"Monomaniac" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... invincible forces all that extraordinary obstinacy, that morose doggedness, that indifference to comfort and pleasure, that brutal violence which had more than once, in their negative condition, made him seem more like some wild animal or half-savage monomaniac than an ordinary young man under five-and-twenty. He had, moreover, at this moment, when all the energies of his nature suddenly burst out, a power of deliberate, complacent, and pitiless moral self-vivisection, a power of performing upon his character ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... claims to be something of a connoisseur, and the picture is really worth seeing, if the lad has not spoiled it with his 'final touches'. And anyhow, the boy will be a study for a psychological monomaniac ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... of singular intensity enables him to see the object presented, and at the same time to impart to it a kind of visionary life. "That imagination," says M. Taine, "is akin to the imagination of the monomaniac." And, starting from this point, he proceeds to show, here again quite truly, with what admirable sympathetic power and insight Dickens has described certain cases of madness, as in Mr. Dick. But here, having said some right things, ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... false; and I believe it was in mere pity that Mrs. Higgs came to my rescue with a welcome proposition. If the gentleman was really interested in stamps, she said, probably supposing me a monomaniac on the point, he should see Mr. Denman's album. Mr. Denman had been collecting forty years, and his collection was said to be worth a mint of money. "Agnes," she went on, "if you were a kind little girl, you would run over to the 'All, tell Mr. Denman ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... do our God-Christ-worshipers attribute Divinity? To a nobody, to a vile and contemptible man, who had neither talent, science, nor ability; born of poor parents, and who, while He figured in the world, passed but for a monomaniac and a seditious fool, who was disdained, ridiculed, persecuted, whipped, and, finally, was hanged like most of those who desired to act the same part, when they had neither the courage nor skill. About that time there were ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... that sort of thing isn't unusual. I heard once of a postage-stamp collector who went all over the world collecting stamps, and finally gave up his last dollar for a rare stamp when he actually hadn't enough to eat. Of course, he was a monomaniac on the subject of ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... mad while he could do that?... How had she received his answer—in which he tried to show her the impossibility of any decent man compromising a girl in the way she proposed in her sweet innocence and ignorance. Of course he, a half-mad, epileptic, fiend-ridden monomaniac—nay, dangerous lunatic,—could not marry. Why, he might murder his own wife under some such circumstances as those under which he attacked Captain Blake. (Splendid fellow Blake! Not every man after such a handling as that would make ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... With a monomaniac, conversation is apt to limit itself to monologue; so, while Henry was greatly interested in this odd talk, it left him but ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... convinced that to pay tribute to the corrupt aldermen is on the whole cheaper than to have taxes too high; that it is better to pay exorbitant rates for franchises, than to be made unwilling partners in transportation experiments. Such men come to regard political reformers as a sort of monomaniac, who are not reasonable enough to see the necessity of the present arrangement which has slowly been evolved and developed, and upon which business is safely conducted. A reformer who really knew the people and their great human needs, who believed that it was the business ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... the agony of the unfortunate Boxtel on seeing the windows of the new story set out with bulbs and seedlings of tulips for the border, and tulips in pots; in short, with everything pertaining to the pursuits of a tulip-monomaniac! ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... magistrate, however, when I reflect upon the treatment which I received at the hands of my own relatives, who, though they knew my unimpeachable character, listened to my statement with an indulgent smile as if humouring the delusion of a monomaniac. This slur upon my veracity led to a quarrel between myself and John Vanburger, the brother of my wife, and confirmed me in my resolution to let the matter sink into oblivion—a determination which I have only altered through my son's solicitations. In order to make my narrative intelligible, ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Kent, the maternal great-aunt of Mr. Raleigh, devised her property, the will might possibly have been set aside as that of a monomaniac, but for the fact that he cared too little about anything to go to law for it, and for the still more important fact that the heirs-at-law were sufficiently numerous to ingulf the whole property and leave no ripple to attest its submerged existence, had ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... delusion to be indefinitely prolonged—it struggles with the hallucination, and eventually shakes it off; providing always the mind has a shadow, and not a reality, to deal with, and that the patient is not a monomaniac. The dilemma was consequently reduced to this position—either Willis was mad, or Captain Littlestone was on board ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... turned to Mr. Usher and said: "Usher, this boy is a monomaniac on the subject of my safety. I can hear him or hear of his being around at all times in the night, to prevent somebody from murdering me. He thinks I shall be killed, and we think he is going crazy. What does any one want to assassinate me for? If any one wants to do so, he can do ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... semi-incredulous manner as a fetish, or amulet, on which his luck depended, began to be seriously concerned, and awaking to the fact, deliberately cultivated his alarm as a psychological study, till he found himself, even with his eyes wide open as an observer in terrible fear, or a semi-monomaniac. The recovery of his lost charm at once relieved him. This was a diversion of Attention for a deliberate purpose, which might have been varied ad infinitum to procure very useful results. But I have myself known a man in the United States, who, having lost—he being an actor or performer—a certain ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... monomaniac on these things. I tell you what it is if William Montgomery were in your shoes he would not last a week. Thank God, he is a farmer—there's no ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... Francesco Pazzi, to guarantee the purchase-money. By this act Lorenzo made two mortal foes—the Pope and Francesco Pazzi. Francesco was a thin, pale, atrabilious fanatic, all nerve and passion, with a monomaniac intensity of purpose, and a will inflamed and guided by imagination—a man formed by nature for conspiracy, such a man, in fact, as Shakspere drew in Cassius. Maddened by Lorenzo's prohibition, he conceived the notion ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... you could get no one about this place to believe you! They have taken my brother-in-law's false story, indorsed as it is by the doctor-proprietor, for granted. And just so long as I persist in telling my true story, they will consider me a monomaniac, and so often as the thought of my many wrongs and sorrows combines with the nervous irritability to which every woman is occasionally subject, and makes me rave with impatience and excitement, they will report me a dangerous ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... filled with fury. He despised the Church, and St. John's above all churches, because you were of it; because you who had given so generously to it had wrecked his life. You had shattered his faith in humanity, his ideal. From a normal, contented man he had deteriorated into a monomaniac whom no one would hire, a physical and mental wreck who needed care and nursing. He said he hoped ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... land there was but one man who had the slightest hope of accomplishing any thing with India-rubber, and that one was Charles Goodyear. His friends regarded him as a monomaniac. He not only manufactured his cloth, but even dressed in clothes made of it, wearing it for the purpose of testing its durability, as well as of advertising it. He was certainly an odd figure, and in his appearance justified the remark of one of his friends, who, upon being asked ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... do, my dear Watson," said Holmes, shaking his head; "for no amount of 'idee fixe' would enable your interesting monomaniac to find out where these ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... who then descend down different paths towards different towns, traveling slow or fast. It is right; there must be people traveling to different towns; there must be specialists; but shall no one behold the horizon? Shall all mankind be specialist surgeons or peculiar plumbers; shall all humanity be monomaniac? Tradition has decided that only half of humanity shall be monomaniac. It has decided that in every home there shall be a tradesman and a Jack-of-all-trades. But it has also decided, among other things, that the Jack-of-all-trades ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton |
