Insanity Quotes - Page 23

• when ... I've thought of madness, it seems most easily explained to me as poetry in action. A life of symbol rather than reality. On paper one can understand Gulliver, or Kafka, or Dante. But let a man go about behaving as if he were a giant or a midget, or caught in a cosmic plot directed at himself, or in heaven or hell, and we feel horror - we want to disavow him to proclaim him as far removed as possible from ourselves.

  Helen Eustis

  Reality, Men, Heaven

  Helen Eustis (2015). “The Horizontal Man: A Library of America eBook Classic”, p.245, Library of America

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• Everyone is on the verge of insanity ... insanity meaning on the verge of the unknown.

  Frederick Lenz

  Buddhism, Verge

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• Any inhibition must be wrong, since inevitably in the end it causes neurosis and insanity.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Neurosis, Causes, Ends

  D.H. Lawrence (2013). “Delphi Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated)”, p.5109, Delphi Classics

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• To rush to throw away your magazine business and move it on the iPad is just sheer insanity and insecurity and fear.

  Jann Wenner

  Moving, Ipads, Insecurity

  "Jann Wenner: Magazines' Rush To Ipad Is 'Sheer Insanity And Insecurity And Fear'". Interview with Nat Ives, adage.com. May 30, 2011.

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• When everything comes from Jesus, it is spiritual insanity to have any form of pride.

  Derwin L. Gray

  Spiritual, Jesus, Pride

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• Tracy, the leader of the CDH group, looks at me with eyes that seem to belong to someone three times her age. It's something beyond wisdom, all the way to insanity and back. It's like her eyes are scarred from all the things she's seen.

  Augusten Burroughs

  Eye, Leader, Age

  Augusten Burroughs (2013). “Dry: A Memoir”, p.57, Macmillan

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• The human phenomenon is but the sum Of densely coiled layers of illusion Each of which winds itself on the supreme insanity That there are persons of any kind When all there can be is mindless mirrors Laughing and screaming as they parade about in an endless dream

  Thomas Ligotti

  Dream, Mirrors, Wind

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• I have lived on the lip of insanity, wanting to know reasons, knocking on a door. It opens. I've been knocking from the inside.

  Rumi

  Spiritual, Doors, Lips

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• Every isolated passion, is, in isolation, insane; sanity may be defined as synthesis of insanities. Every dominant passion generates a dominant fear, the fear of its non-fulfillment. Every dominant fear generates a nightmare, sometimes in form of explicit and conscious fanaticism, sometimes in paralyzing timidity, sometimes in an unconscious or subconscious terror which finds expression only in dreams. The man who wishes to preserve sanity in a dangerous world should summon in his own mind a parliament of fears, in which each in turn is voted absurd by all the others.

  Bertrand Russell

  Dream, Passion, Men

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• When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Life, Marriage, Wedding

  Getting Married preface (1911)

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• MR. KHARIS: 'Does Mr. Celine seriously suggest that the United States Government is in need of a guardian?' MR. CELINE: 'I am merely offering a way out for your client. Any private individual with a record of such incessant murder and robbery would be glad to cop an insanity plea. Do you insist that your client was in full possession of its reason at Wounded Knee? At Hiroshima? At Dresden?' JUSTICE IMMHOTEP: 'You become facetious, Mr. Celine.' MR. CELINE: 'I have never been more serious.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Offering, Government, Justice

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• The two are not mutually exclusive, but we think we can have wealth without good ideas and without values and without a clear vision. Wealth without vision is insanity.

  Andrew Young

  Thinking, Ideas, Two

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• To stand up on a stage alone with an acoustic guitar requires bravery bordering on heroism. Bordering on insanity.

  Richard Thompson

  Guitar, Bravery, Heroism

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• 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

  Thinking, Curiosity, Insane

  "Radio Power Will Revolutionize the World". Modern Mechanics and Inventions, July 193.

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• There are people who want me to do a cologne. They want to call it 'Patrick.' I was offered a fortune to make exercise videos. Posters, all kinds of stuff - something like $10 million worth. It's insanity. I'm not going to do any of it.

  Patrick Swayze

  Exercise, People, Video

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• 'Hamlet' is one of the most dangerous things ever set down on paper. All the big, unknowable questions like what it is to be a human being; the difference between sanity and insanity; the meaning of life and death; what's real and not real. All these subjects can literally drive you mad.

  Michael Sheen

  Real, Differences, Life And Death

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Professional comedians, surprisingly, have a lack of humor. They're insensitive to the insanity of our times.

  Mort Sahl

  Comedian, Insensitive, Our Time

  Mort Sahl (1976). “Heartland”, New York : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

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• Taking crazy things seriously is a serious waste of time.

  Haruki Murakami

  Life, Crazy, Waste

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• There are essential and inessential insanities. The later are solar in character, the former are linked to the moon.

  Tom Robbins

  Character, Moon, Essentials

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• I don't suffer from insanity. I can actually say that I enjoy it.

  Tim Dorsey

  Suffering, Enjoy, I Can

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• American gentlemen are a cross between English and French men, and yet really altogether like neither. They are more refined and modest than Frenchmen, and less manly, shy, and rough, than Englishmen. Their brains are finer and flimsier, their bodies less robust and vigorous than ours. We are the finer animals, and they the subtler spirits. Their intellectual tendency is to excitement and insanity, and ours to stagnation and stupidity.

  Fanny Kemble

  Animal, Men, Stupidity

  Fanny Kemble (1890). “Further Records, 1848-1883: A Series of Letters”

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• Alas! how much there is in education, and in our social institutions, to prepare us and our children for insanity.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Education, Children, Social

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1842). “Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and Travels”, p.78

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• Lots of people say if you dredge too much stuff up, you'll go crazy - "You'll go insane!" But for a comedian, insanity is not a problem. It's a goal.

  Jim Carrey

  Crazy, People, Goal

  "New Again: Jim Carrey". Interview with Betsy Borns, www.interviewmagazine.com. May 28, 2014.

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• What is commonly honored with the name of Friendship is no very profound or powerful instinct. Men do not, after all, love their Friends greatly. I do not often see the farmers made seers and wise to the verge of insanity by their Friendship for one another. They are not often transfigured and translated by love in each other's presence. I do not observe them purified, refined, and elevated by the love of a man.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Friendship, Wise, Wisdom

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.110, Penguin

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• How comes it that a cripple does not offend us, but a fool does? Because a cripple recognizes that we walk straight, whereas a fool declares that it is we who are silly; if it were not so, we should feel pity and not anger.

  Blaise Pascal

  Silly, Doe, Fool

  Blaise Pascal (2007). “Thoughts”, p.34, Cosimo, Inc.

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