Henry David Thoreau Imagination Quotations

Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling.

It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive.

This world is but a canvas to our imaginations.

It is the marriage of the soul with nature that makes the intellect fruitful, and gives birth to imagination

Friendship is never established as an understood relation. It is a miracle which requires constant proofs. It is an exercise of the purest imagination and of the rarest faith!....

I do not know how to distinguish between our waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?

The repugnance to animal food is not the effect of experience, but is an instinct. It appeared more beautiful to live low and farehard in many respects; and though I never did so, I went far enough to please my imagination.

An island always pleases my imagination, even the smallest, as a small continent and integral portion of the globe. I have a fancyfor building my hut on one. Even a bare, grassy isle, which I can see entirely over at a glance, has some undefined and mysterious charm for me.

The most stupendous scenery ceases to be sublime when it becomes distinct, or in other words limited, and the imagination is no longer encouraged to exaggerate it. The actual height and breadth of a mountain or a waterfall are always ridiculously small; they are the imagined only that content us.

As we looked up in silence to those distant lights, we were reminded that it was a rare imagination which first taught that the stars are worlds, and had conferred a great benefit on mankind.

Comparatively, we can excuse any offense against the heart, but not against the imagination. The imagination knows--nothing escapes its glance from out its eyry--and it controls the breast.

Men cannot conceive of a state of things so fair that it cannot be realized.

We should endeavor practically in our lives to correct all the defects which our imagination detects.

Some simple dishes recommend themselves to our imaginations as well as palates.

The gross feeder is a man in the larva state; and there are whole nations in that condition, nations without fancy or imagination,whose vast abdomens betray them.

The imagination never forgets; it is a re-membering. It is not foundationless, but most reasonable, and it alone uses all the knowledge of the intellect.

However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the lay, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.

The imagination, give it the least license, dives deeper and soars higher than Nature goes.

In love and friendship the imagination is as much exercised as the heart; and if either is outraged the other will be estranged. It is commonly the imagination which is wounded first, rather than the heart,--it is so much the more sensitive.

When we come down into the distant village, visible from the mountain-top, the nobler inhabitants with whom we peopled it have departed, and left only vermin in its desolate streets. It is the imagination of poets which puts those brave speeches into the mouths of their heroes.

We can conceive of nothing more fair than something which we have experienced.

When one man has reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact to his understanding, I foresee that all men will at length establish their lives on that basis.