"Maniac" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mexicans, whose father and lover were burned to death before her eyes, suffered such poignant anguish that her reason gave way, and she was borne inside the temple a raving maniac. ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... most pitiable object in nature—an unhappy maniac; she resides at the same cottage where I found shelter ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... at our feet before these skeptics can be convinced? Is not such a state a living death? Must these men visit him in the cell of the asylum, watch him as a raving maniac, gaze upon him as a hopeless idiot or a driveling imbecile, before they will be convinced? Such proof is at hand. Not an asylum in any country but has its score of such; not an asylum record-book but chronicles the sad histories of thousands of these ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... 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 then ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... Salensus Oll. "Fool! John Carter is a white man. This fellow be as yellow as myself. John Carter's face is smooth—Matai Shang has described him to me. This prisoner has a beard and mustache as large and black as any in Okar. Quick, guardsmen, to the pits with the black maniac who wishes to throw his life away for a poor ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... my own case: a month ago, See me a maniac, rushing forth to find A wife who loved me not; my heart all swollen With rage against the man to whom I owed Exposure of her falsehood; ah, how blind! To chase a form from which the soul had fled! If I grew sane ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... I have already said, I am not a man who easily falls a prey to excitement. It may have beset me in the heat of battle, when the fearsome lust of blood and death makes of every man a raving maniac, thrilled with mad joy at every stab he deals, and laughing with fierce passion at every blow he takes, though in the taking of it his course be run. But, saving at such wild times, never until then could I recall having been so little master of myself. There was a fever in me; ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... The humour had passed from the situation. The man was a lunatic, a religious maniac. Again he addressed Barney Bill. "As I can't convince Mr. Finn of the absurdity of his request, I must ask you ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... an aspect of calm insouciance, and therefore with a feeling of calm and ease within. Yet he was like one who walks with a madman, knowing that if his own courage should for one instant seem to waver, the maniac will be upon him. In his journey to town he had been alone, and between one station and another he had opened his portmanteau and taken therefrom a small breech-loading revolver and a stiletto. He laid his hand upon these now and ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... clever maniac!" Stalky resumed. "We mayn't be aware you were followin' us this afternoon, mayn't we? 'Thought you were stalkin' us, eh? Why, we led you bung into it, of course. Colonel Dabney—don't you think he's a nice man, Foxy?—Colonel Dabney's our pet ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... Tutmosis, "everything seems to show this, that the unfortunate Bakura was a drunkard or a maniac, and, above all, a man of foreign blood. If a genuine Egyptian in his senses were to go without pay for a year, and be clubbed twice as much as this man, would he dare to break into the palace of the nomarch and appeal to thee with such ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... Lecoq hastened to effect the arrest of the count. He arrived too late. Realising that he was hopelessly in the toils, the count was bereft of his senses and become a hopeless maniac. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... seems to take hold of a man so irrevocably as Walton's mania. Travelling by night in the north lately, I looked out into the dusk from the carriage window and beheld a bright flash of lightning, and by the gleam thereof saw a midnight maniac with his rod silhouetted against the vast inane. How few fishers nowadays, except perhaps Mr. Andrew Lang, can write their experiences in good ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... Mr. Dreissiger, there are people at the back gate already, and the house door won't hold much longer. The smith's battering at it like a maniac with ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... to my patience was a month later, when Short 'ad the cheek to jaw me personally about the girl I was walkin' out with. I went clean mad then, an' was ready for anythink, even for 'avin' it out again with Bill, rather than put up with that maniac's talk. ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois
... Irish railways. His Lordship feeling a shock, which he knew to be the forerunner of a concussion, without more ado sprang upon the two persons sitting opposite to him, and dragged them with him to the bottom of the carriage; the astonished persons at first imagined that they had been set upon by a maniac, and commenced struggling for their liberty, but in a few seconds they but too well understood the nature of the case; the concussion came, and the upper part of the carriage in which Lord Guillamore and the other two persons were was shattered to pieces, while ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... part of it went to Josephine in the shape of chocolates, of which she was inordinately fond; in fact, Josephine, who came of the poor whites, like Gladys Mann, might have been said to be a chocolate maniac. Maria used to arrange with Josephine to meet her on a certain corner on Saturdays, and there the transfer was made: Josephine became the possessor of half a pound of chocolates, and Maria of the baby. Josephine had sworn almost a solemn oath to never tell. She at ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... to tear his hair with vexation at having such a little idiot for a son. "Must you rove afield to find poverty to help, when it sits cold enough, the Lord knows, at our own hearth? Oh, little ass, little dolt, little maniac, fit only for a madhouse, talking to iron figures and taking them for real men! What have I done, O heaven, that I should ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... 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
... snatched up the 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
... factories, mines, and railway systems go in part to Englishmen or Belgians or Germans who never set foot in America, and who obviously can have no share in even the mental labor of direction. A certificate of stock may belong to a child, to a maniac, to an imbecile, to a prisoner behind the bars, and it draws profit for its owner just the same. Stocks and bonds may lie for months or years in a safe-deposit vault, while an estate is being disputed, before their ownership ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... sinking of her heart. She was afraid of her father, who no longer seemed her father, created to protect and cherish her, but some maniac stranger. She felt an impulse like that of a terrified child to run away, far away to some one who should stand before her and bear the brunt. She started up from her chair with panic haste, but the familiar room, saturated with recollections ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... shadow of a great man's death Falls on this land, so sad and dark before— Dark with the famine and the fever breath, And mad dissensions knawing at its core. Oh! let us hush foul discord's maniac roar, And make a mournful truce, however brief, Like hostile armies when the day is o'er! And thus devote the night-time of our grief To tears and prayers for him, the ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... she recovered from her swoon, and her confessor, who was present, came forward and endeavoured to prepare her for the awful deed which was about to be done upon her, and for the state into which she was about to enter, when she came to herself it was only to scream like a maniac, to curse the Duke as a butcher and tyrant, and to call ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "Oak, you're a maniac! Why, by this time, it's all over Ceres that the boss' daughter is missing! Shalimar Ravenhurst will have your hide ...
— A Spaceship Named McGuire • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Lord had meant to say to the bystanders,—ay and to us, and to all people in all times and in all countries, 'This poor possessed maniac's notion was a true one. There were other persons in him besides himself, tormenting him, body and soul: and, behold, I can drive these out of him and send them into something else, and leave the man uninjured, HIMSELF, and ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... O ignorant. The popular word is Ahmak which, however, in the West means a maniac, a madman, a Santon; "Bohl" being ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... projected into that narrow, roofed-in space, made of it a chaos of contending demons. All stocks were caught in the upheaval; Melville's plans to limit the explosion were blown skyward, feeble as straws in a cyclone. Amid shrieks and howls and frantic tossings of arms and mad rushes and maniac contortions of faces, National Woolens and all the Dumont stocks bent, broke, went smashing down, down, down, every ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... to his feet. He forgot his crutches. He flung himself across the floor of the cave in three reckless bounds, flung himself on the barrier of logs and limbs, clawing it like a maniac, or a wild beast, tore his way through it, and stood in the snow on the platform, calling into the storm, shrieking, bellowing, out-shrieking and out-bellowing the storm, swaying dizzily in the wind, and clutching at the air ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... 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 citizens ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... his people's shall my power be shown. Then to another land, when all things here Are well, must I fare onward, making clear My godhead's might. But should this Theban town Essay with wrath and battle to drag down My maids, lo, in their path myself shall be, And maniac armies battled after me! For this I veil my godhead with the wan Form of the things that ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... conscientious drink). But they mixed their wine with water - which I'm sure they didn't oughter - And we Anglo-Saxons know a trick worth two of that, I think! Then came rather risky dances (under certain circumstances) Which would shock that worthy gentleman, the Licenser of Plays, Corybantian maniAC kick - Dionysiac or Bacchic - And the Dithyrambic revels of ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... his bloody foot-prints. And this strange, sublime, vulgar melodrama, which is melodrama and yet is painfully real, reaches its hideous height in that fine scene of the death of Sikes, the besieged house, the boy screaming within, the crowd screaming without, the murderer turned almost a maniac and dragging his victim uselessly up and down the room, the escape over the roof, the rope swiftly running taut, and death sudden, startling and symbolic; a man hanged. There is in this and similar scenes something of the quality of Hogarth ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... forty prominent citizens who were sent as hostages to St. Augustine at the capture of Charleston in 1780 and kept for eleven months in close confinement. His death was caused by wounds received from a maniac, who shot him in the street for testifying ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... fighting—their way into the field. The police could not stop them, but were driven in with a rush; and in the centre of this rush Tilda caught sight of Gavel again. His back was turned to her. He was struggling for admission, and like a maniac. Glasson she ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... place much stock in Professor Cortoran's theory, though I admit that I am prejudiced. Naturally one does not care to believe that the object of his greatest affection is descended from a gibbering idiot and a raving maniac. ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... cried George. He sprang toward her, and tried to lift her, but she shrank from him, repelling him with a gesture of disgust, of hatred, of the most profound terror. "Don't touch me!" she screamed, like a maniac. "Don't touch me!" ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair
... puff of wind. It was a heated whiff, in spite of the cooling breeze. It was from a pipe, a short, black pipe, owned by some one in the Mansard window next door. There was the round disk of a dark-blue beret drooping over the pipe. "Good—" I said to myself—"I shall see now—at last—this maniac with a ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... throne, so the frenzied father, regardless, nay, forgetful, of the place, the time, the occasion, of himself and natural ties, assailed the scared Narcisse, clutching him by the throat with the strength of a maniac, and pushing him backwards against the balustrade, and holding him there transfixed, while, with eyes seething with wrath beneath the blanched, and big, umbrageous brows, and showing like a sudden opening of the infernal pit, he cried: "Demon, degenerate dog, where hast thou been walking ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... 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
... the stimulant; but facing a harrowing scene like this was impossible. He felt that his appetite was like a savage beast on which he held a weakening and relaxing grasp. With the strange, double consciousness of the opium maniac, he saw his wife in all her deep distress, and he had the remorse of a lost soul in view of her agony; he was almost certain that she knew how he had wronged her and his children, and he had all the shame and self-loathing of a proud, sensitive man; he knew that he was false ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... face next morning. But that was a trifling inconvenience in comparison with the brutal proceedings I became victim of on the part of Sotillo. Something utterly inconceivable, sir; more like the proceedings of a maniac than the action of a sane man, however lost to all sense of honour and decency. But Sotillo was furious at the failure ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... 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 ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... me someding to murter him mit!" shrieked Hans, like a maniac. "Gif me a gun! I vill shot him on der spot, or somevere near id! Gif me ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... God. You will be mine through all time and all eternity; nothing shall tear you from my arms, not even your own wish, your own prayers. Oh, Amelia! do you see that I am a madman, insane from rapture and despair! Should you not flee from a maniac? Perhaps his arm, imbued with giant strength, seeking to hold you ever to his heart, might crush you. Fly, then; spurn me from you; go to your room; go, and say to this mocking courtier, to whom nothing is holy, not even our love, who is surprised, at nothing—go ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... could not bear to hear an artist praised, or look with patience at any work of art that bore the impress of genius. On beholding such he would grind his teeth with fury, and the expression of his face became that of a maniac. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... maniac was dead, and in his last moments he had made such reparation as was in his power for the evil that he had done. With that slight touch of his dry fevered lips he had made the assertion on which was to depend the future peace and comfort of the woman whom he had so cruelly ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... where the sympathies of the court and people were. Then a hundred pursed lips were advanced to kiss the liberated prisoner, and many a hand thrust out to give him a congratulatory shake—but presto! with a maniac's own quickness and a maniac's own fury the lunatic assassin of Richardson fell upon his friends with teeth and nails, boots and office furniture, and the amazing rapidity with which he broke heads and limbs, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... bearing greater ills." Thus lamenting, the crowned consort of the illustrious (king) began to seek her lord in those woods, inhabited by beasts of prey. And the daughter of Bhima, wailing bitterly, wandered hither and thither like a maniac, exclaiming, "Alas! Alas! Oh king!" And as she was wailing loudly like a female osprey, and grieving and indulging in piteous lamentations unceasingly, she came near a gigantic serpent. And that huge and hungry serpent thereupon suddenly seized Bhima's daughter, who had come near and was ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... "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
... could have taken one or two trifles at least. He wanted a respectable English telescope, I remember, to see the stars with—a bit of an astronomer, you know. Chutney, too—devilish fond of chutney, the old boy was; quite a gastro-maniac. What a nuisance! Now he will be thinking I forgot all about it. And he needed a clothes-press; I was on no account to forget that clothes-press. Rather fussy about his trousers, he was. And a type-writer; just an ordinary one. But I doubt whether ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... up stairs and cultivate patience on hunger and thirst and a general mortification of the senses. "Victory, or destruction to the bell!" I said at last, and pulled the rope with the desperation of a maniac. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... narrow bed, instinctively following the patch of yellow sunlight as it gilded the gloom, he felt that the maniac next door had the better part. Of what use was reason when it ceased to function except ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... the suffering was over. This appears not to be so. All the miserable depression of spirits, all the incapacity to banish distressing fears and suspicions, which paved the way to real insanity, exist in even intensified degree when insanity has actually been reached. The poor maniac fancies he is surrounded by burning fires, that he is encircled by writhing snakes, that he is in hell, tormented by devils; and we must remember that the misery caused by firmly believing a thing which does not exist, is precisely the same as that which would be occasioned ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... a remorseful sigh; "I fear I'm bringing her sandy hairs with sorrow to the grave. That hair of hers never could be gray, you know, it's too self-opinionated in its sandiness. Now come along, Rorie, do. Titmouse will be stamping about his box like a maniac if he doesn't get ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... One giant maniac had broken his shackles and rescued one of the guards from the building. He had just one sane moment; long enough to be a hero. Then he fled howling ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... 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
... hands the most sentimental exotics of the publishing firms. There was the 'Elegant Maniac; or, the Snuff-coloured Rose and the Field of Silver,' a beautiful romance. Then there was the 'Sentimental Footpad; or, Honour among Thieves.' And 'Syngenesia,' the last of the melancholies; with the 'Knight of the Snorting Palfrey; ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... atavism or disease. This latter art, which is occupied with the antics of the freak, is of interest only to the variation from ordinary minds, and for this reason is never universal. To be quite plain, the tramp in real life, Hamlet and Faust in the arts, are variations; but the maniac in real life, and Des Esseintes and all his ugly crew in the arts, are ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge
... shall dream of chess at night and make excuses to play it in the day. For a month chess will be even more to me than golf or billiards—games which I adore because I am so bad at them. For a month, starting from yesterday when I was inveigled into a game, you must regard me, please, as a chess maniac. ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... 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
... I said, "though Blasphemy's loud scream With that sweet music of deliverance strove! Though all the fierce and drunken passions wove A dance more wild than e'er was maniac's dream! Ye Storms, that round the dawning east assembled, The Sun was rising, though ye hid his light!" And when, to soothe my soul, that hoped and trembled, The dissonance ceas'd, and all seem'd calm and bright; When France her front deep-scarr'd and gory Conceal'd ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... reply. For how can we even keep company with Khalid, who has become such a maniac on flounces? And was this fantastic, phantasmagoric rhapsody all inspired by Najma's simple remark on his hair? Fruitful is thy word, ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... across the floor, slams a suitcase down on my foot and throws his arms around the wife's neck. He had on a cap which could of been used as a checker board when you got tired of wearin' it, a suit of clothes that must of been made by a maniac tailor and the yellowest tan shoes I ever seen in my life. If he had been three inches taller and an ounce thinner, you could of put a tent around him and got a dime admission. On his upper lip, which was of a retirin' disposition, he ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... Then he whirled like a maniac upon his little coterie of followers. "Vile traitor!" he shrieked, "I will drink your ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... him cold!" was his thought. "But he's still with us, and there's no use in reviving him now; the less noise over here the better. Hope I didn't jar his brains loose altogether; he might wake up a murderous maniac. Poor devil! A millionaire, yet half starved and more than ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... to you that perfume is the art of arts?" she demanded. He rushed from the room and was shaking the grilled gate in the hallway like a caged maniac, when with a pitying smile she released him. He reached the street at ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... in a violent attack on the offending person, or in throwing about and breaking the furniture. From that pursing of the mouth indicative of slight displeasure, up to the frantic struggles of the maniac, we shall find that mental irritation tends to ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... the other at first. Banion knew he must keep the impounded hand back from the knife sheath or he was done. Thus close, he could make no escape. He fought fast and furiously, striving to throw, to bend, to beat back the body of a man almost as strong as himself, and now a maniac in rage and fear. ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... am to-day! You'll think me a maniac," she said. But he only took her hand as if she had been a child and led her ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... 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
... world, soon began to throw various missiles and even stones at him, notwithstanding all his prayers and exclamations. They declared that they wished to see if he were in truth of glass, as he affirmed; but the lamentations and outcries of the poor maniac induced the grown persons who were near to reprove and even beat the boys, whom they drove away for the moment, but who did not fail to return at ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... years, and five over—and most of the time in Hell! Ah—run away, if you like—run away from your own son!" He released her arm; but though the terror had come back twofold, she would not run; for the most terrible maniac is pitiful as well as terrible, and her pity for him put her thoughts on calming and conciliating him. He went on, his speech breaking through something that choked it back and made it half a cry in the end. "Fourteen years of quod—fourteen years of prison-food—fourteen years of such ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... and strange were these records, so eccentric the vagaries of the soul during its nocturnal wanderings, that I was induced to abandon the task, lest some friend hereafter, might examine, the mystic scroll, and conclude that it was written by a maniac. ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... pale; her lips bloodless and compressed; her eyes contracted and glittering with a cold, black, baleful light; her hair unloosed in her agitation, streamed down each side, and fell upon her bosom like the ends of a long black scarf. At times she muttered to herself like any maniac: ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... theory to account for a maniac on a deserted schooner in these desolate seas. No doubt if a solitary man were left in these terrible painted seas he would go insane. Madden regretted that he had not searched the Minnie B more thoroughly when he ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... explaining my plans for the night, and presently succeeded beyond my hopes; for when he heard who the lady was whom I proposed to carry off, and that she was lying that evening at the Chateau de Chize, his surprise swept away the last trace of resentment. He stared at me, as at a maniac. ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... though they were real, as stated above in the First Part (Q. 84, A. 8, ad 2). Wherefore what a man does while he sleeps and is deprived of reason's judgment, is not imputed to him as a sin, as neither are the actions of a maniac or an imbecile. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... at that, and I was ready for him, and Jim was warming his opinion, too, and next minute we'd 'a' broke loose on another argument, if Tom hadn't dropped the glass and begun to clap his hands like a maniac and sing out: ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... adsecutus—Labeonem Antistium, iisdem artibus praecellentem ... namque illa aetas duo pacis decora simul tulit; sed Labeo incorrupta libertate ... celebratior" (An. III. 75). Horace, who was a contemporary of Labeo's, says that he was a maniac, or, at any rate—"considered very crazy in ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... villain!" she screamed. "Is this, the way you play upon people: bringing me from my home to console a maniac, and, instead of that, you are only what you always were, a spendthrift and a scamp? Finely they will laugh ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... he said. "Violet Campion's mother was a homicidal maniac. She killed her husband—this girl's father—in a fit of madness one night three months after their marriage. It happened in India, and was put down to native treachery in order to hush it up, but it was well known ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... maniac," growled Trendon, feeling in his breast pocket. "The devil," he cried, bringing forth ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... second day from Liverpool two maiden ladies in the room next mine made representations to the captain which resulted in my removal to the steerage. They couldn't consent, they said, to listen to the shrieks of the maniac in the ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... expiate then. If suffering can wash out sins, I washed out mine. I, who thought I had so many enemies, have no enemy. No one has ever injured me. But if I had the cruellest in the world, I would not condemn him, if he were a morphia maniac, to sudden enforced abstinence and prison life. And I could not die. I am very strong by nature. I could neither die nor live. It was months before I saw light, months of hell, consumed in the flame of hell which is thirst. And slowly the power to live came back to me. I was saved in spite of ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... a trifle bitterly. "Good Lord," said she, "if I had to think of a trousseau for myself, I should be a maniac! The trousseau would at any time have seemed a much more ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... discharging my piece at the blue heron or the egret, the summer duck or the snake-bird, the slender ibis or the stately crane. Even the king of winged creatures, the white-headed eagle, was more than once within range of my gun, screaming his maniac note among the tops of the ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... The Flat-Dweller The Advantage of a Good Thing The Common Carrier The Heir and the Heiress The Undecided Bachelors The Wonderful Meal of Vittles The Galloping Pilgrim The Progressive Maniac Cognizant of our Shortcomings The Divine Spark Two Philanthropic Sons The Juvenile and Mankind The Honeymoon That Tried to Come Back The Local Pierpont The Life of the Party The Galumptious Girl Everybody's Friend and ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... mischief had been done during the night, aroused him. He glanced upon his enemy, who pale and trembling, stood gazing on the wreck that he had made. Revenge at last was in his hands—not a moment was to be lost—with the yell of a maniac he sprang upon the powerless and conscious-stricken man—seized him in his arms rushed to the river—and ere any could interpose, both had found a grave where but a few minutes before the bodies of Mary and ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... poetry, two are deserving of particular notice. The first is his power of expressing intense emotion, especially when it is associated with the darker passions of the soul. "Never had any writer," says Macaulay, "so vast a command of the whole eloquence of scorn, misanthropy and despair.... From maniac laughter to piercing lamentation, there is not a single note of human anguish of which he was ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... of countenance never failed to produce in a nursery, flattered him quite as much as the applause of mature critics. He often exhibited all his powers of mimicry for the amusement of the little Burneys, awed them by shuddering and crouching as if he saw a ghost, scared them by raving like a maniac in St. Lukes', and then at once became an auctioneer, a chimney-sweeper, or an old woman, and made them laugh till the tears ran down ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... people. His eye fell upon the Mungana, who had also been destined to play a prominent part in that ceremony. At once he saw that there was something wrong with the man. A curious change had come over his emaciated face. It was working like that of a maniac. Foam appeared upon his dyed lips, his haunted eyes rolled, his thin hands gripped the side of the canoe and he began to sing, or rather howl like a dog baying at the stars. Jeekie hit him on the head ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... me, grinding me with iron heel, into 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
... "no, my mother,—not even for thee!" And, dashing the money to the ground, he fled, like a maniac, from ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to Mrs. Stephen Kemble, as she stood disheveled at the side scene, ready to go on the stage as Ophelia in her madness, a basket with carrots, turnips, onions, leeks, and pot-herbs, instead of the conventional flowers and straws of the stage maniac, which sent the representative of the fair Ophelia on in a broad grin, with ill-suppressed fury and laughter, which must have given quite an original character of verisimilitude to the ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... 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 alone—Ned was ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... been rudely carved by man; and the number of birds kept increasing. One can readily see how even the most skeptical man on the expedition should have felt sure by this time that the man whom he used to consider a mild maniac was in truth a very wise person. And perhaps the crew did feel it; but also they felt angry at those signs that mocked them day after day by never coming true. They grumbled; and the more the signs increased the more they grumbled; till finally ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... overboard our Mozart and Beethoven, our Kant and Schopenhauer, our Schiller and Goethe, our Rembrandts, Leonardos, Michael Angelos, in short, all our wealth of art and intellect? What is a miserable cur of an American millionaire, a dollar maniac, as compared with all those great men? Let him come and ask ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... blood; the rights thereto were maintained in the case of the Duke of Maine and the Count of Toulouse, for their lives, by the bounty of the Regent, "which did not prevent the Duchess of Maine from uttering loud shrieks, like a maniac," says St. Simon, "or the Duchess of Orleans from weeping night and day, and refusing for two months to see anybody." Of the thirty-nine members of the nobility who had signed the petition to Parliament, six were detained in prison for a month, after which the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... screaming and crying. No, not all; all but Joan. She stood up and faced the man, and remained so. As we reached the wood that borders the grassy clearing and jumped into its shelter, two or three of us glanced back to see if Benoist was gaining on us, and that is what we saw—Joan standing, and the maniac gliding stealthily toward her with his ax lifted. The sight was sickening. We stood where we were, trembling and not able to move. I did not want to see the murder done, and yet I could not take my eyes away. Now I saw Joan step forward ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... friend Stephens be fearless enough to claim that this custom also was taught the natives by the degraded whites? Apart from the diabolical cruelty to a woman of which no white man except a maniac would ever be individually guilty—whereas this is a tribal custom—note the unutterable masculine selfishness of this "jealousy," which, while indifferent to chastity and fidelity, per se, punishes by proxy, leaving the real culprit untouched and happy at having ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... and clothing of Issachar's protege provoked the remark from one of a group of men that Abraham was "only a stuck-up nigger, anyway;" and then, like a maniac, Old Issachar dashed from his store with a boat-hook and struck down the offender like a ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... will have to ask favours at my hand. They did not know that I possessed the secret of her birth, that it still lies locked up in the chest guarded safely in the vault beneath the mill, and that it will be beyond their reach before to-morrow. Ah! ah! ah!" and he broke out into a cry of maniac laughter. ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... you, I'm a swindler. Parfitts' name is gone for ever, and there'll be the greatest scandal that ever was. Witt is threatening proceedings. I offered to take the whole lot back at the price he paid me, without any commission. But he won't. He's an old man; a bit of a maniac I expect, and he won't. He's angry. He thinks he's been swindled, and what he says is that he's going to see the thing through. I've got to prove to him that the pictures are yours. I've got to show him what grounds I had for giving my guarantee. ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... 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 carriages broke upon his ear. Aubrey grew almost frantic. ...
— The Vampyre; A Tale • John William Polidori
... after professed an unconquerable aversion for those sermons in which God's punishment of sinners was set forth; and this had strangely been true of their daughter, born but a little time after the father's release from the maniac's cabin. She had grown to womanhood submitting meekly to an iron rule; but none the less betraying an acute repugnance for certain doctrines preached by her father. It seemed to the old man a long way to look back; ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... and exhausted, nature would have her due. Joe became merely a driveling maniac, urged along by an insane desire to make progress. At times he would wander round and round, but eventually he would head on straight again. It was late that night that Joe saw far ahead a welcome light. This spurred him on and for about half a mile ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... gay to sit, And thy poor brain torment for awkward wit; All thy good thoughts (thou hat'st them) to restrain, And give a wicked pleasure to the vain; Thy long, lean frame by fashion to attire, That lads may laugh and wantons may admire; To raise the mirth of boys, and not to see, Unhappy maniac! that they laugh at thee "These boyish follies, which alone the boy Can idly act, or gracefully enjoy, Add new reproaches to thy fallen state, And make men scorn what they would only hate. "What pains, ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... "book-bandits" to his reports on the proceedings in the Saints' and Sinners' Corner. Scattered throughout his writings from 1887 onward were paragraphs, ballads, and jests, praising, berating, and "joshing" the maniac crew who held that "binding's the surest test," and who bought books, as some would-be connoisseurs do wine, by the label. With all his professions of sympathy with the maniacs, he never missed an opportunity to make merry over what he regarded as their rivalries and disappointments, ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... promise to grant any boon asked by the person producing it. As he retreats, his suspicions are excited by the conduct of his guide, and confirmed by the warnings of a mad woman whom they encounter. His false guide discharges an arrow at him, which kills the maniac. The knight slays the murderer; and learning from the expiring victim that her brain had been turned by the cruelty of Sir Roderick Dhu, he vows vengeance. When chilled with the midnight cold and exhausted with fatigue, he suddenly comes upon a chief ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... madhouses in the world,' said Mr Tapley, 'couldn't produce such a maniac as the man must be who could ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... the maniac to give battle to the other fury. Some fled to the doors and fought with their clumsy fastenings, but as they flung them back a draught sucked through, changing the place into ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... seemed harmless enough, it was of course possible that he might be dangerous. He was almost sorry that he had sought shelter here. Better have encountered the storm in its full fury than place himself in the power of a maniac. The rain was now falling in thick drops, and he decided at any rate to remain a while longer. He knew that it would not be well to dispute the old man, and resolved to ...
— Bound to Rise • Horatio Alger
... maniac Winter rages o'er The hills whence classic Yarrow flows, Rousing the turbid torrent's roar, Or sweeping, wild, a waste ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... running here, the terrible danger to yourself? The sea preys upon your mind. You ought not to be near it. Every murmur of the waves is suggestive to your ears. The voices of those bells recall to your mind the drowning of men. The sigh of that poor maniac depresses you perpetually. Leave the sea. Try to forget it. I tell you, Sir Graham, that your mind is becoming actually diseased from incessant brooding. It begins even to trick your eyes in ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... saw her property gradually dwindling, for every day the boy brought home an animal less than he had taken to pasture in the morning, and his only answer when questioned was, "The wolves have devoured it." She screamed like a maniac, and threatened to throw the boy to the wild beasts to devour, but he answered, laughing, "Wouldn't your own savage meat be better for them?" Then he left the wolves for three days without food ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... And the poor maniac glides farther away, hooded in his unintelligible mourning; and certainly he does not hear ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... swept over the surface. All around the homeless shores the evergreen trees seemed to hunch their backs and crowd closer together in patient misery. Not a bird had the heart to sing; only the loon—storm-lover—laughed his crazy challenge to the elements, and mocked us with his long-drawn maniac scream. ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... hope that she would eventually have some cheering intelligence to impart. The Count, however, speedily relieved the devoted husband and wife of their anxiety. He knew as well as they that his daughter could not fail soon to learn that the Viscount was a maniac and preferred to break the terrible news to her himself. As soon, therefore, as the greetings were over, before Zuleika could whisper to Mme. Morrel the question that was trembling on her lips, the ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... victory, brutality, and licentiousness are linked together. Every evil passion was allowed to revel with impunity, and revenge, lust, and avarice,—each had its hundreds of victims in unhappy Semlin. Any maniac can kindle a conflagration, but it may require many wise men to put it out. Peter the Hermit had blown the popular fury into a flame, but to cool it again was beyond his power. His followers rioted unrestrained, until the fear of retaliation warned them to ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... no more. You know so much, you must know the rest. They came to me, fearing I had been killed—robbed and murdered. They found me at last, when I was forced to admit them, looking, I suppose, a maniac; for I felt one then, compelled to face them, and hear the old man's reproaches, in horror lest they should discover the wretched convict lying dead, and no word to say in my defence. Nature could bear no more. My wound robbed ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... sure after it happened; for hold your breath now, fellows, because to be honest with you there was a terrible tragedy, and after the poor young wife was buried the judge lived as much as ten years in an asylum. He had become a maniac, you see, from jealousy of his ...
— The Boy Scouts with the Motion Picture Players • Robert Shaler
... maniac, over the small farmers and peasantry in his neighbourhood, is most astonishing. They believed in all he told them; first that he should be a great chieftain in Kent, and that they should all live rent free on his land, and that if they ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... illuminated by the fire-light, Morton had no 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
... of a man. Even under the circumstances, it could be nothing else, but of a man who had taken leave of his senses. It was the wild cry of a maniac! ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... 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
... this, and made for the ring, from which, in the agony of his terror, he endeavored to force my hands, as it was not large enough to afford us both a secure grasp. I never felt deeper grief than when I saw him attempt this act—although I knew he was a madman when he did it—a raving maniac through sheer fright. I did not care, however, to contest the point with him. I knew it could make no difference whether either of us held on at all; so I let him have the bolt, and went astern to the cask. This there was no great difficulty in doing; for the smack flew round ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... presence of Bar seemed to madden Vidocq immediately. From the time the former entered the house, Vidocq cursed him with every vile oath his drunken lips could frame, and, when Bar attempted remonstrance and command, the infuriated maniac suddenly caught up a table knife, and plunged it in his opponent's side. Then with a yell Vidocq rushed from the house, leaving the door thrown back for the deadly cold to enter and complete his work. John Bar said that he fell when the knife ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... artillery is formidable; a charge of cavalry is terrible; the full shock of great armies is tremendous. A dangerous man is likely to do mischief, and needs watching; a formidable man may not be dangerous if not attacked; an enraged maniac is terrible; the force of ocean waves in a storm, and the silent pressure in the ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... have appeared, and she is almost frantic with terror. Last night, at 12 o'clock, I was going the rounds of the sick wards, and found her wringing her hands, and running up and down the cell like a maniac. I tried to quiet and encourage her, but she paid no more attention than if stone deaf; and when I started to leave her, she seized my arm, and begged me to ask you to come and stay with her. She thinks if you would sing for her, she could listen, and forget the horrible things ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson |
