“Inspiration is not the exclusive privilege of poets or artists.”
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."
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Wisława Szymborska 92
Polish writer 1923–2012Related quotes
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.”
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.
“A true artist is not one who is inspired, but one who inspires others.”
Interim report of the Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order, Alfred Maurice de Zayas http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/IntOrder/A.67.277_en.pdf.
2012
Letter to Paul Cézanne (16 April 1860), as published in Paul Cézanne : Letters (1995) edited by John Rewald.
As quoted in Karl Marx's "The Jewish Question" by ; as translated in Karl Marx, Frederick Engels : Collected Works (1975) edited by International Publishers
“At the age of four, you were an artist. And at seven, you were a poet.”
Source: Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?
A Defence of Poetry http://www.bartleby.com/27/23.html (1821)