Monomania Quotes & Sayings

To muse for long unwearied hours with my attention riveted to some frivolous device upon the margin, or in the typography of a book - to become absorbed for the better part of a summer's day in a quaint shadow falling aslant upon the tapestry, or upon the floor - to lose myself for an entire night in watching the steady flame of a lamp, or the embers of a fire - to dream away whole days over the perfume of a flower - to repeat monotonously some common word, until the sound, by dint of frequent repetition, ceased to convey any idea whatever to the mind - to lose all sense of motion or physical existence in a state of absolute bodily quiescence long and obstinately persevered in - Such were a few of the most common and least pernicious vagaries induced by a condition of the mental faculties, not, indeed, altogether unparalleled, but certainly bidding defiance to any thing like analysis or explanation. — Edgar Allan Poe

Honesty, like any inclination, can become a ruling passion, a monomania almost. — Sena Jeter Naslund

There is nothing in the world so enjoyable as a thorough-going monomania ... — Agnes Repplier

But, as in his narrow-flowing monomania, not one jot of Ahab's broad madness had been left behind; so in that broad madness, not one jot of his great natural intellect had perished. That before living agent, now became the living instrument. If such a furious trope may stand, his special lunacy stormed his general sanity, and carried it, and turned all its concentred cannon upon its own mad mark; so that far from having lost his strength, Ahab, to that one end, did now possess a thousand fold more potency than ever he had sanely brought to bear upon any one reasonable object. — Herman Melville

Drumming completely eclipsed my life from age 13, when I started drum lessons. Everything disappeared. I'd done well in school up until that time. I was fairly adjusted socially up until that time. And I became completely monomania, obsessed all through my teens. Nothing else existed anymore. — Neil Peart

Men can intoxicate themselves with ideas as effectually as with alcohol or with bang and produce, be dint of serious thinking, mental conditions hardly distinguishable from monomania. — Thomas Huxley

Eccentricity is developed monomania. — Bayard Taylor

Justice is not cheap in this country, and people who insist on it are usually either desperate or possessed by some private determination bordering on monomania. — Hunter S. Thompson

That before living agent, now became the living instrument. — Herman Melville

Obsessive devotion to creating can spark that which is called 'genius.' Smarter or more gifted? The 'madness' is the insatiable drive to discover, achieve and create. Monomania can develop into 'genius,' as the individual delves deeper into the process leaving normal parameters behind. — Paul Russo

Unbendingness can also be monomania, it can ca be tyranny, and also it can be brittle, whereas what is flexible can also be humane, and strong enough to last. — Salmon Rushdie

[G]lobal warming, that manufactured monomania. — Ilana Mercer

I had considered envying men before
I pretend to envy things like their higher incidence of ungrounded confidence and monomania
but I don't really envy those things, and I'm not sure I even believe in them
but this, the covert-baby-having thing, was the first real thing. — Rivka Galchen

Adhesion to one idea is monomania; to few, slavery. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Bourgeois society is infected by monomania: the monomania of accounting. For it, the only thing that has value is what can be counted in francs and centimes. It never hesitates to sacrifice human life to figures which look well on paper, such as national budgets or industrial balance sheets. — Simone Weil

I've tried open-ended jobs and found myself incredibly unhappy. I don't like the monomania of showing up every day and doing the same thing. I don't know where my next cheque is coming from, I don't know where my next job is coming from, I have really sketchy health insurance, but I need variety in my life. — Julie Klausner

When some one sorrow, that is yet reparable, gets hold of your mind like a monomania,
when you think, because Heaven has denied you this or that, on which you had set your heart, that all your life must be a blank,
oh, then diet yourself well on biography,
the biography of good and great men. See how little a space one sorrow really makes in life. See scarce a page, perhaps, given to some grief similar to your own, and how triumphantly the life sails on beyond it. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

Could be generous and caring to a fault, but he had a darker side as well, characterized by monomania, impatience, and unwavering self-absorption, qualities that seemed to intensify through his college years. — Jon Krakauer