quotations about sleep
It is a common rule with primitive people not to waken a sleeper, because his soul is away and might not have time to get back; so if the man wakened without his soul, he would fall sick. If it is absolutely necessary to rouse a sleeper, it must be done very gradually, to allow the soul time to return.
JAMES FRAZER
The Golden Bough
Frequent naps will keep you from getting old, especially if you take them while driving.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
What a blessing man acknowledges in sleep, whose soft oblivion makes an island of every day, and breaks the hold of continuous care; that cools the hot brain, and bathes the weary eye-lids, and lets the buffeted and foundering heart cast anchor every night in some harbor of happy dreams. He feels the beneficence of that law which makes even misery halt, and besieging fortune strike its tents, and in the great democracy of nature levels the children of men in common helplessness and common need; finding no conditions so wretched, no spot so bleak that even the most desperate cannot recline nearer to the bosom of the common mother, and forget for a little while their sorrow and their shame.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
It was that sort of sleep in which you wake every hour and think to yourself that you have not been sleeping at all; you can remember dreams that are like reflections, daytime thinking slightly warped.
KIM STANLEY ROBINSON
Icehenge
Holy and blest
Is the calm of thy rest,
For thy chamber of sleep
Is dark and deep.
HENRY ALFORD
"A Remembrance"
To sleep is to die.
DAVID GEMMELL
Lord of the Silver Bow
Sleep is a belonging to all; even if all songs are old songs and the singing heart is snuffed out like a switchman's lantern with the oil gone, even if we forget our names and houses in the finish, the secret of sleep is left us, sleep belongs to all, sleep is the first and last and best of all.
CARL SANDBURG
"Work Gangs"
Sleep is truly a thief who ravishes our greatest treasures.
ANONYMOUS
"Early Rising", Catholic World, vol. 5
There surely is some Life beyond
The state of man's mere waking mind:
Whereto -- Earth-blind --
Men's spirits creep
From out the sepulchre of sleep.
WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE
"The Existence Dual", Cloudrifts at Twilight
You are now in a deep sleep
(In-store promises)
Endless possibilities
A life of ease
A life cocooned in a routine of food
(Stimulus and response!)
Softness is a thing called comfort
(It doesn't cost much to keep in touch)
We never forget you have a choice
Possibilities in store
A taste of paradise
Success on a plate for you
Endless promises
THIS HEAT
"Sleep"
I try to be a good person at all times. I try to be nice to my co-workers and to my boss. I try, but without sleep, it's hard.
ROGER BLUHM
"Sleep is needed more than ever", Dodge City Daily Globe, August 24, 2017
In sleep we are living corpses, we are the prey of an unknown power which seizes us in spite of ourselves, and shows itself in the oddest shapes.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Physiology of Marriage
Sleep is the gateway to those nightly visitations of the irrational.
GAYLE GREENE
Insomniac
Life dreams itself, contents to keep
Happy immortality, in sleep.
ARTHUR SYMONS
"Alle Zattere"
That we are not much sicker and much madder than we are is due exclusively to that most blessed and blessing of all natural graces, sleep.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Themes and Variations
Death was a friend, and sleep was Death's brother.
JOHN STEINBECK
The Grapes of Wrath
In order to live the life of night, a watcher must not wake too much. That is, he should not alter so greatly the character of night as to lose the solitude, the visible darkness, or the quietude. The hours of sleep are too much altered when they are filled by lights and crowds; and Nature is cheated so, and evaded, and her rhythm broken, as when the larks caged in populous streets make ineffectual springs and sing daybreak songs when the London gas is lighted. Nature is easily deceived; and the muse, like the lark, may be set all astray as to the hour. You may spend the peculiar hours of sleep amid so much noise and among so many people that you shall not be aware of them; you may thus merely force and prolong the day. But to do so is not to live well both lives; it is not to yield to the daily and nightly rise and fall and to be cradled in the swing of change.
ALICE MEYNELL
"The Hours of Sleep", The Spirit of Place and Other Essays
Through the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber,
Past the wan-mooned abysses of night,
I have lived o'er my lives without number,
I have sounded all things with my sight.
H. P. LOVECRAFT
"Nemesis"
Too much sleep makes a person heavy and stupid, and those who wish to become useful to the community in their journey through life, must not take upon their backs much useless slumber.
E. L. BLANCHARD
Flights of Fancy: A Medley of Quips and Cranks in Prose and Verse
Now, blessings light on him that first invented this same sleep! It covers a man all over, thoughts and all, like a cloak; it is meat for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, heat for the cold, and cold for the hot. It is 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.
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES
Don Quixote