"Madness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his brow Relentless frowns involved. His savage limbs 510 With sharp impatience violent he writhed, As through convulsive anguish; and his hand, Arm'd with a scorpion lash, full oft he raised In madness to his bosom; while his eyes Rain'd bitter tears, and bellowing loud he shook The void with horror. Silent by his side The virgin came. No discomposure stirr'd Her features. From the glooms which hung around, No stain of darkness mingled with the beam Of her divine effulgence. Now they ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... reconciliation, for, in the presence of the different generations of the suspected family, Providence itself shall decide which of its members has been guilty of treason. During the preparations for the obsequies the bride shows signs of approaching madness; she flies from her bridegroom, refuses to be united to him, and locks herself up in her tower-chamber. Only when, at night, the gloomy though gorgeous ceremony commences, does she appear at the head of her women to be present at the burial service, the gruesome solemnity of which ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... that he can suffer long and much, both morally and physically, without dying; that it is therefore necessary to have patience; that that would even have been better for those poor little children; that it had been an act of madness for him, a miserable, unfortunate wretch, to take society at large violently by the collar, and to imagine that one can escape from misery through theft; that that is in any case a poor door through which to escape from misery through which infamy ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... they like dearly to see it going forward. And love, considered as a spectacle, must have attractions for many who are not of the confraternity. The sentimental old maid is a commonplace of the novelists; and he must be rather a poor sort of human being, to be sure, who can look on at this pretty madness without indulgence and sympathy. For nature commends itself to people with a most insinuating art; the busiest is now and again arrested by a great sunset; and you may be as pacific or as cold-blooded as you will, but you cannot help some emotion when you read of well-disputed battles, ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... seen Anderson. She sprang up. It became sure to her that she must get away from that house, that she must not remain. The imaginative girl, whom anxiety and want of food had weakened, as well as fear, was fairly at the point of madness, or that hysteria which is the border-land of it. She distinctly heard herself laugh as she ran out of the room and out of the house. Her head was bare, but she did not think of that. She had on her coat which she had worn because of the ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Her eyes to mine inclining, Like azure isles In seas of lovelight shining, With a merry madness find I endless pleasure— Till she sighs—then sadness is my only treasure. Woe best beguiles; Mirth, wait thou other whiles, Thou shalt borrow all my sorrow When ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... unreasonable. In this Distraction she lay, till those women were Apprehended, by the Authority; then she began to mend; and upon their Execution, was presently and perfectly Recovered, from the ten years madness that had ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... Other books of short stories dealing with children are: Whilomville Stories, by Stephen Crane; The Golden Age, by Kenneth Grahame; The Madness of Philip, by Josephine Daskam Bacon; The King of Boyville, by William Allen White; New Chronicles of Rebecca, by Kate Douglas Wiggin. Read one of these, and compare ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... saw him with her prophetic eyes; and seeing as well all the guilt and misery that he was to bring upon them, she broke into bitter lamentations, and would have warned her kindred against the evil to come. But the Trojans gave little heed; they were wont to look upon her visions as spells of madness. Paris had come back to them a glorious youth and a victor; and when he made known the secret of his birth, they cast the words of the oracle to the winds, and received the ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... it done settled too strong in yo' tongue, run it off wid a song; an' ef yo' feet's git a kickin' spell on 'em, dance it off; an' ef you feel it in yo' han', des run fur de banjo an' play de sweetes' chune you know, an' fus' thing you know all yo' madness 'll ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... minstrel's heart in sadness Was wrestling with his fate; "Am I the sport of madness," He ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... introduced may be familiar to the reader; but the Author hopes that sufficient novelty of detail will be found even in these, to render them acceptable, while they could not be wholly omitted in justice to the subject of which it was proposed to treat. The memoirs of the South-Sea madness and the Mississippi delusion are more complete and copious than are to be found elsewhere; and the same may be said of the history of the Witch Mania, which contains an account of its terrific progress in Germany, a part of the subject which has been left comparatively untouched by ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... have protection from the burning sun by day. A thorn hedge, the native "boma," keeps out lions and the sneaking hyaena at night. Nor are their rifles more than a half protection, for the '303 makes so clean a hole that it is often madness to attempt to shoot a lion with it. Once wounded he is far more dangerous a foe. Here the "tota" earns his pay, for he can hunt the native villages for "cuckoos," ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... to realise the seriousness of your position," she said. "You're a married woman. If you persist in this madness you'll ruin your whole life. I'll be candid with you. What happens to you doesn't matter to me; but what happens to Arthur does. Can't you see the ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... morass. On the 6th of May, Verdugo found the States' commander-in-chief trenched and impregnable, squarely established upon his line of communications. He reconnoitred, called a council of war, and decided that to assail him were madness; to remain, destruction. On the night of the 6th of May, he broke up his camp and stole away in the darkness, without sound of drum or trumpet, leaving all his fortifications and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... provocation could excuse." It was, in Fuller's fine old quaint language, "breaking one whom God had bowed before." Our readers will find Butler's squib in our edition of that poet, vol. ii. p. 200, under the title of "A Panegyrick on Sir John Denham's Recovery from his Madness." It is a piece quite unworthy of Butler's powers, and its sting lies principally in charging Denham with plagiarising "Cooper's Hill" and "Sophy," with gambling, and with overreaching the King as Surveyor of the Public Buildings, and with an overbearing and ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... curiously comprehensive, can fancy the kind of rage and rapture with which it was received. It was a blow that shook the whole dynasty. Thersites had there given such a wound to Ajax, as Hector in arms could scarcely have inflicted: a blow sufficient almost to create the madness to which the fabulous hero of Homer ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Europe would rise up, like the earth-born children of Deucalion and Pyrrha (or of the Theban Cadmus and Hermione) American millions counted by hundreds. But from what radix? Originally, it would have been regarded as madness to take Ireland, in her Celtic element, as counting for anything. But of late—whether rationally, however, I will inquire for a brief moment or so—the counters have all changed in these estimates. The late Mr O'Connell ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... whose very silence charms, To be preferred to smoke—to the eclipse That Metropolitan volcanoes make, Whose Stygian throats breathe darkness all day long, And to the stir of commerce, driving slow, And thundering loud with his ten thousand wheels? They would be, were not madness in the head And folly in the heart; were England now What England was, plain, hospitable, kind, And undebauched. But we have bid farewell To all the virtues of those better days, And all their honest pleasures. Mansions once Knew their own masters, and laborious ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... go with the expectation of finding a land flowing with milk and honey, the sight of all this ruin long saddened his thoughts. All was confusion, disorder, debts, mortgages, sales, pillage, villainy, waste, folly, and madness. The nettles and brambles in the park were up to his shoulders; horses had been turned into the garden, and banditti lodged in ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... of one who stands between them and freedom, in order to fully appreciate the degree of malevolence which they frequently exhibit. Indeed, the study of litigious paranoia, more than anything else, illustrates how much method there may really be in madness. Were an alleged lunatic standing as a defendant in a criminal suit to use one-tenth of the amount of ingenuity and conscious direction of his symptoms that the average paranoiac uses, he would furnish the champions of the idea of malingering ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... pride deceive the sons of men who after money crave; shining riches at last become a sorrow: many have riches driven to madness. ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... breath, to think how soon every wretched roue in the city would be free to pollute the spotless child with glances, with words, even, in dances, with a clasp of her waist! De Windt, watching him covertly, said to himself that by that time, should this madness continue, Ivan would be fit only for ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... influences boys and girls feel the purest and simplest sentiments in a hyperesthetic manner. The girls here studied have lost an exact conception of the simple manifestations of friendship, and think they are giving evidence of exquisite sensibility and true friendship by loving a companion to madness; friendship in them has become a passion. That this intense desire to love a companion passionately is the result of the college environments may be seen by the following extract from a letter: "You know, dear, much better than I do how acutely ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... with man; Whose life such play and folly seems—for all Its sweat and agony—that laughter lies The sole escape from madness. I peruse The present and the past, only to find Mountains of human effort piled aloft Like the Egyptian Pyramids, and toward No end ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... Richard—ah, not far from believing he who but rejected such a God!—gave her to know that such things were believed. From the whole swarm she was protected—shame that it should have to be said!—by pure lack of what is generally regarded as a religious education, such being the mother of more tears and madness in humble souls, and more presumption in the proud and selfish, than perhaps any other influence out of whose darkness God brings light. Neither ascetic nor mystic nor doctrinist of any sort, caring nothing for church or chapel, of ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... "Does her madness usually take this form, gentlemen?" he added; "does she usually show this animosity ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... on the Stage of Action III Which the Reader, on perusal, may wish were Chapter the last IV In which it appears that the Knight, when heartily set in for sleeping, was not easily disturbed V In which this Recapitulation draws to a close VI In which the Reader will perceive that in some Cases Madness is catching VII In which the Knight resumes his Importance VIII Which is within a hair's-breadth of proving highly interesting will interest the Curiosity of the Reader IX Which may serve to show, that true Patriotism is of no Party X Which ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... feeling that lyric inspiration has found its most fruitful root. But not so. Warmly susceptible to the charms of friendship, Schubert for the most part enacted the role of the woman-hater, which was not all affected; for the Hamletlike mood is only in part a simulated madness with souls of this type. In early youth he would sneer at the amours of his comrades. It is true he fell a victim to the charms of Theresa Grobe, a beautiful soprano, who afterward became the spouse of a master-baker. But the only genuine love-sickness of Schubert ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... too late, however. Already the boat was several yards from the shore, and the frantic efforts he made in the madness of his despair to overtake it, only served to exhaust him. When Henry Stuart reached the beach, it was with difficulty he prevented those members of his band who carried muskets from firing on the boat. None of them thought for a moment, of course, of making the mad attempt to swim ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... have no ill-will against you, as they showed when you passed through them at Blackheath. I implore you, order all to remain quiet whatever happens, and it were best that all save your personal attendants dispersed to their apartments. Even the semblance of resistance might excite these people to madness, and serve as an excuse for the ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... exacting and depressing of mistresses. The man who gives himself up to her, who always takes too long views, who broods on the future of this planet when the sun has burned out, is on the high-way to madness. The odds are that he does not travel all the way. He remains a self-tormented wretch, highly profitable to his medical man, and a frightful nuisance to his family. Now, there are, of course, cases in which this melancholy has physical causes. It may ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... still prevents my wishes.— Yet I have one request, Might it not pass almost for madness, and Extreme ambition ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... for me one little bit?' she said wistfully, and surely sudden madness fell upon him. For he kissed her again, he kissed her many times, he took her in his arms, and pushed all thoughts of the consequences far ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... ye demons dark, Your madness, hate, and fell despair, And fling your darts at each we mark, That ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... in the glass was gone now. She was not like Arthur at all; it was madness in her to have thought so. And she was not like Gretchen either. Her mother was lying under the little pine tree which she and Harold had planted above the lonely grave. Her mother had been dark, and coarse, and bony, and a peasant woman—so Ann Eliza Peterkin, who had ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... of the Government;—prostituting the strength and influence of the Nation to the support of slavery here and elsewhere;—trampling on the rights of the free States and making the courts of the country their tools. To continue this disastrous alliance longer is madness. The trial of fifty years with the best of men and the best of Constitutions, on this supposition, only proves that it is impossible for free and slave States to unite on any terms, without all becoming partners in the guilt and responsible for the sin of slavery. We dare not prolong the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... moved the oar. What should he tell her to do? If she could put her single oar out at the stern, she might scull the boat; but he was sure she did not understand sculling, and to try it she would have to stand up, and this would be madness. ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... my pardner's arm, and sez I, "Stay by me, Josiah Allen; if madness and ruin result from this Pandemonium, be ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... tall and majestic: he was dexterous in all warlike accomplishments; intrepid in war, affable in peace; patient and prudent in council, bold and unhesitating in action. Ambition alone led him to attack the East; and the very madness of jealousy marked his course after his success. He was filial in his affection towards his mother; but he can scarcely be called affectionate who put to death his father-in-law, his brother-in-law, ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... him there exists nothing more awful than absolute solitude and the knowledge of complete isolation from human society and the life of moral and aesthetic culture. One step, one moment of weakness and dark madness will seize a man and carry him to inevitable destruction. I spent awful days of struggle with the cold and hunger but I passed more terrible days in the struggle of the will to kill weakening destructive thoughts. The memories of these days freeze my heart and mind and even now, as I revive them ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... to the exasperating provinciality of the town, exemplified by the childish preoccupation of the inhabitants with their own two-penny affairs. No characteristic of life in Bursley annoyed her more than this. None had oftener caused her to yearn in a brief madness for the desert-like freedom of great cities. But she had got accustomed to it. Indeed, she had almost ceased to notice it. Only occasionally, when her nerves were more upset than usual, did it ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... spirit—another was the stimulus he had, in sheer desperation, wooed so recklessly. When the thing was done it was something for angels and devils alike to tremble before. It meant nothing, of course, but, like many inscrutable and unfathomable things, it terrified by its sheer blank, chaotic madness. He hung it in the exhibition. And it was—yes, it was—the hit of the occasion. This is not a fairy tale—not even fiction. The story was told me by the culprit—or ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... the Major, advancing towards him, "I, as the senior, tell you, in the name of our comrades, that your behaviour would have been unpardonable unless a sort of madness had seized you. The game was a straightforward one, and only the generosity ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... time, and threatened them with punishment. If they still persevered, I ordered their commitment; for I had no doubt whatever, that whatever they confessed, at any rate, dogged and inflexible obstinacy deserved to be punished. There were others who displayed similar madness; but, as they were Roman citizens, I ordered them to be sent back to the city. Soon, persecution itself, as is generally the case, caused the crime to spread, and it appeared in new forms. An anonymous information was laid against a large number ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... we break in a minute In snatching the image our soul has cast in it, What is the use of the Summers and Springs, The wave of the woods and the waft of the wings— Since all means nothing, and good things and ill Make madness,—a ...
— The Rainbow and the Rose • E. Nesbit
... out. It looked very black. She gathered her dripping skirt back as she bent forward a little and peered into the darkness. The rain fell in sheets, now, with the unquavering sound of a steadily rushing torrent. It would be madness to go out into it. A shiver ran through her, and another. She was very cold and miserable. No doubt Griggs had a fire upstairs, and a pleasant light in his study. He would be there, hard at work. She would knock, and he would open, and she would ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... sufferings, and thinking even a cruel death preferable to a longer endurance of them, precipitately plunged into danger; and not fearing the last extremities, but being wrought up almost to madness, he undertook a most audacious enterprise. His desire was to win over the legions known as the Divitenses and the younger Tungricani, who were under orders to march through Thrace for the coming campaign, and, according to custom, would ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... of ultimate success; always acting with energy and vigour. He attempted to win {16} back, and had been forced to abandon, Ferghana; then he resolved, with a motley band of two to three hundred men, to march on Khorasan. It seemed madness, but the madness had a method. How he marched, and what was the result of his march, will be told in ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... So feeble were his spirits, and so low, And changed so, that no man coulde know His speech, neither his voice, though men it heard. And in his gear* for all the world he far'd *behaviour Not only like the lovers' malady Of Eros, but rather y-like manie* *madness Engender'd of humours melancholic, Before his head in his cell fantastic. And shortly turned was all upside down, Both habit and eke dispositioun, Of him, this woful lover Dan* Arcite. *Lord Why should I all day of his woe indite? When he endured ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... these little vessels with their precious cargoes becalmed, or with wind ahead, just unable to make anchorage, and often on moonless nights when the barometer has been low and the sky threatening. As there were no lights on the land, it would have been madness to try ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... came out with a story of rafters of the original Titianic kitchen being still visible in the new one. After a lapse of two years I revisited the house, and found that so far from having learned patience by frequent trial, the inmates had been apparently goaded into madness during the interval. They seemed to know of our approach by instinct, and thrust their heads out, ready for protest, before we were near enough to speak. The lazy, frowzy women, the worthless men, and idle, loafing boys of the neighborhood, ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... this madness of his old friend, Jotham easily made his way to where the prophet stood. He placed his arm around Isaiah's shoulder and invited him to go with him and his companions to ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... hands. "If I could get over to England," he wrote to his old chief, General Greene, "without being known, and only remain in safety until I could get out a proclamation, I could open the eyes of the country with respect to the madness and stupidity of its government." Greene had no confidence in the success of this appeal to the English people, and advised Paine not to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... went bent double toward Danveld, as if he wished to embrace his knees; and his eyes glittered with madness, and his voice broke alternately with pain, fear, and dread. Danveld, hearing the accusations of treason and deceit in presence of all, commenced to snort, and at length his features worked with rage; so that like a flame in ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Lords, see what sort of peace he afterwards made. I could prove, if I were called upon so to do, from this paper that they have had the folly and madness to produce to you for other purposes, that he might at any time have made a better treaty, and have concluded a more secure and advantageous peace, than that which at last he acceded to; that the treaty he made was both disadvantageous and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... use of machine devices. Take the building trade. I've revolutionized it. Till now all the bricks even for a high building were carried up to the mason in hods. Madness! Think of the waste of it. By my method instead of carrying the bricks to the mason we take the mason to the brick,—lower him on a wire rope, give him a brick, and up he goes again. As soon as he wants another brick he calls down, 'I want ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... returning like the night wind from a different direction, cut at himself, at the collapse of his integrity. He was, in reality, frightened at what had been no better than a relapse into a state of mania; he was shocked at the presence, however temporary, of a frenzy of madness. ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... eying her with the resentment which is so closely akin to love; "but I think you understand my madness. Talking gets us nowhere. A dozen times to-day your eyes answered mine. Either you feel it too or you ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... in Contarini Fleming as the sin by which the young author was most easily beset. His attempts at serious sentiment and pompous reflection are too often deplorable, because inanimate and stilted. When he warns a heroine against an error of judgment by shouting, "'Tis the madness of the fawn who gazes with adoration on the lurid glare of the anaconda's eye," or murmurs, "Farewell, my lovely bird; I'll soon return to pillow in thy nest," we need all the stimulus of his irony and his velocity to carry us over such ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... Bellasses, and others, where there were high words and some blows, and pulling off of perriwiggs; till my Lord Monk took away some of their swords, and sent for some soldiers to guard the house till the fray was ended. To such a degree of madness the nobility of this age is come! After dinner I went up to Sir Thomas Crew, who lies there not very well in his head, being troubled with vapours and fits of dizziness: and there I sat talking with him all the afternoon from one discourse ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... careful examination of the cuts on his chest, and was relieved to discover that Ling Chu—he did not doubt that the Chinaman was responsible for Milburgh's plight—had not yet employed that terrible torture which had so often brought Chinese criminals to the verge of madness. ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... himself of whatever lay between Egypt and the Carthaginian territory. But the Phoenician sailors who manned his fleet refused to sail against their brethren in Carthage. Cambyses assumed the title and character of an Egyptian sovereign. The story of his madness is an invention ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... her hand on his arm, her warm breath on his cheek, her face so near to his, left him capable in that moment of but one thought, and that was that he loved her wildly, with a love which it had been madness for him to think he could ever overcome or forget. But it was not with soft and melting emotions, but rather in great bitterness, that he owned the mastery of the passion which he had tried so hard to throw off. He knew that if she despised him before, ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... bashing his mother and saying to her, "O old woman of ill-omen, am I not the Commander of the Faithful? Thou hast ensorcelled me!" When the folk heard his words, they said, "This man raveth," and doubted not of his madness. So they came in upon him, and seizing him, pinioned his elbows, and bore him to the Bedlam. Quoth the Superintendent, "What aileth this youth?" and quoth they, "This is a madman, afflicted of the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... has anathematized it. The partisans and the enemies of Aristotle have each been excommunicated in their turn, as have those who wore long hair and those who wore short. In this world we have perfect law only to rule a species of madness called gaming. The rules of gaming are the only ones which admit neither exception, relaxation, variety nor tyranny. A man who has been a lackey, if he play at lansquenet with kings, is paid without difficulty if he win; everywhere else the law is a sword with ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... stumbling through the darkness, but his speed was no match for the madness of fear, and his steps were still to be heard crashing through the furze bushes and loose stones, when the white coiffe had flitted, like some bird of night, round the projecting boulders of ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... convincing all the Indians who saw him that he was possessed by a spirit, which nothing but the approach of Okoj could reduce. So deep was their conviction and her's, that she at last consented to become his wife, and never after was he troubled by a return of madness." ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... asylum they are going. They will be lost to what friends or relatives they have in that oblivion of a living grave. When their comrades return, not the faintest echo of the cheering will reach their cells. Men do not like to talk of madness; they will point with pride and pity to chums and comrades bearing honourable wounds, but these poor wretches will just disappear, lost in the great aftermath of war. We still have the expressions "frightened out of his senses" or "frightened out of his wits," and here are instances of its actually ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... the delight I take in your society, the urgent manner in which I have so frequently, this summer, begged your company from your mother. You know this would have not only been the height of insincerity, but of folly and madness, if I had not felt a reliance upon you that made me consider it as an absolute impossibility that you could ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... certain animals connect ideas of misery or enjoyment with particular words which they are acquainted with. I'll give you an example. I knew a cob in Ireland that could be driven to a state of kicking madness by a particular word, used by a particular person, in a particular tone; but that word was connected with a very painful operation which had been performed upon him by that individual, who had frequently ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... go about the streets begging piteously, with a calabash inkstand and reed-pen in their hands. I have been pestered with two or three every day since I came here. They also wander through the country parts of Damerghou. Bornou is the nursery of these silly pedagogues, in whom learning and madness are most cordially united; but, as I have already mentioned, it sends out a few instructed ones to redeem the reputation ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... of lofty lineage would turn their backs and scorn to take them. I were to blame an I permitted this calamity. You can permit it an you are minded so to do, for you have the delegated authority, but that the king should do it were a most strange madness and not ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Say, what revenge on Dennis can be had, Too dull for laughter, for reply too mad? On one so poor you cannot take the law, On one so old your sword you scorn to draw, Uncag'd then, let the harmless monster rage, Secure in dullness, madness, want, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... and the madness fired his blood. Half stupefied, she yielded to his embrace, her lips rested upon his, her frightened eyes were half closed. His arms held her like a vise, he could feel her heart throbbing madly against his. How long they remained like ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and John Mangles, the Major was right in every aspect of the case. To attempt to follow the sailor, to run in the darkness of night among the convicts in their leafy ambush was madness, and more than that—it was useless. Glenarvan's party was not so numerous that it could afford to sacrifice ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... are mutually exclusive. Only in a kind of aesthetic orgy — in the madness of an intoxicated imagination — can we confuse them. As the Roman emperor wished that the Roman people had but a single neck, to murder them at one blow, so we may sometimes wish that all beauties had but one form, that we might behold them together. But in the nature of things ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... with the other dashing off some of the most perfect masterpieces of English prose. And when he would wince and turn white at her coughing, she would always whisper: "Work on, my poet, and when you have finished read it to me. I am happy when I listen." O, the devotion of women and the madness of art! They are the two most awesome things on earth, and surely this man knew both to ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... said Dr. Brayle when we moved away at last, flinging the end of his cigar over the yacht side—"Something of madness ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... returned to the scene of his triumph, his self-appointed companion could only surmise. He had determined to save this young fool in spite of his madness, and never had he failed to bring his enterprises to their fore-arranged end. And there was sentiment between all this, sentiment he would not have been ashamed to avow. Upon chance, then, fickle inconstant ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... beauty of the prospect; but the sight of the numerous cities, telling of an immense population, filled them with uneasiness; and a clamor presently arose, that to march onward against such overwhelming odds was nothing short of madness; and that, having accomplished such vast things, they had done sufficient for honor, and should now return with the spoils they had ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... degree when, in a curtain lecture, my staid, correct, frosty-hearted, jewel-hugging aunt said, "Cheeseman, it was a judgment for such conduct to a wife. In that letter, which you treated with such contumely, I strictly cautioned you not to take that valuable box about with you, if your madness for sight-seeing should lead you into a mob. Let this be a warning to you; and be sure that though woman be the weaker vessel, she is oftentimes the deepest." We ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 30, 1841 • Various
... himself to dwell on these thoughts—madness lay that way. Madness, and a watching demon that whispered of substance, and sought to guide his wanderings in the night. Hodder clung to the shell of reality, to the tiny panorama of the visible and the finite, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... itself into the past and the 24th was following in the gloomy wake of its predecessors. Two days more! He began to feel the approach of madness! His own death was not far away. It would follow that of the Prince and of Olga Platanova, his friend. But he was not thinking of his own death; he was ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... Spanish writer, treating of the Inquisition, has some very striking remarks on the kind of madness which, whenever some terrible notoriety is given to a particular offence, leads persons of distempered fancy to accuse themselves of it. He observes that when the cruelties of the Inquisition against ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... for thought she was, rapidly driven to the railway station, and conveyed to the Hospital for Lunatic Criminals. It was only when she was within this vast and grim abode of madness that she realized the horror of her situation. It was only when she was received by the kind physician and read pity in his eyes, and saw his look of hopeless incredulity when she attempted to tell him that she was ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the opinions infused along with them, into heads already inflamed by youth and wine, are enough to scatter madness and sedition through a whole camp. So seldom upon their knees to pray, and so often to curse! This is not properly atheism, but a sort of anti-religion prescribed by the Devil, and which an atheist of common sense would scorn as an absurdity. I have heard it ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... brains out six months after; and serve you right, too! Don't let us talk about it to-night. I am sorry for you, and if you have any sense left you will soon be sorry for yourself. Here comes Doctor Oleander, and I mean to be as fascinating as I know how, just to drive the other two to the verge of madness." ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... said Shackwell, with reviving obstinacy. "But if you've reached such a height and pulled him up to your side it seems to me that from that standpoint you ought to get an even clearer view of the madness of your position. You say you have decided to sacrifice your own feelings and your wife's—though I'm not so sure of your right to dispose of her voice in the matter; but what if you sacrifice the party and the State as well, in this transcendental ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... air. I was watching the first red streak that heralded the rising sun, when I was startled by the words, "Thank God," faintly uttered behind me. Suddenly she had awoke from her torpor, and with a heart overflowing I went to her bedside. Her eyes were full of madness! She spoke, but ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... good rout! I can afford them leave to err so still; And like the barking students of Bears-college, To swallow up the garbage of the time With greedy gullets, whilst myself sit by, Pleased, and yet tortured, with their beastly feeding. 'Tis a sweet madness runs along with them, To think, all that are aim'd at still are struck: Then, where the shaft still lights, make that the mark: And so each fear or fever-shaken fool May challenge Teucer's hand in archery. Good troth, if I knew any man so vile, To act the crimes these Whippers ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... each paroxysm I fancy I escape somewhat stronger, somewhat more manly than before. I think, too, my periods of excess are shorter, and of repentance longer; and I sometimes entertain a hope that folly and madness will in me, as in the young, become exhausted, and that beyond still lies the goal of peace ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... it," he observed, as soon as he was somewhat recovered. "No sooner was I on the rope, than some of the wretches in their madness cut it, and have so lost all means of reaching the shore in safety. Still we will do what we can ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... only it swept over me, as with a sudden tempest, that, if I meant to get back to my own camp, I must keep my wits about me. I must not dwell on any other alternative, any more than a boy who climbs a precipice must look down. Imagination had no business here. That way madness lay. There was a shore somewhere before me, and I must get to it, by the ordinary means, before the ebb laid bare the flats, or swept me below the lower bends of the ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... cornice of gilt wood, remembering that everything had ended there. Thenceforth no more hopes, no dreams, for the man whom Fate and Destiny, hitherto propitious and obliging, had conspired to lash with scourges, and drive with goads, and hound with despairs and horrors to the sheer brink where Madness waits to hurl the desperate over ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... Miss Gabriel had not lived all her life in Garland Town without learning the subtle aromas of the wind, to distinguish those that were harmless or beneficent from those that warned, those that threatened, those that were morose, savage, malignant, those that piped a note of madness and meant a hurricane. Nor did the fog in itself appear to her very formidable. To be sure, she had never known a thicker one; but the Lord Proprietor (saving his presence) had probably exaggerated its terror. He was—let this excuse be made for ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the cause:—"Lyons rebelled against the Republic—Lyons is no more." Such fragments of the town as might be permitted to remain, were to bear the name of Ville Affranchie. It will scarce be believed that a doom like that which might have passed the lips of some eastern despot, in all the frantic madness of arbitrary power and utter ignorance, could have been seriously pronounced, and as seriously enforced, in one of the most civilized nations in Europe; and that to the present enlightened age, men who pretended to wisdom and ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... is the third letter I write to you this blessed day, dear Hal, I cannot help thinking myself a funny woman; and that if you are as fond of me as you pretend to be, you ought to be much obliged to the "streak of madness" which compels me ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... have been brought under the power of one of those influences which have been proved to exist, but which have hitherto been inexplicable, which are called suggestions. In any case, my mental state bordered on madness, and twenty-four hours of Paris sufficed to ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... dinner, sir?" John Thomas rubs the sweat from his forehead and sets the soup on the table. I ponder on the madness of eating Christmas fare in that oven-like mess-room, but sentiment wins, and I sit down with ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... is close upon you when the madness of the season Having howled itself to silence, like a Minnesota 'clone, Will at last be superseded by the still, small voice of reason, When the whelpage of your ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... I think just the reverse. When the fit is on me, I assert that this fever—this madness—far from being the bane of my life, is a blessing to it; that I am habitually devoting money, time, and wits to an object at once beautiful and elevating; that I have found consolation in its visions for many sufferings, which all the amusements ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... example, first make certain Of one good hour, like theirs, before our parting; Make a debauch, o'er night, of love and madness; And marry, when ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... evil among all things that are done under the sun, that there is one event unto all: yea, also the heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live, and after that ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... worked, permitting her fear and rage to rouse no answer in kind from himself; talking to her softly, luring her out of fury into the enveloping madness ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... madness is past," the Russian began, slowly and musically. The tone was musing. He seemed oblivious of his surroundings and that three pairs of curious eyes were leveled in his direction. He studied the note, creased it, drew it through his fingers, smoothed it and caressed it. "And ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... what I say. Just let me look through the keyhole before I mention it. All right; there's nobody at the keyhole; I may say it safely. It's a dreadful secret to reveal—Mrs. Housekeeper is mad! No, no; there can be no possible mistake about it. If there's a creature living who thoroughly understands madness when he sees ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... to sadness, Hark! hark, what myriads bid you rise; Three millions of our race in madness Break out in wails, in bitter cries, Break out in wails, in bitter cries, Must men whose hearts now bleed with anguish, Yes, trembling slaves in freedom's land, Endure the lash, nor raise a hand? Must nature 'neath the whip-cord languish? Have pity on the slave, Take ...
— The Anti-Slavery Harp • Various
... collected in a large and excited gathering, and sent a delegation of three persons to demand of the governor the communication which he had received from the hostile fleet. Threats were uttered. Curses were heard. Resistance was declared to be madness. The universal voice clamored for the letter. The community was upon the eve ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... further interruption, monsieur," I cried. "I can permit no such madness on my flying ground, and no such discourtesy ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... to give up this folly. I asked you not to do it at Cambridge, and I ask you again now. I don't care a damn what I promised. It's simple madness, and—" ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... he went on in resolute sinning, only grudging that he could not get such scope as the madness of despair solicited, when one day standing at a neighbour's window, cursing and swearing, and "playing the madman, after his wonted manner," the woman of the house protested that he made her tremble, ...
— Life of Bunyan • Rev. James Hamilton
... see such frights as poor Mrs. Feathertop has got?" said Dame Scratchard. "I knew what would come of her family—all deformed, and with a dreadful sort of madness, which makes them love to shovel mud with those ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... which the attendants devised little paths—they were like an inundation, a deluge, which rose up, streamed over the whole Palais de l'Industrie, and submerged it beneath the murky flow of all the mediocrity and madness to be found in the river of Art. And but a single afternoon sitting was held, from one till seven o'clock—six hours of wild galloping through a maze! At first they held out against fatigue and strove to keep their vision clear; but the forced march soon made their legs give way, their ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... Peter. "Shan't be bothered with 'Master Tommy' any more, don't expect. Starting a nursery at our time of life. Madness." Peter's pen scratched and spluttered. Elizabeth kept an eye ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... are done in temporary fits of insanity," went on Chinston, "and if a person broods over anything, his incipient madness is sure to break out sooner or later; but, of course, there are cases where a perfectly sane person may commit a murder on the impulse of the moment, but I regard such persons as mad for the time being; but, ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... made no reply. He was placed in a very disagreeable and painful position. He knew that it was madness to send a boat off while the squall was impending. Mr. Hamblin was wrathy. The long billows were black and smooth, and the sails hung idly on the gaffs. There was no danger then, and the learned gentleman had been so fortunate ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... to that piece of madness, known by the name of the Continental system, the First Consul adopted every possible preventive measure against the introduction of English merchandise. Bonaparte's irritation against the English was not without a cause. The intelligence which reached ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... God sent the great Mohammedan imposture to punish the corrupt Christianity of a former age, so in like manner He may soon commission Mormonism to wipe out of existence the corrupt Christianity of Mexico. Mormonism has not yet developed a military character, because it would be madness to raise an arm against the United States. But when it shall have once passed the frontier and entered the dominions of a feeble state, then we shall see how keen an edge fanaticism can give to the sword in the hands of men naturally courageous, when the double motive ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson |
