“Imagination has been the companion of my whole existence – lively, swift, restless, at times timid and balky, most often ready to devour plain upon plain in its course.”

— Machado de Assis , book Dom Casmurro

A imaginação foi a companheira de toda a minha existência, viva, rápida, inquieta, alguma vez tímida e amiga de empacar, as mais delas capaz de engolir campanhas e campanhas, correndo.
Source: Dom Casmurro (1899), Ch. 40, p. 98.

Original

A imaginação foi a companheira de toda a minha existência, viva, rápida, inquieta, alguma vez tímida e amiga de empacar, as mais delas capaz de engolir campanhas e campanhas, correndo.

Dom Casmurro (1899)

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Do you have more details about the quote "Imagination has been the companion of my whole existence – lively, swift, restless, at times timid and balky, most ofte…" by Machado de Assis?

Machado de Assis 16

Brazilian writer 1839–1908

Marion L. Starkey (1901–1991) American historian & writer

Source: The Devil in Massachusetts: A Modern Enquiry into the Salem Witch Trials (1949), Chapter 17, “Eight Firebrands of Hell” (p. 205)

“Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

31 May 1830.
Table Talk (1821–1834)
Context: The Pilgrim's Progress is composed in the lowest style of English, without slang or false grammar. If you were to polish it, you would at once destroy the reality of the vision. For works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.

“Plain question and plain answer make the shortest road out of most perplexities.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“My manner of living is plain. I do not mean to be put out of it.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

Letter to George William Fairfax (25 June 1786), published in The Writings Of George Washington (1835) by Jared Sparks, p. 175
1780s
Context: My manner of living is plain. I do not mean to be put out of it. A glass of wine and a bit of mutton are always ready; and such as will be content to partake of them are always welcome. Those, who expect more, will be disappointed, but no change will be effected by it.

“Never give children a chance of imagining that anything exists in isolation. Make it plain from the very beginning that all living is relationship. Show them relationships in the woods, in the fields, in the ponds and streams, in the village and in the country around it. Rub it in.”

Aldous Huxley book Island

Island (1962)

“It is only a plain tale of plain people told in the plain dialect of a plain old woman.”

Eliza Calvert Hall (1856–1935) American author, women's rights advocate and suffragist

Hall, Eliza Calvert (1910). "Introduction". Sally Ann's Experience. Illustrated by G. Patrick Nelson, Theodore Brown Hapgood. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company. pp. v - xii. http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=ugAZAAAAYAAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA50&dq=aunt+jane+of+kentucky&ots=Oaz4lMOoks&sig=_ET0k7b6BWOlRwCqW5Qja3baNvg#v=onepage&q=Introduction&f=false.
Lida Obenchain's description of her then famous story Sally Ann's Experience.

“The government of the United States, under the conduct of the Democratic Party, has been all that time surrendering one plain and castle after another to slavery.”

William H. Seward (1801–1872) American lawyer and politician

Speech (1859)

“Even for the physicist the description in plain language will be the criterion of the degree of understanding that has been reached.”

Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976) German theoretical physicist

Physics and Philosophy (1958)
Context: The physicist may be satisfied when he has the mathematical scheme and knows how to use for the interpretation of the experiments. But he has to speak about his results also to non-physicists who will not be satisfied unless some explanation is given in plain language. Even for the physicist the description in plain language will be the criterion of the degree of understanding that has been reached.

“In the dark a glimmering light is often sufficient for the pilot to find the polar star and to fix his course. To the pilgrim often a single footstep suffices to enable him to find his way across the bewildering plain.”

Pietro Metastasio Achille in Sciro

Fra l' ombre un lampo solo
Basta al nocchier fugace
Che già ritrova il polo,
Già riconosce il mar.
Al pellegrin ben spesso
Basta un vestigio impresso,
Perchè la via fallace
Non l'abbia ad ingannar.
Act I, scene 6.
Achille in Sciro (1736)

“My mind has been the most discontented and restless one that ever was put into a body too small for it.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

“Imagination has been the companion of my whole existence – lively, swift, restless, at times timid and balky, most often ready to devour plain upon plain in its course.”

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Machado de Assis 16

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