Top 100 Quotes About The Muses
#1. 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
#2. The muses are ghosts, and sometimes they come uninvited.
Stephen King
#3. We pursued the muses, instead of the mirrors.
Adam Gopnik
#4. 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
#5. 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
#7. 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
#8. Let those who drink not, but austerely dine, dry up in law; the Muses smell of wine.
Horace
#9. A cheerful life is what the Muses love, A soaring spirit is their prime delight.
William Wordsworth
#10. 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
#11. The Muses inspire art and pretend not to notice when Mammon buys it.
Mason Cooley
#12. 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
#13. 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
#14. 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
#15. There is no wide road which leads to the Muses.
Propertius
#16. 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
#17. One expected growth, change; without it, the world was less, the well of inspiration dried up, the muses fled.
Charles De Lint
#18. 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
#19. Some thoughtlessly proclaim the Muses nine:
A tenth is Sappho, maid divine.
Plato
#20. 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
#21. The virtues, like the Muses, are always seen in groups. A good principle was never found solitary in any breast.
Buddha
#22. 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
#23. 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
#24. Artists are visited by the Muses, or tormented by their own passions and demons.
Wes Nisker
#25. 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
#26. 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
#27. Landmarks to the muses that inspired the music. When I could tell it was sincere without trying to prove it
Drake
#28. Happy is the man whom the Muses love: sweet speech flows from his mouth.
Hesiod
#29. 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
#30. 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
#31. 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
#32. 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
#33. 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
#34. I have always believed that opera is a planet where the muses work together, join hands and celebrate all the arts.
Franco Zeffirelli
#35. 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
#36. 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
#37. With thought, with the ideal, is immortal hilarity, the rose of joy. Round it all the muses sing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#39. A full Belly makes a dull Brain: The Muses starve in a Cook's Shop.
Benjamin Franklin
#40. 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
#41. 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
#42. Dawn is a friend of the muses, even if they aren't awake to appreciate it.
Kimberly Morgan
#43. Art doesn't spring from the muses alone, but from hard work.
Tom Rachman
#44. 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
#45. 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
#46. 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
#47. The most astonishing joy is to receive from the muses the gift of a whole lyric.
James Broughton
#48. If anyone comes to the gates of poetry and expects to become an adequate poet by acquiring expert knowledge of the subject without the Muses' madness, he will fail, and his self-controlled verses will be eclipsed by the poetry of men who have been driven out of their minds.
Plato
#50. Writers feel that they can't afford to wait. They must do it now, and they are so clever, and there is so much competition. I'm quite happy to wait, and quite confident that the muses will cross the stream.
Robert Dessaix
#51. 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
#52. I will not stop singing
the Muses who set me dancing.
Anne Carson
#53. 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
#54. You forget," I said, "I'm a writer and the Muses are the daughters of Memory.
Aldous Huxley
#55. Clio may be the most austere and chaste of the Muses, but she has been known to come down informally from Mount Helicon in a mood so raffish that there are those who claim to have seen her with her slip showing.
Thornton Willis
#56. 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
#57. I'm a sucker for a guy with scars, so for your protection, we should probably stick to the case."
"I'm not scared.
Lisa Kessler
#58. 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
#59. 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
#60. She didn't warn you about me?"
"Should she have?"
Erica finished her drink, relishing the burn in her belly and the flush of heat in her cheeks as she nodded "Definitely."
His gaze smoldered. "It's a good thing danger is my calling, then.
Lisa Kessler
#61. Mistress Creation keeps calling my name ... i long for her, and she, for me ... we will be reunited soon. In the interim, i bide my time dreaming of her, writing about her and stretching her across the vast landscape of my imagination. "Soon", i whisper to her, "Soon
Jaeda DeWalt
#62. 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
#63. 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
#64. Your eyes make me pick up my pen and write.
Avijeet Das
#65. And the truth shall set you free," the Pillar muses. "Free enough to kill one another." "Stop
Cameron Jace
#66. 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
#67. 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
#68. 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
#69. I have my permanent muses and my muses of the moment.
Karl Lagerfeld
#70. Writing is the light of imagination playing over shadow of thoughts.
Khaled Talib
#71. 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
#72. 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
#73. A digital wall of masks stared back at him. His finger rolled the mouse in a slow downward scroll.
Okay, you bastard. Where are you?
Lisa Kessler
#74. 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
#76. 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
#77. Solving crimes is like following a spider web. Everything is connected in some way. It's just figuring out where things intersect so I can find the spider in the middle.
Lisa Kessler
#78. It's only very recently that women have succeeded in entering those professions which, as Muses, they typified for the Greeks.
Mary Ritter Beard
#79. 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
#80. What you seem to forget is that I'm not one of the embodiments of evil. I'm one of the embodiments of fear. That means I know what makes evil quake in the light of the sun.
Emily Kirby
#81. 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
#82. 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
#83. 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
#84. ( ... ) 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
#85. 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
#86. I go forth to seek To seek and claim the lovely magic garden Where grasses softly sigh and Muses speak.
Anna Akhmatova
#87. 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
#88. Soul mates are muses. The people in your life you despise, disrespect and desire the most.
Coco J. Ginger
#89. I am no writer. Her sparkling eyes made my fingers write words in the sand. Her radiant smile made my pen write words in the air. Her beautiful soul made my typewriter type poems for eternity. I am no writer.
Avijeet Das
#90. I have a pullout couch, and I could sleep in the living room. You can have the bedroom."
"I'm sorry. No." Mel put her hand on his chest, her eyes sparkling. "I have to draw the line there. I should at least get sex out of this deal or this really would be a tragedy.
Lisa Kessler
#91. 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
#92. 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
#93. She rose on her tiptoes and brushed a slow kiss to his lips. "This doesn't have to be a relationship, okay? Just let me be your muse."
He bent to taste her again and smiled. "And I'll be your Guardian.
Lisa Kessler
#94. Last night, I was a mad man searching for a whiff of your fragrance. The stars and the moon even laughed at me.
Avijeet Das
#95. 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
#96. 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
#97. Why don't you come with me to the station? We can talk, and I'll treat you to a bad cup of coffee."
"You make it sound pretty tempting.
Lisa Kessler
#98. 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
#99. Have patience, Margaret, and trouble not thyself. Death comes for us all; 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. It is the law of nature and the will of God.
Robert Bolt
#100. Inspiration is the windfall from hard work and focus. Muses are too unreliable to keep on the payroll.
Helen Hanson
