"Maniac" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that a 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
... anxiety, Mrs. Judson was prostrated by sickness soon after her return to Ava. Reason fled away; insanity took the place of calm and deliberate action; and for seventeen days she was a raving maniac. Absent from her husband, and dependent on the cold mercy of heathen women, she was indeed an object of pity. But from the borders of the grave she was raised up when all around thought her beyond the reach of hope. The hand of God reached down to the borders of the grave and rescued her ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... those sudden and inexplicable revulsions which occasionally restore to sense and intellect the maniac of years standing, that I was no sooner left alone in my chamber than I became perfectly sober. The fumes of the wine—and I had drunk deeply—were dissipated at once; my head, which but a moment before was half wild with excitement, was now cool, calm, and collected; and stranger than all, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... have been the company was not to learn, for Fra Domenico, crimson of face, had swooped down upon the fool, and would have caught him but that he dived under the table by Valentina's skirts, and craved her protection from this gross maniac that ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... companions had still held any lingering doubts about his insanity, it was sufficient to dispel them. It was the true stare of the maniac. ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... part of the day in the trip, and had time permitted, we would gladly have broken the journey at one of the quaint towns along the way. At many points of vantage we stopped to contemplate the beauty of the scene—one would have to be a speed maniac indeed to "scorch" over ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... was cut in the rock. He was soon so low down that he could no longer see the stars shining; beneath him moved a shrouded form; and sliding with involuntary haste down the steep descent, he stood near the groaning figure; it ceased its lamentations, and began to laugh like a maniac from beneath its long, ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... more to be 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 of ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... 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 ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... 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, ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... remainder of the day above meteors; if yours—why, you at most admire my fingers. No doubt you are a connoisseur of fingers and such-like trifles; but, then, a woman does not wish to be admired by a connoisseur so much as she hungers to be adored by a maniac. And accordingly, I prefer my ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... thou judgest, Couthon! He is one, Who flies from silent solitary anguish, Seeking forgetful peace amid the jar Of elements. The howl of maniac uproar Lulls to sad sleep the memory of himself. A calm is fatal to him—then he feels The dire upboilings of the storm within him. A tiger mad with inward wounds!—I dread The fierce and restless turbulence ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... remembrance of his mother has often, very often mingled in his gayest hours, and dashed them with remorseful bitterness. He owns that often of late years her image, and that of his sister Mary, have risen so mildly, so impressively before him, that he has flown almost like a maniac from the gay and heartless throngs, to solitude and silence, and as the thoughts of home and his infancy, when he first lisped out his boyish prayer by the side of his sister at his mother's knee, came thronging over him, he has sobbed and wept like a child. These feelings ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... hero of heroes is Valjean. Jean Valjean is conscience. In Macbeth, conscience is warring and retributive. In Richard III, conscience, stifled in waking, speaks in dreams, and is menace, like a sword swung by a maniac's hands. In Arthur Dimmesdale, conscience is lacerative. In Jean Valjean, conscience is regulative, creative, constructive. Jean Valjean is conscience, and conscience is king. What the classic ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... the Quarterly began in 1811, when in a review of Weber's edition of Ford Lamb was described as a "poor maniac." It was renewed in 1814, when his article on Wordsworth's Excursion was mutilated. It broke out again in 1822, as Lamb says here, when a reviewer of Reid's treatise on Hypochondriasis and other Nervous Affections (supposed ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... at all afraid of ghosts when I reach my second wind, and I grabbed at this one. It moved backward silently and as I made a quick step toward it that specter let out the most blood-curdling yell I ever heard—the shriek of a maniac. ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... assented Vixen, with 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
... you crazy? Are you a raving maniac? I never did anything like that. Toot Wambush was writing about Hettie Fergusson. She is his sweetheart; she helped him hide the barrel of whiskey in the kitchen. Oh, Mr. Westerfelt, was that what you've been thinking all ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... horrors which follow when 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 ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... 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 before ...
— War is Kind • Stephen Crane
... paternal grandfather, Robert Scott, who rented the farm of Sandyknowe, in the vicinity of Smailholm Tower, in Roxburghshire. Shortly after his arrival at Sandyknowe, he narrowly escaped destruction through the frantic desperation of a maniac attendant; but he had afterwards to congratulate himself on being enabled to form an early acquaintance with rural scenes. No advantage accruing to his lameness, he was, in his fourth year, removed to Bath, where he remained twelve months, without experiencing benefit ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... 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
... visage, like the hag Remorse That gloateth over on a nameless deed Of darkness and of dole unhistoried. And were there that might hear him, they would hear The murmur of a prayer in deep fear, Through unbarr'd lips, escaping by the half, And all but smother'd by a maniac laugh, That follow'd it, so sudden and so shrill, That swarms of sea-birds, wandering at will Upon the wave, rose startled, and away Went flocking, like a silver shower of spray! And aye he called ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... which adoption of vegetable diet and pure water has not infallibly mitigated, wherever the experiment has been fairly tried. Debility is gradually converted into strength, disease into healthfulness; madness, in all its hideous variety, from the ravings of the fettered maniac, to the unaccountable irrationalities of ill-temper, that make a hell of domestic life, into a calm and considerate evenness of temper, that alone might offer a certain pledge of the future moral reformation ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... was certainly a fool! No man with a grain of sense would do such a thing alone—maybe with a crowd of cheering men, but only a maniac could do it alone—Ned ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... was nothing conciliatory in his reply. I saw that in his heart he despised those dedicated to any but worldly idols. "Every man," he said, "dreams about something, love, honour, and pleasure; you dream of friendship, and devote yourself to a maniac; well, if that be your vocation, doubtless you are in ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... sisters, named Lucy, whom he had most loved when well, had now power to soothe him. He would listen to her voice, and give way to a milder mood when she talked or sang. But this favorite sister married, went to her new home, and the maniac became ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... they would have screamed and emptied the room. They did not see him, and they went on making a clatter with their forks, and a murmur with their conversation. But the man's face was the face of a maniac. ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... 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
... 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 way ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... upon him, but Donaldson managed to secure a good grip and dragged the fellow to the ground. The latter was up in a minute and faced him with that gleam of devilish hatred that marks the foiled maniac. The girl started to separate the two men, but it was unnecessary; she saw the murder fade from her companion's face before the calm untroubled gaze of the other. She saw his strained body relax, she ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... to the abyss; with his mother's sin blackening for him all womankind, and blasting the face of both heaven and earth; and with the knowledge in his heart that he had sent the woman he loved, with her father and her brother, out of the world—maniac, spy, and traitor. Instead of according him such 'poetic justice,' the Poet gives Hamlet the only true success of doing his duty to the end—for it was as much his duty not to act before, as it was his duty to act at last—then sends him after his Ophelia—into ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... he writes from Valladolid, "more a Cecil maniac than ever. In the Duke of Norfolk's conspiracy, the Queen seems to have fairly given up the reins to him. It is impossible to read the correspondence between Philip, Alva, the Pope, the Duke of Norfolk, ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... necessary to search the cabin," Senator Warfield answered stiffly. "Unless she is in a stupor we'd have heard her yelling long ago. The girl was a raving maniac when she appeared at the Sawtooth. It's for her good ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... a tobacco maniac," growled Trendon, feeling in his breast pocket. "The devil," he cried, bringing ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... 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, was it not to protect myself and help others—and was not my motive and ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... hot dust of the road that rose like smoke under their shifting feet. The soldiers had the fighting, plunging prisoner; between their bodies, and past those of the men and women who had run out with them, his young, black-avised face surged and raged in an agony of resistance, lifting itself in a maniac effort to be free, then dragged and beaten down. An old woman tottered on the fringes of the struggle, crying feebly; others, young and old, wept or screamed; a soldier, bitten in the hand, cried an oath and gave way. The prisoner tore ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... and, as they appeared at the door, I joined them; but on striking out a few yards into the moor, we found the maniac already in the custody of two men, who had seized and were dragging her towards her cottage, a miserable hovel, about half a mile away. She never once spoke to us, but continued singing, though in a lower and more subdued tone of ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... 