Quotes & Sayings About Sanity

We all practice self-deception to a degree; no man can handle complete honesty without being cut at each turn. There's not enough room in a man's head for sanity alongside each grief, each worry, each terror that he owns. I'm well used to burying such things in a dark cellar and moving on. — Mark Lawrence

Our sanity depends essentially on a narrowness of vision
the ability to select the elements vital to survival, while ignoring the great truths. — Josephine Hart

Sometimes doing what's necessary seems crazy but it's the highest form of sanity. — Shane Kuhn

I think people are going to return to sanity when they see how ridiculous many of these charges are, and how the predictions are not borne out. — Dixie Lee Ray

I'm not so sure he's mad, Father. Just a little devious in his sanity. — Walter M. Miller Jr.

Once people get hung up on theology, they've lost sanity forever. More people have been killed in the name of Jesus Christ than any other name in the history of the world. — Gore Vidal

The world is, for the most part, a collective madhouse, and practically everyone, however "normal" his facade, is faking sanity. — John Astin

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

Liza made a sudden decision. "I'll be your friend," she announced. she had trouble speaking the words but was glad once she had spoken them. She did not really want to be friends with an enormous rat of questionable sanity, but it seemed the right thing to say. — Lauren Oliver

To remain sane in a mad world is the true victory. — Marty Rubin

Human nature simply cannot subsist without a hope and aim of some kind; as the sanity of the Old Testament truly said, where there is no vision the people perish. But it is precisely because an ideal is necessary to man that the man without ideals is in permanent danger of fanaticism. — G.K. Chesterton

I was accorded the opportunity to learn by failing - albeit at the cost of a few honourable teachers' sanity - and now I realise what a rare and incredible luxury that is. — Arabella Weir

The human mind is a product of the Pleistocene age, shaped by wildness that has all but disappeared. If we complete the destruction of nature, we will have succeeded in cutting ourselves off from the source of sanity itself. Hermetically sealed amidst our creations and bereft of those of the
Creation, the world then will reflect only the demented image of the mind imprisoned within itself. Can the mind doting on itself and its creations be sane? — Edward O. Wilson

One should make the best choice possible given the circumstances, and then avoid second-guessing for the sake of one's own sanity. — Lisa Kleypas

To make sense of plastic on the mind and to develop a resistance to the perverse patterns that will otherwise run our world for us, I believe an activity of this sort - by way of a blog, an especially redemptive conversation with a coworker, a water coloring or a playlist - is absolutely crucial. It can be done. And when we do it, we begin to see things we didn't know. We have to try to make sense. We have to make time for artful analysis, which is the way we clear a space for the possibility of sanity. It is an outlet for honesty. — David Dark

It's better to be crazy on one point and happy, than sane on all points and unhappy. — Margaret Deland

Where's your sense of adventure?"
"Off on a beach somewhere with your sanity? — Rachel Caine

Long before a thermonuclear war can come about, we have had to lay waste our own sanity. We begin with the children. It is imperative to catch them in time. Without the most thorough and rapid brainwashing their dirty minds would see through our dirty tricks. Children are not yet fools, but we shall turn them into imbeciles like ourselves, with high I.Q.s if possible. — R.D. Laing

Motherhood is a constant battle of wanting to go to bed early so you can catch up on sleep and wanting to stay awake so you can enjoy some peace and sanity! — Tanya Masse

There are things we want, and things we may have ... Sanity lies in knowing the difference. — Karen Chance

No carelessness in your actions. No confusion in your words. No imprecision in your thoughts. No retreating into your own soul, or trying to escape it. No overactivity. They kill you, cut you with knives, shower you with curses. And that somehow cuts your mind off from clearness, and sanity, and self-control, and justice? A man standing by a spring of clear, sweet water and cursing it. While the fresh water keeps on bubbling up. He can shovel mud into it, or dung, and the stream will carry it away, wash itself clean, remain unstained. To have that. Not a cistern but a perpetual spring. How? By working to win your freedom. Hour by hour. Through patience, honesty, humility. — Marcus Aurelius

He pulled the door open and saw a Checker cab sitting out there, an ambassador from the land of sanity. — Stephen King

destroy me. love me. warp my image in photoshop with filter presets


push me off the brink of sanity. edit my sister sister fan fiction without my permish — Heiko Julien

The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane. — Marcus Aurelius

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

Every isolated passion, is, in isolation, insane; sanity may be defined as synthesis of insanities. Every dominant passion generates a dominant fear, the fear of its non-fulfillment. Every dominant fear generates a nightmare, sometimes in form of explicit and conscious fanaticism, sometimes in paralyzing timidity, sometimes in an unconscious or subconscious terror which finds expression only in dreams. The man who wishes to preserve sanity in a dangerous world should summon in his own mind a parliament of fears, in which each in turn is voted absurd by all the others. — Bertrand Russell

Nevertheless, when it is your lot to have to endure something that is (or seems to you) worse than the ordinary lot of mankind, Spinoza's principle of thinking about the whole, or at any rate about larger matters than your own grief, is a useful one. There are even times when it is comforting to reflect that human life, with all that is contains of evil and suffering, is an infinitesimal part of the life of the universe. Such reflections may not suffice to constitute a religion, but in a painful world they are a help towards sanity and an antidote to the paralysis of utter despair. - about Spinoza — Bertrand Russell

Today he was being reminded yet again of the obvious: The world doesn't give even the slightest damn about us or our petty problems. We never quite get that, do we? Our lives have been shattered - shouldn't the rest of us take notice? But no. To the outside world, Adam looked the same, acted the same, felt the same. We get mad at someone for cutting us off in traffic or for taking too long to order at Starbucks or for not responding exactly as we see fit, and we have no idea that behind their facade, they may be dealing with some industrial-strength shit. Their lives may be in pieces. They may be in the midst of incalculable tragedy and turmoil, and they may be hanging on to their sanity by a thread. — Harlan Coben

But Hannah's friend didn't understand the volatile balancing act between art and sanity, that the act of creation was like walking a tightrope during an earthquake. She didn't understand Hannah's stupid need for validation, or that the size of the audience increased the stakes and multiplied the fear. She didn't understand that creativity was dangerous, that, yes, there were some people who could stand before a canvas, paint a sunset that would bring the world to its knees, and return to their loved ones as a complete person who didn't hurt, didn't cry, didn't spill blood to appease the host of fickle muses. But Hannah did. Hannah's best ideas - sometimes her only ideas - were buried beneath the skin. — Jake Vander Ark

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

Many scientists have been drawn to Buddhism out of a sense that the Western tradition has delivered an impoverished conception of basic, human sanity. In the West, if you speak to yourself out loud all day long, you are considered crazy. But speaking to yourself silently - thinking incessantly - is considered perfectly normal. — Sam Harris

Doesn't it make you wonder about your own sexual identity, not to mention your sanity, that the two women you love are, respectively, a virtual woman existing only in the transient ansible connections between computers and a woman whose soul is in fact that of a man who is the husband of your mother? — Orson Scott Card

Those dear to me took fright for my safety and, perhaps, my sanity. Kings, they explained, do not walk like beggars for hundreds of miles. My response was that if a beggar could managed the feat, then why not a king? Did they think me less capable than a beggar?
Sometimes I think that I am. The beggar knows much that the king can only guess. And yet who draws up the codes for begging ordinances? Often I wonder what my experience in life
my easy life following the Desolation, and my current level of comfort
has given me of any true experience to use in making laws. If we had to rely on what we knew, kings would only be of use in creating laws regarding the proper heating of tea and the cushioning of thrones. — Brandon Sanderson

[While voicing cartoons] you have to lose your sanity and inhibitions and any kind of dignity and just throw yourself around a bit. — Benedict Cumberbatch

Honestly...this is why I write.
I write to get the happy ending I sometimes feel is eluding me.
I write for my sanity. — Debora Dennis

Your madness is silent and your sanity makes a racket. — C.D. Reiss

Some of us walk around with a necklace of hope, an armour of sanity, but at the end of the day, they always come off. We reveal our naked, vulnerable, real selves. — Karen Quan

Sanity is only that which is within the frame of reference of conventional thought. — Erich Fromm

What is this thing of intangible substance that wreaks consequential havoc on our lives? What is this sensitive thread that runs through heart and mind, and when given the slightest tremor grasps hold of all sanity, dragging the afflicted down to insufferable depths or flinging him weightless to euphoric heights? What is this magic we would deem imagination, fantasy, or pretend if not for the evidence of power manifest by human consequences? Effortlessly controlling us, it affects the infected in an instant. It takes but one word, one thought, one act to become immersed.
To stop it is hopeless.
To stifle it, demanding.
To think to master it is both improbable and pretentious.
What is this invisible hand that blinds our eyes and reigns hearts with a string? It is nature's drug and poison we call emotion. — Richelle E. Goodrich

I won't say that writing tamed the Black Beast. It soothed him, though, enough so he agreed simply to occupy a corner of my mind ... Gradually, I redirected my focus and skills towards causes much closer to my own heart: writing and mental health advocacy.
[ ... ]
I felt so good at times that I even wondered, was I still bipolar? In my community work, I saw so many people who were much worse off than I was - deep in their disease in a way I no longer seemed to be. I knew that this often happens to manic-depressives: the brain forgets the ravages of the illness they way a woman forgets the pains of childbirth. You have to, to survive. But it's always a dangerous place to be, because you inevitably start to question the need for medication, therapy, and all the other rigorous stopgaps of sanity so carefully put into place to prevent another episode. — Terri Cheney

Sanity:
You can go through your whole life telling yourself that life is logical, life is prosaic, life is sane. Above all, sane. And I think it is. I've had a lot of time to think about that ...
I think; therefore I am. There are hairs on my face; therefore I shave. My wife and child have been critically injured in a car crash; therefore I pray. It's all logical, it's all sane.
... there's a Mr. Hyde for every happy Jekyll face, a dark face on the other side of the mirror ... You turn the mirror sideways and see your face reflected with a sinister left-hand twist, half mad and half sane.
... No one looks at that side unless they have to, and I can understand that.
... I'm the sane one. — Richard Bachman

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

He said: "It's possible to fight intolerance, stupidity and fanaticism when they come separately. When you get all three together it's probably wiser to get out, if only to preserve your sanity." They — P.D. James

Sanity and sense becomes a prison. — Darnell Lamont Walker

If the plural for marble, marbles, is slang for sanity, then what does it mean to get lost in a room of marble statues? — Bridgette Bates

Crazy by definition is
Knowing that true sanity is
A figment of the educated mind — Caleb Warta

Wherever she sought solitude, she was never alone. Suddenly that wasn't a bad thing. There was safety in numbers greater than one and sanity in knowing that everyone healed. If everyone has scars, there are two choices. Bleed to death slowly or stitch yourself together. — Nicki Salcedo

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

All you ought to be worrying about now is order (not about how to impose it on chaos, wish is the opposite of art, but about how to bring it out of chaos, which is art itself). And your worrying about this ought not to be a tortured thing - God knows there's enough torture growing wild in everybody's life so that nobody in his right mind needs to cultivate it - but a serene thing. Don't, in other words, jazz yourself up into a nervous wreck. Be quiet, be as sane as you can, and let the work come out of you. If it's to come, it will; if it's not, no amount of self-induced frenzy is going to hep it along.
One final piece of solemn, teacherly advice, and I do mean this: Try to like yourself a little better. — Blake Bailey

Sanity is overrated. — Cynthia Hand

From time to time, I do consider that I might be mad. Like any self-respecting lunatic, however, I am always quick to dismiss any doubts about my sanity. — Dean Koontz

You would not make the act of submission which is the price of sanity. — George Orwell

Unkindness involves a failure of the imagination so acute that it threatens not just our happiness but our sanity. Caring — Adam Phillips

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality. — Shirley Jackson

Studies show that neurotic and psychiatric disorders are more common among those who attempt to keep conscious control of life and suppress its unwelcome quirks. Sanity, paradoxically, may lie in accepting that you are not in control. — Michael Brooks

That she had so completely recovered her sanity was a source of sadness to her. One should never be cured of one's passion. — Marguerite Duras

If there was one certain victim in all this, it was my sanity. My — Skye Warren

Sometimes the strongest thing you will ever do will be to let go of someone. It will be painful, you will suffer guilt, and you will second-guess yourself, but for your own sanity and quality of life, there will come a time where you hand them to God, with your love, and trust Him to be who and what He is. May our Lord comfort you. — Lee Goff

You don't even know what your mere presence does to me. You're my sanity. — Linda Kage

Many psychiatrists and psychologists refuse to entertain the idea that society as a whole may be lacking in sanity. They hold that the problem of mental health in a society is only that of the number of 'unadjusted' individuals, and not of a possible unadjustment of the culture itself. — Erich Fromm

Sometimes being a MOM is like a good
ol' country song! You lose your sleep, you lose your hair, you lose your patience, you lose your energy, you lose your memory AND you lose your SANITY! But you DO IT all for LOVE! — Tanya Masse

That's an incredibly depressing thought," I said "that if you're in a room and at one end lies madness and at the other end lies sanity it is human nature to veer towards the madness end. — Jon Ronson

If I do a certain number of ads, I have to do a personal project in between, just for my own sanity. I still consider myself a punk-rock kid. — Aaron Ruell

Sanity is an illusion caused by alcohol deficiency. — N. F. Simpson

At some point, you have to make the decision between losing the person you love and your own sanity. — Lucinda Riley

Computers no longer interface with humans
they interact, and the interaction will become steadily deeper, more subtle, and more crucial to our collective sanity and ultimate survival. — Alan Cooper

Sometimes becoming drug free has less to do with addiction and more to do with sanity. — Shane Koyczan

Fundamental security comes from realizing that you have broken through something. You reflect back and realize that you used to be extraordinarily paranoid and neurotic, watching each step you made, thinking you might lose your sanity, that situations were always threatening in some way. Now you are free of all those fears and preconceptions. You discover that you have something to give rather than having to demand from others, having to grasp all the time. For the first time, you are a rich person, you contain basic sanity. You have something to offer, you are able to work with your fellow sentient beings, you do not have to reassure yourself anymore. Reassurance implies a mentality of poverty--you are checking yourself, "Do I have it? How could I do it?" But the bodhisattva's delight in his richness is based upon experience rather than theory or wishful thinking. It is so, directly, fundamentally. He is fundamentally rich and so can delight in generosity. — Chogyam Trungpa

There is no scarier chasm of darkness than the human mind. — Roseanne Barr

writing is a sanity-saving companion for people in times of grief, loss, illness, and other accidents of fate. — William Zinsser

There's no such thing as normal. There is no definition of normal. Normal is subjective. You can't - and shouldn't - force yourself to want something 'normal' and stop wanting what you truly want. It's a sure way to make your life miserable. — Alessandra Hazard

My job is to ensure the sanctity of this House. Ensuring the sanity of its Master seemed like a good start. — Chloe Neill

Sanity is to be found in accurate honesty to oneself. — David Bain

The pathologized images have moved the soul in several ways: we are afraid; we feel vulnerable and in danger; our very physical sustance and sanity appear to be menaced; we want to prevent or rectify. Especially this last seizes us. We feel protective, impelled to correct, straighten, repair. For we have confused something sick with something wrong. [ ... ]
affliction reaches us partly through the guilt it brings. Guilt belongs to the experiences of deviation, the the sense of being off, failing, 'missing the mark'. [ ... ]
However the true missing of the mark is taking the guilt literally, where failings becomes faults to be set right. This places the guilt on the shoulders of the ego who 'should not' have failed. Then pathologizing reinforces the ego's style and guilt serves a secondary gain, increasing the ego's sense of importance: ego becomes superego, drivenly busy with repairing wrongs. A guilty ego is no less egocentric than a proud one. — James Hillman

I think that the most important reason to come out is your own sanity; that's above everything else. I think that applies whether you're a public figure or not. The closet is a terrible place to be for the person who's in it. — Christopher Rice

A good friend is a connection to life - a tie to the past, a road to the future, the key to sanity in a totally insane world. — Lois Wyse

Clothes? sufficient Keys? found 'em Coffee cup? full Sanity? sanity? - T-SHIRT — Darynda Jones

I was treading the thin line of his patience while falling off the thin line of my sanity — C.J. Roberts

I remain still and stare blankly at the profile of my handsome, troubled man and wonder whether I could be classed as troubled too, now. My sanity is certainly questionable, but I'm sane enough to admit that. I was a normal, sound-minded girl. I definitely don't qualify for that any more. — Jodi Ellen Malpas

Well, sanity, I suppose, is getting people to see the world your way. — Paul Merton

Sanity was statistical. It was merely a question of learning to think as they thought. — George Orwell

She surrounded herself with books at work and at home. Her living space was a testament to her first and abiding love with shelves jammed with books tables crowded with them. She saw them not only as knowledge entertainment comfort even sanity but as a kind of artful decoration. — Nora Roberts

He'd sacrifice even his sanity for her. If it came down to it, he'd let her break his heart.
Because he loved her. — Becky Wade

Sanity, it would seem, was a dangerously contagious disease. — H. Beam Piper

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

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

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.
Most people I meet are secretly convinced that they're a little crazier than the average person. People understand the energy necessary to maintain their own shields, but not the energy expended by other people. They understand that their own sanity is a performance, but when confronted by other people they confuse the person with the role.
Sanity has nothing directly to do with the way you think. Its a matter of presenting yourself as safe. — Keith Johnstone

She is both my madness and my sanity.

She is the calm quiet eye of my storm.

She is the whisper in the maddening din.

She is a rare mix of dirty mind, exquisite beauty, curves that make your hands ache, deep heart and mischief that you want for your own.

She is peace in the shape of a woman. — Kirk Diedrich

No temporary chaos is worth your sanity. Just knowing that whatever happens, it happens to the best of them too. — Nas

I really believe, or want to believe, really I am nuts, otherwise I'll never be sane. — Allen Ginsberg

You gonna deal with Mr. Hot and Moody?"
"Not sure. I may just pull out my e-reader."
He nodded. "Probably safer for your sanity. — Sylvia Day

For a lot of kids, the Boys and Girls Club is really a sanctuary, an oasis of sanity and safety for them because their home life is so tragic. Some of these kids have only one parent, and that one is addicted to drugs. — Judge Reinhold

Accuracy of signal and free flow of information define sanity in my epistemology. — Robert Anton Wilson

Does what happened keep you from acting with justice, generosity, self-control, sanity, prudence, honesty, humility, straightforwardness? Nope. Then get back to work! Subconsciously, we should be constantly asking ourselves this question: Do I need to freak out about this? — Ryan Holiday

[...] 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

August in sub-Saharan Los Angeles is one of the great and awful tests of one's endurance, sanity and stamina. — Henry Rollins

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

Noise is an imposition on sanity, and we live in very noisy times. — Joan Baez

I love what I do, and I love doing it, and I love getting better at it. I just am not willing to risk ... Much ... to go on to the next level. I don't want to risk my personal sanity or happiness or my family or the love of my life. — Summer Phoenix

I am charged with guarding sanity, not morality. If you want to stay together, do not split. If you want peace, do not start wars. If you want to avoid genocide, do not wipe out an alien species. But if these are not your highest values, then you may well end up sacrificing them. What you are willing to trade off, may end up traded away - be you warned! But if that is acceptable to you, then so be it. — Eliezer Yudkowsky