Imagination Quotes

“O, then I see Queen Mab hath been with you. . . . She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes In shape no bigger than an agate stone On the forefinger of an alderman, Drawn with a team of little atomi Athwart men’s noses as they lie asleep.”

“Present fears are less than horrible imaginings.”

“In the night, imagining some fear,How easy is a bush supposed a bear!”

“A king of infinite space”

“True, I talk of dreams, Which are the children of an idle brain, Begot of nothing but vain fantasy, Which is as thin of substance as the air, And more inconstant than the wind, who woos Even now the frozen bosom of the north, And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence, Turning his side to the dew-dropping south.”

“I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was.”

“This is a gift that I have, simple, simple; a foolish extravagant spirit full of forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, motions, revolutions; these are begot in the ventricle of memory, nourished in the womb of pia mater, and delivered upon the mellowing of occasion.”

“I am giddy, expectation whirls me round.The imaginary relish is so sweetThat it enchants my sense.”

“Dreams are the children of idled minds.”

“So full of shapes is fancy That it alone is high fantastical.”

“And oft, my jealousy shapes faults that are not.”

“The truest poetry is the most feigning.”

“The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,Doth glance from heaven to earth,From earth to heaven.”

“All impediments in fancy's course Are motives of more fancy.”

“so full of shapes is fancy”

“We are made aware that magnitude of material things is relative, and all objects shrink and expand to serve the passion of the poet. Thus, in his sonnets, the lays of birds, the scents and dyes of flowers, he finds to be the shadow of his beloved; time, which keeps her from him, is his chest; the suspicion she has awakened, is her ornament”

“One sees more devils than vast hell can hold”

“Trifles light as air are to the jealous confirmations strong as proofs of holy writ.”

“O God, I could be bound in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space – were it not that I have bad dreams.”

“In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.”

“There is no better way to exercise the imagination than the study of the law.”

“If I could put my hand on the north star, would it be as beautiful? The sea is lovely, but when we bathe in it the beauty forsakesall the near water. For the imagination and senses cannot be gratified at the same time.”

“There comes a period of the imagination to each--a later youth--the power of beauty, the power of looks, of poetry.”

“The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, doth glance from heaven to Earth, from Earth to heaven; and as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown, the poet's pen turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name; such tricks hath strong imagination.”

“Think, when we talk of horses, that you see themPrinting their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth.”