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Mania Quotes

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Mania Quotes

“I imagine I shall hunt orchids, in one fashion or another, until the day I die. My father considers the whole thing a mania, and perhaps he's right." "A mania," she repeated. "Why, that's putting it rather strongly!" James shrugged. "I'm not so sure. If something brings you more grief and heartache than reward and pleasure, yet you persist in the endeavour anyway, then how else might one describe it?”

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Book:The Winter Garden
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“We're like little kids. We are little kids, but don't tell us that—we're having a fantastic time. We have our little house, and live our little life. We are the perfect young husband and wife. We have nonstop dinner parties—the glorious food, the fabulous friends, the gallons of wine. I sometimes feel as if I've raced off a cliff and am spinning my legs in midair, like Wile E. Coyote. But I'm fine. It's fine. It's all going to be fine. Crazy people don't have dinner parties, do they? No.”

MadnessBipolarManiaBipolar Disorder
Book:Madness: A Bipolar Life
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“About his madmen Mr. Lecky was no more certain. He knew less than the little to be learned of the causes or even of the results of madness. Yet for practical purposes one can imagine all that is necessary. As long as maniacs walk like men, you must come close to them to penetrate so excellent a disguise. Once close, you have joined the true werewolf. Pick for your companion a manic-depressive, afflicted by any of the various degrees of mania - chronic, acute, delirious. Usually more man than wolf, he will be instructive. His disorder lies in the very process of his thinking, rather than in the content of his thought. He cannot wait a minute for the satisfaction of his fleeting desires or the fulfillment of his innumerable schemes. Nor can he, for two minutes, be certain of his intention or constant in any plan or agreement. Presently you may hear his failing made manifest in the crazy concatenation of his thinking aloud, which psychiatrists call "flight of ideas." Exhausted suddenly by this riotous expense of speech and spirit, he may subside in an apathy dangerous and morose, which you will be well advised not to disturb. Let the man you meet be, instead, a paretic. He has taken a secret departure from your world. He dwells amidst choicest, most dispendious superlatives. In his arm he has the strength to lift ten elephants. He is already two hundred years old. He is more than nine feet high; his chest is of iron, his right leg is silver, his incomparable head is one whole ruby. Husband of a thousand wives, he has begotten on them ten thousand children. Nothing is mean about him; his urine is white wine; his faeces are always soft gold. However, despite his splendor and his extraordinary attainments, he cannot successfully pronounce the words: electricity, Methodist Episcopal, organization, third cavalry brigade. Avoid them. Infuriated by your demonstration of any accomplishment not his, he may suddenly kill you. Now choose for your friend a paranoiac, and beware of the wolf! His back is to the wall, his implacable enemies are crowding on him. He gets no rest. He finds no starting hole to hide him. Ten times oftener than the Apostle, he has been, through the violence of the unswerving malice which pursues him, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of his own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren, in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness. Now that, face to face with him, you simulate innocence and come within his reach, what pity can you expect? You showed him none; he will certainly not show you any. Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, 0 Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all the perils and dangers of this night; for the love of thy only Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Amen. Mr. Lecky's maniacs lay in wait to slash a man's head half off, to perform some erotic atrocity of disembowelment on a woman. Here, they fed thoughtlessly on human flesh; there, wishing to play with him, they plucked the mangled Tybalt from his shroud. The beastly cunning of their approach, the fantastic capriciousness of their intention could not be very well met or provided for. In his makeshift fort everywhere encircled by darkness, Mr. Lecky did not care to meditate further on the subject.”

MadnessMurderKillingInsanityParanoiaManiaMadmanManiacParanoiac
Book:Castaway
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“There is a duality to darkness known only to those who’ve been infected by its touch. Everyone knows the shadows: shallow, comfortable, mostly harmless places where one might nest for a night. But the depths of living pitch only visit the aristocracy of madmen and women who’ve unwittingly pledged fealty to the curse. For some, it outright ruins minds like a hound to fresh meat; for others, it wanes into the deepest parts of its less caustic sibling and waits for the time to strike, returning periodically through life like an incurable disease.”

DarknessMadnessInsanityShadowsDementiaManiaPsychosisLunacyWhere Madness RoostsAway With The FairiesBedlamite
Book:Where Madness Roosts
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“Imagine a young Isaac Newton time-travelling from 1670s England to teach Harvard undergrads in 2017. After the time-jump, Newton still has an obsessive, paranoid personality, with Asperger’s syndrome, a bad stutter, unstable moods, and episodes of psychotic mania and depression. But now he’s subject to Harvard’s speech codes that prohibit any “disrespect for the dignity of others”; any violations will get him in trouble with Harvard’s Inquisition (the ‘Office for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion’). Newton also wants to publish Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, to explain the laws of motion governing the universe. But his literary agent explains that he can’t get a decent book deal until Newton builds his ‘author platform’ to include at least 20k Twitter followers – without provoking any backlash for airing his eccentric views on ancient Greek alchemy, Biblical cryptography, fiat currency, Jewish mysticism, or how to predict the exact date of the Apocalypse. Newton wouldn’t last long as a ‘public intellectual’ in modern American culture. Sooner or later, he would say ‘offensive’ things that get reported to Harvard and that get picked up by mainstream media as moral-outrage clickbait. His eccentric, ornery awkwardness would lead to swift expulsion from academia, social media, and publishing. Result? On the upside, he’d drive some traffic through Huffpost, Buzzfeed, and Jezebel, and people would have a fresh controversy to virtue-signal about on Facebook. On the downside, we wouldn’t have Newton’s Laws of Motion.”

UniverseDepressionDiversityIntellectualDignitySocial MediaAuthorMysticismInclusionOffensiveEquityPublishOutrageEccentricDisrespectAlchemyObsessiveParanoidUnstableTwitterLawsPsychoticInquisitionAwkwardnessManiaBacklashExpulsionCryptographyMoodsIsaac NewtonStutterAsperger SVirtue SignallingAsperger S SyndromeAsperger SyndromeLiterary AgentTime TravellingClickbaitVirtue SignalSpeech CodesTime Jump
Author:Geoffrey Miller
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“People say, when I complain of being less lively, less energetic, less high - spirited, "Well, now you're just like the rest of us," meaning, among other things to be reassuring. But I compare myself with my former self, not with the others. Not only that, I tend to compare my current self with the best I have been, which is when I have been mildly manic. When I am my present "normal" self, I am far removed from when I have been my liveliest, most productive, most intense, most outgoing and effervescent. In short, for myself, I am a hard act to follow. And I miss Saturn very much." An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison page 92, paragraph 1 sentence 2 -4 and paragraph 2”

LossManiaThe GoodThe BadThe Ugly
Book:An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
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“Life decisions—making too many and/or making them too easily is as dangerous as not making them at all. How clearly mania and depression outline the extremes of the dilemma of us all before the terrible fact of choice: indecisiveness in depression—nothing can be done; overdecisiveness in mania—everything is to be done and nothing gets done. We are doomed to choose, Sartre said, yet we don’t know when to choose and when not to choose.”

DepressionDecisionsChoiceExistentialPsychiatryManiaSartre
Book:The Concepts of Psychiatry: A Pluralistic Approach to the Mind and Mental Illness
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“I compare myself with my former self, not with others. Not only that, I tend to compare my current self with the best I have been, which is when I have been midly manic. When I am my present "normal" self, I am far removed from when I have been my liveliest, most productive, most intense, most outgoing and effervescent. In short, for myself, I am a hard act to follow.”

PsychologyMental IllnessBipolarManicMania
Book:An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
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“Bipolar disorder was like that: a wild party that was constantly on the verge of ending, chaos and bright lights, an exaltation of the senses. That was mania. But all parties had their end, and when the shadows were long and the glitter had lost its sparkle and gathered to mingle with the dust on the unclean floors and all the food lost its flavor and the music finally died—that was depression, lurking in between all of the dark spaces of the noise and the laughter, as unavoidable as death or darkness.”

PsychologyDepressionMental IllnessBipolarManiaBipolar DisorderManic Depression
Book:Batter My Heart
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“I'm a pioneer, I'm an explorer, I'm a human, and I'm coming. I'm animated, I'm alive, my heart's big, it's got hot blood going through it fast. I like to fight, too! I like to eat! I like to have children! I'm here! I've got a life force: This is a human, this is what we look like, this is what we act like, this what everybody was like before us, this is what I am, I'm a throwback. I'm here! I've got the fire of human liberty! I'm setting fires everywhere, and humans are turning on everywhere.”

PhilosophyHumorPoliticsManiaEssentialismAnti Technology
Author:Alex E. Jones
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“The doctor’s words made me understand what happened to me was a dark, evil, and shameful secret, and by association I too was dark, evil, and shameful. While it may not have been their intention, this was the message my clouded mind received. To escape the confines of the hospital, I once again disassociated myself from my emotions and numbed myself to the pain ravaging my body and mind. I acted as if nothing was wrong and went back to performing the necessary motions to get me from one day to the next. I existed but I did not live.”

DepressionMental HealthMental IllnessInsanityBipolarHallucinationsManicManiaBipolar DisorderDelusions
Book:Letters from a Bipolar Mother
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“Her parents, she said, has put a pinball machine inside her head when she was five years old. The red balls told her when she should laugh, the blue ones when she should be silent and keep away from other people; the green balls told her that she should start multiplying by three. Every few days a silver ball would make its way through the pins of the machine. At this point her head turned and she stared at me; I assumed she was checking to see if I was still listening. I was, of course. How could one not? The whole thing was bizarre but riveting. I asked her, What does the silver ball mean? She looked at me intently, and then everything went dead in her eyes. She stared off into space, caught up in some internal world. I never found out what the silver ball meant.”

PsychologyDepressionMental IllnessBipolarManicManiaMental DisorderBipolar DisorderPsychopathologyManic Depression
Book:An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
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“Many [Tudor-era religious radicals] believed then, exactly as Christian fundamentalists do today, that they lived in the 'last days' before Armageddon and, again just as now, saw signs all around in the world that they took as certain proof that the Apocalypse was imminent. Again like fundamentalists today, they looked on the prospect of the violent destruction of mankind without turning a hair. The remarkable similarity between the first Tudor Puritans and the fanatics among today's Christian fundamentalists extends to their selective reading of the Bible, their emphasis on the Book of Revelation, their certainty of their rightness, even to their phraseology. Where the Book of Revelation is concerned, I share the view of Guy, that the early church fathers released something very dangerous on the world when, after much deliberation, they decided to include it in the Christian canon." [From the author's concluding Historical Note]”

ReligionDestructionCrueltyHolocaustFundamentalismApocalypseOrthodoxyManiaArmageddonRadicalismBook Of Revelation
Book:Revelation
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“Imagine an alternate universe in which people don’t have words for different forms of transportation—only the collective noun “vehicle.” They use that word to refer to cars, buses, bikes, spacecraft, and all other ways of getting from place A to place B. Conversations in this world are confusing. There are furious debates about whether or not vehicles are environmentally friendly, even though no one realizes that one side of the debate is talking about bikes and the other side is talking about trucks. There is a breakthrough in rocketry, but the media focuses on how vehicles have gotten faster—so people call their car dealer (oops, vehicle dealer) to ask when faster models will be available. Meanwhile, fraudsters have capitalized on the fact that consumers don’t know what to believe when it comes to vehicle technology, so scams are rampant in the vehicle sector. Now replace the word “vehicle” with “artificial intelligence,” and we have a pretty good description of the world we live in. Artificial intelligence, AI for short, is an umbrella term for a set of loosely related technologies. ChatGPT has little in common with, say, software that banks use to evaluate loan applicants. Both are referred to as AI, but in all the ways that matter—how they work, what they’re used for and by whom, and how they fail—they couldn’t be more different.”

AiArtificial IntelligenceHypeComputingManiaGenerative AiChatgptLarge Language ModelsPredictive Ai
Book:AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can't, and How to Tell the Difference
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“I am excessively slothful, and wonderfully industrious-by fits. There are epochs when any kind of mental exercise is torture, and when nothing yields me pleasure but the solitary communion with the 'mountains & the woods'-the 'altars' of Byron. I have thus rambled and dreamed away whole months, and awake, at last, to a sort of mania for composition. Then I scribble all day, and read all night, so long as the disease endures.”

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Book:The Portable Edgar Allan Poe
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“If the behaviour of babies and small children is any guide, we emerge into the world with our tendencies to imbalance already well entrenched. In our playpens and high chairs, we are rarely far from displaying either hysterical happiness or savage disappointment, love or rage, mania or exhaustion--and, despite the growth of a more temperate exterior in adulthood, we seldom succeed in laying claim to lasting equilibrium, traversing our lives like stubbornly listing ships on choppy seas.”

IfsWorldWellsChildrenGrowthOur LivesSeaBabySucceedClaimsDisappointmentGuidesRageShipsTendenciesDespiteChairsLastingAdulthoodBehaviourSavagesEquilibriumExhaustionExteriorSmall ChildHystericalImbalanceManiaDisappointment Love
Author:Alain de Botton
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