Men speak of dreaming as if it were a phenomenon of night and sleep. They should know better. All results achieved by us are self-promised, and all self-promises are made in dreams awake. Dreaming is the relief of labor,the wine that sustains us in act. We learn to love labor, not for itself, but for the opportunity it furnishes for dreaming, which is the great under-monotone of real life, unheard, unnoticed, because of its constancy. Living is dreaming. Only in the graves are there no dreams.
Interpretation
Dreaming is a vital part of living and achieving, transcending mere night visions.
This quote emphasizes that dreaming is not merely confined to sleep; it is integral to our waking lives and aspirations. Lew Wallace suggests that all our accomplishments originate from our ability to dream while awake, providing motivation and purpose to our labor. The quote also posits that dreaming is essential for a meaningful life, as it sustains our efforts and fuels our passions, highlighting how dreams permeate our existence, making life a continuous journey of aspiration.
In practice
During a motivational speech, one might evoke this quote to inspire creativity and perseverance in a workforce.
I know what I should love to do - to build a study; to write, and to think of nothing else. I want to bury myself in a den of books. I want to saturate myself with the elements of which they are made, and breathe their atmosphere until I am of it. Not a bookworm, being which is to give off no utterances; but a man in the world of writing - one with a pen that shall stop men to listen to it, whether they wish to or not.
Panic is rare, looting is essentially insignificant, people are not terrified and trampling each other to flee from a disaster scene, but in fact are trying to manage a situation. We may in fact revert to some sort of primordial civility.
In antiquity the sage kings recognized that men's nature is bad and that their tendencies were not being corrected and their lawlessness controlled.
'Memory.' 'Race.' 'Murder.' That's what they say about me. I am an elegiac poet. I have some historical questions, and I'm grappling with ways to make sense of history; why it still haunts us in our most intimate relationships with each other, but also in our political decisions.
Early on, you talk about God because you consider Him to be most important. But later, you realize there are means by which God is known and portrayed.
wherever you find the greatest good, you will find the greatest evil, because evil loves paradise as much as good.
The hypocrite who always plays one and the same part ceases at last to be a hypocrite.
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