Quotes about sleeping
page 11

Lin Yutang photo

“A man may own a thousand acres of land, and yet he still sleeps upon a bed of five feet.”

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), p. 38 (Chinese saying)

Ernest Hemingway photo
Tim O'Brien photo
Amber Benson photo

“It doesn't matter who you sleep with, it's how you treat other people in this world.”

Amber Benson (1977) actress from the United States

Amber Benson - Interview at Madame Tussaud's - 10 December, 2003 http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/buffy/interviews/benson2003/printpage.html

John Harvey Kellogg photo
Aleksis Kivi photo

“Grove of Tuoni, grove of night!
There thy bed of sand is light.
Thither my baby I lead.
Mirth and joy each long hour yields
In the Prince of Tuoni's fields
Tending the Tuonela cattle.
Mirth and joy my babe will know,
Lulled to sleep at evening glow
By the pale Tuonela maiden.
Surely joy hours will hold,
Lying in thy cot of gold,
Hearing the nightjar singing.
Grove of Tuoni, grove of peace!
There all strife and passion cease.
Distant the treacherous world.”

Aleksis Kivi (1834–1872) Finnish writer

"Tuonen lehto, öinen lehto! / Siell' on hieno hietakehto, / Sinnepä lapseni saatan. // Siell' on lapsen lysti olla, / Tuonen herran vainiolla / Kaitsea Tuonelan karjaa. // Siell' on lapsen lysti olla, / Illan tullen tuuditella / Helmassa Tuonelan immen. // Onpa kullan lysti olla, / Kultakehdoss' kellahdella, / Kuullella kehräjälintuu. // Tuonen viita, rauhan viita! / Kaukana on vaino, riita, / Kaukana kavala maailma." (Äiti Aleksis Kiven kuvaamana, koonnut Ukko Kivistö, Turussa, kustannusosakeyhtiö Aura 1948)

Nelson Mandela photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Henry Suso photo

“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

John F. Street photo

“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

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Aron Ra photo

“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)

Henry Van Dyke photo
E.E. Cummings photo
André Breton photo
Charles Kingsley photo

“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,

Francis Escudero photo

“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

Heidi Klum photo

“[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)

Alexis De Tocqueville photo

“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

Paul Simon photo
William Allingham photo

“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).

Suzanne Collins photo
Ernest Hemingway photo
Thomas Browne photo
William Hazlitt photo

“We are not hypocrites in our sleep.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On Dreams"
The Plain Speaker (1826)

Homér photo
Philip Massinger photo
Greg Egan photo

“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

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi photo
Jacoba van Heemskerck photo

“.. 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

Conor Oberst photo
John Romilly, 1st Baron Romilly photo

“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.

Alexandre Dumas photo

“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.

Robert Erskine Childers photo

“…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.

Edward Coke photo

“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.

Jeremy Corbyn photo

“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)

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Daniel Levitin photo
Noel Gallagher photo
Djuna Barnes photo
Czeslaw Milosz photo
Max Pechstein photo

“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

Hermann Ebbinghaus photo
Evelyn Waugh photo
Sören Kierkegaard photo
Mariah Carey photo
Georgia O'Keeffe photo
James Macpherson photo
George Lippard photo
T. H. White photo
John Keats photo
Marcus Aurelius photo
Thomas R. Marshall photo

“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.

Marcus Tullius Cicero photo

“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)

Joan Rivers photo

“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

James Braid photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Octavio Paz photo

“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)

Dave Eggers photo
André Breton photo
Reese Palley photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“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)

Bill Bryson photo
Helen Keller photo
Conor Oberst photo
Bouck White photo
André Breton photo
Karl Kraus photo

“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)

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)

Erving Goffman photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
William Blake photo
Josh Billings photo
Mike Oldfield photo
Pete Yorn photo

“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.”

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

Jane Roberts photo
William Westmoreland photo
Robert Frost photo
Bill Maher photo

“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)

William Winwood Reade photo
Ben Jonson photo

“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

Robert E. Howard photo
Dejan Stojanovic photo

“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”

Victor Borge photo

“(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

Meagan Duhamel photo
Giraut de Bornelh photo

“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.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Bhakti Tirtha Swami photo
Annie Besant photo