Careful Words

inspiration (n.)

  It has all the contortions of the sibyl without the inspiration.

Edmund Burke (1729-1797): Prior's Life of Burke.

  Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822): A Defence of Poetry.

  The gloomy companions of a disturbed imagination, the melancholy madness of poetry without the inspiration.

Letters of Junius. Letter vii. To Sir W. Draper.