SLEEP QUOTES III
quotations about sleep
Sleep is so like death, I dare not trust it without my prayers.
THOMAS BROWNE
Religio Medici
It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.
JOHN STEINBECK
Sweet Thursday
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"
Our sleep is like a rollercoaster going through 90 minutes of sleep cycles, starting in deep sleep and then light sleep ... going across the night. That deep sleep stage is the period where the conscious part of the brain -- the upper part of the brain -- is least activated. If you wake up and are quite confused as to what time it is, where you are, or who your friend is that just woke you up, you're likely to have woken up out of the deeper stages of sleep.
LEON LACK
"Sleep is like a rollercoaster which may contribute to waking up confused", ABC News, August 11, 2017
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
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
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
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
Sleep comes like a drug in God's country
Sad eyes, crooked crosses, in God's country
Set me alight, we'll punch a hole right through the night.
Every day the dreamers die to see what's on the other side.
U2
"In God's Country"
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"
Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
HERMAN MELVILLE
Moby Dick
As you make your bed, so you will sleep.
SWEDISH PROVERB
Far from a passive state of being dead-to-the-world, sleep is part of a complex neurological rhythm that we can condition ourselves to. Much as an exercise regime conditions the muscles, establishing a sleep routine trains the brain to undo the stresses of the day.
RICHARD E. CYTOWIC
"Four Ways to More Restful Sleep", Psychology Today, August 24, 2017
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
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"
Loved Sleep! methinks I feel thee o'er me hover,
Thy seraph wings expanding to descend:
They fan me now, their balmy wavings blend
Along my brow; strange elf-light things come over
My fancied sight: now thought's unmeaning train
Runs through my mind; and, like a spell-bound lover,
I am enslaved with a bewitching chain--
Loved Sleep!
ROBERT LEIGHTON
"To Sleep"
I'm not a very good sleeper. But you know what? I'm willing to put in a few extra hours every day to get better. That's just the kind of hard worker I am.
JAROD KINTZ
Whenever You're Gone, I'm Here For You
The brain's sleep cycle -- comprised of deep and light sleep stages -- probably played a role in our survival as a species. Most species have this sleep cycle -- it may have served some vigilance-type function. Every 90 minutes or so, you come into light sleep and you're much more responsive to the environment and just awake for a few minutes to check out that everything's still OK, and that there's no danger. Having that type of sleep pattern across the night may have helped to increase our chances of survival. If the sabre-toothed tiger came into your cave at night and you came out of deep sleep, you would probably respond more slowly. If our whole sleep period were deep sleep, then we would be more vulnerable to any environmental changes that may occur.
LEON LACK
"Sleep is like a rollercoaster which may contribute to waking up confused", ABC News, August 11, 2017
It is one of life's bitterest truths that bedtime so often arrives just when things are really getting interesting.
DANIEL HANDLER
as Lemony Snicket, The Grim Grotto
Beneath the tides of Sleep and time strange fish are moving. For Sleep has crossed the worn visages of day, and in the night time, in the dark, in all the sleeping silence of the towns, the faces of ten million men are strange and dark as time. In Sleep we lie all naked and alone, in Sleep we are united at the heart of night and darkness, and we are strange and beautiful asleep; for we are dying in the darkness, and we know no death, there is no death, there is no life, no joy, no sorrow, and no glory on the earth but Sleep.
THOMAS WOLFE
From Death to Morning