Reverie Quotes

• Sit in reverie and watch the changing color of the waves that break upon the idle seashore of the mind.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Color, Sea, Waves Breaking

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1844). “The Spanish Student: A Play in Three Acts”, p.50

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• Reverie is not a mind vacuum. It is rather the gift of an hour which knows the plenitude of the soul.

  Gaston Bachelard

  Soul, Mind, Vacuums

  "The Poetics of Reverie". Book by Gaston Bachelard, 1960.

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• Thought is the labor of the intellect, reverie is its pleasure.

  Victor Hugo

  Inspirational, Wisdom, Ideas

  Victor Hugo (1862). “Saint Denis”, p.28

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• A state of reverie does not avoid reality, it accedes to reality.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Reality, Doe, States

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• Active imagination requires a state of reverie, half-way between sleep and waking.

  Carl Jung

  Sleep, Imagination, Waking

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• To lose one's self in reverie, one must be either very happy, or very unhappy. Reverie is the child of extremes.

  Antoine Rivarol

  Children, Self, Unhappy

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• There are reveries so deep, reveries which help us descend so deeply within ourselves that they rid us of our history. They liberate us from our name. These solitudes of today return us to the original solitudes.

  Gaston Bachelard

  Self, Names, Solitude

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• He does not need opium. He has the gift of reverie.

  Anais Nin

  Addiction, Drug, Doe

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• Preserve, within a wild sanctuary, an inaccessible valley of reverie.

  Ellen Glasgow

  Valleys, Sanctuary, Spirituality

  Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow (1938). “Works”

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• I hope your rambles have been sweet, and your reveries spacious

  Emily Dickinson

  Sweet, Has Beens

  Emily Dickinson, Martha Dickinson Bianchi (1971). “The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson”, p.307, Biblo & Tannen Publishers

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• Reverie is the groundwork of creative imagination; it is the privilege of the artist that with him it is not as with other men an escape from reality, but the means by which he accedes to it.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Mean, Reality, Men

  W. Somerset Maugham (1954). “Mr. Maugham Himself”

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• In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts bring sad thoughts to the mind.

  William Wordsworth

  Sweet, Mind, Mood

  1798 'Lines Written in Early Spring', stanza 1.

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• The world went on, as it does, without my full participation, and I only woke up from the reverie when someone said my name.

  John Green

  Names, Doe, World

  John Green (2012). “The Fault in Our Stars”, p.131, Penguin

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• Flowing water is at once a picture and a music, which causes to flow at the same time from my brain, like a limpid and murmuring rivulet, sweet thoughts, charming reveries, and melancholy remembrances.

  Alphonse Karr

  Sweet, Water, Remembrance

  Alphonse Karr, Rev. J. Wood (1855). “A Tour Round My Garden”, p.135

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• When ideas float in our mind, without any reflection or regard of the understanding, it is that which the French call reverie.

  John Locke

  Dream, Philosophical, Reflection

  "An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding".

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• Instead of looking for the dream in reverie, people should look for reverie in the dream. There are calm beaches in the midst of nightmares.

  Gaston Bachelard

  Dream, Beach, People

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• I undertake the same project as Montaigne, but with an aim contrary to his own: for he wrote his Essays only for others, and I write my reveries only for myself.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Writing, Projects, Aim

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• The reverie we intend to study is poetic reverie. This is a reverie which poetry puts on the right track, the track an expanding consciousness follows. This reverie is written, or, at least, promises to be written. It is already facing the great universe of the blank page. Then images begin to compose and fall into place.

  Gaston Bachelard

  Fall, Track, Poetry

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• Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries--stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.

  Herman Melville

  Rain, Men, Rivers

  Herman Melville (2015). “Annotated Moby Dick or, the Whale with English Grammar Exercises: by Herman Melville (Author), Robert Powell (Editor)”, p.5, Powell Publications, LLC

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• For a while these reveries provided an outlet for his imagination; they were a satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy's wing.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Reality, Rocks, Wings

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2016). “(The Great Gatsby)”, p.59, F. Scott Fitzgerald

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• Both mind and heart when given up to reveries and dreaminess, have a thousand avenues open for the entrance of evil.

  Charles Simmons

  Heart, Evil, Mind

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• It is quite evident that a barrier must be cleared in order to escape the psychologists and enter into a realm which is not "auto-observant", where we ourselves no longer divide ourselves into observer and observed. Then the dreamer is completely dissolved in his reverie. His reverie is his silent life. It is that silent peace which the poet wants to convey to us.

  Gaston Bachelard

  Dream, Peace, Order

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• Do anything rather than give yourself to reverie.

  William Ellery Channing

  Giving

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• Tobacco and alcohol, delicious fathers of abiding friendships and fertile reveries.

  Luis Bunuel

  Father, Smoking, Alcohol

  Luis Bunuel (2011). “My Last Breath”, p.48, Random House

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• How is it possible not to feel that there is communication between our solitude as a dreamer and the solitudes of childhood? And it is no accident that, in a tranquil reverie, we often follow the slope which returns us to our childhood solitudes.

  Gaston Bachelard

  Dream, Communication, Childhood

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