quotations about madness
Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Hamlet
First sign of madness, talking to your own head.
J. K. ROWLING
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Even if one understands that what one is doing is mad, it is indeed still madness.
GUILLERMO DEL TORO & CHUCK HOGAN
The Fall
In ancient Greek culture, the image of madness is that of a black, angry, inner flood. The organic source of madness is black liquid. It seethes up from below, manifesting itself in uncontrolled passion, illness, and violence. It rebels against order and tradition. It wanders from its natural course. And in some instances ... the madness passes, and the mad are left to contemplate the destruction they have wrought.
GARY ROSENSHIELD
Pushkin and the Genres of Madness: The Masterpieces of 1833
The language of madness is thus marked by privacy, immediacy, and soliloquy -- what appears on the outside as either silence or delirium.
DANIEL BERTHOLD-BOND
Hegel's Theory of Madness
Madness is not real; what is real is audiences' response to and labeling of certain actors and behaviors as "mad."
CAROL A. B. WARREN
Court of Last Resort: Mental Illness and the Law
I am not mad; I would to heaven I were!
For then, 'tis like I should forget myself.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
King John
It is only through mystery and madness that the soul is revealed.
THOMAS MOORE
Care of the Soul
You have made the terrible mistake of seeing things as they should be and not as they are--that makes you a very sane madman.
TERRY WALSTROM
The Monorails of Mars
I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.
SYLVIA PLATH
"Elm", Ariel
The idea that madness is an illness affecting the mind is merely a recognition of the objective reality that it has always had. Earlier ideas that the mad were filled with a god, diabolically possessed, had chosen to embrace unreason, and so forth, were merely mistakes that have been replaced by our scientific discovery that madness is actually mental illness.
GARY GUTTING
Michel Foucault's Archaeology of Scientific Reason
I don't know what it is with the mad, but they've certainly got force of will. Maybe it's not having the checks and balances the rest of us have, or perhaps I'm kidding myself: maybe their minds are simply clearer, unclouded with the anxieties and morality that the rest of us are swaddled with. Perhaps they have the courage to point their magical thinking at the stars.
MICHAEL MARSHALL
The Upright Man
Somewhere in the depths of solitude, beyond wilderness and freedom, lay the trap of madness.
EDWARD ABBEY
The Monkey Wrench Gang
Madness is when the highs are too high and the lows are too low.
CAROL SAFER
"The Madwoman on the Streets", Madness Network News: A Journal of the Psychiatric Survivor Movement
When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies?
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES
Don Quixote
In certain cases, a man blind from birth may have an operation performed which gives him his sight. The result: frequently misery, confusion, disorientation. The light that illumines the madman is an unearthly light, but I do not believe it is a projection, an emanation from his mundane ego. He is irradiated by a light that is more than he. It may burn him out.
R. D. LAING
"Transcendental Experience in Relation to Religion and Psychosis", The Psychedelic Review, 1964
In our society madness has come to mean mental illness. Mental illness is a dehumanizing label used to justify the social control through psychiatric intervention of troublesome or troubled individuals, who have not violated any laws and therefore cannot be criminally prosecuted and imprisoned, but whose ideas and actions, values and life styles, threaten established power relationships or society in general.
LEONARD FRANK
Madness Network News: A Journal of the Psychiatric Survivor Movement
Madness is locked beneath. It goes into tissues, is swallowed by the cells. The cells go mad. Cancer is their flag. Cancer is the growth of madness denied.
NORMAN MAILER
An American Dream
It's better to face madness with a plan than to sit still and let it take you in pieces.
JOSH MALERMAN
Bird Box
You are trying to understand madness with logic. This is not unlike searching for darkness with a torch.
BRIAN K. VAUGHN
Detective Comics #787