"Unhinged" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seemed to be trying to do as he directed, for her nostrils dilated as if in an effort to breathe deeply. He wished she would speak. He dreaded that her mind might be unhinged. ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... unhinged him altogether—seemed to make a mere fool of him—the sport of gods and men. There he paced up and down in a mad excitement. What in the Devil's name was the meaning of it? The picture came from Phoebe—no one else. But it seemed she had only sent it to ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... before the execution, and then to have expired. On that day he went to Stafford in order, by permit of the prison governor, to see his cousin for the last time. His condition then was undoubtedly not far removed from monomania. 'Unhinged' was the conventional expression which frequently rose in Constance's mind as a description of the mind of her husband; but she fought it down; she would not have it; it was too crude—with its associations. She would ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... the gilded gates. The old servant and the gardener were still on the same spot, standing silent and depressed. They said not a word to us, nor did they make any sign; they seemed to be completely unhinged and incapable ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... of the ghost had left upon the senses of Hamlet, he being weak and dispirited before, almost unhinged his mind, and drove him beside his reason. And he, fearing that it would continue to have this effect, which might subject him to observation, and set his uncle upon his guard, if he suspected that he was meditating any thing against ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the heights, and felt once more God's blessed sun, and rejoiced—even as we should. But, as regards this stranger, he is one who would seem to have suffered some great wrong, the continued thought of which has unhinged his mind; his heart seems broken—dead. I have, sitting beside his delirious couch, heard him babble a terrible indictment against some man; I have also heard him pray, and his prayers have been ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... Russian people, who had been scared by the spectre of anarchy, in the direction of reactionary politics. This retrograde tendency was bound to affect the Jewish question. The bacillus of Judaeophobia [1] became astir in the politically immature minds which had been unhinged by the acts of terrorism. The influential press organs, which maintained more or less close relations with the leading Government spheres, adopted more and more a hostile attitude towards the Jews. ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... Disgrace, and sorrow, and bereavement, and the stings of remorse, and the suffering of punishment—the forfeiture of a guilty past, and the gloom of a lonely future—these things unmanned him, bowed him down, poisoned his tranquillity of mind, unhinged every energy of his soul, seemed to dry up the very springs of life. The hand of man could not rouse him from the stupor caused by ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... remainder of that day of festal sadness, I was left to my own devices. Being too much unhinged for any steady occupation, I wandered about with a book in my hand for several hours, more thinking than reading, for I had many things to think about. In the evening, I made use of my liberty to go ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... "'T is pretty to talk of, but 't is another thing to bring it off, and I make small doubt that 't will be no more successful than the damned ingenious manoeuvres of Brooklyn and Fort Washington, which have unhinged the goodly fabric we had been building. I tell you we shall be in a declension till a tobacco-hoeing Virginian, who was put into power by a trick, and who has been puffed up to the people as a great man ever since, is shown to be most damnably weak and deficient. He 's had his ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... and nothing less—the poor gentleman kept glancing over his shoulder and answering at random, "Yes, yes," or "Precisely—if you will allow me," or "Excuse me a moment, until my brother—" In short, he rambled so that Captain Muspratt could only suppose his wits unhinged. It was scarce credible that a sane man could receive such a message inattentively, and yet this old gentleman did not ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... this to be a salutary caution to his companion, which would ensure a noiseless retreat. To men of his own stamp it would have been useful, but he little knew the peculiar temperament of his friend; the mere idea of the success of the whole expedition depending upon his extreme care unhinged the nerves of the poor artist, who, although absolutely a brave man, in the true sense of the term, could no more control his nervous system than he could perform an Indian war-dance. He could have rushed single-handed on the whole body of ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... through the traffic and catches a downtown car, leavin' him there with his silly face unhinged. And I did no more announcin' to anybody. I was through advertisin'. When some of the commuters on the eight-three heard the news and started springin' their comic tricks on me, I pretended I ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... him to let me look at the ring and I'll drop it. You pick it up. But remember, it's a pure accident, and you don't know me. I can't have my name mixed up in a thing like this. You're sure he's really unhinged?" ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... Carlson, with the strength of his great arms, driven to madness by the blow he had received, or whether it was another whom the vast solitudes of that country had unhinged, Mackenzie did not know. But that it was man, he had ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... cut me short, with a flourish of his spoon. "I know what you would say: that you are impatient rather to hear how it is that you find me here in Genoa. That also you shall hear, but permit me to come to it in my own way. For the moment your news has unhinged me, and you will help my recovery by allowing me to talk a little faster than I can think. . . . I loved your father, Cavalier. . . . But our ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... the return of the manuscript of his much-prized translation from the Welsh of The Sleeping Bard—and this by his 'prince of publishers,' John Murray. 'There is no money in it,' said the publisher, and he was doubtless right.[193] The two disasters were of different character, but both unhinged him. He had already written Wild Wales, although it was not to be published for another four years. He had caused to be advertised—in 1857—a book on Cornwall, but it was never written in any definitive form, and now ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... he said, mastering his own shrinking by remembrance of how the strong-witted man could often master the brain unhinged; "my impression is that you want change. Suppose you and I take a run. What do you say to Switzerland, and ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... and taint the coronation of Charles VII as the work of a witch. That policy, and not malice (as M. Michelet is so happy to believe), was the moving principle in the subsequent prosecution of Joanna. Unless they unhinged the force of the first coronation in the popular mind by associating it with power given from hell, they felt that the sceptre of ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... again to find his feeble powers unequal to sustain him. As he fell back panting upon a seat, his eyes assumed a wild, unnatural expression—despair of mind and weakness of body had together partially unhinged his faculties. When his daughter affrightedly approached to soothe and succour him, he impatiently waved her back; and began to speak in a dull, hoarse, monotonous voice, pressing his hand firmly over his brow, and directing his eyes backwards and forwards incessantly, ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... on the bare rock, near where they had been working, and held a whispered conversation together, which lasted for some time after darkness covered the face of the deep. Paolo's mind, troubled and unhinged with the thoughts of the past, and the darkening prospect of the future, for long refused to allow sleep to visit his eyelids. He listened to ascertain whether his sister and Miss Garden were still awake; ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... Reckless use of the most dangerous expedients.... Cocaine not in it. Stimulants—violent stimulants. In the highest quarters. Terrible. Exalted persons. Royalty! Anxious to be given war work and become anonymous.... Horrible! He's been a terrible influence. One idea—to disturb soul and body. Minds unhinged. Personal relations deranged. Shattered the practice of years. The harm ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... things is unhinged, and we are nearing chaos. It is going so far that Wyclif cannot refrain from inserting some of those slight restrictions which the logicians of the Middle Ages were fond of slipping into their writings. In time ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... was little more than two gutters and a crack of sky overhead between two broken-tiled roofs. It was a dilapidated, deserted ruelle, and I was positively angry when Rangon pointed to a blistered old porte-cochere with a half-unhinged railing ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... me more terrible than reality. What I mean is, apparitions are terrible, but life is terrible, too. I don't understand life and I am afraid of it, my dear boy; I don't know. Perhaps I am a morbid person, unhinged. It seems to a sound, healthy man that he understands everything he sees and hears, but that 'seeming' is lost to me, and from day to day I am poisoning myself with terror. There is a disease, the fear of open spaces, but my disease is the fear of life. When ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... lots facing the unhinged gate was an old relinquished tannery that still flavored the air with decayed hemlock and fir bark, which lay here and there in dull-red patches, killing the grass. The undulations of a colonial graveyard broke tamely against the western base of the house. ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Traveller, stooping to light a spill at the fire. Then he turned, lighting his pipe, to look at the Psychologist's face. (The Psychologist, to show that he was not unhinged, helped himself to a cigar and tried to light it uncut.) 'What is more, I have a big machine nearly finished in there'—he indicated the laboratory—'and when that is put together I mean to have a journey ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... his great fortune, and had finally driven him into the Bankruptcy Court. The death of his wife on the very day of his insolvency had filled his cup of sorrow, and he had gone about since with a stunned, half-dazed expression upon his weak pallid face which spoke of a mind unhinged. So complete had been his downfall that the family would have been reduced to absolute poverty were it not for a small legacy of two-hundred a year which both the children had received from one of their uncles upon the mother's ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sir. It served his purpose for the moment, I grant you. I was unhinged. The indignity, the very monstrosity of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wouldn't have gone, anyway—hush—' said Gillian, beginning, it may be, a little sharply, but then becoming dismayed as Valetta, perhaps a little unhinged by the late pleasures, burst forth into such a fit of crying as made everybody look up, and her mother tell her to go away if she could not behave better. Gillian, understanding a sign of the head as permission, led her away, hearing ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with 12,000 men-at-arms, appeared at the Porte St. Denis, and there stood the provost of the merchants with the chief citizens in new robes, holding a canopy of cloth of gold. Charles, with a fierce glance, ordered them back; the gates were unhinged and flung down; the royal army entered as in a conquered city. A terrible vengeance ensued. The President of the Parlement and other civil officers, with three hundred prominent citizens, were arrested and cast into prison. In vain was the royal clemency entreated by the ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... [2017] Romilly's affection and admiration for this noble woman endured to the end; and when she died, the shock proved greater than his sensitive nature could bear. Sleep left his eyelids, his mind became unhinged, and three days after her death the sad event occurred which brought his own valued ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... living warmth beside which the love of science and art is cold and clammy. Surely it would be not much to ask for the docility to recognize such patent facts as these. And I must believe that any mind is fundamentally unhinged that despises the profoundest convictions of the noblest hearts, or speaks lightly of the mighty influence that has moulded human events and has upheaved the world. It has, in its arrogance, cut adrift and swung off from the two grand foci of all truth, the human ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... and Anthony had been endeavouring to restrain broke out tempestuously. Betty's procedure and bearing at the Bridge table would have unhinged an enthusiast, but since the four domestics played for amusement and a penny a hundred her short-comings hurt ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... me? But no! Why should she? I could only conclude that her nerves were badly shaken, and that she was temporarily unhinged. Upstairs, I heard a door bang, loudly, and I knew that she had taken refuge in her room. I put the flask down on the table. My attention was distracted by a noise in the direction of the back door. ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... homicide and owned his guilt, refused to confess when the hour of punishment arrived. However strongly pressed, he resisted, and so violently, giving no reason, that all were persuaded that his mind was unhinged by the fear of death. Saint-Thomas of Villeneuve, Archbishop of Valencia, heard of his obstinacy. Valencia was the place where his sentence was given. The worthy prelate was so charitable as to try to persuade ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... an open question. The mind is unhinged; there is no doubt of that. There is something more here than the ordinary delirium we look for ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... one was to pass and that was why he had come. Cavour stared at him in silence. Then he went on, "Must I believe that Count Cavour will desert the camp on the eve of battle; that he will abandon us all?" And, unhinged by excitement and by his great affection for the man, he burst into tears. Cavour walked round the room looking like one distraught. Then he stopped opposite to Castelli and embraced him, saying, "Be tranquil; ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... devices could not be quite unhinged, Wilhelmine reflected idly. She recollected how Eberhard Ludwig had shown her the grotto's marvellous springs and tricks; she recalled how, after much heaving and turning at an iron lever, the whole grotto had suddenly been converted into a place of living waters. She wondered if ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... dwells too much on any one subject, no one can tell just how far he will go. The mind is a delicate instrument, and even the law recognises that it is easily thrown from its balance. Bodman's friends—for he had friends—claim that his mind was unhinged; but neither his friends nor his enemies suspected the truth of the episode, which turned out to be the most important, as it was the most ominous, event ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... he screamed out. "It's a lie!" The man's reason appeared to be almost unhinged; a mad terror seemed to possess him. "It's all a lie! I never heard of this rajah bunk before in my life! I never heard of Deemer, or any jewels before. You lie! I tell you, you lie! You can't ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... case, it is certain that Caligula was not a second Augustus. He was probably not so frenzied a lunatic as ancient writers have pictured him, but his was certainly an extravagant, unbalanced mind, given to excesses, and unhinged by the delirium of greatness, which his coming to the throne had increased the more because it had been conferred upon him at a time when he was too young and before he had been sufficiently prepared. For many years Caligula had never even hoped to succeed ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... made to cancel one useful intermediate stage), presenting themselves, for the most part, in a highly-agitated condition of mind, with the result that officials acquire the methods of those who deal with the mentally unhinged; show themselves prepared for any display of eccentricity. Ever, as in life, you remark the people who arrive too soon, or too late; a few lucky ones come in the very nick of time. The last named are favourites, ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... her movements with the kindly interest offered at the shrine of childhood or imbecility. It was evident that he supposed that the landslip had unhinged ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... have adhered to the wishes of her parents, which they endeavoured to make pleasant to her by much kindness, had not a letter from the Major been conveyed to her on the next evening, which quite excited and unhinged her again. He complained violently therein of her father's unreasonableness, injustice, and tyranny; and spoke, in the most passionate terms, of his love, of his unbounded sufferings, and of his despair. The consequence ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... "he is mad! I have watched him day by day, and would not believe it. But his violent ambition, and the thwarting to which it has been subjected, have unhinged his mind. I am hoping that the active life he must necessarily lead in Canada will restore his reason. But mad he is now, and for my sake bear with him and humour him. He has been cruel to us, unkind to me, brutal to you, but he is not the uncle I once knew and loved. ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... Morris in America, 'to imagine a more disorderly body. They neither reason, examine, nor discuss. They clap those whom they approve, and hiss those whom they disapprove.... I told their President frankly that it was impossible for such a mob to govern the country. They have unhinged everything. It is anarchy beyond conception, and they will be obliged to ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... smiled. "It's only her way of saying that my mind is unhinged and that I ought to be sent to a private hospital ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... me, dearest, and perhaps I shall. I am overburdened—and you, too, are unhinged just now." He put his arm round her and lifted her; but though she came, she preferred ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... pass without going over to see her. About a week after, she went one afternoon, but found the house closed. The stillness and desertion of the cottage sent a thrill of fear through her. Fearing that Deb's mind had become slightly unhinged, she wondered if she had destroyed her own life. She tried the door, but it was locked; and then she noticed a piece of paper tucked into the sill. Taking ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... atmosphere had proved too much for her, in her unhinged state of mind. Captain Woolcot was extraordinarily upset by the occurrence; not one of his children had ever done such a thing before, and as Meg lay on the sofa, with her little fair head drooping against the red frilled cushions, ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... the door of the presbytery had closed behind Claudet, the Abbe Pernot, flinging to one side all his preparations, began to pace nervously up and down the principal garden-walk. He appeared completely unhinged. His features were drawn, through an unusual tension of ideas forced upon him. He had hurriedly caught his skullcap from his head, as if he feared the heat of his meditation might cause a rush of blood to the head. He quickened ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... with her plate and jewels; for that he was locked up for six months. On his release, he employed his leisure in the composition of an odious poem. Then he flung himself head foremost into the revolution. Blood calcined by study, a colossal pride, a conscience completely unhinged, an imagination haunted by the bloody recollections of Rome and Sparta, an intelligence falsified and twisted until it found itself most at its ease in the practice of enormous paradox, barefaced ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... the impression of being mentally almost unhinged by the sudden anticlimax of helplessness after over-confidence. Yet when she spoke again her voice was calm, and not without a ring ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... adventures, but Francesca was so unhinged by her unfortunate exit from Ballycastle that, after a few miles, she announced her intention of putting her machine and herself on the car; whereupon Benella proclaimed herself a competent cyclist, ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... done up, and I mean to see it out," I retorted doggedly. My nervous system was completely unhinged, and a fit of stupid obstinacy came on me which rendered any interference ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... await a disabled ship caught in a southwesterly gale on the Pacific side of Tierra del Fuego rose dimly in her mind. And the advancing darkness did not tend towards cheerfulness. In her new track, the Kansas had turned her back on the murky light which penetrated the storm-clouds towards the west. Unhinged by the external gloom and the prevalent uncertainty, and finding that no one cared to dispute with her, Isobel felt that a scream or two would be a relief. For once, pride was helpful—it saved ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... Sir Walter waited for the gong to sound, but it did not, and he rebuked himself for thinking that it would sound. Masters had a more correct sense of the fitness of things than he. He thought curiously upon this incident, and suspected that he must be unhinged a little. Then he remembered a thing that he had desired to say to Mary ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... the organism if administered when in a healthy, normal condition. A strong organism recovers from disease, and from its treatment. Human societies and institutions pass through a similar ordeal, and when they are unhinged, extraordinary and abnormal ways are required to maintain the endangered ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... lay thinking of what his mother had said and of the strange look in her eyes. It seemed as though he had roused something evil in her nature, and for a time he wondered whether her brain had not been unhinged. He knew she was a proud woman, and that she was jealous beyond words of her good name. The thought of Wilson's words being bandied around the town must be worse than death to her, and yet what could he do? He blamed himself more than he could ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... same cause, their date, and their melancholy end. Both (Suckling in 1609, Lovelace nine years later) were born to large fortunes, both spent them, at least partially, in the King's cause, and both died miserably,—Suckling, in 1642, by his own hand, his mind, according to a legend, unhinged by the tortures of the Inquisition; Lovelace, two years before the Restoration, a needy though not an exiled cavalier, in London purlieus. Both have written songs of quite marvellous and unparalleled exquisiteness, and both have left doggerel which would disgrace a schoolboy. Both, it may ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... and grinned at Peter Jeffers, a lean, bony character who had a tendency to collapse into chairs as though he had come unhinged. Jeffers ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... him with a smile of pitying contempt. Mad, mad; quite mad! The loss of his fortune had, no doubt, unhinged this shareholder's reason. But Guy, never heeding him, rushed out into the street and ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... if he lost, one penny left to last him to next pay day!" A terrible thought seized him. "And what if, when he presented himself at Mr. Fossell's bank on pay-day, the money was not forthcoming?" Nonsense! He was unhinged.... The money had always arrived punctually ... but the whole world seemed to be in conspiracy against him to-night, and his luck ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... jar and upheaval was a genuine surprise for all concerned, and goes far to prove that except a vessel be taken unawares, it will be impossible for a torpedo to come into actual contact with it. At the experiments last year the wooden booms were unhinged and splintered under a much less violent shock. But the steel booms employed, though somewhat bent, remained unbroken and in position, and the joints were quite uninjured. All that is necessary for perfect defense is that the booms should be ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... wide difference: my object is not to excite fear of supernatural tilings in my reader, but to show the effect of such fear upon the agents in the story—one a man of sense and firmness—one a man unhinged by remorse—one a stupid uninquiring clown—one a learned and worthy, but superstitious divine. In the third place, the book turns on this hinge, and cannot want it. But I will try to insinuate the refutation of Aldiboronti's exception into the ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... however, I felt thoroughly exasperated. I was in a hurry to get on. Important business engagements would be unhinged by the delay. I was a stranger in Broughton. It looked like a stupid, stuffy little town. I went to a hotel in an atrocious humor. After I had fumed until I wanted a change, it occurred to me that I might as ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... first place, there is no vulgarity in Restif. If he had had a more regular education and society, literary or other, and could have kept his mind, which was to a certainty slightly unhinged, off the continual obsession of morbid subjects, he might have been a very considerable man of letters, and he is no mean one, so far as style goes,[419] as it is. He avails himself duly of the obscurity of a learned language when he has to use (which is regrettably ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... heavings of the war were struggling to rest, but the men whose minds were unhinged and thrown off their balance by the possession of large sums flowing from transactions, a little irregular, perhaps, but which the necessities of Government permitted, were endeavoring, by any means, to open up new fountains of wealth in place ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... all technical summary of the case, sufficient to say that this was one of the rare instances in which the mind, totally unhinged, is restored to its balance by sixty drops of laudanum taken fasting, with a squeeze of lemon, after violent exercise on an ...
— Much Darker Days • Andrew Lang (AKA A. Huge Longway)
... in his bathing suit. He and Jack unhinged a stateroom door, carrying it up through the conning tower. Hal, in the meantime, under orders, had attended to bringing the "Pollard's" platform deck briefly ...
— The Submarine Boys' Trial Trip - "Making Good" as Young Experts • Victor G. Durham
... he was of true royal blood—a stray Bourbon, or something of the sort. His speech was singularly fluent and elegant. The Emperor was one of the celebrities that no visitor failed to see. It is said that his mind was unhinged by a sudden loss of fortune in the early days, by the treachery of a partner in trade. The sudden blow was deadly, and the quiet, thrifty, affable man of business became a wreck. By nothing is the inmost quality of a man made more manifest than by ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... wife almost seems to have unhinged him," she said, with a troubled pucker of her brows. "But—but I don't wonder, I really don't. She was the sweetest girl. Poor soul. And that bonny wee boy. But there, I can't bear to think of it all. You mustn't blame him too much, ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... beating the air; he walked on his hind legs like the trained dog in the circus; he yelped continuously, as if it agonized him to see the lion safe out of his reach. Sounder had lost his identity. Joy had unhinged his mind and had made him a dog of double personality. He had always been unsocial with me, never responding to my attempts to caress him, but now he leaped into my arms and licked my face. He had always hated Jones till that moment, when he raised his paws to his master's ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... with that to the problem of just how the whole thing had seemed to him. He looked completely undamaged—so far, good; he was neither scared nor unhinged, he was simply tremendously satisfied with the afternoon's entertainment, and there in his arms were the ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... disregarded all the rules of politeness. It is fair to state these matters, since the candid student must always wish to see a case presented from several points of view. But it must be said that only an intense feeling of resentment could have unhinged the courteous disposition which was habitual with Flinders. A gentler man in his relations with all could hardly have been found. He was not more respectful to authority than he was considerate to subordinates; and throughout his career ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... "there's no use in tryin' to conceal it from you any longer. Your pa was crazy—as crazy as a loon. What with buyin' books so steady and readin' of 'em so continual, his mind got unhinged. I've always suspected it, and now ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... early misfortunes and an imprudent marriage had driven him to the mastership of the little country grammar-school; and here the perpetual annoyance caused to his refined mind by the coarseness of clumsy or spiteful boys, had gradually unhinged his intellect. Often did he tell the boys "that it was an easier life by far to break stones by the roadside than to teach them;" and at last his eccentricities became too obvious to be ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... that Cuthbert had been right, and that this house could no longer be a home to her. Right well did she credit now, what had never entered her mind before, that her father had brooded and brooded until his very mind had become unhinged. He was not master of his words when he spoke to her as he had done upon that terrible night; he was not master of his actions when he had flung her away and left her lying unconscious on the stone floor. There was even some ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... demarcation where sound sense stops, and insanity commences; but he, who has visited a receptacle for the insane, will speedily observe the strange state and appearance of the eyes of those whose intellects are unhinged. This appearance cannot be mistaken either in lucid or rabid intervals; it is still perceptible, although, of course, in a greater or lesser degree. Now, the visitor to Bethlehem, on the occasion here refered to, particularly observed ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... his father's house feeling even more exhausted and dejected in spirit than when he had entered it. His mind too seemed shattered and unhinged, while he felt that he was afraid to put together the disjointed fragments and form a general idea from all the agonizing and conflicting experiences of the day. He felt something bordering upon despair, which he had never known till then. Towering like a mountain above all the rest ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... to say, the Crazy Woman lived; but she was not crazy. I knew the old lady well, and at one time we were very good friends. She was the last daughter of an old, once prosperous family; a woman of bright, even brilliant mind, unhinged by misfortune, disappointment, loneliness, and the horrible fascination which an inherited load of litigation exercised upon her. The one diversion of her declining years was to let various parts and portions of her premises, on any ridiculous terms that might suggest themselves, to any tenants ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... from her. With a supreme effort, she tried to stir, but all movement was impossible; and, when she attempted to speak, she could only flutter her lips and emit incoherent sounds. She felt herself lost. The thought of death unhinged her. Her knees gave way beneath her and she sank into a ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... were safe in prison, she knew not but that dagger, dagg, or arming sword might still be ready for her, and she believed that any fatal charge openly made against Mary at the trial might drive her friends to desperation and lead to the use of dagg or dagger. She was more unhinged than ever before, and commanded herself with difficulty when going through all the scenes of ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... death had surprised them. At length Harney sprang to his feet with a slight shiver. "God! it's damp—we couldn't have come here much longer." He went to the shelf, took down a tin candle-stick and lit the candle; then he propped an unhinged shutter against the empty window-frame and put the candle on the table. It threw a queer shadow on his frowning forehead, and made the smile ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... instructed not to praise him so highly, if the Cardinal were present, as if the oration were made to Henry alone;[310] and, four years later, Wolsey found an occasion for sending Pace to the Tower—treatment which eventually caused Pace's mind to become unhinged.[311] ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... his arms on the table:—a false tooth had got unhinged. His Lordship, who, at any other time, would have been most annoyed, coolly put it in his pocket. His cheeks had fallen, and he looked twenty ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... the meeting he had pictured to himself a thousand times? Had her troubles unhinged ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... reason may have been unhinged, less on account of his reverses than because no one ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie
... in the grasp of some evil spirit. It was the first time I had ever ministered to mental disease. Never before had I realised what self-will, unchastened by sorrow and untaught by religion, can bring a woman to. Once or twice that evening I had doubted whether the brain were really unhinged; but I had come to the conclusion that it was only excess of ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... box staple. As is usual, it is fearfully and wonderfully made up of sheet iron, square iron, and brass; the outcome of which is that the showy brass striking piece comes unriveted, the door comes unfastened, and the tenant's temper comes unhinged. Why, in the name of common sense, could they not substitute a neat malleable casting? In our own houses I have long since discarded the ordinary box staple for draw-back locks, and find it cheaper to buy a cast iron staple, and throw away the one supplied by ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... at that time Lorna Bolivick really thought his mind was unhinged; I imagine, too, that she was afraid, because Edgecumbe told me that a look amounting almost to terror was in her eyes. But he seems to have taken no notice of this, for ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... pay him a visit on Monday afternoon. It was at a moment when the first effects of the tidings of life had subsided, and there had been time to look forth on the future with a spirit more steadfast than buoyant. The strain of the previous weeks was reacting on the bodily frame, and indisposition unhinged the spirits; so that, when Dr. May entered, beaming with congratulations, he was met with the same patient glance of endurance, endeavouring at resignation, that he knew so well, but without the victorious ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... taken a chill, and our mind is a little unhinged," said the skillful practitioner: "careful diet, complete repose, a warm surrounding atmosphere, absence of undue excitement, and, above all, a course of my gentle alteratives regularly administered—these are the very simple means to restore our beloved patient. He is certainly making ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... friend," he said, "the woman was not my mistress. She was my mother." His voice shook a little. "I never talk of her. But I think of her always. She was very perfect and very lovely. And she suffered greatly, so greatly that it unhinged her reason. Now do you understand? For ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... guarded peg at Mount Vernon. Lafayette thought that, without the example of America, France would never have found strength to throw off the rule of kings, and so America must have the key to the detested door that was now unhinged forever. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... mysteries in divinity, and airy subtleties in religion, which have unhinged the brains of better heads, they never stretched the pia mater of mine. Methinks there be not impossibilities enough in religion for an active faith: the deepest mysteries ours contains have not only been illustrated but maintained by syllogism and the rule ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... just now," he says; "I must tell you that since you came back you have the air of a foreigner—a Belgian or an American. You say intolantable things. We thought at first your mind had got a bit unhinged. Unfortunately, it's not that. Is it because you've turned sour? Anyway, I don't know what advantage you're after, but I must cautionize you that you're anielating everybody. We must put ourselves ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... all the faith of those who embraced the Gospel was founded upon these two facts, as upon the historical fundamentals of the {337} salvation which comes from Jesus; and that thus Christianity, with all its effects, which have unhinged the old world and diffused streams of blessing over mankind, has its historical basis in faith in the death of Jesus and his resurrection. This is our historical chain of proof. And that evidence ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... should have little to say against him, (for the whole process of sensation is indeed miraculous.) But he postulates more than a miracle; he postulates a contradiction, in the very contemplation of which our reason is unhinged. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... the ruins, there sat a young woman with dishevelled hair, singing rapturously. "Her husband was crushed to death," he said, "and it unhinged her wits. Strange, is it not, sir? They used to fight like fiends, and now—she sings to him night and day to ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... his self-possession by an effort. "It is clear to me," he said calmly, "that your reason is unhinged. What is all this nonsense about death? There is nothing that will harm you except your own evil actions." He turned abruptly and strode out of the room with the firm and decided step of a man who has taken an ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... close by, where my own bower looks down Upon that unknown sea of wavy roofs, I turned into an alley 'neath the wall— And stepped from earth to hell.—The light of heaven, The common air, was narrow, gross, and dun; The tiles did drop from the eaves; the unhinged doors Tottered o'er inky pools, where reeked and curdled The offal of a life; the gaunt-haunched swine Growled at their christened playmates o'er the scraps. Shrill mothers cursed; wan children wailed; sharp coughs Rang through the crazy chambers; hungry eyes Glared dumb reproach, and old perplexity, ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... middle of all this felicity, one blow from unseen Providence unhinged me at once; and not only made a breach upon me inevitable and incurable, but drove me, by its consequences, into a deep relapse of the wandering disposition, which, as I may say, being born in my very blood, soon recovered its hold of me; and, like the returns of a violent ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... afternoon following, in a brownstone house in West Forty-sixth Street that was more like a museum of the storied loot of many lands, Trieste himself opened the pair of Florentine doors, originally unhinged from a campanile outside of Rome, of his very private studio, without appointment, to the magic of Gedney ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... seriously deranged. I noticed something strange in him when he first came to consult me about his mother's health. The mischief has not been caused entirely by the affliction of her death. In my belief, his mind has been—what shall I say?—unhinged, for some time past. He is a very reserved person. I suspect he has been oppressed by anxieties which he has kept secret from every one. At his age, the unacknowledged troubles of life are generally troubles caused by women. It is in his temperament ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... heerd what the ol' nigger Proph' says? Of co'se he's all unhinged in the top story ez anybody would be thet lived in the woods an' e't sca'cely anything but herbs an' berries. But, anyhow, he's got a sort o' gift o' prophecy an' insight, ez ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... before the fair, she was seized with an unaccountable disorder in the sinews, or somewhere in the bones of the neck—with a weakness or total want of power in her fillets; and, in short, the whole vertebrae of her spine seemed to be diseased and unhinged, and in eight and forty hours, in spite of the two best farriers in the country, she died and be damn'd to her! The farriers said that she had been quite strained in the fillets beyond cure before you had bought her; and that the poor devil, though she might keep a little ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... could not—would not—believe it. Then, as the truth gradually forced itself into her brain, she subsided into a tearless, expressionless, state of quiescence that seemed to indicate a mind unhinged. In this state she remained for some time, apparently unconscious of the kind words of Christian love that were ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... join them in what they termed sociality, arose from the prejudices of education: that he must endeavour to banish all his fears of futurity, and mind present enjoyment. These and similar observations gradually unhinged the principles of young George, and before reaching their destined port, his checks of conscience were almost gone. What a dreadful state, when man's conscience ceases to be his reprover! Men are often glad when they obtain ...
— The Village in the Mountains; Conversion of Peter Bayssiere; and History of a Bible • Anonymous
... trifle she could think of, in the house of Marchmont. She could have talked of its delights if there had been anybody to care about them in her own way, but that was the great if of Marian's life. She was conscious that her day's pleasure had unhinged her, and made her present tasks unusually distasteful, and she thought it the fault of the Lyddells, and in a great fit of repining blamed Edmund for injustice to Selina in not letting her house be their home. Her great hope was of another day there, the only thing that seemed to give ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... fatal neutrality in every case, a calamity of which all the responsibility, we repeat, recoiled not upon the people but upon those who in June, 1848, after having promised them amnesty, had refused it, and who had unhinged the great soul of the people of Paris by breaking faith with them. What the Constituent Assembly had sown the Legislative Assembly harvested. We, innocent of the fault, had to ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... of a good part of the congregation, when she said, on the way home after the service, "Poor Canon Farlow! It is too terrible. The excitement of the wedding must have unhinged ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... You see, I have got my work to do, and you have got yours, and, notwithstanding all you say, I do not believe you to be unable to write the history of the lake and its castles. Your letters prove that you can, only your mind is unhinged by fears for my spiritual safety, and depressed by the Irish climate. It is very depressing, I know. I remember how you used to attribute the history of Ireland to the climate: a beautiful climate in a way, without extremes of heat and cold, as ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... and pity, "you are mad, stark mad! Your mind's unhinged, your vision's all distorted. This fiend incarnate is become a poor victim of the evil of others; and I am become a murderer in your sight—a murderer and a fool. God's Life! Bah! Anon when you are rested, when you are ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... the judge answered the sound, and his eyes were like lamps as he turned them toward the man. "But you're wrong—my mind is not unhinged. You'll see. After what I've gone through, after facing eternity without hope, what are mere years? I can wait. I know. I ...
— The Lifted Bandage • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... those whom he accused, but as indication of the need of thorough investigation. Then without warning he committed suicide in his cell. On investigation it turned out that he had been accustomed to from sixty to eighty drinks of whiskey each day, and the sudden and complete deprivation had unhinged his mind. Warned by this unforeseen circumstance, the Committee henceforth issued regular rations of whiskey to all its prisoners, a fact which is a striking commentary on the character of the latter. It is to be noted, furthermore, that liquor of all sorts ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... had divined the court's complacent misinterpretation ere he saw its smile; the facile theory that brooding so much over her fascinating picture had unhinged his brain. From that moment a hardness came over his heart. He shut his lips grimly. What was the use of talking? Whatever he said would be discredited on this impish theory. And, even without it, how incredible his ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... was unhinged and placed against the front of the house, this board was appended as its motto. Both, however, were displaced by the march of public-house improvement; the weather-beaten sign of the gallant admiral's head was transferred to a wall of the back premises, where its "faded form" might, until recently, ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... other alternative: the writer may have believed himself thus inspired, and was thus self-deceived But in this case far gone in disease must his mind have been; nor could it fail constantly to give striking evidence of being thus unhinged in other parts of his writings. This is a subject with which unbalanced minds have shown their inability to be much occupied without the most sorrowful evidences of the disease under which they suffer. Let there be independence of the ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... depend upon their own discretion; that if they remained quiet and lulled the vigilance of the ruffians into whose hands they had fallen, the chances of their being able to procure assistance when they reached the town, were very much increased; that unless society were quite unhinged, a hot pursuit must be immediately commenced; and that her uncle, she might be sure, would never rest until he had found them out and rescued them. But as she said these latter words, the idea that he had fallen in a general massacre of the Catholics that night—no very wild or improbable ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... in evidence and who took no part in the Reform movement, beyond associating himself with the organizations for the protection of property in Johannesburg, told so severely upon one of the prisoners that his mind became unhinged, and in the course of the following period he developed marked signs of homicidal and suicidal mania. His condition was so serious that strong representations were made to all the officials connected with the gaol—the gaoler himself, the district ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... often to Chelsea Gardens, and most of his spare time not spent there was employed in running errands to and fro. Owing to these distractions his nerves became quite unhinged, and for the first time in his life he began to show signs of a temper. He had been full of the Paris scheme at first, but he had not spoken of it now for ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... who, completely unstrung by such a show of agility on the part of a dead man, was trembling yet. A very faint mist of smoke hung before his face which had an extraordinary aspect as if the lower jaw had come unhinged. ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... you strove to prove that a criminal, at such a moment, is always, mentally, more or less unhinged. That point of view is a very original one, but it was not this part of your article which most interested me. I was particularly struck by an idea at the end of the article, and which, unfortunately, you have touched upon too cursorily. In a word, if you ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... o'er the poop the audacious seas aspire, Uproll'd in hills of fluctuating fire: With labouring throes she rolls on either side, And dips her gunnells in the yawning tide. Her joints unhinged in palsied langour play, As ice-flakes part beneath the noontide ray; The gale howls doleful through the blocks and shrouds, And big rain pours a deluge from the clouds. From wintry magazines that sweep the sky, Descending globes of hail incessant fly; High on the masts with pale ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... mainly that I began certain studies and experiences that were to convince me that images well up before the mind's eye from a deeper source than conscious or subconscious memory. I believe that his mind in those early days did not belie his face and body, though in later years it became unhinged, for he kept a proud head amid great poverty. One that boxed with him nightly has told me that for many weeks he could knock him down, though Macgregor was the stronger man, and only knew long after that during those weeks Macgregor starved. ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... now loaded and ready to start. It was about two o'clock in the afternoon, when a strange and painful trial befell us. Poor dear Mr. Mathieson, apparently unhinged, locked himself all alone into what had been his study, telling Mrs. Mathieson and me to go, for he had resolved to remain and die on Tanna. We tried to show him the inconsistency of praying to God to protect us or grant us means of escape, and ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... where the beings around them know nothing of their history, and share none of their ideas—where their mother earth shows another lap, and human life has other forms than those on which their souls have been nourished. Minds that have been unhinged from their old faith and love, have perhaps sought this Lethean influence of exile, in which the past becomes dreamy because its symbols have all vanished, and the present too is dreamy because it is linked with ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... aim as a rule," put in Christopher, too blind with fury now to realise the other's unhinged condition, but Geoffry ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... properly a subject of regret. One of the assassins of General Dillon was this morning guillotined before the hotel where we are lodged.—I did not, as you will conclude, see the operation; but the mere circumstance of knowing the moment it was performed, and being so near it, has much unhinged me. The man, however, deserved his fate, and such an example was particularly necessary at this time, when we are without a government, and the laws are relaxed. The mere privation of life is, perhaps, ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady |
