Quotes About Madness

Isidor thought for a moment he had gone mad, and that he wished his valet to cut his throat.

I took to writing at an early age to escape from meaninglessness, uselessness, unimportance, insignificance, poverty, enslavement, ill health, despair, madness, and all manner of other unattractive, natural and inevitable things.

I am interested in madness. I believe it is the biggest thing in the human race, and the most constant. How do you take away from a man his madness without also taking away his identity? Are we sure it is desirable for a man's spirit not to be at war with itself, or that it is better to be serene and ready to go to dinner than to be excited and unwilling to stop for a cup of coffee, even?

I have managed to conceal my madness fairly effectively, and as far as I know it hasn't hurt anybody badly, for which I am grateful.

All great art has madness, and quite a lot of bad art has it, too.

Dispute not with her: she is lunatic.

Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.

Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs; Being purg'd, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes; Being vex'd, a sea nourish'd with lovers' tears; What is it else? A madness most discreet, A choking gall, and a preserving sweet.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet Are of imagination all compact: One sees more devils than vast hell can hold, That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt: The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name.

Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.

Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do; and the reason why they are not so punish'd and cured is that the lunacy is so ordinary that the whippers are in love too.

I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.

Tis the times' plague, when madmen lead the blind.

Too much of water hast thou poor Ophelia, and therefore I forbid my tears. But yet it is our trick, let shame say what it will. when these are gone the women will be out! Adieu my lord, I have a speech of fire that fane would blaze, But that this folly doubts it.

O! Let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven; keep me in temper; I would not be mad!

Lady, shall I lie in your lap? Ophelia: No, my lord. Hamlet: DId you think I meant country matters? Ophelia: I think nothing, my lord. Hamlet: That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs. Ophelia: What is, my lord? Hamlet: Nothing.

When down her weedy trophies and herself Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide; And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up: Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes; As one incapable of her own distress, Or like a creature native and indued Unto that element: but long it could not be Till that her garments, heavy with their drink, Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay To muddy death. (Ophelia)

Cannot you tell that? Every fool can tell that. It was the very day that young Hamlet was born, he that is mad and sent into England. Ay, marry, why was he sent into England? Why, because he was mad. He shall recover his wits there, or, if he do not, it's no great matter there. Why? 'Twill not be seen in him there. There the men are as mad as he.

Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him? - Lady Macbeth

He's mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse's health, a boy's love, or a whore's oath.

That he's mad, 'tis true, 'tis true 'tis pity, And pity 'tis, 'tis true —a foolish figure

Alas, sir, how fell you besides your five wits? Malvolio: Fool, there was never a man so notoriously abused. I am as well in my wits, fool, as thou art. Feste: But as well? Then you are mad indeed, if you be no better in you wits than a fool.

He's mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse's health, a boy's love, or a whore's oath.

You think I'll weep? No, I'll not weep. Storm and tempest. I have full cause of weeping, but this heart Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws, Or e're I'll weep.—O Fool, I shall go mad.