"Madness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... witchcraft is the insensibility or indifference of even men of science, and therefore observation, to the obvious origin of the greatest part of the confessions elicited; confession of such a kind as could be the product only of torture, madness, or some other equally obvious cause. Bodin himself, however, sufficiently explains the fact and exposes the secret. 'The trial of this offence,' he enunciates, 'must not be conducted like other crimes. Whoever adheres to the ordinary course of justice perverts the spirit of the law both ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... by our own barbarism, we boast of a civilisation that has already made us ridiculous, and of which we shall surely die. Here in the Bargello, the ancient palace of the Podesta of a Latin city, let us be silent and forget our madness before the statues of the Gods, the images of the great ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... at my madness, and, while they consulted what to do with me, I took my chance to grip the first of them by the throat and swing him off ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... the cruellest of all human states. It transforms the man into the likeness of the cat, who, when she is caught in a trap, or shut up in a room, has too low an intellect to understand that you wish to release her: and, in the madness of terror, bites and tears at the hand which tries to do her good. Yes; very cruel is blind fear. When a man dreads he knows not what, he will do he cares not what. When he dreads desperately, he will act desperately. When he dreads beyond all reason, he will behave ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... would not go at all. The Queen, indeed, was in a very critical state, and were it not that her children, she being an Infanta of Spain, are entitled to a certain sum of money by no means small, provided they were born in Spain, it would have been madness in her to have undertaken the voyage; indeed, I think it highly probable that a young Prince will make his appearance ere we arrive at Barcelona. After having spent a longer time than I liked at Leghorn, ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... at that moment with M. le Baron's coat and boots, and Eustace could hardly repress a smile. We could not but rejoice when Solivet took leave of us at the carriage door, very affectionate, but shrugging his shoulders at our madness, and leaving a corporal and his party to guard us to the frontier. They prolonged the sense of constraint, and forced us to be very guarded with poor Clement, but otherwise they were very useful. The ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that every man is obliged to know what is contained in books, and that he who is out of reach of these books, and of those who understand them, will be punished for an ignorance which is no fault of his. Books upon books! What madness! As all Europe is full of books, Europeans regard them as necessary, forgetting that they are unknown throughout three-quarters of the globe. Were not all these books written by men? Why then should a man need them to teach him his duty, and how did he learn his duty before ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... of our affairs during the last century, protesting it was only a heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions, banishments, the very worst effects that avarice, faction, hypocrisy, perfidiousness, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, lust, malice, and ambition, ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... the woods, the wretched dreamer, wakened thus at last, sprang up and felt for his sword. Fool! he had left it in his hammock! Screaming the name of his dead bride, he rushed on the jaguar, as it crouched above its prey, and seizing its head with teeth and nails, worried it, in the ferocity of his madness, like a mastiff-dog. ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... to find her again and induce her to entrust you with her eggs, which you would rear in the refectory, to increase the taste for Spiders from generation to generation! Merely to dream of it were madness. Shall we, in our helplessness, admit ourselves beaten by the evolutionary effects of diet? Not a bit of it! One experiment—and you could not wish for a more decisive—is continually in progress, apart from all artifices, on an enormous ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... at his empurpled face, and my madness came back on me like a rush of fire through my veins—and I shut down on his throat again until I could feel the cords draw under ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... man," he said, in a grave tone—"glad for both your sakes; for any one could see with three-quarters of an eye, to be exact, that you were both miserable without each other. Oh, save me from the madness of love!" ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... turbulent people, with unbridled passions. They are not only fond to excess of the fermented liquors prepared from cassava and maize, and of palm-wine, but they throw themselves into a peculiar state of intoxication, we might say of madness, by the use of the powder of niopo. They gather the long pods of a mimosacea which we have made known by the name of Acacia niopo,* cut them into pieces, moisten them, and cause them to ferment. (* It is an acacia with very delicate leaves, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... century old. It is evident that they lead idealization. They put cases and solve them, and every reader forms a judgment whether the case has actuality and whether the solution is correct. Love in half-civilization and in antiquity was erotic only. The Greeks conceived of it as a madness by which a person was afflicted through the caprice or malevolence of some god or goddess. Such a passion is necessarily evanescent. The ancient peoples in general, and the Semites in particular, did not think this passion an honorable or trustworthy basis of marriage. The Kaffirs think that ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... passengers sprang at the snow-capped rails. The exhorted team tugged the coach up the slant to the door of the edifice from which a mid-summer madness had ravished its proprietor. The driver and two of the passengers began to unhitch. Judge Menefee opened the door of the ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... climb where Alps on Alps arise? No; snuff and science are to me a dream, But hold my soul! for that way madness lies, Love's in the scale, tobacco ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... woman richly endowed by Nature and fortune, whose mother and brother have died insane. She comes to maidenly maturity under the impression which strengthens into belief that madness is her heritage. After long struggles she accepts the hand of one who has striven steadily to combat what he considers a morbid conviction, and makes ready for her marriage. When dressed for the ceremony she sits down to await her bridegroom, and the image of herself in a tarnished ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... piteously, with a calabash inkstand and reed-pen in their hands. I have been pestered with two or three every day since I came here. They also wander through the country parts of Damerghou. Bornou is the nursery of these silly pedagogues, in whom learning and madness are most cordially united; but, as I have already mentioned, it sends out a few instructed ones to redeem ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... he, with quickness, "for why should I remain in it? a few weeks only could I fill up in any tour so near home, and hither in a few weeks to return would be folly and madness: in an absence so brief, what thought but that of the approaching meeting would occupy me? and what, at that meeting, should I feel, but joy the most dangerous, and delight which I dare not think of!—every conflict renewed, every struggle re-felt, ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... When the madness and the folly are over, when the tender green is creeping in and out among the blackened ruins, it will be well for us to think of that dying Uhlan who had to put up with a French baby instead of his own; of that Belgian mother to whom the German youngsters ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... the women, especially the young and unwedded, screamed evil names at me; and the elders shook their wise heads and muttered and mumbled that not their fathers nor their fathers' fathers had betrayed such a madness. Horse meat was good to eat; young colts were tender to old teeth; and only a fool would come to close grapples with any wild horse save when an arrow had pierced it, or when it struggled on the stake in ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... a animal in human shape. And he misused her in such a way that she never got over the horror of what befell her when she come to to find herself at the mercy of a brute in a man's shape. She went into a melancholy madness and wuz sent to ...
— Samantha on the Woman Question • Marietta Holley
... "Love is a madness," she said. "It is an obsession. It is devouring me. No one can judge of its power until ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... Where is now that moral sense which has so much power over that which is merely animal in us, and which can restrain the madness of anger? ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... not the grief of having offended so good a father, but the disgrace of the punishment inflicted on him, which gave him the most poignant anguish, and far from feeling any true contrition, he was all rage and madness, which having no means to vent in words, discovered itself in sullenness:—when the servant to whom he intrusted the key came in to bring him food, he refused to eat, and could scarce restrain himself from throwing in the man's face what ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... a voice vibrant with apprehension. For she would have gone on risking this madness that she feared, rather than let him efface from her conscious thoughts, or even dim, one recollection ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... hear of Bahram's defeat than he sent off a messenger to the camp upon the Araxes, who deprived the general of his command, and presented to him, on the part of his master, a distaff, some cotton, and a complete set of women's garments. Stung to madness by the undeserved insult, Bahram retorted with a letter, wherein he addressed Hormisdas, not as the son, but as the daughter of Chosroes. Shortly afterwards, upon the arrival of a second messenger from the court, with orders to bring the recalcitrant commander home in chains, Bahram openly revolted, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... filled him which he had never known or imagined before. He had known tragedy; he had investigated to what he had supposed to be the depths of human vileness—but this that he was experiencing now stunned him. Was it possible that these were people of his own kind? Had a madness of some sort driven all human instincts from them? He saw Thompson's red eyes fastened upon him, and he turned his face to escape their questioning, stupid leer. The bearded man was turning out the ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... was true or false, as if that were a question that never occurred to them.[92] The plain man, who was but a poor master either of theology or of the history of the church of England, but who loved the prayer-book and hated confession, convents, priest-craft, and mariolatry, was wrought to madness by a clergyman who should describe himself, as did R. H. Froude, as a catholic without the popery, and a church of England man without the protestantism. The plain man knew that he was not himself clever enough to form any distinct idea of what such talk meant. But then his helplessness only ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... voice, the sobbing catch of her breath, the strange glow in her eyes. With her brother away would she confide in him? Would she tell him the secret of her slavedom to Strang? Nathaniel was conscious of no madness in the wild hope that filled him; nothing seemed impossible to him now. Marion would meet him at midnight. She would go with him to the boat, and then—ah, he had solved the problem! He would use no force. He would tell her that Neil was in ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... Madness indeed! all may be mere surmise; Wherefore, at present it will be most prudent, To hush the sad ideas of suspicion. A little time must prove its truth, or falsehood; Besides, the person charg'd is ...
— The Female Gamester • Gorges Edmond Howard
... observed Sandy Black to Charlie Considine, as they stood watching the efforts of a double team to haul one of their waggons up a slope so rugged and steep that the mere attempt appeared absolute madness in their eyes. ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... light by the circumstance, that God gave them time for repentance, and did not at once proceed to the utmost rigour, but advanced, step by step, in His judgments. But here too it was seen that crime, in its highest degree, becomes madness; the more nearly that people and king approached the abyss, the greater became the speed with which they hastened towards it. It is true that they [Pg 367] did not remain altogether insensible when the threatenings of the Prophet began to be fulfilled. This is ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... to me that resistance would be not bravery, but a sort of madness. There are promises of aid from England; but how long may we have to wait for them? And there are but ten days' provisions in the town. If these English officers of King William think that resistance is hopeless, why should I, who ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... paper,—weapons he began to think invincible in his hands. "If I could get over to England," he wrote to his old chief, General Greene, "without being known, and only remain in safety until I could get out a proclamation, I could open the eyes of the country with respect to the madness and stupidity of its government." Greene had no confidence in the success of this appeal to the English people, and advised ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... attitudes in this picture have that character of elegance which distinguished the Florentine school at this period, without any of those extravagances and peculiarities into which Piero often fell; for the man had evidently a touch of madness, and was as eccentric in his works as in his life and conversation. The order of the Serviti, for whom he painted this picture, was instituted in honour of the Virgin, and for her particular service, which will account for the ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... of universal lunacy, it might well have seemed the last phase of a world presently to be destroyed. They who were in it but not of it, as they fancied, though there was no reason for this,—looked on it amazed, and at last their own errands being accomplished, and themselves so far cured of the madness of purpose, they cried with one voice, that it was a hideous sight, and strove to take refuge from it in the nearest place where ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... ... it was Templeton's voice, snappy and irritable, ... "this thing is madness! Pure and simple, unadulterated madness! It's as devoid of sense as a last year's nest of birds; it's as full of danger as a ... ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... household where love and unity reign drives ill-matched folk to madness. The man declares that his friend's wife makes the felicity; the woman praises the other husband; and the unhappy souls grow jealous together, and hate each other more cordially by reason of the joy which they have seen. All sorts of evil ends come to these wretched unions—in every ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... that is what we called brain-heat. Our teachers found it to be madness and it was abolished. It was not convenient. The air-ships were not convenient to you, so you abolished them. The folk, too, that you abolished with those things," pointing to the guns, "they were not convenient. If you hadn't done ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... is itself too frail and uncertain a thing to be a criterion of sanity. The common sense of yesterday is to-day's folly, and our present common sense will be the madness of to-morrow. ...
— The Flutter of the Goldleaf; and Other Plays • Olive Tilford Dargan and Frederick Peterson
... the name of an indemnification, the very brightest jewel in their coronets? This morning they all rose from their couches peers of Parliament, individual pillars of the realm, indispensable parties to every law that could pass. Tomorrow they will be nobody—men of straw—terrae filii. What madness has persuaded them to part with their birthright, and to cashier themselves and their children forever into mere titular lords? As to the commoners at the bar, their case was different: they had no life ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... was well calculated to produce this result; but the proclamation of the President, declaring emancipation after the 1st of January next, in all the rebellious States, comes in at this critical moment speedily to perfect the work which the madness of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... took the train for Buffalo, where we arrived at ten minutes past six in the morning. We had telegraphed beforehand for carriages and coffee to be in readiness, and to have food provided for us, as it is simply madness for thirty-two persons to arrive on a Sunday in such towns as these without giving notice of such an event. We had a special train going at full speed over the lines, which were entirely clear on Sundays, and it was decorated ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... Algiers arrived, I wrote thus:—"And so the African campaign is over, and well over; ours, which must commence in about two months, will be rather more difficult; but no matter; I hope this success will not stimulate power to the last madness, and I prefer our national ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... one a petty officer, the other a private sentinel—had been friends and comrades for years; but, quarrelling in some love affair, they became bitter enemies. The officer made an ungenerous use of his authority, and so annoyed and persecuted the sentinel as almost to fret him into madness; and he was frequently heard to say that he would die to be avenged of him. Whole months were spent in the infliction of injuries on the one side, and in the venting of complaints on the other; when, in the midst of their mutual rage, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... for Tanqueray. The brisk director of a great publishing firm in New York desired (at the last moment before his departure) an appointment with the novelist for that afternoon. The affair was of extreme importance. The American meant business. It would be madness not to see him, even ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... darling young lady," said Rooney, very politely, "sure it's an entertainment that a man gives after he is dead, when his disconsolate friends all assemble at his house, to discuss his virtues and drink his poteen. There is one who is called a 'keener,' usually an elderly woman, with a touch of madness, or poetry, and a wild rolling eye, who chants a 'keen,' or lamentation; in short, it's a sort of melancholy frolic, where we only drink to drown our sorrow—a good old Irish custom. Now, go on, Norah, ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... thee, and gave purchase-price to thee, which of right belongs to the bride—of clothing, namely, the raiment of twelve men, a chariot worth thrice seven bondmaids, the breadth of thy face of red gold[c], the weight of thy left forearm of silvered bronze. Whoso brings shame and sorrow and madness upon thee, no claim for compensation nor satisfaction hast thou therefor that I myself have not, [2]but it is to me the compensation belongs,"[2] said Medb, "for a man dependent upon a woman's maintenance ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... the Ascalon, who was in command of the port, saw the overwhelming force of the hostile fleet, he at once came to the conclusion that it would be madness for him to attempt to put to sea with his eleven ships and six torpedo-boats. The utmost that he could do was to remain inshore and assist the forts to keep the Russians at bay, if possible, until the assistance, which had already ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... the difficulties of our situation. Yes, you were right. I have been imprudent; but I pay dear for my precipitation. We are now going down hill so rapidly that nothing can save us; we must fall to the very bottom. To attempt stopping half way would be madness. Rich or poor, I have cause to tremble as long as there is any risk of a meeting between Gaston and Valentine. How can they be kept apart? Will my brother renounce his plan of discovering the whereabouts of this woman whom ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... occasions, many important private sales took place about the same time. There was not a sheep, cow, or horse in the Colony, too old or too bad to find a purchaser! Any thing would sell, provided only that time was given to find the money. Nothing could exceed the madness of the people, buying, selling, and exchanging accommodation-paper from end to end of the land. Then came the land-jobbers, a set of sharks who did great harm. It was a common practice with those jobbers, ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... there are two sorts, one madness, the other ignorance, and they may be justly attributed to disease. Excessive pleasures or pains are among the greatest diseases, and deprive men of their senses. When the seed about the spinal marrow is too ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... contrasts. They were only two, but they were Lethargy and Madness. The Station was either totally unconscious, or wildly raving. By day, in its unconscious state, it looked as if no life could come to it,—as if it were all rust, dust, and ashes—as if the last train for ever, had gone without ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... spent in this abode of the dead, without rest or sleep. The attempt to obtain either would have been sheer madness, for the least mis-step, the least unguarded motion, or a slight relaxation of the firm grasp by which I held on to the shelves, would have plunged me headlong into the dark water, from which escape would have been impossible. For thirty hours I had not tasted food, and ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... in the New World, or with the Russian Jew who holds the foremost place among American song-writers and whose soulful compositions are sung in almost every English-speaking house in the world. I love music to madness. I yearn for the world of great singers, violinists, pianists. Several of the greatest of them are of my race and country, and I have met them, but all my acquaintance with them has brought me is a sense of being looked down upon as a money-bag striving to play ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... blood, and flew at another. Ordinarily she would have removed that one and found it enough; but men who have been "broke," when they got suddenly rich, seem to go temporarily mad with the lust of spending, and so it was with her; only, her madness was the ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... is full as politic as my Lord Hervey, had made herself an absolute servant to Lady Sundon, but I don't hear that she has left her even her old clothes. Lord Sundon is in great grief: I am surprised, for she has had fits of madness ever since her ambition met such a check by the death of the Queen.(404) She had great power with her, though the Queen pretended to despise her; but had unluckily told her, or fallen into her power by some secret.(405) I was saying to Lady Pomfret, to be sure she is dead very rich!" She replied, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... strain of Roland will I tell Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme, On whom strange madness and rank fury fell, A man esteemed so wise in former time; If she, who to like cruel pass has well Nigh brought my feeble wit which fain would climb And hourly wastes my sense, concede me skill And strength my daring ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... His cheek was flushed, and his eyes shot a wild fire that struck to her heart. Unconscious what she did, she ran up to him; but Pembroke, pushing her back, exclaimed, "Don't ask me any questions, if you would not drive me to madness." ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... recalling. "Cherry, Crean, we're floating out to sea," was the startling awakening from Bowers, standing in his socks outside the tent at 4.30 A.M. that Wednesday morning. And indeed at first sight on getting outside the tent it looked a quite hopeless situation. I thought it was madness to try and save the ponies and gear when, it seemed, the only chance at all of saving the men was an immediate rush for the Barrier, and I said so. "Well, I'm going to try," was Bowers' answer, and, quixotic or no, he largely succeeded. I never knew a man who treated ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... that incipient madness—that was something; and brave Rachel would quite master it. Happy she had discovered it so soon. Besides, it was, even if Chelford were at her feet, a wild impossibility now; and it was well, though despair were in the pang, that she had, at last, ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... abroad over Irish difficulties, Mosaic sweating-establishments, French barricades, and an anarchic Europe, is it not as if all the populations of the world were rising or had risen into incendiary madness;—unable longer to endure such an avalanche of forgeries, and of penalties in consequence, as had accumulated upon them? The speaker is "excellent;" the notes he does are beautiful? Beautifully fit for the market, yes; he ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... most unlikely part of his story is true we may assume that the rest of it is. We need not go over it again in detail. The man was evidently attached to his master, and was prepared to shoot him if he exhibited signs of madness. Considering the state of his own nerves, I can believe that Bennett watched for these signs, and felt convinced of his master's madness when he spoke of a wealth of diamonds. Bennett knew they had no diamonds in their possession. He only knew of those bits of rock. So he determined to shoot Hardiman. ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... had heard of the death of his brother, during the cruel scene at Drum Dhu, and of the other inhuman outrage which had driven her mad. He had come from a remote part of England with the single, fixed, and irrevocable purpose of wreaking vengeance on the head of him who had brought madness, desolation, ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... without hearing from Lothair was madness; and, indeed, when hour after heavy hour rolled away without the appearance of Mignon, and the Lady Imogene found herself gazing upon the vanishing twilight, she became nearly frantic with disappointment and terror. While light remained, an indefinite hope maintained ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... her life as the price of yours!" That is the strangest of all cures, And one, I think, you will never try; The prescription you may well put by, As something impossible to find Before the world itself shall end! And yet who knows? One cannot say That into some maiden's brain that kind Of madness will not find its way. Meanwhile permit me to recommend, As the matter admits of no delay, My wonderful Catholicon, Of very subtile and ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... ever without some mixture of madness, nor can anything grand or superior to the voice of common mortals be spoken except by ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... was ashamed they should see him naked. When Amphons of Spain, bewitched by his step-mother into a were-wolf, was at last restored, and stood suddenly naked before her, he was greatly ashamed. The maiden who healed Iwein was tender of his modesty. In his love-madness, the hero wanders for a time naked through the wood; three women find him asleep, and send a waiting-maid to annoint him with salve; when he came to himself, the maiden hid herself. On the whole, however, the ladies were not so delicate; they ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... disappointment, their only hopes lay in the return of the boat. They looked in vain; not a glimpse of her was to be seen. A raging thirst tormented them; and some, in spite of warning, drank salt water; raging madness soon followed, and their agonies were terminated by death. Another awful night was passed by them. To preserve themselves from the cold, they huddled close together, and covered themselves with their few remaining rags. They were haunted by the ravings of ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... but I know that though I am a fool for giving in to my son's madness, these are the only terms I propose; and if you, Lady, so deal with her as to make her accept them, you are free without ransom to ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... on his seat, "what madness this is! I was a thought warm with the liquor, and the recollections of past times were rising on my memory. Think nothing of it. I heard those words once before," and he ground his teeth in rage—"Yes, once—but in a shriller voice than your's! ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 286, December 8, 1827 • Various
... dispassionate reader almost incredible that the English people, who shed his father's blood, who rallied round the Parliament, and were fulsome in their praises of the Protector, should thus suddenly change; but, allowing for "the madness of the people," we look for strength and consistency to the men of learning and letters. We feel sure that he who sang his eulogy of Cromwell dead, can have now no lyric burst for the returning ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... the body may cause disease to the soul. Ay, madness. Some rapture in the soul makes the brain numb, and thence sudden or lingering death;—some rupture in the brain makes the soul insane, and thence life worse than death, and haunted by horrors beyond what is dreamt of the grave and all its corruption. Perhaps the line fullest ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... do ye think the foe Gone, or that guileless are their gifts? O blind With madness! Thus Ulysses do ye know? Or Grecians in these timbers lurk confined, Or 'tis some engine of assault, designed To breach the walls, and lay our houses bare, And storm the town. Some mischief lies behind. Trust not the horse, ye Teucrians. Whatso'er This means, I fear the Greeks, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... evades the obligation he so readily undertakes, and sinks back into that more powerful interest that almost at once regains possession of his mind. Still, before he quits the scene of this ghastly disclosure, he resolves to counterfeit madness—and this for two reasons: he will seem (to himself) to be conspiring, and he will gain a license to speak his mind without offence. This is the only use to which he puts this mask of madness, as Coleridge has remarked. But why should he instinctively seek to gain more latitude of ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... an excellent captain: he took his pleasure with other men, and was so impressionable a character that he enjoyed a virtuous project as well as any plan for a debauch; in love he was most susceptible, and jealous to the point of madness even about a courtesan, had she once taken his fancy; his prodigality was princely, although he had no income; further, he was most sensitive to slights, as all men are who, because they are placed in an equivocal position, fancy that everyone who makes any reference to ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... else we will be miserable in the grief of disappointment. It is not for man wholly to direct his steps. Sometimes what he thinks for his good, turns out ill; and what he thinks a great evil, develops a great blessing in disguise. It is folly, almost madness, to be miserable because things are not as we would have them, or because we are disappointed in our plans. Many of our plans must be defeated. A multitude of little hopes must every day be crushed, and now and then a great one. Besides, the success of our plans is not always essential ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... her actions, as, to the pile of clothing in her arms, she added the revolver that lay on the blanket, and, returning to the little trap-door in the ceiling, hid them away; but her brain was whirling again in a turmoil of doubt. This was madness, utter, stark, blind madness, this thing that she was doing! It was suicide, literally that, nothing less than suicide for one in Gypsy Nan's condition to attempt this thing. But the woman would certainly die here, too, with out medical assistance—only ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... he left several rows of vacant places in front of him, and sat himself down. Immediately afterwards, Novion, Chief President of the Parliament, arrived, and seated himself in front of M. de Coislin. Astonished at this act of madness, M. de Coislin said not a word, but took an arm-chair, and, while Novion turned his head to speak to Cardinal de Bouillon, placed that arm-chair in front of the Chief President in such a manner that he was as it were ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... had come to him when the madness of the quest was on him, a madness so strong that it overcame his perception of her social lapses. It was impossible to be unaware of some of them, of certain phrases, of the sudden wild flight of her aspirates. But these things were entangled with ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... me go, please, Lord Bracondale! This is madness. I refuse to hear you. Reflect—and you will see that I can never become ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... was aflame; and his veins ran fire. Now for the first time he knew what it was to be alive—Life spurting from his finger-tips, making madness in his blood, issuing riotously from his lips. He sang; he yelled; he laughed, battering at the lunatic in front. He caught the blasphemies of his battle-fellows, and echoed them shrilly and with joy. The light in his comrades' eyes revealed to him deeps of being undreamed of before. His spirit ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... over his shoulder, and let her forehead drop on his breast. Then came a sudden impulse in his blood. Long after he shuddered when he remembered what he thought at that instant; what he wished to do; what rich madness possessed him. He knew now why he had come to town; he also knew why he must not stay, or, if staying, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Peter, simply because it had been her custom so to do during the period of nearly fifty years in which they had lived in the same parish as brother and sister. She could, therefore, only stare at him and his tragic humor, as he stood there before her. "Though of course it is madness on my part to object to it! My godfather and godmother christened me Peter, and our father was Peter before me, and his father too was Peter Prosper. But that woman has made the name ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... previously refused to listen to any reconciliation, the unexpected emigration of a kind so disgraceful had raised their wrath to madness, and the wild vengeance breathed by the beaten contrasted strangely with the placability of the victor. The communications regularly coming from the camp of the emigrants to their friends left behind in Italy were ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... we have been subjected is a question of great magnitude; but it is of little importance compared with that of guarding against a recurrence of the Rebellion, by removing the cause of it. It would be worse than madness to restore them to all their former rights under the government they have done their utmost to destroy, and at the same time permit them to retain a system that would surely involve us or our children in another ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... reputation they have had for contributing to the health of whole countries and cities, frequently occur in history: For instance, in the island of Cyprus, abounding with the trees of that name, and other resinous plants, curing ulcerated lungs, &c. Sardinia, melancholy and madness, replanted with true Anticyran hellebore, was famous; whilst Thusus (especially in Summer) brought almost all the inhabitants to lunacy and distraction for want of it. And what the effects and benefit of such plantations ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... lamp. The fire was needed, but the lamp was lit—as a comparison of the oil consumed will show—long after it was broad daylight. Why? Surely because there is some connection between three things—the burning, the stuffy atmosphere, and, finally, the madness or death of those unfortunate people. That is ...
