Emerson suggests that the most memorable periods of life are often those transformed by imagination. An ordinary day can acquire unusual significance when a work of art, an idea, a landscape or another experience awakens a new way of seeing. The “stroke of the imagination” refers to this sudden intensification of perception and feeling.

Within Beauty, the statement reflects Emerson’s view that aesthetic experience can change how people perceive the world. Beauty is not merely a quality observed from a distance; it can stimulate thought, emotion and memory, giving particular moments a lasting place in a person’s life. The quotation is deliberately expansive and does not mean that only imaginative experiences are memorable. Rather, it emphasises the distinctive power of imagination to make experience feel vivid, meaningful and enduring.