Love is Madness

For stony limits cannot hold love out,
And what love can do that dares love attempt.
William Shakespeare, 1564-1616, English poet, Romeo and Juliet

Common life is an insignificant reflection of what happens in love
Marcel Proust, 1871-1922, French writer, The Prisoner

We knew passions could make us mad, but one should also state that they can illuminate.
E. Morin, French philosopher and sociologist, Method V

Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
William Shakespeare, 1564-1616, English poet, Midsummer’s Night Dream

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And, as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That, if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear!
William Shakespeare, 1564-1616, English poet, Midsummer’s Night Dream

The desire of love bewitches and turns fool the heart of the victim. It bewitches the mountain lions, the fishes of the sea, men, and all the creatures fed by Earth.
Euripides, 480-406 b. C., Greek author, Hypolitus