Insanity Vs Sanity Quotes & Sayings

To be sane, he held, was either to be sedated by melancholy or activated by hysteria, two responses which were 'always and equally warranted for those of sound insight'. All others were irrational, merely symptoms of imaginations left idle, of memories out of work. And above these mundane responses, the only elevation allowable, the only valid transcendence, was a sardonic one: a bliss that annihilated the universe with jeers of dark joy, a mindful ecstasy. Anything else in the way of 'mysticism' was a sign of deviation or distraction, and a heresy to the obvious. ("The Medusa") — Thomas Ligotti

We are all insane. But how do you distinguish sanity from insanity, how do you diagnose abnormality in this new world? — Francesca Lia Block

If we were to gain God's perspective, even for a moment, and were to look at the way we go through life accumulating and hoarding and displaying our things, we would have the same feelings of horror and pity that any sane person has when he views people in an asylum endlessly beating their heads against the wall. — Randy Alcorn

There is an area of the mind that could be called unsane, beyond sanity, and yet not insane. Think of a circle with a fine split in it. At one end there's insanity. You go around the circle to sanity, and on the other end of the circle, close to insanity, but not insanity, is unsanity. — Terence McKenna

I was sane once. It was horrible. — Michael R. Fletcher

Just because I'm insane doesn't mean I have to act all crazy. — Diana Rowland

I lie on the floor, washed by nothing and hanging on. I cry at night. I am afraid of hearing voices, or a voice. I have come to the edge, of the land. I could get pushed over. — Margaret Atwood

If we lose our sanity ... We can but howl the lugubrious howl of idiots, the howl of the utterly lost howling their nowhereness. — D.H. Lawrence

The sanity of society is a balance of a thousand insanity's. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

If there is moral insanity," he said in a conspiratorial whisper, "then there may be the reverse, immoral sanity, if you will, that comes upon one suddenly, like a fever. — Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Sometimes the dim veil between sanity and insanity is perception. — Luis Marques

He had found in himself the perfect, undeniable case of insanity. He possessed wisdom, patience, tolerance, truthfulness, loyalty, and moral fortitude - all the qualities that go to make an utter madman. — Machado De Assis

In our national parlance, what's usually meant by the word "maverick" is someone who skirts the edge of sanity
or is so insane as to appear sane
who then does something absolutely insane and yet, after the passage of time, and especially if the maverick's creation yields a profit of any kind, is deemed less and less insane until the maverick worms his or her way into the fibers of history. Then generations grow to envy the ingenuity and courage of the maverick while glossing over the maverick's genetic kookiness. On such shoulders, a country rises. — Michael Paterniti

"There was no public to humiliate him here. They already knew he was a lunatic. They expected it. He could burst into howls of insanity, and they would only smile those gentle smiles at him and wrestle him into the chains." — Laura Kinsale

Love isn't crazy. Love isn't a degree of insanity. Love is sanity at its purest. It forces your soul to make a rational choice - a choice to make another person's happiness your priority, to allow them access to your heart and soul. — Lila Felix

Was it possible that perhaps the most plausible explanation was being offered by someone who anyone with an ounce of sanity would have long ago consigned to the realm of the insane? — Tim Horvath

My feeling is that sanity is actually a pretence, a way we learn to behave. We keep this pretence up because we don't want to be rejected by other people - and being classified insane is to be shut out of the group in a very complete way. — Keith Johnstone

We all disapprove of prostitution; but we do not all approve of purity. The only way to discuss the social evil is to get at once to the social ideal. We can all see the national madness; but what is national sanity? — G.K. Chesterton

Art, in the artist, is proportion, or, a habitual respect to the whole by an eye loving beauty in details. And the wonder and charm of it is the sanity in insanity which it denotes. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you think anyone is sane you just don't know enough about them. — Christopher Moore

Insanity destroys reason, but not wit. — Nathanael Emmons

It was the essence of life to disbelieve in death for one's self, to act as if life would continue forever. And life had to act also as if little issues were big ones. To take a realistic attitude toward life and death meant that one lapsed into unreality. Into insanity. It was ironic that the only way to keep one's sanity was to ignore that one was in an insane world or to act as if the world were sane. — Philip Jose Farmer

What the world calls sanity has led us to the present planetary crisis ... and insanity is the only viable alternative. — Robert Anton Wilson

Sanity and sense becomes a prison. — Darnell Lamont Walker

See what I mean? You gotta be crazy. Ain't no time to be sane. — Robin McLaurin Williams

Once upon a time there was a
Once upon a time there was a
Once upon a time there was a
Stop this. It's undignified. — N.K. Jemisin

Yet mad I am not...and very surely do I not dream. — Edgar Allan Poe

Flirting with madness was one thing; when madness started flirting back, it was time to call the whole thing off. — Rohinton Mistry

[...] nobody anywhere seemed to be willing to ponder for a moment the possibility that a human being who refused to participate, who refused to speak or listen, who failed to 'interact with his peer group', might not be all that crazy, and might even have arrived at an understandable response to the world in which we lived. — Craig Harrison