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 (1900–38) American Novelist
We are not hypocrites in our sleep.
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English Essayist
Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
Turn on its noiseless hinges, delicate sleep!
—Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836–1907) American Writer, Poet, Critic, Editor
To travel like a bird, lightly to view
Deserts where stone gods founder in the sand,
Ocean embraced in a white sleep with land;
To escape time, always to start anew…
Hooded by a dark sense of destination…
Travelers, we’re fabric of the road we go; We settle, but like feathers on time’s flow.
—Cecil Day-Lewis (1904–72) British Poet, Critic
O bed! O bed! Delicious bed! That heaven on earth to the weary head.
—Thomas Hood (1799–1845) English Poet, Humorist
The feeling of sleepiness when you are not in bed, and can’t get there, is the meanest feeling in the world.
—E. W. Howe (1853–1937) American Novelist, Editor
One hour’s sleep before midnight, is worth two after.
—Common Proverb
A nap, my friend, is a brief period of sleep which overtakes superannuated persons when they endeavor to entertain unwelcome visitors or to listen to scientific lectures.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
Go to bed early, get up early—this is wise.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
Thou driftest gently down the tides of sleep.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82) American Poet, Educator, Academic
Tired nature’s sweet restorer, balmy sleep; he, like the world, his ready visit pays where fortune smiles—the wretched he forsakes.
—Edward Young (1683–1765) English Poet
Sleep is perverse as human nature, Sleep is perverse as a legislature, Sleep is as forward as hives or goiters, And where it is least desired, it loiters.
—Ogden Nash (1902–71) American Writer of Sophisticated Light Verse
How it is I know not; but there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other; and some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our hearts honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg—a cozy, loving pair.
—Herman Melville (1819–91) American Novelist, Short Story Writer, Essayist, Poet
A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow.
—Charlotte Bronte (1816–1855) English Novelist, Poet
Sleep, the type of death, is also, like that which it typifies, restricted to the earth.—It flies from hell, and is excluded from heaven.
—Charles Caleb Colton (c.1780–1832) English Clergyman, Aphorist
Sleep is the golden chain that ties health and our bodies together.
—Thomas Dekker
Put off thy cares with thy clothes; so shall thy rest strengthen thy labor; and and so shall thy labor sweeten thy rest.
—Francis Quarles (1592–1644) English Religious Poet
He who sleeps in continual noise is wakened by silence.
—William Dean Howells (1837–1920) American Novelist, Critic
It is comforting when one has a sorrow to lie in the warmth of one’s bed and there, abandoning all effort and all resistance, to bury even one’s head under the cover, giving one’s self up to it completely, moaning like branches in the autumn wind. But there is still a better bed, full of divine odors. It is our sweet, our profound, our impenetrable friendship.
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922) French Novelist
Sleep is the most blessed and blessing of all natural graces.
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English Humanist, Pacifist, Essayist, Short Story Writer, Satirist
A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor’s book.
—Irish Proverb
The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world.
—Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian Singer, Songwriter, Poet, Novelist
Finish each day before you begin the next, and interpose a solid wall of sleep between the two. This you cannot do without temperance.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Every season is likeable, and wet days and fine, red wine and white, company and solitude. Even sleep, that deplorable curtailment of the joy of life, can be full of dreams; and the most common actions
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English Novelist
Methought I heard a voice cry Sleep no more,
Macbeth does murder sleep the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care
The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
There is only one thing people like that is good for them; a good night’s sleep.
—E. W. Howe (1853–1937) American Novelist, Editor
Sleep, the antechamber of the grave.
—Jean Paul (1763–1825) German Novelist, Humorist
What probing deep Has ever solved the mystery of sleep?
—Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836–1907) American Writer, Poet, Critic, Editor
Sleep hath its own world, and a wide realm of wild reality. And dreams in their development have breath, and tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
To sleep is an act of faith.
—Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (1934–2002) American Journalist, Essayist, Memoirist, Travel Writer
The bed is a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret; we make up our minds every night to leave it early, but we make up our bodies every morning to keep it late.
—Charles Caleb Colton (c.1780–1832) English Clergyman, Aphorist
Sleep, thou repose of all things; thou gentlest of the duties; thou peace of the mind, from which care flies; who dost soothe the hearts of men wearied with the toils of the day, and refittest them for labor.
—Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) (c.43 BCE–c.18 CE) Roman Poet
No matter what time it is, wake me, even if it’s in the middle of a Cabinet meeting.
—Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American Head of State
When to soft Sleep we give ourselves away,
And in a dream as in a fairy bark
Drift on and on through the enchanted dark
To purple daybreak—little thought we pay
To that sweet bitter world we know by day.
—Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836–1907) American Writer, Poet, Critic, Editor
There is between sleep and us something like a pact, a treaty with no secret clauses, and according to this convention it is agreed that, far from being a dangerous, bewitching force, sleep will become domesticated and serve as an instrument of our power to act. We surrender to sleep, but in the way that the master entrusts himself to the slave who serves him.
—Maurice Blanchot (1907–2003) French Novelist, Critic
Your life is a kind of laboratory where you’re constantly experimenting with your own higher knowing, always increasing your capacity to design the life you choose. Human beings must create; it’s hardwired. The question is, are you consciously creating or only sleepwalking through your human life?
—David Emerald
And if tonight my soul may find her peace in sleep, and sink in good oblivion, and in the morning wake like a new-opened flower then I have been dipped again in God, and new-created.
—D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English Novelist, Playwright, Poet, Essayist, Literary Critic
Sleep is sweet to the labouring man.
—John Bunyan (1628–88) English Puritan Writer, Preacher
True silence is the rest of the mind, and is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment. It is a great virtue: it covers folly, keeps secrets, avoids disputes, and prevents sin.
—William Penn (1644–1718) American Entrepreneur, Political leader, Philosopher
The city sleeps and the country sleeps, the living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time, the old husband sleeps by his wife and the young husband sleeps by his wife; and these tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them, and such as it is to be of these more or less I am, and of these one and all I weave the song of myself.
—Walt Whitman (1819–92) American Poet, Essayist, Journalist, American, Poet, Essayist, Journalist
What angel wakes me from my flowery bed?
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
Come, cuddle your head on my shoulder, dear,
Your head like the golden-rod,
And we will go sailing away from here
To the beautiful land of Nod.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850–1919) American Poet, Journalist
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.
—Plutarch (c.46–c.120 CE) Greek Biographer, Philosopher
Come, Sleep! O Sleep, the certain knot of peace,
The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,
The poor man’s wealth, the prisoner’s release,
Th’ indifferent judge between the high and low.
—Philip Sidney (1554–86) English Soldier Poet, Courtier
It seemed the world was divided into good and bad people. The good ones slept better… while the bad ones seemed to enjoy the waking hours much more.
—Woody Allen (b.1935) American Film Actor, Director
Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
Death, so called, is a thing which makes men weep, and yet a third of life is passed in sleep.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
Now blessings light on him that first invented this same sleep: it covers a man all over, thoughts and all, like a cloak; ‘Tis meat for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, heat for the cold, and cold for the hot. ‘Tis 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. There is only one thing that I dislike in sleep; ‘Tis that it resembles death; there’s very little difference between a man in his first sleep, and a man in his last sleep.
—Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish Novelist
Better to get up late and be wide awake than to get up early and be asleep all day.
—Unknown