quotations about dreams & dreaming
Far, far away, there is a beautiful Country which no human eye has ever seen in waking hours. Under the Sunset it lies, where the distant horizon bounds the day, and where the clouds, splendid with light and colour, give a promise of the glory and beauty which encompass it. Sometimes it is given to us to see it in dreams.
BRAM STOKER
"Under the Sunset"
If we couldn't dream, our lives wouldn't mean anything anymore.
GEORG KAISER
The Raft of the Medusa
Dreaming is an advanced evolutionary exercise, a way the brain can go on an extended journey into that other reality.
ROBERT T. BAKKER
Raptor Red
Go ahead. Dream a bigger than average dream. It takes an imagination like yours to even think of the next amazing thing. It's only the middle of the week. You have time to do the impossible.
MARY ANNE RADMACHER
"My Words to Share,", Pinterest
We have discovered that the distortion of dreams, a disturbing element in our work of understanding them, is the result of a censorious activity which is directed against the unacceptable of the unconscious wish-impulses. But, of course, we have not maintained that censorship is the only factor which is to blame for the dream distortion, and we may actually make the discovery in a further study of the dream that other items play a part in this result. That is, even if the dream censorship were eliminated we might not be in a position to understand the dreams; the actual dream still might not be identical with the latent dream thought.
SIGMUND FREUD
"Symbolism in the Dream", A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis
The armored cars of dreams contrived to let us do
so many a dangerous thing.
ELIZABETH BISHOP
"Sleeping Standing Up"
When it comes to dreams, one may falter, but the only way to fail is to abandon them.
JONATHAN RHYS MEYERS
"A Whiff of Sulfur"
The dreaming faculty, like every other faculty, may be abused. A great many people do nothing but dream. They spend all their energies in building air castles which they never try to make real; they live in an unnatural, delusive, theoretical atmosphere until the faculties become paralyzed from inaction. It is a splendid thing to dream when you have the grit and tenacity of purpose and the resolution to match your dreams with realities, but dreaming without effort, wishing without putting forth exertion to realize the wish, undermines the character. It is only practical dreaming that counts--dreaming coupled with hard work and persistent endeavor.
ORISON SWETT MARDEN
He Can Who Thinks He Can
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
Sonnet XXI
Dreams are the royal road to the unconscious.
SIGMUND FREUD
The Interpretation of Dreams
Dreams are life, real life, not simply reflections. Dreams are honest.
TIM LEBBON
Face
A dream is a scripture, and many scriptures are nothing but dreams.
UMBERTO ECO
The Name of the Rose
As everyone knows, the ancients before Aristotle did not consider the dream a product of the dreaming mind, but a divine inspiration, and in ancient times the two antagonistic streams, which one finds throughout in the estimates of dream life, were already noticeable. They distinguished between true and valuable dreams, sent to the dreamer to warn him or to foretell the future, and vain, fraudulent, and empty dreams, the object of which was to misguide or lead him to destruction.
SIGMUND FREUD
The Interpretation of Dreams
Attempts to wake before our time are often punished, especially by those who love us most. Because they, bless them, are asleep. They think anyone who wakes up, or who, still asleep, realizes that what is taken to be real is a "dream" is going crazy.
R. D. LAING
The Politics of Family and Other Essays
A dream has power to poison sleep.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
"Mutability"
Dream, O youth! Dream manfully and nobly, and thy dreams shall be prophets!
EDWARD BULWER LYTTON
The Caxtons: A Family Picture
You may say I'm a dreamer,
but I'm not the only one,
I hope some day you'll join us,
And the world will be as one.
JOHN LENNON
"Imagine"
What vague, delicious dreams,
Born of this golden hour of afternoon,
And air balm-freighted, fill the soul with bliss,
Transpierced like yonder clouds with lustrous gleams,
Fantastic, brief as they, and, like them, spun
Of gilded nothingness!
EMMA LAZARUS
"Afternoon"
The dream is the liberation of the spirit from the pressure of external nature, a detachment of the soul from the fetters of matter.
SIGMUND FREUD
The Interpretation of Dreams
Dreams come to tell us something about our lives that we are missing.
JAMES REDFIELD
The Celestine Prophecy