We are so obsessed with doing that we have no time and no imagination left for being. As a result, men are valued not for what they are but for what they do or what they have - for their usefulness.
The power of the projecting force increases in proportion as the object projected is smaller; the acceleration of the motion increases to infinity proportionately to this diminution. It would follow that an atom would be almost as rapid as the imagination or the eye, which in a moment attains to the height of the stars, and consequently its voyage would be infinite, because the thing which can be infinitely diminished would have an infinite velocity and would travel on an infinite course (because every continuous quantity is divisible to infinity). And this opinion is {147} condemned by reason and consequently by experience.
We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of the superstitious fears which were implanted in his imagination, no matter how utterly his reason may reject them.--_Holmes._
The heart, unlike the fancy and the imagination, is not complex, and may be reached by the same weapons of thought in the most luxurious court of Christendom as in the tent of the Arab or the wigwam of the Cherokee.
I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death.
There are more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in.
By poetry we mean the art of employing words in such a manner as to produce an illusion on the imagination; the art of doing by means of words what the painter does by means of colors.--_Macaulay._
The rapid increase of natural knowledge, which is the chief characteristic of our age, is effected in various ways. The main army of science moves to the conquest of new worlds slowly and surely, nor ever cedes an inch of the territory gained. But the advance is covered and facilitated by the ceaseless activity of clouds of light troops provided with a weapon--always efficient, if not always an arm of precision--the scientific imagination. It is the business of these _enfants perdus_ of science to make raids into the realm of ignorance wherever they see, or think they see, a chance; and cheerfully to accept defeat, or it may be annihilation, as the reward of error. Unfortunately the public, which watches the progress of the campaign, too often mistakes a dashing incursion of the Uhlans for a forward movement of the main body; fondly imagining that the strategic movement to the rear, which occasionally follows, indicates a battle lost by science. And it must be confessed that the error is too often justified by the effects of the irrepressible tendency which men of science share with all other sorts of men known to me, to be impatient of that most wholesome state of mind--suspended judgment; to assume the objective truth of speculations which, from the nature of the evidence in their favour, can have no claim to be more than working hypotheses.
~Writing.~--Writing, after all, is a cold and coarse interpreter of thought. How much of the imagination, how much of the intellect, evaporates and is lost while we seek to embody it in words! Man made language and God the genius.--_Bulwer-Lytton._
When at eve at the bounding of the landscape the heavens appear to recline so slowly on the earth, imagination pictures beyond the horizon an asylum of hope,--a native land of love; and nature seems silently to repeat that man is immortal.--_Madame de Staël._
Change appears to us mysterious because it is invisible. It is impossible to see a tree grow tall or a man grow old, except with the precarious imagination of hindsight. A tree is small, and later it is tall. A man is young, and later he is old. A people are at peace, and later they are at war. In each case, the intermediate states are at once infinitely many and infinitely complex, which is why they exceed our finite perceptions.
He who has imagination without learning has wings without feet.
If ever Shakespeare rants, it is not when his imagination is hurrying him along, but when he is hurrying his imagination along.--_Macaulay._
Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited; genius, being the action of reason or imagination, rarely or never.--_Coleridge._
One last thing,” said Beatty. “At least once in his career, every fireman gets an itch. What do the books say, he wonders. Oh, to scratch that itch, eh? Well, Montag, take my word for it, I’ve had to read a few in my time, to know what I was about, and the books say nothing! Nothing you can teach or believe. They’re about nonexistent people, figments of imagination, if they’re fiction. And if they’re nonfiction, it’s worse, one professor calling another an idiot, one philosopher screaming down another’s gullet. All of them running about, putting out the stars and extinguishing the sun. You come away lost.
Neither wisdom nor good will is now dominant. Hope lies in dreams, in imagination and in the courage of those who dare to make dreams into reality.
