Martin Luther — "Sleep is a most excellent thing, for it makes us forget all the miseries of life…"
Sleep is a most excellent thing, for it makes us forget all the miseries of life.
Get This Quote & Author's Image Illustrated On:
Click any product to generate a realistic preview. Up to 3 at a time.
* Initial load can take up to 90 seconds — revising the preview in another color is nearly instant.
Kitchen
Apparel
Other
More from Martin Luther
"Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also; The body they may kill: God's truth abideth still, His kingdom is forever."
"We are saved by faith alone, but the faith that saves is never alone."
"It is enough to know simply that there is a certain inscrutable will in God, and as to what, why, and how far it wills, that is something we have no right whatever to inquire into, hanker after, care …"
"Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved."
"I resist the devil, and often it is with a fart that I chase him away. When he tempts me with silly sins I say, 'Devil, yesterday I broke wind too. Have you written it down on your list?'"
About Martin Luther (1483-1546)
German theologian whose 95 Theses (1517) launched the Protestant Reformation and broke the Catholic Church's monopoly on Western Christianity. Closely associated with Philipp Melanchthon (Lutheran systematizer) and John Calvin (later Reformer who built on Luther's break). For an intellectual contrast, see Pope Leo X, Renaissance pope (1513-1521) — Leo X's indulgence sales triggered Luther's break and Leo excommunicated him in 1521 — Luther's entire Reformation is structured as a direct answer to the indulgence-funded Vatican Leo represented.
Verification
Unverifiable
Found in 1 providers: gemini
1 source checked
Understanding this quote
What it means
Sleep is one of life's greatest gifts because it temporarily erases our worries, pains, and hardships. When we're unconscious, we don't feel grief, stress, physical discomfort, or emotional burdens. For those few hours, the mind escapes suffering and finds peace. The quote frames rest not merely as biological necessity but as a merciful pause from existence itself, a nightly reprieve that resets our capacity to face waking struggles.
Relevance to Martin Luther
Luther suffered chronic ailments including kidney stones, constipation, vertigo, and severe depressive episodes he called Anfechtungen, dark spiritual assaults where he felt abandoned by God. He also endured excommunication, an imperial death warrant, and years of hiding. For a man battling constant physical pain and psychological torment while reshaping Christianity, sleep genuinely offered rare relief from both bodily suffering and the crushing weight of theological warfare.
The era
Early sixteenth-century Europe was brutal: plague recurred regularly, infant mortality was catastrophic, peasant wars erupted, and religious conflict killed thousands. Medicine was primitive, chronic pain untreatable, and anxiety about damnation pervasive. Luther's 1517 Ninety-Five Theses ignited decades of violent upheaval across the Holy Roman Empire. In an age without painkillers, therapy, or social safety nets, sleep was genuinely one of few accessible escapes from lives saturated with physical hardship and existential dread.
AI-generated insights based on extensive research and information for context. Factual errors? Email [email protected].