Sleep (original) (raw)

Now tell me if that any is,
For gift or grace, surpassing this—
"He giveth His beloved sleep." ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I can sleep, when I die. ~ Jay Wayne Jenkins

Sleep is a naturally recurring state of bodily rest involving altered consciousness, relatively inhibited sensory activity, and inhibition of nearly all voluntary muscles. It is distinguished from wakefulness by a decreased ability to react to stimuli, and it is more easily reversible than being in hibernation or a coma.

• 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.
  • Gene G. Abel, William D. Murphy, Judith V. Becker & Adib Bitar MD; “Women's vaginal responses during REM sleep”, Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, Volume 5, 1979 - Issue 1, pp.5-14
• 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.
  • Joseph Addison, Cato, A Tragedy (1713), Act V, scene 1.
• 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.
  • Babylonian Talmud on Tractate Shabbath 151b
• Still believe that ever round you
  Spirits float who watch and wait;
  Nor forget the twain who found you
  Sleeping nigh the Golden Gate.
  • Walter Besant and James Rice, Case of Mr. Lucraft and other Tales (Ed. 1877), p. 92.
• Since the Brother of Death daily haunts us with dying mementoes.
  • Sir Thomas Browne, Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial (1658). Same idea in Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), p. 107. (Ed. 1849). Also in an old French poet Racan.
• 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.
  • Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici (1642), Part II, Section XII.
• 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.”
  • Rosalind Cartwright, as quoted by Rush University Medical Center. "Can Snoring Ruin A Marriage?", ScienceDaily, 2 (February 2006).
• "Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone."
  • Mrs. Patrick (Beatrice Stella Tanner Campbell) Campbell, letter to George Bernard Shaw (August 13, 1912), Alan Dent, ed., Bernard Shaw and Mrs. Patrick Campbell: Their Correspondence (1952), p. 32. Since this was in quotation marks in the letter, it may have been her own version of the familiar lines, "Laugh, and the world laughs with you; / Weep, and you weep alone." These are the first two lines of Ella Wheeler Wilcox's poem, "Solitude," first published in 1883 in her Poems of Passion and widely reprinted in newspapers, often without attribution.—Burton Stevenson, Famous Single Poems, p. 223–242 (1935).
• 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.
  • Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote (1605-15), Part II, Chapter LXVIII.
• When you fall asleep counting planets, think upon others
  Who cannot find a place to sleep.
  • Mahmoud Darwish, Think upon others edinburgharabicinitiative.wordpress.com, aldiwan.net (Arabic)
• 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.
  • Mdme. Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, translated by Letitia Elizabeth Landon in Traits and Trials of Early Life (1836), 'The Little Boy's Bed-time'
• 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.
  • Thomas Edison, diary entry quoted in Defending and Parenting Children Who Learn Differently : Lessons from Edison's Mother (2007) by Scott Teel, p. 12.
• It's always possible to wake someone from sleep, but no amount of noise will wake someone who is pretending to be asleep.
  • Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals (2009)
• Sleepiness and laziness in a man are the beginning of his misfortune.
  • Genesis Rabbah 17, Tales and Maxims from the Midrash by Rev. Samuel Rapaport, (1907), p. 69.
• It's not the sort of night for bed anyhow; and daybreak is not so very far off...
  • The Rat in The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, (1908)
• Run the streets, all day. I can sleep, when I die.
  • Jay Wayne Jenkins, "Soul Survivor" (2005).
• I never take a nap after dinner but when I have had a bad night, and then the nap takes me.
  • Samuel Johnson, reported in James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson (1775).
• 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.
  • John Keats, Endymion (1818), Book I, line 452.
• 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.
  • Kendrick Lamar, "Sing About Me, I'm Dying Of Thirst", Good Kid, M.A.A.D City (2012).
• Dreams of the summer night!
  Tell her, her lover keeps
  Watch! while in slumbers light
  She sleeps!
  My lady sleeps!
  Sleeps!
