quotations about dreams & dreaming
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
Dreams that are realized become an inspiration for new endeavor. It is in the power to make the dream good that we find the hope of this world.
ORISON SWETT MARDEN
He Can Who Thinks He Can
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
You can't put a limit on anything. The more you dream, the farther you get.
MICHAEL PHELPS
Woman's Day, Apr. 1, 2009
All men who have achieved great things have been great dreamers.
ORISON SWETT MARDEN
The Miracle of Right Thought
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
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 are pegs for Superstition and Romance to hang their cloaks upon.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
If you're smart, then your dreams evolve, too.
MARIO BATALI
Esquire, Jun. 2004
No man lives long when his dreams are dead.
GENE WOLFE
The Claw of the Conciliator
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
Dreams fade with morning light,
Never a morn for thee,
Dreamer of dreams, goodnight.
JOYCE KILMER
"The Poet's Epitaph"
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 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
Through soundless labyrinths of dream you pass, through many doors to the one door of all.
CONRAD AIKEN
The House of Dust
I live not in dreams but in contemplation of a reality that is perhaps the future.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Letters: 1892-1910
My dreams are a stupid refuge, like an umbrella against a thunderbolt.
FERNANDO PESSOA
The Book of Disquiet
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