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Even sleepers are workers and collaborators on what goes on in the universe.
-Heraclitus
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The happiest part of a man's life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.
-Samuel Johnson
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I have thought of a pulley to raise me gradually; but that would give me pain, as it would counteract my natural inclination. I would have something that can dissipate the inertia and give elasticity to the muscles. We can heat the body, we can cool it; we can give it tension or relaxation; and surely it is possible to bring it into a state in which rising from bed will not be a pain.
-Samuel Johnson
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I divide my time as follows: half the time I sleep, the other half I dream. I never dream when I sleep, for that would be a pity, for sleeping is the highest accomplishment of genius.
-Soren Kierkegaard
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He who sleeps half a day has won half a life.
-Karl Kraus
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Sleep is a reward for some, a punishment for others. For all, it is a sanction.
-Isidore Ducasse Lautreamont
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And if tonight my soul may find her peace
in sleep, and sink in good oblivion,
and in the morning wake like a new-opened flower
then I have been dipped again in God, and new-created.
-D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
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Sleep is still most perfect when it is shared with a beloved. The warmth, the security and peace of soul, the utter comfort from the touch of the other, knits the sleep, so that it takes the body and soul completely in its healing.
-D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
Sons and Lovers
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Sleeping in a bed -- it is, apparently, of immense importance. Against those who sleep, from choice or necessity, elsewhere society feels righteously hostile. It is not done. It is disorderly, anarchical.
-Rose Macaulay
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How it is I know not; but there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other; and some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our hearts honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg -- a cozy, loving pair.
-Herman Melville
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Those who have compared our life to a dream were right.... We sleeping wake, and waking sleep.
-Michel de Montaigne
Essays, 1580
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The first moments of sleep are an image of death; a hazy torpor grips our thoughts and it becomes impossible for us to determine the exact instant when the I, under another form, continues the task of existence.
-Gerard De Nerval
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All men whilst they are awake are in one common world: but each of them, when he is asleep, is in a world of his own.
-Plutarch
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It is comforting when one has a sorrow to lie in the warmth of one's bed and there, abandoning all effort and all resistance, to bury even one's head under the cover, giving one's self up to it completely, moaning like branches in the autumn wind. But there is still a better bed, full of divine odors. It is our sweet, our profound, our impenetrable friendship.
-Marcel Proust
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No matter what time it is, wake me, even if it's in the middle of a Cabinet meeting.
-Ronald Reagan
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Some praise the Lord for Light,
The living spark;
I thank God for the Night
The healing dark.
-Robert William Service
Weary, first lines
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What angel wakes me from my flowery bed?
-William Shakespeare
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O sleep, O gentle sleep, nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee, That thou no more wilt weigh my eye-lids down and steep my senses in forgetfulness?
-William Shakespeare
Henry IV Part 2 : Act 3, scene i
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Methought I heard a voice cry Sleep no more,
Macbeth does murder sleep the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravelled 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 Shakespeare
Macbeth said by MacBeth at Act II, Scene 2
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A nap, my friend, is a brief period of sleep which overtakes superannuated persons when they endeavor to entertain unwelcome visitors or to listen to scientific lectures.
-George Bernard Shaw
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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,
Th' indifferent judge between the high and low.
-Sir Philip Sidney
Astrophel and Stella, Sonnet 39
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Come Sleep! Oh 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.
-Sir Philip Sidney
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When I sleep I sleep and do not dream because it is as well that I am what I seem when I am in my bed and dream.
-Gertrude Stein
Originally published by Plain Edition (1931). Before the Flowers of Friendship Faded Friendship Faded, stz. 18, The Major Works of Gertrude Stein, Hon-no-Tomosha (1993).
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It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.
-John Steinbeck
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For I've been born and I've been wed -- all of man's peril comes of bed.
-C. H. Webb
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Books about Sleep
