“Many are astonished at this, and since they do not know the reason, they are offended. And truly, if it were not that God stands by me, the world would often consider me mad, and that is because I almost always live outside myself.”
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Catherine of Genoa 29
Italian author and nurse 1447–1510Related quotes

Heathcliff (Ch. XVI).
Source: Wuthering Heights (1847)
Context: Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living! You said I killed you — haunt me then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe; I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always — take any form — drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss where I can not find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I can not live without my life! I can not live without my soul!

Source: Astronomia nova (1609), Ch.58, as quoted in John Freely, Before Galileo: The Birth of Modern Science in Medieval Europe (2012)
Context: I was almost driven to madness in considering and calculating this matter. I could not find out why the planet would rather go on an elliptical orbit. Oh, ridiculous me! As the liberation in the diameter could not also be the way to the ellipse. So this notion brought me up short, that the ellipse exists because of the liberation. With reasoning derived from physical principles, agreeing with experience, there is no figure left for the orbit of the planet but a perfect ellipse.

“I do not live for what the world thinks of me, but for what I think of myself.”
Letter to Charles Warren Stoddard (21 August 1903)