sleep

   The greatest asset that a head of state can have is the ability to get a good night's sleep.

—Wilson of Rievaulx, (James) Harold Wilson, Baron

Nor will the sweetest delight of gardens afford much comfort in sleep; wherein the dullness of that sense shakes hands with delectable odours; and though in the bed of Cleopatra, can hardly with any delight raise up the ghost of a rose.

—Browne, SirThomas

And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the L is in this place; and I knew it not.

—Bible (Old Testament)

And still she slept an azure-lidded sleep, In blanched linen, smooth, and lavendered, While he from forth the closet brought a heap Of candied apple, quince, and plum, and gourd; With jellies soother than the creamy curd, And lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon; Manna and dates, in argosy transferred From Fez; and spiced dainties, every one, From silken Samarcand to cedared Lebanon.

—Keats,John

There hath he lain for ages and will lie Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep Until the latter fire shall heat the deep.

—Tennyson

A group of senators, bleary eyed for lack of sleep, will have to sit down at about two o'clock in the morning around a table in a smoke-filled room in some hotel, and decide the nomination.

—Daugherty, Harry Micajah

I have come to the borders of sleep, The unfathomable deep Forest, where all must lose Their way, however straight Or winding, soon or late; They cannot choose.

—Thomas, (Philip) Edward

Was it for this the clay grew tall? öO what made fatuous sunbeams toil To break earth's sleep at all?

—Owen,Wilfred

This rortie wretched city Sair come down frae its auld hiechts öThe hauf o't smug, complacent, Lost til all pride of race or spirit, The tither wild and rouch as ever In its secret hairt But lost alsweill, the smeddum tane, The man o'independent mind has cap in hand the day öSits on its craggy spine And drees the wind and rain That nourished all its genius öWeary wi centuries This empty capital snorts like a great beast Caged in its sleep, dreaming of freedom.

—Smith, Sydney Goodsir

The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won't get much sleep.

—Allen,Woody pseudonym of  Allen Stewart Konigsberg

Care-charming Sleep, thou easer of all woes, Brother to Death.

—Fo, Dario

Aunque chillen los pedantes y arruguen todos el cen‹  o, lo declaro yo: Cervantes suele producirme suen‹  o Pedants may cry out loud or frown at me, but I must say it: Cervantes usually puts me to sleep.

—Gonza¤ l ez Prada, Manuel

Two voices are there: one is of the deep; It learns the storm-clouds thundrous melody, Now roars, now murmurs with the changing sea, Now bird-like pipes, now closes soft in sleep: And one is of an old half-witted sheep Which bleats articulate monotony, And indicates that two and one are three, That grass isgreen, lakes damp, and mountains steep And,Wordsworth, both are thine.

—Stephen,J(ames) K(enneth)

Come sleep,O sleep, the certain knot of peace, The baiting place of wit, the balm of woe, The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release, The indifferent judge between the high and low.

—Shute, Nevil originally Nevil Shute Norway

War is a condition of progress; the whip-cut that prevents a country from going to sleep and forces satisfied mediocrity to shake off its apathy.

—Renan, (Joseph) Ernest

Down here it was still the England I had known in my childhood:†all sleeping the deep, deep sleep of England, fromwhich Isometimesfear that weshall never wake till we are jerked out of it by the roar of bombs.

—Orwell, George pseudonym of  Eric Arthur Blair

   This afternoon I slept for two hours in the Library of the House of Commons. A deep House of Commons sleep. There is no sleep to compare with itörich, deep, and guilty.

—Channon, Sir Henry

There in close covert by some brook, Where no profaner eye may look, Hide me from day's garish eye, While the bee with honied thigh, That at her flowery work doth sing, And the waters murmuring And such consort as they keep, Entice the dewy-feathered Sleep.

—Milton,John

Where is the antique glory now become, What whilom wont in women to appear? Where be the brave achievements doen by some? Where be the battles, where the shield and spear, And all the conquests, which them high did rear, That matter made for famous poet's verse, And boastful men so oft abashed to hear? Bene theyall dead, and laid in doleful hearse? Or doen they only sleep, and shall again reverse?

—Spenser, Edmund

Below the thunders of the upper deep; Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea, His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep The Kraken sleepeth.

—Tennyson

   Here! creep, Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.

—Hopkins, SirAnthony

Beyond the gap where the river plunges into the narrow gorge, unseen öand the imagination soars, as a voice beckons, a thundrous voice, endless öas sleep: the voice that has ineluctably called themö that unmoving roar!

—Williams,William Carlos

When you are old and greyand full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face; And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly how Love fled And paced among the mountains overhead And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

—Yeats,W(illiam) B(utler)

I'm going to visit every country in the world, eat all the food of the world, drink all the drink of the worldöand, I hope, make love to every woman in the world. Then I might get a good night's sleep.

—Keenan, Brian

Except the L build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the L keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain. It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep.

—Bible (Old Testament)

  Hanging upside down like rows of disgusting old rags And grinning in their sleep.

—Lawrence, D(avid) H(erbert)

My good friends, this is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time.Go home and have a nice, quiet sleep. See also Disraeli 277:85.

—Chamberlain, (Arthur) Neville

I haven't been to sleep for over a year. That's why I go to bed early.One needs more rest if one doesn't sleep.

—Waugh, Evelyn Arthur StJohn

We sing the love of danger.Courage, rashness, and rebellion are the elements of our poetry. Hitherto literature has tended to exalt thoughtful immobility, ecstasy, and sleep, whereas we are for aggressive movement, febrile insomnia, mortal leaps, and blows with the fist.We proclaim that the world is richer for a new beautyof speed, and our praise isfor themanat the wheel. There is no beauty now save in struggle, no masterpiece can be anything but aggressive, and hence we glorify war, militarism and patriotism.

—Marinetti, Emilio FilippoTomasso

So then Dr Froyd said that all I needed was to cultivate a few inhibitions and get some sleep.

—Loos, Anita

Straightfaced in his cunning sleep he pulls the legs of his dreams.

—Thomas, Dylan Marlais

   The self persists like a dying star, In sleep, afraid.

—Rogers,Will

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay, And saw in sleep old palaces and towers Quivering within the wave's intenser day, All overgrown with azure moss and flowers So sweet, the sense faints picturing them.

—Shelley, Percy Bysshe

I shall sleep, and move with the moving ships, Change as the winds change, veer in the tide.

—Swinburne, Algernon Charles

I sleep like a baby tooöevery two hours I wake up screaming.

—Powell, Colin Luther

With lack of sleep and too much understanding I grow a little crazy,Ithink, likeall menat seawho livetoo closeto each other and too close thereby to all that is monstrous under the sun and moon.

—Golding, Sir William (Gerald)

: Oh, but thou dost not know What 'tis to die. :Yes, I do know, my Lord: 'Tis less than to be born; a lasting sleep; A quiet resting from all jealousy, A thing we all pursue; I know besides, It is but giving over of a game, That must be lost.

—Beaumont, Francis and Fletcher,John

   Spider, spider, spin Your register and let me sleep a little, Not now in order to end but to begin The task begun so often.

—MacNeice, (Frederick) Louis

O let me be awake, my God! Or let me sleep alway.

—Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

Lie soft, sleep hard, drink wine, and eat good cheer.

—Middleton,Thomas

Whatever may have been my enthusiasm or impatience to be up and doing on the night before, the hour for getting up always finds me with no other ambition in the world than to be permitted to lie where I am and sleep, sleep, sleep.Not soTilman.Ihave never met anyonewith such a complete disregard for the sublime comforts of the early morning bed. However monstrously early we might decide, thenight before, toget up, hewas about at least half an hour before the time. He was generally very good about it, and used to sit placidly smoking his pipe over the fire.

—Shipton, Eric Earle

Morality Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep.

—Keats,John

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.

—Frost, Robert Lee

It's funny when you feel as if you don't want anything more in your life except to sleep, or else to lie without moving. That's when you can hear time sliding past you, like water running.

—Rhys,Jean pseudonym of  Ellen Gwendolen Rees Williams

   To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin That makes calamity of so long life; For who would fardels bear, till Birnam Wood do come to Dunsinane, But that the fear of something after death Murders the innocent sleep, Great nature's second course, And makes us rather sling the arrows of outrageous fortune Than fly to others that we know not of. There's the respect must give us pause: Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou couldst; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

—Twain, Mark pseudonym of  Samuel Langhorne Clemens

Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom's. And never, ever, nomatter whatelse you do in your whole life, never sleep with anyone whose troubles are worse than your own.

—Algren, Nelson

Dear, why should you command me to my rest, When now the night doth summon all to sleep? Methinks this time becometh lovers best; Night was ordained together friends to keep.

—Drayton, Michael

What hath night to do with sleep?

—Milton,John

The City is of Night, but not of Sleep; There sweet Sleep is not for the weary brain; The pitiless hours like years and ages creep, A night seems termless hell.

—Thomson,James pseudonym 'BV',ByssheVanolis

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

—Donne,John

   Thou has been called,O Sleep! the friend of Woe, But 'tis the happy who have called thee so.

—Southey, Robert

While pensive poets painful vigils keep, Sleepless themselves, to give their readers sleep.

—Pope, Alexander

Stop and consider! life is but a day; A fragile dew-drop on its perilous way From a tree's summit; a poor Indian's sleep While his boat hastens to the monstrous steep Of Montmorenci.

—Keats,John

Facility is a dangerous thing.Where there is too much technical ease the brain stops criticising. Don't let the hand fall into a smart way of putting the mind to sleep.

—Sloan,John French

I must down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life, To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife; And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover, And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.

—Masefield,John Edward

I climbed a hill as light fell short, And rooks came home in scramble sort, And filled the trees and flapped and fought And sang themselves to sleep.

—Hodgson, Ralph

Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of aneye, atthelasttrump: for thetrumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

—Bible (NewTestament)

Sleep after toil, port after stormy seas, Ease after war, death after life does greatly please.

—Spenser, Edmund

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing boy, But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, He sees it in his joy; The youth, who daily farther from the east Must travel, still is nature's priest, And by the vision splendid Is on his wayattended; At length the man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day.

—Wordsworth,William

   The main essentials of a successful Prime Minister are sleep and a sense of history.

—Wilson of Rievaulx, (James) Harold Wilson, Baron

Sleep is cousin-german unto death: Sleep and death differ, no more, than a carcass And a skeleton.

—Traherne,Thomas

   Sweet and low, sweet and low, Wind of the western sea, Low, low, breathe and blow, Wind of the western sea! Over the rolling waters go, Come from the dying moon, and blow, Blow him again to me; While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps. Sleep and rest, sleep and rest, Father will come to thee soon; Rest, rest, on mother's breast, Father will come to thee soon; Father will come to his babe in the nest, Silver sails all out of the west Under the silver moon: Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep.

—Tennyson

Sleep demands of us a guilty immunity. There is not one of us who, given an eternal incognito, a thumbprint nowhere set against our souls, would not commit rape, murder and all abominations.

—Barnes, Djuna

   A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

—Keats,John

   Ay waukin,O, Waukin still and weary: Sleep I can get nane, For thinkin on my Dearie.

—Burns, Robert

   Sleep is death without the responsibility.

—Lebowitz, Fran(ces Ann)

Sleep is sweet to the labouring man.

—Bunyan,John

Sleep is when all the unsorted stuff comes flying out as from a dustbin upset in a high wind.

—Golding, Sir William (Gerald)

I am well as long as I live on horseback†sleep out-of- doors, or in a log cabin, and lead in all respects a completely unconventional life. But each time for a few days†I have become civilised, I have found myself rapidly going down again.

—Bird, Isabella married name Isabella Bishop

Vivre est une maladie dont le sommeil nous soulage toutes les16 heures. C'est un palliatif. La mort est le reme'  de. Living is an illness to which sleep provides relief every16 hours.It's a palliative. Death is the remedy.

—Chamfort, Se¤  bastien-Roch Nicolas

Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night, Brother to Death, in silent darkness born, Relieve my languish and restore the light; With dark forgetting of my care return. And let the day be time enough to mourn The shipwreck of my ill adventured youth: Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn Without the torment of the night's untruth.

—Daniel, Samuel

People would rather sleep their way through life than stayawake for it.

—Albee, Edward Franklin, III

One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake.

—Browning, Robert

La majestueuse e¤  galite¤   des lois, qui interdit au riche comme au pauvre de coucher sous les ponts, de mendier dans les rues et de voler du pain. The majestic equality of laws forbids the rich as well as the poor tosleep under bridges, to beg inthestreets and to steal bread.

—Thibault

I have fed purely upon ale; I have eat my ale, drank my ale, and I always sleep upon ale.

—Farquhar, George

If you are with the quality, or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain't sleepy†why you itch all over in upward of a thousand places.

—Twain, Mark pseudonym of  Samuel Langhorne Clemens

Death will come when thou art dead, Soon, too soonö Sleep will come when thou art fled; Of neither would I ask the boon I ask of thee, belove'  d Nightö Swift be thine approaching flight, Come soon, soon!

—Shelley, Percy Bysshe

They that sleep with dogs shall rise with fleas.

—Webster,John

Tous les jours on couche avec des femmes qu'on n'aime pas, et l'on ne couche pas avec des femmes qu'on aime. Every day we sleep with women we do not love and don't sleep with the women we do love.

—Diderot, Denis

An English homeögrey twilight poured On dewy pasture, dewy trees, Softer than sleepöall things in order stored, A haunt of ancient Peace.

—Tennyson

A poet's work† To name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it from going to sleep.

—Rushdie, (Ahmed) Salman

The poor sleep little.

—Otway,Thomas

And yet, amidst that joyand uproar, Let us think of them that sleep, Full manya fathom deep, By thy wild and stormy steep, Elsinore!

—Campbell,Thomas

Clay lies still, but blood's a rover; Breath's a ware that will not keep. Up, lad: when the journey's over There'll be time enough to sleep.

—Housman, A(lfred) E(dward)

The poet knowshimselfonlyonthe conditionthatthings resound in him, and that in him, at a single awakening, theyand he come forth together out of sleep.

—Maritain,Jacques

   I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go.

—Rogers,Will

Father in Heaven, whenthethoughtof Thee wakesinour hearts, let it not awaken like a frightened bird that flies about in dismay, but like a child waking from its sleep with a heavenly smile.

—Kierkegaard, So«  ren Aabye

You are too young to fall asleep for ever; And when you sleep you remind me of the dead.

—Sassoon, Siegfried Louvain

Is there any room at your head, Sanders? Is there any room at your feet? Or any room at your twa sides, Where fain, fain I would sleep? There is nae room at my head, Margaret, There is nae room at my feet; My bed it is the cold, cold grave; Among the hungry worms I sleep.

—Ballads

Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep: So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth, and thy want as an armed man.

—Bible (Old Testament)