"Creative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lovers will beget children after a year or two, nor will they mind making a few so-called sacrifices, as of parties and new automobiles, for the sake of having children. They recognize the distinction between entertainment and joy. Man may be a laughing animal, but he is more essentially a creative animal. His deepest pleasures are simply the by-products of his activity. In building a home around a family of children both men and women often find the deepest of all possible pleasures. And when it is in this spirit ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... some reason with which I am not yet acquainted. It may be that an unrestricted mentality would endanger her own intuitive perceptions by shackling all her other organs of perception, or annoy her by vexatious efforts at creative rivalry. ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... studying the Kojiki and ancient writings, but mankind has been turned aside from it, by the spirits of crookedness, to Buddhism and Chinese philosophy. The various doctrines taught under the name of Shinto are without authority, Human beings, having been produced by the spirit of the two creative deities, are naturally endowed with the knowledge of what they ought to do, and what they ought to refrain from doing. It is unnecessary for them to trouble their heads with systems of morality. If a system of morals were necessary, men would be inferior ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... learned or illiterate, young or old, rich or poor. All the material needed to fashion gods of was ignorance, and there was always an unlimited stock of that article. The artificer was imagination, a glorious faculty, which is the highest dower of the creative artist and the scientific discoverer, and in their service is fruitful in usefulness and beauty, but which in the service of theology is a frightful curse, filling the mental world with fantastic ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... this political infighting and personality conflict was support for the king. Amidst the factionalism, corruption, and greed, independent members of parliament saw the crown as the only means for creative, effective leadership. For that reason George, after 1770, not only had a minister he could work with, he had a more tractable parliament aided by the complete disintegration of the Whigs and a hardening attitude toward the Americans whose ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... it swam into his ken. This creation of the concrete world of art is the joint act of the imagination and the reason working in unison; and hence the faculty to which this act is ascribed is sometimes called the creative reason, or shaping power of the mind, in distinction from the scientific intellect which merely knows. The term is intended to convey at once the double phase, under one aspect of which the reason controls ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... we think we are fairly entitled to affirm, that Le Sage was not considered by his contemporaries as a man of original and creative genius; although he possessed, in an eminent degree, the power of appropriating and embellishing the works of others, that his style was graceful, his allusions happy, and his wit keen and spontaneous. If any one assert that this is to underrate Le Sage, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... of Romanticism; preeminently a man of prose, he endeavored all his life to be a great poet. He mistook the responsive excitement produced by the ideas and visions of others for authentic inspiration, the vivacity of a sociable and conversational gift for the creative force of genius, and the immobility of obvious and established conventional judgments for an extraordinary soundness and incisiveness of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... incident. The dullest of clowns tells, or tries to tell, himself a story, as the feeblest of children uses invention in his play; and even as the imaginative grown person, joining in the game, at once enriches it with many delightful circumstances, the great creative writer shows us the realisation and the apotheosis of the day-dreams of common men. His stories may be nourished with the realities of life, but their true mark is to satisfy the nameless longings of the reader, and to obey the ideal laws ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Lectures. I expected only good sense and instruction, where the object was merely to convey information: I was astonished to hear a critic as eloquent as an orator, and who, far from falling upon defects, which are the eternal food of mean and little jealousy, sought only the means of reviving a creative genius." ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... he was a god, and have that passage about the divinity of joining ocean to ocean construed to him as she could construe it, would not the great man become plastic under her hands? And if, while this was a-doing, Felix would run away with Marie, could not forgiveness be made easy? And her creative mind ranged still farther. Mr Broune might help, and even Mr Booker. To such a one as Melmotte, a man doing great things through the force of the confidence placed in him by the world at large, the ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... We must remember, that precisely this particular range of time was that in which the Greek systems of philosophy, having thoroughly completed their evolution, had suffered something of a collapse; and, having exhausted their creative energies, began to gratify the cravings for novelty by re modellings of old forms. It is remarkable, indeed, that this very city of Alexandria founded and matured this new principle of remodelling applied to poetry not less than to philosophy ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... labored at the desk before him! He had put away the old wild hopes of the masterpiece and executed in a fury of inspiration, wrought out in one white heat of creative joy; it was enough if by dint of long perseverance and singleness of desire he could at last, in pain and agony and despair, after failure and disappointment and effort constantly renewed, fashion something of which he need not be ashamed. ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... the life of John Wesley, and not exclaim, if varied and exhausting labor, if perpetual excitement and constant drafts upon the brain, would ever wear a man out, he would have worn out? It was his creative energy that called into existence a denomination, his ardent piety that inspired it, his clear mind that legislated for it, his heroic industry that did no mean part of the incessant daily toil needful for its establishment. Yet this man of many labors, who through ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... of the well-tilled field, This earth is only thine; for after thee, When all is sown and gathered and put by, Comes the grave poet with creative eye, And from these silent acres and clean plots, Bids with his wand the fancied after-yield, A second tilth and second harvest, be, The crop of images ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... Dr. Robinson made available the draft of a short paper he had prepared on the tooth found in Weld County, Colorado; his work was facilitated by a grant from the University of Colorado Council on Research and Creative Work. I also gratefully acknowledge receipt of critical data and valuable comments from Drs. Edwin C. Galbreath, Glenn L. Jepsen, and Malcolm C. McKenna who is currently revising the Paleocene apatemyids and studying ...
— Records of the Fossil Mammal Sinclairella, Family Apatemyidae, From the Chadronian and Orellan • William A. Clemens
... could not pay, in order that the synagogues might be rebuilt. Such was the first open breach between the king and the Romans, who now began to remind themselves that there was an Augustus at Constantinople. This memory, which had slumbered while pope and emperor were in conflict—such is the creative and formative power of religion—was stirred and strengthened by the reconciliation between the emperor Justin and the Holy See. It is curious that the man who was to lead the Catholic party and to suffer in the national cause had translated thirty books of Aristotle ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... the reformation of the Roman law, his creative genius, enlightened by reflection and study, would have given to the world a pure and original system of jurisprudence. Whatever flattery might suggest, the emperor of the East was afraid to establish his private ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... offspring from mere blind brute passion, and to transfer it to the reason and to the intelligence; to impress on parents the sacredness of the parental office, the tremendous responsibility of the exercise of the creative function. And since, further, one of the most pressing problems for solution in the older countries is that of poverty, the horrible slums and dens into which are crowded and in which are festering families of eight ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... little to do with the preparation of the picture until the scenes were made. She had never made continuity, as it is called, for that is more or less of a mechanical process and is sure to interfere with the creative ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... development of Spanish countries the mental activity of the people is principally manifested in an exuberant imagination which finds expression in superlative and poetical language. If there were any corresponding creative genius and executive ability in material affairs such a fertile and well-watered land as Puerto Rico would be the home of one of the richest communities on the globe. By her situation she is adapted to become the centre of a flourishing commerce whose goods might ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... of creative work lies in self-discovery: you are mining nuggets of power out of your own cosmos, and the find comes as a great and glad surprise. The kindergarten baby who discovers he can cut out a pretty shape from colored paper, and straightway wants to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... to have strayed into an atmosphere, born of that warning admonition, and of their talk, of the reckless, creative spring; and because, in spite of his youth, he was very much a man, and she was a dangerously attractive woman, his pulses leapt fitfully and eagerly with the swift ache that has existed ever since God made ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... books. Some regard him as the greatest novelist of his age and country and as one of the greatest of any country and any age. These hold him to be not less sound a moralist than excellent as a writer, not less magnificently creative than usefully and delightfully cynical, not less powerful and complete a painter of manners than infallible as a social philosopher and incomparable as a lecturer on the human heart. They accept Amelia Sedley for a very woman; they ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... feeling, and every human virtue; so children, at their first awakening in the fond covenant of love between parents, both of whom are tenderly concerned for the same object, find an image of complete humanity leagued in free love. The spirit of love which prevails between them acts with creative power upon the young mind, and awakens every germ of goodness within it. This invisible and incalculable influence of parental life acts more upon the child than all the efforts of education, whether by means ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... to paint for hire or model on order is the same. Wagner, Millet, Rembrandt, William Morris and Ruskin are examples of men who were incapable of anything but their highest and best creative work, and refused to truckle to the mercenary horde. Such men may be without conscience in a business way. And a person may be absolutely moral in all his acts of life, except in writing and talking, and here he may ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... vapour, Tinged with hell and cold damnation; Yet we bless thee as we may, For love a spark remains within us, And we wait for our redemption, Working out our fearful destiny, Till those we injured grant release, And the Mighty All Creative Pass ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... indeed, for the covenant is one of the great creative documents of human history. The peace treaty will fade into merciful oblivion and its provisions will be gradually obliterated by the great human tides sweeping over the world. But the covenant will stand as sure as fate. Forty-two nations gathered round it at the first meeting of ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... is a mechanico-material struggle, two mechanical forces pulling asunder from the central object, the bone. All it can result in is the pulling asunder of the fabric of civilisation, and even of life, without any creative issue. It is no more than a frog under a cart-wheel. The mechanical forces, rolling on, roll over the body ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... philosophic purposes by the synthetic principles of comparative anatomy. But even the most important universal laws of organisation—of which the old system of comparative anatomy was one—had to take refuge in mystical ideas of a plan of structure and of creative final causes (causae finales); they were incapable of arriving at a true and clear perception of effective mechanical causes (causae efficientes). This last, most difficult, and grandest problem, Charles Darwin was ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... brush—Who does not know moods such as this? Who has not experience of those dark days when the ungrateful canvas refuses to come right, and the artist sits down before it and calls himself a fraud? We may even say that these fits of incapacity and blank despondency are part of the cost of all creative work. They may be intensified by terror for the family exchequer. The day passes in strenuous but futile effort, and the man asks himself, "What will happen to me and mine if this kind of thing continues?" Stevenson, ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the opposite of that mind which is the eternal God. But God can have no real opposite. Any so-called opposite to Him must be a supposition—or, as Jesus defined it, the lie about Him. This lie seems to counterfeit the eternal mind that is God. It seems to pose as a creative principle, and to simulate the powers and attributes of God himself. It assumes to create its universe of matter, the direct opposite of the spiritual universe. And, likewise, it assumes to create its man, its own idea of itself, and hence the direct opposite of the real man, the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... almost white but a moment before, is converted into crimson by the sudden display of the red lining of their wings. A peculiarity in the beak of this bird has scarcely attracted the attention it merits, as a striking illustration of creative wisdom in adapting the organs of animals ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... its unfinished condition, the lines on the "spell," its high place as a work of creative art, its fragmentary beauties, the description of Christabel's chamber, its main idea, outline of the unfinished parts, Lamb and Hartley Coleridge on, its perfection from the metrical point of view, publication of the second part, ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... quarters that Tennyson stands higher through having written it. You see, what he appeared to want, according to the view of many, was an earnest personality and direct purpose. In this last book, though of course there is not room in it for that exercise of creative faculty which elsewhere established his fame, he appeals heart to heart, directly as from his own to the universal heart, and we all feel him nearer to us—I do—and so do others. Have you read a poem called 'the Roman' which was praised highly in the 'Athenaeum,' ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... The Creator was so much beyond the highest object of his creative skill, even though that is or might be one so gloriously endowed as Beethoven; it seemed strange that a thinking, intellectual being would grasp the less when he might lay hold on the greater. I glanced ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... development of mankind,—will use religion for his disciplining and educating work, just as he will use the contemporary political and economic conditions. The selecting and disciplining influence—destructive, as well as creative and fashioning—which can be exercised by means of religion is manifold and varied, according to the sort of people placed under its spell and protection. For those who are strong and independent, ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... as so many another creative genius, spent his love chiefly upon the beings that he begot within his own heart. Every genius is more or less a Pygmalion, and his own imagination is the Aphrodite that gives life to the Galateas that he carves. I have shown by this time that certain musicians ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... class of subjects and occupies a very prominent place in the public eye. As a basis for belief of any kind, his vision is of no more value than that of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who would probably in that region discern the promise and potency of every form of life in a supreme and creative intelligence. Scientific men are continually pushing back the limits of our knowledge of the material universe. They have during the last eighty years made an enormous addition to the sum of that knowledge, but they have not, since Democritus, taken away one hair's-breadth ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... have sinned." Rom. 5:12. This is the origin of sin in this world and the awful consequence. God's design was that his creation be sinless and pure, but by disobedience sin has marred the scene of God's creative purity. The following texts will acquaint the reader with the characteristics ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... What is said to you of a night will not have the same effect on your mind as if it had been uttered in the morning when your attention had been lately refreshed by the pause of sleep. We are told on the first page of the Bible that even the Creative Energy of God rested on the "seventh day." You may be sure, then, that the frail finite mind of your audience will likewise demand rest. Observe nature, study her laws, and obey them in ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... rarely succeeded as a serious poet; when he did so it was only in short flights. He found the proper field for his genius in Don Juan. His province was satire, and the Vision of Judgment is at the top of English achievement in this direction, A creative imagination he did not possess, any more than a profound intellect; and it was the perception of this fact which prompted his impertinent sneers at Shakespeare. But he had imagination enough to give wings to his satire, and an inexhaustible wit which played like lightning around the objects of ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... create conditions of economic and social progress in the world. This work had to be carried forward alongside the first, not only in order to meet the non-military aspects of the communist drive for power, but also because this creative effort toward human progress is essential to bring about the kind of world we as free men want to ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Harry S. Truman • Harry S. Truman
... conception of power so calm and simple that it needs only to be presented in the fewest and the plainest words, and would be confused or weakened by any suggestion of accessories. Let us amplify the expression in the redundant style of miscalled eloquent writers: "God, in the magnificent fulness of creative energy, exclaimed: Let there be light! and lo! the agitating fiat immediately went forth, and thus in one indivisible moment the whole universe was illumlned." We have here a sentence which I am certain many a writer would, in secret, prefer to the masterly plainness of Genesis. ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... brilliant summer the work was very much more pleasant. Then, under the beautiful trees, or where the great rocks rose up around us and cast their welcome shadows, we could gather the people and talk of the loving Heavenly Father; not only of His Creative power, but of His redeeming love in the gift of ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... finishing one already begun. The aphoristic nature of such tasks as those set you by this Goethe celebration must involuntarily be transferred to the artistic production, which therefore cannot attain to perfect warmth. Creative power in music appears to me like a bell, which the larger it is is the less able to give forth its full tone, unless an adequate power has set it in motion. This power is internal, and where it does not exist internally it does not exist at all. The purely internal, however, cannot operate ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... knew him, knew him as the most astonishing human expression of the Creative Spirit we had ever seen. His manifold talents, his protean interests, his tireless energy, his thunderbolts which he did not let loose, as well as those he did, his masterful will sheathed in self-control like a sword in ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... the term mean to say that nature is the first creative power; but if the soul turn out to be the primeval element, and not fire or air, then in the truest sense and beyond other things the soul may be said to exist by nature; and this would be true if you proved that the soul is older than the body, but ...
— Laws • Plato
... a similarity of feature, especially in profile, between peers and peeresses, poets and poetesses, statesmen and the grandes dames of society. Caricatured, it lived in the drawings of Leech and Du Maurier. Taken seriously, it inspired creative artists both of pen and brush when dealing with the heroic. Superficial writers confused it with the Hebraic nose, and in prints of criminal and depraved characters one frequently found it distorted ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... general, it reveals to the student what noble ideals the soul of man has cherished, and striven to realize, and discloses the varied achievements of man's intellectual powers. If we of to-day are the witnesses and the offspring of an eternal, creative principle, then, in turn, the present is but the beginning of a future, that is, the translation of knowledge into life. Spiritual ideals consciously held by any portion of mankind lend freedom to thought, grace to feeling, and by ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... leave room for doubt. The brilliant, venturesome imagination, defying forecast with ever-fresh surprise; the sense of humour in its finest and most naive form; the power to touch with lightest hand the undercurrent of pathos in the midst of fun; the audacity of creative fancy, and the delicacy of insight—these are rare gifts; and surely they were his. Yes, but it was his simplicity of mind and heart that raised them all, not only in his work but in his life, in all his ways, in the man as ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... carried by a true seer back of all traditions, behind all conventions, beyond all beliefs about life to life itself as it lies in its own freshness and fulness. We are led to look upon human life newly made, still warm with the touch of the creative hand, and yet containing in it that very hour all that the Lord eventually drew out of it. If the first man had understood himself he would have been essentially a Christian. And therefore I propose to evolve from the original human situation, as described in the ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... classical and other reading was probably continued. But we hear nothing in the programme of mathematics, or logic—of any, in short, of those subjects which train, even coerce, the thinking powers, and which were doubly requisite for a nature in which the creative imagination was predominant over all the other mental faculties, great as these other faculties were. And, even as poet, he suffered from this omission: since the involutions and overlappings of thought and phrase, which occur in his earlier and again in his ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... getting people to look through a telescope at a comet that might destroy the world. He thought his detective brain as good as the criminal's, which was true. But he fully realised the disadvantage. "The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic," he said with a sour smile, and lifted his coffee cup to his lips slowly, and put it down very quickly. He had ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... season of a professional practice, which already imposes the burden of fifteen hours per day of incessant labor, which may account for any inaccuracies, typographical or otherwise, which may appear. My lectures on Sexual and Creative Science, delivered to the sexes separately, are now in course of preparation, and will be given to the public in similar form as ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... head firmly. "Not at all. He did new, creative work in every one of the fields he touched. He was considered something of a mystic, but not a ...
— Suite Mentale • Gordon Randall Garrett
... child than the story. Not only does he like to hear stories; he likes to tell them. And where the short-story course is rightly used, he likes to write them. He finds that the pleasure of exercising creative power more than offsets the drudgery inevitable in composition. A plan that has been satisfactorily carried out in the classroom is here ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... desire. She was often in the habit of forgetting engagements and at times there was a faraway expression in her eyes, which may have come from having neglected to wear her glasses, but which her friends believed due to the thrall of some wonderful creative idea which might be presented to the world some day in the form of a great picture. And Eleanor, being but human and seventeen, had done her best to foster this belief. She would not dress in modern fashions like the other girls; her parents had little ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook
... passion of the great hungry world seemed concentrated in his sole being. Images of maddening beauty glowed upon him out of the darkness, glowed and gleamed by he knew not what creative mandate; faces, forms, such as may visit the delirium of a supreme artist. Of him they knew not; they were worlds away, though his own brain bodied them forth. He smothered cries of agony; he flung himself upon his face, and lay ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... rejoicing rush. The mind of youth, when impelled by this original strength and enthusiasm of Nature, is keen, eager, inquisitive, intense, audacious, rapidly assimilating facts into faculties and knowledge into power, and above all teeming with that joyous fulness of creative life which radiates thoughts as inspirations, and magnetizes as well as informs. Now the limit of this youth of mind observation decides to be commonly between thirty-five and forty; but still it is not so properly marked by years as by the arrest of this glad mental growth and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... dramatic element is confined to the themes, the purpose of the whole being merely to work out all their significant variations,—to embroider and repeat them in new keys and rhythms and tempos, and to contrast them with other themes. Repetition is the great creative principle of musical development, the composer seeking to say over again in ever new forms what he has said before. And this, again because of the abstractness of music, is a significant process; to repeat the concrete is tiresome and trivial, but an abstract form is always ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... manifestation of Divine favour, in as much as they dispose the heart to kind and gentle inclinations. For, I think them ordained by God for some great and holy purpose. Do we not know that the professors of the fine arts are commonly men greatly distinguished by special gifts of a creative and discerning spirit? If there be any thing in the usual course of human affairs which exhibits the immediate interposition of the Deity, it is in the progress of the fine arts, in which it would appear he often raises up those ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... and I have or will, that it is one thing to still our habitual thoughts and motions, but quite another to cause the spiritual self to arise. By our own efforts we can subdue the body-mind to some extent. Few of us, by our efforts alone, can activate our spiritual natures in a vital and creative way. We need God's help. We need the help of one another. But God's help may not come at once. Our help to each other, even though we are gathered in a meeting for worship or actively serving our fellow men ...
— An Interpretation of Friends Worship • N. Jean Toomer
... the world the fact that you have lived in it is to scratch matches on walls and woodwork. A banged door leaves no record except in the ear processes of the persons sitting near the door, whereas match scratches are creative work. ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... confessions which an author can make early. The pagan Aztecs only confessed once in a lifetime—in old age, when they had fewer temptations to fall to their old loves: then they made a clean breast of it once for all. So it might be with an author. While he is in his creative vigour, we want to hear about his fancied persons, about Pendennis, Beatrix, Becky, not about himself, and how he invented them. But when he has passed his best, then it is he who becomes of interest; it is about himself that we wish him ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... however, in this strange mode of expression is, that even such incongruous language faithfully reflects the mind of the man whose nature was of prophetic depth and heroic force; and who that knows anything of the creative genius of a Beethoven can ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... the Vedanta) both to explain away the existence of matter and to identify the soul with the Lord more closely than its original formulae allow. Matter is described as Maya and is potentially contained in the Lord who manifests it in the creative process which begins each kalpa. The Lord is also said to be one with our souls and yet other. The soul is by nature ignorant, in bondage to the illusion of Maya and of Karma, but by the grace of the Lord ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... wrapt in the very paradise of some creative vision; still he filled the glass, but this time he only sipped it, as if he were afraid to disturb the clustering images ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... addressed to his heart, or as we should say, will, so that Khepera willed this standing-place to appear, and it did so forthwith. The first version only mentions a heart, but the second also speaks of a heart-soul as assisting Khepera in his first creative acts; and we may assume that he thought out in his heart what manner of thing be wished to create, and then by uttering its name caused his thought to take concrete form. This process of thinking out the existence of things is expressed in Egyptian by words which mean "laying ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge
... however, the remote distance was hazy and indistinct, and at any other season I should have been diverted with the various mistakes I made. From occasional combinations of color, modified by light and shade, and of course powerfully assisted by the creative state of the eye under this nervous apprehensiveness, I continued to shape into images of Agnes forms without end, that upon nearer approach presented the most grotesque contrasts to her impressive appearance. But I had ceased even to comprehend ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... image-groups—visual, auditory, tactile, motor—are known to everyone, and form a collection of inquiries solidly based on subjective and objective observation, on pathological facts and laboratory experiments. The study of the creative or constructive imagination, on the other hand, has been almost entirely neglected. It would be easy to show that the best, most complete, and most recent treatises on psychology devote to it scarcely a page or two; often, indeed, do not even mention it. A few articles, ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... the future development of their district, when we would build the roads and bridges which would allow them to export the wood from Urianhai, iron and gold from the Sayan Mountains, cattle and furs from Mongolia. What a triumph of creative work for the Soviet Government! Our ode occupied about an hour and afterwards the members of the "Cheka," forgetting about our documents, personally changed our horses, placed our luggage on the wagon and wished ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... say that in like manner the baby should be left at liberty spiritually, because creative Nature can also fashion its spirit better than we can, we do not mean that it should be neglected ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... thing day in and day out, but to other minds, perhaps I might say to the majority of minds, repetitive operations hold no terrors. In fact, to some types of mind thought is absolutely appalling. To them the ideal job is one where the creative instinct need not be expressed. The jobs where it is necessary to put in mind as well as muscle have very few takers—we always need men who like a job because it is difficult. The average worker, I am sorry to say, wants a job in which he does not have to put forth ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... which now, beneath his fostering care, began to grow into big, flapping boog-a-boos. And when he returned that night, he was a very mean Charles-Norton. He spoke hardly a word at dinner, pretended he did not like the vanilla custard over which Dolly had toiled all day, her soul aglow with creative delight, sipped but half of his demi-tasse (as though the coffee were bitter, which it wasn't), and went off to bed early with a good-night so frigid that Dolly's little nose ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... He will be unable to visualize the life of the period. In other words, the histories lack realism; they are unreal, and, therefore, deceptive. The new spirit, in the development of which the materialist conception of Marx and Engels has been an important creative influence, is concerned less with the chronicle of notable events and dates than with their underlying causes and the manner of life of the people. Had it no other bearing, the Marx-Engels theory, considered solely as a contribution to ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... middle of the seventeenth century.... But it is not merely an authentic narrative. It is for the unconscious light which it sheds upon the life, manners, politics and literature of the country that it is valuable. Above all, it possesses the crowning quality displayed usually in creative poetry alone, of presenting a vivid mind picture of the character of the men with whom it deals. It has been called the 'Epic of the Sudan.' It lacks the charm of form, but in all else the description is well merited. Its pages are a treasure house of information for the careful ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... of the like of "Ecce Homo," being to enlighten the current interest for whose delight moreover art, from a social point of view, is justified in its mission, having a yet higher motive, the kindling of rapture in the heart of the creative artist. ...
— Original Letters and Biographic Epitomes • J. Atwood.Slater
... the rain would have some creative and wonderful effect on her body. Not for years had she felt so full of youth and courage. She wanted to leap and run, to cry out, to find some other lonely human and embrace him. On the brick sidewalk before the house a man stumbled homeward. Alice ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... washed the deck. They chatted and laughed together, read, played bridge when the men were so inclined, and now and then, when their attention was drawn to it, looked at the sea. They were always exquisitely and carefully dressed, and I looked at them as I would at any other masterpieces of creative art, with nothing ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... love thus break forth at once from their encountering hearts, his soul leaped for joy of the new-created love—new, but not the less surely eternal; for God is Love, and Love is that which is, and was, and shall be for evermore—boundless, unconditioned, self-existent, creative! "Truly," he said in himself, "God is Love, and God is all and in all! He is no abstraction; he is the one eternal Individual God! In him Love evermore breaks forth anew into fresh personality—in every new consciousness, in every new child of the one creating Father. In every ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... east ends were, in most cases, more successful than the west fronts. In these the English displayed a singular indifference or lack of creative power. They produced nothing to rival the majestic faades of Notre Dame, Amiens, or Reims, and their portals are almost ridiculously small. The front of York Cathedral is the most notable in the list for its size and elaborate decoration. ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... In 1819 he codified all previous practices into a general school law for the kingdom. While the King never really approved and issued it, it nevertheless became a basis for future work and is the law so enthusiastically described by Cousin, in 1830 (R. 280). Under his administration the earlier creative enthusiasm and the energy for the execution of great ideas disappeared, and the earlier "stimulating and encouraging attitude on the part of the authorities was now replaced by the timid policy of the drag and the brake." The earlier preparatory work in the development ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... see if the intelligence quotients of the subjects affected the time of contact which Charlie was able to maintain. Naturally, we picked the men here with the highest IQ's, the two men we have who are in the top echelon of the creative genius class." He cleared his throat. "I did not include myself, of course, since I wished to remain an impartial observer, as ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... very well brought up," rebuked Joel, who like most people of his type was quite unable to distinguish between the gambols of the creative imagination and deliberate falsifying. "Don't you know where little girls go when ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... in the presence of an artist and his work. Louis Trudel had rule and measure, shears and a needle. Our friend here has eye and head, sense of form and creative gift. Ah, Cure, Cure, if I were twenty-five, with the assistance of Monsieur, I would show the bucks in Fabrique Street how to dress. What style is this called, Monsieur?" he suddenly asked, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... I am wrapt in utter gloom; How far is night advanced, and when will day Retinge the dusk and livid air with bloom, And fill this void with warm, creative ray? Would I could sleep again till, clear and red, Morning shall ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... Nameless And all-creative spirit of the Law, Uncomprehended, comprehensive, blameless, Invincible, resistless, with no flaw; So full of love it must create for ever, Destroying that it may create again, Persistent and perfecting in endeavour, ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... their food, who are fussy about meaningless employments, and never give way to natural impulses, must surely assume this veil of decorum with intent to deceive. Charles Dickens was hard driven in his childhood, and the impressions that were then burnt into him governed all his seeing. The creative spirit in him transformed his sufferings into delight; but he never outgrew them; and, when he died, the eyes of a child were closed upon a scene touched, it is true, here and there with rapturous pleasure, rich in oddity, and trembling with pathos, ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... predicted criminals, criminal and moral codes of unbelievable complexity, and a great multitude of harmful and illogical taboos, local customs, and regional superstitions. It was a superb achievement of creative imagination and scientific deduction—but not even its creator thought it was more than an exercise in fantasy and perhaps not in the best of taste. The basic assumption was simply too absurd for ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... to imagine that you are friendly, accepting, and understand my ideas readily. Then I relax, enjoy writing to you and proceed with an open heart. Most important, when the creative process has been fun, the writing still sparkles when I polish it up the next ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... my visualizations actually did help. Ever since, I've had the fasters I supervised use creative imagery or write affirmations to help their bodies heal. There are lots of books on this subject. I've found that the techniques work far better on a faster than when a ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... calling for wide and exact scholarship, large reserves of extra-professional learning, does not primarily belong to a discussion within the department of practical theology. Besides which there is a task, closely allied to it, but creative rather than critical, prophetic rather than philosophic, which does fall within the precise area of this field. I mean the endeavor to describe the mind and heart of our generation, appraise the significant thought-currents ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... the money earned by Eleanor; but two pounds per week was insufficient for their needs, and, now that the bank balance was exhausted and they were dependent upon actual earnings, John had less time for creative work. Free lance journalism seemed likely to provide an adequate income for them, but he soon discovered that if he were to make a reasonable livelihood from it, he must give up the greater part of his time and thought to it. He could not depend upon certain or immediate acceptance of any article ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... provinces were to be ascribed, not so much to the severity of the royal ordinances, as to the unworthiness of those who were charged with their execution. Margaret possessed natural capacity and intellect; and an acquired political tact enabled her to meet any ordinary case; but she wanted that creative genius which, for new and extraordinary emergencies, invents new maxims, or wisely oversteps old ones. In a country where honesty was the best policy, she adopted the unfortunate plan of practising ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... who "arrive" never know the joy of possessing. Meyerbeer's father was a rich Jewish banker, Jacob Beer, of Berlin. It is pleasant to think of one man, capable of large achievements, having an easy time of it, finding himself free all his life to follow his best creative instincts. It is not ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... it is otherwise. Pure poetry is not the decoration of a preconceived and clearly defined matter: it springs from the creative impulse of a vague imaginative mass pressing for development and definition. If the poet already knew exactly what he meant to say, why should he write the poem? The poem would in fact already be written. For only its completion can ...
— Poetry for Poetry's Sake - An Inaugural Lecture Delivered on June 5, 1901 • A. C. Bradley
... creative element, and stream of tendencies in the universe, whereby all things struggle toward perfection, deign to be the recipient of that gratitude which fills me, and cannot be silent; and since gratitude is right in all, and most of all in me at this moment, ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... D'Arthur of Malory is again a collection of traditional stories, as is the Gesta Romanorum, and not the creative work of a single intellect. As might be expected, it straggles, and overlays its climax with a too-lavish abundance of incidents; it lacks the harmony of values which results from the introduction ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... of excellent material Mac and his kind are spoiling. Tom Murray is a fine lad, full of energy and initiative, but he has to sit passive at a desk doing work that does not interest him. His creative faculties have no outlet at all during the day, and naturally when free from authority at nights he expresses his creative interest anti-socially. He nearly wrecked the five-twenty the other night; he tied a huge iron bolt to the rails. Mac called ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... capable of producing individuality of much profounder nature than any of its fighting champions. Or rather, we should simply say that the production of epic poetry depends on the occurrence (always an accidental occurrence) of creative genius. It is quite likely that what Homer had to work on was nothing superior to the Arthurian legends. But Homer occurred; and the tales of Troy and Odysseus became ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie
... Isabel II. He had become interested in the work of Gustavo, and, knowing the dire financial straits in which the young poet labored, he thought to diminish these anxieties and thus give him more time to devote to creative work by making him censor of novels. A new period of calm and comparative comfort began, and for the first time in his life Becquer had the leisure to carry out a long-cherished project, at once his own desire and the desire of his friends: that of gathering together in one volume all his ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... cannot be reasonably set aside.... Making allowances for the exaggerations of later times, we should leave history and tradition altogether unexplained if we disallowed the claim of Solomon to have exercised a creative influence upon the wisdom in Israel." [Footnote: Art. ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... flags or standards. The victory was so much the more glorious in that it was gained over an army superior in numbers and almost equal in quality. It was owing to the king's valor, decision, vigilance, quick eye, comprehension of tactics, and that creative instinct which he brought into application in politics as well as in war, and which was destined to render him so happily inspired in the beautiful defensive actions of Arques, at the affair of Ivry, and on so many other occasions." [Histoire des Princes de Conde, &c., ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Super-nature, capable of producing it. In their anxiety to get rid of a natural difficulty, they invent a supernatural one, and accuse Atheists of 'wilful blindness,' and 'obstinate deafness,' for not choosing so unphilosophic a mode of explaining universal mystery. Call upon them to define their 'all-creative Deity,' and they know not what to answer. Ask them who, what, or where He is, and at once you have them on the hip; at once you spy their utter ignorance, and reduce them to a condition very similar to that ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... design. Surrounded by every form of animate and inanimate existence, the sun of science has yet penetrated but through the outer fold of nature's majestic robe; but if the philosopher were required to separate, from amongst those countless evidences of creative power, one being, the masterpiece of its skill; and from that being to select one gift, the choicest of all the attributes of life; turning within his own breast, and conscious of those powers which have subjugated ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... of Creation is a bisexual being, and yet you feel the spirit and not the flesh. Its idealism is of the highest order, being largely produced by the hood drawn far over the face, throwing such deep shadow that personality is lost sight of and only creative force is left. High on a mighty boulder it sits with arms raised. The word has just been spoken and man and woman have come forth - their feet on the serpent, the symbol of wisdom and eternity. At the rear of the group their hands meet as if in mutual dependence, while above appear ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James
... really agreed that a recumbent or semi-recumbent position is the best for creative thought, and another friend of mine, also a maker of verses, has patented the very ingenious device of a pair of stirrups just under the mantelshelf, so that, when he sits back in his armchair, he can manage his Pegasus without having his feet continually slipping ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 30th, 1920 • Various
... at self-expression for its own sake. It is a necessity of his nature, an outpouring of pent-up feeling, as much as is the song of the lark. Of course we are speaking of the true creative artist, and not of the laborious copyist. If he subordinates his work as a means to some further end; if his aim is morality or immorality, truth or error, pleasure or pain; if it is anything else than the embodiment or utterance of his own soul, so far he is ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... construct? To say that it does is to confound the meaning of words of well-known signification. The word "regulate" has several shades of meaning, according to its application to different subjects, but never does it approach the signification of creative power. The regulating power necessarily presupposes the existence of something to be regulated. As applied to commerce, it signifies, according to the lexicographers, "to subject to rules or restrictions, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... them not. I have within myself All that my heart desires; the ideal beauty Which the creative faculty of mind Fashions and follows in a thousand shapes More lovely than the real. My own thoughts Are my companions; my designs and labors And aspirations ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... material veil grown under the touch of modern science that everywhere the spiritual breaks through. Often in that nameless discouragement before unfinished tasks, unfulfilled aims, and broken efforts, I have thought of how the creative Word has fashioned the opal, made it of the same stuff as desert sands, mere silica—not a crystallized stone like a diamond, but rather a stone with a broken heart, traversed by hundreds of small fissures ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... the energy, how unfailing the life, of that Catholic Church which they so bitterly hate; how little wisdom they display in matching their strength and their temporary triumphs over her against that incomparable union of living forces which the creative power of Christ has bound around this central rock. More than ever is it needful in our age, that all men should see and understand that the only strong and lasting tie between men's souls depends on the reign over all of the ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... of the little Catholic priest, which was commonly complacent and even comic, had suddenly become knotted with a curious frown. It was not the blank curiosity of his first innocence. It was rather that creative curiosity which comes when a man has the beginnings of an idea. "Say it again, please," he said in a simple, bothered manner; "do you mean that Todhunter can tie himself up all alone and untie himself ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... name but genius. It is then, and then only, that an audience feels that it is in the presence of a reality rather than a fiction. To an audience an ounce of genius has more weight than a ton of talent; for though it respects the latter, it reverences the former. But the creative power, divine as it may be, should in common gratitude pay due regard to the reflective; for Art is the handmaid of Genius, and only asks the modest wages of respectful consideration in payment for her valuable services. A splendid torrent of genius ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... shall desiderate something characteristic in nature, of the mountain or the man. But the poet who hugs to his bosom everything he loves or admires—themselves, or the thoughts that are their shadows—who is himself still the centre of the enchanted circle—who, in the delusion of a strong creative genius, absolutely believes that were he to die, all that he now sees and hears delighted would die with ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... winter we find him in Copenhagen, laboring with an intensity of creative ardor which he had never known before. His striking appearance, the pithy terseness of his speech, and a certain naive self-assertion and impatience of social restraints made him a notable figure in ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... and of creative spiritual activity, is a personal matter. From this deepening and enriching of the inner life of the individual proceeds creative spiritual activity, which attempts spiritual tasks as an end in themselves, and which gradually builds up a kingdom of truth ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones
... literary enterprise was a translation of /Goetz von Berlichingen/; and, if genius could be communicated like instruction, we might call this work of Goethe's the prime cause of /Marmion/ and the /Lady of the Lake/, with all that has followed from the same creative hand. Truly, a grain of seed that has lighted on the right soil! For if not firmer and fairer, it has grown to be taller and broader than any other tree; and all the nations of the earth are still yearly gathering ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... have said to me, "I wish I could write poems. I often try, but——" They mean, I gather, that the impulse, the creative itch, is in them, but they don't know how to satisfy it. My own position is that I know how to write poetry, but I can't be bothered. I have not got the itch. The least I can do, however, is to try to help those ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, June 2, 1920 • Various
... nothing of that rich poetical vein of Luther's, finding its twofold course in music and in poetry: Huss was comparatively dry, and unenriched by those overflowings of a deep inner nature. He is, therefore, rather the exponent of an age than a brilliant mark,—rather a type than a great, restless, creative power. His life was almost too saintly to be interesting in the popular sense; and although he does emerge above his age, yet it is not as the advocate of an idea, as Luther was, nor of a great system, as Calvin was, nor as a man fearless of kings ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... and rarer still than this architectural gift is the creative power which lies in imagination. And by imagination I do not mean merely the play of fancy in Mercutio's famous speech, nor simply the conjuring up of pictures as in Clarence's dream, nor the invention of those perfect similitudes which meet us everywhere. In these, ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... as I hear, that he does not believe in the gods, but he believes in dreams; and perhaps he is right. My jests do not prevent me from thinking at times that in truth there is only one deity, eternal, creative, all-powerful, Venus Genetrix. She brings souls together; she unites bodies and things. Eros called the world out of chaos. Whether he did well is another question; but, since he did so, we should recognize his might, though we are free not to ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... creative activity, he recognized only one self-imposed limitation—beauty. Hence, though his span of life was short, his work is imperishable. He steadily progressed: but he was ever true, beautiful and pure, and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... keyholes. I may say from experience that he who has slept out of doors every day for a month, nay even for a week, is at the end of that time a new man. He has entered into new relationship with the world in which he lives, and has allowed the gentle creative hands of ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... while yet the world was young, Ere Abram fed his flocks or Homer sung; When blacksmith Tubal tamed creative fire, And Jabal dwelt in tents and Jubal struck the lyre; Flesh grown corrupt brought forth a monstrous birth And obscene giants trod the shrinking earth, Till God, impatient of their sinful brood, Gave rein to wrath and drown'd them in the Flood. Teeming again, repeopled Tellus ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... all in capital letters,—each the evident result of serious labor,—with figures representing combinations of the pot-hook according to bold and original conceptions. The spelling is also a remarkable effort of creative genius. The only difficulty under which the author labors in regard to the book is the confusion naturally resulting from the effort to get literature right side up when it has got upside down. The writing is a kind of pugilism— the strokes being made straight out from the shoulder. The account-book ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... like the sky in a dew-drop, a whole world was reflected, with ever changing pageantry, and that the abstracted expression in the boy's eyes that he thought could only mean that he was "hatching mischief," really indicated that the creative faculty in budding genius was awake and ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... life and every breath is freedom; where the desire to live is dominant and the future holds no terrors, and each new day and sun and moon and procession of the stars are greeted with the joy that is born of living and hailed as emblems of the creative force that marks and animates the passing ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... heart hungry, and isolated herself. First she had endured, then she had fought; the dawn of a new life was breaking over her hill. She had found work she was eager to do. She could put the best of her brain, the skill of her fingers, the creative impulse of her heart, ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... living force. I hold out no hope that the problem is easy of solution; I only know it exists. You will first of all become as little children, and learn, as best you may, what makes the wheels go round. Learn, that you may teach, by your creative art. Above all, remember, when you rise to protest that I am forgetting Nature, that together with "the way of an eagle in the air, and the way of a serpent upon a rock," the Hebrew poet has joined "the way of a ship in the ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... and nurtured in a world where his feeling for the nude and his ideal of humanity could be appreciated, he passed most of his life in the midst of tragic disasters, and while yet in the fulness of his vigour, in the midst of his most creative years, he found himself alone, perhaps the greatest, but alas! also the last of the giants born so plentifully during the fifteenth century. He lived on in a world he could not but despise, in a world which really could no more employ ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... this group might well have been called "The Angel of Generation." The winged figure, neither male nor female, but angelic, is veiled, suggesting the creative impulse as a blind command from unknown sources. The arms are raised in a gesture of creative command. It has wings, said French, because. both art and the conception demanded these spiritual symbols. The man and woman against the rock whereon the angel sits are emblems of the highest types created. ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... notions, his likes and dislikes, do not obtrude themselves at all; that good and evil stand judged in his work by the logic of events, as they do in nature, and not by any special pleading on his part. He does non hold a brief for either side; he exemplifies the working of the creative energy. . . . The great artist works in and through and from moral ideas; his works are indirectly a criticism of life. He is moral without having a moral. The moment a moral obtrudes itself, that moment ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... lights he was thinking that he had been a fool not to learn dancing, no matter how the Reverend Otto Carmichael denounced it as a survival from the barbaric Congo. He was also thinking that the Montague girl ought to be kept away from people who were trying to do really creative things, and he was bitterly regretting that he had no silver cigarette case. The gloom of his young face was honest gloom. He was aware that his companion leaned vivaciously toward him with gay chatter and gestures. Very slowly he inhaled ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... fabrics and bit her lorgnon in study, Kedzie looked over the big albums filled with photographs of the creations of the great creatrix. For Lady Powell-Carewe was a creative artist, taking her ideas where she found them in art or nature, and in revivals and in inventions. She took her color schemes from paintings, old and new, from jewels, landscapes. It was said that she went ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... by country people continued, indeed, but the creative artistic impulse was lost. True carols after the Reformation tend to be doggerel, and no doubt many of the traditional pieces printed in such collections as Bramley and Stainer's[33]{37} are debased survivals ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... shadow is my own. Well I know that all things move To the spheral rhythm of love,— That to Thee, O Lord of all! Nothing can of chance befall: Child and seraph, mote and star, Well Thou knowest what we are; Through Thy vast creative plan Looking, from the worm to man, There is pity in Thine eyes, But no hatred nor surprise. Not in blind caprice of will, Not in cunning sleight of skill, Not for show of power, was wrought Nature's marvel in Thy thought. Never careless ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... another way. We are governed by two influences, our own character, and example. For each man his own character is for his meditation apart, but of example we may sometimes speak together in the open with profit. Those of us who live always striving towards creative effort believe passionately that the thing towards which we aim makes for all that is most chivalrous and most intelligent in life, that it is indeed the one true honesty in the world. And yet we know how easily that effort is beset by ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... the most energetic and important fiction now being written in the United States goes unmistakably back to that creative uprising of discontent in the eighties of the last century which brought into articulate consciousness the larger share of the aspects of unrest which have since continued to challenge the ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... redescend to the rank of impressions before they can give rise to new impressions. When we utter new words, we generally transform the old ones, varying or enlarging their meaning; but this process is not associative. It is creative, although the creation has for material the impressions, not of the hypothetical primitive man, but of man who has lived long ages in society, and who has, so to say, stored so many things in his psychic organism, and among them ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... for themselves, but have heard about Him from others, and have put belief in Him into the back of their minds along with the various odds and ends that make up their total creed. To many others God is but an ideal, another name for goodness, or beauty, or truth; or He is law, or life, or the creative impulse back ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer
... make a detour, and call attention to that city where Toepffer was born, and where society had such an influence upon his creative mind. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... maturing of a generation that has produced the change. For each generation the works of art produced by its members have a distinct importance. Out of them, during their time, there sparks the creative impulse. For every generation is ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... employees came in late that morning. But nobody seemed very much perturbed, for Roger was an easy employer. Still, he sternly told himself, he had been letting things get altogether too slack. He had been neglecting his business again. The work had become so cut and dried, there was nothing creative left to do. It had not been so in years gone by. Those years had fairly bristled with ideas and hopes and schemes. But even those old memories were no longer here to hearten him. They had all been swept away when Bruce had made him move out of his office in a dark creaky ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole |
