Sane Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Sane. Here they are! All 100 of them:

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It is thanks to my evening reading alone that I am still more or less sane.
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W.G. Sebald (Vertigo)
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Don't worry. You're just as sane as I am.
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J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter, #5))
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If you think anyone is sane you just don't know enough about them.
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Christopher Moore (Practical Demonkeeping (Pine Cove, #1))
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No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality.
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Shirley Jackson (The Haunting of Hill House)
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Life's single lesson: that there is more accident to it than a man can ever admit to in a lifetime and stay sane.
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Thomas Pynchon (V.)
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We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Saints or sex addicts. Heroes or victims. Letting history tell us how good or bad we are. Letting our past decide our future. Or we can decide for ourselves. And maybe it's our job to invent something better.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Choke)
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I mean, maybe I am crazy. I mean, maybe. But if this is all there is, then I don't want to be sane.
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Neil Gaiman (Neverwhere (London Below, #1))
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Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.
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C.G. Jung
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In a mad world, only the mad are sane.
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Akira Kurosawa
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Sane is boring.
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R.A. Salvatore
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A sane person to an insane society must appear insane.
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Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Welcome to the Monkey House)
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What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?
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Ursula K. Le Guin
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Did I do anything last night that suggested I was sane?
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Terry Pratchett (Going Postal (Discworld, #33; Moist von Lipwig, #1))
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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.
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Nikola Tesla
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Inside every sane person there's a madman struggling to get out," said the shopkeeper. "That's what I've always thought. No one goes mad quicker than a totally sane person.
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Terry Pratchett (The Light Fantastic (Discworld, #2; Rincewind, #2))
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Persistence. Perfection. Patience. Power. Prioritize your passion. It keeps you sane.
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Criss Jami (Killosophy)
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No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.
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Shirley Jackson (The Haunting of Hill House)
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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.
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Richelle Mead (Spirit Bound (Vampire Academy, #5))
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The only reason we don't open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don't feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with. To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves, we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else's eyes.
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Pema ChΓΆdrΓΆn
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When you're the only sane person, you look like the only insane person.
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Criss Jami (Diotima, Battery, Electric Personality)
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Sometimes the only way to stay sane is to go a little crazy.
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Susanna Kaysen (Girl, Interrupted)
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You are a slow learner, Winston." "How can I help it? How can I help but see what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four." "Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.
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George Orwell (1984)
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If I am mad, it is mercy! May the gods pity the man who in his callousness can remain sane to the hideous end!
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H.P. Lovecraft (The Temple)
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That all men are equal is a proposition which at ordinary times no sane individual has ever given his assent.
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Aldous Huxley (Proper Studies)
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That millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane.
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Erich Fromm (The Sane Society)
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One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.
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Nikola Tesla
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No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.
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Shirley Jackson (The Haunting of Hill House)
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To be sane in a world of madman is in itself madness.
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Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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If being sane is thinking there's something wrong with being different....I'd rather be completely fucking mental.
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Angelina Jolie
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I let myself slip away... Just to stay sane. Just to get through it. And when I felt myself slipping too far, I held on to the one thing I'm always sure of - Blue eyes. Bronze curls. The fact that Simon Snow is the most powerful magician alive. That nothing can hurt him, not even me. That Simon Snow is alive. And I'm hopelessly in love with him.
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Rainbow Rowell (Carry On (Simon Snow, #1))
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Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.
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Erich Fromm
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Give me a shot to remember And you can take all the pain away from me A kiss and I will surrender The sharpest lives are the deadliest to lead A light to burn all the empires So bright the sun is ashamed to rise and be And I'm in love with all of those vampires So you can leave like the sane abandoned me
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Gerard Way
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Insane people are always sure that they are fine. It is only the sane people who are willing to admit that they are crazy.
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Nora Ephron
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The doors to the world of the wild Self are few but precious. If you have a deep scar, that is a door, if you have an old, old story, that is a door. If you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door.
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Clarissa Pinkola EstΓ©s (Women Who Run With the Wolves)
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In a totally sane society, madness is the only freedom.
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J.G. Ballard (Running Wild)
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Memory's truth, because memory has its own special kind. It selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates, minimizes, glorifies, and vilifies also; but in the end it creates its own reality, its heterogeneous but usually coherent version of events; and no sane human being ever trusts someone else's version more than his own.
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Salman Rushdie (Midnight’s Children)
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Get out, Get out, get out, get out!" I do what any sane male would do in this situation; I run down the hall and lock myself in her bedroom.
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Colleen Hoover (Point of Retreat (Slammed, #2))
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I really believe, or want to believe, really I am nuts, otherwise I'll never be sane.
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Allen Ginsberg
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Whoever's calm and sensible is insane!
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Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi (The Essential Rumi)
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Real, sane, mature loveβ€”the kind that pays the mortgage year after year and picks up the kids after schoolβ€”is not based on infatuation but on affection and respect.
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Elizabeth Gilbert (Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage)
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There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle. "That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed. "It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.
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Joseph Heller (Catch-22)
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Maybe this was how you stayed sane in wartime: a handful of noble deeds amid the chaos.
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Scott Westerfeld (Leviathan (Leviathan, #1))
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Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.
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Bertrand Russell (Unpopular Essays)
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A person who has not been completely alienated, who has remained sensitive and able to feel, who has not lost the sense of dignity, who is not yet "for sale", who can still suffer over the suffering of others, who has not acquired fully the having mode of existence - briefly, a person who has remained a person and not become a thing - cannot help feeling lonely, powerless, isolated in present-day society. He cannot help doubting himself and his own convictions, if not his sanity. He cannot help suffering, even though he can experience moments of joy and clarity that are absent in the life of his "normal" contemporaries. Not rarely will he suffer from neurosis that results from the situation of a sane man living in an insane society, rather than that of the more conventional neurosis of a sick man trying to adapt himself to a sick society. In the process of going further in his analysis, i.e. of growing to greater independence and productivity,his neurotic symptoms will cure themselves.
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Erich Fromm (The Art of Being)
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When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane.
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Hermann Hesse
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I thought you were sane," I said, "but you're just as crazy as the rest of them.
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Charles Bukowski (Love Is a Dog from Hell)
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One person's crazy is another person's sane, I guess.
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Maureen Johnson (Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances)
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I feel I'm very sane about how crazy I am.
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Carrie Fisher (Wishful Drinking)
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Melancholy suicide. β€”This is connected with a general state of extreme depression and exaggerated sadness, causing the patient no longer to realize sanely the bonds which connect him with people and things about him. Pleasures no longer attract;
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Γ‰mile Durkheim (Suicide: A Study in Sociology)
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When insane things start to arrange themselves in sane patterns around you, you know you got problems.
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Karen Marie Moning
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love is thicker than forget more thinner than recall more seldom than a wave is wet more frequent than to fail it is most mad and moonly and less it shall unbe than all the sea which only is deeper than the sea love is less always than to win less never than alive less bigger than the least begin less littler than forgive it is most sane and sunly and more it cannot die than all the sky which only is higher than the sky
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E.E. Cummings
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Love, it turns out, is as undemocratic as money, so it accumulates around people who have plenty of it already: the sane, the healthy, the lovable.
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Nick Hornby (How to Be Good)
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How often do you have to drink?” β€œEvery night, to feel good. Every few nights, to stay sane.” β€œHave you ever bitten anyone?” β€œNo. I’m not a murderer.” β€œDoes it have to be fatal every time? The biting? Couldn’t you just drink some of a person’s blood, then walk away?” β€œI can’t believe you’re asking me this, Snow. You, who can’t walk away from half a sandwich.
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Rainbow Rowell (Carry On (Simon Snow, #1))
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In general, the greater the understanding, the greater the delusion; the more intelligent, the less sane.
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George Orwell (1984)
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It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.
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David Brin
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When the whole world is crazy, it doesn't pay to be sane.
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Terry Goodkind (The Pillars of Creation (Sword of Truth, #7))
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Children need close friends to help them grow up, to discover things about themselves and about life. They also need close friends to keep them sane
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Cecelia Ahern (Love, Rosie)
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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 β€œthis 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.
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Osho
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under the present brutal and primitive conditions on this planet, every person you meet should be regarded as one of the walking wounded. we have never seen a man or woman not slightly deranged by either anxiety or grief. we have never seen a totally sane human being.
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Robert Anton Wilson
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I apologized to her once for spending less time with her, but she blew it off. "You're in love. That makes you actually kind of boring to people who aren't in love. You know, the sane ones.
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Claudia Gray (Evernight (Evernight, #1))
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If a man comes to the door of poetry untouched by the madness of the Muses, believing that technique alone will make him a good poet, he and his sane compositions never reach perfection, but are utterly eclipsed by the performances of the inspired madman.
