Sleep Quotes - Page 31

• I get up about four times a night and go back to sleep, or not. Then I swill tea around 8 a.m. I answer e-mail, while I stall thinking about whatever scares me.

  Jenny Holzer

  Thinking, Night, Tea

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• Stories--from the literature of our culture to descriptions of our days to the lunatic's ravings--appear to be hardwired into us. Even in sleep we tell ourselves stories through our dreams, and it's been shown that those who are prevented from doing so cease to function.

  Michael Ruhlman

  Dream, Culture, Stories

  Michael Ruhlman (2005). “House: A Memoir”, Viking Press

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• We sleep together in the dark but confuse light with love.

  Rae Armantrout

  Dark, Light, Together

  Rae Armantrout (2010). “Versed”, p.103, Wesleyan University Press

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• Dreams are those that don't let you sleep at night.

  Akhil Kumar

  Dream, Night

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• There are persons who can speak no more, whose very names have vanished. Yet a name excised from the verge where it once lived still casts its sound on all who sleep there and enters their throats.

  Erin Moure

  Names, Sound, Speak

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• I can't wait to wake up and try something new. I can't sleep at night because I want to try something new.

  Rodney Mullen

  Night, Waiting, Trying

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• Sometimes when I sleep at night I think of (Dr. Seuss's) 'Hop on Pop.'

  George W. Bush

  Night, Thinking, Drs

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• I do not know what dust is, I do not know where it comes from, I only know that it settles on things. I cannot see it in the air, or watch it fall. Sometimes Im home all day but I never see it sliding about looking for a place to rest when my back is turned. Does it wait til I go out? Or, does it happen in the night when I sleep? Dust is not fussy about the places it chooses, though it seems to prefer still objects. Sometimes, out of kindness, I let it lie for weeks. On some places it will lie forever. However, dust holds no grudges and once removed it will always return, in a friendly way.

  Ivor Cutler

  Kindness, Lying, Fall

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• My work has to do with a defense against fervor. People are always in a rush. To do what? To do nothing! There is a kind of fervor that is completely meaningless. This drawing is a call for meditation.... I am an insomniac, so for me the state of being asleep is paradise. It is a paradise I can never reach. But I still try to conquer the insomnia, and to a large extent I have done it; it is conquerable. My drawings are a kind of rocking or stroking and an attempt at finding peace. Peaceful rhythm. Like rocking a baby to sleep.

  Louise Bourgeois

  Baby, Insomnia, Drawing

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• But cats to me are strange, so strange I cannot sleep if one is near.

  W. H. Davies

  Cat, Strange, Ifs

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• When you inoculate children with a polio vaccine, you don't sleep well for two or three months.

  Jonas Salk

  Children, Vaccines, Polio Vaccine

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• Dreams are nothing but incoherent ideas, occasioned by partial or imperfect sleep.

  Benjamin Rush

  Dream, Ideas, Imperfect

  Benjamin Rush (1839). “An Inquiry into the influence of Physical Causes upon the Moral Faculty. Delivered before a meeting of the American Philosophical Society, etc”, p.7

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• Meditation is your awakening. The moment you awake, sleep disappears and with it all the dreams, all the projections, all expectations, all desires. Suddenly you are in a state of desirelessness, non-ambition, unfathomable silence. And only in this silence, blossoms flower in your being. Only in this silence the lotuses open their petals.

  Rajneesh

  Dream, Flower, Ambition

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• You’re probably wasting time on things like eating and sleeping. Cease that, and read all of philosophy and all of literature. Also art. Plus politics and a few other things. The history of everything.

  John Barth

  Art, Philosophy, Literature

  John Barth (2012). “Final Fridays: Essays, Lectures, Tributes & Other Nonfiction, 1995-”, p.262, Counterpoint Press

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• There is nothing frightening about an eternal dreamless sleep. Surely it is better than eternal torment in Hell and eternal boredom in Heaven.

  Isaac Asimov

  Death, Boredom, Heaven

  Isaac Asimov (2009). “I, Asimov: A Memoir”, p.480, Bantam

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• A crust of bread and a corner to sleep in. A minute to smile and an hour to weep in. A pint of joy to a peck of trouble, And never a laugh but the moans come double. And that is life. A crust and a corner that makes love precious, With a smile to warm and tears to refresh us, And joy seems sweeter when cares come after, And a moan is the finest of foils for laughter. And that is life.

  Paul Laurence Dunbar

  Laughter, Laughing, Joy

  Paul Laurence Dunbar, Joanne M. Braxton (1993). “The Collected Poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar”, p.8, University of Virginia Press

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• On a lazy Saturday morning when you're lying in bed, drifting in and out of sleep, there is a space where fantasy and reality become one. Are you awake, or are you dreaming? You see people and things; some are familiar; some are strange. You talk, you feel, but you move without walking; you fly without wings. Your mind and your body exist, but on separate planes. Time stands still. For me, this is the feeling I have when ideas come.

  Lynn Johnston

  Dream, Morning, Lying

  Lynn Johnston (1994). “It's the Thought That Counts:: A For Better Or For Worse Fifteenth Anniversary Collection”, p.6, Andrews McMeel Publishing

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• All good New Orleanians go to look at the Mississippi at least once a day. At night it is like creeping into a dark bedroom to look at a sleeping child--something of that sort--gives you the same warm nice feeling, I mean.

  Sherwood Anderson

  Children, Nice, Mean

  Sherwood Anderson (1997). “Southern Odyssey: Selected Writings by Sherwood Anderson”, p.19, University of Georgia Press

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• I could see the road ahead of me. I was poor and I was going to stay poor. But I didn't particularly want money. I didn't know what I wanted. Yes, I did. I wanted someplace to hide out, someplace where one didn't have to do anything. The thought of being something didn't only appall me, it sickened me . . . To do things, to be part of family picnics, Christmas, the 4th of July, Labor Day, Mother's Day . . . was a man born just to endure those things and then die? I would rather be a dishwasher, return alone to a tiny room and drink myself to sleep.

  Charles Bukowski

  Mother, 4th Of July, Men

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• The human frame being what it is, heart, body and brain all mixed together, and not contained in separate compartments as they will be no doubt in another million years, a good dinner is of great importance to good talk. One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.

  Virginia Woolf

  Heart, Thinking, Years

  1929 A Room of One's Own, ch.1.

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• God is not dead; nor doth He sleep; ...
  The wrong shall fail,
  The right prevail,
  With peace on earth, good will to men.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Peace, Men, Earth

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1871). “The Poetical Works”, p.334

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• Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition: the clean becomes soiled, the soiled is made clean, over and over, day after day. The housewife wears herself out marking time: she makes nothing, simply perpetuates the present … Eating, sleeping, cleaning – the years no longer rise up towards heaven, they lie spread out ahead, grey and identical. The battle against dust and dirt is never won.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Lying, Dust, Years

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• Silent night, holy night. All is calm, all is bright. Round yon Virgin Mother and Child. Holy Infant so tender and mild. Sleep in heavenly peace. Sleep in heavenly peace.

  Joseph Mohr

  Christmas, Mother, Children

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• Prayer is better than to sleep. Wake up. Wake up & pray. This is the way you free yourself.

  Tariq Ramadan

  Prayer, Wake Up, Way

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• Neither. I am just one who has woken up while the rest of you are still sleeping.

  Aravind Adiga

  Stills, Just One

  Aravind Adiga (2008). “The White Tiger”, p.186, Atlantic Books Ltd

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