"Madman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... place we are told that Prussian reaction is too strong, and that for the German people to attack the Hohenzollern stronghold would be as hopeless as for a madman or a prisoner to break down the walls of his prison or cell. The prisoner would only break his head, and the madman would only get himself put into a "strait-waistcoat." The German rebel is confronted ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... Oh, whither shall I fly? Will she not be here anon? Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard her footstep on the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart? Madman!"—here he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his soul—"Madman! I tell you that she now stands without ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... or Tony would inevitably have been borne under her bottom. Tim seized an oar, and with the ferocity of a madman sprang forward to execute his ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... waiting for the response which no one could give, he darted off like a madman in the direction of ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... every relic of the Roman times,—armor, fosses, and praetoria,—and found, with much that was real, many a fraud or delusion. It was an age which, in the words of old Walter Charleton, "despised the present as an innovation, and slighted the future, like the madman who ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... were asked the riddle how images of the eye and all the sensations of our senses could be represented by sounds, nay, could be so embodied in sounds as to express thought and to excite thought, we should probably give it up as the question of a madman, who, mixing up the most heterogeneous subjects, attempted to change color and sound into thought. Yet this is the riddle we have ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Sum to be lent to the young Gentleman: When, on a sudden, his Doors flew open, and a Couple of Rogues bound him in his Bed, and went off laden with Baggs. Soon after, a meagre Servant comes in, and unbinds him; he tears his Hair, raves, stamps, and has all the Gestures of a Madman; he sends the Servant out, takes a Halter, throws it over a Beam, and ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... been prudently chosen, when the most formidable, Stephen Colonna, was absent from the city. On the first rumor, he returned to his palace, affected to despise this plebeian tumult, and declared to the messenger of Rienzi, that at his leisure he would cast the madman from the windows of the Capitol. The great bell instantly rang an alarm, and so rapid was the tide, so urgent was the danger, that Colonna escaped with precipitation to the suburb of St. Laurence: from thence, after a moment's refreshment, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... way of describing this, you would suppose that it was a farcical exhibition of vulgar extravagance, and the Duke a madman or an impostor; but the effect was different. It was done with grace, and, in the midst of so much else, it attracted only that side regard, at intervals, which is sure to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... young hero, confident of his courage to face his father, came forth pale and weak, only to be stoned as a madman by the people. His father locked him up in the house, but the tenderer compassion of his mother released him from his bonds, and he found refuge with the priest. When his father demanded his return, Francis tore off his clothes and, as he flung the last rag at the feet of his astounded ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... madman—and frightened me nearly to death! Had you better recall that night, Jose? I was generous about it; I was even a little sorry for you. And I ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... the steps of the portico and reached the salon without being seen by either the count or his wife. Hearing the madman's sharp cries I first shut all the doors, then I returned and found Henriette as ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... historical link and a royal tomb. One hall, over two hundred feet long and sixty wide, contains nearly seventy thousand bound volumes, all arranged with their backs to the wall so that the titles cannot be read, a plan which one would say was the device of some madman. The shelves, divided into sections and ornamental cases, are made of ebony, cedar, orange, and other choice woods. What possible historic wealth may here lie concealed, what noble thoughts and minds embalmed! In the domestic ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... Jackson remembered nothing afterwards. It was evident that the fellow had done it in order to take his place. He had staved in the boat, and, as they supposed, afterwards swam to shore; but the crime seemed so singularly motiveless that they finally put it down as the work of a madman. ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... meal-times, making pert sayings under the nose of humorless visitors like Pacheco, living solitary in a country where he remained to his death misunderstood and alien and where two centuries thought of him along with Don Quixote as a madman,—how strange that it should be he who should express most flamingly all that was imperturbable in Toledo.... I have often wondered whether that fiery vitality of spirit that we feel in El Greco, that we felt in my generation when I was young, that I see occasionally in the young men of your time, ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... the madman of passion, who meets and easily overthrows for the moment the madman of imagination. And note the contagion of madness of any kind, upon Don Quixote's interruption of ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... gave him the rank of a general, with a scarlet-clad bodyguard, and woe betide any one who treated the Dictator's fool with scant respect. Rosas was undoubtedly as mad as Bedlam, but he was an abominably bloodthirsty madman who successfully exterminated all his opponents. The Dictator was accessible to every one at his house at Palermo, and the marvel is that he managed to escape assassination. His enormities became so intolerable that in 1852 the Brazilians and Uruguayans invaded the Argentine, and at the critical ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... his master with a face of awful tenor:—"for God's sake, sir," said he, "don't say a word that might cross him, sure he's the great madman, Raymond-na-hattha. Just sit still, and let him take his own way, and he'll do no harm in life; appear to listen to him, and he'll be like a child—but, if you go to harshness, he'd tear you, and me, and all that's in the house, into ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... in this wise. Jensen, who united a madman's cunning to a bad man's daring, saw that my suspicions of him might prove fatal to his plans. Those plans had indeed been, as I had guessed, to seize the Royal Christopher and make a pirate ship of her, ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... as she would upon a madman, and perhaps, after all, it was not so strange that she should do so, I being footsore and weary and all covered with the stains and dust of travel—or perhaps it was merely my so strange form of address which startled her. ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... both of you can properly apply the preconceptions to things about which you have contrary opinions? It is not possible. Can you then show us anything better towards adapting the preconceptions beyond your thinking that you do? Does the madman do any other things than the things which seem to him right? Is then this criterion sufficient for him also? It is not sufficient. Come then to something which is superior to seeming ([Greek: tou ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... me. Burroughs is an excellent author. I like his Martian books. "The Beetle Horde" in the first two issues was very good. But why not give a sequel about the other and more terrible creatures in the earth whom the madman spoke of? Fourth dimensionals are sometimes good. You should have reprints by Burroughs, Cummings and Merritt. I am eagerly waiting for the next issue. Do not enlarge the magazine because I cannot afford it. Don't publish stories like "From ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... the title role. Jerrold's play, which has for sub-title "The King of Calais," treats of that period in Brummell's life in which he had retired across the channel to live upon black-mail and to drift into that Consulship at Caen which he so queerly resigned, to end a poor madman, trying to shave his own peruke. Jerrold's is a grim play; either it or a version on the same lines of Brummell's fall is being played across the Atlantic at this very hour by Mr. Mansfield whose study of the final decay and idiotcy ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... bulletin in the year 2570 indicated to some that Cavour had achieved his goal or was on the verge of achieving it; others, less sympathetic, interpreted his last message as a madman's wild boast. It made little difference which interpretation was accepted. James Hudson Cavour was never heard ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... himself to death, Alcibiades regains his lost dignity by force. If the poet very properly sides with Timon against the common practice of the world, he is, on the other hand, by no means disposed to spare Timon. Timon was a fool in his generosity; in his discontent he is a madman: he is every where wanting in the wisdom which enables a man in all things to observe the due measure. Although the truth of his extravagant feelings is proved by his death, and though when he digs up a treasure he spurns the wealth which ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... clotted in his beard, and only the whites of his eyes, rolling and sanguinary, gave evidence of his humanity; his shirt, half torn from his body by plunging through the cat-claws, hung limp and heavy with sweat; and the look of him was that of a madman, beside himself with rage. The dirt, the sweat, the grime, were as heavy on Hardy, and his eyes rolled like a negro's beneath the mask of dust, but weariness had overcome his madness and he leaned forward upon the horn. They ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... lantern I saw the bars sliding slowly before me. Already there was an opening a foot wide at the farther end. With a scream I seized the last bar with my hands and pulled with the strength of a madman. I WAS a madman with rage and horror. For a minute or more I held the thing motionless. I knew that he was straining with all his force upon the handle, and that the leverage was sure to overcome me. I gave inch by inch, my feet sliding along the stones, and all the time I ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the cudgels on its behalf. During the Empire, his voice was drowned. It was only a score of years later that the new Catholic reaction found it to their advantage to take him at his word and see in him the genius that he had given himself out to be. He was as much a genius as the madman in the asylum ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... An infidel has said that if he could believe that men's future state depended at all upon what was done in this life, he would let nothing hinder him from being up and at men. He would be content to be counted a madman—anything, if only he could do anything to make men's state better in the world to come. (I wish these Chinamen would shut up; I came here to meet Mongols, and I am like to be flooded out by Chinamen whose language I ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... awful silence for just three minutes. Then the man who had sworn before shot out another oath. Hookway began to rave like a madman. Evans burst into sobs. Davis began to swear horribly, and cursed Gilliland for putting the provisions in ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... Blas" of Le Sage has made famous throughout the world. Mendoza, after having filled many high offices under Charles V., when Philip ascended the throne, was, for some slight offense, banished from the court as a madman. In the poems which he occasionally wrote during his exile, he gave the influence of his example to the new form introduced by Boscan and Garcilasso. At a later period he occupied himself in writing some portions of the ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... the rim of the pit. She had fainted at sight of the ghost-shape, whose white-hot folds flapped there, reaching to engulf her in their all-consuming embrace. Carr babbled like a madman as he pulled her away from the horrible thing that pulsated with eager flutterings not three feet away, its hot breath singeing ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... move suddenly, or in jerks; "—up," stir up, rouse; "firks mad," suddenly behaves like a madman. ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... some fine method, felt convinced that Filippo had talked like a mere simpleton, as did the superintendents, and all the other citizens; they derided him therefore, laughing at him, and turning away; they bade him discourse of something else, for that this was the talk of a fool or madman, as he was. Therefore Filippo, thinking he had cause of offence, replied, 'But consider, gentlemen, that it is not possible to raise the cupola in any other manner than this of mine, and although you laugh at me, yet you will be obliged to admit ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... shifting oddly in the harsh yellow monochromatic light that pervaded the cabin. The screens were leaking like sieves, but they were holding well enough to keep Cth yellow from being anything more than an annoyance. He glanced over at Copper, a fantastically elongated Copper who looked like a madman's dream of chaos. ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... reasons. You are a madman—a dangerous madman. Why should I destroy my own property? It ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... there is a Druidical circle, of which the stones, themselves to ruin grown, are strange and death-like old. Legend says that this is the burial-place of Taliesin, the first of Welsh bards, the primeval poet of Celtic time. Whoever sleeps on the grave will awake either a madman or a poet, or is at any rate unsafe to become one or the other. I went, with two friends, afoot on this little pilgrimage. Both were professors at one of the great universities. The elder is a gentleman of great benevolence, ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... fair in Tregarrick—and the crowd under the prison wall. And there, above them, he could see the little open doorway in the wall, and one or two black figures there, and the beam. Just as he saw this the clock struck its first note, and Dan'l, still riding like a madman, let out a scream, and waved the paper over his head; but the distance was too great. Seven times the clapper struck, and with each stroke Dan'l screamed, still riding and keeping his eyes upon that little ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... my might, and prepared to fling myself out when we came to the earth again, but my captor, seizing each article that lay on the floor of the car, hurled forth, with the frenzy of a madman, ballast, stores, water-keg, cooking apparatus, everything, indiscriminately. For a moment this unburdening of the balloon did not have the effect one would suppose—that of making us shoot swiftly up into the sky, and I trusted that Phillip and the men who had helped us at the gas-works ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... other woman as much as ever. It could do her no great harm, since she took no interest whatever in him. Who could she be, this cold creature, whom even Giovanni could not move to interest? It was absurd—the letter was absurd—the whole thing was absurd! None but a madman would think of pursuing such a course; and why should he think it necessary to confide his plans—his very foolish plans—to her, Corona d'Astrardente,—why? Ah, Giovanni, how different ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... his napkin and began to brush the drink from his uniform, meanwhile sputtering to an extent verging on hysteria. The major who had been seated immediately to his right, fumbled in assistance, meanwhile staring at Joe as though he were a madman. ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... heard all these words, he was furiously enraged: and, seized with ungovernable anger, he cried out wrathfully against him, and gnashed his teeth fiercely, like any madman. "And who," said he, "is blameable for all my misfortunes but myself, who have dealt with thee so kindly, and cared for thee as no father before? Hence the perversity and contrariness of thy mind, gathering strength by the licence ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... the democracy of Italy proved too intense, too frenzied and unbalanced. Rienzi established a republic in Rome and talked of the restoration of the city's ancient rule. But he governed like a madman or an inflated fool, and was slain in a riot of the streets.[10] Scarce one of the famous cities succeeded in retaining its republican form. Milan became a duchy. Florence fell under the sway of the Medici. In Venice a few rich families seized all authority, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... much.—Do you know my opinion of the whole matter? (BERENT looks up at him.) That I am in this room with a madman. ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... feet. Two of the gang had reached the landing and were smashing at the Adventurer. There seemed to be a swirling mob in riot there below. The Adventurer was fighting like a madman. It was hand to ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... trotted peacefully out. Then, seeing he was almost in the hands of his enemies, he ran like a hunted deer straight across a vast open, which lies directly in front of the Dynastic Gate—never seeking cover, but running like a madman in the open. ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... drowned man, a fool and a madman: one draught above heat makes him a fool; the second mads him; and a ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... spirits, and wrought many things by their help: "I," said He, "have not the devil, but do glorify my Father: but it is you that have dishonoured me, and put me to rebuke and shame." And St. Paul, when Festus the lieutenant scorned him as a madman: "I," said he, "most dear Festus, am not mad, as thou thinkest, but I speak the words of truth and soberness." And the ancient Christians, when they were slandered to the people for mankillers, for adulterers, ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel
... therefore, to the Regent, to intervene his power; to treat the Count as having acted under an access of his mental malady; and to shut him up in a madhouse. The Regent was deaf to their solicitations. He replied, coldly, that if the Count was a madman, one could not get rid too quickly of madmen who were furious in their insanity. The crime was too public and atrocious to be hushed up or slurred over; justice must ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... very polite and courteous to his literary friends in private, he made bitter attacks upon them in print. Dibdin says of him that 'his habits were indeed peculiar: not much to be envied or imitated; as they sometimes betrayed the flights of a madman, and sometimes the asperities of a cynic. His attachments were warm, but fickle both in choice and duration. He would frequently part from one, with whom he had lived on terms of close intimacy, without any assignable cause; and his enmities, once fixed, ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... top o' a cyprus-tree! It 'ud be of no use. For all that I tried it. Steamers, keels, and flats,—I hailed them all till I war hoarse; some o' 'em heard me, for I war answered by shouts o' scornful laughter. My own shouts o' despair mout a' been mistuk for the cries o' a fool or a madman. ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... pain of the wounds, but it was the contempt in Sharkey's voice which turned Craddock into a savage madman. He flew at the pirate, roaring with rage, striking, kicking, writhing, foaming. It took six men to drag him down on to the floor amidst the splintered remains of the table—and not one of the six who did not bear the prisoner's mark upon him. But Sharkey ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... merely pitied; a sceptic with a peculiar faith of his own, which he was resolved to promulgate, Herbert became odious. A solitary votary of obnoxious opinions, Herbert would have been looked upon only as a madman; but the moment he attempted to make proselytes he rose into a conspirator ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... Ginger could move he suddenly clapped 'is hand over 'is mouth and flung 'im on the bed. Ginger was like a child in 'is hands, although he struggled like a madman, and in five minutes 'e was laying there with a towel tied round his mouth and 'is arms and legs tied up with the cord ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... despoiled of his liberty any longer? And when it was replied that the man had been convicted, and that the wheels of justice could not be stopped or turned back by the letter of a romantic artist or the ravings of a madman, there was a mighty outcry against the farce of justice that had been played out in ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... numerous, e.g. Braidwood, Harwood, Norwood, Sherrard and Sherratt (Sherwood). But, in considering the frequency of the simple Wood, it must be remembered that we find people described as le wode, i.e. mad (cf. Ger. Wut, frenzy), and that mad and madman are found as ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... street car had stopped, the horses were rearing and plunging, the passengers were pouring out at both ends, and one fat man had crashed half way through a glass window on one side of the car, got wedged fast and was squirming and screaming like an impaled madman. Every door, of every house, as far as the eye could reach, was vomiting a stream of human beings; and almost before one could execute a wink and begin another, there was a massed multitude of people stretching in endless procession down every street my position commanded. Never was solemn solitude ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... swineherds beheld the sword in Sir Tristram's hands, they said, "That is no fit plaything for a madman to have," and they would have taken it from him, but Sir Tristram would not permit them, for he would not give them the sword, and no one dared to try to take ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... Holy Caaba," said the Emir, "thou art a madman who hugs his chain of iron as if it were of gold! Look more closely. This ring of mine would lose half its beauty were not the signet encircled and enchased with these lesser brilliants, which grace it and set it off. The central diamond is man, firm and entire, his value depending on himself alone; ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... repair his model. Edward summoned a deputation from the London merchants and traders, before whom Adam appeared and explained his device. But these practical men at first ridiculed the notion as a madman's fancy, and it required all the art of Hastings to overcome their contempt, and appeal to the native acuteness of the king. Edward, however, was only caught by Adam's incidental allusions to the application of his principle to ships. The merchant-king suddenly ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... which fell upon his hardened spirit was still more deeply felt, because it was given by one from whom he could the least have expected it. He was standing at a neighbour's shop-window, 'belching out oaths like the madman that Solomon speaks of, who scatters abroad firebrands, arrows, and death'[58] 'after his wonted manner.' He exemplified the character drawn by the Psalmist. 'As he clothed himself with cursing like as with his garment: so let it come into his bowels like ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... I could hear the steamer's winches at work hoisting and lowering. It was already growing dusk. At last the whistle sounded: the cargo was on board, the ship was putting off. I still had some minutes to wait. The moon was not up, and I stared like a madman through the gloom ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun
... me, still beholding me, Full many things whereof I wish to know, And as we walk from whispering tree to tree Still more familiar to thee shall I grow, And such things shalt thou say unto me now As when thou deemedst thou wast quite alone, A madman, kneeling to ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... the rummest way. I was brought behind the scenes one night by a Cambridge chum. We were painting the town a bit red. We were not exactly drunk; but we were not particularly sober either; and I was very green at that time, and made a fool of myself about Lalage: staring; clapping like a madman in the middle of her songs; getting into the way of everybody and everything, and so on. Then a couple of fellows we knew turned up, and we got chatting at the wing with some girls. At last a fellow came in with a bag of cherries; and we began trying that old trick—you know—taking ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... abandonment he limped to the little stone doorway and stood there like an apparition, clutching the sides with trembling hands. But whatever reckless words of surrender he meant to offer froze upon his lips, and he swayed in the opening, staring like a madman. ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... went wide, and Van came on. Bostwick steadied and fired again. There was no such thing as halting the demon in the car. But the target's size was rapidly increasing! Nevertheless, the third shot missed, like the others. Would the madman never halt? ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... the learned say, that a wise man rules the stars. I was born with a very choleric disposition, insomuch that there was no living with me; but I took notice of it, and considered, that a person swayed by his passion, must at certain times be no better than a madman; I mean at those times, when he suffers his passions to predominate, because he then renounces his reason and understanding. I, therefore, resolved to make my choleric disposition give way to reason; so that now, ...
— Discourses on a Sober and Temperate Life • Lewis Cornaro
... to touch him ... but a skeleton hand shot out of a crimson sleeve and violently seized the rash one's wrist; and he, feeling the clutch of the knucklebones, the furious grasp of Death, uttered a cry of pain and terror. When Red Death released him at last, he ran away like a very madman, pursued by the jeers of ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... Madman puts to flight, They quick to fly, he bitter to recite! What hapless soul he seizes, he holds fast; Rants, and repeats, and reads him dead at last: Hangs on him, ne'er to quit, with ceaseless speech. Till gorg'd and full of blood, a ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... was before St Jean d'Acre, he had a paper privately distributed among the officers and soldiers, tending to induce them to revolt and quit me; on which I issued a proclamation, denouncing the English commanding-officer as a madman, and prohibiting all intercourse with him. This nettled Sir Sydney so much, that he sent me a challenge to meet him in single combat on the beach at Caiffa. My reply was, that when Marlborough appeared for that purpose, I should be at his service; ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... philosophy, his revolutionary methods of treating diseases, and his unparalleled success in curing them. A man who was to be remembered in after-time by some as the father of modern chemistry and the founder of modern medicine; by others as madman, charlatan, impostor; and by still others as a combination of all these. This soft-cheeked, effeminate, woman-hating man, whose very sex has been questioned, was Theophrastus von Hohenheim, better ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... causeless. I do not dwell here upon the disastrous lapse in determinist logic. Obviously if any actions, even a lunatic's, can be causeless, determinism is done for. If the chain of causation can be broken for a madman, it can be broken for a man. But my purpose is to point out something more practical. It was natural, perhaps, that a modern Marxian Socialist should not know anything about free will. But it was certainly remarkable that a modern Marxian Socialist should not know anything about lunatics. Mr. Suthers ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... work he actually was able for, and then, by permission, persuasion, and even compulsion, to set about doing the same! That is his true blessedness, honour, 'liberty,' and maximum of well-being,—if liberty be not that, I for one have small care about liberty. You do not allow a palpable madman to leap over precipices; you violate his liberty, you that are wise, and keep him, were it in strait waist-coat, away from the precipices! Every stupid, every cowardly and foolish man, is but a less palpable madman; his true liberty were that a wiser man, that any and every wiser man, could, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... Grandfather, "his life, while he retained what intellect Heaven had gifted him with, was one long mortification. At last, he grew crazed with care and trouble. For nearly twenty years, the monarch of England was confined as a madman. In his old age, too, God took away his eyesight; so that his royal palace was nothing to him but a ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... difference between a madman and a fool is, that the former reasons justly from false data; and the ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... forgotten the whole matter, but at dinner my brother began to say that he thought Breuning was to blame in the affair, which I at once denied, saying that you were in fault. I think this shows plainly enough that I attributed no blame to Breuning; but on this he sprang up like a madman, and insisted on sending for the house-steward. Such behavior, in the presence of all those with whom I usually associate, and to which I am wholly unaccustomed, caused me to lose all self-control; so ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... obstacles around the South Pole—even more unattainable than the North Pole, which still hadn't been reached by the boldest navigators— wasn't this an absolutely insane undertaking, one that could occur only in the brain of a madman? ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... Ex-Governor Pownall, after comparing this confusion to Des Cartes's chaos of vortices, remarked, (1768,) in a letter addressed to Dr. Cooper,—"We have but one word,—I will not call it an idea,—that is, our sovereignty; and it is like some word to a madman, which, whenever mentioned, throws him into his ravings, and brings on a paroxysm." The Massachusetts crown officials were continually pronouncing this word to the Ministry. They constantly set forth the principle of local self-government, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... But whatever ass I made of myself she forgave me anything, and was fonder of me every time we met, while I, although I did not know it for a long time, was less fond of her. She knew how to revive my love, however. Some nights she would not meet me, and I would be like a madman. Other nights she would meet me, but not let me raise her dress. She would lie on me, on a moonlit night, and her young face in shadow like a siren's in its frame of hair, merely to kiss me. But what kisses! Slow, cold kisses changing to clinging, passionate ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... that he can stand it and her no longer. While she was pouring out literary garbage he could just manage to endure his position, but the thought that she would be hailed as a genius while he remained an utter failure was the final stroke that turned him from a mendicant into a madman. I am not going to tell you exactly what happened, but Jane found a "way out," and with her departure from this life my interest in the book evaporated. Mrs. HENRY DUDENEY has notable gifts as a descriptive writer, and my only complaint ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 7, 1917. • Various
... epithet of loco or "madman" was punningly bestowed on Father Luque, for his spirited exertions in behalf of the enterprise; Padre Luque o loco, says Oviedo of him, as if it were synonymous. Historia de las Indias Islas e Tierra Firme del Mar Oceano, Ms., Parte 3, ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... victory—great victory! Official! British! 'Eavy defeat of the 'Uns! Many thousand prisoners! 'Eavy defeat!" It speeds by, intoxicating, filling him with a fearful joy; he leans far out, waving his cap and cheering like a madman; the night seems to flutter and vibrate and answer. He turns to rush down into the street, strikes against something soft, and recoils. The GIRL stands with hands clenched, and face convulsed, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the end, then, to lie at the mercy of this madman till death came to blot out all his efforts, all his hopes. He made a last feeble effort to stanch that deadly ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... The very best colts want breaking in. Not that we like severity; cruel mothers are not mothers, and those who are always flogging and fault-finding ought to be flogged themselves. There is reason in all things, as the madman said when ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... 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 Jinn." "By Allah, cried Abu al- Hasan, "they lie against me! I am no madman, but the Commander of the Faithful." And the Superintendent answered him, saying, "None lieth but thou, O foulest of the Jinn-maddened!" Then he stripped him of his clothes, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... the aged friend, the attendant of the prison, who is as good as a friend—these take part in the conversation. There are present also, Hermogenes, from whom Xenophon derived his information about the trial of Socrates (Mem.), the 'madman' Apollodorus (Symp.), Euclid and Terpsion from Megara (compare Theaet.), Ctesippus, Antisthenes, Menexenus, and some other less-known members of the Socratic circle, all of whom are silent auditors. Aristippus, Cleombrotus, ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... rid of him than by the army, unless it were by assassination. At such times the Senate might make a show of naming the successor, and the army might make a show of agreeing with the Senate, but such expressions, as Tacitus repeats, were "empty and meaningless words." The madman Caligula had been assassinated. When, four years after our date, Nero was compelled to flee from his palace and was persuaded into committing suicide, it was because the soldiers had declared against him and had ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... my friends, and lendermen, marshals and shield-bearers, and all the best men in the land; but none did so well against me as this man, who appears to you of little worth compared to any of you, although now he loves me most. I came here like a madman, and would have destroyed my precious property; but he turned aside my deed, and was not afraid of death for it. Then he made an able speech, ordering his words so that they were honourable to me, and not saying a single word about things which could increase my vexation; but ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... schools would remember enough of Socrates to force the Eugenist to tell him (at least) whether Midias was segregated because he was curable or because he was incurable. The meanest Thomist of the mediaeval monasteries would have the sense to see that you cannot discuss a madman when you have not discussed a man. The most owlish Calvinist commentator in the seventeenth century would ask the Eugenist to reconcile such Bible texts as derided fools with the other Bible texts that praised them. The dullest shopkeeper in Paris in 1790 would have asked what were the ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... little, summer, crowd not so All glory and gladness in so brief a day, Teach all thy dancing flowers a step more slow, And bid thy wild musicians softlier play, O hast thou thought, that like a madman spends, The ...
— The Lonely Dancer and Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... a lunar synthesis, Whispering lunar incantations Dissolve the floors of the memory And all its clear relations, Its divisions and precisions, Every street lamp that I pass Beats like a fatalistic drum, And through the spaces of the dark Midnight shakes the memory As a madman shakes a ...
— Prufrock and Other Observations • T. S. Eliot
... great suppression of anything like telling what a difficult time he was having, but again we read between the lines. The trip is "without accident" but there was "extreme cold." Pedley was nurse and doctor as well as guard over the unfortunate madman who raved as they travelled along almost impossible roads. Then Pedley goes on: "I arrived at Lake La Biche on the 31st, and secured a team of horses to carry me to Fort Saskatchewan. I arrived on January 7, 1905, and handed over my prisoner." Pedley had spent ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... again and again," replied the farmer; "but the whole generation of the Sandfords have been brought up to labour with their own hands for these hundred years; and during all that time there has not been a dishonest person, a gentleman, or a madman amongst us. And shall I be the first to break the customs of the family, and perhaps bring down a curse on all our heads? What could I have more if I were a lord or a macaroni, as I think you call them? I have plenty of victuals and work, good firing, clothes, warm house, ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... the highroad became a journey, where they sat grimly, with set teeth, listening to the curses of a madman, and bowing their heads to escape having them cut off repeatedly ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... and his straw hat resting on the handkerchief, Baltic looked at his flushed host calmly and solemnly without moving a muscle, or even winking an eye. Brace did not know whether to treat the ex-sailor as a madman or as an impudent impostor. The situation ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... of punishment, has its origin in the mind and intention of the actor; and therefore, where that is wanting, there is no proper object of chastisement. A madman, for example, can no more properly be said to be guilty of murder than the sword with which he commits it, both being equally incapable of intending injury. In the present case, in like manner, although it ought no doubt to be matter of deep sorrow ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... a fearful change across his face had passed— He seemed to rave—on cheek and lip a flaky foam was cast; He raised on high the glittering blade—then first I found a tongue— "Hold, madman! stay thy frantic deed!" I cried, and forth I sprung; He heard me, but he heeded not; one glance around he gave, And ere I could arrest his hands, he ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... compensate for the weakness of their arguments by strongly expressing their abhorrence of the act—that is to say, by abusing it. We are told that suicide is an act of the greatest cowardice, that it is only possible to a madman, and other absurdities of a similar nature; or they make use of the perfectly senseless expression that it is "wrong," while it is perfectly clear that no one has such indisputable right over anything in the world as over his own person and life. Suicide, as has been said, is computed ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... regarded as the frown of God when it is regularly foretold with certainty. The measurement of the atmosphere exterminated the wiseacre proverb, "Nature abhors a vacuum," by the burlesque addition, "but only for the first thirty two feet." The madman cannot be looked on as divinely inspired, his words to be caught as oracles, or as possessed by a devil, to be chained and scourged, since Pinel's great work has brought insanity within the range of organic disease. When Franklin's kite drew electricity from the cloud to his ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... caught him up from place to place [564] and laughed at him. However, he fended not himself neither took heed of this, but ceased not to go round about the city till he came under Alaeddin's palace, where he fell to crying his loudest, whilst the children called after him, "Madman! Madman!" ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... cried. "The Brown-Pericord Motor acts!" He danced about like a madman in his delight. Brown's eyes twinkled, and ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... surprised at seeing an old lady enter the room. But when I spoke, and they recognised in the old lady the frock-coated (and I trust sympathetic) official they had interviewed earlier in the day, their astonishment knew no bounds. The father gazed at me horror-stricken, as though I were a madman; the mother kept on swallowing, as ladies of her type do when they wish to convey strong disapprobation; and the prominent-orbed boy's eyes nearly fell out of his head. I explained that some theatricals were in progress, ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... went home, with a deadly terror gnawing at their souls; and that evening Jurgis came home and heard their story, and that was the end. Jurgis was sure that they had been swindled, and were ruined; and he tore his hair and cursed like a madman, swearing that he would kill the agent that very night. In the end he seized the paper and rushed out of the house, and all the way across the yards to Halsted Street. He dragged Szedvilas out from his supper, and together they ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... atom—inconsumable— Immortal, hopeless, voiceless, powerless! And oft I fancy, I am weak and old, And all who loved me, one by one, are dead, And I am left alone—and cannot die! Surely there is no rest on earth for souls Whose dreams are like a madman's! I am young And much is yet before me—after years May bring peace with them to my ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... called upon to preserve the peace he threatens to disturb. Dearly does he love his legitimate brandy, and dearly does it make him pay for the insane frolics it incites him to perpetrate, to the profit of certain saloons, and danger of persons. Madman under the influence of his favourite drink, a strange pride besets his faculties, which is only appeased with the demolition of glass and men's faces. For this strange amusement he has become famous and feared; and as the light of his own besotted countenance makes its appearance, ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... sake I shouldn't like a row. Afraid of a madman like that! But he can do nothing. I don't see what ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... which Lear is led, turns out to be the same which Edgar has entered, disguised as a madman, i.e., naked. Edgar comes out of the hovel, and, altho all have known him, no one recognizes him,—as no one recognizes Kent,—and Edgar, Lear, and the fool begin to say senseless things which continue with interruptions ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... change as do the nebulae and the shifting continents we build on. Yet through all changes a thread of continuity runs. It is all changing and no ending. Always Law and always, so far as we can see, what we call progression. A man is a fool who cares for his life. He is the true madman who wastes his years ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... heaven, I should be a madman if I were. But why do you not finish the argument which proves that gold and silver and other things which seem to be wealth are not real wealth? For I have been exceedingly delighted to hear the discourses which you have ...
— Eryxias • An Imitator of Plato
... detained by the orders of Mustapha, was ordered to appear. During his confinement, Mustapha had been informed by his people that he was "visited by Alla;" or in other words, that he was a madman. Nevertheless, Mustapha—who was afraid to release a man (or rather, a story) without the consent of the pacha, and could not send for the renegade to supply any defalcation—considered that, upon the whole, it was better that he ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... orchard vvith vnfruitfull trees, None but a madman so vvill vvast his ground, Or vvho sowes corne vvhere onely sand he sees, Assured that there vvill no increase be found: And in a vvord all that the vvorld containes, Haue excellence in their ...
— The Bride • Samuel Rowlands et al
... days he wandered about like a madman, asking everyone what had become of his palace, but they only laughed and pitied him. He came to the banks of a river, and knelt down to say his prayers before throwing himself in. In doing so he rubbed the ring he ...
— Aladdin and the Magic Lamp • Unknown
... one Collins, a madman, suffered death with his dog in Smithfield. The circumstances were as follow: Collins happened to be in church when the priest elevated the host; and Collins, in derision of the sacrifice of the Mass, lifted up ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... now: he wanted no furniture; he struggled no longer to appear to the world as his equals appeared; he required no more money than would procure for his family and himself the barest necessaries of life; he suffered no interruptions from his fellow-workmen, who thought him a madman, and kept out of his way; and—most precious privilege of his new position—he could at last shorten his hours of labour, and lengthen his hours of study, with impunity. Having no temptations to spend money, no hard demands of an inexorable landlord to answer, he could now work with his brains as ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... was prudent to have divulged in Vienna, and his enemies were also those of Wallenstein. A defeat might have been forgiven in Vienna, but this disappointment of their hopes they could not pardon. "What should I have done with this madman?" he writes, with a malicious sneer, to the minister who called him to account for this unseasonable magnanimity. "Would to Heaven the enemy had no generals but such as he. At the head of the Swedish army, he will render us much ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... first celebration of the festival called Neroniana he was crowned with the wreath of victory. His most celebrated poem, the one that drew down on him the irony of Juvenal, was the Troica, in which perhaps occurred the Troiae Halosis which this madman recited in state over the burning ruins of Rome, and which is parodied with subtle mockery in Petronius. Other poems were of a lighter cast and intended to be sung to the accompaniment of the harp. These were the crowning scandal of his imperial vagaries in the eyes of patriotic Romans. "With our ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... something similar. I called to consult my lawyer; he was clothed in a dragoon's dress, belted and casqued, and about to mount a charger, which his writing-clerk (habited as a sharp-shooter) walked to and fro before his door. I went to scold my agent for having sent me to advise with a madman; he had stuck into his head the plume, which in more sober days he wielded between his fingers, and figured as an artillery officer. My mercer had his spontoon in his hand, as if he measured his cloth by that implement, ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... step closer to her, raising his chair, gazing at her with the eye of a madman, and laughing ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... His words were like those of some madman. If we did not hear from him within three days, we are to look ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... matters, they would soon feel and acknowledge the force of this way of reasoning; for which of them would give any price for an estate from which they were liable to be immediately ejected? or, would they not laugh at him as a madman who accounted himself rich from such an uncertain possession? This is the fountain, sir, from which I have drawn my philosophy. Hence it is that I have learnt to look on all those things which are esteemed the blessings of life, and those which are dreaded as its evils, with such a degree of indifference ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... I, "if Hamed wants to be a fool, and kill his pagazis, why should we? I have as much cause for haste as Sheikh Hamed; but Unyanyembe is far yet, and I am not going to endanger my property by playing the madman." ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... indeed, my child, How I do love thee. 'Tis a good young man, And wealthy—no fool, like his brother. Fool, Said I?—a madman, ape, dolt, idiot, ass, An honourable ass to give the land His weak sire left him, to our Basil—Ha! He'll give none back, I think !—no! no! Come, girl! Wouldst thou be foolish, too? I would not marry For money only, understand—no! no! That I abhor, detest, but ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... would seem to pass into real madness in Ophelia. King Lear's growing perturbation becomes insanity the moment he sees the pretended madman Edgar. ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... be made. In the one case the reader is utterly at the mercy of the poet respecting what imagery or diction he may choose to connect with the passion.' But is this a poet, of whom a poet is speaking? No surely! rather of a fool or madman: or at best of a vain or ignorant phantast! And might not brains so wild and so deficient make just the same havoc with rhymes and metres, as they are supposed to effect with modes and figures of speech? How is the reader at the mercy of such men? If he continue to ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... a week before that he would not have enjoyed that night, that it would not have been amongst the happiest and proudest of his life, he would have set his informer down as a madman. As it was, he never once rose to the spirit of the feast, and wished it all over a dozen times. He deserved not to enjoy it; but not so Hardy, who was nevertheless almost as much out of tune as Tom; though the University coxswain ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... night, in a high garret-room, without a carpet, with a bare uncurtained bed, and scarcely any other furniture; when he went out early every morning, and often forgot to return and give her her dinner during the day, and at night, when he came back, was like a madman, furious, terrible, or—still more painful—like an idiot, imbecile, senseless. She knew she had fallen ill in this place, and that one night, when she was very sick he had come raving into the room, and said he would kill her, for she was a burden to him. Her screams had brought ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... foolishly vain, and madly ambitious of military glory. He plunged into shameful excesses, and gave way to bursts of passion that transformed a usually mild and generous disposition into the fury of a madman. The contradictions of his life cannot, perhaps, be better expressed than in the words once applied to the gifted Themistocles: "He was greater in ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... drink brandy and water whenever he felt chilly, and assured him that if he were deprived of meat or salt for a whole year, he would not only not die, but would be none the worse, Mr. Pickwick would have fled from his presence as from that of a dangerous madman. And in these matters the doctor cannot cheat his patient. If he has no faith in drugs or vaccination, and the patient has, he can cheat him with colored water and pass his lancet through the flame of a spirit lamp before scratching his arm. ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... all this? And if Thou remember, dost Thou not understand the dangers which threaten us from this milksop? Still he has under his hand the rudder of the ship of state, which he pushes in among rocks and eddies. Who will assure me that this madman, who yesterday summoned to his presence the Phoenicians, but quarreled with them today, will not do something to-morrow which ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... years ago, while the Emperor was on a visit to the tomb of Kutb-ud-din, a madman got into his private apartments. The servants were ordered to turn him out. On passing the Minar he ran in, ascended to the top, stood a few minutes on the verge, laughing at those who were running after him, and made a spring ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... been at liberty to see, and to have had the power to preserve Eliza from death. But in vain was my anxiety; it could not relieve, it could not liberate me. When I first heard the dreadful tidings of her exit, I believe I acted like a madman; indeed, I am little else now. I have compounded with my creditors, and resigned the whole of my property. Thus that splendor and equipage, to secure which I have sacrificed a virtuous woman, is taken from me. That poverty, ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster |
