The Quotes canon

Sourced and curated.

Every quote has been curated by hand and carefully authenticated.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Dreams31 quotes
All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream. — Edgar Allan Poe · 1849We are the music makers, And we are the dreamers of dreams. — Arthur O'Shaughnessy · 1874What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore - And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over - like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode? — Langston Hughes · 1951The stuff that dreams are made of. — Samuel Spade · 1941The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind. — Sigmund Freud · 1899Hold fast to dreams For if dreams die Life is a broken-winged bird That cannot fly. Hold fast to dreams For when dreams go Life is a barren field Frozen with snow. — Langston Hughes · 1923All 31 quotes →
What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore - And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over - like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode? — Langston Hughes · 1951Is a dream a lie if it don't come true, Or is it something worse? — Bruce Springsteen · 1980Life has killed the dream I dreamed. — Fantine · 2012
Thinking big2 quotes
You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling. — Eames · 2010The size of your dreams must always exceed your current capacity to achieve them. If your dreams do not scare you they are not big enough. — Ellen Johnson Sirleaf · 2011
Adversity1 quote
Life has killed the dream I dreamed. — Fantine · 2012
All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream. — Edgar Allan Poe · 1849
All I do is dream of you the whole night through. — Kathy Selden · 1952
Life has killed the dream I dreamed. — Fantine · 2012
Wide and undetermined Prospects are as pleasing to the Fancy, as the Speculations of Eternity or Infinitude are to the Understanding. — Joseph Addison · 1712
I slept and dreamed that life was beauty. I woke-and found that life was duty. — Ellen Sturgis Hooper · 1840
Delusion1 quote
Castles in the air-they are so easy to take refuge in. And easy to build, too. — Henrik Ibsen · 1892
Dreamers1 quote
We are the music makers, And we are the dreamers of dreams. — Arthur O'Shaughnessy · 1874
Freedom1 quote
But only in their dreams can men be truly free. 'Twas always thus, and always thus will be. — John Keating · 1989
Goals1 quote
The size of your dreams must always exceed your current capacity to achieve them. If your dreams do not scare you they are not big enough. — Ellen Johnson Sirleaf · 2011
Happiness1 quote
If you're happy in a dream... does that count? — Arundhati Roy · 1997
Heaven1 quote
If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found the flower in his hand when he awoke-Aye! and what then? — Samuel Taylor Coleridge · 1816
My dream is to become hopeless. — George Costanza · 1992
Inner life1 quote
If the dreams of any so-called normal man were exposed... There would be no more gravity and dignity left for mankind. — Vera Caspary · 1943
The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind. — Sigmund Freud · 1899
Life1 quote
What is life? A frenzy. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a fiction. And the greatest good is of slight worth, as all life is a dream, and dreams are dreams. — Pedro Calderon de la Barca · 1635
He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it. — Douglas Adams · 1979
No dream is ever just a dream. — Dr. Wiliam Harford · 1999
What is life? A frenzy. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a fiction. And the greatest good is of slight worth, as all life is a dream, and dreams are dreams. — Pedro Calderon de la Barca · 1635
Reason1 quote
The sleep of reason produces monsters. — Francisco de Goya · 1799
The sleep of reason produces monsters. — Francisco de Goya · 1799
Sleep1 quote
All men whilst they are awake are in one common world; but each of them, when he is asleep, is in a world of his own. — Heraclitus
Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men. — Zora Neale Hurston · 1937
All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams. — Elias Canetti · 1972
Waking up1 quote
But Mole stood still a moment, held in thought. As one wakened suddenly from a beautiful dream, who struggles to recall it, and can recapture nothing but a dim sense of the beauty of it, the beauty! Till that, too, fades away in its turn, and the dreamer bitterly accepts the hard, cold waking and all its penalties. — Kenneth Grahame · 1908