"Maniac" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on the chord of feverish extravagance; the more hateful to Colney because of his perceiving, that she simulated a blind devotedness to stupefy her natural pride; and he was divided between stamping on her for an imbecile and dashing at Victor for a maniac. But her situation rendered her pitiable. 'You will learn tomorrow what Victor has done,' he said, and thought how the simple words carried ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... answered fiercely, and ran madly from the room, along the gallery and down the stairs, shouting and raging like a maniac, ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... swore, and wept and prayed, With maniac laughter joined; How fearful were these signs displayed By pangs that ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... of Buchan, where the sea has forced its way through the solid rock, leaving an arch of triumph to commemorate the passage, and formed a huge round pot where its waters, in the time of storm, rage and fret and foam like a newly imprisoned maniac—a pot which Dr Johnson proposes to substitute for the Red Sea, in ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... not allude to the amiable old gentleman who controls our Accounts Department, who is the mirror of tenderness. The person I would impale is a creation of my own wrath, a mere official type struck in frenzied fancy, [at a moment when Time seems a maniac scattering dust, and Life a Fury ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... to have peace? While on Friday we recorded the pretensions of a maniac to the great throne of France; while on Saturday we were compelled to register the culpable attempts of one whom we regard as a ruffian, murderer, swindler, forger, burglar, and common pickpocket, to gain over the allegiance of Frenchmen—it is to-day our painful duty to announce ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was nothing conciliatory in his reply. I saw that in his heart he despised those dedicated to any but worldly idols. "Every man," he said, "dreams about something, love, honour, and pleasure; you dream of friendship, and devote yourself to a maniac; well, if that be your vocation, doubtless you are in ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... as though he would raise them no more on earth. But he starts, for he hears a loud shriek, a rushing, and an opening of the crowd: they seem to be awed by something that approaches. It is a woman, whoso violent gestures defy opposition; she looks like a maniac just escaped from her keepers; she has reached Hyppolito; his fettered arms move as if they would receive her, but in vain. She turns to the crowd, and some among them recognise the modest and beautiful daughter of Bardi. She calls out: 'He is innocent ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... the dust of the grave. I could not move, for its nightmare weight crushed me. I could not see, for its blackness shrouded me; nor hear, for its shrieks deafened me. Had I remained long in that awful condition, I should have become a maniac. ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... few hours that marriage, on which he denounced the most heavy curses. The servants promised they would deliver it; but giving it to the physician, he thought it better not to harass any more the mind of Miss Aubrey by, what he considered, the ravings of a maniac. Night passed on without rest to the busy inmates of the house; and Aubrey heard, with a horror that may more easily be conceived than described, the notes of busy preparation. Morning came, and the sound of ...
— The Vampyre; A Tale • John William Polidori
... were much alarmed by this unexpected occurrence. They doubted not that the foul fiend was before them, bodily, in the form of this poor maniac. After a short interval of silence, he ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... LIZZIE:—I am writing this morning with a broken heart after a sleepless night of great mental suffering. R. came up last evening like a maniac, and almost threatening his life, looking like death, because the letters of the World were published in yesterday's paper. I could not refrain from weeping when I saw him so miserable. But yet, my dear good Lizzie, ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... have thought of the priests of Baal who danced in probably just such measures round the cromlechs in the hills above Carnfother; as she wasn't, she remarked merely that this was all very well, but that the old maniac would have to clear out of that before they brought Pilot round, ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... a gray streak of a car, driven by a maniac with a scarf blowing back from a turban over two ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... trouble from tongues that hardly can frame the words that must tell the dreadful truth. Ivan only understands that something is wrong. His one thought is for Anethe; he flies to Ingebertsen's cottage, she may be there; he rushes in like a maniac, crying, "Anethe, Anethe! Where is Anethe?" and broken-hearted Maren answers her brother, "Anethe is—at home." He does not wait for another word, but seizes the little boat and lands at the same time with John on Smutty-Nose; ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... of us, the cynical Greek doctor, the artist-sage and lover of Arab institutions, myself (flint-maniac)—to say nothing of men like Dufresnoy—we all contrive to fit, after a fashion, into the place; we have a raison d'etre. But this composite, unadaptive city-dweller: how incongruous a figure against that background of ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... whose charge she had travelled, with a proper escort, looked upon her as a lovely maniac; and the mixture of pity and admiration wherewith he regarded her, was a strange thing to observe; especially after he had seen our simple house and manners. On the other hand, Lorna considered him a worthy but foolish old gentleman; ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... echoing in the courts of heaven. Such spectacles of human perfidy are the real Medusas that Gorgonize trusting, tender, throbbing hearts, and in view of this one I laughed aloud,—laughed so unnaturally that it was no marvel I was called a maniac. At sight of my desperate white face Edith shrieked and fainted, and Maurice blanched and stammered and cowered. Without a word of comment or recrimination I silently passed on to my own room, where Elsie ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... say," said Sloane stolidly, "that 'cause you had some sort of indigestion that made you act like a maniac last night, you're never coming on ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Miff are eyeing Mr Dombey from a little distance, when the noise of approaching wheels is heard, and Mr Sownds goes out. Mrs Miff, meeting Mr Dombey's eye as it is withdrawn from the presumptuous maniac upstairs, who salutes him with so much urbanity, drops a curtsey, and informs him that she believes his 'good lady' is come. Then there is a crowding and a whispering at the door, and the good lady ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... crony of Doc Philipps who almost any day of the year may be caught burrowing in the ground. For Doc Philipps is a tree maniac and father to every little green growing thing. He knows trees as a mother knows her children and he never sets foot outside his front gate without having tucked somewhere into the many pockets about his big person a stout trowel, some choice ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... difficulty in recognising several of those zealots who had most distinguished themselves by their intemperate opposition to all moderate measures, together with their noted pastor, the fanatical Ephraim Macbriar, and the maniac, Habakkuk Mucklewrath. The Cameronians neither stirred tongue nor hand to welcome their brethren in misfortune, but continued to listen to the low murmured exercise of Macbriar, as he prayed that the Almighty ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... interfere with the sternness of his determination. He seemed to breathe more freely, and the haggard wanness of his brow, relaxed at least from the workings that, but the moment before, distorted its wonted serenity, with a maniac wildness. ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was in unison with our thoughts; and equally so with the laughter that at that moment sounded in our ears—for it was laughter wild and maniac. It was heard in the forest behind us; ringing among the trees, and mingling its shrill unearthly echo with the roaring of the torrent. Both of us were startled at the sound. Though the voice was a woman's, I could see that it had produced ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... glanced at me with that expressionless look upon his face which he could summon at will, and which is at the bottom of the superstition about his iron nerve. 'I was worried, and not well. Besides, one doesn't care to be burgled, even by a maniac.' ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... pretty frequently, as a rule. One of the fellows is a perfect maniac. He keeps a suit-case always ready, and the instant he is at liberty, he bolts with it to the station, and changes in the train. No matter who is in the carriage, off he whips his tunic, and performs at least the ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... sorrow, may be gathered together and built into this edifice. The Life of Reason is the happy marriage of two elements—impulse and ideation—which if wholly divorced would reduce man to a brute or to a maniac. The rational animal is generated by the union of these two monsters. He is constituted by ideas which have ceased to be visionary and actions which have ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... flowing around her, intent on universal conquest, seemed yet more threatening; grandmothers still bore children, daughters suckled already, sons laid hands upon vacant kingdoms. And she remained alone; she had but her unworthy, broken-down, worn-out husband beside her; while Morange, the maniac, incessantly walking to and fro, was like the symbolical spectre of human distress, one whose heart and strength and reason had been carried away in the frightful death of his only daughter. And not a sound came from the cold and empty works; ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... finally realized the gravity of the situation, lost all hope whatever for any restoration and, acting under the advice of the old family physician, had her committed to the State Hospital for the Insane as an incurable narco-maniac. Here she was rudely but promptly deprived of all narcotics, nor by any hook nor crook, cunning though she was, could she secure a quieting, solacing grain. The wise superintendent, believing that ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... gateways, and filed about the field. Susan envied no one to-day, her heart was dancing. There was a racy autumnal tang in the air, laughter and shouting. The "rooters" were already in place, their leader occasionally leaped into the air like a maniac, and conducted a "yell" with a vigor that needed ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... advent of the Weggs, however, a strong friendship seemed to spring up between the retired sea captain and the bluff, erratic old farmer, which lasted until the fatal day when one died and the other became a paralytic and a maniac. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... elderly man, hurried along by a crowd of people, by whom he was pelted with mud and stones. His meek and unresisting deportment exciting her attention, she inquired what were his offences, and learned with pity and surprise that he was an unfortunate maniac, known only by the appellation of "mad Jemmy." The situation of this miserable being seized her imagination and became the subject of her attention. She would wait whole hours for the appearance of the poor maniac, and, whatever were her occupations, the voice of mad ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... sense of disillusion with Nature. It was as though a beautiful, tender, and fondly loved mother had turned murderously on her children, had wounded them nearly to death, had then tried to woo them to her breast again. The loveliness of her, the mindless, heartless, soulless loveliness, as of a maniac tamed, mocked at their agonies, mocked with her gentle indifference, mocked with her self-satisfied placidity, mocked with her serenity and her peace. For them she was dead—dead like those whom we no ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... poor maniac glides farther away, hooded in his unintelligible mourning; and certainly he does not hear ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... such a person should be called. Whether revolutionise, atheist, Bright (I said him), or Un-English. Miss Piff screeched her shrill opinion last, in the words: "A malignant maniac!" ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... wrestle with dangers dire, Since Colin is gone? Who'll fearlessly brave the maniac wave, Thoughtless of self, human life to save, Unmoved by the storm-fiend's ire? Who, Shadrach-like, will walk through fire, Since Colin is gone? Or hang his life on so frail a breath That there's but a step 'twixt life and death? For Courage is not the heritage Of the ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... out near the door sill. Springing up then I attacked the bars at the window. Hours and hours I labored, impelled to greater effort by the dread of spending another night in that room of murder. I was patient, too, patient with the cunning of a maniac. ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... that the rain hit me like a cloudburst. That was over quick, and by the time it had settled to a drizzle I was down in the paymaster's camp. Things were sure in an uproar there. Two men killed, two more crippled, and the paymaster raving like a maniac. I hadn't been far wide of the mark. The men that passed me on the ridge had held up the outfit—and looted fifty thousand ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... in his place and leaped a good twenty feet to the ground. When he raised himself the look of a maniac had settled on his face. Tearing his garments from him as he went, he entered a narrow street that made its ascent toward Zion by steps and cobbled slants. Here he came upon great crowds of terror-stricken ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... roofs in sight, from five to ten stories lower than the Corrugated buildin', but no mashie maniac in evidence. And while they're scoutin' around I takes another squint ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... tobacco maniac," growled Trendon, feeling in his breast pocket. "The devil," he cried, bringing forth ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... from each number. On the annual motion for renewing the act for suspending the Habeas Corpus bill, there was a stormy debate; but the measure was carried with the usual majorities. An attempt made by a maniac named Hadfield to shoot the king in Drury-lane theatre, led to the insertion of two additional clauses in the insanity bill, by which the privilege of bail to alleged lunatics was abridged, and the personal safety of the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... of shackles on Karuska and get him ready to travel by plane. He appears to be suffering from mental paralysis, but I don't know how his case will develope. He may go violently insane at any moment and I don't care to be aloft in a plane with an unbound maniac." ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... behind him, having crawled out through a shadow, and hit him so hard with a stone on the back of the skull that he loosed off the rifle and pitched head-foremost down among us. The Greek promptly jumped on top of him with a yell like a maniac's, failing to land with both heels on his backbone by nothing but luck. As it was, he lost balance and sat down so hard on Schillingschen's head that there was no need of the energy with which we all followed suit, piling all over ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... "the American flyers in such cases are already dead, for Moyen will be a maniac in his tortures. Munson, do you hurriedly examine the mother-subs and see if ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... hound!" cried the boatswain, spurning him with his foot. "I have you where I swore I'd bring you. And, remember, 'tis I that laid you low—I—I—" He shrieked like a maniac. "When you suffer in that living death for which they design you, remember with every lingering breath of anguish that it was I who brought you there! You trifled with me—mocked me—betrayed me. You denied my request. I grovelled at your feet and begged you—you spurned ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... the region of Middletown, proved a cumbered path. From stone fence to stone fence, in the middle trough of dust, and on the bordering of what had been, that morning, dew-gemmed grass and flower, War the maniac had left marks. Overturned wagons formed barriers around which the column must wind. Some were afire; the smoke of burning straw and clothing and foodstuffs mingling with the yet low-lying powder smoke and with the pall of Valley ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... English," said Brand, regarding the maniac-looking person before him with angry brows. "Will you go indoors, Miss Lind, and leave him to me. I will talk an English to ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... the womanly pride humbled in the dust and wifely honor wounded unto death—these alone are real! With an involuntary cry of rage and shame, a cry that is half a prayer and half a curse—a cry that rings and reverberates through the great sleepy house like a maniac's shriek heard at midnight among the tombs—she flings herself sobbing and moaning upon the marble floor. The drowsy slave starts up as from a dream, quivering in every limb like a coward looking upon his death. He tries ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... dropped from the envelope. I found afterwards that it contained a few words of farewell, dictated by Percy in his dying moments; and this sufficiently accounted for the state of mind into which its perusal plunged the unhappy Theresa. Before night she was a raving maniac, and in this state she was ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore
... rich, and thou hast much cool store of wine. But the town thirsts, and every beat of our blood Hastens us on to maniac agony. The Assyrians have our wells, and half the tanks Are dry, and the pools shoal with baking mud: The water left to us is pestilent. And therefore have we asked the governors For death: and it ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... rendered so sensitively susceptible of its influences, paralyzed the whole moral constitution of the devoted creature, and realized the poetical creation of despair. I felt inclined to soften the sternness of her grief, by quickening her disbelief of the raving thoughts of a fever-maniac; but I paused as I thought of the probable necessity of her suspicion for her future safety from the schemes of a murderer, whose evil desires might be resuscitated by the return of health. I could do nothing more at that time for the dreadful condition ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... to charity, Until I find peace again, My curse upon the fiend or god That will not let me hear A bird in song upon the bough But, hovering about the notes, There chimes the maniac ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... at all afraid of ghosts when I reach my second wind, and I grabbed at this one. It moved backward silently and as I made a quick step toward it that specter let out the most blood-curdling yell I ever heard—the shriek of a maniac. ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... she:—I have heard, O auspicious King, that Prince Ali presently asked one of the shopkeepers with whom he had made acquaintance, saying, "O my friend, is this man a maniac that he asketh a sum of thirty thousand Ashrafis for this little pipe of ivory? Surely none save an idiot would give him such a price and waste upon it such a mint of money." Said the shop man, "O my lord, this broker is wiser and warier than ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... type of crime we're working with—the kind we expect future laws to apply to—is strictly limited. It must be a crime of violence against a human being, or a crime of destruction in which there is a grave danger that human lives may be lost. The sex maniac, the firebug, or the goon who gets a thrill out of beating people. Or the reckless driver who has proven that he can't be trusted behind the wheel ...
— Nor Iron Bars a Cage.... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... contained a passage, the publication of which occasioned Gifford the deepest regret. Towards the conclusion of the article these words occurred: The Editor "has polluted his pages with the blasphemies of a poor maniac, who, it seems, once published some detached scenes of the 'Broken Heart.'" This referred to Charles Lamb, who likened the "transcendent scene [of the Spartan boy and Calantha] in imagination to Calvary and the Cross." Now Gifford had never heard ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... official letter, cast his eyes over it, and then, forgetting his gout, caught hold of Syd's hands and began to caper about the room like a maniac. ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... bones, for the chance of finding details to corroborate his own views, or possibly even to detect Grampus in some oversight or textual tampering. All other work was neglected: rare clients were sent away and amazed editors found this maniac indifferent to his chance of getting book-parcels from them. It was many months before Merman had satisfied himself that he was strong enough to face round upon his adversary. But at last he had prepared sixty ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... The maniac looked up, and breaking, as she sometimes did, into improvisation, chanted, in the most mournful ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... night of wakefulness and delirium, Brian, with his brain still wild and disordered, perhaps, had taken the boy out with him on some indefinite excursion—alone—the helpless child in the power of a maniac! ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... Archduchess of Austria, as one of the most honoured of the guests! He now gazed upon the splendours of this third marriage ceremony, by far the greatest poet of his age, but a homeless vagrant, a reputed maniac, treated with neglect or contumely on every side! No wonder that his cup of misery, which had previously been filled to the brim, overflowed with this last and crowning insult; and, scarce knowing what he did, he broke forth into the most vehement denunciations ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... filling the mouth with bread and cheese, and bidding him eat, for many a merry meal he had eaten in that house. The poor woman, returning and beholding this dreadful sight, shrieked aloud and fled into the woods, where, as described in the romance, she roamed a raving maniac, and for some time secreted herself from all living society. Some remaining instinctive feeling brought her at length to steal a glance from a distance at the maidens while they milked the cows, ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... Telemachus? Think of the temptations of a metropolis. Look at the question well, and let me know speedily; for I've got him as far as this place, and he's kicking up an awful row in the hotel-yard, and rattling his chain like a maniac. Let me know by telegraph ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... remarks founded upon my actual personal knowledge of Poe, in at least the phase of character in which he appeared to me. What he may have been to his ordinary associates, or to the world at large, I do not know; and in the picture presented to us by Dr. Griswold,—half maniac, half demon,—I confess, I cannot recognize a trait of the gentle, grateful, warm-hearted man whom I saw amid his friends,—his careworn face all aglow with generous feeling in the kindness and appreciation to which he was so little ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... Berry, with the laugh of a maniac. "Cast my portion to the dogs." He dabbed his face with a handkerchief. "Never mind. When his hour comes, you'll have to hold him out of the window. I'm not going to stop every time ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... is a semi-maniac, she's not to be encouraged in her destruction of the human race," he argued hotly. Then, as he saw the tightening and the whitening of Brenton's lips, he forgot his argument in swift contrition. "Damn it all, Brenton! I vowed I'd never ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... name was Brown and who was fortunately a silent individual; the courier and the father and son were on the banc behind. Muscari was in towering spirits, seriously believing in the peril, and his talk to Ethel might well have made her think him a maniac. But there was something in the crazy and gorgeous ascent, amid crags like peaks loaded with woods like orchards, that dragged her spirit up alone with his into purple preposterous heavens with wheeling ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... resolution. Yet, recollecting where he was, it was with some feelings of fear that he saw the dying flame leap up and spread a flash of light on the visage of Eachin, which seemed pale as the grave, while his eye rolled like that of a maniac in his fever fit. The light instantly sunk down and died, and Simon felt a momentary terror lest he should have to dispute for his life with the youth, whom he knew to be capable of violent actions when highly excited, however short a period his nature could support the measures ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... over his poisons, so much is he engrossed in the science that it takes with him the post of a besetting. Like a maniac which always speaks of his strange fancies, so this poor savage speaks all day long of his poisons, and studies ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... man, engaged in our county lunatic asylum—among a variety of papers, which I had the option of destroying or preserving, as I thought proper. I can hardly believe that the manuscript is genuine, though it certainly is not in my friend's hand. However, whether it be the genuine production of a maniac, or founded upon the ravings of some unhappy being (which I think more probable), read ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... inside the house of the man who had murdered her brother and sent her sorrowing father, a poor, senseless maniac, tottering to ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... o'er his piety by night.) The Moslem deprecates the deed, Cuts off the head that holds the creed, Then reverently goes to grass, Muttering thanks to Balaam's Ass For faith and learning to refute Idolatry so dissolute! But should a maniac dash past, With straws in beard and hands upcast, To him (through whom, whene'er inclined To preach a bit to Madmankind, The Holy Prophet speaks his mind) Our True Believer lifts his eyes Devoutly and his prayer applies; But next to Solyman the Great Reveres ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... hour I had staggered to my feet again, shivering in every limb, my teeth chattering, and there I stood staring with the eyes of a maniac ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... gaunt with hunger. Glaring down the darkening glen; But a fiercer Power and stronger Drives him back into his den: For the fiend TORNADO rideth Forth with FEAR, his maniac bride. Who by shipwrecked shores abideth, With the she-wolf by ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... beginning of a fierce fight. Any trifling accident attracts a great crowd, which becomes excited at the slightest provocation. It is easy to see from an ordinary walk in this Hongkong street how panic or rage may convert the stolid Chinese into a deadly maniac, who will stop at no outburst of violence, no atrocity, that will serve to wreak his ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... were sitting there I saw Umbopa get up and hobble towards the patch of green, and a few minutes afterwards, to my great astonishment, I perceived that usually very dignified individual dancing and shouting like a maniac, and waving something green. Off we all scrambled towards him as fast as our wearied limbs would carry us, hoping that he had ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... necessary to search the cabin," Senator Warfield answered stiffly. "Unless she is in a stupor we'd have heard her yelling long ago. The girl was a raving maniac when she appeared at the Sawtooth. It's for her ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... consists chiefly in being deliberately deaf and blind, owes a great deal of its complete sway to his example. Out of him flows most of the philosophy of Nietzsche, who is in modern times the supreme maniac of this moonstruck consistency. Though Nietzsche and Carlyle were in reality profoundly different, Carlyle being a stiff-necked peasant and Nietzsche a very fragile aristocrat, they were alike in this one quality of which ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... curtain was up, and the moonlight lay on his bed. The mystic influence of that strange white orb which moves the soul of the lover to dream of love and yearnings after it, which saddens with sweet wounds the soul who has lost it forever, which increases the terrible freedom of the maniac, and perhaps moves the tides, apparently increased the longing in the heart of one poor boy for all the innocent hilarity of his ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... 4 children. Wolves attacked them and one by one he threw the children to the pack, hoping each time thus to save the others. When he had thrown the last his sleigh came to the city gate with him sitting in it a raving maniac. That yarn had been going the rounds of print since 1746. The Old Man was an absent-minded old child, and I knew it, so I turned my fancy loose and enlarged the paragraph to a full galley of long primer, composing the awful details as I set the type and made it ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... some maniac's idea of a joke, you'll have proof very soon that it isn't, because one of the people at your Center is due to leave ...
— Warning from the Stars • Ron Cocking
... be retaken at once, Coblich!" cried Prince Peter of Blentz. "He is a dangerous maniac, and we must make this fact plain to the people—this and a thorough description of him. A handsome reward for his safe return to Blentz might not be ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... who proceeded to hand out a lady. A person in the room with her, saw her put her hands to her head, and then she rushed from the back door of the house, and did not stop till she reached the woods. When found she was a raving maniac, and is so still. We have been obliged to place her in the county house, where she is confined in the apartment devoted to Lunatics, and is as comfortable as she can be made under the circumstances. The accompanying package I found ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... Why, I've been wrecked in a typhoon in the Gulf of Mexico. And I didn't care! And I've lain for nine days more dead than alive in an Asiatic cholera camp. And I didn't care! And I've been locked into my office three hours with a raving maniac and a dynamite bomb. And I didn't care! And twice in a Pennsylvania mine disaster I've been the first man down the shaft. And I didn't care! And I've been shot, I tell you,—and I've been horse-trampled,—and ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... need give you no uneasiness," pursued Jonathan; "Mrs. Sheppard, as I told you, is in Bedlam, an incurable maniac; while her son is in the New Prison, whence he will only be removed ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... escapes, in the country at least—unless he be a criminal maniac in for a serious offence, and therefore a real danger to society—we all honestly hope that they won't catch him, and we don't hide it. And, if put in a corner, most of us would help them not ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... rope—what not—to bind the raving man. She flew into the next room, quite collected; fetched her handkerchief, snatched off the silken girdle that bound her waist, rushed back and helped the leech to tie the maniac's hands. She understood her friend's least word, or a movement of his finger; and when the slaves whom the nun had fetched came into the room, they found Rustem with his hands firmly bound, and had only to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... other fish to fry than listening to the empty babble of a maniac. By the bye, what did you ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... the East begins chronologically with Yusuf and Zulaykha (Potiphar's wife) sung by Jami (nat. A.H. 8171414); the next in date is Khusraw and Shirin (also by Nizami); Farhad and Shirin; and Layla and Majnun (the Night-black maid and the Maniac-man) are the last. We are obliged to compare the lovers with "Romeo and Juliet," having no corresponding instances in modern days: the classics of Europe supply a host as Hero and Leander, Theagenes ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... and skill, by studying his infirmity and managing with due discretion, would have but little trouble with him, and he would readily earn his living. He would be an unsafe man to go at large, as dangerous, if fired with anger, as any raving maniac. He should ever be under firm control somewhere, ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... us, so little did we look for it, that when Kess Denton, the yellow man, stood at the open gate and uttered a loud and piercing yell of defiance, not one among us could lilt a rifle, not one thought of plan or action. There the fellow was, laughing like a maniac. Why he came, whence he came, no man could tell. But he leaped into the seas and the night engulfed him, and only his mocking laugh told us that ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... voice produced a most singular effect upon Edward. The moment before, his actions had been those of a raving maniac; but, when the words struck his ear, he paused, put his hand to his forehead, seemed to recollect himself, and finally advanced with a firm and steady step. His countenance was dark and ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... justify such an extraordinary breach of all the—the decencies. Reasons? the reasons of a maniac. Not to say more, sir. Fraudulent detention—fraudulent, I say, sir! What were your ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... also to gain the approbation of the crowd, and so brings all his powers of persuasion to bear against me. Time and again, while traversing with the greatest difficulty the narrow bazaar in the midst of a surging mob, he faces about and makes the same insane request, shouting like a maniac to make his voice audible above the din of a thousand clamorous appeals to the same purpose. Had I the power to annihilate the whole crazy, maddening multitude with a sweep of the hand, I am afraid they would at this juncture have ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... sports in the soul."[434] He is supposed to dance in the Golden Hall of the temple at Chidambaram and something of the old legends of the Satarudriya hangs about such popular titles as the Deceiver and the Maniac (Kalvar) and the stories of his going about disguised and visiting his worshippers in the form of a mendicant. The idea of sport and playfulness is also prominent in Vishnuism. It is a striking feature in the cultus of both the infant and the youthful Krishna, but I have not found it recorded ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... as a disaster?" asked Kew, with a sigh of relief. "Is she a maniac, or a suffragette, or a Mormon, or just some one who has never ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... noted as a declaimer; his "youth but gave promise of the man," Mr. B., at the present time, standing without a peer in his peculiar line of declamation and oratory. In 1845, he traveled with Professor De Bonneville, giving his wonderful rendition of "The Maniac," so as to attract the attention of ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... tolled twelve very methodically and stopped for an hour's rest. Cateye was still sleeping soundly but for some unaccountable reason he was bothered with bad dreams. It seemed now as if Judd had turned into a raving maniac, had grasped him by the throat and was slowly, cruelly, choking him to death. Try as he might Cateye could not shake that death grip off. Judd was grinning crazily and saying: "That's one of my failin's; I always do grip too hard!" Cateye's breath began to come in short, ...
— Over the Line • Harold M. Sherman
... engaged in their separate duties, a loud exclamation from Basil drew the attention of his brothers. It was a shout of joy, followed by a wild laugh, like the laugh of a maniac! ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... saw it myself." That is a common and envy-compelling remark. It can refer to a battle; to a handing; to a coronation; to the killing of Jumbo by the railway-train; to the arrival of Jenny Lind at the Battery; to the meeting of the President and Prince Henry; to the chase of a murderous maniac; to the disaster in the tunnel; to the explosion in the subway; to a remarkable dog-fight; to a village church struck by lightning. It will be said, more or less causally, by everybody in America who has seen Prince Henry do anything, or try ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... presently passed her two young men carrying a young woman they had just murdered. The hat of one blew off, and fell at Mary's feet. She picked it up, and flew to the inn, told her story, and then, producing the hat, found it was Richard's. Her senses gave way, and she became a confirmed maniac for life.—R. Southey, Mary, the Maid of the Inn (from Dr. Plot's ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... children cuddle about His robe in utter contentment; a weary mother with babe at her breast, has brought her sick daughter; husband has carried a crippled wife; a woman 'that was lost' bends at the Saviour's feet in an agony of repentance; an aged, blind man is led by his daughter; a maniac, whose tortured soul looks out of haggard eyes, frames ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... poison to me and cigarettes are worse. The health- board belonged to this republican whiskey ring, and was in conspiracy to make me insane, so they put a quarantine on the jail for three weeks, and I was a lone woman in there, with two cigarette smokers, and a maniac, next to my cell. John, the Trusty, smoked a horrid strong pipe, and he also was next to my cell. Strange to say, when that jail had so many apartments, and so few in them, that four inmates should have been put next to me; but there was "a cause." Mr. Dick Dodd was ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... trusting in them. Among many women is one, the principal figure in that panel, who, having knelt down before the Apostles, and turning her head towards them, stretches her arms in the direction of the maniac and points out his misery; besides which the Apostles, some standing, some seated, and others kneeling, show that they are moved to very great compassion by such misfortune. And, indeed, he made therein figures and heads so fine in their novelty and variety, to say nothing of their ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... their prices should be paid the next day, according to the invoice. I made my obeisance, and was pleased within myself that under this pretext I should have to come again the next day. When I took my leave and came out, I was speaking and uttering words like those of a maniac. In this state I came to the serai, but my senses were not right; all my friends began to ask what was the matter with me; I replied, that from going and returning so far, the heat had ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... revolution. The purest type of Epicureanism may have refined a few of the better sort, but the prevailing influence, doubtless, undermined society. The god of the reason was allied with the god of the sense, and the maniac soul of the lying prophet entered the schools. Education, as directed by them, served only to make youth worldly and frivolous. Teachers sought to amuse and not to instruct, to make royal roads to knowledge, to exalt the omnipotence ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... heard; the dawn had come, and Polou unlocked the porch-door for Father Augustin just in time to hear the last agonized cry. The maniac turned in the very act of leaping on his victim, and sprang for the two men, who stopped in dumb amazement. Poor old Pierre Polou went down at a blow; but Father Augustin was young and fearless, and he grappled the mad animal with all his strength ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... note: original reads 'apportunity'] of ascertaining how far that disease may be removed by moral management alone, which it is believed, will, in many instances, be more effectual in controlling the maniac, than medical treatment especially, in those cases where the disease has proceeded from causes operating directly on ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... revolts at usurpations must abstain from discussing the principles and policies of your Federal government, or receive the kicks of crossroad sputterers and press reporters; must either lie or be silent. They know only how to brawl and scrawl 'hot-head' and 'impolitic maniac.' Why, my free negroes know more than all your bosses. Now, damn it, put that ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... him—he could but just hear him—murmuring over and over, all but inaudibly, "Father o' lichts! Father o' lichts! Father o' lichts!" It seemed as if no other word dared mingle itself with that cry. Maniac or not—the mood of the man was supremely sane, and altogether too sacred to disturb. Malcolm retreated a little way, sat down in the sand and watched beside him. It was a solemn time—the full tide lapping up on the long ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... Pandemonium reigned on the seats at the goal post end of the course. Shouts of "Carlisle! Carlisle!" rose up through the din of megaphones and screech of whistles from the launches. Paul looked at Walter. The boy had risen, flung his hat up anywhere and was waving his arms like a maniac, screaming out the name of Carlisle, the crack stroke of Burrton. And then, without a second's warning, the big stroke, the hero of the Burrton crew, whose name was on a thousand tongues, suddenly bent forward and collapsed ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... congested trees, writhing in some kind of agony private and eternal, made tenebrous and shifty silhouettes against the sky, like shapes cut out of black paper by a maniac who pushes them with his thumb this way and that, irritably, on a concave surface of blue steel. Resin oozed unseen from the upper branches to the trunks swathed in creepers that clutched and interlocked with tendrils venomous, frantic and faint. Down below, by force of habit, the lush ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... Ortiz in Toledo A. D. 1483, and was therefore called Casa del Nuncio. The Damascus "Maristan" was described by every traveller of the last century: and it showed a curious contrast between the treatment of the maniac and the idiot or omadhaun, who is humanely allowed to wander about unharmed, if not held a Saint. When I saw it last (1870) it was all but empty and mostly in ruins. As far as my experience goes, the United ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... friend o' his. Let me say tae ye if ony ill cames tae her, by the leevin' God above us he wull answer tae me." Hoarse, panting, his face that of a maniac, he stood glaring wild-eyed at the young man before him. To say that Vic was shaken by this sudden and violent onslaught would be much within the truth. Nevertheless he boldly ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... was certainly a fool! No man with a grain of sense would do such a thing alone—maybe with a crowd of cheering men, but only a maniac could do it ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... as if the young man had been the victim of a homicidal maniac, so brutal had been the way in which he had been assassinated. The head and body were battered and bruised by some heavy stick or poker, almost past human shape, as if the murderer had wished to wreak some awful vengeance upon the body of his ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... of Peking on that dreadful night the madness of the Boxer forces was comparable to nothing human. Nor jungle beasts starving for food and drink, frenzied with the smell of blood and the sight of water, could have raged in more maniac fury than the fury possessing the demon minds of these fanatics in their supreme struggle to flood the streets of Peking with rivers of Christian blood. For such as these the Christ died on the Cross of Calvary. ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... I cannot find that his life was great, as a whole; I cannot see him caring for his land, for the poor, for religion, for humanity; he was always a restless soul; and the ceaseless wear of incompleteness finally killed, as a maniac, him whom a broader Love might have kept alive as a glorious artist ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... Tom said, but his crazed eyes were upon that strained, uplifted face. Jerry-Jo ceased his moaning and—laughed! It was a foolish cackle, such as a maniac might give, mistaking a death-struggle for ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... spectacle to meet a father's eye! His infant made a vulture's prey, with terror to descry! And know, with agonizing breast, and with a maniac rave, That earthly power could not avail, that innocent ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... me; down near the Queen's arbour two nursemaids were trundling their perambulators; otherwise, there was not a creature anywhere in sight. I was in a thoroughly embittered temper; I paced up and down before my seat like a maniac. How strangely awry things seemed to go! To think that an article in three sections should be downright stranded by the simple fact of my not having a pennyworth of pencil in my pocket. Supposing I were to return to Pyle Street and ask to get my pencil back? There would ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... take that maniac with you," he stormed. "Not a word; I don't care if Rose has murdered all Long Island, he's some use now. Clear out and leave ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... transformed into a maniac. He turned to the old men and shouted in some incomprehensible language. Nat and Madge, Brent and Benson, and two others who wore the uniforms of officers were seized and dragged across the bridge to the landing-stage where the black ship ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... they appeared at the door, I joined them; but on striking out a few yards into the moor, we found the maniac already in the custody of two men, who had seized and were dragging her towards her cottage, a miserable hovel, about half a mile away. She never once spoke to us, but continued singing, though in a lower and more subdued tone of voice than before, a Gaelic song. We reached her hut, and, making ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... virgin loves, Or whatsoever else the heart holds dear; 155 Enow to stir for these; yea, will I say, Contemplating in soberness the approach Of an event so dire, by signs in earth Or heaven made manifest, that I could share That maniac's fond anxiety, and go 160 Upon like errand. Oftentimes at least Me hath such strong enhancement overcome, When I have held a volume in my hand, Poor earthly casket of immortal verse, Shakespeare, or ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... sees Jesus from afar, and, with the disordered haste and preternatural agility which marked all his movements, he runs towards Him. Such is the introduction to the narrative of the cure. It paints for us not merely a maniac, but a demoniac. He is not a man at war with himself, but a man at war with other beings, who have forced themselves into his house of life. At least, so says Mark, and so said Jesus; and if the story before us is true, its subsequent incidents compel the acceptance of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... proved to be most interesting and amusing, anything but eccentric; but I shall never hear the last of my mistake, and to this day he and Jack tease me unmercifully about my "dangerous maniac!" ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... see how a few remain behind in the hope that their mate may meet with an accident and 'they can snatch at the work he had.' Why, to talk of individual freedom and equality of opportunity under a system of cannibalistic competition like this is like the mocking laughter of a raving maniac gloating over the torture of the victim it holds in its murderous grip."[45] In another popular pamphlet the worker is told: "After all, John, does it not strike you that there is some foul iniquity in a system which allows one part of the community to do another portion of it to death and to rob ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... hero of this battle. "It's now or never," I thought, and saw scarlet, and went for my foe like a maniac. The ring was kept by Alfred and Charlie helped, oddly enough, by a couple of male Prendergasts, who so far forgot themselves as to take an interest in the proceedings. Madge and Mimsey ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... of his life Landseer became hopelessly insane and, during his periods of violence a dangerous homicidal maniac. Such an affection, however, had my father and mother for the friend of their younger days, that they still had him to stay with us in Kent for long periods. He had necessarily to bring a large retinue with him: his own trained ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... "You maniac!" I hear him mutter: "I expected you were given to such tricks as these. Lucky for you no eyes but mine have seen your abject folly. Come ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... said, in Virginia, two Dutchmen, brothers, George and Jake Fulwiler. They were both well to do in the world, and each owned a grist mill. There was another Dutchman near by, by the name of Henry Snyder. He was a mono-maniac, but a harmless man, occasionally thinking himself to be God. He built a throne, and would often sit upon it, pronouncing judgment upon others, and also upon himself. He would send the culprits to heaven or to hell, as ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... deaf to his voice. The most frantic of them all was not a child but a woman, who half lay on a bench with limbs stiffened out, screaming continuously like a maniac. Evan's voice was powerless against those cries. He was obliged to silence her. She fell over on the bench limply. Evan sprang up ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... wives, a naive virgin, with Max as inaccessible as a star. But after a capital exposition, Sudermann gets us in a terrible state of mind by making the lady with the good reputation go off in a hysterical crisis, and almost confess to her stiff, severe husband—who is a maniac on the subject of his house being above suspicion. The charming, reckless baroness intervenes at the crucial point, becomes a lightning-rod that draws the electric current, and pretends to be the real culprit. Her husband, a sinister baron and ex-lieutenant in the Hussars, is present. A ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... after that; what I chose to do with it was my own concern. But here I do not live. I want the means to get away; to make a fresh start in different surroundings. Sooner or later I must go, or I shall become a raving maniac. You can help me in this, even as I can help you in the cause in which you are now spending and wasting a lot of money. Get mother to give me fifteen thousand dollars, not only as the price of my information, ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... fully ten thousand nau-naus landed upon me. At the second step I was walking in a cloud. By the third step the sun was dimmed in the sky. After that I don't know what happened. When I arrived at my clothes, I was a maniac. And here enters my grand tactical error. There is only one rule of conduct in dealing with nau-naus. Never swat them. Whatever you do, don't swat them. They are so vicious that in the instant of annihilation they eject their last atom of poison into your carcass. You ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... through a slough of thawing snow, teeth chattering, eyes watering and fingers numbed, whilst a wind fit to dethrone all the weather-cocks in Christendom was ploughing up the earth in showers of mud around me, blowing my hat off my head and howling in my ears like a maniac who has broken ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... his remorse for the officer's death, his burning thirst for vengeance, and his own sense of self-abasement—all conspired to add to the fever of his brain; and when Walter and his daughter were admitted to his cell, it was a gibbering maniac that rushed forward to meet them. Walter removed his fainting daughter from the appalling spectacle, and returned with a sickening heart and terrible forebodings. The shades of evening had given place to bright moonlight ere they reached the castle. The driver ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite
... malady continued to grow worse, until at last he was reduced to utter despair, tortured by sick headaches, and without the strength, as he said, to put one foot before the other, convinced every morning that he would spend the night at the Tulettes, a raving maniac. He grew thin; his face, under its crown of white hair—which he still cared for through a last remnant of vanity—acquired a look of suffering, of tragic beauty. And although he allowed himself to be waited on, he refused roughly ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... the wonderful powers of his expressive countenance, the feelings of a father, who in looking over a lofty balcony with his only child in his arms, by accident dropped it. The disaster drove the unhappy parent mad. Garrick had visited him in his cell; where the miserable maniac was accustomed, several times in the course of the day, to exhibit all those looks and attitudes which he had displayed at the balcony[9]. On a sudden he would bend himself forward, as if looking from a window into the street, with his arms folded as if they embraced ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... down the fore-scuttle and yelled like a maniac; the others came up in their night-gear, and in a marvellously short space of time the schooner was hove to and the cook and Joe had tumbled into the boat and were pulling back lustily ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... medico-psychologiques, December, 1876), holds that every kind of mental disease has its own form of imagination that expresses itself in stories, compositions, sketches, decorations, dress, and symbolic attributes. The maniac invents complicated and improbable designs; the persecuted, symbolic designs, strange writings, bordering on the horrible; megalomaniacs look for the effect of everything they say and do; the general paralytic lives in grandeur and attributes capital importance ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... said, "Not the slightest cloud ever darkened our relations;" nor does he exaggerate his solitude. Being a sane man, he has too much common-sense to assemble all his woes at once. He might have told you that Bridget was a homicidal maniac; what he does tell you is that she was faithful. Another reason of his success is his continual regard for beautiful things and fine actions, as illustrated in the major characteristics of his grandmother and his ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... father, musingly, 'Saul. I am afraid she was only too right there; he disobeyed the commands of his master, and brought down on his head the vengeance of Heaven—he became a maniac, prophesied, and ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... vain the ire That urged thee 'gainst the Bacchic choir The god avenged his votaries well— Stern was the doom that thee befell; And on the Bacchus-hating herd Still rests the curse thy guilt incurr'd. For the same spells that in those days Were wont the Bacchanals to craze— The maniac orgies, the rash vow, Have fall'n on thy disciples now. Though deepest silence dwells alone, Parnassus, on thy double cone; To mystic cry, through fell and brake, No more Cithaeron's echoes wake; No longer glisten, white and fleet, O'er the dark lawns of Taygete, The Spartan virgin's bounding feet: ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... man, but a mere stripling who had been scarred and branded for life, some say even deformed, by an attack made upon him in earliest infancy by his own unnatural father, the Sultan Ibrahim. This cruel maniac (whose only excuse was that he was not in possession of more than half his wits at the time) had been seized with a fit of ungovernable rage against the ladies of his harem, and in his fury had done his best to slay his own son and heir. Happily he had ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... of his imagination which his work at home left untouched. But upon his present state of deep moral commotion the spells of art and history were powerless to work. The foundations of his life had been shaken, and the fair exterior of the world was as vacant as a maniac's face. He could only take refuge in his special task, barricading himself against every expression of beauty and poetry as so many poignant reminders of a phase of life that he was vainly trying to cast ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... thou judgest, Couthon! He is one, Who flies from silent solitary anguish, Seeking forgetful peace amid the jar Of elements. The howl of maniac uproar Lulls to sad sleep the memory of himself. A calm is fatal to him—then he feels The dire upboilings of the storm within him. A tiger mad with inward wounds!—I dread The fierce and restless ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... The maniac had just discovered that the door was locked, and rushing to the window caught sight of his hostess and desired patient fleeing ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... his senses—assembles his followers and departs for the abode of Layla's family, and presenting himself before the maiden's father, proposes in haughty terms the union of his son with Layla; but the offer is declined, on the ground that Syd Omri's son is a maniac, and he will not give his daughter to a man bereft of his senses; but should he be restored to his right mind he will consent to their union. Indignant at this answer, Syd Omri returns home, and after his friends had in vain tried the effect of love-philtres to make Layla's father relent, ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... moods, law with him was law, and a legal claim a legal claim. Had he been all his life agent to the Hap House property instead of to that of Castle Richmond, a thought so romantic would never have entered his head. He would have scouted a man as nearly a maniac who should suggest to him that his client ought to surrender an undoubted inheritance of twelve thousand a year on a point of feeling. He would have rejected it as a proposed crime, and talked much of the indefeasible rights of the coming heirs of the new heir. He would have been as ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... Malays seem to be peculiarly liable, during the paroxysms of which those affected by it rush in blind fury among their fellows, slaying right and left. From the terrified appearance of some of the approaching crowd and the maniac shouts in rear, it was evident that a man thus possessed of the spirit of amok was ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... the top of the flesh-mountain was a big metal object, a shining concave dome with which all the tubes connected; so that a stranger to the procedure could not have felt sure whether the mountain was holding up the dome, or was dangling from it. A piece of symbolism done by a maniac artist, whose meaning ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... you. I don't mean that he was a raging maniac. Now, you had advised him not to make any new will because you thought he was ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... remembered being startled by the face of the woman who found her way into the court. She had seen the look of madness in her eyes as she looked first at Paul and then at her father. After which she uttered the scream of a maniac and ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... identity of the 'English Student' was soon discovered, and 'from that moment,' writes Haydon, 'the destiny of my life was changed. My picture was caricatured, my name detested, my peace harassed. I was looked at like a monster, abused like a plague, and avoided like a maniac.' There is probably some characteristic exaggeration in this statement, but considering the power wielded at this time by the Academy and its supporters, Haydon would undoubtedly have done better, from a worldly point of ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... two of the harder as well. Given this form on the day of their appearance in public, and Henfrey might be disappointed when he came to watch and smile sarcastically. A batting fiasco is not one half so ridiculous as maniac fielding. ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse |
