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Words paint to the imagination, but every man forms the thing to himself in his own way.

— Jonathan Richardson Essay on the Theory of Painting (1725)

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Imagination

More quotes by Jonathan Richardson

In picture we never die, never decay, or grow older.

Essay on the Theory of Painting (1725)

Painting is that pleasant amusement...being one of the means whereby we convey our ideas to each other.

Essay on the Theory of Painting (1725)

The pleasure that painting as a dumb art give us, is like what we have from music; its beautiful forms, colours and harmony are to the eye what sounds and the harmony...are to the ear.

Essay on the Theory of Painting (1725)

The theatre gives us representations of things..., and there we see a sort of moving, speaking pictures, but these are transient; whereas painting remains and is always at hand.

Essay on the Theory of Painting (1725)

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Some of my youthful readers are developing wonderful imaginations. This pleases me.

L. Frank Baum Introduction to The Lost Princess of Oz (1917)

There is an inverse relationship between imagination and money.

Alan Moore

An active imagination may find a bad tendency arising out of every transaction between imperfect morals.

Edward Hall Alderson Brownlow v. Egerton (1854)

Nothing is more dangerous to reason than the flights of the imagination, and nothing has been the occasion of more mistakes among philosophers.

David Hume A Treatise of Human Nature (1739)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Jonathan Richardson (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.