Best 280 quotes in «sanity quotes» category

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.

We are poor indeed if we are only sane.

We all talk to ourselves. Those we call mad just talk a little louder.

...we have no right to decide off-hand that it is an unnatural pleasure to eat sawdust. A man might be constituted so that he liked it. And so long as his peculiarity doesn't damage or interfere with other people, there's no reason why he shouldn't be left alone. But if it is the man's fixed belief that sawdust eating is essential to human happiness; if he attributes almost everything that happens either to the effects of eating it or not eating it; if he imagines that most of the people he meets are also sawdust-eaters, and above all, if he thinks that the salvation of the world depends entirely upon making laws to compel people to eat sawdust, whether they like it or not, then it is fair to say that his mind is unbalanced on the subject; and that, further, the practice itself, however innocent it may appear, is in that particular case perverse. Sanity consists in the proper equilibrium of ideas in general. That is the only sense in which it is true that genius is connected with insanity.

We rode in silence, I think all of us wondering what was behind the flowery wallpaper our perceptions had always pasted on the unknown. All the things the mind won't allow us to see, to protect our sanity, or our soul, or maybe just to keep the shit out of our pants.

We would not be ashamed of doing some of the things we do in private, if the number of sane human beings who do them in public were large enough.

What an ass you are!” Satan said. “Are you so unobservant as not to have found out that sanity and happiness are an impossible combination? No sane man can be happy, for to him life is real, and he sees what a fearful thing it is.

What a paradox it is, the sane causes more problems than the insane! It is! The real problems of the world do not come from the insane but, the sane!

What I cannot love, I overlook.

What slave work do you want me to do for you?” asked Diogenes when he had been bought. “Be a teacher to my children,” answered Xeniades with the insanity that matched the wisdom of Diogenes.

What she had done over the past year had required an equivalent expenditure of energy to a year-long sprint, and when she thought of it that way it was obviously an unreasonable thing to do. Remaining sane--clinging and grasping at it, seeking to please a propriety constructed by people whose boyfriends had never killed themselves--was in fact the most insane thing she could have done, and anyone properly equipped by the right kind of experience would understand that.

When in love try keeping your heart sane. Once it loses sanity the mind usually follows the course.

Wesley was really the only thing getting me through those weeks. Some part of me was appalled at myself, but what could I say? I needed that escape-that high-more than ever, and he was always just a short drive away. A fix three or four times a week was all it took to keep me sane. God, I was like a fucking druggie. Maybe my sanity was long gone already.

When you are madly in love with someone, even when sanity tries to rescue you, you wrestle it.

Where was the threshold, between the inner world and the outer one? We each move unthinkingly through this gateway every day, we use the passwords of grammar--I say, you say, he and she, it, on the other hand, does not say--paying for the privilege of sanity with common coin, with meanings we've agreed on.

What's the difference between sanity and madness anyway? We all play headgames with ourselves. We all have baggage. We all cope somehow. I'm not sure if I'm mad or sane. I mean, I hold my life together, I pay my bills, I raise my kids. But the world is so polarized and bizarre now that for some people, none of these these things matter if they're not wearing the right shoes or don't have the right credit score or a fancy family car. Some people think the most important things to worry about are handbags and tan lines. Meanwhile, war and crime and poverty unfold all around us, and we ignore it. In that environment, how can we even begin to talk about sanity and madness?

WHO AM I? I have seven heavenly panels Leading up to a pointed sphere I’m multidimensional like a crystal And my center is never clear. I’m an inventor and pioneer. A mentor to my peers. But I'm not as sound as my shell reveals, Because I’m tormented by my fears - That may appear to be grounded But my insides are filled with tears. And the sadness is well-founded, From years and years Of traumatic experiences Compounded In the most demented Atmospheres. I talk but feel like nobody hears. Has reason disappeared? And, God, are you near? This is Giza’s 7th light force And I'm asking you to interfere. I can no longer walk amongst the blind and dead With open eyes and ears. I’m trying to maintain my sanity And to straighten up my veneer As I roll amongst the growing calamities Flowing on Earth’s severely trashed Frontier. Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun (2010)

Who we are usually depends on who is—or who we think is—looking at us.

Writing is a solitary existence, especially if you forget to chat to your friends – sorry, I meant characters.

You aren’t crazy,’ he says. ‘What?’ ‘I’ve known you all your life, and you’ve always tried to hide the parts of yourself that you think are wrong. But nothing is wrong with you.’ Those may be the best words he’s ever said to me.

You'd be surprised how often you doubt your own sanity when you don't understand your own capacities.

You must firmly, absolutely and ruthlessly protect your safety and sanity.

You're crackers.” “Marvelous isn't it? I find it's the only way to be.

When psychotherapy began, it was about the practitioner listening to a patient and interpreting what the patient said, in order to afford the patient insights about his or her psyche. But now we understand that the main curative part of psychotherapy is the relationship itself. It appears not to be relevant which psychology school the practitioner belongs to. What matters is the quality of the relationship and the practitioner's belief in what he or she is offering.

You are not walking slow enough, when taking a walk, if you do not come across as bored or depressed (to the average sane person).

You knew then that this was not any kind of hospital that cured, but a hospital that held, that kept their patients away from the rest of the world, a kind of ark that floated along full of life, but not participating in life.... These people no longer made progress.

You thought I was mad. Perhaps I was. Perhaps I am. It doesn't make for sanity, does it, living with the devil.

You were talking to yourself, Udinaas. You shouldn't do that.' 'That's what I keep telling myself.

Ability to type on a computer terminal is no guarantee of sanity, intelligence, or common sense.

Accuracy of signal and free flow of information define sanity in my epistemology.

A sense of continuity with the rest of creation is a form of religious experience essential to sanity.

and he would probably not agree with my conviction that a sense of humor is the main measure of sanity. But who can say for sure? Humor is a very private thing.

But I like my madness. There is a thrill in it unknown to such sanity as yours. ~ Book 1, Chapter 9.

Chemotherapy tests your sanity.

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.

And the most terrifying question of all may be just how much horror the human mind can stand and still maintain a wakeful, staring, unrelenting sanity.

A sense of humor is the main measure of sanity.

Exercise is an absolute must. Period. That doesn't mean I'm a gym junkie - it just means that I have to get a few days doing something physical a week, even just for my mental sanity.

Despite my vanity, I fear for my sanity.

For whatever deserves to exist deserves also to be known, for knowledge is the image of existence, and things mean and splendid exist alike.

Doubt tempers belief with sanity.

For me, exercise is more mental than physical. I crave it for my sanity. Not just the endorphins, but my energy, confidence, and relaxation are all motivated by it.

...Go somewhere else. Somewhere safer.” Anywhere else. God, please. Or he was likely to do something horribly awful, like surrender his sanity and kiss her.

Having a sense of humor has served me more than it has hurt me - just in the sense that it has allowed me to keep my sanity.

From the alienated starting point of our pseudo-sanity, everything is equivocal. Our sanity is not "true" sanity. Their madness is not "true" madness. The madness of our patients is an artifact of the destruction wreaked on them by us, and by them on themselves.

I don't really trust a sane person.

I have only one goal in golf - to leave it with my sanity.

I feel the need to scream, and even if the scream is not answered, I find my sanity in the echo.

I always made a point of telling the doctors I was sane, and asking to be released, but the more I endeavored to assure them of my sanity, the more they doubted it

I guess a lot of police keep their sanity by developing black humour.