"Lunatic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mad. You bewail that you are at the foot of the ladder, and at the same instant you stipulate that I shall lift you at a bound to the top. Either you are a lunatic, or you are ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... brought to trial by his children as a lunatic; and some, who censured the inequalities of this poet, have also condemned the vanity of Pindar; the rough verses of AEschylus; and Euripides, for the conduct of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Such fishing, shooting, looking through telescopes, and talking of what was to be done on our arrival! Like Antaeus, Sigurdr seemed twice the man he was before, at sight of his native land; and the Doctor grew nearly lunatic when after stalking a solent goose asleep on the water, the bird flew away at the moment the schooner ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... "Nobody can tell how long if it is appealed.... I have had to muddle away the better part of the winter over this business, first and last! It's nothing but popular clamor, suspicion. The government is playing to the gallery. I don't know what the devil will happen to the country with this lunatic of a President. Capital is already freezing up tight. The road will have to issue short-time notes to finance the improvements it has under way, and abandon all new work. Men who have money to invest aren't going ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... by the rooks, were gone; and the trees were lopped and topped out of their remembered shapes. The garden had run wild, and half the windows of the house were shut up. It was occupied, but only by a poor lunatic gentleman, and the people who took care of him. He was always sitting at my little window, looking out into the churchyard; and I wondered whether his rambling thoughts ever went upon any of the fancies that used to occupy mine, on the ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... screaming over toward our left and landed without bursting among low bushes. A 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 with ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... maid, is sick, Almost to be lunatic: AEsculapius! come and bring Means for her recovering; And a gallant cock shall be Offer'd ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... sketch, and note the tints, that he might paint a picture of it later. He made the sketch, saying: 'If I attempted to represent truly what we see before us, the painting would be rejected by the good people at home as absurdly unreal, or as the work of a hopeless lunatic.' There was such a high wind that our small tents had a narrow escape of being blown away. That night the water was frozen in our jugs, and it was quite impossible ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... against sudden attack. Every man's house is literally his castle here, each accessible window being secured with stout iron bars, reaching from the top to the bottom, while bullet-proof doors bar the entrance,—the whole seriously suggestive of jails and lunatic asylums. No carpets are used even in the parlors, though a long rug is sometimes placed between the inevitable double row of rocking-chairs. The best floors are laid in white marble and jasper. The great heat of the climate renders even wooden floors quite insupportable. ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... interfusing, made him mad. That it was only then, on the homeward voyage, after the encounter, that the final monomania seized him, seems all but certain from the fact that, at intervals during the passage, he was a raving lunatic; and, though unlimbed of a leg, yet such vital strength yet lurked in his Egyptian chest, and was moreover intensified by his delirium, that his mates were forced to lace him fast, even there, as he sailed, raving ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... you in convincing the jury that Penreath is a criminal lunatic," said Colwyn. "That is what your defence amounts to. It is a grave responsibility. Doctors and specialists are ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... lunatic asylums, the separate system has its advantages, if not too long continued, and of the promiscuous association system I have already at ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... when he would ask for a horse and go for a long ride. He would make a call at some English estancia, and drink freely of the wine or spirits hospitably set on the table. And the result would be that he would come home raving like a lunatic:—a very little alcohol would drive him mad. Then would follow a day or two of repentance and black melancholy; then recovery and a fresh ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... father's dignity, Mr. Masterman presently beat a retreat, not feeling quite so well satisfied with himself as usual. His companion did not allude directly to her change of views, but treated her with a sort of pitying condescension, as if she had been a mild lunatic. ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... delirious, dementate, mad, lunatic, distracted, frantic, crazed, crack-brained; rickety, decrepit, shaky, tottering, dilapidated; desirous, eager, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... and he passed through several severe illnesses from which his recovery was considered miraculous. His heaviest cross was, perhaps, the hopeless insanity of his first-born son, who throughout his life had to be confined to a locked and barred room as a hopeless and dangerous lunatic. A visitor in the bishop's palace, it is related, once remarked: "You speak so often about sorrows and trials, Bishop Brorson, but you have your ample income and live comfortably in this fine mansion, so how can you know about these things?" Without answering, Brorson beckoned his visitor to follow ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... Olga declared with a suggestion of awe in her voice. "If it isn't a ghost—and I don't believe in such things—it must be somebody escaped from a lunatic asylum." ...
