But the great artists like Michelangelo and Blake and Tolstoi--like Christ whom Blake called an artist because he had one of the most creative imaginations that ever was on earth--do not want security, egoistic or materialistic. Why, it never occurs to them. "Be not anxious for the morrow, " and "which of you being anxious can add one cubit to his stature?" So they dare to be idle, i.e. not to be pressed and duty-driven all the time. They dare to love people even when they are very bad, and they dare not to try and dominate others to show them what they must do for their own good.Brenda Ueland
About This Quote
As a child you took the shortest route between two points. You didn't have a choice. You just went. You grew up and it was almost a reflex to take the shortest path from one point to another. But when you get older, you start asking yourself what's the shortest possible path from one point to another? In other words, why not make decisions in life based on your own best interest?
Source: If You Want To Write: A Book About Art, Independence And Spirit
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More Quotes By Brenda Ueland
- I learned...that inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic, energetic striving, but it comes into us slowly and quietly and all the time, though we must regularly and every day give it a little chance to start flowing, prime it with...
- Everybody is original, if he tells the truth, if he speaks from himself. But it must be from his *true* self and not from the self he thinks he *should* be.
- ...at last I understood that writing was this: an impulse to share with other people a feeling or truth that I myself had.
- ...the best way to know the Truth or Beauty is to try to express it. And what is the purpose of existence Here or Yonder but to discover truth and beauty and express it, i.e., share it with others?
- (about William Blake)As for Blake's happiness--a man who knew him said: "If asked whether I ever knew among the intellectual, a happy man, Blake would be the only one who would immediately occur to me." And yet this creative power in Blake did not come...