100 Quotes About Insanity

Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do; and the reason why they are not so punish'd and cured is that the lunacy is soordinary that the whippers are in love too. William Shakespeare

Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked. Good mental machinery ought to break its own wheels and levers, if anything is thrust among them suddenly which tends to stop them or reverse their motion. A weak mind does not accumulate force enough to hurt itself; stupidity often saves a man from going mad. Unknown

Madness is something rare in individuals – but in groups, parties, peoples, and ages, it is the rule. Friedrich Nietzsche

I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again 'I know that that’s a tree', pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell him: 'This fellow isn’t insane. We are only doing philosophy. Ludwig Wittgenstein

Was I insane? Maybe. But then, there were many different kinds of insanity. Aunt Rose had always taken for granted that the whole world was in a state of constantly fluctuating madness, and that a neurosis was not an illness, but a fact of life, like pimples. Some have more, some have less, but only truly abnormal people have none at all. This commonsense philosophy had consoled me many times before, and it did now, too. Anne Fortier

We don't need to be constantly reasonable in order to have good relationships; all we need to have mastered is the occasional capacity to acknowledge with good grace that we may, in one or two areas, be somewhat insane. Alain De Botton

Work will drive you crazy if you let it. Patrick DeWitt

Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked Unknown

You never know what lurks just beneath the surface of my fragile sanity. Ashly Lorenzana

Matter is plastic in the face of Mind. Philip K. Dick

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 as . Kate Summerscale

It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane. Philip K. Dick

Why can I never go back to bed? Who's is the voice ringing in my head? Where is the sense in these desperate dreams? Why should I wake when I'm half past dead? Emilie Autumn

Julian spoke with the clear, unequivocal lucidity of madmen who have escaped the hypocrisy of having to abide by a reality that makes no sense. Unknown

Insanity is the ability to communicate your ideas. It’s as if you were in a foreign country, able to see and understand everything that’s going on around you but incapable of explaining what you need to know or of being helped, because you don’t understand the language they speak there. Paulo Coelho

Later I would come to believe that erotic ties were all a spell, a temporary psychosis, even a kind of violence, or at least they coexisted with these states. I noted that criminals as well as the insane tended to give off a palpable, vibrating allure, a kind of animal magnetism that kept them loved by someone. How else could they survive at all? Someone had to hide them from the authorities! Hence the necessity and prevalence of sex appeal for people who were wild and on the edge. Lorrie Moore

In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. Friedrich Nietzsche

Individual insanity is immune to the consequences of collective insanity Aldous Huxley

All the tall mad mountains of her mind Anne Carson

Perhaps I am too tame, too domestic a magician. But how does one work up a little madness? I meet with mad people every day in the street, but I never thought before to wonder how they got mad. Perhaps I should go wandering on lonely moors and barren shores. That is always a popular place for lunatics - in novels and plays at any rate. Perhaps wild England will make me mad. Susanna Clarke

A sick thought can devour the body's flesh more than fever or consumption. Guy De Maupassant

Solitude is indeed dangerous for a working intelligence. We need to have around us people who think and speak. When we are alone for a long time we people the void with phantoms Guy De Maupassant

She never wished for the thing what she is experiencing. It is her inner voice that became her enemy. Durgesh Satpathy

I wonder how long it would take him to realize I'm right as sin - it's the rest of the world that's wrong. I'm not even sure how I qualify for admission to Aspen Springs. Does wanting to die equal losing your mind? Ellen Hopkins

For what was living with a man if it wasn't living inside his insanity? Alice Munro

If there is moral insanity, " he said in a conspiratorial whisper, "then there may be the reverse, immoral sanity, if you will, that comes upon one suddenly, like a fever. Kareem AbdulJabbar

Very soon she'll join all the others who know the secret and will not tell it. Or cannot. Or try and fail because they do not know enough. They can be recognized. White faces, dazed eyes, aimless gestures, high-pitched laughter. The way they walk and talk and scream or try to kill (themselves or you) if you laugh back at them. Yes, they've got to be watched. For the time comes when they try to kill, then disappear. But others are waiting to take their places, it's a long, long line. She's one of them. I too can wait–for the day when she is only a memory to be avoided, locked away, and like all memories a legend. Or a lie. . Jean Rhys

At a certain point, unabashed optimism becomes delusional insanity. Matt Abrams

Because there are a million thoughts that never sleepand a million more that wake up as each second passes by... And it's insanity insidebut I can no longer keep quiet Oh, I can't speak as well I need to write I have to write... Sanhita Baruah

The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame. Edgar Allan Poe

When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. Franklin D. Roosevelt

I can survive either love or insanity. But not both. And you bring me both. VaZaki Nada

