68 Quotes On Sleep And Dreams

Sleep and dreams have fascinated humans for centuries, weaving themselves into our cultures, beliefs, and daily lives. These states of rest and imagination hold a mysterious allure, capturing our curiosity and sparking endless discussion. In our fast-paced world, where rest is often sacrificed at the altar of productivity, reflecting on the importance and beauty of sleep is more vital than ever. We've gathered an inspiring and thought-provoking collection of 68 quotes on sleep and dreams, offering insights from poets, philosophers, and thinkers throughout history. Whether you're seeking solace, inspiration, or simply a moment of reflection, these quotes are sure to resonate and remind you of the magic that happens when night falls.

1. “Each night, when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning, when I wake up, I am reborn.” - Mahatma Gandhi

2. “Death, so called, is a thing which makes men weep, And yet a third of life is passed in sleep.” - Lord George Gordon Byron

3. “Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone.” - Anthony Burgess

4. “Fatigue is the safest sleeping draught.” - Virginia Woolf

5. “What hath night to do with sleep?” - John Milton

6. “The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death.” - E. M. Forster

7. “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

8. “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

9. “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

10. “Do we choose sleep? Hell no and bullshit - we fall. We give ourselves over to possibility, to whim and fancy, to the bed, to the pillow, the tiny white tablet. And these choose for us.” - Tim O'Brien

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

12. “I like the posture, but not the yoga. I like the inebriated morning, but not the opium. I like the flower but not the garden, the moment but not the dream. Quiet, my love. Be still. I am sleeping.” - Roman Payne

13. “Moments before sleep are when she feels most alive, leaping across fragments of the day, bringing each moment into the bed with her like a child with schoolbooks and pencils. The day seems to have no order until these times, which are like a ledger for her, her body full of stories and situations.” - Michael Ondaatje

14. “Several people toss and turn in their sleep, startled by the lines of the newspapers in their dreams, knives out, lights out, lights out, knives out!” - H.C. Artmann

15. “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

16. “You never know. Maybe when we’re dreaming…we’re more lucid than when we are awake.” - Katherine Angela Yeboah

17. “Those with a moral deficit put on a good show, and sleep like a baby.” - Paul Newman

18. “Its hard to stay up. Its been a long long dayAnd you've got the sandman at your door. But hang on, leave the TV on and lets do it anyway.Its ok. You can always sleep through work tomorrow. Ok?Hey, Hey, Tomorrow's just your future yesterday.Tell the clock on the wall, "Forget the wake up call."Cause the night's not nearly through.Wipe the sleep from your eyes. Give yourself a surprise.Let your worries wait another day.And if you stay too late at the bar,At least you made it out this far. So make up your mind and say, "Let's do it anyway!"Its OkYou can always sleep through work tomorrow, ok? Hey, Hey, Tomorrow's just your future yesterday. Life's too short to worry about the things that you can live withoutAnd I regret to say, the morning light is hours away.The world can be such a fright, But it belongs to us tonight.What's the point of going to bed?You look so lovely when your eyes are red.Tomorrow's just your future yesterday.” - Craig Ferguson

19. “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

20. “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

21. “I don't know why it should be, I am sure; but the sight of another man asleep in bed when I am up, maddens me.” - Jerome K. Jerome

22. “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

23. “I lay in bed that night, a first-time drunkard at seven years of age, pondering the punishment I knew would arrive on callused palms. In the forest, as if sensing my plight, wolves howled nocturnal laments. The magnificent lunar lullabies of my lupine brethren wooed me into a deep and cleansing sleep.” - Mark Rice

24. “Commander! Sir! Wake up!"Jack surfaced from sleep, wondering who the commander was and wishing he'd respond so he could go back to sleep - until he remembered that he was the commander.” - Cinda Williams Chima

25. “The concept of dreaming is known to the waking mind but to the dreamer there is no waking, no real world, no sanity; there is only the screaming bedlam of sleep.” - Stephen King

26. “Sleep my little baby-ohSleep until you wakenWhen you wake you'll see the worldIf I'm not mistaken...Kiss a loverDance a measure,Find your nameAnd buried treasure...Face your lifeIts pain, Its pleasure,Leave no path untaken.” - Neil Gaiman

27. “The stillness and stasis of bed are the perfect opposite of travel: inertia is what I've come to consider the default mode, existentially and electronically speaking. Bed, its utter inactivity, offers a glimpse of eternity, without the drawback of being dead.” - Lynne Sharon Schwartz

28. “...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

29. “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

30. “There are vampires. They are real, they are of our time, and they are here, close by, stalking us as we sleep...” - Nicky Raven

31. “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

32. “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

33. “Am I sleeping? Have I slept at all? This is insomnia.” - Chuck Palahniuk

34. “Dark circles under my eyes sink deeper and deeper into my skull, in contrast to my pale skin there is an undeniable resemblance to a fresh corpse.” - Dee Remy

35. “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

36. “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

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

38. “Anna woke with the wonderful feeling bad sleepers have when they know they have slept well. As if they have stolen something and got away with it. At these times the memories of what led up to such deep sleep keep their distance for a few seconds and those few seconds are perhaps the only time the world can ever be said to show mercy.” - James Meek

39. “Just let me sleep," she grumbled. "Let me sleep, and I'll sign a paper that you're a fucking angel.” - Kim Harrison

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

41. “[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

42. “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

43. “Daytime sleep is like the sin of the flesh; the more you have the more you want, and yet you feel unhappy, sated and unsated at the same time.” - Umberto Eco

44. “And I feel like a real Dad when I read to her at night. She won't sleep without one story, at least.” - Steven Herrick

45. “Whatever it may bring, I will live by my own policies, I will sleep with a clear conscience, I will sleep in peace.” - Sinead O'Conner

46. “I wanted to find a nice quiet spot, go to sleep, and dream about kittens.” - John Corwin

47. “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

48. “There's little of the melancholy element in her, my lord: she is never sad but when she sleeps; and not ever sad then; for I have heard my daughter say, she hath often dreamt of unhappiness, and waked herself with laughing.” - William Shakespeare

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

50. “Sometimes, as Eve was born from one of Adam’s ribs, a woman was born during my sleep from a cramped position of my thigh. Formed from the pleasure I was on the point of enjoying, she, I imagined, was the one offering it to me. My body, which felt in hers my own warmth, would try to find itself inside her, I would wake up. The rest of humanity seemed very remote compared to this woman I had left scarcely a few moments before; my cheek was still warm from her kiss, my body aching from the weight of hers. If, as sometimes happens, she had the features of a woman I had known in life, I would devote myself entirely to this end: to finding her again, like those who go off on a journey to see a longed-for city with their own eyes and imagine that one can enjoy in reality the charm of a dream. Little by little, the memory of her would fade, I had forgotten the girl of my dream.” - Marcel Proust

51. “Never lose sleep over someone who is not worth staying awake for.” - Habeeb Akande

52. “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

53. “With great power comes a great need to take a nap.” - Rick Riordan

54. “Lulled by stupefying illusions, the world is asleep in the cradle of infancy, dreaming away the hours.” - Mary Baker Eddy

55. “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

56. “In every sound, the hidden silence sleeps.” - Dejan Stojanovic

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

58. “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

59. “Making love to a person in their sleep is the only guarantee they'll wake up with a smile on their face.” - Bauvard

60. “I was through with sleep. I didn't like what it brought me.” - Ali Cross

61. “Ah, wonderful sleep. I love to sleep. It's one of the things I'm really good at.” - Kate Johnson

62. “Dormir, según se sabe, es el mas secreto de nuestros actos. Le dedicamos una tercera parte de nuestra vida y no lo comprendemos. Para algunos no es otra cosa que el eclipse de nuestra vigilia; para otros, un estado más complejo, que abarca a un tiempo el ayer, el ahora y el mañana; para otros, una no interrumpida serie de sueños.” - Jorge Luis Borges

63. “He doesn't mind if he dies... indeed, he would like to die; but yet he fears to fall. He would welcome a long sleep; but not at the price of falling to it.” - William Golding

64. “She wanted to return to her dream. Perhaps it was still somewhere there behind her closed eyelids. Perhaps a little of its happiness still clung like gold dust to her lashes. Don't dreams in fairy tales sometimes leave a token behind?” - Cornelia Funke

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

66. “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

67. “Good soul easily sleeps well.” - Toba Beta

68. “But unshed tears can turn rancid. So can memory. So can biting your tongue. My bad nights were beginning. I couldn't sleep.” - Margaret Atwood