quotations about sleep
In sleep we are living corpses, we are the prey of an unknown power which seizes us in spite of ourselves, and shows itself in the oddest shapes.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Death was a friend, and sleep was Death's brother.
JOHN STEINBECK
The Grapes of Wrath
I love sleep. My life has a tendency to fall apart when I'm awake.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
attributed, Hunting for Hemingway
It was that sort of sleep in which you wake every hour and think to yourself that you have not been sleeping at all; you can remember dreams that are like reflections, daytime thinking slightly warped.
KIM STANLEY ROBINSON
Icehenge
Thus we travel from sleep to sleep, learning again to dream.
NICO SLATE
Where Nothing Needs To Be Said
In order to live the life of night, a watcher must not wake too much. That is, he should not alter so greatly the character of night as to lose the solitude, the visible darkness, or the quietude. The hours of sleep are too much altered when they are filled by lights and crowds; and Nature is cheated so, and evaded, and her rhythm broken, as when the larks caged in populous streets make ineffectual springs and sing daybreak songs when the London gas is lighted. Nature is easily deceived; and the muse, like the lark, may be set all astray as to the hour. You may spend the peculiar hours of sleep amid so much noise and among so many people that you shall not be aware of them; you may thus merely force and prolong the day. But to do so is not to live well both lives; it is not to yield to the daily and nightly rise and fall and to be cradled in the swing of change.
ALICE MEYNELL
"The Hours of Sleep", The Spirit of Place and Other Essays
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
Thou silent power, whose welcome sway
Charms every anxious thought away;
In whose divine oblivion drown'd,
Sore pain and weary toil grow mild,
Love is with kinder looks beguiled,
And Grief forgets her fondly cherish'd wound;
Oh, whither hast thou flown, indulgent god?
God of kind shadows and of healing dews,
Whom dost thou touch with thy Lethæan rod?
Around whose temples now thy opiate airs diffuse?
MARK AKENSIDE
"To Sleep"
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
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
There surely is some Life beyond
The state of man's mere waking mind:
Whereto -- Earth-blind --
Men's spirits creep
From out the sepulchre of sleep.
WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE
"The Existence Dual", Cloudrifts at Twilight
All men, whilst they are awake, are in one common world: but each of them, when he is asleep, is in a world of his own.
HERACLITUS
attributed, The Spectator, September 18, 1755
Sleep, delicious and profound, the very counterfeit of death.
HOMER
The Odyssey
How lovely is the heaven of this night,
How deadly still its earth. The forest brute
Has crept into his cave, and laid himself
Where sleep has made him harmless like the lamb:
The horrid snake, his venom now forgot,
Is still and innocent as the honied flower
Under his head:--and man, in whom are met
Leopard and snake--and all the gentleness
And beauty of the young lamb and the bud,
Has let his ghost out, put his thoughts aside
And lent his senses unto death himself;
Whereby the King and beggar all lie down
On straw or purple-tissue, are but bones
And air, and blood, equal to one another
And to the unborn and buried: so we go
Placing ourselves among the unconceived
And the old ghosts, wantonly, smilingly,
For sleep is fair and warm.
THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES
"Lines"
Sweet is the oblivion of sleep;
But sweeter far is the sleep beyond oblivion.
ELSA BARKER
Songs of a Vagrom Angel
Sleep is a natural reset button for our brain and body.
HANSA VENKATESWARAN
"Do you wake up looking tired or with dull skin? Here's what your morning face says about your health", Economic Times, August 29, 2017
Even a soul submerged in sleep is hard at work and helps make something of the world.
HERACLITUS
Fragments
Now, blessings light on him that first invented this same sleep! It covers a man all over, thoughts and all, like a cloak; it is meat for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, heat for the cold, and cold for the hot. It is the current coin that purchases all the pleasures of the world cheap, and the balance that sets the king and the shepherd, the fool and the wise man, even.
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES
Don Quixote
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 the darkness and we know no death.
THOMAS WOLFE
A Stone, a Leaf, a Door: Poems
I've heard some studies have suggested that sleep isn't needed as much when we get older. I find that hard to believe. Sleep is as vital as coffee in the morning. Sleep is needed as much as breathing. Sleep is what I crave and -- if it's not 8 hours or close to it -- there's a chance I will really be grouchy the next morning.
ROGER BLUHM
"Sleep is needed more than ever", Dodge City Daily Globe, August 24, 2017