Selected rest quotes

1. We now to peace and darkness And earth and thee restore Thy creature that thou madest And wilt cast forth no more.

2. A man can do only what he can do. But if he does that each day he can sleep at night and do it again the next day.

3. Sometimes the most urgent and vital thing you can possibly do is take a complete rest.

4. Come in, dear wind, and be our guest You too have neither home nor rest.

5. Americans need rest, but do not know it. I believe this to be a large part of the explanation of the crime wave in the United States.

6. Music is 99% of my life. But I know I need a break. Besides, if you give people too much, they start to not want it. We need to restrain ourselves.

7. No man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one.

8. What do I want to take home from my summer vacation? Time. The wonderful luxury of being at rest. The days when you shut down the mental machinery that keeps life on track and let life simply wander. The days when you stop planning, analyzing, thinking and just are. Summer is my period of grace.

9. I haven't been to sleep for over a year. That's why I go to bed early. One needs more rest if one doesn't sleep.

10. The repose of sleep refreshes only the body. It rarely sets the soul at rest. The repose of the night does not belong to us. It is not the possession of our being. Sleep opens within us an inn for phantoms. In the morning we must sweep out the shadows.

11. One great thing about getting old is that you can get out of all sorts of social obligations just by saying you're too tired.

12. When I sleep I sleep and do not dream because it is as well that I am what I seem when I am in my bed and dream.

13. You must learn to be still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly alive in repose.

14. Hide me from day's garish eye, While the bee with honied thigh, That at her flowery work doth sing, And the waters murmuring With such consort as they keep, Entice the dewy-feathered sleep.

15. Come to the woods, for here is rest. There is no repose like that of the green deep woods. Here grow the wallflower and the violet. The squirrel will come and sit upon your knee, the logcock will wake you in the morning. Sleep in forgetfulness of all ill. Of all the upness accessible to mortals, there is no upness comparable to the mountains.

16. Death is an eternal sleep.

17. God is the place where I do not remember the rest.

18. Good soldiers never pass up a chance to eat or sleep. They never know how much they'll be called on to do before the next chance.

19. I feel guilty just sitting around when I know I can be doing something.

20. Take rest; a field that has rested gives a beautiful crop.

21. Time, motion and wine cause sleep.

22. What is without periods of rest will not endure.

23. The world is weary of the past, Oh, might it die or rest at last!

24. That indolent but agreeable condition of doing nothing.

25. Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing, Beloved from pole to pole.

26. I don't generally like running. I believe in training by rising gently up and down from the bench.

27. I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed. Inaction, no falsifying dream Between my hooked head and hooked feet: Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.

28. Don't want to discuss it, I think it's time for a change You may get disgusted, some think that I'm strange In that case I'll go underground, get some heavy rest Never have to worry, about what is worst and what is best.

29. Come, blessed barrier between day and day, Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health!

30. Do not let Sunday be taken from you - If your soul has no Sunday, it becomes an orphan.

31. We're not really taught how to recreate constructively. We need to do more than find diversions; we need to restore and expand ourselves. Our idea of relaxing is all too often to plop down in front of the television set and let its pandering idiocy liquefy our brains. Shutting off the thought process is not rejuvenating; the mind is like a car battery- it recharges by running.

32. But he lay like a warrior taking his rest, With his martial cloak around him.

33. O sweet clean earth, from whom the green blade cometh! When we are dead, my best beloved and I, Close well above us, that we may rest forever, Sending up grass and blossoms to the sky.

34. 'He who cannot rest, cannot work; he who cannot let go, cannot hold on; he who cannot find footing, cannot go forward.'

35. If all the skies were sunshine, Our faces would be fain To feel once more upon them The cooling splash of rain. If all the world were music, Our hearts would often long For one sweet strain of silence. To break the endless song. If life were always merry, Our souls would seek relief, And rest from weary laughter In the quiet arms of grief.

36. 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.

37. Strew on her roses, roses, And never a spray of yew. In quiet she reposes: Ah! would that I did too.

38. There is more refreshment and stimulation in a nap, even of the briefest, than in all the alcohol ever distilled.

39. How wonderful is Death, Death and his brother Sleep!

40. Thou hast been called, O sleep! the friend of woe; But 'tis the happy that have called thee so.

41. Given the choice between accomplishing something and just lying around, I'd rather lie around. No contest.

42. Wasting time has an esthetics to it.

43. Certainly work is not always required of man. There is such a thing as a sacred idleness - the cultivation of which is now fearfully neglected.

44. We combat obstacles in order to get repose, and, when got, the repose is insupportable.

45. The hardest thing about being James Brown is I have to live. I don't have no down time.

46. 'I shall soon be rested,' said Fanny; 'to sit in the shade on a fine day, and look upon verdure, is the most perfect refreshment.'

47. Ah! there is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.

48. O'er all the hilltops Is quiet now, In all the treetops Hearest thou Hardly a breath; The birds are asleep in the trees: Wait; soon like these Thou too shalt rest.

49. I now leave that bed which has afforded me little rest, and eagerly seek repose in the quiet enjoyments of rural life.

50. '...it is not when he is working in his office but when he is lying idly on the sand that his soul utters, 'Life is beautiful.'' (p. 2)

51. If you spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live.

52. Different subjects and different affairs are arranged in my head as in a cupboard. When I wish to interrupt one train of thought, I shut that drawer and open another. Do I wish to sleep, I simply close all the drawers and then I am- asleep.

53. I wouldn't have said off-hand that I had a subconscious mind, but I suppose I must without knowing it, and no doubt it was there, sweating away diligently at the old stand, all the while the corporeal Wooster was getting his eight hours.

54. O quanta qualia sunt illa sabbata, quae semper celebrat superna curia.

55. Come sleep, O sleep, the certain knot of peace, The baiting place of wit, the balm of woe, The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release, The indifferent judge between the high and low.

56. Hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action.

57. The storm is over, the land hushes to rest: The tyrannous wind, its strength fordone, Is fallen back in the west.

58. Were I a cloud I'd gather My skirts up in the air, And fly I well know whither, And rest I well know where.

59. A faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity.

60. Call a truce, then, to our labors - let us feast with friends and neighbors, And be merry as the custom of our caste; For if 'faint and forced the laughter,' and if sadness follow after, We are richer by one mocking Christmas past.

61. When Earth's last picture is painted and the tubes are twisted and dried, When the oldest colours have faded, and the youngest critic has died, We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it - lie down for an aeon or two, Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall put us to work anew!

62. For our penitence deserves a glimpse only; our toil respite only.

63. Give me a Leonard Cohen afterworld So I can sigh eternally

64. To act is to rest.