"Insane" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are amused? But it doesn't matter, (to the doctor) I think it is very kind of you—helping people go insane. I suppose they have all sorts of reasons for having to do it—reasons why they can't stay sane any longer. But tell me, how do they do it? It's not so easy to—get out. How ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... valour, and his virtues. As he was taking it to the palace he was met by a friend at the outer gate, who inquired where he was going, and he informed him of his purpose. His friend asked him if he was insane, to offer an ode to a barbarian who hardly understood a word of the Persian language. "All that you say may be very true," said the poor poet, "but I am starving, and have no means of livelihood but by making verses. I must, therefore, ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... queer creature: and he saw that the tumblebug was malodorous, certainly, but at bottom honest and well-meaning; and this seemed to Jurgen the saddest thing he had found among the Philistines. For the tumblebug was sincere in his insane doings, and all Philistia honored him sincerely, so that there was nowhere any hope for ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... consequently rapid, terminating just as he reached his twentieth year. His fellow-students erected to his memory a monument of rough-hewn granite, with a white marble slab for the inscription. This was borrowed from the grave of Nathanael Mather, whom, in his almost insane eagerness for knowledge, and in his early death, ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Sanseverino, of the princely Naples family; and Don Pietro di Cardona, a Sicilian. With each of the two first she quarrelled, and separately besought each to murder the other. They were friends and frustrated her plans by communicating them to one another. The third loved her with the insane passion of a very young man. What she desired, he promised to do blindly; and she bade him murder his two predecessors in her favour. At this time she was living at Milan, where the Duke of Bourbon was acting as viceroy for the Emperor. Don Pietro took twenty-five armed men of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... England 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 English authority, from a safe distance ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... caught the disjointed words. What did they mean? They were mad—insane. Dying? He—Billy Saunders! What about Molly—his Molly? What about. . . . Gentle fingers once again touched his head, and, looking up, he saw the doctor's ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... her cavernous blue eyes into his; and he noticed, too, that in her long, aqueously bony fingers bits of dripping seaweed were entwined, the ends hanging down, and these ends she drew across his forehead until he became like one insane. And then he swooned away, and was found unconscious in his bed the next morning by his host, simply saturated with sea-water and fright, from the combined effects of which he never recovered, dying four years later of pneumonia ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... not heed her. He was really beside himself, and he continued his lamentations and reproaches with increasing violence, though his voice was choked with sobs. He gesticulated wildly; he formed a thousand plans, each more insane than the preceding. Now, he declared his intention of forcibly removing Dolores; now he declared he would appeal to the judges for mercy; again he swore that Vauquelas should interfere in her behalf. But the girl forbade any attempt to ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... Something—something of a very romantic nature, we may be sure—had driven him away from the companionship of his fellows, but he still found it convenient to be within reach of human society. Like all such solitaries, he had some half-insane notions. He could not sleep indoors, not for a night; it would ruin his health, if I understood him correctly; and because of wild animals—bears and what not—he made his bed on the roof of his hermitage. I had often dreamed of the enjoyment ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... The tuberculous and the scrofulous are recognised by their diseases, and the insane and the immoral by ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... 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 sits way up in front, ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy
... hopes has been a great shock to him, bodily, and mentally also, for the sight of you has had the effect of dispersing the cloud which has shadowed his brain for so long. He is now what may be called sane—perfectly sane—although the term is a misleading one, for he has never been insane, as we understand the word. His state has been curious. I can only describe it in the words I used just now. His mind has been shadowed—clouded by one idea, one obsession. And now, the sight of you, as he sees ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... 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 of time. In theory and practice, confusion rules the world, and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... for what you have written. On the other hand, I am profoundly sorry for you. I have watched your work recently, and it is my opinion, reached after calm and dispassionate observation, that you are mentally unbalanced. You are insane. Your mind is a wreck. Your friends should take you in hand. The very kindest suggestion I can make is that you visit an alienist and place yourself under treatment. So far you have shown no sign of violence, but what the future holds ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... Allman Alrunas, telling the Teutons that they ought to come over the Rhine and destroy the empire, and then, murdering the interpreters, lest they should repeat his words, was but babbling out in an insane shape the thought which was brooding in the most far-seeing Roman minds. He felt that they could have done the deed; and he felt rightly, madman as he was. They could have done it then, if physical power and courage were all that was needed, in the days of the Allman war. ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... insult.... She felt her face grow hot; he had kissed her rudely and she had been willing to find excuses, she had even felt as odd sort of thrill tingling through her. And now this eternal play-acting of his, this insane pretence.... ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... rich fool, who would pay them for him. I answered her letter, which was addressed to her own mother—then quite ill at home—and I told her precisely what she might expect, if she persisted in her insane folly. As soon as my wife convalesced sufficiently to render my departure advisable, I started to bring my daughter home; but she ran away, a few hours before my arrival, and while, hoping to rescue Ellice, I was in pursuit ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... 