Explore a collection of the most beloved and motivational quotes and sayings about Reverie. Share these powerful messages with your loved ones on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or on your personal blog, and inspire the world with their wisdom. We've compiled the Top 100 Reverie Quotes and Sayings from 88 influential authors, including Charles Baudelaire,Kevin Powers,Paul Verlaine,Mary Shelley,Elizabeth Von Arnim, for you to enjoy and share.

A tender heart unnerved by nothingnesshoards every fragment of the radiant past. By Charles Baudelaire Past Tender Heart Unnerved Nothingnesshoards

A new patina whitening the walls with marks of memories, all running together as if the memories themselves aspired to be the walls in which I was imprisoned ... By Kevin Powers Walls Memories Imprisoned Patina Whitening

The rosy hearth, the lamplight's narrow beam, The meditation that is rather dream, With looks that lose themselves in cherished looks; The hour of steaming tea and banished books; The sweetness of the evening at an end, The dear fatigue, and right to rest attained, And worshipped expectation of the night, Oh, all these things, in unrelenting flight, My dream pursues through all the vain delays, Impatient of the weeks, mad at the days! By Paul Verlaine Dream Impatient Hearth Beam Books

My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that arose in my mind with a vivdness far beyond the usual bounds of reverie ... By Mary Shelley Unbidden Imagination Possessed Gifting Reverie

The place I was bound for on my latest pilgrimage was filled with living, first-hand memories of all the enchanted years that lie between two and eighteen. How enchanted those years are is made more and more clear to me the older I grow. There has been nothing in the least like them since; and though I have forgotten most of what happened six months ago, every incident, almost every day of those wonderful long years is perfectly distinct in my memory. By Elizabeth Von Arnim Living Firsthand Eighteen Years Enchanted

We were solitary and apart. Slept during the day, uncurled at dusk like evening primroses; fragrant and lush. We never wanted to conquer the world, only our fears. We didn't keep in touch. Somewhere, though, our memories had. By Sarah Winman Solitary Slept Day Uncurled Primroses

Pardon if all the cleanness and the beautyBrave rhythym and the immemorial seaEnsare us sometimes with their siren song,Forgetful of our murderous intentions.Through our uneasy peacetime carnivalCold sweat of death holds us like a dew;Even this grey machinery of murderHolds beauty and the promise of a future. By Norman Hampson Pardon Dew Future Cleanness Beautybrave

She trekked back across the meadow and down through the trees in possession of the oldest secret known to man. She sat on the mooring stone and surrendered immediately to the down of night. She hadn't slept long before she suddenly jolted awake. Thought she had heard the sweet call of a lark ascending. Unaware that it was actually the sound of her soul awakening. By Sarah Winman Man Trekked Back Meadow Trees

Reminiscence is less an endowment than a disease, and expectation in its only comfortable formthat of absolute faithis practically an impossibility; whilst in the form of hope and the secondary compounds, patience, impatience, resolve, curiosity, it is a constant fluctuation between pleasure and pain. By Thomas Hardy Patience Impatience Resolve Curiosity Reminiscence

Now, back in the reality that always lies in wait among the shadows of the Ensanche quarter, the enchantment was lifting, and all I had was painful desire and an indescribable restlessness. By Carlos Ruiz Zafon Ensanche Back Quarter Lifting Restlessness

There is a charm in Solitude that cheersA feeling that the world knows nothing ofA green delight the wounded mind endearsAfter the hustling world is broken off By John Clare Solitude World Charm Cheersa Feeling

In one creative thought a thousand forgotten nights of love revive, filling it with sublimity and exaltation. By Rainer Maria Rilke Revive Filling Exaltation Creative Thought

Dimlyat first wary that it was merely a dislodged fragment of the dreamshe remembered Resurgam. And then, slowly, events returned, not as a tidal wave, or even as as landslide, but as a slow, squelching slippage: a disembowelment of the past. By Alastair Reynolds Resurgam Dimlyat Wary Dislodged Fragment

PRELUDE TO A NEW DREAM By Miguel Ruiz Prelude Dream

Preserve, within a wild sanctuary, an inaccessible valley of reverie. By Ellen Glasgow Preserve Sanctuary Reverie Wild Inaccessible

This is only a record of broken and apparently unrelated memories, some of them as distinct and sequent as brilliant beads upon a thread, others remote and strange, having the character of crimson dreams with interspaces blank and black witch-fires glowing still and red in a great desolation. By Ambrose Bierce Memories Thread Strange Desolation Record

It is singular how soon we lose the impression of what ceases to be constantly before us. A year impairs, a luster obliterates. There is little distinct left without an effort of memory, then indeed the lights are rekindled for a moment - but who can be sure that the Imagination is not the torch-bearer? By Lord Byron Singular Lose Impression Ceases Constantly

Mysterious power, whence hope ethereal springs!Sweet heavenly relic of eternal things!Inspiring oft deep thoughts of things divine:The past, the present, and the future time.Thy reminiscences transport the soulTo memory?s Paradise?its future goal. By Parley P. Pratt Sweet Inspiring Paradise Things Future

In the quagmire of feelings and emotions that engulf us on our drab and monotonous days and starry, resplendent nights, the ones that bring back past memories hold a special place, almost a unique pedestal, in our hearts! The distinct fragrance of nostalgia that serenades us in our minds is incomparable and is akin to a feeling of ecstasy. A feeling that hovers in our minds for a humongous period of time, one that takes us to leviathan heights in the midst of chaos and cacophony. It is as if we found a new elixir that rejuvenates us and makes us spring back into life. By Avijeet Das Starry Resplendent Nights Place Pedestal

This dim coolness of my room was to the broad daylight of the street what the shadow is to the sunbeam, that is to say equally luminous, and presented to my imagination the entire panorama of summer, which my senses, if I had been out walking, could have tasted and enjoyed only piecemeal; and so it was quite in harmony with my state of repose which (thanks to the enlivening adventures related in my books) sustained, like a hand reposing motionless in a stream of running water, the shock and animation of a torrent of activity. By Marcel Proust Sustained Sunbeam Luminous Summer Senses

Reinhart rubbed his face with his hand. He could still smell her light, flowery scent, like springtime and lilacs, could still feel her in his arms, and his heart skipped a beat. Seeing her dangling from the balcony, hanging over that deep ravine, knowing she was one moment away from death, sent a bolt of lightning through his veins. Thank You, God. He had arrived in time. He By Melanie Dickerson Reinhart Hand Rubbed Face God

She touched the edge of its voluptuous field, knowing it would be lovely beyond dreams simply to submit to it; that not gravity's pull, laws of ballistics, feral ravening, promised more delight. She tested it, shivering: I am meant to remember. Each clue that comes is supposed to have its own clarity, its fine chances for permanence. But then she wondered if the gemlike "clues" were only some kind of compensation. To make up for her having lost the direct, epileptic Word, the cry that might abolish the night. By Thomas Pynchon Field Knowing Pull Laws Ballistics

Repose is the secret of all contemplation and meditation, the secret of getting in tune with that aspect of life which is the essence of all things. When one is not accustomed to take repose, one does not know what is behind one's being. By Hazrat Inayat Khan Secret Meditation Things Repose Contemplation

The breath of song in your remembering eyes cascades fragile reflections of time-steeped sunsets tinting delicate snowflakes with the solitude of a sleeping forest where ancient secrets lie waiting, undisturbed by knowing, tranquil in the forgetfulness of yesterday's silvery silence By Sean Terrence Best Waiting Undisturbed Knowing Tranquil Silence

I close my eyes And sink within myself Relive the gift of precious memories In need of a fix called innocence When did it begin?The change to come was undetectable The open wounds expose the importance of Our innocence A high that can never be bought or sold By Chuck Schuldiner Relive Innocence Begin Sold Close

Before Summer RainSuddenly, from all the green around you,something-you don't know what-has disappeared;you feel it creeping closer to the window,in total silence. From the nearby woodyou hear the urgent whistling of a plover,reminding you of someone's Saint Jerome:so much solitude and passion comefrom that one voice, whose fierce request the downpourwill grant. The walls, with their ancient portraits, glideaway from us, cautiously, as thoughthey weren't supposed to hear what we are saying.And reflected on the faded tapestries now;the chill, uncertain sunlight of those longchildhood hours when you were so afraid By Rainer Maria Rilke Summer Rainsuddenly Disappeared Silence Green

When to the sessions of sweet silent thoughtI summon up remembrance of things past,I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought ... By William Shakespeare Sought Sessions Sweet Silent Thoughti

Darkness crept through. Shadows pried at doors, teased dull edges of recollections that never quite took hold. Memories that would have shriveled under the blinding sun of daylight. And reason. By Edward Fahey Darkness Crept Shadows Doors Teased

Each time I have a lapse of memory, I think of the anguish which must afflict those who know they no longer remember anything. But something tells me that after a certain time a secret joy possesses them, a joy they would not agree to trade for any of their memories, even the most stirring. ... By Emil Cioran Memory Time Lapse Anguish Afflict

The charm is in waiting... The fragrance of a hope... The sublimity of a dream... The eloquence of a silence... The resplendence of darkness... The heat of winter... The cold of summer... The flashback of a memory... The unliving of a moment... By Avijeet Das Waiting Charm Hope Fragrance Dream

The comfort of reclusion, the poetry of hibernation By Marcel Proust Reclusion Hibernation Comfort Poetry

Afterward, Isabel drove me home and I shut myself in the study with Rilke, and I read and I wanted.And leaving you (there arent words to untangle it) Your life, fearful and immense and blossoming, So that, sometimes frustrated, and sometimes understanding Your life is sometimes a stone in you, and then, a starI was beginning to undertand poetry. By Maggie Stiefvater Life Isabel Rilke Afterward Fearful

I AM RESTLESS AM restless. I am athirst for far-away things.My soul goes out in a longing to touch the skirt of the dim distance.O Great Beyond, O the keen call of thy flute!I forget, I ever forget, that I have no wings to fly, that I am bound in this spot evermore.I am eager and wakeful, I am a stranger in a strange land.Thy breath comes to me whispering an impossible hope.Thy tongue is known to my heart as its very own.O Far-to-seek, O the keen call of thy flute!I forget, I ever forget, that I know not the way, that I have not the winged horse.I am listless, I am a wanderer in my heart.In the sunny haze of the languid hours, what vast vision of thine takes shape in the blue of the sky!O Farthest end, O the keen call of thy flute!I forget, I ever forget, that the gates are shut everywhere in the house where I dwell alone! By Rabindranath Tagore Forget Restless Flute Keen Call

I can still catch the fragrance of many things which stir me with feelings of melancholy and send delicious shivers of delight through me - dark and sunlit streets, houses and towers, clock chimes and people's faces, rooms full of comfort and warm hospitality, rooms full of secret and profound, ghostly fears. It is a world that savours of warm corners, rabbits, servant girls, household remedies and dried fruit. It was the meeting-place of two worlds; day and night came thither from two opposite poles. By Hermann Hesse Rooms Full Warm Dark Streets

The senses reign, and reason now is dead;from one pleasing desire comes another.Virtue, honor, beauty, gracious bearing,sweet words have caught me in her lovely branchesin which my heart is tenderly entangled.In thirteen twenty-seven, and preciselyat the first hour of the sixth of AprilI entered the labyrinth, and I see no way out. By Francesco Petrarca Honor Beauty Reign Dead Anothervirtue

At the magic touch of the beautiful the secret chords of our being are awakened, we vibrate and thrill in response to its call. Mind speaks to mind. We listen to the unspoken, we gaze upon the unseen. The master calls forth notes we know not of. Memories long forgotten all come back to us with a new significance. Hopes stifled by fear, yearnings that we dare not recognise, stand forth in new glory. By Okakura Kakuzo Awakened Magic Touch Beautiful Secret

Wholesome solitude, the nurse of sense! By Alexander Pope Wholesome Solitude Sense Nurse

Clouds, this eveningThe same as always, like thirst,The same red dress, unfastened.Imagine, passerby,Our new beginnings, our eagerness, our trust. By Yves Bonnefoy Clouds Unfastenedimagine Dress Passerbyour Beginnings

This splendid vision dwelt in her memory as the most beautiful thing that it was possible to dream, so that now she strove to recall her sensation. That still lasted, however, but in a less exclusive fashion and with a deeper sweetness. Her soul, tortured by By Gustave Flaubert Dream Sensation Splendid Vision Dwelt

We comfort ourselves by reliving memories of protection. Something closed must retain our memories, while leaving them their original value as images. Memories of the outside world will never have the same tonality as those of home and, by recalling these memories, we add to our store of dreams; we are never real historians, but always near poets, and our emotion is perhaps nothing but an expression of a poetry that was lost. By Gaston Bachelard Memories Protection Comfort Reliving Images

Oft in the stilly night, Ere slumber's chain has bound me, Fond memory brings the light Of other days around me; The smiles, the tears, Of boyhood's years, The words of love then spoken; The eyes that shone Now dimmed and gone, The cheerful hearts now broken. By Charles Lamb Ere Fond Oft Night Smiles

Once in a while, groundless melancholy would darken my face, a dull and incomprehensible nostalgia for times never experienced would invade me. By Clarice Lispector Groundless Face Melancholy Darken Dull

Memory lived not in initial possession but in the freed hands, pardoned and freed, and in the heart that can empty but fill again, in the patterns restored by dreams. By Eudora Welty Freed Memory Hands Pardoned Dreams

Imagination, the traitor of the mind, has taken my solitude and slain it. By Robinson Jeffers Imagination Mind Traitor Solitude Slain

I cannot express the uneasiness caused in me by this intrusion of mystery and beauty into a room I had at last filled with myself to the point of paying no more attention to the room than to that self. The anesthetizing influence of habit having ceased, I would begin to have thoughts, and feelings, and they are such sad things. By Marcel Proust Room Express Uneasiness Caused Intrusion

Even in forgetting there is an aspect of recollection, a faded few moments of wispy consciousness clung like webs in high-vaulted chambers, moving ever so lightly with the draft. By Jeffrey Panzer Recollection Chambers Moving Draft Forgetting

And at that instant, Ivis, so brightly painted in triumph, does the world freeze? Does time itself cease, nothing crawling on; not a single moment following in its usual tumble? But what world offers this impossibility? Only the one begat in a mind, and then raised in chains, never to be set free. The fashioning of nostalgia, my friend, imprisons us. By Steven Erikson Ivis Instant Triumph Freeze Brightly

A while later, I lingered in the hinterlands of sleep. Sometimes I think there is more rest in that place between wakefulness and sleep than there is in true sleep. The mind walks in the twilight of both states, and finds the truths that are hidden alike by daylight and dreams. Things we are not ready to know abide in that place, awaiting that unguarded frame of mind. By Robin Hobb Sleep Lingered Hinterlands Place Mind

I burn the clouds,Knowing that remembrance has thorny flasks.I plough the sky by sea,Knowing that tears are bluer than my joy.I watch my follies in fancy, hoping that sparrows inherit my maze,And listen to those who rouse war from its nap.I see my blood trundled at the borders,I plead to words to gather it on the page. By Basim Furat Fancy Hoping Page Burn Cloudsknowing

... beauty glowing, suddenly expressive, withdrawn the moment after. No one can count on it or seize it or have it wrapped in paper. Nothing is to be won from the shops, and Heaven knows it would be better to sit at home than haunt the plate-glass windows in the hope of lifting the shining green, the glowing ruby, out of them alive. By Virginia Woolf Glowing Beauty Suddenly Expressive Withdrawn

Set a pen to a dream, and the colour drains from it. The ink with which we write seems diluted with something holding too much of reality, and we find that after all we cannot delineate the incredible memory. It is as if our inward selves, released from the bonds of daytime and objectivity, revelled in prisoned emotions which are hastily stifled when we translate them. In dreams and visions lie the greatest creations of man, for on them rests no yoke of line or hue. Forgotten scenes, and lands more obscure than the golden world of childhood, spring into the sleeping mind to reign until awakening puts them to rout. By H.p. Lovecraft Set Pen Colour Drains Reality

Sublime moments refracted,Even if only for seconds,Caught forever in your soul. By Scott Hastie Sublime Soul Moments Refractedeven Secondscaught

The last of Summer is Delight -Deterred by Retrospect.'Tis Ecstasy's revealed Review -Enchantment's Syndicate.To meet it - nameless as it is -Without celestial Mail -Audacious as without a KnockTo walk within the Veil. By Emily Dickinson Delight Deterred Retrospect Tis Review

Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep. By William Shakespeare Ended Air Yea Revels Leave

I'm scared that my world of reverie will soon spill from my head, splashing every horizon in its illusory shade until it's all there is, and home will be a place I'm destined not to find, in this realm or the next. By Stephen Mosley Head Splashing Find Scared World

I remember being unusually pensive that May evening, perhaps it was the heat of Spring's first warm day which, encountering my thick winter blood, forced a dilution upward into a brain weary of straining the last six months to overcome freezing and the long absent thinning of blood stirred a weakening desire for the softer things, a nostalgia, yet a death, a precognition, if you will... By Neal Cassady Blood Spring Evening Encountering Forced

Revival brings back a holy shock to apathy and carelessness. By Winkie Pratney Revival Carelessness Brings Back Holy

I try desperately to conquer the transitory nature of my existence, to trap moments before they evenesce, to untangle the confusion of my past. Every instant disappears in a breath and immediately becomes the past; reality is ephemeral and changing, pure longing. By Isabel Allende Past Existence Evenesce Desperately Conquer

Even people whose lives have been made various by learning sometimes find it hard to keep a fast hold on their habitual views of life, on their faith in the Invisible - nay, on the sense that their past joys and sorrows are a real experience, when they are suddenly transported to a new land, where the beings around them know nothing of their history, and share none of their ideas - where their mother earth shows another lap, and human life has other forms than those on which their souls have been nourished. Minds that have been unhinged from their old faith and love have perhaps sought this Lethean influence of exile in which the past becomes dreamy because its symbols have all vanished, and the present too is dreamy because it is linked with no memories. By George Eliot Invisible Life Nay Faith Past

Long walks are off, and alas, bathing in the sea; fillet steaks and apples and raw blackberries (teeth difficulties) and reading fine print. But there is a great deal left. Operas and concerts, and reading, and the enormous pleasure of dropping into bed and going to sleep, and dreams of every variety. Almost best of all, sitting in the sungently drowsing and there you are againremembering. I remember, I remember, the house where I was born ... By Agatha Christie Long Alas Bathing Sea Fillet

And dazzling memory revive.Refresh the faded tints, Recut the aged prints, And write my old adventures, with the pen Which, on the first day, drew Upon the tablets blue The dancing Pleiads, and the eternal men. By Ralph Waldo Emerson Recut Pleiads Tints Prints Adventures

Forgotten tones of love recur to us, and kind glances shine out of the pastoh so bright and clear!oh so longed after!because they are out of reach; as holiday music from within a prison wallor sunshine seen through the bars; more prized because unattainablemore bright because of the contrast of present darkness and solitude, whence there is no escape. By William Makepeace Thackeray Bright Forgotten Clear Reach Bars

The soul, at peace, reflects the peace without, Forgetting grief as sunset skies forget The morning's transient shower. By Emma Lazarus Forgetting Peace Soul Reflects Shower

Memory, bosom-spring of joy. By Samuel Taylor Coleridge Memory Bosomspring Joy

The cloudless day is richer at its close;A golden glory settles on the lea;Soft, stealing shadows hint of cool reposeTo mellowing landscape, and to calming sea.And in that nobler, gentler, lovelier light,The soul to sweeter, loftier bliss inclines;Freed form the noonday glare, the favour'd sightIncreasing grace in earth and sky divines.But ere the purest radiance crowns the green,Or fairest lustre fills th' expectant grove,The twilight thickens, and the fleeting sceneLeaves but a hallow'd memory of love! By H.p. Lovecraft Soft Freed Gentler Close Lea

We were utterly alone. The hot-springs hotel where we'd had lunch, and the iron bridge, lay hidden in the shadow of the mountains. Every once in a while, as if remembering its duty, the sun showed its face through a break in the clouds. All we could hear were the screeches of crows and the rush of water. Someday, somewhere, I will see this scene, I felt. The opposite of deja-vu - not the feeling that I'd already seen what was around me, but the premonition that I would someday. By Haruki Murakami Utterly Someday Lunch Bridge Lay

I remembered my days and nights of sunshine and starshine, where life was all a wild sweet wonder, a spiritual paradise of unselfish adventure and ethical romance. And I saw before me, ever blazing and burning, the Holy Grail. By Jack London Starshine Romance Remembered Days Nights

Which cheers the sad, revives the old, inspires The young, makes Weariness forget his toil, And Fear her danger; opens a new world When this, the present, palls. By Lord Byron Palls Weariness Fear Sad Revives

One night, the Duarte girl, sang poems set to music in a voice so clear I felt my soul rise up inside my ear. In a garden of clematis, with servants dressed like Gypsies placing candles in the trees, we assembled on the grass, between a Belgian wood and {the Duchess of Lorraine}'s glassy pond. In a pale orange gown I read two pieces I'd prepared...When the ladies clapped their approval in the dark, everything, to me, was suddenly bright and near. By Danielle Dutton Duarte Night Girl Sang Ear

My grief is my castle, which like an eagle's nest is built high up on the mountain peaks among the clouds; nothing can storm it. From it I fly down into reality to seize my prey; but i do not remain down there, I bring it home with me, and this prey is a picture I weave into the tapestries of my palace. There I live as one dead. I immerse everything I have experienced in a baptism of forgetfulness unto an eternal remembrance. Everything finite and accidental is forgotten and erased. Then I sit like an old man, grey-haired and thoughtful, and explain the pictures in a voice as soft as a whisper; and at my side a child sits and listens, although he remembers everything before I tell it. By Soren Kierkegaard Castle Clouds Grief Eagle Nest

Love passed, the Muse appeared, the weather of mind got clarity new-found; now free, I once more weave together emotion, thought, and magic sound. By Alexander Pushkin Thought Muse Love Passed Appeared

The music of cri-cri and cigales droned on in a hypnotic rhythm, punctuated by the occasional croon of the nightingale. I thought of lullabies and how as a child they would placate my disappointment that another day had ended. I was used to sleeping in strange places, and would always focus on sound to relax. In the pawnshop, it was the ticking of grandfather clocks or the tuning of antique instruments. In the thieves' den, it was striking of a match, the bubbling of a water pipe and the gentle murmur floating in off the streets. On the Wastrel, it was the wind or the creaking wood. It was important to me to find lullabies where I could. If death came with a lullaby, perhaps fewer men would fear it. By Meg Merriet Rhythm Punctuated Nightingale Music Cricri

We must, like a painter, take time to stand back from our work, to be still, and thus see what's what ... True repose is standing back to survey the activities that fill our days. By William Mcnamara Painter Work Back Time Stand

I had so identified myself with Rebecca that my own dull self did not exist, had never come to Manderley. I had gone back in thought and in person to the days that were gone. By Daphne Du Maurier Manderley Rebecca Exist Identified Dull

And there is enchantment in the very hour I am now spending with you. Who can tell what a dark, dreary, hopeless life I have dragged on for months past? Doing nothing, expecting nothing; merging night in day; feeling but the sensation of cold when I let the fire go out, of hunger when I forgot to eat: and then a ceaseless sorrow, and, at times, a very delirium of desire to behold my Jane again. Yes: for her restoration I longed, far more than for that of my lost sight. How can it be that Jane is with me, and says she loves me? Will she not depart as suddenly as she came? To-morrow, I fear I shall find her no more. By Charlotte Bronte Enchantment Hour Spending Jane Dreary

So now I lye by Day and toss or rave by Night, since the ratling and perpetual Hum of the Town deny me rest: just as Madness and Phrensy are the vapours which rise from the lower Faculties, so the Chaos of the Streets reaches up even to the very Closet here and I am whirl'd about by cries of Knives to Grind and Here are your Mouse-Traps. I was last night about to enter the Shaddowe of Rest when a Watch-man, half-drunken, thumps at the Door with his Past Three-a-clock and his Rainy Wet Morning. And when at length I slipp'd into Sleep I had no sooner forgot my present Distemper than I was plunged into a worse: I dreamd my self to be lying in a small place under ground, like unto a Grave, and my Body was all broken while others sung. And there was a Face that did so terrifie me that I had like to have expired in my Dream. Well, I will say no more. By Peter Ackroyd Faculties Day Hum Town Madness

I have always wished the present to resemble memory: because the present can be flat at times, and bald as a road. But memory is never like that. It makes hills of feeling in collapsed hours, a scene of enclosure made all precious by its frame. By Lydia Millet Present Times Road Memory Wished

Too many things have changed. Too much time has passed. I'm different now, a man with a pocketful of unconnected but terribly vivid memories. I was looking to dredge up what I'd long forgotten. Most of all, I am wishing for something to fasten all these gems, maybe something to hold them in a continuity that I can comprehend. By Andrew X. Pham Changed Things Passed Time Memories

It had been a winter of deadening seriousness, when all the illusions and bright dreams of my early twenties had withered and died. I did not yet have the interior resources to dream new dreams; I was far too busy mourning the death of the old ones and wondering how I was to survive without them. I was sure I could replace them somehow , but was not sure I could restore their brassy luster or dazzling impress . By Pat Conroy Seriousness Died Dreams Winter Deadening

Days and nights passed over this despair of flesh, but one morning he awoke, looked (with calm now) at the blurred things that lay about him, and felt, inexplicably, the way one might feel upon recognizing a melody or a voice, that all this had happened to him before and that he had faced it with fear but also with joy and hopefulness and curiosity. Then he descended into his memory, which seemed to him endless, and managed to draw up from that vertigo the lost remembrance that gleamed like a coin in the rain - perhaps because he had never really looked at it except (perhaps) in a dream. By Jorge Luis Borges Inexplicably Days Flesh Awoke Felt

An introspective person seeks to attain a pure state of consciousness by merging finitude in infinity and by expressing the rapture of the soul through the contemplation and adoration of beauty. In this brief interlude of time, I surrender to becoming a cog in the roadway, an insentient time traveler, a ward of eternity, a day-tripper, a nighttime dream weaver, a blip in the cosmos, a freebase glob of energy, an imaginable disk of bundled vitality that wants for nothing. By Kilroy J. Oldster Beauty Introspective Person Seeks Attain

There is an evening twilight of the heart, When its wild passion-waves are lulled to rest. By Fitz-Greene Halleck Heart Rest Evening Twilight Wild

At odd moments she may fret over a blank in her memory, but soon a Pied Piper thought will come dancing along and her untrained mind will follow ... By David Mitchell Pied Piper Memory Follow Odd

By means of poetry all this suffering and effort could be transformed into dream; no matter how much of the ephemeral existed, poetry could immortalize it by turning it into song. Only two or three primitive passions had governed me until this time: fear, the struggle to conquer fear, and the yearning for freedom. But now two new passions were kindled inside me: beauty and the thirst for learning. By Nikos Kazantzakis Poetry Dream Existed Song Fear

I see the spectacle of morning from the hilltop over against my house, from daybreak to sunrise, with emotions which an angel might share. The long slender bars of cloud float like fishes in the sea of crimson light. From the earth, as a shore, I look out into that silent sea. I seem to partake its rapid transformations; the active enchantment reaches my dust, and I dilate and conspire with the morning wind. By Ralph Waldo Emerson House Sunrise Share Spectacle Hilltop

At first I protested and rebelled against poetry. I was about to deny my poetic worlds. I was doing violence to my illusions with analysis, science, and learning Henry's language, entering Henry's world. I wanted to destroy by violence and animalism my tenuous fantasies and illusions and my hypersensitivity. A kind of suicide. The ignominy awakened me. Then June came and answered the cravings of my imagination and saved me. Or perhaps she killed me, for now I am started on a course of madness. By Anais Nin Henry Poetry Protested Rebelled Violence

Melancholy is the nurse of frenzy. By William Shakespeare Melancholy Frenzy Nurse

Always. At every moment, asleep and awake, during the most sublime and most abject moments, Amaranta thought of Rebeca, because solitude had made a selection in her memory and had burned the dimming piles of nostalgic waste that life had accumulated in her heart, and had purified, magnified, and eternalized the others, the most bitter ones. By Gabriel Garcia Marquez Amaranta Rebeca Magnified Moment Moments

The memory of that first state of Freedom and paradisiac Unconsciousness has faded away into an ideal poetic dream. We stand here too conscious of many things: with Knowledge, the symptom of Derangement, we must even do our best to restore a little Order. Life is, in few instances, and at rare intervals, the diapason of a heavenly melody; oftenest the fierce jar of disruptions and convulsions, which, do what we will, there is no disregarding. By Thomas Carlyle Freedom Unconsciousness Dream Memory State

There is no secret in the mystery of life stronger and more beautiful than that attachment which converts the silence of a virgin's spirit into a perpetual awareness that makes a person forget the past, for it kindles fiercely in the heart the sweet and overwhelming hope of the coming future. By Khalil Gibran Past Future Secret Mystery Life

When the last days were upon me, and the ugly trifles of existence began to drive me to madness like the small drops of water that torturers let fall ceaselessly upon one spot of their victims body, I loved the irradiate refuge of sleep. In my dreams I found a little of the beauty I had vainly sought in life, and wandered through old gardens and enchanted woods. Once when the wind was soft and scented I heard the south calling, and sailed endlessly and languorously under strange stars. By H.p. Lovecraft Body Sleep Days Ugly Trifles

Have you really not noticed, then, that here of all places, in this private, personal solitude that surrounds me, I have turned to you? All the memories of my youth speak to me as I walk, just as the sea shells crunch under my feet on the beach. The crash of every wave awakens far-distant reverberations within me ... I hear the rumble of bygone days, and in my mind the whole endless series of old passions surges forward like the billows. I remember my spasms, my sorrows, gusts of desire that whistled like wind in the rigging, and vast vague longings that swirled in the dark like a flock of wild gulls in a stormcloud ... On whom should I lean, if not on you? My weary mind turns for refreshment to the thought of you as a dusty traveler might sink onto a soft and grassy bank ... By Gustave Flaubert Noticed Places Private Personal Solitude

Things, I know, stiffen and shift in memory, become what they never were before. As when an army takes over a country. Or a summer yard goes scarlet with fall and its venous leaves. One summons the years of the past largely by witchcraft-a whore's arts, collage and brew, eye of newt, heart of horse. Still, the house of my childhood is etched in my memory like the shape of the mind itself: a house-shaped mind-why not? It was this particular mind out of which I ventured-for any wild danger or sentimental stance or lunge at something faraway. But it housed every seedling act. I floated above it, but close, like a figure in a Chagall. By Lorrie Moore Things Stiffen Shift Memory Mind

He yearned for a thousand tremulous dreams, for cool and delicate images, transparent tints, fleeting scents, and exquisite music from streams of highly strung, tensely drawn silvery strings - and then silence, the innermost heart of silence, where the waves of air never bore a single stray tone, but where all was rest unto death, steeped in the calm glow of red colors and the languid warmth of fiery fragrance. By Jens Peter Jacobsen Silence Dreams Images Transparent Tints

We need a renaissance of wonder. We need to renew, in our hearts and in our souls, the deathless dream, the eternal poetry, the perennial sense that life is miracle and magic. By E. Merrill Root Renaissance Renew Souls Dream Poetry

Moments have fallen from your eyes, like tears written in the wind. There, on the river of knowledge, where you live from your memories. By Kristian Goldmund Aumann Moments Eyes Wind Fallen Tears

paralyzed by the past, caught in the amber of loss. By Karen Perry Paralyzed Past Caught Loss Amber

Memories I had locked away have begun to break free, like shards of ice fracturing off an arctic shelf. In sleep, these broken floes drift toward the morning light of remembrance. By Tan Twan Eng Memories Free Shelf Locked Begun

When the windows like the jackal's eye and desire pierce the dawn, silken windlasses lift me up to suburban footbridges. I summon a girl who is dreaming in the little gilded house; she meets me on the piles of black moss and offers me her lips which are stones in the rapid river depths. Veiled forebodings descend the buildings' steps. The best thing is to flee from the great feather cylinders when the hunters limp into the sodden lands. If you take a bath in the watery patterns of the streets, childhood returns to the country like a greyhound. Man seeks his prey in the breezes and the fruits are drying on the screens of pink paper, in the shadow of the names overgrown by forgetfulness. Joys and sorrows spread in the town. Gold and eucalyptus, similarly scented, attack dreams. Among the bridles and the dark edelweiss subterranean forms are resting like perfumers' corks. By Andre Breton Dawn Silken Footbridges Windows Jackal

But lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of vacant, unconscious reverie is this absent-minded youth by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that at last he loses his identity; By Herman Melville Vacant Unconscious Thoughts Identity Lulled