Horace Quotes

you may be right, I may be crazy, but it just might be a lunatic you're looking for

The fellow is either a madman or a poet.

Writers, especially poets, are particularly prone to madness.

Insanity is a legal term. Crazy is an art form.

So wie die Verruecktheit in einem hoeheren Sinn, der Anfang aller Weisheit ist, so ist die Schizophrenie der Anfang aller Kunst, aller Phantasie. (As insanity in a higher sense, is the beginning of all wisdom, so is schizophrenia the beginning of all art, all fantasy.)

There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

Perhaps he was a bit different from other people, but what really sympathetic person is not a little mad?

Genius is one of the many forms of insanity.

I do have some very strange thoughts... Still, all geniuses are mad aren't they?

Artists have nothing to do with the deranged, vaguely connected actions of a few celebrated nutcases.

The world thinks eccentricity in great things is genius, but in small things, only crazy.

I think every genius person has a bit of insanity.

There's a thin line between genius and insanity - and I always get labelled as being the crazy one.

Saying that a great genius is mad, while at the same time recognizing his artistic worth, is like saying that he had rheumatism or suffered from diabetes. Madness, in fact, is a medical term that can claim no more notice from the objective critic than he grants the charge of heresy raised by the theologian, or the charge of immorality raised by the police.

One must be just a little crazy to write a great novel. One must be capable of allowing the darkest, most ancient and shrewd parts of one’s being to take over the work from time to time.

With the truth so dull and depressing, the only working alternative is wild bursts of madness and filigree.

the mad have a grace all their own

I thought you were sane," I said, "but you're just as crazy as the rest of them.

Great minds that are healthy are never considered geniuses, while this sublime qualification is lavished on brains that are often inferior but are slightly touched by madness.

Do you have any notion of how goddamned crazy you are?

Poetry demands a man with a special gift for it, or else one with a touch of madness in him.

For me, insanity is super sanity. The normal is psychotic. Normal means lack of imagination, lack of creativity.

Gaiety is a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.

We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words.