Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“We live, as we dream—alone.”
- Source
- Heart of Darkness
- Date
- 1899
Meaning of “We live, as we dream—alone.”
Marlow describes the difficulty of transferring the full inner texture of experience to another person, suggesting that some dimensions of consciousness remain irreducibly private.
Where does it come from?
Heart of Darkness, Part I, Project Gutenberg #219. Marlow says ‘We live, as we dream—alone’ while explaining to his listeners that the lived ‘life-sensation’ of an earlier period cannot be fully conveyed to another person. The line remains fictional narration inside Conrad's colonial-era novella rather than a clinical or universal psychological finding about loneliness.