"Unhinged" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... vessels; among others from Captain Daniel, who turned up in Vancouver's Island. It seems that after you were thrown overboard and supposed to be drowned, your poor father went—went—that is to say, his mind was unhinged, owing, no doubt, to the combined effect of your supposed murder and the two terrible blows by which he was felled during ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... Stimulants—violent stimulants. In the highest quarters. Terrible. Exalted persons. Royalty! Anxious to be given war work and become anonymous.... Horrible! He's been a terrible influence. One idea—to disturb soul and body. Minds unhinged. Personal relations deranged. Shattered the practice of years. The harm he ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... "It's only her way of saying that my mind is unhinged and that I ought to be sent to a private ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... trouble some of the strongest minds were unhinged. It is no small honor to George Sand that hers should have preserved its balance. The pages of this journal are distinguished throughout by a wonderful calm of judgment and an equitable tone—not the calm of indifference, but of a broad and penetrating intelligence, no longer ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... manuscript of his much-prized translation from the Welsh of The Sleeping Bard—and this by his 'prince of publishers,' John Murray. 'There is no money in it,' said the publisher, and he was doubtless right.[193] The two disasters were of different character, but both unhinged him. He had already written Wild Wales, although it was not to be published for another four years. He had caused to be advertised—in 1857—a book on Cornwall, but it was never written in any definitive form, and now our ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... though the enemies were safe in prison, she knew not but that dagger, dagg, or arming sword might still be ready for her, and she believed that any fatal charge openly made against Mary at the trial might drive her friends to desperation and lead to the use of dagg or dagger. She was more unhinged than ever before, and commanded herself with difficulty when going through all the scenes of ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... their date, and their melancholy end. Both (Suckling in 1609, Lovelace nine years later) were born to large fortunes, both spent them, at least partially, in the King's cause, and both died miserably,—Suckling, in 1642, by his own hand, his mind, according to a legend, unhinged by the tortures of the Inquisition; Lovelace, two years before the Restoration, a needy though not an exiled cavalier, in London purlieus. Both have written songs of quite marvellous and unparalleled exquisiteness, and both have left doggerel which would ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... round with that to the problem of just how the whole thing had seemed to him. He looked completely undamaged—so far, good; he was neither scared nor unhinged, he was simply tremendously satisfied with the afternoon's entertainment, and there in his arms were ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... the absurdity of this ambition. I lacked the ghost of an idea of how to set about the thing. But the general craziness of events had unhinged me. I was forming the habit of trusting to pure luck and vogue la galere! I can't swear that I hadn't visions of conquering all my adversaries in some miraculous single-handed fashion, disarming them, and, as a final sweet touch of revenge, tying them up in ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... unaccountable disorder in the sinews, or somewhere in the bones of the neck—with a weakness or total want of power in her fillets; and, in short, the whole vertebrae of her spine seemed to be diseased and unhinged, and in eight and forty hours, in spite of the two best farriers in the country, she died and be damn'd to her! The farriers said that she had been quite strained in the fillets beyond cure before you had bought her; and that the poor devil, though ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... capotes, on the bare rock, near where they had been working, and held a whispered conversation together, which lasted for some time after darkness covered the face of the deep. Paolo's mind, troubled and unhinged with the thoughts of the past, and the darkening prospect of the future, for long refused to allow sleep to visit his eyelids. He listened to ascertain whether his sister and Miss Garden were still awake; but from the perfect ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... lest the servant, who did not like to be disturbed, should ill-treat her. And, at two o'clock in the morning, after offering Santerre an oyster supper at a night restaurant, the Seguins would come home, their minds unhinged by the imbecile literature and art to which they had taken for fashion's sake, vitiated yet more by the ignoble performance they had witnessed, and the base society they had elbowed at supper. They seemed ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... the great event which is befalling one of the seniors. It is thought at once a delicate and prudent precaution to prevent the veil which hides the future, with its casualties, from being lifted prematurely and abruptly, where juvenile minds are concerned, lest they become unhinged and unfit for the salutary discipline of schoolroom lessons, and the mild pleasure of schoolroom treats. The flower in the bud ought to be kept with its petals folded, in its innocent absence of ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... neither reason, examine, nor discuss. They clap those whom they approve, and hiss those whom they disapprove.... I told their President frankly that it was impossible for such a mob to govern the country. They have unhinged everything. It is anarchy beyond conception, and they will be obliged to ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... distinguishing features of that wonderful character, one of the most interesting (yet painful) is that soreness of mind which makes him treat the intrusions of Polonius with harshness, and that asperity which he puts on in his interviews with Ophelia. These tokens of an unhinged mind (if they be not mixed in the latter case with a profound artifice of love, to alienate Ophelia by affected discourtesies, so to prepare her mind for the breaking off of that loving intercourse, which can no ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... Unprofitable. She was Unknown, Unnoticed, Unheeded, Unobeyed, Unloved, Unfriended, Unemployed, Unvalued, Unpopular, and actually Unpitied. She was Unsuccessful, Unfortunate, Unlucky, Unpaid, Unshod, Unfed, Unquiet, Unsettled, Uncertain, Undecided, Unhinged, Uneasy, Upset, Unhappy, and Utterly Useless. Until, by chance, she went to Cole's Book Arcade, and got some good instructive books, and now she is the very best person in Australia, and the best ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... man's nervous system is seriously deranged. I noticed something strange in him when he first came to consult me about his mother's health. The mischief has not been caused entirely by the affliction of her death. In my belief, his mind has been—what shall I say?—unhinged, for some time past. He is a very reserved person. I suspect he has been oppressed by anxieties which he has kept secret from every one. At his age, the unacknowledged troubles of life are generally troubles caused by women. It is in his temperament to take ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... scarcely dared to hope that the thing was true; that thing which her miraculous escape had suggested to a mind almost unhinged. It took her more than a minute to mount the steps and push the heavy door open, and satisfy herself that in the outer room at least all was as she had left it. A spark of fire still glowed on the hearth; she ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... is not cruel, neither does it crawl. The state of mind which attributes to it these characters of a living creature is one in which the reason is unhinged by grief. All violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize as the ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... no money troubles; but were there any domestic troubles which might have unhinged his mind to that extent?" said ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... life, with the exception of one, which affords the orthodox "haunted house" belonging to every well-regulated village. The ruined walls of this old mansion, with lichen cropping out from every crevice; the unhinged doors and broken windows; the ladder rotting as it leans against the moss-grown roof, the broken well-sweep and deserted barn, offer an aspect of desolation and decay which should prove sufficient bait to tempt any ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... or ever. The Algemeine Zeitung of Vienna said that Zionism was a madness born of despair, The Algemeine Zeitung of Munich described it as a fantastic dream of a feuilletonist whose mind had been unhinged ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... out. "It's a lie!" The man's reason appeared to be almost unhinged; a mad terror seemed to possess him. "It's all a lie! I never heard of this rajah bunk before in my life! I never heard of Deemer, or any jewels before. You lie! I tell you, you lie! You can't ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... now, he filled your mind with all sorts of nonsense about me—probably told you that I was the greatest villain unhung, eh? and all that sort of thing? Poor fellow! He was a fine sort before his mind became unhinged. One of his fancies used to be that everybody else was insane, or just about to become insane. Is he still as bad ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... difficult to determine the exact line of demarcation where sound sense stops, and insanity commences; but he, who has visited a receptacle for the insane, will speedily observe the strange state and appearance of the eyes of those whose intellects are unhinged. This appearance cannot be mistaken either in lucid or rabid intervals; it is still perceptible, although, of course, in a greater or lesser degree. Now, the visitor to Bethlehem, on the occasion here refered to, particularly observed ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... civilian in a moment of provocation. It may seem a just retribution that he should have met with such a tragic fate, but those who knew him in Natal felt nothing but regret for his loss. Oberst von Braun was taken prisoner a few days after, and the British reported that his mind was unhinged. This did not appear improbable to us, for we knew how much he had been affected by the loss of ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... to be on board. We were, however, delayed by an 'attack of nerves' on the part of Catherine, who during the morning was seized with a violent fit of hysteria to which she completely gave way, sobbing, laughing and gasping for breath in a manner which showed her to be quite unhinged and swept from self- control. Dr. Brayle took her at once in charge, while Mr. Harland fumed and fretted, pacing up and down in the saloon with an angry face and brooding eyes. He looked at me where I stood waiting, ready dressed for the excursion ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... an open question. The mind is unhinged; there is no doubt of that. There is something more here than the ordinary delirium we ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... mysterious journeys in various directions, while her days at home were usually spent in the solitude of her own room. Some friends of the family, he said, attributed it to grief at the great blow she had sustained, while others suspected that her mind had become slightly unhinged. I recollected, myself, how strange had been her manner when she had visited me, and inwardly ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... from him by accident; but they did not fall to the ground. My child! His child, what an association of ideas! If I had had a father, such a father!—She could not dwell on the thoughts, the wishes which obtruded themselves. Her mind was unhinged, and passion unperceived filled her whole soul. Lost, in waking dreams, she considered and reconsidered Henry's account of himself; till she actually thought she would tell Ann—a bitter recollection then roused her out of her reverie; and aloud she ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft
... 2d place, I have taken a wide difference: my object is not to excite fear of supernatural tilings in my reader, but to show the effect of such fear upon the agents in the story—one a man of sense and firmness—one a man unhinged by remorse—one a stupid uninquiring clown—one a learned and worthy, but superstitious divine. In the third place, the book turns on this hinge, and cannot want it. But I will try to insinuate the refutation of Aldiboronti's exception ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... could not collect my thoughts, the news seemed to have unhinged my mind, but presently I remembered. I thought of what I had heard Richard Tresidder say, and many wild ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... have been very badly kept in the Ogilvie family. Also, may I say this to you in confidence? There was an idea in many people's minds that, about the time of Colonel Ogilvie's death and the early infancy of the second son, Peter, Mrs. Ogilvie's mind was slightly unhinged for a time. It may not have been so, but one cannot help wondering if the concealment which she has used to keep from her family the knowledge of the existence of this disease from which she has died may not have been something like a return ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... thought.' The allusion to upsetting a decanter reminds the other interlocutor of a story, which he proceeds to tell. A gentleman who carved a goose was inexpert; and thinking only of the stubborn joints that would not be unhinged, he totally forgot the gravy. Presently, the goose slipped off the dish, and escaped into his neighbour's lap. Now, to have thrown a hot goose on a lady's lap would disconcert most people, but the gentleman in question was not disconcerted. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various
... Anne and Anthony had been endeavouring to restrain broke out tempestuously. Betty's procedure and bearing at the Bridge table would have unhinged an enthusiast, but since the four domestics played for amusement and a penny a hundred her short-comings hurt nobody ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... been censured by the court: but, I have my own opinion. I sincerely pity him; and have wrote to Lord Melville, and Sir Evan Nepean, to try what can be done. All together, I am much unhinged. ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol II. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... there is one other thing you do not know. The poor fellow has a child, only one, to whom he is devoted. I heard this morning that the child is dying. Under such circumstances his mind may have been unhinged. Let me follow him. I will return after I have ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... dazed: then he fell back in a faint and was carried by his attendants from the room. The shock had unhinged the poor man's reason: he lingered insane for eighteen ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... deposited your watch and purse under your pillow. At the hotels, you never thought of placing your boots outside the door; and the landlords, in the morning, carefully looked to see if the towels, or the blankets of the beds had been stolen. All things were thus unhinged. Misery had let loose upon the community all the outlaws of civilization; the scum and dregs of society had come to the top, and floated on the surface ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... lips set hard and his hands tightened to fists as he murmured: "I've met with criminals who used strange tools, but never before have I met with one who had the cunning and the incredible cruelty to utilise the mania of an unhinged human mind. It is a thousand times worse than those criminals who, now and then throughout the ages, have trained brute beasts to murder for them. Truly, this Hungarian peasant, Gyuri Kovacz, deserves a high place in the infamous roll-call ...
— The Case of The Pool of Blood in the Pastor's Study • Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner
... merry, in such exhilaration, that her mother was glad to welcome back the shadowed mood which soon succeeded. The sagacity of physicians, of her most familiar acquaintances, of her mother, was all at fault. No one could decide whether or not her mind was unhinged, whether or not Mary Trigillgus was insane; for it must be remembered that her friends were ignorant of the events we have been narrating—her love for Christian Van Pelt, her disappointment, her grand scheme, the sacrifice of her home and the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... place, there is no vulgarity in Restif. If he had had a more regular education and society, literary or other, and could have kept his mind, which was to a certainty slightly unhinged, off the continual obsession of morbid subjects, he might have been a very considerable man of letters, and he is no mean one, so far as style goes,[419] as it is. He avails himself duly of the obscurity of a learned ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... stresses is greatly diminished. The restricted area on which the pressure acts at the lead joints involves greater intensity of stress than has been usual in arched bridges. In the Wuerttemberg hinged arches a limit of stress of 110 tons per sq. ft. was allowed, while in the unhinged arches at Cologne and Coblentz the limit was 50 to 60 tons per sq. ft. (Annales des Fonts et Chaussees, 1891). At Rechtenstein a bridge of two concrete arches has been constructed, span 751/2 ft., with lead articulations: width of arch 11 ft.; depth of arch ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... narrating a scene related to us by the very gaoler we here describe, and as nearly as possible in his own language. rather an uncommon case, says it makes a body feel kind a' unhinged about the heart, which heart, however rocky at times, will have its own way when little children are sorrowing. "And then, to know their parents! that's what tells deeper on a body's feeling,—it makes a body look into the hereafter." The man of ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... effectually, was to vitiate and taint the coronation of Charles VII as the work of a witch. That policy, and not malice (as M. Michelet is so happy to believe), was the moving principle in the subsequent prosecution of Joanna. Unless they unhinged the force of the first coronation in the popular mind by associating it with power given from hell, they felt that the sceptre of the invader ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... but Francesca was so unhinged by her unfortunate exit from Ballycastle that, after a few miles, she announced her intention of putting her machine and herself on the car; whereupon Benella proclaimed herself a competent cyclist, and climbed down blithely to mount the discarded wheel. Her ideas of propriety were by ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... given it all up now. I will not meddle with spiritualism again. It unhinged my nerves and destroyed my peace of mind while I was ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... the opinion of a good part of the congregation, when she said, on the way home after the service, "Poor Canon Farlow! It is too terrible. The excitement of the wedding must have unhinged his mind." ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... children, as the whole household, quite beside themselves, dragged them into a dark passage, where, on their knees, with frightful groans and cries, they thought to conciliate the wrathful Deity. Meanwhile, my father, who was the only one self- possessed, forced open and unhinged the window-frames, by which we saved much glass, but made a broader inlet for the rain that followed the hail; so that, after we were finally quieted, we found ourselves in the rooms and on the stairs completely surrounded by floods and streams ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... laughable side, and passengers unacquainted with the custom may be astonished to hear all sorts of oaths and curses, or words of entreaty and encouragement, addressed to some well-known name—and they might be excused for thinking the driver's mind was a little unhinged, or that in his troubles and vexations he was calling on some prominent citizen, in the same way that knights of ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... companion, which would ensure a noiseless retreat. To men of his own stamp it would have been useful, but he little knew the peculiar temperament of his friend; the mere idea of the success of the whole expedition depending upon his extreme care unhinged the nerves of the poor artist, who, although absolutely a brave man, in the true sense of the term, could no more control his nervous system than he could perform an Indian war-dance. He could have rushed single-handed on the whole body of warriors with ease, but he ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... allies' ratification of this deed, Napoleon's first demand was to retract the abdication. It would be unjust, however, to lay too much stress on this strange conduct; for at that time the Emperor's mind was partly unhinged by maddening tumults. ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... their state of temporary insanity, accuse themselves of the acts of rapacity committed by the beasts into which they believed themselves to be transformed. It is a well-known fact that men, whose minds are unhinged, will deliver themselves up to justice, accusing themselves of having committed crimes which have actually taken place, and it is only on investigation that their self-accusation proves to be false; and yet they will describe the circumstances with ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... judge answered the sound, and his eyes were like lamps as he turned them toward the man. "But you're wrong—my mind is not unhinged. You'll see. After what I've gone through, after facing eternity without hope, what are mere years? I can wait. I know. I ...
— The Lifted Bandage • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... with a smile of pitying contempt. Mad, mad; quite mad! The loss of his fortune had, no doubt, unhinged this shareholder's reason. But Guy, never heeding him, rushed out into the street and hailed a ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... a chill, and our mind is a little unhinged," said the skillful practitioner: "careful diet, complete repose, a warm surrounding atmosphere, absence of undue excitement, and, above all, a course of my gentle alteratives regularly administered—these are the very simple means to restore our beloved patient. He is certainly making ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... kneel on the ground, as is their custom; and they will thus be led to use chairs; and with chairs they will want tables. But, were these to be introduced, their houses would be too low, for their heads would almost touch the ceiling. Thus by a little innovation might their whole usages be unhinged." ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... the necessity of early rising gave them an excuse desired by all, for retiring early for the night. They could not talk together, for every word that was spoken begot fresh sources of sorrow; they could not employ themselves, for their minds were unhinged and unfitted for employment; so they agreed that they would go to bed, and before nine o'clock, the ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... strove to prove that a criminal, at such a moment, is always, mentally, more or less unhinged. That point of view is a very original one, but it was not this part of your article which most interested me. I was particularly struck by an idea at the end of the article, and which, unfortunately, you have touched upon too cursorily. In a word, if you remember, you maintained ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... Westmacott's mind unhinged, Trenchard scanned him narrowly. Richard caught the glance and misinterpreted it for one of reproof. He bethought him that his joy was unrighteous. He stifled it, and forced his ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... pardon," went on Gunner Sobey, still slightly unhinged. "The fact is, I mistook you ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a disabled ship caught in a southwesterly gale on the Pacific side of Tierra del Fuego rose dimly in her mind. And the advancing darkness did not tend towards cheerfulness. In her new track, the Kansas had turned her back on the murky light which penetrated the storm-clouds towards the west. Unhinged by the external gloom and the prevalent uncertainty, and finding that no one cared to dispute with her, Isobel felt that a scream or two would be a relief. For once, pride was helpful—it ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... his rescue, Lucie had never been out of Doctor Manette's sight. Now, though he was glad for her happiness, yet he felt the pain of the separation so keenly that it unhinged his mind again. Miss Pross and Mr. Lorry found him next morning making shoes at the old prison bench and for nine days he did not know them at all. At last, however, he recovered, and then, lest the sight of it affect him, one ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... you're wrong. You forget the dollars. A big crowd of solicitors will get busy, and they'll get some high-brow doctors on the job, and the end of it all will be that they'll say my brain was unhinged. I shall spend a few months in a quiet sanatorium, my mental health will improve, the doctors will declare me sane again, and all will end happily for little Julius. I guess I can bear a few months' retirement ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... Ned horrible damage and may cost him his life. I shall at once go and instruct Wakefield to appear for him, if he is taken, and to obtain the best professional assistance for his defense. I feel completely unhinged by the news, the boy has been such a favorite of mine ever since I came here; he has fought hard against his faults, and had the makings of a very fine character in him. God grant that he may be able to clear himself of this ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... again until her face had been fairly ground into the alkali. There she had choked and strangled and gasped and sobbed, her mind nearly unhinged with terror. She kept appealing to him in a hoarse voice, but could get no reply, no indication that he had even heard. This terrified her still more. Brent Palmer cursed steadily and accurately, but the man did not seem to ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... I was filled with wonder and fear. There was no constitution could bear so violent a strain—his least of all, that was unhinged already; and I decided in my mind that we must bring this ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... clear me, and therefore began to enjoy the fun. Even my certain expulsion from College on the morrow seem'd of a piece with the rest of events and (prospectively) a matter for laughter. For the struggle at the "Crown" had unhinged my wits, as I must suppose and you must believe, if you would understand my behavior in ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... softening. Phoebe durst not enter into the subject, but soothed and composed her by caresses and cheerfulness; but either the tears, or perhaps their original cause—the fatigue and terror of the previous day—had entirely unhinged her, and she was in such a nervous, trembling state, and had so severe a headache, that she was left lying down, under Lieschen's charge, when the others went to the English chapel. Her urgent entreaty was that they would bring Miss Holmby to her on ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that, mother. You didn't see, you were crying all the time. He is quite unhinged ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... or rather crouched, unhinged by the interview, lunch-time came, and then the early afternoon, almost without her consciousness. Then "a strange gentleman who says it is not necessary to give his name," was ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... asked him where, then, he did act. 'On the platform,' he answered. 'You mean,' said I, 'that you recite at concerts?' He smiled. 'This,' he whispered, striking his stick on the ground, 'is the platform I mean.' Had his mysterious prosperity unhinged him? He looked quite sane. I begged ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... you just now," he says; "I must tell you that since you came back you have the air of a foreigner—a Belgian or an American. You say intolantable things. We thought at first your mind had got a bit unhinged. Unfortunately, it's not that. Is it because you've turned sour? Anyway, I don't know what advantage you're after, but I must cautionize you that you're anielating everybody. We must put ourselves in these people's places. Apropos of this, and apropos of that, you make proposals of a tendicious ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... afraid of me? But no! Why should she? I could only conclude that her nerves were badly shaken, and that she was temporarily unhinged. Upstairs, I heard a door bang, loudly, and I knew that she had taken refuge in her room. I put the flask down on the table. My attention was distracted by a noise in the direction of the back door. I went toward it, and listened. It appeared to be shaken, as though some ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... head, a giddiness, a sense of obstruction in his brain. He went into the dining-room, and poured himself out a small quantity of whiskey, measuring it with the accuracy of abstemious habit. The dose had become necessary since his nerves had been unhinged by worry and the shock of Peggy's death. This time he drank it ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... car-barn bench I spied Gilly the Grip, quite recent this g. m., Just like a lily on a broken stem Or like a Salt Lake buck without a bride. "Chirk, Gilly, chirk!" I says in tones of pride, "Perhaps this unhinged heart is just pro tem. The world is full of pompadours for them That keep their search-lights ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor • Wallace Irwin
... striking his forehead; "Theodore or a phantom, he has unhinged the soul of Manfred. But how comes he here? and how comes he ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... his aplomb by the time he returned accompanied by the Duke. If Angus had ever lost his, he gave no indication of it. The effect on everybody else was literally seismic. The generally accepted view was that Lord Trask's reason had been unhinged by his tragic loss; there might, he conceded, be more than a crumb of truth in that. At first, his cousin Nikkolay raged at him for alienating the barony from the family, and then he learned that Duke Angus was appointing him vicar-baron and giving him Traskon New House for his residence. ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... her manner very strange, but concluded she was a little unhinged by yesterday's excitement. Moreover, there faced him an omelet of enormous size, and savory. He thought this worthy to divide a man's attention even with the great creature's tantrums. He devoted himself to it, and it occupied him so agreeably that he did not observe ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... German Professors, it might be hard to believe them capable of making any mistake; but they were nothing of the kind; they were ignorant Eastern peasants, living in the very thick of every conceivable kind of delusive influence. Strauss himself supposes their minds to have been so weak and unhinged that they became easy victims to hallucination. But if this was the case, they would be liable to other kinds of credulity, and it seems strange that one who would bring them down so low, should be here so suddenly jealous for ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... interpret, Mrs Langley then put one or two questions. The bride turned her large dark eyes on her husband while he was speaking, and then, instead of replying, turned them on her visitors and laughed. Whereupon little Agnes, unable to control herself, also laughed; this unhinged Mrs Langley, who laughed likewise, and Rais ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... the Colonel suspected irony he was angry, but as Charlie seemed, after all, to be certainly in earnest, he began to feel conscience-stricken. He was by no means a tender man, but his lately-discovered misfortune had unhinged him, and this strange, undeserved, disinterested family fealty on the part of Charlie touched his heart. And should he still try to lead him into the pitfall he had dug? He hesitated;—no, he would show him the place by broad daylight, and if he chose to overlook the "caving bank," it would ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... again to find his feeble powers unequal to sustain him. As he fell back panting upon a seat, his eyes assumed a wild, unnatural expression—despair of mind and weakness of body had together partially unhinged his faculties. When his daughter affrightedly approached to soothe and succour him, he impatiently waved her back; and began to speak in a dull, hoarse, monotonous voice, pressing his hand firmly over his brow, and directing his eyes backwards and forwards incessantly, on object after object, in ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... Livia. In any case, it is certain that Caligula was not a second Augustus. He was probably not so frenzied a lunatic as ancient writers have pictured him, but his was certainly an extravagant, unbalanced mind, given to excesses, and unhinged by the delirium of greatness, which his coming to the throne had increased the more because it had been conferred upon him at a time when he was too young and before he had been sufficiently prepared. For many years Caligula had never even hoped to succeed Tiberius; he had ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... only assume, Mr. Merriman, that your mind has become temporarily unhinged, but even with such an excuse, you cannot really believe that I am going to wait here and listen to you making ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... order of things is unhinged, and we are nearing chaos. It is going so far that Wyclif cannot refrain from inserting some of those slight restrictions which the logicians of the Middle Ages were fond of slipping into their writings. In time of danger ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... wingy mysteries in divinity, and airy subtleties in religion, which have unhinged the brains of better heads, they never stretched the pia mater of mine. Methinks there be not impossibilities enough in religion for an active faith: the deepest mysteries ours contains have not only been illustrated but maintained by syllogism and the rule of reason. I love ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... the representatives cannot act as an assembly, but as a convention delegated by the people, to prevent the utter ruin of this government, if not the loss of the province, till his majesty's pleasure be known: and, lastly, That the Lords Proprietors have by such proceedings unhinged the frame of their government, and forfeited their right to the same; and that an address be prepared, to desire the honourable Robert Johnson, our present Governor, to take the government upon him in the King's name, ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... find it any consolation to be told that that sort of thing is by no means uncommon," said Panton reflectively. "People, especially women, whose minds for any reason have become just a little unhinged, often take that sort of strange dislike to another human being. Sometimes for no reason at all. Every medical man would tell you of half-a-dozen such cases within his own knowledge. Fortunately, such half-insane people generally choose ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... do with what I told you the first night I ever talked with you, Boyne. You threw doubt on Thomas Gilbert's death being suicide. I gave as a reason for my belief that it was, a knowledge and conviction that the man's mind was unhinged." ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... said, sadly, "there's no use in tryin' to conceal it from you any longer. Your pa was crazy—as crazy as a loon. What with buyin' books so steady and readin' of 'em so continual, his mind got unhinged. I've always suspected it, ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... harsh winter, some five or six years after our first meeting, that I began to think of him as an old man. It was as though the long-continued cold had cracked and shrivelled him. He had grown bent and hollow-chested and his lower lip shook like an unhinged door. The summer heat did little to revive him, and in September, when I came home from my vacation, I found him just recovering from an attack of pneumonia. That autumn he did not care to venture often into the night air, and now and then I used to go and sit with him in his little room, to ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... of the presbytery had closed behind Claudet, the Abbe Pernot, flinging to one side all his preparations, began to pace nervously up and down the principal garden-walk. He appeared completely unhinged. His features were drawn, through an unusual tension of ideas forced upon him. He had hurriedly caught his skullcap from his head, as if he feared the heat of his meditation might cause a rush of blood to the head. He ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... heerd what the ol' nigger Proph' says? Of co'se he's all unhinged in the top story ez anybody would be thet lived in the woods an' e't sca'cely anything but herbs an' berries. But, anyhow, he's got a sort o' gift o' prophecy an' insight, ez we ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... father had never heard from her, she poured into their youthful souls. No tear their mother shed was unobserved by them; they knew when their father had lost, and when he had won; they knew, too, all the varying moods of his unhinged mind; and in this terrible school of misery they acquired an instinctive intelligence, which in the eyes of strangers ...
— A Ghetto Violet - From "Christian and Leah" • Leopold Kompert
... to greater speed. "I save myself; myself," he shrieked shrilly and unhinged by deadly ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... father's house feeling even more exhausted and dejected in spirit than when he had entered it. His mind too seemed shattered and unhinged, while he felt that he was afraid to put together the disjointed fragments and form a general idea from all the agonizing and conflicting experiences of the day. He felt something bordering upon despair, which he had never known till then. Towering like a mountain ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... good cheer, their fashionable visiter paid but small respect, and the old commander, having pressed him to make himself at home, and help himself, attacked his own breakfast with vigor, feeling at the same time no small contempt for a man whose stomach could be so effectually unhinged by a simple capsize, and thorough ducking. The vender of tape and calico, seemed to feast his eyes, if not his appetite, by gazing on the lovely countenance of his young hostess; and after some slight hesitation, commenced talking to her of theatres, and ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... other alternative: the writer may have believed himself thus inspired, and was thus self-deceived But in this case far gone in disease must his mind have been; nor could it fail constantly to give striking evidence of being thus unhinged in other parts of his writings. This is a subject with which unbalanced minds have shown their inability to be much occupied without the most sorrowful evidences of the disease under which they suffer. Let there be independence of the Scriptures (as ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... in him. It is usually found that a monomaniac will, sooner or later, exhibit signs of mental unsoundness on other matters as well; and even while he has given no such signs, it still remains true that a mind cannot be trusted, but has something radically unsound about it, if it is really unhinged at ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... hardship have unhinged him a bit. Suffers from delusions. Suppose I keep him here ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... been long forgotten. There was no snuff-box handed about now, for courtesy, admiration, or a pinch; no affectation of occasionally making a remark upon any other topic but the all-engrossing one. Lord Castlefort rested with his arms on the table: a false tooth had got unhinged. His Lordship, who, at any other time, would have been most annoyed, coolly put it in his pocket. His cheeks had fallen, and he looked twenty years older. Lord Dice had torn off his cravat, and his hair hung down over his callous, bloodless cheeks, straight as silk. Temple ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... and strange devices could not be quite unhinged, Wilhelmine reflected idly. She recollected how Eberhard Ludwig had shown her the grotto's marvellous springs and tricks; she recalled how, after much heaving and turning at an iron lever, the whole grotto had suddenly been converted into a place of living waters. She wondered if the ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... monsieur, the plan was simple and well devised. And I knew nothing of it. But Louis d'Epernay blurted it all out to me upon our wedding night. I think the shame of knowing that I had been sold to him unhinged my mind, for I ran ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... that day of festal sadness, I was left to my own devices. Being too much unhinged for any steady occupation, I wandered about with a book in my hand for several hours, more thinking than reading, for I had many things to think about. In the evening, I made use of my liberty to go and see my old friend Nancy once again; to apologize for my long absence (which must have ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... Dinkman, has misfortune completely unhinged your mind? Money thrown in the gutter—imposed on by oily rascals—our house swallowed up by this ... this unnatural stuff—and the final humiliation of being pulled out of our own home in front of a gawking crowd." She turned around ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... last! our much-abused, lock-broken, unhinged portmanteau unpacked and laid ignobly to rest under the household eaves! Stay a moment,—let us pitch our inky passport into the fire. How it writhes and grows black in the face! And now it will trouble ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... frantic with the indecision of ignorance. Never had he felt so helpless, so utterly childish and unhinged in the face of disaster. He had heard that it was good for a woman to be allowed to cry when overwhelmed with misery. Again, he remembered reading somewhere that the feminine temperament should not be allowed to yield ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... whole company was now turned upon the speaker. He was an old gentleman, one side of whose face was no match for the other. The eyelid drooped and hung down like an unhinged window shutter. Indeed, the whole side of his head was dilapidated, and seemed like the wing of a house shut up and haunted. I'll warrant that side was ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... for ever. Of what my poor friend suffered at this time, I can give you no idea; suffice it to say that he passed from celluloid to a blue flannel shirt and from blue to grey. The sight of a red cotton handkerchief in his wash at length warned me that his disappointed love had unhinged his mind, and I feared the worst. Then came an agonizing interval of three weeks during which he sent me nothing, and after that came the last parcel that I ever received from him an enormous bundle that seemed ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... woman, undeserving of consideration as she was, narrowly escaped a horrible punishment. The unfortunate girl was brought back here, and I was sent for to attend her. She grew worse hour after hour. Her mind was completely unhinged. From a furious hatred of the beauty of the woman who had wronged her, the mania increased into a furious hatred of beauty in any shape or form, and a savage lust to destroy it. In the house there were many portraits of the beautiful women of the Winslowe family. She tore the pictures ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... treated her movements with the kindly interest offered at the shrine of childhood or imbecility. It was evident that he supposed that the landslip had unhinged Mademoiselle Brun's reason. ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... burning the straw upon which the sick man lay became a simple preservative against infection. At night the dead body is waked, that is to say, all the friends and neighbours of the deceased collect in a barn or stable, where the corpse is laid upon some boards, or an unhinged door, supported upon stools, the face exposed, the rest of the body covered with a white sheet. Round the body are stuck in brass candlesticks, which have been borrowed perhaps at five miles' distance, as many candles as the poor person can beg or borrow, ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... ever. Next, take the box staple. As is usual, it is fearfully and wonderfully made up of sheet iron, square iron, and brass; the outcome of which is that the showy brass striking piece comes unriveted, the door comes unfastened, and the tenant's temper comes unhinged. Why, in the name of common sense, could they not substitute a neat malleable casting? In our own houses I have long since discarded the ordinary box staple for draw-back locks, and find it cheaper to buy a cast iron staple, and throw away the one ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... a good aim as a rule," put in Christopher, too blind with fury now to realise the other's unhinged condition, but Geoffry ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... which mention has been made—an interval employed by Roger Sterne in "spending a great deal of money" on a "large house," which he hired and furnished; and then "in the year one thousand seven hundred and nineteen, all unhinged again." The regiment had been ordered off to the Isle of Wight, thence to embark for Spain, on "the Vigo Expedition," and "we," who accompanied it, "were driven into Milford Haven, but afterwards landed at Bristol, ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... of being mentally almost unhinged by the sudden anticlimax of helplessness after over-confidence. Yet when she spoke again her voice was calm, and not without a ring of ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... "Trouble has unhinged your wits, my friend. Did you seriously imagine I intended to disclose to his Majesty the proposal we ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... is just her craze. I believe she was a bit queer and unhinged when Jacobi got her back. Anyhow, he was obliged to pacify her a bit. She threw away her wedding-ring and never again alluded to her wretched marriage, and he is obliged to give in to her. I believe Jacobi ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... was at a moment when the first effects of the tidings of life had subsided, and there had been time to look forth on the future with a spirit more steadfast than buoyant. The strain of the previous weeks was reacting on the bodily frame, and indisposition unhinged the spirits; so that, when Dr. May entered, beaming with congratulations, he was met with the same patient glance of endurance, endeavouring at resignation, that he knew so well, but without the victorious peace that had of late gained the ascendant expression. ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... condemned to death for homicide and owned his guilt, refused to confess when the hour of punishment arrived. However strongly pressed, he resisted, and so violently, giving no reason, that all were persuaded that his mind was unhinged by the fear of death. Saint-Thomas of Villeneuve, Archbishop of Valencia, heard of his obstinacy. Valencia was the place where his sentence was given. The worthy prelate was so charitable as to try to persuade the criminal ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... that this hour beats in millions of hearts, all over this globe, with a living warmth beside which the love of science and art is cold and clammy. Surely it would be not much to ask for the docility to recognize such patent facts as these. And I must believe that any mind is fundamentally unhinged that despises the profoundest convictions of the noblest hearts, or speaks lightly of the mighty influence that has moulded human events and has upheaved the world. It has, in its arrogance, cut adrift and swung off from the two grand foci of all truth, the human ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... So unhinged was he that for quite half an hour after Buz's departure he kept looking nervously at the door, fully expectant that it would open to admit Uz, primed with some fresh reason why Eloquent Gallup should be asked to dinner; and that he would be followed by Ger and ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... name slawbank, from sloap-bancke, a sleeping-bench. A slawbank was the prototype of our modern folding-bed. It was an oblong frame with a network of rope. This frame was fastened at one end to the wall with heavy hinges, and at night it was lowered to a horizontal position, and the unhinged end was supported on heavy wooden turned legs which fitted into sockets in the frame. When not in use the bed was hooked up against the wall, and doors like closet doors were closed over it, or curtains were drawn over it to conceal it. It was usually placed in the kitchen, and upon it slept ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... with 12,000 men-at-arms, appeared at the Porte St. Denis, and there stood the provost of the merchants with the chief citizens in new robes, holding a canopy of cloth of gold. Charles, with a fierce glance, ordered them back; the gates were unhinged and flung down; the royal army entered as in a conquered city. A terrible vengeance ensued. The President of the Parlement and other civil officers, with three hundred prominent citizens, were arrested ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... quiet and lulled the vigilance of the ruffians into whose hands they had fallen, the chances of their being able to procure assistance when they reached the town, were very much increased; that unless society were quite unhinged, a hot pursuit must be immediately commenced; and that her uncle, she might be sure, would never rest until he had found them out and rescued them. But as she said these latter words, the idea that he had fallen in a general massacre ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... sight of the ghost had left upon the senses of Hamlet, he being weak and dispirited before, almost unhinged his mind, and drove him beside his reason. And he, fearing that it would continue to have this effect, which might subject him to observation, and set his uncle upon his guard, if he suspected that he was meditating any thing against him, or that Hamlet really knew more of his father's death than ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... and drowned myself a year ago. Now, tell me, Mr. Sherry, do you think it possible that owing to the continuous strain upon me mentally and physically—for I am really very weak, and had a long illness two years ago when my baby was born—that my mind has become unhinged ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... building, each side having a door. All the doors but one were locked. That one, when pushed against, tottered over. We climbed in over the heavy sacks, seemingly full of cement, with which the unlocked door had been propped to. It also was unhinged. ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... their best to amuse them. Paganel tried to beguile the time with his stories, but it was a hopeless case. Their minds were so distracted at this change of route as to be quite unhinged. Much as they had been interested in his dissertation on the Pampas, or Australia, his lectures on New Zealand fell on cold and indifferent ears. Besides, they were going to this new and ill-reputed country without enthusiasm, without ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne |
