"Demented" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that, if you sneaked softly up behind him and shouted: "Hey, Plooie! What was you doing in the war?" his jaw would drop and his whole rackety body begin to quiver, and he would heave his burden to his shoulder and break into a spavined gallop, muttering and sobbing like one demented. As the juvenile sense of humor is highly developed in Our Square, Plooie got a good deal of exercise, ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the year of the great crime, When the false English Nobles and their Jew, By God demented, slew The Trust they stood twice pledged to keep from wrong, One said, Take up thy Song, That breathes the mild and almost mythic time Of England's prime! But I, Ah, me, The freedom of the few That, in our free Land, were indeed the free, Can song renew? ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... uttered a sharp command which brought the crew to their feet in an instant, and, in an incredibly short space of time, the proa came around, and, scarcely losing any headway, moved back toward the spot where the demented man had sprung into the sea, which was now a long ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... facts go to prove that there is a great wrong somewhere, and that a part, or the whole, of the American people are demented, and hurrying down to swift destruction. To ascertain where this great wrong and evil lies, to point out the remedy, to disabuse the public mind of all erroneous impressions or prejudices, to combat all false doctrines on this subject, and to ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... years ago. Seized, in the middle of the night, with an abominable toothache, he put his hand to his cheek, stumbled against the furniture, pacing up and down the room like a demented person. ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... understands him—Walt Wilder; though he, too, seems demented. With like incoherent speech and frantic gesture, he follows ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... lamented, thought the Christian world demented, Yet still he felt a rev'rence as he read the Bible o'er, And he thought the modern preacher, though a poor stick for a teacher, Or a broken reed, like Beecher, ought to have his claims looked o'er, And the "tyranny ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... same time held him in such strict bondage that it was almost impossible for him to get on in the world or even to give her the comforts she needed. In villages like Riverboro in those early days there was no putting away, even of men or women so demented as to be something of a menace to the peace of the household; but Lois Boynton was so gentle, so fragile, so exquisite a spirit, that she seemed in her sad aloofness simply a thing to be sheltered and shielded somehow in her difficult ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... seeming to have any doubt. I coldly set myself to tell her of Arthur's double dealing about the estate, and of how he had made Hugh's father believe he was minded to consider the ways of Friends, and at last of how he had borrowed money and had set poor Hugh's half-demented father against him. I did not spare her or him, and the half of what I said I have not set down. The Arnold business I did return to, seeing that it struck her, or seemed to, less than it did me; for to my mind it was ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... not understand his witticisms, and their intelligence did not seem to be awakened until he sputtered obscene words, rough expressions, crippled by his accent. Then all in a chorus began to laugh as if they were demented, falling on the laps of their neighbors, repeating the words which the Baron disfigured purposely in order to make them say filthy things. They vomited at will plenty of them, intoxicated after drinking from the first bottles of wine; and relapsing into their ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... Sir Isaac Newton, that while riding homeward one day, the weather being clear and cloudless, in passing a herder he was warned to ride fast or the shower would wet him. Sir Isaac looked upon the man as demented, and rode on, not, however, without being caught in a drenching shower. Not being able to account for the source of information through which the rustic had gained his knowledge, he rode back, wet as he was, to learn something. "My cow," ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... life and studious habits. How incomprehensible it is that Murray should prefer to pass his years roaming over deserts and wandering about neglected, comfortless khans, when he might spend them in such an elysium as this! The man must be demented! How do ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... I smiled, for her mood was far from serious. "But," I quietly pursued, "how much of this old woman's story do you believe? Can not she have been deceived as to what she saw? You say she is more or less demented. Perhaps there never was any old wallet, and possibly ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... she paused, the younger, slimmer figure turned in her direction and uttered a cry, a cry almost of terror. Was she demented? Had her longing, her aching longing for a sight of him called up this vision of Stafford? Unless she were out of her mind, the victim of a strange hallucination, it was he himself who stood there, his face, pale ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... well-known Professor of Arabic at Halle, Dr. Thorbeck, who remarks that the word (here as further on) must be an adjective, mad, love-distraught, not a "lakab" or poetical cognomen. He generally finds it written Al-Sh'ir al-Walahn (the love-demented poet) not Al-Walahn al-Sh'ir Walahn the Poet. Note this burst of song after the sweet youth falls in love: it explains the cause of verse-quotation in The Nights, poetry being the natural language ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... her up and carried her to the canape, where very gently he laid her down. Even in that disturbed moment the touch of her damp curls and the faint odour of her skin moved him strangely. She might be demented, but it was not easy for him to forget that she ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... out the rock As this eternal jade wears me; I could withstand the single shock, But not the continuity. It 's pay me here, an' pay me there, An' pay me, pay me evermair; I 'll gang demented wi' despair; I 'm ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... beautiful than on the day when we plighted our troth at the altar? Did she not wear the same sweet, trusting smile, the same noble look in her dear eyes? I told her so, and she informed me that I was demented, but I know she knew that I thought she had not changed, which I am sure was enough for her even if Providence has dimmed my eyes. Yet I maintain that I am right. She is a little stouter, of course; I can see a wrinkle and a crow's foot here and there; and her hair is grizzled. But ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... "But a little time, love—but a little time!" Poor fellow, it is sad to see a gallant seaman and accomplished gentleman reduced to such a pass, and to think that imagination and delusion can cow a mind to which real danger was but the salt of life. Was ever a man in such a position as I, between a demented captain and a ghost-seeing mate? I sometimes think I am the only really sane man aboard the vessel—except perhaps the second engineer, who is a kind of ruminant, and would care nothing for all the fiends in the Red Sea so long as they would leave him ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was lost from that moment. She had Len over in a corner again, telling him how easy it was to win, and how this poor demented creature had left all hers there because Judge Ballard probably didn't want to create a scene by making her take it; and mustn't they have a lot of trouble looking after the weak-minded thing all the time! And I could hear her say if one person could do it another could, especially ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... upon the grass, still as death; indeed, her heart had stopped its beat when Cosimo raised her, and bid her sternly to act the woman. She was speechless and demented, and at the sight of her dear son's crimson blood colouring the fresh verdure where he had fallen, she lost her reason, and her cries and shrieks resounded ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... then rightly generate, carry, nurse and educate their children, will they in deed and in truth carry out {223} the holy and happy purpose of their Creator. See those miserable and depraved scape-goats of humanity, the demented simpletons, the half-crazy, unbalanced multitudes which infest our earth, and fill our prisons with criminals and our poor-houses with paupers. Oh! the boundless capabilities and perfections of our God-like nature and, alas! its deformities! All is the result of the ignorance or indifference ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... to the gray pile in the distance. It was possible that this demented peasant didn't even ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... not know. This has been going on for a month now. I am unable to prove her an imposter, even to identify her. I have endeavoured to discuss the situation with a few people, but they only laugh at the strange idea. No one will listen to me seriously. My lawyer actually believes I am demented." ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... Parochial Board; she belonged originally to a very decent and respectable family; her father was a small proprietor, but in the course of her life she became very poor, and I am not sure that she was not sometimes half demented. She had, I believe, three daughters in this parish, they are still in the parish, grown up, and two of them I think are mothers of families. None of them attended to their mother, and she had to be taken by the Parochial Board and boarded with the mother of the girl who was ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... and him, asked him to wait a bit, whipped out at her back door, luckily met the policeman starting on his rounds, bade him have an eye to the customer in her shop, and came off to show it to me. That young woman is demented enough for anything, and is quite capable of doing it—for some absurd scheme. But do you think it ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... her eight eyes caught sight of the blue-bottle, and she shot off in that direction,—when the hum of the gnat again diverted her; and in the middle of this perplexity, pounce came a young wasp in a violent passion! Then the spider evidently lost her presence of mind; she became clean demented; and after standing, stupid and stock-still, in the middle of her meshes for a minute or two, she ran off to her hole as fast as she could run, and left her guests to shift for themselves. I confess that I am somewhat in the dilemma of the attractive and amiable insect I have just ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Israel Veal would show nothing of himself to a stranger. Probably he would speak so little, though quite politely, that he would be put down as "one of those muddle-headed, stupid yokels with little or no mind," who, according to the townsman, "moulder" in country villages "till they become demented." ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... something somewhere, I don't care if dinner is ready, and Brother's "safe old Secesh" downstairs! Lydia has another boy! Letter has just come, and I am demented about my new godchild! There now! ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... covered with soldiers, strewn with dying and dead. A horrible sort of fight was going on, horrible to us, because the French were in full retreat before our foe, going down like sheep before the butcher's knife, rushing panic stricken hither and thither as men demented, whilst the English soldiers, as though ashamed of their recent inaction and paralysis, were fiercely pursuing, shouting "Kill! kill! kill!" as they went about their work of slaughter, driving back their enemies, and ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... inclinations and taste of a bibliophile and a bibliomaniac as between a slight cold and the advanced stages of consumption. Some one has said that "to call a bibliophile a bibliomaniac is to conduct a lover, languishing for his maiden's smile, to an asylum for the demented, and to shut him up in the ward for the incurables." Biblio relates to books, and mania is synonymous with madness, insanity, violent derangement, mental aberration, etc. A bibliomaniac, therefore, might properly ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... at him as if they thought he had suddenly gone demented. Dick examined his boots carefully as if he expected to see money ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... while a boy I gave little heed to his odd ways an' wanderin' mode o' life; for he was very kind to mysel' an' a younger brither an' we thought muckle o' him; but when we had grown up to manhood my father tell'd us what had changed Davy Stuart from a usefu' an' active man to the puir demented body he then was. He was born in a small parish in the south of Scotland, o' respectable honest parents, who spared nae pains as he grew up to instruct him in his duty to baith God an' man. At quite an early ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... face of this man that I had learned to love, and the full measure of his needed rest was with him; and the rainy day that glowered and drabbled at the eastern window of the room was as drearily stared back at by a hopeless woman's dull demented eyes. ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... but his quivering lips emitted no sound. "Thrash him!" again shouted Nozdrev as he rushed forward in a state of heat and perspiration more proper to a warrior who is attacking an impregnable fortress. "Thrash him!" again he shouted in a voice like that of some half-demented lieutenant whose desperate bravery has acquired such a reputation that orders have had to be issued that his hands shall be held lest he attempt deeds of over-presumptuous daring. Seized with the military spirit, however, the lieutenant's head begins ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... debate Throughout the isle was storming, And Rads attacked the throne and state, And Tories the reforming, To calm the furious rage of each, And right the land demented, Heaven sent us Jolly Jack, to teach The ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... at them long and long. They do not sweat and whine about their condition, They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago, Not one is respectable or unhappy over the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... of the least demented of Jan's followers at length determined that the tragedy must cease, and the city was delivered into the bishop's hands. "What judgment," writes Professor Pearson, "his grace the bishop thinks fit to ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... fire of silks and laces, Jewels and gold dressing-cases, And ruby brooches, and jets and pearls, That every one of her dainty curls Brought the price of a hundred common girls; Folks thought the lass demented! But at last a wonderful diamond ring, An infant Kohinoor, did the thing, And, sighing with love, or something the same, (What's in a name?) The ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... the other side held his friend's hand tight, 'this is a noble gentleman—the brother of the Duke de Mericour. He has come at great risk to bring me tidings of my dear and true wife. And not one word will these demented rascals let me hear with their ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... least, your intellect." It was for repeating these points of her teaching in my own way, that certain passages of one of my Volumes have been brought into the general accusation which has been made against my religious opinions. The writer has said that I was demented if I believed, and unprincipled if I did not believe, in my own statement, that a lazy, ragged, filthy, story-telling beggar-woman, if chaste, sober, cheerful, and religious, had a prospect of heaven, such as was absolutely closed to an accomplished statesman, or lawyer, or ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... her. The sight of the river close by was in his mind, he released the hands, picked up the tin and scrambled out of the cave. As he ran to the river heedless of sea elephants or anything else he kept crying out: "Oh, the poor woman. Oh, the poor woman." He seemed like a huge thing demented. The baby sea elephants scuttered out of his way and as he came running back he spilt half the contents of the tin. Then he was down beside her again, dipping his finger in the ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... progress of the Goths, had the weak emperor intrusted himself to his guidance. But imperial jealousy, and the voice of faction, removed forever this last hope of Rome. The frivolous Senate which he had saved, and the timid emperor whom he had guarded, were alike demented. The savior of Italy was an object of fear and hatred, and the assassin's dagger, which cut short his days, inflicted a fatal and ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... simple line of thought like that. If you can't see the plain and obvious mental process which led to my change of opinion, I don't see how you can expect to track the obscure workings of the criminal mind. The criminal, as of course you know, is always more or less demented, and consequently doesn't reason in the obvious and straightforward way in which ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... their own deck; for my father was a big man, as I have heard, and knew tolerably well how to use his hands. And when my mother heard the news, she became half distracted, and ran away into the fields and forests, totally neglecting her business, for she was a small milliner; and so she ran demented about the meads and forests for a long time, now sitting under a tree, and now by the side of a river—at last she flung herself into some water, and would have been drowned, had not some one been at hand and rescued her, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... his smarting wounds, "Mr. Flint, I am so glad all the girls like you so much. You fascinate them. They say you are such a profoundly clever and interesting man, Mr. Flint! Why, some of those girls are perfectly demented ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... for thousands of years, dead under the breath of the desert, until a little trickle of water was turned in from the Colorado River, and then it swiftly put forth such luxuriant wealth of food and clothes and fruit and flowers that its story sounds like the demented dreams of ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... believe Miss Gilbert was interested. They all, by the way, make a specialty of giving advice in money matters and solving the problems of lovers. I suspect that at times Mr. Jameson has thought that I was demented, but I had to resort to many and various expedients to collect the specimens of hair which I wanted. From the police, who used Mr. Lawton's valet, I received some hair from his head. Here is another specimen from each of the advertisers, ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... combined rush drove the defenders nearly on top of the non-combatants, Iris would have striven to draw the half-demented girl into the little ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... I forgot my sufferings the moment I looked at him. Wild and haggard, he stared at me with bloodshot eyes like a man demented. ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... farther yet," remarked the captain. "But I cannot understand," he continued, "why that man persists in acting so strangely. He must know by this time that we have seen him and will rescue him, yet he continues to signal with his arms and that red rag as though he were demented. It would not greatly surprise me to find, when we get him on board, that his brain has given way with the horror of solitude, suffering, ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... to the edge of the mere, where they vanished close to the gravel path which leads out of the grounds. The lake there is eight feet deep, and you can imagine our feelings when we saw that the trail of the poor demented girl came to an end ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... Two years after the production of "Der Freischuetz" the opera of "Euryanthe" was completed. The libretto was the work of a half demented woman, Helmine von Chezy, but Weber set out to produce the best opera he was capable of, and to this story he has joined some wonderful music. It was his favorite work; he wrote to his beloved wife two hours before the first performance: "I rely on God and my 'Euryanthe.'" ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... looked forlorn, as the month was January. His face, despite its angularity of outline and its wanness, had that expression of complacency which often relieves from pathos the countenances of harmlessly demented people. His hair was gray, but his somewhat formidable looking moustache was still dark. He carried an unadorned walking-stick and under his left arm was what a journalistic eye immediately recognized as manuscript. From the man's ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... of my change. No one will believe my frantic assertions. I am treated as one demented, and even at this moment I am under restraint. But I am sane, absolutely sane, and to prove it I have sat down to write this story minutely as the things happened to me. I appeal to the reader, whether ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... always been more or less a source of mortification to her. The Handbys, though excellent plain people, were of no particular distinction. Rachel had a pretty face, with which Benjamin had grown suddenly demented. That source of mortification and of disturbed intimacy was now buried in the grave. Benjamin had won a reputation for dignity and ability which was immensely gratifying to her. She had assured him of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... Donald, and steeking his nieves, he would seem to threaten him wi' a leatherin'. A'thegither he was desperate impudent, and eneuch to try the patience of a saunt, no to spak o' a het-bluided Heelandman. It was gude for sair een to see how Donald behavit on this occasion. He raged like ane demented, misca'ing the monkey beyond measure, and swearing as mony Gaelic aiths as micht hae sair'd an ordinar man for a twalmonth. During this time, I never sterr'd a foot, but keepit keeking frae the back shop ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 275, September 29, 1827 • Various
... he had kept himself by his never-flagging exertions, and with the demented idea that he was mounting upward. And now he stood very near the lowest depth of life—the very bottom. And he was so tired. Why not let himself sink yet a little further; why not let destiny run its course? There would be a seductive repose in the ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Morgan, in one thing Jenny speaks truth. I don't feel the poor demented creature I was a few short months ago," said Moggy; "and it's your tender kindness, and that of your dear boy, Master Willie, and the rest of your children, has brought about the change which ye see in me. I am clothed, and in my right mind; and yet, through the mercy of ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... of this suspicion struck him; not an hour before he had left his wife almost asleep in her room, how was it possible that she could be there, wandering about like a demented creature ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... minutes later, chuckling to himself in a half demented fashion, he opened the firewall door and went in to let the helium do ...
— The Bramble Bush • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the landlord said, when questioned. "It's old Mrs. Harris and her grand-daughter out in the palmetto clearing; they're Crackers. The old woman is half demented, the whole family was queer, and the girl the queerest of all—won't talk and keeps her mouth shut as to her marriage, if there ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... predicted such events, a hundred years past, he would be regarded as demented. And yet he would not be a ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... wrung his right hand violently, and as he did so he sent a little spray of blood from his finger-tips. A bullet had chipped his wrist. Headingly ran out from the cover where he had been crouching, with the intention of dragging the demented Frenchman into a place of safety, but he had not taken three paces before he was himself hit in the loins, and fell with a dreadful crash among the stones. He staggered to his feet, and then fell again in the same place, floundering up and down like a horse which has broken its back. ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... as though he was demented. "A hundred thousand," one said. "There are not that many literate ...
— Adaptation • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... life, vivid past all expression. Far out of range on the opposite shore a huge bull moose stood like a statue in black marble, gazing out over the shimmering expanse. Trout leaped, flashing silver, anywhere they might look; and a flock of loon shrieked demented cries from its center. The burnished wings of a flock of mallard flashed in the air, startled ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... photographer and a Belgian newspaper correspondent, and his intention had been to make sketches on the battlefield. His arrest at Laneffe thwarted this plan. He underwent a terrifying ordeal at the hands of his demented captor, although he ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... Never before or since have I seen anything like so passionate a revulsion from the depths of despair to exultant, triumphant, uncontrollable joy. He flashed and darted hither and thither as if fairly demented, screaming and shouting, swirling round and round in giddy loops and circles like a leaf in a whirlwind, lying down, and rolling over and over, sidewise and heels over head, and pouring forth a tumultuous flood of hysterical cries and sobs and gasping mutterings. When I ran ...
— Stickeen • John Muir
... the end of the awful struggle. At one time I despaired (we all despaired) of quieting the poor, demented creature. But at last it was done; and the gaunt, blood-stained savage whom we had known as Detective-Inspector Weymouth lay passive upon the couch in his own sitting-room. A great wonder possessed my mind for the genius of the uncanny being who with the scratch of a needle had made a brave ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... demented Ophelia takes part in the plays of the village-maidens. The Swedish song she sings to them is full of sweet pathos. When her playmates leave her, she hides {116} among the willows, enticed into the water by the "Neck" ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... the hedge and dropped through a mat of brambles, dragging my rug after me. The fall landed me on all-fours upon the sunken high road, along which I ran as one demented—stark naked, too—a small Jack of Bedlam under the broadening eye of day; ran past Miss Belcher's entrance gate with its sentinel masses of tall laurels, and had reached the bend of the road opening the low cottage into view, when ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... as if she was frighted I had grown demented, and only said, "Tak' your ain way, gudeman; ye'se get your ain way for ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... Under the combined effects of the injury, exposure, and want, he was wasting visibly away; his strength was so completely gone that he was quite unable to move without assistance; and George had once or twice asked himself the question, whether he was justified in involving this poor weak demented creature in the sufferings which there was only too much reason to believe still awaited them. Would it not have been truer kindness, he asked himself, to have left Walford in some sheltered spot where there would be a certainty of his being ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... about to kill him. But the Roman authorities interfered, and rescuing him from the hands of the infuriated mob, bore him to the castle, the tower of Antonia. When they arrived at the stairs of the tower, Paul begged the tribune to be allowed to speak to the angry and demented crowd. The request was granted, and he made a speech in Hebrew, narrating his early history and conversion; but when he came to his mission to the Gentiles, the uproar was renewed, the people shouting, "Away with such a fellow from the earth, for it is not fit ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... surely be demented!" thought the old farmer. "I wonder what he will do next? He will be calling the land water, and the water land; and be speaking of light where there is darkness, and of darkness when it is light." However, he kept ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... pistol. The only pistol carried there was the one with which my demented wife chose to take her life. I do not understand ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... scheme, practical and statesmanlike, so different from the wild projects of demented Socialists, was started by the Rev. Mr Bosher, a popular preacher, the Vicar of the fashionable Church of the Whited Sepulchre. He collected some subscriptions from a number of semi-imbecile old women who attended his church. ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... de Louisbourg says: "The enemy did not attack us with any regularity, and made no intrenchments to cover themselves." This last is not exact. Not being wholly demented, they made intrenchments, such as they were,—at least at the advanced battery; [Footnote: Diary of Joseph Sherburn, Captain at the Advanced Battery.] as they would otherwise have been swept out of existence, being under the ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... the hearing was adjourned until the next Monday evening, after which I arranged with the Governor to see him Monday, P. M. I saw the letters referred to, which contained the grossest misrepresentations, uttering sentiments I never thought of, or, if I had, should not have expressed there, unless demented. ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... Protectorship. This received expression in his extraordinary pamphlet, Killing no Murder, in which the assassination of C. is advocated, and which displays in a remarkable degree perverted ingenuity of argument combined with considerable literary power. S. d. demented in the ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... master returning from the chase, accompanied by his great hounds and laden with trophies. His bow is in his hand, and he carries the carcass of a boar upon his shoulder. The red blood drops from the dead beast's mouth and stains his hand. The aged chief, well-nigh demented, awaits his coming, and ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... not seem so to me. You know the general tendency of sudden madness, which usually produces a complete reversal of the ordinary instincts of the demented persons, making them dangerous to their dearest friends. But why talk longer of this? It is too painful—too overwhelming. What can man do against the great forces of Nature? At this moment I solemnly declare to you that I regret that I ever ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... friends say, 'half daft'; and whoever, in the Lower Provinces, about the same time, would have ventured to foretell the composition of their delegations which sat with us under this roof last October, would probably have been considered equally demented. But the thing came about; and if those gentlemen who have had no immediate hand in bringing it about, and, therefore, naturally feel less interest in the project than we who had, will only give us the benefit of the doubt— will ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... greasy smile, that allus did make me want to slap his face. "This is Mr. Clamp, from Coptown. Make ye acquainted with Miss Ca-iry Pennypacker, Mr. Clamp. I met up with Mr. Clamp yesterday, Ca-iry, and I was tellin' him about this demented creatur as you've been shelterin' at your own expense the last three years, as the hull neighborhood says it's a shame. And lo! how myster'ous is the ways o' Providence! Mr. Clamp is sup'n'tendent o' the Poor Farm down to Coptown, and he says this woman is a ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... said Lady Honoria drily. "Here we are, and there is Effie, skipping about like a wild thing as usual. I think that child is demented." ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... it is our only heritage from our ancestors? No! I say, a thousand times no. I am ashamed of myself, my ancestors and my entire race," he shouted, and the girl almost trembled in fear of him. He must surely be demented. But she still clung to him, thinking that her enchanting presence might cure him. Thus love can be a very warm thing even up among the cold ice and snow. Their cold, half frozen cheeks came together ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... the shadow of evil was even then drawing nigh unto us. For on the sixth day after birth, when the midwife was about to light the four-wicked lamp for the 'chatti' ceremony, Afiza suddenly cast the child from her, leaped wildly from the couch, tearing at her hair and swaying to and fro as one demented, and broke the lamp with her hands. And the midwife fled from the room crying for help, and brought my mother and my sister in to try and soothe her. And even while they wrestled with her spirit someone set light to the ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... ye are or demented in the head? Did ever anyone hear of soap unless of a Saturday night? Letting on to be as dainty and as useless as those young princes beyond, that are kept closed up in a tower of glass. Come on now. If there is no food that ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... had lost all fascination for me from that moment. The world, in which I had moved like one demented, suddenly seemed stripped of all interest or attraction. My rage for gambling had already made me quite indifferent to the usual student's vanities, and when I was freed from this passion also, I suddenly found myself face to face ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... frenzied city stood, moved, and yelled the mob, as though at a fire. It would be almost impossible to describe what went on in the Yamkas then. Despite the fact that the madams had increased the staff of their patients to more than double and increased their prices trebly, their poor demented girls could not catch up in satisfying the demands of the drunken, crazed public, which threw money around like chips. It happened that in the drawing room, filled to overflowing with people, each girl would be awaited for by some seven, eight, at times even ten, men. It ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... 1805, from a fall received on leaving an inn where he spent his time after becoming well-to-do. His wife, who was a very harsh aunt of Flore's. Lastly the brother and brother-in-law of this girl's guardians, the real father of "La Rabouilleuse," who died in 1799, a demented widower, in the hospital ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... wounded; some dead. All the camp-following tribes were there; all the cowards; a few officers. Not one of them knew where his regiment was, nor if he had a regiment. Many had not. These men were defeated, beaten, cowed. They were deaf to duty and dead to shame. A more demented crew never drifted to the rear of broken battalions. They would have stood in their tracks and been shot down to a man by a provost-marshal's guard, but they could not have been urged up that bank. An army's bravest ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... O heaven-demented race of Oedipus, My race, tear-fraught, detested of the gods! Alas, our father's curses now bear fruit. But it beseems not to lament or weep, Lest lamentations sadder still be born. For him, too truly Polyneikes named,— What his device will work we soon shall know; Whether his braggart words, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... see the hoss on this place that could ketch the lieutenant's black mare. Oh, why didn't I shoot the nigger?" and the soldier strode up and down as if demented. ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... around again! She turned her tail to Brooklyn Bridge and started out to sea again. Certainly if anybody had been following her course that morning they would have been justified in supposing the Captain to be slightly demented. ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... officials were like men possessed. Half of them had disappeared in the rush to the City, for it had leaked out, in spite of the Government's precautions, that Paul's House, known once as St. Paul's Cathedral, was to be the scene of Felsenburgh's reception. The others seemed demented; one man on the platform had dropped dead from nervous exhaustion, but no one appeared to care; and the body lay huddled beneath a seat. Again and again Percy had been swept away by a rush, as he struggled from platform to platform in his ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... lived at Aunt Betsy's tent, because Solomon Hook was snow-blind and demented, and at times restless and difficult to control. The poor boy, some weeks earlier, had set out alone to reach the settlement, and after an absence of forty-eight hours was found close to camp, blind, and with his mind unbalanced. He, ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... I was tormented with this ambition, and, like many grown- up people, was so fully occupied by these vain and ridiculous desires that I neglected the actual natural pleasures around me. The idea was not quite so demented as it may seem, because we were in the habit of singing, as well as reading, of those enraptured beings who spend their days in 'flinging down their golden crowns upon the jasper sea'. Why, I argued, should I not be able to fling down my straw hat upon the tides of Oddicombe? ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... under the Regent Murray of Scotland, when churches and abbeys were ruthlessly destroyed. Contrast her Archbishop of Canterbury with the religious dictator of Scotland. She kindled no auto-da-fe, like the Spaniards; she incited no wholesale massacre, like the demented fury of France; she had a loving care of her subjects that no religious bigotry could suppress. She did not seek to exterminate Catholics or Puritans, but simply to build up the Church of England as the shield and defence and enlargement ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... David Graham, ugly, deformed, half-demented as he was, had fallen desperately in love with Miss Edith Crawford, daughter of the late Dr. Crawford, of Prince's Gardens. The young lady, however—very naturally, perhaps—fought shy of David Graham, who, about this time, certainly seemed very queer and morose, but Lady Donaldson, with characteristic ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... he hasn't. The tunes he whistles round the house would drive you demented if so be that you listened to them; but I needn't tell you I ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... I'd rather stand a whole shower of red herrings' tails at once than bother Julius about his brother's wife. How would you and Terry like it, if your wives took to squabbling, and setting you together by the ears? I was demented enough to try it once, but I soon saw ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... demented, deranged, insane, delirious, dementate, mad, lunatic, distracted, frantic, crazed, crack-brained; rickety, decrepit, shaky, tottering, dilapidated; desirous, eager, infatuated. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... predestined!" Then he went up to the roof and found the strips of Ba'albak stuff tied to the crenelles and hanging down to the ground, and thus it was he knew that she had descended thence and had fled forth, as one distracted and demented with desire and passion. Presently, he turned and seeing there two birds, a gor-crow and an owl he justly deemed this an omen of ill; so he groaned ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... up in his childish mind "as the model on which the genie of the lamp built the palace for Aladdin", only to return and recognize with saddened, grown-up eyes—exaggerating the depreciation a little, for the sake of the contrast—"a mere mean little heap of bricks, like a chapel gone demented". Close by the Guildhall is the Town Clock, "supposed to be the finest clock in the world", which, alas! "turned out to be as moon-faced and weak a clock as ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... and from the black streets below came scarcely a sound. But always the great tattoo of guns beat in the east. Gradually we descended to a lower level, till we emerged on the top of a shed in a courtyard. Hussin gave an odd sort of cry, like a demented owl, and something began ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... a son who wanted to go east was temporarily demented. It was an absurd plan. "Why, it's against the drift of things. You can't make a living back east. Hang onto your land and you'll come out all right. The place for a young ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... rough exclamations, which, however, always contained a note so tender and suggestive as to defy translation. Thus, while we were sitting on his front porch one day and hotly discussing politics to while away a dull afternoon, there came down the street, past his home, a queer, ragged, half-demented individual, who gazed about in an aimless sort of way, peering queerly over fences, looking idly down the road, staring strangely overhead into the blue. It was apparent, in a moment, that the man was crazy, some demented creature, harmless enough, however, to be allowed abroad and so save ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... of a cattle-truck full of naked girls riding from nowhere to nowhere, of Lydia laughing because her father made great debts and said, "I know, I know"; of Jews running down the street shouting in Yiddish, "Don't do it, don't do it," and being cut down by demented peasants—she called them "cattle"—whilst she looked on interested and even amused; of tutors and governesses and Paris and a convent. It was too much for him. And there she sat, telling the tales to the open space, not to him, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... and John looked at James. Was their excellent employer demented, then, or had they ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... people brought home and then turned adrift. It will be a real kindness to help her home, and you shall pick her up when you come up to me on your way, and see my child! Oh, didn't I tell you? We had a housemaid once who was demented enough to marry a scamp of a stoker on one of the Thames steamers. He deserted her, and I found her living, or rather dying, in an awful place at Rotherhithe, surrounded by tipsy women, raging in opposite corners. I got her into a decent room, but too late to save her life—and ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... harm than good. Anyone looking at me would say (and all the more so because I am dressed in the fashion of the day, and not in some peculiar way, or in a nun's habit, for such trifling things affect many minds), "That person is demented to think that she knows what it is to have Contact with God," and it would seem a scandal to them. But the explanation of the mystery is not so simple as this. I am not demented. I never was so sane, so capable in my life as now. I never was so perfectly poised as now. But if you ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley
... is seized with a revulsion once more against the task imposed on him. He springs from his high seat and stands among them begging that rather they will kill him. "Already I feel the night of death closing around me, and must I be forced back into life? You demented! Who shall compel me to live? Death alone it is in your power to give!" He tears open his garment and offers his breast. "Forward, heroes! Slay the sinner with his affliction! The Grail perchance will glow for you then ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... said was the truth, and there was nothing for it but to stick to the ship, though that was small chance enough; but those poor, fear-demented souls would have nothing of his advice now 'twas given, and must needs go for the boat. Then some came up from below who had been in the spirit-room and were full of drink and drink-courage, and heartened on the rest, saying they would ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... of an insurance policy is due to the family of a suicide, the doubt depending for solution on the sound or unsound condition of his mind at the moment of the fatal act. Again, there may be a real or pretended doubt whether a certain property-owner is so far demented as to be unfit to manage his estate; or whether he needs a guardian to take care of his person; or it may even seem necessary to confine him in a lunatic asylum. There may be objections raised to the mental soundness of a witness in a civil or a criminal suit; or, finally, a criminal prosecution ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... taking a survey of the work before him, he felt that sense of a divided personality which often becomes so vivid in the history of individuals of strong will and passion. It seemed to him that there were two men within him: the one turbulent, passionate, demented; the other vainly endeavoring by authority, reason, and conscience to bring the rebel to subjection. The discipline of conventual life, the extraordinary austerities to which he had condemned himself, the monotonous solitude of his existence, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... Yukon river, weather fair, recent heavy rains; set out packing and filed main-rod brasses of both engines. Settled with Enoch to go home on first ship bound south. Demented white man brought on board by Indians, put ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... am crazy; You're a daisy, Ozma dear; I'm demented; You're contented, Ozma dear; I am patched and gay and glary; You're a sweet and lovely fairy; May your birthdays all be ...
— The Magic of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... began to fear the glitter in the eyes of the gaunt young man who seemed suddenly to have become demented. And his envy and hatred of his talented host blazed anew as Forsythe gloried in the success of his efforts. Then he was struck with an idea and he ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... the thirst of officers and the men of note. Many of the high dignitaries and officials from the Capitol had come out to witness the fight from afar, and enjoy the exciting scene of battle. They were now fleeing through the woods like men demented, or crouched behind trees, perfectly paralyzed with uncertainty and fright. One old citizen of the North, captured by the boys, gave much merriment by the antics he cut, being frightened out of his wits with the thought of being summarily dealt with by the soldiers. Some would punch ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... 17th century, crowded with so many important historical events, changes, and personages. Throughout Europe, and especially in what we call our Mother Country, men were unusually arous'd—(some would say demented.) It was a special age of the insanity of witch-trials and witch-hangings. In one year 60 were hung for witchcraft in one English county alone. It was peculiarly an age of military-religious conflict. Protestantism and Catholicism were wrestling like giants ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... way to my feelings? You haven't lost the most precious thing on God's earth. You never cared for a woman as I do; perhaps you never cared for one at all. You don't look as if you did." Owen's face wrinkled; he jibbered at one moment like a demented baboon, at the next he was transfigured, and looked like some Titan as he strode about the room, swearing that they should not ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... motor jerkin, green motorgoggles on his brow) Dr Bloom is bisexually abnormal. He has recently escaped from Dr Eustace's private asylum for demented gentlemen. Born out of bedlock hereditary epilepsy is present, the consequence of unbridled lust. Traces of elephantiasis have been discovered among his ascendants. There are marked symptoms of chronic exhibitionism. Ambidexterity is also latent. He ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... opportunity for heaven. Now they are not responsible for what they do, or for what they say; but in the last day they will be held responsible for what they did when they were mentally well; and if, on that day, a soul should say: "Oh, God, I was demented, and I had no responsibility," God will say: "Yes, you were demented; but there were long years when you were not demented. That was your chance for heaven, and you missed it." Oh, better be, as the Scotch say, a little "daft," nevertheless ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... showed me better than that. So I hustled the poor thing into my car and brought her here. All the way she kept crying over and over: 'Look, don't you see it? She's afire! Her lips shine—they shine, they shine.' I think the girl is demented ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... "Demented in verity. His folly was surpassing. He put his faith in a recusant priest—one John Ballard—who goes ruffling about as Captain Fortescue in velvet hose ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... you no one was here. I am not quite demented yet. Now go. Don't you see you are interrupting me?' was Arthur's rather savage response, and without having gained any satisfactory information Charles returned to the ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... demented—not she. Neither the fatigue of the journey, the many wonders she had witnessed, including the shower of golochs, nor the raid upon the camp had deprived Moncrieff's wonderful mither of her wits. I have said there was a stove burning in the ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... far back in the jungles of the Amazon with a half-demented naturalist who told the lad nothing of his past. The jungle boy was a lover of birds, and hunted animals with a bow and arrow and his trusty machete. He had a primitive education in some things, and ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Camp - or The Water Fight at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... honey, dat my name—Catherine Mortimer. Which Catherine were the name giben me by my sponsibles in baptism; and Mortimer were de name 'ferred upon me in holy matrimony by my late demented 'panion; which he was de coachman to ole Comedy Burghe, as fought de Britishers in the war of eighteen hundred ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... running steps, and presently there broke, equally unannounced, into the presence of his mistress, the coachman, fresh from his stables and none too careful of his garb. Tears ran down his cheeks. He flung out his hands with gestures as of one demented. ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... and brutal violence drove a weeping woman out into the cheerless night. He deemed her the Russian's cherished mistress. With a shudder Alixe Delavigne recalled the white face of the discarded mother, whose babe slumbered in peace, while the half-demented woman fled away to the shelter of the house of ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... and was full of pity; for his forlorn condition and apparently crazed intellect touched her womanly heart. She was a widow, and rather poor; consequently she had seen trouble enough to enable her to feel for the unfortunate. She imagined that the demented boy had wandered away from his friends or keepers; so she tried to find out whence he had come, in order that she might take measures to return him; but all her references to neighbouring towns and villages, and all her inquiries in the same line went for nothing—the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... then. Besides I was in a hurry. I had just come from my encounter with this demented man. I had noticed the marks on the landing, and the worn edges of the carpet, on my way upstairs. I was in no condition to observe them ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green |
