In one word, Queequeg, said I, rather digressively; hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling; and since then perpetuated through the hereditary dyspepsias nurtured by Ramadans.
In general, scientific progress calls for no more than the absorption and elaboration of new ideas — and this is a call most scientists are happy to heed.
If you are possessed by an idea, you find it expressed everywhere, you even smell it.
Ideas, like ghosts (according to the common notion of ghosts), must be spoken to a little before they will explain themselves.
Ideas on Earth were badges of friendship or enmity. Their content did not matter. Friends agreed with friends, in order to express friendliness. Enemies disagreed with enemies, in order to express enmity.
Ideas consume the ages as passions consume men. When man is cured, humanity may possibly cure itself.
Ideas are the beginning points of all fortunes.
I suppose it is because nearly all children go to school nowadays, and have things arranged for them, that they seem so forlornly unable to produce their own ideas in holiday time.
First comes the thought; then, organization of that thought into ideas and plans; then transformation of those plans into reality. The beginning, as you will observe, is in your imagination.
Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.
Every jackass going the roads thinks he has ideas.
Every idea appears at first as a strange visitor, and when it begins to be realised, it is hardly distinguishable from phantasy and phantastery.
