"Madman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he had taken, jumping across brooks and hardly glancing at surrounding objects, almost as a bull stung by a hornet might do. The countrymen he met, the market-gardeners who saw him pass, very possibly took him for a madman. ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... at the end,' he muttered. To him too it had occurred that if she was to be the King's peaceably, this madman must begone. If Cromwell wished this lover of this girl out of the way, ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... What? To fly to another city—that meant another Palmer, or the miseries of the unprotected woman of the streets, or slavery to the madman of what the French with cruel irony call a maison de joie. To ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... purloin ("convey the wise it call") a portion of the warmest of Mrs. Shelley's wardrobe, to protect some poor starving sister. One of the richer residents of Marlow told me that "they all considered him a madman." I wish he had bitten ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... but seemed to be so. Although it be somewhat incredible, that is excused before it be spoken. But there are hyperboles which will become one language, that will by no means admit another. As Eos esse P. R. exercitus, qui caelum possint perrumpere, {118a} who would say with us, but a madman? Therefore we must consider in every tongue what is used, what received. Quintilian warns us, that in no kind of translation, or metaphor, or allegory, we make a turn from what we began; as if we fetch the original of our metaphor from sea and billows, we end not in flames ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... great fool for being hoodwinked at all," said Beverly, very much at odds with her protege. "In an hour from now he will know the truth and will be howling like a madman for his freedom." ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... intemperate course of life to an unwieldy corpulence, was covered with ulcers and devoured by immense swarms of those insects who have given their names to this most loathsome disease." It is also said that the African Vandal King, the Arian Huneric, died of the disease. Antiochus, surnamed the "Madman," was also afflicted with it; and Josephus makes mention of it as afflicting the body of Herod the Great. The so-called "King Pym" died of this "morbus pedicularis," but as prejudice and passion militated against him during his ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... time, the winds, from their dark caves, Arose, and wrestled with the swelling waves, Shrieking as doth a madman when he raves; Yet still Eternity Was spoken audibly unto my hearing; While foaming billows, their huge crests up-rearing, Rushed with a furious force upon the shore, That only answered with a sullen roar; As if it hoarsely echoed what the ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... Julia inherited her mother's tendencies, and came to a like end. Agrippina, a bitter and violent woman, became the evil genius of the next reign. Of this Agrippina's children, Drusus and Caligula went mad and her daughter was the mother of the madman Nero. To me the record suggest this: that the marriage with, not the divorce of, Scribonia was a grave mistake on the part of Octavian; bringing down four generations of terible karma. He was afloat in dangerous seas at that time, and a mere boy to ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... stood up against it. A statement by a driver of the Royal Field Artillery, published in the Evening News, gives a vivid impression of how the men felt. "I have no clear notion of the order of events in the long retreat," he says; "it was a nightmare, like being seized by a madman after coming out of a serious illness and forced towards the edge of a precipice." The constant marching, the want of sleep, the restless and (as it sometimes seemed to the men) purposeless backward movement night and day drove them into a fury. The ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... Knew him for a once famous European ruler who had lost his throne in the war. A man always of unbalanced mentality, who, after living for years in exile, had been reported dead three years before. A madman who had vanished to make this last attempt upon the world, aided and abetted by the secret group of nobles who had surrounded him in the days of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... a gaunt and haggard madman he appeared. His grey hair was ragged and tangled, and his sunken eyes gleamed with a strange brightness. The villagers, who were wont at times to call him an imbecile, would have been sure they were right at this moment, as he stood motionless and dumb, staring at Alice; but to her he looked more ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... and questioned and made game of, by German soldiers posted at the ends of the streets; the quarter is full of them. I was going through the market place when a sudden tumult arose, and they say a prisoner of great importance has made his escape. Councillor Von Aert was there, shouting like a madman. But he had better have held his tongue; for as soon as he was recognized the crowd hustled and beat him, and went nigh killing him, when some men with drawn swords rescued him from their hands, and with great difficulty escorted him to the town hall. He is hated ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... Indians had repelled the zealous chaplain, as a madman; compelling him to take the route toward the settlements, however; their respect for this unfortunate class of beings, rendering them averse to his rejoining their enemies. He could, and did impart enough to Beekman to quicken his march, and to bring ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... and for acting on and asserting the right of man to think and judge for himself, a father was to have two children torn from him, in the sacred name of law and justice, by the principal adviser of a dying madman, "Defender of the Faith, by Law Established," and by us despised as the self-willed tyrant, who lost America and poured out human blood like water to gratify his lust of power. By that Lord Chancellor whose cold, impassive statue has a place in Westminster Abbey, where Byron's was refused ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... and unhealthy route of the Soudan, and, once arrived at Metemma, to inform him of our arrival there, and that he would then provide us with an escort. We did not like the letter; it seemed more the production of a madman than of a reasonable being. I select a few extracts from this letter, as they are really curiosities in their ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... who chooses the career of outlawry is either a natural fool or an innocent madman. The term outlaw has a varied meaning. A man may be an outlaw, and yet a patriot. There is the outlaw with a heart of velvet and a hand of steel; there is the outlaw who never molested the sacred sanctity of any man's home; there is the outlaw ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... mother; another, in imitation of Abraham, sacrificed her child; we hear, too, of parricides. Amidst the slaughters of civil wars, spoil and blood had accustomed the people to contemplate the most horrible scenes. One madman of the many, we find drinking a health on his knees, in the midst of a town, "to the devil! that it might be said that his family should not be extinct without doing some infamous act." A Scotchman, one Alexander Agnew, commonly called "Jock of broad ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... that man is Cromwell? Do not exaggerate your duty. In Heaven's name, my dear Athos, do not make a useless sacrifice. When I see you merely, you look like a reasonable being; when you speak, I seem to have to do with a madman. Come, Porthos, join me; say frankly, what do ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Cambyses as governor of Babylon. Although a worshipper of Ahura-Mazda and Mithra, Cambyses appears to have conciliated the priesthood. When he became king, and swept through Egypt, he was remembered as the madman who in a fit of passion slew a sacred Apis bull. It is possible, however, that he performed what he considered to be a pious act: he may have sacrificed the bull ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... ought not to be despised. Cecil, perceiving that the king viewed the matter more seriously than he had anticipated, referred him to one sentence, "for the danger is past as soon as you have burnt the letter," which he conceived must have been written by a fool or a madman, since if the danger was past as soon as the letter was destroyed, as if burning the letter could ward off the danger, the warning was of small consequence. The king connected the expression with the former sentence, "That ...
— Guy Fawkes - or A Complete History Of The Gunpowder Treason, A.D. 1605 • Thomas Lathbury
... had placed just inside the door, and by its dim light, as I looked at him, I saw the terror of a madman ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... replies, touched with their melancholy symbolism. When St. George left him it was in the hope that Olivia would consent to have him sent down the mountain, although St. George himself was half inclined to agree with Amory's "But, really, I would far rather talk with one madman with this madman's manners than to sup with uncouth sanity" and "After all, if he should murder us, probably no one could do it with greater delicacy." And Olivia had no intention of sending old Malakh back to Med. "How could one ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... Caaba," said the Emir, "thou art a madman who hugs his chain of iron as if it were of gold! Look more closely. This ring of mine would lose half its beauty were not the signet encircled and enchased with these lesser brilliants, which grace it and set it off. The central diamond is man, firm and entire, his value depending on himself alone; ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... support of his faith; for if he had looked to outward appearance, was it not almost a ridiculous thing, and like a vain fancy, for a poor inconsiderable man to go to a king with such a message, that he would dismiss so many subjects? And was it not an attempt of some madman to go about to lead so many thousands from a wicked tyrannical king, into another nation? Well, saith the Lord, "I am;" I, who give all things a being, will give a being to my promise. I will make Pharaoh hearken, and the people obey. ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... huddled into his blankets and followed the madman about with a cocked revolver, ready to shoot him if ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... discontent vague in its aims, and passionately crying out for what, if granted, it could not have used: twenty years ago any one hinting at the possibility of serious class discontent in this country would have been looked upon as a madman; in fact, the well-to-do and cultivated were quite unconscious (as many still are) that there was any class distinction in this country other than what was made by the rags and cast clothes of feudalism, which in a perfunctory manner ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... the squireens, (hobereaux) of the reign of Terror, again appear and resume their fiefs. At Toulouse, it is Barrau, a shoemaker, famous up to 1792 for his fury under Robespierre, and Desbarreaux, another madman of 1793, formerly an actor playing the parts of valet, compelled in 1795 to demand pardon of the audience on his knees on the stage, and, not obtaining it, driven out of the house, and now filling the office of cashier in the theatre and posing ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... The fourth, 'The Madman and the Lethargist' (p. 414), is an expansion of an epigram in the Greek Anthology. It is possible that it was written in Germany in 1799, and is contemporary with the epigrams published in the Morning Post in 1802, for the Greek original is quoted by Lessing in a critical ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... noticed about him; when he spoke as a madman, he talked like a man who had been fairly well educated (or sometimes, I fancied, like a young fellow who was studying to be a school-teacher); his speech was deliberate and his grammar painfully correct—far more so than I have ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... possible. But if it isn't true what can we do? If we had a dozen boats we could patrol the creeks; and that wouldn't be much good. That drunken madman was right; we haven't enough hold on this coast. They do what they like. Are ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... classes demand a plausible excuse for stage happenings. The picture of an insane husband strangling his wife and child might be accepted as the logical sequence of some startling train of events. But to enter a playhouse and watch a couple of murders for no other reason than that the murderer was a madman, is not ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... head, just plunging in the flood, "Don't do yourself a mischief," so he cried In friendly tones, appearing at my side: "'Tis all false shame: you fear to be thought mad, Not knowing that the world are just as bad. What constitutes a madman? if 'tis shown The marks are found in you and you alone, Trust me, I'll add no word to thwart your plan, But leave you free to perish like a man. The wight who drives through life with bandaged eyes, ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... own house, I contrived a device by which the man who held my fate in his hands fell on my library hearth with no one near and no sign by which to associate me with the act. Does this seem like the assertion of a madman? Go to the old chamber familiarly called "The Colonel's Own." Enter its closet, pull out its two drawers, and in the opening thus made seek for the loophole at the back, through which, if you stoop low enough, you can catch a glimpse of the library ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... have the word for its authority. Zeal without knowledge is like a mettled horse without eyes, or like a sword in a madman's hand; and there is no knowledge where there is not the word: for if they reject the word of the Lord, and act not by that, 'what wisdom is in them?' saith the prophet (Jer 8:9; Isa 8:20). Wherefore see thou have the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... sexton shook his head and murmured to himself: "It must be some madman locked in the church," but he unlocked the door, and the king rushed wildly out—on out in the street, where the moonlight fell upon him. Then suddenly he stopped and gazed at his clothes in amazement, for instead of wearing his ...
— A Child's Story Garden • Compiled by Elizabeth Heber
... belong to a church whose doctrine is passive obedience. You are not bewildered by this madman's chimeras, but can prudently estimate the value of our free ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... had slept on board, until a summons to breakfast quickened their motions; but just as the laggards entered the randevous the same horrible noise that had so startled Edward Dotey burst forth again, while one of the sailors yet lingering by the shore came rushing up, shouting like a madman,— ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... death, weaker than a bruised reed! When I woke from my swoon he was supporting me in his arms. "Now," he said, grinning down at me, "now you have at last delivered all into my hands." He left me, and I saw him go into his room and lock the door upon himself. What is it I have delivered into the madman's hands? ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... devils who'd crushed Belgium. Of course there were plenty there ready to die in the last ditch for honor and the country, but the mob was with the speakers. Quite insane with terror the mob was. And I spoke aloud to Kitchener, like a madman of a sort also, begging him to come from another world ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... free forces unsuspected, transcendental, supernatural in the deepest sense; forces which we can no more stop, by shrieks at their absurdity, from incarnating themselves in actual blood, and misery, and horror, than we can control the madman in his paroxysm by telling him that he is a madman. And so the fair vision of the student is buried once more in rack and hail and driving storm; and, like Daniel of old when rejoicing over the coming restoration of his people, he sees beyond ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley
... rivals—each was armed. We drew our knives—threw ourselves one upon the other, and Caradec fell from his horse, pierced through the body. To tell you what I felt when I saw him, bleeding and writhing in agony, would be impossible; I spurred my horse, and darted through the forest like a madman. ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... imprecations, start breaking furniture, smashing china and glass. From the moment he opened the private door and while ascending the twenty-eight steps of a winding staircase, giving access to the corridor on which his room opened, he went through a horrible and humiliating scene in which an infuriated madman with blood-shot eyes and a foaming mouth played inconceivable havoc with everything inanimate that may be found in a well-appointed dining-room. When he opened the door of his apartment the fit was over, and his bodily fatigue was so great that he had to catch at the backs of the chairs ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... himself in his way of living than he did, he would have made known the greatness of his intellect in such a way that he would have been revered, whereas, by reason of his uncouth ways, he was rather held to be a madman, although in the end he did no harm save to himself alone, while his works were beneficial and useful to his art. For which reason every good intellect and every excellent craftsman should always be taught, from such an example, to keep his eyes ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... started through the forest as wildly as any madman, now muttering to himself and now laughing aloud and making the forest echo with Helen's name. When he stopped again he was far away from the path, in a desolate spot, but tho he was staring around him, he saw no more than before. Trembling had seized his limbs, and he sank down ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... thing to be so in France. An Emma Goldman there would be an object of respect. The prime minister of France was generally regarded as an anarchist before he went into office. A man of the type of Herve would be deemed a madman here. Even a man as little radical as Jaures would be considered a terrible social danger in America and could not conceivably have the power he exerts in France, where they have a respect ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... to urge him. When Palamedes arrived at Ithaca Ulysses pretended to be mad. He yoked an ass and an ox together to the plough and began to sow salt. Palamedes, to try him, placed the infant Telemachus before the plough, whereupon the father turned the plough aside, showing plainly that he was no madman, and after that could no longer refuse to fulfil his promise. Being now himself gained for the undertaking, he lent his aid to bring in other reluctant chiefs, especially Achilles. This hero was the son of that Thetis at whose marriage the apple of ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... occurred to make such a madman of him?" the girl queried wonderingly. "He acted more like a demon ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... going to tell you why," he answered. "Because when Pelham heard you laugh last night he was like a madman. He believed that it was the voice of Phyllis Poynton. And I—I—when I saw you, I also felt that miracles were ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... circumstances than to pour out abuse, occasionally varied by ridicule, on the Unionist leaders, of which Sir Edward Carson came in for the most generous portion. He was by turns everything that was bad, dangerous, and absurd, from Mephistopheles to a madman. "F.C.G." summarised the Balmoral meeting pictorially in a Westminster Gazette cartoon as a costermonger's donkey-cart in which Carson, Londonderry, and Bonar Law, refreshed by "Orangeade," took "an Easter Jaunt in Ulster," and other caricaturists used their pencils ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... no calculation whatever can be made. In the one case the reader is utterly at the mercy of the poet respecting what imagery or diction he may choose to connect with the passion." But is this a poet, of whom a poet is speaking? No surely! rather of a fool or madman: or at best of a vain or ignorant phantast! And might not brains so wild and so deficient make just the same havoc with rhymes and metres, as they are supposed to effect with modes and figures of speech? How is the reader at the mercy of such men? If he continue to read their nonsense, is it not ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... and the buzzard's hoarse croak, a caracara adds its shrill note; the fiend-like chorus further strengthened by the scream of the white-headed eagle—for all the world like the filing of a frame saw, and not unlike the wild, unmeaning laughter of a madman. ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... The engine now announced the close vicinity of the final station-house by one last and horrible scream, in which there seemed to be distinguishable every kind of wailing and woe, and bitter fierceness of wrath, all mixed up with the wild laughter of a devil or a madman. Throughout our journey, at every stopping-place, Apollyon had exercised his ingenuity in screwing the most abominable sounds out of the whistle of the steam-engine; but in this closing effort he outdid himself and created an infernal uproar, which, besides disturbing the peaceful inhabitants ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the two men who watched the destruction of La Liberte? And, above all, who is this man who plans, alone and unaided, the destruction of our navy? What is his purpose? Whence did he come? Whither has he gone? Is he a madman—an anarchist?" Delcasse ran his fingers through his hair with a despairing gesture. "He astounds me!" he added. "My brain falters at thought of such ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... explain. He went to his own room, and gave instructions that he was not to be disturbed. Once alone, his mind became active, and he shook himself free from his fear. Wealth was within his grasp. That Martin had run away and left him did not shake his belief. Martin was a madman, not responsible for his actions from one moment to another, but in his trance he had seen this treasure, therefore it was there, Sir John argued. More, the entrance to it lay behind the Nun's hard couch; only a stone slab blocked the entrance. Greed took the place of fear, and it may be that ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... be to have the cavalier's right to challenge a noble," said old Colonna, "I cannot conjecture. Will Rome never grow weary of this madman?" ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... why began to study the mystery of the moving clouds and to form his storm theories. At last he asked of Congress an appropriation of five thousand dollars a year for five years, but he was met with jibes and ridicule. Senator Preston, of South Carolina, said Espy was a madman, too dangerous to be at large, and the Senator would vote a special appropriation for a prison in which to confine him. Espy was in the Senate gallery at the time. Wounded to the quick, he left the Capital and went ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... be laid hold of by a madman, if madman he be," said Lorenzo Tornabuoni, in polite excuse of Tito, "but perhaps he is only a ruffian. We shall hear. I think we must see if we have authority enough to stop this disturbance between our people and your ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... Like a madman he worked: so that even from where I stood I could hear his breath coming hard and fast. At length, with one last glance around, he knelt down and disappeared from my view. My ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... walk down-stairs without being called back. I sallied forth into the street, but no clerk was sent after me, nor did the publisher call after me from the drawing-room window. I have been told since, that he considered me either a madman or a fool. I leave you to judge how much he was in the wrong ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... Our gracious Emperor Tiberius lives like a madman on Capri, and is pummelled by his nephew Caligula, if the offspring of incest can be called a nephew. And now he is to become a god. ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... it?" he cried, wheeling round on his wife. "The son you were so wild about sending to College has been flung in disgrace from its door! That's what it is!" He swept from the house like a madman. ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... respecting Vigilantius, whose zealous and persevering opposition to the worship of saints, images, and relics, &c., had greatly provoked the irascible monk of Bethlehem. "I saw (says Jerome) a short time ago that monster Vigilantius. I would fain have bound this madman by passages of Holy Writ, as Hippocrates advises to confine maniacs with bonds; but he has departed, he has withdrawn, he has hurried away, he has escaped, and from the space between the Alps, where Cottius reigned,[B] and the waves of the Adriatic, his cries have reached me. Oh, ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... he said disgustedly. "Who does he think I am, anyway? Some crazy irresponsible madman who hasn't got enough brains to stay ...
— Larson's Luck • Gerald Vance
... subject, sir!" said Tyrrel. "Hitherto I have disputed my most important rights—rights which involved my rank in society, my fortune, the honour of my mother—with something like composure; but do not say more on the topic you have touched upon, unless you would have before you a madman!—Is it possible for you, sir, to have heard even the outline of this story, and to imagine that I can ever reflect on the cold-blooded and most inhuman stratagem, which this friend of yours prepared for two unfortunates, without"—He started up, and walked ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... mystery, what is beyond the world, exercises a curious fascination over them. Everywhere you will meet with traces of it, and I have in another chapter told some of the principal phases of these. But the religion has kept itself pure. No hysteric visions, no madman's dreams, no clever conjurer's tricks, have ever shed a tawdry glory on the monkhood of the Buddha. Amid all the superstition round about them they have remained pure, as they have from passion and desire. Here in the far East, the very home, we think, of the ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... thought Morris; and the next moment, seizing his hat, he fled from his place of business like a madman. Three streets away he stopped and groaned. "Lord! I should have borrowed from the manager!" he cried. "But it's too late now; it would look dicky to go back; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... regard him as a miracle of conceit and assurance rather than as a prophet; and that his commonplaces about "olive leaves," "calumets," "universal brotherhood," "fatherland," etc., have no more influence than the maudlin rigmarole of the madman whose preternatural force is lost in senility. It is time for Elihu Burritt to go back to his shop: the ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... Twelve had our way there would be just such another roof kept always over Earth. For the slavering madman has left a many like him clamoring and spewing about the churches that were named for us Twelve, and in the pulpits of the churches that were named for us: and we find it embarrassing. It is the ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... had given me the clue: "He smashed Rindy's Toys." Out of the context it sounded like the work of a madman. Now, having encountered Evarin's workshop, it ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... this intention as the perverse delirium of an unbridled sensuality. It was certainly the gross act of a madman, but there was perhaps more politics in his madness than perversity; for it was an attempt to introduce into Rome the dynastic marriages between brothers and sisters which had been the constant tradition ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... is that we are commanded by a madman. Nothing else can account for the extraordinary vagaries of Captain Craigie. It is fortunate that I have kept this journal of our voyage, as it will serve to justify us in case we have to put him under any sort of restraint, a step which I should only consent ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... down and give heed to his discourse. The chauffeur listened with a grin, glancing guardedly at Deering, who stared grimly ahead with an unlighted cigar in his mouth. He was not to be disturbed in his meditations upon the blackness of the world by the idiotic prattle of a madman. For half an hour Hood had been describing his adventures with a Dublin University man, whose humor he pronounced the keenest and most satisfying he had ever known. He had gathered from this person an immense fund of lore ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... Brethren of Christ, were a terror to Bird, in their visits, when they came by day to receive the charity which no one denies them; he felt himself bound to keep a watchful eye on this old Yankee, who was either a rascal or a madman, and perhaps both, and to see that no harm came to him; and when he heard the tramps prowling about at night, and feeling for the alms that kind people leave out-doors for them, he could not sleep. The old hunter neglected his wild-beast ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... him, the incident was to the moment opportune. If ever a man was in the mood for war, it was the big, square-jawed pioneer. He was reckless and desperate for the first time in his life, and he joined with Burr against the room, with the abandon of a madman. ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... King pronounced it Taete) for? What to us was this pinch of tobacco seeds in the middle of the ocean? What is the use of lodging our honour four thousand leagues away in the box of a sentry insulted by a savage and a madman? Upon the whole there is something laughable about it. When all is said and done it is a small matter and nothing big will come of it. Sir Robert Peel has spoken thoughtlessly. He has acted with schoolboy foolishness. ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... model, unnoticed by Brent, now fluttered to the floor the letter he had been writing. But the madman paid no attention to that now as it sifted through the air and fluttered ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... the madman after?" began the King, and broke off with a sharp exclamation as his eyes fell on Margery, who had picked up her skirts and was running after Mark. She was perhaps a hundred yards behind him when the cannon roared and, almost in the entrance of the gap, he flung ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... forgotten; the vindictiveness of a fiend shone in his dilated eyeballs, and, with a yell of fury, he cast the goblet into the air, crying out that the wine boiled like the bowl of Pluto. He was writhing in one of those paroxysms of rage, which justified posterity in regarding him as a madman. The howling of Tiberius resounded among the verdure, as the rattle of a snake might do when it raises its deadly crest from its lair among the flowers. Quick as thought at the first sound of those inexorable accents, the grove was thronged with the revellers. They jostled each other ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... to come back?" asked the Major, sadly. "How can I, how can anybody, prevail with a man—a madman I had almost said!—who could leave you at the moment when you first opened your eyes on him? I saw Eustace alone in the next room while the doctor was in attendance on you. I tried to shake his obstinate ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... Fortunately for him, he knew more than it was prudent to have divulged in Vienna, and his enemies were also those of Wallenstein. A defeat might have been forgiven in Vienna, but this disappointment of their hopes they could not pardon. "What should I have done with this madman?" he writes, with a malicious sneer, to the minister who called him to account for this unseasonable magnanimity. "Would to Heaven the enemy had no generals but such as he. At the head of the Swedish army, he will render us much better service than ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... I shall see no more this beautiful sky, these green lawns, these sparkling waters; I shall never again breathe the balmy air of the spring! Madman that I was! I might have enjoyed for twenty-five years to come these blessings God has showered on all, blessings whose worth I knew not, and of which I am beginning to know the value. I have worn out my days, I have sacrificed my life ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... before an old and very common-looking house. In the second story one could see a light burning. The madman motioned Hiram to enter. The millionnaire was glad to discover that he was so near the end of his journey, and in a perfectly respectable neighborhood. Not doubting that he would find the apartment occupied, and quite sure there were inhabitants in the other part of the house, he proceeded ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... "Madman!" I cried, and next moment was on my feet; but, with a sound that was neither a groan nor a scream, and yet something of both, he leapt into the thickest part of the underbrush, and made off. And standing there, dazed by the suddenness of it all, I heard the ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... went down when he escaped from the British dragoons at Horseneck. He didn't go down the steps at all, but went zigzag from the top to the bottom of the hill, very near them. I stood just here listening to the firing above, when I saw the general rushing down the hill like a madman, as he seemed, for you see it is very steep. As he flew past me on his powerful bay horse, all bespattered with mud, I heard him cursing the British, who had pursued him to the brow of the precipice, but ...
— Harper's Young People, January 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... tore at him. Below the sun-mottled river glided endlessly on in sylvan peace. The other shore looked better. There the wind-bent shag of trees was greener save when, with a hint of rain, the breeze turned up an under-leaf ripple of silver. He met no one; no one but a madman, he reflected, would explore the tangled banks of ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... motives, the restraining fears to the wicked, and the animating hopes to the righteous, which the gospel tenders; and he has nothing to oppose to its claims but the weakness and uncertainty of his doubts. Franklin was a philosopher, but Paine was a madman. The former doubted, but never dogmatized—never opposed the gospel, but always discountenanced and discouraged the infidel; the latter gave to his doubts the authority of oracles, and madly attempted to silence the Christian's artillery ...
— The Christian Foundation, May, 1880
... trying to concentrate in the midst of bedlam. The campaign to elect Tyndall had to start now. They labored to record a work-schedule, listing names, outlining telegrams, drinking coffee, as Dan swore at his dead cigar like old times once again, and grinned like a madman as the plans ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse
... Harwood, Norwood, Sherrard and Sherratt (Sherwood). But, in considering the frequency of the simple Wood, it must be remembered that we find people described as le wode, i.e. mad (cf. Ger. Wut, frenzy), and that mad and madman are ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... pleasant, and which has such skilled hands to guide its pleasures that the word customary fails entirely to describe them." He paused for a moment, and a man near me asked what he was talking about, but Webb answered quickly that he was a hopeless madman, and that the ceremonies would be the real joke. "That I, a freshman," he continued, "should be elected President of this Society fills me with gratitude and even dismay, for I fear that the duties of so distinguished an office will be but inadequately performed during the coming ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... pale, 'Heaven knows that ye say right, and that nevermore shall I have ease after this. But no more should I have ease, but rather more shame and remorse, if I should do what my heart bids me do. I gave my promise to mine uncle, madman that I was, and I must perform it, and suffer. But I could slay myself to think that ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... and if any harm come to a lock of her hair, I tell you that there is not a living soul within this portcullis who will not die a death of torture. Fools, will you gasp out your lives upon the rack, or writhe in boiling oil, at the bidding of this madman?" ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... my semblance to your eyes, Is an imposter in a king's disguise. Do you not know me? does no voice within Answer my cry, and say we are akin?" The Pope in silence, but with troubled mien, Gazed at the Angel's countenance serene; The Emperor, laughing, said, "It is strange sport To keep a madman for thy Fool at court!" And the poor, baffled Jester in disgrace Was hustled back among ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... because the cheerfulness of their society had buoyed up his spirit in their presence, did it now suffer depression. The awful presentiment began to haunt him that he would not find the girl that night, that he had in grim reality "lost her." If this were the case, what a fool, what a madman, he had been to let go the only aid within his reach! He stopped his rowing for a minute, and almost thought of turning to call the surveying party back again. But no, Sissy might be—in all probability was—already in the house; in that case what folly to ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... swung the big file about him like a madman. He felt with frenzied pleasure, how he would strike—strike down the whole smithy one by one until justice was done him. Wait a little, he had only begun yet—a hammer was ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... side for ever. The offer of liberty to men who have spent a thousand years under despotism, is irresistible. Light may blind, but who loves utter darkness? The soldier may melt down like the rest; he is a man, and may be a madman like the rest; he, too, is one ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... of Italy proved too intense, too frenzied and unbalanced. Rienzi established a republic in Rome and talked of the restoration of the city's ancient rule. But he governed like a madman or an inflated fool, and was slain in a riot of the streets.[10] Scarce one of the famous cities succeeded in retaining its republican form. Milan became a duchy. Florence fell under the sway of the Medici. In Venice a few rich families seized all authority, and while the fame and territory of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... ill-feeling toward me. How long it had existed I do not know. I cannot imagine why it was there. I was forced to think, when I considered the thing in those awful days after his death, that it was a case of a madman's delusion, that he believed me to be plotting against him, as they so often do. Some such insane conviction must have been at the root of it. But who can sound the abysses of a lunatic's fancy? Can you imagine the state of mind in which a man dooms himself to death with the object ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... therefore, who, if we will fall for fear of men, is ready to run upon us and devour us. And is it wisdom, then, to think so much upon the Turks that we forget the devil? What a madman would he be who, when a lion were about to devour him, would vouchsafe to regard the biting of a little fisting cur? Therefore, when he roareth out upon us by the threats of mortal men, let us tell ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... Baird, and he hurled himself across the table like a madman. "No! You are not! No, Latimer! ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... strength. I called to Melannie to keep away from us, but afraid for my safety, and fearless of her own, she hurried to my assistance. "Get my knife," I whispered, for I was unable to draw it myself from its sheath by my side. The brave girl stooped to do my bidding, when the madman, at the same moment, wrenched his arm free and struck her. Melannie fell with a low moan upon the thwart beside me, and Van Luck, snatching the bag of gems from where it hung at her girdle, retreated with his ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... perceive our masters may throw their caps at their money: these debts may well be called desperate ones, for a madman owes 'em. ...
— The Life of Timon of Athens • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... of the death of President Lincoln was appointed for illuminations and rejoicings on the surrender of Lee. There is no intelligence of the death of Mr. Seward or his son. It was a dastardly deed—surely the act of a madman. ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... the purer air of the dark mountaintop. There he had seen many from his own little cure of souls who were shaken by the madman's fervour as he had never been able to move them by precept or example. There he, too, had seen, with sight borrowed from the eyes of the enthusiast, the enthusiast's Lord, seen Him the more readily because there had been times in his life when he had not needed another to show him the loveliness ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... fell beneath him, but I still had my right arm tightly clasped around him, and I hugged him to me with all the strength that I could master. With Durnief, it was a struggle for life, liberty, and everything that he possessed, and he fought with all the desperation of a madman. With me, it was life, and the woman I loved, and I fought coolly, knowing that he could not get away from me, believing that I could tire him out, and satisfied that I could prevent him from securing his sword again. He managed to wrench his hand from my grasp, and he struck me a savage ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... "A madman, or not far off it. End this horrible life: send him away. It's killing me, and as for you, if you were sane enough to understand what you're doing, you would blow your ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... seizing me with one hand by the throat while with the other he aimed blow after blow at me with his terrible knife. I defended myself as well as I could, monsieur, fighting bravely for my life; but what can one do against a madman? The captain seemed to possess the strength of twenty men; he forced me irresistibly back against the bulkhead, and then drove his knife through my arm. Believing that he had killed me, I relaxed my hold upon him; whereupon ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... playmates!" she cried, as they started. Her voice broke, pathetically. He did not reply. He was too furiously angry to trust himself in conversation at that moment, and he rode like a madman, knowing that she could ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... by another madman, who was in an opposite cell; and raising himself up from an old mat, whereon he had thrown himself stark naked, he demanded aloud, who it was that was going away ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... him. And in the first place, you will be so good as to unsay that story about selling his head, which if true I take to be good evidence that this harpooneer is stark mad, and I've no idea of sleeping with a madman; and you, sir, YOU I mean, landlord, YOU, sir, by trying to induce me to do so knowingly, would thereby render yourself ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... did the thief hear this than he sprang like a madman from the roof, and rushing into the kitchen, dragged off from the petsch the drunken swine. He and his brother then lugged her away from the house, and when they had got to some distance, they tied her feet together, and thrusting a stick ...
— The Story of Tim • Anonymous
... Parisian committee discussed with M. Rollon the new aspect of the case. "Had they resuscitated a madman? Had the revivification produced some disorder of the nervous system? Had the abuse of wine and other drinkables during the first repast caused a delirium? What an interesting autopsy it would be, if they could dissect M. Fougas at the ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... and cried,—"Hold! hold! What are you doing, madman? Spurn you more wealth than can be told, The fowl that lays the eggs of gold, Because ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... thoughts. Heed not these lying rumors. Trust in the magnanimity of Aurelian. We make the virtue we believe in. Let it not reach his ears that you have doubted him. I can see no reason why he should desire to disturb the harmony that has so long reigned—and Aurelian is no madman. What could he gain by a warlike expedition, which a few words could not gain? Noble Piso, if your great emperor would but speak before he acts—if indeed any purpose like that which is attributed to him has entered his mind—a world of evil, and suffering, ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... whither shall I fly? Will she not be here anon? Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard her footstep on the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart? Madman!"—here he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his soul—"Madman! I tell you that she now stands without ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... take that tone..." he said with a ridiculous affectation of bravado, and did not complete his sentence. His evasion was, perhaps, the best that he could have managed in the circumstances. It was so obvious that only the least further incentive was required to make me an irresponsible madman. And ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... never heard any thing so monstrously absurd as the recall of this gallant and high minded-man. The Duke of Wellington said he would be worse than mad if he became premier. He is therefore a self-convicted madman! And yet, gracious Heaven! he continues the insane pilot, who directs our almost tottering state." But if Mr. O'Connell had known the duke's intentions he would not have been thus abusive. On receiving his recall the Marquis of Anglesea is said to have divined immediately the true reason ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... madman in pursuit of me, and he threatens my life. An hour ago he got me to swear solemnly, and to put my hand to the oath, that I would renounce all pretensions to you, and never even speak to you again. I was a poltroon to submit to it. I know that well enough, and you cannot despise me more than ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... along the highroad became a journey, where they sat grimly, with set teeth, listening to the curses of a madman, and bowing their heads to escape having them cut off repeatedly by the ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... to-day, though some ancient fittings of inestimable value have irreparably perished, is in some ways not less magnificent, and is certainly more complete, than its imperfect predecessor. One takes comfort, again, in the thought of York Minster in the conflagration caused by the single madman Martin in 1829, and of the collapse of the blazing ceilings in nave and chancel, whilst the great gallery of painted glass, by some odd miracle, escaped. Is it too much to hope that this devil's work of a million madmen at Dixmude or ...
— Beautiful Europe - Belgium • Joseph E. Morris
... my ears heard the sentence, I could not believe it would be carried out. The firing party, the chair, the bandage. Oh, God! spare me these awful thoughts. To think of your breasts lacerated by the——Oh! this is unendurable! Stop, madman that I am! ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... not hear from Carew or the Duke Of Suffolk, and till then I should not move. The Duke hath gone to Leicester; Carew stirs In Devon: that fine porcelain Courtenay, Save that he fears he might be crack'd in using, (I have known a semi-madman in my time So fancy-ridd'n) ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... Guest wildly. "I beg your pardon, Mal. I'm excited, too. I'm awfully sorry, though, old man. But tell me," he cried, changing his manner. "Those letters—that glass? Great Heavens! You were never going to be such a madman, such an idiot, as to—Oh, say it was ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... I should be a madman if I were. But why do you not finish the argument which proves that gold and silver and other things which seem to be wealth are not real wealth? For I have been exceedingly delighted to hear the discourses which you have ...
— Eryxias • An Imitator of Plato
... offered Rousseau shelter, and so did Voltaire; but each of them disliked his work as warmly as the other. They did not understand one who, if he wrote with an eloquence that touched all hearts, repulsed friends and provoked enemies like a madman or a savage. The very language of Rousseau was to Voltaire as an unknown tongue, for it was the language of reason clothing the births of passionate sensation. Emile only wearied him, though there were perhaps fifty pages of it which he would have had ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... carried all before him, and he would start up to rush to the side of the wife he loved, to clasp her to his heart, and defy earth and Hades to part them. Sometimes anger held the day, and he would pace up and down like a madman, raging at her, at himself, at Parmalee, at ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... his mouth; and he did other the like actions before the king of Gath, which might make him believe that they proceeded from such a distemper. Accordingly the king was very angry at his servants that they had brought him a madman, and he gave orders that they should eject David immediately ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... as impossible to fathom, as it is difficult to account for the actions of a madman, he ordered that the Declaration of Indulgence, an unconstitutional act, should be read publicly from all the pulpits in the kingdom. The London clergy, the most respectable and influential in the realm, made up their minds to disregard the order, and the bishops ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... pride of the preceding evening was sunk into the deepest dejection; "and does she not fly as I approach her? can she patiently bear in her sight one so strange, so fiery, so inconsistent? But she is too wise to resent the ravings of a madman;— and who, under the influence of a passion at once hopeless and violent, can boast, but at intervals, full ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... key of mine unlocks One lock of one gate wherethrough Heaven's glory is freed. And I stand and I hold my breath, daylong, yearlong, Out of comfort and easy dreaming evermore starting awake, — Yearning beyond all sanity for some echo of that Song Of Songs that was sung to the soul of the madman, Blake! ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... were deep and pathless, and only an Indian could find and keep a trail by night. To challenge the wilderness; to strike blindly at the forest, now here, now there; to dare all, and know that it was hopeless daring,—a madman might do this for love. But it was only Haward's fancy that had been touched, and if he lacked not courage, neither did he lack a certain cool good sense which divided for him the possible from that which was impossible, and ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... cab and swore savagely and loudly. The intimidated cabman, believing these demonstrations designed to urge him to a greater speed, performed feats of driving calculated to jeopardize his license. But still the savage passenger stamped and cursed, so that the cabby began to believe that a madman ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... while being pulled ashore for my excursion inland, I saw Macao on the beach, crying, waving and behaving like a madman. He called out that Bourbaki was dead, and that we must come to the village. I took him into the boat and we returned to the cutter. Macao was trembling all over, uttering wild curses, sighing and sobbing like a child. Between the fingers of his left hand he frantically grasped his cartridges, and ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... with emotions akin to mine, they grew ever more dark, angry, and scornful. Instead of enthusiasm, the ladies showed only aversion and dread, while the men interrupted me with shouts of reprobation and contempt. "Madman!" "Pestilent fellow!" "Fanatic!" "Enemy of society!" were some of their cries, and the one who had before taken his eyeglass to me exclaimed, "He says we are to have no more ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... the guide, with a shrug of his shoulder. "Who knows? No sooner does he reach one town than he is off for another. It is his life, the madman, to bore a hole through this world of Christ. Just now we were headed for the ranch of Dom Francisco. After that, who knows? But he pays, friend. Gold oozes from him like matter ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain |
