Popular quotes about Madness! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 63
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.
PlatoIt is their nature, beautiful and simple. That you would destroy such beings, Mr. Lincoln, such superior creatures, seems madness to me.โ โThat you speak of them with such reverence, Mr. Poe, seems madness to me.โ "Can you imagine it? Can you imagine seeing the universe through such eyes? Laughing in the face of time and deathโthe world your Garden of Eden? Your library? Your harem?
Seth Grahame-SmithI have loved to the point of madness; That which is called madness, That which to me, Is the only sensible way to love.
Francoise SaganTo see the madness and yet walk a perfect silver line. ... That's what the true story-teller should be: a great guide, a clear mind, who can walk a silver line in hell or madness.
Ben OkriEven in such a time of madness as the late twenties, a great many man in Wall Street remained quite sane. But they also remained very quiet. The sense of responsibility in the financial community for the community as a whole is not small. It is nearly nil. Perhaps this is inherent. In a community where the primary concern is making money, one of the necessary rules is to live and let live. To speak out against madness may be to ruin those who have succumbed to it. So the wise in Wall Street are nearly always silent. The foolish thus have the field to themselves. None rebukes them.
John Kenneth GalbraithThere is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
Friedrich NietzscheI call to mind flatness and dampness; and then all is madness - the madness of a memory which busies itself among forbidden things.
Edgar Allan PoeFlirting with madness was one thing; when madness started flirting back, it was time to call the whole thing off.
Rohinton MistryAs 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 LangeMany a man is mad in certain instances, and goes through life without having it perceived. For example, a madness has seized a person of supposing himself obliged literally to pray continually; had the madness turned the opposite way, and the person thought it a crime ever to pray, it might not improbably have continued unobserved.
Samuel JohnsonI marvel with distress that in 2015 we are fighting the vaccination wars. It is deeply disturbing that people who should be able to weigh discredited so-called studies instead believe garbage, and so are willing to endanger their children and others. I sincerely hope this madness burns itself out before a lot more people get hurt.
Emily YoffeAvoiding problems doesn't make them go away - you think it does, but it really doesn't. They're just postponed. Those problems just stay inside your subconscious and brew until your body gets to a point where it's had enough and decides to release some of the stress itself. That's what an anxiety attack is! It happens when you don't know how to vent your frustration, fears, stress, sadness, madness, whatever it is that bothers you, the things you should be confronting and getting closure with. If you don't confront these things and deal with them, your body does it for you.
Sully ErnaThey are the only honest hypocrites, their life is a voluntary dream, a studied madness.
William HazlittJem is nothing but goodness. That he struck you last night only shows how capable you are of driving even saints to madness.
Cassandra ClareI think we all have a little bit of that beautiful madness that keeps us walking when everything around us is so insanely sane.
Julio CortazarIf they [Plato and Aristotle] wrote about politics it was as if to lay down rules for a madhouse. And if they pretended to treat it as something really important it was because they knew that the madmen they were talking to believed themselves to be kings and emperors. They humored these beliefs in order to calm down their madness with as little harm as possible.
Blaise PascalIf the will, which in the law of our nature, were withdrawn from our memory, fancy, understanding, and reason, no other hell could equal, for a spiritual being, what we should then feel from the anarchy of our powers. It would be conscious madness,--a horrid thought!
John MiltonBut what struck me was the book-madness of the place--books lay scattered across the unmade bed and the top of a battered-looking desk, books stood in knee-high piles on the floor, books were crammed sideways and right side up in a narrow bookcase that rose higher than my head and leaned dangerously from the wall, books sat in stacks on top of a dingy dresser. The closet door was propped open by a pile of books, and from beneath the bed a book stuck out beside the toe of a maroon slipper.
Steven MillhauserIt'll be your own torture," he said, serious. "I hope to God it'll torture you to madness.
Anthony BurgessAs we have seen so clearly demonstrated in Europe, hate breeds hate and the vicious circle revolves with all its attending madness.
Emanuel CellerA great deal of phenomenal experience has fostered in me a flexibility of the mind and imagination that some might call madness
Dean KoontzI was on this boat in the middle of the ocean scuba diving for this film I did, and I was with actor Mackenzie Cook, who is in it as well, and I didn't have my phone on me. The producer of the film handed me over this phone and said "someone is on the phone for you Gemma," and here I am completely in all of the scuba gear on with the tank on, and a helmet. My agent just went "dum, dum, dum, dum"(hums Bond theme song), and I just knew then, and I went ahhhh madness, and I was over the moon.
Gemma ArtertonThe essence of greatness is the ability to choose personal fulfillment in circumstances where others choose madness.
Wayne DyerOnce in a mental hospital, a person grows used to the freedom that exists in the world of madness and becomes addicted to it. You no longer have to take on responsibilities, to struggle to earn your daily bread, to be bothered with repetitive, mundane tasks. You could spend hours looking at a picture or making absurd doodles. Everything is torelated because, after all, the person is mentally ill.
Paulo CoelhoGod was gone; it was the silence of his departure. It was a rainy night. It was the myth of the rainy night. Dean was popeyed with awe. This madness would lead nowhere. I didn't know what was happening to me, and I suddenly realized it was only the tea that we were smoking; Dean had bought some in New York. It made me think that everything was about to arrive - the moment when you know all and everything is decided forever.
Jack KerouacI love heavily tattooed women. I imagine their lives are filled with sensuality and excess, madness and generosity, impulsive natures and fights. They look like they have endured much pain and sadness, yet have the ability to transcend all of it by documenting it on the body
Margaret ChoWhat madness is this, inviting sable Death by warfare? It always hovers close and comes unforeseen on silent steps.
TibullusArt will remain the most astonishing activity of mankind born out of struggle between wisdom and madness, between dream and reality in our mind.
Magdalena AbakanowiczTerror acts powerfully upon the body, through the medium of the mind, and should be employed in the cure of madness.
Benjamin RushSomebody had tipped the American continent like a pinball machine and all the goofballs had come rolling to LA in the southwest corner. I cried for all of us. There was no end to the American sadness and the American madness. Someday we'll all start laughing and roll on the ground when we realize how funny it's been.
Jack KerouacAlexander smoked and watched her from his tree stump bench. What are you doing? she would ask him. Nothing, he would reply. Nothing but growing my pain into madness.
Paullina SimonsI think that dwelling on other people's perception of you is the road to complete madness, unfortunately. I try and resist that.
Kate BeckinsaleWas I insane? Maybe. But then, there were many different kinds of insanity. Aunt Rose had always taken for granted that the whole world was in a state of constantly fluctuating madness, and that a neurosis was not an illness, but a fact of life, like pimples. Some have more, some have less, but only truly abnormal people have none at all. This commonsense philosophy had consoled me many times before, and it did now, too.
Anne FortierWhat music appeals to in us it is difficult to know; what we do know is that music reaches a zone so deep that madness itself cannot penetrate there.
Emile M. CioranBe nobody's darling; Be an outcast. Take the contradictions Of your life And wrap around You like a shawl, To parry stones To keep you warm. Watch the people succumb To madness With ample cheer; Let them look askance at you And you askance reply. Be an outcast; Be pleased to walk alone (Uncool) Or line the crowded River beds With other impetuous Fools. Make a merry gathering On the bank Where thousands perished For brave hurt words They said. Be nobody's darling; Be an outcast. Qualified to live Among your dead.
Alice WalkerZaphod felt he was teetering on the edge of madness and wondered if he shouldn't just jump over and have done with it.
Douglas AdamsAnd yet, just as our body would burst asunder if the pressure of the atmosphere were removed from it, so would the arrogance of men expand, if not to the point of bursting then to that of the most unbridled folly, indeed madness, if the pressure of want, toil, calamity and frustration were removed from their life. One can even say that we require at all times a certain quantity of care or sorrow or want, as a ship requires ballast, in order to keep on a straight course.
Arthur SchopenhauerI struggle in these situations not to let my madness govern me, and to let the positive aspects of my character define my life.
Russell Brand