Sanity Quotes

“Sane people did what their neighbors did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch

“Life it too short to deal with crazy people.”
― Karen E. Quinones Miller

“Crazy people made him crazy. It was as if he personally resented them giving into madness - in part, because he so frequently labored to behave sanely. When some people gave up the labor of sanity, or failed at it, Garp suspected them of not trying hard enough. ”
― John Irving, The World According to Garp

“Mais, vrai, J'ai trop pleure! Les aubes sont navrantes. What a sad and beautiful line that is. I'd always hoped that someday I'd be able to use it.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“The reason we feel alienated is because the society is infantile, trivial, and stupid. So the cost of sanity in this society is a certain level of alienation. I grapple with this because I’m a parent. And I think anybody who has children, you come to this realization, you know—what’ll it be? Alienated, cynical intellectual? Or slack-jawed, half-wit consumer of the horseshit being handed down from on high? There is not much choice in there, you see. And we all want our children to be well adjusted; unfortunately, there’s nothing to be well adjusted to!”
― Terence McKenna

“There is, incidentally, no way of talking about cats that enables one to come off as a sane person.”
― Dan Greenberg

“People don't deserve the restraint we show by not going into delirium in front of them.”
― Louis-Ferdinand Celine

“See what I mean? You gotta be crazy. Ain't no time to be sane.”
― Robin McLaurim Williams

“Gender is not sane. It's not sane to call a rainbow black and white.”
― Kate Bornstein

“We formed the fellowship of the ring when we should've all just gone on medication”
― Nancy Werlin, Impossible

“I say, thirteen is too many dogs for good mental health. Five is pretty much the limit. More than five dogs and you forfeit your right to call yourself entirely sane.
Even if the dogs are small.”
― E. Lockhart, The Boyfriend List: 15 Guys, 11 Shrink Appointments, 4 Ceramic Frogs and Me, Ruby Oliver

“When people have invested their identities into clichés, the only counter argument they have is 'being offended'.”
― Stefan Molyneux

“Here lies a gentleman bold
Who was so very brave
He went to lengths untold,
And on the brink of the grave
Death had on him no hold.
By the world he set small store--
He frightened it to the core--
Yet somehow, by Fate's plan,
Though he'd lived a crazy man,
When he died he was sane once more.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

“... the reason life works at all is that not everyone in your tribe is nuts on the same day. [pp. 65-66]”
― Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

“Art has always been the raft onto which we climb to save our sanity. I don't see a different purpose for it now.”
― Dorothea Tanning

“Most people believe most of the things they believe only because they believe that most people believe them.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Perfect sanity is a myth propagated by straitjacket salesmen.”
― Rebecca McKinsey

“No man is sane who does not know how to be insane on the proper occasions."
Henry Ward Beecher”
― Henry Ward Beecher

“We are all a little schizophrenic. Each of us has three different people living inside us every day—who you were, who you are and who you will become. The road to sanity is to recognize those identities, in order to know who you are today.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“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, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

“One secret of life is that the reason life works at all is that not everyone in your tribe is nuts on the same day. Another secret is that laughter is carbonated holiness”
― Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

“Got us a full moon too coming tomorrow night. Just make things a whole lot worse. All we need.
- Why is that?
- What’s that, Marshal?
- The full moon. You think it makes people crazy?
- I know it does.- Found a wrinkle in one of the pages and used his index finger to smooth it out.
- How come?
- Well, you think about it—the moon affects the tide, right?
- Sure.
- Has some sort of magnet effect or something on water.
- I’ll buy that.
- Human brain,- Trey said, - is over fifty percent water.
- No kidding?
- No kidding. You figure ol’ Mr. Moon can jerk the ocean around, think what it can do to the head.”
― Dennis Lehane, Shutter Island

“Fat realized that one of two possibilities existed and only two; either Dr. Stone was totally insane – not just insane but totally so – or else in an artful, professional fashion he had gotten Fat to talk; he had drawn Fat out and now knew that Fat was totally insane.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“We outsource the problem of sanity. People remain mentally healthy not merely because of the integrity of their own minds, but because they are constantly being reminded how to think, act, and speak by those around them.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules For Life

“Our rocky ledge overlooking the valley. Perhaps a little less green than usual, but the blackberry bushes hang heavy with fruit. Here began countless days of hunting and snaring, fishing and gathering, roaming together through the woods, unloading our thoughts while we filled our game bags. This was the doorway to both sustenance and sanity. And we were each other's key.”
― Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay

“Most sane human beings who are over the age of six usually act or react not as per what they genuinely feel or really think but in accordance with the expectations of those around them.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, The Use and Misuse of Children

“Everybody knows there is no such thing as normal. There is no black-and-white definition of normal. Normal is subjective. There's only a messy, inconsistent, silly, hopeful version of how we feel most at home in our lives.”
― Tori Spelling, sTORI Telling

“The "pathology of normalcy" rarely deteriorates to graver forms of mental illness because society produces the antidote against such deterioration. When pathological processes become socially patterned, they lose their individual character. On the contrary, the sick individual finds himself at home with all other similarly sick individuals. The whole culture is geared to this kind of pathology and arranged the means to give satisfactions which fit the pathology. The result is that the average individual does not experience the separateness and isolation the fully schizophrenic person feels. He feels at ease among those who suffer from the same deformation, in fact, it is the fully sane person who feels isolated in the insane society - and he may suffer so much from the incapacity to communicate that it is he who may become psychotic.”
― Erich Fromm, The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness

“You're a very odd man," said Bert.

"I get that more often than you'd think," replied Charles.”
― James A. Owen, The Search for the Red Dragon

“We want a few mad people now. See where the sane ones have landed us!”
― George Bernard Shaw, Saint Joan