Friday Night Quotes - Insomnia and Sleep

Several months ago, I hurt my shoulder and was on a pretty high dosage of steroids for about a week. One of the side effects I was dreading was insomnia. I love to sleep. I love naps. I can sleep late, take a nap and still be fast asleep by 10:00 p.m. if I like.

The problem is, I also like to stay up late. I love watching television all night or reading all night or being out and about all night or writing all night. I guess I'm a sleep schizophrenic. Since I've never suffered from insomnia, I didn't know what to expect from the Prednisone.

My dread soon turned to delight as I found I could get by on about four hours of sleep. Instead of barely being able to keep my eyes open at 10:30 p.m., I stayed up until 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. I loved having all that extra time added to the end of my day. Since the steroids also energized me, I didn't suffer from fatigue the next day.

Alas, my reign as Queen of the Night was shortlived and I'm back to needing about eight hours of sleep a night to really feel alert the next day. I miss the feeling of being awake and doing things while everyone else is asleep. It's like a sneaky little secret. So, tonight I have rounded up quotes about sleep and insomnia.

Sweet dreams.

If you can't sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. It's the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep. ~Dale Carnegie

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

People who say they sleep like a baby usually don't have one. ~Leo J. Burke

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

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

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

It's a cruel season that makes you get ready for bed while it's light out. ~Calvin

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

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

There is no snooze button on a cat who wants breakfast. ~Author Unknown



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

Sleep is a symptom of caffeine deprivation. ~Author Unknown
A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by
One after one; the sound of rain, and bees
Murmuring; the fall of rivers, winds and seas,
Smooth fields, white sheets of water, and pure sky -I've thought of all by turns, and still I lie
Sleepless...~William Wordsworth, "To Sleep"
If a man had as many ideas during the day as he does when he has insomnia, he'd make a fortune. ~Griff Niblack
A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow. ~Charlotte Brontë
Nothing cures insomnia like the realization that it's time to get up. ~Author Unknown
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
Without enough sleep, we all become tall two-year-olds. ~JoJo Jensen, Dirt Farmer Wisdom, 2002
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

Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soon
Smooth away trouble; and the rough male kiss
Of blankets....~Rupert Brooke, "The Great Lover,"

I'm not asleep... but that doesn't mean I'm awake. ~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
In its early stages, insomnia is almost an oasis in which those who have to think or suffer darkly take refuge. ~Colette
There are twelve hours in the day, and above fifty in the night. ~Marie de Rabutin-Chantal