“For the end of imagination is harmony.  A right imagination, being the reflex of the creation, will fall in with the divine order of things as the highest form of its own operation; ‘will tune its instrument here at the door’ to the divine harmonies within; will be content alone with growth towards the divine idea, which includes all that is beautiful in the imperfect imaginations of men; will know that every deviation from that growth is downward; and will therefore send the man forth from its loftiest representations to do the commonest duty of the most wearisome calling in a hearty and hopeful spirit.  This is the work of the right imagination; and towards this work every imagination, in proportion to the rightness that is in it, will tend.  The reveries even of the wise man will make him stronger for his work; his dreaming was well as his thinking will render him sorry for past failure, and hopeful of future success.”

Books

“But in the culture of the imagination, books, although not the only, are the readiest means of supplying the food convenient for it, and a hundred books may be had where even one work of art of the right sort is unattainable…”

Nature

Nature is the workshop….and artists are the workmen. “In books we have….music of speech…wonder of words…like a golden dish set with shining jewels, and adorned by the hands of the cunning workmen, stands finished before us.”