QuoteProject
Our most emotionally active life is lived in our dreams, and our cells renew themselves most industriously in sleep. We reach highest in meditation, and farthest in prayer. In stillness every human being is great; he is free from the experience of hostility; he is a poet, and most like an angel.
Leonard Bernstein
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Our inner lives and potential are best expressed in stillness and dreams.

This quote by Leonard Bernstein highlights the significance of our emotional and spiritual life, emphasizing that in moments of stillness—such as sleep, meditation, and prayer—we find our greatest selves. It suggests that through these peaceful experiences, we can rise above negativity and experience profound creativity and freedom, connecting with our inner greatness and potential.

Themes

DreamsMeditationStillnessSpiritualityInner Greatness

In practice

Example use cases

During a motivational speech on personal growth, one could use this quote to emphasize the importance of inner peace.

More from Leonard Bernstein

From New Year's on the outlook brightens; good humor lost in a mood of failure returns. I resolve to stop complaining.
Leonard BernsteinRead
Any great art work … revives and readapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world - the extent to which it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air.
Leonard BernsteinRead
The key to the mystery of a great artist is that for reasons unknown, he will give away his energies and his life just to make sure that one note follows another... and leaves us with the feeling that something is right in the world.
Leonard BernsteinRead
A liberal is a man or a woman or a child who looks forward to a better day, a more tranquil night, and a bright, infinite future.
Leonard BernsteinRead
Stillness is our most intense mode of action. It is in our moments of deep quiet that is born every idea, emotion, and drive which we eventually honor with the name of action. We reach highest in meditation, and farthest in prayer. In stillness every human being is great.
Leonard BernsteinRead
In the olden days, everybody sang. You were expected to sing as well as talk. It was a mark of the cultured man to sing.
Leonard BernsteinRead

Similar quotes

I have always tried to make room for anything that wanted to come to me from within.
Carl JungRead
Never, never rest contented with any circle of ideas, but always be certain that a wider one is still possible.
Pearl BaileyRead
It seems that the necessary thing to do is not to fear mistakes, to plunge in, to do the best that one can, hoping to learn enough from blunders to correct them eventually.
Abraham MaslowRead
It is the privilege of genius that life never grows common place, as it does for the rest of us.
James Russell LowellRead
Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not truth. Truth is not beauty. Beauty is not love. Love is not music. Music is THE BEST.
Frank ZappaRead
I think time management as a label encourages people to view each 24-hour period as a slot in which they should pack as much as possible.
Tim FerrissRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.