Quotes about Creativity

We are all wise. The difference between persons is not in wisdom but in art. I knew, in an academical club, a person who always deferred to me; who, seeing my whim for writing, fancied that my experiences had somewhat superior; whilst I saw that his experiences were as good as mine. Give them to me and I would make the same use of them.

America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.

But it is a cold, lifeless business when you go to the shops to buy something, which does not represent your life and talent, but a goldsmith's.

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine

As no air-pump can by any means make a perfect vacuum, so neither can any artist entirely exclude the conventional, the local, the perishable from his book, or write a book of pure thought, that shall be as efficient, in all respects, to a remote posterity, as to contemporaries, or rather to the second age. Each age, it is found, must write its owns books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding. The books of an older period will not fit this.

For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings, and attempt to write them down...

Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and make a trail.

Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone.

I hate quotes: tell me what you know.

The true poem is the poet's mind; the true ship is the ship-builder.

When an artist runs out of inspiration or a scholar wearies of books, they always have the ability to live. Character is more important than intellect. Life is primary; our thoughts about it are secondary.

Imagination is not a talent of some men, but is health of every man.