"Madness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... impression of pain and misery, accompanied at the same time by a vague sense of unreal happiness—that is, a happiness which, whilst it balances the latent conviction of their misery does not, however, ultimately remove it. This probably constitutes that pleasure in madness, which, it is said, ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... constitutional melancholy, he observed, 'A man so afflicted, Sir, must divert distressing thoughts, and not combat with them.' BOSWELL. 'May not he think them down, Sir?' JOHNSON. 'No, Sir. To attempt to think them down is madness. He should have a lamp constantly burning in his bed-chamber during the night, and if wakefully disturbed, take a book, and read, and compose himself to rest. To have the management of the mind is a great art, and it may be attained in a considerable degree by experience and habitual ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... hesitation which to chuse, between ruin and dishonour; it is then, that the greatness of a nation is displayed. I acknowledge, however, that men accustomed to judge of things by the event, call great and perilous resolutions, heroism or madness, according to the good or bad success with which they have been attended. If then I should be asked, what is the name which shall in years to come be given to the firmness, which was in this moment exhibited ...
— A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal, on the Affairs of North America, in Which the Mistakes in the Abbe's Account of the Revolution of America Are Corrected and Cleared Up • Thomas Paine
... historical and chartered liberty to foreign despotism. Neither that liberty nor ours was born of the cloud-embraces of a false Divinity with, a Humanity of impossible beauty, nor was the infant career of either arrested in blood and tears by the madness of its worshippers. "To maintain," not to overthrow, was the device of the Washington of the sixteenth century, as it was the aim of our own hero ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... mine. But come, now, Rosny, you must admit that once or twice, when all your wiseacres were deadlocked, my madness has served." ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... attacked the instrument, from which escaped accents of veritable torture; a delirium of tone followed, meagre melodies fighting for existence in the boiling madness of it all; it was the parody of a parody, the music of yesterday masquerading as the music of to-morrow. Alixe nervously watched the critic. He stood at the end of the piano and morosely fumbled his beard. Again a wave of anxious hatred, ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... "The madness of fear has assailed some, I believe, who have been able to affect a better disguise than ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... to slay your father, maiden," he said gently; "we slay only those who resist, and resistance on the part of a single man, and he wounded, against a whole ship's crew is madness. We are no sea-wolves who slay for the pleasure of slaying, but are Saxons, who fight for our country against the oppressions and rapine of your people. Little right have they to mercy seeing they show none; but our religion enjoins us to have pity even upon our enemies. You had ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... brings with it a thrill of feeling intense and special as the recurrent sensation of a sweet odour breathed in a far-off hour of happiness. It is a memory that gives a more exquisite touch to tenderness, that feeds the madness of jealousy and adds the last keenness to the ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... soul as one knows the contents of one's pocket. What a prodigious memory and what a lurid imagination! He is at once a visionary and yet master of his dreams; he summons up and handles at will the hallucinations of opium or of hasheesh, without ever becoming their dupe; he makes of madness one of his tame animals, and bestrides, with equal coolness, Pegasus or Nightmare, the Hippogriff or the Chimera. As a psychological phenomenon he is of the deepest interest. Victor Hugo draws in sulphuric acid, he lights his pictures with electric light. He deafens, ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the disease from which art has suffered most in the last twenty years. The disease is now at wane, and when we happen upon a canvas of the period like "Labourers after Dinner", we cry out, "What madness! were we ever as mad as that?" The impressionists have been often accused of a desire to dispense with the element of beauty, but the accusation has always seemed to me to be quite groundless, and even memory of a certain portrait by Mr. Walter Sickert does not cause me to falter in this opinion. ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... former was saying, "the action is madness. Yourself (I am glad to remember it) chose your brother for this perilous service, and you are bound in duty to have a guard upon his conduct. He has consented to delay so many days in Paris; that was already an imprudence, considering the character of the man he has to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... potency, and with a majestic madness, this band of heroic troopers shook the air with their battle-cry, and dashed forward to meet the hitherto exultant foe. Ambulances, forges, and cannon, with pack-horses and mules, non-combatants and others, all joined to swell the mighty tide. Brave hearts ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... three-legged stool, I was soon lost in thought. I wondered what my wife was doing, how she was spending the auspicious day. What a "merry Christmas" for a woman with her husband eating his heart out in gaol! But "that way madness lies," and I had fought down the demon too long to give way then. Springing to my feet, I sped up and down my cell like a caged animal, and after many maledictions on "the accursed creed," I succeeded in ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... method in his madness. In the Dresden interview he had warned Metternich that not till the eleventh hour would he disclose his real demands. And now was the opportunity of trying the effect of a final act of intimidation. On August 4th he was back again in ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... "If, through the madness of Northern abolitionists, that dire calamity (disruption of the Union) must come, the fighting will not be along Mason and Dixon's line merely. It will be within our own borders, in our own streets, between the two classes of citizens to whom I have referred. Those ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... The Anguttara Nikaya, book iv. chap. 77, forbids speculation on four subjects as likely to bring madness and trouble. Two of the four are kamma-vipako and loka-cinta. An attempt to make the chain of causation into a cosmic law would involve ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... few stopped to inspect 'Aristides' or 'Nero.' 'They push, they fight, they scream, they faint,' writes Haydon, 'they see my bills, my boards, my caravans, and don't read them. Their eyes are open, but their sense is shut. It is an insanity, a rabies, a madness, a furor, a dream. Tom Thumb had 12,000 people last week, B. R. Haydon 133 1/2 (the half a little girl). Exquisite taste of the English people!... (May, 18th) I closed my exhibition this day, and lost L111, 8s. 10d. No man ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... great gift that their excess of passion will bestow on this race: it will give them romance. It will teach them what little they ever will learn about love. Other animals have little romance: there is none in the rut: that seasonal madness that drives them to mate with perhaps the first comer. But the simians will attain to a fine descrimination in love, and this will be their path to the only spiritual heights they can reach. For, in love, their inmost selves will draw near, in the silence of truth; learning little ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... welfare; every man must act as if he were the first man made. Briefly, we must always be worrying about what is best for our children, and we must not take one hint or rule of thumb from our fathers. Some think that this anarchism would make a man tread down mighty cities in his madness. I think it would make a man walk down the street as if he were walking on egg-shells. I do not think this experiment in opportunism would end in frantic license; I think it would end in frozen timidity. If a man was forbidden to ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... I look like a person who gets beatings? No, it is a madness,' said Joey, putting his hand upon his chest. 'The case is, I ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... merry comrade at a banquet, and an excellent captain: he took his pleasure with other men, and was so impressionable a character that he enjoyed a virtuous project as well as any plan for a debauch; in love he was most susceptible, and jealous to the point of madness even about a courtesan, had she once taken his fancy; his prodigality was princely, although he had no income; further, he was most sensitive to slights, as all men are who, because they are placed in an equivocal position, fancy that everyone ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... fellow, at times full of fun and gayety and at other times melancholy to the verge of insanity. Madness ran in his family, and one of his brothers, in a moment of frenzy had blown his brains out. Barnum knew of Bennett's tendency to melancholy and watched him constantly. When they were on board the steamer "Falcon" on their way back to New Orleans, a thrilling incident occurred which Barnum afterwards ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... drink in the world for an inventor or an author to work on. When I say an author I mean a poor writer of prose, for I have always been told that all poets are either mad, or bad, or both. Many of them must be bad, or they could not write such atrocious poems; but madness is different; perhaps they read ...
— The Little City Of Hope - A Christmas Story • F. Marion Crawford
... direct personification of natural phenomena, as well as the indirect personification of metaphor; the infusion of life into a man's own shadow, into reflex images and dreams; the belief in the reality of normal illusions, as well as of the abnormal hallucinations of delirium, of madness, and of all forms of nervous affections; all these things must be resolved into a single generating act which explains and includes them. It must be shown how and why there is found in man the possibility of modifying ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... suffering in the torments of a guilty conscience, he still tightly clutches his money-bag as he hurries on into the night. The picture tells the story of the fruit of Judas's sin,—the money-bag, with eighteen dollars and sixty cents in it, and even that soon to be cast away in the madness ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... sample of his ward's temper, I fear Erle has resumed guardianship of Tartary. As Miss Orme is a total stranger in New York, it is sheer madness to talk of leaving here. This is Erle Palma's house, not mine, else I should not hesitate a moment; but under the circumstances I shall insist upon this girl remaining here at least until his return, which must be very soon. ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... powers of wit and sophistry to ridicule the principles which he had abandoned. In short, he affected to glory in a species of political profligacy; and laughed or sneered at public virtue, as if it could only be the madness of enthusiasm, or the meanness of hypocrisy. By the brilliancy of his conversation, and the gaiety of his manners, Sir Hyacinth sometimes succeeded in persuading others that he was in the right; but, alas! there was one person whom ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... snapped low down in the water. We drifted out to sea, and immediately set our mainsail, but we were now without any anchor, and in a vessel so poorly manned that it could not be rowed against the most feeble current or the slightest wind, it word be madness to approach these dangerous shores except in the most perfect calm. We had also only three days' food left. It was therefore out of the question making any further attempts to get round the point without assistance, and I at once determined to run to the village ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... its shade, which you may enjoy till winter comes to despoil it of its leafy tresses. An end to all excellence in poetry, in painting, in music, as soon as superstition has once wrought upon human temperament the effect of old age! It is the very climax of madness to propose to oneself the ruin of the passions. A fine design truly in your pietist, to torment himself like a convict in order to desire nothing, love nothing, feel nothing; and he would end by becoming a true monster, if he were to succeed!"[34] Many years afterwards ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... and concealment; I believed he would work mighty things for his poor brethren, and would obtain, for his father's friend, the supplying of the king's wives and concubines with raiment and cloth of price. But years have passed: he hath not lightened our burthens; and, by the madness that hath of late come over him, heading the heathen armies, and drawing our brethren into danger and death, he hath deserved the curse of the synagogue, and the wrath of our whole race. I find, from our brethren who escaped the Inquisition by the surrender of their substance, ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is akin to that 'insanity' of the poet which is but impassioned sanity. Plato sums the matter when he says, "He who, having no touch of the Muse's madness in his soul, comes to the door and thinks he will get into the temple by the help of Art—he, I say, and his ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... when I saw you without your pale, sweet mask of composure—when I saw you moved and glowing, with your eyes and your hands alive, and when you made me understand that for such a creature as you there had been emptiness and the mere waste of yourself for so long. Madness rose in me then, and my spirit was clamoring to say what I say at last now—that life would never seem a full thing again because you could not love me, that I was taken forever in the nets of your black hair and by the incantation ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... and mathematical speculations, relating to the longitude and other things, brought on mental troubles, which were intensified by bankruptcy, about 1718. He was afterwards removed from Dublin to his home at Trim, where he rallied; but in a few years his madness returned, and ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... sell this marvel? Why should he accept the millions offered him? Yes, I comprehended now that absolute confidence in himself which was expressed in his every attitude. And where might not his ambition carry him, if by its own excess it mounted some day into madness! ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne
... remain too. It would be madness for an old salt like me to go paddlin' about the ocean in a cockleshell of a boat when he has the chance of sailin' in a good ship. Put me down too, capting. I'm game for anything a'most, from pitch ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... Chardon? It was worth while to take some trouble to gain the title of Comtesse de Rubempre. Love, you see, is a great vanity, which requires the lesser vanities to be in harmony with itself—especially in marriage. I might love you to madness—which is to say, sufficiently to marry you—and yet I should find it very unpleasant to be called Madame Chardon. You can see that. And now that you understand the difficulties of Paris life, you will know how many roundabout ways you must take to ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... without sufficient reason is foolhardiness. To expose ourselves needlessly to disease; to put ourselves in the range of a cannon, to jump into the stream, with no worthy end in view, or for the very shallow reason of showing off how brave we can be, is folly and madness. Doing such things because someone dares us to do them is ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... deliberately went to the depths in the search for new sensation. What the paradox was to me in the sphere of thought, perversity became to me in the sphere of passion. Desire, at the end, was a malady, or a madness, or both. I grew careless of the lives of others. I took pleasure where it pleased me, and passed on. I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret ...
— De Profundis • Oscar Wilde
... in the sand, with his arms thrown out crosswise. They dismounted and found Hal Sinclair dead and cold. Perhaps the insanity of thirst had taken him; perhaps he had figured it out methodically that it was better to end things before the madness came. There was a certain stern repose about his face that favored this supposition. He seemed much older. But, whatever the reason, Hal Sinclair had shot himself ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... on't. 'Twas madness in me to give it to his management. But I'll demand it from him this morning. I have a ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore
... said, "you may be able to ride, but it would not be safe to attempt to do so now. You are going on as well as could be wished, and it would be madness to risk ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... bound, At wrists, sides, and each aperture, With pearls the whitest ever found,— White all her brave investiture; But a wondrous pearl, a flawless round, Upon her breast was set full sure; A man's mind it might well astound, And all his wits to madness lure. I thought that no tongue might endure Fully to tell of that sweet sight, So was it perfect, clear and pure, That precious ...
— The Pearl • Sophie Jewett
... now. But what does that prove?—only that you must be the more carefully watched, for appearing at times so reasonable. You have not touched a morsel since you entered the house."—Maria sighed intelligibly.—"Could any thing but madness produce ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... people, the desperate helplessness of those folk, she alone suffering and crying and unable to help her child and the people unwilling to help him: that impotence pierced her soul; and the patient suffering changed into a frenzied madness, a raging fury. With a terrible scream, like that of a goaded beast, a hoarse yell that came grating out of her parched throat, she thrust her arms, stiff with pain, like two steel rods, under the arms of that limp corpse and, with a superhuman effort, with ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... have suffered, and still suffer, much, especially since the full exercise of our powers is restrained. But in the feeling of the vengeance which we take on the sons of dust,—in the contemplation of their madness and crimes, by which they continually thwart the purposes of their being,—lies a recompense for our suffering. Welcome, thrice welcome, all ye whom this ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... 'It is madness, rank lunacy!' Stafforth was saying vehemently. 'Illegal and impossible, it will spell disgrace and misfortune to us all. The Emperor will interfere, for this is going too far. We must hinder this farcical ceremony; his Highness cannot marry two wives! ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... that no man coulde know His speech, neither his voice, though men it heard. And in his gear* for all the world he far'd *behaviour Not only like the lovers' malady Of Eros, but rather y-like manie* *madness Engender'd of humours melancholic, Before his head in his cell fantastic. And shortly turned was all upside down, Both habit and eke dispositioun, Of him, this woful lover Dan* Arcite. *Lord Why should I all day of his woe indite? When he ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... the darkness and misery which were her proper element, seized and mastered her. She staggered to her feet. A young girl approached her with a tray of tempting food. The sight and smell of it goaded the starved creature to madness. She could have fallen upon it like a wolf, but instead she pushed the girl roughly aside and ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... of petition. On every petition day, he would offer, in constantly increasing numbers, petitions which came to him from all parts of the country for the abolition of slavery. The southern representatives were driven almost to madness, but Adams kept doggedly on his way, and every year renewed his motion to strike out the gag rule. As constant dripping will wear away a stone, so his persistence wore away opposition, or, rather, the sentiment of the country was gradually changing, and at last, on December ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... without dissent, that death was the end of all things. Pliny, perhaps the greatest of all the Roman scholars, adopting the sentiment of all the school of Epicurus, describes the belief in a future life as a form of madness, a puerile and a pernicious illusion. The opinions of the Stoics were wavering and uncertain. Their first doctrine was that the soul of man has a future and independent, but not an eternal existence, that it survives until ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... second he stood and stared. Latimer's face was white and damp with sweat. Its lines were drawn and sunken deep. His eyes were fixed on the man before him with something which had a ghastly resemblance to an unsteady smile which was not a smile at all. He looked as if illness—or death—or madness had struck him. He did not seem a sane man, and yet a stillness so deadly was expressed by his whole being that it seemed to fill ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Louise had left him, had mastered his grief, if not his affection; and, compelled to look forward on that perilous road over which madness and revulsion were hurrying him, he had seen, from the very first glance, his father exposed to the royal obstinacy, since Athos had himself been the first to oppose any resistance to the royal will. At this moment, from a very natural sequence of feeling, the unhappy young man remembered ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... distant the waves so high that a perogue could scarcely live in any situation, the water excessively could, and the stream rappid; had I undertaken this project therefore, there was a hundred to one but what I should have paid the forfit of my life for the madness of my project, but this had the perogue been lost, I should have valued but little.- After having all matters arranged for the evening as well as the nature of circumstances would permit, we thought it a proper ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... week in November Rosedale was turned over to the military and the household re-established in the stately house in the official quarter of Richmond, where the bustle and movement of new conditions gave Jack's mind another direction, or, rather, took it from the bitter brooding that threatened madness. ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... a voice? Had your face been scarred, as I once suspected; had you committed some crime, as I once believed, it would not matter. I am mad." He laughed angrily. "Yes, I love you, knowing not what you are nor caring. I have been mad for weeks, only I did not see my madness in ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... turmoil. He was afraid. But of what? He took his hands from the chair and sat back, angry with himself, almost ashamed. That he should feel afraid, here in his own garden, in his own cozy tea-house! It was absurd, monstrous; it was like a sort of madness come upon him. But he was determined not to give way to such nonsense. Just because he was longing to go out of the tea-house he would remain in it. Let the darkness come; he did not mind it; he was ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... adopted, would bring about in the world, and who would hesitate between the two? And then when, in addition, we remember that Christ ensures to His followers eternal happiness, greater even than the mind of man can comprehend, what madness is it in those who hesitate to accept His offers! True, there are mysteries which even the Bible does not explain, such as the existence of Satan; but it does explain why Satan has power over man, and why sin and misery and death came into the world. This ...
— Janet McLaren - The Faithful Nurse • W.H.G. Kingston
... Reb Shemuel. "What madness is this? Dost thou think thy mother will obey thee rather than ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... 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 forth so ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... that best," muttered Babalatchi, with a fugitive smile—"but remember, woman with the strong heart, that to hold him now you must be to him like the great sea to thirsty men—a never-ceasing torment, and a madness." ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... of Tuscany, had betrothed his only daughter, Rosalia, to Prince Antonio, a cousin of the king. His whole life was wrapped up in the fame of his family, and he quite forgot all domestic affection in his madness for dynastic glory. His son was a worthy scion, cold and proud; but Rosalia was, according to legend, utterly the reverse,—a passionate, beautiful girl, wilful and headstrong, and careless of her family ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... a dissolution had no terrors for the Catalonian or the Fleming, for the Lombard or the Calabrian, for the Mexican or the Peruvian, the thought of it was torture and madness to the Castilian. Castile enjoyed the supremacy in that great assemblage of races and languages. Castile sent out governors to Brussels, Milan, Naples, Mexico, Lima. To Castile came the annual galleons laden with the treasures of America. In Castile was ostentatiously ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... she was, rapidly driven to the railway station, and conveyed to the Hospital for Lunatic Criminals. It was only when she was within this vast and grim abode of madness that she realized the horror of her situation. It was only when she was received by the kind physician and read pity in his eyes, and saw his look of hopeless incredulity when she attempted to tell him that she was not insane; it was only ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of Fouquet better than even Fouquet himself did, had conceived the strangest fancies and suspicions at the announcement of the fete, which would have ruined a wealthy man, and which became impossible, utter madness even, for a man so poor as he was. And then, the presence of Aramis, who had returned from Belle-Isle, and been nominated by Monsieur Fouquet inspector-general of all the arrangements; his perseverance in mixing himself up with all the surintendant's affairs; his visits ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... have not a penny. Leave your laboratory; your honor is in question. What will become of you if you are put in prison? Will you soil your white hairs and the name of Claes with the disgrace of bankruptcy? I will not allow it. I shall have strength to oppose your madness; it would be dreadful to see you without bread in your old age. Open your eyes to our position; see reason ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... about Raleigh for which I am sorry, coming as it does from a countryman of John Knox. 'Society, it would seem, was yet in a state in which such a man could seriously plead, that the madness he feigned was justified' (his last word is unfair, for Raleigh only hopes that it is no sin) 'by the example of David, King of Israel.' What a shocking state of society when men actually believed their Bibles, not too little, but too much. For my ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... Jack turned themselves into a couple of the maddest, silliest clowns imaginable. But there was method in their madness. Though they did not even own it to each other, they were making themselves ridiculous and foolish to prevent the rest from feeling so. Boys loathe sentiment, and many a quarrel drifts on and on, simply because each party dreads "being made to ...
— Jack of Both Sides - The Story of a School War • Florence Coombe
... been a child again. Then she had put on her dressing-gown and gone to Mrs. Clinton's room, and resting her head on her mother's knee had told her everything with frequent tears and many exclamations at her own madness and folly. ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... young. At times the feeling is so strong that I must have faith in it. Possibly I am foolish. But when the mountain swung back, like a great door, and we saw Skagway, I knew that sometime—somewhere—I had seen a thing like that before. And I have had strange visions of it. Maybe it is a touch of madness in me. But it is that faith which gives me courage to go on with ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... madman could have done it,' he said, blinking his eyes at the green linn. 'Indeed, Davie, I think for about four days you were as mad as they make. It was a fortunate thing, for your madness saved the country.' ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... the sort of mistake that drives half the lifeboats on the rocks. I mean, dear, falling in love with love. But you're over that. It was—a different sort of love with me. I knew as we crossed the river that first day in the punt that the madness could not last. You see—it ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... know what is the good of it all. To me it looks more like madness than anything else. It will not be very easy to convince me that people who behave like this are not wrong in ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... hated with a hate which no feeling of duty and no bond of gratitude could either lessen or overcome. Was he not married? Had he not seen that wife of his a thousand times? Had he not associated with her at Chetwynde Castle, at Lausanne, on the road, and in Florence? What madness, what mockery was this? It would seem as though Mrs. Hart had mistaken Miss Lorton for that detested wife who stood between him and his love. But how could such a mistake be made? True, the complexion of each was dark, and the ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... madness beyond all this, which may serve to give an idea of the distracted humour of the poor people at that time: and this was their following a worse sort of deceivers than any of these; for these petty thieves only deluded them to pick their pockets and get their money, ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... what contradictions nature is pleased to form in the same species. Here am I, able to eat, to drink, to sleep, and do all acts of nature, except begetting my like; and yet by an unintelligible force of spleen and fancy, I every moment imagine I am dying. It is utter madness in thee to provide for supper; for I'll bet you ten to one, you don't live till half an hour after four; and yet I am so distracted as to be in fear every moment, though I'll lay ten to three, I drink three pints of burnt claret at your funeral three nights hence. After all, I envy thee; thou ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... Vera repeated, in a glacial tone. The madness of a desired hat had seized her. She was a changed Vera. She was not a loving woman, not a duteous young wife, nor a reasoning creature. She was an embodied instinct ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... manner of my uncle, at all times irksome and repelling, after the death of his good wife became almost insupportable; while the insolence and presumption of his artful son, goaded a free and irascible spirit like mine almost to madness. The moral force of his mother's character, though unappreciated by him, had been some restraint upon his unamiable, tyrannical temper. That restraint was now removed, and Theophilus considered that ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... said in distress. "We are all afraid of some madness, and any increase of talk may hasten it. There is no one who can control him, and of late he has not even tried ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... rest, save when I speak with thee, for that sustaineth thy servant. But I fear these days and ways. This is a very crooked riddle. So much I desire thee that I am tremulous to take thee. If it be a madness call it a ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... think you 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 ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... was such a bloody piece of work, that he was glad it was not done upon the stage. Seeing afterwards Orestes in his raving fit, he grew more than ordinary serious, and took occasion to moralise (in his way) upon an evil conscience, adding, that Orestes, in his madness, looked ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... plain and simple. Unity is the word; the interpretation of it is the name of Rome. The desire is for all the romance and the legends and the visions of supreme greatness which no other name can ever call up. What will be called hereafter the madness of the Italian people took possession of them on the day when Rome was theirs to do with as they pleased. Their financial ruin had its origin at that moment, when they became masters of the legendary ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... Oh, child-madness! Sweet, lost child! Oh, pity of the world! and I crawling on with such a hurt; I did not think that should have wrung ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... one day, to see Madame he was talking of madmen and madness. The King was present, and everything relating to disease of any kind interested him. The first physician said that he could distinguish the symptoms of approaching madness six months beforehand. "Are there any persons about the Court likely to become mad?" said the King.—"I know one ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... in 1692 when the witchcraft madness, which might have been stayed by a seasonable spanking, broke out in Danvers, Massachusetts, the first victim being a wild Irishwoman, named Glover, and speedily involved the neighboring community of Salem. The mischiefs done by witches were ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... only madness, and Denham was bound beside the man of the Golden City, and Evelyn was the center of a fighting group which was suddenly flung aside by the bearded giant, and the encampment of the Ragged Men was bedlam. And somehow Tommy knew with a terrible ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... "It seemed madness to me, but I suppose they were no more helpless than other fathers and mothers. He had plenty to say for himself, and introductions—all sorts of credentials, except a pair of eyes. They had to let it go on; and he took her away from them six months after she saw him first. That's happiness, ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... however, likely to prove no despicable opponents, and Captain Martin was only watching until he had knocked away the masts or spars of one or both of the frigates, to make sail and escape, for it would have been madness to have continued the fight longer than was necessary to ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... and I up to the Vestry at the desire of the justices of the Peace, Sir Theo. Biddulph and Sir W. Boreman and Alderman Hooker, in order to the doing something for the keeping of the plague from growing; but Lord! to consider the madness of the people of the town, who will (because they are forbid) come in crowds along with the dead corps to see them buried; but we agreed on some orders for the prevention thereof. Among other stories, one was very passionate, methought, of a complaint brought against a man in the ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... seemed to think that this was a favourable opportunity to advance towards them. On we went through the high grass. Had I not been with a good sportsman like Nowell and a practised hunter like Dango, I should have thought that what we were doing was the height of madness. No sooner, however, did we thus boldly advance than the greater portion of the herd turned round and retreated before us. At the same time the two leaders, and a third who had joined them, as was the duty of the warriors probably of the party, formed ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... "Mick" had terrorized in the long ago; and for the first time in his wretched life, personal death—not of another but of himself—looked at him with steady eyes, and he could not return the gaze. All he could do was to wait, and think—and thoughts were madness. Again and again, knowing what the result would be, but seeking merely a diversion, he struggled at the straps until he was breathless; but relentless as time one picture kept recurring to his brain. In it was a rope, a stout rope, dangling from something he could not distinctly recognize; ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... mountain-like buildings that aspired up as though to scale heaven itself! Far beneath narrow streets pierced through them and in the picture we seemed to land from the ship, to go through those streets of the city. It was an incredible city of madness! The streets and ways were mere chasms between the sky-toppling buildings! People—people—people—millions on millions of them rushed through the endless streets. Countless ground-vehicles rushed to and fro also, and other different ones that roared above the streets ...
— The Man Who Saw the Future • Edmond Hamilton
... every part of her nature, against the power which had cowed her reverend companion. There is nothing that so goads a spirited woman to madness as the realization that any man controls her husband. He may be subservient to her—a cuckold even—but to be mated with a man whose soul is neither his own nor wholly hers, is to her the ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... about A. D. 1785. Commencing in France, and extending with more or less virulence throughout the ten kingdoms, there was excited an intense uneasiness of the people respecting their relation to their rulers. They regarded themselves as insupportably oppressed and degraded, and were exasperated to madness against their respective governments. This, under the next vial, resulted in the overthrow of the French monarchy, and in ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... tell you," insisted the stranger. "What in the world do you mean by wading out to such a place? Why, it's madness." ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... an unwounded heart, would have provoked only such a grim and threatening smile as a powerful wrestler might wear, when, in the careless security of proud contempt, he had been thrown by a boy—now, in the self-esteem of age and the anguish of bereavement, moved him almost to madness. Seizing his gown, he half cast it from his form, regardless of decorum, and stood the picture of ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... paleness, meagreness, neglect of business, and the like, these men are farther yet misaffected, and in a higher strain. 'Tis a more vehement passion, a more furious perturbation, a bitter pain, a fire, a pernicious curiosity, a gall corrupting the honey of our life, madness, vertigo, plague, hell, they are more than ordinarily disquieted, they lose bonum pacis, as [6125]Chrysostom observes; and though they be rich, keep sumptuous tables, be nobly allied, yet miserrimi omnium sunt, they are most miserable, they ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... plenty of service, for the spirit of pandemonium was present in the west side. Towards evening, however, the rioters ceased their aimless and capricious violence, and adopted in their madness the dangerous method of Parisian mobs. They began throwing up a series of barricades in Eighth Avenue. Vehicles of all kinds within reach, telegraph poles, boxes,—anything that would obstruct,—were wired together. Barricades were also erected on cross-streets, ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... handsomest, and we bridesmaids in six couples behind, when, just as we were clear of the porch, and school-children were strewing flowers before the pair, there was a strange shuddering cry, and the great bloodhound, Kirby, with broken chain and foaming jaws—all the dreadful tokens of madness about him—came rushing up the avenue with the speed of the wind, making full for his mistress, the bride. There was not a moment for her to do more than give a sort of shrieking, despairing command, "Down, Kirby!" when, just as ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... preceding winter it was scarce more than a dozen gun lengths in width. Now it was a veritable Amazon, its black, ugly waters rolling and twisting like the slow boiling of a thick liquid over a fire. There was little rush about it, no frenzied haste, no mountain-like madness in the advance of the torrent. Rod had expected to see this, and he would not have been ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... prompts the roving mania—is it love Of wild adventure fanciful, unique, and odd? Is it to be in fashion, and to others prove One's social standing, that impels the madness of ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... it does not drive a man to madness, will at least cure him of trifling. It will clear his mind of false sentiment, take the nonsense out of him, and enable him to resist vulgar temptation as nothing else will. The danger is that the mind may not bear the strain, that the belief itself may crack and leave ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... to make her hesitate for one instant in her choice between him and me. Half-an-hour after the receipt of my letter, she told me herself that the next morning she would pay me her usual visit, but I waited in vain. This conduct provoked me almost to madness, but my surprise was indeed great when, at the breakfast table, she asked me whether I would let her dress me up as a girl to accompany her five or six days later to a ball for which a neighbour of ours, Doctor Olivo, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... 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 it is ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Bellward replied heatedly, "I tell you it is madness. We must not delay a minute. For Heaven's sake, leave the girl ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... real," said one, and bade me gaze On black and mighty shapes of iron and stone, On murder, on madness, on lust, on towns ablaze, And on a thing made all of rattling bone: "What," said he, "will you bring to match with these?" "Yea! War is real," I said, "and real is Death, A little while—mortal realities; But Love and Hope draw ...
— The Silk-Hat Soldier - And Other Poems in War Time • Richard le Gallienne
... years of my life passed peacefully, without any other events than my terrible fits of temper, which upset the whole pension and always left me in the infirmary for two or three days. These outbursts of temper were like attacks of madness. ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... folly and madness to try any more, I know what I'll do—in a letter to-day I will just tell her plainly how utterly vainly I've striven and struggled to finish her play; And then—happy thought!—I will mildly suggest That she'll find for ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 6, 1890 • Various
... lesson to one who could reflect and reason upon them, and diligently try to discover how such feelings could have grown up in millions of minds. This, however, the poor queen never thought of doing. She called it madness; and felt as if in Bedlam, while surrounded by those who were of the same ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau
... have had for contributing to the health of whole countries and cities, frequently occur in history: For instance, in the island of Cyprus, abounding with the trees of that name, and other resinous plants, curing ulcerated lungs, &c. Sardinia, melancholy and madness, replanted with true Anticyran hellebore, was famous; whilst Thusus (especially in Summer) brought almost all the inhabitants to lunacy and distraction for want of it. And what the effects and benefit of such plantations ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... Don't you see? It's madness to think of swimming across with the tide against you! You could never do it. You might get cramp—Oh! Anything ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... is convulsed. These are the workings of the mighty spirit shaking and threatening to rend the frail tabernacle of flesh. This form of inspiration is not clearly distinguishable from what we call madness; indeed the natives do not attempt to distinguish between the two things; they regard the madman and the prophet as both alike inspired by a ghost or spirit, and a man will sometimes pretend to be mad in order that he may get ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... 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 ancient ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... they have, just. W'y, you haven't spoke like that, sir, for—but, surely—are you better, or is this on'y another dodge o' yer madness?" asked Disco ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... a paternal explosion; but, when it was hinted that the marital rights of my poor mother were to be sacrificed, his fury amounted almost to madness. ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... lovely young lady to the verge of madness when she found that he had gone from C—— without her. She left your house alone on foot, and as she landed in Venice Providence threw her in the way of this young man, who induced her to follow him, and has placed her under the care of an honest woman, whom she has not left ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... ewes, There the spotted goats browse, And the kids shall arouse In their madness of play; They shall butt, they shall fight, They shall emulate flight, They shall break with delight O'er the mountains away. And there shall my Mary With her faithful one tarry, And never be weary In ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... dead silence. Every one felt that some ugly thing was about to happen. Several women began to laugh hysterically. It seems to have been supposed, at first, that Archibald had exchanged his inoffensive idiocy for a condition of raving madness. The old physician was probably the only one present who had a glimmering of what might be the truth. The Honorable Richard Pennroyal had none. He pushed between the venerable knight and his "best ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... "It would be madness," said I, "for me to buy a diamond under the circumstances. Besides, I do not carry hundreds of pounds about in my pocket. Yet I more than half believe your story. I will, if you like, do this: come to my office ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... World, or with the Russian Jew who holds the foremost place among American song-writers and whose soulful compositions are sung in almost every English-speaking house in the world. I love music to madness. I yearn for the world of great singers, violinists, pianists. Several of the greatest of them are of my race and country, and I have met them, but all my acquaintance with them has brought me is a sense of being looked down upon as a money-bag striving ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... misers in awful torment, being linked by their hearts to chests of burning coin, the rust of which was consuming them without end, just as they had never thought of an end to the piling of them, and now they were tearing themselves to pieces with more than madness through grief and remorse. Below this was a charnel vault where some of the apothecaries had been ground down and stuffed into earthenware pots with Album graecum, dung, and many ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... to a modern British auditory, trained in the school of Locke, much of ancient thought, heathen as well as Christian, may seem so utterly the product of the imagination, so utterly without any corresponding reality in the universe, as to look like mere unintelligible madness. Still, I must try; only entreating my hearers to consider, that how much soever we may honour Locke and his great Scotch followers, we are not bound to believe them either infallible, or altogether world-embracing; that there have been other methods ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... part, I am not a little concerned at this unfortunate incident. As it was impossible to foresee this fit of madness in the King of Prussia, there was no guarding against it: and after it had happened, I thought I could do no less than resent it in the manner I have done,—without prostituting the character with which the King ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... telling me also never to enter it again till I was able to settle the long score already against me. The fact that I had been turned from the door, together with his taunting language stung me almost to madness. I strolled along, scarce knowing or caring whither, till I found myself beyond the limits of the city; and seating myself by the roadside I gazed in silent abstraction over the moonlit landscape; and as I sat thus ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... these causes alone would have sufficed to raise a serious obstacle to the marriage. Together they seemed insurmountable. During the disorder and anarchy that prevailed in the seven months of the reign of Pseudo-Smerdis, it would have been madness to have married, trusting to the favour of the wretched semi-monarch for fortune and advancement; nor could Nehushta have married and maintained her state as a princess of Judah without the consent of Daniel, who was her guardian, and whose influence was paramount in Media, and very great ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... under the direction of an Apothecary! The College of Physicians with Tennyson as President! and we know that madness is about. But a school of art with an accomplished litterateur at its head disturbs no one! and is actually what the world receives as rational, while Ruskin writes for pupils, and Colvin holds forth ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... come, boys! let us drink; 'Tis madness to sorra, 'tis folly to think. For we're ahl jolly fellows wheriver we go— Ogedashin, den thashin, na ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... blind fool. It goaded him to madness to think of the happiness that had been his for the taking, and which he had let fall to the ground. He clenched his teeth in impotent rage. When they reached his rooms he threw his hat and coat aside, and began pacing up and down as if he could not ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres |
