3.31.2011

Inspiration Squared

Want to explore more using our March 2001 theme, INSPIRATION? Here it is! Enjoy these free prompts, quotations, music and more from all of us at Scrapbooking from the Inside Out.

Tomorrow...RESILIENCE!

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Journaling Prompts


Inspired by: Who are the women you know, past and present, who inspire you. Why would you pick the ones you pick? How have the important men in your life inspired you? Do men and women inspire you in different ways? Are there essential qualities of femininity and masculinity that impact how you've been inspired by these different and important figures? How have you been supported and uplifted? How do you support and uplift others?



Breath: One of the literal meanings of inspiration is breath. Have you even noticed how your breathing changes when you are under stress? Shallow or deep breathing impacts how you feel, and how you feel can make your breathing shallow or deep. When do you become aware of your breathing? Do you ever slow yourself down by breathing deeply? Have you ever experienced a panic attack where your breathing was affected?



Ideas: Where do your best ideas come from? Do they hit you like a bolt of lightning, a spark, or do they creep up on you? Does inspiration ever visit you in a dream or while daydreaming? Are you a solitary dreamer or do you benefit from brainstorming with others? Do you feel that ideas and inspiration come to you or through you...do the ideas belong to you or do they come from another source?



Creativity: Do you see yourself as a creative being? Did you grow up creating art or crafts, or did you start doing that as an adult? Were you given feedback, positive or negative, about whether you had talent? Did that impact how you saw your own ability to be artistic? When you experience the works of other artists whom you admire, do you feel inspired to create or intimidated? is creative inspiration available to all or is it reserved for 'genuis'?



Childlike Delight: Is there part of you that feels childlike? Is that a part of you that you embrace or reject, or something in between? What are your best memories of your childhood...times when you felt free and light? If you could recover some of your childlike innocence, where and how would you use that to improve your life or your attitude and beliefs? Was there a moment, or moments where you lost that sense of childlike joy?



Bliss: One definition of inspiration is ecstasy - 'to stand outside the ordinary self'. Have you experienced moments of pure happiness and pleasure? What, inside or out, has brought you an elevated sense of self or a rapturous state? Is that emotion more fleeting, or something that you've felt more regularly?



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Quotes on INSPIRATION




A deadline is negative inspiration. Still, it's better than no inspiration at all. Rita Mae Brown


Actually, I feel music becoming more and more important. It's a big source of inspiration. With what's going on in the world, we feel almost desperate. Music also brings you peace. Cecilia Bartoli


After it's finished, sometimes I can trace a path that goes back to the possible source of inspiration. Tracy Chapman


After you've done it for so many years, you have to find a new direction. You have to find something in your soul that's going to push you towards - to find your inspiration. Elvis Stojko


All characters come from people I know, but after the initial inspiration, I tend to modify the characters so they fit with the story. Nicholas Sparks


An artist's duty is rather to stay open-minded and in a state where he can receive information and inspiration. You always have to be ready for that little artistic Epiphany. Nick Cave


Beethoven, Wagner, Bach, and Mozart settled down day after day to the job in hand. They didn't waste time waiting for inspiration. Ernest Newman


Before I do anything, I think, well what hasn't been seen. Sometimes, that turns out to be something ghastly and not fit for society. And sometimes that inspiration becomes something that's really worthwhile. Jim Carrey


Better beware of notions like genius and inspiration; they are a sort of magic wand and should be used sparingly by anybody who wants to see things clearly. Jose Ortega y Gasset


But inspiration? - That's when you come home from abroad and are asked: Well, have you found inspiration? - and fortunately you haven't. But the impressions sink in, of course, and may emerge later: None of us has invented the house; that was done many thousands of years ago. Arne Jacobsen


Cease trying to work everything out with your minds. It will get you nowhere. Live by intuition and inspiration and let your whole life be Revelation. Eileen Caddy


Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination; do not become the slave of your model. Vincent Van Gogh


Do not worry about the incarnation of ideas. If you are a poet, your works will contain them without your knowledge' they will be both moral and national if you follow your inspiration freely. Vissarion Belinsky


Dreams are not without meaning wherever thay may come from-from fantasy, from the elements, or from other inspiration. Paracelsus



Education in the past has been too much inspiration and too little information. E. Franklin Frazier



Enthusiasm is excitement with inspiration, motivation, and a pinch of creativity. Bo Bennett


Enthusiasm is the inspiration of everything great. Without it no man is to be feared, and with it none despised. Christian Nestell Bovee


Every great inspiration is but an experiment. Charles Ives


Every mind which has given itself to self-expression in art is aware of a directing agency outside its conscious control which it has agreed to label 'inspiration'. Norman Lindsay



Families are the compass that guide us. They are the inspiration to reach great heights, and our comfort when we occasionally falter. Brad Henry



For hundreds of years people have talked about artists having inspiration, but often, some persons would say, write us a symphony or write us a song, on commission. The artists would come up with a masterpiece without waiting to have their muse inspire them. Tom Glazer



For me, our beaches have always been a source of personal inspiration. Thomas Carper


Here is the secret of inspiration: Tell yourself that thousands and tens of thousands of people, not very intelligent and certainly no more intelligent than the rest of us, have mastered problems as difficult as those that now baffle you. William Feather



His genius he was quite content in one brief sentence to define; Of inspiration one percent, of perspiration, ninety nine. Thomas A. Edison



Human beings have speculated about the relationship between inspiration and insanity for centuries. Patty Duke



Human requirements are the inspiration for art. Stephen Gardiner



I am one of those people who thrive on deadlines, nothing brings on inspiration more readily than desperation. Harry Shearer



I defied nothing at all. I ignored the law because I didn't know it existed. It didn't occur to me that anyone would want to curb my inspiration. Margaret Anderson



I have inspiration and feelings of being alive most every day I live. Judy Collins



I long to speak out the intense inspiration that comes to me from the lives of strong women. Ruth Benedict



I would say that the surest measure of a man's or a woman's maturity is the harmony, style, joy, and dignity he creates in his marriage, and the pleasure and inspiration he provides for his spouse. Benjamin Spock



If you wait for inspiration you'll be standing on the corner after the parade is a mile down the street. Ben Nicholas



In general, I don't know when inspiration will pop up. Larry Niven



In life you need either inspiration or desperation. Tony Robbins



In the nineteenth century the more grandiose word inspiration began to replace the word idea in the arts. Lukas Foss



Insomnia is my greatest inspiration. Jon Stewart



Inspiration arrives as a packet of material to be delivered. John Updike



Inspiration comes from all different places. Jeffrey Katzenberg



Inspiration comes of working every day. Charles Baudelaire



Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced. Ned Rorem



Inspiration doesn't really work like that - you're not looking out for it. Inspiration is something that tends to capture you rather than you capture it. Joan Armatrading



Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working. Pablo Picasso


The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak
sleeps in the acorn, the bird waits in the egg, and in the highest
vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of
realities. James Allen




The gift of loneliness is sometimes a radical vision of society or one's
people that has not previously been taken into account. Alice Walker



Inspiration is an awakening, a quickening of all man's faculties, and it is manifested in all high artistic achievements. Giacomo Puccini



Inspiration is God making contact with itself. Ram Dass



Inspiration is one thing and you can't control it, but hard work is what keeps the ship moving. Good luck means, work hard. Keep up the good work. Kevin Eubanks



Inspiration may be a form of super-consciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness I wouldn't know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness. Aaron Copland



Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it. Madeleine L'Engle



It is the helpless cry of [the] lost women who are victims of centuries of wrong; it is the unspoken plea of thousands of women now standing on the brink of similar ruin; it is the silent appeal of the army of women in all lands who in shops and factories are demanding fair living and working conditions; it is the need to turn the energies of more favoured women to public service; it is the demand for a complete revision of women's legal, social, educational, and industrial status all along the line, which permits us no delay, no hesitation. The belief that we are defending the highest good of the mothers of our race and the ultimate welfare of society makes every sacrifice seem trivial, every duty a pleasure. The pressing need spurs us on, the certainty of victory gives us daily inspiration. Carrie Chapman Catt



What Romantic terminology called genius or talent or inspiration is nothing other than finding the right road empirically, following one's nose, taking shortcuts. Italo Calvino



When you do not know what you are doing and what you are doing is the best—that is inspiration. When you do not know what you are doing and what you are doing is the best—that is inspiration. Robert Bresson



Youth is the period in which a man can be hopeless. The end of every episode is the end of the world. But the power of hoping through everything, the knowledge that the soul survives its adventures, that great inspiration comes to the middle-aged. Gilbert Keith Chesterton



Artistic inspiration ignores the law of supply and demand. Artistic inspiration ignores the law of supply and demand. Mason Cooley



The ironies in the commonplace are my inspiration and delight. The ironies in the commonplace are my inspiration and delight. Mason Cooley



It is not speech or tool making that distinguishes us from other animals, it is imagination....Of what use are speech sounds and tools without an inspiration toward perfectibility, without a sense that we can create or construct a history. Louise J. Kaplan



Life is one big road with lots of signs. So when you riding through the ruts, don't complicate your mind. Flee from hate, mischief and jealousy. Don't bury your thoughts, put your vision to reality. Wake Up and Live! Bob Marley



As selfishness and complaint pervert the mind, so love with its joy clears and sharpens the vision. Helen Keller



Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision. Ayn Rand



All successful people men and women are big dreamers. They imagine what their future could be, ideal in every respect, and then they work every day toward their distant vision, that goal or purpose. Brian Tracy



Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others. Jonathan Swift



It takes someone with a vision of the possibilities to attain new levels of experience. Someone with the courage to live his dreams. Les Brown



Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision. Salvador Dali



Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardor, for their curiosity, their intolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision. Aldous Huxley



Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world. Arthur Schopenhauer



Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes. Carl Jung



Yet it is in this loneliness that the deepest activities begin. It is here that you discover act without motion, labor that is profound repose, vision in obscurity, and, beyond all desire, a fulfillment whose limits extend to infinity. Thomas Merton



People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision. John C. Maxwell



Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality. Warren G. Bennis



You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand. Woodrow Wilson



Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such. Henry Miller


The vision must be followed by the venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps - we must step up the stairs. Vance Havner



Every great work, every big accomplishment, has been brought into manifestation through holding to the vision, and often just before the big achievement, comes apparent failure and discouragement. Florence Scovel Shinn



A dream is your creative vision for your life in the future. You must break out of your current comfort zone and become comfortable with the unfamiliar and the unknown. Denis Waitley



If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence. George Eliot


Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self. George Eliot



The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision. George Eliot



When the divine vision is attained, all appear equal; and there remains no distinction of good and bad, or of high and low. Ramakrishna


Longing is like the rosy dawn. After the dawn out comes the sun. Longing is followed by the vision of God. Ramakrishna








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