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 States is ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... magazine, containing a mixture of debased Cabalism and vulgar blasphemies, interspersed with panegyrics on haschish—for Crowley combined with sexual perversion an addiction to drugs—which might appear to express only the ravings of a maniac. But eccentricity has often provided the best cloak for dark designs, and the outbreak of war proved that there was a method in the madness of the man whom the authorities persisted in regarding merely as an irresponsible degenerate of a non-political kind. To quote the press report of ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... sends his money abroad at all, he goes wild altogether. He rushes at obscure transactions, and lends to Peru, or Guatemala, or Tierra del Fuego, or some shaky place he knows nothing about. The insular maniac overlooks the continent of Europe, instead of studying it, and seeking what countries there are safe and others risky. Now, why overlook Prussia? It is a country much better governed than England, especially as regards great ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... Albanian. Sultan Mahomet, the 'Grand Seignior' of the whole Turkish Empire, was no strong, powerful man, but a mere stripling who had been scarred and branded for life, some say even deformed, by an attack made upon him in earliest infancy by his own unnatural father, the Sultan Ibrahim. This cruel maniac (whose only excuse was that he was not in possession of more than half his wits at the time) had been seized with a fit of ungovernable rage against the ladies of his harem, and in his fury had done his best to slay his own son and heir. Happily ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... fell—and villagers relate No more of Mary's hour, But how she rose with deadly might, And, with a maniac's power, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various
... it was so—the misdeed was a double-edged blade which cut both ways. It will never be known, probably, how near a massacre followed the explosion of indignation at that maniac's murder of the Emancipator. Fortunately for the unsullied robe of Columbia, a hundred advocates of leaving retribution to Heaven ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... when every freeman should be awake and look to his arms.... Surely, if the danger is groundless, there can be no harm in endeavoring to ascertain its groundlessness. If you were told your house was on fire you would hardly think of calling the man a maniac for informing you of it, even if he should use a tone of voice and gestures somewhat earnest and impassioned. The course of some of our journals on the subject of Popery has led to the belief that they are covertly under the control of the Jesuits. And let me say, sir, that the modes of control in ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... still so unlike the Milly of Tims's intimacy, far from exerting the unnatural strength of a maniac, passively permitted herself to be placed in the chair and listened to what Tims was saying with the puzzled intentness of a child or a foreigner, trying to understand. She laid her head back in ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... and Winslow—within the limits and boundaries of the lazaretto of San Antonio, until their neutrality shall be established, and pending the further pleasure of the Council. And it is further decreed and declared that one Capitano Bunker, formerly of the Excelsior, but now a maniac and lunatic—being irresponsible and visited of God, shall be exempted from the ordinances of this decree until his reason shall be restored; and during that interval subjected to the ordinary remedial ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... 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 ...
— Nor Iron Bars a Cage.... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... or becomes a maniac," thought he to himself, "the end as regards us will be the same for Norbert will break off ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... continued to rage, and the loud peals of thunder and sharp flashes of lightening, together with the shrieks and moans of the maniac in the adjoining room, made the night a fearful one. The long hours wore slowly away, but neither Jerome nor his wife could sleep, and they arose at an early hour in the morning, ordered breakfast, and resolved ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... get it well betrothed, The law would call him madman, and the care Of him and of his goods would pass elsewhere. You offer up your daughter for a lamb; And are you rational? Don't say, I am. No; when a man's a fool, he's then insane: The man that's guilty, he's a maniac plain: The dupe of bubble glory, war's grim queen Has dinned away his senses, ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... close to a dead, human body. Immediately the recollection of the mad woman struck me like a 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
... One horse, rejoicing in the title of "Jean l'Hereux," seemed specially selected for this mode of treatment. He was a brute of surpassing obstinacy, but, as he bore the name of his former owner, a French semi-clerical maniac who had fled from Canada and joined the Blackfeet, and who was regarded by the Crees as one of their direst foes, I rather think that the youthful Battenotte took out on the horse some of the grudges that he owed to the man. Be that ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... pendulums with bits of thread and little balls of clay. He had delineated a segment of a circle on the wall with chalk, and marked their different vibrations by intersecting it with cross lines. A decent-looking man came up, and smiling at the maniac, turned to Harley, and told him that gentleman had once been a very celebrated mathematician. "He fell a sacrifice," said he, "to the theory of comets; for having, with infinite labour, formed a table on the conjectures of Sir Isaac Newton, he was disappointed in the return of one of those luminaries, ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... or even love could supply. All that money can do to lessen her misery, is done. The house in which she lives is surrounded by soft lawns and secluded groves. It has been prepared altogether for the wealthy, and is furnished with every luxury which it may be within the power of a maniac to enjoy. This lady has her own woman to attend her; and the woman, though stout and masterful, is gentle in language and kind in treatment. "An eye for an eye, ma'am. Oh, certainly. That is the law. An eye for an eye, no doubt." This formula she will repeat a dozen times ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... oblige a rearrangement. If I should now utter piercing shrieks and act like a maniac on this platform, it would make many of you revise your ideas as to the probable worth of my philosophy. 