SLEEP QUOTES III
quotations about sleep
Beneath the tides of Sleep and time strange fish are moving. For Sleep has crossed the worn visages of day, and in the night time, in the dark, in all the sleeping silence of the towns, the faces of ten million men are strange and dark as time. In Sleep we lie all naked and alone, in Sleep we are united at the heart of night and darkness, and we are strange and beautiful asleep; for we are dying in the darkness, and we know no death, there is no death, there is no life, no joy, no sorrow, and no glory on the earth but Sleep.
THOMAS WOLFE
From Death to Morning
Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
HERMAN MELVILLE
Moby Dick
Blessed sleep, kindest minister to man,
Sure and silent distiller of the balm of rest,
Having alone the power, when naught else can,
To soothe the torn and sorrow-ridden breast.
JAMES WELDON JOHNSON
"Blessed Sleep"
Close your eyes and you will see
Microflashing neon lights
Open your eyes and you will see
It still looks like the same thing
Lie and wait for sleep and listen
To your heart beat too fast for sleep
Close your eyes and you will see
The sound-a-sleep
BLONDIE
"Sound Asleep"
Sleep comes like a drug in God's country
Sad eyes, crooked crosses, in God's country
Set me alight, we'll punch a hole right through the night.
Every day the dreamers die to see what's on the other side.
U2
"In God's Country"
Sleep of seven lights upon you
Sleep of seven joys
Sleep of seven slumbers on you
In your easy poise
You are home this night
Home of stillness
Your home of spirit
Being and bliss
DONOVAN
"Sleep"
The brain's sleep cycle -- comprised of deep and light sleep stages -- probably played a role in our survival as a species. Most species have this sleep cycle -- it may have served some vigilance-type function. Every 90 minutes or so, you come into light sleep and you're much more responsive to the environment and just awake for a few minutes to check out that everything's still OK, and that there's no danger. Having that type of sleep pattern across the night may have helped to increase our chances of survival. If the sabre-toothed tiger came into your cave at night and you came out of deep sleep, you would probably respond more slowly. If our whole sleep period were deep sleep, then we would be more vulnerable to any environmental changes that may occur.
LEON LACK
"Sleep is like a rollercoaster which may contribute to waking up confused", ABC News, August 11, 2017
Come, mild and magnificent Sleep, and let your tides flow through the nation. Oh, daughter of unmemoried desire, sister of Death, and my stern comrade, Loneliness, bringer of peace and dark forgetfulness, healer and redeemer, dear enchantress, hear us: come to us through the fields of night, over the plains and rivers of the everlasting earth, bringing to the huge vexed substance of this world and to all the fury, pain, and madness of our lives the merciful anodyne of your redemption. Seal up the porches of our memory, tenderly, gently, steal our lives away from us, blot out the vision of lost love, lost days, and all our ancient hungers, great Transformer, heal us!
THOMAS WOLFE
From Death to Morning
It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.
JOHN STEINBECK
Sweet Thursday
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep;
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
ANONYMOUS
For six months I couldn't sleep. With insomnia, nothing's real. Everything is far away. Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
Fight Club
Sleep is a state in which a great part of every life is passed. No animal has yet been discovered, whose existence is not varied with intervals of insensibility; and some late philosophers have extended the empire of sleep over the vegetable world.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
The Idler, November 25, 1758
Fair Sleep! mind-soothing, soul-bewitching Sleep!
Come, fair enchantress, I would with thee speak--
O come, and fan this fever from my cheek:
I now with Thought no more communion keep;
Be not afraid, fair spirit, to alight;
Thy breath will soothe me into slumbers deep;
My weary brain hath need of them tonight--
Come Sleep!
ROBERT LEIGHTON
"To Sleep"
How blessed are some people, whose lives have no fears, no dreads, to whom sleep is a blessing that comes nightly, and brings nothing but sweet dreams.
BRAM STOKER
Dracula
Loved Sleep! methinks I feel thee o'er me hover,
Thy seraph wings expanding to descend:
They fan me now, their balmy wavings blend
Along my brow; strange elf-light things come over
My fancied sight: now thought's unmeaning train
Runs through my mind; and, like a spell-bound lover,
I am enslaved with a bewitching chain--
Loved Sleep!
ROBERT LEIGHTON
"To Sleep"
A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
The Professor
Of all the things a man may do, sleep probably contributes most to keeping him sane. It puts brackets about each day. If you do something foolish or painful today, you get irritated if somebody mentions it, today. If it happened yesterday, though, you can nod or chuckle, as the case may be. You've crossed through nothingness or dream to another island in Time.
ROGER ZELAZNY
Isle of the Dead
Sleep is a death; oh! make me try,
By sleeping what it is to die:
And as gently lay my head
On my grave, as now my bed.
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
"Evening Hymn"
It is one of life's bitterest truths that bedtime so often arrives just when things are really getting interesting.
DANIEL HANDLER
as Lemony Snicket, The Grim Grotto
Far from a passive state of being dead-to-the-world, sleep is part of a complex neurological rhythm that we can condition ourselves to. Much as an exercise regime conditions the muscles, establishing a sleep routine trains the brain to undo the stresses of the day.
RICHARD E. CYTOWIC
"Four Ways to More Restful Sleep", Psychology Today, August 24, 2017