A dream has power to poison sleep.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyRead
The mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; this power arises from within...could this influence be durable in its original purity and force, it is impossible to predict the greatness of the result; but when composition begins, inspiration is already on the decline; and the most glorious poetry that has been communicated to the world is probably a feeble shadow of the original conceptions of the poet.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Inspiration is fleeting and can fade quickly; the true power of creativity comes from within and is often lost in the act of creation.
This quote by Percy Bysshe Shelley suggests that the creative process is often influenced by an ephemeral spark of inspiration, akin to a coal that can ignite brightly but ultimately fades. Shelley implies that the purest and most potent ideas may diminish once they are put into form, especially through poetry, leading to a final result that may not fully embody the original vision or potential of the artist's thoughts.
Themes
InspirationCreativityPoetryArtProcess
In practice
Example use cases
A writer might quote this to inspire fellow authors at a literary conference.
More from Percy Bysshe Shelley
All quotes →Senseless is the breast and cold _x000D_ _x000D_ Which relenting love would fold;_x000D_ _x000D_ Bloodless are the veins and chill _x000D_ _x000D_ Which the pulse of pain did fill; _x000D_ _x000D_ Every little living nerve _x000D_ _x000D_ That from bitter words did swerve _x000D_ _x000D_ Round the tortur'd lips and brow, _x000D_ _x000D_ Are like sapless leaflets now _x000D_ _x000D_ Frozen upon December's bough.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyRead
A sensitive plant in a garden grew,_x000D_ _x000D_ And the young winds fed it with silver dew,_x000D_ _x000D_ And it opened its fan_x000D_ _x000D_ like leaves to the light,_x000D_ _x000D_ and closed them beneath the kisses of night.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyRead
I am the daughter of Earth and Water, And the nursling of the Sky; I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; I change, but I cannot die. For after the rain when with never a stain The pavilion of Heaven is bare, And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams Build up the blue dome of air, I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, And out of the caverns of rain, Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I arise and unbuild it again.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyRead
O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?
Percy Bysshe ShelleyRead
Ah, woe is me! Winter is come and gone. But grief returns with the revolving year.
Percy Bysshe ShelleyRead
Similar quotes
I believe in God, Mozart and Beethoven, and likewise their disciples and apostles; - I believe in the Holy Spirit and the truth of the one, indivisible Art; - I believe that this Art proceeds from God, and lives within the hearts of all illumined men.
Richard WagnerRead
One has a nose. The nose scents and it chooses. An artist is simply a kind of pig snouting truffles.
Igor StravinskyRead
I'm a method writer. In order to write about the emotion, I have to experience it. I get physically tired and exhausted, devoting hours and hours and hours to it.
Sherman AlexieRead
I film normal-life subjects in natural settings that some people would consider uncinematic. But what I want to show is nature itself, as the truth of life.
Abbas KiarostamiRead
Poetry is either something that lives like fire inside you -- like music to the musician or Marxism to the Communist -- or else it is nothing, an empty, formalized bore around which pedants can endlessly drone their notes and explanations.
F. Scott FitzgeraldRead
One of the convenient things about literature is that, despite copyrights [...] a book belongs to the reader as well as to the writer.
Anne FadimanRead