Daily Inspiration Quote by Ninette de Valois

"There's nothing in the world that isn't good, bad, and indifferent" lands like a dancer's correction: brisk, unsentimental, and designed to sharpen your attention. Ninette de Valois built institutions out of an art form that survives on judgment - not only of taste, but of bodies, timing, discipline, and risk. Her line refuses the comforting binary where things are either triumphs or failures. In her worldview, everything carries all three charges at once, and maturity is the ability to hold them without flinching.

The intent feels practical, almost managerial. De Valois isn't offering a philosophy seminar; she's training perception. In the studio, a rehearsal can be "good" because it reveals what's possible, "bad" because it exposes weakness or injury, and "indifferent" because some details simply don't matter to the performance. That third category is the sneaky one: it gives permission to stop catastrophizing. Not every mistake is a moral crisis. Not every critique is a personal attack. Some notes are just noise.

The subtext is a quiet rebuke to purity culture, the urge to sort people and experiences into clean piles. Coming from a dancer who lived through war, austerity, and the long grind of building British ballet, it reads as hard-won immunity to melodrama. She's also smuggling in a survival tactic for artists: the world will contain beauty, harm, and boredom simultaneously. Your job is to keep working anyway, and to develop the taste to know which of the three you are dealing with in real time.