A Quote by Christina Stead

It is a rule of creative ability that it does nothing of any value, while it is possessed by this afflatus of vanity. — © Christina Stead
It is a rule of creative ability that it does nothing of any value, while it is possessed by this afflatus of vanity.
Common sense says that if something possessed the ability to create itself from nothing, then that something wasn't nothing, it was something - a very intelligent creative power of some sort.
...one of hallmarks of a creative person is the ability to tolerate ambiguity, dissonance, inconsistency, things out of place. But one of the rules of a well-run corporation is that surprise is to be minimized. Yet if this rule were applied to the creative process, nothing worth reading would get written, nothing worth seeing would get painted, nothing worth living with and using would ever get designed.
There is nothing great in the world that does not owe its origin to the creative ability of an individual man.
If there is a single quality that is shared by all great men, it is vanity. But I mean by vanity only that they appreciate their own worth. Without this kind of vanity they would not be great. And with vanity alone, of course, a man is nothing.
The rule of God is not tyranny, for it does not partake of a political or governmental character -- it is not a rule of authority. God is not a governor of the universe, for a governor rules over those of a like nature with himself, and exercises a political and judicial power, while God exercises a creative, a preserving, and a determinative power of an altogether different kind. If I am a servant of God, I am under no tyranny; for God does not govern, but supports, sustains, and directs me.
So the first thing to be remembered: don't confine creativity to anything in particular. A man is creative - and if he is creative, whatsoever he does, even if he walks, you can see in his walking there is creativity. Even if he sits silently and does nothing, even non-doing will be a creative act. Buddha sitting under the Bodhi Tree doing nothing is the greatest creator the world has ever known.
If life — the craving for which is the very essence of our being — were possessed of any positive intrinsic value, there would be no such thing as boredom at all: mere existence would satisfy us in itself, and we should want for nothing.
Chess, like any creative activity, can exist only through the combined efforts of those who have creative talent, and those who have the ability to organize their creative work
Is the artist impelled by spiritual forces, by the divine afflatus, by conscious or unconscious emulation of others? Do angles whisper in the ears of the chosen few, and create for them visions of aethereal beauty? Do landscape painters of genius walk the plains of Heaven? Or is it only vanity that urges him to paint?
The traits I picked from my conversation with Captain Gopinath was his honesty. He was completely possessed at each stage by what he was doing. When he was in the army, he was possessed there. He was possessed when he started Udupi hotel or while doing agriculture. He is a perfectionist and he is very impatient.
... overconfidence in one's own ability is the root of much evil. Vanity, egoism, is the deadliest of all characteristics. This vanity, combined with extreme ignorance of conditions the knowledge of which is the very A B C of business and of life, produces more shipwrecks and heartaches than any other part of our mental make-up.
While you're being creative, nothing is wrong. There's no such thing as a mistake, and any drivel may lead to the breakthrough.
As a person I'm perfectly vain, I'm just vainer as an actor about my ability. My acting vanity trumps my human vanity.
He does not rule us. No one can rule us. No one can rule anyone who does not first agree to the ruling." She smiled a trace at Aeriel and patted the little camp dog, which was whining for more tidbits. "One must rule oneself.
Nothing great in science has ever been done by men, whatever their powers, in whom the divine afflatus of the truth-seeker was wanting.
He who does nothing renders himself incapable of doing any thing; but while we are executing any work, we are preparing and qualifying ourselves to undertake another.
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