Careful Words

sleeping (n.)

sleeping (adj.)

Be noble! and the nobleness that lies

In other men, sleeping but never dead,

Will rise in majesty to meet thine own.

James Russell Lowell (1819-1891): Sonnet iv.

  Jock, when ye hae naething else to do, ye may be aye sticking in a tree; it will be growing, Jock, when ye 're sleeping.

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832): The Heart of Midlothian. Chap. viii.

Our very hopes belied our fears,

Our fears our hopes belied;

We thought her dying when she slept,

And sleeping when she died.

Thomas Hood (1798-1845): The Death-Bed.

But, soft! methinks I scent the morning air;

Brief let me be. Sleeping within my orchard,

My custom always of the afternoon.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act i. Sc. 5.