Inspiration quotes
5.2K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside inspiration — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Since the last tour I have done a lot of extensive travel to Iraq, Kuwait, Siberia, South Korea and other places and picked up some hopefully interesting stories. We are living in interesting times and as bad as things are, I draw considerable inspiration from some of the things I'm seeing and people I'm meeting. I'm looking forward to getting out on the road and talking about it all."
"I would never be innovative enough to "blaze my own trail," I'm just trying to be interesting. So I don't look to anyone else as far as inspiration."
"Most of the writers I like just intimidate and humble me but in that there's a good deal of inspiration to be had as well."
"As noble Art has survived noble nature, so too she marches ahead of it, fashioning and awakening by her inspiration. Before Truth sends her triumphant light into the depths of the heart, imagination catches its rays, and the peaks of humanity will be glowing when humid night still lingers in the valleys."
"Has anyone...any distinct notion of what poets of a stronger age understood by the word inspiration? ... There is an ecstasy such that the immese strain of it is sometimes relaxed by a flood of tears, along with which one's steps either rush or involuntarily lag, alternately. There is the feeling that one is completely out of hand, with the very distinct consciousness of an endless number of fine thrills and quiverings to the very toes... Everything happens quite involuntarily, as if in a tempestuous outburst of freedom, of absoluteness, of power and divinity."
"Inspiration is in seeing a part of the whole with the part of the whole in you."
"As one boy said, 'I was thinking all these horrible thoughts about my parents when suddenly it hit me-if they're all that bad, how come I'm so wonderful'"
"I prefer milk because I am a Prohibitionist, but I do not go to it for inspiration."
"The Public is merely a multiplied 'me.'"
"Wine is a clog to the pen, not an inspiration."
"All our acts, reasoned and unreasoned, are selfish"
"Italy is the home of art and swindling; home of religion and moral rottenness"
"Going to law is losing a cow for the sake of a cat."
"Prophesy is a good line of business, but it is full of risks."
"If to be interesting is to be uncommonplace, it is becoming a question, with me, if there are any commonplace people"
"I respect a man who knows how to spell a word more than one way."
"Authorship is not a trade, it is an inspiration; authorship does not keep an office, its habitation is all out under the sky, and everywhere the winds are blowing and the sun is shining and the creatures of God are free."
"I've actually broken up with boyfriends for inspiration."
"For groups like the Rolling Stones names like Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf were exotic inspirations. For Siegel-Schwall they were the guys that played with them on 43rd Street."
"It is not inspiration; it is expiration."
