William Hazlitt Quotes on Imagination & Visualization (8 Quotes)

Man is an individual animal with narrow faculties, but infinite desires, which he is anxious to concentrate in some one object within the grasp of his imagination, and where, if he cannot be all that he wishes himself, he may at least contemplate his own pride, vanity, and passions, displayed in their most extravagant dimensions in a being no bigger and no better than himself.

A nickname is the heaviest stone that the devil can throw at a man. It is a bugbear to the imagination, and, though we do not believe in it, it still haunts our apprehensions.

We are the creatures of imagination, passion, and self-will, more than of reason or even of self-interest. . . . Even in the common transactions and daily intercourse of life, we are governed by whim, caprice, prejudice, or accident.

The imagination is of so delicate a texture that even words wound it.

What a fine lesson is conveyed to the mind -- to take no note of time but by its benefits, to watch only for the smiles and neglect the frowns of fate, to compose our lives of bright and gentle moments, turning always to the sunny side of things, and letting the rest slip for our imaginations, unheeded or forgotten How different from the common art of self-tormenting

Love at first sight is only realizing an imagination that has always haunted us or meeting with a face, a figure, or cast of expression in perfection that we have seen and admired in a less degree or in less favorable circumstances a hundred times before.

Taste is nothing but an enlarged capacity for receiving pleasure from works of imagination.

The great requisite for the prosperous management of ordinary business is the want of imagination.