Dreams have been a source of inspiration (and education!) for many creative thinkers, artists, writers, scientists, and other human beings engaged in the voyage of discovery we call "Life". Listen to what some of these remarkable people have to say....
To read dreams of celebrated artists, writers, scientists and others whose works or lives have had an impact on the collective, visit the Famous Dreams page. To read dreams which have been written in novels or poetry, visit the Literary Dreams page
"I've
dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed
my ideas; they've gone through and through me, like wine through water, and
altered the color of my mind." Emily Bronte Englist novelist.
"I
dream, therefore I exist." J. August Strindberg (1849-1912),
Swedish dramatist, novelist, poet.
"
Now Allah has created the dream not only as a means of guidance and instruction,
I refer to the dream, but he has made it a window on the Unseen. " Words of
the Prophet Mohammed, Arabia, 7th century A.D.
"
In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in
slumberings upon the bed; then he openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their
instructions." words of Elihu, in Job 33.15.....Holy Land, sometimes B.C.
"Once
upon a time, I, Chuang-tzu, dreamt I was a butterfly, flittering hither and
thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly...suddenly I awoke... Now
I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether
I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man." Chuang-tzu Chinese
philosopher.
"Man
is a genius when he is dreaming." Akira Kurosawa. Japanese filmmaker.
"The
future belongs to those who believe in the beautyof their dreams." Eleanor
Roosevelt
"Existence
would be intolerable if we were never to dream." Anatole France,
French novelist.
"
And He said, " Hear now my words: If there be a prophet among you, I , the
Lord, will make Myself known to him in a vision, and will speak unto him in
a dream." Words of the Lord of the Universe revealed to Moses, Aaron and Miriam....
and preserved in Numbers 12.6
"Dreams
seek the truth.". Sara Stanges, high school student " He, who does not believe
in the true dream, does not believe in Allah nor in the Day of Reckoning."
Words of Mohammed
"Dream
is not a revelation. If a dream affords the dreamer some light on himself,
it is not the person with closed eyes who makes the discovery, but the person
with open eyes lucid enough to fit thoughts together. Dream -- a scintillating
mirage surrounded by shadows -- is essentially POETRY." Michel Leiris
(1901-90), French anthropologist, author.
"Even
sleepers are workers and collaborators in what goes on in the Universe."
Heraclitus Greek Philosopher
"Why
does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when
awake?" Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Italian artist, scientist,
architect, genius!
"Grasping
the True nature of dreams, May I train myself in the clear Light of the Miraculous
Transformation.May I recognise whatever appareth as being my own Spiritual
forms, May the Trinity be realised."Words of Guru Padma Sambhava, Lung-ta's
Rider, Tibet, 8th century A.D., extracted from "Root verses" of "The Bardo
Thodol" and re-edited by Gérald 'Aoust.
"Dreams----
Who is to say where reality lies....and if reality lies...what is the truth?"
Kristin Joy Bender, dancer/choreographer
"But
I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams." W.B. Yeats (1865-1939),
Irish poet, playwright.
"It
has never been my object to record my dreams, just the determination to realize
them." Man Ray (1890-1976), U.S. artist, photographer.
"Yet
it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes
to the top." A
Room of One's Own.Virginia Woolf (1882-1941),
English writer.
"W
hat
dreaming does is give us the fluidity to enter into other worlds by destroying
our sense of knowing this world...Dreaming is a journey of unthinkable dimensions,
a journey that, after making us perceive everything we can humanly perceive,makes
the assemblage point jump outside the human domain and perceive the inconceivable."
Carlos Castenada American anthropologist and mystic.
"Dreams
are often most profound when they seem the most crazy." Sigmund Freud,
The Interpretation of Dreams, 1900.
"Love
is an attempt to change a piece of a dream-world into reality." Henry
David Thoreau (1817-62), American philospher and writer.
"Learn
from your dreams what you lack." W.H. Auden (1907-73), English
poet and playwright.
"Whoso
regardeth dreams is like him that catcheth at a shadow, and followeth after
the wind." Apopcrypha. Ecclesiasticus 34:2.
"You
see things and you say 'Why?'. But I dream things that never were, and I say
'Why Not?'" George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Anglo-Irish playwright,
critic.
"The
soul in sleep gives proof of its divine nature". Cicero
"If
the dream is a translation of waking life, waking life is also a translation
of the dream." Rene Magritte (1849-1912), Surrealist.
"I
am against nature. I don't dig nature at all. I think nature is very unnatural.
I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can't touch with
decay." Bob Dylan (b.1941), U.S. singer, songwriter.
"Sleep
hath it's own world,// And a wide realm of wild reality.// And dreams in their
development have breath,// And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy."
The Dream. Lord Byron (1788-1824), English poet.
"If
a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less, but
to dream more, to dream all the time." Rembrance of Things Past. Marcel
Proust (1871-1922), French novelist.
"If
a little dream sharing is dangerous, the cure for it is not to share dreams
less, but to share dreams more, to share dreams all the time." Richard
Catlett Wilkerson (1955-2075), Global Cyber-Dream Pioneer.
"The
Language of the Dream/Night is contrary to that of Waking/Day. It is a language
of Images and Sensations, the various dialects of which are far less different
from each other, than the various Day-Languages of Nations." Samuel
Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), English poet.
"There
couldn't be a society of people who didn't dream. They'd be dead in two weeks."
William Burroughs (b. 1914), U.S. Author.
"If
someone were to tell me I had twenty years left, and ask me how I'd like to
spend them, I'd reply 'Give me two hours a day of activity, and I'll take
the other twenty-two in dreams.'" Luis Buñuel (1900-83),
Spanish film-maker and surrealist.
"I
am not quite sure whether I am dreaming or remembering, whether
I have lived my life or dreamed it. Just as dreams do, memory makes me profoundly
aware of the unreality, the evanescence of the world, a fleeting image in
the moving water.". Eugène Ionesco (born 1912), French dramatist
"I
can never decide whether my dreams are the result of my thoughts, or my thoughts
the result of my dreams." D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930), English
novelist.
"A
dream is a scripture, and many scriptures are nothing but dreams." The
Name or the Rose. Umberto Ecco (born 1932), Italian novelist
and literary critic.
"Dreams
have only the pigmentation of fact." Nightwood.
Djuna Barnes (born 1892), American novelist.
"Maybe
the wildest dreams are but the needful preludes of the truth." Alfred
Lord Tennyson (1809-92), English poet.
"Travelers
repose and dream among my leaves". William Blake
"As
I live and am a man, this is an unexaggerated tale -- my dreams become the
substances of my life." Samuel T. Coleridge, 1803
"
Let us learn to dream, gentlemen, and then we may perhaps find the truth F.A.
Keule, German chemist, who discovered the structure of benzene in
a dream
"
For the Days of the Lord are coming..... . And it shall come to pass afterward,
saith God, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; and your sons and
your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young
men shall see visions. Even on my servants and handmaidens I will pour out,
in those days,my Spirit; and they shall prophesy." Words of the Lord himself
revealed to the prophet Joël preserved in Joël 2.28-30 in the Old Testament
and, due to their crucial importance, repeated in the New Testament in Acts
2.16-18.
"I
dreamed of myself in a dream, and told the dream, which was mine, as if it
were another person's of whom I dreamed. Indeed what is life when thinking
of the past, but dreaming of a dream dreamt by another who seems to be oneself?"
Stopford Brooke, 1899
"We
are such stuff as dreams are made on." William Shakespeare .
 |
|
If
you don't see this black bar at the top of the page, you are outside
of The Dream Tree's website. Click
here to come inside.
|
