“While pensive poets painful vigils keep,Sleepless themselves, to give their readers sleep.”

“Oh, the terrible struggle that I have had against sleep so often of late; the pain of the sleeplessness, or the pain of the fear of sleep, and with such unknown horror as it has for me! How blessed are some people, whose lives have no fears, no dreads; to whom sleep is a blessing that comes nightly, and brings nothing but sweet dreams.”

“May He who holds in his hands the destinies of nations, make you worthy of the favors He has bestowed, and enabled you with pure hearts and hands and sleepless vigilance, to guard and defend to the end of time, the great charge He has committed to your keeping. ”

“Every poet has his dream reader: mine keeps a look out for curious prosodic fauna like bacchics and choriambs.”

“It is rarely that the pleasures of the imagination will compensate for the pain of sleeplessness,”

“Men pass my grave, and say, "'Twere well to sleep,Like such an one, amid the uncaring dead!"How should they know the vigils that I keep,The tears I shed?”