William Shakespeare Quotes

Whatever happens in the world is real, what one thinks should have happened is projection. We suffer more from our fictitious illusion and expectations of reality.

I'm particularly interested in how you can't rely on your own perception.

What we wish, we readily believe, and what we ourselves think, we imagine others think also.

Reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know.

... imagination robs us in great measure of reality...

I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world, to release the truth within us, to hold back the night, to transcend death, to charm motorways, to ingratiate ourselves with birds, to enlist the confidences of madmen.

I think nighttime is dark so you can imagine your fears with less distraction.

The most evident difference springs from the important part which is played in man by a relatively strong power of imagination and by the capacity to think, aided as it is by language and other symbolically devices.

I thought the most beautiful thing in the world must be shadow, the million moving shapes and cul-de-sacs of shadow. There was shadow in bureau drawers and closets and suitcases, and shadow under houses and trees and stones, and shadow at the back of people's eyes and smiles, and shadow, miles and miles and miles of it, on the night side of the earth.

I heard the bells from the future churches, the children playing and laughing in the schoolyards [...] and here was an almond tree in bloom before me: I must reach out and cut a flowering branch. For, by believing passionately in something which still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired, whatever we have not irrigated with our blood to such a degree that it becomes strong enough to stride across the somber threshold of nonexistence.

The sky is changed,-and such a change! O night And storm and darkness! ye are wondrous strong, Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light Of a dark eye in woman! Far along, From peak to peak, the rattling crags among, Leaps the live thunder.

We all dream profusely every night, yet by morning we've forgotten ninety percent of what went on. That's why poets are such important members of society. Poets remember our dreams for us.

if something is there, you can only see it with your eyes open, but if it isn't there, you can see it just as well with your eyes closed. That's why imaginary things are often easier to see than real ones.

It is an overactive imagination that turns men into cowards, not a surfeit of fear, as many believe

The library is inhabited by spirits that come out of the pages at night.

It occurs to me that we allow ourselves to imagine only such messages as we need to survive.

Those of us that had been up all night were in no mood for coffee and donuts, we wanted strong drink. We were, after all, the cream of the national sporting press.

When we question our thoughts, we see that the craziness was never in the world, but in us.

A person must have a good memory to keep the promises he has made. A person must have a strong imagination to be able to have pity. So closely is morality tied to the quality of the intellect.

The Land of Dreams, that mystical realm, where the oddest of visions appear, come wander through scenes of joyful peace, or stampeded through nightmares of fear. Dare we open those secret doors, down dusty paths of mind, in long-forgotten corners, what memories we'll find. Who rules o'er the Kingdom of Night, where all is not what it seems? 'Tis I, the Weaver of Tales, for I am the Dreamer of Dreams!

Your ideas need not have anything to do with reality. Making conclusions is a sure way of not enhancing our perception.

Photographic fantasy: more agile and faster in discoveries than murky subconscious processes!

My thoughts by night are often filled With visions false as fair: For in the past alone, I build My castles in the air.

Now come the whispers bearing bouquets of moonbeams and sunlight tremblings.