The great under-monotone of real life

Men speak of dreaming as if it were a phenomenon of night and sleep. They should know better.

All results achieved by us are self-promised, and all self-promises are made in dreams awake. Dreaming is the relief of labor, the wine that sustains us in act.

We learn to love labor, not for itself, but for the opportunity it furnishes for dreaming, which is the great under-monotone of real life, unheard, unnoticed, because of its constancy.

Living is dreaming.

Only in the grave are there no dreams.

Source: Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ by Lew Wallace