— Campfire Girls at Twin Lakes - The Quest of a Summer Vacation • Stella M. Francis
... Doctor Warren to write an account to him, which he is now doing. His letter says, if an amendment does not take place in twenty-four hours, it is impossible for the King to support it:—he adds to me, he will answer for his never living to be declared a lunatic. I say all this to you in confidence, (though I will not answer for being intelligible,) as it goes by your own servant; but I need not add, your own discretion will remind you how necessary it is that neither my name nor those I use should ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... earthly after all in comparison; and when the summit is reached, and I mount and glide noiselessly away down a gentle declivity, he uses his vocal organs in a manner that simply defies chirographical description or any known comparison; it is the despairing howl of a semi-lunatic at witnessing my departure without having exercised my supposed extraordinary powers in some miraculous manner in his behalf. The road continues as an artificial highway, but is not continuously ridable, owing to the rocky nature of the material ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... Rely upon me. But endeavor to behave more like a man of the world and less like a dangerous lunatic, or ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... building of houses and streets: the drainage: places of amusement: it can close streets and pull down houses: it administers and makes regulations concerning parks, bridges, tunnels, subways, dairies, cattle diseases, explosives, lunatic asylums, reformatory schools, weights and measures. It grants licenses for music and dancing: it carries on, in fact, the whole administration of the greatest City in the world, and, in some ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... talk to her," George broke forth. "I feel as if she might scream in a minute and call everybody in. I've been a lunatic and she has apparently never been kissed before. Tell her—tell her ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... accursed fool who tries to make them," broke in one of the younger men. "There was a fellow who had been pinned up against a barn door and left to hang there—and a coarse, loud-mouthed lunatic asked him to describe how it felt. The chap couldn't stand it. Do you know what he did? He sprang at him and knocked him down. He apologized afterwards and said it was his nerves. But there's not a man who was there who will ever speak to ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... State of Texas I had a niece living whose father was an inmate of a lunatic asylum. She exerted as wide an influence in the State of Texas as any woman there. I allude to Miss Mollie Moore, who was the ward of Mr. Gushing. I give this illustration as a reason why Southern women are taking part in this movement, ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... doctrine that obedience to rulers and contentment in poverty are according to the will of God, and the doctrine that the poor and the oppressed will be compensated in heaven are the chief causes of slums, prisons, lunatic asylums and poor-houses. ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... book of the Iliad, or the sixth book of the AEneid, or the Agamemnon. He encouraged the Eton boys to laugh at "Scientific lectures, and lessons on the diameter of the sun and moon"; but he was moved almost to tears when "Can you not wait upon the lunatic?" was offered as a paraphrase of "Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?" He listened with amused interest to the teachers who deduced our descent from "a hairy quadruped furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... until afterward. He would take the affair upon himself, and I have a chance to kill him, that Gorka—to wound him, at least. In any case, I will arrange it so that a second duel will be rendered difficult to that lunatic.... But, first of all, let us make sure that we have not spoken too loudly and that they have not heard upstairs the ill-bred fellow's ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... startled. A sane man does not talk of breakfasting at nine o'clock in the evening. But if he were a lunatic perhaps it were wise to ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... home and have vaunted the beauty of the old, simple, patriarchal life, and told of how I enjoyed it during my Egyptian explorations, you laughed at me, and as good as called me a lunatic. What do ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... departure from day to day for six months; and then he only did start because his friend Maret himself put him into his carriage, with post-horses already harnessed to it. . . . When he left this post they found in his cabinet 900 letters which he had not opened. He was an eccentric lunatic, amusing enough sometimes, but a curse to everything which depended on him." (Memoirs of the Duc de Raguse, ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... back through the room which was now in almost lunatic confusion—forms being locked; galleys being lifted in; editors, compositors, boys, rushing to and fro in a fury of activity. Again the phenomenon of the news-room, the individual faces calm but their tense ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... time we always saw the lunatic and the bent shepherd together. The older man grew quieter under Lem's care than he had been for years, and if he felt one of his insane impulses overtaking him, ran totteringly to grasp his protector's arm until, quaking ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... of Marat is rather more complicated, not only because his craving for murder was combined with other elements— wounded self-love, ambition, mystic beliefs, &c.—but also because we must regard him as a semi-lunatic, affected by megalomania, and ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... two or three months I shall be allowed, I am sure, to pass at my ease in a lunatic asylum. I have one ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... stress of ignorance to ask the newcomer his name. This is, of course, an insult of the worst kind. "A being who does not know my name," argues the partial slacker, "must be something not far from a criminal lunatic." The name is, however, extracted, and the partial slacker strides to the arena. Now arises insult No. 2. He is wearing his cap. A hint as to the advisability of removing this piece de resistance not being taken, he is ordered to assume a capless state, and by these means a coolness springs ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... who had been in to Winnipeg, told me a day or two before. "I looked in at the Tecumseh House, and the clerk mentioned that a wild man from the old country had been asking for you. Wouldn't answer any questions; a lunatic of some sort, the ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... policy of a closed state put in force against Europe as well as against Asia. An act of Congress passed August 2, 1882, prohibited the landing from any country of any would-be immigrant who was a convict, lunatic, idiot, or unable to take care of himself. This law, like the supplementary one of March 3, 1887, proved inadequate. In 1888 American consuls represented that transatlantic steamship companies were employing unscrupulous brokers ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... clever when they are old or even middle-aged, then allowances are made for them and they may be as odd as they please. But if any one happens to be clever when he is at Oxford, he will have to watch himself closely or he will be called either a genius or a lunatic, and the one is almost as fatal ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... and, on reading them, I was astounded to find one was an order for my removal to a private lunatic asylum, the papers being signed by Josias Googery, J.P., and Dr. Loonem; and others contained statements of the evidences of my insanity, signed ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... alarmed at her appearance, and stood gazing on her in wondering silence. At length she said, "I cannot take a message like that to him; he would think it the wild raving of a lunatic." ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... in reply to this. "He may be Strong by name and he looks strong by nature; but, really, he seems unusually weak in mind—he's a lunatic, ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the wild men had followed Roosevelt, and the most conservative business circles felt at least some relief that there had been no re-entry into the White House of the Rough Rider, with a gift for stinging phrases and a cohort of followers in which the lunatic fringe was disproportionately large ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... her eyes unusually bright and her cheeks burning, "that we've got smallpox here, or diphtheria, or a lunatic asylum, or anything you like. Tell them there's a big dog in the yard that won't let anybody open the gate. ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... 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. At the end of two months Louis heard of ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... a rush for the door, greatly to the annoyance of the people, who not only considered me very dirty, but also very rude in not availing myself of their polite invitation! The next morning as I took my cold bath as usual in beautifully clean spring water, I was condemned and pitied as a lunatic! Such are the different ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... Alone? I did not know you counted me a lunatic," replied Geoffrey. Then, after a look over the fields where the storm was swirling, he gave attention to the point ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... succeeded, and then the fatal Bartholomew marriage with the Messalina of Valois. The faith taught in the mountains of Bearn was no buckler against the demand of "the mass or death," thundered at his breast by the lunatic Charles, as he pointed to thousands of massacred Huguenots. Henry yielded to such conclusive arguments, and became a Catholic. Four years of court imprisonment succeeded, and the young King of Navarre, though proof to the artifices ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... is a lunatic!" cried Nick Smithers, thinking of his experience on the train. "They let him out of the asylum only ...
— From Farm to Fortune - or Nat Nason's Strange Experience • Horatio Alger Jr.
... attempted to start him, he always proceeded backward until I whipped him savagely, and then he would go in a proper manner, but suddenly, and with the air of a horse who had a conviction that there was a lunatic in the carriage who didn't know what he was about. One day, while we were coming down the street, this theory became so strong that he suddenly stopped and backed the carriage through the plate-glass window of Mackey's drug-store. ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... amazement when, on arriving there, he found that the window had been opened in the night 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 have got ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... wealth, of which not more than a half had been mentioned in his will. If Clifford refused to reveal where the missing documents were placed, the judge declared he would have him confined in a public asylum as a lunatic, for there were many witnesses of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... subject, they may have called English attention to the Pythagorean lore concerning the fate of the soul after death,[136] above cited from Montaigne. We might again, on Dr. Tschischwitz's lines, trace the verses on the "shaping fantasies" of "the lunatic, the lover, and the poet," in the MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM,[137] to such a ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... district, as the district of Simcoe is, although I believe about half the money it cost would have been better employed on the roads; for it has never been used, except as a place of confinement for an unfortunate lunatic. ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... somewhat. They might have fired in return, and have brought down their quarry, but no brave man likes to think of shooting a lunatic. ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... were forced to perform the thousand tyrannies that are directed against the child during the day by cruel and thoughtless parents, the lunatic asylum would soon be our place of refuge. Such trivial things as a spot on the shoe, a speck of dirt upon the clothes, a mere tip of the hat, a slight turn of the scarf often give rise to such violent reprimand, and very often ...
