Madness Quotes - 7
More Madness Quotes
In the Renaissance, madness was present everywhere and mingled with every experience by its images or its dangers. During the classical period, madness was shown, but on the other side of bars; if present, it was at a distance, under the eyes of a reason that no longer felt any relation to it and that would not compromise itself by too close a resemblance. madness had become a thing to look at: no longer a monster inside oneself, but an animal with strange mechanisms, a bestiality from which man had long since been suppressed.
Michel Foucault— Chapter 3 (Madness and Civilization (1964))
But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.
Edmund Burke— Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France.
These are the gloomy comparisons of a disturbed imagination; the melancholy madness of poetry, without the inspiration.
junius— Letter No, VII. To Sir W. Draper
Erections, Ejaculations,Exhibitions and General Tales of Ordinary madness.
Charles Bukowski— 1972 Title of book.
And most of all would I flee from the cruel madness of love, The honey of poison-flowers and all the measureless ill.
Tennyson— Maud, part 1, section 4, stanza 10, lines 156-7 (1855)
I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy, The sleepless soul that perished in his pride. Of him who walked in glory and in joy Following his plough along the mountainside: By our own spirits are we deified. We poets in our youth begin in gladness; But thereof comes in the end despondencyand madness.
william wordsworth— 1802 Of the poetThomas Chatterton, who committed suicide at the age of17.'Resolution and Independence', stanza 7 (published1807).
By moving to London I removed myself from the madness of the entertainment industry. I love the city and the culture, and it was an opportunity to bring my children up in a more sane environment.
gillian anderson— John Hiscock (July 25, 2008) "Mulder and Scully: the truth is here Anderson on Duchovny David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, stars of the new 'X-Files' movie, talk to Will Lawrence and John Hiscock about their on-screen chemistry", The Daily Telegraph.
Despair is like forward children, who, when you take away one of their playthings, throw the rest into the fire for madness. It grows angry with itself, turns its own executioner, and revenges its misfortunes on its own head.
pierre charron— As quoted in Treasury of Thought : Forming an encyclopædia of quotation from ancient and modern authors (1894) edited by Maturin Murray Ballou, p. 123
You must acquire the best knowledge first, and without delay; it is the height of madness to learn what you will later have to unlearn.
Erasmus— Letter to Christian Northoff (1497), as translated in Collected Works of Erasmus (1974), p. 114
Thus the image is burdened with supplementary meanings, and forced to express them. And dreams, madness, the unreasonable can also slip into this excess of meaning.
— Madness and Civilization by Michel Foucault
Nor do we find him forward to be sounded But, with a crafty madness, keeps aloof, When we would bring him on to some confession Of his true state.
william shakespeare— William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600-02), Act III, scene 1, line 7.
From the violence and rule of passion, from a servile will, and a commanding lust, from pride and vanity, from false opinion and ignorant confidence; from improvidence and prodigality, from envy and the spirit of slander; from sensuality, from presumption and from despair; from a state of temptation and a hardened spirit; from delaying of repentance and persevering in sin; from unthankfulness and irreligion, and from seducing others; from all infatuation of soul, folly, and madness; from willfulness, self-love, and vain ambition; from a vicious life and an unprovided death, good Lord, deliver us.
— Jeremy Taylor, p. 468. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
Moping melancholy, And moon-struck madness.
john milton— John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book XI, line 485 (1667; 1674).
Go you may call it madness, folly, You shall not chase my gloom away. There's such a charm in melancholy, I would not, if I could, be gay!
samuel rogers— Samuel Rogers, To——, Stanza 1. reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Hamlet, being charged with " coinage of the brain" answers: "It is not madness That I have uttered; bring me to the test, And I the matter will re-word; which madness Would gambol from." madness, then, varies and fluctuates: it cannot "re-word" if the poet's observation be well founded; and though the Court would not at all rely upon it as an authority, yet it knows from the information of a most eminent physician that this test of madness, suggested by this passage, was found, by experiment in a recent case, to be strictly applicable, and discovered the lurking disease.
— Sir John Nicholl, Groom v. Thomas (1829), 2 Hagg. Ecc. Rep. 452, 453; reported in The Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 104-05. The reference goes on to say:
The Court was understood to allude to the case referred to in a note to p. 242, of the 10th number of the new series of the Quarterly Journal of Sciences and the Arts, London, 1829. "If the tests of insanity are matters of law, the practice of allowing experts to testify what they are should be discontinued; if they are matters of fact, the Judge should no longer testify without being sworn as a witness and showing himself qualified to testify as an expert."—Doe, J., State v. Pike, 49 New Hamp. Eep. 399 ; 6 Amer. Eep. 584.
