“It was Homer who inspired the poet.”
Francis Wayland (1796–1865) President of Brown University
The Iliad and the Bible, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 609.
Variant: It was Homer who gave laws to the artist.
Source: The Victorian Age in Literature (1913), On Algernon Charles Swinburne Ch. III: The Great Victorian Poets (p. 95)
“It was Homer who inspired the poet.”
Francis Wayland (1796–1865) President of Brown University
The Iliad and the Bible, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 609.
Variant: It was Homer who gave laws to the artist.
“Inspiration is not the exclusive privilege of poets or artists.”
Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer
The Poet and the World (1996)
Context: Inspiration is not the exclusive privilege of poets or artists. There is, there has been, there will always be a certain group of people whom inspiration visits. It's made up of all those who've consciously chosen their calling and do their job with love and imagination. It may include doctors, teachers, gardeners — I could list a hundred more professions. Their work becomes one continuous adventure as long as they manage to keep discovering new challenges in it. Difficulties and setbacks never quell their curiosity. A swarm of new questions emerges from every problem that they solve. Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous "I don't know."
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet
A Defence of Poetry http://www.bartleby.com/27/23.html (1821)
Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist
“The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p. 66
The Third Book of Criticism (1969)
Max Euwe (1901–1981) Dutch chess Grandmaster, mathematician, and author
Max Euwe, in: Fred Reinfeld (1956) Why You Lose at Chess, p. 180.