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Imaginary Quotes

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Imaginary Quotes

“Men of warm imaginations and towering thoughts are apt to overlook the goods of fortune which are near them, for something that glitters in the sight at a distance; to neglect solid and substantial happiness for what is showy and superficial; and to contemn that good which lies within their reach, for that which they are not capable of attaining. Hope calculates its schemes for a long and durable life; presses forward to imaginary points of bliss; grasps at impossibilities; and consequently very often ensnares men into beggary, ruin, and dishonour.”

MenLongHappinessLyingImaginationCapableSightPressesDistanceFortuneWarmRuinsBlissGoodsNeglectImaginarySchemesSuperficialImpossibilityGlitterShowyDishonourBeggary
Book:The Works of Joseph Addison: The Spectator, no. 315-635
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“God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners. Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong (sin boldly), but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides. We, however, ... are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth where justice will reign.”

WorldDoeEarthLife IsStrongHeavenChristJusticeSinStrongerCommitThis LifeSinnerRejoiceImaginaryReignLooking ForwardNew Earth
Author:Martin Luther
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“You know, whenever women make imaginary female kingdoms in literature, they are always very permissive, to use the jargon word, and easy and generous and self-indulgent, like the relationships between women when there are no men around. They make each other presents, and they have little feasts, and nobody punishes anyone else. This is the female way of going along when there are no men about or when men are not in the ascendant.”

KnowsMenWayLittlesSelfUseLiteratureEasyFemaleKingdomsGenerousImaginaryJargonSelf Indulgent
Book:Putting questions differently: interviews with Doris Lessing, 1964-1994
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“How few of us appreciate the fact that a very great deal of physical suffering in after life comes from bad mental training in childhood! I do not mean suffering of an imaginary kind; I mean disease which may entirely ruin a life which might have been of use to the world, and which surely would have been happier but for the lost health. Many a chronic invalid might have preserved his health had he been taught to use his brain properly when a child.”

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Author:Lyman Abbott
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“Avarice, the spur of industry, is so obstinate a passion, and works its way through so many real dangers and difficulties, that it is not likely to be scared by an imaginary danger, which is so small, that it scarcely admits of calculation. Commerce, therefore, in my opinion, is apt to decay in absolute governments, not because it is there less secure, but because it is less honourable.”

WayRealGovernmentPassionOpinionDangerIndustryDifficultyAbsolutesScaredSecureImaginaryDecayCommerceCalculationsAvariceSpursObstinate
Author:David Hume
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“In conscious life, we achieve some sense of ourselves as reasonably unified, coherent selves, and without this action would be impossible. But all this is merely at the 'imaginary' level of the ego, which is no more than the tip of the iceberg of the human subject known to psychoanalysis. The ego is function or effect of a subject which is always dispersed, never identical with itself, strung out along the chains of the discourses which constitute it.”

HumansSelfWould BeActionLevelsKnownImpossibleAchieveSubjectsEffectsEgoConsciousFunctionChainsImaginaryDiscourseIdenticalPsychoanalysisUnifiedIcebergTip Of The Iceberg
Book:Literary Theory: An Introduction
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“Revolutionary feminism embraces men who are able to change, who are capable of responding mutually in a subject-to-subject encounter where desire and fulfillment are in no way linked to coercive subjugation. This feminist vision of the sexual imaginary is the space few men seem able to enter.”

MenWaySeemsAbleDesireSpaceVisionFeminismSubjectsCapableEmbraceFeministFulfillmentRevolutionaryEncountersImaginaryLinkedRespondingSubjugation
Book:Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations
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“Rebellion against technology and civilization is real rebellion, a real attack on the values of the existing system. But the green anarchists, anarcho-primitivists, and so forth (The "GA Movement") have fallen under such heavy influence from the left that their rebellion against civilization has to great extent been neutralized. Instead of rebelling against the values of civilization, they have adopted many civilized values themselves and have constructed an imaginary picture of primitive societies that embodies these civilized values.”

RealValuesLeftTechnologyInfluenceMovementCivilizationGreenHeavyFallenRebellionCivilizedImaginaryPrimitiveAdoptedAnarchist
Author:Theodore Kaczynski
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“First of all, directing is an idea that you have of a total flow of images that are going on, which are incidentally actors, words, and objects in space. It's an idea you have of yourself, like the idea you have of your own personality which finds its best representation in the world in terms of specific flows of imaginary images. That's what directing is.”

WorldFirstsIdeasActorsTermSpaceObjectsPersonalityFlowImaginaryRepresentation
Author:Abraham Polonsky
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“Exceptions to the traditions of dumpy dignity and fake learnedness in law review writing are as rare as they are beautiful. Once in a while a Thomas Reed Powell gets away with an imaginary judicial opinion that gives a real twist to the lion's tail. Once in a while a Thurman Arnold forgets his footnotes as though to say that if people do not believe or understand him that is their worry and not his. But even such mild breaches of etiquette as these are tolerated gingerly and seldom, and are likely to be looked at a little askance by the writers' more pious brethren.”

PeopleIfsGivingWritingBelieveLittlesRealBeautifulLawForgetOpinionWorryTraditionDignityFakeExceptionGet AwayReviewsLionsImaginaryTailsTwistsEtiquetteIn-lawsJudicialPiousBrethrenReedsBreachFootnotes
Author:Fred Rodell
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“I tend to be a loner – I think a lot of social theorists are like that. On one level, the majority of the most important people to me are people who I have imaginary conversations with in the deep of the night: I'm often in conversation with Max Weber or Karl Marx or someone like that. Those are the people I'm closest to and that have had the most influence on me!”

PeopleThinkingImportantNightSocialLevelsInfluenceConversationMajorityImaginaryClosestMaxLonerTheoristsWeber
Author:George Ritzer
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“The highfalutin aims of democracy, whether real or imaginary, are always assumed to be identical with its achievements. This, of course, is sheer hallucination. Not one of those aims, not even the aim of giving every adult a vote, has been realized. It has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.”

MenGivingHas BeensMadeRealCoursesChristianityDemocracyWiseAchievementAdultsVoteAimImaginarySheerIdenticalHallucinations
Author:H. L. Mencken
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“Fancy what a game of chess would be if all the chessmen had passions and intellects, more or less small and cunning; if you were not only uncertain about your adversary's men, but a little uncertain also about your own. You would be especially likely to be beaten, if you depended arrogantly on your mathematical imagination, and regarded your passionate pieces with contempt. Yet this imaginary chess is easy compared with a game a man has to play against his fellow-men with other fellow-men for instruments.”

IfsMenLittlesPlayWould BePassionGamesEasyImaginationPiecesFellowsInstrumentsPassionateIntellectChessMathematicalFancyContemptHuman ConditionImaginaryUncertainBeatenCunningFellow ManAdversaries
Author:George Eliot
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“Evil, as evil, can never be chosen; and though evil is often the effect of our own choice, yet we never desire it but under the appearance of an imaginary good.”

DesireChoicesEvilEffectsAppearanceChosenImaginary
Book:Memoirs of the Life and Writings of (the Same), Continued to the Time of His Death by William Temple Franklin. - London, H. Colburn 1818
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“In our true blissful essence of mind is known that everything is alright forever and forever and forever...listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world, and you will remember the lesson you forgot, It is all one vast awakened thing. We were never really born, we will never really die. It has nothing to do with the imaginary idea of a personal self, other selves, many selves everywhere: Self is only an idea, a mortal idea. That which passes into everything is one thing. It's a dream already ended.”

WorldMindIdeasSelfDreamRememberDiesBornSilenceKnownForeverOne ThingLessonsIllusionEssenceMortalsImaginaryAwakenedAlright
Author:Jack Kerouac
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“Imaginary evils soon become real ones by indulging our reflections on them; as he who in a melancholy fancy sees something like a face on the wall or the wainscot can, by two or three touches with a lead pencil, make it look visible, and agreeing with what he fancied.”

LooksTwoRealFacesThreeEvilWallReflectionFancyVisibleMelancholyImaginaryPencilsReal Ones
Book:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, D.D. ...: With Notes, Historical and Critical
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“Pride differs in many things from vanity, and by gradations that never blend, although they may be somewhat indistinguishable. Pride may perhaps be termed a too high opinion of ourselves founded on the overrating of certain qualities that we do actually possess; whereas vanity is more easily satisfied, and can extract a feeling of self-complacency from qualifications that are imaginary.”

MaySelfFeelingsCertainQualityOpinionPrideSatisfiedVanityImaginaryComplacencyQualifications
Book:Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
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“Learn to be good readers, which is perhaps a more difficult thing than you imagine. Learn to be discriminative in your reading; to read faithfully, and with your best attention, all kinds of things which you have a real interest in,--a real, not an imaginary,--and which you find to be really fit for what you are engaged in.”

KindRealReadingDifficultInterestAttentionImagineReaderFitBe GoodAll KindsEngagedBeing RealImaginaryDifficult Things
Book:The Works of Thomas Carlyle
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“Does a man reproach thee for being proud or ill-natured, envious or conceited, ignorant or detracting? Consider with thyself whether his reproaches are true. If they are not, consider that thou art not the person whom he reproaches, but that he reviles an imaginary being, and perhaps loves what thou really art, though he hates what thou appearest to be.”

IfsMenPersonsDoeArtHateProudIllIgnorantTheeImaginaryBe ProudThyselfEnviousReproachConceitedPerhaps Love
Author:Epictetus
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“I didn't have an imaginary childhood friend, but I did one day imagine somehow tiny green men, and they were only tiny and green because my brother had a ton of toy soldier toys that came on a skateboard plank type of thing, and I just envisioned in this car driving to church with my mom, they were there.”

MenChurchImagineChildhoodCarBrotherMomTypeOne DayGreenSoldierMy MomTinyDrivingMy BrotherImaginaryToysChildhood FriendCar DrivingToy Soldiers
Author:Jim Parsons
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“Once you realize that the world is your own projection, you are free of it. You need not free yourself of a world that does not exist, except in your own imagination! However is the picture, beautiful or ugly, you are painting it and you are not bound by it. Realize that there is nobody to force it on you, that it is due to the habit of taking the imaginary to be real. See the imaginary as imaginary and be free of fear.”

WorldNeedsDoeRealBeautifulForceFearRealizingImaginationPaintingHabitBoundsUglyDuesBeing RealImaginaryProjectionFree Yourself
Author:Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
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“Poverty is, except where there is an actual want of food and raiment, a thing much more imaginary than real. The shame of poverty--the shame of being thought poor--it is a great and fatal weakness, though arising in this country, from the fashion of the times themselves.”

WantRealCountryPoorPovertyFashionWeaknessShameImaginary
Book:Advice to Young Men - And (Incidentally) to Young Women in the Middle and Higher Ranks of Life. In a Series of Letters, Addressed to a Youth, a Bachelor, a Lover, a Husband, a Father, a Citizen, or a Subject.
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“If we listen to our self-love, we shall estimate our lot less by what it is than by what it is not; shall dwell upon its hindrances and be blind to its possibilities; and, comparing it only with imaginary lives, shall indulge in flattering dreams of what we should do if we had but power, and give if we had but wealth, and be if we had no temptations.”

IfsGivingShouldSelfDreamWealthPossibilitySelf LoveBlindTemptationCompareImaginaryIndulgeFlatteringIndulge InHindranceImaginary Life
Book:Tides of the Spirit: Selections from the Writings of James Martineau
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“There is no wrong suffering. There is imaginary, sham, feigned, simulated, pretended suffering. But the assertion that someone suffers for the right or wrong reason presupposes a divine, all-penetrating judgment able to distinguish historically obsolete forms of suffering from those in our time, instead of leaving this decision to the sufferers themselves.”

ReasonAbleFormSufferingDecisionDivineJudgmentLeavingOur TimeImaginaryAssertionObsoleteSufferersWrong Reasons
Book:Suffering
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“The hardest thing about being a guy is that women don't accept that you really are just a simple, pathetic, labrador retriever-like creature. That we live in a world were women actually expect you to think thoughtful thoughts, and have real emotions, which we don't have. Having to try to live up to the imaginary ideal that women have of what men are, instead of just being what you are, which is just a pathetic creature, but still.”

ThinkingMenWorldTryingStillsRealGuySimpleEmotionAcceptingCreaturesIdealsHardestThoughtfulImaginaryJust BeingHardest ThingPatheticRetrieversReal EmotionLabradors
Author:Dave Barry
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“I have laid the stick that connects people together. Now it is up to you, your generation and the generations to come, to build upon that stick a bridge that will ensure the free sharing of information and teaching between the two peoples until the day we become united again as a single people, as we were once before; before men separated us with their imaginary political boundaries of today's Polynesia and Micronesia.”

PeopleMenTwoTodayTogetherPoliticalUnitedGenerationsTeachingInformationSticksBoundariesBridgesImaginaryUp To YouSingle PeoplePolynesia
Author:Mau Piailug
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“Life in a small town is like an intricately plotted novel, and even though I had read every book in the public library by the time I was fourteen, I found the real people around me saying and doing far more interesting things than did the imaginary book characters.”

PeopleBookRealCharacterFoundInterestingNovelTownsLibraryImaginarySmall TownInteresting ThingsFourteenPublic LibrarySaying And DoingBook Characters
Book:Maxine Cheshire, reporter
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“In this twenty-first century, there's no one like Sharona Muir who can write, in bright accurate language, animals real or imaginary in an updated bestiary that riffs on evolution, extinction, and what it means to be human among other species. We need this view, and you'll be right there with her on every page of Invisible Beasts.”

NeedsWritingFirstsHumansMeanRealLanguageAnimalViewsCenturyEvolutionPagesTwentiesSpeciesInvisibleBeastImaginaryAccurateExtinctionWhat It Means To Be Human
Author:John Felstiner
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