Dreams Quotes

We have collected and put the best Dreams quotes about the meaning of life from around the world. Enjoy reading these insights and feel free to share this page on your social media to inspire others.

May these Dreams Quotes on many subjects inspire you to never give up and keep working towards your goals. Who knows—success could be just around the corner.

dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. The content and purpose of dreams are not fully understood, though they have been a topic of scientific, philosophical and religious interest throughout recorded history. Dream interpretation is the attempt at drawing meaning from dreams and searching for an underlying message. The scientific study of dreams is called oneirology.

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Dreams

Dreams usually comprise images that are somehow related to past or future circumstances, seen either clearly or symbolically, through windows opening onto the world of truth. So long as the mind is free from certain impressions and preconceptions, every dream, like a light or a signpost from the worlds beyond, may remove a darkness and indicate a direction. – M. Fethullah Gulen

Since in dreams there is no need for eyes or light or other means or materials, and what is “seen” is perceived by insight and the spirit, dreams can sometimes tell people things more beautiful than they could imagine when awake. It is not uncommon for a single dream to impart more knowledge about the past, present, and future than is contained in many libraries. – M. Fethullah Gulen

Almost everyone has dreams, which are the visions of the spirit. Through these visions, people can experience dimensions outside of material or physical existence, and thereby penetrate some way into many of Destiny’s mysteries. – M. Fethullah Gulen

So many dreams have proven to be true in actual life, that if everyone were to record their true dreams, the accounts would have to be bound together in huge volumes. – M. Fethullah Gulen

Some dreams bring scenes from the other world to purified souls. A soul refreshes itself in such dreams and, entering the “flower gardens” of that world, drinks from the pure waters therein to taste deliverance. “Seeing” through openings onto eternity, the soul is enraptured by scenes it cannot see with its human eyes, hear with its human ears, or imagine with its conscious mind. – M. Fethullah Gulen

Dreams make us aware of our two important faculties, the heart and the power of insight, and free us from the three-dimensional prison of our bodies. However, souls that unite with the truth do not need dreams to “see” the worlds beyond, for they live enraptured by the vision of beauty in both this and other worlds at the same time. However, this door opens only to those who have undergone strenuous and serious spiritual training and self-discipline, not to just anybody who knocks upon it. – M. Fethullah Gulen

For those who regard the human mind as a sort of rubbish dump, a container of the most abased things, who pursue their investigations into it (and draw conclusions) as if it were a swamp of animal impulses, dreams are a device through which the subconscious expresses itself. However, thousands of inspirations flow to the heart during dreams. As almost everyone from the time of Adam has received messages pertaining to future in their dreams, thousands of inventors and saintly people have received their earliest inspirations in them and have felt forever indebted to this radiant and blessed world of symbols or ideal forms. – M. Fethullah Gulen

The Most Noble Spirit, upon him be peace and blessings, who illuminated the world with his perfect light, sometimes returned to this first phase of his Prophethood (dreams) even while sailing in the ocean of knowledge of God. He drew attention to this blessed source, which is considered one of the forty or so aspects of Prophethood. – M. Fethullah Gulen

When realities are too dark to endure, dawn comes in dreams. The spirit wanders through night to find a way out toward that which it seeks and longs for. It travels with the hope of recovering what it lost. When realities are too dark to endure, dawn comes in dreams. – M. Fethullah Gulen

There is a cold war between realities and imaginings. I travel from the reason to the heart until bereft of power to distinguish the hopeful among hopeless causes. When events begin to drive me to give up hope. There is a cold war between realities and imaginings. – M. Fethullah Gulen

Dreams are always vivid, full of color. Therein man looks deep into unfathomed oceans, beholds the past, the far future and what is near to come, what is old and about to be replaced or renewed. Dreams are always vivid, full of color. – M. Fethullah Gulen

In darkness man suffers the extreme of loneliness. When everything turns pale in the dead hours of night, when mouths are tight-lipped as if zip-fastened, he wishes to sprout wings and fly to the realms beyond. In darkness man suffers the extreme of loneliness. – M. Fethullah Gulen

Dreams Quotes

Dreams Quotes

Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives. – William Dement

All that we see or seem, is but a dream within a dream. – Edgar Allan Poe

The best thing about dreams is that fleeting moment, when you are between asleep and awake, when you don’t know the difference between reality and fantasy, when for just that one moment you feel with your entire soul that the dream is reality, and it really happened. – James Arthur Baldwin

All men whilst they are awake are in one common world: but each of them, when he is asleep, is in a world of his own. – Plutarch

Dreams feel real while we’re in them. It’s only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange. – Inception

Even the loveliest dream bears like a blemish its difference from reality, the awareness that what it grants is mere illusion. – Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno

Dreams are often most profound when they seem the most crazy. – Sigmund Freud

Dreaming is an act of pure imagination, attesting in all men a creative power, which if it were available in waking, would make every man a Dante or Shakespeare. – H.F. Hedge

Dreams are only thoughts you didn’t have time to think about during the day. – Author Unknown

For often, when one is asleep, there is something in consciousness which declares that what then presents itself is but a dream. – Aristotle

Dreams are more real than reality itself, they’re closer to the self. – Gao Xingjian

The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind. – Sigmund Freud

We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep. – William Shakespeare

Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?  – Alfred Lord Tennyson

In sleep, fantasy takes the form of dreams. But in waking life, too, we continue to dream beneath the threshold of consciousness, especially when under the influence of repressed or other unconscious complexes. – Carl Jung

Dreams are illustrations… from the book your soul is writing about you. – Marsha Norman

Dreams are real while they last — can we say more of life?  – Havelock Ellis

Dreams are today’s answers to tomorrow’s questions. – Edgar Cayce

I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake. – Rene Descartes

Your world is not real!  – Inception

Every dream that anyone ever has is theirs alone and they never manage to share it. And they never manage to remember it either. Not truly or accurately. Not as it was. Our memories and our vocabularies aren’t up to the job. – Alex Garland

Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day. – Friedrich Nietzsche

There’s a long, long trail a-winding into the land of my dreams. – Stoddard King, Jr.

One can write, think and pray exclusively of others; dreams are all egocentric. – Evelyn Waugh

Insomnia is a gross feeder. It will nourish itself on any kind of thinking, including thinking about not thinking. – Clifton Fadiman

Sleep… Oh! how I loathe those little slices of death. – Author unknown

Dreams say what they mean, but they don’t say it in daytime language. – Gail Godwin

A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow. – Charlotte Brontë

Dreams Quotes

Dreams Quotes

Huge and mighty forms that do not live like living men, moved slowly through the mind by day and were trouble to my dreams. – William Wordsworth

Recall the old story of the rather refined young man who preferred sex dreams to visiting brothels because he met a much nicer type of girl that way. – Vivian Mercer

I think we dream so we don’t have to be apart so long. If we’re in each other’s dreams, we can play together all night. – Bill Watterson

Our dreams disturb us because they refuse to pander to our fondest notions of ourselves. The closer one looks, the more they seem to insist upon a challenging proposition: You must live truthfully. Right now. And always. Few forces in life present, with an equal sense of inevitability, the bare-knuckle facts of who we are, and the demands of what we might become. – Marc Ian Barasch

In a dream you are never eighty. – Anne Sexton

In dreams, we enter a world that’s entirely our own. – Steven Kloves

I’ll take the dream I had last night, And put it in my freezer, So someday long and far away, When I’m an old grey greezer, I’ll take it out and thaw it out, This lovely dream I’ve frozen, And boil it up and sit me down And dip my old cold toes in. – Shel Silverstein

I have always been amazed at the way an ordinary observer lends so much more credence and attaches so much more importance to waking events than to those occurring in dreams…. Man… is above all the plaything of his memory. – Andre Breton

Some colors exist in dreams that are not present in the waking spectrum. – Terri Guillemets

Even thus last night, and two nights more I lay, And could not win thee, Sleep, by any stealth: So do not let me wear to-night away. Without thee what is all the morning’s wealth? Come, blessed barrier between day and day, Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health!  – William Wordsworth

We are not only less reasonable and less decent in our dreams… we are also more inteligent, wiser and capable of better judgment when we are asleep than when we are awake. – Erich Fromm

For a dreamer, night’s the only time of day. – Newsies

Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, Chief nourisher in life’s feast. – William Shakespeare

Those who have compared our life to a dream were right…. We sleeping wake, and waking sleep. – Michel de Montaigne

The sailor does not control the sea, nor does the lucid dreamer control the dream. Like a sailor, lucid dreamers manipulate or direct themselves in the larger expanse of dreaming; however, they do not control it. Lucid dreaming appears to be a co-created experience. – Robert Waggoner

Pause now to ask yourself the following question: “Am I dreaming or awake, right now?” Be serious, really try to answer the question to the best of your ability and be ready to justify your answer. – Stephen LaBerge

I have lots of things to prove to myself. One is that I can live my life fearlessly. – Oprah Winfrey

Don’t give up on your dreams, or your dreams will give up on you. – John Wooden

You will never find time for anything. You must make it. – Charles Buxton. M

Never be ashamed! There’s some who will hold it against you, but they are not worth bothering with. – J. K. Rowling

To be a human being is to be in a state of tension between your appetites and your dreams, and the social realities around you and your obligations to your fellow man. – John Updike

Press on. Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. – Ray Kroc

Once in a while it really hits people that they don’t have to experience the world in the way they have been told. – Alan Keightley

I can’t imagine a person becoming a success who doesn’t give this game of life everything he’s got. – Walter Cronkite

When you reach an obstacle, turn it into an opportunity. You have the choice. You can overcome and be a winner, or you can allow it to overcome you and be a loser. The choice is yours and yours alone. Refuse to throw in the towel. Go that extra mile that failures refuse to travel. It is far better to be exhausted from success than to be rested from failure. – Mary Kay Ash

Love what you do and do what you love. Don’t listen to anyone else who tells you not to do it. You do what you want, what you love. Imagination should be the center of your life. – Ray Bradbury

I don’t focus on what I’m up against. I focus on my goals and I try to ignore the rest. – Venus Williams

It is better to risk starving to death than surrender. If you give up on your dreams, what’s left? – Jim Carrey

Remember to celebrate milestones as you prepare for the road ahead. – Nelson Mandela

The only thing worse than starting something and failing… is not starting something. – Seth Godin

A dream is your creative vision for your life in the future. You must break out of your current comfort zone and become comfortable with the unfamiliar and the unknown. – Denis Waitley

Let us dream of tomorrow where we can truly love from the soul, and know love as the ultimate truth. – Michael Jackson

No matter how meticulously you plan the path to your dream, life will get in the way. There will be delays, setbacks and detours aplenty. They are all part of the experience, learn from them. – Tony Clark

Money is certainly one of the ways we can turn the dreams we have into the reality we live. – Tony Robbins

Part of the Disney success is our ability to create a believable world of dreams that appeals to all age groups. – Walt Disney

The famous psychiatrist and author of Man and His Symbols, Carl Jung, once said, ‘The dream is the small hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul…’ – Sean Lysaght

Mary Kay Ash established her dream company’s principles and priorities for relationships first, and then she discovered the products they would offer to the market place. – Robert Busha

Martin Luther King, Jr., had a dream – a dream that all people could live together in peace and be treated equally. And though he died over forty years ago, his dream lives on. – Bonnie Bader

His (Dwight Eisenhower) life was an amazing saga of the American dream come true. He came from humble, undistinguished midwestern roots, yet rose to a position undreamed of during the most destructive war in the history of mankind. – Carlo D’Este

A great way to keep our minds off the worry track is to focus our thoughts on things that are good, beautiful, and positive. Allow yourself to dream, wish, and imagine the best that could happen. – Rohen Phoenix

Intrinsic motivation comes from within you and is powered by your own dreams, aspirations, wants and wishes. – Joanna Jast

The travel dream we all have is for something elemental to materialize when we’re away from home, something that connects us indelibly to the life around us. – Dina Bennett

Not being able to recognize our lifelong dreams is like not being able to recognize that we are alive. – David A. Hunter

The loss of a life is not nearly as devastating as the loss of what could have been, of the dreams left unfulfilled and lingering passions undiscovered. – Seth David Chernoff

For many people, the adverse circumstances along the roadway of life have them so beat down and discouraged, they’ve forgotten how to dream. Their dreams were left in the dust years ago, and now it just hurts too much to get back up and try again. – Omar Johnson

The heart is the epicenter of everything as it is where dreams, hopes and ambitions are born. – Cess Gichuhi

You need to start feeling gratitude as you set your intentions. Intentions are the starting point for fulfilling your dreams. – Brenda Nathan

Another common reason people with huge, servants’ hearts don’t create the vision of their dream life is that they think they are supposed to help everybody, and that they are required to put all their energy into helping. – Cassie Parks

When you experience a large shock, you may reassess your life or your dreams, and realize that you aren’t living the life you imagined or wanted. – Sullins Stuart

The ability to dream is one of humans’ most valuable assets. It’s what allows us to progress, to be creative, to invent, and to solve the world’s most critical issues. – Paul David Brand

Once you know yourself, what you like, what you love, what you dislike, what your dreams are, and honest about your faults, you can accept yourself for who you are. – B. W. Robertson

What I know for a fact is that we all have dreams; we all want to believe deep down in our souls that we have a special gift, that we can make a difference, that we can somehow touch other people in a special way and that we can make the world a better place. – Zac Dixon

People will often talk about one day they will land their dream job, but more often than not, a person’s idea of a dream job is purely fantasy and not a realistic look at what they can do all day and get paid for – and doing something that they genuinely love to do. – Jack Warren

Life is about positive and negative choices that you have to make. A dream is just a dream but it’s up to you to make it a reality. – Mr. Desire

Because when you decide to live the life of your dreams, dark moments are inevitable. You will not grow without them. You will not succeed without them. – Jennifer Mayers

We should see dreaming as one of our responsibilities, rather than an alternative to one. – Mary Engelbreit

The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak sleeps in the acorn; the bird sleeps in the egg; and in the highest vision of the soul, a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities. . . . – James Allen

Always remember that you mustn’t let others know about your dreams until you achieve them. After that you can share your success story with others to inspire them as well. – Sampath Bandara

I can now state my dream without five hundred internal voices jumping in with comments, putdowns and questions. – Jenny Clift

Despite the many versions, one thing is common; success is the fulfillment of a dream, an achieved desire, or a victory over a life battle. – Rowena Cauba

It’s a thrill to fulfill your own childhood dreams, but as you get older, you may find that enabling the dreams of others is even more fun. – Randy Pausch

A leader is a person with a clear vision for the future who wants to enlist others to help him turn a dream into reality. – Ace McCloud

Do I have enough? Will I go broke? And the one place in our lives where those questions really crystallize is when we start thinking about retirement. Talk about a landscape where people’s biggest dreams collide with the harshest realities! – Wes Moss

We achieve our dreams only when we have a successful mindset; the ones focused on positive mental attitudes, victory, empowerment, and good habits. – Faith P. Blake

It is almost impossible for you to reach for your dreams, to be truly yourself, if you have a low self-confidence. – Charles Lamont

Just as a building without foundations will not be habitable you cannot turn your life around and start manifesting your dreams with the click of your fingers. – Craig Beck

Sometimes a smile on someone’s face, a little thank you from someone you helped or seeing someone achieve their dreams is a source of immense satisfaction. – Naomi Hill

Hope lies in dreams, in imagination, and in the courage of those who dare to make dreams into reality. – Jonas Salk

Nothing happens unless first we dream. – Carl Sandburg

You are never given a dream without also being given the power to make it come true. You will have to work for it, however. – Richard Bach

The only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and the willingness to work hard for them. – Michelle Obama

If your dreams don’t scare you, they are too small. – Richard Branson

Follow your dreams, they know the way. – Kobe Yamada

Without dreams, there can be no courage. And without courage, there can be no action. – Wim Wenders

Dream big. Start small. But most of all start. – Simon Sinek

Dream as if you’ll live forever, live as if you’ll die today. – James Dean

Life without dreams is like a bird with a broken wing – it can’t fly. – Dan Peña

When you stop having dreams and ideals – well, you might as well stop altogether. – Marian Anderson

The only thing that will stop you from fulfilling your dreams is you. – Tom Bradley

You’ve got to follow that dream, wherever that dream may lead. – Elvis Presley

The only dreams that come true are the ones you chase, if you do nothing, you get nothing. – Joseph Atser

20 years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. – Mark Twain

Every morning you have two choices: continue to sleep with your dreams, or wake up and chase them. – Anonymus

Dream it, then make it happen. – Anonymus

If you don’t have a dream, how are you going to make a dream come true? – Oscar Hammerstein

No dreamer is ever too small; no dream is ever too big. – Anonymus

No one has ever achieved anything from the smallest to the greatest unless the dream was dreamed first. – Laura Ingalls Wilder

You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream. – C.S. Lewis

A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality. – John Lennon

Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly. – Langston Hughes

All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible. – T. E. Lawrence

Dreams are renewable. No matter what our age or condition, there are still untapped possibilities within us and new beauty waiting to be born. – Dale Turner

No matter where you’re from, your dreams are valid. – Lupita Nyong’o

Why should you continue going after your dreams? Because seeing the look on the faces of the people who said you couldn’t… will be priceless. – Kevin Ngo

Dreams come true. Without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them. – John Updike

The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams. – Oprah Winfrey

Don’t tell people your dreams. Show them. – Anonymus

First, think. Second, believe. Third, dream. And finally, dare. – Walt Disney

The excitement of dreams coming true is beyond the description of words. – Lailah Gifty Akita

Nothing is going to stop you from fulfilling your dreams. And you deserve every last one of success I know you will have. – Michelle Obama

Don’t let others hijack your dreams. Be captain of your own ship and master of your own destiny. – Joanne Madeline Moore

Whatever the mind…can conceive and believe, it can achieve. – Napoleon Hill

It’s never too late to focus on your dreams. – Anonymus

Where there is a will, there is a way. If there is a chance in a million that you can do something, anything, to keep what you want from ending, do it. Pry the door open or, if need be, wedge your foot in that door and keep it open. – Pauline Kael

Dreams come a size too big so we can grow in them. – Josie Bissett

Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country. – Anaïs Nin

Dreams are illustrations… from the book your soul is writing about you. – Marsha Norman

Keep your heart open to dreams. For as long as there’s a dream, there is hope, and as long as there is hope, there is joy in living. – Anonymus

Don’t be pushed around by the fears in your mind. Be led by the dreams in your heart. – Roy T. Bennett

Life is full of beauty. Notice it. Notice the bumble bee, the small child, and the smiling faces. Smell the rain, and feel the wind. Live your life to the fullest potential, and fight for your dreams. – Ashley Smith

Follow your passion and dreams, do what you truly love, put aside any nonsense or worries and realize that this moment it is all we’ve got. – Frank Arrigazzi

Let your dreams be your wings. – Anonymus

Money is certainly one of the ways we can turn the dreams we have into the reality we live. – Tony Robbins

Yesterday is but today’s memory, tomorrow is today’s dream. – Kahlil Gibran

I have had dreams, and I’ve had nightmares. I overcame the nightmares because of my dreams. – Jonas Salk

Sometimes the dreams that come true are the ones you never even knew you had. – Alice Sebold

It always seems impossible until it’s done. – Nelson Mandela

All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them. – Walt Disney

Man, alone, has the power to transform his thoughts into physical reality; man, alone, can dream and make his dreams come true. – Napoleon Hill

Don’t be afraid of the space between your dreams and reality. If you can dream it, you can make it so. – Belva Davis

Dare to dream, but even more importantly, dare to put action behinds your dreams. – Josh Hinds

The only thing worse than starting something and failing…is not starting something. – Seth Godin

Let your dreams become your reality, set your goals, take action, and live your dream. – Catherine Pulsifer

A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step. – Lao Tzu

Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Despite what we’ve been taught, we don’t have to be rich, famous or distinguished to make our dreams come true. – Sharon Cook and Graciela Sholander

Step away from the couch sitters who are awaiting the single perfect day to begin living their dream. You can choose to live your dream every day if you just take the first step. – T. D. Jakes

Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work. – Stephen King

You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step. – Martin Luther King, Jr.

When you have a dream that you can’t let go of, trust your instincts and pursue it. But remember: real dreams take work. They take patience, and sometimes they require you to dig down very deep. Be sure you’re willing to do that. – Harvey Mackay

What is not started today is never finished tomorrow. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again. – Richard Branson

The key to realizing a dream is to focus not on success but significance – and then even the small steps and little victories along your path will take on greater meaning. – Oprah Winfrey

If you are not willing to risk the usual, you will have to settle for the ordinary. – Jim Rohn

There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other. – Douglas H. Everett

Life is about positive and negative choices that you have to make. A dream is just a dream but it’s up to you to make it a reality. – Mr. Desire

Like success, failure is many things to many people. With positive mental attitude, failure is a learning experience, a rung on the ladder, and a plateau at which to get your thoughts in order to prepare to try again. – W. Clement Stone

Never limit yourself because of others’ limited imagination; never limit others because of your own limited imagination. – Mae Jemison

Do what they think you can’t do. – Duke Fergerson

Miracles start to happen when you give as much energy to your dreams as you do to your fears. – Richard Wilkins

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better. – Samuel Beckett

Do not wait; the time will never be ‘just right.’ Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along. – George Herbert

There will be obstacles. There will be doubters. There will be mistakes. But with hard work, there are no limits. – Michael Phelps

If you don’t build your dreams, someone will hire you to help build theirs. – Tony Gaskin

It is only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth – and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up – that we will begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had. – Elizabeth Kübler-Ross

If you take responsibility for yourself you will develop a hunger to accomplish your dreams. – Les Brown

Never give up on what you really want to do. The person with big dreams is more powerful than the one with all the facts. – Harriet Jackson Brown, Jr.

Don’t wait. The time will never be just right. – Napoleon Hill

Life is full of beauty. Notice it. Notice the bumble bee, the small child, and the smiling faces. Smell the rain, and feel the wind. Live your life to the fullest potential, and fight for your dreams. – Ashley Smith

Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can. – Arthur Ashe

Dream as if you’ll live forever, live as if you’ll die today. – James Dean

No matter where you’re from, your dreams are valid. – Lupita Nyong’o

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world. – Oscar Wilde

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great. – Mark Twain

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for. – Epicurus

The only thing worse than starting something and failing … is not starting something. – Seth Godin

Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice. – Wayne Dyer

Yesterday is but today’s memory, tomorrow is today’s dream. – Kahlil Gibran

When I’m old and dying, I plan to look back on my life and say, ‘Wow, that was an adventure,’ not, ‘Wow, I sure felt safe.’ – Tom Preston-Werner

It is only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth – and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up – that we will begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had. – Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny. – Albert Ellis

Much of the stress that people feel doesn’t come from having too much to do. It comes from not finishing what they started. – David Allen

If one advances confidently in the direction of one’s dreams, and endeavors to live the life which one has imagined, one will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. – Henry David Thoreau

Hold fast to dreams for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly. – Langston Hughes

”Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again. – Richard Branson

I have spread my dreams beneath your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. – William Butler Yeats

Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness. – Bertrand Russell

Nothing in the world can take the place of perseverance. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost legendary. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Perseverance and determination alone are omnipotent. – Calvin Coolidge

To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself. – Soren Kierkegaard

Think of many things; do one. – Portuguese proverb

All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible. – T. E. Lawrence

Dreams come true. – Unknown

I dwell in possibility. – Emily Dickinson

Hope is a waking dream. – Aristotle

Explore. Dream. Discover. – Mark Twain

Never give up on your dreams. – Barack Obama

Dreams are necessary to life. – Anais Nin

Swim out of your little pond. – Rumi

Let your dreams be your wings. – Unknown

In dreams begins responsibility. – W. B. Yeats

You get one life. Make it count. – Shane Parrish

Dreams don’t work unless you do. – John C. Maxwell

Dream big. Start small. Act now. – Robin Sharma

Think, believe, dream, and dare. – Walt Disney

I don’t chase dreams, I hunt goals. – Unknown

Face reality or escape with a dream. – Maxime Lagacé

Never leave your dreams unfulfilled. – James Clear

In dreams I have achieved everything. – Fernando Pessoa

The journey is essential to the dream. – Francis of Assisi

Don’t call it a dream, call it a plan. – Unknown

Don’t tell people your dreams, show them. – Unknown

If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. – Steve Jobs

Any dream is possible, if you have courage. – Walt Disney

Honor your dreams and they will be honored. – Gabby Bernstein

Build a dream and the dream will build you. – Robert H. Schuller

Dreams are the touchstones of our character. – Henry David Thoreau

The shell must break before the bird can fly. – Alfred Tennyson

Believe in your dreams. If you don’t, who will? – Jon Bon Jovi

For the goal is to die with memories, not dreams. – Unknown

The dream is free. The hustle is sold separately. – Tyrese Gibson

Dreams are today’s answers to tomorrow’s questions. – Edgar Cayce

Never let your memories be greater than your dreams. – Douglas Ivester

It is a happiness to wonder; it is a happiness to dream. – Edgar Allan Poe

I dream. Sometimes I think that’s the only right thing to do. – Haruki Murakami

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere. – Albert Einstein

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. – Martin Luther King Jr

You can kill the dreamer, but you can’t kill the dream. – Martin Luther King Jr

I believe that the only courage anybody ever needs is the courage to follow your own dreams. – Oprah Winfrey

You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say, ‘Why not?’ – George Bernard Shaw

Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will live as one. – John Lennon

Ambition is a dream with a V8 engine. – Elvis Presley

I have learned, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. – Henry David Thoreau

We grow great by dreams. All big men are dreamers. They see things in the soft haze of a spring day or in the red fire of a long winter’s evening. Some of us let these great dreams die, but others nourish and protect them; nurse them through bad days till they bring them to the sunshine and light which comes always to those who sincerely hope that their dreams will come true. – Woodrow Wilson

We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep. – Williams Shakespeare

All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream. – Edgar Allen Poe

Study while others are sleeping; work while others are loafing; prepare while others are playing; and dream while others are wishing. – William Arthur Ward

Fashion is about dreaming and making other people dream. – Donatella Versace

I don’t paint dreams or nightmares, I paint my own reality. – Frida Kahlo

I dream my painting and I paint my dream. – Vincent van Gogh

I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them. – Pablo Picasso

You have to dream before your dreams can come true. – A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

You can’t put a limit on anything. The more you dream, the farther you get. – Michael Phelps

The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up. – Muhammad Ali

It was all a dream. – The Notorious B.I.G.

Sometimes a dream almost whispers, it never shouts. So you have to, every day of your lives, be ready to hear what whispers in your ear. – Steven Spielberg

It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else. – Erma Bombeck

Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today. – James Dean

Nothing happens unless first a dream. – Carl Sandburg

Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Never give up on what you really want to do. The person with big dreams is more powerful than one with all the facts. – Albert Einstein

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens. – Carl Jung

Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities. – J. R. R. Tolkien

Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway. – Earl Nightingale

I like dreams of the future better than the history of the past. – Thomas Jefferson

Dreams are the seedlings of realities. – James Allen

Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment. – Buddha

You should realize that everything you see is like a dream or illusion. – Bodhidharma

We spend most of our waking lives dreaming. We think we’re awake but we’re walking around talking to ourselves. – Naval Ravikant

Dreamers and artists change the world while others face the change. – Maxime Lagacé

If growing up is the process of creating ideas and dreams about what life should be, then maturity is letting go again. – Mary Beth Danielson

Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor. – Sholom Aleichem

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. – Edgar Allan Poe

It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream – making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams…No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence — that which makes its truth, its meaning — its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream — alone. – Joseph Conrad

People don’t come to church for preachments, of course, but to daydream about God. – Kurt Vonnegut

Personally, I would sooner have written Alice in Wonderland than the whole Encyclopedia Britannica. – Stephen Leacock

I believe in the imagination. What I cannot see is infinitely more important than what I can see. – Duane Michals

It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream. – Edgar Allan Poe

Dreams Quotes

Dreams Quotes

Nobody is ever too old to dream. And dreams never grow old. – L. M. Montgomery

Go after a dream. There’s a tremendous amount to risk if playing it safe. – Bill Burr

You must make your dream a priority in order for it to become your life. – Bob Proctor

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake. – Henry David Thoreau

Fight for your dreams, and your dreams will fight for you. – Paulo Coelho

Ordinary people dream and stay idle. Others dream and change the world. – Maxime Lagacé

The clichés like “follow your dreams,” and “live in the moment” are actually correct. – Naval Ravikant

You give up your dreams by always deciding to pursue them tomorrow. – Shane Parrish

If you are living the dream, how do you know if you are asleep or awake? – Karl Pilkington

It’s not until they tell you you’re going to die soon that you realize how short life is. Time is the most valuable thing in life because it never comes back. And whether you spend it in the arms of a loved one or alone in a prison-cell, life is what you make of it. Dream big. – Stefán Karl Stefánsson

Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become. – James Allen

He does not need opium. He has the gift of reverie. – Anais Nin

The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up. – Paul Valéry

Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears. – Les Brown

Follow your dreams; you may not make money, but will never be poor. Follow other people’s dreams; you can make money but will never be rich. – Paulo Coelho

Let your dream devour your life, not your life devour your dream. – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

You don’t let your dreams happen, you make them happen. – Tom Bilyeu

Don’t ever let someone tell you that you can’t do something. You got a dream, you gotta protect it. When people can’t do something themselves, they are going to tell you that you can’t do it. You want something, go get it. Period. – Will Smith

If you give up on your dreams, what’s left? – Jim Carrey

It may be that those who do most, dream most. – Stephen Butler Leacock

It’s difficult to follow your dream. It’s a tragedy not to. – Ralph Marston

A man must dream a long time in order to act with grandeur, and dreaming is nursed in darkness. – Jean Genet

That which is dreamed can never be lost, can never be undreamed. – Neil Gaiman

Thought is the labor of the intellect, reverie is its pleasure. – Victor Hugo

To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe. – Anatole France

We’re told that the American dream will bring you happiness, and it will not. I think a lot of us learn as we get older that happiness is internal. Happiness is a choice that you make and a skill that you develop. – Naval Ravikant

Make the action to move closer to your dream the first action you take each day. – Leo Babauta

A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams. – John Barrymore

I don’t dream at night, I dream all day; I dream for a living. – Steven Spielberg

Dream is not that you see in the sleep; dream is that does not allow you to sleep. – A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

Genius is the ability to put into effect what is in your mind. There’s no other definition of it. – F. Scott Fitzgerald

All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible. – Thomas Edward Lawrence

You’re alive, Bod. That means you have infinite potential. You can do anything, make anything, dream anything. – Neil Gaiman

It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live. – J. K. Rowling

Yesterday’s dreams are often tomorrow’s realities. – Bruce Lee

Freedom is the word that the human dream feeds on, that no one can explain nor fail to understand. – Cecília Meireles

You’ll stumble upon something you can’t stop thinking about, something more important than anything else. Make it the focus of your life. – Maxime Lagacé

If you’ve never stared off in the distance, then your life is a shame. – Adam Duritz

Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in reverie. – Henry David Thoreau

Reverie is not a mind vacuum. It is rather the gift of an hour which knows the plenitude of the soul. – Gaston Bachelard

Spread joy. Chase your wildest dreams. – Patch Adams

Anyone who dreams of an uncommon life eventually discovers that there is no choice but to seek an uncommon approach to living it. – Gary Keller

Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it. – Buddha

Fill your brain with giant dreams so it has no space for petty pursuits. – Robin Sharma

We dream to give ourselves hope. To stop dreaming – well, that’s like saying you can never change your fate. – Amy Tan

I believe in everything until it’s disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind. Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now? – John Lennon

To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to. – Kahlil Gibran

Dream what you dare to dream. Go where you want to go. Be what you want to be. – Earl Nightingale 

You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream. – Les Brown

At school the word ‘daydreamer’ is an insult. Yet everything we are surrounded by was first a dream in someone’s head. – We live in the dreamer’s world. Live the dream. – Thibaut

Forsake all inhibitions, pursue thy dreams. – Walt Whitman

At first dreams seem impossible, then improbable, then inevitable. – Christopher Reeve

Give your dreams all you’ve got and you’ll be amazed at the energy that comes out of you. – William James

Never, ever, let anyone tell you what you can and can’t do. Prove the cynics wrong. Pity them for they have no imagination. The sky’s the limit. Your sky. Your limit. Now. Let’s dance. – Tom Hiddleston

Once you’ve truly controlled your own fate, for better or for worse, you’ll never let anyone else tell you what to do. – Naval Ravikant

Make your dream so clear that it’s the only thing you think about all day long. – Maxime Lagacé

The invariable mark of a dream is to see it come true. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Trust in dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity. – Kahlil Gibran

I think we dream so we don’t have to be apart so long. If we’re in each others dreams, we can be together all the time. – Calvin and Hobbes

You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one. – James A. Froude

When we are dreaming alone it is only a dream. When we are dreaming with others, it is the beginning of reality. – Dom Helder Camara

There will be obstacles. There will be doubters. There will be mistakes. But with hard work, with belief, with confidence and trust in yourself and those around you, there are no limits. – Michael Phelps

You were born with potential. You were born with goodness and trust. You were born with ideals and dreams. You were born with greatness. You were born with wings. You are not meant for crawling, so don’t. You have wings. Learn to use them and fly. – Rumi

God knows the dreams and desires in your heart; in fact, he gave them to you. He will order your steps and take you where you need to be. – Joel Osteen

The answer is dreams. Dreaming on and on. Entering the world of dreams and never coming out. Living in dreams for the rest of time. – Haruki Murakami

Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world. – Harriet Tubman

Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back: a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country. – Anais Nin

You have a certain amount of time to be alive – to pursue your hopes, dreams, and passions. Make it count. – Life Math Money

Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning. – Gloria Steinem

Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs. – Farrah Gray

Our dreams prove that to imagine – to dream about things that have not happened – is among mankind’s deepest needs. – Milan Kundera

The further the reward from the effort, the thinner the competition. Patience is the gatekeeper. – Johnny Uzan

That’s why they call it the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it. – George Carlin

He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher… or, as his wife would have it, an idiot. – Douglas Adams

Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven. – H. L. Mencken

I dream of a day where I walk down the street and hear people talk about morality, sustainability and philosophy instead of the Kardashians. – Keanu Reeves

If you even dream of beating me, you’d better wake up and apologize. – Muhammad Ali

Dream the dreams that have never been dreamt. – David Bower

Delaying pursuing your dreams is like saving up sex for old age — you might get what you want eventually, but it won’t be as much fun. – Shane Parrish

Ah, nothing is too late, till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate. – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Dreams can change, if we all stuck with our first dreams there would be a lot of cowboys and princesses running around. – Stephen Colbert

Television is simply automated daydreaming. – Lee Loevinger

I was trying to daydream, but my mind kept wandering. – Steven Wright

If you aren’t living your dreams then you’re living your fears. – Daymond John

What are we after all our dreams, after all our memories? – Nicholas Sparks

No person has the right to rain on your dreams. – Marian Wright Edelman

A dream is an answer to a question we haven’t yet learned how to ask. – Fox Mulder

The most pitiful among men is he who turns his dreams into silver and gold. – Kahlil Gibran

The mind was dreaming. The world was its dream. – Jorge Luis Borges

If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time. – Marcel Proust

In my dreams the world would come alive, becoming so captivatingly majestic, free and ethereal, that afterwards it would be oppressive to breathe the dust of this painted life. – Vladimir Nabokov

Dreaming is hoping. Hoping is desiring. Desiring is suffering. Suffering is living. But your dream is worth suffering for. – Maxime Lagacé

The dream was always running ahead of me. To catch up, to live for a moment in unison with it, that was the miracle. – Anais Nin

Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top. – Virginia Woolf

Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

You only dream as big as you think and you only think as big as what you see. – Tom Bilyeu

The best love affairs are those we never had. – Norman Lindsay

Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements. – Napoleon Hill

Asking your children to carry the burden of your dreams is the worst form of child labour. – Thibaut

All that appears is devoid of independent existence, just like a magical apparition or a dream. – Padmasambhava

When you stop having dreams and ideals – well, you might as well stop altogether. – Marian Anderson

There is no such thing as death, life is only a dream and we, are the imagination of ourselves. – Bill Hicks

When your deepest thoughts are broken, keep on dreaming boy, cause when you stop dreaming it’s time to die. – Shannon Hoon

Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world. – Oscar Wilde

Like all dreamers I confuse disenchantment with truth. – Jean-Paul Sartre

Dreams are illustrations from the book your soul is writing about you. – Marsha Norman

Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality. – Lewis Carroll

Make your life a dream, and a dream a reality. – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

You may tire of reality but you never tire of dreams. – Lucy Maud Montgomery

All trees live their life grounded, but they all want to reach the sky. – Maxime Lagacé

Reality is just a dream that one can never awaken from. – Thibaut

I do not know how to distinguish between waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are? – Henry David Thoreau

You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams. – Dr. Seuss

Where all is but dream, reasoning and arguments are of no use, truth and knowledge nothing. – John Locke

When you compare the sorrows of real life to the pleasures of the imaginary one, you will never want to live again, only to dream forever. – Alexandre Dumas

Don’t put in average effort and claim that you want exceptional results. – James Clear

When you begin to awaken, you see how caught you have been in the prison of your mind about certain reality… and how caught everybody else seems to be. – Ram Dass

Every single desire can lead to dream and every single dream has possibility to become reality. – Santosh Kalwar

The most prolific period of pessimism comes at twenty-one, or thereabouts, when the first attempt is made to translate dreams into reality. – Heywood Broun

People think dreams aren’t real just because they aren’t made of matter, of particles. Dreams are real. But they are made of viewpoints, of images, of memories and puns and lost hopes. – Neil Gaiman

You waste precious time dreaming of the future instead of engaging in the present. – Robert Greene

Procrastination is slow poison for your dreams. – Life Math Money

Real life is the present moment – not the memories of the past, nor the dreams of the future. – Walpola Rahula

It’s strange how dreams get under your skin and give your heart a test for what’s real and what’s imaginary. – Jason Mraz

In the world of the dreamer there was solitude: all the exaltations and joys came in the moment of preparation for living. They took place in solitude. But with action came anxiety, and the sense of insuperable effort made to match the dream, and with it came weariness, discouragement, and the flight into solitude again. And then in solitude, in the opium den of remembrance, the possibility of pleasure again. – Anais Nin

Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the actions stems the dream again; and this interdependence produces the highest form of living. – Anais Nin

During our dreams we do not know we are dreaming. We may even dream of interpreting a dream. Only on waking do we know it was a dream. Only after the great awakening will we realize that this is the great dream. – Zhuangzi

I am a dreamer. I know so little of real life that I just can’t help re-living such moments as these in my dreams, for such moments are something I have very rarely experienced. – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

He who passes not his days in the realm of dreams is the slave of the days. – Kahlil Gibran

Open your eyes, for this world is only a dream. – Rumi

All human beings are also dream beings. Dreaming ties all mankind together. – Jack Kerouac

Every morning you have two choices: continue to sleep with your dreams, or wake up and chase them. – Carmelo Anthony

I don’t sleep, I dream awake. – Donald Glover

A dream is just a nightmare with lipstick. – Toni Morrison

Most of my dreams are about buses and boats that take me on a journey to a better destination. – Maxime Lagacé

A dream which is not interpreted is like a letter which is not read. – The Talmud

Insights from myth, dreams, and intuitions, from glimpses of an invisible reality, and from perennial human wisdom provide us with hints and guesses about the meaning of life and what we are here for. Prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action are the means through which we grow and find meaning. – Jean Shinoda Bolen

Men dream but dreams hold no value here. What was first the bright light of hope has now turned into a long night of captivity. Lost in the dark we surrender our minds and forget who we are. But some of us have woken up. They remind us that we have a choice. – Edward Kenway

Dreams are excursions into the limbo of things, a semi-deliverance from the human prison. – Henri Amiel

The dream is the liberation of the spirit from the pressure of external nature, a detachment of the soul from the fetters of matter. – Sigmund Freud

Dreams are never concerned with trivia. – Sigmund Freud

A dream is a microscope through which we look at the hidden occurrences in our soul. – Erich Fromm

The best reason for having dreams is that in dreams no reasons are necessary. – Ashleigh Brilliant

To lose one’s self in reverie, one must be either very happy, or very unhappy. Reverie is the child of extremes. – Antoine Rivarol

We all dream profusely every night, yet by morning we’ve forgotten ninety percent of what went on. That’s why poets are such important members of society. Poets remember our dreams for us. – Tom Robbins

Recounting the strange is like telling one’s dreams: one can communicate the events of a dream, but not the emotional content, the way that a dream can colour one’s entire day. – Neil Gaiman

Thought is the greatest of pleasures —pleasure itself is only imagination—have you ever enjoyed anything more than your dreams? – Gustave Flaubert

Dreams are not what you see in your sleep, dreams are things which do not let you sleep. – Cristiano Ronaldo

There is nothing like a dream to create the future. – Victor Hugo

Once you learn patience, your options suddenly expand. – Robert Greene

When you’ll stop dreaming and hoping of a better future it’s because you’re now enlightened or you’re dead. Otherwise, you’re a normal human being. – Maxime Lagacé

Keep in mind that dreaming and hoping can make your life better, but it can also make you suffer. Choose a dream worth suffering for. – Maxime Lagacé

Without a dream you’ll not get anywhere. – Kofi Annan

Imagination is the soul’s happiest retreat. – James Lendall Basford

Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. – Thich Nhat Hanh

The inability to open up to hope is what blocks trust, and blocked trust is the reason for blighted dreams. – Elizabeth Gilbert

We all have our own life to pursue, our own kind of dream to be weaving. And we all have some power to make wishes come true, as long as we keep believing. – Louisa May Alcott

Dreams have only one owner at a time. That’s why dreamers are lonely. – William Faulkner

Heroes are heroes because they are heroic in behavior, not because they won or lost. – Nassim Nicholas Taleb

If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream. – Martin Luther King Jr

If your actions create a legacy that inspires others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, then, you are an excellent leader. – Dolly Parton

The imagination is a palette of bright colors. You can use it to touch up memories — or you can use it to paint dreams. – Robert Brault

Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do. – Pope John XXIII

From the pain comes the dream. From the dream comes the vision. From the vision come the people. From the people comes the power. From this power come the change. – Peter Gabriel

Each dream you leave behind is a part of your future that will no longer exist. -Steve Jobs

A goal is a dream taken seriously. – Henry David Thoreau

A goal is a dream with a deadline. – Napoleon Hill

‎Without dreams, there can be no courage. And without courage, there can be no action. – Wim Wenders

The real shortage we face is dreams, and the wherewithal and the will to make them come true. – Seth Godin

If you talk about it, it’s a dream, if you envision it, it’s possible, but if you schedule it, it’s real. – Tony Robbins

If you have dreams and ambitions, you know that you have to bruise a few people in your path. Expect others to do the same to you. – Robert Greene

How do you move forward? One step at a time. How do you lose weight? One kilo at a time. How do you write a book? One page at a time. How do you build a relationship? One day at a time. In a world obsessed with speed, never forget things of real worth and value take time. – Thibaut

Your dream will be achieved in baby steps, not in leaps and bounds. Every step is a cause for celebration. With enough steps, you’ll get there. – Leo Babauta

I don’t have dreams. I have goals. – Harvey Specter

The greatest enemy of a good plan, is the dream of a perfect plan. – Carl Von Clausewitz

Get action. Do things; be sane; don’t fritter away your time; create, act, take a place wherever you are and be somebody; get action. – Theodore Roosevelt

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. – H. Jackson Brown Jr

You are never given a dream without also being given the power to make it true. – Richard Bach

I want to be around people that do things. I don’t want to be around people anymore that judge or talk about what people do. I want to be around people that dream and support and do things. – Amy Poehler

Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will. – Suzy Kassem

It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting. – Paulo Coelho

There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure. – Paulo Coelho

Self-esteem means knowing you are the dream. – Oprah Winfrey

If your dream ain’t bigger than you, there’s a problem with your dream. – Deion Sanders

Dreamers dream dreams and rich people create plans and build bridges to their dreams. – Robert T. Kiyosaki

Success is loving your life, even if you didn’t reach your goal yet. Maxime Lagacé

You attract what you are, not what you want. If you want great, be great. – Unknown

Be careful what you water your dreams with. Water them with worry and fear and you will produce weeds that choke the life from your dream. Water them with optimism and solutions and you will cultivate success. Always be on the lookout for ways to turn a problem into an opportunity for success. Always be on the lookout for ways to nurture your dream. – Lao Tzu

If you want to reach your goals and dreams, you cannot do it without discipline. – Lee Kuan Yew

You can’t have a million-dollar dream with a minimum-wage work ethic. – Stephen C. Hogan

The size of your success is measured by the strength of your desire; the size of your dream; and how you handle disappointment along the way. – Robert T. Kiyosaki

Never follow your dreams. Follow your effort. It’s not about what you can dream of. That’s easy. It’s about whether or not it’s important enough to you to do the work to be ready to be successful in that business. – Mark Cuban

Man is a genius when he dreams. Dream what you are capable of. The harder you dream it, the sooner it will come true. – Akira Kurosawa

The biggest wall you have to climb is the one you build in your mind: Never let your mind talk you out of your dreams, trick you into giving up. Never let your mind become the greatest obstacle to success. – Roy T. Bennett

No one has ever achieved greatness without dreams. – Roy T. Bennett

The bridge between reality and a dream is work. – Jared Leto

Never let go of your dreams. – Anonymous

If you can dream it, you can do it. – Walt Disney

A dream doesn’t become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination, and hard work. – Colin Powell

A dream is a wish your heart makes. – Walt Disney

As soon as you start to pursue a dream, your life wakes up and everything has meaning. – Barbara Sher

All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them. – Walt Disney

Dream. Believe. Create. Succeed. – Anonymous

Let your dreams be bigger than your fears and your actions louder than your words. – Anonymous

When you cease to dream, you cease to live. – Malcolm Forbes

I am a dreamer. – Eva Green

Miracles start to happen when you give as much energy to your dreams as you do to your fears. – Richard Wilkins

Embrace your inner childhood dreams. – Anonymous

Dare to dream. – Anonymous

Be brave, fight for what you belive in and make your dreams a reality. – Anonymous

You mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling. – Anonymous

Doing what you belive in, and going after your dreams will only result in success. – Anonymous

Chase after your dreams. – Anonymous

Dreams are extremely important. You can’t do it unless you imagine it. – George Lucas

Dreams aren’t what you leave behind when morning comes. They are the stuff that fill your every living moment. – David Cuschieri

If you keep believing, the dream that you wish will come true. – Cinderella

Happy are those who dream dreams and are willing to pay the price to make them come true. – Leon Suenens

Someday all my dreams will come true. – Anonymous

Dream big, it’s the first step to success. – Anonymous

The only thing that stands between you and your dream is the will to try and the belief that it is actually possible. – Joel Brown

Dreams are not what you see in sleep, it is the thing which doesn’t let you sleep. – A.P.J Abdul Kalam

Focus on your dream and do everything in your power. You have the power to change your life circumstances. – Nick Vujicic

Never stop dreaming. – Anonymous

I love dreaming. – Anonymous

Dream big dreams, commit to you true passion, and you will learn to fly. – Vadim Kotelnikov

Dream big, work hard. – Sherly Swoopes

Dreams make things happen, nothing is impossible as long as you believe. – Anonymous

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. – Henry David Thoreau

Living the dream is simply a form of living out your passion, of making that passion gradually, through persistence and effort, a central part of your life. – Urijah Faber

Man is a genius when he is dreaming. – Akira Kurosawa

All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams. – Elias Canetti

Dream and give yourself permission to envision a YOU that you choose to be. – Joy Page

All men of action are dreamers. – James Huneker

I was a great dreamer of day dreams. – Abraham Cahan

Stay focused, go after your dreams and keep moving toward your goals. – LL Cool J

Dreams must be heeded and accepted. For a great many of them come true. – Paracelsus

It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams. – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The more closely you get in touch with your dreams, the more able you are to make them real. The more vividly you consider how you want your world to be, the more real and effective tools you will have for making it so. – Ralph Marston

Do all you can to make your dreams come true. – Joel Osteen

So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable. – Christopher Reeve

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. – Eleanor Roosevelt

Living a dream is the most thrilling adventure ever. – Anonymous

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams and live the life you have imagined. – Henry David Thoreau

Dreams Quotes

Dreams Quotes

Quotes From Wikiquote

  • Under each arm he carries an umbrella; one of them, with pictures on the inside, he spreads over the good children, and then they dream the most beautiful stories the whole night. But the other umbrella has no pictures, and this he holds over the naughty children so that they sleep heavily, and wake in the morning without having dreamed at all.
    • Hans Christian Andersen Ole Lukøje
  • Follow your dreams, not your boyfriends.
    • Gillian Anderson, as she wrote in a letter to her teenage self — from Dear Me: More Letters To My Sixteen-Year-Old Self, edited by Joseph Galliano. (June 19, 2011)
  • In dreams and in love there are no impossibilities.
    • János Arany, as quoted in Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources (1893) by James Wood, p. 11.
  • Courage is the magic that turns dreams into reality.
    • Aster and Richter Abend in Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World.
  • Sweet sleep be with us, one and all!
    And if upon its stillness fall
    The visions of a busy brain,
    We’ll have our pleasure o’er again,
    To warm the heart, to charm the sight,
    Gay dreams to all! good night, good night.

    • Joanna Baillie, The Phantom, Song (1836).
  • Hypnotic dreams have long been a method by which hypnosis is utilized in psychotherapy; however, the research on their characteristics in comparison to nocturnal dreams is sparse. Physiological correlates of hypnotic dreams have been clearly established as resembling those of a relaxed waking state much more closely than they resemble any stage of sleep (Brady & Rosner, 1966; Tart, 1964), the one exception being the observation of rapid eye movements (REM) during some hypnotic dreams (Brady & Rosner, 1966; Schiff, Bunney, & Freedman, 1961).
    The content of hypnotic dreams has been less methodically tested. Some psychotherapists describe using hypnotic dreams in the same manner they would nocturnal dreams and believe their content to be virtually identical (Fromm, 1965; Sacerdote, 1968; Schneck, 1953). Other authors describe having observed differences between two categories (Gill & Brenman, 1959; Tart, 1966). The most empirical articles to date have indicated some possible differences, such as hypnotic dreams being shorter, having fewer characters,having more “Alice-in-Wonderland” size distortions (Hilgard & Nowlis, 1972), and being less vivid, less fearful, and more plausible (Spanos & Ham, 1975). Tart (1966) found a correlation between depth of trance and vividness of hypnotic dreams. Some authors such as Barber (1962) and Walker (1974) assert that hypnotic dream content is identical to that of waking fantasy and quite different from nocturnal dreams. Obviously there are many contradictions in the literature of this area.

    • Barrett, D. L. (1979). “The Hypnotic Dream: Its Content in Comparison to Nocturnal Dreams and Waking Fantasy”. Journal of Abnormal Psychology. 88: 584–591. doi:10.1037/0021-843x.88.5.584. p.584
  • Some of my youthful readers are developing wonderful imaginations. This pleases me. Imagination has brought mankind through the Dark Ages to its present state of civilization. Imagination led Columbus to discover America. Imagination led Franklin to discover electricity. Imagination has given us the steam engine, the telephone, the talking-machine, and the automobile, for these things had to be dreamed of before they became realities. So I believe that dreams — day dreams, you know, with your eyes wide open and your brain machinery whizzing — are likely to lead to the betterment of the world. The imaginative child will become the imaginative man or woman most apt to create, to invent, and therefore to foster civilization. A prominent educator tells me that fairy tales are of untold value in developing imagination in the young. I believe it.
    • L. Frank Baum, Introduction to The Lost Princess of Oz (1917).
  • Perhaps you have heard the story of Christopher Wren, one of the greatest of English architects, who walked one day unrecognized among the men who were at work upon the building of St. Paul’s cathedral in London which he had designed. “What are you doing?” he inquired of one of the workmen, and the man replied, “I am cutting a piece of stone.” As he went on he put the same question to another man, and the man replied, “I am earning five shillings twopence a day.” And to a third man he addressed the same inquiry and the man answered, “I am helping Sir Christopher Wren build a beautiful cathedral.” That man had vision. He could see beyond the cutting of the stone, beyond the earning of his daily wage, to the creation of a work of art—the building of a great cathedral. And in your life it is important for you to strive to attain a vision of the larger whole.
    • Attributed to Louise Bush-Brown, director of the Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women. Reported in as unverified in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989).
  • And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.
    • The Bible, Book of Joel, chapter 2, verse 28.
  • Trapped dreams must die.
    • James Branch Cabell, The Certain Hour (1916), “To Robert Gamble Cabell II: In Dedication of The Certain Hour’“.
  • I was born, I think, with the desire to make beautiful books — brave books that would preserve the glories of the Dream untarnished, and would re-create them for battered people, and re-awaken joy and magnanimity.
    • James Branch Cabell, The Certain Hour (1916), “Auctorial Induction”.
  • The Dream, as I now know, is not best served by making parodies of it, and it does not greatly matter after all whether a book be an epic or a directory. What really matters is that there is so much faith and love and kindliness which we can share with and provoke in others, and that by cleanly, simple, generous living we approach perfection in the highest and most lovely of all arts. . . . But you, I think, have always comprehended this.
    • James Branch Cabell, The Certain Hour (1916), “Auctorial Induction”.
  • I can but entreat you to remember it is only by preserving faith in human dreams that we may, after all, perhaps some day make them come true.
    • James Branch Cabell, The Cream of the Jest : A Comedy of Evasions (1917) “Richard Fentnor Harroby” in Ch. 1 : Pallation of the Gambit.
  • With the passage of time, whatever a man had done, whether for good or evil, with the man’s bodily organs, left the man’s parish unaffected: only a man’s thoughts and dreams could outlive him, in any serious sense, and these might survive with perhaps augmenting influence: so that Kennaston had come to think artistic creation in words — since marble and canvas inevitably perished — was the one, possibly, worth-while employment of human life. But here was a crude corporal deed which bluntly destroyed thoughts, and annihilated dreams by wholesale. To Kennaston this seemed the one real tragedy that could be staged on earth….
    • James Branch Cabell, The Cream of the Jest (1917) “Richard Fentnor Harroby” in Ch. 24 : Deals with Pen Scratches.
  • Man alone of animals plays the ape to his dreams.
    • James Branch Cabell, The Silver Stallion : A Comedy of Redemption (1926), Manuel, in Book Four : Coth at Porutsa, Chapter XXV : Last Obligation upon Manuel
  • People must have both their dreams and their dinners in this world, and when we go out of it we must take what we find. That is all.
    • James Branch Cabell, The Silver Stallion : A Comedy of Redemption (1926), Niafer, in Book Ten : At Manuel’s Tomb, Chapter LXIX : Economics of Jurgen.
  • Freud very rightly brought his critical faculties to bear upon the dream. It is, in fact, inadmissible that this considerable portion of psychic activity (since, at least from man’s birth until his death, thought offers no solution of continuity, the sum of the moments of the dream, from the point of view of time, and taking into consideration only the time of pure dreaming, that is the dreams of sleep, is not inferior to the sum of the moments of reality, or, to be more precisely limiting, the moments of waking) has still today been so grossly neglected.
    • André Breton, initiator of French Surrealism, from the first Manifesto of Surrealism – 1924; The Abridged Dictionary of Surrealism, reprinted in Marguerite Bonnet, ed. (1988). Oeuvres complètes, 1:328. Paris: Éditions Gallimard
  • I’ve dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they’ve gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind.
    • Emily Brontë, Catherine Earnshaw (Ch. IX). Wuthering Heights (1847).
  • The dreamer dies, but never dies the dream,
    Though Death shall call the whirlwind to his aid,
    Enlist men’s passions, trick their hearts with hate,
    Still shall the Vision live! Say never more
    That dreams are fragile things. What else endures
    Of all this broken world save only dreams!

    • Dana Burnet, “Who Dreams Shall Live”, in Poems (1915), p. 209, lines 11–16.
  • His early dreams of good outstripp’d the truth,
And troubled manhood follow’d baffled youth.

  • Byron, Lara, Canto 18.
  • Alice! a childish story take,
    And with a gentle hand
    Lay it where Childhood’s dreams are twined
    In Memory’s mystic band,
    Like pilgrim’s withered wreath of flowers
    Plucked in a far-off land.

    • Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), opening poem, stanza seven.
  • Life, what is it but a dream?
    • Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1871)
  • If you have never had a dream, perhaps you have only dreamt to be alive.
    • Fausto Cercignani in: Brian Morris, Quotes we cherish. Quotations from Fausto Cercignani, 2013, p. 21.
  • Perhaps it is not true that “a man becomes what he dreams”; but if he does not dream, what kind of a man is he?
    • Fausto Cercignani, in: Brian Morris, Simply Transcribed. Quotations from Fausto Cercignani, 2013, p. 13.
  • Un poète doit laisser des traces de son passage, non des preuves. Seules les traces font rêver.
    • A poet should leave traces of his passage, not proofs. Traces alone engender dreams.
      • René Char, as quoted in The French-American Review (1976) by Texas Christian University, p. 132.
  • The center of every man’s existence is a dream. Death, disease, insanity, are merely material accidents, like a toothache or a twisted ankle. That these brutal forces always besiege and often capture the citadel does not prove that they are the citadel.
    • G. K. Chesterton, Twelve Types (1903) “Sir Walter Scott”.
  • I have become increasingly convinced that some of the popular methods presumed to discover what is in the unconscious cannot be counted upon as reliable methods of obtaining evidence. They often involve the use of symbolism and analogy in such a way that the interpreter can find virtually anything that he is looking for. Freud, for instance, from a simple dream reported by a man in his middle twenties [i.e., Sergei Pankejeff ] as having occurred at 4 years of age drew remarkable conclusions. The 4-year-old boy dreamed of seeing six or seven white wolves sitting in a tree. Freud interpreted the dream in such a way as to convince himself that the patient at 18 months of age had been shocked by seeing his parents have intercourse three times in succession and that this played a major part in the extreme fear of being castrated by his father which Freud ascribed to him at 4 years of age. No objective evidence was ever offered to support this conclusion. Nor was actual fear of castration ever made to emerge into the light of consciousness despite years of analysis.
    • Hervey Cleckley, The Mask of Sanity, 1941, fifth edition 1976, ISBN 0-9621519-0-4
  • If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand when he awake — Aye, what then?
    • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Anima Poetæ : From the Unpublished Note-books of Samuel Taylor Coleridge” (1895) edited by Ernest Hartley Coleridge, p. 282.
  • Don’t ever let someone tell you, you can’t do something. Not even me. You got a dream, you got to protect it. People can’t do something themselves, they want to tell you you can’t do it. You want something, go get it. Period.
    • Steve Conrad, The Pursuit of Happyness (2006) based on the book by Chris Gardner
  • Dream after dream ensues;
    And still they dream that they shall still succeed;
    And still are disappointed.

    • William Cowper, The Task (1785), Book III, line 127.
  • I dream of vampires. I dream of god. I dream of no vampires. I dream of no god. I dream of nothing. And yet that too is still my dream.
    • Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves (2000), p. 544.
  • Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than with the imagination being awake?
    • Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations., as translated by Edward MacCurdy.
  • Men will seem to see new destructions in the sky. The flames that fall from it will seem to rise in it and to fly from it with terror. They will hear every kind of animals speak in human language. They will instantaneously run in person in various parts of the world, without motion. They will see the greatest splendour in the midst of darkness. O! marvel of the human race! What madness has led you thus! You will speak with animals of every species and they with you in human speech. You will see yourself fall from great heights without any harm and torrents will accompany you, and will mingle with their rapid course.
    • Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), XX Humorous Writings, as translated by Edward MacCurdy.
  • Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness; and this truth is in itself so excellent that, even when it dwells on humble and lowly matters, it is still infinitely above uncertainty and lies, disguised in high and lofty discourses; because in our minds, even if lying should be their fifth element, this does not prevent that the truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects, though not of wandering wits. But you who live in dreams are better pleased by the sophistical reasons and frauds of wits in great and uncertain things, than by those reasons which are certain and natural and not so far above us.
    • Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations., as translated by Edward MacCurdy.
  • ‘I say to my students: We all spend a big chunk of our lives dreaming—we obviously need to do it for some reason.’
    • Drew Dawson, Director, Centre for Sleep Research, UNISA In Williams, Daniel (April 5, 2007). “While you were sleeping”. Time Magazine. Archived from the original on October 3, 2011. Retrieved October 9, 2011.
  • Somehow, I can’t believe that there are any heights that can’t be scaled by a man who knows the secret of making dreams come true. The special secret it seems to me is summarized in four C’s. They are Curiosity, Courage, Confidence and Constancy. And the greatest of all is Confidence. When you believe in a thing, believe in it all the way, implicitly and unquestionably.
    • Walt Disney, as quoted in Perceive This! : How to Get Everything You Want Out of Life by Changing Your Perceptions (2004) by Kevin A. Martin, Ch. 9, No Bar Too High!, p. 64.
  • All our dreams can come true — if we have the courage to pursue them.
    • Walt Disney, How to Be Like Walt : Capturing the Magic Every Day of Your Life (2004), Ch. 3 : Imagination Unlimited, p. 63; Unsourced variant: All your dreams can come true if you have the courage to pursue them.
  • During the late nineteenth century it was generally believed by dream theorists that dreams were very brief, usually in reaction to an internal or external stimulus, or even that they occurred during the process of awakening. Freud (1900) tried to blend these perspectives by comparing dreams to “a firework that has been hours in the preparation, and then blazes up in a moment.” He agreed that they last for only a brief time, and perhaps occur only during awakening, but added the idea that the thoughts underlying dreams develop slowly during the day. However, contrary to Freud, laboratory studies reveal that dreaming takes place longer, more frequently, and more regularly than he or any other theorist ever imagined before the serendipitous discovery of sleep stages in 1953 (Aserinsky & Kleitman, 1953; Dement, 1955; Dement & Kleitman, 1957).
  • Freud also asserted that “a reference to the events of the day just past is to be discovered in every dream,” but five detailed studies demonstrate that only about half of dreams contain even the slightest “day residue” that can be identified by the dreamer (Botman & Crovitz, 1989; Harlow & Roll, 1992; Hartmann, 1968; Marquardt, Bonato, & Hoffmann, 1996; Nielsen & Powell, 1992). As part of his emphasis on the large role of specific memories in shaping dream content, Freud believed that all significant speeches in dreams can be traced to memories of speeches heard or sentences read, but the analysis of hundreds of speech acts in dreams collected in sleep laboratories shows they are usually new constructions appropriate to the unfolding dream context, not reproductions (Meier, 1993). Indeed, speech acts are so appropriate to the dream context that bi-lingual participants in one sleep study reported that they spoke in the language understood by the dream character with whom they were talking(Foulkes, Meier, Strauch, & Kerr, 1993).
  • Freud’s most famous and important claim was that “wish-fulfillment is the meaning of each and every dream.” Although this hypothesis was based on his work with adult patients, he began his argument with several simple wishful dreams that he overheard from his pre-school children or learned of through the parents of the dreamers. However, a five-year longitudinal study in the sleep laboratory of 14 children ages 3-5 reveals on the basis of dozens of awakenings that young children have static and bland dreams, not at all like Freud’s anecdotal examples (Foulkes, 1982; Foulkes, 1999).
    • Domhoff, G. W. (2000). “Moving Dream Theory Beyond Freud and Jung”. Paper presented to the symposium Beyond Freud and Jung?, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, CA, 9/23/2000.
  • Dreams, as we all know, are very queer things: some parts are presented with appalling vividness, with details worked up with the elaborate finish of jewellery, while others one gallops through, as it were, without noticing them at all, as, for instance, through space and time. Dreams seem to be spurred on not by reason but by desire, not by the head but by the heart, and yet what complicated tricks my reason has played sometimes in dreams, what utterly incomprehensible things happen to it!
    • Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877), II.
  • Yes, I dreamed a dream, my dream of the third of November. They tease me now, telling me it was only a dream. But does it matter whether it was a dream or reality, if the dream made known to me the truth? If once one has recognized the truth and seen it, you know that it is the truth and that there is no other and there cannot be, whether you are asleep or awake. Let it be a dream, so be it, but that real life of which you make so much I had meant to extinguish by suicide, and my dream, my dream — oh, it revealed to me a different life, renewed, grand and full of power!
    • Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877), II.
  • In dreams you sometimes fall from a height, or are stabbed, or beaten, but you never feel pain unless, perhaps, you really bruise yourself against the bedstead, then you feel pain and almost always wake up from it. It was the same in my dream. I did not feel any pain, but it seemed as though with my shot everything within me was shaken and everything was suddenly dimmed, and it grew horribly black around me. I seemed to be blinded, and it benumbed, and I was lying on something hard, stretched on my back; I saw nothing, and could not make the slightest movement.
    • Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877), III.
  • Oh, everyone laughs in my face now, and assures me that one cannot dream of such details as I am telling now, that I only dreamed or felt one sensation that arose in my heart in delirium and made up the details myself when I woke up. And when I told them that perhaps it really was so, my God, how they shouted with laughter in my face, and what mirth I caused! Oh, yes, of course I was overcome by the mere sensation of my dream, and that was all that was preserved in my cruelly wounded heart; but the actual forms and images of my dream, that is, the very ones I really saw at the very time of my dream, were filled with such harmony, were so lovely and enchanting and were so actual, that on awakening I was, of course, incapable of clothing them in our poor language, so that they were bound to become blurred in my mind; and so perhaps I really was forced afterwards to make up the details, and so of course to distort them in my passionate desire to convey some at least of them as quickly as I could. But on the other hand, how can I help believing that it was all true? It was perhaps a thousand times brighter, happier and more joyful than I describe it. Granted that I dreamed it, yet it must have been real. You know, I will tell you a secret: perhaps it was not a dream at all!
    • Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877), IV.
  • How it could come to pass I do not know, but I remember it clearly. The dream embraced thousands of years and left in me only a sense of the whole. I only know that I was the cause of their sin and downfall. Like a vile trichina, like a germ of the plague infecting whole kingdoms, so I contaminated all this earth, so happy and sinless before my coming. They learnt to lie, grew fond of lying, and discovered the charm of falsehood.
    • Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877), V.
  • A dream! What is a dream? And is not our life a dream? I will say more. Suppose that this paradise will never come to pass (that I understand), yet I shall go on preaching it. And yet how simple it is: in one day, in one hour everything could be arranged at once! The chief thing is to love others like yourself, that’s the chief thing, and that’s everything; nothing else is wanted — you will find out at once how to arrange it all. And yet it’s an old truth which has been told and retold a billion times — but it has not formed part of our lives! The consciousness of life is higher than life, the knowledge of the laws of happiness is higher than happiness — that is what one must contend against. And I shall. If only everyone wants it, it can be arranged at once.
    • Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877), V.
  • A dream! What is a dream? And is not our life a dream? I will say more. Suppose that this paradise will never come to pass (that I understand), yet I shall go on preaching it. And yet how simple it is: in one day, in one hour everything could be arranged at once! The chief thing is to love others like yourself, that’s the chief thing, and that’s everything; nothing else is wanted — you will find out at once how to arrange it all. And yet it’s an old truth which has been told and retold a billion times — but it has not formed part of our lives! The consciousness of life is higher than life, the knowledge of the laws of happiness is higher than happiness — that is what one must contend against. And I shall. If only everyone wants it, it can be arranged at once.
    • Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877), V.
  • You can live in your dreams, but only if you are worthy of them.
    • Harlan Ellison , “Delusion for a Dragon Slayer” (1966).
  • They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
    Out of a misty dream
    Our path emerges for a while, then closes
    Within a dream.

    • Ernest Dowson, “They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,” stanza 2, The Poems and Prose of Ernest Dowson (1919), p. 22.
  • Nenne dich nicht arm, weil deine Träume nicht in Erfüllung gegangen sind; wirklich arm ist nur der, der nicht geträumt hat.
    • Don’t call yourself poor, because your dreams are unfulfilled. Truly poor is only the one who has never dreamed.
    • Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Fünfhundert Aphorismen, p. 69
  • The seventeenth-century Iroquois, as described by the Jesuit missionaries, practiced a dream psychotherapy that was remarkably similar to Freud’s discoveries two hundred years later. The Iroquois recognized the existence of an unconscious, the force of unconscious desires, the way in which the conscious mind attempts to repress unpleasant thoughts, the emergence of unpleasant thoughts in dreams, and the mental and physical (psychosomatic) illnesses that may be caused by the frustration of unconscious desires. The Iroquois knew that their dreams did not deal in facts but rather in symbols. …And one of the techniques employed by the Iroquois seers to uncover the latent meanings behind a dream was free association… The Iroquois faith in dreams… is only somewhat diminished after more than three hundred years. …The conclusions are inevitable: Had Freud not discovered psychotherapy, then someone else would have.
    • Peter Farb, Man’s Rise to Civilization (1968)
  • You have to believe we are magic, nothin’ can stand in our way
    You have to believe we are magic, don’t let your aim ever stray
    And if all your hopes survive, destiny will arrive
    I’ll bring all your dreams alive, for you.

    • John Farrar in “Magic”, from the film Xanadu (1980).
  • People say that your dreams are the only things that save ya… Come on baby in our dreams, we can live our misbehaviors
    • Arcade Fire, “Rebellion (Lies)”, Funeral (2004).
  • If dreaming was selected for because of its adaptive function, the general content of dreams should certainly reflect this, and consist of situations that allow the rehearsal of scenarios that ultimately lead toward increased fitness. This is exactly what is seen, with studies indicating that dream content is biased toward negative elements reflecting threat, as opposed to positive elements. Data collected from over 500 dream reports by Hall and Van de Castle (1966) indicate that about 80% contained negative emotions, while only about 20% contained positive emotions. These negative dreams are also disproportionably likely to contain threatening elements such as animals and male strangers in threatening encounters. The evidence points towards the overrepresentation of threatening events in dreams, which should not occur if dream content is random. Through appropriating and learning to deal with these threats in dreams, it is proposed here that an animal could increase its overall evolutionary fitness.
    • Franklin, M; Zyphur, M (2005). “The role of dreams in the evolution of the human mind” (PDF). Evolutionary Psychology. 3: Archived (PDF) from the original on 2011-08-11, p.66
  • Another example of a skill that has arguably played a pivotal role in other functional aspects of the human intellect and could serve to be shaped by dreaming is that of interpretation. As discussed by Bogdan (1997, p.108), “…key advances in interpretation, such as the recognition of belief, were accelerated by increased opportunities to interact with or manipulate subjects and slowed down by a lack of such opportunities.” As such, via teasing, play, mental rehearsal/imagery, or dreaming, the individual is given the opportunity to utilize successful strategies in dealing with these situations and further develop interpretive skills. In fact, studies of children’s dream-reports indicate that their dreams more often contain family members and close friends than adults’ dreams (Hobson, 1988), possibly due to the fact that it is more important for younger children to be practicing close interpersonal skills than it is for adults.
    • Ibid, p.69-70
  • The latent content of dreams consists of:
    1. Dynamically unconscious wishes (id impulses) prevented by the censorship (the defences of the ego) from reaching consciousness or even the system preconscious during waking life. Several wishes may be present in the same dream:
    ‘Dreams frequently seem to have more than one meaning. Not only, as our examples have shown, may they include several wishfulfilments one alongside the other; but a succession of meanings or wish-fulfilments may be superimposed on one another, the bottom one being the fulfilment of a wish dating from earliest childhood. And here again the question arises whether it might not be more correct to assert that this occurs “invariably” rather than “frequently”.

    • (1900a) The Interpertation of Dreams, S.E., Vol. 4, p. 219; as quoted in Nagera, Humberto, ed. (2014) [1969]. “Latent dream-content (pp. 31ff.)”. Basic Psychoanalytic Concepts on the Theory of Dreams. Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge. ISBN 1-31767048-5. ISBN 978-1-317-67048-3., p.31
  • The majority of these impulses are sexual in nature, and most of them stem from the infantile period of life: ‘a dream might be described as a substitute for an infantile scene modified by being trnsferred on to a recent experience. The infantile scene is unable to bring about its own revival and has to be content with returning as a dream.’
    • 1900a) The Interpertation of Dreams, S.E., Vol. 5, p. 546; as quoted in Nagera, Humberto, ed. (2014) [1969]. “Latent dream-content (pp. 31ff.)”. Basic Psychoanalytic Concepts on the Theory of Dreams. Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge. ISBN 1-31767048-5. ISBN 978-1-317-67048-3., p.31
  • The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.
    • The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), from The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, translated by James Strachey.
    • At any rate the interpretation of dreams is the via regia to a knowledge of the unconscious in psychic life.
      • Alternate translation by Abraham Arden Brill, p. 483. Freud did use the Latin phrase via regia in the original as opposed to translating it into the German of the surrounding text.
    • Sigmund Freud “Royal road” or via regia is an allusion to a statement attributed to Euclid.
  • Both dreams and myths are important communications from ourselves to ourselves. If we do not understand the language in which they are written, we miss a great deal of what we know and tell ourselves in those hours when we are not busy manipulating the outside world.
    • Erich Fromm, as quoted in The New York Times (5 January 1964).
  • Science’s self-assumed responsibility has been self-limited to disclosure to society only of the separate, supposedly physical (because separately weighable) atomic component isolations data. Synergetic integrity would require the scientists to announce that in reality what had been identified heretofore as physical is entirely metaphysical—because synergetically weightless. Metaphysical has been science’s designation for all weightless phenomena such as thought. But science has made no experimental finding of any phenomena that can be described as a solid, or as continuous, or as a straight surface plane, or as a straight line, or as infinite anything. We are now synergetically forced to conclude that all phenomena are metaphysical; wherefore, as many have long suspected—like it or not—”life is but a dream”.
  • Buckminster Fuller, Synergetics (Introduction: The Wellspring of Reality) 1975
  • Did I dream this belief
    Or did I believe this dream?
    Now I will find relief
    I grieve

    • Peter Gabriel I Grieve
  • Always believe in your dreams, because if you don’t, you’ll still have hope.
    • Mahatma Gandhi Young India (23 March 1924).
  • Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge
    • Paul Gauguin, Avant et Après (1903), from Paul Gauguin’s Intimate Journals, trans. (1923) Van Wyck Brooks [Dover, 1997, ISBN 0-486-29441-2], p. 2.
  • Dreams, something like prophecy, are the offspring of imaginations and comparisons which we may form whilst awake.
    • Tales and Maxims from the Midrash by Rev. Samuel Rapaport, Genesis Rabbah 17, (1907), p. 69
  • Dreams neither injure nor benefit: they are vain.
    • Ibid., Genesis Rabbah 68, p.83
  • A dream towards morning is likely to be fulfilled.
    • Ibid., Genesis Rabbah 89, p.86
  • When a dream is born in you
    With a sudden clamorous pain,
    When you know the dream is true
    And lovely, with no flaw nor stain,
    O then, be careful, or with sudden clutch
    You’ll hurt the delicate thing you prize so much.

    • Robert Graves, Fairies and Fusiliers (1917), “A Pinch of Salt”.
  • The pain was maddening. You should pray to God when you’re dying, if you can pray when you’re in agony. In my dream I didn’t pray to God, I thought of Roger and how dearly I loved him. The pain of those wicked flames was not half so bad as the pain I felt when I knew he was dead. I felt suddenly glad to be dying. I didn’t know when you were burnt to death you’d bleed. I thought the blood would all dry up in the terrible heat. But I was bleeding heavily. The blood was dripping and hissing in the flames. I wished I had enough blood to put the flames out. The worst part was my eyes. I hate the thought of gong blind. It’s bad enough when I’m awake but in dreams you can’t shake the thoughts away. They remain. In this dream I was going blind. I tried to close my eyelids but I couldn’t. They must have been burnt off, and now those flames were going to pluck my eyes out with their evil fingers, I didn’t want to go blind. The flames weren’t so cruel after all. They began to feel cold. Icy cold. It occurred to me that I wasn’t burning to death but freezing to death.
    • Arthur Guirdham in The Cathars and Reincarnation, p. 89.
  • Many similarities are noted between the process of dreaming and the process of psychotherapy as usually practiced in the many dynamic psychotherapies deriving from Freud’s work. Dreaming and psychotherapy both involve freeing of associations, prevention of acting out, and making psychological connections in many different senses, all occurring in a safe environment. In REM sleep, safety is provided by the bed and by muscular paralysis; in therapy, by the relationship with the therapist (alliance), the setting, and the rules of conduct. The similarity can be seen particularly clearly in the period following an acute trauma. Dreaming and therapy each give the patient a safe place in which to make connections between the trauma and other relevant memories, themes, and issues so that the trauma and its associated disturbing affect are eventually integrated into the patient’s life. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
    • Hartmann, E. “Making connections in a safe place: Is dreaming psychotherapy?”. Dreaming. 5 (4): 213–228. doi:10.1037/h0094437. (1995).
  • Dream and deed are not as different as many think. All the deeds of men are dreams at first, and become dreams in the end.
    • Theodor Herzl as quoted in The Israelis : Founders and Sons (1971) by Amos Elon, p. 57
  • I differ from Freud in that I think that most dreams are neither obscure nor bowdlerized, but rather that they are transparent and unedited. They reveal clearly meaningful undisguised and often highly conflictual themes worthy of note by the dreamer (and any interpretive assistant). My position echoes Jung’s notion of dreams as transparently meaningful and does away with any distinction between manifest and latent content.
    • J. Allan Hobson, in The Dreaming Brain : How the brain creates both the sense and nonsense of dreams (1988)
  • Dreaming has fascinated and mystified humankind for ages: the bizarre and evanescent qualities of dreams have invited boundless speculation about their origin, meaning and purpose. For most of the twentieth century, scientific dream theories were mainly psychological. Since the discovery of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, the neural underpinnings of dreaming have become increasingly well understood, and it is now possible to complement the details of these brain mechanisms with a theory of consciousness that is derived from the study of dreaming. The theory advanced here emphasizes data that suggest that REM sleep may constitute a protoconscious state, providing a virtual reality model of the world that is of functional use to the development and maintenance of waking consciousness.
    • Hobson, J.A. (2009). “REM sleep and dreaming: towards a theory of protoconsciousness”. Nature Reviews Neuroscience. 10 (11): 803–813. doi:10.1038/nrn2716. PMID 19794431. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19794431
  • It is important to state here — though evidence will be considered in detail later on — that all three women have either had “dreams” or normal recollections of having been shown, at later times, tiny offspring whose appearance suggests they are something other than completely human . . . that they are in fact hybrids, partly human and partly what we must call, for want of a better term, alien. it is unthinkable and unbelievable — yet the evidence points in that direction. An ongoing and systematic breeding experiment must be considered one of the central purposes of UFO abductions.
    • Budd Hopkins, in Intruders: The Incredible Visitations at Copley Woods , p. 130
  • Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.
    • Langston Hughes, in “Dreams” in the anthology Golden Slippers : An Anthology of Negro Poetry for Young Readers (1941), edited by Arna Bontemps.
  • What happens to a dream deferred?Does it dry up
    like a raisin in the sun?

    Or fester like a sore —
    And then run?
    Does it stink like rotten meat?
    Or crust and sugar over —
    like a syrupy sweet?Maybe it just sags
    like a heavy load.Or does it explode?

    • Langston Hughes, in “Harlem” in Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951).
  • Joined by his friend Zero, Mega Man X gazes out over the sea. Sigma has once again been destroyed, but X wonders if the fighting will truly end. Was Dr. Light’s dream of a world in which Reploids and humans lived together in peace merely a dream? The price of peace is often high, X thinks to himself. Who or what must be sacrificed for it to become a reality? And when the time comes, will he be able to do it? The future holds the answers or…
  • Keiji Inafune, Sho Tsuge and Yoshihisa Tsuda Mega Man X2
  • I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past, — so good night!
    • Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams (1 August 1816).
  • ALL THIS IS A DREAM. Still examine it by a few experiments. Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature; and in such things as these experiment is the best test of such consistency.
    • Michael Faraday, in his laboratory journal entry #10,040 (19 March 1849); published in The Life and Letters of Faraday (1870) Vol. II, edited by Henry Bence Jones, p. 253. This has sometimes been quoted partially as “Nothing is too wonderful to be true”.
  • The dream is the small hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul, which opens to that primeval cosmic night that was soul long before there was conscious ego and will be soul far beyond what a conscious ego could ever reach.
    • Carl Jung, The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man (1934).
  • We are so captivated by and entangled in our subjective consciousness that we have forgotten the age-old fact that God speaks chiefly through dreams and visions.
    • Carl Jung, The Symbolic Life (1953); also in Man and His Symbols (1964).
  • We were able to reveal dream content from brain activity during sleep, which was consistent with the subjects’ verbal reports.
  • All of this would have to be done within individual subjects. So you would never be able build a general classifier that could read anybody’s dreams. They will all be idiosyncratic to the individual, so the brain activity will never be general across subjects.
    • Yukiyasu Kamitani, in “Scientists ‘read dreams’ using brain scans – BBC News”. BBC News. Archived from the original on 2016-04-27. Retrieved 2016-04-24.
  • One of the most important ways of understanding the unconscious—indeed, as Freud saw it, the royal road to discovering the nature of its contents—is the dream.
    • Morton Kelsey, Myth, History & Faith: The Mysteries of Christian Myth & Imagination (1974) Ch.VII
  • I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.” … I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.
    • Martin Luther King, Jr., “I Have a Dream,” speech at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C. (August 28, 1963); reported in the Congressional Record (April 18, 1968), vol. 114, p. 9165.
  • I chose to dream and act on my dreams, following the example that my father taught. To live with this dream may be crazy, it may be foolish, but to live without it would be a nightmare.
    • Yolanda King, “A Dream Deferred” Speech (1989) delivered at Denise’s alma mater
  • Dreaming is not merely an act of communication; it is also an aesthetic activity, a game of the imagination, a game that is a value in itself.
    • Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984). as translated by Michael Henry Heim; Part Two: Soul and Body, p. 59.
  • Yes, you can kill the dreamer. Absolutely, you can kill the dreamer. But you cannot kill the dream.
    • Samuel Kyles, as quoted in “Samuel Billy Kyles, Witness to King’s Last Moments, Dies at 81” (30 April 2016), by Sam Roberts, The New York Times
  • The dream on the pillow,
    That flits with the day,
    The leaf of the willow
    A breath wears away;
    The dust on the blossom,
    The spray on the sea;
    Ay,—ask thine own bosom—
    Are emblems of thee.

    • Letitia Elizabeth Landon, The London Literary Gazette (29th March 1823), ‘Song – The dream on the pillow’
  • I dreamed a dream, that I had flung a chain
    Of roses around Love, — I woke, and found
    I had chained Sorrow.

    • Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Literary Souvenir, 1826 (1825), ‘The Forsaken’
  • if after all this any one will be so sceptical as to distrust his senses, and to affirm that all we see and hear, feel and taste, think and do, during our whole being, is but the series and deluding appearances of a long dream, whereof there is no reality; and therefore will question the existence of all things, or our knowledge of anything: I must desire him to consider, that, if all be a dream, then he doth but dream that he makes the question, and so it is not much matter that a waking man should answer him. But yet, if he pleases, he may dream that I make him this answer,
    • Locke, John An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Book IV Of Knowledge And Probability
  • Dream, dream, let me dream,
    Wherefore should I waken,
    Sleep is as a fairy land
    Not yet by spells forsaken.
    Break not on the gentle charm
    In which night has bound me,
    Wherefore, wherefore should I wake
    To the cold world around me ?

    • Letitia Elizabeth Landon, The Casket, 1829, ‘Song’
  • All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did.
    • T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922).
  • Some dreams tell us what we wish to believe. Some dreams tell us what we fear. Some dreams are of what we know though we may not know we knew it. The rarest dream is the dream that tells us what we did not know.
    • Ursula K. Le Guin, Social Dreaming of the Frin in David G. Hartwell (ed.) Year’s Best Fantasy 3, p. 172 (Originally published at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction October/November 2002)
  • “Dreams mean nothing,” he said coldly. “They are unreal.”
    “They’re as real as anything else,” she shot back at him. “And they merely mean conscience.”

    • Fritz Leiber, Gather, Darkness! (1950), Chapter 14
  • Imagine there’s no countries,
    It isn’t hard to do,
    Nothing to kill or die for,
    No religion too,
    Imagine all the people
    living life in peace…
    You may say I’m a dreamer,
    but I’m not the only one,
    I hope some day you’ll join us,
    And the world will be as one.

    • John Lennon, in Imagine
  • “It is new, indeed, for I made it last night in a dream of strange cities; and dreams are older than brooding Tyre, or the contemplative Sphinx, or garden-girdled Babylon.”
    • H. P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu, Chapter 1
  • The king lay down not to sleep, he lay down to dream.
    • Lugalbanda in the Mountain Cave, Ur III Period (21st century BCE).[1]
  • To the liar it talks in lies, to the truthful it speaks truth. It can make one man happy, it can make another man sing, but it is the closed tablet-basket of the gods. It is the beautiful bedchamber of Ninlil, it is the counsellor of Inana. The multiplier of mankind, the voice of one not alive.
    • Lugalbanda in the Mountain Cave, Ur III Period (21st century BCE).[2]
  • There are those, I know, who will reply that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is. It is the American Dream.
    • Archibald MacLeish, “We Have Purpose … We All Know It”, Life (May 30, 1960), p. 93. This was one of a series of essays in Life magazine and The New York Times on “The National Purpose.”
  • The value of dreams, like … divinations, is not that they give a specific answer, but that they open up new areas of psychic reality, shake us out of our customary ruts, and throw light on a new segment of our lives. Thus the sayings of the shrine, like dreams, were not to be received passively; the recipients had to “live” themselves into the message.
    • Rollo May, The Courage to Create (1975), Ch. 5 : The Delphic Oracle as Therapist, p. 106.
  • This research investigated laypeople’s interpretation of their dreams. Participants from both Eastern and Western cultures believed that dreams contain hidden truths (Study 1) and considered dreams to provide more meaningful information about the world than similar waking thoughts (Studies 2 and 3). The meaningfulness attributed to specific dreams, however, was moderated by the extent to which the content of those dreams accorded with participants’ preexisting beliefs–from the theories they endorsed to attitudes toward acquaintances, relationships with friends, and faith in God (Studies 3-6). Finally, dream content influenced judgment: Participants reported greater affection for a friend after considering a dream in which a friend protected rather than betrayed them (Study 5) and were equally reluctant to fly after dreaming or learning of a plane crash (Studies 2 and 3). Together, these results suggest that people engage in motivated interpretation of their dreams and that these interpretations impact their everyday lives. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
    • Morewedge, Carey K.; Norton, Michael I. “When dreaming is believing: The (motivated) interpretation of dreams”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 96(2): 249–264. doi:10.1037/a0013264. PMID 19159131.
  • Whereas Freud was for the most part concerned with the morbid effects of unconscious repression, Jung was more interested in the manifestations of unconscious expression, first in the dream and eventually in all the more orderly products of religion and art and morals.
    • Lewis Mumford in Interpretations and Forecasts (1967)
  • The dream censorship functions to preserve sleep by controlling the expression of unconscious wishes, and reventing the generation of unpleasant affect. The inhibition of affect…must be considered as the second consequence of the censorship of dreams, just as dream-distortion is its first consequence’ It should be noted that while it is the censorship that necessitates dream distortion, the censorship itself does not actually carry out the distortion, This is done by the dream-work. The work of the censorship is merely to prevent unconscious wishes from entering the preconscious, or from linking up with preconscious wishes. Only if the unconscious wishes can be sufficiently disguised by the dream-work will the censorship permit the compromise formation to be experienced as part of the dream.
    • Nagera, Humberto, ed. “Manifest content” “Basic Psychoanalytic Concepts on the Theory of Dreams”. Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge. ISBN 1-31767047-7. ISBN 978-1-317-67047-6. p.57, (2014) [1969]
  • We are near awakening when we dream that we dream.
    • Variants: We are near waking when we dream that we dream. As quoted by Edgar Allan Poe in “A Tale of the Ragged Mountains” (1844), adapted from Fragments from German Prose Writers (1841) by Sarah Austin We are near waking when we dream we are dreaming.
    • Novalis as quoted in the essay “Novalis” (1829) by Thomas Carlyle
  • “You are walking on the earth as in a dream; Our world is a dream within a dream” Paramahansa Yogananda, The Divine Romance,1986
  • A dream is a creation of the intelligence, the creator being present but not knowing how it will end.
    • Cesare Pavese, This Business of Living1940-07-22
  • Tonight, may I get so drunk in love that
    I do not see any dreams!

