Madness Quotes - Page 7

Insanity is a very lonely and empty existence - it’s painfully true. They may laugh and smile, and skip and dance, but behind all the faces there is hollowness like a bottomless pit. The living dead, depression is a terrible illness, so is psychosis, the mentally inflicted beyond cure.
Stephen Richards
I am but a man attempting to be graceful as I slowly decend into madness.
Danny Bunyavong
When Gran finally came home she stepped into the house and wept. She grabbed Sophie and I to her and cried, “Oh my dears…” and though Gran was usually a harsh woman and we were uncomfortable with her affection, we were grateful for it this day. In the months she was gone we realized she was what held us all together. Broken or not, crazy or not—Gran kept us and made us a family. Truly she did.
Monika Basile
Fools write books about madness being an elevated mental state or an alternative form of creativity. It's not, it's anguish.
Jonathan Kellerman
...if in the heat of the dispute he insists and asks, 'Am I not the master of throwing myself out of the window?' I shall answer him, no; that whilst he preserves his reason there is no probability that the desire of proving his free agency, will become a motive sufficiently powerful to make him sacrifice his life to the attempt: if, notwithstanding this, to prove he is a free agent, he should actually precipitate himself from the window, it would not be a sufficient warranty to conclude he acted freely, but rather that it was the violence of his temperament which spurred him on to this folly. Madness is a state, that depends upon the heat of the blood, not upon the will. A fanatic or a hero, braves death as necessarily as a more phlegmatic man or a coward flies from it.
Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach
I know, Little Man, you are quick with the diagnosis of craziness when you meet a truth you don’t like. And you feel yourself as the ‘homo normalis’. You have locked up crazy people, and the normal people manage this world. Who then is to blame for all the misery? Not you, of course, you only do your duty, and who are you to have an opinion of your own? I know, you don’t have to repeat it. It isn’t you that matters, Little Man. But when I think of your newborn children, of how you torture them in order to make them into ‘normal’ human beings after your image.
Wilhelm Reich
They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me.
Nathaniel Lee
I push against the tree and run away, stumbling, the unreal night playing with me, gravity pulling from below, behind, above, making me fall. And I run through a world that is rotating, conscious of the earth's spin, of our planet twirling as it careens through nothingness, of the stars spiraling above, of the uncertainty of everything, even ground, even sky. Mumtaz never calls out, although a thousand and one voices scream in my mind, sing, whisper, taunt me with madness.
Mohsin Hamid
Last night, I was a mad man searching for a whiff of your fragrance. The stars and the moon even laughed at me.
Avijeet Das
About his madmen Mr. Lecky was no more certain. He knew less than the little to be learned of the causes or even of the results of madness. Yet for practical purposes one can imagine all that is necessary. As long as maniacs walk like men, you must come close to them to penetrate so excellent a disguise. Once close, you have joined the true werewolf.Pick for your companion a manic-depressive, afflicted by any of the various degrees of mania - chronic, acute, delirious. Usually more man than wolf, he will be instructive. His disorder lies in the very process of his thinking, rather than in the content of his thought. He cannot wait a minute for the satisfaction of his fleeting desires or the fulfillment of his innumerable schemes. Nor can he, for two minutes, be certain of his intention or constant in any plan or agreement. Presently you may hear his failing made manifest in the crazy concatenation of his thinking aloud, which psychiatrists call "flight of ideas." Exhausted suddenly by this riotous expense of speech and spirit, he may subside in an apathy dangerous and morose, which you will be well advised not to disturb.Let the man you meet be, instead, a paretic. He has taken a secret departure from your world. He dwells amidst choicest, most dispendious superlatives. In his arm he has the strength to lift ten elephants. He is already two hundred years old. He is more than nine feet high; his chest is of iron, his right leg is silver, his incomparable head is one whole ruby. Husband of a thousand wives, he has begotten on them ten thousand children. Nothing is mean about him; his urine is white wine; his faeces are always soft gold. However, despite his splendor and his extraordinary attainments, he cannot successfully pronounce the words: electricity, Methodist Episcopal, organization, third cavalry brigade. Avoid them. Infuriated by your demonstration of any accomplishment not his, he may suddenly kill you.Now choose for your friend a paranoiac, and beware of the wolf! His back is to the wall, his implacable enemies are crowding on him. He gets no rest. He finds no starting hole to hide him. Ten times oftener than the Apostle, he has been, through the violence of the unswerving malice which pursues him, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of his own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren, in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness. Now that, face to face with him, you simulate innocence and come within his reach, what pity can you expect? You showed him none; he will certainly not show you any.Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, 0 Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all the perils and dangers of this night; for the love of thy only Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Amen.Mr. Lecky's maniacs lay in wait to slash a man's head half off, to perform some erotic atrocity of disembowelment on a woman. Here, they fed thoughtlessly on human flesh; there, wishing to play with him, they plucked the mangled Tybalt from his shroud. The beastly cunning of their approach, the fantastic capriciousness of their intention could not be very well met or provided for. In his makeshift fort everywhere encircled by darkness, Mr. Lecky did not care to meditate further on the subject.
James Gould Cozzens
The attendance of that brother was now become like the attendance of a demon on some devoted being that had sold himself to destruction
James Hogg
Some people are attracted to sickness, to the kind of madness where sparks fly off the head, to the incoherence of despair, masked by nervous energy, which winds up looking like bewildered joy.
Luke Davies
Well, here I am, just come home; a fellow gone to the bad; though I had the best intentions in the world at one time. Now I am melancholy mad, what with drinking and one thing and another.
Thomas Hardy
If we were entirely sane, if madness did not have a serious grip on one side of us, other people's tragedies would hold a great deal less interest for us.
Alain de Botton
Humans, as a rule, don't like mad people unless they are good at painting, and only then once they are dead. But the definition of mad, on Earth, seems to be very unclear and inconsistent. What is perfectly sane in one era turns out to be insane in another. The earliest humans walked around naked with no problem. Certain humans, in humid rainforests mainly, still do so. So, we must conclude that madness is sometimes a question of time, and sometimes of postcode. Basically, the key rule is, if you want to appear sane on Earth you have to be in the right place, wearing the right clothes, saying the right things, and only stepping on the right kind of grass.
Matt Haig
People say 'I love Artists', but what they really know about Artists? They've ever thought about sharing the real madness with us? I believe those extreme passions/emotions in me separated from the real world is the sauce to pull out the inspirations out of me that touch the core of people's hearts, which is usually wandering about deep inside of you unconsciously covered with the social taboo called 'common sense'.
Hiroko Sakai
ONLY' having the Gift, people appreciate this madness as Art. Everybody wants to have Art in their lives, but no body wants to have what the Art came out from in their lives...
Hiroko Sakai
When a mad man found some certain way to express his insanity in original way, he would get promoted to be called an Artist.... Wait, are you talking about me?
Hiroko Sakai
Genius - the pursuit of madness.
Criss Jami
Magda looks at me as if I've gone mad. Or I've grown up. It's kind of the same thing.
Victoria Schwab
You don’t know me well enough to be confident that I wouldn’t be able to live without you. I survived almost two decades of ignoring the fuck out of you, I can survive plenty more.
Christine Celis
He was mad and plenty brave.
Ernest Hemingway
Death and madness are his only mistresses.
Kristen Painter
The group’s laughter echoed off the stained, plaster ceiling. I raised my beer, but before I clinked the bottles together, I challenged him. “You think you’re a man I won’t forget?”“Ah’m nae any man ye’ve met before.”“Praise be,” I smirked, “the others haven’t been worth spit.”Then the whiskey came, and I was taken by the tawny light, forgetting to worry about my ‘crazy’. Until Angus’ efforts at gilding my heart, called my ‘alter’ to the fore.
Cheryl R Cowtan
Life was taking its vengeance on me, and that vengeance consisted merely in coming back, nothing more. Every case of madness involves something coming back. People who are possessed are not possessed by something that just comes but instead by something that comes back. Sometimes life comes back. If in me everything crumbled before that power, it is not because that power was itself necessarily an overwhelming one: it in fact had only to come, since it had already become too full-flowing a force to be controlled or contained - when it appeared it overran everything. And then, like after a flood, there floated a wardrobe, a person, a loose window, three suitcases. And that seemed like Hell to me, that destruction of layers and layers of human archaeology.
Clarice Lispector
During the earliest attacks of Fear and intense unreality, I sometimes uttered these unconscious and shocking words: 'I should prefer to escape into madness to avoid this consuming fear.' Alas, I did not know what I was saying. In my ignorance I believed that madness was a state of insensibility where there was neither pain nor suffering nor joy, but particularly, no responsibility. Never, for one instant, has I even imagined what 'to lose one's reason' actually meant.
Marguerite Sechehaye
The paradox of innovation is that it is accepted as an innovation when it has become imitation.
Piero Scaruffi
Revenge is a business of calculation, best served cold. Rescue holds more of sacrifice, suicidal danger, and all manner of other madness that should have me running in the opposite direction.
Mark Lawrence
Call it sentimentality. Call it curiosity. Just don't call it madness.
Megan Shepherd
Those who are truly enlightened, those whose souls are illuminated by love, have been able to overcome all of the inhibitions and preconceptions of their era. They have been able to sing, to laugh, and to pray out loud; they have danced and shared what Saint Paul called 'the madness of saintliness'. They have been joyful - because those who love conquer the world and have no fear of loss. True love is an act of total surrender.
Paulo Coelho
You might never comprehend my madness. But it stands behind my undying love for you. You're the object of my everything. I’m sorry I’ve been stupid lately.
Crystal Woods
True love is a word found by a madman to make the people who believe in it go mad.
Luffina Lourduraj
His terror became his companion. When it seemed to diminish, or grow easier to bear, he forced himself to remember the details of what he had said and done so that his fears returned, redoubled. His previous life, which had been without fear, he now dismissed as an illusion since he had come to believe that only in fear could the truth be found. When he woke from sleep without anxiety, he asked himself, What is wrong? What is missing? And then his door opened slowly, and a child put its head around and gazed at him: there are wheels, Ned thought, wheels within wheels. The curtains were now always closed, for the sun horrified him: he was reminded of a film he had seen some time before, and how the brightness of the noonday light had struck the water where a man, in danger of drowning, was struggling for his life.
Peter Ackroyd
Se tudo o resto não me basta por que hei-de impedir o efeito paliativo das benzodiazepinas e a volúpia desta evocação alucinatória?If everything else is not enough for me why should I stop the palliative effect of benzodiazepines and the lust of this hallucinatory evocation?
Victor Eustáquio
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.
Haruki Murakami
In this atmosphere Where you have to go perennially crazy only to survive, Which auspicious moment should I choose to become mad?
Suman Pokhrel
I can survive either love or insanity. But not both. And you bring me both.
VaZaki Nada
All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways. This madness can be saving; it is part and parcel of the ability to adapt. Without it, no species would survive.
Yann Martel
A sworn sworn owes his liege our service and obedience, but this is madness.
George R.R. Martin
One of the most distinctive features of psychosis is its dynamic of externalization. Madness is experienced as being enacted on the subject from without; a person perceives his own unintegrated psychological contents as outer-world creatures and demons who threaten to engulf and physically destroy him. The barriers between inner and outer, subject and object, dissolve so entirely that no boundary remains to protect the ego from the onslaught of this projected unconscious material.
Victoria Nelson
I have seen beyond the bounds of infinity and drawn down daemons from the stars. . . . I have harnessed the shadows that stride from world to world to sow death and madness. . . .
H.P. Lovecraft
How much violence, Marshal, do you think a man can carry before it breaks him?
Dennis Lehane
Whose Daddy's Little Girl Now?
Lauren Bradshaw
Don't give into him at all. Deny yourself. Because then your eyes will not be clouded by a madness that you cannot control, and then you will be able to learn to see him as he is. Do you understand?
Louis de Bernières
People who smile while they are alone used to be called insane, until we invented smartphones and social media.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Weird how I can feel so frail and tiny sometimes, and other times so brave and bold and reckless and free, and . . . Does everybody feel the same? When people get grown-up, do they always feel grown-up and sensible and sorted out and . . . And do I want to feel grown-up? Do I want to stop feeling . . . paradoxical, nonsensical? Do I want to stop being crackers? Do I want to be destrangified? O yes, sometimes I want nothing more - but it only lasts a moment, then O I want to be the strangest and crakerest of everybody.
David Almond
Madness is only an amplification of what you already are.
Margaret Atwood
I happen to be partial to humans - most, anyway. Clowns, not so much. Those evil bastards never stop smiling.
Mimi Jean Pamfiloff
Honestly, Evie," I huffed, flopping back to the centre of my bed and glaring at the ceiling. "Why don't you whine some more instead of actually doing anything?""Talking to yourself is the first sign of madness," Arianna volunteered, leaning on the frame of my open door."Yeah, so's seeing things no one else can, but people seem to like that about me.""Good point. Odds are, you've been crazy for years now. I'm probably nothing more than a figment of your imagination.""If that were true, I'd imagine you as less of a slob."She sighed. "Isn't it sad that you hate yourself so much you can't even dream up a pleasant roommate?""Not as sad as the fact that you admit how bad you suck as one."Flashing a wicked grin, she narrowed her eyes. “ I'd use the term 'suck' sparingly around me.  Don't want to go planting ideas in my pretty,  dead head."I threw a pillow at her.
Kiersten White
... insanity is never reasonable.
E.A. Bucchianeri
We men of intelligence will learn to harness the insanities of reason. We can't leave the world any longer to the direction of chance. We can't allow dangerous maniacs like Luther, mad about dogma, like Napoleon, mad about himself, to go on casually appearing and turning everything upside down. In the past it didn't so much matter; but our modern machine is too delicate. A few more knocks like the Great War, another Luther or two, and the whole concern will go to pieces. In future, the men of reason must see that the madness of the world's maniacs is canalised into proper channels, is made to do useful work, like a mountain torrent driving a dynamo...
Aldous Huxley
It may be crazy, but I'm the closest thing I have to a voice of reason.
Gil Scott-Heron
I studied mathematics which is the madness of reason.
Benjamin Moser
Stubbornness is surely just taut-jawed, clenched-fisted madness.
Richelle E. Goodrich
It is more than love, barely less than madness. It’s never close enough.
C.J. Carlyon
What if the insane are too raw to know which stations are real and which are just confused static?
Kate Scelsa
I was, a near grown man, sat in his dank, dark and rickety digs, feverishly hovering about the glare of a computer screen like a disorientated moth, one searching for a flaming light of recognition from someone/anyone!
Tom Conrad
I was walking around in an almost blind, crazy rage of madness. There was a story burning a hole in my brain, and it was dying to come out on paper. It was begging of me to create it, but I didn’t know where to begin. A month after giving birth to the idea, I felt like I was losing my mind. Ideas would pop into my head in the middle of the night, or during a midterm, and I missed them, quite narrowly, almost every time. Every time an idea left my mind without taking the shape of a word on paper, my mind would automatically begin to churn something just as impressive, or at least close to it. I was digging myself into a shallow grave, and I was getting nowhere. And this was even before the thoughts were committed to paper.
Leigh Hershkovich
That’s the thing about the collapse of civilization, Blake. It never happens according to plan – there’s no slavering horde of zombies. No actinic flash of thermonuclear war. No Earth-shuddering asteroid. The end comes in unforeseen ways; the stock market collapses, and then the banks, and then there is no food in the supermarkets, or the communications system goes down completely and inevitably, and previously amiable co-workers find themselves wrestling over the last remaining cookie that someone brought in before all the madness began.
Mark A. Rayner
There is madness in youth, but sometimes a god inspires it.
Mary Renault

Related Topics

Ildan Wisdom
Quotes
Netherling
Quotes
Thinkers
Quotes
Magnificent
Quotes
Amaya Ellman
Quotes
Walking
Quotes
Lyrics
Quotes
Search
Quotes