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We have listened too long to the courtly Muses of Europe. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Happy is the man whom the Muses love: sweet speech flows from his mouth. -- Hesiod
The virtues, like the Muses, are always seen in groups. A good principle was never found solitary in any breast. -- Gautama Buddha
It's only very recently that women have succeeded in entering those professions which, as Muses, they typified for the Greeks. -- Mary Ritter Beard
I guess I'll just slip into the studio after the next time with the Muses, and then just keel over and die. -- Kristin Hersh
The number of guests at dinner should not be less than the number of the Graces nor exceed that of the Muses, i.e., it should begin with three and stop at nine. -- Marcus Terentius Varro
The Helicon of too many poets is not a hill crowned with sunshine and visited by the Muses and the Graces, but an old, mouldering house, full of gloom and haunted by ghosts. -- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Muses were dumb while Apollo lectured. -- Charles Lamb
Muses had a way of killing those whom they inspired. -- Katherine Neville
There is no wide road which leads to the Muses. -- Propertius
I will not stop singingthe Muses who set me dancing. -- Anne Carson
Some thoughtlessly proclaim the Muses nine: A tenth is Sappho, maid divine. -- Plato
Muses work all day long and then at night get together and dance. -- Edgar Degas
The Muses inspire art and pretend not to notice when Mammon buys it. -- Mason Cooley
A full Belly makes a dull Brain: The Muses starve in a Cook's Shop. -- Benjamin Franklin
Artists are visited by the Muses, or tormented by their own passions and demons. -- Wes Nisker
A cheerful life is what the Muses love. A soaring spirit is their prime delight. -- William Wordsworth
Let those who drink not, but austerely dine, dry up in law; the Muses smell of wine. -- Horace
Inspiration is the windfall from hard work and focus. Muses are too unreliable to keep on the payroll. -- Helen Hanson
Grey time-worn marbles Hold the pure Muses. In their cool gallery, By yellow Tiber, They still look fair. -- Matthew Arnold
I go forth to seek To seek and claim the lovely magic garden Where grasses softly sigh and Muses speak. -- Anna Akhmatova
The virtues, like the Muses, are always seen in groups. A good principle was never found solitary in any breast. -- Gautama Buddha
It's only very recently that women have succeeded in entering those professions which, as Muses, they typified for the Greeks -- Miriam
To me the Muses truly gave / An envied and a happy lot: / E'en when I lie within the grave, / I cannot, shall not, be forgot. -- Sappho
I sit down to the piano regularly at nine-o'clock in the morning and Mesdames les Muses have learned to be on time for that rendezvous. -- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Yet the companions of the Muses will keep their collective nose in my books And weary with historical data, they will turn to my dance tune. -- Ezra Pound
But the culture-vultures and the intellectual snobs, and the self-appointed guardians of the Muses, often frighten off the average person from the free development of this appetite. -- Sydney J. Harris
Inspiration is hogwash. My work comes directly out of my loves and hates. Muses don't whisper in my ear, and ideas don't flow over my body like a cool rain. -- James Victore
For deeds to die, however nobly done, And thoughts of men to as themselves decay, But wise words taught in numbers for to run, Recorded by the Muses, live for ay. -- Edmund Spenser
All literature up to today is sexist. The Muses never sang to the poets about liberated women. It's the same old chanson from the Bible and Homer through Joyce and Proust. -- Allan Bloom
For, whom the Muses smile upon, And touch with soft persuasion, His words like a storm-wind can bring Terror and beauty on their wing; In his every syllable Lurketh nature veritable. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have found power in the mysteries of thought, exaltation in the changing of the Muses ... I have been versed in the reasonings of men but Fate is stronger than anything I have known. -- Euripides
He who approaches the temple of the Muses without inspiration, in the belief that craftsmanship alone suffices, will remain a bungler and his presumptuous poetry will be obscured by the songs of the maniacs." -- Plato
Two goddesses now must Cyprus adore; The Muses are ten, and the Graces are four; Stella's wit is so charming, so sweet her fair face, She shines a new Venus, a Muse, and a Grace. -- Callimachus
Clio may be the most austere and chaste of the Muses, but she has been known to come down informally from Mount Helicon in a mood so raffish that there are those who claim to have seen her with her slip showing. -- Thornton Willis
If a man comes to the door of poetry untouched by the madness of the Muses, believing that technique alone will make him a good poet, he and his sane compositions never reach perfection, but are utterly eclipsed by the performances of the inspired madman. -- Socrates
The man who arrives at the doors of artistic creation with none of the madness of the Muses would be convinced that technical ability alone was enough to make an artist... what that man creates by means of reason will pale before the art of inspired beings. -- Plato
I have my permanent muses and my muses of the moment. -- Karl Lagerfeld
Art doesn't spring from the muses alone, but from hard work. -- Tom Rachman
The most astonishing joy is to receive from the muses the gift of a whole lyric. -- James Broughton
One expected growth, change; without it, the world was less, the well of inspiration dried up, the muses fled. -- Charles de Lint
I was raised by muses. Women who had men in awe of them and who wrote them movies and wrote them music. -- Lou Doillon
Who knows where inspiration comes from. Perhaps it arises from desperation. Perhaps it comes from the flukes of the universe, the kindness of the muses. -- Amy Tan
It is ever the invisible that is the object of our profoundest worship. With the lover it is not the seen but the unseen that he muses upon. -- Christian Nestell Bovee
Some people have human muses - mine is a city. I feel a startling ambivalence towards London, but for better or worse my work has come utterly to depend upon it. -- Will Self
Even at our birth, death does but stand aside a little. And every day he looks towards us and muses somewhat to himself whether that day or the next he will draw nigh. -- Robert Bolt
Writing novels is largely about endurance and patience. I take a lot of breaks, hit walls, and go do something else while I think things through. But I do it every day, and I try to treat it as a job, something that is not dictated by whimsy or muses. -- Adam Mansbach
People think of me as a stereotype: muse, privileged, decorative. Classically, the muses were the inspiration. They'd come and go - they wouldn't actually make things, get their hands dirty. I don't think I'm a muse, although I think I can help pull a trigger. I really like getting my hands dirty. -- Amanda Harlech
Unemployed writers have muses. Employed writers just sweat. -- Lucille Kallen
The muses are ghosts, and sometimes they come uninvited. -- Stephen King
The muses crown virtue when fortune refuses to do it. -- Elizabeth Montagu
True muses stay dreams forever unless artists connect them to exploratory work. -- Robert Genn
She [Kim Kardashian] was always my muse, now she's become other designers' muses. -- Kanye West
Christianity is merely a system for turning priestesses into handmaidens, queens into concubines, and goddesses into muses. -- Tom Robbins
With thought, with the ideal, is immortal hilarity, the rose of joy. Round it all the muses sing. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
There are a couple of poems I've written with masculine muses, very often the muse to me is a female. -- Shirley Geok-lin Lim
Landmarks to the muses that inspired the music. When I could tell it was sincere without trying to prove it -- Drake
I have always believed that opera is a planet where the muses work together, join hands and celebrate all the arts. -- Franco Zeffirelli
I shall live here in the rains,There in winter,Elsewhere in summer," muses the fool,Not aware of the nearness of death. -- Gautama Buddha
My paintings are reflections of my own inner mysteries... they all reflect my relationship to my steadiest of companions and muses - nature and animals... -- Katherine Dunn
Here will I live in the rainy season, here in the autumn and in the summer: thus muses the fool. He realizes not the danger (of death). -- Gautama Buddha
(...) The new nine muses, Commerce, Operatic Music, Amor, Publicity, Manufacture, Liberty of Specch, Plural Voting, Gastronomy, Private Hygiene, Seaside Concert Entertainments, Painless Obstetrics and Astronomy for the People. -- James Joyce
I do not know whether I would not like much better to have produced one perfectly formed child by intercourse with the muses than by intercourse with my wife. -- Michel de Montaigne
If you look at the greatest models, it was because they were muses to photographers. They collaborated with the artist and they created the kind of images that become iconic. -- Michael Flutie
An acquaintance with the muses, in the education of youth, contributes not a little to soften manners. It gives a delicate turn to the imagination and a polish to the mind. -- Samuel Richardson
Creativity requires introspection, self-examination, and a willingness to take risks. Because of this, artists are perhaps more susceptible to self-doubt and despair than those who do not court the creative muses. -- Eric Maisel
My muses were all the incredible, iconic women of glamour in Hollywood that I have worked with over 15 years. Anjelica Huston, Michelle Pfeiffer, Gwyneth Paltrow, Lena Dunham, Viola Davis, Rihanna, Demi Moore... -- Zac Posen
I am impressed by the way Annie Kevans captured the different types of beauties that have been my inspiration and my muses from my grandmother to artists like David Bowie and Boy George. -- Jean Paul Gaultier
Memory in Greek mythology is the mother of the muses, and it is so for me. Both personal and societal memory move me strongly, and that is one of the sources of my writing. -- Marge Piercy

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