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Imagination
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Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) by Linux fortune

Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects
such as wickerwork picnic baskets.  Imagination without skill gives us modern
art.
                -- Tom Stoppard
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet,
Are of imagination all compact...
                -- Wm. Shakespeare, "A Midsummer Night's Dream"
He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet.
"The stars are made of the same atoms as the earth."  I usually pick one small
topic like this to give a lecture on.  Poets say science takes away from the
beauty of the stars -- mere gobs of gas atoms.  Nothing is "mere."  I too can
see the stars on a desert night, and feel them.  But do I see less or more?
The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination -- stuck on this carousel
my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light.  A vast pattern -- of which
I am a part -- perhaps my stuff was belched from some forgotten star, as one
is belching there.  Or see them with the greater eye of Palomar, rushing all
apart from some common starting point when they were perhaps all together.
What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the *why?*  It does not do harm to the
mystery to know a little about it.  For far more marvelous is the truth than
any artists of the past imagined!  Why do the poets of the present not speak
of it?  What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were like a man, but
if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?
-- Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988)
Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.  Second marriage is
the triumph of hope over experience.
"The Right Honorable Gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests
and to his imagination for his facts."
                -- Sheridan
Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.
                -- Jules de Gaultier
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
                -- Albert Einstein
To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.
                -- Thomas Edison
Nature to all things fixed the limits fit,
And wisely curbed proud man's pretending wit.
As on the land while here the ocean gains,
In other parts it leaves wide sandy plains;
Thus in the soul while memory prevails,
The solid power of understanding fails;
Where beams of warm imagination play,
The memory's soft figures melt away.
                -- Alexander Pope (on runtime bounds checking?)
I'm not the person your mother warned you about... her imagination isn't
that good.
                -- Amy Gorin
If God hadn't wanted you to be paranoid, He wouldn't have given you such
a vivid imagination.
If you think things can't get worse it's probably only because you
lack sufficient imagination.
        Youth is not a time of life, it is a state of mind; it is a temper of
the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a predominance
of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over love of ease.
        Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years; people grow
old only by deserting their ideals.  Years wrinkle the skin, but to give up
enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.  Worry, doubt, self-distrust, fear, and despair
-- these are the long, long years that bow the head and turn the growing spirit
back to dust.
        Whether seventy or sixteen, there is in every being's heart the love
of wonder, the sweet amazement at the stars and the starlike things and
thoughts, the undaunted challenge of events, the unfailing childlike appetite
for what next, and the joy and the game of life.
        You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your
self-confidence, as old as your fear, as young as your hope, as old as your
despair.
        So long as your heart receives messages of beauty, cheer, courage,
grandeur and power from the earth, from man, and from the Infinite, so long
you are young.
                -- Samuel Ullman
Look, it cannot be seen - it is beyond form.
Listen, it cannot be heard - it is beyond sound.
Grasp, it cannot be held - it is intangible.
These three are indefinable;
Therefore they are joined in one.

From above it is not bright;
From below it is not dark:
An unbroken thread beyond description.
It returns to nothingness.
The form of the formless,
The image of the imageless,
It is called indefinable and beyond imagination.

Stand before it and there is no beginning.
Follow it and there is no end.
Stay with the ancient Tao,
Move with the present.

Knowing the ancient beginning is the essence of Tao.
There is no better way of exercising the imagination than the study of law.
No poet ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer interprets truth.
                -- Jean Giraudoux, "Tiger at the Gates"
A Scholar asked his Master, "Master, would you advise me of a proper
vocation?"
        The Master replied, "Some men can earn their keep with the power of
their minds.  Others must use thier strong backs, legs and hands.  This is
the same in nature as it is with man.  Some animals acquire their food easily,
such as rabbits, hogs and goats.  Other animals must fiercely struggle for
their sustenance, like beavers, moles and ants.  So you see, the nature of
the vocation must fit the individual.
        "But I have no abilities, desires, or imagination, Master," the
scholar sobbed.
        Queried the Master... "Have you thought of becoming a salesperson?"
Reality is for people who lack imagination.
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
                -- H. L. Mencken
No guarantee of accuracy or completeness!
©TU Chemnitz, 2006-2024
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