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More "Madness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... think me mad!" he said. "Perhaps I am,—but if so, it is the madness of love that has seized me. Love! ... it is a passion I have never known before.. I have used it as a mere thread whereon to string madrigals. a background of uncertain tint serving to show off ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... his wife.) What have we to do with blessings or cursings? The Chisera is unsound in her mind. I have seen her dancing in the hills sometimes where I went to gather eagle's feathers for my arrows, and her madness has made ...
— The Arrow-Maker - A Drama in Three Acts • Mary Austin
... inspire distrust. You have accepted an exalted post, and I thank you for so doing. You know, better than others, that force and power are needed to make the happiness of a great nation. Save France from her own madness, and you will fulfil the desire of my heart; restore her king, and future generations will bless your memory. If you doubt my gratitude, choose your own place, determine the future of your friends. As for my principles, I am a Frenchman, clement ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... necessity abide in God; if we fall out of the hands of his mercy, we fall into the hands of His justice. We must ever abide in Him. What madness then is it to wish not to be with Him, without whom thou canst ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... myself free. And I know that you feel with me, Janet. The world may call us over-scrupulous; but I set your judgment higher than that of the world. And all I can say about Margaret is that I fell into a passing fit of madness, and cared for nothing but what my fancy dictated; and that now I am sane—clothed in my right mind, so to speak—I am disgusted with myself for my folly. Lady Caroline and her daughter should have taken higher ground. They were right ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... is divinest sense To a discerning eye; Much sense the starkest madness. 'T is the majority In this, as all, prevails. Assent, and you are sane; Demur, — you're straightway dangerous, And handled with ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... rapidly, its lights soon vanished from sight, and a minute later there was no sound of it, as though everything had conspired together to end as quickly as possible that sweet delirium, that madness. Left alone on the platform, and gazing into the dark distance, Gurov listened to the chirrup of the grasshoppers and the hum of the telegraph wires, feeling as though he had only just waked up. And he thought, musing, that there had been another episode or adventure in his life, ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... acted spontaneously, yet there was method in his madness. By running across to the other side of the ship there was little chance of the boats being able to pick him up ere he sank for the last time. Not until he rose to the surface did he realize his difficulty. He was a strong swimmer, and the natural instinct ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... for such fears. It seemed madness even to think of Italian poisons, of the Cencis or the Borgias in the midst of this ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... exclaimed, with more than a touch of contempt in her voice. "As if a clever man-of-the-world like Hugo Le Geyt would run away by rail, or start off to the Continent! Every Englishman is noticeable on the Continent. It would be sheer madness!" ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... ruby ring into the sea. I wish I could say that I'd like you to be just so far Pritchard as not to have any desire for the stage; but I somehow don't dare even say that. You see, I couldn't risk losing any particle of Marley other than the stage-madness." ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... leaping of the sea, The mouthing of his madness to the moon, The seething of his endless sorcery, His prophecy no power can attune, Swept over me as, on the sounding prow Of a great ship that steered into the stars, I stood and felt the awe upon my brow Of death and destiny and all ...
— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice
... life passed peacefully, without any other events than my terrible fits of temper, which upset the whole pension and always left me in the infirmary for two or three days. These outbursts of temper were like attacks of madness. ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... little Clementine, so reasonable, so obedient, so happy in the prospect of marrying Leon Renault, sacrificing, all at once, her affections, her happiness, and almost her duty, to the caprice of an interloper. M. Nibor declared that it was madness. As for Leon, he would have butted his head into all the walls, if his mother had not ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... changes he set sail from Africa, and offered to serve under Cinna, who gladly accepted his proposal, and named him Proconsul; but Marius refused all marks of honor. The sufferings and privations he had endured had exasperated his proud and haughty spirit almost to madness, and nothing but the blood of his enemies could appease his resentment. He continued to wear a mean and humble dress, and his hair and beard had remained unshorn from the day he had been driven out of Rome. After joining Cinna, Marius prosecuted the war with great vigor. He first captured the ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... gladness That thy brain must know, Such harmonious madness From my lips would flow, The world should listen then, as ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... of Crete, the Minotaur. The monster beholding them gnawed himself for rage; and on their persisting to advance, began plunging like a bull when he is stricken by the knife of the butcher. They succeeded, however, in entering the fissure before he recovered sufficiently from his madness to run at them; and at the foot of the descent, came to a river of boiling blood, on the strand of which ran thousands of Centaurs armed with bows and arrows. In the blood, more or less deep according to the amount of the crime, and shrieking as they boiled, were the souls of ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... just capering about without any special object," mused Tom, but it was not long after this that they learned to their dismay, that the colored man had had a method in his madness. ...
— Tom Swift Among The Diamond Makers - or The Secret of Phantom Mountain • Victor Appleton
... have known that the spring of imagination and joy had been touched in the girl and merely the madness of youth and the legitimate yearning for expression moved her! But Theodora did not understand and ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... at him, in dumb sorrowful appeal. She closed the ivory fan, clasping her hands upon it. The unquestioning finality of her patient silence, goaded Jim Airth to madness, and let loose the torrent of his fierce wild protest against this inevitable—this ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... forced from such their desired inclinations; for they parted themselves into different bodies, and lay in wait up and down the country, and plundered the houses of the great men, and slew the men themselves, and set the villages on fire; and this till all Judea was filled with the effects of their madness. And thus the flame was every day more and more blown up, till it ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... madness, for I can see that to those who already believe in change of species, these facts will modify to a certain extent the whole view of Hybridity. (A letter to Dr. Gray (July, 1862) bears on this point: "A few days ago I made an observation which has surprised me more than it ought to do—it will have ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... saw himself as he might be, strong, helpful, kindly. The night crept on, as this one image slowly evolved itself from the crowd of other thoughts and stood triumphant. He looked at it. As he might be! What wonder, if it blinded him to delirium,—the madness that underlies all revolution, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... speculations, relating to the longitude and other things, brought on mental troubles, which were intensified by bankruptcy, about 1718. He was afterwards removed from Dublin to his home at Trim, where he rallied; but in a few years his madness returned, and he ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... the signal grace by which God, foiling the designs of a bad woman, Already with her dagger in your breast, He chose, and saved you from amid the carnage. You have not yet eluded all her madness: With the same passion she has ever hungered To lose in you the last child of her son, Her cruelty is fixed to reach your death; Under your name assumed, she hunts you still. But 'neath your standard I have now arranged A people prompt to vengeance ...
— Athaliah • J. Donkersley
... fox and not the cow. Should the most valuable fox that runs be called a black-fox, or a silver-fox? What is the highest price ever paid for a fox-skin? Do not try to get to the bottom of these two innocent-looking demands. That way madness lies. "How old is Ann?" pales before this. Canadian foxes present themselves patriotically in red, white, and blue, and there are also black foxes and silver ones. The black-fox is only less elusive than the black tulip or the blue rose, and yet he inhabits the same ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... referred to the writer's; described with much minuteness a strange headache which had attacked Mrs. Cox, together with a long list of the remedies prescribed and the effects of each, and wound up in an out-of-the-way corner, in a vein of cheery optimism which reduced both readers to the verge of madness. ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... yards away but the cloud was drifting in again and I dropped down for a shot. The hunters were running up the slope, frantically waving for me to come on, thinking it madness to shoot at that distance. I could just see the gray form through the sights and the first two shots spattered the loose rock about a foot low. For the third I got a dead rest over a stone and as the crash of the little Mannlicher echoed up the gorge, the goral threw itself into ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... there," said Loki. He watched Thor go up the hillside to Grid's cave. He waited until he saw Thor come back down the hillside and go toward Gerrioed's dwelling. He watched Thor go into the house where, as he thought, death awaited him. Then in a madness for what he had done, Loki, with his head drawn down on his shoulders, started running like a ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... moment, dreading conversation lest his tongue should betray him, listening ever for the name of Yusef to strike upon his ears. Despair kept him company at times, and fear always. But from the sharp pangs of these emotions a sort of madness was begotten in him, a frenzy of obstinacy, a belief fanatical as the dark religion of those amongst whom he moved, that he could not now fail and the world go on, that there could be no injustice in the whole scheme ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... amused Jack. "There may be a method in Toby's seeming madness. Remember the old story of the doctor who, being called in to prescribe for an old gentleman addicted to much dram drinking, put him on a strict allowance of one drink a day, which was to be taken when he sent ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton
... with such a sea running was sheer madness, as experience has taught us. What was I to do? The destroyer might have seen ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... bedroom," she replied. "I met them pushing him along the corridor—it was horrible! Grundt won't let him out of his sight. Oh, it was madness to have come. If only I could have ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... written were separated but by a few inches of marble from those which guarded the secrets of her councils, or confined the victims of her policy. And when in her last hours she threw off all shame and all restraint, and the great square of the city became filled with the madness of the whole earth, be it remembered how much her sin was greater, because it was done in the face of the House of God, burning with the letters of His Law. Mountebank and masker laughed their laugh, and went their way; and a silence has followed them, ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... Sometimes the Church has commanded the duel, sometimes she has anathematized it. The partisans and the enemies of Aristotle have each been excommunicated in their turn, as have those who wore long hair and those who wore short. In this world we have perfect law only to rule a species of madness called gaming. The rules of gaming are the only ones which admit neither exception, relaxation, variety nor tyranny. A man who has been a lackey, if he play at lansquenet with kings, is paid without difficulty if he win; everywhere else the law is a sword with which the stronger cut ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... If misery and madness abound in stage life, so also does an indomitable cheerfulness, always at least a cheerful countenance. Dr. Doran's book abounds, as might be expected, with admirable impromptus and the like; one might collect a large posy of them. Foote, seeing a sweep on a blood-horse, remarked, "There goes ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... of the slain amounted to one hundred and sixty-two thousand, or according to another account, three hundred thousand persons; and these incredible exaggerations suppose a real or effective loss, sufficient to justify the historian's remark, that whole generations may be swept away, by the madness of kings, in the space of ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... How can that be, Morva?—a student without home or money, and a girl without a penny in the world! What madness thou art talking. I only ask thee to have patience for a year or two, and I will have a home for thee. And ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... her heart turned over new-wrought rede, New craft; how, face and fashion changed, her son the very Love For sweet Ascanius should come forth, and, gift-giving, should move The Queen to madness, make her bones the yoke-fellows of flame. 660 Forsooth the doubtful house she dreads, the two-tongued Tyrian name; And bitter Juno burneth her, and care the night doth wake: Now therefore to the winged Love such words as ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... the man's honour and truth that he was insanely impelled to go to him and tell him all, and implore him to save Veronica at any cost, no matter what, or to whom. Then of course, a moment later, the thought seemed madness, and he only felt that he was losing hold more quickly upon his saner sense. His visit to the somnambulist, too, had helped to unnerve him, and as he wandered through the streets he forgot that it was time to eat, so that physical faintness ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... and dark, and the weather showed no signs of improving, which was depressing for those who had great plans afoot. Mademoiselle Therese thought Barbara was showing signs of madness when she proposed going to the baths, and was not a little annoyed when her disapproval failed to turn the girl from her purpose. Barbara had grave doubts about Alice being allowed to go, but she felt she, at least, must at all costs be there. She had time to remind the ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... seems to think it's a new madness that we've recently invented.' The child seemed in her loneliness to reach out for companioning. She spoke of 'our ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... ruthless destruction of human life united the island sovereignties in his own person, routed the forces of the King of Oahu in the Nuuanu Valley, and drove them in hundreds up the precipice, from which they leaped in despair and madness, and their bones ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... move that the masses of the people had time neither to think nor to act. The suddenness of the crisis marks it as a species of "mid-summer madness," a very "witches' sabbath" of ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... the outward Bishop had gone on unceasingly and hopelessly, until—as well enough might happen to one strong enough to resent yet not strong enough to overcome restraint—the galling irksomeness of such a double life had brought madness near; and that madness did actually come when the chains of a life and of a faith alike intolerable suddenly were fused in the fierce heat of the ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... offered under the express stipulation of a monstrous sin? Or did it represent the allegory of fecundity, the Hindoo myth of life, an existence held between the hands of woman, distorted and trampled by the palpitant hands of man whom a fit of madness seizes, seduced by a ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... the spring that wakened madness in his mind. He came up to me with a ferocious countenance, as if determined to force me into a confession of my thoughts. A sudden pang however seemed to change his design! he drew back with trepidation, and exclaimed, "Detested be the universe, and the ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... Dean, Dr. Conover, was appointed to Durdlebury, and, restless innovator that he was, underpinned the North Transept and split up Canon Trevor's home by marrying Sophia. Then Sarah, bitten by the madness, committed abrupt matrimony with the Rev. Vernon Manningtree, Rector of Durdlebury. Canon Trevor, many years older than his sisters, remained for some months in bewildered loneliness, until one day he found himself standing in ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... her vanity and her love, that she might one day be Mrs. Weir of Hermiston; swift, also, to recognise in his stumbling or throttled utterance the death-knell of these expectations, and constant, poor girl! in her large-minded madness, to go on and to reck nothing of the future. But these unfinished references, these blinks in which his heart spoke, and his memory and reason rose up to silence it before the words were well uttered, gave her unqualifiable agony. She was raised up and ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... if she wrote to you?" "Oh, if she wrote—that would be different, but she never will. There is no doubt, Harding, love is a sort of madness, and it takes every man; none can look into his life without finding that at some time or another he was mad; the only thing is that it has taken me rather badly, and cure seems farther off than ever. Why is it, Harding, that ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... quite convinced that the king was mad, though that did not alarm him because he knew if King Loc should lose his reason he would be a most gracious, charming, amiable and kindly lunatic. The madness of the dwarfs is gentle like their reason, and full of the most delicious fancies. But King Loc was not mad; at least not more ...
— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France
... extreme of life, when the child comes into the world, mother and child must be guarded against hostile demonic influences.[279] When a demon is known to have entered into a human being, producing sickness or madness, exorcism must be resorted to; magicians, prophets, and saints are able by ceremonies or by prayer to expel the intruder and restore the afflicted to health. Ritual taint (which is supernatural), incurred, for example, by touching ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... send to England a list of those Scottish lords against whom he bore resentment, and their fates should be ordered according to his dictates. Edward concluded his offers by inviting him immediately to London, to be invested with his new sovereignty; and Hilton ended his address by showing him the madness of abiding in a country where almost every chief, secretly or openly, carried a dagger against his life; and therefore he exhorted him no longer to contend for a nation so unworthy of freedom, that it bore with impatience the only man who had the courage ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... which had enjoyed centuries of peace, health and accord, stark terror now reigned. In some instances the finely-bred, marvellously intelligent people were in a mental condition bordering on madness. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... stood trembling near the door, with such an expression on her countenance that absolute fear drove her from the room before she knew what she was about. The locking of the door behind her let her know that she had abandoned her young mistress to the madness of her mother's evil temper and disposition. But it was too late. She lingered by the door and listened, but beyond an occasional hoarse tone of suppressed energy, she heard nothing. At length the lock—as suddenly turned, and she was ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... young gentlemen, and spend half their time before their looking-glasses. It's like those poetry books you're so fond of. But it's not meant for them as must earn their bread by their own sweat. You talk about love, but it's only madness ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... had exhibited the slightest sign of fear, if he had moved an inch towards the door, Armand, blind with passion, driven to madness by agonising remorse more even than by rage, would have sprung at his enemy's throat and crushed the life out of him as he would out of a venomous beast. But the man's calm, his immobility, recalled St. Just to himself. ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... ——; that is the first idea, I know, that will come into your silly little head, but put it out directly. If you were upon this attack to quit the field of battle, you yield the victory to your enemies. To leave Lady ——'s house would be folly and madness. As long as she is your friend, or appears such, all is safe; but any coolness on her part would, in the present circumstances, be death to your reputation. And, even if you were to leave her on the best terms possible, the malicious world would say that ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... works of pure imagination. But you must go down to the turf if you want the true smell of the earth. Education levels all human types, as love is said to level all ranks; and to preserve your individuality and yet be educated seems to want a strain of genius, or else a touch of madness. ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... excessive quantity of mucus. Abortion during advanced pregnancy is not infrequent, following a severe attack. In connection with these various symptoms there may be much uneasiness on the part of the animal, leading in some cases to madness and furious delirium, in others to spasms and convulsions or paralysis. A vesicular eruption of the skin may occur, seen principally between the toes and on the inside of the flank and in the armpits, with subsequent loss of ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... gentlemen of rank, birth, and experience, who could be entrusted with commands, and when so many hung back it was the more needful for some to go. It was a great stroke to us, for besides that Sir Andrew Macniven went on reiterating that it was mere madness, and there was not a hope of success—the idea of Eustace going to face the winds of spring in the islands of Scotland ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the federal, as was produced by the dread of a foreign, yoke; and unless the projected innovations should be voluntarily renounced, the same appeal to a trial of force would be made in the one case as was made in the other. But what degree of madness could ever drive the federal government to such an extremity. In the contest with Great Britain, one part of the empire was employed against the other. The more numerous part invaded the rights of ...
— The Federalist Papers
... opportunity to advance towards them. On we went through the high grass. Had I not been with a good sportsman like Nowell and a practised hunter like Dango, I should have thought that what we were doing was the height of madness. No sooner, however, did we thus boldly advance than the greater portion of the herd turned round and retreated before us. At the same time the two leaders, and a third who had joined them, as was ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... marriage which had never been consummated, and which was celebrated while one of the parties took the other for some one else,—but Clara's shattered reason, Tyrrel's despair, and Etherington's certainty that he has the cards in his hand, are all incredible and unaccountable—mere mid-winter madness. Nevertheless, this, Scott's only attempt at actual contemporary fiction, has extraordinary interest and great merit as such, while Meg Dods would save half a dozen novels, and the society at the Well is ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... silently evades the obligation he so readily undertakes, and sinks back into that more powerful interest that almost at once regains possession of his mind. Still, before he quits the scene of this ghastly disclosure, he resolves to counterfeit madness—and this for two reasons: he will seem (to himself) to be conspiring, and he will gain a license to speak his mind without offence. This is the only use to which he puts this mask of madness, as ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... previously mentioned, the whole clustering and crystallizing around a nucleus of crude, ignorant, hard-working, passionate, rough, turbulent men, deceived by the adroit misrepresentations of interested persons, until, driven to madness by a sense of supposed injustice, they believed themselves justified in securing redress by the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... that the progress toward perfection we are so proud of is only a pretentious imperfection. Duty seems now to be more negative than positive; it means lessening evil rather than actual good; it is a generous discontent, but not happiness; it is an incessant pursuit of an unattainable goal, a noble madness, but not reason; it is homesickness for the impossible—pathetic and pitiful, but ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... collection. Thus there came for me a time when I looked forward to a journey less because it meant movement and change for myself than because it meant another label for my hat-box. A strange state to fall into? Yes, collecting is a mania, a form of madness. And it is the most pleasant form of madness in the whole world. It can bring us nearer to real happiness than can any form of sanity. The normal, eclectic man is never happy, because he is always craving something of another kind than what he has got. The collector, in his mad concentration, ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... yards went through her like a knife. The confused rumble of carts in Regent Street, the familiar sounds from the shop below, the slamming of a door, a voice raised in inquiry, the monotonous, kindly echoes of life, struck on the raw edges of her nerves, exasperating her to madness. ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... Lynsey, two of the Porters, my Lord Bellasses, and others, where there were high words and some blows, and pulling off of perriwiggs; till my Lord Monk took away some of their swords, and sent for some soldiers to guard the house till the fray was ended. To such a degree of madness the nobility of this age is come! After dinner, I went up to Sir Thomas Crewe, who lies there not very well in his head, being troubled with vapours and fits of dizzinesse: and there I sat talking with him all the afternoon upon the unhappy posture ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... words shocked old Colonel Morgan, who was holding the court. Half the officers who sat in it had served through the Revolution, and their lives, not to say their necks, had been risked for the very idea which he so cavalierly cursed in his madness. He, on his part, had grown up in the West of those days, in the midst of "Spanish plot," "Orleans plot," and all the rest. He had been educated on a plantation where the finest company was a Spanish officer or a French merchant from Orleans. His education, such as it was, ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... rotting, and patched with calico. Blanket, etc. Large bundle of assorted rags for patches, all rotten. Leaky billy-can, containing fishing-line, papers, suet, needles and cotton, etc. Jam-tin, medicine bottles, corks on strings, to hang to his hat to keep the flies off (a sign of madness in the bush, for the corks would madden a sane man sooner than the flies could). Three boots of different sizes, all belonging to the right foot, and a left slipper. Coffee-pot, without handle or spout, and quart-pot full of rubbish—broken knives and forks, with the handles burnt off, ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... declared that he couldn't exactly say in so many words that Mr Harding was legally entitled to, &c., &c., &c., and ended in expressing a strong opinion that it would be madness to raise any further question on the matter, as the suit was to ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... that gorge but every gorge in the whole monstrous range seemed to be suddenly endowed, the darkness as of night, the violent revolving of the snow which beat and broke it into spray and blinded them, the madness of everything around insatiate for destruction, the rapid substitution of furious violence for unnatural calm, and hosts of appalling sounds for silence: these were things, on the edge of a deep abyss, to chill the ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... friends—mute creatures of prey; Their prey is lucre, their claws a knife, Some say they take the beseeching life. Horrible pity is theirs for despair, And they the love-sacred limbs leave bare. Love will come to-morrow, and sadness, Patient for the fear of madness, And shut its eyes for cruelty, So many pale beds to see. Turn away, thou Love, and weep No more in covering his last sleep; Thou hast him—blessed is thine eye! Friendless ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... very little shame in me if I could have the face to pray, who had just been so wicked. And under that snare of Satan I actually as good as gave up all prayer for a year and a half. This was nothing else but to throw myself straight down into hell. O my God, was there ever such madness as mine! Where could I think to find either pardon for the past, or power for the time to come, but from Thee? What folly to the stumbler to run away from the light! Let all those who would give themselves to prayer, and to a holy life, look ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte
... to the floor, crawled backwards, inch by inch; it was slavering, and there was a ravening madness in ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... no common flame, nor could he move In the old Arts, and beaten paths of Love, No Flowers nor Fruits sent to oblige the Fair, {62} His was all Rage, and Madness: ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... phrenologists call "inhabitiveness" is very prominent; he is not naturally migratory—"content to bear the ills he has, than fly to those he knows not of." Hence there appeared reason, if not entire "method in his madness." ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... glancing for an instant at the more hopeful side of the question; "but not often where they've got anything like a start. Did John Saltram really mean to follow those two to Liverpool, I wonder? Such a journey would seem like madness, in his state; and yet what a triumph if he should have been in time to prevent their ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... much with a fool, and go not to him that hath no understanding: beware of him, lest thou have trouble, and thou shalt never be defiled with his fooleries: depart from him, and thou shalt find rest, and never be disquieted with madness. ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous
... that resistance was simply madness, so up went their hands and the keen glance of the sheriff swept over the party and ...
— Jack Wright and His Electric Stage; - or, Leagued Against the James Boys • "Noname"
... took her to his arms, in this madness he told her of his love (committing himself into her hands, declining into her life), and in the end requested of her parents the honor of their ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... Mrs. Sarrasin had found means to tell her husband what Dolores had told her—and Sarrasin agreed with his wife in thinking that, although the discovery might appear trivial in itself, it had possibilities in it the stretch of which it would be madness to underrate. Ericson and Hamilton had common thoughts concerning the expedition to Gloria; but Hamilton had not confided to the Dictator any hint of what Mrs. Sarrasin had told him, and what Dolores had ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... does not need much talking to. He makes mistakes sometimes in the men he engages, just as I used to when I did the engaging, and he had one poor young man as apprentice who very soon, like the first of my three meek gardeners, went mad. His madness was of a harmless nature and took a literary form; indeed, that was all they had against him, that he would write books. He used to sit in the early morning on my special seats in the garden, and strictly meditate ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... said: What was the passion here? And the Moony-crested god said slowly: It was a threefold cord, and very strong: love, and love turned by intense disappointment into hatred, and rage against a rival: each by itself alone enough to turn reason into madness. But the whole story is told, by its hero himself, in the very letter: and if thou wilt, I will read it aloud to thee, exactly as he wrote it, word for word. And the goddess said: Thou knowest all: why not tell it in thy own way, without the trouble ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... disease of the brain produced by excessive use of alcoholic stimulants; derived from two Greek words, oinos, wine, and mania, madness. The same disease sometimes arises from overuse of tobacco and other stimulants of ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... with Jack? In imagination she saw him in a prison cell, perhaps doomed to drag out all the after years of his life there, and the thought seemed to drive her to madness. ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... elephants cased in armour of black iron, as if these were only thick reeds. Many kings, graced with modesty, their hour having come, laid themselves down (for the last sleep) on painful beds, overlaid with vultures' feathers. Advancing to battle on his car, sire slew son; and son also, through madness all losing regard, approached sire in battle. The wheels of cars were broken; banners were torn; umbrellas fell down on the earth. Dragging broken yokes, steeds ran away. Arms with swords in grasp, and heads decked with ear-rings fell down. Cars, dragged by mighty elephants, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... they not be hypocrites?" Place men so disposed in positions of power; let them be the masters of society; what will follow? Beliefs are a cause of disturbances: what seemed at first an innocent weakness, takes then the character of a dangerous madness. For the politician, the temptation to extirpate this madness is not far off. "What if we were to get rid of this troublesome source of agitation! If we declared that the conscience of individuals belongs to the sovereign, what repose we should have in the State! If we proclaimed the ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... years had gone by since the Treaty of Bretigny raised England to a height of glory such as it had never known before. But the years had been years of a shame and suffering which stung the people to madness. Never had England fallen so low. Her conquests were lost, her shores insulted, her commerce swept from the seas. Within she was drained by the taxation and bloodshed of the war. Its popularity had wholly died away. When the Commons were asked in 1354 whether they would assent to a treaty ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... sockets; he had only his shirt on, with the sleeves rolled up, showing his thin bony arms and legs. He was shrieking terrifically. The captain attempted to kick him back as he appeared above the hatchway; but he evaded the blow, and stood on deck confronting his persecutor. The strength of madness was upon him. He made a spring at the captain, and would have hurled him, I verily believe, overboard; but at that moment the first mate rushing forward, struck the poor fellow a blow on the back of the head with a handspike. He gave one ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... reader almost incredible that the English people, who shed his father's blood, who rallied round the Parliament, and were fulsome in their praises of the Protector, should thus suddenly change; but, allowing for "the madness of the people," we look for strength and consistency to the men of learning and letters. We feel sure that he who sang his eulogy of Cromwell dead, can have now no lyric burst for the ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... gloomy mien He oft upon his lips would curb, Thinking: 'tis foolish to disturb This evanescent boyish bliss. Time without me will lessons give, So meantime let him joyous live And deem the world perfection is! Forgive the fever youth inspires, And youthful madness, youthful fires. ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... "It is madness to give up—it will kill me;" were the thoughts that rose half framed to his lips and then forced themselves ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... so renowned and celebrated throughout Europe! may become the prey of the devouring element, and then how will you be reproached by posterity! Again—if you convert them to other purposes of destruction, how can you hope to prevent the same example from being followed in other places? The madness of the multitude will make no distinction; and as many pikes and swords may be carried within the great library, as within the various depositories of the monastic books. Pause awhile. Respect those collections of books, and you will both respect yourselves and preserve the ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... rudely touched; thou to be couched In this poor hut, its floor thy bed, and I, Thy lord, deserting thee, stealing from thee Thy last robe! O my Love with the bright smile, My slender-waisted Queen! Will she not wake To madness? Yea, and when she wanders lone In the dark wood, haunted with beasts and snakes, How will it fare with Bhima's tender child, The bright and peerless? O my life, my wife! May the great sun, may the Eight Powers of air, The Rudras, Maruts, and the Aswins twain, Guard thee, thou true and ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... "for why should I remain in it? a few weeks only could I fill up in any tour so near home, and hither in a few weeks to return would be folly and madness: in an absence so brief, what thought but that of the approaching meeting would occupy me? and what, at that meeting, should I feel, but joy the most dangerous, and delight which I dare not think of!—every conflict renewed, every struggle re-felt, again all this scene ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... of Sienna; and none can relieve him of this debt, without encroaching on the sacred rights of the City our mother. He must needs die; but his soul is his Maker's, and it is not meet that through our fault he die in this sinful state of madness and despair. Therefore should we use all the means within our competence to assure ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... oftener into inevitability of phrase, or more fully diffuse a glamour of otherworldliness. "The Wanderings of Oisin" revealed poetry as unmistakably new to his day as was Poe's to the earliest Victorian days. Beside the title poem another from legend had this new quality, "The Madness of King Goll," with its refrain that will not out of memory, "They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me, the beech leaves old." "Down by the Salley Gardens" and "The Meditation of the Old Fisherman" bear witness to talks before turf fires, or in herring boats off Knocknarea, and other developments ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... Sowler. The horrible woman was tramping round and round in the middle of the kitchen, like a beast in a cage; raving in the dreadful drink-madness called delirium tremens. In the farthest corner of the room, barricaded behind the table, the landlord's wife and daughter crouched in terror of their lives. The gas, turned full on, blazed high enough to blacken the ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... parental authority begot want of filial regard, so that the boy, shooting up with these vicious habits and disregard of the father, advanced from reproaches and curses to blows, whenever the unfortunate old man ventured to remonstrate against the folly and madness of his ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... resorts of black-legs, and the betting-books of men on the turf, the dishonourable payment of so-called debts of honour, the trickery of horse-dealers, horse-trainers, and horse-racers, and the wretched madness of professed gamblers, are things we have all heard of, but of which, happily, comparatively few of us know ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... of the disaster of Sedan. The Republic was proclaimed. All France was panting from a madness that lasted until the time of the Commonwealth. Everybody was playing at soldier from one end of ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... edition of the Twice-told Tales.' I still pressed upon him the good chances he would have now with something new. 'Who would risk publishing a book for me, the most unpopular writer in America?' 'I would,' said I, 'and would start with an edition of 2,000 copies of anything you would write.' 'What madness!' he exclaimed. 'Your friendship for me gets the better of your judgment.' 'No, no!' he continued, 'I have no money to indemnify a publisher's losses on my account.' I looked at my watch, and found that ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... my papers, if you like. So many, you know, have written about Tasso; but they are all wrong. As to the particular nature of his madness, and his feelings for Leonora, and the real cause of his imprisonment, and the character of Leonora, who, in my opinion, was a cold-hearted woman, else she would have married him in spite of her brother—they are all wrong. ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... houses in town and country, with every whim of body and soul apparently gratified, perhaps it does sound strange. But suppose that all this madness of luxury, at which you wonder, is but the vain effort ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... for general distribution, and sought through all these weeks for a fitting disposition to make of it, where it would all go in some special manner to relieve some special necessity. I wanted it to benefit some children who had "wept on the banks" of the river, which in its madness had devoured ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... better person to extricate him from his dangerous dilemma, and thus relieved his breast of a mountain of anxiety and distress. But the laugh with which he greeted his approach found no response from Nathan himself, who, having looked with amazement upon Edith and Telie, as if marvelling what madness had brought females at that hour into that wild desert, turned at last to the ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... important intelligence, and Captain Delmar walked up and down deck in deep thought: the fact was, he was puzzled how to act. To attempt to cope with such a force, unless under peculiarly favourable circumstances, would be madness: to leave the coast and our mercantile navy exposed to her depredations, was at the same time very repulsive to his feelings and sense of duty. The prizes had been manned, the prisoners were on board, ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... slowly shook her head with a cunning, bitter smile, that looked stranger on her fair face than the madness itself had looked, and: ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... of the difficulty of persuading persons (farmers in particular) to adopt any new systems; and I have often, when speaking of this subject amongst men of enlightened understandings, been told it would be next to madness, to sacrifice the benefit of a crop of oats or barley when the land is in fine tilth, and whilst we can ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... her, till the folk heard her cries and coming to her, [found] Aboulhusn beating her and saying to her, "O old woman of ill-omen, am I not the Commander of the Faithful? Thou hast enchanted me!" When the folk heard his words, they said, "This man raveth," and doubted not of his madness. So they came in upon him and seizing him, pinioned him and carried him to the hospital. Quoth the superintendant, "What aileth this youth?" And they said, "This is a madman." "By Allah," cried Aboulhusn, "they ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... that this imprudence would effectually close the door, for a long time, against all efforts, even the most judicious, to spread the gospel amongst a people so needlessly and greatly prejudiced against it by an unwise and abrupt application of its principles. For instance, what folly and madness it would be for our missionaries to Burmah, to make a direct assault on the political institutions of that country! How fatal would it be to their lives, and how incalculably injurious to the cause entrusted to their hands! And, if this can be said of them, after they have spent ten, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Silent, still, the world of Unaga seemed to have lost all semblance of life. White, white, eternal white, and above the heavy grey of an overburdened sky. Solitude, loneliness, desperately complete. It was the silence which well nigh drives the human brain to madness. From minutes to hours; from inches to feet. Day and night. Day and night. Snow, snow all the time, till the tally of days grew, and the weeks slowly passed. It almost seemed as if Nature, in her shame, were seeking to hide up the sight of ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... beings to madness, weak and powerless as they were. Tandang Selo got up, sat down, went outside, came back again, knowing not where to go, where to seek aid. Juli appealed to her images, counted and recounted her ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... urged, 'tell me what you wish, and you shall have it; tell me your thoughts, and then I can advise you. But to go from here without a plan, without forethought, in the heat of a moment, is madder than madness, and can help nothing. I am not speaking like a man, but I speak the truth; and I tell you again, the thing's ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... revolted; it was found impossible to subdue them, and the government very imprudently resolved to make an example of eleven captives, and thus terrify the rest of the rebels. They were tortured to death, eight of the eleven being women; this drove the others to madness, and plantation after plantation was visited with fire and sword. After a long conflict, their chief, Adoe, was induced to make a treaty, in 1749. The rebels promised to keep the peace, and in turn were promised freedom, money, tools, clothes, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... America. Against the tens of millions in Europe would rise up, like the earth-born children of Deucalion and Pyrrha (or of the Theban Cadmus and Hermione) American millions counted by hundreds. But from what radix? Originally, it would have been regarded as madness to take Ireland, in her Celtic element, as counting for anything. But of late—whether rationally, however, I will inquire for a brief moment or so—the counters have all changed in these estimates. The late Mr O'Connell was the parent of these hyperbolical anticipations. To count his ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... is, isn't it?" he remarked, after a moment. "Just imagine Enville, now! Upon my soul I didn't think he had it in him!... Of course,"—he threw his head up with a careless laugh,—"of course, it would have been madness for us to miss such a chance! He's one of the men of ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... is one of the fifty fallacies that come from the modern madness for biological or bodily metaphors. It is convenient to speak of the Social Organism, just as it is convenient to speak of the British Lion. But Britain is no more an organism than Britain is a lion. The moment we begin to give a ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... paternal explosion; but, when it was hinted that the marital rights of my poor mother were to be sacrificed, his fury amounted almost to madness. ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... capital, have aided them. Disappointed and dangerous politicians who merely desire office and power have lifted their voices in the hue and cry to fool the honest voter. I am glad to say I believe that the worst of this madness and rascality is over; that the common sense of the people of this country is too great to be swept away by the methods of these self-seekers; that the ordinary man is beginning to see that his bread and butter depends on the brain of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... "Your Quixotic madness has made you more than once speak to me of Quixotism as the new religion. And I tell you that this new religion you propose to me, if it hatched, would have two singular merits. One that its founder, its prophet, Don Quixote—not Cervantes—probably ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... the first victim of that diabolical scheme to awaken the wrath of the northland? In the madness which possessed him now Philip shoved out his canoe while there was still danger of discovery. Fortunately none of the pursued glanced back, and a turn in the channel soon hid them from view. Philip had recovered ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood
... was subject to peculiar fits of insanity, during which he did wild and foolish things for the mere love of notoriety. He had two natures—one bright and good, the other sullen and criminal. A taint of madness ran in the family—came down from drunken and unprincipled fathers of dead generations; under different conditions, it might have developed into genius in one or ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... resistance of historical and chartered liberty to foreign despotism. Neither that liberty nor ours was born of the cloud-embraces of a false Divinity with, a Humanity of impossible beauty, nor was the infant career of either arrested in blood and tears by the madness of its worshippers. "To maintain," not to overthrow, was the device of the Washington of the sixteenth century, as it was the aim of our own hero and his ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... spit; a gun, a half dozen bullets, a few pinches of powder, and a bottle of water were chucked ashore after him, and away rowed the boat's crew back to the ship, leaving the poor wretch alone to rave away his life in madness, or to sit sunken in his gloomy despair till death mercifully released him from torment. It rarely if ever happened that anything was known of him after having been marooned. A boat's crew from some vessel, sailing by chance that way, might perhaps find a few chalky bones bleaching upon ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... eye, the nose, the mouth, in the expression of certain emotions of the soul. True passion, which never errs, has no need of recurring to such studies; but they are indispensable to the feigned passion of the actor. How useful would it not be to the actor who wishes to represent madness or wrath, to know that the eye never expresses the sentiment experienced, but simply indicates the object of this sentiment! Cover the lower part of your face with your hand, and impart to your look all the energy of which it is ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... audience up to a pitch of demoniac fury; she had pictured her—and their—beloved young mistress in the power of the wretch who crouched with smarting, lacerated back yonder in the shed—insulted, ill-treated, and finally driven to madness and death by him: and now, at a word from one of them, the whole body of negroes sprang to their feet and, with low, hissing, muttering execrations and threats, infinitely more terrifying to listen to than the loudest yells of ferocity, ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... months after; and serve you right, too! Don't let us talk about it to-night. I am sorry for you, and if you have any sense left you will soon be sorry for yourself. Here comes Doctor Oleander, and I mean to be as fascinating as I know how, just to drive the other two to the verge of madness." ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... again. She felt that she had been within measurable distance of a tragedy. Nor was there any call on her wits to devise fresh means of drawing his mind away from the madness that possessed him a few minutes earlier. As he limped unevenly by her side, his talk was of the mountains. Did she intend to climb? Well, slow and sure was the golden rule. Do little or nothing during ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... had the partnership, he felt himself morally obligated to deny himself Eveley in the flesh. For he was one of those unique, old-fashioned creatures who feels that man must offer position and affluence as well as love to the lady of his choice. So it was no mere mercenary madness on his own account that kept Nolan living a life of gentle and economic obscurity, patient struggling for a foothold on the ladder of ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... after her departure? Alas, no! There was only herself the less in the house. Of old his grief could find vent, he could break into abuse, or representations—he could show all he suffered and excite the pity of her who caused his sufferings. But now his grief was solitary, his jealousy had become madness, for formerly he could at any rate, when he suspected anything, hinder Mimi from going out, keep her beside him in his possession, and now he might meet her in the street on the arm of her new lover, and must turn aside to let her ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... journals of the House by Mr. Thornton, which have been verified in Springfield, Mr. Lincoln was in his seat in the House on that 'fatal first of January' when he is asserted to have been groping in the shadow of madness, and he was also there ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... fives. When he lights upon a village, he holds it to ransom; when he comes upon a city, he captures it, making it literally the prisoner of his bow and his spear. A writer in Blackwood's Magazine once drove the people of Lancashire to madness by declaring that, in the Rebellion of 1745, Manchester 'was taken by a Scots sergeant and a wench;' but it is a notorious fact that Nancy submitted without a murmur to five Uhlans, and that Bar-le-Duc was occupied ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... felt them to be. The family had long fallen into the habit of treating her as a child, playing some imaginary character. She seemed less demented than walking in a dream, her faculties asleep. It was somnambulism rather than madness. She had not the expression of insane people, the shifty eyes, the cunning and perverseness, the animal ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... ignoring her remark, "even now, what are you doing? Oh, Viola, you're a prey to the modern madness for crawling in the dirt instead of walking upright in the sun. You might be a goddess and you prefer to be an insect. Isn't it ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... a hopelessly tragic conclusion, and on it he grafted the equally distressing tale of Gloucester and his two sons, which he drew from Sidney's 'Arcadia.' {241b} Hints for the speeches of Edgar when feigning madness were drawn from Harsnet's 'Declaration of Popish Impostures,' 1603. In every act of 'Lear' the pity and terror of which tragedy is capable reach their climax. Only one who has something of the Shakespearean gift ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... like trout, they flashed away. See everything, force nothing. Let a book be turned over for nineteen days, the chances were that on the twentieth you would turn over the price. As to expecting the class of cheap customers to commit themselves by walking into a shop, it was simple madness. Of course, when you were ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... killed afterwards; it was they who were thrown into the well; but three boats got away down the stream. Two went ashore and all the occupants were killed by the merciless brutes who lined the banks. The other had men in it, men who were filled with a madness of wrath that knew no bounds. In spite of their own condition, in spite of the odds against them, they leaped like tigers on the foe whenever they got the chance. They were followed by the natives, who fired on them repeatedly from a safe distance, and again and again the dead had to be east ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... I have said, a gray day. But the fires of a century's sunsets flamed and flashed in that library! Ruby, sapphire, diamond, emerald, pearl—how they glowed and glimmered! How they shone and sparkled! For the moment there fell upon me that madness that jewels bring upon women, a sort of wild delight in their hard, bright beauty, an ecstasy, an intoxication. I poured them from one hand to the other, I held the greatest to my cheek. The loveliness of them went to my head. "I did chap them atween my hands, as children chap chaff. They ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... reckon upon the dotage, madness, servitude and blindness, the foolish phantasms and vanities of lovers, their torments, wishes, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... corrupt in his morals; but he was a gentleman of elegant manners and cultivated taste. He was the most popular political character ever known in England; and his name, at one time, was sufficient to blow up the flames of sedition, and excite the lower orders to acts of violence bordering on madness. ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... to me that a general madness has seized all Paris," the marquis said to his wife on his return, "but at present nothing can be done to arrest it. I have seen the king and queen. His majesty is resolved to do nothing; that is, to let events ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... way. Charles III. died a madman; the Queen of Portugal is mad; the King of England has been mad, and, as some say, is not really cured. There is nothing astonishing in it; a king who tries to do his duty is almost forced into madness by his enormous task. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... lie slain of thy madness, nevermore to render service to our emperor. Thou too shalt die, and ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... to see that the boat was not proceeding towards some other dangerous obstacle. Then Markham, with the sudden swift cunning of madness, lifted the butt end of his pole and ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... great publishing firm in New York desired (at the last moment before his departure) an appointment with the novelist for that afternoon. The affair was of extreme importance. The American meant business. It would be madness not to see him, even though ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... irritation became more than Cotherstone could bear. He was a highly-strung, nervous man, quick to feel and to appreciate, and the averted looks and monosyllabic remarks and replies of a man into whose company he could not avoid being thrown began to sting him to something like madness. And one day, left alone in the office with Mallalieu when Stoner the clerk had gone to get his dinner, the irritation became unbearable, and he turned on his partner in a sudden white heat of ungovernable and ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... feet thrust themselves from the toes of his moccasins. His face was so thin and white that it shone with the pallor of death from its frame of straight dark hair. His eyes gleamed like black diamonds. The madness of hunger ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... of research as that which offered itself within the limits of New South Wales, and in which they considered I had laboured with some success during the last two years. Others considered the undertaking exceedingly dangerous, and even the conception of it madness on my part; and the consequence of a blind enthusiasm, nourished either by a deep devotion to science, or by an unreasonable craving for fame: whilst others did not feel themselves justified in assisting a man who they considered was setting out with an intention of committing suicide. I ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... and equal in moral impression what the reality will be to the sufferers. It is easy to speak or hear the word "hell;" but to analyze its significance and realize it in a sensitive fancy is difficult; and whenever it is done the fruit is madness, as the bedlams of the world are shrieking in testimony at this instant. The Revivalist preachers, so far from exaggerating the frightful contents latent in the prevalent dogma concerning hell, have never been ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... back amazed at my madness, and, while they consulted what to do with me, I took my chance to grip the first of them by the throat and swing ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... brothers, who began to fear, when the gale had lasted over the middle of the month, that the stormy weather might possibly prevent the Pilot's Bride from venturing near the island, Captain Brown having said that it would have been more than madness while the wind prevailed from that quarter for any ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... him who says that he must not satisfy all his pleasures and appetites, and get rid of all the corresponding pains—and the third and greatest and sharpest want and desire breaks out last, and is the fire of sexual lust, which kindles in men every species of wantonness and madness. And these three disorders we must endeavour to master by the three great principles of fear and law and right reason; turning them away from that which is called pleasantest to the best, using the Muses and the Gods who preside over contests ...
— Laws • Plato
... man, Frank Muller might have broken upon the world as a Napoleon. Had he been a little more savage, a little farther removed from the unconscious but present influence of a progressive race, he might have ground his fellows down and ruthlessly destroyed them in the madness of his rage and lust, like an Attila or a T'Chaka. As it was he was buffeted between two forces he did not realise, even when they swayed him, and thus at every step in his path towards a supremacy of evil an unseen power made stumbling-blocks of weaknesses ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... allowed to believe in God," said Napoleon, smiling. "Yes, I believe in Providence, and I believe it was a dispensation of Providence that those arrogant officers of the guard, who thought it was only necessary to show themselves in order to drive away the French, and who went so far in their madness as to whet their swords on the doorsteps of the house of our ambassadors, should now be duly humiliated and chastised. For the guards of Potsdam and Berlin are among the captured of the corps of the Prince von Hohenlohe, and they ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... in this picture have that character of elegance which distinguished the Florentine school at this period, without any of those extravagances and peculiarities into which Piero often fell; for the man had evidently a touch of madness, and was as eccentric in his works as in his life and conversation. The order of the Serviti, for whom he painted this picture, was instituted in honour of the Virgin, and for her particular service, which will account for the ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... of her shoulders sufficiently completed the interjection. But the madness of a woman's anger may always lead to something, so he drew her on. 'Yet he was one ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... through as being a little touched in the upper storey,—whatever we could do for him, we could do against his own will. The more he opposed us the stronger our case would be. He would swear he was not mad at all, and we should say that that was the greatest sign of his madness. But when I say we, of course I mean you. I ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... than with ourselves, but this intimacy should not give rise to such boldness, without ever as I know seeking advice from any one, for if I knew any creature who had put such an idea into her head, I would make such a demonstration that you, my lord, would know that this madness is contrary to the will of the father and mother, who have never had, and never will have, any ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... imagination, unless I am really a somnambulist, or that I have been brought under the power of one of those influences which have been proved to exist, but which have hitherto been inexplicable, which are called suggestions. In any case, my mental state bordered on madness, and twenty-four hours of Paris sufficed to restore ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... every day in the latter half of May was marked by a new mutiny in different military stations, widely separated from each other, throughout the North-Western Provinces and Bengal. The tidings of the possession of Delhi by the mutineers stimulated the daring madness of regiments that had been touched by disaffection. Some mutinied from mere panic, some from bitterness of hate. Some fled away quietly with their arms, to join the force that had now swelled to an army in the city of the Great Moghul; some ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... ruin herself for nothing? When was she to take the first step toward peace? Surely every Englishman will remember that when the earliest tidings of the coming quarrel reached us on the election of Mr. Lincoln, we all declared that any division was impossible; it was a mere madness to speak of it. The States, which were so great in their unity, would never consent to break up all their prestige and all their power by a separation! Would it have been well for the North then to say, "If the South ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... the development of manhood and age has to be crowded into the few remaining weeks of his life. His own folly and blindness supply the occasion. And before the few weeks are gone, he has passed through all the stages of a fever of indignation and wrath, ending in a madness from which love redeems him; he has learned that a king is nothing if the man is nothing; that a king ought to care for those who cannot help themselves; that love has not its origin or grounds in favours flowing from royal resource and ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... submission, however, was not in his nature. An attempt was made to put down the insurrection by the sword: but the King's military means and military talents were unequal to the task. To impose fresh taxes on England in defiance of law, would, at this conjuncture, have been madness. No resource was left but a Parliament; and in the spring of 1640 ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... silence, but at last the fire grew hot, When he heard "The Lotus-Eaters" described as "luscious rot"; And he shouted out in the madness that is one of Truth's allies, "Old TENNYSON'S little finger is thicker than all ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 18th, 1920 • Various
... a few similar copies in the library; which I obtained after a strenuous effort. There was certainly a very great degree of Book-Madness exhibited at the sale of Steevens's library—and yet I remember to have witnessed stronger symptoms ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... double toward Danveld, as if he wished to embrace his knees; and his eyes glittered with madness, and his voice broke alternately with pain, fear, and dread. Danveld, hearing the accusations of treason and deceit in presence of all, commenced to snort, and at length his features worked with rage; so that like a flame in his desire utterly to crush the unfortunate, he advanced ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Dropping his voice yet lower, he added, "It ill becomes a Jew of good standing in the Temple to put his money at such a hazard; yet, in confidence, I will have a friend next behind the consul's seat to accept offers of three to one, or five, or ten—the madness may go to such height. I have put to his order six thousand ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... Hantee, but you will hear that only occasionally, for the boys of the back streets called him Skag, which "got" him somewhere at once. That was in Chicago. He was eleven years old, when he wandered quite alone to Lincoln Park Zoo, and the madness took him. ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... Germanic Confederation. Such was the passionate feeling in Belgium that there was actually much talk of resisting in the last resort by force of arms. Volunteers poured in; and in Holland also the government began to make military preparations. But it was an act of sheer madness for isolated Belgium to think of opposing the will of the Great Powers of Europe. The angry interchange of diplomatic notes resulted only in one modification in favour of Belgium. The annual charge of 8,400,000 francs placed upon Belgium on account of her share in the public debt of the Netherlands ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... and sweet Saint Elid too, Shield me from rooting cancers and from madness: Shield me from sudden death, worse than two death-beds; Let me not lie like this unwanted queen, Yet let my time come not ere I am ready— Grant space enow to relish the watchers' tears And give my clothes away and calm my ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... the Goths and the deliverance of Rome, an Asiatic monk, by name Telemachus, had the boldness to descend into the arena to part the combatants. "The Romans were provoked by this interruption of their pleasures, and the rash monk was overwhelmed under a shower of stones. But the madness of the people soon subsided; they respected the memory of Telemachus, who had deserved the honors of martyrdom, and they submitted without a murmur to the laws of Honorius, which abolished forever the human sacrifices of the amphitheatre." This occurred A.D. 404. It was not, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... you Ambrosine," she said, and she kissed me. "I am not given to sudden friendships, but there is something about your eyes that touches me. Oh, dear, I hope fate will not force you to commit some mid-summer madness, as I did, to regret to ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... being was in a turmoil. She drew nearer to the papers upon the table. She was now within a yard of Prince Shan himself. He made no effort to intercept her, no movement of any sort to stop her. Only his eyes never left her face, and she felt a madness which seemed to be choking the life out of her, a pounding of her heart against her ribs, a strange and wonderful joy, a joy in which there was no fear, a joy of new things and new hopes. With the papers for which she had come only a few ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... there be?" he asked. "How can a man who has been—as I hope I have—a man of honour in the past explain such an act of madness? It arose out of your order against duelling," he went on. "Samoval offended me mortally. He said such things to me of my wife's honour that no man could suffer, and I least of any man. My temper betrayed me. I consented ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... sad yearning seemed to split his breast. He rose to his feet, his eyes upon the cloud. A turbulence now churned within him; his shoulders palpitated within their cloth prison (you see, they had not been sheared for a full twenty-four hours); a wave of madness, of daring, of revolt, rose into the head of Charles-Norton. "No, no, no," he growled. "No more, no more, I can't, I can't, ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... density. Silent, still, the world of Unaga seemed to have lost all semblance of life. White, white, eternal white, and above the heavy grey of an overburdened sky. Solitude, loneliness, desperately complete. It was the silence which well nigh drives the human brain to madness. From minutes to hours; from inches to feet. Day and night. Day and night. Snow, snow all the time, till the tally of days grew, and the weeks slowly passed. It almost seemed as if Nature, in her shame, were seeking to hide up the sight of her ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... my fancy; if my reason Will thereto be obedient, I have reason; If not, my senses, better pleas'd with madness, Do ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... morning, before I was up, to see if I knew where Sisily had gone. After tea he came again in a terrible state, raving against the detective for taking out a warrant for her arrest. He said it was madness on his part to imagine that a girl like Sisily would kill her father. I told him that as Sisily had disappeared he could hardly blame the police for looking for her. He turned on me when I said that, and used ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... the tenement of clay. A daring pilot in extremity; Pleased with the danger, when the waves went high, 160 He sought the storms; but for a calm unfit, Would steer too nigh the sands, to boast his wit. Great wits are sure to madness near allied, And thin partitions do their bounds divide; Else why should he, with wealth and honour blest, Refuse his age the needful hours of rest? Punish a body which he could not please; Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease? And all to leave what with his toil he won, To that unfeather'd ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... and as the poet says "this way madness lies." Let me get to my books, there is comfort and companionship in them; and yet I have held my finger in this page till the light is gone and ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... fever, heat; fire, flame, fume, blood boiling; tumult; effervescence, ebullition; boiling over; whiff, gust, story, tempest; scene, breaking out, burst, fit, paroxysm, explosion; outbreak, outburst; agony. violence &c 173; fierceness &c adj.; rage, fury, furor, furore^, desperation, madness, distraction, raving, delirium; phrensy^, frenzy, hysterics; intoxication; tearing passion, raging passion; anger &c 900. fascination, infatuation, fanaticism; Quixotism, Quixotry; tete montee [Fr.]. V. be impatient &c adj.; not be able to bear &c 826; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... luckless lover. There they were found by anxious servants, who, knowing of the quarrel, had not dared to stir about at first. Hallam says, after his account of this event: "So cruel an outrage wrought the Geremei to madness; they formed alliances with some of the neighboring republics; the Lambertazzi took the same measures; and after a fight in the streets of Bologna of forty days' duration, the latter were driven out of the city, with all the Ghibellines, their political associates. Twelve ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... very madness of truth, he had not," Robert answered. "So this rogue has rusted here idly through a generation of eating and sleeping. Very likely his sword is grown with ivy. But now he must stretch his sinews, now he must scour his scimitar, now he ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... though I do not pretend I thought it so near. I rather imagined France would have instigated or winked at Spain's beginning with us. Here is a solution of the Americans declaring themselves independent. Oh! the folly, the madness, the guilt of having plunged us into this abyss! Were we and a few more endued with any uncommon penetration? No: they who did not see as far, would not. I am impatient to hear the complexion of to-day. I suppose it will, on ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... pretended that he was 'is little boy, and a precious handful of a boy he was too, I can tell you. Fust of all he showed 'is father 'ow they wrestled at school, and arter that he showed 'im 'ow he 'arf killed another boy in fifteen rounds. Leastways he was going to, but arter seven rounds Joe's madness left 'im all of a sudden and he was as right as ever ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... with real madness now. Great drops of perspiration gathered on his face. He dared not face those beautiful eyes so calmly gazing at him. Where had high Heaven gained such knowledge of him? How could God punish ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... that thinks it madness to keep their words, and there's them that don't, Hurry Harry. You may be one of the first, but I'm one of the last. No red-skin breathing shall have it in his power to say that a Mingo minds his word more than a man of white blood and white gifts, in any thing that consarns me. ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... mill, and stopping beside the motionless wheel, watched the excited swallows fly back and forth overhead. He knew how a man felt who was given a life sentence in prison for an act committed in a moment of madness. Why he had ever asked Judy to marry him—why he had gone on calmly approaching the day of his wedding—he could no more explain than he could explain the motives which impelled him to the absurdities in a nightmare. It was all a part of the terrible ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... I offer you liberty," he said quietly; "liberty and honour. I only stand in your way when I see that, in a blind madness, you are going to rush headlong to destruction. You do ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... name madness[35] implies a sickness of the mind and disease; that is to say, an unsoundness and an unhealthiness of mind, which they call madness. But the philosophers call all perturbations of the soul diseases, and their opinion is that no fool is ever free from these; but all that are diseased are unsound; ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... must have written to him and asked him to come, at the very moment when she was cheating me with a show of reviving affection; and I own that the meeting of these two one day in the hotel gardens at Aix-les-Bains drove me into a fit of temporary madness. We quarrelled; I sent him a challenge, and we fought. He was not much hurt, and I escaped untouched. The man disappeared, and I have never seen him from that day to this, but I have some reason to think that he ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... have melted under it. To his eternal shame, let it be said, the bassoon remained as impervious to her beseeching glances as if he had been a sphinx or a rhinoceros. In fact, Aurora's supplicating eyes seemed to instigate him to further and greater madness, for after that he became still more riotous, and at many times during the evening the crisis in the orchestra ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... think that we are the victims of a common madness," said his son, raising his hand to his head in a manner ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... grey hair hung down on either side of her colourless face, from which beamed forth a pair of wild eyes, glowing with the fire of madness. Her dress being of the same sombre hue as was everything in the hut, had as Algernon entered prevented him from observing her till she turned her face ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... sky sparkled, and columns of burning sand, which at quick intervals towered high into the atmosphere, became so illumined as to appear like tall pillars of fire. Crowds of horses, mules, and camels, tormented to madness by the poisonous gad-fly, flocked to share the only bush; and, disputing with their heels the slender shelter it afforded, compelled several of the party to seek refuge in caves formed below by fallen masses of volcanic rock, heated to the temperature of a potter's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... which appeared to extend right across the opening towards which all eyes had been turned with so much eagerness, and over which the tide was boiling and whirling with great force. To attempt to cross would have been madness; there was nothing, therefore, to be done but patiently await the rising of ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... believe that I never loved till I saw your face for the first time?" said his wife. "I had no experience to place me on my guard against the fascination—the madness some people might call it—which possesses a woman when all her heart is given to a man. Don't despise me, my dear! Remember that I had to save you from disgrace and ruin. Besides, my old stage remembrances tempted me. I ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... him naked. When Amphons of Spain, bewitched by his step-mother into a were-wolf, was at last restored, and stood suddenly naked before her, he was greatly ashamed. The maiden who healed Iwein was tender of his modesty. In his love-madness, the hero wanders for a time naked through the wood; three women find him asleep, and send a waiting-maid to annoint him with salve; when he came to himself, the maiden hid herself. On the whole, however, the ladies were not so delicate; they had no hesitation in bathing with gentlemen, and ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... unhappy marines we had left on shore. Could we have found them, we had now agreed to take them on board again, though it would have been the certain destruction of us all. This, at another time, would have been mere madness; but we were now resigned to our fate, which we none of us thought far off; however, there was nothing to be seen of them, and no traces but a musket ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... me if they will," he said; "but I am not going to be false to my religion. If they should not kill me I may be able, in time, to persuade them that their gods are false; but for the present it would be madness to try to do so. From what Malinche said they are devoted to their religion, and the priests are all powerful. If I am to do any good, therefore, it ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... 14,000 is a very serious matter for any one of moderate means; to him it was doubly grievous, for he worshipped money and valued nothing but success. By constantly brooding on his misfortunes and folly he developed symptoms of madness and was at times so violent that his relatives were obliged to confine him in a dark room. One afternoon he eluded their vigilance and hurried to the office of "Campbell & Co." on the Strand. After gazing ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... dismal howling of wolves; white frost and clinging icicles upon their beards as they trudged across trackless areas; and over all that awesome hush which she had learned to dread—breathless, brooding silence. Gold madness or trail madness, or simply adventurous unrest? She could not say. She knew only that a certain type of man found pleasure in such mad undertakings, bucked hard trails and plunged headlong into ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... indeed, I must in justice to them observe, that no sanguinary measures were thought of; on the contrary, they proposed good treatment to myself and the free people; but how far that intention would have been observed by a set of men of their description, when in a state of drunken madness, may ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... strove to pierce the vaults of heaven, and to carry my song of gratitude, and my ecstasy of joy, into the very presence of God. I was no longer a man, I was a living hymn of praise, prayer, adoration, worship of overflowing, speechless thankfulness. I felt an intoxication of the heart, a madness of the soul; my body had lost the consciousness of its materiality and I no longer believed in time, or space, or death. The new life of love which had gushed forth in my heart gave me the consciousness, the anticipated enjoyment, of the fulness ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... running that way? Chapata! Chapata! She does not even hear my call. I have never seen a night like this! The horizon on every side suddenly becomes red, like a madman's eye! The sun seems to be setting at this untimely hour on all sides at the same time. What madness of the Almighty is this! ... Oh, I am frightened! ... Where shall I ...
— The King of the Dark Chamber • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... the doctrine that wickedness is to the mind what disease is to the body. The soul suffers from two distempers, madness and ignorance; the man under passionate heat is not wicked voluntarily. No man is bad willingly; but only from some evil habit of body, the effect of bad bringing-up [very much the ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... probable that most of us would suffer severe penalties rather than return to them, beautiful as they then appeared to us by contrast with the exaggerated crinoline and flower-garden bonnet, which had given way to the somewhat milder form of hoop-skirt madness, but had not yet flown to the opposite extreme in the invention of the close-fitting princesse garments of 1868. But, to each other, people looked then as they look now. Fashion in dress, concerning which nine-tenths of society gives itself so much trouble, appears to exercise less influence ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... preparing for death, who are fighting, who are dying, all alike speak much and unexpectedly about subjects utterly inappropriate to the occasion, being evidently guided rather by consonances and play of words than by thoughts. They speak all alike. Lear raves exactly as does Edgar when feigning madness. Both Kent and the fool speak alike. The words of one of the personages might be placed in the mouth of another, and by the character of the speech it would be impossible to distinguish who speaks. If there is a difference in the speech of Shakespeare's ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... on loving him after he was dead, and that even when Godfrey Wardour had condescended to let her know he loved her. It was thus the devil befooled him. Perhaps the worst devil a man can be posessed withal, is himself. In mere madness, the man is beside himself; but in this case he is inside himself; the presiding, indwelling, inspiring sprit of him is himself, and that is the hardest of all to cast out. Godfrey rose form the reading ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... is no hurry about the younger one, who is only a child; but the other, Critobulus, is getting on, and needs some one who will improve him. I cannot help thinking, when I hear you talk, that there is a sort of madness in many of our anxieties about our children:—in the first place, about marrying a wife of good family to be the mother of them, and then about heaping up money for them—and yet taking no care about their education. ...
— Euthydemus • Plato
... to snow-madness, for I remember that Thomas who never attempted a line of poetry before, nor since, led off ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... The madness of anxiety took possession of him. What did this mean? What had happened? Was no one left? Could it be that life had crumbled away behind him? What had happened to them all? Good heavens! Then he rushed like a tempest against the ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... 9th the order was given to retreat, as it would have been madness to attempt to hold our position with our few men, and we should have risked a terrible defeat the next day. The First and Third Armies had not been able to attack with us, as we had advanced too rapidly. Our morale was absolutely broken. In spite of unheard-of ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... disappointment, the shudder of disgust. The battle in "Ein Heldenleben" pictures war really; the whistling, ironical wind-machine in "Don Quixote" satirizes dreams bitingly as no music has done; the orchestra describes the enthusiastic Don recovering from his madness, and smiles a conclusion; in "Also Sprach Zarathustra" it piles high the tomes of science, and waltzes with ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... day—and Carew's madness grows. Ye'll meet him again, lad, if you stay wi' the ship. Wi' Old Nick to help him, 'tis black fortune he'll bring to the lass, ye'll see." And Sails would croak out dismal prophecies concerning Wild Bob Carew's future activities, so long ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... life. He could not bear the place or the servitude. Even in that poem of courtly condolence, from which we have quoted a few lines of mock melancholy, he breaks out of the funereal procession with a mad shriek, as it were, and rushes away crying his own grief, cursing his own fate, foreboding madness, and forsaken by ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Shakespeare did no more than to put into eloquent language every man's belief, that we are all mad on one subject or another. If this be so, every race is mad on some point, for have we not often heard that what is true of the individual is true of the race? Anglo-Saxon madness is book morality. Madness has been defined as a lack of consequence in ideas, and can anything be less consequent than—we need look no further back than Ibsen? The great genius who died in May last was decried by the English people as one of the most immoral of writers; for twenty ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... "This is madness!" remonstrated Lydyard, still maintaining his grasp. "What satisfaction will it afford you to witness her sufferings—to see the frightful ravages made upon her charms by this remorseless disease,—to throw her whole family into consternation, and destroy the little ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... maid had not promised anything; and if, perchance, she guessed the weighty secret of her destiny, whence could she have taken the strength of mind to battle against what threatened to drive even the strong man to madness? ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... Nothing could persuade the coast natives to venture farther, and Sheldon, with his four Tahitians, knew that it was madness to go on alone. So he stood waist-deep in the grass and looked regretfully across the rolling savannah and the soft-swelling foothills to the Lion's Head, a massive peak of rock that upreared into the azure from the midmost centre of Guadalcanar, a landmark used for bearings by every ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... contemptuous of those who believed in them. However, in an article called 'The Influence of Civilization upon Genius,' published in 1888, he made this admission: 'Twenty or thirty years are enough to make the whole world admire a discovery which was treated as madness at the moment when it was made.... Who knows whether my friends and I who laugh at spiritualism are not in error, just like hypnotized persons, or like lunatics; being in the dark as regards the truth, we laugh at those who are not ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... three hundred yards away but the cloud was drifting in again and I dropped down for a shot. The hunters were running up the slope, frantically waving for me to come on, thinking it madness to shoot at that distance. I could just see the gray form through the sights and the first two shots spattered the loose rock about a foot low. For the third I got a dead rest over a stone and as the crash of the little Mannlicher echoed up the gorge, the goral threw itself ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... Street, the familiar sounds from the shop below, the slamming of a door, a voice raised in inquiry, the monotonous, kindly echoes of life, struck on the raw edges of her nerves, exasperating her to madness. ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... one fact if no other—the continual limbering up and changing positions of the rebel pieces, to escape the deadly aim of artillerymen who have probably never been excelled in any service. The only historian who has as yet dealt with the events of that great day,[14] says that it was "madness for the Confederates to rush against such obstacles," and that during the entire day, owing to the weight and superior management of the Federal artillery, they fought "without for a single moment having ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... distrusting me—not I you? Shall I begin to question whether you love me? Could you complain of injustice if I did, when you have been tempting my honour, insulting my trust in you, and wounding my soul? Is this the love you imagine I cannot estimate and return? This is madness, Hester. Rouse yourself from it. Waken up the most generous part of yourself. We shall both have ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... fearsome nightmare, and, unable to remain longer in the cottage, ran home with the speed of one distracted. There he rebuked his mother wildly, telling her that she had forced him into madness, and that he was free to execute her will—to marry or hang, whichever she pleased. His love of Anne now became entirely dormant, and he was able to estimate the greatness of his guilt without even the suggestion of a palliative. Anne returned to Castle Chute, and preparations were soon ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... seen in the glass was gone now. She was not like Arthur at all; it was madness in her to have thought so. And she was not like Gretchen either. Her mother was lying under the little pine tree which she and Harold had planted above the lonely grave. Her mother had been dark, and coarse, and bony, ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... more heartily at this madness of his old friend, Jotham easily made his way to where the prophet stood. He placed his arm around Isaiah's shoulder and invited him to go with him and his companions to ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... set right, by confession and absolution, there will be no peace for them, for they are living in a lie; and, unless it be a very little one indeed, better, perhaps, that they should go on to that terrible crisis of open defiance. It may end in disgust, hatred, madness; but it may, too, end in each falling again upon the other's bosom, and sobbing out through holy tears,—"Yes, you do know the worst of me, and yet you love me still. This is happiness, to find oneself most loved when one most hates oneself! God, ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... again. "I begin to think," said he, surveying through narrowing eyes the slender graceful figure before him, "that her ladyship is right that you are mad; unless—unless you are mad of the same madness that beset Ulysses. ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... in the position in which you find yourself, it would be madness for me to imagine that you intend to insult me, and therefore I do not consider your words ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... tea-drinkers were there now, under the green glass dome, prattling and smiling, those people he had called his own. And as the music sounded louder, faster, wilder and wilder with the gipsy madness—then in that darkening bedchamber his soul became articulate in a ...
— His Own People • Booth Tarkington
... beyond everything in the world. He took her adoration brutally for granted. At the outbreak of hostilities he joined the army, serving bravely in the ranks till he was hopelessly blinded. Having always been a thoroughly selfish man, his privation drove him nearly to madness. He had always used the world; now for the first time he had been used by it. His viciousness broke out in blasphemy; he hated both God and man. He made no distinction between people in the mass and the people who tried to help him. His whole desire was to inflict as much pain ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... poetic grandeur, and fervid sublimity of imagination, Carlyle is the superior beyond measure. But Emerson is as much his superior in that high and transparent sanity, which is not further removed from midsummer madness than it is from a terrene and grovelling mediocrity. This sanity, among other things, kept Emerson in line with the ruling tendencies of his age, and his teaching brings all the aid that abstract teaching can, towards the ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... told that they saw it too; he made a convulsive spring to secure himself, fell back, lost his hold, and plunged headlong from a height of a hundred and fifty feet to the ground! Another tried the same adventure, and with the same fate; three in succession were shot; but enthusiasm or madness gave them courage, and at length half a dozen making the attempt together, the belfry was reached, and the tocsin was rung. Its effect was terrible. The multitude seemed to be inspired with a new ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... to-morrow morning, and the want of it will put me to great inconvenience. I don't mean to say that I won't assist you ultimately. But as for paying your creditors in full, I might as well hope to pay the National Debt. It is madness, sheer madness, to think of such a thing. You must come to a compromise. It's a painful thing for the family, but everybody does it. There was George Kitely, Lord Ragland's son, went through the Court last week, and was what they call ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... shame I hope and I fear I know how to console myself If he has deserved it, let them strike off his head Implication there was much, of assertion very little In this he was much behind his age or before it It had not yet occurred to him that he was married John Robinson King who thought it furious madness to resist the enemy Logic is rarely the quality on which kings pride themselves Magistracy at that moment seemed to mean the sword Make the very name of man a term of reproach Misery had come not from their being enemies ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... slayer committeth a deadly sin, and the slain perisheth eternally? Verily, to use the words of the apostle, he that plougheth should plough in hope, and he that thresheth should be partaker of his hope. Whence, therefore, O soldiers, cometh this so stupendous error? What insufferable madness is this—to wage war with so great cost and labor, but with no pay except either death or crime? Ye cover your horses with silken trappings, and I know not how much fine cloth hangs pendent from your coats of mail. Ye paint ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... themselves, &c.; mothers murdering their own children in their lunacy; some dying of mere grief, as a passion; some of mere fright and surprise, without any infection at all; others frighted into idiotism and foolish distractions, some into despair and lunacy, others into melancholy madness." ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... misguide them, Came to tempt Nimaera's people, Lead them on to lust and evil, Taught them how to rob and plunder, Taught them how to kill and murder, Put corruption in their wishes, Poisoned all their thoughts and reasons, Mingled madness in their pleasures, Blinded them with show and grandeur, Gave them longings and ambitions, That they lost their true discernment, As a man with wines confused Loses proper sense and caution. And they gave such sumptuous meetings, And they said such wondrous fair things— Things that ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... a sob, as she thus gives vent to her troubled feelings. Twice, already, has her husband been seized with the drunkard's madness; and, in the nervous prostration consequent upon even a brief withdrawal of his usual strong stimulants, she sees the fearful precursor of another attack of this dreadful and dangerous malady. In the hope of supplying the needed tone she has given him ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... chosen band of warriors, Girty[10] advanced with fierceness upon the whites, from the advantageous position which he covertly occupied, and "madness, despair and death succeed, the conflict's gathering wrath." The Indians had greatly the advantage in numbers, as well as position, and the disorderly front of the whites, gave them still greater superiority. The bravery of ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... Mathesons, where they had rather a staid, elderly house-party, but here it will be a different matter. There is the Durmot flapper, for instance, who simply stops at nothing, and you know what Van Tahn is like. Then there is Cyril Skatterly; he has madness on one side of his family and a Hungarian grandmother ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... American liberty raised its first voice, and where its youth was nurtured and sustained, there it still lives, in the strength of its manhood, and full of its original spirit. If discord and disunion shall wound it, if party strife and blind ambition shall hawk at and tear it, if folly and madness, if uneasiness under salutary and necessary restraint shall succeed in separating it from that Union by which alone its existence is made sure, it will stand, in the end, by the side of that cradle in which its infancy was rocked; it will stretch forth its arm ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... equal in moral impression what the reality will be to the sufferers. It is easy to speak or hear the word "hell;" but to analyze its significance and realize it in a sensitive fancy is difficult; and whenever it is done the fruit is madness, as the bedlams of the world are shrieking in testimony at this instant. The Revivalist preachers, so far from exaggerating the frightful contents latent in the prevalent dogma concerning hell, have never been able and no man is able to ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... that we inherit dispositions from our parents. 'I inherited,' said he, 'a vile melancholy from my father, which has made me mad all my life, at least not sober.' Lady M'Leod wondered he should tell this. 'Madam,' said I, 'he knows that with that madness he is ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... wood, and his face burned. He saw what the patrol leader meant—a fire stood a good chance of passing unnoticed now. Flame would not reflect and smoke would mingle with the rising mist. Last night a fire would have been madness. He could see it all now and he could see, too, the sorry part he ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger
... excepting perhaps in Spitzbergen. We cannot picture to ourselves the intense Egyptian darkness which prevails in such places as Kane and his companions wintered. The thermometer was more than 100 degrees below freezing point. This was in February, 1854, and the "madness" of the dogs, though not harmful to their masters, was evidently attributable to the terrible cold, which affected the air passages, and to ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... but if you really wish to learn you must mount a machine and become acquainted with its tricks by actual trial.'[2] This pronouncement, by the highest authority, may serve as an apology for some of those whose attempts were reckoned madness or quackery, and whose misfortunes, during many long centuries, are the only material available for the history ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... hurriedly over to it. "Cousin! this is madness! You know not to what danger you may be ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... physician, intelligent of symptoms, distinguished between the access of fever and the force of health; and what other men conceived to be the vigour of her constitution, he knew to be no more than the paroxysm of her madness; and then, prophet-like, he denounced the destinies of France, and in his prophetic ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... which he prepared from the venom of a kind of swamp adder," she answered. "It produces madness, but not ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... time was given me to mourn. My life was soon to be in peril, and I must summon up the utmost power of eye and limb to escape the violence of my frenzied mare. Did you ever see a mad horse when his madness is on him? Take your stand with me in that car, and you shall see what suffering a dumb creature can endure before it dies. In no malady does a horse suffer more than in phrenitis, or inflammation of the brain. Possibly in severe cases of colic, probably in rabies ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... to say God, but hesitated and added, "before the whole world! I can't be silent when I hear such utter madness! And why can't I understand you, pray? What insufferable pride these young people have nowadays! On the contrary, I understand you only too well... I can see that you are infected with these new ideas, which will only be your ruin. It will ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... children, three young girls, and would have assegaied their mother, when suddenly a spirit entered into her at the sight, and she went mad, so that they let her go, being afraid to touch her afterwards. So she fled and took up her abode in the haunted glen; and this was the nature of her madness, that whenever she saw children, and more especially girl children, a longing came upon her to kill them as her own had been killed. This, indeed, she did often, for when the moon was full and her madness at its highest, she would travel far to find children, snatching them away from ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... he got rid of the old woman, and the exhibition always called for uproarious applause. There is a hint in it for any well-bred company who may be bored to the point of extinction by a distinguished member. The only wonder is that in some cases the sudden madness is not real rather ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... savage beast pursued, and, quickly overtaking them, attacked the hindermost, the youngest of the two little girls, anal killed her, the others escaping in the meantime. On the following day the father returned, and was mad with grief and rage on hearing of the tragedy, and in his madness resolved to go alone on foot to the forest and search for the beast and taste no food or drink until he had slain it. Accordingly to the forest he went, and roamed through it by day and night, and towards the end of the following ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... Ned, "that being so, I may as well tell you what my idea was. It mayn't have been very bright; still there was a kind of method in my madness. You see I wanted you to have an absolutely clear field and let you suspect me just as much as ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... If women are the only unrecognized class as a part of the people, then woe to the nation! for there will be no noble mothers; frivolity, folly, and madness will seize them, for all inverted action of the faculties becomes intense in just the ratio of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... him through. But the price that the cultured man must pay is that for him there exists nothing more awful than absolute solitude and the knowledge of complete isolation from human society and the life of moral and aesthetic culture. One step, one moment of weakness and dark madness will seize a man and carry him to inevitable destruction. I spent awful days of struggle with the cold and hunger but I passed more terrible days in the struggle of the will to kill weakening destructive thoughts. The memories of these days freeze ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... attacked the instrument, from which escaped accents of veritable torture; a delirium of tone followed, meagre melodies fighting for existence in the boiling madness of it all; it was the parody of a parody, the music of yesterday masquerading as the music of to-morrow. Alixe nervously watched the critic. He stood at the end of the piano and morosely fumbled his beard. Again a wave of anxious hatred, followed by forebodings, crowded her alert ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... dying of curiosity to know what was in your wise little head that day," he went on. "Oh, it was wise all right; that wink you gave me was perfectly sane; there was method in that madness of yours." ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... Stung to madness by his jealousy, the Count rushed to the apartment of the Countess. "False and faithless, false and faithless!" he cried in hoarse rage, and clutching her in his iron grasp, lifted her in the air and hurled her through the casement into ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... "Once it may be, but the evil spirits tempt us to death. It matters not what comes to Tekewani; he is as the leaf that falls from the stem; but for Summer Song that has far to go, it is the madness from ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... spring madness. You would carry her off, I dare say, and hide yourselves at the end of ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... like this, a busy, bustling time, Suits ill with writers, very ill with rhyme: Unheard we sing, when party-rage runs strong, And mightier madness checks the flowing song: Or, should we force the peaceful Muse to wield Her feeble arms amid the furious field, Where party-pens a wordy war maintain, Poor is her anger, and her friendship vain; And oft the foes who feel her sting, combine, Till serious vengeance pays an idle line: ...
— The Village and The Newspaper • George Crabbe
... infernal cavern, seven times heated? I fear it may have been so. And what of the effect upon the minds of the village folk who saw them day by day? It would have depressed, one would think, an imaginative girl or boy into madness, to dream of such things as being countenanced by God for the heathen and the unbaptized, as well as for the cruel and sinful. If the vile work had been represented as being done by cloudy, sombre, relentless creatures, it would have been more tolerable. But these fantastic imps, as lively ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of madness! The deepest tragic notes are often struck by a half sense of an impending blow. The Fool's conclusion of this act by a grotesque prattling seems to indicate the dislocation of feeling that has begun and ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... startling awakening from Bowers, standing in his socks outside the tent at 4.30 A.M. that Wednesday morning. And indeed at first sight on getting outside the tent it looked a quite hopeless situation. I thought it was madness to try and save the ponies and gear when, it seemed, the only chance at all of saving the men was an immediate rush for the Barrier, and I said so. "Well, I'm going to try," was Bowers' answer, and, quixotic or no, he largely succeeded. I never ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... escaping from the toils. What was all else that he desired to be put in comparison with that raging, craving desire that he felt and sickened with for her? That was what he really wanted—what he must have or die. It was madness to see her, as he saw her then, in the arms of other men, laughing, sparkling, brilliant with animation and enjoyment. Worst hell of all to see her thus with his nephew, her admiration for whom she had frankly confessed; ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... before he could renew his attack he was in the powerful grasp of his old enemy, Edwin Gurwood. A terrific struggle ensued, for both men, as we have said before, were unusually powerful; but on this occasion madness more than counterbalanced Edwin's superior strength. For some time they wrestled so fiercely that none of the other gentlemen could interfere with effect. They dashed down the large tent and went crashing through the debris ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... endure; in his mind was always the fact that his sister was an invalid, perhaps for life, owing to the poverty brought on them by their father's neglect. With all this before me, can you wonder that I was afraid—afraid that the boy, in a moment of madness, ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... misgivings as to the desirability of such a marriage; misgivings which had reference to the disastrous story of the Redwing household; the conception of hereditary tendencies has become a strong force in our time, and pronounced madness in a parent cannot as easily be disregarded as it once was. But the advantages of the alliance were so considerable, its likelihood so indisputable, that prudence had scarcely fair play; besides, Beatrice had reached her ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... and a little poverty. They are nothing. I hope (and believe) that you get enough to eat. Be content, then. Read the poets, improve a piece of land, play with the baby, learn golf. That's the happy and philosophic and fortunate life in these times of world-madness. ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... could be again loaded, sparks in thick showers began to descend from the roof, and unhappily some fell among our cartridges. An explosion followed, severely injuring one of our men. To stay longer where we were would have been madness. We therefore retreated through the door, amidst a volley of bullets and arrows, dragging the poor wounded fellow with us. I told his companion to carry him into the garden, while Tim and I hastened downstairs to assist Rochford; for the men in the lower story ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... sorry—very sorry indeed," cried Murray. "I wish to goodness I had never come. It is nonsense, madness, impossible. I am nearly forty—that is over four and thirty. I am a confirmed bachelor, and I would not be so idiotically conceited as to imagine, sir, that the young lady could have even a passing fancy for such a dry-as-dust ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... of Dostoievsky in English by Constance Garnett is significant. A few years ago Crime and Punishment was the only one of his works well known. The Possessed, that extraordinary study of souls obsessed by madness and crime, The Brothers Karamazov, The House of the Dead, and The Idiot are to-day in the hands of American readers who indorse what Nietzsche said of the Russian master: "This profound man ... has perceived that Siberian convicts, with whom he lived for a long time ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... arose from the multitude were those of light-hearted mirth and tiptoe jollity. The musicians preluded on their instruments—the minstrels hummed their songs—the licensed jester whooped betwixt mirth and madness, as he brandished his bauble—the morrice-dancers jangled their bells—the rustics hallooed and whistled-men laughed loud, and maidens giggled shrill; while many a broad jest flew like a shuttlecock ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... and therefore are we here to-day. We hope and believe it was written in fever or in madness. If we are mistaken in this, you shall repeat to us what was written in that letter, which I tore and trampled under my feet. Speak, then! we ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... corresponding change in the republic of letters; and some of the principal gazettes of this country exhibited a disgusting display, not only of a perversion of taste in composition, but a still greater perversion of principle, in that hideous morality of revolutionary madness, which, priding itself in an emancipation from moral obligation, leveled the boundaries of virtue and vice, while it contemptuously derided the most amiable and sacred feelings of our nature. Disgusted with the cruelties exhibited by the French Revolution at a very early stage ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... soon the vessel was set fast in the ice and was lifted satisfactorily on to its surface without the smallest leak. So far everything had gone as Nansen anticipated, and the experienced Polar voyagers who had declared that the whole scheme was madness had to acknowledge that they were not so clever ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... thought to share his madness—if he was mad—I will conclude by saying that I, for one, believe him to have been sane, and to have told the ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... Forster had made every despatch, and returned to Overton with the cargo of shingle a few days after his mother's incarceration. He had not been ten minutes on shore before he was made acquainted with the melancholy history of her (supposed) madness and removal to the asylum. He hastened home, where he found his father in a profound melancholy: he received Newton with a flood of tears, and appeared to be quite lost in his state of widowhood. The next morning Newton set off for the asylum, to ascertain the condition ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... personal devil," muttered Canon Nicholls to himself, and Mark stared at him. "Now listen," he said. "There is a young man who has a vocation to the priesthood, and he comes under obedience to work in London. That is, to live in the thick of sin, of suffering, of folly and madness. If it were acknowledged that the place was full of cholera or smallpox it would be simple enough. But the place is thick with disguises. The worst cases don't seem in the least ill; the stench of the plague is a sweet ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... I think you told us that Hamlet was one of your favourite parts? Is it not the fact that the chief character in the play drives his fiancee to madness and suicide by his cruelty, slays her father and brother, together with his own step-father, and procures the death of ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... melancholy—Without present enjoyment or future expectation of any thing but increasing misery and debility.—If these symptoms are inconsiderately suffered to continue, they soon terminate in palsy, hip, madness, epilepsy, apoplexy, or in some mortal disease, as the black jaundice, ...
— A Treatise on Foreign Teas - Abstracted From An Ingenious Work, Lately Published, - Entitled An Essay On the Nerves • Hugh Smith
... frequently bought; shops whose windows were a clutter of tissue-like crepe-de-chine underclothes and blouses; boot-clubs and jewelry-clubs, these last, garish establishments, secure in the glamour of irresistible imitations—all have urged to extravagance and a madness for ornament. ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... be wise," she said, philosophically. "Life is too short to live any other way than as close as possible to nature. All this"—she glanced up the busy street—"is madness—sheer madness. In the whole squirming human mass you could not show me one really contented person, while I can point to hundreds in the mountains. You are thinking about leaving it while my father is planning to come ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... of the Bengal council, seeing that Bengal was, at the time, threatened with invasion from the north, and menaced with troubles within, considered that it would be an act little short of madness to send troops, at a time when they could be so little spared, to assist a chief, who, even from his own accounts, was only able to raise three thousand irregular followers, Clive thought otherwise. He ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... provocation, be it remembered, which the witnesses proved—she might have been convicted of manslaughter, and might have received a light sentence. But the evidence so undeniably revealed deliberate and merciless premeditation, that the only defense attempted by her counsel was madness, and the only alternative left to a righteous jury was a verdict which condemned the woman to death. Those mischievous members of the community, whose topsy-turvy sympathies feel for the living criminal and forget the dead ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... "reason used without root, reason in the void." "Madness may be defined as using mental activity so as to reach mental helplessness." For he notes how some of the rationalists, in doubting everything, have cast doubt even on the validity of thought. The complete sceptic says, "I have no right to think for myself. I have no right ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... because, next to getting rid of him, it was the most out-of-the-way place to be found. That the Company did not get rid of him was due to the difficulty of finding another man to take his place. He was a strapping big German, with something wrong in his brain. Semi-madness would be a charitable statement of his condition. He was a bully and a coward, and a thrice-bigger savage than any ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... forbidden to touch or to eat. There is a tree which grows in our times, whose fruit, when eaten by some, produces unrest, discontent, rebellion against God, unsatisfied desires, a revelation of unrealized miseries, the mere contemplation of which is enough to drive to madness and moral death. Yet of all the other trees of life's garden may woman eat,—those trees that grow in the boundless field which modern knowledge and enterprise have revealed to woman, and which, if she confine herself thereto, will make her a blessing and a glory forever ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... wife and mother. In the representation of that species of mental alienation where the judgment has perished but traces of character still remain, he is peculiarly happy. The insanity of Saul is skilfully managed; and the horrid joy of Orestes in killing Aegisthus rises finely and naturally to madness in finding that, at the same time, he had inadvertently ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... head Rules all the Russias' limitless domain; The progeny of Ludwig, lately dead By his own hand; the Hohenzollern vain And proud, and yet diseased; or Austria's queen Whose hidden madness still is plainly seen: ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats
... Madness it is inspires thy thought. Thy words are words of one distraught. What here is wanting that can be Sure token of insanity? But now, ye ocean nymphs whose eyes Weep for yon sinner's agonies, Go hence, the heavens begin to lower, Go hence, or with its awful stour ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... of the second boat, "it is madness to stay longer. See!" and he pointed to the town, now plainly discernible in the ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... restaurant. Paris was afraid of itself. What uproar or riot or criminal demonstration might not burst suddenly into this tranquillity? There were evil elements lurking in the low quarters. Apaches and anarchists might be inflamed with the madness of blood which excites men in time of war. The socialists and syndicalists might refuse to fight, and fight in maintaining their refusal. Some political crime might set all those smouldering passions on fire and make a hell in the streets. So people waited and watched ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... know, see visions, hold conversations with, even draw the likeness of, people invisible to you and me. Is this making of people out of fancy madness? and are novel-writers at all entitled to strait-waistcoats? I often forget people's names in life; and in my own stories contritely own that I make dreadful blunders regarding them; but I declare, my dear sir, with respect to the personages introduced into ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the slave power. Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. The slave power had reached the reckless point of madness and was rushing to its own destruction. These three manifestations,—the fugitive-slave law, the Dred Scott decision, and the anarchy in Kansas,—though they were revolting in the extreme and indescribably painful, hastened ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... doing the thing upon which MacKelvey would not count. Besides it was sheer madness to think of spending the night without shelter of any kind and he did not dare go immediately to Wanda's cave. Already he had come to think of that place, high above the treetops and as safely hidden as if it were below the earth's surface, as a place of refuge. ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... the very maddest of my poor friends sometimes do, there would be fewer foolish things said in the world. What remark is that the great poet puts into the mouth of Polonius, speaking of Hamlet? 'How pregnant sometimes his replies are! a happiness that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity could not so prosperously be delivered of.' My dear Mr. Lynde, it was your excellent good sense that convicted you! By the way, I believe you claimed the horse which Morton found ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... naturally generous impulses, his gentlemanly bearing, his kindly consideration for the weaker sex, all that was momentarily cast to the winds and like the savage beast, unaccustomed to control his appetites, he stopped at nothing in a wild, passionate madness to gratify his ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... think of him," he said in a confidential whisper, shaking his head at me. "He's gone, sir, gone, in my estimation. Now what would you take to be a proof of madness, Mr. West?" ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the idea of Prudence, and is a most noble virtue, yet properly marked by Plato as inferior to sacred enthusiasm, though necessary for its government. He opposes it, under the name "Mortal Temperance" or "the Temperance which is of men," to divine madness, [Greek: mania], or inspiration; but he most justly and nobly expresses the general idea of it under the term [Greek: hubris], which, in the "Phaedrus," is divided into various intemperances with respect to various objects, and set forth under the image ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... walked up, and took him by the ear familiarly. Had he ran or shown any signs of fear, the elephant would, he thought, have killed him also, for he had killed three men in the service of his former proprietor, and was now in his annual fit of madness, or must. Holding the elephant by the ear, he led him to the first tree, and placed himself on the opposite side to see whether the animal had become quite sober. Seeing that he had, he again approached, and put upon his two forelegs the chain fetters, which they always have with ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... Canada," he wrote, at a later date, "if you come into difficulties, that is the class of men to fall back upon, rather than the ultra-liberal party."[3] Confidence in political adventurers and the disaffected French seemed to him a kind of madness. In addition to this attitude towards existing parties, Stanley held stiffly to every constitutional expedient which asserted the supremacy of the Imperial government. The Union had, by fixing a Civil List, taken the power of the purse within certain limits from Canadian hands, and this Civil ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... her voice high, but a lightning glance from Bell quieted her. It was not exactly madness that he had to deal with, and he knew it. The woman required firm, quiet treatment. Dr. Walker stood alongside, anxious and nervous. The man with the quiet practice of the well-to-do doctor was not used to scenes ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... of the hero! The longing! Will she never come? The fever is consuming him, and his heated brain breeds fancies which one moment lift him above all memories of pain and the next bring him to the verge of madness. Cooling breezes waft him again toward Ireland, whose princess healed the wound struck by Morold, then ripped it up again with the avenging sword with its telltale nick. From her hands he took the ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... outcasts, the sick and the dying, the wind brought the soul-piercing sounds of the reveling mob in the distant city, the scrap of vulgar song, the shocking oath, shrieked from the temple tower in the madness of drunken orgies. ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
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