c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Asta Sollilja slept on, her head in the corner, mouth open, chin up, and head back, with one hand under her ear and the other half-open on the coverlet as if she thought in her sleep that someone would come and lay happiness in her palm.
— Halldór Laxness, Independent People
My WHY is always greater than my SLEEP.
— Sivaprakash Sidhu
I have thought the difference might be that my Mary knows she will live forever, that she will step from the living into another life as easily as she slips from sleep to wakefulness. She knows this with her whole body, so completely that she does not think of it any more than she thinks to breathe. Thus she has time to sleep, time to rest, time to cease to exist for a little.
— John Steinbeck
The last thing she remembered before finally drifting off was how nice Steffi's hair smelled.
— Kim Baldwin, Taken by Storm
I am a fading phantasmagoria. Time has left me in partial glory.
— Fidelis O. Mkparu
Sometimes I wake up and think... 'I was asleep.
— Rebecca Hurley
One of the most frequent sins of omission is the failure to get adequate rest.
— James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth
For me, sleep equaled death. How was closing your eyes and losing consciousness any different from death? What separated temporary loss of consciousness from permanent obliteration?
— Lena Dunham
I decided to stay in bed until noon. Maybe by then half the world would be dead and it would only be half as hard to take.
— Charles Bukowski, Pulp
You can’t imagine the white-hot fury someone who can’t sleep has toward the beautiful dreamer beside him.
— Karen Joy Fowler, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
Are you always so cynical?' said Angelica.'No,' said Katherine. 'Sometimes I'm asleep.
— Sam Byers, Idiopathy
You drool in your sleep- Annabeth Chase
— Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief
We both fell asleep wrapped up together with the wolves still lullaby-ing us in the background
— April Genevieve Tucholke, Between the Spark and the Burn
A beautiful nap this afternoon that put velvet between my vertebrae.
— Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
We do not include the pleasures we enjoy in sleep in the inventory of the pleasures we have experienced in the course of our existence.
— Marcel Proust, Sodom and Gomorrah
I’m awake and I can’t sleep. The more I’m awake, the more I see, and the harder to sleep.
— Donna Lynn Hope
For some it is harder to wake up to the truth of life than it is to fall into the sleep of death
— Dean Cavanagh
In a while, her eyes felt leaden and she felt sleep overpower her, even as she fought to keep her eyes open. In vain, I tried to churn within her, a little nugget of fear, trying desperately to warn her of impending danger.
— Deepti Menon, Chronicles of Urban Nomads
I spent many a charming evening talking and playing with Albertine, but none so sweet as when I was watching her sleep.
— Marcel Proust, The Captive & The Fugitive
It's just I'd rather sleep through the days so I'll be awake for the nights, when the boys are out.
— Kerry Cohen, Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity
Normally, it takes people about 60 to 90 minutes to reach REM sleep, so they wouldn’t enter this stage during a 20 minute nap. People with narcolepsy often enter REM sleep soon after falling asleep. If a person enters REM sleep in two or more of the five naps in eight minutes or less during the study, it’s highly suggestive of narcolepsy.
— Julie Flygare, Wide Awake and Dreaming: A Memoir
James was sixteen, Cam seventeen, perhaps. She had looked round for someone who was not there, for Mrs. Ramsay, presumably. But there was only kind Mrs. Beckwith turning over her sketches under the lamp. Then, being tired, her mind still rising and falling with the sea, the taste and smell that places have after long absence possessing her, the candles wavering in her eyes, she had lost herself and gone under. It was a wonderful night, starlit; the waves sounded as they went upstairs; the moon surprised them, enormous, pale, as they passed the staircase window. She had slept at once.
— Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
At home in bed that first night I had patchy, mundane dreams about normal things. It would be nobler and less uncomfortable to write that I tossed sleeplessly.
— Darin Strauss, Half a Life
For there is nothing quite so terror-inducing as the loss of sleep. It creates phantoms and doubts, causes one to questions one's own abilities and judgement, and, over time, dismantles, from within, the body.
— Charlie Huston, Sleepless
Emily woke to shadows and their voices. They looked different today, because the entire world hurt. The numbness had worn off sometime between sleep and awake, and she was seeing red. The shadows on the walls were not shadows at all, but red blobs consisting of teeth and claws. Her house reeked of pain.The whole world was fucking bleeding.
— Allie Burke, Paper Souls
...an irresistible sleep fell deeply on his eyes, the sweetest, soundest oblivion, still as the sleep of death itself...
— Homer, The Odyssey
I am so tired; all I want to do is sleep. I want to sleep all the day, from dawn until twilight that every evening comes a little earlier and a little more drearily. In the daytime, all I can think about is sleeping. But in the night I do is try to stay awake.
— Philippa Gregory, The White Princess
Forget it, Jonathan, and go back to sleep. And before you go to sleep, pray that no well-meaning god ever makes you immortal.
— Peter S. Beagle, A Fine and Private Place
How much more than necessary do we spend in sleep, forgetting that the sleeping fox catches no poultry, and that there will be sleeping enough in the grave, as Poor Richard says.
— Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
Some like to sleep. Some like to read late into the night without catching a wink. In a world of dreamers, both are essential.
— Amanda Joy Bruns
To achieve the impossible dream, try going to sleep.
— Joan Klempner
Be honest with yourself; set the alarm for the time the Real You will get up, not the Ambitious You, because the Ambitious You doesn't really exist.
— Laurie Notaro, Autobiography of a Fat Bride: True Tales of a Pretend Adulthood
I’m still afraid to sleep—too many ghosts peering creeping condemning.
— Kiersten White, Perfect Lies
The body can be a marvel of resiliency, a cactus when it comes to sleep - capable of surviving on mere drops.
— Karen Russell, Sleep Donation
To be precise, there are three gems for healthy life: sufficient workouts, healthy food, and enough sleep.
— Girdhar Joshi, Some Mistakes Have No Pardon
Flying in his dreams was an exhilarating, breathtaking experience, sometimes literally, that tended to leave reality wanting, like riding a roller coaster compared to mowing the lawn.
— Sol Luckman, Snooze: A Story of Awakening
When I am awake, I sleep, but when I dream I come to life.
— Anna Jae
He kissed her forehead and drifted into an uneasy sleep, listening to the soft snoring of the creature on his chest, one he loved slightly more than he had come to fear.
— Thomm Quackenbush, Danse Macabre (Night's Dream, #2)
They should be going to sleep, but good company is the enemy of sleep.
— David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing
Well, I suggest you sleep on it," said Aunt Zelda sensibly. "Things always look better in the morning.
— Angie Sage, Magyk
Go where people sleep and see if they are safe
— Jenny Holzer
Slowly I swam up from the bottom of a black sleep.
— Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
The best sleep imaginable is sleeping in your dreams
— Dean Cavanagh
Seven a.m. on the first day of summer vacation was, to her mind, a dangerous time to be awake. Even God had to be sleeping in.
— Victoria Kahler, Luisa Across the Bay
Sleep: the breakfast of champions
— Dean Cavanagh
You talk; I'll sleep. feel free to make up my side of the conversation in case you get bored. I recommend throwing in the occasional 'fuck you' on my behalf, just to keep things true to life.
— Douglas Hulick, Sworn in Steel
Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death. The higher the interest rate and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed
— Arthur Schopenhauer
Sleepiness seemed to be creeping out of the ground and up their legs, and falling softly out of the air upon theirheads and eyes.
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
I long for sleep, and for soft English rain. But they do not come.
— Michael Cox, The Meaning of Night
THERE'S NO REASON TO SLEEPCURLED UP AND BENT.IT'S NOT COMFORTABLE,IT'S NOT GOOD FOR YOU, AND ITDOESN'T PROTECT YOU FROM DANGER.IF YOU'RE WORRIED ABOUT AN ATTACKYOU SHOULD STAY AWAKEOR SLEEP LIGHTLY WITHLIMBS UNFURLED FOR ACTION.
— Jenny Holzer
I spread eggshells all over my room, so anyone who tries to get close when I sleep will know what they're walking on
— Josh Stern, And That's Why I'm Single: What Good Is Having A Lucky Horseshoe Up Your Butt When The Horse Is Still Attached?
Hail, happiness, then, and after happiness, hail not those dreams which bloat the sharp image as spotted mirrors do the face in a country-inn parlour; dreams which splinter the whole and tear us asunder and wound us and split us apart in the night when we would sleep; but sleep, sleep, so deep that all shapes are ground to dust of infinite softness, water of dimness inscrutable, and there, folded, shrouded, like a mummy, like a moth, prone let us lie on the sand at the bottom of sleep.
— Virginia Woolf, Orlando
When we are asleep, so it seems to me, we sleep surrounded by all the years. I have imagined, sleeping, that I heard the footsteps of the long-dead; I have held conversations with them, and with the blank-faced people I was yet to meet, conversations that seemed of unbearable poignancy, though when I woke I could remember only a few words, and those not words that possessed, waking, any emotional significance to me. It is said that this is because content is divorced from emotion in sleep, as though the sleeping mind read two books at once, one of tears and lust and laughter, the other words and phrases picked up from old newspapers, from grimy handbills blowing along the street and conversations overheard in barbershops and bars, and the banalities of radio. I think rather that we have forgotten on waking what the words have meant to us, or have not learned as yet what they will mean. But the worst thing is to wake and remember that we have been talking to the dead, having never thought to hear that voice again, having never any expectation of hearing it again before we ourselves are gone.
— Gene Wolfe, Peace
There now remain only a few books, which they call books of the lesser prophets; and as I have already shown that the greater are impostors, it would be cowardice to disturb the repose of the little ones. Let them sleep, then, in the arms of their nurses, the priests, and both be forgotten together.
— Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
... sleep deprivation is an illegal torture method outlawed by the Geneva Convention and international courts, but most of us do it to ourselves.
— Ryan Hurd, Dream Like a Boss: Sleep Better, Dream More, and Wake Up to What Matters Most
I have never had any difficulty falling asleep. No matter what problems I have. However terrible things are, I can sleep. It's like killing yourself and taking the easy way out. It's waking up that I dread. Every morning, I go through the five stages of death. I wake up in denial that I have to go to work. Then I get angry. Then I bargain with God, or myself, and try to call in sick. Then I feel guilty and go into remission, until finally I accept that the day will suck and I get up.
— Ernesto Quiñonez, Chango's Fire
If I couldn't sleep, I could read.
— Gail Carson Levine, Ella Enchanted
Stupid. Why do people want to pretendthat death is sleep? It isn’t. It isn’t
— Veronica Roth
Like when people say they slept like a baby. Do they mean they slept well? Or do they mean they woke up every ten minutes, screaming?
— Lee Child, Killing Floor
That gap between half sleep and half awakening has always been occupied by nostalgia.
— Shreya Gupta
It's four A.M.! Who goes to bed this early!?
— Jeff Hirsch, Breakaway
He imagined that he was looking for her and couldn't find her anywhere, that the two of them were lost on a vast ship, sleep is a skilled magician, it changes the proportions of things, the distances between them, it separates people and they're lying next to each other, brings them together and they can barely see one another, the woman is sleeping only a few yards away from him and he cannot reach her, yet it's so very easy to go from port to starboard.
— José Saramago, The Tale of the Unknown Island
To sleep and being able to. RareTo sleep and deserve it. Rarer.
— Saleem Sharma
Sleeping is terrifying.When you close your eyes and surrender your consciousness to the void, you lose yourself—voluntarily—and you're trustingly assuming you'll find yourself back out of the labyrinth again.Usually you do.But sometimes you don't.It's that uncertainty, more than anything, which kills me. That I might not wake up, and wouldn't know it.That I could be dead, dreaming I'm alive.
— Nenia Campbell, Tantalized
He tried to think of death as he had done now and then, but that tired him and he dozed off. When he awoke an hour later, he felt fresh and calm as though he had slept for days.
— Hermann Hesse, Knulp
So he slips his head off of Jeff's shoulder and slides out from under Evan's Armand shuffles down to the bottom of the bed. It doesn't have a lot of dignity this part of their sleeping arrangement. He's complained about this before but Jeff just nodded, and Evan had kissed the back of his neck, and they'd both snuggled in a little tighter, pinning him in the middle even more effectively than before.
— Kate Sherwood, Out of the Darkness
You may think there's nothing very interesting about seeing someone sleep, but that probably means you've never found the girl of your dreams.
— Jodi Picoult
I paced while he slept, ricocheting like a dove skidding the lonely confines of a Joseph Cornell box.
— Patti Smith, Just Kids
I slept for over a full day, as you know, but I won’t say I rested.
— Daniel Woodrell, Tomato Red
I FELL DEEP down in there, until this bright light raised me from sleep. Coming out of a pit such as that, you think the bright light could be God or a cop on patrol.
— Daniel Woodrell, Tomato Red
I love sleep. I need sleep. We all do, of course. There are those people that don't need sleep. I think they're called 'successful.
— Jim Gaffigan, Dad Is Fat
There are the people of the day, and the creatures of the night. And it's important to remember that the creatures of the night aren't simply the people of the day staying up late because they think that makes them cool and interesting. It takes more than heavy mascara and a pale complexion to cross the divide.
— Terry Pratchett, Soul Music
What shall you do all your vacation?’, asked Amy. "I shall lie abed and do nothing", replied Meg.
— Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
For me, it's always a little sad getting out of bed. Every morning after I get up, I always gaze longingly at my bed and lament, 'You were wonderful last night. I didn't want it to end. I can't wait to see you again.
— Jim Gaffigan
Sometimes, I think, that in the mornings when you first wake up, every thing that happened in the previous day rushes through our mind so fast, we, A: Don't realize it. B: Become more tired, die a little inside, and become groggy. Since everyday, we die a little inside we age closer and closer to death. We constantly grow older, and we're constantly dying. Therefore, don't wake me up early, or I'll take it that you wanted to kill me.
— Melanie Kay Taylor
His life was focused on each single day. For him each night meant a void, a grave, extinction. The capacity to lay oneself down to die at the end of every day, without thinking anything of it, was something he had not yet acquired.
— Robert Musil, The Confusions of Young Törless
Sleep's what we need. It produces an emptiness in us into which sooner or later energies flow.
— John Cage, M: Writings '67-'72
He woke up and fought another battle and won. Then he went to bed and slept again and dreamed again and then he woke up and won again and slept again and he hardly noticed when waking became sleeping. Nor did he care.
— Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
Never assume you are alone, because you never truly are. Only when your life has surely ended and your loved ones have forgotten you is when you are gone. Gone from this world and the next.Sleep is when you are most vulnerable. It’s a sanctuary and a curse; how you perceive it is up to you.
— Mandi Lynn, Essence
Here's lumbos. Where misties swaddlum, where misches lodge none, where mystries pour kind on, O sleepy! So be yet!
— James Joyce, Finnegans Wake
I cannot do anything fake; that is why even when I sleep with a prostitute, she falls in love with me.
— M.F. Moonzajer
There was the focus of seeking pleasure, and the numbing effect, once they were finished, removing all specific thoughts from her brain. It ushered in the solid, dreamless sleep that otherwise eluded her.
— Jhumpa Lahiri, The Lowland
...the simple task of getting dressed and undressed was a real strain, but nothing could compare with her addiction to deep sleep...
— Ingeborg Bachmann, Simultan: Erzählungen
Sleep in my arms like a little cat
—  I love your snoring and your smell.
I can’t sleep during the nights
—  I feel carrying the world on my shoulders.
Look, de Mazel, you've known him for years - hasn't he been known to sleep for forty hours in two days?' 'Forty hours?' 'Certainly. He awoke at meal times, just to take nourishment, and afterwards fell again into his torpor. And Freneuse had a strange horror of sleep; there was some abnormal phenomenon associated with it, some lesion of the brain or neurotic depression.''The troublesome cerebral anaemia which results from excessive debauchery. Another myth! I've never believed, myself, in the supposed debauchery of that poor gentleman. Such a frail chap, with such a delicate complexion! Quite frankly, there was no scope in him for debauchery.'Pooh! About as much as Lorenzaccio!''You associate him with the Medicis! Lorenzaccio was a Florentine impassioned by rancour, a man of energy slowly brooding over his vengeance, caressing it as he might caress the blade of a dagger! There is not the slightest comparison to be drawn between Lorenzaccio and that gall-green, liverish creature Freneuse.
— Jean Lorrain, Monsieur De Phocas
Orr slept. He dreamed. There was no rub.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven
But Beatrix knew very well that there were no jobs, not even the most pitiful office routine - she wasn't even qualified for that - and that no one would allow her to sleep until late in the afternoon because these ill-advised people all around her let themselves be squeezed into schedules; that she would never work, least of all learn a trade, because she had no ambition whatsoever to earn a single shilling, become self-supporting and spend eight hours a day with people who smelled bad.
— Ingeborg Bachmann, Simultan: Erzählungen
It was spring, not winter or autumn, Paul thought with some lingering confusion. He listened to the layered murmur of wind against leaves, familiarly and gently disorienting as a terrestrial sound track, reminding people of their own lives, then opened his MacBook—sideways, like a hardcover book—and looked at the internet, lying on his side, with his right ear pressed into his pillow, as if, unable to return to sleep, at least in position to hear what, in his absence, might be happening there.
— Tao Lin, Taipei
Were you watching me sleep? Because I thought we agreed that's creepy.
— Ilona Andrews, Magic Rises
The old sleep poorly. Perhaps they stand watch.
— Stephen King, Pet Sematary
Sleep makes the silence and the terrible fear go by more quickly, helps pass the time, since it's impossible to kill.
— Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl
Sleep was a country for which he could not obtain a visa.
— Ann Patchett, Bel Canto
I love that moment, when you stop struggling to stay awake and your eyelids shut sink down and you slip effortlessly into another realm that’s beckoning to you.
— Rachel Klein, The Moth Diaries
I appreciate my my sleep In sleep my conversation  is witty My home is dusted My office work is up to date The dog  is even  well behaved And food is on the table on timeBut then when I'm asleep I don't have you to clutter and confuseMy hungry heart
— Nikki Giovanni
I want to get some sleep, so if there's something mind-numbingly disturbing you want to show me, can we just get it over with?
— Kendare Blake, Girl of Nightmares
Afternoons are hard. Mornings are pure evil from the pits of hell, which is why I don't do them anymore.
— Rachel Caine, Bite Club
Sleeping is the most common attempt to temporarily escape reality.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Hullo!” said Merry. “So that’s what is bothering you? Now, Pippin my lad, don’t forget Gildor’s saying—the one Sam used to quote: Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.” “But our whole life for months has been one long meddling in the affairs of Wizards,” said Pippin. “I should like a bit of information as well as danger. I should like a look at that ball.” “Go to sleep!” said Merry. “You’ll get information enough, sooner or later. My dear Pippin, no Took ever beat a Brandybuck for inquisitiveness; but is it this time, I ask you?” “All right! What’s the harm in my telling you what I should like: a look at that stone? I know I can’t have it, with old Gandalf sitting on it, like a hen on an egg. But it doesn’t help much to get no more from you than a you-can’t-have-it-so-go-to-sleep!” “Well, what else could I say?” said Merry. “I’m sorry, Pippin, but you really must wait till the morning. I’ll be as curious as you like after breakfast, and I’ll help you in any way I can at wizard-wheedling. But I can’t keep awake any longer. If I yawn any more, I shall split at the ears. Good night!
