“Fool," said my muse to me. "Look in thy heart and write.”
Sonnet 1,Concluding couplet from Loving in truth,and fain in verse my love to show
Compare: "Look, then, into thine heart and write", Henry W. Longfellow, Voices of the Night, Prelude.
Variant: Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite:
"Fool!" said my muse to me, "look in thy heart, and write.
Source: Astrophel and Stella (1591)
Context: .... But words came halting forth, wanting Invention's stay,
Invention, Nature's child, fled step-dame Study's blows,
And others' feet still seemed but strangers in my way.
Thus great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes,
Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite:
"Fool," said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart and write."
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Philip Sidney 26
English diplomat 1554–1586Related quotes

Give All to Love http://www.emersoncentral.com/poems/give_all_to_love.htm, st. 1
1840s, Poems (1847)

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 161.

“It's a fool that looks for logic in the chambers of the human heart.”
Source: O Brother, Where Art Thou?

“When thou findest thyself scorning another, look then at thy own heart and laugh at thy folly.”
Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913), Karma

A Prayer
as quoted in Pushkin, Alexander (2009). Selected Lyric Poetry. Northwestern University Press, p. 199.

“Fool that I am," said he,"that I did not tear out my heart the day I resolved to revenge myself".”
Variant: What a fool I was, not to tear my heart out on the day when I resolved to avenge myself!
Source: The Count of Monte Cristo