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Socrates
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Don't try to behave as though you were essentially sane and naturally good. We're all demented sinners in the same cosmic boat - and the boat is perpetually sinking.
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Aldous Huxley (Island)
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The problem with being nuts, she thought, is that you don't always feel as if you're nuts. Sometimes, in fact, you feel perfectly sane, and there just happens to be a trailer-shaped dragon crouching in the lot next door.
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Christopher Moore
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You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.
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George Orwell (1984)
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Sane people did what their neighbors did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.
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George Eliot (Middlemarch)
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What kept me sane was knowing that things would change, and it was a question of keeping myself together until they did.
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Nina Simone (I Put a Spell on You: The Autobiography of Nina Simone)
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If longing is madness, then none of us are sane.
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Nina Varela (Crier's War (Crier's War, #1))
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And in what fairy tale would John ever be any sane person's idea of Prince Charming anyway? He was the opposite of charming. More like Prince Terrifying.
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Meg Cabot (Abandon (Abandon, #1))
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Dancing music, music sad, Both together, sane and mad…
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John Keats
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Eight full lives,” I whispered against his jaw, my voice breaking. β€œEight full lives and I never found anyone I would stay on a planet for, anyone I would follow when they left. I never found a partner. Why now? Why you? You're not of my species. How can you be my partner?” β€œIt's a strange universe,” he murmured. β€œIt's not fair,” I complained, echoing Sunny's words. It wasn't fair. How could I find this, find love–now, in this eleventh hour–and have to leave it? Was it fair that my soul and body couldn't reconcile? Was it fair that I had to love Melanie, too? Was it fair that Ian would suffer? He deserved happiness if anyone did. Itwasn't fair or right or even…sane. How could I do this to him? β€œI love you,” I whispered. β€œDon't say that like you're saying goodbye.” But I had to. β€œI, the soul called Wanderer, love you, human Ian. And that will never change, no matter what I might become.” I worded it carefully, so that there would be no lie in my voice. β€œIf I were a Dolphin or a Bear or a Flower, it wouldn't matter. I would always love you, always remember you. You will be my only partner.
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Stephenie Meyer (The Host (The Host, #1))
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Stark raving sane.
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Tom Stoppard (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead)
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It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage.
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George Orwell (1984)
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There is, incidently, no way of talking about cats that enables one to come off as a sane person.
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Dan Greenberg
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Nobody's cut out for this town," Shane said. "Nobody sane anyway." "Says the kid who came back." "Yeah, kind of proves my point.
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Rachel Caine (Ghost Town (The Morganville Vampires, #9))
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I wonder if being sane means disregarding the chaos that is life, pretending only an infinitesimal segment of it is reality.
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Rabih Alameddine (Koolaids: The Art of War)
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My people are going to learn the principles of democracy the dictates of truth and the teachings of science. Superstition must go. Let them worship as they will, every man can follow his own conscience provided it does not interfere with sane reason or bid him act against the liberty of his fellow men.
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Mustafa Kemal AtatΓΌrk
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I believed in a good home, in sane and sound living, in good food, good times, work, faith and hope. I have always believed in these things. It was with some amazement that I realized I was one of the few people in the world who really believed in these things without going around making a dull middle class philosophy out of it. I was suddenly left with nothing in my hands but a handful of crazy stars.
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Jack Kerouac (On the Road: The Original Scroll)
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Humans, as a rule, don't like mad people unless they are good at painting, and only then once they are dead. But the definition of mad, on Earth, seems to be very unclear and inconsistent. What is perfectly sane in one era turns out to be insane in another. The earliest humans walked around naked with no problem. Certain humans, in humid rainforests mainly, still do so. So, we must conclude that madness is sometimes a question of time, and sometimes of postcode. Basically, the key rule is, if you want to appear sane on Earth you have to be in the right place, wearing the right clothes, saying the right things, and only stepping on the right kind of grass.
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Matt Haig (The Humans)
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I'd rather be insane with you than sane without you. - Jake to Lydia
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Lisa Kleypas (Where's My Hero? (The Gamblers of Craven's, #2.5; Brotherhood - MacAllister's, #4.5; Splendid, #3.5))
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When a madman appears thoroughly sane, indeed, it is high time to put him in a straight jacket.
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Edgar Allan Poe
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No one is more dangerously insane than one who is sane all the time: he is like a steel bridge without flexibility, and the order of his life is rigid and brittle.
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Alan W. Watts
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My principles are only those that, before the French Revolution, every well-born person considered sane and normal.
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Julius Evola
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Much Madness Is Divinest Sense Much Madness is divinest Sense β€” To a discerning Eye β€” Much Sense β€” the starkest Madness β€” 'Tis the Majority In this, as All, prevail β€” Assent β€” and you are sane β€” Demur β€” you're straightway dangerous β€” And handled with a Chain β€”
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Emily Dickinson (The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson)
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He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear. But so long as he uttered it, in some obscure way the continuity was not broken. It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage.
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George Orwell (1984)
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If you are careful,' Garp wrote, 'if you use good ingredients, and you don't take any shortcuts, then you can usually cook something very good. Sometimes it is the only worthwhile product you can salvage from a day; what you make to eat. With writing, I find, you can have all the right ingredients, give plenty of time and care, and still get nothing. Also true of love. Cooking, therefore, can keep a person who tries hard sane.
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John Irving (The World According to Garp)
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Oh, my dear, if you only knew how strange is the matter regarding which I am here, it is you who would laugh. I have learned not to think little of any one's belief, no matter how strange it may be. I have tried to keep an open mind, and it is not the ordinary things of life that could close it, but the strange things, the extraordinary things, the things that make one doubt if they be mad or sane.
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Bram Stoker (Dracula)
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In a way, the worldβˆ’view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird.
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George Orwell (1984)
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Recognizing that people's reactions don't belong to you is the only sane way to create. If people enjoy what you've created, terrific. If people ignore what you've created, too bad. If people misunderstand what you've created, don't sweat it. And what if people absolutely hate what you've created? What if people attack you with savage vitriol, and insult your intelligence, and malign your motives, and drag your good name through the mud? Just smile sweetly and suggest - as politely as you possibly can - that they go make their own fucking art. Then stubbornly continue making yours.
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Elizabeth Gilbert (Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear)
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Unrequited love is the only emotion that allows sane people to taste the β€œlife sentence” of someone with bipolar disorder. The longer they hang onto a lost cause the more unstable they look to everyone else. They contradict their own belief systems and statements, by circling the drain with two competing emotionsβ€”love and hate.
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Shannon L. Alder
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The whole life of the individual is nothing but the process of giving birth to himself; indeed, we should be fully born when we die - although it is the tragic fate of most individuals to die before they are born.
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Erich Fromm (The Sane Society)
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Calling it lunacy makes it easier to explain away the things we don't understand.
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Megan Chance (The Spiritualist)
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What it means to be human is to bring up your children in safety, educate them, keep them healthy, teach them how to care for themselves and others, allow them to develop in their own way among adults who are sane and responsibile, who know the value of the world and not its economic potential. It means art, it means time, it means all the invisibles never counted by the GDP and the census figures. It means knowing that life has an inside as well as an outside. And I think it means love.
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Jeanette Winterson (The Stone Gods)
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Ghost?” St. Vincent shot him an incredulous glance. β€œChrist. You’re not serious, are you?” "I’m a Gypsy,” Cam replied matter-of-factly. β€œOf course I believe in ghosts.” β€œOnly half Gypsy. Which led me to assume that the rest of you was at least marginally sane and rational.” β€œThe other half is Irish,” Cam said a touch apologetically. β€œChrist,” St. Vincent said again, shaking his head as he strode away.
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Lisa Kleypas (Devil in Winter (Wallflowers, #3))
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One tiny Hobbit against all the evil the world could muster. A sane being would have given up, but Samwise burned with a magnificent madness, a glowing obsession to surmount every obstacle, to find Frodo, destroy the Ring, and cleanse Middle Earth of its festering malignancy. He knew he would try again. Fail, perhaps. And try once more. A thousand, thousand times if need be, but he would not give up the quest.
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J.R.R. Tolkien
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Can you not see," I said, "that fairy tales in their essence are quite solid and straightforward; but that this everlasting fiction about modern life is in its nature essentially incredible? Folk-lore means that the soul is sane, but that the universe is wild and full of marvels. Realism means that the world is dull and full of routine, but that the soul is sick and screaming. The problem of the fairy tale isβ€”what will a healthy man do with a fantastic world? The problem of the modern novel isβ€”what will a madman do with a dull world? In the fairy tales the cosmos goes mad; but the hero does not go mad. In the modern novels the hero is mad before the book begins, and suffers from the harsh steadiness and cruel sanity of the cosmos.
