quotations about sleep
It's in the morning, for most of us. It's that time, those few seconds when we're coming out of sleep but we're not really awake yet. For those few seconds we're something more primitive than what we are about to become. We have just slept the sleep of our most distant ancestors, and something of them and their world still clings to us. For those few moments we are unformed, uncivilized. We are not the people we know as ourselves, but creatures more in tune with a tree than a keyboard. We are untitled, unnamed, natural, suspended between was and will be.
JERRY SPINELLI
Stargirl
Sleep, sleep all the sleepy town
You are the only one
Now only night lights flickering
Now all is said and done
Sleep, sleep all the sleepy town
You are the only one
All the moments from the rising
To the setting of the sun
THE VERVE PIPE
"Sleepy Town"
Thus, sleep is a refreshing shower
To man's body, soul, and mind;
Nature's mysterious remedy
In potations, sweet and kind.
Could we ever keep on journeying
Through the bitter ills of life,
If there were no peacefulness in sleep,
No tonic to sweeten strife?
VENELIA R. CASE
Grange Poems
Sleep is the salutary bath that renovates life, the entire being growing younger under its influence; it is a station in the desert of this world; and often, after dull and wearying journeys, one comes to repose in this oasis prepared by divine Providence, enabled the next day to pursue the route with renewed courage and activity.
ANONYMOUS
"Early Rising", Catholic World, vol. 5
While the city sleeps
Men are dreaming
A world enlightened
Beyond this darkest age
CHICAGO
"While the City Sleeps"
One truly ought to enter upon sleep as into a strange, fair chapel. Fragrant and melodious antechamber of the unseen, sleep is a novitiate for the beyond.
EDWARD THOMAS
"Autumn Thoughts", Atlantic Monthly, September 1902
Sleep, baby, sleep
Your father tends the sheep
Your mother shakes the dreamland tree
And from it fall sweet dreams for thee
NAT KING COLE
"Bedtime (Sleep Baby Sleep)"
Sleep is a god too proud to wait in palaces, and yet so humble too as not to scorn the meanest country cottages.
ABRAHAM COWLEY
The Works of Mr. Abraham Cowley
Sleep brings dreams; and dreams are often most vivid and fantastical, before we have yet been wholly lost in slumber.
ROBERT MONTGOMERY BIRD
Calavar; or, The Knight of the Conquest
Sleep. To lie down and shut out the noise, the fear, the unceasing misery.
TAD WILLIAMS
Otherland: City of Golden Shadow
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
THEODORE ROETHKE
"The Waking", Collected Poems
Sleep is a skilled magician, it changes the proportions of things, the distances between them, it separates people and they're lying next to each other, brings them together and they can barely see one another.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO
The Tale of the Unknown Island
Eat, sleep, rave, repeat
FATBOY SLIM
"Eat Sleep Rave Repeat"
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
Sleep is God. Go worship.
JIM BUTCHER
Death Masks
Care-charming Sleep, thou easer of all woes,
Brother to Death, sweetly thyself dispose.
JOHN FLETCHER
The Tragedy of Valentinian
I'm so good at sleeping I can do it with my eyes closed.
ANONYMOUS
Sleep is not a waste of time. During sleep, a variety of biological processes take place that restore our bodies and minds.
NANCY FOLDVARY-SCHAEFER
Getting a Good Night's Sleep
I wonder why I don't go to bed and go to sleep. But then it would be tomorrow, so I decide that no matter how tired, no matter how incoherent I am, I can skip on hour more of sleep and live.
SYLVIA PLATH
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Waking is strife; sleep is the truce of God!
HENRY VAN DYKE
"The House of Rimmon"