Madman Quotes

“I have found both freedom and safety in my madness; the freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Madman

“Every lover is, in his heart, a madman, and, in his head, a minstrel.”
― Neil Gaiman, Stardust

“I’ve told you before, I love like a madman,” he said. “Immoderate, jealous, possessive...I’m absolutely intolerable.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Married by Morning

“My friend, I am not what I seem. Seeming is but a garment I wear-a care-woven garment that protects me from thy questionings and thee from my negligence.

The “I” in me, my friend, dwells in the house of silence, and therein it shall remain for ever more, unperceived, unapproachable.

I would not have thee believe in what I say nor trust in what I do-for my words are naught but thy own thoughts in sound and my deeds thy own hopes in action.

When thou sayest, “The wind bloweth eastward,” I say, “Aye it doth blow eastward”; for I would not have thee know that my mind doth not dwell upon the wind but upon the sea.

Thou canst not understand my seafaring thoughts, nor would I have thee understand. I would be at sea alone.

When it is day with thee, my friend, it is night with me; yet even then I speak of the noontide that dances upon the hills and of the purple shadow that steals its way across the valley; for thou canst not hear the songs of my darkness nor see my wings beating against the stars-and I fain would not have thee hear or see. I would be with night alone.

When thou ascendest to thy Heaven I descend to my Hell-even then thou callest to me across the unbridgeable gulf, “My companion, my comrade,” and I call back to thee, “My comrade, my companion”-for I would not have thee see my Hell. The flame would burn thy eyesight and the smoke would crowd thy nostrils. And I love my Hell too well to have thee visit it. I would be in Hell alone.

Thou lovest Truth and Beauty and Righteousness; and I for thy sake say it is well and seemly to love these things. But in my heart I laughed at thy love. Yet I would not have thee see my laughter. I would laugh alone.

My friend, thou art good and cautious and wise; nay, thou art perfect-and I, too, speak with thee wisely and cautiously. And yet I am mad. But I mask my madness. I would be mad alone.

My friend, thou art not my friend, but how shall I make thee understand? My path is not thy path, yet together we walk, hand in hand.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Madman

“Lightning and thunder require time, the light of the stars requires time, deeds require time even after they are done, before they can be seen and heard.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

“There was no more dangerous kind of madman than one who devoted a good brain and a courageous heart to unhealthy ambitions.”
― Michael Moorcock, The City in the Autumn Stars

“One sip of this wine
and you will go mad with drunkenness.
You will drop your masks
and tear your clothes — destroying
everything that separates you from the Lover.
Once you taste the fruit of this vine,
you will be kicked out of the city of yourself.
You will forget the world. You will forget yourself.
I tell you:
you will become a madman
who wanders the streets looking for the Lover
once you drink this Wine of Love.”
― Kamand Kojouri

“You must make your choice: either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
― C. S. Lewis

“When your efforts run in the face of conventional wisdom and accepted mastery, persistence can look like madness. If you succeed in the end, this extreme originality reformulates into a new level of mastery, sometimes even genius; if you fail in the end, you remain a madman in the eyes of others, and maybe even yourself. When you are in the midst of the journey…there’s really no way of knowing which one you are.” (p.129)”
― Hilary Austen, Artistry Unleashed: A Guide to Pursuing Great Performance in Work and Life

“Moshe was an Israeli with an ear-slitting laugh. He used it in the same way as a madman uses a gun, spraying it around with bewildering randomness.”
― Alex Garland, The Beach

“Only in war does the madman become sane.”
― Anthony Ryan, Queen of Fire

“Once you were in the hands of a Grand Vizier, you were dead. Grand Viziers were always scheming megalomaniacs. It was probably in the job description: "Are you a devious, plotting, unreliable madman? Ah, good, then you can be my most trusted minister.”
― Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times

“The skeleton was as happy as a madman whose straitjacket had been taken off.”
― Leonora Carrington, The Skeleton’s Holiday

“You are like the first drops of the wet rain
You are like the first rays of the warm sun
I call myself a madman
For I have lost myself within you
Somewhere...”
― Avijeet Das

“A person whom questions the purpose behind enduring life strafed with pain and self-doubt must construct a self-rescue plan. Does a demoralized person discover contentment and a meaningful life through expanded intellectual studies or by becoming engrossed in living deeply connected to nature? Should I seek personal conquest and eradication of ugly segments of my persona or merger and unification of the irrational splinters of a fragmented and traumatized personality? How does a person express what it means to be human? How does a person locate the incandescent flash of their flesh? If I shout into the wind with all my might, will responsive people hear my wild cry? Will placing pen to paper buffet the cantos of a troubled mind, expose the operatic musings of a madman’s ranting song, or will looking at each day through the diverse lens of both detachment and solipsism ignite an illuminating shaft of wisdom to grace the sinkhole of a fallen man?”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Insanity is the term used when one has digressed or progressed beyond the norm.”
― Jordan O'Donnell

“Besides, I'm not going to tell you my whole autobiography or anything. I'll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around last Christmas just before I got pretty run-down and had to come out here and take it easy.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Why is it every time a madman's prayers are answered, a witch burns?”
― J. Danielle Dorn, Devil's Call

“I’ve been writing like a madman for the past hour. I must say it was not easy to write the words, let alone think them.”
― Jason Medina, The Manhattanville Incident: An Undead Novel

“The parsee’s eyes, like a mad man’s, were fixed in air, nowhere in particular, and his thoughts soared into another time.”
― Mukta Singh-Zocchi, The Thugs & a Courtesan

“Mad people are sometimes capable of sanity when sober. A mad man once said; “the reason why I am called mad is that when I want to say something, something else slips into my mouth”. Is he not on point?”
― Vincent Okay Nwachukwu, Weighty 'n' Worthy African Proverbs - Volume 1

“There is a madman in the White House.”
― Steven Magee

“What lies in being a poet when you are no mad-man?”
― Shreesham Pandey

“He carried in his head the verbal articulation of world-altering news, but he wasn't a poet, he was just another madman in this world of inexhaustible beings wearing themselves out in vain.”
― Manuel Vilas, Ordesa

“It is the madman in us who forces us into adventure; once he abandons us, we are lost; everything depends on him, even our vegetative life; it is he who invites us, who obliges us to breathe, and it is also he who forces our blood to venture through our veins.”
― Emil M. Cioran, The Temptation to Exist

“English: "All people are mad, and many try to pretend they are not."

Česky: „Všichni lidé jsou blázni a mnozí se snaží předstírat, že nejsou.”
― Sebastián Wortys

“English: "Stupidity consists of limitation, madness of limitlessness, and genius of their balance."

Česky: „Hloupost spočívá v omezenosti, bláznovství v bezmeznosti a genialita v jejich rovnováze.”
― Sebastián Wortys

“This is the "only a madman" argument.
Whenever I hear it (and it's often trotted out in such debates), I remind myself that madmen really exist. Sometimes they achieve the highest levels of political power in modern industrial nations.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

“You might be called crazy and a madman over what you believe is right, but that's what people do. In turn, give them that permission in order for you to take back your power: let the useful idiots and know-nothings mock a courage they'll never possess.”
― Criss Jami

“I consider myself as a mentally healthy Madman.”
― Sino Melo