Looking for Inspiration

We've all seen those lists 'Who's the greatest player of all time' but what does that really mean. Opinions are often reached by varying parameters and often include players that have never been World Champion. Of course incumbant World Champions have often avoided playing the best players of their time, something which continues to this present day, so that increases the problem of defining the 'greatest'.

What I want to suggest here, is that rather than looking for the greatest players, that what we should look for is the most inspirational. In that case would any list be different to those pertaining to the greatest.

I study a fair few games during a weeks online activity, nowhere near enough to greatly improve, but what I need to do is study games that keep me inspired and in a busy family life keep me interested in the game of chess. So finding the right players to study is quite important for me to keep this passion for the game alive.

Yet again there are a number of quick draws at the British Champs (1 in 7 moves another in 9), I would hardly call this inspiring chess. So who should I study? The players I do like in particular are Kasparov, Alekhine, Spassky, Keres, Tal and Smyslov. Is there a pattern here, and given those names are there others I should be looking at. Some may say, "surely you must like Capablanca" the fact is that whilst his endgames are superb, I don't consider them inspiring. "What about Fischer?", no thanks, the hype around him bores me to tears and so many of his 'greatest' performances were against poorer players IMO, whilst others were intimidating performances given with the political muscle of cold war USA behind him.

Any thoughts let me know.