Thomas Wentworth Higginson Quotes

When a thought takes one's breath away, a grammar lesson seems an impertinence.

The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity... and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.

No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher. For poetry is the blossom and the fragrance of all human knowledge, human thoughts, human passions, emotions, language.

O thou sculptor, painter, poet! Take this lesson to thy heart: That is best which lieth nearest; Shape from that thy work of art.

The words of genius have a wider meaning than the thought that prompted them.

To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful.

After all, when a thought takes one's breath away, a lesson on grammar seems an impertinence.

Every day look at a beautiful picture, read a beautiful poem, listen to some beautiful music, and if possible, say some reasonable thing.

One can steal ideas, but no one can steal execution or passion.

For poetry is, I believe, always an act of the spirit. The poem teaches us something while we make it. The poem makes you as you make the poem, and your making of the poem requires all your capacities of thought, feeling, analysis, and synthesis.

The true creator may be recognized by his ability always to find about him, in the commonest and humblest thing, items worthy of note.

Those moments when you feel you want to read something truly beautiful. The eyes make a tour of the library, and there is nothing. Then you decide to take no matter what, and it is full of beautiful things.

True works of art are a manifestation of the higher laws of nature.

The greatest ideas, the most profound thoughts, and the most beautiful poetry are born from the womb of silence

Nature's imagination far surpasses our own.

When passion is dead, or absent, then the magnificent throb of beauty is incomprehensible and even a little despicable.

One should be a painter. As a writer, I feel the beauty, which is almost entirely colour, very subtle, very changeable, running over my pen, as if you poured a large jug of champagne over a hairpin.

Art is the child of Nature.

If one could only reproduce nature, and always with less beauty than the original, why paint at all?

More primordial than any idea, beauty will be manifest as the herald and generator or ideas.

The very first discovery of beauty strikes the mind with an inward joy, and spreads a cheerfulness and delight through all its faculties.

Music is edifying, for from time to time it sets the soul in operation.

An Edward Povey hangs in my living room and every day I am reminded of his originality, his beauty, and the eternal promise of his craft.

Where does beauty begin? Where does it end? Where it ends is where the artist begins.

The American who has been confined, in his own country, to the sight of buildings designed after foreign models, is surprised on entering York Minster or St. Peter's at Rome, by the feeling that these structures are imitations also,--faint copies of an invisible archetype.