Quotes About Imagination

Poetry should... should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.

I will imagine you Venus tonight and pray, pray, pray to your star like a Heathen.

Tall oaks branch charmed by the earnest stars Dream and so dream all night without a stir.

No sooner had I stepp'd into these pleasures Than I began to think of rhymes and measures: The air that floated by me seem'd to say 'Write! thou wilt never have a better day.

I feel more and more every day, as my imagination strengthens, that I do not live in this world alone but in a thousand worlds.

one of the most mysterious of semi-speculations is, one would suppose, that of one Mind's imagining into another

Then felt I like like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Like stout Cortes when with eagle eyes He star'd at the Pacific-and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surmise Silent upon a peak in Darien

I have clung To nothing, lov'd a nothing, nothing seen Or felt but a great dream!

Open wide the mind's cage-door, She'll dart forth, and cloudward soar.

O that our dreamings all, of sleep or wake, Would all their colours from the sunset take.

t this is human life: the war, the deeds, The disappointment, the anxiety, Imagination's struggles, far and nigh, All human; bearing in themselves this good, That they are still the air, the subtle food, To make us feel existence, and to shew How quiet death is.

But here there is no light, Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet ..Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee, Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of Poesy

But this is human life: the war, the deeds, The disappointment, the anxiety, Imagination's struggles, far and nigh, All human; bearing in themselves this good, That they are still the air, the subtle food, To make us feel existence. -Keats, Endymion This is the 'goal' of the soul path – to feel existence; not to overcome life's struggles and anxieties, but to know life first hand, to exist fully in context. (Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul, p.260)

Even now I am perhaps not speaking from myself: but from some character in whose soul I now live.

The imagination may be compared to adams dream. He awoke and found it truth.

How sad is it when a luxurious imagination is obliged in self defense to deaden its delicacy in vulgarity, and riot in things attainable that it may not have leisure to go mad after things which are not.

My spirit is too weak--mortality Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep, And each imagin'd pinnacle and steep Of godlike hardship tells me I must die Like a sick Eagle looking at the sky.

When through the old oak forest I am gone, Let me not wander in a barren dream.

No estoy seguro de nada excepto de la santidad del afecto del Corazón y la verdad de la Imaginación. Aquello que la imaginación capta como Belleza ha de ser verdad, haya existido antes o no.

Let the winged Fancy roam Pleasure never is at home.

I should like the window to open onto the Lake of Geneva--and there I'd sit and read all day like the picture of somebody reading.

I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspir'd. So let me be thy choir, and make a moan Upon the midnight hours; Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet From swinged censer teeming; Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat Of pale-mouth'd prophet dreaming. Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane In some untrodden region of my mind, Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain, Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind: - Ode to Psyche - Excerpt

Besides, a long poem is a test of invention, which I take to be the Polar star of Poetry, as Fancy is the sails - and Imagination the rudder.