Muse Quotes - Page 8

• I do not know whether I would not like much better to have produced one perfectly formed child by intercourse with the muses than by intercourse with my wife.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Children, Wife, Intercourse

  Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”, p.293, Stanford University Press

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• We all have our muses. My grandmother and my mother are the people I write for. I'll never have to worry about who buys my work, or who likes it, and who doesn't. The people who I want to be proud of me already are.

  Nikki Giovanni

  Mother, Writing, Worry

  Interview with Nicole Sealey, mosaicmagazine.org. September 6, 2013.

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• I am tired of loving a foreign muse.

  Stephen Vincent Benet

  Tired, Homesickness

  1927 'American Names'.

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• But there are spirits of a yet more liberal culture, to whom no simplicity is barren. There are not only stately pines, but fragile flowers, like the orchises, commonly described as too delicate for cultivation, which derive their nutriment from the crudest mass of peat. These remind us, that, not only for strength, but for beauty, the poet must, from time to time, travel the logger's path and the Indian's trail, to drink at some new and more bracing fountain of the Muses, far in the recesses of the wilderness.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Inspirational, Flower, Simplicity

  Henry David Thoreau (1873). “The Maine Woods”, p.160

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• [The Muse of our Fiction of the future] will lead you - if you are humble and honest with her - straight into a World of Working Men, crude of speech, swift of action, strong of passion, straight to the heart of a new life.

  Frank Norris

  Strong, Passion, Heart

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• The biggest mistake you can make is assuming that creativity will hit you all at once and the muse will carry you to the end of the book on feather wings while Foster the People plays gently in the background. Storytelling is work. Pleasurable work, usually, but it is work.

  Maggie Stiefvater

  Mistake, Book, Creativity

  "How to Win the 2012 Fiction Contest!" by Laura Rosenfeld, www.seventeen.com. September 1, 2011.

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• I was standing next to a famed geo-politician when the first news of the Argentine attack [on the Faulkland Islands] was received, and heard him muse incredulously: "An old-fashioned naval battle. A war between two civilized nations, perhaps with even a declaration of war, and later a peace conference. Wow." No hostages, no nukes, no ideologies, no religious fanaticism; just a fair-and-square war over national interests - hard to believe, in this day and age.

  William Safire

  Religious, Peace, War

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• He who without the Muse's madness in his soul comes knocking at the door of poesy and thinks that art will make him anything fit to be called a poet, finds that the poetry which he indites in his sober senses is beaten hollow by the poetry of madmen.

  Plato

  Art, Thinking, Doors

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• We knew when we started the Daily Muse, we wanted a recruiting-focused business model rather than an advertising-focused one. We felt like publishers were being forced to go to more and more extreme lengths to monetize through advertising.

  Kathryn Minshew

  Advertising, Length, Wanted

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• For, whom the Muses smile upon,
  And touch with soft persuasion,
  His words like a storm-wind can bring
  Terror and beauty on their wing;
  In his every syllable
  Lurketh nature veritable.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wind, Wings, Poetry

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2007). “Poems”, p.137, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Rhyme and meter force gaps in meaning so the muse can enter.

  Mason Cooley

  Poetry, Gaps, Meter

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• Oh! not for the great departed, Who formed our country's laws, And not for the bravest-hearted, Who died in freedom's cause, And not for some living hero To whom all bend the knee, My muse would raise her song of praise - But for the man to be.

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox

  Country, Song, Appreciation

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox (2012). “Leafs On An Idle Breeze - My Inspirational Poems (Annotated Edition)”, p.263, Jazzybee Verlag

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• I wake up in the morning, or the middle of the night when an idea comes through. My songwriting style, basically I just write down information given to me from the muse and how that works for songwriters. Record the muse and the muse delivers.

  Creed Bratton

  Morning, Writing, Night

  Source: www.talive.com

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• As the profoundest philosophy of ancient Rome and Greece lighted her taper at Israel's altar, so the sweetest strains of the pagan muse were swept from harps attuned on Zion's hill.

  Edward Thomson

  Bible, Philosophy, Zion

  Edward Thomson (1856). “Essays, moral and religious”, p.35

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• Virtue runs before the muse,
  and defies her skill;
  she is rapt and doth refuse
  to wait a painter's will.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Running, Art, Skills

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1847). “Poems”, p.192

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• If you would get money as a writer or lecturer, you must be popular, which is to go down perpendicularly.... You are paid for being something less than a man. The state does not commonly reward a genius any more wisely. Even the poet laureate would rather not have to celebrate the accidents of royalty. He must be bribed with a pipe of wine; and perhaps another poet is called away from his muse to gauge that very pipe.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Wine, Men, Poetry

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.216, Graphic Arts Books

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• My mom was my muse - she would buy me Italian 'Vogue.' I was this little fashion boy.

  Nicola Formichetti

  Mom, Fashion, Italian

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• Among all men on the earth bards have a share of honor and reverence, because the muse has taught them songs and loves the race of bards.

  Homer

  Music, Song, Men

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• The Muses were dumb while Apollo lectured.

  Charles Lamb

  Silence, Dumb, Apollo

  Charles Lamb, Sir Thomas Noon TALFOURD (1849). “The Letters of Charles Lamb, with a sketch of his life. By T. N. Talfourd”, p.264

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• O you, who in some pretty boat, Eager to listen, have been following Behind my ship, that singing sails along Turn back to look again upon your own shores; Tempt not the deep, lest unawares, In losing me, you yourselves might be lost. The sea I sail has never yet been passed; Minerva breathes, and pilots me Apollo, And Muses nine point out to me the Bears. You other few who have neck uplifted Betimes to the bread of angels upon Which one lives and does not grow sated, Well may you launch your vessel Upon the deep sea.

  Dante Alighieri

  Angel, Sea, Singing

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• I imagined myself as Frida to Diego, both muse and maker. I dreamed of meeting an artist to love and support and work with side by side.

  Patti Smith

  Artist, Support, Sides

  Patti Smith (2010). “Just Kids”, p.12, A&C Black

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• Pity! Religion has so seldom found
  A skilful guide into poetic ground!
  The flowers would spring where'er she deign'd to stray
  And every muse attend her in her way.

  William Cowper

  Spring, Flower, Religion

  William Cowper (1855). “The Complete Poetical Works of William Cowper: With Life, and Critical Notice of His Writings. Eight Engravings on Steel”, p.14

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• Dulness! whose good old cause I yet defend,
  With whom my muse began, with who shall end.

  Alexander Pope

  Causes, Poet, Ends

  Alexander Pope, Valerie Rumbold (2007). “The Poems of Alexander Pope: The Dunciad (1728) & The Dunciad Variorum (1729)”, p.33, Pearson Education

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• Education and study, and the favors of the muses, confer no greater benefit on those that seek them than these humanizing and civilizing lessons, which teach our natural qualities to submit to the limitations prescribed by reason, and to avoid the wildness of extremes.

  Plutarch

  Quality, Benefits, Lessons

  Plutarch (2015). “Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans: Top Biography”, p.292, 谷月社

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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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