Quotes About Inspiration

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. 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.'

Of course, a psychologist would find it more direct to study the inspired poet. He would make concrete studies of inspiration in individual geniuses. But for all that, would he experience the phenomena of inspiration? His human documentation gathered from inspired poets could hardly be related, except from the exterior, in an ideal of objective observations. Comparison of inspired poets would soon make us lose sight of inspiration.

Had I mentioned to someone around 1795 that I planned to write, anyone with any sense would have told me to write for two hours every day, with or without inspiration. Their advice would have enabled me to benefit from the ten years of my life I totally wasted waiting for inspiration.

Out of my entire annual output of songs, perhaps two, or at the most three, came as a result of inspiration. We can never rely on inspiration. When we most want it, it does not come.

A lot of young writers wait for inspiration. The inspiration only hits you at the desk.

Inspiration comes from the heart. The letter ‘I’ is the heart of F”I”RST… (F Inspiration R S T).

Very few people know how to work. Inspiration, everybody has inspiration. That's just hot air.

Someone once asked Somerset Maughham if he wrote on a schedule or only when struck by inspiration. "I write only when inspiration strikes," he replied. "Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp.

There's so many things to explore in life, and if you don't have that inspiration or motivation to do it, then don't force yourself. Take that time to do whatever else you need to do. That inspiration or motivation will always come back and when it does, it's always stronger.

I don't believe in inspiration. I write when I can't avoid writing anymore.

I always start from scratch with a character - they're never based on anyone else. You get ideas of what people look like, and I'm a great people watcher. You can draw inspiration from people.

I am a man of prayer and meditation. I feel inspiration is of paramount importance. If I can inspire someone, and if that person also can inspire me, then we can do many good things for the betterment of this world.

Of course Nebraska is a storehouse of literary material. Everywhere is a storehouse of literary material. If a true artist were born in a pigpen and raised in a sty, he would still find plenty of inspiration for his work. The only need is the eye to see.

Miles Davis was a part of my life from 1947 on. I was born in 1941 and I first heard him in 1947 on a 78 rpm. And then I followed his career, starting with his first solo album in 1951. He was an icon and inspiration and a mentor to me.

My daughter is my greatest inspiration.

I don't really want people looking to me for inspiration. I just want to be a sign along the way that points toward Heaven.

A lot of people like to think that polio was a inspiration in what I do. I think that music has to do with what kind of passion do you have.

What I'm looking for in my career, you know? You're looking for those lightning bolts of inspiration where someone says something that sparks an idea or suggests something strange.

I approached photography the only way that I knew how to approach anything: as a job. I would get up, photograph all morning, stop and have lunch, and then, photograph all afternoon. I didn't think that I had to wait for some inspiration.

I think to get society to act as a whole, people need inspiration.

It is not speech or tool making that distinguishes us from other animals, it is imagination....Of what use are speech sounds and tools without an inspiration toward perfectibility, without a sense that we can create or construct a history.

When listening to the sound material, we metamorphose the inside into an outside. This notion of metamorphosis is one of the principles that leads the course of the musical suite, reflecting changes (fluidsolid passages: water/ice/fire) or movements (ebb/flow/wave, inspiration/expiration) or inside-outside passages (door/individual/crowd). Thus, the perceived object is not entirely what we would have liked it to be. Our music brings us closer to some while it takes us away from others: each with their own inside.

Through the years, I have learned there is no harm in charging oneself up with delusions between moments of valid inspiration.

I never played music, but it's an important thing ... the studying, the inspiration.

Most of my horror inspiration is really older stuff and really new stuff.

Accordingly the Northern races of Europe found their inspiration in the Bible; and the enthusiasm for it has not yet quite faded away.

If you're waiting for inspiration, you'll wait until you're dead.

We as the band are passionate and energetic musicians. We have minimised the amount of self-criticism. Fear of death, total impatience and an unconcerned attitude to weary notions of good and bad is what's making us exceed speed limits. We're hijacking the holy inspiration from otherness, and we don't spoil it with personal aesthetic preferences. We are panthers and gazelles, not slugs and tortoises. Though it must be said that after turning forty I've started to resemble a sloth more and more.

The stories of past courage... can offer hope, they can provide inspiration. But they cannot supply courage itself. For this each man must look into his own soul.

As far as I can recall, the initial shiver of inspiration [for Lolita] was somehow prompted by a newspaper story about an ape in the Jardin des Plantes, who, after months of coaxing by a scientist, produced the first drawing ever charcoaled by an animal: this sketch showed the bars of the poor creature's cage.

My friends are a huge part of my inspiration.

God would first, by this inspiration of his Spirit, have wrought in our hearts that holy love without which none can enter into glory.

Lead by inspiration, not intimidation.

We all tend to go to extremes; some rely only on their own preparation and look for nothing more; others, as I say, tend to despise preparation and trust to the unction, the anointing and the inspiration of the Spirit alone. But there must be no "either/or" here; it is always "both/and." These two things must go together.

Every great inspiration is but an experiment.

The inspiration of a noble cause enables men to do things they did not dream themselves capable of before

It is my faith and conviction that the Constitution came not alone of the brain and purpose of man, but of the inspiration of God.

When I'm writing I've been playing something for a couple of hours and I'm almost in a trance. At two or three in the morning you can actually see bits inspiration floating about and grab them.

I just want to tell stories that are meaningful and have inspiration to them; people can watch it and take away something or maybe they'll just think about themselves differently, or thing about the world differently. I just want to create characters that live on.

At one level inspiration is the ability to see beauty and mystery in everything men and women do.

If you wait for inspiration to write you're not a writer, you're a waiter.

Inspiration arrives as a packet of material to be delivered.

Any serious man or woman in search of spiritual ideas will find a surprising challenge and an authentic source of inspiration and intellectual nourishment in the writings of Paul Brunton.

A role model in the flesh provides more than inspiration; his or her very existence is confirmation of possibilities one may have every reason to doubt, saying, "Yes, someone like me can do this."

Leadership is the capacity to influence others through inspiration motivated by passion, generated by vision, produced by a conviction, ignited by a purpose.

All an actor has, I think, is their heart, really,...that's the place you go for your inspiration. If my heart wasn't filled with them, where would I get stuff? What would I have to express?

Inspiration does not come like a blot, nor is it kinetic energy striving, but it comes to us slowly and quietly all the time.

When inspiration does not come to me, I go halfway to meet it.