in the cold light of day

In my over-wrought state of the night before, it had seemed reasonable enough; but here, in the cold light of day, it seemed preposterous.

1912 March, Burton E[gbert] Stevenson, “Preparations”, in The Mystery of the Boule Cabinet: A Detective Story, New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead & Company, published 1918, →OCLC, page 119

To the dreamer, a dream can seem at the time eerily indistinguishable from everyday consciousness yet, in retrospect, upon waking, so self-evidently different. The fragmented narrative, the improbability of much of what happens – flying, for example, or the transmogrification of one individual suddenly into another, and so on – seem ludicrous, even embarrassing, in the cold light of day.

2016, Susan Greenfield, “Dreaming”, in A Day in the Life of the Brain: The Neuroscience of Consciousness from Dawn till Dusk, London: Penguin Books, published 2017, →ISBN

In the cold light of day, we're a flame in the wind / Not the fire that we've begun.

2018 August 16, Marshmello, Steve Mac, Dan Smith, “Happier”, performed by Marshmello and Bastille

But in the cold light of day, and with the Railways Bill passing through Parliament, it's fair to say that not everyone is happy with what's being offered.

2026 March 18, Peter Plisner, “Will devolution deliver real local control?”, in RAIL, number 1057, page 44

And above the crowd of living figures rise colossal forms of armed warriors, and peaceful poets, and sceptred monarchs; these glowing crimson; those standing calm and pale in the cold light of day.

1853, Anna Mary Howitt, “The Casting of the Sieges-Thor, Bavaria”, in An Art-student in Munich. […], volume II, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, →OCLC, page 178

However subtle the social pecking order may have been, the outsider entering the famous town with high expectations saw it in the cold light of day shrink into a philistine backwoods dump.

1989, Rüdiger Safranski, “Weimar”, in Ewald Osers, transl., Schopenhauer and the Wild Years of Philosophy, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, published 1991, →ISBN, book 1, page 72