"Madman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... without giving any reason to any one. He was his own master. No one would be injured by anything that he might do. He had a right to spend his income as he pleased. Everything was distasteful that reminded him of Bullhampton. But still he knew that this was no more than a madman's idea;—that it would ill become him so to act. He had duties to perform, and he must perform them, let them be ever so distasteful. It was only an idea, made to be rejected; but, ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... floor is black with dirt, and so are the doors which once opened into rooms where luxury waited upon some who were born, and upon others (perchance the same) who died. A sound reaches me from the far-end of the corridor that makes me feel like a coward. It is the raving of a madman. How he seems to be contending with all the fiends of hell! Sometimes his voice is so low, and the words crowd one upon another so fast, that the muttering is like the prolonged growl of a wild beast; then the mood changes, and the unseen ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... sat together at their little breakfast, and pressed each other to eat; but neither could eat. David's night excursion had filled Eve with new misgivings. It was the act of a madman; and we know the fears that beset her on that head, and their ground. He had come home shivering, and she had forced him to keep his bed all that day. He was not well now, and bodily weakness, added to his ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... process, or some physical necessity. No one, who has had experience of men of studious habits, but must recognize the existence of a parallel phenomenon in the case of those who have over-stimulated the Memory. In such persons Reason acts almost as feebly and as impotently as in the madman; once fairly started on any subject whatever, they have no power of self-control; they passively endure the succession of impulses which are evolved out of the original exciting cause; they are passed ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... dingle Borrow experienced one of his worst attacks of the "Horrors"—the "Screaming Horrors." He raged like a madman, a prey to some indefinable, intangible fear; clinging to his "little horse as if for safety and protection." {64a} He had not recovered from the prostrating effects of that night of tragedy when he was called upon to fight Anselo ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... of the girl seemed to have completely upset his equilibrium as a gambler—certainly it made him bet with the recklessness of a madman. And Frederic Fernand, glancing in from time to time, watched the demolition of Ronicky's pile ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... taxicab ride I had in the rush hour one afternoon over a route that extended from away down near the site of the Bastille to a hotel away up near the Place Vendome. The driver was a congenital madman, the same as all Parisian taxicab drivers are; and in addition he was on this occasion acquiring special merit by being quite drunk. This last, however, was a detail that did not dawn on my perceptions until too late to cancel the contract. Once he had ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... of the cab and swore savagely and loudly. The intimidated cabman, believing these demonstrations designed to urge him to a greater speed, performed feats of driving calculated to jeopardize his license. But still the savage passenger stamped and cursed, so that the cabby began to believe that a madman was seated ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... the incident was to the moment opportune. If ever a man was in the mood for war, it was the big, square-jawed pioneer. He was reckless and desperate for the first time in his life, and he joined with Burr against the room, with the abandon of a madman. ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... stamp and your father will rave, Over the garden wall; And like an old madman no doubt will behave, Over the garden wall. M'KINLEY has riled him, he's lost his head. MAC's Tariff is stiff, but if me you'll wed, I'll give Reciprocity, darling, instead, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 21, 1891 • Various
... my lord, I cannot eat or drink with you, to-night. Some humour, or some fever in my blood, At other seasons temperate, or some thought That like an adder creeps from point to point, That like a madman crawls from cell to cell, Poisons my palate and makes appetite A loathing, ...
— A Florentine Tragedy—A Fragment • Oscar Wilde
... road. I was at first afraid to lift the glittering treasure, hardly believing it possible that so rich and splendid a thing could be without an owner; but, gradually picking up courage, I seized on the watch, hurried it into my pocket, and ran onwards like a madman. I had not run far, however, when a man, respectably dressed, but who seemed the worse of liquor, or rather like one just recovering from a debauch, met me, and, seizing me by the breast, fiercely asked me if I had seen anything of a gold watch. I instantly confessed that ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... sir!" said Tyrrel. "Hitherto I have disputed my most important rights—rights which involved my rank in society, my fortune, the honour of my mother—with something like composure; but do not say more on the topic you have touched upon, unless you would have before you a madman!—Is it possible for you, sir, to have heard even the outline of this story, and to imagine that I can ever reflect on the cold-blooded and most inhuman stratagem, which this friend of yours prepared for two unfortunates, without"—He started ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... is impossible that a nobleman should need more, that is, provided he does not expend it in a foolish manner, like a madman." ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... "amok" frenzy. He mentioned that he had known of as many as forty people being injured by a single "amok" runner. When the cry "amok! amok!" is raised, people fly to the right and left for shelter, for after the blinded madman's kris has once "drank blood," his fury becomes ungovernable, his sole desire is to kill; he strikes here and there; men fall along his course; he stabs fugitives in the back, his kris drips blood, he rushes on yet more wildly, blood and murder in his course; there are shrieks and ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... fellow-creature in the shape of a newly made squire; in one or two spots the hanging copses looked down upon a lawn below with such sheltering mien, that seeing the like in England you would have been tempted almost to ask the name of the spend-thrift, or the madman who had dared to pull down ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... fared eagerly and with a sanguine heart to Langres. His father supposed that he had seen the evil of his ways, and was come at last to continue the honest tradition of their name. When the son disclosed the object of his visit, he was treated as a madman and threatened with malediction. Without a word of remonstrance he started back one day for Paris. Madame Champion warned him that his project must now be for ever at an end. Such unflinching resoluteness is often the last preliminary ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... itself; though insensibility, which at another time would have been the result, did not now follow. Acting upon his previous agitation, the wine seemed to set his blood in a flame; and, for the time being, he was a perfect madman. ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to go after Tus, and by fair words and proper excuses bring him back to his festive board. Accordingly Gudarz departed. No sooner had he gone than Giw rose up, and said, "Tus is little better than a madman, and my father of a hasty temper; I should therefore wish to follow, to prevent the possibility of further disagreement." To this Rustem consented. Byzun was now also anxious to go, and he too got permission. When all the three had departed, Rustem began to be apprehensive that something ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... the harmless beverage of your festive scene this poison of adders! Mix not with the white sugar of the cup the snow of this awful leprosy! Mar not the clatter of cutlery at the holiday feast with the clank of a madman's chain! ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... telling this story. If you knew what tears are blotting over the paper as I write it—if you knew that for weeks after I was more like a madman than a sane man,—a madman in the Fleet Prison, where I went instead of to the desert island! What had I done to deserve it? Hadn't I always kept an eye to the main chance? Hadn't I lived economically, and not like other young men? Had ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray
... He began to walk about the room. 'But what's the reason? Drake's action, if this statement is a libel, is the action of a madman.' ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... probably, had he been under such intelligent care as may be had at present, the crisis might have been followed up, and a favorable direction given to his disease. But the subject was not understood then, and, having once fallen mad, he was doomed to live and die a madman. ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... he had invested largely, at the advice of some friends, in the lands of the great North-West, but had lost a great deal by the speculation. In his despair, the first friend he thought of was myself. He got around me in his old way, and before he left my office that morning I had loaned him, madman that I was, the sum of five thousand dollars, without any question whatever of security. He swore to me that I might rely on him to deal honestly with me, and, blinded by the old infatuation, I gave him a cheque for the amount and sent him away contented. Give me a drink, Guy, and fix up ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... incomprehensible that he should really suppose me guilty. I take God to witness, and all those who knew me in prosperity and misfortune, I never harboured a thought of betraying my country. How was it possible to suspect me? I was neither madman nor idiot. In my eighteenth year I was a cornet of the body guard, adjutant to the King, and possessed his favour and confidence in the highest degree. His presents to me, in one year, amounted to fifteen hundred dollars. I kept ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... made. In the one case the reader is utterly at the mercy of the poet respecting what imagery or diction he may choose to connect with the passion." But is this a poet, of whom a poet is speaking? No surely! rather of a fool or madman: or at best of a vain or ignorant phantast! And might not brains so wild and so deficient make just the same havoc with rhymes and metres, as they are supposed to effect with modes and figures of speech? How is the reader at the mercy of such ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... in one of Nashe's pamphlets (which perhaps furnished our author with his instance), may serve to confirm the observation: "The causes conducting unto wrath are as diverse as the actions of a man's life. Some will take on like a madman, if they see a pig come to the table. Sotericus, the surgeon, was cholerick at the sight of sturgeon," &c. Pierce Pennylesse his Supplication ...
— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare
... John Randolph.—This madman is full of his vagaries here; says the most offensive things, but in such a high-bred, supercilious, if not gentlemanly way, that people cannot make up their minds about him, nor whether to cut him dead or acknowledge him for a genius and a humorist. Sir Robert Inglis ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... the proceedings from the window of my room and was able to see everything that took place. Without any warning the mad commandant rushed out of a building and up to the wire, where he screamed at the little gathering like a madman, making violent motions to show that they were to go back. It is perfectly legitimate to stand in a group as long as every one behaves and no one touches the neutral zone wire. One must stand somewhere. In this case he ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... seventeenth century, English criticism sought to put Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, Otway, Wycherly, Congreve, Cowley, Dryden, and even the madman Lee, above Shakspere. Denham in 1667 sings an obituary to the memory ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... she said. "And what must he do but come bursting round to my place—half an hour before I'm due to start for the show—and carry on like a madman. Scared stiff, I was. Tried to make me swear I'd marry him and start for Timbuctoo to-morrow, and when I wouldn't, wanted to shoot himself and me too—as though I'd made a muck of things. Well, I'd done my best, and when it came to that sort of ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... Like a madman with these words From the cave rushed Atta Troll Swift to his destruction—oh! To his ruin straight ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... the rim of the pit. She had fainted at sight of the ghost-shape, whose white-hot folds flapped there, reaching to engulf her in their all-consuming embrace. Carr babbled like a madman as he pulled her away from the horrible thing that pulsated with eager flutterings not three feet away, its hot breath singeing ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... as of its cause, and fearing that the halter was intended to hang the luckless mealman, probably upon the next tree they came to, did not, as many another female would do, avoid or run away from the madman. On the contrary, she approached him with an expression singularly winning and sweet on her countenance, and in a voice of great kindness, laid her hand upon his arm to arrest his attention, asked him how he did. He paused a moment, and looking ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... himself put to it to provide about three hundred new Code Names at once. Heroically he set to work with his dictionary, his H.B. pencil, and his little rhyme. For two days the Resplendent Ones in the General Staff Office bore patiently with the muttering madman in the corner. For two days he fluttered the leaves of his dictionary and whispered hoarsely to himself, "Tit-tat-toe, my-first-go, three-jolly-nigger-boys-all-in-a-row," picking out word after word with unerring accuracy until ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 28, 1917 • Various
... angry at a man for controverting an opinion which we believe and value; we rather pity him.' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir; to be sure when you wish a man to have that belief which you think is of infinite advantage, you wish well to him; but your primary consideration is your own quiet. If a madman were to come into this room with a stick in his hand, no doubt we should pity the state of his mind; but our primary consideration would be to take care of ourselves. We should knock him down first, and pity him afterwards. No, Sir; every man will dispute with great good humour ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... in amongst the low-growing bush, only to reappear with more feverish haste, and eyes whose fiery glance seemed to shoot in every direction at once. On he went, round the edge of the entire clearing; in and out, like some madman running purposelessly in search of some phantasy of his brain. There was no one there but himself, and the two still forms upon the ground. ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... to the seed-time and harvest of agriculture. "If we only behold," says he, "the actions of the husbandman in the seed time, when he casteth away much good corn into the ground, we shall account him rather a madman than a husbandman. But when we consider his labours in the harvest, which is the end of his endeavours, we shall find the worth and plentiful increase ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... barricaded the house, and almost escaped out of a back window. They had a dreadful fight before they got him even then. He is so strong, father says, that he just threw the men right and left as if he had been a madman." ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... his mind, and expected, as in former cases, that he would come round a bit by-and-by when his insane temper had passed. Still his insinuations were highly dangerous, not to speak of their offensiveness. It was no joke to be charged, even by a madman, with striving to arouse the crew to mutiny. Nevertheless I tried to console myself as best I could by reflecting that he could not prove his charges; that I need only to endure his insolence for a few weeks, and that there was always a law to vindicate me and punish him, should ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... the idea of the doited grey-beard whom the boys called "Old Nebuly," had been so firmly impressed on Westray's mind, that when he first turned over the papers he expected to find in them little more than the hallucinations of a madman. But by degrees he became aware that however disconnected many of Martin's notes might appear, they possessed a good deal of interest, and the coherence which results from a particular object being kept more or less continuously in view. Besides endless genealogies ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... definition of humanity? Where does it end and where does it begin? Does humanity end with the savage, the idiot, the dipsomaniac, or the madman? If we draw a line excluding from humanity its lowest representatives, where are we to draw the line? Shall we exclude the negroes like the Americans, or the Hindoos like some Englishmen, or the Jews like some others? If we include ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... laggards entered the randevous the same horrible noise that had so startled Edward Dotey burst forth again, while one of the sailors yet lingering by the shore came rushing up, shouting like a madman,— ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... Medoro, however, survives his friend, and is cured of his wounds by Angelica, who happens to come up. She falls in love with and marries him. Account of their honeymoon in the woods. They quit them to set out for Cathay, and see a madman on the road. ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... the Lord intended, is kept pent up in our insides by our clothes, and of course it gets to playing the mischief with all our organs. As old Fuller says, 'He that is proud of the rustling of his silks, like a madman laughs at the rattling of ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... he were a madman, he would continue to hold supremacy over a nation, though his groom ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... that they intended to use them as slaves: but as we all stood talking, one of the Spaniards, understanding what was forward, threw himself on his knees before Mr. Oxenham, and shrieking like a madman, entreated not to be given up into the hands of 'those devils,' said he, 'who never take a Spanish prisoner, but they roast him alive, and then eat his heart among them.' We asked the negroes if this was possible? To which some answered, What was ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... in need of money has no appetite, he springs up in sleep, he looks at women with astonishment, as if to ask, 'Why were they created?' Fire flashes in his face in the coolest temple. In the middle of a desert shivers of cold pass through him during the greatest heat. He looks like a madman; he does not hear what people say to him. Very often he walks along with his wig awry and forgets to sprinkle it with perfume. His only comfort is a pitcher of strong wine, and that for a brief moment. Barely has the poor man's thoughts come back when again ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... thus delineating the character of Nathan Slaughter, the latter found himself surrounded by the young men of the Station, the butt of a thousand jests, and the victim of the insolence of the captain of horse-thieves. It is not to be supposed that Roaring Ralph was really the bully and madman that his extravagant freaks and expressions seemed to proclaim him. These, like any other "actions that a man might play," were assumed, partly because it suited his humour to be fantastic, and partly because the putting of his antic disposition on, was the only means ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... buzzard's hoarse croak, a caracara adds its shrill note; the fiend-like chorus further strengthened by the scream of the white-headed eagle—for all the world like the filing of a frame saw, and not unlike the wild, unmeaning laughter of a madman. ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... made every inquiry without success. Not a trace of the boy had been found, or (in the opinion of the police) was likely to be found. The one event that had happened, since the appearance of the paragraph in the New York journal, was the confinement of James Bellbridge in an asylum, as a madman under restraint without hope ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... a madman. Gnashing his teeth together, he rode back a little way; then turning and couching his lance, he suddenly clapped spurs to his horse, and the next instant came thundering down upon ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... hand. I preferred renouncing my throne rather than to retain it by staining my glory, and the honour of the French nation.... A degraded crown is an intolerable burthen. My enemies have published everywhere, that I obstinately refused to make peace. They have represented me as a wretched madman, eager only for blood and carnage: this language answered their turn. When you wish to hang your dog, you give out that he is mad: Quand on veut tuer son chien, il faut bien faire accroire qu'il est enrage. But Europe shall know the truth: I will let ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... SÂŽes were to be forgotten—that they were both to take life up—from VallÂŽcy. He stood a moment in joyous uncertainty, his glance on the clock, then, quickly wrapping the memento in its tissue paper, thrust it into his coat pocket and in a moment was striding like a madman down the street. At his apartment he rang for a taxicab, thrust a few things into a suitcase, wrote a note or two and in half an hour was on his way to the bank and then ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... them; he who has suddenly forgotten what he had been doing on earth; he who has spoken to the trees along the route and to the birds in their flight; finally, he who, in the midst of men, has acted the madman, and then has fallen on his knees and thanked God for it; let him die without complaint: he has known the joy ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... his soul all the paltriness and the thoughts of vanity which are proper to a court. We pity genius when we behold it struggling with impossibility. Mirabeau was the most potent man of his time; but the greatest individual contending with an enraged element appears but a madman. A fall is only majestic ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... be little better than a Madman, when he perceiv'd him of a suddain snatch out of his Bosom a Handkerchief, which having kiss'd with a great deal of Ardour, he took Aurelian by the Hand, and smiling at the Surprize he saw ...
— Incognita - or, Love & Duty Reconcil'd. A Novel • William Congreve
... no farther attention to him. He then turned to me and asked me for my pistols, with a pair of which he had furnished me. I told him they were not with me. He growled an oath, threw himself on his horse and left us. In the evening I found him half drunk and raving like a madman. He said he would no longer bear with that nigger's insolence; but would whip him if it cost him his life. He at length fixed upon a plan for seizing him; and told me that he would go out in the morning, ride along by the side of Harry and talk pleasantly to him, and then, while Harry ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... wandering poor, who are known to the piety of the habitans as the Brethren of Christ, were a terror to Bird, in their visits, when they came by day to receive the charity which no one denies them; he felt himself bound to keep a watchful eye on this old Yankee, who was either a rascal or a madman, and perhaps both, and to see that no harm came to him; and when he heard the tramps prowling about at night, and feeling for the alms that kind people leave out-doors for them, he could not sleep. The old hunter ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... But it was not to be seen, neither there nor in the harbour. All at once her eye caught the well-known craft, which was not, however, far behind, but almost level with the others. Per must have rowed like a madman. She was well able to estimate the distance, and could appreciate such a feat of oarsmanship, and, entirely forgetting her pain and that she was alone, she turned round as if to a crowd of spectators, and pointing at the boats she said, with sparkling ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... courage. At Saratoga while that scapegoat Gates sulked in his tent, I burst from the camp on my big brown horse and rode like a madman to the head of Larned's brigade, my old command, and we took the hill. Fear? I never knew what the word meant. Dashing back to the center, I galloped up and down before the line. We charged twice, and the enemy broke and fled. Then I turned to the left ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... Randolph it was also a world aglow with danger. Somewhere in its tiny vastness were the friends he had to rescue. Captives of a madman, they had been reduced to native Orena size; to return to Earth they needed the growth capsules Randolph was bringing them. It was up to Randolph to find them—and quickly—for the longer they stayed tiny, the closer they came to passing BEYOND THE ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... it seems no less necessary sometimes to deposit one's money with a usurer than to borrow from him. Now it seems altogether unlawful to deposit one's money with a usurer, even as it would be unlawful to deposit one's sword with a madman, a maiden with a libertine, or food with a glutton. Neither therefore is it lawful to borrow ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... a madman. Seizing Alfred's arm in his teeth, sinking them into the flesh, he held on like a bulldog. The blows Alfred rained on the man's face had no effect on him and it was only when beaten into insensibility that ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... far back as 1885, I had not the faintest conception of Keely's work, or what he claimed to have discovered or to be on the track of discovering. I never heard his name mentioned without being told at the same time that he was either a silly madman or a conscious impostor, and as I came with an entirely unprejudiced mind (for I had never heard of Keely before landing in America), it would have been natural to accept ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... see it. Was that poor flesh so passing fair, beyond All woman's loveliness? Was I some fond False plotter, that I schemed to win through her Thy castle's heirdom? Fond indeed I were! Nay, a stark madman! "But a crown," thou sayest, "Usurped, is sweet." Nay, rather most unblest To all wise-hearted; sweet to fools and them Whose eyes are blinded by the diadem. In contests of all valour fain would I Lead Hellas; but in rank and majesty Not lead, but ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... sound Forever in his ears; the mustering tramp Of hostile legions on the distant cloud, A far-off echo from the woe to come? Such is his lot who sinfully contends Against the just will of the Judging One, Lifting his puny arm in rebel pride And rushing like a madman on his doom. The wealth he may have gathered shall dissolve And turn to ashes mid devouring flame. His branch shall not be green, but as the vine Casteth her unripe grapes, as thro' the leaves Of rich and lustrous hue, the olive buds Untimely strew the ground, ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... very sensibly, "they couldn't suffocate that boy, Master Oxford, and say no more about it. To have put him quietly between two feather beds would have stopped his heroic speeches, and dulled the sound of his glory very much. As it is, she will have to run the gauntlet of many a fool and madman, some of whom may perchance be better shots and use other than Brummagem firearms." How much of this actually came to ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... one more to die,' he shouted, and away he went like a madman up the second stair. In effect, I should have gone to my death also had I been in his place, for he had done very wrong in not throwing out his scouts to warn him if the Germans advanced upon him. For an instant I ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... near him, with his match case in his hand, lay his brother. "Oh, Dick, boy!" he cried aloud, "not too late, surely!" He dropped beside the still form, turned him gently over and laid his hand upon his heart. "Too late! Too late!" he groaned. Like a madman he rushed out of the woods, flung himself down the rocky bank and toward his canoe, seized his bag and scrambled back again. Again, and more carefully, he felt for the heartbeat. He thought he could detect a feeble flutter. Hurriedly he seized his ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... passion with which young Arsdale had before attacked him. He could not see his face, and the man uttered no cry. The fellow's arms seemed stronger than before and even longer. But he himself was stronger also, and so while the madman from behind clasped his hands below Donaldson's throat, the latter managed to get his own arms behind him and secure a firm grip on his assailant's trousers. Then he threw himself sideways and back as much as possible. ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... "Your refusal will send me away a madman, ready for any reckless action. Your consent will humble me, but it will make me happier. ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... itself. To paint faces on the darkness, to hear voices in the air, is madness. The madman can do no more." ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... going to tell you why," he answered. "Because when Pelham heard you laugh last night he was like a madman. He believed that it was the voice of Phyllis Poynton. And I—I—when I saw you, I also felt that miracles were at ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... eating shrimps in a donkey-chaise? Yes, knighthood is absurd: and chivalry an idiotic superstition: and Sir Walter Manny was a zany: and Nelson, with his flaming stars and cordons, splendent upon a day of battle, was a madman: and Murat, with his crosses and orders, at the head of his squadrons charging victorious, was only a crazy mountebank, who had been a tavern-waiter, and was puffed up with absurd vanity about his dress and legs. And the men of the French line at Fontenoy, who told Messieurs de la ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fell down in a fainting-fit and weeping arose amongst the folk; and I also cried out and fainted away. The sailors were startled by me and one of the Hashimi's pages said to them, How came ye to take this madman on board?' So they said one to other, As soon as we come to the next village, we will set him ashore and rid us of him.' When I heard this, I was sore troubled but I heartened and hardened myself, saying in thought, Nothing will serve me to deliver myself ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... flageolet, which he had taken; he looked also at my jacket of blue cotton, which one of them had tied round his shoulders like a mantle; and doubtless he then gave orders for me to be carried to the canoe. They seized upon me; I screamed like a madman, kicked them and scratched them; but what could I do against seven or eight great savages? They tied my legs together, and my hands behind me, and carried me like a parcel. I could then do nothing but cry out for Fritz; and the ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... on the northern frontier of Virginia, the fanatic, John Brown, had attempted to raise an insurrection amongst the negroes, and had been hung after trial in presence of the troops. By the South Brown was regarded as a madman and a murderer; by many in the North he was glorified as a martyr; and so acute was the tension that early in 1860, during a short absence from Lexington, Jackson wrote in a letter to his wife, "What do you think about ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... shows that only when a course of action is known to have a definite result people set about it without hesitation. Hence a man who proclaims a doctrine of altogether indefinite contents does not deserve to be listened to any more than a drunken man or a madman.—Again, if we apply the Jaina reasoning to their doctrine of the five categories, we have to say that on one view of the matter they are five and on another view they are not five; from which latter point ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... successively annex Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Northern Switzerland, then Trieste and Venice, finally Northern France from the Sambre to the Loire. This programme we fearlessly pronounce. It is not the work of a madman. The Empire we intend to found will be no Utopia. We have ready to our hands the means of founding it, and no coalition in the world can ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... cried. "The Brown-Pericord Motor acts!" He danced about like a madman in his delight. Brown's eyes twinkled, ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... their idol feasts, and massacred great numbers of their leading men. It was a bloody black business, and bitterly the Spaniards paid for it. Cortez when he heard it actually lost his temper for once, and called his lieutenant-general a madman and a traitor; but he could not afford to cashier him, for after all he was the best and bravest man he had. But the mischief was done. The whole city of Mexico, the whole country round, had risen in fury, had driven the Spanish garrison into the great palace; and worst ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... period; and no other reign, since the reformation, had been free from the like barbarities. Stowe says, that these Arians were offered their pardon at the stake, if they would merit it by a recantation. A madman, who called himself the Holy Ghost, was without any indulgence for his frenzy, condemned to the same punishment. Twenty pounds a month could, by law, be levied on every one who frequented not the established worship. This rigorous law, however, had one indulgent clause, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... now taken to Travalla and carried to the court-house or judgment hall, accompanied by a great concourse of people, including women and children who made a circle at some distance from them. The chief soon entered, looking as wild as a madman, carrying in his hand a large drawn cress or knife, the blade of which was two feet and half long and very bright. Captain Woodward approached so near to him as to place the foot of the chief on his own head, as a token that he was completely under his power and direction. ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... festival, and the guilds, and the choir, and the temperance work. A great deal of it was a strange language to May, but she half-disapproved of it, as entirely unlike the 'soberness' of Bridgefield ways, and like the Redcastle vicar, whom her father commonly called 'that madman.' Still, she had a practical soul for parish work, and could appreciate the earnestness that manifested itself, and the exertions made for people of the classes whom she had always supposed too bad or else too well off to come under clerical supervision. And her aunt ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... States. The moral power of the free negro, in promoting emancipation, is at an end; but how is it with his prospects of success in the employment of force? The Harper's Ferry movement is pronounced, by anti-slavery men themselves, as the work of a madman; and no other attempt of that kind can be more successful, as none but the insane and the ignorant will ever enlist in such an enterprise. The power of the free colored people in promoting emancipation, say what they will, is now at ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... Thousand, the Altogether Lovely." In this capacity he went into the West of England early in 1656, the admiring women following him, and chaunting his praises with every variety of epithet from the Song of Solomon, till he was clapped up in Exeter jail. Nor was Nayler the only madman among the Quakers about this time. A kind of epidemic of madness seems to have broken out in the sect, or among those reputed to belong to it. "One while," says Baxter, "divers of them went naked through divers chief towns and cities of the land, as a prophetical act: ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... Russia all sought to snatch away his territories. He fought the Danes and defeated them. He fought the Saxon Elector who had become king of Poland. Soon both Poland and Saxony lay crushed at the feet of the "Lion of the North," as they called him then—"Madman of the North," after his great designs had failed. Only Russia remained to oppose him—Russia, as yet almost unknown to Europe, a semi-barbaric frontier land, supposedly helpless against the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... of the top segment stands often one man, and only one. His joyful vision cloaks a vast sorrow. Even those who are nearest to him in sympathy do not understand him. Angrily they abuse him as charlatan or madman. So in his lifetime ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... night under a rock, when I heard a melancholy croak away in the mist to the left. I went towards it and found Xenia lost on his own account, and distinctly quaint in manner, and then I recollected that I had been warned Xenia is slightly crazy. Nice situation this: a madman on a mountain in the mist. Xenia, I found, had no longer got my black bag, but in its place a lid of a saucepan and an empty lantern. To put it mildly, this is not the sort of outfit the R.G.S. Hints to Travellers would ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... fell upon his hardened spirit was still more deeply felt, because it was given by one from whom he could the least have expected it. He was standing at a neighbour's shop-window, 'belching out oaths like the madman that Solomon speaks of, who scatters abroad firebrands, arrows, and death'[58] 'after his wonted manner.' He exemplified the character drawn by the Psalmist. 'As he clothed himself with cursing ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... emphatically my sister.... C——, the most excellent, the most Pantisocratic of aristocrats, has been laughing at me. Up I arose, terrible is reasoning. He fled from me, because "he would not answer for his own sanity, sitting so near a madman of genius." He told me that the strength of my imagination had intoxicated my reason, and that the acuteness of my reason had given a directing influ-* *ence to my imagination. Four months ago the remark ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... hath said it," cried the Governor. "Ye will see when the man comes. O sheikhs and men, have we ridden together and walked puppies together, and bought and sold barley for the horses that after these years we should run riot on the scent of a madman—an afflicted of God?" ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... that we are commanded by a madman. Nothing else can account for the extraordinary vagaries of Captain Craigie. It is fortunate that I have kept this journal of our voyage, as it will serve to justify us in case we have to put him under any sort of restraint, a step which I should ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... incredulity and recalcitrance, produced an irresistible impression that Christ, though rejected by his posterity as an unpractical dreamer, and executed by his contemporaries as a dangerous anarchist and blasphemous madman, ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... her. His eyes flamed as he rushed across the room like a madman. Before she could get out of his way he struck her a brutal blow that felled her to the floor, and kicked her as she struggled. He reached for the empty bottle and brandished it ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... won't have it!" The prisoner was on his feet, trembling with anger. "You shall not swear my life away in such fashion! To bring a madman, whom I have only met once in my life, to testify as to ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... cried a voice—such a voice! I swerved to the right and rode like a madman, but a dozen squirts of fire came out of the darkness, and the bullets whizzed all round my ears. That was no new sound to me, my friends, though I will not talk like a foolish conscript and say that I have ever liked it. But at least it had never kept me from thinking clearly, ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... against a madman with a gun—still he promised, he promised me he would not go to ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... tried friend though he was I shook him off roughly, and hurried into the streets like a madman. How I reached the Hotel de Ville I cannot tell! I seemed to have made the passage in darkness; but at last I found myself there, pressing through the ever-increasing crowd that thronged the entrance to the trial chamber; and ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... citizens, who contemned the laws of the barbarians. Had Paul come with the word Judaism on his lips, he would have surely failed. Had he come to enforce a foreign law, he would have been laughed at as a madman. They did not know that Paul cared not for an hundred and one laws, as long as the essence and substance could be saved and preserved; that he held that laws are local, the spirit is universal; that laws are limitations, the spirit is free and the property of all men of all ages ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... it reasonably be doubted that he hoped at some future day to make the attempt; and yet it is incredible that he proposed his plan of conquest with the serious intention of attempting to execute it at the time and in the manner which he indicates. He was a bold schemer, but neither a madman nor a fool. The project, as set forth in his memorial, bears all the indications of being drawn up with the view of producing a certain effect on the minds of the king and the minister. Ignorant as they were of the nature of the ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... bare uncurtained bed, and scarcely any other furniture; when he went out early every morning, and often forgot to return and give her her dinner during the day, and at night, when he came back, was like a madman, furious, terrible, or—still more painful—like an idiot, imbecile, senseless. She knew she had fallen ill in this place, and that one night, when she was very sick he had come raving into the room, and said he would kill her, for she was a burden to ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... of the vault! Oh, whither shall I fly? Will she not be here anon? Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard her footstep on the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart? Madman!"—here he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his soul—"Madman! I tell you that she ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... you talking about?' asked the king, who was lying on another bed, with the physicians bending over him. 'Here is one that I picked up among some cinders, before that madman shot me—perhaps it may be the one you want, or, at all events, it may do as well.' And he signed to an attendant to take the collar from the pocket ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... bear on the Bishop, and representations were made to him respecting the annoying features of the pecuniary difficulties which had arisen with the contractor. With a little imagination poor Peyramale was transformed into a violent, obstinate madman, through whose undisciplined zeal the Church had almost been compromised. And, at last, the Bishop, forgetting that he himself had blessed the foundation-stone, issued a pastoral letter laying the unfinished church under interdict, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... between a madman and a fool is, that the former reasons justly from false data; and the latter, erroneously from ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... young; Nor own, your fathers have been fools so long. What can ennoble sots, or slaves, or cowards? Alas! not all the blood of all the Howards. Look next on greatness; say where greatness lies? "Where, but among the heroes and the wise?" Heroes are much the same, the points agreed, From Macedonia's madman to the Swede; The whole strange purpose of their lives, to find Or make, an enemy of all mankind? Not one looks backward, onward still he goes, Yet ne'er looks forward farther than his nose. No less alike the politic and wise; All sly slow things, with circumspective eyes; Men ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... his wits being quite gone, he hit upon the strangest notion that ever madman in this world hit upon, and that was that he fancied it was right and requisite, as well for the support of his own honour as for the service of his country, that he should make a knight-errant of himself, roaming the world over in full armour and on horseback in quest of adventures, and ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Bert; I don't mind.' But whatever ass I made of myself she forgave me anything, and was fonder of me every time we met, while I, although I did not know it for a long time, was less fond of her. She knew how to revive my love, however. Some nights she would not meet me, and I would be like a madman. Other nights she would meet me, but not let me raise her dress. She would lie on me, on a moonlit night, and her young face in shadow like a siren's in its frame of hair, merely to kiss me. But ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... country without recalling James, and yet without despoiling him of his crown. This device was a Regency. The most uncompromising of those divines who had inculcated the doctrine of passive obedience had never maintained that such obedience was due to a babe or to a madman. It was universally acknowledged that, when the rightful sovereign was intellectually incapable of performing his office, a deputy might be appointed to act in his stead, and that any person who should resist the deputy, and should plead as an excuse for doing so ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... together in the centre aisle, one in the full robes of a clergyman, the other in his ordinary dress, whom I took to be the Honourable John Haddon. His profile was toward me, and I must admit there was very little of the madman in his calm countenance. His was a well-cut face, clean shaven, and strikingly manly. In one of the pews was seated a woman—I learned afterwards she was Lady Alicia's maid, who had been instructed ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... the gold Of the palace and its vessels; then the cars Yoked with swift steeds; and last, the royal robes: For, cast by cast, the dice against him fell, Bewitched by Kali; and, cast after cast, The passion of the dice kept hold on him, Until not one of all his faithfullest Could stay the madman's hand and gamester's heart Of who was named "Subduer of his Foes." The townsmen gathered with the ministers: Into that palace gate they thronged (my King!) To see their lord, if so they might abate This sickness of his soul. The charioteer, ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... quietly," said she. "I would not tell you all he said, for on the eve of a battle in which you were to fight side by side, I did not wish to make you angry with your friend and companion: but had a raging madman, just escaped from his keepers, come to offer me his hand, his conduct could not have been worse than ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... of bedlam. The campaign to elect Tyndall had to start now. They labored to record a work-schedule, listing names, outlining telegrams, drinking coffee, as Dan swore at his dead cigar like old times once again, and grinned like a madman as the plans slowly developed and ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse
... Prime Minister, where the capital city and all the provinces were in subjection to him, where the armies were victorious, and where the corporations and societies seemed to have no power?—whoever, I say, had said this would have been thought a madman, not only in the judgment of the vulgar, but in the opinion of ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... fellow-Jews, sinister with malicious glee. No brother friar droned consolation to him or held the cross to his eyes—was he not a pestilential infidel, an outcast from both worlds? The chief of the Caporioni was present. Troops surrounded the stake lest, perchance, the madman might have followers who would yet attempt a rescue. But the precautions were superfluous. Not a face that showed sympathy; those who, bewitched by the Friar, had followed his crucifix and pallio now exaggerated their jocosity lest they should be recognized; the Jews were joyous ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... no beds for the Hansons or any body else at present. The Hansons sleep at Mansfield. I do not know that I resemble Jean Jacques Rousseau. [1] I have no ambition to be like so illustrious a madman—but this I know, that I shall live in my own manner, and as much alone as possible. When my rooms are ready I shall be glad to see you: at present it would be improper, and uncomfortable to both parties. You can hardly object to my rendering my mansion ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... Dorothy?" she cried. A trembling old man and a frantic woman bumped against each other in the darkness and the search began. There were but two people in the room! Following this alarming discovery one of these persons swooned and the other battered, like a madman, ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... demonstrations of enthusiasm on the part of the populace, and warm expressions of gratitude from the Supreme Director. But my reception by his ministers was wholly different. Zenteno, through whose orders I had broken, declared, that the conquest of Valdivia "was the act of a madman! that I deserved to have lost my life in the attempt; and even now ought to lose my head for daring to attack such a place without instructions, and for exposing the patriot troops to such hazard;" afterwards setting ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... thing Trejago remembers, after raging and shouting like a madman between those pitiless walls, is that he found himself near the river as the dawn was breaking, threw away his ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... always resented it, and, as opportunity offered, made me sensible of it. But now, madam, that he had me in his power, he expressed his resentment in a very barbarous manner; for he came to me like a madman as soon as ever he saw me, and, thrusting his finger into my right eye, pulled it out himself; and so, madam, I became blind ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... conversation with the deceased? But it was impossible to act on such suspicions,—impossible even to confide them. Could I have told to any man the effect produced on me in the museum, he would have considered me a liar or a madman. And in Sir Philip's accusations against Margrave, there was nothing tangible,—nothing that could bear repetition. Those accusations, if analyzed, vanished into air. What did they imply?—that Margrave was a magician, a monstrous prodigy, a creature exceptional to the ordinary ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the mighty spirit shaking and threatening to rend the frail tabernacle of flesh. This form of inspiration is not clearly distinguishable from what we call madness; indeed the natives do not attempt to distinguish between the two things; they regard the madman and the prophet as both alike inspired by a ghost or spirit, and a man will sometimes pretend to be mad in order that he may get the reputation of being a prophet. At Saa a man will speak with the voice ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... moreover now he fear of sickness of his eldest son, he is now unhappy and must solicit his friends in correspondence and others who please to write for the foresaid purpose, that they should know suitable reason in writing to him, and shall not urge him as they would urge a madman! And the general rumours forementioned are some exaggerated and some entirely false; they shall not believe such the rumours, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... in the field—for frequently we took our lunch with us—we returned before sunset and bathed and dressed for dinner. In the Congo only a madman would take a cold plunge. The most healthful immersion is in tepid water. More than one Englishman has paid the penalty with his life, by continuing his traditional cold bath in the tropics. This reminds me of a significant fact in connection with colonization. Everyone must admit that ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... ask you to get mad, and fly at me like a madman," replied Archy, coldly, as he placed his handkerchief upon the ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... in silence, occasionally startling his companion by wild plunges across the table, knife in hand. At first she was inclined to believe him a dangerous madman; but finding that the various dishes, and not herself, were the objects of attack, she refrained from flight, and considerately pushed everything within convenient stabbing distance of the blade, which unweariedly continued to wave ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... my room and in Manon's presence that he delivered this apostolical harangue. He rose to depart. I was about to detain him; but was prevented by Manon, who said it was better to let the madman go. ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... When he came back his face was that of a madman still. He was met by a white funeral winding up the little path. You understand, Signor,—a virgin's funeral. Giovanni was hurrying blindly past ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... brown-clad mourners of Scene I. The BEGGAR. A woman in mourning with two children. A woman who resembles the Lady, but who is not her and who is crocheting instead of eating. A Man very like the Doctor, another like the Madman. Others like the Father, Mother, Brother. Parents of the 'Prodigal Son,' etc. All are dressed in white, but over this are wearing costumes of coloured crepe. Their faces are waxen and corpse-like, their whole appearance queer, their gestures strange. On the rise of the curtain all are finishing ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... took it to so little purpose? Well, God forgive me, and you too, you made me tell a great lie. I was fain to say you came only to take your leave before you went abroad; and all this not only to keep quiet, but to keep him from playing the madman; for when he has the least suspicion, he carries it so strangely that all the world takes notice on't, and so often guess at the reason, or else he tells it. Now, do but you judge whether if by mischance he should discover the truth, whether he would not rail ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... orchard vvith vnfruitfull trees, None but a madman so vvill vvast his ground, Or vvho sowes corne vvhere onely sand he sees, Assured that there vvill no increase be found: And in a vvord all that the vvorld containes, Haue ...
— The Bride • Samuel Rowlands et al
... swear, that I will not be at the initiating, passing, or raising a candidate in a clandestine Lodge, I knowing it to be such. Furthermore, do I promise and swear, that I will not be at the initiating of an old man in dotage, a young man in nonage, an atheist, irreligious libertine, idiot, madman, hermaphrodite, nor woman. Furthermore, do I promise and swear, that I will not speak evil of a brother Master Mason, neither behind his back, nor before his face, but will apprise him of all approaching danger, if in my power. ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... scoffs, jeers, supercilious smiles. Outside of the Cafe of the Nouvelle Athenes, Monet was a laughing-stock. Manet was bad enough; but when it came to Monet, words were inadequate to express sufficient contempt. A shrug of the shoulders or a pitying look, which clearly meant, "Art thou most of madman or simpleton, or, maybe, impudent charlatan who would attract attention to himself by ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... it, Max as yet hardly knew. This was a matter in which he felt he would like to have the advice of grave and thoughtful Owen. Four of them might keep guard over the raging madman, trying to appease him by thrusting bits of tempting food through the cracks; while the fifth fellow sped down the river in one of the canoes to bring help ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... begging for brandy. The doctor had left strict orders with Karin not to give him any spirits, lest he drink himself to death. Then Elof tried to get what he wanted by shrieking and making the most hideous noises, especially at night. He behaved like a madman, and disturbed ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... advanced and famine commenced, he contracted the habit of intoxication. His children died of cold and hunger. The woman he lived with followed them to the grave. Then he seems to have become a ferocious madman, and to have been implicated in the worst crimes of the Communists. He cherished a wild desire of revenge against this Jean Lebeau, to whom he attributed all his calamities, and by whom, he said, his brother had been shot in the sortie ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... it possible? An unfrocked monk against us Leads rascal troops, a truant friar dares write Threats to us! Then 'tis time to tame the madman! Trubetskoy, set thou forth, and thou Basmanov; My zealous governors need help. Chernigov Already by the rebel is besieged; ...
— Boris Godunov - A Drama in Verse • Alexander Pushkin
... said Tom, 'that I am here with any view of conciliating you or pleasing myself, I am quite indifferent to your reception of me, or your dismissal of me. Hear what I have to say, if you are not a madman! I gave you a letter the other day, when you were about ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... intersit"—except indeed for rhyme sake. Would the laws of Strophe and antistrophe, which, if they are as unchangeable, I suppose are about as wise, [as] the Mede and Persian laws, admit of expunging that line altogether, and changing the preceding one to "and he, poor madman, deemd it quenchd in endless night?"—fond madman or proud madman if you will, but poor is more contemptuous. If I offer alterations of my own to your poetry, and admit not yours in mine, it is ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... rushed out, banging the doors. Oh! these artists, poor unsettled brains taking life all the wrong way! What could be done with such a man? I should have liked to talk to him, to reason with him. In vain. Those were indeed right, who had said to me: "He is a madman." Of what use moreover to talk to him? We do not speak the same language. He would not understand me, any more than I understand him. And now, here we must sit and look at each other. I see hatred in his glance, ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... of the sons was killed. Then the terrible thing happened. The father and his remaining son were bound hand and foot and fastened in the ancient dungeon room under the Post building. Then Black Roger set the building on fire, and stood outside in the storm and laughed like a madman at the dying shrieks of his victims. It was the season when the trappers were on their lines, and there were but few people at the post. The company clerk and one other attempted to interfere, and Black Roger killed them with his own hands. Five deaths ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... he began to throw over Sugar stock, right and left, in big and little amounts. He slaughtered the price, under-cutting Barry Conant's every offer and filling every bid. For twenty minutes he was a madman, then he stopped. Sugar was falling rapidly to the price it finally reached, 90, and the panic was in full swing, but panics seemed now to have no interest for Bob. He pushed his way through the crowd and, joining me, said: "Jim, forgive me. I have dragged you into an ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... course there were plenty there ready to die in the last ditch for honor and the country, but the mob was with the speakers. Quite insane with terror the mob was. And I spoke aloud to Kitchener, like a madman of a sort also, begging him to come from another world ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... despondent outer appearances, and uniformly conducted by embittered elderly men of savage aspect—seem to sue in vain from year to year for at least one customer; and as many other melancholy dens for the sale of exactly the things no one but a madman would want to buy while on his way to a Post-Office, or from it, appear to wait as hopelessly for the first purchaser. There are, too, no end of open-air dealers in such curious postal incidentals as ghastly apples, insulting neck-ties, and impracticable pocket-combs; to whom, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various
... conspiracy, so to speak, to defraud 'em of what they consider their rights. Then their whole system gets poisoned through and through, and they're no longer reasoning human beings. I look upon Braxton Wyatt as in a way a madman, one poisoned permanently." ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... that Julian Mastakovich was a somewhat corpulent man, heavy, well-fed, puffy-cheeked, with a paunch and ankles as round as nuts. He perspired and puffed and panted. So strong was his dislike (or was it jealousy?) of the child that he actually began to carry on like a madman. ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... that threaten no one could offer the world a safer, more stable basis for deterrence. We must also remember that SDI is our insurance policy against a nuclear accident, a Chernobyl of the sky, or an accidental launch or some madman who might come along. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... undecided, were giving way to him, when Adam Hartley approached, and placing himself before the unhappy man, fixed his eye firmly on the General's, while he said in a low but stern voice—"Madman, would you kill ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... we got out of that room. It was Monica, with her sweet womanly tact, who managed it. I believe the madman even demanded to see my passport, but Monica scraped me through that trap ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... Serve the public tables with better food, good Pandarus. Those commentators on the Newgate calendar, those bringers-into-fashion of the mysteries of vice, must not be quite acquitted of the evils they have caused: brilliancy of dialogue, and graphic power of delineation, are only weapons in a madman's hand, if the moral be corrupting and profane. To cheerful, hearty, care-dispelling humour, to such merry faces as Pickwick and Co.—inimitable Pickwick—hail, all hail! but triumphs of burglary, and ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... David putting his hand into a bag for a stone; and then making his cotton handkerchief into a sling, he whirled it with fury half a dozen times around his head, and then let fly with much skill at Goliath; and at the same instant halloing with the frenzy of a madman—"Hurraw for lilly Davy!" At that cry he, with his left hand, struck himself a violent slap on the forehead, to represent the blow of the sling-stone hitting the giant; and then in person of Goliath he dropped quasi dead upon ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... of "drunks" imprisoned with me were some of the worst and largest roughs of Jersey City, and these inhuman wretches, in the absence of the police, threatened; to take my life if I vomited again. In the room adjoining ours a madman was confined, and I don't think he ceased kicking and screaming a moment from Saturday night until Monday. In the room just across the narrow hall, fronting ours, was an insane woman, who swore she had two souls, one of which was in hell! She, ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... years. "Seemed to des tech each other like mahbles at a single point, stade of meltin' togedder lak two drops of watah runnin' down a window pane. Mars' David, he done went he own way, drinkin', gamblin' and cussin'; he lak a madman when he baby die. He seem skeered when he see Miss Pepeeta. She look at him wid her big black eyes full of wonder and s'prise, stretch out her li'l han's, and when he run away or struck her, she des go out to the li'l baby's ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... ear. She had as her ally the full unbridled might of the House of Caesar, while against her there was only this stranger, a descendant of a freedwoman from a strange land. For the nonce his influence was great over the mind of the quasi-madman who sat on the Empire's throne, but any moment, any event, the whisper of an enemy, the word of a woman, might put ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... When that madman assassinated the President, the conspiracy included also the murder of the general. This failed only by reason of Grant's unexpected absence from Washington City on the night ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... therefore, according to the countryman's rule, you have not so much the advantage over me as you may think you have: that the real object of what anger I really felt was rather the situation in which I found myself than you or anybody; but that, as none but a madman would go to quarrel with a nonentity called a situation, it was necessary for me to look out for somebody who, somehow or other, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Midford, with three hundred men, reached Anjengo. His report on the state of affairs he found there makes it a matter of surprise that the place had not fallen. The safety of the fort had been entirely due to Gunner Ince. Sewell's behaviour was that of a fool or a madman. Together with Lapthorne, he had set the example of plundering the Company, and their men had done as much damage as the enemy. Sewell, as storekeeper, had no books, and said he never had kept any. Lapthorne had retained ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph |
