But the greatest thing by far is to have a command of metaphor.
Our note: Aristotle on the one skill in writing that cannot be taught by others.
Verified in the full text of Poetics on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #1974
Quotes about imagination
30 verified quotes from 17 writers, c. 335 BC to 1911.
Imagination here ranges from Prospero’s “such stuff as dreams are made on” to the White Queen, who has believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. Emily Dickinson contributes three short poems, among them the brain that is wider than the sky and the book that is a better ship than any frigate.
Chesterton defends fairy tales not for telling children that dragons exist but for telling them dragons can be beaten, and Barrie gives the directions to Neverland: second to the right, and straight on till morning. Every quote below was matched word for word in the public-domain edition we link.
What “verified” means, and what we leave out: How we verify.
Aristotle, Poetics, c. 335 BCTranslated by S. H. Butcher (1895) Poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history: for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular
Aristotle, Poetics, c. 335 BCTranslated by S. H. Butcher (1895) Our note: Aristotle explains why he ranks poetry above a plain record of events.
Verified in the full text of Poetics on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #1974
We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.
Prospero, in The Tempest by William Shakespeare, 1623 Our note: Prospero ends the magical show he has staged for the young lovers.
Verified in the full text of The Tempest on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #100 · Collected in The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
Painted the same decade: Still Life with a Skull and a Writing Quill, Pieter Claesz, 1628
…that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, 1817 Our note: Coleridge on what a reader gives to a poem or story about the supernatural.
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Painted the same decade: Charles Maurice de Talleyrand Périgord (1754–1838), Prince de Talleyrand, Pierre Paul Prud'hon, 1817
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought
Percy Bysshe Shelley, To a Skylark, 1820 Our note: From Shelley's poem addressed to a skylark.
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Painted the same decade: Madame Jacques-Louis Leblanc (Françoise Poncelle, 1788–1839), Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, 1823
…they've gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind
Catherine Earnshaw, in Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, 1847 Our note: Catherine Earnshaw to Nelly Dean, on dreams that stayed with her.
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Painted the same decade: The Abduction of Rebecca, Eugène Delacroix, 1846
It is not down in any map; true places never are.
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, 1851 Our note: Ishmael, describing Queequeg's home island.
Verified in the full text of Moby-Dick on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #2701
Painted the same decade: Scene in the Jewish Quarter of Constantine, Théodore Chassériau, 1851
To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, 1851 Our note: Ishmael, in the chapter on the size of whales, defending his huge subject.
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Painted the same decade: Madame Frederic Breyer (Fanny Hélène Van Bruyssel, 1830–1894), Gustave Courbet, 1858
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854 Our note: A line from the conclusion of Walden about turning dreams into plans.
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Painted the same decade: The Artist's Sitting Room in Ritterstrasse, Adolph Menzel, 1851
I want to do something splendid before I go into my castle, something heroic or wonderful that won't be forgotten after I'm dead.
Jo March, in Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, 1868 Our note: Jo describing her castle in the air, when the young people share their dreams.
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Painted the same decade: Boy with a Sword, Edouard Manet, 1861
I've got the key to my castle in the air, but whether I can unlock the door remains to be seen
Jo March, in Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, 1868 Our note: Jo, in the same conversation, hinting at her ink-stand and her writing.
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Painted the same decade: The Dead Christ with Angels, Edouard Manet, 1864
Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
The White Queen, in Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll, 1871 Our note: The White Queen, after Alice says one can't believe impossible things.
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Painted the same decade: Joan of Arc, Jules Bastien-Lepage, 1879
It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards, …
The White Queen, in Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll, 1871 Our note: The White Queen, who remembers things before they happen.
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Painted the same decade: Sulking, Edgar Degas, ca. 1870
To talk of many things: Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax— Of cabbages—and kings— And why the sea is boiling hot— And whether pigs have wings
The Walrus, in Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll, 1871 Our note: From 'The Walrus and the Carpenter', recited to Alice by Tweedledee.
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Painted the same decade: The Dancing Class, Edgar Degas, ca. 1870
I never saw a moor, I never saw the sea; Yet know I how the heather looks, And what a wave must be
Emily Dickinson, I never saw a moor, 1890 Our note: A short poem first printed in the 1890 selection edited after Dickinson's death.
Verified in the full text of I never saw a moor on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #12242 · Collected in Poems by Emily Dickinson
Painted the same decade: Still Life with Teapot and Fruit, Paul Gauguin, 1896
…life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.
Sherlock Holmes, in A Case of Identity by Arthur Conan Doyle, 1891 Our note: Holmes by the fire at Baker Street.
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Painted the same decade: Irises, Vincent van Gogh, 1890
The excellence of every art is its intensity
John Keats, Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends, 1891 Our note: From Keats's letter of December 1817 to his brothers, a thought about what makes art work.
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Painted the same decade: The Englishman (William Tom Warrener, 1861–1934) at the Moulin Rouge, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1892
There is no frigate like a book To take us lands away, Nor any coursers like a page Of prancing poetry.
Emily Dickinson, There is no frigate like a book, 1894 Our note: Dickinson on books as ships that carry the reader anywhere.
Verified in the full text of There is no frigate like a book on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #12242 · Collected in Poems by Emily Dickinson
Painted the same decade: Still Life with Teapot and Fruit, Paul Gauguin, 1896
The brain is wider than the sky, For, put them side by side, The one the other will include With ease, and you beside.
Emily Dickinson, The brain is wider than the sky, 1896 Our note: The first stanza.
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Painted the same decade: The Englishman (William Tom Warrener, 1861–1934) at the Moulin Rouge, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1892
To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,— One clover, and a bee, And revery.
Emily Dickinson, To make a prairie, 1896 Our note: The first lines of a very short poem.
Verified in the full text of To make a prairie on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #12242 · Collected in Poems by Emily Dickinson
Painted the same decade: Ia Orana Maria (Hail Mary), Paul Gauguin, 1891
The man with a new idea is a Crank until the idea succeeds.
Mark Twain, Following the Equator, 1897 Our note: From "Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar."
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Painted the same decade: The Dream of the Shepherd (Der Traum des Hirten), Ferdinand Hodler, 1896
The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream
James Allen, As a Man Thinketh, 1903 Our note: From the chapter on visions and ideals.
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The Vision that you glorify in your mind, the Ideal that you enthrone in your heart—this you will build your life by, this you will become.
James Allen, As a Man Thinketh, 1903 Our note: From the chapter on visions and ideals.
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The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.
G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 1908 Our note: From the chapter "The Maniac."
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The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason
G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 1908 Our note: From the chapter 'The Maniac', on the danger of logic cut off from everything else.
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It's delightful when your imaginations come true, isn't it?
Anne Shirley, in Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery, 1908 Our note: Anne, delighted that something she had imagined has really happened.
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The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.
G. K. Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles, 1909 Our note: From the essay "The Red Angel," defending fairy tales for children.
Verified in the full text of Tremendous Trifles on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #8092
Second to the right, and straight on till morning.
J. M. Barrie, Peter and Wendy, 1911 Our note: Peter's directions to the Neverland.
Verified in the full text of Peter and Wendy on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #16 · Collected in Peter Pan
Painted the same decade: Tilla Durieux (Ottilie Godeffroy, 1880–1971), Auguste Renoir, 1914
To die will be an awfully big adventure
Peter Pan, in Peter and Wendy by J. M. Barrie, 1911 Our note: Peter's thought as the tide rises around him on Marooners' Rock.
Verified in the full text of Peter and Wendy on Project Gutenberg · Project Gutenberg ebook #16 · Collected in Peter Pan
Painted the same decade: Tilla Durieux (Ottilie Godeffroy, 1880–1971), Auguste Renoir, 1914
…when the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.
J. M. Barrie, Peter and Wendy, 1911 Our note: Peter explains to Wendy where fairies come from.
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Painted the same decade: Tilla Durieux (Ottilie Godeffroy, 1880–1971), Auguste Renoir, 1914