quotations about dreams & dreaming
Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
The Higher Pantheism
All men who have achieved great things have been great dreamers.
ORISON SWETT MARDEN
The Miracle of Right Thought
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
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
What we experience in dreams -- assuming that we experience it often -- belongs in the end just as much to the over-all economy of our soul as anything experienced "actually": we are richer or poorer on account of it.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Beyond Good and Evil
They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
EDGAR ALLAN POE
"Eleonora"
Dream life, I realized, was only confusing when you were awake. It was from the perspective of waking life that dream life seemed fractured and lacking consequence, lacking any certainty that one thing led to another. But from within dream life, the world was generally coherent. Not exactly an unconfusing world--just no more confusing than any other.
ALEX GARLAND
The Coma
You can't put a limit on anything. The more you dream, the farther you get.
MICHAEL PHELPS
Woman's Day, Apr. 1, 2009
One use of dreams is that, unprejudiced by our often forced and artificial reflections, they represent the impartial outcome of our entire being.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
"Notebook J", The Waste Books
If you're smart, then your dreams evolve, too.
MARIO BATALI
Esquire, Jun. 2004
No human being can achieve all he or she desires in this life except in dreams, so good night all.
JOSé SARAMAGO
Baltasar and Blimunda
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
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
Dreams are symbolic in order that they cannot be understood; in order that the wish, which is the source of the dream, may remain unknown.
CARL JUNG
Psychology of the Unconscious
If you do not fear God, then fear your dreams, because they're how He talks to you.
TIM LEBBON
Face
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
The world would not have advanced very far had it not been for the contributions of its dreamers. It would never have gained its steamboat, nor its Atlantic cable, nor its wireless telegraph, nor its electric light. It would never have acquired any really great enterprise. For a little enterprise may be rustled and worried into being: but a really great program or movement or business must be dreamed.
BRUCE FAIRCHILD BARTON
More Power to You
I dream, therefore I exist.
AUGUST STRINDBERG
A Madman's Defense
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"