quotations about dreams & dreaming
Sleep is in contact with the Possible, which we also call the improbable. The world of the night is a world. Night, as night, is a universe.... The dark things of the unknown world become neighbors of man, whether by true communication or by a visionary enlargement of the distances of the abyss ... and the sleeper, not quite seeing, not quite unconscious, glimpses the strange anomalities, weird vegetation, terrible or radiant pallors, ghosts, masks, figures, hydras, confusions, moonless moonlights, obscure unmakings of miracle, growths and vanishings within a murky depth, shapes floating in shadow, the whole mystery which we call Dreaming, and which is nothing other than the approach of an invisible reality. The dream is the aquarium of Night.
VICTOR HUGO
Travailleurs de la Mer
Well now what's the use in dreamin'
You got better things to do
Dreams never did work for me anyway
Even when they did come true
BOB DYLAN
"I Feel a Change Comin' On"
The dream is a series of images, which are apparently contradictory and nonsensical, but arise in reality from psychologic material which yields a clear meaning.
CARL JUNG
Psychology of the Unconscious
Not everything to which we are able to compare an object or an occurrence occurs in the dream as its symbol; on the other hand, the dream does not symbolize anything we may choose, but only specific elements of the dream thought. There are limitations on both sides.
SIGMUND FREUD
"Symbolism in the Dream", A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis
I have observed dreams and visions very carefully, and am now certain that the imagination has some way of lighting on the truth that the reason has not, and that its commandments, delivered when the body is still and the reason silent, are the most binding we can ever know.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Ideas of Good and Evil
Dreams are pegs for Superstition and Romance to hang their cloaks upon.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
No man lives long when his dreams are dead.
GENE WOLFE
The Claw of the Conciliator
Those dreams that on the silent night intrude, and with false flitting shapes our minds delude ... are mere productions of the brain. And fools consult interpreters in vain.
JONATHAN SWIFT
On Dreams
All men who have achieved great things have been great dreamers.
ORISON SWETT MARDEN
The Miracle of Right Thought
I live not in dreams but in contemplation of a reality that is perhaps the future.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Letters: 1892-1910
The dreams of golden glory in the future will not come true unless, high of heart and strong of hand, by our own mighty deeds we make them come true.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
speech at the University of Berlin, May 12, 1910
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
My dreams are a stupid refuge, like an umbrella against a thunderbolt.
FERNANDO PESSOA
The Book of Disquiet
For, after all, you do grow up, you do outgrow your ideals, which turn to dust and ashes, which are shattered into fragments; and if you have no other life, you just have to build one up out of these fragments. And all the time your soul is craving and longing for something else. And in vain does the dreamer rummage about in his old dreams, raking them over as though they were a heap of cinders, looking in these cinders for some spark, however tiny, to fan it into a flame so as to warm his chilled blood by it and revive in it all that he held so dear before, all that touched his heart, that made his blood course through his veins, that drew tears from his eyes, and that so splendidly deceived him.
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
White Nights
There were dreams once upon a time, dreams now all but forgotten. On sad days I dust them off and fondle them nostalgically, with a patronizing wonder at the naivete of the youth who dreamed them.
GLEN COOK
The White Rose
Dreams fade with morning light,
Never a morn for thee,
Dreamer of dreams, goodnight.
JOYCE KILMER
"The Poet's Epitaph"
If you're smart, then your dreams evolve, too.
MARIO BATALI
Esquire, Jun. 2004
The longer that dreams remained mere dreams, the more difficult it was to mold them into reality.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Atreides
Dream different dreams while on the same bed.
CHINESE PROVERB
Through soundless labyrinths of dream you pass, through many doors to the one door of all.
CONRAD AIKEN
The House of Dust