Slumber

Did you think the lion was sleeping because he didn't roar? ~~ Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller

Others may woo thee, Sleep; so will not I.
Dear is each minute of my conscious breath,
Hard fate, that, ere the time be come to die,
Myself, to live, must nightly mimic death. ~~ Mary Coleridge

Purring in his sleep, Fletch [the cat] stretches out his little black paws to touch my hands, the claws withdrawn, just a gentle touch to assure him that I am there beside him as he sleeps. ~~ William S. Burroughs

If left to their own devices, felines tend to nap and nibble throughout the day and night, scarcely differentiating between the two. ~~ Lynn Hollyn

Backward, flow backward, O Time, in your flight,
Make me a child again, just for tonight!
Mother, come back from the echoless shore,
Take me again to your heart, as of yore;
Kiss from my forehead the furrows of care
Smooth the few silver threads out of my hair,
Over my slumbers your loving watch keep --
Rock me to sleep, mother, rock me to sleep. ~~ Elizabeth Akers Allen

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. ~~ Robert Frost

It is better to sleep on what you intend doing than to stay awake over what you have done. ~~ Joe Moore

When there was room on the ledge outside of the pots and boxes for a cat, the cat was there -- in sunny weather -- stretched out at full length, asleep and blissful, with her furry belly to the sun and a paw curved over her nose. Then that house was complete, and its contentment and peace were made manifest to the world by this symbol, whose testimony is infallible. A home without a cat -- and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat -- may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title? ~~ Mark Twain

Average number of hours a person sleeps each night: 7.5
Average number of hours a cat sleeps: 14.8 ~~ The Better Sleep Council

When men were all asleep the snow came flying,
In large white flakes falling on the city brown,
Stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying,
Hushing the latest traffic of the drowsy town. ~~ Robert Bridges

There ain't no way to find out why a snorer can't hear himself snore. ~~ Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens]

The city dweller who passes through a country town, and imagines it sleepy and apathetic is very far from the truth: it is watchful as the jungle. ~~ John Broderick

Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone. ~~ Mrs. Patrick Campbell

Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead. ~~ James Thurber

I've always thought a hotel ought to offer optional small animals … I mean a cat to sleep on your bed at night, or a dog of some kind to act pleased when you come in. You ever notice how a hotel room feels so lifeless? ~~ Anne Tyler

At last, deathly tiredness drained him of all apprehension; so might a man fall asleep half-an-hour before he was to be woken by a firing squad. ~~ Nadine Gordimer [July's People]

A man of sixty has spent twenty years in bed and over three years in eating. ~~ Arnold Bennett

There is a fatigue so great that the body cries, even in its sleep. ~~ Martha Graham

What do you get when you cross an insomniac, a dyslexic, and an agnostic? Someone who lies awake all night wondering if there really is a Dog. ~~ Unattributed

As a kitten, this cat never slept on the outside of the bed. She waited until I was in it, then she walked all over me, considering the possibilities. ~~ Doris Lessing

O sleep, O gentle sleep,
Nature's soft nurse. ~~ Shakespeare [Henry IV]

[The cats] are quiet only at night. To give them a sense of security, of belonging, I treated them to crimson cushions to sleep on, but it didn't work; they sleep on me. When I lie on my left side, they sleep along the ridges formed by my arm, hip and thigh; when I roll over, they take to treading me. If I bend down to pick up something, they leap onto my back and crouch there, beginning a leisurely bath. When I receive guests, they scale forbidden bookshelves before my eyes and swat houseplants. They once ate two ferns and shredded my terrycloth robe. When I bark a command -- "Heel!" -- they collapse, roll over, and squirm with delight. When I stand quite still and look down at them in blank despair, they wind themselves about my ankles and croon and have no other gods before me. They hear things that cannot really be heard. But as watchdogs they are a total flop. ~~ Katinka Loeser

Sleep is a thin white hand laid along me in the darkness. ~~ Evelyn Scott [Escapade]

Before sleeping together today, people should boil themselves. ~~ Richard Lewis

Death, so called, is a thing which makes men weep
And yet a third of life is passed in sleep. ~~ Lord Byron

Cats have it all -- admiration and endless sleep and company only when they want it. ~~ Rod McKuen

Light comes to us unexpectedly and obliquely. Perhaps it amuses the gods to try us. They want to see whether we are asleep. ~~ H. M. Tomlinson

Since our housecat no longer has to hunt, she may spend hours dreaming and philosophizing. Perhaps when she sleeps, she dreams of the wild. ~~ John Richard Stephens

To sleep is an act of faith. ~~ Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

The most unsociable cat, when it finds itself wrapped up in someone's coat and put to sleep upon his bed -- stroked, fed and tended with every imaginable care -- soon ceases to stand upon its dignity. ~~ Murasaki Shikibu

One of the ways in which cats show happiness is by sleeping. ~~ Cleveland Amory

One of the Clock, and silence deep
Then up the Stairway, black and steep
The old House-Cat comes creepy-creep
With soft feet goes from room to room
Her green eyes shining through the gloom,
And finds all fast asleep. ~~ Katharine Pyle

I probably have been made to look a fool but I'm not a man with phobias and complexes. I'm not a man who needs sleeping pills. I don't care what you think about me … I'm not ashamed of anything I've done. ~~ Robert Maxwell

Next to debt, the hardest thing to get out of is a warm bed on a cold morning. ~~ Unattributed

Life is something that happens when you can't get to sleep. ~~ Fran Lebowitz

Great occasions do not make heroes or cowards; they simply unveil them to the eyes of men. Silently and imperceptibly, as we wake or sleep, we grow strong or weak; and at last some crisis shows what we have become. ~~ Brooke Foss Westcott

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

The feeling of sleepiness when you are not in bed, and can't get there, is the meanest feeling in the world. ~~ Edgar Watson Howe

That we are not much sicker and much madder than we are is due exclusively to that most blessed and blessing of all natural graces, sleep. ~~ Aldous Huxley

Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell, and advertise. ~~ Laurence J. Peter

Nearly 35 and nearly 25 are two very different kettles of fish where nervous stamina and the ability to do without sleep are concerned. ~~ Margery Allingham

The trouble with sharing one's bed with cats is that they'd rather sleep on you than beside you. ~~ Pam Brown

A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow. ~~ Charlotte Bronte

As you make your bed, so must lie in it … Simply a lie. If I have made my bed uncomfortable, please God, I will make it again. ~~ G. K. Chesterton

Cats everywhere asleep on bookshelves like motorized bookends. ~~ Audrey Thomas

It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it. ~~ John Steinbeck

Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact. ~~ Bertrand Russell

Harris went to sleep at once. I hate a man who goes to sleep at once. There is a sort of indefinable something about it which is not exactly an insult and yet is an insolence. ~~ Mark Twain

Sleeplessness is a desert without vegetation or inhabitants. ~~ Jessamyn West

How do people go to sleep? I'm afraid I've lost the knack. I might try busting myself smartly over the temple with the night light. I might repeat to myself, slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound; if I can remember any of the damn things. ~~ Dorothy Parker

For me it is sufficient to have a corner by my hearth, a book and a friend, and a nap undisturbed by creditors or grief. ~~ Fernandez de Andrada

A light supper, a good night's sleep, and a fine morning have often made a hero of the same man who by indigestion, a restless night, and a rainy morning, would have proved a coward. ~~ Earl of Chesterfield

I rise from bed the first thing in the morning not because I am dissatisfied with it, but because I cannot carry it with me during the day. ~~ Kathleen Norris

My father says that almost the whole world is asleep. Everybody you know. Everybody you see. Everybody you talk to. He says that only a few people are awake and they live in a state of constant total amazement. ~~ Joe Versus the Volcano [film, 1990]

Schedule all your worrying for a specific half hour about the middle of the day -- then take a nap during that period. ~~ Unattributed

A cat allows you to sleep on the bed. On the edge. ~~ Jenny De Vries

No physical exertion is more fatiguing than an unsuccessful effort to sleep. ~~ Raymond Paul

[The cat] Calvin's life seems to me a fortunate one, for it was natural and unforced. He ate when he was hungry, slept when he was sleepy, and enjoyed existence to the very tips of his toes and the end of his expressive and slow-moving tail. ~~ Charles Dudley Warner

Sleep is death without the responsibility. ~~ Fran Lebowitz

Habituation is a falling asleep or fatiguing of the sense of time, which explains why young years pass slowly, while later life flings itself faster and faster upon its course. ~~ Thomas Mann

Even in your thought, do not curse the king, nor in your bedchamber curse the rich; for a bird of the air will carry your voice, or some winged creature tell the matter. ~~ Ecclesiastes 10:20

Daytime sleep is a cursed slumber from which one wakes in despair. ~~ Iris Murdoch [Under the Net]

Ronald Reagan's platform seems to be: Hey, I'm a big good looking guy and I need a lot of sleep. ~~ Roy G. Blount, Jr.

Insomniacs don't sleep because they worry about it, and they worry about it because they don't sleep. ~~ Franklin Pierce Adams

To believe in one's dreams is to spend all of one's life asleep. ~~ Chinese proverb

Sleep, riches, and health to be truly enjoyed must be interrupted. ~~ Jean Paul Richter

Within that porch, across the way,
I see two naked eyes this night;
Two eyes that neither shut nor blink,
Searching my face with a green light.
But cats to me are strange, so strange
I cannot sleep if one is near;
And though I'm sure I see those eyes,
I'm not so sure a body's there! ~~ William Henry Davies

Sleep was her fetish, panacea, and art. ~~ Mary Webb

To sleep! perchance to dream; ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. ~~ Shakespeare [Hamlet]

To all, to each, a fair goodnight,
And pleasing dreams, and slumbers light. ~~ Scott [Marmion]

Sleep, rest of nature, O sleep, most gentle of the divinities, peace of the soul, thou at whose presence care disappears, who soothest hearts wearied with daily employments, and makest them strong again for labor! ~~ Ovid [Metamorphoses]

While Alice was sitting curled up in a corner of the great armchair, half talking to herself and half asleep, the kitten had been having a grand game of romps with the ball of worsted Alice had been trying to wind up, and had been rolling it up and down till it had all come undone again; and there it was, spread over the hearth rug, all knots and tangles, with the kitten running after its own tail in the middle. ~~ Lewis Carroll

Bears don't truly hibernate. They just get cranky and sleepy. ~~ Deane Jordan [1,001 Facts Somebody Screwed Up]

I think you should always laugh in bed -- people always laugh at me when I'm in bed. ~~ Boy George

There is no innocent sleep so innocent as sleep shared between a woman and a child, the little breath hurrying beside the longer, as a child's foot runs. ~~ Alice Meynell

Small children disturb your sleep, big children your life. ~~ Yiddish proverb

Sleep is the best cure for waking troubles. ~~ Miguel de Cervantes

We are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all. ~~ Annie Dillard

When kittens nap in pansy beds
And drowse the sunny hours,
I can't tell which are spotted cats
And which are spotted flowers! ~~ Beryl Swift

He shut his eyes while Saha [the cat] kept vigil, watching all the invisible signs that hover over sleeping human beings when the light is put out. ~~ Colette

Most people spend their lives going to bed when they're not sleepy and getting up when they are! ~~ Cindy Adams

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. ~~ Anatole France [Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault]

It has never been determined whether the early bird enjoys the worm as much as the late bird enjoys the extra sleep. ~~ Joe Moore

I reached for sleep and drew it round me like a blanket muffling pain and thought together in the merciful dark. ~~ Mary Stewart [The Hollow Hills]

[On God] Let me put it this way: I have a very good friend. I don't know who he is or what his name is, but I talk to him every single night before I go to sleep and every single day during the day. Mostly to say thank you. ~~ Betty White

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. ~~ Dale Carnegie

He and I were standing inside the threshold of his bare country room and bending over a box where the mother cat was sleeping with her four kittens. The children were all sleeping head to foot, with their tails in each other's mouths so that together they looked like one big cat. ~~ Phillip Lopate

All I Want is a Warm Bed and a Kind Word and Unlimited Power. ~~ Ashleigh Brilliant [title of book]

Squid [the cat] for all her play acting, is a lover. She often does such intense figure eights around our ankles it becomes all but impossible to walk, and that not just when she wants foods, either. She appears from nowhere when you are trying to read or watch television and jumps into your lap or climbs up onto your shoulders to drape herself to sleep there. You wake up and find out that she has been sharing your pillow. ~~ Roger A. Caras

Death is the veil which those who live call life;
They sleep, and it is lifted. ~~ Percy Bysshe Shelley [Prometheus Unbound]

When life is miserable it is painful to endure it; when it is happy it is horrible to lose it; both come to the same thing. Life is something to do when you can't get to sleep. ~~ La Bruyere

Hers was the pleasant fatigue that comes of work well done. When at night in bed she went over the events of the day, it was with a modest yet certain satisfaction at this misunderstanding disentangled, that problem solved, some other help given in time of need. Her good deeds smoothed her pillow. ~~ Winifred Holtby [South Riding]

Make sure you never, never argue at night. You just lose a good night's sleep, and you can't settle anything until morning anyway. ~~ Rose Kennedy

Early to bed and early to rise -- till you get enough money to do otherwise. ~~ Peter's Almanac

A good sleep and some exercise changes many opinions. ~~ R. E. Phillips

Before marriage, a man will lie awake all night thinking about something you said; after marriage, he'll fall asleep before you finish saying it. ~~ Helen Rowland

All cats sleep an amazing amount -- close to three-quarters of the time, I would estimate, counting, of course, the kind of nap which they have made famous. ~~ Cleveland Amory

Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself. ~~ Arthur Bloch

His sleep was a sensuous gluttony of oblivion. ~~ P. D. James [Death of an Expert Witness]

When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep. ~~ Ursula K. Le Guin (See Said Who?)