Quotes about imagination
page 7

Esther Hicks (1948) American writer

“Manners are about imagination, ultimately. They are about imagining being the other person.”

Lynne Truss (1955) British writer

Source: Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door

Personality

“If you have a past with which you feel dissatisfied, then forget it, now. Imagine a new story for your life and believe in it. Focus only on the moments when you achieved what you desired, and that strength will help you to get what you want.”

Paulo Coelho book The Fifth Mountain

Source: The Fifth Mountain

Life, Feeling, Past, Help

“My imagination is a monastery, and I am its monk”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

“Imagining something is better than remembering something.”

John Irving book The World According to Garp

Source: The World According to Garp]] (1978)

“The more you know, the more you can create. There's no end to imagination in the kitchen.”

Julia Child (1921–2004) American chef

Source: Particular Passions: Talks With Women Who Have Shaped Our Times

“Peace has to be created, in order to be maintained. It is the product of Faith, Strength, Energy, Will, Sympathy, Justice, Imagination, and the triumph of principle. It will never be achieved by passivity and quietism.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Peace, Faith, Justice, Peaceful

“Hal: "… Then we'll leave in a huff, taking you with us."
"I've always wanted to travel in a huff," Ingvar mused. "It sounds very comfortable. I imagine they're well padded."
"Lined with feathers, in fact," Gilan put in.”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Source: Slaves of Socorro

Travel

“Peter Rabbit, for all its gentle tininess, loudly proclaims that no story is worth the writing, no picture worth the making, if it is not a work of imagination.”

Maurice Sendak (1928–2012) American illustrator and writer of children's books

Source: Caldecott and Co.: Notes on Books and Pictures

“Imagine" he said, "never even thinking, 'We are alone,' simply because it has never occurred to you to think that there's any other way to be.”

Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English writer and humorist

Source: The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Way, Thinking

“Can you imagine a life with no fear? What if faith, not fear, was your default reaction to threats?”

Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer

Source: Fearless: Imagine Your Life Without Fear

Life, Fear, Faith

“The man with no imagination has no wings.”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist

For Men

“I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake.”

René Descartes (1596–1650) French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist

Dreams, Sleep

“[They say I imagine — it is not true — I remember. ]”

Irving Stone book Lust for Life

Source: Lust for Life

“What I wanted to do seemed simple. I wanted something alive and shocking enough that it could be a morning in somebody's life. The most ordinary morning. Imagine, trying to do that.”

Michael Cunningham book The Hours

Source: The Hours

Life

“You can do this" I murmured. "You are my brother. I love you. All the embarrassing bits, all the annoying bits, which I imagine is most of you--a thousand Zias might run away from you if they knew the truth. But I won't. I'll still be here.”

Rick Riordan book The Throne of Fire

Source: The Throne of Fire

Love, Truth

“Imagining and fantasizing did nothing but break her heart.”

Cecelia Ahern book If You Could See Me Now

Source: If You Could See Me Now

Heart

“For there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.”

Milan Kundera book Identity

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Part One: Lightness and Weight
Variant: For there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.
Source: Identity

Pain, Feeling

“Considering Adrian had once gotten bored while reading while reading a particularly long menu, I had a hard time imagining he'd read the Hugo book in any language.”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

Books, Time, Reading

“If some people are so hungry for a feeling of importance that they actually go insane to get it, imagine what miracle you and I can achieve by giving people honest appreciation this side of insanity.”

Dale Carnegie How to Win Friends and Influence People

Source: How to Win Friends and Influence People

People, Feeling

“You give too much rein to your imagination. Imagination is a good servant, and a bad master. The simplest explanation is always the most likely.”

Agatha Christie book The Mysterious Affair at Styles

Source: The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)

“It is rarely that the pleasures of the imagination will compensate for the pain of sleeplessness”

Thomas Hardy book Far from the Madding Crowd

Source: Far from the Madding Crowd

Pain, Pleasure

“Whether or not you find your own way, you're bound to find some way. If you happen to find my way, please return it, as it was lost years ago. I imagine by now it's quite rusty.”

Norton Juster book The Phantom Tollbooth

Source: The Phantom Tollbooth

Way

“No one has imagined us. We want to live like trees,
sycamores blazing through the sulfuric air,
dappled with scars, still exuberantly budding,
our animal passion rooted in the city.”

Adrienne Rich book The Dream of a Common Language

Source: The Dream of a Common Language

Tree, Passion, Animals

“Donner: Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.”

Tom Stoppard (1937) British playwright

Source: Artist Descending a Staircase (1972)

Art

“When you hit a wall – of your own imagined limitations – just kick it in.”

Sam Shepard (1943–2017) American playwright and actor

“I’ve always found that the better the book I’m reading, the smarter I feel, or, at least, the more able I am to imagine that I might, someday, become smarter.”

Francine Prose (1947) American writer

Source: Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

Books, Feeling, Reading

“Lies hurt people; imagination makes life more fun.”

Dean Koontz book Relentless

Relentless

Life, People, Hurt

“You're taller than I am, but I'm stronger, and meaner right this minute than you could ever imagine" - Lady Madelyne.”

Julie Garwood (1946) American writer

Source: Honor's Splendour

“The main thing is to write
for the joy of it. Cultivate a work-lust
that imagines its haven like your hands at night
dreaming the sun in the sunspot of a breast.
You are fasted now, light-headed, dangerous.
Take off from here.”

Seamus Heaney book Station Island

Source: Station Island

Dreams, Light, Sun, Joy

“If I don't shut down my brain soon, my imagination will take off so far about what could be with this guy, that nothing will ever just be.-- Norah, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist

Guy

“There are many ways to be free. One of them is to transcend reality by imagination, as I try to do.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Way, Reality

“All successful people men and women are big dreamers. They imagine what their future could be, ideal in every respect, and then they work every day toward their distant vision, that goal or purpose.”

Brian Tracy (1944) American motivational speaker and writer

Source: Personal Success

Women, Men, People, Distant

“There will be guards,” Bast said. “And traps. And alarms. You can bet the house is heavily charmed to keep out gods.”
“Magicians can do that?” I asked. I imagined a big can of pesticide labeled God-Away.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

God, Housing

“The answer came to me before I'd even finished asking myself the question. I couldn't be Mason's girlfriend because when I imagined someone holding me and whispering dirty things in my ear, he had a Russian accent.”

Richelle Mead Vampire Academy

Source: Vampire Academy

Question

“It's fear, Jack. The man deals with a huge amount of fear.'
Because he got hurt?'
No, not entirely. Fear comes with imagination, it's a penalty, it's the price of imagination.”

Thomas Harris Red Dragon

Source: Red Dragon

Fear, Penalty, Hurt

“Idealism is the death of the body and the imagination. All but freedom, utter freedom, is death”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Source: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

Death, Freedom

“Not into older guys, huh?" asked Adrian once we were alone.
"You're imagining things," I said. "Clearly, my stunning beauty has clouded your mind.”

Richelle Mead book Frostbite

Source: Frostbite

Beauty, Guy

“The woman will sit eternally in the tall black armchair. I will be the one woman you will never have… excessive living weighs down the imagination: we will not live, we will only write and talk to swell the sails.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

“When you imagine mistakes, there can be no self-defense.”

Frank Herbert book Dune

Source: Dune

“Imagination without reason produces impossible monsters; with reason, it becomes the mother of the arts, and the source of its marvels.”

Francisco De Goya (1746–1828) Spanish painter and printmaker (1746–1828)

quoted by Albert Frederick Calvert, in Goya; an account of his life and works; publisher London J. Lane, 1908; as quoted in Francisco Goya, Hugh Stokes, Herbert Jenkins Limited Publishers, London, 1914, pp. 355-377
Goya wrote this inscription upon a later copy of the etching-plate Capricho no. 43
1790s

Art

“Not seeing people permits us to imagine them with every perfection.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

People, Perfection

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be some kind of library.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

Variant: I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.

“There's no such thing as im-POSSIBLE, Hiccup, only im-PROBABLE. The only thing that limits us are the limits to our imagination”

Cressida Cowell book How to Cheat a Dragon's Curse

Source: How to Cheat a Dragon's Curse

“My love is my soul's imagination…
how do I love you… imagine.”

Saul Williams (1972) American singer, musician, poet, writer, and actor

Love, Soul

“The Dude just pounded his way in a straight line, convinced that the lion was a figment of his imagination and that the vampire ahead of him was just Grendel's deformed mutant brother.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Gifts

Way

“Then he asked if I didn’t like things changing. And I said I wouldn’t mind things changing if I became an astronaut, for example, which is one of the biggest changes you can imagine, apart from becoming a girl or dying.”

Mark Haddon book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Source: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Girl, Change

“With schools turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the word "intellectual," of course, became the swear word it deserved to be.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

School

“i shall imagine life
is not worth dying, if
(and when)roses complain
their beauties are in vain

but though mankind persuades
itself that every weed's
a rose, roses(you feel
certain)will only smile”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Source: Complete Poems, 1904-1962

Life, Smile, Beauty, Feeling

“Oh, can I really believe the poet's tales, that when one first sees the object of one's love, one imagines one has seen her long ago, that all love like all knowledge is remembrance, that love too has its prophecies in the individual.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

On Regine Olsen (2 February 1839)
1830s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1830s
Context: Oh, can I really believe the poet's tales, that when one first sees the object of one's love, one imagines one has seen her long ago, that all love like all knowledge is remembrance, that love too has its prophecies in the individual. … it seems to me that I should have to possess the beauty of all girls in order to draw out a beauty equal to yours; that I should have to circumnavigate the world in order to find the place I lack and which the deepest mystery of my whole being points towards, and at the next moment you are so near to me, filling my spirit so powerfully that I am transfigured for myself, and feel that it's good to be here.

Love, Knowledge

“Joe" I said. "It's Stephanie."
"Does this involve death?"
"Not yet."
"Does this involve sex?"
"Not yet."
"I can't imagine why else you'd be calling me.”

Janet Evanovich Four to Score

Source: Four to Score

Death, Sex

“It was their secret, a secret meant for just the two of them, and she'd never been able to imagine how it would sound coming from someone else. But, somehow, Logan made it sound just right.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Lucky One

Source: The Lucky One

Secret

“If babies held the same tendency toward self-criticism as adults, they might never learn to walk or talk. Can you imagine infants stomping, 'Aarggh! Screwed up again!' Fortunately, babies are free of self-criticism. They just keep practicing.”

Dan Millman (1946) American self help writer

Learning, Baby

“I can’t imagine anything worse than being required to have fun.”

Scott Westerfeld (1963) American science fiction writer

“Her imagination painted Georgie twenty years later, sitting in leg irons before some Broken psychiatrist. "Well, you see, it all started with bubbles…”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: On the Edge

Painting

“I think that this scene is upsetting because it calls us beyond fact into the vast world of imagination, and imagination is a word of many dimensions.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Acceptance Speech for the Margaret Edwards Award (1998)
Source: A Circle of Quiet
Context: In Kenneth Grahame's beautiful book, The Wind In The Willows, Mole and Rat go to the holy island of the great god, Pan. It is a superb piece of religious writing, but because it has gone beyond fact, it is deeply upsetting and untruthful to some people. If a story is not specified as being Christian, it is not Christian. But that is not so.
I think that this scene is upsetting because it calls us beyond fact into the vast world of imagination, and imagination is a word of many dimensions.

World, Thinking

“My survival was up to me. I had nothing and I had no one. What I did have, I told myself, was my mind, my imagination, my memory, my feelings, my spirit. These were important and powerful things.”

John Marsden (1950) author

Source: A Killing Frost

Feeling, Memory

“I'm asking you, I'm begging you, could you please shut your mouth for just five minutes?"
You can imagine the reaction. They ended up in the basement.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

“There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

Books, Housing

“somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence.
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you always open petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously)her first rose or if it be your wish to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly
as the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending; nothing we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries
rendering death and forever with each breathing”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

W [ViVa] (1931) LVII

Life, Death, World, Travel

“But America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

Special Message to the Congress: The President's First Economic Report (1947)
Source: https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/public-papers/4/special-message-congress-presidents-first-economic-report

Fear, Courage, Courageous

“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination. I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Intelligence, Knowledge, Passion

“He realized that he had thought only about the first step, never imagined the last.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Source: Let the Great World Spin

“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1920s, Viereck interview (1929)

World, Knowledge, Drawing, Inspirational

“We imagined we knew everything the other thought, even when we did not necessarily want to know it, but in fact, I have come to see, we knew not the smallest fraction of what there was to know.”

Joan Didion The Year of Magical Thinking

Source: The Year of Magical Thinking

“I sometimes longed for someone who, like me, had not adjusted perfectly with his age, and such a person was hard to find; but I soon discovered cats, in which I could imagine a condition like mine, and books, where I found it quite often.”

Julio Cortázar book Around the Day in Eighty Worlds

Source: Around the Day in Eighty Worlds

Books, Age, Cats, Personality

“in the presence of extraordinary actuality, consciousness takes the place of imagination.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

“Equality and freedom are not luxuries to lightly cast aside. Without them, order cannot long endure before approaching depths beyond imagining.”

Alan Moore V for Vendetta

Source: V for Vendetta

Freedom

“You are the only woman who ever answered the demands of my imagination.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Source: Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin

“Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination; do not become the slave of your model.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

“The ties that bind us to life are tougher than you imagine, or than any one can who has not felt how roughly they may be pulled without breaking.”

Anne Brontë book Agnes Grey

Source: Agnes Grey

Life

“… but it's your existence I love you for, mainly. Existence seems to me now the most remarkable thing that could ever be imagined.”

Marilynne Robinson Gilead

Source: Gilead

Love

“Death? Why all this fuss about death? Use your imagination, try to visualize a world without death! Death is the essential condition to life, not an evil.”

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) American feminist, writer, commercial artist, lecturer and social reformer

Life, Death, World, Evil

“The world to me was a secret, which I desired to discover; to her it was a vacancy, which she sought to people with imaginations of her own.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Source: Frankenstein

People, Secret, World

“Imagine no limitations; decide what's right and desirable before you decide
what's possible.”

Brian Tracy (1944) American motivational speaker and writer

“I can't imagine a sweeter agony, having him so close.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Again the Magic

“You gotta imagine what's never been.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

“Tell me you love me," I pleaded"
"Gideon's eyes met mine. "You know I do"
"Imagine if I i ever said the words to you. If you never heard them from me"
"His chest expanded on a deep breath. "Crossfire”

Sylvia Day (1973) American writer

Source: Entwined with You

Love

“Imagination is the key to my lyrics. The rest is painted with a little science fiction.”

Jimi Hendrix (1942–1970) American musician, singer and songwriter

Science, Painting

“There is a mystery about this which stimulates the imagination; where there is no imagination there is no horror.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book A Study in Scarlet

Source: A Study in Scarlet

“gravity, n.

I imagine you saved my life. And then I wonder if I'm just imagining it.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

Life

“Sometimes I imagine myself looking back on right now and I think like where will I be standing when I look back Will right now look like the beginning of a great life or… or what”

Jennifer Egan A Visit from the Goon Squad

Source: A Visit from the Goon Squad

Life, Thinking

“Agad bowed to the Fairy Queen. 'You are most wise, your majesty. Some imagine the difference between heaven and hell to be a matter of geography. Not so. The difference is much more evident in the individuals who dwell there.”

Brandon Mull (1974) American fiction writer

Source: Keys to the Demon Prison

Hell

“I'll leave it to you, Sassenach," he said dryly, "to imagine what it feels like to arrive unexpectedly in the midst of a brothel, in possession of a verra large sausage.”

Diana Gabaldon book Dragonfly in Amber

Source: Dragonfly in Amber

Feeling

“You can con God and get away with it, Granny said, if you do so with charm and wit. If you live your life with imagination and verve, God will play along just to see what outrageously entertaining thing you'll do next.”

Dean Koontz Odd Thomas

Source: Odd Thomas

Life, God

“Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose.”

Alan Moore book Watchmen

Source: Watchmen

“He was so different from her, yet in his presence she felt the possibility of another kind of life, a life she had never imagined could be hers. A life without the rigid limitations others had always set for her.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Choice

Source: The Choice

Life

“When the past is recaptured by the imagination, breath is put back into life.”

Marguerite Duras (1914–1996) French writer and film director

Life, Past

“You are the answer to every prayer I've offered. You are a song, a dream, a whisper, and I don't know how I could have lived without you for as long as I have. I love you, Aliie, more than you can ever imagine. I always have, and I always will.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook

Source: The Notebook

Love, Dreams

“I am really only myself when I'm somebody else whom I have endowed with these wonderful qualities from my imagination.”

Zelda Fitzgerald book Save Me the Waltz

Variant: But I warn you, I am only really myself when I’m somebody else whom I have endowed with these wonderful qualities from my imagination.
Source: Save Me the Waltz