Creativity quotes
Imagination, invention and the stubbornness that turns an idea into a thing. Quotes about creativity from inventors, writers and artists.
The library has 432 quotes on this topic. Here are 60 of the most quoted, no more than four from any one writer.
60 creativity quotes
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Lost time is never found again; and what we call time enough, always proves little enough.
Benjamin Franklin The Way to Wealth (Poor Richard Improved) -
Diligence is the mother of good luck, and God gives all things to industry.
Benjamin Franklin The Way to Wealth (Poor Richard Improved) -
Men might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get.
Frederick Douglass West India Emancipation speech, Canandaigua NY, 3 August 1857 -
There is no frigate like a book To take us lands away, Nor any coursers like a page Of prancing poetry.
Emily Dickinson Poems, Third Series -
One science only will one genius fit: So vast is art, so narrow human wit.
Alexander Pope Essay on Criticism, Part i. Line 60 -
O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention!
William Shakespeare Henry V, Prologue -
This is the very coinage of your brain: This bodiless creation ecstasy Is very cunning in.
William Shakespeare Hamlet, Act iii. Sc. 4 -
What is now proved was once only imagined.
William Blake Proverbs of Hell, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, c. 1790 -
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, Are of imagination all compact.
William Shakespeare A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act v., Sc. 1 -
Ideas often flash across our minds more complete than we could make them after much labour.
François de La Rochefoucauld Maxims, Maxim 101 · translated by J. W. Willis Bund and J. Hain Friswell -
Chewing the food of sweet and bitter fancy.
William Shakespeare As You Like It, Act iv. Sc. 3 -
The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.
Samuel Johnson Johnsoniana. Piozzi, 154 -
Energy is Eternal Delight.
William Blake The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, c. 1790 -
But thou that didst appear so fair To fond imagination, Dost rival in the light of day Her delicate creation.
William Wordsworth Yarrow Visited -
The man with a new idea is a Crank until the idea succeeds.
Mark Twain Following the Equator -
It is a mistake to think that the passion one feels in creation is ever really shown in the work one creates. Art is always more abstract than we fancy. Form and colour tell us of form and colour—that is all.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
The first and last thing which is required of genius is love of truth.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -
A romance is a subjective epic in which the author begs leave to treat the world after his own ideas. The only question is, whether he has any ideas; the rest will follow of itself.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Maxims and Reflections, Literature and Art, No. 422 · translated by T. Bailey Saunders -
An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
I remember a good story when I hear it, but I never invented anything original: I am only a retail dealer.
Abraham Lincoln May 27 -
All in the world know the beauty of the beautiful, and in doing this they have the idea of what ugliness is; they all know the skill of the skilful, and in doing this they have the idea of what the want of skill is.
Laozi Tao Te Ching, ch. 2.1 · translated by James Legge -
The chancellor is grave, and clothed with ornaments, for his position is unreal. Not so the king, he has power, and has nothing to do with the imagination. Judges, physicians, etc. appeal only to the imagination.
Blaise Pascal Pensées, No. 307 · translated by W. F. Trotter -
In comparison with these Infinites all finites are equal, and I see no reason for fixing our imagination on one more than on another. The only comparison which we make of ourselves to the finite is painful to us.
Blaise Pascal Pensées, No. 72 · translated by W. F. Trotter -
On the saying in Genesis viii, 21: “The imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth.”
Blaise Pascal Pensées, No. 446 · translated by W. F. Trotter -
One person says that my feeling is fancy, another that his fancy is feeling.
Blaise Pascal Pensées, No. 274 · translated by W. F. Trotter -
Set it down to thyself as well to create good precedents as to follow them.
Francis Bacon Essays -
Great men are more distinguished by range and extent than by originality.
Ralph Waldo Emerson Representative Men -
Wipe out imagination; check desire: extinguish appetite: keep the ruling faculty in its own power.
Marcus Aurelius Meditations, Book IX.7 · translated by George Long -
Genius should be the child of genius, and every child should be inspired.
Ralph Waldo Emerson Essays: First Series -
No power of genius has ever yet had the smallest success in explaining existence.
Ralph Waldo Emerson Representative Men -
To live in a great idea means to treat the impossible as though it were possible. It is just the same with a strong character; and when an idea and a character meet, things arise which fill the world with wonder for thousands of years.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Maxims and Reflections, Life and Character, No. 239 · translated by T. Bailey Saunders -
Every genius is defended from approach by quantities of unavailableness.
Ralph Waldo Emerson Representative Men -
Confidence imparts a wondrous inspiration to its possessor. It bears him on in security, either to meet no danger or to find matter of glorious trial.
John Milton -
Matter exists only spiritually, and to represent some idea and body it forth.
Thomas Carlyle Sartor Resartus -
Men of genius are often dull and inert in society, as the blazing meteor when it descends to earth is only a stone.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow -
It is the greatest invention man has ever made, this of marking down the unseen thought that is in him by written characters.
Thomas Carlyle On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History -
The merit of originality is not novelty, it is sincerity. The believing man is the original man; whatsoever he believes, he believes it for himself, not for another.
Thomas Carlyle On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History -
Teach self-denial, and make its practice pleasurable, and you create for the world a destiny more sublime than ever issued from the brain of the wildest dreamer.
Walter Scott -
No man will be found in whose mind airy notions do not sometimes tyrannize, and force him to hope or fear beyond the limits of sober probability.
Samuel Johnson Rasselas -
When our vices leave us we flatter ourselves with the idea we have left them.
François de La Rochefoucauld Maxims, Maxim 192 · translated by J. W. Willis Bund and J. Hain Friswell -
A good book is comparable to a piece of meat, and fools are as flies who swarm to it, each for the purpose of depositing and hatching his own particular maggot of an idea.
Thomas Henry Huxley Aphorisms and Reflections, No. CCCXVI -
The scientific imagination always restrains itself within the limits of probability.
Thomas Henry Huxley Aphorisms and Reflections, No. CXXXI -
The fidelity of most men is merely an invention of self-love to win confidence; a method to place us above others and to render us depositaries of the most important matters.
François de La Rochefoucauld Maxims, Maxim 247 · translated by J. W. Willis Bund and J. Hain Friswell -
Men can intoxicate themselves with ideas as effectually as with alcohol or with bang, and produce, by dint of intense thinking, mental conditions hardly distinguishable from monomania.
Thomas Henry Huxley Aphorisms and Reflections, No. CXXXIII -
A certain harmony should be kept between actions and ideas if we desire to estimate the effects that they produce.
François de La Rochefoucauld Maxims, Maxim 161 · translated by J. W. Willis Bund and J. Hain Friswell -
Delightful task! to rear the tender thought, To teach the young idea how to shoot.
James Thomson The Seasons. Spring, Line 1149 -
Th’ invention all admir’d, and each how he To be th’ inventor miss’d; so easy it seem’d, Once found, which yet unfound most would have thought impossible!
John Milton Paradise Lost, Bk. vi., Line 498 -
Fond pride of dress is sure a very curse, Ere fancy you consult, consult your purse.
Benjamin Franklin Poor Richard’s Almanack -
Presumption is our natural and original disease.
Michel de Montaigne -
Work is love made visible.
Kahlil Gibran The Prophet -
What was once to me Mere matter of the fancy, now has grown The vast necessity of heart and life.
Alfred Tennyson -
And there began a lang digression About the lords o’ the creation.
Robert Burns The Twa Dogs -
Creation sleeps! ’Tis as the general pulse Of life stood still, and Nature made a pause,—An awful pause! prophetic of her end.
Edward Young Night thoughts. Night i, Line 23 -
When at the close of each sad, sorrowing day, Fancy restores what vengeance snatched away.
Alexander Pope Eloise to Abélard -
Fiction lags after truth, invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren.
Edmund Burke Speech on the Conciliation of America. Vol. ii. p. 116 -
His imagination resembled the wings of an ostrich. It enabled him to run, though not to soar.
Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay On John Dryden. 1828 -
Demoniac possession is mythical; but the faculty of being possessed, more or less completely, by an idea is probably the fundamental condition of what is called genius, whether it show itself in the saint, the artist, or the man of science.
Thomas Henry Huxley Aphorisms and Reflections, No. CXXXIV -
Patience is a necessary ingredient of genius.
Benjamin Disraeli Contarini Fleming, Part iv. Chap. v -
There is no work of genius which has not been the delight of mankind, no word of genius to which the human heart and soul have not sooner or later responded.
James Russell Lowell Among my Books. First Series. Rousseau and the Sentimentalists -
In all literary history there is no such figure as Dante, no such homogeneousness of life and works, such loyalty to ideas, such sublime irrecognition of the unessential.
James Russell Lowell Among my Books. Second Series. Dante
Who wrote most about creativity
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 33
- Ralph Waldo Emerson 25
- Thomas Carlyle 19
- Blaise Pascal 15
- James Russell Lowell 13
- William Shakespeare 12
- François de La Rochefoucauld 9
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge 7
- Robert Aris Willmott 7
- Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay 6
- Benjamin Disraeli 6
- Friedrich Schiller 6