quotations about dreams & dreaming
Dreams make all men authors.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
My dreams are the problems of the day stepped up to absurdity, a little like men dancing, wearing the horns and masks of animals.
JOHN STEINBECK
The Winter of Our Discontent
Dreams are as simple or as complicated as the dreamer.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Harkonnen
In ... dreams there is a language that is older than the spoken word at all. The idiom is another specie and with it there can be no lie or no dissemblance of the truth.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
Cities of the Plain
In dreams the mind is constantly giving you substitutes just to protect sleep. And the same is happening while you are awake. The mind is giving you substitutes just to protect your sanity; otherwise you will be scattered in fragments.
OSHO
The Book of Secrets
In dreams, as in the Gospels, one usually possesses the gift of tongues.
ROBERTO BOLAÑO
2666
One difference between those who make it and those who don't--regardless of their field of endeavor--is not the "talent" difference. Those who go over the top have a dream and the dream has them. They make the commitment and pursue that dream with dogged patience and persistence. Commitment produces consistent, enthusiastic effort that inevitably produces greater and greater rewards.
ZIG ZIGLAR
Over the Top: Moving from Survival to Stability
Since symbols are permanent or constant translations, they realize, in a certain measure, the ideal of ancient as well as popular dream interpretation, an ideal which by means of our technique we had left behind. They permit us in certain cases to interpret a dream without questioning the dreamer who, aside from this, has no explanation for the symbol. If the interpreter is acquainted with the customary dream symbols and, in addition, with the dreamer himself, the conditions under which the latter lives and the impressions he received before having the dream, it is often possible to interpret a dream without further information--to translate it "right off the bat." Such a trick flatters the interpreter and impresses the dreamer; it stands out as a pleasurable incident in the usual arduous course of cross-examining the dreamer. But do not be misled. It is not our function to perform tricks. Interpretation based on a knowledge of symbols is not a technique that can replace the associative technique, or even compare with it. It is a supplement to the associative technique, and furnishes the latter merely with transplanted, usable results. But as regards familiarity with the dreamer's psychic situation, you must consider the fact that you are not limited to interpreting the dreams of acquaintances; that as a rule you are not acquainted with the daily occurrences which act as the stimuli for the dreams, and that the associations of the subject furnish you with a knowledge of that very thing we call the psychic situation.
SIGMUND FREUD
"Symbolism in the Dream", A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis
Dreams never deceive.
DEPECHE MODE
"Comatose"
There is no one so insufferable as a person who gives no other excuse for a peculiar action than saying he had been directed to it in a dream.
ISAAC ASIMOV
Foundation's Edge
Dreams are the bright creatures of poem and legend, who sport on earth in the night season, and melt away in the first beam of the sun, which lights grim care and stern reality on their daily pilgrimage through the world.
CHARLES DICKENS
Nicholas Nickleby
Rich men have dreams. Poor men die to make them come true.
GLEN COOK
Water Sleeps
The general function of dreams is to try to restore our psychological balance by producing dream material that re-establishes, in a subtle way, the total psychic equilibrium.
CARL JUNG
Man and His Symbols
Keep your dreams, you never know when you might need them.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
The Shadow of the Wind
People have dreams all the time. It don't mean nothin.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
The Crossing
Much of our waking experience is but a dream in the daylight.
GEORGE ELIOT
Theophrastus Such
Don't let your reality change your dreams, let your dreams change reality.
ANONYMOUS
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
I'll never waste my dreams by falling asleep. Never again.
EUGÈNE IONESCO
Man With Bags
When we can't dream any longer we die.
EMMA GOLDMAN
Mother Earth Bulletin