Quotes & Sayings About Life Is But A Dream

How do we know we're not people in a movie?' she asked.
I looked at her not knowing how to reply.
Mama, [ ... ] how do we know that things are real?'
Great. Now we have a junior existentialist in the house.
Well, we don't know. We just have to hope that what we think is real is real.'
But how do we know?' she asked, insistently.
Ah, a scientist, who wants empirical evidence.
We don't know. We just have to hope.'
Mama, how do we know things aren't a dream? You know, how sometimes life feels like a dream? Do you ever feel that way?'
Yes, sweetie, I feel that way all the time. — Julie Metz

Last night I had a nightmare. That me and someone I cared a lot about were playing a game in a pool. We'd take turns submerging ourselves under the water while the other person kept time.
At one point it felt like the other person might be drowning, so I jumped in to pull her up. She smiled and laughed and pushed me away. Then she turned blue and died. I could not resuciate her.
I woke up at 3, sweating, in shock and pain. Frightened. But then I realized it was only a dream. But then I realized it was just like real life ...
Sometimes people we care about play risky games and then don't want our help. There is nothing we can do for them, no matter how much we care ... — Jose N. Harris

A
fighter's dream is to win a world title and gain financial stability.
But what is happening to me now is the most humbling experience of my
life. It is a great honor for me to be the face of my people and to let
everyone know we are a small but mighty country. I have great pride for
all of the Filipinos living throughout the world and it is these people
that I fight for each and every time I step into the ring. — Manny Pacquiao

We are but phantoms, and the phantoms of phantoms, desires like cloud-shadows and wills of straw that eddy in the wind; the days pass, use and wont carry us through as a train carries the shadow of its lights - so be it! But one thing is real and certain, one thing is no dream-stuff, but eternal and enduring. It is the centre of my life, and all other things about it are subordinate or altogether vain. I loved her, that woman of a dream. And she and I are dead together! — H.G.Wells

I've never been good at writing letters, so I hope you'll forgive me if I'm not able to make myself clear.
I've been thinking about you constantly since I left, wondering why the journey I'm on seemed to have led through you. I know my journey's not over yet, and that life is a winding path, but I can only hope it somehow circles back to the place I belong.
That's how I think of it now. I belong with you.
It is almost as if a part of you is with me. I want to believe that's true. No, change that - I know it's true. Before we met, I was as lost as a person could be, and yet you saw something in me that somehow gave me direction again. It was you, that I had been looking for all along. And it's you who is with me now.
I realize that I miss you more than I've ever missed anyone. In the short time we spent together, we had what most people can only dream about, and I'm counting the days until I can see you again. Never forget how much I love you. — Unknown

Many men have been praised as vividly imaginative on the strength of their profuseness in indifferent drawing or cheap narration: - reports of very poor talk going on in distant orbs; or portraits of Lucifer coming down on his bad errands as a large ugly man with bat's wings and spurts of phosphorescence; or exaggerations of wantonness that seem to reflect life in a diseased dream. But these kinds of inspirations Lydgate regarded as rather vulgar and vinous compared with the imagination that reveals subtle actions inaccessible by any sort of lens, but tracked in that outer darkness through long pathways of necessary sequence by the inward light which is the last refinement of Energy, capable of bathing even the ethereal atoms in its ideally illuminated space. — George Eliot

[O]ne has to have endured a few decades before wanting, let alone needing, to embark on the project of recovering lost life. And I think it may be possible to review 'the chronicles of wasted time.' William Morris wrote in The Dream of John Ball that men fight for things and then lose the battle, only to win it again in a shape and form that they had not expected, and then be compelled again to defend it under another name. We are all of us very good at self-persuasion and I strive to be alert to its traps, but a version of what Hegel called 'the cunning of history' is a parallel commentary that I fight to keep alive in my mind. — Christopher Hitchens

What if you wake up one fine morning only to realize that the life you have been living since the last few days was nothing but a dream of yours?

Would you go back to sleep then?

I wake up each morning only to realize you're not by my side. And if this emptiness is nothing but a nightmare, let me wake up and go back to the time we were together... — Sanhita Baruah

It is from the bystanders (who are in the vast majority) that we receive the propaganda that life is not worth living, that life is drudgery, that the ambitions of youth must he laid aside for a life which is but a painful wait for death. These are the ones who squeeze what excitement they can from life out of the imaginations and experiences of others through books and movies. These are the insignificant and forgotten men who preach conformity because it is all they know. These are the men who dream at night of what could have been, but who wake at dawn to take their places at the now-familiar rut and to merely exist through another day. For them, the romance of life is long dead and they are forced to go through the years on a treadmill, cursing their existence, yet afraid to die because of the unknown which faces them after death. They lacked the only true courage: the kind which enables men to face the unknown regardless of the consequences. — Hunter S. Thompson

There are dreams inside of me and those are mine and my guess is that they're there for a reason. But for all the days like now where the dreams are asked to be only dreams, I'm gonna keep getting out of bed. I'm gonna keep living my story. I'm gonna believe that there is reason and purpose, and power in my life. I'm gonna believe that I'm alive inside a story bigger than my pain, bigger than everything missing. — Jamie Tworkowski

It sometime is so amazing to know, how the most ordinary day turns so extraordinary, in a flash of second. And depending on harshness of a sudden jolt of reality, sometime one has no option but to still be hopeful, listen to the heartbeat, still dream grand, still dream impossible; and keep one's inner self illuminated forever. After all, dream only turns into reality, if one is genuinely passionate and truthful to it. What a waste of life it would be otherwise. — Smishra

I had a dream about you. You were you, but you were many - a multitude of mannequins, each named Manny. And I was me, but I was Dark Jar Tin Zoo, and as such I made love to you - all of you. Then I woke up alone, naked, cuddling a mannequin I named after you who smells like you, because I spray it with the same fragrance you used to wear. Is that crazy? No, I didn't think so either. — Dora J. Arod

It was hard and sour, but, as Poushkin said, the illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths. I saw a happy man, one whose dearest dream had come true, who had attained his goal in life, who had got what he wanted, and was pleased with his destiny and with himself. — Anton Chekhov

In the human life time is but an instant, and the substance of it a flux, and the perception dull, and the composition of the whole body subject to putrefaction, and the soul a whirl, and fortune hard to divine, and fame a thing devoid of certainty. And, to say all in a word, everything that belongs to the body is a stream, and what belongs to the soul is a dream and vapor, and life is a warfare and a stranger's sojourn, and after- fame is oblivion. What then can guide a man? One thing and only one, philosophy. — Marcus Aurelius

I invested in the album. Look, if I never did anything again in music, it wouldn't affect my life materially. I live a very satisfying life. Not because I've made a few dollars, but because I have a wife who loves me and children who wait for me to come home. And that is beautiful. I think that's the American dream: to be at peace at home. — RZA

But human beings must suffer, and must make suffering for themselves, and beat themselves up into spiritual frenzies, and oh death and desolation, and oh night space and horror, and oh keep my dream from me. And how very splendid it is that we can do all this to ourselves and have such a splendid and really ingenious gift for inflicting suffering upon ourselves. For suffering and strain are the gauge of life, and who wishes to live like a vegetable?
But sometimes suffering measures life and ends it. And then it is not good at all. And between two people without knowing it a love may grow up, and a link may form, and no one knows or guesses. — Stevie Smith

You travel life has the aspect of a dream. It is something outside the normal, yet you are in it. It is peopled with characters you have never seen before and in all probability will never see again. It brings occasional homesickness, and loneliness, and pangs of longing ... But you are like the Vikings who have gone into a world of adventure, and home is not home until you return. — Agatha Christie

Such is the common process of marriage. A youth and maiden exchange meeting by chance, or brought together by artifice, exchange glances, reciprocate civilities, go home, and dream of one another. Having little to divert attention, or diversify thought, they find themselves uneasy when they are apart, and therefore conclude that they shall be happy together. They marry, and discover what nothing but voluntary blindness had before concealed; they wear out life in altercations, and charge nature with cruelty. — Samuel Johnson

Like dew I was born
Like dew I vanish
..and all that I have ever done
Is but a dream
Within a dream — James Clavell

Every man who truly loves a woman, and every woman who truly loves a man, hopes and dreams that their companionship will last forever. But marriage is a covenant sealed by authority. If that authority is of the state alone, it will endure only while the state has jurisdiction, and that jurisdiction ends with death. But add to the authority of the state the power of the endowment given by Him who overcame death, and that companionship will endure beyond life if the parties to the marriage live worthy of the promise. — Gordon B. Hinckley

What I'm doing is a dream come true but at the same time its work. It's like anything else. The only time it doesn't really feel like work to me is when I'm on stage and doing what I've prepared myself for my whole life which is to stand out in front of a crowd and sing. — Gretchen Wilson

You know the irony of life is that you have like this big dream to get where you wanna be. But once you get there you start to dream about where you came from. I guess that's the part of the circle of our lives, like the hands of a clock going round. If only we could wind them back and return to a time where the dream began. It's all too soon that's all we'll be is a dream in someone's mind. — Insane Clown Posse

What is he rudest question you can ask a woman? 'How old are you?' 'What do you weigh?' No, the worst question is 'How do you juggle it all?' people constantly ask me, with an accusatory look in their eyes. 'You're fucking it all up, aren't you?' their eyes say. My standard answer is that I have the same struggles as any working parent but with the good fortune of working my dream job. — Tina Fey

And they say that each man has but one dream and life is just a question of whether he attains them or not... — Oscar Simanjuntak

Never give up on your aspirations. Sometimes life is funny and can get in the way with simple distractions, but don't let that stop you. If you have a dream, then go for it. You have the power to make it manifest itself into something fantastic, so mesmerizing that it has the possibility to astonish even the most daring of minds. Dream on and make it a reality. — Sheila Renee Parker

Many people have wonderful dreams, but die without realizing them. It is because they do not know how to get a hold of a dream and work with it to make it happen. Everything happens by laws."

(From the Secrets To Divine Manifestations by Alain Yaovi M. Dagba — Alain Yaovi M. Dagba

Man's life is but a jest,
A dream, a shadow, bubble, air, a vapor at the best. — George Walter

An actor's life is the shadow of a cloud, the echo of a sound, the memory of a dream, nothing come of nothing. The finest actor does not create, he is but a translator of another man's work. — Fanny Kemble

I have always been aware that human life is dream-like because most human beings exist passively. Their consciousness is little more than a reflection of their environment. In the sexual orgasm, the voltage power of their minds surges, and they become momentarily aware that they are not forty-watt bulbs, but two hundred and fifty, five hundred, a thousand ... Then the voltage drops, and they sink back to forty watts without a protest. They are like empty-headed fools who cannot remember anything for more than a few seconds. Human beings are so mediocre that they can scarcely be said to possess minds in any real sense. In a flash, I understood the absurd and obvious truth: nothing is worth possessing except intensity of consciousness. This is the truth we glimpse in the orgasm. — Colin Wilson

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. — Rajneesh

Often, during combat, the warrior of light receives blows that he was not expecting. And he realizes that, during a war, his enemy is bound to win some of the battles. When this happens, the warrior of light weeps bitter tears and rests in order to recover his energies a little. But he immediately resumes the battle for his dreams. — Paulo Coelho

Photographers usually want to photograph facts and things. But I'm interested in the nature of the thing itself. A photograph of someone sleeping tells me nothing about their dream state; a photograph of a corpse tells me nothing about the nature of death. My work is about my life as an event, and I find myself to be very temporal, transient. — Duane Michals

Creatures of a day, what is any one? What is he not? Man is but a dream of a shadow. Yet when there comes as a gift of heaven a gleam of sunshine, there rest upon men a radiant light and, aye, a gentle life. — Pindar

Out in the sky, no one sleeps. No one, no one.
No one sleeps.
In a graveyard far off there is a corpse
who has moaned for three years
because of an arid landscape in his knee;
and that boy they buried this morning cried so much
it was necessary to call out the dogs to keep him quiet.
Life is not a dream. Careful! Careful! Careful!
We fall down the stairs in order to eat the moist earth
or we climb to the snow's edge with the voices of dead dahlias.
But there is no oblivion; no dream:
only flesh exists. Kisses tie our mouths
in a tangle of new veins,
and those who hurt will hurt without rest
and those who are afraid of death will carry it on their shoulders. — Federico Garcia Lorca

Life is, in fact, a battle. Evil is insolent and strong; beauty enchanting, but rare; goodness very apt to be weak; folly very apt to be defiant; wickedness to carry the day; imbeciles to be in great places, people of sense in small, and mankind generally unhappy. But the world as it stands is no narrow illusion, no phantasm, no evil dream of the night; we wake up to it, forever and ever; and we can neither forget it nor deny it nor dispense with it. — Henry James

Just to get into a company like ABT is a dream come true, but to have all of these opportunities on top of it, I don't think it will hit me until I'm 70. I'll be like, "Oh, my god, remember that amazing life you had?" It's an incredible honor to be a part of something like ABT. — Misty Copeland

One of the greatest life lessons I've learned has been to dream new dreams. When a dream is fulfilled, it shouldn't become a straitjacket, constricting a person's evolution and progress. Instead, it should be a stepping-stone to the next thing. When a dream shatters, you should pick up the pieces and create a new one. It won't be the same as the broken one, but you can hope it will be as vibrant and as exciting. — Jai Pausch

o each his Dulcinea, that he alone can name...to each a secret hiding place where he can find the haunting face to light his secret flame. For with his Dulcinea beside him, so to stand, a man can do quite anything, outfly the bird upon the wing, hold moonlight in his hand. Yet if you build your life on dreams, it's prudent to recall--a man with moonlight in his hand has nothing there at all. There is no Dulcinea, she's made of flame and air, and yet how lovely life would seem if ev'ry man could weave a dream to keep him from despair. To each his Dulcinea...though she's naught but flame and air! — Mitch Leigh

Truthfully, this is the fabric of all my fantasies: love shown not by a kiss or a wild look or a careful hand but by a willingness for research. i don't dream of someone who understands me immediately, who seems to have known me my entire life, who says, i know me too. i want someone keen to learn my own strange organization, amazed at what's revealed; someone who asks, and then what, and then what? — Elizabeth McCracken

I'M SORRY. I HAVE BEEN VERY LONELY AND STRUGGLED WITH A LOT OF THINGS. NO ONE UNDERSTANDS THE FEELINGS I'VE HAD. NO ONE IS ON MY SIDE. IT'S LIKE I'M COMPLETELY ALONE. I REALIZE THIS IS THE COWARDLY WAY OUT BUT I CAN'T STOP MYSELF FROM BEING A COWARD. MY WHOLE LIFE IS LIKE A BAD DREAM. THE KIND OF DREAM YOU DON'T WAKE UP FROM. PAIGE — Katie Alender

Why do I have three Super Bowl rings and still think there's something greater out there for me? I mean, maybe a lot of people would say, 'Hey man, this is what is.' I reached my goal, my dream, my life. I think, 'God, it's got to be more than this.' I mean this isn't, this can't be what it's all cracked up to be ... I love playing football and I love being quarterback for this team. But at the same time, I think there are a lot of other parts about me that I'm trying to find. — Tom Brady

Reading this book, you will probably get motivated to take a major faith step, but life can stare you back in the face and tell you that you are stupid to believe that God will answer your prayer. The bottom line is, GOD CAN DO IT, and He will do it if you let Him. Numbers, 23:19 states, "God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?" Your entrepreneurial dream may seem impossible, but God can do it. Your finances might be in the worst shape that you have ever experienced in your life, but God can fix it. You might not have the education or the skill that you know is required to follow through on your dream, but God can supplement it. Will you trust Him to do it? — V.L. Thompson

It was quite a wedding and as I stood there watching I realized something I'd forgotten a long time ago. Sometimes in life there really are bonds formed that can never be broken. Sometimes you really can find that one person who will stand by you no matter what. Maybe you will find it in a spouse and celebrate it with your dream wedding. But there's also the chance that the one person you can count on for a lifetime, the one person who knows you sometimes better than you know yourself is the same person who's been standing beside you all along. — Greg DePaul

Man is a dream about a shadow. But when some splendour falls upon him from God, a glory comes to him and his life is sweet. — R.S. Thomas

The truth is that we are a part of God. God could not have created anything except out of his own consciousness. We're all his dream, and our duty in life that God has assigned to us, that the universe has placed squarely in our laps, is to find out who we really are. "Gnothi seauton," as the Greeks used to say. "Know thyself." But to know thyself, if you trace it back, to the deeper and deeper levels, you discover that that self is not your body or your ego or your personality or your country or anything, that's just a sack of self-definitions that you carry around with you — Goswami Kriyananda

No boyfriend, I said, perhaps a little too quickly. Have I mentioned my total lack of social life? Having a dream about Alex last night was the closest thing I'd had to a date in months and that was only a dream and it was about a guy who was undead. Admittedly very sexy, but still completely undead. Although I have heard that vampire sex is supposed to be pretty damn good. — Eileen Rendahl

And yet not a dream, but a mighty reality- a glimpse of the higher life, the broader possibilities of humanity, which is granted to the man who, amid the rush and roar of living, pauses four short years to learn what living means — W.E.B. Du Bois

Late in the night I pay
the unrest I own
to the life that has never lived
and cannot live now.
What the world could be
is my good dream
and my agony when, dreaming it,
I lie awake and turn
and look into the dark.
I think of a luxury
in the sturdiness and grace
of necessary things, not
in frivolity. That would heal
the earth, and heal men.
But the end, too, is part
of the pattern, the last
labor of the heart:
to learn to lie still,
one with the earth
again, and let the world go. — Wendell Berry

of yourself and of other people. If you wish to attain to lasting happiness you must be ready to hate father, mother, even your own life and to take leave of all your possessions. How? Not by renouncing them or giving them up because what you give up violently you are forever bound to. But rather by seeing them for the nightmare they are; and then, whether you keep them or not, they will have lost their grip over you, their power to hurt you, and you will be out of your dream at last, out of your darkness, your fear, your unhappiness. So spend some time seeing each of the things you cling to for what it really is, a nightmare that causes you excitement and pleasure on the one hand but also worry, insecurity, tension, anxiety, fear, unhappiness on the other. — Anthony De Mello

We rejoice in God since he has taught us that every thing which is true in us, is but a faint expression of what is in him. And thus all our joys become to us the echo of higher joys, and our very life is as a dream of that nobler life, to which we shall awaken when we die. — Henry Ward Beecher

She is all I could ever ask for, she is perfect, and right now, with those big, green eyes and pillowy lips and alabaster thighs, the idea of doing this for the rest of our lives doesn't seem all that daunting. She's the last reprieve. The stay of execution. She gives me hope. But times are tough for dreamers. And even if my dream is a simple one - all I want is for Her to be in love with me forever - I know it's still a long shot. Life ruins everything. — Pete Wentz

I feel like I've been able to live a dream life, but my view of things is absolutely inside behavior about how I behave and how I count on other people behaving. — Kevin Costner

We don't really want to get what we think that we want.
I am married to a wife and relationship with her are cold and I have a mistress. And all the time I dream oh my god if my wife were to disappear - I'm not a murderer but let us say- that it will open up a new life with the mistress.Then, for some reason, the wife goes away, you lose the mistress.
You thought this is all I want, when you have it there, you turn out it was a much more complex situation.
It was not to live with the mistress, but to keep her as a distance as on object of desire about which you dream.
This is not an excessive example, I claim this is how things function. We don't really want what we think we desire — Slavoj Zizek

I think our lives are surely but the dreams
Of spirits, dwelling in the distant spheres,
Who as we die, do one by one awake. — Edgar Saltus

The tragedy of life doesn't lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach. It isn't a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream ... It is not a disgrace not to reach the stars, but it is a disgrace to have no stars to reach for. Not failure, but low aim is sin. — Benjamin E. Mays

We think that we are living when we walk upon the earth but the very moment we "die" there, we wake up here! This life on the other side of the Rainbow Bridge is the real one. We find that our life on earth was just a dream, a dream designed to lead us further and further into love. True love grows and then cannot be destroyed. It grows and grows until it is stronger than death. — Kate McGahan

With our collective shock, what we saw seemed to be frozen into a state of suspended animation. Indelibly etched into our memories in terror, forever! My life was in slow motion, it was as if I was no longer in my body and this was a rather bad dream! It is almost impossible to describe with words what I saw, but I will try. This very experience is the one that has continued to shake me awake during the dense night of my lifetime. — Alfred Nestor

There is no other life; life itself is only a vision and a dream for nothing exists but space and you. If there was an all-powerful God, he would have made all good, and no bad. — Mark Twain

The person who hurt you
who raped you or killed your family
is also here. If you are still angry at that person, if you haven't been able to forgive, you are chained to him. Everyone could feel the emotional truth of that: When someone offends you and you haven't let go, every time you see him, you grow breathless or your heart skips a beat. If the trauma was really severe, you dream of revenge. Above you, is the Mountain of Peace and Prosperity where we all want to go. But when you try to climb that hill, the person you haven't forgiven weighs you down. It's a personal choice whether or not to let go. No one can tell you how long to mourn a death or rage over a rape. But you can't move forward until you break that chain. — Leymah Gbowee

You are pure-hearted, Branza, and lovely, and you have never done a moment's wrong. But you are a living creature, born to make a real life, however it cracks your heart. However sweet that other place was, it was not real. It was an artifact of your mam's imagination; it was a dream of hers and a desire; you could not have stayed there forever and called yourself alive. Now you are in the true world, and a great deal more is required of you. Here you must befriend real wolves, and lure real birds down from the sky. Here you must endure real people around you, and we are not uniformly kind; we are damaged and impulsive, each in our own way. It is harder. It is not safe. But it is what you were born to. (357) — Margo Lanagan

35 "Everyone has a dream, a vision, a goal and a desire. Just because we have bigger dreams than others doesn't mean they don't have one. Sometimes we just too lazy to make it happen or are scared of failing."

But trying is better than not doing anything at all. — Kcat Yarza

Going after a dream has a price. It may mean abandoning our habits, it may make us go through hardships, or it may lead us to disappointment, et cetera. But however costly it may be, it is never as high as the price paid by people who didn't live. Because one day they will look back and hear their own heart say: 'I wasted my life.' " He is not making things any easier. Let's suppose — Paulo Coelho

Life," said Emerson, "consists in what a man is thinking all day." If that be so, then my life is nothing but a big intestine. I not only think about food all day, but I dream about it at night. — Henry Miller

But my life, oh, my life, had been a constant search for an enormous dream in which my fellow creatures and animals, plants, chimeras, stars, and minerals were in a pre-established harmony, a dream that is forgotten because it must be forgotten, and is sought desperately, and only sporadically does one find its tragic fragments in the warmth of a person, in some specific situation, a glance - in memory too, of course, in some specific pain, some moment. I loved that harmony with a passion; I loved it in voices, voices. And then, instead of harmony, there was nothing but scraps and tatters. And perhaps that alone is what it means to be a poet. — Aleksander Wat

Thorne waved his hand. "They already showed the clips. And now you've achieved the dream of every red-blooded girl under the age of twenty
five"
"Right, my life is a real dream come true."
Thorne wiggled his eyebrow. "Maybe not, but at least dreamy Prince Kai knows your name. — Marissa Meyer

One does not think during creative work, any more than one thinks when driving a car. But one has a background of years - learning, unlearning, success, failure, dreaming, thinking, experience, all this - then the moment of creation, the focusing of all into the moment. So I can make without thought, fifteen carefully considered negatives, one every fifteen minutes, given material with as many possibilities. But there is all the eyes have seen in this life to influence me. — Edward Weston

So you were born, and that was a good day. Some day you'll die, and that is a shame. But somewhere in the between, you'll live a life of which we'll all dream, and nothing and no one will ever take that away. — Tomas Kalnoky

As slaves we were this country's first windfall, the down payment on its freedom. After the ruin and liberation of the Civil War came Redemption for the unrepentant South and Reunion, and our bodies became this country's second mortgage. In the New Deal we were their guestroom, their finished basement. And today, with a sprawling prison system, which has turned the warehousing of black bodies into a jobs program for Dreamers and a lucrative investment for Dreamers; today, when 8 percent of the world's prisoners are black men, our bodies have refinanced the Dream of being white. Black life is cheap, but in America black bodies are a natural resource of incomparable value. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

We need to return from the self-centred concept of sincerity to the other-centred concept of truth. We are not isolated free choosers, monarchs of all we survey, but benighted creatures sunk in a reality whose nature we are constantly and overwhelmingly tempted to deform by fantasy. Our current picture of freedom encourages a dream-like facility; whereas what we require is a renewed sense of the difficulty and complexity of the moral life and the opacity of persons. We need more concepts in terms of which to picture the substance of our being; it is through an enriching and deepening of concepts that moral progress takes place. Simone Weil said that morality was a matter of attention not of will. We need a new vocabulary of attention. — Iris Murdoch

The writer loves the fog as it pours in; he loves the sun when the fog pours out. The rest of California is Beach Boys country, but San Francisco has that moody thing going on, those blues notes wrapped in moisture, an atmosphere that tempers California dreaming and makes life more real. The fog brings reality, but it is still a California reality, one spent outdoors the whole year round. — Eric Maisel

You know, all of us have fallen short of our dreams in life on occasion, but it is part of the Judeo-Christian spirit to give people the opportunity to show what they can do. The most important thing, I believe, for a person when they make mistakes is what they do after they've made mistakes. — Mel Reynolds

I once had a dream, or a vision, and I imagined that dream to be of importance to other people, so I wrote the manuscript and made the film. But it is not until the moment when my dream meets with your emotions and your minds that my shadows come to life. It is your recognition that brings them to life. It is your indifference that kills them. I hope that you will understand; that you when you leave the cinema will take with you an experience or a sudden thought - or maybe a question. The efforts of my friends and myself have then not been in vain ... — Ingmar Bergman

In that way Vinteuil's phrase, like some theme, say, in Tristan, which represents to us also a certain acquisition of sentiment, has espoused our mortal state, had endued a vesture of humanity that was affecting enough. Its destiny was linked, for the future, with that of the human soul, of which it was one of the special, the most distinctive ornaments. Perhaps it is not-being that is the true state, and all our dream of life is without existence; but, if so, we feel that it must be that these phrases of music, these conceptions which exist in relation to our dream, are nothing either. We shall perish, but we have for our hostages these divine captives who shall follow and share our fate. And death in their company is something less bitter, less inglorious, perhaps even less certain. — Marcel Proust

Why is it so hard to be human being? I wonder. Why do we have to surrender? And to what? What if you refused to believe in a higher power? What if you thought you were the only trustworthy higher power? I have done that all my life and I know it doesn't work. You are not enough. Your will is not enough. But God? God is a pagan dream, conjured out of neediness. — Erica Jong

Just because some dreams never see light that doesn't make us nonbelievers, they are wings to our sky and fiction makes us dream. I know the truth is fatal, especially for the stubborn's but trust me the illusion is worse. — Parul Wadhwa

For those who dispair that their lives are without meaning and without purpose, for those who dwell in a lonelines so terrible that it has withered their hearts, for those who hate because they have no recognition of the destiny they share with all humanity, for those who would squander their lives in self-pity and in self-destruction because they have lost the saving wisdom with which they are born, for all these and many more, hope waits in the dreams of a dog, where the scared bature of life may be clearly experienced without all but binding filter of human need, desire, greed, envy and endless fear. And here, in dream woods and fields, along with the shores of dream seas, with the profound awareness of the playful presence abiding in all things, Curtis is able to prove what she thus far only dared to hope is true: that although her mother never loved her, there is one who always has. — Dean Koontz

There are ways in, journeys to the center of life, through time; through air, matter, dream and thought. The ways are not always mapped or charted, but sometimes being lost, if there is such a thing, is the sweetest place to be. And always, in this search, a person might find that she is already there, at the center of the world. It may be a broken world, but it is glorious nonetheless. — Linda Hogan

Married or unmarried, young or old, poet or worker, you are still a dreamer, and will one time know, and feel, that your life is but a dream. — Donald G. Mitchell

We as human being do dream & do expect a lot for what we are not entitled but there comes a phase when we get what we have never expected or dreamt of ... So, Accept every little thing that life offers cause might be this is what we deserve ... — Anonymous

Only those who truly love and who are truly strong can sustain their lives as a dream. You dwell in your own enchantment. Life throws stones at you, but your love and your dream change those stones into the flowers of discovery. Even if you lose, or are defeated by things, your triumph will always be exemplary. And if no one knows it, then there are places that do. People like you enrich the dreams of the worlds, and it is dreams that create history. People like you are unknowing transformers of things, protected by your own fairy-tale, by love. — Ben Okri

But this element of failure is a very condition of his life; one can never dream of eliminating it without immediately dreaming of death. This does not mean that one should consent to failure, but rather one must consent to struggle against it without respite. — Simone De Beauvoir

Margaret ... you must know that you could never change your own life. You are a girl: girls have no choice. You could never even choose your own husband: you are of the royal family. A husband would always have been chosen for you. It is forbidden for one of royal blood to marry their own choice. You know this too. And finally, you are of the House of Lancaster. You cannot choose your allegiance. You have to serve your house, your family, and your husband. I have allowed you to dream, and I have allowed you to read, but the time has come to put aside silly stories and silly dreams and do your duty. — Philippa Gregory

So long as I confine my activities to social service and the blind, they compliment me extravagantly, calling me 'arch priestess of the sightless,' 'wonder woman,' and a 'modern miracle.' But when it comes to a discussion of poverty, and I maintain that it is the result of wrong economics - that the industrial system under which we live is at the root of much of the physical deafness and blindness in the world - that is a different matter! It is laudable to give aid to the handicapped. Superficial charities make smooth the way of the prosperous; but to advocate that all human beings should have leisure and comfort, the decencies and refinements of life, is a Utopian dream, and one who seriously contemplates its realization indeed must be deaf, dumb, and blind. — Helen Keller

For life is but a dream whose shapes return, some frequently, some seldom, some by night and some by day. — James Thomson

One-half of life is admitted by us to be passed in sleep, in which, however, it may appear otherwise, we have no perception of truth, and all our feelings are delusions; who knows but the other half of life, in which we think we are awake, is a sleep also, but in some respects different from the other, and from which we wake when we, as we call it, sleep. As a man dreams often that he is dreaming, crowding one dreamy delusion on another. — Blaise Pascal

Ah, great it is to believe the dream as we stand in youth by the starry stream; but a greater thing is to fight life through and say at the end, the dream is true! — Edwin Markham

Sad is one of those words that has given up its life for our country, it's been a martyr for the American dream, it's been neutralized, co-opted by our culture to suggest a tinge of discomfort that lasts the time it takes for this and then for that to happen, the time it takes to change a channel. But sadness is real because once it meant something real. It meant dignified, grave; it meant trustworthy; it meant exceptionally bad, deplorable, shameful; it meant massive, weighty, forming a compact body; it meant falling heavily; and it meant of a color: dark. It meant dark in color, to darken. It meant me. I felt sad. — Claudia Rankine

Your whole life is nothing but a dream. You live in a fantasy where everything you know about yourself is only true for you. Your truth is not the truth for anyone else. — Miguel Angel Ruiz

I fall asleep
Call it deep while all is well be-
Cause my life seems like a freestyle mean-
While asleep on the couch I dream it's a written piece and now
The symphony's sounding
Shouting out to these feet whose leaps feel foul but quite loud
But how
I'm allowed to live my dreams
My Chimeran team brings the Siberian breed
Riding reality free 'til these tires they freeze
In mires in dire need of wires, fire and heat but
I love a dark, hard cold heart in the wintery breeze — Criss Jami

When you haven't yet had your heart really broken, the gospel isn't about death and rebirth. It's about life and more life. It's about hope and possibility and a brighter future. And it is, certainly, about those things.
But when you've faced some kind of death - the loss of someone you loved dearly, the failure of a dream, the fracture of a relationship - that's when you start understanding the central metaphor. When your life is easy, a lot of the really crucial parts of Christian doctrine and life are nice theories, but you don't really need them. When, however, death of any kind is staring you in the face, all of a sudden rebirth and new life are very, very important to you. — Shauna Niequist

Life, believe, is not a dream
So dark as sages say;
Oft a little morning rain
Foretells a pleasant day.

Sometimes there are clouds of gloom,
But these are transient all;
If the shower will make the roses bloom,
O why lament its fall ?

Rapidly, merrily,
Life's sunny hours flit by,
Gratefully, cheerily,
Enjoy them as they fly !

What though Death at times steps in
And calls our Best away ?
What though sorrow seems to win,
O'er hope, a heavy sway ?

Yet hope again elastic springs,
Unconquered, though she fell;
Still buoyant are her golden wings,
Still strong to bear us well.

Manfully, fearlessly,
The day of trial bear,
For gloriously, victoriously,
Can courage quell despair ! — Charlotte Bronte

Even old, your husband is the young man you remember now. Even dead, he is the man you remember, not as he was but as he is, alive still in your love. Death is a sort of lens, though I used to think of it as a wall or a shut door. It changes things and makes them clear. Maybe it is the truest way of knowing this dream, this brief and timeless life. — Wendell Berry

Stigmata of Love
A light which lives on what the flames devour,
a grey landscape surrounding me with scorch,
a crucifixion by a single wound,
a sky and earth that darken by each hour,
a sob of blood whose red ribbon adorns
a lyre without a pulse, and oils the torch,
a tide which stuns and strands me on the reef,
a scorpion scrambling, stinging in my chest
this is the wreath of love, this bed of thorns
is where I dream of you stealing my rest,
haunting these sunken ribs cargoed with grief.
I sought the peak of prudence, but I found
the hemlock-brimming valley of your heart,
and my own thirst for bitter truth and art. — Federico Garcia Lorca

The Wolf trots to and fro,
The world lies deep in snow,
The raven from the birch tree flies,
But nowhere a hare, nowhere a roe,
The roe -she is so dear, so sweet -
If such a thing I might surprise
In my embrace, my teeth would meet,
What else is there beneath the skies?
The lovely creature I would so treasure,
And feast myself deep on her tender thigh,
I would drink of her red blood full measure,
Then howl till the night went by.
Even a hare I would not despise;
Sweet enough its warm flesh in the night.
Is everything to be denied
That could make life a little bright?
The hair on my brush is getting grey.
The sight is failing from my eyes.
Years ago my dear mate died.
And now I trot and dream of a roe.
I trot and dream of a hare.
I hear the wind of midnight howl.
I cool with the snow my burning jowl,
And on to the devil my wretched soul I bear. — Hermann Hesse

He remembered suddenly, at this moment, as he looked at the squares of moonlight lying on the floor, the time when he had first realized that pain is a thing that we must face and come to terms with if life is to be lived with dignity an not merely muddled through like an evil dream ... In some vague way he had understood that dark things are necessary; without them the silver moonlight would just stream away into nothingness, but with them it can be held and arranged into beautiful squares. (David Eliot, Chapter 4) — Elizabeth Goudge

Nothing is working. Nothing in my life is working. Giants of literature, philosophy, and the arts have influenced my life, but what have I done with this life? I remain a speck in a tumultuous universe that has little concern for me. I am no more than dust, a mote - dust to dust. I am a blade of grass upon which the stormtrooper's boot stomps. I had dreams, and they were not about ending up a speck. I didn't dream of becoming a star, but I thought I might have a small nonspeaking role in a grand epic, an epic with a touch of artistic credentials. I didn't dream of becoming a giant - I wasn't that delusional or arrogant - but I wanted to be more than a speck, maybe a midget. I could have been a midget. All our dreams of glory are but manure in the end. — Rabih Alameddine

Will you bring life to your dream or will you allow it to die of neglect? It is absolutely true that you have a divine summons to fulfill, but it's not automatic and it's not guaranteed. You are the major player who must give yourself fully to the process of becoming. — T.D. Jakes

We all have dream cars,dream houses and jobs but as soon as we stop dreaming we wake up go take a pee. the world is waiting out here don't just dream,make it a dream. — Mohlalefi J Motsima

When all are undressed, one is somehow not ashamed, but when one's the only one undressed and everybody is looking, it's degrading,' he kept repeating to himself, again and again. 'It's like a dream, I've sometimes dreamed of being in such degrading positions.' It was a misery to him to take off his socks. They were very dirty, and so were his underclothes, and now everyone could see it. And what was worse, he disliked his feet. All his life he had thought both his big toes hideous. He particularly loathed the coarse, flat, crooked nail on the right one, and now they would all see it. Feeling intolerably ashamed made him, at once and intentionally, rougher. He pulled off his shirt, himself. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Whenever we need to make a very important decision it is best to trust our instincts, because reason usually tries to remove us from our dream, saying that the time is not yet right. Reason is afraid of defeat, but intuition enjoys life and its challenges. — Paulo Coelho