Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.
 Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849). copy citation

Context

“But an unwavering and commanding virtue would compel even its most fantastic and faintest dreams to respect its ever-wakeful authority; as we are accustomed to say carelessly, we should never have dreamed of such a thing. Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.
«And, more to lulle him in his slumber soft, A trickling streame from high rock tumbling downe, And ever-drizzling raine upon the loft, Mixt with a murmuring winde, much like the sowne Of swarming bees, did cast him in a swowne.” source

Meaning and analysis

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