madness

   Ambition, madam, is a great man's madness, That is not kept in chains, and close-pent rooms, But in fair lightsome lodgings, and isgirt With the wild noise of prattling visitants, Which makes it lunatic beyond all cure.

—Webster,John

It was a moment of madness for which I have subsequently paid a very, very heavy price.

—Davies, Ron(ald)

O bom era ter uma intelige"  ncia e na‹  o entender. Era uma be"  n c° a‹  o estranha como a de ter loucura sem ser doida. Era um desinteresse manso em rela c° a‹  o a'  s coisas ditas do intelecto, uma do c° ura de estupidez. What was good was to have intelligence and yet not understand. It was a strange blessing like experiencing madness without being mad. It was a gentle lack of interest with respect to the so-called things of the intellect, a sweet stupidity.

—Lispector, Clarice

My life has crept so long on a broken wing Through cells of madness, haunts of horror and fear, That I come to be grateful at last for a little thing.

—Tennyson

   Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit. We should not listen to those who like to affirm that the voice of the people is the voice of God, for the tumult of the masses is truly close to madness.

—Alcuin

And most of all would I flee from the cruel madness of love, The honey of poison-flowers and all the measureless ill.

—Tennyson

A naked lunch is natural to us, we eat reality sandwiches. But allegories are so much lettuce. Don't hide the madness.

—Ginsberg, Allen

Writing is a formof therapy; sometimes Iwonder howall these people who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear which is inherent in the human situation.

—Greene, (Henry) Graham

   Neat Marlowe, bathed in theThespian springs, Had in him those brave translunary things That the first poets had; his raptures were All air and fire, which made his verses clear, For that fine madness still he did retain Which rightly should possess a poet's brain.

—Drayton, Michael

Fishing is undoubtedly a form of madness but, happily for the once-bitten, there is no cure.

—Douglas-Home, Baron

Great wits are sure to madness near allied, And thin partitions do their bands divide.

—Dryden,John

Composing is not a profession. It is a maniaöa harmless madness.

—Honegger, Arthur

Of course, in an age of madness, to expect to be untouched by madness is a form of madness. But the pursuit of sanity can be a form of madness, too.

—Bellow, Saul

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.

—Wordsworth,William

   You were silly like us: your gift survived it all; 40 The parish of rich women, physical decay, Yourself; mad Ireland hurt you into poetry. Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still, For poetry makes nothing happen.

—Auden,W(ystan) H(ugh)

My love's a noble madness.

—Dryden,John

To a writer, madness is a final distillation of self, a final editing down. It's the drowning out of false voices.

—DeLillo, Don

Poets! Madness is a gift god-given (though not to me).

—Paley, Grace ne¤  e  Goodside

For the nineteenth century, the initial model of madness would be to believe oneself to be God, while for the preceding centuries it had been to deny God.

—Foucault, Michel

Moping melancholy And moon-struck madness.

—Milton,John

Much Madness is divinest Senseö To a discerning Eyeö Much Senseöthe starkest Madnessö

—Dickinson, Emily Elizabeth

If I could only live at the pitch that is near madness When everything is as it was in my childhood Violent, vivid and of infinite possibility.

—Eberhart, Richard Ghormley

'Tis thou, alone, who with thy mystic fan, Work'st more than Wisdom, Art, or Nature can, To rouse the sacred madness; and awake The frost-bound-blood, and spirits; and to make Them frantic with thy raptures, flashing through The soul, like lightning, and as active too.

—Herrick, Robert

Teach me half the gladness That thy brain must know, Such harmonious madness From my lips would flow The world should listen thenöas I am listening now.

—Shelley, Percy Bysshe

   When we, the Workers, all demand: What are WE fighting for? Then we'll end that stupid crime, that devil's madnessöWar.

—Service, Robert William

There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness.

—Melville, Herman

We work in the darköwe do what we canöwe give what we have.Our doubt is in our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is madness.

—James, Henry

   Alas! they had been friends in youth; But whispering tongues can poison truth; And constancy lives in realms above; And life is thorny; and youth is vain; And to be wroth with one we love Doth work like madness on the brain. 226

—Coleridge, Samuel Taylor