QuoteProject
To be mad is to feel with excruciating intensity the sadness and joy of a time which has not arrived or has already been.
Mark Helprin
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Being mad means experiencing deep emotions about the past or future, rather than the present.

This quote by Mark Helprin reflects on the nature of madness as an overwhelming emotional state where one is not truly present in the moment, but rather consumed by feelings of joy and sadness related to times that have yet to come or have already passed. It suggests that this heightened emotional awareness, while potentially painful, is a profound aspect of the human experience, highlighting our struggles with time and memory.

Themes

MadnessEmotionTimeSadnessJoy

In practice

Example use cases

During a speech about creativity and madness in art, this quote can illustrate how artists often feel profoundly connected to different times.

More from Mark Helprin

As the clockwork of the millennia moved a notch in front of their eyes, it had taken their thoughts from small things and reminded them of how vulnerable they were to time.
Mark HelprinRead
They're not just dreams. Not anymore, I dream more than I wake now, and, at times, I have crossed over. Can't you see? I've been there.
Mark HelprinRead
their powerlessness, innocence, and imagination fused to enable them to turn time inside out, travel on the wind, and enter the souls of animals.
Mark HelprinRead
You’ll join me sooner than you know in a place with . . . no illusions, where the truth is the only architecture, the only color, the only sound--where that which we sense merely on occasion, and which takes us up and gives us the rare and beautiful glimpses of the things we truly love, flows in deep rivers and tumbles about like clouds in the sky.
Mark HelprinRead
Perhaps things are most beautiful when they are not quite real; when you look upon a scene as an outsider, and come to possess it in its entirety and forever; when you live in the present with the lucidity and feeling of memory; when, for want of connection, the world deepens and becomes art.
Mark HelprinRead
The horse could not do without Manhattan. It drew him like a magnet, like a vacuum, like oats, or a mare, or an open, never-ending, tree-lined road.
Mark HelprinRead

Similar quotes

Doctors put drugs of which they know little into bodies of which they know less for diseases of which they know nothing at all.
VoltaireRead
Some people believe that the nuclear bomb should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, since it scared the major powers away from war by equating it with doomsday.
Steven PinkerRead
Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged.
Samuel JohnsonRead
People were always sorry. Sorry they had done what they had done, sorry they were doing what they were doing, sorry they were going to do what they were going to do; but they still did whatever it is. The sorrow never stopped them; it just made them feel better. And so the sorrow never stopped.
Iain BanksRead
We know that we cannot live together without rules which tell us what is right and what is wrong, what is permitted and what is prohibited. We know that it is law which enables men to live together, that creates order out of chaos. We know that law is the glue that holds civilization together.
Robert KennedyRead
All material in nature, the mountains and the streams and the air and we, are made of Light which has been spent, and this crumpled mass called material casts a shadow, and the shadow belongs to Light.
Louis KahnRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.