Selected mental health quotes

1. Peace can only last where human rights are respected, where the people are fed, and where individuals and nations are free. True peace with oneself and with the world around us can only be achieved through the development of mental peace.

2. Spend some time alone every day.

3. It is only too true that a lot of artists are mentally ill- it's a life which, to put it mildly, makes one an outsider. I'm all right when I completely immerse myself in work, but I'll always remain half crazy.

4. I find Cambridge an asylum, in every sense of the word.

5. There cannot be mental atrophy in any person who continues to observe, to remember what he observes, and to seek answers for his unceasing hows and whys about things.

6. Nothing is more capable of troubling our reason, and consuming our health, than secret notions of jealousy in solitude.

7. All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.

8. It's good to know that if I behave strangely enough, society will take full responsibility for me.

9. I hope I can settle my internal conflicts without bloodshed.

10. The things I fear may all be imaginary, so what I fear most is my imagination.

11. My mind contains many good ideas, but it's not always easy to squeeze one out.

12. Take heart! Many great things have been done by people in poor mental health.

13. Things are gradually falling into place on top of me.

14. My first line of defense against reality is called sleep.

15. Did it ever strike you on such a morning as this that drowning would be happiness and peace?

16. I used to work in jobs I hated because I needed the money to buy a guitar. I know what it feels like to be depressed. On the other hand, I also know what it feels like to have money, to be successful, to be independent, but I can tell you that money and success never solve your problems.

17. If you lose the power to laugh, you lose the power to think.

18. If I couldn't laugh, I'd rather die.

19. Thoughts shut up want air, And spoil, like bales unopen'd to the sun.

20. The house of laughter makes a house of woe.

21. A preoccupation with the future not only prevents us from seeing the present as it is but often prompts us to rearrange the past.

22. It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is true of men as of dogs.

23. We have rudiments of reverence for the human body, but we consider as nothing the rape of the human mind.

24. I love sleep because it is both pleasant and safe to use. Pleasant because one is in the best possible company and safe because sleep is the consummate protection against the unseemliness that is the invariable consequence of being awake. What you don't know won't hurt you. Sleep is death without the responsibility.

25. Don't despair, not even over the fact that you don't despair.

26. Just think, right now as you read this, some guy somewhere is gettin' ready to hang himself.

27. Worry is the interest paid by those who borrow trouble.

28. I spent my childhood alone, overweight and ugly, angry at everything, and knowing nothing of a life beyond this sadness.

29. When the last days were upon me, and the ugly trifles of existence began to drive me to madness like the small drops of water torturers let fall ceaselessly upon one spot of their victim's body, I loved the irradiate refuge of sleep. In my dreams I found a little of the beauty I had vainly sought in life, and wandered through old gardens and enchanted woods.

30. Half of the secular unrest and dismal, profane sadness of modern society comes from the vain ideas that every man is bound to be a critic for life.

31. It's the boredom that kills you. You read until you're tired of that. You do crossword puzzles until you're tired of that. This is torture. This is mental torture.

32. There is no better ballast for keeping the mind steady on its keel, and saving it from all risk of crankiness, than business.

33. If it's dangerous to talk to yourself, it's probably even dicier to listen.

34. The psychic scars caused by believing that you are ugly leave a permanent mark on your personality.

35. Melancholy Is not, as you conceive, indisposition Of body, but the mind's disease.

36. No small misery is caused by overworked and unhappy people, in the dark views which they necessarily take up themselves, and force upon others, of work itself.

37. Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions.

38. Misery is almost always the result of thinking.

39. Perfectionism is not a quest for the best. It is a pursuit of the worst in ourselves, the part that tells us that nothing we do will ever be good enough - that we should try again.

40. I do think I go out of my way to be a very normal person and I just find it frustrating that people think that I'm some kind of weirdo reclusive that never comes out into the world. Y'know, I'm a very strong person and I think that's why actually I find it really infuriating when I read, 'She had a nervous breakdown' or 'She's not very mentally stable, just a weak, frail little creature'.

41. Holding Frances in my arms is the best drug in the world.

42. For me, the work is an absolute necessity. I cannot put it off; I don't care for anything else; that is to say, the pleasure in something else ceases at once, and I become melancholy when I cannot go on with my work. I feel then as the weaver does when he sees that his threads have got tangled, the pattern he had on the loom has gone to the deuce, and his exertion and deliberation are lost.

43. When you find yourself locked onto an unpleasant train of thought, heading for the places in your past where the screaming is unbearable, remember there's always madness. Madness is the emergency exit.

44. If a psychiatric and scientific enquiry were to be made upon our rulers, mankind would be appalled at the disclosures.

45. They constantly use the words eccentric, eccentric, eccentric, weird. I am boring. I am boring!

46. How sweet! You still believe in death... that's just so... quaint. Well, sorry to pop your death bubble, but there's no such thing. So make the best of things. Any real belief in death is just wishful thinking. Don't waste good drugs on killing yourself. Share them with friends and have a party. Or send them to me.

47. I was feeling everything too much. Everything was pulling at my eyes.

48. Gaiety - a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.

49. I knew, and it was an illumination - one of those things one has always known, but never understood before - that all sanity depends on this: that it should be a delight to feel the roughness of a carpet under smooth soles, a delight to feel heat strike the skin, a delight to stand upright, knowing the bones are moving easily under flesh. If this goes, then the conviction of life goes too. But I could feel none of this. ... I knew I was moving into a new dimension, further from sanity than I had ever been.

50. Whenever Richard Cory went down town, We people on the pavement looked at him: He was a gentleman from sole to crown, Clean favored, and imperially slim. And he was always quietly arrayed, And he was always human when he talked; But still he fluttered pulses when he said, 'Good-morning,' and he glittered when he walked. And he was rich-yes, richer than a king- And admirably schooled in every grace: In fine, we thought that he was everything To make us wish that we were in his place. So on we worked, and waited for the light, And went without the meat, and cursed the bread; And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, Went home and put a bullet through his head.

51. Friendship with oneself is all-important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.

52. My own heart let me have more have pity on; let Me live to my sad self hereafter kind, Charitable; not live this tormented mind With this tormented mind tormenting yet.

53. Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity. In pronounced cases there is no question about them. But in some supposed cases, in various degrees supposedly less pronounced, to draw the exact line of demarcation few will undertake tho' for a fee some professional experts will. There is nothing nameable but that some men will undertake to do it for pay.

54. I'm not disparaging suicides when I call them weak, I'm pointing out that anybody who would consider doing a thing like that needs help. I don't think a normal, mentally healthy person commits suicide. Of course, there are exceptions; people who are terminally ill are a different issue. But in the vast majority of cases, suicide is a tragedy that does unbelievable damage to the family and friends the suicide leaves behind. You don't want to encourage people to do such a thing.

55. The truth was that he died from solitude, the enemy known but to few on this Earth, and whom only the simplest of us are fit to withstand. The brilliant Costaguanaro of the boulevards had died from solitude and want of faith in himself and others.

56. You cannot die of grief, though it feels as if you can. A heart does not actually break, though sometimes your chest aches as if it is breaking. Grief dims with time. It is the way of things. There comes a day when you smile again, and you feel like a traitor. How dare I feel happy. How dare I be glad in a world where my father is no more. And then you cry fresh tears, because you do not miss him as much as you once did, and giving up your grief is another kind of death.

57. Why is it when we talk to God we're said to be praying - but when God talks to us, we're said to be schizophrenic?

58. Like all twenty-one-year-old poets, I thought I would be dead by thirty, and Sylvia Plath had not set a helpful example. For a while there, you were made to feel that, if a poet and female, you could not really be serious about it unless you'd made a least one suicide attempt. So I felt I was running out of time.

59. With fame, you know, you can read about yourself, and somebody else's ideas about you, but what's important is how you feel about yourself - for survival and living day to day with what comes up.

60. The schizoid man is the natural product of the technological man. It is one way to live and is increasingly utilized--and it may explode into violence.

61. It is merely an accident of history that it is considered normal in our society to believe that the Creator of the universe can hear your thoughts while it is demonstrative of mental illness to believe that he is communicating with you by having the rain tap in Morse code on your bedroom window.[2]

62. The tears stream down my cheeks from my unblinking eyes. What makes me weep so? From time to time. There is nothing saddening here. Perhaps it is liquefied brain.

63. I would say laughter is the best medicine. But it's more than that. It's an entire regime of antibiotics and steroids. Laughter brings the swelling down on our national psyche, and then applies an antibiotic cream... Obviously, it's a challenge to make light of the darkness but, um, it's better than crying about it.

64. There are essential and inessential insanities. The latter are solar in character, the former are linked to the moon.

65. More people are driven insane through religious hysteria than by drinking alcohol.

66. As for hobbies, people with stimulating hobbies suffer from the most noxious of despairs since they are tranquilized in their despair. [citation needed]

67. If there wasn't something called acting they would probably hospitalize people like me. The giddiness and the joy of life is the moving and grooving, the exploration.

68. Like a fiend in a cloud, With howling woe, After night I do crowd, And with night will go; I turn my back to the east, From whence comforts have increased; For light doth seize my brain With frantic pain.

69. I'm a much happier guy than a lot of people think I am. (1993)

70. ...[B]ut the rest are even scared to open up and laugh. You know, that's the first thing that got me about this place, that there wasn't anybody laughing. I haven't heard a real laugh since I came through that door, do you know that? Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.

71. Depression is the inability to construct a future

72. Sanity can take one of two forms: That of either ignorance, or denial.

73. Do not dump your woes upon people-keep the sad story of your life to yourself. Troubles grow by recounting them. [Pg. 156.]

74. Chess is mental torture.

75. What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity, devoid of troubling or disturbing subject matter, an art which could be for every mental worker, for the businessman was well as the man of letters, for example, a soothing, calming influence on the mind, something like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.

76. 'Goodness,' I babbled, 'but how awful for you. Not drinking, I mean. I mean, imagine getting up in the morning knowing that you're not going to feel any better all day'.

77. Be thou the rainbow to the storms of life, The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, And tints to-morrow with prophetic ray!

78. Anyone who would go to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined!

79. The moment a man begins to question the meaning and value of life, he is sick.

80. 'Dream tonight of peacock tails, / Diamond fields and spouter whales. / Ills are many, blessings few, / But dreams tonight will shelter you.'

81. In adolescence, I hated life and was continually on the verge of suicide, from which, however, I was restrained by the desire to know more mathematics. Now, on the contrary, I enjoy life; I might almost say that with every year that passes I enjoy it more. This is due partly to having discovered what were the things that I most desired, and having gradually acquired many of these things. Partly it is due to having successfully dismissed certain objects of desire - such as the acquisition of indubitable knowledge about something or other - as essentially unattainable. But very largely it is due to a diminishing preoccupation with myself. Like others who had a Puritan education, I had the habit of meditating on my sins, follies, and shortcomings. I seemed to myself - no doubt justly - a miserable specimen. Gradually I learned to be indifferent to myself and my deficiencies; I came to centre my attention increasingly upon external objects: the state of the world, various branches of knowledge, individuals for whom I felt affection.

82. Crooks: Books ain't no good. A guy needs somebody - to be near him. A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. Ch.4, p.72

83. I no longer feel I'll be dead by thirty; now it's sixty. I suppose these deadlines we set for ourselves are really a way of saying we appreciate time, and want to use all of it. I'm still writing, I'm still writing poetry, I still can't explain why, and I'm still running out of time. Wordsworth was sort of right when he said, 'Poets in their youth begin in gladness/ But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness.' Except that sometimes poets skip the gladness and go straight to the despondency. Why is that? Part of it is the conditions under which poets work - giving all, receiving little in return from an age that by and large ignores them - and part of it is cultural expectation - 'The lunatic, the lover and the poet,' says Shakespeare, and notice which comes first. My own theory is that poetry is composed with the melancholy side of the brain, and that if you do nothing but, you may find yourself going slowly down a long dark tunnel with no exit. I have avoided this by being ambidextrous: I write novels too. But when I find myself writing poetry again, it always has the surprise of that first unexpected and anonymous gift.

84. A discordant mind, black with confusion and despair, would finish me off as thoroughly as the cold. ~ Ch 7

85. The truth is that Tolstoy, with his immense genius, with his colossal faith, with his vast fearlessness and vast knowledge of life, is deficient in one faculty and one faculty alone. He is not a mystic; and therefore he has a tendency to go mad. Men talk of the extravagances and frenzies that have been produced by mysticism; they are a mere drop in the bucket. In the main, and from the beginning of time, mysticism has kept men sane. The thing that has driven them mad was logic. ...The only thing that has kept the race of men from the mad extremes of the convent and the pirate-galley, the night-club and the lethal chamber, has been mysticism - the belief that logic is misleading, and that things are not what they seem.

86. Inner peace is the key: if you have inner peace, the external problems do not affect your deep sense of peace and tranquility. In that state of mind you can deal with situations with calmness and reason, while keeping your inner happiness. That is very important. Without this inner peace, no matter how comfortable your life is materially, you may still be worried, disturbed or unhappy because of circumstances.

87. There's something wrong with that boy. He frowns for no good reason.

88. Though it is folly to suppose that happiness is a matter of volition, and that we can make ourselves content and cheerful whenever we choose - a theory that many poor hypochondriacs are taunted with till they are nigh driven mad - yet, on the other hand, no sane mind is ever left without the power of self-discipline and self-control in a measure, which measure increases in proportion as it is exercised. ~ Ch. 10

89. Though she had no one to write to, she had bought herself a blotter, a writing case, a pen and envelopes; she would dust off her whatnot, look at herself in the mirror, take up a book, and then begin to daydream and let it fall to her lap. . . . She wanted to die. And she wanted to live in Paris.

90. Finish every day and be done with it. For manners and for wise living it is a vice to remember. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. To-morrow is a new day; you shall begin it well and serenely, and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense.

91. Admittedly an unusual state, but not one that can be stigmatized as pathological.

92. It's gonna take the man in me to conquer this insanity/It seems tha rain'll never let up

93. A paranoid-schizophrenic is a guy who just found out what's going on.

94. Now I think I know what you tried to say to me How you suffered for you sanity How you tried to set them free They would not listen they're not listening still... Perhaps they never will...

95. So variously seem'd all things wrought, I marvell'd how the mind was brought To anchor by one gloomy thought; And wherefore rather I made choice To commune with that barren voice, Than him that said, 'Rejoice! rejoice!'

96. When your world falls apart or you're feeling depressed, you pick yourself up and smile so they won't worry.

97. Je parvins a faire s'evanouir dans mon esprit toute l'esperance humaine.

98. You've got to learn to like yourself a little more.

99. A man may feel so completely thwarted that he seeks no form of satisfaction, but only distraction and oblivion. He then becomes a devotee of 'pleasure.' That is to say, he seeks to make life bearable by becoming less alive. Drunkenness, for example, is temporary suicide.

100. It's pretty tough because of all the tension and all the concentration, sitting there hour after hour. It's...exhausting.