FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • More 'Maddening' Quotes from Famous Books

... rules don't hold. We are facing new conditions. This is a thing for women to take in hand, practically, as they are taking in hand other work. It must be done absolutely without prejudice. There is no time to lecture or condemn or even deplore. There is only time to try to heal wounds and quiet maddening pain and ...

— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... sinner a good while to get the invitation through his head. Most church-bells in the world are of poor quality, and have a harsh and rasping sound which upsets the temper and produces much sin, but the St. Nicholas bell is a good deal the worst one that has been contrived yet, and is peculiarly maddening in its operation. Still, it may have its right and its excuse to exist, for the community is poor and not every citizen can afford a clock, perhaps; but there cannot be any excuse for our church-bells at home, for their is no family ...

— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... from the ground; he rushes at it, and it sticks somehow or other in the fingers of his left hand, to the utter astonishment of himself and the whole field. Such a catch hasn't been made in the close for years, and the cheering is maddening. "Pretty cricket," says the captain, throwing himself on the ground by the deserted wicket with a long breath. He feels that ...

— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes

... Colorow, and associated her first persistent revolt with him; and now, seeing her beside him, in his own house, looking up into his face, absorbed, fascinated, utterly forgetful of her duty, oblivious to every one else, was maddening. Her gown angered him. "Why did she wear that dress?" he fiercely asked himself. "She does not do that for me. She is in love with him—that is why. She shall not come here again. These people are destructive ...

— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... It was maddening. He had no lights. If he opened the door of the room the thing would get away. In the darkness he saw Pawkins quite distinctly laughing at him. Pawkins had ever an oily laugh. He swore furiously and stamped his ...

— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... victory to heights of dazzling glory, and now plunged down into the abysm of defeat. I saw my wife and children torn from me; restored, only to be dragged away again. I saw Rome driven from the Holy City, only to see her return in triumph. And all through these maddening vicissitudes, suspected by my own people, and knowing my own infamy, I heard the voice, "Tarry ...

— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.

... still, and he came very near to being disgusted with his queen who could do no wrong. 'Just when I thought I had made some headway, she goes off chasing butterflies. It's too maddening!' ...

— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling

... to ask.... My dearest daughter, I would bear it all over again for your sake. But it is maddening work, it goes to the head at last. It makes one feel as if something was giving way there,' he said, touching his forehead, 'it ...

— Celibates • George Moore

... caravan devolved upon myself. The Wanyamwezi donkeys stuck in the mire as if they were rooted to it. As fast as one was flogged from his stubborn position, prone to the depths fell another, giving me a Sisyphean labour, which was maddening trader pelting rain, assisted by such men as Bombay and Uledi, who could not for a whole skin's sake stomach the storm and mire. Two hours of such a task enabled me to drag my caravan over a savannah one mile and a half broad; ...

— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... flowers,—no garlands green, Conceal the goblet's shade or sheen, Nor maddening draughts of Hippocrene, Like gleams of sunshine, flash between Thick ...

— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... It is maddening to read all this ignoble clap-trap, written by European wiseacres concerning this country. Not one knows the people, not one knows the accidental agencies which neutralize what is grand ...

— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski

... twenty-two miles separating New York from the army's Hazlehurst Field at Mineola, Long Island, I wished that we might turn round, if only for an instant, that I might adjust the fur-lined chin strap, the buckle of which snapped against my left ear with maddening ...

— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell

... what is necessary, while the character of Albany renders a still more maddening grievance possible, namely, Regan and Cornwall in perfect sympathy of monstrosity. Not a sentiment, not an image, which can give pleasure on its own account, is admitted; whenever these creatures are introduced, and they are brought forward as little as possible, pure ...

— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge

... "The maddening noise of carriages shakes the silence of the night. Paris wet and muddy! Parisian Paris! Now everything is quiet ... she is sleeping the sleep of the unjust" (Written to Ferrand, Lettres intimes, pp. ...

— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland

... as he did, to perish, had not been difficult, because he knew that he should not see the act of perishing; but to be brought there and compelled to witness this terrible doom acted out in all its minute and horrible details on the mother whom he had once loved so tenderly, was maddening to think of. All the dread tortures that had yet been invented and practised on warriors must have seemed to him as nothing compared with this awful device of the pale-face, on whom he now glared with the eyes of implacable ...

— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne

... on which to play hymns, too wet to walk, none with whom to converse, no possibility of sleeping, as in an endeavour to kill a little of the time I had gone to bed early and got up late. There was nothing but to sit still, tormented by maddening regret. I pictured what would he transpiring at Caddagat now; what we had done this time last week, and so on, till the thing became an agony ...

— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin

... The thought was maddening. For a little while he yielded to utter despondency. It was quite true that a comparatively small amount of money would restore the stability of his firm. Even without it, were his credit unimpaired, he could easily ...

— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy

... that Lord Blackadder saw me then, at the start. But at Bellegarde, the Swiss frontier, where there was a wait of half an hour for the Customs examination, an irritating performance always, but carried out here with the most maddening and overbearing particularity, everyone was obliged to alight from the train, and for the moment I trembled for Lady Claire. But the appeal addressed to the French brigadier, "un galant homme," of an invalid lady, too ...

— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths

... followed her uneasily, behind some palms. She was a thin little woman with a maddening habit of drawing her tight veil down even closer by a contortion of her lower jaw, so that the rector found himself watching her chin rather ...

— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... if I betrayed my absentmindedness during the time that I was struggling vainly with these maddening problems, but presently, Mrs. Camber having departed about her household duties, I found myself walking down ...

— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer

... at last, and there joined Sir Colin Campbell's force. The sight of this house of murder was simply maddening to the men. They left the place next morning with a sort of shudder, and set their faces towards Lucknow. It was not till we were well on the march that I had leisure to look about me and notice how our ...

— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed

... English lines and died at Drake's feet. Sir Francis was a dangerous man to provoke. Such doings had to be promptly stopped. In the part of the town which he occupied was a monastery with a number of friars in it. The religious orders, he well knew, were the chief instigators of the policy which was maddening the world. He sent two of these friars with the provost-marshal to the spot where the boy had been struck, promptly hanged them, and then despatched another to tell the Governor that he would hang two more every day at the ...

— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude

... near the parlor-door when they entered, and the shock of meeting her hated rival in company with her husband, under the very roof where she had hoped to lay the foundations of her future happiness, must have been great, if not maddening. Accusations, recriminations even, did not satisfy her. She wanted to kill; but she had no weapon. Suddenly her eyes fell on the hat-pin which her more self-possessed rival had drawn from her hat, ...

— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green

... ammunition to justify a few brief hours' retaliation. The boot is on the other leg now. For every Boche battery that opens on us, two or three of ours thunder back a reply—and that without any delays other than those incidental to the use of that maddening instrument, the field-telephone. During the past six months neither side has been able to boast much in the way of ground actually gained; but the moral ascendancy—the initiative—the offensive—call it what you will—has changed hands; and no ...

— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)

... she called herself—entered that household her torture began. It was bad enough to be told by Captain Frazier of her would-be lover's lack of constancy; but to witness it with her own eyes—ah, that was maddening! ...

— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey

... like Loki, in the Northern mythology, always tricking him. Ikpat had disappeared in a ship, taking the best of everything with him. It was also believed that the spirits of the dead survived and ranged about at night, maddening all who chanced to meet them; and, like many other darkly coloured people, the Motans had begun by supposing their white visitors to be the ghosts of their deceased friends ...

— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... moment likewise Sweeney did not stir. For a second his slow brain failed to grasp the truth, the deliberate challenge of the refusal; then of a sudden, in a blinding, maddening flood, came comprehension, came action. Swifter than any human being would have thought possible, unbelievably ferocious even in this land of licence, something took place, something which the staring onlookers ...

— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge

... alarms; diseased with care; cankered with solitude; corroded with regret; gnawed by remorse; he dies within himself; his conscience sustains him not but loads him with reproach; his mind, overwhelmed, sinks beneath its own turpitude; his reflection is the bitter dregs of hemlock; maddening anguish holds him to the mirror that shews him his own deformity; that recalls unhallowed deeds; gloomy thoughts rush on his too faithful memory; despondence benumbs him; his body, simultaneously assailed on all sides, bends under the storm of—his own unruly passions; at last despair ...

— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach

... The suspense grew maddening, as the noise of the engagement between the prahus and the "Startler" increased. The yells of the Malays could be plainly heard; then the reports of the heavy guns ceased; there was a little rifle firing, the occasional crack of a revolver; and lastly came the faintly-heard noise ...

— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn

... you are deprived of the power to choose, and forced by that which is evil in you to wander away from ail that is good and pure and pleasant into the turmoil and trouble, the falseness, the illusion, and the maddening unrest of the other life? You know it all. You can imagine what it would be when that last loophole of escape, upon which we all rely—perhaps unconsciously—was closed, when you knew you never could return; when you came ...

— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... the whole wide world that you cannot lose by flight—and that's memory. You can think just as hard in Japan or the South Sea Islands as you can on Fifth Avenue in New York, and sometimes the farther away you get the more maddening your thoughts become. It isn't travel you want, David. It's blood—red blood. And for putting blood into you, and courage, and joy of just living and breathing, there's nothing on the ...

— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood

... and evasiveness made me feel that, for some reason, she did not wish to hear what she knew I meant to say. Could it be that she was, after all, more conventional, less genuine, than I had thought? I went again and again over the whole maddening round of conjecture; but the only conclusion I could rest in was that, if she loved me as I loved her, she would be as determined as I was to let no obstacle come between us during the ...

— The Long Run - 1916 • Edith Wharton

... intention, her words were maddening me, driving me on. I could not play the coward before her eyes. "Here goes," I said, backing water with one oar and running ...

— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London

... I confess the constant necessity of drinking under which the majority of men labor is quite unaccountable. I can understand people drinking to drown care or to drive away maddening thoughts well enough. I can understand the ignorant masses loving to soak themselves in drink—oh, yes, it's very shocking that they should, of course—very shocking to us who live in cozy homes, with all the graces and pleasures of life around us, that the dwellers ...

— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome

... of pins, is rearranging the dress of a young lady in her first season, to whom, as to the inexperienced hunter, that burst of music is simply maddening. She is a well-bred young lady, however, and keeps her raptures to herself, but is slightly indignant at the very small notice taken of her by Dick Stanmore, who rushes into the tiring-room, drops a flurried ...

— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville

... three Sans play the game in silence. Whenever they came into close contact with one or more of the freshmen, they had something to say. It was not more than a hasty sentence or two uttered in a peculiarly soft tone. The effect, however, was disconcerting. Soon it became maddening. Involuntarily the one addressed strained the ear to catch the import. A sudden exclamation or ejaculation would have passed unnoticed. This purposely continued flow of soft remark drew the attention of the hearer just enough to interfere with ...

— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester

... Crapaud," he would say with mournful pleasantry, "without doubt you have had a master, and a kind one; but tell me who was he, and where is he now? Was he old or young, and was it in the last stage of maddening loneliness that he made friends with such a creature ...

— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade

... seeming mishap that had brought the startled cry from his lips, but the crash of sundering wood, and the sudden disappearance of the lone fisherman below the rim of the river bank; for the log had finally betrayed Jerry, and dropped him into that swirling, maddening current ...

— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen

... for years vainly struggled to recover—were the earliest trophies and prizes of his art. But the details of his victories may be briefly indicated, for they have none of the picturesqueness of crime. The sieges of Naarden, Harlem, Leyden, were tragedies of maddening interest, but the recovery of Zutphen, Deventer, Nymegen, Groningen, and many other places—all important though they were—was accomplished with the calmness of a consummate player, who throws down on the table the best half dozen invincible cards ...

— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... He had never condescended to study his own son, and the method of training he had adopted with him was in some respects very pernicious. His system hardened, instead of softening, and prejudiced Ben against what was right, maddening him with a sense of injustice, and so preventing his being influenced towards good. Of course, all this did not justify Ben in running away from home. The thought of his mother ought to have been sufficient to have kept him from any such step. ...

— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger

... this point the controversy had been pleasantly conducted in whispers, and was unnoticed by the bystanders; but M. Bartin's last insinuation had the strange effect of maddening the Signor still more. He lost his self-control, and said, in an ...

— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... life of continuous joy, I can imagine even pain coming as a welcome variation. I wonder sometimes whether the saints in heaven do not occasionally feel the continual serenity a burden. To myself a life of endless bliss, uninterrupted by a single contrasting note, would, I feel, grow maddening. I suppose," I continued, "I am a strange sort of man; I can hardly understand myself at times. There are moments," I ...

— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome

... How eagerly my heart hears what you say, Tho' it may be delusion, dear Ismene! Did it seem possible to you, who know me, That I, sad sport of a relentless Fate, Fed upon bitter tears by night and day, Could ever taste the maddening draught of love? The last frail offspring of a royal race, Children of Earth, I only have survived War's fury. Cut off in the flow'r of youth, Mown by the sword, six brothers have I lost, The hope of an illustrious house, whose blood Earth drank with sorrow, near akin to his Whom she herself produced. ...

— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine

... intoxicating quality, chewed and smoked by the Malays and other people in the East, who, being mostly prohibited the use of wine, double upon Mahomet by indulging in other intoxicating matter, as if the manner of doing it cleared off the crime of drunkenness. This horrid stuff gives the maddening excitement which makes a Malay run amok (which see).—To bang is colloquially used to express excelling or beating ...

— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... enough, for love is vanity, Selfish in its beginning as its end, Except where 't is a mere insanity, A maddening spirit which would strive to blend Itself with beauty's frail inanity, On which the passion's self seems to depend: And hence some heathenish philosophers Make love the main spring ...

— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... our ruler turn from tragedy to comedy. For tragedy, there was the look my queen lavished upon Solon when she heard his sentence; a look of blushing merriment, with a maddening dash of pity in it,—he was to suffer because ...

— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... an atmosphere of almost hilarious enjoyment that the distinguished Commission arrived a few minutes before noon, just as Jasper's barbecue-pits were beginning to send forth absolutely maddening aromas. ...

— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess

... discussions also took place around what was called the issue of "practical" and "political" Zionism. The Russians, under the leadership of Ussishkin, were all heartily against the "charter" emphasis and drove with maddening persistence for immediate work in Palestine. In the course of these debates, continued over the years, the Congress became a forum for the discussion of international Jewish problems and developed speakers and theorists of varying degrees ...

— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl

... the wine when it was red, and found in its dregs the sting of the adder. He had participated in the maddening excitement of the gaming-table, from which remorse and horror pursued him with scorpion lash. He had entered the "chambers of death"—though avenging demons guarded its threshold. Poor, tempted Louis! ...

— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz

... Moreover they did not always jog, frequently they stopped dead still, while the ancient driver fumbled with the gear and eventually hit upon something which sent them forward again with a fresh spasm. It was so completely maddening that after the fifth attack she could bear it no longer. Thrusting her head out of the ...

— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell

... chattering again. And so I can only pace about, and then rush out into the street—and wear myself sick. I call this simply monstrous. That my soul should be tied down to such vulgarity as this—is it not maddening? Here I am—with all my load of woe—at this fearful crisis! And I am to be shattered and wrecked and ruined by this! Just as long as they choose to sit there, just so long I am helpless. Was it for this that I have ...

— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair

... was maddening. But there was still a hope of saving him by speed and resolution; and he urged the Sachem to depart instantly. One moment he gave to visit and endeavor to cheer his wife, who now lay powerless and weeping in Apannow's lodge; and then he joined the Chief, who, with Brewster and ...

— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb

... get a ray of light, a lead, the flutter of a signal from outside the wall. But I keep hammering my head at it day after day, and it remains precisely as it was years ago when I began. It's maddening." ...

— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge

... him—he had chosen to stay. Once she hid her burning face in her hands as the memory of those kisses rushed over her afresh, sending little, new, delicious thrills coursing through her veins. Then once more the maddening doubt assailed her—were they but a bitter humiliation which she would remember for the rest of ...

— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler

... and out by the back way, generally through the kitchen, and the crackling and hissing of the poultry and the joints of meat roasting in the ovens, and the odours of fruit pies and tarts, and plum puddings and sage and onions, were simply maddening. In the back-yards of these houses there were usually huge stacks of empty beer, stout and wine bottles, and others that had contained ...

— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... innocent. Now that guilty ones—real Mexican soldiers in uniform, such as ruthlessly speared and shot down their countrymen at Goliad and San Antonio—now that a whole troop of these have but the hour before been within reach—almost striking distance—it is afflicting, maddening, to think they ...

— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... the castaways saw no signs of life, not a sail, not a smoke, not a gull, not even the ripple of a wave; nothing but gaudy, motionless markings from one flat horizon to the other, dead traceries that swiftly became uninteresting, then monotonous, then disagreeable, then maddening in the ...

— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling

... sits down cross-legged and tells them stories, and they get so excited they can't move. Oh, I say, do—do look! look what is in the corner of your card, Sarah! 'After supper, story-telling by Betty Vivian. Most of the lights down.' There, isn't it maddening! I do call it a shame; they might have ...

— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade

... Paris, Sunday of the toilers and the humble, often have I cursed thee without reason, I have poured whole streams of abusive ink over thy noisy and extravagant joys, over the dust of railway stations filled by thy uproar and the maddening omnibuses that thou takest by assault, over thy tavern songs bawled everywhere from carts adorned with green and pink dresses, on thy barrel-organs grinding out their tunes beneath the balconies of deserted court-yards; but to-day, abjuring my errors, I exalt thee, ...

— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... brilliant light, women and maidens, whose chief virtue has always been modesty, exhibit themselves in the midst of strange men, who are also clad in improperly tight-fitting garments; and to the sound of maddening music, they embrace and whirl. Old women, often as naked as the young ones, sit and look on, and eat and drink savory things; old men do the same. It is not to be wondered at that this should take place at night, when all the common people are asleep, so that no one may see them. But this is ...

— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi

... our clerk. They were fratching—quarrelling—I could hear 'em as well as see 'em. And I slipped behind a big bush and waited and watched. I could see and hear, even at thirty yards off, that Stoner was maddening Mallalieu, though of course I couldn't distinguish precise words. And all of a sudden Mallalieu's temper went, and he lets out with that heavy oak stick of his and fetches the lad a crack right over his forehead—and with Stoner starting suddenly back the old railings gave way and—down ...

— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher

... mention it...." Lanyard cocked his head to one side with a maddening effect of deliberation. "No," he concluded—"no; I wouldn't accuse you of intentional treason, monsieur; for that would involve ...

— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... of excess and violence in the capital. But, in justice to the German people as a whole, it should be remembered that the revolution was carried out at remarkably small cost; that the people displayed wonderful patience and self-control, in circumstances of maddening difficulty, which were aggravated at every turn by the Emperor's arbitrary edicts and arrogant obtrusion of his personal will, and by the insolence of the official class. One must remember that for several decades Germany had been essentially an industrial country, and that ...

— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... which the furious sea was breaking in mountain-like billows; cloud and rack deformed the firmament, which wore a dull and leaden-like hue; gulls and other aquatic fowls were toppling upon the blast, or skimming over the tops of the maddening waves—'Mercy upon him! he must be drowned!' I exclaimed, as my eyes fell upon a poor wretch who appeared to be striving to reach the shore; he was upon his legs but was evidently half-smothered with the brine; high above his head ...

— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow

... of his arms tightened like steel. One of the guards sprang forward and caught the girl roughly by the arm and attempted to drag her away. In his excitement he pulled her head back and her hair trailed in the dirt. The sight was maddening. From Nathaniel's throat there came a fierce cry and in a single leap he had cleared the distance to the guard and had driven his fist against the officer's head with the sickening force of a sledge-hammer. ...

— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood

... warmth were not well lost for this keen exhilarated sense in every nerve, in limb, in eye, in brain? What potion has sleep like this crystalline air it almost takes one's breath to drink, of such a maddening chastity is its grot-cool sparkle? What intoxication can she give us for this larger better rapture? So did Narcissus, an old Son of the Morning, figure to himself the struggle, and pronounce ...

— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard

... with the quicker, and the quicker with the slower, may awaken anger as well as laughter in the minds of many; for there is a difficulty in perceiving that the city ought to be well mingled like a cup, in which the maddening wine is hot and fiery, but when chastened by a soberer God, receives a fair associate and becomes an excellent and temperate drink (compare Statesman). Yet in marriage no one is able to see that the same result occurs. Wherefore ...

— Laws • Plato

... Bettina, around her was a maddening whirl, an orgy of adulation. Such fortune! Such beauty! Miss Percival arrived in Paris on the 15th of April; a fortnight had not passed before the offers of marriage began to pour upon her. In the course of that first year, she might, had she wished it, have been married ...

— L'Abbe Constantin, Complete • Ludovic Halevy

... maddening. For three long hours I had to sit there and listen to the children as they droned over and over their lessons. Yet this was my life's work. To my care Six Stars had intrusted her young, and I should be proud of that trust and earnest in its fulfilment. But Tim's ...

— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd

... something of realization of the great fight he was making for her—for her, and the aged, feeble grandfather waiting patiently out there. He loved her, this master among men, and she sighed contentedly. For the moment the maddening anxiety that brought her here was forgotten; there was only the ineffable sweetness of seeing him again. She extended her hands to him impulsively, and he kissed ...

— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle

... 'This war is maddening. Last night I couldn't sleep for thinking of it,—all the horror of it got hold of me. I fancied myself out at the front again,—I heard the awful howls and shrieks of the shells, heard the booming of the big guns, smelt the acids of the explosives, ...

— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking

... pulses' maddening play, Wild, send thee Pleasure's devious way, And yet the light that led astray Was light ...

— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... aghast! The thought that my hare-brained cousin was engaged in such a foolhardy expedition was maddening. I loved the boy as a brother—indeed he was my foster-brother, brought up in my own family, and regarded as one of us. The ...

— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald

... here like lambs for nearly an hour, while he has waited barely half that time. By the great horn spoon! If his serene highness does not admit us to his presence in a few minutes more, I shall beard him in his den, and demand audience in the name of the king. It is simply maddening to think of Cuyler carrying the Rothsay party farther and farther away with each minute, and having the beauty all to himself. Of course you don't care, since it was decided that they travel by the north shore of the lake, ...

— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore

... would come out from Marrakech, squat round-faced young women heavily hennaed and bejewelled, accompanied by gaunt musicians in bright caftans; and for hours they would sing sentimental or obscene ballads to the persistent maddening twang of violin and flute and drum. Meanwhile fiery brandy or sweet champagne would probably be passed around between the steaming glasses of mint-tea which the slaves perpetually refilled; or perhaps the sultry air, the heavy meal, the scent of the ...

— In Morocco • Edith Wharton

... drove him on. He became possessed of the idea that again he was working in the mines, under the overseer's lash; the sound of his horse's feet merged imperceptibly into the tapping of the picks, hideously loud, and the maddening rhythm of the sound pounded his brain into bruised torpor. Then he knew that he was on fire; from head to foot he burned, parched as a soul in hell. Balls of flame danced before his eyes; while he looked upon them they ...

— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor

... manner. Offered to increase my handicap to five bisque, advised me to get my wrists into the stroke and keep my body out. That sort of thing. And from a man who lunges at every shot and makes a 75-yard approach with a brassie—Well, it was nothing short of maddening. I kept my temper, though. Can't say that my friend Ellins did. He had sliced into a trap on his drive, while I had topped mine short. We started the first hole with our heads down. Rutter and Staples were a trifle ...

— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford

... the general. "Oh, the gout, the maddening pains! I cannot throw the bold fellow out of the house! I must lie here, and writhe like a worm! I cannot be master of my ...

— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach

... upon the king and his friends was maddening, and events were quickly brought to a crisis. In spite of earnest opposition retaliatory acts were passed through Parliament in April, 1774. One of these was the Port Bill, for shutting up the port of Boston and stopping ...

— The War of Independence • John Fiske

... again. The grass seemed signalling to me with all its fingers at once; the crowded stars seemed bent upon being understood. The sun would make me see him if he rose a thousand times. The recurrences of the universe rose to the maddening rhythm of an incantation, and I began ...

— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton

... walk. I was sun-sick—I was heart-sick for the sun, for the sunny South—for grassy plains, blue mountains, sweeps of mountain bush and sunny ocean beaches. I walked hard; I walked till I was mud-splashed to the shoulders; I walked through the squalid, maddening sameness of miles of dingy, grimy-walled blocks and rows of four-storied houses till I felt smothered—jailed, hopelessly. "Best get home and in, and draw the blinds on it," I said, "or my ...

— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson

... heard the others complaining of the loneliness of our surroundings, I said nothing at first. I was no sailor man, and I was on board only by tolerance. But I looked again at the maddening sameness of the horizon—the same vacant, void horizon that we had seen now for sixteen days on end, and felt in my wits and in my nerves that same formless rebellion and protest such as comes when the same note is reiterated over and ...

— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris

... he perceived two jaguars, which followed his movements with glaring eyes. A single glance satisfied him they were cubs; but a maddening thought shot across his brain; the mother was out, probably not far; she might return in a moment, and he had no arms, except his knife and the barrel of his broken rifle. While musing upon his perilous situation, he heard a roar, which summoned all his energy; he rolled a ...

— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat

... off it looked like a pale grey wall of inconceivable height, but as it drew nearer, the wall resolved itself into a wild array of columns, and eddies, and whirlpools, and great full-bosomed clouds, that rolled and swam and rose and fell with maddening complexity. Then came a breath of deadly chillness, and then a horror of great darkness—a darkness that could be felt. The skipper himself took to the fore rigging, and placed one of the watch handy to the wheel; finally he called all hands up very quietly, and the men hung on anyhow. ...

— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman

... fasces of the people or purple of kings sway not, not maddening discord among treacherous brethren, nor the Dacians swarming down from the leagued Danube, not the Roman State, or realms ...

— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce

... a maddening picture to hold out. But she would be a hundred times sweeter than Polly, than anyone's sister could possibly be, he thought as he ...

— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... they stopped, and the Winchester regiment and the Ohio lads concluded that they had been wrong after all. No battle would be fought that day. They were willing now, too, to postpone it, as they were almost exhausted by heat and thirst, and that stinging, burning dust was maddening. A portion of their line rested on the first creek, and they drank eagerly of the muddy water. Dick saw before him fields in which the corn stood thick and heavy. The fields were divided by hedges which cut off the view ...

— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler

... "Electric bow and steaming lights!" His voice had a ring of almost boyish enthusiasm, and he picked up a tangle of threads from the table. "But this fore-derrick purchase is the devil, though. All last evening I was on the sheaves of one of the double blocks—maddening work. Hornby's designing a hydraulic lift to the engine-room; column of water concealed in the foremast, d'you see? When's that going to ...

— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie

... seemed to lift the ceiling overhead. Again, with increased vim, was it given. The lobby and the galleries joined in the wild shout. Members and spectators rushed into each others' arms, kissed each other, wept, shouted, kicked over the desks, tumbled on the floor, and for ten minutes this maddening excitement suspended the proceedings of the day. It was useless for the presiding officer to command order, if, indeed, his feelings were sufficiently under control to do so. When exhaustion had produced comparative silence, ...

— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... forest-fingers crawling free O'er dark flint wall that seems a wall of eyes, Shall evil break my soul with mysteries Of some world-poison maddening bush ...

— The Wild Knight and Other Poems • Gilbert Chesterton

... Her maddening eyes were directed on the Maiden Head inn. Her full lips were parted in a harsh boisterous laugh; her white teeth gleamed; the blood ran riot in her veins; she was the embodiment of exuberant, semi-savage, animal life. She danced ...

— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce

... contrast of conditions between the rich and poor. The question first suggested by this statement is: To whom, to what class did these contrasts tend to make life more amusing? Certainly not to the poor, who made up the mass of the race. To them they must have been maddening. It was then in the interest of the mere handful of rich and fortunate that this argument for retaining poverty was urged. Indeed this appears to have been quite a fine ladies' argument. Kenloe puts it in the mouths of leaders of polite society. As coolly as if it had been a question of parlor ...

— Equality • Edward Bellamy

... Sir Amyas was a great deal more anxious for the Queen's health than he pretended to be, or he would never have tolerated such objections. The Queen, too, must know of this, or she would not have ventured, with so much at stake, to treat him with such maddening rebuffs. There had been rumours (verified later) that Elizabeth had actually caused it to be suggested to Sir Amyas that he should poison his prisoner decently and privately, and thereby save a great deal of trouble and scandal; and that ...

— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson

... dangerous post he stood; Each call for needful rest repell'd, With dying hand the rudder held, Till in his fall with fateful sway The steerage of the realm gave way. Then—while on Britain's thousand plains One polluted church remains, Whose peaceful bells ne'er sent around The bloody tocsin's maddening sound, But still upon the hallow'd day Convoke the swains to praise and pray; While faith and civil peace are dear, Grace this cold marble with a tear:— He who preserved them, ...

— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... "The noise was maddening. The air seemed full of shrieks and cries, as though the universe were lost and bewailing itself, 'Lamentation and mourning and woe,' seemed written upon the lurid sky and sea. I thought of those poor lovers in Dante's 'Inferno,' blown like spectral leaves before the infernal winds ...

— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... no messenger from another world. She was unique. To his famished eyes, starved senses, and fever-driven brain, she was her entire sex personified. She was the one woman for whom he had always sought, alluring, soothing, maddening; if need be, to be fought for; the one thing to be desired. Opposite, across the table, her husband, the ex-wrestler, chasseur d'Afrique, elephant poacher, bulked large as an ox. Men felt as well as saw his bigness. Captain Hardy deferred ...

— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis

... trembling hands to his head, and gave a wild ringing scream, the cry of desolation. For a few moments after, he stood motionless; but the cry had relieved him from the first maddening pressure of the truth. He turned, and tottered towards his loom, and got into the seat where he worked, instinctively seeking this as the strongest assurance ...

— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot

... committees haunted the Crow's Nest, and the insurrectionary faction, starting with the trainmen and spreading to the track force, threatened to involve the telegraph operators—threatened to become a protest unanimous and in the mass. Worse than this, the service, haphazard enough before, now became a maddening chaos. Orders were misunderstood, whether wilfully or not no court of inquiry could determine; wrecks were of almost daily occurrence, and the shop track was speedily filled to the switches with crippled engines ...

— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde

... tomato can, and as he could not get it out was rushing wildly about, shaking the can with much violence. He got to be a horror to us all, but we could not help him and he finally smothered to death. Oh, peaceful release from torture! Such maddening thirst and not a drop of water to be had. I went around to see how Lord Roberts was getting along and found him discouraged and heart broken. He said, "It can not be possible that our people have abandoned us, it must be some horrible mistake." I went every day to the main road and watched ...

— The Nomad of the Nine Lives • A. Frances Friebe

... Maddening church bells of all degrees of dissonance, sharp and flat, cracked and clear, fast and slow, made the ...

— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood

... had often racked my brains with the question, "What is there beyond the world?" Void. Well, and what surrounds that void? Many times this distracting thought drove me almost to madness. Now this same maddening dilemma seized upon me. How could it be ...

— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai

... some time the heavy snow blocks we had heaved up on to the canvas roof kept it weighted down. But it seemed that they were being gradually moved off by the hurricane. The tension became well-nigh unendurable: the waiting in all that welter of noise was maddening. Minute after minute, hour after hour—those snow blocks were off now anyway, and the roof was smashed up and down—no canvas ever ...

— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... and fast they fly They blur the earth and blot the sky In wild, white mirk. They fill the air with frozen wings And tiny, angry, icy stings; They blind the eyes, and choke the breath, They dance a maddening dance of death Around their work, Sweeping the cover from the hill, Heaping the hollows deeper still, Effacing every line and mark, And swarming, storming in the dark Through the long night; Until, at dawn, the wind lies down, Weary of fight. The last torn ...

— The White Bees • Henry Van Dyke

... our efforts, our tragedies, and finally our wonderful good fortune, to lose these beautiful lions for lack of a little water was sickening, maddening. ...

— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey

... stood there on the edge of the South Sea jungle, the boundless sea at her back. The luxuries and joys of a life to which she had been accustomed came up in a great flash before her memory's eye, almost maddening in their seductiveness. She glanced at the dress she wore, and a faint, weary smile came to her eyes and lips. Instead of the white, perfect yachting costume, she saw the wretched, shrunken, stained, shapeless garment that to her eyes would ...

— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon

... innumerable, imperceptible steps of her undoing. Her old power of reflecting, analyzing, even thinking at all, seemed to have vanished in a pulse-stirring sense of one new emotion. She only felt all her instinctive outward action that was a physical relief, all her involuntary inner strife that was maddening, yet unutterably sweet; and they seemed to be just ...

— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey

... The battle in the harbor he had seen; and his own death he had described. But this was a much more startling plunge into the past. Was it possible that he had skipped half a dozen lives and was then dimly remembering some episode of a thousand years later? It was a maddening jumble, and the worst of it was that Charlie Mears in his normal condition was the last person in the world to clear it up. I could only wait and watch, but I went to bed that night full of the wildest imaginings. There was nothing ...

— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... before. On board of English ships (except men-of-war) there is practically no discipline, which is bad, but this sort of thing was maddening. I knew how desperately ill all those poor wretches were, how helpless and awkward they would be if quite hale and hearty; but there was absolutely no pity for them, the officers seemed to be incapable of any feelings of compassion whatever. My heart sank within me as I thought of ...

— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen

... foliage, the fragrant blossom, the gay flower; in Canada, black twigs—bare, scraggy, and altogether wretched—thrust their repulsive forms forth into the bleak air—there, the soft rain-shower falls; here, the fierce snow-squall, or maddening sleet!—there, the field is traversed by the cheerful plough; here, it is covered with ice-heaps or thawing snow; there, the rivers run babbling onward under the green trees; here, they groan and chafe under heaps of dingy and slowly-disintegrating ice-hummocks; there, one's only weapon ...

— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille

... sleep on damp straw in the midst of slush and snow, and peeping through the ragged tent roof at the moon as he lay on his back, surrounded by Gipsies of both sexes, of all ages and sizes, cursing each other under the maddening influence of brandy and disappointment. To make himself and his damsel comfortable on a Gipsy tour he fills his pocket with gold, flask with brandy, buys a quantity of rugs upon which are a number of foxes' heads—and I suppose tails too—waterproof covering ...

— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith

... a long time, but he did not stir from his tense position. He seemed to have utterly forgotten her presence in the room behind him. And still that maddening waltz kept on and on and on till she felt sick and dazed with listening to it. It seemed as if for the rest of her life she would never again be free from those ...

— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell

... of the days, but he knew that he was far into the autumn, that in truth winter must have come in his own and distant north. That thought at times was almost maddening. Doubtless the snow was already falling on the peaks that had seen so many gallant exploits by his comrades and himself, and on George and Champlain, the lakes so beautiful and majestic under any aspect. ...

— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler

... How thy sweet features, kind to every clime, Mock with their smile the wrinkled front of time We stain thy flowers,—they blossom o'er the dead; We rend thy bosom, and it gives us bread; O'er the red field that trampling strife has torn, Waves the green plumage of thy tasselled corn; Our maddening conflicts sear thy fairest plain, Still thy soft answer is the growing grain. Yet, O our Mother, while uncounted charms Steal round our hearts in thine embracing arms, Let not our virtues in thy love decay, And thy fond sweetness waste our ...

— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... pass in tumult driven, Like chaff before the wind of heaven, The archery appear; For life! for life! their flight they ply— And shriek, and shout, and battle-cry, 435 And plaids and bonnets waving high, And broadswords flashing to the sky, Are maddening in the rear. Onward they drive, in dreadful race, Pursuers and pursued; 440 Before that tide of flight and chase, How shall it keep its rooted place, The spearmen's twilight wood? 'Down, down,' cried Mar, 'your lances down! Bear back both friend and foe!' 445 Like reeds before the ...

— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... that I should have to appeal to their courage again presently, for something unusual was happening in front of us. It was maddening not to be able to pierce the luminous mist, behind which the enemy would be able to form up and take new positions without our knowledge. Down behind the line of willows we could now barely distinguish, we were aware ...

— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont

... at Espalion, for there were a couple of feathered fiends just underneath the window crowing against each other with maddening rivalry. One, an old cock, had a very hoarse crow, and seemed to be suffering from chronic laryngitis brought on by an abuse of his vocal powers; and the other was a young cock with a very squeaky crow, for he was still taking lessons, and, as is the case ...

— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... light that always shone upon Ayesha's brow; the wide-set, maddening eyes which were filled sometimes with the fire of the stars and sometimes with the blue darkness of the heavens wherein they float; the curved lips, so wistful yet so proud; the tresses fine as glossy silk that still spread and rippled ...

— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard

... walked thirty yards down the river bank away from the maddening smell of the others' pipes. He sat down upon a stone. He was thinking he would set out for the Bronx. At least he could earn tobacco there. What if the books did say he owed Corrigan? Any man's work was worth his keep. But then he hated to go without getting even with the hard-hearted ...

— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry

... kindness? It may be your fate to be imprisoned in the hair of one whom you know to be heartless or to be thrust into the buttonhole of one who would not dare to look you in the face were you a man. It may even be your lot to be confined in some narrow vessel with only stagnant water to quench the maddening thirst that ...

— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura

... In a maddening access of rage, Hilliard clenched his fist and struck fiercely at the man. But he did no harm, for his aim was wild, and Dengate easily warded off ...

— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing

... that seemed maddening, to two at least of the group that was watching, the old Krooman announced that all ...

— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... horrible to Florian to see how prosaically these women dealt with his unusual misadventure. Here was a miracle occurring virtually before their eyes, and these women accepted it with maddening tranquillity as an affair for which they were not responsible. Florian began to reflect that elderly persons were always more or ...

— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... words came aloud. He loved the sound when he was alone, the vital rush of it, and the voluptuous pause and the soft, lingering cadence before it rose again. In the music of each separate verse there was the whole episode of man's love and woman's, the illusion and the image, the image and the maddening, leaping, all-satisfying, ...

— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford

... have noted or remembered any of this, save that the mind sometimes gathers impressions under strange stress of suffering. I had had no food all day, and when our ponies stopped to drink, the agony of thirst was maddening. My tongue was swollen and my lips were cracked and bleeding. The leather thongs that bound me cut deep now. But—only the men who lived it can know what all this meant to the ...

— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter

... country together. But in the neighboring hall a strain of music, proceeding From the accordant strings of Michael's melodious fiddle, Broke up all further speech. Away, like children delighted, All things forgotten beside, they gave themselves to the maddening Whirl of the dizzy dance, as it swept and swayed to the music, Dreamlike, with beaming eyes and ...

— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... happiness, the idyllic fulness of his world as he found it, were things which added to the heaviness and fear at Philip's heart instead of filling him with similar emotions. Of these things he was not a part. A voice kept whispering to him with maddening insistence that he was a fraud. One by one John Adare was unlocking for him hallowed pictures in which Jean had told him he could never share possession. His desire to see Josephine again was almost feverish, and filled him with a restlessness ...

— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood

... exciting melody that almost drew me out of the window; it seemed to have no particular form, no beginning or middle or end; it went soaring higher and higher, like the song of a lark, with never a pause for breath, to the time of a maddening jig—a tarantella, perhaps—always on the strain and stress, always getting nearer and nearer to some shrill climax of ecstasy quite high up and away, beyond the scope of earthly music; while the persistent drone kept buzzing of the earth and the impossibility to escape. All so gay, so sad, there ...

— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al

... with eagerness and continued disappointment. The thought of losing the finest lion we had seen on the whole trip was maddening, yet it seemed impossible ...

— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon

... "Oliver," he then said, slowly and very impressively, "I should be truly sorry to see you injured, we were school mates, and I remember our early friendship." Oliver's jaw fell, and his intelligent eye grew glassy with a "wild and maddening" apprehension, but his feelings would not permit him to speak. "Oliver," continued Gano after a pause (and keeping his countenance remarkably) "isn't it possible that you may be mistaken in these troops. To which army do ...

— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke

... an empty tomato can, and as he could not get it out was rushing wildly about, shaking the can with much violence. He got to be a horror to us all, but we could not help him and he finally smothered to death. Oh, peaceful release from torture! Such maddening thirst and not a drop of water to be had. I went around to see how Lord Roberts was getting along and found him discouraged and heart broken. He said, "It can not be possible that our people have ...

— The Nomad of the Nine Lives • A. Frances Friebe

... way of praising me; I never was praised so before," said Mirah, with a smile, which was rather maddening to Hans and made him feel still more of ...

— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... went to sleep in a wee loft. I could not sleep. I was always seeing those wounded men passing, passing, and in my ear—like the maddening refrain of a musical comedy ditty—there was always murmuring—"We shall never return. It doesn't matter." Outside was the clink and clatter of the column, the pitiful curses of tired men, the groaning roar of the motor-lorries as they toiled ...

— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson

... manufacturer, the banker, the broker, the speculator, the selfish politician, when compared with those confided to the Christian wife and mother? They are too often simply contemptible—a wretched, feverish, maddening struggle to pile up lucre, which is any thing but clean. Where is the superior merit of such a life, that we should hanker after it, when placed beside that of the loving, unselfish, Christian wife and mother—the wife, standing at her husband's side, to cheer, to aid, to ...

— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... little caress and they proceeded immediately to the dining room, where the string orchestra and the small talk of two hundred and fifty guests strove vainly for the ascendency in one maddening cacophony. It was nearly eight o'clock before Elkan and Yetta arose from the table and repaired to the veranda whose rockers were filled ...

— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass

... the reins by which, turning a little to the left, he caught Messala's wheel with the iron-shod point of his axle, and crushed it; but they had seen the transformation of the man, and themselves felt the heat and glow of his spirit, the heroic resolution, the maddening energy of action with which, by look, word, and gesture, he so suddenly inspired his Arabs. And such running! It was rather the long leaping of lions in harness; but for the lumbering chariot, it seemed the four were flying. When the Byzantine and Corinthian ...

— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... of her fingers. She called the dripping lump a canard, like the French children. It was such a trivial thing; but it brought back with a rush all the thousand dainty, foolish, captivating intimacies that made up the maddening ...

— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... nearly past—the girls should have fallen into the hands of the enemy, and he not there to strike a blow in their defence. To think of Jeanne—his bright, fearless Jeanne—and clinging little Virginie, in the hands of these human tigers. It was maddening! But after a time the passion of weeping calmed down, and ...

— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty

... charms, In fancy holds her ever in his arms: In maddening fancy, cheeks, eyes, lips devours; Plays with the ringlets that all flaxen flow In rich luxuriance o'er a breast of snow, And on that breast the soul ...

— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... and even star-clusters, but it was not yet capable of crossing the continent of suns on which the human race arose. And between any two solar systems the journeying of the Med Ship consumed much time. Which would be maddening for someone with no work to do or no resources ...

— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster

... all her fragile weight against it, aided with the strength of maddening fear. Her ears were strained for the sound in the lock. When she heard the bolt click, she gasped and pressed forward again with redoubled vigour as he slowly drew out his lacerated hand ...

— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston

... plague o' these Sundays! How the Church bells ring up the sleeping past! Here has a maddening memory broken into my brain. To the door, to the door, with the naked lunatic thought! Once it is forth we may talk of what we dare not entertain; once the intriguing thought has been put to the door I can watch it out of the loophole where, with its fellows, it raves and threatens ...

— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp

... renovare dolorem.' The day was one of burning discomfort, spent in cracks and nullas, under blanket bivouacs. We had tramped, from dawn, through eight miles of 'chivvy-dusters,' and our camp was now among them. These are a grass which crams the clothes and feet with maddening needles; once in they seemed there 'for duration.' The soldier out East knows them for his worst foe on a march. Lest we should be obsessed with these, we were infested with sandflies and mosquitoes. But large black ants were the principal line in vermin. At dinner they ...

— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson

... probably have been very different; but unfortunately, while the army of belated facts—the fatal Grouchy corps—never accomplish their intended mission, they avenge they failure by a pertinacious presence ever after that is sometimes almost maddening. ...

— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... goin' to make you talk this time!" cried Dryfoos, striking the arm of the chair he sat in with the side of his fist. A maddening thought of Christine came over him. "As long as you eat my bread, you have got to do as I say. I won't have my children telling me what I shall do and sha'n't do, or take on airs of being holier than me. Now, you just speak up! Do you think ...

— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... nor shut her eyes to her husband's worthlessness. But the passive resistance her daughter always opposed to her efforts, her dogged adherence to a resolution never to discuss religious questions or give a reason for her unbelief, had a powerfully irritating, almost a maddening, effect on her, and made her at times denunciatory and violent. Her daughter's motive for keeping her lips closed was a noble one, only Mrs. Churton did not know what it was. But she was conscious of her own failings, ...

— Fan • Henry Harford

... wearied; sick of his way of livelihood, sick of the atmosphere he moved in, sick of his reflections, sick of himself. Life had got to be stale, flat, and unprofitable. His self-loathing, which steadily grew, would have become a maddening torture if he hadn't found refuge in a stony apathy. Sometimes he relieved this by an outburst of bitter or satirical self-exposure, when the mood found anybody at hand for his confidences. But for the most part he lived in a lethargic indifference, mechanically going ...

— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens

... in Roughsedge. For the first time she must perforce recognize what hitherto she had preferred not to see: what now she was determined not to know. The young soldier, on his side, was stifled by his own emotions—wrath—contempt—pity; and by a maddening desire to wrap this pale stricken creature in his arms, and so protect her from an abominable world. But something told him—to his despair—that she had been in Marsham's arms; had given her heart irrevocably; and ...

— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... fists. This delay and waste of priceless time was maddening him. "Gents," he called desperately, "I got to get to Martindale today. It's more than life or death ...

— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand

... the evidence is unanimous—at that moment came sudden, absolute darkness, followed immediately by the maddening din of all the bells and all the gongs, from top to bottom of the house, in every room and ...

— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc

... he did not shrink. Horrible it was; he was going mad before it. And yet he took a strange and fierce delight in making it more horrible; in maddening himself yet more and more; in clothing those fantastic stones with every fancy which could inspire another man with dread. But he had no dread. Perfect rage, like perfect love, casts out fear. He rejoiced in his own ...

— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley

... so well, I am afraid, as any second-hand bookseller's apprentice could have done it," said Wharton, shaking his head. "It's maddening to think what duffers ...

— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... afternoon services, and that in her eyes she had come to be merely a cross which must with heroism be borne, she probably would have been indignant. Pitying people and being pitied oneself are two very different things. The first is soothing and sweet, the second is annoying, or even maddening, according to the temperament of the patient. Susie, however, never suspected that anyone could be sorry for her; and when, after a party, before they went to bed, Anna would put her arms round her and give ...

— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp

... and impossible as many of them were, made him wince, not knowing indeed how cunning was the invention behind them; and many times when she was more maddening than usual, Herrick schooled himself to patience by reminding himself of the drastic punishments which had apparently been meted ...

— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes

... consent with a bribe. Moreover, they extended their abominable and abandoned lust not only to virgins, but to the multitude of matrons indiscriminately. Thus a twofold madness incited this mixture of wantonness and frenzy. Guests and strangers were proffered not shelter but revilings. All these maddening mockeries did this insolent and wanton crew devise, and thus under a boy-king freedom fostered licence. For nothing prolongs reckless sin like the procrastination of punishment and vengeance. This unbridled impudence of the soldiers ended by making the king detested, not only by foreigners, ...

— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... feverishly collected them all; I picked out each in its order and held it up to the light. This gave me a maddening month, in the course of which several things took place. One of these, the last, I may as well immediately mention, was that I acted on Vereker's advice: I renounced my ridiculous attempt. I could really make nothing of the business; it proved a dead loss. After all I had ...

— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James

... through the cave was a maddening torture. They had no light, nor would they dare use one if they had. There were no wheel marks to follow on the stone floor. Without Ulv's sensitive nose they would have been completely lost. The cave branched and rejoined and they soon lost all ...

— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison

... might have chosen some other time and place for their silly walks abroad. And as for the spirit of discipline exemplified in the servant, who scrupled to defy red tape and slip through at a convenient interval, this was nothing else but the maddening ...

— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various

... of the little cell he was in, so closely that he could barely reach the low, rough bench on which to sit. But Pomponio could have borne his imprisonment patiently, even cheerfully, had the rebellion only taken place, successfully or not. That was the maddening thought. He buried his head in his hands. Well he knew that all hope was over. Even though he might manage to escape, he would find the Indians dispersed and in hiding, too frightened at the effect his capture might have on the Spaniards, and the result to themselves. All ...

— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter

... way of learning anything from that source, and the detective he had employed had thus far discovered nothing. She might be in difficulties, in actual want and would not ask assistance from sheer pride. The thought was maddening and for days Stafford, distraught, unable to attend to his affairs, remained in the house, hoping, half expecting, she would return until the uncertainty and continual disappointment nearly drove him insane. He could not eat; he could not sleep. His ears still rang with her ...

— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow

... was involved in this odious Social Union business from the first, and now have it left on my hands in the end, is maddening. Why, I can't get ...

— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells

... never reaped. He had held this beautiful creature in his arms, this innocent, red-haired child, whom he, Peterman, had marked down for his own. For how long? And she was all unconscious. Oh, it was maddening, infuriating. And— ...

— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum

... they who share the nuptial bed of the Goddess Aphrodite,[39] when she is moderate, and with modesty, obtaining a calm from the maddening stings, when Love with his golden locks stretches his twin bow of graces, the one for a prosperous fate, the other for the upturning of life. I deprecate this [bow,] O fairest Venus, from our beds, but may mine be a moderate grace, and holy endearments, and may ...

— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides

... came, and I dreamed dreams too terrible for record: demons danced on the drifting clouds before me, while whirling savages chanting in horrid discord stuck my frenzied body full of blazing brands. At times I was awake, calling in vain for water to quench a thirst which grew maddening, then I lapsed into a semi-consciousness that drove me wild with its delirious fancies. I knew vaguely that the Major had crept back through the darkness and passed his strong arm gently beneath my head. I heard him shouting in his deep voice to the driver for something to drink, but was unaware ...

— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish

... of the heavily loaded subway trains jarred the walls of the building. The rattle and whirr of the overflowing surface cars rose sharply above the hum and din of the city streets. To the man who asked only a chance, only a place, only room to stand and something—anything—to do, it was maddening. A blind, impotent, fury took possession of him. He clenched his fists and ...

— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright

... about her mouth and eyes! Her strange, sweet, maddening eyes, her subtle mouth! Mouth in whose closure all love's sweetness lives,— Eyes with the warm gleam ...

— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts

... around me, and looking timidly at me, I should shed hot and bitter tears over the terrors that have menaced me during these hours. On the morning of September 18th my dugout containing seventeen men was shot to pieces over our heads. I am the only one who withstood the maddening bombardment of three days and still survives. You cannot imagine the frightful mental torments I have undergone in those few hours. After crawling out through the bleeding remnants of my comrades, and through the smoke and debris, wandering and running in the midst of the raging gun-fire in ...

— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... unsurpassed, is capable of thrusting into his book interminable chapters of comment and explanation, chapters in the manner of a controversial pamphlet, lest the argument of his drama should be missed. But the reader at last takes an easy way with these maddening interruptions; wherever "the historians" are mentioned he knows that several pages can be turned at once; Tolstoy may be left to belabour the conventional theories of the Napoleonic legend, and rejoined later on, when it has occurred to him once ...

— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock

... the maddening maze of things, And tossed by storm and flood, To one fixed trust my spirit clings: I know ...

— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... Added to this were the facts that the ice-water in the coolers scalded the mouth; the brass-work on the seats blistered the hands; and the empty stoves, almost red-hot from their exposure to the sun, superheated the cars to a degree that was maddening. Added to these was the fact that the intense heat expanded the rails until they were several miles longer than usual, and thus the passengers suffered the tortures of the transit for an increased ...

— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various

... spasmodic nervousness and flung them on the board. They rolled over and over again, and during that brief instant I felt a suspense, the intensity of which I have never known before or since. At last they lay before me. A shout of the same horrible, maddening laughter rang in my ears. I peered in vain at the dice, but my sight was so confused that I could not distinguish the amount of the cast. This lasted for a few moments. Then my sight grew clear, and I sank back almost lifeless with despair ...

— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various

... find an opportunity; but they do not bite each other like dogs over a bone. But when opponents are almost in accord, as is always the case with our parliamentary gladiators, they are ever striving to give maddening little wounds through the joints of the harness. What is there with us to create the divergence necessary for debate but the pride of personal skill in the encounter? Who desires among us to put down the Queen, or to repudiate the National ...

— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... in the past,—and this was the sound of sheep. Two herders had combined their bands to work them down to the low country and the camp tender stayed to help them with the crossing. Breed listened long to the droning undertone, the maddening blat of five thousand woollies on the bed ground, its querulous volume persisting through the sound of water and wind and drifting to him across a distance of five miles. Then he stretched forth his head and issued his ...

— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts

... by the arras, her quick eye, however, recognized the King's long plume behind it; and she halted in her course. She was alert with a thousand maddening thoughts crowding her brain, all ...

— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.

... kind of affectation very common among pretty women; and this is the affectation of not knowing that they are pretty, and not recognising the effect of their beauty on men. Take a woman with bewildering eyes, say, of a maddening size and shape, and fringed with long lashes that distract you to look at; the creature knows that her eyes are bewildering, as well as she knows that fire burns and that ice melts; she knows the effect of that trick she has with them—the sudden uplifting of the heavy ...

— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... most lives reflected hers in that their questioning was never answered. The fortunate, then, were the incurious and the hearts undisturbed by a maddening thrill. She said aloud, "The ones who never heard music." Pleydon was without a sign that she had spoken. Her emotions were very delicate, very fragile, and enormously difficult to perceive. They were like plants in stony ground. Where had she heard that—out of the Bible? Then she thought ...

— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer

... man had been the only boon she craved of heaven; but now, conscious that the darling hope of her life was crushed and withering under Dr. Grey's relentless feet, she resolved that the admiration of the world should feed her insatiable hunger,—a maddening hunger which one tender word from his true lips would have assuaged,—but which she began to realize he would ...

— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... and the carriage with it. He said it was far ower muckle, but I just laughed, and said wealthy gentlemen like Mr. Sandys couldna be bothered to take back change, so Malcolm could keep what was ower. Malcolm was the man Esther Auld had just married, and I counted on this maddening her and on Malcolm's spreading the story through the town. Laddie, I've kent since syne what it is to be without bite or sup, but ...

— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie

... or a still more maddening, "Yes, darling, I quite understand!"—which she knew perfectly well to be an untruth. Really, these good people seemed to think that she was demented, and did not know what she was saying. As a matter of fact, it was ...

— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey

... fell at his feet a river of fire. There was stillness no longer. The roaring and the exploding of the fusing metals, or whatever it might be, filled the vast region like the hoarse cries of wild beasts and the hissing of angry serpents. It was deafening, maddening. And there was no relief but to plunge into that abyss and drown individuality. He flew downward, and as he paused a moment on the brink, he looked across to the opposite bank and saw a figure about to take the leap like ...

— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... flat when I am completely soaped up and have to stand there and feel it crackle and dry in my ears and burn me blind. Pretty soon those people who read my paper, say the prosperity of the United States will slow down into a quiet trickle, then a dribble shading off into a blast of air and a maddening gurgle, while folks stick their heads out the window and swear at the government for not giving ...

— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent

... bells of the churches ring incessantly; not in peals, or any known form of sound, but in a horrible, irregular, jerking, dingle, dingle, dingle: with a sudden stop at every fifteenth dingle or so, which is maddening. This performance is usually achieved by a boy up in the steeple, who takes hold of the clapper, or a little rope attached to it, and tries to dingle louder than every other boy similarly employed. The noise is supposed to be particularly obnoxious to ...

— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... times her letter was triumphant, optimistic; she seemed radiant, and the painter read her satisfaction between the lines; he divined her intoxication after those daring meetings in her own house, defying the count's blindness. And she told him everything, with shameless, maddening familiarity, as if he were a woman, as if he could not be moved in ...

— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... she refused to part with the stones anyhow. Said that they would go to pay my debts. I threatened violence and all kinds of things, but it was no good. I said that unless I had money in forty-eight hours I should be in jail, but it was all to no effect. Did you ever hear anything so maddening in all your life?" ...

— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White

... child!" cried Rosa, in a tone like a shriek of anguish, "my child, my wronged and ruined babe! The sight of him is a sword through my bosom! my child that he robbed and made me an accomplice in robbing—it is maddening to think of it." ...

— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... kill him! if the house would take fire, or a riot begin in the street! The old man finished his reading, congratulated the poet, blessed the pair in the old-fashioned style, informed his wife of the date of the wedding, and marched off to bed. After pulling at that door for years it was maddening to have the very frame-work come out as if cemented with butter. What an outrage to come prepared for heroic action, and to find the enemy turned friend! Oh, admirable enchantress ...

— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith

... recourse might be had to the church, and his happiness ascertained before night. But the bride objected with great vehemence to such precipitation, being desirous of her mother's presence at the ceremony; and she was seconded in her opinion by her brother's wife. Peregrine, maddening with desire, assaulted her with the most earnest entreaties, representing, that, as her mother's consent was already obtained, there was surely no necessity for delay, that must infallibly make a dangerous impression upon his brain and constitution. He fell at her feet in all the ...

— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... and loosening precipices of long-accumulated ice tempest with hideous crash the foaming deep,—images like these may give some faint shadow of what was the situation of my bosom. My chained faculties broke loose; my maddening passions, roused to tenfold fury, bore over their banks with impetuous, resistless force, carrying every check and principle before them. Counsel was an unheeded call to the passing hurricane; Reason a screaming elk in the vortex of Malstrom; and Religion a ...

— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... quicker path. The workers have refused to listen to them. On the other hand, they have declined the way of compromise, of fusions, and of alliances, that have also promised a quicker and a shorter road to power. With the most maddening patience they have declined to take any other path than their own—thus infuriating not only the terrorists in their own ranks but those Greeks from the other side who came to them bearing gifts. Nothing seems to disturb them or to block their path. They are offered ...

— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... over his work as another man might have done. The canary made up for his silence, trilling and chittering continually, splashing about in its morning bath, keeping up an incessant noise and movement that would have been maddening to any one but McTeague, who seemed to have no nerves ...

— McTeague • Frank Norris

... or tenth century. The battle in the harbor he had seen; and his own death he had described. But this was a much more startling plunge into the past. Was it possible that he had skipped half a dozen lives and was then dimly remembering some episode of a thousand years later? It was a maddening jumble, and the worst of it was that Charlie Mears in his normal condition was the last person in the world to clear it up. I could only wait and watch, but I went to bed that night full of the wildest imaginings. There was nothing that was not possible if Charlie's detestable memory ...

— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... had traveled all day without food or water, night was approaching and with it a realization that she was hopelessly lost in a wild and trackless country notorious principally for its tsetse flies and savage beasts. It was maddening to know that she had absolutely no knowledge of the direction she was traveling—that she might be forging steadily further from the railway, deeper into the gloomy and forbidding country toward the Pangani; yet it was impossible ...

— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Henry would come over to her, and hold her in his arms while Mr. Archer, with maddening deliberation, glanced through the long typewritten document—but Henry had turned his back, and was gazing ...

— Rope • Holworthy Hall

... of Philip to end the life of his son by other means than execution he could not have taken better measures. For a young man of his high spirit and fiery temper such strict confinement was maddening. At first he was thrown into a frenzy, and tried more than once to make way with himself. The sullenness of despair succeeded. He grew daily more emaciated, and the malarial fever which had so long affected him now returned in a severe degree. To allay the heat of the fever ...

— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris

... life was absorbed in contemplation as rapt as that of any of the Romish saints. Every hour that I gazed upon the divine form strengthened my passion,—a passion that was always overshadowed by the maddening conviction, that, although I could gaze on her at will, she never, ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... till his imagination dwells upon the indulgence of his vitiated tastes in the mountains of North Carolina, is doomed to disappointment. If he wants to make himself an exception to the sober people whose cooking will make him long for the maddening bowl, he must bring his poison with him. We had found no bread since we left Virginia; we had seen cornmeal and water, slack-baked; we had seen potatoes fried in grease, and bacon incrusted with salt (all thirst-provokers), but nothing to drink stronger than buttermilk. And we can say that, ...

— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... nearly an hour, while he has waited barely half that time. By the great horn spoon! If his serene highness does not admit us to his presence in a few minutes more, I shall beard him in his den, and demand audience in the name of the king. It is simply maddening to think of Cuyler carrying the Rothsay party farther and farther away with each minute, and having the beauty all to himself. Of course you don't care, since it was decided that they travel by the north shore of the lake, while, ...

— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore

... the mead did their work in maddening brains; the revelry grew louder; riddles, which had flown thick around the board at first, gave place to banter, taunts, and fierce boasts of prowess; angry eyes gleamed defiance; and it was well if, in the morning, the household slaves had not to wash blood-stains from ...

— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education

... a suggestive smile that crossed the heavy features of James Rutlidge, as he turned his gaze from the gloves to meet the look of the novelist was maddening. ...

— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright

... and to-morrow may be washed away. So she counted not her life dear unto herself when, for the second time, as in our passage, she ventured, uninvited, into the king's presence. The womanly courage that risks life for love's sake is nobler than the soldier's that feels the lust of battle maddening him. ...

— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... thirst had been carried to the fiercest extremity. Upon this last morning, at the sight of the hills and the forest scenery, which announced to those who acted as guides the neighborhood of the lake of Tengis, all the people rushed along with maddening eagerness to the anticipated solace. The day grew hotter and hotter, the people more and more exhausted, and gradually, in the general rush forwards to the lake, all discipline and command were lost—all attempts ...

— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... to catch Sid DuPree dancing around her in maddening circles, some afternoon, while she shrank piteously from each cry of "'Fraid cat! 'Fraid cat!" Or that bully might throw pieces of chalk at her or pelt her with snowballs in the winter time until she broke into incoherent sobs. Then he, John ...

— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely

... tears, with which you looked up, after having performed some blunder, whilst the doctor held you to public scorn before the class, and cracked his great clumsy jokes upon you—helpless, and a prisoner! Better the block itself, and the lictors, with their fasces of birch-twigs, than the maddening torture ...

— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... prostrate, his heart seemed swept clean of all hope and feeling. Then his furious temper, the failing that, above every other, was his curse and bane, came to his aid and occupied it like the seven devils of Scripture, bringing in its train his re-awakened vanity, hatred, jealousy, and other maddening passions. It could not be true, there must be an explanation, and, of course, the explanation was that Foy had been so fortunate, or so cunning as to make advances to Elsa soon after she had swallowed the love philtre. Adrian, like most people in his day, was very superstitious and credulous. ...

— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... me all the time and kept my own maddening thoughts at bay. I gathered together only those things I would urgently require, and gave her my keys to attend to all the rest ...

— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"

... eleven knots, hour after hour, upon a taut bowline; the smother of froth under her bows boiling up at times to the level of her lee cat-head, and her foresail wet with spray to the height of its reef-band. It was grand sailing, exhilarating as a draught of wine, maddening in the feeling of recklessness that it begot; but, all the same, I did not believe that we were doing more than perhaps just holding our own with the Virginia; it was not under such conditions as those that we were likely to overhaul her; our chance ...

— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood

... dimly of punishment, more keenly of separation. If I had analysed my thoughts, I suppose I should have found annihilation to have been my belief—death forever, loss eternal. But this—if this were truth—(and it smote me as the truth alone can smite), oh, it was maddening. To my knees! To my knees! Oh, that I might live long years to pray for him! Oh, that I might stretch out my hands to God for him, withered with age and shrunk with fasting, and strong but in faith and final perseverance! Oh, ...

— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris

... great powers of good and of evil had both despatched at this same moment, on rival errands, ambassadors to gain dominion over these distant savages. It was a curious contest: on the one hand, showy robes, shining beads, and maddening fire-water, on the other, the old, old story of peace and brotherhood, of Christ and Calvary—a contest so full of interest, so teeming with adventure, so pregnant with the discovery of mighty rivers and great inland seas, that one would fain ramble ...

— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler

... "Oh! maddening sight," sobbed Nick; "I see myself staggering from the ale-house and reeling into what should be a home, where gaunt starvation stalks the floor; where the hearth is fireless, and where a starving family die upon a pallet ...

— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff

... shall now tell thee of duties having a very ancient origin and laid down by the Rishis, duties that are distinguished above all others. Listen to me with undivided attention. The senses that are maddening should carefully be restrained by the understanding like a sire restraining his own inexperienced children liable to fall into diverse evil habits. The withdrawal of the mind and the senses from all unworthy objects and their due concentration (upon worthy ...

— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... with the world, in a sense, at her feet was maddening. The Doctor paced the floor roaring like an angry lion. "It may not do any good, but I've got to tell her ...

— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey

... lover. Then she vowed to torture him: he should no longer find a wife in her—not even a woman, still less a lovely companion; she would implant in him intolerable longing and guard that he might not gratify it—not even lull it on any side, while she would become a statue of marble to his most maddening advance. He should have no more leisure for study, but be thrilled with the incessant and implacable sensation which relaxes the muscles, pales the blood, poisons the marrow, obscures reason, weakens the will and eats away ...

— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas

... describes a sweep, is gone, and all is dark again. It suggests the policeman going his rounds. How the exile forced to sojourn here must detest this obtrusive beacon of the first class! It must become maddening in time for the eyes. Even in bed it has the effect of mild sheet-lightning. Municipality of Calais! move it away at once to a rational spot—to the end of the pier, where ...

— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald

... her eyes gaze into mine, and when Her lips to mine are pressed,— Why are my veins all fire then? and then Why should her soul suggest Voluptuous perfumes, maddening unto ...

— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein

... abstainer from all intoxicating drinks, and, remaining firm to his pledge throughout the course of his downward career, was thus saved from the rapid destruction which too frequently overtook those who to the exciting influences of gambling added the maddening stimulus of alcohol. But the constant mental fever under which he laboured was beginning to undermine a naturally-robust constitution, and to unstring the nerves of a well-made, powerful frame. Sometimes, when fortune favoured him, he became suddenly possessor of a large sum of money, ...

— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne

... Luscombe talk about the maddening trouble he has had in teaching plough-tail or urban recruits to knot and splice a rope, or watches, as I have, a couple of blue-jackets drive ashore in a small boat because they couldn't hoist sail, then one comprehends better the importance of the fisher-families ...

— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds

... serene about Peter that his highly imperious, poised employer found it impertinent, not to say maddening. Peter had a look of the freedom of desert distances in his eyes already. A lieutenant was actually radiating happiness in that neutral-toned sanctum of ...

— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer

... again the fiddle ceased its ear-maddening screams as refreshment was partaken of by the dancers. Wilder and wilder grew the scene as the potent liquor took hold of its victims. They danced with more and more reckless abandon as each time they returned to step it to the fiddler's patient measure. ...

— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... however, it was a world of gloom. Upstairs Huldah was singing— singing!—and it was Thanksgiving. He could hear her feet patter, patter on the floor above, and the sound had a cheery self-reliance that was maddening. Huldah was happy, evidently—and it was Thanksgiving! Twice he had walked resolutely to the back stairs with a brown-paper parcel in his arms; and twice a quavering song of triumph from the room above had sent him back ...

— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter

... seemed ravished by it. It had been his misfortune, he thought, to see long, modish, tapering stays that bruised his fancy as it did the wearer's body, and to behold such slender waist crowned by full, unfettered maiden roundness, pedestalled by such broad and shapely hips was maddening. He had not dreamt of such beauty when his Grace of Buckingham had suggested the trip into ...

— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne

... Why, what is the matter with you? I can see that you are mad at me by the twitching of—Do you know, Dixie, you have the most maddening mouth and lips that a woman ever owned? Say, shake just once to show that ...

— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben

... proceeded," he went on, with the same maddening conscientiousness of manner, "to Mr Carr (not Mr James Carr, of course; Mr Robert Carr) who is temporarily assisting our organist, and having consulted with him (on the subject of a choir boy who ...

— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton

... passions, they lost all control over their own impetuous progress, until brought up and checked, as we have seen, by a catastrophe the most ruinous—the return of reason being the signal for the rousing up of those lurking furies—terror, remorse, and many and maddening regrets. From little to large events, we experience or behold this every day. It is a history and all read it. It belongs to human nature and to society: and until some process shall be discovered by which ...

— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... blasting lightning, for a moment seemed to make the reason of their leader stagger. Arrows, winged with fire, flashed through the air; and sticking in men and beasts, drove them against each other in maddening pain. Twice was the horse of Wallace shot under him; and on every side were his closest friends wounded and dispersed. But his terrific horror at the scene passed away the moment of its perception; and though the Southron and the Bruce pressed on him in overwhelming numbers, his few ...

— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... crash. The roof over the main room had come smashing in! Instantly the fire roared louder; tongues of it began to lick through the walls. Wood popped, and the heat became maddening. One side of the room became a mass of flames. The imprisoned men began to wet their clothing with the little water ...

— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens

... Mr. Muller had fallen into the habit of reading to her while she did so. But to-day the Reformatory rose before her a prison, the gates of which were about to close on her. The heap of stockings, the touch of the darning cotton, the sound of Mr. Muller's droning voice, were maddening to her: every moment she made a tangle in her thread, looking down at Maria under the Bourbon rose, and the attentive face bent over her. Where should she go? What should she do? Had the world nothing in ...

— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various

... answered by the iron howitzers from the battery of the parallel, the heavy roll, and horrid explosion of the powder-barrels, the whizzing flight of the blazing splinters, the loud exhortations of the officers, and the continual clatter of the muskets, made a maddening din. Now a multitude bounded up the great breach, as if driven by a whirlwind, but across the top glittered a range of sword-blades, sharp-pointed, keen-edged on both sides, and firmly fixed in ponderous beams chained ...

— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty

... bored a hole in my leg, and were squirting melted lead into all my veins—right up my leg, sir. It's maddening! It's horrible! It's worse than—worse than—there, I was going to say gout, Lawrence, but I'll say it's worse than being caned. Now, Yussuf, what do you ...

— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn

... had said in vain, and saw Latinus still Withstand her: when all inwardly the maddening serpent's ill Hath smitten through her heart of hearts and passed through all her frame, Then verily the hapless one, with dreadful things aflame, Raves through the city's length and breadth in God-wrought ...

— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil

... Can she be there? Or in the woods, or on her way to some unknown place far out of our reach? The thought is maddening, Mr. Harper, and I feel as helpless as a child under it. Shall we get detectives from the county-seat, or start on the hunt ourselves? We might hear something further on ...

— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green

... laurel, or for such could die. I am a fool of passion, and a frown Of thine to me is as an adder's eye. To the poor bird whose pinion fluttering down Wafts unto death the breast it bore so high; Such is this maddening fascination grown, So strong thy magic or so ...

— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron

... for her person. With the vanity of the woman and the pride of a queen, "she painted her face and tired her head," and then haughtily presenting herself before the murderer of her children, she uttered a maddening taunt and defiance. By the hands of her servants she was cast from the windows of the palace of Israel into the very grounds which had been the vineyard of Naboth; and as she was dashed to the earth, ...

— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous

... that was to be placed on the Frisbie property gradually took a sort of being, though everything about it seemed to progress with maddening deliberation. Ground was broken for the buildings. Timber and lumber were delayed by Far Western strikes, but finally put in an appearance. A spur of railway line shot out to the site of the new flying grounds. Then barracks and huge hangars—-the latter to house ...

— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll

... said. Unless the will maintain a certain control over these movements, which it cannot stop, but can to some extent regulate, men are very apt to try to get at the machine by some indirect system of leverage or other. They clap on the breaks by means of opium; they change the maddening monotony of the rhythm by means of fermented liquors. It is because the brain is locked up and we cannot touch its movement directly, that we thrust these coarse tools in through any crevice by which they may reach the interior, and so alter its rate of going ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... Hurricane swept. At that cry of wrath and despair I struggled to rise, again dashed to earth by the hoofs and the horns. But was it the dream-like deceit of my reeling senses, or did I see that giant Foot stride past through the close-serried ranks of the maddening herds? Did I hear, distinct through all the huge uproar of animal terror, the roll of low thunder which followed ...

— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... those words worked through Harriet's veins like a poison of joy. So long as a single human being expresses faith in us, what matters an unbelieving world? Harriet regularly visited Miss Anna to hear these maddening syllables. She called for them as for the refilling of a prescription, which she preferred to get fresh every time rather than take home once for all and ...

— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen

... and despair through triumph and delight to gratification and content, from the bitterest sense of frustration and peril to one of security; the uprush of those strange instincts which had lain dormant till roused by the knowledge that she was free at length from the maddening stupidity of social life, together with her recent, implicit self-dedication to a life in all things its converse: these influences were working upon her so strongly as to render her mood more dangerous than ...

— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance

... we were supposed to be "making a dash" for the Edith, a river twelve miles farther on; but there was nothing very dashing about our pace. The air was stiflingly, swelteringly hot, and the flies maddening in their persistence. The horses developed puffs, and when we were not being half-drowned in torrents of rain we were being parboiled in steamy atmosphere. The track was as tracks usually are "during the Wet," and for four hours we laboured on, slipping and slithering over the greasy track, ...

— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... completion, as she stuck halfway; but the organ-grinder's melodies only stopped for a touch to the mechanism, and Black-Eyed Susan passed into the Old Hundredth, awkwardly, but with hardly a perceptible pause. The effect of the joint performance was at first ludicrous, and by degrees maddening, especially when we had come to the Old Hundredth, which was so familiar in connection with the words ...

— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... rather to forget I am a man. Art thou blind, or hast thou never even looked into a mirror? Dost thou imagine me less than a man, bidding me forget that she is a woman who stands before me, as thou dost, smiling, and bewildering my soul with her maddening loveliness, and the absolute perfection of her body and her soul, showing the hungry man food, and forbidding him to eat, and the thirsty man water, and requiring him to think of it as something it is not? Or art thou all the time only ...

— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain

... is a maddening maze Of paths that wind on without exit or end, From nowhere to nowhere lead all of its ways, And shadows with shadows in more shadows blend. Each guide-post is lettered, 'This way to Despair,' And the River of Death in the darkness flows near, ...

— Poems of Purpose • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... out inarticulate disgust as he tumbled into his tent; but I stood above the embers of the camp fire thinking. Again I felt with a creepiness, that set all my flesh quaking, felt, rather than saw, those maddening, tiger eyes of the dark foliage watching me. Looking up, I found my morose canoeman on the other side of the fire, leaning so close to a tree, he was barely visible in the shadows. Thinking himself unseen by me, he wore such an insolent, amused, malicious ...

— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... cried, "it is maddening! Why do we do it? Are we paupers or adventurers? Oh! let me go away! I am ashamed to ...

— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... blood had acted like the maddening first sip of wine to a dipsomaniac long-deprived. Punctuated by deafening roar, the brute's assaults grew in fury. My inadequate defense of only one hand left me vulnerable before claws and fangs. But I dealt out dazing ...

— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... houses. Bates one day saw some Indian children with one of these monsters secured by a cord round its waist, by which they were leading it about the house as they would a dog. The hairs with which it is covered come off when touched, and cause a peculiar and almost maddening irritation. This is, however, probably owing to their being short and hard, and thus getting into the fine creases of the skin, and not to any poisonous quality residing in the hairs. These monstrous spiders prey on lizards, small birds, and other diminutive vertebrates. Their muscular power is very ...

— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... fly about eight feet over a sunk fence—the second followed in the same style, the riders sitting as steadily as in the gallop. It was now my turn, and I confess, as I neared the dyke, I heartily wished myself well over it, for the very possibility of a "mistake" was maddening. Sir Roger came on at a slapping pace, and when within two yards of the brink, rose to it, and cleared it like a deer. By the time I had accomplished this feat, not the less to my satisfaction, that both ladies had turned in the saddles to watch me, they were already ...

— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... discovered two men in the vicinity of the jail. A cold shudder nearly paralyzed him. Was his labor all in vain? Had he with so much trial and suffering effected his escape, only to be incarcerated again? The thought was maddening, and he resolved to die rather than be returned to ...

— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton

... was a maddening whirl, an orgy of adulation. Such fortune! Such beauty! Miss Percival arrived in Paris on the 15th of April; a fortnight had not passed before the offers of marriage began to pour upon her. In the course of that first year, she might, ...

— L'Abbe Constantin, Complete • Ludovic Halevy

... of the clock slowly crawled to the hour of three the frenzy of the mob in the centre of the pit became maddening. I had no way of knowing from where we stood whether prices were moving up or down, but it was evident that Harding ...

— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams

... rest here; he was, after all, a child of an age that grew sad, and earnest, and thoughtful. He saw abuses round him—injustice, and oppression, and cruelty. He had a heart to which those things were not only abhorrent, but, as it were, maddening. He knew how great an influence he wielded, and who can blame him for using it in any cause he thought good? Very possibly he might have been a greater artist if he had been less of a man, if he had been quite disinterested, and had never written ...

— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang

... more maddening because Man would not admit that he was through. Ended, that is, as a ...

— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer

... "At the close of that war, three armies which had been fighting on the Southern side, and which numbered probably forty thousand men, were disbanded. These men had for four years been subjected to the unfamiliar and galling restrictions of military discipline, and to the most maddening privations. . . . At the same time four millions of slaves, without provisions and without prospect of labor in a land where employers were impoverished, were liberated. . . . The reign of law at this thrilling time was at ...

— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims

... devilled partridge, the truffled salad, the fine yellow cheese, and the long bottle of good red Beaune, revealed when the cover was off, I could almost have forgiven the old rascal for his scandal- mongering. As for my vis-a-vis, she pronounced it a "maddening sight." ...

— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington

... wistfulness, of mystery, that ministers to our luxurious sadness. But when one bears about the heavy burden of a harassing anxiety of sorrow, then the smile on the face of nature has something poisonous, almost maddening about it. It breeds an emotion that is like the rage of Othello when he looks upon the face of Desdemona, and believes her false. Nature has no sympathy, no pity. She has her work to do, and the swift and bright ...

— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson

... that I am the victim of an aberration," he said. "I do not speak of the Eucharist; there my thoughts may not be exact, but at least they are not maddening, while as for ...

— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

... it appealed to the interests, the pride, the honor, and the glory of the nation, that it shamed and taunted the timidity of friends, that it scorned and scouted and withered the temerity of domestic foes, that it bearded and defied the British lion, and, rising and swelling and maddening in its course, it sounded the onset, till the charge, the shock, the steady struggle, and the glorious victory all passed in vivid review before ...

— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... were no longer on the floor, each muscle in the rigid girl having so well done its part that she hung straight-limbed against him. Close to his face drew hers, and for a space of time, the length of which he could never afterward accurately measure, he forgot everything but the maddening expression in her face. Her eyelids were closed, and her breath ...

— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White

... me dyurr, that ye can't hearr 'em now? Kape your tongue silent and listen!" A good, full brogue permits speech that would offend in colourless Saxon; and Mrs. Tapping made no protest, but listened. Sure enough the rousing, maddening "Fire, fire, fire, fire, fire!" was on its way at speed somewhere close at hand. It grew and lessened and died. And Mrs. Riley was triumphant. "That's a larrudge fire, shure!" said she, transposing her impression of the enthusiasm of the engine to the area of the conflagration. ...

— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... one moment he stood as though about to carry out his first intention. He stood glaring at his opponent, his face contracted into a snarl, his whole appearance hideous, almost bestial. Mr. Sabin smiled upon him contemptuously—the maddening, compelling ...

— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... husband-slayer fordone By swordstroke of her son, Unutterable, unimaginable on high, On earth abhorrent, fell Beyond all scourge of hell, Yet righteous as redemption: Love stood nigh, Mute, sister-like, and closer clung Than all fierce forms of threatening coil and maddening tongue. ...

— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... horse, and hound, and horn, Destructive sweep the field along; While, joying o'er the wasted corn, Fell Famine marks the maddening throng. ...

— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various

... creatures in our host's great forests were hares, wolves, moose, and bears. The moose had retreated, for the hot weather, to the lakes on the Crown lands adjacent, to escape the maddening attacks of the gadflies. Though it was not the hungry height of the season with the wolves, there was always an exciting possibility of encountering a stray specimen during our strolls, and we found the skull and bones of a horse which they had killed the past winter. ...

— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... of his feelings, and clasping her once more to his beating heart. "Oh! Matilda, if you knew how the idea of that fearful condition has haunted me in my thoughts by day, and my dreams by night, you would only wonder that at this moment I retain my senses, filled as my soul is with maddening—with ...

— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... your maddening beauty will not suffer me to forget that mine is still susceptible of ...

— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... to bear than that which is caused by man. In the latter case the sense that the misery felt may be ended by so small a thing as another's will; that another may, by lifting a finger, cut it short, and will not; that to persuade him is all that is needful—this becomes at the last maddening, intolerable, a thing to upset the reason, if that other will ...

— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman

... Julia Crosby, and again her tantalizing laugh rang out, "you are entirely too hasty in your supposition. As it happens, I have the best right in the world to bring my team to the gym. this afternoon. So, little folks," looking from one sophomore to another in a way that was fairly maddening, "run away and ...

— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower

... came there two or three times, I escaped arrest. It is impossible to give the reader the faintest idea of my condition. Without money, clothes, or friends, an outcast, hunted like a wild beast, I had only one thing left—my horrible appetite, at all times fierce and now maddening in the extreme. My hands trembled, my face was bloated, and my eyes were bloodshot. I had almost ceased to look like a human. Hope had flown from me, and I was in complete despair. I moved about over my father's farm like one walking in sleep, the veriest ...

— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson

... over the dreamy waltz and the false joys of the skating rink, but give me the maddening yelp of the pack in full cry as it chases the speckled two-year-old of the low-born rustic across the open and into ...

— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye

... than a fourth of the city by the two great fires. Want, with the rich, meant famine for the poor and sad privation for the well-to-do; smallpox and typhus swept us; commerce by water died, and slowly our loneliness became a maddening isolation, when his Excellency flung out his blue dragoons to the very edges of the ...

— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers

... behavior. It was this way with the skipper. He felt shame for having kept the girl in the harbor against her prayers, and for the lies he had told her and the destruction of the letters; but he was neither humble nor contrite. Shame was a bitter and maddening emotion for one of his nature. He brooded over this shame, and over that aroused by the girl's scorn, until his finer feelings toward her were burned out and blown abroad like ashes. His infatuation lost its fine, ennobling element of worship, and fell to a red glow of ...

— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts

... low sandy beach on which the furious sea was breaking in mountain-like billows; cloud and rack deformed the firmament, which wore a dull and leaden-like hue; gulls and other aquatic fowls were toppling upon the blast, or skimming over the tops of the maddening waves—'Mercy upon him! he must be drowned!' I exclaimed, as my eyes fell upon a poor wretch who appeared to be striving to reach the shore; he was upon his legs, but was evidently half smothered with the brine; high above his head curled a horrible billow, ...

— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... overwhelmed with a fear and a terror such as she had never known even in imagination. "Have you a soul? Have you really a soul, Bertalda?" she cried again and again to her angry friend, as if forcibly to rouse her to consciousness from some sudden delirium or maddening nightmare. But when Bertalda only became more and more enraged, when the repulsed parents began to weep aloud, and the company, in eager dispute, were taking different sides, she begged in such a dignified ...

— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque

... stillness in their bearing, a look of abstraction and half resignation in their pale, often gaunt faces. They belonged to another world, they had a strange glamour, their voices were full of an intolerable deep resonance, like a machine's burring, a music more maddening than the ...

— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... If, therefore, you have not rosbif expressed in every lineament of your countenance; if the soles of your boots are less than an inch thick, and your clothes are not reduced in color to the invariable and maddening tone of the English tweed,—you must resign yourself to be a German. All this is grievous to the soul which loves to spread its eagle in every land and to be known as American, with star-spangled conspicuousness all over ...

— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells

... lubrication—and look out of the window and see your best girl sitting on the grass with some smug oyster who has saved up his cuts. How I used to hate these chaps who saved up their cuts till spring and then took my girl out walking while I went to classes! Is there anything more maddening, I'd like to know, than to sit before a big, low window trying to follow a psychology recitation closely enough to get up when called on, and at the same time watch five girls, with all of whom you are dead in love, strolling slowly off into the bright distance with five job-lot ...

— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch

... under cover of her blindness, and obtained her quit-claim to the mine, she would at least have had the satisfaction of obtaining her own terms—and she would have the twenty thousand to spend. It was maddening, disgusting, when she thought it over, that he had turned out to be Holman's son, and she never quite forgave Virginia for dinning the fact into her ears. For what you don't know will never hurt you, and she had lost her last chance to sell. ...

— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge