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What means this heaviness that hangs upon me?
This lethargy that creeps through all my senses?
Nature, oppress'd and harrass'd out with care,
Sinks down to rest.
Author: Joseph Addison
Source: Cato (act V, sc. 1)
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What probing deep
Has ever solved the mystery of sleep?
Author: Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Source: Human Ignorance
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But I, in the chilling twilight stand and wait
At the portcullis, at thy castle gate,
Longing to see the charmed door of dreams
Turn on its noiseless hinges, delicate sleep!
Author: Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Source: Invocation to Sleep
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Come to me now! O, come! benignest sleep!
And fold me up, as evening doth a flower,
From my vain self, and vain things which have power
Upon my soul to make me smile or weep.
And when thou comest, oh, like Death be deep.
Author: Patrick Proctor Alexander
Source: Sleep, appeared in the "Spectator"
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How happy he whose toil
Has o'er his languid pow'rless limbs diffus'd
A pleasing lassitude; he not in vain
Invokes the gentle Deity of dreams.
His pow'rs the most voluptuously dissolve
In soft repose; on him the balmy dews
Of Sleep with double nutriment descend.
Author: John Armstrong
Source: The Art of Preserving Health (bk. III, l. 385)
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When the sheep are in the fauld, and a' the kye at hame,
And all the weary world to sleep are gane.
Author: Lady Ann Barnard
Source: Auld Robin Gray
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Still believe that ever round you
Spirits float who watch and wait;
Nor forget the twain who found you
Sleeping nigh the Golden Gate.
Author: Sir Walter Besant and J. Rice
Source: Case of Mr. Lucraft and other Tales (p. 92), (ed. 1877)
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The sleep of a labouring man is sweet, whether he eat little or
much: but the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to
sleep.
Author: Bible
Source: Ecclesiastes (ch. V, v. 12)
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Be not among winebibbers; among riotous eaters of flesh:
For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty: and
drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags.
Author: Bible
Source: Proverbs (ch. XXIII, v. 20-21)
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It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the
bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep.
Author: Bible
Source: Psalms (ch. CXXVII, v. 2)
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Lord, remember David, and all his afflictions:
How he sware unto the Lord, and vowed unto the mighty God of
Jacob;
Surely I will not come into the tabernacle of my house, nor go up
into my bed;
I will not give sleep to mine eyes, or slumber to mine eyelids,
Until I find a place for the Lord, an habitation for the mighty
God of Jacob.
Author: Bible
Source: Psalms (ch. CXXXII, v. 1-5)
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I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for thou, Lord,
only makest me dwell in safety.
Author: Bible
Source: Psalms (ch. IV, v. 8)
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Since the Brother of Death daily haunts us with dying mementoes.
Author: Sir Thomas Browne
Source: Hydriotaphia
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Sleep is a death, O make me try,
By sleeping, what it is to die:
And as gently lay my head
On my grave, as now my bed.
Author: Sir Thomas Browne
Source: Religio Medici (pt. II, sec. XII)
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How he sleepeth! having drunken
Weary childhood's mandragore,
From his pretty eyes have sunken
Pleasures to make room for more--
Sleeping near the withered nosegay which he pulled the day
before.
Author: Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Source: A Child Asleep
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Of all the thoughts of God that are
Borne inward unto souls afar,
Along the Psalmist's music deep,
Now tell me if that any is.
For gift or grace, surpassing this--
"He giveth His beloved sleep."
Author: Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Source: The Sleep
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Sleep on, Baby, on the floor,
Tired of all the playing,
Sleep with smile the sweeter for
That you dropped away in!
On your curls' full roundness stand
Golden lights serenely--
One cheek, pushed out by the hand,
Folds the dimple inly.
Author: Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Source: Sleeping and Watching
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Don't stay in bed, unless you can make money in bed.
Author: Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Source: Sleeping and Watching
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Sleep hath its own world,
A boundary between the things misnamed
Death and existence: 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.
Author: Lord Byron (George Gordon Noel Byron)
Source: The Dream (st. 1)
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Now, blessings light on him that first invented this same sleep!
it covers a man all over, thoughts and all, like a cloak; it is
meat for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, heat for the cold,
and cold for the hot. It is 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, which somebody once put into my head, that I
dislike in sleep; it is, that it resembles death; there is very
little difference between a man in his first sleep, and a man in
his last sleep.
Author: Cervantes (Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra)
Source: Don Quixote (pt. II, ch. LXVIII)
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There is nowhere in the world where sleep is so deep as in the
libraries of the House of Commons.
Author: Henry "Chips" Channon
Source: diary
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It is not good a sleping hound to wake.
Author: Geoffrey Chaucer
Source: Troilus and Criseyde (I, 640)
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O 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.
Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Source: The Ancient Mariner (pt. V, st. 1)
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Visit her, gentle Sleep! with wings of healing,
And may this storm be but a mountain-birth,
May all the stars hang bright above her dwelling,
Silent as though they watched the sleeping Earth!
Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Source: Dejection--An Ode (st. 8)
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Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night,
Brother to Death, in silent darkness born;
Relive my languish, and restore the light.
Author: Samuel Daniel
Source: Sonnet (46, To Delia)
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Living is a disease from which sleep gives us relief eight hours a day.
Author: Chamfort
Source: None
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Life is something that happens when you can't get to sleep.
Author: Fran Lebowitz
Source: None
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Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone.
Author: Anthony Burgess
Source: None
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When I woke up this morning my girlfriend asked me, 'Did you sleep good?' I said 'No, I made a few mistakes.'
Author: Stephen Wright
Source: None
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Nice guys finish last, but we get to sleep in.
Author: Evan Davis
Source: None
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To achieve the impossible dream, try going to sleep.
Author: Joan Klempner
Source: None
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I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting.
Author: Mark Twain
Source: None
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Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons. It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.
Author: Walt Whitman
Source: None
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I reached for sleep and drew it round me like a blanket muffling pain and thought together in the merciful dark.
Author: Mary Stewart
Source: None
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Perhaps I am a bear, or some hibernating animal underneath, for the instinct to be half asleep all winter is so strong in me.
Author: Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Source: None
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[Sleep is] the golden chain that ties health and our bodies together.
Author: Thomas Dekker
Source: None
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Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee and just as hard to sleep after.
Author: Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Source: None
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Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake.
Author: Victor Hugo
Source: None
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If you can't sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there and worrying. It's the worry that gets you, not the loss of sleep.
Author: Dale Carnegie
Source: None
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Better to get up late and be wide awake than to get up early and be asleep all day.
Author: Anonymous
Source: None
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Blessed is the person who is too busy to worry in the daytime and too sleepy to worry at night.
Author: Anonymous
Source: None
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Sleep... Oh! how I loathe those little slices of death....
Author: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Source: None
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