"Maniac" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... up Sarah was an old German artist, painter and musician both, of rare genius, but a maniac, as they called him. At all events, he was a good, ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... mountains and valley farms, rather than a built-up industrial district. Local police and wild-game protection officers are concerned; all the farmers excited, and going armed. The theory is that it's either a wildcat of some sort, or a maniac armed with a cutlass. Either theory would conform, more or less, to the nature of its depredations. Nobody ...
— Police Operation • H. Beam Piper
... said to one another as they sought their houses: "What a powerful witch she must be, to calm down that maniac with one word." While others replied, "But he is possessed with a devil; and she does it because her ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... man was crazy, or at least a monomaniac, and, though he seemed harmless enough, it was of course possible that he might be dangerous. He was almost sorry that he had sought shelter here. Better have encountered the storm in its full fury than place himself in the power of a maniac. The rain was now falling in thick drops, and he decided at any rate to remain a while longer. He knew that it would not be well to dispute the old man, and ...
— Bound to Rise • Horatio Alger
... bloodshot with the 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 being that others observed in him. ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... occupied with the antics of the freak, is of interest only to the variation from ordinary minds, and for this reason is never universal. To be quite plain, the tramp in real life, Hamlet and Faust in the arts, are variations; but the maniac in real life, and Des Esseintes and all his ugly crew in the ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge
... thing to be ignorant—so vile that, for the sake of his secret hoard of facts, they do right in breaking with torture into the house of the innocent! Surely they shall not thus find the way of understanding! Surely there is a maniac thirst for knowledge, as a maniac thirst for wine or for blood! He who loves knowledge the most genuinely, will with the most patience wait for it until it can be ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... privilege of fighting in anger. He went without a word toward this hopeless encounter, as a drunkard to his bottle. First Perion killed Ruggiero of the Lamberti and after that Perion raged as a wolf harrying sheep. Six other stalwart men he cut down, like a dumb maniac among tapestries. His horse was slain and lay blocking the road, making a barrier behind which Perion fought. Then Perion encountered Giacomo di Forio, and while the two contended Gulio the Red very warily cast his sword ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... Buttons, "we had better leave. The Sorrentonians will be around here soon to see the maniac. They will find out all about him, and make us acquainted with ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... article on "Imagination in Insanity" (Annales medico-psychologiques, December, 1876), holds that every kind of mental disease has its own form of imagination that expresses itself in stories, compositions, sketches, decorations, dress, and symbolic attributes. The maniac invents complicated and improbable designs; the persecuted, symbolic designs, strange writings, bordering on the horrible; megalomaniacs look for the effect of everything they say and do; the general paralytic lives in grandeur ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... to Judge Merlin's, because, he said, that ancient man was so well stricken with years as to be falling into his dotage; to old Katie's, because most decidedly he declared she was totally unreliable, being half monkey, half maniac, and whole knave; to Jim's, because he averred him to be wholly under the influence of others; to Sally's, for the same reason. It would be monstrous, he said, to send a nobleman and a lady to trial upon such evidence as had been given in by such witnesses ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... terrors begin. All the dark corners are peopled, now, with those spectres which form the cortege of assassins; he is frightened, and hurries on. He soon goes up again, armed with a large hatchet—that found on the second story—and makes the pieces of wood fly about him. He goes about like a maniac, rips up the furniture at hazard; but he pursues a desperate search, the traces of which I have followed, among the debris. Nothing, always nothing! Everything in the room is topsy-turvy; he goes into his cabinet and continues ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... as she stood disheveled at the side scene, ready to go on the stage as Ophelia in her madness, a basket with carrots, turnips, onions, leeks, and pot-herbs, instead of the conventional flowers and straws of the stage maniac, which sent the representative of the fair Ophelia on in a broad grin, with ill-suppressed fury and laughter, which must have given quite an original character of verisimilitude ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... this speed was 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 ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... he evidently did not try to overtake her— only to keep her in sight. The maniac did not choose her course, but ran straight before her, leaping over fallen trees and obstructions with a degree of agility and power that seemed marvellous. Sometimes she shrieked as she ran, sometimes she ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... continued, 'I thought that this beloved cross and these sacred relics would ever get into other hands—would ever touch other flesh—than mine, I should die a maniac, Hal, and my spirit would never be released from the chains of earth.' It was the superstitious tone of his talk that irritated and hardened me. He saw it, and a ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... 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
... on with the birth of Nina, and from that day to her death she was a raving, disgusting maniac, as her mother and grandmother had been before her. This was exceedingly mortifying to the proud Bernards, negroes and all, and the utmost care was taken of Nina, who, nevertheless, was too much like her mother to hope for escape. There was the same peculiar look in the eye—the ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... 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
... "Principles of Selection," and "What of To-morrow?" but candour compels the admission that she was a somewhat reckless driver. Perhaps it was due to some atavistic tendency. One of her ancestors may have been a Roman charioteer or a coach-racing maniac of the Regency days. At any rate, after a hard morning's work on her new book she felt that her mind needed cooling, and found that the rush of air against her face effected this satisfactorily. The greater the ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... nothing, what is?" They were growing incoherent. "What d'you mean, screeching like a maniac? Like a wild woman? The neighbors'll think I've killed you. What d'you ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... with the raging turmoil of water, and a second time he felt the same firm yet smooth surface. His dormant faculties awoke. It was sand. With frenzied desperation, buoyed now by the inspiring hope of safety, he fought his way onwards like a maniac. ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... 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 ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... father, with natural impatience, ready to tear his hair with vexation at having such a little idiot for a son. "Must you rove afield to find poverty to help, when it sits cold enough, the Lord knows, at our own hearth? Oh, little ass, little dolt, little maniac, fit only for a madhouse, talking to iron figures and taking them for real men! What have I done, O heaven, that I should be ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... an old book under his arm, fumbling 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 ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... the wildness of a maniac. "No, no; as far from him as possible! Oh! not with him! She was to blame in our days of splendour as much as he was; but she could not see it; and I durst not reason with her. Not with him! She would ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... some maniac's idea of a joke, you'll have proof very soon that it isn't, because one of the people at your Center is due to leave ...
— Warning from the Stars • Ron Cocking
... behind them. Young Holliday was dancing about, waving a bottle and yelling like a maniac, "Go it, Bertie! Give it ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... 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 ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... arrested as a spy, and hastily condemned to be shot. But each time, on hearing his sentence of death, he gave so strange a laugh that the officer examined him more closely, and then set him free, saying with scornful pity, "It is a harmless maniac. Let him go." ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... type of crime we're working with—the kind we expect future laws to apply to—is strictly limited. It must be a crime of violence against a human being, or a crime of destruction in which there is a grave danger that human lives may be lost. The sex maniac, the firebug, or the goon who gets a thrill out of beating people. Or the reckless driver who has proven that he can't be trusted behind ...
— Nor Iron Bars a Cage.... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... first medical advice of New York, Philadelphia, Edinburgh, Paris, London, and Berlin, for he was his only son. No help came. First his body gave way in pangs and convulsions of suffering. Then his mind gave way and he became a raving maniac. Then his soul went out blaspheming God into a starless eternity. He died at thirty years of age. Behold the ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... indignities. And then that cruel old pagan of a father—was he not ashamed of himself to see the results of his own cold-blooded theories? Was this the glory of art? Was this the reward of the sacrifice of a life? That a sensitive girl should be publicly insulted by a tipsy maniac, and jeered at by a brutal crowd? Macleod laid down the letter for a minute or two, and the look on his face ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... fiercely, and ran madly from the room, along the gallery and down the stairs, shouting and raging like a maniac, Cavalcanti following me. ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... 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
... her death groans which had struck my ears. I threw myself into the midst of the carnage, and, armed with a firebrand, snatched from my burning nuptial chamber, I made my way through the combatants, more like a maniac at the height of his frenzy, than a bridegroom on his wedding-night. Getting into the skirts of the village again, I thought I heard the shrieks of my beloved. I ran towards the direction, and a flash of lightning, that glanced over the adjoining ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... up, sir! She's in my pantry," continued the butler, ruefully. "We've got her in there because there are bars to the windows—she can't get out of that. A terrible time we had, too, sir—she fought us like—like a maniac, protesting all the time that Mrs. Mallathorpe had given her what she had on her. Of course, sir, we don't know what she may have on her—we simply obeyed ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... 