Quotes about dreams (4411 quotes, page 24)

“And yet, as angels in some brighter dreams
Call to the soul when man doth sleep,
So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes,
And into glory peep.”

Henry Vaughan (1621–1695) Welsh author, physician and metaphysical poet

"They Are All Gone," st. 7.
Silex Scintillans (1655)

Angels , Soul , Sleep

“For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end. For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.”

Ted Kennedy (1932–2009) United States Senator

Concession speech in his campaign for nomination as the Democratic Presidential candidate against incumbent Jimmy Carter at the Democratic Convention in New York City (12 August 1980).
This has sometimes been misquoted as "The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dreams shall never die."

Hope

“A dream with a deadline is a goal.”

Jay Samit (1961) American businessman

Source: Disrupt You! (2015), p. 42

“To dream on occasion is not dreaming; to love on occasion is not love.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

Lover http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/lover-16/
From the poems written in English

Love

“While II was looking for a good enough excuse to run away from Anand; I was befriended by Tribhuvandas Patel, the young cooperative chairman and almost without realizing it I began to share his dream of building a strong organization that would free the famers from clutches of the middle man. In one of my weker moments I accepted |w:Tribhuvandas Kishibhai Patel|Tribhuvandas’s]] suggestion that I work for the nascent Kaira Cooperative. I have never regretted that decision in my 33-year career as an employee of the farmers.”

Verghese Kurien (1921–2012) Indian founder of dairy-cooperative Amul

In p. 74
Quote, Our Leaders

Decision , Strong

“Why has not anyone seen that fossils alone gave birth to a theory about the formation of the earth, that without them, no one would have ever dreamed that there were successive epochs in the formation of the globe.”

Georges Cuvier (1769–1832) French naturalist, zoologist and paleontologist (1769–1832)

as quoted from "Discourse on the Revolutionary Upheavals on the Surface of the Earth".

Birth , Success

“The American dream is under attack because our government has been hijacked by the liberals in Washington, D. C. … They want you to believe that they're going to drag out enough prisoners and dead people to win the election. Well, let me tell you a little secret. Conservatives that are alive outnumber the dead people and prisoners. … I have a message for the political elites in Washington, D. C.: The United States of America is not going to become the United States of Europe, not on our watch.”

Herman Cain (1945) American writer, businessman and activist

[Tea Party speaker: 'Stupid people' running country, Dayton Daily News, 2010-10-15, Lynn, Hulsey, http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/dayton-news/tea-party-speaker-stupid-people-running-country-977298.html, 2011-10-08]

People , Secret , Dead

“The enlightenment idea of privacy is breaking apart under the strain of new technologies, social tools and the emergence of the database state. We cannot hold back the tide, but we can use it as an opportunity to rethink what we understand by 'personality', how we engage and interact with others and where the boundaries can be put between the public and private. Those of us who are ahead of the curve when it comes to the adoption and use of technologies that undermine the old model of privacy have much to teach those who will come after us, and can offer advice and support to those who might be unhappy to have their movements, eating habits, friendships and patterns of media consumption made available to all. But every Twitterer, Tumblr, Dopplr or Brightkite user at Lift is sharing more data with more people than even the FBI under Hoover or the Stasi at the height of its powers could have dreamed of. And we do so willingly, hoping to benefit in unquantifiable ways from this unwarranted - in all senses - disclosure. I'll argue that we are in the vanguard of creating not just new forms of social organisation but new ways of being human.”

Bill Thompson (1960) English technology writer, born 1960

" The Death of Privacy and Why We Should Welcome It http://liftconference.com/death-privacy-and-why-we-should-welcome-it," January 18, 2009. (Remarks made during the Lift Conference)

Friendship , People , Hope , Way

“If you have not even dreamed
Of benefiting yourself
Before dreaming of this for sentient beings,
How could you be of benefit to others?”

Šantidéva (685–763) 8th-century Indian Buddhist monk and scholar

Attributed

“But to-day, mankind believes itself able to do without Art. It does not wish to meditate, to contemplate, to dream; it wishes to enjoy physically. The heights and the depths of truth are indifferent to it; it is content to satisfy its bodily appetites. Mankind to-day is brutish — it is not the stuff of which artists are made.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Source: Art, 1912, Preface, p. 8

Truth , Art , Indifference

“There is a new mood in America. We have been shaken by a tragic war abroad and by scandals and broken promises at home. Our people are searching for new voices and new ideas and new leaders.
Although government has its limits and cannot solve all our problems, we Americans reject the view that we must be reconciled to failures and mediocrity, or to an inferior quality of life. For I believe that we can come through this time of trouble stronger than ever. Like troops who have been in combat, we have been tempered in the fire; we have been disciplined, and we have been educated.
Guided by lasting and simple moral values, we have emerged idealists without illusions, realists who still know the old dreams of justice and liberty, of country and of community.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Pre-Presidency, First Presidential Nomination Acceptance Speech (1976)

Life , War , People , Education

“Unlike with other armies of the world who pledge to defend their monarch or their homeland, our oath of service links our military to the protection and defense of the Constitution and the obedience to the President under the condition of adherence to orders. In effect, through that oath the U. S. military defends our people's security while also defending ideas, ideals and the rule of law. Throughout a career, every soldier, from private to general, undergoes training in history, legal processes and values. That training complements what we do on rifle ranges or in field exercises. Soldiers have terrific skills, and they are thinking protectors of the American way of life. I was in combat for more than three years of my career; during that time, I saw some horrible things and many of those revisit me in dreams. There is evil in man, and in battle. But in the U. S. military; while there have been occasion where soldiers needed to be disciplined for violating the laws or the regulations; overwhelmingly and consistently the actions of my brothers and sisters in arms has made me very proud.”

Mark Hertling (1953) United States Army general

As quoted in "A soldier's view on Trump" http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/04/opinions/donald-trump-military-hertling/index.html CNN, 4 March 2016

Life , People , World , Law

“The amount of racism, sexism, homophobia, and hatred in general that lies beneath the surface of the American dream is astounding and serious.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, RACISM AND CIVIL RIGHTS

“I have seen pictures [on the Salon of Brussel, 1860], of which I had never dreamed and in which I found all that my heart desires, all that I nearly always miss in the Dutch painters. Troyon, Courbet, Diaz, Dupré [all painters of the School of Barbizon, Robert Fleury have made a great impression on me. I am a good Frenchman, therefore; but, as Simon van den Berg says, it is just because I am a good Frenchman that I am a good Dutchman, since the great Frenchmen of today and the great Dutchmen of the past have much in common. Unity, restfulness, earnestness and, above all, an inexplicable intimacy with nature are what struck me most in these pictures. There were certainly also a few good Dutch pieces, but, generally speaking, when you place them next to the great Parisians, they lack that mellowness, that quality which, so to speak, resembles the deep tones of an organ. And yet this luxurious manner came originally from Holland, from our steaming, fat-coloured Holland! They were courageous pictures; there was a heart and a soul in them.”

Gerard Bilders (1838–1865) painter from the Netherlands

Quote from Bilders in his letter (End of 1860); as cited in Dutch Art in the Nineteenth Century – 'The Hague School; Introduction' https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dutch_Art_in_the_Nineteenth_Century/The_Hague_School:_Introduction, by G. Hermine Marius, transl. A. Teixera de Mattos; publish: The la More Press, London, 1908
1860's

School , Soul , Courage , Nature

“I live my life in the city / There's no easy way out / The day's moving just too fast for me"
I live my life for the stars that shine/People say it's just a waste of time.
In my mind my dreams are real
You're not down with who I am / look at you now, you're all in my hands tonight"”

Noel Gallagher (1967) British musician

Rock'n'Roll Star
Definitely Maybe (1994)

Life , People , Way , Star

“Past, n. That part of Eternity with some small fraction of which we have a slight and regrettable acquaintance. A moving line called the Present parts it from an imaginary period known as the Future. These two grand divisions of Eternity, of which the one is continually effacing the other, are entirely unlike. The one is dark with sorrow and disappointment, the other bright with prosperity and joy. The Past is the region of sobs, the Future is the realm of song. In the one crouches Memory, clad in sackcloth and ashes, mumbling penitential prayer; in the sunshine of the other Hope flies with a free wing, beckoning to temples of success and bowers of ease. Yet the Past is the Future of yesterday, the Future is the Past of to-morrow. They are one--the knowledge and the dream.”

Ambrose Bierce book The Devil's Dictionary

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

Hope , Disappointment , Knowledge , Memory

“Since dreams are influenced by the predominant activities and mental preoccupations of the waking state, in order to attract higher beings you must engage in consciously higher activities. If we spend our days speaking verbal garbage and engaging in activities that do harm to ourselves and other living entities, why would any being of a higher vibration want to associate with us in our dreams or other- wise? Thus, if we raise the vibrations of our surroundings by meditating and acting according to a higher standard, utilizing prayer and focusing on helping others, we will be guided by those whose role it is to assist souls in their spiritual development.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

Source: Books, Spiritual Warrior, Volume I: Uncovering Spiritual Truths in Psychic Phenomena (Hari-Nama Press, 1996), Chapter 1: Dreams: A State of Reality, p. 29

Soul , Help

“My spirit is old; and some black lot awaits me
On my long road.
Some dream accurst, inveterate, suffocates me
Still with its load.
So young – yet hosts of dreadful thoughts appal me,
Sick and opprest.
Come! and from shadowy phantoms disenthral me,
Friend.”

Alexander Blok (1880–1921) poet

"My Spirit is Old" (1899); translation from Oliver Elton Verse from Pushkin and Others (London: E. Arnold, 1935) p. 175.

“A man forced to spend his life without ever having the right, without ever finding the time, to shut himself up all alone, no matter where, to think, to reflect, to work, to dream? Ah! my dear boy, a key, the key of a door which one can lock — this is happiness, mark you, the only happiness!”

Guy De Maupassant (1850–1893) French writer

"The Question of Latin"

Life , Boy , Thinking , Time

“The herculean task of a photographer is to capture a momentary frame as beautiful in reality, as it would be in a dream.”

Ansel Adams (1902–1984) American photographer and environmentalist

Radio interview, 1972

Beauty , Reality

“Dreams unwind
Love's a state of mind”

Stevie Nicks (1948) American singer and songwriter, member of Fleetwood Mac

Rhiannon
Fleetwood Mac (1976)

Love

“It is impossible to have workers' control within a capitalist society. Capitalism, by its very nature, produces contradictions which cannot be resolved until and unless we change the system of society…The unions could only have class collaboration and compromise with the mixed economy, and those who advanced the theory of workers' control in present-day society were putting forward an intellectual, Utopian dream, idealistic, unworkable and unattainable.”

Arthur Scargill (1938) British trade unionist

The Miner (5 December 1977), quoted in Paul Routledge, "Scargill attack on idea of worker directors", The Times (5 December 1977), p. 17

Nature , Change

“But it is of the past, it seems to me. Perhaps... Man and the nightingales were in the most favourable situation for imagining: for them the forest was a perfect dream-conductor..”

Max Ernst (1891–1976) German painter, sculptor and graphic artist

1910 - 1935, The mysteries of the forest' (1934)

Imagination , Past , Perfection

“Often, when following the trail which meanders over the hills, I pull myself up in an effort to encompass the glory and the grandeur which envelops the whole horizon. Often, when the clouds pile up in the north and the sea is churned with white caps, I say to myself: "This is the California that men dreamed of years ago, this is the Pacific that Balboa looked out on from the Peak of Darien, this is the face of the earth as the Creator intended it to look."”

Henry Miller book Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

Source: Miller, H. (1957). Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, New Directions Books, New York, p. 6.

Men , Effort , Sea

“Nehru's great passion was to change our society — the congealed society which we inherited from our own past, and from the static past of the British period. And, social change he connected with economic change. We could not change our society without changing our economic system and economic relations in society. His whole dream was that, his whole effort was in that direction. But the march of society, of social change has not been fast enough, nor fundamental enough so far. And, our inherited caste system remains with us, but it has been very badly battered. And, the conceptions behind the caste system have also been very badly damaged by policies, by the march of technology and economics, all these things. To some extent while this progressive movement was taking place, there was also, concurrently, some sort of counter-revolution, resisting it. But the overwhelming force of the progressive movement has been winning by and large. But now we have to specifically deal with many of the social ills and backwardness.”

K. R. Narayanan (1920–2005) 9th Vice President and the 10th President of India

Shri K. R. Narayanan President of India in Conversation with N. Ram on Doordarshan and All India Radio

Effort , Passion , Change , Past

“O lay me, ye that see the light, near some rock of my hills! let the thick hazels be around, let the rustling oak be near. Green be the place of my rest; let the sound of the distant torrent be heard. Daughter of Toscar, take the harp, and raise the lovely song of Selma, that sleep may overtake my soul in the midst of joy; that the dreams of my youth may return, and the days of the mighty Fingal.”

James Macpherson (1736–1796) Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician

"The War of Inis-thona"
The Poems of Ossian

Love , Youth , Soul , Sleep

“And as the moon rises he sits by his fire
Thinking about women and glasses of beer.
And closing his eyes as the dogies retire,
He sings out a song which is soft but it's clear,
As if maybe someone could hear.Goodnight you moonlight ladies.
Rockabye sweet baby James.
Deep greens and blues are the colors I choose.
Won't you let me go down in my dreams?
And rockabye sweet baby James.”

James Taylor (1948) American singer-songwriter and guitarist

"Sweet Baby James"
Song lyrics, Sweet Baby James (1970)

Women , Color , Beer , Thinking

“The world of their [the bourgeois’] predecessors was a backward, pre-technological world, a world with the good conscience of inequality and toil, in which labor was still a fated misfortune; but a world in which man and nature were not yet organized as things and instrumentalities. With its code of forms and manners. with the style and vocabulary of its literature and philosophy. this past culture expressed the rhythm and content of a universe in which valleys and forests, villages and inns, nobles and villains, salons and courts were a part of the experienced reality. In the verse and prose of this pre-technological culture is the rhythm of those who wander or ride in carriages. who have the time and the pleasure to think, contemplate, feel and narrate. It is an outdated and surpassed culture, and only dreams and childlike regressions can recapture it. But this culture is, in some of its decisive elements. also a post-technological one. Its most advanced images and positions seem to survive their absorption into administered comforts and stimuli; they continue to haunt the consciousness with the possibility of their rebirth in the consummation of technical progress. They are the expression of that free and conscious alienation from the established forms of life with which literature and the arts opposed these forms even where they adorned them. In contrast to the Marxian concept, which denotes man's relation to himself and to his work in capitalist society, the artistic alienation is the conscious transcendence of the alienated existence—a “higher level” or mediated alienation. The conflict with the world of progress, the negation of the order of business, the anti-bourgeois elements in bourgeois literature and art are neither due to the aesthetic lowliness of this order nor to romantic reaction—nostalgic consecration of a disappearing stage of civilization. “Romantic” is a term of condescending defamation which is easily applied to disparaging avant-garde positions, just as the term “decadent” far more often denounces the genuinely progressive traits of a dying culture than the real factors of decay. The traditional images of artistic alienation are indeed romantic in as much as they are in aesthetic incompatibility with the developing society. This incompatibility is the token of their truth. What they recall and preserve in memory pertains to the future: images of a gratification that would dissolve the society which suppresses it”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), pp. 59-60

Life , Fate , Pleasure , Truth

“The marketing people don't care about the elegance and perfection that impresses the engineers' peers. They think engineers are impractical cuckoos who would just as soon bankrupt the company by pursuing perfectionist pipe dreams.”

Howard S. Becker (1928) American sociologist

Source: Writing for Social Scientists (1986), p. 159.

People , Thinking , Perfection

“When you’re dreaming with a broken heart,
The waking up is the hardest part.”

John Mayer (1977) guitarist and singer/songwriter

Dreaming with a Broken Heart
Song lyrics, Continuum (2006)

Heart , Parting

““Hey!” the people cried in their dreams. “Give us back our ghosts!” for ghosts are as much a part of a community as its plumbing or its library, for how can a community be without its memories?”

Ian McDonald book Desolation Road

Source: Desolation Road (1988), Chapter 18 (p. 94).

People , Communication , Memory , Parting

“The wind shrieks, the wind grieves;
It dashes the leaves on walls, it whirls then again;
And the enormous sleeper vaguely and stupidly dreams
And desires to stir, to resist a ghost of pain.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

Pain

“You talk like they
don’t kick dreams
around downtown.”

