madness Quotes

“We are little flames poorly sheltered by frail walls against the storm of dissolution and madness, in which we flicker and sometimes almost go out.”

“Frodo gave a cry, and there was, fallen upon his knees at the chasm’s edge. But Gollum, dancing like a mad thing, held aloft the ring, a finger still thrust within its circle.”

“We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”

“That’s how the madness of the world tries to colonize you: from the outside in, forcing you to live in its reality.”

“It is true we love life; not because we are wont to live, but because we are wont to love. There is always some madness in love. But there is always, also, some method in madness.”

“Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.”

“Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.”

“I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.”

“Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs; Being purg’d, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes; Being vex’d, a sea nourish’d with lovers’ tears; What is it else? A madness most discreet, A choking gall, and a preserving sweet.”

“We are all born mad. Some remain so.”

“Well, the family always was bright, and brightness, as you know, decays brilliantly. Madness is the most shining way. ”

“And have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the sense?”

“Say I am mad and give my madness rein To wreck itself; the worst that can befall Is but to die an honorable death.”

“Achilles’ eyes were bright in the firelight, his face drawn sharply by the flickering shadows. I would know is in dark or disguise, told myself. I would know it even in madness.”

“He said people were talking behind the bedroom walls. Mrs Filmer thought it odd. He saw things too – he had seen an old woman’s head in the middle of a fern.”

“Look! Her wedding ring slipped – she had grown so thin. It was she who suffered – but she had nobody to tell.”

“The word “time” split its husk; poured its riches over him; and from his lips fell like shells, like shavings from a plane, without his making them, hard, white, imperishable words, and flew to attach themselves to their places in an ode to Time; an immortal ode to Time.”

“Men must not cut down trees. There is a God. (He noted such revelations on the backs of envelopes.) Change the world. No one kills from hatred. Make it known (he wrote it down). He waited. He listened.”

“The road’s up there on the wall a thousand feet with a sheer drop sometimes, ... And worst of all is the bridge! I go ambling seaward along the path by the creek and see this awful thin white line of bridge a thousand unbridgeable sighs of height above the little woods.”

“I’ve got the directions all memorized from a little map Monsanto’s mailed me but in my imagination dreaming about this big retreat back home there’d been something larkish, bucolic, all homely woods and gladness instead of all this aerial roaring mystery in the dark.”

“O the sad music of it all, I’ve done it all, seen it all, done everything with everybody.”

“Marylou was the only girl Dean ever really loved. He was sick with regret when he saw her face again, and, as of yore, he pleaded and begged at her knees for the joy of her being. She understood Dean; she stroked his hair; she knew he was mad.”

“There was madness in any direction, at any hour.”

“Surrounded by madness, surrounded by hunger, surrounded by everything but death, I knew death was our only way out.”

“And Carlo began his monkey dance in the streets of life as I’d seen him do so many times everywhere in New York.”

To surrender dreams — this may be madness.

Perhaps to be too practical is madness.

Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!

When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies?

“The Knight looked surprised at the question. ‘What does it matter where my body happens to be?” he said. “My mind goes on working all the same.‘”

“He makes these decisions with courage, detachment, and - sometimes - with just a touch of madness.”

“Only poetry or madness could do justice to the noises.”

“I stand as guilty as they. For I knew better and did not step forth to try to stop the madness. Certainly not in any manner that counted. I held back, afraid.”

“There was a distinct method to the madness, every move propagated to force my hand, to lure me out of hiding with the sweet promise of finality.”

“I always thought insanity would be a dark, bitter feeling, but it is drenching and delicious if you really roll around in it.”

“I sometimes think we must be all mad and that we shall wake to sanity in strait-waistcoats.”

For there is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men

Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form.

“But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself and, by heavens I tell you, it had gone mad.”

“I have not slept. Between the acting of a dreadful thing And the first motion, all the interim is Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream: The Genius and the mortal instruments Are then in council; and the state of man, Like to a little kingdom, suffers then The nature of an insurrection.”

“Captain, this is madness! High time you thought of your own home at last, if it really is your fate to make it back alive and reach your well-built house and native land.”

Did I write it so as not to go mad or, on the contrary, to go mad in order to understand the nature of madness?

If it be you that stir these daughters’ hearts Against their father, fool me not so much To bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger, And let not women’s weapons, water-drops, Stain my man’s cheeks! No, you unnatural hags, … No, I’ll not weep. I have full cause of weeping, but this heart Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws, Or ere I’ll weep. O fool, I shall go mad!

“It’s better to face madness with a plan than to sit still and let it take you in pieces.”

“There is no orchestra, no audience; it is an empty theater in the middle of the night and all the clocks in the world are ticking. And now for this last time, Jade, I don’t mind, or even ask if it is madness: I see your face, I see you, you; I see you in every seat.”

“My story is not a pleasant one; it neither sweet nor harmonious, as invented stories are; it has the taste of nonsense and chaos, of madness and dreams–like the lives of all men who stop deceiving themselves.”

“But the Mahommedan religion increases, instead of lessening, the fury of intolerance. It was originally propagated by the sword, and ever since its votaries have been subject, above the people of all other creeds, to this form of madness.”

“What difference do you think you can make, one man in all this madness?′

“I could not help feeling that they were evil things-- mountains of madness whose farther slopes looked out over some accursed ultimate abyss.”

“In order really to live, you must photograph as much as you can, and to photograph as much as you can you must either live in the most photographable way possible, or else consider photographable every moment of your life. The first course leads to stupidity; the second to madness.”

“Visit either you like: they’re both mad.”

“Trying not to believe things when in your heart you are almost sure they are true, is as bad for the temper as anything I know.”

“He is mad; but he is my son, and England’s heir; and, mad or sane, still shall reign!”

“Now were he impostor and called himself prince, look you that would be natural; that would be reasonable. But lived ever an impostor yet, who, being called prince by the king, prince by the court, prince by all, denied his dignity and pleaded against his exaltation? No! By the soul of St. Swithin, no! This is the true prince, gone mad.”

″‘I love you Kess,’ said Mumpo, embracing her. ‘I’m so happy, are you happy? I want you to be as happy as me.’ And he gambolled around her, laughing and waving his mud-encrusted arms.”

“But to believe that getting stuff is the purpose and aim of life is madness. ”

“We’re all mad here, I am, you are. But I’ll tell you a secret... all the best people are.”

“You become increasingly comfortable with madness - and not just the madness of others, but your own. We’re all crazy, I believe, just in different ways.”

“He is mad, inhuman…the man’s become inhuman, I tell you.”