This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
H. G. Wells, fully Herbert George Wells
Religions are such stuff as dreams are made of.
There seems to be direct link between truly creative intelligence and the ability to dilute consciousness, to cut mental corners and practice unusual, lateral thinking in what amounts almost to a state of trance. All the most profound insights seem to flow from breaches in the barrier between waking thought, which tends to be conservative, and dream logic, which is essential liberal.
Ability | Consciousness | Intelligence | Logic | Practice | Thinking | Thought | Wisdom |
Money is a dream. It is a piece of paper on which is imprinted in invisible ink the dream of all the things it will buy, all the trinkets and all the power over others. A kind of institutionalized dream, along with its companion dream-in-stitution of Success, constitutes the main fantasy on which our way of life has been built.
We have in dreams no true perception of time - a strange property of mind ! - for if such be also its property when entered into the eternal disembodied state, time will appear to us eternity! The relations of space as well as of time are also annihilated, so that while almost an eternity is compressed into a moment, infinite space is traversed more swiftly than by real thought.
Dreams | Eternal | Eternity | Mind | Perception | Property | Space | Thought | Time | Will | Wisdom |
Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste
It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.
James Baldwin, fully James Arthur Baldwin
Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety. And at such a moment, unable to see and not daring to imagine what the future will now bring forth, one clings to what one knew, or dreamed that one possessed. Yet, it is only when a man is able, without bitterness or self-pity, to surrender a dream he has long cherished or a privilege he has long possessed that he is set free — he has set himself free — for higher dreams, for greater privileges.
Bitterness | Change | Daring | Future | Man | Surrender | Will | World | Loss | Privilege |
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
The poet is the equable man, not in him but off from him things are grotesque, eccentric, fail of their full returns, nothing out of its place is good, nothing in its place is bad, he bestows on every object or quality its fit proportion, neither more nor less, he is the arbiter of the diverse, he is the key... As he sees the farthest he has the most faith, his thoughts are the hymns of the praise of things, in the dispute on God and eternity he is silent, he sees eternity less like a play with a prologue and denouement, he sees eternity in men and women, he does not see men and women as dreams or dots.
Dispute | Dreams | Eternity | Faith | God | Good | Man | Men | Nothing | Object | Play | Praise | Wisdom | God |
A hundred years are no more than the dream of a butterfly. Looking back, how one sighs for the things of the past! Yesterday spring came; this morning the flowers wither. Let us hasten with the forfeit cup before the night is spent and the lamp goes out.
Past |
Would we say… that the function of the dream is to express something or to hide something? It is both at once.
The purpose of the past: to give us pleasant memories, wisdom and lessons to learn, not endless regrets. The purpose of the future: to give us hope and motivation and a place for our dreams. To warn us of possible risks, not for needless worry. The purpose of the present: to help us grow by applying the lessons from our past. To enjoy and appreciate the gift and beauty of life. To do what is necessary to make our dreams come true. To heed the warnings coming from our future.
Beauty | Dreams | Future | Hope | Life | Life | Past | Present | Purpose | Purpose | Wisdom | Worry | Beauty |
Every one of us is endowed at birth with all sorts of magnificent possibilities and potentialities. There is a capacity for idealism, a yearning for truth and beauty and nobility, a sensitivity to the hurt of others and to the dreams and needs of our fellow man. In the hopeful dawn of youth we feel these stirrings within us and we promise to bring them to life. And yet so often as the years pass by we permit these promises to be swept under the rug of expediency. We chalk them up to immaturity and we go on to live “more realistically.”
Beauty | Birth | Capacity | Dawn | Dreams | Idealism | Life | Life | Man | Nobility | Promise | Truth | Youth | Youth | Beauty |
Emil Gutheil, fully Emil Arthur Gutheil
[A] remarkably close relation… exists between humanity’s dreams and humanity’s religions.
Hold fast to dreams. For when dreams go, life is a barren field frozen with snow.