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.

84 verified voices · 12 shown here, a fresh sample each day

“Every considerable effort to develop a noble idiom will count in the final result, as the writers of early English made possible the language of the Bible, Shakespeare, and Milton.”
— Vachel Lindsay, The Art of the Moving Picture (1922)
Film & story Craft & discipline Hope
“Let us look for the day, be it a puritan triumph or not, when the sons and the daughters of the slums shall prophesy, the young men shall see visions, the old men dream dreams.”
— Vachel Lindsay, The Art of the Moving Picture (1922)
Film & story Imagination Hope
“Pain is a treasure, for it contains mercies; The kernel is soft when the rind is scraped off.”
— Jalalu'd-Din Rumi, Masnavi i Ma'navi (trans. E. H. Whinfield), as printed in F. Hadland Davis, The Persian Mystics
Sacred arts Solace & consolation Meaning & purpose Hope
“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays: First Series — Self-Reliance (1841)
Philosophy Meaning & purpose Courage Hope
“But you, though you are not yet a Socrates, ought to live as one who wishes to be a Socrates.”
— Epictetus, Enchiridion
Philosophy Craft & discipline Meaning & purpose Hope
“[S]hould one not have patience, not learn patience from nature, learn patience from seeing the wheat slowly come up, the growing of things — should one think oneself such a hugely dead thing that one believed one wouldn’t grow? Should one deliberately discourage one’s development?”
— Vincent van Gogh, Letters of Vincent van Gogh (1883)
Visual arts Hope Nature Time & mortality
“I think I shall be among the English Poets after my death.”
— John Keats, Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends (ed. Sidney Colvin) (1818)
Literature & poetry Courage Hope
“Are you too deeply occupied to say if my verse is alive? The mind is so near itself it cannot see distinctly, and I have none to ask. Should you think it breathed, and had you the leisure to tell me, I should feel quick gratitude.”
— Emily Dickinson, Letters to T. W. Higginson (in 'Emily Dickinson's Letters', The Atlantic Monthly) (1862)
Literature & poetry Craft & discipline Courage Hope
“I have a conviction that good fortune will not forsake me, for to what may I not at present aspire?”
— Ludwig van Beethoven, Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 (trans. Lady Grace Wallace, 1866), Vol. 1 (1800)
Music Courage Hope
“Never mind the ridicule, never mind the defeat; up again, old heart!--it seems to say,--there is victory yet for all justice; and the true romance which the world exists to realize will be the transformation of genius into practical power.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays: Second Series — Experience (1844)
Philosophy Courage Hope
“Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.”
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Philosophy Hope Stillness & rest
“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 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.