Quotes About Imagination

I can look at the knot in a piece of wood until it frightens me.

This cabinet is formed of gold And pearl and crystal shining bright, And within it opens into a world And a little lovely moony night.

And I made a rural pen,And I stain'd the water clear,And I wrote my happy songsEvery child may joy to hear.

Piping down the valleys wild,Piping songs of pleasant glee,On a cloud I saw a child,And he laughing said to me:"Pipe a song about a Lamb."So I piped with merry cheer;"Piper, pipe that song again."So I piped; he wept to hear.

Travelers repose and dream among my leaves.

The man who never in his mind and thoughts travel'd to heaven is no artist.

To me this world is all one continued vision of fancy or imagination, and I feel flattered when I am told so. What is it sets Homer, Virgil and Milton in so high a rank of art? Why is the Bible more entertaining and instructive than any other book? Is it not because they are addressed to the imagination, which is spiritual sensation, and but immediately to the understanding or reason?

The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity... and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.

What is now proved was once only imagined.

The imagination is not a state: it is the human existence itself.

Encourage learning in the areas of discovery and innovation. This is the time for even more creative thinking and greater focus on innovation.

Look for opportunities to brainstorm new answers to old problems. You have lived with them for so long that you may have unwittingly given up any hope of solving them. Break through this block, not by finding the single right answer but by finding 10 or 20 new answers—the crazier, the better.

What is called "innovation" usually represents a new Dream.

Purpose You can explain the basic purpose behind the outcome you seek. People have to understand the logic of it before they will turn their minds to work on it. Picture You can paint a picture of how the outcome will look and feel. People need to experience it imaginatively before they can give their hearts to it. Plan You can lay out a step-by-step plan for phasing in the outcome. People need a clear idea of how they can get where they need to go.

Purposes are critical to beginnings, but they are rather abstract. They are ideas, and most people are not ready to throw themselves into a difficult and risky undertaking simply on the basis of an idea.1 They need something they can see, at least in their imaginations. They need a picture of how the outcome will look, and they need to be able to imagine how it will feel to be a participant in it.

Landscape is metaphor / and only metaphor. But, oh, I have loved it so.

A green world, a scene of green, deep / with light blues, the greens made deep / by those blues. One thinks how / in certain pictures, envied landscapes are seen / (through a window, maybe) far behind the serene / sitter's face, the serene pose, as though/in some impossible mirror, face to back, / human serenity gazed at a green world / which gazed at this face.

It appears that many people's concept of heaven is often limited to their physical conceptions of reality.

In a society that has cast out imaginative tradition, only a few people - three or four thousand out of millions - favoured by their own characters and by happy circumstance, and only then after much labour, have understanding of imaginative things, and yet "the imagination is the man himself".

In dreams begin responsibility.

Take, if you must, this little bag of dreams, Unloose the cord, and they will wrap you round.

Down the mountain wallsFrom where Pan's cavern isIntolerable music falls.Foul goat-head, brutal arm appear,Belly, shoulder, bum,Flash fishlike; nymphs and satyrsCopulate in the foam.

In dreams begins responsibility.

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,Enwrought with gold and silver light.