quotations about sleep
Sleep is the gift of many spiders
The webs tie down the sleepers easy.
CARL SANDBURG
"Drowsy"
I think sleep is unrated.
TRACI LORDS
Twitter post, September 19, 2014
Care-charming Sleep, thou easer of all woes,
Brother to Death, sweetly thyself dispose.
JOHN FLETCHER
The Tragedy of Valentinian
It's in the morning, for most of us. It's that time, those few seconds when we're coming out of sleep but we're not really awake yet. For those few seconds we're something more primitive than what we are about to become. We have just slept the sleep of our most distant ancestors, and something of them and their world still clings to us. For those few moments we are unformed, uncivilized. We are not the people we know as ourselves, but creatures more in tune with a tree than a keyboard. We are untitled, unnamed, natural, suspended between was and will be.
JERRY SPINELLI
Stargirl
Dream that sleep is a sunlit meadow
Drowsy with a dream of bees
Threading sun, and the shadow
Where you lie lulled by their sunlit industries.
Let the murmurous bees of sleep
Tread down honey in honeycomb.
Heart-deep now, your dream will keep
Sweet in that deep comb for time to come.
Dream the sweetness coming on.
Dream, sweet son.
Sleep on.
ROBERT PENN WARREN
"Lullaby: Smile in Sleep"
Thus, sleep is a refreshing shower
To man's body, soul, and mind;
Nature's mysterious remedy
In potations, sweet and kind.
Could we ever keep on journeying
Through the bitter ills of life,
If there were no peacefulness in sleep,
No tonic to sweeten strife?
VENELIA R. CASE
Grange Poems
The emptiness under sleep is all you fear,
The dead directionless winds that blow there.
HOWARD NEMEROV
"To the Memory of John Wheelwright"
That daily the night falls; that over stresses and torments, cares and sorrows the blessing of sleep unfolds, stilling and quenching them; that every anew this draught of refreshment and lethe is offered to our parching lips, ever after the battle this mildness laves our shaking limbs, that from it, purified from sweat and dust and blood, strengthened, renewed, rejuvenated, almost innocent once more, almost with pristine courage and zeal we may go forth again -- these I hold to be the benignest, the most moving of all the great facts of life.
THOMAS MANN
"Sleep, Sweet Sleep"
Sleep is the gift of gifts! most prized! most sweet!
The grant of mercy from offended heav'n!
The golden sceptre of the King of kings!
Nature's great fold, where, all who enter in,
The fierce, the strong, the wretched, and the vile,
Are by its mystic influence, made lambs!
C. B. LANGSTON
"What Is Sleep?"
Sleep is the best meditation.
DALAI LAMA
attributed, And I Quote
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
THEODORE ROETHKE
"The Waking", Collected Poems
What means this heaviness that hangs upon me?
This lethargy that creeps through all my senses?
Nature, oppress'd and harrass'd out with care,
Sinks down to rest.
JOSEPH ADDISON
Cato
While the city sleeps
Men are dreaming
A world enlightened
Beyond this darkest age
CHICAGO
"While the City Sleeps"
Sleep is not a waste of time. During sleep, a variety of biological processes take place that restore our bodies and minds.
NANCY FOLDVARY-SCHAEFER
Getting a Good Night's Sleep
Eat, sleep, rave, repeat
FATBOY SLIM
"Eat Sleep Rave Repeat"
While the city sleeps
Men are scheming
New ways to kill us
And tell us dirty lies
CHICAGO
"While the City Sleeps"
Despite fifty years of research all we can conclude about the function of sleep is that it overcomes sleepiness, and that the only reliable finding from sleep deprivation experiments is that sleep loss makes us sleepy.
JAMES HORNE
Why We Sleep
When every inch of the world is known, sleep may be the only wilderness that we have left.
LOUISE ERDRICH
The Blue Jay's Dance
Sleep brings dreams; and dreams are often most vivid and fantastical, before we have yet been wholly lost in slumber.
ROBERT MONTGOMERY BIRD
Calavar; or, The Knight of the Conquest
Waking is strife; sleep is the truce of God!
HENRY VAN DYKE
"The House of Rimmon"