There is a woe that is wisdom, a woe that is madness.
—Herman Melville
Eccentricity is not, as dull people would have us believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd.
—Edith Sitwell
Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be breakthrough.
—R.D. Laing
Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't the fine line between sanity and madness gotten finer?
—George Price
Without meaning to belittle the wonders of science, I do not think they can absolve mankind of suffering, desire, madness, and death.
—Lewis H. Lapham
There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Love is a temporary madness; it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of eternal passion. That is just being in love, which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Those that truly love have roots that grow towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms have fallen from their branches, they find that they are one tree and not two.
—Louis de Bernières in Captain Corelli's Mandolin
If this be not love, it is madness, and then it is pardonable.
—William Congreve