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Madness quotes

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“Though this be madness, yet there is a method in't.” William Shakespeare, “Hamlet” - 1623

“Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs; Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes; Being vexed, a sea nourished with loving tears. What is it else? A madness most discreet, A choking gall, and a preserving sweet.” William Shakespeare, “Romeo and Juliet” - 1597

“Dreams, then, are often most profound when they seem most crazy.” Sigmund Freud, “The Interpretation of Dreams” - 1899

“We are all born mad. Some remain so.” Samuel Beckett, “Waiting for Godot” - 1953

“There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness.” Herman Melville, “Moby-Dick” - 1851

“If one's lot is cast among fools, it is necessary to study folly.” Alexandre Dumas, “The Count of Monte Cristo” - 1845

“Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go.” William Shakespeare, “Hamlet” - 1623

“Taking crazy things seriously is—a serious waste of time.” Haruki Murakami, “Kafka on the Shore” - 2002

“a dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad.” Lewis Carroll, “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland” - 1865

“Everybody's youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Tales of the Jazz Age” - 1922

“people who try hard to do the right thing always seem mad.” Stephen King, “The Stand” - 1978

“I had noticed that both in the very poor and very rich extremes of society the mad were often allowed to mingle freely.” Charles Bukowski, “Ham on Rye” - 1982

“This cold night will turn us all to fools and madmen.” William Shakespeare, “King Lear” - 1623

“One sees more devils than vast hell can hold” William Shakespeare, “A Midsummer Night's Dream” - 1601

“Her madness hath the oddest frame of sense, such a dependency of thing on thing, as e'er I heard in madness.” William Shakespeare, “Measure for Measure” - 1623

“Many that are not mad have, sure, more lack of reason.” William Shakespeare, “Measure for Measure” - 1623

“For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I not — and very surely do I...” Edgar Allan Poe, “The Black Cat” - 1843

“It's like there was a fellow in every man that's done a-past the sanity or the insanity, that watches the sane and the insane doings of that man with the same horror and the same astonishment.” William Faulkner, “As I Lay Dying” - 1930

“Good Lord, what madness rules in brainsick men, when for so slight and frivolous a cause such factious emulations shall arise!” William Shakespeare, “Henry VI, Part 1” - 1623

“'Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: 'we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.' 'How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice. 'You must be,' said the Cat, 'or you wouldn't have come here.'” Lewis Carroll, “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland” - 1865

“Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.” George Orwell, “1984” - 1949

“All my means are sane, my motive and my object mad.” Herman Melville, “Moby-Dick” - 1851

“Then it was that there came into my head the first of the mad notions that contributed so much to save our lives.” Robert Louis Stevenson, “Treasure Island” - 1883

“Even the tiger runs and hides when little Tabaqui goes mad, for madness is the most disgraceful thing that can overtake a wild creature.” Rudyard Kipling, “The Jungle Book” - 1894

“Sir William said he never spoke of "madness"; he called it not having a sense of proportion.” Virginia Woolf, “Mrs Dalloway” - 1925

“All men are mad in some way or the other, and inasmuch as you deal discreetly with your madmen, so deal with God's madmen too, the rest of the world.” Bram Stoker, “Dracula” - 1897

“If he were a man of strong mind, it only gave him fits; but a person of mere average intellect it usually sent mad.” Jerome K. Jerome, “Three Men in a Boat” - 1889

“A weak mind does not accumulate force enough to hurt itself; stupidity often saves a man from going mad.” Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., “The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table” - 1858

“He did not care upon what terms he satisfied his passion. He had even had a mad, melodramatic idea to drug her.” W. Somerset Maugham, “Of Human Bondage” - 1915

“Sometimes, I feel sure he is as mad as a hatter; and then, just as he is at his maddest, I find there is method in his madness.” Agatha Christie, “The Mysterious Affair at Styles” - 1920

“Mad are thy subjects all, and even the wisest heart Straight to folly will fall, at a touch of thy poisoned dart.” Sophocles, “Antigone” - c. 441 BC

“Every thinking person fears nuclear war, and every technological state plans for it. Everyone knows it is madness, and every nation has an excuse.” Carl Sagan, “Cosmos” - 1980

“Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.” Blaise Pascal, “Pensées” - 1670

“But mad people never do die. That's a well-known fact. They've nothing to trouble them, and they live for ever.” Anthony Trollope, “Phineas Redux” - 1874

“But weariness is a kind of madness. And there are times when the only feeling I have is one of mad revolt.” Albert Camus, “The Plague” - 1947

“it is the madness of maintaining that everything is right when it is wrong.” Voltaire, “Candide” - 1759

“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, “1984” - 1949

“I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.” William Shakespeare, “Hamlet” - 1623

“Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do: and the reason why they are not so punished and cured is, that the lunacy is so ordinary that the whippers are in love too.” William Shakespeare, “As You Like It” - 1623

“You know, schizoid behavior is a pretty common thing in children. It’s accepted, because all we adults have this unspoken agreement that children are lunatics.” Stephen King, “The Shining” - 1977

“it is madness in all women to let a secret love kindle within them, which, if unreturned and unknown, must devour the life that feeds it; and, if discovered and responded to, must lead, ignis-fatuus-like, into miry wilds whence there is no...” Charlotte Brontë, “Jane Eyre” - 16 October 1847

“First sign of madness, talking to your own head” J. K. Rowling, “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” - 2003

Related topics

love passion wisdom death reason insanity sanity method sweetness men youth mind truth foolishness God dream seriousness stupidity trouble secret

Related authors

William Shakespeare (10)
Lewis Carroll (2)
George Orwell (2)
Herman Melville (2)
Stephen King (2)
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1)
William Faulkner (1)
Edgar Allan Poe (1)
J. K. Rowling (1)
Charlotte Brontë (1)
Robert Louis Stevenson (1)
Rudyard Kipling (1)
Virginia Woolf (1)
Bram Stoker (1)
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1)
Jerome K. Jerome (1)
W. Somerset Maugham (1)
Agatha Christie (1)
Sophocles (1)
Sigmund Freud (1)

Related sources

Hamlet (3)
Measure for Measure (2)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (2)
1984 (2)
Moby-Dick (2)
Romeo and Juliet (1)
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1)
As You Like It (1)
King Lear (1)
As I Lay Dying (1)
The Black Cat (1)
Henry VI, Part 1 (1)
Jane Eyre (1)
Treasure Island (1)
The Jungle Book (1)
Mrs Dalloway (1)
Dracula (1)
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table (1)
Three Men in a Boat (1)
Of Human Bondage (1)