Quotes about bed
page 7

Dylan Moran photo
Larry the Cable Guy photo
Samuel Butler (poet) photo

“If he that in the field is slain
Be in the bed of honour lain,
He that is beaten may be said
To lie in honour's truckle-bed.”

Samuel Butler (poet) (1612–1680) poet and satirist

Canto III, line 1047
Source: Hudibras, Part I (1663–1664)

Michelle Obama photo
Margaret Cho photo
Bill Bryson photo
Torquato Tasso photo

“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)

Honoré de Balzac photo

“Do not therefore allow yourself to be led astray by the specious good nature of such an institution as that of twin beds.
It is the silliest, the most treacherous, the most dangerous in the world. Shame and anathema to him who conceived it.”

Ainsi ne vous laissez jamais séduire par la fausse bonhomie des lits jumeaux.
C'est l'invention la plus sotte, la plus perfide et la plus dangereuse qui soit au monde. Honte et anathème à qui l'imagina!
Part II, Meditation XVII, The Theory of the Bed, I: Twin Beds.
Physiology of Marriage (1829)

“O maister deere and Fadir reverent,
Mi maister Chaucer, flour of eloquence,
Mirour of fructuous entendement,
O, universel fadir in science!
Allas! þat þou thyn excellent prudence
In þi bed mortel mightist naght by-qwethe;
What eiled deth? allas! whi wolde he sle the?”

Thomas Occleve (1369–1426) British writer

O master dear and reverend father, my master Chaucer, flower of eloquence, mirror of fruitful wisdom, O universal father of knowledge! Alas, that on thy mortal bed thou mightest not bequeath thine excellent prudence! What aileth Death? Alas, why would he slay thee?
Source: Regement of Princes (c. 1412), Line 1961; vol. 3, p. 71; translation from Roger Sherman Loomis and Rudolph Willard (eds.) Medieval English Verse and Prose in Modernized Versions (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1948) p. 351.

Emily Brontë photo
P. D. James photo
John Fante photo
Colin Wilson photo
Nathanael Greene photo
Wesley Snipes photo
Amit Chaudhuri photo
Lana Turner photo
Bhakti Tirtha Swami photo
Joan Miró photo

“How did I think up my drawings and my ideas for painting? Well I'd come home to my Paris studio in Rue Blomet at night, I'd go to bed, and sometimes I hadn't any supper. I saw things, and I jotted them down in a notebook. I saw shapes on the ceiling..”

Joan Miró (1893–1983) Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist

from: Miro, on English Wikipedia
Miró's quote on 'automatic painting and drawing', explaining the start of his work 'Harlequin's Carnival' he made in Paris, strongly admired then by Surrealists like André Breton
1915 - 1940

Sufjan Stevens photo

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

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

Lyrics, Illinois (2005)

Trevor Baylis photo

“A good idea turns every cog in your mind, making you scared of bed in case the whole machine grinds to a halt.”

Trevor Baylis (1937–2018) English inventor

Cited in: Andrew Razeghi (2008), The Riddle: Where Ideas Come From and How to Have Better Ones. p. 104

“All this slowness, all this hardness,
The nearness that is waiting in my bed,
The gradual self-effacement of the dead.”

Alun Lewis (1915–1944) Welsh poet

"The First Month of His Absence", line 33; p. 35.
Ha! Ha! Among the Trumpets (1945)

James K. Morrow photo
Donald Barthelme photo

“Oh, there is nothing better than intelligent conversation except thrashing about in bed with a naked girl and Egmont Light Italic.”

Donald Barthelme (1931–1989) American writer, editor, and professor

"Florence Green is 81".
Come Back, Dr. Caligari (1964)

Anthony Burgess photo
Lewis Black photo

“I lost my virginity to a [record] skip. "Lay Lady Lay--Lay Lady Lay--Lay Lady Lay". We didn't even get to the big brass bed part.”

Lewis Black (1948) American stand-up comedian, author, playwright, social critic and actor

Anticipation (2008)

Samuel Romilly photo

“Murali is really struggling out there, he looked like Heather Mills McCartney making her way to bed from her en suite bathroom fielding down at fine-leg.”

Ben Dirs journalist

England v Sri Lanka, 2007-04-04, BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/6521515.stm,

James Comey photo
Rand Paul photo
Max Ernst photo

“When at length they rose to go to bed, it struck each man as he followed his neighbour upstairs that the one before him walked very crookedly.”

Robert Smith Surtees (1805–1864) English writer

Source: Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour (1853), Ch. 40

Robinson Jeffers photo
Han-shan photo
F. Scott Fitzgerald photo

“He read at wine, he read in bed, He read aloud, had he the breath, His every thought was with the dead, And so he read himself to death.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

"Tarquin of Cheapside"
Quoted, Tales of the Jazz Age (1922)

John Green photo
Little Richard photo
Nigella Lawson photo

“I don't wear anything in bed. But I'm not ready for a nude scene quite yet.”

Nigella Lawson (1960) British food writer, journalist and broadcaster

A woman of extremes (2001)

Plutarch photo
James Gates Percival photo
Prem Rawat photo
Bob Dylan photo

“Early one mornin' the sun was shinin',
I was layin' in bed
Wond'rin'if she'd changed at all
If her hair was still red.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Blood on the Tracks (1975), Tangled Up In Blue

Philip Roth photo
Amanda Palmer photo
Andrea Pirlo photo
Edward Young photo

“And what its worth, ask death-beds; they can tell.”

Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night II, Line 51.

Jennifer Lawrence photo

“I always knew that I was going to be famous. I honest to God don't know how else to describe it. I used to lie in bed and wonder, "Am I going to be a local TV person? Am I going to a motivational speaker?" It wasn't a vision. But as it's kind of happening, you have this buried understanding: "Of course."”

Jennifer Lawrence (1990) American actress

Van Meter, Jonathan. "The Hunger Games' Jennifer Lawrence Covers the September Issue" http://www.vogue.com/magazine/print/star-quality-jennifer-lawrence-hunger-games/. vogue.com. August 12, 2013. Retrieved March 29, 2014.

Sonny Bill Williams photo

“If you don't have massive dreams, you might as well stay in bed.”

Sonny Bill Williams (1985) New Zealand rugby player and heavyweight boxer

Williams while speaking on his sporting aspirations. Time gets close for SBW to make call http://www.smh.com.au/sport/boxing/time-gets-close-for-sbw-to-make-call-20130206-2dyud.html, by Phil Lutton, Sydney Morning Herald, dated 7 February 2013.

Rutherford B. Hayes photo

“My only objection to the arrangements there is the two-in-a-bed system. It is bad…. But let your words and conduct be perfectly pure — such as your mother might know without bringing a blush to your cheek…. If not already mentioned, do not tell your mother of the doubling in bed.”

Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) American politician, 19th President of the United States (in office from 1877 to 1881)

Letter to his son, Rutherford P. Hayes (26 February 1875)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

Charlotte Brontë photo
Ray Bradbury photo

“Why would you clone people when you can go to bed with them and make a baby? C'mon, it's stupid.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Salon Magazine (29 August 2001)

Robert Frost photo
Patrick Stump photo
Andrew Marvell photo

“But bowed his comely head
Down as upon a bed.”

Andrew Marvell (1621–1678) English metaphysical poet and politician

Upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland (1650)

Johnnie Ray photo

“It's not a handicap, because when you go to bed, I take [the hearing aid] off, and the phones ring, the maids vacuum, people knock on doors, and I don't hear any of that.”

Johnnie Ray (1927–1990) American singer, actor, songwriter and composer

On his partial deafness, interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzylptCm7Dk with Hugh Downs (1977)

Gabriel García Márquez photo

“The anxiety of falling in love could not find repose except in bed.”

Source: One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), p. 269

William Golding photo
W. Somerset Maugham photo
Happy Rhodes photo

“I am skilled now, at casting iron
To make a hardened bed for my heavy world”

Happy Rhodes (1965) American singer-songwriter

"One And Many"
Find Me (2007)

Dorothy L. Sayers photo
James K. Morrow photo
Ben Jonson photo

“He cursed Petrarch for redacting verses to sonnets, which he said were like that tyrant's bed, where some who were too short were racked, others too long cut short.”

Ben Jonson (1572–1637) English writer

Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden (1711)

Kate Bush photo

“Who knows who wrote that song of summer,
That blackbirds sing at dusk,
This is a song of colour,
Where sands sing in crimson, red and rust,
Then climb into bed and turn to dust.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Aerial (2005), A Sky of Honey (Disc 2)

Goodman Ace photo

“Late that last night, as I sat alone watching the interviews and the speeches and the what-not, she shouted to turn that thing off and come to bed. Once again politics had made estranged bedfellows.”

Goodman Ace (1899–1982) Comedian, television writer and columnist

Unconventional TV http://books.google.com/books?id=0L9kAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Late+that+last+night+as+I+sat+alone+watching+the+interviews+and+the+speeches+and+the+what+not+she+shouted+to+turn+that+thing+off+and+come+to+bed+Once+again+politics+had+made+estranged+bedfellows%22&pg=PA101, Saturday Review, 2 August 1952 http://www.unz.org/Pub/SaturdayRev-1952aug02-00030

David Sedaris photo
Margaret Cho photo
Isaac Watts photo

“Hush! my dear, lie still and slumber,
Holy angels guard thy bed!
Heavenly blessings without number
Gently falling on thy head.”

Isaac Watts (1674–1748) English hymnwriter, theologian and logician

Song 35: "A Cradle Hymn".
1710s, Divine Songs Attempted in the Easy Language of Children (1715)

Noel Gallagher photo
Lucy Mack Smith photo
Orson Scott Card photo
Adrienne von Speyr photo
Michael Drayton photo
James Madison photo

“Behold you, then, my dear friend, at the head of a great army, establishing the liberties of your country against a foreign enemy. May heaven favor your cause, and make you the channel through which it may pour its favors. While you are exterminating the monster aristocracy, and pulling out the teeth and fangs of its associate, monarchy, a contrary tendency is discovered in some here. A sect has shown itself among us, who declare they espoused our new Constitution, not as a good and sufficient thing in itself, but only as a step to an English constitution, the only thing good and sufficient in itself, in their eye. It is happy for us that these are preachers without followers, and that our people are firm and constant in their republican purity. You will wonder to be told that it is from the eastward chiefly that these champions for a king, lords and commons come. They get some important associates from New York, and are puffed up by a tribe of agitators which have been hatched in a bed of corruption made up after the model of their beloved England. Too many of these stock-jobbers and king-jobbers have come into our legislature, or rather too many of our legislature have become stock-jobbers and king-jobbers. However, the voice of the people is beginning to make itself heard, and will probably cleanse their seats at the ensuing election.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

Letter to Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette (16 June 1792)
1790s

Gideon Mantell photo
Dylan Moran photo
Jonah Goldberg photo
Girolamo Cardano photo
Percy Bysshe Shelley photo
Marcus Aurelius photo

“At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: ‘I have to go to work – as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for – the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?”

Hays translation
At dawn of day, when you dislike being called, have this thought ready: "I am called to man's labour; why then do I make a difficulty if I am going out to do what I was born to do and what I was brought into the world for?(Farquharson translation)
Ὄρθρου, ὅταν δυσόκνως ἐξεγείρῃ, πρόχειρον ἔστω ὅτι ἐπὶ ἀνθρώπου ἔργον ἐγείρομαι· ἔτι οὖν δυσκολαίνω, εἰ πορεύομαι ἐπὶ τὸ ποιεῖν ὧν ἕνεκεν γέγονα καὶ ὧν χάριν προῆγμαι εἰς τὸν κόσμον; ἢ ἐπὶ τοῦτο κατεσκεύασμαι, ἵνα κατακείμενος ἐν στρωματίοις ἐμαυτὸν θάλπω;
V, 1
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book V

Taliesin photo
Margaret Cho photo
Bob Dylan photo

“Lay, lady, lay. Lay across my big, brass bed.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Nashville Skyline (1969), Lay Lady Lay

“Dismissing the whole thing as the world’s aberration and not mine, I went back to bed.”

Joanna Russ (1937–2011) American author

Part 2, Chapter 8 (p. 25)
Fiction, The Female Man (1975)

Neil Gaiman photo

“Off to bed. If squirrels take over in the night, I, for one, welcome our new bushy-tailed scampering overlords, & I know where the nuts are.”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

Neil Gaiman's Twitter stream http://twitter.com/neilhimself, Tweet ID # 2189298072 (16 June 2009) http://twitter.com/neilhimself/status/2189298072

Michelle Phillips photo

“I've always had a reputation as the pretty girl. Pretty girls rarely get the good parts. We all have to do a film like The Burning Bed where we can really be degraded so that people think we can act.”

Michelle Phillips (1944) Singer, actress

The Chicago Tribune http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1986-07-05/entertainment/8602170918_1_michelle-phillips-mamas-papa-john (July 5, 1986)

Elie Wiesel photo
Georgia O'Keeffe photo
Lois McMaster Bujold photo
Russell Brand photo

“Only Boris concerns me. When I used to watch Have I Got News For You, which as a kid I was proud to watch, full stop, I loved it when Boris Johnson came on. I didn't know who he was or what he did, I didn't think about it, I just liked him. I liked his voice, his manner, his name, his vocabulary, his self-effacing charm, humour and, of course, his hair. He has catwalk hair. Vogue cover hair, Rumplestiltskin spun it out of straw, straight-out-of-bed, drop-dead, gold-thread hair. He was always at ease with Deayton, Merton and Hislop, equal to their wit and always gave a great account of himself. "This bloke is cool," I thought. As I grew up I found out that he was an old Etonian, bully-boy, Spectator-editing Tory.
"That's weird," I thought. While I was busy becoming a world-class junkie, the man from HIGNFY became mayor. People like Boris Johnson; I like the HIGNFY Boris. He is the most popular politician in the country. Well, not in the country, on the television. There is a difference. Most people, of course, haven't met him, they've seen him on the telly. When I met Boris in his office, the nucleus of his dominion, I glanced at his library. Among the Wodehouses and the Euripides there were, of course, fierce economic tomes, capitalist manuals, bibles of domination. Eye-to-eye, the bumbling bonhomie appeared to be a lacquer of likability over a living obelisk of corporate power.”

Russell Brand (1975) British comedian, actor, and author

Russell Brand - The Guardian (2013)

Edie Brickell photo
Dylan Moran photo
Brad Pitt photo

“Being married means I can break wind and eat ice cream in bed.”

Brad Pitt (1963) American actor and filmmaker

US Weekly (18 September 2000)

Mary McCarthy photo

“Of all the men I slept with in my studio-bed on Gay Street (and there were a lot: I stopped counting) I liked Bill Mangold the best. Until I began to see Philip Rahv.”

Mary McCarthy (1912–1989) American writer

Source: Intellectual Memoirs: New York 1936–1938 (1992), Ch. 2