Quotes & Sayings About Imagination And Magic

It is not too much to say that next after the passion to learn there is no quality so indispensable to the successful prosecutionof science as imagination. Find me a people whose early medicine is not mixed up with magic and incantations, and I will find you a people devoid of all scientific ability. — Charles Sanders Peirce

Imagination is a glorious thing, Without imagination there would be no solace for our suffering, no wondrous creations, no stories to beguile us, and no magic... — Karen Wrighton

Imagination was a dangerously captivating magic for those compelled to be realistic in life, and words could be poisonous for those destined always to be silenced. — Elif Shafak

He knew clearly enough that his imagination was growing traitor to him, and yet at times it seemed the ship he sailed in, his fellow-passengers, the sailors, the wide sea, were all part of a filmy phantasmagoria that hung, scarcely veiling it, between him and a horrible real world. Then the Porroh man, thrusting his diabolical face through that curtain, was the one real and undeniable thing. At that he would get up and touch things, taste something, gnaw something, burn his hand with a match, or run a needle into himself.
("Pollock And The Porrah Man") — H.G.Wells

One cannot always tell what it is that keeps us shut in, confines us, seems to bury us, but still one feels certain barriers, certain gates, certain walls. Is all this imagination, fantasy? I do not think so. And then one asks: My God! Is it for long, is it for ever, is it for eternity? Do you know what frees one from this captivity? It is very deep serious affection. Being friends, being brothers, love, that is what opens the prison by supreme power, by some magic force. - Vincent van Gogh, letter to his brother, July 1880 — Andre Agassi

The Polar Express is about faith, and the power of imagination to sustain faith. It's also about the desire to reside in a world where magic can happen, the kind of world we all believed in as children, but one that disappears as we grow older. — Chris Van Allsburg

Only curiosity about the fate of others, the ability to put ourselves in their shoes, and the will to enter their world through the magic of imagination, creates this shock of recognition. Without this empathy there can be no genuine dialogue, and we as individuals and nations will remain isolated and alien, segregated and fragmented. — Azar Nafisi

Governments and citizens blend together only in the imaginations of political theorists. Government is, and always will be, an alien power over private citizens. There is no magic in a ballot box that makes government any less coercive. — James Bovard

We're all entitled to our different likes and dislikes. Imagine the world if we all liked the same things. — Malia Ann Haberman

Creative arts, new inventions, and new ideas spring from those blessed with imagination, and magic stimulates imagination. It is no coincidence that many artists, writers, and dancers are interested in magic. — Vivianne Crowley

Magic is a kind of energy. It is given shape by human thoughts and emotions, by imagination. Thoughts define that shape - and words help to define those thoughts. That's why wizards usually use words to help them with their spells. Words provide a sort of insulation as the energy of magic burns through a spell caster's mind. — Jim Butcher

I am absorbed in the magic of movement and light. Movement never lies. It is the magic of what I call the outer space of the imagination. — Martha Graham

Fantasyland was designed as a home for some of the classic characters [from those films], and as a symbol of the magic, hope and beauty of the human imagination. — Leslie Le Mon

Libraries are sanctuaries from the world and command centers onto it: here in the quiet rooms are the lives of Crazy Horse and Aung San Suu Kyi, the Hundred Years' War and the Opium Wars and the Dirty War, the ideas of Simone Weil and Lao-Tzu, information on building your sailboat or dissolving your marriage, fictional worlds and books to equip the reader to reenter the real world. They are, ideally, places where nothing happens and where everything that has happened is stored up to be remembered and relived, the place where the world is folded up into boxes of paper. Every book is a door that opens onto another world, which might be the magic that all those children's books were alluding to, and a library is a Milky Way of worlds. — Rebecca Solnit

Sensation invested itself in form and color and radiance, and what his imagination dared, it objectified in some sublimated and magic way. Past, present, and future mingled; and he went on oscillating across the broad, warm world, through — Jack London

To dream of afar, to chase a star, to believe in Captain Hook. To dance with bears and have no cares, this is the magic of a book. — H.L. Stephens

Resting on the roots of this old oak I lean back against his knotted trunk, shine my granny smith on my sleeve And ponder the days ... — Kellie Elmore

"But you're a full-blood netherling. You don't know how to use your imagination."
"On the contrary. I do. Thanks to you. I followed your example in our childhood. I absorbed it without even realizing. Then, when I was stuck here deprived of my magic, I had to find something to while away those weeks and hours. Perhaps that was the silver lining to this entire debacle. The lack of magic is what leads humans to fantasize in the first place. And Alyssa, what a wonderfully powerful force an imagination can be."
His expression is awestruck, exactly the way he used to look at me during our childhood escapades. How inconceivable, that I was his teacher, too. He once told me I was, but I never grasped what he meant until now. — A.G. Howard

Mortals may not believe in magic in the way they did centuries ago, but they merely call it a different name," Merrick said from my other side. "Artists and poets - and many others - still draw on inspiration and imagination. They make the fantastic real. And what is that if not magic? — Jocelyn A. Fox

It was the King Color, of which all the lesser colors are merely partial and wishy-washy reflections. It was octarine, the color of magic. It was alive and glowing and vibrant and it was the undisputed pigment of the imagination, because wherever it appeared it was a sign that mere matter was a servant of the powers of the magical mind. It was enchantment itself. — Terry Pratchett

Whatever it was, Calla's imagination had waked up from a long sleep, and these days she had the feeling that magic and miracles might be hovering in the air all around, waiting to happen. She wasn't a great believer in such things, but she didn't push the thought away. — Jenny Wingfield

With astonishing wonder, I have seen the magic of life, the power of thoughts, and the beauty of imagination. — Debasish Mridha

We are tomorrow's past. Even now we slip away like those pictures painted on the moving dials of antique clocks - a ship, a cottage, sun and moon, a nosegay. The dial turns, the ship rides up and sinks again, the yellow painted sun has set, and we, that were the new thing, gather magic as we go. The whirr of the spinning wheels has ceased in our parlours, and we hear no more the treadles of the loom, the swift, silken noise of the flung shuttle, the intermittent thud of the batten. But the imagination hears them, and theirs is the melody of romance." ~ from Mary Webb's introduction to her novel Precious Bane. — Mary Webb

In the hands of a genius, engineering turns to magic, philosophy becomes poetry, and science pure imagination. — Benjamin Disraeli

In those sticky summer nights in South London our windows stay open and our tiny apartment becomes our secret garden. The magic of the secret garden is that it exists in our imagination. There are no limits, no borderlines. The secret garden leads to the marigolds of Mogadishu and the magnolias of Kingston and when the heat turns us sticky and sweet and unwilling to be claimed by defeat we own the night. We own our bodies. We own our lives. — Diriye Osman

You hold one feather tightly in your hand, close your eyes and concentrate. The location of the other feather will appear in your mind and the magic will take you there. — Louise Courey Nadeau

An armchair is always an armchair, to the modern child, never a ship, never a desert island. The pattern on the wall are patterns; not characters whose faces change at dusk ... The trouble is, the children have no imagination. They are sweet, and have carefree, honest eyes; but they have not any magic in their day. The magic has all gone ... — Daphne Du Maurier

As mamas, papas, grandparents, teachers, and caregivers we have a responsibility to protect these little earth warriors. It's our job to protect and nurture their love, their innocence, their spirits, their imagination, their gifts, their health and wellbeing, their spirituality, their confidence, their character, their freedom of thought, their instincts, their wildness, and their magic! There is nothing we can do in this lifetime that will compare to the importance of this work. These little ones are our future. Guard them well!! — Brooke Hampton

Keats mourned that the rainbow, which as a boy had been for him a magic thing, had lost its glory because the physicists had found it resulted merely from the refraction of the sunlight by the raindrops. Yet knowledge of its causation could not spoil the rainbow for me. I am sure that it is not given to man to be omniscient. There will always be something left to know, something to excite the imagination of the poet and those attuned to the great world in which they live (p. 64) — Robert Frost

M. J. Putney has created true magic with this book, the kind that comes when you curl up in a comfortable armchair and let the story take your imagination away. Come visit an enchanted eighteenth-century England and meet two desperate lovers caught in the web of a sinister lord with great magical power. Romantic and lyrical, this tale will fill your reading time with pleasure. I loved it. — Catherine Asaro

Don't want to walk around with my imagination to depend on. I have a very evil imagination. It's one of my wicked womanly powers. Much worse than magic." "Is that right?" he asked with a laugh as he turned and crossed over to her. "Oh yes. Lots of exercise involved. I can jump to conclusions in a single bound. I'm more powerful than a murder motive. I'm faster than the town gossip. I am deadly and I must be stopped. — Jacquelyn Frank

Afterwards, in bed with a book, the spell of television feels remote compared to the journey into the page. To be in a book. To slip into the crease where two pages meet, to live in the place where your eyes alight upon the words to ignite a world of smoke and peril, colour and serene delight. That is a journey no one can end with the change of a channel. Enduring magic. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

That's the beginning of magic. Let your imagination run and follow it. — Patricia A. McKillip

Our room swallowed light whole. Even in summer when sunlight glared through the windows, it was somehow dim inside. Now it was only Easter morning, and the muted sky of early spring offered scant relief to our tenebrous room. On our side of the house a gnarled and ancient oak tree spread its reach across the back facade of the house as if to shade and protect us. One of the massive branches of its principal fork reached invitingly right up to our window to offer to take us wherever we wanted to go. This great limb, with circumference grander than both of us together, was our stairway to heaven and our secret exit to the ground; it was our biplane in the Great War of our imaginations and a magic carpet to Araby; it was our lookout post and the clubhouse of our most secret fraternal order; it was our secret passageway through the imaginary castle we made of our house. It was our escape from the darkness into the light. — Mason West

What is so intriguing about this interplay between technology and the human imagination is that here we are dealing with the equation. As I imagine, so I become - and this is the very essence of magic. — Nevill Drury

This is the awe-inspiring universe of magic: There are no atoms, only waves and motions all around. Here, you discard all belief in barriers to understanding. You put aside understanding itself. This universe cannot be seen, cannot be heard, cannot be detected in any way by fixed perceptions. It is the ultimate void where no preordained screens occur upon which forms may be projected. You have only one awareness here - the screen of the magi: Imagination! Here, you learn what it is to be human. You are a creator of order, of beautiful shapes and systems, an organizer of chaos. — Frank Herbert

This is the Self-Esteem Looking-Glass. You have to look in the mirror and compliment yourself. — Malia Ann Haberman

Education tends to be diagrammatic and categorical, opening up no sluices in the human imagination on the wonder of the beauty of our unique estate in the cosmos. Little wonder that it becomes so easy for our young to regard human hurt casually or to be uninspired by the magic of sensitivity. — Norman Cousins

"A son," I say, recalling every detail of the child's perfect face.
Ivory's smile is blinding. "A most unique creature. The first child to be born to two netherlings who've shared a childhood. Wonderland is founded on chaos, madness, and magic. For so long, innocence and imagination have had no place there. As a result, we haven't had children, at least by your world's definition. And because of this, we've lost the ability to dream. But Morpheus experienced those things via you, each time you played together in your dreams. Through your child, Wonderland will thrive with new magic and strength. Our offspring will become true children once more; they will learn to dream again. And all will be right with our world. — A.G. Howard

I know that life is busy and hard and that there's crushing pressure to just settle down and get a real job and khaki pants and a haircut. But don't. Please don't. Please keep believing that life can be better, brighter, broader because of the art that you make. Please keep demonstrating the courage that it takes to swim upstream in a world that prefers putting away for retirement to putting pen to paper, that chooses practicality over poetry, that values you more for going to the gym than going to the deepest places in your soul. Please keep making your art for people like me, people who need the magic and imagination and honesty of great art to make the day-to-day world a little more bearable. — Shauna Niequist

As cities grow and technology takes over the world belief and imagination fade away and so do we. — Julie Kagawa

[On Chopin's Preludes:]
His genius was filled with the mysterious sounds of nature, but transformed into sublime equivalents in musical thought, and not through slavish imitation of the actual external sounds. His composition of that night was surely filled with raindrops, resounding clearly on the tiles of the Charterhouse, but it had been transformed in his imagination and in his song into tears falling upon his heart from the sky ... The gift of Chopin is [the expression of] the deepest and fullest feelings and emotions that have ever existed. He made a single instrument speak a language of infinity. He could often sum up, in ten lines that a child could play, poems of a boundless exaltation, dramas of unequalled power. — George Sand

The dream of transmigration is profound and complex. In it, you forget who you really are. Through this multiplicity of so many transcendental states, you have divided into many sparks with individual consciousness, and you have forgotten your real nature. We are the dream that appeared as an act of magic that has the solemn purpose of awakening you. It is a glorious day when, in small oscillating parts of the dream of infinite immensity, you, the dreamed personage, realize and know that you have been blindly following a forged mental conception - only a figment of a virtual imagination that lacks any real foundations. The individual mind turns and looks at itself as an astral projection or just a hologram, preconceived by the Source of Radiant Essence. In this instant, something we know as Grace happens. The Source floods the mind with dazzling light and destroys the coverings of psychological "I-ness". — Matias Flury

It is frightfully difficult to know much about the fairies, and almost the only thing for certain is that there are fairies wherever there are children. — J.M. Barrie

To make your spiritual yearning public, I thought, was to announce that you were wounded. To turn deeply into religion was to admit that your own resources were so weak you had to resort to magic and miracle cures for healing. To acquire faith was to mobilize the powers of an overly active imagination. — Vanessa L Ochs

Truly, there is magic in fairytales.
For it takes but a simply-uttered 'Once upon a time ... ' to allure and spellbind an audience. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Sooner or later someone's going to catch the imagination of these people with some new magic. At the bottom of it will be a promise of regaining the feeling of participation, the feeling of being neede on earth - hell, dignity. The police are bright enough to look for people like that, and lock them up under the antisabotage laws. But sooner or later someone's going keep out of thei site long enough to organize a following. — Kurt Vonnegut

Unicorns and rainbows exist because we want them to. — Truth Devour

I have devoted myself to architecture as a sublime act of poetic imagination. Consequently, I am only a symbol for all those who have been touched by beauty. The words Beauty, Inspiration, Magic, Spellbound, Enchantment, as well as the concepts of Serenity, Silence, Intimacy and Amazement, all these have nestled in my soul. Though I am fully aware that I have not done them complete justice in my work, they have never ceased to be my guiding lights. — Luis Barragan

When magic through nerves and reason passes, Imagination, force, and passion will thunder. The portrait of the world is changed. — Dejan Stojanovic

What Sherlock does is train his mind to remember details, access them as needed, and then spy the hidden pattern in them. It's like spotting animals in clouds: The vapor's the same for everyone, but sometimes you're the only person who can see what's floating there, because you have the proper angle and the imagination to see it. And that's the magic of Sherlock Holmes - his talent for synthesis and discovery. Anyone can train the mind to absorb and recall; — Kevin Hearne

Architecture is the triumph of human imagination over materials, methods, and men, to put man into possession of his own Earth. It is at least the geometric pattern of things, of life, of the human and social world. It is at best that magic framework of reality that we sometimes touch upon when we use the word order. — Frank Lloyd Wright

The only source of my power are the pages you hold and the words written thereon. As you read them, I hope the magic starts to work between my words and your imagination. — Elizabeth Vaughan

One of the things he'd always loved about Clary was how easily caught up in her imagination she was, how easily she could wall herself away in illusory worlds of curses and princes and destiny and magic. — Cassandra Clare

The lack of magic is what leads humans to fantasize in the first place. And Alyssa, what a wonderfully powerful force an imagination can be. — A.G. Howard

It's no good. I've been trying to sleep for the last half-hour, and I can't. Writing here is a sort of drug. It's the only thing I look forward to. This afternoon I read what I wrote ... And it seemed vivid. I know it seems vivid because my imagination fills in all the bits another person wouldn't understand. I mean, it's vanity. But it seems a sort of magic ... And I just can't live in this present. I would go mad if I did — John Fowles

What is this thing of intangible substance that wreaks consequential havoc on our lives? What is this sensitive thread that runs through heart and mind, and when given the slightest tremor grasps hold of all sanity, dragging the afflicted down to insufferable depths or flinging him weightless to euphoric heights? What is this magic we would deem imagination, fantasy, or pretend if not for the evidence of power manifest by human consequences? Effortlessly controlling us, it affects the infected in an instant. It takes but one word, one thought, one act to become immersed.
To stop it is hopeless.
To stifle it, demanding.
To think to master it is both improbable and pretentious.
What is this invisible hand that blinds our eyes and reigns hearts with a string? It is nature's drug and poison we call emotion. — Richelle E. Goodrich

But it would have been a surprise, not only to katherine herself, if some magic watch could have taken count of the moments spent in an entirely different occupation from her ostensible one.Sitting with faded papers before her, she took part in a series of scenes such as the taming of wild ponies upon the American prairies, or the conduct of a vast ship in a hurricane round a black promontory of rock, or in others more peaceful, but marked by her complete emancipation from her present surroundings and, needles to say, her surprising ability in her new vocation. — Virginia Woolf

If any writer in this country has collected as fine and passionate a group of readers as I have, they're fortunate and lucky beyond anyone's imagination. It remains a shock to me that I've had a successful writing career. Not someone like me; Lord, there were too many forces working against me, too many dark currents pushing against me, but it somehow worked. Though I wish I'd written a lot more, been bolder with my talent, more forgiving of my weaknesses, I've managed to draw a magic audience into my circle. They come to my signings to tell me stories, their stories. The ones that have hurt them and made their nights long and their lives harder. — Pat Conroy

In The Jaguar's Children we enter the dangerous borderlands between countries and generations; myth and magic; human community and the vast, infinitely mysterious, wild environment. Here, John Vaillant proves that his heart and imagination are as expansive and fierce as his radiant intellect. Never have I encountered a writer with more energy or compassion. — Melanie Rae Thon

Sometimes we don't want to be tethered to yesterday. It's nicer to forget. Maybe the gaps in our memory are there for a reason, evolutionary perhaps, to give us the space to grow, to get away from childishness or childish things. Or maybe it's so we have the chance to invent, or at least include, some magic in our yesterdays, surely the consolation of getting older, of moving away from youth, is that we can shape our past to our fantasies. So, even if the present isn't going the way we want it, we can stand and remember our earlier selves as exciting and funny and daring — Sue Perkins

Do they still call it infatuation? That magic ax that chops away the world in one blow, leaving only the couple standing there trembling? Whatever they call it, it leaps over anything, takes the biggest chair, the largest slice, rules the ground wherever it walks, from a mansion to a swamp, and its selfishness is its beauty ... People with no imagination feed it with sex
the clown of love. They don't know the real kinds, the better kinds, where losses are cut and everybody benefits. It takes a certain intelligence to love like that
softly, without props. — Toni Morrison

I've read up on magic, and I think it sets you free, and it gives you hope. You can explore worlds you didn't know existed. It stretches your imagination, and I like my own imagination to be stretched and also the children I'm telling the story to. It gives you a sense of wonder. — Jenny Nimmo

Yet magic is no more the art of employing consciously invisible means to produce visible effects. Will, love, and imagination are magic powers that everyone possesses; and whoever knows how to develop them to their fullest extent is a magician. Magic has but one dogma, namely, that the seen is the measure of the unseen. — W. Somerset Maugham

Composition is a process of combination, in which thought puts together complementary truths, and talent fuses into harmony the most contrary qualities of style. So that there is no composition without effort, without pain even, as in all bringing forth. The reward is the giving birth to something living
something, that is to say, which, by a kind of magic, makes a living unity out of such opposed attributes as orderliness and spontaneity, thought and imagination, solidity and charm. — Henri Frederic Amiel

Their meal was illuminated by torches, which Gwen found were utterly without fire. What the children called torches were really just small platforms on tall, wooden poles. The reason they radiated light was because fairies had flown up to them to waltz and glow on the tiny dance floors. — Audrey Greathouse

The Nevernever is dying, human. It grows smaller and smaller every decade. Too much progress, too much technology. Mortals are losing their faith in anything but science. Even the children of man are consumed by progress. They sneer at the old stories and are drawn to the newest gadgets, computers, or video games. They no longer believe in monsters of magic. As cities grown and technology takes over the world, belief and imagination fade away, and so do we."
"What can we do to stop it?" I whispered.
"Nothing." Grimalkin raised a hind leg and scratched an ear. "Maybe the Nevenever will hold out till the end of the world. Maybe it will disappear in a few centuries. Everything dies eventually, human. — Julie Kagawa

One of the things he loved about Clary was how easily caught up in her imagination she was, how easily she could wall herself away in illusory worlds of curses and princes and destiny and magic. Once he had been able to do the same ... Now that the real and the imagined had collided, he wondered if she, like he, longed for the past, for the normal. He wondered if normalcy was something, like a vision or silence, you didn't realize it was precious until you lost it. — Cassandra Clare

The boy thought, How powerful a story is, and how by a kind of magic it compels the imagination; there was nothing in the world, it seemed to him, so mysteriously strong; and he began to wonder if he would ever have anything as beautiful to tell. — Glenway Wescott

You know when you're a child and your imagination is limitless and you really believe in magic? I thought I had super powers. — Michelle Phan

It was octarine, the colour of magic. It was alive and glowing and vibrant and it was the undisputed pigment of the imagination, because wherever it appeared it was a sign that mere matter was a servant of the powers of the magical mind. It was enchantment itself.
But Rincewind always thought it looked a sort of greenish-purple. — Terry Pratchett

My child, you have a flawed grasp of the nature of myth-making. I am a poet and storyteller, a creator of ballads and sagas. Pray do not confuse the exercise of the imagination with mere mendacity. I am a master of the mysteries of words, their meanings and music and mellifluous magic. — Frances Hardinge

The magic in writing is not so much using your imagination as it is allowing the reader to uses theirs. When I write a novel I'm not going to hand walk you through each scene. Avid readers tend to have very high IQ's so I'm constantly aware of, and respect that. I have a tendency to give my readers vivid descriptions of panoramic viewpoints, soft breezes, and the late evening as it scrapes against the emerging night and present this step by suspenseful step. Once I get them to the threshold of that unseen cliff, I shove them off and say, take it from there. — Carl Henegan

The answers lie in not just hard science or philosophical rhetoric but in experiments of the imagination as well. Human perspective must be re-examined through an almost whimsical fount of imagination of species, magic, and clear creative thinking. — Leviak B. Kelly

Imagination is the real magic that exists in this world. Look inwards, to see outwards. And capture it in writing. — Fennel Hudson

Everyone has creative potential. Creativity involves using your imagination and inventiveness. Your unique expression of yourself is your creativity...Creativity can be magic when visiting people who are ill. — Patch Adams

She opened her eyes slowly and saw that a pale lavender moth had come to a rest on the back of her hand. She watched it from her pillow, wondering if it was real. It reminded her of her husband Matt's favorite T-shirt, which she'd hidden in a bag of sewing, unable to throw it away. It had a large faded moth on the front, the logo of a cover band out of Athens called the Mothballs.
That T-shirt, that moth, always brought back a strange memory of when she was a child. She used to draw tattoos of butterflies on her arms with Magic Markers. She would give them names, talk to them, carefully fill in their colors when they started to fade. When the time came that they wanted to be set free, she would blow on them and they would come to life, peeling away from her skin and flying away. — Sarah Addison Allen

Here is the world of imagination, hopes, and dreams. In this timeless land of enchantment, the age of chivalry, magic and make-believe are reborn - and fairy tales come true. Fantasyland is dedicated to the young-in-heart, to those who that when you wish upon a star, your dreams come true. — Walt Disney Company

The object of storytelling, like the object of magic, is not to explain or to resolve, but rather to create and to perform miracles of the imagination. To extend the boundaries of the mysterious. To push into the unknown in pursuit of still other unknowns. To reach into one's heart, down into that place where the stories are, bringing up the mystery of oneself. — Tim O'Brien