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G.K. Chesterton
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Challenge a person's beliefs, and you challenge his dignity, standing, and power. And when those beliefs are based on nothing but faith, they are chronically fragile. No one gets upset about the belief that rocks fall down as opposed to up, because all sane people can see it with their own eyes. Not so for the belief that babies are born with original sin or that God exists in three persons or that Ali is the second-most divinely inspired man after Muhammad. When people organize their lives around these beliefs, and then learn of other people who seem to be doing just fine without them--or worse, who credibly rebut them--they are in danger of looking like fools. Since one cannot defend a belief based on faith by persuading skeptics it is true, the faithful are apt to react to unbelief with rage, and may try to eliminate that affront to everything that makes their lives meaningful.
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Steven Pinker (The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined)
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They spoke almost as loud as Feeling: and that clamoured wildly. "Oh, comply!" it said. "Think of his misery; think of his danger β€” look at his state when left alone; remember his headlong nature; consider the recklessness following on despair β€” soothe him; save him; love him; tell him you love him and will be his. Who in the world cares for you? or who will be injured by what you do?" Still indomitable was the reply β€” "I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad β€” as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? They have a worth β€” so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am quite insane β€” quite insane: with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I have this hour to stand by: there I plant my foot.
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Charlotte BrontΓ« (Jane Eyre)
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Lucius paused, turning on his heel to face me. "I grow weary of your ignorance." He moved closer to me, leaning down and peering into my eyes. "Because your parents refuse to inform you, I will deliver the news myself,and I shall make this simple for you." He pointed to his chest and announced, as though talking to a child, "I am a vampire." He pointed to my chest. "You are a vampire. And we are to be married, the moment you come of age. This has been decreed since our births." I couldn't even process the "getting married" part, or the thing about "decreed." He'd lost me at "vampire." Nuts. Lucius Vladescu is completely nuts. And I'm alone with him, in an empty barn. So I did what any sane person would do. I jammed the pitchfork in the general direction of his foot and ran like hell for the house, ignoring his yowl of pain.
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Beth Fantaskey (Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side (Jessica, #1))
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I KNOW THE WAY YOU CAN GET I know the way you can get When you have not had a drink of Love: Your face hardens, Your sweet muscles cramp. Children become concerned About a strange look that appears in your eyes Which even begins to worry your own mirror And nose. Squirrels and birds sense your sadness And call an important conference in a tall tree. They decide which secret code to chant To help your mind and soul. Even angels fear that brand of madness That arrays itself against the world And throws sharp stones and spears into The innocent And into one's self. O I know the way you can get If you have not been drinking Love: You might rip apart Every sentence your friends and teachers say, Looking for hidden clauses. You might weigh every word on a scale Like a dead fish. You might pull out a ruler to measure From every angle in your darkness The beautiful dimensions of a heart you once Trusted. I know the way you can get If you have not had a drink from Love's Hands. That is why all the Great Ones speak of The vital need To keep remembering God, So you will come to know and see Him As being so Playful And Wanting, Just Wanting to help. That is why Hafiz says: Bring your cup near me. For all I care about Is quenching your thirst for freedom! All a Sane man can ever care about Is giving Love!
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...Whilst on board the Beagle I was quite orthodox, and I remember being heartily laughed at by several of the officers... for quoting the Bible as an unanswerable authority on some point of morality... But I had gradually come by this time, i.e., 1836 to 1839, to see that the Old Testament from its manifestly false history of the world, with the Tower of Babel, the rainbow at sign, &c., &c., and from its attributing to God the feelings of a revengeful tyrant, was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos, or the beliefs of any barbarian. ...By further reflecting that the clearest evidence would be requisite to make any sane man believe in the miracles by which Christianity is supported, (and that the more we know of the fixed laws of nature the more incredible do miracles become), that the men at that time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost uncomprehensible by us, that the Gospels cannot be proved to have been written simultaneously with the events, that they differ in many important details, far too important, as it seemed to me, to be admitted as the usual inaccuracies of eyewitnesses; by such reflections as these, which I give not as having the least novelty or value, but as they influenced me, I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation. The fact that many false religions have spread over large portions of the earth like wild-fire had some weight with me. Beautiful as is the morality of the New Testament, it can be hardly denied that its perfection depends in part on the interpretation which we now put on metaphors and allegories. But I was very unwilling to give up my belief... Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct. I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all of my friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.
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Charles Darwin (The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809–82)