Article image

16 Quotes on the Benefits of Sleep

The average person spends about a third of their life sleeping. That’s a lot of time, but it’s time well spent. Sleep is vital for a healthy life. While we are asleep, our bodies have a chance to restore themselves, giving our immune, nervous, skeletal, and muscular systems a well-earned break and time to renew.

At the same time, our senses diminish and our minds enter a state of altered consciousness: We dream. Our sleeping minds process our waking experiences, improving mood, memory, and cognitive function.

Considering the importance of rest and the endlessly fascinating nature of dreams, sleep has long been a subject of extensive research, from ancient philosophers to modern psychologists. Today, the general consensus is that adults need between seven and nine hours of sleep per day — but that’s certainly not a hard and fast rule.

Many successful people have claimed to get by just fine on four to five hours a night; Thomas Edison was famously opposed to sleeping, considering it “a heritage from our cave days” and preferring to sleep for just three or four hours a day.

Edison, however, is certainly in a minority when it comes to his opinion of sleep. For most of us, sleep is a wonderful break, and we’d be happy to sleep for longer — especially when the dreaded alarm sounds in the morning. And we’re not alone. Many famous figures, from Homer to Homer Simpson, have extolled the virtues of sleep, as the following quotes reveal.

There is a time for many words and there is a time for sleep.
Homer

Share Quote

Even a soul submerged in sleep is hard at work and helps make something of the world.
Heraclitus

Share Quote

We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.
William Shakespeare

Share Quote

Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing, beloved from pole to pole.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Share Quote

Sleep! Life's nurse, sent from heaven to create us anew day by day.
Charles Reade

Share Quote

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

Share Quote

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

Share Quote

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

Share Quote

When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.
Ursula K. Le Guin

Share Quote

Sleep is the Swiss Army knife of health. When sleep is deficient, there is sickness and disease. And when sleep is abundant, there is vitality and health.
Matthew Walker

Share Quote

In the end, winning is sleeping better.
Jodie Foster

Share Quote

In ancient cultures, sleep was actually seen as a gateway to another world. There's something sacred in all of us that we need to protect, and sleep is a way to connect with it, nourish it, and make it more present in our lives.
Arianna Huffington

Share Quote

Sleep is like a cat: It only comes to you if you ignore it.
Gillian Flynn

Share Quote

Having peace, happiness, and healthiness is my definition of beauty. And you can't have any of that without sleep.
Beyoncé

Share Quote

Sleep is a regenerative process where we heal and where our neurons build strong connections. It’s like a fountain of youth that we dive in to every night.
Mikhail Varshavski, aka Doctor Mike

Share Quote

I don't wanna sleep like a guinea pig, I wanna sleep like a bear!
Homer Simpson

Share Quote

Featured image credit: safolka/ Unsplash

Author image
About the Author
Tony Dunnell
Tony is an English writer of non-fiction and fiction living on the edge of the Amazon jungle.
Play more header background
Play more icon
Daily Question
Who said, "We tell ourselves stories in order to live"?

More Inspiration

happiness theme icon

That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as another’s. We see so much only as we possess.

separator icon
Henry David Thoreau
motivation theme icon

Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.

separator icon
Vincent van Gogh
hope theme icon

Time is how you spend your love.

separator icon
Nick Laird
love theme icon

I didn't fall in love, I rose in it.

separator icon
Toni Morrison
wisdom theme icon

Don’t be afraid to be confused. Try to remain permanently confused. Anything is possible.

separator icon
George Saunders
happiness theme icon

In the depths of Winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.

separator icon
Albert Camus
motivation theme icon

With confidence, you have won before you have started.

separator icon
Marcus Garvey
hope theme icon

Pretend you’re more obsessed with this moment and a little bit less with the way it ends.

separator icon
Buddy Wakefield
love theme icon

The truth is the light and light is the truth.

separator icon
Ralph Ellison
wisdom theme icon

My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.

separator icon
Desmond Tutu
happiness theme icon

If it is true for you, it is true for someone else, and you are no longer alone.

separator icon
Colson Whitehead