"Unhinged" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... adhered to the wishes of her parents, which they endeavoured to make pleasant to her by much kindness, had not a letter from the Major been conveyed to her on the next evening, which quite excited and unhinged her again. He complained violently therein of her father's unreasonableness, injustice, and tyranny; and spoke, in the most passionate terms, of his love, of his unbounded sufferings, and of his despair. The consequence of this ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... he had no money troubles; but were there any domestic troubles which might have unhinged his mind to that extent?" ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... a disabled ship caught in a southwesterly gale on the Pacific side of Tierra del Fuego rose dimly in her mind. And the advancing darkness did not tend towards cheerfulness. In her new track, the Kansas had turned her back on the murky light which penetrated the storm-clouds towards the west. Unhinged by the external gloom and the prevalent uncertainty, and finding that no one cared to dispute with her, Isobel felt that a scream or two would be a relief. For once, pride was helpful—it saved ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... afterthought was too much for him, and Bacheet immediately comforted him by telling the most horrible tales of death and destruction that had been wrought by lions, until the nerves of Mahomet were completely unhinged. ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... on its carefully guarded peg at Mount Vernon. Lafayette thought that, without the example of America, France would never have found strength to throw off the rule of kings, and so America must have the key to the detested door that was now unhinged forever. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... things is unhinged, and we are nearing chaos. It is going so far that Wyclif cannot refrain from inserting some of those slight restrictions which the logicians of the Middle Ages were fond of slipping into their writings. In time of danger this was the secret door by which they made their escape, turning ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... a good aim as a rule," put in Christopher, too blind with fury now to realise the other's unhinged condition, but Geoffry ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... what I told you the first night I ever talked with you, Boyne. You threw doubt on Thomas Gilbert's death being suicide. I gave as a reason for my belief that it was, a knowledge and conviction that the man's mind was unhinged." ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... cruel, neither does it crawl. The state of mind which attributes to it these characters of a living creature is one in which the reason is unhinged by grief. All violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize as the ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... original sentence upon a man who was never even mentioned in evidence and who took no part in the Reform movement, beyond associating himself with the organizations for the protection of property in Johannesburg, told so severely upon one of the prisoners that his mind became unhinged, and in the course of the following period he developed marked signs of homicidal and suicidal mania. His condition was so serious that strong representations were made to all the officials connected ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... which would ensure a noiseless retreat. To men of his own stamp it would have been useful, but he little knew the peculiar temperament of his friend; the mere idea of the success of the whole expedition depending upon his extreme care unhinged the nerves of the poor artist, who, although absolutely a brave man, in the true sense of the term, could no more control his nervous system than he could perform an Indian war-dance. He could have rushed single-handed on the whole body of warriors with ease, but he could not creep ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... Elliston listened as one in a dream. What was this she was saying, that it was Lapierre who sold whiskey to the Indians, and MacNair who stood firm, and struck mighty blows for the right of things? Surely, this girl's mind was unhinged—or, had something gone wrong with her own brain? Was it possible ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... out to them, huddled together, wrapped up in their capotes, on the bare rock, near where they had been working, and held a whispered conversation together, which lasted for some time after darkness covered the face of the deep. Paolo's mind, troubled and unhinged with the thoughts of the past, and the darkening prospect of the future, for long refused to allow sleep to visit his eyelids. He listened to ascertain whether his sister and Miss Garden were still awake; but from the perfect silence ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... depths of despond; but Job stood, at last, upon the heights, and felt once more God's blessed sun, and rejoiced—even as we should. But, as regards this stranger, he is one who would seem to have suffered some great wrong, the continued thought of which has unhinged his mind; his heart seems broken—dead. I have, sitting beside his delirious couch, heard him babble a terrible indictment against some man; I have also heard him pray, and his prayers have been all ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... urged it to greater speed. "I save myself; myself," he shrieked shrilly and unhinged by deadly ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... I was sure the potboy's evidence would clear me, and therefore began to enjoy the fun. Even my certain expulsion from College on the morrow seem'd of a piece with the rest of events and (prospectively) a matter for laughter. For the struggle at the "Crown" had unhinged my wits, as I must suppose and you must believe, if you would understand my behavior ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... and our mind is a little unhinged," said the skillful practitioner: "careful diet, complete repose, a warm surrounding atmosphere, absence of undue excitement, and, above all, a course of my gentle alteratives regularly administered—these are the very simple means to restore our beloved patient. He is ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... hung over the poor woman's spirit, Master Swift's plain consolations made their way. The ruling thought of his mind became the one idea to which her unhinged intellect clung,- -the second coming of the Lord. For this she watched—not merely in the sense of a readiness for judgment, but—out of the upper windows of the windmill, from which could be seen a vast extent of that heaven in which the sign of ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... beating the air; he walked on his hind legs like the trained dog in the circus; he yelped continuously, as if it agonized him to see the lion safe out of his reach. Sounder had lost his identity. Joy had unhinged his mind and had made him a dog of double personality. He had always been unsocial with me, never responding to my attempts to caress him, but now he leaped into my arms and licked my face. He had always hated Jones till that moment, when he raised his paws to his master's breast. And perhaps ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... Go-Komatsu abdicated in favour of his son Shoko (101st sovereign), then twelve years old. This sovereign abandoned himself to the profligacy of the era. It is doubtful whether his reason was not unhinged. Some accounts say that he fell into a state of lunacy; others, that he practised magic arts. At all events he died childless in 1428, and was succeeded by a grandson of the Emperor Suko, Go-Hanazono, then in his tenth year. Thus, the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... had recently expired, and burning the straw upon which the sick man lay became a simple preservative against infection. At night the dead body is waked, that is to say, all the friends and neighbours of the deceased collect in a barn or stable, where the corpse is laid upon some boards, or an unhinged door, supported upon stools, the face exposed, the rest of the body covered with a white sheet. Round the body are stuck in brass candlesticks, which have been borrowed perhaps at five miles' distance, as many candles as the poor person can beg or borrow, observing always to have an odd number. ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... listening to you just now," he says; "I must tell you that since you came back you have the air of a foreigner—a Belgian or an American. You say intolantable things. We thought at first your mind had got a bit unhinged. Unfortunately, it's not that. Is it because you've turned sour? Anyway, I don't know what advantage you're after, but I must cautionize you that you're anielating everybody. We must put ourselves in these people's places. Apropos of this, and apropos of that, you make proposals of ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... adventures, but Francesca was so unhinged by her unfortunate exit from Ballycastle that, after a few miles, she announced her intention of putting her machine and herself on the car; whereupon Benella proclaimed herself a competent cyclist, and climbed down blithely to mount the discarded wheel. Her ideas ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... certain things which have puzzled me. Up to now I never quite knew what Shakespeare meant when he made Hamlet say, "My tablets! Quick, my tablets! 'tis meet that I put it down," etc., For now, feeling as though my own brain were unhinged or as if the shock had come which must end in its undoing, I turn to my diary for repose. The habit of entering accurately ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... German Professors, it might be hard to believe them capable of making any mistake; but they were nothing of the kind; they were ignorant Eastern peasants, living in the very thick of every conceivable kind of delusive influence. Strauss himself supposes their minds to have been so weak and unhinged that they became easy victims to hallucination. But if this was the case, they would be liable to other kinds of credulity, and it seems strange that one who would bring them down so low, should be here so suddenly jealous for their intelligence. There is no reason to suppose ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... face to face with one of the most appalling of God's mysteries, and was unhinged by it. Gwen with the toothache ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... of the ghost had left upon the senses of Hamlet, he being weak and dispirited before, almost unhinged his mind, and drove him beside his reason. And he, fearing that it would continue to have this effect, which might subject him to observation, and set his uncle upon his guard, if he suspected that he was meditating any thing against him, or that Hamlet really ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the audacious seas aspire, Uproll'd in hills of fluctuating fire: With labouring throes she rolls on either side, And dips her gunnells in the yawning tide. Her joints unhinged in palsied langour play, As ice-flakes part beneath the noontide ray; The gale howls doleful through the blocks and shrouds, And big rain pours a deluge from the clouds. From wintry magazines that sweep the sky, Descending ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... interrupted, for Baron Suire, who had already once gone by without perceiving them, so completely did the darkness enshroud them in that retired corner, had just recognised the ex-public prosecutor's good-natured laugh. And, thereupon, with the volubility of a man whose head is easily unhinged, he gave him several orders respecting the vehicles and the transport service, deploring the circumstance that it would be impossible to conduct the patients to the Grotto immediately on their arrival, as it was yet ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... admits that it is very difficult to determine the exact line of demarcation where sound sense stops, and insanity commences; but he, who has visited a receptacle for the insane, will speedily observe the strange state and appearance of the eyes of those whose intellects are unhinged. This appearance cannot be mistaken either in lucid or rabid intervals; it is still perceptible, although, of course, in a greater or lesser degree. Now, the visitor to Bethlehem, on the occasion here refered to, particularly observed the eyes of all ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... grieved to see him so unhinged. It is a pitiable thing when a man loses his pluck, and the woman must play the part of consoler ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... have taken a wide difference: my object is not to excite fear of supernatural tilings in my reader, but to show the effect of such fear upon the agents in the story—one a man of sense and firmness—one a man unhinged by remorse—one a stupid uninquiring clown—one a learned and worthy, but superstitious divine. In the third place, the book turns on this hinge, and cannot want it. But I will try to insinuate the refutation of Aldiboronti's exception into the ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... to his task, and fears to make complaint; And sad-eyed Rachels, childless in decay, Weep for their lost ones sold and torn away! Of ampler size the master's dwelling stands, In shabby keeping with his half-tilled lands; The gates unhinged, the yard with weeds unclean, The cracked veranda with a tipsy lean. Without, loose-scattered like a wreck adrift, Signs of misrule and tokens of unthrift; Within, profusion to discomfort joined, The listless body ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... his great fortune, and had finally driven him into the Bankruptcy Court. The death of his wife on the very day of his insolvency had filled his cup of sorrow, and he had gone about since with a stunned, half-dazed expression upon his weak pallid face which spoke of a mind unhinged. So complete had been his downfall that the family would have been reduced to absolute poverty were it not for a small legacy of two-hundred a year which both the children had received from one of their uncles upon the mother's side who ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... however, I felt thoroughly exasperated. I was in a hurry to get on. Important business engagements would be unhinged by the delay. I was a stranger in Broughton. It looked like a stupid, stuffy little town. I went to a hotel in an atrocious humor. After I had fumed until I wanted a change, it occurred to me that I might as well hunt up Clark Oliver by way of passing the time. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... though the enemies were safe in prison, she knew not but that dagger, dagg, or arming sword might still be ready for her, and she believed that any fatal charge openly made against Mary at the trial might drive her friends to desperation and lead to the use of dagg or dagger. She was more unhinged than ever before, and commanded herself with difficulty when going through all the scenes of her public ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... grinned at Peter Jeffers, a lean, bony character who had a tendency to collapse into chairs as though he had come unhinged. Jeffers ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... England, a country where Splenetic Maladies are prevailing and pernicious, perhaps above any other, hath afforded Numberless Instances, of even pious People, who have contracted these Melancholy Indispositions which have unhinged them from all Service or Comfort; yea, not a few Persons have been hurried thereby to lay Violent Hands upon themselves at the last. These are among the ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... you, dear father," she said. Sir Walter waited for the gong to sound, but it did not, and he rebuked himself for thinking that it would sound. Masters had a more correct sense of the fitness of things than he. He thought curiously upon this incident, and suspected that he must be unhinged a little. Then he remembered a thing that he had desired to say to Mary and returned ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... now loaded and ready to start. It was about two o'clock in the afternoon, when a strange and painful trial befell us. Poor dear Mr. Mathieson, apparently unhinged, locked himself all alone into what had been his study, telling Mrs. Mathieson and me to go, for he had resolved to remain and die on Tanna. We tried to show him the inconsistency of praying to God to protect us or grant us means of escape, and then refuse to accept a rescue sent ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... continued the Captain, in a changed voice. "General Clark's mind is unhinged by—disappointment. Mad Anthony[1] is not a man to be caught sleeping, and he has already attended to a little expedition from the Cumberland. Mad Anthony loves the General, as we all do, and the Federal government is wiser than the Jacobins think. It may ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... open lots facing the unhinged gate was an old relinquished tannery that still flavored the air with decayed hemlock and fir bark, which lay here and there in dull-red patches, killing the grass. The undulations of a colonial graveyard broke tamely against the western base of the house. Head-stones and monuments—if there ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... of the whole company was now turned upon the speaker. He was an old gentleman, one side of whose face was no match for the other. The eyelid drooped and hung down like an unhinged window shutter. Indeed, the whole side of his head was dilapidated, and seemed like the wing of a house shut up and haunted. I'll warrant that side was well stuffed with ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... and wonderfully made up of sheet iron, square iron, and brass; the outcome of which is that the showy brass striking piece comes unriveted, the door comes unfastened, and the tenant's temper comes unhinged. Why, in the name of common sense, could they not substitute a neat malleable casting? In our own houses I have long since discarded the ordinary box staple for draw-back locks, and find it cheaper to buy a cast iron staple, and throw away the one supplied ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... used to say, the Crazy Woman lived; but she was not crazy. I knew the old lady well, and at one time we were very good friends. She was the last daughter of an old, once prosperous family; a woman of bright, even brilliant mind, unhinged by misfortune, disappointment, loneliness, and the horrible fascination which an inherited load of litigation exercised upon her. The one diversion of her declining years was to let various parts and portions ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... mother. You didn't see, you were crying all the time. He is quite unhinged by serious illness—that's ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... and pity, "you are mad, stark mad! Your mind's unhinged, your vision's all distorted. This fiend incarnate is become a poor victim of the evil of others; and I am become a murderer in your sight—a murderer and a fool. God's Life! Bah! Anon when you are rested, when you are restored, ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... same instant, with a jerk that nearly unhinged every bone in their bodies. Both yelled with terror at the ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... offer advice. Maria's well-balanced mind was so completely unhinged, that she looked with languid curiosity at her sister. Zo still stared at the ceiling, and still rolled slowly from one side to the other. The dog on her breast, lulled by the regular motion, slept profoundly—not even troubled by ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... when four or five days before the fair, she was seized with an unaccountable disorder in the sinews, or somewhere in the bones of the neck; with a weakness or total want of power in her fillets, and in short the whole vertebrae of her spine seemed to be diseased and unhinged, and in eight-and-forty hours, in spite of the two best farriers in the country, she died and be d—mned to her! The farriers said that she had been quite strained in the fillets beyond cure before you had bought her; and that the poor ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... oversight, but which never could have redressed it effectually, was to vitiate and taint the coronation of Charles VII as the work of a witch. That policy, and not malice (as M. Michelet is so happy to believe), was the moving principle in the subsequent prosecution of Joanna. Unless they unhinged the force of the first coronation in the popular mind by associating it with power given from hell, they felt that the sceptre of ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... globe, with a living warmth beside which the love of science and art is cold and clammy. Surely it would be not much to ask for the docility to recognize such patent facts as these. And I must believe that any mind is fundamentally unhinged that despises the profoundest convictions of the noblest hearts, or speaks lightly of the mighty influence that has moulded human events and has upheaved the world. It has, in its arrogance, cut adrift and swung off from ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... self-possession by an effort. "It is clear to me," he said calmly, "that your reason is unhinged. What is all this nonsense about death? There is nothing that will harm you except your own evil actions." He turned abruptly and strode out of the room with the firm and decided step of a man who has taken ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... find it any consolation to be told that that sort of thing is by no means uncommon," said Panton reflectively. "People, especially women, whose minds for any reason have become just a little unhinged, often take that sort of strange dislike to another human being. Sometimes for no reason at all. Every medical man would tell you of half-a-dozen such cases within his own knowledge. Fortunately, such half-insane people generally ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... to you, a voice that seemed within three yards of me, replied out of the fog, 'It's only Irwin,' and a most awful, and great, and supernatural sort of sigh faded away in the distance. I went in, feeling quite unhinged and nervous, and could not sleep. After that night it was chiefly sighs and coughing, and it was kept up until one day, at the end of about nine weeks, my letter was returned marked, 'Signor O'Neill e morto,' together with a letter from the Consul to say ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... only her way of saying that my mind is unhinged and that I ought to be sent to a private ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... tree face to face with General Feraud. This last, completely unstrung by such a show of agility on the part of a dead man, was trembling yet. A very faint mist of smoke hung before his face which had an extraordinary aspect, as if the lower jaw had come unhinged. ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... rose, sometimes," she said. "I think this morning I'm a little like some of the old doors up on the third floor: I feel rather unhinged, Mr. Corliss." ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... the meeting he had pictured to himself a thousand times? Had her troubles unhinged ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... seconds. Then the dammed-back blood-surge drave thundering in his ears. He swayed, and would have fallen but for the parapet of the bridge and the clinging arms about his neck. All his nature and love in full career stopped dead. The shock almost unhinged his soul and reason. It was still so dark that, though he could see the outline of her head and the paleness of her face, nothing held him but the intense and vivid fascination of her eyes. Ralph would have broken away, indignant and amazed, but her arms and eyes held him close ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... was nearly an hour before the potion became fully effective, and even then Earle's sleep was fitful and disturbed, his semi-coherent mutterings showing that his mind was still unhinged. To be brief, the outbreak of delirium was followed by a period of extreme weakness and profound dejection, during which the patient lost all memory of his splendid dream, and, at least temporarily, of several other things as well, so that nearly a fortnight ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... those wingy mysteries in divinity, and airy subtleties in religion, which have unhinged the brains of better heads, they never stretched the pia mater of mine. Methinks there be not impossibilities enough in religion for an active faith: the deepest mysteries ours contains have not only been illustrated ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... the presbytery had closed behind Claudet, the Abbe Pernot, flinging to one side all his preparations, began to pace nervously up and down the principal garden-walk. He appeared completely unhinged. His features were drawn, through an unusual tension of ideas forced upon him. He had hurriedly caught his skullcap from his head, as if he feared the heat of his meditation might cause a rush of blood to the head. He quickened ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... done up, and I mean to see it out," I retorted doggedly. My nervous system was completely unhinged, and a fit of stupid obstinacy came on me which rendered any interference with ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... mind unhinged, Trenchard scanned him narrowly. Richard caught the glance and misinterpreted it for one of reproof. He bethought him that his joy was unrighteous. He stifled it, and forced his lips ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... Jesus, as on the two cardinal points of all preaching of salvation; also that all the faith of those who embraced the Gospel was founded upon these two facts, as upon the historical fundamentals of the {337} salvation which comes from Jesus; and that thus Christianity, with all its effects, which have unhinged the old world and diffused streams of blessing over mankind, has its historical basis in faith in the death of Jesus and his resurrection. This is our historical chain of proof. And that evidence which gives certainty to its most important link, on which everything depends—the appearance ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... carried me along with him to Aleppo. Here he had a daughter, and her he gave me in marriage, with a dower of a hundred dinars. Soon after this damsel turned out a termagant and vixen, and discovered such a perverse spirit and virulent tongue as quite unhinged all my domestic comfort.—A scolding wife in the dwelling of a peaceful man is his hell, even in this world. Protect and guard us against a wicked inmate. Save us, O Lord, and preserve us from ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... should, in their state of temporary insanity, accuse themselves of the acts of rapacity committed by the beasts into which they believed themselves to be transformed. It is a well-known fact that men, whose minds are unhinged, will deliver themselves up to justice, accusing themselves of having committed crimes which have actually taken place, and it is only on investigation that their self-accusation proves to be false; and yet they will describe the circumstances with the greatest minuteness, and be thoroughly ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... since his rescue, Lucie had never been out of Doctor Manette's sight. Now, though he was glad for her happiness, yet he felt the pain of the separation so keenly that it unhinged his mind again. Miss Pross and Mr. Lorry found him next morning making shoes at the old prison bench and for nine days he did not know them at all. At last, however, he recovered, and then, lest the sight of it affect him, one day when he was not there they chopped the bench ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... knowing that we had now but little time to lose. The cabin had originally been built substantially, and with a good deal of skill, and it had suffered but little from decay. We had, in fact nothing to do in the way of repairing it, except to rehang the door, which was loose, and partially unhinged, and to mend the roof, which leaked in one or two places. We then cleared the yard from the rank weeds by which it was overgrown, aired the house thoroughly, by setting door and windows open for a day or two, and swept out both ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... chairs they will want tables. But, were these to be introduced, their houses would be too low, for their heads would almost touch the ceiling. Thus by a little innovation might their whole usages be unhinged." ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... quickly in his bathing suit. He and Jack unhinged a stateroom door, carrying it up through the conning tower. Hal, in the meantime, under orders, had attended to bringing the "Pollard's" ...
— The Submarine Boys' Trial Trip - "Making Good" as Young Experts • Victor G. Durham
... particularly so when he was called forth on any occasion in which the oppressed Africans were concerned; for he had lived in the island of Barbados, and he had witnessed there scenes of cruelty towards them which had greatly disturbed his mind, and which unhinged it, as it were, whenever the subject of their sufferings was brought before him. Hence, if others did not think precisely as he did, when he conversed with them on the subject, he was apt to go ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... divined the court's complacent misinterpretation ere he saw its smile; the facile theory that brooding so much over her fascinating picture had unhinged his brain. From that moment a hardness came over his heart. He shut his lips grimly. What was the use of talking? Whatever he said would be discredited on this impish theory. And, even without it, how incredible his story, ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... crushed him forever. This very difference of hats marked a difference of politics—at least in France. There the old chapeau a trois cornes was the badge of the aristocracy: the chapeau rond and the bonnet rouge were sworn brothers in the cause of democracy. The times were getting unhinged; all fashions were relaxing; so were public morals; so were private morals; so were men's hats: hats and heads seemed to have a sympathy, and to have gone ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... the opinion of a good part of the congregation, when she said, on the way home after the service, "Poor Canon Farlow! It is too terrible. The excitement of the wedding must have unhinged his mind." ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... companion-in-arms, were he not bound by a solemn vow to dedicate his daughter to the Church. When Falkenstein at last understood that the knight's decision was irrevocable he galloped off as if crazed. The knight's vow, however, was not to be fulfilled; Gisela's reason became unhinged, she wandered aimlessly through the corridors of the castle, and one dark and stormy night cast herself into the Rhine and was drowned. Broemser built the convent, but in vain did he strive to free his conscience from remorse. Many were his benefactions, and he built a church on the ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... despojos m. pl. remains. despreciar spurn, neglect, reject. desprender(se) fall, tear, separate, issue from, arise, relax one's hold, let go. desprendido, -a loosened, falling, torn, broken. despus adv. afterward, then. despuntar begin to dawn. desquiciarse be unhinged, shake. destellar flash, twinkle. desterrar banish, exile. destilar drip. destino m. destiny, fate, lot. desvanecerse vanish, disappear, fade away. desvanecido, -a dizzy, vague, faint. desvaro m. delirium, raving. ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... of, in the house of Marchmont. She could have talked of its delights if there had been anybody to care about them in her own way, but that was the great if of Marian's life. She was conscious that her day's pleasure had unhinged her, and made her present tasks unusually distasteful, and she thought it the fault of the Lyddells, and in a great fit of repining blamed Edmund for injustice to Selina in not letting her house be their home. Her great ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... your thought," the judge answered the sound, and his eyes were like lamps as he turned them toward the man. "But you're wrong—my mind is not unhinged. You'll see. After what I've gone through, after facing eternity without hope, what are mere years? I can wait. I ...
— The Lifted Bandage • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... correspondence. You see, I have got my work to do, and you have got yours, and, notwithstanding all you say, I do not believe you to be unable to write the history of the lake and its castles. Your letters prove that you can, only your mind is unhinged by fears for my spiritual safety, and depressed by the Irish climate. It is very depressing, I know. I remember how you used to attribute the history of Ireland to the climate: a beautiful climate in a way, without extremes of heat and cold, as you said once, ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... Morris in America, 'to imagine a more disorderly body. They neither reason, examine, nor discuss. They clap those whom they approve, and hiss those whom they disapprove.... I told their President frankly that it was impossible for such a mob to govern the country. They have unhinged everything. It is anarchy beyond conception, and they will be obliged to take back ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... put in an honest day's toil, that the white man brings to his work, often being beguiled, by some outside pleasure or amusement, into permitting his day's work to sustain a break, which he laments afterwards in a melancholy refrain, of farming operations behind, and domestic matters unhinged, generally. Though the white has endeavored (and I the more gladly bear my witness to these attempts at the redemption of the Indian from some of his weaknesses, since the white has been so freely charged with ministering to his appetite for drink, and to the evil side of his nature generally) ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... poor friend suffered at this time, I can give you no idea; suffice it to say that he passed from celluloid to a blue flannel shirt and from blue to grey. The sight of a red cotton handkerchief in his wash at length warned me that his disappointed love had unhinged his mind, and I feared the worst. Then came an agonizing interval of three weeks during which he sent me nothing, and after that came the last parcel that I ever received from him an enormous bundle that seemed to contain all his effects. ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... "he is mad! I have watched him day by day, and would not believe it. But his violent ambition, and the thwarting to which it has been subjected, have unhinged his mind. I am hoping that the active life he must necessarily lead in Canada will restore his reason. But mad he is now, and for my sake bear with him and humour him. He has been cruel to us, unkind to me, brutal to you, but he is not the uncle I once knew ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... ask Mrs. Zephine," reply I, bitterly, thinking, with a lively exasperation, of the changed and demoralized Algy I had last seen—soured, headstrong, and unhinged. ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... think I had a moment's doubt, at that time, that her mind was unhinged? Such an accusation as that, against a man like you! Well, she came to see me again, about a month later. She seemed calmer then; but, as she was going away, she said: "They may expect to see the ...
— Rosmerholm • Henrik Ibsen
... observed by the company; they laughed heartily and assured him that his reluctance to join them in what they termed sociality, arose from the prejudices of education: that he must endeavour to banish all his fears of futurity, and mind present enjoyment. These and similar observations gradually unhinged the principles of young George, and before reaching their destined port, his checks of conscience were almost gone. What a dreadful state, when man's conscience ceases to be his reprover! Men are often glad when they obtain this deliverance, but the infatuation is ...
— The Village in the Mountains; Conversion of Peter Bayssiere; and History of a Bible • Anonymous
... time Lorna Bolivick really thought his mind was unhinged; I imagine, too, that she was afraid, because Edgecumbe told me that a look amounting almost to terror was in her eyes. But he seems to have taken no notice of this, ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... nightmare, and I assure you that that did not seem to me more terrible than reality. What I mean is, apparitions are terrible, but life is terrible, too. I don't understand life and I am afraid of it, my dear boy; I don't know. Perhaps I am a morbid person, unhinged. It seems to a sound, healthy man that he understands everything he sees and hears, but that 'seeming' is lost to me, and from day to day I am poisoning myself with terror. There is a disease, the fear of open spaces, but my disease is the ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... used—remedies which would destroy the organism if administered when in a healthy, normal condition. A strong organism recovers from disease, and from its treatment. Human societies and institutions pass through a similar ordeal, and when they are unhinged, extraordinary and abnormal ways are required to maintain the endangered society ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... Cocaine not in it. Stimulants—violent stimulants. In the highest quarters. Terrible. Exalted persons. Royalty! Anxious to be given war work and become anonymous.... Horrible! He's been a terrible influence. One idea—to disturb soul and body. Minds unhinged. Personal relations deranged. Shattered the practice of years. The harm ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... snuff-box handed about now, for courtesy, admiration, or a pinch; no affectation of occasionally making a remark upon any other topic but the all-engrossing one. Lord Castlefort rested with his arms on the table: a false tooth had got unhinged. His Lordship, who, at any other time, would have been most annoyed, coolly put it in his pocket. His cheeks had fallen, and he looked twenty years older. Lord Dice had torn off his cravat, and his hair hung down over his callous, bloodless cheeks, straight as silk. ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... cheer, their fashionable visiter paid but small respect, and the old commander, having pressed him to make himself at home, and help himself, attacked his own breakfast with vigor, feeling at the same time no small contempt for a man whose stomach could be so effectually unhinged by a simple capsize, and thorough ducking. The vender of tape and calico, seemed to feast his eyes, if not his appetite, by gazing on the lovely countenance of his young hostess; and after some slight hesitation, ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... wingy mysteries in divinity and airy subtleties in religion which have unhinged the brains of better heads, they have never stretched the membranes of mine. Methinks there be not impossibilities enough in religion for an active faith; I love to lose myself in a mystery, to pursue my reason ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... Madame Beattie saw the least little flickering thought run into her eyes, and knew she was involuntarily charting the means of summons, setting up the loom, as it were, to weave the magic web. She got up, took her hat, gave her toupee a little smack with the hand, and unhinged it worse ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... very strange, but concluded she was a little unhinged by yesterday's excitement. Moreover, there faced him an omelet of enormous size, and savory. He thought this worthy to divide a man's attention even with the great creature's tantrums. He devoted himself ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... cause for that terror on him. My uncle was stern and ruthless. The pendulum had swung the other way, and the lawless monster that Bowers had allied was now turning on himself. He saw it and his joints were unhinged with fear. ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... That the representatives cannot, therefore, act as an assembly, but as a convention delegated by the people to prevent the utter ruin of the government: And, lastly, that the lords proprietors had unhinged the frame of the government, and forfeited their right thereto; and that an address be prepared to desire the honourable Robert Johnson, the present governor, to take on himself the government of the province in the name of the King." The address was signed by Arthur Middleton, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... was completed on Monday-a perfect tragedy, for there were variety of incidents, villany, murder, and a hero! His sufferings, persecutions, aspersions, disturbances, nay, the revolutions of his fate, had not in the least unhinged his mind; his whole behaviour was natural and firm. A few days before, one of his friends standing by him, said, "Which of us is the tallest?" He replied, "Why this ceremony? I know what it means; let the man come and measure me for my coffin." He said, that ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... was glad to welcome back the shadowed mood which soon succeeded. The sagacity of physicians, of her most familiar acquaintances, of her mother, was all at fault. No one could decide whether or not her mind was unhinged, whether or not Mary Trigillgus was insane; for it must be remembered that her friends were ignorant of the events we have been narrating—her love for Christian Van Pelt, her disappointment, her grand scheme, the sacrifice of her home and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... lips set hard and his hands tightened to fists as he murmured: "I've met with criminals who used strange tools, but never before have I met with one who had the cunning and the incredible cruelty to utilise the mania of an unhinged human mind. It is a thousand times worse than those criminals who, now and then throughout the ages, have trained brute beasts to murder for them. Truly, this Hungarian peasant, Gyuri Kovacz, deserves a high place in the infamous roll-call of the great criminals ...
— The Case of The Pool of Blood in the Pastor's Study • Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner |
