Life Is a Dream (Spanish: La vida es sueño) is a Spanish language play by Pedro Calderón de la Barca. First published in 1635 (or possibly early in 1636), it is a philosophical allegory regarding the human situation and the mystery of life. Focusing on Segismundo, Prince of Poland, the central argument is the conflict between free will and fate. The play remains one of Calderón's best-known and most studied works.
Read more about Life Is A Dream: Synopsis, The Rosaura Subplot, Segismundo's Soliloquy, Segismundo's Conclusions, Themes and Motifs, Adaptations
Famous quotes containing the words life is, life and/or dream:
“What quarrel, what harshness, what unbelief in each other can subsist in the presence of a great calamity, when all the artificial vesture of our life is gone, and we are all one with each other in primitive mortal needs?”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Virtue and vice suppose the freedom to choose between good and evil; but what can be the morals of a woman who is not even in possession of herself, who has nothing of her own, and who all her life has been trained to extricate herself from the arbitrary by ruse, from constraint by using her charms?... As long as she is subject to man’s yoke or to prejudice, as long as she receives no professional education, as long as she is deprived of her civil rights, there can be no moral law for her!”
—Flora Tristan (1803–1844)
“If we dreamed the same thing every night, it would affect us much as the objects we see every day. And if a common workman were sure to dream every night for twelve hours that he was a king, I believe he would be almost as happy as a king who should dream every night for twelve hours on end that he was a common workman.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)