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More "Madman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Dennis, Johnson and Mack! Do you know what this means? It spells hanging for every mother's son of you. Don't be a madman and fire that gun, Johnson. There's still a chance, even for you. Cut loose from the pirate you're serving and join the honest party. Mack, you're not a mutineer, are you? You don't want to be hanged at ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... "I would not tell you all he said, for on the eve of a battle in which you were to fight side by side, I did not wish to make you angry with your friend and companion: but had a raging madman, just escaped from his keepers, come to offer me his hand, his conduct could not have been worse ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... unfortunate, instantly forgetting their favorite virtues, signalized themselves by the number and violence of the outrages with which, while each seemed to strive who should afflict me most, they overwhelmed me. I was impious, an atheist, a madman, a wild beast, a wolf. The continuator of the Journal of Trevoux was guilty of a piece of extravagance in attacking my pretended Lycanthropy, which was by no means proof of his own. A stranger would have thought an author ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... half afterwards. The Arab chief who came with me said it was the telegraph. The Gordons and the camels are of the same race—let them take an idea into their heads, and nothing will take it out.... It is fearful to see the Governor-General arrayed in gold clothes, flying along like a madman, with only a guide, as if he were pursued.... If I were fastidious, I should be as many weeks as I now am days on the road; I gain a great deal of prestige by these unheard-of marches. It makes the people fear me much more than ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... fugitive Slaves, and face the Enemy; Oh Villains, Cowards, deaf to all Command: by Heaven, I had my Rival in my view, and aim'd at nothing but my conquering him—now like a Coward I must fly with Cowards, or like a desperate Madman fall, thus singly, midst the numbers. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... thereof." But as he spake these words, looking towards the river, he espied where Bruin the bear lay and rested, which struck his heart with grief, and he railed against Lanfert the carpenter, saying, "Silly fool that thou art, what madman would have lost such good venison, especially being so fat and wholesome, and for which he took no pains, for he was taken to his hand; any man would have been proud of the fortune which thou neglectest." Thus fretting and ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... listen to 'em, and he jumped up and carried on like a madman. His idea was for 'em all to club together to pay the money, and to borrow it from Smith, the landlord, to go on with. They wouldn't 'ear of it at fust, but arter Smith 'ad pointed out that they might 'ave to go to jail with Henery, and said things about 'is ...
— Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection) • W.W. Jacobs
... into favour. Before the night was over, this was proved to be the fact, and, I believe, from his own confession. The King came, that evening, to see Madame de Pompadour; he spoke of this occurrence with great sang froid, and said, "The gentleman who wanted to kill me was a wicked madman; this is a ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... the influence of liquor, is a madman in every sense of the word, and his mental aberration is often of the most dangerous kind. Place him and the confirmed maniac side by side, and it would be difficult for a stranger to determine which was the most irrational ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... moon, the night is far spent; already the east changes, the stars fade; he rows like a madman to reach the land, but a blush of morning is stealing up the sky, and sunrise is rosy over shore and sea, when panting, trembling, weary, a creature accursed, a blot on the face of the day, he lands at Newcastle—too ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... "The madman of the sea," said the stolid mate. "A bad day for us when he sailed to the north'ard. He kills for the pleasure of it. Now Stede Bonnet loots such stuff as takes ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... and the whole seven can be let loose in less than that many seconds, for this is a self-cocking instrument. Now it will take you at least ten seconds to get to the door, so remain exactly where you are. That advice will strike you as wise, even if, as you think, you have to do with a madman. You asked me a minute ago how the Indian experiments were coming on, and I answered admirably. Bernard Heaton left his body this morning, and I, David Allen, am now in possession of it. Do you understand? I admit it is a little difficult for the legal mind to ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... FIRST MADMAN. Doom's-day not come yet! I 'll draw it nearer by a perspective, or make a glass that shall set all the world on fire upon an instant. I cannot sleep; my pillow is stuffed with ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... men of studious habits, but must recognize the existence of a parallel phenomenon in the case of those who have over-stimulated the Memory. In such persons Reason acts almost as feebly and as impotently as in the madman; once fairly started on any subject whatever, they have no power of self-control; they passively endure the succession of impulses which are evolved out of the original exciting cause; they are passed on from one idea to another and go steadily forward, plodding along ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... supercilious smiles. Outside of the Cafe of the Nouvelle Athenes, Monet was a laughing-stock. Manet was bad enough; but when it came to Monet, words were inadequate to express sufficient contempt. A shrug of the shoulders or a pitying look, which clearly meant, "Art thou most of madman or simpleton, or, maybe, impudent charlatan who would attract attention to himself by ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... chauffeur listened with a grin, glancing guardedly at Deering, who stared grimly ahead with an unlighted cigar in his mouth. He was not to be disturbed in his meditations upon the blackness of the world by the idiotic prattle of a madman. For half an hour Hood had been describing his adventures with a Dublin University man, whose humor he pronounced the keenest and most satisfying he had ever known. He had gathered from this person an immense fund of lore ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... curb had slipped. His anger was a frenzied runaway which he, like a madman, was riding ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... the lower in a straight line, a lean nose, and eyes perpetually bloodshot. His manner was that of a bully of the most brutal kind. He browbeat his officers, cuffed and kicked his men, in his best days a martinet, in his worst a madman. The only good point about him was that he never used the cat, which, as Bulger said, ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... best colts want breaking in. Not that we like severity; cruel mothers are not mothers, and those who are always flogging and fault-finding ought to be flogged themselves. There is reason in all things, as the madman said when he cut off ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... man's business to protect women and innocent children from the malice of a madman. To let you into a dark secret, he's got the idea that there's buried treasure somewhere on the land occupied by ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... top segment stands often one man, and only one. His joyful vision cloaks a vast sorrow. Even those who are nearest to him in sympathy do not understand him. Angrily they abuse him as charlatan or madman. So in his lifetime stood Beethoven, solitary ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... at, pitied as a madman, discouraged by the great, refused by the rich, he kept on till, in 1790, he had the first vessel on the Delaware that ever answered the purpose of a steamboat. It ran six miles an hour against the tide, ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... however, he slunk out of bed, rushed to the gaming table, and lost all the money he had with him. He tried to borrow more, but was refused. He went home. His wife had taken the precaution to lock the drawer that contained their last money. Vain obstacle! The madman broke it open, carried off two thousand crowns—to take his revenge, as he said, but in reality to ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... of Brutus is superbly portrayed in that wonderful scene with Cassius in the fourth act. With all the superiority of conscious genius he treats his confederate as a child or madman, much as ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... child do, with the knowledge she had, but give him every penny that came into her hands, lest he should be tempted on to rob their benefactress? If she told the truth (so thought the child) he would be treated as a madman; if she did not supply him with money, he would supply himself; supplying him, she fed the fire that burned him, and put him perhaps beyond recovery. Distracted by these thoughts, tortured by a crowd of apprehensions whenever he was absent, and dreading ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... lovers murmur to each other across that little abyss. He flung himself against the barriers like a madman. But his hands were futile against the tangle of ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... page after page. Then I felt the approaches of a supreme despotism that might annihilate all I had been, all I hoped to be,—that might compel me to denounce all that I had taught, to hear all that was respectable and healthy in the world jeer at me as an impostor, an enthusiast, a madman. It was not that I was simply invited to come above the ordinary doctrines of the day, and stand supported and encouraged by a few advanced minds; but I was called to place myself where the most earnest souls—unless a second birth ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... twitching up first one of his legs, then the other, and shifting as the animal aimed his hoofs, escaping every time as it were by miracle. With a mixture of temerity and presence of mind, which made us alternately look upon him as a madman and a hero, he gloried in the danger, secure of success, and of the sympathy ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... day he started up and seized his arms. His helmet, his buckler, he cast far from him; his hauberk and his clothes he rent asunder; the fragments were scattered through the wood. In fine, he became a furious madman. His insanity was such that he cared not to retain even his sword. But he had no need of Durindana, nor of other arms, to do wonderful things. His prodigious strength sufficed. At the first wrench of his mighty arm he tore up a pine- tree by the roots. Oaks, beeches, maples, whatever he ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... and comport myself like a madman in the highways and byways, but for the help of God?—That is a small matter, and a question of common decency; but you must know that without the grace of God and the virtue of His Spirit, there is no impurity, meanness, infamy, drunkenness, blasphemy, or other kind of sin to which ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... Braidwood, Harwood, Norwood, Sherrard and Sherratt (Sherwood). But, in considering the frequency of the simple Wood, it must be remembered that we find people described as le wode, i.e. mad (cf. Ger. Wut, frenzy), and that mad and madman ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... that it would be as easy to buy a soul as to invest money in the Funds. Any ordinary person would have feared ridicule, but Castanier knew by experience that a desperate man takes everything seriously. A prisoner lying under sentence of death would listen to the madman who should tell him that by pronouncing some gibberish he could escape through the keyhole; for suffering is credulous, and clings to an idea until it fails, as the swimmer borne along by the current clings to the branch that snaps in ...
— Melmoth Reconciled • Honore de Balzac
... bluish-red, with a large nose. "Then," said he, "you bloody dog, come and bow to my bishop," pointing to the best house there. I stared with astonishment, and was turning away presuming he was a cloth in the wind or some madman escaped from his keeper. "Ho, ho! but you can't go before you have bowed to my bishop," he again called out; "come with me to my house, and we shall be better acquainted." He took my arm; I thought him a character, which I afterwards found he was, and gave in ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... time I was convinced that I was entertaining either a rogue or a madman, and I cursed my stupidity in bringing the man in without having seen his face. My mind was quickly made up, and I knew what to do. Ghosts and psychic phenomena flew to the winds. If I angered the creature my life might pay the price. I must humor him till I got to the door, and then ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... never made so indifferent a figure in my life, and so we thought all; to come away, lose our infantry, our general, and our honour, and never fight for it. Duke Bernhard was utterly disconsolate for old Gustavus Horn, for he concluded him killed; he tore the hair from his head like a madman, and telling the Rhinegrave the story of the council of war, would reproach himself with not taking his advice, often repeating it in his passion. "Tis I," said he, "have been the death of the bravest general in ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... and the actions of a lunatic would be causeless. I do not dwell here upon the disastrous lapse in determinist logic. Obviously if any actions, even a lunatic's, can be causeless, determinism is done for. If the chain of causation can be broken for a madman, it can be broken for a man. But my purpose is to point out something more practical. It was natural, perhaps, that a modern Marxian Socialist should not know anything about free will. But it was ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... lumbermen's camp has leaped from his bunk. His appearance is something ghastly. His comrades spring forward to restrain him, but he throws them off. There is a furious struggle with the madman. He has the strength of a dozen men. The sturdy lumbermen at last gain the advantage over him. Suddenly he throws up his hands and pitches forward upon the floor of ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... gone Naima gave free scope to his feelings. He wept aloud, tore his beard, and threw himself upon the ground, like a madman. The servants and slaves of the house stood around in motionless astonishment, as they were not accustomed to see their master exhibiting such passionate emotion; others sought to console him, but fruitlessly; so they cried and bewailed with ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... powerful considerations among the Indians. Unhappy L'Herbier lost his senses under the horror of the night massacre. Insanity, as you may have heard, is a sacred thing in the estimation of the American savages; they regard this poor madman as a mysteriously inspired person The other priest, Penrose, had been in charge of the mission medicine-chest, and had successfully treated cases of illness among the Apaches. As a 'great medicine-man,' he too is ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... Cornelius, who had barely time to retreat behind his table to avoid the first thrust; but as Gryphus continued, with horrid threats, to brandish his huge knife, and as, although out of the reach of his weapon, yet, as long as it remained in the madman's hand, the ruffian might fling it at him, Cornelius lost no time, and availing himself of the stick, which he held tight under his arm, dealt the jailer a vigorous blow on the wrist of that hand ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... madman?" he cried. "You can only ruin me, but do you not know that I will have the power to denounce ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... for the weakness of their arguments by strongly expressing their abhorrence of the act—that is to say, by abusing it. We are told that suicide is an act of the greatest cowardice, that it is only possible to a madman, and other absurdities of a similar nature; or they make use of the perfectly senseless expression that it is "wrong," while it is perfectly clear that no one has such indisputable right over anything in the world as over his own person and life. Suicide, ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... to Dennis, "I remember poor Nat Lee, who was then upon the verge of madness, yet made a sober and witty answer to a bad poet who told him, 'It was an easy thing to write like a madman.' 'No,' said he, ''tis a very difficult thing to write like a madman, but 'tis a very easy thing to write like a fool.'" Nevertheless, the difficult song of distraction is to be heard, a light high note, in English poetry throughout two centuries at least, and one English poet lately set that ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... the madman, the fool, the hero; in short, any or everything to rescue her I love. Name your objections no longer: ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... an excitement so powerful that the girl instinctively drew away; but he went on, scarcely noticing, and with a fixed glare in his eyes that was akin to the stare of a madman. ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... show off their jesting tricks at Croydon fair, a most suitable place for them. On one occasion Hook personates a madman, accusing Mathews, 'his brother,' of keeping him out of his rights and in his custody. The whole fair collects around them, and begins to sympathise with Hook, who begs them to aid in his escape from his 'brother.' A sham escape and ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... her go, but when a peasant told me there was a bull-fight at Cordova, I set off like a madman to the spot. Lucas was pointed out to me, and on the bench close to the barrier I recognised Carmen. It was enough for me to see her to be certain how things stood. Lucas, at the first bull, did the gallant, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... addressing the conqueror; for when Scipio asked what had been his object in not only renouncing his alliance with the Romans, but in making war against them without provocation, he fully admitted "that he had indeed done wrong, and acted like a madman; but not at that time only when he took up arms against the Roman people; that was the consummation of his frenzy, not its commencement. Then it was that he is mad; then it was that he banished from his mind all regard for private friendship and public treaties, when he received a Carthaginian ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... he did so, Carew rushed in and threw his arms round the madman. In that grip even Red Mick ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... himself no person was abroad, for on the night of the Feast of Samhain none but a madman would quit the shelter of a house even if it were on fire; for whatever disasters might be within a house would be as nothing to the calamities ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... Seigneur and his accomplice to be arrested. Their trial took place before a commission which de Retz denounced, declaring that he would rather be hanged like a dog, without trial, than plead before its members. But the evidence against him was overwhelming. It was told how the wretched madman, in his insane quest for gold, had sacrificed his innocent victims on the altar of Satan, and how he had gloated over their sufferings. Finally he confessed his enormities and told how nearly a ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... toward the hut. The priest lay asleep before the door. It was better to get this madman away than to leave him free to prowl ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... ideas, as the pendulum regulates the motion of the timepiece. I do not know if this is sense or nonsense, but I am sensible that if I were in solitary confinement, without either the power of taking exercise or employing myself in study, six months would make me a madman or ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... hearsay, had raised it from 500 to 5000, and by the time she came into the country she called it 15,000. The Irishman, for such I understood him to be, was stark mad at this bait; in short, he courted me, made me presents, and ran in debt like a madman for the expenses of his equipage and of his courtship. He had, to give him his due, the appearance of an extraordinary fine gentleman; he was tall, well-shaped, and had an extraordinary address; talked as naturally of his park and his stables, of his horses, his gamekeepers, ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... upon his head, seemed to stupefy him, so that at last they were obliged to halt and weave a kind of hat out of corn and grasses, which gave him so strange an appearance that some Moors, whom they met going to their toil, thought that he must be a madman, and ran away. ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... doing so knocked his wig awry and his hat off. He bleated in my embrace; so bleats the sheep in the arms of the butcher. The whole thing, on looking back, appears incomparably reckless and absurd; I no better than a madman for offering to advance on Dudgeon, and he no better than a fool for not shooting me while I was about it. But all's well that ends well; or, as the people in these days kept singing ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... He was dark, more like a Spaniard than an Englishman, with black eyes and olive complexion. His expression was lofty and noble, but his temper was so easily aflame that the slightest cross or annoyance would set him raving like a madman, with blazing eyes and foaming mouth. I have seen him myself with the froth upon his lips and his whole face twitching with passion, like one who hath the falling sickness. Yet his other emotions were under as little control, for I have heard ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... assistance I proceeded to lift the corpse, and lay it in the coffin. The widow's son remained motionless, and, as it were, stupified during this operation: but the moment he saw me prepare the lid of the coffin so as to be screwed down, he started up with the energy and gestures of a madman. His glazed eyes seemed bursting from their sockets, and his upper lip, leaving his teeth bare, gave his mouth the appearance of a horrible and convulsive smile. He seized my arm with his whole strength; and, as I felt his grasp, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various
... had stood by him, suddenly turned, and maybe fearing lest some thunderbolt of vengeance should fall upon them from heaven and consume them all, he elbowed himself out of the crowd and hurried away. As for the wretched madman, in his raging fury, it was not the men who had forbidden him heaven whom he strove to rend and tear limb from limb, but poor, innocent, harmless Sandy Graff. The crowd swayed and jostled this way and that, and as madness begets madness, the curses that ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... "A madman," replies the keeper of the madhouse. "What whimsical ideas these lunatics have! He imagines that one can propel ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... interesting moment then, because the figure lunged at Mr. Cameron, and Mr. Cameron, stooping low and swiftly, as well as to one side, and at the same instant becoming a fighting Scot, which means a cool-eyed madman, got in one or two rather neat effects with his fists. The first took the shadow just below his breast-bone, and the left caught him at that angle of the jaw where a small cause sometimes produces a large effect. The figure sat ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... it," cried the Governor. "Ye will see when the man comes. O sheikhs and men, have we ridden together and walked puppies together, and bought and sold barley for the horses that after these years we should run riot on the scent of a madman—an ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... silence for just three minutes. Then the man who had sworn before shot out another oath. Hookway began to rave like a madman. Evans burst into sobs. Davis began to swear horribly, and cursed Gilliland for putting the ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... nations were delivered into the hand of Tsardom—can do nothing. It can do nothing because it does not exist. It has vanished for ever at last, and as yet there is no new Russia to take the place of that ill- omened creation, which, being a fantasy of a madman's brain, could in reality be nothing else than a figure out of a nightmare seated upon a monument of ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... Christ's destructive might over all foul spirits (for the 'us' means not the man and the demon, but the demon and his fellows); and the recognition of Christ's holiness, which lashes unholiness into a paroxysm of mingled despair and hate. Does this sound like a madman, or an epileptic, or like a spirit which knew more than men knew, and trembled and hated more than they could do? There is nothing more terrible than the picture, self-drawn in these spasmodic words, of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... the knives and forks, serviettes, plates and dishes. While laying the table she related all the news about the factory. "The master came from Moscow by rail and started running from floor to floor like a madman. Of course he doesn't understand anything and does it only for show—to set an example so to speak. Vassily Fedotitch treats him like a child. The master wanted to make some unpleasantness, but Vassily Fedotitch ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... her with his eyes until she disappeared. Then he started up and walked about the Luxembourg garden like a madman. It is possible that, at times, he laughed to himself and talked aloud. He was so dreamy when he came near the children's nurses, that each one of them thought him in ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Saint Bartholomew. This was the emancipation of the human mind. These were the fruits of the great victory of reason over prejudice. France had rejected the faith of Pascal and Descartes as a nursery fable, that a courtezan might be her idol, and a madman her priest. She had asserted her freedom against Louis, that she might bow down before Robespierre. For a time men thought that all the boasted wisdom of the eighteenth century was folly; and that those ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a gentle mother, my famous namesake; he was always a gentleman. The Russian Czars, Paul, Nicholas I, and Alexander III, were brought up with the knout, their preceptors used the boys at their sweet pleasure. The first turned out a madman; the second a brute; ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... moment all was excitement, and the great crowd of visitors, becoming panic-stricken, ran in a dozen different directions or hid behind exhibits. The madman, pursued by a half-dozen guards, dashed down a side aisle and, leaping over boxes and machines, made a complete circuit of the General Electric company's exhibit and then paused again before the central column. Two guards seized him, but he threw them ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... but I am quite ready to blot it out from my memory if Gordon will admit it. Gordon acted under a strong feeling of excitement when he was not master of himself, and I have no more thought of holding him strictly responsible for what he wrote at such a moment than I would a madman." ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... Is it possible then that both of you can properly apply the preconceptions to things about which you have contrary opinions? It is not possible. Can you then show us anything better towards adapting the preconceptions beyond your thinking that you do? Does the madman do any other things than the things which seem to him right? Is then this criterion sufficient for him also? It is not sufficient. Come then to something which is superior to seeming ([Greek: tou dochein]). What ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... advanced before we were able to snatch a hasty luncheon at a restaurant. A news-bill at the entrance announced "Kensington Outrage. Murder by a Madman," and the contents of the paper showed that Mr. Horace Harker had got his account into print after all. Two columns were occupied with a highly sensational and flowery rendering of the whole incident. Holmes propped it against the cruet-stand and read it while he ate. ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... jury rose to their feet as one man to show their admiration of so great a poet, and praised him marvellously both for the shrewdness of his argument and for the eloquence of his tragic verse. And indeed they were not far off unanimously condemning the accuser as the madman instead. ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... her ripe, yet modest, beauty, nor allow any other to set eyes on it, but shut her up in barren, fruitless virginity; let him say all the while that he is in love with her, and let his pallid hue, his wasting flesh and his sunken eyes confirm the statement;—is he a madman, or is he not? he should be raising a family and enjoying matrimony; but he lets this fair-faced lovely girl wither away; he might as well be bringing up a perpetual priestess of Demeter. And now ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... the democracy of Italy proved too intense, too frenzied and unbalanced. Rienzi established a republic in Rome and talked of the restoration of the city's ancient rule. But he governed like a madman or an inflated fool, and was slain in a riot of the streets.[10] Scarce one of the famous cities succeeded in retaining its republican form. Milan became a duchy. Florence fell under the sway of the Medici. In Venice a few ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... reveries, nor could understand nor care for them. It is not good for man to cherish a solitary ambition. Unless there be those around him, by whose example be may regulate himself, his thoughts, desires, and hopes will become extravagant, and he the semblance, perhaps the reality, of a madman. Reading other bosoms, with an acuteness almost preternatural, the painter failed to see the disorder of ...
— The Prophetic Pictures (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... now made two new friends, the adventurous Dumont and a Mr. Lewis. In July 1757, Lewis and Macallester went to Paris, and were much with Lord Clare (de Thomond). In December, Lord Clancarty came hunting for our spy, 'raging like a madman' after Macallester, much to that hero's discomposure, for, being as silly as he was base, he had let out the secret of his 'Clancarty Elegant Extracts.' His Lordship, in fact, accused Macallester of showing all his letters to Lord Clare, whom Clancarty hated. He then ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... was alone and in the presence of an undoubted madman—one strong enough, in spite of his years, to inflict a deadly injury, and one whom he now began to realize might have done so once before. Nevertheless, he laid his hand on the old man's arm, and, looking him calmly in the eye, said, quietly, "Come? Where, ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... well that the cripple should limp like Hephaistos: it would be well that the madman should indulge in all the fury of Ajax, that the incestuous woman should repeat the crimes of Phaedra, that the traitor should betray, that the rascal should lie, and the murderer kill, and when the piece was played, ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... speak, to defraud 'em of what they consider their rights. Then their whole system gets poisoned through and through, and they're no longer reasoning human beings. I look upon Braxton Wyatt as in a way a madman, one ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... I cannot tell you what it is, the new world I cannot tell you the mad, astounded rapture of its discovery. I shall be mad with delight before I have done, and whosoever comes after will find me in the new world a madman in rapture. ...
— Look! We Have Come Through! • D. H. Lawrence
... incident was to the moment opportune. If ever a man was in the mood for war, it was the big, square-jawed pioneer. He was reckless and desperate for the first time in his life, and he joined with Burr against the room, with the abandon of a madman. ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... she had so unfortunately been a witness, she broke her crook in an excess of indignation. But it was too much to bear. She fell upon the bank, and uttered a plaintive cry. At that cry—at sight of his poor Daphne fainting upon the grass, he rushed like a madman across the stream, buoyant with love and despair. He ran to his insensate shepherdess, regardless of the exclamations of the fair Clotilde, and raised her in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... carried all before him, and he would start up to rush to the side of the wife he loved, to clasp her to his heart, and defy earth and Hades to part them. Sometimes anger held the day, and he would pace up and down like a madman, raging at her, at himself, at ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... in your eyes, Is an imposter in a king's disguise. Do you not know me? Does no voice within Answer my cry, and say we are akin?" The Pope in silence, but with troubled mien, Gazed at the Angel's countenance serene; The Emperor, laughing said, "It is strange sport To keep a madman for thy fool at court!" And the poor baffled Jester in disgrace Was hustled ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... hung a pistol; he snatched one off the hook, and was going to revenge the injury he had received on one or both the guilty persons, when the minister, stepping between, beat down that arm which held the instrument of death, crying at the same time, 'What, are you a madman!—would you to punish them expose yourself!'—The passion with which Natura was overwhelmed was too mighty for his breast; it stopped the passage of his words, and all he could bring out was 'villain!'—'whore'—while ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... quite understood; his face, the expression of which till then had been gloomy, and hard, now expressed stupefaction, doubt and joy, and became absolutely wonderful. He began to stutter like a madman. ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... strategy and time-honored camouflage to protect a precious lot of recipes. Promptly we lost this unctuous manuscript, as we feared we would; if not deciphered today, the book has long since been discarded as being a record of the ravings of a madman. ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... to be a madman. It was not thus that ladies were rescued from calumny. But to leave her alone to face it for time indefinite was unthinkable. And, meanwhile, what would become of him severed from her and little Jean? He sighed and looked around the little room where he had been so happy, and at the sweet-faced ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... rage, or rather his wits were taken from him for three months by way of punishment, and deposited in the moon. Astolpho went to the moon in Elijah's chariot, and St. John gave him "the lost wits" in an urn. On reaching France Astolpho bound the madman, then, holding the urn to his nose, the wits returned to their nidus, and the hero was himself again. After this, the siege was continued, and the Christians were wholly successful. (See ORLANDO INNAMORATO.)—Ariosto, Orlando ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... slightest present value to me. It takes years of practice to know how to use a complicated microscope. The optician looked suspiciously at me as I made these wholesale purchases. He evidently was uncertain whether to set me down as some scientific celebrity or a madman. I think he inclined to the latter belief. I suppose I was mad. Every great genius is mad upon the subject in which he is greatest. The unsuccessful madman is disgraced, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... when they carelessly regretted their ancient faith, with a smiling and whispered assurance that a time of restitution would yet come. By all opinions and in all places he was regarded as a harmless madman, whose strange delusions and predilections were not to be combated, but to be indulged. Thus he wandered through the Christian world; regardless alike of lapse of time and change of climate; living within ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... as "Don Quixote"—that is, the common Spaniard's conception of the Knight of La Mancha, merely the simple fanatic and madman—that Mr. Stephen Masterton ever after rode all unconsciously through the streets of the Mission, amid the half-pitying, half-smiling glances of ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... by the rabble with sticks and stones, and came home all besmeared with dirt and blood. He then gave away all he had in the world, and having thus reduced himself to absolute poverty, that he might die to himself, and crucify all the sentiments of the old man, he began again to counterfeit the madman, running about the streets as before, till some had the charity to take him to the venerable John D'Avila, covered with dirt and blood. The holy man, full of the Spirit of God, soon discovered in John the motions of extraordinary ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... of Urien to Kai, "thou wert ill advised, when thou didst send that madman after the knight, for one of two things must befall him. He must either be overthrown, or slain. If he is overthrown by the knight, he will be counted by him to be an honourable person of the Court, and an eternal disgrace will it be to Arthur and his warriors. ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 1 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... considerate person he had, in a matter of minutes, become a madman. What had brought about the change? Was he still human or was he now OUT OF ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... the first instance, he had to defend almost single-handed. Many of his best friends hung back, believing the time to be not yet ripe for such a proposal. Even Edmund Burke—the life-long and passionate friend of Ireland—cried out in alarm "Will no one speak to that madman? Will no one stop that madman Grattan?" The madman, however, went on undismayed. His words flew like wild-fire over the country. He was supported in his motion by eighteen counties, by addresses from the grand juries, ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... own betrayal to the mullah. But as if the Rangar had read his mind he suddenly redoubled his efforts and King, weary to the point of sickness, had to redouble his own or die. Perhaps the jealousy helped put venom in his effort, for his strength came back to him as a madman's does. The Rangar gave a moan and let ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... "Madman, hold! what is your purpose?" whispered he. "Wave back that woman! Cast off this child! All shall be well! Do not blacken your fame, and perish in dishonour! I can yet save you! Would you bring infamy ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Another, sitting at his door on a Sunday, laughs at those passing by, and says to himself when he sees a gentleman going hawking with a bird on his wrist, "Ah! that bird will eat a hen to-day, and our children could all feast upon it!" Another is described as a sort of madman who equally despises God, the saints, the Church, and the nobility. His neighbour is an honest simpleton, who, stopping in admiration before the doorway of Notre Dame in Paris in order to admire the statues of Pepin, ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... what feelings, with what an infinitude of youthful hopes and expectations, Chopin looked forward to this journey may be gathered from some expressions in a letter of his (September 9, 1828) addressed to Titus Woyciechowski, where he describes himself as being at the time of writing "like a madman," and accounts for his madness by the announcement: "For I am going to-day to Berlin." To appear in public as a pianist or composer was not one of the objects he had in view. His dearest wishes were ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... fanatic and half a madman," Arnold replied. "You represent to him the class he loathes, the class he has hated all his life, and against which he has waged ceaseless war. He hated your marriage to his sister, and his feelings were the more embittered because it suited you to keep it private. ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... spent more cunning on the deed. Master in my own house, I contrived a device by which the man who held my fate in his hands fell on my library hearth with no one near and no sign by which to associate me with the act. Does this seem like the assertion of a madman? Go to the old chamber familiarly called "The Colonel's Own." Enter its closet, pull out its two drawers, and in the opening thus made seek for the loophole at the back, through which, if you stoop low enough, you ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... mirror," he screamed—"my own mirror that the rascal has here;" and, rushing wildly about the room, he snatched up a chair, and struck the mirror with it. The glass soon rattled down in a hundred pieces, but he went on belaboring the frame and screaming like a madman. "It hung in my house; the rogue has stolen my mirror—he has stolen my prosperity." He poured forth hideous imprecations against ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... up into my blanket, filled with strange presentiments. Again the question came up: What is the source of the influence that this madman of the mountains, this wild hunter, this leader of the black wolf pack, had on me to impel me to trail him over the mountains? Was it mental telepathy? Could he really be my father? Somehow I felt ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... attacked the king in the presence of his wife and court. To the cynical and haughty queen, born in idolatry, he probably seemed a madman of the desert,—shaggy, unwashed, fierce, repulsive. To the Israelitish king, however, with better knowledge of the ways of God, the prophet appeared armed with supernal powers, whom he both feared and hated, and desired to put out of the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... the white water below the fall, lifted to the first wave, knocking up foam out of foam, and so dived to the next, quivering like a reed shaken in the hand. Dominique straightened himself on his knees. In a moment he was working his paddle like a madman, striking broad off with it on this side and that, forcing the canoe into its course, zigzagging within a hand's breadth of rocks which, at a touch, would have broken her like glass, and across the edge ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... said Grandfather, "his life, while he retained what intellect Heaven had gifted him with, was one long mortification. At last he grew crazed with care and trouble. For nearly twenty years the men arch of England was confined as a madman. In his old age, too, God took away his eyesight; so that his royal palace was nothing to him but a ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... "Was ever madman more mad than I!" he murmured with some self- contempt—"What logical human being in his right mind would be guilty of such egregious folly! But am I logical? Certainly not! Am I in my right mind? ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... often spoken of it," said the madman, whose mind, like that of a child, could be ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... of lightning, Which clear'st all up at once! I, wretched madman! How senseless was I, and by pride how blinded To sons of earth my eyes I never lower'd. Ah! is my proud solicitude thus baffled? But she can only love ...
— The Death of Balder • Johannes Ewald
... is led, turns out to be the same which Edgar has entered, disguised as a madman, i.e., naked. Edgar comes out of the hovel, and, altho all have known him, no one recognizes him,—as no one recognizes Kent,—and Edgar, Lear, and the fool begin to say senseless things which continue with interruptions for many pages. In the middle of this ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... horrors of constant intestine strife. "We concluded from our observations," notes Farragut in his journal, "that he was a man of uncommon mind and energy, and, as a general thing, reasonable; but on the subject of secret societies he was a madman, if we might judge from his furious denunciation of them." They constituted, indeed, the one resource of the cowed Unitarios, and were the chief danger then threatening him. "We had an excellent opportunity ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... and forks, serviettes, plates and dishes. While laying the table she related all the news about the factory. "The master came from Moscow by rail and started running from floor to floor like a madman. Of course he doesn't understand anything and does it only for show—to set an example so to speak. Vassily Fedotitch treats him like a child. The master wanted to make some unpleasantness, but Vassily Fedotitch soon shut ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... went home, with a deadly terror gnawing at their souls; and that evening Jurgis came home and heard their story, and that was the end. Jurgis was sure that they had been swindled, and were ruined; and he tore his hair and cursed like a madman, swearing that he would kill the agent that very night. In the end he seized the paper and rushed out of the house, and all the way across the yards to Halsted Street. He dragged Szedvilas out from his supper, and together ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... Armand fought like a madman; he wanted to reach that gate. He shouted, he laughed, and he cried, until one of the soldiers in a fit of rage struck him ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... Nashe's pamphlets (which perhaps furnished our author with his instance), may serve to confirm the observation: "The causes conducting unto wrath are as diverse as the actions of a man's life. Some will take on like a madman, if they see a pig come to the table. Sotericus, the surgeon, was cholerick at the sight of sturgeon," &c. Pierce Pennylesse his ...
— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare
... say another word! You've talked like a madman. See! Look what you've done! Oh, Jane!" he caught sight of the girl on the landing ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... aroused at midnight by a piercing yell, and to find a tall, half-naked fellow, with wild eyes and a face plastered with yellow mud, standing over me, brandishing a heavy club. Though a revolver was at hand, it was useless; for I saw at a glance that I had to deal with a madman. After a severe tussle, Gerome and I managed to throw out the unwelcome visitor and bar the door, though we saw him for an hour or more prowling backwards and forwards in the moonlight in front of the bungalow, muttering to himself, waving his arms about, and breaking every now and then ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... of cartridges and distributed them to the men; and once when, after a desperate struggle, our troops were driven from the crest, and the enemy's flag waved above it, the men were rallied, and I rode up the hill with them, waving my hat, and shouting like a madman. Thus we charged, and the enemy only saved his colors by throwing them down the hill. However much we may say of those who held command, justice compels the acknowledgment that no officer exhibited more courage on that occasion than the humblest ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... blindness, and rebel against a seductiveness not founded on reason. This is not all. I have such a high and subtle idea of harmony, that nothing can ever realize my ideal. But you will call me a madman. Listen to me. A woman, in my opinion, may have an exquisite soul and a charming body, without that body and that soul being in perfect accord with one another. I mean that persons who have noses made in a certain shape are not to be expected to ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... attacked by a dreadful disease in the bowels, which so distressed him that he roared like a madman; and his friends, which is too often the case with the heathen, left him to suffer and die alone. The two Christians whom he would have ruined then went and took care of him till he died, two or three days after his attack. The ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... were pending, Richard's mind was in a state of dreadful suspense and agitation. Sometimes he sank into the greatest depths of despondency and gloom, and sometimes he raved like a madman, walking to and fro in his apartment in his phrensy, ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... as she would upon a madman, and perhaps, after all, it was not so strange that she should do so, I being footsore and weary and all covered with the stains and dust of travel—or perhaps it was merely my so strange form of address which startled her. However, she retreated several steps toward the ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... optics are as cheerful as the day that lends them light, and they love to salute the setting sun, as if a hundred beacons, level above level, were kindled along a mountain side. He might safely be pronounced a madman who preferred an avenue of trees to a street. Why, trees have no chimneys; and, were you to kindle a fire in the hollow of an oak, you would soon be as dead as a Druid. It won't do to talk to us of sap, and the circulation of sap. A grove in winter, hole and branch—leaves it has none—is ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... "unassailable"—to exchange the soul of a Viking for that of a New Yorker, that of the quick pike for that of the lazy carp whose fat back grows moss covered in a dangerless pond—that must never become the wish of a German. And for the securing of more comfortable frontier protection only a madman would risk the life that is flourishing in power and wealth. Now we know what the war is for—not for French, Polish, Ruthenian, Esthonian, Lettish territories, nor for billions of money; not in order to ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... melancholy considerations, and to make me utterly dissatisfied with the life I now lead, and the life which I foresee I shall lead. I am angry and envious, and dejected and frantic, and disregard all present things, just as becomes a madman to do. I am infinitely pleased (though it is a gloomy joy) with the application of Dr. Swift's complaint, 'that he is forced to die in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.' My soul is no more fitted to the figure I make, than a cable rope to a cambric needle; I cannot bear to see the advantages ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... her crook in an excess of indignation. But it was too much to bear. She fell upon the bank, and uttered a plaintive cry. At that cry—at sight of his poor Daphne fainting upon the grass, he rushed like a madman across the stream, buoyant with love and despair. He ran to his insensate shepherdess, regardless of the exclamations of the fair Clotilde, and raised her in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... so small as not to involve duties from each member to the rest; duties to which a sound human mind is requisite. Neither an idiot nor a madman can be a normal citizen. The former ranks as in permanent childhood; the latter, being generally dangerous, must be classed with criminals. A dehumanized brain impairs a citizen's rights because it ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... battle 'gins Of the Smith's Hound of Red Branch.[a] Bound to meet this madman's rage; This the name that's ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... overcome all the obstacles around the South Pole—even more unattainable than the North Pole, which still hadn't been reached by the boldest navigators— wasn't this an absolutely insane undertaking, one that could occur only in the brain of a madman? ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... directly to Aladdin's palace; as he approached he began crying, "Who will change old lamps for new ones?" As he went along, a crowd of children collected, who hooted, and thought him, as did all who chanced to be passing by, a madman or a fool, to offer to change new ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... wrong, and even now I scarcely know how to decide. Those who blamed me said I was Sorillo's guest, and should not have abused his confidence. Others urged that I was bound, if possible, to prevent him putting a man to death unlawfully. All, however, agreed that none but a madman would have embarked on so ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... chooses the career of outlawry is either a natural fool or an innocent madman. The term outlaw has a varied meaning. A man may be an outlaw, and yet a patriot. There is the outlaw with a heart of velvet and a hand of steel; there is the outlaw who never molested the sacred sanctity of any man's home; there is the outlaw who never dethroned a woman's honor, ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... precipitate steps in the course he had taken, jumping across brooks and hardly glancing at surrounding objects, almost as a bull stung by a hornet might do. The countrymen he met, the market-gardeners who saw him pass, very possibly took him for a madman. ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... the rogue cried. "No, no, sir, you are a madman!" He looked round at the police. "Take care what you do!" he cried. "This is a raving maniac. I had business just now with Sir Charles Vandrift, who quitted the room as these gentlemen entered. This person is mad, ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... and again," replied the farmer; "but the whole generation of the Sandfords have been brought up to labour with their own hands for these hundred years; and during all that time there has not been a dishonest person, a gentleman, or a madman amongst us. And shall I be the first to break the customs of the family, and perhaps bring down a curse on all our heads? What could I have more if I were a lord or a macaroni, as I think you call them? I have plenty of victuals and ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... trust them. At first, when he divulged his enemy's identity, they were thunderstruck; mere mention of Henry Nelson's name rendered them speechless and caused them to regard their employer as a harmless madman, but as he unfolded his plans in greater detail they listened with growing respect. The idea seized them finally. In the first place, it was sufficiently fantastic to appeal to their imaginations, for they ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... the wild air of a prophet, completed the growing conviction of the listeners that they really had a madman to deal with, and Professor Pludder, having recovered his self—command, rose to ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... Fogg, having ascertained their position, called Passepartout, and ordered him to go for Captain Speedy. It was as if the honest fellow had been commanded to unchain a tiger. He went to the poop, saying to himself, "He will be like a madman!" ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... for the old man's death, and not demand his throne; for it was somewhat better to succeed to the dead than to rob the living. Yet, that he might not be thought to make over the honours of his ancient freedom, like a madman, to the possession of another, he would accept the challenge with his own hand. The envoys answered that they knew that their king would shrink from the mockery of fighting a blind man, for such an absurd mode of combat was thought more shameful than honourable. It ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... how they please. You know that as well as I, Monsieur. To run the risk of throwing us all into such a state of emotion and threatening his own future, as he has done, it would seem that Jean must be a madman, and he is by no means that. Had he known sooner of this situation, do you think that he would not have confided in me, and that I would have been so stupid—yes, I—as not to avert this disaster? Why, I tell you it is as clear ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... self-congratulation a tall figure rose from the ground, and fear compelled me into courage. For throughout this long interview more and more I felt an extremely unpleasant conviction. That stranger might not be a downright madman, nor even what is called a lunatic; but still it was clear that upon certain points—the laws of this country, for instance, and the value of rank and station—his opinions were so outrageous that his reason ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... sympathy, "Have you not only one little piece of ground, while I have three fields left?" And when he admitted that it was so, he went on to say, "Ought I not then to condole with you rather than you with me?" For it is the act of a madman to distress oneself over what is lost, and not to rejoice at what is left; but like little children, if one of their many playthings be taken away by anyone, throw the rest away and weep and cry out, so we, if we are assailed by fortune in some one point, wail ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... to do with her ripe, yet modest, beauty, nor allow any other to set eyes on it, but shut her up in barren, fruitless virginity; let him say all the while that he is in love with her, and let his pallid hue, his wasting flesh and his sunken eyes confirm the statement;—is he a madman, or is he not? he should be raising a family and enjoying matrimony; but he lets this fair-faced lovely girl wither away; he might as well be bringing up a perpetual priestess of Demeter. And now you understand my feelings when one set of people kick ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... be made. In the one case the reader is utterly at the mercy of the poet respecting what imagery or diction he may choose to connect with the passion." But is this a poet, of whom a poet is speaking? No surely! rather of a fool or madman: or at best of a vain or ignorant phantast! And might not brains so wild and so deficient make just the same havoc with rhymes and metres, as they are supposed to effect with modes and figures of speech? How is the reader ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... seed-time and harvest of agriculture. "If we only behold," says he, "the actions of the husbandman in the seed time, when he casteth away much good corn into the ground, we shall account him rather a madman than a husbandman. But when we consider his labours in the harvest, which is the end of his endeavours, we shall find the worth and plentiful ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... he said; "and you are very beautiful—and he is young—and half a Greek." She blushed, and the grim senator took her hand. "May the gods grant, my daughter, that your sacrifice be not for nothing. You have spoken wisdom; but he—he is a madman. As for me, I am as one ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... they rowed, the flashing of the water about their oars only half convinced Madden that a similar cause underlay the bizarre illumination on the schooner. The American's mind clung to the idea that there was somebody on board the Minnie B, a madman, possibly, who in some unknown way produced this ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... Charles has behaved like a madman; and his acts are no more to be respected than the ravings of insanity. Charles V. received the imperial crown from the head of the Church; in abdicating, that crown could only return to the sacred hands which conferred ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... back and let fly a vigorous kick in the stomach. He tumbles, carrying with him a chair that rebounds; the dormitory is awakened; Francis runs up in his shirt to lend me assistance; the sister arrives; the nurses dart upon the madman, whom they flog and succeed with great difficulty in putting in bed again. The aspect of the dormitory was eminently ludicrous; to the gloom of faded rose, which the dying night lamps had spread around them, succeeded the flaming of three lanterns. The black ceiling, with its rings of ...
— Sac-Au-Dos - 1907 • Joris Karl Huysmans
... and clung tightly to him, thus avoiding punishment for the moment. The two were well matched in height and weight; but the skipper was the stronger in both body and heart. Also, he seemed now to be possessed of the nerve-strength of a madman. He lifted his clinging antagonist clear of the floor, shook him and wrenched at him, and at last broke his hold and flung him against the wall. Dick landed on his feet, steadied himself for a moment and then dashed back to the encounter; but he was met by the skipper's fist—and that was ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... he was like a madman. He raved and swore and frothed like a churn, running here, there and everywhere nearly collapsing with rage, ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... by far the largest number of hallucinations it is impossible to prove that there is no modicum of external agency co-operating in the production of the effect. It is presumable, indeed, that many, if not all, hallucinations have such a basis of fact. Thus, the madman who projects his internal thoughts outwards in the shape of external voices may, for aught we know, be prompted to do so in part by faint impressions coming from the ear, the result of those slight stimulations to which the organ is always exposed, even in profound silence, and which ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... are not to be circumscribed by dress and fashion. Their seat is deeper (in the soul), and is altogether independent of such trivial accretions. In point of expression, I never saw the face of the madman (in the "Rake's Progress") exceeded in any picture, ancient or modern. "It is a face" (Lamb says) "that no one that has seen can easily forget." It is, as he argues, human suffering stretched to its utmost endurance. I cannot forbear ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... they inscribed their initials upon the walls of that melancholy room, to the moment when, with a howl like a madman, Heathcliff drags her from her grave, their affiliation ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... who had been detained by the orders of Mustapha, was ordered to appear. During his confinement, Mustapha had been informed by his people that he was "visited by Alla;" or in other words, that he was a madman. Nevertheless, Mustapha—who was afraid to release a man (or rather, a story) without the consent of the pacha, and could not send for the renegade to supply any defalcation—considered that, upon the whole, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... only the metaphysics of physics; nature is everything, and I give you leave to consider as a madman whoever tells you that he has made a new discovery in metaphysics. But if I went on, my dear, I might appear rather obscure to you. Proceed slowly, think; let your maxims be the consequence of just reasoning, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... right,' he muttered to himself. 'She will sink under it; we must all sink under it. Madman! you know not what you ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... grim reply, "but the next time I get my hands on him there will be a different story to tell. Why, he's a madman ...
— The Boy Allies in Great Peril • Clair W. Hayes
... and Count Hannibal swore furiously, suspecting treachery. But he was no madman, and at the moment the least reflection would have sent him about to seek another road. Unfortunately, as he hesitated a man sprang with a gesture of warning to his horse's head and seized it; and Tavannes, mistaking the motive of the act, lost his self- ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... conceal and I told him quite fully all that I knew. Actually, I believe if Jermyn had been there, it would have taken both Kennedy and myself to prevent violence. As it was I had a veritable madman to deal with while Kennedy gathered up leisurely the wireless outfit he had installed on the deck of Waldon's yacht. It was only by telling him that I would certainly demand that Kennedy leave him behind if he did not control his feelings ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... the day when the ruler, who had bestowed freedom on millions of his people, met his reward in the shattering bomb which tore him to fragments, she had been in St. Petersburg. A king, who had been assassinated, she had known well and had well liked; an empress, whom a frenzied madman had stabbed to the ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... not a great many competitors of the highest quality. His Dick, also, was a remarkably good dog. Earlier specimens which have left their names in the history of the breed were Hinks's Old Dutch, who was, perhaps, even a more perfect terrier than the same breeder's Madman and Puss. ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... and her struggles within the coppered archway of the vault! Oh, whither shall I fly? Will she not be here anon? Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard her footstep on the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart? Madman!"—here he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his soul—"Madman! I tell you that she now stands without ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... whether latent and unsuspected, the taint might not be in the blood and brains of the man to whom she was about to bind herself for life? Who was to tell when it might break forth, in what horrible shape it might show itself? To be the widowed wife of a madman—what wealth and title on earth could compensate for that? She shivered as she sat, partly with the chill night air, partly with the horror of the thought. In her youth, and health, and beauty, her predecessor had been struck down, ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... Believing that, if neglected, the flames would spread to some vital part, I seized a water-pitcher and dashed the contents upon you. Up you instantly sprang, with a theological expression on your lips, and engaged me in violent single combat. "Madman!" roared I, "is it thus you treat one who has saved your life?" Falling upon the floor, with a black eye, you at once consented to be reconciled; and, from that hour forth, we were both members of the same ...
— Punchinello Vol. 2, No. 28, October 8, 1870 • Various
... becoming. But the old fool has rushed out and shouted his grievances to everybody. I suppose you've heard of the ridiculous quarrel we had coming away from Carpledon. The whole town knows of it. There never was a more ridiculous scene. He stood in the middle of the road and screamed like a madman. It's my belief he is going mad! A precious lot I had to do with that. I was as amiable as possible. But you can't deal with him. His conceit and his obstinacy ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... is hard up," interrupted Hamilton, "for he rang my front door bell at five o'clock this morning, and when I let him in he went on like a madman and begged me to let him have several thousands, or Richmond Hill would be sold over ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... did, but the others took not the least notice of his signal. He stamped and swore like a madman, and I went hot with shame to think of what opinion the Frenchmen must have of us. And with our rigging all shot away we had to lay by and look at them as they brought to, remanned their own shattered ship, and took her in tow. Sure never ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... not argue with a madman." The face of Achmet the Ropemaker was not more pleasant than ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... than it was prudent to have divulged in Vienna, and his enemies were also those of Wallenstein. A defeat might have been forgiven in Vienna, but this disappointment of their hopes they could not pardon. "What should I have done with this madman?" he writes, with a malicious sneer, to the minister who called him to account for this unseasonable magnanimity. "Would to Heaven the enemy had no generals but such as he. At the head of the Swedish army, he will render us much better service than ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... for ever, day and night the same, Years flying swiftly nowhere, like a game Played random by a madman, without end Or any reasoned object but to spend What is unspendable—Eternal Woe! O Weariness of Time that fast or slow Goes never further, never has in view An ending to the thing it seeks to do, And so does nothing: merely ebb and flow, From nowhere into nowhere, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... annoy him, I began about you, and that—that we loved each other. For we do, Christian, don't we?" He had her hands in his, he crushed them in his anxiety, his eyes implored her. "Then suddenly he began to abuse me like a madman! My religion, my politics, my treachery to my class—I can't tell you what he didn't say! And then he swore he'd rather see you dead than married to me. I don't know what I said—nothing, I think; he began to look as if he were dying himself, and I rang the ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... old friend, who had accompanied him so far and until now had stood by him, suddenly turned, and maybe fearing lest some thunderbolt of vengeance should fall upon them from heaven and consume them all, he elbowed himself out of the crowd and hurried away. As for the wretched madman, in his raging fury, it was not the men who had forbidden him heaven whom he strove to rend and tear limb from limb, but poor, innocent, harmless Sandy Graff. The crowd swayed and jostled this way and that, ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... to an Italian correspondent, "the courage with which you have dared to say that Dante was a madman[6] and his work a monster. . . . There are found among us and in the eighteenth century, people who strive to admire imaginations so stupid and barbarous." A French translation of the "Divine Comedy" had been printed by the Abbe ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... me anything, and was fonder of me every time we met, while I, although I did not know it for a long time, was less fond of her. She knew how to revive my love, however. Some nights she would not meet me, and I would be like a madman. Other nights she would meet me, but not let me raise her dress. She would lie on me, on a moonlit night, and her young face in shadow like a siren's in its frame of hair, merely to kiss me. But what kisses! Slow, cold kisses changing to clinging, passionate ones. She would leave my mouth to look ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... His is poems are not poems about little children who win good-conduct prizes. They are poems of the agonies of life, poems about tragic severance, poems about failure. They range through the virtues and the vices with the magnificent boldness of Dostoevsky's novels. The madman, the atheist, the adulterer, the traitor, the murderer, the beast, are portrayed in them side by side with the hero, the saint, and the perfect woman. There is every sort of rogue here half-way between good and evil, and ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... your muscle into an oar or a cricket bat and you are a hero; put your muscle into a spade and you are a madman." ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... Trejago remembers, after raging and shouting like a madman between those pitiless walls, is that he found himself near the river as the dawn was breaking, threw away his boorka and ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... possession. After many miserable hours of uncertainty, spent in this place, I said to myself, 'I will put myself in the place of this glass, and it shall be an omen whether our union be possible or not. I will go; I will seek for death; not like a madman, but like a man who still hopes that he may live. Ottilie shall be the prize for which I fight. Ottilie shall be behind the ranks of the enemy; in every intrenchment, in every beleaguered fortress, I shall hope to find her, and to win her. I will do wonders, with the wish to survive ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... had invested largely, at the advice of some friends, in the lands of the great North-West, but had lost a great deal by the speculation. In his despair, the first friend he thought of was myself. He got around me in his old way, and before he left my office that morning I had loaned him, madman that I was, the sum of five thousand dollars, without any question whatever of security. He swore to me that I might rely on him to deal honestly with me, and, blinded by the old infatuation, I gave him a cheque for the amount and sent him away contented. ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... saved Frederick the Great was the death of the Tsarina Elizabeth (1762) and the accession to the Russian throne of Peter III, a dangerous madman but a warm admirer of the military prowess of the Prussian king. Peter in brusque style transferred the Russian forces from the standard of Maria Theresa to that of Frederick and restored to Prussia the conquests of ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... much a part of their personalities that without them they cease to be persons and have no status in human society. Except under very exceptional circumstances a man who appeared without clothing would be treated as a madman, and hunted like a ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... had turned during the ride from an angry, indignant prisoner to a joyful madman, and was now tearfully and effusively humble in his petitions for pardon and in his thanks. Their benefactor, as they were pleased to call him, hurried them into the waiting train and ran to purchase their ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... remarkable feature of their malady that when one takes to his peculiar flight, whatever it be, the others immediately take the hint and go off at score. Hence my agreeable adventure: the Bengal tiger being a Liverpool merchant, and the most vivacious madman in England; while the hour-glass and the Moulah were both on an experimental tour to see whether they should not be ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... A madman! A madman, or possessed by some evil spirit, Paul cried out, and rising to his feet he rushed out of the cenoby, but nobody rose to detain him; some of the Essenes raised their heads, and a moment after the interruption ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... An unfrocked monk against us Leads rascal troops, a truant friar dares write Threats to us! Then 'tis time to tame the madman! Trubetskoy, set thou forth, and thou Basmanov; My zealous governors need help. Chernigov Already by the rebel is besieged; Rescue ...
— Boris Godunov - A Drama in Verse • Alexander Pushkin
... I were a man, and capable of loving, I could love no other way; because I suppose love to be a madness, and the sublimest and the most despicable of states. And I admire Moore for that flash of the fallen angelic—it is the sentiment of a hero and a madman—too base and too noble for ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... governor still intend to go to M. Fouquet?" suddenly called out the major from below. Baisemeaux ran to the window like a madman. "No, no," he exclaimed in a state of desperation, "who the deuce is speaking of M. Fouquet? are you drunk below there? why am I interrupted when I am ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Prince, who always releases the prisoners from their fetters during the great festivals; one wretched individual, however, we noticed more heavily manacled than even a murderer of the worst kind. He was, we were informed, a dangerous madman, though, poor devil, he looked harmless enough, slouching round and round the yard. The primitive custom of confining dangerous lunatics (for the harmless are allowed their full liberty outside) in the common prison is soon to be done away ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... dismayed,' commented the miscreant, no longer a madman now to my thinking, but a very dangerous character indeed. 'I am not surprised. Now prepare yourself for a story that will freeze the very marrow in your bones. Know that I am from Daibul, the city by the ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... as I appeared to be; that, therefore, according to the countryman's rule, you have not so much the advantage over me as you may think you have: that the real object of what anger I really felt was rather the situation in which I found myself than you or anybody; but that, as none but a madman would go to quarrel with a nonentity called a situation, it was necessary for me to look out for somebody who, somehow or other, was connected ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... as a "very dear friend." According to Vasari, Topolino thought himself an able sculptor, but was in reality extremely feeble. He blocked out a marble Mercury, and begged the great master to pronounce a candid opinion on its merits. "You are a madman, Topolino," replied Michelangelo, "to attempt this art of statuary. Do you not see that your Mercury is too short by more than a third of a cubit from the knees to the feet? You have made him a dwarf, and spoiled the ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... Was Every thing by starts, and Nothing long: But, in the course of one revolving Moon, Was Chymist, Fidler, States-Man, and Buffoon: Then all for Women, Painting, Rhiming, Drinking; Besides ten thousand Freaks that dy'd in thinking. Blest Madman, who coud every hour employ, With something New to wish, or to enjoy! Railing and praising were his usual Theams; And both (to shew his Judgment) in Extreams: So over Violent, or over Civil, That every Man, with him, was God or Devil. In squandring Wealth was his peculiar ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... and guardsmen, who are not unfrequently called upon to preserve the peace he threatens to disturb. Dearly does he love his legitimate brandy, and dearly does it make him pay for the insane frolics it incites him to perpetrate, to the profit of certain saloons, and danger of persons. Madman under the influence of his favourite drink, a strange pride besets his faculties, which is only appeased with the demolition of glass and men's faces. For this strange amusement he has become famous and feared; and as the light of his own besotted countenance makes its appearance, citizens ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... listening! Yes! The riot was quelled at once by the totally unexpected fashion of the speech. Was this fellow a madman or a hoaxer? Whoever he was, he kept his audience in hand. There was not a whisper in the meeting in which but a few minutes ago the storm was ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... this extraordinary letter twice or thrice. At first he was tempted to throw it aside as the production of a madman, so little did "the scraps from play-books," as he termed the poetical quotation, resemble the correspondence of a rational being. On a re-perusal, however, he thought that, amid its incoherence, he could discover something ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... true, it is the language of a madman, but one who knows very well what he says. For he is right; he dares utter what all my marshals are thinking, and gives utterance to their thoughts, because he imagines that my friendship for him gives him that right. The fool! I shall ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... one try this kind of experiment on me or mine! Though I have observed that by a felicitous arrangement, the man with the whip puts it into use with an old horse commonly. I once knew a fine specimen of the boilingly passionate, desperately respectable on the Eastern principle that reverences a madman—and this fellow, whom it was to be death to oppose, (some bloodvessel was to break)—he, once at a dinner party at which I was present, insulted his wife (a young pretty simple believer in his awful immunities ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... you to get mad, and fly at me like a madman," replied Archy, coldly, as he placed his handkerchief ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... gazing at him with her wide-open, beautiful eyes; underneath her protests and her terror, she was thrilling with awe at this amazing madman she loved. "They will kill ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... sharply upon the wheels, shrill whistlings from the 266 sounded the stop signal, and past the end of the slowing service-car a trackman ran frantically up the line toward the following passenger, yelling and swinging his stripped coat like a madman. ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... those devils who'd crushed Belgium. Of course there were plenty there ready to die in the last ditch for honor and the country, but the mob was with the speakers. Quite insane with terror the mob was. And I spoke aloud to Kitchener, like a madman of a sort also, begging him to come from another world and ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... have left him, not to return until the general closing in at the death-bed. But there were marks of the violence of the passions of which he was the victim in his altered mien and deportment. Even before the event that has fixed upon him an infamous notoriety, he acted at times like a madman in the indulgence of his whims and coarse tastes. Sir Thomas Smith, five months before the fatal St. Bartholomew's Day, wrote of "his inordinate hunting, so early in the morning and so late at night, without sparing frost, snow or rain, and ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... repent; my master was the most passionate madman I ever beheld; and, when in a passion, the most mischievous. His cattle, his horses, his servants, his wife, his children, were each of them in turn ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... be content to act as his agent. But then the Wilbrahams had been magnates in the Bursley region for generations, up till the final Wilbraham smash in the late seventies. The town hungered to see those huge moustaches and that peculiar eye. In addition to Denry, only one person had seen the madman, and that person was Nellie Cotterill, who had been viewing the half-built house with Denry one Sunday morning when the madman had most astonishingly arrived upon the scene, and after a few minutes vanished. The building ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... among the people. There were some who had greater honour shown to them than even to the king himself. His father had an elder sister, of equal rank to himself, and she married a chief who came from Fejee. By him she had a son, the silent chief Latoolibooloo, who was looked upon as a madman, and two daughters. The king met one of these women on board the Resolution, and would not venture to eat in her presence. On afterwards encountering Latoolibooloo, the king bent down and touched the silent prince's feet with the ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... by God. He had to break with the faith of his fathers; he had to deny the gods who were worshipped by his friends and neighbours. Like all the friends of God, he had to hear himself called an infidel and atheist, and in our own days he would have been looked upon as a madman for attempting to slay his son. It was through special faith that Abraham received his special revelation, not through instinct, not through abstract meditation, not through ecstatic visions. We want to know more of that man than we do; but, even with the little ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... threat of nuclear weapons to all mankind. Strategic defenses that threaten no one could offer the world a safer, more stable basis for deterrence. We must also remember that SDI is our insurance policy against a nuclear accident, a Chernobyl of the sky, or an accidental launch or some madman who ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... expected than asserted that the Emperor was dead, but an estafette from Russia would reveal the truth, resuscitate Napoleon, and overwhelm with confusion Mallet and his proclamation. His enterprise was that of a madman. The French were too weary of troubles to throw themselves into the arms of, Mallet or his associate Lahorie, who had figured so disgracefully on the trial of Moreau., Yet, in spite of the evident impossibility of success, it must be confessed that considerable ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... won't have it!" The prisoner was on his feet, trembling with anger. "You shall not swear my life away in such fashion! To bring a madman, whom I have only met once in my life, to ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... left him there, and warned him not to come back. I have broken with him, after a desperate quarrel, such as one might have expected with such a madman. And I'm glad to think that he is in my debt now, and that I have been the means of keeping him out of more ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... received a very insolent letter from him in reply. The lead-pipe contract will be litigated, and Smith has written a letter full of the bitterest malignity against me to the Secretary of the Treasury. He seems perfectly reckless and acts like a madman, and all for what? Because the condition of my pipe and the imperfect insulation of my wires were such that it became necessary to stop trenching on this account alone, but, taken in connection with the advanced state of the season, when it was impossible to carry on my ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... into such excesses of savage cruelty and monstrous vice that he was thought to be half-deranged. He was fond of seeing with his own eyes the infliction of tortures. His wild extravagance in the matter of public games and in building drained the resources of the empire. After four years, this madman was cut down by two of his guards whom he ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... better authority than vulgar rumor for this story. According to Robles, the cardinal, after this bravado, twirled his cordelier's belt about his fingers, saying, "he wanted nothing better than that to tame the pride of the Castilian nobles with!" But Ximenes was neither a fool nor a madman; although his over-zealous biographers make him sometimes one, and sometimes the other. Voltaire, who never lets the opportunity slip of seizing a paradox in character or conduct, speaks of Ximenes as one "qui, toujours vetu en cordelier, met son faste a fouler sous ses sandales le faste Espagnol." ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... it surely had a charm. It was in the first half that I got away for my run, and as we came out of the field house at the start of the second half, whom should I see but my friend, yelling like a madman— ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... fatigue: his breast was affected, his respiration difficult. After a painful sigh, he said to the duke: "The army performed prodigies; a panic terror seized it; all was lost.... Ney conducted himself like a madman; he got my cavalry massacred for me.... I can say no more.... I must have two hours rest, to enable me to set about business: I am choking here:" and he laid his hand ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... the face; likewise with quite red hair, and indeed her goodman had the same. But though I diligently admonished her out of God's Word, she made no answer until at last I said, 'Wilt thou unbewitch thy goodman (for I saw from the window how that he was raving in the street like a madman), or wilt thou that I should inform the magistrate of thy deeds?' Then, indeed, she gave in, and promised that he should soon be better (and so he was); moreover she begged that I would give her some bread ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... upon him as he leaped, and in the ensuing struggle the three rolled together on the deck. He fought them like a madman, using his bandaged arm, his feet, his head. He was powerful with the fictitious strength of desperation and thwarted intent. But the two men got the upper hand, and, astride the prostrate form, the detective forced on the handcuffs. ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... lunatic, the lover, and the poet Are of imagination all compact. One sees more devils than vast hell can hold; The madman. While the lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt. The poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heav'n to earth, from earth to heav'n; And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shape, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... given character to the masqueraders. Be sure they were grotesque. There were much glare and glitter and piquancy and phantasm—much of what has been since seen in "Hernani." There were arabesque figures with unsuited limbs and appointments. There were delirious fancies such as the madman fashions. There was much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust. To and fro in the seven chambers there stalked, in fact, a multitude of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... his mind her for whom he is in such distress; it is she who has filched his heart away, and grants him no rest upon his bed, because, forsooth, he delights to recall the beauty and the grace of her who, he has no hope, will ever bring him any joy. "I may as well hold myself a madman." he exclaims. "A madman? Truly, I am beside myself, when I dare not speak what I have in mind; for it would speedily fare worse with me (if I held my peace). I have engaged my thoughts in a mad emprise. But is it not better to keep ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... other, just at this moment, I noticed the steam at the end of that blow-off pipe, and all the devils in hell whispered at once 'One move of your hand and your revenge is complete.' I wasn't Steadman Hopkins then, I was a madman bent on murder, and I reached down for that handle, holding on by the throttle with my left hand. The cock had some mud in it and I opened it wide before it blew out and then with a roar and a shriek it burst—and the crime ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... a prelate of the kingdom of Ireland, who is a person of excellent wit and learning, he offered a notion applicable to the subject we were then upon, which I took to be altogether new and right. He said, that the difference betwixt a madman and one in his wits, in what related to speech, consisted in this; that the former spoke out whatever came into his mind, and just in the confused manner as his imagination presented the ideas: The latter only expressed ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... you are a neologian, and he is going to have you up before the court for this. He knows that such a charge is readily received by the world, as I myself know too well; for when I speak in the assembly about divine things, and foretell the future to them, they laugh at me and think me a madman. Yet every word that I say is true. But they are jealous of us all; and we must be brave and ...
— Euthyphro • Plato
... Tyndall had to start now. They labored to record a work-schedule, listing names, outlining telegrams, drinking coffee, as Dan swore at his dead cigar like old times once again, and grinned like a madman as the plans ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse
... Inn-fields, thinking to have come into the fields to have seen the prentices; but here we found these fields full of soldiers all in a body, and my Lord Craven commanding of them, and riding up and down to give orders like a madman. And some young men we saw brought by soldiers to the guard at White Hall, and overheard others that stood by say that it was only for pulling down the brothels; and none of the bystanders finding fault ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... see any. There may be some in the bath. I didn't wait to look.... Blinded by the steam, deafened by the noise, you make a rush for the door. This seems to have been moved. You feel all over the walls, like a madman. In the frenzy of despair—it's astonishing how one clings to life—you hurl yourself at the bath and turn on both taps.... As if by magic the steam disappears, the roaring subsides, and two broad streams of pure cold ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... . . . lifted . . ." Suddenly he recalled the figure he had seen moving upon the hummock, and with a groan he set his face northward and gave chase. Oh, he was mad for certain! He ran like a madman— floundering, slipping, plunging in his clumsy moccasins. "Take us the foxes, the little foxes . . . My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels were moved for him . . . I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem . . . I charge you ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... wars are commemorated in the names of Napoleon Avenue, and Austerlitz and Jena Streets, and the visit of Lafayette in the naming for him of both a street and an avenue. But perhaps the most striking names of all the old ones were Mystery Street, Madman's Street, Love Street (Rue de l'Amour), Goodchildren Street (Rue des Bons Enfants), and above all those two streets in the Faubourg Marigny which old Bernard Marigny amused himself by naming for two games of chance at which, it is said, he had lost a fortune—namely Bagatelle and Craps—the ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... is not enough, we may compare the imagination—"the madman at home" as it has been called—to an unbroken horse which has neither bridle nor reins. What can the rider do except let himself go wherever the horse wishes to take him? And often if the latter runs away, his mad career only comes to end in the ditch. If however the rider succeeds in putting a ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue
... silently that even Lang did not see them. In another moment they were upon him. Josephine staggered back, her eyes big and wild with horror. She saw him go down, and then his shrieks rang out like a madman's. The others were on their feet, and not until she saw Philip lying still and white on the snow did the power of speech return to her lips. She sprang toward ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... WYATT. I do not hear from Carew or the Duke Of Suffolk, and till then I should not move. The Duke hath gone to Leicester; Carew stirs In Devon: that fine porcelain Courtenay, Save that he fears he might be crack'd in using, (I have known a semi-madman in my time So fancy-ridd'n) should ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... suffered to walk down-stairs without being called back. I sallied forth into the street, but no clerk was sent after me, nor did the publisher call after me from the drawing-room window. I have been told since, that he considered me either a madman or a fool. I leave you to judge how much he was in the wrong ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... terrible thing happened. The father and his remaining son were bound hand and foot and fastened in the ancient dungeon room under the Post building. Then Black Roger set the building on fire, and stood outside in the storm and laughed like a madman at the dying shrieks of his victims. It was the season when the trappers were on their lines, and there were but few people at the post. The company clerk and one other attempted to interfere, and Black Roger killed them with his own hands. Five deaths that ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... the little pipes of pasteboard simulated the sound of the human voice singing to the victorious notes of the long metal trumpets. At times this also, as people heard night after night those wandering sounds, seemed like the work of a madman, though they awoke sometimes in wonder at snatches of a new, an unmistakable new music. It was the triumph of all the various modes of the power of the pipe, tamed, ruled, united. Only, on the painted shutters ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... is a perfect madman," thought Saint-Aignan. "What in Heaven's name does he want?" He then said aloud: "Come, monsieur, let us hush ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... said irritably, chafing under the delay, and sitting down, a frowsy, horrible object, in the dim corner, he prepared to enjoy a further description out of the wild fantastic terrors of the madman's brain. ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... object of punishment, has its origin in the mind and intention of the actor; and therefore, where that is wanting, there is no proper object of chastisement. A madman, for example, can no more properly be said to be guilty of murder than the sword with which he commits it, both being equally incapable of intending injury. In the present case, in like manner, although it ought no doubt to be ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... O! wife of mine?" he cried, the wind carrying the words from his lips almost before they were uttered. "Mine, all mine thou art, and yet thou strivest to look upon the countenance of that madman who would have outraged my honour by looking upon ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... with the fury of a madman, and so sudden and fierce was his attack that the lad was borne to the ground. But in spite of the fact that he was underneath, one hand still grasped the hand in which the spy held the revolver; and, try as he would, the latter was unable to break ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes
... the lumbermen's camp has leaped from his bunk. His appearance is something ghastly. His comrades spring forward to restrain him, but he throws them off. There is a furious struggle with the madman. He has the strength of a dozen men. The sturdy lumbermen at last gain the advantage over him. Suddenly he throws up his hands and pitches forward upon ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... way of describing this, you would suppose that it was a farcical exhibition of vulgar extravagance, and the Duke a madman or an impostor; but the effect was different. It was done with grace, and, in the midst of so much else, it attracted only that side regard, at intervals, which is sure ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... were routed, and Pompeius seeing the dust conjectured what had befallen the cavalry, what reflections passed in his mind, it is difficult to say; but like a madman more than anything else and one whose reason was affected, without considering that he was Magnus Pompeius, without speaking a word to any one, he walked slowly back to his camp, so that one may properly apply to ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... for just three minutes. Then the man who had sworn before shot out another oath. Hookway began to rave like a madman. Evans burst into sobs. Davis began to swear horribly, and cursed Gilliland for putting the provisions in the ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... faculties of the mind ripen more slowly than those of the body, a curator was interposed to guard the fortunes of a Roman youth from his own inexperience and headstrong passions. Such a trustee had been first instituted by the praetor, to save a family from the blind havoc of a prodigal or madman; and the minor was compelled by the laws to solicit the same protection, to give validity to his acts till he accomplished the full period of twenty-five years. Women were condemned to the perpetual tutelage of parents, husbands, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... himself no longer, but springing to his feet he threw his hat in the air, and shouted, and danced about like a madman. ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... dream. Various thoughts and pictures flitted through his brain. He saw the wounded Swiss to whom he felt immense gratitude and whom he pitied so heartily that, at first, during their conversation, he took him for a madman; he saw little Nasibu with skull as round as a ball, and the row of sleeping "pagahs," and the barrels of the Remingtons stacked against the rock and glistening in the fire. He was almost certain that the battle which Linde mentioned was with Smain's division, and it seemed strange to ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... herself, except bitterly, in anger, and hated the indulgence. Suspecting still what she failed to find, she fell in with my desire to eat, though she must have thought it preposterous, and me a madman to have it. She could never understand my attachment to custom, and never think of more than one thing at a time. Just now she was engaged in hiding me from justice—to succeed in which task she would have ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... merely folded his arms; on the other hand, the friend shouted at the top of his voice:—"Good heavens! What art thou doing? Come to thy senses, thou madman! Dost thou not see that the board is completely rotten?—It will break beneath thy weight, and ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... blame? He was possessed by devils; but they were devils of insanity. The taint of madness was in his blood before he uttered his first cry in the cradle. His uncle, whose coronet he was to wear, was an incurable madman. His aunt, the Lady Barbara Shirley, spent years of her life shut up in an asylum. And this hereditary taint shadowed Laurence Shirley's life from his infancy, and ended ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... cried that, that was first silence, and then such a clamour as he had never heard nor thought to hear. He was pushed this way and that; one tore at his shoulder from behind; one struck him on the head: he heard himself named madman, feeble-wit, knave, fond fellow. The guards in front turned themselves about, and made as though they would run at the crowd with their weapons, and at that the men left off heaving at Master Richard, and went back, babbling and ...
— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson
... of hours ago," said Mr. Jenkins, watching him closely, "and while he was getting it out of his eyes they upset him and made off with his helmet and truncheon. I just met Brown and he says Cooper's been going on like a madman." ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... because the cheerfulness of their society had buoyed up his spirit in their presence, did it now suffer depression. The awful presentiment began to haunt him that he would not find the girl that night, that he had in grim reality "lost her." If this were the case, what a fool, what a madman, he had been to let go the only aid within his reach! He stopped his rowing for a minute, and almost thought of turning to call the surveying party back again. But no, Sissy might be—in all probability was—already ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... young man twenty, fifty, eighty, at last a hundred, zechins, in addition to his two hundred, if he would surrender it to me. What my entreaties could not accomplish, my gold did. He took my good zechins, while I went off in triumph with the mantle, obliged to be satisfied with being taken for a madman by every one in Florence. Nevertheless, the opinion of the people was a matter of indifference to me, for I knew better than they, that I would ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... violently, but Cherry was not quite the utter fool Grim took him for, for he had locked the door. Grim stood outside on the corridor for some seconds, petrified with rage and disgust, and then flew like a madman back to the concert-room. He cannoned up against some one leisurely strolling up to the dressing-room, and was darting on again sans apology. A hand gently closed upon his collar and ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... ease; he changes from one sad object to another, from Sylvia to Calista, then back to Sylvia; but like to feverish men that toss about here and there, remove for some relief, he shifts but to new pain, wherever he turns he finds the madman still: in this distraction of thought he remained till a page from Sylvia brought him this letter, which in midst of all, he started from his bed with ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... hero, confident of his courage to face his father, came forth pale and weak, only to be stoned as a madman by the people. His father locked him up in the house, but the tenderer compassion of his mother released him from his bonds, and he found refuge with the priest. When his father demanded his return, Francis tore off his clothes and, as he flung the last rag at the feet of his ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... great care everything was going on smoothly; the fellow would have been in jail, had not your master come up that very moment, and, like a madman spoiled your plot. "I cannot suffer," says he in a loud voice, "that a respectable man should be dragged to prison in this disgraceful manner; I will be responsible for him, from his very looks, and will be his bail." And as they refused to let him go, he immediately and so vigorously attacked ...
— The Blunderer • Moliere
... corral to find Belding shaking, roaring like a madman. The gate was open, the corral was empty. Ladd stooped over the ground, ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... fair, And tho' I heard him call you fairest fair, Let never maiden think, however fair, She is not fairer in new clothes than old. And should some great court-lady say, the Prince Hath pick'd a ragged-robin from the hedge, And like a madman brought her to the court, Then were ye shamed, and, worse, might shame the Prince To whom we are beholden; but I know, When my dear child is set forth at her best, That neither court nor country, tho' they sought ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... unnatural sons, who stirred Enmity up against me with the Pope? Whom in one night merciful God cut off: 135 Innocent lambs! They thought not any ill. You were not here conspiring? You said nothing Of how I might be dungeoned as a madman; Or be condemned to death for some offence, And you would be the witnesses?—This failing, 140 How just it were to hire assassins, or Put sudden poison in my evening drink? Or smother me when overcome by wine? Seeing we had no other judge but God, And He had sentenced me, and there ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
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