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Quote by Democritus

“Whatever a poet writes with enthusiasm and a divine inspiration is very fine. Earliest reference to the madness or divine inspiration of poets.”

Quote by Democritus

Author

Democritus

Democritus (460 BC - 370 BC) was an influential ancient Greek philosopher known as one of the founders of atomism. His philosophical ideas had a profound impact on subsequent generations, particularly his atomic theory and natural philosophy. more

“In this century the writer has carried on a conversation with madness. We might almost say of the twentieth-century writer that he aspires to madness. Some have made it, of course, and they hold special places in our regard. To a writer, madness is a final distillation of self, a final editing down. It's the drowning out of false voices.”

Made Self Might Courses Voice Special Century Conversation Madness Regard Finals Made It Aspire Editing Drowning Twentieth Century Special Places Distillation

Author:Don DeLillo

“One who shows signs of mental aberration is, inevitably, perhaps, but cruelly, shut off from familiar, thoughtless intercourse, partly excommunicated; his isolation is unwittingly proclaimed to him on every countenance by curiosity, indifference, aversion, or pity, and in so far as he is human enough to need free and equal communication and feel the lack of it, he suffers pain and loss of a kind and degree which others can only faintly imagine, and for the most part ignore.”

Source: Human Nature and the Social Order

“And what is an authentic madman? It is a man who preferred to become mad, in the socially accepted sense of the word, rather than forfeit a certain superior idea of human honor. So society has strangled in its asylums all those it wanted to get rid of or protect itself from, because they refused to become its accomplices in certain great nastinesses. For a madman is also a man whom society did not want to hear and whom it wanted to prevent from uttering certain intolerable truths.”

Men Want Humans Ideas Wanted Certain Society Honor Protect Madness Mad Accepted Superiors Madmen Asylums Forfeit Accomplices Nastiness Misunderstood Genius

Book:Antonin Artaud, Selected Writings

Source: Antonin Artaud, Selected Writings

“We want a few mad people now. See where the sane ones have landed us!”

People Want Madness Mad Sane

Book:George Bernard Shaw: The Collected Plays (Illustrated): 60 plays including Caesar and Cleopatra, Pygmalion, Saint Joan, The Apple Cart, Cymbeline, Androcles And The Lion, The Man Of Destiny, The Inca Of Perusalem and Macbeth Skit

Source: George Bernard Shaw: The Collected Plays (Illustrated): 60 plays including Caesar and Cleopatra, Pygmalion, Saint Joan, The Apple Cart, Cymbeline, Androcles And The Lion, The Man Of Destiny, The Inca Of Perusalem and Macbeth Skit

“There is a kind of euphoria of grief, a degree of madness.”

Kind Grief Degrees Madness Euphoria

Author:Nigella Lawson

“But my doubt would not be overcome. Kierkegaard had declared that it was only to the consciousness of sin that Christianity was not horror or madness. For me it was sometimes both.”

Sometimes Sin Consciousness Christianity Doubt Horror Overcoming Madness

Author:Georg Brandes

“Actors are able to trick themselves into treating anything as if it's fantastic. It's a kind of madness really.”

Ifs Kind Able Actors Madness Tricks Fantastic

Author:Tom Baker

“The genius which runs to madness is no longer genius.”

Running Genius Madness

Book:Sex & Character