Inspirational Quotes on Madness

“I have found both freedom and safety in my madness; the freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us.”

“Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.”

“There is also a third kind of madness, which is possession by the Muses, enters into a delicate and virgin soul, and there inspiring frenzy, awakens lyric....But he, who, not being inspired and having no touch of madness in his soul, comes to the door and thinks he will get into the temple by the help of art--he, I say, and his poetry are not admitted; the sane man is nowhere at all when he enters into rivalry with the madman.”

“There nearly always is a method in madness.”

“Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed.”

“Be careful how you suggest things to me. For there is in me a madness which goes beyond martyrdom, the madness of an utterly idle man.”

“Men are so inevitably mad that not to be mad would be to give a mad twist to madness.”

“Indeed, in that sense we’re all rather often almost like mad people, only with the slight difference that the ‘sick’ are somewhat madder than we are, so that it’s necessary to draw a line here.”

“How stand I, then, That have a father killed, a mother stained, Excitements of my reason and my blood, And let all sleep, while to my shame I see The imminent death of twenty thousand men That for a fantasy and trick of fame Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause, Which is not tomb enough and continent To hide the slain? O, from this time forth My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth! ”

“Do you know, Alexey Fyodorovitch, how people do go out of their mind?”

“Such were my wild words, for madness had mastered my judgement and gained complete control.”

“All habits are bad habits. (...) Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed.”

“Mothers of Latium! Hey! Hear me, each one of you, wherever you may be! If you still have any sympathy for poor Amata in your faithful hearts, or any prick of conscience for a mother's claims, untie the bands around your hair and take to the wild rites with me!”

“May the dead forgive me, I can do no other But as I am commanded; to do more is madness." - Ismene”

“And in that tenderness I even asked myself why I should save her from the Brute, or warn her against the Brute, or meddle with the matter at all. ‘She is happy,’ said my heart. ‘Whether it’s madness or a god or a monster, or whatever it is, she is happy. You have seen that yourself. She is ten times happier, there in the Mountain, than you could ever make her. Leave her alone. Don’t spoil it. Don’t mar what you’ve learnt you can’t make.”

“A goods train was approaching. The platform shook, and it seemed to her as if she were again in the train. Suddenly remembering the man who had been run over the day she first met Vronsky, she realized what she had to do. Quickly and lightly descending the steps that led from the water-tank to the rails, she stopped close to the passing train. She looked at the bottom of the trucks, at the bolts and chains, and large iron wheels of the slowly-moving front truck, and tried to estimate the middle point between the front and back wheels, and the moment when that point would be opposite her. She wanted to fall half-way between the wheels of the front truck, which was drawing level with her, but the little red handbag which she began to take off her arm delayed her, and then she was too late. The middle had passed her. She was obliged to wait for the next truck. A feeling seized her like that she had experienced when preparing to enter the water in bathing, and she crossed herself. The familiar gesture of making the sign of the cross called up a whole series of girlish and childish memories, and suddenly the darkness, that obscured everything for her, broke, and life showed itself to her for an instant with all its bright past joys. But she did not take her eyes off the wheels of the approaching second truck, and at the very moment when the midway point between the wheels drew level, she threw away her red bag, and drawing her head down between her shoulders threw herself forward on her hands under the truck, and with a light movement as if preparing to rise again, immediately dropped on her knees. And at the same moment she was horror-struck at what she was doing. ‘Where am I? What am I doing? Why?’ She wished to rise, to throw herself back, but something huge and relentless struck her on her head and dragged her down. ‘God forgive me everything!’ she said, feeling the impossibility of struggling… A little peasant muttering something was working at the rails. The candle, by the light of which she had been reading that book filled with anxieties, deceptions, grief and evil, flared up with a brighter light, lit up for her all that had before been dark, crackled, began to flicker, and went out for ever.”