Voices of the Muses

The world's great painters, poets, composers and thinkers wrote constantly about how to live — in letters, journals and the works themselves. This is that wisdom, gathered and verified: a companion for your day, and a doorway into the arts they made.

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Today's voice
“Let us rather submit with firmness to His almighty will, in the full conviction that it will prove for our good, as he does nothing without a cause.”
— Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Vol. 1 (trans. Lady Grace Wallace, 1865) (1778)
Composer, 1756–1791
What this is, and how to use it

Not a quote site. A daily practice, and a door.

1

Find a voice for your day

Filter by what you're living through — courage, solace, gratitude, stillness — and hear how someone who lived by their art faced the same thing. Every quote is real: traced to the letter, page or verse it was actually written in, never internet folklore.

2

Don't just read — sit with it

Take one voice, not twenty. Read it slowly, twice. Ask what it would change about your afternoon if it were true. That single unhurried minute is the smallest version of every practice ImagineArts teaches.

3

Follow the voice to its art

Each voice is a door: Van Gogh's letters lead to really looking, Seneca leads to the examined life, the Psalms lead to awe. When a voice grabs you, start free and learn the practice behind it.

101 verified voices in Literature & poetry · 12 shown here, a fresh sample each day

“Thank you for the surgery; it was not so painful as I supposed. I bring you others, as you ask, though they might not differ. While my thought is undressed, I can make the distinction; but when I put them in the gown, they look alike and numb.”
— Emily Dickinson, Letters to T. W. Higginson (in 'Emily Dickinson's Letters', The Atlantic Monthly) (1862)
Literature & poetry Craft & discipline Truth & honesty
“That you are here—that life exists and identity, / That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.”
— Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1892 edition) (1892)
Literature & poetry Meaning & purpose Courage Hope
“The incredible never surprises us, because it is the incredible.”
— Emily Dickinson, The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson (ed. Martha Dickinson Bianchi) (1870)
Literature & poetry Wonder & awe Truth & honesty
“The principle which controls it is simply that it should give pleasure; the desire which impels us when we take it from the shelf is simply to receive pleasure.”
— Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader (1925) (1925)
Literature & poetry Joy & delight Play
“Movement and change are the essence of our being; rigidity is death; conformity is death: let us say what comes into our heads, repeat ourselves, contradict ourselves, fling out the wildest nonsense, and follow the most fantastic fancies without caring what the world does or thinks or says. For nothing matters except life; and, of course, order.”
— Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader (1925) (1925)
Literature & poetry Creativity Courage Play
“Memory should not be called Knowledge—Many have original minds who do not think it—they are led away by Custom.”
— John Keats, Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends (ed. Sidney Colvin) (1818)
Literature & poetry Creativity Courage
“The task of art is enormous. Through the influence of real art, aided by science guided by religion, that peaceful co-operation of man which is now obtained by external means—by our law-courts, police, charitable institutions, factory inspection, etc.—should be obtained by man's free and joyous activity. Art should cause violence to be set aside.”
— Leo Tolstoy, What is Art? (trans. Aylmer Maude) (1897)
Literature & poetry Hope Community
“The trick is, I find, to tone your wants and tastes low down enough, and make much of negatives, and of mere daylight and the skies.”
— Walt Whitman, Complete Prose Works (1882)
Literature & poetry Gratitude Stillness & rest
“There is one indubitable indication distinguishing real art from its counterfeit, namely, the infectiousness of art.”
— Leo Tolstoy, What is Art? (trans. Aylmer Maude) (1897)
Literature & poetry Craft & discipline Truth & honesty
“it is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable for the life and progress towards well-being of individuals and of humanity”
— Leo Tolstoy, What is Art? (trans. Aylmer Maude) (1897)
Literature & poetry Community Transcendence
“Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; but a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.”
— Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader (1925) (1925)
Literature & poetry Wonder & awe Meaning & purpose
“The destiny of art in our time is to transmit from the realm of reason to the realm of feeling the truth that well-being for men consists in being united together”
— Leo Tolstoy, What is Art? (trans. Aylmer Maude) (1897)
Literature & poetry Meaning & purpose Hope Community
The Salon library

This is today’s sample of twelve. The whole collection is in the Salon.

Salon members read all 746 English quotes and the Afrikaans collection too, with every filter, the plain-words notes from A Year with the Muses, the quotes they save, and a private journal for the lines that stay with them.

Join the SalonAlready a member? Open the library →

Every quote in this collection was verified against its original public-domain source — the letter, journal, poem or treatise it truly comes from. No internet folklore, no misattributions. Start free to bring these voices into your daily practice.