“Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
"Life is but an empty dream!"”
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
St. 1.
A Psalm of Life (1839)
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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 202
American poet 1807–1882Related quotes

Source: The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877), II
Context: Yes, I dreamed a dream, my dream of the third of November. They tease me now, telling me it was only a dream. But does it matter whether it was a dream or reality, if the dream made known to me the truth? If once one has recognized the truth and seen it, you know that it is the truth and that there is no other and there cannot be, whether you are asleep or awake. Let it be a dream, so be it, but that real life of which you make so much I had meant to extinguish by suicide, and my dream, my dream — oh, it revealed to me a different life, renewed, grand and full of power!

“I’m in mourning for my life.”
Act I
The Seagull (1896)

“The ancient empty street's too dead for dreaming.”
Song lyrics, Bringing It All Back Home (1965), Mr. Tambourine Man

“If life but a dream, then
WAKE ME!”
"Keep Your Eyes Peeled", ...Like Clockwork (2013)
Lyrics, Queens of the Stone Age
“Life's for living, not for mourning … Live in the present, not the past.”
The Wheel of Fortune (1984), Part 6: Hal

“To-morrow it seem
Like the empty words of a dream
Remembered on waking.”
I Love all Beauteous Things, st. 2.
Poetry