Muse Quotes - Page 10

• When I was from Cupid's passions free, my Muse was mute and wrote no elegy.

  Ovid

  Passion, Cupid, Mute

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• Everyone has left me
  except my muse,
  that good nurse.
  She stays in my hand,
  a mild white mouse.

  Anne Sexton

  Inspirational, Hands, White

  Anne Sexton, Diane Wood Middlebrook, Diana Hume George (2000). “Selected Poems of Anne Sexton”, p.75, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I don't know if you actually get something out of writing poetry. I think poetry is an autonomous muse that decides to come and sit on your couch.

  Alice Walker

  Writing, Thinking, Couches

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• How sublime Upon a time-blanch’d cliff to muse, and, while The eagle glories in a sea of air, To mingle with the scene around! - Survey The sun-warm heaven.

  Robert Montgomery

  Nature, Air, Eagles

  Robert Montgomery (1829). “A universal prayer ; Death ; A vision of heaven ; and A vision of hell”, p.142

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• We live in an age of science and of abundance. The care and reverence for books as such, proper to an age when no book was duplicated until someone took the pains to copy it out by hand, is obviously no longer suited to ’the needs of society’, or to the conservation of learning. The weeder is supremely needed if the Garden of the Muses is to persist as a garden.

  Ezra Pound

  Pain, Book, Garden

  Ezra Pound, Michael Dirda (2010). “ABC of Reading”, p.17, New Directions Publishing

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• All literature up to today is sexist. The Muses never sang to the poets about liberated women. It's the same old chanson from the Bible and Homer through Joyce and Proust.

  Allan Bloom

  Men, Literature, Today

  Allan Bloom (2008). “Closing of the American Mind”, p.65, Simon and Schuster

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• Sitting around and waiting for your muse is not the best choice.

  Kristin Hannah

  Choices, Waiting, Sitting

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• Popular poets are the parish priests of the Muse, retailing her ancient divinations to a long since converted public.

  George Santayana

  Long, Poetry, Ancient

  George Santayana, Marianne S. Wokeck, Martin A. Coleman, James Gouinlock (2015). “The Life of Reason Or The Phases of Human Progress: Reason in Art, Volume VII, Book Four”, p.58, MIT Press

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• The art of writing is mysterious; the opinions we hold are ephemeral , and I prefer the Platonic idea of the Muse to that of Poe, who reasoned, or feigned to reason, that the writing of a poem is an act of the intelligence. It never fails to amaze me that the classics hold a romantic theory of poetry, and a romantic poet a classical theory.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Art, Writing, Ideas

  Jorge Luis Borges (1978). “Doctor Brodie's Report”, Plume Books

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• But words came halting forth, wanting Invention's stay;
  
  Invention, Nature's child, fled stepdame Study's blows;
  
  And others' feet still seemed but strangers in my way.
  
  Thus, great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes,
  
  Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite:
  
  "Fool," said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart, and write.

  Philip Sidney

  Children, Writing, Heart

  'Astrophel and Stella' (1591) sonnet 1

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• As we've grown 'The Daily Muse' and met contacts who want to collaborate with us, knowing who does what has helped us be clear on who we want our partners to connect with - and makes us look buttoned up, too. SEO firm? Talk to our COO. An editor from the 'Huffington Post?' Meet our Editor-in-Chief.

  Kathryn Minshew

  Editors, Knowing, Doe

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• For almost the first year of The Muse's life, I would do 5 to 8 networking events a week. And I don't necessarily think that's the right path for everyone, but I realized that as an entrepreneur, one of my strengths was finding the right people who could help us. I didn't come into startups with any network.

  Kathryn Minshew

  Thinking, Years, People

  "Kathryn Minshew: Helping Women Find Their Muse". Interview with Nusha Balyan, www.huffingtonpost.com. July 18, 2013.

