Inspiration should not be contemplated but tasted

—unknown

Inspiration is needed in geometry, just as much as in poetry.

—Aleksandr  Pushkin

Inspiration kicks open the doors of the mind and says. "I'm here!"

—Edwin Rutsch

Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them. 

—Henry David Thoreau

I am amazed at this wonderful dynamo in the mind that can create a novel from a single image." He added: "In fact I am wondering now whether I should admit to you that I have no idea where this novel is going at all. I think if you were making a skeleton you’d want to make sure you had certain bones. I think I’ve got the main bones. 

—John Fowles,
newspaper interview

Confidence imparts a wonderful inspiration to its possessor.

—John Milton

Creative imagination . . . is the faculty through which 'hunches' and 'inspirations' are received.

—Napoleon Hill

I came back to performing with a different attitude about performing and myself. I wasn't expecting perfection any more, just hoping for an occasional inspiration.  

—Neil Diamond

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

To believe your own thought . . . - that is genius. . . . A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. . . . Great works of art . . . teach us to abide our spontaneous impression. . . . Else tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another. 

—R W Emerson

The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him.  

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Not being known doesn't stop the truth from being true.

—Richard Bach