quotations about dreams & dreaming
What we experience in dreams -- assuming that we experience it often -- belongs in the end just as much to the over-all economy of our soul as anything experienced "actually": we are richer or poorer on account of it.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Beyond Good and Evil
The dream is the small hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul, which opens to that primeval cosmic night that was soul long before there was conscious ego and will be soul far beyond what a conscious ego could ever reach.
CARL JUNG
The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man
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"
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
Those dreams that on the silent night intrude, and with false flitting shapes our minds delude ... are mere productions of the brain. And fools consult interpreters in vain.
JONATHAN SWIFT
On Dreams
Did you ever have a dream you were dreaming? You know. In your dream ... in you're dream you're having a dream. Dreams are the nearest univers parallele. Like the universe next door. So when you dream, you're really entering the universe next door. But if you dream you're dreaming, that's the universe NEXT to the universe next door ...
GLEN DUNCAN
Talulla Rising
If you do not fear God, then fear your dreams, because they're how He talks to you.
TIM LEBBON
Face
Dreams may be impossible, yet still be dreamed.
ISAAC ASIMOV
Foundation and Earth
Dreams are pegs for Superstition and Romance to hang their cloaks upon.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
EDGAR ALLAN POE
"Eleonora"
The blackest murder is the killing of the Soul's aspirations!
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"The Song of the Soul"
Sleep is in contact with the Possible, which we also call the improbable. The world of the night is a world. Night, as night, is a universe.... The dark things of the unknown world become neighbors of man, whether by true communication or by a visionary enlargement of the distances of the abyss ... and the sleeper, not quite seeing, not quite unconscious, glimpses the strange anomalities, weird vegetation, terrible or radiant pallors, ghosts, masks, figures, hydras, confusions, moonless moonlights, obscure unmakings of miracle, growths and vanishings within a murky depth, shapes floating in shadow, the whole mystery which we call Dreaming, and which is nothing other than the approach of an invisible reality. The dream is the aquarium of Night.
VICTOR HUGO
Travailleurs de la Mer
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
Between the dreams of night and day there is not so great a difference.
CARL JUNG
Psychology of the Unconscious
There are men who would do anything, asleep, and I'm not sure what stops them when they wake. I do not know how they draw the line.
ANNE ENRIGHT
The Gathering
The world would not have advanced very far had it not been for the contributions of its dreamers. It would never have gained its steamboat, nor its Atlantic cable, nor its wireless telegraph, nor its electric light. It would never have acquired any really great enterprise. For a little enterprise may be rustled and worried into being: but a really great program or movement or business must be dreamed.
BRUCE FAIRCHILD BARTON
More Power to You
The dream deceives; it leads to confusions; it is illusory. But it is not erroneous.
MICHEL FOUCAULT
Madness & Civilization
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
It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.
ERMA BOMBECK
attributed, Chicken Soup for the Entrepreneur's Soul
Dreams fade with morning light,
Never a morn for thee,
Dreamer of dreams, goodnight.
JOYCE KILMER
"The Poet's Epitaph"