“
Lassiter skidded in from the billiards room, the fallen angel glowing from his black-and-blond hair and white eyes, all the way down to his shitkickers. Then again, maybe the illumination wasn’t his nature, but that gold he insisted on wearing.
He looked like a living, breathing jewelry tree.
“I’m here. Where’s my chauffeur hat?”
“Here, use mine,” Butch said, outing a B Sox cap and throwing it over. “It’ll help that hair of yours.”
The angel caught the thing on the fly and stared at the red S. “I’m sorry, I can’t.”
“Do not tell me you’re a Yankees fan,” V drawled. “I’ll have to kill you, and frankly, tonight we need all the wingmen we’ve got.”
Lassiter tossed the cap back. Whistled. Looked casual.
“Are you serious?” Butch said. Like the guy had maybe volunteered for a lobotomy. Or a limb amputation. Or a pedicure.
“No fucking way,” V echoed. “When and where did you become a friend of the enemy—”
The angel held up his palms. “It’s not my fault you guys suck—”
Tohr actually stepped in front of Lassiter, like he was worried that something a lot more than smack talk was going to start flying. And the sad thing was, he was right to be concerned. Apart from their shellans, V and Butch loved the Sox above almost everything else—including sanity.
”
”
J.R. Ward (Lover at Last (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #11))
“
Women are afraid of the intensity of feeling that may surface as their eyes are opened to the wider reality of a woman’s life. A woman’s intensity makes everyone uncomfortable, including herself. We were taught to be nice, not angry, even when our own lives and sanity are at stake.
”
”
Patricia Lynn Reilly (Be Full of Yourself!: The Journey from Self-Criticism to Self-Celebration)
“
So you're, like crazy, in love. You open your eyes in the morning and your first thought is her. You wonder how she is. What she's doing. When you can see her again. Those thoughts stay with you all day. You share them with whoever will listen — including your best friends, who of course respect you but, after a while, out of the kind of concern only real friends have, seriously question your sanity. And you make all sorts of plans — big plans, like, post-high school — when the rest of us can barely wrap our heads around the fact that we only two years left to get a clue.
You live and breath this girl. You talk about her all the time, you hang out with your friends less and less, you're blind to other girls, no matter how hot or into you they are — and some of them are extremely hot and into you — and eventually, you break and actually say you love her.
Not only that, you tell your friends you love her. Which, as you know, is about as major as you can get.
Your friends may think you're a little out there, but they know you wouldn't be for any other girl. It's just because it's her. She's different.
This girl is it for you. Food, water, oxygen, sleep — all details.
”
”
Tricia Rayburn (Siren (Siren, #1))
“
the rest of the guardians are all checking out the explosion," I realised. Pieces began coming together-including Lissa's lack of surprise over the commotion. "Oh no. You had Christian blow up ancient Moroi artifacts."
"Of course not," said Eddie. He seemed shocked that I would have suggested such an atrocity. "Other fire users would be able to tell if he did."
"Well, that's something," I said. I should have had more faith in their sanity.
Or maybe not.
"We used C4," explained Mikhail.
"Where on earth did you-
”
”
Richelle Mead (Last Sacrifice (Vampire Academy, #6))
“
People who detest their sanity love to tell you they are insane, authors included...and all for a few bucks. Their charlatan madness is masturbation.
”
”
W.T. Shad
“
No validation of our rationality - of our very sanity - can be accomplished using our rationality itself. How can a person operating within a system of beliefs, including beliefs about beliefs, get outside that system to determine whether it is rational? If your entire system becomes infected with madness, including the very rules by which you reason, then how can you ever reason your way out of your madness?
”
”
Rebecca Goldstein (Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel (Great Discoveries))
“
Not long ago-incredible though it may seem-I heard a clerk of Oxford declare that he 'welcomed' the proximity of mass-production robot factories, and the roar of self-obstructive traffic, because it brought his university into 'contact with real life.' He may have meant that the way men were living and working in the twentieth century was increasing in barbarity at an alarming rate, and that the loud demonstration of this in the streets of Oxford might serve as a warning that it is not possible to preserve for long an oasis of sanity in a desert of unreason by mere fences, without actual offensive action (practical and intellectual). I fear he did not. In any case the expression 'real life' in this context seems to fall short of academic standards. The notion that motor-cars are more 'alive' than, say, centaurs or dragons is curious; that they are more 'real' than, say, horses is pathetically absurd. How real, how startlingly alive is a factory chimney compared with an elm tree: poor obsolete thing, insubstantial dream of an escapist!
”
”
J.R.R. Tolkien (Tree and Leaf: Includes Mythopoeia and The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth)
“
Kaysen elaborates through parts of the book on her thoughts about how mental illness is treated. She explains that families who are willing to pay the rather high costs of hospitalization do so to prove their own sanity. Once one member of the family is hospitalized, it becomes easier for the rest of the family to distance themselves from the problem and to create a clear boundary between the sane and the insane. Recognizing a family member or friend as insane makes others around them, says Kaysen, compare themselves to that individual. Hospitalization allows for distance from this questioning of self that makes us so uncomfortable. Her view that mental illness often includes the entire family means the hospitalized family member becomes an excuse for other family members not to look at their own problems. This explains the willingness to pay the high financial costs of hospitalization.
”
”
Susanna Kaysen (Girl, Interrupted)
“
Once they let you get away with running around for ten years like a king hoodlum, you tend to forget now and then that about half the people you meet live from one day to the next in a state of such fear and uncertainty that about half the time they honestly doubt their own sanity. These are not the kind of people who really need to get hung up in depressing political trips. They are not ready for it. Their boats are rocking so badly that all they want to do is get level long enough to think straight and avoid the next nightmare. This girl I was delivering up to the chicken coop was one of those people. She was terrified of almost everything, including me, and this made me very uncomfortable.
”
”
Hunter S. Thompson (Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72)
“
If we do not objectify, and feel instinctively and permanently that words are not the things spoken about, then we could not speak abouth such meaningless subjects as the 'beginning' or the 'end' of time. But, if we are semantically disturbed and objectify, then, of course, since objects have a beginning and an end, so also would 'time' have a 'beggining' and an 'end'. In such pathological fancies the universe must have a 'beginning in time' and so must have been made., and all of our old anthropomorphic and objectified mythologies follow, including the older theories of entropy in physics. But, if 'time' is only a human form of representation and not an object, the universe has no 'beginning in time' and no 'end in time'; in other words, the universe is 'time'-less. The moment we realize, feel permanently, and utilize these realizations and feelings that words are not things, then only do we acquire the semantic freedom to use different forms of representation. We can fit better their structure to the facts at hand, become better adjusted to these facts which are not words, and so evaluate properly m.o (multi-ordinal) realities, which evaluation is important for sanity.
”
”
Alfred Korzybski (Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics)
“
1. Recall those leaders you’ve most admired, those you were happy to serve under. What were their behaviors? How did you feel working for them? What kind of worker were you, including the quality of what you produced? How do you feel about them now? 2. Recall your own moments when you were proud of the leadership (either formal or informal) you provided to your organization, family, friends, community. What did you do? How did you behave toward others? What were the results of your leadership? Are you still in a relationship with any of these people?
”
”
Margaret J. Wheatley (Who Do We Choose to Be?: Facing Reality, Claiming Leadership, Restoring Sanity)
“
Rees’ logic is clear. For true mental health, there must be a complete transformation of society along the lines of rational selection. But, as he laments in his book, “many don´t see reality this way, including most workers who believe that any method of selection is a mechanism by which the wicked capitalist aims to get more work out of the workers, and that argument dies hard.”8 In the Reesian world-view, such nay-sayers, along with anyone who engages in “strikes” or “subversive activity,” are themselves neurotic, desperately “in need of treatment, but unfortunately unable to see that they are ill. In such a world of unwitting neurotics, psychiatry, the only arbiter of sanity, can be exercised only by a cabal in every country, groups of psychiatrists, linked to each other” prepared to muster all their weapons and influence for a move “into the political and governmental field.
”
”
Daniel Estulin (Tavistock Institute: Social Engineering the Masses)
“
Self-control is not just a puritanical virtue. It is a key psychological trait that breeds success at work and play—and in overcoming life’s hardship,” according to Roy Baumeister. When we depend on external factors, including other people, to live well, life feels risky.
”
”
Jenny Taitz (How to Be Single and Happy: Science-Based Strategies for Keeping Your Sanity While Looking for a Soul Mate)
“
How could three hours a week at church undo the other one hundred sixty-five hours of destructive influence each week? Those three hours of sanity offered a glimmer of hope. Sometimes, that’s all it takes. Just a glint of light can show you an alternate path. Now I can see how those three hours a week were enough to keep my head above water. It didn’t take me long to figure out some of my buddies were a bad influence. The longer I’d hang out with them, the greater the probability I’d give in to their pressure to take up their bad habits. And that included most of my family as well.
”
”
Gary W. Keith (Overcoming a Childhood of Abuse and Dysfunctional Living: How I Did It)
“
Luck in life is self-generated. You see more when you know more. You get more if you work more. But the billions of people on this planet will disagree with what I just said and invent some idiotic theory to comfort their ignorance on what life truly is. In fact, they will deny any of your efforts, and the harder you work, the more they will question your morality and claim some special secret to your results that they too could get if they knew about it. The average person is so immersed in their own ego that they can't possibly grasp all the unimaginable parts of reality. Reality is largely inaccessible and therefore unreal. The more you talk about it, the less you are understood, the more you are seen as a madman. Because those who don't know have to comfort their ignorance for lack of better options. Eventually, there comes a point in life when no explanation can sustain what you had before, including your ability to explain yourself to others. In fact, the more you say or try to explain, the more jealousy and slander you get. It is predestined that the more one works to better himself, the more hatred he receives from the vast masses of mediocre minds. Isolation is then not a choice, but a fate that precedes extraordinary success. One must experience it for one's own sanity, but also to fulfill what one has planted in one's soul. It must happen that the people who change the world the most are the most hated by the same people they help. As such, we must then assume that friends are for fools, as fertilizer is for plants. A real person is hardly understood by the masses. He is lucky if he finds a real friend. But as soon as he realizes that his friend is on the same intellectual level as he is, even that is proven to be predestined.
”
”
Dan Desmarques
“
I wanted nothing more than to kill the four of them, the daddy included, but baby girl had taught me a lesson. Sometimes you got to hit a nigga where it hurts, in their pockets and through their sanity. After this shit, they would have neither.
”
”
Zee Reneé (When He's Not There)
“
Ah, so do you believe Lucetta has accustomed herself to the idea of marrying me?” Tilda arched a brow. “Not at all. I believe your mother and grandmother are refusing to face the truth—that truth being that Miss Plum never agreed to marry you. And after she got over the shock of being found in the storage room with you, she began to feel very put out indeed that anyone would assume, and I think you may be included with that whole anyone business, that she’d”—Tilda tapped a finger against her chin—“‘blithely sit back and allow everyone else to plan out my life when I’m fully capable, as well as willing, to plan out that life on my own.’” Bram winced. “Am I to assume those were her exact words?” “Or close enough,” Tilda said. “I’m afraid you’ve really made a muddle of this, Mr. Haverstein, and I’m also afraid that you won’t be marrying Miss Plum anytime soon, if ever.” She leaned closer to him. “She talks quite often to herself when she’s alone. Because of that, I’ve been privy to some interesting conversations, all of which center around the idea she’s not a woman who wants to lose her independent identity through marriage.” As an afterthought, Tilda added, “And . . . she’s come to the firm belief that you’re demented.” “What?” Tilda shrugged. “Can you blame her? You proclaim the two of you are going to get married—without asking her if that’s what she’d like, mind you—while allowing your mother and grandmother to believe they should start planning the wedding festivities. That, Mr. Haverstein, is not how it’s done. The bride gets a say in this day and age, and then, add in that pesky business of you disappearing and it’s little wonder Miss Plum is questioning your sanity.” “Why
”
”
Jen Turano (Playing the Part (A Class of Their Own, #3))
“
life. I want you to experiment with foods outside the basic Paleo diet (this is what the 7-Day Carb Test Plan is for) and figure out what foods you can eat that do not cause you problems. This provides for as much variety as possible while maintaining our health, sanity, and waistline. In my own diet I tend to include a fair amount of properly prepared beans and lentils, as well as some goat’s- and sheep’s-milk-based dairy, mainly cheeses. I am highly reactive to gluten, and cow dairy (of all types, with the possible exception of butter) gives me acne. Being middle-aged is bad enough; I do not want to be over the hill and looking like I’m going through puberty at the same time, so I generally follow Paleo guidelines while adding foods that I feel good with. This is the process I want you to follow.
”
”
Robb Wolf (Wired to Eat: Turn Off Cravings, Rewire Your Appetite for Weight Loss, and Determine the Foods That Work for You)
“
[...] Nothing moves; nothing is alive; everything is dead, including the self. The self by its detachment is precluded from a full experience of realness and aliveness. What one might call a creative relationship with the other, in which there is mutual enrichment of the self and the other (benign circle), is impossible, and an interaction is substituted which may seem to operate efficiently and smoothly for a while but which has no 'life' in it (sterile relationship). There is a quasi-it-it interaction instead of an I-thou relationship. This interaction is a dead process. [The inner self in the schizoid condition ]
”
”
R.D.Laing (The Divided Self( An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness)[DIVIDED SELF REV/E][Paperback])
“
The origins of the current description of the psychopathy syndrome can be traced back to the work of Harvey Cleckley in 1940s, and his book, The Mask of Sanity. Some of the key features of psychopathy recorded by Cleckley included: absence of nervousness, interpersonal charm, lack of shame, impoverished affect (emotions seem shallow and are often used to manipulate others), and antisocial behaviour that appears senseless and without obvious motivation. Since Cleckley’s days, scientists have systematically developed ways of assessing psychopathy in criminal populations and in community samples. They have also developed assessments for psychopathic traits in children.
”
”
Essi Viding (Psychopathy: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions))
“
When social spaces begin to be created outside the direct control of the state (including commercial ones, run for profit), civil society can start to flourish in unexpected ways. Learning just to sip alongside a stranger makes for a potable kind of pluralism.
”
”
Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism)
“
What, then, is happiness? First of all, we must note that happiness is often confused with pleasure. From the fountains of pleasure, noted the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius in De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), there arises something of bitterness that torments us amid the flowers themselves. Or, as another poet put it, even the sweetest rose has its thorns. The particular sting of pleasure is that it is short-lived. Hence we often hunt after a pleasurable repetition, and in the process run the risk of becoming addicted. Pleasure is inherently addictive, precisely because it is not completely fulfilling. However much the pleasure, we always hunger for more. This can lead to extreme situations, such as in the case of a drug addict who forgoes everything—including propriety and sanity—in order to acquire the substance that gives him pleasure. Happiness, on the other hand, is deep, full, and enduring. It is satisfying in itself. Therefore it gives us peace and tranquillity. Whereas suffering follows in the wake of pleasure, either because the pleasure has ended or because its pursuit has led to painful imbalances, happiness has no untoward repercussions. It gives rise to harmony. The American philosopher George Santayana wrote in Little Essays, “Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.”2 Happiness ends all sorrow; it concludes our frantic search for the next injection of pleasure. The person who is happy does not look for greater happiness. But pleasure always spurs us on to experience greater pleasure. It drives us, and in driving us it enslaves us. Happiness, however, sets us free. It is freedom. When we are happy we are whole. The pleasure-seeker is feeling incomplete and therefore is looking for completion, except his or her search is focused on external means that can never bring true happiness. If pleasure were the same as happiness, our Western consumer society, which provides unparalleled access to pleasures of all kinds, would produce the happiest human beings on earth. Instead, our society is filled with desperate and emotionally disturbed and spiritually unfulfilled individuals. In fact, many mental health authorities think it is the sickest society ever to exist on this planet. According to a recent poll, more than one-third of the American population is thought to suffer from one or the other mental illness—from chronic depression to schizophrenia. This is a scary figure, but not surprising when we look at our contemporary lifestyle of work, pressure, haste, drivenness, and consumerism. As long as we are spiritually fragmented, we must expect to also be physically, emotionally, and mentally unfit. Spiritual wholeness and psychosomatic well-being go hand in hand. Millions suffer from chronic diseases that are the result of emotional disturbance and wrong attitudes to life, expressed in unwholesome habits.
”
”
Georg Feuerstein (The Deeper Dimension of Yoga: Theory and Practice)
“
Include ONE call to action
”
”
Meera Kothand (The Blog Startup: Proven Strategies to Launch Smart and Exponentially Grow Your Audience, Brand, and Income without Losing Your Sanity or Crying Bucketloads of Tears)
“
Feel free to stay stuck and believe that you aren’t working hard enough. Or be brave and realize that most people, including you, need help to do important things.
”
”
Kathi Lipp (Overwhelmed: How to Quiet the Chaos and Restore Your Sanity)
“
Once you have access to a Facebook group, use the “Search this group” box and type in the following keywords (including the quotation marks): • “need help” • “desperate for” • “newbie” • “have no clue” • “advice about” • “question about
”
”
Meera Kothand (The Blog Startup: Proven Strategies to Launch Smart and Exponentially Grow Your Audience, Brand, and Income without Losing Your Sanity or Crying Bucketloads of Tears)
“
My opinions about Holmes’s legal sanity were similar to Dr. Metzner’s: as of July 20, 2012, Holmes did not suffer from a mental disease or defect that prevented him from forming a culpable mental state. Regardless of any mental disorder or psychiatric symptoms he may have had at those relevant times, he knew that his shootings and killings would be, and were, illegal and socially wrong. He knew that others, including law enforcement officers and his psychiatrists, would try to stop him if they were aware of what he was planning to do. He knew the consequences to others, and to himself, of his actions, and he knowingly intended to carry them out in spite of their illegality and those likely consequences. He also understood the moral—as contrasted with legal—wrongfulness of his shootings and killings.
”
”
William H. Reid (A Dark Night in Aurora: Inside James Holmes and the Colorado Mass Shootings)
“
The intimidatory tactics failed and Anna called for gheraoing MPs’ houses and Parliament. A gherao contingent, evading the police barricade by using the Metro, actually reached the prime minister’s house on 25 August 2011. It was only then that the prime minister, who appeared either marginalized or deliberately detached, seemed to wake up. The seasoned firefighter Pranab Mukherjee took over, and some semblance of sanity was brought into the discourse. The arrogant brigade peopled by Kapil Sibal and Manish Tiwari was silenced, and the prime minister in his usual self-effacing style became conciliatory, stating that ‘our government was prepared to request the Speaker of the Lok Sabha to formally refer the Jan Lokpal Bill also to the Standing Committee.’ As confusion continued in the government camp, so did negotiations between government and Team Anna. Pranab Mukherjee successfully drew the discussions towards a consensus on most points, including the three sticky issues of including the lower bureaucracy, appointing Lokayuktas in states and having a Citizens’ Charter, which for long had been a bone of contention. Finally, a compromise was reached.
”
”
Ram Jethmalani (RAM JETHMALANI MAVERICK UNCHANGED, UNREPENTANT)
“
There before us, in a glade now not so lovely as before, were several well-known and soul-damning works including The Necronomicon—not a bad piece of work for a mad Arab fellow who’d spent a great deal of time listening at metaphysical keyholes, not realizing his sanity and life-force were dribbling through those apertures into realms that lacked any concern for his well-being.
”
”
Roy M. Griffis (The Thing From HR)
“
Building Insurance Your Guide Review by Reedsy Discovery Reviewer Mardene Carr
Must read
”
”
Michael A.N.P. Cretikos