We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
— Prospero, The Tempest · William Shakespeare
We're made of the same stuff as dreams, and our brief life is wrapped in sleep at both ends.
Prospero reflects that everything — the pageant, the world, human life — is as insubstantial as a dream, and ends in the sleep of death. It is Shakespeare's gentlest meditation on mortality: not bitter, but calmly aware of how fleeting it all is.