quotations about sleep
That daily the night falls; that over stresses and torments, cares and sorrows the blessing of sleep unfolds, stilling and quenching them; that every anew this draught of refreshment and lethe is offered to our parching lips, ever after the battle this mildness laves our shaking limbs, that from it, purified from sweat and dust and blood, strengthened, renewed, rejuvenated, almost innocent once more, almost with pristine courage and zeal we may go forth again -- these I hold to be the benignest, the most moving of all the great facts of life.
THOMAS MANN
"Sleep, Sweet Sleep"
It's in the morning, for most of us. It's that time, those few seconds when we're coming out of sleep but we're not really awake yet. For those few seconds we're something more primitive than what we are about to become. We have just slept the sleep of our most distant ancestors, and something of them and their world still clings to us. For those few moments we are unformed, uncivilized. We are not the people we know as ourselves, but creatures more in tune with a tree than a keyboard. We are untitled, unnamed, natural, suspended between was and will be.
JERRY SPINELLI
Stargirl
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
THEODORE ROETHKE
"The Waking", Collected Poems
Sleep, baby, sleep
Your father tends the sheep
Your mother shakes the dreamland tree
And from it fall sweet dreams for thee
NAT KING COLE
"Bedtime (Sleep Baby Sleep)"
Care-charming Sleep, thou easer of all woes,
Brother to Death, sweetly thyself dispose.
JOHN FLETCHER
The Tragedy of Valentinian
One truly ought to enter upon sleep as into a strange, fair chapel. Fragrant and melodious antechamber of the unseen, sleep is a novitiate for the beyond.
EDWARD THOMAS
"Autumn Thoughts", Atlantic Monthly, September 1902
Sleep. To lie down and shut out the noise, the fear, the unceasing misery.
TAD WILLIAMS
Otherland: City of Golden Shadow
Oh sleep awhile, and stop the wheels of fate.
I think that there is privilege in woe,
And sorrow may not seize us everywhere,
And havoc doth not hunt where'er he list,
And sleep is halcyon time when griefs are still.
SYDNEY THOMPSON DOBELL
Balder
Sleep is a god too proud to wait in palaces, and yet so humble too as not to scorn the meanest country cottages.
ABRAHAM COWLEY
The Works of Mr. Abraham Cowley
While the city sleeps
Men are dreaming
A world enlightened
Beyond this darkest age
CHICAGO
"While the City Sleeps"
Sleep is not a waste of time. During sleep, a variety of biological processes take place that restore our bodies and minds.
NANCY FOLDVARY-SCHAEFER
Getting a Good Night's Sleep
Thus, sleep is a refreshing shower
To man's body, soul, and mind;
Nature's mysterious remedy
In potations, sweet and kind.
Could we ever keep on journeying
Through the bitter ills of life,
If there were no peacefulness in sleep,
No tonic to sweeten strife?
VENELIA R. CASE
Grange Poems
I wonder why I don't go to bed and go to sleep. But then it would be tomorrow, so I decide that no matter how tired, no matter how incoherent I am, I can skip on hour more of sleep and live.
SYLVIA PLATH
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Waking is strife; sleep is the truce of God!
HENRY VAN DYKE
"The House of Rimmon"
It is a common rule with primitive people not to waken a sleeper, because his soul is away and might not have time to get back; so if the man wakened without his soul, he would fall sick. If it is absolutely necessary to rouse a sleeper, it must be done very gradually, to allow the soul time to return.
JAMES FRAZER
The Golden Bough
Sleep is a skilled magician, it changes the proportions of things, the distances between them, it separates people and they're lying next to each other, brings them together and they can barely see one another.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO
The Tale of the Unknown Island
Sleep is God. Go worship.
JIM BUTCHER
Death Masks
Sleep is the gift of many spiders
The webs tie down the sleepers easy.
CARL SANDBURG
"Drowsy"
Sleep brings dreams; and dreams are often most vivid and fantastical, before we have yet been wholly lost in slumber.
ROBERT MONTGOMERY BIRD
Calavar; or, The Knight of the Conquest
I'm so good at sleeping I can do it with my eyes closed.
ANONYMOUS