quotes about imagination

On matters of style, swim with the current, on matters of principle, stand like a rock. ~Thomas Jefferson



Church tax exemption means that we all drop our money in the collection boxes, whether we go to church or not and whether we are interested in the church or not. It is systematic and complete robbery, from which none of us escapes. ~E. Haldeman-Julius, The Church Is a Burden, Not a Benefit, In Social Life



There is no such thing as a list of reasons. There is either one sufficient reason or a list of excuses. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com



Every word born of an inner necessity - writing must never be anything else. ~Etty Hillesum, quoted in Ten Fun Things to Do Before You Die by Karol Jackowski



I think sometimes could I only have music on my own terms, could I live in a great city, and know where I could go whenever I wished the ablution and inundation of musical waves, that were a bath and a medicine. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson



Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth. ~Samuel Johnson



I felt like a race horse in a world without racetracks or a champion college footballer suddenly confronted by Wall Street and a business suit, his days of glory shrunk to a little gold cup on his mantel with a date engraved on it like a date on a tombstone. ~Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar



Duffers who consistently shank their balls are urged to buy and study Shanks - No Thanks by R.K. Hoffman, or in extreme cases, M.S. Howard's excellent Tennis for Beginners. ~Henry Beard, Golfing, 1985



Don't be yourself - be someone a little nicer. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966



Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel. ~Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 1909



Spending that many hours in the saddle gave a man plenty of time to think. That's why so many cowboys fancied themselves Philosophers. ~Charles M. Russell



Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers. ~Charles W. Eliot



Sometimes, in the grip of a sudden poetic mood, I buried myself in a God-forsaken corner of the country, and in the presence of nature aspired to purity, silence and moral rehabilitation which, alas! never lasted very long. ~"The Mission," Chapter 2



Promise me one thing: don't take me home until I'm drunk - very drunk indeed. ~From the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's, 1961, screenplay by George Axelrod, based on the novella by Truman Capote, spoken by the character Holly Golightly



You're not 40, you're eighteen with 22 years experience. ~Author Unknown



Every time you think television has hit its lowest ebb, a new type program comes along to make you wonder where you thought the ebb was. ~Art Buchwald, "Adding Insult to Injury," Have I Ever Lied to You?, 1966



Observations always involve theory. ~Edwin Hubble



All the world is a laboratory to the inquiring mind. ~Martin H. Fischer



Freedom is never given; it is won. ~A. Philip Randolph



Two little girls, on their way home from Sunday school, were solemnly discussing the lesson. "Do you believe there is a devil?" asked one. "No," said the other promptly. "It's like Santa Claus: it's your father." ~Ladies' Home Journal, quoted in 2,715 One-Line Quotations for Speakers, Writers & Raconteurs by Edward F. Murphy