Tag Archives: imagination
The true magic carpet
“Imagination is the true magic carpet.” — Norman Vincent Peale Even when we aren’t free to travel because of health, finances or responsibilities, our minds are always free. And now, with the entire world available literally at our fingertips, through words, photos, music and videos, our minds have even more fuel for our imaginary journeys. …
Language of the imagination
“ ‘They are all beasts of burden in a sense,’ Thoreau once remarked of animals, ‘made to carry some portion of our thoughts.’ Animals are the old language of the imagination; one of the ten thousand tragedies of their disappearance would be a silencing of this speech.” ― Rebecca Solnit I’m not sure I understand …
In the company of children
“Christmas Day in the company of children is one of the few occasions on which men become entirely alive.” ― Robert Lynd This quote sounds charming, but I couldn’t help but laugh a little to recall how exhausted Jeff and I used to be during the years when Santa would visit our sons. It always …
An act of recollection
“The Polar Express was the easiest of my picture book manuscripts to write… Once I realized the train was going to the North Pole, finding the story seemed less like a creative effort than an act of recollection. I felt, like the story’s narrator, that I was remembering something, not making it up.” — Chris …
Share to the full
“Let the children have their night of fun and laughter. Let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their play. Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstinted pleasures before we turn again to the stern task and the formidable years that lie before us…” — Winston Churchill, in his Christmas Eve message of …
Stories to tell
“With thousands of years of human habitation, this land surely has stories to tell. The trees rustle with whispers of those who have come and gone.” — from a display at the Visitor’s Center at Fort Raleigh National Historic Site Recently Jeff and I visited beautiful Roanoke Island, North Carolina, the site of the mysterious “Lost …
What to do
“Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.” – Susan Ertz As the warm weather fades and the cold or rainy season moves in, we’ll all be indoors more, whether we like or not. I like it. I relish the chance to spend hours at home, puttering …
A vision that stays
“The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always. No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe…they are ambassadors from another time.” — John Steinbeck It really is impossible to capture a forest …
Carry your childhood with you
“If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older.” — Tom Stoppard Here it is: photographic evidence that a lot of things about me haven’t changed in nearly half a century. I still love cats. I still love yellow. I still wear my hair in a bun often (no wisecracks about librarians here). And the camera, well, …
A palace untouched
“A palace untouched by human hand, with its gardens of rock and water where living creatures play the part of flowers…” — Philippe Diole Reading descriptions of the form and function of the sea anemone brings to mind horror movies or frightful science fiction. “Venom-filled tentacles…harpoon-like filament…paralyzing neurotoxin…helpless prey.” Really? But look how beautiful they are. …
Imagination will take you
“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.” – Albert Einstein Logic is important and even indispensable, but imagination is what gives life its brightest colors. Often we equate imagination with fantasy and escapism, although its most common and useful purpose is to add flair to everyday life. Think of …
The garden of your mind
“You can grow ideas in the garden of your mind.” — Fred Rogers As springtime approaches, there’s no better time to tend to the garden of your mind. Let’s make our minds into beautiful gardens to enjoy every day! We can cultivate the soil by feeding it healthy images and words. We can watch out …
Added to the inner freedom
“No great work has ever been based on hatred and contempt. On the contrary, there is not a single true work of art that has not in the end added to the inner freedom of each person who has known and loved it.” — Albert Camus Van Gogh’s swirling clouds, Rembrandt’s pensive faces, Pissarro’s evocative …
Intense love
“Creative work carries with it a form of intense love.” – Lin Yutang Lin Yutang’s description of creativity is parallel to the Bible verse that tells us “God is love.” If God’s love has been made manifest in the boundless beauty and diversity of creation, it stands to reason that people made in God’s image …
Always more mystery
“The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.”― Anais Nin One of my favorite people in this blog community frequently wishes me “a wonder-filled week.” I love it! The word wonderful is used so often that we tend to miss its root meaning, so I …
Like a fire
“A place that ever was lived in is like a fire that never goes out.” – Eudora Welty The house pictured above is the place I will always think of as my childhood home. I’ve returned there, just to drive by it, several times since my parents first moved away more than twenty years after …
Generous beyond all reason
“This is among the oldest, deepest, most primal truths: the facts of life may be, at times, unbearably painful. But the core, the bones of life are generous beyond all reason or belief. Those things that ought to kill us do not. This should be taken as encouragement to continue.” — Augusten Burroughs Perhaps the …
Whoever you are
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on… Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting – over and over announcing your place in the family of things. — Mary Oliver …
A thousand tongues
“There is an air about it, resonant of joy and hope: it speaks with a thousand tongues to the heart: it waves its mighty shadow over the imagination…and points with prophetic fingers to the sky.” — William Hazlitt, describing Oxford This was my third visit to Oxford, but the first time I stayed more than three …
