Quotes & Sayings About Madness Shakespeare

Love is merely a madness. — William Shakespeare

Like madness is the glory of this life. — William Shakespeare

O you gods, what a number of
men eat Timon, and he sees 'em not! It grieves me
to see so many dip their meat in one man's blood;
and all the madness is, he cheers them up too.
I wonder men dare trust themselves with men:
Methinks they should invite them without knives;
Good for their meat, and safer for their lives.
There's much example for't; the fellow that sits
next him now, parts bread with him, pledges the
breath of him in a divided draught, is the readiest
man to kill him: 't has been proved. If I were a
huge man, I should fear to drink at meals; — William Shakespeare

Some are born mad, some achieve madness, and some have madness thrust upon 'em. — Emilie Autumn

Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones! — William Shakespeare

I kept seeing Yolanda on the parquet, two men pinning her to the ground, her eyes loaded with hatred and madness combing her hair. I was stormed by her image and my heart could not bear it. We know so little about people. But about the people we love, we know even less. — Nicholas Shakespeare

We all fear loneliness, madness, dying. Shakespeare and Walt Whitman, Leopardi and Hart Crane will not cure those fears. And yet these poets bring us fire and light. — Harold Bloom

(aside) Oh, you are well tuned now,
But I'll set down the pegs that make this music,
As honest as I am. — William Shakespeare

Jessie had never heard you could inherit madness. She thought madness was something that just happened to people in Shakespeare when the wind got up. — Lynne Truss

Why, such is love's transgression.
Griefs of mine own lie heavy in my breast,
Which thou wilt propagate, to have it prest
With more of thine: this love that thou hast shown
Doth add more grief to too much of mine own.
Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs;
Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes;
Being vex'd a sea nourish'd with lovers' tears:
What is it else? a madness most discreet,
A choking gall and a preserving sweet.
Farewell, my coz. — William Shakespeare

I guess I ought to be aware of what to look for, is all. The signs of true love, I mean. Is it like Shakespeare?" I sat up and took Tootsie's hands. "You know, is it all heaving bosoms and fluttering hearts and mistaken identities and madness?"
The sound of the phone ringing downstairs made my heart leap.
"Yes," Tootsie said with wide eyes, holding tightly to my hand as I jumped up. "Yes, it is exactly like that. — Therese Anne Fowler

How stand I, then,
That have a father killed, a mother stained,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep, while to my shame I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men
That for a fantasy and trick of fame
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain? O, from this time forth
My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth!
He exits. — William Shakespeare

Lay not that flattering unction to your soul, That not your trespass but my madness speaks. — William Shakespeare

But these people _announced_ their madness ... they flaunted their insanity, they weren't half mad and half not, curled around a door frame. They were properly mad in the Shakespearean sense, talking sense when you least expected it. — Zadie Smith

Riotous madness,
To be entangled with those mouth-made vows,
Which break themselves in swearing! — William Shakespeare

I mutter and mutter and no one to listen. I speak my words in Japanese and my daughter will not hear them. The words that come from our ears, our mouths, they collide in the space between us.
"Obachan, please! I wish you would stop that. Is it too much to ask for some peace and quiet? You do this on purpose, don't you? Don't you! I just want some peace. Just stop! Please, just stop."
"Gomennasai. Waruine, Obachan wa. Solly. Solly."
Ha! Keiko, there is method in my madness. I could stand on my head and quote Shakespeare until I had a nosebleed, but to no avail, no one hears my language. So I sit and say the words and will, until the wind or I shall die. Someone, something must stand against this wind and I will. I am. — Hiromi Goto

Like madness is the glory of life. — William Shakespeare

Good Lord, what madness rules in brainsick men
When for so slight and frivolous a cause
Such factious emulations shall arise! — William Shakespeare

+"There is method in my madness."~Hamlet — William Shakespeare

My wits begin to turn. — William Shakespeare

I pray thee, cease thy counsel,
Which falls into mine ears as profitless
As water in a sieve: give not me counsel;
Nor let no comforter delight mine ear
But such a one whose wrongs do suit with mine:
... for, brother, men
Can counsel and speak comfort to that grief Which they themselves not feel; but, tasting it,
Their counsel turns to passion, which before
Would give preceptial medicine to rage,
Fetter strong madness in a silken thread,
Charm ache with air and agony with words.
No, no; 'tis all men's office to speak patience
To those that wring under the load of sorrow,
But no man's virtue nor sufficiency
To be so moral when he shall endure
The like himself. Therefore give me no counsel:
My griefs cry louder than advertisement. — William Shakespeare

Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) was a profoundly important analysis of human states of mind - a kind of early philosophical/ psychological study. He sees 'melancholy' as part of the human condition, especially love melancholy and religious melancholy. His concerns are remarkably close to those which Shakespeare explores in his plays. Ambition, for example, Burton describes as 'a proud covetousness or a dry thirst of Honour, a great torture of the mind, composed of envy, pride and covetousness, a gallant madness' - words which could well be applied to Macbeth. — Ronald Carter

Why, this is very midsummer madness. — William Shakespeare

Love is ... a madness most discreet — William Shakespeare

What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord?
Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff
That beetles o'er his base into the sea,
And there assume some other horrible form
Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason
And draw you into madness? Think of it.
[The very place puts toys of desperation,
Without more motive, into every brain
That looks so many fathoms to the sea
And hears it roar beneath.] — William Shakespeare

Though this be madness, yet there is method in't. — William Shakespeare

O! That way madness lies. — William Shakespeare

How pregnant sometimes his replies are. A happiness that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity could not so prosperously be delivered of. — William Shakespeare

My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,
Shakes so my single state of man
That function is smothered in surmise,
And nothing is but what is not. — William Shakespeare

For to define true madness,
What is't but to be nothing else but mad? — William Shakespeare

They think thee mad? I'll show thou mad, my lord. — Phar West Nagle

Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs;
Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes;
Being vexed, a sea nourished with loving tears.
What is it else? A madness most discreet,
A choking gall, and a preserving sweet.
*Here's what love is: a smoke made out of lovers' sighs. When the smoke clears, love is a fire burning in your lover's eyes. If you frustrate love, you get an ocean made out of lovers' tears. What else is love? It's a wise form of madness. It's a sweet lozenge that you choke on.* — William Shakespeare

But there is no such man; for, brother, men
Can counsel and speak comfort to that grief
Which they themselves not feel; but, tasting it,
Their counsel turns to passion, which before
Would give preceptial medicine to rage,
Fetter strong madness in a silken thread,
Charm ache with air and agony with words. — William Shakespeare

Mad I call it, for to define true madness, what is't to be nothing else but mad? — William Shakespeare

Oh, that way madness lies; let me shun that. — William Shakespeare

Love is a smoke rais'd with the fume of sighs; being purg'd, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes; being vex'd, a sea nourish'd with lovers' tears; what is it else? A madness most discreet, a choking gall, and a preserving sweet. — William Shakespeare

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

If I could mimic the dynamic of any Shakespearean marriage, I'd choose to mimic the Macbeths - before the murder, ruthless ambition, and torturous descents into madness and death, that is. — Jillian Keenan

EDGAR
A serving-man, proud in heart and mind; that curled
my hair; wore gloves in my cap; served the lust of
my mistress' heart, and did the act of darkness with
her; swore as many oaths as I spake words, and
broke them in the sweet face of heaven: one that
slept in the contriving of lust, and waked to do it:
wine loved I deeply, dice dearly: and in woman
out-paramoured the Turk: false of heart, light of
ear, bloody of hand; hog in sloth, fox in stealth,
wolf in greediness, dog in madness, lion in prey.
Let not the creaking of shoes nor the rustling of
silks betray thy poor heart to woman: keep thy foot
out of brothels, thy hand out of plackets, thy pen
from lenders' books, and defy the foul fiend.
Still through the hawthorn blows the cold wind:
Says suum, mun, ha, no, nonny.
Dolphin my boy, my boy, sessa! let him trot by.
Storm still. — William Shakespeare

Madness in great ones must not unwatched go. — William Shakespeare

I like him not, nor stands it safe with us
To let his madness range. Therefore prepare you;
I your commission will forthwith dispatch,
And he to England shall along with you:
The terms of our estate may not endure
Hazard so dangerous as doth hourly grow
Out of his lunacies. — William Shakespeare