“Those who have compared our life to a dream were right…”
Book II, Ch. 12
Variant translation: 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 betwixt night and the meridian brightness of the sun, but as betwixt night and shade; there she sleeps, here she slumbers; but, whether more or less, ‘tis still dark, and Cimmerian darkness. We wake sleeping, and sleep waking.
Essais (1595), Book II
Kontext: Those who have compared our life to a dream were right... We are sleeping awake, and waking asleep.