Looking for thought-provoking dream quotes about your waking life?

The study of dreams has long been a fascination for many.

People often wake up puzzled by what they have dreamt.

Some want to search for the meaning of what ran through their mind.

As bizarre as some of the images and themes may seem, dreams are our subconscious way of working through things that are troubling us, or that are unsettled, while we sleep.

Dreams have been studied by so many individuals for years.

Many books have been written explaining the symbolism found in them.

While there is some discrepancy or multiple meanings for some of the dream symbols, most remain consistent.

Understanding them can help an individual see the bigger picture and find greater meaning in their dreams.

In this respect, here are some dream quotes, dream sayings, and dream proverbs from some of the great – and surprising minds – of our time. Read them to understand more about your dreams and the nature of your reality.

We also have a collection of inspirational good night quotes to put you in the right place before you sleep. Be sure to read that as well.

Dream quotes to help you interpret your dreams and waking life better

1. “No one has ever achieved greatness without dreams.” – Roy T. Bennett

2. “All that we see or seem, is but a dream within a dream.” – Edgar Allan Poe

3. “Dreams are illustrations…from the book your soul is writing about you.” – Marsha Norman

4. “A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow.” – Charlotte Brontë

5. “In a dream you are never eighty.” – Anne Sexton

6. “Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

7. “The Future Belongs To Those Who Believe In The Beauty Of Their Dreams.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

8. “Dreams are often most profound when they seem the most crazy.”- Sigmund Freud

9. “Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.”- Virginia Woolf

10. “It’s difficult to follow your dream. It’s a tragedy not to.” – Ralph Marston

11. “All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams.”- Elias Canetti

12. “For often, when one is asleep, there is something in consciousness which declares that what then presents itself is but a dream.”- Aristotle

13. “Dreams are more real than reality itself, they’re closer to the self.”- Gao Xingjian

14. “The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.”- Sigmund Freud

15. “Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?”- Alfred Lord Tennyson

16. “In sleep, fantasy takes the form of dreams. But in waking life, too, we continue to dream beneath the threshold of consciousness, especially when under the influence of repressed or other unconscious complexes.”- Carl Jung

17. “A dream which is not interpreted is like a letter which is not read.”- The Talmud

18. “I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake.”- René Descartes

Also, check out our list of The Secret quotes that will inspire you to manifest your dreams.

Dream quotes about the nature of our reality

19. “Your world is not real!”- Inception, 2010 film

20. “Every dream that anyone ever has is theirs alone and they never manage to share it. And they never manage to remember it either. Not truly or accurately. Not as it was. Our memories and our vocabularies aren’t up to the job.”- Alex Garland

21. “Dreams are excursions into the limbo of things, a semi-deliverance from the human prison.”- Henri Amiel

22. “Insomnia is a gross feeder. It will nourish itself on any kind of thinking, including thinking about not thinking.”- Clifton Fadiman

23. “Sleep… Oh! How I loathe those little slices of death.”- Author unknown

24. “Huge and mighty forms that do not live like living men, moved slowly through the mind by day and were trouble to my dreams.”- William Wordsworth

25. “Dreams say what they mean, but they don’t say it in daytime language.”- Gail Godwin

26. “The best thing about dreams is that fleeting moment, when you are between asleep and awake, when you don’t know the difference between reality and fantasy, when for just that one moment you feel with your entire soul that the dream is reality, and it really happened.”- James Arthur Baldwin

27. “Recall the old story of the rather refined young man who preferred sex dreams to visiting brothels because he met a much nicer type of girl that way.”- Vivian Mercer

28. “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

29. “There’s a long, long trail a-winding into the land of my dreams.”- Stoddard King, Jr.

30. “One can write, think, and pray exclusively of others; dreams are all egocentric.”- Evelyn Waugh

31. “Our dreams disturb us because they refuse to pander to our fondest notions of ourselves. The closer one looks, the more they seem to insist upon a challenging proposition: You must live truthfully. Right now. And always. Few forces in life present, with an equal sense of inevitability, the bare-knuckle facts of who we are, and the demands of what we might become.”- Marc Ian Barasch

32. “Dreams feel real while we’re in them. It’s only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange.”- Inception, 2010 film

33. “In dreams, we enter a world that’s entirely our own.”- Steven Kloves

34. “I’ll take the dream I had last night, And put it in my freezer, So someday long and far away, When I’m an old grey greezer, I’ll take it out and thaw it out, This lovely dream I’ve frozen, And boil it up and sit me down And dip my old cold toes in.”- Shel Silverstein

35. “Even the loveliest dream bears like a blemish its difference from reality, the awareness that what it grants is mere illusion.”- Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno

Don’t forget to also read these insightful reality quotes that will inspire you to live your best life.

Beautiful Dream Quotes for You

36. “The best reason for having dreams is that in dreams no reasons are necessary.”- Ashleigh Brilliant

37. “I have always been amazed at the way an ordinary observer lends so much more credence and attaches so much more importance to waking events than to those occurring in dreams…. Man… is above all the plaything of his memory.”- Andre Breton

38. “A dream is a microscope through which we look at the hidden occurrences in our soul.”- Erich Fromm

39. “Even thus last night, and two nights more I lay, And could not win thee, Sleep, by any stealth: So do not let me wear to-night away. Without thee what is all the morning’s wealth? Come, blessed barrier between day and day, Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health!”- William Wordsworth

You might also like these inspirational morning quotes to help you seize the day.

40. “We are not only less reasonable and less decent in our dreams… we are also more intelligent, wiser, and capable of better judgment when we are asleep than when we are awake.”- Erich Fromm

41. “For a dreamer, night’s the only time of day.”- Newsies

42. “Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care, The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, Chief nourisher in life’s feast.”- William Shakespeare, Macbeth

43. “Those who have compared our life to a dream were right…. We sleeping wake, and waking sleep.”- Michel de Montaigne

44. “The sailor does not control the sea, nor does the lucid dreamer control the dream. Like a sailor, lucid dreamers manipulate or direct themselves in the larger expanse of dreaming; however, they do not control it. Lucid dreaming appears to be a co-created experience.”- Robert Waggoner

45. “Pause now to ask yourself the following question: ‘Am I dreaming or awake, right now?’ Be serious, really try to answer the question to the best of your ability and be ready to justify your answer.”- Stephen LaBerge

46. “A dream doesn’t become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work.” – Colin Powell

If you’re enjoying these quotes, make sure to read our collection of magic quotes about the power of the unseen.

47. “A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.” – Yoko Ono

48. “Dreaming is an act of pure imagination, attesting in all men a creative power, which if it were available in waking, would make every man a Dante or Shakespeare.”- H.F. Hedge

49.  “There Is Only One Thing That Makes A Dream Impossible To Achieve: The Fear Of Failure.” – Paulo Coelho

50. “As soon as you start to pursue a dream, your life wakes up and everything has meaning.” – Barbara Sher

Also, check out these insomnia quotes for when you can’t sleep.

Dream quotes to elevate your mind

51. “When you cease to dream, you cease to live.” – Malcolm Forbes

52. “So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.” – Christopher Reeve

53. “You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.” ― Dr. Seuss

54. “I can think. I can sleep. I can move. I can ride my bike. I can dream.” – Bill Walton

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

56. “Dreams are real while they last — can we say more of life?” – The sexologist and writer Havelock Ellis (1859-1939)

57. “Dreams are not what you see in your sleep, dreams are things which do not let you sleep.”— Cristiano Ronaldo

58. “Dreams are only thoughts you didn’t have time to think about during the day.” ~Author Unknown

59. “Dreams are foreign lands within the bounds of our own hearts.”~Terri Guillemets

60. “Anyone can escape into sleep, we are all geniuses when we dream, the butcher’s the poet’s equal there.”~ Emile M. Cioran

You might also like these Colin Powell quotes that will inspire and motivate you to work hard for your dreams.

Thought-provoking dream quotes

61. “Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”– Ralph Waldo Emerson

62. “A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities.” – J.R.R. Tolkien

63. “Never limit yourself because of others’ limited imagination; never limit others because of your own limited imagination.”– Mae Jemison

64. “I like dreams of the future better than the history of the past.” – Thomas Jefferson

65. “Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”– Mark Twain
If you’re enjoying these quotes, read our collection of ambition quotes to set your sights sky high.

66. “A man must dream a long time in order to act with grandeur, and dreaming is nursed in darkness.” – Jean Genet

67. “Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.”– Harriet Tubman

68. “If you give up on your dreams, what’s left?” – Jim Carrey

69. “Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.”– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

70. “Yesterday’s dreams are often tomorrow’s realities.” – Bruce Lee

Also check out these moon quotes that will inspire you to believe in your purpose.

Other motivational dream quotes

71. “No matter how your heart is grieving, if you keep on believing, the dreams that you wish will come true.” – Walt Disney Company

72. “Sometimes the dreams that come true are the dreams you never even knew you had.” – Alice Sebold

73. “Dreams don’t work unless you take action. The surest way to make your dreams come true is to live them.” – Roy T. Bennett

74. “Permit your dreams to see the daylight.” – Bernard Kelvin Clive

75. “Dream your own dreams, achieve your own goals. Your journey is your own and unique.” – Roy T. Bennett

76. “Dreams have only one owner at a time. That’s why dreamers are lonely.” – William Faulkner

77. “Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.”- William Dement

78. “All human beings are also dream beings. Dreaming ties all mankind together.” – Jack Kerouac

79. “The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.” – Paul Valéry

80. “Know what you want to do, hold the thought firmly, and do every day what should be done, and every sunset will see you that much nearer the goal.” – Elbert Hubbard

You might also like these graduation quotes on success, dreams and your future.

More Dream Quotes and Sayings

81. “Nothing happens unless first a dream.” – Carl Sandburg

82. “Never give up on what you really want to do. The person with big dreams is more powerful than one with all the facts.” – Albert Einstein

83. “Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.” – Carl Jung

84. “Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

85. “Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway.” – Earl Nightingale

86. “Dreams are the seedlings of realities.” – James Allen

87. “It may be that those who do most, dream most.” – Stephen Butler Leacock

88. “That which is dreamed can never be lost, can never be undreamed.” – Neil Gaiman

89. “You’ll stumble upon something you can’t stop thinking about, something more important than anything else. Make it the focus of your life.” – Maxime Lagacé

Which of these dream quotes is your favorite?

Dreams mean different things to different people. They can also be interpreted in a myriad of ways; whether or not you enjoy dreaming.

Hopefully,  these dream quotes inspired or motivated you for your next nighttime sojourn

Which of these dream quotes is your favorite? Do you have any other interesting quotes about dreams to share with us? Tell us in the comment section below.