Quotes About Madness

Tanzie knew Nicky was thinking what she was thinking—that Mum had finally gone mad. But she had read somewhere that mad people were like sleepwalkers—it was best not to disturb them. So she nodded really slowly, like this was all making good sense.

Excess of grief for the dead is madness; for it is an injury to the living, and the dead know it not.

Suddenly, madness was everywhere, and I was determined to learn about the impact it had on the way society evolves. I've always believed society to be a fundamentally rational thing, but what if it isn't? What if it is built on insanity?

Psychopaths [make] the world go around...society [is] an expression of that particular sort of madness...I've always believed society to be a fundamentally rational thing, but what if it isn't? What if it is built on insanity?

That's an incredibly depressing thought," I said "that if you're in a room and at one end lies madness and at the other end lies sanity it is human nature to veer towards the madness end.

Sometimes in life, and commonly in literature, desire undermines our resolve, drives us to obsession, illness, madness, or even death; or splits us into self-division, or contradictory moral evaluation, or wrecks us with the ambivalence of love and hate fused in the same desire.

Fools write books about madness being an elevated mental state or an alternative form of creativity. It's not, it's anguish.

The symptoms of madness can often be altered with medication, but there's no therapy for evil.

The stress of grad school can drive anyone temporarily mad.

Well, when you're being held at gunpoint by a geriatric madman in a metal skirt, you've kind of hit rock bottom anyway. It can't really get much worse.

I envied women with signature hair-dos, signature perfumes, signature sign-offs. Novelists who tell Vogue Magazine: "I can't live without my Smythson notebook, Pomegranate Noir cologne by Jo Malone and Frette sheets". In the grip of madness, materialism begins to look like an admirable belief system.

It is madness. And if you don't know who you are, or if your real self has drifted away from you with the undertow, madness at least gives you an identity. It's the same with self-loathing. You're probably just normal and normal-looking but that's not a real identity, not the way ugliness is. Normality, just accepting that you're probably normal-looking, lacks the force field of self-disgust. If you don't know who you are, madness gives you something to believe in.

Nel caso di Romand il fatto più sconcertante è che la follia sia stata commessa in due tempi, come uno che mentre lavora al computer schiacci il tasto sbagliato, rischiando di perdere un file prezioso, e quando il programma chiede: «Sei sicuro di voler eliminare il documento?», dopo aver soppesato i pro e i contro, dia ugualmente l'ok.

Lovecraft lo había escrito: si conociéramos todo, el terror nos haría enloquecer. Llegó a representarse su sueño como una trampa diabólica

Writing this, I'm reminded that until I was quite old I too adhered to the romantic cult of madness. I got over it, thank God. Experience has taught me that this particular form of romanticism is pure stupidity, and that madness is the saddest, most dismal thing on earth.

Vivevano il loro strano sogno e si raccontavano tutto e camminavano e parlavano e ridevano e camminavano e parlavano contro tutto il già visto come in un lungo sogno, quei matti. E poi, e poi.

Bueno. Pero eso le pasa a todo el mundo... - Sí. Y por eso el mundo no es más que un manicomio sin verja - remató Cienfuegos.

El mundo no es más que un manicomio sin verja

La angustia que transmite todo atisbo de demencia le va dejando perdido en una deriva extraña por el peligroso barrio infantil que hay en los límites de su mente, allí donde sabe que en cualquier momento puede perderse para siempre.

Don Quixote was for Bonhoeffer an important picture of the human condition.

The date was appropriate for his debut, for it was—certainly unbeknownst to Wilberforce—the fiftieth birthday of George Washington, the man who had driven Lord North and King George to the brink of madness and frustration

And whatever it was that happened, he eventually seemed born anew and became a kind of giddy pied piper for that newness and freedom and joy, so much so that many thought he must be demon possessed—or at least simply mad.

What madness is the course I am pursuing. I believe all the great truths of the Christian religion, but I am not acting as though I did. Should I die in this state I must go into a place of misery.

Writers are not the sanest lunatics in the asylum...