"Maddening" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... taste of blood had acted like the maddening first sip of wine to a dipsomaniac long-deprived. Punctuated by deafening roar, the brute's assaults grew in fury. My inadequate defense of only one hand left me vulnerable before claws and fangs. But I dealt out dazing retribution. Mutually ensanguined, we struggled ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... The maddening song of the mosquitoes was always with him. Only when he slept did he escape from it. The heavy gloves, the netting, the smudge fires were ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... been visible had been passed by us in the dark. It now struck me, that the water spoken of by the natives at Yeerkumban-kauwe might be situated among these sand-hills, and that we were going away from instead of approaching it. The bare idea of such a possibility was almost maddening, and as the dreadful thought flashed across my mind I stood for a moment undecided and irresolute as to what I ought to do. We were now many miles past these hills, and if we went back to examine them for water, and did not find it, we could never ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... up and burst into a loud harsh cackle of laughter. Whoop! he went, and doubled himself up with laughter. Whoop! Whoop! he went, and fell on the ground and writhed with laughter. He was in that state of intoxication when he could find no release from maddening self-consciousness. He knew what he was doing, he did it deliberately. And yet he was also beside himself, in a sort of hysterics. He could not help ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... in hand, above the prostrate bodies of Cassio and Roderigo, and as the sudden impulse to murder them strikes his brain, breathing out in a blood-curdling whisper, "How silent is this town!" his Bertuccio, begging at the door of the banquet-hall, and breaking down in hysterics of affected glee and maddening agony; his Lear, at that supreme moment of intolerable torture when he parts away from Goneril and Regan, with his wild scream of revenges that shall be the terrors of the earth; his Richard the Third, with the gigantic effrontery of his "Call him again," and with his whole matchless and wonderful ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... fashion of the song sparrow, fill the air with distressed "pips" that seemed to hint of mischief dire; neither did he, as does the red squirrel, resent an intrusion into preserves that he considered his own, with a maddening series of choking cries, coughs, and "snickers," till one was almost ready to turn a gun upon him; still less did he, in veery style, utter wails so despairing that one felt herself a monster for remaining. The yellow-throat's guardianship was a pleasure. He remained in sight, not fifteen ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... Which shows that Love hath once been there, To those who watch thee will disclose More than ten thousand tomes of woes Wrung from the vain Romancer's art. With thee how proudly Love hath dwelt! His full Divinity was felt, Maddening the heart he could not melt, Till Guilt became Sublime; But never yet did Beauty's Zone For him surround a lovelier throne, Than in that bosom once his own: And he the Sun and Thou the Clime Together must have made a Heaven For which the Future ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... there cruelty in laying the rein on their necks, and delivering them up to the transport of their high condition—for every throbbing vein is visible—at the first full burst of that maddening cry, and letting loose to their delight the living thunderbolts? Danger! What danger but breaking their own legs, necks, or backs, and those of their riders? And what right have you to complain of that, lying all your length, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 330, September 6, 1828 • Various
... woman in Europe to-day—was that the 'only way'? What are they doing and saying to-day? Of what are the newspapers talking under those horrid headlines? What are the police, the detectives, the gossips doing? I am the object on which their every thought is centered. Oh, it is maddening to think of what you, of all people, ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... snow! How the flakes gather and laugh as they go! Whirling about in its maddening fun, It plays in its glee with every one. Chasing, Laughing, Hurrying by, It lights up the face and it sparkles the eye; And even the dogs, with a bark and a bound, Snap at the crystals that eddy around. The town is alive, and its heart in a glow, To welcome the coming of beautiful snow. How the ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... years he had struggled with these, and still they eluded him. Once he had succeeded—that was the dreadful thing. Once for a while the instruments had worked, and with a space of several miles between them. But—this was the maddening part of it—he had never been able to repeat the exact conditions; or, rather, to discover precisely what they were. On that occasion he had entrusted one of his machines to his first cousin, Mary Porson, a big girl with her hair still down her back, rather idle in disposition, but very intelligent, ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... that I felt each evening, and made it perhaps even more cruel to my sensibility because, when it assumed this olfactory guise, my intellect was powerless to resist it. When we have gone to sleep with a maddening toothache and are conscious of it only as a little girl whom we attempt, time after time, to pull out of the water, or as a line of Moliere which we repeat incessantly to ourselves, it is a great relief to wake up, so that our intelligence can disentangle the idea of toothache from any ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... sentiment is very exquisite, and the truth of the natural fact very perfect as observation, and the book is full of such writing. But oh, dear! the confusion of plot is so maddening you have a delirious feeling that everybody is getting engaged to his half-sister or widowed stepmother, and keep turning back to make sure! But the dramatism is very ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... this is undeniably low for WALLACK'S, and the sales-ladies in the audience express their sense of that fact by intimating that EFFIE GERMON'S jewels are not real, and the sales-gentlemen by confiding to one another at the bar, whither they wend after the second act to quaff the maddening sarsaparilla, that WALLACK'S is ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., Issue 31, October 29, 1870 • Various
... said, "it will be maddening to be two months at sea without news, and to know that perhaps all Europe is in arms and tremendous events going on and ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... Cooktown, and he hasn't got the one that plays the tune yet. Does this smell like 'The Last Rose of Summer'? Why, you can hear those fish of yours humming! What with hardly any fish, the stink of the whole boat, and that maddening mouth-organ, I feel almost inclined to jump overboard and marry a mermaid. Let's ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... o' these Sundays! How the Church bells ring up the sleeping past! Here has a maddening memory broken into my brain. To the door, to the door, with the naked lunatic thought! Once it is forth we may talk of what we dare not entertain; once the intriguing thought has been put to the door ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... I am, old man," Joe answered for her. "Talk about the language! I don't hanker after learning it, but I've got to, some time. If they would just let me be a sort of deaf-mute doctor I'd be much obliged. The work is fairly maddening. You know, it was a question of closing up this hospital or putting me in as a green hand. Of course there are the nurses, and a couple of students. But I'm glad they put me in; only, look at the job! Never a day without new patients. ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... you suppose made him bother to do such a mean thing? Why did he want to make all that trouble for? Why couldn't he stick to his own business and let us alone? It is maddening to think of. ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... column, threaded ravines and depressions well known to them from boyish days, and finally creeping behind the curtaining bluffs into full view of the great herd drowsily nibbling in the broad, sunny valley, had burst with maddening yell and waving blankets and banging rifles, with sudden fury from their covert, tearing by the weary pickets, stampeding their horses, and so had gone thundering down upon the startled herd and, skilfully encircling it from the south, reckless of rallying ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... polite. Nothing is so maddening to me as cheerfulness in others when I have suddenly been awakened. Her ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... the loneliness of such a life might not in some way have disturbed the man's mind, at least temporarily. Wasn't it possible for one, in such a case, to do queer things and never remember anything about them afterwards? No one better than she knew what a terrible and maddening thing loneliness was. She recollected distracting hours spent in little hall-bedrooms while she tried to mend, after an exhausting day's work, the poor clothing that wore out so terribly soon, and how at times she had felt that she must ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... legs, through his aching thighs, through his tortured back, through his cringing neck, till the whole reeking misery seemed to foam and froth in his brain in an utter frenzy of furious resentment. Again the day dragged by with maddening monotony and loneliness. Again the clock mocked him, and the postman shirked him, and the janitor forgot him. Again the big, black night came crowding down and stung him and smothered him into a countless ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... again to the consciousness of his condition, clasped either the rosary or the crucifix, and turned his soul to fervent prayer; then, again, the strange wild cries without confounded themselves into one maddening noise on his feverish ear, or, in the confusion of his weakened faculties, he would, as it were, believe himself to be his brother dying on the field of Navaretta, and scarce be able to rouse himself to a feeling ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... from ubiquity to invisibility would have seemed to Susy, a few months earlier, one of the most maddening of many characteristics not calculated to promote repose. But now she felt differently. She had grown interested in her charges, and the search for a clue to their methods, whether tribal or individual, was as exciting to her as the development ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... of the people or purple of kings sway not, not maddening discord among treacherous brethren, nor the Dacians swarming down from the leagued Danube, not the Roman State, or realms destined ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... mountains—when lo! a miracle! Creative of grandeur in his very despair, he stood astonished at the cliff that came prerupt from his canvass, and christened itself "the Eagle's Eyrie," as it frowned serenely upon the sea, maddening in a foamy circle at its ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... betrayed my absentmindedness during the time that I was struggling vainly with these maddening problems, but presently, Mrs. Camber having departed about her household duties, I found myself walking down the garden with ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... for three years she had shrunk from doing. So she told Robert Grant Burns that she would meet him and his company in Helena, and without a word of explanation, she left two days in advance of them, just after she had had another maddening talk with her Uncle Carl, wherein she had repeated her intention of employing ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... this fearful disturbance had made his escape to Newgate, from the roof of which he witnessed the destruction of his premises. He saw the flames burst from the windows, and perhaps in that maddening spectacle suffered torture equivalent to some of ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... moment he stood as though about to carry out his first intention. He stood glaring at his opponent, his face contracted into a snarl, his whole appearance hideous, almost bestial. Mr. Sabin smiled upon him contemptuously—the maddening, compelling ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... over his cooling coffee. Through haunted nights he had fought maddening memories of Io's shadowed eyes, of the exhalant, irresistible femininity of her, of the pulses of her heart against his on that wild and wonderful night in the flood; and he had won to an armed peace, in which the outposts of his spirit ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... whom, when victory glances, The bloody laurels on the brow he bindeth! Whom, after rapid, maddening dances, In clasping maiden-arms he findeth! O would that I, before that spirit-power, Ravished and rapt from life, ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... four months after he had entered the prison. By that time he had become inured to his convict life. The silence of his cell and the menial tasks he was compelled to perform, which had at first been so distressing, banal, maddening, in their pointless iteration, had now become merely commonplace—dull, but not painful. Furthermore he had learned many of the little resources of the solitary convict, such as that of using his lamp to ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... his head. Most church-bells in the world are of poor quality, and have a harsh and rasping sound which upsets the temper and produces much sin, but the St. Nicholas bell is a good deal the worst one that has been contrived yet, and is peculiarly maddening in its operation. Still, it may have its right and its excuse to exist, for the community is poor and not every citizen can afford a clock, perhaps; but there cannot be any excuse for our church-bells ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... more active than during the day and many times their bombs found a mark among the British soldiers crouching on the ground. It was a terrible ordeal through which these brave fellows had to pass, the forced inaction was maddening, and they were all the more eager to fight when at last the welcome signal came in the early dawn ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... ridiculous and he was absolutely impotent to retaliate in any way. He would bring scandal upon them all if waiters and other guests saw him guarding Miss Rawson's actual door, and he could not sit outside like a valet; the whole thing was unspeakably maddening, and murderous thoughts ...
— The Point of View • Elinor Glyn
... I woke, and I lay awake for hours. Every vext problem of my life and of the hereafter presented itself to me, and had to be argued out and puzzled over with maddening reiteration. The reason for this was evident and flagrant. It had woven itself into the tissue of my brief unconsciousness, and was now recognised ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... the more maddening because Man would not admit that he was through. Ended, that is, ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... a man who knew his own mind. He strode away at once without looking to right or left, and Royson yielded to the impulse which bade him not hesitate but accept the proffered assistance in the search for Irene. Action of any sort was preferable to a maddening wait for tardy officialdom, so he hastened ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... before we heard the sound of firing, and shots came in quick succession, maddening us beyond control, for we thought of our men, few in number and scattered over the fort, opposed to some five or six hundred of ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... themselves to whisper, the unmistakable truth. Now another alarm, another fire bell mingles its sound with the general chorus of discord, shouts of the soldiery, the frightened cries of the people—jells of the drunken troops all a scathing, maddening turbulance in the crowded streets. A lurid glare shoots up above the housetops, then the cracking and roaring of the dread elements told but too plainly that the beautiful city was soon to be wrapped in flames. The sack and ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... festa-days) the bells of the churches ring incessantly; not in peals, or any known form of sound, but in a horrible, irregular, jerking, dingle, dingle, dingle: with a sudden stop at every fifteenth dingle or so, which is maddening. This performance is usually achieved by a boy up in the steeple, who takes hold of the clapper, or a little rope attached to it, and tries to dingle louder than every other boy similarly employed. The noise is supposed to be particularly obnoxious to Evil Spirits; but looking up into ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... reversal of bird form, a shatterment of sentiment, a rasping maddening note from somewhere in the dome of a pipal tree. A Koel bird, as if in derision of the feathered songsters, sent forth his shrill plaintive, ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... cleaning and brushing up for it. Short service, read by the Major, and two hymns. Then a long lazy lie on deck with Williams, learning Dutch from a distracting grammar by a pompous old pedant. Pronunciation maddening, and the explanations made it worse. Long afternoon, too, doing the same. No exercising; just water, feed, and a little grooming at 4.30, then work over for the day. Kept the ship lively combing my roan's ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... cried Almamen, in atone of deep anguish. "I, then, at last regain my child? Do I press her to my heart? and is it only for that brief moment, when I stand upon the brink of death? Leila, my child, look up! smile upon thy father; let him feel, on his maddening and burning brow, the sweet breath of the last of his race, and bear with him, at least, one holy and gentle thought to ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... nothing could seem to satisfy. Her hands clutched my buttocks convulsively, and seemed to wish to force my whole body into her wildly excited cunt. With such vigour was the action carried on that the grand crisis soon arrived, most rapturous to both, and almost maddening to Miss Frankland. The heavings of her body and gaspings for breath were quite hysterical, while, with one of those real vice-like pressures, I felt as if she were nipping my prick in two. It was not a mere throbbing pressure, but a long continued convulsive ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... no other thoughts. Surprize is an emotion that enfeebles, not invigorates. All my meditations were accompanied with wonder. I rambled with vagueness, or clung to one image with an obstinacy which sufficiently testified the maddening ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... be the only topic of conversation. Each had his say, his prediction. It became maddening. Towards evening the chill of melting snow would deceive many into the belief that ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... the Provost's lodging in the High Street, and made her wild appeal, in all the force of impassioned and terrible emotion, to the overawed and excited crowd. They saw her in the carelessness of misery half-dressed, unadorned, disenchanted, and delivered from the maddening delusion which had carried her away, recognising in its full extent the horrors of the result—and their hearts were rent with pity. But notwithstanding that pity and all the innate chivalry which her sufferings called forth, Edinburgh and Scotland, the whole alarmed and terrified nation, believed ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... the same note on the piano over and over again. This will give you some idea of the displeasing, jarring effect monotony has on the ear. The dictionary defines "monotonous" as being synonymous with "wearisome." That is putting it mildly. It is maddening. The department-store prince does not disgust the public by playing only the one tune, "Come Buy My Wares!" He gives recitals on a $125,000 organ, and the pleased people naturally ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... left alone, except so far as a person who is agitated by maddening Furies is not alone, fluctuated in sorrow like a stormy sea; and though her purpose was fixed and her heart was resolute when she first began to make preparations for the impious work, her mind now wavered, and feared. She hurried, she procrastinated; now she was bold, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... you'd better use these, Mother." It was of no use to offer them till she was weakening in the search, and she would take them grudgingly with, "They don't suit me." Similarly with the keys, accepted only after prolonged and maddening search. "Well, you'd better try ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... heavily loaded subway trains jarred the walls of the building. The rattle and whirr of the overflowing surface cars rose sharply above the hum and din of the city streets. To the man who asked only a chance, only a place, only room to stand and something—anything—to do, it was maddening. A blind, impotent, fury took possession of him. He clenched ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... once, you maddening half-wit. What did you think I meant? Come at once or expect an aunt's curse first ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... was a tremendous crash. The roof over the main room had come smashing in! Instantly the fire roared louder; tongues of it began to lick through the walls. Wood popped, and the heat became maddening. One side of the room became a mass of flames. The imprisoned men began to wet their clothing with the little water ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... 's enough, for love is vanity, Selfish in its beginning as its end, Except where 't is a mere insanity, A maddening spirit which would strive to blend Itself with beauty's frail inanity, On which the passion's self seems to depend: And hence some heathenish philosophers Make love the main ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... one says, "how can healthy organs misbehave in this way? Something must be wrong. There must be some cause. If 'nerves' are not physical, what are they? They surely can't be imaginary." Most emphatically, they are real; nothing could be more maddening than to have some one suggest that our troubles are "mere imagination." No wonder such theories have been more popular with the patient's family than with the patient himself. Many years ago a physician put the whole truth into ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... on earth can solve the mystery of it, avert the new and appalling danger of it, it is you! Oh, say that you will take the case, say that you will solve it, say that you will save little Lord Chepstow and put an end to this maddening mystery!" ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... involved in this odious Social Union business from the first, and now have it left on my hands in the end, is maddening. Why, I can't get rid of ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... ignorant of the full extent of maddening persecution to which not merely the Covenanters but the people of Scotland generally had been subjected, his own limited experience told him that there was much truth in what his companion said; still, like all loyal-hearted men, he shrank from the ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... ever-growing mob of terror stricken people who had escaped this massacre. Some of the girls seemed quite paralysed with fear; others were apparently temporarily bereft and kept on shrieking with a persistency that was maddening. A young French sailor who did not look more than seventeen, and was splashed all over with blood from having fallen in one of the worst places, kept striking them two and three at a time, and cursing them in fluent Breton, in the hope of bringing them to reason. "Eh bien, mes belles! ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... understand all a woman feels. She must sit and wait, and hope, and pray for the safe return of husband or brother or sweetheart. The long days! Oh, the long sleepless nights, with the wail of the wind in the pines, and the rain on the roof! It is maddening. Do not leave us! Do not leave me! Do not leave Helen! Say ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... the evidence is unanimous—at that moment came sudden, absolute darkness, followed immediately by the maddening din of all the bells and all the gongs, from top to bottom of the house, in every room ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... review I can't forget How oft in sickness, grief and pain, Thy loving heart our needs has met, While solace rich came in thy train. Nor when thyself on sick bed lay, Racked with Neuralgia's maddening pangs. How Patience kept the wolf at bay, And made him soon withdraw his fangs. My darling sweet, 'Tis surely meet I thee with ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... laughing and half remonstrating; but he replied with the utmost solemnity, explaining to them, in a maddening little sermon, that one can always find some small occupation that is helpful to others. He did not find a spud; but he found an old broom made of twigs, with which he began energetically to brush the fallen leaves ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... she looked full in his face, and he thought that her eyes were as colourless as those of a watersprite, and there lay hidden in them a maddening riddle. From below in the bushes there came the sound of a shot. Vera rose immediately from the bench, ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... sake, and that my love for Margaret could only be justified to myself—the only one who could ever know it—by my work. Over the black top there, down in the blacker valley, was the enemy, her enemy, nibbling up the space between us as a rabbit nibbles up a lettuce leaf. I closed my mind to the maddening chime, and started ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... their wives as slaves. But still, in spite of all, the Indians clung to their priests — as they said, from affection for the religious care they had bestowed, but quite as possibly from the instinctive knowledge that, between the raiding Portuguese and the maddening patriots in Asuncion, their only safeguard against slavery lay in the Jesuits. Most fortunately for Paraguay at the time (1734), Don Bruno de Zavala, perhaps the most energetic of the Spaniards in the King's service ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... had for some minutes fruitlessly exhausted all his force to drag Eleanor from the door. Despair gave her strength; she clutched at the door; but she felt her strength failing her—her grasp was relaxing. And then the maddening thought that she would be shortly his—that he would slay her—while the idea that Ranulph was so near, and yet unable to protect her, added gall even to her bitterness. With savage delight Luke exulted in the lovers' tortures. He heard Ranulph's ineffectual attempts; he ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... of the musicians, were the brass: trumpets and trumpets-a-piston, trombones and valve trombones and Fulk horns, all blatting away to split the sky with maddening sound, Sousaphones and saxophones and French horns and bass horns and hunting horns, and tubas along in their own little cart, six round-cheeked men lost in the curves of the great instruments, valiantly blowing away as they rolled by into the woods ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... was at its height when he arrived, but his first letters home were chiefly occupied with descriptions of the city itself, and how it had affected him. 'It is fearful! it is maddening!' he writes to Fanny three days after he had settled into his Great Portland Street lodgings.[30] 'London is the grandest and most complicated monster on the face of the earth.... Things roll and carry me along as in a vortex. Not in the last six months at Berlin have ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... two jaguars, which followed his movements with glaring eyes. A single glance satisfied him they were cubs; but a maddening thought shot across his brain; the mother was out, probably not far; she might return in a moment, and he had no arms, except his knife and the barrel of his broken rifle. While musing upon his perilous situation, he heard a roar, which summoned all his energy; ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... not quite sure that Bob would consent to dine in the modest little home, but under the circumstances idleness was maddening, so she fell to work. It seemed very odd, when she thought of it, for the bride of a millionaire to prepare a meal with her own hands, but anything was preferable to dining out, in her present frame of mind. This was very different from what she had expected, but—everything ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... frightful grip on the Grizzly, who, limping noisily around, was known and recognized as "Can-foot." His comings and goings to and from the garbage heap, by day and by night, were plainly announced to all by the clamp, clamp, clamp of that maddening, galling tin. Some weeks went by and still the implacable meat ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... I could do nothing else. That draper's shop was not the place for a scene, with a half-dozen clerks to enjoy it. I waited, fuming, while she wandered about, taking a great deal of time, and lingering over each purchase in a maddening manner. At last she seemed able to think of no more possibilities and strolled to where I was standing, followed by the salesman, whose hands ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... identity of the murderer, to cast about for the motive of the crime. Motive, motive! How desperately he had sought for another, turning his back upon that grim thought, that Marlowe—obsessed by passion like himself, and privy perhaps to maddening truths about the wife's unhappiness—had taken a leaf, the guiltiest, from the book of Bothwell. But in all his investigations at the time, in all his broodings on the matter afterwards, he had been able to discover nothing that could prompt Marlowe to such a deed—nothing but that temptation, the ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... pangs of hunger began to gnaw like vultures, and the thirst was still more intolerable; the pangs of hunger intermitted for hours at a time, and then returned to intermit again: they exhausted but did not infuriate; but the rage of thirst became incessant and maddening. Ben Burnley suffered the most from this, and the wretch came ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... arms twitching to seize me, and the minds Inflamed like the glee-kindled hearts of fiends. And through the world the fawning, fawning lusts Hound me with worship of a ravenous yearning: And I am weary of maddening men with beauty. ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... in the empty study, I had to admit that the author, no more gifted, no more favoured with talent than myself, had been successful and I had not. The very praise I received for my powers from men who would not help me to employ them was a maddening stimulus. ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... recognize many old acquaintances; in the special hope of which, Bob Transit has faithfully delineated some of the most conspicuous characters, as they appeared on that occasion, lending their hearty assistance in the general scene of maddening uproar. It was past five o'clock in the morning ere we quitted this den of dreadful depravity, heartily tired out by the night's adventures, yet solacing ourselves with the reflection that we had seen much and suffered ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... that precedes a Syrian dawn, which invigorates the frame and elevates the spirit. One cannot help fancying that angels may have been resting on the mountain tops during the night, the air is so sweet and the earth so still. Nor, when it wakes, does it wake to the maddening cares of Europe. The beauty of a patriarchal repose still lingers about its existence in spite of its degradation. Notwithstanding all they have suffered during the European development, the manners of the Asiatic races generally are more in harmony with ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... he said, "when I declare that the fault is not all on the side of the working man. Many of our employers are kind and sympathetic men, but others of them are not. I envy no man among you the wealth he has gathered, but the selfishness of some of our manufacturers is maddening to the ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... his friend, loses him. Observe how I am placed! It is maddening. I have had a dozen opportunities to marry riches. This millstone is eternally round my neck. I have gone through my part of the fortune which was left us independently. She has all of hers, and that is why she is so strong. ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... together one of the most perplexing, maddening triangles that ever disturbed the ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... shoulder, with a bustle behind and tightly swathed hips, under the most brilliant light, women and maidens, whose chief virtue has always been modesty, exhibit themselves in the midst of strange men, who are also clad in improperly tight-fitting garments; and to the sound of maddening music, they embrace and whirl. Old women, often as naked as the young ones, sit and look on, and eat and drink savory things; old men do the same. It is not to be wondered at that this should take place at night, when all the common people are asleep, so that no one may see them. ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... moodily out over the place of the topsy turvy house, his own mind awhirl with the maddening force of the furious winds ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... we are. It's all over, Phil: they know all about us in England. (To Valentine.) Oh, you can't think how maddening it is to be related to a celebrated person, and never be valued ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... before him, a glorious bird of paradise. The wanton display of a maddening curve of slender ankle, through the slash of the clinging gown imparted just the needed allurement to stamp her as a Vestal of the temple of Madness. The cunning simplicity of the draping over her shoulders—luminous ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... of this maddening frolic, while Caesar and the others were kneeling behind the barley stack, Kate snatched Philip's hat from his head and shot like a gleam into the ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... for her person. With the vanity of the woman and the pride of a queen, "she painted her face and tired her head," and then haughtily presenting herself before the murderer of her children, she uttered a maddening taunt and defiance. By the hands of her servants she was cast from the windows of the palace of Israel into the very grounds which had been the vineyard of Naboth; and as she was dashed to the earth, the wheels of the chariot of the destroyer of her race passed over her, and the feet of ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... were paddling felt no fatigue. They knew that at night they were to have a feast. Already the fires of the maddening drink had made the blood in their dull veins course quickly. They anticipated the excitement that would make them forget they had ever been cold or hungry; and bring to them bright dreams of that ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... think they were so badly off for their times. The parsonage is a well-built stone house, their father had his salary, and the villagers told me that the three girls looked after the poor in hard winters, often supplying whole families with coal. Of course they led lives of a maddening monotony, but they were neither hungry nor bitter, and at least two of them developed a higher order of genius than was possible to the gifted Jane Austin in her smug life of middle-class plenty, and, to my ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... the Southern side, and which numbered probably forty thousand men, were disbanded. These men had for four years been subjected to the unfamiliar and galling restrictions of military discipline, and to the most maddening privations. . . . At the same time four millions of slaves, without provisions and without prospect of labor in a land where employers were impoverished, were liberated. . . . The reign of law at this thrilling time was at an end. The civil powers of the States were dead; the military ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... replied Brown impatiently. "How should I know? How can I guess all their mazes down below? Perhaps you can make a torture out of snuff and bamboo. Perhaps lunatics lust after wax and steel filings. Perhaps there is a maddening drug made of lead pencils! Our shortest cut to the mystery is up the hill to ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... a torrent ran recklessly, tearing at its rocky confines with raging hands, and crying out in many voices like a multitude bent on some deed of vengeance—hurrying, delaying, turning on itself, maddening itself. Its bellowing seemed a part of universal silence. Silence brooded here, alone, with those wild voices for ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... beyond its wont the heaving main. To the third heaven her chaste soul made repair, And in Zerbino's arms was locked again. On earth, with shame and sorrow for his share, That second Breuse sans pity did remain; Who, when digested was the maddening bowl, Lamented sore his error, ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... Harper's, I should say, for it was in response to her entreaties that the latter had thrown down their arms, were taken away; the dead man was borne out; lights glowed in every room, the servants returned to their tasks, a maddening fragrance came from the kitchen, and the three nieces flitted everywhere in their benign activities, never discovering the hurt on my shoulder until everything else on earth had been discovered, and then—"Oh, Richard, Richard!" from Estelle, with "Reach-hard, ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... goin' to make you talk this time!" cried Dryfoos, striking the arm of the chair he sat in with the side of his fist. A maddening thought of Christine came over him. "As long as you eat my bread, you have got to do as I say. I won't have my children telling me what I shall do and sha'n't do, or take on airs of being holier than me. Now, you just speak up! Do you think those loafers are right, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... empty of all thought, and he did not whistle over his work as another man might have done. The canary made up for his silence, trilling and chittering continually, splashing about in its morning bath, keeping up an incessant noise and movement that would have been maddening to any one but McTeague, who seemed to have no ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... dressing-table! Four waists on coat hangers! Four skirts, beautifully hung! And what a litter of brushes and things on the floor! She turned to Dan, who had not entered, but was standing in the doorway, smiling. "It must have been perfectly maddening for the good lady of the ship to leave all this behind." She walked to the dressing-table and peered into the mirror. It must be said she saw a girl whom under other circumstances she would hardly have recognized. Her heavy hair was ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... face flushed hot all over. There, back to a tree, a rope twisted twice about his body sat Ned Rector, defiance in face and eyes. Ned was looking straight at his captor. The situation was strained. To Tad, it was maddening. ...
— The Pony Rider Boys with the Texas Rangers • Frank Gee Patchin
... standing—standing—standing yet! With the flesh sick, the inmost soul a-fret, Pale, pulseless patiences, our very sex, That should be a protection, one more load To lade, and chafe, and vex. No tired ox urged to tramping by the goad Feels a more mutely-maddening weariness Than we white, black-garbed spectral girls who stand Stonily smiling on while ladies grand, Easily seated, idly turn and toss The samples; and our Watcher, 'neath the gloss Of courtly smugness glaring menace, stalks About us, creaking cruelty ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 8, 1893 • Various
... dejected, embittered, wearied; sick of his way of livelihood, sick of the atmosphere he moved in, sick of his reflections, sick of himself. Life had got to be stale, flat, and unprofitable. His self-loathing, which steadily grew, would have become a maddening torture if he hadn't found refuge in a stony apathy. Sometimes he relieved this by an outburst of bitter or satirical self-exposure, when the mood found anybody at hand for his confidences. But for the most part he lived in a lethargic indifference, ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... doorstep?" broke in Hilton Fenley shrilly. His utterance was nearly hysterical. Farrow's judicial calm appeared to stir him to frenzy. He clamored for action, for zealous scouting, and this orderly investigation by mere words was absolutely maddening. ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... your maddening beauty will not suffer me to forget that mine is still susceptible ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... Pimpernel himself, with that indomitable optimism of his, and almost maddening insouciance, either did not believe in Kulmsted's disloyalty or chose not ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... exhausted his memory, she had announced that they would go up to Town the next day, and that on Sunday morning, sun, rain, or snow, he would motor her down to where Lyveden dwelt; then she had said she was sorry she'd shaken him, smiled him a maddening smile, told him, with a rare blush, that Anthony Lyveden was "the most wonderful man in the world," kissed him between the eyes, and then darted out of the room, calling for ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... realized. No sooner had he departed than the rioters were supplied by some of those mysterious agents who were actively employed throughout the whole of these transactions, with wine, brandy, and other incitements to inflame their already maddening fury. Led on by Verhoef and one Van Bankhem, a sheriff of The Hague, they assailed the prison door with axes and sledge-hammers, threatening to kill all the inmates if it were not instantly opened. Terrified, or corrupted, the gaoler obeyed their behests. On gaining admittance ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... eyelids flickered with some emotion; and his eyes—she noted now, even though she could have killed him for his maddening insistence—were blue, and rimmed by heavy lashes that sun and sand had bleached until the natural brown of them threatened to become ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... unhappy and abused wife, and also that of his helpless family. Yet in one sense, may we say with the murderer, it was not he who committed the awful and inhuman deed, but boldly and truthfully charge it to man's bitterest foe—Rum! What but the maddening effects of spirituous liquors, could so demoralize, so demonize a man, as to convert the once loving husband and proud father, into a reckless fiend, a heartless savage? Oh, Rum! earth contains not another ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... Millie. Or perhaps he has left her—in some dark, upper space. A maddening sense of impotence settled upon him. If the man had taken Millie out into the night he had no chance of following, finding them. Impenetrable screens of bushes lay on every hand, with, behind them, mile after ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Gyp hesitated, in a maddening way. "Well, I suppose it was giving her the handkerchief made her break down and I don't believe she thought I'd come straight out here and tell you girls. And I'm only telling you because I think maybe we can help her. After she'd taken the handkerchief and wiped her ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... happy, and questioned only the extent of my patience, which I felt fast giving way as the preparations for Miss Dudleigh's marriage proceeded without my seeing any immediate prospect of my own. You can realize, then, the maddening nature of the shock which I received when, coming quietly into the house as I did one day, I beheld her face disappearing through one of the doorways, with that look upon it which I had always felt was natural to it, but ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... the fly, made perspiration flow so freely that it was difficult to avoid damage. Moreover, I was greatly annoyed by the small yellow bees, which were very numerous. They clung to my face and hair in a maddening manner, refusing to be driven away. If caught with the fingers, ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... seemed care enough. A neighbor across the canyon, who had known her in her girlhood, took too vital an interest in her daily life. It was maddening to be called on the telephone at all hours and told that Poppy had had no fresh drinking water since such and such an hour, or to have Donald waylaid and admonished to give her plenty to eat. That she had, as my bills at the feed ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... at a maddening pace and stars flashed like jewels in a black sky, a glow of pale yellow light overspread the north-east horizon—the aurora. A rim of dark, stratus cloud was often visible below the light which brightened and diffused till it curved as a low arc across the sky. It was eerie to watch ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... herself away, her low voice maddening him. "Don't you have a private room? A girl doesn't like to be ...
— A Bottle of Old Wine • Richard O. Lewis
... emotion which almost overcame her; and after it came something of realization of the great fight he was making for her—for her, and the aged, feeble grandfather waiting patiently out there. He loved her, this master among men, and she sighed contentedly. For the moment the maddening anxiety that brought her here was forgotten; there was only the ineffable sweetness of seeing him again. She extended her hands to him impulsively, and he kissed ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle
... maddening—" Harriet thought, splashing hot water and clattering tea-cups. "Who's coming?" she added aloud in an undertone to Ward, as one more motor swept about the ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... Think only of the Polonaises in A major (Op. 40, No. 1) and in A flat major (Op. 53), of many of his studies, the first three of his ballades, the scherzos, and much besides! To be sure, a great deal of this vigour is not natural, but the outcome of despair and maddening passion. Still, it is vigour, and such vigour as is not often to be met with. And, then, it is not the only kind to be found in his music. There is also a healthy vigour, which, for instance, in the A major Polonaise assumes a brilliantly-heroic ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... wonderful thing. They say music's the most evocative art in the world, but, sacre nom de dieu, they hadn't counted the orchestra of a bombardment. That's music at ten thousand pounds a minute. And if I'd not heard that, I'd never have known what it is to have my soul drawn out of me by the maddening excitement of an intensive bombardment. And—and, que voulez-vous, I ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... blindly whirling, In rings madly swirling, Full of crazy wrath, So furious and fast they fly They blur the earth and blot the sky In wild, white mirk. They fill the air with frozen wings And tiny, angry, icy stings; They blind the eyes, and choke the breath, They dance a maddening dance of death Around their work, Sweeping the cover from the hill, Heaping the hollows deeper still, Effacing every line and mark, And swarming, storming in the dark Through the long night; Until, at dawn, the wind lies down, Weary of fight. The last torn cloud, with trailing gown, ...
— The White Bees • Henry Van Dyke
... is maddening. Last night I couldn't sleep for thinking of it,—all the horror of it got hold of me. I fancied myself out at the front again,—I heard the awful howls and shrieks of the shells, heard the booming of the big guns, smelt the acids of the explosives, heard the groans of the men, saw them lying in ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... the victory at Manassas, it was worse than a barren one, having only exasperated the enemy, and stimulated the Abolitionists to renewed efforts. I suppose these critics would have us forbear to injure the invader, for fear of maddening him. They are making this war; we must make it terrible. With them war is a new thing, and they will not cease from it till the novelty wears off, and all their fighting men are sated with blood and bullets. It must run its course, like the measles. We must both ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... constitution cried out for the joy of life. She was made to be a great lover, a great mother; and to her, more than most, the sunshine falling in muffled beams through the lattices of her mother's sick-room came with a maddening summons to—live. She was so supremely fitted to play a triumphant part in the world outside there, so gay of ...
— Different Girls • Various
... for some time, he entered a desert, in which no water was to be found, and the sand was so burning hot, that it seemed to be instinct with fire. Both horse and rider were oppressed with the most maddening thirst. Rustem alighted, and vainly wandered about in search of relief, till almost exhausted, he put up a prayer to Heaven for protection against the evils which surrounded him, engaged as he was in an enterprise for the release of Kai-kaus ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... Vernabelle, putting her hands to her chest to show where it tore. "That last maddening Russian bit—it leaves me like a limp lily!" So she was led to the punch bowl by Comrades Price and Tuttle, with the others pushing after ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... the clothes, and Mr. Muller had fallen into the habit of reading to her while she did so. But to-day the Reformatory rose before her a prison, the gates of which were about to close on her. The heap of stockings, the touch of the darning cotton, the sound of Mr. Muller's droning voice, were maddening to her: every moment she made a tangle in her thread, looking down at Maria under the Bourbon rose, and the attentive face bent over her. Where should she go? What should she do? Had the world nothing in it for her but ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... dumped in on you, that was degrading. Consequently, while conjecturing new versions of Perrault, versions which it relieved her to find were not wanted, she gnashed her milk-white teeth at Lennox, felt that she hated him, yet felt, too, and the feeling was maddening, that the hatred ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... to hear you talk like this," she said. "To me it seems almost maddening to see so much suffering, so many people suffering, not only physically, but being dragged down into a lower moral state by sheer force of circumstances and their surroundings, and all the time we educated people ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... passers-by with a cool, easy indifference, but never losing a chance of business. In Algeria this race is generally thought to present a picture of arrogance, knavery and rank cowardice not equaled on the face of the globe. An English traveler saw an Arab, after maddening himself with opium and absinthe, run a-mok among the shopkeepers who lined the principal street of Algiers. Selecting the Hebrews, he drove before him a throng of twenty, dressed in all the colors of the rainbow, who allowed themselves to be knocked down with the obedience of ninepins. A Frenchman ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... breath. How maddening to have his happy thoughts so rudely broken! In a flash he was ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... ears and burn me blind. Pretty soon those people who read my paper, say the prosperity of the United States will slow down into a quiet trickle, then a dribble shading off into a blast of air and a maddening gurgle, while folks stick their heads out the window and swear at the government for not ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent |
