Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Insanity
Like men condemned to thunderbolts,
Who, ere the blow, become mere dolts.
Butler—Hudibras. Pt. III. Canto II. L. 565.
Much madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye;
Much sense the starkest madness.
’Tis the majority
In this, as all, prevails
Assent, and you are sane;
Demur,—you’re straightway dangerous,
And handled with a chain.
Emily Dickinson—Poems. XI. (Ed. 1891).
For those whom God to ruin has designed
He fits for fate, and first destroys their mind.
Dryden—Fables. The Hind and the Panther. Pt. III. L. 2,387.
There is a pleasure, sure,
In being mad, which none but madmen know!
Dryden—Spanish Friar. Act II. St. 1.
The alleged power to charm down insanity, or ferocity in beasts, is a power behind the eye.
Emerson—Essays. Conduct of Life. Of Behaviour.
At dæmon, homini quum struit aliquid malum,
Pervertit illi primitus mentem suam.
But the devil when he purports any evil against man, first perverts his mind.
Euripides. Fragment 25. Barnes Ed. Attributed to Athenagorus. Also ed. pub. at Padua, 1743–53. Vol. X. P. 268. The Translator. P. Carmeli, gives the Italian as: Quondo vogliono gli Dei far perire alcuno, gli tiglie la mente.
But when Fate destines one to ruin it begins by blinding the eyes of his understanding.
James Fraser—Short Hist. of the Hindostan Emperors of the Moghol Race. (1742). P. 57. See also story of the Christian Broker. Arabian Nights. Lane’s trans. Ed. 1859. Vol. I. P. 307.
Mad as a March hare.
Halliwell—Archaic Diet. Vol. II. Art. “March Hare.” Heywood—Proverbs. Pt. II. Ch. V. Skelton—Replycacion Agaynst Certayne Yong Scolers, etc. L. 35.
Doceo insanire omnes.
I teach that all men are mad.
Horace—Satires. II. 3. 81.
Nimirum insanus paucis videatur, eo quod
Maxima pars hominum morbo jactatur eodem.
He appears mad indeed but to a few, because the majority is infected with the same disease.
Horace—Satires. II. . 120.
Quisnam igitur sanus? Qui non stultus.
Who then is sane? He who is not a fool.
Horace—Satires. II. 3. 158.
O major tandem parcas, insane, minori.
Oh! thou who art greatly mad, deign to spare me who am less mad.
Horace—Satires. II. 3. 326.
I demens! et sævas curre per Alpes,
Ut pueris placeas et declamatio fias.
Go, madman! rush over the wildest Alps, that you may please children and be made the subject of declamation.
Juvenal—Satires. X. 166.
O, hark! what mean those yells and cries?
His chain some furious madman breaks;
He comes—I see his glaring eyes;
Now, now, my dungeon grate he shakes.
Help! Help! He’s gone!—O fearful woe,
Such screams to hear, such sights to see!
My brain, my brain,—I know, I know
I am not mad but soon shall be.
Matthew Gregory Lewis (“Monk Lewis”)—The Maniac.
Id commune malum; semel insanivimus omnes.
It is a common calamity; at some one time we have all been mad.
Joh. Baptista Mantuanus—Ecl. I.
My dear Sir, take any road, you can’t go amiss. The whole state is one vast insane asylum.
James L. Petigru—On being asked the way to the Charleston, S. C., Insane Asylum. (1860).
Hei mihi, insanire me ajunt, ultro cum ipsi insaniunt.
They call me mad, while they are all mad themselves.
Plautus—Menæchmi. V. 2. 90.
Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiæ fuit.
There has never been any great genius without a spice of madness.
Seneca—De Animi Tranquillitate. XV. 10.
Quid est dementius quam bilem in homines collectam in res effundere.
What is more insane than to vent on senseless things the anger that is felt towards men?
Seneca—De Ira. II. 26.
Madam, I swear I use no art at all.
That he is mad, ’tis true, ’tis true ’tis pity;
And pity ’tis ’tis true.
Hamlet. Act II. Sc. 2. L. 96.
Though this be madness, yet there is method in ’t
Hamlet. Act II. Sc. 2. L. 208.
It shall be so:
Madness in great ones must not unwatch’d go.
Hamlet. Act III. Sc. 1. L. 196.
I am not mad; I would to heaven I were!
For then, ’tis like I should forget myself.
King John. Act III. Sc. 4. L. 48.
We are not ourselves
When nature, being oppress’d, commands the mind
To suffer with the body.
King Lear. Act II. Sc. 4. L. 109.
Were such things here as we do speak about?
Or have we eaten on the insane root
That takes the reason prisoner?
Macbeth. Act I. Sc. 3. L. 83.
You will never run mad, niece;
No, not till a hot January.
Much Ado About Nothing. Act I. Sc. 1. L. 93.
Fetter strong madness in a silken thread.
Much Ado About Nothing. Act V. Sc. 1. L. 25.
Quem Jupiter vult perdere, dementat primus.
Whom Jupiter would destroy he first drives mad.
Sophocles—Antigone. Johnson’s ed. (1758). L. 632. Sophocles quotes it as a saying. The passage in Antigone is explained by Tricinius as “The gods lead to error him whom they intend to make miserable.” Quoted by Athenagoras in Legat. P. 106. Oxon Ed. Found in a fragment of Æschylus preserved by Plutarch—De Audiend. Poet. P. 63. Oxon ed. See also Constantinus Manasses. Fragments. Bk. VIII. L. 40. Ed. by Boissonade. (1819). Duport’s Gnomologia Homerica. P. 282. (1660). Oracula Sibylliana. Bk. VIII. L. 14. Leutsch and Schneidewin—Corpus Paræmiographorum Græcorum. Vol. I. P. 444. Sextus Empiricus is given as the first writer to present the whole of the adage as cited by Plutarch. (“Concerning such whom God is slow to punish.”) Hesiod—Scutum Herculis. V. 89. Note by Robinson gives it to Plato. See also Stobæus—Germ. II. de Malitia.
Insanus omnis furere credit ceteros.
Every madman thinks all other men mad.
Syrus—Maxims.
Mad as a hatter.
Thackeray—Pendennis. Ch. X.