quotations about imagination
People speak of imagination with praise, as an attainment or attribute of great men whose ability and power have shaped destinies of nations and the world; and the same people will speak of it as being the characteristic of others who are not practical, who have vagrant fancies and weak minds; that the visions of such are of no use, their dreams never materialize, they expect what never happens; and, they are looked on with pity or contempt.
H. W. PERCIVAL
"Imagination", The Word
What we know about who we are comes from stories. It's the agents of our imagination who really shape who we are.
CHRIS ABANI
Technology, Oct. 2007
As the imagination is set to look into the invisible and immaterial, it seems to attract something of their vitality; and though it can give nothing to the body to redeem it from years, it can give to the soul that freshness of youth in old age which is even more beautiful than youth in the young.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Imagination will continue to sway destinies. It will carry some up into the heights and others into the depths. It may make or unmake men.
H. W. PERCIVAL
"Imagination", The Word
By the imagination, by its flattering brush, the cold skeleton of reason takes on living and ruddy flesh, by the imagination the sciences flourish, the arts are adorned, the wood speaks, the echoes sigh, the rocks weep, marble breathes, and all inanimate objects gain life. It is imagination again which adds the piquant charm of voluptuousness to the tenderness of an amorous heart; which makes tenderness bud in the study of the philosopher and of the dusty pedant, which, in a word, creates scholars as well as orators and poets.
JULIEN OFFRAY DE LA METTRIE
Man a Machine
Let your mind be hospitable to lofty ideals and noble aspirations. See only the good and beautiful and there will be no power in the universe that can keep these things from manifesting themselves in your life and experience. Never let your imagination dwell in undesirable things that you do not want to come into your experience.
WALTER MATTHEWS
"Imagination", Human Life from Many Angles
Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire; you will what you imagine; and at last you create what you will.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Back to Methuselah
Everything that happens is at least one dimension smaller than you've imagined it to be.
WOLFGANG HILDESHEIMER
Nightpiece
I believe imagination is our premium resource. We carry within us the lost diversity this planet needs. Engaging our individual expression, using imagination to inform, expand, and guide us, we can begin to return to Eden.
SUZANNE BETH STINNETT
Little Shifts
This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone.
ROD SERLING
The Twilight Zone
The imagination is the secret and marrow of civilization. It is the very eye of faith.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Nothing is worse than what we can imagine.
J. M. COETZEE
Waiting for the Barbarians
Life is an exploration of the potential of the world to be a screen onto which our fantasy and imaginative life can shine. Happiness comes from seeing life for what you imagine it to be.
COLM O'CONNOR
The Courage to Be Happy
For me, reason is the natural organ of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.
C. S. LEWIS
Selected Literary Essays
I find that few men of imagination are not worth my attention. Their ideas may be wrong, even foolish, but their methods often repay a close study.... The different drummer often beats a fruitful tempo.
STEPHEN JAY GOULD
"Crazy Old Randolph Kirkpatrick"