The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green.
Thomas CarlyleRead
Imagination is a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Imagination alone is ineffective without the foundation of understanding.
This quote by Thomas Carlyle highlights the importance of combining imagination with understanding. While imagination allows us to dream and envision possibilities, it becomes a 'poor matter' when divorced from the knowledge and comprehension necessary to bring those ideas to life. Understanding provides the context and structure that make imaginative concepts viable and actionable.
Themes
ImaginationUnderstandingWisdomKnowledgeCreativity
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about creativity in the workplace.
More from Thomas Carlyle
All quotes βThirty millions, mostly fools.
Thomas CarlyleRead
There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.
Thomas CarlyleRead
For the superior morality, of which we hear so much, we too would desire to be thankful: at the same time, it were but blindness to deny that this superior morality is properly rather an inferior criminality, produced not by greater love of Virtue, but by greater perfection of Police; and of that far subtler and stronger Police, called Public Opinion.
Thomas CarlyleRead
Enjoying things which are pleasant; that is not the evil; it is the reducing of our moral self to slavery by them that is.
Thomas CarlyleRead
Clean undeniable right, clear undeniable might: either of these once ascertained puts an end to battle. All battle is a confused experiment to ascertain one and both of these.
Thomas CarlyleRead
Similar quotes
To some people, not caring is supposed to be cool, commenting is more interesting than doing, and everything is judged and then disposed of in, like, five minutes. I'm not interested in those kinds of people. I like the person who commits and goes all in and takes big swings and then maybe fails or looks stupid; who jumps and falls down, rather than the person who points at the person who fell, and laughs. But I do sometimes laugh when people fall down.
Amy PoehlerRead
Please learn the pragmatics of expressing fear: sometimes words that seem to express really invoke. This can be tricky.
David Foster WallaceRead
Why should we worry about what others think of us, do we have more confidence in their opinions than we do our own?
Brigham YoungRead
My goal is this: always to put myself in the place in which I am best able to serve, wherever my gifts and qualities find the best soil to grow, the widest field of action. There is no other goal.
Hermann HesseRead
Rather than continuing to seek the truth, simply let go of your views.
Gautama BuddhaRead
Think of me as a fellow patient in the same hospital who, having been admitted a little earlier could give some advice.
C. S. LewisRead