quotations about sleep
Close your eyes and you will see
Microflashing neon lights
Open your eyes and you will see
It still looks like the same thing
Lie and wait for sleep and listen
To your heart beat too fast for sleep
Close your eyes and you will see
The sound-a-sleep
BLONDIE
"Sound Asleep"
Sleep is so like death, I dare not trust it without my prayers.
THOMAS BROWNE
Religio Medici
There is a knowledge in the heart of sleep.
SRI AUROBINDO
Gems from Sri Aurobindo
A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow.
CHARLOTTE BRONTË
The Professor
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep;
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
ANONYMOUS
Thee are the spells that to kind sleep invite,
And nothing does within resistance make,
Which yet we moderately take;
Who would not choose to be awake.
ABRAHAM COWLEY
The Works of Mr. Abraham Cowley
The great modification which the act of awakening effects in us is not so much that of ushering us into the clear life of consciousness, as that of making us lose all memory of the slightly more diffused light in which our mind had been resting, as in the opaline depths of the sea. The tide of thought, half veiled from our perception, on which we were still drifting a moment ago, kept us in a state of motion perfectly sufficient to enable us to refer to it by the name of wakefulness. But then our actual awakenings produce an interruption of memory. A little later we describe these states as sleep because we no longer remember them.
MARCEL PROUST
The Guermantes Way
Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light.
BIBLE
Ephesians 5:14
To sleep! perchance to dream; ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Hamlet
As you make your bed, so you will sleep.
SWEDISH PROVERB
Good night, sleep tight
Don't let the bedbugs bite.
But if they do, take your little shoe
And beat them black and blue.
ANONYMOUS
"Good Night, Sleep Tight"
Come, mild and magnificent Sleep, and let your tides flow through the nation. Oh, daughter of unmemoried desire, sister of Death, and my stern comrade, Loneliness, bringer of peace and dark forgetfulness, healer and redeemer, dear enchantress, hear us: come to us through the fields of night, over the plains and rivers of the everlasting earth, bringing to the huge vexed substance of this world and to all the fury, pain, and madness of our lives the merciful anodyne of your redemption. Seal up the porches of our memory, tenderly, gently, steal our lives away from us, blot out the vision of lost love, lost days, and all our ancient hungers, great Transformer, heal us!
THOMAS WOLFE
From Death to Morning
My bones wish to escape
And run along an alien expanse
To collapse from the heat
In a cartoonish heap
To sleep oh to sleep
SPARKLEHORSE
"Box of Stars"
Sleep is a death; oh! make me try,
By sleeping what it is to die:
And as gently lay my head
On my grave, as now my bed.
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
"Evening Hymn"
Sleep is a state in which a great part of every life is passed. No animal has yet been discovered, whose existence is not varied with intervals of insensibility; and some late philosophers have extended the empire of sleep over the vegetable world.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
The Idler, November 25, 1758
Even sleep is characteristic. How charming are children in their lovely innocence! How angel-like their blooming hue! How painful and anxious is the sleep and expression in the countenance of the guilty!
KARL WILHELM HUMBOLDT
attributed, Day's Collacon
Blessed sleep, kindest minister to man,
Sure and silent distiller of the balm of rest,
Having alone the power, when naught else can,
To soothe the torn and sorrow-ridden breast.
JAMES WELDON JOHNSON
"Blessed Sleep"
There, in the depths of sleep, is the communion of the living and the dead.
GENNADY AYGI
Veronica's Book
Sleep of seven lights upon you
Sleep of seven joys
Sleep of seven slumbers on you
In your easy poise
You are home this night
Home of stillness
Your home of spirit
Being and bliss
DONOVAN
"Sleep"
I think if you maintain a force in the world that comes into people's sleep, you are exercising a meaningful power.
DON DELILLO
Underworld