Quotes about sleep
page 11

“On a lone barren isle, where the wild roaring billows
Assail the stern rock, and the loud tempests rave,
The hero lies still, while the dew-drooping willows,
Like fond weeping mourners, lean over his grave.
The lightnings may flash and the loud thunders rattle;
He heeds not, he hears not, he's free from all pain;
He sleeps his last sleep, he has fought his last battle;
No sound can awake him to glory again!”

Lyman Heath (1804–1870) American musician

The Grave of Bonaparte, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919) (incorrectly attributed as "Leonard" Heath).

Pain

“I feel that this way of non-violence is vital because it is the only way to reestablish the broken community. It is the method which seeks to implement the just law by appealing to the conscience of the great decent majority who through blindness, fear, pride or irrationality have allowed their consciences to sleep.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, The Rising Tide of Racial Consciousnes (1960)

Fear, Law, Way, Feeling

“Question: Does a detached person remain unoccupied all the time, or what does he or she do?
Answer: The activity of really detached people lies in their becoming detached, and their achievement is to remain unoccupied because they remain calm in action and unconcerned about their achievements.
Question: What is their conduct toward their fellow human beings?
Answer: They enjoy the companionship of people, but without being compromised by them. They love them without attachment, and they show them sympathy without anxious concern - all in true freedom.
Question: Is such a person required to go to confession?
Answer: The confession that is motivated by love is nobler than one motivated by necessity.
Question: What is such people’s prayer like? Are they supposed to pray, too?
Answer: Their prayer is effective because they forestall the influence of the senses. God is spirit and knows whether this person has put an obstacle in the way or whether he or she has acted from selfish impulses. And then a light is enkindled in their highest power, which makes clear that God is the being, life and activity within them and that they are merely instruments.
Question: What are such a person's eating, drinking and sleeping like?
Answer: Externally, and in keeping with their sensuous nature, the outward person eats. Internally, however, they are as if not eating; otherwise, One does not arrive at the goal by asking questions. It is rather through detachment that one comes to this hidden truth they would be enjoying food and rest like an animal. This is also the case in other things pertaining to human existence.”

Henry Suso (1295–1366) Dominican friar and mystic

The Exemplar, The Little Book of Truth

Love, Life, God, People

“When I was council president I had a rule that people could sleep on the job. I modified the rule. You could actually sleep in public if you weren't sitting down. I had three people who actually perfected the art of sleeping while standing.”

John F. Street (1943) American politician

"Actual Excerpts from John Street's Class at Temple" by Tom Namako in Philadelphia Citypaper (27 February 2008) http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2008/02/28/actual-excerpts-from-john-streets-class-at-temple

People, Art, Perfection

“Who has not loathed that worst, that waking hour,
When grief and consciousness assert their power;
When misery has morn's freshness, yet we fain
Would hold it as a dream, and sleep again;”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Title poem, section VI.
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)

Dreams

“Godzilla 2014 missed the mark primarily because it is not an origins story. Gojira was a monster of our own making. Similarly Gino was supposed to impose nature’s response to our meddling. But G2014 pre-existed genetic modifications and nuclear testing. We have no responsibility for him, nor the mutos either. They come from a time that never was, millions of years ago, “when the world was much more radioactive than it is today”. The story implies that mutos ‘eat radiation’. In the film, they can track it through every kind of protective shielding, and they eat nuclear devices like fruit -metallic peal and all. I guess millions of years ago, nuclear missiles grew on trees, and kaiju were common even though they’re absent from the fossil record -with only one top-secret exception. As an advocate of science education with a deep interest in paleontology, and as someone who would rather see humans held accountable for what they do to their environment, this film was very disappointing. As an atheist, it was even worse. The star of the film not only has impossible dimensions and an inexplicable power, he is also immortal. He’s been alive forever, and spends all his time sleeping. He awakens only he senses submarines or the arrival of other kaiju, because he has a mission to protect humanity. G2014 put the ‘god’ in Godzilla. The director called him a god, and some of the characters in the movie describe him as a god too. So he’s not a lizard, not a dinosaur, but one of the Lovecraftian great old ones like Cthulhu. In a video I made years ago, I too joked about Godzilla being a god. But it was still somewhat disappointing to see him depicted that way.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Patheos, Weighing in on Godzilla http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2014/06/08/weighing-in-on-godzilla/ (June 8, 2014)

God, Secret, World, Education

“Honour the brave who sleep
Where the lost “Titanic” lies,
The men who knew what a man must do
When he looks Death in the eyes.“Women and children first,”—
Ah, strong and tender cry!
The sons whom women had borne and nursed,
Remembered,—and dared to die.The boats crept off in the dark:
The great ship groaned: and then,—
O stars of the night, who saw that sight,
Bear witness, These were men!”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

Heroes of the "Titantic" (November 9, 1912).

Death, Women, Men, Children

“I'm angry that I can't sleep that I hate myself
that I can’t write as well as I want
because I’m so damn angry I can’t breathe
Furious that nobody else seems to be angry
and they don’t want me to be either
Enraged at this whole sodden rotting mess they keep calling
civilization
as it poisons the air and the water and kills everyone in it’s way.”

Chrystos (1946) American writer, activist

"They're always telling me I'm too angry" (1995)

Hate, Way, Water

“Women and men (both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain…
all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

29
50 Poems (1940)

Women, Men, Dreams, Star

“I have always been amazed at the way an ordinary observer lends so much more credence and attaches so much more importance to waking events than to those occurring in dreams. It is because man, when he ceases to sleep, is above all the plaything of his memory, and in its normal state memory takes pleasure in weakly retracing for him the circumstances of the dream, in stripping it of any real importance, and in dismissing the only determinant from the point where he thinks he has left it a few hours before: this firm hope, this concern. He is under the impression of continuing something that is worthwhile. Thus the dream finds itself reduced to a mere parenthesis, as is the night. And, like the night, dreams generally contribute little to furthering our understanding. This curious state of affairs seems to me to call for certain reflections.”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

Le Manifeste du Surréalisme, Andre Breton (Manifesto of Surrealism; 1924)

Pleasure, Dreams, Hope, Way

“And the sooner it's over, the sooner to sleep—
And good-by to the bar and its moaning.”

Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) English clergyman, historian and novelist

The Three Fishers, st. 3,

“I love putting my kids to sleep. Cherishing every moment of it knowing that it won't be the same once they are all grown up.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Francis Escudero Twitter feed: @SayChiz (9:09 p.m. 2012 September 09).
2012, Twitter Feed

Love

“[In America] people are a little bit more scared to show their bodies. I grew up different. Nudity was a common thing. We went camping on nude beaches in Italy. When my parents were still sleeping, I'd just go outside and run to the beach without anything on.”

Heidi Klum (1973) German model, television host, businesswoman, fashion designer, television producer, and actress

Quoted by Eric Thurnauer for Stuff Magazine (November/December 1998)

People, Parent

“We are sleeping on a volcano… A wind of revolution blows, the storm is on the horizon.”

Alexis De Tocqueville (1805–1859) French political thinker and historian

Original text: Nous dormons sur un volcan… Ne voyez-vous pas que la terre commence à trembler. Le vent de la révolte souffle, la tempête est à l’horizon.
Speaking in the Chamber of Deputies just prior to to outbreak of revolution in Europe (1848).
1840s

“Well I'm accustomed to a smooth ride,
Or maybe I'm a dog that's lost its bite,
I don't expect to be treated like a fool, no, no,
I don't expect to sleep long nights,
Some people say a lie is just a lie but I say,
Why deny the obvious child?”

Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer

The Obvious Child
Song lyrics, The Rhythm of the Saints (1990)

People, Lie, Dogs, Fools

“Winds and waters keep
A hush more dead than any sleep.”

William Allingham (1824–1889) Irish man of letters and poet

Ruined Chapel; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Water, Dead

“You know, where I come from, we don't think much of someone who sneaks up and stabs a person in their sleep.”

Suzanne Collins The Underland Chronicles

Gregor, p. 239
The Underland Chronicles, Gregor the Overlander (2003)

Thinking, Personality

“Age is my alarm clock,” the old man said. “Why do old men wake so early? Is it to have one longer day?”
“I don’t know,” the boy said. “All I know is that young boys sleep late and hard.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Old Man and the Sea

The Old Man and the Sea (1952)

Men, Age, Boy

“But the Quincunx of Heaven runs low, and 'tis time to close the five ports of knowledge. We are unwilling to spin out our awaking thoughts into the phantasmes of sleep, which often continueth præcogitations; making Cables of Cobwebbes and Wildernesses of handsome Groves. Beside Hippocrates hath spoke so little and the Oneirocriticall Masters, have left such frigid Interpretations from plants, that there is little encouragement to dream of Paradise it self. Nor will the sweetest delight of Gardens afford much comfort in sleep; wherein the dulnesse 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.”

Thomas Browne book The Garden of Cyrus

Source: The Garden of Cyrus (1658), Ch. 5

Dreams, Knowledge, Sense, Time

“Night in so sweet an attitude beheld Asleep, was by an angel sculptured In this stone; and sleeping, is alive; Waken her, doubter; she will speak to thee”

Giovan Battista Strozzi

Epigram for Michelangelo's ""la Notte""

Angels, Night

“We are not hypocrites in our sleep.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On Dreams"
The Plain Speaker (1826)

“Then give him into the charge of swift messengers to carry him,
of Sleep and Death, who are twin brothers, and these two shall lay him
down presently within the rich countryside of broad Lykia.”

Homér Iliad

XVI. 671–673 (tr. R. Lattimore). Cf. Virgil, Aeneid, VI.278.
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

Death

“Quiet night that brings
Rest to the labourer, is the outlaw's day,
In which he rises early to do wrong,
And when his work is ended, dares not sleep.”

Philip Massinger The Guardian

The Guardian (1633), Act II, scene iv.

Night

“Every night, at exactly a quarter past three, something dreadful happens on the street outside our bedroom window. We peek through the curtains, yawning and shivering in the life-draining chill, and then we clamber back beneath the blankets without exchanging a word, to hug each other tightly and hope for sound sleep before it's time to rise.

Usually what we witness verges on the mundane. Drunken young men fighting, swaying about with outstretched knives, cursing incoherently. Robbery, bashings, rape. We wince to see such violence, but we can hardly be shocked or surprised any more, and we're never tempted to intervene: it's always far too cold, for a start! A single warm exhalation can coat the window pane with mist, transforming the most stomach-wrenching assault into a safely cryptic ballet for abstract blobs of light.

On some nights, though, when the shadows in the room are subtly wrong, when the familiar street looks like an abandoned film set, or a painting of itself perversely come to life, we are confronted by truly disturbing sights, oppressive apparitions which almost make us doubt we're awake, or, if awake, sane. I can't catalogue these visions, for most, mercifully, are blurred by morning, leaving only a vague uneasiness and a reluctance to be alone even in the brightest sunshine.”

Greg Egan (1961) Australian science fiction writer and former computer programmer

Scatter My Ashes http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/HORROR/SCATTER/Scatter.html, published in Interzone (Spring 1988) Fiction

Life, Men, Hope, Light

“…Soon, by Allah's permission, a day will come when the Muslim will walk everywhere as master, having honor, being revered, with his head held high, and his dignity preserved. Anyone who dares to offend him will be disciplined, and any hand that reaches out to harm him will be cut off. So let the world know that we are living today in a new era. Whoever was heedless must now be alert. Whoever was sleeping must now awaken…”

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (1971–2019) leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant

As quoted in Dabiq, issue #12; published November 18, 2015, pp. 2-3
2014, 2015

World

“.. I am so often showing my work in Germany that I belong to the German moderns... I openly want to confess you that I don't value the new painting in my home country very much. That is why I don't have a lot of acquaintances among the painters. Everything here is so little progressive. People's life is to easy here. It is very difficult to keep wide-awake since all are sleeping here. I feel much more at home in Germany.”

Jacoba van Heemskerck (1876–1923) Dutch painter

translation from Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
version in Dutch / citaat van Jacoba van Heemskerck, in het Nederlands vertaald: ..ik ben zo vaak met mijn werk in Duitsland dat ik helemaal tot de Duitse modernen behoor.. .Ik wil u openlijk bekennen dat ik de nieuwe schilderkunst in mijn vaderland niet erg hoog aansla. Daarom heb ik ook niet erg veel kennissen onder de schilders. Alles is hier zo weinig vooruitstrevend. De mensen herbben het veel te goed. Het is erg moeilijk wakker te blijven aangezien allen hier slapen. In Duitsland voel ik me veel meer thuis.
Quote of Jacoba van Heemskerck, in a letter of June 1921 to prof de:Hans Hildebrandt, Stuttgart Germany; as cited in Jacoba van Heemskerck van Beest, 1876 – 1923: schilderes uit roeping, A. H. Huussen jr. (ed. Marleen Blokhuis), (ISBN: 90-400-9064-5Waanders, Zwolle, 2005, p. 179
1920's

Life, People, Feeling, Home

“There's a cat in the window, of the house of my lover.
Well she sleeps there alone now, or perhaps with another.
Oh I try no to think about that, I try not to think at all!”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

Insound Tour Support No.12 (2000)

Cats, Lovers, Thinking, Housing

“Courts of equity have always considered it of the greatest possible importance that parties should not sleep on their rights.”

John Romilly, 1st Baron Romilly (1802–1874) English Whig politician and judge

Browne v. Cross (1852), 14 Beav. 113.

“Sleeping on a plank has one advantage — it encourages early rising.”

Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870) French writer and dramatist, father of the homonym writer and dramatist

Adventures in Czarist Russia.

“…the Dulcibella had begun to move in her sleep, as it were, rolling drowsily to some faint send of the sea, with an occasional short jump, like the start of an uneasy dreamer.”

Robert Erskine Childers (1870–1922) Irish nationalist and author

Source: Literary Years and War (1900-1918), The Riddle Of The Sands (1903), p. 35.

Sea

“Six hours in sleep, in law's grave study six,
Four spend in prayer, the rest on Nature fix.”

Edward Coke (1552–1634) English lawyer and judge

Translation of lines quoted by Coke. Compare: "Seven hours to law, to soothing slumber seven; Ten to the world allot, and all to heaven" - Sir William Jones.

Law, Nature, Study

“There is a correlation between crude yuppies buying Porsches in the City and the number of people sleeping on the street. The tax rip-offs that are used to buy second homes, swimming pools and extended holidays mean an increase in the number of people sleeping on the street because there is insufficient public expenditure to provide housing for them. The Tories have always supported the creed which blames poverty on the poor. We believe that the poor are the victims of the society created by the Conservatives and the Government whom they so avidly support…There would indeed be no need for anyone to be homeless if a large number of previously privately rented houses were not deliberately kept empty by property speculators as a result of Government policies. It is sheer hypocrisy for Tory Members to blame the poor unfortunate people who have to sleep in cardboard boxes when they themselves put those people on the street, splash them every night as they drive past in their Porsches and kick dirt in the faces of the poor. They are the people to blame for the situation faced by so many people in London, and it is a matter of grave concern.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1988/jun/24/policing-london in the House of Commons (24 June 1988). 1980s

People, Home, Support, Past

“And yet, as angels in some brighter dreams
Call to the soul when man doth sleep,
So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes,
And into glory peep.”

Henry Vaughan (1621–1695) Welsh author, physician and metaphysical poet

"They Are All Gone," st. 7.
Silex Scintillans (1655)

Dreams, Angels, Soul

“Truly, night was made for sleep; since to its wakeful hours belongs an oppression unknown to the very dreariest hours of day. The stillness is so deep, the solitude so unbroken, the fever brought on by want of rest so weakens the nerves, that the imagination exercises despotic and unwholesome power, till, if the heart have a fear or a sorrow, up it arises in all the force and terror of gigantic exaggeration.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

Fear, Exercises, Imagination, Solitude

“A good rule of thumb is every couple of hours take fifteen minutes off. Naps are also very helpful, short naps. Even a ten or fifteen minute nap in the middle of the day can be the equivalent of an hour and a half of extra sleep the night before, and it can raise your effective IQ by ten points.”

Daniel Levitin (1957) American psychologist

Talks at Google (Oct 28, 2014)

Help, Night

“Round this town you've ceased to be / That's what you get for sleeping with the enemy
Guess who's gonna take the blame for my big mouth
Into my big mouth / You could fly a plane”

Noel Gallagher (1967) British musician

My Big Mouth
Be Here Now (1997)

Flying

“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 book Nightwood

Source: Nightwood (1936), Ch. 5 : Watchman, What of the Night?

Soul

“I will neither resurrect the past nor return.
Sleep, Romeo, Juliet, on your headrest of stone feathers.
I won't raise your bound hands from the ashes.
Let the cat visit the deserted cathedrals,
its pupil flashing on the altars. Let an owl
nest on the dead ogive.”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

"Farewell" (1945), trans. Renata Gorczynski and Robert Hass
Rescue (1945)

Cats, Past, Dead

“Contented sleep releases the limbs. We await full moon. Await the dance!”

Max Pechstein (1881–1955) German artist

4 short quotes of Max Pechstein, 1918, in Aus dem Palau-Tagebuch, 'Das Kunstblatt' 2, no. 6, p. 179; as cited in 'The Revival of Printmaking in Germany', I. K. Rigby; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; published by Museum Associates, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California & Prestel-Verlag, Germany, 1986, p. 43

Dance

“When we read how one mediæval saint stood erect in his cell for a week without sleep or food, merely chewing a plantain-leaf out of humility, so as not to be too perfect; how another remained all night up to his neck in a pond that was freezing over; and how others still performed for the glory of God feats no less tasking to their energies, we are inclined to think, that, with the gods of yore, the men, too, have departed, and that the earth is handed over to a race whose will has become as feeble as its faith.”

Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909) German psychologist

Hermann Ebbinghaus (1885), "Experiments in Memory," in Science http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16792/16792-h/16792-h.htm Vol. 6, 1885, p. 198

Men, God, Faith, Food

“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 Waugh book Decline and Fall

Decline and Fall (1928)

“If someone were to expound that godliness is to belong to childhood in the temporal sense and thus dwindle and die with the years as childhood does, is to be a happy frame of mind that cannot be preserved but only recollected; if someone were to expound that repentance as a weakness of old age accompanies the decline of one’s powers, when the senses are dulled, when sleep no longer strengthens but increases lethargy-this would be ungodliness and foolishness.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, Hong p. 12
1840s

Age, Sense, Childhood, Happiness

“So many I considered, closest to me,
turned on a dime and sold me out dutifully,
although that knife was chipping away at me,
they turned their eyes away and went home to sleep.”

Mariah Carey (1970) American singer-songwriter

"Petals", Rainbow, 1999
Lyrics

Home

“The passions are a kind of thirst, inexorable and intense, for certain feelings or felt states. To find or invent 'objects' (which are, more strictly speaking, relational structures) whose felt quality satisfies the passions,- that for me is the activity of the artist, an activity which does not cease even in sleep. No wonder the artist is constantly placing and displacing, relating and rupturing relations; his task is to find a complex of qualities whose feeling is just right – veering toward the unknown and chaos, yet ordered and related in order to be apprehended.”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

Source: 1940s, Beyond the Aesthetics' (1946), pp. 36-37

Feeling, Passion

“Last night I couldn't sleep till after four in the morning – I had been out to the canyon all afternoon – till late at night – wonderful color – I wish I could tell you how big – and with the night the colors deeper and darker – cattle on the pastures in the bottom looked line little pinheads. I can understand Pa Dow painting his pretty colored canyons – it must have been a great temptation – no wonder he fell. Then the moon rose right up out of the ground after we got out on the plains again – battered a little where he bumped his head but enormous – There was no wind – it was just big and still – so very big and still – long legged jack rabbits hopping across in front of the light as we passed – A great place to see the night time because there is nothing else.”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

then I came home – not sleepy so I made a pattern of some flowers I had picked – They were like waterlilies – white ones – with the quality of smoothness gone.
Canyon, Texas, (September 14, 1916), pp. 186, 187
1915 - 1920, Letters to Anita Pollitzer' (1916)

Color, Home, Flowers, Understanding

“O lay me, ye that see the light, near some rock of my hills! let the thick hazels be around, let the rustling oak be near. Green be the place of my rest; let the sound of the distant torrent be heard. Daughter of Toscar, take the harp, and raise the lovely song of Selma, that sleep may overtake my soul in the midst of joy; that the dreams of my youth may return, and the days of the mighty Fingal.”

James Macpherson (1736–1796) Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician

"The War of Inis-thona"
The Poems of Ossian

Love, Youth, Dreams, Soul

“The maiden---pure and without stain--lay sleeping on the small couch that occupied one corner of the closet. Her fair limbs were enshrouded in the light folds of a night-robe, and she lay in an attitude of perfect repose, one glowing cheek resting upon her uncovered arm, while over the other, waved the loosened curls of her glossy hair. The parting lips disclosed her teeth, white as ivory, while her youthful bosom came heaving up from the folds of her night-robe, like a billow that trembles for a moment in the moonlight, and then is suddenly lost to view. She lay there in all the ripening beauty of maidenhood, the light falling gently over her young limbs, their outlines marked by the easy folds of her robe, resembling in their roundness and richness of proportion, the swelling fulness of the rose-bud that needs but another beam of light, to open it into its perfect bloom.”

George Lippard (1822–1854) Novelist, journalist

The Quaker City; or, the Monks of Monk Hall, part 1, chapter 9 "The Bride" (1844)

Youth, Beauty, Light, Parting

“He caught a glimpse of that extraordinary faculty in man, that strange, altruistic, rare, and obstinate decency which will make writers or scientists maintain their truths at the risk of death. Eppur si muove, Galileo was to say; it moves all the same. They were to be in a position to burn him if he would go on with it, with his preposterous nonsense about the earth moving round the sun, but he was to continue with the sublime assertion because there was something which he valued more than himself. The Truth. To recognize and to acknowledge What Is. That was the thing which man could do, which his English could do, his beloved, his sleeping, his now defenceless English. They might be stupid, ferocious, unpolitical, almost hopeless. But here and there, oh so seldome, oh so rare, oh so glorious, there were those all the same who would face the rack, the executioner, and even utter extinction, in the cause of something greater than themselves. Truth, that strange thing, the jest of Pilate's. Many stupid young men had thought they were dying for it, and many would continue to die for it, perhaps for a thousand years. They did not have to be right about their truth, as Galileo was to be. It was enough that they, the few and martyred, should establish a greatness, a thing above the sum of all they ignorantly had.”

T. H. White book The Book of Merlyn

The Book of Merlyn (1977)

Death, Men, Truth, Stupidity

“She hurried at his words, beset with fears,
For there were sleeping dragons all around,
At glaring watch, perhaps, with ready spears —
Down the wide stairs a darkling way they found. —
In all the house was heard no human sound.
A chain-droop’d lamp was flickering by each door;
The arras, rich with horseman, hawk, and hound,
Flutter’d in the besieging wind’s uproar;
And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor.”

John Keats The Eve of St. Agnes

Stanza 40
Poems (1820), The Eve of St. Agnes

Fear, Way, Housing

“You don't love yourself enough. Or you'd love your nature too, and what it demands of you. People who love what they do wear themselves down doing it, they even forget to wash or eat. Do you have less respect for your own nature than the engraver does for engraving, the dancer for the dance, the miser for money or the social climber for status? When they're really possessed by what they do, they'd rather stop eating and sleeping than give up practicing their arts. Is helping others less valuable to you? Not worth your effort?”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Hays translation
V, 1
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book V

Love, Money, People, Art

“Death had to take him in his sleep, for if he was awake there'd have been a fight.”

Thomas R. Marshall (1854–1925) American politician who served as the 28th Vice President of the United States

Upon hearing the death of President Teddy Roosevelt, as quoted in F.D.R. : 1905-1928‎ (1947) by Elliott Roosevelt, p. 449.

Death, Fight

“We may, indeed, indulge in sport and jest, but in the same way as we enjoy sleep or other relaxations, and only when we have satisfied the claims of our earnest, serious task.”
Ludo autem et ioco uti illo quidem licet, sed sicut somno et quietibus ceteris tum, cum gravibus seriisque rebus satis fecerimus.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Book I, section 103
De Officiis – On Duties (44 BC)

Way, Sport

“First she studied her husband's flower arrangement. He had chosen the blossom of a single white wild rose and put a single pearl of water on the green leaf, and set it on red stones. Autumn is coming, he was suggesting with the flower, talking through the flower, do not weep for the time of fall, the time of dying when the earth begins to sleep; enjoy the time of beginning again and experience the glorious cool of the autumn air on this summer evening…soon the tear will vanish and the rose, only the stones will remain — soon you and I will vanish and only the stones will remain.”

James Clavell book Shōgun

Source: Shōgun (1975), Ch. 43

Flowers, Autumn, Tear, Study

“Don't tell your kids you had an easy birth or they won't respect you. For years I used to wake up my daughter and say, 'Melissa, you ripped me to shreds. Now go back to sleep.”

Joan Rivers (1933–2014) American comedian, actress, and television host

As quoted in On Being Blonde: Wit and Wisdom from the World's Most Infamous Blondes (2004), by P. Munier, p. 83

Birth, Daughters

“…by the term Hypnotism, or Nervous Sleep, I mean a peculiar condition of the nervous system, into which it may be thrown by artificial contrivance, and which differs, in several respects, from common sleep or the waking condition. I do not allege that this condition is induced through the transmission of a magnetic or occult influence from my body into that of my patients; nor do I profess, by my processes, to produce the higher [i. e., supernatural] phenomena of the Mesmerists. My pretensions are of a much more humble character, and are all consistent with generally admitted principles in physiological and psychological science. Hypnotism might therefore not inaptly be designated, Rational Mesmerism, in contra-distinction to the Transcendental Mesmerism of the Mesmerists. [ Braid, Observations on Trance or Human Hibernation, 1850, 'Preface.”

James Braid (1795–1860) Scottish surgeon, hypnotist, and hypnotherapist

In The Discovery of Hypnosis: The Complete Writings of James Braid, the Father ... http://books.google.co.in/books?id=Vs35STwQYQoC&pg=PA200&lpg=PA200, p. 200.

Science

“When every worldly thought is utterly forsaken,
Comes the starry midnight, felt by life's gifted few;
Then will the spirit from its earthly sleep awaken
To a being more intense, more spiritual and true.
So doth the soul awaken,
Like that youth to night's fair queen!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(1837-1) (Vol. 49) Subjects for Pictures. Third Series. I. The Awakening of Endymion
The Monthly Magazine

Life, Youth, Soul, Night

“To the people of New York, Paris, or London, "death" is a word that is never pronounced because it burns the lips. The Mexican, however, frequents it, jokes about it, caresses it, sleeps with it, celebrates it; it is one of his favorite toys and most steadfast love. Of course, in his attitude perhaps there is as much fear as there is in one of the others; at least he does not hide it; he confronts it face to face with patience, disdain, or irony.”

Octavio Paz book The Labyrinth of Solitude

The Labyrinth of Solitude (1950)

Love, Death, People, Fear

“Bedroom insulation is unnecessary and restrictive of optimum summer sleeping comfort.”

Ken Kern American writer

The Owner Built Home: A How-to-do-it Book (1972)

Summer

“And we will be ready, at the end of every day will be ready, will not say no to anything, will try to stay awake while everyone is sleeping, will not sleep, will make the shoes with the elves, will breathe deeply all the time, breathe in all the air full of glass and nails and blood, will breathe it and drink it, so rich, so when it comes we will not be angry, will be content, tired enough to go, gratefully, will shake hands with everyone, bye, bye, and then pack a bag, some snacks, and go to the volcano.”

Dave Eggers (1970) memoirist, novelist, short story writer, editor, publisher

A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius (2000)

Shoe, Drink, Time

“Freud very rightly brought his critical faculties to bear upon the dream. It is, in fact, inadmissible that this considerable portion of psychic activity (since, at least from man’s birth until his death, thought offers no solution of continuity, the sum of the moments of the dream, from the point of view of time, and taking into consideration only the time of pure dreaming, that is the dreams of sleep, is not inferior to the sum of the moments of reality, or, to be more precisely limiting, the moments of waking) has still today been so grossly neglected.”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

Le Manifeste du Surréalisme, Andre Breton (Manifesto of Surrealism; 1924)

Death, Dreams, Birth, Reality

“More dreams have been assassinated by guilt than ever were ended by waking up. The dream of freedom is a yearning towards growth, a need for self-knowledge, not an escape from some half seen, half felt bogeyman. We all have a need, mostly unsatisfied and rarely spoken, to measure ourselves against nature as we were meant to do. To see how far our muscles and our breath and our unaided minds can take us. In a culture that lets us do little for ourselves we have this curious and hidden need to make our way to paradise on our own two feet. Being carried to paradise on a palanquin was, I am sure, as unsatisfying as being carried there on a jet. To sleep away your passage in silk draped sloth, or to murder space in a turbine’s roar, gives us no measure of ourselves and the measure of self is the meaning of life.”

Reese Palley (1922–2015)

“Unlikely Passages” 1984

Life, Dreams, Way, Nature

“My tears are buried in my heart,
Like cave-locked fountains sleeping.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Song - I pray thee let me weep to-night
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)

Tear, Heart

“So to sleep on the sleeping porch required preparation. First, you put on long underwear, pajamas, jeans, a sweatshirt, your grandfather’s old cardigan and bathrobe, two pairs of woolen socks on your feet and another on your hands, and a hat with earflaps tied beneath the chin. Then you climbed into bed and were immediately covered with a dozen bed blankets, three horse blankets, all the household overcoats, a canvas tarpaulin, and a piece of old carpet. I’m not sure that they didn’t lay an old wardrobe on top of that, just to hold everything down. It was like sleeping under a dead horse. For the first minute or so it was unimaginably cold, shockingly cold, but gradually your body heat seeped in and you became warm and happy in a way you would not have believed possible only a minute or two before. It was bliss. Or at least it was until you moved a muscle. The warmth, you discovered, extended only to the edge of your skin and not a micron farther. There wasn’t any possibility of shifting positions. If you so much as flexed a finger or bent a knee, it was like plunging them into liquid nitrogen.”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

Source: The Life And Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (2006), p. 140

Way, Horse, Dead, Happiness

“Recently I was visited by a very good friend who had just returned from a long walk in the woods, and I asked her what she had observed. “Nothing in particular,” she replied. I might have been incredulous had I not been accustomed to such responses, for long ago I became convinced that the seeing see little.
How was it possible, I asked myself, to walk for an hour through the woods and see nothing worthy of note? I who cannot see find hundreds of things to interest me through mere touch. I feel the delicate symmetry of a leaf. I pass my hands lovingly about the smooth skin of a silver birch, or the rough, shaggy bark of a pine. In spring I touch the branches of trees hopefully in search of a bud, the first sign of awakening Nature after her winter’s sleep. I feel the delightful, velvety texture of a flower, and discover its remarkable convolutions; and something of the miracle of Nature is revealed to me.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

Three Days to See (1933)

Feeling, Search, Spring, Flowers

“I sing and drink and sleep on floors
And try hard not to be annoyed
By all these people worrying about me.
So when I'm suffering through some awful drive,
You occasionally cross my mind.
It's my hidden hope that you are still among them.
Well, are you?”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

Oh, You Are the Roots That Sleep Beneath My Feet and Hold the Earth in Place
Don't Be Frightened of Turning the Page (2001)

People, Hope, Drink, Suffering

“In the countries of the ancient world, even before the formation of the empire, slavery was the basis of society. In each was a capitalist class and a slave class. The capitalists, however, were constantly in fear of slave insurrection. The dread clouded their sunshine by day, and nightmared their sleep; for they saw, piling up against them, a discontent hell-deep and heaven-high.”

Bouck White (1874–1951) American author and novelist

Source: The Call of the Carpenter (1914), p. 8

World, Fear, Hell, Country

“A story is told according to which Saint-Pol-Roux, in times gone by, used to have a notice posted on the door of his manor house in Camaret, every evening before he went to sleep, which read: ‘THE POET IS WORKING’.”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

Le Manifeste du Surréalisme, Andre Breton (Manifesto of Surrealism; 1924)

Time, Reading, Housing

“Many women would like to dream with men without sleeping with them. Someone should point out to them that this is utterly impossible.”

Karl Kraus (1874–1936) Czech playwright and publicist

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

Women, Men, Dreams

“Now spread the night her spangled canopy,
And summoned every restless eye to sleep;
On beds of tender grass the beasts down lie,
The fishes slumbered in the silent deep,
Unheard were serpent's hiss and dragon's cry,
Birds left to sing, and Philomen to weep,
Only that noise heaven's rolling circles kest,
Sung lullaby to bring the world to rest.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

Era la notte allor ch'alto riposo
Han l'onde e i venti, e parea muto il mondo,
Gli animai lassi, e quei che 'l mare ondoso,
O de' liquidi laghi alberga il fondo,
E chi si giace in tana, o in mandra ascoso,
E i pinti augelli nell’oblio giocondo
Sotto il silenzio de' secreti orrori
Sopían gli affanni, e raddolciano i cori.
Canto II, stanza 96 (tr. Fairfax)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

Lie, World, Bird, Fish

“A basic social arrangement in modern society is that the individual tends to sleep, play and work in different places with different co-participants, under different authorities, and without an over-all rational plan. The central feature of total institutions can be described as a breakdown of the barriers ordinarily separating these three spheres of life. First, all aspects of life are conducted in the same place and under the same central authority. Second, each phase of the member's daily activity is carried on in the immediate company of a large batch of others, all of whom are treated alike and required to do the same thing together. Third, all phases of the day's activities are tightly scheduled, with one activity leading at prearranged time into the next, the whole sequence of activities being imposed from above by a system of explicit formal rulings and a body of officials. Finally, the various enforced activities are brought together into a single rational plan purportedly designed to fulfil the official aims of the institution.”

Erving Goffman book Asylums

Source: 1950s-1960s, Asylums, 1961, p. 5-6

Life, Time

“Ever sits the lady weeping —
Weeping night and day —
One perpetual vigil keeping,
Till life pass away,
And she join the seven who sleep.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Monthly Magazine

Life, Night

“And did those feet in ancient time,
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold,
Bring me my Arrows of desire,
Bring me my Spear — O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green & pleasant land.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Prefatory Poem
1800s, Milton (c. 1809)

God, Mountain, Time, Fight

“Ventilashun iz a good thing, but when a man kant lay down and sleep in a 10 aker lot without taking down two lengths ov fence to let the wind in he iz alltogether too airish.”

Josh Billings (1818–1885) American humorist

Josh Billings: His Works, Complete (1873)

“On the island of New Georgia in the Solomons,
Stands a simple wooden cross alone to tell
That beneath the silent coral of the Solomons,
Sleeps a man, sleeps a man remembered well.”

Frank Loesser (1910–1969) American songwriter

The Ballad of Rodger Young http://www.wegrokit.com/shines.htm

“Queen and Huntress chaste and fair
Now the Sun is laid to sleep
Seated in the Silver Chair
State in wonder
Manner keep […]
Hesperus entreats Thy light
Goddess excellently bright
Bless us then with a wished sight
Thou who mak'st the day of night…”

Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist

Song lyrics, Incantations (1978)

Light, Sun, Night

“Don’t try, don’t try, Don’t try you’ll never win, And you can never be him. ~ "Sleep Better"”

Pete Yorn (1974) American musician

Song lyrics

“Long before the human spirit awoke to clear cognizance of the world and itself, it sometimes stirred in its sleep, opened bewildered eyes, and slept again.”

Olaf Stapledon book Last and First Men

Source: Last and First Men (1930), Chapter I: Balkan Europe; Section 1, “The European War and After” (p. 17)

World

“I mentioned the caffeine. I should also note that if coffee does not prevent or inhibit sleep, it will stimulate dream projections, and also aid you in bringing the critical faculties into the dream state.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 290, Page 70
The Early Sessions: Sessions 1-42, 1997, The Early Sessions: Book 7

Dreams, Coffee

“At the 9th Division headquarters at El Guettar, Tunisia, enemy planes bombed and strafed incessantly, so that the security normally associated with a headquarters in the rear was missing. Although officers and men alike dug deep, even in foxholes they could get little sleep. One day a small convoy of vehicles arrived, sirens alive, Patton standing in the lead vehicle. While the division commander, Major General Manton Eddy, rushed to greet him, the staff pondered what fault Patton would find this time. "Manton, Goddamn it," Patton shouted in his high-pitched voice, "I want you to get these staff officers out front and get them shot at!" Having been bombarded day and night by enemy planes, having had no sleep for days, a young personnel officer went berserk and had to be evacuated for medical treatment.”

William Westmoreland book A Soldier Reports

Source: A Soldier Reports (1976), p. 21.

Men, Time, Night

“Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it’s like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

"After Apple Picking
1910s

“Yet spirit immortal, the tomb can not bind thee,
But like thine own eagle that soars to the sun
Thou springest from bondage and leavest behind thee
A name which before thee no mortal hath won.
Tho' nations may combat, and war's thunders rattle,
No more on thy steed wilt thou sweep o’er the plain:
Thou sleep'st thy last sleep, thou hast fought thy last battle,
No sound can awake thee to glory again.”

Lyman Heath (1804–1870) American musician

The Grave of Bonaparte, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919) (incorrectly attributed as "Leonard" Heath).

War, Sun

“I want to thank some very special people without whom I would not be here today. George Bush, Sarah Palin and the Pope. When I came to Hollywood in 1983, I had one dream— to sleep with Jodie Foster. That didn't work out, but this is nice, too.”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

On getting his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (14 September 2010), as reported on Larry King Live (14 September 2010)

People, Dreams

“As for the system of the Commune, which makes it impossible for a man to rise or fall, it is merely the old caste system revived; if it could be put into force, all industry would be disheartened, emulation would cease, and mankind would go to sleep.”

William Winwood Reade (1838–1875) British historian

Source: The Martyrdom of Man (1872), Chapter IV, "Intellect", p. 408.

Communication

“Where dost thou careless lie,
Buried in ease and sloth?
Knowledge that sleeps, doth die;
And this security,
It is the common moth,
That eats on wits and arts, and oft destroys them both.”

Ben Jonson (1572–1637) English writer

XXIII, An Ode, to Himself, lines 1-6
The Works of Ben Jonson, Second Folio (1640), Underwoods

Lie, Art, Knowledge

“By Crom, I do not like this place, where dead men rise, and sleeping men vanish into the bellies of shadows!”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

"Xuthal of the Dusk" (1933)

Men, Dead

“In the biggest and the smallest I sleep but at the same place I stay.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

"Motion," p. 31
The Shape (2000), Sequence: “Happiness of Atoms”

“(Shortly after Germany forced Denmark to sign a non-aggression pact in 1939) How nice. Now the Germans can sleep in peace, knowing that they will not be invaded by us.”

Victor Borge (1909–2000) Danish and US-American comedian and musician

From the obit in The Independent.
Quotations from Borge's performances

Peace

“[About her vegan diet] I guess I'm a very compassionate person so hearing about animal abuse kind of triggered something in me that maybe I should try it… I'm really into health and fitness and wellness, so this kind of tied into it. I thought I was just going to do it until the (2010) Olympics, but then I didn't go to the Olympics, and then I ended up liking it so much, I think I'll be a vegan for the rest of my life. … My energy is so much better, I don't hit that wall at 2 o'clock or 3 o'clock in the afternoon, I sleep well, my skin is better, everything just feels well. And it transfers into my attitude, everything in my life has just become a lot calmer, everything I'm putting in me is clean and genuine and organic and in turn, the way I live my life has started to follow that path.”

Meagan Duhamel (1985) Canadian pair skater

" Canadian pairs champ Meagan Duhamel credits vegan diet for good health http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/02/07/canadian-pairs-champ-meag_n_1261130.html" by Lori Ewing, The Canadian Press, in The Huffington Post Canada (2 July 2012)

Life, Health, Way, Feeling

“Fair friend, in singing I call you:
Sleep no longer, for I hear the bird sing
Who goes seeking day through the wood
And I fear that the jealous one will attack you,
And soon it will be dawn!”

Giraut de Bornelh (1138–1220) French writer

Bel companho, en chantan vos apel!
No dormatz plus, qu'eu auch chantar l'auzel
Que vai queren lo jorn per lo boschatge
Et ai paor que.l gilos vos assatge
Et ades sera l'alba.
"Reis glorios", line 11; translation from Gale Sigal Erotic Dawn-Songs of the Middle Ages (1996) p. 148.

Fear, Bird, Singing

“The day is past, and the moonbeams weep
O'er the many that rest in their last cold sleep;
Near to the gashed and the nerveless hand
Is the pointless spear and the broken brand;
The archer lies like an arrow spent,
His shafts all loose and his bow unbent;
Many a white plume torn and red,
Bright curls rent from the graceful head,
Helmet and breast-plate scattered around,
Lie a fearful show on the well-fought ground;
While the crow and the raven flock overhead
To feed on the hearts of the helpless dead,
Save when scared by the glaring eye
Of some wretch in his last death agony.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Warrior from The London Literary Gazette (25th October 1823) Sketch
The Improvisatrice (1824)

Death, Lie, Fear, Past

“It is important to remember that when the body tells you to sleep or rest, it does so because it needs time to rejuvenate itself. Therefore, getting proper rest will help all aspects of existence. […] Try to eat no later than three hours before lying down. If you want to maximize the nourishing benefits of sleep, you should try to go to bed before 10 p. m.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

Source: Books, Spiritual Warrior, Volume I: Uncovering Spiritual Truths in Psychic Phenomena (Hari-Nama Press, 1996), Chapter 1: Dreams: A State of Reality, p. 23

Lying, Time, Help

“Looking at them, it does not seem as though even progress in intellect, slow as that also is, made the pace very much more rapid. When we look at those whose intellect is scarcely developed, they seem after each day of life to sink to sleep almost on the place they occupied the day before; and when we glance over those who are more highly evolved so far as intellect is concerned, they too are travelling very very slowly, and seem to make small progress in each day of life.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

https://theosophy.world/sites/default/files/ebooks/Annie%20Besant-In-The-Outer-Court.pdf In the Outer Court, 1895, p. 11

Life, Travel

“Lay your sleeping head, my love
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral;
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie:
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.”

W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet

Lay your sleeping head, my love (1937), lines 1–2, written January 1937; also known as Lullaby.

Love, Children, Lie, Beauty

“Oh, I am not quite sleeping.
Oh, I am fast in bed.”

Sufjan Stevens (1975) American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist

Lyrics, Illinois (2005)

“And weeping fast as she had breath
Janet implored us, "Wake her from her sleep!"
And would not be instructed in how deep
Was the forgetful kingdom of death.”

John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974) American poet

"Janet Waking", line 25, from Two Gentlemen in Bonds (1927).

Death, Forgetting

“Don't you know there is no one in the streets
and no one in the houses?There are only eyes in the windows.
If you don't have a place to sleep,
knock on a door and it will open,
open up to a certain point
and you will see that it is cold inside,
and that that house is empty
and wants nothing to do with you,
your stories mean nothing,
and if you insist on being gentle,
the dog and the cat will bite you.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

¿Sabes que en las calles no hay nadie
y adentro de las casas tampoco?Sólo hay ojos en las ventanas.
Si no tienes dònde dormir
toca una puerta y te abrirán,
te abrirán hasta cierto punto
y verás que hace frío adentro,
que aquella casa está vacía,
y no quiere nada contigo,
no valen nada tus historias,
y si insistes con tu ternura
te muerden el perro y el gato.
Soliloquio en Tinieblas (Soliloquy at Twilight) from Estravagario (Book of Vagaries) (1958).

Dogs, Cats, Housing