#Creativity Quotes

“Nor age so eat up my invention.”

“Ideas are the very coinage of your brain.”

“Where art thou, Muse, that thou forget'st so long / To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?”

“Write till your ink be dry, and with your tearsMoist it again, and frame some feeling lineThat may discover such integrity.”

“This is a gift that I have, simple, simple; a foolish extravagant spirit full of forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, motions, revolutions; these are begot in the ventricle of memory, nourished in the womb of pia mater, and delivered upon the mellowing of occasion.”

“By heaven, I do love: and it hath taught me to rhyme, and to be mekancholy.”

“So full of shapes is fancy That it alone is high fantastical.”

“The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,Doth glance from heaven to earth,From earth to heaven.”

“so full of shapes is fancy”

“It has come to be practically a sort of rule in literature that a man, having once shown himself capable of original writing, is entitled thenceforth to steal from the writings of others at discretion.”

“Nature is a rag-merchant, who works up every shred and ort and end into new creations; like a good chemist, whom I found, the other day, in his laboratory, converting his old shirts into pure white sugar.”

“Good writing is a kind of skating which carries off the performer where he would not go.”

“Congratulate yourself if you have done something strange, extravagant and broken the monotony.”

“Life too near paralyses art.”

“In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.”

“All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients.”

“The poet's habit of living should be set on a key so low that the common influences should delight him.”

“There is no better way to exercise the imagination than the study of the law.”

“Thought is the property of him who can entertain it, and of him who can adequately place it.”

“Every man is a new method.”

“Genius Borrows nobly.”

“A vivid thought brings the power to paint it; and in proportion to the depth of its source is the force of its projection.”

“The reward of commercial civilization is the ability to consume a never-ending array of products.There are limits beyond which commodities cannot be multiplied without preventing their consumers from affirming themselves through the exercise of their personal freedom.When market dependence reaches a certain threshold it deprives people of their power to live creatively and to act autonomously. And precisely because this new impotence is so deeply experienced, it is expressed with difficulty.”

“We do not yet trust the unknown powers of thought. Whence came all these tools, inventions, book laws, parties, kingdoms? Out of the invisible world, through a few brains. The arts and institutions of men are created out of thought. The powers that make the capitalist are metaphysical, the force of method and force of will makes trade, and builds towns.”

“Genius is always sufficiently the enemy of genius by over influence. The literature of every nation bear me witness. The English dramatic poets have Shakspearized now for two hundred years.”

“Invention breeds invention.”

“The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, doth glance from heaven to Earth, from Earth to heaven; and as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown, the poet's pen turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name; such tricks hath strong imagination.”

“Our debt to tradition through reading and conversation is so massive, our protest so rare and insignificant-and this commonly on the ground of other reading and hearing-that in large sense, one would say there is no pure originality. All minds quote. Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands. By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. It is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.”

“Shakespeare carries us to such a lofty strain of intelligent activity, as to suggest a wealth which beggars his own; and we then feel that the splendid works which he has created, and which in other hours we extol as a sort of self-existent poetry, take no stronger hold of real nature than the shadow of a passing traveller on the rock. The inspiration which uttered itself in Hamlet and Lear could utter things as good from day to day, for ever.”

“The poet knows that he speaks adequately, then, only when he speaks somewhat wildly.”

“The charm of the best courages is that they are inventions, inspirations, flashes of genius.”

“We are as much informed of a writer's genius by what he selects as by what he originates. We read the quotation with his eyes, andfind a new and fervent sense; as a passage from one of the poets, well recited, borrows new interest from the rendering. As the journals say, "the italics are ours.”

“As sunbeams stream through liberal space And nothing jostle or displace, So waved the pine-tree through my thought And fanned the dreams it never brought.”

“Don't make a novel to establish a principle of political economy. You will spoil both.”

“Writing should be the settlement of dew on the leaf.”

“Art is a jealous mistress.”

“Each mind has its own method.”

“One must be an inventor to read well.”

“No matter what your work, let it be your own. No matter what your occupation, let what you are doing be organic. Let it be in your bones. In this way, you will open the door by which the affluence of heaven and earth shall stream into you.”

“Every genuine work of art has as much reason for being as the earth and the sun.”

“Talent may frolic and juggle; genius realizes and adds.”

“The eye is the painter and the ear the singer.”

“Herein is the explanation of the analogies, which exist in all the arts. They are the re-appearance of one mind, working in many materials to many temporary ends. Raphael paints wisdom, Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakspeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it. Painting was called "silent poetry," and poetry "speaking painting." The laws of each art are convertible into the laws of every other.”

“A song is no song unless the circumstance is free and fine. If a singer sing from a sense of duty or from seeing no way to escape,I had rather have none. Those only can sleep who do not care to sleep; and those only write or speak best who do not too much respect the writing or the speaking.”

“The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity.”

“Colleges, in like manner, have their indispensable office,--to teach elements. But they can only highly serve us, when they aim not to drill, but to create; when they gather from far every ray of various genius to their hospitable halls, and, by the concentrated fires, set the hearts of their youth on flame.”

“O! for a muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention.”

“In the vaunted works of Art, The master-stroke is Nature's part.”

“No book was ever written down by any but itself.”

“Among the multitude of scholars and authors, we feel no hallowing presence; we are sensible of a knack and skill rather than of inspiration; they have a light, and know not whence it comes, and call it their own; their talent is some exaggerated faculty, some overgrown member, so that their strength is a disease.”