
“When two people dream the same dream, it ceases to be an illusion.”
Lies, Inc. (1984)
1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), Experience
Context: Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and, as we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only what lies in its focus.
“When two people dream the same dream, it ceases to be an illusion.”
Lies, Inc. (1984)
Ultralight Beam
Lyrics, The Life of Pablo (2016)
¿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)
“The possibility of the impossible, dreams and illusions, are the subject of my novels.”
Introduction
The Stone Raft (1994)
“Why live life from dream to dream? And dread the day when dreaming ends.”
Source: Moulin Rouge!: The Splendid Book That Charts the Journey of Baz Luhrmann's Motion Picture
“Knowing not to have illusions is absolutely necessary in order to have dreams.”
Ibid., p. 276
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Saber não ter ilusões é absolutamente necessário para se poder ter sonhos.
Socrates, p. 35
L'Âme et la danse (1921)
Enlightenment
Song lyrics, Enlightenment (1990)
“Death only grasps; to live is to pursue, —
Dream on! there 's nothing but illusion true!”
"The Old Player" (1861), in Songs in Many Keys (1862).
Context: Dream on! Though Heaven may woo our open eyes,
Through their closed lids we look on fairer skies;
Truth is for other worlds, and hope for this;
The cheating future lends the present's bliss;
Life is a running shade, with fettered hands,
That chases phantoms over shifting sands;
Death a still spectre on a marble seat,
With ever clutching palms and shackled feet;
The airy shapes that mock life's slender chain,
The flying joys he strives to clasp in vain,
Death only grasps; to live is to pursue, —
Dream on! there 's nothing but illusion true!