Lunacy Quotes - Page 2

• The greater a man's talents, the more marked his idiosyncracies. Yet in the provinces originality is considered perilously close to lunacy.

  Honore de Balzac

  Men, Originality, Talent

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• I was recently asked what it takes to become a writer. Three things, I answered: first, one must cultivate incompetence at almost every other form of profitable work. This must be accompanied, second, by a haughty contempt for all the forms of work that one has established one cannot do. To these two must be joined, third, the nuttiness to believe that other people can be made to care about your opinions and views and be charmed by the way you state them. Incompetence, contempt, lunacy—once you have these in place, you are set to go.

  Joseph Epstein

  Believe, Views, Two

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• Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do; and the reason why they are not so punish'd and cured is that the lunacy is so ordinary that the whippers are in love too.

  William Shakespeare

  Dark, Love Is, House

  William Shakespeare (1810). “As You Like it: A Comedy”, p.45

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• From that moment onwards, our loathsome society rushed, like Narcissus, to contemplate its trivial image on a metallic plate. A form of lunacy, an extraordinary fanaticism took hold of these new sun-worshippers.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Sun, Moments, That Moment

  Charles Baudelaire (1981). “Baudelaire: Selected Writings on Art and Artists”, p.295, CUP Archive

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• Happy the youth who believes that his duty is to remake the world and bring it more in accord with virtue and justice, more in accord with his own heart. Woe to whoever commences his life without lunacy.

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Believe, Heart, Justice

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• I don't want to talk about today's market anymore because nobody can make sense of what the market is. It's all over the map. There's a bunch of lunatics out there throwing money away. I'm sick and tired of it. It's lunacy. Punch me in the head and tell me I'm stupid, but that's the way I feel. There's no sense to it anymore.

  Kevin Lowe

  Stupid, Tired, Nhl

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• While sticks and stones break bones, words can never hurt? Manifestly untrue. Politics everywhere are holistic, interconnected, and the rhetoric of right or left can produce toxic atmospheres in which lunacy thrives.

  Phillip Adams

  Leadership, Hurt, Atmosphere

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• Claims have been made that I've been on a strict workout routine regulated by co-stars, whipped into shape by trainers I've never met, eating sprouted grains I can't pronounce and ultimately losing 14 pounds off my 5'3" frame. Losing 14 pounds out of necessity in order to live a healthier life is a huge victory. I'm a petite person to begin with, so the idea of my losing this amount of weight is utter lunacy. If I were to lose 14 pounds, I'd have to part with both arms. And a foot.

  Scarlett Johansson

  Workout, Stars, Ideas

  "Scarlett Johansson denies being on Iron Man diet" by Ben Child, www.theguardian.com. April 14, 2009.

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• Suppose that we believe what we are taught. . . . destroying the environment and militarizing outer space are rational policies . . . of institutional lunacy.

  Noam Chomsky

  Believe, Space, Taught

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• The sole fact of having a school to train creative people is absolute lunacy... The idea of 'pedagogical vision' is ignoble, it has nothing to do with art, it's contrary to art. I really believe in teaching, despite what I say.

  Christian Boltanski

  Education, Art, Believe

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• A vision is something you see and others don't. Some people would say that's a pocket definition of lunacy. But it also defines entrepreneurial spirit.

  Anita Roddick

  Business, People, Vision

  Anita Roddick (1994). “Body and soul: profits with principles, the amazing success story of Anita Roddick & the Body Shop”, Three Rivers Press

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• Lust, that state commonly known as 'being in love,' is a kind of madness. It is a distortion of reality so remarkable that it should, by rights, enable most of us to understand the other forms of lunacy with the sympathy of fellow-sufferers. But, paradoxically, mad and suffering as one is, and the heat of the flame, few of us are glad as we feel that passion slip away No, while most people have been at their unhappiest when in love, it is nevertheless the state the human being yearns for above all.

  Julian Fellowes

  Passion, Being In Love, Reality

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• All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That's how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day.

  Alan Moore

  Bad Day, Men, Dc Comics

  "Batman: The Killing Joke". Comic book by Alan Moore, 1988.

