Rest

Rest is relief from work or activity, usually by sleeping, or by indulging in quiet and relaxation.

Quotes

• In the rest of Nirvana all sorrows surcease:
  Only Buddha can guide to that city of Peace
  Whose inhabitants have the eternal release.
  • William R. Alger, "A Leader to Repose", Poetry of the Orient (1865), p. 101.

• Silken rest
  Tie all thy cares up!
  • Beaumont and Fletcher, Four Plays in One (c. 1608–13; published 1647), scene 4, Triumph of Love.

• The result would inevitably be a state of universal rest and death, if the universe were finite and left to obey existing laws. But it is impossible to conceive a limit to the extent of matter in the universe; and therefore science points rather to an endless progress, through an endless space, of action involving the transformation of potential energy into palpable motion and hence into heat, than to a single finite mechanism, running down like a clock, and stopping for ever.

• William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) (1862). "On the age of the sun’s heat", Macmillan’s Mag., 5, 288–93; PL, 1, 394–68.

• Rest is sweet after strife.
  • Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton), Lucile (1860), Part I, Canto VI, Stanza 25.

• Weariness
  Can snore upon the flint, when resty sloth
  Finds the down pillow hard.
  • William Shakespeare, Cymbeline (1611), Act III, scene 6, line 33.

• Who, with a body filled and vacant mind,
  Gets him to rest, cramm'd with distressful bread.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry V (c. 1599), Act IV, scene 1, line 286.

• Sleepe after toyle, port after stormie seas,
  Ease after warre, death after life, does greatly please.
  • Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene (1589-96), Book I, Canto IX, Stanza 40.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 669-70.

• O! quid solutis est beatius curis!
  Cum mens onus reponit, ac peregrino
  Labore fessi venimus larem ad nostrum
  Desideratoque acquiescimus lecto.
  Hoc est, quod unum est pro laboribus tantis.
  • O, what is more sweet than when the mind, set free from care, lays its burden down; and, when spent with distant travel, we come back to our home, and rest our limbs on the wished-for bed? This, this alone, repays such toils as these!
  • Catullus, Carmina, 31. 7.

• Absence of occupation is not rest;
  A mind quite vacant is a mind distress'd.
  • William Cowper, Retirement, line 623.

• Rest is not quitting the busy career;
  Rest is the fitting of self to its sphere.
  • John S. Dwight, True Rest. (From his translation of Goethe. Main part original).

• Sweet is the pleasure itself cannot spoil.
  Is not true leisure one with true toil?
  • John S. Dwight, True Rest.

• Amidst these restless thoughts this rest I find,
  For those that rest, not here, there's rest behind.
  • Thomas Gataker, B. D. Nat. 4 (Sept., 1574).

• On every mountain height
  Is rest.
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Ein Gleiches.

• Calm on the bosom of thy God,
  Fair spirit! rest thee now!
  • Felicia Hemans, Siege of Valencia, Dirge, scene 9.

• For too much rest itself becomes a pain.
  • Homer, The Odyssey, Book XV, line 429. Pope's translation.

• Anything for a quiet life.
  • Thomas Middleton, title of a play, Anything for a Quiet Life (1621).

• Da requiem; requietus ager bene credita reddit.
  • Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop.
  • Ovid, Ars Amatoria, II. 351.

• Life's race well run,
  Life's work well done,
  Life's victory won,
  Now cometh rest.
  • Dr. Edward Hazen Parker, Funeral Ode on President Garfield. Claimed for him by his brother in Notes and Queries, May 25, 1901, p. 406. Claimed by Mrs. John Mills, for John Mills of Manchester, 1878. Appears in the Life of John Mills with account of origin. See Notes and Queries. Ser. 9, Volume IV, p. 167. Also Volume VII, p. 406.

• Master, I've filled my contract, wrought in Thy many lands;
  Not by my sins wilt Thou judge me, but by the work of my hands.
  Master, I've done Thy bidding, and the light is low in the west,
  And the long, long shift is over … Master, I've earned it—Rest.
  • Robert Service, Song of the Wage Slave.

• Arcum intensio frangit, animum remissio.
  • Straining breaks the bow, and relaxation relieves the mind.
  • Syrus, Maxims.

• And rest, that strengthens unto virtuous deeds,
  Is one with Prayer.
  • Bayard Taylor, Temptation of Hassan Ben Khaled, Stanza 4.

• The camel at the close of day
  Kneels down upon the sandy plain
  To have his burden lifted off
  And rest again.
  • Anna Temple, Kneeling Camel.

• Now is done thy long day's work
  Fold thy palms across thy breast,
  Fold thine arms, turn to thy rest.
  Let them rave.
  • Alfred Tennyson, A Dirge.

• Thou hadst, for weary feet, the gift of rest.
  • William Watson, Wordsworth's Grave, II, Stanza 3.

• Father Abbot, I am come to lay my weary bones among you.
  • Wolsey, at Leicester Abbey (Nov. 26, 1529).