"Lunatic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... after, on the 30th, there was brought in and put next to my cell an old man, named Isaiah Cooper, a lunatic, who raved, cursed and tore his clothes and bedding. He was brought from the poor farm where he was waiting to be sent to the insane asylum. There were some cigarette, smokers in the jail and the fumes came in my cell, for I had nothing but an open barred door. I begged that I might ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... of necessity, and I saw that the bottom of it was strewn with something white—like very, very tiny scraps of paper. "I think you need not look any further," said I. "Polly, you either are very clever, or else you are a lunatic and a ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... but followed the lunatic's counsel, nevertheless, so far as to refrain from offering the other a lift in the well-appointed brougham, with its burly coachman, waiting to convey him to Ecclesfield Manor, though his late fellow-traveller was proceeding ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... Trent Sonnet—"Give me a cottage on some Cambrian wild," Sonnet supposed to have been addressed by a Female Lunatic to a Lady Sonnet supposed to be written by the unhappy Poet Dermody in a Storm The Winter Traveller Sonnet—"Ye whose aspirings court the muse of lays," Recantatory, in Reply to the foregoing elegant Admonition On hearing the Sounds of an Aolian ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... and in order to get its platform translated into party it had to have Mr. Drury or somebody like him. And if Mr. Drury should resign from the head of the two groups which he alone has made into the semblance of a party, he would be recommended by Mr. Crerar to let his guardian take him to a lunatic asylum. ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... around to my land; I set and sowed acres in ginseng, knowing I must nurse, tend, and cultivate seven years. If my neighbours had understood what I was attempting, what do you think they would have said? Cranky and lazy would have become adjectives too mild. Lunatic would have expressed it better. That's close the general opinion, anyway. Because I will not fell my trees, and the woods hide the work I do, it is generally conceded that I spend my time in the sun reading a book. I do, as often as I have an opportunity. But the point is that this fall, ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... [IBM] A customer who can be relied upon to buy, without fail, the latest version of an existing product (not quite the same as a member of the {lunatic fringe}). A 1993 example of a heatseeker is someone who, owning a 286 PC and Windows 3.0, goes out and buys Windows 3.1 (which offers no worthwhile benefits unless you have a 386). If all customers were heatseekers, vast amounts ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... a lunatic asylum in London in Pope's day. Notice how Pope mentions, in the same breath, Bedlam and Parnassus, the hill of the Muses which poets might well be ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... and that the broken pieces of his second bust were strewn all over the room. It had been smashed to atoms where it stood. In neither case were there any signs which could give us a clue as to the criminal or lunatic who had done the mischief. Now, Mr. Holmes, you ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... from the past. To Rattray, on the other hand, it was rather sadly plain that the place was both a burden and a bore; in fact he vowed it was the dampest and the dullest old ruin under the sun, and that he would sell it to-morrow if he could find a lunatic to buy. His want of sentiment struck me as his one deplorable trait. Yet even this displayed his characteristic merit of frankness. Nor was it at all unpleasant to hear his merry, boyish laughter ringing round hall and gallery, ere it died away ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... in the fact. They will set you down for a lunatic, a contributor to the magazines, or a star-gazer—if you permit them to believe that you can see a single hairsbreadth beyond your nose, or a single inch further by lifting your eyes to Heaven than by fixing them steadfastly ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... master of you. That is what is the matter with the fanatic. He is so obsessed by his idea that he cannot relate it to other ideas, and loses all sense of proportion, and often all sense of sanity. I have seen more unrelieved seriousness in a lunatic ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... about the past of Tommy Trainor as Tommy ever knew. He is welcomed by his old friends. They recognize him from his resemblance to his father, old Micky Trainor. He slips into his position comfortably, and in five years the whole neighborhood would go to court and swear Tims into a lunatic asylum if he ever tried to resume ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... party started after him at an express-train rate. There was some very fine running indeed. Culkins was brought to a sudden stop against a tall board fence, but he sprang back and cleared it like an English hunter, and tore like a lunatic for the city. Half an hour later the party might have been seen, if it hadn't been so pesky dark, groping blindly around the office in which Culkins had been ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne
... "Lunatic I the old fellow is as sane as you or I; and he has some ground of complaint against those Sansis. I asked if he would like a native superintendent of police with some men to make inquiries, but he objected on the grounds the police were rather worse than ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... working for a livelihood. Fortunate that it was so, otherwise a lunatic asylum, or a permanent state of what the doctors call hypochondriasis, might ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... Tom-o'-Bedlam conspire to produce such a medley of mirth checked by misery, and misery rebuked by mirth; where the society of those "strange bedfellows" which misfortunes have brought Lear acquainted with, so finely sets forth the destitute state of the monarch; while the lunatic bans of the one, and the disjointed sayings and wild but pregnant allusions of the other, so wonderfully sympathize with that confusion, which they seem to assist in the production of, in the senses ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... days of war, together with the loss of her husband and home, broke the heart and sickened the brain of Mrs. Waldron; and in the State Lunatic Asylum is an old white-haired woman, with a weary, patient look in her eyes, and this gentle old woman, who sits day after day just looking out at the sunshine and the flowers, is the once beautiful "mamma" of Diddie, Dumps ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... roughly. And then there was so much more play for character. Now-a-days, if a man dare go out of the common ways to seek a manner of life suited to him, and unlike others, he is voted a vagabond, or, at least, a lunatic, supposing he is rich enough to get the sentence so softened. In those days the impossible was possible—a paradox? oh, of course. The perfection of those days was, that they were full of paradoxes. No democracy will ever compass the immensity of Hope, the vastness of Possibility, ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... he. "But before you go, I beg you to observe that if between now and the time you show us these documents you breathe abroad one word of your accusations, I will have you arrested as a dangerous lunatic, and lodged in Santo Spirito; and if these papers are not authentic, you will be arrested to-morrow afternoon on a charge of forgery. You quite understand me?" He stood aside to let her pass. She laughed scornfully in his face, and ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... "Argo is a lunatic without me," he would observe, blandly, to Pipa, if roused by a special outburst of barking, the smoke of his pipe curling round his bullet-head the while. "Lunatics, either among men or beasts, are not worth ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... purchases. He evidently was uncertain whether to set me down as some scientific celebrity or a madman. I think he was inclined to the latter belief. I suppose I was mad. Every great genius is mad upon the subject in which he is greatest. The unsuccessful madman is disgraced and called a lunatic. ...
— The Diamond Lens • Fitz-James O'brien
... might have been interested, but he could not have appreciated the situation, even if I had told him everything. He would not really have known my age, for he would not have believed me. I might have found myself in a lunatic asylum. I never saw Lamb again, and very soon after that meeting ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton
... are "our own flesh and blood," and, as we compel them to be vaccinated, so we should permit them to vote. Is it a dream that Mr. Jesse Collings (how you would have loved that man!) has a Bill for extending the priceless boon of the vote to inmates of Pauper Lunatic Asylums? This may prove that last element in the Elixir of political happiness which we have long sought in vain. Atheists, you will regret to hear, are still unpopular; but the new Parliament ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... responsibility is reposed in you doctors!" I said. "Think what it means to condemn a man to a lunatic asylum. In the hands of the unscrupulous such ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... are also a very conservative people. The fate of all pioneers besets those who attempt to move in this matter. They are jeered at, or, what is worse, neglected. One of the most prominent of the League's workers has been certified a lunatic by an authority whose bitter prejudice is well known, and against whom we have as yet had no grant of a mandamus, and we have all noticed the quiet contempt, the sort of organized boycott or conspiracy of silence ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... to the King, have obtained a majority, and have voted that this army shall be independent of him. They are supported by Prussia, while the King depends on Russia. Authentic information from England leaves not a doubt, that the King is lunatic; and that, instead of the effect, is the cause of the illness, under which he has been so near dying. I mention this, because the English newspapers, speaking by guess on that as they do on all other subjects, might mislead you as to his true situation; or rather, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... irresponsible person whose actions are beyond his power to understand or control, is regarded by society as a being too dangerous to be at large. Of him we do not here speak to any extent, he is too well recognized. It should always be borne in mind, however, that he commits crime because he is a lunatic, and that although his confinement is absolutely necessary, yet there is no warrant whatever that it should ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... duly certified that Nick Should be confined as lunatic, Fit subject for commission. But who the deuce would like to be The devil's person's committee? ...
— The True Legend of St. Dunstan and the Devil • Edward G. Flight
... at the fire, yes, and even puffing out her cheeks and blowing at it, as if she wanted to make it burn more furiously, people have had to choose between taking her for the devil himself or for a lunatic. And there were ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... help in finding employment are taken from the Twenty-eighth Report of the Charity Organization Society of London.[10] "One was a quiet, honest young fellow, a gardener, who had lately come out of a lunatic asylum, his insanity being due, it appeared, to ear trouble, involving a painful operation. He had been some months in the asylum, and on coming out was at some loss to obtain regular employment. The ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... the girl's hands for the instant. Then Richard, white with anger at this interference, answered insolently: "It means that this girl's an escaped lunatic, and we're sent to take her back. She's dangerous, so you'd better keep ...
— The Mystery of Mary • Grace Livingston Hill
... sudden exasperation, turning round in the doorway, 'if you can tell me at any time, how under the sun a man who put on all those clothes could forget to put in his teeth, you may kick me from here to the nearest lunatic asylum, and hand me ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... in. He is the pink of orderliness in his own study and the library, but as long as no one meddles there, he minds nothing. It just keeps him alive; but I believe the Shapcotes think this house a mild lunatic asylum.' ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... commonplace and sensational topics, colloquial expressions, and malformed spelling; but make due concessions to the youth of the editorial staff and the nascent state of the periodical. So promising are the young publishers that time cannot fail to refine and mature their efforts. "An Hour with a Lunatic," by Harry B. Sadik, is a very short and very thrilling tale of the "dime novel" variety. Mr. Sadik has a commendable sense of the dramatic, which would serve him well should he choose a less sensational field of endeavour. ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... then saunter, leaning over bridges to watch the trout in the pools, admiring from a dry-stone dyke the unsteady gambols of new-born lambs, kicking up dust from strips of moor-burn on the heather. Once by a fir-wood he was privileged to surprise three lunatic hares waltzing. His cheeks glowed with the sun; he moved in an atmosphere of pastoral, serene and contented. When the shadows began to lengthen he arrived at the village of Cloncae, where he proposed to lie. The inn looked dirty, ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... Judge Baggs, with considerable asperity, "ef you are an Englishman, try to speak your native tongue, an' explain what you mean by actin' ez ef you'd jes' broke out of a lunatic 'sylum. Speak quick, or I'll fine you drinks for ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... sight of your life. They were having a grand good time dousing me in the drink, you see, when, all of a sudden, Kaiser burst among them. Such whooping and howling I never heard in all my life! You'd sure thought a lunatic asylum had broken loose, boys," and Bones laughed as well ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... King to do his homage at Jerusalem," and he ordered Finch to be thrown into gaol.[111] In 1795 an exactly similar proposal was made by an ex-naval officer, one Richard Brothers, who announced himself as King of the Jews. He also was prosecuted, but was found to be a lunatic.[112] A certain political interest attaches to the case of Brothers; inasmuch as his scheme for the National Restoration of the Jews was brought before the House of Commons by one of his adherents, Mr. Nathaniel Brassey Halhed, M.P., with a motion ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... another mysterious disappearance, and I don't think that any one except the Pentanas and Prince Oscarovitch will trouble much about him. The Pentanas are now deprived of all power for harm, and the Prince will probably be a harmless lunatic when he comes back into the world. I should sweep that dust up and put it into the fireplace, if I were you. In that desk you will find documents giving the whole history of the Affaire Zastrow. They will be useful to you. You will have to excuse me now. Europe is on the brink of war, and I must ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... brought out some clothes of Mother's that I'd kep' laid away,—a good calico dress and some underclothing, all nice and fresh,—and laid them over the back of a cheer by her bed. It seemed kind o' strange to go to bed with a ravin' lunatic, as you may say, in the next room; but I knew I was doin' right, and that was all there was to it. The Lord would see to the rest, ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... familiar of mine—I begin to detest the expression—will accuse me of endeavouring to make a case for myself if I say that I believe my madness to be a disease? I do believe it. I honestly can no more help getting drunk than a lunatic can help screaming and gibbering. It would be different with me, perhaps, were I a contented man, happily married, with children about me, and family cares to distract me. But as I am—a lonely, gloomy being, debarred from love, ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... Their chief notes were the variety of their opinions and the unanimity of their persecution by all other parties. Some of them were men of intelligible social and religious tenets; others furnished the "lunatic fringe" of the reform movement. The proclamation banishing them from England [Sidenote: 1538] on pain of death merely continued the previous practice ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... enemy's cavalry moved in columns on the Charlotte, Franklin, and Nolinsville turnpikes from the south, while Forrest in person with 1,000 cavalry and Hanson's infantry, pushed rapidly forward on the Murfreesboro pike, arriving at the Lunatic Asylum, six miles from Nashville, by daylight. Our pickets and cavalry were driven in, and Hanson was in readiness to make the attack with the infantry when a peremptory order from Breckinridge was received, directing further operations to cease, under express orders from ...
— The Army of the Cumberland • Henry M. Cist
... feet, for of course the bullets might come up through the floor. Aunt Selina joined us there, and Bella, and the Mercer girls, and we sat around and talked in whispers, and Leila Mercer told of the time her grandfather had had a struggle with an escaped lunatic. ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... those letters were written by the late superintendent. The poor man is now a lunatic. ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... some inexplicable fatality to suffer those very afflictions we dread the most. We are told of persons who trembled for a lifetime at the horrid anticipation of being one day mad; it was the shadow of the judgement that was creeping on them, which cast them finally amongst the victims of the lunatic asylum. The suicide is the prophet of his own doom; the presentiment of death by drowning has but too often ended in a watery grave. Perhaps where the fibres of the heart are weakest, the strain brought on them by excited fancy ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... an' talked like a lunatic asylum," he meditated. "I allus was that crazy about babies! Here I've gone an' talked spiteful about th' neighbours, an' told things that hadn't ought t' be told. If I'd a talked about that baby, I'd 'a' let 'er see I was plum foolish about it—an' I couldn't think of a blessed ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... would at once have broken every glass on the table. It would not have surprised him in the least if she had torn handfuls of hair off the King's head. To his amazement she laughed. It was a most unpleasant laugh. But it was not the laugh of a lunatic. ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... diplomacy, had much more than its usual decision. It was abrupt and unhesitating. My demand had evidently taken his "lordship" by surprise. He started from the magisterial chair, in which he was yet to awe so many successions of rustic functionaries, and with a flushed cheek asked "Whether I was lunatic, or supposed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... clay-modelling tools, spinning-wheels, weaving-frames, treadmills, bass drums, enlarged-crayon-portrait apparatuses, blacksmith forges, and everything, seemingly, that could interest the paying lunatic guests of ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... while ago, but his explanations only made the matter more confusing to our minds than it was before. He was surprised at what he called our density, and said the thing was all clear and simple to him. But we discovered afterward that he was an escaped lunatic. ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... from which hypothesis I should the more eagerly recoil. If his hopes reposed on any base of fact, if indeed, by some abhorrent miracle, he should discard his age, death were my only refuge from that most unnatural, that most ungodly union. If, on the other hand, these dreams were merely lunatic, the madness of a life waxed suddenly acute, my pity would become a load almost as heavy to bear as my revolt against the marriage. So passed the night, in alternations of rebellion and despair, of hate and pity; and with the next morning I was only to comprehend more fully ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... quite so loudly, as the driver has pulled the lever back and the steam goes up with less force through the chimney: working quietly. Away, away, on our iron steed through Ealing and Hanwell—across the viaduct over the River Brent, which runs to Brentford—past the pretty church and the dull lunatic asylum, and so on to Slough, which is passed in twenty-three minutes after quitting Paddington. Then we reach Taplow, and have just fifty-five miles to do within the hour. "Crimea" rushes across the Thames below Maidenhead, ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... "Old lunatic!" said James Poynter, with his fat upper lip curling in disgust, as his eyes lit on the row of glass jars with their ghastly contents. "Once I get my lady home, I don't mean to see much of him. Here, boy," he said, as he ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... had but been a convict lunatic, and had shot at the Queen, killed all his creditors to avoid paying them, or indulged in any other little amiable eccentricity of that kind, they would have given ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... said I. "But he's a lunatic, unless I'm mistaken. We'll hear what the doctor says. . . . But he shan't sleep here, to trouble you. . . . Furnilove, whistle up and have a ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Fifish are one and the same thing. Thereupon Francesca told Mr. Macdonald a story she heard in Edinburgh, to the effect that when a certain committee or council was quarreling as to which of certain Fifeshire towns should be the seat of a projected lunatic asylum, a new resident arose and suggested that the building of a wall round the kingdom of Fife would solve the difficulty, settle all disputes, and give sufficient room for the lunatics to ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... have been a long time in hospital," he said aloud. "Why, what a fool I am! The battle was in December, and it is now summer!" He laughed. "No wonder that fellow thought me an escaped lunatic. He was wrong: I am only ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... lost, faint traces of its existence may be perceived in the opinions of the vulgar, and in many of their ordinary forms of expression. Thus it is generally believed throughout all Asia, that the moon has an influence on the brain; and when a man is of insane mind, we call him a lunatic. One of the curses of the common people is, 'May the moon eat up your brains;' and in China they say of a man who has done any act of egregious folly, 'He was gathering wool in ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... home from his office-work to find that his sister had wounded her father in the forehead and had stabbed her mother to the heart. The inquest on the mother, held next day, was closed with a verdict of insanity, and Mary Lamb was placed in a lunatic asylum. ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... drinking spirits in Canada are beyond anything I had imagined, until the report of the census of the Lower province for 1843, and that of Dr. Rees upon the lunatic asylum at Toronto, in the Upper, were published. The population of Lower Canada was ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... just on that account a little bit more formal with the cousins from across the sea than were most of the men of high position in Europe. He was undoubtedly taken aback and thrown off his guard when he found that Edestone was the dangerous American lunatic of whom he had been warned. In the first place, he knew that there was not the slightest chance of his being an impostor, and he also knew exactly how much of a lunatic he was. He knew, in fact, that he was a hard-riding, clear-thinking, high-minded Anglo-Saxon of the very ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... women; but my time was short, and I had to leave them to Captain Guy. So I did keep a lookout for the Sparhawk, and heard of her from two vessels coming north, and finally fell in with you. And a regular lunatic you were when I took you on board; but that's not to be wondered at; and you seem to be all ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... position is to say that woman stands for the idea of Sanity; that intellectual home to which the mind must return after every excursion on extravagance. The mind that finds its way to wild places is the poet's; but the mind that never finds its way back is the lunatic's. There must in every machine be a part that moves and a part that stands still; there must be in everything that changes a part that is unchangeable. And many of the phenomena which moderns hastily condemn are really parts of this position ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... life, but my voyage had been a series of imprudences, committed by a lunatic, and I had not ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... all sins. This blasphemous, fiendish proposition has frightened numbers of half-baked folks, and they have pestered their small modicum of brains over this mysterious say-so of priests and parsons even to the point of committing suicide, or of landing themselves in lunatic asylums. ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... to prevail. This means close confinement, good food, sufficient clothing and comfortable beds. Asylum care means the humane custody of dangerous prisoners. "From the asylum we move on to the hospital system of caring for the insane and this system recognizes the fact that the lunatic is a sick man and needs nursing and medical treatment in order to be cured. Hospital treatment has been gradually introduced during the past thirty years or more," and in time it will eventually supercede asylum ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... give it up for the rest of to-day or you and I will separate here and now. You act as though you had just escaped from a lunatic asylum, and when people see me they are apt to think there are two ...
— Owen Clancy's Happy Trail - or, The Motor Wizard in California • Burt L. Standish
... incidents, Agnes reminded me that I had noticed that circumstance to herself, and that she had answered me faithfully as to the main fact. It was true she had done so; for she had said that she had just met a lunatic who had alarmed her by fixing his attention upon herself, and speaking to her in a ruffian manner; and it was also true that she did sincerely regard him in that light. This led me at the time to construe the whole affair into a casual collision with some poor maniac escaping from ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... temper the harshness of the law: and he destroys the life which the law has given over to him to save. What man of them all shows by his acts that he believes; or would be treated otherwise than as a lunatic if he did? Let those who will, halt between belief and unbelief. It has not been in him to do so. Give him the certainty of another world, and he would have lived for it. Owning no such certainty, he has lived for this one; ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... to herself with a chuckle. "My gracious, Patricia Kendall, what are you thinking of!" she exclaimed in growing amazement. "Are you mad enough to imagine I'm going to behave like a lunatic, just because I'm taking a new name to myself? Do behave or I'll ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... intending to kill all of us. And Owen deserves a sound thrashing for having anything to do with such a murderous lunatic." ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... that year, and when he finally left the University he vanished, so to speak, in a blaze of intellectual glory. I have never seen him again—and never heard of him—and so I suppose his studies led him nowhere. He must be an elderly man now,—he may be lame, blind, lunatic, or what is more probable still, he may be dead, and I don't know why I think of him except that his theories were much the same as those of our little friend,"—again indicating me by a nod—"He never cared for agreeable speeches,—always rather mistrusted social ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... stared in blank bewilderment. He first surmised that an escaped lunatic was face to face with him. Yet there was coherence in the strange man's speech, and nothing wild in his looks. In fact, Mr. Hale had frequently seen the gaunt, gigantic figure of Plutarch dodging about the town, and had heard his name spoken as that of a very ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... said Bakkus. "Much reading in military text-books has made him mad. A considerably less interesting fellow than Andrew, who, after all, has a modicum of brains, one Don Quixote, achieved immortality by proceeding along the same lunatic lines." ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... outstretched and then suddenly drawn back, with gnashing of teeth, by raging, by spitting, by scratching their heads, by gnawing their nails, by stamping with their feet, they rage like madmen, and omit no kind of lunatic behaviour by means of which they may arouse the hatred and anger of both prince and people ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... under the age of puberty is incapable of making a will, because he has no judgement, and so too is a lunatic, because he has lost his reason; and it is immaterial that the one reaches the age of puberty, and the other recovers his faculties, before his decease. If, however, a lunatic makes a will during a lucid interval, the will is deemed valid, and one is ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... enough,' answered the man. 'But you did not see me, because I took very good care that you should not. At first I thought you were a lunatic, preaching to a lot of forms and tables like that, and better left alone. Then, afterwards, I wouldn't let you see me, for fear you should see also that your words had gone in deeper than I cared ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... hour or two; fall asleep in the chair; wake up suddenly; look at the sea,—and cry out! This sea is impossibly blue! The painter who should try to paint it would be denounced as a lunatic.... Yet it is transparent; the foam-clouds, as they sink down, turn sky-blue,—a sky-blue which now looks white by contrast with the strange and violent splendor of the sea color. It seems as if one were looking into an immeasurable dyeing vat, ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... ascended to the room above, Joe went about the kitchen talking to himself, poking the fire violently, overturning the camp stools, knocking about the crockery on the dresser, and otherwise conducting himself like a lunatic. ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... heavy table in the centre of the room. The head developed spasms of agility; there were clangings and rippings, then the foremost section of the long, black snake detached itself, bounded into the air, and, after turning a number of somersaults, became, severally, a torn stocking, excelsior, and a lunatic cat. The ears of this cat were laid back flat upon its head and its speed was excessive upon a fairly circular track it laid out for itself in the library. Flying round this orbit, it perceived the open doorway; passed through it, thence to the kitchen, and ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... guards that his mission was of a celestial nature; but they, not finding messengers from above among the list of visitors set down in the orders of the day, handed poor Martin over to the municipal authorities, who transferred him to the Bicetre lunatic asylum. Here he remained for some time, during which his exemplary piety and touching resignation attracted the attention and respect of the principal physician, who often made him the subject of general conversation. ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... laid bare. Already his mind was rejecting it. The only matter that concerned him was to bring his ship to her destination in a seaman-like manner, and let who would perplex their brains with fantasy. Indeed, he was beginning to regard the Baron as a harmless lunatic, whom Providence had entrusted with the spending of a rich man's money for the special benefit ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... third and a fourth followed it, and the last one did explode. That was plainly too much for some one who had dodged into hiding when the second shot fell; we saw him come rushing out from cover like a lunatic, unconscious of direction and only intent on shielding the top of his head ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... magnificently; 'to afterthink' (still in use in Lancashire) for to repent; 'medeful', which has given way to meritorious; 'untellable' for ineffable; 'dearworth' for precious; Chaucer has 'forword' for promise; Sir John Cheke 'freshman' for proselyte; 'mooned' for lunatic; 'foreshewer' for prophet; 'hundreder' for centurion; Jewel 'foretalk', where we now employ preface; Holland 'sunstead' where we use solstice; 'leechcraft' instead of medicine; and another, 'wordcraft' for logic; 'starconner' (Gascoigne) did service once, if not instead of ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... fellow like myself has to be. You wouldn't have me go down to posterity as Pelham the Pincher, would you? No! Very well, then. By the time this volume is in the hands of the customers, everybody will, of course, have read Mr. J. Storer Clouston's "The Lunatic at Large Again." (Those who are chumps enough to miss it deserve no consideration.) Well, both the hero of "The Lunatic" and my "Sam Marlowe" try to get out of a tight corner by hiding in a suit of armour in the hall of a country-house. Looks fishy, yes? And yet I call on Heaven ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... province she puts down disorder with an iron hand. But in the Ukraine, in Great Russia and in Finland she encourages the party of the Reds, she encourages the Bolshevists; and the poor, ignorant, gullible peasants follow the lead of the men, however criminal—sometimes rather more lunatic than criminal—who would throw them under Germany's feet. The American Bolshevists would tear America to pieces, exactly as ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn
... together the Parent and the child of full age, it is one to which only contract gives its legal validity. The apparent exceptions are exceptions of that stamp which illustrate the rule. The child before years of discretion, the orphan under guardianship, the adjudged lunatic, have all their capacities and incapacities regulated by the Law of Persons. But why? The reason is differently expressed in the conventional language of different systems, but in substance it is stated to the same effect by all. The great majority of ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... have mercy on my son: for he is lunatic and sore vexed: and oft-times he falleth into the fire, ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... I think this man's book disgraceful; he simply runs his sex-idea to death. Really, we aren't all quite so obsessed as that. I do think he ought to be put in his own lunatic asylum." ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the hotel was built on Morgan land, and belonged to the Morgans. Nobody outside a madhouse could be found to dispute with Duke Morgan a title to land within ten miles of Morgan's Gap, and none but a lunatic would attempt to run a hotel at Calabasas, anyway. However, a solution of the difficulty was found: Duke's colorable title gave the cue to his retainers in the Gap, and in time they carted away piecemeal most of the main building, leaving for years the kitchen and the servants' quarters ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... A leader of the Orange Party was opposed by a Nationalist, and the proceedings promised to be lively. They promised for a while to be still livelier, owing to the nomination at the last moment of the local lunatic. ...
— The Master of Mrs. Chilvers • Jerome K. Jerome
... tremble. It is as though she had taken measurements; and the edge of her weapon does not swerve by a hair's breadth. Need I give you any further proofs or examine all the other details with you? Surely not. You now possess the key to the riddle; and you know as I do that only a lunatic can behave in this way, stupidly, savagely, mechanically, like a striking clock or the ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... Turlygood, saying: 'Who gives anything to poor Tom?' sticking pins and nails and sprigs of rosemary into their arms to make them bleed; and with such horrible actions, partly by prayers, and partly with lunatic curses, they move or terrify the ignorant countryfolks into giving them alms. This poor fellow was such a one; and the king seeing him in so wretched a plight, with nothing but a blanket about his ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... continued in doubt as to this had they been treated only to a repetition of the shriek; but this was followed by a series of speeches,—incoherent, it is true, but spoken in an intelligible tongue, and ending in a peal of laughter such as might be heard echoing along the corridors of a lunatic asylum! ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... he said, because he parted his hair in the middle, a "softy," in fact. He did not know in all probability that one gentleman on the jury had a rooted conviction that the murder of the Dewars was the work of a criminal lunatic. There was certainly nothing in Butler's demeanour or ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... one another with a sickly, incredulous smile when they first heard the grim announcement and wondered whether, after all, the new head-master was an escaped lunatic. A few gifted with more presence of mind than others bethought them of visiting the shop and of dispelling the hideous nightmare by ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... the responsibility myself, but I daresay if I were lunatic enough to back him up, the powers that be ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... Bromley, member of Parliament for the university; and the vice-chancellor offered a reward of one hundred pounds to any person who should discover the author. It was either the production of some lunatic, or a weak contrivance to fix an odium on that ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... cloud-like setting that photographers of the baser sort so passionately admire. The place was as windy as Troy; from far on the ringing plains the breeze raced and fell upon this veil, ceaselessly kicking it here and there, in a way that would have driven a strong man lunatic in seven minutes. Sharlee, though a slim girl and no stronger than another, remained entirely unconscious of the behavior of the veil; long familiarity had bred contempt for its boisterous play; and, with her eyes a thousand miles away, she was wishing with her whole heart that ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Construction and Economy 2 0 of PAUPER LUNATIC ASYLUMS; including Instructions to the Architects who offered plans for the Wakefield Asylum, and a sketch of the most approved ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... limb to limb, constantly nearing the base of the tree. "I suppose the thing's been watching me all the time, and wondering what under the sun a fellow could be doing, waving his old handkerchief around as though he were daffy. He looks on me as a lunatic, and I know him to ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... this same state of things continued. When I was tired of pacing the lanes of the city, I wandered into the woods, and when I became restless there, I returned to the lanes of the city like a lunatic. I thought not of nourishment during the day, or sleep at night; like a washerman's dog, that belongs neither to the house nor the ghat [159] The existence of man depends on eating and drinking; he is the worm of the grain. Not the least strength remained ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... lunatic asylum with you alone," replied the painter. "Why don't you go off and do some work instead of exhibiting ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... loose &c n., have a devil; avoir le diable au corps [Fr.]; lose one's head &c (be uncertain) 475. render mad, drive mad &c adj.; madden, dementate^, addle the wits, addle the brain, derange the head, infatuate, befool^; turn the brain, turn one's head; drive one nuts [Coll.]. Adj. insane, mad, lunatic, loony [Coll.]; crazy, crazed, aliene^, non compos mentis; not right, cracked, touched; bereft of reason; all possessed, unhinged, unsettled in one's mind; insensate, reasonless, beside oneself, demented, daft; phrenzied^, frenzied, frenetic; possessed, possessed ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the near alliance of great wits—"the lunatic, the lover, and the poet"—there comes a point where the vagaries of temperament overlap and are confounded, and where the historian, at least, must take a line. None of Sheridan's biographers, and he has had, as I think, more than his share, refer ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... dare call me Biddy. Charles Lomax: you are a fool. Adolphus Cusins: you are a Jesuit. Stephen: you are a prig. Barbara: you are a lunatic. Andrew: you are a vulgar tradesman. Now you all know my opinion; and my conscience is clear, at all events [she sits down again with a vehemence that ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... seemed to him to be unpractical creatures. He had, indeed, himself founded a university before he left America and handsomely endowed several professorial chairs. But he did so in the spirit which led Dean Swift to found a lunatic asylum. He wanted to provide a kind of hospital for a class of men who ought, for the sake of society, to be secluded, lest their theories should come inconveniently athwart the plans of those who are engaged in the ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... with the coin of usury; they never sacrificed their manhood to fashion; they never endangered in the cafes and lupanars their health and reason. The Mosque and the Church, notwithstanding the ignorance and bigotry they foster, are still better than lunatic asylums. And Europe can not ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... Ulster Regiments as I am of the Nationalist Regiments. If five years ago any one had predicted that in a great war in which the Empire was engaged 95,000 recruits would have been raised from Ireland and that there would be 151,143 Irishmen with the colours, would he not have been looked upon as a lunatic?" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 26, 1916 • Various
... He did not dare go away while that menacing figure remained on guard. The police, no doubt, would drive him away in time, but he would come back again. So Simmy Dodge squared his shoulders and marched across the street, to face what might turn out to be a ruthless lunatic—the kind one reads about, who kill their best friends, "and all that ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... for some jest, especially as it came from a Frenchman. What human being would ever have conceived the idea of such a journey? and, if such a person really existed, he must be an idiot, whom one would shut up in a lunatic ward, rather than within the walls ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... military machine were necessary exigencies. Everybody waited, waited, in confidence and with tranquil smiles. Also it is misleading to say that civil life was in abeyance. For the elemental basis of its prosperity and its amenities continued just as though the lunatic bullies of Potsdam had never dictated to Vienna the ultimatum for Serbia. The earth was yielding, fabulously. It was yielding up to within a mile and a half of the German wire entanglements. The peasants would not neglect the earth. Officers remonstrated with them upon their perilous rashness. ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... "Cagliostro scarcely deigned to glance at the furious goldsmith; but in the middle of the profound silence which the incident occasioned among the crowd, a voice, apparently in the clouds, uttered with great distinctness the following words: 'Remove this lunatic, who is possessed by infernal spirits.' Some of the spectators fell on their knees, others seized the unfortunate goldsmith, and the brilliant cortege ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... forgive me, Miss Thornton?" he said, "for running up to the house in this lunatic sort of way? I am still half a school-boy, you know. What an old jewel she is!" he added ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... was disappointed. A lunatic. But a lunatic can murder. Best to proceed, the Coroner thought. "I was not aware that we ...
— The Smiler • Albert Hernhunter
... presented cannot fail to strike one with wonder. Thomas Huxley was now seventeen; he had already had two years' "practice in pharmacy" as a testimonial put it. After a similar apprenticeship, his brother had made the acquaintance of the director of the Gloucester Lunatic Asylum, and was given by him the post of dispenser or "apothecary," which he filled so satisfactorily as to receive a promise that if he went to London for a couple of years to complete his medical training, a substitute should be appointed ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... the English Parliament to look into the matter. They sneered at Stephenson as a lunatic, when he assured them that he could run his engine at twelve miles an hour. One of these wise men said to him: "Suppose a cow were to get in the way of an engine running at that rate of speed, wouldn't that be a very awkward circumstance?" ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... "are we going to hear what happened? You set out all shipshape in an auxiliary rocket, we don't get a peep for ten days, and finally Putz here picks you out of a lunatic ant-heap with a freak ostrich as your pal! Spill ...
— A Martian Odyssey • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... be one of the very common cases of mental hallucination which one hears of every day—the belief of the sufferer that he is surrounded by enemies and followed by spies. It is probably the most usual delusion of the harmless lunatic. ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... very tender with Harvey, whom he pitied both as a lost child and as a lunatic; and when Salters saw that Penn liked the boy, he relaxed, too. Salters was not an amiable person (He esteemed it his business to keep the boys in order); and the first time Harvey, in fear and trembling, on a still day, managed to shin up to the main-truck (Dan was behind him ready to help), ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... it lugubriously with many sighs, her cap much askew. Robert could have kissed her, curls and all, one moment for suggesting the errand, and the next could almost have signed her committal to the county lunatic asylum with a clear conscience. What ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... insane," said Napoleon, after a pause. "I want him to be looked upon as a lunatic. I hope that the whole affair will remain a secret, and that the world will hear nothing of it; but if it should be talked about, we must insist that the man ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... flowing free. Some one interjects a whiskyfied interruption into the Professor's speech, who at once in stentorian tones orders that the disturber of the harmony of the evening shall be summarily consigned to the lunatic asylum. I see him ejected with something like the force of a stone from a catapult and have no reasonable doubt that he will spend the night an inmate of "Craig Duncan." The speeches over bargaining recommences moistened ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... many people looked upon her as a harmless lunatic, but in these extravagances of hers a keener observer surely would have seen the broken fragments of a magnificent edifice that had crumbled into ruin before it was completed, the stones of a heavenly Jerusalem—love, in short, ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... mere outsider to conclude that the horrible decree had actually been put into execution. We may notice in passing that this so-called "lingering death" is now almost invariably coupled with the name of some poor lunatic who in a frenzy of passion has killed either father or mother, sometimes both. Vide Peking Gazette, two or three times every year. This is one of those pleasant fictions of Chinese official life, which every one knows and every one winks at. In nine cases out of ten, the unhappy ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... related some curious particulars, and then continued: "Well, after I had passed him and his turn-out, I drove straight to the public-house, where I baited my horses, and where I found some of the chaises and drivers who had driven the folks to the lunatic-looking mansion, and were now waiting to take them up again. Whilst my horses were eating their bait, I sat me down, as the weather was warm, at a table outside, and smoked a pipe, and drank some ale in company with the coachman of the old gentleman who had gone to the house with his son, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... aunt Celia ever unbent sufficiently to get engaged. But, as I was saying, Mr. Copley has accomplished something, young as he is. He has built three picturesque suburban churches suitable for weddings, and a state lunatic asylum. ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... "I think better of you than to suppose that you try this sort of thing as a joke. But even the vagaries of a fever-crazed lunatic come some time to a limit. What is this talk about heads and baskets? Get yourself together and throw away that absurd cane-chopper. What would Miss Greene think of you?" he ended, with the silky cajolery that one would use ...
— Options • O. Henry
... structure of the play not long before it came from the press. The part of the Athenian lovers certainly has a good deal that, viewed by itself, would scarce do credit even to such a boyhood as Shakespeare's must have been. On the other hand, there is a large philosophy in Theseus' discourse of "the lunatic, the lover, and the poet," a manly judgment in his reasons for preferring the "tedious brief scene of young Pyramus and his love Thisbe," and a bracing freshness in the short dialogue of the chase, all in the best style of the author's second period. Perhaps, however, what seem the defects of ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... disregarded it," she remarked, lifting her dress from the dew-laden grass on to which we had emerged, "it does not matter, does it? Only you are very young, and you know little of the world. Lord Ronald was your predecessor, and he is in a lunatic asylum. No one knows what lies behind certain unfortunate things which have happened during the last months. There is a mystery which ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Without it she takes to peroxide, smooths out her wrinkles with cream, and what is even more tragic, developes a tendency to pursue the young men of her children's generation. People call it ridiculous, lunatic,—so it would be, if it were not so nobly, ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... insist upon giving you the tiresome details of insipid trivialities! There is no escape from them; they are everywhere. They are to be found on farms, in mining-camps, in women's clubs, in churches, jails, and lunatic asylums, and the nearest approach to a release from them is to be fashionable, for in society nobody ever is allowed to finish ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... laughing like a lunatic, and looked very flushed, but she was soaked to such a point that water streamed from her clothes, her hair, her hands. You might have taken her for some fairy of the springs who had ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... the average number annually received amounting to about twelve thousand; and the foundling hospitals alone are capable of receiving upwards of three thousand children annually. Besides the hospitals for the sick, there is also a hospital for poor convalescents at Sta Trinita dei Pellegrini, a lunatic asylum containing about four hundred patients, one for incurables at San Giacomo, a lying-in hospital at San Rocco, and a hospital of education and industry at San Michele. There are also thirteen societies for bestowing dowries on poor young girls ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... his brother's next proceeding he would certainly have pronounced him a hopeless lunatic. He took the sum that fell to him and placed it in the bank to his mother's credit. "The interest money won't amount to much, mother," he said, as he handed her the certificate of deposit, "but I shall enjoy thinking that if you want some little thing you can get ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... himself up nimbly enough, and lent Lanfear his help with the girl. The situation explained itself, almost without his incoherent additions, to the effect that he had become anxious, and had started out with the boy for a guide, to meet them, and had met the lunatic, who suddenly attacked him. While he talked, Lanfear was feeling the girl's pulse, and now and then putting his ear to her heart. With a glance at her father: "You're bleeding, ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... had grown-up children of his own and could not help speaking with a touch of sarcasm—he thought it good for boys in the lunatic stage), "pray," said he, looking quizzically down at the unhappy but firm-minded George as he sat there in his chair, "is there any form of work for which you do ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... least as well keep their arms free. And all down the long line of stragglers that stretched almost far as the eye could reach in the smooth and fertile country the muskets flew through the air to the accompaniment of jeers and laughter such as would have befitted the inmates of a lunatic asylum out for ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... of them stared at me as though I were a freak or a lunatic. Then somebody laughed nervously, and immediately everybody began to laugh. Even the distant army of the Black Kendah became convulsed with roars of unholy merriment and I, Allan Quatermain, was ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... holding aloof for his pleasure or his pride; perhaps because of illness or inability to conceive the actual situation at a distance. He mentioned the presence of the countess, and Mr. Wythan mentioned it, neither of them thinking a rational man would so play the lunatic as to let men starve, and wreck precious mines, for ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and at once enraged wails resounded through all the corridors and rooms of the establishment. This was that general fit of grand hysterics, which takes possession of those confined in prisons, or that elemental insanity (raptus), which envelops unexpectedly and epidemically an entire lunatic asylum, from which even experienced ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... said to his wife, 'my dear, someone's being murdered in the church! Give me my hat and a thick stick, and tell Andrew to come after me. I expect it's the lunatic who stole the tongue.' ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... moment when the Indian approached to within a couple of feet and looked him straight in the face, as was his wont at each turn. But Cheenbuk was gifted with nerves of steel. His contemplation of the moon was so absorbing, that a civilised observer might have mistaken him for an astronomer or a lunatic. Alizay suspected nothing. He turned round, and the Eskimo allowed him to take about five paces before he moved. Then, with the speed of lightning, he ran the sharp blade down his side, severing all his bonds ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... Dr. Holsma's carriage drove up before Juffrouw Pieterse's door that afternoon and Kaatje alighted with her message. After the recent fright Walter had given her, she was glad enough to escape from such close proximity to the young lunatic. For thus ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... and state that if I did not know your business career, and had not read your writings, I should dismiss this latter statement of yours by calling on the proper authorities to take cognizance of you as a most dangerous lunatic, but as your business career and your writings show you to be an able financier, a successful business man, an advanced thinker and brilliant writer, I feel that mental derangement cannot be the cause of ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... circumstance. We now have our splendid county asylums for our lunatics, but the writer can remember the case of an unfortunate lunatic who was kept chained to the kitchen fire-place in a house in Horncastle, was never unchained, and slept on the brick floor. At Horsington the parish officers made special provision for the insane. In the parish chest there was, until quite recently, {159} a brass collar, to which was attached a chain ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... sad case," Mr. Gilbert continued. "My daughter was engaged to marry his son, but I broke off the match. I could not have her marry the son of a lunatic, and there could be no doubt of his condition. He has been seen—a man of his age, and the head of a family—to load himself up with a heavy knapsack, which there was no earthly necessity for him to carry, and go skipping along the road for miles, vaulting over ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... quick but entirely respectful discussion of the situation. They thought him a lunatic who had tramped into, this neighbourhood ignorant of Bill. They desired to temporise until their leader came. Bill would settle him. Some one spoke ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... my deliverers. Lincoln was dancing like a lunatic, uttering his wild, half-Indian yells. A dozen men, in the dark-green uniform of the "mounted rifles", stood looking on and laughing at this grotesque exhibition. Close by another party were guarding some prisoners, while a hundred others were seen in scattered groups along ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... was no less a personage than the manager of the theatre, leaving Dumps fully persuaded that he had been closeted with a lunatic. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 389, September 12, 1829 • Various
... the conductor left him to make inquiries ahead, tapping his forehead significantly to some passengers near, who had overheard the conversation, and who, as soon as the conductor was out of sight, began to question the "harmless lunatic." ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... the hail, and while she still hesitated there at the head of the staircase, the door opened far enough to allow the huddled figure of Miss Polly to creep through the crack. Then the key turned in the lock; and O'Hara's voice was heard pacifying George as he might have pacified a child or a lunatic. After a few minutes the shrieks stopped suddenly; the door was unlocked again for a minute, and there floated out the ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... madness for a man to wish to be a boy again. Chimp and his companions spent a large part of their time in wishing to be men: the other side was not to be believed. But he pulled himself together with the thought that to humour this old lunatic might be funny, and would last only a week. After all, to find a cracked man on the island was better than to find no man at all, now that Ballantyne had been proved to be so wrong. And just then the boy caught a glimpse of the Hermit's anxious eager eyes. 'All ...
— The Flamp, The Ameliorator, and The Schoolboy's Apprentice • E. V. Lucas
... strapped to his own kitchen table, and defend himself to the last gasp with a carving-knife. Exors says that the law is bad, and you can't touch him. As for Barnes, he has gone out of what little wits he ever had with the fright of it, and people seem to think that you couldn't touch a lunatic." ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... certainly have strangled him had not several people, attracted by the noise, rushed in and torn away the madman; and so they saved the Professor, whose wounds were immediately dressed. Siegmund, with all his strength, was not able to subdue the frantic lunatic, who continued to scream in a dreadful way, "Spin round, wooden doll!" and to strike out right and left with his doubled fists. At length the united strength of several succeeded in overpowering him ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann |
