"Frantic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pursuance of an old design, had come to sack the prison. But in either case he had no belief or hope that they would spare him. Every shout they raised, and every sound they made, was a blow upon his heart. As the attack went on, he grew more wild and frantic in his terror: tried to pull away the bars that guarded the chimney and prevented him from climbing up: called loudly on the turnkeys to cluster round the cell and save him from the fury of the rabble; or put him in some dungeon underground, no matter of what depth, how dark ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... mother having died in giving him birth, and he was the apple of his eye. He would have jumped into the sea, too, when, he learnt what had happened, if he had not been prevented; and his grief was frantic. ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... sheep blundering through a gap in their hurdles. Their case was a hard one, for the folk in front refused to yield an inch of their places—but the arguments from the rear prevailed over everything else, and presently every frantic fugitive had been absorbed, whilst the beaters-out took their stands along the edge at regular intervals, with their whips held down by ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... always would call him stingy, Because he didn't invite us to Injy; And I am his only heir, 'tis said. A million of pounds, at the very least, And pearls and diamonds, likely, beside!" Mrs. Mackerel's spirits rose like yeast— "How lucky I married you, Mac," she cried. Then the two broke forth into frantic glee. A customer hearing the strange commotion, Peeped into the little back-room, and he Was seized with the very natural notion That the Mackerel family had gone insane; So he ran ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... a single piece of money, or article of value of any kind: while searching the last place of safety he could think of, he was suddenly struck with the sight of his rose, which had fallen from the stalk, and every leaf withered and dead: frantic with despair, he rushed all over the castle proclaiming himself ruined, but hardly sensible of what he said or did. On hearing this, the profligate crew, who had called themselves his friends, speedily ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... Rathburn strode down the trail alone, while behind him, on the other side of the fast-shut cabin door, barked and scratched a frantic ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... madness of a long standing. For these diseases are nearly related; and in this case, we know by experience, that there remain not the least hopes of recovery. Lastly it is to be observed, that the patient is either frantic or melancholic, according as his habit of body is disposed to receive this ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... further explanation, "lend me—(I specified the sum)—or I am ruined; that infernal, inconceivable Tailor has—." C——smilingly interrupted me by an instant compliance with my demand; on which, without a moment's delay, I bounded off, breathless and semi-frantic, towards my arch fiend's Pandaemonium at High Holborn. I cannot—cannot say what I felt as I crossed over from Drury-lane towards his den, more particularly when, on entering, I beheld the demon himself behind his counter—calm, moveless, and sepulchral, as if nothing of moment had occurred; as ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various
... preserved. Their floe was at last reduced from a great sheet of ice, perhaps a mile or more square, to a scant ten yards by seventy-five, and this rapidly breaking up. In two days four whalers passed near enough for them to see, yet failed to see them, but finally their frantic signals attracted attention, and they were picked up—not only the original nineteen who had begun the drift six months earlier, but one new and helpless passenger, for one of the Esquimau women had given birth to a child while on ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... and the poet Are of imagination all compact. One sees more devils than vast hell can hold; The madman. While the lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt. The poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heav'n to earth, from earth to heav'n; And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shape, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... furious rage. He had completed all his calculations about Nerina, but that perfidious satellite had totally disappeared. The astronomer was frantic at the loss of his moon. Captured probably by some larger body, it was revolving in its proper zone of ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... to the oars, but as we did so a number of figures appeared round the bend of the land where we had passed our first night. Shouts reached us. The figure in the boat was working his oars with frantic haste, and now ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... he will win!" he muttered presently. "By St. George, I hope that he will win!" and his soothing pats on the horse's neck became frantic slaps in ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... collectors were afraid to meet their principals, as no money could be collected. Provision dealers were subject to incursions from a wolfish man prowling for food for his children, or from a half frantic woman, with her dying baby at her breast; or from parties of ten or a dozen desperate wretches who were levying contributions along the street. The linen draper told how new clothes had become out of the question ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... laird was not proof against temptation; he sold[a] the king's lieutenant for four hundred bolls of meal; and Argyle and his associates, almost frantic with joy, passed an act to regulate the ignominious treatment to which their captive should be subjected, the form of the judgment to be pronounced, and the manner of his subsequent execution. When Montrose ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... much troubled by importunate kings, called for a minstrel, "and when he played, the hand of the Lord came upon him," 2 Kings iii. Censorinus de natali, cap. 12. reports how Asclepiades the physician helped many frantic persons by this means, phreneticorum mentes morbo turbatas—Jason Pratensis, cap. de Mania, hath many examples, how Clinias and Empedocles cured some desperately melancholy, and some mad by ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... even of the diplomatic Iorson was at an end. Re-doubling his attentions to the diners at the farther side of the room, he remained resolutely unconscious of Madame's signals, which were rapidly becoming frantic. ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... and baby. As the man and woman clasped each other in frantic caress, the driver came up, and, kicking them, bade them with an oath ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... the boys saw, by the bright moonlight, the captain, bareheaded, barefooted, with open shirt, standing on the tree directly over the crushed gable, and chopping with frantic rapidity. ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... we got on deck. There were too many on the companion ladder at the same time. While we were struggling upwards we heard that frantic bell ring often enough to drive the engine-room people distracted. I got to the ship's side in time to see a liner's bulk glide by. She would have been invisible but for her strata of lights. She was just beyond our touch. A figure on her, high over us, came to her rail, distinct in ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... myself, he said: "It's my birthday to-day; I'll wait till they come in," and sitting down to the piano, he added: "If it won't disturb you, I'll play till they do." And as he turned to the instrument, the bells of some neighbouring church suddenly burst out with a frantic merry peal. It seemed, to my childish fancy, as if in response to the remark that it was his birthday. He was then slim and dark, and very handsome; and—may I hint it—just a trifle of a dandy, addicted to lemon-coloured kid-gloves and such things: quite "the glass ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... he recalled Sheeta's great rage, his frantic efforts to free himself from the entangling strands, his uncanny screams that were part hate, part anger, part terror. He smiled in retrospection at the discomfiture of his enemy, and in anticipation of another day as he added an extra ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... would take me on your back!" Inza observed, her voice thrilled with the thought that the long-expected breeze was actually coming. "I'm as frantic as any one can be to put foot on land and learn what has happened to our friends ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... were maimed or killed on that hard fought field. Enveloped in the mists of receding years; obscured by the glamour of poetry; belied by the vivid imagination of stragglers and camp-followers who, on the first note of danger, made a frantic rush for Winchester, seeking to palliate their own misconduct by spreading exaggerated reports of disaster, the union army that confronted Early at Cedar Creek, for many years made a sorry picture, which the aureole ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... deep in health, and little Mark was stepping off gallantly into his own life as the others had done. But she felt afraid. What could she be afraid of? As she opened the door, their advance was halted by the rush upon them of Paul's dog, frantic with delight to see the children ready to be off, springing up on Paul, bounding down the path, racing back to the door, all quivering eager exultation. "Ah, he's going with ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... of God supplanted by the image of him whose service they preferred to that of a holy God and Saviour. What a moment will that be, when the sinner's grave is opened by the last trumpet, and a hideous form rises to receive a frantic spirit! "The harvest is the end of the world, and the reapers are the angels." "As, therefore, the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so shall it be in the end of this world. The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... the gate, determined to die rather than give up the fort. Just in time she ordered the sentry to turn loose a pack of dogs which had been selected for their size and courage to encounter bears and panthers. Frantic to join the fray, they dashed off, outyelling the savages, who recoiled before the fury of their onset, thus giving the men time to escape to the fort. So overjoyed was Mrs. Robertson that she patted every dog as he came ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... were told, that the Indian who runs a muck is always first driven to desperation by some outrage, and always first revenges himself upon those who have done him wrong: We were also told, that though these unhappy wretches afterwards run into the street with a weapon in their hand, frantic and foaming at the mouth, yet they never kill any but those who attempt to apprehend them, or those whom they suspect of such an intention, and that whoever gives them way is safe. They are generally slaves, who indeed are most subject to insults, and least able to obtain legal ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... other occasions, they had remained in their homes they would not have suffered, nor would the men have been so ferocious in their violence. They were the first to yield to panic, however, and now their shrieks were the loudest and their efforts to escape out of the deadly range of the guns the most frantic. In a few moments the avenue was cleared, and the military marched away, leaving the dead and wounded rioters where they had fallen, as the police had done before. Instantly the friends of the sufferers gathered them up and ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... resounds with the discharges, the air is filled with sulphurous vapors, which irritate the throat and eyes, and the ears are stunned with the explosions. Young America is in his glory, and quiet, orderly people are driven nearly frantic. ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... be fearful that he has worried his mind up to that pitch, that he cannot bear the idea of showing himself again to the world, until he shall have struck some blow, and that it is this hope that is now making him run about, half-frantic, in quest of adventures. That such unparalleled perseverance and true valor should thus evaporate in air ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... had leaped at the cavalier's kiss, her eyes wide, her lips apart, was Maren Le Moyne. In the hurrying rush of frantic people she had been forgotten and ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... overdetermined in an infantile way. In the drama the prince for a long time does not believe in the grim seriousness of his position. The elector father will only put him to the test. The sudden transition to frantic fear follows first when the friend informs him that Natalie has sent back the addresses carried by the ambassador, because she is betrothed to the latter. This would have so roused the elector against him. From this time on the prince—and the ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... the successive discharges of cannon, and the Wind-Flower staggered and heeled, reeling through the Tappan Zee as a great water-fowl, crippled and stung to terror, drives blindly into the spindrift, while shot on shot strikes, yet ends not the frantic struggle. ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... a curse on John Halifax's lips but once—that once. Lord Luxmore heard it too. The image of the frantic father, snatching up his darling from under the horse's heels, must have haunted the earl's good memory for many ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... at this early hour to beg the noble lady of Ringstetten to pardon my unbecoming behaviour of yesterday. Sweet lady, I have the fullest persuasion that you meant to do me a kindness, but you were not aware how severely you would wound me; and then, in my agony and surprise, so many rash and frantic expressions burst from my lips. Forgive me, ah, forgive me! I am in truth so unhappy, already. Only consider what I was but yesterday morning, what I was even at the beginning of your yesterday's festival, and what ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... Please, Mamma, it's me and Rubens." (Sobs on my part, and frantic attempts by Rubens to lick every inch of my face at once.) "And please, Mamma, we're very miser-r-r-r-rable. And oh! please, Mamma, don't let papa marry Miss Burton. Please, please don't, dear, ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... long hair falling, like a split cone of shadow, in the glimmer of a night-light that burned beside him. You have to imagine her, a silent, a no doubt agonized figure, like a spectre, suddenly offering herself to him—to save his reason! And you have to imagine his frantic refusal—and talk. And ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... beyond the reasonable limits of help, and I tried desperately to impress upon Tucker that I was going to be very severe: for this purpose I flourished my stock-whip in a way that drove my own skittish mare nearly frantic, and never touched Tucker, whom F—— was dragging along by main force. At last I gave up the stock-whip, with its unmanageable three yards of lash, and dropped it on the track, to be picked up as we came home. I now ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... kept his head above water. The pool circled about in large oily wavelets flecked with foam, so that there was a great contrast in all this to the tremendous turmoil of the raging rapid. But the comparative calm did not last long. The huge fish made a frantic, and apparently a last, effort to get free. It rushed down to the foot of the pool, and passed over the ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... his wife, who threw herself sobbing into his arms, kissed his children with rapture, and wrung old Ready's hand. He was almost frantic with ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... such a man dishonors our country," said he, "he is a frantic Jacobin, and admitted to be dangerous, since Monsieur Fouche has him upon his list of suspected persons; and he is even now under ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... absent. My noble Andrea was dead, and at that very moment his funeral obsequies were being celebrated in the neighboring church—the very church in which I had first beheld the mysterious lady! Frantic with grief—unmindful of the exposure that would ensue—reckless of the consequences, I left the house—I hastened to the church—I intruded my presence amidst the mourners. You know the rest, Fernand. It only ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... a difficulty in breathing, so foul did the air immediately become. The sufferings of those further back in the apartment must of course have been much worse. The door was no sooner closed than those next to it began to make frantic efforts to open it again; but we were so closely packed that, even if the door had not been locked, it would have been scarcely possible to open it wide enough to allow of any persons going through. Every mind seemed to become ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... on, Helen tooted the horn constantly. Its blasts alone should have warned people of what threatened, without Tom's frantic shouts and gesticulations. They were obliged, however, to slow down before several houses to make the occupants ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... I can scarcely tell. It was many hours after noon when I heard heavy steps without my door, which suddenly began to shake as though one beat upon it with frantic hands. ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... across the still, listening room. 'The more I think of it,' Lawford pushed slowly on, 'the less I understand the frantic purposelessness of all that has happened to me. Until I went down, as you said, "a godsend of a little Miss Muffet," and the inconceivable farce came off, I was fairly happy, fairly contented to dance my little wooden ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... excellently calculated to drive Queensberry frantic with rage. There was feminine cunning in its ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... who had been doing most of the talking wheeled with an oath, making a frantic dash to get out of the ...
— The High School Freshmen - Dick & Co.'s First Year Pranks and Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... she was conducted in an opposite direction; when, upon entering an apartment, what was her astonishment at finding herself, not in the presence of Lady Audley, but in the arms of Sir Edmund! In the utmost agitation, she sought to disengage herself from his almost frantic embrace; while he poured forth a torrent of rapturous exclamations, and swore that no human power ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... With one frantic wrench he freed himself, and ran down Locust Street. At the corner, turning fearfully, he perceived the man in the overcoat calmly preparing ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... a safeguard. It came to her with dreadful certainty that there was no one who could warn him but herself—and she was a prisoner, several miles away. For the moment her own possible fate scarcely concerned her at all. It was the thought of Roger's position which drove her nearly frantic, impelled her to rise with tottering, cautious ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... will none other. When I see one of these modern fools sit absorbed, holding the end of a telegraph wire in his hand, and reflect that a thousand miles away there is another fool hitched to the other end of it, it makes me frantic with rage; and then I am more implacably fixed and resolved than ever to continue taking twenty minutes to telegraph you what I might communicate in ten seconds by the new way if I would so debase myself. And when I see a whole silent, solemn drawing-room full of idiots ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... expression of consternation upon his face. He was usually one of the most tidy men of my acquaintance, but now his collar was undone at one end, his tie was flying, and his hat at the back of his head. I read his whole story in his frantic eyes. ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... opposite chair, and an open book lay face down on his lap. Within convenient reaching distance stood a silver goblet topped with sprigs of mint. He was dressed in immaculate white, a suit which showed the character of expert tailorship when subjected to the arm and leg stretch of the frantic yawn he now deliberately enjoyed. For young Mr. Brent McElroy was as well groomed as he was good to look upon. Although Bod had called him the laziest chap in clothes, and Miss Liz had berated his ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... despite of his multiplied prevarications and denials, what they all knew, and what he himself should have been the last to be ignorant of—that the question of his failure, for more than he could ever pay, had already been settled against him, he became frantic in the outpourings of his rage, disappointment, and chagrin; sometimes declaring that the world, grown envious of his prosperity, had all suddenly become his enemies, and grossly belied him; sometimes savagely charging ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... 'phone and turned to the letters and telegrams that were strewn about the desk. There were notices from the bank and frantic demands that he put up more margin on his stock and a peremptory announcement that his loans had been called and must be taken up by the next day at noon—and a letter from Mary Fortune. He thrust it aside and searched ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... tired of doing this, and put them into the hands of the trustiest servants, some good, well-meaning creature is sure to break her heart and your own and your very pet, darling china pitcher all in one and the same minute; and then her frantic despair leaves you not even ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... the slaves, whose shackles had been knocked off, now scrambled up the fore hatchway, and we had only time to jump overboard, when they made a rush aft; and no doubt, exhausted as we were, they would have massacred us on the spot, frantic and furious as they evidently were from the murderous fire of grape that had been directed ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... moving nature of his eloquence. Encouraged by these symptoms of approval, and working himself up to a pitch of enthusiasm amounting almost to frenzy, he denounces sabbath-breakers with the direst vengeance of offended Heaven. He stretches his body half out of the pulpit, thrusts forth his arms with frantic gestures, and blasphemously calls upon The Deity to visit with eternal torments, those who turn aside from the word, as interpreted and preached by—himself. A low moaning is heard, the women rock ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... presence of my cruel Sylvia; own her mine, and ravish my delight; nor shall the happy walls of Bellfont be of strength sufficient to secure her; nay, persuade me not, for if you make me mad and raving, this will be the effects on't.——Oh pardon me, my sacred maid, pardon the wildness of my frantic love—I paused, took a turn or two in the lone path, consider'd what I had said, and found it was too much, too bold, too rude to approach my soft, my tender maid: I am calm, my soul, as thy bewitching smiles; hush, as thy secret sighs, and will resolve to die rather than ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... hundreds of wounded men greeted us. Ambulance No——, which we had come to relieve, had been hard at it since the night before, without having made much visible progress. Doctors and orderlies, their faces haggard from a night of frantic toil, came and went, choosing among the heaps of wounded, and tended two ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... was led away to the coast at Padstow. His new task was to make ropes of sand—one of the familiar penances of such traditions. He could not do it; it was worse than draining Dosmare. Night and day he rendered the place hideous with his frantic cries, and the Padstow folk did not like it at all. It was making the neighbourhood unbearable. At their earnest request another effort was made by the priests to dispose of poor Tregeagle. He was ruining ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... Lois, with smiling, white lips. She could not have told what made the frantic, overmastering fear, under the impulse of which she had suddenly thrown the baby down on the bed and fled to Justin—what strange force of thought-transference, imagined or real, had ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... blank closed door, doggedly resisting the inviting barks of a collie who had caught sight of him from the opposite hill. But when his long absent friend appeared on the scene his self-restraint was thrown to the winds, and Gethin in vain tried to check the joyous barks which accompanied his frantic gambols ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... to do so, there might have risen in his mind some prescience of a certain scene, in which he must play a part on a far-off but destined night. He might have beheld a vision of himself, bald, corpulent and thin-legged, but wearing the imperial robes of Caesar, rolling in a frantic struggle for life upon the floor of his bed-chamber, at death grips with one Stephanus, while an old chamberlain named Saturius drove a dagger again and again into his back, crying at ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... especially in the night, become frightened and stampeded from very slight causes. A wolf or a deer passing through a herd will often alarm them, and cause them to break away in the most frantic manner. Upon one occasion in the Choctaw country, my entire herd of about two hundred horses and mules all stampeded in the night, and scattered over the country for many miles, and it was several days before I succeeded in collecting them together. The alarm occurred while the herders were walking ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... the presence of the prince, who, still under the influence of the burning excitement into which he had been plunged by the words of the half-caste, did not appear to perceive the Jesuit. The latter, surprised at the animated expression of Djalma's countenance, and his almost frantic air, made a sign of interrogation to Faringhea, who answered him privately in the following symbolical manner:—After laying his forefinger on his head and heart, he pointed to the fire burning in the chimney, signifying by his pantomimic action that the head ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... narrow track. Jackson himself received three bullets, one in the right hand, and two in the left arm, cutting the main artery, and crushing the bone below the shoulder, and as the reins dropped upon his neck, "Little Sorrel," frantic with terror, plunged into the wood and rushed towards the Federal lines. An overhanging bough struck his rider violently in the face, tore off his cap and nearly unhorsed him; but recovering his seat, he managed to seize the bridle with his bleeding hand, and turned into the road. Here ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... he gave a shriek of agony which roused me to a state of frenzy, as I could just see him beating the water with frantic effort close by ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... the eggings on of Helga his wife, Kolbein is now become so frantic and furious that some of my clerks think he cannot suffer the sound of a bell. He has threatened to break down the fort of Holar, to spare no one, and has promised his Lady Helga the life of a man, ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... Boswell (1740-1795) we have another extraordinary figure,—a shallow little Scotch barrister, who trots about like a dog at the heels of his big master, frantic at a caress and groveling at a cuff, and abundantly contented if only he can be near him and record his oracles. All his life long Boswell's one ambition seems to have been to shine in the reflected glory of great men, and his chief task to record their sayings and doings. When he came to ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... of chains, a scraping as of a heavy object dragged across the floor. He leaned against the wall of the passage, the lamplight on his face, his figure tense with expectation, his hands quite unconsciously hard clenched. Without warning there rose from inside a frantic gibbering, meaningless, bestial, horribly shrill. Nicanor smiled with ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... to Mr Razumov. Where to? Back to his rooms, where the Revolution had sought him out to put to a sudden test his dormant instincts, his half-conscious thoughts and almost wholly unconscious ambitions, by the touch as of some furious and dogmatic religion, with its call to frantic sacrifices, its tender resignations, its dreams and hopes uplifting the soul by the side of the most sombre moods of despair. And Mr. Razumov had let go the door-handle and had come back to the middle of the room, asking Councillor Mikulin angrily, "What ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... he makes the vain appeal. Upon his brow, where manhood's hand had seal'd Its perfect dignity, is now reveal'd A haggard wanness; from his livid eye The manly fire has faded; cold and dry, No more it glistens to the light. His thought, To the last pitch of frantic memory wrought, Turns to the partner of his heart and woe, Who, weigh'd with grief, no lesser love can know; Despair soon haunts the hope that fills his breast, And passion's flood in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... cloak. The roads were freezing hard, but they managed to proceed for a mile or two, and then suddenly there came a sway and a lurch, for one of the horses had slipped and fallen on the snowy road, and the other was trying to free himself from his struggling companion by frantic kicks and plunges. ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... without one tear of pity or one struggle of remorse, to penury, infamy, and disease,—condemns to bear the burden of its own atrocious absurdities! Thus, the youth of one sex is consumed in slavery, disappointment, and spleen; that of the other, in frantic folly and selfish intemperance: till at length, on the necks of a couple so enfeebled, so perverted, so distempered both in body and soul, society throws the yoke of marriage: that yoke which, once rivetted on the necks of its victims, clings to them like the poisoned garments ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... little boy was missed from their camp that Thursday night, and of their frantic search along the shore, thinking he had fallen into the lake. Then some one found a toy sailboat of his in the woods and they came to the conclusion that he had either wandered off or been carried away. No trace of any abductor could be found, however, ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... school honour forbade their furnishing the master with an account of the occurrence, and they had to content themselves with breathing dark threats to those day-boys who crossed their path in the frantic rush ...
— Jack of Both Sides - The Story of a School War • Florence Coombe
... speak. Her throat worked. Her eyes were frantic. Mike got her legs straightened out without sending her into screaming pain. Now she was rising into a sitting position ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis
... their way, impede the escape of the wolf when once seized, and prevent him from going any great distance from the spot where he has been caught. The trap should not be tied or fixed in any way, for then the wolf would probably in his first bound, his first frantic movement of terror, either break some part of it, or in his violent endeavours to escape, succeed, only leaving a ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... of my way back to my tent; before I reached it the qualm had seized me again, and I was deadly sick. I flung myself on my pallet, qualm succeeded qualm, but in the intervals my mouth was dry and burning, and I felt a frantic desire to drink, but no water was at hand, and to reach the spring once more was impossible; the qualms continued, deadly pains shot through my whole frame; I could bear my agonies no longer, and ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... whispered Jack Harris, as he vanished through the aperture and dropped softly on the ground outside. We all followed him expeditiously—Pepper Whitcomb and myself getting stuck in the window for a moment in our frantic ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... of the way, so that I can leave her," he called to the girl. He tried with a frantic gesture to frighten them into getting out of the mother's reach. He continued to shout for aid as he held down the woman, who with the strength of insanity was struggling to get hold ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... Mr. Leslie, who, though a slow man, was methodical and punctual. Mrs. Leslie made a frantic rush at the door, the Montfydget blood being now in a blaze, dashed up the stairs, burst into her room, tore her best bonnet from the peg, snatched her newest shawl from the drawers, crushed the bonnet on her head, flung the shawl on her shoulders, thrust a desperate pin into ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the fair horseman anxious pleads; The black, wild whooping, points the prey. Alas! the Earl no warning heeds, But frantic keeps the ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... Piper pipes in the centre, hidden from sight. And we become frantic, we dance. The March wind, seized with frenzy, Runs and reels, and sways with noisy branches. The sun and stars are drawn in the ...
— The Cycle of Spring • Rabindranath Tagore
... friends with an Arab goatherd. After nine days' absence without leave, "Pij" reappeared, with dirty rags tied round its bony back and wasted waist, showing an admirable skeleton, and making the most frantic demonstrations of joy. The loss of the poor little brute had affected all our spirits: we thought that the hyenas and the ravens had seen the last of it; and it received a warm ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... same vile condition. Her proud spirit could not brook this, and she instantly swallowed arsenic. The King relented, and every remedy was tried, but in vain. The King watched over her agonies till she was about to expire, when he fled in a frantic state and took refuge in the apartments of the race-stand, about three miles from the palace, till the funeral ceremonies were over. It is said, that in her anxiety to give birth to an heir to the throne, she got the husband, from ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... reeling in the saddle what time the foremost of them overtook me. I held on grimly till the horse pursuing lapped the one I rode by head, by neck and presently by withers. Then I turned and would be making frantic-feeble passes with the sword at the ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... frantic haste Lot's wife urges them on; she even leads the way in her mad desire for their escape, encouraging them by word, look and action. And while her heart is a battle-ground where a desperate conflict is raging, there ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley
... beginning of the Reformation. A great ideal, the ideal of a national church, was pounding to pieces, like a ship in the breakers, and in the confusion of such an hour the action of the various sects was like that of frantic passengers, each striving to save his possessions from the wreck. The Catholic church, as its name implies, has always held true to the ideal of a united church, a church which, like the great Roman government of the early centuries, can bring ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... lumbered and crashed about us. The billows heaved and leaped like steeds just freed from harness, tossing their white manes; the raft shuddered and reeled with a deadly, sickly motion, like a creature in strong throes, plunging with frantic suddenness into the troughs of the waves at one moment, as if impelled by fear, then rallying to their summits, only to cast ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... the East! My husband has been almost frantic on the subject. We may all cover our heads and be humble.[40] Verily we have sinned deeply. As to ministers, that there is blame I do not doubt. The Aberdeen element has done its worst, but our misfortune is that ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... a frantic effort to keep going on these accounts, but the battle was too much for him. He could not imagine ways and means—he knew nothing of the ropes of finance. He was like a farmer with a scythe against sharpshooters. Ellaphine ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... next day Jacqueline kept to her coach. She was cross or nervously excited or melancholy, and by erratic turns in every mood that was hopelessly downcast, until her maid became well nigh frantic. At first Ney would hover near in helpless concern, but she ordered him away angrily. However, the storm broke at last when Driscoll reined in and waited at the roadside. She could see him through the little front pane of glass ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... spiritual forces, it is necessary to break up, at times, their monotonous habits, and send them off into new channels of thought and feeling. A lesson may be learned in this direction from the picnic excursion. It is not the little ones alone who, relieved of the confinement of the parlor, gambol in half frantic ecstasy, but the sedate matron and the grave sire renew their youth, and in their exhuberance of spirit, join in the recreations with the zest of childhood. The same law obtains in Camp-Meetings. Why not go out into ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... must tie thee on,' replied Moussa Isa and, knotting one end of the puggri to the back of the saddle, he passed it twice round Ibrahim and tied the other end near the first. This done, and Ibrahim being in a frantic fever of haste and fear and hope, Moussa Isa commenced to bargain, Ibrahim agreeing to every ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... are on the point of doing something that will put a brand upon your conscience for the balance of your career. And at this moment you are confronted with the realization that you are ruining your daughter's life. You see her before you, desperate... frantic with shame and grief. And you have to make up your mind, either to drive her from you, heart-broken... or else to turn your face from these evils, and to take up a ...
— The Machine • Upton Sinclair
... the dead are most tenderly and passionately deplored? Those who love the survivors the least, I believe. The death of a child occasions a passion of grief and frantic tears, such as your end, brother reader, will never inspire. The death of an infant which scarce knew you, which a week's absence from you would have caused to forget you, will strike you down more than the loss of your closest friend, or your first-born ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Show ground, flapping and fluttering like a white whirlwind and quacking his loudest, and the Gascoyne family, popping down hampers and baskets, followed hard behind; Winnie, much encumbered by her duck, shouting frantic directions. It was Dick who caught the runaway, and pinioned him cleverly until Gwen secured him, then with much triumph they shut him up with his agitated mate in the wire pen marked ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... he did how richly he had earned damnation, a frantic terror was upon him, and all that day he tossed and turned, now blaspheming, now praying, now weeping. His life had been indeed one protracted course of wrong-doing, and many had suffered by Gregory's ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... seize thy harp, I pray, And let a dirge arise In frantic woe—then faintly die Amid the ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... a step farther, dear Madam, and take the liberty of reproving you for putting into this poor woman's hands such a frantic thing as The Castle of Otranto? It was fit for nothing but the age in which it was written: an age in which much was known; that -required only to be amused, nor cared whether its amusements were conformable to truth and the models ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... perceived that she had looked back, he readily interpreted it as a sign that in her heart her thoughts had been of him, and he was frantic with irrepressible joy. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... English and their ways; perhaps also something of the partiality with which I have ever since regarded that singular people. Towgood was not without an eye, could he have come at any light. Invited doubtless by the presence of the Zaehdarm Family, he had travelled hither, in the almost frantic hope of perfecting his studies; he, whose studies had as yet been those of infancy, hither to a University where so much as the notion of perfection, not to say the effort after it, no longer existed! ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... from one to the other, and then, with a big oath, walked forward. Before he could reach the fo'c'sle Bill and Ted dived down before him, and, by the time he had descended, sat on their chests side by side confronting him. To threats and appeals alike they turned a deaf ear, and the frantic skipper was compelled at last to go on deck again, still encumbered ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... farewell; I never look to see Dean, or thy watery[F] incivility. Thy rocky bottom, that doth tear thy streams And makes them frantic even to all extremes, To my content I never should behold, Were thy streams silver, or thy rocks all gold. Rocky thou art, and rocky we discover Thy men, and rocky are thy ways all over. O men, O manners, now and ever known To be a rocky generation! ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... scorn to answer," said Mr Elsworthy; "there aint no need to make any reply—all Carlingford knows me; but as for Rosa, if it is understood plain between us that it's your wish, I aint the man to interfere," continued Rosa's guardian, with a smile which drove the Curate frantic; "but she hasn't got no father, poor thing, and it's my business to look after her; and I'll not bring her back, Mr Wentworth, unless it's ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... he was looking for. Long before he found it, he had come to the conclusion that finding country estates in Pennsylvania was only a shade easier than finding private homes in the Borough of Brooklyn. In both cases, he had found himself saddled with the same frantic search down what seemed likely routes which turned out to lead nowhere. He had found, in both cases, complete ignorance of the place on the part of local citizens, and even strong doubts that the place could possibly have any ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... past love to save his life. But mindful only of her wrongs, Oenone crushed out of her heart every womanly feeling of pity and compassion, and sternly bade him depart. Soon, however, all her former affection for her husband awoke within her. With frantic haste she followed him; but on her arrival in the city she found the dead body of Paris already laid on the lighted funeral pile, and, in her remorse and despair, Oenone threw herself on the lifeless form of her husband ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... he would surely betray it. Moreover—for that violent and crafty nature abounded in perplexities—Boleslas, who passionately admired the author's talent, experienced a sort of indefinable attraction in exhibiting himself before him in the role of a frantic lover. He was one of the persons who would have his photograph taken on his deathbed, so much importance did he attach to his person. He would, no doubt, have been insulted, if the author of 'Une Eglogue Mondaine' had portrayed in a book himself and his love for Countess Steno, and ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... seemed each minute to be more taken with the idea. At last, almost by force, and amid the frantic applause of the party, Cuervo, the herculean cornet of the First, took the "child" up in his arms and seated her on ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... called the big world, things were going on with frantic hurry and change, but in here the leisured calm was huge, gigantic, so much so that the other dwindled into a kind of lost remoteness. "Smothered by depth and distance," he could almost forget it altogether. ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... water, without forgetting all sad counsel and discretion, and rushing out as if the dingy pump were my own delicious Blue River. People used to look at me from the windows with pity and astonishment, supposing me to be crazed or frantic, especially the Germans. For to run out like this, without a pocket full of money, would have been insanity; and to run out with it, to their minds, was even clearer proof of that condition. For the money went as quickly as the water of the pump; on this side and ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... so called after Montanus, their famous leader, arose in Asia Minor during the second century, when Marcus Aurelius was emperor. Schaff describes the movement as "a morbid exaggeration of Christian ideas and demands." It was a powerful and frantic protest against the growing laxity of the church. It despised ornamental dress and prescribed numerous fasts ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... 'twould move her, sure, To find I loved her all the more! Nay, now I think, haply amiss I read her words and looks, and his, That night! Did not his jealousy Show—Good my God, and can it be That I, a modest fool, all blest, Nothing of such a heaven guess'd? Oh, chance too frail, yet frantic sweet, To-morrow sees me at her feet! Yonder, at last, the glad sea roars Along the sacred English shores! There lies the lovely land I know, Where men and women lordliest grow; There peep the roofs where more than kings Postpone state cares to country things, And many a gay queen simply ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... against it from the intestinal mass, owing to the spasmodic action of the abdominal muscles, may account for it, and so also may the struggles of the animal to escape from the restraint of the hobbles while frantic under the pain of an operation without anesthesia. In these cases the fracture usually occurs in the body or the annular part, or both, of the posterior dorsal or the anterior lumbar vertebra. When the transverse processes of the last-named bones are injured, it is probably in consequence ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... Most loved and most venerable of men! To see thee changed into a maniac! Haggard and wild! Deterred from outrage on thyself and those around thee by fetters and stripes! What was it that saved me from a like fate? To view this hideous ruin, and to think by whom it was occasioned! Yet not to become frantic like thee, my father; or not destroy myself like thee, my brother! ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... ride that was for Joan! The slope resembled a magnified ant-hill with a horde of frantic ants in action. As she drew closer she saw these ants were men, digging for gold. Those near at hand could be plainly seen—rough, ragged, bearded men and smooth-faced boys. Farther on and up the slope, ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey |
