Quote

The tragedy of bold, forthright, industrious people is that they act so continuously without much thinking, that it becomes dry and empty.

Brenda Ueland

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Brenda Ueland
Age: 93 †
Born: 1891
Born: October 24
Died: 1985
Died: March 5
Journalist
Becomes
Without
Forthright
Much
Industrious
Thinking
Continuously
People
Bold
Dry
Tragedy
Empty

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Don't always be appraising yourself, wondering if you are better or worse than other writers. I will not Reason and Compare, said Blake my business is to Create. Besides, since you are like no other being ever created since the beginning of Time, you are incomparable.
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People who try to boss themselves always want (however kindly) to boss other people. They always think they know best and are so stern and resolute about it they are not very open to new and better ideas.
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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 a little solitude and idleness.
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Think of yourself as incandescent power, illuminated perhaps and forever talked to by God and his messengers.
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These people who are always briskly doing something and as busy as waltzing mice, they have little, sharp, staccato ideas, such as: I see where I can make an annual cut of $3.47 in my meat budget. But they have no slow, big ideas.
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We are always afraid to start something that we want to make very good, true, and serious.
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We are always doing something, talking, reading, listening to the radio, planning what next. The mind is kept naggingly busy on some easy, unimportant external thing all day.
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We start out in our lives as little children, full of light and the clearest vision.
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Consistency is the horror of the world.
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Inspiration comes to us slowly and quietly . prime it with a little solitude.
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We should all know this: that listening, not talking, is the gifted and great role, and the imaginative role.
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Families are great murderers of the creative impulsive, particularly husbands.
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... when I am really alone some power seems to grow in me. ... Conjugality made me think of a three-legged race, where two people cannot go fast and keep tripping each other because their two legs are tied together.
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it is only by expressing all that is inside that purer and purer streams come. ... Pour out the dull things on paper too-you can tear them up afterward-for only then do the bright ones come. If you hold back the dull things, you are certain to hold back what is clear and beautiful and true and lively.
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You have to hold your audience in writing to the very end-much more than in talking, when people have to be polite and listen to you.
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Advertising companies hire the very brightest, wittiest young people to write for them. Not one single sentence of it is worth repeating. Why? Because it wasn't meant.
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Why should we all use our creative power....? Because there is nothing that makes people so generous, joyful, lively, bold and compassionate, so indifferent to fighting and the accumulation of objects and money.
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Sometimes I think of life as a process where everybody is discouraging and taking everybody else down a peg or two.
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The only good teachers for you are those friends who love you, who think you are interesting, or very important, or wonderfully funny.
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Duty should be a byproduct.
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