life on planet earth on Nightmares

How many of our daydreams would darken into nightmares if there seemed any danger of their coming true!

An elderly man had horrible nightmares, the same event happening over and over in his dreams. He would dream that an enormous green dragon was chasing him, and he would become frantic. Then, just abou...

We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream; it may be so the moment after death.

Dreams say what they mean, but they don't say it in daytime language.

Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.

Fear grows in darkness; if you think there’s a bogeyman around, turn on the light.

Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?

“We walk away from our dreams afraid that we may fail, or worse yet, afraid we may succeed.”

Dreams are today's answers to tomorrow's questions.

I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Disturb us, O Lord, when We are too pleased with ourselves, When our dreams have come true Because we dreamed too little, When we arrived safely Because we sailed too close to the shore. Disturb us, O...

The accomplished science fiction writer and futurist H.G. Wells lived through the dark days of the Blitz in London (during the Second World War). One evening, a fellow writer named Elizabeth Bowen fou...

You see things; and you say, “Why?” But I dream things that never were; and I say, “Why not?”

The Land of What-Ifs is a tempting place to dwell. It is also a dangerous place to be. And chances are, if you flipped to this page, you’re stepping foot into its territory. Before you even pull the c...

A man named Jack was driving on a dark country road one night when he got a flat tire. He saw a cabin in the woods and began to walk towards it. He told himself that the person who answered the door w...

The center of every man's existence is a dream. Death, disease, insanity, are merely material accidents, like a toothache or a twisted ankle. That these brutal forces always besiege and often capt...

The mind in all its intricate beauty can be a place of great anguish. Thoughts can both grip us for the good and plague us for that which is not. In Dickens’ Christmas novella, The Chimes, he describe...

The worst evils of life are those which do not exist except in our imagination. If we had no troubles but real troubles, we should not have a tenth part of our present sorrows. We feel a thousand deat...

Psychologists tell us that one of the most difficult conditions a person can be forced to bear is light deprivation. Darkness, in fact, is often used in military captivity or penal institutions to bre...

In his book, Running Scared, Pychologist Edward Welch illustrates how the fear of an event is often worse than the event itself. To demonstrate this, he provides two examples of people whose lives are...

The nearer the dawn, the darker the night

A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.

When my eldest son, Drew, was a toddler, bedtime was a battleground in our house. I think he felt cheated by the prospect of sleep. He hated the thought of going to bed while the rest of the world con...

Years ago, I read an old fairy tale about a wicked witch who lived in a remote cottage in the deep forest. When travelers came through looking for lodging, she offered them a meal and a bed. It was th...

God’s gifts put man’s best dreams to shame.

Last night REM wasn’t a sleep cycle I sank into but a 1990s rock band encouraging me to “stand in the place where you are.” My hands throb.

I believe there are visions that come to us only in memory, in retrospect.

When I was six years old, my dad let me stay up late with the rest of the family and watch the movie The Wolf Man. Boy, did he regret that decision. The film left me convinced that the wolf man spent ...

Nothing happens unless first we dream.

Editor’s Note: This story is often told as a true story, when in fact it is probably fictitious. Nevertheless, there is a significant illustrative point: sometimes the things we fear most may in fact ...