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Imagination: Quotations from Shakespearian Quotations

Such tricks hath strong imagination; That if it would but apprehend some joy, It comprehends some bringer of that joy; Or, in the night imagining some fear, How easy is a bush suppos'd a bear!— M. N. v. 1

Conceit, more rich in matter than in words, Brags of his substance, not of ornament: They are but beggars that can count their worth.— R. J. ii. 6

Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend More than cool reason ever comprehends. The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, Are of imagination all compact: One sees more devils than vast hell can hold; That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt: The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; 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.— M. N. V. 1

O, who can hold a fire in his hand, By thinking on the frosty Caucasus? Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite, By bare imagination of a feast? Or wallow naked in December's snow, By thinking on fantastic summer's heat O, no! the apprehension of the good, Gives but the greater feeling to the worse: Fell sorrow's tooth doth never rankle more, Than when it bites, but lanceth not the sore.— R. II. i. 3

Dangerous conceits, are, in their natures, poisons, Which, at the first, are scarce found to distaste; But, with a little act upon the blood, Burn like the mines of sulphur.— 0. iii. 3

He waxes desperate with imagination.— H. i. 4

Imaginary Evils Cause Real Cares

The passions of the mind, That have their first conception by mis-dread, Have after-nourishment and life by care; And what was first but fear what might be done, Grows elder now, and cares it be not done.— P. P. i. 2.