“It has been observed before that images, however beautiful, though faithfully copied from nature, and as accurately represented in words, do not of themselves characterize the poet. They become proofs of original genius only as far as they are modified by a predominant passion; or by associated thoughts or images awakened by that passion; or when they have the effect of reducing multitude to unity, or succession to an instant; or lastly, when a human and intellectual life is transferred to them from the poet's spirit.”

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge , book Biographia Literaria

Source: Biographia Literaria (1817), Ch. XV

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge 220

English poet, literary critic and philosopher 1772–1834

Pierre Piobb (1874–1942) French ophthalmologist (1874-1942)

Source: Book Ancient Higher Magic

“The poet presents the imagination with images from life and human characters and situations, sets them all in motion and leaves it to the beholder to let these images take his thoughts as far as his mental powers will permit.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

Vol. 2 "On Philosophy and the Intellect" as translated in Essays and Aphorisms (1970), as translated by R. J. Hollingdale
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Counsels and Maxims
Context: The poet presents the imagination with images from life and human characters and situations, sets them all in motion and leaves it to the beholder to let these images take his thoughts as far as his mental powers will permit. This is why he is able to engage men of the most differing capabilities, indeed fools and sages together. The philosopher, on the other hand, presents not life itself but the finished thoughts which he has abstracted from it and then demands that the reader should think precisely as, and precisely as far as, he himself thinks. That is why his public is so small.

“The human being, on the other hand, is firmly located in a temporal process. He has an image of the past which extends back far beyond the limits of his own life and experience, and he likewise has an image of the future. Closely associated with the time structure of his image is the image of the structure of relationships. Because we are aware of time, we are also aware of cause and effect, of contiguity and succession, of cycles and repetition. The image of man is also characterized by a much greater degree of self-consciousness and of self-awareness than that of the lower animals. We not only know, but we know that we know. This reflective character of the human image is unique, and is what leads to philosophy.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1950s, The Image: Knowledge in Life and Society, 1956, p. 25

“We are forced to distinguish between three kinds of speech: (1) The external, “rhetorical speech,” in the common meaning of this expression, which only refers to images because they affect the passions. Since these images do not stem from insight, however, they remain an object of opinion. This is the case of the purely emotive, false speech: “rhetoric” in the usual negative sense. (2) The speech which arises exclusively from a rational proceeding. It is true that this is of a demonstrative character, but it cannot have a rhetorical effect because purely rational arguments do not attain to the passions, i. e., “theoretical” speech in the usual sense. (3) The true rhetorical speech. This springs from the archai, nondeductible, moving, and indicative, due to its original images. The original speech is that of the wise man, of the sophos, who is not only epistetai, but who with insight leads, guides, and attracts.”

Ernesto Grassi (1902–1991) Italian philosopher

Source: Rhetoric as Philosophy (1980), p. 32

“In images of horror, and in a certain terrible greatness, our author comes far behind Chaucer. Whether they were not suited to the genius or the temper of Lydgate, I do not determine; but it is certain that, though they naturally seemed to present themselves, he has almost generally chose to avoid them: yet is there frequently a stiller kind of majesty both in his thought and expression, which makes one of his principal beauties.”

John Lydgate (1370–1450) monk and poet

Thomas Gray "Some Remarks on the Poems of Lydgate", in The Works of Thomas Gray (1858) vol. 5, pp. 308-9.
Criticism

“Mathematical physics represents the purest image that the view of nature may generate in the human mind; this image presents all the character of the product of art; it begets some unity, it is true and has the quality of sublimity; this image is to physical nature what music is to the thousand noises of which the air is full…”

Théophile de Donder (1872–1957) Belgian physicist

as quoted by Ilya Prigogine in his Autobiography http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1977/prigogine-autobio.html given at the occasion of Prigogine's 1977 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

“Their successors have not devoted themselves to such serious studies, and hence it so frequently happens that they are reduced to content themselves, either with copying from those who went before them, or with working after individual models, whose proportions they modify according to mere caprice, without having any just or proper ideas of the beautiful.”

Adolphe Quetelet (1796–1874) Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociologist

Preface of M. Quetelet
A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1842)
Context: The principal artists of the era of the revival of letters, such as Leon Baptista Alberti, Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Durer, with many others who what art ought to borrow from science, felt the necessity of resorting to observation, in order to rebuild in some sort the ruined monument of ancient artistical skill. They studied nature in a philosophical manner; sought to strike out the limits within which they ought to confine themselves in order to be truthlike... and from those profound studies which kept them ever before the face of nature, they deduced original views and new models, destined to distinguish for ever that celebrated age. The proportions of the human body did not alone attract their attention: anatomy, perspective, and chemistry, formed parts of their studies; nothing was neglected; and some of these great artists even gained for themselves a first place among the geometers of their day. Their successors have not devoted themselves to such serious studies, and hence it so frequently happens that they are reduced to content themselves, either with copying from those who went before them, or with working after individual models, whose proportions they modify according to mere caprice, without having any just or proper ideas of the beautiful.

“An image of thought called philosophy has been formed historically and it effectively stops people from thinking.”

Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) French philosopher

Source: Dialogues II

“What the public wants is the image of passion, not passion itself.”

Roland Barthes (1915–1980) French philosopher, critic and literary theorist

"Le monde où l'on catche," in Mythologies (1957)

“Image…that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time.”

Ezra Pound (1885–1972) American Imagist poet and critic

"Poetry: A Few Don'ts by an Imagist", Poetry: A Magazine of Verse (March 1913)

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