Inspirational Quotes on Dreams

“Though I have forgotten the reason, there is spread over everything a vague sense of wrongness, of something amiss. Like in those dreams where nothing terrible occurs—nothing that would sound even remarkable if you told it at breakfast-time—but the atmosphere, the taste, the whole thing is deadly. So with this.”

“For, after all, you do grow up, you do outgrow your ideals, which turn to dust and ashes, which are shattered into fragments; and if you have no other life, you just have to build one up out of these fragments.”

“A fresh dream-fresh happiness! A fresh rush of delicate, voluptuous poison! What is real life to him ! To his corrupted eyes we live, you and I, Nastenka, so torpidly, slowly, insipidly; in his eyes we are all so dissatisfied with our fate, so exhausted by our life"! And, truly, see how at first sight everything is cold, morose, as though ill-humoured among us. . . . Poor things! thinks our dreamer. And it is no wonder that he thinks it! Look at these magic phantasms, which so enchantingly, so whimsically, so carelessly and freely group before him in such a magic, animated picture, in which the most prominent figure in the foreground is of course himself, our dreamer, in his precious person.”

“Perhaps it was because a terrible anguish had developed within my soul, occasioned by a circumstance which loomed infinitely larger than my own self: to be precise, it was the dawning conviction that in the world at large, . I had had a presentiment of this for a good long time, but complete conviction came swiftly during this last year. All of a sudden, I realized that it to me whether the world existed or whether there was nothing at all anywhere. I began to intuit and sense with all my being, that .”

“Don't sit around depressed and discouraged. Get a new vision for your life.”

“A sick man's dreams are often extraordinarily distinct and vivid and extremely life-like. A scene may be composed of the most unnatural and incongruous elements, but the setting and presentation are so plausible, the details so subtle, so unexpected, so artistically in harmony with the whole picture, that the dreamer could not invent them for himself in his waking state, even if he were an artist like Pushkin or Turgenev. Such morbid dreams always make a strong impression on the dreamer's already disturbed and excited nerves, and are remembered for a long time.”

“You are never too old to set a new goal or dream a new dream”

“Does it matter whether it was a dream or a reality, if the dream made known to me the truth?”

“So often as you set out to build the temple of peace you are left lonesome; you are left discouraged; you are left bewildered. Well, that is the story of life. And the thing that makes me happy is that I can hear a voice crying through the vista of time, saying: "It may not come today or it may not come tomorrow, but it is well that it is within thine heart. It’s well that you are trying." You may not see it. The dream may not be fulfilled, but it’s just good that you have a desire to bring it into reality. It’s well that it’s in thine heart. Thank God this morning that we do have hearts to put something meaningful in. Life is a continual story of shattered dreams.”

“Well, this time I'll be honest with you and let you in on it. Listen, in dreams and particularly in nightmares, caused perhaps by indigestion or whatever, a man may think up such artistic creations, such complex and realistic visions, events or even a whole world of events woven into a plot of such astounding details that even Leo Tolstoi himself could not invent them. And yet people who have such dreams don't have to be novelists but can be the most ordinary civil servants, newspapermen, priests, or anything . . . It creates, in fact, a most interesting problem: once, for instance, I heard a member of the government say that his best ideas came to him when he was asleep.”

“But all these are golden dreams.”

“I have covenanted with my Lord that He should not send visions, or dreams or even angels! I am content with this gift of the Scriptures, which teaches and supplies all that is necessary both for this life and that which is to come.”

“If you hold on to what you want so tightly, it almost becomes an idol.”

“To know that one is dreaming is to be no longer perfectly asleep.”

“Well," he said, "don't you know that there are souls forever in torment? They must have alternate dream and action, the purest passions and the most violent satisfactions, and that way one stumbles into all sorts of whims, of follies.”

“The memory of all that had happened to her after her illness: reconciliation with her husband, the break-up, the news of Vronsky's wound, his appearance, the preparation for the divorce, the departure from her husband's house, the leavetaking from her son - all this seemed to her a feverish dream from which she had awakened abroad, alone with Vronsky.”

“Giacché, che cosa è mai uno stato dove non si sogni?”

“If we will but let our God and Father work His will with us, there can be no limit to His enlargement of our existence, to the flood of life with which He will overflow our consciousness. We have no conception of what life might be, of how vast the consciousness of which we could be made capable. Many can recall some moment in which life seemed richer and fuller than ever before. To some, such moments arrive mostly in dreams. Shall soul, awake or asleep, infold a bliss greater than its Life, the living God, can seal, perpetuate, enlarge? Can the human twilight of a dream be capable of generating or holding a fuller life than the morning of divine activity?”

“And the worst thing about it was that you began to feel as if you had always lived on that ship, in that darkness, and to wonder whether sun and blue skies and wind and birds had not been only a dream.”

“Why is it also that when you have woken up and completely recovered your sense of reality, you feel each time, sometimes with great intensity, that you have left behind something personally unresolved along with your dream? You laugh at the absurdity of your dream, yet at the same time sense that there is a sort of idea inherent in the interweaving of these absurdities, but this idea is actual and has to do with your life, something existing in your heart now, as it has always done; something new, prophetic, and yet expected, has been told to you by your dream; the impression is vivid; it may be joyful or agonizing, but what it was or what has been said to you- all this you are unable either to comprehend or recall.”