Living in dreams of yesterday, we find ourselves still dreaming of impossible future conquests.
—Charles Lindbergh (1902–74) American Aviator, Inventor, Conservationist
Dream manfully and nobly, and thy dreams shall be prophets.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton (1803–73) British Novelist, Poet, Politician
I dreamed a thousand new paths… I woke and walked my old one.
—Chinese Proverb
Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together.
—Eugene Ionesco (1909–94) Romanian-born French Dramatist
That, if then I had waked after a long sleep, will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming, the clouds me thought would open and show riches ready to drop upon me; that, when I waked I cried to dream again.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
The most pitiful among men is he who turns his dreams into silver and gold.
—Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931) Lebanese-born American Philosopher, Poet, Painter, Theologian, Sculptor
I don’t want an epitaph on my gravestone that says, ‘He would have pursued some big dreams in his life, but other people wouldn’t let him.
—Tom Peters (b.1942) American Management Consultant, Author
All men who have achieved great things have been great dreamers.
—Orison Swett Marden (1850–1924) American New Thought Writer, Physician, Entrepreneur
But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) Irish Poet, Dramatist
I have a dream.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–68) American Civil Rights Leader, Clergyman
Don’t be afraid of the space between your dreams and reality. If you can dream it, you can make it so.
—Indian Proverb
Society often forgives the criminal; it never forgives the dreamer.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
My theory has always been, that if we are to dream, the flatteries of hope are as cheap, and pleasanter, than the gloom of despair.
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) American Head of State, Lawyer
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 (1818–48) English Novelist, Poet
You gotta have a dream. If you don’t have a dream, how you gonna make a dream come true?
—Oscar Hammerstein II (1895–1960) American Songwriter, Composer, Theater Producer, Writer
I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge—that myth is more potent than history. I believe that dreams are more powerful than facts—That hope always triumphs over experience—That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death.
—Robert Fulghum (b.1937) American Unitarian Universalist Author, Essayist, Clergyman
It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.
—Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1927–2014) Colombian Novelist, Short-Story Writer
It is never too late to be what you might have been.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (1819–80) English Novelist
You must go after your wish. As soon as you start to pursue a dream, your life wakes up and everything has meaning.
—Barbara Sher (1935–2020) American Career Coach
If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time.
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922) French Novelist
The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.
—Paul Valery (1871–1945) French Critic, Poet
Is this is a dream? O, if it be a dream,
Let me sleep on, and do not wake me yet!
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82) American Poet, Educator, Academic
We grow great by dreams. All big men are dreamers. They see things in the soft haze of a spring day or in the red fire of a long winter’s evening. Some of us let these dreams die, but others nourish and protect them; nurse them through bad days till they bring them to the sunshine and light which comes always to those who hope that their dreams will come true.
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American Head of State
The center of every man’s existence is a dream.
—G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet
Dreams are the bright creatures of poem and legend, who sport on earth in the night season, and melt away in the first beam of the sun, which lights grim care and stern reality on their daily pilgrimage through the world.
—Charles Dickens (1812–70) English Novelist
Our heart oft times wakes when we sleep, and God can speak to that, either by words, by proverbs, by signs and similitudes, as well as if one was awake.
—John Bunyan (1628–88) English Puritan Writer, Preacher
I cannot sleep for dreaming; I cannot dream but I wake and walk about the house as though I’d find you coming through some door.
—Arthur Miller (1915–2005) American Playwright, Essayist
We are such stuff as dreams are made of, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake?
—Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Polymath, Painter, Sculptor, Inventor, Architect
Hope is the pillar that holds up the world. Hope is the dream of a waking man.
—Pliny the Elder (23–79CE) Roman Statesman, Scholar