Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination.

Of course I'm crazy, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong

Perhaps no person can be a poet, or even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.

Our occasional madness is less wonderful than our occasional sanity.

In an insane world, sanity made very little sense.

Are we, then, insane because we have not gone mad?

Writers ... I think ... live on that fine line between insanity and genius.

Lots of people say if you dredge too much stuff up, you'll go crazy - "You'll go insane!" But for a comedian, insanity is not a problem. It's a goal.

A lot of the time I'm semi-insane, but there is a slight bit of intelligence there.

The man is either mad, or he is making verses.

The man who never dreams, goes slowly mad.

There's a fine line between genius and insanity, as we all know.

Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason.

Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.

Turin is a city which entices a writer towards vigor, linearity, style. It encourages logic, and through logic it opens the way towards madness.

Great wits are sure to madness near allied, and thin partitions do their bounds divide.

There is only one difference between a madman and me. The madman thinks he is sane. I know I am mad.

The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.

We cannot unthink unless we are insane.

Worse than madness. Sanity.

There is no insanity so devastating in man's life as utter sanity.

Artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach.

The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.

Creativity is on the side of health - it isn't the thing that drives us mad; it is the capacity in us that tries to save us from madness.

A great many men are mad, and no one knows it. They do not know it themselves