"Maniac" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to claim his bride, and she was gone,' said Glastonbury; 'his mind sunk under the terrible bereavement. For weeks he was a maniac; and, though Providence spared him again to us, and his mind, thanks to God, is again whole, he is the victim of a profound melancholy, that seems to defy alike medical ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... incarnation of repressed emotions and desires. He had married twice and his fierce passions had made him the father of twenty children before fifty years of age. His first wife had given birth to seven in ten years and died a raving maniac during the birth of her last. Two of his children had already shown the signs of ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... these records, so eccentric the vagaries of the soul during its nocturnal wanderings, that I was induced to abandon the task, lest some friend hereafter, might examine, the mystic scroll, and conclude that it was written by a maniac. ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... 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
... simpler catches were held, and one or two of the harder as well. Given this form on the day of their appearance in public, and Henfrey might be disappointed when he came to watch and smile sarcastically. A batting fiasco is not one half so ridiculous as maniac fielding. ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... parallels between the past and the present she might have thought of the priests of Baal who danced in probably just such measures round the cromlechs in the hills above Carnfother; as she wasn't, she remarked merely that this was all very well, but that the old maniac would have to clear out of that before they brought Pilot ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... signers we find 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 general council of Lateran, where they were received with all honour by Pope ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... instances reported in which the period of abstinence has varied from a short time to endurance beyond the bounds of credulity. Hufeland mentions total abstinence from food for seventeen days, and there is a contemporary case of abstinence for forty days in a maniac who subsisted solely on water and tobacco. Bolsot speaks of abstinence for fourteen months, and Consbruch mentions a girl who fasted eighteen months. Muller mentions an old man of forty-five who lived six ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... peculiar set of the Young Electrician's jaw warned you quite definitely that if you should ever even so much as hint the small, sentimental word "lure" to him he would most certainly "swat" you on first impulse for a maniac, and on second impulse for a liar—smiling at you all the while in the strange little wrinkly ...
— The Indiscreet Letter • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... 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 wild and ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... old showman once did, to signalise the fall of the screen in The School for Scandal. The eccentrics and the taste for them have passed away. It seems really once to have been thought that the actor who did not often make a maniac of himself with drink could not be possessed of the divine fire. That demonstration of genius is not expected now, nor does the present age exact from its favourite players the performance of all sorts and varieties of parts. Forrest was the first of the prominent actors to break ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... that image that no two men are alike. The stars show forth God's handy work, yet 'one star different from another star in glory' (1 Cor 15:41). Uniformity is opposed to every law of nature, for no two leaves upon a majestic tree are alike. Who but an idiot or a maniac would attempt to reduce the mental powers of all men to uniformity? Every church may have its own order of public worship while the Scriptures form the standard of truth and morals. Where differences of opinion occur, as they most certainly will, as to the observance ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... some theory to account for a maniac on a deserted schooner in these desolate seas. No doubt if a solitary man were left in these terrible painted seas he would go insane. Madden regretted that he had not searched the Minnie B more thoroughly when he ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... father, musingly, "Saul, I am afraid she was only too right there; he disobeyed the commands of his master, and brought down on his head the vengeance of Heaven—he became a maniac, prophesied, and flung ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... together in rooms poorly ventilated and noisome with filth;" that "in two cages or pens constructed of plank, within the four stone walls of the same room" were confined, and had been for months, a raving maniac and an interesting young woman whose mind was so slightly obscured that it seemed any moment as if the cloud would pass away; that "the whole prison echoed with the blasphemies of the poor old woman, while her young and gentle fellow in suffering seemed to shrink from her words as from blows;" that ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... simple,'t is rather an Encyclopaedia torn into a million million fragments by kittens and pasted together again by infants, so that all possible things are inextricably interfused, every one with every other; 't is a Bradshaw edited by a maniac, where the trains that start but don't arrive are not even distinguished from the trains that arrive but don't start. Wherever persons are conscious of the infinite complexities of things, they will be found cautious of creed and timid of assertion. You have probably noted that at ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... Moore, as we reached the inn and ordered a trap to carry our valuable bargain home in—"I wonder what on earth made Isaacs run off like a maniac." ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... hero of this battle. "It's now or never," I thought, and saw scarlet, and went for my foe like a maniac. The ring was kept by Alfred and Charlie helped, oddly enough, by a couple of male Prendergasts, who so far forgot themselves as to take an interest in the proceedings. Madge and Mimsey ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... awful shadow of a great man's death Falls on this land, so sad and dark before— Dark with the famine and the fever breath, And mad dissensions knawing at its core. Oh! let us hush foul discord's maniac roar, And make a mournful truce, however brief, Like hostile armies when the day is o'er! And thus devote the night-time of our grief To tears and prayers for him, the great ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... himself round at that. "Your mother must have given you a strange idea of me!" he said, with a mixture of anger and mortification which it humiliated him to show, even while he could not manage to hide it. "One would have said I was an ogre—a maniac. But she misjudged me all her life—it is useless to expect anything else—of course she would try to ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... 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 the ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... me someding to murter him mit!" shrieked Hans, like a maniac. "Gif me a gun! I vill shot him on der spot, or somevere near id! ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... in the East begins chronologically with Yusuf and Zulaykha (Potiphar's wife) sung by Jami (nat. A.H. 8171414); the next in date is Khusraw and Shirin (also by Nizami); Farhad and Shirin; and Layla and Majnun (the Night-black maid and the Maniac-man) are the last. We are obliged to compare the lovers with "Romeo and Juliet," having no corresponding instances in modern days: the classics of Europe supply a host as Hero and Leander, Theagenes and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... Vandrift!" the rogue cried. "No, no, sir, you are a madman!" He looked round at the police. "Take care what you do!" he cried. "This is a raving maniac. I had business just now with Sir Charles Vandrift, who quitted the room as these gentlemen entered. This person is mad, and you, monsieur, I doubt not," bowing to me, "you ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... all, and 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
... ire is a great impediment and whose favour is productive of mighty fruits? No one should move his lips, arms and thighs, before the king. A person should speak and spit before the king only mildly. In the presence of even laughable objects, a man should not break out into loud laughter, like a maniac; nor should one show (unreasonable) gravity by containing himself, to the utmost. One should smile modestly, to show his interest (in what is before him). He that is ever mindful of the king's welfare, and is neither exhilarated by reward nor depressed by disgrace, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... that time, seemed almost the raving of a mad man. This is the view the chief took of it, and he decided to conciliate the maniac. ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson
... apprentice-blacksmith in our village, and I a schoolboy, a couple of young Englishmen came to the town and sojourned a while; and one day they got themselves up in cheap royal finery and did the Richard III swordfight with maniac energy and prodigious powwow, in the presence of the village boys. This blacksmith cub was there, and the histrionic poison entered his bones. This vast, lumbering, ignorant, dull-witted lout was stage-struck, and irrecoverably. He disappeared, and presently turned ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... "life," never describing with real skill, so as to interest anything which would make life worth living for—except love—which is good to a certain extent, but not absolutely all in all, save to the eroto-maniac. And as most novelists now pretend to instruct and convey ideas, beyond mere story-telling, or even being "interesting," which means the love or detective business, I would suggest to some of these writers that the marvelous latent powers of the human mind, and also some ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... night.) The Moslem deprecates the deed, Cuts off the head that holds the creed, Then reverently goes to grass, Muttering thanks to Balaam's Ass For faith and learning to refute Idolatry so dissolute! But should a maniac dash past, With straws in beard and hands upcast, To him (through whom, whene'er inclined To preach a bit to Madmankind, The Holy Prophet speaks his mind) Our True Believer lifts his eyes Devoutly and his prayer applies; But next to Solyman the Great Reveres the idiot's ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... Jerry began her story, which she told rapidly in German, he became excited at once, and his manner was that of a maniac, as he turned fiercely upon Tom, denouncing him as a coward and a liar, and threatening to turn him out of the house if he dared harbor such a ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... which is occupied with the antics of the freak, is of interest only to the variation from ordinary minds, and for this reason is never universal. To be quite plain, the tramp in real life, Hamlet and Faust in the arts, are variations; but the maniac in real life, and Des Esseintes and all his ugly crew in ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge
... table, filling the mouth with bread and cheese, and bidding him eat, for many a merry meal he had eaten in that house. The poor woman, returning and beholding this dreadful sight, shrieked aloud and fled into the woods, where, as described in the romance, she roamed a raving maniac, and for some time secreted herself from all living society. Some remaining instinctive feeling brought her at length to steal a glance from a distance at the maidens while they milked the cows, which being observed, her husband, Ardvoirlich, had her ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... I said, "though Blasphemy's loud scream With that sweet music of deliverance strove! Though all the fierce and drunken passions wove A dance more wild than e'er was maniac's dream! Ye Storms, that round the dawning east assembled, The Sun was rising, though ye hid his light!" And when, to soothe my soul, that hoped and trembled, The dissonance ceas'd, and all seem'd calm and bright; When France her front deep-scarr'd ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... guileless? Could you be the Mentor to this Telemachus? Think of the temptations of a metropolis. Look at the question well, and let me know speedily; for I've got him as far as this place, and he's kicking up an awful row in the hotel-yard, and rattling his chain like a maniac. Let me know by ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... head. Everything was about as far from all right as it well could be. The cook was a violent maniac who required peas to be picked so young that they weren't worth the picking. Tomes and his footman were a band of malicious pirates who took pleasure in cutting for the table the very buds which ...
— The Beauty and the Bolshevist • Alice Duer Miller
... 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 and attributes ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... sister, for there is certainly a resemblance to himself in it. The picture is set in gold. When Robin first discovered it, the agony of the stricken wretch was most deplorable. He was afraid that the man would remove it, and he screamed and implored like a true maniac. When he found that he might keep it, he evinced the maddest pleasure, and beckoned his keeper to notice and admire it. He pointed to the eyes, and then groaned and wept himself; until Robin was frightened ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... cheer of a couple of student-lamps. So it was warm and snug within, though bleak and raw without; it was light and bright within, though outside it was as dark and dreary as if the world had been lit with Hartford gas. Alonzo smiled feebly to think how his loving vagaries had made him a maniac in the eyes of the world, and was proceeding to pursue his line of thought further, when a faint, sweet strain, the very ghost of sound, so remote and attenuated it seemed, struck upon his ear. His pulses stood still; he listened with parted lips ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... therefore had in old Davidson, the landlord of the Inn, and my companions submitted him to an interrogatory of three long hours' duration. One little anecdote of fresh occurrence struck me as possessing some interest. I will record it. About a month before, a poor maniac presented herself at the gates of Abbotsford. She desired to see Sir Walter. The servant denied her admittance, but such was the earnestness of the poor creature, that auld Saunders, on her pressing application, went and informed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... 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 was not lovely ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... be mine through all time and all eternity; nothing shall tear you from my arms, not even your own wish, your own prayers. Oh, Amelia! do you see that I am a madman, insane from rapture and despair! Should you not flee from a maniac? Perhaps his arm, imbued with giant strength, seeking to hold you ever to his heart, might crush you. Fly, then; spurn me from you; go to your room; go, and say to this mocking courtier, to whom nothing is holy, not even our love, who is surprised, at nothing—go and say to him: ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... any drab of the streets!" bellowed old Anthony. "He never cared for you. He married you to revenge himself on me. He sent you back here for the same reason. He'll take your child, and break its spirit and ruin its body, for the same reason. The man's a maniac." ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... 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 ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... a maniac and not your da. I could take an oath I seen him raving on the sands to-day. [Girls ...
— The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge
... I am a maniac. I have for some years been the victim of a peculiar insanity, which has greatly distressed several of my friends and relatives. They generally soften it in their talk by the name monomania; but they do not hesitate to aver, when speaking ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... of his heart Crushed also to the sod?" "The nun who saw their lot and part Died maniac, ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... and fashion of Montreal, and since that time Lillian had been the acknowledged belle of the set commonly known as "the upper ten." The letter being written in rather extravagant terms, he imagined it to contain the incoherent ravings of a maniac, and his first impulse was to toss it aside. On the arrival of the English mail, however, he received letters from his friends, couched in terms of the deepest anxiety, urging him to sever all connection with the D'Alton family if ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... looked about him, with a smile so haggard, that the anxious governess unconsciously drew nigher to her pupil, like one who sought, and was willing to yield, protection against the uncertain designs of a maniac. Her visiter, however, remained in a silence so long and deep, that she felt the necessity of removing the awkward embarrassment of their ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... outside got alarmed. Robbie made an attempt to pull up, and then with an odd smile took his whip, gathered up his reins, and lashed the entire four into a gallop. If we had not seen his face we would have thought him a maniac; he kept them well together, and shot down like an arrow, as far as we could see to certain destruction. Right in front at the turn was a stout gate into a field, shut; he drove them straight at that, and through we went, the gate broken into shivers, and we finding ourselves ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... 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, ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... her 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 ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... with his booty, and cheat his son with the rest. On his putting a smooth inquiry to Alfred, his face flushed with shame or anger, and he gave a very short, obscure reply. So he invited the doctor to dinner, and elicited the information that David's life indeed was saved, but he was a maniac; and his sister, a sensible, resolute woman, had signed the certificate, and he was now in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... hands the most sentimental exotics of the publishing firms. There was the 'Elegant Maniac; or, the Snuff-coloured Rose and the Field of Silver,' a beautiful romance. Then there was the 'Sentimental Footpad; or, Honour among Thieves.' And 'Syngenesia,' the last of the melancholies; with the 'Knight of the Snorting Palfrey; or, the Silken Fetlock.' ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... house, to delay but for a few hours that marriage, on which he denounced the most heavy curses. The servants promised they would deliver it; but giving it to the physician, he thought it better not to harass any more the mind of Miss Aubrey by, what he considered, the ravings of a maniac. Night passed on without rest to the busy inmates of the house; and Aubrey heard, with a horror that may more easily be conceived than described, the notes of busy preparation. Morning came, and the ...
— The Vampyre; A Tale • John William Polidori
... I had spoken at the Queen's Hall meeting I had been quite self-possessed. I pursued the narrative and smiled slightly at a description of the Russian—"a loosely-built, bearded giant, unkempt in appearance, and with huge square hands and pale Mongolian eyes which roll like those of a maniac." That was certainly unfair, unless the reporter had seen him at the restaurant when Sarakoff drank the champagne. I was about to continue, when a red brick suddenly landed neatly on my breakfast table, and raised the number of articles ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... for barricading and set to work, despite numbed and weary muscles. Walking on the Moon is tiring for muscles acquired on worlds of greater gravity. He was near exhaustion, but the stimulus of fear is strong. He worked like a maniac, hauling materials for blockade, carrying the smaller ingredients and rolling or dragging the heavier. A brief interval of rest brought Darbor to his side. She worked with him and helped with the heavier items. Fortunately, the faint gravity eased ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... wheeled again; he had caught the cavalry, that rode to meet him, unawares. They were not yet certain whether he was friend or foe, and they were milling in a bunch, shouting orders to one another. He, spurring like a maniac, was heading straight for the searching party, who had formed to cut him off. He seemed to have thrown his heart over Alwa's iron gate and to be thundering on hell's own horse ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... make a few remarks 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 ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... not true," thundered Mr. Wilberfloss, hopping to avoid a perambulating cat. "Nothing will convince me of it. Mr. Benjamin White is not a maniac." ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... when again there came that fearful yell, sounding like what I could conceive to be the horrible laughter of a maniac. ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... sight as if the young man had been the victim of a homicidal maniac, so brutal had been the way in which he had been assassinated. The head and body were battered and bruised by some heavy stick or poker, almost past human shape, as if the murderer had wished to wreak some awful vengeance ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... rushed pell-mell for the camels. At once these men of a martial tribe, men who had cheerfully faced the far greater danger of the Hadendowa general attack, became untrammeled savages, each striving like a maniac to secure a mount for himself, and careless whether or not his employers and ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... out of their houses along the thickly settled streets awe-struck and wondering. No one knew the man, and some thought he was a maniac and laughed. On and on, at a deadly pace, he rode, and shrilly rang out his awful cry. In a few moments, however, there came a cloud of ruin down the broad streets, down the narrow alleys, grinding, twisting, hurling, overturning, crashing—annihilating ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... hour I had staggered to my feet again, shivering in every limb, my teeth chattering, and there I stood staring with the eyes of a maniac ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... old gentleman who controls our Accounts Department, who is the mirror of tenderness. The person I would impale is a creation of my own wrath, a mere official type struck in frenzied fancy, [at a moment when Time seems a maniac scattering dust, and Life a Fury ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... obstinate fanatic, a maniac," thought Pyotr Mihalitch, "and she is as soft, yielding, and weak in character as I am. . . . She and I give in easily, without resistance. She loves him; but, then, I, too, love him in spite ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... surprising it had happened to him. Things like that were bound to happen to him. He had just been lucky that Ed Michaels hadn't called the sheriff. What had got into him? He had never been a sex maniac before! But still ... it was ...
— The Last Place on Earth • James Judson Harmon
... to do it? Had he deteriorated to such a depth of villainy? Could he let that noblest and finest flower of womanhood marry a—dangerous lunatic, a homicidal maniac who had nearly killed the man who proved to be almost his greatest benefactor? Could he? Would the noble-hearted Decies frankly say that he was normal and had a right to marry? He would not, and no living man was better qualified to give an opinion on ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... which tale he listened, his searching eye fixing its stare plump upon me, from time to time; but when I had done, he rang the bell for his clerk, and I could see that he felt himself in the company of a maniac. So I left him, and breathed the breath of liberty again as I went back to the hotel, and told Roderick of the utter and crushing failure waiting upon the very beginning of the task which Martin Hall had left ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... spite of the pressing need of better transportation for coal, cotton, merchandise, and passengers, the bill failed. Such was the blindness, and ignorance, and prejudice of the House of Commons! Think of calling George Stephenson "an ignoramus, a fool, a maniac," in Parliament, yet ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... have taken me for some other person. I will no longer listen to one who is either a maniac ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 6 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... remembered being startled by the face of the woman who found her way into the court. She had seen the look of madness in her eyes as she looked first at Paul and then at her father. After which she uttered the scream of a maniac and then ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... weepest for the Maniac's woe, And thou art fair, and thou, like me, art young; Oh! may thy bosom never, never know The pangs with which my wretched heart is wrung. I had a mother once—a brother too— (Beneath yon yew my father rests his head:) I had a lover once, and kind ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... 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
... into the butler's room. The butler seemed at that moment to have been smitten with a fit of apoplexy—we could see him from our dark corner;—he grew purple in the face, gasped once or twice, choked awfully, and then sat up in bed staring like a maniac. ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... that strange white orb which moves the soul of the lover to dream of love and yearnings after it, which saddens with sweet wounds the soul who has lost it forever, which increases the terrible freedom of the maniac, and perhaps moves the tides, apparently increased the longing in the heart of one poor boy for all the innocent hilarity of his ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... in whose charge she had travelled, with a proper escort, looked upon her as a lovely maniac; and the mixture of pity and admiration wherewith he regarded her, was a strange thing to observe; especially after he had seen our simple house and manners. On the other hand, Lorna considered him a worthy but foolish old gentleman; to whom true happiness meant ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... Slade was a maniac in drink, and this latter became his habitual condition. Now and again he sobered up, and he always was a business man and animated by an ambition to get on in the world. He worked here and there in different capacities, and at last settled on a ranch a dozen miles or so from Virginia City, where ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... greater ills." Thus lamenting, the crowned consort of the illustrious (king) began to seek her lord in those woods, inhabited by beasts of prey. And the daughter of Bhima, wailing bitterly, wandered hither and thither like a maniac, exclaiming, "Alas! Alas! Oh king!" And as she was wailing loudly like a female osprey, and grieving and indulging in piteous lamentations unceasingly, she came near a gigantic serpent. And that huge and hungry serpent thereupon suddenly seized Bhima's daughter, who had come near and was moving ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... frowning when he replied: "You don't see the point involved. I can't reward Judson for what you, yourself, admit was a personal service. I have said that no drunkard shall pull a train on this division. Judson is no less a drink-maniac for the fact that he arrested Rufford when everybody ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... supported me, but here it failed. Was this person an assassin, who was acquainted with the windings of the grotto, and who would take advantage of the dark to execute his vengeance upon me, who had dared to pursue him to these forlorn retreats? or was he maniac, or walker in his sleep? Whichever supposition were true, it would be rash in me to follow him. Besides, he could not long remain in these darksome recesses, unless some fatal ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... 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
... boatswain, spurning him with his foot. "I have you where I swore I'd bring you. And, remember, 'tis I that laid you low—I—I—" He shrieked like a maniac. "When you suffer in that living death for which they design you, remember with every lingering breath of anguish that it was I who brought you there! You trifled with me—mocked me—betrayed me. You denied my request. I grovelled at your feet and begged you—you spurned me as I do you ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... which this book affords the theme is in the singular collocation of characters,—the hero being wrongfully imprisoned as insane, the heroine's father really made so by medical malpractice, the hero's sister dying of injuries received from another maniac, his uncle being imbecile, and his father and one of his physicians becoming monomaniac. Nicer shades than these allow could not be drawn, and the subject stands in bold relief as a monument ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... on. Isabel Sawtelle married a miserable aristocrat, who recently died of delirium tremens. Her father failed, and is now a raving maniac, and wants to bite little children. All her brothers (except one) were sent to the penitentiary for burglary, and her mother peddles clams that are stolen for her by little George, her only son that ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne
... indeed she will not believe me; and I likewise know that now it must be open war between us. For do not think that I will suffer myself to be thus shamefully beaten out of the field. No, by Lucifer and his Tophet! I will die a foaming maniac, fettered in straw, ere that shall happen! If not by persuasion, she shall be mine by chicanery, or even by force. I will perish, Fairfax, sooner ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... where art thou, dearest?" Thus I cry, while yet afar; Ah! what scent invades my nostrils?— 'Tis the smoke of a cigar! Instantly into the parlour Like a maniac, I haste, And I find a young Life-Guardsman, With his ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... expect a summons to death and public shame, to find—Bunning. Bunning—that soft, blithering, emotional, religious, middle-class maniac—Bunning! "Soft-faced" Bunning, as he was called, was the man of Olva's year in whom the world at large found most entertainment. The son of some country clergyman, kicked and battered through the slow, dreary years at some small Public School, he had come up to Saul's ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... said, but his crazed eyes were upon that strained, uplifted face. Jerry-Jo ceased his moaning and—laughed! It was a foolish cackle, such as a maniac might give, mistaking a death-struggle for a bit ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... on saying to himself: No. Women do not love like that. And yet the bare idea of it turned Stanistreet, the cool, the collected, into a trembling maniac. He could not face the possibility of losing her, of being nothing to her. But for that he might have been content to go on drifting indefinitely, sure of a sort of visionary eternity, taking no count of time. He had been ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... the doctor, while we listened with a breathless interest, "he wasn't exactly a maniac, but I think I can safely ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... 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 destruction; the hatchet rises and falls without rest. He ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... on a gray streak of a car, driven by a maniac with a scarf blowing back from a turban over two wildly ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... suffering can wash out sins, I washed out mine. I, who thought I had so many enemies, have no enemy. No one has ever injured me. But if I had the cruellest in the world, I would not condemn him, if he were a morphia maniac, to sudden enforced abstinence and prison life. And I could not die. I am very strong by nature. I could neither die nor live. It was months before I saw light, months of hell, consumed in the flame of hell which is thirst. And slowly the power to live came back to me. I was saved in ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... something of the kind, drew and levelled his revolver, but before he could fire Charlie had caught the uplifted arm, wrested the knife from the man, and thrust him violently back. Thus foiled Jim sprang up again and with a maniac's yell leaped into the sea, and ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... kind words could His mad resolve o'erturn; He plunged into the foaming flood, But never cross'd the burn! And now though ten long years have pass'd Since that wild storm blew by— Oh! still the maniac hears the blast, And still her crazy ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... her sufferings, and restored to liberty. I had seen this young and comely looking woman, who was endowed with more than common good sense, driven to the depths of despair by the intensity of her sufferings. I had seen her a raving maniac. Now, I saw her 'sitting and clothed in her right mind.' I was a thousand times more than compensated for all the pains I had taken. I had sympathized deeply with her sufferings, and I now partook largely of ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... discussions on the Commercial Treaty with the Court of Versailles, on the Regency, on the French Revolution, he showed even more virulence than in conducting the impeachment. Indeed, it may be remarked that the very persons who called him a mischievous maniac, for condemning in burning words the Rohilla war and the spoliation of the Begums, exalted him into a prophet as soon as he began to declaim, with greater vehemence, and not with greater reason, against the taking of the Bastile and the insults ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... clinging snow off his clothes. He shook himself like a dog after a plunge into water. In the distance he saw the hotel, with its promise of luxury and forgetfulness. And he cursed Stampa with a bitter fury of emphasis, trying vainly to persuade himself that he had been the victim of a maniac's delusion. ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... chemical tubes? 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 ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... he, on this day, came leaning on his staff and with considerable strain, as far as the street for a little relaxation, he suddenly caught sight, approaching from the off side, of a Taoist priest with a crippled foot; his maniac appearance so repulsive, his shoes of straw, his dress all in tatters, muttering several sentiments ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... his 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 wilder, ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... intentionally. Coutlass sprang from behind him, having crawled out through a shadow, and hit him so hard with a stone on the back of the skull that he loosed off the rifle and pitched head-foremost down among us. The Greek promptly jumped on top of him with a yell like a maniac's, failing to land with both heels on his backbone by nothing but luck. As it was, he lost balance and sat down so hard on Schillingschen's head that there was no need of the energy with which we all followed suit, piling all over him to pin him ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... was struggling like a maniac between two officers, who were trying to snap a pair of handcuffs ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... justices in Sussex), I shall never forget the way that valet turned on poor Kennaway (for that was the detective's name) and laid him flat on the grass. Such a snarl of rage I never heard. The man seemed transformed in an instant from a silent, reserved, taciturn servant to a very maniac, fighting with teeth and claw, cursing and swearing horribly, and ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... 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
... butler and two footmen, who had been alarmed by the cries, rushed into the room. With their aid we had no further difficulty in securing our prisoner, who lay foaming and glaring upon the ground. One glance at his face was enough to prove that he was a dangerous maniac, while the short, heavy hammer which lay beside the bed showed how murderous had ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 'twas very clear we drank only ginger-beer, Faith, there must ha' been some stingo in the ginger." Come back, you maniac. I'm going to take you home, and you're going to ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... at me with that expressionless look upon his face which he could summon at will, and which is at the bottom of the superstition about his iron nerve. 'I was worried, and not well. Besides, one doesn't care to be burgled, even by a maniac.' ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... with joy. She was free now to give way to her transports without being observed. She traversed her chamber with the excitement of a furious maniac or of a tigress shut up in an iron cage. CERTES, if the knife had been left in her power, she would now have thought, not of killing herself, ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... working with it, as a small portion introduced into a scratch acts like morbid matter in dissection wounds. The agony is so great that the person cuts himself, calls for his mother's breast as if he were returned in idea to his childhood again, or flies from human habitations a raging maniac. The effects on the lion are equally terrible. He is heard moaning in distress, and becomes furious, biting the ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... you can 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 ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... was present, came forward and endeavoured to prepare her for the awful deed which was about to be done upon her, and for the state into which she was about to enter, when she came to herself it was only to scream like a maniac, to curse the Duke as a butcher and tyrant, and to call upon Magny, her ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of a man. Even under the circumstances, it could be nothing else, but of a man who had taken leave of his senses. It was the wild cry of a maniac! ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... his first marriage, Dr. McAlister had bought the place, going far out of the town for the purpose. At that time, he was regarded as little short of a maniac, to prefer land on the ridge to the smooth, conventional little lawns of the middle of the town, where one house was so like another that the inhabitants might have followed the example of the Mad Tea Party and moved up a place, ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... thousands own, Shall thy brows wear the stoic frown? 45 And when her goblet she extends Which maddening myriads press around, What power divine thy soul befriends That thou should'st dash it to the ground?— No, thou shalt drink, and thou shalt know 50 Her transient bliss, her lasting woe, Her maniac joys, that know no measure, And Riot rude and painted Pleasure;— Till (sad reverse!) the Enchantress vile To frowns converts her magic smile; 55 Her train impatient to destroy, Observe her frown with gloomy joy; On thee with harpy fangs they seize The hideous offspring ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... strictures were not really important. In marshalling some thousands of facts, Warton had made perhaps a couple of dozen mistakes, and Ritson advances these with a reiteration and a violence worthy of a maniac. Moreover, and this is the fate of angry pedants, he himself is often found to be as dustily incorrect as Warton when examined by modern lights. Ritson, who accuses Warton of "never having consulted ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... him how poor a creature he had become. And now, after a night of wakefulness and delirium, Brian, with his brain still wild and disordered, perhaps, had taken the boy out with him on some indefinite excursion—alone—the helpless child in the power of a maniac! ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... have appeared, and she is almost frantic with terror. Last night, at 12 o'clock, I was going the rounds of the sick wards, and found her wringing her hands, and running up and down the cell like a maniac. I tried to quiet and encourage her, but she paid no more attention than if stone deaf; and when I started to leave her, she seized my arm, and begged me to ask you to come and stay with her. She thinks ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... and their allies have camped hard by our ships and by the wall; they have lit watchfires throughout their host and deem that nothing can now prevent them from falling on our fleet. Jove, moreover, has sent his lightnings on their right; Hector, in all his glory, rages like a maniac; confident that Jove is with him he fears neither god nor man, but is gone raving mad, and prays for the approach of day. He vows that he will hew the high sterns of our ships in pieces, set fire to their hulls, and make havoc of the Achaeans while ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... view of the maniac coincides with Leigh Hunt's. I agree with them that the character is shocking, but I know that it is but too natural. There is a phase of insanity which may be called moral madness, in which all that is good or even human seems ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... Morton had no difficulty in recognising several of those zealots who had most distinguished themselves by their intemperate opposition to all moderate measures, together with their noted pastor, the fanatical Ephraim Macbriar, and the maniac, Habakkuk Mucklewrath. The Cameronians neither stirred tongue nor hand to welcome their brethren in misfortune, but continued to listen to the low murmured exercise of Macbriar, as he prayed that the Almighty would lift up his hand from his people, and not make an end in the day of his anger. ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... while quietly carving the meat at a dinner to which he had invited several guests, a gentleman opposite him inadvertently spoke the fatal words, when, without a word of warning, he sprang at him across the table, using the carving-knife with all the fury of the most violent maniac; and yet, under all other conditions, he ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... "I'm no speed maniac," she told Gerald, in response to his query as to whether she cared to ride as fast as a railroad train. "I'm well satisfied at the present pace. I feel that it is as fast as we can go in perfect ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... rage, allays the grief or rage. He went about with an aspect of calm insouciance, and therefore with a feeling of calm and ease within. Yet he was like one who walks with a madman, knowing that if his own courage should for one instant seem to waver, the maniac will be upon him. In his journey to town he had been alone, and between one station and another he had opened his portmanteau and taken therefrom a small breech-loading revolver and a stiletto. He laid his hand upon these now and again, and ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... with you. It doesn't make any difference whether he is right or not, but Adrian Brownwell may be fooled into thinking he has reason to be jealous of me." Hendricks was biting his mustache. "He's a raging maniac of jealousy, Jake, but I'm not afraid of him—not for myself. I can get him before he gets me, if it comes to that, but to do it I'll have to sacrifice Molly. And I won't do that. If it comes to her good name or my life—she can have ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... mental, 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 ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... France in paving the way for the revolution. The purest type of Epicureanism may have refined a few of the better sort, but the prevailing influence, doubtless, undermined society. The god of the reason was allied with the god of the sense, and the maniac soul of the lying prophet entered the schools. Education, as directed by them, served only to make youth worldly and frivolous. Teachers sought to amuse and not to instruct, to make royal roads to knowledge, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... about books? How much do you think we spend altogether on our libraries, public or private, as compared with what we spend on our horses? If a man spends lavishly on his library you call him mad—a bibliomaniac. But you never call any one a horse-maniac, though men ruin themselves every day by their horses, and you do not hear of people ruining themselves by their books. Or, to go lower still, how much do you think the contents of the book-shelves of the United Kingdom, public and private, would fetch, as compared with the contents ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... snatched up the official letter, cast his eyes over it, and then, forgetting his gout, caught hold of Syd's hands and began to caper about the room like a maniac. ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... he whirled like a maniac upon his little coterie of followers. "Vile traitor!" he shrieked, "I ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... them) to restrain, And give a wicked pleasure to the vain; Thy long, lean frame by fashion to attire, That lads may laugh and wantons may admire; To raise the mirth of boys, and not to see, Unhappy maniac! that they laugh at thee "These boyish follies, which alone the boy Can idly act, or gracefully enjoy, Add new reproaches to thy fallen state, And make men scorn what they would only hate. "What pains, my brother, dost thou take to prove A taste for follies which thou canst not love! ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... 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
... what mischief had been done during the night, aroused him. He glanced upon his enemy, who pale and trembling, stood gazing on the wreck that he had made. Revenge at last was in his hands—not a moment was to be lost—with the yell of a maniac he sprang upon the powerless and conscious-stricken man—seized him in his arms rushed to the river—and ere any could interpose, both had found a grave where but a few minutes before the bodies of Mary ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... examining the wall of the passage. Presently, drawing out a footrule from his pocket, he actually began to measure it! Miss Du Page saw no more. Hurriedly closing her door, she locked and bolted it, firmly convinced that Gabriel Lane was harboring in the guise of Uncle Sylvester a somnambulist, a maniac, ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... 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 ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... licentiousness of the most debased and debasing character, burying their infirm and aged parents alive, desertion of the sick, revolting cruelties to the unfortunate maniac, cannibalism and drunkenness, form a list of some of the traits in social life among the ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... grates upon the shingly strand, their ears are saluted by a chorus of cries—the alarm signal of seabirds, startled by the intrusion; among them the scream of the harpy eagle, resembling the laugh of a maniac. ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... 