Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Dreams
When to soft Sleep we give ourselves away,
And in a dream as in a fairy bark
Drift on and on through the enchanted dark
To purple daybreak—little thought we pay
To that sweet bitter world we know by day.
T. B. Aldrich—Sonnet. Sleep.
Sweet sleep be with us, one and all!
And if upon its stillness fall
The visions of a busy brain,
We’ll have our pleasure o’er again,
To warm the heart, to charm the sight,
Gay dreams to all! good night, good night.
Joanna Baillie—The Phantom. Song.
If there were dreams to sell,
Merry and sad to tell,
And the crier rung his bell,
What would you buy?
Thomas Lovell Beddoes—Dream-Pedlary.
“Come to me, darling; I’m lonely without thee;
Daytime and nighttime I’m dreaming about thee.”
Joseph Brenan—The Exile To His Wife.
Oft morning dreams presage approaching fate,
For morning dreams, as poets tell, are true.
Michael Bruce—Elegy on Spring.
I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls,
With vassals and serfs at my side.
Alfred Bunn—Song from Bohemian Girl.
I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
Byron—Darkness.
And dreams in their development have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy;
They have a weight upon our waking thoughts,
They take a weight from off our waking toils,
They do divide our being.
Byron—The Dream. St. 1.
A change came o’er the spirit of my dream.
Byron—The Dream. St. 3.
The fisher droppeth his net in the stream,
And a hundred streams are the same as one;
And the maiden dreameth her love-lit dream;
And what is it all, when all is done?
The net of the fisher the burden breaks,
And always the dreaming the dreamer wakes.
Alice Cary—Lover’s Diary.
Again let us dream where the land lies sunny
And live, like the bees, on our hearts’ old honey,
Away from the world that slaves for money—
Come, journey the way with me.
Madison Cawein—Song of the Road.
Like the dreams,
Children of night, of indigestion bred.
Churchill—The Candidate. L. 784.
My eyes make pictures, when they are shut.
Coleridge—A Day Dream.
And so, his senses gradually wrapt
In a half sleep, he dreams of better worlds,
And dreaming hears thee still, O singing lark;
That singest like an angel in the clouds.
Coleridge—Fears in Solitude. L. 25.
Dream after dream ensues;
And still they dream that they shall still succeed;
And still are disappointed.
Cowper—Task. Bk. III. L. 127.
Dreams are but interludes, which fancy makes;
When monarch reason sleeps, this mimic wakes.
Dryden—Fables. The Cock and the Fox. L. 325.
In blissful dream, in silent night,
There came to me, with magic might,
With magic might, my own sweet love,
Into my little room above.
Heine—Youthful Sorrows. Pt. VI. St. 1.
Fly, dotard, fly!
With thy wise dreams and fables of the sky.
Homer—The Odyssey. Bk. II. L. 207. Pope’s trans.
Some dreams we have are nothing else but dreams,
Unnatural and full of contradictions;
Yet others of our most romantic schemes
Are something more than fictions.
Hood—The Haunted House. Pt. I.
And the dream that our mind had sketched in haste
Shall others continue, but never complete.
For none upon earth can achieve his scheme;
The best as the worst are futile here:
We wake at the self-same point of the dream,—
All is here begun, and finished elsewhere.
Victor Hugo—Early Love Revisited.
Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace.
Leigh Hunt—Abou Ben Adhem.
Your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.
Joel. II. 28.
There’s a long, long trail a-winding
Into the land of my dreams,
Where the nightingales are singing
And a white moon beams;
There’s a long, long night of waiting
Until my dreams all come true,
Till the day when I’ll be going down that
Long, long trail with you.
Stoddard King—There’s a Long, Long Trail. (Popular in the Great War.)
Ever of thee I’m fondly dreaming,
Thy gentle voice my spirit can cheer.
George Linley—Ever of Thee.
’Twas but a dream,—let it pass,—let it vanish like so many others!
What I thought was a flower is only a weed, and is worthless.
Longfellow—Courtship of Miles Standish. Pt. VII.
Is this is a dream? O, if it be a dream,
Let me sleep on, and do not wake me yet!
Longfellow—Spanish Student. Act III. Sc. 5.
For dhrames always go by conthraries, my dear.
Samuel Lover—Rory O’More. Goldsmith—Citizen of the World. No. 46.
Ground not upon dreams, you know they are ever contrary.
Thos. Middleton—The Family of Love. Act IV. Sc. 3.
I believe it to be true that Dreams are the true Interpreters of our Inclinations; but there is Art required to sort and understand them.
Montaigne—Essays. Bk. III. Ch. XIII.
One of those passing rainbow dreams,
Half light, half shade, which fancy’s beams
Paint on the fleeting mists that roll,
In trance or slumber, round the soul!
Moore—Lalla Rookh. Fire Worshippers. St. 54.
Oh! that a dream so sweet, so long enjoy’d,
Should be so sadly, cruelly destroy’d!
Moore—Lalla Rookh. Veiled Prophet of Khorassan. St. 62.
A thousand creeds and battle cries,
A thousand warring social schemes,
A thousand new moralities
And twenty thousand, thousand dreams.
Alfred Noyes—Forward.
I am weary of planning and toiling
In the crowded hives of men;
Heart weary of building and spoiling
And spoiling and building again;
And I long for the dear old river
Where I dreamed my youth away;
For a dreamer lives forever,
And a toiler dies in a day.
John Boyle O’Reilly—Cry of the Dreamer.
“Namque sub Aurora jam dormitante lucerna Somnia quo cerni tempore vera solent.”
Those dreams are true which we have in the morning, as the lamp begins to flicker.
Ovid—Epistles. XIX. Hero Leandro. 195.
Dreams, which, beneath the hov’ring shades of night,
Sport with the ever-restless minds of men,
Descend not from the gods. Each busy brain
Creates its own.
Thomas Love Peacock—Dreams. From Petronius Arbiter.
What was your dream?
It seemed to me that a woman in white raiment, graceful and fair to look upon, came towards me and calling me by name said:
On the third day, Socrates, thou shall reach the coast of fertile Phthia.
Plato—Crito.
That holy dream—that holy dream,
While all the world were chiding,
Hath cheered me as a lovely beam
A lonely spirit guiding.
Poe—A Dream. St. 3.
Yet eat in dreams, the custard of the day.
Pope—The Dunciad. Bk. I. L. 92.
Till their own dreams at length deceive ’em
And oft repeating, they believe ’em.
Prior—Alma. Canto III. L. 13.
As a dream when one awaketh.
Psalms. LXXIII. 20.
This morn, as sleeping in my bed I lay,
I dreamt (and morning dreams come true they say).
W. B. Rhodes—Bombastes Furioso. Post medium noctean bisus, quum comnia vera. Horace—Satires. Bk. I. Sat. 10. L. 33. Tibullus—Elegy. Bk. III. 4.
O Brethren, weep to-day,
The silent God hath quenched my Torch’s ray,
And the vain dream hath flown.
Schiller—Resignation. Bowring’s trans.
Some must delve when the dawn is nigh;
Some must toil when the noonday beams;
But when night comes, and the soft winds sigh,
Every man is a King of Dreams.
Clinton Scollard—King of Dreams.
I’ll dream no more—by manly mind
Not even in sleep is well resigned.
My midnight orisons said o’er,
I’ll turn to rest and dream no more.
Scott—Lady of the Lake. Canto I. St. 35.
Thou hast beat me out
Twelve several times, and I have nightly since
Dreamt of encounters ’twixt thyself and me.
Coriolanus. Act IV. Sc. 5. L. 127.
There is some ill a-brewing towards my rest,
For I did dream of money-bags to-night.
Merchant of Venice. Act II. Sc. 5. L. 17.
I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was.
Midsummer Night’s Dream. Act IV. Sc. 1. L. 211.
This is the rarest dream that e’er dull sleep
Did mock sad fools withal.
Pericles. Act V. Sc. 1. L. 164.
Oh! I have pass’d a miserable night,
So full of ugly sights, of ghastly dreams,
That, as I am a Christian faithful man,
I would not spend another such a night,
Though ’twere to buy a world of happy days.
Richard III. Act I. Sc. 4. L. 2.
For never yet one hour in his bed
Have I enjoyed the golden dew of sleep,
But have been waked by his timorous dreams.
Richard III. Act IV. Sc. 1. L. 83.
I talk of dreams,
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,
Which is as thin of substance as the air
And more inconstant than the wind.
Romeo and Juliet. Act I. Sc. 4. L. 96.
Sometime she driveth o’er a soldier’s neck,
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
Of healths five-fathom deep.
Romeo and Juliet. Act I. Sc. 4. L. 82.
If I may trust the flattering truth of sleep,
My dreams presage some joyful news at hand:
My bosom’s lord sits lightly in his throne;
And all this day an unaccustom’d spirit
Lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts.
Romeo and Juliet. Act V. Sc. 1. L. 1.
We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
Tempest. Act IV. Sc. 1. L. 156.
Ah, the strange, sweet, lonely delight
Of the Valleys of Dream.
William Sharp (Fiona McLeod)—Dream Fantasy.
Across the silent stream
Where the dream-shadows go,
From the dim blue Hill of Dream
I have heard the west wind blow.
William Sharp (Fiona McLeod)—From the Hills of Dream.
In an ocean of dreams without a sound.
Shelley—The Sensitive Plant. Pt. I. St. 26.
Those dreams, that on the silent night intrude,
And with false flitting shades our minds delude,
Jove never sends us downward from the skies;
Nor can they from infernal mansions rise;
But are all mere productions of the brain,
And fools consult interpreters in vain.
Swift—On Dreams.
In the world of dreams, I have chosen my part.
To sleep for a season and hear no word
Of true love’s truth or of light love’s art,
Only the song of a secret bird.
Swinburne—A Ballad of Dreamland. Envoi.
The dream
Dreamed by a happy man, when the dark East,
Unseen, is brightening to his bridal morn.
Tennyson—The Gardener’s Daughter. L. 71.
Seeing, I saw not, hearing not, I heard.
Tho’, if I saw not, yet they told me all
So often that I spake as having seen.
Tennyson—The Princess. VI. L. 3.
Like glimpses of forgotten dreams.
Tennyson—The Two Voices. St. CXXVII.
The chambers in the house of dreams
Are fed with so divine an air,
That Time’s hoar wings grow young therein,
And they who walk there are most fair.
Francis Thompson—Dream Tryst. St. 3.
And yet, as angels in some brighter dreams
Call to the soul when man doth sleep.
So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted dreams,
And into glory peep.
Vaughan—Ascension Hymn.
Hunt half a day for a forgotten dream.
Wordsworth—Hart-Leap Well. Pt. II. St. 9.