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

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

A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor’s book. —Irish Proverb

A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow.            —Charlotte Brontë

O bed! O bed! delicious bed! / That heaven upon earth to the weary head.

                                                                                            —Thomas Hood

The best bridge between despair and hope is a good night’s sleep.

—E. Joseph Cossman

Fatigue is the best pillow.

—Benjamin Franklin

It appears that every man’s insomnia is as different from his neighbour’s as are their daytime hopes and aspirations.

 —F. Scott Fitzgerald

Sleeplessness is a desert without vegetation or inhabitants.

 —Jessamyn West

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

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

Dawn: When men of reason go to bed.

 —Ambrose Bierce

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

 —Clifton Fadiman

Most people do not consider dawn to be an attractive experience — unless they are still up.

 —Ellen Goodman