76 Dream-Inspired Quotes

Dreams have always held a profound place in our hearts and minds, serving as windows to our deepest desires, fears, and imaginations. Whether they appear as fleeting visions in the night or as the guiding stars of our ambitions, dreams inspire and challenge us in ways that are both mysterious and magnificent. In this collection, discover 76 dream-inspired quotes that capture the essence of dreaming—from the whimsical to the profound, from the motivational to the introspective. These quotes serve as gentle reminders that the journey we embark on within our dreams often shapes the reality we build when we awaken.

1. “Ol' man Simon, planted a diamond. Grew hisself a garden the likes of none. Sprouts all growin' comin' up glowin' Fruit of jewels all shinin' in the sun. Colors of the rainbow. See the sun and the rain grow sapphires and rubies on ivory vines, Grapes of jade, just ripenin' in the shade, just ready for the squeezin' into green jade wine. Pure gold corn there, Blowin' in the warm air. Ol' crow nibblin' on the amnythyst seeds. In between the diamonds, Ol' man Simon crawls about pullin' out platinum weeds. Pink pearl berries, all you can carry, put 'em in a bushel and haul 'em into town. Up in the tree there's opal nuts and gold pears- Hurry quick, grab a stick and shake some down. Take a silver tater, emerald tomater, fresh plump coral melons. Hangin' in reach. Ol' man Simon, diggin' in his diamonds, stops and rests and dreams about one... real... peach.” - Shel Silverstein

2. “At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.” - Salvador Dali

3. “You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us. And the world will live as one.” - John Lennon

4. “Yes: I am a dreamer. For 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.” - Oscar Wilde

5. “It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream.” - Edgar Allan Poe

6. “A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.” - John Lennon

7. “I believe in everything until it's disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it's in your mind. Who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as real as the here and now?” - John Lennon

8. “Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all is a form of planning.” - Gloria Steinem

9. “We always know when we are awake that we cannot be dreaming even though when actually dreaming we feel all this may be real.” - Ruth Rendell

10. “I've crossed some kind of invisible line. I feel as if I've come to a place I never thought I'd have to come to. And I don't know how I got here. It's a strange place. It's a place where a little harmless dreaming and then some sleepy, early-morning talk has led me into considerations of death and annihilation.” - Raymond Carver

11. “I dream. Sometimes I think that's the only right thing to do.” - Haruki Murakami

12. “You seemed so far away," Miss Honey whispered, awestruck."Oh, I was. I was flying past the stars on silver wings," Matilda said. "It was wonderful.” - Roald Dahl

13. “Am I really admitting that my sister is determined to marry a man she has only seen once and doesn't much like the look of? It is half real and half pretense - and I have an idea that it is a game most girls play when they meet an eligible young men. They just...wonder.” - Dodie Smith

14. “When you wake up from a dream you have only a few precious moments before the details of the dream begin to dissipate and the memory fades.Not all dreams are significant or worth remembering.But the ones that are . . . happen again.So, wait for the dream to return. And never be afraid. Instead, consider it an opportunity to learn something profound and possibly wondrous about yourself.” - Vera Nazarian

15. “There you'll find the place I love most in the world. The place where I grew thin from dreaming. My village, rising from the plain. Shaded with trees and leaves like a piggy bank filled with memories. You'll see why a person would want to live there forever. Dawn, morning, mid-day, night: all the same, except for the changes in the air. The air changes the color of things there. And life whirs by as quiet as a murmur...the pure murmuring of life.” - Juan Rulfo

16. “You must try to forget all you have learned,' said the old man. 'You must begin to dream. From this time on you must shut your ears to the roaring of the voices.” - Sherwood Anderson

17. “Before everything happened I wished i had double voice box like a song bird so I could sing two songs at once, the way a bird can harmonize with itself. I wanted to sing crystal clear notes. I wanted to sing them one after anther in ascending order. And at the same time I wanted to let another fountain of notes descend from my heart.” - Karen Foxlee

18. “Identifying Your DreamSome people can easily identify one primary dream. For others, a dream is more elusive. These people often have many dreams at once, or a general idea of a dream that never takes a specific shape.” - Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy (SARK)

19. “This imaginary gift is a journey for your imagination.I send you...A luxury train ride. On this train are all the inspiring people you've ever wanted to meet or talk to. You glide from car to car, sitting or lying down on velvet lounge chairs, listening and asking questions. There is also a voluminous library on the train, with every book you've ever wanted to read or look at. Kind people bring you delicious tidbits to eat and nourishing liquids to drink. If you take a nap, time stands still until you return so you never miss anything. You receive a large journal filled with photographs, drawings and descriptions of your journey to take with you when you leave. You realize that you can board this train at any time.” - Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy (SARK)

20. “Inside CriticsThe critical voices in our own heads are far more vicious than what we might hear from the outside. Our "inside critics" have intimate knowledge of us and can zero in on our weakest spots. You might be told by the critics that you're too fat, too old, too young, not intelligent enough, a quitter, not logical, prone to try too many things...It's all balderdash!Some elements of these may be true, and it's completely up to you how they affect you. Inside critics are really just trying to protect you. You can:Learn to dialogue with them.Give them new jobs.Turn them into allies.You can also dismantle/exterminate them.” - Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy (SARK)

21. “Our creative dreams are subject to grudge-holding when we decide that other people somehow have made their dreams real and we have not.” - Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy (SARK)

22. “A Gift for YouI send you...A cottage retreat on a hill in Ireland. This cottage is filled with fresh flowers, art supplies, and a double-wide chaise lounge in front of a wood-burning fireplace. There is a cabinet near the front door, where your favorite meals appear, several times a day. Desserts are plentiful and calorie free. The closet is stocked with colorful robes and pajamas, and a painting in the bedroom slides aside to reveal a plasma television screen with every movie you've ever wanted to watch. A wooden mailbox at the end of the lane is filled daily with beguiling invitations to tea parties, horse-and-carriage rides, theatrical performances, and violin concerts. There is no obligation or need to respond. You sleep deeply and peacefully each night, and feel profoundly healthy. This cottage is yours to return to at any time. ” - Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy (SARK)

23. “Building your "dream life" is filled with things that can feel like the opposite of a dream:MistakesDelaysStarting overFailureThe building part is actually more of a rebuilding that is a continual process. The building is not linear in nature but far more interesting. You might start a creative dream, take the "next step", and find yourself completely bored, dissatisfied, or just not inspired. ” - Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy (SARK)

24. “Initially, I feel expansive when I try something new, and then contract as soon as I encounter difficulty or the unknown. I am learning to experiment with my tolerance of difficulty and the not knowing, in order to go further with my creative dreams.Whenever I experience contraction, I explore it by asking, "Where did I stop and why?" Building a creative dream life is not just about achieving, succeeding, or "meeting goals." It is also about floundering, stumbling, tripping and failing. ” - Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy (SARK)

25. “From now on I hope always to stay alert, to educate myself as best I can. But lacking this, in Future I will relaxedly turn back to my secret mind to see what it has observed when I thought I was sitting this one out. We never sit anything out.We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out. ” - Ray Bradbury

26. “Dreaming is another form of thinking, more concrete, more economical, more visual, and often more emotional than the thoughts of the day, but a thinking through of the day, nevertheless.” - Siri Hustvedt

27. “Dreams are stories made by and for the dreamer, and each dreamer has his own folds to open and knots to untie.” - Siri Hustvedt

28. “When they say the sky's the limit to me that's really true” - Michael Jackson

29. “I know you can dream your way through an otherwise fine life, and never wake up, which is what I almost did.” - Richard Ford

30. “It is not needful for our dreams to be very grand nor very big. It is only needful for our dreams to be very shiny.” - C. JoyBell C.

31. “The Dream of a Queer Fellow I write the words again and they appear doubly pregnant with meaning. It is a true and terrible phrase : true, because we are all queer fellows dreaming ; and we are queer just because we dream ; terrible, because of the vastness of the unknown which it carries within itself, because it sets loose the tremendous and awful question : What if we are only queer fellows dreaming ? What if behind the veil the truth is leering and jeering at our queerness and our dreams? What if the queer fellow of the story were right, before he dreamed ? What if it were really all the same?What if it were all the same not once but a million times, life after life, world after world, the same pain, the same doubt, the same dreams? The queer fellow went but one day's journey along the eternal recurrence which threatens human minds and human destinies. When he returned he was queer. There was another man went the same journey. Friedrich Nietzsche dreamed this very dream in the mountains of the Engadine. When he returned he too was queer.” - John Middleton Murry

32. “I have a dream.” “Is your dream very big?” “No.” “Well is it very grand?” “Not either.” “Neither?” “Neither.” “What is it then?” “It is very shiny.” - C. JoyBell C.

33. “McAfee, I could try this case in my sleep and still win.""Guess that's your plan, then, since you're clearly dreaming.” - Jodi Picoult

34. “We spend a good part of our lives dreaming, especially when we're awake.” - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

35. “First you have nothing, and then, astonishingly, after ripping out your brain and your heart and betraying your friends and ex-lovers and dreaming like a zombie over the page till you can't see or hear or smell or taste, you have something.” - T.C. Boyle

36. “If life was a dream, then dying must be the moment when you woke up. It was so simple it must be true. You died, the dream was over, you woke up. That's what people meant when they talked about going to heaven. It was like waking up.” - Ian McEwan

37. “So here is why I write what I do: We all have futures. We all have pasts. We all have stories. And we all, every single one of us, no matter who we are and no matter what’s been taken from us or what poison we’ve internalized or how hard we’ve had to work to expel it –– we all get to dream.” - N.K. Jemisin

38. “He had read much of things as they are, and talked with too many people. Well-meaning philosophers had taught him to look into the logical relations of things, and analyse the processes which shaped his thoughts and fancies. Wonder had gone away, and he had forgotten that all life is only a set of pictures in the brain, among which there is no difference betwixt those born of real things and those born of inward dreamings, and no cause to value the one above the other.” - H.P. Lovecraft

39. “The best way to be appreciative for your life is to live it; don't die for any other reason but love. Dreams are what guide us, art is what defines us, math is makes it all possible, and love is what lights our way.” - Mike Norton

40. “Man träumt gar nicht, oder interessant -- Man muss lernen, ebeson zu wachen: -- gar nicht, oder interessant” - Friedrich Nietzsche

41. “Dreaming was easier than screaming, and screaming was easier than worrying, and worrying was easier than crying, which was what she knew she would be reduced to if she didn’t keep a hard eye on herself.” - Kevin Brockmeier

42. “And then, just at that moment, when I'm no longer sure if I'm dreaming or awake or walking some valley in between where everything you wish for comes true, I feel the flutter of his lips on mine.” - Lauren Oliver

43. “Men speak of dreaming as if it were a phenomenon of night and sleep. They should know better. All results achieved by us are self-promised, and all self-promises are made in dreams awake. Dreaming is the relief of labor,the wine that sustains us in act. We learn to love labor, not for itself, but for the opportunity it furnishes for dreaming, which is the great under-monotone of real life, unheard, unnoticed, because of its constancy. Living is dreaming. Only in the graves are there no dreams.” - Lew Wallace

44. “Really, nobody was there?” I asked.“Well, nobody important,” he said, putting his glasses back on and blinking.” - Daniel Amory

45. “You appear to me not to have understood the nature of my body & mind. Partly from ill-health, & partly from an unhealthy & reverie-like vividness of Thoughts, & (pardon the pedantry of the phrase) a diminished Impressibility from Things, my ideas, wishes, & feelings are to a diseased degree disconnected from motion & action. In plain and natural English, I am a dreaming & therefore an indolent man. I am a Starling self-incaged, & always in the Moult, & my whole Note is, Tomorrow, & tomorrow, & tomorrow.” - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

46. “I won't stop writing until I am known as the Kurt Cobain of literature!” - Christina Westover

47. “In Wirklichkeit war ich schon wach, aber ich hielt noch die Augen zu, um die Traaumgestalten noch länger vor meiner Seele zu behalten.” - Adelbert von Chamisso

48. “The cattle crouched round them in soft shadowy clumps, placidly munching, and dreaming with wide-open eyes. The narrow zone of colour created by the firelight was like the planet Earth - a little freak of brightness in a universe of impenetrable shadows” - Hope Mirrlees

49. “I wish I could go to Paris right now.” - Emily J. Proctor

50. “I'll never waste my dreams by falling asleep. Never again.” - Eugene Ionesco

51. “Screw technicolor, red, and foreign languages. I dream in status updates.” - Fierce Dolan

52. “Yet the stupid believe they are awake, busily and brightly assuming they understand things, calling this man ruler, that one herdsman – how dense! Confucius and you are both dreaming! And when I say you are dreaming, I am dreaming, too. Words like these will be labeled the Supreme Swindle.” - Zhuangzi

53. “لم تكن أنت، لم أكن أنا...في عالمٍ غير العالم،قبل أن تتردَّد أنت،وقبل أن أستيقظ أنا...” - إيناس حليم

54. “Everything has taken on a strange, distant quality - the sounds of running and shouting outside get warped and weird like they're being filtered through water, and Alex looks miles away. I start to think I might be dreaming, or about to pass out. And then I decide I'm definitely dreaming, because as I'm watching, Alex starts peeling his shirt off over his head.” - Lauren Oliver

55. “Dreaming permits each and everyone of us to be quietly insane every night of out lives.” - William Dement

56. “I’ve dreamed a lot. I’m tired now from dreaming but not tired of dreaming. No one tires of dreaming, because to dream is to forget, and forgetting does not weigh on us, it is a dreamless sleep throughout which we remain awake. In dreams I have achieved everything.” - Fernando Pessoa

57. “As long as I can dream, I will dream of you.” - Cassandra Clare

58. “A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in--what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.” - Victor Hugo

59. “I have at least the whole of my life to answer a question: Who am I? And who is the other? A gust of wind at dawn? A motionless landscape? A trembling leaf? A coil of white smoke above a mountain? I write all these words and I hear the wind, not outside, but inside my head. A strong wind, it rattles the shutters through which I enter the dream.” - Tahar Ben Jelloun

60. “One day or one night—between my days and nights, what difference can there be?—I dreamed that there was a grain of sand on the floor of my cell. Unconcerned, I went back to sleep; I dreamed that I woke up and there were two grains of sand. Again I slept; I dreamed that now there were three. Thus the grains of sand multiplied, little by little, until they filled the cell and I was dying beneath that hemisphere of sand. I realized that I was dreaming; with a vast effort I woke myself. But waking up was useless—I was suffocated by the countless sand. Someone said to me:You have wakened not out of sleep, but into a prior dream, and that dream lies within another, and so on, to infinity, which is the number of the grains of sand. The path that you are to take is endless, and you will die before you have truly awakened.I felt lost. The sand crushed my mouth, but I cried out: I cannot be killed by sand that I dream —nor is there any such thing as a dream within a dream.— Jorge Luis Borges, The Writing of the God” - Jorge Luis Borges

61. “Sometimes, as Eve was born from one of Adam’s ribs, a woman was born during my sleep from a cramped position of my thigh. Formed from the pleasure I was on the point of enjoying, she, I imagined, was the one offering it to me. My body, which felt in hers my own warmth, would try to find itself inside her, I would wake up. The rest of humanity seemed very remote compared to this woman I had left scarcely a few moments before; my cheek was still warm from her kiss, my body aching from the weight of hers. If, as sometimes happens, she had the features of a woman I had known in life, I would devote myself entirely to this end: to finding her again, like those who go off on a journey to see a longed-for city with their own eyes and imagine that one can enjoy in reality the charm of a dream. Little by little, the memory of her would fade, I had forgotten the girl of my dream.” - Marcel Proust

62. “WRITER'S NIGHTMARE""I felt a grip on my arm that shook my body, forcefully pulling me toward a tunnel of darkness.   The threat of consciousness stole my steady breath. For a moment I believed myself to be under siege; ripped from the sky in mid flight, my wings useless against the monstrous claws shredding my reality. I struggled to remain, to be left alone, aloft.  Reaching with wings that through the power of imagination were suddenly feathered arms, I grabbed at the air.  My hands clutched at something solid.  Wooden.  A desk.  My head spun as I held the furniture, suffering the illusion of falling.  "I was flying," I gasped, realizing suddenly that it had all been a dream. "My best fantasy ever." Lifting my head from its resting spot on the writing desk, I worked mentally to secure the fading images, hoping to capture their essence to memory before they faded away forever.  Bitterness tainted my heart against the hand that had jerked me into sensibility.  Why was I always so callously awakened while doing my best work?  Why not let me dream?” - Richelle E. Goodrich

63. “Groping blindly in the darkness, he sank between the white mounds of cool feathers and slept as he fell, across the bed or with his head downward, pushing deep into the softness of the pillows, as if in sleep he wanted to drill through, to explore completely, that powerful massif of feather bedding rising out of the night.” - Bruno Schulz

64. “Jim knew that he was awake and asleep at the same time, dreaming of the war and yet dreamed of by the war.” - J.G. Ballard

65. “and dreaming is very pleasant as long as you are not forced to put your dreams into practice. That way, we avoid all the risks, frustrations and difficulties, and when we are old, we can always blame other people-preferably our parents, our spouses or our children-for our failure to realize our dreams.” - Paulo Coelho

66. “These paper boats of mine are meant to dance on the ripples of hours, and not reach any destination.” - Rabindranath Tagore

67. “To dream on occasion is not dreaming, To love on occasion is not love.” - Dejan Stojanovic

68. “What's so horrible about being dead forever, and not feeling anything, and not even dreaming? What's so great about feeling and dreaming?” - Jonathan Safran Foer

69. “Just because you don’t know how on Earth something might be achieved doesn’t mean you shouldn’t allow yourself to really, really want it. That’s the essence of a dream, the realms of magic and of miracles.” - Silvia Hartmann

70. “Mai tii minte cat visai? Mai visezi?” - Giovanni Arpino

71. “Asleep you can experience many hours whilst only a few waking moments have passed. This is why dreams are an ideal platform for training.” - Wayne Gerard Trotman

72. “She wanted to return to her dream. Perhaps it was still somewhere there behind her closed eyelids. Perhaps a little of its happiness still clung like gold dust to her lashes. Don't dreams in fairy tales sometimes leave a token behind?” - Cornelia Funke

73. “You’re afraid of imagination. And even more afraid of dreams. Afraid of the responsibility that begins in dreams. But you have to sleep, and dreams are a part of sleep. When you’re awake you can suppress imagination. But you can’t suppress dreams.” - Haruki Murakami

74. “In life we don't always get what we want; hopes and dreams get washed away so easily, hearts are broken, chances are missed, and we always seem to end up right back where we started.” - Rebecah McManus

75. “when you shoot for the stars, you can't ever look back.” - Brittany Perloff

76. “My cough is much worse at night and often prevents me from sleeping. It is not so much the daytime tiredness that I resent, but the inability to proceed uninter- rupted with my dreams, to run and play with my fancies, and, at last, in the early hours of the morning, to be visited with visions like a holy madman. The dreamer is like a Delian diver, fishing for pearls from the depths of our inner sea of knowledge; and I must have solved, or rather resolved, many more problems in my sleep than in my conscious hours.” - Neel Burton