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• Every handsome man had a flaw. It was just her luck that in William's case that flaw was lunacy.

  Ilona Andrews

  Men, Luck, Handsome

  Ilona Andrews (2010). “Bayou Moon”, p.84, Penguin

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• Don’t be stupid, Jess.” – Abigail “Brains don’t exactly run in my family. Suicidal lunacy, on the other hand…” – Sundown

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Running, Stupid, Suicidal

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• It was a good speech, but the reaction was due to the fact that politics are madness, and even if one does not know it, a country in electoral season experiences flares of lunacy like the great storms that sometimes march across the golden surface of the sun.

  Mark Helprin

  Country, Storm, Speech

  Mark Helprin (2005). “Freddy and Fredericka”, p.313, Penguin

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• As her skin sizzled under the delicious heat, she supposed she should’ve been giving serious thought to the lunacy of what she was doing playing with a vampire, who was, for all his charm, as lethal as a stiletto across the throat. But then again, most of her friends already thought she was half a nut short of a fruitcake. Why disappoint?

  Nalini Singh

  Nuts, Giving, Vampire

  Nalini Singh (2012). “Angels' Flight: A Guild Hunter Collection”, p.22, Penguin

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• I've never seen such a collection of idiots in my whole life.' Doolittle shook his head. 'If you participate in this lunacy, y'all will get yourselves killed. Then don't come crying to me.' Now that would be a neat trick.

  Ilona Andrews

  Would Be, Idiot, Cry

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• There are so many cliches associated with mental health - such as the 'fine line between lunacy and genius' - which are, on the whole, a load of rubbish.

  Jo Brand

  Genius, Lines, Rubbish

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• But the myth of power is, of course, a very powerful myth, and probably most people in this world more or less believe in it. It is a myth, which, if everybody believes in it, becomes to that extent self-validating. But it is still epistemological lunacy and leads inevitably to various sorts of disaster.

  Gregory Bateson

  Powerful, Believe, Self

  "Steps to an Ecology of Mind". Book by Gregory Bateson, 1972.

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• They promised me that this would be my home. That girls like you would always be my sisters. But they weren't my sisters, were they?" Catherine asked, but then the lunacy broke, a quick and fleeting crack, and through it I saw anger and bitterness and rage.

  Ally Carter

  Girl, Home, Cracks

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• Musings The little poets sing of little things: Hope, cheer, and faith, small queens and puppet kings; Lovers who kissed and then were made as one, And modest flowers waving in the sun. The mighty poets write in blood and tears And agony that, flame-like, bites and sears. They reach their mad blind hands into the night, To plumb abysses dead to human sight; To drag from gulfs where lunacy lies curled, Mad, monstrous nightmare shapes to blast the world. [click on the thumbnail by Jack "King" Kirby]

  Robert E. Howard

  Kings, Queens, Cheer

  Robert E. Howard (2008). “The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard”, p.158, Del Rey

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• The notion is that human beings are born, (as my Guru has explained many times,) with equivalent potential for both contraction and expansion. The ingredients of both darkness and light are equally present in all of us, and then it's up to the individual (or the family, or the society) to decide what will be brought forth - the virtues or the malevolence. The madness of this planet is largely a result of human being's difficulty in coming into virtuous balance with himself. Lunacy (both collective and individual) results.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Light, Darkness, Balance

  Elizabeth Gilbert (2010). “The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims”, p.236, A&C Black

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• The lunatic is all idée fixe, and whatever he comes across confirms his lunacy. You can tell him by the liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration, and by the fact that sooner or later he brings up the Templars.

  Umberto Eco

  Inspiration, Common Sense, Liberty

  Umberto Eco (2007). “Foucault's Pendulum”, p.76, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Quantum physics is a bit of a passion of mine. It's extraordinary. There's a branch of mathematics that is based on lunacy, and that's wonderful.

  Bob Hoskins

  Passion, Branches, Physics

  "This much I know: Bob Hoskins". Interview with Bob Hoskins, www.theguardian.com. September 18, 2010.

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