“Great literature demands an active reader, one willing to meet the writer halfway in the work of imagination.”

Underlining the collaborative role of the reader's imagination in bringing text to life · Literary criticism

• Imagination
• Readers
• Reading

“Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.”

Suggesting that imaginative intensity may involve a departure from ordinary rational habits · Essay, A Defence of the English?

• Consciousness
• Imagination
• Poetry

“The poet never affirmeth, and therefore never lieth.”

Distinguishing imaginative invention from literal claims about fact · Essay, An Apology for Poetry

• Imagination
• Poetry
• Truth

“Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads.”

Defining poetry as imaginative art grounded in the vivid realities of life · Statement on poetry, as commonly attributed

• Imagination
• Poetry
• Reality

“Youth is not a time of life, it is a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination.”

Framing vitality as an enduring attitude rather than a count of years · Commentary on art and age (essay)

• Age
• Imagination
• Youth

“Language expands when the imagination refuses to be bounded by convention.”

Original: تتسع اللغة عندما يرفض الخيال أن تحده التقاليد — A defense of poetic innovation and freedom · Literary reflection (Arabic)

• Convention
• Imagination
• Language

“I find the forest most beautiful in the imagination of autumn's genius, and not when it stands greenest.”

Original: Skogen finner jeg er skjønnest i høstgeniets fantasi, og ikke, når den står som grønnest. — Prefers the rich artistic depth of autumn over simple summer greenery · Nature reflections (Norwegian)

• Beauty
• Imagination
• Nature

“In the poetry of fancy and of the imagination, there is poetry that lulls and lifts, and soothes with music and pictures.”

Distinguishes imaginative and musical poetry from the more demanding poetry he regarded as greatest · Across Spoon River

• Imagination
• Music
• Poetry

“Words like "far away" and "ancient" are intensely poetic and pleasing because they awaken vast, indefinite, indeterminate and hazy ideas.”

Original: Le parole lontano, antico e simili sono poeticissime e piacevoli, perché destano idee vaste e indefinite e non determinabili e confuse. — A concise statement of Leopardi's poetics of vagueness, distance and imaginative suggestion. · Zibaldone, entry 1789, 25 September 1821 (Italian)

• Imagination
• Language
• Poetry

“Remembrance is essential and fundamental to poetic feeling.”

Original: La rimembranza è essenziale e principale nel sentimento poetico. — Leopardi places remembered distance at the heart of the imaginative transformation that makes experience poetic. · Zibaldone, entry 4426, 14 December 1828 (Italian)

• Imagination
• Memory
• Poetry

“Children find everything in nothing; adults find nothing in everything.”

Original: I fanciulli trovano il tutto nel nulla, gli uomini il nulla nel tutto. — A celebrated contrast between childhood imagination and the disillusionment that accompanies adult experience. · Zibaldone, entry 527, 19 January 1821 (Italian)

• Childhood
• Experience
• Imagination

“Every untainted fancy begets ideal visions of which the pastoral forms a legitimate and artistically necessary reflection.”

Defending imaginative beauty and pastoral idealisation against strict realism · Essay, The Despised Pastoral

• Beauty
• Imagination
• Poetry

“Indeed, all that a wonder story can ever be is a vivid picture of a certain type of human mood.”

Defining fantastic fiction primarily as the artistic expression of a mood · Essay, Notes on Writing Weird Fiction

• Emotion
• Imagination
• Writing

“A casual style ruins any serious fantasy.”

Expressing his belief that fantastic material requires sustained seriousness of treatment · Essay, Notes on Writing Weird Fiction

• Imagination
• Style
• Writing

“Once or twice I have literally written out a dream.”

Showing the direct influence of dreams upon some of his imaginative writing · Essay, Notes on Writing Weird Fiction

• Dreams
• Imagination
• Writing

“The reason why time plays a great part in so many of my tales is that this element looms up in my mind as the most profoundly dramatic and grimly terrible thing in the universe.”

Revealing why time repeatedly becomes a source of terror in his imaginative world · Essay, Notes on Writing Weird Fiction

• Horror
• Imagination
• Time

“But the sensitive are always with us, and sometimes a curious streak of fancy invades an obscure corner of the very hardest head.”

Suggesting that imaginative susceptibility survives even in strongly rational minds · Essay, Supernatural Horror in Literature

• Imagination
• Mind
• Wonder

“The appeal of the spectrally macabre is generally narrow because it demands from the reader a certain degree of imagination and a capacity for detachment from every-day life.”

Connecting supernatural literature with imagination and escape from ordinary experience · Essay, Supernatural Horror in Literature

• Horror
• Imagination
• Reading

“Important, therefore, as may be the office of the imagination in poetry, the great spring of poetry is emotion.”

Placing emotion at the source of poetic creation · Lecture, On the Nature of Poetry, 1825–26

• Emotion
• Imagination
• Poetry

“The feelings and the imagination, when skilfully touched, act reciprocally on each other.”

Showing how emotion and imagination strengthen one another · Lecture, On the Nature of Poetry, 1825–26

• Emotion
• Imagination
• Mind

“The imagination is the most active and the least susceptible of fatigue of all the faculties of the human mind.”

Celebrating the extraordinary endurance of the imaginative faculty · Lecture, On the Nature of Poetry, 1825–26

• Creativity
• Imagination
• Mind

“I would rather call poetry a suggestive art. Its power of affecting the mind is by pure suggestion.”

Defining poetry as an art that awakens rather than merely describes · Lecture, On the Nature of Poetry, 1825–26

• Imagination
• Language
• Poetry

“My source of inspiration is reality. But an integral reality: the outer world and the inner world, what is seen and what is imagined.”

Original: Mi fuente de inspiración es la realidad. Pero una realidad integral del mundo exterior y del mundo interior. De lo visto y lo imaginado. — Defining inspiration as a union of observation and imagination · Confesiones literarias, Cuadernos de Poesía, 1941 (Spanish)

• Creativity
• Experience
• Imagination

“We must be in love before we can understand the mysteries of vision.”

Making love a prerequisite for the deepest forms of imaginative perception · Essay, Notes on Thought and Vision

• Imagination
• Love
• Understanding