Many / One

A database of 11,000+ illuminated guiding quotations in 40 categories from 600+ inspired books by our most brilliant and influential authors.
Compiled by JoAnn Kite

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1		"A greatly educative means employed in the [Ancient] Mysteries was that of instructing, enlarging and purifying the imagination by means of myths, expressing…truths of the Divine world and of the soul's history." The Meaning of Masonry (W. L. Wilmshurst)

2		"Images have their own potency and their own persistence; they testify to human need and desire, but also to a transcendent frontier." Omens of Millennium (Harold Bloom)

3		"Our imaginations are holy, the Holy Spirit works through us when we create and participate in the ongoing Creation of self, society, universe, and mind." One River, Many Wells: Wisdom Springing from World Faiths (Matthew Fox)

4		"Mental images, attitudes, and emotions help determine sickness and well-being. Life-giving exercises of the imagination, for example, were described in Egyptian books of the dead, the Vedas, and other religious scriptures. In the Phaedrus, Phaedo, and Symposium, Plato celebrated the power of images to stimulate health. Aristotle recognized the intimate connections between mental pictures, volition, sensation, and other bodily functions…Renaissance physicians believed that images were connected to impulses that travel through the nerves from the brain, stirring up humors that lead to changes in cognitive, emotional, and somatic functioning." The Future of the Body, Explorations Into the Further Evolution of Human Nature (Michael Murphy)

5		"Certain basic images are universal. From culture to culture, they may vary somewhat in surface details, or content, but in underlying form they are basically the same. These include the archetypes of figures such as the Hero, the Wise Old Man, the Great Mother, the Self, the Sun-God, the Demon, and events such as Birth, Death, the Initiation Rite, the Sacred Marriage." The Sphinx and The Rainbow: Brain, Mind and Future Vision (David Loye)

6		"You know, the imagination is also a place of reality. That may sound ridiculous, but it is. I think the imagination is where we create the future. It's where we begin to know ourselves, and it's the place of creativity and knowledge." Terry Lynn Taylor Angels: The Mysterious Messengers (Rex Hauck, editor)

7		"The imagination is able to look beyond the mundane image to the Reality itself." Karen Armstrong The Schocken Book of Jewish Mystical Testimonies (Louis Jacobs, Compiler)

8		"Humans are…beings who serve as a focus for the outworking of patterns of meaning as well as content. Sacred psychology calls for renewing our commitment to a science of the soul, in which imagining is primary." Angels and Mortals, Their Co-Creative Power (Maria Parisen, compiler)

9		"We all work near and drink from the same reservoir of imagination that forms from our collective creativity." Breaking the Mind Barrier (Todd Siler)

10		"There exists in the human mind a prefiguration of reality, an interior imagery of nature." A God Within (Rene Dubos)

11		"Imagination is a kind of mediator, opening the way to the activity of the intelligible and spiritual life of the human being." Ramon Lull and the Secret of Life (Amador Vega)

12		"Imagination is the instrument of discovery. The poet and the scientist agree. Discovery is conceiving in imagination, or, more succinctly, discovery IS imagined conception." Imagination (Harold Rugg)

13		"Images bridge the gap between the verbal and non-verbal modes of awareness; they allow the two sides of the brain to communicate, arousing the emotions as well as the intellect." The Spiral Dance, A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess (Starhawk (Miriam Simos))

14		"Imagination is the universal and indispensable instrument of all levels of living in the human world. Our daily lives are dependent on it….In fact, the principal function of the imagination is to enable the human being constantly to build thought models of the real world." Imagination (Harold Rugg)

15		"Images are the compelling source of morality and religion as well as the conscientiousness of art." A Blue Fire (James Hillman)

16		"The culture of the depths, sometimes referred to as the 'mundus imaginalis', the imaginal world, or in the Arabic mystical tradition as the 'alam al-mithal', is as real as everyday, objective life – perhaps even more real, since it is the place where the forms and creations of your existential life are conceived." The Search for the Beloved (Jean Houston)

17		"The Imagination is not a State: it is the Human Existence itself." William Blake (1757-1827) Wisdom for Life (Lynette Evans, editor)

18		"The beginning of a cure for our ills is a revitalized imagination, one that truly recognizes that there is a sacred dimension to the everyday life that we live." Thomas Moore Angels: The Mysterious Messengers (Rex Hauck, editor)

19		"Imagine, if you will, a time when human beings lived in intimacy with God, and so with all other living beings and with one another. Imagine, then, that humankind emerged and separated itself from God, and from intimacy with other living beings. Imagine further that in their separateness, individuals imagined themselves as autonomous beings, distant not only from God but from their own common humanity. Imagine, finally, that these autonomous individuals were to rediscover their common humanity, their connections to other living beings – and eventually reuinite with God. This could be the story of the religions of the West. It could also…be the story of the religions of India. It might, perhaps, even be the story of the world. In that case, it would be the story of stories, the myth of all myths – and no less true for that." The Book of Miracles (Kenneth L. Woodward)

20		"Imagination is like the Sun, the light of which is not tangible, but which can set a house on fire. Imagination leads man's life. If he thinks of fire, he is on fire; if he thinks of war, he will cause war. All depends only upon man's imagination to be Sun, i.e., that he imagines wholly that which he wills." Paracelsus The History of Magic and the Occult (Kurt Seligmann)

21		"The spirit is the master, imagination the tool, and the body the plastic material." Paracelsus The Spirit of Shamanism (Roger N. Walsh, M.D., Ph.D.)

22		"To the eyes of the man of imagination, Nature is Imagination itself. As a man is, so he sees." William Blake One Thousand Inspirational Things (Audrey Stone Morris, Compiler)

23		"This planet is going to make some decisions soon…..As you go about your life, for a thousand moments every day, hold this planet in your awareness. See it glowing with wonder, power, love, peace, harmony and wholeness. See it safe beyond the limitations and chaos the mind of man has created. See all the boundaries dissolving and see nothing but a sphere of energy, unified, beautiful, clear, joined, uplifted. The planet needs your help." Reflections of an Elder Brother: Awakening from the Dream (Mary-Margaret Moore)

24		"The image of God in every person is precisely the imagination or the capacity of each person for creativity." Wrestling with the Prophets, Essays on Creation Spirituality and Everyday Life (Matthew Fox)

25		"The primary imagination I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM." Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), English poet and philosopher, 'Biographia Literaria', ch. 13 Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 4th edition (Angela Partington, editor)