Waking Times Quotes & Sayings

Have you ever felt as if your dreams were more memorable, more alive, than what you knew to be reality? Have your dreams ever seemed so tangible as to make you question upon waking if you'd truly only dreamt them? Have they at times been addictive enough to consume your waking hours; blurring actuality and pretend together until your wishes and passions stare back at you with open eyes?
If only dreams could be reality, that beautiful garden of sweet-smelling roses we all long for. But reality for me is no such bed of roses. It is nothing but a field of unwanted dandelions.
- From the thoughts of Annabelle Fancher — Richelle E. Goodrich

I realized that I had died and been reborn numberless times but just didn't remember especially because the transitions from life to death and back to life are so ghostly easy, a magical action for naught, like falling asleep and waking up again a million times, the utter casualness and deep ignorance of it. — Jack Kerouac

The few times he made the mistake of relaxing in a woman's bed after a quick lay proved to be serious mistakes. They wanted to coddle and always asked the questions that made him cringe, 'What are you thinking?', 'Do you love me?', 'Where do you see this going?', 'Are you as happy as I am?', 'Why do you keep calling me by my sister's name?', or his personal favorite 'I wonder what our babies will look like.' No, sex was best kept at a woman's house, hotel room or better yet in the backseat of a car. Thank god his neighbor seemed to share the same attitude. He hated the idea of waking up to the sounds of another man grunting and moaning. With his luck the sounds would filter into his dream and he would end up having a gay dream. — R.L. Mathewson

He doesn't like me, does he?" I asked.
Maggie made a face like my words were insulting her. "He doesn't like you?"
My eyes connected with hers for a brief moment. "Not in the way you know I'm talking about."
She shook her head, blinking a few times like she was waking up. "Hi, welcome to planet Earth," she said in a mock cheery voice, waving in my direction. "The place where brains and sound-thinking make the planet go round. — Nicole Williams

I enjoy waking up and not having to go to work. So I do it three or four times a day. — Gene Perret

....[T]he night terrors were no match for the glory of waking up to a new day in the Land of Israel. In every conscious moment, Yael was aware that she was living through times that would form the legends and myths of future generations. Just as her generation told and retold the story of the Exodus from Egypt - the event that changed the nature of Israel forever - so would her people hundreds of years from now tell of the end of the Great Exile and the return to this land. The wonder of it touched everything around her, casting a golden glow over even the most mundane events. Nothing seemed impossible, and nothing seemed entirely real. — Yael Shahar

Recalling those gone times, old memories lit by the fire of the new, I did not this time wonder how long it would last; I was too smart for that now. Take what you get, and don't think. Of course it could never be that easy, but there were moments, like now, that I could successfully pretend that it was, and I had no inclination to try to peer past those moments. I'm not one who wants to know the future: at the best it spoils the present, with longing or dismay, and at the worst, well. Who really wants to find out how tight the sling is, for your own very personal ass, who wants to know how deep the shit will really be. Not you. Not me either. Because it's rarely bliss saved up, is it, when you finally get there. I'll take my now, waking with a lover's scent on me, around me, take my hopes before they're maybe tragedy; a good morning is a good morning, even if it leads to apocalypse at night. — Kathe Koja

There are three things that make me want to drink: difficult times, when I want alcohol to either alleviate the pain or allow me to feel it; clear days that make me want to scribble all over the irritating blue sky; and well, waking up in the morning. — Abigail Thomas

The more I read about feeding times, sleep times and waking-up times, the more inadequate and miserable I felt. — Gail Porter

Because he's three thousand times the human being you'll ever be,' said Alec. 'Now get out of here before I risk his life by waking him up so he can turn you into a garbage fire. Something that would match your personality.'
'Oh!', said Zara. 'So rude! — Cassandra Clare

Babies of around one year old are often active by day and wake frequently at night, for no obvious reason. Then a mother can feel desparate for sleep yet equally desparate to comfort her baby when he needs her at night. I have spoken to many mothers who have sacrificed their own sleep, waking up numerous times every night because their babies cried for them. It seems terrible that these hardworking women think of themselves as failures as a result. Surely a mother who has chosen to sacrifice her sleep deserves respect and admiration for her generous mothering. — Naomi Stadlen

Trusting takes a different kind of energy. It takes showing up, despite your moods or personal whims. It is not inventing opportunities out of nowhere, but being obedient to respond to them as they come across your path. It's waking up, silencing insecurity, and taking steps forward even when you don't know how it will turn out. It means adjusting expectations at times, when reality doesn't look like the "dream" from your head. It is moving forward in anticipation, without knowing exactly what lies ahead. — Allison Vesterfelt

But I cannot forget that, at other times I have been deceived in sleep by similar illusions; and, attentively considering those cases, I perceive so clearly that there exist no certain marks by which the state of waking can ever be distinguished from sleep, that I feel greatly astonished; and in amazement I almost persuade myself that I am now dreaming. — Rene Descartes

We teach our children one thing only, as we were taught: to wake up. We teach our children to look alive there, to join by words and activities the life of human culture on this planet's crust. As adults we are almost all adept at waking up. We have so mastered the transition we make a hundred times a day, as, like so many will-less dolphins, we plunge and surface, lapse and emerge. We live half our waking lives and all of our sleeping lives in some private, useless, and insensible waters we never mention or recall. Useless, I say. Valueless, I might add - until someone hauls their wealth up to the surface and into the wide-awake city, in a form that people can use. — Annie Dillard

May we feel after Thee; still calling out in the darkness, as children waking in the night call "Father," so may we call out for God; and, at times, even if we do not hear Thy voice, may there be the form of a hand resting upon us, and that shall be enough; for we shall take hold of it, though it be in the dark, and it shall guide us to the growing light; for the day shall come, and the release and triumph. — Henry Ward Beecher

Never woke, at first, without recalling, chilled, all those other waking times, those similar stark views from similarly lighted precipices: dizzying precipices from which the distant, glittering world revealed itself as a brooding and separated scene - and so let slip a queer implication, that I myself was both observer and observable, and so a possible object of my own humming awareness. Whenever I stepped into the porcelain bathtub, the bath's hot water sent a shock traveling up my bones. The skin on my arms pricked up, and the hair rose on the back of my skull. I saw my own firm foot press the tub, and the pale shadows waver over it, as if I were looking down from the sky and remembering this scene forever. The skin on my face tightened, as it had always done whenever I stepped into the tub, and remembering it all drew a swinging line, loops connecting the dots, all the way back. You again. — Annie Dillard

THERE ARE TIMES when just waking up can feel like the hardest thing anyone could ever ask you to do. The first morning after your child has died, perhaps. Or after the man you adore has walked out. You would give anything, certainly the rest of your life, to stay down in the darkness of not knowing.
It never happens, though, does it? You always come back to yourself. The world is still there. You are still there... — Sharon Bolton

Sometimes I wanted to dance and laugh with my friends until midnight, and sometimes I wanted to screen all calls and hide away with a tragic novel and a bag of candy. Sometimes I spend an hour trying to pretty myself up, and sometimes I could barely be bothered to comb the knots out of my hair before I left the house.
Sometimes I wanted to know what it felt like to tell a boy all my secrets. Other times, that seemed as impossible as waking up one morning to find myself fluent in a foreign language.
Sometimes I felt better alone that I did with people. And sometimes that just felt lonely. — Michelle Dalton

Man lives on earth not once, but three times: the first stage of his life is his continual sleep; the second, sleeping and waking by turns; the third, waking forever. — Gustav Fechner

What in the world are we going to do with you?' Mrs. Ritter asked.
I could think of a few things.
Take it easy on me.
Teach me different.
Care about me just a little.
So many times that year I wanted to shout,'It's not like I'm waking up in the morning and trying to mess up. I just don't get it! — Joan Bauer

Embrace yourself, in these times, and acknowledge yourself for the extraordinary progress you are making, as a soul, in every waking moment. — Rasha

Finnick and I sit for a long time in silence, watching the knots bloom and vanish, before I can ask, 'How do you bear it?'
Finnick looks at me in disbelief. 'I don't, Katniss! Obviously, I don't. I drag myself out of nightmares each morning and find there's no relief in waking.'
Something in my expression stops him.
'Better not give in to it. It takes ten times as long to put yourself together as it does to fall apart.'
Well, he must know. I take a deep breath, forcing myself back into one piece. — Suzanne Collins

This is what they don't tell you about losing someone: It doesn't happen once. It happens every day, every moment they're missing from. You lose them a hundred times between waking and sleep, and even sleep is no respite, because you lose them in your dreams, too. — Leah Raeder

The unbroken realization that you are indivisible from the universe, from universal consciousness, from the source of everything - that you are that source, that there is no other, no second, nothing that is not part of that unity, except as transitory illusion. If you could maintain that realization at all times, through waking and sleeping states of consciousness, across the threshold of death itself, what would you be? — Daniel Pinchbeck

I could hear and indescribable seething roar which wasn't which wasn't in my ear but everywhere and had nothing to do with sounds. I realised that I had died and reborn numberless times but just didn't remember especially because the transitions from life to death and back to life are so ghostly eas, a magical action for naught, like falling asleep and waking up again a million times, the utter casualness and deep ignorance of it.
I realised it was only because of the stability of the intrinsic Mind that these ripples of birth and death took place, like the action of wind on a sheet of pure, serene, mirror-like water. I felt sweet, swinging bliss, like a big shot of heroin in the mainline vein, like a gulp of wine late in the afternoon and it makes you shudder; my feet tingled.
I thought I was going to die the very next moment. — Jack Kerouac

When our daughter, Alexandra, was about three years old, she used to wake up at night and come down the stairs into our room. Of course, we would have to take her back to bed. For a few months she was waking up two or three times a night and coming down. This was not long after I took over for my father and started pastoring. I was learning to minister, and there was a lot of stress and change just with that, so I wasn't sleeping much. One time I was telling Victoria, "We've just got to do something about Alexandra. She's coming down so much. You know, I'm just so tired. I'm not getting enough sleep." On and on. Victoria said something I'll never forget. She said, "Joel, just remember, twenty years from now, you'll give anything to hear those little footsteps coming down the stairs. You'll give anything to have her wanting to come into your room." That changed my whole perspective. I began looking forward — Joel Osteen

Walking uplifts the spirit. Breathe out the poisons of tension, stress, and worry; breathe in the power of God. Send forth little silent prayers of goodwill toward those you meet. Walk with a sense of being a part of a vast universe. Consider the thousands of miles of earth beneath your feet; think of the limitless expanse of space above your head. Walk in awe, wonder, and humility. Walk at all times of day. In the early morning when the world is just waking up. Late at night under the stars. Along a busy city street at noontime. — Bill Vaughan

She was a woman with a broom or a dust-
pan or a washrag or a mixing spoon in her hand. You saw
her cutting piecrust in the morning, humming to it, or you
saw her setting out the baked pies at noon or taking them in,
cool, at dusk. She rang porcelain cups like a Swiss bell ringer
to their place. She glided through the halls as steadily as a
vacuum machine, seeking, finding, and setting to rights. She
made mirrors of every window, to catch the sun. She strolled
but twice through any garden, trowel in hand, and the flowers
raised their quivering fires upon the warm air in her wake.
She slept quietly and turned no more than three times in a
night, as relaxed as a White glove to which, at dawn, a brisk
hand will return. Waking, she touched people like pictures,
to set their frames straight. — Ray Bradbury

In a morbid condition of the brain, dreams often have a singular actuality, vividness, and extraordinary semblance of reality. At times monstrous images are created, but the setting and the whole picture are so truthlike and filled with details so delicate, so unexpectedly, but so artistically consistent, that the dreamer, were he an artist like Pushkin or Turgenev even, could never have invented them in the waking state. Such sick dreams always remain long in the memory and make a powerful impression on the overwrought and deranged nervous system. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

If you are trying to slip out without waking a sleeping man, zips are a nightmare. Haven't you ever tried to creep out of the room unnoticed the following morning? I've done that many times. — Diane Von Furstenberg

Wakings are the worst times
almost before my eyes are open a great weight seems to roll on my heart. — Dodie Smith I Capture The Castle

This was a respect in which he paid due homage to the wise old spirit of the late Emiel Kroger, that romantically practical Teuton who used to murmur to Pablo, between sleeping and waking, a sort of incantation that went like his: Sometimes you will find it and other times you won't find it and the times you don't find it are the times when you have got to be careful. Those are the times when you have got to remember that other times you will find it, not this time but the next time, or the time after that, and then you've got to be able to go home without it, yes, those times are the times when you have got to be able to go home without it, go home alone without it ... — Tennessee Williams

Ars Poetica

To gaze at the river made of time and water
And recall that time itself is another river,
To know we cease to be, just like the river,
And that our faces pass away, just like the water.

To feel that waking is another sleep
That dreams it does not sleep and that death,
Which our flesh dreads, is that very death
Of every night, which we call sleep.

To see in the day or in the year a symbol
Of mankind's days and of his years,
To transform the outrage of the years
Into a music, a rumor and a symbol,

To see in death a sleep, and in the sunset
A sad gold, of such is Poetry
Immortal and a pauper. For Poetry
Returns like the dawn and the sunset.

At times in the afternoons a face
Looks at us from the depths of a mirror;
Art must be like that mirror
That reveals to us this face of ours. — Jorge Luis Borges

We called them the Nine-to-Fivers. They lived in accordance with nature, waking and sleeping with the cycle of the sun. Mealtimes, business hours, the world conformed to their schedule. The best markets, the A-list concerts, the street fairs, the banner festivities were on Saturdays and Sundays. They sold out movies, art openings, ceramics classes. They had evenings to waste. The watched the Super Bowl, they watched the Oscars, they made reservations for dinner because they ate dinner at a normal time. They brunched, ruthlessly, and read the Sunday Times on Sundays. They moved in crowds that reinforced their citizenship: crowded museums, crowded subways, crowded bars, the city teeming with extras for the movie they starred in.

They were dining, shopping, consuming, unwinding, expanding while we were working, diminishing, being absorbed into their scenery. That is why we -- the Industry People -- got so greedy when the Nine-to-Fivers went to bed. — Stephanie Danler

To help yourself to cultivate serendipity, you should keep a notebook with you at all times. The moment any idea or observation comes, you note it down. You keep the notebook by your bed, careful to record ideas that come in those moments of fringe awareness - just before falling asleep, or just upon waking. — Robert Greene

There were really funny characteristics about this guy [Richard Nixon], chief of which would be that he seemed to devote about 85 percent of his waking energy to suppressing any sign of his emotional response to anything that was going on around him, and the other 15 percent blurting out those authentic responses in the silliest and most inopportune ways. And he had these smiles that would come at the most inappropriate times - just flashes that there was an inner life screaming to get out. — Harry Shearer

Mikolay took his wand out, touched the cage's lock and said: "Eis Izras" three times.
The door opened at once, unfortunately making lots of noise and waking the humans up.
Mikolay knew a few powerful hexes and he was able to create small flying dragons.
He hoped that he could stop the people, animals, and block the shadows to buy some time. — Magda M. Olchawska

It is quite natural and inevitable that, if we spend sixteen hours daily of our waking lives in thinking about the affairs of the world and five minutes in thinking about God and our souls, this world will seem two hundred times more real to us than God. — William Ralph Inge

Letting go looks different for everyone, I think. Sometimes it's as simple as waking up one day and deciding not to let your past rule you. Other times it's a process; slow moving and painful, like trudging through a forest of thorny vines in hopes that you'll find freedom on the other side. — Allison J. Kennedy

In the early morning as dawn was just beginning to streak through the cabin windows, Jack was stirred awake by the soft sound of slightly off-key humming. He found Mel nestled into the crook of his arm, her breath tickling his chest. She was purring, humming, her lips moving slightly, as though singing. It might've troubled him if her expression had been sad or disturbed. But she was smiling. She snuggled closer, throwing a leg over his. And this sleepy little music, contented, drifted out of her. He could count on one hand the number of times he'd spent the entire night in bed with a woman. And already, he couldn't imagine waking up alone. He pulled her closer knowing he'd never been happier in his life. — Robyn Carr

Worse and somehow embarrassing affair are "ghost" dreams, from which the dreamer only remembers fragments, and very short snippets of events, after which the next morning is left only a vague feeling of a messaged received. If the "ghost" is repeated several times, it is certain that it is a dream which is important for some reason. Then the dreamer, through concentration and auto-suggestion tries to force the dream again, this time a more specific "ghost". The best result are to force oneself to dream again immediately after waking up - called "hooking". If the dream does not produce a "hook" they try and produce a vision during one of the following session by concentration and meditation prior to going to sleep. Such pressure programming is called "anchoring". — Andrzej Sapkowski

For me, even if the path isn't clear, I feel much better today waking up and working hard and heading forward in some direction than being at times where I was before when I was just flipping the same switch every single day and not really moving forward. I don't live my life based on a guarantee, because I don't buy it. Anything can happen. A — Tess Vigeland

The second sort was waking up alone. That was characterised by an awareness that he was alone in bed, alone in life, alone in the world, and it could sometimes fill him with a sweet sensation of freedom, and at other times with a melancholy that could perhaps be called loneliness, but which was perhaps just a glimpse of what anyone's life really is: a journey from the attachment of the umbilical cord to a death where we are finally separated from everything and everyone. A brief glimpse at the moment of awakening before all our defence mechanisms and comforting illusions slot into place again and we can face life in all its unreal glory. Then — Jo Nesbo

It's very weird waking around a corner and being nose to nose with myself on the side of a bus. And Times Square - that's the craziest one. — Allison Williams

Love Is a curious thing. Sometimes it barrels into you, leaves you breathless. Other times, it comes in- to your life, a tentative beam of morning sun sneaking through the blinds, and you think this light isn't possible. The shutters are drawn. Night should linger on. I don't feel like waking. Yet the room comes slowly lit. Sleep slithers away, and at last you can no longer deny the dawning. — Ellen Hopkins

But especially he loved to run in the dim twilight of the summer midnights, listening to the subdued and sleepy murmurs of the forest, reading signs and sounds as a man may read a book, and seeking for the mysterious something that called
called, waking or sleeping, at all times, for him to come. — Jack London

The character of a child is formed largely during the first twelve years of his life. He spends 16 times as many waking hours in the home as in the school, and 126 times as many hours in the home as in the church. Each child is, to a great degree, what he is because of the ever-constant influence of home environment and the careful or neglectful training of parents. Home is the best place for the child to learn self-control, to learn that he must submerge himself for the good of another. It is the best place in which to develop obedience, which nature and society will later demand. — David O. McKay