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
Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light.
BIBLE
Ephesians 5:14
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"
A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
The Professor
I don't know if you've ever felt like that. That you wanted to sleep for a thousand years. Or just not exist. Or just not be aware that you do exist. Or something like that. I think wanting that is very morbid, but I want it when I get like this. That's why I'm trying not to think. I just want it all to stop spinning.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Sleep is so like death, I dare not trust it without my prayers.
THOMAS BROWNE
Religio Medici
Good night, sleep tight
Don't let the bedbugs bite.
But if they do, take your little shoe
And beat them black and blue.
ANONYMOUS
"Good Night, Sleep Tight"
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 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"
There, in the depths of sleep, is the communion of the living and the dead.
GENNADY AYGI
Veronica's Book
To sleep! perchance to dream; ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Hamlet
Sleep in heavenly peace.
JOSEPH MOHR
"Silent Night"
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"
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"
I think if you maintain a force in the world that comes into people's sleep, you are exercising a meaningful power.
DON DELILLO
Underworld
Sleep is my lover now, my forgetting, my opiate, my oblivion.
AUDREY NIFFENEGGER
The Time Traveler's Wife
There is a knowledge in the heart of sleep.
SRI AUROBINDO
Gems from Sri Aurobindo
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