The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise, we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them

I’d never before been infatuated with someone living, someone real.

I wanted to write songs that would play themselves on stage, songs that sweep you through their current.

I try to understand, but all I hear is a river of words, rushing and thundering and pushing me beneath the surface. Now and then a word I know darts up like a sparkling fish, but then it’s all dark moving water again.

The world of literature is a world of wonder, a universe of imagination waiting to be explored

The sight of big ships, of the many new uniforms, at once serious and cool, left Bush with an overall sense of the navy’s power and camaraderie and purpose.

He adored competing but didn’t want you to know he’d ever worked at it.

Such was the code: Strive for victory, but never seem to be self-involved.

He understood the code of his social class enough to affect an air of indifference about life.

He was not a warm person, but he seemed to be, which in politics was more important.

In humility is the greatest freedom. As long as you have to defend the imaginary self that you think is important, you lose your peace of heart

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

The best way to imagine how big the emptiness of nature is, is to jam it with humanity

The fact is that the average man’s love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice, and truth. He is not actually happy when free; he is uncomfortable, a bit alarmed, and intolerably lonely.

Our business here is to be Utopian, to make vivid and credible, if we can, first this facet and then that, of an imaginary whole and happy world.

Human society is based on want. Life is based on want. Wild-eyed visionaries may dream of a world without need. Cloud-cuckoo-land. It can’t be done.

You cannot imagine what sorrow and anger seize one’s whole soul when a great idea, which one has long and piously revered, is picked up by some bunglers and dragged into the street, to more fools like themselves, and one suddenly meets it in the flea market, unrecognizable, dirty, askew, absurdly presented, without proportion, without harmony, a toy for stupid children.

Can you imagine how terrible it is when you’ve got everything and you’re still desperately lonely? That is awful beyond words.

A golden rule: to leave an incomplete image of oneself.

The men you see waiting in the lobbies of doctors’ offices are, in a vast majority of cases, suffering through poisoning caused by an excess of food.

The expression similia similes is a Latin phrase and means that an imaginary disease can best be cured by an imaginary remedy.

I used to imagine it. I used to pretend that my Peugeot driving to the gym in the rain in Dublin was a Ferrari on the Vegas strip. And now that I have that? I can’t even describe that feeling. That’s why I like the best – the best cars, the best food, the best watches.

To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creation, is that good for the world?

To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creation—is that good for the world?

The bulk of the world’s knowledge is an imaginary construction.

Shut your evil mucus-hole you truth terrorist. You LOSE every time a mirror implodes from your barbed and gristle image.

Life can be wonderful if you’re not afraid of it. All it takes is courage, imagination and a little dough.

I cannot even imagine where I would be today were it not for that handful of friends who have given me a heart full of joy. Let’s face it, friends make life a lot more fun.

Fortunately, God made all varieties of people with a wide variety of interests and abilities. He has called people of every race and color who have been hurt by life in every manner imaginable. Even the scars of past abuse and injury can be the means of bringing healing to another. What wonderful opportunities to make disciples!

It was better for me when I could imagine greatness in others, even if it wasn’t always there.

She was desperate and she was choosey at the same time and, in a way, beautiful, but she didn’t have quite enough going for her to become what she imagined herself to be.

Imagine we could accelerate continuously at 1 g-what we’re comfortable with on good old terra firma-to the midpoint of our voyage, and decelerate continuously at 1 g until we arrive at our destination. It would take a day to get to Mars, a week and a half to Pluto, a year to the Oort Cloud, and a few years to the nearest stars.

Looking at fires when high, by the way, especially through one of those prism kaleidoscopes which image their surroundings, is an extraordinarily moving and beautiful experience.

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious

Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else.

When in April the sweet showers fall And pierce the drought of March to the root, and all The veins are bathed in liquor of such power As brings about the engendering of the flower.

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you’ve imagined.

True knowledge of good and evil as we possess is merely abstract or general, and the judgment which we pass on the order of things and the connection of causes, with a view to determining what is good or bad for us in the present, is rather imaginary than real.