Sleep. We fight it, we crave it, we never get enough of it. It’s the world’s most undervalued luxury, and yet no one ever brags about a full eight hours.
“You can last three days without water, thirty days without food—you can last seven days without sleep,” says America’s #1 Sleep Doctor, Dr. Michael Breus, in his Mindvalley program, The Mastery of Sleep.
Writers, philosophers, and the perpetually exhausted have all tried to put sleep into words—some in awe, some in frustration, and others in pure desperation.
So here they are: the best, boldest, and most brutally honest sleep quotes. Sweet dreams not included.
20 sleep well quotes for the rest you deserve
Sleep is a basic human right—right up there with WiFi and snacks. Yet, we treat it like an optional hobby.
The fact of the matter is, sleep hygiene keeps your mind sharp, your mood steady, and your skin looking its best. Still, about a third of adults aren’t getting enough sleep—32.8% to be exact. Broken down by gender, 32.2% of women and 33.4% of men report sleeping less than the recommended amount.
Beauty sleep is the real deal, and the more you get, the better you feel. If you need a nudge to prioritize rest, these quotes are here to do the job.
- “A good laugh and a long sleep are the two best cures for anything.” ― Shawn Stevenson
- “Oh, sleep. Nothing else could ever bring me such pleasure, such freedom, the power to feel and move and think and imagine, safe from the miseries of my waking consciousness.” ― Ottessa Moshfegh
- “Each night, when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning, when I wake up, I’m reborn.” — Mahatma Gandhi
- “To die, to sleep—to sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub, for in this sleep of death what dreams may come…” — Hamlet
- “Meditation isn’t about switching off the mind. It’s about switching on… not going to sleep, but waking up.” — Gelong Thubten
- “True silence is the rest of the mind, and is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment, and refreshment.” — William Penn
- “Even a soul submerged in sleep is hard at work and helps make something of the world.” — Heraclitus
- “As a matter of your experience, you are not a body of atoms, molecules, and cells; you are consciousness and its ever-changing contents, passing through various stages of wakefulness and sleep, from cradle to grave.” — Sam Harris
- “I love sleep; it’s my favorite.” — Kanye West
- “Sleep is that golden chain that ties health and our bodies together.” — Thomas Dekker
- “Sleeping is a natural state. You don’t go to sleep. It comes to you.” — Marisa Peer
- “No day is so bad it can’t be fixed with a nap.” — Carrie Snow
- “The best bridge between despair and hope is a good night’s sleep.” ― Matthew Walker
- “Even the most strenuous day was made lighter by a good nights rest.” — Unknown
- “Once you know that you’re dreaming, you gain access to the world’s most powerful virtual reality simulation—your own subconscious mind.” — Charlie Morley
- “See, the night doth enfold us! See, all the world lies sleeping!” ― Giacomo Puccini
- “A well-spent day brings happy sleep.” — Leonardo de Vinci
- “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
- “We are such stuff as dreams are made of.” — William Shakespeare
- “Anyone can escape into sleep. We are all geniuses when we dream, the butcher’s the poet’s equal there.” — Emile M. Cioran
20 quotes about the importance of sleep (because exhaustion isn’t a personality trait)
Burnout isn’t a badge of honor, and being “so tired” isn’t a personality trait. Really, it’s a cry for help.
As Dr. Breus says, “Sleep is a prescription for rejuvenating your mind and your body.” The fact is, getting some shut-eye fuels everything: your focus, your energy, and even your ability to be a decent human.
Matthew Walker, the author of Why We Sleep, too, highlights the importance of sleep. He writes, “Sleep is not an optional lifestyle luxury. Sleep is a non-negotiable biological necessity.”
And if you’re wondering how to get more deep sleep, start by giving it the respect it deserves. After all, your REM sleep isn’t just for dreaming. It’s when your brain files memories, repairs itself, and preps you to take on the next day.
So read these quotes about sleep, absorb them, and then, for the love of all things well-rested, use them as permission to actually nod off to dreamland.
- “Trying to get good sleep while you’re stressed out is like trying to make a half-court shot while blindfolded.” — Dr. Michael Breus
- “You should never pull an all-nighter. It destroys your cognitive abilities the following day and will put you in an endless cycle of sleep deprivation.” — Vishen
- “Lack of sleep over time can lead to an irreversible loss of brain cells—yet another debunking of the myth that sleep debt can be made up.” — Arianna Huffington
- “Happiness consists of getting enough sleep. Just that, nothing more.” — Robert A. Heinlein
- “Sleep is the best meditation.” — Dalai Lama
- “The body knows how to heal itself, but it needs time to do so. Rest is an essential part of the healing process.” — Unknown
- “Prioritizing good sleep is good self-love.” — Danielle Laporte
- “Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.” — John Lubbock
- “Your soul needs time for solitude and self-reflection. In order to thrive, you must find moments of peace and quiet.” — Unknown
- “Women need real moments of solitude and self-reflection to balance out how much of ourselves we give away.” — Barbara De Angelis
- “A good laugh and a long sleep are the two best cures for anything.” – Irish Proverb
- “Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night.” — Charles Fisher
- “When you can’t sleep, you cannot get yourself out of the ditch—there’s not a chance.” — Elizabeth Gilbert
- “Try to imagine what it will be like to go to sleep and never wake up… now try to imagine what it was like to wake up having never gone to sleep.” ― Alan Watts
- “Your calm mind is the ultimate weapon against your challenges. So relax.” — Bryant McGill
- “Learn to relax. Your body is precious, as it houses your mind and spirit. Inner peace begins with a relaxed body.” ― Norman Vincent Peale
- “An insufficient amount of sleep can lead to serious repercussions. Some studies have shown sleep deprivation leaves people vulnerable to attention lapses, reduced cognition, delayed reactions, and mood shifts.” — The Sleep Foundation
- “I find out a lot about myself by sleeping. Dreams, they are who I am when I’m too tired to be me.” ― Jarod Kintz
- “Having peace, happiness, and healthiness is my definition of beauty. And you can’t have any of that without sleep.” — Beyoncé
- “Almost anything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.” — Anne Lamott
20 sleep-deprived quotes for the permanently tired
If your relationship with slumberland is best described as “it’s complicated,” welcome to the club. Whether you’re running on caffeine and chaos or avoiding sleep altogether (yes, somniphobia is a legitimate fear), the struggle is real.
“Humans are not sleeping the way nature intended,” Matthew highlights in Why We Sleep. “The number of sleep bouts, the duration of sleep, and when sleep occurs has all been comprehensively distorted by modernity.”
And the sleep deprivation effects? Brutal. Lack of Zzz’s messes with your memory, wrecks your mood, and after a while, can even weaken your immune system.
No solutions here, just pure, relatable exhaustion. And if you need company in your sleepless misery, these insomnia quotes may just do the job.
- “Let him sleep. For in dreams, we enter a world that is entirely our own. Let him swim in the deepest ocean or glide over the highest cloud.” — Dumbledore
- “The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world.” ― Leonard Cohen
- “Fatigue is the best pillow.” — Benjamin Franklin
- “There is more refreshment and stimulation in a nap, even of the briefest, than in all the alcohol ever distilled.” — Edward Lucas
- “I wonder why I don’t go to bed and go to sleep. But then it would be tomorrow, so I decide that no matter how tired, no matter how incoherent I am, I can skip one hour more of sleep and live.” ― Sylvia Plath
- “The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world.” — Leonard Cohen
- “There are twelve hours in the day, and above fifty in the night.” — Marie de Rabutin-Chantal
- “The worst thing in the world is to try to sleep and not to.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “If a man had as many ideas during the day as he does when he has insomnia, he’d make a fortune.” — Griff Niblack
- “Don’t fight with the pillow, but lay down your head, and kick every worriment out of the bed.” — Edmund Vance Cooke
- “We dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep.” ― Nathaniel Hawthorne
- “If you are a student, you should always get a good night’s sleep unless you have come to the good part of your book, and then you should stay up all night and let your schoolwork fall by the wayside, a phrase which means ‘flunk’.” ― Lemony Snicket
- “What hath night to do with sleep?” ― John Milton
- “The night is the hardest time to be alive and 4 a.m. knows all my secrets.” ― Poppy Z. Brite
- “Nourishing yourself in a way that helps you blossom in the direction you want to go is attainable, and you are worth the effort.” — Deborah Day
- “People say, ‘I’m going to sleep now,’ as if it were nothing. But it’s really a bizarre activity. ‘For the next several hours, while the sun is gone, I’m going to become unconscious, temporarily losing command over everything I know and understand. When the sun returns, I will resume my life.’” — George Carlin
- “Sleep is my lover now, my forgetting, my opiate, my oblivion.” — Audrey Niffenegger
- “Sometimes I’m afraid to go to sleep because of what I’m leaving behind.” ― Lauren Oliver
- “For years now, I’ve wanted to fall asleep. The sort of slipping off, the giving up, the falling part of sleep. Now sleeping is the last thing I want to do.” ― Chuck Palahniuk
- “I think insomnia is a sign that a person is interesting.” ― Avery Sawyer
20 motivational sleep quotes to get you under the covers
Motivation gets us to the gym and through Monday mornings. But, believe it or not, it can also get us into bed at a decent hour. As Dr. Breus points out, “Everything you do, you do better with a good night’s sleep.”
But shutting down the brain factory doesn’t always come easy. Sometimes, even a solid eight hours feels like a myth, and we’re left surviving on caffeine and power naps. Other times, exhaustion hits like a truck, and all we can do is search for quotes about being tired to feel less alone.
If you need that extra nudge to close the laptop, put down the phone, and actually surrender to the snooze, these quotes are your personal sleep coach.
- “I love to sleep. Do you? Isn’t it great? It really is the best of both worlds. You get to be alive and unconscious.” ― Rita Rudner
- “Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.” ― Aeschylus
- “Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer.” — Maya Angelou
- “Sometimes doing nothing leads to the very best something.” — Winnie the Pooh
- “Your future depends on your dreams, so go to sleep.” — Mesut Barazany
- “Sleep is an investment in the energy you need to be effective tomorrow.” — Tom Roth
- “Just Sleep Faster.” — Arnold Schwarzenegger
- “Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop.” — Ovid
- “God has made sleep to be a sponge by which to rub out fatigue. A man’s roots are planted in night as in a soil.” — Henry Ward Beecher
- “Proper sleep has helped me get to where I am today as an athlete, and it is something that I continue to rely on every day.” — Tom Brady
- “Within you, there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself.” — Hermann Hesse
- “Sleep is an essential part of life, but more importantly, sleep is a gift.” — William C. Dement
- “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
- “There is a time for many words, and there is also a time for sleep.” ― Homer
- “Goodnight stars, goodnight air, goodnight noises everywhere.” — Margaret Wise Brown
- “A person who has not done one half his day’s work by ten o’clock, runs a chance of leaving the other half undone.” ― Emily Bronte
- “Put your thoughts to sleep, do not let them cast a shadow over the moon of your heart. Let go of thinking.” ― Rumi
- “Listen to the night sky; the mockingbird always sings you my lullaby.” — Jmemo
- “Good night now, and rest. Today was a test, You passed it, you’re past it. Now breathe till unstressed.” — Lin-Manuel Miranda
- “Success means we go to sleep at night knowing that our talents and ablities were used in a way that served others.” ― Marianne Williamson
21 sleep quotes funny enough to make you laugh in your dreams
The human shutdown process is weird. One minute, you’re scrolling, promising yourself “just five more minutes.” The next, you’re dreaming about riding a unicycle through a grocery store with your best friend.
Maybe a solid sleep schedule would prevent these fever-dream scenarios—or maybe not. Either way, a little pre-snooze wind-down wouldn’t hurt.
If that level of absurdity speaks to you, these bedtime musings will have you chuckling all the way to dreamland.
- “SLEEP (Sleep Like Everyone Else, Please).” ― Tina Fey
- “Maybe if I can just sleep for a hundred years, I’ll wake up in a better story.” ― Huntley Fitzpatrick
- “I only sleep with people I love, which is why I have insomnia.” ― Emilie Autumn
- “When it came to napping, Winston Churchill insisted that there should be ‘no halfway measures.’ ‘Take off your clothes,’ he said, ‘and get into bed.’” ― Sara C. Mednick
- “A good night sleep, or a ten minute bawl, or a pint of chocolate ice cream, or all three together, is good medicine.” ― Ray Bradbury
- “I’ve always envied people who sleep easily. Their brains must be cleaner, the floorboards of the skull well swept, all the little monsters closed up in a steamer trunk at the foot of the bed.” — David Benioff
- “A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow.” — Charlotte Brontë
- “If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.” ― Dalai Lama XIV
- “Sleep, those little slices of death—how I loathe them.” ― Edgar Allan Poe
- “Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone.” ― Anthony Burgess
- “Two people can sleep in the same bed and still be alone when they close their eyes.” ― Haruki Murakami
- “Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep.” ― Albert Camus
- “No wonder Sleeping Beauty looked so good… she took long naps, never got old, and didn’t have to do anything but snore to get her Prince Charming.” — Olive Green
- “There is no sunrise so beautiful that it is worth waking me up to see it.” ― Mindy Kaling
- “How about if I sleep a little bit longer and forget all this nonsense?” ― Franz Kafka
- “There are two types of people in this world, good and bad. The good sleep better, but the bad seem to enjoy the waking hours much more.” ― Woody Allen
- “Oh, if you’re a bird, be an early bird and catch the worm for your breakfast plate. If you’re a bird, be an early early bird. But if you’re a worm, sleep late.” ― Shel Silverstein
- “While it is always possible to wake a person who’s sleeping, no amount of noise will wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.” ― Jonathan Safran Foer
- “Happiness is waking up, looking at the clock and finding that you still have two hours left to sleep.” ― Charles M. Schultz
- “In my next life, I want to be a cat. To sleep 20 hours a day and wait to be fed. To sit around licking my ass.” ― Charles Bukowski
- “There are four basic human needs; food, sleep, sex, and revenge.” ― Banksy
BONUS: Bedtime affirmations for when counting sheep isn’t cutting it
If your brain turns into a chaotic TED Talk the second your head hits the pillow, it’s time to rewire that nonsense.
“I believe that the world would be a better place if everybody slept better,” says Dr. Breus. And a few relaxation techniques and a little mindfulness before sleep can work wonders, whether you’re trying to unwind after a long day or master the ultimate bedtime routine for kids (good luck with that).
These bedtime affirmations are here to drown out the mental noise, tuck you in, and whisper sweet nothings of pure relaxation. No more doom-scrolling, but just deep, uninterrupted sleep.
- “My body is ready to rest, and my mind follows.”
- “I release today’s worries; they do not belong in my dreams.”
- “Sleep restores me. I welcome it with open arms.”
- “My bed is a place of peace, not overthinking.”
- “I breathe in calm and exhale stress.”
- “Deep rest fuels my energy, creativity, and joy.”
- “Each moment of sleep strengthens and refreshes me.”
- “I am safe, I am loved, and I am allowed to sleep.”
- “Every breath I take relaxes me deeper into sleep.”
- “I surrender to rest because I deserve it.”
Futureproof your well-being
Every great decision you make today shapes the version of you that wakes up tomorrow. Choosing rest, movement, and nourishment now means a future filled with more energy, better health, and fewer “why am I like this?” moments.
So start where you can—whether it’s better sleep, smarter self-care, or simply listening to what your body needs. Mindvalley Pulse’s free resources are packed with expert-backed insights to help you feel your best, one habit at a time.
As Dr. Breus points out, “The three most important dominoes for your health: Sleep, hydration, and breath.”
Because when you take care of yourself, everything else follows. And Mindvalley’s here to help you do that.
Welcome in.
