Oh sleep! It is a gentle thing, Beloved from pole to pole.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English Poet, Literary Critic, Philosopher
Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
—Unknown
Sleep is lovely, death is better still, not to have been born is of course the miracle.
—Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German Poet, Writer
In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.
—Aeschylus (525–456 BCE) Greek Poet
Sleep is pain’s easiest salve, and doth fulfill all the offices of death, except to kill
—John Donne (1572–1631) English Poet, Cleric
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
I am convinced that a light supper, a good night’s sleep, and a fine morning, have sometimes made a hero of the same man, who, by an indigestion, a restless night, and rainy morning, would have proved a coward.
—Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) English Statesman, Man of Letters
Sleep, the antechamber of the grave.
—Jean Paul (1763–1825) German Novelist, Humorist
A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow.
—Charlotte Bronte (1816–1855) English Novelist, Poet
Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death; and the higher the rate of interest and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German Philosopher
Thou driftest gently down the tides of sleep.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82) American Poet, Educator, Academic
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
Every closed eye is not sleeping, and every open eye is not seeing.
—Bill Cosby (b.1937) American Actor, Comedian, Activist, Producer, Author
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.
Nor will the sweetest delight of gardens afford much comfort in sleep; wherein the dullness of that sense shakes hands with delectable odours; and though in the bed of Cleopatra, can hardly with any delight raise up the ghost of a rose.
—Thomas Browne (1605–82) English Author, Physician
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
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
Sleep is an eight-hour peep show of infantile erotica.
—J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) English Novelist, Short Story Writer
Do you want a sign that you’re asleep? Here it is: you’re suffering. Suffering is a sign that you’re out of touch with the truth. Suffering is given to you that you might open your eyes to the truth, that you might understand that there’s falsehood somewhere, just as physical pain is given to you so you will understand that there is disease or illness somewhere. Suffering occurs when you clash with reality. When your illusions clash with reality, when your falsehoods clash with truth, then you have suffering. Otherwise there is no suffering.
—Anthony de Mello (1931–87) Indian-born American Theologian
Go to bed early, get up early—this is wise.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
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 is still most perfect when it is shared with a beloved. The warmth, the security and peace of soul, the utter comfort from the touch of the other, knits the sleep, so that it takes the body and soul completely in its healing.
—D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English Novelist, Playwright, Poet, Essayist, Literary Critic
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
For sleep, one needs endless depths of blackness to sink into; daylight is too shallow, it will not cover one.
—Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906–2001) American Aviator, 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
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 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
Those who have compared our life to a dream were right…. We sleeping wake, and waking sleep.
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) French Essayist
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
The first moments of sleep are an image of death; a hazy torpor grips our thoughts and it becomes impossible for us to determine the exact instant when the “I,” under another form, continues the task of existence.
—Gerard de Nerval (1808–55) French Poet, Essayist, Critic
To sleep is an act of faith.
—Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (1934–2002) American Journalist, Essayist, Memoirist, Travel Writer
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
Six hours for a man, seven for a woman, and eight for a fool.
—English Proverb
Everything is un-American that tends either to government by a plutocracy or government by a mob. To divide along the lines of section or caste or creed is un-American. All privileges based on wealth, and all enmity to honest men merely because they are wealthy, are un-American-both of them equally so. The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life.
—Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American Head of State, Political leader, Historian, Explorer
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
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
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
I divide my time as follows: half the time I sleep, the other half I dream. I never dream when I sleep, for that would be a pity, for sleeping is the highest accomplishment of genius.
—Soren Kierkegaard (1813–55) Danish Philosopher, Theologian
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
Blessed is the man who is too busy to worry in the daytime and too sleepy to worry at night.
—Anonymous
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
When tir’d with vain rotations of the day, sleep winds us up for the succeeding dawn.
—Edward Young (1683–1765) English Poet
Health is the first muse, and sleep is the condition to produce it.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
Sleep is the most blessed and blessing of all natural graces.
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English Humanist, Pacifist, Essayist, Short Story Writer, Satirist
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
Better to get up late and be wide awake than to get up early and be asleep all day.
—Unknown
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
A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor’s book.
—Irish Proverb