Grocott & Ward, comps. Grocott’s Familiar Quotations, 6th ed. 189-?.
Mad
The man is either mad, or making verses.
Horace.—Translated by Smart, Book II., Satire VII. Line 117.
The man’s as mad as his master! The strangest stranger that ever came to our house!
Brome.—The Merry Beggars, Act V.
Are his wits safe? is he not light of brain?
Shakespeare.—Othello, Act IV. Scene 1. (Lodovico to Iago.)
Sure the man is tainted in his wits.
Shakespeare.—Twelfth Night, Act III. Scene 4. (Maria to Olivia.)
See that noble and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh.
Shakespeare.—Hamlet, Act III. Scene 1. (Ophelia after Hamlet leaves her.)
It shall be so;
Madness in great ones must not unwatch’d go.
Shakespeare.—Hamlet, Act III. Scene 1. (The King resolving to send him to England.)
It is the very error of the moon,
She comes more nearer earth than she was wont,
And makes men mad.
Shakespeare.—Othello, Act V. Scene 2. (Othello to Emilia.)
That he is mad ’tis true; ’tis true, ’tis pity;
And pity ’tis ’tis true.
Shakespeare.—Hamlet, Act II. Scene 2. (Polonius to the Queen.)
I am not mad;—I would to heaven I were!
For then ’tis like I should forget myself.
Shakespeare.—King John, Act III. Scene 4. (Constance to Pandulph.)
Why, this is very midsummer madness.
Shakespeare.—Twelfth Night, Act III. Scene 4. (Olivia to Maria.)
My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time,
And makes as healthful music.
Shakespeare.—Hamlet, Act III. Scene 4. (To his Mother.)
Though this be madness, yet there is
Method in it.
Shakespeare.—Hamlet, Act II. Scene 2. (Polonius with Hamlet.)
By this time I am afraid the reader begins to suspect that he was crazy; and certainly when I consider everything, he must have been crazy when the wind was at N.N.E.
De Quincey.—Walking Stewart, pa. xi.
By mine honesty,
If she be mad, as I believe no other,
Her madness hath the oddest frame of sense
(Such a dependency of thing on things)
As e’er I heard in madness.
Shakespeare.—Measure for Measure, Act V. Scene 1. (The Duke on hearing Isabella’s complaint.)
Moody madness, laughing wild,
Amid severest woe.
Gray.—Prospect of Eton College, Stanza 8.
And madness laughing in his ireful mood.
Dryden.—Palamon and Arcite, near the end.
O, that way madness lies, let me shun that!
Shakespeare.—King Lear, Act III. Scene 4. (Lear to Kent.)
There is a pleasure, sure, in being mad,
Which none but madmen know.
Dryden.—Spanish Friar, Act II. Scene 1.
With a heart of furious fancies,
Whereof I am commander;
With a burning spear,
And a horse of air,
To the wilderness I wander;
With a night of ghosts and shadows,
I summoned am to Tourney:
Ten leagues beyond
The wide world’s end;
Methinks it is no journey!
Anonymous.—The last verse of a Tom-a-bedlam Song in Disraeli’s Curiosities of Lit. Vol. 2, pa. 317.