To marry once is a duty, twice a folly, and three times… madness.
—Dutch Proverb
A man of gladness seldom falls into madness.
—Unknown
Much Madness is divinest Sense—to a discerning Eye—much Sense—the starkest Madness—
—Emily Dickinson (1830–86) American Poet
The extreme limit of wisdom—that’s what the public calls madness.
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French Poet, Playwright, Film Director
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
In this century the writer has carried on a conversation with madness. We might almost say of the twentieth-century writer that he aspires to madness. Some have made it, of course, and they hold special places in our regard. To a writer, madness is a final distillation of self, a final editing down. It’s the drowning out of false voices.
—Don DeLillo (b.1936) American Novelist, Short Story Writer
The insane, for the most part, reason correctly, but from false principles, while they do not perceive that their premises are incorrect.
—Tryon Edwards American Theologian
Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason.
—Andre Gide (1869–1951) French Novelist
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
It is sheer madness to live in want in order to be wealthy when you die.
—Juvenal (c.60–c.136 CE) Roman Poet
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked.
—Allen Ginsberg (1926–97) American Poet, Activist
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
The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad.
—Salvador Dali (1904–89) Spanish Painter
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
Everybody’s youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.
—Unknown
Anger is a short madness.
—Dutch Proverb
We want a few mad people now. See where the sane ones have landed us!
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
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
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
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
There is no great genius without some touch of madness.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian
The different sorts of madness are innumerable.
—Arabic Proverb
Everybody’s youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American Novelist
If the dead talk to you, you are a spiritualist; if God talks to you, you are a schizophrenic.
—Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian-American Psychiatrist, Psychoanalyst
Every madman thinks all other men mad.
—Latin Proverb
Perhaps he was a bit different from other people, but what really sympathetic person is not a little mad?
—Isadora Duncan (1877–1927) American Dancer, Choreographer
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
Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
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.
—John Lennon (1940–80) British Singer, Songwriter, Musician, Activist
I guess the definition of a lunatic is a man surrounded by them.
—Ezra Pound (1885-1972) American Poet, Translator, Critic
Wrath begins in madness and ends in repentance.
—Arabic Proverb
The experience and behavior that gets labeled schizophrenic is a special strategy that a person invents in order to live in an unlivable situation.
—R. D. Laing (1927–89) Scottish Psychiatrist
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
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
He raves; his words are loose as heaps of sand, and scattered wide from sense.—So high he’s mounted on his airy throne, that now the wind has got into his head, and turns his brains to frenzy.
—John Dryden (1631–1700) English Poet, Literary Critic, Playwright
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
How pregnant, sometimes, his replies are; a happiness that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity could not so prosperously be delivered of!
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.
—Aristotle (384BCE–322BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar
In the past, men created witches; now they create mental patients.
—Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian-American Psychiatrist, Psychoanalyst
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
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
It is madness for sheep to talk peace with a wolf.
—Thomas Fuller (1608–61) English Cleric, Historian
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
Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through. It is potential liberation and renewal as well as enslavement and existential death.
—R. D. Laing (1927–89) Scottish Psychiatrist
Great wits are sure to madness near allied
And thin partitions do their bounds divide.
—John Dryden (1631–1700) English Poet, Literary Critic, Playwright
In a completely sane world, madness is the only freedom!
—J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) English Novelist, Short Story Writer