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The faculty of imagination is the great spring of human activity, and the principle source of human improvement. As it delights in presenting to the mind scenes and characters more perfect than those which we are acquainted with, it prevents us from ever being completely satisfied without present condition, or with our past attainments, and engages us continually in the pursuit of some untried enjoyment, or of some ideal excellence. Destroy this faculty, and the condition of man will become as stationary as that of the brutes.

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We can gradually grow into any condition we desire, provided we first make ourselves in habitual mental attitude the person who corresponds to those conditions.

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I visualize things in my mind before I have to do them. It is like having a mental workshop.

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Imagination is the pontoon bridge making way for the timid feet of reason.

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It is by imitation, far more than by precept, that we learn everything; and what we learn thus, we acquire not only more efficiently, but more pleasantly. This forms our manners, our opinions, our lives.

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I hardly know so true a mark of a little mind as the servile imitation of others.

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It is a poor wit who lives by borrowing the words, decisions, inventions and actions of others.

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Imitation causes us to leave natural ways to enter into artificial ones; it therefore makes slaves.

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Whoever is out of patience is out of possession of his soul. Men must not turn into bees, and kill themselves in stinging others.

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There are two main human sins from which all the others derive: impatience and indolence. It was because of impatience that they were expelled from Paradise, it is because of indolence that they do not return. Yet perhaps there is only one major sin: impatience. Because of impatience they were expelled, because of impatience they do not return.

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