"Monomaniacal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... an imagination of singular intensity enables him to see the object presented, and at the same time to impart to it a kind of visionary life. "That imagination," says M. Taine, "is akin to the imagination of the monomaniac." And, starting from this point, he proceeds to show, here again quite truly, with what admirable sympathetic power and insight Dickens has described certain cases of madness, as in Mr. Dick. But here, having said some right things, ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... of depression came over the captain when he realized that the land of promise had risen on his vision at last. For days, weeks and months this had been the one absorbing theme of his mind. He had dreamed of it until he was almost, if not quite, a monomaniac, and he had built air-castles until the whole sky of his vision was filled with gorgeous structures. And it should be added, in justice to both Bergen and Storms, that these structures were creditable to the builders; for, realizing in the fullest sense that about all they could extract ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... amongst the rebels of '48; the one man who distinctly knew what he wanted, and was prepared to run any risk to get it." Even Mitchell, it is clear, would never have gone as far as he did but for the impulse which he received from the crippled desperado in the background. Lalor was, in fact, a monomaniac, but this Mitchell seems to have failed to perceive. To him it was intolerable that any human being should be willing to go further and to dare more in the cause of Ireland than himself, and the result was that after awhile he broke away from his ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... intellect again by denying his insanity; for he was now convinced of what he had long half suspected, that the doctor had a bee in his own bonnet; and Alfred had studied true insanity all this time, and knew how inhumane it is to oppose a monomaniac's foible; it only infuriates and worries him. No power ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... false; and I believe it was in mere pity that Mrs. Higgs came to my rescue with a welcome proposition. If the gentleman was really interested in stamps, she said, probably supposing me a monomaniac on the point, he should see Mr. Denman's album. Mr. Denman had been collecting forty years, and his collection was said to be worth a mint of money. "Agnes," she went on, "if you were a kind little girl, you would run over to the 'All, tell Mr. Denman there's ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... reformed seaman was becoming a monomaniac, and what is more, one of the religious type. He had a Bible with him that had been given to him by his mother when he was a boy, and in this he read constantly; also he was always on his knees and at night ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... couldn't be anything like mad while he could do that?... How had she received his answer—in which he tried to show her the impossibility of any decent man compromising a girl in the way she proposed in her sweet innocence and ignorance. Of course he, a half-mad, epileptic, fiend-ridden monomaniac—nay, dangerous lunatic,—could not marry. Why, he might murder his own wife under some such circumstances as those under which he attacked Captain Blake. (Splendid fellow Blake! Not every man after such a ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... incorrigible, Bathurst. Miss Hannay, I warn you that this man is a monomaniac. I drag him away from his work, and here he is discoursing with you on reform just as a race is going to start. You may imagine, my dear, what a thorn he is in the side of the bigwigs. You have heard of Talleyrand's advice to a young ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... such, akin in character to my old friend Billy of Maughold, but of more universal popularity, a quite privileged pet of everybody, a sort of sacred being, though as crazy as man may be, called Chalse-a-Killey. Chaise was scarcely a bard, but a singer of the songs of bards. He was a religious monomaniac, who lived before his time, poor fellow; his madness would not be seen in him now. The idol of his crazed heart was Bishop Wilson. He called him dear and sweet, vowed he longed to die, just that he might ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... Thorne, and ask him to accompany us to-night. He claims to be something of a connoisseur, and the picture is really worth seeing, if the lad has not spoiled it with his 'final touches'. And anyhow, the boy will be a study for a psychological monomaniac like Thorne." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... and the poor monomaniac's room seemed a horrible place to her, all glistening as it was with the cleanliness that had gradually become a mania. She had reached one of those fateful moments when the loss of one illusion causes you to lose them all, enables you to look to the very depths of human misery. The realization ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... man is crazy?" asked Brookings. "He probably is a monomaniac, really insane on that one thing, from studying it ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... obtain his assent to principles in various branches of art, and apply them subsequently to music. All was well so long as the patient's brain was heated with the fumes of wine; but as soon as he had recovered—or, rather, lost—his reason, he was a monomaniac ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... difficulty, "I don't know whether you realize, not being a physician, that she is really not herself. She has for the present a mania for providing as she thinks best for her children's future. Of course no one not a monomaniac would so entirely ignore your side, would conceive so strange an idea. She is so absorbed in her own need that she does not realize what an unheard-of request she is making. To burden yourself with two young children—to mortgage ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... Ahab had cherished a wild vindictiveness against the whale, all the more fell for that in his frantic morbidness he at last came to identify with him, not only all his bodily woes, but all his intellectual and spiritual exasperations. The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them, till they are left living on with half a heart and half a lung. That intangible malignity which has been from the beginning; to whose ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... themselves. Personally, I can find nothing in them which suggests any highly organized intelligence, such as the leaders of the Jewish race represent and command in abundance; rather, they seem to me to clearly indicate the disordered mind and distorted vision of a very common type of monomaniac, the genus "crank." ...
— The Jew and American Ideals • John Spargo
... a grand one. In the execution of it, a man of his character and mind might well feel and display the extraordinary zeal and enthusiasm that gave to his appearance, habits, and conduct the characteristics of a monomaniac. Without ever once turning aside for pleasure, ambition, curiosity, affection, or enmity, he steadily pursued his great design, until death released him from the severe servitude to which he had bound himself. But, save in this entire self-abnegation and social exclusion, Mr. McDonogh ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... scruples, and unsparingly used every means to nullify his influence and destroy his credit. He was ridiculed as a madman—a monomaniac on the subject of Indians and their rights; his plainly stated facts were branded as exaggerations, though nobody accepted his challenge to contradict them. Such tactics alternated with others, for he was also described as a heretic, as disloyal and unpatriotic, seeking ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... left alone with him after dinner. He cannot bear contradiction. The queerest old man alive. One of his most intimate friends told me that he was undoubtedly deranged, mad as a March hare upon some subjects, and a monomaniac upon others. Do you know that he keeps a relay of young men, thoroughly trained for the work, to follow him round all day and pick up his droppings,—or what his followers call 'sibylline leaves,'—bits of paper, that is, written ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various |
