Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

William Shakespeare

Thoughts are but dreams till their effects be tried.

Dreams |

Zig Ziglar, born Hilary Hinton Ziglar

Goals are dreams we convert to plans and take action to fulfill.

Action | Dreams | Goals |

Charles Lamb

The true poet dreams being awake.

Dreams |

Émile Durkheim, fully David Émile Durkheim

Reality seems valueless by comparison with the dreams of fevered imaginations; reality is therefore abandoned

Dreams | Reality |

Edgar Allan Poe

The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true.

Dreams | Hope | Man | World |

Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

I've dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me even after, and changed my ideas; they've gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind.

Dreams | Life | Life |

Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

I have dreamed in my life, dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they have gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind.

Dreams |

Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm

Both dreams and myths are important communications from ourselves to ourselves. If we do not understand the language in which they are written, we miss a great deal of what we know and tell ourselves in those hours when we are not busy manipulating the outside world.

Dreams | Important | Language | Understand |

Nicholas Black Elk, formally Heȟáka Sápa

Sometimes dreams are wiser than waking.

Dreams |

Irvin David Yalom

The death anxiety of many people is fueled ... by disappointment at never having fulfilled their potential. Many people are in despair because their dreams didn't come true, and they despair even more that they did not make them come true. A focus on this deep dissatisfaction is often the starting point in overcoming death anxiety.

Anxiety | Anxiety | Death | Despair | Dreams | Focus | People |

Hōjō Shigetoki, also known as Lord Gokuraku-ji

One should have insight into this world of dreams that passes in the twinkling of an eye.

Dreams | Insight | World |

Hélène Cixous

What we hope for at the School of Dreams is the strength both to deal and to receive the axe's blow, to look straight at the face of God, which is none other than my own face, but seen naked, the face of my soul. The face of "God" is the unveiling, the staggering vision fo the construction we are, the tiny and great lies, the small nontruths we must have incessantly woven to be able to prepare our brothers' dinner and cook for our children. An unveiling that only happens by surprise, by accident, and with a brutality that shatters: under the blow of truth, the eggshell we are breaks. Right in the middle of life's path: the apocalypse; we lose a life.

Brutality | Dreams | Hope | Receive | Right | Strength | Vision |

Hélène Cixous

It takes a great deal of effort to make truth in writing so that the truth as one dreams it may have the best chance of being - not approached, not glimpsed - but better dreamed.

Better | Chance | Dreams | Effort | Truth | Writing |

Hopi Proverbs

All dreams spin out from the same web.

Dreams |

Isak Dinesen, pen name of Baroness Karen Blixen

People who dream when they sleep at night know of a special kind of happiness which the world of the day holds not, a placid ecstasy, and ease of heart, that are like honey on the tongue. They also know that the real glory of dreams lies in their atmosphere of unlimited freedom. It is not the freedom of the dictator, who enforces his own will on the world, but the freedom of the artist, who has no will, who is free of will. The pleasure of the true dreamer does not lie in the substance of the dream, but in this: that there things happen without any interference from his side, and altogether outside his control.

Day | Dreams | Freedom | Glory | Pleasure | Will | World | Happiness |

Jackie Gleason, born John Herbert Gleason

Our dreams are firsthand creations, rather than residues of waking life. We have the capacity for infinite creativity; at least while dreaming, we partake of the power of the Spirit, the infinite Godhead that creates the cosmos.

Capacity | Dreams | Power |

Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL

Future is your projection of unfulfilled desires. The more unfulfilled you are, the bigger a future you have. The more unfulfilled is your being, the richer the dreams you have of the future. But it is just in your mind.

Dreams | Future |

Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL

Why do you dream? -- because there are so many desires unfulfilled, and to live with unfulfilled desires is painful. In dream you try to fulfill them; in dream you create a false feeling of fulfillment. Hence your dreams show much about you: what your desires are, what you want to become. But if you want to become anything in life, you are asleep.

Dreams |

James A. Michener, fully James Albert Michener

The permanent temptation of life is to confuse dreams with reality. The permanent defeat of life comes when dreams are surrendered to reality.

Defeat | Dreams | Life | Life | Temptation | Temptation |

James Allen

The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak sleeps in the acorn, the bird waits in the egg, and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities.

Achievement | Dreams | Soul | Time | Vision |