Top 100 Imaginative Quotes

#1. The nude does not simply represent the body, but relates it, by analogy, to all structures that have become part of our imaginative experience.

Kenneth Clark

#2. Time and time again we forget all too easily that nonviolent action embraces a wide and imaginative range of behavior which can always be stepped up.

Petra Kelly

#3. The creative consequences of man's imaginative strivings may never make him whole; but they constitute his deepest consolations and his greatest glories.

Anthony Storr

#4. I was a very religious child - I went to synagogue at least once, sometimes twice, a day. And I remember my religiousness as good - I think religion is good for children, especially educated children, because it allows for imagination, a whole imaginative world apart from the practical world.

Yehuda Amichai

#5. The arts, like language, emerged spontaneously and universally in similar forms across cultures, employing imaginative and intellectual capacities that had clear survival value.

Denis Dutton

#6. ... rational metaphysics teaches that man becomes all things by understanding them ... imaginative metaphysics shows that
man becomes all things by not understanding them ... for when he does not understand he makes the things out of himself and becomes them by transforming himself into them.

Giambattista Vico

#7. Shouldn't someone tag Mr. Kennedy's bold new imaginative program with its proper age? Under the tousled boyish haircut is still old Karl Marx-first launched a century ago. There is nothing new in the idea of a government being Big Brother.

Ronald Reagan

#8. Of course, it's wonderful to film any period piece - but especially 'Foyle's War' because the art direction is so imaginative and yet at the same time so real. You can open a drawer on set, and even though the camera never sees what's inside, it'll be filled with genuine 1940s documents.

Honeysuckle Weeks

#9. Those half-learn'd witlings, num'rous in our isle
As half-form'd insects on the banks of Nile

Alexander Pope

#10. Memory belongs to the imagination. Human memory is not like a computer which records things; it is part of the imaginative process, on the same terms as invention.

Alain Robbe-Grillet

#11. Joseph moved to prove his sincerity in his vision-they moved ahead to invalidate his sincerity and what they think is his imaginative illusion.

Ikechukwu Joseph

#12. If something doesnt feel normal to me, it must be wrong. Failing to have a shred of imaginative empathy is a virtue!

Gavin McInnes

#13. Like art, religion is an imaginative and creative effort to find a meaning and value in human life.

Karen Armstrong

#14. Imaginative cook, and her experiments weren't always edible. I was surprised, and sad, that he seemed to remember that far back. "Steak and potatoes," I answered, and he looked relieved. He seemed to feel awkward standing in the kitchen doing nothing; he lumbered

Stephenie Meyer

#15. To think that realistic fiction is by definition superior to imaginative fiction is to think imitation is superior to invention.

Ursula K. Le Guin

#16. Perhaps the most terrible (or wonderful) thing that can happen to an imaginative youth, aside from the curse (or blessing) of imagination itself, is to be exposed without preparation to the life outside his or her own sphere - the sudden revelation that there is a there out there.

Tom Robbins

#17. Anything can be a weapon in imaginative hands.

Jane Prowse

#18. A person's work allows their character to form and provides a creative outlet for their inner world of imaginative thoughts and creative impulses. A person whom fails to find suitable work that allows their soul room to grow will quickly begin eroding into a withered and desiccated being.

Kilroy J. Oldster

#19. Once i asked myself ," what is time? " , in a second or two , i find the answer - " 't' for tension , 'i' for imaginative character of time , 'm' as it is mathematically expressed , 'e' as it has elegance

Suman Kundu

#20. There are two kinds of taste in the appreciation of imaginative literature: the taste for emotions of surprise and the taste for emotions of recognition.

Henry James

#21. By focusing on positive, healthy motivations and letting the more negative ones pass, you can purify the source of you imaginative power.

Denis Waitley

#22. If plants could be credited with reasoning powers, we would marvel at the imaginative ways they bribe or ensnare other creatures to carry out their wishes.

Jane Goodall

#23. I love the virtuosity and imaginative chutzpah of 'Da Vinci's Demons,' and not just because my boyfriend is in it!

Hattie Morahan

#24. The thing is, I don't believe in most of what's done. The amount of financial and imaginative energy that's put into mediocrity is just amazing which I find to be fundamentally offensive as a human being.

William Hurt

#25. For a scientist must indeed be freely imaginative and yet skeptical, creative and yet a critic. There is a sense in which he must be free, but another in which his thought must be very precisely regimented; there is poetry in science, but also a lot of bookkeeping.

Peter Medawar

#26. We marry children who have grown up and still rejoice in being children, especially if we're creative. Imaginative people fidget with ideas, including the idea of a relationship. If they're wordsmiths like us, they fidget a lot in words.

Diane Ackerman

#27. Writing imaginative tales for the young is like sending coals to Newcastle. For coals.

Neil Gaiman

#28. I like the fact that kids are willing to be imaginative and go along with me when I'm telling strange tales.

Margaret Haddix

#29. I have a personal definition of cartooning, which is, simply, "imaginative drawing." Anything you're drawing that is not in front of you but is a mental construct that you want to express in a drawing is, to me, a cartoon.

Jim Woodring

#30. The true method of discovery is like the flight of an aeroplane. It starts from the ground of particular observation; it makes a flight in the thin air of imaginative generalization; and it again lands for renewed observation rendered acute by rational interpretation.

Alfred North Whitehead

#31. Go home, Rachel. She so likes to to be there for his return. Zachariah is coming, Zachariah is coming! Rachel is all gravity now, nudged from dreams, a swift transition. Rachel dreams much and often. She is not hunted.

Emma Richler

#32. The thing that makes me happiest about Simpsons Illustrated are all the drawings that we get from readers. I wish we could print them all. They're really imaginative. They show a lot of hard work.

Matt Groening

#33. If we can come up with all sorts of imaginative ways in which people die, then I really don't see what the problem is with coming up with imaginative ways in which people can procreate.

Alan Moore

#34. Every philosophy is tinged with the coloring of some secret imaginative background, which never emerges explicitly into its train of reasoning.

Alfred North Whitehead

#35. ... sometimes you need to be imaginative about what kinds of research you do, compromise and be driven by the questions that need answering, rather than the tools available to you.

Ben Goldacre

#36. Invention despoils observations, insinuation invalidates memory. A stewpot of bad habits, all of it - so that imaginative writers wind up, by and large, a shifty crew, sunk in distortion, misrepresentation, illusion, imposture, fakery.

Cynthia Ozick

#37. The thrill of terror is passive, masochistic, and implicitly feminine. It is imaginative submission to overwhelming superior force.

Camille Paglia

#38. The exotic and the erotic ideals go hand in hand, and this fact also contributes another proof of a more or less obvious truth - that is, that a love of the exotic is usually an imaginative projection of a sexual desire.

Mario Praz

#39. A relationship is an imaginative act, it's an act of creation. Someone said to me the other day that a relationship between a person and a kid is unconditional; but the relationship between adults, to each other, is conditional, in a sense. But that condition can be the best kind.

Keanu Reeves

#40. Broadway purists may deplore the influx of movie-spinoff musicals in recent years, wishing someone would turn off the popcorn machine and let more imaginative brainstorms blow through.

James Wolcott

#41. The romantic mode is primarily inspirational, imaginative, creative, intuitive. Feelings rather than facts predominate. "Art" when it is opposed to "Science" is often romantic. It does not proceed by reason or by laws. It proceeds by feeling, intuition and esthetic conscience.

Robert M. Pirsig

#42. Virtually every kid is exposed to giants and ogres and talking wolves, and so forth. And magic. And I think you never outgrow your love for those imaginative, fanciful, farfetched, fantastic characters and situations.

Stan Lee

#43. ...playing these physical and imaginative group games instantly creates community connection.

Hannah Fox

#44. I have sometimes thought that his bursts of imaginative talk were fatal to his poetic gift. He squandered too much in the heat of personal communication.

Willa Cather

#45. For many imaginative writers, working for the press is a fact of their life. But it's best not to like it too much.

Hilary Mantel

#46. The carved stone sign in front read Building C.
Imaginative title, Langdon thought

Dan Brown

#47. Poetry, like all imaginative creations, divines the human enterprise. This is poetry's social value.

Major Jackson

#48. With the wings of love, fly
in the imaginative and joyful blue sky.

Debasish Mridha

#49. In talking with scholars, I observe that they lost on ruder companions those years of boyhood which alone could give imaginative literature a religious and infinite quality in their esteem.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#50. Curiosity, wonder, and passion are defining qualities of imaginative minds and great teachers ... Restlessness and discontent are vital things ... Intense experience and suffering instruct us in ways less intense emotions can never do.

Kay Redfield Jamison

#51. Glamour is an imaginative process that creates a specific emotional response: a sharp mixture of projection, longing, admiration, and aspiration. It evokes an audience's hopes and dreams and makes them seem attainable, all the while maintaining enough distance to sustain the fantasy.

Virginia Postrel

#52. Sometimes taking a leap faith requires an imaginative mind that can create the ending you are unable to see.

Shannon L. Alder

#53. Nepotism is the lowest and least imaginative form of corruption.

Daniel Alarcon

#54. I believe, with Gandhi, that we need to take an imaginative leap forward toward fresh and generous idealism for the sake of all humanity - that we neeed to renew this ancient wisdom of nonviolence, to strive for a disarmed world, and to create a culture of nonviolence.

Mairead Corrigan

#55. A poem needs imaginative rhythms as well as imaginative transformation of content.

Helen Vendler

#56. My mind wanders terribly. I'm not wholly annoyed by my daydreaming as it has been immense use to me as regards imaginative thought, but it doesn't help when it comes to concentration. And writing needs concentration - lots of it.

Jasper Fforde

#57. Philosophy makes progress not by becoming more rigorous but by becoming more imaginative.

Richard Rorty

#58. An imaginative book renders us much more service at first, by stimulating us through its tropes, than afterward, when we arrive atthe precise sense of the author. I think nothing is of any value in books, excepting the transcendental and extraordinary.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#59. It is the spirit of the age to believe that any fact, no matter how suspect, is superior to any imaginative exercise, no matter how true.

Gore Vidal

#60. People cannot stand the saddest truth I know about the very nature of reading and writing imaginative literature, which is that poetry does not teach us how to talk to other people: it teaches us how to talk to ourselves.

Harold Bloom

#61. I think it's too fast to say that all sci-fi ultimately winds up having some place in science. On the other hand, imaginative minds working outside of science as storytellers certainly have come upon ideas that, with the passing decades, have either materialized of come close to materializing.

Brian Greene

#62. And the podcasting - I swear to you - on its worst day, the podcasts are better than our best films. Because they're more imaginative, and there's no artifice, and it's far more real.

Kevin Smith

#63. This is a little parable about cities and genres; how, while some of them lose their imaginative centrality, others take their place.

Amit Chaudhuri

#64. We all have only one life to live on Earth, and through television we have the choice of encouraging others to demean this life or to cherish it in creative, imaginative ways.

Fred Rogers

#65. The most imaginative people are the most credulous, for them everything is possible.

Alexander Chase

#66. When I'm writing, I'm waiting to see somebody, and I'm waiting to hear them. It's almost like conjuring spirits out of the air, using your own imaginative instability.

Charles Baxter

#67. [Art] would have helped us survive in the Pleistocene - in the period, say, 1.6 million years ago until fairly recently. The kind of imaginative abilities that artists have and that we all have in the appreciation of art - to appreciate Jane Austen, the late quartets of Beethoven.

Denis Dutton

#68. When any civilization is dust and ashes," he said, "art is all that's left over. Images, words, music. Imaginative structures. Meaning - human meaning, that is - is defined by them. You have to admit that.

Margaret Atwood

#69. Personal life becomes paler as the imaginative life becomes richer.

Willa Cather

#70. it was not even imaginative; it lives in my memory mainly as a period of humdrum, prosaic happiness and awakes none of the poignant nostalgia with which I look back on my much less happy boyhood. It is not settled happiness but momentary joy that glorifies the past. To

C.S. Lewis

#71. Pastors need to know what's going on in the world and what has been going on for 4,000 years. We need a way to read Scripture which is imaginative, interpretive.

Eugene H. Peterson

#72. This can be one of cheerfulness or gloom because color which is so inexpensive, is what does the trick. Not color alone but color plus imaginative lighting and cleverly grouping of the furniture. You say you have an old lobby that nothing much can be done with? Oh yes it can!

Dorothy Draper

#73. We love things because they reflect our imaginative love in their expression.

Debasish Mridha

#74. He was a loner with an intimate bond to humanity, a rebel who was suffused with reverence. And thus it was that an imaginative, impertinent patent clerk became the mind reader of the creator of the cosmos, the locksmith of the mysteries of the atom and the universe.

Walter Isaacson

#75. Well-wrought poems and works of imaginative literature can do for us what stone-cold prose can never do. They can help us grasp the full dimension of ways of life other than our own.

James W. Sire

#76. Much of the visualizing is imaginative.

Fred D'Aguiar

#77. The more we are proud that the Bethlehem story is plain enough to be understood by the shepherds, and almost by the sheep, the more do we let ourselves go, in dark and gorgeous imaginative frescoes or pageants about the mystery and majesty of the Three Magian Kings.

G.K. Chesterton

#78. We certainly have at present the dismal situation that the most imaginative men are directed by a group, the top managers, who are among the least.

Paul Goodman

#79. Personally I believe that the courses we followed for some years after World War II were enlightened, surprisingly imaginative and extremely effective.

David K. E. Bruce

#80. It was imaginative people who tended to lie. Lying required making stuff up, and only imaginative people were good at that.

John Connolly

#81. Wisdom is creating connections between the current perceptual realities with future imaginative possibilities.

Debasish Mridha

#82. Bare lists of words are found suggestive to an imaginative and excited mind.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#83. In art the Greeks were the children of the Egyptians. The day may yet come when we shall do justice to the high powers of that mysterious and imaginative people.

Benjamin Disraeli

#84. Live each day to the fullness, live the life that you imagine.

Lailah Gifty Akita

#85. Identification with the past is an intuitive, imaginative process which seeks as its fulfillment a perception not merely of the relevancy of the past, but of its actuality.

Robert W. Hanning

#86. I should dread to disfigure the beautiful ideal of the memories of illustrious persons with incongruous features, and to sully the imaginative purity of classical works with gross and trivial recollections.

William Wordsworth

#87. The most common-place people become highly imaginative when they are in a passion. Whole dramas of insult, injury, and wrong pass before their minds,
efforts of creative genius, for there is sometimes not a fact to go upon.

Arthur Helps

#88. Take the whole range of imaginative literature, and we are all wholesale borrowers. In every matter that relates to invention, to use, or beauty or form, we are borrowers.

Wendell Phillips

#89. Stories and images can be powerful means for conveying ideas. Every time we read a book or watch a movie, we enter into an imaginative

Nancy Pearcey

#90. When people wish for harmony, I wish for chaos. I'd rather see imaginative means of self-destruction, than to see laziness and wasted potential.

Lionel Suggs

#91. A string of excited, fugitive, miscellaneous pleasures is not happiness; happiness resides in imaginative reflection and judgment, when the picture of one's life, or of human life, as it truly has been or is, satisfies the will, and is gladly accepted.

George Santayana

#92. To give up our imaginary position as the center, to renounce it, not only intellectually but in the imaginative part of our soul, that means to awaken to what is real and eternal, to see the true light and hear the true silence.

Simone Weil

#93. Dostoyevsky wrote of the unconscious as if it were conscious; that is in reality the reason why his characters seem 'pathological', while they are only visualized more clearly than any other figures in imaginative literature ... He was in the rank in which we set Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe.

Edwin Muir

#94. I was somebody who was not athletic. I was highly imaginative; I loved to read, and I loved nothing more than being in a story ... I didn't want to play ball; I wanted to imagine something and read something.

Julianne Moore

#95. History will help to remedy intellectual faults such as excessive concentration on one line of thought, absence of understanding for other points of view, belief in simple solutions, lack of balance of mind, absence of an imaginative understanding.

Geoffrey Elton

#96. Acting is an imaginative leap, really, isn't it? And imaginations prosper in different circumstances.

John Hurt

#97. All the preparation in the world doesn't avail you if you can't make that imaginative leap and put yourself in the position of the characters you've created, to imagine what it's like to be somebody else.

Michael Chabon

#98. I think fiction may be, whatever else, an exercise in the capacity for imaginative love, or sympathy, or identification.
-Imagination & Community

Marilynne Robinson

#99. with forefinger wagging, explained that he was an artist and that his tales should not be seen as literal constructs but as imaginative re-creations, truer than the truth, and

Neil Gaiman

#100. In many ways, astrology, numerology and palmistry are corruptions of the occult because they have attempted to make a practice out of something that is essentially imaginative.

Isaac Bashevis Singer

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