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The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Madness Quotes

Why, this is very midsummer madness.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 3, Scene 4. Olivia says this after listening to Malvolio reading from a love letter he mistakingly thinks was written by her. She thinks the lovesick Malvolio, who is wearing a big grin and looks ridiculous in yellow cross-gartered stockings, has gone mad.

I never saw a more interesting creature: his eyes have generally an expression of wildness, and even madness; but there are moments when, if one performs an act of kindness towards him, or does him any the most trifling service, his whole countenance is lighted up, as it were, with a beam of benevolence and sweetness that I never saw equalled.

– Mary Shelley

Frankenstein, Robert Walton in “Letter 4”. Walton longs for a friend in Victor. He also describes him as a creature, as if Victor had become equal to the creature he had created.

Madness has no purpose. Or reason. But it may have a goal.

– Mr. Spock

Star Trek: The Original Series, ‘The Alternative Factor’.

I will ask the people around the world to realize that our political leaders have failed us, because we are facing an existential threat and there is no time to continue down this road of madness.

– Greta Thunberg

Madness is tonic and invigorating. It makes the sane more sane. The only ones who are unable to profit by it are the insane.

– Henry Miller

It is madness to attempt to hold. In the first place the troops cannot do it and in the second place if they do not retreat they will be destroyed. I repeat that this order be rescinded or that you find someone else.

– Gerd von Rundstedt

Anger is a short madness.

– Horace

Between the Dinosaur Jr. albums and his recent solo albums, ‘Several Shades of Why’ and ‘Heavy Blanket,’ J Mascis is emerging as one of the last men from all that ’80s indie madness, still writing songs that you want to listen to over and over.

– Henry Rollins

The extreme limit of wisdom, that’s what the public calls madness.

– Jean Cocteau

Turin is a city which entices a writer towards vigor, linearity, style. It encourages logic, and through logic it opens the way towards madness.

– Italo Calvino

Madness isn’t altogether a bad thing in comedy.

– Jo Brand

It is madness to make fortune the mistress of events, because by herself she is nothing and is ruled by prudence.

– John Dryden

Great wits are sure to madness near allied, and thin partitions do their bounds divide.

– John Dryden

I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.

– Isaac Newton

You can’t satirise darts, because it’s hyper-real as it is; there’s already enough over-the-top madness to it.

– Irvine Welsh

Government is either organized benevolence or organized madness; its peculiar magnitude permits no shading.

– John Updike

In a completely sane world, madness is the only freedom.

– J. G. Ballard

America has entered one of its periods of historic madness, but this is the worst I can remember.

– John le Carre

Actors, to a certain extent, never grow up, you see. It’s an extension of being out in the back yard with a stick, only you’re being paid to do it. It’s borderline madness.

– Ioan Gruffudd

A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.

– Jonathan Swift

You can’t complain about the pressures, the paparazzi, the madness. Because that is the job. I’ve always understood that’s the deal.

– Avril Lavigne

The first draught serveth for health, the second for pleasure, the third for shame, and the fourth for madness.

– Anacharsis

When you are developing something, you have to look at it individually. You can’t compare and contrast it to the projects around it, because that way madness lies.

– Bryan Fuller

There’s a method to the madness in filmmaking, where everything’s very specifically laid out, the shots and what they need – but there also can be a freedom to allowing the actors to find genuine moments.

– Alexandra Daddario

All cities are mad: but the madness is gallant. All cities are beautiful: but the beauty is grim.

– Christopher Morley

Success can create more madness than happiness.

– Billy Ocean

Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.

– Blaise Pascal

No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.

– Aristotle

Party-spirit at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.

– Alexander Pope

Television is actually closer to reality than anything in books. The madness of TV is the madness of human life.

– Camille Paglia

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