C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Madness
Without one glimpse of reason or of heaven.
O, that way madness lies; let me shun that.
Why, this is very midsummer madness.
Moody madness laughing wild.
Though this be madness, yet there is method in it.
Madness in great ones must not unwatch’d go.
Insane people easily detect the nonsense of other people.
Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked.
The dreamer is a madman quiescent; the madman is a dreamer in action.
O this poor brain! ten thousand shapes of fury are whirling there, and reason is no more.
How see that noble and most sovereign reason, like sweet bells jangled, out of time, and harsh.
Montesquieu wittily observes that, by building professed madhouses, men tacitly insinuate that all who are out of their senses are to be found only in those places.
Madness is consistent; which is more than can be said for poor reason. Whatever may be the ruling passion at the time continues equally so throughout the whole delirium, though it should last for life. Madmen are always constant in love; which no man in his senses ever was. Our passions and principles are steady in frenzy; but begin to shift and waver, as we return to reason.
Many a man is mad in certain instances, and goes through life without having it perceived. For example, a madness has seized a person of supposing himself obliged literally to pray continually; had the madness turned the opposite way, and the person thought it a crime ever to pray, it might not improbably have continued unobserved.