quotations about dreams & dreaming
One use of dreams is that, unprejudiced by our often forced and artificial reflections, they represent the impartial outcome of our entire being.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
"Notebook J", The Waste Books
Dream different dreams while on the same bed.
CHINESE PROVERB
People who are most afraid of their dreams convince themselves they don't dream at all.
JOHN STEINBECK
The Winter of Our Discontent
What I want to do is travel deep and deeper into the dreamlands, to find that place that I know is waiting for me here. My home.
CHARLES DE LINT
The Onion Girl
Why did I keep hitching myself to dreams as big as that Montana sky? I was like Rooster Jim's chickens, with no way to fly that high.
KIRBY LARSON
Hattie Ever After
Hear in a realm of wordless dreams--
That inner life which knows and thinks;
My thirsty spirit comes and drinks
The petal dew of golden streams;
Where death is less than what it seems,
And life is subtler than the Sphinx.
HENRY ABBEY
"May Dreams"
I have observed dreams and visions very carefully, and am now certain that the imagination has some way of lighting on the truth that the reason has not, and that its commandments, delivered when the body is still and the reason silent, are the most binding we can ever know.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Ideas of Good and Evil
Dreams are pegs for Superstition and Romance to hang their cloaks upon.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
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
Why is the unconscious so loathe to speak to us? Why the images, metaphors, pictures? Why the dreams, for that matter.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
"The Kekulé Problem: Where did language come from?", Nautilus, April 20, 2017
All men who have achieved great things have been great dreamers.
ORISON SWETT MARDEN
The Miracle of Right Thought
Not everything to which we are able to compare an object or an occurrence occurs in the dream as its symbol; on the other hand, the dream does not symbolize anything we may choose, but only specific elements of the dream thought. There are limitations on both sides.
SIGMUND FREUD
"Symbolism in the Dream", A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis
Because waking I often observe the absurdity of dreams, but never dream of the absurdities of my waking thoughts, I am well satisfied that being awake, I know I dream not; though when I dream, I think myself awake.
THOMAS HOBBES
Leviathan
Dream life, I realized, was only confusing when you were awake. It was from the perspective of waking life that dream life seemed fractured and lacking consequence, lacking any certainty that one thing led to another. But from within dream life, the world was generally coherent. Not exactly an unconfusing world--just no more confusing than any other.
ALEX GARLAND
The Coma
The answer is dreams. Dreaming on and on. Entering the world of dreams and never coming out. Living in dreams for the rest of time.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Sputnik Sweetheart
If you're smart, then your dreams evolve, too.
MARIO BATALI
Esquire, Jun. 2004
Dreams only change their houses.
They cannot be lined up against a wall
And quietly buried under ground,
And no more heard of ...
However deep the pit and heaped the clay--
Like seedlings of old time
Hooding a sacred rose under the ice cap of the world--
Dreams will to light.
LOLA RIDGE
"Dreams"
You can't put a limit on anything. The more you dream, the farther you get.
MICHAEL PHELPS
Woman's Day, Apr. 1, 2009
If you do not fear God, then fear your dreams, because they're how He talks to you.
TIM LEBBON
Face
Dreams are symbolic in order that they cannot be understood; in order that the wish, which is the source of the dream, may remain unknown.
CARL JUNG
Psychology of the Unconscious