I find then this great and numerous people, sprung from a single man, who adore one God, and guide themselves by a law, given them as they say, by his own hand. They maintain that to them alone in the world God has revealed his mysteries, that all men are corrupt and under the wrath of God, are all abandoned to their senses and imagination, whence arise the strange errors and continual changes among them, both of religions and of manners, whereas this nation remains unshaken in its conduct: but that God will not leave other nations in darkness for ever, that there will come a Saviour for all, that they are in the world to announce his coming, that they were expressly formed to be the forerunners and heralds of this great advent, and to call on all nations to join with them in the expectation of this Redeemer.
A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.
Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up these defenses, you build this whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life. You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They do something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own any more. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darknes, so working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.
The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed.
We differ, blind and seeing, one from another, not in our senses, but in the use we make of them, in the imagination and courage with which we seek wisdom beyond the senses.
The imagination enlarges little objects so as to fill our soul with its fantastic estimate, and by a rash insolence belittles the great to its own measure, as when it speaks of God.
Idolatry is simply the substitution of an "Eidolon," phantasm, or imagination of good for that which is real and enduring, from the highest Living Good which gives life, to the lowest material good which ministers to it.
You would say that this magistrate whose reverend age commands the respect of a whole people is swayed by pure and lofty reason, that he judges all causes according to their true nature, unmoved by those mere accidents which only affect the imagination of the weak. See him go to sermon with devout zeal, strengthening his firm and impartial reason by the ardour of his divine love. He is ready to listen with exemplary respect. The preacher appears; but if nature have given him a hoarse voice or a comic face, if his barber have shaven him ill, or if his clothes be splashed more than is wont, then however great the truths he announces, I wager that our statesman lose his gravity.
Strictly speaking, the imagination is never governed; it is always the ruling and divine power, and the rest of the man is to it only as an instrument which it sounds, or a tablet on which it writes; clearly and sublimely if the wax be smooth and the strings true, grotesquely and wildly if they are stained and broken.
I am of opinion that there is nothing so beautiful but that there is something still more beautiful, of which this is the mere image and expression,--a something which can neither be perceived by the eyes, the ears, nor any of the senses; we comprehend it merely in the imagination.--_Cicero._
His imagination resembled the wings of an ostrich. It enabled him to run, though not to soar.
Love the battle between chaos and imagination.
Inspiration is not the exclusive privilege of poets or artists. There is, there has been, there will always be a certain group of people whom inspiration visits. It's made up of all those who've consciously chosen their calling and do their job with love and imagination. It may include doctors, teachers, gardeners — I could list a hundred more professions. Their work becomes one continuous adventure as long as they manage to keep discovering new challenges in it. Difficulties and setbacks never quell their curiosity. A swarm of new questions emerges from every problem that they solve. Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous "I don't know."
He who has imagination without learning has wings and no feet.--_Joubert._
The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and, instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.--_Johnson._
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 shapes, and gives to airy nothing / A local habitation and a name.
Man is only truly great when he acts from his passions; never irresistible but when he appeals to the imagination.
Flattery is an ensnaring quality, and leaves a very dangerous impression. It swells a man's imagination, entertains his fancy, and drives him to a doting upon his own person.--_Jeremy Collier._
It is difficult to submit anything to the judgment of a second person without prejudicing him by the way in which we submit it. If we say, "I think it beautiful, I think it obscure," or the like, we either draw the imagination to that opinion, or irritate it to form the contrary. It is better to say nothing, so that the other may judge according to what really is, that is to say, as it then is, and according as the other circumstances which are not of our making have placed it. We at least shall have added nothing of our own, except that silence produces an effect, according to the turn and the interpretation which the other is inclined to give it, or as he may conjecture it, from gestures or countenance, or from the tone of voice, if he be a physiognomist; so difficult is it not to oust the judgment from its natural seat, or rather so rarely is it firm and stable!
In literature and art memory is a synonym for invention; it is the life-blood of imagination, which faints and dies when the veins are empty.--_Willmott._
Conversation warms the mind, enlivens the imagination, and is continually starting fresh game that is immediately pursued and taken, and which would never have occurred in the duller intercourse of epistolary correspondence.--_Franklin._
What the heart or the imagination dictates always flows readily; but where there is no subject to warm or interest these, constraint appears.
L'imagination galope, le jugement ne va que le pas=--The imagination gallops, the judgment merely walks.
