Popular quotes about Madness! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 36
Madness, provided it comes as the gift of heaven, is the channel by which we receive the greatest blessings... the men of old who gave things their names saw no disgrace or reproach in madness; otherwise they would not have connected it with the name of the noblest of arts, the art of discerning the future, and called it the manic art... So, according to the evidence provided by our ancestors, madness is a nobler thing than sober sense... madness comes from God, whereas sober sense is merely human.
PlatoExotic: meaning you're "desired." For madness is seductive, sexy. Female madness. So long as the female is reasonably young and attractive.
Joyce Carol OatesMadness is confusion of levels of fact. . . . Madness is not seeing visions but confusing levels.
William S. BurroughsThe typhoon came out of the sea first as a deep hollow roar. ... I was surrounded by the madness, the unreason, of uncontrolled, undisciplined energy. None of this made any sense. It was worse than useless - it was nature destroying its own creation - its own self. To create by the long process of growth and then to destroy by a fit of wild emotion - was this not madness, was this not unreason?
Pearl S. BuckMadness is not enlightenment, but the search for enlightenment is often mistaken for madness.
Richard Davenport-HinesAs an actor, you have to have trust and believe that somebody is taking care of you or watching your back. With a part like this, especially with where we're going with it, I can't pull any punches. I can't do it halfway, especially when you're dealing with madness and this descent into madness.
Jessica LangeSo many bright futures consigned to the ashes of the past.So many dreams lost in the madness that had engulfed us.Except for a few widely scattered shouts of joy,the survivors of the abyss sat hollow-eyed and silent, trying to comprehend a world without war.
Paul FussellAll those evil doctrines about God that work misery and madness have their origin in the brains of the wise and prudent, not in the hearts of children.
George MacDonaldSometimes the personalities at the helm of the madness industry are, with their drives and obsessions, as mad in their own way as those they study. And that relatively ordinary people are, more and more, defined by their maddest edges.
Jon RonsonBut everyone has a touch of madness, and those who can't admit it are usually farther gone than the rest of us.
David Farland[Madness] is the jail we could all end up in. And we know it. And watch our step. For a lifetime. We behave. A fantastic and entire system of social control, by the threat of example as effective over the general population as detention centers in dictatorships, the image of the madhouse floats through every mind for the course of its lifetime.
Kate MillettMiserliness is a capital quality to run in families; it's the safe side for madness to dip on.
George EliotOne friend dies and we remain indifferent; another dies, perhaps less intimate, and we see ourselves as dead, and weep, mourn, tear our hair or find ourselves caught up in the madness of the wake, competing with others as to who was closest, now suffers most.
Fay WeldonWhen I try to write love, it only turns into horror. Thinking about it with a clear head, feeling such deep emotions to some other person you don't even know is truly a terrifying thingI wonder if love isn't a manifestation of madness in some way.
Gen UrobuchiThe ingredients of both darkness and light are equally present in all of us,...The madness of this planet is largely a result of the human being's difficulty in coming to viruous balance with himself.
Elizabeth GilbertI have always been reconciled to the fact that I was born a bibliomaniac, never have I sought a cure, and my dearest friends have been drawn from those likewise suffering from book madness.
Lawrence Clark PowellUnless it comes out of your soul like a rocket, unless being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder, don't do it. unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, don't do it. when it is truly time, and if you have been chosen, it will do it by itself and it will keep on doing it until you die or it dies in you. there is no other way. and there never was.
Charles BukowskiOf course in war all madness's come out in a man. That is the fault of war not of a man or a nation.
Frieda LawrenceThe supreme trick of mass insanity is that it persuades you that the only abnormal person is the one who refuses to join in the madness of others, the one who tries vainly to resist. We will never understand totalitarianism if we do not understand that people rarely have the strength to be uncommon.
Eugene IonescoWhen so much is left to the listener's imagination, it is bound to be more scary. But our stories are not just to frighten; they are engaged with the things that are really scary like loneliness and madness.
Larry FessendenRead for yourselves, read for the sake of your inspiration, for the sweet turmoil in your lovely head. But also read against yourselves, read for questioning and impotence, for despair and erudition... and also read those whose darkness or malice or madness or greatness you can't understand because only in this way will you grow, outlive yourself, and become what you are.
Adam ZagajewskiI believe that one should be able to control and manipulate experiences, even the most terrifying, like madness, being tortured...with an informed and intelligent mind.
Sylvia PlathI watched them carefully, as always, searching for a sign of mental weakness. But there was none. Every man was coping well with the hardship, each one of them locked into his task. But it is one thing to practice, and quite another to race. And the trouble is, you never know who, on the day, will find it within his soul to give more than he has ever given before. It takes a kind of madness to compete like that, because of the will power and the ego, and his loyalty. And while some men have it, others have yet to find it. And a coach can only use his best judgement as to who those men will be.
Daniel TopolskiIf any mention was made of homicide, madness, adultery, and intolerable tortures, we would let the church-bells ring louder, the church-organ swell its peal and drown the hideous sound. The sugar they raised was excellent: nobody tasted blood in it.
Ralph Waldo EmersonPeople were interesting at first. Then later, slowly but surely, all the flaws and madness would manifest themselves. I would become less and less to them; they would mean less and less to me.
Charles BukowskiI cheat him, I deceive him, yet the world does not sink in sulphur-colored mists. Madness conquers. I can no longer put my mosaics together. I just cry and laugh.
Anais NinThe real madness probably is not another thing that the wisdom itself that, tired of discovering the shames of the world, has taken the intelligent resolution to become mad
Heinrich HeineCertainly, Gandhi is not inferior to Christ in goodness and sanctity, and he surpasses him in touching humility. Gandhi is the prophet of hope in this age of pessimism and disillusionment. He is a promise of sanity in the madness induced by our world's heedless drinking at the fount of war.
Sudhir KakarSince 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.
Louis-Ferdinand CelineIf an American is concerned only about his nation, he will not be concerned about the peoples of Asia, Africa, or South America. Is this not why nations engage in the madness of war without the slightest sense of penitence? Is this not why the murder of a citizen of your own nation is a crime, but the murder of citizens of another nation in war is an act of heroic virtue?
Martin Luther King, Jr.She was darkness and he was darkness and there had never been anything before this time, only darkness and his lips upon her. She tried to speak and his mouth was over hers again. Suddenly she had a wild thrill such as she had never known; joy, fear, madness, excitement, surrender to arms that were too strong, lips too bruising, fate that moved too fast.
Margaret MitchellSuddenly, 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?
Jon RonsonBut to deny fate is arrogance, to declare that we are the sole shapers of our existence is madness;if you deny fate life becomes the series of missed opportunities, a regret for what never was and could have been, a remorse of what was not done and could have been done, and the present is wasted, twisted into another missed oppurtunity.
Oriana FallaciThe Josh Brolin character in that movie [Hail, Caesar!], he's given a choice to leave, to do something where he wouldn't have to work as hard. And he'd rather work and deal with the madness of what he's doing because it thrills him, because it gives him meaning.
David KrumholtzWhat is life? A madness. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a story. And the greatest good is little enough: for all life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams.
Pedro Calderon de la BarcaWise men mingle mirth with their cares, as a help either to forget or overcome them; but to resort to intoxication for the ease of one's mind is to cure melancholy by madness.
Pierre CharronI'm not afraid to write about madness. I always figure that whatever most embarrasses you is something that everyone can relate to, really...because we're just not that different. So if you think, 'Oh my god, this is so embarrassing. I can't possibly talk about that,' and you write about it, the audience is gonna be like, 'that happened to me!
David Sedaris