Musings Quotes

• It is not easy to walk alone in the country without musing upon something.

  Charles Dickens

  Country, Nature, Easy

  Charles Dickens (1868). “Little Dorrit”, p.178, Kartindo.com

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• it seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl.

  Anne Frank

  Years, Thirteen, Seems

  Anne Frank (2011). “The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition”, p.11, Bantam

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• A great work always leaves us in a state of musing.

  Isaac D'Israeli

  Reading, Great Work, States

  "The literary character". Book by Isaac D'Israeli (Chapter XII, last lines), 1795.

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• To rove about, musing, that is to say loitering, is, for a philosopher, a good way of spending time.

  Victor Hugo

  Way, Leisure, Philosopher

  Victor Hugo (1862). “Marius”, p.9

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• Fiction is love and hate and agreement and conflict and common adventure, not lonely musings on have-beens and might-have-beens.

  Alfred Bertram Guthrie

  Lonely, Hate, Adventure

  Alfred Bertram Guthrie (1993). “The Blue Hen's Chick: An Autobiography”, p.177, U of Nebraska Press

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• It has been a long time since I believed in Reality. I prefer the loveliness and the terror of my subjective experiences to those coldly scientific explanations which in the long run turn out to be no more real, and far less fun, than my own fantasies and musings.

  Sheldon B. Kopp

  Running, Fun, Real

  Sheldon B. Kopp (1985). “Even a Stone Can be a Teacher: Learning and Growing from the Experiences of Everyday Life”, Tarcher

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• The sun shall shine in ages yet to be, The musing moon illumine pastures dim, And afterwards a new nativity For all who slept the dreamless interim.

  Nathalia Crane

  Moon, Shining, Age

  Nathalia Crane (1925). “The Janitor's Boy and Other Poems”

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• To rove about, musing, that is to say loitering, is, for a philosopher, a good way of spending time, especially in that kind of mock rurality, ugly but odd, and partaking of two natures, which surrounds certain large cities, particularly Paris.

  Victor Hugo

  Cities, Two, Paris

  Victor Hugo (1862). “Marius”, p.9

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• And when night, guiding her bright train of stars, Throws o'er the sleeping world her gloomy veil, Lonely amidst the desert and the darkness, Musing upon the night's calm majesty; Wrapt up in quietness, with shade and silence, My soul more closely worshippeth Thy presence; With an internal day I feel enlighten'd, And hear a voice, which biddeth me to hope.

  Alphonse de Lamartine

  Lonely, Stars, Sleep

  Alphonse de Lamartine (1849). “A biographical sketch: the poetical meditations : and, poetical and religious harmonies”, p.18

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• On Man, on Nature, and on Human Life, Musing in solitude, I oft perceive Fair trains of images before me rise, Accompanied by feelings of delight Pure, or with no unpleasing sadness mixed.

  William Wordsworth

  Sadness, Men, Solitude

  1814 'The Excursion', preface, l.1-5.

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• Autumn is the Sabbath of the year; the time to think of all the past: nature's calm twilight before the darkness. It does make all men think at times; even the lightest and the worst. The distant days of our springtime, our faded summer, comes over us like a dream. We sit in the evening of our life in tender musings, and all that has been takes shadowy form again, and passes through the thoughts.

  Cunningham Geikie

  Summer, Dream, Twilight

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• Universal design systems can no longer be dismissed as the irrelevant musings of a small, localized design community. A second modernism has emerged, reinvigorating the utopian search for universal forms that marked the birth of design as a discourse and a discipline nearly a century earlier.

  Ellen Lupton

  Discipline, Design, Community

  Ellen Lupton (2014). “Thinking with Type”, p.174, Chronicle Books

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• Children often have been likened to scientists. Both ask fundamental questions about the nature of the universe. Both also ask innumerable questions that seem utterly trivial to others. Finally, both are granted by society the time to pursue their musings.

  Robert S. Siegler

  Children, Fundamentals, Granted

  Robert S. Siegler (1991). “Children's Thinking”, Prentice Hall

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• Some people make sharp distinctions sort of between their recreational musings and their professional work. I don't make that distinction very much

  Whitfield Diffie

  People, Distinction, Professional Work

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• To choose a writer for a friend is like palling around with your cardiologist, who might be musing as you talk to him that you are a sinking man. A writer's love for another writer is never quite free of malice. He may enjoy discussing your failures even more than you do. He probably sees you as tragic, like his characters - or unworthy of tragedy, which is worse.

  Anatole Broyard

  Character, Men, Tragedy

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• I live here among the ignorant like a lost man in fact like one whom the rest seems careless of having anything to do with — they hardly dare talk in my company for fear I shoud mention them in my writings & I find more pleasure in wandering the fields then in mixing among my silent neighbours who are insensible of everything but toiling & talking of it & that to no purpose.

  John Clare

  Writing, Men, Talking

  "Letters".

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• What is new about Barthes's posthumous reputation is the view of him as a writer whose books of criticism and personal musings must be admired as serious and beautiful works of the imagination.

  Edmund White

  Beautiful, Book, Views

  Edmund White, David Bergman (1995). “The Burning Library: Essays”, Vintage

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• No great work has ever been produced except after a long interval of still and musing meditation.

  Walter Bagehot

  Meditation And Yoga, Long, Calming

  Richard Holt Hutton, Walter Bagehot (1860). “The National Review”, p.234

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• Kings built tombs more splendid than the houses of the living and counted the names of their descent dearer than the names of their sons. Childless lords sat in aged halls musing on heraldry or in high cold towers asking questions of the stars. And so the kingdom of Gondor sank into ruin, the line of kings failed, the white tree withered and the rule of Gondor was given over to lesser men.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Kings, Stars, Son

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• Insomnia is a variant of Tourette's--the waking brain races, sampling the world after the world has turned away, touching it everywhere, refusing to settle, to join the collective nod. The insomniac brain is a sort of conspiracy theorist as well, believing too much in its own paranoiac importance--as though if it were to blink, then doze, the world might be overrun by some encroaching calamity, which its obsessive musings are somehow fending off.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Believe, Insomnia, Race

  FaceBook post by Jonathan Lethem from Jul 01, 2016

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• It was Rome, on the fifteenth of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.

  Edward Gibbon

  Fall, Writing, Rome

  Memoirs of My Life ch. 6 (1796)

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• Musings The little poets sing of little things: Hope, cheer, and faith, small queens and puppet kings; Lovers who kissed and then were made as one, And modest flowers waving in the sun. The mighty poets write in blood and tears And agony that, flame-like, bites and sears. They reach their mad blind hands into the night, To plumb abysses dead to human sight; To drag from gulfs where lunacy lies curled, Mad, monstrous nightmare shapes to blast the world. [click on the thumbnail by Jack "King" Kirby]

  Robert E. Howard

  Kings, Queens, Cheer

  Robert E. Howard (2008). “The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard”, p.158, Del Rey

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• I'm steeped in aesthetic theory, so I tend to bring in my own amateurish way of baring a little bit - when, in practice, I'm not thinking about that when I'm working over the keyboard, or musing over musical ideas in my head. But when discussing it, we want to have some new thought about this new music.

  John Maus

  Thinking, Practice, Ideas

  Interview with Jenn Pelly, pitchfork.com. August 10, 2012.

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• I pluck up the good lissome herbs of sentences by pruning, eat them by reading, digest them by musing, and lay them up at length in the high seat of memory.

  Elizabeth I

  Memories, Reading, Pruning

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• Story ideas, but it's also musing on stuff that I'm thinking about. This leads me to this and this leads me to this. They're kind of random and haphazard. Often I can't find anything. Somehow, by doing that, even though I don't necessarily refer to them in a specific way, I have some sort of architecture in my head.

  Charlie Kaufman

  Thinking, Ideas, Stories

  "Exploring Things: Charlie Kaufman & Duke Johnson On 'Anomalisa'". Interview with Brian Tallerico, www.rogerebert.com. December 29, 2015.

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