Quotes & Sayings About Pipe Dreams

If you are not willing to work hard and establish discipline in your life, then all your dreams are merely pipe dreams. — Rick Pitino

If our dreams are sincere desires to achieve, not mere pipe-dreams, there is something deep within ourselves which comes out to meet them and helps to make them realities. — Orison Swett Marden

In the rush of complex modern living, we have a tendency to laugh at the 'bring-Papa-his-pipe-and-slippers' approach to marriage - but most men are more than a little wistful at its demise. A man dreams of home as a haven and his wife as a romantic, fragrant creature whose most important goal in life is making him comfortable. — Arlene Dahl

The greatest thing has been that projects that were pipe dreams before 'Whiplash' are now feeling more realistic. — Damien Chazelle

I don't want kids to be distracted by pipe dreams. — Kimberly Elise

No matter how carefully you plan your goals they will never be more than pipe dreams unless you pursue them with gusto. — W. Clement Stone

To deprive the derelicts of hope is right, and to sustain them in their illusory "pipe dreams" is right also. — Harold Bloom

Now musing o'er the changing scene Farmers behind the tavern screen Collect; with elbows idly press'd On hob, reclines the corner's guest, Reading the news to mark again The bankrupt lists or price of grain. Puffing the while his red-tipt pipe He dreams o'er troubles nearly ripe, Yet, winter's leisure to regale, Hopes better times, and sips his ale. — John Clare

The wind comes creeping, it calls to me to come go exploring. It sings of the things that are to be found under the leaves. It whispers the dreams of the tall fir trees. It does pipe the gentle song the forest sings on gray days. I hear all the voices calling me. I listen. But I cannot go. — Opal Whiteley

Evening prayer
I spend my life sitting, like an angel in a barber's chair,
Holding a beer mug with deep-cut designs,
My neck and gut both bent, while in the air
A weightless veil of pipe smoke hangs.
Like steaming dung within an old dovecote
A thousand Dreams within me softly burn:
From time to time my heart is like some oak
Whose blood runs golden where a branch is torn.
And then, when I have swallowed down my Dreams
In thirty, forty mugs of beer, I turn
To satisfy a need I can't ignore,
And like the Lord of Hyssop and of Myrrh
I piss into the skies, a soaring stream
That consecrates a patch of flowering fern. — Arthur Rimbaud

Unfortunately, in the field of evolution most explanations are not good. As a matter of fact, they hardly qualify as explanations at all; they are suggestions, hunches, pipe dreams, hardly worthy of being called hypotheses. — Norman Macbeth

Americans had built themselves a world of speculative pipe dreams. That world was inhabited, not by people who had to be convinced, but by people who sought excuses for believing. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Illusions and pipe dreams on the one hand
And straight reality is always cold — Van Morrison

What are you prepared to give for your dream? If it is not everything ... stop pipe dreaming. — T.F. Hodge

At the Ball

I chanced to see you. Music played,
Vain chatter filled the place.
It seemed as though a veil were laid
Across your secret face.

Your eyes alone were sad; your way
Of speaking ravished me,
As though I heard a far pipe play,
And on the shores the sea.

How welcome was your look of thought,
Your figure tall and slight;
And that clear laugh with sadness fraught
Is in my heart to-night.

And when the noise of day is stilled
Once more they come to me,
Those eyes with so much sadness filled,
That voice, with gaiety.

Down to the depths of sleep I go,
Where dreams uncaptured move.
But do I love you? Who can know?
Yet this, I think, is love. — Alexei Tolstoy

I asked about the pipe dreams and he said they were more than I could afford. — S.J. Cruz

As long as there will be something to conquer, world peace will be a pipe dream — Bangambiki Habyarimana

Common to the many theories about the birth trauma is the assumption that the feelings produced by this event were recorded and reside in some form in the brain. This assumption is supported by the great number of repetitious dreams of the "drainage pipe" variety — Thomas A. Harris

Satan represents indulgence, instead of abstinence! Satan represents vital existence, instead of spiritual pipe dreams! Satan represents undefiled wisdom, instead of hypocritical self-deceit! Satan represents all of the so-called sins, as they all lead to physical, mental, or emotional gratification! — Anton Szandor LaVey

Much of the discovery of the world was based on failure rather than on success
on tactical errors and pipe dreams. — David Grann

To eat one's fill, eat until the exhaustion of the appetite, was the principal pleasure that the peasants dangled before their imagination, and one that they rarely realized in their lives.
They [the peasants] also imagined other dreams coming true, including the standard run of castles and princesses. But their wishes usually remained fixed on common objects in the everyday world. One hero gets "a cow and some chickens"; another, an armoire full of linens. A third settles for light work, regular meals, and a pipe full of tobacco. And when gold rains into the fireplace of a fourth, he uses it to buy "food, clothes, a horse, land." In most of the tales, wish fulfillment turns into a program for survival, not a fantasy of escape. — Robert Darnton

The best pictures are always those one dreams of when one is smoking a pipe in bed, but which never get done. But still one ought to try, however incompetent one may feel before the unspeakable perfection and radiant splendour of nature. — Vincent Van Gogh

Generally speaking, followers will not commit themselves for very long to a leader who is not also a pragmatist. As most of us have discovered, dreams are only powerful when we believe they can come true. Pipe dreams belong in the realm of fantasy; leaders' dreams belong in the realm of possibility. — Marlene Caroselli

I'm not trying to sell pipe dreams to people. I'm not giving them some fake utopia. I'm not telling them it's easy. If it was easy, everyone would do it. But you don't fight the fights you can win, you fight the fights that need fighting. That's the most important part. — Immortal Technique

If you rescue me from my pipe dreams, I'll stop smoking fantasies. — Munia Khan