
On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense (1873)
"Walter de la Mare", p. 393
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)
On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense (1873)
“Sometimes dreams are wiser than waking.”
Black Elk Speaks (1961)
Context: A long time ago my father told me what his father told him, that there was once a Lakota holy man, called Drinks Water, who dreamed what was to be; and this was long before the coming of the Wasichus. He dreamed that the four-leggeds were going back into the earth and that a strange race had woven a spider's web all around the Lakotas. And he said: "When this happens, you shall live in square gray houses, in a barren land, and beside those square gray houses you shall starve." They say he went back to Mother Earth soon after he saw this vision, and it was sorrow that killed him. You can look about you now and see that he meant these dirt-roofed houses we are living in, and that all the rest was true. Sometimes dreams are wiser than waking.
“Surely something resides in this heart that is not perishable, and life is more than a dream.”
Letters Written in Sweden (1796)
Context: It appears to me impossible that I should cease to exist, or that this active, restless spirit, equally alive to joy and sorrow, should only be organised dust — ready to fly abroad the moment the spring snaps, or the spark goes out which kept it together. Surely something resides in this heart that is not perishable, and life is more than a dream.
Le Manifeste du Surréalisme, Andre Breton (Manifesto of Surrealism; 1924)
Attributed from posthumous publications
“If the dream is a translation of waking life, waking life is also a translation of the dream.”