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Some are born mad. Some remain so.
Author: Samuel Beckett
Source: Waiting for Godot
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Like men condemned to thunderbolts,
Who, ere the blow, become mere dolts.
Author: Samuel Butler (1)
Source: Hudibras (pt. III, canto II, l. 565)
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Much madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye;
Much sense the starkest madness.
'Tis the majority
In this, as all, prevails
Assent, and you are sane;
Demur,--you're straightway dangerous,
And handled with a chain.
Author: Emily Dickinson
Source: Poems (XI (1891 ed.))
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For those whom God to ruin has designed
He fits for fate, and first destroys their mind.
Author: John Dryden
Source: Fables--The Hind and the Panther (pt. III, l. 2,387)
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There is a pleasure, sure,
In being mad, which none but madmen know!
Author: John Dryden
Source: Spanish Friar (act II, st. 1)
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Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting
different results.
Author: John Dryden
Source: Spanish Friar (act II, st. 1)
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The alleged power to charm down insanity, or ferocity in beasts,
is a power behind the eye.
Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source: Essays--Conduct of Life--Of Behaviour
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But the devil when he purports any evil against man, first
perverts his mind.
[Lat., At daemon, homini quum struit aliquid malum,
Pervertit illi primitus mentem suam.]
Author: Euripides
Source: Fragment (25), (Baine's edition)
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But when Fate destines one to ruin it begins by blinding the eyes
of his understanding.
Author: James Baillie Fraser
Source: Short History of the Hindostan Emperors of the Moghol Race (p. 57)
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Mad as a March hare.
Author: James O. Halliwell
Source: Archaic Diet (vol. II, Art, "March Hare")
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He appears mad indeed but to a few, because the majority is
infected with the same disease.
[Lat., Nimirum insanus paucis videatur, eo quod
Maxima pars hominum morbo jactatur eodem.]
Author: Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Source: Satires (II, 3, 120)
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Who then is sane? He who is not a fool.
[Lat., Quisnam igitur sanus? Qui non stultus.]
Author: Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Source: Satires (II, 3, 158)
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Oh! thou who are greatly mad, deign to spare me who am less mad.
[Lat., O major tandem parcas, insane, minori.]
Author: Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Source: Satires (II, 3, 326)
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I teach that all are men are mad.
[Lat., Doceo insanire omnes.]
Author: Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Source: Satires (II, 3, 81)
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Go, madman! rush over the wildest Alps, that you may please
children and be made the subject of declamation.
[Lat., I demens! et saevas curre per Alpes,
Ut pueris placeas et declamatio fias.]
Author: Juvenal (Decimus Junius Juvenal)
Source: Satires (X, 166)
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O, hark! what mean those yells and cries?
His chain some furious madman breaks;
He comes--I see his glaring eyes:
Now, now, my dungeon grate he shakes.
Help! Help! He's gone!--O fearful woe,
Such screams to hear, such sights to see!
My brain, my brain,--I know, I know
I am not mad but soon shall be.
Author: Matthew Gregory Lewis ("Monk Lewis")
Source: The Maniac
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It is a common calamity; at some one time we have all been mad.
[Lat., Id commune malum; semel insanivimus omnes.]
Author: Baptista Mantuanus
Source: Eclogue (I)
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My dear Sir, take any road, you can't go amiss. The whole state
is one vast insane asylum.
Author: James L. Petigru
Source: on being asked the way the Charleston, South Carolina, Insane Asylum
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They call me mad, while they are all mad themselves.
[Lat., Hei mihi, insanire me ajunt, ultro cum ipsi insaniunt.]
Author: Plautus (Titus Maccius Plautus)
Source: Menoechmi (V, 2, 90)
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What is more insane than to vent on senseless things the anger
that is felt towards men?
[Lat., Quid est dementius quam bilem in homines collectam in res
effundere.]
Author: Seneca (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Source: De Ira (II, 26)
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There has never been any great genius without a spice of madness.
[Lat., Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae fuit.]
Author: Seneca (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Source: De Tranquillitate Animi (XVII, 10)
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Madam, I swear I use no art at all.
That he is mad, 'tis true: 'tis true 'tis pity,
And pity 'tis 'tis true--a foolish figure.
Author: William Shakespeare
Source: Hamlet Prince of Denmark (Polonius at II, ii)
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Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.
Author: William Shakespeare
Source: Hamlet Prince of Denmark (Polonius at II, ii)
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It shall be so.
Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.
Author: William Shakespeare
Source: Hamlet Prince of Denmark (Claudius, King of Denmark at III, i)
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We are not ourselves
When nature, being oppressed, commands the mind
To suffer with the body.
Author: William Shakespeare
Source: King Lear (King Lear at II, iv)
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No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.
Author: Aristotle
Source: None
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There is a thin line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.
Author: Oscar Levant
Source: None
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Everyone is more or less mad on one point.
Author: Rudyard Kipling
Source: None
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Better mad with the rest of the world than wise alone.
Author: Baltasar Gracian
Source: None
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For me, insanity is super sanity. The normal is psychotic. Normal means lack of imagination, lack of creativity.
Author: Jean Dubuffet
Source: None
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I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.
Author: Edgar Allan Poe
Source: None
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I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies but not the madness of people.
Author: Isaac Newton
Source: None
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Whom God wishes to destroy, he first makes mad.
Author: Proverb
Source: None
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In order to act, you must be somewhat insane. A reasonably sensible man is satisfied with thinking.
Author: Georges Clemenceau
Source: None
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All of us are crazy in one way or another.
Author: Yiddish Proverb
Source: None
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