Sanity Quotes

“قال لنفسه إنه لا نجاة له إلا بالجنون. الجنون وحده هو الذي يتسع للإيمان والكفر، للمجد والخزي، للحب والخداع، للصدق والكذب، أما العقل فكيف يتحمل هذه الحياة الغريبة؟ كيف يشيم ألق النجوم وهو مغروس حتى قمة رأسه في الوحل؟!”
― Naguib Mahfouz, حضرة المحترم

“The concept of dreaming is known to the waking mind but to the dreamer there is no waking, no real world, no sanity; there is only the screaming bedlam of sleep.”
― Stephen King, Rose Madder

“It isn't for the moment you are struck that you need courage, but for that long uphill climb back to sanity and faith and security.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh

“Maybe he’s normal and we’re the crazy ones. Maybe everyone should talk to themselves. Maybe we’re all just afraid of what we’d say.”
― Katie Kacvinsky, Awaken

“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

“Well, Daddy, I used to believe that artists went crazy in the process of creating the beautiful works of art that kept society sane. Nowadays, though, artists make intentionally ugly art that’s only supposed to reflect society rather than inspire it. So I guess we’re all loony together now, loony rats in the shithouse of commercialism.”
― Tom Robbins, Skinny Legs and All

“We have all got to exert ourselves a little to keep sane, and call things by the same names as other people call them by.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch

“All sanity depends on this: that it should be a delight to feel the roughness of a carpet under smooth soles, a delight to feel heat strike the skin, a delight to stand upright, knowing the bones are moving easily under the flesh.”
― Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook

“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, Straight Boy

“You can't compare men or women with mental disorders to the normal expectations of men and women in without mental orders. Your dealing with symptoms and until you understand that you will always try to find sane explanations among insane behaviors. You will always have unreachable standards and disappointments. If you want to survive in a marriage to someone that has a disorder you have to judge their actions from a place of realistic expectations in regards to that person's upbringing and diagnosis.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“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 José Farmer

“Nobody sane wants to disappoint himself intentionally.”
― Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity

“But maybe that isn't possible. Maybe the mind of the majority is always the healthy mind, simply by virtue of its numbers. Maybe it's the definition of madness to believe I'm right and everyone else if wrong, to find my thoughts rational and reasonable when almost the entire world finds them damaged and flawed.”
― Stacey Jay, Of Beast and Beauty

“Temporary Insanity had come a-knocking and I had shouted "Come on in the door is open." Luckily, Reality had come unexpectedly and found Temporary Insanity roaming the corridors of my mind unchecked, going into rooms, opening cupboards, reading my letters, looking in my underwear drawer, that kind of thing. Reality had run and got Sanity. And after a tussle, they both had managed to throw out Temporary Insanity and slam the door in his face. Temporary Insanity now lay on the gravel in the driveway of my mind, panting and furious, shouting, "She invited me in, you know. She asked me in. She wanted me there.”
― Marian Keyes, Watermelon

“The conundrum of sanity and insanity, is that it serves us to be some of each. It's really only a question of degrees. You cannot possibly be 100% adjusted and live in this INSANE world. A little bit of crazy is a coping skill.”
― Kelli Jae Baeli, Too Much World

“People who're nuts never doubt their own sanity. (The Killer's Cousin)”
― Nancy Werlin

“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.”
― Anne Spollen, The Shape of Water

“As long as you doubt your sanity, you can't be insane.”
― Miles Keaton Andrew

“You're crackers.”

“Marvelous isn't it? I find it's the only way to be.”
― Paul Magrs, Doctor Who: Hornets' Nest, Part 1 - The Stuff of Nightmares

“I really believe," said Wanda thoughtfully,"that your madness is nothing but a demonic, unsatisfied sensuality. Our unnatural way of life must generate such illnesses. Were you less virtuous, you would be completely sane.”
― Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

“They say isolation drives you crazy. Sure it does - when you can't get enough of it.”
― Anneli Rufus

“Longevity-and sanity. Eccentric old ladies on Harleys I can deal with.”
― Alison Larkin, The English American

“As long as she could remember who she was, she was okay. She wouldn't go crazy. At least not today.”
― Melissa de la Cruz, The Van Alen Legacy

“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.”
― Lauren DeStefano, Perfect Ruin

“I have treated many artists. There are among them many neurotics, so many that one finally comes to believe that one cannot be an artist without being neurotic. Again I found in them that inner conflict which is characteristic of modern man: the conflict between a right intuition (namely, that their vocation has fundamental importance for the destiny of humanity) and a false idea (namely, that art is superfluous luxury).”
― Paul Tournier, The Whole Person in a Broken World

“The twentieth century has built up a powerful set of intellectual shortcuts and devices that help us defend ourselves against moments when clouds suddenly appear to think.”
― Charles Baxter, Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction

“I wasn't convinced I was crazy, though I feared I was. Some people say that having any conscious opinion on the matter is a mark of sanity, but I'm not sure that's true. I still think about it. I'll always have to think about it.”
― Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted

“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!”
― Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

“Attending a funeral would leave the average person insane, if they truly believed that sooner or later they are also going to die.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“To be physically astute and psychologically tended, yet morally insulated and conceptually blind--is to be crazy, not healthy.”
― Michael Ventura, Letters at 3am