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers
I thought calming thoughts and visualized serene places. Eventually, i found myself drifting along the frenetic edges of my mind. The Sandman was nowhere to be found, as i slipped further away from sleep.
— Jaeda DeWalt
Before he could lose courage he flung himself back and slammed his sleep-inducer to full theta.
— James Tiptree Jr., Her Smoke Rose Up Forever
Emergency Rooms ... were the nightmares your nightmares had while they slept.
— Nicole Deese, All for Anna
Then there was Mani, the Mighty Good-For-Nothing. He towered above all the other boys of the class. He seldom brought any books to the class, and never bothered about homework. He came to the class, monopolized the last bench, ans slept bravely. No teacher ever tried to prod him.
— R.K. Narayan, Swami and Friends, The Bachelor of Arts, The Dark Room, The English Teacher
Life is merely one very long day that routinely gets dark to give people a sensible excuse to keep their eyes closed for 8 hours.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Like the bat, the Sufi is asleep to 'things of the day' - the familiar struggle for existence which the ordinary man finds all-important - and vigilant while others are asleep. In other words, he keeps awake the spiritual attention dormant in others. That 'mankind sleeps in a nightmare of unfulfillment' is a commonplace of Sufi literature
— Idries Shah, The Sufis
The sleep he went back to was never the one he left.
— Ann Patchett, Run
If people don’t sleep with me I just rape them. Because right is not given but taken.
— M.F. Moonzajer
I think when we sleep, the world belongs to everyone still awake. Which means a shitload of the world belongs to Craig. ~Lio
— Hannah Moskowitz
The death of each days life
— William Shakespeare
Sleeping is nice. You forget about everything for a little while.
— H.k Ruman
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
The only dreams that matter are the ones you have when you're awake.
— John O'Callaghan
What, all so soon asleep! I wish mine eyesWould, with themselves, shut up my thoughts...
— William Shakespeare, The Tempest
In bed, I can go for hours. Oh yes, I love naps. 
— Dark Jar Tin Zoo, Love Quotes for the Ages. Specifically Ages 19-91.
Man's conscious state is an awareness of body and breath. His subconscious state, active in sleep, is associated with his mental, and temporary, separation from body and breath. His superconscious state is a freedom from the delusion that "existence" depends on body and breath. God lives without breath; the soul made in his image becomes conscious of itself, for the first time, only during the breathless state.
— Paramahansa Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi
The sun was up, the room already too warm. Light filtered in through the net curtains, hanging suspended in the air, sediment in a pond. My head felt like a sack of pulp. Still in my nightgown, damp from some fright I'd pushed aside like foliage, I pulled myself up and out of my tangled bed, then forced myself through the usual dawn rituals - the ceremonies we perform to make ourselves look sane and acceptable to other people. The hair must be smoothed down after whatever apparitions have made it stand on end during the night, the expression of staring disbelief washed from the eyes. The teeth brushed, such as they are. God knows what bones I'd been gnawing in my sleep.
— Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
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, Slumber
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, The Blind Assassin
At least when I'm sleeping I can dream myself back to Alex, can dream myself into a different world.
— Lauren Oliver, Pandemonium
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, All the King's Men
Bright morning comes; the bloody-fingered dawn with zealous light sets seas of air ablaze and bends to earth another false beginning. My eyes open like cornflowers, stick, crusted with their own stale dew, then take that light.
— Iain Banks, A Song of Stone
I drift into the armpits of strangers, tasting their manic salt, and sleep to forget everything.
— Laurie Halse Anderson, Wintergirls
Unless you have a very good reason, never wake up anybody or anything! Let the sleeper sleep in peace.
— Mehmet Murat ildan
IVREVEILLEWake: the silver dusk returningUp the beach of darkness brims,And the ship of sunrise burningStrands upon the eastern rims.Wake: the vaulted shadow shaatters,Trampled to the floor it spanned,And the tent of night in tatters Straws the sky-pavilioned land.Up, lad, up, 'tis late for lying:Hear the drums of morning play;Hark, the empty highways crying"Who'll beyond the hills away?"Towns and countries woo together,Forelands beacon, belfries call;Never lad that trod on leatherLived to feast his heart with all.Up, lad: thews that lie and cumberSunlit pallets never thrive;Morns abed and daylight slumberWere not meant for man alive.Clay lies still, but blood's a rover;Breath's a ware that will not keepUp, lad: when the journey's overThere'll be time enough to sleep.
— A.E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad
The cashier had long since left for home. By now she was probably bustling by an unmade bed that was waiting in her small room like a boat to carry her off to the black lagoons of sleep, into the complicated world of dreams. The person sitting in the box office was only a wraith, an illusory phantom looking with tired, heavily made-up eyes at the empyiness of light, fluttering her lashes thoughtlessly to disperse the golden dust of drowsiness scattered by the elctric bulbs.
— Bruno Schulz, The Street of Crocodiles
A lot of high-profile companies are recognizing the benefits of power napping. . . . It's like kindergarten all over again.
— Stefanie Weisman
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
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, Fight Club
Our dreams are little stories or puzzles that we must solve to be free, Sebastian said. He was reading out loud from Wilson's notebook. My dream is me offering me a solution to the conundrum of my life. My dream is me offering me something that I need and my responsibility to myself is to try to understand what it means. Our dreams are a thin curtain between survival and extinction.
— Miriam Toews, Irma Voth
Sonnet LXXXI And now you're mine. Rest with your dream in my dream. Love and pain and work should all sleep, now. The night turns on its invisible wheels, and you are pure beside me as a sleeping ember. No one else, Love, will sleep in my dreams. You will go, we will go together, over the waters of time. No one else will travel through the shadows with me, only you, evergreen, ever sun, ever moon. Your hands have already opened their delicate fists and let their soft drifting signs drop away; your eyes closed like two gray wings, and I move after, following the folding water you carry, that carries me away. The night, the world, the wind spin out their destiny. Without you, I am your dream, only that, and that is all.
— Pablo Neruda
Never lose sleep over someone who is not worth staying awake for.
— Habeeb Akande
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, Beautiful Disaster
Happiness consists in getting enough sleep. Just that, nothing more. All the wealthy, unhappy people you're ever met take sleeping pills; Mobile Infantrymen don't need them. Give a cap trooper a bunk and time to sack out in it and he's as happy as a worm in an apple - asleep.
— Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers
It was sometimes said that the grey-and-black mountain range which ran like a spine north to south down that part of Faerie had once been a giant, who grew so huge and so heavy that, one day, worn out from the sheer effort of moving and living, he had stretched out on the plain and fallen into a sleep so profound that centuries passed between heartbeats.
— Neil Gaiman, Stardust
Making love to a person in their sleep is the only guarantee they'll wake up with a smile on their face.
— Bauvard, The Prince Of Plungers
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, Swann's Way
A 2002 Oxford study showed counting sheep actually delays the onset of sleep. It's just too dull to stop us from worrying about jobs and spouses
— A.J. Jacobs, Drop Dead Healthy: One Man's Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection
Thy best of rest is sleep,And that thou oft provok'st; yet grossly fear'stThy death, which is no more.
— William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure
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, The Street of Crocodiles
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, Spinning Straw into Gold: What Fairy Tales Reveal About the Transformations in a Woman's Life
The man who begins to go to bed forty minutes before he opens his bedroom door is bored; that is to say, he is not living.
— Arnold Bennett, How to Live on 24 Hours a Day
And she was not beautiful asleep. Her expression slack and not angelic. The very ordinariness of it so beautiful he felt a yearning to be something more than he was or could be. And as good a player as he was, he knew as he turned on the reel to reel and hugged the Fender once again that nothing he composed would ever be as beautiful as her ordinary sleep.Watching her he played the music of her sleeping. And by surrendering made something beautiful.
— Steven R. Boyett, Mortality Bridge
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'Connor
I didn’t mean to snore in your ear, but I wanted to inhale all of what was wrapped up in the comforter with me.
— Darnell Lamont Walker, Book of She
When a man can't sleep, he won't let anybody else sleep either. If he doesn't go off to dreamland the moment his head hits the pillow, he gets frightfully annoyed and won't stay in bed.
— Carter Dickson, The Cavalier's Cup
Gen was sleeping the sleep of the heavily drugged.
— Ann Patchett, Bel Canto
With great power comes a great need to take a nap.
— Rick Riordan, The Last Olympian
Death's brother, sleep.
— Virgil, The Aeneid
All my life I have been a poor go-to-sleeper. No matter how great my weariness, the wrench of parting with consciousness is unspeakably repulsive to me. I loathe Somnus, that black-masked headsman binding me to the block; and if in the course of years I have got so used to my nightly ordeal as almost to swagger while the familiar axe is coming out of its great velvet-lined case, initially I had no such comfort or defense: I had nothing - save a door left slightly ajar into Mademoiselle's room. Its vertical line of meek light was something I could cling to, since in absolute darkness my head would swim, just as the soul dissolves in the blackness of sleep.
— Vladimir Nabokov
Sleep is a daily reminder from God that we are not God. Once a day God sends us to bed like patients with a sickness. The sickness is a chronic tendency to think we are in control and that our work is indispensable. To cure us of this disease God turns us into helpless sacks of sand once a day.
— John Piper
You look tired," Rachel told Jason."I wish I could jog and sleep at the same time.""Can't you?" Ferrin asked, joining them at the little cascade. "I always imagined that you could sleep rolling down a mountainside in a barrel.""I probably could today," Jason conceded.
— Brandon Mull, Seeds of Rebellion
Sleep, that deplorable curtailment of the joy of life.
— Virginia Woolf
What pillow can one have like a good conscience?
— John Steinbeck, Tortilla Flat
Speech, tennis, music, skiing, manners, love- you try them waking and perhaps balk at the jump, and then you're over. You've caught the rhythm of them once and for all, in your sleep at night. The city, of course, can wreck it. So much insomnia. So many rhythms collide. The salesgirl, the landlord, the guests, the bystanders, sixteen varieties of social circumstance in a day. Everyone has the power to call your whole life into question here. Too many people have access to your state of mind. Some people are indifferent to dislike, even relish it. Hardly anyone I know.
— Renata Adler, Speedboat
Our nights are different. She falls asleep like someone yielding to the gentle tug of a warm tide, and floats with confidence till morning. I fall asleep more grudgingly, thrashing at the waves, either reluctant to let a good day depart or still bitching about a bad one. Different currents run through our spells of unconsciousness.
— Julian Barnes, A History of the World in 10½  Chapters
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
Ah, wonderful sleep. I love to sleep. It's one of the things I'm really good at.
— Kate Johnson, I, Spy?
My brain has become my enemy. We fight over creation and his need for sleep.
— Darnell Lamont Walker
I was through with sleep. I didn't like what it brought me.
— Ali Cross, Become
...at dawn, the grains of sleep turn to floating black spots, then out of focus the world tilts, and the cat scratches at the door...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
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, The Claw of the Conciliator
She had not heard him enter, and hardly realized his presence there. She was yawning, and he saw the red interior of her mouth as if it had been a snake's. She had stretched one arm so high above her coiled-up cable of hair that he could see its satin delicacy above the sunburn; her face was flushed with sleep, and her eyelids hung heavy over their pupils. The brim-fulness of her nature breathed from her. It was a moment when a woman's soul is more incarnate than at any other time; when the most spiritual beauty bespeaks itself flesh; and sex takes the outside place in the presentation.
— Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles
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, The Spire
Is there anywhere else to sleep tonight... Anywhere?' I pleaded.There's Mei's office, but you'll have to sleep on the floor I'm afraid.' Mei was one of the Ward 9D dietitians.'I'll sleep on the floor any day. I'm used to it back in the Islands,' I laughed tiredly.I settled down on the floor. The three rugs I had brought to cushion my back worked surprisingly well. It was almost more comfortable than the thin mats on the cold concrete floors of the fales in Samoa. The idea of sleeping in someone's office was the best idea I had had all year. I decided that I would keep this secret to myself.
— Ta'afuli Andrew Fiu
Isn't there someone kind enough to come strangle me in my sleep?
— Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
A while later, I lingered in the hinterlands of sleep. Sometimes I think there is more rest in that place between wakefulness and sleep than there is in true sleep. The mind walks in the twilight of both states, and finds the truths that are hidden alike by daylight and dreams. Things we are not ready to know abide in that place, awaiting that unguarded frame of mind.
— Robin Hobb, Fool's Errand
Precious is sleep, better to be of stone,while the oppression and the shame still last;not seeing and not hearing, I am blest;so do not wake me, hush! keep your voice down.
— Michelangelo Buonarroti, Complete Poems and Selected Letters
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, Spontaneous Healing
Nick drank the coffee, the coffee according to Hopkins. The coffee was bitter. Nick laughed. It made a good ending to the story. His mind was starting to work. He knew he could choke it because he was tired enough. He spilled the coffee out of the pot and shook the grounds loose into the fire. He lit a cigarette and went inside the tent. He took off his shoes and trousers, sitting on the blankets, rolled the shoes up inside the trousers for a pillow and got in between the blankets.Out through the front of the tent he watched the glow of the fire when the night wind blew on it. It was a quiet night. The swamp was perfectly quiet. Nick stretched under the blanket comfortably. A mosquito hummed close to his ear. Nick sat up and lit a match. The mosquito was on the canvas, over his head. Nick moved the match quickly up to it. The mosquito made a satisfactory hiss in the flame. The match went out. Nick lay down again under the blankets. He turned on his side and shut his eyes. He was sleepy. He felt sleep coming. He curled up under the blanket and went to sleep.
— Ernest Hemingway, The Nick Adams Stories
...the past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whaterver form. Both are illusions.
— Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
HELLO! Look at me. HELLO! I am so ZEN. This is BLOOD. This is NOTHING. Hello. Everything is nothing, and it's so cool to be ENLIGHTENED. Like me.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
There is strong shadow where there is much light.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Götz von Berlichingen
I shall no longer be instructed by the Yoga Veda or the Aharva Veda, or the ascetics, or any other doctrine whatsoever. I shall learn from myself, be a pupil of myself; I shall get to know myself, the mystery of Siddhartha." He looked around as if he were seeing the world for the first time.
— Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
Nobody makes anybody enlightened.Just tell them what you want to say,then let them decide for themselves.
— Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
Enlightenment must come little by little - otherwise it would overwhelm.
— Idries Shah
I feel that the essence of dance is the expression of man--the landscape of his soul. I hope that every dance I do reveals something of myself or some wonderful thing a human can be.
— Martha Graham, Blood Memory
All descriptions of reality are temporary hypotheses.
— Gautama Buddha
Knowing others is Wisdom, knowing yourself is Enlightenment
— Lao Tzu
Everything transitory is but an image.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: First Part
Enlightenment will be now the beginning, not the end. Beginning of a non-ending process in all dimensions of richness. 
— Osho
When the stories of our life no longer bind us, we discover within them something greater. We discover that within the very limitations of form, of our maleness and femaleness, of our parenthood and our childhood, of gravity on the earth and the changing of the seasons, is the freedom and harmony we have sought for so long. Our individual life is an expression of the whole mystery, and in it we can rest in the center of the movement, the center of all worlds.
— Jack Kornfield, A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life
Whoever sees me sees the teaching, and whoever sees the teaching sees me.
— Gautama Buddha
Dream Song of Thunders:Sometimes I go about pitying Myself, While I am carried by the wind Across the sky. 
— Frances Densmore, American Indians and Their Music
An enlightened man had but one duty - to seek the way to himself, to reach inner certainty, to grope his way forward, no matter where it led.
— Hermann Hesse, Demian. Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend
It is not easy to convey, unless one has experienced it, the dramatic feeling of sudden enlightenment that floods the mind when the right idea finally clicks into place. One immediately sees how many previously puzzling facts are neatly explained by the new hypothesis. One could kick oneself for not having the idea earlier, it now seems so obvious. Yet before, everything was in a fog.
— Francis Crick, What Mad Pursuit
The ancient tradition that the world will be consumed in fire at the end of six thousand years is true, as I have heard from Hell.For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his guard at tree of life, and when he does, the whole creation will be consumed, and appear infinite, and holy whereas it now appears finite & corrupt.
— William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
I'm sorry. This is diary, not enlightenment.
— Maryse Holder, Give Sorrow Words: Maryse Holder's Letters From Mexico
You only learn when you give your whole being to something. When you give your whole being to mathematics,you learn; but when you are in a state of contradiction, when you do not want to learn but are forced to learn, then it becomes merely a process of accumulation. To learn is like reading a novel with innumerable characters; it requires your full attention, not contradictory attention.
— Jiddu Krishnamurti, Book of Life, The: Daily Meditations with Krishnamurti
I stopped living a long time ago, in order to simply exist. Now I am trying to leave existence, in order to step into nihility.
— Lionel Suggs
Is it by chance that the 18th century of France, the century of the "philosophy of enlightenment," did not produce any poets except the Marquis de Sade, who -- despite his participation in the events of this epoch -- expressed the first violent protest against the essential postulates of this period?
— Benjamin Péret, A Menagerie in Revolt: Selected Writings
Maybe the Truth of the Meaning of Life, Ancient and Arcane Knowledge of the Great Unknowable Universe is handed down only to persons presenting with the correct brand-name footwear. If you turn up wearing Shoe City knock-offs, you don't get to pass Go and collect Infinite Enlightenment.
— Tracy Engelbrecht, The Girl Who Couldn't Say No
Whoever does decide to awaken should put their whole effort, attention, and life into it, in order to make it succeed.
— Belsebuub, Gazing into the Eternal: Reflections upon a Deeper Purpose to Living
In that nanosecond of enlightenment I knew that the human spirit survives the death of the physical body and I understood that my wandering soul needed to get back into its earthly habitat.
— Janet Bettag
Israel's monomaniacal Spinoza worship is amusing and exasperating by turns. For a start, his insistence that Spinoza was the singular font of the Enlightenment leaves him without a story of the Enlightenment's intellectual or cultural origins. Every historian has to begin somewhere, but the fact that Israel begins with Spinoza, and then reduces most of what follows the philosopher to a footnote, leaves his account of the Enlightenment founded on something like immaculate conception.
— Samuel Moyn
He suddenly understood the message of so many spiritual teachers that the only revolution that can work is the inner transformation of every human being.
— Stanislav Grof, The Holotropic Mind: The Three Levels of Human Consciousness and How They Shape Our Lives
If you would listen, sir, in the sense of being aware of your conflicts and contradictions without forcing them into any particular pattern of thought, perhaps they might altogether cease.
— Jiddu Krishnamurti, Book of Life, The: Daily Meditations with Krishnamurti