Sentence Examples:
And the demented old totterer actually took hold of me with no less an idea in his head than that of chucking me out of the door and downstairs.
For a moment she stood like one transfixed, staring at the place whence he had vanished, then, with a moan, she sank in a heap on the floor, and rocked to and fro like one demented.
In dress each bore a resemblance to the other, inasmuch as numbers were painted conspicuously on their backs, while the wrists of the one who had become demented were still in bracelets of rusted steel, although the connecting link had been broken.
I managed to find the auctioneer at his office in a comparatively leisurely mood, but he was a hustling sort of man, constantly looking at his watch and with the affectation of being over-crowded with engagements that deceives only the partially demented.
Sorrowfully, but remorselessly, it must be recognized that he has become lunatic, morally demented, incapable of self-government, and that upon him, therefore, must be passed the sentence of permanent seclusion from a world in which he is not fit to be at large.
Listless, troubled, and uneasy, through the demented city Nicole continued her search, stopping neither for lunch nor for supper, sorting, without success, each successive throng, while every scene of license and sacrilege that inflamed her anger steadied her resolve.
We proceeded at an easy canter, taking care to maintain a good distance, so that she might not be conscious of being followed, but just keeping her in sight; and in this fashion the poor, demented creature ran quite two miles before she fell exhausted.
They lose their identity, lose the instinct of self-preservation in the flood of an older instinct which blinds them to all but the hazards of the ground, and sweeps them forward like demented animals frantic to assuage a thirst that consumes their tissues.
I have frequently seen all the inhabitants of a marsh struck with panic, acting as if demented, and suddenly grown careless to all other dangers; and on such occasions I have looked up confident of seeing the sharp-winged death, suspended above them in the sky.
To reduce that excitement, or even to prevent its eventually increasing to a state of violent and confirmed madness, all medicine, restraint, or care, was found unavailing; and, eventually, he was confined for life in a public institution for the reception of demented individuals.
A demented individual is never dangerous enough to require confinement in an especially secure hospital, though he is a prisoner, and unless he is criminally insane, i.e., unless he manifests dangerous or criminal tendencies as a result of his mental disorder, really forms no special administrative problem.
The incautious, half demented inheritors of this discovery, however, apprehending, in the present condition of things, no danger of injury to their intellectual, professional, literary or religious reputation, proclaim it as boldly and unreservedly as if it were universally admitted and confirmed by universal experience.
"The ruler there treated us handsomely, and had even taken care in the most kindly manner, of a white man who had escaped the rigors of the sea some years before, and who was demented, or incapable, through paralysis, of recognizing those around him."
Yelled the persecuted and furious captain of the Home Guards when these dispiriting reflections passed through his mind; and with the words he sprang from the lounge to the middle of the room, where he swung his arms and danced about like one demented.
It was feared there might be some difficulty in persuading the poor demented woman to embark; yet, when the vessel was ready, by a harmless deception she was led to connect the proposed voyage, somehow, with going to meet her lover and hastening her bridal.
The latter seemed to be of so strange and disjointed a character that, my curiosity overcoming me, I stooped and applied my ear to the keyhole of the oaken door which divided our rooms, believing that some demented person had gained wrongful access to the adjoining rooms.
It was, therefore, evident that James was demented, and it became lawful to take the sword of justice from his hands; just as it would be lawful for servants or children to seize the head of their family, if it had pleased heaven to afflict him with madness.
An instant later, the shattering roar and blast of the explosion struck the hospital buildings in a wave of force and the bursting crash of a thousand windows was lost in the fury of the explosion and the wild screams of the frightened and demented patients.
Knocked down by horses, jostled by men, deafened by the roar of the city always in motion like some colossal and hellish factory, blinded by the glare of lights to which I was not accustomed, I roamed about the city in the strange dream of a demented one.
In former times these rages of demented women were supposed to have been caused by possession of demons, which tormented them at the orders of magicians, and advantage was often taken by the unscrupulous to accuse their enemies of the crime of sorcery, and thus cause their execution.
The people on the vessel thought him demented, and for a few days the captain kept him under a continuous guard, and considerately suppressed the cause of his behavior, that was soon revealed by requests for opium that were sometimes pitiful pleadings and again irritable demands.
All these bespeak that these poor demented creatures are not forgotten on the Sabbath; and even where a few sparks of intellect linger amid the ashes of minds once proud and noble, it is interesting to see how those sparks are kindled anew by the light of religion.
Since then mortals have been more or less demented, particularly those who are held to be wise, but madmen are in reality the only wise men; for they can see, hear and feel the invisible, the inaudible and the intangible, though they cannot relate their experiences to others.'
At a time, when I had almost banished from my memory the existence of my passion, some passing object would reflect your image in the mirror of my mind, and would render me almost demented with the thought that your charms were destined to bless some other one.
At the close the judge frankly informed the wealthy brother and the insanity experts that they and all connected with this outrageous infamy ought to be sent to prison, and that the alleged demented man was saner than those who had pronounced him insane.
Drunken wives, though physically weak and ill, though mothers of young children, though decent in other ways, were not to be allowed one chance of reformation, were not to be considered for one moment worthy of treatment equal to that given to demented and gross women of the streets.
It was about eight o'clock when Martha, the eldest daughter, came flying to me like a demented creature, crying the persecutors were come, with naked swords and dreadful faces; and she wept and wrung her hands, thinking they were then murdering her parents and brothers and sisters.
They stumbled forward with bowed heads in silence, until of a sudden they were startled by a surprised hail of recognition, and looked up to find themselves confronted by a bent and gray old man, a village character, a harmless, slightly demented public charge known as "Ishmael" or "Captain Rover."
Halicarnassus saw that a fell purpose was working in my mind, but a certain high tragedy in my aspect warned him to silence; so he only dogged me around the corners of the house, eyed me askance from the wood-shed, and peeped through the crevices of the demented little barn.
He went to the house, and in speaking with the lad and after reading the Scriptures he was about to leave, when this boy, with only half his reasoning power, demented and partly idiotic, asked the great preacher if he wouldn't kneel down and recite for him the Twenty-third Psalm.
If intellect, as revealed in the face, in words, and in actions, did not assist in inspiring the amorous sentiment, it would be as easy to fall in love with a doll-faced, silly girl as with a woman of culture; it would even be possible to fall in love with a statue or with a demented person.
He found her now, poverty-stricken, prematurely old, almost demented, and, though he had hated her cordially in days gone by, his pity was aroused by her wretchedness, and he took her to his home, clothed and fed her, and surrounded her with such comforts as his bachelor apartment offered.
Years went on, the wedding breakfast remained set on the table, while the poor half demented lady flitted from one room to another like a restless ghost; and the case is recorded of another lady whose lover was arrested for forgery on the day before their marriage was to have taken place.
And intemperate men, especially those who become demented rather than demonized, it is well known, are always easily moved by religious influences, even when so drunk that they would wisely be deemed incompetent to execute a will for the disposal of earthly property, and incapable of giving testimony in a court of law.
Crawling into his cell again he heard no more of the chatter and cries of the maniac, and he surmised that the other two were fighting for places on bench or shelf, which was amply large enough to have supported both, had they not been too demented with fear to recognize that fact.
It is circumstantially related that the one near at hand, who has been referred to as possessing a voiced machine, became demented, and bearing the contrivance to a certain tent erected by the charitable, entreated them to remove the impediment from its speech so that it might be heard again and his livelihood restored.
There is no longer any question that a large number, say probably from ten to twenty per cent of the convicted are, in fact, insane at the time the act was committed, and that the demented, the imbecile, and the clearly subnormal constitute many more than half of the inmates of prisons.
In the quarters devoted to the insane, people slightly demented and raving maniacs were in the same rooms, while there were also those utter wrecks which sat in heaps on the floor, mumbling and muttering unintelligible words, the whole current of their thoughts hopelessly muddled, turning around upon itself in eddies never ending.
I noticed in the distance, through the deepening twilight, and behind a cloud of rain, two or three horsemen running at full speed, and as if demented, through these boundless spaces; they disappeared at intervals in the depressions of the meadows, and suddenly came to sight again, still galloping with the same frenzy.
At times the fury of the gale would drive it back and hold it against the sides of the pit, leaving the opening free; at times, following the blind instinct of habit, the demented man would fall upon his face and bury his nose and mouth in the wet bark and sawdust.
It is likely that the merry young Queen laughed at the absurd demonstrations and amatory effusions of her demented admirers; but when, after her marriage, and her appearing always in public with the handsomest Prince in Christendom at her side, such monomaniacs grew desperate and took to shooting, the matter became serious.
Rested by the cool of the night I felt little the worse for my climb, and was all eagerness for dawn to break that I might see what manner of country I was in, for I had been half demented when my terrible ride from the pursuing sandstorm had brought me into it.
The cries of the men and the splashing of the boat echoed a hundred times among the arches; while the hissing oil of the open lamp, which, poured on the surface of the water, blazed for a moment, made as near a representation of pandemonium as this world ever affords, except in the brain of the demented.
Reverence for the place and song, and respect for the singer alike failed to control the irrepressible start of amazement and smile of amusement with which we greeted the weird and apparently demented shriek which rose high over the voices of the choir, but which did not at all disconcert their accustomed ears.
At the same time, however, she rose, slender and tall, for she stood up with deliberate haste, curtly and silently directed at Norbert another glance, in which something suggested that she considered him demented; then, thrusting her foot forward, she walked out in her characteristic way along the pillars of the old portico.
Had there been a spark of honor in him, he would have done all in his power to keep the irresponsible Stone from crime, and, if possible, to banish his ailment; but instead he determined to use the demented man for his own ends to help him to murder, and finally to strip him of his fortune.
He had expected to find the town mad with excitement, to behold here the gold fever blazing without restraint; but wherever there was a post to lean against a man was leaning against it, exactly as if there were nothing doing, and the world had not just run demented over the richness of their Victorian fields.
Investigation has in the past been directed to the physical side of the disease, and many of the insane hospitals are examples of physical comfort and perfect physical attention, but they are also living examples of the fact that to house, feed and clothe the demented does not necessarily mean a cure, and a call for deeper understanding is imperative.
There rose that whining, shrieking moan of the demented and tortured puppy, lowering in pitch until it became a hoarse and strident howl, slowly falling away in volume but dropping in pitch until it sounded like the moan of wind through stretched silk, ending, as had ended the original, spooky manifestation upstairs, in a grinding, abrupt rumble and silence.
In the olden days the people were often driven to the hills by their savage or demented rulers, and as the rigorous winters that contrast with the tropical summers came on, they not only burned the trees, but as roots make excellent charcoal they dug up even these, leaving nothing that might by any chance sprout again.
I happened to be in the corridor one day when one of the guards, a tall, strapping fellow, was bringing downstairs a convict of stature much less than his own, a poor half demented youth, whose dementia was unfortunately wont to express itself in foul or abusive language, which came from him almost involuntarily, without any particular personal application.
Since the tragic death of Professor Dempsey they felt that they need no longer fear the woods, although they never ventured near the river or the falls without a heartache and the fervent wish that they might have reached the poor demented man with the glad news of his sons' safety in time to avert the tragedy.
I have no doubt I looked like one demented, for I was desperately angry, pale and trembling with excitement, and as they fronted me with a curious expression of alarm on their faces, a sudden sense of the absurdity of the spectacle came over me; I laughed hysterically a moment, then broke into a passion of regretful tears, remembering that Guy was gone.
The doctor did not know how rapidly a lively, affectionate child will win one's love, and he thought his proud mother grown almost demented; but still, in spite of himself, he more than once raised his hand to lay it on Willie's head, pausing occasionally in his conversation to watch the gambols of the playful child sporting on the carpet.
With its entire mental life thus overwhelmed by the flood of a single emotion, the horse not only loses, as other animals lose, 'presence of mind,' or a due balance among the distinctively intellectual faculties, but even the avenues of special sense become stopped, so that the wholly demented animal may run headlong and at terrific speed against a stone wall.
I was to show that 'the honor, interests, reputation and position of any lady (demented or not,' she added) 'were as precious to me as to the owner': that 'no woman was ever in peril of a shadow of loss in the hands of an English gentleman,' and so forth, rather surprisingly to me, remembering her off- hand manner of the foregoing day.
The lady wore tin plates, tin cans, tin spoons, etc., sewed on to skirt and waist in fantastic patterns, making music as she walked, and on her head a battered old coffee pot, with artificial flowers which had outlived their usefulness sticking out of the spout; and her winning partner was arrayed in rag patchwork of the most demented variety.
Such a study will soon demonstrate to, and teach the attendant the fact, that the insane are very individual in their habits, and while no two are alike, there are resemblances that in an asylum are made the basis of classification by wards: there is the convalescent, the suicidal, the demented, the sick and feeble, and the noisy or violent wards.
During the eventful hours that preceded the initial act of the tragedy which was to change the face of the whole world she went about like a demented woman, crying and praying in turns, and imploring her husband to pause before he allowed the accomplishment of a calamity which she vaguely guessed would claim her for one of its first victims.
The fishermen, of course, exaggerated their story, and the simple islanders, who always regard a demented person with awe, came to believe that the sculptor possessed superhuman strength and agility; and, although their curiosity concerning his mode of life and occupation was much excited, their superstitious fears prevented them from interfering with him or attempting to investigate his actions.
Underwood, wife of the demented governor, who had alluded so truthfully to my lecture, was in the audience, and being gifted with genuine clairvoyant powers, she rose and begged the audience not to disperse, as she could distinctly see me pacing nervously up and down the platform at the Junction in a long sealskin coat and hat trimmed with band of fur.
And at such moments, when he was made with her destroying him, when all his complacency was destroyed, all his everyday self was broken, and only the stripped, rudimentary, primal man remained, demented with torture, her passion to love him became love, she took him again, they came together in an overwhelming passion, in which he knew he satisfied her.
Sometimes seated in a secluded corner he would watch the poor demented creatures with a pitying gaze, wondering why they talked and acted so strangely, but whether he could or could not understand them, he studied the sane and the mad alike, and what he felt was right in the conduct of either he made his pattern, but the wrong he rejected.
A companion who could not talk, and who was, in all probability, demented, the eternal silence, except as it would be occasionally startled into life by some living thing; unable to even indicate his thoughts, or to consult with him, as to direction, or to talk about the probabilities beyond them, and you will feel that it took a brave heart to continue the journey.
This state continued until the arrival of the doctor, who, though he did not express his fears, entertained serious apprehensions for her life; and afterwards communicated to John his alarm, that, though her corporeal system might recover, the shock to her nerves had been so great that he feared her mind might give way and either become impaired or totally demented.
At last the terrible truth began to dawn on the poor creature that she had been basely deserted by him who was sworn to be her friend and protector, and she became almost demented, she tried to account for his silence in many ways but her intellectual acumen as too great and her reasoning always brought her to the one sad conclusion.
After Bettina has picked it up, and with honest delight returned it as a missing valuable, and every adult and minor in the house has taken his or her turn in depositing it carefully on your table, were you ever driven "clean" demented by the dust-man ringing the area bell, with the article in question, thinking, deluded philanthropist, that he had performed a virtuous action?
George, who has been looking first at one of them and then at the other, as if he were demented, takes his venerable acquaintance by the throat on receiving this request, and dragging him upright in his chair as easily as if he were a doll, appears in two minds whether or no to shake all future power of cushioning out of him and shake him into his grave.
You leap and shout and clap your hands, and tell the billows to come on, and in excess of glee greet persons that you never saw before and never will again, and never want to, and act so wildly that others would think you demented but that they also are as fully let loose; so that if there be one imbecile there is a whole asylum of lunatics.
A whispering dialogue now took place between the judge and the counsel, in which, while they evidently looked upon her as little better than demented with her love for the accused, they still appeared to hold it due to justice, not less than to humanity, to obtain from her every particular of testimony bearing on the case, which, by possibility, she might really have in her possession.
Richer than the valley of the Nile it has lain here beneath the sea level for thousands of years, dead under the breath of the desert, until a little trickle of water was turned in from the Colorado River, and then it swiftly put forth such luxuriant wealth of food and clothes and fruit and flowers that its story sounds like the demented dreams of a bankrupt land promoter.
While she was kneeling before him, Sancho Panza was anxiously whispering to Don Quixote bits of information about her and her kingdom, afraid that his master might refuse her; but, demented though he was, rank and riches mattered little to Don Quixote, for he drew his sword, he said, in defense of anything that was righteous, and the meek and downtrodden always found in him a ready and courteous defendant.
In Hartmann's poem the old, deranged man who answers to Coleridge's demented mariner, tells how he, as a page, was seized with a violent passion for his master's wife, and how, every time he rushed from her presence, in despair at her coldness and displeasure, he was tortured as he left her apartments by the bird's song in honor of the chastity of the lady to whom it owed its life.
Followed by the demented band at his heels, the butcher ran back to the altar, holding the livid head in his hands, red and streaming with the warm blood of the victim; he knelt down himself, and slammed the head face down upon the ground at the feet of Mary, amidst the savage acclaim of his fellow assassins, all of whom piously threw themselves down upon their knees like himself.
I have seen big locusts and other important insects tumbling about and acting generally as if demented after a few sips of rum and sugar, but these wasps, when they had had their full of banana and whiskey, buzzed about and came and went and quarrelled with one another just as usual, and when I parted from them there was not one of the company who could be said to be the worse for liquor.
Again, to her infinite chagrin, she found that she was utterly disbelieved, for the knight regarded her with a kind but sad smile of commiseration, as one whom terror had slightly "demented;" she saw him elevate his eyebrows, and nod perceptibly as he exchanged a glance with his lady, who kindly smoothed Jane's glossy hair, kissed her again as a mother would have done, and led her through the Spur, and up the Castle-rock towards King David's Tower.