Inspiration

“ Here is inspiration—the voice of the soul. And we, who professed to bring such wisdom, what have we to say? Have we uttered with equal confidence such hopes, or with such daring and amplitude of illustration? Let us confess we have not. There are one or two exceptions which will occur to everyone. Now, as we adventure afresh, let us see what it is has brought despondency and failure in our work upon us in the past. I think it is because we have been saying things we have never realized; we have been repeating without imagination the words of those few leaders. ”

“ Whole schools of art, entire ages of old workmanship, the very soul of the Middle Age, have been revealed with a new inspiration and transfigured in a more mysterious light. Poetry, Greek sculpture, mediaeval worship, commercial morality, the training of the young, the nobility of industry, the purity of the home,--a thousand things that make up the joy and soundness of human life have been irradiated by the flashing searchlight of one ardent soul: irradiated, let us say, as this dazzling ray shot round the horizon, glancing from heaven to earth, and touching the gloom with fire. ”

“ The hidden things that come near to you in beauty, in dream, in inspiration are mine and my people's. All these I can make yours—I offer you life of a fullness such as the people of the world do not dream. ”

“ While our spirits, soaring heavenward, from them inspiration draw.
Thus, unto us, nature ever, speaks in tones so loud and clear,
That, whoever will but listen, her sweet cadences shall hear.
But ’tis not alone from nature, that the soul this power derives; [Pg 65]
The sublimest inspiration, comes to us from human lives. ”

“ No wonder man from the beginning of history has turned to the heights for inspiration, for here is the spirit awed by the infinite and here one sees both the mystery of creation and the manifestations of the Father's loving kindness. ”

“ The love, hope, fear and faith that make humanity, and the elemental passions of the human heart, remain unchanged, and the secret of inspiration in any literature is the capacity to touch the cord that vibrates in a sympathy that knows nor time nor place. ”

“ And as he brooded over them with regret and sadness, and the beginnings of new resolutions, there flashed from them, with the electric suddenness of genuine inspiration, the bright spark of a new idea, a new idea for the new work which he was aching to begin. ”

“ Thou art the very mould and model of our thoughts and ideas; Thou art the very essence of our feelings and emotions. Thou art the very inspiration and sanction of our aims and ideals. Thou art the parent and the preceptor of our spirits. ”

“ He had developed, he had branched and blossomed in the degree to which the inspiration of his work had been squeezed and strained through layers and layers of close-packed humanity; and the more he was played upon by the cross-bred, striped and ring-streaked passions and affections of society, the more delicate and fanciful and human his work became. ”

“ Looking into the mirror of her works, like the influence of gazing into loving eyes, he draws from it a pure, a holy inspiration, which he may, if his practised hand be obedient to his creative mind, transfer to the gross element which is to express to mankind the power of the true. ”

“ Your eyes may criticise and your hands may accomplish art-work, but the inspiration that truly expresses art comes from Mind alone. Thus the finer and more harmonious the thoughts of the mentality that thinks, the more beautiful and perfect will be his achievement in any line of work. ”

“ An inspiration—a long deep breath of the pure air of thought—could alone give health to the heart. ”

“ Thy celestial inspiration will dominate the remainder of my life, public as well as private, and preside over my progress towards perfection, purifying my sentiments, ennobling my thoughts, and elevating my conduct. ”

“ Inspiration, an earnest, divinely-awakened, soul-subduing sense and perception of the presence of the invisible in the visible, of the infinite in the finite, of the ideal in the real, of the divine in the human, and, in ecstatic moments, of very God in man, accompanied with a burning desire to impart to others the vision revealed ”

“ How true it is that art expressions are the mute speech of genius, and genius is but another name for inspiration. It has been said "back of the artist is art, and back of art is that which men name God." ”

“ Was I not present at some undreamed-of demonstration of the absence of the remoter real, the real other than immediate and exquisite, other than guaranteed and enclosed, in landscape, friendship, fame, above all in consciousness of awaited and admired and self-consistent inspiration? ”

“ And do we not all agree to call rapid thought and noble impulse by the name of inspiration? ”

“ Drawing her inspiration direct from nature, she has held on her independent way, steadily faithful to the gift she possesses of evoking a character in a portrait or of making us feel how the common task, when representative of genuine human effort and touched with the poetry of national tradition, of religion, and of nature, becomes a subject of noble artistic treatment. ”

“ I do not, however, propose to discuss with more detail the confusions which have prevailed over the conception of inspiration and genius, and the notion, which even at the present day finds advocates, that inspiration simply by itself can effect anything and everything. ”

“ The poet, the painter, the statesman, the preacher, can alike in moments of ecstasy ascend this mount of inspiration, and foretell the advancement of the world in relation to art, science, and spiritual development. ”

“ After hearing the secret voice of the many creations asking to live she now received within her the touch, the inspiration, which determined her to put into her work that wonderful perseverance displayed by Nature, of which she had herself already given many proofs. ”

“ That is to say, what in the beginning was a fresh and vivid inspiration caught direct from life has become a pattern whose colours and shape can be repeated or varied by lesser writers who take their teaching from the original discoverers. ”

“ And here lies the foundation of the doctrine of inspiration which is a process of mental action whereby the mind in the body is raised to a perception and expression of ideas beyond its own range of thought as generated by the physical senses. ”

“ He mistook the responsive excitement produced by the ideas and visions of others for authentic inspiration, the vivacity of a sociable and conversational gift for the creative force of genius, and the immobility of obvious and established conventional judgments for an extraordinary soundness and incisiveness of fundamental analysis. ”

“ To me, the spirit and content of an inspired poem is potential form; and in its natural verbal expression, of necessity organic. The inspiration shapes and perfects the form. This is why I regard the actual form as only, at most, equal in importance to what is expressed. ”

“ Inspiration is not an isolated phenomenon. Like all our thoughts and doings, it is the resultant of three component factors--namely, our own ego and that of our fellow-men, and the all-pervading influence of that divine environment in which we live, and move, and have our being. ”

“ Every really great work must have in it more or less of this element which we call inspiration.
But while the great works of genius belong to the class of inspired works, we make a distinct order out of the great religious works which have been the sacred Scriptures of races of men. ”

“ The purpose of inspiration is practical; the inspired men are used of God to give guidance in belief and duty by declaring the word and will of God as bearing on human life. (5) As revelation is progressive, inspiration does not exclude defects in doctrine and practice in the earlier stages and their correction in the later stages of development. ”

“ The line of distinction between this and the less tangible ideas which are conveyed by form, by melody, by suggestion,—the ideas, in short, which are the secret of the inspirational effect of a work,—cannot be sharply drawn. Many of the tangible ideas will have been obvious in the reading of which the recognized purpose has been mere delight and inspiration ”

“ The sources of inspiration from which perfect art springs are in the depths of the human heart, in the eternal realities of life before which all men are equal. And the sources of a popular language must be found in the small number of simple and vigorous forms which express elementary sensations, and draw the master lines of human destiny. ”

“ There is, for instance, the strange notion, to some extent arising from the general truth of the peculiar intimacy with which genius attaches itself to the worlds of conscious life and Nature, that inspiration can be conjured up through mere excitation of the senses. ”

“ And the amount of true inspiration possessed by each individual depends upon his or her moral, intellectual, and spiritual elevation of the soul or mind into the higher enjoyment of spiritual bliss where it becomes en rapport with all that is lovely, inspiring, and beautiful in God's universe ”

“ With hot insistence I battled for the inspiration to be drawn from the beauty and grandeur of which human life was capable. "Will any one exclaim, 'You are taking all beauty out of human life, all hope, all warmth, all inspiration ”

“ What the light of your mind, which is the direct inspiration of the Almighty, pronounces incredible,—that, in God's name, leave uncredited; at your peril do not try believing that. ”

“ Artistic inspiration arises from the stimulation of the imagination, the faculty of movement and form, by some strong feeling seeking expression. Among the feelings which have been most productive of such stimulation we may mention the religious sentiments, which open a limitless field for imaginative activity; the emotions of love, which stir imagination to the delineation of human beauty; the moral sentiments, which excite it to portray the heroic and sublime qualities of character; and the passion for natural scenery, which attracts it to the representation of the beautiful in Nature. ”

“ An inspiration of suggestion, which precedes the former, and takes place when God doth, as it were, speak directly to the mind of the inspired person, making such discoveries to it as it could not but by miracle obtain. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The most wonderful inspirations die with their subject, if he has no hand to paint them to the senses. ”

“ They say to you, oh Poet, ‘Perfect those gifts of your higher nature—yet be not of them vainglorious, since, humanly speaking, they are not yours, but lent for a purpose, and the brief space of earth-life.’ Look upon every beautiful thought, every gift of expression, as the direction of One who has dowered you with the possibility of opening other eyes to the beauty, and other minds to the understanding of such expression. ”

“ Look into the mind of man, where wisdom reigns enthroned; where imagination, the painter, sits, with his pencil dipt in hues lovelier than those of sunset, adorning familiar life with glowing tints. What a noble boon, worthy the giver, is the imagination! ”

“ Now the expression of vision, of reality, of beauty, at an artist's hands--the creation of new life in all forms--has two factors: the living moulding creative spirit, and the material in which it works. ”

“ Mind and matter, hope and experience, longing and limitation, for an instant combine in a reconciliation that interprets and ennobles his environment. This is art's maturity, its fine and perfect flower. ”

“ And it is ever growing towards perfection in the form of poetry, bearing witness to the creativeness (or genius) of man forevermore. As breath is to the material body, keeping men alive in nature, so language is to the social body, keeping individuals alive in history and literature; and as the material universe is symbolical of God's wisdom, so the echoes of the universe tossed from the lips of men are symbolic images of the wisdom of man. ”

“ There lies the future field for the poet, the novelist, and the painter—the idealization of the real world as it is in its highest terms of love and passion, struggle, joy, and sorrow, free from the condescension of superior castes and the mystification of the star-reaching introspective culture which seeks only personal exaltation, and excludes sympathy with the every-day beings and things of earth from its so-called spiritual outlook. ”

“ The use of words of vital significance, an imagination which can associate itself with all the world, can restore the Past to the Present, can transform the entire external environment of man's life to a symbolical expression of his spirit, can bravely adventure into the depths of comprehensive thought, and, while doing so, reveal an exuberant, capacious, clear, exalted, and noble nature—a wealth of character such as this, freely expressing such a world, is a prize indeed for the Lyric Muse. ”