Quotessence
Home / Topics / Imagination Quotes

Imagination Quotes

Browse 8070 quotes about Imagination.

Related topics

WorldIfsThinkingMy ImaginationPeopleMenMindWayKnowsRealityArtHumansImagineWritingIdeasUseRealDreamCreativityChildrenGivingWantNeedsMayBookKindMemoriesWellsShouldBelieveStoriesHeartFactsCreativeMeanLittlesDoeFeelsPersonsTryingCharacterFormImportantInspirationalEyeFirstsLooksReasonFantasyArtistMadeLifeFeelingsVisionI CanMomentsDifferentLongEnoughScienceReadingSeemsMightSelfAblePastPlayStillsFictionHuman ImaginationMatterHas BeensLiteratureSometimesSoulWholeLimitsRunningDesireEndsHappensActorsPossibilityBodyYearsForceLyingOrderReaderKidsBeautifulAbilityBrainFilmHelpingPoetTurnsLife IsSpiritTwomore

Imagination Quotes

“All my desires are born of my dreams. And I have proven my love with words. To what fantastic creatures have I entrusted myself, in what dolorous and ravishing world has my imagination enclosed me? I am sure of having been loved in the most mysterious of domains, my own. The language of my love does not belong to human language, my human body does not touch the flesh of my love. My amorous imagination has always been constant and high enough so that nothing could attempt to convince me of error.”

WorldHumansDoeEnoughDreamBodyDesireLanguageBornImaginationMy OwnCreaturesConstantErrorsFleshMysteriousFantasticConvinceProvenDomainMy ImaginationHuman BodyHuman LanguageAmorous
Author:Paul Eluard
Create image

“Each is liable to panic, which is exactly, the terror of ignorance surrendered to the imagination. Knowledge is the encourager, knowledge that takes fear out of the heart, knowledge and use, which is knowledge in practice. They can conquer who believe they can. It is he who has done the deed once who does not shrink from attempting again.”

BelieveHeartDoeDoneUseImaginationKnowledgePracticeIgnoranceTerrorDeedsConquerPanicShrinksAttemptingLiableEncouragers
Book:Society and Solitude: Twelve Chapters
Create image

“A symbol is indeed the only possible expression of some invisible essence, a transparent lamp about a spiritual flame; while allegory is one of many possible representations of an embodied thing, or familiar principle, and belongs to fancy and not to imagination: the one is a revelation, the other an amusement.”

SpiritualImaginationPrinciplesExpressionEssenceInvisibleFamiliarSymbolsFlamesFancyRevelationsRepresentationLampsAmusementTransparentSymbolismAllegory
Book:The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume IV: Early Essays
Create image

“The crude commercialism of America, its materialising spirit, its indifference to the poetical side of things, and its lack of imagination and of high unattainable ideals, are entirely due to that country having adopted for its national hero a man who, according to his own confession, was incapable of telling a lie, and it is not too much to say that the story of George Washington and the cherry-tree has done more harm, and in a shorter space of time, than any other moral tale in the whole of literature.”

MenCountryDoneWholeStoriesAmericaSpiritLyingLiteratureSidesImaginationSpaceMoralToo MuchTreeHeroIdealsDuesHarmTalesIndifferenceConfessionIncapableAdoptedCrudeCherriesUnattainableCommercialismCherry Trees
Book:The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde
Create image

“Every one of the numberless religions and religious sects views the Deity after its own fashion; and, fathering on the unknown its own speculations, it enforces these purely human outgrowths of overheated imagination on the ignorant masses, and calls them "revelation." As the dogmas of every religion and sect often differ radically, they cannot be true. And if untrue, what are they?”

IfsHumansImaginationReligiousViewsFashionMassIgnorantBeing TrueRevelationsDogmaSpeculationDeitiesSectsUntrueFatheringReligious SectsIgnorant Masses
Book:Isis Unveiled
Create image

“Fantasy is a product of thought, Imagination of sensibility. If the thinking, discursive mind turns to speculation, the result isFantasy; if, however, the sensitive, intuitive mind turns to speculation, the result is Imagination. Fantasy may be visionary, but it is cold and logical. Imagination is sensuous and instinctive. Both have form, but the form of Fantasy is analogous to Exposition, that of Imagination to Narrative.”

IfsThinkingMindMayFormTurnsImaginationResultsFantasyProductsColdNarrativeSensitiveLogicalSensibilitySpeculationIntuitiveVisionariesSensuous
Author:Herbert Read
Create image

“An enormous amount of art and literature is erotic in the sense that it stimulates vague sexual emotions, but it has no pornographic intention or effect because "it leaves everything to the imagination." The consumer has to invent his own images, and it is felt, I do not know with what justification, that there is no harm in this.”

KnowsArtLiteratureFeltImaginationEmotionEffectsAmountIntentionHarmEnormousConsumersJustificationVaguePornographyErotic
Book:To Hell With Culture
Create image

“Religion and anger has gone together a lot, historically. My father, being very religious and angry, was trying to reconcile the ideas of love and forgiveness with damage in his own heart. We historically create God in the image of someone who will redeem us, or someone who has damaged us. A lot of my imaginations of God was a projection of my own damage because of my father. God is good but he has a lot of expectations, of which I have failed -- just like my dad. But I don't think it's truthful to create God as a projection of either our damage or our altruism.”

ThinkingTryingHeartIdeasTogetherFatherImaginationReligiousMy OwnGoneDadExpectationsAngryMy DadDamageTruthfulAltruismMy ImaginationProjectionReconcileLove And Forgiveness
Author:William P. Young
Create image

“The empire of Saturnus is gone by; Lord of the secret birth of things is he; Within the lap of earth, and in the depths Of the imagination dominates; And his are all things that eschew the light. The time is o'er of brooding and contrivance, For Jupiter, the lustrous, lordeth now, And the dark work, complete of preparation, He draws by force into the realm of light. Now must we hasten on to action, ere The scheme, and most auspicious positure Parts o'er my head, and takes once more its flight, For the heavens journey still, and adjourn not.”

StillsLightActionEarthForceHeavenImaginationDarkSecretLordGoneJourneyBirthDrawsAll ThingsDepthFlightPreparationRealmsEmpiresSchemesLapBroodingJupiter
Author:Friedrich Schiller
Create image

“A perfect historian must possess an imagination sufficiently powerful to make his narrative affecting and picturesque; yet he must control it so absolutely as to content himself with the materials which he finds, and to refrain from supplying deficiencies by additions of his own. He must be a profound and ingenious reasoner; yet he must possess sufficient self-command to abstain from casting his facts in the mould of his hypothesis.”

SelfFactsImaginationPerfectPowerfulMaterialsProfoundCommandNarrativeSufficientHistorianHypothesisCastingRefrainDeficiencyIngeniousMouldPicturesque
Author:Thomas B. Macaulay
Create image

“Sculpture and painting are very justly called liberal arts; a lively and strong imagination, together with a just observation, being absolutely necessary to excel in either; which, in my opinion, is by no means the case of music, though called a liberal art, and now in Italy placed even above the other two--a proof of the decline of that country.”

MeanArtTwoCountryTogetherArtistStrongImaginationMusicOpinionCasesPaintingMusicianProofObservationDeclineSculptureLivelyLiberal Arts
Author:Lord Chesterfield
Create image

“It seems to me that your doctor [Tronchin] is more of a philosopher than a physician. As for me, I much prefer a doctor who is anoptimist and who gives me remedies that will improve my health. Philosophical consolations are, after all, useless against real ailments. I know only two kinds of sickness--physical and moral: all the others are purely in the imagination.”

KnowsGivingKindTwoRealSeemsImaginationMoralDoctorsGive MePhilosophicalMedicinePhilosopherUselessSicknessRemedyPhysiciansConsolationDoctor WhoAilments
Author:Lord Chesterfield
Create image

“Used with due abstinence, hope acts as a healthful tonic; intemperately indulged, as an enervating opiate. The visions of future triumph, which at first animate exertion, if dwelt upon too intently, will usurp the place of the stern reality; and, noble objects will be contemplated, not for their own inherent worth, but on account of the day-dreams they engender. Thus hope, aided by imagination, makes one man a hero, another a somnambulist, and a third a lunatic; while it renders them all enthusiasts.”

IfsMenFirstsDreamRealityUsedHopeImaginationVisionObjectsHeroThirdsAccountsDuesNobleTriumphOne ManInherentLunaticExertionAbstinenceOpiates
Author:James Fitzjames Stephen
Create image

“A fiction which is designed to inculcate an object wholly alien to the imagination sins against the first law of art; and if a writer of fiction narrow his scope to particulars so positive as polemical controversy in matters ecclesiastical, political or moral, his work may or may not be an able treatise, but it must be a very poor novel.”

IfsFirstsMayArtMatterAbleLawPoliticalImaginationSinPoorFictionMoralNovelObjectsAliensControversyScope
Author:Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Create image

“The Spy Who Came in from the Cold was the work of a wayward imagination brought to the end of its tether by political disgust and personal confusion. Fifty years on, I don't associate the book with anything that ever happened to me, save for one wordless encounter at London airport when a worn-out, middle-aged military kind of man in a stained raincoat slammed a handful of mixed foreign change on to the bar and in gritty Irish accents ordered himself as much Scotch as it would buy. In that moment, Alec Leamas was born. Or so my memory, not always a reliable informant, tells me.”

MenYearsKindBookEndsMomentsPoliticalBornImaginationMemoriesHappenedMiddleMilitaryColdLondonBarsConfusionEncountersFiftyThat MomentDisgustingWornAccentsAssociatesSpyAirportsHandfulMiddle AgedWorn OutScotchInformantsIrish Accent
Author:John le Carre
Create image

“He will always see the most beauty whose affections are the warmest and most exercised, whose imagination is the most powerful, and who has most accustomed himself to attend to the objects by which he is surrounded.”

ImaginationPowerfulObjectsAffectionMost PowerfulAccustomed
Book:Essay on beauty, by Francis, lord Jeffrey; and Essays on the nature and principles of taste, by A. Alison. Repr. of the 5th ed
Create image

“The power of reading a great book is that you start thinking like the author. For those magical moments while you are immersed in the forests of Arden, you are William Shakespeare; while you are shipwrecked on Treasure Island, you are Robert Louis Stevenson; while you are communing with nature at Walden, you are Henry David Thoreau. You start to think like they think, feel like they feel, and use imagination as they would. Their references become your own, and you carry these with you long after you've turned the last page.”

ThinkingFeelsLongBookMomentsUseLastsReadingImaginationPagesTreasureForestsIslandsGreat BookMagical MomentsTreasure IslandDavid Thoreau
Author:Tony Robbins
Create image