The painter has the Universe in his mind and hands.
Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is a painting that is felt rather than seen.
The eye sees a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination awake.
The painter’s mind is a copy of the divine mind since it operates freely in creating the many kinds of animals, plants, fruits, landscapes, countrysides, ruins, and awe-inspiring places.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
Art is the Queen of all sciences communicating knowledge to all the generations of the world.
The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul.
To write great music, the musician must make his life a great song. … Ceaseless work, analysis, reflection, writing much, endless self-correction, that is my secret.
Music is an agreeable harmony for the honor of God and the permissible delights of the soul.
God and the permissible delights of the soul. I play the notes as they are written, but it is God who makes the music.
Genius means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.
The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
Belief creates the actual fact.
Geniuses are commonly believed to excel other men in their power of sustained attention . . . But it is their genius making them attentive, not their attention making geniuses of them.
The essence of genius is to know what to overlook.
The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitude.
Psychologists – creativity theorists about creativity
The creative person is more primitive and more cultured, more destructive and more constructive, crazier and saner, than the average person.
The creative individual not only respects the irrational in himself, but also courts the most promising source of novelty in his own thought.
The sorcery and charm of imagination, and the power it gives to the individual to transform his world into a new world of order and delight, makes it one of the most treasured of all human capacities.
…creativity is a quest for meaning. It is an attempt to penetrate the mystery of the self, and perhaps the even greater mystery of Being.
…the desire to create one’s own universe of meaning, personally defined.
There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Without creativity, there would be no progress, and we would be forever repeating the same patterns.
Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way.
Creative thinking – in terms of idea creativity – is not a mystical talent. It is a skill that can be practised and nurtured.
We need creativity in order to break free from the temporary structures that have been set up by a particular sequence of experience.
Creativity gives the possibility of some sort of achievement to everyone.
Modern authors and speakers about creativity
Julia Cameron
In a sense, as we are creative beings, our lives become our work of art.
When I ask for help with my creativity, I get it.
Creativity is the natural order of life. Life is energy: pure creative energy…As we open our creative channel to the creator, many gentle but powerful changes are to be expected…Our creative dreams and yearnings come from a divine source. As we move toward our dreams, we move toward our divinity.
Mystery is at the heart of creativity. That, and surprise…As creative channels, we need to trust the darkness.
Creativity requires faith. Faith requires that we relinquish control.
Alternative thinkers about creativity
Osho
You can be creative only if you love life enough that you want to enhance its beauty. that you bring to the activity that you are doing. It is an attitude, an inner approach – how you look at things .
Creativity is the quality that you bring to the activity that you are doing. It is an attitude, an inner approach – how you look at things.
What so ever you do, if you do it joyfully, if you do it lovingly, if your act of doing is not purely economical, then it is creative.
You become more divine as you become more creative. All the religions of the world have said God is the creator.
Love what you do. Be meditative while you are doing it – whatsoever it is!
Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.
Every great book is an action, and every great action is a book.
As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways in which I could respond to my situation — either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course.
Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.
Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.
Creativity has got to start with humanity and when you’re a human being, you feel, you suffer.
If I’d observed all the rules I’d never have got anywhere.
Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.
Love and work are the only two real things in our lives. They belong together, otherwise it is off. Work is in itself a form of love.
Like any creative human being, I would like a bit more control so that it would be a little easier for me when the director says, ‘One tear, right now,’ that one tear would pop out.
I’ve always tried to do my best on the ball field. I can’t do any more than that. I always try to give one hundred percent; and if my team loses, I come back and give one hundred percent the next day.
It’s important to give it all you have while you have the chance.
Writing is very much a playground – an artistic playground. It’s the most fun thing I do.
I loved the feeling of being stranded. I’m not afraid of being in my own environment, being physical, working hard. I was very strong…It was a very rugged existence, but I was very creative and I would sit alone in the forest with my dog and a guitar and would just write songs.
I find that the very things that I get criticized for, which is usually being different and just doing my own thing and just being original, is the very thing that’s making me successful.
I’m focused on going out every day and doing my best.
I have had lots of luck in my career but there has also been a lot of hard work.
If I can create something that allows a woman to feel better – that is the true reward.
Music is a part of my life all the time – on the plane, before matches, driving out to the court.
I look forward to the challenges.
I don’t follow other players or the tournaments they play. I have my own schedule and do my own thing. I never really think, ‘Oh, I want to be or play like so-and-so.’ I just like being myself.
Imagination is a powerful agent for creating, as it were, a second nature out of the material supplied to it by actual nature. Immanuel Kant (April 22, 1724 –February 12, 1804), German philosopher
Creativity is the supreme mystery of life, the mystery of the appearance of something new, hitherto unknown, derived from nothing, proceeding from nothing, born of nothing other…. Nikolai Berdyaev (March 18, 1874 – March 24, 1948), Russian philosopher.
True life is creativity, not development: it is the freedom for creative acts, for creative fire, rather than necessity and the heaviness of congealing self-perfection. Nikolai Berdyaev
This is the eternal origin of art that a human being confronts a form that wants to become a work through him. Not a figment of his soul but something that appears to the soul and demands the soul’s creative power. What is required is a deed that a man does with his whole being. Martin Buber (February 8, 1878 – June 13, 1965) was an Austrian-born Israeli Jewish philosopher
Creativity in science could be described as the act of putting two and two together to make five. Arthur Koestler (September 5, 1905 – March 1, 1983) was a Hungarian-Jewish novelist, philosopher, journalist