70 Inspiring Imagery Quotes

In a world abundant with visual stimuli, the power of imagery to inspire and uplift is truly unparalleled. Capturing the essence of human emotions, experiences, and dreams, imagery quotes blend the eloquence of words with the vividness of visuals, offering a unique source of motivation and reflection. Whether you're seeking a burst of creativity, a moment of serenity, or a spark of encouragement, our curated collection of the top 70 inspiring imagery quotes promises to ignite your spirit and enrich your soul. Dive in and let these beautifully crafted quotes transport you to places of wonder and wisdom.

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

2. “He would sit singing, his cheeks turning red above his whiskers; but his voice always came out deep and steady, like the sound of long ago, if long ago could make a sound instead of being forever lost and silent.” - Ruth Moore

3. “Grampie's boat was a little double-ender, a model not built nowadays. She was narrow, so that she pitched and rolled something wicked in almost any sea. He could handle her, but he said she was probably the boat Christ got out of and walked away from on the water.” - Ruth Moore

4. “The autumn leaves blew over the moonlit pavement in such a way as to make the girl who was moving there seem fixed to a sliding walk, letting the motion of the wind and the leaves carry her forward. [...] The trees overhead made a great sound of letting down their dry rain.” - Ray Bradbury

5. “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

6. “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

7. “I seemed to be walking on and on forever through a peaceful, languid garden of rice paddies. This was no longer the territory of savages, but of an ancient and high civilization. Here and there farmers were plowing their fields, using water buffaloes. As a buffalo started to move, snowy herons would fly down and perch on its back and horns. But they flew away again in fright whenever a buffalo reached the edge of the field the farmer turned his plow.Once, as I was walking along, a moist wind began to blow and the sky quickly filled with black clouds. Herons were tossing in the wind like downy feathers. Soon the rain came. Rainfall in Burma is violent. Before I knew it, I was shut in by a thick spray. I could hardly breathe--I felt as if I were swimming.After a while the rain stopped and the sky cleared. All at once the landscape brightened and a vast rainbow hung across the sky. The mist was gone, as if a curtain had been lifted. And there, under the rainbow, the farmers were singing and plowing again. ” - Michio Takeyama

8. “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

9. “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

10. “Rain woke him, a slow drizzle, his feet tangled in coils of discarded fiberoptics. The arcade's sea of sound washed over him, receded, returned. Rolling over, he sat up and held his head.” - William Gibson

11. “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

12. “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

13. “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

14. “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

15. “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

16. “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

17. “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

18. “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

19. “I often wish I'd got on better with your father,' he said.But he never liked anyone who--our friends,' said Clarissa; and could have bitten her tongue for thus reminding Peter that he had wanted to marry her.Of course I did, thought Peter; it almost broke my heart too, he thought; and was overcome with his own grief, which rose like a moon looked at from a terrace, ghastly beautiful with light from the sunken day. I was more unhappy than I've ever been since, he thought. And as if in truth he were sitting there on the terrace he edged a little towards Clarissa; put his hand out; raised it; let it fall. There above them it hung, that moon. She too seemed to be sitting with him on the terrace, in the moonlight.” - Virginia Woolf

20. “He'd watched a falcon fall down the long blue wall of the mountain and break with the keel of its breastbone the midmost from a flight of cranes and take it to the river below all gangly and wrecked and trailing its loose and blowsy plumage in the still autumn air.” - Cormac McCarthy

21. “Here we go mother on the shipless ocean.Pity us, pity the ocean, here we go.” - Anne Carson

22. “Ortho Stice played with a kind of rigid, liquid grace, like a panther in a back-brace.” - David Foster Wallace

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

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

25. “The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit.” - Scott Westerfeld

26. “I wasn't so inclined to tell anyone else in my family about my plan. It was very new and felt about as vulnerable as a day-old mouse, its eyelids still sealed shut. ” - Jeanne Ray

27. “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

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

29. “And my life went to pieces, like a love letter in the rain.” - Will Christopher Baer

30. “I brought to mind the image of the stranger lying there in the first light of dawn: the slight growth of whiskers on his chin, strands of his red hair shifting gently on the faint stirrings of the morning breeze, the pallor, the extended legs, the quivering fingers, that last, sucking breath. And that word, blown into my face ... "Vale."The thrill of it all!Yes," I said, "it was devastating.” - Alan Bradley

31. “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

32. “But then I'm distracted by movement in the Forest, a glimpse of red at the edge of my vision. She's no longer running, no longer even walking or standing, but crawling now. Dragging her broken body across the ground toward me, her fingers clawing at the dirt. Her progress is slow, unbearably so. Such that it's almost sad to see her reduced to this. Her body has used up it's stores of energy and has begun collapsing in on itself.” - Carrie Ryan (The Forest of Hands and Teeth)

33. “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

34. “In the middle of nowhere, along a quiet stretch of road, the diner dreamt of the hungry dead. And of two men.” - A. Lee Martinez

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

36. “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

37. “But it is just two lovers, holding hands and in a hurry to reach their car, their locked hands a starfish leaping through the dark.” - Updike, John

38. “...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

39. “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

40. “In the height of the gusts, in my high position, where the seas did not break, I found myself compelled to cling tightly to the rail to escape being blown away. My face was stung to severe pain by the high-driving spindrift, and I had a feeling that the wind was blowing the cobwebs out of my sleep-starved brain. ” - Jack London

41. “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

42. “Power is meant to be shared with the goal of empowering others. Hoarded power weakens others and exalts oneself. Power, when grounded in biblical values, serves others by liberating them. It acknowledges that people bear the image of God and treats them in a way that will nurture the development of that image. In so doing, we honor their Creator.” - Duane Elmer

43. “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

44. “For mile after mile the same melodic phrase rose up in my memory. I simply couldn’t get free of it. Each time it had a new fascination for me. Initially imprecise in outline, it seemed to become more and more intricately woven, as if to conceal from the listener how eventually it would end. This weaving and re-weaving became so complicated that one wondered how it could possibly be unravelled; and then suddenly one note would resolve the whole problem, and the solution would seem yet more audacious than the procedures which had preceded, called for, and made possible its arrival; when it was heard, all that had gone before took on a new meaning, and the quest, which had seemed arbitrary, was seen to have prepared the way for this undreamed-of solution.” - Claude Levi-Strauss

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

46. “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

47. “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

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

49. “their heart grew coldthey let their wings down” - Sappho

50. “]Sardisoften turning her thoughts here]you like a goddessand in your song most of all she rejoiced.But now she is conspicuous among Lydian womenas sometimes at sunsetthe rosyfingered moonsurpasses all the stars. And her lightstretches over salt seaequally and flowerdeep fields.And the beautiful dew is poured outand roses bloom and frailchervil and flowering sweetclover.But she goes back and forth rememberinggentle Atthis and in longingshe bites her tender mind” - Sappho

51. “... the round towers of the castles looked as if they were so firmly encrusted in the sky that, to get to their other side, one would have to hew out a passage through the celestial marble.” - Hope Mirrlees

52. “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

53. “I think that cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals; I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely magical object.” - Roland Barthes

54. “[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

55. “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

56. “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

57. “For the first time she could see a man's head naked of its skull. Saw the cunning thoughts race in and out through the caves and promontories of his mind long before they darted through the tunnel of his mouth.” - Zora Neale Hurston

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

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

60. “It was not a great presence but a great absence, a geometric ocean of darkness that seemed to swallow heaven itself.” - Laura Hillenbrand

61. “Our interactions were confined to a nod as I settled down into my seat. A few days into our routine and we were like an old married couple--we'd just missed out the honeymoon and skipped straight from flirtation to habit." from "First Impressions” - Josephine Myles

62. “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

63. “From daybreak to sunset she turned her thoughts, like boulders, over. She set them in long lines. She rearranged their order...” - Mervyn Peake

64. “Lugh's decided to stick with bein mad at me. It's like traveling with a storm cloud. One of them that hangs low an heavy. The kind that builds an broods an keeps on buildin an brood in till everybody's got a sick headache.” - Moira Young

65. “The pale pink light of dawn sparkled on branch and leaf and stone. Every blade of grass was carved from emerald, every drip of water turned to diamond. Flowers and mushrooms alike wore coats of glass. Even the mud puddles had a bright brown sheen. Through the shimmering greenery, the black tents of his brothers were encased in a fine glaze of ice. So there is magic beyond the Wall after all.” - George R.R. Martin

66. “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

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

68. “Everything and all of them were being rattled around like peas inside an enormous rattle that was being rattled by a mad giant who refused to stop.” - Roald Dahl

69. “The stars have come to the earth, and the ocean has turned over the ground; dark waves meet the sky.” - Ally Condie

70. “A mud-stained sunlight began to splatter the sodden fields, and the hateful, nasal world of birds began to come to life. It seemed to me that I was coming out of a suffocating nightmare and that the low clouds flying before the wind were the shreds of an evil dream.” - Blaise Cendrars