Inspiration vs. Imagination — What's the Difference?
Difference Between Inspiration and Imagination
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Inspiration
The excitement of the mind or emotions to a high level of feeling or activity
A singer who found her inspiration in popular songs of the 1920s.
Imagination
Imagination is the ability to produce and simulate novel objects, sensations, and ideas in the mind without any immediate input of the senses. It is also described as the forming of experiences in one's mind, which can be re-creations of past experiences such as vivid memories with imagined changes, or they can be completely invented and possibly fantastic scenes.
Inspiration
The condition of being so excited
Sat down to write in a sudden burst of inspiration.
Imagination
The faculty or action of forming new ideas, or images or concepts of external objects not present to the senses
Her story captured the public's imagination
She'd never been blessed with a vivid imagination
Inspiration
The quality of being so excited, as manifested in something
A painting full of inspiration.
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Imagination
The ability to form mental images of things that are not present to the senses or not considered to be real
The author uses her imagination to create a universe parallel to our own.
Inspiration
A person or thing that moves the intellect or emotions or prompts action or invention
Gandhi has been an inspiration to political reformers for decades.
Imagination
The formation of such images
A child's imagination of monsters.
Inspiration
Something, such as a sudden creative act or idea, that is inspired
Had an inspiration and saw a way to solve the problem.
Imagination
One of these mental images
"some secret sense ... which ... took to itself and treasured up ... her thoughts, her imaginations, her desires" (Virginia Woolf).
Inspiration
Divine guidance or influence exerted directly on a human mind or soul.
Imagination
The mind viewed as the locus or repository of this ability or these images
"This story had been rattling around in my imagination for years" (Orson Scott Card).
Inspiration
The act of drawing in, especially the inhalation of air into the lungs.
Imagination
The ability to confront and deal with reality by using the creative power of the mind; resourcefulness
Handled the problems with great imagination.
Inspiration
The drawing of air into the lungs, accomplished in mammals by elevation of the chest walls and flattening of the diaphragm, as part of the act of respiration.
Imagination
Attention, interest, or enthusiasm
An explorer's ordeal that caught the imagination of the public.
Inspiration
(countable) A breath, a single inhalation.
Imagination
The image-making power of the mind; the act of mentally creating or reproducing an object not previously perceived; the ability to create such images.
Imagination is one of the most advanced human faculties.
Inspiration
A supernatural divine influence on the prophets, apostles, or sacred writers, by which they were qualified to communicate moral or religious truth with authority; a supernatural influence which qualifies people to receive and communicate divine truth; also, the truth communicated.
Imagination
Particularly, construction of false images; fantasizing.
You think someone's been following you? That's just your imagination.
Inspiration
The act of an elevating or stimulating influence upon the intellect, emotions or creativity.
She was waiting for inspiration to write a book.
Usage notes: In this sense, it may be followed by the adposition to in relation to the person being influenced, and for or to in relation to the idea or activity:
Imagination
Creativity; resourcefulness.
His imagination makes him a valuable team member.
Inspiration
A person, object, or situation which quickens or stimulates an influence upon the intellect, emotions or creativity.
The trip was an inspiration to her for writing a book.
Imagination
A mental image formed by the action of the imagination as a faculty; something imagined.
Inspiration
A new idea, especially one which arises suddenly and is clever or creative.
Imagination
The imagine-making power of the mind; the power to create or reproduce ideally an object of sense previously perceived; the power to call up mental imagines.
Our simple apprehension of corporeal objects, if present, is sense; if absent, is imagination.
Imagination is of three kinds: joined with belief of that which is to come; joined with memory of that which is past; and of things present, or as if they were present.
Inspiration
The act of inspiring or breathing in; breath; specif. (Physiol.), the drawing of air into the lungs, accomplished in mammals by elevation of the chest walls and flattening of the diaphragm; - the opposite of expiration.
Imagination
The representative power; the power to reconstruct or recombine the materials furnished by direct apprehension; the complex faculty usually termed the plastic or creative power; the fancy.
The imagination of common language - the productive imagination of philosophers - is nothing but the representative process plus the process to which I would give the name of the "comparative."
The power of the mind to decompose its conceptions, and to recombine the elements of them at its pleasure, is called its faculty of imagination.
The business of conception is to present us with an exact transcript of what we have felt or perceived. But we have moreover a power of modifying our conceptions, by combining the parts of different ones together, so as to form new wholes of our creation. I shall employ the word imagination to express this power.
Inspiration
The act or power of exercising an elevating or stimulating influence upon the intellect or emotions; the result of such influence which quickens or stimulates; as, the inspiration of occasion, of art, etc.
Your father was ever virtuous, and holy men at their death have good inspirations.
Imagination
The power to recombine the materials furnished by experience or memory, for the accomplishment of an elevated purpose; the power of conceiving and expressing the ideal.
The lunatic, the lover, and the poetAre of imagination all compact . . . The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,And as imagination bodies forthThe forms of things unknown, the poet's penTurns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothingA local habitation and a name.
Inspiration
A supernatural divine influence on the prophets, apostles, or sacred writers, by which they were qualified to communicate moral or religious truth with authority; a supernatural influence which qualifies men to receive and communicate divine truth; also, the truth communicated.
All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.
The age which we now live in is not an age of inspiration and impulses.
Imagination
A mental image formed by the action of the imagination as a faculty; a conception; a notion.
The same power, which we should call fancy if employed on a production of a light nature, would be dignified with the title of imagination if shown on a grander scale.
Inspiration
Arousal of the mind to special unusual activity or creativity
Imagination
The formation of a mental image of something that is not perceived as real and is not present to the senses;
Popular imagination created a world of demons
Imagination reveals what the world could be
Inspiration
A product of your creative thinking and work;
He had little respect for the inspirations of other artists
After years of work his brainchild was a tangible reality
Imagination
The ability to form mental images of things or events;
He could still hear her in his imagination
Inspiration
A sudden intuition as part of solving a problem
Imagination
The ability to deal resourcefully with unusual problems;
A man of resource
Inspiration
(theology) a special influence of a divinity on the minds of human beings;
They believe that the books of Scripture were written under divine guidance
Inspiration
Arousing to a particular emotion or action
Inspiration
The act of inhaling; the drawing in of air (or other gases) as in breathing
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