"It does not suffice us simply to exist... What matters to us... is the explicit confirmation: It is good that you exist; how wonderful that you are! In other words, what we need over and above sheer existence is: to be loved by another person."
Is this the writing of a mystic or a maniac?

What's this all about?

"The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason... The sane man knows that he has a touch of the madman, but the madman thinks he is entirely sane... The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand... [The mystic] knows the world is larger than his mind, while the madman makes his mind larger than the world."

G.K. Chesterton
Orthodoxy, Chapter 2