“Imagination? It is the one thing beside honesty that a good writer must have. The more he learns from experience the more he can imagine.”
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Ernest Hemingway501
American author and journalist 1899–1961Related quotes
Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist
"Quotes", The Educated Imagination (1963), Talk 2: The Singing School
“He who is wicked and held to be good, can cheat because no one imagines he would.”
Giovanni Boccaccio book The Decameron
Chi è reo e buono è tenuto
Può fare il male e non è creduto.
Fourth Day, Second Story
The Decameron (c. 1350)
Patricia Reilly Giff (1935) American children's writer
Source: Water Street (2006), Chapters 11-20, p. 90
Cyrano de Bergerac (1619–1655) French novelist, dramatist, scientist and duelist
Sun-being to the court
The Other World (1657)
Context: O just ones, hear me! You cannot condemn this man, monkey or parrot for saying that the moon is the world he comes from. If he is a man, all men are free. Is he then not free to imagine what he wants, even if he does not come from the moon? Can you force him to have only your visions? Impossible! You may make him say that he believes that the moon is not a world, but still he will not believe it. To believe something, one must imagine that it is more probable than not. Unless you show him what is probable or he realizes it himself, he may tell you that he believes and yet he will not believe.
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist
Variant: I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
Source: Walden: Or, Life in the Woods