Imagination Quotes
To reduce the imagination to a state of slavery --even though it would mean the elimination of what is commonly called happiness --is to betray all sense of absolute justice within oneself. Imagination alone offers me some intimation of what can be.
My subject enlarges itself, becomes methodized and define, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it, like a fine picture or a beautiful statute, at a glance.
Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, I hear them all at once. What a delight this is! All this inventing, this producing, takes place in a pleasing, lively dream.
Imagination is the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow.
Memory and imagination help [a man] as he works. Not only his own thoughts, but the thoughts of the men of past ages guide his hands; and, as part of the human race, he creates.
But thou, that did'st appear so fair
To fond imagination,
Dost rival in the light of day
Her delicate creation.
I build nought els but castles in the ayre.
It is only in France that one builds castles in Spain.
Whatever one man is capable of conceiving, other men will be able to achieve.
Imagination is not thought, neither is fancy reflection; thought paceth like a hoary sage, but imagination hath wings as an eagle.
An uncommon degree of imagination constitutes poetical genius.
The imagination never dies.
A vile imagination, once indulged, gets the key of our minds, and can get in again very easily, whether we will or no, and can so return as to bring seven other spirits with it more wicked than itself; and what may follow no one knows.
Reason respects the differences, and imagination the similitudes of things.
Look what thy soul holds dear, imagine it
To lie that way thou goest, not whence thou com'st.
Suppose the singing birds musicians,
The grass whereon thou tread'st the presence strewed,
The flowers fair ladies, and thy steps no more
Than a delight measure or a dance;
For gnarling sorrow hath less power to bite
The man that mocks at it and sets it light.