122 Inspiring Sleep Quotes

In a world where fast-paced lifestyles and constant connectivity often take precedence, the value of a good night's sleep can sometimes be overlooked. Yet, sleep is a fundamental pillar of our overall well-being, influencing everything from mental clarity to emotional resilience. To honor the profound power of rest, we've gathered a curated collection of 122 inspiring sleep quotes. Each quote serves as a gentle reminder of sleep's rejuvenating magic, encouraging us to embrace the restorative embrace of slumber and dream more vividly. Whether you're seeking motivation to prioritize rest or simply a moment of reflection, these quotes will guide you towards a more serene state of mind and body. Dive in for a dose of inspiration that will not only soothe your soul but might just transform your nightly routine.

1. “She used to say she could taste sleep and that it was as delicious as a BLT on fresh French bread.” - Rebecca Wells

2. “What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams.” - Werner Herzog

3. “For years now, I've wanted to fall asleep. The sort of slipping off, the giving up, the falling part of sleep. Now sleeping is the last thing I want to do.” - Chuck Palahniuk

4. “I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary.” - Margaret Atwood

5. “I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?” - Ernest Hemingway

6. “Life is something that happens when you can't get to sleep.” - Fran Lebowitz

7. “The WakingI 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.We think by feeling. What is there to know?I hear my being dance from ear to ear.I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.Of those so close beside me, which are you?God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,And learn by going where I have to go.Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.Great Nature has another thing to doTo you and me, so take the lively air,And, lovely, learn by going where to go.This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.What falls away is always. And is near.I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.I learn by going where I have to go.” - Theodore Roethke

8. “Making love with a woman and sleeping with a woman are two separate passions, not merely different but opposite. Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to an infinite number of women) but in the desire for shared sleep (a desire limited to one woman).” - Milan Kundera

9. “He had the face of one who walks in his sleep, and for a wild moment the idea came to me that perhaps he was not normal, not altogether sane. There were people who had trances, I had surely heard of them, and they followed strange laws of which we could know nothing, they obeyed the tangled orders of their own sub-conscious minds. Perhaps he was one of them, and here we were within six feet of death.” - Daphne du Maurier

10. “Le spectacle est le mauvais rêve de la société moderne enchaînée, qui n'exprime finalement que son désir de dormir. Le spectacle est le gardien de ce sommeil.” - Guy Debord

11. “If men only felt about death as they do about sleep, all terrors would cease. . . Men sleep contentedly, assured that they will wake the following morning. They should feel the same about their lives.” - Richard Matheson

12. “Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep” - Albert Camus

13. “A person who has not done one half his day's work by ten o'clock, runs a chance of leaving the other half undone.” - Emily Brontë

14. “I sleep better knowing that a naked cork-eater is not sneaking around at night, stealing my underwear. ” - Maureen Johnson

15. “Der Schlaf, den wir ersehnen, der vollkommene Schlaf, ist traumlos. Wir werden von Träumen heimgesucht, sobald wir gelernt haben, uns zu erinnern und Reue zu empfinden” - Golo Mann

16. “I've crossed some kind of invisible line. I feel as if I've come to a place I never thought I'd have to come to. And I don't know how I got here. It's a strange place. It's a place where a little harmless dreaming and then some sleepy, early-morning talk has led me into considerations of death and annihilation.” - Raymond Carver

17. “I wonder why I don't go to bed and go to sleep. But then it would be tomorrow, so I decide that no matter how tired, no matter how incoherent I am, I can skip on hour more of sleep and live.” - Sylvia Plath

18. “If a composer suffers from loss of sleep and his sleeplessness induces him to turn out masterpieces, what a profitable loss it is!” - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

19. “InsomniaI cannot get to sleep tonight.I toss and turn and flop.I try to count some fluffy sheepwhile o'er a fence they hop.I try to think of pleasant dreamsof places really cool.I don't know why I cannot sleep -I slept just fine at school.” - Kathy Kenney-Marshall

20. “Although she was giddy with exhaustion, sleep was a lover who refused to be touched....” - Janet Fitch

21. “He slept like an animal, well and lightly, faced in the opposite direction from that of a man; for a man going to sleep is about to escape into it while animals are prepared to escape out of it.” - Theodore Sturgeon

22. “Waking up begins with saying am and now. That which has awoken then lies for a while staring up at the ceiling and down into itself until it has recognized I, and therefrom deduced I am, I am now. Here comes next, and is at least negatively reassuring; because here, this morning, is where it has expected to find itself: what’s called at home.” - Christopher Isherwood

23. “The ‘Muse’ is not an artistic mystery, but a mathematical equation. The gift are those ideas you think of as you drift to sleep. The giver is that one you think of when you first awake.” - Roman Payne

24. “One of the Georges - I forget which - once said that a certain number of hours' sleep each night - I cannot recall at the moment how many - made a man something which for the time being has slipped my memory.” - P.G. Wodehouse

25. “Laugh, even when you feel too sick or too worn out or tired. Smile, even when you're trying not to cry and the tears are blurring your vision. Sing, even when people stare at you and tell you your voice is crappy. Trust, even when your heart begs you not to. Twirl, even when your mind makes no sense of what you see. Frolick, even when you are made fun of. Kiss, even when others are watching. Sleep, even when you're afraid of what the dreams might bring. Run, even when it feels like you can't run any more.And, always, remember, even when the memories pinch your heart. Because the pain of all your experience is what makes you the person you are now. And without your experience---you are an empty page, a blank notebook, a missing lyric. What makes you brave is your willingness to live through your terrible life and hold your head up high the next day. So don't live life in fear. Because you are stronger now, after all the crap has happened, than you ever were back before it started.” - Alysha Speer

26. “You're always in a rush, or else you're too exhausted to have a proper conversation. Soon enough, the long hours, the traveling, the broken sleep have all crept into your being and become part of you, so everyone can see it, in your posture, your gaze, the way you move and talk.” - Kazuo Ishiguro

27. “What silence rules the ghostly hoursThat guard the close of human sleep!(“The Testimony of the Suns”)” - George Sterling

28. “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.” - Theodore Roethke

29. “It's the oasis," said the camel driver."Well, why don't we go there right now?" the boy asked."Because we have to sleep.” - Paulo Coelho

30. “Insomnia is a variant of Tourette's--the waking brain races, sampling the world after the world has turned away, touching it everywhere, refusing to settle, to join the collective nod. The insomniac brain is a sort of conspiracy theorist as well, believing too much in its own paranoiac importance--as though if it were to blink, then doze, the world might be overrun by some encroaching calamity, which its obsessive musings are somehow fending off.” - Jonathan Lethem

31. “They slept profoundly, desperately, greedily, as though for the last time, as though they had been condemned to stay awake forever and had to drink in all the sleep in the world during these last hours. ” - Hermann Hesse

32. “If a woman sleeps alone it puts a shame on all men. God has a very big heart, but there is one sin He will not forgive. If a woman calls a man to her bed and he will not go.” - Nikos Kazantzakis

33. “Also, I could finally sleep. And this was the real gift, because when you cannot sleep, you cannot get yourself out of the ditch--there's not a chance.” - Elizabeth Gilbert

34. “If one believed in angels one would feel that they must love us best when we are asleep and cannot hurt each other; and what a mercy it is that once in every twenty-four hours we are too utterly weary to go on being unkind.” - Elizabeth von Arnim

35. “At length the Lady Galadriel released them from her eyes, and she smiled. ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled,’ she said. ‘Tonight you shall sleep in peace.’ Then they sighed and felt suddenly weary, as those who have been questioned long and deeply, though no words had been spoken openly.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

36. “How can non-existence get sick of itself?Everytime you wake up, you appear again out of nowhere. And so does everything else. Death just means the replacement of the usual morning waking with something else, something quite impossible even to think about. We don't even have the instrument to do it, because our mind & our world are the same thing.” - Victor Pelevin

37. “When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.” - Ursula K. LeGuin

38. “Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night.” - Charles Fisher

39. “sleep is such a luxury, which i cant afford.” - Robin Sikarwar

40. “There is no such thing as a good call at 7 AM. It's been my experience that all calls between the hours of 11 PM and 9 AM are disaster calls.” - Janet Evanovich

41. “Being sent to bed is a terrible command to all children, because it means the most public possible humiliation in front of adults, the confession that they bear the stigma of childhood, of being small and having a child's need for sleep.” - Stefan Zweig

42. “No wonder Sleeping Beauty looked so good...she took long naps, never got old, and didn't have to do anything but snore to get her Prince Charming.” - Olive Green

43. “I wash with the can of water I set aside the night before, and eat whatever I put next to it. The washing is not strictly necessary but, again, I have always found it a good way to greet the day. You wash after a period of work, after all, and what else is a night of sleep, if not work, or a journey at least? ("The Things He Said")” - Michael Marshall Smith

44. “I breathe slowly and deeply. I make my eyes still under eyelids, I make my mind still, and soon, Sleep, seeing a perfect reproduction of himself, comes to be united with his facsimile.” - Audrey Niffenegger

45. “In my room I'd barely closed my eyes when the blonde from the movie house came along and sang her whole song of sorrow just for me. I helped her put me to sleep, so to speak, and succeeded pretty well... I wasn't entirely alone... It's not possible to sleep alone...” - Louis-Ferdinand Celine

46. “Sleep: the stepchild of Death.” - Nancy A. Collins

47. “Death was a friend, and sleep was Death's brother.” - John Steinbeck

48. “Sleep is not on good terms with broken hearts. It will have nothing to do with them.” - Christopher Pike

49. “What the hell time is it?" muttered the old man. He was always an aggressive sleeper. Sleep was one of the things he did best, and he loved it. Some look upon sleep as an unfortunate necessary interruption of life; but there are others who hold that sleep is life, or at least one of the more fulfilling aspects of it, like eating or sex. Any time my old man's sleep was interrupted, he became truly dangerous.” - Jean Shepherd

50. “Under the stars,I tried to sleep,but for once in my life couldn't.My mutant super power-the ability to nod off at at the drop of a hat,any time,anywhere-had deserted me.” - James Lovegrove

51. “...to return to their 'native soil,' as they say, to the bosom, so to speak, of their mother earth, like frightened children, yearning to fall asleep on the withered bosom of their decrepit mother, and to sleep there for ever, only to escape the horrors that terrify them.” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

52. “The sigh of all the seas breaking in measure round the isles soothed them; the night wrapped them; nothing broke their sleep, until, the birds beginning and the dawn weaving their thin voices in to its whiteness” - Virginia Woolf

53. “You cannot imagine the craving for rest that I feel—a hunger and thirst. For six long days, since my work was done, my mind has been a whirlpool, swift, unprogressive and incessant, a torrent of thoughts leading nowhere, spinning round swift and steady” - H.G. Wells

54. “Ich werde stehen und warten.Ich werde müde werden.Ich werde nicht einschlafen.Ich werde sterben.” - Hermann Hesse

55. “I want to see beauty. In the ugly, in the sink, in the suffering, in the daily, in all the days before I die, the moments before I sleep.” - Ann Voskamp

56. “One afternoon, disgusted, bravo, you fall asleep.” - Tim Lilburn

57. “Parfois, tu rêves que le sommeil est une morte lente qui te gagne, une anestésie douce et terrible à la fois, une nécrose heureuse : le froid monte le long de tes jambes, le long de tes bras, monte lentement, t'engourdit, t'annihile.Ton orteil est une montagne lointaine, ta jambe un fleuve, ta joue est ton oreiller, tu loges tout entier dans ton pouce, tu fonds, tu coules comme du sable, comme du mercure.” - Georges Perec

58. “I remembered my little brother, Allyn, had appeared so innocent and angelic when he slept--similar to Kerrick. It must be a survival tactic. If Allyn hadn't looked so sweet, we would have killed him while he slept. He had been pure evil when he was awake--similar to Kerrick.” - Maria V. Snyder

59. “Good night, belovedest. Your sleep will be sweet if there is any influences in the wishes of your own.” - L.M. Montgomery

60. “All I want is to sleep--to dream. Life is better in dreams.” - Christina Westover

61. “Cordy slept late, awakening only when the noises of the house and the insistent sunlight became to obvious to be believably incorporated into her dreams any longer.” - Eleanor Brown

62. “Spies and parents never sleep.” - Linda Gerber

63. “And then, despite all these concerns, Arnette felt her mind begin to loosen, the images of the day unwinding inside her like a spool of thread, pulling her down into sleep.” - Justin Cronin

64. “I had a dream I was awake and I woke up to find myself asleep.” - Stan Laurel

65. “he wanted to sleep inside her lungs and breathe her blood and be smothered. He wanted her to be a virgin and not a virgin all at once. He wanted to know her. Intimate secrets: Why poetry? Why so sad? Why that grayness in her eyes? Why so alone? Not lonely, just alone - riding her bike across campus or sitting off by herself in the cafeteria - even dancing, she danced alone - and it was the aloneness that filled him with love. He remembered telling her that one evening. How she nodded and looked away. And how, later, when he kissed her, she received the kiss without returning it, her eyes wide open, not afraid, not a virgin’s eyes, just flat and uninvolved.” - Tim O'Brien

66. “Mmmm… stay.” Her voice was barely audible, as she grazed her lips against mine and her head fell back against the pillow into a deep sleep.” - J.D. Stroube

67. “Yea, all things live forever, though at times they sleep and are forgotten.” - H. Rider Haggard

68. “Never waste any time you can spend sleeping.” - Frank H. Knight

69. “Always wear cute pyjamas to bed, you'll never know who u will meet in your dreams.” - Joel Madden

70. “Though her emotions had not deviated from a jittery frailty she knew that in her own room she could at least attempt sleep and that if she dreamed she might then finally be with Henry.” - Anna Godbersen

71. “The man was allergic to sleep.” - Scott Westerfeld

72. “Now for a good twelve-hour sleep, I told myself. Twelve solid hours. Let birds sing, let people go to work. Somewhere out there, a volcano might blow, Israeli commandos might decimate a Palestinian village. I couldn't stop it. I was going to sleep.” - Haruki Murakami

73. “She walked down the basement steps. She saw an imaginary framed photo seep into the wall - a quiet-smiled secret. No more than a few meters, it was a long walk to the drop sheets and the assortment of paint cans that shielded Max Vandenburg. She removed the sheets closest to the wall until there was a small corridor to look through. The first part of him she saw was his shoulder, and through the slender gap, she slowly, painfully, inched her hand in until it rested there. His clothing was cool. He did not wake.She could feel his breathing and his shoulder moving up and down ever so slightly. For a while, she watched him. Then she sat and leaned back.Sleepy air seemed to have followed her.The scrawled words of practice stood magnificently on the wall by the stairs, jagged and childlike and sweet. They looked on as both the hidden Jew and the girl slept, hand to shoulder.They breathed.German and Jewish lungs.” - Markus Zusak

74. “I really like it when a bad dream doesn't scare you...it inspires you instead'.” - Fwah Storm

75. “Of all the things a man may do, sleep probably contributes most to keeping him sane. It puts brackets about each day. If you do something foolish or painful today, you get irritated if somebody mentions it, today. If it happened yesterday, though, you can nod or chuckle, as the case may be. You've crossed through nothingness or dream to another island in Time.” - Roger Zelazny

76. “I'll never waste my dreams by falling asleep. Never again.” - Eugene Ionesco

77. “He was afraid of touching his own wrist. He never attempted to sleep on his left side, even in those dismal hours of the night when the insomniac longs for a third side after trying the two he has.” - Vladimir Nabokov

78. “I am terrified by this dark thing that sleeps in me.” - Sylvia Plath

79. “My own eyes try to sleep, but they don't. They stay wide awake as time snarls forward and silence drops down, like measured thought.” - Markus Zusak

80. “Food," I suggested. "Sleep. That's what I need. To get the hell away from here."Cole frowned at me, as if I'd suggested "ducks" and "yoga".” - Maggie Stiefvater

81. “[Hot flashes] are the prime cause of sleep disruption in women over age fifty, Suzanne Woodward of Wayne State University School of Medicine reports. Her studies show that hot flashes in sleep occur about once an hour. Most prompt an arousal of three minutes or longer. Independently of their hot flashes, women who have them still awaken briefly every eight minutes on average. The sleep process dramatically blunts memory for awakenings, Woodward said, and in the morning women seldom realize how poorly they slept. Instead, they often focus on the daytime consequences of poor sleep, which include fatigue, lethargy, mood swings, depression, and irritability. Many women and their doctors, Woodward said, dismiss such symptoms as "just menopause." This is a mistake, she suggested, because treatment can reduce or eliminate hot flashes, aid sleep, relieve other symptoms, and improve a woman's quality of life. Treatment also helps keep frequent awakenings from becoming a bad habit that continues after hot flashes subside.” - Michael Smolensky

82. “I wrestled through many sleepless nights after God became real to me. I can only describe this period of my life as 2 years of mental agony.” - C.L. Cagan

83. “My only relief is to sleep. When I'm sleeping, I'm not sad, I'm not angry, I'm not lonely, I'm nothing.” - Jillian Medoff

84. “Assim, quantas vezes, desperto e abandonado, não entrei pela noite dentro, aguardando não bem a madrugada nem o meu sono final, mas o vazio absoluto de um nunca mais para o passado e para o futuro.” - Vergílio Ferreira

85. “At NightLove said, "Wake still and think of me,"Sleep, "Close your eyes till break of day,"But Dreams came by and smilinglyGave both to Love and Sleep their way.” - Sara Teasdale

86. “What pillow can one have like a good conscience?” - John Steinbeck

87. “Isn't there someone kind enough to come strangle me in my sleep?” - Ryunosuke Akutagawa

88. “It is not the dream of what you're feeling laziness, if not, the sleep of exhaustion.” - Edmundo de Amicis

89. “I used to sleep the sleep of someone who knew she was loved. Now, I didn't.” - Kristen Ashley

90. “Thanks, Pepe. You've put an extra night into my life. I would have spent it just sleeping like an ox, but I've lived it instead. I'm grateful.” - Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

91. “When assaulted by sexual knowledge for the first time, a girl plunges into a period of blackness, which is required in order to let her emotions catch up with her body.Sleeping Beauty sleeps. Cinderella waits, and while she waits she works her way through the darkness of depression. Snow White both works and sleeps before she is ready to open her eyes and find a Prince leaning over her.” - Joan Gould

92. “Groping blindly in the darkness, he sank between the white mounds of cool feathers and slept as he fell, across the bed or with his head downward, pushing deep into the softness of the pillows, as if in sleep he wanted to drill through, to explore completely, that powerful massif of feather bedding rising out of the night.” - Bruno Schulz

93. “It is very difficult sometimes to keep awake, especially at church, but there is no difficulty at all about sleeping.” - Oscar Wilde

94. “People who are contented and serene sleep well. They fall asleep easily, stay asleep, and wake refreshed. Conversely, people who are anxious, stressed, or depressed do not sleep well, and chronic insomnia is strongly associated with mood disorders. These are clear correlations, but what is cause and what is effect is not clear. Most experts agree that sleep and mood are closely related, that healthy sleep can enhance emotional well-being, while insufficient quantity or quality of sleep can adversely affect it.” - Andrew Weil

95. “Death's brother, sleep.” - Virgil

96. “In the biggest and the smallest I sleep but at the same place I stay.” - Dejan Stojanovic

97. “I used to be free spirited, now I'm just free of sleep. I got a burning passion in my throat. I got a burning passion inside me.” - Tegan Quin

98. “All the kids from daycare are in dreamland.The froggie has made his last leap.Hell no you can't go to the bathroom.You know where you can go?The f**k to sleep.” - Adam Mansbach

99. “I wanted to sleep with you. I thought about throwing you over my couch fifty different ways, but I haven’t because I don’t see you that way anymore. It’s not that I’m not attracted to you, I just think you’re better than that.” - Jamie McGuire

100. “Sleep is closing your eyes and trusting you will heal.” - Danielle Barone

101. “Get sleep....get sharp!!” - kart

102. “...How terrible, those dreams before sleep were—the worse kind, mixing hope with despair...” - John Geddes

103. “...poetry is paying attention to life when all the world seems asleep to its beauties and truths...” - John Geddes

104. “...the wind hums low with sweet exultation, sings its lullaby, while you sleep ...” - John Geddes

105. “Sleep, that deplorable curtailment of the joy of life.” - Virginia Wolfe

106. “A novelist's characters must be with him as he lies down to sleep, and as he wakes from his dreams. He must learn to hate them and to love them.” - Anthony Trollopel

107. “Don't fall asleep yet. Contrary to popular belief, that's not where dreams get accomplished.” - George Watsky

108. “I make love with a focus and intensity that most people reserve for sleep.” - Dark Jar Tin Zoo

109. “Can death be sleep, when life is but a dream, And scenes of bliss pass as a phantom by?---"On death” - John Keats

110. “Whatever we may say, all of us suffer from disturbed sleep at times.Some in truth hardly sleep, though some who sleep copiously swear that they do not.Some are disquieted by incessant dreams, and a fortunate few are visited often by dreams of delightful character.Some will say that they were at one time troubled in sleeping but have 'recovered' from it, as though awareness were a disease, as perhaps it is.” - Gene Wolfe

111. “I would have liked to catch hold of sleep at least once, just as I had been resolved to catch hold of death one day, to catch hold of the wings of the angel of sleep when it came for me, to grab it with two fingers like a butterfly after sneaking up on it from behind. [...] My sleep game was practice for the grand struggle with death.” - Danilo Kis

112. “Must have been some kind a nightmare.”“Yeah,” I answer, my usual calm, vacant voice returning. “Can’t wait to wake up.” - K.A. Tucker

113. “I've never really understood why people sleep. Wasting a third of your life and becoming vulnerable for almost 8 hours every night. Doesn't seem very appealing to me.” - Banksy

114. “And if I do fall asleep, Marla has to keep track of Tyler. Where he goes. What he does. So maybe during the day, I can rush around and undo the damage.” - Chuck Palahniuk

115. “She sleeps like a cocoyam. A thing without senses. She sleeps like his mother, unplugged from the world.” - Taiye Selasi

116. “Sometimes sleep gets to be a serious and complete thing. You stop going to sleep in order that you may be able to get up, but get up in order that you may be able to go back to sleep.” - Robert Penn Warren

117. “In bed, I can go for hours. Oh yes, I love naps.
” - Dark Jar Tin Zoo

118. “Lay downYour tired & weary head my friend.We have wept too longNight is fallingAnd you are only sleepingWe have come to this journey's endIt's time for us to goTo meet our friendsWho beckon usTo jump againFrom across a distant skyA C-130 comes to carry usWhere we shall all wait For the final green lightIn the light ofThe pale moon risingI see far on the horizonInto the world of night and darknessFeet and knees togetherTime has ceasedBut cherished memories still lingerThis is the way of life and all thingsWe shall meet againYou are only sleeping.” - José N. Harris

119. “Slow and steady wins the race, only and only if the rabbit, competent, sleeps a while. But, fast and consistency always win it, even if rabbit is awaken.” - Syed Ather

120. “Maintaining one’s health in today’s toxic rich environment requires proper rest, hydration, an abundant intake of nutrients, and regular internal cleansing practices” - Gary Hopkins

121. “Might there come a timeWhen we stand over a graveAnd mourn ourselves?Mourn the past, a previous life?Shall we weep for the passing of time?Shall we grieve for unfulfilled dreams?In my naivety; in my beliefIn immortal youth, I sleep walk through life.Someone... wake me up.Please.Wake me up.” - Samantha Young

122. “What, all so soon asleep! I wish mine eyesWould, with themselves, shut up my thoughts...” - William Shakespeare