Sleep quotes
5.3K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside sleep — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Christ taught an astonishing thing about physical death: not merely that it is an experience robbed of its terror but that as an experience it does not exist at all. To "sleep in Christ," like one that wraps the drapery of his couch about him, and lies down to pleasant dreams."
"A silence, the brief Sabbath of an hour, Reigns o'er the fields; the laborer sits within His dwelling; he has left his steers awhile, Unyoked, to bite the herbage, and his dog Sleeps stretched beside the door-stone in the shade. Now the gray marmot, with uplifted paws, No more sits listening by his den, but steals Abroad, in safety, to the clover-field, And crops its juicy-blossoms."
"When I clamber to the heights of sleep, Or when I grow excited with wine, suddenly I meet your face."
"Once more the storm is howling, and half hid Under this cradle-hood and coverlid My child sleeps on."
"While man can still his body keep Wine or love drug him to sleep, Waking he thanks the Lord that he Has body and its stupidity."
"A speckled cat and a tame hare Eat at my hearthstone And sleep there; And both look up to me alone For learning and defence As I look up to Providence."
"You're looking, sir, at a very dull survivor of a very gaudy life. Crippled, paralyzed in both legs. Very little I can eat, and my sleep is so near waking that it's hardly worth the name. I seem to exist largely on heat, like a newborn spider."
"Where the shadow of the bridge fell I could see down for a long way, but not as far as the bottom. When you leave a leaf in water a long time after awhile the tissue will be gone and the delicate fibres waving slow as the motion of sleep. They don't touch one another, no matter how knotted up they once were, no matter how close they lay once to the bones."
"...and you don't even have to sleep alone, you don't even have to sleep at all; and so, all you have to do is show the stick to the dog now and then and say, 'Thank God for nothing.'"
"I don't go into hysterics or anything, but I look around for something to smash it with. I used to live out in the country when I first moved here, and there were a lot of centipedes in the house, and I set out to kill them all. A program of genocide. I'd wake up in the middle of the night, and I'd know there's a centipede in this room. And there always was. And I couldn't go to sleep until I killed it."
"Is this a vision? Is this a dream? Do I sleep?"
"There's little of the melancholy element in her, my lord: she is never sad but when she sleeps; and not ever sad then; for I have heard my daughter say, she hath often dreamt of unhappiness, and waked herself with laughing."
"This sleep is sound indeed; this is a sleep That from this golden rigol hath divorc'd So many English kings."
"Sleep, that sometimes shuts up sorrow's eye."
"The blood weeps from my heart when I do shape, In forms imaginary, th' unguided days And rotten times that you shall look upon When I am sleeping with my ancestors."
"Nor shall this peace sleep with her; but as when The bird of wonder dies, the maiden phoenix, Her ashes new-create another heir As great in admiration as herself."
"He that is thy friend indeed, He will help thee in thy need: If thou sorrow, he will weep; If thou wake, he cannot sleep: Thus of every grief in heart He with thee does bear a part. These are certain signs to know Faithful friend from flattering foe."
"Downy sleep, death's counterfeit."
"Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting That would not let me sleep."
"To bed, to bed; sleep kill those pretty eyes, And give as soft attachment to thy senses, As infants empty of all thought."
