"When one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity; when many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion."
I don't suffer from my insanity -- I enjoy every minute of it.
To have a true idea of man, or of life, one must have stood himself on the brink of suicide, or on the door-sill of insanity, at least once.--_Taine._
The higher the wisdom, the closer its neighbourhood and kinship with mere insanity.
The alleged power to charm down insanity, or ferocity in beasts, is a power behind the eye.
In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
Somewhere, he thought, on the long backtrack of history, the human race had accepted an insanity for a principle and had persisted in it until today that insanity-turned-principle stood ready to wipe out, if not the race itself, at least all of those things, both material and immaterial, that had been fashioned as symbols of humanity through many hard-won centuries.
There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.
All power of fancy over reason is a degree of insanity.
Every hand and every hour should be devoted to rescue the world from its insanity of guilt, and to assuage the pangs of human hearts with balm and anodyne. To pity distress is but human; to relieve it is Godlike.
I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.
"Sometimes insanity is the only alternative"
The fog hung thick and heavy as the kids formed into a single line on the south side of Helicopter Hill. Mellas felt as if the clouds above him were slabs of slate. The kids were fatigued and filled with despair at the insanity of it all. Yet they were all checking ammunition, sliding bolts back and forth, preparing to participate in the insanity. It was as if the veterans of the company, succumbing to this insanity, had decided to commit suicide. Mellas, sick with exhaustion, now knew why men threw themselves on hand grenades.
~Insanity.~--Insanity is not a distinct and separate empire; our ordinary life borders upon it, and we cross the frontier in some part of our nature.--_Taine._
I believe they call this the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
A certain tendency to insanity has always attended the opening of the religious sense in men, as if they had been "blasted with excess of light."
not everyone on this planet is going to like you. It doesn’t matter what you do, what your hairstyle looks like, what type of music you listen to, or how nice you are. Someone somewhere is going to hate you. And thinking you can do anything to change other people’s minds will lead you to insanity.
Love is not altogether a delirium, yet has it many points in common therewith ... I call it rather a discerning of the Infinite in the Finite, of the Idea made Real; which discerning again may be either true or false, either seraphic or demonic, Inspiration or Insanity.
X windows: The ultimate bottleneck. Flawed beyond belief. The only thing you have to fear. Somewhere between chaos and insanity. On autopilot to oblivion. The joke that kills. A disgrace you can be proud of. A mistake carried out to perfection. Belongs more to the problem set than the solution set. To err is X windows. Ignorance is our most important resource. Complex nonsolutions to simple nonproblems. Built to fall apart. Nullifying centuries of progress. Falling to new depths of inefficiency. The last thing you need. The defacto substandard. Elevating brain damage to an art form. X windows.
"As I was walking among the fires of Hell, delighted with the enjoyments of Genius; which to Angels look like torment and insanity. I collected some of their Proverbs..." - Blake, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"
Honesty is the best policy, but insanity is a better defense.
"Sometimes insanity is the only alternative" -- button at a Science Fiction convention.
What garlic is to food, insanity is to art.
salesman is sniffing your crotch and baying at the moon.
token it is the shortest detour to marriage.
-- Wilson Mizner
Fortune's Exercising Truths: 1: Richard Simmons gets paid to exercise like a lunatic. You don't. 2. Aerobic exercises stimulate and speed up the heart. So do heart attacks. 3. Exercising around small children can scar them emotionally for life. 4. Sweating like a pig and gasping for breath is not refreshing. 5. No matter what anyone tells you, isometric exercises cannot be done quietly at your desk at work. People will suspect manic tendencies as you twitter around in your chair. 6. Next to burying bones, the thing a dog enjoys mosts is tripping joggers. 7. Locking four people in a tiny, cement-walled room so they can run around for an hour smashing a little rubber ball -- and each other -- with a hard racket should immediately be recognized for what it is: a form of insanity. 8. Fifty push-ups, followed by thirty sit-ups, followed by ten chin-ups, followed by one throw-up. 9. Any activity that can't be done while smoking should be avoided.
Sanity and insanity overlap a fine grey line.
Bonum est, pauxillum amare sane, insane non bonum est=--It is good to be moderately sane in love; to be madly in love is not good.
"What, know of it? Ha, ha, ha! Why, there was a whole crowd round her the moment she appeared on the scenes here. You know what sort of people surround her nowadays, and solicit the honour of her 'acquaintance.' Of course she might easily have heard the news from someone coming from town. All Petersburg, if not all Pavlofsk, knows it by now. Look at the slyness of her observation about Evgenie's uniform! I mean, her remark that he had retired just in time! There's a venomous hint for you, if you like! No, no! there's no insanity there! Of course I refuse to believe that Evgenie Pavlovitch could have known beforehand of the catastrophe; that is, that at such and such a day at seven o'clock, and all that; but he might well have had a presentiment of the truth. And I--all of us--Prince S. and everybody, believed that he was to inherit a large fortune from this uncle. It's dreadful, horrible! Mind, I don't suspect Evgenie of anything, be quite clear on that point; but the thing is a little suspicious, nevertheless. Prince S. can't get over it. Altogether it is a very extraordinary combination of circumstances."
