The repose of sleep refreshes only the body. It rarely sets the soul at rest. The repose of the night does not belong to us. It is not the possession of our being. Sleep opens within us an inn for phantoms. In the morning we must sweep out the shadows.
~ Gaston Bachelard

Sleep demands of us a guilty immunity. There is not one of us who, given an eternal incognito, a thumbprint nowhere set against our souls, would not commit rape, murder and all abominations.
~ Djuna Barnes

There is between sleep and us something like a pact, a treaty with no secret clauses, and according to this convention it is agreed that, far from being a dangerous, bewitching force, sleep will become domesticated and serve as an instrument of our power to act. We surrender to sleep, but in the way that the master entrusts himself to the slave who serves him.
~ Maurice Blanchot

We term sleep a death by which we may be literally said to die daily; in fine, so like death, I dare not trust it without my prayers.
~ Sir Thomas Browne

Sleep hath its own world, and a wide realm of wild reality. And dreams in their development have breath, and tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy.
~ Lord Byron

Now blessings light on him that first invented this same sleep: it covers a man all over, thoughts and all, like a cloak; 'Tis meat for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, heat for the cold, and cold for the hot. 'Tis the current coin that purchases all the pleasures of the world cheap; and the balance that sets the king and the shepherd, the fool and the wise-man even. There is only one thing that I dislike in sleep; 'Tis that it resembles death; there's very little difference between a man in his first sleep, and a man in his last sleep.
~ Miguel De Cervantes

Oh Sleep! it is a gentle thing, beloved from pole to pole, to Mary Queen the praise be given! She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven, that slid into my soul.
~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I don't wake up for less than $10,000 a day.
~ Linda Evangelista

Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
~ Benjamin Franklin

Sleep is when all the unsorted stuff comes flying out as from a dustbin upset in a high wind.
~ William Golding

We are not hypocrites in our sleep.
~ William Hazlitt

Even sleepers are workers and collaborators on what goes on in the universe.
~ Heraclitus

I divide my time as follows: half the time I sleep, the other half I dream. I never dream when I sleep, for that would be a pity, for sleeping is the highest accomplishment of genius.
~ Soren Kierkegaard

He who sleeps half a day has won half a life.
~ Karl Kraus

Sleep is a reward for some, a punishment for others. For all, it is a sanction.
~ Isidore Ducasse Lautreamont

And if tonight my soul may find her peace in sleep, and sink in good oblivion, and in the morning wake like a new-opened flower then I have been dipped again in God, and new-created.
~ D. H. Lawrence

The first moments of sleep are an image of death; a hazy torpor grips our thoughts and it becomes impossible for us to determine the exact instant when the ''I,'' under another form, continues the task of existence.
~ Gerard De Nerval

All men whilst they are awake are in one common world: but each of them, when he is asleep, is in a world of his own.
~ Plutarch

Six hours for a man, seven for a woman, and eight for a fool.
~ English Proverb

No matter what time it is, wake me, even if it's in the middle of a Cabinet meeting.
~ Ronald Reagan