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sleep quotes

  • People would rather sleep their way through life than stayawake for it.

    - Edward Franklin, III Albee
    Quoted in  Joseph F McCrindle (ed) Behind the Scenes (1971).

  • Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom's. And never, ever, nomatter whatelse you do in your whole life, never sleep with anyone whose troubles are worse than your own.

    - Nelson Algren
      In Newsweek, 2  Jul.  Algren claimed that these were his only principles, taught him by 'a nice old Negro lady'.

  • The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won't get much sleep.

    -Woody pseudonym of  Allen Stewart Konigsberg Allen
      'The Scrolls', in The New Republic, 31  Aug.

  • Is there any room at your head, Sanders? Is there any room at your feet? Or any room at your twa sides, Where fain, fain I would sleep? There is nae room at my head, Margaret, There is nae room at my feet; My bed it is the cold, cold grave; Among the hungry worms I sleep.

    -Ballads
    'Clerk Sanders'.

  • Sleep demands of us a guilty immunity. There is not one of us who, given an eternal incognito, a thumbprint nowhere set against our souls, would not commit rape, murder and all abominations.

    - Djuna Barnes
      Doctor. Nightwood, ch.5.

  • : Oh, but thou dost not know What 'tis to die. :Yes, I do know, my Lord: 'Tis less than to be born; a lasting sleep; A quiet resting from all jealousy, A thing we all pursue; I know besides, It is but giving over of a game, That must be lost.

    - Francis and Fletcher,John Beaumont
         PHILASTERBELLARIO1609  Philaster (published1620), act 3, sc.1.

  • And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the L is in this place; and I knew it not.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    ORDGenesis 28:16.

  • Except the L build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the L keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain. It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    ORDORDPsalms127:1^2.

  • Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep: So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth, and thy want as an armed man.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Proverbs 6:10^11.

  • Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of aneye, atthelasttrump: for thetrumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    Corinthians15:51^2.

  • I am well as long as I live on horseback†sleep out-of- doors, or in a log cabin, and lead in all respects a completely unconventional life. But each time for a few days†I have become civilised, I have found myself rapidly going down again.

    - Isabella married name Isabella Bishop Bird
      A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains.

  • Nor will the sweetest delight of gardens afford much comfort in sleep; wherein the dullness of that sense shakes hands with delectable odours; and though in the bed of Cleopatra, can hardly with any delight raise up the ghost of a rose.

    - SirThomas Browne
      The Garden of Cyrus, ch.5.

  • One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake.

    - Robert Browning
      Asolando, epilogue.

  • Sleep is sweet to the labouring man.

    -John Bunyan
      The Pilgrim's Progress, pt.1.

  •    Ay waukin,O, Waukin still and weary: Sleep I can get nane, For thinkin on my Dearie.

    - Robert Burns
      'Ay waukin O', chorus.

  • And yet, amidst that joyand uproar, Let us think of them that sleep, Full manya fathom deep, By thy wild and stormy steep, Elsinore!

    -Thomas Campbell
      'The Battle of the Baltic', stanza 8.

  • My good friends, this is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time.Go home and have a nice, quiet sleep. See also Disraeli 277:85.

    - (Arthur) Neville Chamberlain
      Speech from the window of No.10 Downing Street to the crowds outside, 30 Sep, having returned that day from signing the Munich  Agreement. The earlier peace referred to was the Treaty of Berlin which Beaconsfield brought back in1878.

  • Vivre est une maladie dont le sommeil nous soulage toutes les16 heures. C'est un palliatif. La mort est le reme'  de. Living is an illness to which sleep provides relief every16 hours.It's a palliative. Death is the remedy.

    - Se  bastien-Roch Nicolas Chamfort
    Maximes et Pense  es (1795), ch.2.

  •    This afternoon I slept for two hours in the Library of the House of Commons. A deep House of Commons sleep. There is no sleep to compare with itrich, deep, and guilty.

    - Sir Henry Channon
    Attributed.

  • O let me be awake, my God! Or let me sleep alway.

    - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
      'The Rime of the  Ancient Mariner', pt.7.

  • Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night, Brother to Death, in silent darkness born, Relieve my languish and restore the light; With dark forgetting of my care return. And let the day be time enough to mourn The shipwreck of my ill adventured youth: Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn Without the torment of the night's untruth.

    - Samuel Daniel
      Delia, sonnet 54.

  • A group of senators, bleary eyed for lack of sleep, will have to sit down at about two o'clock in the morning around a table in a smoke-filled room in some hotel, and decide the nomination.

    - Harry Micajah Daugherty
      On the Republicans' failure to choose a presidential candidate at their convention.

  • Tous les jours on couche avec des femmes qu'on n'aime pas, et l'on ne couche pas avec des femmes qu'on aime. Every day we sleep with women we do not love and don't sleep with the women we do love.

    - Denis Diderot
    c.1773  Jacques le fataliste et son ma|"  tre (published1796).

  • One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And Death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die!

    -John Donne
    c.1610^1615  Holy Sonnets, no.10.

  • Dear, why should you command me to my rest, When now the night doth summon all to sleep? Methinks this time becometh lovers best; Night was ordained together friends to keep.

    - Michael Drayton
      Ideas Mirrour, sonnet 37.

  • I have fed purely upon ale; I have eat my ale, drank my ale, and I always sleep upon ale.

    - George Farquhar
      The Beaux' Stratagem, act1, sc.1.

  • Care-charming Sleep, thou easer of all woes, Brother to Death.

    - Dario Fo
    c.1610^1614  Valentinian, act 5, sc.7.

  • La majestueuse e  galite   des lois, qui interdit au riche comme au pauvre de coucher sous les ponts, de mendier dans les rues et de voler du pain. The majestic equality of laws forbids the rich as well as the poor tosleep under bridges, to beg inthestreets and to steal bread.

    -Thibault
      Le Lys rouge.

  • The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.

    - Robert Lee Frost
      'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening'.

  • Sleep is when all the unsorted stuff comes flying out as from a dustbin upset in a high wind.

    - Sir William (Gerald) Golding
      Pincher Martin, ch.6.

  • With lack of sleep and too much understanding I grow a little crazy,Ithink, likeall menat seawho livetoo closeto each other and too close thereby to all that is monstrous under the sun and moon.

    - Sir William (Gerald) Golding
      Rites of Passage, closing words.

  • Aunque chillen los pedantes y arruguen todos el cen‹  o, lo declaro yo: Cervantes suele producirme suen‹  o Pedants may cry out loud or frown at me, but I must say it: Cervantes usually puts me to sleep.

    - Manuel Gonza l ez Prada
      Grafitos,'Hombres y libros' ('Men and Books').

  • I climbed a hill as light fell short, And rooks came home in scramble sort, And filled the trees and flapped and fought And sang themselves to sleep.

    - Ralph Hodgson
      'Song of Honour'.

  •    Here! creep, Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.

    -Gerard Manley Hopkins
      'No worst, there is none'.

  • Clay lies still, but blood's a rover; Breath's a ware that will not keep. Up, lad: when the journey's over There'll be time enough to sleep.

    - A(lfred) E(dward) Housman
      A Shropshire Lad, no.4.

  •    A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

    -John Keats
      Endymion, bk.1, l.1^5.

  • Morality Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep.

    -John Keats
      'On Seeing the Elgin Marbles'.

  • Stop and consider! life is but a day; A fragile dew-drop on its perilous way From a tree's summit; a poor Indian's sleep While his boat hastens to the monstrous steep Of Montmorenci.

    -John Keats
      'Sleep and Poetry', l.85^9.

  • And still she slept an azure-lidded sleep, In blanched linen, smooth, and lavendered, While he from forth the closet brought a heap Of candied apple, quince, and plum, and gourd; With jellies soother than the creamy curd, And lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon; Manna and dates, in argosy transferred From Fez; and spiced dainties, every one, From silken Samarcand to cedared Lebanon.

    -John Keats
      Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St.  Agnes and Other Poems,'The Eve of St.  Agnes', stanza 30.

  • I'm going to visit every country in the world, eat all the food of the world, drink all the drink of the worldand, I hope, make love to every woman in the world. Then I might get a good night's sleep.

    - Brian Keenan
      Said on his release, BBC  T V, 25  Aug.

  • Father in Heaven, whenthethoughtof Thee wakesinour hearts, let it not awaken like a frightened bird that flies about in dismay, but like a child waking from its sleep with a heavenly smile.

    - So«  ren Aabye Kierkegaard
    Journal entry (translated by Alexander Dru,1938).

  •   Hanging upside down like rows of disgusting old rags And grinning in their sleep.

    - D(avid) H(erbert) Lawrence
      'Bats'.

  •    Sleep is death without the responsibility.

    - Fran(ces Ann) Lebowitz
      Metropolitan Life,'Why I Love Sleep'.

  • So then Dr Froyd said that all I needed was to cultivate a few inhibitions and get some sleep.

    - Anita Loos
      Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, ch.5.

  •    Spider, spider, spin Your register and let me sleep a little, Not now in order to end but to begin The task begun so often.

    - (Frederick) Louis MacNeice
      Autumn Journal, part 2.

  • We sing the love of danger.Courage, rashness, and rebellion are the elements of our poetry. Hitherto literature has tended to exalt thoughtful immobility, ecstasy, and sleep, whereas we are for aggressive movement, febrile insomnia, mortal leaps, and blows with the fist.We proclaim that the world is richer for a new beautyof speed, and our praise isfor themanat the wheel. There is no beauty now save in struggle, no masterpiece can be anything but aggressive, and hence we glorify war, militarism and patriotism.

    - Emilio FilippoTomasso Marinetti
      Manifesto of Futurism. Quoted in Denis Mack Smith Italy:  A Modern History (1959), p.270.

  • The poet knowshimselfonlyonthe conditionthatthings resound in him, and that in him, at a single awakening, theyand he come forth together out of sleep.

    -Jacques Maritain
    Quoted in Robert Fitzgerald (ed) Enlarging the Change (1985).

  • I must down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life, To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife; And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover, And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.

    -John Edward Masefield
      'Sea Fever'.

  • Lie soft, sleep hard, drink wine, and eat good cheer.

    -Thomas Middleton
      A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (published1630), act1, sc.1.

  • There in close covert by some brook, Where no profaner eye may look, Hide me from day's garish eye, While the bee with honied thigh, That at her flowery work doth sing, And the waters murmuring And such consort as they keep, Entice the dewy-feathered Sleep.

    -John Milton
    c.1631 Il Penseroso, l.139^46.

  • What hath night to do with sleep?

    -John Milton
      Comus,  A Mask, l.122.

  • Down here it was still the England I had known in my childhood:†all sleeping the deep, deep sleep of England, fromwhich Isometimesfear that weshall never wake till we are jerked out of it by the roar of bombs.

    - George pseudonym of  Eric Arthur Blair Orwell
      Homage to Catalonia, ch.14.

  • The poor sleep little.

    -Thomas Otway
      Venice Preserved, or a Plot Discovered, act 2, sc.3.

  • Was it for this the clay grew tall? O what made fatuous sunbeams toil To break earth's sleep at all?

    -Wilfred Owen
      'Futility', collected in Poems (published1920).

  • While pensive poets painful vigils keep, Sleepless themselves, to give their readers sleep.

    - Alexander Pope
      The Dunciad, bk.1, l.93^4.

  • I sleep like a baby tooevery two hours I wake up screaming.

    - Colin Luther Powell
      On being reminded that GeorgeW Bush claims to sleep like a baby. In the NewYorker,10 Feb.

  • War is a condition of progress; the whip-cut that prevents a country from going to sleep and forces satisfied mediocrity to shake off its apathy.

    - (Joseph) Ernest Renan
    La Re  forme intellectuelle et morale.

  • It's funny when you feel as if you don't want anything more in your life except to sleep, or else to lie without moving. That's when you can hear time sliding past you, like water running.

