"Madman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... force the government to give in and make terms with those devils who'd crushed Belgium. Of course there were plenty there ready to die in the last ditch for honor and the country, but the mob was with the speakers. Quite insane with terror the mob was. And I spoke aloud to Kitchener, like a madman of a sort also, begging him to come from another world and save ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... the madman. 'Let go, or I'll dash you to atoms!' Suiting the action to the threat, he hurled my brother-in-law against the wall with stunning force, and rushed on, shouting incoherently: 'My horse! There is time ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... "It was a madman who gave Henry VI. of Lancaster the crown of Saint-Louis, and the blazon of England still bears—until I scratch them out with my ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... wall, and even saw the jailer and his men cross the court, there was no hue and cry or alarm of an escape. Nor, I surmise, did any one even of my fellow-prisoners, distracted as they were by their own concerns and the excitement of the madman's attempt, miss me. ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... not only a most poetical insight into the real nature of the 'Illustrious Hidalgo of La Mancha'; he has shown us that it was a nature compacted of the madman and the poet, and this in language so appropriate, that the consideration of it cannot fail to give pleasure to all who have found a reason ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... in consultation with his shrewd old foster-father. Without pausing in his argument, he sent an impatient glance over his shoulder; when it fell upon the gory young madman, he turned sharply and ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... that madman means to try and do?" he asked excitedly; "see how he keeps on creeping straight along toward where that battery is hidden behind some sort of barricade. Honest to goodness, now, I believe he means to ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... themselves with the invaders—put forth a counter address to the Druses and other Christian inhabitants of Syria, invoking their assistance in the name of their religion, against the blasphemous general of a nation which had renounced Christianity. Napoleon upon this said that Sir Sydney was a madman; and if his story be true, Sir Sydney challenged him to single combat; to which he made answer, that he would not come forth to a duel unless the English could fetch Marlborough from his grave, but ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... to move to one of the famous cotton plantations of Dallas County, Ala. I seem to recall taking an interest in the world about me quite early. Especially do I recall, as one of my earliest recollections, the death of Garfield, so cruelly slain by the madman Guiteau. My father was greatly distressed, ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... Well, God forgive me, and you too, you made me tell a great lie. I was fain to say you came only to take your leave before you went abroad; and all this not only to keep quiet, but to keep him from playing the madman; for when he has the least suspicion, he carries it so strangely that all the world takes notice on't, and so often guess at the reason, or else he tells it. Now, do but you judge whether if by mischance he should discover the truth, whether he would ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... Macedon into a madman, and perverted the gracious-minded Julius Caesar into usurpation and tyranny, has also been found by Christian heroes the most perilous ordeal of their virtue; but, inasmuch as they are Christian heroes, and not pagan men, worshippers of false gods, whose fabled examples ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... out, a shrill and savage noise, And tears ran down the stubble of his cheek. The other face was younger, clean and sad With the manful stricken beauty of a lad Who had intended always to be glad. .... The touch of his compassion, like a mother's, Pitied the madman, soothed him and caressed. And then I heard him speak, In a low voice: "Mon frere, mon frere! Calme-toi! Right here's your place." And, opening his coat, he pressed Upon his heart the wanderer's ...
— The New World • Witter Bynner
... much last night, and behaved like a madman, as these blows will sufficiently witness, though I cannot remember how I came by them, or what I did last night; but if this is my hatchet, which I see by the mark it is, why I know 'tis no use denying the fact. I am heartily ...
— The Little Quaker - or, the Triumph of Virtue. A Tale for the Instruction of Youth • Susan Moodie
... inclined to be shocked when he was reminded of their previous meetings, but his uncomfortable feeling soon wore off, and he and Antony quickly became intimate. But Bill generally addressed him as "Dear Madman" when he happened ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... writing to Dennis, "I remember poor Nat Lee, who was then upon the verge of madness, yet made a sober and witty answer to a bad poet who told him, 'It was an easy thing to write like a madman.' 'No,' said he, ''tis a very difficult thing to write like a madman, but 'tis a very easy thing to write like a fool.'" Nevertheless, the difficult song of distraction is to be heard, a light high ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... June 16th, 1661, more than two years before Lady Fanshawe was told this story, the circumstances of which she states to have happened only three months previously. The Colonel was a most extraordinary character, and though a man of genius and erudition, was very nearly a madman. A voluminous collection of his MSS. is preserved in the British Museum, whence it appears that he was in the habit of committing his most private thoughts to paper; that there was scarcely a subject to which his attention was not directed; and ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... and to protest against the injustice of my confinement. Finally, on the seventeenth of October, 1862, I was released. My uncle was dead, and the friends of my youth were now strangers. Indeed, a man over fifty years old, whose only known record is that of a madman, ...
— The Smoky God • Willis George Emerson
... Neroniana he was crowned with the wreath of victory. His most celebrated poem, the one that drew down on him the irony of Juvenal, was the Troica, in which perhaps occurred the Troiae Halosis which this madman recited in state over the burning ruins of Rome, and which is parodied with subtle mockery in Petronius. Other poems were of a lighter cast and intended to be sung to the accompaniment of the harp. These ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... which the "Gil Blas" of Le Sage has made famous throughout the world. Mendoza, after having filled many high offices under Charles V., when Philip ascended the throne, was, for some slight offense, banished from the court as a madman. In the poems which he occasionally wrote during his exile, he gave the influence of his example to the new form introduced by Boscan and Garcilasso. At a later period he occupied himself in writing some portions ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... the fireman said. "The landlady and her children. Her husband was a porter at the railway station, and had been detained on overtime. He only came back a quarter of an hour ago, and he's been going on like a madman;" and he pointed to the porter, who was sitting down on the doorsteps of a house facing his own, with his face ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... Or rather, it was a thing that had once been a man. It was a torture that even the diabolical mind of an Indian could not have invented. It was the insane creation of another race—the work of a madman. ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... of which I have not learnt the name. Letters have been dropped at Bedford, threatening to burn the town; and the inhabitants have been so intimidated, as to have placed a guard in many parts of it, several nights past. Some madman or some devil has broke loose, who it is to be hoped will pay dear for these effusions of his malignity. Since our conflagration here, we have sent two women and a boy to the justice, for depredation; Sue Riviss, for stealing a piece of beef, which, in her excuse, she said she intended ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... his sister and another for his niece—giving careful directions as to style and price. Mathilde and he had then been each other's for over eight years, but none the less—nay, let us say all the more—he ended his letter: "Adieu! I think only of thee, and I love thee like the madman that I am." ...
— Old Love Stories Retold • Richard Le Gallienne
... perform a fight at sea must believe that there is more belonging to a good man of war upon the waters than great daring, and must know that there is a great deal of difference between fighting loose or at large and grappling. To clap ships together without consideration belongs rather to a madman than to a man of war; for by such an ignorant bravery was Peter Strozzi lost at the Azores, when he fought against the Marquis of Santa Cruz. In like sort had the Lord Charles Howard, Admiral of England, been lost in the year 1588, if he had not been better advised than a ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... and dramatic, Mr Kelly's book is a cleverly written and absorbing romance. It concludes with a tremendous scene, in which a life-and-death struggle with a madman in the midst of a raging ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... the persecutor was attacked by a dreadful disease in the bowels, which so distressed him that he roared like a madman; and his friends, which is too often the case with the heathen, left him to suffer and die alone. The two Christians whom he would have ruined then went and took care of him till he died, two or three days after his attack. The whole affair was well known in the neighborhood, ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... I am!" said the other. "You wouldn't think it, to hear me go on as I did, but I am a Methodist. The last two or three days, though, I've been like a raving madman. That's the worst of it. Starvation has brought the devil into me. I'm not a-going to take all that though, master; I'll take some of it; and if ever I prayed to the Throne of Grace in my life, I'll pray for you. Who are you? ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... syllable of bad language that Gammon had heard from Polperro's lips. Struck with the fact, and all the more conscious of his duty to this high-born madman, he hit on a device for rescuing him ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... is left but to defend yourselves? You may profess to be at peace, if you like, as he does; I quarrel not with that. But if any man supposes this to be a peace, which will enable Philip to master all else and attack you last, he is a madman, or he talks of a peace observed toward him by you, not toward you by him. This it is that Philip purchases by all his expenditure, the privilege of assailing you without ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... library, kept in a noble hall over two hundred feet long and fifty or sixty wide, the books being all arranged with their backs to the wall, so that even the titles cannot be read,—a plan which one would say must be the device of some madman. The bookcases are made of ebony, cedar, orange, and other choice woods, and contain some sixty thousand volumes. What possible historic wealth may here lie concealed,—what noble thoughts and minds embalmed! In the domestic or dwelling portion of the Escurial the apartments ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... minutes vouchsafed to him; but it is quite certain that any one but the dying woman might have misunderstood it. A busy statesman, always thinking of the interests of France, the Duke had a thousand odd ways on the surface, such as often lead to a man of genius being mistaken for a madman, and of which the explanation lies in the exquisiteness and exacting needs of their intellect. He came to seat himself in an armchair by his wife's side, and looked fixedly at her. The dying woman put her hand out a little way, took her ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... Brutus is superbly portrayed in that wonderful scene with Cassius in the fourth act. With all the superiority of conscious genius he treats his confederate as a child or madman, much as Hamlet treats Rosencrantz ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... time being, John Arthur was a madman. Defied, mocked, by this girl who had been a burden to his very life! He raged, he raved, he cursed; and so raging and raving, he cursed her, and then in vile, bitter words hurled his anathema at her ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... been found, or (in the opinion of the police) was likely to be found. The one event that had happened, since the appearance of the paragraph in the New York journal, was the confinement of James Bellbridge in an asylum, as a madman under ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... and, with a sudden movement, slipped her arm out of this madman's and dived away like a swallow through the pavement traffic. Fiorsen stood still and laughed with his head thrown back. The second time to-day. SHE had slipped from his grasp. Passers looked at him, amazed. The ugly devils! And with a grimace, he turned out of Piccadilly, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... She must, therefore, be more emphatically my sister.... C——, the most excellent, the most Pantisocratic of aristocrats, has been laughing at me. Up I arose, terrible is reasoning. He fled from me, because "he would not answer for his own sanity, sitting so near a madman of genius." He told me that the strength of my imagination had intoxicated my reason, and that the acuteness of my reason had given a directing influ-* *ence to my imagination. Four months ago the remark would not have been ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... the king rushing like a madman after his mother, he threw himself before him and bade him stop. But the king struck at him furiously with his sword. Perseus caught the blow on his shield, and at the same moment took the head of ...
— Old Greek Stories • James Baldwin
... unfrequently called upon to preserve the peace he threatens to disturb. Dearly does he love his legitimate brandy, and dearly does it make him pay for the insane frolics it incites him to perpetrate, to the profit of certain saloons, and danger of persons. Madman under the influence of his favourite drink, a strange pride besets his faculties, which is only appeased with the demolition of glass and men's faces. For this strange amusement he has become famous and feared; and as the light of his own besotted countenance makes its appearance, ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... other than the Lake Vadimon of which Pliny speaks. Of that I know nothing: it is a poor little pool now, filled with rushes, peopled with frogs. By the side of this pool I saw her again: she looked at me. Like a madman I plunged into the water, but the reeds and the lilies entangled me in their meshes: the long grasses and water-weeds were netted into an impenetrable mass. I stood there up to my waist in water, incapable of movement, like the poor cattle of which Pliny tells, who used to mistake all this ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... exposed itself. Its owner was probably some poor lunatic, subject to fits of madness. But Helwyse was full of scorn and anger, born of that bitterest disappointment which admits not even the poor consolation of having worthily aspired. He had been duped,—and by the cobwebs of a madman's brain! He broke into a short laugh, harsh to the ear, and answering ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... has frightened them all of a sudden? This is not the usual time of their flight, certainly, ... Why is the Queen's pet deer running that way? Chapata! Chapata! She does not even hear my call. I have never seen a night like this! The horizon on every side suddenly becomes red, like a madman's eye! The sun seems to be setting at this untimely hour on all sides at the same time. What madness of the Almighty is this! ... Oh, I am frightened! ... Where ...
— The King of the Dark Chamber • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... Hence, their extreme anxiety to avoid Friend Hopper's interference. When they found that more than half of their destined prey had slipped through their fingers, they were furious. One of them especially raved like a madman. He had written the anonymous letter, and was truly "a lewd fellow of the ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... a good morning!" thought Morris; and the next moment, seizing his hat, he fled from his place of business like a madman. Three streets away he stopped and groaned. "Lord! I should have borrowed from the manager!" he cried. "But it's too late now; it would look dicky to go back; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... we recognize in Motley; but none of Botta's tendency to proverbial sayings, bitter with a sarcasm that wounds most deeply its creator; as, 'To believe that abstract principle will prevail over full purses is the folly of a madman.' Neither do we find in Motley the occasional terse conciseness of Botta,—little epics enclosed in a short sentence. 'Napoleon had redeemed France; but he had created Italy.' But the Italian can not be impartial. Just he is, but it is the accident of his political ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... she nodded imperceptibly. She was relieved to think of Hastings—good, faithful, unassuming creature!—remaining on guard. The very desertion of the farm-houses on this great day might tempt marauders—especially that thief or madman who had been haunting their own premises. She hoped the police would not forget them either. But Hastings' offer to stay till the girls came back from the Millsborough crowds and bands at about nine o'clock quite eased ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... be so small as not to involve duties from each member to the rest; duties to which a sound human mind is requisite. Neither an idiot nor a madman can be a normal citizen. The former ranks as in permanent childhood; the latter, being generally dangerous, must be classed with criminals. A dehumanized brain impairs a citizen's rights because it unmans him,—disabling him from duty, even making him ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... are a positive inducement to violent and vicious white men to oppress and injure people of color. In this point of view, a negro becomes the slave of every white man in the community. The brutal drunkard, or the ferocious madman, can beat, rob, and mangle him with perfect impunity. Dr. Torrey, in his "Portraiture of Domestic Slavery," relates an affecting anecdote, which happened near Washington. A free negro walking along the road, was set upon by two intoxicated ruffians on horseback, who, without any provocation, began ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... solitary, and had taken more care of himself in his way of living than he did, he would have made known the greatness of his intellect in such a way that he would have been revered, whereas, by reason of his uncouth ways, he was rather held to be a madman, although in the end he did no harm save to himself alone, while his works were beneficial and useful to his art. For which reason every good intellect and every excellent craftsman should always be taught, from such an example, to keep ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... The maidservant who had ushered him in, returning for some purpose, was amazed to see what the visitor had done, and went and reported the fact to her mistress. She, probably thinking that they had either a madman or a would-be thief to deal with, sent to request him to leave the house, which he did indignantly, and wrote to his friends in India to tell them how he had been insulted by ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... increased; every time the great hall clock sounded the hour he shuddered, not knowing if he might ever hear it again. The physician and lawyer remained with him at his request, but they could not bring calm to his agitated mind. They could only listen to what he said, as to the ravings of a madman, for mad they judged ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... is that we are commanded by a madman. Nothing else can account for the extraordinary vagaries of Captain Craigie. It is fortunate that I have kept this journal of our voyage, as it will serve to justify us in case we have to put him under any sort of restraint, a step which I should only consent to as a last resource. ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... good many fishermen on the Darling. They camp along the banks in all sorts of tents, and move about in little box boats that will only float one man. The fisherman is never heavy. He is mostly a withered little old madman, with black claws, dirty rags (which he never changes), unkempt hair and beard, and a "ratty" expression. We cannot say that we ever saw him catch a fish, or even get a bite, and we certainly never saw him offer any ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... was brought to bear on the Bishop, and representations were made to him respecting the annoying features of the pecuniary difficulties which had arisen with the contractor. With a little imagination poor Peyramale was transformed into a violent, obstinate madman, through whose undisciplined zeal the Church had almost been compromised. And, at last, the Bishop, forgetting that he himself had blessed the foundation-stone, issued a pastoral letter laying the unfinished church under interdict, and prohibiting all religious services in it. This ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... by heaven, I should be a madman if I were. But why do you not finish the argument which proves that gold and silver and other things which seem to be wealth are not real wealth? For I have been exceedingly delighted to hear the discourses which you have just ...
— Eryxias • An Imitator of Plato
... at her, but his wild eyes had warned her, and she eluded his grasp. She felt herself indeed helpless, in such a place and at a madman's mercy, but she prayed and faced him with steadfast eyes. He moved slowly towards her, gloating over ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... passed; and then came an addition to the family. A young woman, Marie Couturier, the daughter of one of Guillaume's friends, suddenly entered it. Couturier had been an inventor, a madman with some measure of genius, and had spent a fairly large fortune in attempting all sorts of fantastic schemes. His wife, a very pious woman, had died of grief at it all; and although on the rare occasions when he saw his daughter, he showed great fondness for her and loaded her with ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... being hoodwinked at all," said Beverly, very much at odds with her protege. "In an hour from now he will know the truth and will be howling like a madman ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... doors which once opened into rooms where luxury waited upon some who were born, and upon others (perchance the same) who died. A sound reaches me from the far-end of the corridor that makes me feel like a coward. It is the raving of a madman. How he seems to be contending with all the fiends of hell! Sometimes his voice is so low, and the words crowd one upon another so fast, that the muttering is like the prolonged growl of a wild beast; then the mood changes, and the unseen man seems to be addressing ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... Joan out of her peril; though for one, after seeing what I had seen, it seemed to me that while Joan had the ax the man's chance was not the best of the two. When we arrived the danger was past, the madman was in custody. All the people were flocking to the little square in front of the church to talk and exclaim and wonder over the event, and it even made the town forget the black news of the treaty for two or ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... a madman. It was not thus that ladies were rescued from calumny. But to leave her alone to face it for time indefinite was unthinkable. And, meanwhile, what would become of him severed from her and little Jean? He sighed and looked around the little room where ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... What was it that his ever-seething brain now meditated? What projects was he forming for the future? Toward what region would he now turn? Would he put in execution the menaces expressed in his letter—the menaces of a madman! ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne
... tried to force Johnnie into a chair. "Madman!" he panted. "I tell you our friends have been betrayed; they are retreating. Go back to ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... authority than vulgar rumor for this story. According to Robles, the cardinal, after this bravado, twirled his cordelier's belt about his fingers, saying, "he wanted nothing better than that to tame the pride of the Castilian nobles with!" But Ximenes was neither a fool nor a madman; although his over-zealous biographers make him sometimes one, and sometimes the other. Voltaire, who never lets the opportunity slip of seizing a paradox in character or conduct, speaks of Ximenes as one "qui, ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... Like your countrymen, I let you rule. But vhen you forget all else off me, remembair you haf find von Peruvian who loaf you so he let you ruin hees life—you vill nefer see anodther such Peruvian madman. If I haf trouble you, I haf not spare myself, keess me gude-night, ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins
... menages-humored. We contradicted no fancies which entered the brains of the mad. On the contrary, we not only indulged but encouraged them; and many of our most permanent cures have been thus effected. There is no argument which so touches the feeble reason of the madman as the argumentum ad absurdum. We have had men, for example, who fancied themselves chickens. The cure was, to insist upon the thing as a fact—to accuse the patient of stupidity in not sufficiently perceiving it to be a fact—and ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... certainly chronic, the shindy enough to appal. Oh yes, I omitted to tell you, I'd wounds on the chest and the head, And my shirt was torn to a gun-rag, and my face blood-gummy and red. I'm thinking I looked like a madman; I fancy I felt one too, Half naked and swinging a rifle. . . . God! what a glorious "do". As I sit here in old Piccadilly, sipping my afternoon tea, I see a blind, bullet-chipped devil, and it's hard to believe that it's ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... doors. Oh! these artists, poor unsettled brains taking life all the wrong way! What could be done with such a man? I should have liked to talk to him, to reason with him. In vain. Those were indeed right, who had said to me: "He is a madman." Of what use moreover to talk to him? We do not speak the same language. He would not understand me, any more than I understand him. And now, here we must sit and look at each other. I see hatred in his glance, and yet I have true affection for ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... permission, persuasion, and even compulsion, to set about doing the same! That is his true blessedness, honour, 'liberty,' and maximum of well-being,—if liberty be not that, I for one have small care about liberty. You do not allow a palpable madman to leap over precipices; you violate his liberty, you that are wise, and keep him, were it in strait waist-coat, away from the precipices! Every stupid, every cowardly and foolish man, is but a less palpable madman; his true liberty ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... he took were deserted, and he was now well-nigh out of the town, with the open country and forest lying before him. The people whom he met rushed out of his path; happily for him they were few, and were terrified, because they thought him a madman broken loose from his keepers. He never looked back; but he could tell that the pursuit was falling farther and farther behind him, that the speed at which he went was breaking the powers of his hunters; fresh throngs added ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... child; I do not wish for any. I feel I am more wife than mother. Well, then, can you fear? Listen to me, my own beloved, promise to forget, not this hour of mingled tenderness and doubt, but the words of that madman. Jules, you must. Promise me not to see him, not to go to him. I have a deep conviction that if you set one foot in that maze we shall both roll down a precipice where I shall perish—but with your name upon my lips, your heart in my heart. Why hold me so high in that ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... QUEEN. Madman! To what rude boldness my indulgence leads! Know you, it is the queen, your mother, sir, Whom you address in such presumptuous strain? Know, that myself will to the king report ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... He moved away to the right and ran in amongst the low-growing bush, only to reappear with more feverish haste, and eyes whose fiery glance seemed to shoot in every direction at once. On he went, round the edge of the entire clearing; in and out, like some madman running purposelessly in search of some phantasy of his brain. There was no one there but himself, and the two still forms upon ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... advice, and ended by carrying him off. He stood, unsteady on his legs, meek, and caked over in half-dried mud, while the two men talked around him in an incomprehensible tongue. Mrs. Smith had refused to come downstairs till the madman was off the premises; Amy Foster, far from within the dark kitchen, watched through the open back door; and he obeyed the signs that were made to him to the best of his ability. But Smith was full of mistrust. 'Mind, sir! It may be all his cunning,' he cried repeatedly in a tone of warning. ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad
... as well the gathered serenity had been by this time all blighted and distorted and the reflected brightness of his happy day turned to blank confusion. "Have I been dealing these three hours with a madman?" ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... projecting headland before mentioned, the whole picture stood revealed in the flush of the alpenglow. Their enthusiasm was excited beyond bounds, and the more impulsive of the two, a young Scotchman, dashed ahead, shouting and gesticulating and tossing his arms in the air like a madman. Here, at last, was a typical ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... during the ride from an angry, indignant prisoner to a joyful madman, and was now tearfully and effusively humble in his petitions for pardon and in his thanks. Their benefactor, as they were pleased to call him, hurried them into the waiting train and ran to purchase their ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... Maid and the Dauphin. It was not the Maid's prophecies concerning the realm of France that attracted him to her. The world was too near its end for him to take any interest in the re-establishment of the madman's son in his inheritance. But he expected that once the kingdom of Jesus Christ had been established in the Land of the Lilies, Jeanne, the prophetess, and Charles, the temporal vicar of Jesus Christ, would lead the people of Christendom to deliver ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... thunderstorm; and one electric shock sets free forces unsuspected, transcendental, supernatural in the deepest sense; forces which we can no more stop, by shrieks at their absurdity, from incarnating themselves in actual blood, and misery, and horror, than we can control the madman in his paroxysm by telling him that he is a madman. And so the fair vision of the student is buried once more in rack and hail and driving storm; and, like Daniel of old when rejoicing over the coming restoration of ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley
... is ruthlessly logical about the telephone. The only occasion on which I was in really serious danger of being taken for a madman in the United States was when, in a Chicago hotel, I permanently removed the receiver from the telephone in a room designed (doubtless ironically) for slumber. The whole hotel was appalled. Half Chicago shuddered. In response to ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... own attendants was suddenly seized with the "amok" frenzy. He mentioned that he had known of as many as forty people being injured by a single "amok" runner. When the cry "amok! amok!" is raised, people fly to the right and left for shelter, for after the blinded madman's kris has once "drank blood," his fury becomes ungovernable, his sole desire is to kill; he strikes here and there; men fall along his course; he stabs fugitives in the back, his kris drips blood, he rushes on yet more wildly, ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... has passed since I went, and all that now weighs upon her mind, I could certainly be of some use. I could and would say every thing that she might scruple to hint to Lady Olivia, and I will answer for it I would make her raise the siege. But I cannot believe Mr. L—— to be such a madman as to think of attaching himself seriously to a woman like Olivia, when he has such a wife as Leonora. That he was amusing himself with Olivia I saw, or thought I saw, some time ago, and I rather wondered ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... had the smallest ill-feeling toward me. How long it had existed I do not know. I cannot imagine why it was there. I was forced to think, when I considered the thing in those awful days after his death, that it was a case of a madman's delusion, that he believed me to be plotting against him, as they so often do. Some such insane conviction must have been at the root of it. But who can sound the abysses of a lunatic's fancy? Can you imagine the state of mind in which a man ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... a letter!" cried he, in a heart-breaking tone, and like a madman pursued by furies, ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... could not restrain his joy; he was coming and going like a madman. The doctor had returned to the house; a few minutes later the stove was roaring, and soon a delicious odor of cooking aroused Bell from his torpor. It may be easily imagined how the feast was enjoyed; still the doctor advised his friends to partake in moderation; he set an example, and while ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... to stupefy him, so that at last they were obliged to halt and weave a kind of hat out of corn and grasses, which gave him so strange an appearance that some Moors, whom they met going to their toil, thought that he must be a madman, and ran away. ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... vanity which are proper to a court. We pity genius when we behold it struggling with impossibility. Mirabeau was the most potent man of his time; but the greatest individual contending with an enraged element appears but a madman. A fall is only ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... all my Aunt Jessica's manoeuvring is to marry me to Dora, and Dora, like Barkis, is willing. Marry Dora! The thought is a febrifuge, a sudorific! She would be thumping discords on my wornout strings all day long. In a month I should be a writhing madman. I would sooner, infinitely sooner, marry Carlotta. Carlotta is nature; Dora isn't even art. Why, in the name of men and angels, should I marry Dora? And why (save to call herself Lady Ordeyne) should she ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... recovered himself with ease and without exertion. The stranger recoiled, and for an instant appeared to be under the impulse to run. But blind rage seized him as his unexpected punishment began to sting, and he came back like a madman. Mr. McGowan shoved aside or blocked the terrific shower of fists with a coolness and precision that drove the stranger momentarily insane. He bellowed like a mad bull. He began to slug with the force of a pile-driver without any pretense to fairness. He leaped from left to ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... to pass into real madness in Ophelia. King Lear's growing perturbation becomes insanity the moment he sees the pretended madman Edgar. ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... dead to-morrow." He shook the door violently, but Cherry was not quite the utter fool Grim took him for, for he had locked the door. Grim stood outside on the corridor for some seconds, petrified with rage and disgust, and then flew like a madman back to the concert-room. He cannoned up against some one leisurely strolling up to the dressing-room, and was darting on again sans apology. A hand gently closed upon his collar and pulled ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... reason, which the deserter does not confess. He has obtained the title needed for his plans. What does he care for the rest? Is it worth while to sit up late at night and wear one's self out in toil for the mere pleasure of learning? He must be a madman who, without the lure of profit, lends an ear to the blandishments of knowledge. Let us retreat into our shell, close our lid to the importunities of the light and lead the life of a mussel. There lies the secret of happiness. This philosophy is not mine. ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... I, observing, with an eye practised in the gymnasium of the Hellenic Institute, the narrow space of the banks over the gulf,—"why, my good lady, it need not be a madman to ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... decide whether a patient is insane or not, and it is quite possible to suffer from very severe fits of depression without being the subject of maniacal melancholia, or from very violent fits of passion without being a madman. ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... Quixote had already described how he had seen the man go bounding along the mountain side, and he was now filled with amazement at what he heard from the goatherd, and more eager than ever to discover who the unhappy madman was; and in his heart he resolved, as he had done before, to search for him all over the mountain, not leaving a corner or cave unexamined until he had found him. But chance arranged matters better than he expected or hoped, for at that very moment, in a gorge on the ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the Palma newspapers, and I came immediately. Your friend the Chueta will always be the same. What anxiety you have given us! Pneumonia, my boy, and in a dangerous form! You opened your eyes and you did not recognize me; you raved like a madman. But it's all over now! We have given you the best of care. ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... "cleaning himself" in his shirt sleeves. Mr. Blyth has broken one of his tumblers, and has mutinously insisted on showing him how to draw the cork of the cowslip wine bottle. Mr. Blyth has knocked down a fork and two spoons, just as they were laid straight, by whisking past the table like a madman on his way into the garden. Mr. Blyth has bumped up against the housemaid in returning to the dining-room, and has apologized to Susan by a joke which makes her giggle ecstatically in Vance's own face. If this sort of thing is to go on for a day or two longer, though he has been twenty ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... genius I hope my friend will some day appreciate, once wrote a strange "crazy tale," in which he meets a madman who had stood in a field; and this seemingly silent pasture had presented to his ears an unspeakable uproar. And he says, "I could hear the daisies grow!" Well, I have sometimes thought of that when in some roaring street of London. Could I but hear men and women think as they ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... was somber, "that I agree to, younger brother. These are not men as we know them, and I do not think they would be good dalaanbiyat'i—allies. They had go'ndi in plenty, these star men, but it is not the power of the People. No one but a madman or a fool would try to disturb this ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... system within us, resembling a natural kingdom, a sort of flora, of which the iconography will one day be outlined by some man who will perhaps be accounted a madman. ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... altercation, Roderick McRae had been leaning far over the railing, striving to attract the attention of the madman in the buggy. But his voice was drowned in the laughter and cheers of the passengers who were enjoying the battle immensely. At this moment he put his fingers to his teeth and uttered a long, sharp ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... semicircle faced by a wide, open V. Imagine such a situation complicated by offensive and counter-offensive, during which the French have seized part of the hills and the German part of the plain, till the whole region is a madman's maze of barbed wire, earthy lines, trenches,—some of them untenable by either side and still full of the dead who fell in the last combat,—shell holes, and fortified craters. Such was something of the situation in that wind-swept plain at the edge of the Bois-le-Pretre. I leave for other ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... ringing double peals, the guns roaring and banging most prodigiously. Bulbo was embracing everybody; the Lord Chancellor was flinging up his wig and shouting like a madman; Hedzoff had got the Archbishop round the waist, and they were dancing a jig for joy; and as for Giglio, I leave you to imagine what HE was doing, and if he kissed Rosalba once, twice—twenty thousand times, I'm sure I don't ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... la Gueritude had never in his life heard anything of this sort, and thought he had to deal with a madman, as one might easily suppose, and, more for defence than attack, he raised his big stick. My good tutor, out of his senses, threw a bottle at the head of the contractor, who fell headlong on the floor, howling, "He has killed me!" And as he was swimming in red wine he really looked ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... ears if I caught her!" quoth Clara; and then ran on to tell how Elsley "never kept no hours, nor no accounts either; so that she has to do everything, poor thing; and no thanks either. And never knows when he'll dine, or when he'll breakfast, or when he'll be in, wandering in and out like a madman; and sits up all night, writing his nonsense. And she'll go down twice and three times a night in the cold, poor dear, to see if he's fallen asleep; and gets abused like a pickpocket for her pains (which ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... But—The moon-jeep climbed and climbed. It was a mile above the bay of the lava sea and the dust-heaps that were a city. It looked like ten miles, because of the curve of the horizon. The mountains all about looked like a madman's dream. ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... trenches was becoming so serious that no loss in achieving such a result is to be compared to that. This event will delight my brother and faithful ally—and friend, Napoleon III.—I may add, for we really are great friends; this attempt,[78] though that of a madman, is very ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... the way, girl, tell me the way." Then he held the girl loosely in his hand, as I watched, it gave me an eerie feeling to see the little figure turn, its outstretched hand pointing northward like a compass. Was Jake Barto a madman? Or did the little figure act as a compass? If so, why did Barto have to rely on the pointing figure's hand for directions? If he didn't get that figure from the place we were heading, where did he get ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... intersit"—except indeed for rhyme sake. Would the laws of Strophe and antistrophe, which, if they are as unchangeable, I suppose are about as wise, [as] the Mede and Persian laws, admit of expunging that line altogether, and changing the preceding one to "and he, poor madman, deemd it quenchd in endless night?"—fond madman or proud madman if you will, but poor is more contemptuous. If I offer alterations of my own to your poetry, and admit not yours in mine, it is upon the principle of a present to a rich man being graciously accepted, and the same ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... beamed from his eyes, and must have been on his face even when he fell under the cruel blows of the gendarmes. Now he is dead. He is judged harshly, he is condemned, but he cannot be hated. He was a madman, but he was a hero. The conduct of Flourens at the Hotel de Ville in the night of the 31st October is hardly in keeping with so favourable a view. The French forgive and forget with ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... the word for its authority. Zeal without knowledge is like a mettled horse without eyes, or like a sword in a madman's hand; and there is no knowledge where there is not the word: for if they reject the word of the Lord, and act not by that, 'what wisdom is in them?' saith the prophet (Jer 8:9; Isa 8:20). Wherefore see thou have the word for ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... seven, lay dying on the day when my friend and myself came up the valley of the Aydyr. Her father, a man of enormous power of will and passion, as well as muscle, rushed forth of the house like a madman, when the doctor from Dolgelly told him that nothing more remained except to await the good time of heaven. It was the same deadly decline which had slain every one of his children at that same age, and now ...
— George Bowring - A Tale Of Cader Idris - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... too late for that now, sir. The man is a dangerous madman and should be arrested and put ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... suddenly, or in jerks; "—up," stir up, rouse; "firks mad," suddenly behaves like a madman. ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... and you shall see," answered the spectre, moving further through the doorway; and the lawyer struggled like a madman to get free from the chair and ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... "Fool!—madman—insane idiot!" he cried, tearing the note to pieces, and trampling on the fragments in his ungovernable rage: "how have you marred your own fortune, destroyed your best hopes, and annihilated all my plans for your ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... him, the incident was to the moment opportune. If ever a man was in the mood for war, it was the big, square-jawed pioneer. He was reckless and desperate for the first time in his life, and he joined with Burr against the room, with the abandon of a madman. ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... nothing to conceal and I told him quite fully all that I knew. Actually, I believe if Jermyn had been there, it would have taken both Kennedy and myself to prevent violence. As it was I had a veritable madman to deal with while Kennedy gathered up leisurely the wireless outfit he had installed on the deck of Waldon's yacht. It was only by telling him that I would certainly demand that Kennedy leave him behind if he did not control ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... to have a definite result people set about it without hesitation. Hence a man who proclaims a doctrine of altogether indefinite contents does not deserve to be listened to any more than a drunken man or a madman.—Again, if we apply the Jaina reasoning to their doctrine of the five categories, we have to say that on one view of the matter they are five and on another view they are not five; from which latter point of view it follows that they are either fewer or more ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... as she would upon a madman, and perhaps, after all, it was not so strange that she should do so, I being footsore and weary and all covered with the stains and dust of travel—or perhaps it was merely my so strange form of address which startled her. However, she retreated several steps toward the house ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... pistols, with a pair of which he had furnished me. I told him they were not with me. He growled an oath, threw himself on his horse and left us. In the evening I found him half drunk and raving like a madman. He said he would no longer bear with that nigger's insolence; but would whip him if it cost him his life. He at length fixed upon a plan for seizing him; and told me that he would go out in the morning, ride along by the side ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... threat of nuclear weapons to all mankind. Strategic defenses that threaten no one could offer the world a safer, more stable basis for deterrence. We must also remember that SDI is our insurance policy against a nuclear accident, a Chernobyl of the sky, or an accidental launch or some madman ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... A madman! A madman, or possessed by some evil spirit, Paul cried out, and rising to his feet he rushed out of the cenoby, but nobody rose to detain him; some of the Essenes raised their heads, and a moment ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... was not all a dream. Various thoughts and pictures flitted through his brain. He saw the wounded Swiss to whom he felt immense gratitude and whom he pitied so heartily that, at first, during their conversation, he took him for a madman; he saw little Nasibu with skull as round as a ball, and the row of sleeping "pagahs," and the barrels of the Remingtons stacked against the rock and glistening in the fire. He was almost certain that the battle which Linde mentioned was with Smain's division, and it seemed strange ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... friendly hint, Restrain your cacoeths fierce to print. But hark, my printer's devil's at the door, My leisure cannot yield one moment more: Nor matters it, advice can ne'er restrain Madman or poet from his bent:—'tis vain To strive to point out colours to the blind, Or set men seeking what ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... "Madman! fool!" burst from the astonished crowd; "we all know Dumiger, his family are eminent in the list of our freemen—you are mad! Grand Master, proclaim that Dumiger has won the prize, that Dumiger ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... admiration of so great a poet, and praised him marvellously both for the shrewdness of his argument and for the eloquence of his tragic verse. And indeed they were not far off unanimously condemning the accuser as the madman instead. ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... clothes have become so much a part of their personalities that without them they cease to be persons and have no status in human society. Except under very exceptional circumstances a man who appeared without clothing would be treated as a madman, and ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... mooncalf, gobemouche^. dotard, driveler; old fogey, old woman, crock; crone, grandmother; cotquean^, henhussy^. incompetent (insanity) 503. greenhorn &c (dupe) 547; dunce &c (ignoramus) 493; lubber &c (bungler) 701; madman &c 504. one who will not set the Thames on fire; one who did not invent gunpowder, qui n'a pas invente' la poudre [Fr.]; no conjuror. Phr. fortuna favet fatuis [Lat.]; les fous font les festinas et les sages les mangent [Fr.]; nomina stultorum parietibus harrent [Lat.]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... was a common sympton of yellow fever, and to increase the horror of darkness which enshrouded us, for we were allowed no light, the voice of warning would be heard, 'Take care! There's a madman stalking through the ship with a knife ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... competitors of the highest quality. His Dick, also, was a remarkably good dog. Earlier specimens which have left their names in the history of the breed were Hinks's Old Dutch, who was, perhaps, even a more perfect terrier than the same breeder's Madman and Puss. ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... reef, waving my arms like any madman and shouting to the vague figure huddled in the stern sheets. As the boat drew nearer, I discovered this figure to be a man in Spanish half-armour, and the head of this man was bowed meekly upon steel-clad breast like one overcome ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... the required amount of chicory and place in a salad bowl well rubbed with an onion. Just before serving pour over a French dressing, remembering to be in making it "a spendthrift for oil, a miser for vinegar, a counselor for salt and a madman ...
— Twenty-four Little French Dinners and How to Cook and Serve Them • Cora Moore
... tripped over a rug, and fell heavily. He was up in an instant, and came at Anthony, bellowing like a madman. ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... are attested to us by the very best authority. The madman Apollodorus, who for three years past has made a daily study of the actions of Socrates—to whom the world is summed up in the words 'Great is Socrates'—he has heard them from another 'madman,' Aristodemus, who was ...
— Symposium • Plato
... possible," exclaimed Vivian, "that you, Russell, my friend, my best friend, can tell me that this line is the motto of my character!—' To see the best, and yet the worse pursue.—Then you must think me either a villain or a madman." ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... it read textually. It was denounced in scathing language as shuffling, arrogant and offensive, or as insulting and dishonest. One paper deemed its terms to be a series of studied insults added to a long inventory of injuries. Said another, Germany's mood is still that of a madman. A third comment on the note described it as "a disingenuous effort to have international petty larceny put on the same plane as international murder and visited with the same punishment." A fourth paper remarked: "If an American can read the note without his temples getting ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... his exertions. A mere sceptic, he would have been perhaps merely pitied; a sceptic with a peculiar faith of his own, which he was resolved to promulgate, Herbert became odious. A solitary votary of obnoxious opinions, Herbert would have been looked upon only as a madman; but the moment he attempted to make proselytes he rose ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... gazing at him with her wide-open, beautiful eyes; underneath her protests and her terror, she was thrilling with awe at this amazing madman she loved. "They will ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... the age and the state of science, we shall find no difficulty in conceiving the scorn and incredulity with which the theory of Columbus was received. We shall not wonder that he was regarded as a madman or as a fool; we are not surprised to remember that he encountered repulse upon repulse as he journeyed wearily from court to court, and pleaded in vain to the sovereigns of Europe for aid to prosecute his great design. The marvel is that when door after ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... quickly obtained. The Rule was rewritten in 1619. Some of the brethren suggested that he take the advice of a cardinal in formulating his rules; but the Saint declared that God had willed that he should "appear as a new sort of madman in the world," arresting the attention of the people and bringing them to reflect, without qualification, upon "the folly of the cross," and that he alone must direct the manner in which this was to ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... was the reverse of an amiable man; and while he was very polite and courteous to his literary friends in private, he made bitter attacks upon them in print. Dibdin says of him that 'his habits were indeed peculiar: not much to be envied or imitated; as they sometimes betrayed the flights of a madman, and sometimes the asperities of a cynic. His attachments were warm, but fickle both in choice and duration. He would frequently part from one, with whom he had lived on terms of close intimacy, without any assignable cause; and his enmities, once ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... of brightness in which her youth, and the hopes of her youth, should be restored, and all these weary years of dreaminess and woe should be revealed as nothing but the nightmare of a night. She sat motionless enough, still enough, Miss Monro by her, watching her as intently as a keeper watches a madman, and with the same purpose—to prevent any outburst even by bodily strength, if such restraint be needed. When all was over; when the principal personages of the ceremony had filed into the vestry to sign their names; when the swarm of townspeople were ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... 'Another madman determined to be hanged,' said the King. 'Very well, do as he asks; one should refuse nothing to a man with a ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... easily nor be so soon forgotten. He had the careless knowledge of himself that many gifted men have even when they are still very young; he knew how far he could answer for his own coolness and sense, and that if he allowed himself to cross the limit he would behave like a madman and ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... Then ensued such a struggle as I hope I shall never see again, while we others stood looking on as if we were bound hand and foot. The whole affair could not have lasted more than a few moments, and yet it seemed like an eternity. Kitwater, with the strength of a madman, had seized Hayle round the waist with one arm, while his right hand was clutching at the other's throat. I saw that the veins were standing out upon Hayle's forehead like black cords. Do what he could, he could not shake off the man he had so cruelly wronged. They swayed to and fro, and in ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... There must have been pauses indeed, brief and short-breath'd pauses of listening for an answer, between every nickname. But the nicknames were quick work. At the Lyceum they were quite an effort of memory: "Romeo! Humours! Madman! Passion! Lover!" ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... exceeding wroth and fearful, and she said, if John Reeve came again to her husband that she would run a spit in his guts, so John Reeve cursed her to eternity." Whereupon Turner, appalled by the sentence, complied with the order and went. The three presented themselves before the other madman, and John Reeve uttered his testimony, denouncing him as a false prophet and gave him a month to repent of his misdeeds. When the month had elapsed Reeve wrote the sentence of eternal damnation upon him "and left it at his lodging, and ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... prospect left that could afford any ease; he changes from one sad object to another, from Sylvia to Calista, then back to Sylvia; but like to feverish men that toss about here and there, remove for some relief, he shifts but to new pain, wherever he turns he finds the madman still: in this distraction of thought he remained till a page from Sylvia brought him this letter, which in midst of all, he started from his bed with excess of joy, ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... intention until he had got his brother out of the room. But Greif had sprung upon him very unexpectedly, and Rex knew instantly that he was detected in his purpose, and must either execute it now or give it up, and resign himself to being treated like a madman, and watched by lynx-eyed keepers day ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... with him "about a month or more," till "one day as he was standing at a neighbour's shop-window, cursing and swearing and playing the madman after his wonted manner, the woman of the house, though a very loose and ungodly wretch," rebuked him so severely as "the ungodliest fellow for swearing that ever she heard, able to spoil all the youth in a whole town," that, self-convicted, he hung down his head in silent ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... going on a different line, since we consider the veriest lies as truth and demand the same lies from others. Here I have for once in my life acted sincerely and, well, you all look upon me as a madman. Though you are friendly to me, yet, you see, you all ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the democracy of Italy proved too intense, too frenzied and unbalanced. Rienzi established a republic in Rome and talked of the restoration of the city's ancient rule. But he governed like a madman or an inflated fool, and was slain in a riot of the streets.[10] Scarce one of the famous cities succeeded in retaining its republican form. Milan became a duchy. Florence fell under the sway of the Medici. In Venice a few rich families seized all authority, and while the fame and territory of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... beseemed to wait for the old man's death, and not demand his throne; for it was somewhat better to succeed to the dead than to rob the living. Yet, that he might not be thought to make over the honours of his ancient freedom, like a madman, to the possession of another, he would accept the challenge with his own hand. The envoys answered that they knew that their king would shrink from the mockery of fighting a blind man, for such an absurd mode of combat was thought more shameful ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... angry. He came to your grandfather's house, he clamored to see me, he attempted to justify himself—oh, I cannot tell you the misery that I went through. At last I consented to see him. He behaved like a madman. He swore that he would have ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... had lived in great style, and got into terrible debt. For a time he had trembled on the high pedestal on which he had placed himself, till at last he toppled over, and ruin came. His numerous merry companions, and the visitors at his table, said it served him right, for he had kept house like a madman. One morning his corpse was found in the canal. The cold hand of death had already touched the heart of Christina. Her youngest child, looked for in the midst of prosperity, had sunk into the grave when only a few weeks old; and at last Christina herself became ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... minor orders as a clerk, "Long Will," as Langland was nicknamed from his tall stature, found his way at an early age to London, and earned a miserable livelihood there by singing "placebos" and "diriges" in the stately funerals of his day. Men took the moody clerk for a madman; his bitter poverty quickened the defiant pride that made him loth, as he tells us, to bow to the gay lords and dames who rode decked in silver and minivere along the Cheap or to exchange a "God save you" with the law sergeants as he passed their new house in the ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... came to his mind. Then he stopped short, gave one agonizing glance toward his barracks only a few feet away, realized that it was nearly time for bed call and that he could not possibly make it if he went back, then whirled about and started out on a wild run like a madman over the ground he had just traveled. He was not conscious of carrying on a train of thought as he ran, his only idea was to get to the Y.M.C.A. hut before the man had left with the letter. Never should his childhood's enemy have that letter to ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... And the madman, chained and tortured by dark powers, from whom all fly, As the tombs, that were his dwelling, echo to his savage cry, Rushes forth and falls adoring, when he ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... madman raving—I cried to her, "Nell! my Nell!" They had left us alone and helpless, alone in that burning hell; They had left us alone to perish—forgotten me living—and she Had been left for the fire to bear her to heaven, ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... cried the Governor. "Ye will see when the man comes. O sheikhs and men, have we ridden together and walked puppies together, and bought and sold barley for the horses that after these years we should run riot on the scent of a madman—an ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... congregated to talk over the fall of Paganism, found him listening at their sides, and comforting them, when they carelessly regretted their ancient faith, with a smiling and whispered assurance that a time of restitution would yet come. By all opinions and in all places he was regarded as a harmless madman, whose strange delusions and predilections were not to be combated, but to be indulged. Thus he wandered through the Christian world; regardless alike of lapse of time and change of climate; living within himself; mourning, as a luxury, over the fall of his worship; patient of wrongs, insults, ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... its customs pleasant, and which has such skilled hands to guide its pleasures that the word customary fails entirely to describe them." He paused for a moment, and a man near me asked what he was talking about, but Webb answered quickly that he was a hopeless madman, and that the ceremonies would be the real joke. "That I, a freshman," he continued, "should be elected President of this Society fills me with gratitude and even dismay, for I fear that the duties of so distinguished an office will be but ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... clouds, surrounded by an atmosphere of purity and peace—but she has been the companion of man in health, in sickness, and in death, in his highest and in his lowest moments. She has worshiped him as a saint and an orator, and pitied him as madman or a fool. In Paradise, man and woman were placed together, and so they must ever be. They must sink or rise together. If man is low and wretched and vile, woman can not escape the contagion, and any atmosphere ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... upon me," he shouted, jumping up as I concluded, "the curse of God—a judgment upon the crime I but the other day committed—a crime as I thought—dolt, idiot that I was—so cunningly contrived, so cleverly executed! Fool, villain, madman that I have been; for now, when fortune is tendered for my acceptance, I dare not put forth my hand to grasp it; fortune, too, not only for me, but—. O God, it will kill us both, Martha as well as me, though I alone am to blame for ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... the fore-chains; but to our consternation, saw the boat rowing away from the wreck. However, the fit of rage and terror that possessed me lasted but a moment or two; for I now saw they were giving chase to the madman, who was swimming steadily away. Two of the men rowed, and the third hung over the bows, ready to grasp the miserable wretch. The Grosvenor stood steady, about a mile off, with her mainyards backed; and just as the fellow ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various |
