Quotessence
Home / Authors / Brenda Ueland
Brenda Ueland

Brenda Ueland Quotes

Journalist

Filter quotes by topic

AllWritingThinkingPeopleIfsKnowsListeningCreativeSelfTryingChildrenShouldWantCreativityIdeasImaginationImportantArtBelieveFeelingsLittles

Famous Brenda Ueland Quotes

“When you will, make a resolution, set your jaw, you are expressing an imaginative fear that you won't do the thing. If you knew you would do the thing, you would smile happily and set about it. And this fear (since the imagination is always creative) comes about presently and you slide down into the complete slump of several weeks or years - the very thing you dreaded and set your jaw against.”

IfsYearsImaginationCreativeWeekResolutionImaginativeSlidesSlumps
Book:If You Want to Write
Create image

“We have come to think that duty should come first. I disagree. Duty should be a by-product. Writing, the creative effort, the use of the imagination, should come first – at least, for some part of every day of your life. It is a wonderful blessing if you use it. You will become happier, more enlightened, alive, impassioned, light-hearted and generous to everybody else. Even your health will improve. Colds will disappear and all the other ailments of discouragement and boredom.”

IfsThinkingShouldWritingFirstsUseLightImaginationEffortCreativeAliveWonderfulDutyProductsBlessingDisappearGenerousBoredomEnlightenedDisagreeHeartedDiscouragementAilmentsImpassionedLight Hearted
Book:If You Want to Write
Create image

“But the great artists like Michelangelo and Blake and Tolstoi--like Christ whom Blake called an artist because he had one of the most creative imaginations that ever was on earth--do not want security, egoistic or materialistic. Why, it never occurs to them. "Be not anxious for the morrow," and "which of you being anxious can add one cubit to his stature?" So they dare to be idle, i.e. not to be pressed and duty-driven all the time. They dare to love people even when they are very bad, and they dare not to try and dominate others to show them what they must do for their own good.”

PeopleWantTryingShowsEarthArtistPeaceChristImaginationCreativeSecurityDutyAddDareDrivenAnxiousSpiritual LifeIdleGreat ArtistMaterialisticMorrowStatureBlakeCreative Imagination
Author:Brenda Ueland
Create image

“I want to write about the great and powerful thing that listening is. And how we forget it. And how we don't listen to our children, or those we love. And least of all - which is so important, too - to those we do not love. But we should. Because listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force...When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life.”

WantShouldWritingChildrenImportantIdeasForceGrowsForgetPowerfulCreativeStrangeListeningOur ChildrenForget ItStrange ThingsMagneticThose We Love
Author:Brenda Ueland
Create image

“Creative listeners are those who want you to be recklessly yourself, even at your very worst, even vituperative, bad-tempered. They are laughing and just delighted with any manifestation of yourself, bad or good. For true listeners know that if you are bad-tempered it does not mean that you are always so. They don't love you just when you are nice; they love all of you.”

IfsKnowsWantMeanDoeLaughingCreativeNiceWorstLove YouListeningManifestationListenersDelighted
Author:Brenda Ueland
Create image