Party-spirit at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.

Most men are within a finger’s breadth of being mad.

Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable.

The great proof of madness is the disproportion of one’s designs to one’s means.

I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.

There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.

Madness is rare in individuals – but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule.

Most poets are young simply because they have not been caught up. Show me an old poet, and I’ll show you, more often than not, either a madman or a master… it’s when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order simply to make a poem that you fail. That is why I do not rework poems.

No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.

Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.

No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.

Men hate the individual whom they call avaricious only because nothing can be gained from him.

The worst of madmen is a saint run mad.

With the introduction of agriculture mankind entered upon a long period of meanness, misery, and madness, from which they are only now being freed by the beneficent operation of the machine.

I find myself hoping a total end of all the unhappy divisions of mankind by party-spirit, which at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.

What can everyone do? Praise and blame. This is human virtue, this is human madness.

O! Let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven; keep me in temper; I would not be mad!

There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

It is a clear gain to sacrifice pleasure in order to avoid pain.

Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman, but believing what he read made him mad.

Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence.

But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.

There is only one difference between a madman and me. The madman thinks he is sane. I know I am mad.

There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.

There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.

Everywhere in life, the true question is not what we gain, but what we do.

To appreciate the noble is a gain which can never be torn from us.

Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.