#muses

The Helicon of too many poets is not a hill crowned with sunshine and visited by the Muses and the Graces, but an old, mouldering house, full of gloom and haunted by ghosts. ↗

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

#full #ghosts #gloom #graces #haunted

It always amuses me that the biggest praise for my work comes for the imagination, while the truth is that there's not a single line in all my work that does not have a basis in reality. The problem is that Caribbean reality resembles the wildest imagination. ↗

— Gabriel Garcia Marquez

#amuses #basis #biggest #caribbean #comes

It's only very recently that women have succeeded in entering those professions which, as Muses, they typified for the Greeks. ↗

— Miriam Beard

#greeks #muses #only #professions #recently

For this will cure him that is sick, and rouse him that is in dumps; one that has loved, it will remember of it; one that has not, it will instruct. For there was never any yet that wholly could escape love, and never shall there be any, never so long as beauty shall be, never so long as eyes can see. But help me that God to write the passions of others; and while I write, keep me in my own right wits. ↗

— Longus

#depression #god #inspiration #instruction #love

The number of guests at dinner should not be less than the number of the Graces nor exceed that of the Muses, i.e., it should begin with three and stop at nine. ↗

— Marcus Terentius Varro

#dinner #exceed #graces #guests #i

The boys were amazed that I could make such a poem as that out of my own head, and so was I, of course, it being as much a surprise to me as it could be to anybody, for I did not know that it was in me. If any had asked me a single day before if it was in me, I should have told them frankly no, it was not. That is the way with us; we may go on half of our life not knowing such a thing is in us, when in reality it was there all the time, and all we needed was something to turn up that would call for it. ↗

— Mark Twain

#inspiration #muses #poetry #unexpected #inspirational

I go to books and to nature as the bee goes to a flower, for a nectar that I can make into my own honey. ↗

— John Burroughs

#muses #reading #inspirational

I just write what I wanted to write. I write what amuses me. It's totally for myself. I never in my wildest dreams expected this popularity. ↗

— J. K. Rowling

#dreams #expected #i #i write #just

I kept reaching for my muses, my wandering muses, floating on clouds filled with their passions.” (Muses of Wandering Passions, p. 64) ↗

— Chimnese Davids

#life #love #muses #passion #understanding

(...) The new nine muses, Commerce, Operatic Music, Amor, Publicity, Manufacture, Liberty of Specch, Plural Voting, Gastronomy, Private Hygiene, Seaside Concert Entertainments, Painless Obstetrics and Astronomy for the People. ↗

— James Joyce

#muses #music #opera #ulysses #music