This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"The true poet dreams being awake." - Charles Lamb
"Reality seems valueless by comparison with the dreams of fevered imaginations; reality is therefore abandoned" - Émile Durkheim, fully David Émile Durkheim
"One of the most adventurous things left us is to go to bed. For no one can lay a hand on our dreams." - E. V. Lucas, fully Edward Verrall Lucas
"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. " - Edgar Allan Poe
"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. " - 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." - Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
"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. " - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
"Sometimes dreams are wiser than waking." - Nicholas Black Elk, formally Heȟáka Sápa
"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." - 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." - Hélène Cixous
"One should have insight into this world of dreams that passes in the twinkling of an eye." - Hōjō Shigetoki, also known as Lord Gokuraku-ji
"All dreams spin out from the same web." - Hopi Proverbs
"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." - Irvin David Yalom
"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. " - Isak Dinesen, pen name of Baroness Karen Blixen
"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." - 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. " - Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL
"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. " - Jackie Gleason, born John Herbert Gleason
"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." - James Allen
"The permanent temptation of life is to confuse dreams with reality. The permanent defeat of life comes when dreams are surrendered to reality. " - James A. Michener, fully James Albert Michener
"Writers turn dreams into print." - James A. Michener, fully James Albert Michener
"How dull, how impossible life would be without dreams — waking dreams, I mean — the dreams that we call "castles in the air," built by the kindly hands of Hope! Were it not for the mirage of the oasis, drawing his footsteps ever onward, the weary traveler would lie down in the desert sand and die. It is the mirage of distant success, of happiness that, like the bunch of carrots fastened an inch beyond the donkey's nose, seems always just within our reach, if only we will gallop fast enough, that makes us run so eagerly along the road of Life." - Jerome K. Jerome, fully Jerome Klapka Jerome
"No one should negotiate their dreams. Dreams must be free to flee and fly high. No government, no legislature, has a right to limit your dreams. You should never agree to surrender your dreams." - Jesse Jackson, fully Jesse Louis Jackson
"People who are most afraid of their dreams convince themselves they don't dream at all." - John Steinbeck, fully John Ernst Steinbeck
"I hope the day will never come when the American nation will be the champion of the status quo. Once that happens, we shall have forfeited, and rightly forfeited, the support of the unsatisfied, of those who are the victims of inevitable imperfections, of those who, young in years or spirit, believe that they can make a better world and of those who dream dreams and want to make their dreams to come true." - John Foster Dulles
"Then what is the answer? — Not to be deluded by dreams. To know that great civilizations have broken down into violence, and their tyrants come, many times before. When open violence appears, to avoid it with honor or choose the least ugly faction; these evils are essential. To keep one's own integrity, be merciful and uncorrupted and not wish for evil; and not be duped by dreams of universal justice or happiness. These dreams will not be fulfilled." - Robinson Jeffers, fully John Robinson Jeffers
"Hope lies in dreams, in imagination, and in the courage of those who dare to make dreams into reality. " - Jonas Salk
"I have had dreams and I have had nightmares, but I have conquered my nightmares because of my dreams. " - Jonas Salk
"Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths." - Joseph Campbell
"It seems to have had an order, to have been composed by someone, and those events that were merely accidental when they happened turn out to be the main elements in a consistent plot. Who composed this plot? Just as your dreams are composed, so your whole life has been composed by the will within you. Just as the people who you met by chance became effective agents in the structuring of your life, so you have been the agent in the structuring of other lives. And the whole thing gears together like one big symphony, everything influencing and structuring everything else. It’s as though our lives were the dream of a single dreamer in which all of the dream characters are dreaming too. And so everything links to everything else moved out of the will in nature…It is as though there were an intention behind it yet it is all by chance. None of us lives the life that he had intended." - Joseph Campbell
"A dream is your creative vision for your life in the future. A goal is what specifically you intend to make happen. Dreams and goals should be just out of your present reach but not out of sight. Dreams and goals are coming attractions in your life." - Joseph Campbell
"Prayer is a universal phenomenon in the soul-life of man. It is the soul's reaction to the terrors and joys, the uncertainties and dreams of life." - Joseph H. Hertz, fully Rabbi Joseph Herman Hertz
"Creativity is the natural order of life. Life is energy: pure creative energy. There is an underlying, in-dwelling creative force infusing all of life -- including ourselves. When we open ourselves to our creativity, we open ourselves to the creator's creativity within us and our lives. We are, ourselves, creations. And we, in turn, are meant to continue creativity by being creative ourselves. Creativity is God's gift to us. Using our creativity is our gift back to God. The refusal to be creative is self-will and is counter to our true nature. When we open ourselves to exploring our creativity, we open ourselves to God: good orderly direction. As we open our creative channel to the creator, many gentle but powerful changes are to be expected. It is safe to open ourselves up to greater and greater creativity. Our creative dreams and yearnings come from a divine source. As we move toward our dreams, we move toward our divinity." - Julia Cameron
"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. " - Leo Busacaglia
"Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake?" - Leonardo da Vinci, fully Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci
"Then isn't this rather all a false funeral? Can't it help you to see that there is something wrong when all the dreams in this house-good or bad-had to depend on something that might never have happened if a man had not died? We always say at home: Accident was at the first and will be at the last a poor tree from which the fruits of life may bloom." - Lorraine Hansberry
"During adolescence imagination is boundless. The urge toward self-perfection is at its peak. And with all their self- absorption and personalized dreams of glory, youth are in pursuit of something larger than personal passions, some values or ideals to which they might attach their imaginations. " - Louise J. Kaplan
"Religion is the dream of the human mind. But even in dreams we do not find ourselves in emptiness or in heaven, but on earth, in the realm of reality; we only see real things in the entrancing splendor of imagination and caprice, instead of in the simple daylight of reality and necessity." - Ludwig Feuerbach, fully Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach
"When you stop having dreams and ideals - well, you might as well stop altogether." - Marian Anderson
"I seek not a fellow feeling in my misery. No sympathy may I ever find. When I first sought it, it was the love of virtue, the feelings of happiness and affection with which my whole being overflowed, that I wished to be participated. But now that virtue has become to me a shadow, and that happiness and affection are turned into bitter and loathing despair, in what should I seek for sympathy? I am content to suffer alone while my sufferings shall endure; when I die, I am well satisfied that abhorrence and opprobrium should load my memory. Once my fancy was soothed with dreams of virtue, of fame, and of enjoyment. Once I falsely hoped to meet with beings who, pardoning my outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which I was capable of unfolding. I was nourished with high thoughts of honour and devotion. But now crime has degraded me beneath the meanest animal. No guilt, no mischief, no malignity, no misery, can be found comparable to mine. When I run over the frightful catalogue of my sins, I cannot believe that I am the same creature whose thoughts were once filled with sublime and transcendent visions of the beauty and the majesty of goodness. But it is even so; the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone." - Mary Shelley, née Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin
"The most prolific period of pessimism comes at twenty-one, or thereabouts, when the first attempt is made to translate dreams into reality." - Heywood Broun, fully Matthew Heywood Campbell Broun
"On my travels, stricken— my dreams over the dry land go on roving." - Matsuo Bashō, born Matsuo Kinsaku, then Matsuo Chūemon Munefusa
"O night, O sweetest time, though black of hue, with peace you force all the restless work to end; those who exalt you see and understand, and he is sound of mind who honours you. You cut the thread of tired thoughts, for so you offer calm in your moist shade; you send to this low sphere the dreams where we ascend up to the highest, where I long to go. Shadow of death that brings to quiet close all miseries that plague the heart and soul, for those in pain the last and best of cures; you heal the flesh of its infirmities, dry and our tears and shut away our toil, and free the good from wrath and fretting cares." - Michelangelo, aka Michaelangelo Buonarroti, fully Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni NULL
"The key is to listen to your heart and let it carry you in the direction of your dreams. I’ve learned that it’s possible to set your sights high and achieve your dreams and do it with integrity, character, and love. And each day that you’re moving toward your dreams without compromising who you are; you’re winning." - Michael Dell, fully Michael Saul Dell
"O night, O sweetest time, though black of hue, with peace you force all the restless work to end; those who exalt you see and understand, and he is sound of mind who honours you. You cut the thread of tired thoughts, for so you offer calm in your moist shade; you send to this low sphere the dreams where we ascend up to the highest, where I long to go. Shadow of death that brings to quiet close all miseries that plague the heart and soul, for those in pain the last and best of cures; you heal the flesh of its infirmities, dry and our tears and shut away our toil, and free the good from wrath and fretting cares." -
"It shall greatly help thee to understand scripture, if thou mark not only what is spoken or written, but of whom, and unto whom, with what words, at what time, where, to what intent, with what circumstance, considering what goeth before, and what followeth after. For there be some things which are done and written, to the intent that we should do likewise: as when Abraham believeth God, is obedient unto his word, and defendeth Lot his kinsman from violent wrong. There be some things also which are written, to the intent that we should eschew such like. As when David lieth with Urias' wife, and causeth him to be slain. Therefore (I say) when thou readest scripture, be wise and circumspect: and when thou commest to such strange manners of speaking and dark sentences, to such parables and similitudes, to such dreams or visions as are hid from thy understanding, commit them unto God or to the gift of his holy spirit in them that are better learned than thou." - Miles Coverdale, also Myles Coverdale
"Because in dreams the past, forever captured within itself, gains freedom and new promise." - Milorad Pavić
"Dream hunters plunge into other people's dreams and sleep and from them extract little pieces of Adam-the-precusor's being, composing them into a whole, into so-called Khazar dictionaries. " - Milorad Pavić