A Quote by James Allen

The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak sleeps in the acorn, the bird waits in the egg, and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities.

James Allen

Quote Topics

Dreams Time Achievement Acorn Angel Bird Dream Egg First Greatest Greatest Achievement Highest Oak Realities Seedlings Sleeps Soul Vision Waits Waking

Quote Author

James Allen
British - Author
November 28, 1864 - January 24, 1912

It takes time for an acorn to turn into an oak, but the oak is already implied in the acorn.

Alan Watts

Every noble achievement is a dream before it is a reality just as the oak is an acorn before it is a tree.

Patience Strong

Time is different for a tree than for a man. Sun and soil and water, these are the things a weirwood understands, not days and years and centuries. For men, time is a river. We are trapped in its flow, hurtling from past to present, always in the same direction. The lives of trees are different. They root and grow and die in one place, and that river does not move them. The oak is the acorn, the acorn is the oak.

George R. R. Martin

You are not the last dream of my soul. You are the first dream, the only dream I ever was unable to stop myself from dreaming. You are the first dream of my soul, and from that dream I hope will come all other dreams, a lifetime’s worth.

Cassandra Clare

The authorities teach that next to the first emanation, which is the Son coming out of the Father, the angels are most like God. And it may well be true, for the soul at its highest is formed like God, but an angel gives a closer idea of Him. That is all an angel is: an idea of God. For this reason the angel was sent to the soul, so that the soul might be re-formed by it, to be the divine idea by which it was first conceived.

Meister Eckhart

The greatest achievement was, at first, and for a time, but a dream.

Napoleon Hill

What I have in mind when I start to write could fit inside an acorn-an acorn, moreover, that rarely if ever grows into an oak. Write fiction and you relinquish reason. You start with an acorn and you end up with a mackerel.

Philip Roth

Organic growth is a cyclical process; it is just as true to say that the oak is a potential acorn as it is to say the acorn is a potential oak. But the process of writing a poem, of making any art object, is not cyclical but a motion in one direction toward a definite end.

W. H. Auden

A potential person is not a person, any more than an acorn is an oak tree. I don't think women should have to give birth just because a sperm met an egg.

Katha Pollitt

God sleeps in the rock, dreams in the plant, stirs in the animal, and awakens in man.

Ibn Arabi

Because waking I often observe the absurdity of dreams, but never dream of the absurdities of my waking thoughts, I am well satisfied that being awake, I know I dream not; though when I dream, I think myself awake.

Thomas Hobbes

Everyone needs time to develop their dreams. An egg in the nest doesn't become a bird overnight.

Lois Ehlert

The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world. The bird flies to God. The God's name is Abraxas.

Hermann Hesse

We are, in a certain way, defined as much by our potential as by its expression. There is a great difference between an acorn and a little bit of wood carved into an acorn shape, a difference not always readily apparent to the naked eye. The difference is there even if the acorn never has the opportunity to plant itself and become an oak. Remembering its potential changes the way in which we think of the acorn and react to it. How we value it. If an acorn were conscious, knowing its potential would change the way that it might think and feel about itself.

Rachel Naomi Remen

When we dream, we create. All of life is a dream or a series of waking dreams. We dream our surroundings. We dream our friends, our relations. We dream our bodies. We dream our dreams.