Quotes about dream
page 9

Sally Wen Mao photo

“I would want a dreaming machine that dreams up the most beautiful dreams and then show me exactly how to make them a reality…This is the eternal conundrum: the visualization of desires (dreams), and then the dissonance between that and reality.”

Sally Wen Mao Chinese-born American poet

On her poem “Yume-Miru Kikai” in “41.2 Feature: An Interview with Sally Wen Mao” https://bwr.ua.edu/an-interview-with-poet-sally-wen-mao-from-issue-41-2/ in Black Warrior Review (2015 Mar 2)

Vanessa Hua photo

“I think the American dream is still what gets us out of bed every day, that life can be better…”

Vanessa Hua American journalist and writer

On the state of the “American Dream” in “A Conversation with Vanessa Hua” https://www.readitforward.com/author-interview/a-conversation-with-vanessa-hua/ in Read It Forward

H.P. Lovecraft photo

“I really agree that Yog-Sothoth is a basically immature conception, & unfitted for really serious literature. The fact is, I have never approached serious literature yet. But I consider the use of actual folk-myths as even more childish than the use of new artificial myths, since in the former one is forced to retain many blatant peurilities & contradictions of experienced which could be subtilised or smoothed over if the supernaturalism were modelled to order for the given case. The only permanently artistic use of Yog-Sothothery, I think, is in symbolic or associative phantasy of the frankly poetic type; in which fixed dream-patterns of the natural organism are given an embodiment & crystallisation... But there is another phase of cosmic phantasy (which may or may not include frank Yog-Sothothery) whose foundations appear to me as better grounded than those of ordinary oneiroscopy; personal limitations regarding the sense of outsideness. I refer to the aesthetic crystallisation of that burning & inextinguishable feeling of mixed wonder & oppression which the sensitive imagination experiences upon scaling itself & its restrictions against the vast & provocative abyss of the unknown. This has always been the chief emotion in my psychology; & whilst it obviously figures less in the psychology of the majority, it is clearly a well-defined & permanent factor from which very few sensitive persons are wholly free.... Reason as we may, we cannot destroy a normal perception of the highly limited & fragmentary nature of our visible world of perception & experience as scaled against the outside abyss of unthinkable galaxies & unplumbed dimensions—an abyss wherein our solar system is the merest dot... The time has come when the normal revolt against time, space, & matter must assume a form not overtly incompatible with what is known of reality—when it must be gratified by images forming supplements rather than contradictions of the visible & measurable universe. And what, if not a form of non-supernatural cosmic art, is to pacify this sense of revolt—as well as gratify the cognate sense of curiosity?”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Frank Belknap Long (27 February 1931), in Selected Letters III, 1929-1931 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 293
Non-Fiction, Letters, to Frank Belknap Long

Marcus Aurelius photo
Jawaharlal Nehru photo
Indíra Gándhí photo
Mark Twain photo
Max Ernst photo
Isaac Newton photo
Arthur C. Clarke photo

“What was the use of wealth and power unless they could be used to shape one’s dreams?”

The Wall of Darkness, p. 111
2000s and posthumous publications, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (2001)

Robert Browning photo
Nikola Tesla photo

“One afternoon, which is ever present in my recollection, I was enjoying a walk with my friend in the city park and reciting poetry. At that age I knew entire books by heart, word for word. One of these was Goethe's Faust. The sun was just setting and reminded me of a glorious passage:
Sie rückt und weicht, der Tag ist überlebt,
Dort eilt sie hin und fördert neues Leben.
O! daß kein Flügel mich vom Boden hebt,
Ihr nach und immer nach zu streben!
Ein schöner Traum, indessen sie entweicht.
Ach! zu des Geistes Flügeln wird so leicht
Kein körperlicher Flügel sich gesellen![The glow retreats, done is the day of toil;
It yonder hastes, new fields of life exploring;
Ah, that no wing can lift me from the soil
Upon its track to follow, follow soaring!
A glorious dream! though now the glories fade.
Alas! the wings that lift the mind no aid
Of wings to lift the body can bequeath me.
(tr. Bayard Taylor)
As I uttered these inspiring words the idea came like a flash of lightning and in an instant the truth was revealed. I drew with a stick on the sand the diagram shown six years later in my address before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, and my companion understood them perfectly. The images I saw were wonderfully sharp and clear and had the solidity of metal and stone, so much so that I told him, "See my motor here; watch me reverse it."”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

I cannot begin to describe my emotions. Pygmalion seeing his statue come to life could not have been more deeply moved. A thousand secrets of nature which I might have stumbled upon accidentally, I would have given for that one which I had wrested from her against all odds and at the peril of my existence …

On the Invention of the Induction Motor
My Inventions (1919)

David Miedzianik photo

“Once I dreamed I'd write songs.”

David Miedzianik (1956) British writer

A Season of Changes

Ronnie James Dio photo

“The world is full of kings and queens
Who blind your eyes and steal your dreams,
It’s heaven and hell, oh well.”

Ronnie James Dio (1942–2010) American singer

"Heaven and Hell" on Heaven and Hell (1980)
Lyrics

Richard Wagner photo

“Believe me, mankind's truest madness is revealed to him in dreams. All word-craft and poetry is nothing but true dream-interpretation.”

Richard Wagner (1813–1883) German composer, conductor

Original: (de) "Glaubt mir, des Menschen wahrster Wahn
wird ihm im Traume aufgetan:
all' Dichtkunst und Poeterei
ist nichts als Wahrtraumdeuterei."
Source: Quotes from his operas, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Hans Sachs, Act 3, Scene 2

Friedrich Nietzsche photo
T.S. Eliot photo
Cristiano Ronaldo photo
Sappho photo

“O dream on your black wings
you come when I am sleeping.”

Sappho (-630–-570 BC) ancient Greek lyric poet

The Willis Barnstone translations, Dream

Chiaki Mukai photo

“On a personal note, I am grateful to have had opportunities to journey into space. It took nearly ten years to see my dreams come true. It was indeed worth the effort and the wait.”

Chiaki Mukai (1952) astronaut, medical doctor

And I strongly believe that "Education enables us to envision and to pursue our dreams."
Source: Space and I, Chiaki Mukai http://www.globaleducationmagazine.com/space-and-i/

William G. Boykin photo

“We also need to be encouragers to our friends. Some of them have hopes and dreams, yet although they've prayed and watched and waited, there's been no answer from above.”

William G. Boykin (1948) Recipient of the Purple Heart medal

After seven tries, the rain was finally on its way.
Source: Man to Man: Rediscovering Masculinity in a Challenging World (2020), p. 123

Pope John XXIII photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Eminem photo

“Had a dream, I was king; I woke up, still king”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"Lighters"
2010s

François Jacob photo

“The dream of every cell is to become two cells.”

François Jacob (1920–2013) French biologist

They not only obey them; they utilize them as a good engineer would, with maximum efficiency, to carry out the project and bring about the "dream" (as François Jacob put it) of every cell: to become two cells.
Source: Originated from paraphrase of a paragraph in Chance and Necessity (1970, p20) by Jacques Monod:

Bachir Gemayel photo
Kanye West photo
Kanye West photo
Kanye West photo
Prevale photo

“In dreams, beyond imagination, there is always a part of life.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: Nei sogni, oltre l'immaginazione, c'è sempre una parte di vita.
Source: prevale.net

John Cheever photo
Neil Young photo
F. Scott Fitzgerald photo

“Your photograph is all I have: it is with me from the morning when I wake up with a frantic half dream about you to the last moment when I think of you and of death at night.”

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

Source: Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald photo
Tom Robbins photo
William H. Gass photo
Gabriel García Márquez photo
Joel Osteen photo
Tom Waits photo
Michael J. Fox photo
Mitch Albom photo
Nicholas Sparks photo

“What are we, after all, without our memories … without our dreams?”

Variant: What are we after all our dreams, after all our memories?
Source: The Wedding

Alice Hoffman photo
Stephen King photo
James A. Michener photo
William Wordsworth photo
Philip K. Dick photo
Ernest Hemingway photo
Don DeLillo photo
Margaret Mitchell photo
Jenny Han photo
Sue Monk Kidd photo
Mary E. Pearson photo
Anaïs Nin photo

“The earth is heavy and opaque without dreams.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Source: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 3: 1939-1944

Audre Lorde photo
Robert Jordan photo
Rick Riordan photo
Lydia Davis photo
Tom Clancy photo

“Dreams have only one owner at a time. That's why dreamers are lonely.”

Erma Bombeck (1927–1996) When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent le…
Yu Hua photo

“Unequal lives give rise to unequal dreams.”

Yu Hua (1960) Chinese writer

十個詞彙裡的中國

Anaïs Nin photo

“You are the poet, you walk inside my dreams…”

Source: Under a Glass Bell

Francesca Lia Block photo
Cecelia Ahern photo
Franz Kafka photo
Henry David Thoreau photo

“I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours..”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Variant: I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
Source: Walden: Or, Life in the Woods

Libba Bray photo
Anaïs Nin photo
Gabrielle Zevin photo
Henry David Thoreau photo
Tom Stoppard photo
William James photo
Haruki Murakami photo
Ayn Rand photo
Marcus Aurelius photo
Warren Ellis photo
Libba Bray photo
Gabriel García Márquez photo