One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And Death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die!

-Donne,John
c.1610^1615  Holy Sonnets, no.10.

Just occasionally you find yourself in an odd situation. You get into it bydegrees and inthemost natural way, but when you are right in the midst of it you are suddenly astonished and ask yourself how in the world it all came about. If, for example, you put to sea on a wooden raft with a parrot and five companions, it is inevitable that sooner or later you will wake up one morning out at sea, perhaps a little better rested than ordinarily, and begin to think about it.

-Heyerdahl,Thor
  The Kon-Tiki Expedition: By Raft  across the South Seas (translated by F H Lyon).

There Poetry shall tune her sacred voice, And wake from ignorance the WesternWorld.

-Johnson, Samuel known as Dr Johnson
c.1737  Irene, act 4, sc.1 (first produced1749).

But these were the dreams of a poet doomed at last to wake a lexicographer.

-Johnson, Samuel known as Dr Johnson
  A Dictionary of the English Language, preface.

Ye wake in a corner and stay there hoping yer body will disappear, the thoughts smothering ye; these thoughts; but ye want to remember and face up to things, just something keeps ye from doing it, why can ye no do it; the words filling yer head: then the other words; there's something far far wrong; ye're no a good man, ye're just no a good man.

-Kelman,James
  How late it was, how late, opening words.

What are days for? Days are where we live. They come, they wake us Time and time over. Theyare to be happy in: Where can we live but days?

-Larkin, Philip Arthur
  'Days'.

Nous veillons dormants, et veillants dormons. We wake sleeping, and sleep waking.

-Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de
  Essais, bk.2, ch.12 (translated by Charles Cotton).

  In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you wake in the morning.

-Sandburg, Carl
  In the NewYork Post, 9 Sep.

Not onlyareselves conditional buttheydie.Eachday, we wake slightlyaltered, and the person we were yesterday is dead.

-Updike,John Hoyer
  Self-Consciousness,VI.'On Being A Self Forever'.