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• I am a big advocate for having an open discussion about team norms and preferences. At The Muse, some of us like to start working at 7:30 A.M. Others focus best from 10 P.M. to 2 A.M. Create a culture where it's acceptable not to be working when someone else is working.

  Kathryn Minshew

  Team, Focus, Culture

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• There's a phrase, "sitzfleisch", which means just plain sitting on your ass and getting it done. Just showing up for work. My uncle Raphael was a painter, and he used to say, "If the muse is late for work, start without her". You have to be there. You have to be there, and do it, and grind it out, even when it is grinding and you know you're probably going to rewrite all this tomorrow.

  Peter S. Beagle

  Uncles, Writing, Mean

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• Some people have human muses - mine is a city. I feel a startling ambivalence towards London, but for better or worse my work has come utterly to depend upon it.

  Will Self

  Cities, People, London

  "In the beginning" by Will Self, www.theguardian.com. June 16, 2007.

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• Sixties folk rock was my original muse and the folk audience-people who listen to music off the beaten track-fostered my career. I definitely don't want to abandon the genre but I also need to make sure I'm Dar Williams first.

  Dar Williams

  Careers, Rocks, People

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• Discipline is what makes a writer. If writing was like lifting weights, then I'd look like Mr. Universe. Write every day. Give the Muse a chance to get to know you.

  Tony D'Souza

  Writing, Lifting Weights, Giving

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• The muse of music isn't just from Greek mythology, but living in people like the Beatles, Chuck Berry, Anita Baker, Aretha Franklin.

  Ernie Isley

  People, Greek, Bakers

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• You can think of a painter as a trio - the artist, his talent and his muse, the last two always on the lookout for a new brush man.

  Robert Breault

  Artist, Men, Thinking

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• The muse does not allow the praise-de-serving here to die: she enthrones him in the heavens.

  Horace

  Heaven, Doe, Praise

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• The lie, as a virtue, a principle, is eternal; the lie, as a recreation, a solace, a refuge in time of need, the fourth Grace, the tenth Muse, man's best and surest friend is immortal

  Mark Twain

  Lying, Men, Grace

  Mark Twain (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated)”, p.2655, Delphi Classics

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• Logic is the subject that has helped me most in picking stocks, if only because it taught me to identify the peculiar illogic of Wall Street. Actually Wall Street thinks just as the Greeks did. The early Greeks used to sit around for days and debate how many teeth a horse has. They thought they could figure it out just by sitting there, instead of checking the horse. A lot of investors sit around and debate whether a stock is going up, as if the financial muse will give them the answer, instead of checking the company.

  Peter Lynch

  Horse, Wall, Thinking

  Peter Lynch (2012). “One Up On Wall Street: How To Use What You Already Know To Make Money In”, p.50, Simon and Schuster

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• Whether the darken'd room to muse invite, Or whiten'd wall provoke the skew'r to write; In durance, exile, Bedlam, or the Mint, Like Lee or Budgel I will rhyme and print.

  Alexander Pope

  Wall, Writing, Rooms

  Alexander Pope, William Warburton (1751). “The Works of Alexander Pope: Esq., with His Last Corrections, Additions, and Improvements; as They Were Delivered to the Editor a Little Before His Death; Together with the Commentaries and Notes of Mr. Warburton”, p.49

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• So in all humours sportively I range; My muse is rightly of the English strain, That cannot long one fashion entertain.

  Michael Drayton

  Fashion, Long, Range

  1594 Ideas Mirrour,'To the Reader of These Sonnets'.

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• There was a rocky valley between Buxton and Bakewell?divine as the vale of Tempe; you might have seen the gods there morning and eveningApollo and the sweet Muses of the Light? You enterprised a railroad?you blasted its rocks away? And, now, every fool in Buxton can be at Bakewell in half-an-hour, and every fool in Bakewell at Buxton.

  John Ruskin

  Sweet, Morning, Light

  1886-8 Praeterita, vol.3, pt.4,'Joanna's Cave', note. Ruskin 704

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