“What we call inspiration in poetry is usually a visitation of words and rhythms rather than ideas.”
Poetry Quotes
The Summer of the Great-Grandmother (1974), p. 143
“What we call inspiration in poetry is usually a visitation of words and rhythms rather than ideas.”
Poetry Quotes
“…conditioning usually reinforces instinct rather than overrides it.”
Source: The Red Queen (1993), Ch. 6
“One had better not rush, otherwise dung comes out rather than creative work.”
Letter to A.S. Suvorin (August 18, 1891)
Letters
Attributed
“Usually, if we hate, it is the shadow of the person that we hate, rather than the substance.”
"Hate Is Rarely a Personal Matter"
The Best of Sydney J. Harris (1975)
Context: Usually, if we hate, it is the shadow of the person that we hate, rather than the substance. We may hate a person because he reminds us of someone we feared and disliked when younger; or because we see in him some gross caricature of what we find repugnant in ourself; or because he symbolizes an attitude that seems to threaten us.
Source: More Money than Brains (2010), Chapter Five, Bully vs. Nerd, p. 168
“Life comes before literature, as the material always comes before the work.”
Literature and Life, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Context: Life comes before literature, as the material always comes before the work. The hills are full of marble before the world blooms with statues.