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 yellow sand from the wide sea darkening ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... [1] relates the sad story of a farmer of Pavia, who, as a wolf, fell upon many men in the open country and tore them to pieces. After much trouble the maniac was caught, and he then assured his captors that the only difference which existed between himself and a natural wolf, was that in a true wolf the hair grew outward, whilst in him it struck inward. In order to put this assertion to the proof, the magistrates, ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... after me to that home in the Rue de Balzac, which is to be the subject of more lawsuits between the man who let it to me and the man who wouldn't let me have possession, than any other house that ever was built. But I have had no letters at all, and have been—ha, ha!—a maniac since last Monday. ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... women; you have heard the unprotected and unfriended orphans' cry echoed from a thousand blighted homes and squalid tenements; you have seen the outcast family of the inebriate wandering houseless upon the highways, or shivering on the streets; you have shuddered at the sound of the maniac's scream upon the burdened air; you have beheld the human form divine despoiled of every humanizing attribute, transformed from an angel into a devil; you have seen virtue crushed by vice; the bright eye lose its lustre, the lips their power ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... Minion, or I'll give you the Maniac Bride, with my best Ha-ha!' cried Josie, glaring at him like an offended kitten. Being set on her feet, she made a splendid courtesy, and dramatically proclaiming, 'Mrs Woffington's carriage waits,' swept down the steps ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... room for the exhibition of tender, sensitive, apprehensive, scarcely suffering beauty, and set off by contrasts not too strong; so that nothing impedes the mind in, or draws it off from, the contemplation of the madman—here more than madman, the maniac made inspired by the belief of the spectator in denunciations which appear verifying themselves visibly before him. It is this feeling which makes the crazed one grand, heroic, and which constitutes this picture an historical work of a high class. It is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... tired and exhausted, nature would have her due. Joe became merely a driveling maniac, urged along by an insane desire to make progress. At times he would wander round and round, but eventually he would head on straight again. It was late that night that Joe saw far ahead a welcome light. This spurred him on and for about half a mile he almost ran. This spurt ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... several acts of frightfulness on Ben with his crutch, seeming quite active for a cripple. Ben finally got out of range and went and had some stitches took in his own scalp. He swore, by doggie, he was through with that maniac forever! But he wasn't ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... fixed his gaze on something that stood just above—something which the dusk half concealed, and by so doing made more impressive. It was the sculptured counterfeit of a human face, that of a man distraught with agony. The eyes stared wildly from their sockets, the hair struggled in maniac disorder, the forehead was wrung with torture, the cheeks sunken, the throat fearsomely wasted, and from the wide lips there seemed to be issuing a horrible cry. Above this hideous effigy was carved the legend: 'MIDDLESEX HOUSE ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... 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
... grasped in his vise-like hands. His hatless head was thrust far out, as though it strove to get to Beulah Sands ahead of his body. His teeth were set, and as I had jumped into the machine I had noted that his eyes were those of a maniac, who saw sanity just ahead if he could but get to it in time. His ears were deaf not only to the howl of the terrified throng and the curses of the teamsters who frantically pulled their horses to the curb, but to my warnings as well. He swung the machine around ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... gentle voice—"I wonder, Talbot, if you had that look when you placed yourself in front of me and faced their levelled rifles. If so, Talbot, lad, I don't wonder that the soldiers paused; for they say that the calm eye of man can tame the wild beast or the fury of the maniac; and so your eyes tamed the madness of these fierce ruffians. Was your look then, Talbot, as calm and as firm as it ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... he was turning in the saddle to observe the singular effect of the lurid light upon the landscape, a freight-train shot obliquely across the road within five rods of his horse's head, the engine flinging great flakes of fiery spume from its nostrils, and shrieking like a maniac as it plunged into a tunnel through a spur of the hills. Mary went sideways, like a crab, for the next three ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... 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 disturb him in ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... February 1829, Jonathan Martin, a brother of the apocalyptic painter, John Martin, and a religious maniac, hid himself during evening service behind the tomb of Archbishop Greenfield in the north transept, and when the church was shut up for the night set fire to the choir. The flames were not extinguished until the stalls, ...
— The Cathedral Church of York - Bell's Cathedrals: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief - History of the Archi-Episcopal See • A. Clutton-Brock
... 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 ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... me and, as I followed him with some eagerness, he ran, only to accelerate his speed when he found he was being pursued. I became more and more convinced that he had recognised me, because he always looked back anxiously when he reached a corner; but seeing that I was hunting him like a maniac, he started off again each time with renewed energy. Thus I followed him through a labyrinth of streets, hardly distinguishable in the thick mist, until I eventually lost sight of him altogether, never to see him again. It was near the church ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... every pretension of the afflicted children to preternatural experiences and communications, and every tale of apparitions of departed spirits and the ghosts of murdered men, women, and children, which, engendered in morbid and maniac imaginations, had been employed to fill him and others with horror, inspire revenge, and drive on the general delirium. And it fortified every point by the law and the testimony, by passages and scraps of Scripture, studiously and skilfully culled out, and ingeniously applied. ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... Furthermore he could perceive no links connecting the three, and no reason why they should have engaged the attention of a common enemy. Such crimes would seem to be purposeless. Assuming that "The Scorpion" was an individual, that individual apparently was a dangerous homicidal maniac. ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer |