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, ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... easily be imagined that a man who, after being elected a Senator of the United States, was capable of the insane insolence of signing his name to a letter informing his defeated competitor that he would have killed him if the result had been different, would not have been likely, when seven years younger, to bear newspaper ridicule with equanimity. His fury against the unknown author ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... mind his insane vanity," said Arkwright, vaguely uneasy at the expression of her hazel eyes, at once so dark, mysterious, melancholy, so light and ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... as at one gone suddenly and violently insane. "If it will do you any good, I will go to sleep again," said she, with much dignity. "But I should like to know what or whom it was ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... very day, and in the excitement of battlefields and hospitals I forgot all about little Rupert, nor did I hear of him again, until one day, meeting an old classmate in the army, who had known the professor, he told me that Rupert had become quite insane, and that in one of his paroxysms he had escaped from the house, and as he had never been found, it was feared that he had fallen into the river and was drowned. I was terribly shocked for the moment, as you may imagine; but, dear me, ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... "It's insane short-sighted policy to neglect the kids," was her creed. "Now's the time to be training them. Get them thoroughly well in hand and make them understand what's expected from them, and in four or five years' time they'll be crack players. Yes, I know it's looking far ahead, and we prefects ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... of its doctrines. This serious danger has never shown so threatening an aspect as at the present moment, when our political and religious life appears to be encountering such a reaction as has not occurred for a long time. The two insane attempts which, within a few weeks, have been made by Social-democracy against the revered and reverend person of the German Emperor have raised a storm of righteous indignation of such violence that calm judgment is entirely overthrown, and that many even of ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... they could easily tell the time on the clock at Smith College. He adjusted it again and they saw the Amherst College buildings. Another adjustment revealed Mount Holyoke Seminary at South Hadley; and in this way they saw the Armory at Springfield, the Insane asylum at Northampton, and other ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... king, Charles V, who had delivered his country for a time from the English invaders,[188] had been followed in 1380 by Charles VI, who soon lost his mind. The right to govern France consequently became a matter of dispute among the insane king's uncles and other relations. The country was divided between two great factions, one of which was headed by the powerful duke of Burgundy, who was building up a new state between France and Germany, and the other by the duke of Orleans. In 1407 the duke of Orleans was brutally ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... insane with grief. She wrung her hands and wept till it was pitiful to see her. But she did not know what to do, and at last comforted herself a little by gazing at Siminok. After some time the latter took out the prince's handkerchief, looked at ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... of official villainy against which Moor draws the sword he had himself seen flourishing unavenged in his native Wuerttemberg. But, on the other hand, he was never for a moment insensible to the moral hideousness and the tragic folly of Moor's conduct. It was to be sublime, but insane and calamitous nevertheless. One is justified in thinking, therefore, that Goedeke goes too far, or does not express the truth felicitously, when he says that the author of 'The Robbers' 'felt himself one' with his hero.[26] ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... than the rest, suggested that as we had some Enfields on board, we should make "a little bit of a fight," or at least "make one butt at a gunboat." I was relieved to find that these insane proposals were not received with any ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... there not been madness in her unfortunate family, all her apparently unbalanced acts could be accounted for by her imperious and imperial nature, and the stigma of a mind even partially unbalanced need never have been hers. Many a wife in the common walks of life has been driven to more insane acts in the eyes of an unfeeling and critical world than ever the unhappy Empress Elizabeth committed, and for the same causes. An inhumanly tyrannical mother-in-law, the most vicious of her vicious kind, whose chief delight was to torture the high-strung nature she was too small ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... will to withhold him from the affectionate charge of this poor young person; but you are to know that Sir Richard Varney hath this day shown himself so much captivated with these ladies of ours, that here is our Duchess of Rutland says he will carry his poor insane wife no farther than the lake, plunge her in to tenant the crystal palaces that the enchanted nymph told us of, and return a jolly widower, to dry his tears and to make up the loss among our train. How say you, my lord? We have seen Varney under two or three ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... go?" I said. I saw a vision, or I tried to see it, a pathetic vision of Viola following poor Jimmy in his pursuit of secretaries and ambassadors, doing insane, ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... himself, and that he ought to feel ashamed; for he was ignorant of the fact that even old plainsmen and practised hunters may lose their nerve at such a time, and suffer so from the horror of believing themselves lost that some even become insane. ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... du Tillet, "the daughter of a duchess is never ugly to the like of us, especially when she brings with her the title of Marquis and a diplomatic appointment. But the great obstacle to the marriage is Madame de Serizy's insane passion for Lucien. She must give him ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... lurked in Gretchen's attitude of impartial selfishness a certain muffled hostility to the ways of this country, and particularly to an objectionable habit she found in us of placing an exaggerated value on straightforward dealing. This culminated in a quite gratuitous, and indeed even insane, demand on the man who for his sins was in love with her that he should surrender either his English ideal or her. That he did as wisely as honestly in letting her go and be d——d to her, I for one had no doubt, nor I think had the authoress, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 22, 1916 • Various
... to that end, when suddenly some sort of a boat—he judged it to be a canoe from the slightness of its shape—loomed up in the mist before him. An idea struck him: the canoe or its occupant, if anybody could be insane enough to come out canoeing in such water, might fetch the curlew and ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... wife of Hamilton, it is said, was sent out naked; but the expression means, probably, very insufficiently clothed for such an exposure. At any rate, the unhappy outcast wandered about, half frantic with anger and terror, until, before morning, she was wholly frantic and insane. To have such a calamity brought upon him in consequence merely of his fidelity to his queen, was, as the bereaved and wretched husband thought, an injury not to be borne. He considered Murray the responsible author ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... schools, the public highways, the protection of life and property, public hospitals, public libraries, residences for the old, the blind, the orphaned and the insane, as well as secure places for the lawless, are built and maintained by ...
— Business Hints for Men and Women • Alfred Rochefort Calhoun
... levers, if anything is thrust among them suddenly which tends to stop them or reverse their motion. A weak mind does not accumulate force enough to hurt itself; stupidity often saves a man from going mad. We frequently see persons in insane hospitals, sent there in consequence of what are called RELIGIOUS mental disturbances. I confess that I think better of them than of many who hold the same notions, and keep their wits and appear to enjoy life very well, outside of the asylums. Any decent person ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... young students fight one. Away with these pistols and compose yourselves. Be reconciled, shake hands! What?—and are you the salt of the earth, the intelligence of the future, the seed of our hopes—and are you not even able to emancipate yourselves from the insane code of honour and its violent regulations? I will not cast any aspersions on your hearts, but your heads certainly do you no credit. You, whose youth is watched over by the wisdom of Greece and Rome, ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... architecture would scarcely claim a second look. Yet it was once the scene of an experiment of such momentous consequences that it will ever possess a peculiar interest both to the philanthropist and the philosopher. It was there, in that receptacle of the insane, while the storm of the great Revolution was raging around him, that a physician, learned, ardent, and bold, but scarcely known beyond the little circle of his friends and patients, conceived and executed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... prepared to resist the attack that from seven points was to be launched that evening upon the city. But Paris did not wait for the attack. It took the initiative. Mad with enthusiasm it conceived the insane project of taking that terrible menacing fortress, the Bastille, and, what is more, it succeeded, as you know, before five o'clock that night, aided in the enterprise by the French ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... 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 that 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 ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Indians it is believed that those who are insane or epileptic are "possessed of devils." (Tylor, "Prim. Cult.," vol. ii., pp. 123-126.) Sickness is caused by evil spirits entering into the sick person. (Eastman's "Sioux.") The spirits of animals are much feared, and their departure out of the body of the invalid is a ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... batteries, and from them to the forces on shore, even the commander-in-chief being affected by the causeless fear. At one moment the assailants were enthusiastic with expectation of success. Not many minutes afterwards they were so overcome with unreasoning terror that an insane order was given to burn the batteries, and these were fired with such precipitate haste that the crews were allowed no time to escape. More of the men were saved by their enemies, who came with generous intrepidity to their aid, than by their own ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... forty drops of laudanum. Twenty more were given him in the same manner in about half an hour, both which evidently shortened the convulsion fits, and the consequent stupor; he then took thirty more drops, which for the present removed the fits. He became rather insane the next day, and after about three more days lost the insanity, and recovered his ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... of the settlement. His conduct fifteen years later, when he returned to head another Metis rebellion farther west and paid the penalty on the scaffold, indicates that once embarked on a dangerous course he would be restrained by no one. That he was half, or wholly, insane on either occasion is ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... mental condition would otherwise have compelled her to remain. Her animus against Sir Percival was due to the fact that she had discovered that he was the cause of her incarceration. The anonymous letter was evidence of this insane antipathy. ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... people, and you, mine host in particular, that I am in a murderous mood," said Don Carlos gaily. "Miss Rostrevor has driven me insane, and I may go Berserker ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... the table and staggered out of the room. It was already the afternoon of a garish, shadeless day, and people stopped to look at Carey's terrible pace as he strode along the sidewalk. As Ripon had seen, he was insane with drink, or would have been but for one dominant ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... That instant, insane with fright, he grasped the astonished officer in the vise of his great hands, swung him into the air, and dashed him down headlong upon the rocks. Uttering a yell like that of some wild animal, the fellow was off, striking against Winston with his body as he passed, leaping recklessly ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... whispered. "You were going to bump me off, were you? You planted me cold, did you? Oh, hell!" His laugh, like the laugh of one insane, jangling, discordant, rang through the room. "Well, it's my turn now, and"—his body was coiling itself in a slow, ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... "Insane girl!" muttered the father, angrily, "what can have put that absurd project into your head? Had you been abed hours ago, as you ought, instead of being up and prying into the doings of our authorities, with which ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... unreliable, but almost unreadable. Only its human interest gives value to the first part; from the second part human interest is totally absent. The unhappy creature, besotted with intellectual pride, was already insane, inhuman; and this morbid condition had been aggravated by years of brooding rancour before he wrote this miserable indictment of men who had done their best to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... he was considered by many people to be insane, and Doctor Burney, in writing of him, says, "I am convinced that in his lucid intervals, he was in a serious style a very great, expressive, and admirable performer;" but Doctor Burney does ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... best to stop me," Tommy said hastily; "but I suppose I had some insane fit on me, for do it I would. I am very ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... 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
... the beginning. "After the school was over," says Dr. Nichols, "Miss Dix went into the jail and found among the prisoners a few insane persons with whom she talked. She noticed that there was no stove in their rooms and no means of proper warmth." The date was the twenty-eighth of March and the climate was New England, from which Miss Dix had so often had to flee. "The jailer said that a fire for them ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... Colonel," pleaded the apothecary; for though convinced that the old gentleman was only in one of his insane fits, when he talked of the value of this concoction, yet he really did not like to give up the cordial, which perhaps had wrought him some benefit. Besides, he had at least a claim upon it for much trouble and skill expended in its composition. This he suggested to the Colonel, who ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in the paroxysm of insane passion, a fit object of indignation? thought Belinda, and she stopped short. "No, Lady Delacour," cried she, "I will not yield to my humour—I will not listen to my pride. A few words said in the heat of passion shall not make me forget myself or you. You have given me your confidence; I am grateful ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... cant about the nocturnes, that the wonder is the real Chopin lover has not rebelled. There are pearls and diamonds in the jewelled collection of nocturnes, many are dolorous, few dramatic, and others are sweetly insane and songful. I yield to none in my admiration for the first one of the two in G minor, for the psychical despair in the C sharp minor nocturne, for that noble drama called the C minor nocturne, for the B major, the Tuberose nocturne; and for ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... Lady Wathin's table, and vowed never more to repeat that offence to his patience, lamented bitterly to Henry Wilmers that the sole woman worthy of sitting at a little Sunday evening dinner with the cream of the choicest men of the time was away wasting herself in that insane modern chase of the picturesque! He called her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... times many kinds of strong and poisonous drinks were made, and untold harm was done by their use. Drunkenness was the most fruitful source of crime and misery; it, more than any other cause, filled the jails, the almshouses and the insane asylums; it kept men in poverty and squalor; it scattered families and changed men, and sometimes women, too, into beasts. No class or profession was free from the evil, for it disqualified the scholar and statesman for their duties just as it unfitted ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... cosmopolitanism hardly to be distinguished from high treason, and the mordant sarcasm of a disappointed man, brought upon Buelow the enmity of the official classes and of the government. He was arrested as insane, but medical examination proved him sane and he was then lodged as a prisoner in Colberg, where he was harshly treated, though Gneisenau obtained some mitigation of his condition. Thence he passed into Russian hands and died in prison at Riga in 1807, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... poor?—besides, no Egyptian takes notice of his words, no true believer will follow his guidance, for he is mad. See, if anything is to be done, take him in as a prisoner to the Pasha, but do not kill him or evil will overtake you. He is insane!" ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... clergyman's poetical talk was, but the next minute the practical results staggered him again, as it were, back into a state of conviction. For the poetry obscured his judgment and fired his imagination so that he could not follow calmly. The feeling that it was not only illogical but insane troubled him; yet the physical effects stared him in the face, and to argue with physical results is waste of ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... said Mr. Martin in slow tones, "will you please tell us what it is my Uncle Toby has left for me to take charge of! Is it an insane asylum?" ...
— The Curlytops and Their Pets - or Uncle Toby's Strange Collection • Howard R. Garis
... Asylum for the Criminal Insane," explained the taller man, whom Hugh now understood must be a guard. "There was a notorious party shut up there, and he managed to escape by the aid of his money and the help of some friends outside. Men are searching the whole ...
— The Boy Scouts with the Motion Picture Players • Robert Shaler
... a chaotic jam of incoherent explanations as she thought of an accounting to Van Lennop should he return, and again she raged at herself for the insane impulse which had led her to boast of a farewell letter to her. The sleepless hours in which she had gone over and over the situation with every solution growing more preposterous than the last, had been telling upon the nerves which never had quite recovered from the shock and the incidents ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... Kenneth thought the man had suddenly become insane. For his own servant not to know him was too ridiculous. At that moment he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror of the hat stand. Ah, now he understood. The beard and emaciated face had made quite a difference—no ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... Sertorius in particular, seriously pointed out the danger of too closely connecting themselves with a man whose name would necessarily place him at the head of the movement, and who yet was notoriously incapable of any statesmanlike action and haunted by an insane thirst for revenge; but Cinna disregarded these scruples, and confirmed Marius in the supreme command in Etruria and at ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... composed of young girls. But it was not. It was chiefly composed of rusty old bachelors and a child of six years. Let us average the ages of the Quaker City's pilgrims and set the figure down as fifty years. Is any man insane enough to imagine that this picnic of patriarchs sang, made love, danced, laughed, told anecdotes, dealt in ungodly levity? In my experience they sinned little in these matters. No doubt it was presumed here at home that these frolicsome veterans laughed and sang and romped all day, and day ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the shirt and the passer-by. Still rumbling and thundering distantly, I put on another shirt. Again the button was absent. I augmented my language to meet the emergency, and threw that shirt out of the window. I was too angry—too insane—to examine the third shirt, but put it furiously on. Again the button was absent, and that shirt followed its comrades out of the window. Then I straightened up, gathered my reserves, and let myself go like a cavalry charge. In the midst of that great assault, ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... jumping and plunging, waving and brandishing the gun above his head; whilst the drums beat, the attendants all woh-wohed, and the women, joining with their lord, rushed about lullalooing and dancing like insane creatures. Then began congratulations and hand-shakings, and, finally, the inspection of the bird, which, by this time, the Wasoga had thrown down. Oh! oh! what a wonder! Its wings outspread reached further ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... of hungry dogs came prowling up the street, and, remembering the antics of the past week, they looked at us as if speculating what new species of crazy human being we were. To them the world of men must suddenly have gone quite insane, and if there had been an agitator among them he might well have asked his fellow-dogs why they had acknowledged a race of madmen as their masters. Indeed, one could almost detect a sense of surprise that we didn't use the photographic apparatus to commit some new outrage. They ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... "Otto, are you insane?" cried Gotthold, leaping up. "Because I ask you how you came by certain moneys, and because ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... frighten a man like me! What does frighten me is that, having lost you once, I may lose you forever; to know that another will be your husband, will love you, will receive your kisses. The very idea that that is possible drives me insane. I feel myself capable of any deed of madness to prevent it. Marsa! Marsa! You did love ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... another may extend it to colored persons and females; one may allow all persons above a prescribed age to convey property and transact business; another may exclude married women. But whether native-born women, or persons under age, or under guardianship because insane or spendthrifts, be excluded from voting or holding office, or allowed to do so, I apprehend no one will deny that they are citizens of the United States. Besides, this clause of the Constitution does not confer on the citizens of one State, in all other States, specific ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... recovering his reason, found himself also delivered from his insane attachment to the queen of Cathay. His heart felt now no further influenced by the recollection of her than to be moved with an ardent desire to retrieve his fame by some distinguished exploit. Astolpho would gladly have yielded to him the chief command of the army, but Orlando would not take from ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... thickened rapidly; and at last, bending with the insane riot of the storm, began to make strange, monstrous shapes. Unravelling these illusions, and exorcising them, kept Pete Noel occupied. But suddenly one of these monstrous shapes neglected to vanish. He was just about to throw himself upon it, in half delirious antagonism, when it ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the other side of Wadley. He, too, carried with him a private hell of fear in his heart, but he knew that the big cattleman was nearly insane with anxiety. ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... kindly. "Your father was a visionary, Bob, only he looked the part. You do not. I have difficulty in convincing myself that you're insane; but surely, Bob, you must admit that no sane man would seriously consider your proposition. Tell me how you expect to induce fifty paupers to apply for land for you, to do it in good faith and be within the law, and yet hand the land over ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... Without answering, Brorson beckoned his visitor to follow him to the graveyard where he showed him the grave of his wife and several of his children, and into the palace where he showed him the sad spectacle of his insane son. Then the visitor understood that position and material comfort are no guaranty ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... I have no child, to be sure, but as few mothers love I love Alice Cheney, my dear husband's granddaughter. My very life is bound up in her, and she—God help us, she loves your son with her whole soul. If he marries another it will kill her or drive her insane." ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... counsel. In truth, Charles, mad with rage, ordered that all the soldiers who had fled from the field should be put to death, and that the new recruits to be raised should be dealt with in the same manner if they did not march to his camp with all haste. It cannot be said that this insane command was obeyed, but so intense was his energy, and so fierce his rage against the Swiss, that in no great time he had a fresh army, of from twenty-five to thirty thousand men, composed of ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... desperate efforts, but plunged deeper in the slough. Feeling that, to regain his ground, each card must tell, he acted on each as if it must win, and the consequences of this insanity (for a gamester at such a crisis is really insane) were, that his losses ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... we give you an opportunity. Rash youth, pause for one moment in your mad career of folly. Forget for an instant the insane counsels of your fanatical teachers. Think of all that has been said to you. Life is before you; life full of joy and pleasure; a life rich in every blessing. Honor, friends, wealth, power, all is yours. A noble name, and the possessions of your family, await you. ...
— The Martyr of the Catacombs - A Tale of Ancient Rome • Anonymous
... this singular chase might have continued, it is impossible to say. Perhaps until the lunatic had exhausted his insane strength, and sunk into the sea: since he appeared to have no idea of making an attempt to return to the boat. He never looked round to see how far he was leaving it behind him. On the contrary, he swam straight on, his ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... unvaried solitude, will have their effect on every nature and the harder that nature is, and the longer time required to work upon it, so much the more strong and indelible is the impression. This is all the reason I am able to give, why a man of feeling so dull should yet become insane, and why the visions of his distempered brain should be of ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... insane with joy when we sprung the news on him and Alex insists on him takin' that seven thousand dollar check whole. He didn't ask for a nickel, which had me puzzled. Mrs. Simmons goes out shoppin' for furs, diamonds and automobiles, and the wife asks me why I don't invent somethin', but ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... a meal served in that severe style which characterised the austere old man's daily life, I commenced to talk of the antics of insane persons and their extraordinary antipathies, but quickly discerned that he had neither intention nor desire to speak of them. He replied in those snappy monosyllables which told me plainly that the subject was distasteful to him, and when I bade him good-bye and drove to the station I was more puzzled ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... same time I have none of those explanations with which people are so generously forthcoming on these occasions. I can only say that I do not think Wilbraham was insane, nor drunk, nor asleep. Nor do I believe that some ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... project,—a most insane and inexcusable one. It had, however, the spice of romance, and it might afford her some amusement and a little excitement during the coming months of misery. It was suggested by some demon of mischief, and was all the more attractive coming from such a source. It came about naturally ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... attaches to the fragility of the bones met with in general paralysis of the insane, locomotor ataxia, and other chronic diseases of the brain and spinal cord. The bones are liable to be fractured by forces which would be insufficient to break a healthy bone. In locomotor ataxia the fractures affect especially the bones of the lower extremity, ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... evident that poor Rayner's head was completely turned by his sudden prosperity. Perhaps few men could have taken such a change without some excitement; probably few men would have become so insane on account of what only changed his fortunes, not himself, or, rather, had so far only changed himself for the worse. All this bluster and talk made no impression on either Mr. Burnet or Mitchell, who waited quietly until Rayner's extravagant ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison
... came that he had inherited a fortune through the death of a rich uncle in America—the attitude of the people around him changed. His relatives began intriguing to have him declared insane. ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... angry. My mind was affected by the sun to such an extent that I had an insane desire to grab the Bolo of the Negrito guide out of his belt and run it through the missionary. I made a determined mental effort to do so, but my arm would not work. I strove as one strives in a dream when he is ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... are changed, and wonder, weep, or smile as may seem best to us in face of the metamorphosis. A moment of such awakening came to me now; I seemed a man different from him who had, no great number of minutes before, hastened to the house, inspired by an insane hope, and aflame with a passion that defied reason and summed up life in longing. The lackeys were there still, the maid's smile altered only by a fuller and more roguish insinuation. On me the change had passed, and I looked open-eyed on what I had been. Then came a smile, close ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... amusement, the contempt of his kind. It was all upside down. She and that fellow ought to be the sufferers, and they—were in Italy! In these weeks the Law he had served so faithfully, looked on so reverently as the guardian of all property, seemed to him quite pitiful. What could be more insane than to tell a man that he owned his wife, and punish him when someone unlawfully took her away from him? Did the Law not know that a man's name was to him the apple of his eye, that it was far harder to be regarded as cuckold than as seducer? He actually envied Jolyon ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... converts among the lowest classes, who, not content with denying the faith, soon began to pillage the churches. Eon was arrested for causing these disturbances, and was brought before Pope Eugenius III, then presiding over the Council of Rheims. He was judged insane, and in all kindness was placed under the charge of Suger, the Abbot of St. Denis. He was confined to a monastery, where he died ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... worse, and the uncomfortable conviction that he had behaved like an hysterical fool. He, too, but angrily, wondered why Dunsack had invented such an apparently pointless lie. Probably Kate Vollar was right, and her brother's wits, soaked in opium, had wandered into a realm of insane fabrications. He composed himself—the first feeling blotting out his other emotions—to meet the deprecating interrogation ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... were much associated with Lovell, a Bristol Quaker. These three friends made a plan—never carried out—of going to the wilds of America and returning to the patriarchal manner of living. They all married three sisters named Fricker. Unfortunately Southey's wife died insane, and he then married a very talented lady named Catherine Bowles. In the beginning of the eighteenth century the Southeys and Coleridges settled in the same house at Greta, near Keswick, and Mrs. Lovell, widow of Robert Lovell, and her son joined the household. Here Southey lived till his death ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... Mr. Gammon, suddenly and apprehensively, in the ear of Mr. Quirk, "you hear that? A little wretch! We have been perfectly insane in going so far already with him! Is not this what I predicted?"—"I don't care," said Mr. Quirk, stubbornly. "Who first found it out, Mr. Gammon? and who's to be at the expense and responsibility? Pshaw! I know what I'm about—I'll make him ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... spiritualism has gone abroad into all the earth. Queen Victoria is almost an insane devotee of the new philosophy. The late Emperor and Empress of France, the late Queen of Spain, the Roman Pontiff, and the Emperor and Grand Dukes of Russia are all said to have sought to these spirits for knowledge. ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith
... honest Martyr, with a sort of back-handed pun, usually nicknames Tenebrero) resumed his inquisitorial functions on Philip's death. Among his subsequent victims was the good archbishop Talavera, whose last days were embittered by his persecution. His insane violence at length provoked again the interference of government. His case was referred to a special commission, with Ximenes at its head. Sentence was pronounced against him. The prisons he had filled were emptied. ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... her hopes of this important event should prove entirely fallacious. Behind her, with timid step, stole up Ella, and, peeping over her shoulders, encountered the eyes of the young man beaming upon her, with a look which her acute perception told her was any thing but insane; and instantly starting back, the blood rushed upward, crimsoning her neck and face with a beautiful glow. As for Reynolds—in whom, as already stated, the voice of Ella alone was sufficient to awaken a thrill of pleasure—no sooner did he behold her, though ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... to prepare accordingly. The lawyer's clerk, whose name was Quiddity, also set about publishing the whole of the matter abroad. He soon succeeded in inducing a number of young men and maidens to favour the joke, and to lend themselves to it. He explained the insane folly of this worthy pair with such irresistible drollery that everyone was eager to be one ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... for a minute or two gazed from one to the other without speaking. His mother was alarmed by his expression. It revealed an emotion agonisingly poignant, and at the same time something immovable, almost insane. Pulcheria Alexandrovna began ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... 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 ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... comstockery are thus abominably insane and irritating, the fact is not to be forgotten that, after all, the thing is no more than an effect itself. The fundamental causes of all the grotesque (and often half-fabulous) phenomena flowing out of it are to ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... was safe in the room, the master man among them, who as I have since learned is a professed keeper of the insane, ungagged me, took off the straight waistcoat, and then they ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... understand, a thousand new notions about scenery and man, a sense of poetic melody and luxuriance as yet utterly unknown. They chimed in with all my discontent, my melancholy, my thirst after any life of action and excitement, however frivolous, insane, or even worse. I forgot the Corsair's sinful trade in his free and daring life; rather, I honestly eliminated the bad element—in which, God knows, I took no delight—and kept the good one. However that might be, the innocent—guilty ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... moment a blind fury possessed me. An insane impulse urged me to give battle to this intruder; to avenge upon his person the insult of his presence. Fortunately the impulse was but momentary, and I recovered myself without making any demonstration. But the appearance of those two policemen brought the peril into the ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... of the few sane men that go stumbling around this insane asylum let loose we call ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... the purest moonshine, since outside of our own dominions our trade with the United States is the most important. Of course, natural trade rivalry exists, but no responsible statesman in this country would dream of proposing an insane measure ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... and shells swept over and exploded near them, and they were in constant terror of being killed. The nervous tension was so great and continued for such a long time that one of the children, a twelve-year-old daughter of Mrs. J. Shaw McKinlay, became insane shortly ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... visit and this way of escaping it made him laugh again; but it was a laughter that had that something terrible in it which makes the laughter of the insane and drunken and cruel, worse than the bitterest lamentation. He felt a sudden haste to escape himself, and seizing his hat walked rapidly to his father's office. Peter looked up as he entered, and the question in his eyes hardly ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... regard to the laws, in your orgies of brutality." People in Germany are beginning to think that William reminds them a little too much of the incoherencies of his great-uncle, Frederick William, who was undoubtedly clever in all sorts of ways, but who died insane. ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... or rushed through the greater part of Nat's stock of lurid literature. It was the one thing that kept him from falling into the black pit of brooding; sometimes he felt as though he must go insane if he allowed himself to think. He had not the courage to tear aside the veil of dull pain that covered his heart and look at the bleeding reality. He was afraid ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... carrying out of what he must, in some sense, believe to be God's purpose. 'If this infant is God's Messiah, I will kill Him,' is surely as strange a piece of policy gone mad as ever the world heard of. But it is perhaps not more insane than much of our own action, when we set ourselves against what we know to be God's will, and consciously seek to thwart it. A child trying to stop a train by pushing against the locomotive has as much chance of success. The ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Tanchelm, who preached in the Netherlands between 1115 and 1124, and Eon de l'Etoile, who gathered round him a band of desperate characters in Brittany about 1148. They have been described as "two frantic enthusiasts," and Eon was almost certainly insane. Eon was imprisoned and his band dispersed. But Tanchelm found a large following when he taught that the hierarchy was null and that tithes should not be paid. He came to an untimely end; but the influence of his doctrines ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... 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, ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... Zoie nodded their heads and smiled at him tolerantly, then Zoie continued to elaborate. "You see," she said, "the poor creature was so insane about little Jimmy that I couldn't go ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... the grace of God to exercise faith upon the word of God, and believe what God says in those passages which settle these matters (1 John v. 1; Gal. iii. 26; Acts x. 43; Romans x. 9, 10; John iii. 16, etc.). Further, at the time when I thought I should be insane, though there was not the least ground for thinking so, I was in peace; because my soul believed the truth of that word, "We know that all things work together for good to them that love God." Rom. viii. 28. Further: When my brother in the flesh and ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... Friends,—Since many have heard a report, that I have become insane; and others, that I have become a heretic; I have wished to write an account of myself in few words, and then let every reflecting man judge for himself, whether I am mad, or am slandered; whether following after heresy, or after the ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... new patient only a hypochondriacal woman, whose malady was a disordered stomach and whose misfortune was a weak brain? 'Why do you come to me?' he asked sharply. 'Why don't you consult a doctor whose special employment is the treatment of the insane?' ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... been to Loanda, so he had never seen the sea before. Waves were breaking over the bar at Quilimane and dashing over the boat that carried Sekwebu out to the brig. He was terribly alarmed, but he lived to reach Mauritius, where he became insane, hurled himself into the sea, and ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... had inherited this curse of humanity, he smiled with a momentary thrill of joy. His ancestors on both sides of the family had been sane. Yet one of the commonest, most invariable delusions of the insane was the imaginary idea that they were pursued by voices, ordering them to do this or that, suggesting crimes to them or weeping in their ears over some tragedy of the past. Maurice knew that the mind which does not inherit a legacy of insanity may yet be overturned by ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... seek a divorce from a husband who is insane. The busy men on the great paper were very kind. They would take me back on the staff. Did I think that I still could write those amusing little human interest stories? Funny ones, you know, with a punch ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... occasions. His fervid activity devoured whole piles of documents; he changed the colours of the postage stamps fourteen times in one week. Nevertheless, he gave vent to outbursts of grief and rage that drove him insane; for whole days his reason abandoned him. If he had been in the employment of a private administration this would have been noticed immediately, but it is much more difficult to discover insanity or frenzy in the conduct of affairs ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... for the villainy into which the whole world was plunged." At the same time, having surprised the castle at Luetzen and fortified himself in it, he summoned the people to join him and help establish a better order of things. With a sort of insane fanaticism the mandate was signed: "Done at the seat of our provisional world government, our ancient ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... frantically. "Can't you understand! This Creature is a mental patient of a violent type. We are in a fourth dimensional insane asylum!" Pillbot gazed upward fearfully at a descending mass. "The pattern of its action fits perfectly," he went on. "Some violent type of insanity, combined with delusions of grandeur. Any slightest opposition ...
— The 4-D Doodler • Graph Waldeyer
... stricken with horror. The insane are always assuring everyone of their sanity. What was wrong with Vera? She did not confide in him, she would not speak out, she was determined to fight her own battles. Who could support and shelter her? An inner voice told him that Tatiana Markovna ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... week, believing my chances of recovery, under such circumstances, precarious, I ordered my horse and buggy, and started for Waupun, thirty miles distant. My friends remonstrated, and thought me insane; but, fortunately, they were too ill to prevent the movement. The attempt was perilous, indeed, but by the aid of stimulants, which I had provided with special care, and a will-power that nerved itself for the occasion, ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... established facts or to facts easily proved, he cannot hope to attain the slightest measure of success. Only one guilty of gross neglect or absolute falsehood is likely to fall into such an error. At one time the story was circulated that, during his early life, Lincoln had been insane. In the following passage Ida M. Tarbell shows that the testimony on which this belief was founded is inconsistent with the known facts of the case, and ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... "He is insane, but not heartless. He is mad! Don't you see it? You're heartless after that!" Razumihin whispered in her ear, squeezing her hand tightly. "I shall be back directly," he shouted to the horror-stricken mother, and he ran out ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Roosevelt is excusable—I recognize it & (ought to) concede it. We are all insane, each in his own way, & with insanity goes irresponsibility. Theodore the man is sane; in fairness we ought to keep in mind that Theodore, as statesman & ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... burglar, the house party rejoiced whole-heartedly at the break in the monotony of life at Blandings Castle. Relations who had not been on speaking terms for years forgot their quarrels and strolled about the grounds in perfect harmony, abusing Baxter. The general verdict was that he was insane. ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... Polonius thought Hamlet really insane. 8. The President and the Senate appoint certain men ministers to foreign courts. 9. Shylock would have struck Jessica dead beside him. 10. Custom renders the feelings blunt and callous. 11. Socrates ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... and this was to declare him a maniac, whose utterances were of no value whatever. He was put into close confinement, and it was freely reported that he had gone crazy while in the arctic regions, and that his mind had been filled with all sorts of insane notions regarding that part of ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... home." As he returned homewards, being on horseback, and a servant with him, he saw a hare on the road, and spurring onward in chase fell headlong from his horse. His manservant who had likewise abused Earl Simon "was seized by the devil" and remained insane "from the Feast of St. John the Baptist to the translation ...
— Evesham • Edmund H. New
... sprang towards her, fearful that some terrible event was about to happen; for Bessie was waving her handkerchief, and dancing about the deck like an insane person. A boat, with two gentlemen in the stern-sheets, was approaching the yacht, and at this Bessie was ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... mind rather than of brilliant talents, Lord Marney found, in the more vivid and impassioned intelligence of Coningsby, the directing sympathy which he required. Tadpole looked upon his lordship as little short of insane. 'Do you see that man?' he would say as Lord Marney rode by. 'He might be Privy Seal, and he throws it all away for the nonsense ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... are all partially insane. It will explain us to each other, it will unriddle many riddles, it will make clear and simple many things which are involved in haunting and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... intellect and reason of the wretched and famishing multitudes. Nor was this state of feeling confined to those who were goaded by the frightful sufferings that prevailed. On the contrary, thousands became victims of a quick and powerful contagion which spread the insane spirit of violence at a rapid rate, affecting many during the course of the day, who in the early part of the morning had not partaken of its influence. To no other principle than this can we attribute the wanton and irrational outrages of many of the people. ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... the low superstitions of their time, but they had proved powerless to regenerate society, or even relieve the individual pessimism and despair of men like Seneca, Pliny, or Marcus Aurelius. Lucretius, wholly or partially insane, died by his own hand. The light of philosophy left the Roman Empire, as Uhlhorn and others have clearly shown, under the shadow of a general despair. And it was in the midst of that gloom that the light of Christianity shone forth. Augustine, who had fathomed various ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... are a nemesis. They affect those who go as well as those who stay. Commenting on the fact that the Irish contribute the highest proportion of the white foreign-born population to the American hospitals for the insane, as well as filling their own asylums, the lunacy inspectors write: "As to why this should be, we can offer no reasoned explanation: but just as the Irish famine was, apart from its direct effects, responsible for so much physical and mental ...
— What's the Matter with Ireland? • Ruth Russell
... added materially to the comforts of the insides, instead of the outsides of the men, by reducing the gutta-percha-like texture of Cyprian bullocks into a savoury stew. Another comfort thoughtfully supplied by some more than usually insane authority, who no doubt had passed a severe competitive examination, was exhibited in countless coal-boxes of cast-iron! These curious devices were about three feet six inches long by two feet and a half deep, and the same in width. To my ideas they were only suitable for gigantic foot-pans or ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... very sad. You have all my sympathy. I shall speak to the Cure. She was unquestionably insane, and the fall was accidental. Millot says so ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... do not in this brief note propose to dwell, though it seems to me insane either to ignore them or to belittle them. The point on which I desire to insist is that they arise not from the establishment of a subordinate Parliament alone, nor from the existence of a "nationalist" sentiment alone, but from the action and reaction of the sentiment upon the institution, ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... insane frenzy, he rushed into Gould's office the afternoon the Directors announced the passing of the dividend, and told Gould that he had been deliberately and grossly deceived and that he was ruined. He wound up by announcing his intention of ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... which, detached as it is from the parental care of the States of Virginia and Maryland, can only expect aid from Congress as its local legislature. Amongst the subjects which claim your attention is the prompt organization of an asylum for the insane who may be found from time to time sojourning within the District. Such course is also demanded by considerations which apply to branches of the public service. For the necessities in this behalf I invite your particular attention ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... saw or could describe, while it was next to impossible for me to turn my eyes away from the hideous vision confronting me, that I have felt more than once that unless by the strongest effort of will I immediately averted my head, I should certainly become insane. Of course I was myself a party to this strange fascination of terror, and must, no doubt, have exercised some power of volition in the assumption of the expression that my face gradually presented, and which was in no sense a distortion or grimace, but ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... astoundment he flung his raccoon-skin cap into the air, spat upon his hands and began that insane war-dance of his. ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... by revelation of sorrow. Sackcloth is the raiment of sorrow, and as such it was interdicted by the Persian monarch. We still follow the insane course, minimizing, despising, masking, denying suffering. Society sometimes attempts this. The affluent entrench themselves within belts of beauty and fashion, excluding the sights and sounds of a suffering world. "Ye that put far away the evil day, ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... possession, then, of talent is not purely arbitrary, but dependent on parentage, training, surroundings. There was one question, indeed, which would have upset the whole of these illustrations. It was this:—Whence comes insanity? It would never be contended that God made some individuals insane and others sane, by a merely arbitrary act. We find, in hundreds of instances, that it is hereditary. One observer considers that six-sevenths of the cases arise from this one cause. When, then, Dr. Payne quotes the words, "He giveth none account of these things," we ask, is it so? Has He ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... sole reason why March Marston was thus deemed a madman, was that he displayed an insane tendency, at all times and in all manners, to break his own neck, or to make away with himself in some similarly ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... and bloody interruption by Tha, the mad priest, passed vividly before the ape-man's recollective eyes, the flight of the votaries before the insane blood lust of the hideous creature, the brutal attack upon La, and his own part of the grim tragedy when he had battled with the infuriated Oparian and left him dead at the feet of the priestess he would ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... were drowned by the roar of laughter that arose from behind the wall, for Glyn's comment had been taken up quickly, and ran from end to end of the line, with the result that, like a chorus dominating their laughter, the boys joined in one insane ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... the 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 ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... suspicion that our choice of a drama of the sixteenth century, one of Lope de Vega's, I think, was scarcely a wise one for beginners. He refers to this venture of ours in a letter to Sidney Colvin as "the play which the sister and I are just beating our way through with two bad dictionaries and an insane grammar." Nevertheless, we made some headway, and I remember that he marvelled greatly at the far-fetched, high-flown similes and figures of speech indulged in by the writers of the "Golden Age" of Spain. In spite of his confessed dislike for the cold-blooded study of ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... point where he first catches a glimpse of the Princess. He tells of the legends concerning the fairy Esterello, and of the Fada (Les Enfees). This last is a name given to idiots or to the insane, who are supposed to have come under ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... for one instant been disturbed by Mrs. Falcon's monstrous suspicion; he looked on her as a monomaniac; a sensible woman insane on one point, ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... fools and peacocks around him, has sent to the War Department a project of a showy uniform for himself and his staff. It would be to laugh at, if it were not insane. McClellan very likely read not what ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... far can you walk without food—(a) when you are trying to reach a definite point; (b) when you are walking with an insane view of getting to some place unknown where a good ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts |
