Quote with the word inspiration

Quotes tagged as «inspiration»
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Inspiration is the act or power of exercising an elevating or stimulating influence upon the intellect or emotions; the result of such influence which quickens or stimulates; as, the inspiration of occasion, of art, etc.

Quotes

Alphabetized by author.

• Inspiration is a slender river of brightness leaping from a vast and eternal knowledge, it exceeds reason more perfectly than reason exceeds the knowledge of the senses.
  • Sri Aurobindo, Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913); Jnana.

• It’s lack that gives us inspiration. It’s not fullness. Not ever having driven, I can write better about automobiles than the people who drive them. I have a distance here. … Space travel is another good example. I’m never going to go to Mars but I’ve helped inspire, thank goodness, the people who built the rockets and sent our photographic equipment off to Mars. So it’s always a lack that causes you to write that type of story.
  • Ray Bradbury, «Ray Bradbury: ‘It’s Lack That Gives Us Inspiration'», NPR (June 8, 2012)

• I got on with the task of turning myself into a brief professional writer. The term professional is not meant to imply a high standard of commitment and attainment: it meant then, as it still does, the pursuit of a trade or calling to the end of paying the rent and buying liquor. I leave the myth of inspiration and agonised creative inaction to the amateurs. The practice of a profession entails discipline, which for me meant the production of two thousand words of fair copy every day, weekends included. I discovered that, if I started early enough, I could complete the day’s stint before the pubs opened. Or, if I could not, there was an elated period of the night after closing time, with neighbours banging on the walls to protest at the industrious clacking. Two thousand words a day means a yearly total of 730,000. Step up the rate and, without undue effort, you can reach a million. This ought to mean ten novels of 100,000 words each. This quantitative approach is not, naturally, to be approved. And because of hangovers, marital quarrels, creative deadness induced by the weather, shopping trips, summonses to meet state officials, and sheer torpid gloom, I was not able to achieve more than five and a half novels of very moderate size in that pseudo-terminal year. Still, it was very nearly E.M.Forster’s whole long life’s output.
  • Anthony Burgess, You’ve Had Your Time, Being the Second Part of the Confessions of Anthony Burgess (1990).

• Greatness is more than potential. It is the execution of that potential. Beyond the raw talent. You need the appropriate training. You need the discipline. You need the inspiration. You need the drive.

• Between your dreams in the sky and your reality on the ground is your future, the horizon.

• • Eric A. Burns, Gossamer Commons, 08-12-05

• Inspiration is never genuine if it is known as inspiration at the time. True inspiration always steals on a person; its importance not being fully recognised for some time.
  • Samuel Butler, The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XI — Cash and Credit, Genius, iii.

• I’ve described my usual writing process as scrambling from peak to peak on inspiration through foggy valleys of despised logic. Inspiration is better — when you can get it.
  • Lois McMaster Bujold Young Miles (1997), «Author’s Afterword».

• If you ever have to make a choice between learning and inspiration, choose learning. It works more of the time.
  • Lois McMaster Bujold Falling Free (1988).

• Wherever we are, God’s in that moment, God’s speaking to us, and if we’ve just got our ears open and our antennas up, there’s no lack of inspiration. He’s not silent. We just have to be listening.
  • Steven Curtis Chapman, Press conference after 2007 GMA Music Awards [1]

• The inspirational value of the space program is probably of far greater importance to education than any input of dollars… A whole generation is growing up which has been attracted to the hard disciplines of science and engineering by the romance of space.
  • Arthur C. Clarke, First on the Moon, 1970.

• Totalitarian art must be a form of classicism: the state which is founded on order and subordination demands an art with a similar basis. Romantic painting, however popular, expresses the revolt of the individual. The State also requires an art of reason by which appropriate works may be produced as required. Inspiration is outside state control. The classic attitude toward subject matter — that it should be clear and unequivocal — supports the attitude of unquestioning belief. Add the fact that totalitarian art must be real enough to please the ignorant, ideal enough to commemorate a national hero, and well enough designed to present a memorable image, and one sees how perfectly The Death of Marat fills the bill. That it happens also to be a great work of art makes it dangerously misleading.
  • Kenneth Clark, The Romantic Rebellion (1973); Ch. 1: David

• I always thought that inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show and get to work. If you’re going to wait a around for the clouds to open up and lightning to strike you in the brain you’re not going to make an awful lot of work.
  • Chuck Close [2]

• When inspiration does not come, I go for a walk, go to the movie, talk to a friend, let go… The muse is bound to return again, especially if I turn my back!
  • Judy Collins, as quoted in Wise Highs: How to Thrill, Chill, & Get Away from It All Without Alcohol or Other Drugs (2006) by Alex J. Packer, p. 213.

• I assure you no art was ever less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and study of the great masters; of inspiration, spontaneity, temperament — temperament is the word — I know nothing.
  • Edgar Degas, Said in conversation with George Moore and quoted by Moore in Impressions and Opinions (1891).

• I always urged my contemporaries to look for interest and inspiration to the development and study of drawing, but they would not listen. They thought the road to salvation lay by the way of colour.
  • Edgar Degas, Quoted by Walter Sickert in «Post-Impressionism and Cubism,» Pall Mall Gazette (1914-03-11). According to Sickert, Degas had said this to him in 1885.

• There’ll be what you might call a moment of inspiration – a way of seeing or feeling or remembering, an instance or a person that’s made a large impression. Like the sand and the oyster, it’s a creative irritant. In each poem, I’m trying to reveal a truth, so it can’t have a fictional beginning.
  • Carol Ann Duffy, Interviewed in The Guardian, December 4, 2005.

• Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.
  • Thomas A. Edison (1847 — 1931), Harper’s Monthly, 1932.

• I believe in intuition and inspiration. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.
  • Albert Einstein; Cosmic Religion : With Other Opinions and Aphorisms (1931) by Albert Einstein, p. 97; also in Transformation : Arts, Communication, Environment (1950) by Harry Holtzman, p. 138.

• Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.
  • Albert Einstein, Out of My Later Years (1950).

• I don’t believe in total freedom for the artist. Left on his own, free to do anything he likes, the artist ends up doing nothing at all. If there’s one thing that’s dangerous for an artist, it’s precisely this question of total freedom, waiting for inspiration and all the rest of it.
  • Federico Fellini (1920 — 1993) I’m a Born Liar: A Fellini Lexicon (2003) Edited by Damian Pettigrew ISBN 0306805200

• It is with just that hope that we welcome everything that tends to strengthen the fibre and develop the nature on more sides. When the intellect and affections are in harmony; when intellectual consciousness is calm and deep; inspiration will not be confounded with fancy.
  • Margaret Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845).

• What I mean by the Muse is that unimpeded clearness of the intuitive powers, which a perfectly truthful adherence to every admonition of the higher instincts would bring to a finely organized human being. It may appear as prophecy or as poesy. … and should these faculties have free play, I believe they will open new, deeper and purer sources of joyous inspiration than have as yet refreshed the earth.
  Let us be wise, and not impede the soul. Let her work as she will. Let us have one creative energy, one incessant revelation. Let it take what form it will, and let us not bind it by the past to man or woman, black or white.
  • Margaret Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845).

• Harmony exists no less in difference than in likeness, if only the same key-note govern both parts. Woman the poem, man the poet; woman the heart, man the head; such divisions are only important when they are never to be transcended. If nature is never bound down, nor the voice of inspiration stifled, that is enough.
  • Margaret Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845).

• Yes, Shakespeare foremost and forever (Darwin too). But also teach about the excellence of pygmy bushcraft and Fuegian survival in the world’s harshest climate. Dignity and inspiration come in many guises. Would anyone choose the tinhorn patriotism of George Armstrong Custer over the eloquence of Chief Joseph in defeat?
  • Stephen Jay Gould, Eight Little Piggies (1993); «The Moral State of Tahiti—and of Darwin», p. 274.

• Darwin grasped the philosophical bleakness with his characteristic courage. He argued that hope and morality cannot, and should not, be passively read in the construction of nature. Aesthetic and moral truths, as human concepts, must be shaped in human terms, not “discovered” in nature. We must formulate these answers for ourselves and then approach nature as a partner who can answer other kinds of questions for us—questions about the factual state of the universe, not about the meaning of human life. If we grant nature the independence of her own domain—her answers unframed in human terms—then we can grasp her exquisite beauty in a free and humble way. For then we become liberated to approach nature without the burden of an inappropriate and impossible quest for moral messages to assuage our hopes and fears. We can pay our proper respect to nature’s independence and read her own ways as beauty or inspiration in our different terms.
  • Stephen Jay Gould, I Have Landed (2002); «Art Meets Science in The Heart of the Andes«, p. 109.

• Inspiration is the windfall from hard work and focus. Muses are too unreliable to keep on the payroll.
  • Helen Hanson, in «For Writers» (14 July 2010).

• He gave us his «Curves and Functions», in the form of lectures; and sometimes, even while stating his propositions, he would be seized with some mathematical inspiration, would forget pupils, notes, everything, and would rapidly dash off equation after equation, following them out with smaller and smaller chalk-marks into the remote corners of the blackboard, forsaking his delightful task only when there was literally no more space to be covered, and coming back with a sigh to his actual students. There was a great fascination about these interruptions; we were present, as it seemed, at mathematics in the making; it was like peeping into a necromancer’s cell, and seeing him at work; or as if our teacher were one of the old Arabian algebraists recalled to life.
  • Thomas Wentworth Higginson, regarding Benjamin Peirce, as quoted in The Early Years of the Saturday Club, 1855-1870 (1918) by Edward Waldo Emerson.

• They who lack talent expect things to happen without effort. They ascribe failure to a lack of inspiration or ability, or to misfortune, rather than to insufficient application. At the core of every true talent there is an awareness of the difficulties inherent in any achievement, and the confidence that by persistence and patience something worthwhile will be realized. Thus talent is a species of vigor.
  • Eric Hoffer (1902 — 1983) Reflections on the Human Condition (1973) Section 77.

• Poetical composition results from two intellectual phenomena, meditation and inspiration. Meditation is a faculty ; inspiration is a gift. All men, to a certain degree, can meditate; very few are inspired. Spiritus flat ubi vult. In meditation, the spirit acts; in inspiration, it oheys ; because the first is of men, the second comes from a higher source. He who gave us this power is stronger than we. These two processes of thoughts are intimately linked in the soul of the poet. The poet invites inspiration by meditation, as the prophets raised themselves to ecstacies by prayer. That the muse should reveal herself to him, he must in some sort have passed all his material existence in repose, in silence, and in meditation. He must be isolated from external life, to enjoy in its fullness that inward life, which developes in bim a new existence; and it is only when the physical world has utterly vanished from before his eyes, that the ideal world is fully revealed to him. It seems that poetic inspiration has in it some- thing too sublime for~the common nature of man. Genius can compass its greater efforts only when the soul is released from the vulgar cares that follow it in life ; for thought cannot take its wings till it has laid aside its burden. Thence comes it, doubtless, that inspiration is born only of meditation. Among the Jews, the people whose history is so rich in mysterious symbols when the priest had built the altar, he lighted upon it an earthly flame — and it was then only that the divine ray descended from Heaven.
  • Victor Hugo SCRAPS OF PHILOSOPHY AND CRITICISM. The New-England magazine. Volume 9, Issue 9 September 1835 [3]

• Happy he who possesses this double power of meditation and inspiration, which is genius! Whatever may be the age on which he is, or the country — be he born in the bosom of domestic calamities, be he thrown on a time of popular convulsions, or, what is still more to be lamented, on a period of stagnant indifference —let him trust himself to the future; for, if the present belong to other men, the future is for him. He is of the number of chosen beings for whom a day is allotted. Sooner or later, the day comes ; and it is then — fed by sublime thought, and elevated by divine inspiration — that he throws himself boldly before the world, with the cry of the poet upon his lips ‘Voici mon Orient: peuples levez les yeux!’
  • Victor Hugo SCRAPS OF PHILOSOPHY AND CRITICISM. The New-England magazine. Volume 9, Issue 9 September 1835 [4]

• Let my inspiration flow, in token lines suggesting rhythm, that will not forsake me, till my tale is told and done
  • Robert Hunter, Terrapin Station (1977); «Lady With a Fan».

• Inspiration, move me brightly, light the song with sense and color, hold away despair
  • Robert Hunter, Terrapin Station (1977); «Lady With a Fan».

• This is Paris. And I’m an American who lives here. My name Jerry Mulligan. And I’m an ex-GI. In 1945, when the Army told me to find my own job, I stayed on and I’ll tell you why. I’m a painter. All my life, that’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. And for a painter, the Mecca of the world for study, for inspiration, and for living is here on this star called Paris. Just look at it. No wonder so many artists have come here and called it home. Brother, if you can’t paint in Paris, you’d better give up and marry the boss’s daughter. Back home everyone said I didn’t have any talent. They might be saying the same thing over here, but it sounds better in French.
  • Alan Jay Lerner, Jerry Mulligan in An American in Paris.

• Don’t loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don’t get it you will nonetheless get something that looks remarkably like it.
  • Jack London (1876 — 1916) ‘Getting into Print’, first published in 1903 in The Editor magazine.
    • often paraphrased; You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

• Desire itself is an inspiration. Every man desires to do something in life.Where there is no desire no way would open out.Yet too much of desire creates problems.If we understand where to draw the limits to our ambition then we would experience a constant need to keep our inspiration alive and the desire to make something of one’s life would never be ignored.
  • Acharya Mahapragya, Thoughts at Sunrise (2007).

• Everyone has a goal which appears to be great, at least to himself, and is great when deepest conviction, the innermost voice of the heart, pronounces it great. … This voice, however, is easily drowned out, and what we thought to be inspiration may have been created by the fleeting moment and again perhaps destroyed by it. … We must seriously ask ourselves, therefore, whether we are really inspired about a vocation, whether an inner voice approves of it, or whether the inspiration was a deception, whether that which we took as the Deity’s calling to us was self-deceit. But how else could we recognize this except by searching for the source of our inspiration?
  • Karl Marx, Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, L. Easton, trans. (1967), p. 36.

• Everything great glitters, glitter begets ambition, and ambition can easily have caused the inspiration or what we thought to be inspiration. But reason can no longer restrain one who is lured by the fury of ambition. He tumbles where his vehement drive calls him; no longer does he choose his position, but rather chance and luster determine it.
  • Karl Marx, Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, L. Easton, trans. (1967), p. 36.

• I’ll get an inspiration and start painting; then I’ll forget everything, everything except how things used to be and how to paint it so people will know how we used to live.
  • Grandma Moses, As quoted in her obituary in The New York Times (14 December 1961).

• A breath of our inspiration
  Is the life of each generation;
  A wondrous thing of our dreaming
  Unearthly, impossible seeming —
  The soldier, the king, and the peasant
  Are working together in one,
  Till our dream shall become their present,
  And their work in the world be done.
  • Arthur O’Shaughnessy, Music and Moonlight (1874), Ode.

• I’m tired of ignorance held up as inspiration, where vicious anti-intellectualism is considered a positive trait, and where uninformed opinion is displayed as fact.
  • Phil Plait, Bad Astronomy blog; «The mainstreaming of crazy» (8 September 2009).

• If you’re going to make a living at this business — more importantly, if you’re going to write anything that will last — you have to realise that a lot of the time, you’re going to be writing without inspiration. The trick is to write just as well without it as with. Of course, you write less readily and fluently without it; but the interesting thing is to look at the private journals and letters of great writers and see how much of the time they just had to do without inspiration. Conrad, for example, groaned at the desperate emptiness of the pages he faced; and yet he managed to cover them. Amateurs think that if they were inspired all the time, they could be professionals. Professional know that if they relied on inspiration, they’d be amateurs.
  • Philip Pullman, from the Q&A section (found July 2010).

• Every culture, if its natural development is not too much affected by political restrictions, experiences a perpetual renewal of the formative urge, and out of that comes an ever growing diversity of creative activity. Every successful piece of work stirs the desire for greater perfection and deeper inspiration; each new form becomes the herald of new possibilities of development.
  • Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism (1938); Ch. 1 «Anarchism: Its Aims and Purposes».

• My inspirations don’t come from outer space, they just come to me. I have no idea why they come when they do.
  • Joe Satriani, As quoted in Guitar Magazine (March 1990).

• I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled [poets] to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.
  • Socrates (469 BC — 399 BC), In «Apology,» sct. 21, by Plato.

• I believe that music can be an inspirational force in all our lives — that its eloquence and the depth of its meaning are all-important, and that all personal considerations concerning musicians and the public are relatively unimportant — that music come from the heart and returns to the heart — that music is spontaneous, impulsive expression — that its range is without limit — that music is forever growing — that music can be one element to help us build a new conception of life in which the madness and cruelty of wars will be replaced by a simple understanding of the brotherhood of man.
  Music can be all things to all men. It is like a great dynamic sun in the center of a solar system which sends out its rays and inspiration in every direction. … It is as if the heavens open and a divine voice calls. Something in our souls responds and understands. We are speaking here of the most inspired music.
  • Leopold Stokowski (born 18 April 1882) Music For All Of Us (1943);
    • also quoted as «…Music can be all things to all persons… «.

• The past slips from our grasp. It leaves us only scattered things. The bond that united them eludes us. Our imagination usually fills in the void by making use of preconceived theories…Archaeology, then, does not supply us with certitudes, but rather with vague hypotheses. And in the shade of these hypotheses some artists are content to dream, considering them less as scientific facts than as sources of inspiration.
  • Igor Stravinsky (1882 — 1971), Poetics of Music in the Form — Six Lessons.

• Inspiration is not the exclusive privilege of poets or artists. There is, there has been, there will always be a certain group of people whom inspiration visits. It’s made up of all those who’ve consciously chosen their calling and do their job with love and imagination. It may include doctors, teachers, gardeners — I could list a hundred more professions. Their work becomes one continuous adventure as long as they manage to keep discovering new challenges in it. Difficulties and setbacks never quell their curiosity. A swarm of new questions emerges from every problem that they solve. Whatever inspiration is, it’s born from a continuous «I don’t know.»
  • Wisława Szymborska The Poet and the World (1996) Nobel lecture (1996-12-07)

• While I was held prisoner, sweet inspiration educated me
  and laws were imparted to me in a speech which had no words…
  • Taliesin, The Tale of Taleisin.

• The Cauldron of Wisdom and Inspiration must be kept boiling for a year and a day, and then the first three drops from it would impart ultimate knowledge to the one who drank them. But the rest of the liquid would be deadly poison.
  Long labored Ceridwen, roaming far to find the rare and exotic herbs she required, and so it chanced that she fell asleep on the last day of the spell. The boy Gwion was stirring the brew when three drops flew out onto his thumb, and they were scalding hot, so that he thrust it into his mouth to stop the burning. Instantly, he had the wisdom and inspiration of ages, and the first thing that occurred to him was that Ceridwen would be very angry.
  • This is part of the folk tradition of how the boy Gwion became Taliesin, from «The Tale of Taliesin» as told by Jennifer Cochrane at Encyclopedia Mythica.

• Who knows where inspiration comes from. Perhaps it arises from desperation. Perhaps it comes from the flukes of the universe, the kindness of the muses.
  • Amy Tan, as quoted in A Small Drop of Ink : A Collection of Inspirational and Moving Quotations of the Ages (2003) by Linda Pendleton, p. 129.

• Even the death of Friends will inspire us as much as their lives. They will leave consolation to the mourners, as the rich leave money to defray the expenses of their funerals, and their memories will be incrusted over with sublime and pleasing thoughts, as monuments of other men are overgrown with moss; for our Friends have no place in the graveyard.
  • Henry David Thoreau A Week on the Concord and Marrimack Rivers (1849) Wednesday.

• I invented something called The Oxford Muse. The Muses were women in mythology. They did not teach or require to be worshipped, but they were a source of inspiration. They taught you how to cultivate your emotions through the different arts in order to reach a higher plane. What is lacking now, I believe, is somewhere you can get that stimulation not information, but stimulation where you can meet just that person, or find just that situation, which will give you the idea of invention, of carrying out some project which interests you, and show how it can become a project of interest to other people.
  • Theodore Zeldin «About The Oxford Muse Foundation», The Gurteen Knowledge Website.

See also

• Action
• Blessings
• Harmony
• Imagination
• Karma
• Leadership
• Meditation
• Muses
• Passion
• Perfection
• Prayer

External links

• 100 Thoughts for an Inspiring Life

All my inspiration comes from life. That’s how it never stops, in a way. (Marina Abramovic)

Everything you look at can become a fairy tale and you can get a story from everything you touch. (Hans Christian Andersen)

Inspiration is the act of drawing up a chair to the writing desk. (Anonymous)

Life inspires me to paint. Painting inspires me to paint. (Dion Archibald)

You could say that I have no inspiration, that I only need to paint. (Francis Bacon)

Inspiration comes of working every day. (Charles Baudelaire)

To be inspired. That is the thing. / to be possessed; to be bewitched. / To be obsessed. That is the thing. / To be inspired. (William Baziotes)

Inspirations never go in for long engagements; they demand immediate marriage to action. (Brendan Francis Behan)

If you only paint on those days when you feel like it, you’re effectively putting up a notice on your easel saying, ‘Out — back when I feel like it.’ (Marion Boddy-Evans)

Without craftsmanship, inspiration is a mere reed shaken in the wind. (Johannes Brahms)

A deadline is negative inspiration. Still, it’s better than no inspiration at all. (Rita Mae Brown)

The artist must raise the cup of his vision aloft to the gods in the high hope that they will pour into it the sweet mellow wine of inspiration. (Paul Brunton)

The ultimate inspiration is the deadline (Nolan Bushnell)

People who are not artists often feel that artists are inspired. But if you work at your art you don’t have time to be inspired. (John Cage)

A landscape clean and crisp in form and colour, rich in inspiration is all that an artist could wish for, begging to be used, and full of inherent possibilities… (Franklin Carmichael)

Inspiration is a byproduct of discipline… simply getting up everyday and planning, plotting, sketching, setting up or actually applying paint to a painting. (Beverly Claridge)

Amateurs look for inspiration; the rest of us just get up and go to work. (Chuck Close)

How I have walked… day after day, and all alone, to see if there was not something among the old things which was new! (Thomas Cole)

Inspiration may be a form of superconsciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness – I wouldn’t know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness. (Aaron Copland)

The inspired moment may sometimes be described as a kind of hallucinatory state of mind: one half of the personality emotes and dictates while the other half listens and notates. The half that listens had better look the other way, had better simulate a half attention only, for the half that dictates is easily disgruntled and avenges itself for too close inspection by fading entirely away. (Aaron Copland)

We have a wonderful world to be inspired by and each new day is like an adventure into the unknown, where things that require a second glance can be captured in time on a canvas for anyone to enjoy forever. (Louise Corke)

—Stoking the Creative Fires…
Inspiration is a message-in-a-bottle from the distant shore, a window into the other world, a tap of the muse’s finger, the grace of the gods. It comes when you least expect it… (Phil Cousineau)

Try to be inspired by something every day. Try to inspire at least one person every day. (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi)

The soul of art is inspiration. (Ginia A. Davis)

What moves men of genius, or rather what inspires their work, is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough. (Eugene Delacroix)

Inspiration is getting to our studies at 9 am. (Eugene Delacroix)

To depend entirely upon inspiration is as bad as waiting for a shipwreck to learn how to swim. To leave everything to natural spontaneity is as bad as to make everything the result of mechanical pre-determination… perfection is the harmonious blending of the two. (Francois Delsarte)

The MOST important source of inspiration for painting ideas is our own lives… and what we like most. (Jack Dickerson)

The moment of inspiration can come from memory, or language, or the imagination, or experience — anything that makes an impression forcibly enough for language to form. (Carol Ann Duffy)

Inspiration comes from nature itself. I am enamored of nature, and that admiration has only increased as I age. (Benjamin Eisenstat)

Painting without inspiration is like trying to drive a car with flat tires. (Ron Elstad)

What is indispensable to inspiration? …sound sleep and the provocation of a good book or a companion. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

There is a great deal of poetry and sentiment in a chest of tea. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

The torpid artist seeks inspiration at any cost, by virtue or by vice, by friend or by fiend, by prayer or by wine. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

I equate inspiration with desire – the desire that moves us to be artists in the first place. To attempt to make a painting without this motivation is a waste of time. (Nita Engle)

I don’t know anything about inspiration because I don’t know what inspiration is; I’ve heard about it, but I never saw it. (William Faulkner)

The endless variations of light on dark, dark on light, light against illumination, white on white, black on black, blue on cold, blue on warm and so on, are eternally inspiring. (Sergei Forostovskii)

When inspiration doesn’t come, I go halfway to meet it. (Sigmund Freud)

You can look anywhere and find inspiration. (Frank Gehry)

Inspiration comes from doing. (Robert Genn)

Inspiration is trying to send me messages in every form it can — through dreams, through portents, through clues, through coincidences, through deja vu, through kismet, through surprising waves of attraction and reaction, through the chills that run up my arms… through stubborn ideas that keep me awake all night long… (Elizabeth Gilbert)

Inspiration is allowed to do whatever it wants to, in fact, and it is never obliged to justify its motives to any of us. (Elizabeth Gilbert)

For hundreds of years people have talked about artists having inspiration, but often some persons would say, ‘Write us a symphony or write us a song, on commission.’ The artists would come up with a masterpiece without waiting to have their muse inspire them. (Tom Glazer)

Vermeer found a life’s work in the corner of a room. (Irwin Greenberg)

Don’t park… Arrival is the death of inspiration. (Ernst Haas)

I just sit down at the piano and rattle it off. (Charlie Haden)

Let your mind wander. (Alfred Hair)

I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it. (Ernest Hemingway)

What inspires me to paint? …revisiting some old greats like Sargent, Homer, Whistler or local masters… thinking hard about a new approach or idea; or seeing a new painting on a friend’s lounge room wall. (Amanda Hyatt)

Stop. Breathe. Allow yourself the luxury of doing nothing for a moment, or an hour, or even a day. It is in emptiness that inspiration will appear. (Carole Katchen)

The longing to produce great inspirations didn’t produce anything but more longing. (Sophie Kerr)

Inspiration is not born of ‘the eureka moment’ but in the quiet spaces we allow ourselves to be in — whether in a beautiful part of nature or in a peaceful meditative state of mind. (Sharon Knettell)

Inspiration is indispensable to my work, but it is hard to come by. It is there or it is not; it is a gift of the gods. (Elaine de Kooning)

My inspiration is molded by my childhood dreamworld of small boundaries — the perennial border of fairy tales and domesticity, summers that stretched long and unplanned at an unhurried, quiet pace. (Mary Kay Krell)

Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth. (Philip Larkin)

I am inspired by symbols and stories of the desire to bridge a gap. This could take the form of our conscious and our subconscious, between lovers, or between humanity and the divine. (Dana Levin)

You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. (Jack London)

To do something, however small, to make others happier and better, is the highest ambition, the most elevating hope, which can inspire a human being. (John Lubbock)

When the artist activates his being, awakens to his surroundings, and sets himself the task of creating, connections are made out of conscious awareness that return coalesced as inspiration. (Eric Maisel)

My work is inspired by two things: the external world and the internal world. A good day is when they meet on canvas. (Bonnie Mandoe)

I could never tell where inspiration begins and impulse leaves off. I suppose the answer is in the outcome. If your hunch proves a good one, you were inspired; if it proves bad, you are guilty of yielding to thoughtless impulse. (Beryl Markham)

I could never tell where inspiration begins and impulse leaves off. I suppose the answer is in the outcome. If your hunch proves a good one, you were inspired; if it proves bad, you are guilty of yielding to thoughtless impulse. (Beryl Markham)

Inspiration is there all the time. For everyone whose mind is not clouded over with thoughts whether they realize it or not. (Agnes Martin)

Don’t wait for inspiration. It comes while one is working. (Henri Matisse)

I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp. (W. Somerset Maugham)

I learn an enormous amount in what I perceive as the inspiration of others in shaping their own surroundings. (William McAllister)

My inspirations are gritty guitar solos, Stevie Wonder harmonies, and explosive color. (Melissa S. McCracken)

People used to envy me my inspiration. I hate inspiration. It takes you over completely. I could never wait until it passed and I got rid of it. (Henry Miller)

Every true artist has been inspired more by the beauty of lines and color and the relationships between them than by the concrete subject of the picture. (Piet Mondrian)

I find my inspiration in myself. (Thelonius Monk)

Money and pretty girls inspire me. (Kelly Moore)

I’ll get an inspiration and start painting; then I’ll forget everything, everything except how things used to be and how to paint it so people will know how we used to live. (Grandma Moses)

If you can’t find your inspiration by walking around the block one time, go around two blocks-but never three. (Robert Motherwell)

At a certain point in your life, you have to stop looking outside to look internally for inspiration. (Catherine Nash)

The great composer does not set to work because he is inspired, but becomes inspired because he is working. Beethoven, Wagner, Bach, and Mozart settled down day after day to the job in hand. They didn’t waste time waiting for inspiration. (Ernest Newman)

I was attracted by the curve — the liberated, sensual curve suggested by the possibilities of new technology yet so often recalled in venerable old baroque churches. (Oscar Niemeyer)

A breath of our inspiration / Is the life of each generation… (Arthur O’Shaughnessy)

The inspiration comes simply by ‘showing up’ before the easel or sculpture stand. (Kathy Ostman-Magnusen)

The glow of inspiration warms us and it is a holy rapture. (Ovid)

When I’m inspired, I get excited because I can’t wait to see what I’ll come up with next. (Dolly Parton)

Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working. (Pablo Picasso)

My inspiration comes from all over… pieces are often based in reality, actual places, things I’ve held in the palm of my hand, and yet they are infused and layered with places where I’ve only been in my dreams. (Colin Poole)

—The War of Art
The professional is acutely aware of the intangibles that go into inspiration. Out of respect for them, she lets them work. She grants them their sphere while she concentrates on hers. (Steven Pressfield)

Inspiration is an awakening, a quickening of all man’s faculties, and it is manifested in all high artistic achievements. (Giacomo Puccini)

Inspiration can come from any direction, but only you can tap into it. (Faith Puleston)

Inspiration is needed in geometry, just as much as in poetry. (Alexander Pushkin)

I criticise these compositions by analysis but an illustration cannot be made that way – it must be made by inspiration. (Howard Pyle)

I don’t wait for inspiration. I just begin and do it. If it’s no good, I toss it and begin again. (Georg Rausch)

Inspiration is what keeps us well. (James Redfield)

It is in the midst of the city that one writes the most inspiring pages about the country. (Jules Renard)

Much like a patchwork quilt, inspiration that stirs and motivates me is made of many things. (Robert Reynolds)

There is the falsely mystical view of art that assumes a kind of supernatural inspiration, a possession by universal forces unrelated to questions of power and privilege or the artist’s relation to bread and blood. (Adrienne Rich)

I like tense, sinewy, dry things, olive trees dried up by the wind, brittle wood… I am more moved by a charred tree stump than by an apple tree in flower. (Germaine Richier)

The lagoon of inspiration may be a material place or it may be a spiritual state of man… the inspiration comes with a spirit of creativity. The creativity comes when is present the moment of investigation and new decisions to investigate. (Yaroslaw Rozputnyak)

Buddha suggests to those who need inspiration for their art to go to it before a perfectly blank wall until its design, composition and subject reveals itself. (Jack Rutherford)

It’s all about being present and doing the work with full consciousness. Ideas and inspiration, past, present and future are mingled together in the work of the artist. (Linda Saccoccio)

One need not travel the world for inspiration. If one is receptive it meets them on the way. (Sandy Sandy)

Sometimes you just have to take your clothes off, sit in the dark, and see what happens. (Alvin Sargent)

You can’t plan for a seizure of feeling, and for this reason I put everything else aside when I’m inspired. (May Sarton)

I must see new things and investigate them. I want to taste dark water and see crackling trees and wild winds. (Egon Schiele)

Many a witty inspiration is like the surprising reunion of befriended thoughts after a long separation. (Friedrich Von Schlegel)

Witty inspirations are the proverbs of the educated. (Friedrich Von Schlegel)

The light of inspiration is less often a flash of lightning than the sun finally peaking through days of dreary drizzle. (Ian Semple)

No inspiration comes from nowhere. No invention is based on nothing. You always need to be tuned up and be ready to start receiving the energy you look for. (Nikolay Semyonov)

Inspiration is found at the end of your brush. (Tom Shropshire)

I’m particularly inspired by pristine locations. I enjoy working in areas where one can travel for miles without seeing any human influence. (Matt Smith)

One does not wait for an inspiration but for a way and an opportunity to put an inspiration to a canvas. Art is passion and does not need a painful and time consuming ‘inspiration.’ (Werner Stephan)

Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernable at the beginning. (Igor Stravinsky)

When I am true to my inspiration, my brushstrokes sometimes surprise me by exposing something of my inner spirit I was not even aware of. (Keiko Tanabe)

If that condition of mind and soul which we call inspiration lasted long without intermission, no artist could survive it. The strings would break and the instrument be shattered into fragments. (Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky)

Whether it’s a painter finding his way each morning to the easel, or a medical researcher returning daily to the laboratory, the routine is as much a part of the creative process as the lightning bolt of inspiration, maybe more. (Twyla Tharp)

Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them. (Henry David Thoreau)

Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action. (Frank Tibolt)

I will tell you what I have learned myself. For me, a long five or six mile walk helps. And one must go alone and every day. (Brenda Ueland)

I learned… that inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic, energetic striving, but it comes into us slowly and quietly and all the time, though we must regularly and every day give it a little chance to start flowing, prime it with a little solitude and idleness. (Brenda Ueland)

Inspiration comes in many forms. Often it’s most powerful when it catches you by surprise. (Author unknown)

Inspiration arrives as a packet of material to be delivered. (John Updike)

Inspiration demands the active cooperation of the intellect joined with enthusiasm, and it is under such conditions that marvelous conceptions, with all that is excellent and divine, come into being. (Giorgio Vasari)

I am convinced that there are universal currents of Divine Thought vibrating the ether everywhere and that any who can feel these vibrations is inspired… (Richard Wagner)

What I write when I force myself is generally just as good as what I write when I’m feeling inspired. It’s mainly a matter of forcing yourself to write. (Tom Wolfe)

Very few people know how to work. Inspiration, everybody has inspiration, that’s just hot air. (Beatrice Wood)

I’m not inspired every day I go to the studio, but you’ve got to push yourself. Do it every day and once in a while things will really click. That’s the biggest high you can imagine. (Jamie Wyeth)

I find the earliest years of my life are the source of my best inspiration. (N. C. Wyeth)

Inspiration is a single word but has a huge impact on our life. If someone can be inspired then problems will be remarkably simple for him.

No problem will not be able to take him in any kind of uncomfortable situation. Inspiration is one of the most important things in our life to become unique and also to become successful.

There are different types of inspiration and you can take inspiration from different sources. But one of the main sources of inspiration is inspirational quotes.

If you can read inspirational quotes from a different famous person then you will be a victorious person. Those inspirations will work for your success.

100 Top Inspirational Quotes:

1. Nothing is impossible, the word itself says, “I’m possible!” –Audrey Hepburn

2. There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing. –Aristotle

3. Life is about making an impact, not making an income. –Kevin Kruse

4. Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve. –Napoleon Hill

5. Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value. –Albert Einstein

6. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. –Robert Frost

7. When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us. –Helen Keller

8. Everything has beauty, but not everyone can see. –Confucius

9. How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. –Anne Frank

10. When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be. –Lao Tzu

11. Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. –Maya Angelou

12. If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat! Just get on. –Sheryl Sandberg

13.Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. –Charles Swindoll

14. The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any. –Alice Walker

15. The mind is everything. What you think you become. –Buddha

16. The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. –Chinese Proverb

17. An unexamined life is not worth living. –Socrates

18. Eighty percent of success is showing up. –Woody Allen

19. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. –Steve Jobs

20. Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is. –Vince Lombardi

21. I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions. –Stephen Covey

22. Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. –Pablo Picasso

What is inspiration?

We just talk about the word inspiration and we use this word in different situations and in different circumstances. But what does the word inspiration mean or what this word refers to? This is really important to know. Actually, the definition of inspiration is not the same for all people.

Different people think about inspiration in a different way. Some people say that inspiration is “the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, especially to do something creative”. Other people think that inspiration is the motivation or a force that leads people to do something. Inspiration is a positive word so most of the time inspiration refers to positive things.

23. You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore. –Christopher Columbus

24. I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. –Maya Angelou

25. Either you run the day, or the day runs you. –Jim Rohn

26. Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right. –Henry Ford

27. The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why. –Mark Twain

28. Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. –Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

29. The best revenge is massive success. –Frank Sinatra

30. Do what you can, where you are, with what you have. –Teddy Roosevelt

31. If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten. –Tony Robbins

32. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning. –Gloria Steinem

33. It’s your place in the world; it’s your life. Go on and do all you can with it, and make it the life you want to live. –Mae Jemison

34. You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try. –Beverly Sills

35. Remember no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. –Eleanor Roosevelt

36. Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be. –Grandma Moses

37. People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing. That’s why we recommend it daily. –Zig Ziglar

38. Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage. –Anais Nin

39. If you hear a voice within you say “you cannot paint,” then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced. –Vincent Van Gogh

Top 50 Powerful Inspirational Quotes. You can see the Video

40. Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear. –George Addair

41. I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took any excuse. –Florence Nightingale

42. You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. –Wayne Gretzky

43. I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. –Michael Jordan

44. The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. –Amelia Earhart

45. Every strike brings me closer to the next home run. –Babe Ruth

46. Definiteness of purpose is the starting point of all achievement. –W. Clement Stone

47. Life isn’t about getting and having, it’s about giving and being. –Kevin Kruse

48. Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. –John Lennon

49. We become what we think about. –Earl Nightingale

50.Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do, so throw off the bowlines, sail away from safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore, Dream, Discover. –Mark Twain

51. We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. –Plato

52. Teach thy tongue to say, “I do not know,” and thous shalt progress. –Maimonides

53. Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can. –Arthur Ashe

54. When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life. –John Lennon

55. Fall seven times and stand up eight. –Japanese Proverb

56. Limitations live only in our minds. But if we use our imaginations, our possibilities become limitless. –Jamie Paolinetti

57. You take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing, no one to blame. –Erica Jong

58. What’s money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do. –Bob Dylan

59. I didn’t fail the test. I just found 100 ways to do it wrong. –Benjamin Franklin

60. In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure. –Bill Cosby

61. A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new. – Albert Einstein

62. The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person who is doing it. –Chinese Proverb

63. First, have a definite, clear practical ideal; a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends; wisdom, money, materials, and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end. –Aristotle

64. If the wind will not serve, take to the oars. –Latin Proverb

65. The only way to do great work is to love what you do. –Steve Jobs

66. We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained. –Marie Curie

67. Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears. –Les Brown

68. Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful. –Joshua J. Marine

69. If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else. –Booker T. Washington

70. I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do. –Leonardo da Vinci

71. There are no traffic jams along the extra mile. –Roger Staubach

72. It is never too late to be what you might have been. –George Eliot

73. You become what you believe. –Oprah Winfrey

74. I would rather die of passion than of boredom. –Vincent van Gogh

75. Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. –Martin Luther King Jr.

76. It is not what you do for your children, but what you have taught them to do for themselves, that will make them successful human beings. –Ann Landers

77. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck. –Dalai Lama

78. Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs. –Farrah Gray

79. The battles that count aren’t the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself–the invisible battles inside all of us–that’s where it’s at. –Jesse Owens

80. Education costs money. But then so does ignorance. –Sir Claus Moser

81. I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear. –Rosa Parks

82. It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop. –Confucius

83. If you look at what you have in life, you’ll always have more. If you look at what you don’t have in life, you’ll never have enough. –Oprah Winfrey

84. If you want your children to turn out well, spend twice as much time with them, and half as much money. –Abigail Van Buren

How can I be inspired?

Some people find themselves in a condition of depression. They don’t find anything good in their life. For them, inspiration is really important.

Inspiration can change their life but finding a proper source of inspiration is really hard. Some people don’t even know how to be inspired and how to get the motivation to do something special in his or her life.

In this part, I am going to show you different ways of getting inspiration. The first and foremost way of getting inspiration is reading inspirational quotes.

These quotes we listed here in this article. You can take those quotes as a medium of inspiration. Those quotes are written by famous people.

They wrote them from their own experience. For these reasons, quotes can be a great source of inspiration for yourself.

You can read the success stories of the different successful person, that is also a useful source of inspiration. Motivational speech, TED Talks, motivational news are also a source of inspiration.

85. You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have. –Maya Angelou

86. Dream big and dare to fail. –Norman Vaughan

87. A truly rich man is one whose children run into his arms when his hands are empty. –Unknown

88. The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me. –Ayn Rand

89. When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it. –Henry Ford

90. It’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years. –Abraham Lincoln

91. Ask and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock and the door will be opened for you. –Jesus

92. The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be. –Ralph Waldo Emerson

93. Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined. –Henry David Thoreau

94. When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left and could say, I used everything you gave me. –Erma Bombeck

95. Few things can help an individual more than to place responsibility on him, and to let him know that you trust him. –Booker T. Washington

96. Certain things catch your eye but pursue only those that capture the heart. – Ancient Indian Proverb

97. Believe you can and you’re halfway there. –Theodore Roosevelt

98. Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. –Benjamin Franklin

99. If you can dream it, you can achieve it. –Zig Ziglar

100.Change your thoughts and you change your world. –Norman Vincent Peale

You can’t fall if you don’t climb. But there’s no joy in living your whole life on the ground. –Unknown

Impact of inspiration on success:

Some people think that without inspiration, no success comes. I also personally believe that inspiration is the root of every success. But this is really hard to get.

People don’t get the right source to take inspiration and sometimes some people try to demotivate people to do something. And that’s the reason for maximum failure in our society.

You can take inspiration as the main strength to become a successful person. So to be successful, inspiration is a must thing. Without inspiration, no success will come.

Always try to be inspired by different sources of nature and your life. Think positively, your positive thinking is the main source of your inspiration.

Try to find the optimistic option from every situation of your life, that also can inspire you to be a great person in your life.

Don’t try to follow the vain attempts and don’t think much about the unsuccessful events of your life. Continue reading inspirational quotes, your life will be changed.