7/1/08

For the insomniacs...

Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day. ~Friedrich Nietzsche

No day is so bad it can't be fixed with a nap. ~Carrie Snow

Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast.
~William Shakespeare, Macbeth

The bed is a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret; we make up our minds every night to leave it early, but we make up our bodies every morning to keep it late. ~Charles Caleb Colton

Most people do not consider dawn to be an attractive experience - unless they are still up. ~Ellen Goodman

Consciousness: that annoying time between naps. ~Author Unknown

Insomnia is a gross feeder. It will nourish itself on any kind of thinking, including thinking about not thinking. ~Clifton Fadiman

Dawn: When men of reason go to bed. ~Ambrose Bierce

If a man had as many ideas during the day as he does when he has insomnia, he'd make a fortune. ~Griff Niblack

[S]leep is the golden chain that ties health and our bodies together. ~Thomas Dekker

People who snore always fall asleep first. ~Author Unknown

When you have insomnia, you're never really asleep, and you're never really awake. ~From the movie Fight Club, based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk

The worst thing in the world is to try to sleep and not to. ~F. Scott Fitzgerald

O bed! O bed! delicious bed!
That heaven upon earth to the weary head.
~Thomas Hood, Miss Kilmansegg - Her Dream

Nothing cures insomnia like the realization that it's time to get up. ~Author Unknown

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

I'm not asleep... but that doesn't mean I'm awake. ~Author Unknown

It's at night, when perhaps we should be dreaming, that the mind is most clear, that we are most able to hold all our life in the palm of our skull. I don't know if anyone has ever pointed out that great attraction of insomnia before, but it is so; the night seems to release a little more of our vast backward inheritance of instincts and feelings; as with the dawn, a little honey is allowed to ooze between the lips of the sandwich, a little of the stuff of dreams to drip into the waking mind. I wish I believed, as J. B. Priestley did, that consciousness continues after disembodiment or death, not forever, but for a long while. Three score years and ten is such a stingy ration of time, when there is so much time around. Perhaps that's why some of us are insomniacs; night is so precious that it would be pusillanimous to sleep all through it! A "bad night" is not always a bad thing. ~Brian W. Aldiss

Even thus last night, and two nights more I lay,
And could not win thee, Sleep, by any stealth:
So do not let me wear to-night away.
Without thee what is all the morning's wealth?
Come, blessed barrier between day and day,
Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health!
~William Wordsworth, "To Sleep"

The amount of sleep required by the average person is five minutes more. ~Wilson Mizener

In its early stages, insomnia is almost an oasis in which those who have to think or suffer darkly take refuge. ~Colette

Early to rise and early to bed
Makes a man healthy and wealthy and dead.
~James Thurber, Fables for Our Times, 1940

It appears that every man's [or woman's] insomnia is as different from his neighbour's as are their daytime hopes and aspirations. ~F. Scott Fitzgerald

For sleep, one needs endless depths of blackness to sink into; daylight is too shallow, it will not cover one. ~Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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

3 comments:

Natorade said...

I feel a little better about my messed up sleeping habits! Eventhough I probably wont win this little sleeping game. ugh.

S.Morgan said...

Great quotations. Whoever wrote them is a true insomniac. Nathan to bed, to bed. Hurry. I will have my eyes closed in two minutes. You won't lose if you go right NOW. I know. I know. Crystal and I do not want to either, but just DO IT.

iBo said...

"...and bed, he thought. Bed is my friend. Just bed, he thought. Bed will be a great thing"- Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea