Imagine

• “An active imagination may find a bad tendency arising out of every transaction between imperfect morals.”

• “C'est très bien de copier ce qu'on voit, c'est beaucoup mieux de dessiner ce que l'on ne voit plus que dans son mémoire. C'est une transformation pendant laquelle l'ingéniosité collabore avec la mémoire. Vous ne reproduisez que ce qui vous a frappé, c'est-à-dire le nécessaire.”

• “[H]e who has the most imagination should be regarded as having the most intelligence or genius, for all these words are synonymous; and again, only by a shameful abuse [of terms] do we think that we are saying different things, when we are merely using different words, different sounds, to which no idea or real distinction is attached.”

• “The true function of logic,... as applied to matters of experience,... is analytic rather than constructive; taken a priori, it shows the possibility of hitherto unsuspected alternatives more often than the impossibility of alternatives which seemed prima facie possible. Thus, while it liberates imagination as to what the world may be, it refuses to legislate as to what the world is.”

• “An uncommon degree of imagination constitutes poetical genius; a talent which, although chiefly displayed in poetical composition, is also the foundation (though not precisely in the same manner) of various other arts.”

• “I build nought els but castles in the ayre.”

Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.