Quotes About Madness

It's no good. I've been trying to sleep for the last half-hour, and I can't. Writing here is a sort of drug. It's the only thing I look forward to. This afternoon I read what I wrote... And it seemed vivid. I know it seems vivid because my imagination fills in all the bits another person wouldn't understand. I mean, it's vanity. But it seems a sort of magic... And I just can't live in this present. I would go mad if I did

era un viso indimenticabile, un viso tragico. Sgorgava dolore con la stessa purezza, naturalezza e inarrestabilità con cui sgorga l'acqua da una sorgente nei boschi. Non c'era artificio in esso, né ipocrisia, né isterismo, né maschera; soprattutto non c'era la minima traccia di pazzia. La pazzia era nel mare vuoto, nel vuoto orizzonte, [...]; come se la sorgente fosse stata naturale in sé ma innaturale in quanto sgorgava da un deserto.

He is mad. It is me. I am his madness. For years he's been looking for something to put his madness into. And he found me.

You've lost your mind. -Yes, and it's so liberating.

How could I be sure that I was not insane? I did not feel mad, but how was I to know what madness felt like?

Crazy people made him crazy. It was as if he personally resented them giving into madness - in part, because he so frequently labored to behave sanely. When some people gave up the labor of sanity, or failed at it, Garp suspected them of not trying hard enough.

It was madness that had killed Jenny Fields, his mother. It was extremism. It was self-righteous, fanatical, and monstrous self-pity. Kenny Truckenmiller was only a special kind of moron: a true believer who was also a thug. He was a man who pitied himself so blindly that he could make absolute enemies out of people who contributed only the ideas to his undoing. And how was an Ellen Jamesian any different? Was not her gesture as desperate, and as empty of an understanding of human complexity?

Left to herself, the serpent now began To change; her elfin blood in madness ran, Her mouth foam'd, and the grass, therewith besprent, Wither'd at dew so sweet and virulent; Her eyes in torture fix'd, and anguish drear, 150 Hot, glaz'd, and wide, with lid-lashes all sear, Flash'd phosphor and sharp sparks

My mentality, uncontrollable and wanton as always, whispered to me a scheme so magnificent and daring that I shrank from the very thought of what I was hearing. Stop! I cried imploringly to my god-like mind. This is madness. But still I listened to the counsel of my brain. It was offering me the opportunity to Save the World Through Degeneracy.

Parce que, à sa façon de causer, on voyait bien que le gars était allé très longtemps à l'école. C'était probablement ce qui l'avait rendu dingue.

If there must be madness, something may be said for having it on a heroic scale

In the world of minor lunacy, the behavior of both the utterly rational and the totally insane seems equally odd.

Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it.

Emotion turning back on itself, and not leading on to thought or action, is the element of madness.

Anger is temporary insanity.

Provided a man is not mad, he can be cured of every folly but vanity; there is no cure for this but experience, if indeed there is any cure for it at all.

...the artist treats intuition and nuance with respect and reminds us that a little madness resides in all of us. Artists give voice to feelings, to conflict, to the prism of human experience.

Experience is mad when it steps beyond the horizons of our common, that is, our communal sense.

A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.

Sometimes, the only way to stay sane is to go a little crazy.

Insanity is beautiful, I'm absolutely glad to be crazy.

Our life consists partly in madness, partly in wisdom.

The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes.

But why did the madness come?" "The gods wished to punish him," Chiron answered. Achilles shook his head, impatiently. "But this was a greater punishment for her. It was not fair of them." "There is no law that gods must be fair, Achilles," Chiron said. "And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone. Do you think?" "Perhaps," Achilles admitted.