Dreamless Sleep Quotes

Yes, this was the evening hour when - how long ago it seemed! - I always felt so well content with life. Then, what awaited me was a night of easy, dreamless sleep. This was the same hour, but with a difference; I was returning to a cell, and what awaited me was a night haunted by forebodings of the coming day. And so I learned that familiar paths traced in the dusk of summer evenings may lead as well to prisons as to innocent, untroubled sleep. ~ Albert Camus

As a boy, he had been moved by those words of the dying Socrates, suggesting that if death were just one long, unbroken, dreamless sleep, then a greater boon could hardly be bestowed upon mankind. ~ Colin Dexter

What exactly is the difference between a dream and waking experience? What happens to the sense of "I" in dreamless sleep? And they sought invariants: in the constantly changing flow of human experience, is there anything that remains the same? In the constantly changing flow of thought, is there an observer who remains the same? Is there any thread of continuity, some level of reality higher than waking, in which these states of mind cohere? ~ Anonymous

Samadhi means when sushupti, dreamless sleep, becomes alert, awake. When you are asleep as far as the body is concerned, you are asleep as far as the mind is concerned, because there is no disturbance of any dream, there is no tension in the body - but beyond the mind, the no-mind is fully alert. He knows that the mind is without any dreams, he sees it, it is without any dreams, he sees it the body is absolutely relaxed. And this seeing, this alertness, continues twenty-four hours. Then sushupti becomes samadhi. ~ Rajneesh

A hundred hands wanted shaking, a hundred tongues expressed their condolences. Thank you, said William, and Kind of you, endlessly.

Between his uncle and the helpfulness of the Misses Young and all these other people, William was never alone, not for an hour, except to sleep. He went to bed with the distant, certain expectation that overnight the world would put itself right. He slept for long hours: endless, dreamless sleep, which did not refresh, and when he woke the world bewildered him by persisting in its wayward course. He felt weighted down and dreary. A fog settled between him and his own thoughts, and behind it, unformulated, unexamined, was this: How long before things go back to normal?

His mother was dead: he had seen the body; yet this knowledge refused to find a settled place in his mind. It came and went, surprised him every time he chanced upon it, and there were a million reasons not to believe it. His mother was dead, but look: here were her clothes and here her tea cups, here her Sunday hat on the shelf over the coat hook. His mother was dead, but hark: the garden gate! Any moment now she would come through the door. ~ Diane Setterfield

There had been no snow up to this time, but as Diana crossed the old log bridge on her homeward way the white flakes were beginning to flutter down over the fields and woods, russet and gray in their dreamless sleep. Soon the far-away slopes and hills were dim and wraith-like through their gauzy scarfing, as if pale autumn had flung a misty bridal veil over her hair and was waiting for her wintry bridegroom. ~ L.M. Montgomery

Men really need sea-monsters in their personal oceans. An ocean without its unnamed monsters would be like a completely dreamless sleep. ~ John Steinbeck

That which is not present in deep dreamless sleep is not real ~ Ramana Maharshi

He'd woken me from a dreamless sleep, and I couldn't roll over and close my eyes, because in my wakefulness, I'd started dreaming. ~ C.D. Reiss

Were the earth smooth, our brains would be smooth as well; we would wake, blink, walk two steps to get the whole picture, and lapse into a dreamless sleep. ~ Annie Dillard

By the second day, the song lyrics had faded, but in their place came darker irritations. Gradually, I started to become aware of a young man sitting just behind me and to the left. I had noticed him when he first entered the mediation hall, and had felt a flash of annoyance at the time: something about him, especially his beard, had struck me as too calculatedly dishevelled, as if he were trying to make a statement. Now his audible breathing was starting to irritate me, too. It seemed studied, unnatural, somehow theatrical. My irritation slowly intensified - a reaction that struck me as entirely reasonable and proportionate at the time. It was all beginning to feel like a personal attack. How much contempt must the bearded meditator have for me, I seethed silently, deliberately to decide to ruin the serenity of my meditation by behaving so obnoxiously? Experienced retreat-goers, it turns out, have a term for this phenomenon. The call it 'vipassana vendetta'. In the stillness tiny irritations become magnified into full-blown hate campaigns; the mind is so conditioned to attaching to storylines that it seizes upon whatever's available. Being on retreat had temporarily separated me from all the real causes of distress in my life, and so, apparently, I was inventing new ones. As I shuffled to my narrow bed that evening, I was still smarting about the loud-breathing man. I did let go of the vendetta eventually - but only because I'd fallen into an exhausted and dreamless sleep ~ Oliver Burkeman

A dreamless sleep and a life without ambition are synonymous with death. ~ Faisal Khosa

I've dreamed a lot. I'm tired now from dreaming but not tired of dreaming. No one tires of dreaming, because to dream is to forget, and forgetting does not weigh on us, it is a dreamless sleep throughout which we remain awake. In dreams I have achieved everything. ~ Fernando Pessoa

The hearing was adjourned. For a few brief moments, as I left the Law Courts on my way to the van, I recognised the familiar smells and colours of a summer evening. In the darkness of my mobile prison I rediscovered one by one, as if rising from the depths of my fatigue, all the familiar sounds of a town that I loved and of a certain time of day when I sometimes used to feel happy. The cries of the newspaper sellers in the languid evening air, the last few birds in the square, the shouts of the sandwich sellers, the moaning of the trams high in the winding streets of the town and the murmuring of the sky before darkness spills over onto the port, all these sounds marked out an invisible route which I knew so well before going into prison. Yes, this was the time of day when, long ago, I used to feel happy. What always awaited me then was a night of easy, dreamless sleep. And yet something had changed, for with the prospect of the coming day, it was to my cell that I returned. As if a familiar journey under a summer sky could as easily end in prison as in innocent sleep. ~ Albert Camus

Bells Screamed all off key, wrangling together as they collided in midair, horns and whistles mingled shrilly with cries of human distress; sulphur-colored light ex-ploded through the black windowpane and flashed away in darkness. Miranda waking from a dreamless sleep asked without expecting an answer, "What is happening?" for there was a bustle of voices and footsteps in the corridor, and a sharpness in the air; the far clamour went on, a furious exasperated shrieking like a mob in revolt.

The light came on, and Miss Tanner said in a furry voice, "Hear that? They're celebrating . It's the Armistice. The war is over, my dear." Her hands trembled. She rattled a spoon in a cup, stopped to listen, held the cup out to Miranda. From the ward for old bedridden women down the hall floated a ragged chorus of cracked voices singing, "My country, 'tis of thee…"

Sweet land… oh terrible land of this bitter world where the sound of rejoicing was a clamour of pain, where ragged tuneless old women, sitting up waiting for their evening bowl of cocoa, were singing, "Sweet land of Liberty-"

"Oh, say, can you see?" their hopeless voices were asking next, the hammer strokes of metal tongues drowning them out. "The war is over," said Miss Tanner, her underlap held firmly, her eyes blurred. Miranda said, "Please open the window, please, I smell death in here. ~ Katherine Anne Porter

What is this Self, and how did the Shaiva philosophers of Kashmir experience It? They assert that the Self alone has absolute existence. This Self is within every human being, and in recognizing and experiencing It within ourselves, we are actually at one with the divine. What is more, the Self exists within us at all times, whether or not we recognize and experience It. As living beings we are always aware of our own existence, and the experience of existing is always present in us. Further, we never require the help of any aids in feeling our own existence. Even when we are in a state of deep dreamless sleep in which the senses and the knowing mind and intellect are no longer functioning, the Self continues to experience Itself as a witness to this state. Had the Self not existed as a witness during this time, how could we, upon awaking, recollect the void experienced in deep sleep? Thus the Self is always self-existent, self-evident, and self-conscious, and is Itself Its own proof.

Shaiva philosophers, relying on their experiences of deep revelation (turya) during meditation, assert that the Self is Consciousness, and that Consciousness is actually a kind of stirring. It is not physical or psychic in nature, but it is described as a spiritual stir or urge. All living beings feel in themselves this urge in the form of a will to know and to do, and so we are always inclined toward knowing and doing. We can recognize this urge in all forms of life, even in a health ~ Balajinnatha Pandita

The pain of hunger beneath everything. At the end of all love-making, the dreamless sleep after the orgasm, which is like death. ~ Christopher Isherwood

Through meditation one has to achieve a dreamless sleep with full alertness. Once this happens, the drop falls into the ocean and becomes the ocean. ~ Rajneesh

Lexy lay curled up in Greys arms on the couch and slept a dreamless sleep free of dragons for she had slain them once again.
The Children of Ankh series ~ Kim Cormack

She slept a dreamless sleep free of dragons for she had slain them once again. The Children of Ankh ~ Kim Cormack

It was in this situation that she penetrated as a vague shape into the existence of Thomas. Everything there appeared desolate and mournful. Deserted shores where deeper and deeper absences, abandoned by the eternally departed sea after a magnificent shipwreck, gradually decomposed. She passed through strange dead cities where, rather than petrified shapes, mummified circumstances, she found a necropolis of movements, silences, voids; she hurled herself against the extraordinary sonority of nothingness which is made of the reverse of sound, and before her spread forth wondrous falls, dreamless sleep, the fading away which buries the dead in a life of dream, the death by which every man, even the weakest spirit, becomes spirit itself. ~ Maurice Blanchot

There is nothing frightening about an eternal dreamless sleep. Surely it is better than eternal torment in Hell and eternal boredom in Heaven. ~ Isaac Asimov

Life is made of moments. and choices. Not all of them matter, or have any lasting impact. Skipping class in favor of a taste of freedom, picking a prom dress because of the way it transforms you into a princess in the mirror. Even the nights you steal away from an open window, tiptoe silent to the end of the driveway, where darkened headlights and the pull of something unknown beckon. These are all small choices, really. Insignificant as soon as they're made. Innocent.
But then.
Then there's a different kind of moment. One when things are irrevocably changed by a choice we make. A moment we will play endlessly in our minds on lonely nights and empty days. One we'll search repeatedly for some indication that what we chose was right, some small sign that tells us the truth isn't nearly as awful as it feels. Or as awful as anyone would think if they knew.
So we explain it to ourselves, justify it enough to sleep. And then we bury it deep, so deep we can almost pretend it never happened. But as much as we wish it were different, the truth is, our worlds are sometimes balanced on choices we make and the secrets we keep. ~ Jessi Kirby

Poetic justice, with her lifted scale,
Where, in nice balance, truth with gold she weighs,
And solid pudding against empty praise.
Here she beholds the chaos dark and deep,
Where nameless somethings in their causes sleep,
Till genial Jacob, or a warm third day,
Call forth each mass, a poem, or a play:
How hints, like spawn, scarce quick in embryo lie,
How new-born nonsense first is taught to cry. ~ Alexander Pope

I've always preferred the city at night. I believe that San Judas, or any city, belongs to the people who sleep there. Or maybe they don't sleep - some don't - but they live there. Everybody else is just a tourist.
Venice, Italy, for instance, pulls in a millions tourists for their own Carnival season but the actual local population is only a couple of hundred thousand. Lots of empty canals and streets at night, especially when you get away from the big hotels, and the residents pretty much have it to themselves when tourist season slows during the winter.
Jude has character - everybody agrees on that. It also has that thing I like best about a city: You can never own it, but it you treat it with respect it will eventually invite you in and make you one of its true citizens. But like I said, you've got to live there. If you're never around after the bars close, or at the other end of the night as the early workers get up to start another day and the coffee shops and news agents raise their security gates, then you don't really know the place, do you? ~ Tad Williams

Dance is fun! It lifts the spirit, stringthens the body, and stimulates the mind ... ~ Wayne Sleep

Sleep is cousin to death, Vasya," he murmured over her head. "And both are mine. ~ Katherine Arden

Now I lay me down to sleep, Try to count electric sheep. Sweet dream wishes you can keep, How I hate the night. ~ Douglas Adams

The church was simply the former chapel of the castle, fronting upon its grass-grown court, which, however, was of generous enough width to have given up its quaintest corner to a little graveyard. Here the very headstones themselves seemed to sleep, as they slanted into the grass. ~ Henry James

Take my advice - it is that of your friend," he said, as he swung himself into the saddle. He gathered up the reins and struck spurs into his horse, then turned to call back to me: "Sleep upon my words, Ralph, and the next time I come I look to see a farthingale behind thee!"
"Thou art as like to see one upon me," I answered. ~ Mary Johnston

In the moment between sleep and wake
I kiss my blanket
Kissing you goodbye ~ Silenus Poetry

In the space between wake and sleep, where the real world juxtaposes with the imagination, that's where I live. ~ Mica Rossi

I faced her and she faced me, and in the space between us in bed, she held out her hand. I took it in mine. Connected at the heart. I went to sleep soon after instead of worrying about the ramifications of what we had done. The safety was a sedative. ~ Debra Anastasia

All right, let's get to work again!-This is the spirit of people of genuine substance. Those who avoid hard work or neglect the things they have to do, who just while away their time, eating, sleeping, playing, watching television-such individuals will never experience true happiness, satisfaction or joy. ~ Daisaku Ikeda

When was the last time you were kissed?" he went on easily. "And I'm not talking about the dry, noncommittal, meaningless kiss you forget about as soon as it's over."

I scrambled out of my stupor long enough to quip, "Like last night's kiss?"

He cocked an eyebrow. "That so? I wonder, then, why you moaned my name after you drifted to sleep."

"I did not!"

"If only I'd had a video recorder. When was the last time you were really kissed?" he repeated.

"You seriously think I'm going to tell you?"

"Your ex?" he guessed.

"And if he was?"

"Was it your ex who taught you to be ashamed and uncomfortable with intimacy? He took from you what he wanted, but never seemed to be around when you wanted something back, isn't that right? What do you want, Britt?" he asked me point-blank.
"Do you really want to pretend like last night never happened?"

"Whatever happened between me and Calvin isn't your business," I fired back.

"For your information, he was a really great boyfriend. I-I wish I was with him right now!" I exclaimed untruthfully. My careless comment made him flinch, but he recovered quickly.

"Does he love you?"

"What?" I said, flustered.

"If you know him so well, it shouldn't be a hard question. Is he in love with you? Was he ever in love with you?"

I tossed my head back haughtily. "I know what you're doing. You' ~ Becca Fitzpatrick

Phresine showed him where he could sleep, in an interior room with no windows, a narrow bed, and a washstand. There were chests stacked along one wall, and Costis guessed the dismal spot was probably a closet cleaned out to make room for him. Hard to believe the royal apartments, so lavish elsewhere, would otherwise have such a plain corner. Expecting better of royal closets, Costis went to bed disappointed. ~ Megan Whalen Turner

It's okay to feel like shit. It's okay to feel worthless. It's okay to feel insignificant. It's okay to miss someone you can't have. It's okay to have a tightness in your chest or a burning sensation on your arms or legs and it's okay to not want to eat or sleep or just overall hurt yourself or worse. It's okay to feel like your world is crashing down and it's okay to feel like you can't do this. But the point is that you try. And no matter who you are, or what age you are. Whether you're my ex from third grade (if I had one) or a random three year old who's just had a bad day. If you're 56 and your wife just divorced you and you just wanna think or get advice or anything. I'll be here. It's okay to think you're a whore, but you aren't. It's okay to feel really dumb. But I'll do my best to convince you otherwise. Cuz I can't do much, I can't. I can't completely understand what you're feeling. And I'm sorry about that. But I can sure as hell try. And I'll try my very best. ~ Shiv Malhotra

Sleep lingers all our lifetime about our eyes, as night hovers all day in the boughs of the fir tree. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Time changes from sleep in moments to sleep of moments ~ Anurag Bhatt

The surgical process turned out to be slightly out of the ordinary because I was not the best patient. I was extremely worried that the doctors would cut open my palm. Cutting the palm would mean substantially altering my grip, which I really didn't want to do. I explained to both my surgeons the nuances of cricket and urged them to cut open the back of the hand. I was so obsessed with this issue that I woke up during the surgery and asked them to show me where they had made the incision. Dr Joshi later told me that they were all surprised to see me awake despite the anaesthesia. The doctors showed me that my palm had been left untouched and told me to calm down and allow them to carry on. Satisfied, I instantly drifted back to sleep. ~ Sachin Tendulkar

Disturb my sleep but darling don't dare disturb my dreams! ~ Jasleen Kaur Gumber

bees and elephants and dogs piled up in squirmin' mounds like Loma's dang cats tryin' to keep warm in the wintertime. Does all this make any sense, Will Tweedy?" "Yessir, Grandpa." I wanted to go lay down. But I also wanted some more answers. "Grandpa, uh, why you think Jesus said ast the Lord for anything you want and you'll get it? 'Ast and it shall be given,' the Bible says. But it ain't so." I felt blasphemous even to think it, much less say it out loud. Grandpa was silent a long time. "Maybe Jesus was talkin' in His sleep, son, or folks heard Him wrong. Or maybe them disciples tryin' to start a church thought everbody would join up if'n they said Jesus Christ would give the Garden a-Eden to anybody believed He was the son a-God and like thet." Grandpa laughed. Gosh, I'd get a whipping if Papa knew what was going on with the Word in his kitchen. "All I know," he added, "is thet folks pray for food and still go hungry, and ~ Olive Ann Burns

In this makeshift place Willie Dunne discovered a peace of sorts. Yes the wild guns struck their great notes in the distance like the bells of a horrific city. Hearts asleep in the shires of England close upon the sea must heard them too. But he fell down between the boards of memory and sleep like a penny in an old floor. But he fell down between the boards of memory and sleep like a penny in an old floor. He lay there in the dust of nowhere, sunken and alone. ~ Sebastian Barry

While I'm fixing up this idiot. I want you to get some sleep ... and tell Amano that if he bothers you, I'll break his other leg. ~ Julie Kagawa

To go to bed and to wake up again day afte day besides a woman, to lie in bed with our arms around each other and drift in and out of sleep, to be with each other not as a quick stolen pleasure, nor as a wild treat but like sunlight, day after day in the regualr course of our lives. I was discovering all the ways that love creeps into life when two selves exist closely, when two women meet. ~ Audre Lorde

There are only 24 hours in a day. The average man has to sleep about 8 hours. And work for 8 hours. That leaves 8 hours to run some errands, drive to and from work, eat, and have some spare time. And in that little bit of spare time, a man has to figure out how to get the one thing he likes more than anything else: sex.

So when a man has to choose whether or not he will hang out with a female and spend any time, money or attention on her, the question of whether the resources he spent will result in sex plays a very big factor. If your male "friend" chooses to spend his time and money on you, it's because he thinks there is a chance it might pay off in sex at some point. If he hangs out with you instead of with some other female, it's because he thinks you are his best bet to getting sex.

The more likely there will be sex, the more willing he is to spend his little bit of free time with you. If he thinks his chances of having sex are higher with a different female, he will spent more time, money and attention on her. That's just common sense, and using his limited resources wisely. ~ Oliver Markus

I walked about the isle like a restless spectre, separated from all it loved, and miserable in the separation. When it became noon, and the sun rose higher, I lay down on the grass, and was overpowered by a deep sleep. I had been awake the whole of the preceding night, my nerves were agitated, and my eyes inflamed by watching and misery, The sleep into which I now sunk refreshed me; and when I awoke, I again felt as if I belonged to a race of human beings like myself, and I began to reflect upon what had passed with greater composure; yet still the words of the fiend rung in my ears like a death-knell, they appeared like a dream, yet distinct and oppressive as a reality. ~ Mary Shelley

They managed to sleep together, but there wasn't enough for dreaming. ~ Ernst Moritz Arndt

Listen to the trees talking in their sleep,' she whispered, as he lifted her to the ground. 'What nice dreams they must have! ~ L.M. Montgomery

More a paraphrase than a quote, really, but it comes from a prayer which was stitched into a sampler above my grandmother's bed. It began like this: 'Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep ... ' ~ Neil Peart

When you're awake, all the men go and fall for you -
Sleep, pretty lady, and give me a chance
(From the poem "Lullaby") ~ Dorothy Parker

There then occurred the first and only paranormal incident of my marriage. Charlie shifted in his sleep, opened his eyes, looked at me and, without preamble, said, "You have to forgive yourself for killing that boy." ... "For your own sake but for mine, too," he was saying, and his voice was hoarse from sleep yet also certain and insistent. "If you don't forgive yourself, you're making that accident too important, you're making him too important." Charlie paused. "And I want to be the love of your life. ~ Curtis Sittenfeld

Who needs sleep? I laugh in the face of sleep! ~ Ellen DeGeneres

A faint rattling pulled me from sleep, which was a relief because I'd been caught in yet another nightmare. After what Rick, my now-former foster father, had done to me, one would think he'd be the one haunting my dreams. And he had something to do with it - he'd revived me the night I tried to kill myself. In the moments before he had, I was certain I'd been standing at the gates of hell, about to be sucked in. Unfortunately, when Rick revived me, I'd brought a piece of hell back with me. That was what I dreamed about. Every night. A dark, walled city. Wandering, lost, trapped. A voice whispering to me, You're perfect. Come back.
Stay. ~ Sarah Fine

I wondered what it would be like to die. Was it like going to sleep or like waking up? Was there no more time? Or did time go on forever? ~ Grace McCleen

How did you sleep?" A wolfish grin spread across his mouth. "I'm not sure I slept. I'm exhausted." "I figured you would be. You were a nympho last night." He stood and dropped the towel that was gracefully hiding his… ~ C.C. Brown

She would go to sleep only once and that would be to die. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Chorea - a twinkling movement or motor scintillation - does not have its origin in the cerebral cortex, but in the deeper parts of the brain, the basal ganglia and upper brainstem, which are the parts that mediate normal awakening. Thus these observations of chorea during migraine support the notion that migraine is a form of arousal disorder, something located in the strange borderlands of sleep - a disorder which has its origin deep in the brainstem, and not superficially, in the cortical mantle, as is often supposed (a ~ Oliver Sacks

Every morning you have two options. Continue to sleep with your dreams or wake up and chase them. ~ Arnold Schwarzenegger

An intruder broke into Mike Tyson's hotel room in Las Vegas while he was sleeping but got out before Tyson could get to him. I don't know what's scarier. Having someone breaking into your room while you're sleeping or breaking into someone else's room and finding out the guy is Mike Tyson. ~ Jay Leno

I like Daniel. He takes care of you."
I blinked. "Oh my God. Did you really just say that? He takes care of me?"
Dad flushed. "I didn't mean it like-"
"Takes care of me? Did I go to sleep and wake up in the nineteenth century?" I looked down at my jeans and T-shirt. "Ack! I can't go to school like this. Where's my corset? My bonnet?"
Dad sighed as Mom walked in with her empty teacup.
"What did I miss?" She said.
"Dad's trying to marry me off to Daniel." I looked at him.
"You know, if you offer him a new truck for a dowry, he might go for it. ~ Kelley Armstrong

I like you in my bed," Patch said. "I rarely pull down the covers. I rarely sleep. I could get used to this picture."
"Are you offering me a permanent place?"
"Already put a spare key in your pocket."
I patted my pocket. Sure enough, something small and hard was snug inside. "How charitable of you."
"I'm not feeling very charitable now," he said, holding my eyes, his voice deepening with a gravelly edge. "I missed you, Angel. Not one day went by that I didn't feel you missing from my life. You haunted me to the point that I began to believe Hank had gone back on his oath and killed you. I saw your ghost in everything. I couldn't escape you and I didn't want to. You tortured me, but it was better than losing you. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick

I don't believe in Love, although I've experienced it. I could say. When I can't sleep, I lie there imagining it's because I never actually gave it a chance. I kind of never reached the stage of thinking I had to put it first, in front of everything else.
Sometimes I feel I haven't really reached dry land yet, and maybe never will. ~ Katarina Mazetti

Let the smoky Käll sustain himself on Mars, and Yuko lay rue on Beethoven's grave. Let the lord of the manor of Rochdale clap his coffin into a canoe and disport himself on the waters. Let Zsa-Zsa sleep on a pillow of haddock in Maria's cello case. Let Mrs Wessen live to see her thousandth moon. Let Ysobel unknit her forehead. Let not poor Virginie weep. Let all and no things come to pass, for how will I pass these days? ~ Vikram Seth

I don't sleep well. I rehash everything in bed. The mind's still working. ~ Hale Irwin