Best 930 quotes in «madness quotes» category

The Lord stuck His finger in the net of my nerves gently--yea, verily, in desultory fashion--and brought slight disorder among the threads. And then the Lord withdrew His finger, and there were fibres and delicate root-like filaments adhering to the finger, and they were the nerve-threads of the filaments. And there was a gaping hole after the finger, which was God's finger, and a wound in my brain in the track of His finger. But when God had touched me with His finger, He let me be, and touched me no more, and let no evil befall me; but let me depart in peace, and let me depart with the gaping hole. And no evil hath befallen me from the God who is the Lord God of all Eternity.

The mad people mirror their madness, with their abnormal actions and the way of talking. That's why we recognize them; otherwise, not.

The madness of our endless minds bewitched in magic... (fragment from Our last tango, chapter Passion)

The madness in the heart is the state of mind.

The madness of faith is a very different thing from the madness of Enlightenment Reason.

The marvellous logic of the mad which seems to mock that of the logicians because it resembles it so exactly, or rather because it is exactly the same, and because at the secret heart of madness, at the core of so many errors, so many absurdities, so many words and gestures without consequence, we discover, finally, the hidden perfection of a language.

Then, as we turned the final curve past the abandoned little hamlet of Ballydubh, with the village almost out of sight, he forced me to turn around and take in the full sweep of the mountains and the sea. "And there", he said, "is your An Clohan. You had best said good-bye, now.

Then he looked up, despite all best prior intentions. In four minutes, it would be another hour; a half hour after that was the ten-minute break. Lane Dean imagined himself running around on the break, waving his arms and shouting gibberish and holding ten cigarettes at once in his mouth, like a panpipe. Year after year, a face the same color as your desk. Lord Jesus. Coffee wasn't allowed because of spills on the files, but on the break he'd have a big cup of coffee in each hand while he pictured himself running around the outside grounds, shouting. He knew what he'd really do on the break was sit facing the wall clock in the lounge and, despite prayers and effort, count the seconds tick off until he had to come back and do this again. And again and again and again.

...then the rushing Pequod, freighted with savages, and laden with fire, and burning a corpse, and plunging into that blackness of darkness, seemed the material counterpart of her monomaniac commander's soul.

The nutritionist said I should eat root vegetables. Said if I could get down thirteen turnips a day I would be grounded, rooted. Said my head would not keep flying away to where the darkness lives. The psychic told me my heart carries too much weight. Said for twenty dollars she’d tell me what to do. I handed her the twenty. She said, “Stop worrying, darling. You will find a good man soon.” The first psycho therapist told me to spend three hours each day sitting in a dark closet with my eyes closed and ears plugged. I tried it once but couldn’t stop thinking about how gay it was to be sitting in the closet. The yogi told me to stretch everything but the truth. Said to focus on the out breath. Said everyone finds happiness when they care more about what they give than what they get. The pharmacist said, “Lexapro, Lamicatl, Lithium, Xanax.” The doctor said an anti-psychotic might help me forget what the trauma said. The trauma said, “Don’t write these poems. Nobody wants to hear you cry about the grief inside your bones.” But my bones said, “Tyler Clementi jumped from the George Washington Bridge into the Hudson River convinced he was entirely alone.” My bones said, “Write the poems.

The only performance that makes it, that makes it all the way is the one that achieves madness.

The only people who are worth knowing are either saints, scoundrels or madmen; at least their conversation is always interesting. Sensible people are dull by definition, because they are always harping on to the same boring tune about everyday life. They form part of the crowd, the more intelligent part perhaps, but the crowd for all that, and I’m sick of them.

The only thing in this world is music–music and books and one or two pictures. I am going to found a colony where there shall be no marrying–unless you happen to fall in love with a symphony of Beethoven–no human element at all, except what comes through Art–nothing but ideal peace and endless meditation. The whole of human beings grows too complicated, my only wonder is that we don’t fill more madhouses: the insane view of life has much to be said for it–perhaps its the sane one after all: and we, the sad sober respectable citizens really rave every moment of our lives and deserve to be shut up perpetually. My spring melancholy is developing these hot days into summer madness.

Theo's already on his way. Paul might bee too, but communications have been down so long, I don't know." "Heading out here with a storm like this coming in? That's madness." Dad sighs. "Then again, jumping through dimensions to chase a dead man is madness too. I had long suspected their lunacy but this confirmation is nonetheless disquieting." "See? Everything's going to be fine.

The origin of illness may be in the past, but the virulent crisis must be dynamically tackled. I believe in attacking the core of the illness, through its present symptoms, quickly, directly. The past is a labyrinth. One does not have to step into it and move step by step through every turn and twist. The past reveals itself instantly, in today’s fever or abscess of the soul.

The people who build high, strong fences are the ones who survive the best. You deny that reality only at the risk of being driven into the wilderness yourself.

The problem with mad people is not that they are mad, but that they are suffering from a particular brand of madness that the majority are not.

The picture of the bacchante who stands motionless and stares into space must have been well known. Catullus is thinking of her when he tells of the abandoned Ariadne, who follows her faithless lover with sorrowing eyes as she stands on the reedy shore ‘like the picture of a maenad.’ Indeed, melancholy silence becomes the sign of women who are possessed by Dionysus. […] Madness dwells in the surge of clanging, shrieking, and pealing sounds, it dwells also in silence. The women who follow Dionysus get their name, maenads, from this madness. Possessed by it, they rush off, whirl madly in circles, or stand still, as if turned to stone.

There are no people anywhere who don't have some mental illness. It all depends on where you set the bar and how hard you look. What is a myth is that we are mostly mentally well most of the time.

There are different categories of madmen, and different types of asylums! I know absolutely nothing about the asylums that house the madman who thinks he is a space man. Would you believe that 90% of madmen are treated in outside clinics?

There are many ties that bind, and as many walls that divide. Music and madness. Love and unending time. Race and war. Strum weaves together each element into a larger human tapestry of light and shadow, where a combination of fate and decision can define a family's legacy.

The reality I submerse myself in when writing, is far greater than the physical reality surrounding me at work!

There is a difference between being mad and being surrounded by retards.

There is a duality to darkness known only to those who’ve been infected by its touch. Everyone knows the shadows: shallow, comfortable, mostly harmless places where one might nest for a night. But the depths of living pitch only visit the aristocracy of madmen and women who’ve unwittingly pledged fealty to the curse. For some, it outright ruins minds like a hound to fresh meat; for others, it wanes into the deepest parts of its less caustic sibling and waits for the time to strike, returning periodically through life like an incurable disease.

The reason creativity and craziness go together is that if you're just plain crazy without being able to sing or dance or write good poems, no one is going to want to have babies with you. Your genes will fall by the wayside. Who but a brazen crazy person would go one-on-one with blank paper or canvas armed with nothing but ideas?

There is a madness in me that does not follow society.

There is a madness that is joy, and there is a madness that is just madness.

There is a madness in love.

There is a madness that is joy and a madness that is just madness.

There is madness in the mind.

There is madness in the every heart.

There is madness in the heart of a man.

There is no end. There is no cure. It gets worse with time. Cure. How can you cure an institution, we are bricks crumbling in the walls of despair. Death is inevitable for us all. But the insanity is here to stay.

There is no law that gods must be fair, Achilles,” Chiron said. “And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone. Do you think?” “Perhaps,” Achilles admitted. I listened and did not speak. Achilles’ eyes were bright in the firelight, his face drawn sharply by the flickering shadows. I would know it in dark or disguise, I told myself. I would know it even in madness.

There is no such thing as a true madman.

There is no mountain on earth which is greater than the mountain of human madness!

There is only one way to escape the madness of this world, and that is to enjoy it.

There is something relentless about the serenity of nature which has a crushing effect on the human mind. The lavish splendour of her phases, which completely ignores human strife, fills the race of men with the sensation of their own ephemeral insignificance and drives them mad.

There is only one escape from the madness of this world, and that is to enjoy it.

There is something maddening about mediocrity that calls forth the worst in those who are forced to deal with it.

There was a fine line between madness and intelligence.

There's a pleasure being mad that only the madman knows.

There was a gleam in her eye now that I did not like, that promised damage. "I want you to think about something. You might be immune to hypnosis- you might- but what about the veil already in place? What if I removed that veil so you could access your own memories of crossing the border?" the psychologist asked. "Would you like that, Little Flame? Would you like it or would you go mad?

There was a single window that tapered into a funnel, with eerie moonlight passing through it, reflecting directly off the globe like a mirror. For a moment, as I rose I saw something glimmering within. Dumbly, with feverish whispers assailing me, I realized it was the center of one of the distant galaxies, flaring after some unknown cataclysm. Its radiance was such that it burst from its prison. It met the moonlight halfway. It created kaleidoscopic colours on the walls. Then, in answer, the reliefs transformed from majestic art into something approaching divine, alive, plays from Egyptian memory, given the spark of life from space. I saw animal-headed gods move. They stepped from the walls to take their place around the altar. All stared at the globe. Each raised their arms in silent supplication. And such was their toxic ecstasy that I wished to join them, to forget my dreadful experiences and revel in something truly wondrous.

There was never a great genius without a touch of madness.

There was a madness in my story, but it was a madness I understood.

The sane man knows that he has a touch of the beast, a touch of the devil, a touch of the saint, a touch of the citizen. Nay, the really sane man knows that he has a touch of the madman. But the materialist's world is quite simple and solid, just as the madman is quite sure he is sane.

The Sad Boy Ay, his old mother was a glad one. And his poor old father was a mad one. The two begot this sad one. Alas for the single shoe The Sad Boy pulled out of the rank green pond, Fishing for fairies On the prankish advice Of two disagreeable lovers of small boys. Pity the unfortunate Sad Boy With a single magic shoe And a pair of feet And an extra foot With no shoe for it. This was how the terrible hopping began That wore the Sad Boy thin and through To his only shoe And started the great fright in the provinces above Brent Where the Sad Boy became half of himself To match the beautiful boot He had dripped from the green pond. Wherever he went weeping and hopping And stamping and sobbing, Pounding a whole earth into a half-heaven, Things split where he stood Into the left side for the left magic, Into no side for the missing right boot. Mercy be to the Sad Boy Scamping exasperated After a wide boot To double the magic Of a limping foot. Mercy to the melancholy folk On the Sad Boy's right. It was not for want of wandering He lost the left boot too And the knowledge of his left side, But because one awful Sunday This dear boy dislimbed Went back to the old pond To fish up another shoe And was quickly (being too light for his line) Fished in. Gracious how he kicks now All the little ripples up! The quiet population of Brent has settled down, And the perfect surface of the famous pond Is slightly pocked, marked with three signs, For visitors come to fish for souvenirs, Where the Sad Boy went in And his glad mother and his mad father after him.

The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned entirely, though. Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes; and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs. He saw God’s foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad. So man’s insanity is heaven’s sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God.

The skies are haunted by that which it were madness to know; and strange abominations pass evermore between earth and moon and athwart the galaxies. Unnamable things have come to us in alien horror and will come again.