This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Psychologists have hitherto failed to realize that imagination is a necessary ingredient of perception itself.
True sympathy is putting ourselves in another’s place; and we are moved in proportion to the reality of our imagination.
Imagination | Reality | Sympathy |
Jessamyn West, fully Mary Jessamyn West
Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.
Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign asters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while. The principle of utility recognizes this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and law. Systems which attempt to question it deal in sounds instead of sense, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light.
Darkness | Effort | Law | Light | Man | Mankind | Nature | Object | Pain | Pleasure | Question | Reality | Reason | Right | Sense | System | Will | Words | Wrong | Govern |
Sometimes there are living beings in nature as beautiful as in romance. Reality surpasses imagination; and we see breathing, brightening, and moving before our eyes sights dearer to our hearts than any we ever beheld in the land of sleep.
Imagination | Land | Nature | Reality | Romance |
The world is a single whole. Everything is linked with everything else. The world 'sounds'. It is a 'chord'. The imagination and freedom necessary for feeling, experiencing, and living through - rather than merely knowing - these are more likely to be associated with an ana-logical process of perception than with logical thinking. Logic aims at security. The ana-logician has the courage to embark on risk and adventure. Logic is goal-oriented and passes judgment. Analogy ponders and establishes relationships. The logician sees. The ana-logician listens... The eye glimpses surfaces and is attached to them, always remaining superficial (on the surface). The ear penetrates deep into the realms it investigates through hearing.
Adventure | Aims | Courage | Freedom | Imagination | Judgment | Knowing | Logic | Perception | Risk | Security | Thinking | World |
I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart’s affections, and the truth of Imagination. What the Imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth - whether it existed before or not, for I have the same idea of all our passions as of Love: they are all, in their sublime, creative of essential Beauty... The Imagination may be compared to Adam’s dream - he awoke and found it truth.
Beauty | Heart | Imagination | Love | Nothing | Truth | Beauty |
The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy; but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thicksighted.
Ambition | Character | Imagination | Life | Life | Man | Soul | Space | Ambition |
To treat your facts with imagination is one thing, to imagine your facts is another.
The imagination may be compared to Adam's dream - he awoke and found it truth.
Imagination | Truth |
To treat your facts with imagination is one thing, to imagine your facts is quite another.
I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart's affections., the truth of Imagination. What the Imagination seizes as Beauty must be the truth- whether it existed before or not,- for I have the same idea of all our passions as of Love: they are all, in their sublime, creative of essential Beauty.
Beauty | Heart | Imagination | Love | Nothing | Truth | Beauty |
I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections and the truth of imagination – what the imagination seizes as being must be truth – whether it existed before or not.
Heart | Imagination | Nothing | Truth |
What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth.
Beauty | Imagination | Truth | Beauty |
We must learn to free ourselves from the traditional idea which would have reality always consist in some thing, be it physical or mental.
What is in reality cowardice and faithlessness, we call charity, and consider it the part of benevolence sometimes to forgive men’s evil practice for the sake of their accurate faith, and sometimes to forgive their confessed heresy for the sake of their admirable practice.
Benevolence | Charity | Cowardice | Evil | Faith | Men | Practice | Reality | Forgive |
Our true reality is in our identity and unity with all life. This is a metaphysical truth which may become spontaneously realized under circumstances of crisis.