42 Inspirational Imagery Quotes

In a world overflowing with information and distractions, sometimes a simple image paired with a powerful quote can ignite our passion, refocus our mind, and inspire action. Whether it's a breathtaking landscape, a serene sunrise, or the vibrant colors of a bustling city, imagery has the unique ability to evoke emotion and convey meaning that words alone often cannot. Join us as we explore a curated selection of the top 42 inspirational imagery quotes, each chosen for its potential to uplift your spirit, challenge your perspective, and spark new ideas. Let these visual and verbal pairings serve as a reminder of the beauty and wisdom that surround us every day.

1. “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” - St. Augustine

2. “For lunch, we drove into the hills and parked in the dappled shade of a big sycamore, its powdery white bark like a woman's body against the uncanny blue sky.” - Janet Fitch

3. “It was her first book, an indigo cover with a silver moonflower, an art nouveau flower, I traced my finger along the silver line like smoke, whiplash curves. ... I touched the pages her hands touched, I pressed them to my lips, the soft thick old paper, yellow now, fragile as skin. I stuck my nose between the bindings and smelled all the readings she had given, the smell of unfiltered cigarettes and the espresso machine, beaches and incense and whispered words in the night. I could hear her voice rising from the pages. The cover curled outward like sails.” - Janet Fitch

4. “The hanging gate, of something like trelliswork, was propped on a pole, and he could see that the house was tiny and flimsy. He felt a little sorry for the occupants of such a place--and then asked himself who in this world had a temporary shelter.[Anonymous, Kokinshuu 987:Where in all this world shall I call home?A temporary shelter is my home.]A hut, a jeweled pavilion, they were the same. A pleasantly green vine was climbing a board wall. The white flowers, he said to himself, had a rather self-satisfied look about them.'I needs must ask the lady far yonder," he said, as if to himself.[Anonymous, Kokinshuu 1007:I needs must ask the lady far yonderWhat flower it is off there that blooms so white.]An attendant came up, bowing deeply. "The white flowers far off yonder are known as 'evening faces," he said. "A very human sort of name--and what a shabby place they have picked to bloom in."It was as the man said. The neighborhood was a poor one, chiefly of small houses. Some were leaning precariously, and there were "evening faces" at the sagging eaves.A hapless sort of flower. Pick one off for me, will you?"The man went inside the raised gate and broke off a flower. A pretty little girl in long, unlined yellow trousers of raw silk came out through a sliding door that seemed too good for the surroundings. Beckoning to the man, she handed him a heavily scented white fan.Put it on this. It isn't much of a fan, but then it isn't much of a flower either.” - Murasaki Shikibu

5. “The road was frozen. The village lay quiet under the cold sky. Komako hitched up the skirt of her kimono and tucked it into her obi. The moon shone like a blade frozen in blue ice.” - Yasunari Kawabata

6. “The threads of malice creeping toward him from Beloved's side of the table were held harmless in the warmth of Sethe's smile.” - Toni Morrison

7. “So when the blue smoke of brittle leaves was in the air and the wind blew the wet laundry stiff on the line I decided to come back home.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald

8. “Then I went to the windows and pulled them open. The rain had stopped and the night was very still, black except for the glow behind the western hills that marked the Burning Lands. A dog barked far off, once and no more.” - John Christopher

9. “Shimamoto was in charge of the records. She'd take one from its jacket, place it carefully on the turntable without touching the grooves with her fingers, and, after making sure to brush the cartridge free of any dust with a tiny brush, lower the needle ever so gently onto the record. When the record was finished, she'd spray it and wipe it with a felt cloth. Finally she'd return the record to its jacket and its proper place on the shelf. Her father had taught her this procedure, and she followed his instructions with a terribly serious look on her face, her eyes narrowed, her breath held in check. Meanwhile, I was on the sofa, watching her every move. Only when the record was safely back on the shelf did she turn to me and give a little smile. And every time, this thought hit me: It wasn't a record she was handling. It was a fragile soul inside a glass bottle.” - Haruki Murakami

10. “I paid the taxi driver, got out with my suitcase, surveyed my surroundings, and just as I was turning to ask the driver something or get back into the taxi and return forthwith to Chillán and then to Santiago, it sped off without warning, as if the somewhat ominous solitude of the place had unleashed atavistic fears in the driver's mind. For a moment I too was afraid. I must have been a sorry sight standing there helplessly with my suitcase from the seminary, holding a copy of Farewell's Anthology in one hand. Some birds flew out from behind a clump of trees. They seemed to be screaming the name of that forsaken village, Querquén, but they also seemed to be enquiring who: quién, quién, quién. I said a hasty prayer and headed for a wooden bench, there to recover a composure more in keeping with what I was, or what at the time I considered myself to be. Our Lady, do not abandon your servant, I murmured, while the black birds, about twenty-five centimetres in length, cried quién, quién, quién. Our Lady of Lourdes, do not abandon your poor priest, I murmured, while other birds, about ten centimetres long, brown in colour, or brownish, rather, with white breasts, called out, but not as loudly, quién, quién, quién, Our Lady of Suffering, Our Lady of Insight, Our Lady of Poetry, do not leave your devoted subject at the mercy of the elements, I murmured, while several tiny birds, magenta, black, fuchsia, yellow and blue in colour, wailed quién, quién, quién, at which point a cold wind sprang up suddenly, chilling me to the bone.” - Roberto Bolaño

11. “People peep into boxes at moving stereoscopic prints, imagining they're in other worlds, and the crowd around a glassblower wonders whether icicles have formed in summer. Potted trees revive and suddenly look fresh when a florist sprinkles water on them, while papier-mâché turtles hanging out for sale move in the wind and take on souls.” - Haruo Shirane

12. “In the middle distance, sails were gliding like butterflies, and farther away, ships dotted the mouth of the bay between Awa and Sagami as if brushed in ink in a single flowing stroke.” - Haruo Shirane

13. “A slow smile curved over my face, and I leaned down over him. "No," I said. "Wishes are lies. Tell me you're going to leave. Tell me you're not going to stay. Tell me that it's only for a while so I can enjoy today," I whispered in his ear, as if saying it louder would break me. "And when you go, don't think me cold when I don't cry. I can't cry anymore, Pierce. It hurts too much.” - Kim Harrison

14. “It was toffee; they were advertising toffee, a nursemaid told Rezia. Together they spell t...o...f..."K...R..." said the nursemaid, and Septimus heard her say "Kay Arr" close to his ear, deeply, softly, like a mellow organ, but with a roughness in her voice like a grasshopper's, which rasped his spine deliciously and sent running up into his brain waves of sound which, concussing, broke. A marvellous discovery indeed - that the human voice in certain atmospheric conditions (for one must be scientific, above all scientific) can quicken trees into life!” - Virginia Woolf

15. “Fear no more," said Clarissa. Fear no more the heat o' the sun; for the shock of Lady Bruton asking Richard to lunch without her made the moment in which she had stood shiver, as a plant on the river-bed feels the shock of a passing oar and shivers: so she rocked: so she shivered.Millicent Bruton, whose lunch parties were said to be extraordinarily amusing, had not asked her. No vulgar jealousy could separate her from Richard. But she feared time itself, and read on Lady Bruton's face, as if it had been a dial cut in impassive stone, the dwindling of life; how year by year her share was sliced; how little the margin that remained was capable any longer of stretching, of absorbing, as in the youthful years, the colours, salts, tones of existence, so that she filled the room she entered, and felt often as she stood hesitating one moment on the threshold of her drawing-room, an exquisite suspense, such as might stay a diver before plunging while the sea darkens and brightens beneath him, and the waves which threaten to break, but only gently split their surface, roll and conceal and encrust as they just turn over the weeds with pearl.” - Virginia Woolf

16. “The sun had become a light yellow yolk and was walking with red legs across the sky.” - Zora Neale Hurston

17. “Night came walking through Egypt swishing her black dress.” - Zora Neale Hurston

18. “There was the gaudy patch of sunflowers beside the west gate of the palace of the Prince of Ombria, that did nothing all day long but turn their golden-haired, thousand-eyed faces to follow the sun.” - Patricia A. McKillip

19. “Her apartment seemed fussier than ever, as if the doilies and tassels had taken to breeding in their unguarded moments.” - Armistead Maupin

20. “On many occasions the curious atmospheric effects enchanted me vastly; these including a strikingly vivid mirage - the first I had ever seen - in which distant bergs became the battlements of unimaginable cosmic castles.” - H.P. Lovecraft

21. “We are in the dark places of the earth," said Madman. "Where all the ancient and most dangerous secrets are kept. There are Old Things down here, sleeping all around us, in the earth and in the living rock, and in the spaces between spaces. Keep your voices down. Some of these old creatures sleep but lightly, and even their dreams can have force and substance in our limited world. We have come among forgotten gods and sleeping devils, from the days before the world settled down and declared itself sane.” - Simon R. Green

22. “The heavy smell of flower petals stroked the walls of my lungs.” - Haruki Murakami

23. “Ghosts have a way of misleading you; they can make your thoughts as heavy as branches after a storm.” - Rebecca Maizel

24. “She remembered the summer evenings all full of sunshine. The colts neighed when any one passed by, and galloped, galloped. Under her window there was a beehive, and sometimes the bees wheeling round in the light struck against her window like rebounding balls of gold.” - Gustave Flaubert

25. “...we could see the parapet of Ryougoku Bridge, arching above the waves that flickered in the faint mid-autumn twilight and against the sky, as though an immense black Chinese ink stroke had been brushed across it. The silhouettes of the traffic, horses and carriages soon faded into the vaporous mist, and now all that could be seen were the dots of reddish light from the passengers' lanterns, rapidly passing to and fro in the darkness like small winter cherries.” - Ryunosuke Akutagawa

26. “The necropolis has never seemed a city of death to me; I know its purple roses (which other people think so hideous) shelter hundreds of small animals and birds. The executions I have seen performed and have performed myself so often are no more than a trade, a butchery of human beings who are for the most part less innocent and less valuable than cattle. When I think of my own death, or the death of someone who has been kind to me, or even of the death of the sun, the image that comes to my mind is that of the nenuphar, with its glossy, pale leaves and azure flower. Under flower and leaves are black roots as fine and strong as hair, reaching down into the dark waters.” - Gene Wolfe

27. “They had painted a lady leaning her arms on the sill of the window. This lady was waiting for a husband. Her flesh was slack and she was some forty-five years old. Perhaps she had been waiting since she was fifteen. A rose and mauve lady that had not yet gathered her flesh and her beauty into dark clothes, and still waited, like a rose stripped of its petals, with her faded colors and her artificial smile, bitter as a grimace.” - Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio

28. “From time to time, too, and for the space of two or three paces, an image or an echo would rise up from the recesses of time: in the little streets of the beaters of silver and gold, for instance, there was a clear, unhurried tinkling, as if a djinn with a thousand arms was absent-mindedly practising on a xylophone.” - Claude Levi-Strauss

29. “It is not often that you see life and fiction take each other by the hand and dance.” - Lawrence Thornton

30. “One evening he was in his room, his brow pressing hard against the pane, looking, without seeing them, at the chestnut trees in the park, which had lost much of their russet-coloured foliage. A heavy mist obscured the distance, and the night was falling grey rather than black, stepping cautiously with its velvet feet upon the tops of the trees. A great swan plunged and replunged amorously its neck and shoulders into the smoking water of the river, and its whiteness made it show in the darkness like a great star of snow. It was the single living being that somewhat enlivened the lonely landscape.” - Théophile Gautier

31. “They spell-caught the sounds of cat paws, the breath of fish, the spittle of birds, the hairs of a woman's beard, and the roots of a mountain, and spun them around the sinews of a bear. That made a bond that looked as fine as a ribbon of silk, but, since it was made of things not in this world, it was so strong nothing in the world could break it.” - Ingri D'Aulaire

32. “]sing to usthe one with violets in her lap]mostly]goes astray” - Sappho

33. “I'd like to hear five recordings of Louis Armstrong playing and singing "What Did I Do to Be so Black and Blue"-all at the same time. Sometimes now I listen to Louis while I have my favorite dessert of vanilla ice cream and sloe gin. I pour the red liquid over the white mound, watching it glisten and the vapor rising as Louis bends that military instrument into a beam of lyrical sound.” - Ralph Ellison

34. “[M]en, though they know full well how much women are worth and how great the benefits we bring them, nonetheless seek to destroy us out of envy for our merits. It's just like the crow, when it produces white nestlings: it is so stricken by envy, knowing how black it is itself, that it kills its own offspring out of pique.” - Moderata Fonte

35. “Up then, fair phoenix bride, frustrate the sun;Thyself from thine affectionTakest warmth enough, and from thine eyeAll lesser birds will take their jollity.Up, up, fair bride, and callThy stars from out their several boxes, takeThy rubies, pearls, and diamonds forth, and makeThyself a constellation of them all;And by their blazing signifyThat a great princess falls, but doth not die.Be thou a new star, that to us portendsEnds of much wonder; and be thou those ends.” - John Donne

36. “Tonight the sun has died like an Emperor ... great scarlet arcs of silk ... saffron ... green ... crimson ... and the blaze of Venus to remind one of the absolute and the infinite ... and along the lower rim of beauty lay the hard harsh line of the hills ...” - John Coldstream

37. “Let's stay up all night,' Kat whispers. 'Let's wait for the moon to kiss the morning star.” - Elissa Janine Hoole

38. “I should have realized, when Cathal kissed me in the hallway, that my response was the first raindrop heralding a storm.” - Juliet Marillier

39. “Surrealism had a great effect on me because then I realised that the imagery in my mind wasn't insanity. Surrealism to me is reality.” - John Lennon

40. “Dad and I leave town in the early dark. It's the second Sunday of the holidays, and we pack up the old blue car with enough clothes for summer and hit the road. It's so early he's wiping hills of sand piled in the corners of his eyes. I wipe a few tears from mine. Tears don't pile, though. They grip and cling and slide in salty trails that I taste until the edge of the city.” - Cath Crowley

41. “...all kinds of images swim like tropical fish in the bathysphere inside my skull ...” - John Geddes

42. “It felt as if I’d been teleported to the dark side of the moon, forced to gaze out at the stars and wonder which one I’d come from.” - Heather Heffner