When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.
 Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature (1836). copy citation

add
Author Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source Nature
Topic life dream
Date 1836
Language English
Reference
Note
Weblink https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Nature,_Addresses_and_Lectures/Nature

Context

“We own and disown our relation to it, by turns. We are, like Nebuchadnezzar, dethroned, bereft of reason, and eating grass like an ox. But who can set limits to the remedial force of spirit? 'A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams. Now, the world would be insane and rabid, if these disorganizations should last for hundreds of years. It is kept in check by death and infancy. Infancy is the perpetual Messiah, which comes into the arms of fallen men, and pleads with them to return to paradise.” source