"Gentlemen of the jury, you remember that awful night of which so much has been said to-day, when the son got over the fence and stood face to face with the enemy and persecutor who had begotten him. I insist most emphatically it was not for money he ran to his father's house: the charge of robbery is an absurdity, as I proved before. And it was not to murder him he broke into the house, oh, no! If he had had that design he would, at least, have taken the precaution of arming himself beforehand. The brass pestle he caught up instinctively without knowing why he did it. Granted that he deceived his father by tapping at the window, granted that he made his way in--I've said already that I do not for a moment believe that legend, but let it be so, let us suppose it for a moment. Gentlemen, I swear to you by all that's holy, if it had not been his father, but an ordinary enemy, he would, after running through the rooms and satisfying himself that the woman was not there, have made off, post-haste, without doing any harm to his rival. He would have struck him, pushed him away perhaps, nothing more, for he had no thought and no time to spare for that. What he wanted to know was where she was. But his father, his father! The mere sight of the father who had hated him from his childhood, had been his enemy, his persecutor, and now his unnatural rival, was enough! A feeling of hatred came over him involuntarily, irresistibly, clouding his reason. It all surged up in one moment! It was an impulse of madness and insanity, but also an impulse of nature, irresistibly and unconsciously (like everything in nature) avenging the violation of its eternal laws.
"Well, it is one of his descendants, and a great friend of mine; he is a very rich Englishman, eccentric almost to insanity, and his real name is Lord Wilmore."
If we couldn't laugh we would all go insane.
Tenet insanabile multos / Scribendi cacoethes=--An incurable itch for writing possesses many.
Cause, Principle, and One eternal From whom being, life, and movement are suspended, And which extends itself in length, breadth, and depth, To whatever is in Heaven, on Earth, and Hell; With sense, with reason, with mind, I discern, That there is no act, measure, nor calculation, which can comprehend That force, that vastness and that number, Which exceeds whatever is inferior, middle, and highest; Blind error, avaricious time, adverse fortune, Deaf envy, vile madness, jealous iniquity, Crude heart, perverse spirit, insane audacity, Will not be sufficient to obscure the air for me, Will not place the veil before my eyes, Will never bring it about that I shall not Contemplate my beautiful Sun.
The laws in a democracy are always true exponents of the character, the tastes, habits, and passions of the people. The dominant passion of our people at the present moment is the acquisition of material wealth, either for its own sake, or for the sake of the ease, independence, and distinction it is supposed to be able to secure. Take any ten thousand men at random, and ask them what they most desire of government, and they will answer you, if they answer you honestly, — Such laws as will facilitate the acquisition of wealth. The facilitating of the acquisition of wealth is at the bottom of every question which has any bearing on our elections. Let these men vote, and they will vote for such laws as they believe will most effectually secure this end. But suppose such laws to be enacted, how many out of the ten thousand will be in a condition to take advantage of them? Certainly, not more than one in a hundred. There will be, then, nine thousand and nine hundred men joining with one hundred to enact laws which in their operation are for the exclusive benefit of the one hundred. The whole action, the inevitable action, of every popular government, where wealth is the dominant passion of the people , is to foster the continued growth of inequality of property. The tendency of all laws passed, if passed by the many, will be to concentrate the property in the hands of the few, because each one who aids in passing them hopes that his will be the hands in which it is to be concentrated; — at least, such will be the tendency, till matters become so bad that the many in their madness and desperation are driven to attempt the insane remedy of agrarian laws [redistribution of landed property /so as to achieve a uniform division of land — OED ]. When, under our new system of industry, which allows little personal intercourse between landlord and tenant, proprietor and operative, which connects the operative simply with the mill and the overseer, the concentration of property in a few hands becomes general, it involves the most fatal results. [ Brownson’s Quarterly Review , January, 1846.]
I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad—as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? They have a worth—so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane—quite insane: with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I have at this hour to stand by: there I plant my foot.
Indeed, not only his wife but the whole town were down upon me and blamed me. "It's all your doing," they said. I was silent and indeed rejoiced at heart, for I saw plainly God's mercy to the man who had turned against himself and punished himself. I could not believe in his insanity.
When insane things start to arrange themselves in sane patterns around you, you know you’ve got problems.
O major tandem, parcas, insane, minori=--Oh, thou who art a greater madman; spare me, I pray, who am not so far gone. _Hor._ [Greek: ho me dareis anthropos ou paideuetai]--The man who has not been scourged is not educated.
"As the night advanced, a fierce wind arose from the woods and quickly dispersed the clouds that had loitered in the heavens; the blast tore along like a mighty avalanche and produced a kind of insanity in my spirits that burst all bounds of reason and reflection. I lighted the dry branch of a tree and danced with fury around the devoted cottage, my eyes still fixed on the western horizon, the edge of which the moon nearly touched. A part of its orb was at length hid, and I waved my brand; it sank, and with a loud scream I fired the straw, and heath, and bushes, which I had collected. The wind fanned the fire, and the cottage was quickly enveloped by the flames, which clung to it and licked it with their forked and destroying tongues.
"It is madness--it is merely another proof of her insanity!" said the prince, and his lips trembled.
And if thou sayest that sight impedes the security and subtlety of mental meditation, by reason of which we penetrate into divine knowledge, and that this impediment drove a philosopher to deprive himself of his sight, I answer that the eye, as lord of the senses, performs its duty in being an impediment to the confusion and lies of that which is not science but discourse, by which with much noise and gesticulation argument is constantly conducted; and hearing should do the same, feeling, as it does, the offence more keenly, because it seeks after harmony which devolves on all the senses. And if this philosopher deprived himself of his sight to get rid of the obstacle to his discourses, consider that his discourses and his brain were a party to the act, because the whole was madness. Now could he not have closed his eyes when this frenzy came upon him, and have kept them closed until the frenzy consumed itself? But the man was mad, the discourse insane, and egregious the folly of destroying his eye-sight.
"Well, then," resumed Faria with a bitter smile, "let me answer your question in full, by acknowledging that I am the poor mad prisoner of the Chateau d'If, for many years permitted to amuse the different visitors with what is said to be my insanity; and, in all probability, I should be promoted to the honor of making sport for the children, if such innocent beings could be found in an abode devoted like this to suffering and despair."
"No, I don't. I suppose there are all kinds of insanity."
And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.
Aut insanit homo, aut versus facit=--The man is either mad, or he is making verses.
Day dawned; and I directed my steps towards the town. The gates were open, and I hastened to my father's house. My first thought was to discover what I knew of the murderer, and cause instant pursuit to be made. But I paused when I reflected on the story that I had to tell. A being whom I myself had formed, and endued with life, had met me at midnight among the precipices of an inaccessible mountain. I remembered also the nervous fever with which I had been seized just at the time that I dated my creation, and which would give an air of delirium to a tale otherwise so utterly improbable. I well knew that if any other had communicated such a relation to me, I should have looked upon it as the ravings of insanity. Besides, the strange nature of the animal would elude all pursuit, even if I were so far credited as to persuade my relatives to commence it. And then of what use would be pursuit? Who could arrest a creature capable of scaling the overhanging sides of Mont Saleve? These reflections determined me, and I resolved to remain silent.
After the last two days spent in solitude and unusual circumstances, Pierre was in a state bordering on insanity. He was completely obsessed by one persistent thought. He did not know how or when this thought had taken such possession of him, but he remembered nothing of the past, understood nothing of the present, and all he saw and heard appeared to him like a dream.
Often in afterlife Pierre recalled this period of blissful insanity. All the views he formed of men and circumstances at this time remained true for him always. He not only did not renounce them subsequently, but when he was in doubt or inwardly at variance, he referred to the views he had held at this time of his madness and they always proved correct.
Human meditation has no limits. At his own risk and peril, it analyzes and digs deep into its own bedazzlement. One might almost say, that by a sort of splendid reaction, it with it dazzles nature; the mysterious world which surrounds us renders back what it has received; it is probable that the contemplators are contemplated. However that may be, there are on earth men who--are they men?--perceive distinctly at the verge of the horizons of revery the heights of the absolute, and who have the terrible vision of the infinite mountain. Monseigneur Welcome was one of these men; Monseigneur Welcome was not a genius. He would have feared those sublimities whence some very great men even, like Swedenborg and Pascal, have slipped into insanity. Certainly, these powerful reveries have their moral utility, and by these arduous paths one approaches to ideal perfection. As for him, he took the path which shortens,--the Gospel's.
Necesse est cum insanientibus furere, nisi solus relinqueris=--You must be mad with the insane unless you wish to be left quite alone.
Are the mystics and sages insane? Because they all tell variations on the same story, don't they? The story of awakening one morning and discovering you are one with the All, in a timeless and eternal and infinite fashion. Yes, maybe they are crazy, these divine fools. Maybe they are mumbling idiots in the face of the Abyss. Maybe they need a nice, understanding therapist. Yes, I'm sure that would help. But then, I wonder. Maybe the evolutionary sequence really is from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit, each transcending and including, each with a greater depth and greater consciousness and wider embrace. And in the highest reaches of evolution, maybe, just maybe, an individual's consciousness does indeed touch infinity a total embrace of the entire Kosmos a Kosmic consciousness that is Spirit awakened to its own true nature. It's at least plausible. And tell me: is that story, sung by mystics and sages the world over, any crazier than the scientific materialism story, which is that the entire sequence is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing? Listen very carefully: just which of those two stories actually sounds totally insane?
"My brother in the interval was dead, and at the end of the four years my father died too. I was rich enough now--yet poor to hideous indigence: a nature the most gross, impure, depraved I ever saw, was associated with mine, and called by the law and by society a part of me. And I could not rid myself of it by any legal proceedings: for the doctors now discovered that _my wife_ was mad--her excesses had prematurely developed the germs of insanity. Jane, you don't like my narrative; you look almost sick--shall I defer the rest to another day?"
Durmadan biz insanların hep aynı gemide olduğumuzu söylüyoruz. Bu sadece fiziki olarak doğrudur, fakat zihinsel olarak değil! Stephen Hawking mesela zihinsel olarak uzayda yaşar! Zihnen herkes bu gezegende yaşamaz!
"But what have I done to you?" exclaimed Villefort, whose mind was balancing between reason and insanity, in that cloud which is neither a dream nor reality; "what have I done to you? Tell me, then! Speak!"
Pierre's physical condition, as is always the case, corresponded to his mental state. The unaccustomed coarse food, the vodka he drank during those days, the absence of wine and cigars, his dirty unchanged linen, two almost sleepless nights passed on a short sofa without bedding--all this kept him in a state of excitement bordering on insanity.
In about a week after the arrival of Elizabeth's letter we returned to Geneva. The sweet girl welcomed me with warm affection, yet tears were in her eyes as she beheld my emaciated frame and feverish cheeks. I saw a change in her also. She was thinner and had lost much of that heavenly vivacity that had before charmed me; but her gentleness and soft looks of compassion made her a more fit companion for one blasted and miserable as I was. The tranquillity which I now enjoyed did not endure. Memory brought madness with it, and when I thought of what had passed, a real insanity possessed me; sometimes I was furious and burnt with rage, sometimes low and despondent. I neither spoke nor looked at anyone, but sat motionless, bewildered by the multitude of miseries that overcame me.
It seemed that the Jeroboam had not long left home, when upon speaking a whale-ship, her people were reliably apprised of the existence of Moby Dick, and the havoc he had made. Greedily sucking in this intelligence, Gabriel solemnly warned the captain against attacking the White Whale, in case the monster should be seen; in his gibbering insanity, pronouncing the White Whale to be no less a being than the Shaker God incarnated; the Shakers receiving the Bible. But when, some year or two afterwards, Moby Dick was fairly sighted from the mast-heads, Macey, the chief mate, burned with ardour to encounter him; and the captain himself being not unwilling to let him have the opportunity, despite all the archangel's denunciations and forewarnings, Macey succeeded in persuading five men to man his boat. With them he pushed off; and, after much weary pulling, and many perilous, unsuccessful onsets, he at last succeeded in getting one iron fast. Meantime, Gabriel, ascending to the main-royal mast-head, was tossing one arm in frantic gestures, and hurling forth prophecies of speedy doom to the sacrilegious assailants of his divinity. Now, while Macey, the mate, was standing up in his boat's bow, and with all the reckless energy of his tribe was venting his wild exclamations upon the whale, and essaying to get a fair chance for his poised lance, lo! a broad white shadow rose from the sea; by its quick, fanning motion, temporarily taking the breath out of the bodies of the oarsmen. Next instant, the luckless mate, so full of furious life, was smitten bodily into the air, and making a long arc in his descent, fell into the sea at the distance of about fifty yards. Not a chip of the boat was harmed, nor a hair of any oarsman's head; but the mate for ever sank.
Peace with them! You know what they’d do? They would take my crown, they’d cut off your head, they would take over the city of Jericho.” “They may do that anyway, sire.” “Get out—get out—get out!” King Jokab screamed. “You’re the commander in chief of my armies. I want every man given a sword. Every man or boy who can walk. We have the strongest city in the world. No army can breach our walls. Now, do your job, Zanoah, or I’ll have your head for it.” Zanoah stared at the king, then nodded and started to speak, but seeing the insane rage on King Jokab’s face, he shrugged his burly shoulders, turned,