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 fell ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... by one of 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 ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... nightmare; and when he was exhausted he lay down, trying to sleep, but finding instead, for the first time in his life, that his brain was too much for him. In the cell next to him was a drunken wife-beater and in the one beyond a yelling maniac. At midnight they opened the station house to the homeless wanderers who were crowded about the door, shivering in the winter blast, and they thronged into the corridor outside of the cells. Some of them stretched themselves out on the bare ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... roots which had grown in the earth; also a piece of wood that had been rudely carved by man; and the number of birds kept increasing. One can readily see how even the most skeptical man on the expedition should have felt sure by this time that the man whom he used to consider a mild maniac was in truth a very wise person. And perhaps the crew did feel it; but also they felt angry at those signs that mocked them day after day by never coming true. They grumbled; and the more the signs increased the more they grumbled; till finally one ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... put into his hands the most sentimental exotics of the publishing firms. There was the 'Elegant Maniac; or, the Snuff-coloured Rose and the Field of Silver,' a beautiful romance. Then there was the 'Sentimental Footpad; or, Honour among Thieves.' And 'Syngenesia,' the last of the melancholies; with the 'Knight of the Snorting ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... upon every thought and action, was lifted and fell away a heavy oppression gone. Bennett and Arcane caught us in their arms and embraced us with all their strength, and Mrs. Bennett when she came fell down on her knees and clung to me like a maniac in the great emotion that came to her, and not a word was spoken. If they had been strong enough they would have carried us to camp upon their shoulders. As it was they stopped two or three times, and turned as if to speak, but there was too much feeling for words, convulsive ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... speed maniac, and does a carom skid into a cross street that showed he didn't need any banked turns ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... 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 the evening; ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... for men, women in love are always blinded by their feelings and never know anything of life. Far from not assenting, they actually turn pale with holy awe, are full of reverence and hang greedily on the maniac's words. Sasha listened to me with attention, but I soon detected an absent-minded expression on her face, she did not understand me. The future of which I talked interested her only in its external aspect and I was wasting time in displaying my plans and projects before her. ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... 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 ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... grown pale, aye, blanched, and bent more than ever, as if old age had already touched her with its featherless wing. Often did she finger the wedding clothes of her Yann, folding and unfolding them again and again like some maniac, especially one of his blue woolen jerseys, which still had preserved his shape; when she threw it gently on the table, it fell with the shoulders and chest well defined; so she placed it by itself on a shelf of ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... life Landseer became hopelessly insane and, during his periods of violence a dangerous homicidal maniac. Such an affection, however, had my father and mother for the friend of their younger days, that they still had him to stay with us in Kent for long periods. He had necessarily to bring a large retinue with him: his own trained mental attendant; Dr. Tuke, a very celebrated ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... 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 match to ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... the cloud, though the latter be near Jove's throne, so the frenzied father, regardless, nay, forgetful, of the place, the time, the occasion, of himself and natural ties, assailed the scared Narcisse, clutching him by the throat with the strength of a maniac, and pushing him backwards against the balustrade, and holding him there transfixed, while, with eyes seething with wrath beneath the blanched, and big, umbrageous brows, and showing like a sudden opening of the infernal pit, he cried: "Demon, ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... Over the top of the flesh-mountain was a big metal object, a shining concave dome with which all the tubes connected; so that a stranger to the procedure could not have felt sure whether the mountain was holding up the dome, or was dangling from it. A piece of symbolism done by a maniac artist, whose meaning no one ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... my horse beside him, a blood-curdling chorus of strange barking screams, as from the throats of maniac women, rose at the farther side of the ravine, drowning the shouts of our men, the ping-g-g of the whistling bullets, and even the sharp crack of the muskets. It was the Indian war-whoop! A swarm of savages were leaping ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... do not place much stock in Professor Cortoran's theory, though I admit that I am prejudiced. Naturally one does not care to believe that the object of his greatest affection is descended from a gibbering idiot and a raving maniac. ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... two scruples (40 grains) of solid opium at a dose, and twenty grains four hours afterwards; which restored the patient. Dr. Brandreth gave 400 drops of laudanum to a maniac in the greatest possible furor, and in a few hours he became calm and rational. Med. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... day. For a month chess will be even more to me than golf or billiards—games which I adore because I am so bad at them. For a month, starting from yesterday when I was inveigled into a game, you must regard me, please, as a chess maniac. ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... I told 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 ...
— Measure for a Loner • James Judson Harmon
... 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 ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... howl like that of a miserable maniac he leapt upon me, tripped and threw me flat upon the flags. I remember the stunning shock of my fall, but remember no more. I learned afterwards that he had pitched me out on to the stairs, and that I ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... agitated as yet to realize that such a charge made under such circumstances could not well prove less than convincing. As he began to collect himself he saw his plight more clearly. His first thought had been that Cortlandt was insane, but the man's actions were not those of a maniac. No! He actually believed and—and these fellows believed also. No doubt they would continue to think him guilty in spite of all that he could do or say; for after this shocking denunciation it ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... edited the Wheeling Intelligencer. His poems seem to be extremely popular, and have been highly praised, the Professor informs us, by Victor Hugo, the Saturday Review and the Commercial Advertiser. The preface is the most amusing part of the book, but the poems also are worth studying. The Maniac, The Bandit Chief, and The Outlaw can hardly be called light reading, but we strongly recommend the ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... 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, which she appeared resolute to draw out by the roots. It was some time before her grasp could ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... in time become more humanized: every month would contribute to make them some little wiser, and, consequently, more manageable; for a child of nine or ten as frantic and ungovernable as these at six and seven would be a maniac. ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... encounter a succession of visions—without reality, but possessed of its power! What if they should be such whose terror would compel him to disclose what most he desired to keep covered? How fearful to be no more his own master, but at the beck and call of a disordered brain, a maniac king in a cosmos acosmos! Better it had been Dawtie, and she had seen in his hands Benvenuto Cellini's chalice made for Pope Clement the Seventh to drink therefrom the holy wine—worth thousands of pounds! ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... founded upon my actual personal knowledge of Poe, in at least the phase of character in which he appeared to me. What he may have been to his ordinary associates, or to the world at large, I do not know; and in the picture presented to us by Dr. Griswold,—half maniac, half demon,—I confess, I cannot recognize a trait of the gentle, grateful, warm-hearted man whom I saw amid his friends,—his careworn face all aglow with generous feeling in the kindness and appreciation to which he was so little accustomed. ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... heart and brain, Sorrow, pestilence, and pain, Moans of anguish, maniac laughter, All the evils that hereafter Shall afflict and vex mankind, All into the air have risen From the chambers of their prison; Only Hope ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... iisdem artibus praecellentem ... namque illa aetas duo pacis decora simul tulit; sed Labeo incorrupta libertate ... celebratior" (An. III. 75). Horace, who was a contemporary of Labeo's, says that he was a maniac, or, at any rate—"considered very crazy in ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... hall, While she stood sobbing in a flood of tears, And he stood choked with anger and amazed. But as I passed the ivied porch he came With bated breath and muttered in my ear— 'Beggar!'—It stung me like a serpent's fang. Pride-pricked and muttering like a maniac, I almost flew the street and hurried home To vent my anger to the silent elms. 'Beggar!'—an hundred times that long, mad night I muttered with hot lips and burning breath; I paced the walk with hurried tread, and raved; I threw myself beneath the willow-tree, ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... disturbed, especially by her, who was practically responsible for all his trouble. Then she insisted on knowing whether he was conscious and whether he had asked for a priest, and when informed that Father Foley had already arrived, it required the strength of four men to hold her. She raved like a maniac, and her screams appalled the garrison. But screams and struggles were all in vain. "Pills the Less" sent for his senior, and "Pills the Pitiless" more than ever deserved his name. He sent for a straitjacket, ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... escort travelled, and of a good many things more about it that nobody guessed at. As for Moran, we could see him fix his eyes upon the sergeant who was driving, and look at him as if he could look right through him. He never took his eyes off him the whole time, but glared at him like a maniac; if some of his people hadn't given him a shove as they passed he would soon have attracted people's attention. But the crowd was too busy looking at the well-conditioned prancing horses and the neatly got ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... piteous to see how in these intervals his delusions were always shaped by the bitterest experiences of his life. Sometimes he fancied that the Americans were pursuing him, or that they were carrying off Ramona, and he was pursuing them. At such times he would run with maniac swiftness for hours, till he fell exhausted on the ground, and slowly regained true consciousness by exhaustion. At other times he believed he owned vast flocks and herds; would enter any enclosure he saw, where there ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... puerperal mania. "What can be more lamentable," asks 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 ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... my sword, when I had said these words, and, fortifying my strength with a heavy meal, so that weakness would not cause me to lose the battle, I presently sallied forth into the public streets and rushed through all the arcades, like a maniac. But while, with my face savagely convulsed in a frown, I was meditating nothing but bloodshed and slaughter, and was continually clapping my hand to the hilt of my sword, which I had consecrated to this, I was observed by a soldier, that is, he either was a real ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... bull falls to the sand and is dead, and the man is unhurt. It is brave. It is magnificent! Ah!—I could love the toreador. But the man of the prize-fight—he is the brute, the human beast, the savage primitive, the maniac that receives many blows in his stupid face and rejoices. Come to Quito and I will show you the brave sport of men, the toreador ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... great to be borne. What should I do: run to the nearest town or village, and request the assistance of my fellow-men? No! that I was ashamed to do; notwithstanding the horror was upon me, I was ashamed to do that. I knew they would consider me a maniac, if I went screaming amongst them; and I did not wish to be considered a maniac. Moreover, I knew that I was not a maniac, for I possessed all my reasoning powers, only the horror was upon me—the screaming horror! But how were indifferent people to ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... of the great Revolution was raging around him, that a physician, learned, ardent, and bold, but scarcely known beyond the little circle of his friends and patients, conceived and executed the idea, then no less wonderful than that of propelling a ship by steam, of striking off the chains of the maniac and opening the door of his cell. Within a few days, says the record, fifty-three persons were restored to light and comparative liberty. In that experiment at the Bicetre, whose triumphant success won the admiration even of those ferocious demagogues who ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... countenance never failed to produce in a nursery, flattered him quite as much as the applause of mature critics. He often exhibited all his powers of mimicry for the amusement of the little Burneys, awed them by shuddering and crouching as if he saw a ghost, scared them by raving like a maniac in Saint Luke's, and then at once became an auctioneer, a chimney-sweeper, or an old woman, and made them laugh till the tears ran down ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 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 ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... hour, Mr. William Brougham, who was retained by the promoters to conduct their case, frankly told him that if he did not moderate his views, and bring his engine within a reasonable speed, he would "inevitably damn the whole thing, and be himself regarded as a maniac ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... round, and stalking rapidly off to the stable like a pair of insane compasses, while the senior clerk returned to the bedroom, where he found Mr. Kennedy still raving, Peter Mactavish still aghast and deadly pale, and Harry Somerville staring like a maniac at his young friend, as if he expected every moment to see him explode, although, to all appearance, he was sleeping soundly, and comfortably too, notwithstanding the noise that was going on around him. Suddenly Harry's eye rested on the label of the half-empty ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... Maniac with his Collar to the bad was found wandering hither and thither with $90 in his Left Hand. The Tout had to shake him a couple of times before he came to. The Tout had some Goods of a very superior Quality. ...
— People You Know • George Ade
... just as near a maniac as a man can be and still go about his business. There'll be a lot of trouble come from this. Hadn't you better advise your folks to call it off? They haven't the least idea, I imagine, what a proposition ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... a few remain behind in the hope that their mate may meet with an accident and 'they can snatch at the work he had.' Why, to talk of individual freedom and equality of opportunity under a system of cannibalistic competition like this is like the mocking laughter of a raving maniac gloating over the torture of the victim it holds in its murderous grip."[45] In another popular pamphlet the worker is told: "After all, John, does it not strike you that there is some foul iniquity in a system which allows one part of the community to do another portion of it to death and to rob ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... streaming towel, and almost brained myself against—the Mail! which was standing there in all stillness, without so much as a horse in it! What I had heard was a heavy coach. And now, having descended like a maniac, I ascended again like a fool, and dried the other half of my face, and put on my bonnet, and came back 'a sadder and ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... disagreement what such a person should be called. Whether revolutionise, atheist, Bright (I said him), or Un-English. Miss Piff screeched her shrill opinion last, in the words: "A malignant maniac!" ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... take that maniac with you," he stormed. "Not a word; I don't care if Rose has murdered all Long Island, he's some use now. Clear out and leave this room ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... beside him, to see if he could do anything for him. Then he found he was praying: he heard him—he could but just hear him—murmuring over and over, all but inaudibly, "Father o' lichts! Father o' lichts! Father o' lichts!" It seemed as if no other word dared mingle itself with that cry. Maniac or not—the mood of the man was supremely sane, and altogether too sacred to disturb. Malcolm retreated a little way, sat down in the sand and watched beside him. It was a solemn time—the full tide lapping up on the long ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... chord of feverish extravagance; the more hateful to Colney because of his perceiving, that she simulated a blind devotedness to stupefy her natural pride; and he was divided between stamping on her for an imbecile and dashing at Victor for a maniac. But her situation rendered her pitiable. 'You will learn tomorrow what Victor has done,' he said, and thought how the simple words carried ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to the skin, and having his body most hideously marked, ran about the town like a maniac with a spear in his hand, calling loudly on Dju dju, and uttering a wild, frantic cry at every corner. It appears that one of his father's wives had been strongly suspected of adulterous intercourse with a free man residing in the town, and that this strange ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... stationed at Fort Chippewyan, Athabasca. He was informed that a man had gone violently insane at Hay River, 350 miles from his post. He proceeded there with dog train, accompanied by the interpreter only and brought the unfortunate man, who was a raving maniac, back to Fort Chippewyan, and thence escorted him to Fort Saskatchewan, travelling a distance of 1,300 miles with dogs and occupying forty-four days on the journey. This is not an isolated instance. It represents the work of Inspector ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... This appears not to be so. All the miserable depression of spirits, all the incapacity to banish distressing fears and suspicions, which paved the way to real insanity, exist in even intensified degree when insanity has actually been reached. The poor maniac fancies he is surrounded by burning fires, that he is encircled by writhing snakes, that he is in hell, tormented by devils; and we must remember that the misery caused by firmly believing a thing which does not exist, is precisely the same as that ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... place that always makes one think about things, and secondly one always finds out in the long run. At last Aunt Dora was so terribly afraid of Uncle that she always kept the door of her bedroom locked. It must be awful to have a husband who is a raging maniac. Father once said to Dora: your Aunt Dora is enough to drive one mad with her whims and fancies. Of course he didn't mean that literally, but I must watch carefully to find out what Aunt really does to annoy anyone so ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... haunted cottage itself. There lay Grace Davoren, after having given birth to a child; there she lay—the victim of the seducer, on the very eve of dissolution, and beside her, sitting on the bed, the unfortunate Nannie Morrissy, now a confirmed and dying maniac. ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... told the story of Frank's sickness and death,—of the noble conduct of his little sister, who, when there was no other alternative, went cheerfully to the poor-house, winning by her gentle ways the love of those unused to love, and taming the wild mood of a maniac until she was harmless as a child. As he proceeded with his story, George became each moment more and more interested, and when at last there was a pause, he asked, "And is Mary in the ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... that a chimney had gone on fire in some part of London; that it was being looked after, and that he and his comrades were to stop where they were and pay no attention to it, even although some one should rush into the office like a maniac shouting that there was a fire in that particular place. This use of the telegraph in thus stopping the men of the Brigade from going out in force to trifling fires, is of the greatest service, because it not only prevents them from being harassed, the engines from being horsed, and steam ...
— Life in the Red Brigade - London Fire Brigade • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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 ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 33, November 12, 1870 • Various
... she came to Crompton Place, and they guessed her mother was one, and nobody knew anything about her anyway. There was a fierce fight in which Dora came off victorious, with a scratch or two on her face and a torn dress. That afternoon the Colonel was confronted by what seemed a little maniac, demanding to know if her mother was black, and if she had lived only with negroes until she ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... You'll think me a maniac," she said. But he only took her hand as if she had been a child and led ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... that blessed hope," said Mrs. Fabens, with a flush of lofty feeling lighting all her features—"but for that blessed hope, I should be a maniac, I know I ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... large rocks. These streams were different also in character. The larger was placid, and even sullen in its course, wheeling in deep eddies, or sleeping in dark blue pools; but the motions of the lesser brook were rapid and furious, issuing from between precipices, like a maniac from his confinement, all ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... letter moves the princess. At the grave of her unhappy lover, she recalls the words of an old friend of her father's: "Perhaps he was an abnormal man or a maniac.... Perhaps,—who knows?—your life was illumined by a love of which women often dream, a kind of love that one ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... has cut in on one of those animated Automobile Conversations, while the salaried Maniac from France is hitting up 42 miles an Hour, will tell you that the hind end of a Motor Vehicle is no good Trysting Place for an ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... showed him the struggle which was going on. There was no time to note details. Some maniac was assaulting his Tom. He sprang at the man, seized him round the waist, dragged him to the ground, and seated himself upon him. "Now tie his hands," he said complacently, as he balanced himself upon ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of no long continuance. I soon perceived that it was impossible for a maniac to be suffered to proceed to so horrid extremities. I perceived in every thing that related to the count, a spirit very different from that of frenzy. It is thus that I have plunged from uncertainty to uncertainty. From adopting a solution ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... I said, "though Blasphemy's loud scream With that sweet music of deliverance strove! Though all the fierce and drunken passions wove A dance more wild than e'er was maniac's dream! Ye Storms, that round the dawning east assembled, The Sun was rising, though ye hid his light!" And when, to soothe my soul, that hoped and trembled, The dissonance ceas'd, and all seem'd calm and bright; ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... "no, my mother,—not even for thee!" And, dashing the money to the ground, he fled, like a maniac, from the house. ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... that strange madness, to which the 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 his ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... out, his threat was unnecessary, for Henry and his men were close at hand; and before the natives could make up their minds what to do, the whole band came pouring over the hill, with Jo Bumpus far ahead of the rest, leaping and howling like a maniac with excitement. ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... wrapping a handkerchief around his wrist. "Now let's see about getting out of here. These little rats all seem to be asleep, and Lord knows where that maniac Krassnov is. Perhaps we can make it. At any rate, we'll give them a ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... humour had passed from the situation. The man was a lunatic, a religious maniac. Again he addressed Barney Bill. "As I can't convince Mr. Finn of the absurdity of his request, I must ask you to ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... to hunch their backs and crowd closer together in patient misery. Not a bird had the heart to sing; only the loon—storm-lover—laughed his crazy challenge to the elements, and mocked us with his long-drawn maniac scream. ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... slaves Manacling of slaves Maniac woman Man sold by a Presbyterian elder Man-stealing paid for Marriage unknown among slaves Martyr for Christ Maryland Journal Maryville Intelligencer Massacre at Antioch " " Thessalonica " " Vicksburg Masters grant no redress to slaves McIntosh, burning ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... 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 nannymice salestibus ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 14, 1891. • Various
... smiled, frankly pleased. "Not that I'm a bit of an Anglo-maniac," she hastened to affirm, "but, do you know," she leaned toward Danvers in an amusingly confidential way, "I've always felt mortified over my throaty voice—that is, I ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... by the side of Belton's grave and saw the stiffened form of his dearest friend lowered to its last resting place, his grief was of a kind too galling for tears. He laughed a fearful, wicked laugh like unto that of a maniac, and said: "Float on proud flag, while yet you may. Rejoice, oh! ye Anglo-Saxons, yet a little while. Make my father ashamed to own me, his lawful son; call me a bastard child; look upon my pure mother as a harlot; laugh at Viola in the grave of a self-murderer; exhume ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... from his bended knees, By the pale spectre pushed, And, wild as one whom demons seize, Up the hall-staircase rushed; Entered his chamber—near the bed Sheathed steel and fire-arms hung— Impelled by maniac purpose dread He ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... The maniac bellowed: she parted her shaggy locks from her visage, and gazed wildly at her visitors. I recognised well that purple face,—those ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... 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 be extensive. Their names speak for themselves: in ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... came to this country, among strangers, to an humble home, where she suffered many privations, which she bore with woman's fortitude. But when her husband became an inebriate, and treated her with moroseness and brutality, reason forsook its throne, and she became a maniac. Hannah Pease was an intimate friend of hers, who seems to be ever in her mind, perhaps because she used her influence to prevent ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna |
