He was the mildest manner'd man

That ever scuttled ship, or cut a throat;
With such true breeding of a gentleman,
You never could divine his real thought.

Byron: Don Juan.

Imagination, Fancy; see Dreams and Genius.
Tell me, where is fancy bred;

Or in the heart, or in the head?
How begot, how nourished?

Reply, reply.

It is engendered in the eyes,

With gazing fed: and fancy dies

In the cradle where it lies.

Shakespeare: Merchant of Venice.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet,
Are of imagination all compact:

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold

That is, the madman; the lover, all as frantic,

Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt;

The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,

And, as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation, and a name.

Shakespeare: Midsummer Night's Dream.

Woe to the youth whom fancy gains,
Winning from Reason's hand the reins,
Pity and woe! for such a mind

Is soft, contemplative, and kind.

Scott: Rokeby.

Imagination is the air of mind.

Above, below, in ocean and in sky,
Thy fairy worlds, Imagination, lie.

Bailey: Festus.

Campbell.

Do what he will, he cannot realize
Half he conceives-the glorious vision flies;
Go where he may, he cannot hope to find
The truth, the beauty pictur'd in his mind.
Rogers: Human Life.

They wove bright fables in the days of old,
When reason borrowed fancy's painted wings:
When truth's clear river flowed o'er sands of gold,
And told in song its high and mystic things!

T. K. Hervey: Psyche.

Two meanings have our lightest fantasies,
One of the flesh, and of the spirit one.

Immortality; see Death and Heaven.

Beyond is all abyss,

Eternity, whose end no eye can reach.

Lowell.

Milton: Paradise Lost.

Still seems it strange, that thou shouldst live for

ever?

Is it less strange, that thou shouldst live at all?
This is a miracle, and that no more.

Young: Night Thoughts.

Can it be?

Matter immortal? and shall spirit die?
Above the nobler shall less noble rise?
Shall man alone, for whom all else revives,
No resurrection know? Shall man alone,
Imperial man! be sown in barren ground,
Less privileg'd than grain, on which he feeds?
Young: Night Thoughts.

The soul, secured in her existence, smiles
At the drawn dagger, and defies its point.
The stars shall fade away, the sun himself
Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years;
But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,
Unhurt amidst the war of elements,

The wreck of matter, and the crush of worlds.
Addison: Cato.

Alas for him who never sees

The stars shine through his cypress-trees!
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away,
Nor looks to see the breaking day
Across the mournful marbles play!

Who hath not learned, in hours of faith,
The truth to flesh and sense unknown,

That Life is ever lord of Death,
And Love can never lose its own!

Whittier: Snow-Bound.

I sent my Soul through the Invisible,
Some letter of that After-life to spell:
And by and by my Soul return'd to me,

And answer'd, "I Myself am Heav'n and Hell."

Fitzgerald: Omar Khayyám: Rubáiyát.

Oh, may I join the choir invisible

Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence.

-While the man whom ye call dead,
In unspoken bliss, instead,
Lives and loves you;

But in the light ye cannot see

Of unfulfilled felicity,

In enlarging paradise,

Lives a life that never dies.

George Eliot.

Edwin Arnold: After Death in Arabia.

"The utmost wonder is this, I hear

And see you, and love you, and kiss you, dear;
And am your angel, who was your bride,
And know that, though dead, I have never died."
Edwin Arnold: She and He.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;

"Dust thou art, to dust returnest,"

Was not spoken of the soul.

Longfellow: A Psalm of Life.

-What is excellent,

As God lives, is permanent:

Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain,
Heart's love will meet thee again.

Independence; see Liberty.

The soul of man can never be enslaved
Save by its own infirmities, nor freed

Emerson.

Save by its very strength and own resolve
And constant vision and supreme endeavor!
You will be free? Then, courage, O my brother!
George Cabot Lodge: Herakles.

Slave to no sect, who takes no private road,
But looks thro' nature up to nature's God.

Pope: Essay on Man.

Hail! independence!-by true reason taught,

How few have known, and priz'd thee as they ought!

Churchill: Independence.

Thy spirit, Independence, let me share;
Lord of the lion-heart and eagle-eye,
Thy steps I follow with my bosom bare,

Nor heed the storm that howls along the sky.

Smollett: Ode to Independence.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.

William E. Henley: Invictus.

Infidelity; see Constancy and Faith.

In Religion:

A foe to God was ne'er true friend to man;

Some sinister intent taints all he does.

Young: Night Thoughts.