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Spanish Student (1843), Act I, scene 3. Serenade, Stanza 4.
• 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.
  • Lugalbanda, in Lugalbanda in the Mountain Cave, Ur III Period (21st century BCE).[1]
• The king lay down not to sleep, he lay down to dream.
  • Lugalbanda in the Mountain Cave, Ur III Period (21st century BCE).[2]
• 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.
  • Mark Mahowald as quoted by Lara Rutherford-Morrison; “The Truth Behind What It Means When You Have A Really Vivid Dream”, Bustle, (June 7, 2019)
• The timely dew of sleep
  Now falling with soft slumb'rous weight inclines
  Our eyelids.
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book IV, line 615.
• For his sleep
  Was aery light, from pure digestion bred.
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book V, line 3.
• You are the biggest enemy of your own sleep.
  • Pawan Mishra
• Inhale deep like the words of my breath,
  I never sleep, cause sleep is the cousin of death
  • Nas, "N.Y. State of Mind"
• 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!
  • Elizabeth Prentiss, "Cradle Song" (From the German), Stanza 1, in Henry T. Coates ed., The Children's Book of Poetry (Philadelphia: Henry T. Coates & Co, 1879), p. 29.
• Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking,
  Morn of toil, nor night of waking.
  • Walter Scott, Lady of the Lake (1810), Canto I, Stanza 31.
• O sleep, thou ape of death, lie dull upon her
  And be her sense but as a monument.
  • William Shakespeare, Cymbeline (1611), Act II, scene 2, line 31.
• He that sleeps feels not the tooth-ache.
  • William Shakespeare, Cymbeline (1611), Act V, scene 4, line 177.
• To sleep! perchance to dream; ay, there's the rub;
  For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
  When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
  Must give us pause.
  • William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600-02), Act III, scene 1, line 65.
• On your eyelids crown the god of sleep,
  Charming your blood with pleasing heaviness:
  Making such difference 'twixt wake and sleep,
  As is the difference betwixt day and night,
  The hour before the heavenly-harness'd team
  Begins his golden progress in the east.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part I (c. 1597), Act III, scene 1, line 217.
• O sleep, O gentle sleep,
  Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,
  That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down
  And steep my senses in forgetfulness?
  • William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part II (c. 1597-99), Act III, scene 1, line 4.
• Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs,
  Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee
  And hushed with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber,
  Than in the perfum'd chambers of the great,
  Under the canopies of costly state,
  And lull'd with sound of sweetest melody?
  • William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part II (c. 1597-99), Act III, scene 1, line 9.
• O polish'd perturbation! golden care!
  That keep'st the ports of slumber open wide
  To many a watchful night! sleep with it now!
  Yet not so sound and half so deeply sweet
  As he whose brow with homely biggen bound
  Snores out the watch of night.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part II (c. 1597-99), Act IV, scene 5, line 23.
• This sleep is sound indeed, this is a sleep
  That from this golden rigol hath divorc'd
  So many English kings.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part II (c. 1597-99), Act IV, scene 5, line 35.
• Winding up days with toil and nights with sleep.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry V (c. 1599), Act IV, scene 1, line 296.
• Fast asleep? It is no matter;
  Enjoy the honey-heavy dew of slumber;
  Thou hast no figures nor no fantasies,
  Which busy care draws in the brains of men;
  Therefore thou sleep'st so sound.
  • William Shakespeare, Julius Cæsar (1599), Act II, scene 1, line 229.
• Bid them come forth and hear me,
  Or at their chamber-door I'll beat the drum
  Till it cry sleep to death.
  • William Shakespeare, King Lear (1608), Act II, scene 4, line 118.
• Sleep shall neither night nor day
  Hang upon his pent-house lid.
  • William Shakespeare, Macbeth (1605), Act I, scene 3, line 19.
• Methought I heard a voice cry, "Sleep no more!
  Macbeth does murder sleep," the innocent sleep.
  • William Shakespeare, Macbeth (1605), Act II, scene 2, line 35.
• Sleep that knits up the ravell'd 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 (1605), Act II, scene 2, line 36.
• Shake off this downy sleep, death's counterfeit,
  And look on death itself!
  • William Shakespeare, Macbeth (1605), Act II, scene 3, line 81.
• He sleeps by day
  More than the wild-cat.
  • William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice (late 1590s), Act II, scene 5, line 47.
• Thou lead them thus,
  Till o'er their brows death-counterfeiting sleep
  With leaden legs and batty wings doth creep.
  • William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream (c. 1595-96), Act III, scene 2, line 363.
• Sleep, that sometimes shuts up sorrow's eye,
  Steal me awhile from mine own company.
  • William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream (c. 1595-96), Act III, scene 2, line 435.
• But I pray you, let none of your people stir me: I have an exposition of sleep come upon me.
  • William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream (c. 1595-96), Act IV, scene 1, line 42.
• Not poppy, nor mandragora,
  Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world
  Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
  Which thou ow'dst yesterday.
  • William Shakespeare, Othello (c. 1603), Act III, scene 3, line 330.
• I let fall the windows of mine eyes.
  • William Shakespeare, Richard III (c. 1591), Act V, scene 3, line 116.
• Thy eyes' windows fall,
  Like death, when he shuts up the day of life;
  Each part, depriv'd of supple government,
  Shall, stiff and stark and cold, appear like death.
  • William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (1597), Act IV, scene 1, line 100.
• How wonderful is Death, Death and his brother Sleep!
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab (1813), line 1.
• And on their lids * * *
  The baby Sleep is pillowed.
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab (1813), Part I.
• For next to Death is Sleepe to be compared;
  Therefore his house is unto his annext:
  Here Sleepe, ther Richesse, and hel-gate them both betwext.
  • Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene (1589-96), Book II, Canto VII, Stanza 25.
• When in the down I sink my head,
  Sleep, Death's twin-brother, times my breath.
  • Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H. (1849), Part LXVIII.
• For is there aught in Sleep can charm the wise?
  To lie in dead oblivion, loosing half
  The fleeting moments of too short a life—
  * * * * * *
  Who would in such a gloomy state remain
  Longer than Nature craves?
  • James Thomson, The Seasons, Summer (1727), line 71.
• The majority of adults sleep with a partner, and for a significant proportion of couples, sleep problems and relationship problems co-occur, yet there has been little systematic study of the association between close relationships and sleep.
  • Wendy M. Troxel, Theodore F. Robles, Martica Hall, and Daniel J. Buysse, “Marital quality and the marital bed: Examining the covariation between relationship quality and sleep”, Sleep Med Rev. 2007 Oct; 11(5): 389–404.
• Evaluating sleep and sleep disorders from a dyadic perspective is important for several reasons. First, according to the 2005 National Sleep Foundation poll, 61% of adults sleep with a significant other, and one-quarter to one-third of married or cohabitating adults report that their intimate relationships are adversely affected by their own or their spouse's excessive sleepiness or sleep problems. Recent qualitative studies from interview data suggest that sleep problems in one or both partners, including insomnia symptoms and sleep-disordered breathing, contribute to marital problems. In addition, Ulfberg and colleagues found that women living with snorers were three times as likely to report symptoms of insomnia compared to women living with nonsnorers, suggesting that a sleep disorder in one spouse may increase risk for a sleep disorder in the other spouse, perhaps leading to additive or synergistic effects on the relationship quality.
  • Wendy M. Troxel, Theodore F. Robles, Martica Hall, and Daniel J. Buysse, “Marital quality and the marital bed: Examining the covariation between relationship quality and sleep”, Sleep Med Rev. 2007 Oct; 11(5): 389–404.
• And to tired limbs and over-busy thoughts,
  Inviting sleep and soft forgetfulness.
  • William Wordsworth, The Excursion (1814), Book IV.
• Tired Nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep!
  He, like the world, his ready visit pays
  Where fortune smiles; the wretched he forsakes.
  • Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night I, line 1.
• Creation sleeps. 'Tis as the general pulse
  Of life stood still, and nature made a pause.
  • Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night I, line 23.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

[edit]

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 716-21.

• What probing deep
  Has ever solved the mystery of sleep?
  • Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Human Ignorance.
• But I, in the chilling twilight stand and wait
  At the portcullis, at thy castle gate,
  Longing to see the charmèd door of dreams
  Turn on its noiseless hinges, delicate sleep!
  • Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Invocation to Sleep.
• Come to me now! O, come! benignest sleep!
  And fold me up, as evening doth a flower,
  From my vain self, and vain things which have power
  Upon my soul to make me smile or weep,
  And when thou comest, oh, like Death be deep.
  • Patrick Proctor Alexander, Sleep. Appeared in the Spectator.
• How happy he whose toil
  Has o'er his languid pow'rless limbs diffus'd
  A pleasing lassitude; he not in vain
  Invokes the gentle Deity of dreams.
  His pow'rs the most voluptuously dissolve
  In soft repose; on him the balmy dews
  Of Sleep with double nutriment descend.
  • John Armstrong, The Art of Preserving Health (1744), Book III, line 385.
• When the sheep are in the fauld, and a' the kye at hame,
  And all the weary world to sleep are gane.
  • Lady Ann Barnard, Auld Robin Gray.
• How he sleepeth! having drunken
  Weary childhood's mandragore,
  From his pretty eyes have sunken
  Pleasures to make room for more—
  Sleeping near the withered nosegay which he pulled the day before.
  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning, A Child Asleep.
• Of all the thoughts of God that are
  Borne inward unto souls afar,
  Along the Psalmist's music deep,
  Now tell me if that any is,
  For gift or grace, surpassing this—
  "He giveth His beloved sleep."
  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning, The Sleep.
• Steep on, Baby, on the floor,
  Tired of all the playing,
  Sleep with smile the sweeter for
  That you dropped away in!
  On your curls' full roundness stand
  Golden lights serenely—
  One cheek, pushed out by the hand,
  Folds the dimple inly.
  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sleeping and Watching.
• Sleep hath its own world,
  A boundary between the things misnamed
  Death and existence: Sleep hath its own world,
  And a wide realm of wild reality,
  And dreams in their development have breath,
  And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy.
  • Lord Byron, The Dream, Stanza 1.
• It is not good a sleping hound to wake.
  • Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus, I, 640. Compare: "Wake not a sleeping lion", The Countryman's New Commonwealth (1647); "Esveiller le chat qui dort", Rabelais, Pantagruel; "Wake not a sleeping wolf", William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part II.
• O sleep! it is a gentle thing,
  Beloved from pole to pole!
  To Mary Queen the praise be given!
  She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven
  That slid into my soul.
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798; 1817), Part V, Stanza 1.
• Visit her, gentle Sleep! with wings of healing,
  And may this storm be but a mountain-birth,
  May all the stars hang bright above her dwelling,
  Silent as though they watched the sleeping Earth!
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Dejection, An Ode, Stanza 8.
• Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night,
  Brother to Death, in silent darkness born;
  Relieve my languish, and restore the light.
  • Samuel Daniel, Sonnet, 46. To Delia.
• Awake thee, my Lady-Love!
  Wake thee, and rise!
  The sun through the bower peeps
  Into thine eyes.
  • George Darley, Waking Song.
• Golden slumbers kiss your eyes,
  Smiles awake you when you rise.
  • Thomas Dekker, The Comedy of Patient Grissil. (Play written by Dekker, Henry Chettle, William Houghton).
• Sister Simplicitie!
  Sing, sing a song to me,—
  Sing me to sleep!
  Some legend low and long,
  Slow as the summer song
  Of the dull Deep.
  • Sidney Dobell, A Sleep Song.
• Two gates the silent house of Sleep adorn:
  Of polished ivory this, that of transparent horn:
  True visions through transparent horn arise;
  Through polished ivory pass deluding lies.
  • John Dryden, translation of Virgil's Æneid (29-19 BC), Book VI. 894. Same in Pope's translation. of Odyssey, Book XIX. 562.
• The sleep of a labouring man is sweet.
  • Ecclesiastes. V. 12.
• She took the cup of life to sip,
  Too bitter 'twas to drain;
  She meekly put it from her lip,
  And went to sleep again.
  • Epitaph in Meole Churchyard. Found in Sabrinæ Corolla, p. 246 of third ed.
• If thou wilt close thy drowsy eyes,
  My mulberry one, my golden son,
  The rose shall sing thee lullabies,
  My pretty cosset lambkin!
  • Eugene Field, Armenian Lullaby.
• The mill goes toiling slowly round
  With steady and solemn creak,
  And my little one hears in the kindly sound
  The voice of the old mill speak;
  While round and round those big white wings
  Grimly and ghostlike creep,
  My little one hears that the old mill sings,
  Sleep, little tulip, sleep.
  • Eugene Field, Nightfall in Dordrecht.
• Care-charming Sleep, thou easer of all woes,
  Brother to Death … thou son of Night.
  • John Fletcher, The Tragedy of Valentinian, Act V. 2.
• O sleep! in pity thou art made
  A double boon to such as we;
  Beneath closed lids and folds of deepest shade
  We think we see.
  • Richard Frothingham, The Sight of the Blind.
• Sleep sweet within this quiet room,
  O thou! whoe'er thou art;
  And let no mournful Yesterday,
  Disturb thy peaceful heart.
  • Ellen M. H. Gates, Sleep Sweet.
• Oh! lightly, lightly tread!
  A holy thing is sleep,
  On the worn spirit shed,
  And eyes that wake to weep.
  • Felicia Hemans, The Sleeper.
• One hour's sleep before midnight is worth three after.
  • George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum (1651).
• Then Sleep and Death, two twins of winged race,
  Of matchless swiftness, but of silent pace.
  • Homer, The Iliad, Book XVI, line 831. Pope's translation.
• * Et idem
  Indignor quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus;
  Verum opere longo fas est obrepere somnum.
  • I, too, am indignant when the worthy Homer nods; yet in a long work it is allowable for sleep to creep over the writer.
  • Horace, Ars Poetica (18 BC), 358.
• I lay me down to sleep,
  With little thought or care
  Whether my waking find
  Me here, or there.
  • Mrs. R. S. Howland (Miss Woolsey)—Rest. Found under the pillow of a soldier who, in the War of the Rebellion, died in the hospital at Port Royal. For a time attributed to this unknown soldier.
• O sleep, we are beholden to thee, sleep;
  Thou bearest angels to us in the night,
  Saints out of heaven with palms.
  Seen by thy light
  Sorrow is some old tale that goeth not deep;
  Love is a pouting child.
  • Jean Ingelow, Sleep.
• We’re operating a huge sleep experiment, worldwide, unlike anything anyone has ever done. We have 250 million nights of sleep in our database, and we’re using all the latest technologies to make sense of it.
  • Philippe Kahn Fortune, June 29th, 2015, regarding the focus that Fullpower Technologies has on gathering and understanding sleep data.
• If a sleep monitor has electrodes and wires that look like something from Frankenstein's lab, you might not wear it consistently, and the information it gathers and reports may be compromised.
  • Philippe Kahn Scientific American June 18th, 2013, regarding the need for noninvasive wearable devices.
• Over the edge of the purple down,
  Where the single lamplight gleams,
  Know ye the road to the Merciful Town
  That is hard by the Sea of Dreams—
  Where the poor may lay their wrongs away,
  And the sick may forget to weep?
  But we—pity us! Oh pity us!
  We wakeful; Ah, pity us!—
  • Rudyard Kipling, City of Sleep.
• But who will reveal to our waiting ken
  The forms that swim and the shapes that creep under the waters of sleep?
  And I would I could know what swimmeth below when the tide comes in
  On the length and the breadth of the marvelous Marches of Glynn.
  • Sidney Lanier, Marches of Glynn. Last lines.
• Breathe thy balm upon the lonely,
  * Gentle Sleep!
  As the twilight breezes bless
  With sweet scents the wilderness,
  Ah, let warm white dove-wings only
  ** Round them sweep!
  • Lucy Larcom, Sleep Song.
• 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!
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Sleep.
• Thou driftest gently down the tides of sleep.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, To a Child, line 115.
• 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.
  • John Milton, Il Penseroso (1631), line 142.
• 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.
  • William Morris, Apology to The Earthly Paradise.
• O, we're a' noddin', nid, nid, noddin';
  O we're a' noddin' at our house at hame.
  • Carolina, Baroness Nairne, We're a' Noddin'.
• Stulte, quid est somnus, gelidæ nisi mortis imago?
  Longa quiescendi tempora fata dabunt.
  • Fool, what is sleep but the likeness of icy death? The fates shall give us a long period of rest.
  • Ovid, Amorum (16 BC), Book II. 10. 40.
• Alliciunt somnos tempus motusque merumque.
  • Time, motion and wine cause sleep.
  • Ovid, Fasti, VI. 681.
• Somne, quies rerum, placidissime, somne, Deorum,
  Pax animi, quem cura fugit, qui corda diurnis
  Fessa ministeriis mulces, reparasque labori!
  • Sleep, rest of nature, O sleep, most gentle of the divinities, peace of the soul, thou at whose presence care disappears, who soothest hearts wearied with daily employments, and makest them strong again for labour!
  • Ovid, Metamorphoses, XI. 624.
• Balow, my babe, lye still and sleipe,
  It grieves me sair to see thee weipe.
  • Thomas Percy, Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, Lady Anne Bothwell's Lament.
• Drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags.
  • Proverbs, XXIII. 21.
• I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for thou, LORD, only makest me dwell in safety.
  • Psalms, IV. 8.
• He giveth his beloved sleep.
  • Psalms. CXXVII. 2.
• I will not give sleep to mine eyes, or slumber to mine eyelids.
  • Psalms. CXXXII. 4; Proverbs, VI. 4.
• Je ne dors jamais bien à mon aise sinon quand je suis au sermon, ou quand je prie Dieu.
  • I never sleep comfortably except when I am at sermon or when I pray to God.
  • François Rabelais, Gargantua, Book I, Chapter XLI.
• Elle s'endormit du sommeil des justes.
  • She slept the sleep of the just.
  • Jean Racine, Abrégé de l'histoire de Port Royal, Volume IV. 517. Mesnard's ed.
• When the Sleepy Man comes with the dust on his eyes
  (Oh, weary, my Dearie, so weary!)
  He shuts up the earth, and he opens the skies.
  (So hush-a-by, weary my Dearie!)
  • Charles G. D. Roberts, Sleepy Man.
• Heavy Sleep, the Cousin of Death.
  • Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset, Sleep.
• Yes; bless the man who first invented sleep
  (I really can't avoid the iteration):
  But blast the man with curses loud and deep,
  Whate'er the rascal's name or age or station,
  Who first invented, and went round advertising,
  That artificial cut-off—Early Rising.
  • John Godfrey Saxe, Early Rising.
• "God bless the man who first invented sleep!"
  So Sancho Panza said and so say I;
  And bless him, also, that he didn't keep
  His great discovery to himself, nor try
  To make it,—as the lucky fellow might—
  A close monopoly by patent-right.
  • John Godfrey Saxe, Early Rising.
• To all, to each, a fair good-night,
  And pleasing dreams, and slumbers light.
  • Walter Scott, Marmion, L'Envoy, To the Reader.
• Sleep, the fresh dew of languid love, the rain
  Whose drops quench kisses till they burn again.
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, Epipsychidion, line 571.
• 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, Stanza 39.
• Take thou of me, sweet pillowes, sweetest bed;
  A chamber deafe of noise, and blind of light,
  A rosie garland and a weary hed.
  • Sir Philip Sidney, Astrophel and Stella, Stanza 39.
• Thou hast been called, O Sleep, the friend of Woe,
  But 'tis the happy who have called thee so.
  • Robert Southey, The Curse of Kehama, Canto XV, Stanza 12.
• All gifts but one the jealous God may keep
  From our soul's longing, one he cannot—sleep.
  This, though he grudge all other grace to prayer,
  This grace his closed hand cannot choose but spare.
  • Algernon Charles Swinburne, Tristram of Lyonesse, Prelude to Tristram and Iseult, line 205.
• She sleeps: her breathings are not heard
  In palace chambers far apart,
  The fragrant tresses are not stirr'd
  That lie upon her charmed heart.
  She sleeps: on either hand upswells
  The gold fringed pillow lightly prest:
  She sleeps, nor dreams, but ever dwells
  A perfect form in perfect rest.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Day Dream, The Sleeping Beauty, Stanza 3.
• The mystery
  Of folded sleep.
  • Alfred Tennyson, Dream of Fair Women, Stanza 66.
• Notably, most studies concerned the effects of sleep apnea or snoring on relationship functioning. It seems plausible that relationship functioning would also suffer as a result of numerous other sleep disorders, including narcolepsy or insomnia. However, to our knowledge, most research concerning other sleep disorders beyond SDB and psychosocial functioning has not included a specific measure of close relationship functioning, or did not specifically address the association between sleep disturbance per se and relationship functioning.
• Who can wrestle against Sleep?—Yet is that giant very gentleness.
  • Martin Tupper, Of Beauty.
• Yet never sleep the sun up. Prayer shou'd
  Dawn with the day. There are set, awful hours
  'Twixt heaven and us. The manna was not good
  After sun-rising; far day sullies flowres.
  Rise to prevent the sun; sleep doth sin glut,
  And heaven's gate opens when the world's is shut.
  • Henry Vaughan, Rules and Lessons, Stanza 2.
• Softly, O midnight hours!
  Move softly o'er the bowers
  Where lies in happy sleep a girl so fair:
  For ye have power, men say,
  Our hearts in sleep to sway
  And cage cold fancies in a moonlight snare.
  • Aubrey Thomas de Vere, Song. Softly, O Midnight Hours.
• Deep rest and sweet, most like indeed to death's own quietness.
  • Virgil, Æneid (29-19 BC), Book VI, line 522. William Morris' translation.
• Tu dors, Brutus, et Rome est dans les fers.
  • Thou sleepest, Brutus, and yet Rome is in chains.
  • Voltaire, La Mort de César, II. 2.
• Hush, my dear, lie still and slumber!
  Holy angels guard thy bed!
  Heavenly blessings without number
  Gently falling on thy head.
  • Isaac Watts, Cradle Hymn.
• 'Tis the voice of the sluggard I hear him complain;
  "You've waked me too soon, I must slumber again.
  * * * * * *
  A little more sleep and a little more slumber."
  • Isaac Watts, Moral Songs, The Sluggard.
• Come, gentle sleep! attend thy votary's prayer,
  And, though death's image, to my couch repair;
  How sweet, though lifeless, yet with life to lie,
  And, without dying, O how sweet to die!
  • John Wolcot (Peter Pindar). Translation of Thomas Warton's Latin Epigram on Sleep for a statue of Somnus in the garden of Mr. Harris.
• Remember how you used to say, can't stay up late? A minute later and we're older now, I can't stay awake.
  • Yo La Tengo, "Today is the Day", Today is the Day (2003), Matador Records
• Encyclopedic article on Sleep on Wikipedia