"The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up"
About this Quote
Valery’s line lands like a cold splash of water: not anti-dream, but anti-sedation. A poet telling you to wake up is a deliberate provocation, because poetry is supposed to dignify reverie, not scold it. The wit is in the pivot of “dreams”: the private, sleeping kind and the ambitious, life-shaping kind. Valery collapses them into the same word so he can separate them with a single motion - consciousness as the real engine of desire.
The subtext is a critique of romanticized passivity. “Dreams” are cheap when they’re weightless, untested, endlessly renewable. Waking up is costlier: it means time, consequence, the friction of the real. In that sense, the quote isn’t motivational poster optimism; it’s a warning about the narcotic pleasure of imagining a life instead of building one. Valery’s elegance masks a hard ethical claim: aspiration without attention is self-indulgence.
Context sharpens the edge. Writing in the aftermath of Symbolism’s misty interiority and alongside the shocks of modernity and war, Valery was obsessed with the discipline of mind - the “work” of thinking, revising, starting over. He kept notebooks like a scientist of his own consciousness. So “wake up” isn’t just get out of bed; it’s an aesthetic program: trade the intoxication of pure feeling for clarity, method, and craft.
That’s why the sentence works. It flatters no one. It turns the dreamer’s favorite alibi into an assignment.
The subtext is a critique of romanticized passivity. “Dreams” are cheap when they’re weightless, untested, endlessly renewable. Waking up is costlier: it means time, consequence, the friction of the real. In that sense, the quote isn’t motivational poster optimism; it’s a warning about the narcotic pleasure of imagining a life instead of building one. Valery’s elegance masks a hard ethical claim: aspiration without attention is self-indulgence.
Context sharpens the edge. Writing in the aftermath of Symbolism’s misty interiority and alongside the shocks of modernity and war, Valery was obsessed with the discipline of mind - the “work” of thinking, revising, starting over. He kept notebooks like a scientist of his own consciousness. So “wake up” isn’t just get out of bed; it’s an aesthetic program: trade the intoxication of pure feeling for clarity, method, and craft.
That’s why the sentence works. It flatters no one. It turns the dreamer’s favorite alibi into an assignment.
Quote Details
| Topic | Motivational |
|---|---|
| Source | Later attribution: Hamster to Harmony Get Off the 'Wheel' and Live Your Best... (Maurice DeCastro, 2009) modern compilationISBN: 9781905823482 · ID: 9gr2QI_AlJUC
Evidence:
... The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.” Paul Valery Ok, so now you've finally stopped your wheel, after all those years, all that energy, and all that effort. I guess it feels a little weird, maybe you even feel ... |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Valery, Paul. (2026, February 12). The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-best-way-to-make-your-dreams-come-true-is-to-125839/
Chicago Style
Valery, Paul. "The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up." FixQuotes. February 12, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-best-way-to-make-your-dreams-come-true-is-to-125839/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up." FixQuotes, 12 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-best-way-to-make-your-dreams-come-true-is-to-125839/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.
More Quotes by Paul
Add to List
