Sleep is the golden chain that ties health and our bodies together.
—Thomas Dekker
It’s at night, when perhaps we should be dreaming, that the mind is most clear, that we are most able to hold all our life in the palm of our skull. I don’t know if anyone has ever pointed out that great attraction of insomnia before, but it is so; the night seems to release a little more of our vast backward inheritance of instincts and feelings; as with the dawn, a little honey is allowed to ooze between the lips of the sandwich, a little of the stuff of dreams to drip into the waking mind. I wish I believed, as J. B. Priestley did, that consciousness continues after disembodiment or death, not forever, but for a long while. Three score years and ten is such a stingy ration of time, when there is so much time around. Perhaps that’s why some of us are insomniacs; night is so precious that it would be pusillanimous to sleep all through it! A bad night is not always a bad thing.
—Brian Aldiss (1925–2017) British Novelist, Short-Story Writer
Only those who are asleep make no mistakes.
—Ingvar Kamprad (1926–2018) Swedish Businessman
There may be those on earth who dress better or eat better, but those who enjoy the peace of God sleep better.
—Thomas L. Holdcroft
The repose of sleep refreshes only the body. It rarely sets the soul at rest. The repose of the night does not belong to us. It is not the possession of our being. Sleep opens within us an inn for phantoms. In the morning we must sweep out the shadows.
—Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962) French Philosopher, Psychoanalyst, Poet
Downy sleep, death’s counterfeit.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
I have thought of a pulley to raise me gradually; but that would give me pain, as it would counteract my natural inclination. I would have something that can dissipate the inertia and give elasticity to the muscles. We can heat the body, we can cool it; we can give it tension or relaxation; and surely it is possible to bring it into a state in which rising from bed will not be a pain.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
Our foster-nurse of nature is repose.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
One hour’s sleep before midnight, is worth two after.
—Common Proverb
I am accustomed to sleep, and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake.
—Rene Descartes (1596–1650) French Mathematician, Philosopher
If you can’t sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. It’s the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep.
—Dale Carnegie (1888–1955) American Self-Help Author
Oh Sleep! it is a gentle thing, beloved from pole to pole, to Mary Queen the praise be given! She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven, that slid into my soul.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English Poet, Literary Critic, Philosopher
Blessed is the man who is too busy to worry in the daytime and too sleepy to worry at night.
—Anonymous
Sleep is so like death, says Sir Thomas Browne, “that I dare not trust myself to it without prayer.” They both, when they seize the body, leave the soul at liberty; and wise is he that remembers of both, that they can be made safe and happy only by virtue.
—William Temple (1881–1944) British Clergyman, Theologian
Fatigue is the best pillow.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
When tir’d with vain rotations of the day, sleep winds us up for the succeeding dawn.
—Edward Young (1683–1765) English Poet
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
Sleep is the most moronic fraternity in the world, with the heaviest dues and the crudest rituals.
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-born American Novelist
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
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
Go to bed early, get up early—this is wise.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
It is a delicious moment, certainly, that of being well nestled in bed and feeling that you shall drop gently to sleep. The good is to come, not past; the limbs are 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 slow and hushing degrees, like a mother detaching her hand from that of a sleeping child, the mind 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 (1784–1859) British Poet, Essayist, Journalist
What angel wakes me from my flowery bed?
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
Every closed eye is not sleeping, and every open eye is not seeing.
—Bill Cosby (b.1937) American Actor, Comedian, Activist, Producer, Author
Don’t wait until you die to learn the warrior’s way. Do it now, each night, just before you drift off to sleep. As you review your day, consider these two questions of courage and love. Learn from each day, so that each day you can show a little more courage and a little more love. Then, as incidents occur, you may rise to the occasion and look back at the end of your life and feel good about the way you lived.
—Dan Millman (b.1946) American Children’s Books Writer, Sportsperson
Sleep is lovely, death is better still, not to have been born is of course the miracle.
—Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German Poet, Writer
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
Turn on its noiseless hinges, delicate sleep!
—Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836–1907) American Writer, Poet, Critic, Editor
Even sleepers are workers and collaborators on what goes on in the universe.
—Heraclitus (535BCE–475BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher
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