"Madness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... its youth was nurtured and sustained, there it still lives, in the strength of its manhood, and full of its original spirit. If discord and disunion shall wound it, if party strife and blind ambition shall hawk at and tear it, if folly and madness, if uneasiness under salutary and necessary restraint shall succeed in separating it from that Union by which alone its existence is made sure, it will stand, in the end, by the side of that cradle in which its infancy was rocked; it will stretch forth its arm with whatever of vigor ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... influences boys and girls feel the purest and simplest sentiments in a hyperesthetic manner. The girls here studied have lost an exact conception of the simple manifestations of friendship, and think they are giving evidence of exquisite sensibility and true friendship by loving a companion to madness; friendship in them has become a passion. That this intense desire to love a companion passionately is the result of the college environments may be seen by the following extract from a letter: "You know, dear, much better than I do how acutely ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... John the motions of extraordinary graces, spoke to him in private, heard his general confession, and gave him proper advice, and promised his assistance ever after. John, out of a desire of the greatest humiliations, returned soon after to his apparent madness and extravagances. He was, thereupon, taken up and put into a madhouse, on supposition of his being disordered in his senses, where the severest methods were used to bring him to himself, all which he underwent in the spirit of penance, and ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... direction. When he came to read the 'Vita Nuova,' it was of Adela expressly that he thought. The poet's passion of worship entered his heart; transferring his present feeling to his earlier self, he grew to regard his recent madness as a lapse from the true love of his life. He persuaded himself that he had loved Adela in a far more serious way than any of the others who from time to time had been her rivals, and that the love was now returning to him, strengthened and exalted. He began to write sonnets ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... when it goes to the haunts of bees to take their honey, the bees having begun to sting him he leaves the honey and rushes to revenge himself. And as he seeks to be revenged on all those that sting him, he is revenged on none; in such wise that his rage is turned to madness, and he flings himself on the ground, vainly exasperating, by his hands and feet, the foes against which he is ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... prodigality and extravagance of Gilles may have been due, as is usually suggested, to profligacy or to madness, but it may equally well have been that he took seriously the belief that as the Incarnate God—or at any rate as a candidate for that honour—he must give to all who asked. He rode a black horse, as also did Joan and the 'Devils' of later ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... thought of many things that might have been instead of this that was—the seething yeast that was Russia, the tearing down of the idols of centuries and the worship of new gods that were no gods at all—not even those of brass or gold—only visions—will-o'-the-wisps.... The madness had shown itself here too. Would the fabric of which the American Ideal was made be strong enough to hold together against the World's new madness? He believed in American institutions. Imperfect though they were, ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... hope, which spoke volumes to her vanity and her love, that she might one day be Mrs. Weir of Hermiston; swift, also, to recognise in his stumbling or throttled utterance the death-knell of these expectations, and constant, poor girl! in her large-minded madness, to go on and to reck nothing of the future. But these unfinished references, these blinks in which his heart spoke, and his memory and reason rose up to silence it before the words were well uttered, gave her unqualifiable agony. She was ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gentlemen of rank, birth, and experience, who could be entrusted with commands, and when so many hung back it was the more needful for some to go. It was a great stroke to us, for besides that Sir Andrew Macniven went on reiterating that it was mere madness, and there was not a hope of success—the idea of Eustace going to face the winds of spring in the islands ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... length an obscure disease which had always afflicted him, fed in part, no doubt, by his fiery spirit and his fiery discontent, reached his brain. After some years of increasing lethargy and imbecility, occasionally varied by fits of violent madness and terrible pain, he died in 1745, leaving all his money to found a hospital for the insane. His grave in St. Patrick's Cathedral bears this inscription of his own composing, the best possible epitome of his career: 'Ubi saeva ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... nothing of the Best, And thou shalt love it only as the nest Whence glory-winged things to Heaven have flown: To the great Soul only are all things known; Present and future are to her as past, While she in glorious madness doth forecast That perfect bud, which seems a flower full-blown To each new Prophet, and yet always opes Fuller and fuller with each day and hour, Heartening the soul with odor of fresh hopes, And longings high, and gushings of wide power, Yet never is ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... implore you to give up this folly. I asked you not to do it at Cambridge, and I ask you again now. I don't care a damn what I promised. It's simple madness, and—" ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... That I could have looked on at calmly, for I want only men's arms and legs and do not ask for their souls; but to burn down the old house before you have collected wood and stone to build a new one I call wicked.—It is cruelty and madness, and when so shrewd a woman as your mother is bent on carrying through such a measure, come what may, there ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... say about Aquila[1] and Montpensier interests me. What madness is it then to force Trapani on Spain! Pray explain to me the cause of the King's obstinacy about that Spanish marriage, for no country has a right to dictate in that way to another. If Tatane[2] was to think of the Infanta, England would be extremely indignant, and would (and with ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... habit of thinking together in a common reverie. His intuitions had already acquired that acuteness which must surely characterize the intellectual perceptiveness of great poets and often bring them to the verge of madness. ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... certain degree of success, and the idea of an eternal hell is reduced from its vagueness to an embraced conception, the over fraught heart gives way, the brain, stretched on too high a tension, reels, madness sets in, and one more case is added to that list of maniacs from religious causes which, according to the yearly reports of insane asylums, forms so large a class. Imagine what a vast and sudden change would come over the spirit and conduct of society if nineteen twentieths ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... the sufferings and death of a person who just continues to dance after the death of his lover is announced (for this is all his merit) to the pangs of Mount Calvary; and not choosing to attribute it to folly, because I reserved that charge for Weber, I unhappily in the present case ascribed it to madness, for which I pray God to forgive me, since the blow has fallen heavily when I really thought it would not be felt. I considered Lamb as a thoughtless scribbler, who, in circumstances of ease, amused himself by writing on any subject. Why I thought so, I cannot tell, ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... Europe and all America, are feverishly scrambling for money. Money is the supreme ideal—all others take tenth place with the great bulk of the nations named. Money-lust has always existed, but not in the history of the world was it ever a craze, a madness, until your time and mine. This lust has rotted these nations; it has made them hard, sordid, ungentle, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... addition to this irresistible stimulus, we may add a spirit of strong prejudice and resentment against these heartless persons, it is not surprising that the starving multitudes should, in the ravening madness of famine, follow up its outrageous impulses, and forget those legal restraints, or moral principles, that protect property under ordinary or different circumstances. It was just at this precise period, therefore, that ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... of publication for approval or disapproval, and, in case of disapproval, to invoke a board of referees for the sole purpose of enforcing his own arbitrary and preposterous "conditions,"—this was too exquisitely absurd. But there was method in the madness. The central aim of the "Memorandum" is clear on its face: namely, to refuse the forensic freedom necessary to self-defence against a libel, and to concede only the parliamentary freedom proper to a purely literary discussion. Since, however, the only object of my writing at all was to ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot
... beyond ordinary limits, and then beyond those of humanity; that it devises new kinds of punishments, calls ingenuity to aid it in inventing devices for varying and lengthening men's torture, and takes delight in their sufferings: this accursed disease of the mind reaches its highest pitch of madness when cruelty itself turns into pleasure and the act of killing a man becomes enjoyment. Such a ruler is soon cast down from his throne; his life is attempted by poison one day and by the sword the next; he is exposed to as many dangers as there are men to whom he is dangerous, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... prophecies, a restless eagerness to search into the future by abnormal means, had infected all ranks from the highest to the lowest; and such symptoms, when they appear, are a sure evidence of approaching disorder, for they are an evidence of a present madness which has brought down wisdom to a common level with folly. At such times, the idlest fancy is more potent with the mind than the soundest arguments of reason. The understanding abdicates its functions; and men are given over, as if by magic, to ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... human appearance. They stood out alone, as if written on the night; they took on a symbolic shape; they imposed themselves upon her senses. She whispered as if pondering: "Belarab, Daman, Ningrat," and these barbarous sounds seemed to possess an exceptional energy, a fatal aspect, the savour of madness. ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... his madness would have seemed less chaotic and incomprehensible, and a thread of sense would have been discovered even in his excesses and in the ravings of his unsettled mind, if it had been understood that many of his most famous freaks were moved and inspired by this ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... growing very fanciful," she said, "which is a sign, if not a bad one. Your metaphors, too, are so farfetched and extravagant as to indicate the earliest stages of the divine madness. Do you mean to suggest that Grace will break forth like a volcano on some fortuitous man? If that be your theory you would stand as good a chance as any one. She might ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... preceding centuries; but guided by that star, led on by the resolute courage, the steadfast integrity of Washington, our fathers went on and on in pursuit of this doctrine, in quest of this precious boon, on through blood and toil, on when the struggle seemed like the very madness of despair, on and on when hope seemed to have fled, but patriotism remained; on over trembling dynasties and crumbling thrones, until they wrested that jewel of their love from the reluctant hand ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... have been worse; for a few, a very few, were picked up alive by English vessels and taken back to their beloved "We country" to tell the tale. But many a canoe was found with a dead Kruboy or so in it; and many a one which, floating bottom upwards, graphically spoke of madness caused by hunger, thirst, and despair having driven its occupants overboard to ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... about dusk, one evening during the supreme madness of the carnival season, that I encountered my friend. He accosted me with excessive warmth, for he had been drinking much. The man wore motley. He had on a tight-fitting parti-striped dress, and his head was surmounted by the conical cap and bells. I was so pleased to see him that I thought ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... happily," continued Lady Featherstone, "to send my brother homewards in a ship a fortnight back, and so to stay with my friend here on my way to Vienna, for we English are all bitten with the madness of travel. Mr. ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... trace many familiar dramatic resemblances in the Old Testament. Shakspeare, who was certainly well read in the Bible and frequently quotes it, in the composition of Lear may have had David and Absalom in mind; the feigned madness of Hamlet has its prototype in that of David; Macbeth and the Weird Sisters have many traits in common with Saul and the Witch of Endor. Jezebel is certainly a suggestive study for Lady Macbeth. The whole story has its key in that verse where we read, "There was none like unto ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... there was "method in his madness," for his steps were ever directed toward the same place, the hotel of the ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... name of an Emperor or of a Republic? Do you think a Republic is going to feed you any better and reduce your rents, or to permit Belleville and Montmartre to become masters of Paris? In a short time they will grumble at the Republic just as they grumble at the Emperor. It is folly and madness. The Emperor is nothing to me, the Government is nothing to me. I have to pay my taxes—they are necessary—for the army has to be kept up and the Government paid; beyond that I do not care a puff of my pipe ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... the title came, he was first to congratulate me. Gave me my first real dinner. Naturally I was grateful for this attention. Well, the upshot of it was, we gambled; and I lost. There was wine. I suggested in the spirit of madness that I play the use of my title for six months against the money I had lost. He agreed. ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... daughter, sister, friend, without impeachment of one's sagacity or integrity; but it is such a dreadful indorsement of a man to marry him! Her own consciousness must be sufficiently grievous; pray do not irritate it into downright madness. Nay, what, after all, are the so heinous faults upon which you animadvert? She cannot earn a cent: that may be her misfortune, it need not be her fault. Perhaps Clement, like Albano, and all good husbands, "never loved to see the sweet form anywhere else than, like other butterflies, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... fear of death, the cobbler then confessed that not by any skill in the medical art, but through the stupidity of the public, he had gained his reputation. The King, having summoned a council, thus remarked: "What think you of the extent of your madness, when you do not hesitate to trust your lives[16] to one to whom no one would trust his feet to ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... said the tyrant, "the frost must have gotten into your brain—that makes men mad, they say, or silly. Yet there is some method in your madness, some truth in your ravings, for yonder light must indicate an inhabited dwelling. This renders a change in the plans for our campaign advisable. We will all go forward together towards the promised ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... in my boot. But the landlord's dry manner, the sullen silence of his two companions, whose eyes steadily refused to meet mine, chilled me again. For an instant the impulse to refuse to mount, to refuse to go, was almost irresistible; then, knowing the madness of such a course, which might, and probably would, give the men the chance they desired, I crushed it down and went slowly to ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... Think of the scientist asking many other learned men to join him from time to time in the experiment, and to take part in picking at the wound, in tormenting the mutilated and blinded victim, and in driving it again and again to the madness of despair! Does anyone say that such an experiment could not be made to-day? In one of the largest laboratories of America, and within ten years, an experiment equally cruel, equally useless, has been performed. The modern defender of unrestricted ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... punishment is condivided with fault. But envy is a kind of punishment: for Gregory says (Moral. v, 46): "When the foul sore of envy corrupts the vanquished heart, the very exterior itself shows how forcibly the mind is urged by madness. For paleness seizes the complexion, the eyes are weighed down, the spirit is inflamed, while the limbs are chilled, there is frenzy in the heart, there is gnashing with the teeth." Therefore ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... had gone out of his senses too and spoke soothingly to him; but Jackson soon showed that if he had become insane there was a method in his madness. ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... sent it for a plague, alone know. A madness ate into all the Army, and they turned against their officers. That was the first evil, but not past remedy if they had then held their hands. But they chose to kill the Sahibs' wives and children. Then came the Sahibs from over the sea and ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... in substituting "unsane lunes." Now it strikes me that there is quite as much tautology in "unsane lunes" as in the double epithet, "dangerous, unsafe." It is, in fact, equivalent to "insane madness;" and, moreover, drags in quite needlessly a ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... infinite love of God, they will both teach you the same lesson; they will shew you that if you were the greatest, the wisest, the holiest man that ever lived, you would still be such a speck by the side of the Almighty and Everlasting God that it would be madness to depend upon yourselves for any thing while you lived in God's world. For, after all, what CAN we do without God? IN Him we live, and move, and have our being. He made us, He gave us our bodies, gave us our life; what we do HE lets us do, what we say ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... father's ears, and the old gentleman is hurrying to Delgratz to check the madness ere it is too late. It is a simple bit of arithmetic: if a King, who works like a horse, is to receive only five thousand a year, what is the annual value of his father, who does nothing but lounge ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... the name of Matthieu, either in a fit of madness or from hatred to the new order of things, decorated himself with the large riband of the Legion of Honour, and had an old star fastened on his coat. Thus accoutred, he went into the Palais Royal, in the middle of the day, got upon a chair, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... this ship of death. Three men only were left alive, and one of these so badly wounded that he leaped overboard in madness before morning. Of the remaining two, neither could sleep without the fear of ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... followed were brilliant links in a fierce sequence of gaiety; and this though the weather was so hot that the very candles in their sconces drooped, dripping their melted wax on egrette and lace, scarlet coat and scarf. A sort of midsummer madness attacked the city; we danced in the hot moonlit nights, we drove at noontide, with the sun flaring in a sky of sapphire, we boated on the Bronx, we galloped out to the lines, escorted by a troop of ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... eyes to mine inclining, Like azure isles In seas of lovelight shining, With a merry madness find I endless pleasure— Till she sighs—then sadness is my only treasure. Woe best beguiles; Mirth, wait thou other whiles, Thou shalt borrow all my sorrow When ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... Clementine, so reasonable, so obedient, so happy in the prospect of marrying Leon Renault, sacrificing, all at once, her affections, her happiness, and almost her duty, to the caprice of an interloper. M. Nibor declared that it was madness. As for Leon, he would have butted his head into all the walls, if his mother ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... movements were so original!" retorted Gipsy. "There's method in my madness this time, though. I was trying to dodge Miss White, and dash upstairs to get my Hamlet. I've forgotten the wretched thing, and if I go to class without a book, Poppie—h'm! I mean Miss Poppleton" (as Doreen's eyebrows went up)—"will want ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... weakened or destroyed. Here, then, is contempt for the master, abhorrence of the magistrate, and mistrust of the law—the apprentice regarding all three as leagued together to rob him of his rights. What a combination of circumstances to drive the apprentices to desperation and madness! What a marvel that the outraged negroes have been restrained from ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... intolerable. A second fit of madness, wilder than the first, drives the man about the town like a tornado. Finally and impressively comes the contrast between the drunkard's horrible mirth and the sudden calm in his mind when the tall pale ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... madness seized me. When I look back over the months I spent at Sunnyside, I wonder that I survived at all. As it is, I show the wear and tear of my harrowing experiences. I have turned very gray—Liddy reminded me of it, only yesterday, by saying that a little bluing in the rinse-water would make my hair ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... obligation not to mention my hasty return from the South. And so I have written to her, that she may divulge the fact to her mother. You start, and I hear you say—'Is the man mad?' No, not mad, my friend; or, if mad, with a method in his madness. Fanny will not tell her mother. Trust me for that. The consequences I have clearly set forth—probable ruin to my prospects, and an eternal separation between us. Do you think she will choose this alternative? Not she. 'Imprudent man! To risk so much ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... professing to be the friend of man and the great supporter of his liberty and independence, should light up the torch of war against the only nation that stands between itself and destruction, exhibited a degree of infatuation or madness, altogether incomprehensible. But the men at present ruling the States, infatuated, or, as their more enlightened countrymen say, 'bribed by the Tyrant of France,' regardless of the best interests of their country, ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... Furies to madness my brain devote— In robes of ice my body wrap! On billowy flames of fire I float, Hear ye my entrails how they snap? Some power unseen forbids my lungs to breathe! 35 What fire-clad meteors round me whizzing fly! I vitrify ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... for the administration of affairs, their patience being quite exhausted, the women had thought it proper and advisable to take the government upon themselves, and preserve Greece, whether it would or no, from the folly and madness of its resolves. "For her part, she declares, that she has taken possession of the city and treasury, in order," says she, "to prevent Pisander and his confederates, the four hundred administrators, from exciting troubles, according ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... Venice, seems entirely unproved. It was the prevailing fear; the one suggestion which alarmed everybody and made sentiment unanimous. But one of the special points which are recorded by the chroniclers as working in him to madness, was that he was senza parentado—without any backing of relationship or allies—i.e., sonless, with no one to come after him. How little likely then was an old man to embark on such a desperate venture for self-aggrandizement merely. He had, indeed, a nephew who was involved ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... commit this madness, the frighted babe set up such a howl as only a man-child can utter, and my lady turned to him in great haste, and my lord also did set about comforting him. Then they walked slowly on, and my lord held the little lad on one side, and my lady coaxed him o' th' other. Ever and anon my lord would ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... living without you. In revel and concert and ball, I had flown from much thinking about you, And your picture I turned to the wall. For to call back the dream that was broken, To fancy your hand on my hair, To remember the words we had spoken, Was madness, and gall, and despair. ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... to dwell on these thoughts—madness lay that way. Madness, and a watching demon that whispered of substance, and sought to guide his wanderings in the night. Hodder clung to the shell of reality, to the tiny panorama of the visible and the finite, to the infinitesimal gropings ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... inclination to hurl himself between that brute and his prospective victim surged over Frank. With but a knife, or even a revolver to back him up, such a rash act would have been little short of madness. Fortunately ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... Power; unlucky Accident! Had I but kill'd Antonio, or Hippolyta, Either had made my Shame supportable. But tho I have mist the Pleasure of Revenge, I will not that of Love. One Look from fair Clarinda will appease The Madness which this Disappointment rais'd. [Walks looking towards the Window. None appears yet: Dormida was to throw me down the Key. The Door is open, left so to give me entrance. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... and it never had occurred to her to try to improve it in any wise. But the governess had had more in mind than the mere indulging of the girl's fancy when she set about rearranging the place. As in most of her characteristic schemes there was "a method in her madness." Nan soon discovered that a dainty home brought its ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... well-balanced judgment. Nothing more illogical, more ill-advised, more thoroughly unsuited to achieve its object than the proposed duel could well be mooted, yet the sheer malignity of Marigny's ruffianly device to attain his ends had impelled him to that final madness. Notions of right and wrong were topsy-turvy in his brain. He was carried along on a current of passion that overturned every barrier imposed by sense and prudence. It seemed quite reasonable to one who had often risked life and limb for his country, who, from mere love of sport, had faced ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... the younger brother of Tiberius seemed disposed to come forward in the same career, his own mother wrote to him: "Shall then our house have no end of madness? Where shall be the limit? Have we not yet enough to be ashamed of, in having confused and disorganized the state?" So spoke not the anxious mother, but the daughter of the conqueror of Carthage, who knew and experienced a misfortune ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... common flame, nor could he move In the old Arts, and beaten paths of Love, No Flowers nor Fruits sent to oblige the Fair, {62} His was all Rage, and Madness: ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... of the fastness and strength of my castle, in a manner which intimated it was these advantages alone that had secured me in former wars from defeat and captivity. I spoke in answer, when I had far better been silent; for what availed my idle boast, but as a fetter to bind me to a deed next to madness? If, I said, a prince of the Cymry shall come in hostile fashion before the Garde Doloureuse, let him pitch his standard down in yonder plain by the bridge, and, by the word of a good knight, and the faith of a Christian man, Raymond Berenger will meet him as willingly, be he many or be he few, ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... fully realized. Never was a more miserably monotonous journey. After riding for weeks, through sodden, sunless forests and trackless wastes we had to abandon our mules and take to our feet, spend weeks on nameless rivers, poling and paddling our canoe in the terrible heat, and tormented almost to madness by countless insects. Then the rains came on, and we were weather-stayed for months in a wretched Indian village. But for the help of friendly aborigines—and fortunately the few we met, being spoken fair showed themselves friendly—we must all have perished. They gave us ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... things. I verily believe if such a scene were presented on any stage in the world the effect of it would be visible instantaneously on the audience; that had they seen it as I saw it, they would have laughed themselves to hysteria and madness. Finally the Sultan recovered himself, great tears rolling down his cheeks, and his features quivering with laughter, then he slowly uttered the word "kali,"—hot, strong, quick, or ardent medicine. He required no more, but the other chiefs pushed forward to get one wee sniff, which they no ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... where they had spent years of misery for any good purpose. However, on that morning Theodore gave orders for about seventy-five to be released, all either former servants of his, or chiefs whom he had imprisoned, without cause, during his fits of madness, so frequent of late. ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... afternoon that she was seized with the great idea of her life. It consisted in giving a luncheon-party which should be more original and amusing than any other which had ever been given in London. The idea became a mania. It left her no peace. It possessed her like venom or like madness. She could think of nothing else. She racked her brains in imagining how it could be done. But the more she was harassed by this aim the further off its realisation appeared to her to be. At last it began to weigh upon her. She lost her spirits and her appetite; her friends ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... she went on, "father was stunned by the blow; I have always believed that he was very near madness. But he shook off his sorrow and decided that the time had come to seek America. We could not depart openly; that was not permitted; so one night he dug up the little hoard of money he had concealed, cut off my hair and dressed me in boys' clothes, arrayed ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... perspiration that provoked him. It was the shaking out of my handkerchief. This was, as you know, of a bright scarlet colour. I thought of this, and then, for the first time, remembered having heard that anything scarlet has a most powerful effect upon the wildebeest, and excites him to a rage resembling madness. ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... plunged riotously into forbidden realms, I reveled in the exaltation of chainless thought, and drank from the deepest wells of rebellion delicious draughts of secret sin, thanking, yea thanking, this sweet madness which ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... gipsy, a great cudgel in her hand, and her dress and bearing more like those of a man than of a woman. Elf-locks shot up through the holes in her bonnet, and her black eyes rolled with a kind of madness. Soon, however, Godfrey, who evidently only half disbelieved in her powers as a witch, dismissed her to the kitchen with fair words, while Guy Mannering, whom his strange adventure had rendered sleepless, walked forth into the night. The vast ruins of the ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... serpent.[30] His faculties were in fact over-burdened with the weight of his learning, and his published works, which followed one another in quick succession, contained eccentricities, strange to the verge of madness. A layman himself, he held views as to the dignities and power of the priesthood, of which the 'Tatler'[31] might well say that Rome herself had never forged such chains for the consciences of the laity as he would have imposed. Starting upon an assumption, ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... murmured the king. "I feel that I am dying. Know you not that there is one accused of practising sorcery upon me. Folly! madness! An evil deed has been practised upon me. Yes—the thought will not leave me. I would drive it away, but it still rankles in my heart. Evil has been done me, but not by sorcery. And yet the sorcerer must die. The world must believe that it was he who worked ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... the first time at the Pau school on February 17, 1915, in a three-cylinder Bleriot. But these were only short leaps, though sufficiently audacious ones. His monitor accused him of breakneck recklessness: "Too much confidence, madness, fantastical humor." That same evening he wrote describing his impressions to his father: "Before departure, a bit worried; in the air, wildly amusing. When the machine slid or oscillated I was not at all troubled, it even seemed funny.... Well, it diverted me immensely, ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... that uncertainty with regard to everything, which characterises the New Academy, the City of God detests all such doubting as a form of madness, since she has the most certain knowledge of those things which she understands by mind and reason, however that knowledge may be limited by our corruptible body. She believes also the evidence of the senses, which the mind uses through the body, for he is miserably deceived who regards them as ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... stood upon the hill, where he was mortified upon the sight of this mad adventure. There he stamped and swore, and banned his master to the bottomless pit; he tore his beard for madness, and cursed the moment he first knew him; but seeing him at last knocked down and settled, the shepherds being scampered, he thought he might venture to come down, and found him in a very ill plight, though not altogether ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... not imagine any such thing. But what is the meaning of this? Harriet Smith refuse Robert Martin? madness, if it is so; but I hope you ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... veteran of the coastguard, whom they had consulted about the weather, "It is better zis zan zat," as they shrugged between rough sea and corpselike land. And they were not seen again. Their meaning none knew. Having paid their bill at the lodging-house, their conduct was ascribed to systematic madness. English people came to Crikswich for the pure salt sea air, and they did not expect it to be cooked and dressed and decorated for them. If these things are done to nature, it is nature no longer that you have, but something Frenchified. Those ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... scalp fit so uncomfortably to my head. The thieves, whoever they were, had, however, left us our blankets, which perhaps had escaped their observation. To stay where we were, with the prospect of being shot, would be madness. Snatching up our blankets, therefore, we secured them over our shoulders, and, followed by Boxer, endeavoured to make our way through an opening, which as far as we could calculate, led towards the east. We went on groping our way, sometimes falling over logs, ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... ought not—I must not—I cannot—I dare not,—at least not at present. When the present stress is over. I may feel better. The fact is, at present I am scarcely fit to take care of my parish, and it would be madness to take upon myself any new [177] burden. See there a fine fellow I should be to have charge of the "Examiner," who have written present three times in as many lines! However, I am writing now in ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... drop. I can't stand it. Instead of soothing me it excites me to the verge of madness. I'm almost over the verge—for want of sleep—my ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... through wildernesses dreary, And to-day my heart is weary; Had I now the wings of a Fairy Up to thee would I fly. There is madness about thee, and joy divine In that song of thine; Lift me, guide me high and high To thy banqueting place ...
— Birds Illustrated by Colour Photography, Vol II. No. 4, October, 1897 • Various
... and odors of the flowers decorating every table. While she had been down there all this had been up here—waiting for her! Why had she stayed down there? But then, why had she gone? What folly, what madness! To suffer such horrors for no reason—beyond some vague, clinging remnant of a superstition—or had it been just plain insanity? "Yes, I've been crazy—out of my head. The break with—Rod—upset ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... occasion for wrong construction of my conduct. Ah, Aunt Phoebe! that marriage was a sad mistake. A union unblessed by love, is the commencement of a wretched life. It is the old story; and never loses its tragic interest. It was folly in the beginning, and it is madness now." ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... cavern by sudden intrusion of voices and of lights, half-formed visions, half-formed ideas, once again, flapped duskily about him, torturing in their multiplicity alike to his senses and his brain. He fought with them, striving to beat them off in a madness of disgust, half suffocated by the fanning of their foul and stifling wings. Then, exhausted by the conflict, he stumbled and fell, while they closed down on him. And ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... he cried, "it is madness, it is folly!... You are not going to fight about an argument such as you have related to me? You talked at the corner of the street, you exchanged a few angry words, and then, suddenly, seconds, a duel.... Ah, ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... of necessity abide in God; if we fall out of the hands of his mercy, we fall into the hands of His justice. We must ever abide in Him. What madness then is it to wish not to be with Him, without whom thou canst ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... still mother and child slept on. Hasty's over-charged heart and brain were for the first time, for some days, lulled to forgetfulness. If this relief had not come, without doubt one would have broken, and the other been lost in madness. Fanny was the first to awake. The crisis of the disease had passed; the fever no longer scorched her veins, and her mind no longer wandered. She was, however, as weak as an infant, and as incapable of attending to her wants. For the first ...
— A Child's Anti-Slavery Book - Containing a Few Words About American Slave Children and Stories - of Slave-Life. • Various
... forgot his own danger, forgot his old caution and the fears that gave birth to it, forgot everything in these moments but Meleese and his own great happiness. For he was happy, happier than he had ever been in his life, happier than he had ever expected to be. He was conscious of no madness in this strange, new joy that swept through his being like a fire; he did not stop to weigh with himself the unreasoning impulses that filled him. He had held Meleese in his arms, he had told her of his love, and though she had accepted it with ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... grave and patriotic public servant. We turn to the same date in the Diary by which he is known, after two centuries, to his descendants. The entry begins in the same key with the letter, blaming the "madness of the House of Commons" and "the base proceedings, just the epitome of all our public proceedings in this age, of the House of Lords"; and then, without the least transition, this is how our diarist proceeds: "To the Strand, to my bookseller's, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to be attributed to madness, than malice." ("The thing seemed to resemble minds possessed rather than guilty.") —Livy, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... make friends for itself, but only genius can give to its creations the divine power of winning love and veneration. Enthusiasm cannot cling to what itself is unenthusiastic, nor will he ever have disciples who has not himself impulsive zeal enough to be a disciple. Great wits are allied to madness only inasmuch as they are possessed and carried away by their demon, While talent keeps him, as Paracelsus did, securely prisoned in the pommel of his sword. To the eye of genius, the veil of the spiritual world is ever rent asunder that it may perceive the ministers ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... sweet Saint Cleer, and sweet Saint Elid too, Shield me from rooting cancers and from madness: Shield me from sudden death, worse than two death-beds; Let me not lie like this unwanted queen, Yet let my time come not ere I am ready— Grant space enow to relish the watchers' tears And give my clothes away and calm my features And streek my limbs according to my will, Not ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... town he no longer shunned the sights that formerly he'd passed with face averted, for well he knew that if he would shed joy and hope on others he must go to places where they most abound. What matter that the thought of Vesta stabbed him nigh to madness when he looked on hearth-fires that could never blaze for him? With courage almost more than human he put that fond ambition out of mind as if it were another sword he'd learned to sheathe. At first it would not stay in hiding, but flew the scabbard ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... in the Frenchman's eyes. "Listen to me, Max," he said. "If I spend my last breath thus, why not? I have not the least desire to cling to life. And is that madness? I love la petite more than all. And is that folly? Why should I not give the strength that is still in me to accomplish the desire of my heart? Is mortal life so precious to those who have nothing for ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... whatever, and is finally assassinated. By some means which remain perfectly unexplained and incomprehensible, Lorenzo keeps old Jeronimo from the Court, so that he cannot bring forward his accusation against the murderers of his son. Jeronimo is consequently seized with madness, which, however, suddenly turns into a well calculated and prudent action. The conclusion of the piece is a general massacre, in which Jeronimo, after having killed Lorenzo, bites off his own tongue, stabs the Duke of Castile, and then ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... faith, and that I may be no longer reproached for my vanity. I wish to convert the world. Very likely this fancy springs from an enthusiastic pride which may have turned to delirium; but it will be admitted at least that I have plenty of company, and that my madness is not monomania. At the present day, everybody wishes to be reckoned among the lunatics of Beranger. To say nothing of the Babeufs, the Marats, and the Robespierres, who swarm in our streets and workshops, all the great reformers of antiquity live again ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... where Ngurn officiated and functioned religiously for himself and the twelve tribes under him. Bassett laughed aloud, almost with madness, at the thought of this wonderful messenger, winged with intelligence across space, to fall into a bushman stronghold and be worshipped by ape-like, man-eating and head- hunting savages. It was as if ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... as their fancies guide, With noise say nothing, and in parts divide. La-oc'o-on, followed by a num'rous crowd, Ran from the fort, and cried, from far, aloud: 'O wretched countrymen! what fury reigns? What more than madness has possessed your brains? Think you the Grecians from your coasts are gone? And are Ulysses' arts no better known? This hollow fabric either must enclose, Within its blind recess, our hidden foes; Or 'tis ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... I believe, be argued that the presence of a neuropathic element of this kind in the ancestry of genius is frequently not without a real significance. Aristotle said in his Poetics that poetry demanded a man with "a touch of madness," though the ancients, who frequently made a similar statement to this, had not our modern ideas of neuropathic heredity in their minds, but merely meant that inspiration simulated insanity. Yet "a touch ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... her mission of discord not yet completed, appeared among a band of Trojan youths who with Iulus at their head were amusing themselves by hunting in the forest. The Fury hurled a fire- brand at the hounds, and suddenly, as if seized with madness, they rushed in pursuit of a beautiful young stag which was sporting among the trees. This stag was a pet of Syl'vi-a, the daughter of Tyr'rheus, one of the herdsmen of King Latinus. Iulus seeing the hounds in pursuit, followed them, and shot at and wounded the ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke
... namely, the raiment of twelve men, a chariot worth thrice seven bondmaids, the breadth of thy face of red gold[c], the weight of thy left forearm of silvered bronze. Whoso brings shame and sorrow and madness upon thee, no claim for compensation nor satisfaction hast thou therefor that I myself have not, [2]but it is to me the compensation belongs,"[2] said Medb, "for a man dependent upon a woman's ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... Henry, there isn't a man in the world could have such a welcome as I could give you. Do you think I am cold? Of course you don't! Do you think I want to feel as I have done this last fortnight towards you? Why, it's misery! It makes me feel inclined to commit any folly, any madness, to get rid of ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... as soon as she crossed the threshold, she drew a revolver, and, dashing toward him, fired. The bullet missed, and she fired again, also without effect, before I could rush up and seize her. She struggled with me with a strength born of madness. ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... he had only refused my request! But then, supposing he had, I should have got possession of it by force, so great was the madness that had laid hold upon me. However, far from refusing it, the dervish at once held it out, saying gracefully, "Take it, my friend, and if there is anything else I can do to make you happy you must ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... how good he is at a leap," and, setting herself more firmly in the saddle, she patted Gritty upon the neck. The well-trained animal understood the signal, and, rearing high in the air, was fast nearing the bank, when the young man, suspecting her design, shrieked out: "Stop, lady, stop! It's madness to attempt it." ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... most excellent way," said Robert. "People who have reached the years of maturity pay no attention to the vaporings and madness of ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... upon the problem of hereditary insanity. Every other human infirmity may be rounded off, merged into a lofty ideal of acceptance, renunciation, and expiation. But under no imaginable conditions can madness be regarded as something from which the heart and soul of man does not shudderingly recoil. Accordingly, a heroine who is haunted, beset, and finally driven crazy by the dread of the fatal inheritance being in her blood seems set apart from the fluctuations and hesitations of maidenly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... and puzzled to the point of madness, was absolutely at a loss what to do next. The best he could think of was to go to the quarters in Pu-cheng1, where he had installed himself when he first arrived at Ch'ang-an. The landlord was sympathetic and offered ...
— More Translations from the Chinese • Various
... then, climb where Alps on Alps arise? No; snuff and science are to me a dream, But hold my soul! for that way madness lies, Love's in the scale, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... entering the museum, that, too, seemed completely clear to the secretary. He was a curio enthusiast himself and he had served collectors in a secretarial capacity; and he knew, both from experience and observation, that strange madness which may at any moment afflict the collector, blotting out morality and the nice distinction between meum and tuum, as with a sponge. He knew that collectors who would not steal a loaf if they were starving might—and did—fall before the ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... subscription. And, indeed, I had previously determined, when I. changed my state, to set aside all my innate and original abhorrences, and to regard and use as resources, myself, what had always been considered as such by others. Without this idea, and this resolution, our hermitage must have been madness. . . . ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... scamper back again, garlanded with leaves and flowers, and caper about hand-in-hand through the streets, and in and out of all the houses, without let or hindrance. Even the "genteel" resident families allow themselves to be infected with the general madness, and wind up the day's capering consistently enough by a night's capering at a grand ball. A full account of these extraordinary absurdities may be found in Polwhele's "History ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... antidotes for madness prescribed by Burton in his "Anatomie of Melancholy." But like most medicines, so the homeopaths have taught us, the plant that heals may also poison; and the coarse, thick rootstock of this hellebore sometimes does deadly work. The shining plaited leaves, put ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... less gifted writer, Edouard Rod, paints in still more vivid colors the cruelty and madness of the present state of things. He too only aims at presenting its tragic features, without suggesting or forseeing any ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... recollected herself and flamed with shame so bitter that her lower lip quivered and she hoped he would ask her again to call him John so that she could make him pay for her momentary madness. ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... Government;—prostituting the strength and influence of the Nation to the support of slavery here and elsewhere;—trampling on the rights of the free States and making the courts of the country their tools. To continue this disastrous alliance longer is madness. The trial of fifty years with the best of men and the best of Constitutions, on this supposition, only proves that it is impossible for free and slave States to unite on any terms, without all becoming partners in the guilt and responsible for the sin of slavery. We dare not prolong the experiment, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... have nothing to do. It was during such a period the crank had his opportunity and the situation was dangerous, and he wished me to come to the platform and fill as much of that hour as possible. I refused on the ground that I was wholly unprepared, and it would be madness to attempt to speak to fourteen thousand people in the hall and a ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... word, Christine, that tool-house was like a vault. It was madness to ask any one to spend the night ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... which he plagiarized, more or less unconsciously, the elder Danish poets. Mr. Jonas Collins, one of the directors of the Royal Theatre, became interested in the youth, whose unusual ambition meant either madness or genius. In order to determine which it might be, Mr. Collins induced King Frederic VI. to pay for his education, and after half a dozen years at school Hans Christian passed the entrance examination to ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... her reticence as to the ownership of the car and the way in which she had tried to prevent a meeting. There was her sympathy for Maisie's matrimonial excesses; her unnatural tolerance for Adair; her reiterated excuse for the current love-madness, that people had the right at any cost to be happy; and the eagerness with which she had seized on his own words, "to recover our lost years by violence." In the silence of his brain he heard her voice pleading, ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... other thrown into a state of anarchy and confusion. After having spread corruption like a deluge through the land, until all public virtue was lost, and the people were inebriated with vice and profligacy, they were then taught in the paroxysms of their infatuation and madness to cry out for havoc and war. History could not show an instance of such an empire ruined in such a manner. They had lost a greater extent of dominion in the first campaign of a ruinous civil war, which was intentionally produced by their own acts, than the most celebrated ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... Resistance would have been madness. Martin and Gerard followed Margaret's example. The pursuers gained slightly on them; but Martin kept shouting, "Only win the wood! ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... openly contemptuous of those who believed in them. However, in an article called 'The Influence of Civilization upon Genius,' published in 1888, he made this admission: 'Twenty or thirty years are enough to make the whole world admire a discovery which was treated as madness at the moment when it was made.... Who knows whether my friends and I who laugh at spiritualism are not in error, just like hypnotized persons, or like lunatics; being in the dark as regards the truth, we laugh at those who are not ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... precious sheets ever appeared, Ashe's position would certainly be shaken. Poor wretch!—endeavoring to pursue a serious existence, yoked to such an impish sprite as this! His own fault, after all. That first night, at Madame d'Estrees', was not her madness written ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... told us that Hamlet was one of your favourite parts? Is it not the fact that the chief character in the play drives his fiancee to madness and suicide by his cruelty, slays her father and brother, together with his own step-father, and procures the death of ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... rear. We passed at every step most curious specimens of volcanic rock. But I did not examine them. I was no longer interested in such things. Another kind of curiosity had taken possession of me. I had come to share Morhange's madness. If my companion had said to me: "We are doing a very rash thing. Let us go back to the known trails," I should have replied, "You are free to do as you please. But I am ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... yet. Lily! yes, I must get her; a fool I have been; my letter miscarried, else she would have written. Refuse me! who would refuse me? Yes, I was born to drink the cup of life as few have drunk it; I shall drink it even like a Roman emperor ... But they drank it to madness and crime! Yet even so; I shall drink of ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... 'my extravagances never are very dangerous. There was method in Hamlet's madness, and there is always a little ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... isn't a fellow at Guy's who wouldn't laugh at me if I told him what the guvnor does. Rich, old girl, I'm sick of it! It was madness for me to go through all this training, when I might have been earning money as porter or a clerk. Everything has been swallowed up in the fees. Why, if Jem Poynter hadn't come forward like a ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... the field from the yard or the stable—things in other classes. The horse is a noble animal. Here the distinguishes this class of animals from other classes. But we cannot say, The man (meaning the race) is mortal, The anger is a short madness, The truth is eternal, The poetry and the painting are fine arts, because man, anger, truth, poetry, and painting are used in their widest sense, and name things that are ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... How can that be, Morva?—a student without home or money, and a girl without a penny in the world! What madness thou art talking. I only ask thee to have patience for a year or two, and I will have a home for thee. And who ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... of himself when he thus criticised the character of Sir Roger de Coverley. 'The variable weather of the mind, the flying vapours of incipient madness, which from time to time cloud reason without eclipsing it, it requires so much nicety to exhibit that Addison seems to have been deterred from prosecuting his own design.' Johnson's ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... unfortunate friend," interrupted the divine. "His reliance must be placed on One, different in all his attributes from your officer, to follow whom, or to consult whose frail conduct, would be the height of madness. ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... not count among timid girls—or among civilized. She had got what she wanted from her madman—mad in his impulses, mad in his reading of honour. She was the sister of Henrietta's husband. Henrietta bore the name she had quitted. Could madness go beyond the marrying of the creature? He chafed at her containment, at her courage, her silence, her withholding the brazen or the fawnish look-up, either of which ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... it the more alarmed she became. For many months she had put the subject away, but it was too big to be slighted now. There was almost a taint of madness. Were all Helen's actions to be governed by a tiny mishap, such as may happen to any young man or woman? Can human nature be constructed on lines so insignificant? The blundering little encounter at Howards End was vital. ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... fear, as it had so soon done that of all the brute-life around him; it was in his mind to do something calling for more courage than he had ever before commanded in his life, save on that one day in Carancro, when, stung to madness by the taunts of a brave man, and driven to the wall, he had grappled and slain his tormentor. He had the thought now to return, and under cover of the swamp's deep outer margin of shadow, silently ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... inherited from a not far-distant, barbarous past. It possesses the genius of organization and work, and is able to lend great service to humanity. . . . But first it is necessary to give it a douche—the douche of downfall. The Germans are mad with pride and their madness threatens the security of the world. When those who have poisoned them with the illusion of universal hegemony have disappeared, when misfortune has freshened their imagination and transformed them into a community of humans, neither superior nor inferior to the rest of mankind, they will become ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... limousines and landaulets of the cities. And there were wagons from the shops—great trucks, carrying supplies, going along at a pace that racked their engines and their bodies, and that boded disaster to whoever got in their way. But no one did—there was no real confusion here, despite the seeming madness of the welter of traffic ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... francs. 'Is that all?' said Chauvignac; and pulling out his pocket-book he added,—'Here's a bank-note; you can repay me to-morrow.' 'Why, man, you are mad!' exclaimed Olivier. 'Be it so,' said Chauvignac; 'and in my madness I give you credit for another thousand-franc bank-note to go and get thirty thousand francs which are waiting for you.' 'Now, do explain yourself, for you are driving ME mad.' 'Nothing more easy. Here is the fact,' said Chauvignac. ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... advantage that our happy constitution can bestow.' Burton's Hume, ii. 238, 240. Hume, in his prejudice against England, went far beyond Johnson in his prejudice against Scotland. In 1769 he wrote:—'I am delighted to see the daily and hourly progress of madness and folly and wickedness in England. The consummation of these qualities are the true ingredients for making a fine narrative in history, especially if followed by some signal and ruinous convulsion—as I hope will soon be the case with that pernicious people.' Ib ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... animals, whose fashion of dress he did well to imitate, since the deer, the wolf, and the bear, had long been his most intimate companions. He was one of those ill-fated mortals, such as the Indians told of, whom, in their early youth, the Great Carbuncle smote with a peculiar madness, and became the passionate dream of their existence. All who visited that region knew him as the Seeker and by no other name. As none could remember when he first took up the search, there went a fable in the valley of the ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a scowl, and slunk below, but I could see an evil light in his eyes which I attributed to madness, though I was subsequently to learn there was much method in it. I did not like to add to Hartog's anxieties by telling him of Van Luck's conduct, and, indeed, when I considered our present predicament, it seemed unlikely ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... and saw a lot of food set out upon a counter. He rushed to it and began. At the first taste a kind of madness seized him, and he ate like a ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... my name, And know my misery, set me safe aboard From these wild Canibals, and as I live, I'le quit this Land for ever: there is nothing, Perpetual prisonment, cold, hunger, sickness Of all sorts, all dangers, and all together The worst company of the worst men, madness, age, To be as many Creatures as a woman, And do as all they do, nay to despair; But I would rather make it a new Nature, And live with all those than endure one ...
— Philaster - Love Lies a Bleeding • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... papal pardons so great that they could absolve a man even if he had committed an impossible sin and violated the Mother of God—this is madness.[19] ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... indeed; yet once more she forced herself to make the hopeless effort, after some more than customary outbreak of the man who was drinking himself into madness and ruin. She writes in the March of 1846 to her friend and ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... remembered that first night and the kiss, and how he had half hated it, half liked it. He felt now, chiefly, anger that Donovan had had one too. One? But he, Peter, had had two.... Then he called himself a damned fool; it was all of a piece with her extravagant and utterly unconventional madness. But what, then, would she say to this? Had she anything ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... Dino, he believed it was a divine message. It is strange," she went on meditatively, "this life of men possessed with fervid beliefs that seem like madness to their fellow-beings. Dino was not a vulgar fanatic; and that Fra Girolamo—his very voice seems to have penetrated me with a sense that there is some truth in what moves them: some truth of which ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... empty—he certainly will not make the attempt now when we are warned, when the police are on the spot, and the house is surrounded. The idea is childish, gentlemen"—he leaned against the door of the safe—"absolutely childish, but Guerchard is mad on this point; and I foresee that his madness is going to hamper us ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... clamorous. He cried out to me that he was dying, implored me to help him, and reproached me vehemently, because I lay there silent, motionless, and apparently careless of his danger. "Why will he disturb me?" I thought; "he thinks he is dying, but what is death to madness? Let him die; a thousand deaths were more easily borne than the pangs I suffer." While I was sufficiently conscious to hear his exclamations, they only provoked my keen anger; but after a time, my senses became clouded, and I sank into ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... indeed sensible—bitterly sensible; and could not listen to the calm, rational, and kind language of my father, without looking back with amazement at the stupidity of my conduct. It now seemed to me to have been the result of utter insanity—madness. I could neither recall nor comprehend the motives and impulses under which I had acted; and could only see the act itself standing forth in naked, inexplicable absurdity. Recurring again to the circumstances which had led to my present ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... name; and if it should happen! Pictures of his father, his home his father's friends, Fenmarket, the Hopgood household, passed before him with such wild rapidity and intermingled complexity that it seemed as if the reins had dropped out of his hands and he was being hurried away to madness. ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... passed into another moment, almost as perilous, of confusion through a primal instinct of the man's by which he yields a double or a divided allegiance and simultaneously worships at two shrines; in still another breath he was aware that this was madness. ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... against them. We Russians no sooner arrive at the brink of the water, and realize that we are really at the brink, than we are so delighted with the outlook that in we plunge and swim to the farthest point we can see. Why is this? You say you are surprised at Pavlicheff's action; you ascribe it to madness, to kindness of heart, and what not, but ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... "It is madness to harass the mind with attempts to measure the world," he asserts, but he proceeds to tell us the size of the world as accepted by him. "Our part of the earth, floating as it were in the ocean, which surrounds it, stretching out to the greatest ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... Browne, mildly. "If it had been anyone else's hand! I could then accuse the moonbeams of a secondary offense, and say that their influence alone, which we all know has a maddening effect, had driven him to so bold a deed. But not madness itself could inspire me with a longing to ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... it be sent to his sister, should he not be heard from again. The records of the expedition have been kept in duplicate. One set of these is given to Howland, and now we are ready. For the last, time, they entreat us not to go on, and tell us that it is madness to set out in this place; that we can never get safely through it; and, further, that the river turns again to the south into the granite, and a few miles of such rapids and falls will exhaust our entire ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... devil! thou blissful madness, thou wise folly! Thou that comest clad in rainbow garments, with words more full of hope than was the first arch that spanned high heaven, stouter hearts than mine have been compelled to own thee master. Prouder hearts than mine have listened to the witcheries of thy satin-smooth tongue until they ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... even when they operate with greatest vigour, is, that they represent their object in so lively a manner, that we could almost say we feel or see it: But, except the mind be disordered by disease or madness, they never can arrive at such a pitch of vivacity, as to render these perceptions altogether undistinguishable. All the colours of poetry, however splendid, can never paint natural objects in such a manner as to make the ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... simply madness, so up went their hands and the keen glance of the sheriff swept over the party and he counted ...
— Jack Wright and His Electric Stage; - or, Leagued Against the James Boys • "Noname"
... filled the room. "Oh, my child! my child!" she cried; "what madness is this, and for ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming |
