Those who have compared our life to a dream were right. ... We sleeping wake, and waking asleep.

Ceux qui ont apparié notre vie à un songe ont eu de la raison. ... Nous veillons dormants et veillants dormons.

Original text (French)

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Notes from Wikiquote

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. (tr. Cotton, rev. W. Carew Hazlitt, 1877)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Michel de Montaigne (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.