Dreams

Dreams are successions of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. The content and purpose of dreams are not definitively understood, though they have been a topic of scientific speculation, as well as a subject of philosophical and religious interest, throughout recorded history. The scientific study of dreams is called oneirology. Scientists believe that, in addition to humans, certain birds and the majority of mammals also dream.

Famous quotes containing the word dreams:

“What is a television apparatus to man, who has only to shut his eyes to see the most inaccessible regions of the seen and the never seen, who has only to imagine in order to pierce through walls and cause all the planetary Baghdads of his dreams to rise from the dust.”
—Salvador Dali (1904–1989)

““A man,” said Oliver Cromwell, “never rises so high as when he knows not whither he is going.” Dreams and drunkenness, the use of opium and alcohol are the semblance and counterfeit of this oracular genius, and hence their dangerous attraction for men. For the like reason they ask the aid of wild passions, as in gaming and war, to ape in some manner these flames and generosities of the heart.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

“A novel is what you dream in your night sleep. A novel is
not waking thoughts although it is written and thought
with waking thoughts. But really a novel goes as
dreams go in sleeping at night and some dreams are like
anything and some dreams are like something and some
dreams change and some dreams are quiet and some dreams
are not. And some dreams are just what any one would
do only a little different always just a little
different and that is what a novel is.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)