Selected imagination quotes

1. When the imagination sleeps, words are emptied of their meaning: a deaf population absent-mindedly registers the condemnation of a man. ... there is no other solution but to speak out and show the obscenity hidden under the verbal cloak.

2. I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.

3. I believe in intuition and inspiration. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.

4. The soul never thinks without a picture.

5. The things I fear may all be imaginary, so what I fear most is my imagination.

6. What could possibly be more fantastic than reality?

7. Those who are clever in imagination are far more pleased with themselves than prudent men could reasonably be.

8. Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.

9. I was a weird little kid. I was very irritable, bored, frustrated. I felt my imagination bubbling inside my head without having any way to express itself. Given a crayon and paper, I would not draw a train or a house. I would draw these monsters, beasts and demons.

10. To tell the truth, the chariot was an astonishing sight to behold, because I had polished the steel of my flying house so carefully that it reflected the sunlight on all sides. It was so bright and dazzling that I thought, myself, that I had been carried away in a chariot of fire.

11. Poetry is what Milton saw when he went blind.

12. They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.

13. I would give ten years off the beginning of my life to see, only once, Tyrannosaurus rex come rearing up from the elms of Central Park, a Morgan police horse screaming in its jaws. We can never have enough of nature.

14. We should not allow ourselves to believe that writers like Poe have more imagination than those who are content with describing things as they really are. It is surely easier to invent striking situations in this way than to tread the beaten track which intelligent minds have followed throughout the centuries.

15. The human mind is inspired enough when it comes to inventing horrors; it is when it tries to invent a Heaven that it shows itself cloddish.

16. An idea is salvation by imagination.

17. It always amuses me that the biggest praise for my work comes for the imagination, while the truth is that there's not a single line in all my work that does not have a basis in reality. The problem is that Caribbean reality resembles the wildest imagination.

18. A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream.

19. I am a dreamer of words, of written words. I think I am reading; a word stops me. I leave the page. The syllables of the word begin to move around. Stressed accents begin to invert. The word abandons its meaning like an overload which is too heavy and prevents dreaming. Then words take on other meanings as if they had the right to be young. And the words wander away, looking in the nooks and crannies of vocabulary for new company, bad company.

20. Man is an imagining being.

21. Literary imagination is an aesthetic object offered by a writer to a lover of books.

22. One must always maintain one's connection to the past and yet ceaselessly pull away from it. To remain in touch with the past requires a love of memory. To remain in touch with the past requires a constant imaginative effort.

23. A novel is what you dream in your night sleep. A novel is not waking thoughts although it is written and thought with waking thoughts. But really a novel goes as dreams go in sleeping at night and some dreams are like anything and some dreams are like something and some dreams change and some dreams are quiet and some dreams are not. And some dreams are just what any one would do only a little different always just a little different and that is what a novel is.

24. Lonely children often have imaginary playmates but I was never lonely; rather, I was solitary, and wanted no company at all other than books and movies, and my own imagination.

25. He was dancing to some music No one else had ever heard He'd speak in unknown languages She would translate every word And then when the world was laughing At his castles in the sky She'd hold him in her body Till he once again could fly.

26. Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything Godlike about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything.

27. Whatever doesn't really happen is dreamed at night. It happens to one if it doesn't happen to another, tomorrow if not today, or a century hence if not next year.

28. Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.

29. Imagination is the key to my lyrics. The rest is painted with a little science fiction.

30. Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.

31. A poet soaring in the high reason of his fancies, with his garland and singing robes about him.

32. In general, when the imagination is at all noble, it is irresistible, and therefore those who can at all resist it ought to resist it. Be a plain topographer if you possibly can; if Nature meant you to be anything else, she will force you to it; but never try to be a prophet.

33. An unimaginative person can neither be reverent nor kind.

34. Writing is nothing more than a guided dream.

35. I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.

36. Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality. I have been for many years a teacher of languages. It is an occupation which at length becomes fatal to whatever share of imagination, observation, and insight an ordinary person may be heir to. To a teacher of languages there comes a time when the world is but a place of many words and man appears a mere talking animal not much more wonderful than a parrot.

37. He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet.

38. Imagination is the eye of the soul.

39. Personality is more important than beauty, but imagination is more important than both of them.

40. The poet is in command of his fantasy, while it is exactly the mark of the neurotic that he is possessed by his fantasy.

41. Adelantase mas la imaginacion que la vista, y el engano, que entra de ordinario por el oido, viene a salir por los ojos.

42. He hath consumed a whole night in lying looking to his great toe, about which he hath seen Tartars and Turks, Romans and Carthaginians, fight in his imagination.

43. The wisest reason takes as her own principles those which the imagination of man has everywhere rashly introduced.

44. When performing the movements, always use your imagination. Picture your adversary attacking, and use Jeet Kune-Do techniques in response to this imagined attack. As these techniques become more innate, new meaning will begin to emerge and better techniques can be formulated.

45. Imagination: 'Many of our scientific realities have been born from our hopeful vision, will and emotional determination; forged from fantasy with the tools of reason, logic and science serving only as the mold into which the molten fruition of our minds are poured.'

46. Imagination: 'The realities of the world seldom measure up to the sublime designs of human imagination.'

47. The moment you give me a locomotive and things like that to play with, as a rule I find some way of getting laughs with it.

48. C'est l'imagination qui a enseigne a l'homme le sens moral de la couleur, du contour, du son et du parfum. Elle a cree, au commencement du monde, l'analogie et la metaphore. Elle decompose toute la creation, et, avec les materiaux amasses et disposes suivant des regles dont on ne peut trouver l'origine que dans le plus profond de l'ame, elle cree un monde nouveau, elle produit la sensation du neuf. Comme elle a cree le monde (on peut bien dire cela, je crois, meme dans un sens religieux), il est juste qu'elle le gouverne.

49. L'imagination est la reine du vrai, et le possible est une des provinces du vrai. Elle est positivement apparentee avec l'infini. Sans elle, toutes les facultes, si solides ou si aiguisees qu'elles soient, sont comme si elles n'etaient pas, tandis que la faiblesse de quelques facultes secondaires, excitees par une imagination vigoureuse, est un malheur secondaire. Aucune ne peut se passer d'elle, et elle peut suppleer quelques-unes. Souvent ce que celles-ci cherchent et ne trouvent qu'apres les essais successifs de plusieurs methodes non adaptees a la nature des choses, fierement et simplement elle le devine. Enfin elle joue un role puissant meme dans la morale; car, permettez-moi d'aller jusque-la, qu'est-ce que la vertu sans imagination?

50. A coup sur, cet homme, tel que je l'ai depeint, ce solitaire doue d'une imagination active, toujours voyageant a travers le grand desert d'hommes, a un but plus eleve que celui d'un pur flaneur, un but plus general, autre que le plaisir fugitif de la circonstance. Il cherche ce quelque chose qu'on nous permettra d'appeler la modernite; car il ne se presente pas de meilleur mot pour exprimer l'idee en question. Il s'agit, pour lui, de degager de la mode ce qu'elle peut contenir de poetique dans l'historique, de tirer l'eternel du transitoire.

51. The imagination eulogized by Baudelaire is in his own case more often than not a synonym for desire or despair. His critical exigencies are, like those of the profoundly sick man that he was, harsh and imperative and illusory in the sense of release temporarily obtained. Yet imagination is also the faculty that gives Baudelaire a royal sense of equality with other creative artists; he uses his status as a poet to boost his activities as a critic, claiming, with total justification in his case, that criticism is a creative affair, a fine rather than applied art.

52. 'I would take a twirling baton and use it as my 'icaphone' - that's what I called it - and lay a towel on the floor as my stage.'

53. 'I`d sing to it, over and over, and imagine like I had this audience.' (about the 'Sound Of Music' soundtrack)

54. The angel had told me in my dream that if I wanted to acquire the perfect knowledge I desired, I would have to go to the Moon. There I would find Adam's paradise and the Tree of Knowledge. As soon as I had tasted its fruit, my mind would be enlightened with all the truths a person could know. That is the voyage for which I built my chariot. Finally, I climbed aboard and, when I was securely settled on the seat, I tossed the magnetic ball high into the air. The chariot I had built was more massive in the middle than at the ends; it was perfectly balanced because the middle rose faster than the extremities. When I had risen to the point that the magnet was drawing me to, I seized the magnetic ball and tossed it into the air again.

55. One day, my male companion (they took me for the female) told me what had really caused him to wander about the world and finally to leave it for the Moon. He had not been able to find a single country where the imagination was free.

56. O just ones, hear me! You cannot condemn this man, monkey or parrot for saying that the moon is the world he comes from. If he is a man, all men are free. Is he then not free to imagine what he wants, even if he does not come from the moon? Can you force him to have only your visions? Impossible! You may make him say that he believes that the moon is not a world, but still he will not believe it. To believe something, one must imagine that it is more probable than not. Unless you show him what is probable or he realizes it himself, he may tell you that he believes and yet he will not believe.

57. Diddy: If I had my way, I'd never work. I'd just stay home all day, watch Scarface 50 times, eat a turkey sandwich, and have sex all fucking day. Then I'd dress up like a clown, and surprise kids at schools. Then I'd take a dump in the back of a movie theater, and just wait until somebody sat in it. Hear it squish. That's funny to me. Then I'd paint, and read, and play violin. I'd climb the mountains, and sing the songs that I like to sing. But I don't got that kinda time.

58. We'd have a motherfucking shitload of dogs! Horses. Peacocks. Oh to live among peacocks. I'd seen them once in person and they defied so many laws of color and gravity that they had to be made geniuses waiting to take over everything.

59. now I lay me down to dream of(nothing i or any somebody or you can begin to begin to imagine) something which nobody may keep.

60. Une peinture, c'est d'abord un produit de l'imagination de l'artiste, ce ne doir jamais etre une copie. Si, ensuite, on peut y ajouter deux ou trois accents de nature, evidemment ca ne fait pas de mal.

61. The maid who modestly conceals Her beauties, while she hides, reveals; Give but a glimpse, and fancy draws Whate'er the Grecian Venus was.

62. The German artist creates out of his imagination,inner vision,the forms of visible nature are to him only a symbol.

63. We are told that Shakespeare's plays were generally performed in barns and that no great trouble was taken over the production. The constant changes of scene which, incidentally, seem the sign of a decadent art rather than one which is progressing, were shown by placards with the inscription: 'A Forest,' 'A Prison,' and so on. Within this conventional setting the onlooker's imagination was free to follow the actions of the various characters who were animated by passions drawn from nature, and that was enough for him. So-called innovations are gratefully seized on as an excuse for poverty of invention and in the same way, the long descriptive passages that so overburden modern novels are a sign of sterility, for it is obviously easier to describe a dress or the outward appearance of an object than to trace the subtle development of a character or portray the emotions of the heart.

64. I have five minutes left to give you a message to take home. The message is simple. 'God forbid that we should give out a dream of our own imagination for a pattern of the world'. This was said by Francis Bacon, one of the founding fathers of modern science, almost four hundred years ago. Bacon was the smartest man of his time, with the possible exception of William Shakespeare.

65. O the idea was childish, but divinely beautiful.

66. There is no intimacy; it's not live. [he said of online games] It's being translated through a computer, and your imagination is not there the same way it is when you're actually together with a group of people. It reminds me of one time where I saw some children talking about whether they liked radio or television, and I asked one little boy why he preferred radio, and he said, 'Because the pictures are so much better.'

67. Reading, in contrast to sitting before the screen, is not a purely passive exercise. The child, particularly one who reads a book dealing with real life, has nothing before it but the hieroglyphics of the printed page. Imagination must do the rest; and imagination is called upon to do it. Not so the television screen. Here everything is spelled out for the viewer, visually, in motion, and in all three dimensions. No effort of imagination is called upon for its enjoyment.

68. Fairyland is nothing but the sunny country of common sense.

69. It seemed to her that certain portions of the earth must produce happiness -- as thought it were a plant native only to those soils and doomed to languish elsewhere. Why couldn't she be leaning over the balcony of some Swiss chalet? Or nursing her melancholy in a cottage in Scotland, with a husband clad in a long black velvet coat and wearing soft leather shoes, a high-crowned hat and fancy cuffs?

70. Nothing specific stood out against the vast background of the future that she thus evoked: the days were all of them splendid, and as alike as the waves of the sea; and the whole thing hovered on the horizon, infinite, harmonious, blue and sparkling in the sun.

71. It seemed to be a sort of monster, or symbol representing a monster, of a form which only a diseased fancy could conceive. If I say that my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature, I shall not be unfaithful to the spirit of the thing. A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings; but it was the general outline of the whole which made it most shockingly frightful.

72. I knew I wouldn't ever trade all this whirling about my head for Russia or heaven or anything on earth.

73. What an astounding thing is the voice! By what miracle is the hot magma of the earth transformed into that which we call speech? If out of clay such an abstract medium as words can be shaped what is to hinder us from leaving our bodies at will and taking up our abode on other planets or between the planets? What is to prevent us from rearranging all life, atomic, molecular, corporeal, stellar, diving? Who or what is powerful enough to eradicate this miraculous leaven which we bear within us like a seed and which, after we have embraced in our mind all the universe, is nothing more than a seed - since to say universe is as easy as to say seed, and we have yet to say greater things, things beyond saying, things limitless and inconceivable, things which no trick of language can encompass.

74. Ordinary language blinkers the already feeble imagination. --Austin, Papers 68.

75. They found the Spring in the heart of the Forest; only once long ago had Niggle imagined it, but he had never drawn it. Now he perceived that it was the source of the lake that glimmered, far away and the nourishment of all that grew in the country.

76. I absolutely did not start writing these books to encourage any child into witchcraft... I'm laughing slightly because to me, the idea is absurd. I have met thousands of children now, and not even one time has a child come up to me and said, 'Ms. Rowling, I'm so glad I've read these books because now I want to be a witch.' They see it for what it is... It is a fantasy world and they understand that completely.

77. The really great writers are people like Emily Bronte who sit in a room and write out of their limited experience and unlimited imagination.

78. Leithen's story had bored and puzzled me at the start, but now it had somehow gripped my fancy. Space a domain of endless corridors and Presences moving in them! The world was not quite the same as an hour ago. It was the hour, as the French say, 'between dog and wolf,' when the mind is disposed to marvels.

79. (After playing 'My Darling' by Ivor Cutler): Well if that's an example of Ivor Cutler's reality, just imagine what his dreams must be like.

80. I saw the delicate bone structure of a hand; I saw the survivors of a battle sending out post cards. . . I saw the oblique shadow of some ferns on the floor of a hot-house; I saw tigers, emboli, bison, ground swells and armies; I saw all the ants in the world.

81. The stars are caught in our hair The stars are on our fingers A veil of diamond dust Just reach up and touch it The sky's above our heads The sea's around our legs In milky, silky water We swim further and further...

82. We dive deeper and deeper Could be we are here Could be in my dream It came up on the horizon Rising and rising In a sea of honey, a sky of honey.

83. This little girl inside me Is retreating to her favourite place. Go into the garden. Go under the ivy, Under the leaves, Away from the party. Go right to the rose. Go right to the white rose (For me.)

84. After a thousand songs on the theme of boy-meets-girl-boy-loses-girl or Thatcher's Britain, exposure to her music comes as an imaginative release as we go giddily flying into the limitless possibilities of the poetic viewpoint. Here is talk of whales, of Peter Pan, kites, Houdini, mysticism... Acquaintances have observed, 'She lives in a world of her own.' But it's a world that lives within all of us, and her songs shine light into neglected areas of our minds.

85. Miles started to track the vote, but by the time the roll came around to him, had taken to jotting repeated iterations of Lady Ekaterin Nile Vorkosigan intertwined with Lord Miles Naismith Vorkosigan in his fanciest handwriting down the margins of his flimsy.

86. As we cast our gaze on the tumbling sea A vision came o'er me Of thundering hooves and beating wings In clouds above.

87. Transforma-se o amador na cousa amada, Por virtude do muito imaginar; Nao tenho, logo, mais que desejar, Pois em mim tenho a parte desejada.

88. The Presence all thy fancies supersedes, All that is done which thou wouldst seek in deeds, The wealth obliterates all seeming needs.

89. Very early on, I determined not to let other people's lack of imagination define my life.

90. I hope that with our music we can inspire other people to be creative and to use their imagination, because it is something that is so lacking nowadays. You have virtual reality, MTV, video games and VCR's. Nobody really wants to think about things or create things. You have programs on a computer which will write a poem for you.

91. [The world's] not a great place anymore and it can't be. I'm sure it would have been much more enjoyable to be alive in the fifties, when there was at least an illusion of purity, and things that were taboo had such a great power to them. I think it was a time when magic was really alive. There's no imagination anymore. It was eliminated with video games and VCR's. I'm only necessary because of the way the world is. Well, maybe if I manage to make the world a better place then maybe I'd want to have a kid.

92. I saw my first Henry Darger collage/paintings in the early 1980's when the tale of Henry's life was just emerging through rumor and scattered fragments of his book. He lived and died a recluse in Chicago where no one knew of his writings or paintings. There was a folk art gallery in New Orleans that had acquired a small pile of Realms of the Unreal illustrations. I was on tour with REM at the time, Michael Stipe and I visited the gallery where we had a first look at these images of seven little horrified girls pursued by a purple and orange winged cats or evil professors on horseback or resting peacefully under giant sunflowers. I was completely captivated and intrigued.

93. I thank God that this refreshing childhood vision still lives inside me in all its fullness of color and sound. This is what keeps my mind untouched by wastage, keeps it from withering and running dry. It is the sacred drop of immortal water which prevents me from dying. When I wish to speak of the sea, woman, or God in my writing, I gaze down in my breast and listen carefully to what the child within me says. He dictates to me; and if it sometimes happens that I come close to these great forces of the sea, woman, and God, approach them by means of words and depict them, I owe it to the child who still lives within me. I become a child again to enable myself to view the world always for the first time, with virgin eyes.

94. It depends only on the weakness of our organs and of our self-excitement (Selbstberuhrung), that we do not see ourselves in a Fairy-world. All Fabulous Tales (Mahrchen) are merely dreams of that home world, which is everywhere and nowhere. The higher powers in us, which one day as Genies, shall fulfil our will, are, for the present, Muses, which refresh us on our toilsome course with sweet remembrances.

95. The spirit of Poesy is the morning light, which makes the Statue of Memnon sound.

96. But I hope that in the lives of [the characters], you will find stories worth holding in your memory, perhaps even in your heart. That's the transaction that counts more than best-seller lists, royalty statements, awards, or reviews. Because in the pages of this book, you and I will meet one-on-one, my mind and yours, and you will enter a world of my making and dwell there, not as a character that I control, but as a person with a mind of your own. You will make of my story what you need it to be, if you can. I hope my tale is true enough and flexible enough that you can make it into a world worth living in.

97. 'Steph thinks you can wear makeup and still find Narnia.' 'Well, so do I, but why make things harder?'

98. I do have utopian fantasies. A lot of them are more - I wouldn't say spiritual, but they relate more to the imagination and the individual. But for me socialism is a way of trying to put far-fetched ideas into everyday use, trying to find a way to bridge the gap between that fantasy and reality, and reaching out across that gap to the people who can actually do something to make the change.

99. The imagination is not a talent of some men but is the health of every man.

100. The soul has no assignments, neither cooks Nor referees: it wastes its time. It wastes its time. Here in this enclave there are centuries For you to waste: the short and narrow stream Of life meanders into a thousand valleys Of all that was, or might have been, or is to be. The books, just leafed through, whisper endlessly.