quotations about sleep
Sleep is a belonging to all; even if all songs are old songs and the singing heart is snuffed out like a switchman's lantern with the oil gone, even if we forget our names and houses in the finish, the secret of sleep is left us, sleep belongs to all, sleep is the first and last and best of all.
CARL SANDBURG
"Work Gangs"
Holy and blest
Is the calm of thy rest,
For thy chamber of sleep
Is dark and deep.
HENRY ALFORD
"A Remembrance"
To sleep is to die.
DAVID GEMMELL
Lord of the Silver Bow
Life dreams itself, contents to keep
Happy immortality, in sleep.
ARTHUR SYMONS
"Alle Zattere"
Some say that gleams of a remoter world
Visit the soul in sleep -- that death is slumber,
And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber
Of those who wake and live.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
"Mont Blanc"
When a man is asleep, he has in a circle round him the chain of the hours, the sequence of the years, the order of the heavenly host. Instinctively, when he awakes, he looks to these, and in an instant reads off his own position on the earth's surface and the time that has elapsed during his slumbers; but this ordered procession is apt to grow confused, and to break its ranks.
MARCEL PROUST
Swann's Way
Run the streets, all day. I can sleep, when I die.
JAY WAYNE JENKINS
"Soul Survivor"
Through the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber,
Past the wan-mooned abysses of night,
I have lived o'er my lives without number,
I have sounded all things with my sight.
H. P. LOVECRAFT
"Nemesis"
Sleep soothes and arrests the fever-pulse of the soul.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
Close your eyes now and kiss me
And whisper you'll miss me
Sleep tight
Sleep well
Sleep warm
DEAN MARTIN
"Sleep Warm"
You are now in a deep sleep
(In-store promises)
Endless possibilities
A life of ease
A life cocooned in a routine of food
(Stimulus and response!)
Softness is a thing called comfort
(It doesn't cost much to keep in touch)
We never forget you have a choice
Possibilities in store
A taste of paradise
Success on a plate for you
Endless promises
THIS HEAT
"Sleep"
I love sleep. My life has a tendency to fall apart when I'm awake.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
attributed, Hunting for Hemingway
Too much sleep makes a person heavy and stupid, and those who wish to become useful to the community in their journey through life, must not take upon their backs much useless slumber.
E. L. BLANCHARD
Flights of Fancy: A Medley of Quips and Cranks in Prose and Verse
Excessive proneness to sleep is a sign of decay and waste of brain.
ANONYMOUS
Harper's Magazine, October 1866
I try to be a good person at all times. I try to be nice to my co-workers and to my boss. I try, but without sleep, it's hard.
ROGER BLUHM
"Sleep is needed more than ever", Dodge City Daily Globe, August 24, 2017
People are typically astonished at how deeply they sleep when they put on a black-out mask of the sort airlines provide on long-haul flights. The equation here is simple: quiet eyes = quiet mind = a brain that quickly falls asleep.
RICHARD E. CYTOWIC
"Four Ways to More Restful Sleep", Psychology Today, August 24, 2017
Moments before sleep are when she feels most alive, leaping across fragments of the day, bringing each moment into the bed with her like a child with schoolbooks and pencils. The day seems to have no order until these times, which are like a ledger for her, her body full of stories and situations.
MICHAEL ONDAATJE
The English Patient
But Sleep is kindly, even in his tricks; and the poets have treated him with proper reverence. According to the ancient mythologists, he had even one of the Graces to wife.
LEIGH HUNT
The Indicator, January 12, 1820
It is a delicious moment, certainly, that of being well nestled in bed, and feeling that yon shall drop gently to sleep. The good is to come, not past; the limbs have just been tired enough to render the remaining in one posture delightful; the labor of the day is gone. A gentle failure of the perceptions creeps over you; the spirit of consciousness disengages itself once more, and with a slow and hushing degrees, like a mother detaching her hand from that of a sleeping child, the wind seems to have a balmy lid closing over it, like the eye--it is closed--the mysterious spirit has gone to take its airy rounds.
LEIGH HUNT
The Indicator, January 12, 1820
Sleep is a nightly reminder that we are beholden to our bodies, that we are our bodies, and that one day we will die. It puts us at the wrong end of the mind-body dualism that has, from Plato through Descartes, raised mind over body. It's a blow to our dignity, a reminder ... that we are (to borrow a phrase from Shakespeare) "stinkingly dependent."
GAYLE GREENE
Insomniac