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
Our foster-nurse of nature is repose.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
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
Bed is the poor man’s opera.
—Italian Proverb
O bed! O bed! Delicious bed! That heaven on earth to the weary head.
—Thomas Hood (1799–1845) English Poet, Humorist
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
A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow.
—Charlotte Bronte (1816–1855) English Novelist, Poet
Downy sleep, death’s counterfeit.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
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 Playwright
We term sleep a death by which we may be literally said to die daily; in fine, so like death, I dare not trust it without my prayers.
—Thomas Browne (1605–82) English Author, Physician
We are not hypocrites in our sleep.
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English Essayist
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
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
Only those who are asleep make no mistakes.
—Ingvar Kamprad (1926–2018) Swedish Businessman
Sleeplessness is a desert without vegetation or inhabitants.
—Jessamyn West
Those who have compared our life to a dream were right…. We sleeping wake, and waking sleep.
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) French Essayist
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
To sleep is an act of faith.
—Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (1934–2002) American Journalist, Essayist, Memoirist, Travel Writer
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
Blessed is the man who is too busy to worry in the daytime and too sleepy to worry at night.
—Anonymous
A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor’s book.
—Irish Proverb
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
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
In thee oppressors soothe their angry brow; in thee, th’ oppress’d forget tyrannic pow’r; in thee, the wretch condemn’d is equal to his judge; and the sad lover to his cruel fair; nay, all the shining glories men pursue, when thou art wanted, are but empty noise.
—Richard Steele (1672–1729) Irish Writer, Politician
What probing deep Has ever solved the mystery of sleep?
—Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836–1907) American Writer, Poet, Critic, Editor
Sleeping in a bed—it is, apparently, of immense importance. Against those who sleep, from choice or necessity, elsewhere society feels righteously hostile. It is not done. It is disorderly, anarchical.
—Rose Macaulay (1881–1958) English Novelist, Essayist
What angel wakes me from my flowery bed?
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
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
When tir’d with vain rotations of the day, sleep winds us up for the succeeding dawn.
—Edward Young (1683–1765) English 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
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
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
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
Every closed eye is not sleeping, and every open eye is not seeing.
—Bill Cosby (b.1937) American Actor, Comedian, Activist, Producer, Author
Sleep is the most blessed and blessing of all natural graces.
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English Humanist, Pacifist, Essayist, Short Story Writer, Satirist
God gives sleep to the bad, in order that the good may be undisturbed.
—Sa’Di (Musharrif Od-Din Muslih Od-Din) (c.1213–91) Persian Poet
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
Turn on its noiseless hinges, delicate sleep!
—Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836–1907) American Writer, Poet, Critic, Editor
Better to get up late and be wide awake than to get up early and be asleep all day.
—Unknown
Thou driftest gently down the tides of sleep.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82) American Poet, Educator, Academic
Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
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
Even sleepers are workers and collaborators on what goes on in the universe.
—Heraclitus (535BCE–475BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher
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
When I sleep I sleep and do not dream because it is as well that I am what I seem when I am in my bed and dream.
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American Writer
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
Sleep is the golden chain that ties health and our bodies together.
—Thomas Dekker
Six hours for a man, seven for a woman, and eight for a fool.
—English Proverb
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
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