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Imagination
  1. From ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties
    And things that go bump in the night, good Lord deliver us!
       -- Anon.

  2. The curse of human nature is imagination. When a long-anticipated moment comes, we always find it pitched a note too low.
       -- Gertrude Atherton

  3. Imagination is the air of mind
       -- Philip James Bailey

  4. Imagination has always had powers of resurrection that no science can match.
       -- Ingrid Bengis

  5. Imagination rules the world.
       -- Napoleon Bonaparte

  6. I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too.
       -- Fyodor Dostoevsky

  7. Where there is no imagination there is no horror.
       -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

  8. Imagination is more important than knowledge.
       -- Albert Einstein

  9. Science does not know its debt to imagination.
       -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

  10. The quality of the imagination is to flow and not to freeze.
       -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

  11. Imagination is not a talent of some men but is the health of every man.
       -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

  12. The Sky is the daily bread of the imagination.
       -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

  13. There is a space between man's imagination and man's attainment that may only be traversed by his longing.
       -- Khalil Gibran

  14. Fantasies are more than substitutes for unpleasant reality; they are also dress rehearsals, plans. All acts performed in the world begin in the imagination.
       -- Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

  15. The assumption that seeing is believing makes us susceptible to visual deceptions.
       -- Kathleen Hall Jamieson

  16. Were it not for imagination, a man would be as happy in the arms of a chambermaid as a dutchess.
       -- Samuel Johnson

  17. He who has imagination without learning has wings and no feet.
       -- Joseph Joubert

  18. Imagination is the eye of the soul.
       -- Joseph Joubert

  19. Without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable.
       -- Carl Jung

  20. Ever let the fancy roam,
    Pleasure never is at home.
       -- John Keats

  21. Imagination is to love what gas is to the balloon--that which raises it from earth.
       -- L.E. Landon

  22. The old proverb, applied to fire and water, may with equal truth be applied to the imagination--it is a good servant, but a bad master.
       -- L.E. Landon

  23. I doubt the imagination can be suppressed. If
       -- Ursula K. LeGuinn

  24. Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.
       -- W. Somerset Maugham

  25. Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are everything in this world.
       -- Blaise Pascal

  26. Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
       -- George S. Patton

  27. Often it is just lack of imagination that keeps a man from suffering very much.
       -- Marcel Proust

  28. Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced.
       -- Ned Rorem

  29. The people who are willing to talk about imagination rarely have much. Imagination is a guilty secret, usually, a passion best kept inside the privacy of one's own skull.
       -- Margaret Lee Runbeck

  30. A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.
       -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

  31. Reason respects the differences, and imagination the similitudes of things.
       -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

  32. The eyes are not responsible when the mind does the seeing.
       -- Publius Syrus

  33. You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
       -- Mark Twain

  34. Imagination and fiction make up more than three-quarters of our real life.
       -- Simone Weil

  35. Fools act on imagination without knowledge, pedants act on knowledge without imagination.
       -- Alfred North Whitehead

  36. Imagination is a quality given a man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is.
       -- Oscar Wilde

Imitation
  1. Imitation belittles.
       -- Christian Nestell Bovee

  2. Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and approximate to the characters we most admire.
       -- Christian Nestell Bovee

  3. We are, in truth, more than half of what we are by imitation.
       -- Lord Chesterfield

  4. To copy beauty forfeits all pretence
    To fame; to copy faults is want of sense.
       -- Charles Churchill

  5. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
       -- Charles Caleb Colton

  6. Every man is a borrower and a mimic; life is theatrical and literature a quotation.
       -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

  7. Insist on yourself; never imitate.
       -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

  8. There is much difference between imitating a good man and counterfeiting him.
       -- Benjamin Franklin

  9. Men are so constituted that every one undertakes what he sees another successful in, whether he has aptitude for it or not.
       -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  10. When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.
       -- Eric Hoffer

  11. No man ever yet became great by imitation.
       -- Samuel Johnson

  12. Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.
       -- Samuel Johnson

  13. We do not imitate, but are a model to others.
       -- Pericles

  14. The only good imitations are those that poke fun at bad originals.
       -- François de La Rochefoucauld

  15. To copy others is necessary, but to copy oneself is pathetic.
       -- Pablo Picasso

  16. We love in others what we lack ourselves,
    And would be everything but what we are.
       -- R.H. Stoddard

Immortality
  1. Millions long for immortality who barely know how to scratch themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
       -- American Proverb

  2. Nothing is lasting but change; nothing perpetual but death.
       -- Ludwig Börne

  3. Men long for an afterlife in which there is apparently nothing to do but delight in heaven's wonders.
       -- Louis D. Brandeis

  4. Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
       -- Susan Ertz

  5. The average man does not know what to do with this life, yet wants another one which will last forever.
       -- Anatole France

  6. I want to go on living even after my death!
       -- Anne Frank

  7. If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
       -- John Kenneth Galbraith

  8. Those who hope for no other life are dead even for this.
       -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  9. If your contribution has been vital there will always be somebody to pick up where you left off, and that will be your claim to immortality.
       -- Walter Gropius

  10. The best argument I know for an immortal life is the existence of a man who deserves one.
       -- William James

  11. I believe in the immortality of the soul because I have within me immortal longings.
       -- Helen Keller

  12. The first requisite for immortality is death.
       -- Stanislaw J. Lec

  13. One has to pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive.
       -- Friedrich Nietzsche

  14. What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.
       -- Albert Pike

  15. The reward of great men is that, long after they have died, one is not quite sure that they are dead.
       -- Jules Renard

  16. Immortality is the genius to move others long after you yourself have stopped moving.
       -- Frank Rooney

  17. Only the actions of the just smell sweet and blossom in the dust.
       -- James Shirley

Impatience
  1. I have been devoured all my life by an incurable and burning impatience: and to this day find all oratoty, biography, operas, films, plays, books, and persons too long.
       -- Margaret Asquith

  2. Little seedlings never flouish in the soil they have been given, be it ever so excellent, if they are continually pulled up to see if the roots are grateful yet.
       -- Bertha Damon

  3. Everything comes to the man who won't wait.
       -- Ada Leverson

  4. The impatience of the old is the worst impatience of all.
       -- L.T. Meade

  5. "Twenty-three and a quarter minutes past," Uncle Matthew was saying furiously, "in precisely six and three-quarter minutes the damned fella will be late."
       -- Nancy Mitford

  6. Impatience is the mark of independence, not of bondage.
       -- Marianne Moore

Impossibility
  1. The difficult we do immediately, the impossible takes a little longer.
       -- Anon. WW II Slogan

  2. Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done.
       -- Louis D. Brandeis

  3. Impossibility: a word only to be found in the dictionary of fools.
       -- Napoleon Bonaparte

  4. Every noble work is at first impossible.
       -- Thomas Carlyle

  5. "There is no use trying," said Alice; "one can't believe impossible things." "I dare say you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
       -- Lewis Carroll (Through the Looking Glass)

  6. Nothing is impossible, we just don't know how to do it yet.
       -- L.L. Larison Cudmore

  7. It is impossible to overdo luxury.
       -- French Proverb

  8. It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow.
       -- Robert H. Goddard

  9. The impossible talked of is less impossible from the moment words are laid to it.
       -- Storm Jameson

  10. Nothing is impossible; there are ways that lead to everything, and if we had sufficient will we should always have sufficient means. It is often merely for an excuse that we say things are impossible.
       -- François de La Rochefoucauld

  11. The Difficult is that which can be done immediately; the Impossible that which takes a little longer.
       -- George Santayana

  12. To the timid and hesitating everything is impossible because it seems so.
       -- Walter Scott

  13. In the age in which we live, the impossible is every day losing ground.
       -- Anne-Sophie Swetchine [1869]

  14. Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today.
       -- Mark Twain

Improvement
  1. Acorns were good until bread was found.
       -- Francis Bacon

  2. Undoubtedly a man is to labor to better his condition, but first to better himself.
       -- William Ellery Channing

  3. He who stops being better stops being good.
       -- Oliver Cromwell

  4. Where we cannot invent, we may at least improve.
       -- Charles Caleb Colton

  5. People seldom improve when they have no other model but themselves to copy after.
       -- Oliver Goldsmith

  6. If a better system is thine, impart it; if not, make use of mine.
       -- Horace

  7. As long as I can conceive something better than myself I cannot be easy unless I am striving to bring it into existence or clearing the way for it.
       -- George Bernard Shaw

  8. Much of the wisdom of one age, is the folly of the next.
       -- Charles Simmons

    Inaction
  1. The biggest sin is sitting on your ass.
       -- Florynce R. Kenndy

  2. Inaction, contrary for its reputation as being a refuge, is neither safe nor comfortable.
       -- Madeline Kuhn

  3. There are so many things that we wish we had done yesterday, so few that we feel like doing today.
       -- Mignon McLaughlin

  4. What you don't do can be a destructive force
       -- Eleanor Rooseveldt

  5. So much attention is paid to the aggressive sins, such as violence and cruelty and greed with all their tragic effects, that too little attention is paid to the passive sins, such as apathy and laziness, which in the long run can have a more devastating and destructive effect upon our society than the others.
       -- Eleanor Rooseveldt

  6. The most ominous of fallacies--the belief that things can be kept static by inaction.
       -- Freyda Stark

  7. Perhaps it is impossible for a person who does no good to do no harm.
       -- Harriet Beecher Stowe

    Inconsistency
  1. Mutability of temper and inconsistency with ourselves is the greatest weakness of human nature.
       -- Joseph Addison

  2. No author ever drew a character consistent to human nature, but he was forced to ascribe to it many inconsistencies.
       -- Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

  3. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
       -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

  4. Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.
       -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

  5. All concord's born of contraries.
       -- Ben Jonson

  6. Some persons do first, think afterward, and then repent forever.
       -- Thomas Secker

  7. Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more;
    Men were deceivers ever;
    One foot in sea, and one on shore;
    To one thing constant never.
       -- William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing


    Incredulity
    1. More persons, on the whole, are humbugged by believing in nothing than by believing in too much.
         -- P. T. Barnum

    2. Incredulity is the wisdom of the fool.
         -- Josh Billings

    3. Incredulity robs us of many pleasures, and gives us nothing in return.
         -- James Russell Lowell

    4. The curse of man, and the cause of nearly all his woe, is his stupendous capacity for believing the incredible.
         -- H. L. Mencken

    5. The amplest knowledge has the largest faith. Ignorance is always incredulous.
         -- Robert Eldridge Willmott


    Indecision
    1. The wavering mind is but a base possession.
         -- Euripides

    2. A man without decision can never be said to belong to himself.
         -- John Watson Foster

    3. Indecision is debilitating; it feeds upon itself; it is, one might almost say, habit-forming. Not only that, but it is contagious; it transmits itself to others.
         -- H. A. Hopf

    4. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.
         -- William James

    5. He is no wise man who will quit a certainty for an uncertainty.
         -- Samuel Johnson

    6. Once I make up my mind, I'm full of indecision.
         -- Oscar Levant

    7. Never Mind.
         -- Gilda Radner

    8. When a man has not a good reason for doing a thing, he has one good reason for letting it alone.
         -- Thomas Scott

    9. Don't stand shivering upon the bank; plunge in at once, and have it over.
         -- Sam Slick

    10. Indecision has often given an advantage to the other fellow because he did his thinking beforehand.
         -- Maurice Switzer

    11. While the mind is in doubt it is driven this way and that by a slight impulse.
         -- Terence


    Independence
    1. So live that you can look any man in the eye and tell him to go to hell.
         -- Anon.

    2. There is no such thing as being too independent.
         -- Victoria Billings

    3. I once worked as a salesman and was very independent. I took orders from no one.
         -- Jacques Barzum

    4. Without moral and intellectual independence, there is no anchor for national independence.
         -- David Ben-Gurion

    5. The only point in making money is, you can tell some big shot where to go.
         -- Humphrey Bogart

    6. No one can build his security upon the nobleness of another person.
         -- Willa Cather

    7. It is not the greatness of a man's means that makes him independent, so much as the smallness of his wants.
         -- William Cobbett

    8. Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one's self?
         -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

    9. [I am] lord of myself, accountable to none.
         -- Benjamin Franklin

    10. If money is your hope for independence, you will never have it.
         -- Henry Ford

    11. It is easy to be independent when you've got money. But to be independent when you haven't got a thing--that's the Lord's test.
         -- Mahalia Jackson

    12. There is no more independence in politics than there is in jail.
         -- Will Rogers

    13. I do desire we may be better strangers.
         -- William Shakespeare


    Indifference
    1. Indifference may not wreck a man's life at any one turn, but it will destroy him with a kind of dry-rot in the long run.
         -- Bliss Carman

    2. The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in time of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.
         -- Dante

    3. What makes life dreary is want of motive.
         -- George Eliot

    4. It is not opposition but indifference which separates men.
         -- M.P. Follett

    5. I want to make people feel intensely alive. I'd rather have them against me than indifferent.
         -- Martha Graham

    6. If moderation is a fault then indifference is a crime.
         -- G.C. Lichtenburg

    7. Hate is not the opposite of love, apathy is.
         -- Rollo May

    8. My dear, I don't give a damn.
         -- Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

    9. Once conform, once do what others do because they do it, and a kind of lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul.
         -- Michel de Montaigne

    10. There is nothing harder than the softness of indifference.
         -- Juan Montalvo

    11. lack of something to feel important about is almost the greatest tragedy a man can have.
         -- Arthur E. Morgan

    12. The accomplice to the crime of corruption is frequently our own indifference.
         -- Bess Myerson

    13. The only menace is inertia.
         -- St. John Perse


    Individuality
    1. Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting in a particular way.
         -- Aristotle

    2. Resolve to be thyself and know that he who finds himself loves his misery.
         -- Matthew Arnold

    3. A child develops individuality long before he discovers taste.
         -- Erma Bombeck

    4. The boughs of no two trees ever have the same arrangement. Nature always produces individuals; she never produces classes.
         -- Lydia Maria Child

    5. Individuality is the aim of political liberty.
         -- James Fenimore Cooper

    6. Individuality is either the mark of genius or the reverse. Mediocrity finds safety in standardization.
         -- Frederick E. Crane

    7. One cup poured into another makes different waters; tears shed by one eye would blind if wept into another's eye. The breast we strike in joy is not the breast we strike in pain; any man's smile would be consternation on another's mouth.
         -- Djuna Barnes

    8. An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.
         -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

    9. I am only one,
      But still I am one.
      I cannot do everything,
      But still I can do something;
      And because I cannot do everything
      I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
         -- Edward Everett

    10. The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely.
         -- Lorainne Hansberry

    11. If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now--when?
         -- Hillel

    12. Individuality is founded in feeling; and the recesses of feeling, the darker, blinder strata of character, are the only places in the world in which we catch real fact in the making.
         -- William James

    13. The worth of the state, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it.
         -- John Stuart Mill

    14. That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time.
         -- John Stuart Mill

    15. But society has now fairly got the better of individuality; and the danger which threatens human nature is not the excess, but the deficiency, of personal Impulses and preferences.
         -- John Stuart Mill

    16. If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
         -- Henry David Thoreau

    17. The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one single individual.
         -- Walt Whitman

    18. Every heart is the other heart. Every soul is the other soul. Every face is the other face. The individual is the one illusion.
         -- Margaurite Young


    Industry
    1. In the ordinary business of life, industry can do anything which genius can do, and very many things which it cannot.
         -- Henry Ward Beecher

    2. It is better to wear out than to rust out.
         -- Richard Cumberland

    3. Industry is the soul of business and the keystone of prosperity.
         -- Charles Dickens

    4. The sleeping fox catches no poultry.
         -- Benjamin Franklin

    5. Like the bee, we should make our industry our amusement.
         -- Oliver Goldsmith

    6. The more we do, the more we can do.
         -- William Hazlitt

    7. No thoroughly occupied man was ever yet very miserable.
         -- Letitia Landon

    8. If you have great talents, industry will improve them; if moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiencies. Nothing is denied to well-directed labor; nothing is ever to be attained without it.
         -- Joshua Reynolds

    9. A man who gives his children habits of industry provides for them better than by giving them a fortune.
         -- Richard Whately


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