"Insane" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... payer exceedingly contented. Meanwhile Peter with difficulty restrained Leslie from "picking up" stray pieces of mosaic from tessellated pavements, and other curios. Oddly together with Leslie's feeling for the costly went the insane and indiscriminate avidity ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... declared "urgent" by a vote of 370 to 251.—A man named Walker has been arrested on his own confession of a design to assassinate Louis Napoleon, for which purpose he had waited several hours for him to pass out of his gate. He proves to have been insane.—M. Thiers has been on a visit to London, where he was received with distinction. He visited Louis Philippe, whose health is ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... Glyde, whose eyes were interrogatively fixed on Mrs. Leveret. The fact of being deferred to was so new to the latter that it filled her with an insane temerity. "Why, Xingu, ...
— Xingu - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... letter, 'that, after all my experience, I should have put myself so much out of my way to serve a client. A man should do what he's paid to do, and what it is presumed that he will do, and nothing more. But here I have been instigated by an insane ambition to emulate the good-natured zeal of a fellow who is absolutely willing to sacrifice himself for the good of a stranger.' Then he went on to say that he could not leave ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... on principles of mutual benefit; they will never relax in their exertions till they gain a point of equal importance to both countries, and the viceroy will find it as easy to stop the current of the Canton River as to carry into effect the insane determinations of the Hong." This notice was naturally enough interpreted as a defiance by the viceroy, who placed the most severe restrictions he could on the trade, sent his troops into the foreign settlements to remove all Chinese servants, ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... sure about the state of affairs; he might be in an insane asylum, or he might be a hopeless ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton
... the time when the murder was committed, that he had on that day created a sensation by announcing himself John the Baptist and swearing that all other Johns the Baptist were base impostors. The fellow was taken to an asylum for the insane, and the search for Dave ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... in and make terms with 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
... is in community, and its membership—about six thousand women—teach in its schools, and care for the sick poor in hospitals and in their homes. Two hundred are assigned to the care of the insane, ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various
... bed, is not applicable to Russian emperors and Russian writers. Few of them can be said to have died in their beds. Griboyedof is assassinated; Pushkin and Lermontof are murdered; Gogol is found dead from bodily starvation, and Byelinsky is found dead from spiritual starvation; Batushkof dies insane; Dostoyefsky and Chernishefsky are in prison the best years of their lives; Turgenef can find the length of his days only in exile, and Tolstoy the length of his in ploughing fields. For such a strange disharmony in the lives of Russian men of letters, the government ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... must confess that one side of the cave in which I found this was walled up with the same kind of masonry as there was in front of it; but, to tell you the truth, the Peruvian Government has such insane ideas about treasure-hunting; and the life of a man who is believed to have discovered anything worth stealing is worth so little in the wilder districts of the interior, that I was afraid of losing the treasure I had got, perhaps for the sake ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith
... these things becomes vast and complicated. Have the wives, and mothers, and sisters of New York less vital interest in them, less practical knowledge of them and their proper treatment, than the husbands and fathers? No man is so insane as to pretend it. Is there then any natural incapacity in women to understand politics? It is not asserted. Are they lacking in the necessary intelligence? But the moment that you erect a standard of intelligence which is sufficient to exclude women as a sex, that moment most ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... carry insane bugs, lame toads, and convulsive kittens in your hands, and they would not stay on a stretcher if you had one. You should have an ambulance and be a branch of the Sanitary ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... about it—almost insane!" she said, and smiled at me in her old way over the top of the glass. Then she put down the glass and came over to me. "Minnie, Minnie," she said, "if you only knew how I've wanted to get away from the newspapers and the gossips and come to this ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... inward Deity-planted law of the emotional soul. In this only the true Quaker, or Friend, has faith; and it is from rigidly, perhaps strainingly carrying it out, that both the Old and New England records of Quakerdom show some unseemly and insane acts. ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... point out to him her husband's intense sincerity, and the necessity which his convictions forced upon him. But the rector refused to think Mr. Ward's attitude worthy of serious consideration. "The man is insane!" he cried. "Send his wife away from him to force her into a certain belief? Madness,—I tell ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... parental care of the States of Virginia and Maryland, can only expect aid from Congress as its local legislature. Amongst the subjects which claim your attention is the prompt organization of an asylum for the insane who may be found from time to time sojourning within the District. Such course is also demanded by considerations which apply to branches of the public service. For the necessities in this behalf I invite ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Tyler • John Tyler
... mamma, reading his rambling sentences very slowly: "I should judge him to be perfectly insane, and I only hope he will not come out here to ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... chagrin, but also by the reproaches for his failure which reached him from London, Colonel Bishop actually went so far as to consider hunting his quarry in Tortuga itself and making an attempt to clear the island of the buccaneers it sheltered. Fortunately for himself, he abandoned the notion of so insane an enterprise, deterred not only by the enormous natural strength of the place, but also by the reflection that a raid upon what was, nominally at least, a French settlement, must be attended by grave offence to France. Yet short of some such measure, it appeared to Colonel Bishop that he ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... is no out-of-doors, no lyric love; some of his characters are frankly insane. The musical takes on a supreme significance among the sensations, and music seemed the only art which was able to draw the soul of the man from his earth-bound habitation. Only in music did Hoffmann find the ability to make the Romantic escape from the homelessness ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... night and his swiftest horse saddled in the stable, ready for a fight or a flight in case the witch-hunters should come to carry him off to jail. They had accused his sister, who saved her life only by fleeing to the wilderness and remaining in hiding until the insane furor was over. He and his wife survived that gloomy period, and in the ancestral homestead lived happily for more than thirty years, raising a "baker's dozen" of children, of whom Israel ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... my own thoughts, both are divine; decide that for yourselves; but assuredly, and without possibility of other decision, one is, humanly speaking, healthy; the other unhealthy; one sane, the other—insane. ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... wish of a friend I was visiting I went to carry some comforts to a neglected almshouse on a Western prairie. In the insane ward I found a poor young fellow suffering from epilepsy. There had been some brutal treatment in the almshouse and he had tried to escape. Being overtaken he had fought for his liberty, and in consequence he was ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... that letter to you he became insane," said the duchess: she put the information in that form, fearful that her sister would be ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... avowed object was to terminate the existence of the monarch by violence, and even after his death she persisted in maintaining the truth of her assertion, not only orally but in writing; for which persistence she was pronounced to be insane, and so closely confined in an asylum for lunatics as actually to become in a few months the madwoman which she had been represented, although it would appear that great doubts were entertained as to her previous hallucination.[425] ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... not insane. There is a rational motive for his conduct—one which many of us have experienced, and which has, perhaps, prompted us to act in a similar manner, if ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... replied. "The silly old josser! pulling me down there amongst the coals and rubbish for an insane idea like that! Why, the flues wouldn't admit the passage of a child; and, even then, there's a bend, an abrupt 'elbow,' that nothing but a cat could crawl up. And that's a man who's an authority on the human brain! ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... of her fulness drew near I grew feverish with excitement. I was sickening, as it were, to my madness, for never more should I look upon her willingly, with eyes either speculative or insane." ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... is practically universal suffrage. At least it amounts to that. Voters must be registered. They must be British subjects. They must be twenty-one years of age. They must not be insane, idiots or convicts. They must own real property to the value of three hundred dollars in cities, two hundred dollars in towns, one hundred and fifty dollars in the country; or they must have a yearly income of three ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... of means to accomplish certain ends or purposes we regard as the evidence of intelligence. By what other means do we distinguish between the rational and the insane? Winchel says, in his "Religion and Science," p. 102, "Without God we can not account for the correlation presented by the world of structural part to structural part, of structural part to intelligible end, of structural part to persistent plans or archetypes, ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume 1, January, 1880 • Various
... Celestin monks, and, to crown all, a number of lunatics. The Hospital of Incurables had been held out by the medical students against the royalists, and when the latter took it, they sent both sane and insane to prison, where some of the madmen were detained on suspicion of feigning lunacy. "One of these poor wretches was the cause of a most disastrous scene, which we witnessed. Having struck one of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... morning. Every one, both in Petropolis and the capital, was so astonished at the manner in which our lives had been attempted, that if we had not been able to show our wounds we should never have been believed. The fellow was at first thought to have been drunk or insane, and it was not till later that we learned the real motives of his conduct. He had some time previously been punished by his master for an offence, and on meeting us in the wood, he no doubt thought that ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... of being insane. You were never that. Some subtle malarial poison, we shall never know what, got into your blood, affected your brain, and you've had a bad time—a very bad time—of being completely off your balance; the violent stage ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... limit, Allen—now you have passed it. Oh! why did I let you go on! I like you so much, and I want to see you succeed. I've tried to help you all I could, and this is the result. Now we can't even be friends any more, and this insane jealousy of yours will spoil your chances in the Companies. Oh, Allen, Allen—why can't you grow up and ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... unsupported in her statement, and some sympathizing poet apostrophized Mrs. R. in an "Ode to Terror." But the fair romance-writer smiled at their pity, and had good sense enough to refrain from writing in the newspapers that she was not insane. The whole was a fiction, (no new trick for a fireside tourist,) for Mrs. Radcliffe had never seen ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various
... above may consume the offerings, but that grace falling on the sacrifice may through it inflame the souls of all and render them purer than silver purified by fire. This most dread rite then who, that is not altogether insane and out of his mind, shall be able to contemn? Art thou ignorant that no human soul could have sustained this fire of the victim, but all would have totally perished, unless the assistance of divine grace had been abundant" S. John Chrysostom, De Sacerdotio ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... another part of this work, to the prize essay of Dr. Bell, awarded to him by the Boylston Medical Committee on the subject of the diet of laborers in New England. Dr. Bell is a physician of respectable talents, and is at present the Physician to an Insane Hospital in Charlestown, ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... serious charges against the new commandant, and the persons acting under his authority and encouragement.[250] Cruelties of the most atrocious description, and a toleration of evils of an appalling kind; but the often insane violence of the men, scarcely admitted of either much caution or delay. It could answer no purpose to collect the awful details. In part, these charges have been disputed; but their substantial truth is, at least, rendered probable, by the accumulation of similar facts ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... and tested and tested while the cycle went up and up beyond human tolerance—not the death level, but the level where nothing was sure again, the level that made cancer a thing of epidemic proportions, replacing statistically all of the insane multitude of things that man could do to kill himself. Even the good things that the atom had brought were destroyed in the panic that ensued. No matter that you quit. You are still one of the guilty. You have seen it hidden in her eyes ...
— Now We Are Three • Joe L. Hensley
... miserable rented shack that never cost a penny over seventy thousand dollars, with only thirty-eight rooms and no proper space for the servants, they set to work building their present marble palace—there's inside and outside pictures of it in a magazine somewhere round here—bigger than the state insane asylum and very tasty and expensive, with hand-painted ceilings and pergolas and cafes and hot ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... are held in grateful remembrance for their efforts in behalf of charity. Perhaps the most celebrated was Father Billini, who, a member of one of the foremost families of Santo Domingo, consecrated his life to helping his fellowmen. He was a father to the poor and through his efforts the insane asylum of Santo Domingo, an orphan asylum and a college were established. His name became notable in other directions also, for he was instrumental in the discovery of the remains of Columbus in the Santo Domingo cathedral in 1877. At times the methods of the good father were a little ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... hot breath on her cheek; she looked into his face, fierce, cruel, with the insane selfishness of his ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... prisoners Bruce directed should be kept safe in the citadel; but to Mobray he gave his liberty, and ordered every means to facilitate the commodious journey of that brave knight whom he had requested to convey the insane Lady Strathearn to the protection of ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... tried by his Peers at the Bar of the House of Lords; and, although he tried with marvellous skill and ingenuity to prove that he was insane when he committed the murder, he was, without a dissentient voice, pronounced "Guilty," and sentenced to be "hanged by the neck until he was dead," when his body should be handed over to the surgeons for dissection. One concession he claimed—pitiful salve to his pride—that he should be hanged ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... his behalf; the reigning Duke of Saxe Gotha offered him the position of Physician to the Asylum for the Insane in Georgenthal, in the Thuringen Forest. He entered upon his duties in 1792. While at the head of this establishment, he succeeded in affecting a cure which created some sensation, because the party concerned was the Hanoverian Minister, Klockenbring, ...
— Allopathy and Homoeopathy Before the Judgement of Common Sense! • Frederick Hiller
... such a fool's errand; but as, when one is going to invest a considerable sum of money in any enterprise, one is naturally anxious to know all about it, I went, little suspecting that the man was insane." ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... bitterest invectives against the duke, by whose orders he was afterwards committed to the hospital for lunatics, where he was closely confined, and treated with extreme rigor. If he had never been insane before, he certainly now became so. To add to his misfortune, his poem was printed without his permission, from an imperfect copy, and while editors and printers enriched themselves with the fruit of his labors, the poet himself was languishing in a dungeon, despised, neglected, sick, ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... why to many Browning is only a joke, Whitman an eccentric, Dante insane and Turner a pretender. These have all sought to express things which the many can not feel, and consequently they have been, and are, the butt of jokes and jibes innumerable. "Except ye become as little children," etc.—and yet the scoffers are often people of worth. Nothing so shows the limitation ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... She struggled dumbly between them, they did not know why, soundless and ghastly, till she sank exhausted on a couch. Luckily the children were out with the two nurses. The hotel housemaid helped Mrs Fyne to put Flora de Barral to bed. She was as if gone speechless and insane. She lay on her back, her face white like a piece of paper, her dark eyes staring at the ceiling, her awful immobility broken by sudden shivering fits with a loud chattering of teeth in the shadowy silence ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... assorted pair. Cassius more filthy than the vilest and most base tatterdemalion of the stews, and with him rare Cethegus, a senator in all his bravery! Wise judgment! excellent disguises! I know not whether most to marvel at the insane and furious temerity of this one, or at the idiotic foolery of that! Well fitted are ye both for a great purpose. And now—may the dark furies hunt you ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... work was no insane outbreak. Analyzed, it was a logical consequence of the social and political conditions under which the boys had been brought up. In a pretty, rich, busy town of 30,000 people proud of its churches and its schools, eighty ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... War rests on Bulgaria is demonstrated in the latter portion of this volume. Yet the intransigent and bellicose policy of Bulgaria was from the point of view of her own interests so short-sighted, so perilous, so foolish and insane that it seemed, even at the time, to be directed by some external power and for some ulterior purpose. No proof, however, was then available. But hints of that suspicion were clearly conveyed even in the first edition of this volume, which, it may be recalled, ...
— The Balkan Wars: 1912-1913 - Third Edition • Jacob Gould Schurman
... a society was calculated to create considerable of a sensation in the village, and to provoke many remarks for and against. The principle of total abstinence was so novel to many, that they thought its advocates must be almost insane. Even some temperance men and women, who had defended the cause on the old ground, concluded that there was more zeal than knowledge in taking such a step. In the grog-shops the subject was ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... England's Ship of State. There were constant head-winds, and now and again shifting gales of fierce opposition, and all the time a fat captain to pacify and appease. This captain was stupid, sly, obstinate and insane by turns, and to run the ship and still allow the captain to believe that he was in command was the problem that confronted Pitt. And that he succeeded as well as any living man could, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... it sounds insane, but, you know my stepfather thought you—you wanted to marry me. You ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... said Albert; "because a man under the influence of violent passion loses all power of reflection, and is regarded as intoxicated or insane." ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... You must leave me alone for a little while. I cannot talk and think now. We must respect the dead, you know." She looked appealingly at him, acting her part desperately, but well. It was as if she were trying to charm a lion or an insane man. ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... love of country and of its compromised honor, the just susceptibilities of the North, the liberal instincts so long repressed, the desire of elevating the debased and corrupt institutions of the land, the need of escaping insane projects, the powerful impulse of the Christian faith, all these sentiments contributed, without doubt, to swell the resistance against which the supremacy of the South has just been broken. This, then, is a legal victory, one of the most glorious spectacles that the friends ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... drop that woman's acquaintance, if possible," said he. "Whether insane, or only eccentric, any particular intimacy with her must be ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... 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 fee, and will render the same service to the friends of the insane.—At home ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various
... Walker. The ghost chased Nance and me the other night when we were coming back from the village. We were really frightened. I suppose it's some insane person." ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... feat to divert the now aimless Colorado River aqueduct to the site nor to erect thousands of prefabricated houses. The climate was declared to be unequalled, salubrious, equable, pleasant and bracing. Factories were erected, airports laid out, hospitals, prisons, and insane asylums built. The Imperial and Coachella valleys shipped their products in at low cost, and as a gesture to those who might suffer from homesickness it was called New ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... Du——-e, breaking seasonably in upon the conversation of the lovers; "on that hill to the left, what once was an abbey is now an asylum for the insane. Does it not seem a quiet and serene abode for the unstrung and erring minds that tenant it? What a mystery is there in our conformation!—those strange and bewildered fancies which replace our solid reason, what a moral of our human ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... so full of sunshine, and pretty, loving conceits, that by the time he had finished reading them he had been positively jubilant; some, I regret to say, were a trifle wilful and coquettish, and had so roused him to jealous fancies that he had instantly dashed off a page or so of insane reproach and distrust which had been the beginning of a lover's quarrel; some of them (always written after he had been specially miserable and unreasoning) were half-pathetic mixtures of reproach and appeal, full of small dashes of high indignation, and outbursts of penitence, and ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... "She is not insane! How can you say so? But how shall we explain the change in her to Dr. Callandar? We can't tell him ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... as a lunatic; it was a not unusual method at that time of disposing of persons whom it was wished to put out of the way, and, notwithstanding De Sade's organically abnormal temperament, there is no reason to regard him as actually insane. Royer-Collard, an eminent alienist of that period, then at the head of Charenton, declared De Sade to be sane, and his detailed report is still extant. Other specialists were of the same opinion. Bloch, who quotes these opinions (Neue Forschungen, etc., p. 370), ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... brain. It is scarcely necessary to inform the reader, that we have always a better chance for a cure in the one case than in the other, insomuch indeed as, in the first, we have merely functional derangement; in the second, organic change. I always maintain there is no interest about insane people, except to the man of science; and even he very soon gets to that "ass's bridge," on the other side of which Nature, as the genius of occult things, stands with a satirical smile on her face, as she ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... purgation, and our fever of legalism will abate. But if we will take thought betimes we may meet the trouble half way, and thus avert, perhaps, the danger that the fever will be checked only by the overturning of all law, sane or insane. The following chapters are designed to help in ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... now literally quite everywhere, some higher than others, but all of a rough appearance, and uninviting in the extreme. The narrow path, moreover, became more and more difficult, and seemed altogether quite insane with its twistings and fearsome declivities. One's first thought was that at least a bit of road-metal might have been put upon it. But there was no sign of this throughout our toilsome day, nor did I once observe a rustic seat along the way, although I saw an abundance of suitable ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... respects I was nonplused; but, frankly, I think Inspector Weymouth considered West insane. Smith, his hands locked behind his back, stared out of ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... out shriek after shriek at every feint, and he growling meaningless curses through his hard set teeth. "Oh! the fiendish noise that split his head and seemed to choke his breath.—It would kill him.—It must be stopped!" An insane desire to crush that yelling thing induced him to cast himself recklessly over the chair with a desperate grab, and they came down together in a cloud of dust amongst the splintered wood. The last shriek died out under him in a faint gurgle, and he had secured the ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... whose sublime unselfishness and want of common egotism presents such a contrast to what is here. Tell him I often think of him, and always with touched feeling. (When he is eighty-six or ninety-six, nobody will be pained or humbled by the spectacle of an insane self-love resulting from a long life's ungoverned will.) May God bless him!—. . . Robert has made his third bust copied from the antique. He breaks them all up as they are finished—it's only matter of education. When the ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... to say further on in this book concerning terror: the panic that haunts high places and the spell of many angry men. This horrible affection of the mind is the delight of our modern scribblers; it is half the plot of their insane 'short stories', and is at the root of their worship of what they call 'strength', a cowardly craving for protection, or the much more despicable fascination of brutality. For my part I have always disregarded it as ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... wineglass of salt water, and the natural result has been disaster. I understand some fool urged her to try this as a preventive of mal-de-mer. Her mother thinks it must have been a coarse practical joke, and is going to speak to the Captain about it. I wouldn't be the man who prescribed that insane dose for ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Philippines, and what he thought should be done by the government to stop the rebellion. "The President will soon put an end to it," he said, "if he can only have the support of Congress. But as long as there are members of Congress fighting his policy, the insurgents are going to continue their insane efforts to establish an independent government." And some of the reporters smiled to hear so young a fellow talking about the policy in the Philippines. They felt that he was well-informed, however, and put down every word ...
— The Adventures of a Boy Reporter • Harry Steele Morrison
... This Act sounds insane, but the Convention was wise in its generation. Had it merely abolished the persecuting laws of the Church, Scotland might never have been Protestant. The old faith is infinitely more attractive to mankind than the new Presbyterian verity. A thing of slow and long ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... drove Linton speedily to his horse, and Catherine to her chamber. I went to hide little Hareton, and to take the shot out of the master's fowling-piece, which he was fond of playing with in his insane excitement, to the hazard of the lives of any who provoked, or even attracted his notice too much; and I had hit upon the plan of removing it, that he might do less mischief if he did go the length ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... returned with the written paper, which had been considered by the persons to whom she had intrusted it, as the distracted dictates of an insane mind; but proved to William, beyond a doubt, that she was perfectly ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... unaccountably. He had never before imagined that so much fun could be got out of the rolling top of a desk, and for a full quarter of an hour he pulled it backward and forward, and so noisily withal that Mr. Baker sent one of the clerks in to see if the office-boy had not become suddenly insane. ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... are not taken immediately, we shall have all the Huskissonians, Whigs and Ultra-Tories (the last are insane), united against us. ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... is insane enough to think Lionel in love with her," thought his friend, remembering gay Mrs. Wingfield's gossip, and that her name had been coupled with Trevalyon's; it was only that she was a foolish little woman, and let society see that she had a penchant for Captain Trevalyon. ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... quite coolly in reply to my exclamation; "but I am determined to try every means of releasing the unfortunate young lady from the cruel thraldom in which she is held by that harridan of an aunt-in-law. She is no more really insane than you are; but at the same time so excitable upon certain topics, that it might be perhaps difficult to disabuse the chancellor or a jury of the impression so industriously propagated to her prejudice. The peremptory rejection by her guardian of young ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... abused. He never had the heart to refuse to lend money, or to deny bread on credit to hopeless debtors; and altogether debts, distress, baking all night, and school keeping all day, were too much for him. The first hint of an examination of his school completed the mischief, and he died insane. It is a sad story, but many of us will remember with affectionate regard the good, kind, quaint, and most excellent little man. By that time our schoolmistress was Mrs. Durndell, the policeman's wife, a severe woman, but she certainly made the girls do thoroughly whatever she taught, especially ...
— Old Times at Otterbourne • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of an asylum for the insane of the District of Columbia and of the Army and Navy of the United States has been somewhat retarded by the great demand for materials and labor during the past summer, but full preparation for the reception of patients before the return of another winter is anticipated; ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin Pierce • Franklin Pierce
... little men are known by the company they keep. The fool was not particular about his associates; children, sick people, insane folks, rich or poor —it made no difference to him. He sometimes even sat at ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... community. The doctrine, as originally set forth, had at least an appearance of cynicism, and is throughout not free from conscious or unconscious sophistry; and though the theological condemnation evoked by it was nothing short of insane, we cannot wonder that the morality of the author's purpose was impugned. He defends this, however, in successive additions to the work, asserting and re-asserting, by statement and illustration, that his object has been to expose the vices inherent to human society—in no ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... Charity, and control of vice. The public relief of the defective classes, insane, feeble-minded, and paupers, is a part of the social protective policy. The public interest undoubtedly is served by having these suffering classes systematically relieved, but the extent and nature of the provision are questions ever in debate. ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... the gods and demons!" he cried, "I'm not going to stand for her going hunting with that man-net! If she catches any insufferable pup in it I'll go insane!" ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... three agreed that I was an insane child, born out of time, and that I satisfied my propensities by gathering to myself such idiotic things as my watch and garments, including ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... insane?" cried Gotthold, leaping up. "Because I ask you how you came by certain moneys, and because ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Plodkins had become insane, but I recollected I was there alone with him, shaky as he was, in a room with a bolted door, so I put my fingers in the water and attempted to turn on the electric light. I got a shock that was very much greater than that which I received when I saw Plodkins lying at ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... Gus's character, as of so many others in our luxurious age of self-pleasing, was weakness; and yet one must be insane with vanity to be at ease if he can do nothing resolutely and dare nothing great. He is a cripple, and, if not ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... enough to be his enemies. He fled from Saul to Samuel, and took shelter under his protection. Pursued to this retreat by the king, he had no resource but to throw himself on the mercy of the Philistines, and he went to Gath. When he saw himself in danger there, he pretended to be insane; insanity being throughout the East a protection from injury. His next step was to go to the cave Adullam, and to collect around him a body of partisans, with whom to protect himself. Saul watched his opportunity, and when ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... thunderstruck. A man in his presence presuming to have an opinion of his own! a man in the rectory parlor capable of interrupting the rector in the middle of a sentence! guilty of the insane audacity of telling him, as a reader—with Shakespeare open before them—that ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... more or less annoyed by the obtrusive presence of his arms and legs, accompanied by a vague feeling that, at any moment, and no warning given, they might, with some insane and irrepressible flourish, break the Sabbath on their own account, and degrade him in the eyes of his fellow townsmen, who seemed all silently watching how he bore the restraints of the holy day. It ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... no other way?" persisted Musard. "He is mad. He must have been possessed. You heard his story; his hallucinations were those of an insane person. He had some justification. He would never have committed this terrible deed of ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... the rest, it is that the Abolitionists were more objectionable and distasteful to him. "Those," he said, "who are urging with most ardor what are called the greatest benefits to mankind are narrow, conceited, self-pleasing men, and affect us as the insane do." And again: "By the side of these men [the idealists] the hot agitators have a certain cheap and ridiculous air; they even look smaller than others. Of the two, I own I like the speculators the best. They have some piety which looks with faith to a fair future ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... humble supplication, coming from the most faithful of his subjects, was made to him; but in his distorted brain it indicated a new conspiracy of the boyars, of which his eldest and ablest son was to be the leader. In a transport of insane rage the frenzied emperor raised his iron-bound staff and struck to the earth with a mortal blow this hope ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... I never heard anything so absurd!" said Eleanor, hotly. "As if you, who have done everything possible for those girls, would do such an insane thing as hire that gypsy to kidnap them. And especially when we know who ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Mountains - or Bessie King's Strange Adventure • Jane L. Stewart
... love, insane with a heedless, reckless passion for the girl. Martin could well understand now Wild Bob Carew's turbulent and persistent wooing of Ruth. His whole ruthless, lawless nature was dominated by his evil passion; for so long balked, his love had fed wildly upon itself ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... repeated softly. "Oh, I can scarcely believe it true. Let me feel of you. I—I believe I was going insane—the dark, the awful dark, and, and ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... certain mountain bear, unlick'd and rude, By fate confined within a lonely wood, A new Bellerophon,[16] whose life, Knew neither comrade, friend, nor wife,— Became insane; for reason, as we term it, Dwells never long with any hermit. 'Tis good to mix in good society, Obeying rules of due propriety; And better yet to be alone; But both are ills when overdone. No animal had business where All grimly dwelt our hermit bear; ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... is false, perverted sentimentalism and unmitigated cant about the nocturnes, that the wonder is the real Chopin lover has not rebelled. There are pearls and diamonds in the jewelled collection of nocturnes, many are dolorous, few dramatic, and others are sweetly insane and songful. I yield to none in my admiration for the first one of the two in G minor, for the psychical despair in the C sharp minor nocturne, for that noble drama called the C minor nocturne, for the B major, the Tuberose nocturne; and for the E, D flat and G major nocturnes, ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... a student of psychology might have found an analysis of her feelings interesting. She had reached the border-line of monomania, yet he would have been a daring man who would have called her absolutely insane. Except to Foyle she had said nothing of ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... exactly the one more or less that sends the balance up or down, that decides the fate of men and nations. An individual often counts more than a generation. If that were not so, nothing would be possible, and hope would be insane." ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... of Lady Thomson's cheek paled. In her calm, rapid way she at once found the explanation of Milly's unhealthy, depressed appearance and manner. Poor Mildred Stewart was insane. Beyond the paling of her cheek, however, Lady Thomson allowed no sign of shock ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... work of a mature intellect, it is evident that even this must be altogether too much for an immature one. 'To suppose the youthful brain,' says the recent admirable report, by Dr. Ray, of the Providence Insane Hospital, 'to be capable of an amount of work which is considered an ample allowance to an adult brain is simply absurd.' 'It would be wrong, therefore, to deduct less than a half-hour from Scott's estimate, for even the ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... fearing a tragic termination, watched him closely in their rooms day and night. 'Knives and razors, and every instrument that could be used for self-destruction, were removed from his reach.' Mrs. Edwards did not hesitate to regard him as insane, and of course her sister Mary shared ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... learn my history by any accident they might not thank her for the introduction. She was quite confounded; but she did not abate her kindness in the least, although my reservation of confidence in only giving her a hint of the truth, checked her advances. You may think this an insane indiscretion on my part; but if you knew how often I have longed to stand up before everybody and proclaim who I am, and so get rid of the incubus of a perpetual falsehood, you would not be so much surprised. There is one unspeakable blessing ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... sought their guidance in trusting confidence. Through the instrumentality of such men as these the American Revolution was shaped into the dignity of a national movement, and preserved from the threatening evils of an insane democracy. ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... to blast his praise; Breath of injustice, breathed from men insane, Who seek in brawling strain The echo of his virtues mild to drown, And with their violent deeds eclipse the days Of his serene renown. Unnumbered are the sands of th' ocean shore; And who shall number o'er Those joys in others' breasts which Theron's hand hath sown? —Trans. ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... Liberator for its comment on John Brown, Susan found it colored, as she had expected, by Garrison's instinctive opposition to all war and bloodshed. He called the raid "a misguided, wild, apparently insane though disinterested and well-intentioned effort by insurrection to emancipate the slaves of Virginia," but even he added, "Let no one who glories in the Revolutionary struggle of 1776 deny the right of the slaves to imitate ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... little time before the post went out; I was almost unable to write from illness; but, after a second glance at this note, I felt that I dared not delay my reply. I did not think that it was money that he wished to ask. I did not think that he was insane. I could not conceive why he should apply to me, nor why he did not explain what he wished from me; but I had a strong impression that it was safest to reply at once. I did so, in half a dozen lines, promising to write next day, after a further attempt to discover his meaning, and begging ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... an Order in Council, January, 1807, prohibiting neutral vessels from trading between the ports of France or her allies; but this was denounced as utterly weak by Perceval and Canning in opposition. In April, 1807, the Grenville Ministry, turned out of office by the half insane George III, was replaced by a thoroughly Tory cabinet, under the Duke of Portland, whose chief members in the Commons were George Canning and Spencer Perceval, Foreign Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer respectively. The United States was now to undergo treatment ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... still testify to the credulous. The other spring is at another village called St. Fillans, nearly thirty miles to the westward, just outside the limits of our map, on the road to Tyndrum. In this Holy Pool, as it is called, insane folk were dipped with certain ceremonies, and then left bound all night in the open air. If they were found loose the next morning, they were supposed to have been cured. This treatment was practised as late as 1790, ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... insane. I don't care to read any more such twaddle and I won't pay for the services of such a man out of the ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... eventually to transfer his allegiance to the Roman Church. The biography is for the most part an account of his death-bed conversation, which lasted a long time, since his illness was even more of the mind than of the body. It is an extremely ghastly account of a morbid and insane melancholia. It was the fashion of the time to take such matters spiritually rather than physically, and we read that many persons went to his death-bed and listened to his miserable cries and groanings in the hope of gaining edification for their souls. How the book came into Bunyan's hands no one ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... become ungovernable at home, and his father had him put in the county insane asylum, where he remained a year and a half. While there he caused so much trouble that the attendants were only too glad when he escaped and went to Liverpool. Here he succeeded in getting a situation with a dealer in bric-a-brac, rare books and ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... menaces of war, insane and demoniac, to fill the world with tears and woe. As we read the record of these horrid outrages which through all the centuries have desolated this globe, it would seem that there must be a vein of insanity as well as of depravity, in ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... ache than listen to one of Herb's home-made jokes. But on the other hand, some of them aren't so awfully bad. If you took one and polished it up a bit here and there and changed it around a little, it might be good enough to raise a laugh in an insane asylum." ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... exhibition. Yet was there ever a man stopped in the streets of London, and suddenly confronted with the question, "What year did Henry VIII. come to the throne?" Certainly not. A man would be considered insane who expected any rational being to burden his mind with such trivialities. Yet the small boy is caned if he doesn't know. The only consolation I can offer the unfortunate small boy of to-day is that it will be ever so much worse for the small boy born 3000 years ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... far less misery from foreign armies in the period between 1630 and 1600 than they had done in the period from 1494 to 1527, yet the state of the country grew ever more and more deplorable. This was due in the first instance to the insane methods of taxation adopted by the Spanish viceroys, who held monopolies of corn and other necessary commodities in their hands and who invented imposts for the meanest articles of consumption. Their example was ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... to say to all these things? Shall we believe that Macpherson advertised his MSS. when he had none? The belief implies that he was insane, which we know was not the case. And are we further to believe that such men as the above deliberately attested what they knew to be false, and what, if false, might easily be proved to be so? It is impossible for a moment to ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... been prodigious. As fast as the stormers came up, the Priests who held the lowest gate remaining to us rained down great rocks upon them till the narrow alley of the stair was paved with their writhing dead. But Phorenice stood on a spur of the rock below them urging on the charges, and with an insane valour company after company marched up to hurl themselves hopelessly against the defences. They had no machines to batter the massive gates, and their attack was as pathetically useless as that of a child who hammers against a wall with an orange; and meanwhile the ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... you have been a fool!" exclaimed Mr. Duncan irritably. "You might have known that would be the result of your insane folly. You've lost your thousand dollars, and what have you got to show ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... that I received thereafter, prior to my leaving Kentucky. On reaching Washington, Mr. Cameron called on General Thomas, as he himself afterward told me, to submit his memorandum of events during his absence, and in that memorandum was mentioned my insane request for two hundred thousand men. By some newspaper man this was seen and published, and, before I had the least conception of it, I was universally published throughout the country as "insane, crazy," etc. Without any knowledge, however, of this fact, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... deception, but had gone into it her own self, voluntarily, following her horrible, insatiable instinct. But the proprietress of the house and both the housekeepers indulge Pasha in every way and encourage her insane weakness, because, thanks to it, Pasha is in constant demand and earns four, five times as much as any one of the remaining girls—earns so much, that on busy gala days she is not brought out to the more drab guests at all, or else refused them under the pretext of Pasha's ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... boats. Hardly had the latter been completed, when there came so violent a storm that the cables were snapped like pack-thread and the bridge swept away. With the weakness of a man of small mind, on hearing of this disaster Xerxes burst into a fit of insane rage. He ordered that the heads of the chief engineers should be cut off, but this was far from satisfying his anger. The elements had risen against his might, and the elements themselves must be punished. The Hellespont should be scourged for its temerity, and three ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... heroes. Life must be the hope of thieves, for something fearful has to follow. Thieves may well be allowed to quake at the fear of death. Hark! Do you hear their horns echoing through the forest? See there! how their glittering sabres threaten! What! are you still irresolute? are you mad? are you insane? It is unpardonable. Do you imagine I shall thank you for my life? I disdain ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... would have amounted to nothing. If Benedict had not lost his reason, the document would have been legally signed. The cause of Benedict's lapse from sanity did not occur to him. He only knew that if the inventor had not become insane, he should have secured his signature at some wretched price, and out of this conviction ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... least a moment the two women stood looking at each other. If Miss Campbell had flinched, there is no telling what the half-savage creature, insane ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... and turning to Joseph Calvin, Judge Van Dorn said: "That man's crazy. This court has no jurisdiction over the insane. His family can bring a proceeding in habeas corpus before the probate court of the county on the ground of the prisoner's insanity. But I have no right to take judicial notice of his insanity." The Judge folded up his opinion, twirled his heavy glasses a moment, ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... sleep. The dead coma had left his brain, and the calling of his name stung his senses to keen attention. He had an insane love of rum, but he did not love the landlord. In other years, Peter Tindar and he had wooed the same maiden,—Ellen Goss,—and he had won her, leaving Peter to take up with the sharp-tempered damsel who had brought him the tavern, and Tom knew that lately the tapster ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... shoulders, cramped, ached and burned. The brilliantly lighted schooner seemed to regress as he progressed. The sun was like an auger boring into the back of his head. His mind began to wander again, and a sudden fear came on him lest he should go insane out in this ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... had never spoken. It was the end recognized and unmentioned. The yacht waited. We were days late. Honolulu called, and the news was that the King had gone particularly pupule" (insane), "that there were Catholic and Protestant missionary plottings, and that trouble with France was brewing. As they had landed at Kawaihae two weeks before with laughter and flowers and song, so they departed from Hilo. It was a merry parting, full of fun and frolic and a thousand last ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... splendid for Gladys in the worldly sense. But there! it was better, perhaps, not to mix up Stations. Mr. Brill repeated this sentiment over and over again, always using a capital S for station—(as though Vaughan had expressed an insane desire to confuse Victoria with the Great Western). And he remained very respectfully, ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... severity. The most amiable of mankind may well be moved to indignation, when what he has earned hardly, and lent with great inconvenience to himself, for the purpose of relieving a friend in distress, is squandered with insane profusion. We will illustrate our meaning by an example, which is not the less striking because it is taken from fiction. Dr. Harrison, in Fielding's Amelia, is represented as the most benevolent of human beings; yet he takes in ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay |
