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.

7 verified voices in Literature & poetry · 7 shown here, a fresh sample each day

“Thou true land-lord! sea-lord! air-lord! Wherever snow falls or water flows or birds fly, wherever day and night meet in twilight, wherever the blue heaven is hung by clouds or sown with stars, wherever are forms with transparent boundaries, wherever are outlets into celestial space, wherever is danger, and awe, and love,—there is Beauty, plenteous as rain, shed for thee”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Poet (Essays: Second Series) (1844)
Literature & poetry Beauty Wonder & awe Nature
“We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us, and, if we do not agree, seems to put its hand into its breeches pocket. Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself—but with its subject.”
— John Keats, Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends (ed. Sidney Colvin) (1818)
Literature & poetry Beauty Craft & discipline
“The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty. He is a sovereign, and stands on the centre. For the world is not painted or adorned, but is from the beginning beautiful; and God has not made some beautiful things, but Beauty is the creator of the universe.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Poet (Essays: Second Series) (1844)
Literature & poetry Beauty Creativity
“I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart's affections, and the truth of Imagination. What the Imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth—whether it existed before or not”
— John Keats, Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends (ed. Sidney Colvin) (1817)
Literature & poetry Beauty Imagination Truth & honesty
“If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?”
— Emily Dickinson, Letters to T. W. Higginson (in 'Emily Dickinson's Letters', The Atlantic Monthly) (1870)
Literature & poetry Beauty Wonder & awe
“Its touches of beauty should never be half-way, thereby making the reader breathless, instead of content. The rise, the progress, the setting of Imagery should, like the sun, come natural to him, shine over him, and set soberly, although in magnificence, leaving him in the luxury of twilight.”
— John Keats, Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends (ed. Sidney Colvin) (1818)
Literature & poetry Beauty Craft & discipline
“I think poetry should surprise by a fine excess, and not by singularity; It should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.”
— John Keats, Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends (ed. Sidney Colvin) (1818)
Literature & poetry Beauty Craft & discipline
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.