    • Suman Pokhrel, May I Not See Dreams
  • The dream too thinks twice,
    gets filtered to go soft
    to be seated on children’s eyes.

    • Suman Pokhrel, Children
  • I salute my desires with a bow.,
    were it not for them to come and play
    mind would be empty just like me.

    • Suman Pokhrel, Desire
  • Still enveloped in a blanket of dreams
    my life continued to lie still, pretending as if
    it was in a deep slumber.

    • Suman Pokhrel, An Encounter with Life
  • I felt I was getting enraged
    and losing my speech
    like them losing their dreams.

    • Suman Pokhrel, Among freed Bonded-Labourers
  • They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
    • Edgar Allan Poe, Eleonora (1841).
  • It is the quality and intensity of the dream only which raises men above the biological norm; and it is fidelity to the dream which differentiates the exceptional figure, the man of heroic stature, from the muddling, aimless mediocrities about him. What the dream is, matters not at all — it may be a dream of sainthood, kingship, love, art, asceticism or sensual pleasure — so long as it is fully expressed with all the resources of self.
    • Burton Rascoe, in the Introduction to Chivalry (1921) by James Branch Cabell, later published in Prometheans : Ancient and Modern (1933), p. 279.
  • Several theories claim that dreaming is a random by-product of REM sleep physiology and that it does not serve any natural function. Phenomenal dream content, however, is not as disorganized as such views imply. The form and content of dreams is not random but organized and selective: during dreaming, the brain constructs a complex model of the world in which certain types of elements, when* compared to waking life, are underrepresented whereas others are over represented. Furthermore, dream content is consistently and powerfully modulated by certain types of waking experiences. On the basis of this evidence, I put forward the hypothesis that the biological function of dreaming is to simulate threatening events, and to rehearse threat perception and threat avoidance. To evaluate this hypothesis, we need to consider the original evolutionary context of dreaming and the possible traces it has left in the dream content of the present human population. In the ancestral environment human life was short and full of threats. Any behavioral advantage in dealing with highly dangerous events would have increased the probability of reproductive success. A dream-production mechanism that tends to select threatening waking events and simulate them over and over again in various combinations would have been valuable for the development and maintenance of threat-avoidance skills. Empirical evidence from normative dream content, children’s dreams, recurrent dreams, nightmares, post traumatic dreams, and the dreams of hunter-gatherers indicates that our dream-production mechanisms are in fact specialized in the simulation of threatening events, and thus provides support to the threat simulation hypothesis of the function of dreaming.
    • Revonsuo, A. (2000). “The reinterpretation of dreams: an evolutionary hypothesis of the function of dreaming”. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 23 (6): 877–901. doi:10.1017/S0140525X00004015. PMID 11515147.
  • Still speaking of dreams, Seth says: “Energy projected into any kind of construction, psychic or physical, cannot be recalled, but must follow the laws of the particular form into which it has been for the moment molded. Therefore, when the dreamer contracts his multi-realistic objects backward, ending for himself the dream he has constructed, he ends it for himself only. The reality of the dream continues.” The energy, as Seth explains it, can be transformed, but not annihilated.
    • Jane Roberts in The Seth Material, p. 200-201.
  • It is true of the Nation, as of the individual, that the greatest doer must also be a great dreamer.
    • Theodore Roosevelt, Berkeley, CA, 1911
  • Man is essentially a dreamer, wakened sometimes for a moment by some peculiarly obtrusive element in the outer world, but lapsing again quickly into the happy somnolence of imagination. Freud has shown how largely our dreams at night are the pictured fulfilment of our wishes; he has, with an equal measure of truth, said the same of day-dreams; and he might have included the day-dreams which we call beliefs.
    • Bertrand Russell, Sceptical Essays (1928), Ch. 2: Dreams and Facts
  • The republic is a dream
    Nothing happens unless first a dream.

    • Carl Sandburg, “Washington Monument by Night,” stanza 4, in The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg, rev. and expanded ed. (1970), p. 282. Ronald Reagan quoted this before a joint session of Congress (April 28, 1981), and added: “As Carl Sandburg said, all we need to begin with is a dream that we can do better than before. All we need to have is faith, and that dream will come true. All we need to do is act, and the time for action is now”. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Ronald Reagan, 1981, p. 394.
  • It may be that “dreaming,” too, should be understood this way, as sustaining the objectifying power of people during hours when they are cut off from the natural source of objects, so that they do not during sleep drown in their own corporeal engulfment. That is, the particular content of dreams (now terrifying, now benign; now full of uncanny secret intelligence about the sleeper, now ignorant, arbitrary, and nonsensical) is itself insignificant beside the overall fact of the dreaming itself, the emergency work of the imagination to provide an object – this object, that object, any object – to sustain and to exercise the capacity for self-objectification during the sleep-filled hours of sweet and dangerous bodily absorption.
    • Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (1985)
  • Although the variability of dream content is large, typical dream themes that occur quite often and are reported by many people can be identified (e.g., being chased, falling, flying, failing an examination, being unable to find a toilet or restroom). The present study is an investigation of the stability of the rank order of the dream themes and of gender differences in the content of dreams. The authors administered A. L. Zadra and T. A. Nielsen’s (1997) Typical Dream Questionnaire to 444 participants. The findings indicated that most of the 55 dream themes occurred at least once in most of the participants’ lifetimes. In addition, the correlation coefficients for the rank order of the themes were very high; that is, the relative frequencies were stable. The gender differences in the present study were in line with content analytic findings; for example, men reported dreams about physical aggression more often than did women. Overall, previous research and the present data indicate that available research results of the measurement of typical dream themes are reliable and valid. The question of the meaning of these themes or the relationship between typical dream contents and waking life experiences, however, has not yet been answered and is open to future research.
    • Michael Schredl; Petra Ciric; Simon Götz; Lutz Wittmann (November 2004). “Typical Dreams: Stability and Gender Differences”. The Journal of Psychology. 138 (6): 485–94. doi:10.3200/JRLP.138.6.485-494. PMID 15612605.
  • But only in their dreams can men be truly free. ‘Twas always thus, and always thus will be.
    • Tom Schulman, Dead Poets Society (1989), expressed by the character John Keating
  • I think the destiny of all men is not to sit in the rubble of their own making but to reach out for an ultimate perfection which is to be had. At the moment, it is a dream. But as of the moment we clasp hands with our neighbor, we build the first span to bridge the gap between the young and the old. At this hour, it’s a wish. But we have it within our power to make it a reality. If you want to prove that God is not dead, first prove that man is alive.
    • Rod Serling, speech at Moorpark College, Moorpark, California (3 December 1968)[specific citation needed]
  • It’s simply a national acknowledgement that in any kind of priority, the needs of human beings must come first. Poverty is here and now. Hunger is here and now. Racial tension is here and now. Pollution is here and now. These are the things that scream for a response. And if we don’t listen to that scream – and if we don’t respond to it – we may well wind up sitting amidst our own rubble, looking for the truck that hit us – or the bomb that pulverized us. Get the license number of whatever it was that destroyed the dream. And I think we will find that the vehicle was registered in our own name.
    • Rod Serling, Commencement Address at the University of Southern California; March 17, 1970
  • I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was.
    • William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (c. 1595).
  • To die, to sleep;
    To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub:
    For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
    When we have shuffled off this mortal coil…”

    • William Shakespeare, Hamlet (c. 1599), Act 3, sc. 1.
  • We are such stuff
    As dreams are made on, and our little life
    Is rounded with a sleep.

    • William Shakespeare, The Tempest (c. 1603 – 1612).
  • There are a kind of men so loose of soul,
    That in their sleeps will mutter their affairs.

    • William Shakespeare, Othello (1603–4), Act III, scene iii.
  • Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true
    Or is it something worse?

    • Bruce Springsteen, “The River”, from The River (1980)
  • It is surely nobler to be a victim of the most noble dream than to profit from a sordid reality and to wallow in it. Dream is akin to aspiration. And aspiration is a kind of divination of an enigmatic vision. And an enigmatic vision in the emphatic sense is the perception of the ultimate mystery, of the truth of the ultimate mystery.
    • Leo Strauss, Commenting upon the Aleinu prayer, in “Why We Remain Jews” (1962).
  • The greatest man of action is he who is the greatest, and a life-long, dreamer. For in him the dreamer is fortified against destruction by a far-seeing eye, a virile mind, a strong will, a robust courage.
    And so has perished the kindly dreamer — on the cross or in the garret.
    A democracy should not let its dreamers perish. They are its life, its guaranty against decay.

    • Louis Sullivan, Education (1902), First read before the Architectural League of America, Toronto (1902), later published in Kindergarten Chats (revised 1918) and Other Writings (1947).
  • You see things; and you say “Why?” But I dream things that never were; and I say “Why not?”
    • George Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah, act I, in Selected Plays with Prefaces (1949), vol. 2, p. 7. The serpent says these words to Eve. John F. Kennedy quoted this line in his address to the Irish Parliament, Dublin (June 28, 1963); Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1963, p. 537. Robert F. Kennedy used a similar quotation as a theme of his 1968 campaign for the presidential nomination: “Some men see things as they are and say, why; I dream things that never were and say, why not.” Ted Kennedy quoted this variation in delivering Robert F. Kennedy’s eulogy in 1968; reported in The New York Times (June 9, 1968), p. 56.
  • Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.
    • Henry David Thoreau, in “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers” (1849).
  • In the past, daydreaming was often considered a failure of mental discipline, or worse. Freud labeled it infantile and neurotic. Psychology textbooks warned it could lead to psychosis. Neuroscientists complained that the rogue bursts of activity on brain scans kept interfering with their studies of more important mental functions.
    But now that researchers have been analyzing those stray thoughts, they’ve found daydreaming to be remarkably common — and often quite useful. A wandering mind can protect you from immediate perils and keep you on course toward long-term goals. Sometimes daydreaming is counterproductive, but sometimes it fosters creativity and helps you solve problems.

    • John Tierney, “Discovering the Virtues of a Wandering Mind”. , The New York Times. (June 28, 2010).
  • If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
    • Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854), chapter 18, p. 427.
  • When the brain in not functioning properly during dreams of aggression, sleepwalkers have been able to commit murder. In several cases sleepwalkers did not recognize their victims. For example, one man drove 15 kilometers to his mother-in-law’s house, which means that his motor skills were intact. Then he stabbed her with a knife and did not respond to her screams. He acted as if he was under threat and initiated a fatal attack. This man had a genetic and personal history of awakening abruptly from the first cycle of sleep into a confused state and never entered REM sleep (Cartwright, 2000). The REM sleep is necessary to prevent waking hallucinations and mental illness (Siegel, 2001).
    Since aggression is prominent in most dreams, it is likely that our enemies cause this aggression. In a study by Hall and Van de Castle, animals and male strangers are the primary enemies in both male and female dreams. When a animal enters a dream it is almost always going to pose some threat or danger to the dreamer. The reason for this was thought to be because in ancestral times humans lived in an environment full of dangerous animals. There was also a constant threat from other humans. These ever-present dangers made behavioral strategies to avoid contact with these things and was of a high survival value. Dreaming simulates these strategies in order to maintain efficiency; otherwise, one failure to respond to these threats in waking life could mean death. Dreams are biased towards simulating threats that were common in our ancestral environment (Revonsuo, 2000).
  • Tubo, J. “The evolution of dreaming”. Archived from the original on 2011-09-28.
  • Postremo nemo aegrotus quidquam somniat tam infandum, quod non aliquis dicat philosophus.
    • No sick man’s monstrous dream can be so wild that some philosopher won’t say it’s true.
    • Marcus Terentius Varro Eumenides, fragment 6, from Saturae Menippeae; translation from J. Wight Duff Roman Satire: Its Outlook on Social Life (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1964) p. 90.
  • The whole life is a succession of dreams. My ambition is to be a conscious dreamer, that is all.
    • Swami Vivekananda, in a letter from New York to Mary Hale (10 February 1896), in Complete Works, 5.100.
  • As I became accustomed to keeping dream records, the dreams themselves got “better,” with more direct information and precognitive “hits.”
    • Susan M. Watkins, Dreaming Myself, Dreaming A Town, p. 36.
  • Each day for 14 weeks, 193 college students indicated whether or not they remembered a dream from the previous evening; they also recorded their sleep schedules and noted whether they had (1) exercised and (2) consumed alcohol and caffeine. In addition, the students completed measures of dissociation, schizotypy, sleep-related experiences, and the five-factor model of personality (N=169). Analyses of these data indicated that individual differences in dream recall were strongly stable over a 2-month interval. Dream recall was specifically associated with openness and was unrelated to the other Big Five traits. Subsequent analyses indicated that individuals who are prone to absorption, imagination and fantasy are particularly likely to remember their dreams and to report other vivid nocturnal experiences. These results are consistent with a salience model of dream recall and a continuity model of human consciousness.
    • Watson, David (2003). “To dream, perchance to remember: Individual differences in dream recall”. ‘’Personality and Individual Differences’’. 34 (7): 1271–1286. doi:10.1016/S0191-8869(02)00114-9.
  • A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
    • Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist (1891).
  • No, Ernest, don’t talk about action. It is a blind thing dependent on external influences, and moved by an impulse of whose nature it is unconscious. It is a thing incomplete in its essence, because limited by accident, and ignorant of its direction, being always at variance with its aim. Its basis is the lack of imagination. It is the last resource of those who know not how to dream.
    • Oscar Wilde, The Major Works Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 256
  • It is the first duty of a gentleman to dream.
    • Oscar Wilde, Epigrams of Oscar Wilde Wordsworth Editions, 2001, p. 91
  • We grow great by dreams. All big men are dreamers. They see things in the soft haze of a spring day or in the red fire of a long winter’s evening. Some of us let these great dreams die, but others nourish and protect them; nurse them through bad days till they bring them to the sunshine and light which comes always to those who sincerely hope that their dreams will come true.
    • Woodrow Wilson, as quoted by Thomas A. Bruno in Take your dreams and Run (South Plainfield: Bridge, 1984), p. 2-3. Source: Dr. Preston Williams (2002): By the Way – A Snapshot Diagnosis of the Inner-City Dilemma, p. 38-39. Xulun Press, Fairfax, Virginia, USA.
  • I have spread my dreams beneath your feet;
    Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

    • William Butler Yeats in “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven”.
  • In dreams begin responsibilities.
    • William Butler Yeats, epigram to the book Responsibilities (1914), later used as the title of the story “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities” (1937) by Delmore Schwartz.
  • Things we do and things we see shortly before we fall asleep are most apt to influence our dreams.
    • W.W. Young, Alice in Wonderland (1915 film)
  • Once upon a time, I, Chuang Chou, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Chou. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man. Between a man and a butterfly there is necessarily a distinction. The transition is called the transformation of material things.
    • As translated by Lin Yutang; Alternate translations:
      Once Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly, a fluttering butterfly. What fun he had, doing as he pleased! He did not know he was Zhou. Suddenly he woke up and found himself to be Zhou. He did not know whether Zhou had dreamed he was a butterfly or a butterfly had dreamed he was Zhou. Between Zhou and the butterfly there must be some distinction. This is what is meant by the transformation of things.
      One night, Zhuangzi dreamed of being a butterfly — a happy butterfly, showing off and doing things as he pleased, unaware of being Zhuangzi. Suddenly he awoke, drowsily, Zhuangzi again. And he could not tell whether it was Zhuangzi who had dreamt the butterfly or the butterfly dreaming Zhuangzi. But there must be some difference between them! This is called ‘the transformation of things’.
    • Zhuangzi, Zhuangzi.
  • How do I know that enjoying life is not a delusion? How do I know that in hating death we are not like people who got lost in early childhood and do not know the way home? Lady Li was the child of a border guard in Ai. When first captured by the state of Jin, she wept so much her clothes were soaked. But after she entered the palace, shared the king’s bed, and dined on the finest meats, she regretted her tears. How do I know that the dead do not regret their previous longing for life? One who dreams of drinking wine may in the morning weep; one who dreams weeping may in the morning go out to hunt. During our dreams we do not know we are dreaming. We may even dream of interpreting a dream. Only on waking do we know it was a dream. Only after the great awakening will we realize that this is the great dream. And yet fools think they are awake, presuming to know that they are rulers or herdsmen. How dense! You and Confucius are both dreaming, and I who say you are a dream am also a dream. Such is my tale. It will probably be called preposterous, but after ten thousand generations there may be a great sage who will be able to explain it, a trivial interval equivalent to the passage from morning to night.
    • Zhuangzi, Zhuangzi
  • When to soft Sleep we give ourselves away,
    And in a dream as in a fairy bark
    Drift on and on through the enchanted dark
    To purple daybreak—little thought we pay
    To that sweet bitter world we know by day.

    • Thomas Bailey Aldrich, SonnetSleep.
  • If there were dreams to sell,
    Merry and sad to tell,
    And the crier rung his bell,
    What would you buy?

    • Thomas Lovell Beddoes, Dream-Pedlary.
  • “Come to me, darling; I’m lonely without thee;
    Daytime and nighttime I’m dreaming about thee.”

    • Joseph Brenan, The Exile To His Wife.
  • Oft morning dreams presage approaching fate,
    For morning dreams, as poets tell, are true.

    • Michael Bruce, Elegy on Spring.
  • I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls,
    With vassals and serfs at my side.

    • Alfred Bunn, Song from Bohemian Girl.
  • I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
    • Lord Byron, Darkness.
  • And dreams in their development have breath,
    And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy;
    They have a weight upon our waking thoughts,
    They take a weight from off our waking toils,
    They do divide our being.

    • Lord Byron, The Dream, Stanza 1.
  • A change came o’er the spirit of my dream.
    • Lord Byron, The Dream, Stanza 3.
  • The fisher droppeth his net in the stream,
    And a hundred streams are the same as one;
    And the maiden dreameth her love-lit dream;
    And what is it all, when all is done?
    The net of the fisher the burden breaks,
    And always the dreaming the dreamer wakes.

    • Alice Cary, Lover’s Diary.
  • Again let us dream where the land lies sunny
    And live, like the bees, on our hearts’ old honey,
    Away from the world that slaves for money—
    Come, journey the way with me.

    • Madison Cawein, Song of the Road.
  • Like the dreams,
    Children of night, of indigestion bred.

    • Charles Churchill, The Candidate, line 784.
  • My eyes make pictures, when they are shut.
    • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, A Day Dream.
  • And so, his senses gradually wrapt
    In a half sleep, he dreams of better worlds,
    And dreaming hears thee still, O singing lark;
    That singest like an angel in the clouds.

    • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Fears in Solitude, line 25.
  • Dreams are but interludes, which fancy makes;
    When monarch reason sleeps, this mimic wakes.

    • John Dryden, FablesThe Cock and the Fox, line 325.
  • In blissful dream, in silent night,
    There came to me, with magic might,
    With magic might, my own sweet love,
    Into my little room above.

    • Heinrich Heine, Youthful Sorrows, Part VI, Stanza 1.
  • Fly, dotard, fly!
    With thy wise dreams and fables of the sky.

    • Homer, The Odyssey, Book II, line 207. Pope’s translation.
  • Some dreams we have are nothing else but dreams,
    Unnatural and full of contradictions;
    Yet others of our most romantic schemes
    Are something more than fictions.

    • Thomas Hood, The Haunted House, Part I.
  • And the dream that our mind had sketched in haste
    Shall others continue, but never complete.
    For none upon earth can achieve his scheme;
    The best as the worst are futile here:
    We wake at the self-same point of the dream,—
    All is here begun, and finished elsewhere.

    • Victor Hugo, Early Love Revisited.
  • Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
    Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace.

    • Leigh Hunt, Abou Ben Adhem.
  • Your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.
    • Joel, II. 28.
  • There’s a long, long trail a-winding
    Into the land of my dreams,
    Where the nightingales are singing
    And a white moon beams;
    There’s a long, long night of waiting
    Until my dreams all come true,
    Till the day when I’ll be going down that
    Long, long trail with you.

    • Stoddard King, There’s a Long, Long Trail. (Popular in the Great War).
  • Ever of thee I’m fondly dreaming,
    Thy gentle voice my spirit can cheer.

    • George Linley, Ever of Thee.
  • ‘Twas but a dream,—let it pass,—let it vanish like so many others!
    What I thought was a flower is only a weed, and is worthless.

    • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858), Part VII.
  • Is this is a dream? O, if it be a dream,
    Let me sleep on, and do not wake me yet!

    • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Spanish Student (1843), Act III, scene 5.
  • For dhrames always go by conthraries, my dear.
    • Samuel Lover, Rory O’More, Oliver Goldsmith, Citizen of the World, No. 46.
  • Ground not upon dreams, you know they are ever contrary.
    • Thomas Middleton, The Family of Love (1602-07), Act IV, scene 3.
  • I believe it to be true that Dreams are the true Interpreters of our Inclinations; but there is Art required to sort and understand them.
    • Michel de Montaigne, Essays, Book III, Chapter XIII.
  • One of those passing rainbow dreams,
    Half light, half shade, which fancy’s beams
    Paint on the fleeting mists that roll,
    In trance or slumber, round the soul!

    • Thomas Moore, Lalla Rookh (1817), Fire Worshippers, Stanza 54.
  • Oh! that a dream so sweet, so long enjoy’d,
    Should be so sadly, cruelly destroy’d!

    • Thomas Moore, Lalla Rookh (1817), Veiled Prophet of Khorassan, Stanza 62.
  • A thousand creeds and battle cries,
    A thousand warring social schemes,
    A thousand new moralities
    And twenty thousand, thousand dreams.

    • Alfred Noyes, Forward.
  • I am weary of planning and toiling
    In the crowded hives of men;
    Heart weary of building and spoiling
    And spoiling and building again;
    And I long for the dear old river
    Where I dreamed my youth away;
    For a dreamer lives forever,
    And a toiler dies in a day.

    • John Boyle O’Reilly, Cry of the Dreamer.
  • Namque sub Aurora jam dormitante lucerna Somnia quo cerni tempore vera solent.
    • Those dreams are true which we have in the morning, as the lamp begins to flicker.
    • Ovid, Epistles, XIX. Hero Leandro. 195.
  • Dreams, which, beneath the hov’ring shades of night,
    Sport with the ever-restless minds of men,
    Descend not from the gods. Each busy brain
    Creates its own.

    • Thomas Love Peacock, DreamsFrom Petronius Arbiter.
  • What was your dream?
    It seemed to me that a woman in white raiment, graceful and fair to look upon, came towards me and calling me by name said:
    On the third day, Socrates, thou shall reach the coast of fertile Phthia.

    • Plato, Crito.
  • That holy dream—that holy dream,
    While all the world were chiding,
    Hath cheered me as a lovely beam
    A lonely spirit guiding.

    • Edgar Allen Poe, A Dream, Stanza 3.
  • You are not wrong, who deem
    That my days have been a dream;

    Yet if hope has flown away
    In a night, or in a day,
    In a vision, or in none,
    Is it therefore the less gone?
    All that we see or seem
    Is but a dream within a dream.

    • Edgar Allen Poe, “A Dream Within a Dream” (1849).
  • O God! Can I not save
    One from the pitiless wave?
    Is all that we see or seem
    But a dream within a dream?

    • Edgar Allen Poe, “A Dream Within A Dream” (1849).
  • Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing,
    Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.

    • Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven (1844), Stanza 5.
  • Yet eat in dreams, the custard of the day.
    • Alexander Pope, The Dunciad (1728; 1735; 1743), Book I, line 92.
  • Till their own dreams at length deceive ’em
    And oft repeating, they believe ’em.

    • Matthew Prior, Alma (1718), Canto III, line 13.
  • As a dream when one awaketh.
    • Psalms. LXXIII. 20.
  • This morn, as sleeping in my bed I lay,
    I dreamt (and morning dreams come true they say).

    • W. B. Rhodes, Bombastes Furioso. Post medium noctean bisus, quum comnia vera. Horace, Satires, Book I. Sat. 10, line 33. Tibullus, Elegy, Book III. 4.
  • We must discipline ourselves to convert dreams into plans, and plans into goals, and goals into those small daily activities that will lead us, one sure step at a time, toward a better future.
    • Jim Rohn, Five Major Pieces To the Life Puzzle (1991).
  • O Brethren, weep to-day,
    The silent God hath quenched my Torch’s ray,
    And the vain dream hath flown.

    • Friedrich Schiller, Resignation. Bowring’s translation.
  • Some must delve when the dawn is nigh;
    Some must toil when the noonday beams;
    But when night comes, and the soft winds sigh,
    Every man is a King of Dreams.

    • Clinton Scollard, King of Dreams.
  • I’ll dream no more—by manly mind
    Not even in sleep is well resigned.
    My midnight orisons said o’er,
    I’ll turn to rest and dream no more.

    • Walter Scott, Lady of the Lake (1810), Canto I, Stanza 35.
  • Thou hast beat me out
    Twelve several times, and I have nightly since
    Dreamt of encounters ‘twixt thyself and me.

    • William Shakespeare, Coriolanus (c. 1607-08), Act IV, scene 5, line 127.
  • There is some ill a-brewing towards my rest,
    For I did dream of money-bags to-night.

    • William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice (late 1590s), Act II, scene 5, line 17.
  • I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was.
    • William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (c. 1595-96), Act IV, scene 1, line 211.
  • This is the rarest dream that e’er dull sleep
    Did mock sad fools withal.

    • William Shakespeare, Pericles, Prince of Tyre (c. 1607-08), Act V, scene 1, line 164.
  • Oh! I have pass’d a miserable night,
    So full of ugly sights, of ghastly dreams,
    That, as I am a Christian faithful man,
    I would not spend another such a night,
    Though ’twere to buy a world of happy days.

    • William Shakespeare, Richard III (c. 1591), Act I, scene 4, line 2.
  • For never yet one hour in his bed
    Have I enjoyed the golden dew of sleep,
    But have been waked by his timorous dreams.

    • William Shakespeare, Richard III (c. 1591), Act IV, scene 1, line 83.
  • I talk of dreams,
    Which are the children of an idle brain,
    Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,
    Which is as thin of substance as the air
    And more inconstant than the wind.

    • William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (1597), Act I, scene 4, line 96.
  • Sometime she driveth o’er a soldier’s neck,
    And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
    Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
    Of healths five-fathom deep.

    • William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (1597), Act I, scene 4, line 82.
  • If I may trust the flattering truth of sleep,
    My dreams presage some joyful news at hand:
    My bosom’s lord sits lightly in his throne;
    And all this day an unaccustom’d spirit
    Lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts.

    • William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (1597), Act V, scene 1, line 1.
  • We are such stuff
    As dreams are made on, and our little life
    Is rounded with a sleep.

    • William Shakespeare, The Tempest (c. 1610-1612), Act IV, scene 1, line 156.
  • Ah, the strange, sweet, lonely delight
    Of the Valleys of Dream.

    • Fiona McLeod, Dream Fantasy.
  • Across the silent stream
    Where the dream-shadows go,
    From the dim blue Hill of Dream
    I have heard the west wind blow.

    • Fiona McLeod, From the Hills of Dream.
  • In an ocean of dreams without a sound.
    • Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Sensitive Plant, Part I, Stanza 26.
  • Those dreams, that on the silent night intrude,
    And with false flitting shades our minds delude,
    Jove never sends us downward from the skies;
    Nor can they from infernal mansions rise;
    But are all mere productions of the brain,
    And fools consult interpreters in vain.

    • Jonathan Swift, On Dreams.
  • In the world of dreams, I have chosen my part.
    To sleep for a season and hear no word
    Of true love’s truth or of light love’s art,
    Only the song of a secret bird.

    • Algernon Charles Swinburne, A Ballad of Dreamland. Envoi.
  • The dream
    Dreamed by a happy man, when the dark East,
    Unseen, is brightening to his bridal morn.

    • Alfred Tennyson, The Gardener’s Daughter, line 71.
  • Seeing, I saw not, hearing not, I heard.
    Tho’, if I saw not, yet they told me all
    So often that I spake as having seen.

    • Alfred Tennyson, The Princess (1847), VI, line 3.
  • Like glimpses of forgotten dreams.
    • Alfred Tennyson, The Two Voices (1832; 1842), Stanza CXXVII.
  • The chambers in the house of dreams
    Are fed with so divine an air,
    That Time’s hoar wings grow young therein,
    And they who walk there are most fair.

    • Francis Thompson, Dream Tryst, Stanza 3.
  • And yet, as angels in some brighter dreams
    Call to the soul when man doth sleep.
    So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted dreams,
    And into glory peep.

    • Henry Vaughan, Ascension Hymn.
  • Hunt half a day for a forgotten dream.
    • William Wordsworth, Hart-Leap Well, Part II, Stanza 9.

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