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Imagination: Quotations from Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations
Not to know me argues yourselves unknown, The lowest of your throng.— MILTON — Paradise Lost. Bk. IV. L. 830.
It is better to be unborn than untaught: for ignorance is the root of misfortune.— PLATO
From ignorance our comfort flows, The only wretched are the wise.— PRIOR — To the Hon. Chas. Montague.
1692. And seeing ignorance is the curse of God, Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.— Shakespeare — Henry VI. Pt. II. Act IV. Sc. 7. L. 78.
Madam, thou errest: I say, there is no darkness, but ignorance; in which thou art more puzzled, than the Egyptians in their fog.— Shakespeare — Twelfth Night. Act IV. Sc. 2. L. 44.
O thou monster, Ignorance, how deformed dost thou look! S.— Shakespeare — Love's Labour's Lost. Act IV. Sc. 2. L. 21.
Ignorance is the mother of devotion.— JEREMY TAYLOR — To a Person newly
Converted to the Church of England. 1657. *** Where blind and naked Ignorance Delivers brawling judgments, unashamed, On all things all day long.— TENNYSON — Idylls of the King. Vivien. L. 515.
Imagination is the air of mind.— BAILEY — Festus. Sc. Another and a
Better World. Seem'd washing his hands with invisible soap In imperceptible water.— HOOD — Miss Kilmansegg. Her
Christening. To those who see only with their eyes, the distant is always indistinct and little, becoming less and less as it recedes, till utterly lost; but to the imagination, which thus reverses the perspective of the senses, the far off is great and imposing, the magnitude increasing with the distance.— MRS. JAMESON — Studies. Detached
Thoughts. These are the gloomy companions of a disturbed imagination; the melancholy madness of poetry, without the inspiration.— JUNIUS — Letter VIII. To Sir W.
Draper. When I could not sleep for cold I had fire enough in my brain, And builded with roofs of gold My beautiful castles in Spain!— LOWELL — Aladdin. St. 1.
His imagination resembled the wings of an ostrich. It enabled him to run, though not to soar.— MACAULAY — On John Dryden. 1828.
Imagination rules the world. C.— NAPOLEON I
And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. Midsummer-Night's Dream. Act V. Sc. 1. L. 14. In my mind's eye, Horatio.— Shakespeare — Hamlet. Act I. Sc. 2. L. 186.
Look, what thy soul holds dear, imagine it To lie that way thou go'st, not whence thou com'st: Suppose the singing birds musicians; The grass whereon thou tread'st the presence strew'd; The flowers fair ladies, and thy steps no more Than a delightful measure or a dance.— Shakespeare — Richard II. Act I. Sc. 3. L. 286.
The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them. Midsummer-Night's Dream. Act V. Sc. 1. L. 213. The lunatic, the lover and the poet Are of imagination all compact. Midsummer-Night's Dream. Act V. Sc. 1. L. 7. This is a gift that I have, simple, simple; a foolish extravagant spirit, full of forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, motions, revolutions; these are begot in the ventricle of memory, nourished in the womb of pia mater, and delivered upon the mellowing of occasion.— Shakespeare — Love's Labour's Lost. Act IV. Sc. 2. L. 67.
This is the very coinage of your brain : This bodiless creation ecstasy.— Shakespeare — Hamlet. Act III. Sc. 4. L. 137.
But thou, that did'st appear so fair To fond imagination, Dost rival in the light of day Her delicate creation.— WORDSWORTH — Yarrow Visited.
Delphinum appingit sylvis, in fluctibus aprum. He paints a dolphin in the woods, and a boar in the waves.— HORACE — Ars Poetica. XXX.
Celui qui a de l'imagination sans érudition a des ailes, et n'a pas de pieds. He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet. C.