Inspired Action Quotes

Write while the heat is in you.
The writer who postpones
the recording of his thoughts
uses an iron which has cooled
to burn a hole with.
He cannot inflame
the minds of his audience.

—Henry David Thoreau

An idea not coupled with action will never get any bigger than the brain cell it occupied.

—Arnold H. Glasow

Inspirations never go in for long engagements; they demand immediate marriage to action

—Brendan Francis Behan

Ideas are elusive, slippery things. Best to keep a pad of paper and a pencil at your bedside, so you can stab them during the night before they get away.

—Earl Nightingale

We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action.

—Frank Tibolt

One must hurry to set them down out of fear of forgetting them. They come once; once only.

—Jean Cocteau

You must act
as if
it is impossible
to fail.

—Ashanti Proverb

The thoughts that come often unsought, and is it were drop into the mind, are commonly the most valuable of any we have, and therefore should be secured, because they seldom return again.

—John Locke.

Sometimes an idea comes in the night when I have to get up and strike a light and note it down — sometimes when out on a lonely walk, when I have had to stop and with half-frozen fingers jot down a few words which should keep the new-born [conceived?] idea from perishing — but whatever or however it comes, it comes of itself [i.e. it cannot be forced to come].

—Lewis Carroll.

Inspiration comes whenever it wants, even at the most unlikely times and in the most inappropriate situations. Often it arrives bit by bit. Therefore it must be anchored, and this is where a most valuable item makes its appearance: the notebook.

—Piero Ferrucci

Inspiration follows aspiration.

—Rabindranath Tagore

Never put off. The instant lightning strikes, jump out of your chair and run and do the poem or the story or the novel . . . I swim. Swimming is wonderful, the total thing of the whole body. And lying in the sun and reading poetry. Then I run back and forth all day from the pool to the typewriter.

—Ray Bradbury

Paint like a fiend when the idea possesses you.

—Robert Henri (1865-1929), American painter.

The idea when it comes suddenly into the mind with the glow of inspiration must be noted down before it fades or is lost.

—Rosamond Harding — The Anatomy of Inspiration

When inspiration does not come to me, I go halfway to meet it.

—Sigmund Freud

Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination; do not become the slave of your model.

—Vincent Van Gogh

I am certain that many, many people have waked up in the middle of the night with a flash of inspiration about some novel they would like to write, or a play or a poem or whatever and that most inspiration never come to anything. Inspirations are a dime a dozen. The difference between inspiration and the final product, for example, Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace', is an awful lot of hard work, an awful lot of discipline, and awful lot of training, an awful lot of finger exercises and practices and rehearsals and throwing away of first drafts and so on.

—Abraham Maslow

Listen

to

the

voices.

—William Faulkner

Once we hear the voice of inspiration, accept it and act on it, another energy is activated - invisible collaboration moves to support us. Useless ideas and resources start showing up in our life. The details start to be taken care of. All that we have created that stands between us and our freedom will also come up to be healed.

—Nick Williams

Beethoven, Wagner, Bach and Mozart settled down day after day to the job in hand with as much regularity as an accountant settles down each day to his figures. They didn't waste time waiting for inspiration.

—Ernest Newman, Englsh music critic

Perhaps it would be better not to be a writer, but if you must, then write. If all feels hopeless, if that famous 'inspiration' will not come, write. If you are a genius, you'll make your own rules, but if not - and the odds are against it - go to your desk no matter what your mood, face the icy challenge of the paper - write.

—J. B. Priestly

At first sight, the idea of any rules or principles being superimposed on the creative mind seems more likely to hinder than to help, but this is quite untrue in practice. Disciplined thinking focuses inspiration rather than blinkers it.

—G.L. Glegg