Elliott Coues

“ The operation of the imagination unconscious of labor is better known by another name—inspiration; its expression is revelation; its mouth-piece the seer. But rare clay, and only the finest, incases such spirits; men must work in the storm, in sorrow and suffering, each to his measure of creative ability. Let us never forget, in the terrible struggle for expression, that it is given to lips which press the sword of pain to speak to fellow-men the words "Go thou up higher!" ”

“ I will not weary you with over-nice formalities of definition in a case where shades of difference blend. Know, by their fruits, that fancy is a parody on imagination. The play of fancy is quips and quirks and airy nothings, and the whole mob of littlenesses we call smart and clever. The working of imagination breathes life into marble and canvas, inspires the drama, the poem, the symphony, and vivifies systems of religion.
What faculty but the imaginative can conceive, what but the power of the imagination itself can convey, the full meaning of this soul of genius? It is creative ”

“ If there be within us one single spark of the divine fire, this spark it is that sends "the long light shaking" from pillar to pillar of the temple that the lesser god of the imagination rears to a God eternal, till it irradiates the shrine where all men sooner or later must kneel in devotion ”

“ Yet this Titan is not omnipotent; its powers are limited; and it is precisely at the point where reason hesitates that the office of imagination begins. The higher faculty takes up the story when reason omits to point the moral, and adorns the tale that Nature tells to man. It brings her seeming discords into one grand harmony, and crowns the noble shaft of Science with the immortal wreath of Art. ”

“ Amid the asperities of the great political crisis which has convulsed a nation, it is pleasant to find the elegant repose of a salon where culture and refinement stand like sleepless sentinels on guard against dissension; and in the Lenten season—when the fugitive madrigal of society is hushed in the measured cadence of the penitential psalm, and the brilliant poppies of fashion grow pale in the shadow of the palm—it is meet that thought should turn from outward things to the contemplation of those within. ”

“ If the labors of the men of science should ever create any material revolution, direct or indirect, in our condition, and in the impressions which we habitually receive, the poet will sleep then no more than at present; he will be at the side of the man of science, carrying sensation into the midst of the objects of science itself. ”

“ This, that, and the other, of things unnumbered, material and immaterial, wise and otherwise, make up the marvelous microcosm we call Self—the world where, like the sun of the planetary system, shines the intellect with perfect splendor. But, as the spectrum has dissected the solar ray, so has the understanding, by a process of self-inflicted vivisection that seems scarcely less than divine in its insight, pierced and resolved the mysteries of its own composition. ”

“ It is beautiful and fearful to see that clear, cold, naked blade, gleaming with steel-blue temper, resistlessly incisive—to see it cleave with equal ease the solid ingot of ignorance and the gossamer web of illusion—to see it work like a giant steam-hammer, smoothly, noiselessly, and irresistibly, whether its power be adjusted to the cracking of an egg-shell of superfine subtilties, or the forging of the massive links by which it is anchored secure in a storm of error. ”

“ With wisdom and uprightness a nation can make its way worthily, and Beauty will follow in the footsteps of the two, even if she be not specially invited; while there is, perhaps, no sight in It has been perceived and said, in the whole world more saddening and more revolting than is offered by men sunk in ignorance of everything but that other men have written—seemingly devoid of moral belief or guidance, but with the sense of beauty so keen, and the power of expression so cultivated, that their sensuous caterwauling may be almost mistaken for the music of the spheres. ”

“ The few moments during which an unworthy member of the Society is indulged to-night will be devoted to the consideration of Imagination as one of the intellectual faculties which, if common in some degree to all, is nevertheless, in its highest development, the rarest, most precious, and most splendid, of human endowments. ”

“ If the time should ever come when what is now called science, thus familiarized to men, shall be ready to put on, as it were, a form of flesh and blood, then the poet will lend his divine spirit to aid the transfiguration, and will welcome the being thus produced as a dear and genuine inmate of the household of men. ”

“ The remotest discoveries of the chemist, the botanist, the mineralogist, will be as proper objects of the poet's art as any upon which it can be employed, if the time should ever come when these things shall be familiar to us, and the relations under which they are contemplated by the followers of the respective sciences shall be manifestly and palpably material to us as enjoying and suffering beings. ”

“ We know that these mental fagots are of many kinds—sturdy oak of the scientist, pliable ash of the schoolman, sail-bearing pine of the positivist, cypress of pessimist, rose-wood of optimist, heart-wood, it may be, for all of us ”

“ We know that the mind is a bundle of many fagots, the united strength of which can never be broken, though racked on doubt and put to the wheel of despair—though cast beneath the car of superstition, or consigned to the nether millstone of inhuman persecution. ”

“ Technical definition of the imagination may be found in the dictionaries of all civilized languages—those monuments of learning and labor which compel the most profound respect, while they excite the liveliest emotions of gratitude and sympathy for the men who were born to erect them. But the conventional label of the imaginative faculty need not be recited before this Society ”

“ These are among the things of blessed memory, of blissful hope, and among those the reality and universality of which are confirmed by all experience. Even those who cuddle the bantlings of their fancy, in the fond delusion that they nurture the offspring of the fertile mother, feel somewhat of the charm indescribable. ”

“ The conflict may nevertheless be protracted as long as either contestant is blinded to the real strength of his antagonist—senseless though it be to attempt the impossible divorce of the material from the immaterial, of matter from force, of the body from the spirit—that would be death. ”

“ No educational system can have a claim to permanence unless it recognizes the truth that education has two great ends to which everything else must be subordinated. The one of these is, to increase knowledge ”

“ As this may possibly be considered—by some of my friends whose generous appreciation of my efforts in scientific lines of inquiry may blind them to the slightness of my acquirements—to be rather a ticklish position for me to assume, let me fortify with authority as well recognized in literature as is that of the sinewy, daring, and brilliant gladiator of the scientific arena who stigmatized poetry as "sensuous caterwauling." [2] substance, that the great scientists and the great artists are in really closer brotherhood than many suppose—they hold divided sway over much common ground ”