"Madcap" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... arrested by some memory, remained on the threshold of that secret retreat. In the profound silence we heard the sigh that came forth form his breast; he removed the most beautiful of the rings with which his skeleton fingers were laden, and placed it in Marianina's bosom. The young madcap laughed, plucked out the ring, slipped it on one of her fingers over her glove, and ran hastily back toward the salon, where the orchestra were, at that moment, beginning the ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... may keep his mind easy on that point," replied the warders. "We had tried everything we could think of to get rid of her majesty the queen, but without effect. So a young madcap Shadow, half against the will of the older ones of us, slipped upstairs into the nursery; and has, no doubt, succeeded in appalling the baby, for he is very ...
— Cross Purposes and The Shadows • George MacDonald
... with great animation, harshly, her lip curling in fierce disdain. The other laughed a false laugh and assumed an airy, condescending tone. "Ah! madcap! madcap!" And his glance, anxious and imploring, rested upon the Nabob, as if to beseech his forgiveness for ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... victory, Gallows Walsh now harangued his followers, and proposed to break open Newgate, or the Black Dog, as the prison was called, and effect a general jail delivery. He was answered by shouts of concurrence, and away went the throng of madcap youngsters, fully bent upon putting an end to the tyranny of law. They were joined by the mob of the city, and made an attack upon the prison with true Irish precipitation and thoughtlessness, never having provided themselves with cannon to batter its ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... the hour was drawing nigh when we had to present ourselves before that company of men of genius, each with his own crow; and I was still unprovided; and yet I thought it would be stupid to fail of such a madcap bagatelle; [3] but what particularly weighed upon my mind was that I did not choose to lend the light of my countenance in that illustrious sphere to some miserable plume-plucked scarecrow. All these considerations made me devise a pleasant trick, ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... gorgeous April day—one of those days when young Spring in madcap masquerade flaunts it in the borrowed mantle of summer. She could assume the deep blue of the sky and the gold of the sunshine, but through all the travesty peeped her laughing youth, the little tender leaves on the trees, the first shy bloom of the lilac, the swelling ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... distance, and that made everything easy to an optimistic youth. I never breathed a word concerning my marriage with Jean. Indeed, I came to look upon it as something that was utterly illegal, and that I could never be expected to stand by what was only, after all, a mere farcical thing, the act of a madcap boy." ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... in white beaded slippers and a green sport skirt broke free from the cavorting ring, and behind Mr. Leary's back the nimble fingers of the madcap tapped his spinal ornamentations as an instrumentalist taps the stops of an organ; and she chanted a ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... hasn't darkened my doors since Wilfred became interested in Marcia. The idea!" overcome by indignation. "What did she want? A princess of the blood? Apparently not! She wants instead a fortune-teller, a madcap like Ydo Carrothers. She spent the whole time this morning telling me how charming and fascinating Ydo was and what a fillip she gave to life. I told her frankly that I had been very thoroughly acquainted with Miss Ydo Carrothers ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... escapade. Instead of being overwhelmed, broken in spirit and utterly cast down by grief and shame as had been confidently predicted, he, much to the disgust of his congregation, went calmly about his duties as though nothing unusual had occurred, referring jocosely to this lark of his madcap ward as he was ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... retort broke from her lips, and called a tear to the eye of her calmer sister, not a moment would elapse before she would cast herself upon her neck and weep her sincere contrition, and be for hours an altered being; until her natural spirit would prevail, and she would be again the wild, mirthful madcap, whose very faults could call forth no keener reproach than a grave and thoughtful smile from the lips of those who loved ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... yet held on and blazed, pealed, and smoked on, begrimed and gory. Here was Tracy borne away to field hospital leaving Avendano and McStea groveling in anguish under the wheels, and brave Converse and young Willie Calder, hot-headed Fusilier and dear madcap Jules St. Ange lying near them out of pain forever. Yet here their fellows blazed on and on, black, shattered, decimated, short of horses, one caisson blown up, and finally dragged away to bivouac, proud holders ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... athletic sports—to that society which constitutes the aristocracy of the ring and the turf, and all that kind of thing. You see, I am putting all the worst points first. But I have known so many young men in my day, after a madcap career of a few years among prizefighters, wrestlers, and jockeys—learning their slang and affecting their manners—take up and cultivate the graces and the decencies. There was poor dear Newgate, many degrees lower in that kind of frolic, who, when he ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... alike were attracted by the flame of her beauty and charm, only to complain that it froze and did not burn. Longarine is discreetly unhappy for her dead husband, but appears decidedly consolable; Ennasuite is a haughty damsel, disdainful of poor folk, and Nomerfide is a pure madcap, a Catherine Seyton of the generation before Catherine herself, the feminine Dioneo of the party, and, if a little too free-spoken for prudish modern taste, ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... I was riding down the river road and just as I came to the end of the clearing a man jumped out from behind some bushes and grasped Madcap's bridle. Imagine! For a moment I was frightened out of my wits. I instantly thought of the Girtys, who, I have heard, have evinced a fondness for kidnapping little girls. Then the fellow said he was on guard and ordered me, actually commanded ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... recognise him; but as long as my mother lived he would not leave her. When death had taken her from him, he so evidently stood in need of a complete change of scene, that even those friends who had most strongly dissuaded him from what they deemed a madcap enterprise, thought it better to leave him to himself. It would have mattered little how much they tried to dissuade him, for before long his passionate longing for the journey became so overmastering that nothing short of restraint in prison or a madhouse could ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... of village maids Goes gaily tripping to the brook, For water-nymphs they mean to be, And seek some still, secluded nook. Here Laura goes, my own delight, And Colin's love, the madcap Jane, And half a score of goddesses Trip over daisies in the plain: Already now they loose their hair And peep from out the tangled gold, Or speed the flying foot to reach The brook that's only summer-cold; The lovely locks stream out ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... antique furniture, and the walls were adorned with old family portraits. The place was in charge of an old man and his wife and a negro boy, who were the sole occupants, except when the nine would sally forth from New York and enliven its solitudes with their madcap ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... himself questioned as to his absence from lectures the day before. But it was difficult to repulse rudely a very good comrade with a smooth pink face and fair hair, bearing the nickname amongst his fellow-students of "Madcap Kostia." He was the idolized only son of a very wealthy and illiterate Government contractor, and attended the lectures only during the periodical fits of contrition following upon tearful paternal remonstrances. ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... kind, indeed properly the only one, was La Mettrie, whom we once saw transiently as Army-Surgeon at Fontenoy: he is now out of all that (flung out, with the dogs at his heels); has been safe in Berlin for three years past. Friedrich not only tolerates the poor madcap, but takes some pleasure in him: madcap we say, though poor La Mettrie had remarkable gifts, exuberant laughter one of them, and was far from intending to be mad. Not Zanyism, but Wisdom of the highest nature, was what he drove ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... it is sometimes the friendship that was fancied!" I cried. "What kind of justice do you call this, to blame me for some words that a tomfool of a madcap lass has written down upon a piece of paper? You know yourself with what respect I have behaved—and would ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... first, day by day, in fear, to confront the fabulous perils of his imagination. Trouble enough thereafter encountering the sea's real assault, to subdue the reasonable terrors of those parts. Trouble enough, too, by and by, to devise perils beyond the common, to find a madcap way, to disclose a chance worth daring for the sheer exercise of courage. But from all these perils, of the real and the fanciful, of the commonplace path and the way of reckless ingenuity, Terry Lute emerged at last with the reputation of having airily outdared ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... has his daughter, who should be the stay of his age, and so forth, whisked up by such a kite as this Varney. And though your part in the matter is somewhat of the wildest, yet I will e'en be a madcap for company, and help you in your honest attempt to get back the good man's child, so far as being your faithful intelligencer can serve. And as I shall be true to you, I pray you to be trusty to me, and keep my secret; for it were bad for the custom of the Black Bear should it be said the ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... twirl! Young Etienne holds her hand by chance, 'Tis the first rigadoon they dance; With parted lips, right thirstily Each rustic tracks them as they fly, And the damsel sly Feels every eye, And lighter moves for each adoring glance. Holy cross! what a sight! when the madcap rears aright Her shining lizard's head! her Spanish foot falls light, Her wasp-like figure sways And swims and whirls and springs again. The wind with corner of her 'kerchief plays. Those lovely cheeks where on the youths now gaze, They hunger ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... up a pair of scissors, and each time laid them down again, wondering if it were little short of a madcap freak; then, shrinking from the grinding hiss of the cutting blades, she clipped with feverish haste the hair that had been her pride. It was a difficult task, and but a rough job at best when finished, but the change in her ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... hidden that evening behind thick dark clouds, but the boats full of guests glided over the black water to the accompaniment of music and laughter. The young madcap of a lawyer was there, again sitting on the lap of someone else's wife, and playing a concertina, till people in the farms on shore opened their windows and put their heads out ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... the new world, varied by a couple of voyages to the gayer Court he had left behind, but through all the reckless episodes of his long and stirring career, Francois was by his side, patient, adroit, silent when necessary, at other times a madcap for freak and fantasy. Faith of a gentleman—Francois Gaillard was everything his noble master should have been, and that master too often such as the poorest lackey might have been ashamed to be, yet—faith of a gentleman—De Clairville atoned ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... madcap I was, and what a stupid fellow I am! That brave and unfortunate Athos was wounded on that very shoulder against which I must run head foremost, like a ram. The only thing that astonishes me is that he did not strike me dead at once. He had good cause to do so; the pain I gave him ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... make her your friend. Coax her secret out of her, and you will find that she is some madcap actress from a travelling company of mountebanks, who has done this thing in order to have the story told by the gazetteers and bring people to look at her. Get her to confess, and then let her story spread among the crowd—and the whole uprising that is now taxing ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... as plain as the nose on your face," replied his wife. "You were to be decoyed off to Ipswich, my horse sent out of the way, and then Joseph's madcap horse offered to me, they knowing well that the worthless creature would not behave himself with any woman ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... Fifth. You monstrous madcap, does your skin Itch for the third time to try that inn? I've had enough for my taste ...
— Faust • Goethe
... sad and sober, Merriest of months, October! Patron of the bursting bins, Reveler in wayside inns, I can nowhere find a trace Of the pensive in his face; There is mingled wit and folly, But the madcap lacks the grace Of a thoughtful melancholy. Spendthrift of the seasons' gold, How he flings and scatters out Treasure filched from summer-time!— Never ruffling squire of old Better loved a tavern bout When Prince Hal was in his prime. Doublet slashed with gold and green; Cloak of crimson; changeful ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... life that Fate, leading a traveler in easy gradients upwards along a road of triumph, suddenly assumes a madcap mood and with wanton hand throws a tiny obstacle in his way; an obstacle at times infinitesimal, scarce visible on that way towards success, yet powerful enough to trip the unwary traveler and bring him down to earth with ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... accustomed to pay little heed, had been at work in their city during the dark hours, and young Romeo of the Montagues, handsome, devil-may-care lad as they had known him, and little Juliet of the Capulets, that madcap, merry, gentle young mistress, lay dead, side by side in the church ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... A famous Prime Minister of Persia in past time, Haji Mirza Aghasi, was a well-known but rather eccentric dervish. My knowledge of this was the means, on one occasion, of averting a disagreeable display of violence by a gay sort of madcap, the relative of a post-house master, who had attached himself as groom to the stable establishment. My smart Armenian servant, who was equally good as groom or table attendant, had taken off his warm pea-jacket to help in bracing up the loads on my baggage post-horses, ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon
... sprang up from sleep, Saying, "Now for a frolic! now for a leap! Now for a madcap galloping chase! I'll make a commotion in every place!" So it swept with a bustle right through a great town, Creaking the signs, and scattering down Shutters, and whisking, with merciless squalls, Old women's bonnets and gingerbread ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... intervals, in earlier manhood, those outbursts of volatility, which, to serious natures, act as safety-valves after prolonged tension of all the powers of the mind. At such moments of levity he is described as almost boyish in recklessness, plunging into any madcap escapade that might be afoot with heedlessness of all consequences. Stories of misadventures, quips and quiddities of every kind, were then his delight, and of these he possessed a fund which no man knew better how to use. He would tell a funny story with ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... And the same low voice that the old don't hear, but the care-free youngsters do, Is calling them to the fields and streams and the joys that once I knew. And if youth be wild desire for play and care is the mark of men, Beneath the skin that Time has tanned I'm a madcap ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... they had to get used to the strange idea of the dead unknown wife, and the little son for whose sake they were to grow up into wise sober women before they had done with being little girls. What wonder that Angel looked pale and grave after a wakeful night, and that Betty felt that madcap ways and tumbled curls must ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham
... madcap!" said her mother. "You'll be brought home on a shutter some day! Mark my words, Bab! You'll see!—or at least I shall; you'll be past seeing! But it don't matter; it's what we're made for! Die or be killed, it's all one! ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... the hypnotic experiments in which Du Maurier was interested in his youth, the book will doubtless be bought. But he must be a dull person who does not find another charm in Mr. Moscheles's artless narrative, mostly about nothing at all, or about the nothings that make up the joy of living to madcap boys.—N. Y. Mail ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... Since the flight of the pretty courtesan, it bears the sad notice: Residence to let. Its fast closed shutters give it the gloomy appearance of a deserted boudoir. Complete silence succeeds feverish bustle! Vanda was a boisterous, madcap spendthrift. Through the old windows with their old-fashioned panes there often used to escape snatches of song, airs of waltzes, fragments of quadrilles. Vanda's horses pawed the ground spiritedly ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... Hall went Frank once more, his heart not a little sore within him for the good days he had spent in it, and especially because of the thought that he would now find there no madcap Die Vernon to tease and torment him out ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... the violence of his remedies. He was a young travelling Englishman; one of that class who are Radicals at twenty, Independents at thirty, and Conservatives at forty. He had not yet reached the intermediate stage. He saw in this madcap Radical Member one of the crude but strong expressions of advanced civilisation. He had the noble ideal of Australia as a land trodden only by the Caucasian. The Correspondent, much to our surprise, had by ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... grew strangely handsome as she listened: she was drawing Phillis out,—leading her to speak of the old life, and of all their youthful sources of happiness. Then she fell into a retrospect of her own young days, when she was a spoiled madcap girl and had ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey |
