Bedlam Quotes

Do but consider what an excellent thing sleep is ... that golden chain that ties health and our bodies together. Who complains of want? of wounds? of cares? of great men's oppressions? of captivity? whilst he sleepeth? Beggars in their beds take as much pleasure kings: can we therefore surfeit on this delicate Ambrosia? Can we drink too much of that whereof to taste too little tumbles us into a churchyard, and to use it but indifferently throws us into Bedlam? No, no, look upon Endymion, the moon's minion, who slept three score and fifteen years, and was not a hair the worse for it. ~ Thomas Dekker

It will be a year and a half ago soon since we found ourselves at last after many wanderings and numerous calamities in this magnificent capital, adorned with innumerable monuments. Here I obtained a
situation.... I obtained it and I lost it again. Do you understand? This time it was through my own fault I lost it: for my weakness had come out.... We have now part of a room at Amalia Fyodorovna Lippevechsel's; and what we live upon and what we pay our rent with, I could not say.
There are a lot of people living there besides ourselves. Dirt and disorder, a perfect Bedlam... ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

People get frightened that success is going to take them out of life. They're no longer going to be on the corner of Bedlam and Squalor; life will only be something you can get through the mail. ~ Tom Waits

Then as we passed down this Passage we were knocked against certain Women of the Town, who gave us Eye-language, since there were many Corners and Closets in Bedlam where they would stop and wait for Custom: indeed it was known as a sure Market for Lechers and Loiterers, for tho' they came in Single they went out by Pairs. This is a Showing-room for Whores, I said.
And what better place for Lust, Sir Chris. replied, than among those whose Wits have fled? ~ Peter Ackroyd

Bedlam: an institution with a history so fearsome it gave its name to a synonym for chaos and pandemonium. ~ Jon Ronson

Mad' sounds dashing, daring and admirable when you hold the tattered flag in the midst of battle and expired natives lie all over the carpet with holes in 'em that you put there. 'Mad' is less impressive written on a form by a commissioner of lunacy as you're turned over to the hospitallers of St Mary of Bedlam to be dunked in ice water because your latest 'scrape' was running starkers down Oxford Street while gibbering like a baboon. ~ Kim Newman

Of course, with any new technology, the question in the back of everyone's mind is 'Can I have sex with it or use it to kill people?'
-Flintstones Vol. 2: Bedrock Bedlam ~ Mark Russell

To find not only that this bedlam of color was true but that the pictures were pale and inaccurate translations, was to me startling. I can't even imagine the forest colors when I am not seeing them. I wondered whether constant association could cause inattention, and asked a native New Hampshire woman about it. She said that autumn never failed to amaze her; to elate. 'It is a glory,' she said, 'and can't be remembered, so that it always comes as a surprise. ~ John Steinbeck

Kit burst out laughing. Ty looked even more astonished than he had when Kit had said he'd miss him. But after a second, he started to laugh too. They were both laughing, Kit doubled up over the blankets, when Magnus came into the room. He looked at the two of them and shook his head.

"Bedlam," he said, and went over to the counter where the glass tubes and funnels had been set up. ~ Cassandra Clare

Tom O' Bedlam among the Sunflowers"

To have gold in your back yard and not know it. . .
I woke this morning before your dream had shredded
And found a curious thing: flowers made of gold,

Six-sided - more than that - broken on flagstones,
Petals the color of a wedding band.
You are sleeping. The morning comes up gold.

Perhaps I made those flowers in my head,
For I have counted snowflakes in July
Blowing across my eyes like bits of calcium,

And I have stepped into your dream at night,
A stranger there, my body steeped in moonlight.
I watched you tremble, washed in all that silver.

Love, the stars have fallen into the garden
And turned to frost. They have opened like a hand.
It is the color that breaks out of the bedsheets.

This morning the garden is littered with dry petals
As yellow as the page of an old book.
I step among them. They are brittle as bone china. ~ Thomas James

Her brows had drawn together over those big eyes, in an expression that no doubt she thought stern, but that was, in reality, rather adorable. Like a small girl chiding a kitten. A streak of anger surged through him. She shouldn't be out by herself in the ruined garden. If he'd been another type of man - a brutal man, like the ones who'd run Bedlam - her dignity, perhaps even her life, might've been in danger. Didn't she have a husband, a brother, a father to keep her safe? Who was letting this slip of a woman wander into danger by herself? ~ Elizabeth Hoyt

As, for the safety of society, we commit honest maniacs to Bedlam, so judges should be withdrawn from their bench, whose erroneous biases are leading us to dissolution. It may indeed injure them in fame or in fortune; but it saves the republic, which is the first and supreme law. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Trace," she prompted. "Would you like to tell our friends our exciting news?" Her expression indicated that she'd barely been able to not call him a dumbass for gaping at her like an idiot. "Of course I would." He turned and flashed his panty-dropping grin at the audience. "Our exciting news is that Kylie and I are expecting." The response was almost deafening. A hand smacked him hard in the chest. "We're expecting y'all to come see us on the road. Because tonight we're kicking off our The Other Side of Me tour," she clarified, practically shouting into the mic over the bedlam. He winked when she glared at him. ~ Caisey Quinn

What a strange fellowship this is, the God seekers in every land, lifting their voices in the most disparate ways imaginable to the God of all life. How does it sound from above? Like bedlam, or do the strains blend in strange ethereal harmony? Does one faith carry the lead or do the parts share in counterpoint and antiphony where not in full throated chorus?
We cannot know. All we can do is to listen carefully and with full attention to each voice in turn as it addresses the divine. ~ Huston Smith

From both my families, I've learnt important things.

From my family of chance, I learnt what it was like to be alone and unrecognized, to be perceived through the prism of delusion, a lost soul marooned in the belly of bedlam. I learned the beauty and power of language, but also its capacity for subtle perfidy, how it can be used to subvert and distort reality, to sanction cruelty and sugarcoat abuse. I learned that words can be the path to freedom or just another lock on the caged door.

And from my family of choice, I learn on a daily basis about love and loyalty, about burdens shared and intimacies treasured, about forgiveness and atonement and joy. I learn about the gift of a difficult childhood and the fact that 'it's never too late to have a happy one. ~ Lucy Taylor

He'd forgotten, in those long years in Bedlam, through fear and grief and pain, what it was like to simply be with a pretty woman. To tease and flirt and yes, perhaps steal a kiss. He didn't know how she felt about that kiss - or if she'd let him kiss her again, but he was certainly going to try. He had lost time to make up - much of life itself to live. He'd spent four years in limbo, simply existing, while others found lovers and friends, even started families. He wanted to live again. ~ Elizabeth Hoyt

I can understand the ignorant masses loving to soak themselves in drink - oh, yes, it's very shocking that they should, of course - very shocking to us who live in cozy homes, with all the graces and pleasures of life around us, that the dwellers in damp cellars and windy attics should creep from their dens of misery into the warmth and glare of the public-house bar, and seek to float for a brief space away from their dull world upon a Lethe stream of gin. But think, before you hold up your hands in horror at their ill-living, what "life" for these wretched creatures really means. Picture the squalid misery of their brutish existence, dragged on from year to year in the narrow, noisome room where, huddled like vermin in sewers, they welter, and sicken, and sleep; where dirt-grimed children scream and fight and sluttish, shrill-voiced women cuff, and curse, and nag; where the street outside teems with roaring filth and the house around is a bedlam of riot and stench. Think what a sapless stick this fair flower of life must be to them, devoid of mind and soul. The horse in his stall scents the sweet hay and munches the ripe corn contentedly. The watch-dog in his kennel blinks at the grateful sun, dreams of a glorious chase over the dewy fields, and wakes with a yelp of gladness to greet a caressing hand. But the clod-like life of these human logs never knows one ray of light. From the hour when they crawl from their comfortless bed to the hour when they lounge back into it agai ~ Jerome K. Jerome

Daniel was quite pleased with her breathless and flustered state when she straightened, and was satisfied that he'd just established that two could play at her torture game. Unfortunately, in the next moment that contentment gave way to shock when Suzette proved that she was better at it than he was, by using the basket as cover as she dropped one hand down, slit it beneath her bottom and squeezed him through his trousers.
It was then Daniel acknowledged that the wench was going to drive him mad until he got her wed...and probably for the rest of his life. But as she squeezed him again, he admitted that his ride to bedlam would be an enjoyable one. ~ Lynsay Sands

Margaret Kochamma's tiny, ordered life relinquished itself to this truly baroque bedlam with the quiet gasp of a warm body entering a chilly sea. ~ Arundhati Roy

A border collie named Orson inspired me to buy a 110-acre farm with four barns and a sheep. That led to a series of books about Bedlam Farm and about dogs, rural life, lambing and herding sheep. ~ Jon Katz

Lord Francis sighed. "When you get back to Bedlam, Soph," he said, "ask them to reserve a room for me, will you? There's a good girl. I am going to be needing it soon." Sophia clucked her tongue and spurred her horse to a canter. Lord Francis shook his head and went after her. ~ Mary Balogh

When we see religion split into so many thousand of sects, and I may say Christianity itself divided into its thousands also, who are disputing, anathematizing and where the laws permit burning and torturing one another for abstractions which no one of them understand, and which are indeed beyond the comprehension of the human mind, into which of the chambers of this Bedlam would a man wish to thrust himself.
[Letter to George Logan, 12 November 1816] ~ Thomas Jefferson

Religious feeling; but in Miss Brooke's case, religion alone would have determined it; and Celia mildly acquiesced in all her sister's sentiments, only infusing them with that common-sense which is able to accept momentous doctrines without any eccentric agitation. Dorothea knew many passages of Pascal's Pensees and of Jeremy Taylor by heart; and to her the destinies of mankind, seen by the light of Christianity, made the solicitudes of feminine fashion appear an occupation for Bedlam. She could not reconcile the anxieties of a spiritual life involving eternal consequences, with a keen interest in gimp and artificial protrusions ~ George Eliot

There are, Jefferson said, two classes of "disputants" that are especially common. The "first is . . . young students . . . the other consists of the ill-tempered & rude men in society, who have taken up a passion for politics." From both, Jefferson urged, "keep aloof, as you would from the infected subjects of yellow fever or pestilence. Consider yourself, when with them, as among the patients of Bedlam, needing medical more than moral counsel. ~ Davidson Butler

There's a palace in your head, boy. Learn to live in it always. ~ Grant Morrison

Elizabeth smiled warmly. "For you I will allow it, Mr. Trask. How is your wife, sir? Still putting up with you, or has she finally come to her senses and run away?"
Trask laughed, slapping his knee. "I see married life has not tamed that wit of yours, Miss Elizabeth! Well done! Your poor hus- band, to be saddled with such a wench!"
Lizzy assumed a mournful face. "Yes, it is a tragic affair. It is merely a matter of time ere a cell at Bedlam will be his home. ~ Sharon Lathan

The concept of dreaming is known to the waking mind but to the dreamer there is no waking, no real world, no sanity; there is only the screaming bedlam of sleep. ~ Stephen King

I'll have you know there is adventure and then there is crime. And crime, such as you are suggesting, my pretty little filching mort, will see you standing in the Old Bailey being consigned to a hanging." "Then I daresay it would be best if we weren't caught." "Not caught!" He shook his head. "At least now I know where you live." "However do you know that?" "Because I'm quite certain the place you escaped from earlier was Bedlam." "Bedlam, indeed," she sniffed. "Whyever would you want to break into someone's house?" She shrugged. "I just merely want to try. It can't be that difficult. Thieves do it all the time." "And are hung all the time. ~ Elizabeth Boyle

You," she said, bending an icy eye on Elizabeth, "come with me. You have much to explain, madam, and you can do it while Faulkner attends to your appearance."
"I am not," Elizabeth said in a burst of frustrated anger, "going to think of my appearance at a time like this."
The duchess's brows shot into her hairline. "Have you come to persuade them that your husband is innocent?"
"Well, of course I have. I-"
"Then don't shame him more than you already have! You look like a refugee from a dustbin in Bedlam. You'll be lucky if they don't hang you for putting them to all this trouble!" She started up the staircase with Elizabeth following slowly behind, listening to her tirade with only half her mind. "Now, if your misbegotten brother would do us the honor of showing himself, your husband might not have to spend the night in a dungeon, which is exactly where Jordan thinks he's going to land if the prosecutors have their way."
Elizabeth stopped on the third step. "Will you please listen to me for a moment-" she began angrily.
"I'll listen to you all the way to Westminster," the dowager snapped back sarcastically. "I daresay all London will be eager to hear what you have to say for yourself in tomorrow's paper!"
"For the love of God!" Elizabeth cried at her back, wondering madly to whom she could turn for speedier help. An hour was an eternity! "I have not come merely to show that I'm alive. I can prove that Robert is alive and that he came to no h ~ Judith McNaught

The book, as it stands, seems to me to be one of the most frightful muddles I have ever read, with scarcely a sound proposition in it beginning with page 45 [Hayek provided historical background up to page 45; after that came his theoretical model], and yet it remains a book of some interest, which is likely to leave its mark on the mind of the reader. It is an extraordinary example of how, starting with a mistake, a remorseless logician can end up in bedlam. ~ John Maynard Keynes

I used to look like a deer in headlights on the red carpet. You step out of the car and it's bedlam. Everyone's got crazy eyes. ~ Emily Blunt

Alice in Darkness

Forget tears. Chasing
white animals with timepieces
in this drug-trip landscape
can only lead to more of same.
Hedgehogs, playing cards, paintbrushes:
full of undisclosed danger.
Didn't your mother tell you
not to kiss strangers?
That Cheshire smile shouldn't fool you.
Pull your skirt down.
Your nails are growing so fast
you're hardly human.
Alice, fight your version of Bedlam
as long as you can.
Sleep the sweet dream away
from that gooey looking glass, or mushrooms,
or the fear of your own body.
Forget what the night tastes like.
Stop wondering through the shadows,
holding your neck out
for the slice of the axe. ~ Jeannine Hall Gailey

We commit honest maniacs to Bedlam, so judges should be withdrawn from their bench, whose erroneous biases are leading us to dissolution. ~ Thomas Jefferson

It is said that in those days one could hear seventy languages in the streets of Istanbul. The vast Ottoman Empire, shrunken and weakened though it now was, had made it normal and natural for Greeks to inhabit Egypt, Persians to settle in Arabia and Albanians to live with Slavs. Christians and Muslims of all sects, Alevis, Zoroastrians, Jews, worshippers of the Peacock Angel, subsisted side by side in the most improbable places and combinations. There were Muslim Greeks, Catholic Armenians, Arab Christians and Serbian Jews. Istanbul was the hub of this broken-felloed wheel, and there could be found epitomised the fantastical bedlam and babel, which although no one realised it at the time, was destined to be the model and precursor of all the world's great metropoles a hundred years hence, by which time Istanbul itself would, paradoxically, have lost its cosmopolitan brilliance entirely. It would be destined, perhaps, one day to find it again, if only the devilish false idols of nationalism, that specious patriotism of the morally stunted, might finally be toppled in the century to come. ~ Louis De Bernieres

The Beatles first appeared on our show on February 9, 1964, and I have never seen any scenes to compare with the bedlam that was occasioned by their debut. Broadway was jammed with people for almost eight blocks. They screamed, yelled, and stopped traffic. It was indescribable ... There has never been anything like it in show business, and the New York City police were very happy it didn't - and wouldn't - happen again. ~ Ed Sullivan

Democracy, in its best state, is but the politics of Bedlam; while kept chained, its thoughts are frantic, but when it breaks loose, it kills the keeper, fires the building, and perishes. ~ Fisher Ames

Your Grace seems out of breath. I do hope you're not being chased by an overly enthusiastic heiress?" "Pack a light bag, Craven," Maximus snapped. "We're going to London to help a murderous lunatic escape from Bedlam. ~ Elizabeth Hoyt

Very well." Artemis blinked, her sweet lips parting as if she didn't believe what she'd heard. "What?" "I'll do it." He turned to go, his mind already making plans, when he felt her fingers clutch at his sleeve. "You'll take him from Bedlam?" "Yes." Perhaps his decision had already been made from the moment he'd seen tears in her eyes. He had a weakness, it seemed, a fault more terrible than any Achilles's heel: he couldn't stand the sight of her tears. ~ Elizabeth Hoyt

It was said of him that he had once been for a short time in Bedlam; they had done him the honour to take him for a madman, but had set him free on discovering that he was only a poet. This story was probably not true; we have all to submit to some such legend about us. ~ Victor Hugo

To think the world therefore a general Bedlam, or place of madmen, and oneself a physician, is the most necessary point of present wisdom: an important imagination, and the way to Happiness. ~ Thomas Traherne

The Bedlam that greeted James Tilly Matthews, then, was not so much a baroque spectacle of depravity as an exhausted and run-down public institution, its building falling apart and its professional image tarnished. ~ Mike Jay

The Greeks, who knew everything, understood that without the orgy there is no middle ground between bedlam and Toronto ... we need the healing grace of the orgy in this country. ~ Hugh MacLennan

If you think about it, the public perception of funky brain chemistry has been as varied and weird as the symptoms, historically speaking.

If I had been born a Native American in another time, I might have been lauded as a medicine man. My voices would have been seen as the voices of ancestors imparting wisdom. I would have been treated with great mystical regard.

If I had lived in biblical times, I might have been seen as a prophet, because, let's face it, there are really only two possibilities: either prophets were actually hearing God speaking to them, or they were mentally ill. I'm sure if an actual prophet surfaced today, he or she would receive plenty of Haldol injections, until the sky opened up and the doctors were slapped silly by the Hand of God.

In the Dark Ages my parents would have sent for an exorcist, because I was clearly possessed by evil spirits, or maybe even the Devil himself.

And if I lived in Dickensian England, I would have been thrown into Bedlam, which is more than just a description of madness. It was an actual place - a "madhouse" where the insane were imprisoned in unthinkable conditions.

Living in the twenty-first century gives a person a much better prognosis for treatment, but sometimes I wish I'd lived in an age before technology. I would much rather everyone think I was a prophet than some poor sick kid. ~ Neal Shusterman