— Tyranny of God • Joseph Lewis
... is in Kaiserswerth that the Deaconesses are trained for their humanitarian life-work. Of this institution Mr. Stevenson says: "It consists of an Hospital for men, women, and children; a Lunatic Asylum for females; an Orphanage for girls; a Refuge for discharged female convicts; a Magdalen Asylum; a Normal Seminary for governesses; an Infant School; a Chapel; two shops; a publishing office; a museum; residence for the Deaconesses; and a Home for the infirm. Besides, ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... the institution of a regency necessary. In one word, the purpose of the measure was to prevent such a situation from arising in Prussia as prevails now in Bavaria, where, since 1886 the throne has been occupied by a lunatic prince, who was incurably insane for many years before his accession to the crown, and whose dementia takes that peculiar form, which is described in the Bible as having overtaken Nebuchadnezzar. King Otto of Bavaria imagines ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... mad,' he said, in a cold voice; 'this is the raving of a lunatic; there is no proof of what you say; it was proved conclusively that myself and Pierre were asleep at our hotel while M. Villiers was with Jarper at two o'clock ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... screamed at my grandfather. “You old lunatic, I wish to God I had never seen you! No wonder you came back to life! You’re a tricky old devil and ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... it for a franc and a half, and would have done so, had I not been encumbered with the hurdy-gurdy. That had brought me into such difficulties that I felt convinced a hurdy-gurdy a spinning-wheel would lodge me in a lunatic asylum. So ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... tread, so peculiarly English. Indeed, in walking along the streets, there is nothing to tell that one is not in England; and if anything were needed to complete the illusion, those sure tokens of British civilisation, a jail and a lunatic asylum, are ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... at S. Athanasius that morning, and the Rev. Thomas Todd was later on conveyed, still shouting fragments of circus dialogue, to the County Lunatic Asylum. The curate's mind had temporarily given way beneath the strain of the position in which he had found himself placed, and of the horrible future that lay before him, and his insanity had taken the form ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... even savage endurance, drew his scalping-knife, yelled the war-cry and burst into the war-dance of the Seneca Indians. In short, the widow's cottage became the theatre of a scene that would have done credit to the violent wards of a lunatic asylum—a scene, which is utterly beyond the delineative powers of pen or pencil—a scene which defies description, repudiates adequate conception, and will dwell for ever on the memories of those who took part in it like the wild phantasmagoria of ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... was fuller and more rounded, because the man knew he was speaking of his best work. Maisie looked at the blur, and a lunatic desire to laugh caught her by the throat. But for Dick's sake—whatever this mad blankness might mean—she must make no sign. Her voice choked with hard-held tears as she answered, still gazing at the ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... and left us. Until he was in the street he continued to vociferate in a manner that could only be ascribed to intoxication, though Clarke and the rest of his suite, who were waiting in the hall, did their best to restrain him." "He behaved as if he had escaped from a lunatic asylum. His own people are all agreed about this." Hueffer, ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... have outlived all human illusions. I have no faith in love—it is bought and sold. No faith in the tears of men; none in their smiles. Society, to me, is one vast mad house. If, in its frenzied walls, I show that I am sane, the delirious throng will shout out, 'Seize the lunatic!' Therefore must I seem as mad as they, and therefore it is that, outside of this study, I commit a thousand follies. In such a world I have no faith; but, Binder, I believe in divine ambition. It is the only passion that has ever stirred my heart—the only passion ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... people, who go about the country calling themselves poor Tom and poor 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 horrible actions, partly by prayers, and partly with lunatic curses, they move or terrify the ignorant country folk 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 loins to cover his nakedness, could not ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... courteous, and nothing more. But the gentlemen of different nations are like brothers brought up in different schools. An Englishman who should demand satisfaction by arms, of another Englishman, for a hasty word spoken in jest, would be considered a lunatic in the clubs, and if he carried his warlike intentions into effect with the consent of his adversary, and killed his man, the law would hang him without mercy as a common murderer. On the other hand, a German who should ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... was so much to talk over, and when they did finally lay themselves down to rest, it was with the conviction that Captain Forest was not quite so mad as they had supposed. He was at least a harmless lunatic and in ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... to resort to the subways that he was figuring on to steal the ore out of the Canaan Tigmores; that all this ceaseless, merciless calculation was but the reaction of a conscience, stalking, gaunt and lunatic, through the charnel-house of its own experience. But for all that he had to go on crossing bridges that he was never to reach, covering black tracks that he was never to make. Often at his desk there, his mind became strangely obtunded and he ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... not waited for the order. He ran up to Prasville, out of breath, with his clothes in disorder, a bandage over his left eye, no tie, no collar, looking like an escaped lunatic; and the door was not closed before he caught hold of Prasville with his ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... whether they were really awake. But in actual life there never was any doubt on that score. The great thing was that I should keep all my wits about me. Everything might depend on presence of mind. Perhaps this murderer was mad. If you fix a lunatic with your eye... ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... so much importance that Mike, in defiance of the dignified-looking clerk, indulged in a hornpipe, and was only brought to his senses when told that he would be locked up by the policemen as a lunatic, ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... is being filled with masses of the youth of America who, as in Egypt of old, fill up the graves of uncleanness and lust. Some time since a prominent Christian man was taking exception to my addressing men on this subject; observe this! one of his own sons was at that very time near the lunatic asylum through these disgusting sins. What ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... anything in the idea that a large number of used penny postage stamps will enable a person to be received into a charitable institution. We have always understood that the collector of one million of these stamps is admitted into a lunatic asylum without having ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 7, 1914 • Various
... be a lunatic!" burst from her mother. "I could not have believed you would be guilty of such ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... camp," said Paulucci, as the Emperor mounted the steps and noticing Prince Andrew scanned his unfamiliar face, "as to that person, sire..." continued Paulucci, desperately, apparently unable to restrain himself, "the man who advised the Drissa camp—I see no alternative but the lunatic asylum or the gallows!" ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... know." The doctor smiled indulgently. "They declare that they offered—even begged—to stay behind with him, one of them, at least, but he rejected their company in a manner so unpleasant that they saw it would only be courting a quarrel to remain. And so, treating him perforce like a child or a lunatic pro tem., and having but little time to decide in, they cut loose and hurried back for help. This is the tale, composed on reflection. They said nothing of this to Winslow—to save publicity, of course! Mrs. Bogardus's lips are doubly sealed, for her son's sake and for the sake of the young ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... came 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 never ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... as another. If he miss he has very hard dealing; for if he can but come to a fair polling of his fits against his intervals, he is sure to carry it. No doubt it would be a singular advantage to him; for, as his present condition stands, he has more full moons in a week than a lunatic has in a year. His passion is like tinder, soon set on fire and as soon out again. The smallest occasion imaginable puts him in his fit, and then he has no respect of persons, strikes up the heels of stools and chairs, tears cards limbmeal without regard of ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... shop a fellow sauntered by. He wore a hat—like a cowboy, and otherwise looked queer. Well, when the plumber sighted him he rushed to the 'phone and called up the only officer in Dalton—Tavia's father, and told him the lunatic was just sauntering down the road. But from last accounts he was still ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... "Confound the lunatic!" said Tough McCarty, receiving a solid thump in the ribs. "I can't stand here, getting pummeled all day. ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... finding that the humble occupants of the vehicle stared at the spectacle of a man in evening dress but without a dustcoat, he jumped off again, oblivious of the fact that the conductor jerked a thumb towards him and winked at the passengers as who should say, 'There goes a lunatic.' He went into a tobacconist's shop and asked for a cigar. The shopman ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... the crucifix to bless the people a woman called to him to be silent, that the Mother of God would not listen to such nonsense. He began to undress himself in the pulpit, to show how emaciated he was by labor and sleepless nights. A Carmelite monk then sprang upon the lunatic, compelled him to descend the steps, and dragged him, with the assistance of the rest of the monks, into the convent, where, in a complete state of exhaustion, he flung himself upon a bed in one of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... Mannering—'what's honour? It means one thing to me and another to you. Aubrey bangs me over the head with it. But I'm like the Doctor in the Punch and Judy show—he thinks he's knocked me flat. He hasn't. I've a new argument every time he comes. And as for my daughters, they think me a lunatic—a stingy lunatic besides—because I won't give to their Red Cross shows and bazaars. I've nothing to give. The income tax gentlemen have ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... refrained from reading the papers lately. Chancing to open one to-day, after a month's complete ignorance of all that had been happening in the world, I saw the following headline: Suicide of a Lady in a Lunatic Asylum. ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... 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 ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... of opinion, the earth is a planet, moves and shines to others, as the moon doth to us. Digges, Gilbert, Keplerus, Origanus, and others, defend this hypothesis of his in sober sadness, and that the moon is inhabited: if it be so that the earth is a moon, then are we also giddy, vertiginous and lunatic within this ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... old lunatic with the whiskers—Hallett, I mean—made a statement that was, to say the least, surprising. I presume he was crazy. That was the most weird collection of insanity that I ever saw or heard. Ha, ha! Oh, dear!... Well, never ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... revelation, and, holding up the curtain from the sad future a little longer, had said scornfully—"Peace on earth! Peace for you two, Charles and Mary Lamb! What peace is possible under the curse which even now is gathering against your heads? Is there peace on earth for the lunatic—peace for the parenticide—peace for the girl that, without warning, and without time granted for a penitential cry to heaven, sends her mother to the last audit?" And then, without treachery, ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... garbled version of the whole affair, which I found it useless to try and contradict, as I was told to hold my tongue. The inspector's version of the affair was even more insulting than the doctor's. He did not hesitate to express his opinion that I was a very suspicious person, probably a lunatic at large. When asked if I had anything to say, my remark summed up the situation, tersely, in ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... delirious; nor did reason again resume her throne; and it was not till after months of suffering and agony, that she recovered, if that could be called recovery, which gave back a deformed and hapless lunatic, bereft of intellect and of beauty, in place of the once gay and fascinating Rosalie. The dread aberration of intellect was attributed by her medical attendants to the fatal and sudden shock which she had sustained, and to its effect on ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... no classes of beings, no means of knowing what may happen, or of verifying any statement, where every effort of fancy may be believed. The mental world of savages has been compared to the ravings of a whole world turned lunatic. We survey it, however, without horror, because we know that reason is not unseated there, but striving towards her kingdom. That is the experience that had to be gone through, these are part of the experiments, such as every child has ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... the Saint, the son of the Don Franco Maironi who, in the Piccolo Mondo Antico, gives his life for the cause of freedom, while he himself is the hero of the Piccolo Mondo Moderno. For those who have not read the preceding volumes it should be explained that his wife being in a lunatic asylum, Maironi, artist and dreamer, had fallen in love with a beautiful woman separated from her husband, Jeanne Dessalle, who professed agnostic opinions. Recalled to a sense of his faith and his honour by an interview with his wife, who sent for him on her ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... a lunatic asylum. The general was no other than the famous Dr. Andrew Moorville, that had the great madhouse at Bangor, and who was in the habit of giving his patients every now and then a kind of country ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... seventeenth century entertained a similar belief. And so it may seem somewhat idle work to take any pains in "scattering" such a "rear of darkness thin" as this forlorn phalanx composes. "Let them alone," said a lunatic in the lucid fit, to a soldier who had told him, when asked why he carried a sword, that it was to kill his enemies,—"let them alone, and they will all die of themselves." But though very inconsiderable, there is a comparatively large proportion of the ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... belonging to it, one for each of the three several nations of which his community was chiefly composed, each speaking a different language; the fourth was for the use of such as were in a state of penance, which those that recovered from their lunatic or possessed condition before, mentioned, were put into, and detained till they had expiated their fault. The nations into which his community was divided, were the Greeks, which were far the most numerous, and consisted of all those that ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... a lunatic" cried the man, "give me an answer straight out—yes or no. Will you be my wife? Speak out and dont go jibbering on in that sentimental fashion; say yes and you will live in luxury and riches for the rest of your life, say no and you go home poor and degraded. Now give me ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... and there snatched as brands from the eternal burning, and started on their way to heaven rejoicing. At the end of the second hour, and as the inspired stranger approached "eighty-seventhly," some one became curious to know who the teacher was, when lo! it turned out that he was an escaped lunatic from the Asylum. ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... to treat the occupant of Suite A as a humorist or a lunatic, but finally he observed, ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... jumped in himself with a force which made the boat rock, and was now paddling with the silent energy of a dangerous lunatic into the middle of the lake; while Mr. Wesson, who had by this time rounded the laurels, stood transfixed, gazing ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he hung up the eleven officers. His opponent was so much alarmed that he did not dare to attack him, but lay wait for him in the trenches, at the mouth of the cannon. Our daring friend was not quite such a lunatic as to go and meet him. He required greater success, more decisive battles, and more guns. He started against the small towns which the Government had built along the Jaik. The Roskolniks received the pseudo-Czar with wild enthusiasm. They believed that he ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... smiled up at him. "Come and sit down and tell me: are you a poet, or a lunatic, or a haberdasher, or what kind ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... blue paper,' said Mrs Biddle. 'It looks to me like the work of a lunatic. And saying you were nice and pretty! It's not the work ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... answer, though she knew it would not be received by him with one emotion like those which she experienced. In her second letter to Miss Woodley, she prayed like a person insane to be taken home from confinement, and like a lunatic protested, in sensible language, she "Had no disorder." But her friend replied, "That very declaration proves its violence." And she assured her, nothing less than placing her affections elsewhere, should induce her to believe but that she ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... whom he could get denounced as criminals, even the participators in his own enormities, were given up to his infernal sport. His huntsman, Squarcia Giramo, trained the dogs to their duty by feeding them on human flesh, and the duke watched them tear his victims in pieces with the avidity of a lunatic.[2] In 1412 some Milanese nobles succeeded in murdering him, and threw his mangled corpse into the street. A prostitute is said to have covered it with roses. Filippo Maria meanwhile had married the widow of Facino Cane,[3] ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... novels advance with his own, so that at last we shall have irresistible fascination at seven score years and ten. But the commonest and the most mischievous way in which personality breaks out is pamphleteering under the guise of fiction. One novel is a pamphlet against lunatic asylums, another against model prisons, a third against the poor law, a fourth against the government offices, a fifth against trade unions. In these pretended works of imagination facts are joined in support of a crotchet or an antipathy with all the license of fiction; calumny ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... Sir Launcelot (Lord have mercy upon us!) remained all night in that dismal place alone, and without light, though it was confidently reported all over the country, that the place was haunted by the spirit of his great-great-uncle, who, being lunatic, had cut his throat from ear to ear, and was found dead on the ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... through the gate at Paris, and to enter a carriage. Then she fled to Switzerland; and, had not her flight been shared by the Chevalier de Rohan, one of the handsomest men in France, one could hardly have blamed an escape from a half-lunatic husband. She was only twenty-eight when, after various adventures, she came in all her unimpaired beauty to England. Charles was captivated by her charms, and, touched by her misfortunes, he settled on her a pension of L4,000 a year, and gave her rooms in St. James's. Waller ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... the point," said he, taking my arm for a last turn, "and that's the truth. There was a fellow who came out with me, quite a good chap really, and a tremendous pal of mine at Eton, yet he behaved like a lunatic about this very thing. Poor chap, he reads like anything, and I suppose he'd been overdoing it, for he actually asked me to choose between Mrs. Lascelles and himself! What could a fellow do but let the poor old simpleton go? They seem to think you can't be pals with a woman without wanting to ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... it is urged; and as if it were not a common and every-day practice of courts and juries, in both civil and criminal cases, to determine the mental capacity of individuals; as, for example, to determine whether they are of sufficient mental capacity to make reasonable contracts; whether they are lunatic; whether they are compotes mentis, "of sound mind and memory," &. &. And there is obviously no more difficulty in a jury's determining whether an accused person knew the law in a criminal case, than there ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... according to my conscience it appeared quite the contrary: terrified and floating in this cruel uncertainty, I had recourse to the most laughable expedient to resolve my doubts, for which I would willingly shut up any man as a lunatic should I see him practise the same folly. One day, meditating on this melancholy subject, I exercised myself in throwing stones at the trunks of trees, with my usual dexterity, that is to say, without ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... is tolerably large. Look at the roundabout circuits we took; the dreams of a patient in delirium are not more incongruous. Still, just as there is nothing absolutely unconnected in the head either of a man who dreams, or of a lunatic, so all hangs together in conversation; but it would often be extremely hard to find the imperceptible links that have brought so many disparate ideas together. A man lets fall a word which he detaches from what has gone before, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... the woman replied, with a heavy sigh; "and," she added, tremulously, "I cannot bear the thought of sending him to any common lunatic asylum. I learned recently that you sometimes receive private patients to test their cases before sending them to a public institution, and that you have frequently effected a cure in critical cases. ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... was kneeling beside the brook, and a girl was giving him a drink of water out of her rosy hands. They stared with wonder and compassion at the wet and solitary angler, wading down the stream, as if he were some kind of a mild lunatic. But as I glanced discreetly at their small tableau, I was not unconscious of the new joy that came into the ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... perfect wife you are!" cried he. "I am an old lunatic, I do not deserve to have such ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... stages of unconsciousness Penton jumped from the table and threatened to kill the doctor. The country physician only laughed at the wild and, to Evan, appalling curses and threats of the temporary lunatic. It mattered not to that rustic doctor whether his patient carried a stiff neck or a limber one—he would do his work just the same. He happened to be a dentist, which was fortunate, for he needed dental knowledge to extract a great tooth from the patient. The further skill of a veterinary ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... 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 • R.M. Ballantyne
... would have mastered me and slain me, and then done his butcher's work, for he was the most skilful swordsman I have ever met; but even as he pressed me hard, the half-mad, wasted, wan creature in the corner leapt high in lunatic mirth, shrieking: ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... have a fever," Murphy replied. "Still, half that fever may be plain lunatic rage. Did you find ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters?" (Paul, 1 Corinthians vi, 2.)—Unfortunately, not merely the speech of a lunatic.... This frightful impostor then proceeds: "Know ye not that we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... convinced of the truth of what I had heard? Had I not bent under the iron rule of the Professor Liedenbrock? Was I to believe him in earnest in his intention to penetrate to the centre of this massive globe? Had I been listening to the mad speculations of a lunatic, or to the scientific conclusions of a lofty genius? Where did truth stop? Where did ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... treason became entangled within treason that their evil designs had fuller scope and more disastrous results. Bourrienne, another rascal already referred to in this book, lost his fortune and his reason in 1830, and died in a lunatic asylum at Caen of apoplexy in February, 1834. It is a notable fact that nearly the whole of the prominent figures in the drama of the Empire and its fall had passed beyond the portal before the great captain's ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... the very first, the first moment I laid eye on you. I was mad for love of you then, and in all the time that has passed since then I have only grown the madder. I am maddest, now, dear. I am almost a lunatic, my head ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... few little jerk-water mills could supply the whole layout easy. East, the lumber in Michigan and Wisconsin and Minnesota never was going to give out. In those days you could hardly give away land up in this country. The fellow that went in for timber was looked on as a lunatic. It took a big man with lots of sand to ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... fine fellow as he was, could not desert the cricket field and gymnasium even in the throes of an examination, and Freckleton, the hermit, whom half of Templeton didn't know by sight, and the other half put down as a harmless lunatic, who divided his time between theological exercises and plodding, but ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... has ever come to me. Some people wear white and play tennis all day, while other people chase the balls, or howl in dungeons in the background!' And that is the problem I wish to put before my American millionaire—the problem of what I will call our lunatic- asylum stage of civilization. Mind you, this condition is all very well so long as we can say that the lunatics are incurable—that there is nothing we can do but shut our ears to their howling, and go ahead with our tennis. But suppose the ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... easily on the arm of a chair, talking rapidly and confidentially to Mr. Osgood, who regarded him with indulgence but wonder, as one who might come suddenly on a charming lady lunatic. ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... sense as well as comfort would induce people to stay at home at noon and make themselves as cool as possible. In other tropical countries these are the hours of the siesta, the noonday nap, which is as common and as necessary as breakfast or dinner, and none but a lunatic would think of calling upon a friend after 11 in the morning or before 3 in the afternoon. It would be as ridiculous as to return a social visit at 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning, and the same reasons which govern that custom ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... he decided, "except that you're an ass. Take your medical man's word for it—you're an ass. My prescription is 'Cease to be lunatic three times daily and after eating.' My fee'll ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... needed in this business, Kostia—you good-hearted lunatic, you. What do you know of my ideas? My ideas may be poison to you." The other began to shake his ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... with fury as we approached him. He tried to rise, ground his teeth, made grimaces, and shook his fist at my grandfather, who tried in vain to draw me out of the room. But, escaping from his grasp, I stepped towards the lunatic, who grew more quiet when he saw me approach; and I tried to lift the chain, which had attracted my attention. Then, finding it too heavy for me, I turned to my grandfather and asked, "Does not this hurt the poor man?" I had hardly spoken the words ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... of their complaints. They obtained neither however, and especially towards Las Casas was the opposition of the auditors directed. When he first entered the council room, some of them cried: "Out with that lunatic!" and on another occasion, when Las Casas declined to withdraw, the President, Maldonado (well named indeed!), ordered him to be ejected by force. Again, when the Bishop, with great solemnity, demanded that the Audiencia should correct the abuses complained of and should ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... Mr. Briggs, the Immortal! Of him whose creation is sufficient to render the year 1849 memorable in the annals of the land much has ere now been written—that type of a well-to-do British householder, delightful for his follies and endearing by his pluck, something of a lunatic, it must be admitted, yet more of a sportsman, and most of all a "muff"—Punch's "simple-minded Philistine paterfamilias." Many of his adventures, especially of house-keeping and its terrors, were based upon Leech's own experiences. ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... like this!" he wailed despairingly. "You promised to help me find those stolen bonds, and now you're talking like a lunatic again. If I can't find the bonds, I've got to find Ranscomb, and get back that first two hundred thousand I gave him. I can't stand this—detectives waiting for us wherever we stop, and you babbling rot—rot—" ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... nuncio, or with noble lords and reverend bishops, was either unknown, or the character of those communications was not suspected. That a serious political conspiracy should have shaped itself round the ravings of a seeming lunatic, to all appearance had not occurred as a possibility to a single member of the council, except to those whose silence ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... on him, some dead dogs, heaps of refuse, and a lot more vultures too gorged to fly—the usual Arab scheme of sanitation. I asked one of my bodyguard to shoot the camel and he obliged me, with the air of a keeper making concessions to a lunatic. Nobody took any notice of ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... personal interest in the discussions she found means to bring about gained her very candid expressions of opinion about Quisante, and she became aware that her world would regard her as something like a lunatic if it awoke one morning to read of her engagement ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... preparations were being made for his execution, his wife and daughter, with her governess, were permitted to visit him. Very adroitly he escaped in his wife's clothes, she remaining in his place. Irritated by this escape, the Government held his wife a prisoner until she became a confirmed lunatic.] ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... me to be only one possible solution. Mr. Rucastle seemed to be a very kind, good-natured man. Is it not possible that his wife is a lunatic, that he desires to keep the matter quiet for fear she should be taken to an asylum, and that he humours her fancies in every way in order ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... broken or barricaded—the whole town looks plague-stricken. The courtyard of the inn we stopped at was grown over with weeds, and a mouthing idiot lolled against the corner of the house, like the evil genius of the spot. Next to a prison or a lunatic asylum, preserve me from ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... not remain altogether unmoved by that simple sentiment. This little fellow was a lunatic, he thought to himself, but there was something in ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... a derisive farewell, turned to pursue my way. In so doing—it was like going suddenly into cold water—I found myself face to face with a prim little old maid. She was all in a flutter, the poor old dear! She had concluded beyond question that this must be a lunatic who stood laughing aloud at a white donkey in the placid beech-woods. I was sure, by her face, that she had already recommended her spirit most religiously to Heaven, and prepared herself for the worst. And so, to reassure ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Waitstill was unexpectedly hearty—much heartier than it would have been Six months before, when she regarded Mrs. Boynton as little less than a harmless lunatic, of no use as a neighbor; and when she knew nothing more of Ivory than she could gather by his occasional drive or walk past her door with a civil greeting. Rodman had been until lately the only member of the family for whom she had a friendly feeling; but all ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin |
