Nothing is worse than what we can imagine.
J. M. COETZEE, Waiting for the Barbarians
The highest exercise of imagination is not to devise what has no existence, but rather to perceive what really exists, though unseen by the outward eye--not creation, but insight.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, Table-Talk
Anything imagined can be made real ... given sufficient genius.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON, The Butlerian Jihad
Our imagination is stretched to the utmost, not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not really there, but just to comprehend those things which are there.
RICHARD FEYNMAN, The Character of Physical Law
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
Nothing too long imagined can be perfect in a wordly way.
ANAIS NIN, Henry and June
I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections and the truth of imagination--what the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth--whether it existed before or not.
JOHN KEATS, letter to Benjamin Bailey, Nov. 22, 1817
- The bird Imagination,
- That flies so far, that dies so soon;
- Her wings are colored like the sun,
- Her breast is colored like the moon.
ELINOR WYLIE, "The Falcon"
The imagination is the secret and marrow of civilization. It is the very eye of faith.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The human imagination ... has great difficulty in living strictly within the confines of a materialistic practice or philosophy. It dreams, like a dog in its basket, of hares in the open.
JOHN BERGER, Keeping a Rendezvous
The imagination is to the effect as the shadow to the opaque body which causes the shadow.
LEONARDO DA VINCI, Thoughts on Art and Life
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
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 practical, matter-of-fact man is like a wagon without springs: every single pebble on the road jolts him; but a man with imagination has springs that break the jar and jolt.
HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Nothing is more frightful than imagination without taste.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
Small towns harbor small imaginations.
STEPHEN KING, Under the Dome
Imagination sometimes has to stand in for experience.
STEVE MARTIN, An Object of Beauty
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
Memory marks the horizon of our consciousness, imagination its zenith.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT, Table Talk
Imagination flourishes just beyond the real, the known, the concrete.
ROBERT A. KOWAL, "Weird Cinema: Through the Lens Darkly," Weird Tales, Summer 2011
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