"Maddening" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I fear your ridicule more than that of others? You are brighter, more bewitching, more tantalising than any woman I have ever known—you are maddening—do you hear? Ah, I crave your pardon for so far forgetting myself as to dwell upon a matter which I should have forgotten in your displeasure. By the way, I should like to tell you why I will not accommodate these young fools with a duel, why I have controlled my natural desire to resent ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... shook it, gave an easy twist, and the maddening lid—loosened, of course, by Johnny's exertions—came off! Edith shrieked with joy; but Johnny, though mortified, was immensely relieved. They sat down on a sloping rock, and talked bait, and the grave and spectacled Johnny became his old self, scolding Edith for talking so ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... stones anyhow. Said that they would go to pay my debts. I threatened violence and all kinds of things, but it was no good. I said that unless I had money in forty-eight hours I should be in jail, but it was all to no effect. Did you ever hear anything so maddening in all your life?" ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... came rolling onward; afar off it looked like a pale grey wall of inconceivable height, but as it drew nearer, the wall resolved itself into a wild array of columns, and eddies, and whirlpools, and great full-bosomed clouds, that rolled and swam and rose and fell with maddening complexity. Then came a breath of deadly chillness, and then a horror of great darkness—a darkness that could be felt. The skipper himself took to the fore rigging, and placed one of the watch handy to the wheel; finally he called ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... each in their time, have tried to point out a shorter, quicker path. The workers have refused to listen to them. On the other hand, they have declined the way of compromise, of fusions, and of alliances, that have also promised a quicker and a shorter road to power. With the most maddening patience they have declined to take any other path than their own—thus infuriating not only the terrorists in their own ranks but those Greeks from the other side who came to them bearing gifts. Nothing seems to disturb them or to block their path. They are offered reforms and concessions, which ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... badly, and making very hideous mouths, though the Indians could not tell what he laughed and mouthed about. There he lay on his back, kicking as a frog swims, till the Little Man went up to him, and took away the thing which held the maddening draught. The Narragansetts demanded of the Little Man what ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... vibrating hammock he occupied. It was much more like a hollow nook inside a gigantic pendulum which swung eternally to and fro until it swung him into senselessness—or aroused him with fierce struggles to escape. But his mother's slender hand sometimes arrested the maddening motion, or—and this was curiously restful—she cleverly transferred him to a cradle, which she rocked, leaning close over him. Only she kept him wrapped up ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... from the ground; he rushes at it, and it sticks somehow or other in the fingers of his left hand, to the utter astonishment of himself and the whole field. Such a catch hasn't been made in the close for years, and the cheering is maddening. "Pretty cricket," says the captain, throwing himself on the ground by the deserted wicket with a long breath. He feels that ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... this that is killing me by inches, yet I cannot prevent it. What can I do? I cannot breast the current that is carrying along everything with it in maddening fury. One day I must ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... setting sun? Have you not seen the moon surrounded by bright pearly clouds? When the winds blow strong and whirl the fleecy clouds through the sky do not the latter make the mountain tops dim and do not the stars seem to dash across the heavens in a maddening race? Ever changing, the clouds constantly rearrange themselves, sometimes bridging the entire heavens, resting at the horizon upon ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... unsurpassable difficulty, I was able to operate the machinery and steer, first for Betelguese, then for the sun. Counting on the warning bells to arouse me, I managed to get in snatches of sleep at odd intervals. At times the strain of the long watches was almost maddening. ...
— Out Around Rigel • Robert H. Wilson
... for her. No—she has deceived me—surely she has deceived me. Why not break my promise, plighted though it be in words of fervid love? Why not flee from the spot, and endeavour to escape the torture that is maddening both my heart and brain? Oh! ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... to his brother, in which, after stating what had happened, and expatiating upon this new disgrace in the gipsy wife, he propounded a plan for raising money sufficient to induce the couple to emigrate to Canada. 'It is our only chance,' he said. 'The case as it stands is maddening. For a successful painter, sculptor, musician, author, who takes society by storm, it is no drawback, it is sometimes even a romantic recommendation, to hail from outcasts and profligates. But for a clergyman of the Church of England! Cornelius, ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... Oh, grrrr-r, why can't you, you impious, unnatural, ill-mannered, irresponsive, irresponsible exasperating young nuisance, you!" Is it any wonder poor youth bawls back, or feels and behaves like bawling back, "How to goodness can I behave like my infernal uncle or my maddening aunt when I'm whirling along head over heels in the middle of ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... now left alone, except so far as a person who is agitated by maddening Furies is not alone, fluctuated in sorrow like a stormy sea; and though her purpose was fixed and her heart was resolute when she first began to make preparations for the impious work, her mind now wavered, and feared. She hurried, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... fate of Miltiades, so far from illustrating either the fickleness or the ingratitude of his countrymen, attests their just appreciation of deserts. It also illustrates another moral of no small importance to the right comprehension of Grecian affairs; it teaches us the painful lesson how perfectly maddening were the effects of a copious draught of glory on the temperament of an enterprising and ambitious Greek. There can be no doubt that the rapid transition, in the course of about one week, from Athenian terror before the battle to Athenian exultation ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... Her maddening eyes were directed on the Maiden Head inn. Her full lips were parted in a harsh boisterous laugh; her white teeth gleamed; the blood ran riot in her veins; she was the embodiment of exuberant, semi-savage, animal life. She danced up ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... passive resistance her daughter always opposed to her efforts, her dogged adherence to a resolution never to discuss religious questions or give a reason for her unbelief, had a powerfully irritating, almost a maddening, effect on her, and made her at times denunciatory and violent. Her daughter's motive for keeping her lips closed was a noble one, only Mrs. Churton did not know what it was. But she was conscious of her own failings, and never ceased struggling to overcome them; and ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... you had, I was going to ask you to be kind enough not to let your excellent landlord, whom I recognize as a butler of the old school, produce it. Butlers of the old school are apt, like Peddle, to bring in a maddening tray of decanters, syphons, and glasses. You may not believe me, but I haven't touched a drop of whisky since ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... his hoary Sire; old Ocean roars Responsive echoes thro the Shetland shores. He comes, the Father! from his bleak domains, To break with liquid arms the sounding chains; Clothed in white majesty, he leads from far His tides high foaming to the wintry war. Billows on billows lift the maddening brine, And seas and clouds in battling conflict join, O'erturn the vast gulph glade with rending sweep, And crash the crust that bridged the boiling deep; Till forced aloft, bright bounding thro the air, Moves ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... but maddening ride. To experience such a magnificent rush seemed to Pax worth living for. It was not more than half-a-mile; but in that brief space there were three corners to turn like zigzag lightning, which they did chiefly on the two near wheels, and there were carts, vans, cabs, drays, apple-stalls, children, ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... destroyed their minds, but the uselessness and objectlessness of it. Sane men require reasonable employment; idleness, or irrational work disintegrates their minds. They want to see and to foresee intelligible results from their toil; mere toil without such results is maddening, or it rots men's minds as scurvy rots their bodies. The reason is, that the men are human; and if you have hitherto supposed that convicts are not human, the insanity which so constantly follows upon prison idleness or mis-employment should ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... weighted the guillotine for Marie Antoinette. It was precisely the same impulse which had caused him to pursue Warren Hastings for his cruelties towards the Begums of Oude. The spring of all this speculation was a nerve which twitched with a maddening sensitiveness ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... "Smile on, my love; that sunny smile Is light and life and joy to thee; But, oh, its glance of witchery the while, Is maddening, hopeless ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... that's enough, for Love is vanity, Selfish in its beginning as its end,[jp] Except where 't is a mere insanity, A maddening spirit which would strive to blend Itself with Beauty's frail inanity, On which the Passion's self seems to depend; And hence some heathenish philosophers Make Love the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... addressed,—which, when introduced occasionally and unobtrusively, is a graceful personal recognition; but when overdone, as too often observed, the constant iteration of "Yes, Mr. Brown,"—"No, Mrs. Black," etc., grows to be a maddening ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... all came to her with a rush; but the words ran together and swam in a maddening blur—the roar from the street below, dull with distance; the hum of the big building, with its faint concussions of closing doors; the air from the open window, not like the sweet prairie air of to-day, but heavy, smoky, typical breath of the town, yet pregnant with the indescribable throb of spring, ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... at the blank plate. No one had reported a little boy missing. In all the maddening confusion that was New Reno, no one had missed ...
— Foundling on Venus • John de Courcy
... little lithe lad. Then it was that in every pickle of mischief where a little lad could be this elf-child, with his black eyes and curly auburn hair, was to be found. So maddening indeed were his naughty tricks that the townspeople spoke not so often of beating him, as they would have beaten a human child, but of wringing his neck like a young thing that had no right to live. Yet it was more often in word than in deed that punishment of any sort was inflicted, for the ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... a state of affairs which, as the days succeeded each other without news of Sir Adrian, became every moment more intolerable to his loyalty. The inaction, the solitary hours of reflection; the maddening feeling of unavailing proximity to his heart's dearest, of impotency against the involving meshes of the present false and hateful position; all this had brought into the young man's soul a fever of anger, which, as fevers ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... "This resignation is maddening! But we are men, and will make a struggle for our lives! how now, my brave and spirited friend, shall we yet mount and push across the flames, or shall we stand here, and see those we most love perish in this ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... may cut each other's throats if they can find an opportunity; but they do not bite each other like dogs over a bone. But when opponents are almost in accord, as is always the case with our parliamentary gladiators, they are ever striving to give maddening little wounds through the joints of the harness. What is there with us to create the divergence necessary for debate but the pride of personal skill in the encounter? Who desires among us to put down ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... to stay in place yet never really getting out of order, each coquetting with a subtle mischief that found an echo in her lips. Her neck and shoulders were of that perfection that men realize but can not analyze; and her mouth, laughing or in repose, was maddening. ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... in the vicinity of the jail. A cold shudder nearly paralyzed him. Was his labor all in vain? Had he with so much trial and suffering effected his escape, only to be incarcerated again? The thought was maddening, and he resolved to die rather than ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... beast gave a snort, a groan, lurched, fell over, kicked convulsively, closed his eyes, and lay to all appearance dead. The town below, which had been watching progress, came running up. We removed the halter; the animal lay quiet. The pity of the by-standers was maddening; their remarks exasperating. "Poor little mule, he dies;" they pointed to his rubbed sides,—"Ah, poor creature! What a heavy load! How thin he is." It is certain that the best mule in the town was in far worse condition, and as for ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... while he has waited barely half that time. By the great horn spoon! If his serene highness does not admit us to his presence in a few minutes more, I shall beard him in his den, and demand audience in the name of the king. It is simply maddening to think of Cuyler carrying the Rothsay party farther and farther away with each minute, and having the beauty all to himself. Of course you don't care, since it was decided that they travel by the north shore of the lake, while, as I understand it, your beastly post lies somewhere on the south ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... stopped the way now, and once more the barker made the night ring with what Westover felt his heartless and shameless cries for Miss Lynde's carriage. After a maddening delay, it lagged up to the curb and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... character of man elevated or purified by all the maddening inventions of science? How indeed! Are we made better men by being whirled about the globe by machinery, by the increased opportunities for limitless volubility, or by the ingenious devices for mutual destruction? And how are we morally advantaged ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge
... he had longed for freedom, on and on, with craving for the open sky, for solitude, for green silence, beyond these maddening walls. This heedful silken coming and going, these Sunday voices, this reiterant yelp of a single peevish bell—would they never cease? And above all, betwixt dread and an almost physical greed, he hungered ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... the others complaining of the loneliness of our surroundings, I said nothing at first. I was no sailor man, and I was on board only by tolerance. But I looked again at the maddening sameness of the horizon—the same vacant, void horizon that we had seen now for sixteen days on end, and felt in my wits and in my nerves that same formless rebellion and protest such as comes when the same note is reiterated over and ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... in every corner and place the bodies are being found and buried as fast as possible. The necessity for speedy burial is becoming manifest, and the stench is sickening. A number of bodies have been found with a bullet hole in them, showing conclusively that in their maddening fright suicide was ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... earthly activity is upon a vast number of others. Here he was alone—everything he needed must be manufactured by his own hands, from its original sources. He had known that progress would be slow and he had been prepared for that; but he had not pictured, even to himself, half of the maddening setbacks which occurred time after time because of the crudity of the tools and equipment he was forced to use. All too often a machine or part, the product of many hours of grueling labor, would fail because of the lack of some insignificant thing—some item so common as to be taken for granted ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... of wit and sarcasm fall harmless to the ground. In fact, he is perfectly proof against any intellectual weapons forged by human skill or wielded by mortal arm, and he awaits and receives every attack with a stolid and insulting indifference which must be maddening to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... away, her low voice maddening him. "Don't you have a private room? A girl doesn't like to be ...
— A Bottle of Old Wine • Richard O. Lewis
... the people or purple of kings sway not, not maddening discord among treacherous brethren, nor the Dacians swarming down from the leagued Danube, not the Roman State, or ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... is in "Kipling's Boots." O English People! read that poem true, And answer,—are those maddening men not you? Oh, not yea few, who gather all the loots, But yea vast legions, lured to be recruits To march, march, march and march with naught in view But boots, boots, boots with blood and mud soaked through,— And, after ages, with ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... that I am relating, but a reality that happened to myself, and which it would be impossible to exaggerate. Never shall I forget the last tremendous wave that came down upon me, impelled by a maddening gust which whirled tearing along through the wild air, and scooping its deep passage through the waters. In vain was the jib-sheet let fly; in vain did I luff into the wind. I could not quit the helm, and therefore was unable to lower the sail which ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... individuals, especially in the detestable trio of bot-flies, blackflies and mosquitoes. The bot-fly infests the caribou and will probably infest the reindeer. The blackfly and mosquito attack both man and beast in maddening millions. The mosquito is not malarious. But that is the only bad thing he is not. Destruction is "conservation" so far as "flies," parasites and ...
— Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood
... I presume?" he said, insultingly, his lividly lavender-like lip upcurling into a haughty sneer, which was maddening to a self-respecting ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... three armies which had been fighting on the Southern side, and which numbered probably forty thousand men, were disbanded. These men had for four years been subjected to the unfamiliar and galling restrictions of military discipline, and to the most maddening privations. . . . At the same time four millions of slaves, without provisions and without prospect of labor in a land where employers were impoverished, were liberated. . . . The reign of law at this thrilling time was at an ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... no doubt, recognize many old acquaintances; in the special hope of which, Bob Transit has faithfully delineated some of the most conspicuous characters, as they appeared on that occasion, lending their hearty assistance in the general scene of maddening uproar. It was past five o'clock in the morning ere we quitted this den of dreadful depravity, heartily tired out by the night's adventures, yet solacing ourselves with the reflection that we had seen much and suffered little either in respect to ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... terrible strain if one is not in the mood for it. Its proper setting is the gay, glittering ball-room at some frivolous court. To a man who has just got the bird at a music-hall, and who is trying to induce another man to confess that the thing was his doing, it is little short of maddening. ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... gesture of despair. He went on repeating the word 'sealed.' I began to realise that the wine had clouded his brain. No wonder! Foodless he had gone into futurity, foodless he still was. I urged him to eat at any rate some bread. It was maddening to think that he, who had so much to tell, might tell nothing. 'How was it all,' I asked, 'yonder? Come! Tell ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... his bitter determination Conway noticed the great change, and instinct, which acts even through anger and hatred and revenge and the maddening fury of murder,—instinct, the ever present—whispered its warning to ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... in the old carved chair, and folded her hands. Peggy and I sat down on the stairs to await his coming in a crisping suspense. Aunt Olivia's kitten, a fat, bewhiskered creature, looking as if it were cut out of black velvet, shared our vigil and purred in maddening peace of mind. ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... now it was all over. Fothergill was as furious with Death as if it had been a rival who robbed him. He felt himself the sport of a power to which he could offer no resistance, and the sense of helplessness was maddening. But his fury was of the white, intense, close-lipped kind. Though he had flung a bitter word or two at Archie, his quarrel was with Destiny. No matter who had decreed this thing, Raymond Fothergill ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... which you can never pick for half an hour without striking it rich. Alas! for the horrible slang of those days, the vapid witless Corinthian talk, with its ogles and its fogles, its pointless jokes, its maddening habit of italicizing a word or two in every sentence. Even these stern and desperate encounters, fit sports for the men of Albuera and Waterloo, become dull and vulgar, in that dreadful jargon. You have to tum to Hazlitt's account of the encounter between the Gasman ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... loathing strangely mixed, On wild or hateful objects fixed. Fantastic passions! maddening brawl! And shame and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... his friend, loses him. Observe how I am placed! It is maddening. I have had a dozen opportunities to marry riches. This millstone is eternally round my neck. I have gone through my part of the fortune which was left us independently. She has all of hers, and that is why she is so strong. ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... all too sudden. She now finds life in that dismal little village intolerable. She's a girl of spirit, you know, and has always been used to luxury and freedom. To live with an old woman in a country cottage away from all her friends must be maddening. No, my dear James, in this you've acted most injudiciously. You were devoid of your usual foresight. Depend upon it, a very serious danger threatens. ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... maiden, as she beheld the deplorable, the maddening sight, might have melted hearts of stone, had there been even such among the Indians. But Indians, engaged in the delights of torturing a prisoner, are, as the dead chief had boasted himself, without heart. Pity, which the Indian can feel at ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... passers-by with a cool, easy indifference, but never losing a chance of business. In Algeria this race is generally thought to present a picture of arrogance, knavery and rank cowardice not equaled on the face of the globe. An English traveler saw an Arab, after maddening himself with opium and absinthe, run a-mok among the shopkeepers who lined the principal street of Algiers. Selecting the Hebrews, he drove before him a throng of twenty, dressed in all the colors of the rainbow, who allowed themselves ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... It was maddening to think of the unhappy Professor still fretting away hour after hour in the uncongenial form of a mule, waiting impatiently for the relief that never came. If it lingered much longer, he might actually starve, unless ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... her, the billows were fierce to catch her. But far away she was borne into desert spaces of the sea: whilst still by sight I followed her, as she ran before the howling gale, chased by angry sea-birds and by maddening billows; still I saw her, as at the moment when she ran past us, amongst the shrouds, with her white draperies streaming before the wind. There she stood with hair dishevelled, one hand clutched amongst ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... kindred spirits of her own. She wanted men about her who would make her laugh, noisy gayety, the spirituous wit that intoxicated her with the wine that was poured into her glass. And thus it was that she sank to the level of the rascally Bohemia of the common people, uproarious, maddening, intoxicating, like all Bohemias: thus it was that she fell to the ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... and went west, hoping to break the spell of his habit. But no mountain was high enough, nor cavern dark enough for him to hide from his mad pursuer. He returned to Louisville and gave himself up to the maddening bowl. His wife left him and went to a country home which she had saved out of her wealth. One night when he was sleeping drunk in one room, his old mother in another said: "Oh God, is my cup of sorrow not yet full?" The pitying angel pushed ajar the golden gates and the ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... for speculative and dreaming or designing men. They relate their dreams and projects to the ignorant and credulous, dazzle them with golden visions, and set them maddening after shadows. The example of one stimulates another; speculation rises on speculation; bubble rises on bubble; every one helps with his breath to swell the windy superstructure, and admires and wonders at the magnitude of the inflation he has ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... the window scattered the tiny fragments to the breeze. Once again her anger scarcely knew any bounds. They were away, the whole happy party, and she was shut up in a dull room, compelled to endure solitary confinement all through this glorious August day. It was insufferable, it was maddening, and it was ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... boy, that it is very humiliating to have to beg for money which really belongs to one—for it does belong to us, to you and me, I mean—as much as to him, doesn't it? It's maddening to think that the law allows a man to ruin his relations because senility has weakened ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... Simultaneously there appeared a herd of the greatest of all the prehistoric monsters—the Brontosaurus. They balked enormously against the flame-licked skies. Zark and his followers attempted to avoid them. But fear of the scorching flames drove the monsters forward. There followed a maddening moment of unutterable pain for the remaining ones of the tribe of Esau, then the herd trampled them underfoot and rumbled towards the half circle of rocks where the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... not quite done. It was well for me in the first moments of this new solitude, of this maddening agony, that there was instant work imperatively demanding the attention of the mind as well as the exercise of the body. I had first, by means of the air pump, to fill the vessel with an atmosphere as dense as that in which I had been born and lived so long; then to close the entrance window and ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... Of aught save laurel, or for such could die. I am a fool of passion, and a frown Of thine to me is as an adder's eye. To the poor bird whose pinion fluttering down Wafts unto death the breast it bore so high; Such is this maddening fascination grown, So strong thy magic or so ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... longing wild, As dies a dream along the paths of night; And Cytherea widowed is, exiled From love itself; and now—an idle sight— The Loves sit in my halls, and all delight My charmed girdle moves, is all undone! Why wouldst thou, rash one, seek the maddening fight? Why, beauteous, wouldst thou not the combat shun?"— Thus Cytherea—and the Loves ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... mention it...." Lanyard cocked his head to one side with a maddening effect of deliberation. "No," he concluded—"no; I wouldn't accuse you of intentional treason, monsieur; for that would involve ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... than in Ireland. I have very lately described at length the terrible years of growing conspiracy, anarchy, and crime; of fluctuating policy, and savage repression, and revived religious animosity, and maddening panic, deliberately and malignantly fomented, that preceded and prepared the rebellion. It is sufficient here to say that in the beginning of 1798 three provinces were organised to assist a French ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... me dyurr, that ye can't hearr 'em now? Kape your tongue silent and listen!" A good, full brogue permits speech that would offend in colourless Saxon; and Mrs. Tapping made no protest, but listened. Sure enough the rousing, maddening "Fire, fire, fire, fire, fire!" was on its way at speed somewhere close at hand. It grew and lessened and died. And Mrs. Riley was triumphant. "That's a larrudge fire, shure!" said she, transposing her impression of the enthusiasm of the engine to the area of the conflagration. Cold logic ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... interval that this little thing was no wife for him; and now—oh! Irony of Fate—he found himself compelled to the very reverse of what he longed to do: to fight the woman he loved—Yes, still loved—as if she were his mortal foe, and pay his court to the girl who really did not suit him. It was maddening, but inevitable; and once more spurring himself with the word "Onwards!" he flung himself into the accomplishment of the unholy task of subduing the inexperienced child at his elbow into committing even a crime for his sake. His heart was beating wildly; but no pause, no retreat ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... impossible to give the reader the faintest idea of my condition. Without money, clothes, or friends, an outcast, hunted like a wild beast, I had only one thing left—my horrible appetite, at all times fierce and now maddening in the extreme. My hands trembled, my face was bloated, and my eyes were bloodshot. I had almost ceased to look like a human. Hope had flown from me, and I was in complete despair. I moved about over my father's ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... Takes in an empire not less proudly so— Inspired in mountain airs, untainted yet By thousand generations' breathing—felt Like a near presence in the awful depths Of unhewn forests, and upon the steep Where giant rivers take their maddening plunge— Has grown impatient of the stifling damps Which hover close on Europe's shackled soil. Content to tread awhile the holy steps Of Art and Genius, sacred through all time, The spirit breathed ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... vain. Weary and exhausted, I sat down upon my bed and ruminated over my fortunes. Vengeance—quick, entire, decisive vengeance—I thirsted and panted for; and every moment I lived under the insult inflicted on me seemed an age of torturing and maddening agony. I rose with a leap; a thought had just occurred to me. I drew the bed towards the window, and fastening the sheet to one of the posts with a firm knot, I twisted it into a rope, and let myself down to within about twelve feet of the ground, when I let go my hold, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... heart of the elder growth, hidden from all the rest of the world and isolated from anything that might have promised relief. In the branches innumerable large, glossy blackbirds kept up a maddening chatter, and higher above, up in the hot sky, the omnipresent buzzards floated lazily, awaiting sight of possible carrion prey. Animals began to appear almost underfoot, coons and rabbits, disturbed for ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... wrath, So furious and fast they fly They blur the earth and blot the sky In wild, white mirk. They fill the air with frozen wings And tiny, angry, icy stings; They blind the eyes, and choke the breath, They dance a maddening dance of death Around their work, Sweeping the cover from the hill, Heaping the hollows deeper still, Effacing every line and mark, And swarming, storming in the dark Through the long night; Until, at dawn, the wind lies down, Weary of fight. The last torn cloud, with trailing ...
— The White Bees • Henry Van Dyke
... sinking. Strong are ye, Tyrants of the Sea; yet we also, are we weak? Lo! all flags, streamers, jacks, every rag of tricolor that will yet run on rope, fly rustling aloft: the whole crew crowds to the upper deck; and, with universal soul-maddening yell, shouts Vive la Republique,—sinking, sinking. She staggers, she lurches, her last drunk whirl; Ocean yawns abysmal: down rushes the Vengeur, carrying Vive la Republique along with her, unconquerable, into Eternity! (Compare Barrere (Chois ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... departure, so there was no way of learning anything from that source, and the detective he had employed had thus far discovered nothing. She might be in difficulties, in actual want and would not ask assistance from sheer pride. The thought was maddening and for days Stafford, distraught, unable to attend to his affairs, remained in the house, hoping, half expecting, she would return until the uncertainty and continual disappointment nearly drove him insane. He could not eat; he could not sleep. His ears still rang with her ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... slowly. Mallow was maddening, but the look of the face was not that of a foe. "Well, let us be friends," Dyck answered with a cordial smile. "Good-bye," he added. "I'm damned sorry we had ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... streak, and the streak into a lane, and upon the lane came a blot that slowly resolved itself into the shadow of a hand upon the latch. Slowly, slowly, to the hand came a wrist, and to the wrist an arm—another minute, and this maddening suspense would be over. Despite Charmian's restraining clasp, I crept a long pace ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... others attributed to a natural feeling of shame, after his display of the previous evening. Hollins and Shelldrake discussed Temperance, with a special view to his edification, and Miss Ringtop favored us with several quotations about 'the maddening bowl,'—but he paid ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... that turned his blood to ice-water run over him at the thought. Left to drift on the broad Atlantic with a serpent for a companion and without a weapon with which to defend himself. The thought was maddening and he resolutely put ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... "The fall's a maddening sort o' time for me," said Tom Randolph. "It makes me itch to get up on ma hind legs ...
— One Man's Initiation—1917 • John Dos Passos
... sound was solemnizing, then it was saddening. After a time it became exasperating, and then maddening. He tried to sleep, but he only tossed. He tried to meditate, but he only wandered—not "in dreams", however. He tried to laugh, but the laugh degenerated into a growl. Then he sighed, and the sigh ended in a groan. Finally, he got up and walked up and down the floor till his legs were cold, ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... composedly with the dissertation on cranes. "Flocks of these birds, Maria, pass periodically over the southern and central countries of Europe"—Her breath failed her, as she looked at Ovid: she could say no more. Zo stopped those maddening confidences; Zo, in desperate want of information, tugged boldly at Carmina's skirts ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... Bettina, around her was a maddening whirl, an orgy of adulation. Such fortune! Such beauty! Miss Percival arrived in Paris on the 15th of April; a fortnight had not passed before the offers of marriage began to pour upon her. In the course of that first year, she might, had she wished it, have been married thirty-four ...
— L'Abbe Constantin, Complete • Ludovic Halevy
... justified to myself—the only one who could ever know it—by my work. Over the black top there, down in the blacker valley, was the enemy, her enemy, nibbling up the space between us as a rabbit nibbles up a lettuce leaf. I closed my mind to the maddening chime, and started forthright to visit ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... you," replied Dr. Marlowe, with maddening deliberation, "I must be paid my fee; I have attended you before and refused to accept what you offered, but now I demand payment before ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... sharply defines her qualities. Think of her as raw, she has the gift of rareness: forget the donkey obstinacy, her character grasps. In the grasp of her character, one inclines, and her husband inclines, to become her advocate. She has only to discontinue maddening. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... interest-killing work than I like to think of goes on in school. Not necessarily; for the name of those is legion who have had their eyes opened to the beauties of literature by good teachers. This makes it all the more maddening when we think how many poor teachers, or good teachers with mistaken methods, or indifferent teachers, have succeeded in associating with books in the minds of their pupils simply burdensome tasks—the gloom and heaviness of life rather ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... moment likewise Sweeney did not stir. For a second his slow brain failed to grasp the truth, the deliberate challenge of the refusal; then of a sudden, in a blinding, maddening flood, came comprehension, came action. Swifter than any human being would have thought possible, unbelievably ferocious even in this land of licence, something took place, something which the staring onlookers did not realise until it was done. They only knew ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... seemed maddening, to two at least of the group that was watching, the old Krooman announced that all ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... Lucy, with angry gasps of spite and disappointment, related in full the maddening, the eccentric, the altogether incomprehensible and inexcusable conduct of the famous millionaire, "old Gold-dust," towards her beautiful, outraged, and injured self. Her mother sat listening in a kind of frozen horror which might possibly have become rigid, ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... more because the loved and hated one—isn't it possible to love and hate at the same time, little mother? I can imagine it quite well—is so indifferent as to whether she loves or hates. And whichever she does, he is polite,—"Always gentleman," as the Germans say. Which is, naturally, maddening. ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... It now struck me, that the water spoken of by the natives at Yeerkumban-kauwe might be situated among these sand-hills, and that we were going away from instead of approaching it. The bare idea of such a possibility was almost maddening, and as the dreadful thought flashed across my mind I stood for a moment undecided and irresolute as to what I ought to do. We were now many miles past these hills, and if we went back to examine them for water, and did not find it, we could never ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... So she counted not her life dear unto herself when, for the second time, as in our passage, she ventured, uninvited, into the king's presence. The womanly courage that risks life for love's sake is nobler than the soldier's that feels the lust of battle maddening him. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... So, when "Dog's-meat" re-echoes through the streets, Rush sympathetic dogs from their retreats, Beam with bright blaze their supplicating eyes, Sink their hind-legs, ascend their joyful cries; Each, wild with hope, and maddening to prevail, Points the pleased ear, and wags ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... the Rapid, that angrily, angrily Shivers their bark in its maddening play; Gaily they entered it—heedlessly recklessly, Mingling their lives with ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... perceived two jaguars, which followed his movements with glaring eyes. A single glance satisfied him they were cubs; but a maddening thought shot across his brain: the mother was out, probably not far; she might return in a moment, and he had no arms, except his knife and the barrel of his broken rifle. While musing upon his perilous situation, he heard a roar, which ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... said, with a gesture of authority. He leaned over the table, holding the other's eyes, the letter in one clinched hand. "Kill him—," he said, and pointed to the other room, from which came the maddening iteration of the jingling song—"you would kill him for his hellish insolence, for this infamous attempt to lead your wife astray, but what good will ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of the accidents of the day. My mind was maddening, and I was ripe for mischief. Belmont in the evening went to the hazard table, and I determined to accompany him, to which he encouraged me. The impetus was given, and, as if resolved on destruction, I put all my ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... are, we are. It's all over, Phil: they know all about us in England. (To Valentine.) Oh, you can't think how maddening it is to be related to a celebrated person, and never be valued anywhere ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... the next. But the surface of the board offered little hold for claws or teeth. Industry, patience, a good cause, do not make boards less hard, nails less maddening. He saw the third day dawn, he heard steps stumping about in the shack, he saw the other man ride into the dirty yard, and he sank down panting on his prison floor, his head between his ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... then, at last regain my child? Do I press her to my heart? and is it only for that brief moment, when I stand upon the brink of death? Leila, my child, look up! smile upon thy father; let him feel, on his maddening and burning brow, the sweet breath of the last of his race, and bear with him, at least, one holy and gentle thought to the ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book IV. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... fool he had been to marry, he told himself; to let that child bind him down to this sort of life. If he could only break away for a time—if he could travel and try what change would do for him; but this quiet existence was maddening. ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... mind, to walk in the solitude which can only be found in crowded places, and also she wanted some kind of distraction. Her days had lately been so filled with adventure that the placid immobility of the top back room was not only irksome, but maddening, and her mother's hasty and troubled breathing came between her and her thoughts. The poor furniture of the room was hideous to her eyes, the uncarpeted floor and bleak, ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... mean by striking me, you drunken pig?" growled Jim, but not yet striking. Conscious of his strength, he had the instinctive forbearance of superiority, but it was fast mastered by the maddening liquor. ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... killing him— loneliness, a maddening desolation, a lifeless world that reached for hundreds of miles farther than his eyes could see. To the north and east there was nothing but ice, piled-up masses and grinning mountains of it, white at first, of a somber gray farther off, and then purple and almost ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... was maddening out there upon that deserted No Man's Land. To the dug-out openings, pointing away from it, noises had been partially tempered; certainly the acrid smoke was less down in the quadrangle, and she had therefore not been prepared for quite such a cataclysm. ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... the street. Plainly, here was conceit personified, and yet a conceit mingled with a maddening insolence. His expression told all that this thing which he was about to do was worthy of the closest attention. He was the axis upon which the interest of the ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... his cigarette, and the maddening music of brass instruments and brazen creatures, which his story had shut out, crashed again upon my ears. "I reckon if you were telling this, you'd stop here," he said, "and put down 'to be continued in our next.'" There seemed a trace of huskiness in his flippant tones, ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... matters little. There is time to be slow in decision; there is time to forecast possibilities. Indeed, it is an advantage for the solitary man to cultivate an over-elaborate way of considering a subject, a slow picking-up and matching of patterns, a maddening deliberation, simply by way of recreation. For a danger of solitude, if one likes one's work, is that one works too much and too hard. Then one writes too much, forgets to fill the cistern; one uses up the old ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... clutch his fingers nervously and shuffle with his feet, which of itself must irritate a woman with nerves on edge. He could do nothing. He could suggest nothing save that he should follow her about like a sympathetic spaniel. It was maddening. He walked to the window and looked out into the unexhilarating street, all that was man in him ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... Crosby, and again her tantalizing laugh rang out, "you are entirely too hasty in your supposition. As it happens, I have the best right in the world to bring my team to the gym. this afternoon. So, little folks," looking from one sophomore to another in a way that was fairly maddening, "run away ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... sent for the Inspector? If so, I feared that the envelope was missing, or at any rate that he had detected Zara el-Khala in the act of stealing it and had determined to place the matter in the hands of the police. It was a maddening reflection. Again—I shrewdly suspected that I was not the only watcher of Dr. Stuart's house. The frequency with which the big yellow car drew up at the door a few moments after the doctor had gone out could not be due to accident. Yet I had been unable to detect the presence of ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... the hall; she walked to and fro, and listened at the open door that led to the kitchen stairs. She came up again; she went down again. The first of the intervals of five minutes was endless. The time stood still. The suspense was maddening. ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... however, it was a world of gloom. Upstairs Huldah was singing— singing!—and it was Thanksgiving. He could hear her feet patter, patter on the floor above, and the sound had a cheery self-reliance that was maddening. Huldah was happy, evidently—and it was Thanksgiving! Twice he had walked resolutely to the back stairs with a brown-paper parcel in his arms; and twice a quavering song of triumph from the room above had sent him back in defeat. As if she could care ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... impatient. Murmurs arose and cries and shouts with the intention of maddening the tiger ...
— The Martyr of the Catacombs - A Tale of Ancient Rome • Anonymous
... really thought I had, time after time. I would start off a series of circumstances that should have had a grave alterative effect, and it would look for awhile as if a long-range change was going to be affected—and then it would straighten itself out again, with no important change occurring. It was maddening. We worked for five years trying to make even a small alteration—and brought back our data—" He pointed to the papers on the floor. "There are the calculations, applied on the Equation. Meaningless. We accomplished nothing. And the Dictator ...
— Infinite Intruder • Alan Edward Nourse
... Bacchante and the Bacchanting of her mud-colored Dutch-fashioned hair had bored him. Ennui was not, of course, an excuse; but it was the explanation of why he answered in this wise (very sweetly, looking Tottykins in the eyes and patting her hand with a brother-like and altogether maddening condescension): ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... most exciting melody that almost drew me out of the window; it seemed to have no particular form, no beginning or middle or end; it went soaring higher and higher, like the song of a lark, with never a pause for breath, to the time of a maddening jig—a tarantella, perhaps—always on the strain and stress, always getting nearer and nearer to some shrill climax of ecstasy quite high up and away, beyond the scope of earthly music; while the persistent drone kept buzzing of the earth and the impossibility to escape. All so gay, so sad, ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... when I was very young and have been desperately tidy about my morals ever since, but for fear of stumbling just because I'm so bored I have entrenched myself behind a maddening routine. Six months here ought to put ballast into the brain of ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... what worlds of joy and sorrow, what maddening griefs and ecstacies have these poor monosyllables conveyed! More than any other words in the whole dictionary have they enraptured or saddened the human heart; rung out the peal of joy, or sounded the knell of hope. ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... and the roaring of guns from the flanks, answered by the iron howitzers from the battery of the parallel, the heavy roll, and horrid explosion of the powder-barrels, the whizzing flight of the blazing splinters, the loud exhortations of the officers, and the continual clatter of the muskets, made a maddening din. Now a multitude bounded up the great breach, as if driven by a whirlwind, but across the top glittered a range of sword-blades, sharp-pointed, keen-edged on both sides, and firmly fixed in ponderous beams chained together, and set deep in the ruins; and for ten feet in ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... any value from the British front (the Censor is hard at work), but for the last six days our casualties have been terrible. It is maddening to see this long catalogue of brave men killed or wounded and yet ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones |
