"Unhinged" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for I was momentarily unhinged, "you see you must put things that way to get Miss Irma to help us. She can do anything with my father, and I believe she could with yours too ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... in sleep. The fears that possessed him, that she herself had held so finely in check when they had followed Banks on this glacier, did not trouble her now. Her indifference to their extremity began to play on Frederic's unhinged nerves. This white, blue-lipped woman was not the Beatriz Weatherbee he had known; who had climbed the slope with him that morning, all exhilaration, spirit, charm; whose example had challenged his endurance and held his courage to ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... Lucie had never been out of Doctor Manette's sight. Now, though he was glad for her happiness, yet he felt the pain of the separation so keenly that it unhinged his mind again. Miss Pross and Mr. Lorry found him next morning making shoes at the old prison bench and for nine days he did not know them at all. At last, however, he recovered, and then, lest the sight of it affect him, ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... bathing suit. He and Jack unhinged a stateroom door, carrying it up through the conning tower. Hal, in the meantime, under orders, had attended to bringing the "Pollard's" platform ...
— The Submarine Boys' Trial Trip - "Making Good" as Young Experts • Victor G. Durham
... and seemed to be trying to do as he directed, for her nostrils dilated as if in an effort to breathe deeply. He wished she would speak. He dreaded that her mind might be unhinged. ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... strange, but concluded she was a little unhinged by yesterday's excitement. Moreover, there faced him an omelet of enormous size, and savory. He thought this worthy to divide a man's attention even with the great creature's tantrums. He devoted himself to it, and it occupied him so agreeably that he ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... treated her movements with the kindly interest offered at the shrine of childhood or imbecility. It was evident that he supposed that the landslip had unhinged Mademoiselle Brun's reason. ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... that hung over the poor woman's spirit, Master Swift's plain consolations made their way. The ruling thought of his mind became the one idea to which her unhinged intellect clung,- -the second coming of the Lord. For this she watched—not merely in the sense of a readiness for judgment, but—out of the upper windows of the windmill, from which could be seen a vast extent of that heaven in ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Peter Jeffers, a lean, bony character who had a tendency to collapse into chairs as though he had come unhinged. ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... But the convent is a great escapement. You came here, having escaped death only by an accident, and when you went to Rome to see your father you came back distraught, your mind unhinged, and it was months before you could believe that your sins could be forgiven. If you leave here, what will become of you? You will return ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... notably at the battle of Aignadel. In 1510 he commanded the troops which fought on behalf of the Duke of Ferrara against the Emperor and Pope Julius II., and the latter having excommunicated him for bearing arms against the Holy See, his mind is said to have become unhinged. He died at Correggio in February 1511, when only thirty-eight years of age, some biographers asserting that he was poisoned, whilst others contend that he fell from a bridge during a military expedition. ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... this the meeting he had pictured to himself a thousand times? Had her troubles unhinged ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... money troubles; but were there any domestic troubles which might have unhinged his mind to that extent?" said ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... most dangerous expedients.... Cocaine not in it. Stimulants—violent stimulants. In the highest quarters. Terrible. Exalted persons. Royalty! Anxious to be given war work and become anonymous.... Horrible! He's been a terrible influence. One idea—to disturb soul and body. Minds unhinged. Personal relations deranged. Shattered the practice of years. The harm he has ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... young sir. It served his purpose for the moment, I grant you. I was unhinged. The indignity, the very monstrosity of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... without knowing a good deal about him—perhaps more than you do. I've no doubt, now, he filled your mind with all sorts of nonsense about me—probably told you that I was the greatest villain unhung, eh? and all that sort of thing? Poor fellow! He was a fine sort before his mind became unhinged. One of his fancies used to be that everybody else was insane, or just about to become insane. Is he still as ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... wingy mysteries in divinity, and airy subtleties in religion, which have unhinged the brains of better heads, they never stretched the pia mater<11> of mine. Methinks there be not impossibilities enough in religion for an active faith: the deepest mysteries our contains have not only been illustrated, but maintained, by syllogism and the rule of reason. I love to lose ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... could think of, in the house of Marchmont. She could have talked of its delights if there had been anybody to care about them in her own way, but that was the great if of Marian's life. She was conscious that her day's pleasure had unhinged her, and made her present tasks unusually distasteful, and she thought it the fault of the Lyddells, and in a great fit of repining blamed Edmund for injustice to Selina in not letting her house be their home. Her great hope was of another day there, the only thing that seemed to give a brightness ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... heerd what the ol' nigger Proph' says? Of co'se he's all unhinged in the top story ez anybody would be thet lived in the woods an' e't sca'cely anything but herbs an' berries. But, anyhow, he's got a sort o' gift o' prophecy an' insight, ez ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... supply of food had been served out to them, huddled together, wrapped up in their capotes, on the bare rock, near where they had been working, and held a whispered conversation together, which lasted for some time after darkness covered the face of the deep. Paolo's mind, troubled and unhinged with the thoughts of the past, and the darkening prospect of the future, for long refused to allow sleep to visit his eyelids. He listened to ascertain whether his sister and Miss Garden were still awake; but from the perfect silence in their tent, he trusted that ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... there is no vulgarity in Restif. If he had had a more regular education and society, literary or other, and could have kept his mind, which was to a certainty slightly unhinged, off the continual obsession of morbid subjects, he might have been a very considerable man of letters, and he is no mean one, so far as style goes,[419] as it is. He avails himself duly of the obscurity of a learned language when he has to use (which is regrettably often) words that do not ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... hit on. It drowned the volleys of oaths, curses, wails, groans, sobbings, and piteous appeals which rose to Heaven from all around us. If we had kept dumb our minds must have been depressingly affected if not unhinged by what we ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... a trusted nurse and governess in many English families for many years, etc., etc. Some day I will tell you all about her. It's a long, long story and rather depressing. But about Karl. His mind had undoubtedly become unhinged and, after escaping from Holland, he found his way to the house where she was employed, learnt that she had been arrested (you see, the red stitches on her handkerchief, which everyone had supposed were laundry marks, turned ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 9, 1914 • Various
... Mr. Merriman, that your mind has become temporarily unhinged, but even with such an excuse, you cannot really believe that I am going to wait here and listen to you ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... Gentlemen, you know his character, you know what his name was worth as our engineer, but there is one other thing you do not know. The poor fellow has a child, only one, to whom he is devoted. I heard this morning that the child is dying. Under such circumstances his mind may have been unhinged. Let me follow him. I will return after I have said ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... sight of the ghost had left upon the senses of Hamlet, he being weak and dispirited before, almost unhinged his mind and drove him beside his reason. And he, fearing that it would continue to have this effect, which might subject him to observation and set his uncle upon his guard, if he suspected that he was meditating anything against him, or that Hamlet really knew more of his father's death than ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... to do with what I told you the first night I ever talked with you, Boyne. You threw doubt on Thomas Gilbert's death being suicide. I gave as a reason for my belief that it was, a knowledge and conviction that the man's mind was unhinged." ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... They neither reason, examine, nor discuss. They clap those whom they approve, and hiss those whom they disapprove.... I told their President frankly that it was impossible for such a mob to govern the country. They have unhinged everything. It is anarchy beyond conception, and they will be obliged to ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... understand, a fatal neutrality in every case, a calamity of which all the responsibility, we repeat, recoiled not upon the people but upon those who in June, 1848, after having promised them amnesty, had refused it, and who had unhinged the great soul of the people of Paris by breaking faith with them. What the Constituent Assembly had sown the Legislative Assembly harvested. We, innocent of the fault, had ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... his breath coming in gusty puffs through his nostrils and mouth. Not alone the desperate sensations of those moments when he had faced the gnashing, mumbling brute, but the unexpected success of his first shot at big game, had unhinged him. By his endurance in the chase, by the pluck with which he stood up to the bear, above all, by his being able, as Joe phrased it, to "take a sure pull on the beast at a paralyzing moment," he had eternally justified his right to the title of sportsman in the eyes of the natives. ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... adventures, but Francesca was so unhinged by her unfortunate exit from Ballycastle that, after a few miles, she announced her intention of putting her machine and herself on the car; whereupon Benella proclaimed herself a competent cyclist, and climbed down blithely to mount the discarded wheel. Her ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Fuego rose dimly in her mind. And the advancing darkness did not tend towards cheerfulness. In her new track, the Kansas had turned her back on the murky light which penetrated the storm-clouds towards the west. Unhinged by the external gloom and the prevalent uncertainty, and finding that no one cared to dispute with her, Isobel felt that a scream or two would be a relief. For once, pride was helpful—it saved her ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... an undertone, as if to recall that name, 'who is Emmeline?' Then looking in my face with fearful shining eyes that made me shudder, she said in a strange, unnatural voice: 'Who are you?' and turned away from me. Her mind was unhinged; this last shock had been too much for her broken ...
— Acadian Reminiscences - The True Story of Evangeline • Felix Voorhies
... the Ogilvie family. Also, may I say this to you in confidence? There was an idea in many people's minds that, about the time of Colonel Ogilvie's death and the early infancy of the second son, Peter, Mrs. Ogilvie's mind was slightly unhinged for a time. It may not have been so, but one cannot help wondering if the concealment which she has used to keep from her family the knowledge of the existence of this disease from which she has died may not have been something like a return of an ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... you think I had a moment's doubt, at that time, that her mind was unhinged? Such an accusation as that, against a man like you! Well, she came to see me again, about a month later. She seemed calmer then; but, as she was going away, she said: "They may expect to see the White ...
— Rosmerholm • Henrik Ibsen
... worst of all, this accident gave Thwackum, who was present, and who held all such doctrine to be heathenish and atheistical, an opportunity to clap a judgment on his back. Now this was done with so malicious a sneer, that it totally unhinged (if I may so say) the temper of the philosopher, which the bite of his tongue had somewhat ruffled; and as he was disabled from venting his wrath at his lips, he had possibly found a more violent method of revenging himself, had not the surgeon, who was then ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... loaded and ready to start. It was about two o'clock in the afternoon, when a strange and painful trial befell us. Poor dear Mr. Mathieson, apparently unhinged, locked himself all alone into what had been his study, telling Mrs. Mathieson and me to go, for he had resolved to remain and die on Tanna. We tried to show him the inconsistency of praying to God to protect us or grant us ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... to his task, and fears to make complaint; And sad-eyed Rachels, childless in decay, Weep for their lost ones sold and torn away! Of ampler size the master's dwelling stands, In shabby keeping with his half-tilled lands; The gates unhinged, the yard with weeds unclean, The cracked veranda with a tipsy lean. Without, loose-scattered like a wreck adrift, Signs of misrule and tokens of unthrift; Within, profusion to discomfort joined, The listless body and the vacant mind; The fear, the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... lights on certain things which have puzzled me. Up to now I never quite knew what Shakespeare meant when he made Hamlet say, "My tablets! Quick, my tablets! 'tis meet that I put it down," etc., For now, feeling as though my own brain were unhinged or as if the shock had come which must end in its undoing, I turn to my diary for repose. The habit of entering accurately must ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... I spied Gilly the Grip, quite recent this g. m., Just like a lily on a broken stem Or like a Salt Lake buck without a bride. "Chirk, Gilly, chirk!" I says in tones of pride, "Perhaps this unhinged heart is just pro tem. The world is full of pompadours for them That keep their search-lights peeled ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor • Wallace Irwin
... happened at an unlucky moment, for continual racketing in the country had quite unhinged me; I required bracing, and had quite lost my colour. My paternal relation, however, (Houlditch), undertook my repair, and I was very soon exhibited painted green, and ticketed, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 397, Saturday, November 7, 1829. • Various
... the Colonel suspected irony he was angry, but as Charlie seemed, after all, to be certainly in earnest, he began to feel conscience-stricken. He was by no means a tender man, but his lately-discovered misfortune had unhinged him, and this strange, undeserved, disinterested family fealty on the part of Charlie touched his heart. And should he still try to lead him into the pitfall he had dug? He hesitated;—no, he would show him the place ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... hour beats in millions of hearts, all over this globe, with a living warmth beside which the love of science and art is cold and clammy. Surely it would be not much to ask for the docility to recognize such patent facts as these. And I must believe that any mind is fundamentally unhinged that despises the profoundest convictions of the noblest hearts, or speaks lightly of the mighty influence that has moulded human events and has upheaved the world. It has, in its arrogance, cut adrift and swung off from the two grand foci of all truth, the ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... The classes are there (an effort is being made to cancel one useful intermediate stage), presenting themselves, for the most part, in a highly-agitated condition of mind, with the result that officials acquire the methods of those who deal with the mentally unhinged; show themselves prepared for any display of eccentricity. Ever, as in life, you remark the people who arrive too soon, or too late; a few lucky ones come in the very nick of time. The last named are favourites, selected with no obvious reason by Fortune, and greatly envied ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... which would ensure a noiseless retreat. To men of his own stamp it would have been useful, but he little knew the peculiar temperament of his friend; the mere idea of the success of the whole expedition depending upon his extreme care unhinged the nerves of the poor artist, who, although absolutely a brave man, in the true sense of the term, could no more control his nervous system than he could perform an Indian war-dance. He could have rushed single-handed ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... where you're wrong. You forget the dollars. A big crowd of solicitors will get busy, and they'll get some high-brow doctors on the job, and the end of it all will be that they'll say my brain was unhinged. I shall spend a few months in a quiet sanatorium, my mental health will improve, the doctors will declare me sane again, and all will end happily for little Julius. I guess I can bear a few months' retirement in order to rid the world ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... the middle of all this felicity, one blow from unseen Providence unhinged me at once; and not only made a breach upon me inevitable and incurable, but drove me, by its consequences, into a deep relapse of the wandering disposition, which, as I may say, being born in my very ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... felt thoroughly exasperated. I was in a hurry to get on. Important business engagements would be unhinged by the delay. I was a stranger in Broughton. It looked like a stupid, stuffy little town. I went to a hotel in an atrocious humor. After I had fumed until I wanted a change, it occurred to me that I might as well hunt up Clark Oliver by way of passing ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... leaden hours of exile. But it must be more than disheartening to realise that your work, however good it may be, will never reach the printer's hands. In six months the book was thrown aside in disgust, and in less than a year afterwards the writer's mind had become so unhinged by the maddening monotony of life, that he would, in civilisation, have been placed under restraint. I met also a once famous professor of anatomy (who had been here for seven years), and who, although completely indifferent to the latest discoveries ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... warm and irritable feelings, and more particularly so when he was called forth on any occasion in which the oppressed Africans were concerned; for he had lived in the island of Barbados, and he had witnessed there scenes of cruelty towards them which had greatly disturbed his mind, and which unhinged it, as it were, whenever the subject of their sufferings was brought before him. Hence, if others did not think precisely as he did, when he conversed with them on the subject, he was apt to go out of due ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... completely under the influence of Macquart, a drunken smuggler and poacher, by whom in course of time she had a son named Antoine and a daughter named Ursule. She became more and more subject to cataleptic attacks, until eventually her mind was completely unhinged. Pierre Rougon, her legitimate son, was a man of strong will inherited from his father, and he early saw that his mother's property was being squandered by the Macquarts. By means approximating ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... and an imprudent marriage had driven him to the mastership of the little country grammar-school; and here the perpetual annoyance caused to his refined mind by the coarseness of clumsy or spiteful boys, had gradually unhinged his intellect. Often did he tell the boys "that it was an easier life by far to break stones by the roadside than to teach them;" and at last his eccentricities became too obvious ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar |
