Quotes About Madness

Things happen, he had decided; they happen and they happen again, and anybody who tries to make sense out of it goes out of his mind.

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.

The greatest blessing granted to mankind come by way of madness, which is a divine gift.

If there were any way of sheltering from death's blows—I am not the man to recoil from it . . . But it is madness to think that you can succeed . .

Wall of lies?' Proust muttered. 'Is that the one that borders the orchard of obsession that contains the tree of lunacy?

La guerre était folie ? Sam disait que la paix devait l'être aussi. Il fallait justement proposer l'inconcevable.

It is probably the only memory of real joy I have in the madness of my past.

Stage-plays also carried me away, full of images of my miseries, and of fuel to my fire. Why is it, that man desires to be made sad, beholding doleful and tragical things, which yet himself would no means suffer? yet he desires as a spectator to feel sorrow at them, and this very sorrow is his pleasure. What is this but a miserable madness?

If, then, Virgil says that the gods were such as these, and were conquered, and that when conquered they could not escape except under the protection of a man, what madness is it to suppose that Rome had been wisely entrusted to these guardians, and could not have been taken unless it had lost them! Indeed, to worship conquered gods as protectors and champions, what is this but to worship, not good divinities, but evil omens?

Every stink that fights the ventilator thinks it is Don Quixote.

Worldly wise I realize that everybody is crazy

Yet I am still somewhat hampered. I cannot free myself from that strong, commanding voice which speaks to me, or from that mysterious power which pushes aside objects, contemptuous of their size; I am still wearied by endless monotonous roads that led nowhere. That is why I am not a perfect spirit, only an 'insane person', someone who arouses in normal people pity, contempt or fear. But I do not complain. Even like this, I am better off than those of healthy mind.

Toutes nos créations originales et puissantes sont le fruit d'une concentration, d'une monomanie sublime, proche de la folie.

El placer no está nunca en la claridad y en la prudencia, siempre en la embriagadez, en la superabundancia, en la ilusión; un brote de locura corresponde siempre a toda vida verdadera.

have heard, again, from other sources — you may laugh, but it is always madness that first gives one an insight into the intensity of a passion — that he has promised vast sums in the way of donations both to the synagogue and to the parish priest in the event of his child's recovery.

she came to the conclusion that if Aunt Ada was mad, then she, Flora, was one of the Marx Brothers.

It's lonely at midnight in the nuthouse.

With the truth so dull and depressing, the only working alternative is wild bursts of madness and filigree.

Since life consists of madness spiked with lies, the farther you are from each other the more lies you can put into it and the happier you'll be. That's only natural and normal. Truth is inedible.

Truth is that the best ideas are often psychotic, obscene and unoriginal.

The greatest blessing granted to mankind come by way of madness, which is a divine gift.

Love is a madness produced by an unsatisfiable rational desire to understand the ultimate truth about the world.

For to define true madness, What is't but to be nothing else but mad?

He must be theory-mad beyond redemption who ... shall ... persist in attempting to reconcile the obstinate oils and waters of Poetry and Truth.