Diccionario ingles.comDiccionario ingles.com
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Lunatic   /lˈunətˌɪk/   Listen
Lunatic

adjective
1.
Insane and believed to be affected by the phases of the moon.  Synonym: moonstruck.



Related search:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Lunatic" Quotes from Famous Books



... Tom, but followed the lunatic's counsel, nevertheless, so far as to refrain from offering the other a lift in the well-appointed brougham, with its burly coachman, waiting to convey him to Ecclesfield Manor, though his late fellow-traveller was proceeding in that ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville

... lunatic asylum with you alone," replied the painter. "Why don't you go off and do some work instead of exhibiting ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston

... he said, bewildered, a little angry, and at her condition not a little alarmed. For the confession, it was preposterous: they had not been many weeks married! "Calm yourself, or you will give me a lunatic for a wife!" he said. Then changing his tone, for his heart rebuked him, when he saw the ashy despair that spread over her face and eyes, "Be still, my precious," he went on. "All is well. You have been dreaming, and are not yet quite awake. ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald

... sacrificed their manhood to fashion; they never endangered in the cafes and lupanars their health and reason. The Mosque and the Church, notwithstanding the ignorance and bigotry they foster, are still better than lunatic asylums. And Europe can not have enough ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... you are going mad, Bertuccio," said the count coldly. "If that is the case, I warn you, I shall have you put in a lunatic asylum." ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... a wounded man as if he were a sick child or a lunatic. It's the greatest rot. I'm ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson

... the suffering souls and listen to the conversation between Don Filipo and old Tasio in the lonely home of the latter. The Sage, or Lunatic, was sick, having been for days unable to leave his bed, prostrated by a malady ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... for men to be 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 ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley

... have rung with lunatic screams after months and years of hollow-eyed watching for the ship that never came? It might have been different, of course, had Malmsworth been able to appreciate the aesthetic values of life, as Mr. Wordsley did. But doubtless these lovely miles and miles of crystalline ...
— The Marooner • Charles A. Stearns

... hell is this fellow driving at, Paret?" he demanded. "It sounds to me like the ranting of a lunatic dervish. If he thinks so much of us, and the way we run the town, what's ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... broken in. He is the pink of orderliness in his own study and the library, but as long as no one meddles there, he minds nothing. It just keeps him alive; but I believe the Shapcotes think this house a mild lunatic asylum.' ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... understand about that 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 ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit

... myself, "did that saintly lunatic produce that masterpiece which but for M. Cavalli I should never ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... does not at once enter on his property "as if he were naturally as well as civilly dead." And if, as in such cases is notoriously the practice, the Court of Chancery appoints a guardian of the lunatic's property, analogy would seem to require that the Houses of Parliament, as the only body which can possibly claim authority in such a matter, should exercise a similar power in providing for the proper management of ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge

... his place by the fire. "Crazy, lunatic Ham. I'd like to see you get him into any kind of a fix he couldn't get out of. When we woke up and found you gone, Ham declared you'd played a trick on him, and he's ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley

... 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 ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond

... commencement of his career, Collins was, however, an object for sympathy instead of censure; and though few refuse their compassion to the confirmed lunatic, it is rare that the dreadful state of irresolution and misery, which sometimes exist for years before the fatal catastrophe, receives either ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins

... with Flossy, while Fred would entertain Maud, much to her pleasure, at home. The wife hated to see her husband come home at all, but she went into hysterics when Fred arrived. When Fred and Flossy were away, or absent, goodness knows where, the once happy home was like a lunatic asylum, in which the mania with the inmates was a total disregard of each other, and where language was unknown. The husband and wife drifted further and further apart. They ceased to smile, ceased to know each other, ceased to see each other. They were like ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)

... mentioned, which sometimes contains 1000 inmates, there are numerous other charitable institutions, such as the women's hospital, the foundling institution, the admirable Hospicio de San Juan de Dios for men, and the lunatic asylum. Gratuitous instruction is given to a large number of children, and there are several mathematical and commercial academies, maintained by different commercial corporations, a nautical school, a school of design, a theological seminary and a flourishing medical school. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... shall come and fetch it to-morrow." And David knew he meant it. Therefore, in order to save a collision between his father and his friend—a collision the issue of which he dared hardly contemplate, knowing, as he did, the unalterable determination of the one and the lunatic passion of the other—the boy had resolved to fetch the Cup himself, then and there, in the teeth, if needs be, of his father and the Tailless Tyke. And ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant

... 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. Will you take my son and see what you think of his case—what you can do for him? I shall ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... received—Marlborough House in London; that he was sure the Prince of Wales would welcome him heartily. At last, means having been obtained from his friends, I sought to forward him from St. Petersburg; but, as no steamers thence would take a lunatic, I sent my private secretary with him to Helsingfors, and thence secured ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... three months I shall be allowed, I am sure, to pass at my ease in a lunatic asylum. I have ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... persistently a story which science pronounces impossible (like your voyage through space), if he do not fall at once a victim to popular piety, would be consigned to the worse than living death of life-long confinement in a lunatic hospital." ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... table, and defend himself to the last gasp with a carving-knife. Exors says that the law is bad, and you can't touch him. As for Barnes, he has gone out of what little wits he ever had with the fright of it, and people seem to think that you couldn't touch a lunatic." ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope

... very nearly crazy on one point. He might be so much of a lunatic as to commit these robberies from simple delusion. Or he might wish to prove to his daughter that the ...
— The Crime of the French Cafe and Other Stories • Nicholas Carter

... his legs in that condition. I would give worlds to know how aunt Celia ever unbent sufficiently to get engaged. But, as I was saying, Mr. Copley has accomplished something, young as he is. He has built three picturesque suburban churches suitable for weddings, and a state lunatic asylum. ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... 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, tome ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... wicked. I do not mean to say that he is necessarily unwilling to grant what he would call "decent hours of labour." He may treat men like dirt; but if you want to make money, even out of dirt, you must let it lie fallow by some rotation of rest. He may treat men as dogs, but unless he is a lunatic he will for certain periods let sleeping ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton

... in great sabots, fetch sack after sack of what I supposed to be bran, and carry it away on his shoulders. He passed close to me, and looked at me with an expression which I interpreted to mean: 'You must be a lunatic to stare at me instead of going to bed—you, who have Monseigneur's soft bed, and are at liberty to sleep.' But no word passed between us. At length I did go to bed ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... another. It was extraordinary that he hadn't the sense to sink straight down, thoroughly test the second bottom, and if he found no gold there, to fill the shaft up to the other bottoms, or build platforms at the proper level and then explore them. He was living in a lunatic asylum the last time I heard of him. And the last time I heard from that field, they were boring the ground like a sieve, with the latest machinery, to find the best place to put down a deep shaft, and finding ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson

... at length, and was characteristic of the woman. Hissing out the words from between her teeth, she replied, "When I take 'Lena Rivers into my family for my husband and son to make love to, alternately, I shall be ready for the lunatic asylum at Lexington." ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes

... 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 refuse a duel, or not demand one if insulted, would ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... the Construction and Economy 2 0 of PAUPER LUNATIC ASYLUMS; including Instructions to the Architects who offered plans for the Wakefield Asylum, and a sketch of the most approved design, by ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland

... with glossy ringlets. He was very cross to her, and it was murmured that 'dear Mrs. Paget had often had to pass through the waters of affliction'. They were very poor, but rigidly genteel, and she was careful, so far as she could, to conceal from the world the caprices of her poor lunatic husband. ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... every experienced intelligence must confidently look for from such a statement. The story-teller who willfully tempts fate by such obvious beginnings, who is to the expectant reader in danger of being robbed or half- murdered, or frightened by an escaped lunatic, or introduced to his lady-love for the first time, deserves to be detected. I am relieved to say that none of these things occurred to me. The road from Wingdam to Slumgullion knew no other banditti than the regularly licensed ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... heart, he told the guards that his mission was of a celestial nature; but they, not finding messengers from above among the list of visitors set down in the orders of the day, handed poor Martin over to the municipal authorities, who transferred him to the Bicetre lunatic asylum. Here he remained for some time, during which his exemplary piety and touching resignation attracted the attention and respect of the principal physician, who often made him the subject of general conversation. At the end of two months Louis heard ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various

... 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!" ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman

... they do, poor darlings, but accept? But they are not interested in moralities, or in religions. How can they be? They are the substance out of which life comes, whereas we are but the spirit, the crazy spirit—the lunatic crying for the moon. Spirit and substance being dependent one on the other, concessions have to be made; the substance in want of the spirit acquiesces, says, 'Very well, I will be religious and moral too.' Then the spirit ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore

... poets nowadays are not always so frank as earlier ones in describing their state of mind. Now that the lunatic is no longer placed in the temple, but in the hospital, the popular imputation of insanity to the poet is not always favorably received. Occasionally he regards it as only another unjust charge brought against ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... smile, as he stirred a cauldron of hot rum punch. Bailleul was only two miles away, and officers and men used often to ride or walk into the town to call on "Tina," buy lace, or have hot baths (a great luxury) at the Lunatic Asylum. Dividing our time between this and cricket, for which there was plenty of room around the huts, we generally managed to pass a very pleasant four or six ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills

... 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 ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... 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 I ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke

... disorder, is here a systematic character; it does not hinder people from forming a plan of conduct, and from even dying agreeably to it. You remember how the last Ratcliffe died with the utmost propriety; so did this horrid lunatic, coolly and sensibly. His own and his wife's relations had asserted that he would tremble at last. No such thing; he shamed heroes. He bore the solemnity of a pompous and tedious procession of above two ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... mild a word to apply to your ward's actions, Mr. Walraven," she said, turning angrily upon her husband. "Mollie Dane is either a very mad girl or a very wicked one. In either case, she is a fit subject for a lunatic asylum, and the sooner she is incased in a strait-jacket and her ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming

... limit to the emotions a woman can pour out. As soon as Peter had got fairly started on the humiliating confession that he had a wife, little Jennie sprang up from the bed with a terrified shriek, and confronted him with a face like the ghost of an escaped lunatic. Peter tried to explain that it wasn't his fault, he had really expected to be free any day. But Jennie only clasped her hands to her forehead and screamed: "You have deceived me! You have betrayed me!" It was just like a scene in the movies, the bored little ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair

... impatient gesture. "I want to know what she's going to do. Surely she isn't going to allow herself to be bound by that old lunatic's will, is she?" ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler

... pressure, and finally exhibited signs of melancholy insanity. Friend Hopper had an interview with her soon after she was conveyed to Sing Sing, and found her in a state of deep dejection. She afterward became completely deranged, and was removed to the Lunatic Asylum at Bloomingdale. He and his wife visited her there, and found her in a state of temporary rationality. Her manners were quiet and pleasing, and she appeared exceedingly gratified to see them. The superintendent granted permission to take her with them in a walk ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child

... and wonted impudence, the Baron, bravely enough, was the first to speak of the article in the "Voix du Peuple." "I say, have you read Sagnier's article this morning? It's a good one; he has verve you know, but what a dangerous lunatic he is!" ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... Nancy, or whatever your name is," he roared, "there's a lunatic upstairs, making a tremendous row in the room over mine. If you don't stop him I'll leave the hotel. Hear ...
— Paul the Peddler - The Fortunes of a Young Street Merchant • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... think what I must have looked like bursting in on you that night—a sort of Curfew-Shall-Not-Ring-To-night, I suppose—I don't wonder at anyone's thinking me a lunatic. How I ever got there at all is a mystery to me. I believe I was unconscious part of the time. I scarcely remember it; the whole thing seems like a sort of feverish nightmare. When the taxi came to a standstill I simply gave everything up for lost. I only set out to ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell

... BEDLAM, originally a lunatic asylum in London, so named from the priory "Bethlehem" in Bishopsgate, first appropriated to the purpose, Bedlam being a corruption of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... important and sanest part of his work was the scheme for organising society on a new principle of industrial co-operation. His general theory of the universe and man's destinies which lay behind his practical plans is so fantastic that it sounds like the dream of a lunatic. Yet many accepted it as the ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury

... a bad. We interpret it by our antecedent impressions. The very same sentiments, according as our jealousy is or is not awake, or our aversion stimulated, are tokens of truth or of dissimulation and pretence. There is a story of a sane person being by mistake shut up in the wards of a lunatic asylum, and that, when he pleaded his cause to some strangers visiting the establishment, the only remark he elicited in answer was, "How naturally he talks! you would think he was in his senses." Controversies should be decided by ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman

... enow," replied the lunatic; "mair than ae puir mind can bear, I trow. Stay a bit, and I'll tell you a' about it; for I like ye, Jeanie Deans; a'body spoke weel about ye when we lived in the Pleasaunts. And I mind aye the drink o' milk ye gae me yon day, when I had been ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight

... him to be unpractical creatures. He had, indeed, himself founded a university before he left America and handsomely endowed several professorial chairs. But he did so in the spirit which led Dean Swift to found a lunatic asylum. He wanted to provide a kind of hospital for a class of men who ought, for the sake of society, to be secluded, lest their theories should come inconveniently athwart the plans of those who are engaged in the ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham

... from the woods around to my land; I set and sowed acres in ginseng, knowing I must nurse, tend, and cultivate seven years. If my neighbours had understood what I was attempting, what do you think they would have said? Cranky and lazy would have become adjectives too mild. Lunatic would have expressed it better. That's close the general opinion, anyway. Because I will not fell my trees, and the woods hide the work I do, it is generally conceded that I spend my time in the sun reading a book. I do, ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter

... authorities, critics, and dealers of his work—these and a feeble constitution sent the unfortunate back to Charenton, where he died February 14, 1868. Baudelaire, his critical discoverer, had only preceded him to a lunatic's grave six months earlier. Inasmuch as there is a certain family likeness among men of genius with disordered minds and instincts, several comparisons might be made between Meryon and Baudelaire. Both were great artists and both were born with flawed, neurotic systems. ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... of these Union meetings. Every one knows, that there is not a county, or a city, or a hamlet in the State of New York, that is ready to go out of the Union, but only some small bodies of fanatics. There is no man so insane in the State, not fit for a lunatic asylum, as to wish it. But that is not the point. We all know that every man and every neighborhood, and all corporations, in the State of New York, except those I have mentioned, are attached to the Union, and have no idea of withdrawing from it. But that is not, I repeat, the point. The ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... imperfect imitation of the voices of animals, of inorganic noises, and of spoken words. The mutilation of his words makes it seem as if the child were already inventing new designations which are soon forgotten; and as the child, like the lunatic, uses familiar words in a new sense after he has begun to learn to talk, his style of expression gets an original character, that of "baby-talk." Here it is characteristic that the feelings and ideas do not now first arise, though ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer

... at him as if he were a lunatic or a person talking in his sleep, and the prince angrily rode on without noticing that his hair ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various

... elaborately and deliberately pathetic; he is always thinking of death, and calling upon the readers to sympathise with his sorrows and accept his consolations. The world taken by itself is, he maintains, a huge lunatic asylum, and the most hideous of sights is a naked human heart. We are, indeed, to find sufficient consolation from the belief in immortality. How far Young was orthodox or logical or really edifying is a question with which I am not concerned. The appetite for this ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen

... caldrons thicker than ever. But the spell was broken. In a moment more Old Phelps was shouting, "The sun!" and before we could gain our feet there was a patch of sky overhead as big as a farm. "See! quick!" The old man was dancing like a lunatic. There was a rift in the vapor at our feet, down, down, three thousand feet into the forest abyss, and lo! lifting out of it yonder the tawny side of Dix,—the vision of a second, snatched away ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... 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 ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg

... infant was one of the most consistently successful men that ever fought with this bitter world. It is the custom to say that the secret of such men is their profound belief in themselves, and this is true, but not all the truth. Workhouses and lunatic asylums are thronged with men who believe in themselves. Of Francis it is far truer to say that the secret of his success was his profound belief in other people, and it is the lack of this that has commonly been ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton

... that on board, or the skipper would not have acted so much like a lunatic," Dave ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock

... dearest maid, is sick, Almost to be lunatic: AEsculapius! come and bring Means for her recovering; And a gallant cock shall be Offer'd up ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... Pilkington, Bishop of Durham, in a letter to Archbishop Parker, dated 1564, complains that, "among other things that be amiss here in your great cares, ye shall understand that in Blackburn there is a fantastical (and as some say, lunatic) young man, which says that he has spoken with one of his neighbours that died four year since, or more. Divers times he says he has seen him, and talked with him, and took with him the curate, the schoolmaster, ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding

... in his dark eyes and haggard, swarthy face. It played flittingly around that strange look of ruined human dignity, like a wan beam of late sunset about a crumbling and forgotten temple. He put his hand hurriedly to his forehead, as if he were trying to remember—like a lunatic, who, having heard only the wrangle of fiends in his delirium, suddenly in a conscious moment, perceives the familiar voice of love. But who could this be, to whom mere human sympathy ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis

... think better of you than to suppose that you try this sort of thing as a joke. But even the vagaries of a fever-crazed lunatic come some time to a limit. What is this talk about heads and baskets? Get yourself together and throw away that absurd cane-chopper. What would Miss Greene think of you?" he ended, with the silky cajolery that one would use toward a ...
— Options • O. Henry

... in all places represented by an image in the atmosphere, that every existing object has a spectral intangible double which may become visible, the Emperor would have sent his informant to Charenton for a lunatic, just as Richelieu before his day sent that Norman martyr, Salomon de Caux, to the Bicetre for announcing his immense triumph, the idea of navigation by steam. Yet Daguerre's discovery amounts to nothing more nor ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... pause, while Mr. Bill Hen wondered if this were a floating lunatic asylum or a nest of pirates, that had come so easily up their quiet river and turned the world topsy-turvy. At length—"Your force, Senor Pike," the Skipper said, "I perceive it not, for to take away this child. Have you the milizia—what you call ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards

... obvious, with teetotalism and similar fads. All these fads were peculiarly rampant in the United States in the period immediately preceding the war, when half the States went "dry," and some cities passed what seems to us quite lunatic laws—prohibiting cigarette-smoking and creating a special female police force of "flirt-catchers." The whole thing is part, one may suppose, of the deliquescence of the Puritan tradition in morals, and will probably not endure. So far as such doctrinaire Pacifism is concerned, it seems ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton

... my charm'd ears no more of woman tell, Name not a woman, and I shall be well: Like a poor lunatic that makes his moan, And for a while beguiles his lookers on; He reasons well.—His eyes their wildness lose He vows the keepers his wrong'd sense abuse. But if you hit the cause that hurt his brain, } Then his teeth gnash, he foams, he shakes his chain, } His eye-balls ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... "Let go, you lunatic! You'll kill yourself. Listen! I'm not lying. It's the truth. She's met a man, I tell you. Been meeting him for months, I guess. There! now will ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln

... summoned to the bedside of his brother, reported dying, returns a moment after he has set out for a key which has been accidently dropped from his bunch and finds Cinthio and Elaria. The gallant can only escape by pretending to be a lunatic brought to the house for medical treatment and cure. But during the doctor's subsequent absence, whilst the two lovers are, as they suppose, securely entertaining their mistresses, the father is suddenly heard to return. For ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn

... is another cause: for the males are thus more liable to be injured during parturition. Consequently the still-born males are more numerous; and, as a highly competent judge, Dr. Crichton Browne (52. 'West Riding Lunatic Asylum Reports,' vol. i. 1871, p. 8. Sir J. Simpson has proved that the head of the male infant exceeds that of the female by 3/8ths of an inch in circumference, and by 1/8th in transverse diameter. Quetelet has shewn that woman is born smaller than man; see Dr. Duncan, ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... that the famed variety dancer Lola Lal, who also appears under the name Lo Llal and whose maiden name is Leni Levi, had to be taken to a lunatic asylum, which caused a tremendous sensation. The pitiful woman had been found toward morning in a wheat field, stark naked in her birthday suit, crying bitterly and smoking a large cigar. Mr Gottschalk Schulz, a poet of sensitivity, has published a moving poem about ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein

... knocking the blanked stokers about? No, by George! You had to get some draught, too—may he be everlastingly blanked for a swab-headed deck-hand if you didn't! And the chief, too, rampaging before the steam-gauge and carrying on like a lunatic up and down the engine-room ever since noon. What did Jukes think he was stuck up there for, if he couldn't get one of his decayed, good-for-nothing deck-cripples to turn the ventilators to ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad

... the saint by a miracle saved all their lives. The shrine was destroyed at the Reformation, and the relics buried in the nave, where they were found in the last century. York Minster remained almost unchanged until 1829, when a lunatic named Martin concealed himself one night in the cathedral and set fire to the woodwork of the choir, afterwards escaping through a transept-window. The fire destroyed the timber roofs of the choir and nave and the great organ. Martin was arrested, and confined in an asylum until ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... he wanted her money, sly dog;" and this young man, who had been petted by the ladies, voted a good fellow by the men, and was universally popular, both in drawing-room and club, had committed a vulgar murder—it was truly shocking. What was the world coming to, and what were gaols and lunatic asylums built for if men of young Fitzgerald's calibre were not put in them, and kept from killing people? And then, of course, everybody asked everybody else who Whyte was, and why he had never been heard of before. All people who had met ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume

... and with repetition, staring the while with incredulous eyes. Quite evidently she considered me a benevolent lunatic, and marked me down as a useful prey. I might not be willing to push her pram, but—The very next evening a small servant knocked at the door with Mrs Lorrimer's compliments, and could Miss Harding lend her a fresh egg? (Her name is Lorrimer, and the children ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... for the recovery of his niece. So Mary was placed under the 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

... as become easier of analysis. At least, I seem to myself to see it differently. In the earlier days it seemed quite simply the struggle between a revolutionary and non-revolutionary countries. I now think that that struggle is a foolish, unnecessary, lunatic incident which disguised from us the existence of a far more serious struggle, in which the revolutionary and non-revolutionary governments are fighting on the same side. They fight without cooperation, and ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome

... administrative functions of the justices of the peace. In the act of 1888 they are enumerated in sixteen distinct categories, of which the most important are the raising, expending, and borrowing of money; the care of county property, buildings, bridges, lunatic asylums, reformatory and industrial schools; the appointment of inferior administrative officials; the granting of certain licenses other than for the sale of liquor;[265] the care of main highways and the protection of streams from pollution; and the execution of various regulations ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg

... 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. For it was Leech who had those ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... trust in flat things coming round! Not in their being beaten round, or worked round, but in their "coming" round! As though a lunatic should trust ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... fair proportion of 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. ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various

... viewed the question from a high standpoint and found it all deplorable, but the general opinion was that Bennett was a hopeless young lunatic. Old Mr. Gervase went purple when his name was mentioned, and the young Dixons sneered very merrily over ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen

... different from these 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 be told as Froude could tell it. The ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul

... been," he said gravely, "rescuing my picture. That insipid lunatic had wrapped it up in brown paper, and put it among his socks in his portmanteau. I couldn't see it anywhere till I routed out the portmanteau. If it had come to grief I ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope

... holidays and then laughed at! They're the other half of a whole that we're half of, 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 ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James

... this lunatic come into my presence and play with a tiger's whiskers?' Rin-zai then burst out into a Ho,[FN85] and Obak said: 'Attendant, come and carry this ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya

... a dingy clock and two old candlesticks. The old man led the way for Popinot and his registrar, and pulled forward two chairs, as though he were master of the place; M. d'Espard left it to him. After the preliminary civilities, during which the judge watched the supposed lunatic, the Marquis naturally asked what was the object of this visit. On this Popinot glanced significantly at the ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac

... darkness. The eldest sister was as silent as a deep ditch and as ugly. She slid here and there with her head on one side like an inquisitive hen watching one curiously, and was always doing nothing with an air of futile employment. The youngest was a semi-lunatic who prattled and prattled without ceasing, and was always catching one's sleeve, and laughing at one's face.—And everywhere those flopping, wriggling petticoats were appearing and disappearing. One saw slack hair whisking by the corner of one's eye. Mysteriously, urgently, they were coming ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens

... life by exposing and conquering, at the expense of two years of his studies, some shocking abuses which existed in the York Lunatic Asylum. This was a proceeding which called much attention to the treatment of the insane, and produced much good effect. He was very resolute and energetic. The magistracy of his {276} time had such scruples about using the severity ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... right away that you must not be more than twenty years old, for you cry out in amazement, 'Impossible!' and look at me as though I were a lunatic ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont

... conference of what had occurred, and found that they did not believe faith would be kept with them, he resigned in the dispairing hope that his action might turn them from a purpose which he considered lunatic, or, at least, by restraining a number of his followers from rising, he might limit the tale of men who ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens

... passionately admire. The place was as windy as Troy; from far on the ringing plains the breeze raced and fell upon this veil, ceaselessly kicking it here and there, in a way that would have driven a strong man lunatic in seven minutes. Sharlee, though a slim girl and no stronger than another, remained entirely unconscious of the behavior of the veil; long familiarity had bred contempt for its boisterous play; and, with her eyes a thousand miles away, she was wishing with ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... 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 upon other planets, where ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson

... childish little poem seems worth preservation now. It was presented to his daughter Matilda on the death of her little dog. She happening to visit a relative, who was physician in a lunatic asylum, and showing the little poem, it was printed in the 'Asylum Magazine,' from which it was copied ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... attack Popery, but to leave the Bible to speak for 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 Borrow's ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... greeting them with "good-morning, damn you," and other remarks of an equally mixed order. A second irrepressible being held that all the emotions of the soul should be freely expressed, and illustrated his theory by antics that would have sent him to a lunatic asylum, if, as an unregenerate wag said, he had not already been in one. When his spirit soared, he climbed trees and shouted; when doubt assailed him, he lay upon the floor and groaned lamentably. At joyful periods, he raced, leaped, and ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various

... sample, though,' explained Dallas. 'That sort of thing has been going on the whole term. If the head of a House is an abject lunatic, there's bound to be ructions. Fags simply live for the sake of kicking up rows. It's meat ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse

... hardest fight, and won. Is there a man of that temper in either crew tonight? If so, now's his time. For both coxswains have called on their men for the last effort; Miller is whirling the tassel of his right-hand tiller rope round his head, like a wiry little lunatic; from the towing path, from Christchurch meadow, from the row of punts, from the clustered tops of the barges, comes a roar of encouragement and applause, and the band, unable to resist the impulse, breaks with a crash into the "Jolly Young Watermen," playing two ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... true; overwork had turned Belton's brain, and he was subsequently sent to a Criminal Lunatic Asylum for the rest of his life. But there were moments when he was comparatively sane, and in these interims he confessed everything. Anderson had told him that he was going to hoax the Dean, and filled with indignation at the idea of such a trick being played on a College official—for ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell

... on the stairs, and then to see a lady all in a white shroud stained with blood and clay stagger into my room, the victim of too rapid interment. As to the notion that my respected kinsman had a mad wife concealed on the premises, and that a lunatic aunt, black in the face with suppressed mania, would burst into my chamber, it was comparatively a harmless fancy, and not particularly disturbing. Between these and the 'Yellow Dwarf,' who (though only the invention of the Countess D'Aulnoy) might frighten a nervous infant into hysterics, ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang

... what there is to know! Now you're a man of sense, in spite of a few bad habits—such as myself, for example. Is this fad of yours madness?—which would be quite to your credit,—for gadzooks, I like a lunatic! Or is it the complaint of a man who has gathered too much data on the subject of Old Rye? Or is it, as I suspect, something more ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie

... I'm in a stait of Destitution. I've got no bed-clothes, think of that, I must have coins, the hole thing's a Mockry, I wont stand it, nobody would. I would have come away before, only I have no money for the railway fare. Don't be a lunatic, Morris, you don't seem to understand my dredful situation. I have to get the stamp on tick. A fact.—Ever ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... He spoke not a word, but after a time drew himself erect and pointed before him. He had led the English to the rear of one of the Spanish batteries. The colonel, who had at first regarded him with doubt, as a lunatic or a false guide, ordered his men to attack, and after a short fight he returned to his lines with prisoners and trophies of victory. He sought in all directions for the old man, to thank him, but the jungle had swallowed him, and he was ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner

... 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, Mr. Wallace had charge of that lunatic asylum for ...
— 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.



Words linked to "Lunatic" :   nutcase, looney, crazy, insane, lunacy, loony, madwoman, pyromaniac, sick person, sufferer, diseased person, adventurer, tearaway, colloquialism, weirdo, venturer, bedlamite



Copyright © 2024 Diccionario ingles.com