Muse Quotes - Page 4

• Illustrious acts high raptures do infuse, And every conqueror creates a muse.

  Edmund Waller

  Rapture, Conqueror

  'Panegyric to My Lord Protector' 46

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• Like a sea-beast fished up from the depths, or a diver too suddenly hoisted, my veins threatened to burst from the fall in pressure. I had great anxiety and no means of relieving it ... And then it was that the Muse of Painting came to my rescue - out of charity and out of chivalry ... - and said, "Are these toys any good to you? They amuse some people."

  Winston Churchill

  Fall, Mean, Sea

  Winston Churchill (2012). “Churchill: The Power of Words”, p.140, Da Capo Press

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• In the beginning, there was a kind of energy that - like an urgency to express myself, and the songs just couldn't be held in. But I think it changes, the nature of how that - what that energy is. And I need to court the muse in a much more serious way.

  James Taylor

  Song, Thinking, Way

  "Why James Taylor is still ‘endlessly interested’ in making music". Interview with Jeffrey Brown, www.pbs.org. Jun 30, 2015.

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• To feed your Muse, then, you should always have been hungry about life since you were a child. If not, it is a little late to start.

  Ray Bradbury

  Children, Littles, Hungry

  "Zen in the Art of Writing" by Ray Bradbury, (p. 45), 1992.

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• Thus does the Muse herself move men divinely inspired, and through them thus inspired a Chain hangs together of others inspired divinely likewise.

  Plato

  Moving, Men, Together

  Plato (1851). “The Works of Plato: Philebus, Charmides, Laches, Menexenus, Hippias major, Hippias minor, Ion, First Alcibiades, Second Alcibiades, Theages, The rivals, Hipparchus. Minos, Clitopho, The epistles”, p.295

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• The artist-muse relationship is romantic and passionate, and complex, and I would imagine that would be a hard relationship to have if you're not with the person. It requires so much of each other, you have to be in love with each other.

  Kate Bosworth

  Artist, Would Be, Passionate

  "Michael Polish And Kate Bosworth, Director And Muse". Interview with Emma Brown, www.interviewmagazine.com. October 31, 2013.

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• The Muse but serv'd to ease some friend, not wife, / To help me through this long disease, my life.

  Alexander Pope

  Long, Wife, Ease

  "An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot" l. 131 (1735)

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• I just really allowed my muse to be my guide and I just go with whatever I'm feeling.

  K. D. Lang

  Feelings, Guides

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• The first two, three, four weeks are wasted. I just show up in front of the computer. Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too. If she doesn't show up invited, eventually she just shows up.

  Isabel Allende

  Writing, Two, Three

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• With no companion but the constant Muse, Who sought me when I needed her ah, when Did I not need her, solitary else?

  Richard Henry Stoddard

  Needs, Poet, Companion

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• The delicate muses lose their head if their attention is once diverted. Perhaps if you were successful abroad in talking and dealing with men, you would not come back to your bookshelf and your task. When the spirit chooses you for its scribe to publish some commandment, it makes you odious to men and men odious to you, and you shall accept that loathsomeness with joy. The moth must fly to the lamp, and you must solve those questions though you die.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Successful, Men, Talking

  "Letters and social aims". Inspiration. Book by Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1875.

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• I sit down to the piano regularly at nine-o'clock in the morning and Mesdames les Muses have learned to be on time for that rendezvous.

  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

  Music, Morning, Piano

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• If a muse knocked at our studio door tomorrow, how many of us would even notice?

  Carole Katchen

  Doors, Tomorrow, Studios

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• It seems that I must bid the Muse to pack, / Choose Plato and Plotinus for a friend / Until imagination, ear and eye, / Can be content with argument and deal / In abstract things; or be derided by / A sort of battered kettle at the heel.

  William Butler Yeats

  Plato, Eye, Imagination

  William Butler Yeats (1962). “Poems of William Butler Yeats”, p.418, Hayes Barton Press

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• Your muse is amused and willed to further renewal during the process of mindless grabbing of reference material or errant imaginings.

  Robert Genn

  Renewal, Process, Mindless

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• You say, "Something important really happened here. I really had hold of something I was visited by the muse." And that's enough to make you continue the months and years to finish the whole book.

  Alan Lightman

  Book, Years, Important

  Interview with Robert Birnbaum, www.identitytheory.com. November 16, 2000.

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• Visual tonics such as 'timed creativity' need to be introduced to refresh and refurbish the muse.

  Robert Genn

  Creativity, Needs, Visuals

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• The power of our Muse lies in her meaninglessness. Even the style can turn one into a slave if one does not run away from it, and then one is doomed to repeat oneself. The only thing that counts is curiosity. For me personally, this is what creativity is about. It will express itself less in the fear of doing the same thing over again than in the desire not to go where one has already been.

  Gueorgui Pinkhassov

  Running, Lying, Creativity

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• Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit/Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste/Brought death into the world, and all our woe,/With loss of Eden, till one greater Man/Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,/Sing heavenly muse

  John Milton

  Loss, Men, Eden

  Paradise Lost bk. 1, l. 1 (1667)

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• No muse shoots darts of insight into the unsuspecting artist.

  Eric Maisel

  Artist, Darts, Insight

  Eric Maisel (1996). “Affirmations for Artists”, Tarcher

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• Every poet knows the pun is Pierian, that it springs from the same soil as the Muse?a matching and shifting of vowels and consonants, an adroit assonance sometimes derided as jackassonance.

  Louis Untermeyer

  Spring, Vowels, Soil

  1965 Bygones.

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• your concert-goer, though he feed upon symphony as a lamb upon milk, is no true lover if he play no instrument. Your true lover does more than admire the muse; he sweats a little in her service.

  Catherine Drinker Bowen

  Music, Play, Sweat

  Catherine Drinker Bowen (1939). “Friends and fiddlers”

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• My Muse sits forlorn She wishes she had not been born She sits in the cold No word she says is ever told.

  Stevie Smith

  Wish, Cold, Forlorn

  Stevie Smith (1988). “New Selected Poems of Stevie Smith”, p.95, New Directions Publishing

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• Why, if 'tis dancing you would be, There's brisker pipes than poetry. Say, for what were hop-yards meant, Or why was Burton built on Trent? Oh many a peer of England brews Livelier liquor than the Muse, And malt does more than Milton can To justify God's ways to man. Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink For fellows whom it hurts to think: Look into the pewter pot To see the world as the world's not.

  A. E. Housman

  Hurt, Drinking, Men

  Shropshire Lad (1896) no. 62

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• Loss as muse. Loss as character. Loss as life.

  Anna Quindlen

  Character, Loss

  Anna Quindlen (2004). “Loud and Clear”, p.158, Random House

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