15 quotes
A genuine work of art must mean many things; the truer its art, the more things it will mean.
The Fantastic Imagination (1893)
One difference between God's work and man's is, that, while God's work cannot mean more than he meant, man's must mean more than he meant.
The Fantastic Imagination (1893)
The greatest forces lie in the region of the uncomprehended.
The Fantastic Imagination (1893)
The tale is there, not to hide, but to show.
The Fantastic Imagination (1893)
My tales may not be roses, but I will not boil them.
The Fantastic Imagination (1893)
A fairytale, like a butterfly or a bee, helps itself on all sides, sips at every wholesome flower, and spoils not one.
The Fantastic Imagination (1893)
A man may well himself discover truth in what he wrote; for he was dealing all the time with things that came from thoughts beyond his own.
The Fantastic Imagination (1893)
The best thing you can do for your fellow, next to rousing his conscience, is — not to give him things to think about, but to wake things up that are in him; or say, to make him think things for himself.
The Fantastic Imagination (1893)
If there be music in my reader, I would gladly wake it.
The Fantastic Imagination (1893)
I say again, if I cannot draw a horse, I will not write THIS IS A HORSE under what I foolishly meant for one.
The Fantastic Imagination (1893)
If he be not a true man, he will draw evil out of the best; we need not mind how he treats any work of art! If he be a true man, he will imagine true things: what matter whether I meant them or not?
The Fantastic Imagination (1893)
It is there not so much to convey a meaning as to wake a meaning. If it do not even wake an interest, throw it aside. A meaning may be there, but it is not for you.
The Fantastic Imagination (1893)
Some thinkers would feel sorely hampered if at liberty to use no forms but such as existed in nature, or to invent nothing save in accordance with the laws of the world of the senses; but it must not therefore be imagined that they desire escape from the region of law.
The Fantastic Imagination (1893)
A fairytale is not an allegory. There may be allegory in it, but it is not an allegory. He must be an artist indeed who can, in any mode, produce a strict allegory that is not a weariness to the spirit.
The Fantastic Imagination (1893)
We spoil countless precious things by intellectual greed. He who will be a man, and will not be a child, must — he cannot help himself — become a little man, that is, a dwarf. He will, however, need no consolation, for he is sure to think himself a very large creature indeed.
The Fantastic Imagination (1893)