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.
There is no contradiction. There never really can be between the core terms of monistic philosophies. The One in India has got to be the same as the One in Greece. If it's not, you've got two. The only disagreements among the monists concern the attributes of the One, not the One itself. Since the One is the source of all things and includes all things in it, it cannot be defined in terms of those things, since no matter what thing you use to define it, the thing will always describe something less than the One itself. The One can only be described allegorically, through the use of analogy, of figures of imagination and speech.
Why does the eye perceive things more clearly in dreams than with the imagination when one is awake?
Losses are comparative, only imagination makes them of any moment.
Is not the real experience of each individual very limited? And, if a writer dwells upon that solely or principally, is he not in danger of repeating himself, and also of becoming an egotist? Then, too, imagination is a strong, restless faculty, which claims to be heard and exercised: are we to be quite deaf to her cry, and insensate to her struggles? When she shows us bright pictures, are we never to look at them, and try to reproduce them? And when she is eloquent, and speaks rapidly and urgently in our ear, are we not to write to her dictation?
The scientific imagination always restrains itself within the limits of probability.
The theory of evolution encourages no millennial anticipations. If, for millions of years, our globe has taken the upward road, yet, some time, the summit will be reached and the downward route will be commenced. The most daring imagination will hardly venture upon the suggestion that the power and the intelligence of man can ever arrest the procession of the great year.
The imagination is a fine faculty; yet I like not when she works on what has actually happened; the airy forms she creates are welcome as things of their own kind; but uniting with reality she produces often nothing but monsters, and seems to me, in such cases, to fly into direct variance with reason and common-sense.
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.
The imagination may be compared to Adam's dream — he awoke and found it truth.
This is where our intuitive knowledge leads us. If it be not true, there is no truth in man; and if it be, he finds therein a great reason for humiliation, because he must abase himself in one way or another. And since he cannot exist without such knowledge, I wish that before entering on deeper researches into nature he would consider her seriously and at leisure, that he would examine himself also, and knowing what proportion there is.... Let man then contemplate the whole realm of nature in its full and exalted majesty, and turn his eyes from the low objects which hem him round; let him observe that brilliant light set like an eternal lamp to illumine the universe, let the earth appear to him a point in comparison with the vast circle described by that sun, and let him see with amazement that even this vast circle is itself but a fine point in regard to that described by the stars revolving in the firmament. If our view be arrested there, let imagination pass beyond, and it will sooner exhaust the power of thinking than nature that of giving scope for thought. The whole visible world is but an imperceptible speck in the ample bosom of nature. No idea approaches it. We may swell our conceptions beyond all imaginable space, yet bring forth only atoms in comparison with the reality of things. It is an infinite sphere, the centre of which is every where, the circumference no where. It is, in short, the greatest sensible mark of the almighty power of God, in that thought let imagination lose itself.
It is very good to copy what one sees; it is much better to draw what you can't see any more but is in your memory. It is a transformation in which imagination and memory work together. You only reproduce what struck you, that is to say the necessary.
The thoughts we have had, the pictures we have seen, can be again called back before the mind's eye and before the imagination; but the heart is not so obliging; it does not reproduce its pleasing emotions.
Our imagination so enlarges the present by dint of continually reflecting on it, and so contracts eternity, by never reflecting on it, that we make a nothing of eternity and an eternity of nothing; and all this has such living roots in us, that all our reason cannot suppress them, and that....
Keep the imagination sane; that is one of the truest conditions of communion with heaven.
L'imagination est la folle du logis=--Imagination is the madcap of the brain (_lit._ the merryandrew of the dwelling).
The imagination, give it the least license, dives deeper and soars higher than Nature does.
Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.
The man who has imagination without learning has wings without feet.
I love child things because there's so much mystery when you're a child. When you're a child, something as simple as a tree doesn't make sense. You see it in the distance and it looks small, but as you go closer, it seems to grow you haven't got a handle on the rules when you're a child. We think we understand the rules when we become adults but what we really experienced is a narrowing of the imagination.
To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.
And space, what it is like? Is it mechanical, Newtonian? A frozen prison? Or the lofty space of Einstein, the relation Between movement and movement? No reason to pretend I know. I don't know, and if I did, Still my imagination is a thousand years old.
To think and to feel constitute the two grand divisions of men of genius--the men of reasoning and the men of imagination.
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
You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
Criticism must never be sharpened into anatomy. The life of the imagination, as of the body, disappears when we pursue it.
Laughter is timeless. Imagination has no age. And dreams are forever.
There is nothing more frightful than imagination without taste.
Those who compare the age in which their lot has fallen with a golden age which exists only in imagination, may talk of degeneracy and decay; but no man who is correctly informed as to the past, will be disposed to take a morose or desponding view of the present.
Fiction lags after truth, invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren.
When the affections are moved there is no place for the imagination.
For millions of years mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk.
Platonic philosophy is probably the grandest example of the unscientific use of the imagination extant; and it would be hard to estimate the amount of detriment to clear thinking effected, directly and indirectly, by the theory of ideas, on the one hand, and by the unfortunate doctrine of the baseness of matter, on the other.
What an enormous camera obscura magnifier is Tradition! How a thing grows in the human memory, in the human imagination, when love, worship, and all that lies in the human heart is there to encourage it!
If magistrates had true justice, and if doctors had the true art of healing, they would have no need of square caps, the majesty of these sciences were of itself venerable enough. But having only imaginary knowledge, they must take these instruments, idle, but striking to the imagination with which they have to deal, and by that in fact they gain respect.
Fiction lags after truth, invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren.
This proud potentate, who loves to rule and domineer over her enemy, reason, has established in man a second nature in order to show her wide-spread influence. She makes men happy and miserable, sound and sick, rich and poor; she obliges reason to believe, doubt and deny; she dulls the senses, or sharpens them; she has her fools and wise; and nothing vexes us more than to see that she fills her votaries with a satisfaction far more full and entire than does reason. Those whose imagination is active feel greater complacency than the truly wise can reasonably allow themselves to feel. They look down on other men as from the height of empire, they argue with assurance and confidence, others with diffidence and fear, and this gaiety of countenance often gives the former an advantage in the minds of their hearers; such favour do the imaginary wise find from judges like-minded. Imagination cannot make fools wise, but it makes them content, and so triumphs over reason, which can only make its friends miserable; the one covers them with glory, the other with shame.
There are no days in life so memorable as those which vibrated to some stroke of the imagination.
On the word in Genesis, viii. 21. The imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth.
Enthusiasm is that temper of mind in which the imagination has got the better of the judgment.--_Warburton._
There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone.
Union does everything when it is perfect; it satisfies desires, it simplifies needs, it foresees the wishes of the imagination; it is an aisle always open, and becomes a constant fortune.
O, who can hold a fire in his hand By thinking on the frosty Caucasus? Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite By bare imagination of a feast? Or wallow naked in December snow By thinking on fantastic summer's heat? O, no! the apprehension of the good Gives but the greater feeling to the worse.
What chiefly distinguishes great artists from feeble artists is first their sensibility and tenderness; secondly, their imagination; and thirdly, their industry.
Poems present their testimony as circumstantial evidences, not as closing argument. Where Wallace Stevens says, “God and the imagination are one,” I would say that the imagination, which synergizes intellect, emotion and instinct, is the perceptive organ through which it is possible, though not inevitable, to experience God.
The power of the imagination is a unifying power, hence the force of metaphor; and the poet is the supreme manipulator of metaphor... the world needs the unifying power of the imagination. The two things that give it best are poetry and religion.
I have myself proved that it is useful when you are in bed in the dark to work with the imagination, summing up the external outlines of the forms previously studied or other noteworthy things apprehended by subtle speculation; and this is a laudable practice and useful in impressing objects on the memory.
Those critics who, in modern times, have the most thoughtfully analyzed the laws of æsthetic beauty, concur in maintaining that the real truthfulness of all works of imagination--sculpture, painting, written fiction--is so purely in the imagination, that the artist never seeks to represent the positive truth, but the idealized image of a truth.--_Bulwer-Lytton._