Madness Quotes - Page 25

• To say that war is madness is like saying that sex is madness: true enough, from the standpoint of a stateless eunuch, but merely a provocative epigram for those who must make their arrangements in the world as given.

  John Updike

  Funny, Sex, War

  Self-Consciousness ch. 4 (1989)

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• But other vampire stories? Well, no, I really haven't read too many, and I can't say I'm crazy about romantic vampires anyway - to me the vampire is simply an evil monster.

  Brian Lumley

  Romantic, Crazy, Evil

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• I once picked up a woman from a garbage dump and she was burning with fever; she was in her last days and her only lament was: My son did this to me. I begged her: You must forgive your son. In a moment of madness, when he was not himself, he did a thing he regrets. Be a mother to him, forgive him. It took me a long time to make her say: I forgive my son. Just before she died in my arms, she was able to say that with a real forgiveness. She was not concerned that she was dying. The breaking of the heart was that her son did not want her. This is something you and I can understand.

  Mother Teresa

  Mother, Regret, Real

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• Realism; fatalism; phlegm. To live in the Fens is to receive strong doses of reality. The great flat monotony of reality; the wide empty space of reality. Melancholia and self-murder are not unknown in the Fens. Heavy drinking, madness and sudden acts of violence are not uncommon. How do you surmount reality, children? How do you acquire, in a flat country, the tonic of elevated feelings?

  Graham Swift

  Country, Strong, Children

  Graham Swift (1991). “Waterland”, Simon & Schuster

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• I'm real bent on dialogue. I'm just a little bit crazy and when you put that along with 20 years as a criminal lawyer, it's pretty easy to come up with some interesting plots.

  Christopher Darden

  Crazy, Real, Years

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• To build a city where it is impossible to build a city is madness in itself, but to build there one of the most elegant and grandest of cities is the madness of genius.

  Alexander Herzen

  Cities, Venice, Genius

  "The lost city of Venice" by Josh McHugh, www.wired.com. August 1, 2003.

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• In the face of this approaching disaster, it behooves men and women not yet overcome by war madness to raise their voice of protest, to call the attention of the people to the crime and outrage which are about to be perpetrated on them.

  Emma Goldman

  War, Men, Voice

  Alphonso Lingis, Emma Goldman (1996). “Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader”, Humanities Press International

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• Ivan and Misha is the great American Russian Novel told as Chekhov would tell it, in stories of delicacy, humanity, and insight. From Kiev to Manhattan, Brighton Beach and Bellevue, Michael Alenyikov lays out a series of compelling arguments for brotherhood between brothers, between lovers, between men from an old country. Alenyikov confronts big subjects—illness and madness, sex and love in the age of AIDS, old and new world values, a fallen wall, the metaphysics of survival, the march of generations.

  Carolyn Cooke

  Country, Beach, Brother

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• I believe in love and lust and sex and romance. I don't want everything to add up to some perfect equation. I want mess and chaos. I want someone to go crazy out of his mind for me. I want to feel passion and heat and sweat and madness. I want valenties and cupids and all of that crap. I want it all.

  Barbra Streisand

  Sex, Crazy, Believe

  "Fictional character: Rose Morgan". "The Mirror Has Two Faces", November 1, 1996.

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• Personally, I believe very much in values of savagery; I mean: instinct, passion, mood, violence, madness.

  Jean Dubuffet

  Believe, Passion, Mean

  Jean Dubuffet (1974). “Dubuffet: Paintings, Drawings, Gouaches 1946-1966 ; March, 1974, Donald Morris Gallery”

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• I build a kind of wall between myself and t he model so that I can paint in peace behind it. Otherwise, she might say something that confuses and distracts me.

  Edvard Munch

  Wall, Artist, Might

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• My father was temperamentally nervous and obsessively religious—to the point of psychoneurosis. From him I inherited the seeds of madness. The angels of fear, sorrow, and death stood by my side since the day I was born.

  Edvard Munch

  Religious, Father, Angel

  Edvard Munch, Peter Russell (2017). “Delphi Complete Paintings of Edvard Munch (Illustrated)”, p.10, Delphi Classics

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• If there's one thing I feel very strongly about, it's that there shouldn't be a distinction between pianists who play Ligeti and those who play Chopin. It might seem that they involve different skill sets, but I don't think that's true: whether playing Ives or Bach or Beethoven, you must bring the same imagination, the same sensitivity, and an ability to deal with same kinds of musical problems. The method behind my madness, anyway, is to keep plugging away at this idea.

  Jeremy Denk

  Thinking, Play, Skills

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• I can remember running around at the age of 3, wanting to play golf, cricket and football. I was always active, one way or another, driving my parents mad.

  Ian Botham

  Football, Running, Golf

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• All inventors, they say, are a little mad. I reckon that only completely sane people are willing to admit they are slightly crazy.

  Trevor Baylis

  Crazy, People, Mad

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• The notion that inventors are anorak-wearing crackpots with glasses held together with Sellotape is beguiling but wrong.

  Trevor Baylis

  Glasses, Together, Inventor

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• In England, an inventor is regarded almost as a crazy man, and in too many instances invention ends in disappointment and poverty. In America, an inventor is honoured, help is forthcoming, and the exercise of ingenuity, the application of science to the work of man, is there the shortest road to wealth.

  Oscar Wilde

  Disappointment, Crazy, Exercise

  Oscar Wilde, Merlin Holland (2003). “Collins complete works of Oscar Wilde”, HarperCollins UK

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• If you commit a big crime then you are crazy, and the more heinous the crime the crazier you must be. Therefore you are not responsible, and nothing is your fault.

  Peggy Noonan

  Crazy, Insanity, Faults

  Peggy Noonan (1990). “What I Saw at the Revolution: A Political Life in the Reagan Era”, Random House (NY)

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• To dig our heels in and say no to a present madness is a good thing, but to walk a new path and say yes is a better thing.

  Jim Wallis

  Simple, Path, Good Things

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• Bizarre and engrossingly disturbing, Naked Lunch, finds truth in madness.

  William S. Burroughs

  Lunch, Naked, Bizarre

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• I may play a total madman on TV, but I'm really just a very unbalanced guy at home. However, when it comes to stocks, I believe in being rigorous and methodical, not crazy. There's no madness to my method.

  Jim Cramer

  Crazy, Believe, Home

  "Mad Money". Book by Jim Cramer, www.today.com. March 14, 2005.

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• She is furious with herself for her own stupidity. Opening herself up like this, voluntarily, to a lifetime of worry and anguish. It was madness. Sheer lunacy. A spectacularly foolish and baseless faith, against enormous odds, that a world you do not control will not take from you the one thing you cannot bear to lose. Faith that the world will not destroy you.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Odds, Worry, Stupidity

  Khaled Hosseini (2013). “And the Mountains Echoed”, p.225, A&C Black

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• There is a madness, yes, this is true. Few mortals possess it, the willingness to step away from the protection of sanity. To walk into the wild wood of madness...

  Neil Gaiman

  Woods, Steps, Sanity

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• Madness is the result not of uncertainty but certainty.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Results, Certainty, Uncertainty

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• Cancer is the growth of madness denied.

  Norman Mailer

  Cancer, Growth, Denied

  Norman Mailer (2013). “An American Dream: A Novel”, p.254, Random House

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