'Radium' came the other day as part of the day's content, and seemed for a moment to contradict our ideas of the whole order ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... enemy kept up an incessant rifle and machine-gun fire on our position, the bullets were snapping around our heads like a bunch of fire-crackers and the mud was flying everywhere, but that little seventeen-year-old "kid" kept feeding in belts and all the while whooping and laughing like a maniac. It certainly cheered me up to have him there. The whole thing was over in about twenty minutes but, during that short time, we had learned something which can be learned in no other way—that it is possible for thousands of ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... ignorant folk who came to visit his temple of science, and to inspect its curiosities, felt themselves insulted—not always without reason. He kept a tame maniac in the house, named Lep, and he used to regard the sayings of this personage as oracular, presaging future events, and far better worth listening to than ordinary conversation. Consequently he used to have him at his banquets and feed him himself; and whenever ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... Weggs, however, a strong friendship seemed to spring up between the retired sea captain and the bluff, erratic old farmer, which lasted until the fatal day when one died and the other became a paralytic and a maniac. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... to charity, Until I find peace again, My curse upon the fiend or god That will not let me hear A bird in song upon the bough But, hovering about the notes, There chimes the maniac beating ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... not deficient in courage, but he did not at all relish the idea of tackling single-handed a powerfully built maniac—for such he took the spy to be. He wisely awaited the approach of the Oxford's sea-boat, which, manned by four rowers who were encouraged by Midshipman Setley, was being urged rapidly towards ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... a rosary of beads, enlarging his turband, lengthening his sleeves and blackening his eyelids with antimony. Here, however, it would be out of place. Very comical also is the way in which he pretends to cure the maniac by "muttering unknown words, blowing in her face, biting her ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... 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 ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... Gordon off and flung him upon the heather, where Jock Forrest set his foot upon him, and turned the light of the lantern upon the fierce face of a maniac, foam-flecked and blood- streaked. Jock still growled and gnashed his teeth, and struggled in sullen fury to get at his fallen foe. With his hat Ralph brought water from a deep moss-hole and dashed it upon the face of Winsome. In a little while, she began to sob in a heartbroken ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... much use 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 was hiding—hiding ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... 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
... 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
... want to make a maniac of her. I am serious in this; you must not allude in the remotest way to the cause of her illness when you visit her, or you may regret ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... 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
... introduced 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
... Who knows? But as Simon slipped back he sprang forward, something shining in his hand, and flung himself desperately against the door ere it could be closed. The moment's delay he caused was our chance, and rushing forward we too added our weight to that of the maniac. ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... 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
... he 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 husband and his shrewish wife—"when four eyes ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... sometimes. Charley is very noisy, and so is Meg Druce, when not overpowered by shyness. She will not exchange a sentence with any of the elders, but in the general laugh she chuckles and shrieks like a young Cochin-Chinese chicken learning to crow; and I hear her squealing like a maniac while she is shrimping with the younger ones and Charley. I must except those two young ladies from the unconscious competition, for one has no manners at all, and the other affects those of a man; but as to the rest, they are all as nice as possible, and ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... on like this for three minutes, stopping to laugh like a maniac about every three words, before I can get a word in to tell him that I'm a delicate, high-strung organization myself, if you come right down to it, and I can't stand there in my nightgown listening to a string of nonsense. He chokes and says: 'What nonsense?' ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... speed maniac, and does a carom skid into a cross street that showed he didn't need any ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... his role of good Catholic, perceived at once that the Merchant's Story of these new Arabian Nights was characterised by extreme frankness, was devoid of a sinister motive, and was not the narrative of a maniac. A physician, he adds sententiously, is not to be deceived. He determined thereupon that he himself would descend into the abyss, taking with him a mental reservation in all he said and did as a kind of discharge in full. The Church and humanity required it. Behold him then presently at Naples, making ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... 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 you think ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... the name of the Archbishop of Dublin, who, while in England, narrowly escaped martyrdom from the hands of a maniac, while celebrating Mass at the tomb of St. Thomas. Four years afterwards, this celebrated ecclesiastic attended at Rome, with Catholicus of Tuam, and the Prelates of Lismore, Limerick, Waterford, and Killaloe, the third ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... became an unendurable burden without 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 to the sacred trusts ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... ceased, she turned her heavy eyes With such a piteous glance upon my face; It pierced my heart, and fast the gathering tears Blinded my sight. Alas! poor maniac; For thee no hope shall dawn—no tender thought Wake in thy blighted heart a thrill of joy. The immortal mind is levelled with the dust, Ere the tenacious cords of life give way. Hers was a common tale—she ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... the gleam of madness; but I remained silent and awaited further developments. But my scrutiny, stolen as it was, had been detected, and he replied at once to the expression of my face: "No, sir; I am neither drunk nor a maniac; I am in deep earnest in all that I say; and I am fully prepared, by actual experiment, to demonstrate beyond all doubt the truth of all ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... "You maniac!" I hear him mutter: "I expected you were given to such tricks as these. Lucky for you no eyes but mine have seen your abject folly. Come ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... friend, Sir 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 ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... the story. Jones was a madman, a homicidal maniac of the worst type. Always a madman, the homicidal element of his disease was recurrent and ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... poor bruised bosom, the womanly pride humbled in the dust and wifely honor wounded unto death—these alone are real! With an involuntary cry of rage and shame, a cry that is half a prayer and half a curse—a cry that rings and reverberates through the great sleepy house like a maniac's shriek heard at midnight among the tombs—she flings herself sobbing and moaning upon the marble floor. The drowsy slave starts up as from a dream, quivering in every limb like a coward looking upon his death. He tries to raise the groveling victim of his unbridled lust, ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... proposals. If there was anything like tenderness in her bosom—and no woman was probably ever entirely without that feminine quality—it all disappeared at this plain announcement. Fury, rage, mortified pride, and a volcano of wrath burst out, at one explosion, converting her into a sort of maniac, as it might beat the touch of a magician's wand. Without deigning a reply in words, she made the arches of the forest ring with screams, and then flew forward at her victim, seizing him by the hair, ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... was, besides, a prematurely-aged man, exhausted by debauch, crazed by strong drink, a ferocious maniac, mutilating his subjects, his officers or his ministers, as the whim seized him, cutting the nose and ears off some, and the foot or the hand from others. His own death, not unlooked for, would ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... 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 ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 33, November 12, 1870 • Various
... 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 ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... who exercised the strictest economy. M. de Turenne possessed perhaps a 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
... me are become REALITIES, and your Catherine is in the midst of those circumstances to which we may, without exaggeration, give the epithet "horrible." I write, as I firmly believe, from the mansion of a maniac! On a visit to my Aunt Ingram, and carried by her to Thornfield, the seat of her wealthy neighbour, Mr. Rochester, how shall your Catherine's trembling pen unfold the mysteries by which she finds herself surrounded! No sooner had I entered this battlemented mansion ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... hand, whiter than Alpine snow! I gazed at it wildly—the gleam of the jewels down there hurt my eyes—the shine of the silver crucifix clasped in those little waxen fingers dazzled my brain-and with a frantic cry of unreasoning terror, I rushed up the steps with a maniac speed—opened the iron gate through which SHE would pass no more, and stood at liberty in the free air, face to face with a wind as tempestuous as my own passions. With what furious haste I shut the entrance to the vault! with what fierce precaution I locked and doubled-locked it! Nay, ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... most vindictive looks: he thrust out his tongue as the snakes do; he hissed through his teeth with inconceivable strength, and became an object of terror to all by-standers. To the lividness of a corpse he united the desperate force of a maniac; they hardly were able to fasten him, so as to guard themselves from his attacks; when in the space of two hours death relieved the poor wretch from his struggles, and the spectators from their apprehensions. The poison of the rattlesnake is not mortal in so short a space, and hence ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... most commendable men within those dreary walls. As for Hall, he was taken to the dungeon and securely chained by the feet to a ring in the center of the stone floor. There is no doubt whatever that the man was a raving maniac. He howled night and day so that he could be heard everywhere in the prison—"Murder, murder! they are murdering me in this black hole; why don't they take me out and ...
— Seven Wives and Seven Prisons • L.A. Abbott
... and acquaintances they sometimes get glimpses of their prodigal relative, who has settled down into a confirmed gambling maniac, living on such salvage of income as obliging moneylenders have left ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... languages independently of the bones, for the chance of finding details to corroborate his own views, or possibly even to detect Grampus in some oversight or textual tampering. All other work was neglected: rare clients were sent away and amazed editors found this maniac indifferent to his chance of getting book-parcels from them. It was many months before Merman had satisfied himself that he was strong enough to face round upon his adversary. But at last he had prepared sixty condensed pages of ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... him with any of the uniforms, and the man, put into a soiled canvas suit, had been permanently assigned to stable duty. The third of this interesting trio was something of an idiot, hailing from the Polish districts. He grinned like a maniac, and he was entirely unfit for drill or any other kind of service that required even the faintest degree of intelligence; but, having been laborer with a Polish peasant, he knew how to handle horses and to clean the stable. He addressed, ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... air The maniac bells of War. There will be little of sleeping to-night; There will be wailing and weeping to-night; Death's red sickle is reaping ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... thing he was already certain; he would find that nothing was waiting outside the bubble to kill him. The first bubble attendant had committed suicide and the second was a mindless maniac on the Earthbound cruiser but it must have been something inside the bubble that had caused it. Or else they ...
— The Nothing Equation • Tom Godwin
... he is a maniac," answered Herhor, "but he is very dangerous in every case. Already Assyria has reminded us twice of the last treaty, and is beginning, I hear, to be alarmed at the arming ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... dexterity the old woman suspended this hideous object to a beam of the shed, then descended rapidly to the courtyard to contemplate it. A burst of sardonic laughter escaped from her lips; she remounted, then descended again like a maniac, and each time uttered new cries and ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... blue-red lightning; his ears were aching from the thunder's shock. Once he stood still, unable to suffer longer—for his nerves were paralyzed with fear, and at that pause a fork of vivid flame darted from the blackness and ran like the finger of a maniac down the side of a tall tree. The stroke was so near that the boy did not heed the crash that followed immediately; he saw the wood and earth fly and he shuddered as he looked. That was the bolt that ended the life of Jim the negro, but ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... place, and has quietly settled down into a state of serene prosperity. I have my boots repaired here by an artist who informs me that he studied in the penitentiary; and I visit the lunatic asylum, where I encounter a vivacious maniac who invites me to ride in a chariot drawn by eight lions and ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... too rich to be a spoliator, too frivolous to be a fanatic by principle, the Revolution turned his brain in the same manner as a rapidly flowing river carries with it the eye that in vain strives to gaze fixedly on it. His life seemed that of a maniac; he loved the Revolution when in motion because it was akin to madness. When yet very young he had sullied his name, ruined his fortune, and forfeited his honours by debauchery, women, and gaming. At the Palais Royal and the neighbouring quartiers, the scene of every disorder, he possessed the infamous ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... Alhambra, and struck silence and awe into the crowd of courtly sycophants. Muley Abul Hassan alone was unmoved: he eyed the hoary anchorite with scorn as he stood dauntless before him, and treated his predictions as the ravings of a maniac. The santon rushed from the royal presence, and, descending into the city, hurried through its streets and squares with frantic gesticulations. His voice was heard in every part in awful denunciation: "The ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... "every book about drink," depressing. It told her nothing; all these books seemed to her to hold a policy of despair that indicated lunacy or suicide as Louis's only possible end. E.F. Benson's "House of Defence" was the most hopeful book she read. In the tormented morphia-maniac she saw Louis vividly. But she knew that he was too innately untrustful, unloving, to be saved by an act of faith. She had put that book down an hour ago, and turned again to the real pessimism of Zola, longing for the cool of ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles |
