"Insane" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and quarrelsome to an incredible degree. He immediately made up his mind that Deane was peculating, and never ceased writing accusatory letters until Congress recalled the unfortunate envoy. All this time he was also acting toward Franklin in a manner which can only be described as insane. He fumed at Franklin's easy way of conducting business; his vanity suffered indescribable tortures at every mark of respect paid to his distinguished colleague; he suspected him of treason and every other crime; and with his partisans (whose ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... nor to erect thousands of prefabricated houses. The climate was declared to be unequalled, salubrious, equable, pleasant and bracing. Factories were erected, airports laid out, hospitals, prisons, and insane asylums built. The Imperial and Coachella valleys shipped their products in at low cost, and as a gesture to those who might suffer from homesickness it was called ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... Shakespeare speaks of as the "headstrong Kentish man John Cade of Ashford," and who, according to the poet, if headstrong, proved in the end so feeble- minded that in Shakespeare's play we might seem to have a picture of one suffering from general paralysis of the insane. Jack Cade, however, was, as we are beginning to realise, a much greater and more significant figure than Shakespeare allows us ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... . . . . . First let His mind be clouded by a slight disorder For, conscious of his manhood he will never Wear women's garb; insane, he's ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... trying period for Arctic travellers, and many poor fellows have gone insane under the terrible oppression of the months ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 56, December 2, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... or France and Louis XV. had to do there? the answer is rigorously, Nothing. Their own windy vanities, ambitions, sanctioned not by fact and the Almighty Powers, but by phantasm and the babble of Versailles; transcendent self-conceit, intrinsically insane; pretensions over their fellow-creatures which were without basis anywhere in Nature, except in the French brain alone: it was this that brought Belleisle and France into a German War. And Belleisle and France having gone into an Anti-Pragmatic War, the unlucky George and his England were dragged ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... that some suspicion attached to his valet, but that the case broke down on an ALIBI. Yesterday a lady, who has been known as Mme. Henri Fournaye, occupying a small villa in the Rue Austerlitz, was reported to the authorities by her servants as being insane. An examination showed she had indeed developed mania of a dangerous and permanent form. On inquiry, the police have discovered that Mme. Henri Fournaye only returned from a journey to London on Tuesday last, and there is evidence to connect her with the crime at Westminster. ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... with an unquiet heart, like a flame of fire mixed with smoke. Withdrawing from company thou liest down breathing hot sighs, like a weak man pressed down by a heavy load. They, who do not know the cause regard thee as insane. As an elephant breaking into fragments uprooted trees lying on the ground grunteth in rage while trampling them under his feet, so thou also, O Bhima, runnest on, breathing deep sighs and shaking the earth ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... no account of Swedes), come from self-banishment on a far Pacific island—a complex Conradian personality. Then his arch-enemy, Schomberg, lieutenant of reserve, shady hotel-keeper, sensualist and craven, with his insane malice. To these enter as pretty a company of miscreants as ever sailed the Southern seas: the sinister Jones, misogynist to the point of fine frenzy, nonconformist in the matter of card-playing, and thereafter frank bandit with a high ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... how I met him,' he continued. 'Well, he won my confidence. I told him my history. I came into the clearing almost every night. Met him often. He tried to persuade me to come back to my people, but I could not do it. I was insane; I feared something—I did not know what. Sometimes I doubted even my own identity. Many a summer night I sat talking for hours, with Uncle Eb, at the foot of Lone Pine. O, he was like a father to me! God ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... will now employ His old Blucher. I feel as though an altar-taper had been suddenly lighted in my heart, and as though an organ were playing in my head. I must collect my thoughts. Speak, Scharnhorst, for you see this surprising news may make me insane." He pressed his hands against his temples and drew a ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... shut him up in the ward for the incurables." Biblio relates to books, and mania is synonymous with madness, insanity, violent derangement, mental aberration, etc. A bibliomaniac, therefore, might properly be called an insane or crazy bibliophile. It is, however, a harmless insanity, and even in its worst stages it injures no one. Rational treatment may cure a bibliomaniac and bring him (or her) back into the congenial folds of bibliophilism, unless, perchance, ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... How unlimited an idea! Why, it meant nothing; it defines nothing, limits nothing, excludes nothing. Who or what is Continental? Apparently it means anyone out of 240 millions not being one of the 27 millions in the Britannides. Every man escapes an insane folly who happens to breathe an air E. (N. E., S. E., N. N. E., S. S. E., etc.) of the Britannides. Vanity, the inevitable wish to improve, or rather to avail, one's self of a natural means offered ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... that after spending more than two hundred million dollars of the people's money, the whole scheme collapsed, and the work stopped. De Lesseps himself was arrested, disgraced, and imprisoned and died with a broken heart a little later in an insane asylum. The French had worked seven years, and now for four years not a wheel turned. Then they organized a new company and worked at intervals ten years more until 1903, when we bought them out. During these years a half dozen nations developed ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... derived from observation of animals (comparative psychology) and of the insane and ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... appears at this time to have come under the disapproval of the Joint Committee of Congress on the War, and the newspaper Press had not long before announced, with affected regret, the news that he had become insane. McClernand, arriving just after Sherman's defeat near Vicksburg, fell in at once with a suggestion of his to attack the Post of Arkansas, a Confederate stronghold in the State of Arkansas and upon the river of that name, from the shelter of which Confederate gunboats had some chance of ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... enterprise. From some letters given in the Memoirs of Mrs. Fry it seems that the Empress felt a true Womanly compassion for the inmates of the Government Lunatic Asylum, and inaugurated a system of more rational treatment. How far her influence on behalf of the imprisoned and insane was induced and fostered by the English Quakeress, was never fully known until after her death, when a most interesting letter, addressed to the children of Mrs. Fry, was published. This letter was sent to them by Mr. John Venning, brother to Walter Venning, who had opened the ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... one of your shelves, and as I thought I might perhaps be crazy some time or other, I felt as if I should like to know what kind of a condition insanity is. I don't believe they were ever very bright, those insane people, most of them. I hope I am not stupid enough ever to ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... where she had locked herself in her bedroom; but Amy Foster sobbed piteously at the kitchen door, wringing her hands and muttering, 'Don't! don't!' I daresay Smith had a rough time of it that evening with one noise and another, and this insane, disturbing voice crying obstinately through the door only added to his irritation. He couldn't possibly have connected this troublesome lunatic with the sinking of a ship in Eastbay, of which there ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad
... next day he said, "Your regiment is on the Rapidan. You would have to walk at least twenty miles from Gordonsville; it would be insane." ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... not play the fool! It's the same insane orgy every year, the same waste of money when there's so much need and so much suffering! But I see! It's the orgy, the bacchanal, that is to still the ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... and complicated. Have the wives, and mothers, and sisters of New York less vital interest in them, less practical knowledge of them and their proper treatment, than the husbands and fathers? No man is so insane as to pretend it. Is there then any natural incapacity in women to understand politics? It is not asserted. Are they lacking in the necessary intelligence? But the moment that you erect a standard of intelligence which is sufficient to exclude women as a sex, that moment most ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... might be hastened. When opportunity served, some leaped overboard in the hope of being taken back to Africa. Throughout the night the hold resounded with the moans of those who awoke from dreams of home to find themselves in bonds. Women became hysterical, and both men and women became insane. Fearful and contagious diseases broke out. Smallpox was one of these. More common was ophthalmia, a frightful inflammation of the eyes. A blind, and hence a worthless, slave was thrown to the sharks. The putrid atmosphere, the melancholy, and the sudden transition from heat to cold greatly ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... "Midas" not because everything he touched would turn to gold, but because he would intrude his gold upon them at every turn. There were some who borrowed; and these he struggled not to let repay. He seemed to have an insane idea that if he could but get his regimental friends bound to him pecuniarily he could control their opinions and actions. It was making him sick at heart, and it made him in secret doubly vindictive ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... The insane woman understood her at last and went on moving her arms regardless of time or tune. A smile of satisfaction contracted the lips of the teacher. It was like the smile of a female Mephistopheles who had succeeded in developing a good pupil; ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... therefore unsatisfactory. Many ingenious Nottingham mechanics had, during a long succession of years, been labouring at the problem of inventing a machine by which the mesh of threads should be TWISTED round each other on the formation of the net. Some of these men died in poverty, some were driven insane, and all alike failed in the object of their search. The old warp-machine held ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... matters he departed, saying casually, "I'll come in again to-night about nine o'clock to see how you are getting on. Don't do anything insane, such as wandering about the streets, because you feel dull. It won't hurt you to put up with the dulness for a bit. You'll have plenty of excitement if you're going to live ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... elevated relations; but these elements are fairly submerged in the worldly and vulgar throng, and can only be eliminated from it with much trouble and difficulty, and never without admixture. Monsieur and Madame de Malouet, Monsieur de Breuilly even, when his insane jealously does not deprive him of the use of his faculties, certainly possess choice minds and hearts; but the mere difference of age opens an abyss between us. As to the young men and the men of my own age whom I meet here, they all march with more ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... breath in mute amazement. What was the meaning of this insane promise? It was wilful, gratuitous, suicidal; it made me catch at his sleeve in open horror and disgust; but, with a word of thanks, Mackenzie had returned to his window-sill, and we sauntered unwatched through the folding-doors into the adjoining room. Here the window looked down ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... profuse in her charitable belief of the right of all to be saved, that she easily fell in with the New Light of the day—Spiritualism; and got her head so filled with "circles," and "progression" and "manifestations," that not recognizing the demoniac origin of it all, she became hopelessly insane. Mrs. Jerrold, enraged at the loss of Mr. Stillinghast's fortune, and the conversion of her son and Helen, retired to the "Cedars," where between "whist" and opium she drags out a lengthened and miserable existence—refusing ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... pleasure in being wooed by Kit: his insane notions went to one's head like wine. She would send Meg for him again to-morrow. And Pevensey was, of course, the best match imaginable.... No, it would be too heartless to dismiss George Bulmer ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... skating into the good graces of his companion. Perhaps the rap on his head had deranged him. He certainly tossed himself about in a reckless and insane way. Still he justified his conduct by never tumbling again, and by inventing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... given such a thought passage through her mind. But it came back as often as she drove it out and then the thought began to hover about her that perhaps the suspicion was not so insane as she believed. The public is generally unreasonable, but its intuitions, like a woman's, are the resultants of such complex instincts that they are ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... The child victim's plea—Little Jo's Smile—was nationalized by an association of laymen, aided by the advertising managers of forty magazines. The smaller cities of New York state are being aroused by a state voluntary association that for years has visited almshouses, insane asylums, and hospitals. These facts I emphasize, for they illustrate the opportunity and the duty of the lay educator, whether parent, teacher, labor leader, or trustee of hospital, ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... Exposed to the fierce rays of a vertical sun; exhausted by a long train of suffering; deprived for a long while the use of any kind of spirituous liquors, when our portions of water, wine, and brandy, mingled in our stomachs we became like insane people. Life, which had lately been a great burden, now became precious to us. Foreheads, lowering and sulky, began to unwrinkle; enemies became most brotherly; the avaricious endeavoured to forget their selfishness and cupidity; the children smiled for the first time since our shipwreck; ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... mingled so largely the possible ingredients of converse. In the Spanish proverb, the fourth man necessary to compound a salad, is a madman to mix it: Jack is that madman. I know not which is more remarkable: the insane lucidity of his conclusions, the humorous eloquence of his language, or his power of method, bringing the whole of life into the focus of the subject treated, mixing the conversational salad like a drunken god. He doubles like the ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... "I don't understand what the man can be thinking about to talk such vulgar nonsense. He ought to be sent to Stockton Insane Asylum." ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... ferocious. If we looked back at her she seemed to be very much put out. We could not understand all this, but it had the effect of checking our conversation and any inclination to merriment. We were not exactly afraid of her, for though she was supposed to be out of her mind, the insane were not treated with the cruelty which has since been imported into the conduct of asylums. So far from being sequestered they were allowed to wander about all day long. There is as a rule a good deal of insanity ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... he would never let her go. He would want to keep her for nothing. And on this characteristic reasoning, having all the force of insane logic, Mrs Verloc's disconnected wits went to work practically. She could slip by him, open the door, run out. But he would dash out after her, seize her round the body, drag her back into the shop. She could scratch, kick, and bite—and stab too; but for stabbing she wanted a knife. Mrs Verloc ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... psychological standpoint our own mental life and that of our neighbor, that of the man and that of the child, that of the normal and that of the insane, that of the human being and that of the animal, are to be considered as a series of mental objects. They are to be analyzed, and to be described, and to be classified and to be explained, just as we deal with the physical ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... met in the State Senate. For years a considerable body of thoughtful men throughout the State, more especially of the medical profession, had sought to remedy a great evil in the treatment of the insane. As far back as the middle of the century, Senator Bradford of Cortland had taken the lead in an investigation of the system then existing, and his report was a frightful ex- posure. Throughout the State, lunatics whose families were unable to support them ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... he thus blindly stared, he could not have definitely told; but in some vague way he felt as he gazed at the multitudes of human beings swarming through the streets, that all were, like himself, the victims of some insane folly which had precipitated them into some peculiar form ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... law, and it is not for us to question them. To repeat what I started to say just now, I fail to understand how you can expect us to tolerate your further attentions to Miss Barbara or how you can persist in your insane determination to ask her hand ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... aid, said Dayton gravely, an expedition would be undertaken against Mexico. Subsequently Dayton unfolded a still more remarkable tale. Burr had been disappointed in the expectation of British aid, and he was now bent upon "an almost insane plan," which was nothing less than the seizure of the Government at Washington. With the government funds thus obtained, and with the necessary frigates, the conspirators would sail for New Orleans and proclaim the independence of Louisiana and the ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... insane enough over her," said the Harvester, "but I'd hate like the nation for her to know it. Seems as if a woman couldn't respect such an addle-pate as I ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... the sole right. He fought in wild despair, striking out, clinging to Jack's arms and legs, and throwing his weight on him in the mad effort to bear him down, or force him over the precipice. Jack could not understand his insane fury, and tried at first simply to overpower him, in order to hear what he was about, and ask him questions. But Thomas had no intention of being questioned. He wanted to get rid of this man once and for all. ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... too pleased to see Ingeborg! She was not exactly insane, but flighty—and a terrible chatterer. He went right on with his work, taking no ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... anything else of some foreign city. He has cleared the furniture from the room, reared a table up on end, and is crouching behind it with a Mauser pistol in his hand and a box of cartridges by his side. My own belief is that he is insane." ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... made a law in 1722, that if any nobleman beat or ill-treat his slaves he should be looked upon as insane, and a guard should be appointed to take care of his person and his estate. This great monarch once struck his gardener, who being a man of great sensibility, took to his bed, and died in a few days. Peter, hearing of this, exclaimed, with tears in his eyes, ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... to tell you," I said at last. "I don't really know much about Semyonov, and my guesses will probably strike you as insane." ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... the second Balkan War rests on Bulgaria is demonstrated in the latter portion of this volume. Yet the intransigent and bellicose policy of Bulgaria was from the point of view of her own interests so short-sighted, so perilous, so foolish and insane that it seemed, even at the time, to be directed by some external power and for some ulterior purpose. No proof, however, was then available. But hints of that suspicion were clearly conveyed even in the first edition of this volume, which, it may be recalled, ...
— The Balkan Wars: 1912-1913 - Third Edition • Jacob Gould Schurman
... thriving one. I noticed that the politeness of these natives increased as we proceeded northward, and that at the same time their mental capacity diminished. For instance, two of the people at Ebelach were hopeless idiots and I was prepared for the terrible percentage of insane persons which I afterwards found amongst the exiles of Sredni-Kolymsk by the large number of Yakutes of feeble intellect whom we encountered at the rest-houses beyond Verkhoyansk. Nearly every one contained ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... you've taken, they pronounce insane! Wilt go a little further on this road?... Your reputation. How you shrink! Too much to pay? Child, I do only take ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... pushed her way into the queer cave, the girl turned, and seeing her, screamed—such a scream as one might expect from the insane. At the same moment the brush was again pushed from the door and there stood the wild man! His white hair and his white beard showed Cora that he was the same person who had so strangely crossed her path in the woods the day ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose
... confined to dark and barbarous ages. Theophrastus pronounced Pericles to be insane in consequence of seeing him with an amulet suspended from his neck. And in the declining era of the Roman Empire, we find this superstitious custom so general that the Emperor Caracalla was induced to make a public edict, ordering, that no ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... what is done in these poems. Three people, even when the poems are monologues, are arguing in them, and Browning plays all their hands, even in The Inn Album, which is not a monologue. In Red Cotton Nightcap Country, when he has told the story of the man and woman in all its sordid and insane detail, with comments of his own, he brings the victim of mean pleasure and mean superstition to the top of the tower whence he throws himself down, and, inserting his intelligence into the soul of the man, explains his ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... agreed with him. Yet how many hundreds were daily falling at that time in warfare—how many thousands and tens of thousands were yet to fall, to gratify the insane ambition of a single man, permitted to be the fearful scourge that he was to the human race? We said as little about our expedition as we could, for the emigrants, as soon as they heard of so many of their countrymen being in the neighbourhood, were eager to set out ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... though by no means the angel he took her for, was at all events a pure and virtuous woman, soothed his sore heart, and counteracted the demoralizing influence of his late companions. Every day he drank deeper of an insane but ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... task, without deviation or compromise, we pledge all our energies and resources. For its accomplishment we call for the support and co-operation of the workers of America and of all other persons desirous of ending the insane rule of capitalism before it has had the opportunity to precipitate humanity into another cataclysm ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... frankly she didn't care to owe her husband to Adelaide Painter...She thinks now that her annoyance at feeling herself so talked over and scrutinized may have shown itself in her manner to Owen, and set him imagining the insane things he did...I understand all she must have felt, and I agree with her that it's best she should go away for a while. She's made me," Anna summed up, "feel as if I'd been ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... only be cut on BARE lead, the men ought to cut their hair close, and wear a light cap at work. They ought to have a canvas suit in the adjoining place (see above); don it when they come, and doff it when they go. They ought to leave off their insane habit of licking the thumb and finger of the left hand—which is the leaded hand—with their tongues. This beastly trick takes the poison direct to the stomach. They might surely leave it to get there through the pores; it is slow, but sure. I have also repeatedly seen a file-cutter ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... relatives, so there were few to mourn over his death. We saw to it that he was given a decent burial and advertised for his heirs, but nobody appeared. In the meantime my father grew melancholy and the doctors thought he might become insane. They advised a trip to new scenes, and my mother and I took him to Europe and then to Kingston, Jamaica, where an old friend of the family had a plantation. One day ...
— The Rover Boys in Southern Waters - or The Deserted Steam Yacht • Arthur M. Winfield
... I say?" Carter followed him. "If she hadn't been terrified over you, if she hadn't the insane idea of duty and loyalty to you, would she have come? ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... stories of the dead, While fresh performers to the ring are led. The sacred nature of the dance is lost, War is their cry, red war, at any cost. Insane for blood they wait for no command, But plunge marauding through the frightened land. Their demon hearts on devils' pleasures bent, For each new foe surprised, new torturing ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Your persistence in this absurd claim has actually shaken the expressed conviction of some of the medical examiners that you are sane. If you will make that complete written confession that the Government asks of you, I pledge you that you shall be declared insane to-night, and sent to a sanitarium from which you will be permitted to escape as soon as this affair has ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... Is it not misrepresenting him and saying, You are malevolent and cruel, and I know that I can no otherwise please you than by offering you the spectacle of my miseries? "I am told," added he, "that you have, in your country, faquirs not less insane, not less cruel to themselves." I thought, with some reason, that he meant the fathers of La Trappe. The recital of the matter afforded me much matter for reflection, and I admired how strange are the systems to which perverted ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... river. I stood a moment petrified, and then, struck by the drollery of the incident, gave way to peals of laughter. I was still laughing when my stepmother reappeared, and the maid, who doubtless considered me insane, ran off to join her; nor had I yet recovered my gravity when I presented myself before the lawyer to solicit a fresh advance. His answer made me serious enough, for it was a flat refusal; and it was not ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... hungry for friendship and most of all her friendship, "Mrs. Dunlap, I have heard what the people at the hotel say is your story. I think I understand, as much as a man can. Anyhow, I know that you can understand. I have reached a point where I must tell some one or go insane. It is only a question of time before I shall be caught. We are all caught. Tell me," he asked eagerly, bending down closer to her with an almost breathless intensity in his face as though he would read ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... passing an insane asylum and he said that the previous summer he had driven a doctor from Philadelphia out to this asylum; and while there a very funny thing had happened. As the doctor was passing along through one of the wards—Now the driver of an Irish jaunting car ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy
... Was she insane? At least I felt that she was sincere. Still, I wondered what sort of hallucination Craig had to deal with, as Veda Blair repeated the incoherent tale ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... to be sure, she has had but two or three attacks ("dizziness" or "faintness" they called them) in as many years. She was very strange and intractable just before the last one, and much clearer in her mind afterwards. They think her worse of late, and have advised Mrs. Grubb to send her to an insane asylum if she doesn't improve. She would probably have gone there long ago if she had not been such a valuable watch-dog for the twins; but she does not belong there,—we have learned that from the doctors. They say decisively that she is curable, but that she ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... was a stalemate between the wind and the motor as to which could make the most noise. But in spite of it all Joe was enjoying it. There was a freedom in the uproar, in the wildly tossing tree tops, in the white clouds that went scudding high overhead. He had an insane desire to fling his hat high up in the air, as they rolled along, and see how far the wind ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... the law, and directed them to be chained together with heavy spiked collars of iron about their necks, and to be set to labour on the roads. Sudds was suffering from liver disease; he sank beneath the severity of his punishment, and in a few days he died—while Thompson, about the same time, became insane. This was an excellent opportunity for the opposition papers, which immediately attacked the Governor for what they called his illegal interference and his brutality. The Gazette filled its columns with the most ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... physiological fact that numbers of women become insane in middle life who would not have done so if they had enjoyed the ordinary duties, pleasures and preoccupations of matrimony—if their women's natures had not been starved by an unnatural celibacy. This ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... is scarcely yet merged into an only less war-like Peace, has brought at least the small compensation that it has led men to look in the face this insane ideal of human progress. We see to-day what has come of it, and the further evils yet to come of it are being embodied beneath our eyes. So that at last the voice of Jehovah has here and there been faintly heard, even where nowadays ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... exactly the one more or less that sends the balance up or down, that decides the fate of men and nations. An individual often counts more than a generation. If that were not so, nothing would be possible, and hope would be insane." ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... guarded in his actions. He stood still a moment, his jaw set, only his eyes turning to right and left. As he had asked himself countless times already so now did he put the question again: "How could a man feel a thing like that?" At his age was he developing nerves and insane fancies? At any rate the sensation was strong, compelling. Making no sound, he turned and stared into the darkness on all sides. He saw ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... be insane enough to drive that horse such a night as this weather threatens. If go you will, in the face of a coming rain, leave Wildfire here, and drive one of the carriage-horses instead. I shall be uneasy if you ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... continued failure of other methods. Further, the diseases which are frequently cured are often those in which drugs are of little or no avail. For example, what medicine would one prescribe for a man in good physical health who had suddenly become the prey of an obsession? Such patients are rarely insane; they recognise that the idea which torments them is morbid; but yet they are powerless to ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... open. With a motion that was almost insane, he clapped his hands over his ears, and ran blindly down the dusty path until he was tired, then dropped hopelessly by ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... give me infinite pleasure to dedicate and communicate these very serious jests to my valued, ever thankfully recognized, and widely scattered friends while still living, and to receive their reply. But, as a matter of fact, the age is so absurd and so insane that I am convinced that the candid efforts which I have long expended upon this unusual structure would be ill rewarded, and that, driven ashore, they will lie like a wreck in ruins and speedily be covered over by the sand-dunes ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... he alone amongst the male sex would have access. From which I gathered that I was not wrong in my surmises, that the fair Leah had been smitten by my personality and my appearance rather than by those of my friend, and that he was suffering the pangs of an insane jealousy. ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Clay and the United States Bank, and could not see why Virginia should not be of the same opinion. Writing to Story in the midst of the campaign he said: "We are up to the chin in politics. Virginia was always insane enough to be opposed to the Bank of the United States, and therefore hurrahs for the veto. But we are a little doubtful how it may work in Pennsylvania. It is not difficult to account for the part New York may take. She has sagacity enough to see her interests in putting down the present ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... callous senses; and the historian, even, who caters professedly for the taste which feeds upon the monstrous and the hyperbolical, is glad at length to escape from the long evolution of his insane atrocities, to the striking and truly scenical catastrophe of retribution which overtook them, and avenged the wrongs of an insulted world. Perhaps history contains no more impressive scenes than those in which the justice of Providence at length ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... Teutonic brotherhood, and allowed ourselves to believe that this was only the call of the blood in the German race—the mad, bad blood of fratricidal hate, the most devilish hate of all. We also reflected that it was a form of hatred not unfamiliar in asylums for the insane, where it has always been equally tragic and pitiful in its effects, and certain to recoil on the sufferer's own head. But as no sane father of a family would make free of his children's nursery the deranged relative who required ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... been so prominent a figure in fashionable English society, he had spent most of his early life abroad. His father, the late Sir Algernon Blakeney, had had the terrible misfortune of seeing an idolized young wife become hopelessly insane after two years of happy married life. Percy had just been born when the late Lady Blakeney fell prey to the terrible malady which in those days was looked upon as hopelessly incurable and nothing short of a curse of God upon the entire family. Sir Algernon took his ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... can't believe it now!" he said, blinking his eyes. "I never heard such an insane combination of names in my life." He went on, "What under the sun ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... and difficult to account for, the actions of an impulsive human being. La Roche sat down to smoke his pipe, but instead of smoking it, he started to his feet and whirled it into the river. This apparently insane action was followed by several others, which, as they were successively performed, gradually unfolded the drift of his intentions. Drawing the knife which hung at his girdle, he went into the bushes, whence he quickly returned, dragging after ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... seemed balanced by a similar English conquest of France. But the chances of fate are many. Both Henry and his insane father-in-law died in the same year, and while Henry left only a tiny babe to succeed to his claims, the French King left a full-grown though rather worthless son. This young man, Charles VII, continued to deny ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... course irresistible. Take care, take care!—the healthful, graceful, spiritual portion of your intelligence has yet the upper hand, and imprints its stamp upon all your extravagances; but you do not know, believe me, with what frightful force the insane portion of the mind, at a given moment, develops itself and strangles up the rest. Then we have no longer graceful eccentricities, like yours, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... she would only increase her own misery in making her husband miserable, which her eccentric nature would certainly insure. I have heard that he has sometimes had a thought of carrying her to an asylum for the insane. The world, however, is not charitable enough to believe this the true reason. The judge is very grasping, and he has in his hands Alice's fortune. Some of his own family suppose he desires the use of it as long as possible. There are many hard things said of him in relation to his influencing ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... attacks on the food nor from his noisy babbling to himself. The rudimentary precautions to keep our imprisonment endurable he would not observe. Slowly I began to realise the complete overthrow of his intelligence, to perceive that my sole companion in this close and sickly darkness was a man insane. ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... good in prolonging this scene. I absolutely refuse to do anything in the matter. It is insane of you to ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... perages, si vivere cum Jove tendis. Jam pueris pellem succinctus et aenophorum aptas; Ocyus ad Navem. Nil obstat quin trabe vasta AEgaeum rapias, nisi solers Luxuria ante Seductum moneat; quo deinde, insane ruis? Quo? Quid tibi vis? Calido sub pectore mascula bilis Intumuit, quam non extinxerit urna cicutae? Tun' mare transilias? Tibi torta cannabe fulto Coena sit in transtro? Veientanumque rubellum Exhalet vapida laesum pice sessilis obba? Quid petis? Ut nummi, quos hic quincunce modesto Nutrieras, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the argument is weak just where it seeks to generalize. We are compelled to put the insane under restraint for social reasons apart from their own benefit. But their own benefit would be a fully sufficient reason if no other existed. To them, by their misfortune, liberty, as we understand the term, has no application, because they are incapable ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... convulsively the long dagger attached to his girdle. There is a sort of contagion in certain forms of passion. At sight of Faringhea's countenance, agitated by jealous fury, Djalma shuddered—for he remembered the fit of insane rage, with which he had been possessed, when the Princess de Saint-Dizier had defied Adrienne to contradict her, as to the discovery of Agricola Baudoin in her bed-chamber. But then, reassured by the lady's proud and noble bearing, Djalma had soon learned to despise ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... never so much mourning in Norway. Sigurd's fate was sad; the shadow predicted in his dream fell on him. His moodiness increased to distraction, and nothing could be more wretched in those early times than the condition of an insane king or of his country. He grew extremely violent, and often did fearful mischief; but he still preserved his generous spirit, and could always, even at the worst, be tamed by any one who would boldly resist his fury. Happily, this only lasted ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... after its long contest with Spain, in a short period of complete wellbeing, before troubles of another kind should set in. That a darker time might return again, was clearly enough felt by Sebastian the elder—a time [85] like that of William the Silent, with its insane civil animosities, which would demand similarly energetic personalities, and offer them similar opportunities. And then, it was part of his honest geniality of character to admire those who "get on" ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... were of hot drinks. He hinted the necessity for inward consolation to his master, who could answer nothing but "Tom! Tom! I shall see her tomorrow!" It was bad—travelling in the wet, Tom hinted again, to provoke the same insane outcry, and have his arm seized and furiously shaken into the bargain. Passing the principal inn of the place, Tom spoke plainly ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... She could see that under the influence of his unhappy passion he had absolutely detached himself from his father's interests and his own. Kitty was profoundly sorry for him, and if she had yielded to her impulses of mercy and pity she would have kept him from Lucia as she would have kept a poor insane moth from the candle. It might be necessary to turn the moth out of doors in order to save it, and—well, she would have turned him out of doors, too, in sheer mercy and pity. But Kitty had a practical mind, and that practical mind perceived the services that ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... and began tearing the packs from the backs of the led animals. He worked with mad haste, and there was an awesome, insane ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... to go into that. What I am trying to point out is that in your position, with a career like yours in front of you,—it's quite certain that in a year or two you will be offered some really big and responsible position—you would be insane to tie yourself to a girl who seems to have been allowed to run perfectly wild, whose uncle is ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... now became furious, and his hand sought the hilt of his sword. If Almia had been a man he would have cut her down. 'Girl!' he cried, 'what do you mean? Are you insane? ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... have a kind of sign-board hung out to show the apparent abode of wisdom: but wisdom is another guest who declines the invitation; she is to be found elsewhere. The chiming of bells, ecclesiastical millinery, attitudes of devotion, insane antics—these are the pretence, the false show of piety. And so on. Everything in the world is like a hollow nut; there is little kernel anywhere, and when it does exist, it is still more rare to find it in the shell. You may look for it elsewhere, ...
— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... thousands for an acre or two of swampy pasture; there, doughty families, hugging old musty quarrels to their heart, buffet each other from generation to generation; thus they go on, raging and wrestling among themselves, with all the world, shrieking insane war-cries which no human soul ever understood—red caps and black, white hoods and grey, Hooks and Kabbeljaws, dealing destruction, building castles and burning them, tilting at tourneys, stealing bullocks, roasting Jews, robbing the highways, crusading—now upon Syrian sands against Paynim ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... largest hospitals in Europe: its facade measures nine hundred feet, and it accommodates upwards of two thousand patients. Like most of the Italian hospitals, there are separate apartments for those who can contribute towards their maintenance. The asylums for the insane are also admirably managed. I have heard that the plan for relieving the poor is much better systematized here than in England. Well! I fear, and I say it with shame, that it could not be much worse or more bungling anywhere. Our wretched system of miscalled Workhouses ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... adopted the name out of sheer admiration for one of the grandest figures in all literature. Robin Hood, Don Quixote, and George Borrow are rubricated saints in my calendar. By the expression on your face I see that you don't make me out, and I can't blame you for thinking me insane; but, my dear boy, such an assumption does me a cruel wrong. Briefly, I'm a hobo with a weakness for good society, and yet a friend of the under dog. I confess to a passion for grand opera and lobster in all its forms. ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... embrace. She struggled dumbly between them, they did not know why, soundless and ghastly, till she sank exhausted on a couch. Luckily the children were out with the two nurses. The hotel housemaid helped Mrs Fyne to put Flora de Barral to bed. She was as if gone speechless and insane. She lay on her back, her face white like a piece of paper, her dark eyes staring at the ceiling, her awful immobility broken by sudden shivering fits with a loud chattering of teeth in the shadowy silence of the room, the blinds pulled down, Mrs Fyne sitting by patiently, her arms folded, ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... felt new life come to them from his kind words, his benignant smile, his helping hand. If the record of his long life could be fully written, which it can never be, since every day and all day, in company, in the family circle, with children, with prisoners, with the insane, 'virtue went out of him' that no human observation could measure or describe, what touching interest would be added to the history of our poor and vicious population for more than half a century past; what ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... cried, in a hollow tone, as he grasped the maiden by the wrist, and scanned her countenance with an almost despairing gaze, "I come to ask what is your final decision. Are you still insane enough to choose ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... The almost insane ardour for and absorption in his work, which were his salient characteristics, had already possession of him; and we see that he laboured as passionately now for fame and for love of his art, as he did later on, when the struggle to free himself from ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... into a deep study, muttering the name of Mag Munday the while, until I thought he never would stop. So wild and wandering did the poor fellow seem, that I began to think it a pity we had not a place, an insane hospital, or some sort of benevolent institution, where such poor creatures could be placed and cared for. It would be much better than sending them ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... my liege," she said, "and my answer shall be as plain and direct as the question you have asked. If I could have been moved to an act of ignominious, insane, and ungrateful folly, it could only arise from my being blinded by that passion, which I believe is pleaded as an excuse for folly and for crime much more often than it has a real existence. I must, in short, have been in love, as it is called—and that ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... with it a year ago. You might even have read it in the papers, only you wouldn't remember. A girl book agent killed herself in Anne's house here because Anne wouldn't buy her book. Did you ever hear of anything so absurd as Anne's thinking it was her fault? Of course the girl was insane, and Anne had absolutely nothing to do with it. And then Anne took the girl's book and went off to sell it herself—and find out, she said, how such things could happen. I don't know whether she found out." Miss ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... across the water, fully shared his friends' enthusiasm, but an insane desire—engendered by vanity—to be present at the function was a source of considerable trouble and annoyance to them. When he offered to black his face and take part in the entertainment as a nigger minstrel, Mr. Kidd had to be led outside and kept there until ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs |
