In the realm of ideas everything depends on enthusiasm; in the real world all rests on perseverance.
- Johann Wolfgang von GoetheDreams
The word dreams carries two meanings here that are rarely separated: what we dream at night and what we aim at. Older cultures did not draw a firm line between them — dreams were read as messages and aspirations as a summons. Only more recent usage splits the two, and gives nearly all the weight to the second.
As a result the same heading holds lines of quite different character. Some are about imagination and the logic of sleep, others about goals and persistence. If you are after encouragement you will want the latter; if you are curious how people have always explained what arrives unbidden, the former are more interesting. The collection deliberately keeps both.
Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.
- Mark TwainThe higher we soar, the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.
- Friedrich NietzscheKeep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.
- Theodore RooseveltThe scientific man does not aim at an immediate result; his duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way.
- Nikola TeslaImagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last you create what you will.
- George Bernard ShawThe present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine.
- Nikola TeslaFar away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.
- Louisa May AlcottWe are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
- Oscar WildeHope is a waking dream.
- AristotleYou can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.
- Rabindranath TagoreYesterday is but today's memory, and tomorrow is today's dream.
- Kahlil GibranNo bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.
- William BlakeDwell in possibility.
- Emily DickinsonVision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.
- Japanese ProverbWhat you seek is seeking you.
- RumiThere is nothing like a dream to create the future.
- Victor HugoThe creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.
- Ralph Waldo EmersonKeep true to the dreams of your youth.
- Friedrich SchillerDreams are the touchstones of our characters.
- Henry David ThoreauGo confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.
- Henry David ThoreauThe greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short, but in setting our aim too low and achieving our mark.
- Michelangelo