Dreams

Adrift on a sea of dreams am I -- lost to every material sense -- living and to the full for one blessed moment, in a world that never was.
~ M.C. "Bill" Barlow, in The World Of Just You and I (1911).

Father, O father! what do we here
In this Land of unbelief & fear?
The Land of Dreams is better far,
Above the light of the Morning Star.
~ William Blake, from The Pickering Manuscript (c. 1803). The Land of Dreams

This life we live so sensible and warm,
Is but a dreaming in a sleep that stays
About us from the cradle to the grave.
~ William Stanley Braithwaite, from The House of Falling Leaves: With Other Poems (1908). The Eternal Self

The records of history, both sacred and profane, abound in instances of dreams which it is impossible to account for on any other hypothesis than that of a supernatural interposition.
~ William Thomas Brande, A Dictionary of Science, Literature, & Art (1842).

All at once
A fresher wind sweeps by, and breaks my dream,
And I am in the wilderness alone.
~ William Cullen Bryant, from Poems (1836 edition). The Prairies (written in 1832)

So shalt thou come from the Land of Dreams,
With love and peace to this world of strife:
And the light which over that border streams
Shall lie on the path of thy daily life.
~ William Cullen Bryant, The Land of Dreams (1845).

Dream long and dream hard enough
You will come to know
Dreaming can make it so.
~ William S. Burroughs, from My Education: A Book of Dreams (1995).

The way to kill a man or a nation is to cut off his dreams, the way the whites are taking care of the Indians: killing their dreams, their magic, their familiar spirits.
~ William S. Burroughs, The Place of Dead Roads (1983).

There couldn't be a society of people who didn't dream. They'd be dead in two weeks.
~ William S. Burroughs, quoted in With William Burroughs: A Report from the Bunker (1981). On Dreams

There is nothing to stop the power of a real dream. I mean this literally. You know, I can dream money into my pocket.
~ William S. Burroughs, in The Letters of William S. Burroughs: Volume I: 1945-1959, Book 2 (1994).

I was a dream, and the world was a dream,
And yet I kenned all things that seem.
~ William Wilfred Campbell, Beyond the Hills of Dream (1899). The Mother

Let him show a brave face if he can;
Let him woo fame and fortune instead;
Yet there's not much to do, but to bury a man
When the last of his dreams is dead.
~ William Herbert Carruth, from Each In His Own Tongue: and Other Poems (1908). Dreamers of Dreams

I still, believe it or not, have dreams in which I am late for The Tonight Show. It's a performer's nightmare, apparently. I've checked with other people, and it occurs to them frequently. And it's frightening. Because I'm not prepared. It's show time and I'm going on -- and I've got nothing to say!
~ "Johnny" William Carson, in Esquire Magazine (June 2002). The Man Who Retired

To fulfil the dreams of one's youth; that is the best that can happen to a man. No worldly success can take the place of that.
~ Willa Sibert Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927).

I dream of wayward gulls
and all landless lovers
Rare moments of winter sun
Peace, privacy, for everyone.
~ William F. Claire, in The Nation (29 March 1971). Thinking of Anaïs Nin

Nothing so much convinces me of the boundlessness of the human mind as its operations in dreaming.
~ William Benton (W.B.) Clulow, Sunshine and Shadows; or, Sketches of Thought, Philosophic and Religious (1863). Retention and Reminiscence

I had a dream that Connie Chung is doing a newscast about my death and they show a clip from Soap.
~ Billy Crystal

I walked beside the evening sea
And dreamed a dream that could not be;
The waves that plunged along the shore
Said only: "Dreamer, dream no more!"
~ George William Curtis, Ebb and Flow

Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.
~ William C. Dement, in Newsweek magazine (1959).

Was it a dream I dream las' night~ William Henry Drummond, from The Voyageur and Other Poems (1905). The Last Portage

All those large dreams by which men long live well
Are magic-lanterned on the smoke of hell.
~ William Empson, in New Signatures (1932). This Last Pain

Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.
~ William Faulkner, Interview in The Paris Review, Issue 12 (Spring 1956). The Art of Fiction No. 12

You escape nothing, you flee nothing; the pursuer is what is doing the running and tomorrow night is nothing but one long sleepless wrestle with yesterday's omissions and regrets.
~ William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust (1948).

It's all about taking a bummer and making a good time out of it.
~ "Wino Willie" Forkner

[P]lease leave me alone to dream as I fancy.
~ William H. Gass, Omensetter's Luck (1966).

Dreaming in public is an important part of our job description, as science writers, but there are bad dreams as well as good dreams. We're dreamers, you see, but we're also realists, of a sort.
~ William Gibson, Speech, National Academy of Sciences Convocation on Technology and Education (10 May 1993).

Your dreams blindfold you by the light they make.
~ William Sydney (W.S.) Graham, from Malcolm Mooney's Land (1970). I Leave This At Your Ear, For Nessie Dunsmuir

To love thee is a fault of mine,
Sweet angel of my dreams.
~ William Shakespeare ("Will S.") Hays, Angel of My Dreams (1870 song).

[W]e often forget our dreams so speedily: if we cannot catch them as they are passing out at the door, we never set eyes on them again.
~ William Hazlitt, from The Plain Speaker, Volume I (1826). On Dreams

In the quiet eve
I am loitering, longing, dreaming ...
Dreaming, and a distant organ
Pipes me ditties.
~ William Ernest (W.E.) Henley, from A Book of Verses (1888). In Hospital: Rhymes and Rhythms. XXIII. Music

When fancies break, and the senses wake,
O life's a dream worth dreaming!
~ William Ernest (W.E.) Henley, from A Book of Verses (1888). Life and Death (Echoes). XXXII

You can do what you want to do, accomplish what you want to accomplish, attain any reasonable objective you may have in mind -- not all of a sudden, perhaps not in one swift and sweeping act of achievement -- but you can do it gradually, day by day and play by play, if you want to do it, if you work to do it, over a sufficiently long period of time.
~ William E. Holler

If we like a man's dream, we call him a prophet; if we don't like his dream, we call him a crank.
~ William Dean Howells, The World of Chance (1892).

The dreamer is purely unmoral; good and bad are the same to his conscience; he has no more to do with right and wrong than the animals; he is reduced to the state of the merely natural man; and perhaps the primitive men were really like what we all are now in our dreams.
~ William Dean Howells, from Impressions and Experiences (1896). I Talk of Dreams

If your world doesn't allow you to dream, move to one where you can.
~ Billy Idol

I know that everybody has a dream
Everybody has a dream
And this is my dream, my own
Just to be at home
And to be all alone ... with you.
~ Billy Joel, in The Stranger (1977 album). Everybody Has a Dream

She's got a light around her
And ev'rywhere she goes
A million dreams of love surround her ev'rywhere.
~ Billy Joel, in Songs In The Attic (1981 album). She's Got A Way

The averidge rainbow chaser dont know enough to go in out of the wet.
~ William James Lampton, Jedge Waxem's Pocket-Book Of Politics (1908).

To the degree we're not living our dreams, our comfort zone has more control of us than we have over ourselves.
~ Peter McWilliams, DO IT! Let's Get Off Our Buts (1994). Part One: Why We're Not Living Our Dreams. The Even Worse News about the Comfort Zone

Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time,
Why should I strive to set the crooked straight?
~ William Morris, from The Earthly Paradise (1868-70). An Apology. Stanza 4

I believe in dreams and in dreamers, being one myself.
~ Willie Nelson, The Tao of Willie: A Guide to the Happiness in Your Heart (2006). The Willie Way -- Let Me Be a Man

Ah, there are so many things betwixt heaven and earth of which only the poets have dreamed!
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra (1885).

And so while dreams are the individual man's play with reality, the sculptor's art is (in a broader sense) the play with dreams.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Dionysian Worldview. Part 1 (1871)

Dreaming. -- Either one does not dream at all, or one dreams in an interesting manner. One must learn to be awake in the same fashion: -- either not at all, or in an interesting manner.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.
~ Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy, from Music and Moonlight: Poems and Songs (1874). Ode

One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample an empire down.
~ Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy, from Music and Moonlight: Poems and Songs (1874). Ode

Nothing in life is more glaring than the contrast between possibilities and actualities, between the ideal and the real. By the ordinary mortal, idealists are regarded as vague dreamers, striving after the impossible; but in the history of the world how often have they gradually moulded to their will conditions most adverse and hopeless!
~ William Osler, in Journal of the American Medical Association (5 August 1905). Unity, Peace and Concord (originally, A Farewell Address to the Medical Profession of the United States; 1903)

Have a care, therefore, where there is more sail than ballast.
~ William Penn, Some Fruits of Solitude (1693). Part I. Respect

This morn, as sleeping in my bed I lay,
I dreamt (and morning dreams come true, they say).
~ William B. Rhodes, Bombastes Furioso (1810). Act I, scene iii

A man who has lost his sense of wonder is a man dead.
~ William of St Thierry, The Enigma of Faith (c. 1144).

A dream itself is but a shadow.
~ William Shakespeare, Hamlet. Act II, scene ii

Can such things be,
And overcome us like a summer's cloud,
Without our special wonder?
~ William Shakespeare, Macbeth. Act III, scene iv

I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream past the wit of man to say what dream it was: man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream.
~ William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream. Act IV, scene i

If consequence do but approve my dream.
~ William Shakespeare, Othello. Act II, scene iii

[I]t shall be called Bottom's Dream, because it hath no bottom.
~ William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream. Act IV, scene i

Many dream not to find, neither deserve,
And yet are steep'd in favours: so am I,
That have this golden chance and know not why.
~ William Shakespeare, Cymbeline. Act V, scene iv

Out of the jaws of death.
~ William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night. Act III, scene iv

Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again.
~ William Shakespeare, The Tempest. Act III, scene ii

The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was.
~ William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream. Act IV, scene i

The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.
~ William Shakespeare, Hamlet. Act II, scene ii

There is some ill a-brewing towards my rest,
For I did dream of money-bags to-night.
~ William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice. Act II, scene v

Thou hast nor youth nor age;
But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep,
Dreaming on both.
~ William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure. Act III, scene i

We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
~ William Shakespeare, The Tempest. Act IV, scene i

Across the silent stream
Where the slumber-shadows go,
From the dim blue Hills of Dream
I have heard the west wind blow.
~ William Sharp (as Fiona MacLeod), From the Hills of Dream: Mountain Songs and Island Runes (1896). From The Hills Of Dream

Ah, the strange sweet lonely delight
Of the Valleys of Dream.
~ William Sharp (as Fiona MacLeod), From the Hills of Dream: Mountain Songs and Island Runes (1896). From The Hills Of Dream. Dream Fantasy

Sad, oh, so sad, the Dreams of men
Drift through the isle beyond our ken.
~ William Sharp, from Romantic Ballads and Poems of Phantasy (1888). The Isle Of Lost Dreams

The far-away bugles of dreamland are calling.
~ William Sharp (as Fiona MacLeod), From the Hills of Dream: Mountain Songs and Island Runes (1896). The Bugles of Dreamland

I must have facts, knocks, and must go on.
~ William Tecumseh Sherman, Letter to General U.S. Grant (4 July 1863)

Stay, gentle spirit of the night,
Oh! fly not thus -- in pity stay!
I sicken at returning light;
Prolong my dream, forbid the day!
~ William Smyth, from English Lyricks (1797). The Dream

When I dream at night, they save a place for me,
no matter how small, somewhere by the fire.
~ William Stafford, Remembering Mountain Men.

Your life you live by the light you find
and follow it on as well as you can,
carrying through darkness wherever you go
your one little fire that will start again.
~ William Stafford, in Learning to Live in the World: Earth Poems by William Stafford (1994). The Dream of Now

The function of dreams is to teach the waking mind how to forget what it thinks it knows but doesn't.
~ William R. Stimson

Vision without a task is only a dream.
A task without a vision is but drudgery.
But vision with a task is a dream fulfilled.
~ Willie Stone

I dream of the purple glory
Of the roseate mountain-height
And the sweet-to-remember story
Of a distant and dear delight.
~ William Wetmore Story, from Graffiti d'Italia (1868). In the Rain

On the broken stem of dreams
Only disappointments grow.
~ William Wetmore Story, from Graffiti d'Italia (1868). Black Eyes

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; there is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.
~ William Graham Sumner

Men never cling to their dreams with such tenacity as at the moment when they are losing faith in them, and know it, but do not dare yet to confess it to themselves.
~ William Graham Sumner, in Earth-Hunger And Other Essays (1913). The Banquet of Life

You cannot underestimate the power of a dream.
~ Bill Tyron, The Associated Press (4 December 2001). Teen-Ager Tyron Earns PGA Tour Card

If you can imagine it, you can achieve it; if you can dream it, you can become it.
~ William Arthur Ward

In dreams alone we drink of liberty.
~ William Watson, from Epigrams of Art, Life and Nature (1884). LI. A Marginal Note on 'The Tempest'

I think we dream so we don't have to be apart so long. If we're in each other's dreams, we can play together all night.
~ Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes (22 October 1989).

We ought to endeavour to give our dreams reality, but in Reality we should preserve the dream.
~ William Hale White (aka Mark Rutherford), More Pages from a Journal, With Other Papers (1910). Notes

Think your life was made for dreaming, nothing more,
When God's work lies all unfinished at your door?
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Drops of Water (1872). Arise

You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.
~ Billy Wilder

Dreams are the fuel that fire desire.
~ A.L. ("Art") Williams, All You Can Do Is All You Can Do, But All You Can Do Is Enough! (1988). Chapter 5. Become A Dreamer Again

In the early '60s, I thought that being an astronaut was really everything that I wanted to do. ... I think for my kids my message would be: Have a dream and don't feel badly about having a dream, and hang in there. ... If you really work hard and you really believe in what you're dreaming, then maybe it will come true as well.
~ Dafydd (Dave) Rhys Williams, The Toronto Star (April 1998).

I think that I'm seeing your eyes seeing mine,
I hold you so close and yet fleeting time
has so quickly passed, a new morning breaks
a broken heart the dreamer makes.
~ Lynn M. Williams, The Dreamer

I've nothing against anyone following their dreams -- but not if they're crap.
~ Robbie Williams, BBC News (28 October 2002). Robbie slates reality pop shows

Planning your path is easier when you have an eye on the horizon. Don't be an ostrich.
~ Roy H. Williams, The Monday Morning Memo (28 January 2008). Hello and Goodbye from John and Jane Doe

Go, then! Then go to the moon -- you selfish dreamer!
~ Thomas Lanier ("Tennessee") Williams, The Glass Menagerie (1944). Scene Seven

What, I asked you, is harmless about a dreamer, and what, I asked you, is harmless about the love of the people? -- Revolution only needs good dreamers who remember their dreams.
~ Thomas Lanier ("Tennessee") Williams, Camino Real (1953).

You don't know things anywhere! You live in a dream: you manufacture illusions.
~ Thomas Lanier ("Tennessee") Williams, The Glass Menagerie (1944). Scene Seven

It wasn't like I was self-motivated. My dad started me. It was his dream before it was mine.
~ Venus Williams, The Associated Press (July 2001).

It's been a journey. For women of color, for my family. It's one dream coming true after another.
~ Venus Williams

I have had my dream -- like others --
and it has come to nothing, so that
I remain now carelessly
with feet planted on the ground
and look up at the sky.
~ William Carlos Williams, from Sour Grapes (1921). Thursday

Well--
all things turn bitter in the end
whether you choose the right or
the left way
and--
dreams are not a bad thing.
~ William Carlos Williams, from Al Que Quiere! A Book of Poems (1917). Libertad! Igualdad! Fraternidad!

There's purity in dreams.
~ Nathaniel Parker (N.P.) Willis, from Sketches (1827). Dreams

Walk in there. Tip my hat. Lay my money down on the table. Get my deed and walk on out. This time I get to keep all the cotton. Hire me some men to work it for me. Gin my cotton. Get my seed.
~ August Wilson, The Piano Lesson (1987).

We are all trapped in a world of dreams inside our own skulls, and nothing short of the threat of immediate death will wake us up to intense appreciation of our lives.
~ Colin Henry Wilson, Introduction to the New Existentialism (1966). Chapter One: The Old Existentialism

But huge and mighty forms, that do not live
Like living men, moved slowly through the mind
By day, and were a trouble to my dreams.
~ William Wordsworth, The Prelude (1850 edition). Book I: Introduction -- Childhood and School-time

Hunt half a day for a forgotten dream.
~ William Wordsworth, from Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, Vol. 2 (1800). Hart-Leap Well. Part ii

I was the Dreamer, they the Dream ...
~ William Wordsworth, The Prelude (1805). Book III: Residence at Cambridge

We have a vision of our own;
Ah! why should we undo it?
~ William Wordsworth, from Poems in Two Volumes, Volume II (1807). Yarrow Unvisited (1803)

Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
~ William Wordsworth, from Poems in Two Volumes (1807). Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, IV

It is my dream, because I've got them ... we've got no prima donnas in our band.
~ Bill Wyman (William George Perks) (on the Rhythm Kings), in The London Free Press (26 July 2001). At least one of the Rolling Stones keeps his word to return to London

Fellow-wanderer,
Could we but mix ourselves into a dream,
Not in its image on the mirror!
~ William Butler Yeats, The Shadowy Waters (1900).

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
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, from The Wind Among the Reeds (1899). He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

Poor men have grown to be rich men,
And rich men grown to be poor again,
And I am running to Paradise.
~ William Butler Yeats, from Responsibilities (1914). Running to Paradise

The last stroke of midnight dies.
All day in the one chair
From dream to dream and rhyme to rhyme I have ranged
In rambling talk with an image of air:
Vague memories, nothing but memories.
~ William Butler Yeats, from The Wild Swans at Coole (1917). Broken Dreams