Quotes about inspiration
A collection of quotes on the topic of inspiration, people, use, world.
Quotes about inspiration
“The richness I achieve comes from nature, the source of my inspiration.”
“Nature is my manifestation of God.
I go to nature every day for inspiration in the day's work.”
“Don't loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club.”
"Getting into Print", first published in 1903 in The Editor magazine
Variant: You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
Context: Don't loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don't get it you will nonetheless get something that looks remarkably like it.
Context: Fiction pays best of all and when it is of fair quality is more easily sold. A good joke will sell quicker than a good poem, and, measured in sweat and blood, will bring better remuneration. Avoid the unhappy ending, the harsh, the brutal, the tragic, the horrible - if you care to see in print things you write. (In this connection don't do as I do, but do as I say.) Humour is the hardest to write, easiest to sell, and best rewarded... Don't write too much. Concentrate your sweat on one story, rather than dissipate it over a dozen. Don't loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don't get it you will nonetheless get something that looks remarkably like it.
As quoted by Wayne Dyer http://n-spire.com/archives/011802.html
The Mahābhāṣya
Variant: If your actions create a legacy that inspires others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, then, you are an excellent leader.
“Motivation gets you through the day, but inspiration lasts a lifetime.”
“Desperation is sometimes as powerful an inspirer as genius.”
Source: Books, Coningsby (1844), Endymion (1880), Ch. 8.
Source: On Authority, see https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm
“If the artist has outer and inner eyes for nature, nature rewards him by giving him inspiration.”
Source: 1916 -1920, Autobiography', 1918, p. 14
MS dedication to Boris Godunov, January 21, 1874. http://www.bklynnews.com/BklynRadio/boris%20godunov-1.htm
Babur writing about the battle against the Rajput Confederacy led by Maharana Sangram Singh of Mewar. In Babur-Nama, translated into English by A.S. Beveridge, New Delhi reprint, 1979, pp. 547-572.
Charles L. Souvay, The Catholic Encyclopedia (1910), Volume VII.
About
“Genius inspires resentment. A sad fact of life.”
Source: The Time Paradox
“We don't have education, we have inspiration; if I was educated I would be a damn fool.”
As recorded in Time Will Tell (1992), a documentary by Declan Lowney
Variant: We don't have education we have inspiration; if I was educated I would be a damn fool.
Source: Bob Marley - Legend
“A true artist is not one who is inspired, but one who inspires others.”
Source: Journey to the End of the Night
“Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.”
La inspiración existe, pero tiene que encontrarte trabajando.
Attributed from posthumous publications
Source: Tomás R. Villasante (1994), Las ciudades hablan: identidades y movimientos sociales en seis metrópolis latinoamericanas. p. 264.
“The Philosophy of Fascism,” first published in English in the Spectator, November 1928, pp. 36-37. Reprinted in Origins and Doctrine of Fascism, A. James Gregor, translator and editor, Transaction Publishers (2003) p. 33
On how he creates memorable music
Ebony interview (2007)
Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism (1879)
The Opium of Intellectuals (1955), Conclusion: The End of the Ideological Age?
Of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue
"Why Don't You Run Upstairs and Write a Nice Gershwin Tune?", in The Atlantic Monthly, April 1955.
A private statement made on March 24, 1942.
Disputed, (1941-1944) (published 1953)
“Science is competitive, aggressive, demanding. It is also imaginative, inspiring, uplifting.”
Bright Galaxies, Dark Matters (1997), p. 219
Quoted by Masiela Lusha in a 2009 press conference http://www.masielalusha.com/board.php
2015, Remarks to the Kenyan People (July 2015)
“Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.”
Spoken statement (c. 1903); published in Harper's Monthly (September 1932).
Variants:
None of my inventions came by accident. I see a worthwhile need to be met and I make trial after trial until it comes. What it boils down to is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.
Statement in a press conference (1929), as quoted in Uncommon Friends: Life with Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, Alexis Carrel & Charles Lindbergh (1987) by James D. Newton, p. 24.
Variant forms without early citation: "Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. Accordingly, a 'genius' is often merely a talented person who has done all of his or her homework."
"Genius: one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration."
1900s
Variant: Genius is one per cent inspiration and ninety nine perspiration.
The Big Picture, 1996
1990s, 1990
Source: [Pierce, 1976-2002, 125]
As quoted in God’s Laughter (1992) by Gerhard Staguhn, p. 152
Inside the Painter's Studio, Joe Fig, Princeton Architectural Press, 2009, p. 42
“Some of the words you'll find within yourself,
the rest some power will inspire you to say.”
III. 26–27 (tr. Robert Fagles); Athena to Telemachus.
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)
Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus (c.450?)
1790s, The Age of Reason, Part I (1794)
"Reasoned Proposal to the Central Committee of the League for Peace and Freedom" also known as "Federalism, Socialism, Anti-Theologism" (September 1867)
"Notes on Nationalism" (1945)
Context: The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists, whose real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writing of the younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States. Moreover they do not as a rule condemn violence as such, but only violence used in defence of western countries. The Russians, unlike the British, are not blamed for defending themselves by warlike means, and indeed all pacifist propaganda of this type avoids mention of Russia or China. It is not claimed, again, that the Indians should abjure violence in their struggle against the British. Pacifist literature abounds with equivocal remarks which, if they mean anything, appear to mean that statesmen of the type of Hitler are preferable to those of the type of Churchill, and that violence is perhaps excusable if it is violent enough. After the fall of France, the French pacifists, faced by a real choice which their English colleagues have not had to make, mostly went over to the Nazis, and in England there appears to have been some small overlap of membership between the Peace Pledge Union and the Blackshirts. Pacifist writers have written in praise of Carlyle, one of the intellectual fathers of Fascism. All in all it is difficult not to feel that pacifism, as it appears among a section of the intelligentsia, is secretly inspired by an admiration for power and successful cruelty.
Deeds Rather Than Words (1963)
Context: To me, today, at age sixty-one, all prayer, by the humble or highly placed, has one thing in common: supplication for strength and inspiration to carry on the best human impulses which should bind us together for a better world. Without such inspiration, we would rapidly deteriorate and finally perish. But in our troubled time, the right of men to think and worship as their conscience dictates is being sorely pressed. We can retain these privileges only by being constantly on guard and fighting off any encroachment on these precepts. To retreat from any of the principles handed down by our forefathers, who shed their blood for the ideals we still embrace, would be a complete victory for those who would destroy liberty and justice for the individual.
Luther King" http://gos.sbc.edu/g/gandhi2.html"Martin, speech at the presentation of the Jawaharial Nehru Award for International Understanding to Coretta Scott King in New Delhi, India (January 24, 1969). Published in Selected Speeches and Writings of Indira Gandhi, September 1972-March 1977 (New Delhi : Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Govt. of India, 1984. pp. 312-313).
Context: We admired Dr. King. We felt his loss as our own. The tragedy rekindled memories of the great martyrs of all time who gave their lives so that men might live and grow. We thought of the great men in your own country who fell to the assassin's bullet and of Mahatma Gandhi's martyrdom here in this city, this very month, twenty-one years ago. Such events remain as wounds in the human consciousness, reminding us of battles, yet to be fought and tasks still to be accomplished. We should not mourn for men of high ideals. Rather we should rejoice that we had the privilege of having had them with us, to inspire us by their radiant personalities.
Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)
Context: Dante has not deigned to take his inspiration from any other. He has wished to be himself, himself alone; in a word, to create. He has occupied a vast space, and has filled it with the superiority of a sublime mind. He is diverse, strong, and gracious. He has imagination, warmth, and enthusiasm. He makes his reader tremble, shed tears, feel the thrill of honor in a way that is the height of art. Severe and menacing, he has terrible imprecations for crime, scourgings for vice, sorrow for misfortune. As a citizen, affected by the laws of the republic, he thunders against its oppressors, but he is always ready to excuse his native city, Florence is ever to him his sweet, beloved country, dear to his heart. I am envious for my dear France, that she has never produced a rival to Dante; that this Colossus has not had his equal among us. No, there is no reputation which can be compared to his.
As quoted in Modern Dancing and Dancers (1912) by John Ernest Crawford Flitch, p. 105.
Context: To seek in nature the fairest forms and to find the movement which expresses the soul of these forms — this is the art of the dancer. It is from nature alone that the dancer must draw his inspirations, in the same manner as the sculptor, with whom he has so many affinities. Rodin has said: "To produce good sculpture it is not necessary to copy the works of antiquity; it is necessary first of all to regard the works of nature, and to see in those of the classics only the method by which they have interpreted nature." Rodin is right; and in my art I have by no means copied, as has been supposed, the figures of Greek vases, friezes and paintings. From them I have learned to regard nature, and when certain of my movements recall the gestures that are seen in works of art, it is only because, like them, they are drawn from the grand natural source.
My inspiration has been drawn from trees, from waves, from clouds, from the sympathies that exist between passion and the storm, between gentleness and the soft breeze, and the like, and I always endeavour to put into my movements a little of that divine continuity which gives to the whole of nature its beauty and its life.
As quoted in an interview with The Times (2011)
Impact interview (2020)
“Love is the attempt to form a friendship inspired by beauty.”
“Love of God is pure when joy and suffering inspire an equal degree of gratitude.”
Source: Gravity and Grace
“Love, known to the person by whom it is inspired, becomes more bearable.”
“Any book which inspires us to lead a better life is a good book.”
Source: The Quotable Fulton Sheen: A Topical Compilation of the Wit, Wisdom, and Satire of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen
“I don't need to be inspired any longer, just supported.”
Source: Journals
“Amateurs look for inspiration; the rest of us just get up and go to work.”
“Inspiration is a word used by people who aren't really doing anything.”
“While I take inspiration from the past, like most Americans, I live for the future.”
“People are not lazy, they simply have impotent goals.. that is.. goals that do not inspire them.”
Source: 1910s, Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays http://archive.org/stream/mysticism00russuoft/mysticism00russuoft_djvu.txt (1918), Ch. 3: A Free Man's Worship
Context: Such... but even more purposeless, more void of meaning, is the world which Science presents for our belief. Amid such a world, if anywhere, our ideals henceforward must find a home. That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the débris of a universe in ruins—all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built.
Context: That Man is the product of causes that had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins – all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built.
Helen Adams Keller (p. 60. Helen Keller's Journal: 1936-1937, Doubleday, Doran & company, inc., 1938)
“The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.”
1920s, What I Believe (1925)
Source: Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Value
“Fire Lookout: Numa Ridge”, p. 57
The Journey Home (1977)
Source: The Journey Home: Some Words in Defense of the American West
Source: A Brief History of Time (1988), Ch. 8
Interviewed by J. T. LeRoy, "Strange Innocence," Vanity Fair, July 2001
Source: Christian Science (1907), Ch. 4
Es gibt kein öderes und widrigeres Geschöpf in der Natur als den Menschen, welcher seinem Genius ausgewichen ist und nun nach rechts und nach links, nach rückwärts und überallhin schielt. Man darf einen solchen Menschen zuletzt gar nicht mehr angreifen, denn er ist ganz Außenseite ohne Kern, ein anbrüchiges, gemaltes, aufgebauschtes Gewand.
“Schopenhauer as educator,” § 3.1, R. Hollingdale, trans. (1983), p. 128
Untimely Meditations (1876)
Søren Kierkegaard The Concept of Anxiety, Nichol p. 98-100 (1844)
About
Book XXXIV, sec. 12 http://books.google.com/books?id=5f08AAAAYAAJ&q="For+he+considered+that+in+many+cases+but+especially+in+war+mere+appearances+have+had+all+the+effect+of+realities+and+that+a+person+under+a+firm+persuasion+that+he+can+command+resources+virtually+has+them+that+very+prospect+inspiring+him+with+hope+and+boldness+in+his+exertions"&pg=PA443#v=onepage
History of Rome
Eugene Onegin (1823)
Original: (ru) Но так и быть — рукой пристрастной Прими собранье пестрых глав, Полусмешных, полупечальных, Простонародных, идеальных, Небрежный плод моих забав, Бессониц, легких вдохновений, Незрелых и увядших лет, Ума холодных наблюдений И сердца горестных замет.
Source: Auguste Rodin: The Man, His Ideas, His Works, 1905, p. 65
“We all conceal
A god within us, we all deal
With heaven direct, from whose high places we derive
The inspiration by which we live.”
Est deus in nobis, et sunt commercia caeli:
Sedibus aetheriis spiritus ille venit.
Book III, lines 549–550 (tr. James Michie)
Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love)
From Interview to the author , in Osamu Tezuka, Jumping ; quoted in AA.VV., Osamu Tezuka: A Manga Biography , vol. 4, translated by Marta Fogato, Coconino Press, Bologna, 2001, p. 178. ISBN 8888063188