It is madness for sheep to talk peace with a wolf.
—Thomas Fuller (1608–61) English Cleric, Historian
The different sorts of madness are innumerable.
—Arabic Proverb
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked.
—Allen Ginsberg (1926–97) American Poet, Activist
The insane, for the most part, reason correctly, but from false principles, while they do not perceive that their premises are incorrect.
—Tryon Edwards (1809–94) American Theologian, Author
No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.
—Aristotle (384BCE–322BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar
Drunkenness is nothing but a self-induced state of insanity.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian
Insanity in individuals is something rare—but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
But then they danced down the street like dingledodies, and shambled after as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”
—Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American Novelist, Poet
Wrath begins in madness and ends in repentance.
—Arabic Proverb
Everybody’s youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American Novelist
One who shows signs of mental aberration is, inevitably, perhaps, but cruelly, shut off from familiar, thoughtless intercourse, partly excommunicated; his isolation is unwittingly proclaimed to him on every countenance by curiosity, indifference, aversion, or pity, and in so far as he is human enough to need free and equal communication and feel the lack of it, he suffers pain and loss of a kind and degree which others can only faintly imagine, and for the most part ignore.
—Charles Cooley (1864–1929) American Sociologist
And what is an authentic madman? It is a man who preferred to become mad, in the socially accepted sense of the word, rather than forfeit a certain superior idea of human honor. So society has strangled in its asylums all those it wanted to get rid of or protect itself from, because they refused to become its accomplices in certain great nastinesses. For a madman is also a man whom society did not want to hear and whom it wanted to prevent from uttering certain intolerable truths.
—Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) French Actor, Drama Theorist
Madness is tonic and invigorating. It makes the sane more sane. The only ones who are unable to profit by it are the insane.
—Henry Miller (1891–1980) American Novelist
O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven! Keep me in temper. I would not be mad.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?
—George Orwell (1903–50) English Novelist, Journalist
I have cultivated my hysteria with delight and terror. Now I suffer continually from vertigo, and today, 23rd of January, 1862, I have received a singular warning, I have felt the wind of the wing of madness pass over me.
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–67) French Poet, Art Critic, Essayist, Translator
Great wits are sure to madness near allied
And thin partitions do their bounds divide.
—John Dryden (1631–1700) English Poet, Literary Critic, Playwright
The usefulness of madmen is famous: they demonstrate society’s logic flagrantly carried out down to its last scrimshaw scrap.
—Cynthia Ozick (b.1928) American Novelist, Short-story Writer, Essayist
It is sheer madness to live in want in order to be wealthy when you die.
—Juvenal (c.60–c.136 CE) Roman Poet
We want a few mad people now. See where the sane ones have landed us!
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
A man of gladness seldom falls into madness.
—Unknown
Everybody’s youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.
—Unknown
Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
The lightning flashes through my skull; mine eyeballs ache and ache; my whole beaten brain seems as beheaded, and rolling on some stunning ground.
—Herman Melville (1819–91) American Novelist, Short Story Writer, Essayist, Poet
Eccentricity is not, as dull people would have us believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd.
—Edith Sitwell (1887–1964) British Poet, Literary Critic
Madness is consistent, which is more than can be said of poor reason.—Whatever may be the ruling passion at the time continues so throughout the whole delirium, though it should last for life.—Our passions and principles are steady in frenzy, but begin to shift and waver as we return to reason.
—Laurence Sterne (1713–68) Irish Anglican Novelist, Clergyman
Much Madness is divinest Sense—to a discerning Eye—much Sense—the starkest Madness—
—Emily Dickinson (1830–86) American Poet
Every madman thinks all other men mad.
—Latin Proverb
To marry once is a duty, twice a folly, and three times… madness.
—Dutch Proverb
Madness is the absolute break with the work of art; it forms the constitutive moment of abolition, which dissolves in time the truth of the work of art.
—Michel Foucault (1926–84) French Philosopher, Critic, Historian
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