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist

"Comment on Curb"
Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951)

“All our dreams can come true — if we have the courage to pursue them.”

Walt Disney (1901–1966) American film producer and businessman

Source: 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.

Success , Beauty , Courageous , Wise

“These Chinese novels are not perfect according to Western standards. They are not always planned from beginning to end, nor are they compact, any more than life is planned or compact. They are often too long, too full of incident, too crowded with character, a medley of fact and fiction as to material, and a medley of romance and realism as to method, so that an impossible event of magic or dream may be described with such exact semblance of detail that one is compelled to belief against all reason”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

The Chinese Novel (1938)

Life , Perfection

“When you review an exhibition of paintings you don't compose a painting about it, when you review a film you don't make a film about it and when you review a new CD you don't make a little CD about it. But when you review a prose-narrative then you write a prose-narrative about that prose-narrative and those who write the secondary prose-narrative, let's face it, must have once had dreams of writing the primary prose-narrative. And so there is a kind of hierarchy of envy and all those other things.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

Interview with Ramona Koval on Radio National (4 September 1999) http://www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/bwriting/stories/s21638.htm

Envy , Painting

“Although I come to you constantly
over the roads of dreams,
those nights of love
are not worth one waking touch of you.”

Ono no Komachi (825–900) Japanese poet

Source: Kenneth Rexroth's translations, Women Poets of Japan (1982), p. 15

Love , Night

“How tell what remains? But it’s the end. Or have I been dreaming, am I dreaming? No no, none of that, for dream is nothing, a joke, and significant what is worse.”

Samuel Beckett (1906–1989) Irish novelist, playwright, and poet

The Calmative (1946)

“Already, in the decades before Independence our people were giving thought to their vision of an Independent India. Pandit Motilal Nehru drafted the well-known Nehru Report on the Constitution of free India. The Karachi Session of the Indian National Congress held in March, 1931 adopted the famous Resolution moved by Mahatma Gandhi which contained our charter on Fundamental Rights. It is against this historical backdrop of a long and arduous struggle and the crystallization of our vision of a sovereign, democratic nation that the first session of the Constituent Assembly was held in 1946, when, as Panditji said, we embarked on `the high adventure of giving shape, in the printed and written word, to a nation's dream and aspiration.”

Shankar Dayal Sharma (1918–1999) Indian politician

Address By Dr. Shanker Dayal Sharma President Of India On The Occasion Of The 50th Anniversary Of The First Sitting Of The Constituent Assembly

People

“The idea that the worldling's 'reality' is illusion and that life itself is a dream from which we shall eventually awake is of course a Buddhist one; but in Xueqin's hands it becomes a poetical means of demonstrating that his characters are both creatures of his imagination and at the same time the real companions of his golden youth. To that extent it can be thought of as a literary device rather than as a deeply held philosophy, though it is really both.”

David Hawkes (sinologist) (1923–2009) British sinologist

Source: Preface to The Golden Days, 1973, p. 45

Life , Youth , Imagination , Idea

“Humankind is a lonely creature looking for connections and associations from childhood to the end of his life. This intention to join with the others can also be found in human societies. Stories, legends and most of human efforts tend to a joint and union, the same direction towards which the humankind is heading. The definition of a human being in this theory is not considered to be a good or a devil self. Man is defined as a social creature craving for establishing relationships and connections, without which he will be unable to survive. Linking up with another thing, establishing connections with God, relating to different points of view, associating with dreams and in its most general form sharing life with a spouse are all examples of this instinct in human beings. In a similar pattern, civilizations of the world are following, and will be following, the same path. This is the era of Collaboration of Civilizations, Union of Cultures, and Joining of Religions.”

Elia M. Ramollah (1973) founder and leader of the El Yasin Community

360 Doctrines and Comprehensive Theories, Union of Civilizations

Life , God , World , Religion

“No doubt analytical psychologists could tear it all to bits and explain it in the jargon of this or that psychological school. Critics could trample on my dreams and say that it was too much in the realm of feeling to have any value, but so is falling in love. Is that not real, and highly significant, and life-changing? So is the state of mind induced by music, or by some of the glories of Nature, or by some of the works of man... All I can say is that to me it was an experience of God, never to be denied... No one who has had such an experience can ever doubt but that in the end good will triumph over every form of evil, and that every life, however humble, frustrated, indifferent or even careless, is in the care of this Power and within a Plan, vast beyond our power to imagine, which will work out in a blessedness which brings utter satisfaction and quality of bliss for which there are no words.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

(76-77) [ellipsis added]
The Christian Agnostic (1965)

Love , Life , God , School

“One of the loveliest daughters of that land,
Divinest Greece! that taught the painter's hand
To give eternity to loveliness;
One of those dark-eyed maids, to whom belong
The glory and the beauty of each Song
Thy poets breathed, for it was theirs to bless
With life the pencil and the lyre's dreams,
Giving reality to visioned gleams
Of bright divinities.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Leander and Hero from The London Literary Gazette (22nd February 1823)
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Life , Beauty , Reality , Daughters

“I think the best thing is being able to play golf competitively for a living. Ever since I was a little boy, that's something I've always wanted to do, and now I get a chance to live out my dreams.”

Tiger Woods (1975) American professional golfer

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0971329/bio

Boy , Thinking , Chance

“The world cannot be translated; it can only be dreamed of and touched.”

Dejan Stojanovic book The Creator

“World II,” p. 84
The Creator (2000), Sequence: “Same and Change”

World

“No one could have less faith in the absolute and definitive importance of the work created by man, because I believe that this world is nothing but a dream…”

Gustave Moreau (1826–1898) French painter

Source: Gustave Moreau (1972), p. 62

World , Faith

“This year, once again, the seasons have passed.
Memories have faded.
The border between my blurry dream and
reality has become blurred.
Even so, the dream I once told you of
did not have a single lie.”

Ayumi Hamasaki (1978) Japanese recording artist, lyricist, model, and actress

Seasons
Lyrics, Duty

Lie , Reality , Memory , Season

“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 (1896–1966) French writer

Le Manifeste du Surréalisme, Andre Breton (Manifesto of Surrealism; 1924)

Death , Birth , Reality , Sleep

“The stuff of thought is the seed of the artist. Dreams form the bristles of the artist's brush. As the eye functions as the brain's sentry, I communicate my innermost perceptions through the art, my worldview.”

Arshile Gorky (1904–1948) Armenian-American painter

quote in Abstract Expressionism, Barbara Hess, Taschen, 2005, p. 10
posthumous

Art , Communication

“I think each person knows what's good for them. I don't think you need to be drastic. But it's finding where's passion in your life. We can't live without dreams.”

Jewel (1974) American singer-songwriter, guitarist, producer, actress, and poet

The Late Late Show (24 January 1997)

Life , Thinking , Passion , Personality

“More dreams have been assassinated by guilt than ever were ended by waking up. The dream of freedom is a yearning towards growth, a need for self-knowledge, not an escape from some half seen, half felt bogeyman. We all have a need, mostly unsatisfied and rarely spoken, to measure ourselves against nature as we were meant to do. To see how far our muscles and our breath and our unaided minds can take us. In a culture that lets us do little for ourselves we have this curious and hidden need to make our way to paradise on our own two feet. Being carried to paradise on a palanquin was, I am sure, as unsatisfying as being carried there on a jet. To sleep away your passage in silk draped sloth, or to murder space in a turbine’s roar, gives us no measure of ourselves and the measure of self is the meaning of life.”

Reese Palley (1922–2015)

“Unlikely Passages” 1984

Life , Way , Nature , Knowledge

“It is a question of the systematic and interpretive organization of the sensational, scattered and narcissist surrealist experimental material, - that is to say, of everyday surrealist events:, br>nocturnal pollution, false recollection, dream, diurnal fantasy, the concrete transformation of nocturnal phosphene into a hypnagogic image or of "waking phosphene" into an objective image, - the nutritive caprice, - inter-uterine claims, - anamorphic hysteria, - the voluntary retention of the urine, - the involuntary retention of insomnia - the fortuitous image of exclusively exhibitionist tendency, -the incomplete action, - the frantic manner, - the regional sneeze, the anal wheelbarrow, the minimal mistake, the liliputian malaise, the super-normal physiological state, - the picture one leaves off painting, that which one paints, the territorial ringing of the telephone, "the deranging image", etc., etc.,
all these things, I say, and a thousand other instantaneous or successive sollicitations, revealing a minimum of irrational intentionalety or, on the contrary, a minimum of suspect phenomenal nullity, are associated, by the mechanisms of paranoiac-critical activity, in an indestructible delirious-interpretive system of political problems, paralytic images, more or less mammiferous questions, playing the role of the obsessing idea.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

Source: Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1931 - 1940, My Pictorial Struggle', S. Dali, 1935, Chapter: 'My Pictorial Struggle', pp. 15-16

Idea , Question , Problem , Success

“True poetry is a function of awakening. It awakens us, but it must retain the memory of previous dreams.”

Gaston Bachelard book L'Eau et les Rêves

Introduction
L'eau et les rêves (Water and Dreams) 1942

Memory

“Politicians are further eroding the 'American Dream' by passing laws which are supposed to be a 'quick fix', when all they are really designed for is to get the official re-elected. These laws tend to "dilute" a problem for a while, until the problem comes roaring back in a worsened form much like a strain of bacteria will alter itself to defeat a known medication.”

Timothy McVeigh (1968–2001) American army soldier, security guard, terrorist

1990s, Letter to the Union-Sun & Journal (1992)

Law , Problem

“The worship of money is the lowest of all human emotions, but it is shared not only by the bourgeoisie, but also by the great majority of us… Little people, humble people, even those who are practically penniless. And I, with all my indignation, all my passion for destruction, I, too, am not free of it. I who am oppressed by wealth, who realise it to be the source of all misery, all my vices and hatred, all the bitterest humiliations that I have to suffer, all my impossible dreams and all the endless torment of my existence, still, all the time, as soon as I find myself in the presence of a rich person, I cannot help looking up to him, as some exceptional and splendid being, a kind of marvelous divinity, and in spite of myself, stronger than either my will of my reason, I feel rising from the very depths of my being, a sort of incense of admiration for this wealthy creature, who is all too often as stupid as he is pitiless. Isn’t it crazy? And why… why?”

Octave Mirbeau (1848–1917) French journalist, art critic, travel writer, pamphleteer, novelist, and playwright

Diary ot a Chambermaid

Money , People , Stupidity , Feeling

“Silence brings us new names
new feelings and new knowledge.
Dreams dress us carefully
in the colors of power and faith.”

Aberjhani (1957) author

(In a Quiet Place on a Quiet Street, p. 98).
Book Sources, ELEMENTAL, The Power of Illuminated Love (2008)

Faith , Color , Feeling , Knowledge

“We have been conned again. The Israeli elections, we are told, mean that the dream of "Greater Israel" has finally been abandoned…But it is a lie.”

Robert Fisk (1946) English writer and journalist

Another Brick in the Wall http://www.palestinechronicle.com/story-040406231246.htm, April 4, 2006
2006

Lie

“…women aren't interested in the romance of dreams; they are interested in the reality of facts, they don't care what facts, let alone whether they are true or not if they just dovetail with all the other facts without leaving a saw-tooth edge.”

William Faulkner book The Town

Gavin Stevens paraphrasing Eula Varner Snopes in Ch. 15
The Town (1957)

Women , Reality

“Some day I would like to meet you as a fellow senator or representative in Washington, D. C. Whether that will ever be my lot none can now say. But for those who have the rightful desire and expectation, a way is usually opened. Let us hope that you and I, and many, many others like us, will be enabled someday, somewhere, somehow to contribute in some small way to the peace and progress of this world. There is nothing wrong with dreams provided foundations are put under them.”

Nile Kinnick (1918–1943) College football player

Letter to friend Loren Hickerson (December 13, 1941)

World , Peace , Hope , Way

“To what may youth's first joyance be compared?
To daylight, and the glad song of the lark
Bursting together, — to a sudden gush
Of perfume, till the giddy senses link
With overmuch delight,— a dream,— a tale
Of Paradise, told in fair poesy.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(13th December 1823) Poetic Sketches. Fourth Series. Sketch V.— The Island.
The London Literary Gazette, 1823

Youth , Sense

“You really have to let me fight my own battles. You can't constantly second-guess me and try to protect me. It's stifling, Christian. I'll never flourish with your incessant interference. I need some freedom. I wouldn't dream of meddling in your affairs.
…if we are to have any hope of a future together, you have to trust me and trust my judgment. Yes, I'll get it wrong sometimes--I'll make mistakes, but I have to learn.
…I know you want to control everything, and I understand why, but you can't. It's an impossible goal…you have to learn to let go.”

E. L. James book Fifty Shades Darker

Fifty Shades Darker (2011) Anastasia Steele, Chapter 11, p. 273-274.

Hope , Understanding , Freedom , Learning

“For hopeless love is but a dream and shade.”

Ludovico Ariosto book Orlando Furioso

Che l'amar senza speme è sogno e ciancia.
Canto XXV, stanza 49 (tr. W. S. Rose)
Orlando Furioso (1532)

Love

“I think I'm getting into the real mood and atmosphere of Worpswede now. What I used to call my Sunken Bell mood, the spell I was under when I first got here, was sweet, very sweet – but it was really only a dream, and one that couldn't last long in any sort of active life. Then came the reaction to it, and after that something truer – serious work and serious living for my art, a battle I must fight with all my strength. I am filled with the sun, every part of me, and with the breezy air, intoxicated with the moonlight on the bright snow... Nature was speaking with me and I listened to her, happy and vibrant. Life.”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

excerpt of her Journal, Worpswede 1897; as quoted in Voicing our visions, – Writings by women artists; ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, pp. 193-194
1897

Life , Art , Mood , Nature

“As dogs, cats, horses, and probably all the higher animals, even birds, as is stated on good authority, have vivid dreams, and this is shewn by their movements and voice, we must admit that they possess some power of imagination. … Few persons any longer dispute that animals possess some power of reasoning. Animals may constantly be seen to pause, deliberate, and resolve. It is a significant fact, that the more the habits of any particular animal are studied by a naturalist, the more he attributes to reason and the less to unlearnt instincts.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

volume I, chapter II: "Comparison of the Mental Powers of Man and the Lower Animals", page 46 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=59&itemID=F937.1&viewtype=image
The Descent of Man (1871)

Dogs , Imagination , Cats , Bird

“One of the biggest box-office successes in movie history — probably because for young audiences it's like getting a box of Cracker Jack that is all prizes. Written and directed by George Lucas, the film is enjoyable in its own terms, but it's exhausting, too: like taking a pack of kids to the circus. There's no breather in the picture, no lyricism; the only attempt at beauty is in the image of a double sunset. The loudness, the smash-and-grab editing, and the relentless pacing drive every idea out of your head, and even if you've been entertained, you may feel cheated of some dimension — a sense of wonder, perhaps. It's an epic without a dream.”

Pauline Kael (1919–2001) American film critic

"Star Wars," p. 714.
5001 Nights at the Movies (1982)

Beauty , Feeling , History , Idea

“Recently a courageous group of Arab and Muslim intellectuals wrote me a letter. In it, they said this: "The shore of reform is the only one on which any lights appear, even though the journey demands courage and patience and perseverance." The United Nations was created to make that journey possible. Together we must support the dreams of good and decent people who are working to transform a troubled region -- and by doing so, we will advance the high ideals on which this institution was founded.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2006, United Nations General Assembly speech (September 2006)

People , Courage , Support , Light

“Many women would like to dream with men without sleeping with them. Someone should point out to them that this is utterly impossible.”

Karl Kraus (1874–1936) Czech playwright and publicist

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

Women , Men , Sleep

“[Mortals] say of some temporal suffering, "No future bliss can make up for it," not knowing Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say "Let me have but this and I'll take the consequences": little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death.”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Great Divorce

Source: The Great Divorce (1944–1945), Ch. 9

Death , Pleasure , Suffering , Past

“Give me steam.
And how you feel to make it real;
Real as anything you've seen.
Get a life with this dreamer's dream.”

Peter Gabriel (1950) English singer-songwriter, record producer and humanitarian

Steam
Song lyrics, Us (1992)

Life , Feeling

“She's ma lady love, she is ma dove, ma baby love,
She's no gal for sittin' down to dream,
She's de only queen Laguna knows;
I know she likes me, I know she likes me
Bekase she says so; She is de Lily of Laguna,
she is ma Lily and ma Rose.”

Leslie Stuart (1863–1928) British composer

Song Lily of Laguna.

Love , Baby

“For just a minute there I was dreaming.
For just a minute it was all so real.
For just a minute she was standing there, with me.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Southern Accents
Lyrics, Southern Accents (1985)

“Breathe slumbrous music round me, sweet and slow,
To honied phrases set!
Into the land of dreams I long to go.
Bid me forget!”

Mary Elizabeth Coleridge (1861–1907) British writer

Mandragora, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Music , Forgetting

“I think fiction comes from everything you've ever done, and said, and dreamed, and imagined. It comes from everything you've read and haven't read…I think my work comes out of the culture of the world around me. I think that's where my language comes from.”

Don DeLillo (1936) American novelist, playwright and essayist

'Exile on Main Street: Don DeLillo's Undisclosed Underworld' by David Remnick, The New Yorker, September 15, 1997

World , Imagination , Thinking , Reading

“The truest worship is a life;
All dreaming we resign;
We lay our offerings at Thy feet, —
Our lives, O God, are Thine!”

John Weiss (1818–1879) United States clergyman and abolitionist

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 118.

Life , God

“On the 24th of the same month I went to see the fort of Kangra, and gave an order that the Qazi, the Chief Justice (Mir'Adl), and other learned men of Islam should accompany me and carry out in the fort whatever was customary, according to the religion of Muhammad. Briefly, having traversed about one koss, I went up to the top of the fort, and by the grace of God, the call to prayer and the reading of the Khutba and the slaughter of a bullock which had not taken place from the commencement of the building of the fort till now, were carried out in my presence. I prostrated myself in thanksgiving for this great gift, which no king had hoped to receive, and ordered a lofty mosque to be built inside the fort' ….'After going round the fort I went to see the temple of Durga, which is known as Bhawan. A world has here wandered in the desert of error. Setting aside the infidels whose custom is the worship of idols, crowds of the people of Islam, traversing long distances, bring their offerings and pray to the black stone (image)' Some maintain that this stone, which is now a place of worship for the vile infidels, is not the stone which was there originally, but that a body of the people of Islam came and carried off the original stone, and threw it into the bottom of the river, with the intent that no one could get at it. For a long time the tumult of the infidels and idol-worshippers had died away in the world, till a lying brahman hid a stone for his own ends, and going to the Raja of the time said: 'I saw Durga in a dream, and she said to me: They have thrown me into a certain place: quickly go and take me up.”

Jahangir (1569–1627) 4th Mughal Emperor

The Raja, in the simplicity of his heart, and greedy for the offerings of gold that would come to him, accepted the tale of the brahman and sent a number of people with him, and brought that stone, and kept it in this place with honour, and started again the shop of error and misleading
Kangra (Himachal Pradesh) , Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri, translated into English by Alexander Rogers, first published 1909-1914, New Delhi Reprint, 1978, Vol. II, pp. 223-25.

Men , God , People , World

“Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with, but where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found?”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

"The Will to Believe" p. 14 http://books.google.com/books?id=Moqh7ktHaJEC&pg=PA14
1890s, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)

“The young come to us creatures of imagination and strong affection; they want to feel, but they don’t know how—that is to say, they do not know the right objects and the right measures. And it is entirely certain that if we leave them to the sort of education obtainable today for extra-scholastic sources, the great majority will be schooled in the two vices of sentimentality and brutality. Now great poetry, rightly interpreted, is the surest antidote to both of these. In contrast with journalists and others, the great poets relate the events of history to a pure or noble metaphysical dream, which our students will have all their lives as a protecting arch over their system of values.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

“The Power of the Word,” p. 51.
Language is Sermonic (1970)

Education , School , Feeling , Imagination

“She watched the lights upon the shore. The glare that was Plymouth in the distance. She thought, the dance is over. The girls are going out of the overheated hall into the cold air. They shiver; their young men hurry after them. Some have got home and find their dresses stained or torn; yet they've enjoyed themselves. Which is the more important? Wallflowers think of the young men who haven't danced with them; probably each has a dream-day hero. Remember the lieutenant to whom I never spoke a word; yet I married him and had children and grandchildren, though he never knew it. And there are others, madly happy, look in their mirrors and smile and wonder. Even the latest home has a warm bed to go to.”

Arthur Calder-Marshall (1908–1992) English novelist, essayist, critic, memoirist and biographer

Calder-Marshall, Arthur. At Sea. London: Jonathan Cape. 1934.

Men , Children , Smile , Home

“We are full of dreams […] We long for the unattainable. We believe in the nonsense of fables. There is no pure love; there is lust and there is need.”

David Gemmell book Quest for Lost Heroes

Source: Drenai series, Quest for Lost Heroes, Ch. 12

Love

“Reality and dream simultaneously, and myself makes a third in the party, completely at home here. This will be fine.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Diary-note, 7 April 1914; as quoted by June Taboroff, on 'AramcoWorld', May, June 1991 http://archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/199103/travels.in.tunisia.htm
1911 - 1914, Diary-notes from Tunisia' (1914)

Home , Reality

“There are two problems with Apple Pay — and both are problematic. The first is that not everyone has an [i]OS device, or one that supports it. And not everyone ever will, despite the wet dreams of the entire Dallas Cowboys team blowing Tim Cook nightly that dance in his head.”

Karl Denninger American businessman

Apple Pay: No, Not Everyone Wants It http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=229553 in The Market Ticker (1 November 2014)

Support , Problem , Dance , Cooking

“You will be one of the 10% of people out there who are in that bracket because you've succeeded, 90% of people don't live their dream, they talk about it. We've all been in the pub when your mate says 'I'm going to do this' and you go back a year later and he's sitting in the same chair saying the same thing. We've all been there or know someone who's been there.”

Paul Oakenfold (1963) British record producer and a trance music DJ

Tony Blair Steals Oakey’s Parking Space. Trackitdown.net, October 12, 2007. http://www.trackitdown.net/news/101585.html

People

“I mentioned the caffeine. I should also note that if coffee does not prevent or inhibit sleep, it will stimulate dream projections, and also aid you in bringing the critical faculties into the dream state.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 290, Page 70
The Early Sessions: Sessions 1-42, 1997, The Early Sessions: Book 7

Coffee , Sleep

“At the following morning, when the first citizens started walking around, he was found dead. So died the poor and brave Antônio da Silva Marramaque who, at the age of 18, dreamed with the glories of poetry and was now murdered due his great soul and brave moral! He didn't compose any sonnet and, if he did, he composed bad ones. But, by his way, he was a hero and a poet… that God bless him!”

Lima Barreto book Clara dos Anjos

Clara dos Anjos (1948)

God , Age , Way , Soul

“To leave behind Earth and air and gravity is an ancient dream of humanity. For these seven, it was a dream fulfilled. Each of these astronauts had the daring and discipline required of their calling. Each of them knew that great endeavors are inseparable from great risks. And each of them accepted those risks willingly, even joyfully, in the cause of discovery.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2003, Columbia space shuttle disaster (February 2003)

“The particular thing about science is to combine that [the dreams of obtaining power] with a retreat from the world. Other people want to obtain power by going out into the world, but the scientist really wants to obtain power by retreating from the world.”

Max Delbrück (1906–1981) biophysicist

Interview with Max Delbruck (1978), p. 88. Oral History Project, California Institute of Technology Archives, Pasadena, California.

People , World , Science

“Green fields and rolling hills,
Room enough to do what we will.
Sweet dreams of yestertime
Are running though my mind
Of a place I left behind.
Been so long, I can't remember when,
I've been to Canaan and I wanna go back again.”

Carole King (1942) Nasa

Been to Canaan
Song lyrics, Rhymes & Reasons (1972)

“I want to thank some very special people without whom I would not be here today. George Bush, Sarah Palin and the Pope. When I came to Hollywood in 1983, I had one dream— to sleep with Jodie Foster. That didn't work out, but this is nice, too.”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

On getting his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (14 September 2010), as reported on Larry King Live (14 September 2010)

People , Sleep

“Advertisers are the interpreters of our dreams — Joseph interpreting for Pharaoh. Like the movies, they infect the routine futility of our days with purposeful adventure. Their weapons are our weaknesses: fear, ambition, illness, pride, selfishness, desire, ignorance. And these weapons must be kept as bright as a sword.”

E. B. White (1899–1985) American writer

"Truth in Advertising," The New Yorker (11 July 1936)

Fear , Selfishness

“All those large dreams by which men long live well
Are magic-lanterned on the smoke of hell.”

William Empson (1906–1984) English literary critic and poet

Source: This Last Pain' (1930), Line 21.

Men , Hell

“To-day Europe is neither at war nor at peace, but stands at armed attention…That, in itself, is a sufficiently melancholy, devastating reply to all the efforts of the lovers of peace. But what is much worse is this: peace in some quarters is proclaimed as a bad dream, and war sanctified as an ideal for rational men. As long as the British Empire lasts we will raise our voices against these false gods.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the Empire Rally of Youth at the Royal Albert Hall (18 May 1937), quoted in Service of Our Lives (1937), pp. 163-164.
1937

Men , God , War , Peace

“She had a need to feel the thunder,
To chase the lightning from the sky,
To watch a storm with all its wonder
Written in her lover's eyes.
She had to ride the heat of passion
Like a comet burning bright,
Rushing headlong in the wind
Now where only dreams have been,
Burning both ends of the night.”

Garth Brooks (1962) American country music artist

That Summer, written by Pat Alger, Sandy Mahl-Brooks, and G. Brooks.
Song lyrics, The Chase (1992)

Feeling , Lovers , Passion , Night

“Since life is but a dream,
Why toil to no avail?”

Li Bai (701–762) Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty poetry period

"A Homily on Ideals in Life, Uttered in Springtime on Rising From a Drunken Slumber" (c. 750), in A Golden Treasury of Chinese Poetry: 121 Classical Poems (1976), p. 115
Variant translation by Arthur Waley: "Life in the World is but a big dream; I will not spoil it by any labour or care."

Life

“Blue, round, miserable moon, full of magic, picture that draws like a magnet, pale-coloured, charmed jewel, made by sorcerers; swiftest of dreams, cold traitor, brother to the ice, most evil and unkind of servants, let hell consume the hateful, thin, bent-lipped mirror!”

Dafydd ap Gwilym (1320–1380) Welsh poet

Lleuad las gron gwmpas graen,
Llawn o hud, llun ehedfaen;
Hadlyd liw, hudol o dlws,
Hudolion a'i hadeilws;
Breuddwyd o'r modd ebrwydda',
Bradwr oer a brawd i'r ia.
Ffalstaf, gwir ddifwynaf gwas,
Fflam fo'r drych mingam meingas!
"Y Drych" (The Mirror), line 25; translation from Carl Lofmark Bards and Heroes (Felinfach: Llanerch, 1989) p. 96.

Hate , Hell , Evil , Drawing