Quotes on Madness

There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.

Doubt … is an illness that comes from knowledge and leads to madness.

Like madness, is the glory of this life.

It's not the one thing nor the other that leads to madness, but the space in between.

Freud thought that a psychosis was a waking dream, and that poets were daydreamers too, but I wonder if the reverse is not as often true, and that madness is a fiction lived in like a rented house

If they [Plato and Aristotle] wrote about politics it was as if to lay down rules for a madhouse. And if they pretended to treat it as something really important it was because they knew that the madmen they were talking to believed themselves to be kings and emperors. They humored these beliefs in order to calm down their madness with as little harm as possible.

Is it the sea you hear in me? Its dissatisfactions? Or the voice of nothing, that was your madness? Love is a shadow. How you lie and cry after it.

Madness is the acme of intelligence.

In anything that does cover the whole of your life - in your philosophy and your religion - you must have mirth. If you do not have mirth you will certainly have madness.

I am madness maddened! That wild madness that's only calm to comprehend itself

I had noticed that both in the very poor and very rich extremes of society the mad were often allowed to mingle freely.

They deem me mad because I will not sell my days for gold; and I deem them mad because they think my days have a price.

The pursuit of mathematics is a divine madness of the human spirit.

Much Madness is divinest Sense -- To a discerning Eye -- Much Sense -- the starkest Madness -- 'Tis the Majority In this, as All, prevail -- Assent -- and you are sane -- Demur -- you're straightway dangerous -- And handled with a Chain --

There is no great genius without a mixture of madness.

One is very crazy when in love.

Pound's crazy. All poets are.... They have to be. You don't put a poet like Pound in the loony bin.