Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Imagination
Imagination is the air of mind.
Bailey—Festus. Sc. Another and a Better World.
Build castles in the air.
Burton—Anatomy of Melancholy. Pt. I. Sec. II. Memb. 1. Subsect. 3. Also in Romaunt of the Rose. Come nous dicimus in nubibus. (As we said in the clouds.) John Rastell—Leg Termes de la Ley. (1527).***his master was in a manner always in a wrong Boxe and building castels in the ayre or catching Hares with Tabers. Letter by F. A. to L. B. 1575–76. Repr. in Miscell. Antiq. Anglic.
Thou hast the keys of Paradise, O just, subtle, and mighty opium!
De Quincey—Confessions of an Opium Eater. Pt. II.
And castels buylt above in lofty skies,
Which never yet had good foundation.
Gascoigne—Steel Glass. Arber’s reprint. P. 55.
Es ist nichts fürchterlicher als Einbildungskraft ohne Geschmack.
There is nothing more fearful than imagination without taste.
Goethe—Sprüche in Prosa. III.
Build castles in Spain.
Herbert—Jacula Prudentum. Lors feras chastiaus en Espaigne. Guillaume de Lorris—Roman de la Rose. 2452. Et fais chasteaulx en Espaigne et en France. Charles d’Orleans—Rondeau. Et le songer fait chasteaux en Asie. Pierre Grangoire—Menus Propos. Tout fin seullet les chasteaux d’Albanye. Le Verger d’Honneur.
Seem’d washing his hands with invisible soap
In imperceptible water.
Hood—Miss Kilmansegg. Her Christening.
Delphinum appingit sylvis, in fluctibus aprum.
He paints a dolphin in the woods, and a boar in the waves.
Horace—Ars Poetica. XXX.
Celui qui a de l’imagination sans érudition a des ailes, et n’a pas de pieds.
He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet.
Joubert.
These are the gloomy comparisons of a disturbed imagination; the melancholy madness of poetry, without the inspiration.
Junius—Letter VIII. To Sir W. Draper.
When I could not sleep for cold
I had fire enough in my brain,
And builded with roofs of gold
My beautiful castles in Spain!
Lowell—Aladdin. St. 1.
His imagination resembled the wings of an ostrich. It enabled him to run, though not to soar.
Macaulay—On John Dryden. (1828).
C’est l’imagination qui gouverne le genre humain.
The human race is governed by its imagination.
Napoleon I.
In my mind’s eye, Horatio.
Hamlet. Act I. Sc. 2. L. 186.
This is the very coinage of your brain:
This bodiless creation ecstasy.
Hamlet. Act III. Sc. 4. L. 137.
This is a gift that I have, simple, simple; a foolish extravagant spirit, full of forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, motions, revolutions; these are begot in the ventricle of memory, nourished in the womb of pia mater, and delivered upon the mellowing of occasion.
Love’s Labour’s Lost. Act IV. Sc. 2. L. 67.
The lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are of imagination all compact.
Midsummer Night’s Dream. Act V. Sc. 1. L. 7.
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Midsummer Night’s Dream. Act V. Sc. 1. L. 14.
The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them.
Midsummer Night’s Dream. Act V. Sc. 1. L. 213.
Look, what thy soul holds dear, imagine it
To lie that way thou go’st, not whence thou com’st:
Suppose the singing birds musicians;
The grass whereon thou tread’st the presence strew’d;
The flowers fair ladies, and thy steps no more
Than a delightful measure or a dance.
Richard II. Act I. Sc. 3. L. 286.
Castles in Spain.
Storer—Peter the Cruel. P. 280, ascribes the origin of this phrase to the time of Don Enrique of Spain, on account of his favors being lavishly bestowed before they were earned. Mercure Français. (1616). Given as source by Littré.
It is only in France that one builds castles in Spain.
Mme. de Villars, when made dame d’honneur to the wife of Philip V, of Spain, grandson of Louis XIV. of France.
I build nought els but castles in the ayre.
Thos. Watson—Poems. Arber’s reprint. P. 82. See also Lyly—Mother Bombie. Act V. Sc. 3.
But thou, that did’st appear so fair
To fond imagination,
Dost rival in the light of day
Her delicate creation.
Wordsworth—Yarrow Visited.