Great Throughts Treasury

"There is something operative in man that transcends the law of matter and, therefore, by definition, a nonphysical or spiritual law is made manifest... This new world of the mind, represented and perhaps only suggested by the psi operations already identified, may very well, through further exploration, expand into an order of significance for a spiritual universe beyond the dreams of religion’s own prophets and mystics." - J. B. Rhine, fully Joseph Banks Rhine

"Why is there no man who confesses his vices? Is it because he has not yet laid them aside. It is a waking man only who can tell his dreams." -

"Dreams are a secretion of our thoughts, and through them our thought is purified." -

"When you remember your dreams, you remember your Self, your hidden wounds, fears, desires and joys... When you explore you dreams, you begin to make yourself whole: you take back the powerful feelings of grief, rage, and love that you've denied or avoided. When you share your dreams, you are sharing deeply personal feelings that create bonds of intimacy and help you receive the love and support needed to heal and grow at times of change." - Alan B. Siegel

"Religion... sex... race... money... avoidance rites... malnutrition... dreams - no part of these can be looked at and clearly seen without looking at the whole of them. For, as a painter mixes colors and makes of them new colors, so religion is turned into something different by race, and segregation is colored as much by sex as by skin pigment, and money is no longer a coin but a lost wish wandering through a man’s whole life." - Lillian Smith, fully Lillian Eugenia Smith

"My young men never work. Men who work cannot dream; and wisdom comes to us in dreams." - Chief Smohalla

"Happy are those who dream dreams and are ready to pay the price to make them come true." - Leon J. Suenens, fully Leo Jozef Suenens

"Asks the Possible of the Impossible, "Where is your dwelling-place?" "In the dreams of the Impotent," comes the answer." -

"The object of education is to give man the unity of truth... I believe in a spiritual world - not as anything separate from this world - but as its innermost truth. With the breath we draw we must always feel this truth, that we are living in God. Born in this great world, full of the mystery of the infinite, we cannot accept our existence as a momentary outburst of chance drifting on the current of matter toward an eternal nowhere. We cannot look upon our lives as dreams of a dreamer who has no awakening in all time. We have a personality to which matter and force are unmeaning unless related to something infinitely personal, whose nature we have discovered, in some measure, in human love, in the greatness of the good, in the martyrdom of heroic souls, in the ineffable beauty of nature which can never be a mere physical fact nor anything but an expression of personality." -

"Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?" - Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, Commonly called Alfred Lord Tennyson

"More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of. Wherefore let thy voice rise like a fountain for me night and day. For what are men better than sheeps or goats that nourish a blind life within the brain, if, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer both for themselves and those who call them friend? For so the whole round earth is every way bound by gold chains about the feet of God." - Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, Commonly called Alfred Lord Tennyson

"Saddle your dreams afore you ride 'em." - Mary Webb, born Gladys Mary Meredith

"Religions are such stuff as dreams are made of." - H. G. Wells, fully Herbert George Wells

"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." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

"Life is not governed by will or intention. Life is a question of nerves, and fibers, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself and passion has its dreams." -

"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." - Hubbard Winslow

"Wisdom comes to us in dreams." - Wovoka, aka Jack Wilson NULL

"It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else." - Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste

"God’s gifts put man’s best dreams to shame." - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"Life and death are nothing but the mind. Years, months, days, and hours are nothing but the mind. Dreams, illusions, and mirages are nothing but the mind. The bubbles of water and the flames of fire are nothing but the mind. The flowers of the spring and the moon of the autumn are nothing but the mind. Confusions and dangers are nothing but the mind." - Dōgen, aka Dōgen Kigen, Eihei Dōgen, titled as Dōgen Zenji NULL

"The ancient belief that dreams reveal the future is not indeed entirely devoid of truth. By representing a wish as fulfilled the dream certainly leads us into the future." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"The interpretation of dreams is the via regia [i.e., royal road] to a knowledge of the unconscious element in our psychic life." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"Fear, the opposite of boldness, is the most paralyzing of all emotions...Fear, like hopes and dreams, have a way of clothing themselves ultimately with reality." - Adam Lindsey Gordon

"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.”" - Sidney Greenberg

"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." - Tom Gregory

"[A] remarkably close relation… exists between humanity’s dreams and humanity’s religions." - Emil Gutheil, fully Emil Arthur Gutheil

"Hold fast to dreams. For when dreams go, life is a barren field frozen with snow." - Langston Hughes

"The two fundamental points in dealing with dreams are these: First, the dream should be treated as a fact, about which one must make no previous assumption except that it somehow makes sense; and second, the dream is a specific expression of the unconscious." - Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

"Within each one of us there is another whom we do not know. He speaks to us in dreams and tells us how differently he sees us from how we see ourselves. When, therefore, we find ourselves in a difficult situation, to which there is no solution, he can sometimes kindle a light that radically alters our attitude, the very attitude that led us into the difficult situation." - Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

"The true poet dreams being awake." -

"I can never decide whether my dreams are the result of my thoughts, or my thoughts are the result of my dreams." -

"All books are either dreams or swords. You can cut, or you can drug, with words." -

"If my dreams left their footprints in the road, the path beneath my love’s window would be worn down, though it is stone. Alas, in the country of dream, no roads endure, no traces remain." - Yi Myong-han

"A parent’s job is to encourage kids to develop a joy for life and a great urge to follow their own dreams. The best we can do is help them develop a personal set of tools for the task." - Randy Pausch, fully Randolph Frederick "Randy" Pausch

"It is the stupidity of our minds that prevents us from seeng existence as a mystery wilder than the dreams of Devil or God." - Llewelyn Powys

"Most people who succeed in the face of seemingly impossible conditions are people who simply don’t know how to quit. When unexpected damage wreaks havoc with your dreams, then what? Never dwell on what you have lost. If you do, you will be discouraged and defeated. Look not at what you have lost but at what you have left." - Robert H. Schuller, fully Robert Harold Schuller

"Appreciate every moment. There is an integrity to pursuing your dreams that animates all other aspects of life." - David Andrew Seaman

"Each one must learn for himself the highest wisdom. It cannot be taught in words… Men who work cannot dream, and wisdom comes to us in dreams." - Smohalla (Dreamer), also Smowholla, Shmoqula or Smuxale NULL

"There is, in sanest hours, a consciousness, a thought that rises, independent, lifted out from all else, calm, like the stars, shining eternal. This is the thought of identity – yours for you, whoever you are, as mine for me. Miracle of miracles, beyond statement, most spiritual and vaguest of earth’s dreams, yet hardest basic fact, and only entrance to all facts. In such devout hours, in the midst of the significant wonders of heaven and earth, (significant only because of the Me in the center), creeds, conventions, fall away and become of no account before this simple idea. Under the luminousness of real vision, it alone takes possession, takes value. Like the shadowy dwarf in the fable, once liberated and look’d upon, it expands over the whole earth, and spreads to the roof of heaven." -

"Revolution is a bitter thing, mixed with filth and blood, not as lovely or perfect as the poets think. It is eminently down to earth, involving many humble, tiresome tasks, not so romantic as the poets think… So it is easy for all who have romantic dreams about revolution to become disillusioned on closer acquaintance, when a revolution is actually carried out." - Lu Xun, or Lu Hsün, pen name of Zhou Shuren

"When we are motivated by goals that have deep meaning, by dreams that need completion, by pure love that needs expressing, then we truly live life." - Greg Anderson

"The best reason for having dreams is that in dreams no reasons are necessary." - Ashleigh Brilliant

"Hold on to your dreams for they are, in a sense, the stuff of which reality is made. It is through our dreams that we maintain the possibility of a better, more meaningful life." -

"Motivation is when your dreams put on work clothes." - Benjamin Franklin

"Dreams show us how to find meaning in our lives, how to fulfill our own destiny, how to realize greater potential of life within us." - Marie-Louise von Franz

"Many of our culture's most important achievements in the arts, science, and technology were made by people who had breakthrough insights in dreams, visions, intuitive flashbacks, and altered states of consciousness. And yet our society generally discounts such experiences, sometimes even treating them as grounds for a diagnosis of mental illness." - Richard Heinberg

"Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart... Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes." -

"Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens." -

"An imagination is the gate to a world of dreams." - Amy Kleer

"One of the most adventurous things left us is to go to bed. For no one can lay a hand on our dreams." -