A. J. Liebling Quotes

No sane man can afford to dispense with debilitating pleasures. No ascetic can be considered reliably sane.

Wherever on earth the religious neurosis has appeared we find it tied to three dangerous dietary demands: solitude, fasting, and sexual abstinence.

Anchorites used to ill-treat themselves in the way they did, so that the common people would not begrudge them the beatitude they would enjoy in heaven.

Maybe the life I think I'm living is a paranoid delusion...Sanity is a valuable possession; I hoard it the way people once hoarded money. I save it, so I will have enough, when the time comes.

Lord keep her safe since you can't keep her sane.

We are all born mad. Some remain so.

Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic.

The principle of asceticism never was, nor ever can be, consistently pursued by any living creature. Let but one tenth part of the inhabitants of the earth pursue it consistently, and in a day's time they will have turned it into a Hell.

No sane man can afford to dispense with debilitating pleasures; no ascetic can be considered reliably sane.

My capacity as a monk was to passionately believe utter nonsense, and when you're an actor you have to do the same thing. Also, Christianity used to have a lot to do with self-loathing and an acceptance of criticism and things like that which is terribly important for actors.

Whoso will pray, he must fast and be clean, And fat his soul, and make his body lean.

Concerning the harsh treatment of the body for our Lord's sake, I would say, avoid anything that would cause the shedding even of a drop of blood.

The convent is supreme egotism resulting in supreme self-denial.

Asceticism without religion is just another way of cultivating peculiar sensations.

Religion, in one sense, is a life of self-denial, just as husbandry, in one sense, is a work of death.

Madness is not a consequence of uncertainty but of certainty.

Sanity is all that stands between good and evil.

Keep in mind that I'm crazy, won't you?

I'm learning in my old age that the only thing you can do to keep your sanity is to stay in the moment.

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.

By means of meditation, I feel that we have planted dynamite to transcend the world of confusion. So it would be good if you could practice meditation as much as you can, as much as physically and psychologically possible. You could become more clear and sane, and you could also influence the national neurosis in that way.

The hard part is that this is a very fine line. There's right on one side of it, and crazy on the other.

I didn't think my day could get any worse until my best friend told me she might be going crazy. Again.

Intend to live in continual mortification, and never to expect or desire any worldly ease or pleasure.