Quotes about Sleep

Spirituality means waking up.  Most people, even though they don't know it, are asleep.  They're born asleep, they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their sleep, they die in their sleep without ever waking up.  They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing that we call human existence.

Nagasaki destroyed by the magic of science is the nearest man has yet approached to the realization of dreams that even during the safe immobility of sleep are accustomed to develop into nightmares of anxiety.

A thing of beauty is a joy forever. Its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness; but still will keep. A bower for us, and a sleep full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing

"I love sleep. My life has this tendency to fall apart when I'm awake you know?"

The witness of the three states of consciousness [waking, dream and deep sleep] and of the nature of Existence-Consciousness-Bliss is the Self

Sleep within your heart.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep.

Is my soul asleep?
Is my soul asleep?
Have those beehives that work
in the night stopped? And the water-
wheel of thought, is it
going around now, cups
empty, carrying only shadows?

No, my soul is not asleep.
It is awake, wide awake.
It neither sleeps nor dreams, but watches,
its eyes wide open
far-off things, and listens
at the shores of the great silence.

It was a celebate villager who wrote, "We know not where we are. Besides, we are all sound asleep nearly half our time. Yet we esteem ourselves wise, and have established order on the surface." Such a surface makes possible human combinations and moments of tender regard. It is a mad thing, to be alive. Villages exist to moderate this madness--to hide it from our children, to bottle it for private use, to smooth its imperatives into habits, to protect us from the darkness without and the darkness within.

“Enlightenment weekends” and gurus and seminars and sitar music and Birkenstocks and biodegradable toilet paper are nothing more than the postmodern masks of humanity and its progressive front. Nothing more. Social networking, constant, unending blather, quoting the Tao Te Ching, saying twenty affirmations before noon–all are utterly meaningless if you are driving to your corporate job later in your SUV. And yet, this is what almost everybody around you does.

Only those who have awakened know that they were sleeping.

Sleep is really important. You need to rest the physiology to be able to work weel and meditate well. When I don't get enough sleep, my meditations are duller. You may even dip into sleep at the beginning of your meditation, because you're settling down. But if you're well rested, you'll have a clearer deeper experience.

Some go to sleep in an organization and never wake up, and those who do wake up put them selves to sleep again by joining another. This acquisitive movement is called expansion of thought, progress.

It is a poor reverie which invites a nap. One must even wonder whether, in this "failing asleep", the subconscious itself does not undergo a decline in being.

Now know I well what people sought formerly above all else when they sought Teachers of virtue.  Good sleep they sought for themselves, and poppy-head virtues to promote it!
To all those be-lauded sages of the academic chairs, wisdom was sleep Without dreams:  they knew no higher significance of life.
Even at present, to be sure, there are some like this preacher of virtue, and not always so honorable:  but their time is past. 
And not much longer do they stand:  there they already lie.
Blessed are those drowsy ones:  for they shall soon nod to sleep.--Thus spoke Zarathustra.

The life that I have
Is all that I have
And the life that I have
Is yours.
The love that I have
Of the life that I have
Is yours and yours and yours.
A sleep I shall have
A rest I shall have
Yet death will be but a pause.
For the peace of my years
In the long green grass
Will be yours and yours and yours.

Daylight, full of small dancing particles
and the one great turning, our souls
are dancing with you, without feet, they dance.
Can you see them when I whisper in your ear?

All day and night, music,
a quiet, bright
reedsong. If it
fades, we fade.

If you can cultivate wholesome mental states prior to sleep and allow them to continue right into sleep without getting distracted, then sleep itself becomes wholesome.

Are you gonna be a gambler and deal?  Are you gonna be a doctor and heal?  or go to heaven, and touch God's face?  Are you gonna be a dreamer who sleeps?  Are you gonna be a sinner who weeps?  Or an angel, under grace?  I'll lay down on your bed of coals.  Offer up my heart and soul.  But in return, I want you to burn, Burn for me, baby.  Like a candle in the night.  Oh burn, burn for me, burn for me.  Laugh for me, cry for me.  Pray for me, fly for me.  Live for me, but die for love.

I suggested that dreams are simulations of the world created by our perceptual systems. The introduction to waking perception that you just read will help you understand this theory.

Consider, first of all, how sleep modifies the process of perception. During REM sleep, as you learned in chapter 2, sensory input from the outside world and body movement are both suppressed, while the entire brain is highly active. The activity of the brain raises certain schemas above their perceptual thresholds. These schemas enter consciousness, causing the dreamer to see, feel, hear, and experience things not present in the external environment.

Ordinarily, if you were to see something that wasn't really there, contradictory sensory input would rapidly correct your mistaken impression. Why doesn't the same thing happen during dreaming? The answer is because there is little or no sensory input available to the brain for correcting such mistakes.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.

If you are discouraged it is a sign of pride, because it shows you trust in your own powers. Never bother about other people's opinions. Be humble and you will never be disturbed. Remember St. Aloysius, who said he would continue to play billiards even if he knew he was going to die. Do you play well? Sleep well? Eat well? These are duties. Nothing is small for God.

Brother stand the pain; Escape the poison of your impulses. The sky will bow to your beauty, if you do. Learn to light the candle. Rise with the sun. Turn away from the cave of your sleeping. That way a thorn expands to a rose. A particular glows with the universal.

When I am with you, we stay up all night. When you are not here, I cannot go to sleep. Praise God for these two insomnias and the difference between them.

There are two types of people in this world, good and bad. The good sleep better, but the bad seem to enjoy the waking hours much more.

The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won't get much sleep.

The Baptist found him far too deep; The Deist sighed with saving sorrow; And the lean Levite went to sleep, And dreamed of tasting pork to-morrow.

"My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So it was when my life began; So it is now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die! The Child is Father of the Man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety." There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream, It is not now as it hath been of yore ;- Turn whereso'er I may, By night or day, The things which I have seen I now can see no more. . . . . But yet I know, where'er I go, That there hath past away a glory from the earth. . . . . Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing Boy, But He beholds the light, and whence it flows, And sees it in his joy; The Youth, who daily farther from the east Must travel, still is Nature's Priest, And by the vision splendid Is on his way attended; At length the Man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day.

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar. Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory, do we come From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy.

My banks they are furnish'd with bees, Whose murmur invites one to sleep.