Literary notes about insane (AI summary)
The word “insane” in literature often carries a dual significance: on one hand, it denotes a literal state of mental instability, while on the other it is employed as a metaphor for actions or emotions that transcend ordinary rationality. Authors use it to describe behaviors that are as reckless as setting one’s house on fire ([1]) or as overpowering as the fury of a storm ([2]). In some narratives, “insane” functions as a label assigned to individuals placed in asylums or dismissed as irrational by society ([3], [4], [5]), whereas in other contexts it underscores the overwhelming intensity of emotions or desires, such as an all-consuming love or a frenetic obsession ([6], [7], [8]). Moreover, the term serves as both a clinical descriptor and a figurative device, capturing the essence of actions that defy logic or societal norms, from the methods of a frenzied moment ([9]) to the spirited exaggeration in dialogue ([10], [11]).
- To make enemies by unnecessary and willful incivility, is just as insane a proceeding as to set your house on fire.
— from The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Counsels and Maxims by Arthur Schopenhauer - Much of the daytime of the past month was sulky, with leaden heaviness, fog, interstices of bitter cold, and some insane storms.
— from Complete Prose Works by Walt Whitman - Altogether 1,419 patients were admitted to the city asylums for the insane in 1889, and at the end of the year 4,913 remained in them.
— from How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York by Jacob A. Riis - Though she was incarcerated in an insane asylum for eighteen months, yet members of her own family again and again testified that she was not insane.
— from History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I - It was Dorothea Dix (a very delicately organized woman), who first in this country recognized the claims and acknowledged the rights of the insane.
— from History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I - “It may be an insane love-affair,” she told her anxious mother, “but it's not inane.”
— from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald - I use that animal as the symbol of my insane illusions.
— from The Portrait of a Lady — Volume 1 by Henry James - I did that in a moment of insane despair, when I had lost all control over myself.
— from The Sea-Gull by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov - Yes; I feel now that I was right when I adhered to principle and law, and scorned and crushed the insane promptings of a frenzied moment.
— from Jane Eyre: An Autobiography by Charlotte Brontë - Whether you are joking, serious, or simply insane, I'm out.
— from The Best Short Stories of 1917, and the Yearbook of the American Short Story - “One could do a man no graver injury than to call him a dancer,” says Cicero, Pro Murena, and adds: “a man cannot dance unless he is drunk or insane.”
— from The Satyricon — Complete by Petronius Arbiter
