It is erroneous to tie down individual genius to ideal models. Each person should do that, not which is best in itself, even supposing this could be known, but that which he can do best, which he will find out if left to himself. Spenser could not have written Paradise Lost, nor Milton the Faerie Queene. Those who aim at faultless regularity will only produce mediocrity, and no one ever approaches perfection except by stealth, and unknown to themselves.
William Hazlitt (1778-1830) English writer
“Thoughts on Taste,” Edinburgh Magazine (1819-07)
(Source)
Quotations about:
creator
Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.
When a poet is being a poet — that is, when he is writing or thinking about writing — he cannot be concerned with anything but the making of a poem. If the poem is to turn out well, the poet cannot have thought of whether it will be saleable, or of what its effect on the world should be; he cannot think of whether it will bring him honor, or advance a cause, or comfort someone in sorrow. All such considerations, whether silly or generous, would be merely intrusive; for, psychologically speaking, the end of writing is the poem itself.
Richard Wilbur (1921-2017) American poet, literary translator
Acceptance Speech, National Book Award (1957)
The relation between the artist and reality is an oblique one, and indeed there is no good art which is not consciously oblique. If you respect the reality of the world, you know that you can approach that reality only by indirect means.
Richard Wilbur (1921-2017) American poet, literary translator
“The Bottles Become New, Too” (1953), Responses: Prose Pieces, 1953-1976 (1976)
(Source)
Originally published in Quarterly Review of Literature, Vol. 7, No. 3 (1953).
The man is nothing, the work all!
[L’homme n’est rien, l’oeuvre tout!]
Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) French writer, novelist
Letter to George Sand (Dec 1875)
Original French. Arthur Conan Doyle misquoted this in "The Red-Headed League" as "L'homme c'est rien -- l'oeuvre c'est tout."
What is it you want to change? Your hair, your face, your body? Why? For God is in love with all those things and he might weep when they are gone.
Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) Italian Catholic mystic, activist, author
(Attributed)
The wretched Artist himself is alternatively the lowest worm that ever crawled when no fire is in him: or the loftiest God that ever sang when the fire is going.
Caitlin Thomas (1913-1994) British author, wife of Dylan Thomas [née Macnamara]
Not Quite Posthumous Letter to My Daughter (1963)
(Source)
An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.
Jean Cocteau (1889-1963) French writer, filmmaker, artist
Quoted in Newsweek (16 May 1955)
A work of art has an author and yet, when it is perfect, it has something which is essentially anonymous about it.
Simone Weil (1909-1943) French philosopher
Gravity and Grace [La Pesanteur et la Grâce], “Beauty” (1947) [ed. Thibon] [tr. Crawford/von der Ruhr (1952)]
(Source)
Be not afraid! In admitting a creator, refuse not to examine his creation; and take not the assertions of creatures like yourselves, in place of the evidence of your senses and the conviction of your understanding.
Frances "Fanny" Wright (1795-1852) Scottish-American writer, lecturer, social reformer
A Course of Popular Lectures, Lecture 3, “Of the more Important Divisions and Essential Parts of Knowledge” (1829)
(Source)
All things are artificial, for nature is the art of God.
Thomas Browne (1605-1682) English physician and author
Religio Medici, Part 1, sec.16 (1642) [ed. Symonds (1886)]
(Source)
Nature is but a name for an effect,
Whose cause is God.William Cowper (1731-1800) English poet
The Task, 6.123 (1785)
And God said, Let there be light, and there was light; but Eastern Electricity Board said He would have to wait until Thursday to be connected.
Terence Alan "Spike" Milligan (1918-2002) Anglo-Irish comedian, writer, actor
The Bible According to Spike Milligan, “The Creation According to the Trade Unions” (1994)
(Source)
Quoted in Spike Milligan's Meaning of Life: A Sort of Autobiography, ch. 1 (2011) [ed. Norma Farnes]
I still think the argument from design the weakest possible ground for Theism, and what may be called the argument from un-design the strongest for Atheism.
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer, literary scholar, lay theologian [Clive Staples Lewis]
Letter to Alan Griffiths (20 Dec 1946)
(Source)
By no means is the natural order of things fashioned for us by a divine agency: so greatly do the imperfections with which it has been endowed stand out.
[Nequaquam nobis divinitus esse paratam
naturam rerum: tanta stat praedita culpa]Lucretius (c. 100-c. 55 BC) Roman poet [Titus Luretius Carus]
De Rerum Natura [On the Nature of Things], Book 5, l. 198-9
Man — who is he?
Too bad to be the work of God; too good for the work of chance![Der Mensch, wo ist er her?
Zu schlecht für einen Gott, zu gut fürs Ungefähr.]Gotthold Lessing (1729-1781) German playwright, philosopher, dramaturg, writer
Fragmente und Fabeln [Fragments and Fables], Fragment 6 “Die Religion” (1753)
As with many of his quotations, frequently misattributed to contemporary author Doris Lessing.
(Source (German)). Alternate translation:Man, whence is he?
Too bad to be the work of a god, too good for the work of chance.
[ed. Wood (1893)]
The truth is, as every one knows, that the great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable. No virtuous man — that is, virtuous in the Y.M.C.A. sense — has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony worth hearing, or a book worth reading.
H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) American writer and journalist [Henry Lewis Mencken]
“The Blushful Mystery: Art and Sex,” Prejudices: First Series (1919)
Wanting to meet an author because you like his work is like wanting to meet a duck because you like paté.
Margaret Atwood (b. 1939) Canadian writer, literary critic, environmental activist
Negotiating with the Dead, ch. 2 “Duplicity: The jekyll hand, the hyde hand, and the slippery double” (2002)
(Source)
Usually directly attributed to Atwood, but she made it clear that it was not hers:There's an epigram tacked to my office bulletin board, pinched from a magazine -- [the quotation]. That's a light enough comment upon the disappointments of encountering the famous, or even the moderately well-known -- they are always shorter and older and more ordinary than you expected -- but there's a more sinister way of looking at it as well. In order for the paté to be made and then eaten, the duck must first be killed. And who is it that does the killing?
Think before you speak is criticism’s motto; speak before you think, creation’s.
E. M. Forster (1879-1970) English novelist, essayist, critic, librettist [Edward Morgan Forster]
“The Raison d’E’tre of Criticism in the Arts,” Two Cheers for Democracy (1951)
And now go, and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Make good art.
Neil Gaiman (b. 1960) British author, screenwriter, fabulist
Speech (2012-05-17), Commencement, University of the Arts, Philadelphia [19:28]
(Source)
A transition from an author’s book to his conversation, is too often like an entrance into a large city, after a distant prospect. Remotely, we see nothing but spires of temples and turrets of palaces, and imagine it the residence of splendour, grandeur and magnificence; but when we have passed the gates, we find it perplexed with narrow passages, disgraced with despicable cottages, embarrassed with obstructions, and clouded with smoke.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic
The Rambler, #14 (5 May 1750)
(Source)
We for a certainty are not the first
Have sat in taverns while the tempest hurled
Their hopeful plans to emptiness, and cursed
Whatever brute and blackguard made the world.A. E. Housman (1859-1936) English scholar and poet [Alfred Edward Housman]
“The Chestnut Casts His Flambeaux and the Flowers,” st. 3, Last Poems, # 9 (1922)
(Source)
CREATOR. A comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh.
H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) American writer and journalist [Henry Lewis Mencken]
A Book of Burlesques, “The Jazz Webster” (1924)
(Source)
The A Little Book in C Major, ch. 4, § 18 (1916), has an alternate definition. This was expanded in Burlesques to include the above, which then became the sole definition in Chrestomathy, ch. 30 "Sententiae" (1949).
Sometimes misattributed to Voltaire.
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) English poet and critic
Lyrical Ballads, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” 615-618 (1798)
For how can anything done by the will of God be contrary to nature, when the will of so great a creator constitutes the nature of each created thing? A portent therefore happens not contrary to nature, but contrary to what is known of nature.
[Quo modo est enim contra naturam, quod Dei fit uoluntate, cum uoluntas tanti utique conditoris conditae rei cuiusque natura sit? Portentum ergo fit non contra naturam, sed contra quam est nota natura.]
Augustine of Hippo (354-430) Christian church father, philosopher, saint [b. Aurelius Augustinus]
City of God [De Civitate Dei], Book 21, ch. 8 (21.8) (AD 412-416) [tr. Green (Loeb) (1972)]
(Source)
Commonly: "Miracles are not contrary to nature, but only contrary to what we know about nature."
(Source (Latin)). Alternate translations:For how is that contrary to nature which happens by the will of God, since the will of so mighty a Creator is certainly the nature of each created thing? A portent, therefore, happens not contrary to nature, but contrary to what we know as nature.
[tr. Dods (1871)]Nothing that happens by the will of God can be ‘contrary to nature.’ The ‘nature’ of any particular created thing is precisely what the supreme Creator of the thing willed it to be. Hence, a portent is merely contrary to nature as known, not to nature as it is.
[tr. Walsh/Honan (1954)]For how can an event be contrary to nature when it happens by the will of God, since the will of the great Creator assuredly is the nature of every created thing? A portent, therefore, does not occur contrary to nature, but contrary to what is known of nature.
[tr. Bettenson (1972)]
When the Egyptians were drowning in the Red Sea, the angels in heaven began to break forth in songs of jubilation, but the Holy One, blessed be He, silenced them: “My creatures are perishing — and ye are ready to sing!”
The Talmud (AD 200-500) Collection of Jewish rabbinical writings
(Unreferenced)
In Louis I. Newman, comp. The Talmudic Anthology, 103 (1945): "When the Egyptians were drowning, the angels wished to sing. But God said, 'My children are dying, and you would sing?'"
