"Maddening" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... would come over to her, and hold her in his arms while Mr. Archer, with maddening deliberation, glanced through the long typewritten document—but Henry had turned his back, and was gazing out of ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... officer had left his seat yonder, and therefore dare not drop to the ground. My heart ached for the girl, and I longed to get my hands on that cur of a Le Gaire, yet might venture to approach neither. It was a maddening situation, but I could only stand there in the dark, gripping the rail, unable to decide my duty. Perhaps she did love me—in spite of that vigorous denial, perhaps she did—and the very possibility made ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... cried Carthew. "I declare I had forgotten it." And he told of the voice in the telephone, and the maddening question: "Why did you want to buy the ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... human beings it would not in the least surprise me were we to find them in that condition; dying, too, one of the most dreadful deaths that man can be called upon to endure, a slow, lingering agony—the indescribable, maddening torment of long-continued ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... with the world, in a sense, at her feet was maddening. The Doctor paced the floor roaring like an angry lion. "It may not do any good, but I've got to tell her what I think ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... severity of the labor that destroyed their minds, but the uselessness and objectlessness of it. Sane men require reasonable employment; idleness, or irrational work disintegrates their minds. They want to see and to foresee intelligible results from their toil; mere toil without such results is maddening, or it rots men's minds as scurvy rots their bodies. The reason is, that the men are human; and if you have hitherto supposed that convicts are not human, the insanity which so constantly follows upon prison idleness or mis-employment should ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... am afraid, as any second-hand bookseller's apprentice could have done it," said Wharton, shaking his head. "It's maddening to think what duffers we ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... tearing off his clothes, he was trampling them beneath his feet, he was crying out in a strange, raucous voice; and all the swaying crowds were taking up his words, maddening themselves and their fellows ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... he, "memoranda of two—chances, shall I call them?—which seem to me very good, though, as I have already said, every clew seems good. That is the maddening, the heart-breaking, part of such an investigation. I have made these brief notes from letters received, one yesterday, one the day before, from an agent of mine who has been searching the bains de mer of the north coast. This agent writes that some one very much resembling poor Arthur ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... as Deena turned and came slowly down the stairs. He only wished she did look funny, or anything, except the intoxicating, maddening contrast to her usual sober self that ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... The day was one of burning discomfort, spent in cracks and nullas, under blanket bivouacs. We had tramped, from dawn, through eight miles of 'chivvy-dusters,' and our camp was now among them. These are a grass which crams the clothes and feet with maddening needles; once in they seemed there 'for duration.' The soldier out East knows them for his worst foe on a march. Lest we should be obsessed with these, we were infested with sandflies and mosquitoes. But large black ants ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... Since the last, a maddening jealousy had seized me. For, returning from those unknown regions into which her soul had wandered away, and where she had stayed for hours, did she not sometimes awake with a smile? How could I be sure that she did not lead two distinct existences?—that she had not ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... to look for the person in distress. There was no answer, no one in sight. As I reached the steep slope, leading upward to the high peaks, I heard terrified, heart-rending cries, southward, toward the spot from which the first call had come. It was strange, and maddening, that I could hear him so distinctly, yet he could not hear me. He was certainly deaf or very stupid, for he continued calling for help, when help was pursuing him and yelling at ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... cried Almamen, in atone of deep anguish. "I, then, at last regain my child? Do I press her to my heart? and is it only for that brief moment, when I stand upon the brink of death? Leila, my child, look up! smile upon thy father; let him feel, on his maddening and burning brow, the sweet breath of the last of his race, and bear with him, at least, one holy and gentle ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book IV. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... close to me. I can only remember the purr of a motor as an ambulance rushed up. Then I saw four stretcher-bearers; two grabbed the German, and two caught hold of me. We were rushed to the ambulance and driven at maddening speed ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... her fond arms enfold me? O let her kindling bosom hold me! Feel I not always her distress? The houseless am I not? the unbefriended? The monster without aim or rest? That, like a cataract, from rock to rock descended To the abyss, with maddening greed possest: She, on its brink, with childlike thoughts and lowly,— Perched on the little Alpine field her cot,— This narrow world, so still and holy Ensphering, like a heaven, her lot. And I, God's hatred daring, Could not be content ...
— Faust • Goethe
... Rinaldo! One gets awfully fond of a horse. Rinaldo was very naughty sometimes, but I loved him all the more for it. And now his good looks have been disastrous. Oh that he had been uglier. Isn't it maddening. Such a leaper, so fast, and such courage. Well, perhaps I shall see ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... have been trifled with—scorned! She, daughter of the erst proudest planter in all Mississippi State, has been slighted for a Creole girl; possibly, one of the "poor white trash" living along the bayous' edge. Full proof she has of his perfidy, or how should Darke know of it? More maddening still, the man so slighting her, has been making boast of it, proclaiming her suppliance and shame, showing her photograph, exulting in the triumph ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... tear To gem our pleasure Will then appear. A few more hours, And I find my rest In maddening bliss, On the loved one's breast. Life, never ending, Swells mighty in me; I look from above down - Look back upon thee. By yonder hillock Expires thy beam; And comes with a shadow, The cooling gleam. Oh, call me, ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... of it, and the voluptuous pause and the soft, lingering cadence before it rose again. In the music of each separate verse there was the whole episode of man's love and woman's, the illusion and the image, the image and the maddening, leaping, all-satisfying, ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... up and down the formal walks in the garden. Away from the maddening fascination of her presence, his mind grew clearer. He resisted the temptation to think of her tenderly; he set himself to consider what it would be well to ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... we tried, the more determined I became. She would sit there, calm and placid, until one of us entered the water. Then she became a veritable fury. It was maddening. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... two jaguars, which followed his movements with glaring eyes. A single glance satisfied him they were cubs; but a maddening thought shot across his brain: the mother was out, probably not far; she might return in a moment, and he had no arms, except his knife and the barrel of his broken rifle. While musing upon his perilous ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... always in a hurry," he remarked as he refilled his pipe with a deliberation that was maddening to his hearers. "But just let me get my pipe drawing well, and I'll tell you all I know. It isn't so much after all as maybe you think, but it may help to piece out ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... the strategist confided, "your dearest Annabel is going to cover herself with Parisian disgrace. You don't know how maddening it is to have every step dogged by a woman who never was, never could have been—and manifestly never will be—young! Wasn't that a divine flash about the corbeille and the mayor? Miss Chantry will wait outside half a day. ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... the purpose of Philip to end the life of his son by other means than execution he could not have taken better measures. For a young man of his high spirit and fiery temper such strict confinement was maddening. At first he was thrown into a frenzy, and tried more than once to make way with himself. The sullenness of despair succeeded. He grew daily more emaciated, and the malarial fever which had so long affected him now returned in a severe degree. ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... new and apart and wonderful? No sleek-haired, slim and straight-backed youth said exactly any of these things to her, but somehow they were conveyed and filled her with a wondering realization of the fact that if they were true, they were no longer dreadful and maddening, since they only made people like and want to dance with one. To dance, to like people and be liked seemed so heavenly natural and right—to be only like air and sky and free, happy breathing. There was, it was true, a blissful little uplifted look about her which she herself was ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... snorting out inarticulate disgust as he tumbled into his tent; but I stood above the embers of the camp fire thinking. Again I felt with a creepiness, that set all my flesh quaking, felt, rather than saw, those maddening, tiger eyes of the dark foliage watching me. Looking up, I found my morose canoeman on the other side of the fire, leaning so close to a tree, he was barely visible in the shadows. Thinking himself unseen by me, ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... about Peter that his highly imperious, poised employer found it impertinent, not to say maddening. Peter had a look of the freedom of desert distances in his eyes already. A lieutenant was actually radiating happiness in that neutral-toned sanctum of power, particularly ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... the manzanita slope, little flashes of light kept calling, calling, and Jack dared not answer. One, two—one, two, three—could anything in the world be more maddening? ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... and half remonstrating; but he replied with the utmost solemnity, explaining to them, in a maddening little sermon, that one can always find some small occupation that is helpful to others. He did not find a spud; but he found an old broom made of twigs, with which he began energetically to brush the fallen ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... hand over his mouth; when she had clearly exhausted his memory, she had announced that they would go up to Town the next day, and that on Sunday morning, sun, rain, or snow, he would motor her down to where Lyveden dwelt; then she had said she was sorry she'd shaken him, smiled him a maddening smile, told him, with a rare blush, that Anthony Lyveden was "the most wonderful man in the world," kissed him between the eyes, and then darted out of the room, ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... you let yourself have a good time?" she had asked, and the question repeated itself now with maddening insistence. Was he, who had always had everything, now missing something—something ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... Ferdinand! How does she ever open it? What ages of life slip by as she unfolds it! Women know this by experience! As to men, when they are in such maddening passes, ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... sleep on damp straw in the midst of slush and snow, and peeping through the ragged tent roof at the moon as he lay on his back, surrounded by Gipsies of both sexes, of all ages and sizes, cursing each other under the maddening influence of brandy and disappointment. To make himself and his damsel comfortable on a Gipsy tour he fills his pocket with gold, flask with brandy, buys a quantity of rugs upon which are a number of ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... they injured neither men nor crops, but they were harder to endure than a major disaster. One was aware of them everywhere, on the chair one sat in, on the food one ate, on one's body. They were a crawling, maddening nightmare. ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... with watchful eyes In silence, for the tongue cannot avail. Vex not his wounds with rhetoric, nor the stale Worn truths, that are but maddening mockeries To him whose grief outmasters all replies. Only watch near him gently; do but bring The piteous help of silent ministering, Watchful and tender. ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... danced on the drifting clouds before me, while whirling savages chanting in horrid discord stuck my frenzied body full of blazing brands. At times I was awake, calling in vain for water to quench a thirst which grew maddening, then I lapsed into a semi-consciousness that drove me wild with its delirious fancies. I knew vaguely that the Major had crept back through the darkness and passed his strong arm gently beneath my head. I heard him shouting in his deep voice to the driver for something ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... one, went nowhere, and scarce allowed myself sufficient time for my meals. My whole life was absorbed in contemplation as rapt as that of any of the Romish saints. Every hour that I gazed upon the divine form strengthened my passion,—a passion that was always overshadowed by the maddening conviction, that, although I could gaze on her at will, she never, never could ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... she be there? Or in the woods, or on her way to some unknown place far out of our reach? The thought is maddening, Mr. Harper, and I feel as helpless as a child under it. Shall we get detectives from the county-seat, or start on the hunt ourselves? We might hear something ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... could not suppose that any friendly feeling on the part of her persecutors would induce them to adopt a course which might relieve that much-loved relative's mind concerning her. What would Francisco conjecture? Oh! these thoughts were maddening! ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... could bear. He was torn with the fierce promptings of primeval forces. To take her, willing or unwilling, despite honour, despite all that stood between them, to make her his and hold her in the face of all the world—at times the temptation had been maddening. There had been days when he had not dared to look on her, when he had drawn himself more than ever apart from the common life, fearful of himself, fearful of circumstances that seemed beyond his ordering. And the thought ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... punish him for his lewdness and hypocrisy—yes, punish him through the medium of his own bad passions, and in a manner that would torture him with alternate hope and despair; now inspiring him with rapture by apparently almost yielding to his wishes, and then maddening him by my resistance—at the same time resolving not to submit to his desires in any case. This was my plan for punishing the hoary libertine, and you shall see how ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... part of the accidents of the day. My mind was maddening, and I was ripe for mischief. Belmont in the evening went to the hazard table, and I determined to accompany him, to which he encouraged me. The impetus was given, and, as if resolved on destruction, I put all my money, except a ten pound note to pay my Bath debts, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... Fitzjohn's Avenue once lived that ever popular Academician, the late Mr. John Pettie. Mr. Pettie was a vigorous draughtsman and a beautiful colourist, and many of his portraits are very fine. He seemed to revel in painting a red coat—an object to many painters as maddening as it is to the infuriated bull. On one "Show Sunday" before the sending-in day of the Royal Academy, at which he exhibited, I recollect admiring a portrait of Mr. Lamb, the celebrated golfer, in his red coat, when the original of the portrait came into ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... court-house, and because this space was meager, that the country folk and excursionists and townsmen showed in such compressed numbers at every turn. In reality, however, they were by no means countless; and if Robert's eagle glance continued to travel from face to face, with that maddening thoroughness— ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... With dying hand the rudder held, Till in his fall, with fateful sway, The steerage of the realm gave way! Then, while on Britain's thousand plains One unpolluted church remains, Whose peaceful bells ne'er sent around The bloody tocsin's maddening sound, But still, upon the hallowed day, Convoke the swains to praise and pray; While faith and civil peace are dear, Grace this cold marble with a tear - He who preserved them, Pitt, ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... he discovered two men in the vicinity of the jail. A cold shudder nearly paralyzed him. Was his labor all in vain? Had he with so much trial and suffering effected his escape, only to be incarcerated again? The thought was maddening, and he resolved to die rather than be returned ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... review I can't forget How oft in sickness, grief and pain, Thy loving heart our needs has met, While solace rich came in thy train. Nor when thyself on sick bed lay, Racked with Neuralgia's maddening pangs. How Patience kept the wolf at bay, And made him soon withdraw his fangs. My darling sweet, 'Tis surely meet I thee with ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... her mouth and eyes! Her strange, sweet, maddening eyes, her subtle mouth! Mouth in whose closure all love's sweetness lives,— Eyes with the warm gleam of ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... a sweeter draught, I gather from that rill of thine, Than maddening drunkards ever quaff'd, Than all the treasures ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... of Fear is a maddening maze Of paths that wind on without exit or end, From nowhere to nowhere lead all of its ways, And shadows with shadows in more shadows blend. Each guide-post is lettered, 'This way to Despair,' And the River of Death in the darkness flows near, But there is ...
