quotations about imagination
The imagination may be compared to Adam's dream--he awoke and found it truth.
JOHN KEATS
letter to Benjamin Bailey, Nov. 22, 1817
A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality.
KARL MARX
Capital
Thought paceth like a hoary sage, but imagination hath wings as an eagle.
MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER
Proverbial Philosophy
Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.
TERRY PRATCHETT
Seriously Funny: The Endlessly Quotable Terry Pratchett
I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death.
ROBERT FULGHUM
All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
The imagination is the power that enables us to perceive the normal in the abnormal, the opposite of chaos in chaos.
WALLACE STEVENS
The Necessary Angel
Imagination is the air of mind.
PHILIP JAMES BAILEY
Festus
Indulge your imagination in every possible flight.
JANE AUSTEN
Pride and Prejudice
We certainly have at present the dismal situation that the most imaginative men are directed by a group, the top managers, who are among the least.
PAUL GOODMAN
Growing Up Absurd
The imagination is the spur of delights ... all depends upon it, it is the mainspring of everything; now, is it not by means of the imagination one knows joy? Is it not of the imagination that the sharpest pleasures arise?
MARQUIS DE SADE
Philosophy in the Bedroom
It is worth repeating that powerful imagination is not false outward vision, but intense inward representation, and a creative energy constantly fed by susceptibility to the veriest minutiæ of experience, which it reproduces and constructs in fresh and fresh wholes; not the habitual confusion of provable fact with the fictions of fancy and transient inclination, but a breadth of ideal association which informs every material object, every incidental fact with far-reaching memories and storied residues of passion, bringing into new light the less obvious relations to human existence.
GEORGE ELIOT
Theophrastus Such
Imagination is a force of nature. Is this not enough to make a person full of ecstasy? Imagination, imagination, imagination. It converts to actual. It sustains, it alters, it redeems!
SAUL BELLOW
Henderson the Rain King
That which men suppose the imagination to be, and to do, is often frivolous enough and mischievous enough; but that which God meant it to be in the mental economy is not merely noble, but supereminent. It is the distinguishing element in all refinement. It is the secret and marrow of civilization. It is the very eye of faith. The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
The only faculty by which we can bring the invisible near, is the imagination. Beyond that which the eye sees, beyond that which the ear hears, is a great region in which life is freer and more transcendently glorious than this. The imagination in us finds its field in trying to grasp that great fact.
REUEN THOMAS
Thoughts for the Thoughtful
Nothing is more frightful than imagination without taste.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
Springing from the provinces and principalities of the unconscious, imagination takes us from what we know to the infinite realm of what we do not know.
WILLIAM HOFFMAN & LEO FURCHT
The Biologist's Imagination
Everything you can imagine is real.
ANONYMOUS
All our other faculties seem to have the brown touch of earth upon them, but the imagination carries the very livery of heaven, and is God's self in the soul.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Small towns harbor small imaginations.
STEPHEN KING
Under the Dome
Let us leave pretty women to men with no imagination.
MARCEL PROUST
The Captive & The Fugitive