"Madness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Jimmy, inflamed to the point of madness. He was in command at this point now, following the death of the lieutenant. "Come on! Make 'em pay for that!" He choked back his sobs, for the lieutenant was ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... madness, sir," the high dignitary cried out with wrath. "You say that wood belonging to the state was stolen. And at the time when these thefts were ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... interests of its favorites the value and production of the labor and property of every man in this extended country had been so fully and fearfully developed; when it was notorious that all classes of this great community had, by means of the power and influence it thus possesses, been infected to madness with a spirit of heedless speculation; when it had been seen that, secure in the support of the combination of influences by which it was surrounded, it could violate its charter and set the laws at defiance with impunity; and when, too, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Martin van Buren • Martin van Buren
... she certainly in this respect went too far. In the midst of religious and political parties, pursued by suspicion and slander, and in herself too tormented by jealousy, endangered rather than guarded by the possession of the highest dignity, she fell into a state of excitement bordering on madness. ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... and just as though a pit had opened before him he drew back. He must stop this double life at once and become his own self in reality; failing to do that he would meet madness. He recognised this. No man's brain could stand what he had been going through for long; had he been left to himself he might have adapted his mind gradually to the perpetual shifting from Jones to Rochester and vice versa. The woman had brought things to a crisis. The horror that ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... house and toward Cousin Tryphena's. ... As he ran, he did what I have never seen anyone do, out of a book; he tore at his bushy hair and scattered handfuls in the air. It seemed to me that some sudden madness had struck our dull little village, and I hastened after him to ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... could, without the least preparation, transform himself into any character tragic or comic, and seize instantaneously upon any passion of the human mind. He could make a sudden transition from violent rage, and even madness, to the extremes of levity and humor, and go through the whole circle of theatric evolution ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... did not escape his notice. He turned once more and cast sullen looks upon me. There was somewhat in his eyes that made me shudder. They denoted that his reverie was not that of grief, but of madness. I continued, in a less steadfast voice ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... on earth, and possible (I was about to say) controller of the skies! Weigh, and weigh well, the wondrous truths I have in view: which cannot be weighed too much; which the more they are weighed, amaze the more; which to have supposed, before they were revealed, would have been as great madness, and to have presumed on as great sin, as it is now madness ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... he had taken no notice, and gone on talking naturally; but that question knocked me over, so I just stared at him and gulped, and pressed my hands together, with that awful, awful sensation which comes over one when one knows it is madness to give way, and yet feels that the moment after next you are just going to do it, and ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... that the egg of the ostrich weighs three pounds—that the sun is the bird's Cantelo—that he has only two toes to each foot—that he sometimes exceeds six feet in height—and that it would not be an act of madness to back a stout specimen, for speed, against an average horse. The digestion of the ostrich has been considerably strengthened in the minds of unscientific persons by imaginative travellers; the fact being that these birds live upon vegetable food, ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... him," he said in a confidential whisper, shaking his head at me. "He's gone, sir, gone, in my estimation. Now what would you take to be a proof of madness, ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... wickedness into madness; and it is to the credit of human reason, that men who are not in some degree mad are never capable of being in the highest degree wicked. The human faculties and reason are in such cases deranged; and therefore this man has been dragged ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the highest degree of infatuation and madness could ever have prevailed with us to introduce unwholesome Exoticks. The voice of reason crys louder than ever for their perpetual banishment; and the further use of them must be accounted for but by the force of invincible prejudice. ...
— The Olden Time Series: Vol. 2: The Days of the Spinning-Wheel in New England • Various
... soul, whilst I gaze, is on fire: But her looks were so tender and kind, My hope almost reach'd my desire, And left lame despair far behind. Transported with madness, I flew, And eagerly seized on my bliss; Her bosom but half she withdrew, But half she refused my ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... treads. I felt those hollows with my hands, traced their formation, and despite my unhappy plight could not refrain from musing upon the stories which those hollows could relate—stories of abandoned hope, frenzy, madness, resignation, suppressed fury, and pathetic awaiting of the doom which ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... the famous South Sea Bubble which inaugurated a period of frantic speculation in England. Worthless shares in companies formed for trade in the South Seas sold at a thousand per cent of their face value. It is a form of madness to which human greed is ever liable. Walpole's financial insight condemned from the first the wild outburst, and his common sense during the crisis helped to stem the tide of disaster. The South Sea Bubble burst partly because Spain stood sternly on her own rights and punished ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... "What madness is this?" Edgar exclaimed. "There are twelve hundred men there, and yet no bow is bent. ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... it might be without a single copper in his pocket or a roof to shelter him! And he was just the sort of man to live on a woman's earnings—just the one to cast the glove to fortune and of his desperation achieve the final madness. No, no, he must leave London. The city had done with him—he had never been so sure of anything in all ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... Mortimer, I goad the schoolmaster to madness. I make the schoolmaster so ridiculous, and so aware of being made ridiculous, that I see him chafe and fret at every pore when we cross one another. The amiable occupation has been the solace of my life, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... having been by an unknown law condemned to die, and the execution suspended for some days, many of the malicious citizens, fearing his pardon, shut up their shops, professing not to open them till justice was executed. This malice and madness is scarce credible; but I ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... the final wrench of the rack. With a yell such as I never thought to listen to from the lips of a man, he flung up his arms, while all the lurid light of madness glared on his face. "And I have given my soul to hell for a shadow!" he moaned, "for ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... such as time will obviate or increase; the obstacle must be either conquerable or unconquerable: if he love me, as I thought he did, if he have the energy of character I think he possesses, he will conquer it, if it can be conquered; if it be unconquerable, what misery, what madness, to suffer my affections to be irrevocably engaged! or what base vanity to wish, if it were in my power, to inspire him with an unhappy passion! Then, in every point of view, mother, surely it is best that I should leave this—dangerous place," said Caroline, smiling. "Yet you are both ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... to him from the first that my thoughts had once been elsewhere. He never asked to know more, and we have never touched upon it since. Besides, at bottom it was simply madness. And then it was over directly—that is to ...
— The Lady From The Sea • Henrik Ibsen
... their own customs, and not be forced to transgress the ancient rules of their own country religion; but that, in the time of Caius, the Alexandrians became insolent towards the Jews that were among them, which Caius, out of his great madness and want of understanding, reduced the nation of the Jews very low, because they would not transgress the religious worship of their country, and call him a god: I will therefore that the nation of the Jews be not deprived ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... hold of her and putting his arms around her waist. "Aileen, dearest, this is plain madness. It is insanity. You're not in your right mind. Don't go! Don't leave me! I love you! Don't you know I do? Can't you really see that? Don't run away like this, and don't cry. I do love you, and you know it. I always ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... the whole country, and in defiance of all rules of the hunt, get rid of the 'daft' fox in any way they could. But the snow did not come, and the red-haired gentleman lived his life. Notwithstanding his madness, he did not lack method. He never came two successive nights to the same farm. He never ate where he killed, and he never left a track that betrayed his re-treat. He usually finished up his night's trail on the turf, or on ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... all the more confirmed in my estimate of his madness. To call such a thing a weapon!—a strip of soft fabric that might kill a butterfly but would be poor defence indeed to rely on against sword or dagger. I suppose I smiled contemptuously, for again the man ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... by this unexpected reception, tried to beg forgiveness for the madness that had caused his expulsion from the place; but ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked Where Tim, the ostler, listened; his face was white and peaked; His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay, But he loved the landlord's daughter; The landlord's red-lipped daughter, Dumb as a dog he listened, and he ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... resolution of the Kentuckians who desired to unite their State to the Southern Confederacy, but while it lasted it was an insurmountable, physical barrier in the way of such an undertaking. With those States antagonistic to the Southern movement, it would have been madness for Kentucky to have attempted to join it. When at length, Virginia and Tennessee passed their ordinances of secession, Kentucky had become infatuated with the policy of "neutrality." With the leaders of the Union party, it had ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... tortured way back from pits of madness, the woman strove to focus her senses, but her wild eyes encountered the dark and crumpled mass on the floor and again a low shriek broke from her. She turned her horrified face away and surrendered to a fresh paroxysm, but ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... aware my movements were so original!" retorted Gipsy. "There's method in my madness this time, though. I was trying to dodge Miss White, and dash upstairs to get my Hamlet. I've forgotten the wretched thing, and if I go to class without a book, Poppie—h'm! I mean Miss Poppleton" (as Doreen's eyebrows went up)—"will want to ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... good rout! I can afford them leave to err so still; And like the barking students of Bears-college, To swallow up the garbage of the time With greedy gullets, whilst myself sit by, Pleased, and yet tortured, with their beastly feeding. 'Tis a sweet madness runs along with them, To think, all that are aim'd at still are struck: Then, where the shaft still lights, make that the mark: And so each fear or fever-shaken fool May challenge Teucer's hand in archery. Good troth, if I knew any man so vile, To act the crimes these Whippers ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... Arrkroo, the man who hated him. He saw the naked women and children, he noticed the dogs and the filth on all sides, and his hand tightened on the huge boomerang which he held. Why shouldn't he rush in amongst these men and deal out death, right, left, in front, behind. His anger was rising to madness. He felt that he could overcome the whole tribe of them. And if he failed, what matter? At least he would have had ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... is fortunate she has a queer way of showing it. She must cry a good deal at night, judging by her eyes in the morning, but the thing that's most the matter with her is madness. She can't take it in that Whythe is showing no signs of anxiousness to make up. She imagined, I suppose, when they had their fuss that it wouldn't last very long and that he would give in to whatever she wanted, and now that ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... our debate, I had forgot Burke, who, after I finished my last night's letter, finished his wild speech in a manner next to madness. He let out two of the new titles—Fitzwilliam to be Marquis of Rockingham, and Lord G. Cavendish, jun. His party pulled him, and our friends calling "Hear, hear," we lost the rest of the twenty-five new Peers, who would all have ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... the madness of Mrs. Smithers, however, for she had once seen the departed Mr. Judson going out to the orchard with a tin box under his arm and her own spade but partially concealed under his long overcoat. When he came back, he was smiling, which was so unusual that she forgot all about ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... Murder Madness! Seven Secret Service Men Had Completely Disappeared. Another Had Been Found a Screaming, Homicidal Maniac, Whose Fingers Writhed Like Snakes. So Bell, of the Secret "Trade," Plunges into South America After The Master—the Mighty, Unknown Octopus of Power Whose Diabolical Poison Threatens ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... difficult to trace many familiar dramatic resemblances in the Old Testament. Shakspeare, who was certainly well read in the Bible and frequently quotes it, in the composition of Lear may have had David and Absalom in mind; the feigned madness of Hamlet has its prototype in that of David; Macbeth and the Weird Sisters have many traits in common with Saul and the Witch of Endor. Jezebel is certainly a suggestive study for Lady Macbeth. The whole story has its key in that verse where we read, "There was none like unto Ahab, which did ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... long ago guessed that stronger forces were at work in his friend than mere sorrow for the loss of a wife, however dear—and he had guessed right. It was Desmond's sensitive conscience that had been his arch tormentor throughout those months of silence and strangeness that had brought him near to madness ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... his ideas, therefore, being neither renovated by discourse, nor increased by reading, wore gradually away, and left his mind vacant to the vexations of the hour, till at last his anger was heightened into madness. He, however, permitted one book to be published, which had been the production of former years—"Polite Conversation," which appeared in 1738. The "Directions for Servants," was printed soon after his death. These two performances show a mind incessantly ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... have nothing to do. It was during such a period the crank had his opportunity and the situation was dangerous, and he wished me to come to the platform and fill as much of that hour as possible. I refused on the ground that I was wholly unprepared, and it would be madness to attempt to speak to fourteen thousand people in the hall and a hundred ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... am careful—and, with you waiting for me, I SHALL be careful—my savings will enable me to start a small school of my own, and to take a wife. Even then it would be more prudent to wait another five years, no doubt. But there was always a streak of madness in the Noakses. I say 'Prudence to ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... we to expect that mercy should exist at all? What madness, then, to think He will depart from the course He has laid out for himself, and save without condition those who are justly condemned? Yet justice is satisfied, for Christ has died. O Soul, accept that sacrifice!" He had come to the edge of ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... of madness is coming on afresh!" cried Schwarzenberg, shrugging his shoulders. "Man, are you really beside yourself?—have you lost your senses? Do you demand your wife and child of me, of Count Adam von Schwarzenberg, the Stadtholder in the Mark? Go ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... be possible to be so taken possession of by the message from God as to lose self-control and even reason itself. In Scripture we meet with manifestations of prophecy which are akin to madness. Just as the wind, catching the sail, would, if the ropes were not adjusted to relieve the strain, overturn the boat, so the Wind of God might sweep the mind off its balance, the human personality ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... not know Mexicans yet? They would be opposed to God Almighty, rather than confess they were well governed. Bah! the genius of Mexico is mutiny. They scarcely want a leader to move their madness. They rebel on any weak pretence. They bluster when they are courted; they crouch when they are oppressed. They are fools to all the world but themselves. I beg the Almighty to consider in my favor, that some over-hasty ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... neglect them when they do not, and they are driven out of society; consequently the poor women generally give their free consent. Upon the occasion, they are handsomely dressed and ornamented, and frequently stupefied with opium almost to madness; are led with music and singing to the place where the corpse of the husband, wrapped in white muslin, lies upon the funeral pile. At the moment that the victim throws herself upon the corpse, the wood is lighted on all sides. At the same time, ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... secret. He would be quite capable of undertaking the terrible journey. Nothing would check him, nothing stop him. Worse, he would compel me to accompany him, and we should be lost forever. But no; such folly and madness cannot be allowed." ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... and the utter uselessness of everything, and the horrible, intolerable, unending pain of all the things that breathe, one comes to think that in this meaningless mystery which men call life a little laughter and a little love are the only things which save us all from madness—the madness that would curse God ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... glimmer of a tottering reason was fast leaving the poor, aching head she was too young to realise. Madness was a word that had only a vague meaning for her. Though she did not understand her father at the present moment, though she was half afraid of him, she would have rejected with scorn and horror any suggestion ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... that he was glad it was not done upon the Stage. Seeing afterwards Orestes in his raving Fit, he grew more than ordinary serious, and took occasion to moralize (in his way) upon an Evil Conscience, adding, that Orestes, in his Madness, looked as ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... tongues can poison truth; And constancy lives in realms above; And life is thorny, and youth is vain; And to be wroth with one we love, Doth work like madness in the brain! ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Tower of David! O Star of the Sea! have you no comfort for my sore heart? Am I for ever to hope? Grant me at least despair!'—and so on she went, heedless of my presence. Her prayers grew wilder and wilder, till they seemed to me to touch on the borders of madness and blasphemy. Almost involuntarily, I spoke as ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... last one was caught in a trap, and the doctor tried the experiment, but only got knocked over and his nose scratched for his pains. There was a curious instance, once, of a Fingo going mad in consequence of being bitten by a leopard. The madness took the form of his feigning to be a leopard, and there was no doubt as to his insanity, for he continually growled and scratched and snapped with his teeth, and finished off by jumping through a glass door.—Now then, the cart's ready; ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... principles' mean those principles which have been shown by our experience to be essential to peace, order, wealth, and progress in arts and sciences. 'No one,' says Fitzjames, 'can feel more strongly than I do the madness of the smallest unnecessary interference with the social habits and religious opinions of the country. I would not touch one of them except in cases of extreme necessity.' But the simple introduction of peace, law, order, ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... door, for a long time, against all efforts, even the most judicious, to spread the gospel amongst a people so needlessly and greatly prejudiced against it by an unwise and abrupt application of its principles. For instance, what folly and madness it would be for our missionaries to Burmah, to make a direct assault on the political institutions of that country! How fatal would it be to their lives, and how incalculably injurious to the cause entrusted to their hands! And, if this can be said of them, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... think not; if it has, there is 'method in his madness,' for he persevered most surprisingly, in the use of the term. His nephew, Tom Wychecombe, the presumptive heir, he insists on it, is a nullus; while this Sir Reginald, who is expected to arrive every instant, he says is only ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... excited no such admiration in the mind of Tafur, who looked on it as one of gross disobedience to the commands of the governor, and as little better than madness, involving the certain destruction of the parties engaged in it. He refused to give any sanction to it himself by leaving one of his vessels with the adventurers to prosecute their voyage, and it was with great difficulty that he could be persuaded even to allow ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... no ghost to deal with, and overwhelmed by the priest's kindness, Tokubei burst into tears, and answered, "Indeed, indeed, I don't know what to say. In a fit of madness I was tempted to kill and rob you. Fortune befriended me ever after; but the richer I grew, the more keenly I felt how wicked I had been, and the more I foresaw that my victim's vengeance would some day overtake me. Haunted by this thought, I lost my nerve, till one night I ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... "Can you give me a good reason why I shouldn't have you treated for space madness and then toss you in the space pot until we ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin
... sparkling, cheeks were flushing, lips were parting as gay activity created warmth in bodies and hearts. Then would come the tarantella, with Gaspare spinning like a top and tripping like a Folly in a veritable madness of movement. And as the night wore on the dance would become wilder, the laughter louder, the fire of jokes more fierce. Healths would be drunk with clinking glasses, brindisi shouted, tricks played. Cards would be got out. There would be a group intent on "Scopa," ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... short, dark coloured pea coats, and their heads were surmounted with glazed hats—a species of costume that more than any thing else, proved their familiarity with the element whose brawling they appeared to brave with an indifference bordering on madness. ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... were a clutter of tissue-like crepe-de-chine underclothes and blouses; boot-clubs and jewelry-clubs, these last, garish establishments, secure in the glamour of irresistible imitations—all have urged to extravagance and a madness for ornament. ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... indeed so resolute, that they "might have argued for a fortnight without coming to an agreement." But the people of the city had starved long enough, and they drove back their emissaries to the Porte St. Hilaire, after one proposal, born of madness, had been made, to set fire to the town and then by every gate at once to pour out upon the English camp with the whole population in a flood, and so win through or die at least with weapons in ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... esthetic invasion, but their crowning audacity was a printed circular which announced that tea would be served in their office in the Caxton Building on Saturday afternoons! Finally as if to convince the city of their utter madness, this intrepid trio adventured the founding of a literary magazine to be called The Chap Book! Culture on the Middle Border had at last ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... be better in my keeping," said Carstairs briskly. "Though I hope the madness which induced her to try to use it will have ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... herself, the serpent now began To change; her elfin blood in madness ran, Her mouth foam'd, and the grass, therewith besprent, Wither'd at dew so sweet and virulent; Her eyes in torture fix'd, and anguish drear, 150 Hot, glaz'd, and wide, with lid-lashes all sear, Flash'd phosphor and sharp sparks, without one cooling tear. The colours all inflam'd throughout ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... and a great abundance of hard work and a great lack of repose. You have to keep your mind marching in all directions, and to overload your memory. Books have led some to learning, and others to madness, when they swallow more than they can digest. In the mind, as in the body, indigestion does more harm than hunger; food and books alike must be used according to the constitution, and what is little enough for one is ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... pathetic manner of her grave and the probability of the sun shining on it early in the morning, and her mother walking on it later in the day. At other times her malady would seize her, and she would snatch the brick off the string and throw it fiercely at Tennyson. Once, in an uncontrollable fit of madness, she gave her sister Effie a half-share in her garden tools and an interest in a ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... instances of slumbering mental powers. After remaining dormant for a long period in our normal condition, they may, in certain abnormal states—such as madness, delirium, catalepsy, hypnotic sleep and so forth-flash out into luminous consciousness and throw into absolute oblivion the powers that are manifesting in the normal state. Talents for eloquence, music, painting, and uncommon ingenuity in several mechanical arts, traces of which were never found ...
— Reincarnation • Swami Abhedananda
... at a banquet, and an excellent captain: he took his pleasure with other men, and was so impressionable a character that he enjoyed a virtuous project as well as any plan for a debauch; in love he was most susceptible, and jealous to the point of madness even about a courtesan, had she once taken his fancy; his prodigality was princely, although he had no income; further, he was most sensitive to slights, as all men are who, because they are placed in an equivocal position, fancy that everyone ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... France was sure to be followed by a revolution throughout Europe. "France conceived the idea that she had a Divine mission, as the great apostle of liberty, to propagate republicanism through all the kingdoms of Europe. In her madness of intoxication she undertook the work, threw down the gauntlet, and the fierce tocsin of war sounded from nation to nation, until the continent was converted into ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... requested, the subject was allowed to drop by those present, but not before they had stung poor Barton almost to madness. ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... language: giving himself out for a grave and patriotic public servant. We turn to the same date in the Diary by which he is known, after two centuries, to his descendants. The entry begins in the same key with the letter, blaming the "madness of the House of Commons" and "the base proceedings, just the epitome of all our public proceedings in this age, of the House of Lords"; and then, without the least transition, this is how our diarist proceeds: "To the Strand, to my ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... poison of chivalry with thy earliest youth, and the base and low-minded envy that met thee on thy return to thy native seats, operated with this poison to hurry thee into madness." ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... CHARLES, - I have found a yacht, and we are going the full pitch for seven months. If I cannot get my health back (more or less), 'tis madness; but, of course, there is the hope, and I will play big. . . . If this business fails to set me up, well, 2000 pounds is gone, and I know I can't get better. We sail from San Francisco, June 15th, for the South Seas in the yacht ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... punishment is condivided with fault. But envy is a kind of punishment: for Gregory says (Moral. v, 46): "When the foul sore of envy corrupts the vanquished heart, the very exterior itself shows how forcibly the mind is urged by madness. For paleness seizes the complexion, the eyes are weighed down, the spirit is inflamed, while the limbs are chilled, there is frenzy in the heart, there is gnashing with the teeth." Therefore envy is ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... madness. From east, south, west, the French commanders—Bourlamaque, Bougainville, Roquemaure, Dumas, La Corne— had all fallen back, deserted by their militias. The provincial army had melted down to two hundred men; the troops of the line ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... delusion,—reasons which seemed to make it impossible that she should attract a suitor. Who would dare to marry Elsie? No, let her have the pleasure, if it was one, at any rate the wholesome excitement, of companionship; it might save her from lapsing into melancholy or a worse form of madness. Dudley Venner had a kind of superstition, too, that, if Elsie could only outlive three septenaries, twenty-one years, so that, according to the prevalent idea, her whole frame would have been thrice made over, counting from her birth, she would revert to the natural standard of ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... a tall, gaunt man of about fifty, with a lantern jaw and straggling gray hair, and eyes that had a sparkle of madness in them. His surname was Quixada or Quesada, and though not rich, he was well known to the country folk and had some reputation in the ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... wife cone in." Savoisy did not like it, but the king insisted; and so they went in this guise through the crowd, and got many a blow from the officers' staves when they attempted to approach too near the procession. In 1393, a year after his first outbreak of madness, the king, during an entertainment at court, conceived the idea of disguising as savages himself and five of his courtiers. They had been sewn up in a linen skin which defined their whole bodies; and this skin had been covered with a resinous pitch, so as to ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... boys! let us drink; 'Tis madness to sorra, 'tis folly to think. For we're ahl jolly fellows wheriver we go— Ogedashin, den thashin, na ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... in the Gospels, that those unfortunate persons who were possessed with evil spirits (which, after all, I think is the most probable cause of madness, as was first suggested to me by my respectable friend Sir John Pringle), had recourse to pain, tearing themselves, and jumping sometimes into the fire, sometimes into the water. Mr. Seward has furnished me with a remarkable anecdote in confirmation of Dr. Johnson's observation. A tradesman, who ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... place was topographically strong. It was defended by General Zaragoza with the very pick of the Mexican army under General Negrete, and was, moreover, supported by the well-manned battery of the Fort de Loretto. To attempt the assault of such a position without the support of artillery seemed madness; and when the general ordered his troops forward it was found that his field-battery, owing to the lay of the land, could not even be brought to bear upon the fort at sufficiently close range to reach it. One fifth of the corps of attack was ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... which had two or three little drills of fresh water in it, and at one end was very woody; I say, they will smile at my forecast, when I shall tell them, I began my enclosing this piece of ground in such a manner, that my hedge or pale must have been at least two miles about. Nor was the madness of it so great as to the compass, for if it was ten miles about, I was like to have time enough to do it in; but I did not consider that my goats would be as wild in so much compass as if they had had the whole island, and I should have so much ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... flame at a mention of that hope, which spoke volumes to her vanity and her love, that she might one day be Mrs. Weir of Hermiston; swift, also, to recognise in his stumbling or throttled utterance the death-knell of these expectations, and constant, poor girl! in her large-minded madness, to go on and to reck nothing of the future. But these unfinished references, these blinks in which his heart spoke, and his memory and reason rose up to silence it before the words were well uttered, ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... form. Put together Dryden's various Prefaces and you will find them one solid monument to his classical faith. Of Pope, Gray, Collins, you will not ask me to speak. What is salt in Cowper you can taste only when you have detected that by a stroke of madness he missed, or barely missed, being our true English Horace, that almost more nearly than the rest he hit what the rest had been seeking. Then, of the 'romantic revival'— enemy of false classicism, not of classicism—bethink you what, in his few great years, Wordsworth owed ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... exposed in the open. Had there been time he would have pulled down the old palisades and made a breastwork, which would have afforded some protection to his people, but now the Maoris had got behind the palisades and fired from thence. To attempt to leave the position would be madness. He could not hope to gain a better without having to pass through the thick of the forest, while his men would have been exposed to the fire of an almost invisible foe. His chief hope was that the Maoris would discover that the other pah was to be attacked and would retreat to assist in its ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... he was an upended Roman battering ram, a man on stilts. I measured him with my eyes, and still there was something left over. Yet he was bent and broken, old before his time, quite bald; but his mouth was tight as a tiger's, and he had a madness in his head that kept him on ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... your energies be bent on occupying the advantageous position first. So Ts'ao Kung. Li Ch'uan and others, however, suppose the meaning to be that the enemy has already forestalled us, sot that it would be sheer madness to attack. In the SUN TZU HSU LU, when the King of Wu inquires what should be done in this case, Sun Tzu replies: "The rule with regard to contentious ground is that those in possession have the advantage over the other side. If a position of this kind is secured first ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... give me such an idea of security as to see twenty or thirty Catholic gentlemen in Parliament, looked upon by all the Catholics as the fair and proper organ of their party. I should have thought it the height of good fortune that such a wish existed on their part, and the very essence of madness and ignorance ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... was of the madness! How I loved to say that words were more beautiful than the things for which they stood, and that the names of the world's beautiful women, Sappho, Fiametta, Guinivere, were more beautiful than Sappho, Fiametta, Guinivere themselves; that the names ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... self-sacrifice, and an heroic fortitude, which, as we gaze on his image, make the halo of the saint and the crown of the martyr alternate with the wrinkles of his weaknesses and his mirth. In one of her periodical paroxysms of madness, Mary struck her mother dead with a knife. Charles was then twenty-two, full of hope and ambition, enthusiastically attached to Coleridge, and in love with a certain "fair-haired maid," named Anna, to whom he had written some verses. This fearful ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... really a pine tree. However this may be, there is something singularly thrilling, even something urgent and intolerant, about the endless forest repetitions; there is the hint of something like madness in that musical ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... the madness of the French government and the exasperation of public feeling in a nation like the French, so uniformly proud of military glory, when very shortly after the first arrival of their new monarch, Louis XVIII., an order was issued for leveling with the dust that proud ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... Birmingham and other kindred platforms must bear the blame of the inference, drawn nearly universally at the present moment, that, if the United States become involved in hopeless difficulties, it would be madness to lower the qualification for the suffrage ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... hearts, notwithstanding, cannot spare; And, once for all, I grudge thee not the pleasure Of lying to thyself in moderate measure. But such a course thou wilt not long endure; Already art thou o'er-excited, And, if it last, wilt soon be plighted To madness and to horror, sure. Enough of that! Thy love sits lonely yonder, By all things saddened and oppressed; Her thoughts and yearnings seek thee, tenderer, fonder,— mighty love is in her breast. First came thy passion's flood and poured around ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... a thought was madness, and, little as we had met, I counted her already a dear friend; but my protestations seemed only to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... content with this, they resolved to call in aid the art of athletics, and required all their men to come with hands, arms, and sinews well anointed and medicated according to the rules of art, would he not cry out that they were only taking pains to show a kind of method and discretion in their madness? Yet just so it is that men proceed in matters intellectual,—with just the same kind of mad effort and useless combination of forces,—when they hope great things either from the number and cooperation or from the excellency and acuteness of individual wits; yea, and when they endeavour by Logic ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... cried Roby. "Good heavens, no! It would be madness to send any one into that horrible pit.—Here, I had forgotten ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... greatest abhorrence; to run the risk of committing murder (for I can call it by no milder name), when at the very moment in which the crime is consummated you may fall yourself, and thus even the forlorn hope of living to repent be cut off from you, appears to me little short of madness. On one point I am resolved—if I do go out with him, nothing shall induce me to fire at him; I will not die a ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... gossip! Asphalion, come you here. Look at those golden columns; those inlaid walls; The ground, the trees, the flowers & precious food That in my madness I did turn to gold:— Pull it all down, I hate its sight and touch; Heap up my cars & waggons with the load And yoke my kine to drag it to the sea: Then crowned with flowers, ivy & Bacchic vine, And singing hymns to the ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... and Aphrodite alive on their marble. He remembers him of your story. He wish himself a statue. Then he becomes mad imagines to himself that your story of the island is true, plunges in the lake, swims among the beasts of the Ark of Noe, feeds with gods on an island. At dawn the madness become less. He think the Pantheon vanish. But him, no he thinks himself statue, hiding from gardeners in his garden till nine less a quarter. Then he thinks to wish himself no more a statue and perceives that he is flesh and blood. A bad dream, but he ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... kind of rage and rapture with which it was received. It was a blow that shook the whole dynasty. Thersites had there given such a wound to Ajax, as Hector in arms could scarcely have inflicted: a blow sufficient almost to create the madness to which the fabulous hero of Homer ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... aeon of gladness, Balance the throes of pain-madness,— Must not the crime of the cruel Burn into souls ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Onward he flaunts it, innocent, vicious and gay, Prophet of prayers that are stifled and loves that drown, Urchin and sprat of the City that roars like a sea Surging around him in hunger and splendour and shame, Cruelty, luxury, madness, he leaps in his glee Out of the mazes of mist and the vistas ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... inexplicable loss came over her, and she was frightened to madness; creeping chills alternating with cold sweats tortured her. It was a mystery she could not penetrate. She could not but implicate Lucy: but then Lucy might be in her grave. After every circumstance had passed in review, her suspicions inevitably ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... incredible as it seems, Mr. Bessel, a stout, middle-aged gentleman, must have scrambled in order to fall down the shaft. He was saturated in colza oil, and the smashed tin lay beside him, but luckily the flame had been extinguished by his fall. And his madness had passed from him altogether. But he was, of course, terribly enfeebled, and at the sight of his rescuers he gave way ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... and a liar," said Donna Inez with great distinctness, and speaking English excellently. "What you say against Sir Frank is madness and foolish talk. In Genoa my father did not speak of the manuscript, nor did I, who tell you this. How, then, could Sir Frank kill this poor man, when he had no reason ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... dreamest'; and to say this and to draw in her head and shut the window were one and the same thing. Whereat Andreuccio, now fully certified of his loss, was like for chagrin to turn his exceeding anger into madness and bethought himself to seek to recover by violence that which he might not have again with words; wherefore, taking up a great stone, he began anew to batter the ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... that is remote; hence everything that is absent or past, or in the future, affects women in a less degree than men. This is why they have greater inclination for extravagance, which sometimes borders on madness. Women in their hearts think that men are intended to earn money so that they may spend it, if possible during their husband's lifetime, but at any rate ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... already! Does he want the responsibility? Does he wish the British to say afterward that it was all the maharajah's doing? No, you ass! At the conference be agreed solely on condition that the commissioner sahib should sign the letter and relieve his highness of all blame in case of a verdict of madness. And it was decided to send an American, lest there be too much talk among the British themselves. ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... madness must it be to run into debt for these superfluities! We are offered, by the terms of this vendue, six months' credit; and that, perhaps, has induced some of us to attend it, because we cannot spare the ready money, and hope now ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... former Talmud student like myself, who is the greatest physiologist in the New World, or with the Russian Jew who holds the foremost place among American song-writers and whose soulful compositions are sung in almost every English-speaking house in the world. I love music to madness. I yearn for the world of great singers, violinists, pianists. Several of the greatest of them are of my race and country, and I have met them, but all my acquaintance with them has brought me is a sense of being looked down upon as a money-bag striving to play the ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... what Cais, that madman[FN16] hight, Did never undergo for love of Leila bright. Yet chase I not the beasts o' the desert, as did he; For madness hath its kinds for this ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... have protection from the burning sun by day. A thorn hedge, the native "boma," keeps out lions and the sneaking hyaena at night. Nor are their rifles more than a half protection, for the '303 makes so clean a hole that it is often madness to attempt to shoot a lion with it. Once wounded he is far more dangerous a foe. Here the "tota" earns his pay, for he can hunt the native villages for "cuckoos," the native fowls, ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... an infant, he strangled some serpents sent by the goddess to destroy him. During his boyhood and youth he performed various marvelous feats of strength, and on reaching manhood succeeded in delivering the Thebans from the oppression of the Minae. In a fit of madness sent upon him by Juno, he slew his own children; and on consulting the Delphic oracle as to how he should cleanse himself from this crime, he was ordered to submit himself for twelve years to Eurystheus, king of Tiryns, and to perform whatever tasks were appointed ...
— Ritchie's Fabulae Faciles - A First Latin Reader • John Kirtland, ed.
... indeed; yet once more she forced herself to make the hopeless effort, after some more than customary outbreak of the man who was drinking himself into madness and ruin. She writes in the March of 1846 to ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... hard to say exactly what madness is. I fancy Azuma-zi was mad. The incessant din and whirl of the dynamo shed may have churned up his little store of knowledge and big store of superstitious fancy, at last, into something akin to frenzy. At any rate, when ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... shrugged her shoulders and said, "How stupid they are!" Emboldened by this, he begged to know whether or not a life of distant unpretending devotion would, after a lapse of years, erase the memory of his madness—his crime! ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... come from Judea, and from Judea it probably came when it first began to agitate minds in these parts; but it seems to have been known in the remote East, more or less for thousands of years previously. It filled people's minds with madness; it was followed by books which were never much regarded, as they contained little of insanity; but the name! what fury that breathed into people! the books were about peace and gentleness, but the name was the most horrible of war-cries—those who wished to uphold old ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow |
