Imaginary Quotes - Page 14

• Don't let us make imaginary evils, when you know we have so many real ones to encounter.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Real, Evil, Encounters

  Oliver Goldsmith (1842). “The Select Works of Oliver Goldsmith: In One Volume. With the Portrait of the Author..”, p.273

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• I learned through my body and soul that it was necessary for me to sin, that I needed lust, that I had to strive for property and experience nausea and the depths of despair in order to learn not to resist them, in order to learn to love the world.

  Hermann Hesse

  Order, Perfection, Soul

  "Siddhartha: An Indian Tale".

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• But a few choosing to venture deeper into the painful corridors of their affliction, found after a while that they could now grind and polish ever more exotic surfaces, hyperboloidial and even stranger, eventually including what we must term ‘imaginary’ shapes (which some preferred to term invisible).

  Thomas Pynchon

  Exotic, Affliction, Shapes

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• Gods, religions and national boundaries are absolutely imaginary. They don't tend to exist. As soon as you pull back half a mile and look down at the Earth there are no national boundaries. There aren't even national boundaries when you get down and walk around. They're just imaginary lines we draw on maps. I just get fascinated by people who assume that things that are imaginary have no relevance to their lives.

  Neil Gaiman

  People, Looks, Half

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• The stars we are given. The constellations we make. That is to say, stars exist in the cosmos, but constellations are the imaginary lines we draw between them, the readings we give the sky, the stories we tell.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Stars, Reading, Sky

  Rebecca Solnit (2008). “Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics”, p.165, Univ of California Press

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• Where had I been that I didn't know about imaginary friends? I could see the point of it. How a lost part of yourself steps out and remind you who you could be with a little work.

  Sue Monk Kidd

  Littles, Steps, Lost

  Sue Monk Kidd (2003). “The Secret Life of Bees”, p.246, Penguin

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• the Twelve Apostles are the most evident sign of Jesus' will regarding the existence and mission of his Church, the guarantee that between Christ and the Church there is no opposition: despite the sins of the people who make up the Church, they are inseparable. Therefore, a slogan that was popular some years back, 'Jesus yes, Church no,' is totally inconceivable with the intention of Christ. This individualistically chosen Jesus is an imaginary Jesus.

  Pope Benedict XVI

  Jesus, Years, Guarantees That

  Pope Benedict XVI (2016). “Jesus, the Apostles, and the Early Church”, p.8, Ignatius Press

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• I'd love to write some porn, but I don't know if I have the right engines. When I was a young man and I was tempted to write porn, imaginary parents would appear over my shoulder and read what I was writing; just about the point that I managed to banish the imaginary parents, real children would lean over my shoulder and read what I was writing.

  Neil Gaiman

  Children, Real, Writing

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• When I was a kid I had an imaginary friend and I used to think that he went everywhere with me, and that I could talk to him and that he could hear me, and that he could grant me wishes and stuff. And then I grew up, and I stopped going to church.

  Jimmy Carr

  Funny, Humor, Kids

  Jimmy Carr, Lucy Greeves (2006). “Only Joking: What's So Funny About Making People Laugh?”, p.171, Penguin

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• if something is there, you can only see it with your eyes open, but if it isn't there, you can see it just as well with your eyes closed. That's why imaginary things are often easier to see than real ones.

  Norton Juster

  Life, Real, Eye

  Norton Juster (2011). “The Phantom Tollbooth”, p.101, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• Haven't you noticed that we women daydream infinitely less than you men? We can't anticipate pleasure in our imagination or keep suffering out our lives with some imaginary consolation.Whatever is,is.Imagintion! It's so paltry!Yes,when you've grown older,as I have,you occasionally make do with the poor comedy of the imagination.

  Jens Peter Jacobsen

  Men, Imagination, Suffering

  Jens Peter Jacobsen (2006). “Niels Lyhne”, p.60, Penguin

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• She was a little given to rehearsing things in her mind, and having imaginary triumphs over people who had upset her in one way and another.

  James M. Cain

  People, Upset, Mind

  James M. Cain (2010). “Mildred Pierce”, p.23, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

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• And yet, the only exciting life is the imaginary one.

  Virginia Woolf

  Life Is, Exciting, Exciting Life

  Virginia Woolf (2003). “A Writer's Diary”, p.136, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• How can you see something that isn't there?" yawned the Humbug, who wasn't fully awake yet. "Sometimes, it's much simpler than seeing things that are,"he said. "For instance, if something is there, you can only see it with your eyes open, but if it isn't there, you can see it just as well with your eyes closed. That's why imaginary things are often easier to see than real ones." "Then where is Reality?" barked Tock. "Right here,"cried Alec, waving his arms.

  Norton Juster

  Real, Eye, Arms

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• In Tereza’s eyes, books were the emblems of a secret brotherhood. For she had but a single weapon against the world of crudity surrounding her: the novels. She had read any number of them, from Fielding to Thomas Mann. They not only offered the possibility of an imaginary escape from a life she found unsatisfying; they also had a meaning for her as physical objects: she loved to walk down the street with a book under her arm. It had the same significance for her as an elegant cane from the dandy a century ago. It differentiated her from others.

  Milan Kundera

  Book, Eye, Numbers

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• A true friend never asks you to feed their imaginary fish. Or fertilize their imaginary crops.

  Teresa Medeiros

  True Friend, Crops, Fishes

  Teresa Medeiros (2010). “The Devil Wears Plaid”, p.415, Simon and Schuster

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• The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like 'religion', to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Religious, Cutting, Practice

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2014). “The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien”, p.172, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Middle-earth is our world. I have (of course) placed the action in a purely imaginary (though not wholly impossible) period of antiquity, in which the shape of the continental masses was different.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Our World, Different, Earth

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• Don't be an actor. Be a human being who works off what exists under imaginary circumstances.

  Sanford Meisner

  Actors, Circumstances, Humans

  Sanford Meisner, Dennis Longwell (2012). “Sanford Meisner on Acting”, p.128, Vintage

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• Any guy, even imaginary, would just feel like second best. Second best to what? I don't even have an image of the perfect boyfriend. I just know he must exist. Because I have all these feelings-love, longing, wanting to be touched, dreaming of being kissed-yet no one to focus them on.

  Tabitha Suzuma

  Dream, Perfect, Focus

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• The novel is a meditation on existence as seen through the medium of imaginary characters.

  Milan Kundera

  Character, Meditation, Existence

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• But think of Adam and Eve like an imaginary number, like the square root of minus one: you can never see any concrete proof that it exists, but if you include it in your equations, you can calculate all manner of things that couldn't be imagined without it.

  Philip Pullman

  Science, Thinking, Squares

  "Northern Lights". Book by Philip Pullman, 1995.

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• No doubt the world is entirely an imaginary world, but it is only once removed from the true world.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Doubt, World, No Doubt

  Isaac Bashevis Singer (2004). “Collected Stories: Gimpel the Fool to the Letter Writer”

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• The real unforgivable acts are committed by calm men in beautiful green silk rooms, who deal death wholesale, by the shipload, without lust, without anger, or desire, or any redeeming emotion to excuse them but cold fear of some pretended future. But the crimes they hope to prevent in that future are imaginary. The ones they commit in the present - they are real.

  Lois McMaster Bujold

  Beautiful, Real, Men

  "Shards of Honor". Book by Lois McMaster Bujold, 1986.

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• In the past the need for a hierarchal form of society has been the doctrine specifically of the High. It had been preached by kings and aristocrats and the priests, lawyers and the like who were parasitical upon them, and it had generally been softened by promises of an imaginary world beyond the grave.

  George Orwell

  Kings, Past, Promise

  George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.294, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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