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Quotes about sleep

53 quotes from 39 people

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One great part of every human existence is passed in a state which cannot be rendered sensible by the use of wideawake language, cutanddry grammar and goahead plot.
James Joyce1882–1941Referring to Finnegans Wake in a letter to Harriet Shaw Weaver (24 November 1926)
- Writing
Dawn, n. The time when men of reason go to bed. Certain old men prefer to rise at about that time, taking a cold bath and a long walk with an empty stomach, and otherwise mortifying the flesh.
Ambrose Bierce1842–1914The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)
- Comedy
As a day well spent procures a happy sleep, so a life well employed procures a happy death.
Leonardo da Vinci1452–1519XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.
- Life & Death
They tease me now, telling me it was only a dream. But does it matter whether it was a dream or reality, if the dream made known to me the truth?
Fyodor Dostoyevsky1821–1881The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877), II
- Truth & Lies
A dream! What is a dream? And is not our life a dream?
Fyodor Dostoyevsky1821–1881The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877), V
- Life & Death
I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
Lord Byron1788–1824Darkness, line 1 (1816).In context
Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.
Miguel de Cervantes1547–1616Don Quixote, Part I (1605), Ch. 1 (tr. Samuel Putnam)
- Reading
Sleep, universal king of gods and men.
Homer900–800 BCIliad, XIV. 233 (tr. Lord Derby); Hera addressing Sleep
The girl slept on, motionless, in that curled-up looseness achieved by some women and all cats.
Raymond Chandler1888–1959“I’ll Be Waiting” (short story), The Saturday Evening Post (14 October 1939)
- Animals
If we could sleep twenty-four hours a day, we would soon return to the primordial slime, the beatitude of that perfect torpor before Genesis-the dream of every consciousness sick of itself.
ECEmil Cioran1911–1995The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
The fact that everybody in the world dreams every night ties all mankind together.
Jack Kerouac1922–1969Book of Dreams (1961) Foreword
This whole creation is essentially subjective, and the dream is the theater where the dreamer is at once scene, actor, prompter, stage manager, author, audience, and critic.
Carl Jung1875–1961General Aspects of Dream Psychology (1928)
I’ve dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas: they’ve gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind.
Emily Brontë1818–1848Wuthering Heights (1847), Chapter IXIn context
- Thinking
Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth
Herman Melville1819–1891Moby-Dick (1851), Chapter XXIXIn context
- Comedy
Methought I heard a voice cry, “Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep,”⁠—the innocent sleep;
Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care,
The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast.
William Shakespeare1564–1616Macbeth (c. 1606), Act II, Scene II, spoken by MacbethIn context