Mary Shelley Quotes

The realities of the world seldom measure up to the sublime designs of human imagination.

I trained as a ballet dancer and fell in love with Rudolf Nureyev; I thought him the most beautiful creature. My mum had to break it to me that not only was he gay, but he was dead.

The dream is real, my friends. The failure to realize it is the only unreality.

The best work of literature to represent the American Dream is 'The Great Gatsby' by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It shows us how dreaming can be tainted by reality, and that if you don't compromise, you may suffer.

Even the largest of my dreams and ambitions, I realize with increasing dismay, were puny, measly, compared to the object of my dreaming. I would not say my life to date has been built overmuch of compromise, but still, it surrounds me.

I was one of those kids who thought I could be the president of England when I grew up if I wanted to. Then I started acting and realized life is hard, and people are mean. And there's no president of England, and I'm not British.

The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.

When you're young and idealistic, you don't care: you'll play to no one, in your bedroom - like kids with football - you'll play anywhere; you just love the music. And then, bang - soon as you're in the industry, you think that's the dream. But that's when the dream starts to end.

Everyone succumbs to finitude. I suspect I am not the only one who reaches this pluperfect state. Most ambitions are either achieved or abandoned; either way, they belong to the past. The future, instead of the ladder toward the goals of life, flattens out into a perpetual present.

Science has promised us truth...It has never promised us either peace or happiness.

Mind the gap - it's the distance between life as you dream it and life as it is.

Not to dream more boldly may turn out to be, in view of present realities, simply irresponsible.

I got a dream that's worth more than my reality.

I don't necessarily view death as something negative. Death gives meaning to life. Living in fear of death is living in denial. Actually, it's not really living at all, because there is no life without death. It's two sides of the one. You can't pick up one side and say, I'm just going to use the 'heads' side. No. It doesn't work like that. You have to pick up both sides because nothing is promised to anyone in this world besides death.

And then the dreams break into a million tiny pieces. The dream dies. Which leaves you with a choice: you can settle for reality, or you can go off, like a fool, and dream another dream.

Because I do not hope to turn again Because I do not hope Because I do not hope to turn Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope I no longer strive to strive towards such things (Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?) Why should I mourn The vanished power of the usual reign?

Although it is a gloomy view to suppose that life will die out, sometimes when I contemplate the things that people do with their lives I think it is almost a consolation

Most people think, when they're young, that they're going to the top of their chosen world, and that the climb up is only a formality. Without that faith, I suppose, they might never start. Somewhere on the way they lift their eyes to the summit and know they aren't going to reach it; and happiness then is looking down and enjoying the view they've got, not envying the one they haven't.

Dreams age faster than dreamers.

Life after death is as improbable as sex after marriage!

Well now what's the use in dreamin' You got better things to do Dreams never did work for me anyway Even when they did come true

Life is a process of losing our illusions, until we finally lose the illusion that we're alive.

The more delicate and ambitious the soul, the further do dreams estrange it from possible things.

I've not only pursued the American dream, I've achieved it. I suppose we could say the last few years, I've also achieved the American nightmare.

What separated me from all my homeboys is the fact that I didn't get caught inside the reality. I was always dreaming about doing something else or going somewhere else.