All who strive to live for something beyond mere selfish aims find their capacities for doing good very inadequate to their aspirations. They do so much less than they want to do, and so much less than they, at the outset, expected to do, that their lives, viewed retrospectively, inevitably look like failure.
Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880) American abolitionist, activist, journalist, suffragist
Letter to John Fraser (1868)
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Quotations about:
dream
Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.
My theory has always been that if we are to dream, the flatteries of hope are as cheap, and pleasanter than the gloom of despair.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
Letter to François de Marbois (14 Jun 1817)
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A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities.
J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973) English writer, fabulist, philologist, academic [John Ronald Reuel Tolkien]
(Misattributed)
Frequently misattributed to J. R. R. Tolkien, most likely because it was used as copy on the Tom Jung's classic movie poster for Ralph Bakshi's The Lord of the Rings film (1978). The origin of the phrase seems to be from Nathaniel Hawthorne, Fanshawe (1828): "If his inmost heart could have been laid open, there would have been discovered that dream of undying fame, which, dream as it is, is more powerful than a thousand realities."
More discussion on this quotation here: Not a Tolkien quote: "A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities." TThnsdwohatdw, Part 3. - thetolkienist.com.
If his inmost heart could have been laid open, there would have been discovered that dream of undying fame, which, dream as it is, is more powerful than a thousand realities.
In dreams and in love there are no impossibilities.
[Álomban és szerelemben nincs lehetetlenség.]
János Arany (1817-1882) Hungarian poet, writer, translator, journalist [John Arany]
(Attributed)
(Source)
Quoted in James Wood, Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources (1893).
On another occasion the question was put to him, what hope is? and his answer was, “The dream of a waking man.”
[ἐρωτηθεὶς τί ἐστιν ἐλπίς, “ἐγρηγορότος,” εἶπεν, “ἐνύπνιον.”]
Aristotle (384-322 BC) Greek philosopher
Attributed in Diogenes Laërtius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers [Vitae Philosophorum], Book 5, sec. 11 [tr. Yonge (1853)]
(Source)
(Source (Greek)). Alternate translations:
He was asked to define hope, and he replied, "It is a waking dream."
[tr. Hicks (1925), sec. 18]
When asked what hope is, he said “It is dreaming while awake.”
[tr. @sentantiq (2016), 5.21]
When asked to define hope, he said, "It is a waking dream."
[tr. Mensch (2018)]
Here is a dream.
It is my dream,
My own dream,
I dreamt it.
I dreamt that my hair was kempt,
Then I dreamt that my true love unkempt it.
Ogden Nash (1902-1971) American poet
“My Dream” (1954), You Can’t Get There from Here (1957)
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Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.
Leslie Calvin "Les" Brown (b. 1945) American motivational speaker, author, politician
(Attributed)
It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.
If your dreams don’t scare you, they aren’t big enough.
Muhammad Ali (b. 1942) American boxer [b. Cassius Clay]
(Attributed)
Ah, Love! could you and I with Him conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits — and then
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart’s Desire!Omar Khayyám (1048-1123) Persian poet, mathematician, philosopher, astronomer
Rubáiyát, 99 [tr. FitzGerald]
To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to.
Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931) Lebanese-American poet, writer, painter [Gibran Khalil Gibran]
(Attributed)
(Source)
To accomplish great things we must not only act, but also dream, not only plan, but also believe.
Anatole France (1844-1924) French poet, journalist, novelist, Nobel Laureate [pseud. of Jaques-Anatole-François Thibault]
Speech, Académie Française (24 Dec 1896)
If this is a dream, then perhaps our dreaming
Can touch life’s height to a finer fire:
Who knows but the heavens and all their seeming
Were made by the heart’s desire?Edwin Markham (1852-1940) American poet
“The Crowning Hour” (2), The Shoes of Happiness, and Other Poems (1913)
The future will be determined by the young, and there is no more essential task today, it seems to me, than to bring before them once more, in all its brightness, in all its splendor and beauty, the American dream, lest we let it fade, too concerned with the ways of earning a living or impressing our neighbors or getting ahead or finding bigger and more potent ways of destroying the world and all that is in it.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) First Lady of the US (1933-45), politician, diplomat, activist
“What Has Happened to the American Dream?” Atlantic Monthly (Apr 1961)
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We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Tempest, Act 4, sc. 1, l. 173ff [Prospero] (1611)
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But either in his dreams or out of them, he could not tell which, Frodo heard a sweet singing running in his mind: a song that seemed to come like a pale light behind a grey rain-curtain, and growing stronger to turn the veil all to silver and glass, until at last it was rolled back, and a far green country opened before him under a swift sunrise.
J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973) English writer, fabulist, philologist, academic [John Ronald Reuel Tolkien]
The Lord of the Rings, Vol. 1: The Fellowship of the Ring, Book 1, ch. 8 “Fog on the Barrow-Downs” (1954)
(Source)