998 Quotes About Madness

My father told me that it is only a mad man that keeps bushy hairs. I asked him, "what about the great men with bushy hairs?". He replied, "education had made them mad, so study to be wise and sane.

Nothing can be more slightly defined than the line of demarcation between sanity and insanity ... Make the definition too narrow, it becomes meaningless; make it too wide, and the whole human race becomes involved in the dragnet. In strictness we are all mad when we give way to passion, to prejudice, to vice, to vanity; but if all the passionate, prejudiced and vain people were to be locked up as lunatics, who is to keep the key to the asylum?"(Editorial, The Times, 22 July 1853)

Though the ancient poet in Plutarch tells us we must not trouble the gods with our affairs because they take no heed of our angers and disputes, we can never enough decry the disorderly sallies of our minds.

Have only this consolation--that he was never a fiend or even truly a madman, but only an eager, studious, and curious boy whose love of mystery and of the past was his undoing. He stumbled on things no mortal ought ever to know, and reached back through the years as no one ever should reach; and something came out of those years to engulf him.

There is no such thing as a true madman.

Creativity is when a stupid clever soul gets up from bed and do amazing things that makes the world think he is wise.

Hate me, then,” he breathed. “Break yourself into a thousand pieces and deny me each and every one of them. Because I am never letting you go.

There is madness in youth, but sometimes a god inspires it.

Whatever strength, courage... madness keeps us going, we find it, in times like these. You have it, soldier. It's what kept you alive all this time.