#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.”

“Now entertain conjecture of a time When creeping murmur and the poring dark Fills the wide vessel of the universe.”

“The religions of the world are the ejaculations of a few imaginative men.”

“One must be an inventor to read well.”

“Chewing the food of sweet and bitter fancy.”

“An imaginative book renders us much more service at first, by stimulating us through its tropes, than afterward, when we arrive atthe precise sense of the author. I think nothing is of any value in books, excepting the transcendental and extraordinary.”

“The imagination and the senses cannot be gratified at the same time.”

“Science does not know its debt to imagination.”

“The maker of a sentence launches out into the infinite and builds a road into Chaos and old Night, and is followed by those who hear him with something of wild, creative delight.”

“My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, Shakes so my single state of man That function is smothered in surmise, And nothing is but what is not.”

“Let fancy still in my sense in Lethe steep; If it be thus to dream, still let me sleep!”

“This is the very coinage of your brain: this bodiless creation ecstasy.”

“Whatever appeals to the imagination, by transcending the ordinary limits of human ability, wonderfully encourages and liberates us.”

“Nimble thought can jump both sea and land.”

“Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts.”

“Such tricks hath strong imagination, That, if it would but apprehend some joy, It comprehends some bringer of that joy; Or in the night, imagining some fear, How easy is a bush supposed a bear!”

“A feeble man can see the farms that are fenced and tilled, the houses that are built. The strong man sees the possible houses and farms. His eye makes estates as fast as the sun breeds clouds.”

“The best bribe which London offers to-day to the imagination, is, that, in such a vast variety of people and conditions, one can believe there is room for persons of romantic character to exist, and that the poet, the mystic, and the hero may hope to confront their counterparts.”

“O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention, A kingdom for a stage, princes to act And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!”

“Your greatest fears are created by your imagination. Don't give in to them.”

“The statue is then beautiful when it begins to be incomprehensible, when it is passing out of criticism, and can no longer be defined by compass and measuring-wand, but demands an active imagination to go with it, and to say what it is in the act of doing.”

“True, I talk of dreams, Which are the children of an idle brain, Begot of nothing but vain fantasy.”

“A lady with whom I was riding in the forest said to me that the woods always seemed to her to wait, as if the genii who inhabit them suspend their deeds until the wayfarer had passed onward; a thought which poetry has celebrated in the dance of the fairies, which breaks off on the approach of human feet.”

“Remember that your imagination is yours and yours alone. You have the inborn capacity to use it in any way that you choose. No one else is responsible for your imagination. Anything placed in your imagination and held there ultimately becomes your reality.”

“When the boys come into my yard for leave to gather horse-chestnuts, I own I enter into nature's game, and affect to grant the permission reluctantly, fearing that any moment they will find out the imposture of that showy chaff. But this tenderness is quite unnecessary; the enchantments are laid on very thick. Their young life is thatched with them. Bare and grim to tears is the lot of the children in the hovel I saw yesterday; yet not the less they hang it round with frippery romance, like the children of the happiest fortune.”

“When a man makes up a story for his child, he becomes a father and a child together, listening.”