    -Jean pseudonym of  Ellen Gwendolen Rees Williams Rhys
      Voyage in the Dark, ch.2.

  •    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.

    -Will Rogers
      TheWaking,'TheWaking'.

  •    The self persists like a dying star, In sleep, afraid.

    -Will Rogers
      The Far Field,'Meditation at Oyster River'.

  • A poet's work† To name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it from going to sleep.

    - (Ahmed) Salman Rushdie
      The SatanicVerses, pt.2.

  • You are too young to fall asleep for ever; And when you sleep you remind me of the dead.

    - Siegfried Louvain Sassoon
      'The Dug-Out'.

  • Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay, And saw in sleep old palaces and towers Quivering within the wave's intenser day, All overgrown with azure moss and flowers So sweet, the sense faints picturing them.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      'Ode to theWestWind', l.29^36.

  • Death will come when thou art dead, Soon, too soon Sleep will come when thou art fled; Of neither would I ask the boon I ask of thee, belove'  d Night Swift be thine approaching flight, Come soon, soon!

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      'To Night'.

  • Whatever may have been my enthusiasm or impatience to be up and doing on the night before, the hour for getting up always finds me with no other ambition in the world than to be permitted to lie where I am and sleep, sleep, sleep.Not soTilman.Ihave never met anyonewith such a complete disregard for the sublime comforts of the early morning bed. However monstrously early we might decide, thenight before, toget up, hewas about at least half an hour before the time. He was generally very good about it, and used to sit placidly smoking his pipe over the fire.

    - Eric Earle Shipton
      On climbing with H W (Bill) Tilman. Nanda Devi.

  • Come sleep,O sleep, the certain knot of peace, The baiting place of wit, the balm of woe, The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release, The indifferent judge between the high and low.

    - Nevil originally Nevil Shute Norway Shute
    Astrophel and Stella, sonnet 39.

  • Facility is a dangerous thing.Where there is too much technical ease the brain stops criticising. Don't let the hand fall into a smart way of putting the mind to sleep.

    -John French Sloan
      Gist of Art.

  • This rortie wretched city Sair come down frae its auld hiechts The hauf o't smug, complacent, Lost til all pride of race or spirit, The tither wild and rouch as ever In its secret hairt But lost alsweill, the smeddum tane, The man o'independent mind has cap in hand the day Sits on its craggy spine And drees the wind and rain That nourished all its genius Weary wi centuries This empty capital snorts like a great beast Caged in its sleep, dreaming of freedom.

    - Sydney Goodsir Smith
      Of Edinburgh.'Kynd Kittock's Land' (Kynd Kittock is a character in the poetry of the16c Scottish poetWilliam Dunbar.) rortie=splendid, smeddum=spirit, drees=endures.

  •    Thou has been called,O Sleep! the friend of Woe, But 'tis the happy who have called thee so.

    - Robert Southey
      The Curse of Kehama, canto15, stanza12.

  • Sleep after toil, port after stormy seas, Ease after war, death after life does greatly please.

    - Edmund Spenser
      The Faerie Queen, bk.1, canto 9, stanza 40.

  • Where is the antique glory now become, What whilom wont in women to appear? Where be the brave achievements doen by some? Where be the battles, where the shield and spear, And all the conquests, which them high did rear, That matter made for famous poet's verse, And boastful men so oft abashed to hear? Bene theyall dead, and laid in doleful hearse? Or doen they only sleep, and shall again reverse?

    - Edmund Spenser
      The Faerie Queen, bk.3, canto 4, stanza1.

  • Two voices are there: one is of the deep; It learns the storm-clouds thundrous melody, Now roars, now murmurs with the changing sea, Now bird-like pipes, now closes soft in sleep: And one is of an old half-witted sheep Which bleats articulate monotony, And indicates that two and one are three, That grass isgreen, lakes damp, and mountains steep And,Wordsworth, both are thine.

    -J(ames) K(enneth) Stephen
      Lapsus Calami,'A Sonnet'.

  • I shall sleep, and move with the moving ships, Change as the winds change, veer in the tide.

    - Algernon Charles Swinburne
      Poems and Ballads,'TheTriumph ofTime'.

  • Below the thunders of the upper deep; Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea, His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep The Kraken sleepeth.

    -Tennyson
      Poems, Chiefly Lyrical,'The Kraken', l.1^4.

  • There hath he lain for ages and will lie Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep Until the latter fire shall heat the deep.

    -Tennyson
      Poems, Chiefly Lyrical,'The Kraken', l.11^13.

  • An English homegrey twilight poured On dewy pasture, dewy trees, Softer than sleepall things in order stored, A haunt of ancient Peace.

    -Tennyson
      Poems,'The Palace of Art', stanza 22, l.85^8.

  •    Sweet and low, sweet and low, Wind of the western sea, Low, low, breathe and blow, Wind of the western sea! Over the rolling waters go, Come from the dying moon, and blow, Blow him again to me; While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps. Sleep and rest, sleep and rest, Father will come to thee soon; Rest, rest, on mother's breast, Father will come to thee soon; Father will come to his babe in the nest, Silver sails all out of the west Under the silver moon: Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep.

    -Tennyson
      The Princess, pt.3, added song, stanzas1^2.

  • Straightfaced in his cunning sleep he pulls the legs of his dreams.

    - Dylan Marlais Thomas
      Under MilkWood.

  • I have come to the borders of sleep, The unfathomable deep Forest, where all must lose Their way, however straight Or winding, soon or late; They cannot choose.

    - (Philip) Edward Thomas
      'Lights Out'.

  • The City is of Night, but not of Sleep; There sweet Sleep is not for the weary brain; The pitiless hours like years and ages creep, A night seems termless hell.

    -James pseudonym 'BV',ByssheVanolis Thomson
      The City of Dreadful Night, pt.1.

  • Sleep is cousin-german unto death: Sleep and death differ, no more, than a carcass And a skeleton.

    -Thomas Traherne
    'A Serious and a Curious Night-Meditation' (published1903).

  •    To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin That makes calamity of so long life; For who would fardels bear, till Birnam Wood do come to Dunsinane, But that the fear of something after death Murders the innocent sleep, Great nature's second course, And makes us rather sling the arrows of outrageous fortune Than fly to others that we know not of. There's the respect must give us pause: Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou couldst; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

    - Mark pseudonym of  Samuel Langhorne Clemens Twain

  • If you are with the quality, or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain't sleepy†why you itch all over in upward of a thousand places.

    - Mark pseudonym of  Samuel Langhorne Clemens Twain
      TheAdventures of Huckleberry Finn, ch.2.

  • I haven't been to sleep for over a year. That's why I go to bed early.One needs more rest if one doesn't sleep.

    - Evelyn Arthur StJohn Waugh
      Decline and Fall, pt.2, ch.3.

  • They that sleep with dogs shall rise with fleas.

    -John Webster
      TheWhite Devil, act 5, sc.1.

  • Beyond the gap where the river plunges into the narrow gorge, unseen and the imagination soars, as a voice beckons, a thundrous voice, endless as sleep: the voice that has ineluctably called them that unmoving roar!

    -William Carlos Williams
      Paterson, bk.2,'Sunday in the Park',1.

  •    The greatest asset that a head of state can have is the ability to get a good night's sleep.

    - (James) Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx
      BBC Radio 4 broadcast,16 Apr.

  •    The main essentials of a successful Prime Minister are sleep and a sense of history.

    - (James) Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx
      The Governance of Britain.

  • Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing boy, But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, He sees it in his joy; The youth, who daily farther from the east Must travel, still is nature's priest, And by the vision splendid Is on his wayattended; At length the man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day.

    -William Wordsworth
    c.1802^1803  'Ode. Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood', stanza 5 (published1807).

  • When you are old and greyand full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face; And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly how Love fled And paced among the mountains overhead And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

    -W(illiam) B(utler) Yeats
      'WhenYou Are Old', complete poem. Collected in The Rose (1893).

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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