

“The emphasis on shifting essences, uncertainty, and fiercely contrasting opposite states was, of course, neither new nor unique to Byron. He and the other Romantic poets, however, took the ideas and emotions to a particularly intense extreme. Shelley's belief that poetry "marries exultation and horror, grief and pleasure, eternity and change," and that it "subdues to union, under its light yoke, all irreconcilable things," was in sympathy not only with the views of Byron but those of Keats as well. "Negative capability," wrote Keats, exists "when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching out after fact & reason." The "poetical Character," he said:
has no self-it is every thing and nothing-It has no character-it enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated-It has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen. What shocks the virtuous philosopher, delights the camelion Poet. It does no harm from its relish of the dark side of things any more than from its taste for the bright one; because they both end in speculation.”
― Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament
has no self-it is every thing and nothing-It has no character-it enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated-It has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen. What shocks the virtuous philosopher, delights the camelion Poet. It does no harm from its relish of the dark side of things any more than from its taste for the bright one; because they both end in speculation.”
― Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament

“A ghost is a ghost, whether it exists in a machine or an organic.”
― Armageddon
― Armageddon

“Guilford concluded that creative individuals were also far more likely to exhibit "divergent" rather than "convergent" thinking:
In tests of convergent thinking there is almost always one conclusion or answer that is regarded as unique, and thinking is to be channeled or controlled in the direction of that answer....In divergent thinking, on the other hand, there is much searching about or going off in various directions. This is most obviously seen when there is no unique conclusion. Divergent thinking...is characterized...as being less goal-bound. There is freedom to go off in different directions....Rejecting the old solution and striking out in some direction is necessary, and the resourceful organism will more probably succeed.”
― Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament
In tests of convergent thinking there is almost always one conclusion or answer that is regarded as unique, and thinking is to be channeled or controlled in the direction of that answer....In divergent thinking, on the other hand, there is much searching about or going off in various directions. This is most obviously seen when there is no unique conclusion. Divergent thinking...is characterized...as being less goal-bound. There is freedom to go off in different directions....Rejecting the old solution and striking out in some direction is necessary, and the resourceful organism will more probably succeed.”
― Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament

“So it became,
the law of universe,
to have the,
profoundest,
of the words,
cloaked in the,
darkest of the masks.”
―
the law of universe,
to have the,
profoundest,
of the words,
cloaked in the,
darkest of the masks.”
―

“The simultaneous existence and shared residence of such opposite moods and feelings is well-illustrated by Franz Schubert's assertion that whenever he sat down to write songs of love he wrote songs of pain, and whenever he sat down to write songs of pain he wrote songs of love.”
― Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament
― Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament
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