William Shakespeare Quotes on Madness (34 Quotes)

Love is merely a madness, and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do.

O let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven.

Why this is very midsummer madness.

Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs. Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers eyes. Being vexed, a sea nourished with lovers tears. What is it else A madness most discreet, a choking gall and a preserving sweet.

If he would despise me, I would forgive him; for if he
love me to madness, I shall never requite him.

Why, are ye mad, or know ye not in Rome
How furious and impatient they be,
And cannot brook competitors in love?

No; that same wicked bastard of Venus, that was begot of
thought, conceiv'd of spleen, and born of madness; that blind
rascally boy, that abuses every one's eyes, because his own are
out- let him be judge how deep I am in love.

O that way madness lies.

O fool, I shall go mad!

The venom clamours of a jealous womanPoisons more deadly than a mad dog's tooth.

False of heart, light of ear, bloody of hand; hog in sloth, fox
in stealth, wolf in greediness, dog in madness, lion in prey.

If't be so,
Hamlet is of the faction that is wrong'd;
His madness is poor Hamlet's enemy.

Love is ... a madness most discreet.

Love is merely madness...

But they'll nor pinch,
Fright me with urchin-shows, pitch me i' th' mire,
Nor lead me, like a firebrand, in the dark
Out of my way, unless he bid 'em; but
For every trifle are they set upon me;
Sometime like apes that mow and chatter at me,
And after bite me; then like hedgehogs which
Lie tumbling in my barefoot way, and mount
Their pricks at my footfall; sometime am I
All wound with adders, who with cloven tongues
Do hiss me into madness.

O! Let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven; keep me in temper; I would not be mad!

What, art thou mad, old fellow?

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 thing,
As e'er I heard in madness.

ROSALIND But are you so much in love as your rhymes speak ORLANDO Neither rhyme nor reason can express how much. ROSALIND Love is merely a madness, and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do and the reason why they are not so punished and cured is, that the lunacy is so ordinary that the whippers are in love too.

Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.

He was to imagine me his
love, his mistress; and I set him every day to woo me; at which
time would I, being but a moonish youth, grieve, be effeminate,
changeable, longing and liking, proud, fantastical, apish,
shallow, inconstant, full of tears, full of smiles; for every
passion something and for no passion truly anything, as boys and
women are for the most part cattle of this colour; would now like
him, now loathe him; then entertain him, then forswear him; now
weep for him, then spit at him; that I drave my suitor from his
mad humour of love to a living humour of madness; which was, to
forswear the full stream of the world and to live in a nook
merely monastic.

Which thing to do,
If this poor trash of Venice, whom I trace
For his quick hunting, stand the putting on,
I'll have our Michael Cassio on the hip,
Abuse him to the Moor in the rank garb
(For I fear Cassio with my nightcap too),
Make the Moor thank me, love me, and reward me
For making him egregiously an ass
And practicing upon his peace and quiet
Even to madness.

Faith, stay here this night; they will
surely do us no harm; you saw they speak us fair, give us
gold; methinks they are such a gentle nation that, but for
the mountain of mad flesh that claims marriage of me,
could find in my heart to stay here still and turn witch.

By heaven, thy madness shall be paid by weight
Till our scale turn the beam.

As they were mad, unto the wood they hie them,
Out-stripping crows that strive to over-fly them.

Be mad, good master; cry 'The devil!

O, very mad, exceeding mad, in love too.

Though this be madness, yet there is method in't. Will you walk out of the air, my lord.

... your noble son is mad Mad call I it for, to define true madness, What is't but to be nothing else but mad But let that go.

Why, Romeo, art thou mad?

It is the very error of the moonShe comes more nearer earth than she was wont,And drives men mad.

And thereof came it that the man was mad.

Thou shouldst be mad;
And I to make thee mad do mock thee thus.

For if I should despair, I should grow mad,
And in my madness might speak ill of thee,
Now this ill-wresting world is grown so bad,
Mad slanderers by mad ears believèd be.