quotations about sleep
That we are not much sicker and much madder than we are is due exclusively to that most blessed and blessing of all natural graces, sleep.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Themes and Variations
I love sleep because it is both pleasant and safe to use. Pleasant because one is in the best possible company and safe because sleep is the consummate protection against the unseemliness that is the invariable consequence of being awake.
FRAN LEBOWITZ
Metropolitan Life
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
I love sleep. My life has a tendency to fall apart when I'm awake.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
attributed, Hunting for Hemingway
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
I softly sink into the bath of sleep:
With eyelids shut, I see around me close
The mottled, violet vapors of the deep,
That wraps me in repose.
JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND
"Sleeping and Dreaming"
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
Death was a friend, and sleep was Death's brother.
JOHN STEINBECK
The Grapes of Wrath
Close your eyes now and kiss me
And whisper you'll miss me
Sleep tight
Sleep well
Sleep warm
DEAN MARTIN
"Sleep Warm"
To sleep is to die.
DAVID GEMMELL
Lord of the Silver Bow
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
Excessive proneness to sleep is a sign of decay and waste of brain.
ANONYMOUS
Harper's Magazine, October 1866
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
Sleep is the gateway to those nightly visitations of the irrational.
GAYLE GREENE
Insomniac
Sweet is the oblivion of sleep;
But sweeter far is the sleep beyond oblivion.
ELSA BARKER
Songs of a Vagrom Angel
Heaven trims our lamps while we sleep.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
The eye is not harmed by sleep.
CHINUA ACHEBE
No Longer at Ease
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
Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night,
Brother to Death, in silent darkness born:
Relieve my languish, and restore the light,
With dark forgetting of my care return.
SAMUEL DANIEL
Sonnets to Delia
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