"Madman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... unless seasonably apprized of the truth; and, when he knows the truth, he may start into rage, which I shall be more fitted to encounter than you. I am told that anger transforms him into a ferocious madman. Shall I ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... about like a madman; he would cheerfully have killed them—he told me that, himself—but he couldn't. When he swung a chair over his head one sprang in the air and caught it, two threw themselves bodily upon him and forced him to the floor; it was only the ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... that old madman down," cried the bailiff. "Now, once for all," he continued, shaking the ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... he treat her to, carried out of himself, gone for the moment the madman she had named him. It was Jim Kendric's way to fight in silence, but now he shouted as he struck, defying them, cursing them, striking as hard as God had given him strength, recking not in the least of blows received, heart and mind centered alone on ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... unexpected that Mahr was honestly at a loss to account for it. He looked anxiously toward the door, remembered the absence of his secretary and gasped in fear. He was at the mercy of the madman. With an ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... Dennis, Johnson and Mack! Do you know what this means? It spells hanging for every mother's son of you. Don't be a madman and fire that gun, Johnson. There's still a chance, even for you. Cut loose from the pirate you're serving and join the honest party. Mack, you're not a mutineer, are you? You don't want to be hanged at ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... "I would not tell you all he said, for on the eve of a battle in which you were to fight side by side, I did not wish to make you angry with your friend and companion: but had a raging madman, just escaped from his keepers, come to offer me his hand, his conduct could not have been worse ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... unfortunate, instantly forgetting their favorite virtues, signalized themselves by the number and violence of the outrages with which, while each seemed to strive who should afflict me most, they overwhelmed me. I was impious, an atheist, a madman, a wild beast, a wolf. The continuator of the Journal of Trevoux was guilty of a piece of extravagance in attacking my pretended Lycanthropy, which was by no means proof of his own. A stranger would have thought an author ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... half afterwards. The Arab chief who came with me said it was the telegraph. The Gordons and the camels are of the same race—let them take an idea into their heads, and nothing will take it out.... It is fearful to see the Governor-General arrayed in gold clothes, flying along like a madman, with only a guide, as if he were pursued.... If I were fastidious, I should be as many weeks as I now am days on the road; I gain a great deal of prestige by these unheard-of marches. It makes the people fear me much more than ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... fugitive Slaves, and face the Enemy; Oh Villains, Cowards, deaf to all Command: by Heaven, I had my Rival in my view, and aim'd at nothing but my conquering him—now like a Coward I must fly with Cowards, or like a desperate Madman fall, thus singly, midst the numbers. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... thereof." But as he spake these words, looking towards the river, he espied where Bruin the bear lay and rested, which struck his heart with grief, and he railed against Lanfert the carpenter, saying, "Silly fool that thou art, what madman would have lost such good venison, especially being so fat and wholesome, and for which he took no pains, for he was taken to his hand; any man would have been proud of the fortune which thou neglectest." Thus fretting and ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... listen to 'em, and he jumped up and carried on like a madman. His idea was for 'em all to club together to pay the money, and to borrow it from Smith, the landlord, to go on with. They wouldn't 'ear of it at fust, but arter Smith 'ad pointed out that they might 'ave to go to jail with Henery, and said things about 'is ...
— Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection) • W.W. Jacobs
... into favour. Before the night was over, this was proved to be the fact, and, I believe, from his own confession. The King came, that evening, to see Madame de Pompadour; he spoke of this occurrence with great sang froid, and said, "The gentleman who wanted to kill me was a wicked madman; this is a ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... the influence of liquor, is a madman in every sense of the word, and his mental aberration is often of the most dangerous kind. Place him and the confirmed maniac side by side, and it would be difficult for a stranger to determine which was the most irrational ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... moon, the night is far spent; already the east changes, the stars fade; he rows like a madman to reach the land, but a blush of morning is stealing up the sky, and sunrise is rosy over shore and sea, when panting, trembling, weary, a creature accursed, a blot on the face of the day, he lands at Newcastle—too ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... "The madman of the sea," said the stolid mate. "A bad day for us when he sailed to the north'ard. He kills for the pleasure of it. Now Stede Bonnet loots such stuff as takes ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... and the whole seven can be let loose in less than that many seconds, for this is a self-cocking instrument. Now it will take you at least ten seconds to get to the door, so remain exactly where you are. That advice will strike you as wise, even if, as you think, you have to do with a madman. You asked me a minute ago how the Indian experiments were coming on, and I answered admirably. Bernard Heaton left his body this morning, and I, David Allen, am now in possession of it. Do you understand? I admit it is a little difficult for the legal mind to ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... FIRST MADMAN. Doom's-day not come yet! I 'll draw it nearer by a perspective, or make a glass that shall set all the world on fire upon an instant. I cannot sleep; my pillow is stuffed with ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... men of studious habits, but must recognize the existence of a parallel phenomenon in the case of those who have over-stimulated the Memory. In such persons Reason acts almost as feebly and as impotently as in the madman; once fairly started on any subject whatever, they have no power of self-control; they passively endure the succession of impulses which are evolved out of the original exciting cause; they are passed on from one idea to another and go steadily forward, plodding along ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... supercilious smiles. Outside of the Cafe of the Nouvelle Athenes, Monet was a laughing-stock. Manet was bad enough; but when it came to Monet, words were inadequate to express sufficient contempt. A shrug of the shoulders or a pitying look, which clearly meant, "Art thou most of madman or simpleton, or, maybe, impudent charlatan who would attract attention to himself by ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... chauffeur listened with a grin, glancing guardedly at Deering, who stared grimly ahead with an unlighted cigar in his mouth. He was not to be disturbed in his meditations upon the blackness of the world by the idiotic prattle of a madman. For half an hour Hood had been describing his adventures with a Dublin University man, whose humor he pronounced the keenest and most satisfying he had ever known. He had gathered from this person an immense fund of lore ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... curb had slipped. His anger was a frenzied runaway which he, like a madman, was riding ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... the lower in a straight line, a lean nose, and eyes perpetually bloodshot. His manner was that of a bully of the most brutal kind. He browbeat his officers, cuffed and kicked his men, in his best days a martinet, in his worst a madman. The only good point about him was that he never used the cat, which, as Bulger said, ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... best colts want breaking in. Not that we like severity; cruel mothers are not mothers, and those who are always flogging and fault-finding ought to be flogged themselves. There is reason in all things, as the madman said when he cut off ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... man's business to protect women and innocent children from the malice of a madman. To let you into a dark secret, he's got the idea that there's buried treasure somewhere on the land occupied by ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... top segment stands often one man, and only one. His joyful vision cloaks a vast sorrow. Even those who are nearest to him in sympathy do not understand him. Angrily they abuse him as charlatan or madman. So in his lifetime stood Beethoven, solitary ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... at, pitied as a madman, discouraged by the great, refused by the rich, he kept on till, in 1790, he had the first vessel on the Delaware that ever answered the purpose of a steamboat. It ran six miles an hour against the tide, ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... however, he slunk out of bed, rushed to the gaming table, and lost all the money he had with him. He tried to borrow more, but was refused. He went home. His wife had taken the precaution to lock the drawer that contained their last money. Vain obstacle! The madman broke it open, carried off two thousand crowns—to take his revenge, as he said, but in reality to ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... of Brutus is superbly portrayed in that wonderful scene with Cassius in the fourth act. With all the superiority of conscious genius he treats his confederate as a child or madman, much as ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... child do, with the knowledge she had, but give him every penny that came into her hands, lest he should be tempted on to rob their benefactress? If she told the truth (so thought the child) he would be treated as a madman; if she did not supply him with money, he would supply himself; supplying him, she fed the fire that burned him, and put him perhaps beyond recovery. Distracted by these thoughts, tortured by a crowd of apprehensions whenever he was absent, and dreading ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... lovers murmur to each other across that little abyss. He flung himself against the barriers like a madman. But his hands were futile against the tangle of ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... page after page. Then I felt the approaches of a supreme despotism that might annihilate all I had been, all I hoped to be,—that might compel me to denounce all that I had taught, to hear all that was respectable and healthy in the world jeer at me as an impostor, an enthusiast, a madman. It was not that I was simply invited to come above the ordinary doctrines of the day, and stand supported and encouraged by a few advanced minds; but I was called to place myself where the most earnest souls—unless a second birth ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... twitching up first one of his legs, then the other, and shifting as the animal aimed his hoofs, escaping every time as it were by miracle. With a mixture of temerity and presence of mind, which made us alternately look upon him as a madman and a hero, he gloried in the danger, secure of success, and of the sympathy ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... day he started up and seized his arms. His helmet, his buckler, he cast far from him; his hauberk and his clothes he rent asunder; the fragments were scattered through the wood. In fine, he became a furious madman. His insanity was such that he cared not to retain even his sword. But he had no need of Durindana, nor of other arms, to do wonderful things. His prodigious strength sufficed. At the first wrench of his mighty arm he tore up a pine- tree by the roots. Oaks, beeches, maples, whatever he ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... and comport myself like a madman in the highways and byways, but for the help of God?—That is a small matter, and a question of common decency; but you must know that without the grace of God and the virtue of His Spirit, there is no impurity, meanness, infamy, drunkenness, blasphemy, or other kind of sin to which ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... Braidwood, Harwood, Norwood, Sherrard and Sherratt (Sherwood). But, in considering the frequency of the simple Wood, it must be remembered that we find people described as le wode, i.e. mad (cf. Ger. Wut, frenzy), and that mad and madman ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... that it would be as easy to buy a soul as to invest money in the Funds. Any ordinary person would have feared ridicule, but Castanier knew by experience that a desperate man takes everything seriously. A prisoner lying under sentence of death would listen to the madman who should tell him that by pronouncing some gibberish he could escape through the keyhole; for suffering is credulous, and clings to an idea until it fails, as the swimmer borne along by the current clings to the branch that snaps in ...
— Melmoth Reconciled • Honore de Balzac
... bluish-red, with a large nose. "Then," said he, "you bloody dog, come and bow to my bishop," pointing to the best house there. I stared with astonishment, and was turning away presuming he was a cloth in the wind or some madman escaped from his keeper. "Ho, ho! but you can't go before you have bowed to my bishop," he again called out; "come with me to my house, and we shall be better acquainted." He took my arm; I thought him a character, which I afterwards found he was, and gave in ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... time I was convinced that I was entertaining either a rogue or a madman, and I cursed my stupidity in bringing the man in without having seen his face. My mind was quickly made up, and I knew what to do. Ghosts and psychic phenomena flew to the winds. If I angered the creature my life might pay the price. I must humor him till I got to the door, and then ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... never made so indifferent a figure in my life, and so we thought all; to come away, lose our infantry, our general, and our honour, and never fight for it. Duke Bernhard was utterly disconsolate for old Gustavus Horn, for he concluded him killed; he tore the hair from his head like a madman, and telling the Rhinegrave the story of the council of war, would reproach himself with not taking his advice, often repeating it in his passion. "Tis I," said he, "have been the death of the bravest general in ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... and the actions of a lunatic would be causeless. I do not dwell here upon the disastrous lapse in determinist logic. Obviously if any actions, even a lunatic's, can be causeless, determinism is done for. If the chain of causation can be broken for a madman, it can be broken for a man. But my purpose is to point out something more practical. It was natural, perhaps, that a modern Marxian Socialist should not know anything about free will. But it was ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... lumbermen's camp has leaped from his bunk. His appearance is something ghastly. His comrades spring forward to restrain him, but he throws them off. There is a furious struggle with the madman. He has the strength of a dozen men. The sturdy lumbermen at last gain the advantage over him. Suddenly he throws up his hands and pitches forward upon the floor of ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... gone Naima gave free scope to his feelings. He wept aloud, tore his beard, and threw himself upon the ground, like a madman. The servants and slaves of the house stood around in motionless astonishment, as they were not accustomed to see their master exhibiting such passionate emotion; others sought to console him, but fruitlessly; so they cried and bewailed with ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... powerful considerations among the Indians. Unhappy L'Herbier lost his senses under the horror of the night massacre. Insanity, as you may have heard, is a sacred thing in the estimation of the American savages; they regard this poor madman as a mysteriously inspired person The other priest, Penrose, had been in charge of the mission medicine-chest, and had successfully treated cases of illness among the Apaches. As a 'great medicine-man,' he too is ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... Cornelius, who had barely time to retreat behind his table to avoid the first thrust; but as Gryphus continued, with horrid threats, to brandish his huge knife, and as, although out of the reach of his weapon, yet, as long as it remained in the madman's hand, the ruffian might fling it at him, Cornelius lost no time, and availing himself of the stick, which he held tight under his arm, dealt the jailer a vigorous blow on the wrist of that hand ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... madman?" he cried. "You can only ruin me, but do you not know that I will have the power to denounce ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... for the weakness of their arguments by strongly expressing their abhorrence of the act—that is to say, by abusing it. We are told that suicide is an act of the greatest cowardice, that it is only possible to a madman, and other absurdities of a similar nature; or they make use of the perfectly senseless expression that it is "wrong," while it is perfectly clear that no one has such indisputable right over anything in the world as over his own person and life. Suicide, ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... to Dennis, "I remember poor Nat Lee, who was then upon the verge of madness, yet made a sober and witty answer to a bad poet who told him, 'It was an easy thing to write like a madman.' 'No,' said he, ''tis a very difficult thing to write like a madman, but 'tis a very easy thing to write like a fool.'" Nevertheless, the difficult song of distraction is to be heard, a light high note, in English poetry throughout two centuries at least, and one English poet lately set that ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... the madman, the fool, the hero; in short, any or everything to rescue her I love. Name your objections no longer: ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... an excitement so powerful that the girl instinctively drew away; but he went on, scarcely noticing, and with a fixed glare in his eyes that was akin to the stare of a madman. ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... show off their jesting tricks at Croydon fair, a most suitable place for them. On one occasion Hook personates a madman, accusing Mathews, 'his brother,' of keeping him out of his rights and in his custody. The whole fair collects around them, and begins to sympathise with Hook, who begs them to aid in his escape from his 'brother.' A sham escape and ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... her go, but when a peasant told me there was a bull-fight at Cordova, I set off like a madman to the spot. Lucas was pointed out to me, and on the bench close to the barrier I recognised Carmen. It was enough for me to see her to be certain how things stood. Lucas, at the first bull, did the gallant, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... addressing the conqueror; for when Scipio asked what had been his object in not only renouncing his alliance with the Romans, but in making war against them without provocation, he fully admitted "that he had indeed done wrong, and acted like a madman; but not at that time only when he took up arms against the Roman people; that was the consummation of his frenzy, not its commencement. Then it was that he is mad; then it was that he banished from his mind all regard for private friendship and public treaties, when he received a Carthaginian ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... he did so, Carew rushed in and threw his arms round the madman. In that grip even Red Mick ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... himself no person was abroad, for on the night of the Feast of Samhain none but a madman would quit the shelter of a house even if it were on fire; for whatever disasters might be within a house would be as nothing to the calamities ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... Seigneur and his accomplice to be arrested. Their trial took place before a commission which de Retz denounced, declaring that he would rather be hanged like a dog, without trial, than plead before its members. But the evidence against him was overwhelming. It was told how the wretched madman, in his insane quest for gold, had sacrificed his innocent victims on the altar of Satan, and how he had gloated over their sufferings. Finally he confessed his enormities and told how nearly a ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... toward the hut. The priest lay asleep before the door. It was better to get this madman away than to leave him free to prowl ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... ideas, as the pendulum regulates the motion of the timepiece. I do not know if this is sense or nonsense, but I am sensible that if I were in solitary confinement, without either the power of taking exercise or employing myself in study, six months would make me a madman or ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... hearsay, had raised it from 500 to 5000, and by the time she came into the country she called it 15,000. The Irishman, for such I understood him to be, was stark mad at this bait; in short, he courted me, made me presents, and ran in debt like a madman for the expenses of his equipage and of his courtship. He had, to give him his due, the appearance of an extraordinary fine gentleman; he was tall, well-shaped, and had an extraordinary address; talked as naturally of his park and his stables, of his horses, his gamekeepers, ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... upon his head, seemed to stupefy him, so that at last they were obliged to halt and weave a kind of hat out of corn and grasses, which gave him so strange an appearance that some Moors, whom they met going to their toil, thought that he must be a madman, and ran away. ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... doing so knocked his wig awry and his hat off. He bleated in my embrace; so bleats the sheep in the arms of the butcher. The whole thing, on looking back, appears incomparably reckless and absurd; I no better than a madman for offering to advance on Dudgeon, and he no better than a fool for not shooting me while I was about it. But all's well that ends well; or, as the people in these days kept singing ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... He was dark, more like a Spaniard than an Englishman, with black eyes and olive complexion. His expression was lofty and noble, but his temper was so easily aflame that the slightest cross or annoyance would set him raving like a madman, with blazing eyes and foaming mouth. I have seen him myself with the froth upon his lips and his whole face twitching with passion, like one who hath the falling sickness. Yet his other emotions were under as little control, for I have heard ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... assistance I proceeded to lift the corpse, and lay it in the coffin. The widow's son remained motionless, and, as it were, stupified during this operation: but the moment he saw me prepare the lid of the coffin so as to be screwed down, he started up with the energy and gestures of a madman. His glazed eyes seemed bursting from their sockets, and his upper lip, leaving his teeth bare, gave his mouth the appearance of a horrible and convulsive smile. He seized my arm with his whole strength; and, as I felt his grasp, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various
... had stood by him, suddenly turned, and maybe fearing lest some thunderbolt of vengeance should fall upon them from heaven and consume them all, he elbowed himself out of the crowd and hurried away. As for the wretched madman, in his raging fury, it was not the men who had forbidden him heaven whom he strove to rend and tear limb from limb, but poor, innocent, harmless Sandy Graff. The crowd swayed and jostled this way and that, and as madness begets madness, the curses that ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... "A madman," replies the keeper of the madhouse. "What whimsical ideas these lunatics have! He imagines that one can propel ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... interesting moment then, because the figure lunged at Mr. Cameron, and Mr. Cameron, stooping low and swiftly, as well as to one side, and at the same instant becoming a fighting Scot, which means a cool-eyed madman, got in one or two rather neat effects with his fists. The first took the shadow just below his breast-bone, and the left caught him at that angle of the jaw where a small cause sometimes produces a large effect. The figure sat ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... it," cried the Governor. "Ye will see when the man comes. O sheikhs and men, have we ridden together and walked puppies together, and bought and sold barley for the horses that after these years we should run riot on the scent of a madman—an ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... silence for just three minutes. Then the man who had sworn before shot out another oath. Hookway began to rave like a madman. Evans burst into sobs. Davis began to swear horribly, and cursed Gilliland for putting the ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... nations were delivered into the hand of Tsardom—can do nothing. It can do nothing because it does not exist. It has vanished for ever at last, and as yet there is no new Russia to take the place of that ill- omened creation, which, being a fantasy of a madman's brain, could in reality be nothing else than a figure out of a nightmare seated upon a monument of ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... Christ's destructive might over all foul spirits (for the 'us' means not the man and the demon, but the demon and his fellows); and the recognition of Christ's holiness, which lashes unholiness into a paroxysm of mingled despair and hate. Does this sound like a madman, or an epileptic, or like a spirit which knew more than men knew, and trembled and hated more than they could do? There is nothing more terrible than the picture, self-drawn in these spasmodic words, of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... the knives and forks, serviettes, plates and dishes. While laying the table she related all the news about the factory. "The master came from Moscow by rail and started running from floor to floor like a madman. Of course he doesn't understand anything and does it only for show—to set an example so to speak. Vassily Fedotitch treats him like a child. The master wanted to make some unpleasantness, but Vassily Fedotitch ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... her with his eyes until she disappeared. Then he started up and walked about the Luxembourg garden like a madman. It is possible that, at times, he laughed to himself and talked aloud. He was so dreamy when he came near the children's nurses, that each one of them thought him in ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Saint Bartholomew. This was the emancipation of the human mind. These were the fruits of the great victory of reason over prejudice. France had rejected the faith of Pascal and Descartes as a nursery fable, that a courtezan might be her idol, and a madman her priest. She had asserted her freedom against Louis, that she might bow down before Robespierre. For a time men thought that all the boasted wisdom of the eighteenth century was folly; and that those ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a gentle mother, my famous namesake; he was always a gentleman. The Russian Czars, Paul, Nicholas I, and Alexander III, were brought up with the knout, their preceptors used the boys at their sweet pleasure. The first turned out a madman; the second a brute; ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... moment all was excitement, and the great crowd of visitors, becoming panic-stricken, ran in a dozen different directions or hid behind exhibits. The madman, pursued by a half-dozen guards, dashed down a side aisle and, leaping over boxes and machines, made a complete circuit of the General Electric company's exhibit and then paused again before the central column. Two guards seized him, but he threw them ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... but I am quite ready to blot it out from my memory if Gordon will admit it. Gordon acted under a strong feeling of excitement when he was not master of himself, and I have no more thought of holding him strictly responsible for what he wrote at such a moment than I would a madman." ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... Is it possible then that both of you can properly apply the preconceptions to things about which you have contrary opinions? It is not possible. Can you then show us anything better towards adapting the preconceptions beyond your thinking that you do? Does the madman do any other things than the things which seem to him right? Is then this criterion sufficient for him also? It is not sufficient. Come then to something which is superior to seeming ([Greek: tou dochein]). What ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... advanced before we were able to snatch a hasty luncheon at a restaurant. A news-bill at the entrance announced "Kensington Outrage. Murder by a Madman," and the contents of the paper showed that Mr. Horace Harker had got his account into print after all. Two columns were occupied with a highly sensational and flowery rendering of the whole incident. Holmes propped it against the cruet-stand and read it while he ate. ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... jury rose to their feet as one man to show their admiration of so great a poet, and praised him marvellously both for the shrewdness of his argument and for the eloquence of his tragic verse. And indeed they were not far off unanimously condemning the accuser as the madman instead. ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... her ripe, yet modest, beauty, nor allow any other to set eyes on it, but shut her up in barren, fruitless virginity; let him say all the while that he is in love with her, and let his pallid hue, his wasting flesh and his sunken eyes confirm the statement;—is he a madman, or is he not? he should be raising a family and enjoying matrimony; but he lets this fair-faced lovely girl wither away; he might as well be bringing up a perpetual priestess of Demeter. And now ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... the democracy of Italy proved too intense, too frenzied and unbalanced. Rienzi established a republic in Rome and talked of the restoration of the city's ancient rule. But he governed like a madman or an inflated fool, and was slain in a riot of the streets.[10] Scarce one of the famous cities succeeded in retaining its republican form. Milan became a duchy. Florence fell under the sway of the Medici. In Venice a few ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... reveries, nor could understand nor care for them. It is not good for man to cherish a solitary ambition. Unless there be those around him, by whose example be may regulate himself, his thoughts, desires, and hopes will become extravagant, and he the semblance, perhaps the reality, of a madman. Reading other bosoms, with an acuteness almost preternatural, the painter failed to see the disorder of ...
— The Prophetic Pictures (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... now made two new friends, the adventurous Dumont and a Mr. Lewis. In July 1757, Lewis and Macallester went to Paris, and were much with Lord Clare (de Thomond). In December, Lord Clancarty came hunting for our spy, 'raging like a madman' after Macallester, much to that hero's discomposure, for, being as silly as he was base, he had let out the secret of his 'Clancarty Elegant Extracts.' His Lordship, in fact, accused Macallester of showing all his letters to Lord Clare, whom Clancarty hated. He then ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... was alone and in the presence of an undoubted madman—one strong enough, in spite of his years, to inflict a deadly injury, and one whom he now began to realize might have done so once before. Nevertheless, he laid his hand on the old man's arm, and, looking him calmly in the eye, said, quietly, "Come? Where, ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... well that the cripple should limp like Hephaistos: it would be well that the madman should indulge in all the fury of Ajax, that the incestuous woman should repeat the crimes of Phaedra, that the traitor should betray, that the rascal should lie, and the murderer kill, and when the piece was played, ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... speak, to defraud 'em of what they consider their rights. Then their whole system gets poisoned through and through, and they're no longer reasoning human beings. I look upon Braxton Wyatt as in a way a madman, one ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... I cannot tell you what it is, the new world I cannot tell you the mad, astounded rapture of its discovery. I shall be mad with delight before I have done, and whosoever comes after will find me in the new world a madman in rapture. ...
— Look! We Have Come Through! • D. H. Lawrence
... incident was to the moment opportune. If ever a man was in the mood for war, it was the big, square-jawed pioneer. He was reckless and desperate for the first time in his life, and he joined with Burr against the room, with the abandon of a madman. ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... she had so unfortunately been a witness, she broke her crook in an excess of indignation. But it was too much to bear. She fell upon the bank, and uttered a plaintive cry. At that cry—at sight of his poor Daphne fainting upon the grass, he rushed like a madman across the stream, buoyant with love and despair. He ran to his insensate shepherdess, regardless of the exclamations of the fair Clotilde, and raised her in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... carried all before him, and he would start up to rush to the side of the wife he loved, to clasp her to his heart, and defy earth and Hades to part them. Sometimes anger held the day, and he would pace up and down like a madman, raging at her, at himself, at ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... in your eyes, Is an imposter in a king's disguise. Do you not know me? Does no voice within Answer my cry, and say we are akin?" The Pope in silence, but with troubled mien, Gazed at the Angel's countenance serene; The Emperor, laughing said, "It is strange sport To keep a madman for thy fool at court!" And the poor baffled Jester in disgrace Was hustled ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... hung a pistol; he snatched one off the hook, and was going to revenge the injury he had received on one or both the guilty persons, when the minister, stepping between, beat down that arm which held the instrument of death, crying at the same time, 'What, are you a madman!—would you to punish them expose yourself!'—The passion with which Natura was overwhelmed was too mighty for his breast; it stopped the passage of his words, and all he could bring out was 'villain!'—'whore'—while ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... quite understood; his face, the expression of which till then had been gloomy, and hard, now expressed stupefaction, doubt and joy, and became absolutely wonderful. He began to stutter like a madman. ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... strategy and time-honored camouflage to protect a precious lot of recipes. Promptly we lost this unctuous manuscript, as we feared we would; if not deciphered today, the book has long since been discarded as being a record of the ravings of a madman. ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... to be a madman. It was not thus that ladies were rescued from calumny. But to leave her alone to face it for time indefinite was unthinkable. And, meanwhile, what would become of him severed from her and little Jean? He sighed and looked around the little room where he had been so happy, and at the sweet-faced ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... madman. Not a word that you have said has any sense in it. All your accusations are false. What about the bank-notes? Did you find them at my place as you ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... rage, or rather his wits were taken from him for three months by way of punishment, and deposited in the moon. Astolpho went to the moon in Elijah's chariot, and St. John gave him "the lost wits" in an urn. On reaching France Astolpho bound the madman, then, holding the urn to his nose, the wits returned to their nidus, and the hero was himself again. After this, the siege was continued, and the Christians were wholly successful. (See ORLANDO INNAMORATO.)—Ariosto, Orlando ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... slightest present value to me. It takes years of practice to know how to use a complicated microscope. The optician looked suspiciously at me as I made these wholesale purchases. He evidently was uncertain whether to set me down as some scientific celebrity or a madman. I think he inclined to the latter belief. I suppose I was mad. Every great genius is mad upon the subject in which he is greatest. The unsuccessful madman is disgraced, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... when they carelessly regretted their ancient faith, with a smiling and whispered assurance that a time of restitution would yet come. By all opinions and in all places he was regarded as a harmless madman, whose strange delusions and predilections were not to be combated, but to be indulged. Thus he wandered through the Christian world; regardless alike of lapse of time and change of climate; living within ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... as "Don Quixote"—that is, the common Spaniard's conception of the Knight of La Mancha, merely the simple fanatic and madman—that Mr. Stephen Masterton ever after rode all unconsciously through the streets of the Mission, amid the half-pitying, half-smiling glances of ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... by the rabble with sticks and stones, and came home all besmeared with dirt and blood. He then gave away all he had in the world, and having thus reduced himself to absolute poverty, that he might die to himself, and crucify all the sentiments of the old man, he began again to counterfeit the madman, running about the streets as before, till some had the charity to take him to the venerable John D'Avila, covered with dirt and blood. The holy man, full of the Spirit of God, soon discovered in John the motions of extraordinary ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... of Urien to Kai, "thou wert ill advised, when thou didst send that madman after the knight, for one of two things must befall him. He must either be overthrown, or slain. If he is overthrown by the knight, he will be counted by him to be an honourable person of the Court, and an eternal disgrace will it be to Arthur and his warriors. ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 1 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... considerate person he had, in a matter of minutes, become a madman. What had brought about the change? Was he still human or was he now OUT OF ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... the first instance, he had to defend almost single-handed. Many of his best friends hung back, believing the time to be not yet ripe for such a proposal. Even Edmund Burke—the life-long and passionate friend of Ireland—cried out in alarm "Will no one speak to that madman? Will no one stop that madman Grattan?" The madman, however, went on undismayed. His words flew like wild-fire over the country. He was supported in his motion by eighteen counties, by addresses from the grand juries, ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... own betrayal to the mullah. But as if the Rangar had read his mind he suddenly redoubled his efforts and King, weary to the point of sickness, had to redouble his own or die. Perhaps the jealousy helped put venom in his effort, for his strength came back to him as a madman's does. The Rangar gave a moan and let ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... "Madman, hold! what is your purpose?" whispered he. "Wave back that woman! Cast off this child! All shall be well! Do not blacken your fame, and perish in dishonour! I can yet save you! Would you bring infamy ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Another, sitting at his door on a Sunday, laughs at those passing by, and says to himself when he sees a gentleman going hawking with a bird on his wrist, "Ah! that bird will eat a hen to-day, and our children could all feast upon it!" Another is described as a sort of madman who equally despises God, the saints, the Church, and the nobility. His neighbour is an honest simpleton, who, stopping in admiration before the doorway of Notre Dame in Paris in order to admire the statues of Pepin, ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... what feelings, with what an infinitude of youthful hopes and expectations, Chopin looked forward to this journey may be gathered from some expressions in a letter of his (September 9, 1828) addressed to Titus Woyciechowski, where he describes himself as being at the time of writing "like a madman," and accounts for his madness by the announcement: "For I am going to-day to Berlin." To appear in public as a pianist or composer was not one of the objects he had in view. His dearest wishes were ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... fanatic and half a madman," Arnold replied. "You represent to him the class he loathes, the class he has hated all his life, and against which he has waged ceaseless war. He hated your marriage to his sister, and his feelings were the more embittered because it suited you to keep it private. ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... spent more cunning on the deed. Master in my own house, I contrived a device by which the man who held my fate in his hands fell on my library hearth with no one near and no sign by which to associate me with the act. Does this seem like the assertion of a madman? Go to the old chamber familiarly called "The Colonel's Own." Enter its closet, pull out its two drawers, and in the opening thus made seek for the loophole at the back, through which, if you stoop low enough, you ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... mirror," he screamed—"my own mirror that the rascal has here;" and, rushing wildly about the room, he snatched up a chair, and struck the mirror with it. The glass soon rattled down in a hundred pieces, but he went on belaboring the frame and screaming like a madman. "It hung in my house; the rogue has stolen my mirror—he has stolen my prosperity." He poured forth hideous imprecations against ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... up into my blanket, filled with strange presentiments. Again the question came up: What is the source of the influence that this madman of the mountains, this wild hunter, this leader of the black wolf pack, had on me to impel me to trail him over the mountains? Was it mental telepathy? Could he really be my father? Somehow I felt ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... attacked the king in the presence of his wife and court. To the cynical and haughty queen, born in idolatry, he probably seemed a madman of the desert,—shaggy, unwashed, fierce, repulsive. To the Israelitish king, however, with better knowledge of the ways of God, the prophet appeared armed with supernal powers, whom he both feared and hated, and desired to put out of the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... the white water below the fall, lifted to the first wave, knocking up foam out of foam, and so dived to the next, quivering like a reed shaken in the hand. Dominique straightened himself on his knees. In a moment he was working his paddle like a madman, striking broad off with it on this side and that, forcing the canoe into its course, zigzagging within a hand's breadth of rocks which, at a touch, would have broken her like glass, and across the edge ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... said Grandfather, "his life, while he retained what intellect Heaven had gifted him with, was one long mortification. At last he grew crazed with care and trouble. For nearly twenty years the men arch of England was confined as a madman. In his old age, too, God took away his eyesight; so that his royal palace was nothing to him but a ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... "Was ever madman more mad than I!" he murmured with some self- contempt—"What logical human being in his right mind would be guilty of such egregious folly! But am I logical? Certainly not! Am I in my right mind? ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli |
