Sleep

"For I am weary, and am overwrought With too much toil, with too much care distraught, And with the iron crown of anguish crowned. Lay thy soft hand upon my brow and cheek, * O peaceful Sleep!"

"Thou driftest gently down the tides of sleep."

"While the bee with honied thigh, That at her flowery work doth sing, And the waters murmuring With such a consort as they keep, Entice the dewy-feather'd sleep."

"Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time, Why should I strive to set the crooked straight? Let it suffice me that my murmuring rhyme Beat with light wing against the ivory gate, Telling a tale not too importunate To those who in the sleepy region stay, Lulled by the singer of an empty day."

"O, we're a' noddin', nid, nid, noddin'; O we're a' noddin' at our house at hame."

"Stulte, quid est somnus, gelidæ nisi mortis imago? Longa quiescendi tempora fata dabunt."

"What means this heaviness that hangs upon me? This lethargy that creeps through all my senses? Nature, oppress'd and harrass'd out with care, Sinks down to rest."

"R. Hanina said: One may not sleep in a house alone [in a lonely house], and whoever sleeps in a house alone is seized by Lilith."

"Still believe that ever round you Spirits float who watch and wait; Nor forget the twain who found you Sleeping nigh the Golden Gate."

"Since the Brother of Death daily haunts us with dying mementoes."

"Sleep is a death, O make me try, By sleeping, what it is to die: And as gently lay my head On my grave, as now my bed."

"The husband snores. The wife nudges him to flip over. Both wake up feeling grouchy the next morning. It’s a common occurrence that may have more of an impact on the marriage than most couples think. The Sleep Disorders Center at Rush University Medical Center is conducting a scientific sleep study to evaluate how a husband’s sleep apnea impacts the wife’s quality of sleep and the couple’s marital satisfaction. “This is a frequent problem within marriages that nobody is paying enough attention to,” said Rosalind Cartwright, PhD, founder of the Sleep Disorders Center at Rush. “Couples who struggle with sleep apnea have a high-divorce rate. Can we save marriages by treating sleep apnea? It’s a question we hope to answer.”"

"Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone."

"Now, blessings light on him that first invented this same sleep! it covers a man all over, thoughts and all, like a cloak; it is meat for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, heat for the cold, and cold for the hot. It is the current coin that purchases all the pleasures of the world cheap; and the balance that sets the king and the shepherd, the fool and the wise man, even. There is only one thing, which somebody once put into my head, that I dislike in sleep; it is, that it resembles death; there is very little difference between a man in his first sleep, and a man in his last sleep."

"Sleep breaks up the state of waking life, but for the sleepless one, who remains lucid in the middle of the night, there is no difference between day and night. He lives in a kind of ceaseless, endless time. It is another time and another world. Life in essence can only be sustained because of the discontinuity. Why else does one sleep? Not to rest, but above all to forget. A person who wakes up after a night of unbroken sleep has the illusion of beginning something new. When one instead remains awake the whole night long, nothing new begins. At eight in the morning one is in the same condition as at eight at night and one's perspective on things is naturally completely different. I believe that the fact that I have never believed in progress, that I have never allowed myself to be seduced by "progress," has to do with that. One has simply a completely different attitude toward time: not time that passes, but time that will not go away. That alters a life, naturally. And on account of that I believe, now as then, that the greatest experiences one can have in life are white nights: they mark one forever, until death. That is of course understandable: in former times they tortured people by depriving them of sleep; after a few sleepless nights, one would admit to or sign anything. The secret of life is sleep; it makes life possible. If one could prevent mankind from sleeping, I am convinced that a massacre without end would ensue; it would mean the end of history."

"When you fall asleep counting planets, think upon others Who cannot find a place to sleep."

"Sleep, little Paul, what, crying, hush ! the night is very dark ; The wolves are near the rampart, the dogs begin to bark ; The bell has rung for slumber, and the guardian angel weeps When a little child beside the hearth so late a play-time keeps."

"I owe my success to the fact that I never had a clock in my workroom. Seventy-five of us worked twenty hours every day and slept only four hours — and thrived on it."

"It's always possible to wake someone from sleep, but no amount of noise will wake someone who is pretending to be asleep."

"They say sleep is the cousin of death, so my eye's wide open: Because a dream is kin to your last breath."

"Sleepiness and laziness in a man are the beginning of his misfortune."

"It's not the sort of night for bed anyhow; and daybreak is not so very far off..."

"Run the streets, all day. I can sleep, when I die."

"I never take a nap after dinner but when I have had a bad night, and then the nap takes me."

"O magic sleep! O comfortable bird, That broodest o'er the troubled sea of the mind Till it is hush'd and smooth! O unconfined Restraint! imprisoned liberty! great key To golden palaces."

"My imagination is surely an aggravation of threats That can come about, ’cause the tongue is mighty powerful And I can name a list of your favorites that probably vouch. Maybe 'cause I'm a dreamer and sleep is the cousin of death."

"Dreams of the summer night! Tell her, her lover keeps Watch! while in slumbers light She sleeps! My lady sleeps! Sleeps!"

"Utu, shepherd of the land, father of the black-headed, when you go to sleep, the people go to sleep with you; youth Utu, when you rise, the people rise with you."

"The king lay down not to sleep, he lay down to dream."

"Counterintuitively, not getting enough sleep can lead to more intense dreaming. A 2005 study found that when subjects didn’t get enough REM sleep one night, their brains tried to make up for it the next, by engaging in longer periods of REM. Sleep for sleep-deprived people also tends to be more extreme; neurologist Mark Mahowald of the University of Minnesota told Scientific American, “When someone is sleep deprived we see greater sleep intensity, meaning greater brain activity during sleep; dreaming is definitely increased and likely more vivid.” Scientific American terms this effect “REM rebound,” and it can occur in a variety of situations."

"The timely dew of sleep Now falling with soft slumb'rous weight inclines Our eyelids."

"For his sleep Was aery light, from pure digestion bred."

"You are the biggest enemy of your own sleep."

"Inhale deep like the words of my breath, I never sleep, cause sleep is the cousin of death"

"Sleep, baby, sleep! Thy father's watching the sheep. Thy mother's shaking the dreamland tree. And down drops a little dream for thee. Sleep, baby, sleep!"

"Eight female subjects underwent vaginal photoplethysmographic recordings while asleep. Results demonstrated consistent findings of decreases in relative blood volume and increases in relative pulse pressure within the vagina during REM periods. These vascular changes indicate that females undergo phasic shifts in vascular blood flow in the vagina during REM sleep, similar to the phasic shifts of blood flow in the male's penis during REM sleep."