Creative Discontent

• The splendid discontent of God / With Chaos, made the world…. — Ella Wheeler Wilcox

• The father of every good work is discontent, and its mother is diligence. — Lajos Kassak

• It is right to be contented with what we have, never with what we are. — MacKintosh

• Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I’ll show you a failure. — Thomas Edison

• What you are must always displease you, if you would attaint to that which you are not. — St. Augustine

• My only anxiety is: How can I be of use in the world, how can I serve some purpose and be of any good, how can I learn more and study profoundly certain subjects? — Vincent Van Gogh

• Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression. The chasm is never completely bridged. — Issac Bashevis Singer

• Strange, I feel as if up to now I had written no more than a few notes. — Beethoven, on his death bed

• Unsatisfied desire is in itself more desirable than any other satisfaction. — C. S. Lewis

• Art demands of us that we shall not stand still. — Beethoven

• I have offended God and mankind because my work didn’t reach the quality it should have. — Leonardo da Vinci

• He who comes up to his own idea of greatness must always have had a very low standard of it in his own mind. — William Hazlitt

• It’s remarkable how large part ignorance plays in making a man satisfied with himself. — Herbert V. Prochnow

• If you get used to being satisfied, you’ll be endlessly dissatisfied. Find satisfaction in dissatisfaction and your mind will be at peace. — Zen poem

• He who feeds on leaves knows not the flavor of fruit. — Indian (Tamil) Proverb

• The lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house as a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master. — Kahlil Gibran

• I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one’s business on earth…. I like a state of continual becoming, with a goal in front and not behind. — George Bernard Shaw