Top 100 Quotes About Muses
#1. The nine Greek Muses, awakened again for this generation of man and meant to inspire mankind forward in the sciences and the arts.
Lisa Kessler
#2. That's what music did. It made you feel.
...
Music, her grandfather always told her, was language. A special language, a gift from the Muses, something all people are born understanding but few people can thoroughly translate.
Sara Zarr
#3. The muses are ghosts, and sometimes they come uninvited.
Stephen King
#4. Here will I live in the rainy season, here in the autumn and in the summer: thus muses the fool. He realizes not the danger (of death).
Gautama Buddha
#5. Grey time-worn marbles Hold the pure Muses. In their cool gallery, By yellow Tiber, They still look fair.
Matthew Arnold
#6. Stretch out your tongue and let the words drip on the world like savage shooting muses, never, never to be forgotten, if once fallen on earth, they stand in glittery defloration.
Laura Gentile
#7. We pursued the muses, instead of the mirrors.
Adam Gopnik
#8. 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
#9. Plato said: 'He who approaches the temple of the Muses without inspiration in the belief that craftmanship alone suffices, will remain a bungler and his presumptuous poetry will be obscured by the songs of the maniacs.'
Chuck Palahniuk
#10. The Muses were dumb while Apollo lectured.
Charles Lamb
#11. If a man comes to the door of poetry untouched by the madness of the Muses, believing that technique alone will make him a good poet, he and his sane compositions never reach perfection, but are utterly eclipsed by the performances of the inspired madman.
Socrates
#12. Here I am, the artist, the person, the black woman, and the stereotype. I'm using myself and it has nothing to do with my muses or other women. It has to do with me. You see parts of my body moving, very collage like, flashing, and not speaking, just laying on a couch, looking out at the viewer.
Mickalene Thomas
#13. Let those who drink not, but austerely dine, dry up in law; the Muses smell of wine.
Horace
#14. A cheerful life is what the Muses love, A soaring spirit is their prime delight.
William Wordsworth
#15. But the culture-vultures and the intellectual snobs, and the self-appointed guardians of the Muses, often frighten off the average person from the free development of this appetite.
Sydney J. Harris
#16. The Muses inspire art and pretend not to notice when Mammon buys it.
Mason Cooley
#17. Yet the companions of the Muses
will keep their collective nose in my books
And weary with historical data, they will turn to my dance tune.
Ezra Pound
#18. Jodi Orgill Brown is inspired by people who live fulfilled lives in spite of their struggles. She loves spending time with her muses,
Jodi Orgill Brown
#19. And one there was, a dreamer born,
Who, with a mission to fulfill,
Had left the Muses' haunts to turn
The crank of an opinion-mill,
Making his rustic reed of song
A weapon in the war with wrong, ...
A Tent on the Beach
John Greenleaf Whittier
#20. She [Kim Kardashian] was always my muse, now she's become other designers' muses.
Kanye West
#21. I thought of muses as inventions to protect one's insight, to avoid questions like "Where do your ideas come from?" Or to escape inquiry into the fuzzy area between autobiography and fiction.
Toni Morrison
#22. Education and study, and the favours of the muses, confer no greater benefit on those that seek them than these humanizing and civilizing lessons, which teach our natural qualities to submit to the limitations prescribed by reason, and to avoid the wildness of extremes.
Plutarch
#23. Professional writers don't have muses; they have mortgages.
Larry Kahaner
#24. No writing? Your muse isn't speaking to you?'
'She rarely does. International cell charges and whatnot. Besides which, she's flighty and nearly impossible to understand. And she says I always misinterpret her intentions.'
'Muses. What can you do, right?
Kiersten White
#25. He's Post-it-noted the window," Tom says, peering to see what it reads. "It says 'Call me' and his mobile number. I might just do that," he muses. "He's kind of cute.
Melina Marchetta
#26. True muses stay dreams forever unless artists connect them to exploratory work.
Robert Genn
#27. There is no wide road which leads to the Muses.
Propertius
#28. An acquaintance with the muses, in the education of youth, contributes not a little to soften manners. It gives a delicate turn to the imagination and a polish to the mind.
Samuel Richardson
#29. Life, he muses, always gives you an excuse to take what you want anyway.
Don Winslow
#30. And the truth shall set you free," the Pillar muses. "Free enough to kill one another." "Stop
Cameron Jace
#31. One expected growth, change; without it, the world was less, the well of inspiration dried up, the muses fled.
Charles De Lint
#32. I sit down to the piano regularly at nine-o'clock in the morning and Mesdames les Muses have learned to be on time for that rendezvous.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
#33. The man who arrives at the doors of artistic creation with none of the madness of the Muses would be convinced that technical ability alone was enough to make an artist ... what that man creates by means of reason will pale before the art of inspired beings.
Plato
#34. Mayakovsky, brazen poet of the revolution, sicced his jeering muses on gourmet fancies: Eat your pineapples, gobble your grouse Your last day is coming, you bourgeois louse!
Anya Von Bremzen
#35. Creativity requires introspection, self-examination, and a willingness to take risks. Because of this, artists are perhaps more susceptible to self-doubt and despair than those who do not court the creative muses.
Eric Maisel
#36. Some thoughtlessly proclaim the Muses nine:
A tenth is Sappho, maid divine.
Plato
#37. For deeds to die, however nobly done, And thoughts of men to as themselves decay, But wise words taught in numbers for to run, Recorded by the Muses, live for ay.
Edmund Spenser
#38. The virtues, like the Muses, are always seen in groups. A good principle was never found solitary in any breast.
Buddha
#39. I have my permanent muses and my muses of the moment.
Karl Lagerfeld
#40. What I've learned is that the muses' decision to sing or not to sing is not based on the elevation of your moral purpose - they will sing or not, regardless.
John Barth
#41. All literature up to today is sexist. The Muses never sang to the poets about liberated women. It's the same old chanson from the Bible and Homer through Joyce and Proust.
Allan Bloom
#42. We all have our muses. My grandmother and my mother are the people I write for. I'll never have to worry about who buys my work, or who likes it, and who doesn't. The people who I want to be proud of me already are.
Nikki Giovanni
#43. Why must a girl pay so dearly for her least escape," Lily muses as she contemplates the prospect of being bored all afternoon by Percy Grice, dull but undeniably rich, "on the bare chance that he might ultimately do her the honor of boring her for life?
Edith Wharton
#44. Artists are visited by the Muses, or tormented by their own passions and demons.
Wes Nisker
#45. Some people have human muses - mine is a city. I feel a startling ambivalence towards London, but for better or worse my work has come utterly to depend upon it.
Will Self
#46. He is happy whom the Muses love. For though a man has sorrow and grief in his soul, yet when the servant of the Muses sings, at once he forgets his dark thoughts and remembers not his troubles. Such is the holy gift of the Muses to men.
Hesiod
#47. Nightmare agenda if ever there was one, she thinks - but that crazy exhilaration persists. When did she last feel this young? She can hardly sit still. "The 20th of July, " Eddie muses, rolling his aspirator along the table from one hand to the other. "Three or four days after
Stephen King
#48. May my life someday be so limpid that the Muses will deign to mirror themselves in it and that we can see the reflections of their smiles and their dances skimming across its surface.
Marcel Proust
#49. Landmarks to the muses that inspired the music. When I could tell it was sincere without trying to prove it
Drake
#51. Even at our birth, death does but stand aside a little. And every day he looks towards us and muses somewhat to himself whether that day or the next he will draw nigh.
Robert Bolt
#52. It's only very recently that women have succeeded in entering those professions which, as Muses, they typified for the Greeks.
Mary Ritter Beard
#53. It is ever the invisible that is the object of our profoundest worship. With the lover it is not the seen but the unseen that he muses upon.
Christian Nestell Bovee
#54. Happy is the man whom the Muses love: sweet speech flows from his mouth.
Hesiod
#55. People think of me as a stereotype: muse, privileged, decorative. Classically, the muses were the inspiration. They'd come and go - they wouldn't actually make things, get their hands dirty. I don't think I'm a muse, although I think I can help pull a trigger. I really like getting my hands dirty.
Amanda Harlech
#56. Two goddesses now must Cyprus adore; The Muses are ten, and the Graces are four; Stella's wit is so charming, so sweet her fair face, She shines a new Venus, a Muse, and a Grace.
Callimachus
#57. Homer tucks in his unwritten words for the night as ocean muses seduce his dreams with swelling songs heard in search of undiscovered paladins.
J.D. Tulloch
#58. I shall live here in the rains,
There in winter,
Elsewhere in summer, muses the fool,
Not aware of the nearness of death.
Gautama Buddha
#59. I kept reaching for my muses,
my wandering muses, floating
on clouds filled with their passions.
(Muses of Wandering Passions, p. 64)
Chimnese Davids
#60. The certainty that someone will never come back," the narrator muses of the dead, "never speak again, never take another step ... will never look at us or look away. I don't know how we bear it, or how we recover.
Javier Marias
#61. Grey's OK on a man,' says Mary-Anne. 'Silver fox and all that.' Ruth notices that Frank doesn't seem to mind this description. She also muses that there isn't a female equivalent to 'silver fox'. 'Grey-haired old bat' doesn't cover it somehow.
Elly Griffiths
#62. The Order of the Titans had agreed with his assessment. This generation, the Order would be successful where previous generations had failed, because this time they would steal mankind's inspiration. They would kill the muses for the greater good ...
For the good of mankind.
Lisa Kessler
#63. ( ... ) 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
#64. Inspiration is hogwash. My work comes directly out of my loves and hates. Muses don't whisper in my ear, and ideas don't flow over my body like a cool rain.
James Victore
#65. To me the Muses truly gave / An envied and a happy lot: / E'en when I lie within the grave, / I cannot, shall not, be forgot.
Sappho
#66. He'd failed them, the swimming goldfish of his life's tiny existence whom he held so dear in his heart; he'd turned his muses into mistakes and no one knew the difference but him.
Luke Taylor
#67. For too many centuries women have been being muses to artists. I wanted to be the muse, I wanted to be the wife of the artist, but I was really trying to avoid the final issue - that I had to do the job myself.
Anais Nin
#69. Memory is the mother of the muses, prototype Artist. As a rule picks and highlights what is important, omitting what is accidental or trivial. Occasionally, however, is mistaken as all the other artists. Nevertheless it is what I take as a guide page.
Frank Harris
#70. I have always believed that opera is a planet where the muses work together, join hands and celebrate all the arts.
Franco Zeffirelli
#71. I think there's probably always been visions and voices, and these were variously ascribed to the divine or demonic or the muses. I think many poets still feel they depend on an inner voice, or a voice which tells them what to do.
Oliver Sacks
#72. I am impressed by the way Annie Kevans captured the different types of beauties that have been my inspiration and my muses from my grandmother to artists like David Bowie and Boy George.
Jean Paul Gaultier
#73. I go forth to seek To seek and claim the lovely magic garden Where grasses softly sigh and Muses speak.
Anna Akhmatova
#74. I do not know whether I would not like much better to have produced one perfectly formed child by intercourse with the muses than by intercourse with my wife.
Michel De Montaigne
#75. Richard's ex-girlfriends were long gone, but their voices followed him all the time and spoke to him, like Muses or Furies. It was like having seven superegos arranged in a firing squad before a single beleaguered id, making sure he didn't enjoy that last cigarette.
Neal Stephenson
#76. Soul mates are muses. The people in your life you despise, disrespect and desire the most.
Coco J. Ginger
#77. But least is he who, with enchanted eyes
Filled with high visions of fair shapes to be,
Muses which god he shall immortalize
In the proud Parian's perpetuity,
Till twilight warns him from the punctual skies
That the night cometh wherein none shall see.
Edith Wharton
#78. With thought, with the ideal, is immortal hilarity, the rose of joy. Round it all the muses sing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#80. A full Belly makes a dull Brain: The Muses starve in a Cook's Shop.
Benjamin Franklin
#81. When a painting problem crops up, don't rush to fix it. You probably already know one way to fix it, but wait for something else to show up ... invite the muses to bring you a new solution.
Carole Katchen
#82. After the play, he counts on playing cards,
and he on a wild night in some girl's arms -
why, in a cause like this, must you poor fools
so sorely try the Muses' kindness
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#83. Muses work all day long and then at night get together and dance ...
Edgar Degas
#84. Writing novels is largely about endurance and patience. I take a lot of breaks, hit walls, and go do something else while I think things through. But I do it every day, and I try to treat it as a job, something that is not dictated by whimsy or muses.
Adam Mansbach
#85. Dawn is a friend of the muses, even if they aren't awake to appreciate it.
Kimberly Morgan
#86. You want poetry, first you have to muck in with humanity, you have to fight with paper and pencil for weeks and weeks until your heart bleeds: verses aren't channelled into your head by angels or muses or sprites of nature.
Stephen Fry
#87. The world of technology has made it easier for people to get in touch with their modern muses regardless of the genres that they are trying to utilize and even if they create a new genre based on a mixing of others. The potential for modern-day muses is as vast as individual creativity.
Kytka Hilmar-Jezek
#88. For those who do not write and who never have been stirred by the creative urge, talk of muses seems a figure of speech, a quaint conceit, but for those of us who live by the Word, our muses are as real and necessary as the soft clay of language which they help to sculpt.
Dan Simmons
#89. Art doesn't spring from the muses alone, but from hard work.
Tom Rachman
#90. I'm going to fall in love with an artist. And we'll have two kids and live in the country. A quiet life, so we can hear our muses and answer when they call.
Tipping up my chin to meet his gaze, he gives me a tender, starlit smile - one that melts my insides. I like your version better.
A.G. Howard
#91. I guess I'll just slip into the studio after the next time with the Muses, and then just keel over and die.
Kristin Hersh
#92. Most people, he muses, they're trying to escape from boredom, but I'm trying to get into the thick of boredom.
Haruki Murakami
#93. Muses have bullwhips and aren't afraid to use them, just sayin
E.T. Malinowski
#94. I think of mythology as the homeland of the muses, the inspirers of art, the inspirers of poetry. To see life as a poem and yourself participating in a poem is what the myth does for you.
Joseph Campbell
#95. For, whom the Muses smile upon,
And touch with soft persuasion,
His words like a storm-wind can bring
Terror and beauty on their wing;
In his every syllable
Lurketh nature veritable.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#96. My muses were all the incredible, iconic women of glamour in Hollywood that I have worked with over 15 years. Anjelica Huston, Michelle Pfeiffer, Gwyneth Paltrow, Lena Dunham, Viola Davis, Rihanna, Demi Moore ...
Zac Posen
#97. If history has taught us anything, Arthur muses, it is that men with mustaches must never achieve positions of power.
Tom Rachman
#98. If you look at the greatest models, it was because they were muses to photographers. They collaborated with the artist and they created the kind of images that become iconic.
Michael Flutie
#99. As one who cons at evening o'er an album all alone,
And muses on the faces of the friends that he has known,
So I turn the leaves of Fancy, till in shadowy design
I find the smiling features of an old sweetheart of mine.
James Whitcomb Riley
#100. My mother and grandmother ... they were my first muses. The way they dressed and carried themselves was an education in elegance. They defined the word.
Christian Cota
