82 Inspiring Dream Quotes

In a world where dreams often serve as the compass guiding our aspirations and ambitions, the power of a simple quote to ignite that spark of inspiration cannot be underestimated. Whether we dream of personal growth, embarking on new adventures, or creating a brighter future, the right words at the right moment can transform our perspective and elevate our mindset. In this collection of 82 inspiring dream quotes, you’ll find profound insights and timeless wisdom from some of the world’s greatest thinkers, leaders, and dreamers. These quotes serve as a gentle reminder that no dream is too big and that every step towards achieving it is a triumph in itself. As you explore these powerful messages, may they encourage you to embrace your dreams with renewed passion and steadfast resolve.

1. “All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.” - Edgar Allan Poe

2. “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” - Henry David Thoreau

3. “I stand for freedom of expression, doing what you believe in, and going after your dreams.” - Madonna

4. “All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake up in the day to find it was vanity, but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.” - T.E. Lawrence

5. “God's gifts put men's best dreams to shame.” - Elizabeth Barrett Browning

6. “in dreams it is often the case that the greatest extravagances seem bereft of their power to astonish and the most improbable chimeras seem commonplace.” - Cormac McCarthy

7. “Ester asked why people are sad."That’s simple," says the old man. "They are the prisoners of their personal history. Everyone believes that the main aim in life is to follow a plan. They never ask if that plan is theirs or if it was created by another person. They accumulate experiences, memories, things, other people's ideas, and it is more than they can possibly cope with. And that is why they forget their dreams.” - Paulo Coelho

8. “I don’t know where dreams come from. Sometimes I wonder if they’re genetic memories, or messages from something divine. Warnings perhaps. Maybe we do come with an instruction booklet but we’re too dense to read it, because we’ve dismissed it as the irrational waste product of the ‘rational’ mind. Sometimes I think all the answers we need are buried in our slumbering subconscious, int he dreaming. The booklet right there, and ever night when we lay our heads down on the pillow it flips open. The wise read it, heed it. The rest of us try as hard as we can upon awakening to forget any disturbing revelations we might have found there.” - Karen Marie Moning

9. “If you have a dream, FOLLOW IT. ” - Paula Deen

10. “Often secret desires as well as abilities surface in our dreams.” - P.C. Cast

11. “Waking consciousness is dreaming – but dreaming constrained by external reality” - Oliver Sacks

12. “Our dreams take us into other worlds, alternative realities that help us make sense of day-to-day realities.” - Tom Hodgkinson

13. “I grew up with an ambition and determination without which I would have been a good deal happier. I thought a lot and developed the faraway look of a dreamer, for it was always the distant heights that fascinated me and drew me to them in spirit. I was not sure what could be accomplished with tenacity and little else, but the target was set high and each rebuff only saw me more determined to see at least one major dream to its fulfillment.” - Earl Denman

14. “There is no possibility of remembering what has been found and understood, and later repeating it to oneself. It disappears as a dream disappears. Perhaps it is all nothing but a dream.” - P.D. Ouspensky

15. “Several people toss and turn in their sleep, startled by the lines of the newspapers in their dreams, knives out, lights out, lights out, knives out!” - H.C. Artmann

16. “A dream is the key that unlocks the mysteries of the waking world...” - Juliet Marillier

17. “There's no point having wishes if you don't at least try to do them” - Sally Nicholls

18. “Dreams are manifestation of the reality.” - Santosh Kalwar

19. “Go and get your things,' he said. 'Dreams mean work.” - Paulo Coelho

20. “Every book has a soul, the soul of the person who wrote it and the soul of those who read it and dream about it.” - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

21. “You have had a dream for so many years. Let today be the day you make a plan for it. Just think about how much more likely you are to hit your target when you finally aim at it.” - Steve Maraboli

22. “Science is my territory, but science fiction is the landscape of my dreams.” - Freeman John Dyson

23. “Do you really believe in destiny?" "How can I not believe in destiny, when there is no difference between my memories and my dreams at night? There's no difference between their reality. And if I dream something first, I remember it later when I am actually walking in the place or looking at the person I first dreamed of. Days later. Or years later. Destiny~ she walks with me.” - C. JoyBell C.

24. “I've wanted to win at everything, every day, since I was a kid. And time doesn't change a person, it just helps you get a handle on who you are. Even at age 41, I still hate losing--I'm just more gracious about it. I'm also aware that setbacks have an upside; they fuel new dreams.” - Dara Torres

25. “A guidance counselor who has made a fetish of security, or who has unwittingly surrendered his thinking to economic determinism, may steer a youth away from his dream of becoming a poet, an artist, a musician or any other of thousands of things, because it offers no security, it does not pay well, there are no vacancies, it has no "future".” - Henry M. Wriston

26. “Dreams are the language of God.” - Paulo Coelho

27. “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings.” - Henry David Thoreau

28. “Dreams and restless thoughts came flowing to him from the river, from the twinkling stars at night, from the sun's melting rays. Dreams and a restlessness of the soul came to him.” - Hermann Hesse

29. “Va' a prendere le tue cose," ha detto. " I sogni richiedono fatica.” - Paulo Coelho

30. “Leaders live by choice, not by accident.” - Mark Gorman

31. “We live in a time that hungers for HOPE; to believe in MIRACLES and DREAMS, for without these soul gems, humanity is ripped at the seams.” - Debi Tibbles

32. “I think she is growing up, and so begins to dream dreams, and have hopes and fears and fidgets, without knowing why or being able to explain them.” - Louisa May Alcott

33. “Mother Dear, one day I'm going to turn this world upside down."--From My Brother Martin, by Christine King Farris” - Martin Luther King Jr.

34. “If life didn’t give you at least one person not wanting you to succeed then half of us would lose are motivation to climb that cliff, in order to prove them wrong.” - Shannon Alder

35. “Making a dream into reality begins with what you have, not with what you are waiting on.” - T.F. Hodge

36. “I melted into the dream as if I had always been there. I knew where I had come from; I knew where I was going.” - Chelsie Shakespeare

37. “I took a deep breath. "Are you free tonight?" There was a long, pregnant pause. "What about the man in the dream?" he finally asked. "There is no man in the dream.” - Richelle Mead

38. “When you got no future, Billy, you got no past - no dreaming to guide you into the future. Gotta have your dreaming of you get lost...” - Gary Taaffe

39. “Our rest is formed by our waking life and our waking life is formed by our sorrows.” - Alice Hoffman

40. “God doesn't like it when we ask Him for the smallest things, dare to make your dream so big that He can conveniently fit into it and make your dream come true.” - Agu, Jaachynma N.E.

41. “Imagine in vibrant detail your heart’s desire—a reality only you can envision, an adventure only you can direct.Then cradle your creation. Caress it. Mold it. Coddle it until it comes to life.And when your precious treasure grows so grand as to steal your breath away, set it free for all the world to experience. For that is how you live your dreams.” - Richelle Goodrich

42. “Felix had gone to live in a lotus land of his imagination. Where what is desired is dreamed of as already happened, where obstacles dissolve under the weight of desire, and where reality has vanished entirely.” - Iain Pears

43. “It takes faith to follow your dreams and courage to reach them.” - E'yen A. Gardner

44. “It is the earliest dream that I can remember, earlier than the witch at the corner of the nursery passage, this dream of something outside that has got to come in. The witch, like the masked dancers, has form, but this is simply power, a force exerted on a door, an influence that drifted after me upstairs and pressed against windows.” - Graham Greene

45. “In this world of dreams, drifting off still more; and once again speaking and dreaming of dreams. Just let it be.” - Ryokan

46. “Your subconscious is a powerful and mysterious force which can either hold you back or help you move forward. Without its cooperation, your best goals will go unrealized; with its help, you are unbeatable.” - Jenny Davidow

47. “It is easier for one to take risks and to chase his dreams with a mindset that he has nothing to lose. In this lies the immense passion, the great advantage of avoiding a materialistic, pleasure-filled way of life.” - Criss Jami

48. “A person who goes in search of God is wasting his time. He can walk a thousand roads and join many religions and sects–but he'll never find God that way. God is here, right now, at our side. We can see Him in this mist, in the ground we're walking on, even in my shoes. His angels keep watch while we sleep and help us in our work. In order to find God, you have only to look around. But meeting Him is not easy. The more God asks us to participate in Hismysteries, the more disoriented we become, because He asks us constantly tofollow our dreams and our hearts. And that's difficult to do when we're used to living in a different way. Finally we discover, to our surprise, that God wants us to be happy, because He is the father.” - Paulo Coelho

49. “By now you must have guessed: I come from another planet. But I will never say to you, Take me to your leaders. Even I - unused to your ways though I am - would never make that mistake. We ourselves have such beings among us, made of cogs, pieces of paper, small disks of shiny metal, scraps of coloured cloth. I do not need to encounter more of them.Instead I will say, Take me to your trees. Take me to your breakfasts, your sunsets, your bad dreams, your shoes, your nouns. Take me to your fingers; take me to your deaths.These are worth it. These are what I have come for.” - Margaret Atwood

50. “Do you want to make a change?...Do you want this change? Then let's move at God`s pace.” - Jaachynma N.E. Agu

51. “What are the dead, anyway, but waves and energy? Light shining from a dead star?That, by the way, is a phrase of Julian's. I remember it from a lecture of his on the Iliad, when Patroklos appears to Achilles in a dream. There is a very moving passage where Achilles overjoyed at the sight of the apparition – tries to throw his arms around the ghost of his old friend, and it vanishes. The dead appear to us in dreams, said Julian, because that's the only way they can make us see them; what we see is only a projection, beamed from a great distance, light shining at us from a dead star…Which reminds me, by the way, of a dream I had a couple of weeks ago.I found myself in a strange deserted city – an old city, like London – underpopulated by war or disease. It was night; the streets were dark, bombed-out, abandoned. For a long time, I wandered aimlessly – past ruined parks, blasted statuary, vacant lots overgrown with weeds and collapsed apartment houses with rusted girders poking out of their sides like ribs. But here and there, interspersed among the desolate shells of the heavy old public buildings, I began to see new buildings, too, which were connected by futuristic walkways lit from beneath. Long, cool perspectives of modern architecture, rising phosphorescent and eerie from the rubble.I went inside one of these new buildings. It was like a laboratory, maybe, or a museum. My footsteps echoed on the tile floors.There was a cluster of men, all smoking pipes, gathered around an exhibit in a glass case that gleamed in the dim light and lit their faces ghoulishly from below.I drew nearer. In the case was a machine revolving slowly on a turntable, a machine with metal parts that slid in and out and collapsed in upon themselves to form new images. An Inca temple… click click click… the Pyramids… the Parthenon.History passing beneath my very eyes, changing every moment.'I thought I'd find you here,' said a voice at my elbow.It was Henry. His gaze was steady and impassive in the dim light. Above his ear, beneath the wire stem of his spectacles, I could just make out the powder burn and the dark hole in his right temple.I was glad to see him, though not exactly surprised. 'You know,' I said to him, 'everybody is saying that you're dead.'He stared down at the machine. The Colosseum… click click click… the Pantheon. 'I'm not dead,' he said. 'I'm only having a bit of trouble with my passport.''What?'He cleared his throat. 'My movements are restricted,' he said.'I no longer have the ability to travel as freely as I would like.'Hagia Sophia. St. Mark's, in Venice. 'What is this place?' I asked him.'That information is classified, I'm afraid.'1 looked around curiously. It seemed that I was the only visitor.'Is it open to the public?' I said.'Not generally, no.'I looked at him. There was so much I wanted to ask him, so much I wanted to say; but somehow I knew there wasn't time and even if there was, that it was all, somehow, beside the point.'Are you happy here?' I said at last.He considered this for a moment. 'Not particularly,' he said.'But you're not very happy where you are, either.'St. Basil's, in Moscow. Chartres. Salisbury and Amiens. He glanced at his watch.'I hope you'll excuse me,' he said, 'but I'm late for an appointment.'He turned from me and walked away. I watched his back receding down the long, gleaming hall.” - Donna Tartt

52. “I was told once by some country people that a magician should never tell his dreams because the telling will make them come true. But I say that is great nonsense.” - Susanna Clarke

53. “Those heart-hammering nightmares that start to lose coherence even as you're waking up from them, but that still manage to leave their moldering fingerprints all across your day.” - Mike Carey

54. “Dreams are the psyche's way of taking a good dump every now and then. And that people who dream - or don't dream in a way they can often remember when they wake up - are mentally constipated in some way.” - Stephen King

55. “What for me is bliss and life and ecstasy and exaltation, the world in general seeks at most in imagination; in life it finds it absurd.” - Hermann Hesse

56. “The most abundant and most precious of things: Thoughts and Dreams, can be found in every corner yet as precious as diamonds.” - StridingDream

57. “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

58. “Love is the castle, doubt is the moat, desire is the paddle and hope is the boat.” - Kellie Elmore

59. “Every time I close my eyes, it's like a dark paradise. No one compares to you, but there's no you, except in my dreams tonight” - Lana Del Rey

60. “Lovers have lived so long with giants and elves, they won't believe again in their own size.” - W.H. Auden

61. “Will he come to me, Dream Angus, Come quietly through the evening light, Come when I do not expect him, and I am sleepy, Come when I am drowsy, when I am ready for rest; Will he come to me, Dream Angus?...Will I see the birds about his head, The birds that are his kisses? Will I believe that each of us, Even he who thinks himself unloved, May be transformed, made different By one who finds him marvellous? Will I think that? ...Will he bring me some sort of quietus, Some form of understanding; will he break my heart; Will he show me my love; will he give Me heart's contentment, the end of sorrow, Will he do that for me; will he do that?...” - Alexander McCall Smith

62. “Whiteness is the color of death, you know, not black. Wetness is life, the breeder and shaper of life. In the beginning the sun was black. So all light was absorbed before it had a chance to return. And our dreams, then, were empty.” - Jim Carroll

63. “If those we love visit us when we dream, those who torment us almost always visit us when we're still awake.” - Alyson Richman

64. “Rise to the challenge of bringing your dreams to life! Do not be discouraged by resistance, be nourished by it. Success is the experience of rising to the level of your true greatness.” - Steve Maraboli

65. “Maybe we were being a bit unrealistic, but we had this hope that if we could just get into the Ivy League, everything would be set. We dreamed of Gothic libraries and leafy green quads and romantic dorms with fireplaces and guys who were not only cute but also smart and charming, and, quite possibly, British. In college, we believed, we’d finally find our people.” - Sarah Strohmeyer

66. “That’s a stupid name! Whirly-gig is much better, I think. Who in their rightmind would point at this thing and say, ‘I’m going to fly in my Model-A1’.People would much rather say, ‘Get in my whirly-gig’. And that’s what youshould name it.” - Nathan Reese Maher

67. “History doesn’t start with a tall buildingand a card with your name written on it, but jokes do. I think someone is takingus for suckers and is playing a mean game.” - Nathan Reese Maher

68. “Use the wings of the flying Universe, Dream with open eyes; See in darkness.” - Dejan Stojanovic

69. “That night, after the movie, driving my father's car along the country roads, I began to wonder how real the landscape truly was, and how much of a dream is a dream.” - Don DeLillo

70. “Every step towards your dream today is a step away from your regret tomorrow.” - Steve Maraboli

71. “There's three things I've seen in this world that seem to make a body happy or miserable. It's no money or health or any of those other things most people talk about. It's knowing where you fit in this world, being able to go after your dreams, and love.” - Patricia McLinn

72. “Some choose to dream with a safety net. I dream with nothing to catch me, that way if I fall nothing can stop me from rising back up.” - Evelyn Shepherd

73. “I believe in the uncommon, the unusual and unlikely, even the miraculous.   I believe in nearly all things except impossibilities. That I can't fathom. ” - Richelle E. Goodrich

74. “A novelist's characters must be with him as he lies down to sleep, and as he wakes from his dreams. He must learn to hate them and to love them.” - Anthony Trollopel

75. “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

76. “Una persona sin sueños es alguien tan pequeño... Tan pequeño, tan inútil... Da pena ver a una persona que sólo tiene lo cotidiano, la realidad de lo cotidiano. Es como un árbol sin hojas. Hay que poner hojas en los árboles. Pegarles un montón de hojas para que se conviertan en árboles altos y hermosos. Y si por casualidad hay hojas que caen, se añaden otras. Más y más, sin desanimarse... Las almas respiran en el sueño. La grandeza del hombre se cuela en el sueño. Hoy ya no respiramos, nos ahogamos. Hemos suprimido los sueños, como hemos suprimido el alma y el Cielo...” - Katherine Pancol

77. “Vezi tu , uneori Dumnezeu asteapta de la tine sa pui si tu umarul.Iti poti dori anumite lucruri.Poti visa.Poti spera.Dar trebuie sa si actionezi in directia acelor dorinte , visuri si sperante.Trebuie sa te intinzi dincolo de locul in care te afli ca sa poti ajunge acolo unde vrei sa fi.” - Nick Vujicic

78. “TAKE ACTION! Wanting is not enough; Act upon your goals! If somebody was watching your day-to-day behavior, would they be able to see what you’re working towards; what your goals are? If the answer is no, FIX IT!” - Steve Maraboli

79. “Es así y punto. Y es así, no sirve soñar. O al menos, más vale no hacerlo, porque daña más. Mejor tener sueños a lo Niko, los seguros, los que te compras. Me voy a comprar unas zapatillas nuevas, las Dreams, así los sueños por lo menos los llevas en los pies y los pisoteas.” - Alessandro D'Avenia

80. “At least when I'm sleeping I can dream myself back to Alex, can dream myself into a different world.” - Lauren Oliver

81. “In our dreams, we can’t see anything that we haven’t put it there!” - Mehmet Murat ildan

82. “The only problem with my dreams is the practical side, otherwise it is perfect.” - M.F. Moonzajer