Be Sane Quotes

Yossarian makes any attempts to excuse himself from the perilous missions then he is caught in Catch-22: if he flies he is crazy, and doesn't have to; but if he doesn't want to he must be sane and has to. That's some catch ... ~ Joseph Heller

nobody ever said smart people had to be sane, and nobody ever said that intelligence has to be paired with wisdom. ~ Yasmine Galenorn

IF YOU'RE CRAZY, I DON'T WANT TO BE SANE.
-Colin ~ K. Lars

Finally, I would like to assure my many Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, and Muslim friends that I am sincerely happy that the religion which Chance has given you has contributed to your peace of mind (and often, as Western medical science now reluctantly admits, to your physical well-being). Perhaps it is better to be un-sane and happy, than sane and un-happy. But it is best of all to be sane and happy. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

You've a very important, early decision to make in your life: are you going to be alone, or are you going to be with somebody else? Are you going to be sane, or not lonely? A couple is a strange thing; it's an organism that's half as intelligent as the most intelligent member. And you both know who it is. ~ Dylan Moran

You're too straight, you just don't understand these guys' priorities. They don't expect any law or justice from the U.S. government. They don't even expect the government to be sane. The whole federal system just detached itself from them and floated off into deep space. They think of the government as something like bad weather. It's something you just endure. ~ Bruce Sterling

The cases described in this section (The Fear of Being) may seem extreme, but I have become convinced that they are not as uncommon as one would think. Beneath the seemingly rational exterior of our lives is a fear of insanity. We dare not question the values by which we live or rebel against the roles we play for fear of putting our sanity into doubt. We are like the inmates of a mental institution who must accept its inhumanity and insensitivity as caring and knowledgeableness if they hope to be regarded as sane enough to leave. The question who is sane and who is crazy was the theme of the novel One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. The question, what is sanity? was clearly asked in the play Equus.
The idea that much of what we do is insane and that if we want to be sane, we must let ourselves go crazy has been strongly advanced by R.D. Laing. In the preface to the Pelican edition of his book The Divided Self, Laing writes: "In the context of our present pervasive madness that we call normality, sanity, freedom, all of our frames of reference are ambiguous and equivocal." And in the same preface: "Thus I would wish to emphasize that our 'normal' 'adjusted' state is too often the abdication of ecstasy, the betrayal of our true potentialities; that many of us are only too successful in acquiring a false self to adapt to false realities."
Wilhelm Reich had a somewhat similar view of present-day human behavior. Thus Reich says, "Homo normalis blocks off entirely the perce ~ Alexander Lowen

Nothing," said Richard. "I really don't want anything. Nothing at all." And then he realized how true that was; and how dreadful a thing it had become. "Have you ever got everything you ever wanted? And then realized it wasn't what you wanted at all?" "Can't say that I have," she said, picking the grit from the corner of her eyes. "I thought I wanted this," said Richard. "I thought I wanted a nice normal life. I mean, maybe I am crazy. I mean, maybe. But if this is all there is, then I don't want to be sane. You know? ~ Neil Gaiman

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

I am by turns a petulant adolescent and a mature man, a melancholy loner and a wit telling actors their trade. I cannot decide whether I'm a philosopher or a moping teenager, a poet or a murderer, a procrastinator or a man of action. I might be truly mad or sane pretending to be mad or even mad pretending to be sane. ~ Jasper Fforde

If there is a true universal mind, must it be sane? ~ Charles Fort

I still think that the greater part of the world is mistaken about many things. Surely one may be sane and yet think so, since the greater part of the world has often had to come round from its opinion. ~ George Eliot

Forgiveness can help you to be sane. ~ Bryant McGill

To be sane, we must recognise our beliefs as fictions. ~ James Hillman

Has it ever occured to you that crazy cat people may be sane and you be the the crazy one? ~ Quitillian Blue

If you live with unhealthy people, to be healthy is dangerous. If you live with insane people, then to be sane is dangerous. If you live in a madhouse, even if you are not mad at least pretend that you are mad; otherwise those mad people will kill you. ~ Osho

In the letter he left for the coroner he had explained his reasoning (for suicide): that life is a gift bestowed without anyone asking for it; that the thinking person has a philosophical duty to examine both the nature of life and the conditions it comes with; and that if this person decides to renounce the gift no one asks for, it is the moral and human duty to act on the consequences of that decision ... Alex showed me a clipping from the Cambridge Evening News. 'Tragic Death of "Promising" Young Man.' ... The verdict of the coroner's inquest had been that Adrian Flinn (22) had killed himself 'while the balance of his mind was disturbed.' ... The law, and society, and religion all said it was impossible to be sane, healthy, and kill yourself. Perhaps those authorities feared that the suicide's reasoning might impugn the nature and value of life as organised by the state which paid the coroner? ~ Julian Barnes

It's a poor thing to be sane! ~ Donald Woods Winnicott

To be sane in a world of madman is in itself madness. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The key to happiness is to listen to campy Parisian music and smile at a bird. It hinges on insanity, but it works. ~ Erica Goros

I'm simply saying that there is a way to be sane. I'm saying that you can get rid of all this insanity created by the past in you. Just by being a simple witness of your thought processes.

It is simply sitting silently, witnessing the thoughts, passing before you. Just witnessing, not interfering not even judging, because the moment you judge you have lost the pure witness. The moment you say "this is good, this is bad," you have already jumped onto the thought process.

It takes a little time to create a gap between the witness and the mind. Once the gap is there, you are in for a great surprise, that you are not the mind, that you are the witness, a watcher.

And this process of watching is the very alchemy of real religion. Because as you become more and more deeply rooted in witnessing, thoughts start disappearing. You are, but the mind is utterly empty.

That's the moment of enlightenment. That is the moment that you become for the first time an unconditioned, sane, really free human being. ~ Osho

What we call 'normal' is a product of repression, denial, splitting, projection, introjection and other forms of destructive action on experience. It is radically estranged from the structure of being. The more one sees this, the more senseless it is to continue with generalized descriptions of supposedly specifically schizoid, schizophrenic, hysterical 'mechanisms.' There are forms of alienation that are relatively strange to statistically 'normal' forms of alienation. The 'normally' alienated person, by reason of the fact that he acts more or less like everyone else, is taken to be sane. Other forms of alienation that are out of step with the prevailing state of alienation are those that are labeled by the 'formal' majority as bad or mad. ~ R.D. Laing

How awful is it to be sane enough to be fully aware of the day you realize you are completely losing your grasp on reality. I'm crazy. Not just a little bit, but rubber room ready out of my mind fucked up. ~ Poppet

That level of irony was such that it should not exist in a sane universe, but then he had never once believed the universe to be sane. ~ Evan Currie

There is nothing sane about the worship of beauty. It is too splendid to be sane. Those of whose lives it forms the dominant note will always seem to the world to be pure visionaries. ~ Oscar Wilde

Scarecrow thin, but immaculate in black long sleeved shirt and slacks, with his big black hat and that grin just a little too wide to be sane... he did. He looked good. ~ Richard Roberts

The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane. ~ Nikola Tesla

Things don't have to be sane when they're normal. ~ Carol Plum-Ucci

I think I was enchanted
When first a sombre Girl -
I read that Foreign Lady** -
The Dark - felt beautiful -

And whether it was noon at night -
Or only Heaven - at Noon -
For very Lunacy of Light
I had not power to tell -

The Bees - became as Butterflies -
The Butterflies - as Swans -
Approached - and spurned the narrow Grass -
And just the meanest Tunes

That Nature murmured to herself
To keep herself in Cheer -
I took for Giants - practising
Titanic Opera -

The Days - to Mighty Metres stept -
The Homeliest - adorned
As if unto a Jubilee
'Twere suddenly confirmed -

I could not have defined the change -
Conversion of the Mind
Like Sanctifying in the Soul -
Is witnessed - not explained -

'Twas a Divine Insanity -
The Danger to be Sane
Should I again experience -
'Tis Antidote to turn -

To Tomes of solid Witchcraft -
Magicians be asleep -
But Magic - hath an Element
Like Deity - to keep - ~ Emily Dickinson

Get action, do things; be sane," he once raved, "don't fritter away your time; create, act, take a place wherever you are and be somebody: get action. ~ Richard Hofstadter

Preserve my sanity, for to this I am reduced. Safety and the assurance of safety are things of the past. Whilst I live on here there is but one thing to hope for, that I may not go mad, if, indeed, I be not mad already. If I be sane, then surely it is maddening to think that of all the foul things that lurk in this hateful place. ~ Bram Stoker

Sex doesn't have to conform to society's standards to be sane. It doesn't have to be slow and tender to be safe. And it doesn't have to be free of leather cuffs to be consensual. ~ Pam Godwin, Dark Notes

I mean, maybe I am crazy. I mean, maybe. But if this is all there is, then I don't want to be sane. ~ Neil Gaiman

We take our bearings, daily, from others. To be sane is, to a great extent, to be sociable. ~ John Updike

To be sane in a mad time is bad for the brain, worse for the heart. ~ Wendell Berry

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

That's what he always used to say to me. Don't expect me to be sane, Anna. Not with you. ~ Paula Hawkins

The law, and society, and religion all said it was impossible to be sane, healthy, and kill yourself. Perhaps those authorities feared that the suicide‟s reasoning might impugn the nature and value of life as organised by the
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state which paid the coroner? And then, since you had been declared temporarily mad, your reasons for killing yourself were also assumed to be mad. So I doubt anyone paid much attention to Adrian‟s argument, with its references to philosophers ancient and modern, about the superiority of the intervening act over the unworthy passivity of merely letting life happen to you. ~ Julian Barnes

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

There was nothing she valued more than a cool and clear head, and Michael had managed to steal that from her with a single kiss.
And then he'd done more.
So much more.
She was never going to be the same.
She was never going to be /sane/.
'You look distressed,' he said.
She wanted to strangle him.
He cocked his head and smiled.
She wanted to kiss him.
He held up the teapot. 'More?'
God, yes, and that was the problem. ~ Julia Quinn

Life has meaning because death exists. We love the good times in life because they're fleeting, because we know they will soon be replaced by something else. But death itself is nothing to be afraid of. It's a natural part of life, the natural closure that everything builds to. Working in a nursing home has taught me that: We're all lunatics on a big space rock, pretending to be sane, pretending we can fix everything, pretending we won't die. ~ Nicholas Conley

He'd managed to take hold of her being, her poise and twisted it that it'd mutilated so bad. Even she had forgotten how it had felt to be sane. ~ Diyar Harraz

You're crazy," she said with a laugh. And thank God for that.
"When it comes to you, I don't know how to be sane. ~ Olivia Cunning

If he could walk across the room and touch her he would be sane. But between them lay a treacherous and complex journey. It was a very wide world. ~ Michael Ondaatje

I am not an irretrievable skeptic. I am not hopelessly prejudiced. I am perfectly willing to believe, and my mind is wide open; but I have, as yet, to be convinced. I am perfectly willing, but the evidence must be sane and conclusive. ~ Harry Houdini

Look around you. Your world-hosts are all in mutiny, in confusion, destitution; on the eve of fiery wreck and madness! They will not march farther for you, on the sixpence a day and supply-demand principle; they will not; nor ought they, nor can they. Ye shall reduce them to order, begin reducing them. to order, to just subordination; noble loyalty in return for noble guidance. Their souls are driven nigh mad; let yours be sane and ever saner. ~ Thomas Carlyle

Don't expect me to be sane anymore. Don't let's be sensible. It was a marriage at Louveciennes - you can't dispute it. I came away with pieces of you sticking to me; I am walking about, swimming, in an ocean of blood, your Andalusian blood, distilled and poisonous ... I can't see how I can go on living away from you - these intermissions are death. How did it seem to you when Hugo came back? Was I still there? I can't picture you moving about with him as you did with me. Legs closed. Frailty. Sweet, treacherous acquiescence. Bird docility. You became a woman with me. I was almost terrified by it. You are not just thirty years old - you are a thousand years old.
Here I am back and still smouldering with passion, like wine smoking. Not a passion any longer for flesh, but a complete hunger for you, a devouring hunger. ~ Henry Miller

No man can be sane who searches for what will injure him in place of what is best. ~ Seneca.

He who can simulate sanity will be sane. ~ Ovid

It's not everyday you find the crazy that fits yours, so when you do, tie it to the bed and take it. That's the only sane thing to do. ~ Alexa Riley

Our lives are awkward and fragile and we have only one thing to keep us sane: pity, and the man without pity is mad. ~ Edward Bond

Sane is the insanity most people call normality, put forth by society. ~ Erik Till

Good, old-fashioned ways keep hearts sweet, heads sane, hands busy. ~ Louisa May Alcott

The sane understand that human beings are incapable of sustaining conspiracies on a grand scale, because some of our most defining qualities as a species are inattention to detail, a tendency to panic, and an inability to keep our mouths shut. ~ Dean Koontz

For that particular community, for my community, the massage has long been clear: The Civil War is a story for white people - acted out by white people, on white people's terms - in which blacks feature strictly as stock characters and props. We are invited to listen, but never to truly join the narrative, for to speak as the slave would, to say that we are as happy for the Civil War as most Americans are for the Revolutionary War, is to rupture the narrative. Having been tendered such a conditional invitation, we have elected - as most sane people would - to decline. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

With the NDAA, his failure to close Guantanamo Bay and the ramping use of drones, President Obama looks suspiciously like President Bush, a man on a quest for American Empire. ~ Justin Sane

I love you Tory. I know I say it a lot, but ... "
"I know baby. I feel the same way about you. Those words never convey what goes through my mind and heart every time I look up and see you sitting in my house. Funny thign is, I always thought my house was full and that there was nothing missing in my life. I had a job I loved. Family who loved me. Good friends to keep me sane. Everything a human could want. And t hen I met an infuriating, impossible man who added the one thing I didn't know wasn't there."
"Dirty socks on the floor?"
She laughed. "No, the other part of my heart. The last face I see before I go to sleep and the first one I see when I get up. I'm so glad it was you."
Those words both thrilled and scared him. Mostly because he knew firsthand that if love went untended it turned into profound hatred.
Tory and Acheron ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Of course sane people always thought the aim of marriage was the procreation of children to the glory of God or according to the plan of Nature; ~ G.K. Chesterton

If we were entirely sane, if madness did not have a serious grip on one side of us, other people's tragedies would hold a great deal less interest for us. ~ Alain De Botton

No sane man will dance. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

Order," Newt continued. "Order. You say that bloody word over and over in your shuck head. Reason we're all sane around here is 'cause we work our butts off and mantain order. Order's the reason we put Ben out
can't have loonies runnin' around tryin' to kill people, now can we? Order. Last thing we need is you screwin' that up. ~ James Dashner

There is, incidently, no way of talking about cats that enables one to come off as a sane person. ~ Dan Greenberg

Oh good," said the Beast dryly. "Here I was afraid that I had kidnapped a sane person by mistake." "If you are going to kidnap travelers, you will simply have to take what you can get," snapped Bryony. ~ T. Kingfisher

You can't drive yourself sane. ~ Claudia Rankine

He is a [sane] man who can have tragedy in his heart and comedy in his head. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Maybe this was how you stayed sane in wartime: a handful of noble deeds amid the chaos. ~ Scott Westerfeld

It was all he'd felt for too long to change now. Maybe it was too late for any other kind of life. This was all he knew. It was safe, insulated. Familiar. An absense of emotion kept him sane. Or what passed for it. ~ Virginia Brown

That millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane. ~ Erich Fromm

Stanley forced a smile to his lips at the memory of the onesided romance; it was silly, after all, a stupid childhood crush. Who'd fall in love with a fictional character? That was the kind of thing you laughed about as an adult. Or at least Harriet had thought so. He couldn't quite do it, though. Couldn't quite see it as a joke. It had felt too real, too raw and wild and fierce, for him to
dismiss it even now. It was love, of a sort, stunted and unformed as it was. For a time, it had kept him sane. ~ Amelia Mangan

The insane have achieved political respectability while the sane act too good for it all. The irrational celebrate while the rational act bored and above-it-all. ~ Maureen Dowd

Submission and humility will not protect you from the injustices of this war. Nothing can. But clarity, and solidarity in action, will allow you to fight back - and to keep sane, no matter what happens. ~ Phyllis Chesler

Why can't I do it?" [Isabel] asked ... .
"Do what?"
"Just forget about everything. Just go somewhere and get smashed and pretend like there are no problems or consequences. I know why. Because there are still problems and consequences. And going and
and
partying doesn't make them go away. I feel like I'm the only sane person in the world. I don't get why this whole world runs on stupidity. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

No, brother, I'm sane. What drives people crazy is trying to live outside reality. Reality is terrible. It can kill you. Given time, it certainly will kill you. The reality is pain- you said that! But it's the lies, the evasions of reality, that drive you crazy. It's the lies that make you want to kill yourself. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Simple formula for the actor: prove you're creative enough to get the job, sane enough to keep the job, and hungry enough to give up everything else to keep them happy. ~ Brooke Langton

Insanity is the only sane reaction to an insane society. ~ Thomas Szasz

I am stark sane, but my mind is erratically crazy. ~ Suman Pokhrel

Oh, hell, no. We want you," Blade declared. A jolt of pure need slammed into her, knocking every sane thought out of her head. "You've got me." "Not yet, we don't," Lance muttered. "What ~ Susan Hayes

There was more to all of this than he'd ever known, and because of that he had a reason to live.
Perhaps more importantly, he had a reason to stay sane. ~ Brandon Sanderson

I realized that every healthcare professional - every single doctor, nurse, midwife, pharmacist, physical therapist, and paramedic - need to shout out about the reality of their work so the next time the health secretary lies that doctors are in it for the money, the public will know just how ridiculous that is. Why would any sane person do that job for anything other than the right reasons, because I wouldn't wish it on anyone. I have so much respect for those who work on the front line because, when it came down to it, I certainly couldn't. ~ Adam Kay

I think we all have a little bit of that beautiful madness that keeps us walking when everything around us is so insanely sane. ~ Julio Cortazar

What an almighty balls-up. Who snorts a wasp? No sane person snorts a live wasp. It's like putting your hand up a tiger's arse. - Egg ~ Jamie Scallion

Damn it," I muttered.
"What?" asked Adrian.
"I hate when you're the sane one. That's my job."
"Rose," he said, forcibly trying to keep a serious tone, "I can think of many words to describe you, sexy and hot being at the top of the list. You know what's not on the list? Sane. ~ Richelle Mead

I know there is a thin silver line between the sane and the insane, and even in that realm of madness, there are degrees of reason, fluttering moments of clarity and truth. Maybe the world can't handle the their truth. Maybe we are too weak. Maybe, like Sloth used to say, It's the blind who see the most. ~ Julie Cantrell

How to dance
in blood and
remain sane? ~ Sonia Sanchez

Lucky for you, since you're the most dangerous man I've ever met. A
sane woman would run away from you, not toward you. ~ Alyssa Day

42 A few months after Nash got out, Baumecker called the Institute for Advanced Study and asked to speak to Oppenheimer about whether Nash was now sane. Oppenheimer replied, "That's something no one on earth can tell you, doctor. ~ Sylvia Nasar

Why would any sane person lower his or her standard of living just to multiply the number of copies of the Homo sapiens genome? Nobody agreed to this deal: the Agricultural Revolution was a trap. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

If you've survived parasites and bacteria until the age of nineteen, you can survive sane people. ~ Cameron Jace

I only box. It's the only thing that keeps me sane. I can't just go to the gym and run. I'd rather die. I played volleyball and rode horses my entire life, so just, like, moving to a city and having to go the gym was just, like, so weird for me. ~ Gigi Hadid

Is she sane?' asked Mrs. Linton, appealing to me. 'I'll repeat our conversation, word for word, Isabella; and you point out any charm it could have had for you. ~ Emily Bronte