Source: Memories of Midnight
“Man is a torch borne in the wind; a dream
But of a shadow, summ'd with all his substance.”
Act I, scene i.
Bussy D'Ambois (1607)
“The Constitution deals with substance, not shadows.”
Cummings v. State of Missouri, 71 U. S. 277, 325 (1866).
¿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)
Quoted in John Dewey and American Democracy by Robert Westbrook (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), p. 440; cited in Understanding Power http://www.understandingpower.com/Chapter9.htm#f16| (2002) by Noam Chomsky, ch. 9, footnote 16; originally from "The Need for a New Party" (1931) by John Dewey, Later Works 6, http://books.google.com/books?id=0xPFJ2uwpbIC&lpg=PA163&ots=dd3ciwpXoJ&dq=%22shadow%20cast%22%20dewey&pg=PA163#v=onepage&q&f=false| p. 163. (Via Westbrook.)
Misc. Quotes
Which I thought was very appropriate.
On reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the last book of the Harry Potter series, as quoted in "Daniel Radcliffe" by Chris Norris in Details (October 2008) http://men.style.com/details/blogs/thegadabout/2008/09/daniel-radcliff.html
“Man’s life is but a jest,
A dream, a shadow, bubble, air, a vapor at the best.”
The Jester’s Sermon. Compare: "Life is a jest and all things show it; I thought so once, but now I know it", John Gay, My own Epitaph; "Life is an empty dream", Robert Browning, Paracelsus, ii.; "Life ’s but a series of trifles at best", Anonymous.
“Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.”
The Dog and the Shadow.
“As shadows attend substances, so words follow upon things.”
Study of Words; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 907.
