“I'm so off on cinquains. I think they're quite lovely. They're so brief.”

Reflecting on her creation and fondness for the concise five-line poetic form · Letter to Esther Lowenthal, 1914

• Creation
• Form
• Poetry

“There is a small, material, mechanical part in every work of man, which true, original inspiration scorns in its ardent moments of rapture.”

Original: Hay una parte mecánica, pequeña y material en todas las obras del hombre, que la primitiva, la verdadera inspiración desdeña en sus ardientes momentos de arrebato. — Bécquer distinguishes the mysterious impulse of inspiration from the later mechanical labour of making art. · Letter II, Cartas literarias a una mujer (Spanish)

• Craft
• Creation
• Inspiration

“The one who feels seizes an idea, clothes it in a form, casts it into the realm of knowledge, and passes on.”

Original: El que la siente se apodera de una idea, la envuelve en una forma, la arroja en el estadio del saber y pasa. — The poet transforms an inward perception into artistic form without claiming to explain it completely. · Letter I, Cartas literarias a una mujer (Spanish)

• Creation
• Expression
• Poetry

“The one who has imagination, how easily they can draw a world out of nothing.”

Original: El que tiene imaginación, con qué facilidad saca de la nada un mundo. — A compact celebration of imagination as a creative power capable of transforming emptiness into an entire world. · Prose remark, commonly attributed (Spanish)

• Creation
• Creativity
• Imagination

“I have this moment when, almost in despair, I throw myself at the paper, wanting to cast handfuls of my soul upon people and transform them into myself.”

Original: a mam tę chwilę, że niby z jakąś rozpaczą rzucam się do papieru, chcąc garściami duszę moją rzucać na ludzi, przemieniać ich w siebie — Writing becomes an almost physical act of pouring the self into other people. · Letter to his mother, 28 November 1843 (Polish)

• Creation
• Expression
• Writing

“The work of the mothers of our race is grandly constructive. It is for us to build above the wreck and ruin of the past more stately temples of thought and action.”

She casts motherhood as a constructive force capable of rebuilding a community after oppression. · Address, Enlightened Motherhood, 1892

• Community
• Creation
• Motherhood

“Every mother should endeavor to be a true artist. I do not mean by this that every woman should be a painter, sculptor, musician, poet or writer.”

Her metaphor of motherhood as an art emphasises the creative responsibility of raising children. · Address, Enlightened Motherhood, 1892

• Creation
• Education
• Motherhood

“Through weary, wasting years men have destroyed, dashed in pieces, and overthrown, but today we stand on the threshold of woman's era, and woman's work is grandly constructive.”

A forceful contrast between destructive history and women's potential for constructive change. · Speech, Woman's Political Future, 1893

• Change
• Creation
• Women

“The mind is a mirror, not only reflecting, but itself creating, the forms of thought.”

Exploring the active rather than merely receptive nature of the human mind. · Essay, A Defence of Poetry

• Creation
• Mind
• Thought

“The parts of the poet's creation are themselves the elements of another creation.”

Suggesting that great imaginative works continue to generate new possibilities in those who encounter them. · Essay, A Defence of Poetry

• Creation
• Imagination
• Poetry

“To create is to hope, for every act of creation assumes that something may yet come into being.”

Connecting artistic creation with an implicit faith in the future. · Essay

• Art
• Creation
• Hope

“Keep it whole, and you can feast your eyes on its gorgeous color, and your mind with the thought that it carries the possibility of Phoenix.”

Celebrating potential before it is diminished by actual performance · Letter to Edward Everett Hale, December 7, 1869

• Creation
• Imagination
• Potential

“That which is creative must create itself.”

Suggesting that genuine artistic creation arises organically rather than being mechanically imposed. · Essay, The Two Chief Schools of English Poetry

• Creation
• Creativity
• Originality

“One must be something in order to make something; Dante seems great, but he had centuries of culture behind him.”

Original: Man muß etwas sein, um etwas zu machen. Dante erscheint uns groß, aber er hatte eine Kultur von Jahrhunderten hinter sich. — Goethe connects individual achievement with the accumulated culture and formation that make it possible. · Conversation with Johann Peter Eckermann, 20 October 1828 (German)

• Creation
• Culture
• Greatness

“Whoever wants to make something great must have developed his education to such a degree that he can raise lesser reality to the height of his spirit.”

Original: Wer aber etwas Großes machen will, muß seine Bildung so gesteigert haben, daß er gleich den Griechen imstande sei, die geringere reale Natur zu der Höhe seines Geistes heranzuheben. — Goethe sees artistic greatness as the transformation of observed reality through cultivated intelligence. · Conversation with Johann Peter Eckermann, 20 October 1828 (German)

• Art
• Creation
• Education

“One must be something in order to make something.”

Original: Man muß etwas sein, um etwas zu machen. — Great creative work requires the inner development of the person who undertakes it. · Conversation with Johann Peter Eckermann, 20 October 1828 (German)

• Art
• Character
• Creation

“The real occasion was this: a shoemaker's 'prentice making holiday with his sweetheart.”

Carey's account of the humble real-life circumstances behind the song · Preface to Sally in Our Alley, 1729

• Creation
• Love
• Observation

“From whence he drew this little Sketch of Nature.”

Carey's concise description of transforming everyday observation into art · Preface to Sally in Our Alley, 1729

• Creation
• Nature
• Observation

“The real occasion was this: a shoemaker's 'prentice making holiday with his sweetheart, treated her with a sight of Bedlam, the puppet-shows, the flying-chairs, and all the elegancies of Moorfields.”

Carey's account of the real-life scene he observed and transformed into art · Preface to Sally in Our Alley, 1729

• Creation
• Love
• Observation

“The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.”

Joyce’s famous formulation of artistic detachment and the invisible creator. · Aesthetic discussion in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

• Art
• Creation
• Detachment

“Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an aesthetic end.”

A concise formulation of Joyce’s early aesthetic theory. · Notebook entry, Paris, 28 March 1903

• Art
• Beauty
• Creation

“The critic is surely himself a literary creator, and his work starts with a spontaneous surge of piety, and is inducted by the contagion of art into a composition of his own.”

He gives literary criticism a creative dignity, describing the critic as an artist responding to art. · Essay, Criticism, Inc.

• Art
• Creation
• Criticism

“The poet perpetuates in his poem an order of existence which in actual life is constantly crumbling beneath his touch.”

A striking account of poetry as an attempt to preserve the richness and individuality of experience. · Essay, Criticism, Inc.

• Creation
• Poetry
• Reality

“The difficulty with writing a play is not in writing it, but in getting it produced.”

Capturing the practical obstacles that can stand between artistic creation and public recognition · Creative Power

• Creation
• Theatre
• Writing