"Insanity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this moment it was being used as a storeroom and was merely awaiting its splendid destiny, quite unconscious of the future. The Hamilton boys were no doubt as extravagant and thriftless as they were insane, but the Careys sympathized with their extravagance and thriftlessness and insanity so heartily, in this particular, that they could hardly conceal their real feelings from Bill Harmon. Nothing could so have accorded with their secret desires as the "fool changes" made by the "crazy Hamilton boys"; light-hearted, ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the insanity has been driven out of you!" replied Stackridge, beginning to have hopes of him. "If you had taken my pistol and used it freely in the first place, or at least shown a good will to use it, you'd have proved yourself a good deal more of a man in my estimation, and been quite ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... in the insanity of fear, he fought with his bonds until the blood came, even throwing himself down, until the men, out of patience, pricked him savagely, and drove him, venting choked cries of pain, to his feet again. After the second attempt, if attempt that could ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... I received of this misfortune, the insanity of vengeance and grief into which I was hurried, my fruitless searches for the author of this guilt, my midnight wanderings and reveries beneath the shade of that fatal elm, were revived and reacted. I ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... as Grard de Nerval, was one of the group of young Romanticists who gathered around Hugo. Symptoms of insanity developed early, and at different times he was an inmate of an asylum. He finally committed suicide. He felt profoundly the influence of German literature, and his lyrics show something of this in the spiritual quality of ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... Logos, word, talk—or, if we like to employ yet more familiar and expressive terms, prattle or chatter. Talk, or prattle, about unseen beings or unknown causes, The idleness of the subject, and inutility—nay, absolute insanity of the occupation, sufficiently appears in the strict etymological meaning of the word employed to typify them. The danger, the mischief, the cruelly immoral, and, if I may be permitted to coin a word for the ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... I dragged up here with my men in the night?" he cried. "Who's responsible for this insanity, anyway? Don't you know," he roared at Reed, who that moment swung within his range of vision, "that I have no standing in the presence of civil law? What do you mean getting me up here to your miserable ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... engaging personalities that ever lived. What is the secret of this charm? He had many characteristics that belong to the most tiresome natures; he even had the qualities of the man as to whom one wonders whether partial insanity may not be his best excuse—inconstancy expressing itself in hysterical revulsions of feeling, complete lack of balance, proneness to act recklessly to the hurt of others. Yet he was loved and respected by contemporaries ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... once upon a time a sprightly lady who added a thousand lively interests. This was Louise de Cabris, sister of the great Mirabeau, "who, when a mere girl, had been married to the Marquis de Cabris. Part knave, part fool, the vices of de Cabris sometimes ended in attacks of insanity. His marriage with one who united the violence of the Mirabeaus to the license of the Vassans was unfortunate; ... and after Louise began to reign in the big dark house of the Cours of Grasse, life never lacked for incidents." ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... fond and faithful creature as he is, from being the most docile and obedient of all animals, is made the most dangerous, if he become mad; so men acquire a frightful and not less monstrous power when they are in a state of moral insanity, and break loose from their social and religious obligations. Remember too how rapidly the plague of diseased opinions is communicated, and that if it once gain head, it is as difficult to be stopt as a conflagration or ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... good practice; afterward, by some lucky stroke, became part owner of a valuable silver-mine in Nevada, and is now accounted a millionaire. I managed to save something out of Spears, and more out of his partner Thornton. This affair of Spears ruined him, because his insanity was manifestly feigned. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... being squandered in Nikolsk, it had all gone to swell the revenues of Mother Church. The inspector of the hospital finally settled it to the satisfaction of all parties, by shewing, from attentive observation of Tchitchikof's conduct at the hospital, that he must be a monomaniac, whose particular insanity took the form of philanthropy; but that, believing that a gift debases the recipient, he dexterously contrived to give his assistance under the cloak of a purchase. Although his companions could not see how any man could be ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various
... remove this chest (my blood ran cold as I thought of what its contents might be!) without making some disturbance was impossible; and, moreover, to think of escaping through the house, now barred up for the night, was sheer insanity. Only one chance was left me—the window. I stole ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... with one who replaced her husband, whilst he was yet alive, with a youth of unknown extraction and condition, and especially when this was in lewd carriage and not by way of lawful marriage? So he who deemeth all women alike,[FN475] there is no remedy for the disease of his insanity. And glory be to Him to whom belongeth the empire of the Seen and the Unseen and He is the Living, who dieth not! And among the tales they tell, O auspicious King, is ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... rushing at her, raised his open hand and struck her rather severely on the side of the head. She felt, as it were, stunned for a little, but at length she rose up, and said: "Father, this is the insanity of a bad ambition, or perhaps of affection, and you know not what you have done." She then approached him, and throwing her arms about his neck, exclaimed: "Papa, kiss me; and I shall never think of it, nor allude to it;" as she spoke the tears fell ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... like Hetty's will for ever remain a mystery. One would have said that she was the last woman in the world to commit a morbid or ill-regulated act. But the act she was meditating now was one which seemed like the act of insanity. Yet had Hetty never in her life seemed farther removed from any such tendency. She was calm, cheerful, self-contained. If any one saw any change in her, it seemed like nothing more than the natural increase of quiet and decorum coming with her increased age. Even her husband, ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... threw herself at the feet of the Queen, implored her pardon, and disturbed the Temple for many days with the sight and the noise of her madness. The Princesses, forgetting the denunciations of this unfortunate being, in consideration of her repentance and insanity, watched over her by turns, and deprived themselves of their own food to relieve her.—LAMARTINE, "History of ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... He attended an efficiency congress and came home with a collection of newfangled ideas that eliminated from the office all the joy and contentment old Cappy Ricks had been a life-time installing. He inaugurated card systems and short cuts in bookkeeping that drove Cappy to the verge of insanity, because he could never go to the books himself and find out anything about his own business. He had to ask Mr. Skinner—which ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... him, David Boone became more insane—for his condition of mind was little, if at all, short of temporary insanity—and his proceedings became more eccentric than ever. Among other things, he became suddenly smitten with a desire to advertise, and immediately in the columns of the tapers appeared advertisements to the effect that "The Celebrated Toy Emporium" was to ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... timorous and wretched. The common man desires no more than bread; he wins it by the sweat of his brow; joyfully would he eat it, if the injustice of the government did not make it bitter in his mouth. By the insanity of governments, those who are swimming in plenty, without being any the happier for it, yet wring from the tiller of the soil the very fruits that his arms have won from it. Injustice, by reducing ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... and discoveries are continually bringing out new facts which show an intimate relation between intestinal poisons and many chronic maladies, including gall bladder disease, high blood pressure, heart disease which kills 300,000 Americans annually, Bright's disease, insanity and premature senility. Many physicians are on this account saying daily to patients, "Eat less meat." "Cut out beefsteak and chops," and "Change your intestinal flora so as to clear your coated tongue and eliminate the poison that taints ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... strapped fast to the stretcher, because his sobbing wrenched and tore his body so that the bearers could not control him otherwise. Something inexpressibly hideous—so it was said—had half robbed the poor devil of his reason, and the Frau Major suddenly dreaded a fit of insanity. She pinched the cavalryman's arm and exclaimed with a pretense of ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... rather a sign of uncertainty and obscurity. Does the same man always agree with himself in the notions he forms of his God? No. His idea varies with the changes, which he experiences;—another sign of uncertainty. Men always agree in demonstrative truths. In any situation, except that of insanity, every one knows that two and two make four, that the sun shines, that the whole is greater than its part; that benevolence is necessary to merit the affection of men; that injustice and cruelty are incompatible with goodness. Are they thus agreed when they speak of ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... recent work on the moral and physical causes of insanity, noticing the influence of professions in promoting this affliction, brings forward a curious table, showing the relative proportion of different professions in a mass of 164 lunatics. It runs thus:—merchants, 50; military men, 33; students, 25; administrateurs et employes, 21; advocates, ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 276 - Volume 10, No. 276, October 6, 1827 • Various
... in dealing with ordinary delirium or insanity is in its way as heroic as the manner in which a soldier will face fire. To most men the advent of the strange visitor would have suggested calling in help or taking instant steps for self-preservations; ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... or Jonathan Wild hanged, and it was as undoubting subscribers to this moral law, that Fielding wrote and Hogarth painted. Except in one instance, where in the mad-house scene in the Rake's Progress, the girl whom he has ruined is represented as still tending and weeping over him in his insanity, a glimpse of pity for his rogues never seems to enter honest Hogarth's mind. There's not the slightest doubt in the breast of ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... increased, had succeeded in forcing his way through the rude fence of brushwood, and had thrown himself upon Bates with the ferocity of insanity. Growling to himself, he had seized the unfortunate pilot by the throat, and the pair were struggling together. Bates, weakened by the sickness that had followed upon his wound in the head, was quite unable to cope with his desperate assailant, but calling ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... crazy—like a fox. You never heard of any insanity in Crane's family, though, did you? You know that he never invests a cent in anything more risky than Government bonds. You can bet your last dollar that Seaton showed him the real goods." Then, as a look of conviction appeared upon ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... Everybody had given up. Even Don Carlos had given up. The hurried removal of the treasure out to sea meant nothing else than that. The Capataz de Cargadores, on a revulsion of subjectiveness, exasperated almost to insanity, beheld all his world without faith and courage. ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... understood, that he would get drunk whenever he had an opportunity, and when intoxicated he was completely insane. He was also subject to fits of temporary derangement, independent of the insanity produced by excessive drinking, when he was both furious and dangerous; and it was always necessary, on such occasions, to confine him in irons. He was also represented as being extremely reserved, and refusing to answer any questions ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... and he looked back at her as an earth-bound soul might look towards paradise. And on a sudden, before a sound of warning had been heard by either of them, their two hands were struck violently apart, and Annette stood between them, her eyes flaming with rage and the spirit of temporary insanity last imported by the ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... Worcester Hospital, has done much to expose this solitary vice. He says no cause is more influential in producing insanity. According to the Report of the Institution, for 1838, out of 199 patients, 42 are considered ...
— A Disquisition on the Evils of Using Tobacco - and the Necessity of Immediate and Entire Reformation • Orin Fowler
... counsel for a widow who had been put in a lunatic asylum, and sued the two medical men who signed the certificate of her insanity. The plaintiff's case was to prove that she was not addicted to drinking, and that there was no pretence for treating hers as a case of delirium tremens. Dr. Tunstal, the last of plaintiff's witnesses, described one case in which he had cured a patient of delirium ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... all, their indigestion, which is the prevailing trouble in that section of the country. But I confess that I was nearly tired out with these consultations. In consequence of frequent intermarriages there are many deaf and dumb persons among them, and epilepsy and insanity are by ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... call or to fancy it a loss, a disappointment, would be a presumption for which she had not words strong enough to satisfy her own humility. To think of him as Miss Crawford might be justified in thinking, would in her be insanity. To her he could be nothing under any circumstances; nothing dearer than a friend. Why did such an idea occur to her even enough to be reprobated and forbidden? It ought not to have touched on the confines ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... world, is it not a happiness to meet with an enchantress, to bow down to the magic of her charms, and for a small half hour to dream of bliss? All other men are mad: why should I alone be reasonable? Come, then, spirit of love and bliss, heavenly insanity, take possession of my struggling soul. Let old age be wise and cool, I am young and warm. For a little while I will play the fool, ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... that" [Footnote: This Mistress Tison, the cruel keeper of the queen, soon after this fell into lunacy, owing both to her longings after her daughter and her compunctions of conscience for her treatment of the queen. The first token of her insanity was her falling upon her knees before Marie Antoinette, and begging pardon for all the pain she had occasioned, and amid floods of tears accusing herself as the one who would be answerable for the death of the queen. She then fell into such ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... obnoxious to it than were commons. Nor was there any privileged age, except that of the tenderest childhood. Men and women of ninety and boys and girls of twelve or fourteen were racked, as were young mothers and women with child. Insanity, however, if recognized as genuine, was considered a ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... deceased, while he twists and writhes under the influence of the ghost; he calls himself by the name of the deceased who speaks through him, and he is so addressed by others; he will eat fire, lift enormous weights, and foretells things to come. When the inspiration, or insanity, is particularly violent, and the Banks' Islanders think they have had quite enough of it, the friends of the prophet or of the madman will sometimes catch him and hold him struggling and roaring in the smoke of strong-smelling leaves, while they call out the names of the dead men whose ghosts ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... silk-house near Spring Street. But after a controversy the adjusters have reached an agreement on that case. I mention these fires because they show practically all the types of work of the various kinds of firebug - insurance, revenge, robbery, and plain insanity. But since the Spring Street fire, the character of the fires has been more uniform. They have all been in ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... was certain that while he might fear for his friend some chance repute of insanity, he had greater terrors than that. As to their nature I had no clew; nor was it my affair to be guessing; but whatever they were, the days of security at Les Trois Pigeons had somewhat eased Professor Keredec's mind in regard to them. At least, his anxiety was sufficiently ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... kind of hieratic pantomime, a coloured, expressive thing, signifying nothing. Matho, maddened with love, 'in an invincible stupor, like those who have drunk some draught of which they are to die,' has the same somnambulistic life; the prey of Venus, he has an almost literal insanity, which, as Flaubert reminds us, is true to the ancient view of that passion. He is the only quite vivid person in the book, and he lives with the intensity of a wild beast, a life 'blinded alike' from every inner and outer interruption to one or two fixed ideas. ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... Chiverses of University Place), but could also enumerate the leading characteristics of each family: as, for instance, the fabulous stinginess of the younger lines of Leffertses (the Long Island ones); or the fatal tendency of the Rushworths to make foolish matches; or the insanity recurring in every second generation of the Albany Chiverses, with whom their New York cousins had always refused to intermarry—with the disastrous exception of poor Medora Manson, who, as everybody knew ... but then her mother ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... scandalized, by the language, the rites, and the vestments, of his Greek clergy. But the slightest glance on the state of the kingdom must teach him to despair of any effectual assistance. The unfortunate Charles, though he enjoyed some lucid intervals, continually relapsed into furious or stupid insanity: the reins of government were alternately seized by his brother and uncle, the dukes of Orleans and Burgundy, whose factious competition prepared the miseries of civil war. The former was a gay youth, dissolved in luxury and love: the latter was the father of John count of Nevers, who had so lately ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... the drama. A single play sometimes requires months for representation, being, like a serial story, "continued" night after night. He never dances. There is no melody in the Mongolian foot. Dancing he regards as a species of Caucasian insanity. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... going, and there was no reason for it. I kept telling myself that. In the mirror I looked white and anxious, and I had a sense of approaching trouble. I caught Maggie watching me, too, and on the seventh I find in my journal the words: "Insanity is often only ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and spread over the whole empire and throughout the neighboring countries. The dance was characterized by wild leaping, furious screaming, and foaming at the mouth, which gave to the individuals affected all the appearance of insanity. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... emotional insanity. Lovers are insane; not in fit condition to decide their own actions. The state of "falling in love" is moon-madness. For the time being the lover's sense of justice, his reason, his judgment, is distorted by reflections from ...
— Happiness and Marriage • Elizabeth (Jones) Towne
... and with thy shadowy hands Cover me softly, singing all the night— In thy dear presence find I best delight; Even the saint that stands Tending the gate of heaven, involved in beams Of rarest glory, to my mortal eyes Pales from the blest insanity of ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... excitement caused in the nervous system by such potions frequently proved fatal. Such, according to Eusebius, was the fate of the poet Lucretius, who, having been driven to madness by an amatory potion, and having, during the intervals of his insanity, composed several books, which were afterwards corrected by Cicero, died by his own hand, in the 44th year of his age.[97] It should, however, be remembered that this account has been questioned by the poet's translator and annotator, ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... Christianity is an historical failure—its counsels of perfection, its command to turn the other cheek—a farce. When a modern spiritual genius, a Tolstoi, repeats it, all Christendom laughs, as at a new freak of insanity. All practical, honorable men are Jews at heart. Judaism has never tampered with human dignity, nor perverted the moral consciousness. Our housekeeper, a Christian, once said to my sifter Addie, 'I'm so glad to see you ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... great thing in this short life must apply himself to the work with such a concentration of his forces as, to idle spectators, who live only to amuse themselves, looks like insanity." ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... various stages of delight, entered on their aggravating shouts, their mocking dance. When they had driven Mr. Ketch to the very verge of insanity, they ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... lose sight of its force. So, then, Paul says, 'In my preaching, Christ was conspicuously set forth. It is like some inexplicable enchantment that, having seen Him, you should turn away to gaze on others.' It is insanity which evokes wonder, as well as sin which deserves rebuke; and the fiery question of my text ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... comprehensive of any shown in the Department for the Insane, and was designed primarily to show the difference between the ancient and modern methods of treating these unfortunates. Two rooms were shown, the first of which represented the primitive methods adopted for treating insanity. The room was barren, dark and not over clean. At the front was shown one of the old peep-doors taken from the Utica Asylum. It was of massive construction and contained a small aperture covered by a heavy wooden blind, through ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... individual has broken away from the traditions of the past, and yet found nothing to take their place. One result is empty churches, and the race for wealth, display, position, and power. Increased idleness begets dissipation, Paresis and Insanity increase, while wasted opportunity ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... Soviet-American standoff—for that is what it was—would most probably have resulted in the destruction of the human race." It had no effect on the class. The destruction of the human race interested nobody. "However," Forrester said gamely, "this form of insanity was too much for the Gods ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... put forth earlier and earlier in the spring, until they got back to January; the leaves at last fell so early that the worms died before spinning cocoons, and the whole enterprise was in a few years abandoned because of this vegetable insanity. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... features were insignificant, he had whiskers like an anarchist and a mouthful of crooked teeth; his personal habits were far from pleasant. It was this sort of thing, Dickens said, that caused his first wife to desert him and finally drove her into insanity. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... supersede practical training—no theoretical training can do this—but it would give young men, at any rate, a knowledge of the best thoughts of the best thinkers, on such subjects as taxation, representation, pauperism, crime, insanity, and a multitude of similar questions; it would remove the spectacle which so often afflicts us in our National and State legislatures, of really strong men stumbling under loads of absurdity and fallacy, long ago exploded by the best and ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... the principle of regret, fear, penance, material restoration of damage, and understand the sense in which, for both society and for the individual, it makes no practical difference whether experts think there is some taint of insanity, provided only that irresponsibility ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... was allowed to see her as she lay near the end, and the effect upon his kindly nature was terrible. There settled upon him a deep despondency. That fall and winter he wandered alone in the woods along the Sangamon, almost distracted with sorrow. When he seemed on the verge of insanity a friend, Bowling Green, took him to his own home and nursed him back to health, and the grief settled into that temperamental melancholy, which, relieved only by his humor, was part of the deep mystic there was in him, part of ...
— Life of Abraham Lincoln - Little Blue Book Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 324 • John Hugh Bowers
... was nothing near him except the six little animals. The yellow one, having spoken, was staring silently at him with only curiosity on its furry face. He wondered if some miasma or some scent from the vegetation in the valley had warped his mind into sudden insanity ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... the earth, who do become Old in their youth, and die ere middle age,[159] 140 Without the violence of warlike death; Some perishing of pleasure—some of study— Some worn with toil, some of mere weariness,— Some of disease—and some insanity— And some of withered, or of broken hearts; For this last is a malady which slays More than are numbered in the lists of Fate, Taking all shapes, and bearing many names. Look upon me! for even of all these things Have I partaken; and of all these things, 150 One were enough; then wonder not that ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... his pocket and turned his horse into an unfrequented road leading to the mountain and along its side. The air was filled with the subtle fragrance of growing and blooming things. He was as near insanity as a man can well be who still retains his mental equipoise. In this slow manner, his horse picking his way over fallen trees and mountain streams, he traversed several miles, and then, in utter ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... retained the whole of Germany with the provinces on the left bank of the Rhine. Louis II (856-875) ascended the throne as Roman Emperor, but died without any male issue, while Charles the Fat, who succeeded him, was removed from the throne by order of the Church on account of his insanity. ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... attack of insanity, for the German, thorough even in forming his opinions, is the last person in the world to harbor delusions, and there is a perfect realization of the titanic task that still confronts Germany. Nor is this confidence in ultimate ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Mental Disease.—Williams,[7] before the American Public Health Association, has recently carefully summarized the role of syphilis in the production of insanity, and the cost of the disease to the State from the standpoint of mental disease alone. He estimates that 10 per cent of the patients who enter the Massachusetts State hospitals for the insane are suffering from syphilitic insanity. Fifteen per cent ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... as they looked into those sad eyes they began weeping, and, childlike, they threw their arms around her and wept. Passively at first she received these fondlings, but soon the children's caresses broke down the barriers, and the hot tears began to flow; and the woman was saved from death or insanity. But her hair turned white shortly afterward, and she has ever since been that sad little woman that you have seen her. Kinesasis has never been cruel to her, as, alas! too many of the pagan Indian husbands are ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... child, though her father was rich, and held an honorable station in society, yet on account of her mother's sorrows, and subsequent insanity, her poor child, Lilias, who was allowed to remain with her mother, was brought up in an atmosphere of sadness, and it was no wonder that ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... "Hurrah for the day which gives me the chance to have at you!" The gate resists but a moment; Melot is first to break in. Kurwenal with a savage cry cuts him down. Brangaene is heard calling to him that he labours under a mistake; Mark calling upon him to desist from this insanity. He sees, understands but one thing, to keep out these enemies of Tristan's, defend the master to the last against this intrusion. He orders one of his party to throw back Brangaene, who is coming by the way of the wall; he hurls himself at the invaders now crowding in. In self-defence ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... profound divine, an eloquent preacher, a deeply-experienced Christian, and, withal, a classical scholar, a popular poet, a man of original genius, and eminently a man of prayer." And his poor sister Isabel, though grievously vexed at times by a dire insanity, seemed to have received from nature powers ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... such celerity as might have convinced the most disaffected of the insanity of defying the power of Great Britain; but it was certain that the spirit which prompted the rebellion was not extinguished, and that, as it had been fed before, so it would continue to be fed by the factious spirit of members of the Irish House of Commons, and of those who could ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... widely-extended realms, annoyed by the undutiful and haughty conduct of his son, who was endeavoring to wrest authority from his father by taking advantage of all his misfortunes, and perhaps inheriting a melancholy temperament from his mother, who died in the glooms of insanity, and, more than all, mortified and wounded by so sudden and so vast a reverse of fortune, in which all his plans seemed to have failed—thus oppressed, humbled, he retired in disgust to his room, indulged in the most fretful temper, admitted none but his sister and a few confidential ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... historians extol blood-shedding; it is woman's place to abhor it. And because I know that they would have apotheosized any man who had crucified Jeff Davis, I abhor this, and call it foul murder, unworthy of our cause—and God grant it was only the temporary insanity of a desperate man that committed this crime! Let not his blood be visited on ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... of driving. Miles beyond, he became aware that he was calling out maledictions: and strangers, passing at a decent speed, had a vision of a dapper, ghastly wretch who appeared to be fleeing on the wings of the wind from the clutch of insanity. ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... be great wrongs, we cannot distrust the Maker, and postpone the security of the soul. Impatience is a wrong as great as any. Love and trust are remedies for wrong. Music is our cure for insanity, and I remember that incantation of fair reasons which Plato prescribed. What gain is in scolding and knitting the brows? The blue sky, the bright cloud, the star of night, the star of day, every creature is in its smiling place a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... of nothing else, neither was Cecilia disposed to change the subject, for the remains of insanity which seemed to hang upon him were affecting without being alarming, and her desire to know more of him grew ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... birth to the legend of a crazy man under Spalton's care, whose chief insanity was running ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... life of Count Lewis, adding that as for the trumpeter, who had just been hanged for the crime suborned by the writer, he was a most notorious lunatic. In reply, Lewis, while he ridiculed this plea of insanity set up for a culprit who had confessed his crime succinctly and voluntarily, expressed great contempt for the counter-charge against Leicester. "His Excellency," said the sturdy little Count, "is a virtuous gentleman, the most ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Thus ended the procedure against Damien and his family, in a manner not very favourable to the avowed clemency of Louis, or the acknowledged humanity of the French nation. It appeared from undoubted evidence, that the attempt on the king's life was the result of insanity, and a disturbed imagination. Several instances of a disordered mind had before been observed in his conduct, and the detestation justly due to the enormity of his crime ought now to have been absorbed in the consideration ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... she came home in her right mind, and, without a thought of what was awaiting her, ran eagerly into her home. It was a terrible shock, and she never has recovered from it, though after a long illness her insanity took a mild form, and she has always been perfectly harmless. She has been alone many years, and no one can persuade her to leave the old house, where she seems to be contented, and does not realize her troubles; though she lives mostly in the past, ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... electrician, who have all investigated the subject for years, agree with me both as to the facts and as to the main inferences to be drawn from them, I am in hopes that you will suspend your judgment for a time till we exhibit some corroborative symptoms of insanity. ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... man to have attempted the feat seemed to him, the next morning, sheer insanity. Dancing, however, knew the treacherous face of the river wall. To his gigantic size and strength he united the sureness of a cat in climbing up or down a mountain arete. Often he had crept with a telegraph wire, unaided, where his best men hung back even in harness. There was, in fact, no time ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... Inclose, surround, encircle, circumscribe, encompass. Increase, grow, enlarge, magnify, amplify, swell, augment. Indecent, indelicate, immodest, shameless, ribald, lewd, lustful, lascivious, libidinous, obscene. Insane, demented, deranged, crazy, mad. Insanity, dementia, derangement, craziness, madness, lunacy, mania, frenzy, hallucination. Insipid, tasteless, flat, vapid. Intention, intent, purpose, plan, design, aim, object, end. Interpose, intervene, intercede, interfere, mediate. Irreligious, ungodly, impious, godless, sacrilegious, blasphemous, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... out from hundreds of atrocity tales which I heard during four months spent in England, Belgium, Germany, and Holland. It will serve as an example, not only because it has the earmarks of truth,—having been told in an offhand way merely as an explanation of the private's insanity,—but because it is typical of the kind of incident which in the telling is, nine times out of ten, twisted into atrocious and wholly ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... sliding scale as it is called, according to which the selling price of coal regulates the wages. This leads to many fluctuations and sudden accesses of prosperity. It is found that whenever wages rise there is a concomitant increase of insanity and at the same time a diminished output of coal due to slacking of work when earnings are greater; there is also an increase of drunkenness and of crime. Stewart concludes that it is doubtful whether ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... play—a play of YOURS as security?' He looked at me almost fearfully, as if detecting the first symptoms of insanity. 'Do you understand anything of business?' he enquired mildly. I laughed and answered: 'No, ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... to recover. I had been nursed and attended there with the utmost assiduity, and the brain-fever eventually left me; but it left me insane, in which dreadful condition I had remained for nearly eight months. The brain-fever and the insanity were both attributed— rightly, no doubt—to my frightful sufferings; and no effort had been spared to secure the restoration of my reason, which, by God's mercy, had at length been achieved. I learned, further, that the "Astarte" ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... and Cecri is a model of a wife and mother. In the representation of that species of mental alienation where the judgment has perished but traces of character still remain, he is peculiarly happy. The insanity of Saul is skilfully managed; and the horrid joy of Orestes in killing Aegisthus rises finely and naturally to madness in finding that, at the same time, he had ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... a coarseness and irreverence so singular, even in the attacks of that age, that it were well if they could be attributed to insanity. They contain the most undisguised abuse which had been uttered against Christianity since the days of the early heathens. Occasionally, when wishing to utter grosser blasphemies than were permissible by law, or compatible with his assumed Christian stand-point, he introduced a Jewish rabbi, ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... establish me there before his departure; and now it is the gray of the evening before his setting off, and we are strolling through the still park. Vick is racing, with idiotic ardor, through the tall green bracken, after the mottled deer, yelping with shrill insanity, and vainly imagining that she is going to overtake them. The gray rabbits are scuttling across the grass rides in the pale light: as I see them popping in and out of their holes, I cannot help thinking of Bobby. Apparently, Sir Roger ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... inexpressible heaviness which burdens me may contribute to this torment. When I sit up sleepless in my bed through the long nights, and see the night in myself, behind me and before me, then dark, horrible phantasies surround me, and I often think that insanity, with ashy cheeks, stony and rigid gaze, approaches me, will darken my reason and bewilder my mind. How can I wish to live? When it is evening, I wish it were morning; and when it is morning, I wish that the day was over, and ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... have always been good to me. Can't you talk Father over? I am going away to-morrow. If he persists in this insanity I shall chuck my commission, go off to Canada and try to make ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... may be communicated by contagion or heredity should not marry. These diseases include: tuberculosis, syphilis, cancer, leprosy, epilepsy and some nervous disorders, some skin diseases and insanity. A worn-out rake has no business to marry, since marriage is not a hospital for the treatment of disease, or a reformatory institution for moral lepers. Those having a marked tendency to disease must not marry those of similar tendency. The ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton
... McFarland was married to him, Revs. Henry Ward Beecher and O.B. Frothingham officiating, in the presence of Mr. Greeley and several other distinguished persons. McFarland was tried, acquitted on the ground of insanity, given the custody of their little son and allowed to ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... angelic patience and forbearance. I was the only one of the family, don't you know, who wasn't quite sane; and yet—so unlike Henry—they considered me rather more responsible than any of them. I couldn't get off anything on the grounds of my insanity." ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... sentences left me doubtful of my schoolmate's insanity. I listened to the old man, ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... always preclude all moral responsibility? Is insanity ever consistent with amenability to punishment? Matson, p. 461: Briefs ...
— Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Debate Index - Second Edition • Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
... system in Health; The Remedy of Diseases; Observance of the Laws of Health Effectual; The Drink of Dyspeptics—its kind, times and quantity; Promotion of Circulation; Consumption—its Prevention and Cure; Preventives of Insanity, etc. ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... such a command could justify. Ellen did not, however, remain long in this opinion; for when she reperused the letter, and considered the firm, regular characters, and the style,—calm and cold, even in requesting such a sacrifice,—she felt that there was nothing like insanity here. In fine, she came gradually to the belief that there were strong reasons, though incomprehensible by her, for the secrecy that her ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... November and lasted more than two months. The defence was insanity. The assassin maintained that he was inspired to commit the deed, and that it was a political necessity. The "stalwart" Republicans, headed by Senator Conkling, had quarrelled with the President over certain appointments unacceptable to the ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... their patients they gain the opportunity of thoroughly knowing and therefore sympathising with and guiding them, and on this, successful treatment largely depends. The majority of the patients in these hospitals are suffering from acute forms of insanity, and this adds both to the strenuousness and to the interest of the nursing work: the fact that such patients frequently recover, acts as a great incentive to ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... in my room and tried once more to consider my position. It was this: for the sake of a girl whom I had only met some score of times; who sometimes acted, talked, dressed after a fashion suggestive of insanity; who had glorious dark eyes, a perfect figure, and an exquisitely beautiful face—but I interrupt myself. For the sake of this girl, and for the manifestly impossible purpose of protecting her from herself as well as others, I had surrendered myself to the ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... necessity for him to get away from his cabin once in a while. He had been there for ten years, digging and plowing and sowing, and reaping what little the hail and the hot winds and the frosts left him to reap. Insanity and suicide are very common things on the Divide. They come on like an epidemic in the hot wind season. Those scorching dusty winds that blow up over the bluffs from Kansas seem to dry up the blood in men's veins as they do ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... self-control resulting in negative, sensitive and subjective conditions which open the way to nervous prostration, control by other personalities (hypnotic influence, obsession, possession); the different forms of insanity, epilepsy, ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... slave. It was suppressed, and five of the participants were hanged. This punishment was unduly severe and exceedingly injudicious. A brave race can forget the victims of the field of battle, but never those of the scaffold. The making of political martyrs is the last insanity of statesmanship. However, the thing was done, and it is typical of the enduring resentment which was left behind that when, after the Jameson Raid, it seemed that the leaders of that ill-fated venture might be hanged, the beam was actually brought from ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... admiration he expresses for the 'Last Judgement' he charges him with irreligion, indecency, and theft from the heirs of Julius II, and adds in a conciliating postscript, 'I only want to show you that if you are "divino," I am not "d'acqua." ' Aretino laid great stress upon it— whether from the insanity of conceit or by way of caricaturing famous men—that he himself should be called divine, as one of his flatterers had already begun to do; and he certainly attained so much personal celebrity that his house at Arezzo passed for one of the sights of the place. There were indeed ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... deceased was once giving evidence in a will case, and on being asked by counsel what fact he chiefly relied upon as establishing the insanity of the testator, replied without a moment's hesitation: 'Chiefly upon his unquestioning faith in the value of my prescriptions.' It might perfectly well be contended that this evidence failed to establish the point at issue, and that faith in the prescriptions ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... said her mother to her, "I was right in saying that Gorka is mad!... It seems he has had a fit of insanity since the duel, and that they prevent him from seeing any one.... Can you now comprehend how Maud could blame me for what is hereditary ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... layman; or if explained, remains incomprehensible; and yet a child may acquire its secrets by its individual efforts. Spiritual power comes to those who seek it in proper mood, but, injudiciously exercised, may cause insanity." ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... was to see the little tot in a bluish-grey French uniform, Garibaldi, who—about when the search approached his paillasse—suddenly hurried over to B. (his perspiring forehead more perspiring than usual, his kepi set at an angle of insanity) and hurriedly presented B. with a long-lost German silver folding camp-knife, purchased by B. from a fellow-member of Vingt-et-Un who was known to us as "Lord Algie"—a lanky, effeminate, brittle, spotless creature who was en route to becoming an officer and to whose finicky tastes ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... taken, the knight, one morning, at daybreak, mounted Bronzomarte, and Crabshaw, as his squire, ascended the back of a clumsy cart-horse, called Gilbert. This, again, was looked upon as an instance of insanity in the said Crabshaw; for, of all the horses in the stable, Gilbert was the most stubborn and vicious, and had often like to have done mischief to Timothy while he drove the cart and plough. When he was out of humour, he would ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... English playwright, when he brought them on the stage, arrayed with intellectual power and gleaming with the lurid splendour of a Northern fancy, made them tenfold darker and more terrible. To the subtlety and vices of the South he added the melancholy, meditation, and sinister insanity of his own climate. He deepened the complexion of crime and intensified lawlessness by robbing the Italian character of levity. Sin, in his conception of that character, was complicated with the sense of sin, as it never had been in a Florentine or a Neapolitan. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... became temporarily insane would give but a feeble idea of what now took place, because few readers are likely to be aware of the amazing power of the negro to give expression to the vagaries of insanity. We shall therefore content ourselves by saying that they cheered, laughed, howled, shouted, danced, and yelled—and leave the ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... woman," said the recorder, with the coolness of a demon, "the plea of insanity you would set up is utterly untenable. Your husband, it seems, is serving his majesty in the royal navy; defending his country, whilst his wife was breaking its laws, by the commission of a crime which, but for the stern repression ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... though the personal contact of the touch had broken through the last crumb of numbness with which shock had overlaid Buck Johnson's passions, the insanity of his rage broke out. He twisted her violently on her face, knelt on her back, and, with the short piece of hard rope the cowboy always carries to "hog-tie" cattle, he lashed her wrists together. Then he arose panting, his square black ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... desire to offer to kiss the finger and make it well. This, however, was not habit. It was insanity. He recognised this himself, and felt more than a trifle worried about it, because he had been in love quite a number of times before, but he had never ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... there;—and very much admire, the manner, and the feeling, with which you have treated Psalmanazar's story. You tell me things respecting Chatterton which were new to me, and of course interested me much. It may be worth while, when you prepare a copy for republication, to corroborate the proof of his insanity, by stating that there was a constitutional tendency to such a disease, which places the fact ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... and Evil there is an apophthegm to the effect that, "Insanity in individuals is something rare—but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule." And whilst, on the one hand mental specialists have been extending the boundaries of insanity to the point of justifying the popular adage that everyone is a bit mad, they have, on the other hand, ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... who boldly refuse to have their country involved in the European slaughter merely for the sake of gratifying Wilson's vainglorious ambition, there is hope that the common sense of the American people will assert itself and that they will not permit the appalling insanity to spread to the new world that holds the old world in ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... as it is in Jesus" by dying fearlessly like De Seso. At the same time, eight females, of irreproachable character, some of them of high rank, were burned alive; among them Maria Gomez, who so nearly betrayed the Protestants during a sudden fit of insanity. Having recovered her senses she returned to the Protestant faith, and soon was brought before the Inquisitors. She suffered with her three daughters and a sister. So hardened had the populace become by similar scenes, that not a single expression of sympathy escaped ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston
... that what was called the Unwritten Law, which meant simply that a soldier could do what he liked with impunity in civil life, was not the law of the land, and that a Victoria Cross did not carry with it a perpetual plenary indulgence. Unfortunately the insanity of the juries and magistrates did not always manifest itself in indulgence. No person unlucky enough to be charged with any sort of conduct, however reasonable and salutary, that did not smack of war delirium, had the slightest chance of acquittal. There were in the country, ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... of his "substitution." There is the misconduct of the Duchess Josiane, divinely beautiful and diabolically wicked, who covets the monster Gwynplaine as a lover, and discards him when, on his peerification, he is commanded to her by Queen Anne as a husband. And then, after all this tedious insanity and a great deal more, there is the finale of the despair of Gwynplaine, of his recovery of the dying Dea in a ship just starting for Holland, of her own death, and of his suicide in the all-healing sea—a "reconciliation" not far short of the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... the readers of NOTES AND QUERIES, who suffer from depression of spirits, confusion, headache, blushing, groundless fears, unfitness for business or society, blood to the head, failure of memory, delusions, suicidal thoughts, fear of insanity, &c., will call on, or correspond with, REV. DR. WILLIS MOSELEY, who, out of above 22,000 applicants, knows not fifty uncured who have followed his advice, he will instruct them how to get well, without a fee, and will render the same service to the friends of the insane.—At ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 185, May 14, 1853 • Various
... Troy, as if inspired by a recollection "do you know if insanity has ever appeared in ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... English protection. The shekh declared, that he had never sent such a message; that the man who brought it was but an ass, and said it from his own brain; that having heard of Asaad's arrival, he merely wished to see whether the reports respecting his insanity were true or false; that Asaad was his bosom friend, his own son, and that whatever he had was his; and that as for church, and priests, and patriarch, he ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... romance of "Felixmarte of Hircania," and similar works. The most ancient romances were originally composed in verse before they were converted into prose: no wonder that the lacerated members of the poet have been cherished by the sympathy of poetical souls. Don Quixote's was a very agreeable insanity. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... wonder they were misunderstood. Grillparzer declared that he was groping in esthetic fog. Julian Schmidt recognized his power and the poetic charm of many of his passages, but thought him in danger of crossing the line which separates sense from nonsense, genius from insanity. Hebbel was restive under criticism, and the method of his polemics tended rather to exasperate than to conciliate his adversaries. Meanwhile Maria Magdalena and Judith were performed at the Hofburgtheater, with Christine as the heroine. But in 1850 Heinrich Laube became director ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... and insufficient, un-nourishing, food, and one can gather some faint idea of the effect which is wrought upon the human body. The German idea is to wear down a man physically as well as mentally, until at last he is brought to the verge of insanity and collapse. By breaking the bodily strength and undermining the mind he is reduced to such a deplorable condition as to render him as pliable as putty in the hands of his accusers. He is rendered absolutely incapable of defending himself. He fails to realise what is said against ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... Henry was the closing of the whole intellectual and religious world that had been opened to the young Lord Clifford. To the men of his own court, practical men of the world, there were times when poor Henry seemed almost imbecile, and no doubt his attack of melancholy insanity, the saddest of his ancestral inheritances, had shattered his powers of decision and action; but he was one who 'saw far on holy ground,' and he was a well-read man in human learning, besides having the ordinary experience of having ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... opened the envelope. The man Richter was undoubtedly a process server—but who had hired him? He unfolded the sheet and scanned the charges—coercion, larceny, livestock theft, and breach of contract. He shrugged. This was Alexander's work. What was the man thinking of? It was insanity to bring the Lani matter into open court. Hadn't Douglas told him what had happened? Couldn't Alexander guess that he had fled with Copper for a good reason—one that would stand up in court? Didn't he know about the spacer? Or had Douglas turned on his cousin? The pup had ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... large extent in the native fashion, and to eschew what they conceive the undue indulgence of those who had preceded them, but the experience of one hot season has generally brought them to another mind. Individuals have adhered to their resolution, and the result in one case I know was insanity, in other cases utter failure of health, and in others speedy death. A band of Germans determined to live, if not in the native style, at least in the simple style of the Fatherland, as to habitation, food, and service, ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... many hours of care and nursing. Poor Mrs. Bennett gained little in mental or bodily health. The fearful scenes of that long night of horror and rapine still seemed vividly before her in her few hours of fitful slumber, and were this state of things to continue long, said the doctor, insanity would be a merciful refuge. An hour or so each day these ministering angels gave to the young officers. Harris, severely shot, was mending fast, his perfect physical condition lending itself admirably to his restoration. Willett, but slightly injured, should be sitting up, with ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... exercise of sanity. But in The Innocence of Father Brown these principles, almost the fundamental ones of literary decency, were put on the shelf. Chesterton's criminals are lunatics, perhaps it is his belief that crime and insanity are inseparable. But even if this last supposition is correct, its approval would not necessarily license the introduction of some of the characters. There is Israel Gow, who suffers from a peculiar mania which drives him to collect gold from places seemly and unseemly, ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... Did he ever, whether from a poisonous philtre or otherwise, lose his reason? and can a poem which ranks among the great masterpieces of genius have been built up into its stately fabric—for this is not a question of brief lyrics like those of Smart or Cowper—in the lucid intervals of insanity? Did Cicero have anything to do with the editing of the unfinished poem? If so, which Cicero—Marcus or Quintus? and why, in either case, is there no record of the fact in their correspondence, or in any writing of the period? All these questions are probably insoluble, and the notice ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... right, who would dare?" murmured Fritz Wendel; "perhaps some poor, deluded mortal, led by a wild insanity to forget his humble condition, and consider himself your equal. There have been maniacs who imagined themselves great among earth's greatest men, and equal even to the ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... temper he had yet to lose; he flung the useless purse from him and broke away from them all in a condition little removed from insanity. ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... monotonous hum; of which hum the true character is extremely difficult to fix. Up to this hour we have never fully satisfied ourselves whether it is a tone and hum of real Humor, which we reckon among the very highest qualities of genius, or some echo of mere Insanity and Inanity, which doubtless ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... the deanery of St. Patrick's, and retired to Ireland to "die like a poisoned rat in a hole." His life was made tragical by the forecast of the madness which finally overtook him. "The stage darkened," said Scott, "ere the curtain fell." Insanity {190} deepened into idiocy and a hideous silence, and for three years before his death he spoke hardly ever a word. He had directed that his tombstone should bear the inscription, Ubi saeva indignatio cor ulterius lacerare nequit. "So great ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... it, he knew that Gabriel spoke the truth. He knew that this man, with the pale, distorted, grief-worn face, with those large eyes flaming with the fires of insanity, was to be his murderer. Death had come to summon him away—death in the form of ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... failed in his undertakings; yet he did not quit the country, and through repeated delays his departure was retarded a whole year. Meanwhile his long sojourn in Africa, the report of his failures, and perhaps whispers of his insanity, had sown the seeds of discontent in Asia; and as Darius said in after-years, when recounting these events, "untruth had spread all over the country, not only in Persia and Media, but in other provinces." Cambyses himself felt that a longer absence would be ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... action of the nervous system. It will sometimes show itself by severe pains in the arm, when in reality there is nothing whatever to cause pain; or it will raise a swelling on the head quite without cause. It is a tendency to nervous disease which in severe cases may lead to insanity. The word neurotic is a general term covering affection of the nervous system. It includes hysteria and ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... of his father's patience, and, despite the publicity of the interview, he contrived to make Mr. Van Riper understand how matters stood. To tell the truth, Van Riper grew quite sober and manageable when he realized that his extravagant imputation of insanity was not so wide of the mark as it might have seemed, and that there was a possibility that his old friend's mind might be growing weak. He even ventured a little way down the path and permitted Jacob to come to the gate while they ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... "In cases of insanity, hysteria, and nervous diseases the mumia of the sufferer must be planted, at 2 a.m., with a cutting of white poplar, and as soon as the latter shows evidences of decay, the ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... into Mrs. Payne's heart. The idea that this bright, delightful child, the idol of her hopes, was the victim of some obscure form of moral insanity frightened her. But she was a woman of courage and determined to know the worst. She took him ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... mind could not at those times have been wholly sane. Sanity is difficult to define, except negatively; but, even though we may be convinced of the truths of the mystic, that nothing is what it seems to be, the above-mentioned conduct suggests temporary insanity. It is sufficient to conclude, as any Philistine would, that whoever has to shake a gate-post to convince himself that it is not a vision is dangerously near madness. Mad people do such things; those who carry on the work of the world as useful and law-abiding citizens do ...
— Noteworthy Families (Modern Science) • Francis Galton and Edgar Schuster
... similarity to Lawyer Giles, had many more of difference. It was the village doctor; a man of some fifty years, whom, at an earlier period of his life, we introduced as paying a professional visit to Ethan Brand during the latter's supposed insanity. He was now a purple-visaged, rude, and brutal, yet half-gentlemanly figure, with something wild, ruined, and desperate in his talk, and in all the details of his gesture and manners. Brandy possessed this man ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... after him so prone to be unjust to a fresh thinker as with regard to his originality. A physical discovery, as Newton's, remains to ninety-nine out of a hundred a mental miracle; but a great moral teacher "labours to make himself forgotten." When he begins to speak he is suspected of insanity; when he has won his way he receives a Royal Commission to appoint the judges; as a veteran he is shelved for platitude. So Horace is regarded as a mere jewelry store of the Latin, Bacon in his Essays, ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... day, Bishop well out of the way, the sisters left his house forever. There was a mad, breathless drive, Bess, with her insanity half returned, biting her wedding ring to pieces, a hurried exchange of coaches to further insure escape from detection, a joyful arrival at modest lodgings in Hackney, a giving in of false names, a hasty locking of doors, and then—the reaction. ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... the German princes and princelings had tried to do in imitation and emulation of French splendor. In Potsdam the grandeur, was not a historical growth as at Versailles, but was the effect of family genius, in which there was often the curious fascination of insanity. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... homewards, unable to devise a proper mode of addressing the unfortunate young lady, and fearing alike to awaken her passions and his own. Whatever he might have proposed to say, was disconcerted by the plain indications that her mind was clouded, more or less slightly, with a shade of insanity, which deranged, though it had not destroyed, her powers ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... disease. That is only one aspect of it. I was on the Royal Commission on Venereal Disease, and Sir William Osier, who was a great authority, said that he could teach medicine on syphilis alone, because every tissue in the body is affected by it, and that the diseases of blindness, deafness, insanity and every form of disease may be due to syphilis. You have only to consider the effect that it had upon the army, and I understand that more than two army corps were invalided during the war on account of venereal disease. What have you to ...
— Safe Marriage - A Return to Sanity • Ettie A. Rout
... course, the unembattled stay-at-homes," he continued. "The sanity of battlefields is in direct ratio to the insanity of the non-combatants. You can see it already in the press. We who stay at home endeavor to excuse the crime of war by attaching ludicrous ideals and purposes to its result. Thus every war is to its non-combatants ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... newly rich who poured into the city, seeking for notoriety and recognition. They prided themselves upon this attitude—they called it their "exclusiveness"; and the exclusiveness of the younger generations of Wallings had become a kind of insanity. ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... tyrannicide, is resumed and embodied in a figure as original and as impossible to forget, for any one who has ever felt the savage fascination of its presence, as any of the humaner figures evoked and immortalized by Shakespeare. The rage of Swift, without his insanity and impurity, seems to utter in every word the healthier if no less consuming passion of a heart lacerated by indignation and envenomed by contempt as absolute, as relentless, and as inconsolable as his ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... crime which, especially under the vulgar bigotry that prevails in England, is followed by an ignominious burial and the seizure of the man's property; and for that reason, in a case of suicide, the jury almost always brings in a verdict of insanity. Now let the reader's own moral feelings decide as to whether or not suicide is a criminal act. Think of the impression that would be made upon you by the news that some one you know had committed the crime, say, of murder or theft, or been guilty of some act of cruelty or ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... they left to support him is now nearly exhausted, together with a small subscription which was also raised to furnish him with necessaries, and to remunerate a person to take care of him. He is perfectly harmless and gentle, being rather in a state of idiotcy than insanity; seldom betraying any symptoms of violent emotion, except occasionally about midnight (the time of his unhappy disaster), when, full of indescribable terror, he exclaims, "Oh! they are coming! they are coming!" All hope of recovery ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor |
