"Lunatic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... severity with which the editors of the papers politically opposed to the administration censured it for the extravagance and all-round idiocy of the whole "Aluminum Bubble Scheme," as they termed it. Dr. Jones was voted a lunatic, and the balance of the party was commiserated in the "Ahs!" and "Dear me's!" and "Poor things!" of the ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... 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 expressions and their swift motions making an impression ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... that disgusting little beast had come pulling at his clothes, and he had pushed it away—well, kicked it maybe—and it had struck at him with the little spear it was carrying. Nobody but a lunatic would give a thing like that to an animal anyhow. And he had kicked it again, ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... from his jaws. At the back of it he dropped him into the dust hole among the remnants of a library whose age had destroyed its value in the eyes of the chapter. They found him burrowing in it, a lunatic henceforth—whose madness presented the peculiar feature, that in its paroxysms he ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... even I, so far from saint or philosopher, must needs fall into amazement when I consider them? I could imagine a man who, by living alone and at peace, came to regard the everyday world as not really existent, but a creation of his own fancy in unsound moments. What lunatic ever dreamt of things less consonant with the calm reason than those which are thought and done every minute in every community of men called sane? But I put aside this reflection as soon as may be; it perturbs me fruitlessly. Then I listen to the sounds about my cottage, always ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... some boyish manifestations of their sympathies; their proceedings made some stir in Germany, and Metternich declared that they were revolutionary. The horror of liberalism was destined to be heightened in 1819 by the murder of the tsar's agent, the dramatist Kotzebue, by a lunatic member of a political society at Giessen. Its immediate result was a conference of German ministers at Carlsbad, where several resolutions for the suppression of political agitation were passed, and afterwards adopted by the diet at Frankfort. This policy was embodied in the "final ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... Western sky aglow with that crimson haze which stands for the zenith of London's night. The Reverend "Jimmy" Dale had abandoned long ago the idea of understanding Alban Kennedy. "He will either die in a lunatic asylum or make his fortune," he said to himself—and all subsequent happenings did not alter this dogged opinion. The fellow was either a lunatic or an original. "Jimmy" Dale, who had rowed in the Trinity second boat, did ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... as the hobby took possession of him, he devoted all his time and all his money to it; then he pawned his clothes, and then he raised money on the furniture; the brokers came in, and finally the poor fellow was taken to a lunatic asylum, and his wife and family were thrown on the parish. The story impressed Hubert strangely. He saw an analogy between himself and the crazy inventor, and he asked himself if he would go on re-writing The Gipsy until he went out of his mind. 'Even if I do,' he thought, 'I can hurt ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... wife who had died in absence from him, herself scarcely past the threshold of youth, lovely as an angel and to all that knew her precious beyond expression. A little later his heart was well-nigh broken and his life was well-nigh blasted by the crime of a lunatic brother that for a moment seemed to darken the hope of the world. Recovering from that blow, he threw all his resources and powers into the establishment of the grandest theatre in the metropolis of America, and he saw his fortune of more than a million dollars, ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... was aflame; and his veins ran fire. Now for the first time he knew what it was to be alive—Life spurting from his finger-tips, making madness in his blood, issuing riotously from his lips. He sang; he yelled; he laughed, battering at the lunatic in front. He caught the blasphemies of his battle-fellows, and echoed them shrilly and with joy. The light in his comrades' eyes revealed to him deeps of being undreamed of before. His spirit was pouring through his flesh, ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... "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 ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... to consider very gravely that the "go" and "energy" of a man have no ascertainable relation to many other extremely important considerations. Your energetic person may be moral or immoral, an unqualified egotist or as public spirited as an ant, sane, or a raving lunatic. Your phlegmatic person may ripen resolves and bring out truths, with the incomparable clearness of a long-exposed, slowly developed, slowly printed photograph. A man who would exchange the slow gigantic toil of that sluggish and deliberate person, Charles ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... looked out at me, as if I might be an escaped lunatic. Then she turned her face over her shoulder ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... day I do not know whether the man was a lunatic, an imposter seeking money, or an agent provocateur, that is, one who imagined that he might through me inveigle M. Zola into an illegal act which would lead to prosecution and imprisonment. The last-mentioned ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... about whom he 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 ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... perhaps, leads us to a plausible conjecture by writing: 'Mr. Darwin saw two Malay women in Keeling Island, who held a wooden spoon dressed in clothes like a doll: this spoon had been carried to the grave of a dead man, and becoming inspired at full moon, in fact lunatic, it danced about convulsively, like a table or a hat at a modern spirit seance.'[1] Now M. Lefebure has pointed out (in 'Melusine') that, according to De Brosses, the African conjurers gave an appearance of independent motion to small objects, which were then accepted as fetishes, ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... "And went out again? What for? Couldn't he keep quietly indoors! What a lunatic! My ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... other such illustrations given. They were, I discovered, by no means imaginary cases, projected into our minds by a kind of mental suggestion, but actual things happening upon earth. We saw many strange scenes of tragedy, we had a glimpse of lunatic asylums and hospitals, of murder even, and of evil passions of anger and lust. We saw scenes of grief and terror; and, stranger still, we saw many things that were being enacted not on the earth, but ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... whole city was mine, (p. 083) each street became very intimate, and I could walk through them and pray out loud to my God in peace. But now! why, if I prayed to my God in the streets of Amiens they would think me a damned lunatic!" I can understand her very human feeling at that time—people who had run away from the city in its agony returned when its tribulation was over, and claimed it as their own again when the calm ...
— An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 • William Orpen
... and rational, suddenly loses all self-control and seems actuated by a will foreign to himself. Modern science possesses the key to this phenomenon; but in former times it was explicable only on the hypothesis that a demon had entered the body of the lunatic, or else that the fairies had stolen the real man and substituted for him a diabolical phantom exactly like him in stature and features. Hence the numerous legends of changelings, some of which are very curious. In Irish folk-lore we find the story of one Rickard, ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... as well have struggled with a bear, or reasoned with a lunatic. The only resource left me was to run to a lattice and warn his intended victim of the fate ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... Bedlam, a popular corruption of Bethlehem, a lunatic hospital, founded in 1246. The old building, with its "carved maniacs at the gates," was taken down in 1675, and the hospital removed to Moorfields. The second building—the one to which Wordsworth ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... and appeared the pink of faithful swains, saw very clearly that Furlong did not like it a bit, and would gladly be off his bargain. Yea, while the people in their sober senses on the same plane with the parties were taken in, the old lunatic, even from the toppling height of her own mad chimney-pot, could look down and see that Furlong would not marry Augusta if ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... for the life of a man. Hence they failed to discriminate. In masses and mobs they needed kings and rulers but could not choose them. Hence the device of selecting as ruler the elder son of the last ruler, whatever his nature might be. A child, a lunatic, a monster, a sage,—it was all the same to these unheeding centuries. The people could not follow those they understood or who understood them. They must trust all to the blind chance of heredity. Tyrant or figurehead, the mob, which from its own indifference ...
— The Call of the Twentieth Century • David Starr Jordan
... the voice of my Alice. I looked up. At a barred window I saw her face; but it was terribly changed. I dropped from my horse. As soon as I was able to move from the hospital, I went to the place, and found it was a lunatic asylum. I was permitted to see the inmates, but discovered no one resembling her. I do not now believe that she was ever there. But I may be wrong. Nor will I trouble my reader with the theories on which I sought to account for the vision. ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... another treaty was negotiated at Fontainebleau; namely, a secret compact with Spain for the partition of Portugal. The house of Braganza, like the other so-called legitimate monarchies of Europe, had fallen into a moral and physical decline. The Queen was a lunatic, and her son Don John, who was regent, though a mild and honorable man, lacked every element of greatness such as would have enabled him to swim in the troubled waters of his time. The land, moreover, was saturated with democratic principles. There had been a tacit understanding that on account of ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... for gracious sake, ever put that idea into your head? But I don't want him to act like a perfectly crazy lunatic. I wish you'd speak to him. He won't listen to me—we just quarrel when I try to reason ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... 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 ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... went into the dining room and sat on our 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
... him to thunder again and, evidently enjoying himself immensely, proceeded to the most frightful denunciations of Thatcher and his party, the mere list of whose crimes and mental incapacities should have condemned them to perdition and the lunatic asylum upon the spot ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... 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, ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... itself. The caution was vain, but in spite of the harm done to Borrow and themselves they recalled Graydon with but a qualified disavowal of his conduct. Borrow did not conceal from the Society his opinion that this man, with his "lunatic vagaries," had been the "evil genius" of the Bible cause and of himself. The incident did no good to the already bickering relations between Borrow and the Rev. A. Brandram, the Secretary. Evidently ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... the tragedy of our lives out here acted itself in dak-bungalows, I wondered that I had met no ghosts. A ghost that would voluntarily hang about a dak-bungalow would be mad of course; but so many men have died mad in dak-bungalows that there must be a fair percentage of lunatic ghosts. ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... was now quite in the dark, and began to regard the little woman as a lunatic. When she spoke of the pot and the gigot he vainly endeavored to follow her; and now that she had got among the daisies he was more at a loss than ever. Fruit, vegetables, and cut flowers came up, he knew, to London regularly from Clavering, ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... York State Lunatic Asylum there is a wild-eyed man whose name and birth-place are alike unknown. His reason has been unseated by some sudden shock, the doctors say, though of what nature they are unable to determine. "It is the most delicate machine which is most readily put ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... suspected perpetrator of the Brighton outrage and the would-be assassin of the President both showed "forethought" and "method." It is a common formula for the expression of doubt as to the irresponsibility of an alleged lunatic, that there is "method in his madness." Nothing can be farther from the truth than the inference to which this observation is intended to point. It is not in the least degree necessary that a madman should be unconscious of the act he performs, or of its nature as a ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... A lunatic who recently escaped from an asylum was eventually recaptured in a large dancing-hall in the West-End. The fact that he was waltzing divinely and keeping perfect time with the music aroused the other dancers' suspicions and led ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various
... any argument is brought forward, consists in pointing to all sorts of men of genius and of talent who, it is alleged, were poor citizens, physical degenerates the prey of all manner of constitutional diseases, sometimes candidates for the lunatic asylum which they occasionally reached. The miscellaneous data which may thus be piled up are seldom critically sifted, and often very questionable, for it is difficult enough to obtain any positive biological knowledge ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... not know what you are talking about. Your letter is an insult to science. These inundations" (this, too, was written before the sky had opened its flood-gates) "are perfectly explicable by the ordinary laws of nature. Your talk of a nebula is so ridiculous that it deserves no reply. If any lunatic accepts your absurd invitation, and goes into your 'ark,' he will find himself in Bedlam, where ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... shows what may be done in the forest and in a brand-new 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
... behaved like a canine lunatic, and Alice was beginning to think of exercising a little tender violence in order to restrain his superabundant glee, when another individual appeared on the scene, and for a time, at least, ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... dear chap, that we are dealing with a lunatic and that he remembered only this date of ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... as a sympathizing man looks at a lunatic, and calmly shook his head. "I can't get rock here till to-morrow morning. What is ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... Western forms of government, a very large reward being offered by the Chinese Government for his body, dead or alive. During his stay there he was decoyed into the Chinese Legation, and imprisoned in an upper room, from which he would have been hurried away to China, probably as a lunatic, to share the fate of his fifteen fellow-conspirators, but for the assistance of a woman who had been told off to wait upon him. To her he confided a note addressed to Dr Cantlie, a personal friend of long standing, under whom he had studied medicine ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... influence of such a diabolical passion, surrenders himself to these instincts of the wild or venomous beast he must seem to the angels a madman—a lunatic, who kindles his own Gehenna that he may consume the world in it, or as much of it as his devilish desires can lay hold upon. Wickedness is forever beginning a new spiral which penetrates deeper still into the abysses of abomination, for the circles of hell have this property—that they have no end. ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... guardianship of her mother's brother, who took good care both of her and her estates, and the wicked uncle was so overcome with shame, when the story of his crime got about, that he went crazy and ended his days in a lunatic asylum." ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... to be afraid of his frenzy. "They'll have to put the man in the Castle," said one. "Or have him chained up in an outhouse," said another. "They kept the Kirk Maug-hold lunatic fifteen years on the straw in the gable loft, and his children in the house grew up to be men and women." "It's the girl that's doing on Caesar. Shame on the daughters that bring ruin to their ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... glory—nave, transepts, and choir, and pillars and towers, Norman and Early English, and Perpendicular and Decorated—till it found itself at last what the American tourist sees it to-day. It suffered from two great fires in the nineteenth century, the first set by a lunatic who had the fancy of seeing it burn, but who had only the satisfaction of destroying ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... lead him further to inquire into the after-history of this same Georgio Rhodojani, let him go on a fine summer day to the County Lunatic Asylum at Bodmin, and, with permission, enter the grounds set apart for private patients. There he may chance to ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... 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 ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... "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
... not understand it, but I swear by God, I could no longer control myself. Something strange was going on in me. I could not hold myself in. I told my husband that I was ill and came here.... And here I have been walking about dizzily, like a lunatic.... And now I have become a low, filthy woman whom everybody ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... and home, for all of which her posterity had now to do penance. I never can recollect that I heard her mention the family name of her grandmother; but her own maiden name was Nommesen. She was employed to take care of the garden belonging to a lunatic asylum, and every Sunday evening she brought us some flowers, which they gave her permission to take home with her. These flowers adorned my mother's cupboard; but still they were mine, and to me it was allowed to put them in the glass of water. ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... Considine to carry off Liosha to the First Class Boarding House which she had found in Queen's Gate. Liosha left us full of love for Barbara and Susan and I think of kindly feeling for myself. A few days afterwards Jaffery went off to sail a small boat with another lunatic in the Hebrides. A little later Doria and Adrian went to pay a round of short family visits beginning with Mrs. Boldero. So before August was out, Barbara and Susan and ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... necessary, are first, if the lunatic is liable to injure others, which must be judged of by the outrage he has already committed. 2dly. If he is likely to injure himself; this also must be judged of by the despondency of his mind, if such exists. 3dly. If ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... to look for a cigarette in a certain part of the Prince of Wales' statue, in Bombay; he went and found nothing. Mrs. Coulomb now says she was Madame B——'s confederate, and that she was afraid of being taken up as a lunatic if she climbed to the unicorn's horn where the cigarette was to be placed. So she said the rain must have washed it away. Madame Blavatsky showed mental weakness in not considering the difficulties, and her fondness for cigarettes made ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... whether to set me down as some scientific celebrity or a madman. I think he 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 Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... one to try the War Office—I don't know why. Of course I tried it. I wish I had a shilling for every hour I wasted in that lunatic asylum." ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... great execution on the enemy ranks as the men came along laden with full packs. A story is told, and is believed to be true, of one machine gunner that, in the course of his morning's work, he slaughtered over 200 German's single handed with his weapon, after which he became a raving lunatic and ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... mad, lunatic!' And she disappeared with that delicious shrug of the shoulders that had ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... me criminal. As I stood behind the tapestry, and heard how my empress accused me, I felt that the spectral hand of madness was hovering above my brain. Oh, Catharine, it is you whom I adore, you who have made of me a lunatic!" ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... they can be sent into the interior or find employment here. Here are barracks for the men, a spacious building for the women and children, a nursery for children of a tender age, Catholic and Protestant chapels, a dispensary, workshops, a lunatic asylum, fever wards, surgical wards, storehouses, residences of the physicians and other persons employed in the care of the place, and out-houses and offices of various kinds. Here, too, rise the stately turrets of the spacious new hospital styled the Verplanck Emigrant Hospital, ...
— A Discourse on the Life, Character and Writings of Gulian Crommelin - Verplanck • William Cullen Bryant
... traps in which my feet had been so often caught. I may as well confess it—it was intoxicating liquor, and that mainly, which had led me into my various mad marrying schemes and made me the matrimonial monomaniac and lunatic lover that I was for years. What my folly, my insanity caused me to suffer, these pages have attempted to portray. I had grown older, wiser, and certainly better. I now only devoted myself strictly to my business, and I found profit as well as ...
— Seven Wives and Seven Prisons • L.A. Abbott
... do. So does my husband. He's awfully handsome and clever, and all that—but his conversation! There now, my dear, you must own he is slightly QUEER. Why, who but a lunatic would say that the only criticism of art is ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... "That's yon red-headed lunatic, I'll be bound; open the door to him yersel'!" cried the landlady, remembering one occasion when Euroclydon had entered with such fervour as almost to pancake her ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... drunk," thought I, "and in either case the old woman and the servants will be the better of a man's assistance," so I descended straight to the hall. I found him staggering about, his eyes in a fine frenzy rolling—a pretty sight he was, a just medium between the fool and the lunatic. ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... Doctor named Fairfax, hinted some doubt as to the validity of the Commission, the Chancellor began to roar like a wild beast. "Who is this man? What commission has he to be impudent here? Seize him. Put him into a dark room. What does he do without a keeper? He is under my care as a lunatic. I wonder that nobody has applied to me for the custody of him." But when this storm had spent its force, and the depositions concerning the moral character of the King's nominee had been read, none of the Commissioners had the front to pronounce that such a ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Burnt. Pont d'Austerlitz, with restaurant Trousseau and sluice-keeper's house. All burnt. Rotonde de la Villette. Damaged. Hospice de l'Enfant Jesus. Damaged. Hospital Lariboisiere. Damaged. Hospital Salpetriere: (House of refuge and lunatic-asylum for women). Burnt. Prison of la Roquette. Damaged. Gare de Lyon (Lyons railway terminus). Fired and damaged. Gare d'Orleans (Orleans railway terminus.) Damaged. Gare Montparnasse (Western railway terminus). Damaged. Gare de Strasbourg (Eastern railway terminus). Damaged. ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... office, an old man named McConnachie, had been forced to retire from the teaching profession on account of failing intellect. After an illness, when he was already far advanced in years, his mind gradually gave way, until he was nothing better than a harmless lunatic. No one grudged the old man a little oatmeal or a bag of potatoes now and again, and he could get milk for the asking from any of those who owned a cow. He lived all by himself in a small house, and a kindly neighbor would go in occasionally to "redd up"—in ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... 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 Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Pinnegar, for once brutally and angrily hostile to him: "You'll make it sound like a private lunatic asylum." ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... 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 ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... steps, clad only in her black skin, came up. Matah told her to go away, but she only corroboreed round him and said she wanted to see me. I have the most morbid horror of lunacy in any form. I was once induced to go over a lunatic asylum—the horror of it haunts me still. However, I thought it would never do to show the coward I was, so though I felt as if I had been scooped out and filled up with ice, I went to her. She danced round me for a little time, then sidled up to me ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... listened to a minister's confidential gossip about Lord Fisher; nothing in these interesting confidences struck me so much as the self-satisfaction of the little minister in treating the man of destiny as an amusing lunatic. ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... individual who gave himself to the she-bear to save her and her young ones from starvation. Or, if the tale was known to him, he probably took it for what it was worth, and never foresaw that the British Government would emulate the action of the self-sacrificing lunatic, and spend precious blood for the sole purpose of nourishing and resuscitating the powers ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... 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 no danger of ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... straight-forward and fair, and to do what was right, and the impulse, on the other hand, to refuse anything demanded by an assailant. But the would-be murderer was not a murderer, after all. He was only a temporary lunatic whom Harlson himself had driven mad. That was the just way to look at it. As for Jenny, she would not suffer much. There had not been time enough. Not in a day does a man or woman have that effect produced upon the ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... in a scene in light and shade, we enjoy and admire its reliefs, but at the same time we know it is a picture, and that it is quite flat. The two tests of knowledge never interfere with each other. To suppose they do is to suppose a case of imbecility that even a lunatic must laugh to scorn. So far, therefore, we think the illuminator mistaken in slavishly copying the limitations of the glass-painter. It is no very great knowledge of nature that is shown in these drawings. There is a good example of the method of study followed by thirteenth-century ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... "Send Kippy to a lunatic asylum!" he said in tones so indignant that they made his chin tremble. "You will do nothing whatever of the kind! Why, all she's ever had in the world was her pa and Aunt Tish and her home; now he's gone, you ain't wanting to take the others away ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... to the loss of his affection. I was not mindful of the hideous guise in which I stood before him, and by which he might justly be misled to imagine me a ruffian or a lunatic. My tears flowed now on a new account, and I articulated, in a broken and faint voice, "My master! my friend! Have you forgotten, have you ceased ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... and interest are possessed by the perplexing incidents, there is no need to be in dread of wearisomeness. And this is really the case here: matters are carried so far that one of the two brothers is first arrested for debt, then confined as a lunatic, and the other is forced to take refuge in a sanctuary to save his life. In a subject of this description it is impossible to steer clear of all sorts of low circumstances, abusive language, and blows; Shakspeare has however ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... made for 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 to an eclipse of his rational ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... you learn the actual truth you'll wonder harder than ever how it is one of us has escaped landing in a lunatic asylum up to this time; but as some of my friends say to me, youthful enthusiasm is responsible for many queer things, and so long as my wonderful ambition is to copy after Stanley in the line of exploring, ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... many counties. Here at this period of the year it suited Lord Llwddythlw to live,—not for any special gratification of his own, but because North Wales was supposed to require his presence. He looked to the Quarter Sessions, to the Roads, to the Lunatic Asylum, and to the Conservative Interests generally of that part of Great Britain. That he should spend Christmas at Llwddythlw was a thing of course. In January he went into Durham; February to Somersetshire. In this way he parcelled ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... trouble of looking at him. And when George Stephenson died, amid the applause and gratitude of all the intelligent men in Britain, he was the same man, maintaining the same principle, as when men of science and of law regarded as a mischievous lunatic the individual who declared that some day the railroad would be the king's highway, and mail-coaches would ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... will be frank 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
... fast by the throat. He would 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 by throwing him on the floor and binding him. His cries passed into a brutish bellow that ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... beareth it on him. Also the diamond should be given freely, without coveting and without buying, and then it is of greater virtue. And it maketh a man more strong and more sad against his enemies. And it healeth him that is lunatic, and them that the fiend pursueth or travaileth. And if venom or poison be brought in presence of the diamond, anon it beginneth to wax moist and for ...
— The Travels of Sir John Mandeville • Author Unknown
... precepts. For the wretched Mary there may be some excuse; she was perhaps not wholly sane. Her fixed idea, that if she killed Protestants enough Heaven would give her a son, was the conviction of a lunatic. Her own husband fled from her, and left her with no earthly consolation save the stake. But Pole was sane enough when he burnt better Christians than himself. The true story of Mary's reign deserved to ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... kept in close touch with what was going on. It was not until 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 remains were brought back to France. These individuals are only remembered now as ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... is better not to talk of these sinister delusions of heathenry." Sir Thomas shrugged. "For my reward would be to have you think me mad. I prefer to iterate the verdict of all logical people, and formally to register my opinion that Robert Herrick was indisputably a lunatic." ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... all guides and rulers of the people to make incessant war upon the loathsome criminals who prey upon young women and young men. They are the worst enemies of the human race. They drink the heart's blood of mothers and eat the flesh of their daughters. They people hospitals, alms-houses, lunatic asylums and dissecting rooms. They blast innocent wives and blind helpless babies. They enslave by force, threats or craft thousands of weak ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... 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, with a parting roar, but we shall ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... 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 ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... of that ring, young man," advised the professor—"take the best of care of it. It may be more valuable than it appears. There is certainly something connected with this ring that makes it valuable to this stranger—or else the man is a lunatic—yes, sir, a lunatic. I do not think that—no, I do not. He appeared rational—he was quite sane when ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... where she met with a cordial reception, and she felt that she had learned a salutary lesson from the poor lunatic. The next afternoon, she and her cousin Edith wandered forth into an adjoining field, to enjoy a stroll beneath the cloudless sky, and inhale the sweet breath of autumn, which was borne upon the gentle ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... shook his head sorrowfully. "I've had a private detective now working ever since that day," he declared. "The man thinks me, of course, a sort of lunatic, but I have made it worth his while to find it. I should think that every child in the neighborhood has been interviewed. What ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... insanity is made to include such men as Newton, Goethe, Darwin, and others who are generally supposed to be the very types of sober sanity, a Richard Wagner may well be content to remain in such company. We are reminded of Lombroso's own story of the lunatic's reply to one who asked when he was coming out of the asylum: "When the people outside are sane." In fact the theories when pushed to their extreme consequences become absurd. There is nothing discreditable ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... this episode much less romantic than it may appear. Many times have motives of interest or vengeance or perfidious machination led to the abuse of the imprudent facility with which inmates are received in certain private lunatic asylums from the hands ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... 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
... "The lunatic, the lover, and the poet Are of imagination all compact: * * * * * And, as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... had no constitutional power to make such appropriations. She then went to the Legislatures of the States, with the result that is so well known. Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New York, Indiana, Illinois, Louisiana, and North Carolina founded lunatic asylums, and the work was begun which is culminating in the separation of the insane from the criminal, the women from the men, in every town and county of the land. The right of petition is not only as open to women as to men, but because of the non-partisan ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... the skies went round, and the sea swam round, And we knew not what we sung: Half a hundred lunatic pirates When ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... hired a fresh team of dogs and started out. The Indian madman was hard to handle, for he was violent and strong. Field had to tie him on the sleigh, but of course had to release him at times for fear he would freeze. On these occasions the lunatic would fight like a wolf and make attempts to get away. It would have been easy to let him get away and be lost in some night blizzard in the wilderness. But that was not the Police way, and in due course the unfortunate ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... of him, Sir James MacFen,—wrote to me that what they really wanted were some ancestral lands with the right to use the family name and privileges. The oddest part of the affair was that the claimant was an impossible sort of lunatic, and the whole thing was run by a syndicate of shrewd Western men. As I don't care for the property, which has only been dropping a lot of money every year for upkeep and litigation, Sir James, who is an awfully far-sighted chap at managing, ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... their imaginations in very strange fashion, and make, or fancy they make, for themselves out of the things of the present life a defence and a strength. Like some poor lunatic, out upon a moor, that fancies himself ensconced in a castle; like some barbarous tribes behind their stockades or crowding at the back of a little turf wall, or in some old tumble-down fort that the first ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... annoyed at that? thought the engineer. The man was a lunatic of course. But perhaps the madness need never have become so firmly fixed as it was then. If some one had ruthlessly yanked Jan of Ruffluck down off his imperial throne in the beginning possibly he could ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... cast his ashes to the winds. But now they worship him when his ear is dead to their praise, the great heart silent that their love would have made beat with ecstasy. Well, such is life. They treated Tasso just about the same who writ "Jerusalem Delivered," they imprisoned him for a lunatic, and now how much ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... I come to a very strange occurrence, which I shall relate quite frankly, although I know beforehand that you will set me down as a liar or a lunatic. I had been away from home for a fortnight, and as I returned rather late at night, I went straight to my room. Having partly undressed, I took my clothes in one hand and a candle in the other, and opened the cupboard door. ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... way that lunatic Franck is going to behave," said Willy in his peculiar voice, in which there was a blending of the guttural and nasal tones of American English with the Austrian German accent of his friends. "He snaps like a ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... odd little drawing-teacher, whom Hannah afterwards, when some qualms as to her own prudence assailed her, characterized as "hevery hinch a lady if she was that queer you'd think she'd just hescaped the lunatic hasylum," removed another stumbling-block from the path of the latter. She offered, if Hannah desired it, to carry the money for Percy back to Sylvandale, and to see that it was safely given into his hands; thus delivering ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... little bronze box that wouldn't open. After which he took to his heels, saying he'd call later for my answer—whatever he meant by that. He did call by night and stole the box. That's about all I know of him, thus far. But I'd watch out for him, if I were you; if he isn't a raving lunatic, I miss my guess." ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... attempt at liberating the insane from their chains, and, notwithstanding his recognized position as a leader of science, he gained but grudging assent, and was regarded as being himself little better than a lunatic for making so manifestly unwise and hopeless an attempt. Once the attempt had been made, however, and carried to a successful issue, the amelioration wrought in the condition of the insane was so patent that the fame of Pinel's work at the Bicetre and the Salpetriere went abroad ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... others unnecessary. Instead of working on your opponent's intellect by argument, work on his will by motive; and he, and also the audience if they have similar interests, will at once be won over to your opinion, even though you got it out of a lunatic asylum; for, as a general rule, half an ounce of will is more effective than a hundredweight of insight and intelligence. This, it is true, can be done only under peculiar circumstances. If you succeed in making your opponent feel that ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer
... nation worth the bearding of Duncan Farll? No! His distaste for Duncan Farll amounted to more than a hundred and forty millions of pounds and the dignity of whole planets. He felt that he could never bring himself to meet Duncan Farll. Why, Duncan might shove him into a lunatic ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... passed away since we related Amine's sufferings and cruel death; and now once more we bring Philip Vanderdecken on the scene. And during this time, where has he been? A lunatic—at one time frantic, chained, coerced with blows; at others, mild and peaceable. Reason occasionally appeared to burst out again, as the sun on a cloudy day, and then it was again obscured. For many years there was one who watched him carefully, ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... the great lunatic asylum of Paris, and it was to this repository that the scornful journalist consigned the pretender to the throne ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... our nigger with great fury. James Wait, with his elbow on the pillow, choked, gasped out:—"Did I ask you to bone the dratted thing? Blow your blamed pie. It has made me worse—you little Irish lunatic, you!" Belfast, with scarlet face and trembling lips, made a dash at him. Every man in the forecastle rose with a shout. There was a moment of wild tumult. Some one shrieked piercingly:—"Easy, Belfast! Easy!..." We expected Belfast to strangle Wait ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... Lammermoor is the greatest love-story ever written, and it was nothing short of desecration to make a libretto of it; but so far as the last act is concerned the opera certainly conveys the impression that the heroine is a raving lunatic. Only a crazy woman could express feeling in such ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... think, Mary,' he said at length. 'I don't believe a word of it. I believe your aunt is going mad, or has gone mad, and that she has delusions. The whole thing sounds to me like the invention of a lunatic.' ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... Miriam Nesbit, still bitterly jealous of Grace's popularity, planned a revenge upon Grace that nearly resulted in making her miss playing on her team during the deciding game. Grace's encounter with an escaped lunatic, David Nesbit's trial flight in his aeroplane, were incidents that also held the undivided ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... of a precognition that Mekin will be defeated when an enemy fleet submits to destruction, lying still in space? There's no sense to it! My Talents wouldn't think of anything idiotic like that! They've got better sense! But when this lunatic said it, they could precognize it too! It's so! They couldn't think of it themselves, but when this Mekinese Talent does, they know it's true. But it ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... about your young Ward. Mary is crazy about his sister, and the Doctor lunatic as to the brother, who will soon kick ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... are legion—begin with extolling him as a prophet or abusing him as a lunatic. I submit that before we extol or abuse, our first duty is to understand. And we can no longer evade that duty. We cannot afford any longer to ignore or dismiss the most powerful force in Continental literature, on the vain pretence that the ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... and don't you forget it! Why in the world should you think it funny for them to do this tomfool trick all winter and have nervous prostration all summer to pay for it? You'd lock up a man as a dangerous lunatic if he spent his life so. What they're like, and what they do with their time and strength concerns us enough sight more than what the tariff is, let me ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... the fool that lent out money gratis; look to him, jailer," (as to lunatic no less than criminal) the enmity, observe, having its symbolism literally carried out by being aimed straight at the heart, and finally foiled by a literal appeal to the great moral law that flesh and blood cannot be weighed, enforced by "Portia"[50] ("Portion"), the type of divine Fortune, found, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... of the world, but over slaves—from all which slavish reasoning, a plain man who had not been informed it was concocted by Europe's pet philosopher, would infallibly conclude some unfortunate lunatic had given birth to it. That there is no creature now tenanting Bedlam who would or could scribble purer nonsense about God than this of Newton's, we are well convinced—for how could the most frenzied of brains imagine anything more repugnant ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... 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
... and to put together paltry articles for works which I never read. Indeed, if I have not undergone the doom of almost all individuals whose situation becomes suddenly opposed to their feelings and habits, and if I am not yet a lunatic, I must thank the mechanical strength of my nerves. My nerves, however, will not withstand the threatenings of shame which I have always contemplated with terror. Time and fortune have taught me to meet all other evils with fortitude; but I grow every day more and more a coward at ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... 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 ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... might in a civilized place, didn't you? But this isn't a civilized place, and the methods are not all civilized. Now, here is the servant you rang for. If you persist in carrying out your intention I shall lock you in this room, take the key, and tell the landlord that you are a harmless lunatic, under my medical supervision. I think I shall not in that case lack for assistance ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... acquaintance of his, having relations with Lyons and other foreign centres, David had once come across a rumour which had seemed to promise a clue. He had himself gone across to Lyons at once, and had done all he could. But the clue broke in his hand, and the tanned, long-faced lunatic from Manchester, whereof report had spoken, could be only doubtfully identified with a man who bore no likeness ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... managed by the State—the Government—that is to say, the majority. Our own system has many Socialistic features and the trend of republican government is all that way. The Anarchist is the kind of lunatic who believes that all crime is the effect of laws forbidding it—as the pig that breaks into the kitchen garden is created by the dog that chews its ear! The Anarchist favors abolition of all law and frequently belongs to an organization ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... exhortation. All life was corrupt, he had been taught; art was corrupt, a snare, a delusion. Yet—was all its appalling power, its sensuous grandeur to be wasted in the service of the world, the flesh, the devil? Lenyard paused. "Oh, come on, Len. Why do you bother your excitable, sick heart with that lunatic's prophecies? Illowski is a big man, a very big man; but he is mad, mad! His theories of the decomposition of tone—he only imitates the old painter-impressionist of long ago—and his affected simplicity—why, he ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... the street had been occasioned by the frantic behaviour of a man with a musket. He had fired it among a crowd of women and children. It proved, however, to have been without a ball, and the fellow was suffered to go his way as a lunatic or a drunkard. When he had gone, D—— came from the window, whither I had followed him immediately upon securing the object in view. Soon afterward I bade him farewell. The pretended lunatic was a man in my ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... the people with whom I associate. But I suppose they are as good as any. As Kurz Pacha says: "If I fly from a Chinaman because he wears his hair long like a woman, I must equally fly the Frenchman because he shaves his like a lunatic. The story of Jack Spratt is the apologue of the world." It is astonishing how intimate he is with our language and literature. By-the-bye, that Polly Potiphar has been mean enough to send out to Paris for the very silk that ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... own mental improvement, or to discourage others from evil doing; neither, on the other hand, does she recognise any claim to abatement on the plea of an offender not having been able to help acting as he did. She would not, indeed, punish with death or with stripes an outrage committed by a lunatic or an idiot, partly because an outrage may be really less offensive for being committed unwittingly, inasmuch as it does not, at any rate, add insult to injury, and also because the corporal chastisement of a lunatic or an idiot could afford no reparation to the wounded feelings of a healthy mind. ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton |
