William Sharp (writer) (1855–1905) Scottish writer
From the Hills of Dream, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
“What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?”
— Wallace Stevens, book Harmonium
"Sunday Morning"
Harmonium (1923)
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Only in silent shadows and in dreams?" by Wallace Stevens?
Wallace Stevens278
American poet 1879–1955Related quotes
Pedro Calderón de la Barca Life is a Dream
¿Qué es la vida? Un frenesí.
¿Qué es la vida? Una ilusión,
una sombra, una ficción,
y el mayor bien es pequeño;
que toda la vida es sueño,
y los sueños, sueños son.
Variant:
What is this life? A frenzy, an illusion,
A shadow, a delirium, a fiction.
The greatest good's but little, and this life
Is but a dream, and dreams are only dreams.
(trans. Roy Campbell)
Segismundo, Act II, l. 1195.
La vida es sueño (Life is a Dream)
“Creatures of a day! What is a man?
What is he not? A dream of a shadow
Is our mortal being.”
Pindar (-517–-437 BC) Ancient Greek poet
Pythian 8, line 95-8; pages 162-3. (446 BC)
Context: Creatures of a day! What is a man?
What is he not? A dream of a shadow
Is our mortal being. But when there comes to men
A gleam of splendour given of Heaven,
Then rests on them a light of glory
And blesséd are their days.
“The true work of art
is but a shadow of the divine perfection”
Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet
Bu Ali Shah Qalandar (1209–1324) Indian Sufi saint
Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004), p. 271
John C. Wright book Orphans of Chaos
Source: Orphans of Chaos (2005), Chapter 23, “Dreams and Desires” Section 1 (p. 305)
“I tend to watch silently from the shadows. You learn a lot more that way.”
Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist
Source: Infinity
R.S. Thomas (1913–2000) Welsh poet
Neb [No-one] (1985)
Context: On seeing his shadow fall on such ancient rocks, he had to question himself in a different context and ask the same old question as before, "Who am I?", and the answer now came more emphatically than ever before, "No-one."
But a no-one with a crown of light about his head. He would remember a verse from Pindar: "Man is a dream about a shadow. But when some splendour falls upon him from God, a glory comes to him and his life is sweet."