"Monomaniacal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... devil, and regarded the Passover with malevolent eyes. Confound such a creature, there was no hope for him! Who could expect to free him from his prejudices? He hated Moses for his fate, and Rebekkah for her forms of worship. He was insane on Judaism. He was a monomaniacal Gentile. Who could make out a mental diagnosis, or anticipate the conduct of a mule afflicted with religious lunacy? Well for your correspondent had he discovered beforehand the bias of the brute, or suspected he was a quadruped zealot! Much might have been saved to him, and more to a ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... about her theory, and would have been much more so, had I desired it; but, being conscious within myself of a sturdy unbelief, I deemed it fair and honest rather to repress than draw her out upon the subject. Unquestionably, she was a monomaniac; these overmastering ideas about the authorship of Shakspeare's plays, and the deep political philosophy concealed beneath the surface of them, had completely thrown her off her balance; but at the same time they had wonderfully developed her ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... be credited? The monomaniac fell to rating me for my indiscretion! But the battle was over; these were her last guns, and more in the nature of a salute than of renewed hostilities. And presently she condescended on very moderate terms, and Rowley and I were able to escape in quest of supper. Much time had, however, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... out. My urchin described him as a very thin, dirty, and ragged man, with a dreadful cough. He left no message. That was the finish of him so far as my story goes. I wonder sometimes what has become of him. Was he an ingenious monomaniac, or a fraudulent dealer in pebbles, or has he really made diamonds as he asserted? The latter is just sufficiently credible to make me think at times that I have missed the most brilliant opportunity of my life. He may of course be dead, and his diamonds carelessly thrown aside—one, I ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... I'll go see Dr. Thorne, and ask him to accompany us to-night. He claims to be something of a connoisseur, and the picture is really worth seeing, if the lad has not spoiled it with his 'final touches'. And anyhow, the boy will be a study for a psychological monomaniac ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... live stock on the very day and at the very hour they said they would. As for the inhabitants venturing any distance from town, except under military escort, such a thing was unknown, and all communication with Naples was for some time virtually intercepted. I was regarded as a sort of monomaniac of recklessness, because I ventured on a solitary walk of a mile or two in search of a sketch,—an act of no great audacity on my part, for I had walked through various parts of the country without ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... insane, I shrank from having it generally known, and the longer I hugged the secret the harder I found it to divulge the whole. It would look queerly, I thought, for a young man like me to be tramelled with a crazy girl. Nobody would believe she was my ward, and nothing more, and I became a sort of monomaniac upon the subject. Had I never loved her—" he paused, and leaned his head upon his hands, while Edith, bending upon him a most searching look, startled him with the words, "Mr. St. Claire, you have not told me all. There is something behind, something mightier than pride or a ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... In normal times the monomaniac's designs would never have reached fruition. Now the vast public discontents converted the cringing ex-tenant or shrieking beggar into a gaunt, long-haired, ferocious agitator—one of the outstanding ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... the rest of men, if only they let out their check-reins a hole or so. It was horrible,—the cruelties men practised to gratify appetite, and that women were guilty of for vanity. I suppose I am a monomaniac on the subject, but we never seemed far removed from barbarians, when we went clothed in the skins of wild animals, and decorated with their heads and tails and feathers, like so many Sioux chiefs. The varnish of ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... being left alone with him after dinner. He cannot bear contradiction. The queerest old man alive. One of his most intimate friends told me that he was undoubtedly deranged, mad as a March hare upon some subjects, and a monomaniac upon others. Do you know that he keeps a relay of young men, thoroughly trained for the work, to follow him round all day and pick up his droppings,—or what his followers call 'sibylline leaves,'—bits of paper, that is, written all over with cabalistic signs, which no mortal could ever hope to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... the night. He found that unfortunate just from her bath, fresh, embellished, and breakfasting with a very good appetite. He admired the grace with which his angel ate her boiled eggs, and he marvelled at the beauty of the gold service, a present from a monomaniac lord, for whom Conti had composed a few ballads on ideas of the lord, who afterwards ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... amusing, but it was also startling. Harry knew now that the old man was crazy, or at least a monomaniac, and, though he 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 ...
— Bound to Rise • Horatio Alger
... me say once more, had other interests than those of his religion. In particular, at this time, he took to painting in water-colours in the open air, and he resumed the assiduous study of botany. He was no fanatical monomaniac. Nevertheless, there was, in everything he did and said, the central purpose present. He acknowledged it plainly; 'with me,' he confessed, 'every question assumes a Divine standpoint and is not adequately answered ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... now highly false; and I believe it was in mere pity that Mrs. Higgs came to my rescue with a welcome proposition. If the gentleman was really interested in stamps, she said, probably supposing me a monomaniac on the point, he should see Mr. Denman's album. Mr. Denman had been collecting forty years, and his collection was said to be worth a mint of money. "Agnes," she went on, "if you were a kind little girl, you would run over to the 'All, tell Mr. ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... singleness of purpose. Everything was a pretext for some wildly idealistic rhapsody or reverie. Nothing could be seen or said that did not lead him sooner or later to a glowing discourse on the true, the beautiful, and the good. If my friend was not a genius, he was certainly a monomaniac; and I found as great a fascination in watching the odd lights and shades of his character as if he had been a creature from another planet. He seemed, indeed, to know very little of this one, and lived and moved altogether ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... filled with fury. He despised the Church, and St. John's above all churches, because you were of it; because you who had given so generously to it had wrecked his life. You had shattered his faith in humanity, his ideal. From a normal, contented man he had deteriorated into a monomaniac whom no one would hire, a physical and mental wreck who needed care and nursing. He said he hoped ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... have understood him best, and to have realised where his difficulty lay. Like many others who are consumed with a burning idea Columbus was very probably at this time in danger of becoming possessed with it like a monomaniac; and his new friends saw that if he were to make any impression upon the conservative learning of the time to which a decision in such matters was always referred he must have some opportunity for friendly discussion ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... giving no quarter, was again freely discussed at General Slaughter's, and was evidently the popular idea. I heard many anecdotes of the late "Stonewall Jackson," who was General Slaughter's comrade in the Artillery of the old army. It appears that previous to the war he was almost a monomaniac about his health. When he left the U.S. service he was under the impression that one of his legs was getting shorter than the other; and afterwards his idea was that he only perspired on one side, and that it was necessary to keep the arm and leg of the other side ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... he was something of a faddist, and on the subject of fresh air almost a monomaniac. He declared that he could not exist for ten minutes in a room with closed windows, and that the smell of apples made him feel positively faint; moreover, he would mention his somewhat numerous antipathies as though there were something peculiarly meritorious ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... 'Journal' that the strange tales of the American poet seemed to them to belong to "a new literature, the literature of the twentieth century, scientifically miraculous story-telling by A B, a literature at once monomaniac and mathematical, Zadig as district-attorney, Cyrano de Bergerac as a ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... Sylvia, vexed and put out. She began to walk forward. Morrison in his turn gave an exclamation which seemed the vent of long-stored exasperation, and said with heat: "Look here, Page, you're getting to be a perfect monomaniac on the subject! What earthly good does it do your man with a pick to ruin a fine moment by lugging ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... return—and I did. He supped with me once or twice in my lodgings, lost money to me at cards and so had some grounds for believing himself "my friend." Presuming upon this, he was not long in discovering himself to me for the monomaniac he was, one of those miserable men devoured by a passion which may lift us to the stars or souse us in the deepest slime of the pit. He made proposals to me, tentatively at first, then with increasing fervency, at last with importunity which would have ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... particular manifestation. I was entirely too much taken up by the smell to observe the occult. Say, what's eating you, anyway, Court? Such foolishness isn't like you. You ought to cut it out. You know a thing like this can get on your nerves if you let it, just like anything else, and make you a monomaniac. You ought to go in for more athletics and cut out some of your psychology and philosophy. Suppose we go and take a ride in the park this ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz |
