Quotes About Dreams

57 quotes

Akira Kurosawa gave dreaming its highest praise: man is a genius when he is dreaming. Michelangelo warned against dreaming too small, writing that the greater danger for most of us lies in setting our aim too low and achieving our mark. John Lennon turned the dream into a political wish, asking listeners to imagine all the people living life in peace and admitting he might be called a dreamer.

Poets have made dreams both private and shared. Pablo Neruda asked a beloved to tie their heart to his so that both might defeat the darkness in dreams. Bob Dylan offered a simpler trade: I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours. Marcel Proust noticed that gardeners produce flowers that are delicious dreams, and others that are like nightmares. Lord Byron recorded the most sudden dream come true of all: he awoke one morning to find himself famous.
English playwright and poet

All days are nights to see till I see thee, And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.

— Shakespeare's Sonnets

Irish poet, playwright, and aesthete

Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.

— The Critic as Artist

English author

It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.

— Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

American author and humorist

Life itself is only a vision, a dream.""Nothing exists; all is a dream. God--man--the world--the sun, the moon, the wilderness of stars--a dream, all a dream; they have no existence. Nothing exists save empty space--and you!

— The Mysterious Stranger

English modernist writer

By the truth we are undone. Life is a dream. 'Tis the waking that kills us. He who robs us of our dreams robs us of our life.

— Orlando

Russian novelist

Sorrow compressed my heart, and I felt I would die, and then . . . Well, then I woke up.

— The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

French novelist, poet, dramatist and politician

I have a dream my life would be. So different from this hell I'm living. So different now from what it seem. Now life has killed the dream I dreamed."*Fantine

— Les Misérables

English writer and philologist

The grey-rain curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.

— The Return of the King

French novelist, critic and essayist

Gardeners produce flowers that are delicious dreams, and others too that are like nightmares.

— The Captive & The Fugitive

Nobel Prize winning German-Swiss poet, novelist and painter

Dreams and restless thoughts came flowing to him from the river, from the twinkling stars at night, from the sun's melting rays. Dreams and a restlessness of the soul came to him.

— Siddhartha

American Baptist minister and civil rights leader

Free at last, Free at last, Thank God almighty we are free at last.

— I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches That Changed the World

French novelist

How badly arranged the world is. What is the purpose of ugliness, suffering, sadness? Why our powerless dreams? Why everything?

— Correspondance

French writer and dramatist

When you compare the sorrows of real life to the pleasures of the imaginary one, you will never want to live again, only to dream forever.

— The Count of Monte Cristo

French novelist and playwright

Poverty has in its favour an exquisite sleep filled with beautiful dreams.

— The Atheist’s Mass

Russian dramatist and author

Country life has its advantages,' he used to say. 'You sit on the veranda drinking tea and your ducklings swim on the pond, and everything smells good. . . and there are gooseberries.

— Gooseberries

Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator

It must be that I am not made to be a dead man, but these places and this discussion seem like a dream, and not a dream dreamed by me but by someone else still to be born.

— Dreamtigers

Irish novelist and poet

What dreams would he have, not seeing. Life a dream for him. Where is the justice being born that way?

— Ulysses

American singer-songwriter

I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours

— Lyrics:1962 2001

French writer

To accomplish great things we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.(From an introductory speech at a session of the Académie Française, December 24, 1896)

— Works of Anatole France

French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist

The dreams we imagine when we are asleep should not in any way make us doubt the truth of the thoughts we have when we are awake.

— Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy