Dreams

"We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep."

"There are a kind of men so loose of soul, That in their sleeps will mutter their affairs."

"In your dream no one is a refugee. Everyone has clean sheets."

"Is a dream a lie if it don't come true Or is it something worse?"

"Dreams which give timely notice of coming accidents are, unfortunately, quite as often useless as they are efficacious for the protection of those to whom they are sent. Mr. Kendall, from whose psychical diary I have often quoted, sends me the following story of a dream... His class-leader there had lost a leg, and he had heard direct from himself the circumstances under which the loss took place and the dream that accompanied. This class-leader was a blacksmith at a manufacturing mill which was driven by a water-wheel... one night he dreamed that at the close of the day's work the manager detained him to repair it, that his foot slipped and became entangled between the two wheels, and was injured and afterwards amputated... The blacksmith determined to make himself scarce before the hour arrived... He found himself ere he was aware of it back at the mill just as the workpeople were being dismissed. He could not escape, and as he was principal smith he had to go upon the wheel, but he resolved to be very careful. In spite of his care, however, his foot slipped and got entangled between the two wheels just as he had dreamed. It was crushed so badly that he had to be carried to the Bradford Infirmary, where the leg was amputated above the knee. The premonitory dream was thus fulfilled throughout."

"It is surely nobler to be a victim of the most noble dream than to profit from a sordid reality and to wallow in it. Dream is akin to aspiration. And aspiration is a kind of divination of an enigmatic vision. And an enigmatic vision in the emphatic sense is the perception of the ultimate mystery, of the truth of the ultimate mystery."

"“You have the look of one who has lately dreamed.” “Perhaps I have,” Elric said. “A fair dream, I hope.” “Too fair to be anything other than a dream.”"

"The greatest man of action is he who is the greatest, and a life-long, dreamer. For in him the dreamer is fortified against destruction by a far-seeing eye, a virile mind, a strong will, a robust courage. And so has perished the kindly dreamer — on the cross or in the garret. A democracy should not let its dreamers perish. They are its life, its guaranty against decay."

"You see things; and you say "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say "Why not?""

"Dreams are the touchstones of our characters."

"In the past, daydreaming was often considered a failure of mental discipline, or worse. Freud labeled it infantile and neurotic. Psychology textbooks warned it could lead to psychosis. Neuroscientists complained that the rogue bursts of activity on brain scans kept interfering with their studies of more important mental functions. But now that researchers have been analyzing those stray thoughts, they’ve found daydreaming to be remarkably common — and often quite useful. A wandering mind can protect you from immediate perils and keep you on course toward long-term goals. Sometimes daydreaming is counterproductive, but sometimes it fosters creativity and helps you solve problems."

"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."

"When the brain in not functioning properly during dreams of aggression, sleepwalkers have been able to commit murder. In several cases sleepwalkers did not recognize their victims. For example, one man drove 15 kilometers to his mother-in-law’s house, which means that his motor skills were intact. Then he stabbed her with a knife and did not respond to her screams. He acted as if he was under threat and initiated a fatal attack. This man had a genetic and personal history of awakening abruptly from the first cycle of sleep into a confused state and never entered REM sleep (Cartwright, 2000). The REM sleep is necessary to prevent waking hallucinations and mental illness (Siegel, 2001). Since aggression is prominent in most dreams, it is likely that our enemies cause this aggression. In a study by Hall and Van de Castle, animals and male strangers are the primary enemies in both male and female dreams. When a animal enters a dream it is almost always going to pose some threat or danger to the dreamer. The reason for this was thought to be because in ancestral times humans lived in an environment full of dangerous animals. There was also a constant threat from other humans. These ever-present dangers made behavioral strategies to avoid contact with these things and was of a high survival value. Dreaming simulates these strategies in order to maintain efficiency; otherwise, one failure to respond to these threats in waking life could mean death. Dreams are biased towards simulating threats that were common in our ancestral environment (Revonsuo, 2000)."

"Under each arm he carries an umbrella; one of them, with pictures on the inside, he spreads over the good children, and then they dream the most beautiful stories the whole night. But the other umbrella has no pictures, and this he holds over the naughty children so that they sleep heavily, and wake in the morning without having dreamed at all."

"Postremo nemo aegrotus quidquam somniat tam infandum, quod non aliquis dicat philosophus."

"The whole life is a succession of dreams. My ambition is to be a conscious dreamer, that is all."

"As I became accustomed to keeping dream records, the dreams themselves got "better", with more direct information and precognitive "hits.""

"Each day for 14 weeks, 193 college students indicated whether or not they remembered a dream from the previous evening; they also recorded their sleep schedules and noted whether they had (1) exercised and (2) consumed alcohol and caffeine. In addition, the students completed measures of dissociation, schizotypy, sleep-related experiences, and the five-factor model of personality (N=169). Analyses of these data indicated that individual differences in dream recall were strongly stable over a 2-month interval. Dream recall was specifically associated with openness and was unrelated to the other Big Five traits. Subsequent analyses indicated that individuals who are prone to absorption, imagination and fantasy are particularly likely to remember their dreams and to report other vivid nocturnal experiences. These results are consistent with a salience model of dream recall and a continuity model of human consciousness."

"Scattered in the wind Earthboy calls me from my dreams: Dirt is where the dreams must end."

"A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world."

"No, Ernest, don't talk about action. It is a blind thing dependent on external influences, and moved by an impulse of whose nature it is unconscious. It is a thing incomplete in its essence, because limited by accident, and ignorant of its direction, being always at variance with its aim. Its basis is the lack of imagination. It is the last resource of those who know not how to dream."

"It is the first duty of a gentleman to dream."

"I have spread my dreams beneath your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."

"In dreams begin responsibilities."

"Things we do and things we see shortly before we fall asleep are most apt to influence our dreams."

"Questionnaire studies indicate that approximately 80% of adults answer positively to the question “Have you ever dreamed of sexual experiences?” with men reporting sexual dreams more often than women. The normative data from the classic HVDC studies indicates that 12% of men’ dreams and 4% of women’s dreams contained sexual content, including having or attempting intercourse, petting, kissing, sexual overtures and fantasies. However, one study by our group of over 3500 dream reports found no gender differences, with approximately 8% of dream reports from both men and women containing sexually-related activity. The differences with the HVDC data may be partially due to sample composition (college students versus student and non-student adults). Alternatively, it is also possible that women actually experience more sexual dreams now than they did 40 years ago, or that they now feel more comfortable reporting such dreams due to changing social roles and attitudes, or both."

"Observed gender differences may be indicative of different waking needs, experiences, desires and attitudes with respect to sexuality. This is consistent with the continuity hypothesis of dreaming which postulates that the content of everyday dreams reflects the dreamer's waking states and concerns -- that is, that dream and waking thought contents are continuous.""

"Once upon a time, I, Chuang Chou, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Chou. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. 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. Between a man and a butterfly there is necessarily a distinction. The transition is called the transformation of material things."

"How do I know that enjoying life is not a delusion? How do I know that in hating death we are not like people who got lost in early childhood and do not know the way home? Lady Li was the child of a border guard in Ai. When first captured by the state of Jin, she wept so much her clothes were soaked. But after she entered the palace, shared the king's bed, and dined on the finest meats, she regretted her tears. How do I know that the dead do not regret their previous longing for life? One who dreams of drinking wine may in the morning weep; one who dreams weeping may in the morning go out to hunt. During our dreams we do not know we are dreaming. We may even dream of interpreting a dream. Only on waking do we know it was a dream. Only after the great awakening will we realize that this is the great dream. And yet fools think they are awake, presuming to know that they are rulers or herdsmen. How dense! You and Confucius are both dreaming, and I who say you are a dream am also a dream. Such is my tale. It will probably be called preposterous, but after ten thousand generations there may be a great sage who will be able to explain it, a trivial interval equivalent to the passage from morning to night."

"When to soft Sleep we give ourselves away, And in a dream as in a fairy bark Drift on and on through the enchanted dark To purple daybreak—little thought we pay To that sweet bitter world we know by day."

"If there were dreams to sell, Merry and sad to tell, And the crier rung his bell, What would you buy?"

"Come to me, darling; I'm lonely without thee; Daytime and nighttime I'm dreaming about thee."

"Oft morning dreams presage approaching fate, For morning dreams, as poets tell, are true."

"I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls, With vassals and serfs at my side."

"I had a dream, which was not all a dream."

"And dreams in their development have breath, And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy; They have a weight upon our waking thoughts, They take a weight from off our waking toils, They do divide our being."

"A change came o'er the spirit of my dream."

"The fisher droppeth his net in the stream, And a hundred streams are the same as one; And the maiden dreameth her love-lit dream; And what is it all, when all is done? The net of the fisher the burden breaks, And always the dreaming the dreamer wakes."

"Like the dreams, Children of night, of indigestion bred."

"My eyes make pictures, when they are shut."

"And so, his senses gradually wrapt In a half sleep, he dreams of better worlds, And dreaming hears thee still, O singing lark; That singest like an angel in the clouds."

"Dreams are but interludes, which fancy makes; When monarch reason sleeps, this mimic wakes."

"In blissful dream, in silent night, There came to me, with magic might, With magic might, my own sweet love, Into my little room above."

"Fly, dotard, fly! With thy wise dreams and fables of the sky."

"Some dreams we have are nothing else but dreams, Unnatural and full of contradictions; Yet others of our most romantic schemes Are something more than fictions."

"And the dream that our mind had sketched in haste Shall others continue, but never complete. For none upon earth can achieve his scheme; The best as the worst are futile here: We wake at the self-same point of the dream,— All is here begun, and finished elsewhere."

"Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!) Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace."

"Your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions."

"There's a long, long trail a-winding Into the land of my dreams, Where the nightingales are singing And a white moon beams; There's a long, long night of waiting Until my dreams all come true, Till the day when I'll be going down that Long, long trail with you."

"Ever of thee I'm fondly dreaming, Thy gentle voice my spirit can cheer."