Sleep is when all the unsorted stuff comes flying out as from a dustbin upset in a high wind.
—William Golding (1911–93) English Novelist
To sleep is an act of faith.
—Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (1934–2002) American Journalist, Essayist, Memoirist, Travel Writer
Sleep is the most blessed and blessing of all natural graces.
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English Humanist, Pacifist, Essayist, Short Story Writer, Satirist
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
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
Sleep is the golden chain that ties health and our bodies together.
—Thomas Dekker
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
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
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
The happiest part of a man’s life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
Turn on its noiseless hinges, delicate sleep!
—Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836–1907) American Poet, Novelist, Traveler, Editor
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 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
What probing deep Has ever solved the mystery of sleep?
—Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836–1907) American Poet, Novelist, Traveler, Editor
Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
—Common Proverb
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
Put off thy cares with thy clothes; so shall thy rest strengthen thy labor; and and so shall thy labor sweeten thy rest.
—Francis Quarles (1592–1644) English Religious Poet
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 Poet, Novelist, Traveler, Editor
Blessed is the man who is too busy to worry in the daytime and too sleepy to worry at night.
—Anonymous
It seemed the world was divided into good and bad people. The good ones slept better… while the bad ones seemed to enjoy the waking hours much more.
—Woody Allen (b.1935) American Film Actor, Director
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
Some praise the Lord for Light,
The living spark;
I thank God for the Night
The healing dark.
—Robert W. Service (1874–1958) Scottish Poet, Author
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
Only those who are asleep make no mistakes.
—Ingvar Kamprad (1926–2018) Swedish Businessman
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
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
The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world.
—Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian Singer, Songwriter, Poet, Novelist
He who sleeps in continual noise is wakened by silence.
—William Dean Howells (1837–1920) American Novelist, Short story Author, Editor
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
Sleep is sweet to the labouring man.
—John Bunyan (1628–88) English Puritan Writer, Preacher
Go to bed early, get up early — this is wise.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
One hour’s sleep before midnight, is worth two after.
—Common Proverb
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
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
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