Dreams are the touchstones of our characters. We are scarcely less afflicted when we remember some unworthiness in our conduct in a dream than if it had been actual and the intensity of our grief which is our atonement measures inversely the degree by which this is separated from an actual unworthiness. For in dreams we but act a part which must have been learned and rehearsed in our waking hours and no doubt could discover some waking consent thereto. If this meanness has not its foundation in us why are we grieved at it

In dreams we see ourselves naked and acting out our real characters even more clearly than we see others awake. 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.

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind will pass an invisible boundary new universal and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him or the old laws be expanded and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings.

I delight to come to my bearingsnot walk in procession with pomp and parade in a conspicuous place but to walk even with the Builder of the universe if I maynot to live in this restless nervous bustling trivial Nineteenth Century but stand or sit thoughtfully while it goes by. What are men celebrating They are all on a committee of arrangements and hourly expect a speech from somebody. God is only the president of the day and Webster is his orator. I love to weigh to settle to gravitate toward that which most strongly and rightfully attracts menot hang by the beam of the scale and try to weigh lessnot suppose a case but take the case that is

Dreams are the touchstones of our characters