"Maniac" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dye. Miss Sandal must have been a fairly decent sort, because she seems not to have written to Father about it. At any rate he didn't give it us in any of our letters, about our good intentions and their ending in a maniac. ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... innocence, knew that it was wise as well as right to be perfectly ingenuous, and resolved that there should be no concealment. His friends stood manfully by him, and his enemies struck at him with such blind fury that their blows injured only themselves. Howe raved like a maniac. "What is to become of the country, plundered by land, plundered by sea? Our rulers have laid hold on our lands, our woods, our mines, our money. And all this is not enough. We cannot send a cargo to the farthest ends of the earth, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... however, at the Apostles, he appears to be encouraging himself by 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 ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... awaking from a heavy slumber, descended like a maniac from his chamber, and, mounting in hot haste, bounded away into the mazes of the forest. An occurrence so common attracted no particular attention, but his return was looked for with intense anxiety on the part of his domestics, when, after some hours' absence, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... 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 ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... 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 prevent him from leaping out of bed or throwing himself ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... went about with 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 again, and ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... there was a crowd of poets, historians, and men of science; and he declared that another Alexandrian Library might be bought in those seething stalls, if one laid out money like a king, or like a maniac, as others might say. In this German Athens a meeting was arranged between Reuchlin and Erasmus; they were joined at Frankfort by Hermann Busch, who brought with him the manuscript of his 'Triumph'; and perhaps it was not difficult to predict that the cause of the old books would be safe in the hands ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... 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 just as she left it, when she dropped ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... Alexander Boswell, in a duel; on other occasions this institution had brought discomfort into his life, and though he was ready to fight General Gourgaud with Napoleon's pistols, he cannot have approved of the practices of the MacTurks and Bingo Binkses. A maniac, as his correspondence shows, challenged Sir Walter, insisting that he was pointed at and ridiculed in the character of MacTurk. (Abbotsford MSS.) It is interesting to have the picture of contemporary manners from Scott's ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... you're a pack of snobs," said Juliet. "Because Mr. Crane is a genius who's made his own way, you try to suggest he's a murderer without daring to say so. Because he wore a toy sword and happened to know how to use it, you want us to believe he used it like a bloodthirsty maniac for no reason in the world. And because he could have hit my brother and didn't, you deduce that he did. That's the sort of way you argue. And as for his having disappeared, you're wrong in that as you are in everything ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... — N. madman, lunatic, maniac, bedlamite[obs3], candidate for Bedlam, raver[obs3], madcap, crazy; energumen[obs3]; automaniac[obs3], monomaniac, dipsomaniac, kleptomaniac; hypochondriac &c. (low spirits); crank, Tom o'Bedlam. dreamer &c. 515; rhapsodist, seer, highflier[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... coming at that time, seemed almost the raving of a mad man. This is the view the chief took of it, and he decided to conciliate the maniac. ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson
... 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 ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... man or woman may wish to take the matrimonial plunge again. Chesterton seems to think it is amusing to poke fun at those who are sensible enough to wish to make lunacy a sufficient ground for divorce. 'The process' he says, 'might begin by releasing somebody from a homicidal maniac and end by dealing with a rather dull conversationalist.' He might have added, to make the joke complete, or from some one who snores, or keeps cats, or ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... 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
... I 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
... 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
... she appears to have been much older than he, rather homely, and already a mother of three daughters when he first loved her. It is difficult to determine how much truth there is in these reports: Caligula was, it is true, a raving maniac, and his frenzy became more accentuated when under the sway of love—a passion which deranges somewhat even wise men. It is not strange, therefore, that in regard to women he may have been guilty of even greater excesses than he was capable of in his dealings with men. Yet some of these ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... were rummaged, Roland's house was surrounded, while Duport, seized in a neighboring department, is deposed in the slaughterhouse. The latter is saved with the utmost difficulty; many a blow is necessary before he can be wrested from the maniac who had seized him. With a surgeon like Marat, and medics like the four or five hundred leaders of the Commune and of the sections, it is not essential to guide the knife; it is a foregone conclusion that the amputation will ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... do no better. But even for their sakes, even for the love of them, my friend, resist their crimes when you can. No man will stand by and see a maniac murder his wife and children. It will be better for the poor maddened wretch himself to prevent him; don't ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... held, and one or 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
... Belinda. 'You little know him. Jealous and revengeful; ferocious in his revenge—a maniac in his jealousy! Would you be assassinated before my eyes?' Mr. Cymon Tuggs, in a voice broken by emotion, expressed his disinclination to undergo the process of assassination before the ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... countenance, which, a better index of the convulsion within than were his broken, incoherent, half-inarticulate words, assumed at last an appearance so wild, so hideous, so truly terrific, that Roland was seized with horror, deeming himself confronted with a raging maniac. He raised his hand to remove that of Nathan, which still clutched his arm, and clutched it with painful force; but while in the act, the fingers relaxed of themselves, and Nathan dropped suddenly to the earth, as if struck down by a thunderbolt, ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... were 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
... the handle, and with a horrible cry thrust his hand under the skirt of his coat and rushed at Thorndyke. But the superintendent was ready for this. There was a shout and a scuffle, and then Petrofsky was born down, kicking and biting like a maniac, while Miller hung on to his right hand and the ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... fish to fry than listening to the empty babble of a maniac. By the bye, what did ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... a sight; it was fearfully contorted; it was the countenance of a maniac. His words were loud and uncannily distinct, and the sound of them had brought a breathless hush over the place. At the moment of Doret's entrance the occupants of the saloon seemed petrified; they stood rooted in their tracks as if the anger in that menacing voice had halted them ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... at that. I thought it was between us, so I jerked off my big mittens to be ready; but the mules' turn was to come first, it seems. He didn't wait for anything, just simply went at them, like a maniac, like a demon. I won't tell you about it—it was too horribly brutal—or about what followed. I simply saw red. For the first time and the last time in my life, I hope, I fought a man—fought like a beast, tooth and nail. When it was over he was lying there in the mud we'd made, unconscious; ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... I heard his boast that he was the reincarnated spirit of Porfias del Norte, whom he would avenge. The man talked like a maniac, for at the last moment he even asserted that ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... heartless 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 ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... certain, for Dicky Pilkington, though he joined in the hysterics of the crowd, had not compromised his dignity by pursuit; when, just as the hat touched the foam of perdition, Molly Trick, the fat bathing woman, interposed the bulwark of her body; she stooped; she spread her wide skirts, and the maniac leapt into ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... 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 venting ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... sunset song of the birches, "A white melody in the silence, "I have seen a quarrel of the pines. "At nightfall "The little grasses have rushed by me "With the wind men. "These things have I lived," quoth the maniac, "Possessing only eyes and ears. "But you— "You don green spectacles ...
— War is Kind • Stephen Crane
... obviously not the type to redden, but her anger was manifest. She spun on her brother. "If the race continues its present maniac course, possibly more effective methods of birth control are the most important development we could make. Even to the ultimate discovery of preventing ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... little too much of what his predecessor lacked, but it was exactly this that pleased the Emperor. M. de Turenne was quite a pretty man, thinking perhaps a little too much of himself, a great talker and Anglo-maniac, which led the Emperor to give him the name of my lord Kinsester (who cannot be silent); but he told a story well, and sometimes his Majesty took pleasure in making him relate ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... in thinking. The old Boldero was settling by the head and the pumps couldn't hold up the inflood. In fifteen minutes I knew that it was all up with us—or all down, rather—and I ordered the boats over and began to run about like a maniac, looking for Ivy and calling to her. And why do you suppose I couldn't find her? She ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... roaring, snarling pack of angry beasts. Bertha Kircher held her breath. What maniac was this who dared approach these frightful creatures in their own haunts, alone against fifty? She saw the brown-skinned figure bathed in moonlight walk straight toward the snarling pack. She saw the symmetry ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... portentous countenance, as if she meant to whisper in his ear, she suddenly plucked St. Louis' dagger from his girdle and struck it into his breast. He caught the hand which grasped the hilt. Her eyes glared with the fury of a maniac, and, with a horrid laugh, she exclaimed: "I have slain thee, insolent triumpher in my love and agonies! Thou shalt not now deride me in the arms of thy minion; for, I know that it is not for the dead Marion you have trampled on my heart but for the ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... wrote Loisa about her husband in a manner implying that he was a brute or a maniac: "Thou hast done well to have him taken to the hospital to save thy life." Haydn and Loisa, being Catholics, never thought of seeking divorce: their only hope of celebrating a formal marriage lay in the death of both her brutish ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... him drily. "A man who isn't a hopeless maniac depressive can't consciously create a test for himself that he knows he will fail. You proved you could stay alone on an island, buster. You didn't prove you could stay alone in a spaceship out in the middle of infinity for three years. Why ...
— Measure for a Loner • James Judson Harmon
... What have you done to my elderly heart? Of all the ladies of paper and ink I count you the paragon, call you the pink. The word of your brother depicts you in part: "You raving maniac!" Adela Chart; But in all the asylums that cumber the ground, So delightful a maniac was ne'er ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... so good that the rest of them may very well be suppressed for its sake, then he must suppress. But the virtue is in what he gets done and not in what he does not do. Reasonable fear is a sound reason for abstinence, as when a man has a passion like a lightly sleeping maniac that the slightest indulgence will arouse. Then he must needs adopt heroic abstinence, and even more so must he take to preventive restraint if he sees any motive becoming unruly and urgent and troublesome. Fear is a sound reason for abstinence and so is love. ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... this child of sorrow relieved from her sufferings, and restored to liberty. I had seen this young and comely looking woman, who was endowed with more than common good sense, driven to the depths of despair by the intensity of her sufferings. I had seen her a raving maniac. Now, I saw her 'sitting and clothed in her right mind.' I was a thousand times more than compensated for all the pains I had taken. I had sympathized deeply with her sufferings, and I now partook ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... an obstinate fanatic, a maniac," thought Pyotr Mihalitch, "and she is as soft, yielding, and weak in character as I am. . . . She and I give in easily, without resistance. She loves him; but, then, I, too, love him in ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... communicating his tale to none save to Ferdinand himself, or to the Chief Hermano, under strict promise to reveal it to the Sovereign: but his intense anxiety had evidently prevented the attainment of his desire, by producing fever; and thence arose his wild and almost maniac cravings to make confession, and bind some holy monk, by a solemn vow, to convey ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... Doctor! the landlady considers you one of the bravest and most courageous men she ever saw, to follow a raving maniac down cellar the ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... present humor without you have him treated as a maniac, which, if I were in your case and in your situation, I most certainly ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... creeping of the flesh as Dupin asked me the question. "A madman," I said, "has done this deed—some raving maniac, escaped from a neighboring Maison ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Blandford (loc. cit.), "than to see a woman break down in childbed, recover, break down again with the next child, and so on, for six, seven, or eight children, the recovery between each being less and less, until she is almost a chronic maniac?" It has been found, moreover, by Tredgold (Lancet, May 17, 1902), that among children born to insane mothers, the mortality is twice as great as the ordinary infantile mortality, in even the poorest districts. In cases of unions between persons with tuberculous antecedents, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... he faltered. Then he whirled like a maniac upon his little coterie of followers. "Vile traitor!" he shrieked, "I will drink your ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... 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 ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... was still alive, but a maniac; it was heartbreaking to hear his broken, feeble cries for his brother, but he lay quiet after a bit, and died in half an hour, though we chafed his feet and poured rum into his mouth, and did what men in our miserable plight could for ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... clang of sea-fowl and roar of billows, and the famous Bullers 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 future ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... 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 a ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... deploying cautiously to surround him. Gordon spoke to his mare; and when he drew rein and wheeled to shout to the gun crew, Thomas Jefferson heard the engineer's low-toned order to the shovelers: "Be careful and don't hurt him, boys. He's the old maniac who threw me off the veranda of his house. Two of you take ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... could not stop to give more than a passing glance to all this. He was terribly wrought up at finding himself in such a strait, and paced the room from end to end, like a veritable maniac, while he tried to think of some ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... 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, which being observed, her husband, Ardvoirlich, had her conveyed back to her home, and detained her ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... pain and pleasure, at the sight of his own blood. His sharpened eyesight 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 that explanation. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... of a maniac," she murmured; "no one but a maniac could be capable of this wild act. My life is in the power of a madman. I can but wait the issue. Let me be calm. Oh, merciful heaven, give me fortitude to ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... not the product of blind insensate agencies, that had no sympathy to give, but was incarnated in the fiery eyeballs of the noblest amongst brutes, in his dilated nostril, spasmodic muscles, and thunder- beating hoofs. The sensibility of the horse, uttering itself in the maniac light of his eye, might be the last vibration of such a movement; the glory of Salamanca might be the first. But the intervening links that connected them, that spread the earthquake of battle into the eyeballs of the horse, were the heart of man and its electric thrillings—kindling in the rapture ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... into the hands of Tigellinus; from a beggar he became rich; it was possible for him to live out his days in peace, have a splendid funeral, and a tomb: but, no! All at once he preferred to lose everything and destroy himself; he must, in truth, be a maniac." ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... and skipping fantastically as it ran. It was a prisoner released from the bondage of the elements that had held it. It was a spirit drunk with sudden-found freedom. It was a flood raging down a valley. It was a maniac at large. ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... 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 ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... could much damage 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
... my sickly gaze upon him and saw that he was deadly pale, and that the perspiration stood out in great drops upon his forehead. The explanation was plain enough—he took me for a maniac. I would have protested and moved the previous question, but taking a small phial from his pocket he broke off the head and threw the contents in my face. Ten seconds later I was totally oblivious, and upon recovering found myself in this place, where such strange things are going on that my fingers ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 33, November 12, 1870 • Various
... hadn't been such a maniac, I should never have made the mistake I did. I tell you the whole thing was misrepresented to me. Stanwell and his wife and, as I was told, his child too, died just before I landed here. This property of his ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... it as if it were now," continued the maniac, "although years have rolled away. Never will it be effaced from my recollection while this heart, broken as it is, continues to beat, or this brain may be permitted to burn. The sun had just disappeared behind the rugged summits of the mountain which sheltered my abode from the unkind north-east ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... most crucial example of the "something wrong" which pursues Musset in pure prose narrative is Emmeline. It is quite free from those unlucky, and possibly unfair, comparisons with contemporaries which have been affixed to its companions. A maniac of parallels might indeed call it something of a modernised Princesse de Cleves; but this would be quite idle. The resemblance is simply in situation; that is to say, in the publica materies which every artist has a right to make his own by private treatment. Emmeline ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... myself into this universal, this damnatory disgrace! I know indeed she will not believe me; and I likewise know that now it must be open war between us. For do not think that I will suffer myself to be thus shamefully beaten out of the field. No, by Lucifer and his Tophet! I will die a foaming maniac, fettered in straw, ere that shall happen! If not by persuasion, she shall be mine by chicanery, or even by force. I will ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... observed. The lake no longer glittered under the silvery beam. Both Ostuta and Monopostiac had resumed the sombre aspect that usually distinguished them, with that mournful tranquillity that habitually reigned over the spot—interrupted only by the cry of the coyote, or the shrill maniac scream of the eagle preparing to descend to the banquet ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... 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 ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... she had Van Ruyne's emeralds or not I saw no particular mystery in the Valenka girl's disappearance: she had probably had some one outside who had taken her clear away in a motor car. I said so, more because Dudley was glaring at Macartney like a maniac than anything else. And Dudley caught me up short. "I won't have either of you say one more word about Valenka in my house. She was as good as she was pretty; and if some one helped her away ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... in this town who has six children and is expecting another. Directly after the birth of a child, she goes insane, a raving maniac, and they send her to the insane asylum. While she is gone, her home and children are cared for by neighbors. After about six months, they discharge her and she comes home and is in a family way again in a few months. Still the doctors ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... was inside the house of the man who had murdered her brother and sent her sorrowing father, a poor, senseless maniac, tottering ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... I am a maniac. I have for some years been the victim of a peculiar insanity, which has greatly distressed several of my friends and relatives. They generally soften it in their talk by the name monomania; but they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... 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 beating Of ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... and there's no wrong!" The sardonic laugh that followed was that of a raging maniac. "You've fooled me, you ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... from Togiak. Two hundred miles in heavy trails," explained George wearily, as the cries of the maniac dimmed ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... to our station—that we could take motor cars and carriages by the day; that we could give each other dinners and dine our friends and we could indulge if we liked in economy. Thus, Florence was in the habit of having the Daily Telegraph sent to her every day from London. She was always an Anglo-maniac, was Florence; the Paris edition of the New York Herald was always good enough for me. But when we discovered that the Ashburnhams' copy of the London paper followed them from England, Leonora and Florence decided between them to suppress one subscription ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... Duke dies, or becomes a maniac," thought he to himself, "the end as regards us will be the same for Norbert will break off the ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... blow in the chest. Many other people had perhaps died in the wood during that disastrous year, but though I do not know why, I was sure, sure, I tell you, that I should see the head of that wretched maniac. ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... the coin was flying from his hand through the air. The beggar, with a livid face and clinched cane, confronted the Congressman like a maniac. ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... made on Robespierre was indirect. An old woman named Catherine Theot, half maniac, half impostor, was protected by him, and exercised a strange influence over his mind; for he was naturally prone to superstition, and, having abjured the faith in which he had been brought up, was looking about for something ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... savage thirst for vengeance. He raised the deadly weapon. Bertram Ingledew, still seated on the big round boulder, opened his breast in silence to receive the bullet. There was a moment's pause. For that moment, even Monteith himself, in his maniac mood, felt dimly aware of that mysterious restraining power all the rest who knew him had so often felt in their dealings with the Alien. But it was only for a moment. His coarser nature was ill adapted to recognise that ineffable air as of a superior ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... prejudice,' said Mrs. Langton, 'but I do not think I should like to be called by an idiot; he might turn into a maniac some day. They do quite suddenly at times, don't they?' she added, appealing to the professor, 'and that wouldn't be nice, you know, if he did. What would you ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... and good. Then I met with misfortune. My life was my own to make or mar 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, but also to help me, as ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... married a miserable aristocrat, who recently died of delirium tremens. Her father failed, and is now a raving maniac, and wants to bite little children. All her brothers (except one) were sent to the penitentiary for burglary, and her mother peddles clams that are stolen for her by little George, her only son that has his freedom. Isabel's sister ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne
... you to inquire, as likewise me to mention—enough to 'int that he occupies a prominent position amongst the hupper circles of Society, and is frequently to be met with in the papers. His faithlessness preyed on my Sister's mind to that degree, that she is now in the Asylum, a nopeless maniac! My honely Brother was withdrawn from 'Arrow, and now 'as the yumiliation of selling penny toys on the kerbstone to his former playfellers. 'Tantee ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 14, 1891. • Various
... Her face was deadly 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
... thought we would find a beautiful maniac walled up there," sighed Velma Sigsbee. "It's a perfect shame to have the ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... maddening myriads press around, What power divine thy soul befriends That thou should'st dash it to the ground?— No, thou shalt drink, and thou shalt know 50 Her transient bliss, her lasting woe, Her maniac joys, that know no measure, And Riot rude and painted Pleasure;— Till (sad reverse!) the Enchantress vile To frowns converts her magic smile; 55 Her train impatient to destroy, Observe her frown with gloomy joy; On thee with harpy fangs they seize The hideous offspring ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Agnes, to whom Neale had once confessed that he was born in the state of Maine. "Then I suppose we ought to call you a 'Maniac,' eh?" ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... 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 ...
— Over the Line • Harold M. Sherman
... only knew odd choruses it did not come to much. As for the few who did happen to know all the words of a song, they either had no voices or were not inclined to sing. The most successful contribution was that of the religious maniac, who sang several hymns, the choruses being joined in by everybody, both drunk ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... the hutkeeper about his going to England. Smith and his companion feared to mention their suspicions to the hutkeeper, believing that he would not remain alone on the station if he thought that a maniac was about. Seeing Jones a second time, apparently in his usual health, had divested their minds of any suspicion that the hutkeeper had deceived them, or was in any way responsible, and the real facts as they subsequently turned out had not presented ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... spite of the pressing need of better transportation for coal, cotton, merchandise, and passengers, the bill failed. Such was the blindness, and ignorance, and prejudice of the House of Commons! Think of calling George Stephenson "an ignoramus, a fool, a maniac," in Parliament, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... is more likely to place the crown upon the brow of a knave, a fool or a madman, than upon that of one qualified to govern. Russia soon awoke to the consciousness that the destinies of thirty millions of people were in the hands of a maniac, whose conduct seemed to prove that his only proper place was in one of the wards of Bedlam. The grossest contradictions followed each other in constant succession. Today he would caress his wife, to-morrow place her under military arrest. At one ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... that they equally join the song of morning, noon, and night? The purple morning falling in flakes of light is a bold figure: but we are told, it falls far and wide—Where?—On the mountain's side. We are sorry to see the purple morning confined so like a maniac in a straight waistcoat. What the night of wing of silence is, we are unable to comprehend: but the climax of the passage is, that, were there such a spot of holy ground as is here so sublimely described, unfound by Pain and her sad family, Nature's God ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... 2nd February 1829, Jonathan Martin, a brother of the apocalyptic painter, John Martin, and a religious maniac, hid himself during evening service behind the tomb of Archbishop Greenfield in the north transept, and when the church was shut up for the night set fire to the choir. The flames were not extinguished until the stalls, the ...
— The Cathedral Church of York - Bell's Cathedrals: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief - History of the Archi-Episcopal See • A. Clutton-Brock
... for his safety, begged him to consider "the fact that any assassin or maniac seeking his life, could enter his presence without the interference of a single armed man to hold him back. The entrance doors, and all doors on the official side of the building, were open at all hours of the day and very late into ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... old Anthony. "He never cared for you. He married you to revenge himself on me. He sent you back here for the same reason. He'll take your child, and break its spirit and ruin its body, for the same reason. The man's a maniac." ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... mean to say," said Sloane stolidly, "that 'cause you had some sort of indigestion that made you act like a maniac last night, you're never ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... neighbouring cairn; on this cairn they then deposit a simple offering of clothes, or perhaps of a small bunch of heath.... The patient is then thrice immerged in the sacred pool; after the immersion he is bound hand and foot, and left for the night in a chapel which stands near. If the maniac is found loose in the morning, good hopes are conceived of his full recovery. If he is still bound, his cure remains doubtful. It sometimes happens that death relieves him during his confinement ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... from his companion, who had fairly left him to settle matters with the apparition as he could, and had proceeded a few paces on his way homeward. Earnscliff, however, turned and followed Hobbie, after looking back towards the supposed maniac, who, as if raised to frenzy by the interview, roamed wildly around the great stone, exhausting his voice in shrieks and imprecations, that thrilled ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... her full length on the floor and, lifting his heel, he seemed on the point of crushing in her head in order to silence her. For the twinkling of an eye she felt sickening dread. Blinded with rage, he had begun beating about the room like a maniac. Then his choking silence and the struggle with which he was shaken melted her to tears. She felt a mortal regret and, rolling herself up in front of the fire so as to roast her right side, she undertook ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... was engaged in a friendly game of cards for keeps, up at Saratogy, some poor deluded money-maniac telegrafs that the Commodore had at last found his match, and had been gathered to his fathers. While at the bottom of the dispatch was forged the name of my friend, KISSLEBURGH, city editor of the Troy Times, who, up to the present time, if this coot knows herself, hain't ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various
... of the Inn, and my companions submitted him to an interrogatory of three long hours' duration. One little anecdote of fresh occurrence struck me as possessing some interest. I will record it. About a month before, a poor maniac presented herself at the gates of Abbotsford. She desired to see Sir Walter. The servant denied her admittance, but such was the earnestness of the poor creature, that auld Saunders, on her pressing application, went and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... The Trojans and their allies have camped hard by our ships and by the wall; they have lit watchfires throughout their host and deem that nothing can now prevent them from falling on our fleet. Jove, moreover, has sent his lightnings on their right; Hector, in all his glory, rages like a maniac; confident that Jove is with him he fears neither god nor man, but is gone raving mad, and prays for the approach of day. He vows that he will hew the high sterns of our ships in pieces, set fire to their hulls, and make havoc of the ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... The maniac had just discovered that the door was locked, and rushing to the window caught sight of his hostess and desired patient fleeing from ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... 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
... comes round to leave the shore Ponto puts off this maniac Mr. Hyde; Becomes a Dr. Jekyll dog once more And ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 7, 1914 • Various
... was not his friend nor the world's law. It was expedient, if anyway possible, that such a man should not have been set in flat hostility with the world. He could be cooped into garrets, laughed at as a maniac, left to starve like a wild beast in his cage;—but he could not be hindered from setting the world on fire. The French Revolution found its Evangelist in Rousseau. His semi-delirious speculations on the miseries of civilised ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... his novels the Russian Anglo-maniac; but in one respect he was more English than the English themselves. This is seen in his passion for shooting. Nearly all of his trips to Britain were made solely for this purpose, and most of the ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... ridden, he desires 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
... human creature that sat there. Then came the dead man's boat. The two shadows rowed noiselessly together, and as they disappeared in the mist that was now settling on the landscape, an unearthly laugh rang over the lake; then all was still. When Nockawando reached the camp that night he was a raving maniac. The Indians never found the bodies of the pair, but they believed that while water remains in Pontoosuc its surface will be vexed by these journeys ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... the spy. Now a shot rang out down the lane on his side. It was followed by a piercing shriek, and this by another shot. In between the shots, the serjeant wheeled round, and raced off down the lane for dear life, spurring and flogging like a maniac. It was useless to follow. My rein hand had lost its grip, my arm felt aflame, and blood was already dripping ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... he, on this day, came leaning on his staff and with considerable strain, as far as the street for a little relaxation, he suddenly caught sight, approaching from the off side, of a Taoist priest with a crippled foot; his maniac appearance so repulsive, his shoes of straw, his dress all in tatters, muttering ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... Mathew, landing, hear a confused rumor of 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; with headlong ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... said, "I sent for you because I'm nearly crazy. Mr. Howell was a friend of that woman. He has acted like a maniac since she disappeared. He doesn't come to see me, he has given up his work on the paper, and I saw him to-day on the street—he ...
— The Case of Jennie Brice • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... show, by 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, ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... seem so. He seemed to look upon love as an obligation pertaining to his age and position. The chief young man in Lancia ought to love the richest, most beautiful girl of Lancia. Besides, it seemed as if he also wanted to show the place that he was neither eccentric nor a maniac, as he had heard that he was reported to be. He therefore went in for being a recognised lover; he spent a couple of hours in the morning in the Calle de Altavilla, where his young lady lived, he sat at her side at the parties of the Senoritas ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... 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 to raise the groveling ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... 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 ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... She 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 then ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... seconds that I sat helplessly staring at the body. Then I rose and moved to it with dragging feet; for now the truth had come to me at last, and I realized the fullness of my appalling danger. It was not only my liberty or my honor that the maniac had undermined. It was death that he had planned for me; death with the degradation of the scaffold. To strike me down with certainty he had not hesitated to end his life—a life which was, no doubt, already threatened by a melancholic impulse to self-destruction; and the last agony of the ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... 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 read any of ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... them: even when I dislike them I still love them: I am in love with them. More than once, with Patroclus, I have kissed the lovely feet of Achilles as he lay bleeding. But the God of the Bible is an old Jew, a maniac, a monomaniac, a raging madman, who spends his time in growling and hurling threats, and howling like an angry wolf, raving to himself in the confinement of that cloud of his. I don't understand him. I don't love him; his perpetual curses make my head ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... tramp into the village at one and two o'clock in the morning are men who have for two weeks been under a strain that two years of experience has robbed of its tensity. But strain it is, nevertheless, as the occasional carrying of a maniac reveals. They know very well why they are fighting; even the most ignorant French laborer has some idea as to what the affair is all about. The Boches attacked France who was peacefully minding her ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... looked gently, almost pitifully at the doctor while he spoke, as if she thought him a well-meaning and impulsive, but rather stupid maniac. ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... thousand blighted homes and squalid tenements; you have seen the outcast family of the inebriate wandering houseless upon the highways, or shivering on the streets; you have shuddered at the sound of the maniac's scream upon the burdened air; you have beheld the human form divine despoiled of every humanizing attribute, transformed from an angel into a devil; you have seen virtue crushed by vice; the bright eye lose its lustre, the lips their power of articulation; you have ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... a maniac I rushed to my door and hallooed lustily for Jack, who, roused by my shouts, came hurrying up in scanty attire, with a revolver in one hand and ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... Ducie to claim his bride, and she was gone,' said Glastonbury; 'his mind sunk under the terrible bereavement. For weeks he was a maniac; and, though Providence spared him again to us, and his mind, thanks to God, is again whole, he is the victim of a profound melancholy, that seems to defy alike ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... have striven to convince us that the prisoner is out of his mind and, in fact, a maniac. I maintain that he is in his right mind, and that if he had not been, he would have behaved more cleverly. As for his being a maniac, that I would agree with, but only in one point, that is, his fixed idea about ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky |
