Reflections

Primary Sources

Thursday, February 10, 2022

Tidbits from Montaigne 37


They who have compared our lives to a dream were, perhaps, more in the right than they were aware of. 

When we dream, the soul lives, works, and exercises all its faculties, neither more nor less than when awake; but more largely and obscurely, yet not so much, neither, that the difference should be as great as between night and the meridian brightness of the sun, but as between night and shade; there she sleeps, here she slumbers; but, whether more or less, it is still dark, and Cimmerian darkness. 

We wake sleeping, and sleep waking. 

—Michel de Montaigne, Essays 2.12

IMAGE: Antonio de Pereda, The Knight's Dream (c  1650)



No comments:

Post a Comment