quotations about sleep
Thee are the spells that to kind sleep invite,
And nothing does within resistance make,
Which yet we moderately take;
Who would not choose to be awake.
ABRAHAM COWLEY
The Works of Mr. Abraham Cowley
The great modification which the act of awakening effects in us is not so much that of ushering us into the clear life of consciousness, as that of making us lose all memory of the slightly more diffused light in which our mind had been resting, as in the opaline depths of the sea. The tide of thought, half veiled from our perception, on which we were still drifting a moment ago, kept us in a state of motion perfectly sufficient to enable us to refer to it by the name of wakefulness. But then our actual awakenings produce an interruption of memory. A little later we describe these states as sleep because we no longer remember them.
MARCEL PROUST
The Guermantes Way
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
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 is so like death, I dare not trust it without my prayers.
THOMAS BROWNE
Religio Medici
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"
A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
The Professor
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 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"
When pillow talks turn to pillow fights
Remember before you say goodnight
To make up before you go to sleep
So pillow fights turn to pillow dreams
GALANTIS
"Pillow Fight"
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
Even sleep is characteristic. How charming are children in their lovely innocence! How angel-like their blooming hue! How painful and anxious is the sleep and expression in the countenance of the guilty!
KARL WILHELM HUMBOLDT
attributed, Day's Collacon
Sleep delays my life (get up, get up)
R.E.M.
"Get Up"
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
My bones wish to escape
And run along an alien expanse
To collapse from the heat
In a cartoonish heap
To sleep oh to sleep
SPARKLEHORSE
"Box of Stars"
Sleep is my lover now, my forgetting, my opiate, my oblivion.
AUDREY NIFFENEGGER
The Time Traveler's Wife
Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light.
BIBLE
Ephesians 5:14
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
There, in the depths of sleep, is the communion of the living and the dead.
GENNADY AYGI
Veronica's Book
I go to bed, and I wait for sleep as a man might wait for the executioner. I wait for its coming with dread, and my heart beats and my legs tremble, while my whole body shivers beneath the warmth of the bedclothes, until the moment when I suddenly fall asleep, as a man throws himself into a pool of stagnant water in order to drown. I do not feel this perfidious sleep coming over me as I used to, but a sleep which is close to me and watching me, which is going to seize me by the head, to close my eyes and annihilate me.
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
"The Horla"