#sanity

The founder of a religion must be able to turn water into wine -- cure with a word the blind and lame, and raise with a simple touch the dead to life. It was necessary for him to demonstrate to the satisfaction of his barbarian disciple, that he was superior to nature. In times of ignorance this was easy to do. The credulity of the savage was almost boundless. To him the marvelous was the beautiful, the mysterious was the sublime. Consequently, every religion has for its foundation a miracle -- that is to say, a violation of nature -- that is to say, a falsehood. No one, in the world's whole history, ever attempted to substantiate a truth by a miracle. Truth scorns the assistance of a miracle. Nothing but falsehood ever attested itself by signs and wonders. No miracle ever was performed, and no sane man ever thought he had performed one, and until one is performed, there can be no evidence of the existence of any power superior to, and independent of, nature. ↗

— Robert G. Ingersoll

#founding #miracle #nature #religion #sanity

All things being equal, he preferred to do business with people who were sane. ↗

— Amanda Quick

#business

Laugh whenever you can. Keeps you from killing yourself when things are bad. That and vodka. ↗

— Jim Butcher

#drinking #harry-dresden #laughter #sanity #sanya

I was also supposed to quiz my various companions on a number of important matters such as nostalgia, fear of unknown animals, food fantasies, nocturnal emissions, hobbies, choice of radio program, changes in out look and so forth. ↗

— Vladimir Nabokov

#inspirational #change

The Amish are islands of sanity in a whirlpool of change. ↗

— Nancy Sleeth

#change #sanity #simplicity #stability #tradition

He had discovered that there was not just one God but many, and some were more than cruel — they were insane, and that changed all. Cruelty, after all, was understandable. With insanity, however, there was no arguing. ↗

— Stephen King

#god #insanity #change

Insanity is the ability to communicate your ideas. It’s as if you were in a foreign country, able to see and understand everything that’s going on around you but incapable of explaining what you need to know or of being helped, because you don’t understand the language they speak there. ↗

— Paulo Coelho

#reality #communication

This place has only three exits, sir: Madness, and Death. ↗

— Rene Daumal

#madness #philosophy #surrealism #death

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

— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

#sanity #death

Worse than madness. Sanity. ↗

— William Golding

#sanity #death