To endow the writer publicly with a good fleshly body, to reveal that he likes dry white wine and underdone steak, is to make even... more miraculous for me, and of a more divine essence, the products of his art. Far from the details of his daily life bringing nearer to me the nature of his inspiration and making it clearer, it is the whole mystical singularity of his condition which the writer emphasizes by such confidences. For I cannot but ascribe to some superhumanity the existence of beings vast enough to wear blue pajamas at the very moment when they manifest themselves as universal conscience.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We have our little theory on all human and divine things. Poetry, the workings of genius itself, which, in all times, with one or ...another meaning, has been called Inspiration, and held to be mysterious and inscrutable, is no longer without its scientific exposition. The building of the lofty rhyme is like any other masonry or bricklaying: we have theories of its rise, height, decline and fall--which latter, it would seem, is now near, among all people.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The poet's body even is not fed like other men's, but he sometimes tastes the genuine nectar and ambrosia of the gods, and lives a... divine life. By the healthful and invigorating thrills of inspiration his life is preserved to a serene old age.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is a mischievous notion that we are come late into nature; that the world was finished a long time ago. As the world was plasti...c and fluid in the hands of God, so it is ever to so much of his attributes as we bring to it. To ignorance and sin, it is flint. They adapt to themselves to it as they may; but in proportion as a man has anything in him divine, the firmament flows before him and takes his signet and form.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If prophets or those who divine by dreams appear among you and promise you omens or portents, and the omens or the portents declar...ed by them take place, and they say, "Let us follow other gods" (whom you have not known) "and let us serve them," you must not heed the words of those prophets or those who divine by dreams; for the LORD your God is testing you, to know whether you indeed love the LORD your God with all your heart and soul.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »