As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, / I must not look to have; but, in their stead, / Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath, / Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not" (5.3.25-28).
William ShakespeareRead
This is the very coinage of your brain: this bodiless creation ecstasy.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote refers to the imaginative and creative powers of the mind in producing art and ecstasy.
In this quote, Shakespeare emphasizes the concept that art is a product of the mind, created through imagination. He portrays creative expression as something magical and intangible, equating it to ecstasy, which suggests that art has the power to evoke profound emotions and experiences that transcend the physical world.
Themes
CreativityImaginationArtEcstasyExpression
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about creativity, one might say, 'As Shakespeare reminds us, this is the very coinage of your brain: this bodiless creation ecstasy'.
More from William Shakespeare
All quotes →Love bears it out even to the edge of doom.
William ShakespeareRead
Good company, good wine, good welcome, can make good people.
William ShakespeareRead
Absence doth sharpen love, presence strengthens it; the one brings fuel, the other blows it till it burns clear.
William ShakespeareRead
Lord, Lord, how this world is given to lying!
William ShakespeareRead
Give it an understanding, but no tongue.
William ShakespeareRead
Similar quotes
I'm one of those people who says, 'yes, cinema died when they invented sound.'
George LucasRead
Acting is all about relating to the people on stage with you, even in plays that break the fourth wall. Clowning, for the most part, is the opposite. If somebody in the audience sneezes, I can count on it: I don't even have to look at Shiner; he'll have his handkerchief out. It's all about all of us in the room together.
Bill IrwinRead
I will tell you what Jeanne was like. She was like a piano in a country where everyone has had their hands cut off.
Angela CarterRead
If we doubt the power of literature and art to civilise, how come no one has ever been mugged by a person carrying a well-thumbed copy of 'Middlemarch' in his back pocket?
Howard JacobsonRead
One day you pick up the guitar and you feel like a great master, and the next day you feel like a fool. It’s because we’re different every day, but the guitar is always the same…beautiful.
Tommy EmmanuelRead
To create anything — whether a short story or a magazine profile or a film or a sitcom — is to believe, if only momentarily, you are capable of magic. These essays are about that magic — which is sometimes perilous, sometimes infectious, sometimes fragile, sometimes failed, sometimes infuriating, sometimes triumphant, and sometimes tragic. I went up there. I wrote. I tried to see.
Tom BissellRead