"Madcap" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Review (Oct. 1871), and evoked replies from Rossetti (The Stealthy School of Criticism), and Swinburne (Under the Microscope). Among his novels are A Child of Nature (1879), God and the Man (1881), and among his dramas A Nine Days' Queen, A Madcap Prince, and Alone in London. His latest poems, The Outcast and The Wandering Jew, were directed against certain aspects of Christianity. B. was unfortunate in his latter years; a speculation turned out ruinously; he had to sell his copyrights, and he sustained a ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... had to get used to the strange idea of the dead unknown wife, and the little son for whose sake they were to grow up into wise sober women before they had done with being little girls. What wonder that Angel looked pale and grave after a wakeful night, and that Betty felt that madcap ways and tumbled curls must cease from ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham
... would not leave her. When death had taken her from him, he so evidently stood in need of a complete change of scene, that even those friends who had most strongly dissuaded him from what they deemed a madcap enterprise, thought it better to leave him to himself. It would have mattered little how much they tried to dissuade him, for before long his passionate longing for the journey became so overmastering that nothing short of restraint in prison or a madhouse ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... scrub ere they decided to take him at his madcap word, and let his blood be on the chuckle-head of the new-chummiest new chum that ever came out after the rain! Was it pluck or all pretence? It was rather plucky even to pretend in such proximity to the terrible Stingaree; ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... about them. Fingal, as they conceitedly term Fin-Mac-Coul, should have disappeared before my search, rolling himself in his cloud like the spirit of Loda. Such an opportunity can hardly again occur to an ancient and grey-haired man; and to see it lost by the madcap spleen of a hot-headed boy! But ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... the lawyer, "would be getting the consent of your parents to any such madcap scheme as going off into the woods to camp, ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... a secret though,' said a young officer; 'which is, that we are to have a dance after all, and a rare madcap and riotous one it will he. Everything is already arranged; the musicians are come secretly, and quartered out of sight. Roderick has managed it all; for he says, one ought not to let him have his own way, or to humour his ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... both on the veranda, enjoying the evening breeze that came laden with sweet scents from off the prairie. Blue Bonnet clapped her hands over Uncle Joe's eyes in her old madcap fashion. ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... precipitate, overhasty, indiscreet, inconsiderate, impulsive, temerarious, madcap, headlong, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... said Sir Ralph, "to view her more nearly. That madcap earl found me other employment than to remark her in ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... sable tyrant Death, nipped in the very bud of youth, while yet the sparkling jest was ripe upon the merry lip, and the ruddy glow of health upon the cheek gave earnest of a lengthened life———But, soft! methinks I hear my reader exclaim, "How now, madcap, moralizing Mr. Spy? art thou, too, bitten by the desire to philosophize, thou, 'the very Spy o' the time,' the merry buoyant rogue who has laughed all serious scenes to scorn, and riding over hill, and dale, and verdant plain upon thy fiery courser, fleet as the winds, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... author's ear, tickling her lips with her feathers, dancing sarabands, and making the house echo with her laughter. If by chance the writer, abandoning science for pleasure, says to her, "Wait a moment, little one, till I come," and runs in great haste to play with the madcap, she has disappeared. She has gone into her hole, hides herself there, rolls herself up, and retires. Take the poker, take a staff, a cudgel, a cane, raise them, strike the wench, and rave at her, she moans; strap her, she moans; caress her, fondle her, she ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... it so? For this I'll like you all the more!" Then, writhing to evade the bore, I quicken now my pace, now stop, And in my servant's ear let drop Some words, and all the while I feel Bathed in cold sweat from head to heel. "Oh, for a touch," I moaned, in pain, "Bolanus, of thy madcap vein, To put this incubus to rout!" As he went chattering on about Whatever he descries or meets, The crowds, the beauty of the streets, The city's growth, its splendour, size, "You're dying to be off," he cries; For all the while I'd been stock dumb. "I've seen it this half-hour. But come, ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... those tissue-paper hats; the surprise and horror of good Mrs. Ramsey when she beheld Alene Dawson among that madcap crowd, skipping along gaily intent on her play, unobserving the pained expression of the portly lady who was coming up the other side of the street. Mrs. Ramsey had stopped suddenly, "so flustrated by the sight," as she said later, that she had not the strength to ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... wind, one morning sprang up from sleep, Saying, 'Now for a frolic! now for a leap! Now for a madcap galloping chase! I'll make a commotion ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... said, blushing, and shaking her pretty little fist at Claude, 'that madcap! how he has betrayed me! When he is at his easel, he is so in the seventh heaven, that he sees nothing, thinks of nothing, but ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... a madcap young, who drove Through clouds of dust at postal pace, By the decree of Mighty Jove, Inheritor of all his race. Friends of Liudmila and Ruslan,(1) Let me present ye to the man, Who without more prevarication The hero is of my narration! Oneguine, O ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... There was a tang of the swift, immoral, fascinating 'seventies in Claire's still cautious reference to champagne and cigarettes. It was impossible for any San Franciscan who had lived through those splendid madcap bonanza days to deny the lure of gay wickedness. At least it was hard to keep one's eyes on a prayer-book while the car of pleasure rattled by. And a coffee-and-cake social was, after all, a rather tame experience in the face of beverages more sparkling and eatables ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... Pretender, and went to pay his respects at Avignon. The Duke had talent beyond the ordinary. He could write fairly well, make an excellent speech, and had a keen sense of wit. When he went to Paris, the British Ambassador, Lord Stair, took it upon himself to give this madcap some sound advice. He extolled the virtues of the late Marquess of Wharton, and, "I hope," he said, "you will follow so illustrious an example of fidelity to your Prince and love to your country." "I thank your Excellency for your good ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... the staidest and most serene. Who would have thought it of the merry madcap of other days! They are coming here, John, to say good-bye to you. They have only a few days' leave. She is in France, too, you know. She was married in her ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... A Madcap Thrush, in Miller, True Bird Stories; Antics in the Bird Room, in Miller, True Bird Stories; Fate of the Children of Lir, in Grierson, Children's Book of Celtie Stories; Halcyone, in Brown, Curious Book of Birds; St. Francis's Sermon to the Birds, Longfellow (poem), in Story-Telling ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... had heard my kind voice yet," mimicked Miss Madcap. "And are you thinking of holding Aileen's ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... thee, yes; and to Holly here I must seem as some madcap girl blown to and fro by every wind of fancy, and building me a palace wherein to dwell out of dew and vapours, or from the substance of the sunset fires. Thinkest thou then that I would enter on this war—one ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... The nimble-footed madcap, Prince of Wales, And his comrades, that daft the world aside And let ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... is sometimes the friendship that was fancied!" I cried. "What kind of justice do you call this, to blame me for some words that a tomfool of a madcap lass has written down upon a piece of paper? You know yourself with what respect I have ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... introduction to the wild young madcap Prince of Wales, afterwards the famous Henry ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... anger. I saw my success, and added, "Yes, sire, it is insupportable for me to think that I am supposed not to possess your friendship, and that I only play the part of a temporary friend. It makes me wretched: you must not be angry if I complain of you to your royal self." "Well, well, you madcap, what must I do? Whom must I banish?" "Oh, sire, no one: with your august support I fear no person; nothing but appearances." "You are an excellent creature; in your place madame de Pompadour would have imprisoned half France." "That was because she loved revenge better than she ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... this signal victory, Gallows Walsh now harangued his followers, and proposed to break open Newgate, or the Black Dog, as the prison was called, and effect a general jail delivery. He was answered by shouts of concurrence, and away went the throng of madcap youngsters, fully bent upon putting an end to the tyranny of law. They were joined by the mob of the city, and made an attack upon the prison with true Irish precipitation and thoughtlessness, never having provided themselves with cannon to batter its stone ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... came such a thought into a madcap's brain; and, what is more extraordinary—but that you already know—it was so far successful, that the marriage ceremony was performed between us in the presence of a servant of mine, Clara's accommodating companion, and the priest.—We ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... of dumb bewilderment that eclipsed all she had experienced before. Truly the world was topsyturvy this madcap night! ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... with Scotch caution, was silent. But the impulsive Marraby—Madcap Marraby, as they called him in B.N.C.—said "It's because I won't lie!" and, leaping up, raised his glass aloft and cried "I give you Zuleika Dobson, the fairest witch that ever ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... of the oldest overland route, when the islet formed the key of the Gulf-head. It subsequently became an eyrie whence its robber knights and barons—including possibly "John, the Christian ruler of 'Akabah" (A.D. 630), and, long after him, madcap Rainald de Chatillon (A.D. 1182)—could live comfortably and sally out to plunder merchants and pilgrims. The Saracenic buildings may date, as the popular superstition has it, from the reign of Salh el-Dn (Saladin) who, in A.D. 1167, cleared his country of the Infidel ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... remedies. He was a young travelling Englishman; one of that class who are Radicals at twenty, Independents at thirty, and Conservatives at forty. He had not yet reached the intermediate stage. He saw in this madcap Radical Member one of the crude but strong expressions of advanced civilisation. He had the noble ideal of Australia as a land trodden only by the Caucasian. The Correspondent, much to our surprise, had by occasional interjections ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... did you manage it, dear? You have taken the wind out of Ada's sails and gained a feather in your cap, I can assure you. It all seems too good to be true. The queen dethroned at last!" and Winnie catching Nellie round the waist, danced her up and down the schoolroom in a regular madcap whirl. ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont |
