Sleep quotes
5.3K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside sleep — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"We breathe, sleep, drink, eat, work and then die! The end of life is death. What do you long for? Love? A few kisses and you will be powerless. Money? What for? To gratify your desires. Glory? What coems after it all? Death! Death alone is certain."
"You've buttered your bread, now sleep in it."
"I think of being an actor as kind of a young man's gig. It's emasculating, in a way, people messing with you and putting make-up on you and telling you when to wake up and when to go to sleep, holding your hand to cross the street. I can do it up to a certain point, and then I start to feel like a puppet."
"How can I lose faith in the justice of life, when the dreams of those who sleep upon feathers are not more beautiful than the dreams of those who sleep upon the earth?"
"Just think, Vishnu sleeps in the cosmic ocean, and the lotus of the universe grows from his navel. On the lotus sits Brahma, the creator. Brahma opens his eyes, and a world comes into being, governed by an Indra. Brahma closes his eyes, and a world goes out of being. The life of a Brahma is 432,000 years. When he dies, the lotus goes back, and another lotus is formed, and another Brahma. Then think of the galaxies beyond galaxies in infinite space, each a lotus, with a Brahma sitting on it, opening his eyes, closing his eyes."
"Now, blessings light on him that first invented sleep!Ê It covers a man all over, thoughts and all, like a cloak; it is meat for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, heat for the cold, and cold for the hot.Ê It is the current coin that purchases all the pleasures of the world cheap, and the balance that sets the king and the shepherd, the fool and the wise man, even."
"It is useless to tell one not to reason but to believe; you might as well tell a man not to wake but sleep."
"You understand sleep when you are awake, not while you are sleeping. You can see mistakes in arithmetic when your mind is working properly; while you are making them you cannot see them. Good people know about both bad and evil; bad people do not know about either."
"Now behind the eyes and secrets of the dreamers in the streets rocked to sleep by the sea, see the titbits and topsyturvies, bobs and buttontops, bags and bones, ash and rind and dandruff and nailparings, saliva and snowflakes and moulted feathers of dreams, the wrecks and sprats and shells and fishbones, whale-juice and moonshine and small salt fry dished up by the hidden sea."
"When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness, and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, or what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost, with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair."
"If you look at the life of Jesus, that's an example of true worship. You know look at the stories, if you want to learn about real worship read Matthew through John. Seriously. You just read it and you will see the true level. You see when Jesus is in the boat and the storm comes when it comes and the winds are blowing and Jesus is sleeping in the boat and the disciples are freaking out. And Jesus wakes up and says "What you guys got is a problem, no?" and he commands the seas to be calm that's true worship."
"Heaven trims our lamps while we sleep."
"Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery. People are working every minute. The machinery is always going. Even when you sleep."
"How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank Here we will sit, and let the sounds of music Creep in our ears; soft stillness, and the night Become the touches of sweet harmony"
"The good sleep better, but the bad seem to enjoy the waking hours much more."
"The clouds, - the only birds that never sleep."
"I am Warhol. I am the No. 1 most impactful artist of our generation. I am Shakespeare in the flesh."
"I can't read or sleep. Without hope or youth or money I sit constantly wishing I were dead."
"Elrond's house was perfect, whether you liked food or sleep or story-telling or singing (or reading), or just sitting and thinking best, or a pleasant mixture of them all. Merely to be there was a cure for weariness. ... Evil things did not come into the secret valley of Rivendell."
"Writing is a deeper sleep than death. Just as one wouldn't pull a corpse from its grave, I can't be dragged from my desk at night."
