“What images are these
That turn dull-eyed away,
Or shift Time’s filthy load,
Straighten aged knees,
Hesitate or stay?
What heads shake or nod?”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“You may read any quantity of books, and you may almost as ignorant as you were at starting, if you don’t have, at the back of your minds, the change for words in definite images which can only be acquired through the operation of your observing faculties on the phenomena of nature.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“A daydream is a meal at which images are eaten. Some of us are gourmets, some gourmands, and a good many take their images precooked out of a can and swallow them down whole, absent-mindedly and with little relish.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)