— The Adventure of the Devil's Foot • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "mew, mew (quickly), chack!" and I interpreted it into a warning to me to leave the premises. I did not go, however, and after several repetitions his vigilance began to relax. He was really so full of sweet summer madness that it was impossible to keep up the role of stern guardian of the nests under the veil of buttercups and daisies, which he knew all the time I could never find. So, when he opened his mouth to say "chack," a note or two would ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... my bride," answered he, in the same hollow accents. "You deem this mockery—perhaps madness. Had I bedizened my aged and broken frame with scarlet and embroidery, had I forced my withered lips to smile at my dead heart, that might have been mockery or madness; but now let young and old declare which of us has come hither without a ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... legion in sadness have bled, And many of earth's angel-minded In grief have gone down to the dead, And the world, with its bright laughing gladness, Oft changed to a frowning abyss, By vain mortals refusing, in madness, A kind word, ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... a scowl, and slunk below, but I could see an evil light in his eyes which I attributed to madness, though I was subsequently to learn there was much method in it. I did not like to add to Hartog's anxieties by telling him of Van Luck's conduct, and, indeed, when I considered our present predicament, it seemed unlikely that Van Luck, ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... before they succeeded* But when she recovered, rather than break the promise she had made to prince Firoze Shaw, by consenting to marry the sultan of Cashmeer, who had proclaimed their nuptials before he had asked her consent, she resolved to feign madness. She began to utter the most extravagant expressions before the sultan, and even rose off her seat as if to attack him; insomuch that he was greatly alarmed and afflicted, that he had made such a ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... he was to death in the next five minutes, while Hank was saddling up to go. For Hank's fingers went several times to his rifle and hovered there, itching to do murder, while Hank's mind revolved the consequences. Murder would be madness—suicide, practically. The boy would be missed when he did not answer the telephone. Some one would be sent up from the Forest Service and the murder would be discovered, unless—unless Hank could hide the body. There was the lake—but the lake was ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... lead me still, Although to death or deadliest ill! Why marvel ye, if they who lose This present joy, this future hope, 1150 No more with Sorrow meekly cope; In phrensy then their fate accuse; In madness do those fearful deeds That seem to add but Guilt to Woe? Alas! the breast that inly bleeds Hath nought to dread from outward blow: Who falls from all he knows of bliss, Cares little into what abyss.[ej] Fierce as the gloomy vulture's now To thee, old man, my deeds appear: 1160 I read abhorrence ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... earth, and there shall be none to fray them away. The LORD shall smite thee with the boil of Egypt, and with the emerods, and with the scurvy, and with the itch, whereof thou canst not be healed. The LORD shall smite thee with madness, and with blindness, and with astonishment of heart: and thou shalt grope at noonday, as the blind gropeth in darkness, and thou shalt not prosper in thy ways: and thou shalt be only oppressed and spoiled alway, and there shall be none ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... together, that only in unity can we be strong, that by justice, not by violence, shall we be safe at home and respected in the world. Citizens! I conjure you for the sake of the nation and of yourselves wipe out a moment of madness by unison, by courage against the common enemies and by a henceforth constant respect of the laws and of those who are appointed in the name of the law. Know this, that he who refuses to be submissive to the law is not ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... akin to snow-madness, for I remember that Thomas who never attempted a line of poetry before, nor since, led off with ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... have found a yacht, and we are going the full pitch for seven months. If I cannot get my health back (more or less), 'tis madness; but, of course, there is the hope, and I will play big. . . . If this business fails to set me up, well, 2000 pounds is gone, and I know I can't get better. We sail from San Francisco, June 15th, for the South Seas in the yacht ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... defence, eh, Carnegie? else it will be understood in Free Kirk circles that the manse is mad. We seem, in fact, a pair of old fools, and you can have your jest at us; but there is an excuse even for our madness. ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... the mode in fiction was historical and rococo. Van Revel in The Two Van Revels, convinced and passionate abolitionist, nevertheless becomes as hungry as any fire-eater of them all the moment Polk moves for war on Mexico, though to Van Revel the war is an evil madness. In The Conquest of Canaan Louden plays Prince Hal among the lowest his town affords, only to mount with a rush to the mayoralty when he is ready. The Guest of Quesnay takes a hero who is soiled with every vileness, smashes his head in an automobile accident, and thus transforms ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... Sumter.... There is no longer a Union.... Mr. Jefferson Davis is angry, and Mr. Abraham Lincoln is mad, and they agree to fight.... You cannot go through Massachusetts and recruit men to bombard Charleston or New Orleans.... We are in no condition to fight.... Nothing but madness can provoke war with the Gulf States;"—with much ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... would be likely to do for what you have, they will certainly send you back to Kiakhta and hand you over to the Russians there; and even if you got through the desert the Chinese would seize you and send you back. It would be madness to try. It would be better than that to go south and make for Thibet, although even that would be a desperate expedition. The tribes are wild and savage, the desert is terrible for those who do not know it. You would never find the wells, and would perish miserably of thirst even ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... world to come, and such a way to it so safe and good, and if God is there to be enjoyed by them that come to him by Christ; then this shows the great madness of the most of men, madness, I say, of the highest degree, for that they come not to God by Christ that they may be inheritors of the world to come. It is a right character which Solomon gives of them, 'The heart,' saith he, 'of the sons of men is full ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... too, should become a brigand. In my youth my father was killed in an affray and my mother took his place, seizing many prisoners and exacting from them ransom. My mother you have seen, and you know of her sudden madness and of her death. She was always mad, I think, and by nature a fiend. She urged my elder brother to wicked crimes, and when he rebelled she herself cast him, in a fit of anger, into the pit. I became duke in his place, and did my mother's bidding because I feared to oppose her. But for ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... from the first that my thoughts had once been elsewhere. He never asked to know more, and we have never touched upon it since. Besides, at bottom it was simply madness. And then it was over directly—that ...
— The Lady From The Sea • Henrik Ibsen
... perceived that there was a female at the mouth of the cave—nearer and nearer, and he was certain that it was his Clara—her name was on his lips when he heard the two shots fired one after another by Hawkhurst—he saw the retreat and fall of Francisco—when, madness to behold! he perceived Clara rush forward, and there lay the young man supported by her, and with his head upon her bosom. Could he believe what he saw? could she really be his betrothed? Yes, there she was, supporting the handsome figure of a young man, ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... exquisite punishments and impossible retaliations. In imagination he had so often seen Fletcher drop dead before him, had so often struck the man down with his own hand, that there were hours when he almost believed the deed to have been done—when something like madness gripped him, and his hallucinations took the shape and colour of life itself. At such times he was conscious of the exhilaration that comes in the instants of swift action, when events move quickly, and one rises beyond the ordinary level of experience. When the real moment came—the ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... I must get her; a fool I have been; my letter miscarried, else she would have written. Refuse me! who would refuse me? Yes, I was born to drink the cup of life as few have drunk it; I shall drink it even like a Roman emperor ... But they drank it to madness and crime! Yet even so; I shall drink ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... a warning protest of the veracities against what they were doing; but the madness of sight-seeing, which spoils travel, was on them, and they delivered themselves up to it as they used in their ignorant youth, though now they knew its futility so well. They spared themselves nothing that they had time for, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... himself, to go on casually appearing and turning everything upside down. In the past it didn't so much matter; but our modern machine is too delicate. A few more knocks like the Great War, another Luther or two, and the whole concern will go to pieces. In future, the men of reason must see that the madness of the world's maniacs is canalised into proper channels, is made to do useful work, like a ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... 1808 Lord Byron lost his favourite dog Boatswain; the poor animal having been seized with a fit of madness, at the commencement of which so little aware was Byron of the nature of the malady, that he more than once, with his bare hand, wiped away the slaver from the dog's lips during the paroxysms. In a letter to his friend Mr Hodson, he thus ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... eccentric and barbarous in the extreme. See Pontano, de Immanitate, vol. i. p. 326, concerning Niccolo Fortibraccio, Antonio, Pontadera, and the Riccio Montechiaro, who stabbed and strangled for the pleasure of seeing men die. I have already discussed the blood-madness of ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... a point at which terror may turn to madness; and madness incites to action. With no definite intent, from no motive but the wayward impulse of a madman, Murlock sprang to the wall, with a little groping seized his loaded rifle, and without aim discharged it. By the flash which lit up ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... what is this? How dark the moral clouds that have been hanging over the country for a period far beyond the memory of man! how black that dismal canopy which is only lit by fires that carry and shed around them disease, famine, crime, madness, bloodshed, and death. How hot, sultry, and enervating to the whole constitution of man, physically and mentally, is the atmosphere we have been breathing so long! The miasma of the swamp, the simoom ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... which is surely noble with the nobility of a viking, he would rather stoop to borrow than to accept money for these last and inadequate efforts of his muse. And this desperate abnegation rises at times near to the height of madness; as when he pretended that he had not written, but only found and published, his immortal "Auld Lang Syne." In the same spirit he became more scrupulous as an artist; he was doing so little, he would fain do that little well; and about two months ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Ireland. The parties engaged were a hen of the game species and a rat of middle size. The hen, in a walk round a spacious room, accompanied by an only chicken, the last one left of a large brood, was roused to madness by an attack made by a fierce rat on her helpless little one. The frightened cries of her beloved little chick, while it was being dragged away by the rat, awoke all the mother-love in the bosom of the hen. She flew at the ...
— Anecdotes of Animals • Unknown
... the righteous AEneas, having his head bare, and holding neither spear nor sword, cried to the people, "What seek ye? what madness is this? The covenant is established, and I only have the right to do battle." But even while he spake an arrow smote him, wounding him. But who let it fly no man knoweth; for who, of a truth, would boast that he had wounded AEneas? And he departed ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... a choice between death and madness. I can endure no more. If this should be the last letter you ever get from me, think of me tenderly, and forgive me. Without her, life would be a howling wilderness, a long tribulation. She is my affinity; the one love of my life, of my youth, ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... terror. The awful memories of San Domingo flamed red and dreadful against the dark background of every Southern plantation and slave community. In the "belly" of the Liberator's picture were many San Domingos. Extreme fear is the beginning of madness; it is, indeed, a kind of madness. The South was suddenly plunged into a state of extreme fear toward which the Liberator and "Walker's Appeal" were hurrying it, by one of those strange accidents ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... sensational entry into that sacred domain, practically wrecking the place. Teddy and his pet had come near doing the same thing twice since, and the performers were beginning to believe there was method in Tucker's madness. ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... cattle were left on that desert, some dead, some lost. Among the lost were all Mr. Reed's herd, except an ox and a cow. His poor beasts had become frenzied in the night, as they were being driven toward water, and with the strength that comes with madness, had rushed away in the darkness. Meanwhile, Mr. Reed, unconscious of his misfortune, was returning to his family, which he found by his wagon, some distance in the rear. At daylight, he, with his wife and children, on foot, overtook my Uncle Jacob's wagons and were carried forward in them ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... Cantos in the first of which Rama with an enchanted Gandharva weapon deals destruction among the Rakshases sent out by Ravan, and in the second the Rakshas dames lament the slain and mourn over the madness ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... commit this madness, the frighted babe set up such a howl as only a man-child can utter, and my lady turned to him in great haste, and my lord also did set about comforting him. Then they walked slowly on, and my lord held the little lad on ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... thing runs in amongst them, shaking hands with the first he meets with, and bursts out a-laughing. He usually succeeds in infusing a little of his cheerfulness into these equally mad people, but more sober in their method of madness. Yesterday the slaves had another feast for the dead. The Moors allow their slaves the liberty of blending the two religions, as Rome has allowed the blending of Christianity and paganism. And ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... her room, with the curtains drawn to shut out the dying lake. But she could not shut it out of her mind for a moment. It haunted her imagination so that she felt as if her lake were her soul, drying up within her, first to become mud, and then madness and death. She brooded over the change, with all its dreadful accompaniments, till she was nearly out of her mind. As for the prince, she had forgotten him. However much she had enjoyed his company in the water, she did not care for him without it. But she seemed ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... Resistance was madness. From east, south, west, the French commanders—Bourlamaque, Bougainville, Roquemaure, Dumas, La Corne— had all fallen back, deserted by their militias. The provincial army had melted down to two hundred men; the troops of the line ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... being was in a turmoil. She drew nearer to the papers upon the table. She was now within a yard of Prince Shan himself. He made no effort to intercept her, no movement of any sort to stop her. Only his eyes never left her face, and she felt a madness which seemed to be choking the life out of her, a pounding of her heart against her ribs, a strange and wonderful joy, a joy in which there was no fear, a joy of new things and new hopes. With the papers for which she had ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... this morning, before I was up, to see if I knew where Sisily had gone. After tea he came again in a terrible state, raving against the detective for taking out a warrant for her arrest. He said it was madness on his part to imagine that a girl like Sisily would kill her father. I told him that as Sisily had disappeared he could hardly blame the police for looking for her. He turned on me when I said that, and used such violent language that I ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... sanity I cannot to this day understand—that is to say, if he had retained it. The hypothesis of madness comforted. I would give much to feel that he had really believed in his progress with the work, that his assurance of having come to the end was genuine. If he had deceived himself, God had been merciful. But if not, if he had sat down day after day, with ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... make more evident how much a favourite he was of heaven, and how prevalent with that God, whom he declared, than that exemplary judgment with which Divine Justice punished the bold impiety of a man, who, either carried on by his own madness, or exasperated by that of the Bonzas, one day railed at him, with foul injurious language. The saint suffered it with his accustomed mildness; and only said these words to him, with somewhat a melancholy countenance, "God preserve your mouth." Immediately the miscreant felt his tongue eaten ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... volley which all but killed him, bullets glancing on all sides of him and scraping the rocks with a horrid message of death. Then on the heels of it came a charge up the slope. The turn had come for the last expedient. He rushed to the stone and with the strength of madness rooted it from its foundations. It wavered for a second, and then with a cloud of earth and gravel it plunged downwards. A second and it had ploughed its way with a sickening grinding sound into the ranks of the men below. There was one wild scream ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... God. How many has it saved—rescued—from madness! how have prayer and watchfulness been blest in conquering self, in subduing rampant passion and the wild, disorderly vagaries of ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... some solitary, snow-banked road-house. He would not stand and soak himself, shoulder to shoulder with stevedores and longshoremen. This was something to be done in secret. He had no pride in it. The man on his right raised a glass, and the young man strangled a madness to tear it from his hands. Instead, he hurried back to the theatre and up to a box, where he drew ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... I discover my self, or steal away? [Aside. And all asham'd of Life after this Action, Go where the Sun or Day may never find me? Oh! what Virtue I've abus'd— Curse on my little Faith; And all the Curses Madness can invent, Light on my ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... Then again every man of modesty and propriety would avoid drunkenness, for anger is next door neighbour to madness as some think,[550] but drunkenness lives in the same house: or rather drunkenness is madness, more short-lived indeed, but more potent also through volition, for it is self-chosen. Nor is drunkenness censured for anything so much as its ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... Szalt, who are always more or less rebellious towards the government of Damascus, are generally on friendly terms with the Bedouins. The fears of my guide, however, prevented me from executing this plan, and I was most reluctantly obliged to return to Souf, for it would have been madness to proceed alone. ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... O what madness, O what folly, That my thoughts should go astray, After toys and empty pleasures, Pleasures only for a day; This vain world with all its treasures, Very soon will be no more, There's no object worth admiring, But the ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... stop. Despite the man's optimism he could not believe it wise to allow tiny tots like that to play with such a huge, clumsy animal. He was sure that their mother would be horrified if she knew it. He loved children, and felt that it was madness to allow these babies to ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... catastrophe, from which he only saves himself by strong efforts of will and by the recollection of the lost love of his youth. The awful calamity which overtook him at the very moment his betrothal to Susanna was sanctioned by her father proved, in fact, his salvation, and delivered him from madness, but its effects were never eradicated. Like Hamlet he found the times out of joint; but, instead of contending with them, he patiently submitted to Fate and won for himself, if not absolute peace, at least a certain amount of tranquillity. Throughout his life he was subject to visions. ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... spirit, action, blood, and fame, Hath this destroy'd? yea, for no other cause Than being such; their honour, worth and place, Was crime enough; their statues, arms and crowns Their ornaments of triumph, chariots, gowns, And what the herald, with a learned care, Had long preserv'd, this madness will not spare. So once Sejanus' statue Rome allow'd Her demi-god, and ev'ry Roman bow'd To pay his safety's vows; but when that face Had lost Tiberius once, its former grace Was soon eclips'd; no diff'rence made—alas!— Betwixt his statue then, ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... thoughts flashed through Stratton's brain as he stood there before the cool, calculating villain watching him so keenly. Money was no object to him. Mr Brettison would let him have any amount, but it was madness to think of such a course. There was only one other—to free the innocent, pure woman he idolised from the persecution of such a wretch, and the law would ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... and again. In Manzoni's story, the saintly Frederick Borromeo preaches and acts that sublime lesson in his scene with the Innominato with compelling eloquence. In "The Truce of God," the Lady Margaret, the monk Omehr, the very woes of the Houses of Hers and Stramen, the tragic madness of the unfortunate Bertha, the blood shed in a senseless and passionate quarrel, the bells of the sanctuary bidding the warring factions sheathe the sword, incessantly proclaim the same duty. In writing his story, George Henry Miles was not only painting for us a picture ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... time is close upon you when the madness of the season Having howled itself to silence, like a Minnesota 'clone, Will at last be superseded by the still, small voice of reason, When the whelpage of your folly ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... it was not an unnatural conclusion for him to suppose that there was a channel far to the west through which these seas poured and which would lead him to the Golden Chersonesus. He put away from him that nightmare madness that he transacted on the coast of Cuba. He knew very well that he had not yet found the Golden Chersonesus and the road to India; but he became convinced that the western current would lead him there if only he followed it long enough. There was nothing insane about this theory; it was in fact ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... Jim Willis wondered uncomfortably if his leader had gone mad. He had known sudden and apparently quite inexplicable cases of madness among sled-dogs, and, like most others having any considerable experience of the trail, he had more than once had to shoot a dog upon whom madness had fallen. At all events, before striding forward to the head of his team Willis fumbled ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... young seaman, named Charles Bonner, who, [Page 39] more venturesome than the rest, had climbed above the crow's-nest to the top of the main-mast. There, seated on the truck, he had remained cheering, until in a moment of madness he raised himself into a standing position, and almost directly afterwards he fell and was instantaneously killed. On the Monday the ship arrived at Port Chalmers, and Bonner was ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... to their rule in former times. Far from captivating the will of the people, they exasperated it to such a degree, that in 1834, after the death of the king, the people of Madrid, in one of those moments of madness and irritation so frequent after the scourge of the cholera, penetrated the establishment of those holy fathers, and inhumanly sacrificed them to their fury. Even to this day the mystery which covered that sanguinary catastrophe has never entirely been revealed. One thing is certain, ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... not sure which it was," said Iredale dryly; "whether you were a fool or a madman. Now I know. I had hoped that it was madness. There is hope for a madman, but none for a fool. Thank you, Grey, for the information you have supplied me with. Your folly has defeated your ends. Remember this. You will never be able to use the 'Secret'—as you are pleased to ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... love with Audrey. He knew now that he had known it for a long time. Here was no slender sentiment, no thin romance. With every fiber of him, heart and soul and body, he loved her and wanted her. There was no madness about it, save the fact itself, which was mad enough. It was not the single attraction of passion, although he recognized that element as fundamental in it. It was the craving of a strong man who had at ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... mother again; hoping to catch a gleam of some expression and recognition, that denoted more of reason. It was in vain; the usual placidity, the usual mild affection were there; but both were blended with the unnatural halo of a mind excited to disease, if not to madness. A slight exclamation, which sounded like alarm, came from Beulah; and turning towards his sister, Willoughby saw that she was clasping Evert still closer to her bosom, with her eyes now bent on the door. Looking in the direction of the latter, ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... blaming Lalage in his heart for having suggested the arrangement. He was a supremely miserable man, at least when he was alone, fearful of his own people, terribly worried about money matters, jealous almost to the point of madness, and haunted by the dread of losing Lalage in the end. If only they could have faced the world openly half the battle would have been over, and they could, he told himself, have got through the rest somehow together. And yet since that one day of madness when he had made her promise ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... "I met a good physician, under whom I often laboured amongst the sick, and he tells me that there be poor stricken wretches from whom all the world flee in terror the moment it appears they have the distemper upon them. Many have died already untended and uncared for, whilst others have in the madness of the fever and pain burst out of the rooms in which they have been shut up, and have run up and down the streets, spreading terror in their path, till they have dropped down dead or dying, to be carried ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... a bound and was still. I grew faint with delight. "No," I said; "I have not broken my promise, Lady Alice; I have struggled nearly to madness to keep ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... those of the body, and even accommodate themselves to the most transitory changes of our physical nature. Sleep suspends many of the faculties of the vital and intellectual principle; drunkenness and disease will either temporarily or permanently derange them. Madness or idiotcy may utterly extinguish the most excellent and delicate of those powers. In old age the mind gradually withers; and as it grew and was strengthened with the body, so does it together with the body sink ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... her pair of chestnuts. She told him about the journey to France, the buying of the trousseau, and the day that Madame Savelli had said, "If you'll stay with me a year, I'll make something wonderful of you." She told him how Owen had sent her to the Bois by herself, and the madness that had risen to her brain: and how near she had been to standing up in the carriage and asking the people to listen to her. She told the tale of all this mental excitement fluently, volubly, carried away by the narrative. ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... always was—always, to the very end? With the first break of winter the excitement that had been fermenting and stewing around camp stoves overflowed into the streets, washed up the gullies, and assailed the hills. There came then a period of madness, beside which the Humboldt excitement had been mere intoxication. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... single instant show thyself," cried Starbuck; "never, never will thou capture him, old man—In Jesus' name no more of this, that's worse than devil's madness. Two days chased; twice stove to splinters; thy very leg once more snatched from under thee; thy evil shadow gone—all good angles mobbing thee with warnings:—what more wouldst thou have?—Shall we keep chasing this murdeous fish ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... that madness which all lovers have; But yet 'tis sweet and pleasing so to rave: 'Tis an enchantment, where the reason's bound; But Paradise is in the enchanted ground; A palace, void of envy, cares and strife, Where gentle ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... the world. They did nothing but say, 'I told you so!' for years, whenever anything disastrous happened—as it constantly did, for poor papa and mamma loved each other so much, and had so much fun, that they couldn't have time to be business-like. My cousins thought everything mamma did was a madness—such as sending me to the most fashionable convent school in France. As if I hadn't to be educated! And then, when the castle fell so to bits that tourists wouldn't bother with it any more, and nobody but rats would live in the Paris house unless it was repaired—and ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... John Mangles, the Major was right in every aspect of the case. To attempt to follow the sailor, to run in the darkness of night among the convicts in their leafy ambush was madness, and more than that—it was useless. Glenarvan's party was not so numerous that it could afford to sacrifice ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne |
