"Madness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gladness in his gladness, when he's glad, There is sadness in his sadness, when he's sad; But the gladness in his gladness, Nor the sadness in his sadness, Isn't a marker to his madness when ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... figure of despair, she leaned against the wall to support the faintness that had so suddenly stolen the strength from her limbs, trying desperately to think of some way to save her father from this madness. She was sure he would bungle it and be caught eventually, and she was equally sure he would never let himself be taken alive. Her helplessness groped for some way out. There must be some road of escape from this horrible situation, and as she sought blindly ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... filled with bitterness and rebellion, bitterness against the pioneering madness which had scattered our family, and rebellion toward my father who had kept my mother always on the border, working like a slave long after the time when she should have been taking her ease. Above all, I ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... security as to see twenty or thirty Catholic gentlemen in Parliament, looked upon by all the Catholics as the fair and proper organ of their party. I should have thought it the height of good fortune that such a wish existed on their part, and the very essence of madness and ignorance to reject it. Can you murder the Catholics? Can you neglect them? They are too numerous for both these expedients. What remains to be done is obvious to every human being—but to that man who, instead of being a Methodist preacher, is, for the curse of us and our ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... these poems, Golias calls down every kind of misery, spiritual and temporal, upon the man who has stolen his purse. He hopes he may die of fever and madness, and be joined to Judas in hell. One of the most amusing pieces is a consultation held among the priests, on account of the Pope having ordered them to dismiss their women-servants. They finally come to the conclusion that parish ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... think me mad!" he said. "Perhaps I am,—but if so, it is the madness of love that has seized me. Love! ... it is a passion I have never known before.. I have used it as a mere thread whereon to string madrigals. a background of uncertain tint serving to show off ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... his wife.) What have we to do with blessings or cursings? The Chisera is unsound in her mind. I have seen her dancing in the hills sometimes where I went to gather eagle's feathers for my arrows, and her madness has made ...
— The Arrow-Maker - A Drama in Three Acts • Mary Austin
... inspire distrust. You have accepted an exalted post, and I thank you for so doing. You know, better than others, that force and power are needed to make the happiness of a great nation. Save France from her own madness, and you will fulfil the desire of my heart; restore her king, and future generations will bless your memory. If you doubt my gratitude, choose your own place, determine the future of your friends. As for my principles, I am a Frenchman, clement ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... necessity abide in God; if we fall out of the hands of his mercy, we fall into the hands of His justice. We must ever abide in Him. What madness then is it to wish not to be with Him, without whom thou canst ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... myself free. And I know that you feel with me, Janet. The world may call us over-scrupulous; but I set your judgment higher than that of the world. And all I can say about Margaret is that I fell into a passing fit of madness, and cared for nothing but what my fancy dictated; and that now I am sane—clothed in my right mind, so to speak—I am disgusted with myself for my folly. Lady Caroline and her daughter should have taken higher ground. They were right ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... is divinest sense To a discerning eye; Much sense the starkest madness. 'T is the majority In this, as all, prevails. Assent, and you are sane; Demur, — you're straightway dangerous, And handled with ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... rapidly, its lights soon vanished from sight, and a minute later there was no sound of it, as though everything had conspired together to end as quickly as possible that sweet delirium, that madness. Left alone on the platform, and gazing into the dark distance, Gurov listened to the chirrup of the grasshoppers and the hum of the telegraph wires, feeling as though he had only just waked up. And he thought, musing, that there had been another episode or adventure in his life, ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... acted spontaneously, yet there was method in his madness. By running across to the other side of the ship there was little chance of the boats being able to pick him up ere he sank for the last time. Not until he rose to the surface did he realize his difficulty. He was a strong swimmer, and the natural instinct ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... for such fears. It seemed madness even to think of Italian poisons, of the Cencis or the Borgias in the midst of this ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... exclaimed, with more than a touch of contempt in her voice. "As if a clever man-of-the-world like Hugo Le Geyt would run away by rail, or start off to the Continent! Every Englishman is noticeable on the Continent. It would be sheer madness!" ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... ruby ring into the sea. I wish I could say that I'd like you to be just so far Pritchard as not to have any desire for the stage; but I somehow don't dare even say that. You see, I couldn't risk losing any particle of Marley other than the stage-madness." ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... leaping of the sea, The mouthing of his madness to the moon, The seething of his endless sorcery, His prophecy no power can attune, Swept over me as, on the sounding prow Of a great ship that steered into the stars, I stood and felt the awe upon my brow Of death and destiny and all ...
— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice
... life passed peacefully, without any other events than my terrible fits of temper, which upset the whole pension and always left me in the infirmary for two or three days. These outbursts of temper were like attacks of madness. ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... little Clementine, so reasonable, so obedient, so happy in the prospect of marrying Leon Renault, sacrificing, all at once, her affections, her happiness, and almost her duty, to the caprice of an interloper. M. Nibor declared that it was madness. As for Leon, he would have butted his head into all the walls, if his mother had not ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... changes he set sail from Africa, and offered to serve under Cinna, who gladly accepted his proposal, and named him Proconsul; but Marius refused all marks of honor. The sufferings and privations he had endured had exasperated his proud and haughty spirit almost to madness, and nothing but the blood of his enemies could appease his resentment. He continued to wear a mean and humble dress, and his hair and beard had remained unshorn from the day he had been driven out of Rome. After joining Cinna, Marius prosecuted the war with great vigor. He first captured the ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... gladness That thy brain must know, Such harmonious madness From my lips would flow, The world should listen then, as ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... of Crete, the Minotaur. The monster beholding them gnawed himself for rage; and on their persisting to advance, began plunging like a bull when he is stricken by the knife of the butcher. They succeeded, however, in entering the fissure before he recovered sufficiently from his madness to run at them; and at the foot of the descent, came to a river of boiling blood, on the strand of which ran thousands of Centaurs armed with bows and arrows. In the blood, more or less deep according to the amount of the crime, and shrieking as they boiled, were the souls of ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... just capering about without any special object," mused Tom, but it was not long after this that they learned to their dismay, that the colored man had had a method in his madness. ...
— Tom Swift Among The Diamond Makers - or The Secret of Phantom Mountain • Victor Appleton
... have known that the spring of imagination and joy had been touched in the girl and merely the madness of youth and the legitimate yearning for expression moved her! But Theodora did not understand and ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... at him, in dumb sorrowful appeal. She closed the ivory fan, clasping her hands upon it. The unquestioning finality of her patient silence, goaded Jim Airth to madness, and let loose the torrent of his fierce wild protest against this inevitable—this ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... forced from such their desired inclinations; for they parted themselves into different bodies, and lay in wait up and down the country, and plundered the houses of the great men, and slew the men themselves, and set the villages on fire; and this till all Judea was filled with the effects of their madness. And thus the flame was every day more and more blown up, till it ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... madness, for I can see that to those who already believe in change of species, these facts will modify to a certain extent the whole view of Hybridity. (A letter to Dr. Gray (July, 1862) bears on this point: "A few days ago I made an observation which has surprised me more than it ought to do—it will have ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... saw himself as he might be, strong, helpful, kindly. The night crept on, as this one image slowly evolved itself from the crowd of other thoughts and stood triumphant. He looked at it. As he might be! What wonder, if it blinded him to delirium,—the madness that underlies all revolution, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... speculations, relating to the longitude and other things, brought on mental troubles, which were intensified by bankruptcy, about 1718. He was afterwards removed from Dublin to his home at Trim, where he rallied; but in a few years his madness returned, and he ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... the signal grace by which God, foiling the designs of a bad woman, Already with her dagger in your breast, He chose, and saved you from amid the carnage. You have not yet eluded all her madness: With the same passion she has ever hungered To lose in you the last child of her son, Her cruelty is fixed to reach your death; Under your name assumed, she hunts you still. But 'neath your standard I have now arranged A people prompt to vengeance ...
— Athaliah • J. Donkersley
... fox and not the cow. Should the most valuable fox that runs be called a black-fox, or a silver-fox? What is the highest price ever paid for a fox-skin? Do not try to get to the bottom of these two innocent-looking demands. That way madness lies. "How old is Ann?" pales before this. Canadian foxes present themselves patriotically in red, white, and blue, and there are also black foxes and silver ones. The black-fox is only less elusive than the black tulip or the blue rose, and yet he inhabits the same ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... referred to the writer's; described with much minuteness a strange headache which had attacked Mrs. Cox, together with a long list of the remedies prescribed and the effects of each, and wound up in an out-of-the-way corner, in a vein of cheery optimism which reduced both readers to the verge of madness. ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... yards away but the cloud was drifting in again and I dropped down for a shot. The hunters were running up the slope, frantically waving for me to come on, thinking it madness to shoot at that distance. I could just see the gray form through the sights and the first two shots spattered the loose rock about a foot low. For the third I got a dead rest over a stone and as the crash of the little Mannlicher echoed up the gorge, the goral threw itself into ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... there," said Loki. He watched Thor go up the hillside to Grid's cave. He waited until he saw Thor come back down the hillside and go toward Gerrioed's dwelling. He watched Thor go into the house where, as he thought, death awaited him. Then in a madness for what he had done, Loki, with his head drawn down on his shoulders, started running like a ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum
... moment, dreading conversation lest his tongue should betray him, listening ever for the name of Yusef to strike upon his ears. Despair kept him company at times, and fear always. But from the sharp pangs of these emotions a sort of madness was begotten in him, a frenzy of obstinacy, a belief fanatical as the dark religion of those amongst whom he moved, that he could not now fail and the world go on, that there could be no injustice in the whole scheme ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... amused Jack. "There may be a method in Toby's seeming madness. Remember the old story of the doctor who, being called in to prescribe for an old gentleman addicted to much dram drinking, put him on a strict allowance of one drink a day, which was to be taken when he sent ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton
... with such a sea running was sheer madness, as experience has taught us. What was I to do? The destroyer might have seen ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... bedroom," she replied. "I met them pushing him along the corridor—it was horrible! Grundt won't let him out of his sight. Oh, it was madness to have come. If only I could have ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... written were separated but by a few inches of marble from those which guarded the secrets of her councils, or confined the victims of her policy. And when in her last hours she threw off all shame and all restraint, and the great square of the city became filled with the madness of the whole earth, be it remembered how much her sin was greater, because it was done in the face of the House of God, burning with the letters of His Law. Mountebank and masker laughed their laugh, and went their way; and a silence has followed them, ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... Sometimes the Church has commanded the duel, sometimes she has anathematized it. The partisans and the enemies of Aristotle have each been excommunicated in their turn, as have those who wore long hair and those who wore short. In this world we have perfect law only to rule a species of madness called gaming. The rules of gaming are the only ones which admit neither exception, relaxation, variety nor tyranny. A man who has been a lackey, if he play at lansquenet with kings, is paid without difficulty if he win; everywhere else the law is a sword with which the stronger cut ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... If misery and madness abound in stage life, so also does an indomitable cheerfulness, always at least a cheerful countenance. Dr. Doran's book abounds, as might be expected, with admirable impromptus and the like; one might collect a large posy of them. Foote, seeing a sweep on a blood-horse, remarked, "There goes ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... of the slain amounted to one hundred and sixty-two thousand, or according to another account, three hundred thousand persons; and these incredible exaggerations suppose a real or effective loss, sufficient to justify the historian's remark, that whole generations may be swept away, by the madness of kings, in the space of ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... How can that be, Morva?—a student without home or money, and a girl without a penny in the world! What madness thou art talking. I only ask thee to have patience for a year or two, and I will have a home for thee. And ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... her heart turned over new-wrought rede, New craft; how, face and fashion changed, her son the very Love For sweet Ascanius should come forth, and, gift-giving, should move The Queen to madness, make her bones the yoke-fellows of flame. 660 Forsooth the doubtful house she dreads, the two-tongued Tyrian name; And bitter Juno burneth her, and care the night doth wake: Now therefore to the winged Love such words as ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... the man's honour and truth that he was insanely impelled to go to him and tell him all, and implore him to save Veronica at any cost, no matter what, or to whom. Then of course, a moment later, the thought seemed madness, and he only felt that he was losing hold more quickly upon his saner sense. His visit to the somnambulist, too, had helped to unnerve him, and as he wandered through the streets he forgot that it was time to eat, so that physical faintness ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... and dark, and the weather showed no signs of improving, which was depressing for those who had great plans afoot. Mademoiselle Therese thought Barbara was showing signs of madness when she proposed going to the baths, and was not a little annoyed when her disapproval failed to turn the girl from her purpose. Barbara had grave doubts about Alice being allowed to go, but she felt she, at least, must at all costs be there. She had time to remind the ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... seems to think it's a new madness that we've recently invented.' The child seemed in her loneliness to reach out for companioning. She spoke of 'our ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... ruthless destruction of human life united the island sovereignties in his own person, routed the forces of the King of Oahu in the Nuuanu Valley, and drove them in hundreds up the precipice, from which they leaped in despair and madness, and their bones ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... move that the masses of the people had time neither to think nor to act. The suddenness of the crisis marks it as a species of "mid-summer madness," a very "witches' sabbath" of ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... the outward Bishop had gone on unceasingly and hopelessly, until—as well enough might happen to one strong enough to resent yet not strong enough to overcome restraint—the galling irksomeness of such a double life had brought madness near; and that madness did actually come when the chains of a life and of a faith alike intolerable suddenly were fused in the fierce heat of the ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... offered under the express stipulation of a monstrous sin? Or did it represent the allegory of fecundity, the Hindoo myth of life, an existence held between the hands of woman, distorted and trampled by the palpitant hands of man whom a fit of madness seizes, seduced by a ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... the spring that wakened madness in his mind. He came up to me with a ferocious countenance, as if determined to force me into a confession of my thoughts. A sudden pang however seemed to change his design! he drew back with trepidation, and exclaimed, "Detested be the universe, and the ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... madness that has possessed thee and thy husband, to run yourselves upon such difficulties! You have heard, I am sure, what your husband did meet with, even, in a manner, at the first step that he took on his ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Dean, Dr. Conover, was appointed to Durdlebury, and, restless innovator that he was, underpinned the North Transept and split up Canon Trevor's home by marrying Sophia. Then Sarah, bitten by the madness, committed abrupt matrimony with the Rev. Vernon Manningtree, Rector of Durdlebury. Canon Trevor, many years older than his sisters, remained for some months in bewildered loneliness, until one day he found himself standing in ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... her vanity and her love, that she might one day be Mrs. Weir of Hermiston; swift, also, to recognise in his stumbling or throttled utterance the death-knell of these expectations, and constant, poor girl! in her large-minded madness, to go on and to reck nothing of the future. But these unfinished references, these blinks in which his heart spoke, and his memory and reason rose up to silence it before the words were well uttered, gave her unqualifiable agony. She was raised up and ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... if she wrote to you?" "Oh, if she wrote—that would be different, but she never will. There is no doubt, Harding, love is a sort of madness, and it takes every man; none can look into his life without finding that at some time or another he was mad; the only thing is that it has taken me rather badly, and cure seems farther off than ever. Why is it, Harding, that ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... quite convinced that the king was mad, though that did not alarm him because he knew if King Loc should lose his reason he would be a most gracious, charming, amiable and kindly lunatic. The madness of the dwarfs is gentle like their reason, and full of the most delicious fancies. But King Loc was not mad; at least not more ...
— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France
... extreme of life, when the child comes into the world, mother and child must be guarded against hostile demonic influences.[279] When a demon is known to have entered into a human being, producing sickness or madness, exorcism must be resorted to; magicians, prophets, and saints are able by ceremonies or by prayer to expel the intruder and restore the afflicted to health. Ritual taint (which is supernatural), incurred, for example, by touching ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... send to England a list of those Scottish lords against whom he bore resentment, and their fates should be ordered according to his dictates. Edward concluded his offers by inviting him immediately to London, to be invested with his new sovereignty; and Hilton ended his address by showing him the madness of abiding in a country where almost every chief, secretly or openly, carried a dagger against his life; and therefore he exhorted him no longer to contend for a nation so unworthy of freedom, that it bore with impatience the only man who had the courage ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... which had enjoyed centuries of peace, health and accord, stark terror now reigned. In some instances the finely-bred, marvellously intelligent people were in a mental condition bordering on madness. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... stood trembling near the door, with such an expression on her countenance that absolute fear drove her from the room before she knew what she was about. The locking of the door behind her let her know that she had abandoned her young mistress to the madness of her mother's evil temper and disposition. But it was too late. She lingered by the door and listened, but beyond an occasional hoarse tone of suppressed energy, she heard nothing. At length the lock—as suddenly turned, and she was ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... young gentlemen, and spend half their time before their looking-glasses. It's like those poetry books you're so fond of. But it's not meant for them as must earn their bread by their own sweat. You talk about love, but it's only madness ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... had exhibited the slightest sign of fear, if he had moved an inch towards the door, Armand, blind with passion, driven to madness by agonising remorse more even than by rage, would have sprung at his enemy's throat and crushed the life out of him as he would out of a venomous beast. But the man's calm, his immobility, recalled St. Just to himself. ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... ——; that is the first idea, I know, that will come into your silly little head, but put it out directly. If you were upon this attack to quit the field of battle, you yield the victory to your enemies. To leave Lady ——'s house would be folly and madness. As long as she is your friend, or appears such, all is safe; but any coolness on her part would, in the present circumstances, be death to your reputation. And, even if you were to leave her on the best terms possible, the malicious world would say that ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... works of pure imagination. But you must go down to the turf if you want the true smell of the earth. Education levels all human types, as love is said to level all ranks; and to preserve your individuality and yet be educated seems to want a strain of genius, or else a touch of madness. ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... excessive quantity of mucus. Abortion during advanced pregnancy is not infrequent, following a severe attack. In connection with these various symptoms there may be much uneasiness on the part of the animal, leading in some cases to madness and furious delirium, in others to spasms and convulsions or paralysis. A vesicular eruption of the skin may occur, seen principally between the toes and on the inside of the flank and in the armpits, with subsequent loss of ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... gentlemen of rank, birth, and experience, who could be entrusted with commands, and when so many hung back it was the more needful for some to go. It was a great stroke to us, for besides that Sir Andrew Macniven went on reiterating that it was mere madness, and there was not a hope of success—the idea of Eustace going to face the winds of spring in the islands of Scotland ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the federal, as was produced by the dread of a foreign, yoke; and unless the projected innovations should be voluntarily renounced, the same appeal to a trial of force would be made in the one case as was made in the other. But what degree of madness could ever drive the federal government to such an extremity. In the contest with Great Britain, one part of the empire was employed against the other. The more numerous part invaded the rights of ...
— The Federalist Papers
... opportunity to advance towards them. On we went through the high grass. Had I not been with a good sportsman like Nowell and a practised hunter like Dango, I should have thought that what we were doing was the height of madness. No sooner, however, did we thus boldly advance than the greater portion of the herd turned round and retreated before us. At the same time the two leaders, and a third who had joined them, as was ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... marriage which had never been consummated, and which was celebrated while one of the parties took the other for some one else,—but Clara's shattered reason, Tyrrel's despair, and Etherington's certainty that he has the cards in his hand, are all incredible and unaccountable—mere mid-winter madness. Nevertheless, this, Scott's only attempt at actual contemporary fiction, has extraordinary interest and great merit as such, while Meg Dods would save half a dozen novels, and the society at the Well is ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... silently evades the obligation he so readily undertakes, and sinks back into that more powerful interest that almost at once regains possession of his mind. Still, before he quits the scene of this ghastly disclosure, he resolves to counterfeit madness—and this for two reasons: he will seem (to himself) to be conspiring, and he will gain a license to speak his mind without offence. This is the only use to which he puts this mask of madness, as ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... previously mentioned, the whole clustering and crystallizing around a nucleus of crude, ignorant, hard-working, passionate, rough, turbulent men, deceived by the adroit misrepresentations of interested persons, until, driven to madness by a sense of supposed injustice, they believed themselves justified in securing redress by the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... that the progress toward perfection we are so proud of is only a pretentious imperfection. Duty seems now to be more negative than positive; it means lessening evil rather than actual good; it is a generous discontent, but not happiness; it is an incessant pursuit of an unattainable goal, a noble madness, but not reason; it is homesickness for the impossible—pathetic and pitiful, but ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... collection. Thus there came for me a time when I looked forward to a journey less because it meant movement and change for myself than because it meant another label for my hat-box. A strange state to fall into? Yes, collecting is a mania, a form of madness. And it is the most pleasant form of madness in the whole world. It can bring us nearer to real happiness than can any form of sanity. The normal, eclectic man is never happy, because he is always craving something of another kind than what he has got. The collector, in his mad concentration, ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... yards went through her like a knife. The confused rumble of carts in Regent Street, the familiar sounds from the shop below, the slamming of a door, a voice raised in inquiry, the monotonous, kindly echoes of life, struck on the raw edges of her nerves, exasperating her to madness. ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... Lynsey, two of the Porters, my Lord Bellasses, and others, where there were high words and some blows, and pulling off of perriwiggs; till my Lord Monk took away some of their swords, and sent for some soldiers to guard the house till the fray was ended. To such a degree of madness the nobility of this age is come! After dinner, I went up to Sir Thomas Crewe, who lies there not very well in his head, being troubled with vapours and fits of dizzinesse: and there I sat talking with him all the afternoon upon the unhappy posture ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... words shocked old Colonel Morgan, who was holding the court. Half the officers who sat in it had served through the Revolution, and their lives, not to say their necks, had been risked for the very idea which he so cavalierly cursed in his madness. He, on his part, had grown up in the West of those days, in the midst of "Spanish plot," "Orleans plot," and all the rest. He had been educated on a plantation where the finest company was a Spanish officer or a French merchant from Orleans. His education, such as it was, ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... rotting, and patched with calico. Blanket, etc. Large bundle of assorted rags for patches, all rotten. Leaky billy-can, containing fishing-line, papers, suet, needles and cotton, etc. Jam-tin, medicine bottles, corks on strings, to hang to his hat to keep the flies off (a sign of madness in the bush, for the corks would madden a sane man sooner than the flies could). Three boots of different sizes, all belonging to the right foot, and a left slipper. Coffee-pot, without handle or spout, and quart-pot full of rubbish—broken knives and forks, with the handles burnt off, ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... declared that he couldn't exactly say in so many words that Mr Harding was legally entitled to, &c., &c., &c., and ended in expressing a strong opinion that it would be madness to raise any further question on the matter, as the suit was to ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... that gorge but every gorge in the whole monstrous range seemed to be suddenly endowed, the darkness as of night, the violent revolving of the snow which beat and broke it into spray and blinded them, the madness of everything around insatiate for destruction, the rapid substitution of furious violence for unnatural calm, and hosts of appalling sounds for silence: these were things, on the edge of a deep abyss, to chill the ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... friends—mute creatures of prey; Their prey is lucre, their claws a knife, Some say they take the beseeching life. Horrible pity is theirs for despair, And they the love-sacred limbs leave bare. Love will come to-morrow, and sadness, Patient for the fear of madness, And shut its eyes for cruelty, So many pale beds to see. Turn away, thou Love, and weep No more in covering his last sleep; Thou hast him—blessed is thine eye! Friendless ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... very little shame in me if I could have the face to pray, who had just been so wicked. And under that snare of Satan I actually as good as gave up all prayer for a year and a half. This was nothing else but to throw myself straight down into hell. O my God, was there ever such madness as mine! Where could I think to find either pardon for the past, or power for the time to come, but from Thee? What folly to the stumbler to run away from the light! Let all those who would give themselves to prayer, and to a holy life, look ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte
... to the floor, crawled backwards, inch by inch; it was slavering, and there was a ravening madness in ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... no common flame, nor could he move In the old Arts, and beaten paths of Love, No Flowers nor Fruits sent to oblige the Fair, {62} His was all Rage, and Madness: ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... phrenologists call "inhabitiveness" is very prominent; he is not naturally migratory—"content to bear the ills he has, than fly to those he knows not of." Hence there appeared reason, if not entire "method in his madness." ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... glancing for an instant at the more hopeful side of the question; "but not often where they've got anything like a start. Did John Saltram really mean to follow those two to Liverpool, I wonder? Such a journey would seem like madness, in his state; and yet what a triumph if he should have been in time to prevent their ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... much with a fool, and go not to him that hath no understanding: beware of him, lest thou have trouble, and thou shalt never be defiled with his fooleries: depart from him, and thou shalt find rest, and never be disquieted with madness. ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous
... that resistance was simply madness, so up went their hands and the keen glance of the sheriff swept over the party and ...
— Jack Wright and His Electric Stage; - or, Leagued Against the James Boys • "Noname"
... took her to his arms, in this madness he told her of his love (committing himself into her hands, declining into her life), and in the end requested of her parents the honor of their ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... Mrs. Sarrasin had found means to tell her husband what Dolores had told her—and Sarrasin agreed with his wife in thinking that, although the discovery might appear trivial in itself, it had possibilities in it the stretch of which it would be madness to underrate. Ericson and Hamilton had common thoughts concerning the expedition to Gloria; but Hamilton had not confided to the Dictator any hint of what Mrs. Sarrasin had told him, and what Dolores had ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... does not need much talking to. He makes mistakes sometimes in the men he engages, just as I used to when I did the engaging, and he had one poor young man as apprentice who very soon, like the first of my three meek gardeners, went mad. His madness was of a harmless nature and took a literary form; indeed, that was all they had against him, that he would write books. He used to sit in the early morning on my special seats in the garden, and strictly meditate ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... said: What was the passion here? And the Moony-crested god said slowly: It was a threefold cord, and very strong: love, and love turned by intense disappointment into hatred, and rage against a rival: each by itself alone enough to turn reason into madness. But the whole story is told, by its hero himself, in the very letter: and if thou wilt, I will read it aloud to thee, exactly as he wrote it, word for word. And the goddess said: Thou knowest all: why not tell it in thy own way, without the trouble ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... disease of the brain produced by excessive use of alcoholic stimulants; derived from two Greek words, oinos, wine, and mania, madness. The same disease sometimes arises from overuse of tobacco and other stimulants of ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... with Jack? In imagination she saw him in a prison cell, perhaps doomed to drag out all the after years of his life there, and the thought seemed to drive her to madness. ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... elephants cased in armour of black iron, as if these were only thick reeds. Many kings, graced with modesty, their hour having come, laid themselves down (for the last sleep) on painful beds, overlaid with vultures' feathers. Advancing to battle on his car, sire slew son; and son also, through madness all losing regard, approached sire in battle. The wheels of cars were broken; banners were torn; umbrellas fell down on the earth. Dragging broken yokes, steeds ran away. Arms with swords in grasp, and heads decked with ear-rings fell down. Cars, dragged by mighty elephants, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... they not be hypocrites?" Place men so disposed in positions of power; let them be the masters of society; what will follow? Beliefs are a cause of disturbances: what seemed at first an innocent weakness, takes then the character of a dangerous madness. For the politician, the temptation to extirpate this madness is not far off. "What if we were to get rid of this troublesome source of agitation! If we declared that the conscience of individuals belongs to the sovereign, what repose we should have in the State! If we proclaimed the ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... years had gone by since the Treaty of Bretigny raised England to a height of glory such as it had never known before. But the years had been years of a shame and suffering which stung the people to madness. Never had England fallen so low. Her conquests were lost, her shores insulted, her commerce swept from the seas. Within she was drained by the taxation and bloodshed of the war. Its popularity had wholly died away. When the Commons were asked in 1354 whether they would assent to a treaty ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... sockets; he had only his shirt on, with the sleeves rolled up, showing his thin bony arms and legs. He was shrieking terrifically. The captain attempted to kick him back as he appeared above the hatchway; but he evaded the blow, and stood on deck confronting his persecutor. The strength of madness was upon him. He made a spring at the captain, and would have hurled him, I verily believe, overboard; but at that moment the first mate rushing forward, struck the poor fellow a blow on the back of the head with a handspike. He gave one ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... reader almost incredible that the English people, who shed his father's blood, who rallied round the Parliament, and were fulsome in their praises of the Protector, should thus suddenly change; but, allowing for "the madness of the people," we look for strength and consistency to the men of learning and letters. We feel sure that he who sang his eulogy of Cromwell dead, can have now no lyric burst for the ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... gloomy mien He oft upon his lips would curb, Thinking: 'tis foolish to disturb This evanescent boyish bliss. Time without me will lessons give, So meantime let him joyous live And deem the world perfection is! Forgive the fever youth inspires, And youthful madness, youthful fires. ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... "It is madness to give up—it will kill me;" were the thoughts that rose half framed to his lips and then forced themselves ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... so renowned and celebrated throughout Europe! may become the prey of the devouring element, and then how will you be reproached by posterity! Again—if you convert them to other purposes of destruction, how can you hope to prevent the same example from being followed in other places? The madness of the multitude will make no distinction; and as many pikes and swords may be carried within the great library, as within the various depositories of the monastic books. Pause awhile. Respect those collections of books, and you will both respect yourselves and preserve the ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... rudely touched; thou to be couched In this poor hut, its floor thy bed, and I, Thy lord, deserting thee, stealing from thee Thy last robe! O my Love with the bright smile, My slender-waisted Queen! Will she not wake To madness? Yea, and when she wanders lone In the dark wood, haunted with beasts and snakes, How will it fare with Bhima's tender child, The bright and peerless? O my life, my wife! May the great sun, may the Eight Powers of air, The Rudras, Maruts, and the Aswins twain, Guard thee, thou true and ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... "for why should I remain in it? a few weeks only could I fill up in any tour so near home, and hither in a few weeks to return would be folly and madness: in an absence so brief, what thought but that of the approaching meeting would occupy me? and what, at that meeting, should I feel, but joy the most dangerous, and delight which I dare not think of!—every conflict renewed, every struggle re-felt, again all this scene ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... of Sienna; and none can relieve him of this debt, without encroaching on the sacred rights of the City our mother. He must needs die; but his soul is his Maker's, and it is not meet that through our fault he die in this sinful state of madness and despair. Therefore should we use all the means within our competence to assure ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... oftener into inevitability of phrase, or more fully diffuse a glamour of otherworldliness. "The Wanderings of Oisin" revealed poetry as unmistakably new to his day as was Poe's to the earliest Victorian days. Beside the title poem another from legend had this new quality, "The Madness of King Goll," with its refrain that will not out of memory, "They will not hush, the leaves a-flutter round me, the beech leaves old." "Down by the Salley Gardens" and "The Meditation of the Old Fisherman" bear witness to talks before turf fires, or in herring boats off Knocknarea, and other developments ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... Sowler. The horrible woman was tramping round and round in the middle of the kitchen, like a beast in a cage; raving in the dreadful drink-madness called delirium tremens. In the farthest corner of the room, barricaded behind the table, the landlord's wife and daughter crouched in terror of their lives. The gas, turned full on, blazed high enough to blacken the ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... parental authority begot want of filial regard, so that the boy, shooting up with these vicious habits and disregard of the father, advanced from reproaches and curses to blows, whenever the unfortunate old man ventured to remonstrate against the folly and madness of his ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... resorts of black-legs, and the betting-books of men on the turf, the dishonourable payment of so-called debts of honour, the trickery of horse-dealers, horse-trainers, and horse-racers, and the wretched madness of professed gamblers, are things we have all heard of, but of which, happily, comparatively few of us know ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... of the disaster of Sedan. The Republic was proclaimed. All France was panting from a madness that lasted until the time of the Commonwealth. Everybody was playing at soldier from one end of ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... edition of the Twice-told Tales.' I still pressed upon him the good chances he would have now with something new. 'Who would risk publishing a book for me, the most unpopular writer in America?' 'I would,' said I, 'and would start with an edition of 2,000 copies of anything you would write.' 'What madness!' he exclaimed. 'Your friendship for me gets the better of your judgment.' 'No, no!' he continued, 'I have no money to indemnify a publisher's losses on my account.' I looked at my watch, and found that ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... my papers, if you like. So many, you know, have written about Tasso; but they are all wrong. As to the particular nature of his madness, and his feelings for Leonora, and the real cause of his imprisonment, and the character of Leonora, who, in my opinion, was a cold-hearted woman, else she would have married him in spite of her brother—they are all wrong. ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... houses in town and country, with every whim of body and soul apparently gratified, perhaps it does sound strange. But suppose that all this madness of luxury, at which you wonder, is but the vain effort ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... for general distribution, and sought through all these weeks for a fitting disposition to make of it, where it would all go in some special manner to relieve some special necessity. I wanted it to benefit some children who had "wept on the banks" of the river, which in its madness had devoured ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... better person to extricate him from his dangerous dilemma, and thus relieved his breast of a mountain of anxiety and distress. But the laugh with which he greeted his approach found no response from Nathan himself, who, having looked with amazement upon Edith and Telie, as if marvelling what madness had brought females at that hour into that wild desert, turned at last to the ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... important intelligence, and Captain Delmar walked up and down deck in deep thought: the fact was, he was puzzled how to act. To attempt to cope with such a force, unless under peculiarly favourable circumstances, would be madness: to leave the coast and our mercantile navy exposed to her depredations, was at the same time very repulsive to his feelings and sense of duty. The prizes had been manned, the prisoners were on board, ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... slowly shook her head with a cunning, bitter smile, that looked stranger on her fair face than the madness itself had looked, and: ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... of the difficulty of persuading persons (farmers in particular) to adopt any new systems; and I have often, when speaking of this subject amongst men of enlightened understandings, been told it would be next to madness, to sacrifice the benefit of a crop of oats or barley when the land is in fine tilth, and whilst we can ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... her, till the folk heard her cries and coming to her, [found] Aboulhusn beating her and saying to her, "O old woman of ill-omen, am I not the Commander of the Faithful? Thou hast enchanted me!" When the folk heard his words, they said, "This man raveth," and doubted not of his madness. So they came in upon him and seizing him, pinioned him and carried him to the hospital. Quoth the superintendant, "What aileth this youth?" And they said, "This is a madman." "By Allah," cried Aboulhusn, "they ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... that this imprudence would effectually close the door, for a long time, against all efforts, even the most judicious, to spread the gospel amongst a people so needlessly and greatly prejudiced against it by an unwise and abrupt application of its principles. For instance, what folly and madness it would be for our missionaries to Burmah, to make a direct assault on the political institutions of that country! How fatal would it be to their lives, and how incalculably injurious to the cause entrusted to their hands! And, if this can be said of them, after they have spent ten, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Silent, still, the world of Unaga seemed to have lost all semblance of life. White, white, eternal white, and above the heavy grey of an overburdened sky. Solitude, loneliness, desperately complete. It was the silence which well nigh drives the human brain to madness. From minutes to hours; from inches to feet. Day and night. Day and night. Snow, snow all the time, till the tally of days grew, and the weeks slowly passed. It almost seemed as if Nature, in her shame, were seeking to hide up the sight of ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... beings to madness, weak and powerless as they were. Tandang Selo got up, sat down, went outside, came back again, knowing not where to go, where to seek aid. Juli appealed to her images, counted and recounted her ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... urged, 'tell me what you wish, and you shall have it; tell me your thoughts, and then I can advise you. But to go from here without a plan, without forethought, in the heat of a moment, is madder than madness, and can help nothing. I am not speaking like a man, but I speak the truth; and I tell you again, the thing's ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... revolted; it was found impossible to subdue them, and the government very imprudently resolved to make an example of eleven captives, and thus terrify the rest of the rebels. They were tortured to death, eight of the eleven being women; this drove the others to madness, and plantation after plantation was visited with fire and sword. After a long conflict, their chief, Adoe, was induced to make a treaty, in 1749. The rebels promised to keep the peace, and in turn were promised freedom, money, tools, clothes, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... America. Against the tens of millions in Europe would rise up, like the earth-born children of Deucalion and Pyrrha (or of the Theban Cadmus and Hermione) American millions counted by hundreds. But from what radix? Originally, it would have been regarded as madness to take Ireland, in her Celtic element, as counting for anything. But of late—whether rationally, however, I will inquire for a brief moment or so—the counters have all changed in these estimates. The late Mr O'Connell was the parent of these hyperbolical anticipations. To count his ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... is, isn't it?" he remarked, after a moment. "Just imagine Enville, now! Upon my soul I didn't think he had it in him!... Of course,"—he threw his head up with a careless laugh,—"of course, it would have been madness for us to miss such a chance! He's one of the men of ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... is one of the fifty fallacies that come from the modern madness for biological or bodily metaphors. It is convenient to speak of the Social Organism, just as it is convenient to speak of the British Lion. But Britain is no more an organism than Britain is a lion. The moment we begin to give a ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... paternal explosion; but, when it was hinted that the marital rights of my poor mother were to be sacrificed, his fury amounted almost to madness. ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... capital, have aided them. Disappointed and dangerous politicians who merely desire office and power have lifted their voices in the hue and cry to fool the honest voter. I am glad to say I believe that the worst of this madness and rascality is over; that the common sense of the people of this country is too great to be swept away by the methods of these self-seekers; that the ordinary man is beginning to see that his bread and butter depends on the brain of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... "Your Quixotic madness has made you more than once speak to me of Quixotism as the new religion. And I tell you that this new religion you propose to me, if it hatched, would have two singular merits. One that its founder, its prophet, Don Quixote—not Cervantes—probably ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... the first victim of that diabolical scheme to awaken the wrath of the northland? In the madness which possessed him now Philip shoved out his canoe while there was still danger of discovery. Fortunately none of the pursued glanced back, and a turn in the channel soon hid them from view. Philip had recovered ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood
... was subject to peculiar fits of insanity, during which he did wild and foolish things for the mere love of notoriety. He had two natures—one bright and good, the other sullen and criminal. A taint of madness ran in the family—came down from drunken and unprincipled fathers of dead generations; under different conditions, it might have developed into genius in one or ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... resistance of historical and chartered liberty to foreign despotism. Neither that liberty nor ours was born of the cloud-embraces of a false Divinity with, a Humanity of impossible beauty, nor was the infant career of either arrested in blood and tears by the madness of its worshippers. "To maintain," not to overthrow, was the device of the Washington of the sixteenth century, as it was the aim of our own hero and his ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... spit; a gun, a half dozen bullets, a few pinches of powder, and a bottle of water were chucked ashore after him, and away rowed the boat's crew back to the ship, leaving the poor wretch alone to rave away his life in madness, or to sit sunken in his gloomy despair till death mercifully released him from torment. It rarely if ever happened that anything was known of him after having been marooned. A boat's crew from some vessel, sailing by chance that way, might perhaps find a few chalky bones bleaching upon ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... eye, the nose, the mouth, in the expression of certain emotions of the soul. True passion, which never errs, has no need of recurring to such studies; but they are indispensable to the feigned passion of the actor. How useful would it not be to the actor who wishes to represent madness or wrath, to know that the eye never expresses the sentiment experienced, but simply indicates the object of this sentiment! Cover the lower part of your face with your hand, and impart to your look all the energy of which it is ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... audience up to a pitch of demoniac fury; she had pictured her—and their—beloved young mistress in the power of the wretch who crouched with smarting, lacerated back yonder in the shed—insulted, ill-treated, and finally driven to madness and death by him: and now, at a word from one of them, the whole body of negroes sprang to their feet and, with low, hissing, muttering execrations and threats, infinitely more terrifying to listen to than the loudest yells of ferocity, ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... months after; and serve you right, too! Don't let us talk about it to-night. I am sorry for you, and if you have any sense left you will soon be sorry for yourself. Here comes Doctor Oleander, and I mean to be as fascinating as I know how, just to drive the other two to the verge of madness." ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... again. She felt that she had been within measurable distance of a tragedy. Nor was there any call on her wits to devise fresh means of drawing his mind away from the madness that possessed him a few minutes earlier. As he limped unevenly by her side, his talk was of the mountains. Did she intend to climb? Well, slow and sure was the golden rule. Do little or nothing during ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... had the partnership, he felt himself morally obligated to deny himself Eveley in the flesh. For he was one of those unique, old-fashioned creatures who feels that man must offer position and affluence as well as love to the lady of his choice. So it was no mere mercenary madness on his own account that kept Nolan living a life of gentle and economic obscurity, patient struggling for a foothold on the ladder of ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... after her departure? Alas, no! There was only herself the less in the house. Of old his grief could find vent, he could break into abuse, or representations—he could show all he suffered and excite the pity of her who caused his sufferings. But now his grief was solitary, his jealousy had become madness, for formerly he could at any rate, when he suspected anything, hinder Mimi from going out, keep her beside him in his possession, and now he might meet her in the street on the arm of her new lover, and must turn aside to let her ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... journals of the House by Mr. Thornton, which have been verified in Springfield, Mr. Lincoln was in his seat in the House on that 'fatal first of January' when he is asserted to have been groping in the shadow of madness, and he was also there ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... fives. When he lights upon a village, he holds it to ransom; when he comes upon a city, he captures it, making it literally the prisoner of his bow and his spear. A writer in Blackwood's Magazine once drove the people of Lancashire to madness by declaring that, in the Rebellion of 1745, Manchester 'was taken by a Scots sergeant and a wench;' but it is a notorious fact that Nancy submitted without a murmur to five Uhlans, and that Bar-le-Duc was occupied ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... felt them to be. The family had long fallen into the habit of treating her as a child, playing some imaginary character. She seemed less demented than walking in a dream, her faculties asleep. It was somnambulism rather than madness. She had not the expression of insane people, the shifty eyes, the cunning and perverseness, the animal ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... ignoring her remark, "even now, what are you doing? Oh, Viola, you're a prey to the modern madness for crawling in the dirt instead of walking upright in the sun. You might be a goddess and you prefer to be an insect. Isn't it ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... a hopelessly tragic conclusion, and on it he grafted the equally distressing tale of Gloucester and his two sons, which he drew from Sidney's 'Arcadia.' {241b} Hints for the speeches of Edgar when feigning madness were drawn from Harsnet's 'Declaration of Popish Impostures,' 1603. In every act of 'Lear' the pity and terror of which tragedy is capable reach their climax. Only one who has something of the Shakespearean gift ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... like trout, they flashed away. See everything, force nothing. Let a book be turned over for nineteen days, the chances were that on the twentieth you would turn over the price. As to expecting the class of cheap customers to commit themselves by walking into a shop, it was simple madness. Of course, when you were ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... killed afterwards; it was they who were thrown into the well; but three boats got away down the stream. Two went ashore and all the occupants were killed by the merciless brutes who lined the banks. The other had men in it, men who were filled with a madness of wrath that knew no bounds. In spite of their own condition, in spite of the odds against them, they leaped like tigers on the foe whenever they got the chance. They were followed by the natives, who fired on them repeatedly from a safe distance, and again and again the dead had to be east ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... I have said, a gray day. But the fires of a century's sunsets flamed and flashed in that library! Ruby, sapphire, diamond, emerald, pearl—how they glowed and glimmered! How they shone and sparkled! For the moment there fell upon me that madness that jewels bring upon women, a sort of wild delight in their hard, bright beauty, an ecstasy, an intoxication. I poured them from one hand to the other, I held the greatest to my cheek. The loveliness of them went to my head. "I did chap them atween my hands, as children chap chaff. They ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... reckon upon the dotage, madness, servitude and blindness, the foolish phantasms and vanities of lovers, their torments, wishes, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... corrupt in his morals; but he was a gentleman of elegant manners and cultivated taste. He was the most popular political character ever known in England; and his name, at one time, was sufficient to blow up the flames of sedition, and excite the lower orders to acts of violence bordering on madness. ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... to me that a general madness has seized all Paris," the marquis said to his wife on his return, "but at present nothing can be done to arrest it. I have seen the king and queen. His majesty is resolved to do nothing; that is, to let events ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... way. Charles III. died a madman; the Queen of Portugal is mad; the King of England has been mad, and, as some say, is not really cured. There is nothing astonishing in it; a king who tries to do his duty is almost forced into madness by his enormous task. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... lie slain of thy madness, nevermore to render service to our emperor. Thou too shalt die, and ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... to see that the boat was not proceeding towards some other dangerous obstacle. Then Markham, with the sudden swift cunning of madness, lifted the butt end of his pole and ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... great publishing firm in New York desired (at the last moment before his departure) an appointment with the novelist for that afternoon. The affair was of extreme importance. The American meant business. It would be madness not to see him, even though ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... irritation became more than Cotherstone could bear. He was a highly-strung, nervous man, quick to feel and to appreciate, and the averted looks and monosyllabic remarks and replies of a man into whose company he could not avoid being thrown began to sting him to something like madness. And one day, left alone in the office with Mallalieu when Stoner the clerk had gone to get his dinner, the irritation became unbearable, and he turned on his partner in a sudden white heat of ungovernable and ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... feet thrust themselves from the toes of his moccasins. His face was so thin and white that it shone with the pallor of death from its frame of straight dark hair. His eyes gleamed like black diamonds. The madness of hunger ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... of research as that which offered itself within the limits of New South Wales, and in which they considered I had laboured with some success during the last two years. Others considered the undertaking exceedingly dangerous, and even the conception of it madness on my part; and the consequence of a blind enthusiasm, nourished either by a deep devotion to science, or by an unreasonable craving for fame: whilst others did not feel themselves justified in assisting a man who they considered was setting out with an intention of committing suicide. I ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... and equal in moral impression what the reality will be to the sufferers. It is easy to speak or hear the word "hell;" but to analyze its significance and realize it in a sensitive fancy is difficult; and whenever it is done the fruit is madness, as the bedlams of the world are shrieking in testimony at this instant. The Revivalist preachers, so far from exaggerating the frightful contents latent in the prevalent dogma concerning hell, have never been ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... back amazed at my madness, and, while they consulted what to do with me, I took my chance to grip the first of them by the throat and swing ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... brothers, who began to fear, when the gale had lasted over the middle of the month, that the stormy weather might possibly prevent the Pilot's Bride from venturing near the island, Captain Brown having said that it would have been more than madness while the wind prevailed from that quarter for any ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... him who says that he must not satisfy all his pleasures and appetites, and get rid of all the corresponding pains—and the third and greatest and sharpest want and desire breaks out last, and is the fire of sexual lust, which kindles in men every species of wantonness and madness. And these three disorders we must endeavour to master by the three great principles of fear and law and right reason; turning them away from that which is called pleasantest to the best, using the Muses and the Gods who preside over contests ...
— Laws • Plato
... man, Frank Muller might have broken upon the world as a Napoleon. Had he been a little more savage, a little farther removed from the unconscious but present influence of a progressive race, he might have ground his fellows down and ruthlessly destroyed them in the madness of his rage and lust, like an Attila or a T'Chaka. As it was he was buffeted between two forces he did not realise, even when they swayed him, and thus at every step in his path towards a supremacy of evil an unseen power made stumbling-blocks of weaknesses ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... allowed to believe in God," said Napoleon, smiling. "Yes, I believe in Providence, and I believe it was a dispensation of Providence that those arrogant officers of the guard, who thought it was only necessary to show themselves in order to drive away the French, and who went so far in their madness as to whet their swords on the doorsteps of the house of our ambassadors, should now be duly humiliated and chastised. For the guards of Potsdam and Berlin are among the captured of the corps of the Prince von Hohenlohe, and they ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach |
