"Maniacal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I believe, who gave the name of Laughing-Thrushes to this group, and this name is applicable enough to this particular bird, the one with which he was most familiar, for it does laugh—albeit, a most maniacal laugh; but the majority of the group have not the shadow of a giggle even in them, and should have been ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... shingle on either shoulder and is trailing his star-spangled cutaway down the plank turnpike. While a few mugwumps, like Josef Phewlitzer and Apollyon Halicarnassus Below, and tearful Miss Nancys of the Anglo- maniacal school, are protesting that this country wants peace, Congress, that faithful mirror of public opinion, if not always the repository of wisdom, proves that it is eager for war. And just so sure as the Cleveland interpretation of the Monroe ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... announcing a ruin that, being foreseen, was not the less inevitable; that, being known, was not therefore healed. What could be done—who was it that could do it—to check the storm- flight of these maniacal horses? Could I not seize the reins from the grasp of the slumbering coachman? You, reader, think that it would have been in your power to do so. And I quarrel not with your estimate of yourself. But, from the way in which the coachman's hand was viced between ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... inconceivable wind was blowing in toward the centre of calm. The result was that the seas sprang up from every point of the compass. There was no wind to check them. They popped up like corks released from the bottom of a pail of water. There was no system to them, no stability. They were hollow, maniacal seas. They were eighty feet high at the least. They were not seas at all. They resembled no sea a man had ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... of eternity and then, with a loud scream, slip into the sea. At the same instant a pair of giant arms encircled me from behind and lifted me entirely off my feet. Kick and squirm as I would, I could neither turn toward my antagonist nor free myself from his maniacal grasp. Relentlessly he was rushing me toward the side of the vessel and death. There was none to stay him, for each of my companions was more than occupied by from one to three of the enemy. For an instant I was fearful for myself, ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... high-spirited, generous young man as I have ever known. When I say that he was a sportsman, that at one season of the year he did little else than pursue his darling amusement of fox-hunting, for which indeed he had almost a maniacal passion—saying this, I shall already have prejudged him in the opinions of many, who fancy all such persons the slaves of corporal enjoyments. But, with submission, the truth lies the other way. According to my experience, people of these habits have their bodies more than usually ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... considerably chilled my hopes. For the worshippers shouted, beat their breasts, struck their heads against the wall, tugged at their ear-curls, leaped aloft with wild yells and even foamed at the mouth, nor could I see any sublime idea behind these maniacal manifestations. They had their own special Zaddik (Saint) here, whom they vaunted ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... or lower than those special states of the soul which call out a doubtful and dangerous glory? those special powers of knowledge or sacrifice which are made possible only by the existence of evil? Which should come first to our affections, the enduring sanities of peace or the half-maniacal virtues of battle? Which should come first, the man great in the daily round or the man great in emergency? Which should come first, to return to the enigma before me, the grocer or the chemist? Which is more certainly the stay of the city, the swift chivalrous ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... their hands, and whispered and explained that Madame Beauchene, feeling quite exhausted, had withdrawn for a few moments, and that Beauchene and Blaise were making necessary arrangements downstairs. And then, resuming his maniacal perambulations, he pointed towards an adjoining room, the folding doors of which ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... impregnable fortress, the hull of the Flying Fish, passed the night in peaceful slumber, undisturbed, in the confidence begotten of a sense of perfect security, by the weird cries of the night birds, the incessant howling of the jackals, the maniacal laugh of the prowling hyena, the occasional roar of the lion, the loud whirr of myriads of insects, the croaking of bull-frogs, and the other multitudinous nocturnal sounds which floated in through the open windows of ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... woman was raving in delirium, and tearing out handfuls of the long black hair which floated over her shoulders. This she was counting one by one, just as the old East India man had counted the silken tress which was sent to him over the sea, and she laughed with maniacal glee as she said the numbering of all her hairs would atone for the sin she had done. At intervals, too, rocking to and fro, she sang of the fearful night when she had thought to steal the auburn locks ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... bestirred himself and ordered a tarpaulin to be thrown over O'Brien's corpse. A boat was lowered from the stranger's side and began to pull toward them. John Gorman laughed. He laughed softly at first, but he accompanied each stroke of the oars with spasmodically increasing glee. It was this maniacal laughter that greeted the rescue boat as it hauled alongside and the first officer ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... Carlos, in a time of general peace, obtained good officers from every part of Europe. Each country was forced into redeeming itself by the overflowing upon it of a foreign gentry. And yet, even at the moment of profoundest degradation, such was the maniacal vanity still prevailing amongst the Spaniards, that at one time the Supreme Junta forwarded the following proposal to the British Government:—Men they had; their own independence of foreign aid, in that sense, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... hope. His humiliation was absolute. The maniacal Coincon had not even given him an opportunity of redeeming his failure. He had been paid to go away. The disgusting yet necessary price of his shame rattled in his pockets. To-night the baggage man would play his part—a being once presumably ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... the scalp wound; if this could only be ensured, few cases went wrong afterwards. Such remote effects as I witnessed were mainly the results of the actual destructive lesion, such as paralyses and contraction. I know of only one case in which early maniacal symptoms closely followed on a frontal injury, and here the symptoms accompanied the development of an abscess. Some patients were depressed and irritable, and some were blind or deaf, probably from gross lesion; ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... lower-floor tenants were joining in the march, and that as they came the janitress was explaining to all and sundry how the weird miscreant had sought to inveigle her into admitting him to Mr. Slack's rooms, and how she had refused, and how with maniacal craft—or words to that effect—he had, nevertheless, managed to secure admittance to the house, and how he must still be in the house. And through all her discourse there were questions from this one or that, crossing its flow but in no-wise interrupting it; and through it ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... pass, especially heavy market wagons overladen and drawn by horses swarming with bells. Their succession left scarcely a moment of the night unstunned; but if ever a moment seemed to be escaping, there was a maniacal bell in a church near by that clashed out: "Hello! Here's a bit of silence; let's ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... probably analogous to the stupidity of a nervous child when terrified or bullied." "Stupor is frequently one of the stages of alternating insanity following the exalted condition. It is more apt to occur in those where the exalted period is acutely maniacal. The stupor is usually melancholic in form." Since he claims that the anergic is a "very curable form of mental disease," while only 50% of the melancholic cases recover, it seems clear that this division is not prognostically final. The "melancholic" ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... on Mrs Brown's fainting, he heard a yell of triumph, and, on looking up, beheld Master Jacky far up the heights, clearly defined against the bright sky, and celebrating the success of his plot with a maniacal edition ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... temperament swings between the dead calm and passionless on the one hand, to the violent and maniacal on the other. The nation is still convalescent, its development is slow, and it is impossible to say how far new Greece will develop. But its strength lies in its serpentine stillness and ancient unforgotten craft, and its weakness ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... female prison. What cries of joy, what sobs of relief from the saner inmates, as they try to think their new, almost incredible jail delivery! What stony, uncomprehending glances or what wild shrieks from the maniacal! Amid this confused throng Picard, who has entered with the crowd to wait upon his mistress, presents a comic figure. He has arrayed himself in the red-and-white striped garb of the proletariat, is trying his best to look a Revolutionary, though all he ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... place not entirely exempt from prejudices: and one of them is, that any sort of appeal to God Almighty is a sign or else forerunner of maniacal excitement. ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... softened the hard lines of the lean jaw. It was hard to believe, after all that he had passed through, and yet he knew that it could not be possible—he knew that that voice could not belong to any man who had been nursing a maniacal vengeance behind a cunningly ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... his prisoner by the throat, he pinned him to the wall; then with his free hand he cocked Longorio's revolver and thrust its muzzle against Jose's body. "Tell me!" he repeated. His countenance was so distorted, his expression so maniacal, that Jose felt his hour had come. The latter, being in all ways Mexican, did not struggle; instead, he squared his shoulders and, staring fearlessly into ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... and make furtive gestures towards Owgooste, signing him to pull down his coat. But Owgooste gave no heed; his eyes were starting from their sockets, his chin had dropped upon his lace collar, and his head turned vaguely from side to side with a continued and maniacal motion. ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... satisfied. At first the sky gave indications of an improvement in the weather, but by noon it came on to blow as hard as ever. They made all the signals they could devise to induce the people who still remained on the wreck to quit it, but they soon found by the wretches' frantic gestures and maniacal shouts that they also had got hold of a cask of spirits, and were in as bad a condition as their comrades. They were soon indeed seen snapping their fingers, and dancing about the decks as if they were in a place of perfect safety. One poor wretch slipped overboard, ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... of an exceeding high mountain by a snowstorm, which opens to show Rubek and Irene "whirled along with the masses of snow, and buried in them," while Maia and her bear-hunter escape in safety to the plains. Interminable, and often very sage and penetrating, but always essentially rather maniacal, conversation fills up the texture of the play, which is certainly the least successful of Ibsen's mature compositions. The boredom of Rubek in the midst of his eminence and wealth, and his conviction that by working ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... The maniacal laugh, the crazy words—a moment only, they heard them: and then the door above, which the poor woman, so long bedridden, had contrived in her frenzy of fear to open, closed on the sounds and stifled them. But enough had been heard: enough to convince ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... head with a wild left swing, and Phillips found the big man's foot in the way when he tried to sidestep. He lost his balance, but kept his grasp on the other so that they went down together, thrashing about for some opening. Brecken was red-faced with a maniacal rage. Beads of saliva sprayed from his twisted lips ...
— This World Must Die! • Horace Brown Fyfe
... madness, and she took courage at last to rise and leave me lying there—lying there with my face upon the wet sand, and the wet rain beating down upon my head, and the moaning tempest rising over me in the heavens, like the awful eruption of maniacal hatred that was working its way ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward
... distant, seeming to resound in some vast empty space, even more funereal and melancholy than the dormitory of my club, the "Tepidarium." It has happened to most people to laugh themselves awake out of a dream, and every one who has done so must remember the ghastly, hollow, and maniacal sound of his own mirth. It rings horribly in a quiet room where there has been, as the Veddahs of Ceylon say is the case in the world at large, "nothing to laugh at." Dean Swift once came to himself, ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... sunk back upon her seat, a red spot upon one of her beautiful shoulders, her cheeks slowly paling into unconsciousness. There was a smell of gunpowder in the air, a little cloud of smoke hanging around, and he had one single photographic glimpse of a man's face, haggard, unkempt, maniacal, pressed against the broken pane of glass whence the shot had come. A moment afterwards, when the place was full of servants, and one had run for a doctor, he rushed outside, backwards and forwards like a madman, looking in the shrubs, ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... baffles description. I have heard Chinese bands, Calliopes, the braying of jackasses, the love songs of Tom cats, operatic screechers, brass band and violin murderers, broken down hand organs and accordeons, Red River carts during the dry season, the maniacal howling of the bulls and bears of Broad Street, and many other noises of like character, but none of them are at all comparable to the voicings of these Hydah dogs, when thoroughly warmed up to their best efforts by ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden
... turbulent times to come music will have lost its personal flavor. Instead of interpretative artists there will be gigantic machinery capable of maniacal displays of virtuosity; merely dropping a small coin in a slot will sound the most abstruse scores of Richard Strauss—then the popular and bewhistled music maker. And yet it is difficult for us, so wedded are we to that tragic delusion of earthly glory and artistic ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... Maniacal attack. Fifteen individual reactions, of which 11 are classed as normal in accordance with the appendix ...
— A Study of Association in Insanity • Grace Helen Kent
... At the same moment Count Berchthold sprang forward, and while he seized the villain with both arms, Madame Ida Pfeiffer recovered her feet. All this took place in less than a minute. The negro was now roused into a condition of maniacal fury; he gnashed his teeth like a wild beast, and brandished his knife, while uttering fearful threats. The issue of the contest would probably have been disastrous, but for the opportune arrival of assistance. Hearing the tramp of horses' hoofs upon the road, the negro desisted from his ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... his body now. With a maniacal glee he rushed upon the devilish contrivance in the corner, tearing the axe from its place with ruthless hands. Throughout the building rang the sounds of smashing wood, furious blows of steel upon wood, and ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... had suffered, and almost maniacal in his eagerness for the coming struggle, the giant's frenzy told Cherry that the fight would be an unrelenting one, and again a vague tremor of regret at having drawn this youth into the affair crept over her and sharpened the ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... man's features were contorted into an arabesque—a pattern of maniacal rage. His face was purple and its hue was deepened because it was set off against the snow which crusted his garments after his descent through the drifts. Knotted veins stood out on his forehead. There was no coherence in the noises he was making in his effort to speak words. He kept ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... a pitch of maniacal rage; the teeth compressed—if they broke the skin it was the end; the first taste of blood would be enough!—and drew away her arm. If she had started then, all the devil in the creature would be loosed, for ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... it with Ortiz himself. One of the hands unclosed from about the revolver and clawed at his throat. It seemed to abandon that effort and attacked Ortiz's face in a frenzy of rage, struggling to claw his eyes open. The other held the weapon fast with maniacal strength. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... some of the recognised eccentricities of the recluse, which, on his return to society, cause him to be regarded as a maniac; and the man who lives entirely in the present cannot argue that the characteristics which he has developed are less maniacal because they are shared by his associates. Rapidly he, too, has become eccentric; and just as the solitary man must needs come into the company of his fellows if he would retain a healthy mind, so the man who lives in the ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... violent temper of the man. Always, it had been the demon to set him aflame. To-night, there in the faint light, within the grip of the waters, he was moved to insensate fury against the element that menaced. His rage mounted, and gave him new power in the battle. Maniacal strength grew out of supreme wrath. Under the urge of it, he conquered—at last brought himself and ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... husband when in a state of intoxication. She was afterward delivered, at the proper time, of a very delicate child, which was so much affected by its mother's agitation that, up to the age of eighteen, it continued subject to panic terrors, and then became completely maniacal. ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... cry had the effect of a roar; it left the room echoing, then savagely he lunged at his assailant. He was blind, in him was a sudden maniacal impulse to destroy; he had no thought of consequences. ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... to me that FAVRE lay swooning on the floor. That the Count glared at me savagely and crunched his jaws with maniacal energy. My knowledge of German was up. It had caught the fierce impulse, the majestic sweep of his ponderous linguosity. I remembered another sentence, and hurled it wildly at him: "Bei Gott, Du wirst, ich hoff's, noch viele Jahre auf ihrem Grabe wandeln, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., Issue 31, October 29, 1870 • Various
... look about him. Jacques Three was nearly at his side; Madame Defarge, still heading some of her women, was visible in the inner distance, and her knife was in her hand. Everywhere was tumult, exultation, deafening and maniacal bewilderment, astounding noise, yet ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... about by a growing fanaticism in the States; New York had always been in sympathy, for the most part with the Southern States, where slavery was a necessary institution to the climate and the cotton industry. He went on to tell me that about a year before a maniacal cobbler named William Lloyd Garrison had started a little paper called The Liberator in which he advocated slave insurrections and the overthrow of the laws sustaining slavery; and that a movement ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... powerful delusions on these "Vive la Plume!" men, who have been generally observed to possess least intellectual ability in proportion to the excellence they have obtained in their own art. I suspect this maniacal vanity is peculiar to the writing-masters of England; and I can only attribute the immense importance which they have conceived of their art to the perfection to which they have carried the art of short-hand ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... wear white duck trousers, a pink shirt, and a yachting-cap. I wired for them to my London tailor and they arrived within a week. The first time I appeared in the maniacal costume I slunk from the stony stare of a gendarme, as I was about to ascend the Casino steps, and hid myself among the fishing-boats lower down on the beach. Carlotta, however, was delighted and said that I looked pretty. Now I have grown callous, seeing other ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... The fact of the hair becoming erect under the influence both of rage and fear agrees perfectly with what we have seen in the lower animals. Dr. Browne adduces several cases in evidence. Thus with a man now in the Asylum, before the recurrence of each maniacal paroxysm, "the hair rises up from his forehead like the mane of a Shetland pony." He has sent me photographs of two women, taken in the intervals between their paroxysms, and he adds with respect ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... elegant Latinity of an account of his malady, which the sufferer had put into his hands, showed it in all directions), but continued to recur at frequent intervals till the close of his life. His malady was undoubtedly of a maniacal cast, resembling Cowper's, but subdued by superior strength of will—a Bucephalus, which it required all the power of a Johnson to back and bridle. In his early days, he had been piously inclined, but after his ninth year, fell ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... happens to a madman after a crime of this sort? Does he get off with it and wander over Europe as a free man for a year? Granted the resources of maniacal cunning and all the rest of it, was it ever heard that a lunatic went at large as this man did, and laughed at Scotland Yard's attempt to run him down and capture him? Is it reasonable that he runs away with a corpse, disposes ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... relation to the rest of human experience. So the prophet develops the import of his trance, and the theologian the import of the prophecy: which prevents not the historian from coming later and showing the origin, the growth, and the possible function of that maniacal sort of wisdom. True, the theologian commonly dreads a critic more than does the geometer, but this happens only because the theologian has probably not developed the import of his facts with any austerity or clearness, but has distorted that ideal interpretation with all sorts ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... evidence of these witnesses was not taken until 1598 and 1602, twelve and sixteen years after the events to which it related took place; and when taken, was taken by Harsnet, a violent Protestant and almost maniacal exorcist-hunter, as the miscellaneous collection of literature evoked by his exposure of Parson Darrell's dealings with Will Sommers and ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... are we inclined to smile at the outrageous vanity of the man who styled himself the son of Jupiter, and who murdered his best friend for refusing him divine honours? Are we disposed to pity the slave-merchant, who, urged by the maniacal desire for gold, hears unmoved the groans of his fellow-creatures, the execrations of mankind, and that "small still voice," which haunts those who ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... and Alice were married, and on the same day Bumpus and Susan were also united. There was great rejoicing on the occasion; Ole Thorwald and Dick Price distinguished themselves by dancing an impromptu and maniacal pas de deux at the ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... recognized that Ahpilus knew nothing of his own past from a period antedating his exile to the present time. It appears that the nervous shock which accompanied the breaking of his spine had, in some way, dispelled his madness, and also those less maniacal, comparatively mild delusions which for several years had clouded and perverted his otherwise brilliant mind; so that he was again the same loving and lovable Ahpilus of former times; but in all the sixty or seventy years ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... with an insane disregard for their legs and his convenience. He could not conceive their maniacal desires to cross the streets. Their madness smote him with eternal amazement. He was continually storming at them from his throne. He sat aloft and denounced their frantic leaps, plunges, ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... that a European war was brewing, its violent emotion would quickly have reached the House. Paul Visire was not uneasy. The European situation was in his view completely reassuring. He was only irritated by the maniacal silence of his Minister of Foreign Affairs. That gnome went to the Cabinet meetings with a portfolio bigger than himself stuffed full of papers, said nothing, refused to answer all questions, even those asked ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... against him and Julian, if only they would consent together to give it power by the united action of sitting, spurred him on to restless desire. It is not only the soldier who has a bizarre love of peril. Many of those who sit at home in apparent calmness of safety seek perils with a maniacal persistence, perils to the intricate scheme of bodily health, perils to the mind. More human mules than the men of the banner and the sword delight in journeying at the extreme edge of the precipice. And Valentine now had to the full this secret hankering ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... the strangers in the camp. But he had waited only until he saw Ray kick the helpless form before him,—that of the god that Fenris, for all the wild had claimed him, still worshipped in his inmost heart. With fiendish, maniacal fury he had sprung to ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... full—that incessant thinking of her, and seeking her, had crazed my brain. I relighted my lamp and made my way into the doctor's study. I read all I could find on the subject of optical delusion and maniacal hallucination until I convinced myself that I was laboring under a very alarming attack of one or both, and resolved on seriously consulting my friend, the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... name of our friendship," says Cicero, addressing Atticus, "suffer nothing to escape you of whatever you find curious or rare." When Atticus informed him that he should send him a fine statue, in which the heads of Mercury and Minerva were united together, Cicero, with the enthusiasm of a maniacal lover of the present day, finds every object which is uncommon the very thing for which he has a proper place. "Your discovery is admirable, and the statue you mention seems to have been made purposely for my cabinet." ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... raw-head and bloody-bones, they were enabled by their stratagems of X. Y. Z. in which ——— was a leading mountebank, their tales of tub-plots, ocean-massacres, bloody-buoys, and pulpit-lyings and slanderings, and maniacal ravings of their Gardiners, their Osgoods, and Parishes, to spread alarm into all but the firmest breasts. Their Attorney General had the impudence to say to a republican member, that deportation must be resorted to, of which, said ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... the bloodless horror of that maniacal voice. It chilled my veins. Again I felt the hair rise on my scalp. Brice bowed quietly; and his eyes, serene and ...
— The Floating Island of Madness • Jason Kirby
... home with the children. Far beyond "Jump and Run" we came upon quite a crowd of women and children, who had built a large fire, and were huddled about it. One woman, a tall creature, ran to meet us as we approached with outstretched hands and a maniacal stare in her eyes. "Where's my husband?" she shrieked. "Is it true he is killed? An' are you comin' to kill me?" "No, my dear," answered the minister, "we come to bring you comfort." "No! no! no!" she cried. "Tell me no more about God. Hagar's children have no God. They are forsaken! Lost! lost! ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... this deportment? Was the ignorance which these words implied real or pretended? Yet how could I imagine a mere human agency in these events? But, if the influence was preternatural or maniacal in my brother's case, they must be equally so in my own. Then I remembered that the voice exerted was to save me from Carwin's attempts. These ideas tended to abate my abhorrence of this man, and to detect the absurdity ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... the moment the man was speechless. An almost maniacal fear seemed to hold him in its grip. With an impatient oath Chauvelin ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... way with a vague feeling of danger and rage, having encountered an opposition of so much more alarming a character than he had anticipated, and found his wife not only competent ferre aspectum to endure his maniacal glare and scowl, but serenely to defy his violence and his wrath. He had abundance of matter for thought and perturbation, and felt himself, when the images of Larcom, Larkin, and Jim Dutton crossed the retina of his memory, some thrill of the ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the ladies paled with terror. The large maple tree, which stood by the front door, and which Julia had called hers, was shivered by lightning, but no one heeded it, for again was heard that fearful, maniacal shriek, and this time could be distinguished the sound as of some one struggling with the blacks, who were huddled together in ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... of a beast enraged, and it was succeeded by a heavy crash as he let fall the coffin-lid; a second later a still louder sound awoke the night-echoes of that silent place. In a burst of maniacal frenzy he had caught the coffin itself a buffet of his mighty fist, and hurled it from ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... have considered me more than a thousand would have done.' Mrs. Leigh is, in Lady Byron's eyes, a most abused and innocent woman, who, to spare her sister in her delicate situation, has taken on herself the whole charge of a maniacal brother, although suffering from him language and actions of the most injurious kind. That Mrs. Leigh did not flee the house at once under such circumstances, and wholly decline the management of the case, seems to Lady ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... in his soul. He had also deposited his valise at the Hotel du Luxembourg, which, as all the world knows, is the most luxurious hotel in the town. Joyousness of heart impelled him to a course of action which the good Nimois regard as maniacal in the sweltering July heat—he walked about the baking streets for his ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... language, Rhoda did not answer, but looked up in his face in silence. A fearful transformation was there—a scowl so livid and maniacal, that her very senses seemed leaving her with terror. Perhaps the sudden alteration observable in her countenance, as this spectacle so unexpectedly encountered her, recalled him to himself; for he added, hurriedly, and in a tone of ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... immunity to whoever shoots down the king," replied the traveler. "Worse still, it gives such an account of the maniacal ferocity of the fugitive as to warrant anyone ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... inactive, every eye turned upon him, and the trussed figure of the ape-man. He realized that indecision now meant ruin, and ruin, death. He raised his voice in the sharp barking tones of a Prussian officer, so unlike his former maniacal screaming as to quickly arouse the attention of every ear and to cause an expression of puzzlement to cross the crafty ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... jungles upon either side came the weird night cries of the carnivora—the maniacal voice of the hyena, the coughing grunt of the panther, the deep and awful roar of the lion. And with them strange, uncanny notes that the girl could not ascribe to any particular night prowler—more terrible because ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... were doubtless a pretty intolerable character when the maniacal condition came on and you were bossing the universe. Not only ordinary "tact," but a genius for diplomacy must have been needed for avoiding rows with you; but you certainly were wrongly treated nevertheless; and the spiteful Assistant M.D. at —— deserves to have his name ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... stunts," he informed Maury; "one of them is to get her hair over her eyes some way and then blow it out, and the other is to say 'You cra-a-azy!' when some one makes a remark that's over her head. It fascinates me. I sit there hour after hour, completely intrigued by the maniacal symptoms she finds in ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... laugh and go on again. You understand. But what maniacal frenzy is this which demands a vociferous "passionate love of music" from everyone? Watch the current dish-water fiction. Every character, male and female, is "passionately fond of music." Which means? That the readers of this stuff ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... face; the speech becomes thick and hesitating. The paralytic symptoms gradually go on increasing, the sphincters refuse to act, and death may occur from suffocation and choking. Sometimes, during the earlier stages especially, there may be maniacal paroxysms or epileptic fits. The delusions remain the same throughout, the patient always expresses himself as being happy, and his last words will probably have reference to money ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... of amusement, though not to be neglected, can never afford. To the melancholy class, this is an important distinction between amusing and useful employments, and labour is to be prefered for the maniacal class as less calculated to stimulate the already too much ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... her over the ridge to the marshy shores of Gray Lake,—a dismal body of water over which the waterfowl circled endlessly and the loons shrieked their maniacal cries. He noticed, with some apprehension, that many sea birds had taken to the lake for refuge,—gulls and their fellows. This fact meant to the woodsman that great storms were raging at sea, and they themselves ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... with a few hints to novices. Preserve a cool head and steady eye. Whilst you are playing your shot your captain will be dancing about in the circle at the other end of the ice. You will find it best to disregard his maniacal shoutings and gesticulations. You will probably not understand half of them and will not agree with the other half. If he should break a blood-vessel do not take any notice unless some part of his fallen body is likely to obstruct your ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... of Melista or Greinan, round which the open Atlantic surges, and left there alone, he took to the water and ran ashore; and that when bound hand and foot, and left in a kiln, by a miracle of strength he broke his bonds and escaped. It is thus they are said to have treated him during his fits of maniacal excitement; and there are many still alive who saw it all, and gave a helping hand.... The further story of Wild Murdoch will astonish no one. He murdered his sister, was taken south, and died in an asylum, or, as the people say ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... we first visited the city was very rainy, and we spent most of the time in viewing the churches. These, even after the churches of Venice, one finds rich in art and historic interest, and they in no instance fall into the maniacal excesses of the Renaissance to which some of the temples of the latter city abandon themselves. Their architecture forms a sort of border-land between the Byzantine of Venice and the Lombardic of Verona. The superb domes of St. Anthony's emulate ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... mental memory. The threshold of excitability changes under most various conditions. Cells which respond easily in certain states may need the strongest stimulation in others. The brain cells which are too easily excited perhaps in maniacal exultation would respond too slowly in a melancholic depression. Hypnotism, too, by closing the opposite channels and opening wide the channels for the suggested discharge, may stir up excitements for which the disposition may have lingered since the days of childhood and yet which would not ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... his grip of the bars, raised his clenched fists above his head, and in a voice and with a maniacal fury that were neither his own, cursed the man who stood there mocking him. Then he reeled, ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... my confidence, since you have devised a new torture after I thought I had exhausted them all, then, Count of Monte Cristo my pretended benefactor—then, Count of Monte Cristo, the universal guardian, be satisfied, you shall witness the death of your friend;" and Morrel, with a maniacal laugh, again ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... more intelligent language) too thin and ethereal for its atmosphere. And to this affection for the actual in the English moderates must be added (in what proportion we know not) a persecuting hatred of Popery almost maniacal but quite sincere. The State had long, as we have seen, been turned to an engine of torture against priests and the friends of priests. Men talk of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes; but the English persecutors never ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... at length have fainted or become insensible; for the contest was long, and, while consciousness remained, terrible and appalling. My fainting, I presume, saved my life, for the felon was in that state of maniacal desperation which nothing but a perfect ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... him her hand with a look of infinite love. She only said, "My poor mother!" That word did not fall to the ground. It flashed like lightning at night across the demented lover, and lighted up his egotism (suicide, like homicide, is generally a fit of maniacal egotism), even to his eyes ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... are owls. Let them do the idiotic and maniacal hooting for men. It is a sound admirably suited to swamps and twilight woods which no day illustrates, suggesting a vast and undeveloped nature which men have not recognized. They represent the stark twilight and unsatisfied thoughts which all ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... his doings are very likely to be spread about. Even in these days of advanced medical science, it is sometimes difficult to decide whether a patient is insane or not, and it is quite possible to suffer from very severe fits of depression without being the subject of maniacal melancholia, or from very violent fits of passion without being ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... deeply wronged, the man whom I had given the right to slay me. A second later the door shook as if a hurricane had smitten it. He had seized the handle, and he was pulling at it frenziedly with a maniacal strength. ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... drama have passed through their town lives, without having been, at some one period of their career, what is called stage struck, afflicted with a maniacal desire to make a "first appearance," to be designated in posters as a "YOUNG GENTLEMAN OF THIS CITY," in connection with one Mr. Shakspeare, the "author of certain plays." The stage-struck youth is easily recognized ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... to her great misfortune became the usurping Duchess of Palliano, for her husband made her life a martyrdom and was ultimately responsible for her death. He was not so utterly depraved as his brother Cardinal Carlo Caraffa but his maniacal jealousy was more dangerous than the Cardinal's vices, and he made himself rich by the maladministration of the ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... beyond their power, those of the lower orders have not sense enough to dance, and that men should dance alone is a proposition of such free and forthright idiocy as to be but obscurely conceivable to any understanding not having the gift of maniacal inspiration, or the normal advantage of original incapacity. Altogether, we may rightly consider China the heaven appointed habitat of people who dislike ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... but slender hope from this. The pace was too terrific at which Victor's car was thundering through the night-bound countryside, it seemed idle to dream that another could overhaul it, even though driven with as much skill and maniacal recklessness. And Sofia returned to thoughts to which Victor's innuendo had given definite shape and colour, if with an effect far from that of his intention. Threatened, the spirit of the girl responded much as sane young flesh will to a cold plunge. She ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... indeed plausibly say that the government is an absent-minded and inconsistent person who occupies himself with providing for the old age of people who have never been infants. I will not deal here in any detail with the fact that some Eugenists have in our time made the maniacal answer that the police ought to control marriage and birth as they control labor and death. Except for this inhuman handful (with whom I regret to say I shall have to deal with later) all the Eugenists I know divide themselves ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... As before, sheets of water—which bore no relation to rain, but seemed rather as though the earth were at the foot of a waterfall from which a river was leaping from on high—were hurled over the land. The shrieking of the wind had a wild and maniacal sound, the sound which Jamaicans have christened "the hell-cackle of a hurricane." This squall lasted longer, five minutes or more, and when it passed, the wind dropped somewhat, but did not die down. It raged furiously, its shriek dropped to a ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... maniacal garments sometimes; that there is no denying. But on the other hand styles for women change with such frequency that no quirk of fashion however foolish and disfiguring ever endures for long enough to work any permanent injury in the health of ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... great reasoners are often maniacal, it is equally true that maniacs are commonly great reasoners. When I was engaged in a controversy with the CLARION on the matter of free will, that able writer Mr. R.B.Suthers said that free will was lunacy, because it meant causeless actions, and the actions of a lunatic ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... sobbing, and screaming, the boy finally flung himself upon the ground and smote it with his fists, while tears streamed from his eyes. Nor could he be silenced. He maintained such a hideous and surprising uproar, answering Gomez's stern commands to be silent with such maniacal howls, that the old soldier was finally glad to yield his consent, incidentally consigning the rebellious youth to that perdition with which he ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... accident). Such insanities are curable and are not transmissible. Another example is what is known as puerperal insanity. Some women during childbirth, due probably to some toxic infection, become insane. This insanity may be extreme and maniacal in character. Still, it often passes away in a few days without leaving any trace and may never return again, or, if it does return, it may return only during another childbirth. This kind of ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... in a similar condition of maniacal excitement for some time preceding and during a Parliamentary election, but afterwards they usually manifested that modification of insanity which is called melancholia. In fact they alternated between these two forms of the ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... that be? don't I love the very dust he treads on!' she screamed out violently at last, and went into a hysteric fit. The sound of her maniacal voice brought her brother to the door with anxious inquiry, but as I told him Mary was a little over excited, and quiet would soon restore her, at my earnest request he retired. In a short time I was able, with bathing her head in cold water, and constantly soothing ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... the young lawyer really loved her and would keep her secret! But he was vexed, and there was something maniacal in her twisting fingers. "What have you got there?" he ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... policemen suddenly hemmed in the fighting mass. Druce, struggling blindly to make a pathway for himself, suddenly looked up to see Mary Randall standing on a table on the opposite side of the room directing the police. A wave of maniacal anger overwhelmed him. In a flash his hand went to his pocket and ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... deeply cleft masculine chin, flushed and eager, his yellow hair disordered, the one tuft on the crown standing stiffly forth like the feather in an Indian's scalp lock; Broderson, vaguely combing at his long beard with a persistent maniacal gesture, distressed, troubled and uneasy; Osterman, with his comedy face, the face of a music-hall singer, his head bald and set off by his great red ears, leaning back in his place, softly cracking the knuckle of a forefinger, and, last of all and close to his elbow, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... incoherent, whimpering wail. Connie reached down to snatch the man to his feet, when suddenly he started back in horror. For the wailing suddenly ceased, and in his ears, high and shrill, sounded a peal of maniacal laughter. The eyes of the man met his own in a wild glare, while peal after peal of the horrible laughter hurtled from between the parchment-like lips that writhed back to expose ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... found in certain types of insanity. Depressed patients frequently manifest the delusion that they have committed a great sin, and are unfit to associate with anyone. Excited and maniacal patients often believe they are important personages—kings or queens, old historical celebrities, etc. Paranoiacs commonly have delusions of persecution and of a conspiracy among their relatives or their associates or rivals. Victims of alcoholic insanity have delusions regarding sexual ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... says he, "to recall how intense sensuality makes itself manifest in the clinical history of many religious maniacs; the motley mixture of religious and sexual delusions that is so frequently observed in psychoses (e. g., in maniacal women who think they are or will be the mother of God), but particularly in masturbatic insanity; and finally, the sexual, cruel self-punishment, injuries, self-castrations, and even self-crucifixions, resulting from ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... general as is here described, is no insanity. But when I see such a woman as Margaret Mackenzie in danger from such a man as Samuel Rubb, junior, I am driven to fear that there may sometimes be a maniacal tendency. But Samuel Rubb was by no means a bad man. He first hankered after the woman's money, but afterwards he had loved the woman; and my female reader, if she agrees with me, will feel that that virtue covers a ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... Yet there appears to my mind a defect of accomplishment, rather than a deliberate intention, in the delineation of Orsino. He seems meant to be the wily, crafty, Machiavellian reptile, whose calculating wickedness should form a contrast to the daemonic, reckless, almost maniacal fiendishness of old Francesco Cenci. But this conception of him wavers; his love for Beatrice is too delicately tinted, and he is suffered to break down with an infirmity of conscience alien to such a nature. On the other hand the uneasy vacillations of Giacomo, and the irresolution, ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... struck up a frantic dance, with maniacal gestures, idiotic stampings, and somersaults like those of the boneless clowns in the circus. Diana, joining in the dance, and howling in her turn, jumped to the top of the projectile. An unaccountable flapping of wings was then heard amid most fantastic ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... moment he had the written one in his pocket. After a moment's struggle to remember what he wished to say, he found himself hopelessly befogged, and abandoned the attempt. Then, to the amazement of all who heard him, he burst out into a loud, strident peal of unmeaning, maniacal laughter—laughter which had no spice of merriment in it, and which was a mere spontaneous effort of nature to relieve the strain upon the shattered nerves. Bench, bar, jury and spectators stared aghast. Such laughter sounded ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... faded from before Tarzan's eyes. Things began to take form—he was regaining the perspective of civilized man. His eyes fell upon the figure of the kneeling woman. "Olga," he whispered. She looked up, expecting to see the maniacal light of murder in the eyes above her. Instead she saw sorrow ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... heart leaping as though it would burst his ribs, raised a fist to strike down his insulter; then, with drunken indecision, joined in the maniacal laughter of the ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... verse the style that stood him in such good stead in the field of familiar prose. It is because of this hard-won ease of style that readers of English will never grow weary of that epistolary autobiography in which he recounts his maniacal fear that his food has been poisoned; his open-eyed wonder at balloons; the story of his mouse; the cure of the distention of his stomach by Lady Hesketh's gingerbread; the pulling out of a tooth at the dinner-table unperceived by the other guests; his desire to thrash Dr. ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... for a moment Hardy gazed into the other's nonchalant mask-like visage, then, with a gesture of maniacal impotence, he raised his clenched fists high above ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... Maddelena, as she was now—believed her lover dead, for her father had given her good proofs of this, and she believed him; nevertheless she refused to marry another, and seized upon the convent life as a blessed relief from the tyranny of her maniacal father. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... constituted that they can only take their leisure in the shape of a change of work. To this fairly numerous class belonged Mr. J. Preston Peters, father of Freddie's Aline. And to this merit—or defect—is to be attributed his almost maniacal devotion to that rather unattractive species of curio, the ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... constantly refrained from mentioning my youthful compatriots. Did I dare reveal that I had companions, and by so doing expose those helpless lads to the unbridled fury of these maniacal beings, filled with the low cunning and insatiable curiosity of the insane? No; a thousand times, no! Rather would I perish first. At all hazards I would protect them—such was my ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... At the front door of the apothecary's hung a thermometer, and as they entered they heard the next comer cry out with a maniacal pride in the affliction laid upon mankind, "Ninety-seven degrees!" Behind them, at the door, there poured in a ceaseless stream of people, each pausing at the shrine of heat, before he tossed off ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the supreme representative of the greatest Republic upon earth and the most prosperous nation? It is an incident in the life of government that the supreme head of it shall be subject to the vicissitudes of its maniacal, fanatical and criminal classes, those who live by their wits or those who dream of a condition of society unattainable, as human nature is constructed, such as Edward Bellamy has pictured in "Looking Backward." I wish it distinctly understood that I refer ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... draw the gloomiest pictures of the Christian Church in the fourth and seventh centuries, and one declares that the "Kingdom of Heaven had become a Hell." Egypt, distracted by the blood- thirsty religious wars of Copt and Greek, had been covered with hermitages by a yens aeterna of semi-maniacal superstition. Syria, ever "feracious of heresies," had allowed many of her finest tracts to be monopolised by monkeries and nunneries.[FN320] After many a tentative measure Mohammed seems to have built his edifice upon two bases, the unity of the Godhead and the priesthood of the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... look at matters in this light. The thought that she had injured her first-born son had taken possession of her completely, and seriously disturbed the balance of her faculties. The desire to make amends to Wyvis for her wrong-doing had already reached almost a maniacal point: how much further it might be carried Janetta never ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... hydrophobia are two different terms, meaning the same disease, the former meaning to rage or become mad. This term applies more especially to the disease as it exists in the maniacal form in the lower animals, while hydrophobia comes from the Greek, meaning "dread of water." As we occasionally find this dread of water only in the human subject, the term is properly used in such a case. The lower animals frequently ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... for much the fat old Norman brown-bay mare, which drew Mademoiselle Cormon to her country-seat at Prebaudet; for the five inhabitants of the house bore to this animal a maniacal affection. She was called Penelope, and had served the family for eighteen years; but she was kept so carefully and fed with such regularity that mademoiselle and Jacquelin both hoped to use her for ten years longer. This beast was the ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... it had come, the smoke of that mental explosion seemed to clear away. Even as he gaped into the white face so close to his own he awoke to reason. The consciousness of how futile, of how odious, of how maniacal, it all was swept over him. He had fallen low, but he had never dreamed that he could fall so low ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... in the twenty-sixth chapter with the interrupted marriage, when Rochester drags the whole bridal party into the den of his maniacal wife, the wild struggle with the mad woman, the despair of Jane—all this is as powerful as anything whatever in English fiction. It is even a masterpiece of ingenious construction and dramatic action. It is difficult to form ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... in cases of acute mental disease, is probably always connected with sexual excitement, if not with sexual depravity. The same association is seen in less extreme cases, and one of the commonest features in the conversation of acutely maniacal women is the intermingling of ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... her colleague, Moggy, and told her she would not stay in the room unless she sat up all night with her. So, together they kept watch and ward, and as the night wore on, Mrs. Nutter's slumbers grew more natural and less brief, and her paroxysms of waking terror less maniacal. Still she would waken, with a cry that thrilled them, from some frightful vision, and seem to hear or see nothing aright for a good while after, and ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... above even the combined din of instruments, voices, and cannon, is hardly heeded by them. Noise is what they want, and they have a surfeit of it. It is only after the performance is ended that the vision of GILMORE'S ecstatic coat-tails, as they danced to the wild whirling of his maniacal baton, comes back to their memory. Then they smile and say, "Curious fellow that GILMORE. Knows how to make himself ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... slightly; fires his pistol in the air when he meets her father—for how could he take the life of him who gave life to his adored one? Your hero can always hit a man just where he pleases—vide every novel in Mr C's collection. The hero becomes misanthropical, the heroine maniacal. The former marries an antiquated and toothless dowager, as an escape from the imaginary disgust he took at a sight of a matchless woman; and the latter marries an old brute, who threatens her life every night, and puts her in bodily fear every morning, as an indemnity in full for the ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... Americans, and loyal Frenchmen, imperial Germans, and double Dutchmen, we are dispersed to preach the Unity, and what we illustrate is the Jewish trinity. A delicious irony! Three-in-one and one-in-three.' He laughed; to Sir Asher his laugh sounded maniacal. The old gentleman was relieved to ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... inferno startled him awake. Those narrow metal walls were echoing a clangour of machinery maniacal in character and overpowering in volume. Clankings, tappings, hissings, coughings, clatterings, stridulation of a wireless spark, drone of dynamos, shrewdish scolding of Diesel motors developing two thousand horsepower, individual efforts of some two thousand valves, combined—or, declined ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... his own voice—the comically commonplace name, "Mr. Jones," even in the agony of his terror, the humor of the conjuncture glimmered in the boy's crazed intelligence, and he laughed a wild, maniacal laugh. But the laugh died out in a pulseless horror. The sick man uprose on his elbow. Dick, above him on the white-oak trunk, could see his very eyes bloodshot and wandering. He uprose, almost sitting. ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... delightful, In the supple grace of her movements and the sparkle of her eyes. You can never devote your whole mind to those studies which I have planned for you whilst such distractions exist. A touch of this keen point, and the laughing Karamaneh becomes the shrieking hag—the maniacal, mowing—" ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... Barleycorn played me his maniacal trick. Some maundering fancy of going out with the tide suddenly obsessed me. I had never been morbid. Thoughts of suicide had never entered my head. And now that they entered, I thought it fine, a splendid culminating, a perfect rounding off of my short but exciting ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... desire was to bring down calamity and plagues upon the individuals or tribes of men against whom their animosity was directed. Unlawful and detested words and mysteries were called into action to conjure up demons who should yield their powerful and tremendous assistance. Songs of a wild and maniacal character were chaunted. Noisome scents and the burning of all unhallowed and odious things were resorted to. In later times books and formulas of a terrific character were commonly employed, upon the reading or recital of which the prodigies resorted to began ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... a startled glance of inquiry about the table. The laugh was repeated, and the sound was even more wild and maniacal. The little man was shocked at the grin which he noted upon ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... the case of "an insane gentleman, aged 49, who, for the past twenty-six years, has been subject to the most regularly occurring brain-exaltation every four weeks, almost to a day. It sometimes passes off without becoming acutely maniacal, or even showing itself in outward acts; at other times it becomes so, and lasts for periods of from one to four weeks. It is always preceded by an uncomfortable feeling in the head, and pain in the back, mental hebetude, and slight depression. The nisus ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... petticoats as she bore down upon the most disappointing, erratic, and self-willed niece that ever brought the grey hairs of a solicitous and devoted aunt in sorrow to the grave, demanding in Heaven's name what Bridget-Mary meant by this maniacal decision? Then she drew back, for at first she hardly credited that this tall, pale, quiet woman in the plain, close-fitting, black woollen gown could be Bridget-Mary at all. Realising that it could be nobody else, she began to cry quite hysterically, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... frequent drinks from the bottle, which had been replenished. His eyes were wild, his manner reckless, almost maniacal. As they passed signals he would utter a fierce, ringing yell. Ralph crowded over ...
— Ralph on the Engine - The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail • Allen Chapman
... in some of his letters to his friends, all of which, doubtless, were opened; but still he entreated, flattered, adored, all to no purpose, for seven long years and upwards. In time he became subject to maniacal illusions; so that if he was not actually mad before, he was now considered so. He was not only visited with sights and sounds, such as many people have experienced whose brains have been over-excited, but he fancied himself haunted by a sprite, and become the sport of ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... his hollow eye-sockets his eyes looked out unwinking, as though his lids had been cut off. He held himself halfway between a reclining and an upright position. No normal person could hold himself that way for long, but the sick boy kept himself motionless with maniacal strength. The flies hung over him like a cloud of black cinders. One of his friends attempted to keep them away with a leafy branch which he had found, Heaven knows where! I could see no other sign of green in the place. As we passed, ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... and breast. For a few seconds, which to her seemed an eternity, she remained here, crouching beside the dead body of this unfortunate man, trying in vain in her confused mind to conjecture what had brought Bela here, instead of the young Count, within the reach of Leopold's maniacal jealousy and revenge. ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Many of them are owned and occupied by artists, who have them towed by horses up and down the river every week or two, or moor them for months in one place while painting river-scenery. Some are inhabited by maniacal fishermen, who sit day after day all day long at the end of poles protruding from front or back doors or bedroom windows. Some are inhabited by Londoners in whom primeval instincts for air, space, sunshine, and liberty break out every summer from under the thick crust of modern habits and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... during supper, had exhibited a boisterous good-humor which she felt to be assumed in order to mask some intention against her. This sudden gaiety contrasted too vividly with the struggle of mind he endeavored to conceal by his eagerness in hunting, and by an almost maniacal toil at his forge, where he spent many hours in hammering iron; and Catherine was not deceived by it. Without being able even to guess which of the statesmen about the king was employed to prepare or negotiate ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... the fit that saved them. In his maniacal contortions he swung around to Neewa's side of the sapling, when, with their halter once more free from impediment, Neewa bolted for safety. Miki followed, yelping at every jump. No longer did Neewa feel a horror of the river. The instinct of his kind told ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... necromancy, is explained by a matter-of-fact spectator. It is true, he says, that the naked worshipers cavort round a big bonfire, with blazing faggots in their hands, and dash the flames over their own and their fellows' bodies, all in a most picturesque and maniacal fashion; but their skins are first so thickly coated with a clay paint that they cannot easily ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... convulsive working of the frightful tentacles as it devoured its lifeless prey. He could stand it no longer. His brain was bursting; he must do something. Raising his voice he shouted—shouted as assuredly he had never shouted in his life. There was a maniacal ring in his voice. He felt as though he must rush right at this thing of fear. Was he really going mad? Well, it began to ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... sprang to her feet, and darted round the rock, against which she had been cowering; she saw the little red gleam through the chinks of the hut; she ran up to it and fell against its wooden walls, which she began to hammer with clenched fists in an almost maniacal frenzy, while ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... conflict with knife and bayonet and gun butt that always occurs when they go over the top to charge the enemy trench. As they near the enemy trench the bestial howl rises, and as they jump into the shell-shattered trenches the howl is maniacal. In the trenches are canvas bags made to represent wounded enemies. The first wave over the top leaves these bags for the stretcher bearers. But by the time the next wave comes over, or the third wave comes, the stretcher bearers are supposed to have cleared the trenches of wounded ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... faithful servant or monachal abstinence, wisest of wise men, how would thy sides ache with laughter, how wouldst thou chuckle, if thou couldst come again for a little while to Chinon, and read the idiotic mouthings, and the maniacal babble of the fools who have interpreted, commentated, torn, disgraced, misunderstood, betrayed, defiled, adulterated and meddled with thy peerless book. As many dogs as Panurge found busy with his lady's robe at church, so many two-legged academic puppies ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... been up the creek arrived. The foremost one, frothing at the mouth with excitement and effort, dashed at me with an uplifted butcher knife as if she would enjoy sending it into me, but I laughed at her and she halted immediately in front of me. She broke into a maniacal laugh then and shouted something to the hidden refugees. We persuaded the old man also to call them, and he stepped out from the cedars which grew on the point and spoke a loud sentence. At last they began to appear silently ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... and horror of hope deferred; hurt by lance blades and sword blades and bayonet blades breaking into the bloody house of life. But Mr. Price (I think that's his name) is still anxious that they should not be hurt by cigarettes. That is the sort of maniacal isolation that can be found in the deserts of Bromley. That cigarettes are bad for the health is a very tenable opinion to which the minister is quite entitled. If he happens to think that the youth of Bromley smoke too many cigarettes, and that he has ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... no expert, then and afterward, could determine whether the lameness was in his frogs, hoofs, legs, shoulders, or head. Maid picked up a nail and began to limp. Milda, figuring the day already sufficiently spent and maniacal with manger-gluttony, began to rabbit-jump. All that held her was the bale- rope. And the Outlaw, game to the last, exceeded all previous exhibitions of ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London |