Nobody's sane above the law. Toba Beta

Science, unlike theology, never leads to insanity. Luther Burbank

I do have a reason for my insanity. I fear regret. Shahrukh Ahmad

God made them as stubble to our swords. Oliver Cromwell

About his madmen Mr. Lecky was no more certain. He knew less than the little to be learned of the causes or even of the results of madness. Yet for practical purposes one can imagine all that is necessary. As long as maniacs walk like men, you must come close to them to penetrate so excellent a disguise. Once close, you have joined the true werewolf. Pick for your companion a manic-depressive, afflicted by any of the various degrees of mania - chronic, acute, delirious. Usually more man than wolf, he will be instructive. His disorder lies in the very process of his thinking, rather than in the content of his thought. He cannot wait a minute for the satisfaction of his fleeting desires or the fulfillment of his innumerable schemes. Nor can he, for two minutes, be certain of his intention or constant in any plan or agreement. Presently you may hear his failing made manifest in the crazy concatenation of his thinking aloud, which psychiatrists call "flight of ideas." Exhausted suddenly by this riotous expense of speech and spirit, he may subside in an apathy dangerous and morose, which you will be well advised not to disturb. Let the man you meet be, instead, a paretic. He has taken a secret departure from your world. He dwells amidst choicest, most dispendious superlatives. In his arm he has the strength to lift ten elephants. He is already two hundred years old. He is more than nine feet high; his chest is of iron, his right leg is silver, his incomparable head is one whole ruby. Husband of a thousand wives, he has begotten on them ten thousand children. Nothing is mean about him; his urine is white wine; his faeces are always soft gold. However, despite his splendor and his extraordinary attainments, he cannot successfully pronounce the words: electricity, Methodist Episcopal, organization, third cavalry brigade. Avoid them. Infuriated by your demonstration of any accomplishment not his, he may suddenly kill you. Now choose for your friend a paranoiac, and beware of the wolf! His back is to the wall, his implacable enemies are crowding on him. He gets no rest. He finds no starting hole to hide him. Ten times oftener than the Apostle, he has been, through the violence of the unswerving malice which pursues him, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of his own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren, in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness. Now that, face to face with him, you simulate innocence and come within his reach, what pity can you expect? You showed him none; he will certainly not show you any. Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, 0 Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all the perils and dangers of this night; for the love of thy only Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Amen.Mr. Lecky's maniacs lay in wait to slash a man's head half off, to perform some erotic atrocity of disembowelment on a woman. Here, they fed thoughtlessly on human flesh; there, wishing to play with him, they plucked the mangled Tybalt from his shroud. The beastly cunning of their approach, the fantastic capriciousness of their intention could not be very well met or provided for. In his makeshift fort everywhere encircled by darkness, Mr. Lecky did not care to meditate further on the subject. James Gould Cozzens

I am but a man attempting to be graceful as I slowly decend into madness. Danny Bunyavong

Plato believed that insanity was essential to our nature and assumed that it held esoteric knowledge about who we are. Michael Greenberg

I rehearsed Foucault's argument that the presence of madness on our doorstep is good for us, for it reminds us the life we live is only one among several human possibilities. Michael Greenberg

Finding love should not cause you to lose your mind. Amanda Mosher

The prince of darkness is a gentleman! William Shakespeare

Out of his zestful study of Man, from Thucydides to the Encyclopaedists, from Seneca to Rousseau, he had confirmed into an unassailable conviction his earliest conscious impressions of the general insanity of his own species. Rafael Sabatini

First sign of madness, talking to your own head. J.k. Rowling

In a mad world, only the mad are sane. Akira Kurosawa

Flirting with madness was one thing; when madness started flirting back, it was time to call the whole thing off. Rohinton Mistry

I have felt the wind on the wing of madness. Charles Baudelaire

He is mad about being small when you were big, but no, that's not it, he is mad about being helpless when you were powerful, but no, not that either, he is mad about being contingent when you were necessary, not quite it... he is insane because when he loved you, you didn't notice. Donald Barthelme

Everyone is more or less mad on one point. Rudyard Kipling

Once upon a time there was a Once upon a time there was a Once upon a time there was a Stop this. It's undignified. N.K. Jemisin

Behind their dark glass, the mad own nothing. Penelope Fitzgerald

It's madness, of course', thought Moist. 'But now I've got it, too. Terry Pratchett

Madness is born in the blood. It is my birthright. Grant Morrison

The first part of madness is believing what you hear. The Second is acting on it. Sam Hawksmoor

Emotions had welled close to the surface, and she thought her heart had never felt so full as it did standing next to the defiled grave of a whore while lunatics sang the national anthem. Mindy McGinnis

And what would they find on sale? His sanity? Could be. Half-Price. Smoke and Water Damage. Everything Must Go. Stephen King

It is impossible for the sane to truly understand madness. Lance Conrad

He was walking around in circles, the smell of the old furniture suddenly very distinct. There was a newspaper in his hand and he started reading it, paying particular attention to the headlines which seemed to be floating towards him so that now a band of black print encircled his forehead. He was curled upon the bed, hugging his knees, when the next horror came upon him: those who heard him last night would now have to report his theft, and his employer would call the police. He saw how the policeman took the telephone call at the station; how his name and address were spoken out loud; how he looked down at the floor as they led him away; how he was in the dock, forced to answer questions about himself, and now he was in a cell and had lost control of his own body. He was staring out of the window at the passing clouds when it occurred to him that he should write to his employer, explaining his drunkenness and confessing that he invented the story of theft; but who would believe him? It was always said that in drink there was truth, and perhaps it was true that he was a convicted thief. He began to sing, One fine day in the middle of the night, Two dead men got up to fightand then he knew what was meant by madness. Peter Ackroyd

Every town has a psychopath or two. Not just the everyday crazy person, either. Not like Crazy Larry, the paint huffing weirdo peddling around town on a child-sized Huffy ranting about the end of the world, or the old lady dressed in rags who hands out filthy doll clothes to the kiddies. I'm talking about the cold, never remorseful lunatic, who may never have seemed insane up until the day he hacked apart his mother and shoved her stinking corpse into the attic. This town is overflowing with them; bloodcurdling murderers like Kenny Wayne Hilbert, Charlie Fender…Orland Winthro. And Al, the crazy had to come from somewhere. Unknown

Madness is a regenerating thing. Like a phoenix, when one strand dies, another burns anew. Chris Galford

I took a few dragging steps toward the locker-room door. 'You're doing something to me that I wouldn't do to a dog, ' I mumbled. 'What you're doing to me is worse than if you were to kill me. You're locking me up in shadows for the rest of my life. You're taking my mind away from me. You're condemning me slowly but surely to madness, to being without a mind. It won't happen right away, but sooner or later, in six months or in a year - Well, I guess that's that.' I fumbled my way out of the locker room and down the passageway outside, guiding myself with one arm along the wall, and past the sergeant's desk and down the steps, and then I was out in the street.(" All At Once, No Alice"). Cornell Woolrich

Writers don't suffer from insanity, they depend upon it! Avijeet Das

Hasn’t everyone taken a nervous breakdown at some point? Maybe I suffered a nervous breakthrough. I don’t know what tothink. It echoes inside your skull. Kirkland Ciccone

Insanity is intuition. Lailah Gifty Akita

I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity. Edgar Allan Poe

I'll take crazy over stupid any day. Joss Whedon

I mean, maybe I am crazy. I mean, maybe. But if this is all there is, then I don't want to be sane. Neil Gaiman

The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane. Nikola Tesla

Insanity is catching. Terry Pratchett

Now this is the point. You fancy me a mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded... Edgar Allan Poe

Oh, and I certainly don't suffer from schizophrenia. I quite enjoy it. And so do I. Emilie Autumn

The sole difference between myself and a madman is the fact that I am not mad! Unknown

One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane. Nikola Tesla

Unfortunately, Susan didn't remember what Jane Fulton once said, 'Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results. Rita Mae Brown

I attributed the incidence to temporary insanity, and in my own defense, I'd like to say I haven't run over anyone since. Janet Evanovich

For me, insanity is super sanity. The normal is psychotic. Normal means lack of imagination, lack of creativity. Jean Dubuffet

When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane. Hermann Hesse

Belane, are you nuts?" Who knows? Insanity is comparative. Who sets the norm? Charles Bukowski

There is no such thing as ‘too insane’ unless others turn up dead due to your actions. Mahatma Gandhi

I did learn something about insanity while I was down there. People go crazy, not because they are crazy, but because it's the best available option at the time. Gabrielle Zevin

Was everybody seeing this stuff and acting as though they weren't? Was insanity just a matter of dropping the act? Susanna Kaysen

To be mad is to feel with excruciating intensity the sadness and joy of a time which has not arrived or has already been. And to protect their delicate vision of that other time, madmen will justify their condition with touching loyalty, and surround it with a thousand distractive schemes. These schemes, in turn, drive them deeper and deeper into the darkness and light (which is their mortification and their reward), and confront them with a choice. They may either slacken and fall back, accepting the relief of a rational view and the approval of others, or they may push on, and, by falling, arise. When and if by their unforgivable stubbornness they finally burst through to worlds upon worlds of motionless light, they are no longer called afflicted or insane. They are called saints. Mark Helprin

Never attempt to apply logic to madness, for there is none; it is the nature of madness to be illogical. Navessa Allen

There are certain people in whom you can detect the seeds of madness - seeds that have remained dormant only because the people in question have lived relatively comfortable, middle class lives. They function perfectly well in the world, but you can imagine, given a nasty parent, or a prolonged bout of unemployment, how their potential for craziness might have been realized. Unknown

Crazy people made him crazy. It was as if he personally resented them giving into madness - in part, because he so frequently labored to behave sanely. When some people gave up the labor of sanity, or failed at it, Garp suspected them of not trying hard enough. John Irving

No man is sane who does not know how to be insane on the proper occasions." Henry Ward Beecher Henry Ward Beecher

Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one. At one time it had been a sign of madness to believe that the Earth goes round the Sun; today, to believe the past is inalterable. He might be alone in holding that belief, and if alone, then a lunatic. But the thought of being a lunatic did not greatly trouble him; the horror was that he might also be wrong. George Orwell

Sane people did what their neighbors did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them. George Eliot

I wish you'd help me look into a more interesting problem - namely, my sanity. Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Everybody looks a little crazy if you're looking close enough and if you can't look that close, then you don't really love them. Chuck Palahniuk