— Poems of Purpose • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... it all came to her with a rush; but the words ran together and swam in a maddening blur—the roar from the street below, dull with distance; the hum of the big building, with its faint concussions of closing doors; the air from the open window, not like the sweet prairie air of to-day, but heavy, smoky, typical breath ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... Indeed, our inclination has always been to regard with an indulgence, which to some rigid moralists appears excessive, those faults into which gentle and noble spirits are sometimes hurried by the excitement of conflict, by the maddening influence of sympathy, and by ill-regulated zeal ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in the heart of the elder growth, hidden from all the rest of the world and isolated from anything that might have promised relief. In the branches innumerable large, glossy blackbirds kept up a maddening chatter, and higher above, up in the hot sky, the omnipresent buzzards floated lazily, awaiting sight of possible carrion prey. Animals began to appear almost underfoot, coons and rabbits, disturbed for the first time in their fastness. Water holes ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... Crisp hair, frank eyes, and honest English skin. Two minutes only! Conscious of a name, The new man plants his weapon with profound Long-practised skill that no mere trick may scare. Not loth, the rested lad resumes the game: The flung ball takes one maddening, tortuous bound, And the mid-stump three somersaults ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... more chill, now. Kirk decided that it must be night, though he didn't feel sleepy. He crawled under the tarpaulin which Ken kept to cover the trunks in foul weather. In doing so, he bumped against the engine. There was another maddening thing! A good, competent engine, sitting complacently in the middle of the boat, and he not able to start it! But even if he had known how to run it, he reflected that he couldn't steer the boat. So he lay still under the tarpaulin, which was dry, as well ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... locomotive at the further end of the town—strident noises brought from the West to break the drowsy murmur of the Orient, but not a sight nor a sound which could give him a clew as to the whereabouts of Linke or Countess Marishka. The inaction was maddening. In his belt the American revolver hung its futile weight. Had it not been for Linke, he might have had a chance at least to follow the instructions of the note of the Hotel Europa to some conclusion whether for good or ill—it did not matter. If Marishka herself had written it!... She would be ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... marks—twenty pounds," said Fritzing, interrupting what was to him a most maddening music. "Four hundred marks. As much as many a German girl can only earn by labouring two years you will receive for doing nothing but ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... therefore, you have not rosbif expressed in every lineament of your countenance; if the soles of your boots are less than an inch thick, and your clothes are not reduced in color to the invariable and maddening tone of the English tweed,—you must resign yourself to be a German. All this is grievous to the soul which loves to spread its eagle in every land and to be known as American, with star-spangled ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... cut into his flesh, for his wrists had swollen as he lay there, and the burning thirst was becoming maddening. ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... photographic plates, but the heat in my tent, notwithstanding the fly, made perspiration flow so freely that it was difficult to avoid damage. Moreover, I was greatly annoyed by the small yellow bees, which were very numerous. They clung to my face and hair in a maddening manner, refusing to be driven away. If caught with ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... at eleven o'clock. But we hadn't any idea of whether it was ten or eleven or twelve, because there was no light to see Jerry's watch by. He had just an ordinary Ingersoll, not the grand Radiolite kind that you can see in the dark and it was perfectly maddening to hear it ticking away cheerfully, and no good to us at all. Just then something cold wrapped itself around my ankle. It was the edge of ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price
... flight of steps, they cluster like bees. Meanwhile (and especially on festa-days) the bells of the churches ring incessantly; not in peals, or any known form of sound, but in a horrible, irregular, jerking, dingle, dingle, dingle: with a sudden stop at every fifteenth dingle or so, which is maddening. This performance is usually achieved by a boy up in the steeple, who takes hold of the clapper, or a little rope attached to it, and tries to dingle louder than every other boy similarly employed. The noise is supposed to be particularly obnoxious to Evil Spirits; but looking ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... A maddening joy pounded in his brain. Jeanne's voice came to him sweetly, with a shyness in it that made him feel like a boy. He was glad that the night concealed his face. He would have given ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood
... are the facts which had preceded her visit to Stradella's lodging, and which resulted in the maddening disappointment and humiliation she felt when she turned her ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... gathered round the two girls. But Alizon only clasped her hands more tightly round Dorothy; while the latter, on whose brain the maddening potion still worked, laughed frantically at them. It was at this moment that Elizabeth Device, who had conceived a project of revenge, put it into execution. While near Dorothy, she stamped, spat on the ground, and then cast a little ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... H. B. Wheatley: "I can scarcely imagine anything more maddening than a frequent reference to cards in a drawer." But it is to be considered that all systems have defects, and the problem of choosing the least defective is ever before us. Most of the suggested defects of the card catalogue, as concerns the readers, can ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... was depressed with apprehension of he knew not what terrible fate awaited him and was close at hand. Never, in his experience of men, had he been so treated, while the confinement of the box was maddening with its suggestion of the trap. Trapped he was, and helpless, and the ultimate evil of life had happened to Steward, who had evidently been swallowed up by the Nothingness which had swallowed up Meringe, the Eugenie, the Solomon Islands, the Makambo, Australia, ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... the beautiful snow! How the flakes gather and laugh as they go! Whirling about in its maddening fun, It plays in its glee with every one. Chasing, Laughing, Hurrying by, It lights up the face and it sparkles the eye; And even the dogs, with a bark and a bound, Snap at the crystals that eddy around. The town is alive, and its ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... can, and as he could not get it out was rushing wildly about, shaking the can with much violence. He got to be a horror to us all, but we could not help him and he finally smothered to death. Oh, peaceful release from torture! Such maddening thirst and not a drop of water to be had. I went around to see how Lord Roberts was getting along and found him discouraged and heart broken. He said, "It can not be possible that our people have abandoned us, it must be some horrible mistake." I went ...
— The Nomad of the Nine Lives • A. Frances Friebe
... I was involved in this odious Social Union business from the first, and now have it left on my hands in the end, is maddening. Why, I can't get rid ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... Charlotte she was safe. In the immediate relief of this she could cry, and those tears were delicious to her. Returning from her drive, and in the solitude of her own room, she indulged in them, weeping on until no more tears would flow. They took the maddening pressure of heart and brain, and after them she felt strong and even calm. She had washed her face and smoothed her hair, and though she could not at once remove all trace of the storm through which she had just passed, she still looked better than ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... of the besiegers were, however, two of their principal foes. The Indian dashed recklessly from post to post. Sooner or later he would pay for it. The continued impunity of the boss was more maddening. Above the rails Koppy could see the slight bulge on which so many shots had been wasted. Probably it was only Torrance's clothing. From the floor of the forest he seemed to ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... dead silence, and on the balcony above stood Rienzi—his head was bared and the morning sun shone over that lordly brow, and the hair grown grey before its time, in the service of that maddening multitude. Pale and erect he stood—neither fear, nor anger, nor menace—but deep grief and high resolve—upon his features! A momentary shame—a ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... garden out there, and real clothes-dryers and some wistaria and sparrows—just like real back yards. I want to hear cats make harrowing music on my own back fence; I want to see a tidy laundress pinning up intimate and indescribable garments on my own clothes-lines; I want to have maddening trouble with plumbers and ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... limb contagions fly, 40 Deform'd and choked they burst and die. 'When Luxury opens wide her arms, And smiling wooes thee to those charms, Whose fascination thousands own, Shall thy brows wear the stoic frown? 45 And when her goblet she extends Which maddening myriads press around, What power divine thy soul befriends That thou should'st dash it to the ground?— No, thou shalt drink, and thou shalt know 50 Her transient bliss, her lasting woe, Her maniac joys, that know no measure, And Riot rude and painted Pleasure;— Till (sad reverse!) ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... whole life was absorbed in contemplation as rapt as that of any of the Romish saints. Every hour that I gazed upon the divine form strengthened my passion—a passion that was always overshadowed by the maddening conviction that, although I could gaze on her at will, she ...
— The Diamond Lens • Fitz-James O'brien
... At other times her letter was triumphant, optimistic; she seemed radiant, and the painter read her satisfaction between the lines; he divined her intoxication after those daring meetings in her own house, defying the count's blindness. And she told him everything, with shameless, maddening familiarity, as if he were a woman, as if he could not be moved in the least by ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... had he lost her, but his loss was another's gain. The pricking of jealousy, for a while suspended, again became maddening. He had heard her say that she would die rather than be his wife; judge, then, what must be her love of the man she bud chosen. His desire now was to do her injury, and his fiercest torment was the thought that he dared not fulfil the menace ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... likewise Sweeney did not stir. For a second his slow brain failed to grasp the truth, the deliberate challenge of the refusal; then of a sudden, in a blinding, maddening flood, came comprehension, came action. Swifter than any human being would have thought possible, unbelievably ferocious even in this land of licence, something took place, something which the staring onlookers did not realise until it ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... had longed for freedom, on and on, with craving for the open sky, for solitude, for green silence, beyond these maddening walls. This heedful silken coming and going, these Sunday voices, this reiterant yelp of a single peevish bell—would they never cease? And above all, betwixt dread and an almost physical greed, he hungered for night. He sat down with elbows on knees ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... certain, that I am the victim of an aberration," he said. "I do not speak of the Eucharist; there my thoughts may not be exact, but at least they are not maddening, while as for ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... Jesuits,—to the prevalence of religious indifference under the guise of Roman Catholicism, until at last it threw off the mask and defied all authority, both human and divine, and invoked all the maddening passions of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... weary way to their fate, and went on in an automatic fashion, resting, tramping on again over patches of sand and clean hard places where the rock had been worn smooth. The pangs of hunger attacked them more and more, and then came maddening thirst which they assuaged by drinking from one of the clear pools lying in depressions, the water tasting sweet and pure. From time to time the candles were renewed in the lanthorn, and the rate at which they burned was marked with feverish earnestness; and at last, in their ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... squadrons light, Did they flinch from the battle's roar, When they burst on the guns of the Muscovite, By the echoing Black Sea shore? On! on! to the cannon's mouth they stride, With never a swerve nor a shy, Oh! the minutes of yonder maddening ride, Long years of ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... "'Far from the maddening crowd,'" quoted Belle as they swung down the quiet river road. "But do be careful, Bess," she urged. "I know you understand as much about the car as I do, but I always feel that I ought to have a life preserver on when any mere girl—including myself—is at ...
— The Motor Girls • Margaret Penrose
... a life might not in some way have disturbed the man's mind, at least temporarily. Wasn't it possible for one, in such a case, to do queer things and never remember anything about them afterwards? No one better than she knew what a terrible and maddening thing loneliness was. She recollected distracting hours spent in little hall-bedrooms while she tried to mend, after an exhausting day's work, the poor clothing that wore out so terribly soon, and how at times she had felt that she must ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... Drake Vernon. I concealed my real name and rank; but I had no base motive in doing so. I was sick of the world, and weary of it and myself, and I longed to escape the maddening notoriety which harassed me. And then, when I thought—ah, no! I won't say thought, for; I know that then, ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... How absurd people were! The fat Hodges boy and his motorcycle! Did they all regard her as an amiable lunatic—even little, lovely, friendly Rosemary, wavering sleepily at her side? It really was maddening. But she felt, amazingly enough, suddenly quiet and joyous and indifferent—and passionately glad that the wanderer from the skies had won safely through and was speeding home. Home! Oh, it was a crying pity that it ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... prevalent among the citizens. We were now ourselves tortured by suspense. Could we escape, or should we again have to seek refuge from the flames? Surely the work of destruction would stop before it reached India Street? The hot breath of the maddening fire, and its lurid glare, were the only response. O, if the wind would only change! But a vane, glistening like gold in the firelight, steadfastly pointed to the southeast. For one moment it veered, and our hearts almost stood still with hope; but it swung back, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... maddening," continued the elder man. "We know that Antony Ferrara visits Mr. Saunderson's house; we know that he is laughing at our vain attempts to trap him. Crowning comedy of all, Saunderson does not know the truth; he is not the type of man who could ever ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... rain forms a rushing cataract in front of that horizon toward which we are running with such maddening speed. But before it has reached us the rain cloud parts asunder, the sea boils, and the electric fires are brought into violent action by a mighty chemical power that descends from the higher regions. The most vivid flashes of lightning are mingled with the violent ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... days spent in fierce excitement—nights passed in reckless dissipation. He had never forgotten Lucy through it all, but even her image only goaded him to fresh extravagances—anything to deaden the sting of remembrance—anything to efface the maddening past. So Cousin Edward too became a Jacobite; and was there a daring scheme to be executed, a foolhardy exploit to be performed—life and limb to be risked without a question—who so ready and so reckless ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... felt shame for having kept the girl in the harbor against her prayers, and for the lies he had told her and the destruction of the letters; but he was neither humble nor contrite. Shame was a bitter and maddening emotion for one of his nature. He brooded over this shame, and over that aroused by the girl's scorn, until his finer feelings toward her were burned out and blown abroad like ashes. His infatuation lost its fine, ennobling element ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... them strikes his brain, breathing out in a blood-curdling whisper, "How silent is this town!" his Bertuccio, begging at the door of the banquet-hall, and breaking down in hysterics of affected glee and maddening agony; his Lear, at that supreme moment of intolerable torture when he parts away from Goneril and Regan, with his wild scream of revenges that shall be the terrors of the earth; his Richard the Third, with the ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... shoulder. "Oh, yes, I understand," and he heard from her lips the maddening sweetness of his boy name. "I understand," she sobbed. "I don't care, Ab—if only—, you will be ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... moment—here again the evidence is unanimous—at that moment came sudden, absolute darkness, followed immediately by the maddening din of all the bells and all the gongs, from top to bottom of the house, in every room and ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... thousands of freshwater fish I saw mounted by taxidermy, not one was without those ridiculous little spears (cut from large rushes, or from paper) growing from the bottom of the case, each one, or each bunch of them, erect as possible, and almost always arranged at equal distances apart, with maddening precision. ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... Albeit for such I could despise a crown Of aught save laurel, or for such could die. I am a fool of passion, and a frown Of thine to me is as an adder's eye. To the poor bird whose pinion fluttering down Wafts unto death the breast it bore so high; Such is this maddening fascination grown, So strong thy magic or ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... intellect. Has love no future? Has right no triumph? Is the unfinished self to remain unfinished? The alternatives are two, Christianity or Pessimism. But when we ascend the further height of the religious nature, the crisis comes. There, without Environment, the darkness is unutterable. So maddening now becomes the mystery that men are compelled to construct an Environment for themselves. No Environment here is unthinkable. An altar of some sort men must have— God, or Nature, or Law. But the anguish of Atheism is only ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... last, and there joined Sir Colin Campbell's force. The sight of this house of murder was simply maddening to the men. They left the place next morning with a sort of shudder, and set their faces towards Lucknow. It was not till we were well on the march that I had leisure to look about me and notice how ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... saw a spectacle which froze my very blood. Twenty men and women, perhaps, some of them Europeans, some natives, some dressed in seamen's dress, some in rags, some quite naked, were dancing a wild, fantastic, maddening dance which no foaming Dervish could have surpassed, aye, or imitated, in his cruellest moments. Whirling round and round, extending their arms to the sky, sometimes casting themselves headlong on the ground, biting the earth with savage ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... life, their flight they ply, And shriek, and shout, and battle-cry, And weapons waving to the sky, Are maddening in ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... top of wooden steps. He was already refreshed; he had tasted the breath of nature, measured his long grind in New York, without a vacation, with the repetition of the daily movement up and down the long, straight, maddening city, like a bucket in a well or ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... Dove around an antique cross, Which long had stood afront the pallid bust Of haughty Pallas o'er my chamber door: Neglected it had been through all the storm Of maddening doubts born from the demon cry Reechoing from the night's Plutonian shore: ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... my graying hair," Mercedes frankly disclaimed. "I shall sell it for the money. Much that I do, when the rheumatism is not maddening my fingers, I sell. La la, my dear, 'tis not old Barry's fifty a month that'll satisfy all my expensive tastes. 'Tis I that make up the difference. And old age needs money as never youth needs it. Some day ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... hesitated. And Justine, with the maddening gentleness of the person prepared to carry a point at ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... out by the back way, generally through the kitchen, and the crackling and hissing of the poultry and the joints of meat roasting in the ovens, and the odours of fruit pies and tarts, and plum puddings and sage and onions, were simply maddening. In the back-yards of these houses there were usually huge stacks of empty beer, stout and wine bottles, and others that had contained ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... feast, Than claims the boor from scythe released, On these scorched fields were known! Death hovered o'er the maddening rout, And, in the thrilling battle-shout, Sent for the bloody banquet out A summons of his own. Through rolling smoke the Demon's eye Could well each destined guest espy, Well could his ear in ecstasy Distinguish every tone That ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... dreadful alarms; diseased with care; cankered with solitude; corroded with regret; gnawed by remorse; he dies within himself; his conscience sustains him not but loads him with reproach; his mind, overwhelmed, sinks beneath its own turpitude; his reflection is the bitter dregs of hemlock; maddening anguish holds him to the mirror that shews him his own deformity; that recalls unhallowed deeds; gloomy thoughts rush on his too faithful memory; despondence benumbs him; his body, simultaneously assailed on all sides, bends under the storm of—his own ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... of listeners, had been repeated and widely circulated; she heard them whispered everywhere. Against a legion of soldiers she would have been brave; but this mysterious influence, more pernicious and powerful than the sword, but impossible to grasp, was maddening! Herodias strode to and fro upon the terrace, white with rage, unable to find words to express the ...
— Herodias • Gustave Flaubert
... Stream we had an outer temperature of 28 deg. Celsius. This was about the warmth of the surrounding water. Fresh air no longer entered. In the engine-room two 6-cylinder combustion motors kept hammering away in a maddening two-four time. They hurled the power of their explosions into the whirling crankshafts. The red-hot breath of the consumed gases went crashing out through the exhausts, but the glow of these incessant ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... devilled partridge, the truffled salad, the fine yellow cheese, and the long bottle of good red Beaune, revealed when the cover was off, I could almost have forgiven the old rascal for his scandal- mongering. As for my vis-a-vis, she pronounced it a "maddening sight." ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... passed away, and he saw that maddening circle with the caracoling steeds. He head the discordant music, the monotonous creak of the machinery, the strident laughter of the excited riders. As first the thing was a blur, a kaleidoscope of whirling colors, ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... crowd comes flying a man that nothing can stay, Maddening against the gate that is locked athwart his way. "No! we keep the bridge for them that can help him. You, Tell us, who are you?" "His brother!" "God help you both! Pass through." Wild, with wide arms of imploring he calls aloud to him, Unto the face of his ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... them, in a tremendous hurry. She wasn't ready yet. It was a maddening, protracted agony, getting Laura off. She had forgotten to lock the cupboard where the whisky was (a shilling's worth in a medicine bottle); and poor Papa might find it. Since he had had his sunstroke you ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... air above them, than instinctively they gave a great plunge forward, and broke into a gallop. Not a sound was heard from the two who sat behind. Mansana repeated the performance, and this time with maddening effect upon the horses. The road at this point began to slope down towards a stiff, steep hill; and precisely at this very point, Mansana, for the third time, raised the whip, swung it in lasso fashion round his head, and brought it down upon the backs of the animals. Such an act, at ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... my Brother, why cannot I shelter thee in my bosom, and wipe away all tears from thy eyes! Truly, the din of many-voiced Life, which, in this solitude, with the mind's organ, I could hear, was no longer a maddening discord, but a melting one; like inarticulate cries, and sobbings of a dumb creature, which in the ear of Heaven are prayers. The poor Earth, with her poor joys, was now my needy Mother, not my cruel Stepdame; Man, with his so mad Wants and so mean Endeavours, had become ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... she was convinced of her power; but, with all her maddening grace and beauty, I kept the hope still that she would fail. I could fancy Mr. Winthrop trampling ruthlessly on the strongest pleading of his heart sooner than stoop to the degradation of a second time asking her to be ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... falls of Missouri, with its loud, maddening roar, To the slopes of Pacific, an ever-green shore, To the Atlantic Ocean, with a coast sand-bound, There some of my boys are sure ...
— Our Little Brown House, A Poem of West Point • Maria L. Stewart
... another carriage that stopped the way now, and once more the barker made the night ring with what Westover felt his heartless and shameless cries for Miss Lynde's carriage. After a maddening delay, it lagged up to the curb and Jeff pulled the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... accident.' With similar faith there came to me tranquil restoration. The deluge of passion rolled back, and from the wreck of my Eden arose a new and more spiritual creation. But forgetfulness was never possible. In the maddening turbulence of my grief and the ghastly stillness of its reaction, the lovely spirit which had become a part of my life seemed to have fled to the inner temple of my soul, breaking the solitude with glimmering ray and faint melodious murmur. And when I could ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... then came back to him, rose from the depths, blinded his eyes with maddening beauty, sang in his ears, possessed his heart and mind. He burned to tell it. The world of tired, restless men, he felt, must equally burn to hear it. Some vision of a simple life lived close to Nature came before his inner eye as the remedy for the vast disease of restless ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... first-born Cain" did indeed reign in the hearts of men; and now, if ever upon this earth, it seemed likely, from the dreadful acharnement which marked the war on both sides,—the acharnement of long-hoarded vengeance and maddening remembrances in the Grecian, of towering disdain in the alarmed oppressor,—that, in very simplicity of truth, "Darkness would be the burier of ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... I love the man!" said Tiara, rising from her chair and throwing herself face downward across the bed. "Oh, I must never see him again. He might read this awful, this maddening love in ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... spectacle, being covered with gore; but a glance at the dead beast revealed the cause. The arrow had passed into the mouth, transfixing the large arteries and the base of the brain, and the blood was still deluging the ice in a crimson tide, from which the hot vapors and sickening odor rose, maddening the remaining ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... refuge— Seek it only in the grave! Love may die, and hatred slumber, And their memory will decay, As the watered garden recks not Of the drought of yesterday; But the dream of power once broken, What shall give repose again? What shall charm the serpent-furies Coiled around the maddening brain? What kind draught can nature offer Strong enough to lull their sting? Better to be born a peasant Than to live an exiled king! Oh, these years of bitter anguish!— What is life to such as me, With my very heart as palsied As a wasted ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... Colonel Blount to his senior major, "I wouldn't mind. But I can't. Only General Withers at the Divisional Headquarters, the Brigadier, you, and myself knew the details of our last scheme, and yet the Bosches got wind of them. It's maddening, maddening!" ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... a doubt, which was really a fear, as to what was going to happen; for, notwithstanding all this neglect of due precaution on the priest's part, to touch him seemed impossible, miraculously so, and every plan of attack dissolved into futility in the most maddening way. ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson |
