A First Rate Madness Quotes & Sayings

But this laughter is the reason why the Tuscans invented science and the clear Tuscan drawing in their cool paintings; laughter means distance. Conversely: where laughter is absent, madness begins. Every time I've had a chance to observe an outbreak of psychosis or a first-rate clinical anxiety neurosis the signal has been given in the absence of humor - the moment one takes the world with complete seriousness one is potentially insane. The whole art of learning to live means holding fast to laughter; without laughter the world is a torture chamber, a dark place where dark things will happen to us, a horror show filled with bloody deeds of violence. — Jens Bjorneboe

The movement to abolish the death penalty needs the religious community because the heart of religion is about compassion, human rights, and the indivisible dignity of each human person made in the image of God. — Helen Prejean

It would be an exaggeration to say I'm not afraid of death, but I'm not afraid of what comes after, because I'm not a believer. — Christian De Duve

No one can really claim to know politics properly until he has stayed up all night writing a speech for delivery the following day. While the world sleeps, the orator paces by lamplight, wondering what madness ever brought him to this occupation in the first place. Arguments are prepared and discarded. The exhausted mind ceases to have any coherent grip upon the purpose of the enterprise, so that often--usually an hour or two after midnight--there comes a point where failing to turn up, feigning illness, and hiding at home seem the only realistic options. And then, somehow, just asa panic and humiliation beckon, the parts cohere, and there it is: a speech. A second-rate orator now retires gratefully to bed. A Cicero stays up and commits it to memory. — Robert Harris

The darkest experiences in a human being's life allow that person to either go deeper and stay depressed or get the strength to stand up stronger than ever, and that's my case. — Thalia

Three-fourths of the miseries and misunderstandings in the world will disappear if we step into the shoes of our adversaries and understand their standpoint. — Mahatma Gandhi

Enveloped in a common mist, we seem to walk in clearness ourselves, and behold only the mist that enshrouds others. — George Eliot

If I'd loved my chemistry teacher and my maths teacher, goodness knows what direction my life might have gone in. I remember there was a primary school teacher who really woke me up to the joys of school for about one year when I was ten. He made me interested in things I would otherwise not have been interested in - because he was a brilliant teacher. He was instrumental in making me think learning was quite exciting. — Colin Firth

Because thinking it into words even only to himself was like the struck match which doesn't dispel the dark but only exposes its terror - one — William Faulkner

The spirit of commerce is frugality, economy, moderation, labor, ponderance, tranquillity, order, and rule. So long as this spirit subsides, the riches it produces have no bad effect. The mischief is when excessive wealth destroys the spirit of commerce, then it is that the conveniences of inequality ... are felt. — Baron De Montesquieu

The closer you penetrated to the substance of his mind, the sounder it appeared. — Nathaniel Hawthorne