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Muse Quotes

Browse 624 quotes about Muse.

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Muse Quotes

“Why, if 'tis dancing you would be, There's brisker pipes than poetry. Say, for what were hop-yards meant, Or why was Burton built on Trent? Oh many a peer of England brews Livelier liquor than the Muse, And malt does more than Milton can To justify God's ways to man. Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink For fellows whom it hurts to think: Look into the pewter pot To see the world as the world's not.”

IfsThinkingMenWorldWayLooksDoeWould BeStuffHurtDrinkBuiltEnglandFellowsDancingDrinkingHopsJustifyPotPeersMuseYardsIt HurtsPipeLiquorMiltonAleMaltPewter
Author:A. E. Housman
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“How astonishingly does the chance of leaving the world improve a sense of its natural beauties upon us. Like poor Falstaff, although I do not 'babble,' I think of green fields; I muse with the greatest affection on every flower I have know from my infancy - their shapes and colours are as new to me as if I had just created them with superhuman fancy.”

IfsThinkingKnowsWorldDoeDeathNaturalJusticeChancePoorDyingFieldsFlowerShapesGreenLeavingAffectionImprovementFancyColourMuseImpermanenceInfancySuperhumanFalstaffGreen Fields
Author:John Keats
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“At one time I thought the most important thing was talent. I think now that the young man must possess or teach himself, training himself, in infinite patience, which is to try and to try until it comes right. He must train himself in ruthless intolerance-that is to throw away anything that is false no matter how much he might love that page or that paragraph. The most important thing is insight, that is to be-curiosity-to wonder, to mull, and to muse why it is that man does what he does, and if you have that, then I don't think the talent makes much difference, whether you've got it or not.”

IfsThinkingMenWritingTryingDoeImportantMatterMightYoungDifferencesWonderTeachTalentPagesTrainingInfiniteImportant ThingsTrainCuriosityInsightYoung ManOne TimeIntoleranceMuseRuthlessParagraph
Author:William Faulkner
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“The muse appears at the point in my writing when I sense a subtle shift, a nudge to move over, and everything cracks open, the writing is freed, the lanuage is full, resources are plentiful, ideas pour forth, and to be frank, some of these ideas surprise me. It seems as thought the universe is my friend and is helping me write, its hand over mine.”

WritingIdeasHelpingHandsSeemsMovingUniverseMinesMy FriendsResourcesSurpriseSubtleCracksFrankMuseSurprise MeNudgePlentiful
Book:The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life
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“I who once wrote songs with keen delight am now by sorrow driven to take up melancholy measures. Wounded Muses tell me what I must write, and elegiac verses bathe my face with real tears. Not even terror could drive from me these faithful companions of my long journey. Poetry, which was once the glory of my happy and flourishing youth, is still my comfort in this misery of my old age.”

WritingLongStillsRealAgeFacesSongMusicJourneyYouthTearsSorrowComfortGloryMiseryTerrorDelightDrivenOld AgeFaithfulCompanionMelancholyVersesWoundedMuseFlourishingLong Journey
Book:The Consolation of Philosophy
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“I struggle with enormous discrepancies: between the reality of motherhood and the image of it, between my love for my home and the need to travel, between the varied and seductive paths of the heart. The lessons of impermanance, the occasional despair and the muse, so tenuously moored, all visit their needs upon me and I dig deeply for the spiritual utilities that restore me: my love for the place, for the one man left, for my children and friends and the great green pulse of spring.”

MenNeedsHeartChildrenHomeRealitySpiritualLeftStrugglePathLessonsDespairSpringGreenPhotographerMotherhoodEnormousMy ChildrenOne ManMuseUtilityOccasionalPulseSeductiveDig DeepDiscrepanciesDiscrepancies BetweenMoored
Author:Sally Mann
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“The absurdly neurotic role you and the rest of your kind have always attributed to me Erato, the Goddess Muse of Erotic Poetry bears no relation at all to reality. As a matter of fact, I was trained as a clinical psychologist. Who simply happens to have specialized in the mental illness that you, in your ignorance, call literature.”

WritingKindMatterFactsRealityHappensLiteratureRolesIgnoranceBearsRelationIllnessMental IllnessPoetry IsSongwritingGoddessMuseEroticNeuroticPsychologistMatter Of FactClinicalsClinical Psychologists
Author:John Fowles
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“In the end, there is no ideal condition for creativity. What works for one person is useless for another. The only criterion is this: Make it easy on yourself. Find a working environment where the prospect of wrestling with your muse doesn't scare you, doesn't shut you down. It should make you want to be there, and once you find it, stick with it. To get the creative habit, you need a working environment that's habit-forming. All preferred working states, no matter how eccentric, have one thing in common: When you enter into them, they compel you to get started.”

WantNeedsShouldPersonsEndsMatterStatesEasyCommonCreativityCreativeEnvironmentOne ThingConditionsHabitIdealsSticksUselessScareWrestlingMuseCriteriaEccentric
Author:Twyla Tharp
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“I am imbued with the notion that a Muse is necessarily a dead woman, inaccessible or absent; that a poetic structure - like the canon, which is only a hole surrounded by steel - can be based only on what one does not have; and that ultimately one can write only to fill a void or at the least to situate, in relation to the most lucid part of ourselves, the place where this incommensurable abyss yawns within us.”

WritingDoeRelationStructureNotionHolesPoeticVoidMuseSteelAbyssAbsentCanonInaccessible
Book:Manhood: A Journey from Childhood Into the Fierce Order of Virility
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“I believe in previous lives and the Muse—and that books and music exist before they are written and that they are propelled into material being by their own imperative to be born, via the offices of those willing servants of discipline, imagination and inspiration whom we call artists.”

BelieveBookInspirationArtistI BelieveBornImaginationWrittenWillingMaterialsDisciplineOfficeI Believe InServantMuseImperativesPrevious LifeBooks And Music
Author:Steven Pressfield
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“A good debater is not necessarily an effective vote-getter: you can find a hole in your opponent's argument through which you could drive a coach and four ringing jingle bells all the way, and thrill at the crystallization of a truth wrung out from a bloody dialogue - which, however, may warm only you and your muse, while the smiling paralogist has in the meantime made votes by the tens of thousands.”

WayMayMadeFourArgumentVoteWarmCoachesHolesDialogueOpponentsBellsBloodyMuseThrillJinglesJingle Bells
Book:The Unmaking of a Mayor
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