Shakespeare

"You do look, my son, in a moved sort,
As if you were dismay'd: be cheerful sir.
Our revels are now ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind.
We are such stuff as dreams are made on;
and our little life
is rounded with a sleep."

The Tempest (IV, i, 145).


"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players,
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts."

As You Like It (II, vii, 140).