I dont think its possible to touch peoples imagination today by aesthetic means. – J. G. Ballard

Even the highest forms of sacrificial worship present much that is repulsive to modern ideas, and in particular it requires an effort to reconcile our imagination to the bloody ritual which is prominent in almost every religion which has a strong sense of sin. – William Robertson Smith

Melville brought to the task a sound knowledge of actual whaling, much curious learning in the literature of the subject, and, above all, an imagination which worked with great power upon the facts of his own experience. – Carl Clinton Van Doren

The pleasures of the imagination are as it were only drawings and models which are played with by poor people who cannot afford the real thing. – Georg C. Lichtenberg