Quotes about dreams
page 10

“We are not accustomed to thinking that God's will for us and our own inner dreams can coincide.”

Julia Cameron (1948) American writer

“We both wondered whether these contradictions that one can't avoid if one begins to think of time and space may not really be proofs that the whole of life is a dream, and the moon and stars bits of nightmare.”

Arthur Machen (1863–1947) Welsh author and mystic

Source: The Terror

Life, Star, Thinking, Time

“The air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled alley so great, that I thought I was in a dream.”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

Source: On the Road: The Original Scroll

Star

“Dream after dream we all lie in each other's arms”

Leonard Cohen book Beautiful Losers

Source: Beautiful Losers

Lie

“The dream is like a river, ever changing as it flows and the dreamer just a vessel that must follow where it goes. We must lean from what's behind us never knowing what's in store keeps each day a contant battle just to stay between the shore”

Garth Brooks (1962) American country music artist

The River, written by Victoria Shaw and G. Brooks.
Song lyrics, Ropin' the Wind (1991)
Context: You know a dream is like a river,
Ever changin' as it flows.
And a dreamer's just a vessel
That must follow where it goes.
Trying to learn from what's behind you,
And never knowing what's in store
Makes each day a constant battle
Just to stay between the shores... andI will sail my vessel
'Til the river runs dry.
Like a bird upon the wind,
These waters are my sky.
I'll never reach my destination
If I never try.
So I will sail my vessel
'Til the river runs dry.

Change

“When we can't dream any longer we die.”

Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches

Quoted by Margaret C. Anderson in "Emma Goldman in Chicago" http://books.google.com/books?id=zstCAQAAMAAJ&q=%22When+we+can't+dream+any+longer+we+die%22&pg=PA321#v=onepage, Mother Earth magazine (December 1914)

“I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake.”

René Descartes (1596–1650) French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist

Imagination, Sleep

“I held the feeling in my heart; the urge to discuss it died out. There was all the time in the world. In the endless repetition of other nights, other mornings, this moment, too, might become a dream.”

Banana Yoshimoto book Kitchen

Source: Kitchen

World, Feeling, Time, Heart

“The best reason for having dreams is that in dreams no reasons are necessary.”

Ashleigh Brilliant (1933) American author and cartoonist

“You convinced yourselves we're just a bunch of regular lads who got a bad break in life. Anything else would have cracked your dream open and made you face reality. Illusion is easy. Illusion is the loser's way out. Your way.”

Peter F. Hamilton book The Reality Dysfunction

Source: The Reality Dysfunction

Life, Way, Reality

“They had behind them, to my mind, the terrific suggestiveness of words heard in dreams, of phrases spoken in nightmares.”

Joseph Conrad book Heart of Darkness

Source: Heart of Darkness

“We are not dead but asleep, dreaming of ourselves.”

David Foster Wallace book The Pale King

Source: The Pale King

Dead

“He knew me in all the ways that truly mattered: the shape of my fears, the contours of my dreams.”

Justina Chen (1968) American writer

Fear, Way

“I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can't touch with decay.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Nature, Thinking

“In the photograph by my bed my mother is perpetually smiling on me. I guess I have forgiven us both, although sometimes in the night my dreams will take me back to the sadness, and I have to wake up and forgive us again.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

Sadness, Smile, Forgiveness, Night

“It's every little girl's dream," she said. "Interpol surveillance. And kittens.”

Ally Carter book Heist Society

Source: Heist Society

Girl

“People who are most afraid of their dreams convince themselves they don't dream at all.”

John Steinbeck book The Winter of Our Discontent

Source: The Winter of Our Discontent

People

“And from that time on I bathed in the Poem
Of the Sea, star-infused and churned into milk,
Devouring the green azures; where, entranced in pallid flotsam,
A dreaming drowned man sometimes goes down.”

Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891) French Decadent and Symbolist poet

Source: A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat

Star, Time, Sea

“Toil on, son, and do not lose heart or hope. Let nothing you dismay. You are not utterly forsaken. I, too, am here--here in the darkness waiting, here attentive, here approving of your labor and your dream.”

Thomas Wolfe book You Can't Go Home Again

Source: You Can't Go Home Again

Hope, Waiting, Heart

“Dreaming, dreaming, dreaming -- weren't our dreams what gave us strength, hope, and desire?”

Lisa See book Peony in Love

Source: Peony in Love

Hope

“Ostara, if one dies while in these othere states of consciousness, one dies indeed. this begs the question, are dreams truly only ever dreams?”

Nancy Holder (1953) American writer

Source: Wicked 2: Legacy & Spellbound

Question

“We wandered in a frenzy and a dream (301).”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Source: On the Road

“If you're alive, kick into drive. Chase whimsies. See if you can turn dreams into a way to make a living, if not an entire way of life.”

Kevin Smith (1970) American screenwriter, actor, film producer, public speaker and director

Source: Tough Shit: Life Advice from a Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good

Life, Way

“You're never given a dream without also being given the power to make it true.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Variant: You are never given a dream without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however.
Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

“Let people be, boss; don't open their eyes. And supposing you did, what'd they see? Their misery! Leave their eyes closed, boss, and let them go on dreaming!”

Nikos Kazantzakis book Zorba the Greek

Source: Zorba the Greek

People

“By the way, when you finish the bottle of Crown Royal, you can still use the pouch to hold your broken dreams.”

Jon Stewart (1962) American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian

Way

“Regain your senses, call yourself back, and once again wake up. Now that you realize that only dreams were troubling you, view this 'reality' as you view your dreams.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

Reality, Sense

“There's something about a roof isn't there? It makes you feel like it doesn't matter what's going on below. All of those things that get in the way of your dreams - you're above them. Anything is possible.”

Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist

Source: The Gray Wolf Throne

Way, Feeling

“It was common enough, to see so much death and want a child. Common, therefore human, and he wanted it all the more. When the wounded were screaming, you dreamed of sharing a little house somewhere, of an ordinary life, a family line, connection.”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

Life, Death, Family, Housing

“My dream is to die thinking "Wow, that was fun! I'm tired.”

Masami Tsuda (1970) Japanese manga artist

Source: Kare Kano: His and Her Circumstances, Vol. 20

Thinking

“that expression you get in your eyes when you are very tired and everything is like a dream and you are starting to know what things are like underneath what people say they are.”

Jean Rhys book Good Morning, Midnight

Source: Good Morning, Midnight

People

“Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together.”

Eugéne Ionesco (1909–1994) Romanian playwright

As quoted in Sunbeams : A Book of Quotations (1990) by Sy Safransky

“Four hundred years of losing out on the girl of my dreams isn't sitting very well with me these days.”

Alyson Nöel book Dark Flame

Source: Dark Flame

Girl

“Only do not forget, if I wake up crying
it's only because in my dream I'm a lost child

hunting through the leaves of the night for your hands….”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Source: 100 Love Sonnets

Cry, Night, Forgetting

“Gay men are guardians of the masculine impulse. To have anonymous sex in a dark alleyway is to pay homage to the dream of male freedom. The unknown stranger is a wandering pagan god. The altar, as in pre-history, is anywhere you kneel.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Men, God, Sex, History

“And when her lips met mine, I knew that I could live to be a hundred and visit every country in the world, but nothing would ever compare to that single moment when I first kissed the girl of my dreams and knew that my love would last forever.”

Nicholas Sparks book Dear John

Source: Dear John

Love, World, Girl, Kiss

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.”

Shirley Jackson book The Haunting of Hill House

Source: The Haunting of Hill House

Reality

“The world was a world of dreaming souls who could not die.”

Justin Cronin The Passage

Source: The Passage

World, Soul

“For some things there are no wrong seasons. Which is what I dream of for me.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Source: A Thousand Mornings

Season

“I remember a friend many years ago who had taped a sign to his refrigerator: There's a dream dreaming us. If you try to think about what that means it makes your mind silly, but that silliness is good.”

Natalie Goldberg (1948) American writer

Source: Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life

Thinking

“We thought we were the only thinking beings in the universe, until we met you, but never did we dream that thought could arise from the lonely animals who cannot dream each other's dreams.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

Thinking, Universe, Animals

“We dance for laughter, we dance for tears, we dance for madness, we dance for fears, we dance for hopes, we dance for screams, we are the dancers, we create the dreams.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Fear, Hope, Tear, Laughter

“If you talk about it, it's a dream, if you envision it, it's possible, but if you schedule it, it's real.”

Anthony Robbins (1960) Author, actor, professional speaker

Source: Get the Edge

Motivational, Deep, Success, Inspirational

“They told us not to wish in the first place, not to aspire, not to try; to be quiet, to play nice, to shoot low and aspire not at all. They are always wrong. Follow your dreams. Make your wishes. Create the future. And above all, believe in yourself. That is the lesson of Babylon 5.”

J. Michael Straczynski (1954) American writer and television producer

From the Babylon 5 Calendar (1998).

Future

“So many dreams, so many disappointments, so many promises. And in the end, they all just vanish.”

Haruki Murakami book Pinball, 1973

Source: Pinball, 1973

Disappointment

“Women still dream and hope, pin their emotions on some man who doesn't reciprocate, and end up in confusion.”

Elisabeth Elliot book Passion and Purity

Source: Passion and Purity

Women, Hope

“The main thing is to write
for the joy of it. Cultivate a work-lust
that imagines its haven like your hands at night
dreaming the sun in the sunspot of a breast.
You are fasted now, light-headed, dangerous.
Take off from here.”

Seamus Heaney book Station Island

Source: Station Island

Imagination, Light, Sun, Joy

“And the dreams so rich in color. How else would death call you? Waking in the cold dawn it all turned to ash instantly. Like certain ancient frescoes entombed for centuries suddenly exposed to the day.”

Cormac McCarthy book The Road

Source: The Road

Death, Color

“We grew up founding our dreams on the infinite promise of American advertising. I still believe that one can learn to play the piano by mail and that mud will give you a perfect complexion.”

Zelda Fitzgerald (1900–1948) Novelist, wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald

Learning, Perfection

“So how many women have you visited in their dreams? (Geary)
Is this one of those questions that if I don’t answer it correctly, you get angry at me? (Arik)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: The Dream Hunter

Women, Question

“Anything you dream is fiction, and anything you accomplish is science, the whole history of mankind is nothing but science fiction.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

History, Science

“I think she is growing up, and so begins to dream dreams, and have hopes and fears and fidgets, without knowing why or being able to explain them.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

Fear, Hope, Thinking

“It is after all so easy to shatter a story. To break a chain of thought. To ruin a fragment of a dream being carried around carefully like a piece of porcelain. To let it be, to travel with it, as Velutha did, is much the harder thing to do.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

Travel

“Things you did. Things you never did. Things you dreamed. After a long time they run together.”

Richard Ford book Canada

Source: Canada

Time

“I’ll affect you slowly
as if you were having a picnic in a dream.
There will be no ants.
It won’t rain.”

Richard Brautigan (1935–1984) American novelist, poet, and short story writer

Source: Loading Mercury With a Pitchfork

“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 (1947) American finance author , investor

Disappointment, Way, Success, Motivational

“As long as I can dream, I will dream of you.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

“The wait is long, my dream of you does not end.”

Nuala O'Faolain (1940–2008) Irish writer

Source: My Dream of You

Waiting

“Every book has a soul, the soul of the person who wrote it and the soul of those who read it and dream about it.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Angel's Game

Source: The Angel's Game

Books, Soul, Reading, Personality

“Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements.”

Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American author

As quoted in Diamond Power : Gems of Wisdom from America's Greatest Marketer (2003) by Barry Farber, p. 53

Children, Soul, Graduation

“There was no answer, except the general answer life gives to all the most complex and insoluble questions. That answer is: one must live for the needs of the day, in other words, become oblivious. To become oblivious in dreams was impossible now, at least till night-time; it was impossible to return to that music sung by carafe-women; and so one had to become oblivious in the dreams of life.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Pt. 1, ch. 2
Source: Anna Karenina (1875–1877; 1878)

Life, Women, Music, Question

“You know a great many things in dreams, often despite the evidence of your eyes. You just know them.”

Cornelia Funke Inkheart trilogy

Source: Inkheart

“The door opened, and we were met by a fifty-something man with a grizzled blond beard. He was wearing Bermuda shorts and a Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt. Also, he had an eye patch. "This is incredible," I heard Adrian murmur. "Beyond my wildest dreams.”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

“What you do in your dreams is never your choice. But it made me happy anyway.”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

Source: Saint Anything

Happiness

“Each moment of our life, we either invoke or destroy our dreams. We call upon it to become a fact, or we cancel our previous instructions.”

Stuart Wilde (1946–2013) English writer

Life

“Give me two hours a day of activity, and I'll take the other twenty-two in dreams.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

Mon Dernier soupir (My Last Sigh, 1983)

“A dream does not die on its own. A dream is vanquished by the choices ordinary people make about real things in their own lives…”

Jonathan Kozol (1936) American activist and educator

Source: Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation

People

“In a dream I cannot see
tangled abstract phallacy
random turmoil builds in me
i'm a addicted to chaos
-Megadeth, Addicted to Chaos”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Acheron

“It was a kiss made in lonely dreams. A kiss that took its time. A kiss that felt so right she couldn't remember all the reasons it was wrong.”

Susan Elizabeth Phillips (1948) American writer

Source: This Heart of Mine

Kiss, Time

“Stuff your eyes with wonder... live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

World, Dead

“To dream in isolation can be properly splendid to be sure; but to dream in company seems to me infinitely preferable.”

Clive Barker book Weaveworld

Source: Weaveworld

“Hair is gray and the firers are burning. So many dreams on the shelf. You say I wanted you to be proud of me. I always wanted that myself.”

Tori Amos (1963) American singer

“My time I divide as follows: the one half I sleep; the other half I dream. I never dream when I sleep; that would be a shame, because to sleep is the height of genius.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Source: Either/Or: A Fragment of Life

Sleep, Time

“Summer is only the unfulfilled promise of spring, a charlatan in place of the warm balmy nights I dream of in April. It’s a sad season of life without growth…It has no day.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Life, Sadness, Spring, Summer

“I have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Cobo Center speech (1963)
Context: I go back to the South not with a feeling that we are caught in a dark dungeon that will never lead to a way out. I go back believing that the new day is coming. And so this afternoon, I have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day, right down in Georgia and Mississippi and Alabama, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to live together as brothers.
I have a dream this afternoon, I have a dream that one day, one day little white children and little Negro children will be able to join hands as brothers and sisters.
I have a dream this afternoon that one day, that one day men will no longer burn down houses and the church of God simply because people want to be free.
I have a dream this afternoon, I have a dream, that there will be a day that we will no longer face the atrocities that Emmett Till had to face or Medgar Evers had to face, that all men can live with dignity.
I have a dream this afternoon that my four little children, that my four little children will not come up in the same young days that I came up within, but they will be judged on the basis of the content of their character, not the color of their skin.
I have a dream this afternoon that one day right here in Detroit, Negroes will be able to buy a house or rent a house anywhere that their money will carry them and they will be able to get a job.
Yes, I have a dream this afternoon that one day in this land the words of Amos will become real and "justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."
I have a dream this evening that one day we will recognize the words of Jefferson that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." I have a dream this afternoon.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and "every valley shall be exalted, and every hill shall be made low; the crooked places shall be made straight, and the rough places plain; and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together."
I have a dream this afternoon that the brotherhood of man will become a reality in this day.
And with this faith I will go out and carve a tunnel of hope through the mountain of despair. With this faith, I will go out with you and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. With this faith, we will be able to achieve this new day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing with the Negroes in the spiritual of old: "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, we are free at last!"

“I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" — one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, (1963)
Source: I Have A Dream

Faith, Beauty, Hope, Girl

“People are capable, at any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

People, Time

“How hard is it, when everything encourages us to sleep, though we may look about us with conscious, clinging eyes, to wake and yet look about us as in a dream, with eyes that no longer know their function and whose gaze is turned inward.”

Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) French-Occitanian poet, playwright, actor and theatre director

Source: The Theater and Its Double

Sleep

“What nobody understood then is this: The only way that you achieve what you want and fulfill your dreams and become great is by demanding that sort of attention. You have to make it happen.”

Augusten Burroughs book Running with Scissors

Source: Running with Scissors

Way

“Dreams have a hard time surviving when confronted with reality.”

Mathias Malzieu (1974) French singer

Reality, Time

“Mr. Knightley, if I have not spoken, it is because I am afraid I will awaken myself from this dream.”

Jane Austen book Emma

Source: Emma

“She did the best that we could be; she was perfectly charming and perfectly loving. She was a dream. And she was the kind of dream that you remember when you wake up smiling.”

Richard Dreyfuss (1947) American actor

Love, Smile

“My dream is to walk around the world. A smallish backpack, all essentials neatly in place. A camera. A notebook. A traveling paint set. A hat. Good shoes. A nice pleated (green?) skirt for the occasional seaside hotel afternoon dance.”

Maira Kalman (1949) Israeli American artist and creator of children's books

Source: The Principles of Uncertainty

World, Shoe, Travel, Dance

“I kept having dreams all night. I thought they were touching me with their fingers. But dreams don't have fingers, they have fists, so it must have been scorpions.”

Roberto Bolaño book The Savage Detectives

Source: The Savage Detectives

Night

“I want to keep my dreams, even bad ones, because without them, I might have nothing all night long.”

Joseph Heller (1923–1999) American author

Night

“Me? I had no dreams. No longings. Dreams only set you up for disappointment. Plus, you had to have a life to have dreams of a better life.”

Julie Anne Peters Luna

Source: Luna

Life, Disappointment

“One of the characteristics of the dream is that nothing surprises us in it. With no regret, we agree to live in it with strangers, completely cut off from our habits and friends.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

"Du Rêve" in La Difficulté d’Etre [The Difficulty of Being] (1947)

“We may come from different places and have different stories, but we share common hopes, and one very American dream.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Source: 2015, Supreme Court Decision on Marriage Equality (June 2015)
Context: I know that Americans of goodwill continue to hold a wide range of views on this issue. Opposition in some cases has been based on sincere and deeply held beliefs. All of us who welcome today’s news should be mindful of that fact; recognize different viewpoints; revere our deep commitment to religious freedom. But today should also give us hope that on the many issues with which we grapple, often painfully, real change is possible. Shifts in hearts and minds is possible. And those who have come so far on their journey to equality have a responsibility to reach back and help others join them. Because for all our differences, we are one people, stronger together than we could ever be alone. That’s always been our story. We are big and vast and diverse; a nation of people with different backgrounds and beliefs, different experiences and stories, but bound by our shared ideal that no matter who you are or what you look like, how you started off, or how and who you love, America is a place where you can write your own destiny.

Hope

“Listen to me, he said, when your dreams are of some world that never was or some world that never will be, and you're happy again, then you'll have given up. Do you understand? And you can't give up, I won't let you.”

Cormac McCarthy book The Road

Source: The Road

Happiness, World, Understanding