Imagination builds the image of the self, and thought then functions within its shadows. From this self-concept grows the conflict between what is and what should be, the conflict in duality.
Imagination is a very high sort of seeing, which does not come by study, but by the intellect being where and what it sees, by sharing the path, or circuits of things through forms, and so making them translucid to others.
I don't suppose any man has ever understood any woman since the beginning of things. You don't understand our imaginations, how wild our imaginations can be.
What acts as a far more effective circumstance for generating compassion and what, in fact, rouses us from our comfortable meditation seat is actually seeing or hearing others - encountering others directly, not just conceptually in our imagination.
Man's relations to man do not captivate my fancy. It is man's relation to the cosmos--to the unknown--which alone arouses in me the spark of creative imagination.
Man's relations to man do not captivate my fancy. It is man's relation to the cosmos--to the unknown--which alone arouses in me the spark of creative imagination.
To endure the pain of living, we all drug ourselves more or less with gin, with literature, with superstitions, with romance, with idealism, political, sentimental, and moral, with every possible preparation of that universal hashish: imagination.
When forced to work within a strict framework, the imagination is taxed to its utmost and will produce its richest ideas. Given total freedom, the work is likely to sprawl.
Princes have but their titles for their glories,
An outward honor for an inward toil;
And, for unfelt imaginations,
They often feel a world of restless cares.
Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen?