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Lunatic   Listen
noun
Lunatic  n.  A person affected by lunacy; an insane person, esp. one who has lucid intervals; a madman; a person of unsound mind. "The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, Are of imagination all compact."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Lunatic" Quotes from Famous Books



... Only his long, skinny forefinger shot out toward the door. Arnold knew that he might just as well have been talking to the most hopeless lunatic ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... 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

... bring the whole affair into court, and Florino knew this as well as he did. After a short time the poet tried a new line of tactics, and endeavored to persuade Jaqui that it was his duty to revive the lady; when this idea once got well into the head of the young man he became a worse lunatic than before. Jaqui attempted to reason with him; but Florino would listen to nothing he had to say, and went on being a fool, and a poet, and a lover, at the same time; and Jaqui began to be afraid that some day he would get into the room by foul means, break open the box, ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton

... you talking about, Kate? Who is this sodden old lunatic, and what on earth are you ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke

... 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 meet the river again soon, ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... dear! he would justly consider me a lunatic, were I to write to him in such a strain. I shall simply tell him that I wish to make use of the talent that has been given me, and ask him for his advice how best to proceed. Don't you think something like that would answer? Come now, Letty," cheerfully and ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton

... Somerville to my father explained my conduct; and my father, in reply, said I certainly must have been mad. To this I assented, quoting Shakspeare—"the lunatic, the lover, and the poet, &c.!" So long as I was out of the scrape, I cared little about the impeachment ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... Curry saw a large Negro wandering in a field. For no reason whatever he decided that that man had been the assailant. Some white would-be murderers were quickly got together and shot the black man to death. Then it was discovered that he was an escaped lunatic, whose recent history did not square with the theory ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various

... had been his undoing in the past. Then came a time when he would ask for a horse and go for a long ride. He would make a call at some English estancia, and drink freely of the wine or spirits hospitably set on the table. And the result would be that he would come home raving like a lunatic:—a very little alcohol would drive him mad. Then would follow a day or two of repentance and black melancholy; then recovery and ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson

... "Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious," there's more in it than meets the eye. There's more in you, dear reader, than meets the eye. What, don't you believe it? Do you think you're as obvious as a poached egg on a piece of toast, like the poor lunatic? Not a bit of it, dear reader. You've got a solar plexus, and a lumbar ganglion not far from your liver, and I'm going to tell everybody. Nothing brings a man home to himself like telling everybody. And I will drive you home to yourself, do you hear? You've been poaching in my private atmospheric ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence

... an outburst of tears. " Yes," continued Coleman, " I am going to say something definite. I am going to say that it is the most imbecile bit of nonsense that has come within the range of my large newspaper experience. It is simply the aberration of a rather remarkable lunatic. It is no good; it is not worth the price of a cheese sandwich. I understand that its one feat has been to break your leg; if it ever goes off again, persuade it to break your neck. And now I want you to take this nursery rhyme of yours ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane

... off the encircling arm and retired a few paces inland. "'Ave you—ever been—in a lunatic asylum at any time?" he inquired, as soon as ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs

... he said. "He knew what he was about. B. & H. is climbing right up to the top. Hanged if I don't put in another hundred!" and he ran down and out into the street like a young lunatic. In five minutes he had put up another hundred dollars with Broker Tabor for Halsey & Company to buy more B. & H. stock on margin. The stock was bought ...
— Halsey & Co. - or, The Young Bankers and Speculators • H. K. Shackleford

... men, so I myself do muse Why in this sort I wrest invention so, And why these giddy metaphors I use, Leaving the path the greater part do go. I will resolve you. I'm a lunatic; And ever this in madmen you shall find, What they last thought of when the brain grew sick, In most distraction they keep that in mind. Thus talking idly in this bedlam fit, Reason and I, you must conceive, ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith

... woman woke me out of my sleep to put them by. She stood over me, and made me fold the clothes up, and shake out the stockings, and put the shoes under a chair, and all the time that fiendish dog was snapping at my heels. Oh, it's intolerable! I'll be in a lunatic asylum if ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade

... together as blasphemers and as social agitators. Their chief notes were the variety of their opinions and the unanimity of their persecution by all other parties. Some of them were men of intelligible social and religious tenets; others furnished the "lunatic fringe" of the reform movement. The proclamation banishing them from England [Sidenote: 1538] on pain of death merely continued the previous ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... in the fully developed exorcism was that, according to sacred Scripture, a main characteristic of Satan is pride. Pride led him to rebel; for pride he was cast down; therefore the first thing to do, in driving him out of a lunatic, was to strike a fatal blow at his pride,—to ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... position is to say that woman stands for the idea of Sanity; that intellectual home to which the mind must return after every excursion on extravagance. The mind that finds its way to wild places is the poet's; but the mind that never finds its way back is the lunatic's. There must in every machine be a part that moves and a part that stands still; there must be in everything that changes a part that is unchangeable. And many of the phenomena which moderns hastily condemn are really parts of this position of the woman as the center and pillar ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton

... written by C.E.W. LAWRENCE with a purpose, but it remains obscure to me. A smart young married clerk in the oil business falls off the top of a bus on to his head and, from a confirmed materialist, becomes something not unlike a confirmed lunatic, with a faculty for seeing flaming emanations which enable him to place the owners of them in the true scale of human and spiritual values. He discovers that his wife's uncle, a whimsical but essentially tedious drunkard, is a better man than the egregious New Religionist pastor—a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 30, 1919 • Various

... the child of full age, it is one to which only contract gives its legal validity. The apparent exceptions are exceptions of that stamp which illustrate the rule. The child before years of discretion, the orphan under guardianship, the adjudged lunatic, have all their capacities and incapacities regulated by the Law of Persons. But why? The reason is differently expressed in the conventional language of different systems, but in substance it is stated to the same effect by all. The ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine

... he deals to have recourse to the principal in case the agent had authority to bind him. And if the agent even buys in his own name, but for the principal, and without disclosing his name, the principal also is bound, provided the goods come to his use. Also if the principal is under age, or a lunatic, or otherwise incompetent to contract, the ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young

... thus incoherently raging, when the scene was interrupted by the arrival of the landlord and inn servants in various degrees of deshabille, and to them I gave my temporary lunatic in charge. ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... have seen his brother's next proceeding he would certainly have pronounced him a hopeless lunatic. He took the sum that fell to him and placed it in the bank to his mother's credit. "The interest money won't amount to much, mother," he said, as he handed her the certificate of deposit, "but I shall enjoy thinking that if you want some ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston

... Oh, Hephzy," with a bitter laugh, "did you ever dream there could be such a hopeless lunatic as I am! You needn't say it. I ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln

... has given up restraining FRED, in despair. FRED down L., in chair). About? About as near to raving madness as ever was seen! Go and buy a straight-jacket, sir, he's a lunatic. While you are at the straight waistcoat shop you may as well purchase half a dozen, for he's not the ...
— Three Hats - A Farcical Comedy in Three Acts • Alfred Debrun

... be urged that the crimes here described were those of a criminal lunatic and not to be attributed to any occult cause; the answer to this is that Gilles was not an isolated unit, but one of a group of occultists who cannot all have been mad. Moreover, it was only after his invocation of the Evil One ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... was mashed to a pulp. But it was a false alarm; it wasn't. I had made the coupling without a scratch to myself, and it wasn't long before I became bolder, and jumped on and off of the foot-boards and brake-beams like any other lunatic. That all four of us were not killed is nothing ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady

... what it is, Trevor, old chap," said Milton, with great solemnity, "there's a lunatic in the school. That's what I make of it. A lunatic whose form of madness ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse

... were for the moment inextricably entangled in the bottom of the boat. Emotional Joe cursed and stamped and tore at his hair like a lunatic. Loud laughter broke from Sam and Bela as ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner

... Briston at Lewisham, who is now a canon or a dean, or something grand that no one ever sees. At present I did not like him. He said, 'No, this lady is nobody's grandmother. May I ask in return how long it is since you escaped from the lunatic asylum, my poor child, ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit

... when the project was laid bare. Already his mind was rejecting it. The only matter that concerned him was to bring his ship to her destination in a seaman-like manner, and let who would perplex their brains with fantasy. Indeed, he was beginning to regard the Baron as a harmless lunatic, whom Providence had entrusted with the spending of a rich man's money for the special benefit ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy

... exhibited in a good light. Into one of these the large box was carried, and most carefully opened. The two clerks who were helping Dennis laughed at his eager interest, and called him under their breath a "green 'un." Mr. Schwartz looked upon him as a mild sort of lunatic. But Mr. Ludolph, who stood near, to see if the picture was safe and right, watched him with some curiosity. His manner was certainly very different from Pat Murphy's at such a time, and his interest both amused and pleased ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... fully equal to the great station he now adorns? But then it must be granted, that he is wholly ignorant in the speculative as well as practical part of polygamy: he knows not how to metamorphose a sober man into a lunatic:[13] he is no freethinker in religion, nor has courage to be patron of an atheistical book,[14] while he is guardian of the Qu[een]'s conscience. Though after all, to speak my private opinion, I cannot think these such mighty objections to his ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift

... themselves be a sufficient chaperonage? Would her friends at home think so? Would they not blame her, Susie, for having allowed all this? As though she could prevent it! Or would they expect her to stay with Anna in this place till she should marry? As though anybody would ever marry such a lunatic! "Mad, mad, mad!" cried Susie, ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp

... money a fortnight ago, he lost money in December. Perhaps if he lost everything we should go away from this town. Oh, my God, I dream of Moscow every night. I'm just like a lunatic. [Laughs] We go there in June, and before June there's still... February, March, April, May... nearly half ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov

... 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, why, they ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne

... 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

... James Denton, with a tinge of bitterness in his voice. "I have never understood how I came to do it. I was a fool—an imbecile—a lunatic, Miss Marvin. I married the girl without even dreaming that ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon

... any alliance with Russia and Denmark, and stubbornly resisted the friendship France wished to bestow. By his imbecility he lost Finland to the kingdom, and was compelled to abdicate in 1808. This "lunatic monarch," as he was called, was escorted out of the country with his family, never to return, and died ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough

... must be familiar to you," he said. "He killed his friend when he was drunk, was confined in a lunatic asylum, and how he ever got out is beyond comprehension. With the help of patronage he was given a position in the District Government and showed himself to be such an asp that every one marvelled. He quickly galloped into a councillorship. He subdued the ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub

... Robinson allowed the emendation to pass. 'This lunatic's got some yarn on about the Pav. ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse

... him—nay, nor should yet, unless Brown's impertinence made it necessary." This proper reply Dodsley sent: Brown wrote back, that he should send an answer to Sir Charles himself; but bid Dodsley take notice, that printing the works of a supposed lunatic might be imputed to the printer himself, and which he, the said Doctor, should chastise. Dodsley, after notifying this new and unprovoked insolence to me, Fox, and Garrick, the one friend of Sir Charles, the other of Brown, returned a very proper, decent, yet firm answer, with ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... venture any depreciatory remarks upon men who have risen from the ranks, unless you are tolerably versed in the family-history of those to whom you are talking. You may have heard a man very jocular upon lunatic-asylums, to another who had several brothers and sisters in one. And though in some cases human beings may render themselves disagreeable through a combination of circumstances which really absolves them from all blame, yet, as a general rule, the man who is disagreeable ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... lent Lanfear his help with the girl. The situation explained itself, almost without his incoherent additions, to the effect that he had become anxious, and had started out with the boy for a guide, to meet them, and had met the lunatic, who suddenly attacked him. While he talked, Lanfear was feeling the girl's pulse, and now and then putting his ear to her heart. With a glance at her father: "You're bleeding, Mr. Gerald," ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells

... down town to the bank where he kept his account and explained his little mistake very humbly, and asked for time to pay up. The teller looked at him as if he were an escaped lunatic, but on account of his great reputation as an inventor he was shown to the desk of one of the partners, which stood in a corner of the vast place, where one could converse confidentially if one did not speak above a whisper; but ...
— The Little City Of Hope - A Christmas Story • F. Marion Crawford

... 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

... informed. A doctor ought to know every little detail relating to a case if he is to cure the patient. The father was now ready to let his daughter marry her former lover, but you were no longer inclined for such a marriage. One day, however, the girl went to you of her own accord, with the face of a lunatic, and threatened..." ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai

... of an alienist; uncle of Comtesse Stephanie de Vandieres. She was supposed to have perished in the disaster of the Russian campaign. He found her near Strasbourg, in 1816, a lunatic, and took her to the ancient convent of Bon-Hommes, in the outskirts of l'Isle Adam, Seine-et-Oise, where he tended her with a tender care. In 1819 he had the sorrow of seeing her expire as a result of a tragic scene when, recovering her ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe

... 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 ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... brakes might fitly be regarded as so many travelling lunatic asylums, the inmates of each exhibiting different degrees ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... 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 the idea ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles

... was told to hold my tongue. The inspector's version of the affair was even more insulting than the doctor's. He did not hesitate to express his opinion that I was a very suspicious person, probably a lunatic at large. When asked if I had anything to say, my remark summed up the situation, tersely, in a ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties

... 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, ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair

... (which possessed a gaol, a workhouse, and a lunatic asylum, and called itself the centre of the Duchy) stood three miles back from the lip of this happy valley, whither on summer evenings its burghers rambled to eat cream and junket at the Dairy Farm by the river bank, and afterwards sit to watch the fish rise, while the youngsters ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... evidently was uncertain 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

... incomprehensible must be great. And the public has taken him, at least partly, at his word. He may or may not be great, but he is certainly incomprehensible and probably a little mad. Until he succeeds the public looks upon the artist as a more or less harmless lunatic. When he succeeds it is willing to exalt him into a kind of god and to worship his eccentricities as a part of his divinity. So we arrive at a belief in the insanity of genius. What would Raphael have thought of such a notion, ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox

... limb to limb, constantly nearing the base of the tree. "I suppose the thing's been watching me all the time, and wondering what under the sun a fellow could be doing, waving his old handkerchief around as though he were daffy. He looks on me as a lunatic, and I know ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter

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

... was still living, an aged lunatic, at Windsor, completely impervious to the impressions of the outer world. Of his seven sons, the youngest was of more than middle age, and none had legitimate offspring. The outlook, therefore, was ambiguous. It seemed highly improbable that the Prince Regent, who had lately ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey

... only another way of emphasizing that Kent was not, and never had been, afraid to die. But it does not say that he treasured life a whit less than the man in another room, who, a day or so before, had fought like a lunatic before going under an anesthetic for the amputation of a bad finger. No man had loved life more than he. No man had lived ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood

... skipper, shaking the irrepressible salesman furiously. "There's no joke in this. Wanted to go to Europe, didn't she? Wasn't that her reason for begging a passage? Well, you darned lunatic! Is this Europe? Or anywhere near it? Let me tell you, there's no steamer touching here from Surabaya or anywhere else. Sanjai's the nearest steamer port—a ship a month; besides, no man or woman other than a breech-clouted deer-footed native could get here from Sanjai in less ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... had retired within the room when she arrived; and, going in after him, she perceived at once what had caused his alarm. There before her, looking more sinister than ever, stood the lunatic Peters; and there was an ominous bulge in his right coat-pocket which betrayed the presence of the revolver. What Jno. Peters was, as a matter of fact, carrying in his right coat-pocket was a bag of mixed chocolates ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse

... a clergyman, 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 ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen

... he be shooting at us?' his father reassured him; 'shooting at people isn't allowed. It's true there is no knowing what a lunatic might do.' ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various

... word, they are dull. Those that have brains are hysterical, devoured with a mania for self-analysis. They whine, they hate, they pick faults everywhere with unhealthy sharpness. They sneak up to me sideways, look at me out of a corner of the eye, and say: "That man is a lunatic," "That man is a wind-bag." Or, if they don't know what else to label me with, they say I am strange. I like the woods; that is strange. I don't eat meat; that is strange, too. Simple, natural relations between man and man or man and nature do not exist. [He tries to ...
— Uncle Vanya • Anton Checkov

... blue paper,' said Mrs Biddle. 'It looks to me like the work of a lunatic. And saying you were nice and pretty! It's not the work of a ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit

... permitted to work for a living under any circumstances whatever. It was a southern family, and of good blood; and for any person except Laura, either within or without the household to have suggested such an idea would have brought upon the suggester the suspicion of being a lunatic. ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

... It was Nigger, despised, half-lunatic Nigger, who was not in my reckoning, nor in Swope's, who put the match to the tinder and upset such carefully laid plans. As I feared, the revolt of the crew blazed up immediately. My shipmates were eager, too eager. As it turned out, their precipitancy was to ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer

... together. "Bessie's marriage have done that! I always told Bessie she'd send some of 'em to the lunatic ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann

... 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 ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... within a couple of feet and looked him straight in the face, as was his wont at each turn. But Cheenbuk was gifted with nerves of steel. His contemplation of the moon was so absorbing, that a civilised observer might have mistaken him for an astronomer or a lunatic. Alizay suspected nothing. He turned round, and the Eskimo allowed him to take about five paces before he moved. Then, with the speed of lightning, he ran the sharp blade down his side, severing all his bonds ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne

... and fairly comfortable, but contained nothing breakable, having been tenanted at one time by a strenuous lunatic, who had considerately died after his immediate family and relations had worn themselves into their several graves, taking care of him. But Eleonora Harrigan knew nothing of the history of the room while she occupied it. So, no ghost disturbed her restless ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath

... Paulucci, as the Emperor mounted the steps and noticing Prince Andrew scanned his unfamiliar face, "as to that person, sire..." continued Paulucci, desperately, apparently unable to restrain himself, "the man who advised the Drissa camp—I see no alternative but the lunatic asylum ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... Brahmanical creed and became a Yogi. Of course he was proclaimed mad, and, having been caught, was sent back to England. Seymour escaped, and returned to India in the dress of a Sannyasi. He was caught again, and shut up in some lunatic asylum in London. Three days after, in spite of the bolts and the watchmen, he disappeared from the establishment. Later on his acquaintances saw him in Benares, and the governor-general received a letter from ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky

... 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 ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... iron hand. But in the Ukraine, in Great Russia and in Finland she encourages the party of the Reds, she encourages the Bolshevists; and the poor, ignorant, gullible peasants follow the lead of the men, however criminal—sometimes rather more lunatic than criminal—who would throw them under Germany's feet. The American Bolshevists would tear America to pieces, exactly as ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn

... Gods a'me! what will you do? why, young master, you are not Castalian mad, lunatic, ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson

... had been more tolerant toward other people's inventions (they never invent anything themselves); but with regard to the one upon which he was now engaged, they had, with complete unanimity, decided that the thing could not be done, and charitably called every man an idiot or a lunatic who ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... confinement 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 he cannot take care of his affairs. Where none of these circumstances exist, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... 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, and lived in hope ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat

... mad,' he said, in a cold voice; 'this is the raving of a lunatic; there is no proof of what you say; it was proved conclusively that myself and Pierre were asleep at our hotel while M. Villiers was with Jarper at two o'clock ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume

... exist, and of course human rights, also; the world as viewed from the standpoint of law contained only corporations, only interests. Thus, a man like Victor Dorn was in his view the modern form of the devil—was a combination of knave and lunatic who had no right to live except in the restraint of an ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips

... that they were considerable men or that Cezanne was a master. In London no one had heard of them, so it was decided out of hand that they were immoral aliens fit only to be thrown on the nearest bonfire. Cezanne was a butcher, Gauguin a farceur, Van Gogh a particularly disagreeable lunatic: that is what the critics said, and the public said "Hee-haw." They reminded one of a pack of Victorian curates to whom the theory of natural selection had been too suddenly broken. Two years later Roger Fry and I collected and arranged at the Grafton Galleries an exhibition of contemporary ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell

... bit,' says Bull McGinty, 'she's been jumpin' like a dolphin', and he goes below to investigate. Two minutes later he prances up on deck like a lunatic. ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... me either a raving lunatic or an unabashed adventurer. A moment more and the car disappeared in the direction of the city. I was free! The girl made no attempt to ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train

... 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 ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske

... precipitating a scandal. Gard's own hasty actions led back to his fear for Mrs. Marteen, that in turn involved the cause of that suspicion. To convince the newsmongers that the crime was one of an almost accidental nature, he felt would be easy. An escaped lunatic had committed the murder. That revenge lay behind the insane act would be hidden. If necessary, the authorities of the asylum could be silenced with a golden ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford

... 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 mad dog. He's enough to make you split your sides laughing—that is, ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann

... should be jealously inspected, otherwise great annoyance may be produced. It has been held that a general clause of this description prohibited a tenant from keeping a school, for which he had taken it, although a lunatic asylum and public-house have been found admissible; the keeping an asylum not being deemed a trade, which is defined as "conducted by buying and selling." It is better to have the trades, or class of trades objected to, defined in ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... are asleep to speak' (Cant 7:9). This is the right HOLY WATER,[18] all other is counterfeit: it will drive away devils and spirits; it will cure enchantments and witchcrafts; it will heal the mad and lunatic (Gal 3:1-3; Mark 16:17,18). It will cure the most desperate melancholy; it will dissolve doubts and mistrusts, though they are grown as hard as stone in the heart (Eze 36:26). It will make you speak well (Col 4:6). It will make you have a white soul, and that is better than ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... you're crazy. The Brotherhood of Man and the Solidarity of the Race can have such meaning only to a lunatic." ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon

... Uncle Si had not led me away and set me down under one of the willow-trees in the front yard I should have had a spell of sickness, and may be even now had been confined in the incurable ward of a lunatic asylum. I can't understand how they do it so accurately and so fast and with such apparent ease. The whole proceeding is so fascinating that I really believe that, next to proficiency in the science of astronomy, I should like to be an expert at nailing lath. In every line ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field

... 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

... given with sufficient distinctness to serve as a guide in my mother's rather chimerical undertaking. I suppose ninety-nine persons out of a hundred would have thought her a candidate for the State Lunatic Asylum. Exactly what she herself expected, hoped, or feared, I think it doubtful if she knew. I confess to a condition of simple bewilderment, when she was fairly gone, and Clara and I were left alone with Selphar's ghostly ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... righteousness and is lost in the trackless wilderness of sin. One should not cast weapons upon kine, Brahmanas, kings, women, friends, one's own mother, one's own preceptor, a weak man, an idiot, a blind man, a sleeping man, a terrified man, one just arisen from sleep, an intoxicated person, a lunatic and one that is heedless. The preceptors of old always inculcated this truth upon men. I have, however, by disregarding the eternal way pointed out by the scriptures, and by essaying to tread in a wrong path, fallen ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... vixen. You know what fiddle-strings are made of; well, I'm told she supplies her own. But why should I dwell on infelicitous unions of this kind? It was obvious to every rational creature from the first—and to him most concerned—that Mrs. Calfsfoot would fiddle poor C. into a lunatic asylum. And if he be not there yet, depend upon it he's on ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold

... secure success, even without an interesting story such as is told here. One may perhaps fairly easily detect its inspiration in certain actual happenings. It is the story of a woman, Lucy Briarwell, clever and gifted with personality, the grass-widow of an apparently incurable lunatic who, living in Bruges, falls under the influence of a Belgian poet-dramatist. Together—for Lucy is shown as his collaborator and source of inspiration—they evolve a wonderful new form of miracle play in which she presently ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various

... a rich aunt in a lunatic asylum. And then I'm making money, you know—and the old boy will have to relent in the end. And we're having a very good time in the ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair

... saying. Whenever I stirred she stopped her chattering and leaned toward me, and watched me like a cat over a mouse-hole. I wondered how I could have considered her an agreeable travelling companion. I thought I would have preferred to be locked in with a lunatic. I don't like to think how she would have acted if I had made a move to examine the bag, but as I had it safely strapped around me again, I did not open it, and I reached Marseilles alive. As we drew into the station ...
— In the Fog • Richard Harding Davis

... the Tom-o'-Bedlam conspire to produce such a medley of mirth checked by misery, and misery rebuked by mirth; where the society of those "strange bedfellows" which misfortunes have brought Lear acquainted with, so finely sets forth the destitute state of the monarch; while the lunatic bans of the one, and the disjointed sayings and wild but pregnant allusions of the other, so wonderfully sympathize with that confusion, which they seem to assist in the production of, in the senses of ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

... terrible days of war, together with the loss of her husband and home, broke the heart and sickened the brain of Mrs. Waldron; and in the State Lunatic Asylum is an old white-haired woman, with a weary, patient look in her eyes, and this gentle old woman, who sits day after day just looking out at the sunshine and the flowers, is the once beautiful "mamma" of Diddie, ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle

... after he is taken into the forest; some hocus-pocus is performed over him, and the spirits of lunatics, who dwell in certain thick trees, are invoked to take possession of him. He is now himself called a lunatic, and on returning home behaves as if he were half-crazed. This completes his training as a medicine-man, and he is now fully qualified to kill or cure the sick. His mode of cure depends on the native theory of sickness. These savages think that sickness is caused ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... human being, out of a lunatic asylum, talking in this way. Shall I own to you, my reverend colleague, how this curious self-exposure struck me? As I listened to Romayne, I felt grateful to the famous Council which definitely forbade the priests of the Catholic Church to marry. We might otherwise have been morally enervated ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins

... Day. She had written him soon after—an invitation for a week-end at her mother's camp in the woods. But he would not go. He sat in the big chair staring at the fire, this small room in the West, and thought about it. No, he could not have gone to her house party—how could he? He had thought, poor lunatic, that there was an unspoken word between them; that she was different to him from what she was to the others. Then she had failed him at the moment of need. He would not be taken back half-way, with the crowd. He could not. So he had civilly ignored the hand which had ...
— The Courage of the Commonplace • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... 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 gold from the second bottom on the bore. But I'm ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson

... "Old lunatic!" thought Christian; she drank the cocoa, and putting out the lamp, groped her way to the back-door. It opened on a shrieking hinge, and she was out into a pale grey dawn, pure and cold, with the shiver and freshness of ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... library, a gallery of pictures and a school of art, an infirmary and various learned societies. There is also a museum, with natural history, archaeological, and art collections, and among other buildings may be mentioned St Bartholomew's church (1089), the town hall (1562-1564), a lunatic asylum, teachers' seminary and an agricultural academy. There is considerable traffic in grain and cattle brought from the surrounding districts; and twice a year there are large horse fairs. Cigars, woollen goods, gloves, hats and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... "Old lunatic!" said James Poynter, with his fat upper lip curling in disgust, as his eyes lit on the row of glass jars with their ghastly contents. "Once I get my lady home, I don't mean to see much of him. Here, boy," he said, as he reached the hall, and so ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn

... into prison. The pauper might be sold to the highest bidder. The criminal was dragged out into open day and flogged or branded. From ten to nineteen crimes were punishable with death. No such thing as a lunatic asylum, or a deaf and dumb asylum, or a penitentiary existed. The prisons were dreadful places. Men came out of them ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster

... the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith." There was a time in Lincoln's experience when his faith faltered, as there was a time when his reason tottered, but these sad experiences were temporary, and Abraham Lincoln was neither an infidel nor a lunatic. It is easy to trace in the life of this colossal character, a steady growth of faith. This grace in him increased steadily in breadth and in strength with the passing years, until it came to pass that his last public utterances show forth the confidence ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various

... millionaires he is busy accumulating wealth. This hint may guide you in soliciting alms for the association some day. His home is in Hamilton Lane, Larien, Conn. But I don't know if he knows a nut from a lunatic. He has two kids, one now preparing for Korea. God ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various

... Miss Thornton?" he said, "for running up to the house in this lunatic sort of way? I am still half a school-boy, you know. What an old jewel she is!" he added ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... "Sprague is a lunatic," he said, with conviction. "There was a body, and it went into the river in the packing-case. It is distinctly possible that this Knight—or Wright—woman, who owned the handkerchief, was the victim. However, that's for later on. The plain truth is, that there was a murder, and that Miss ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... beat a retreat, not feeling quite so well satisfied with himself as usual. His companion did not allude directly to her change of views, but treated her with a sort of pitying condescension, as if she had been a mild lunatic. ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... separation of families that touched the heart of Fanny Kemble Butler, and stirred the indignation of Harriet Martineau, who at the end of her year at the South wrote that she would rather walk through a penitentiary or a lunatic asylum than through the slave quarters that stood in the rear of the great house where she was entertained. It is this element that explains the statement of John Randolph of Virginia. Conversing one evening about the notable orations to which he had listened, the great ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis

... and I answered, "The beautiful young lady at Miss Havisham's, and she's more beautiful than anybody ever was, and I admire her dreadfully, and I want to be a gentleman on her account." Having made this lunatic confession, I began to throw my torn-up grass into the river, as if I had some thoughts ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... immediately one of those partial lunatics who may not be put in confinement, but who are all the more dangerous;[3119] the malady, as they would express it in technical terms, may be called the ambitious delirium, well known in lunatic asylums.—Two predispositions, one an habitually perverted judgment, and the other a colossal excess of self-esteem,[3120] constitute its sources, and nowhere are both more prolific than in Marat. Never did a man with such diversified culture, possess such an incurably perverted intellect. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... chose not to take it. I might have proved myself non compos mentis; but that involved my making a fool of myself in public before a jury, and I have too much dignity for that, I can tell you. I told my lawyer that I should prefer a felon's cell to the richly furnished flat of a wealthy lunatic, to which he replied, 'Then all is lost!' And so it was. I read my defence in court. The judge laughed, the jury whispered, and I was convicted instanter of stealing spoons, when murder itself was no further from my thoughts ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs

... horror and astonishment. It was echoed by a howl not to be called human, as the being broke from their hold and ran along the garden. Three times at least it raced round the whole island, in a way that was as horrible as the chase of a lunatic, both in the cries of the pursued and the ropes carried by the pursuers; but was more horrible still, because it somehow suggested one of the chasing games of children in a garden. Then, finding them closing in on every side, the figure sprang upon one of the higher river banks and disappeared ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... had worked itself into a frenzy, and, forgetting caution, had crazily exposed itself. Its owner was probably some poor lunatic, subject to fits of madness. But Helwyse was full of scorn and anger, born of that bitterest disappointment which admits not even the poor consolation of having worthily aspired. He had been duped,—and by the cobwebs ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... Possibly this dog Randolph would die. Possibly he would live—as a lunatic. Possibly would happen what has happened! The senora is beautiful. The American has eyes. If the Dona Josephine's beauty shall finish what the silly Don Esteban's arm ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte

... was no less a personage than the manager of the theatre, leaving Dumps fully persuaded that he had been closeted with a lunatic. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 389, September 12, 1829 • Various

... 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 ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell

... of informing us, that the Lord Lieutenant has been accustomed to awe and controul the Voters of this County, as Charles the Second and his Brother attempted to awe and controul those of the whole kingdom? If such be the meaning of the Writer and his Employers, what a pity Westmoreland has not a Lunatic Asylum for the accommodation of the whole Body! In the same strain, and from the same quarter, we are triumphantly told 'that no Peer of Parliament shall interfere in Elections.' How injurious then to these Monitors and ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... told his story," said Griggs, "and I don't know, doctor, but it half seems to me as if you believe in the poor old lunatic." ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn

... that, 'cause this looks like what we wanted. Not straight across, Beetle, you blind lunatic! Anyone could spot us half a mile off. This way; and furl up ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling



Words linked to "Lunatic" :   madwoman, maniac, moonstruck, colloquialism, crazy, adventurer, harum-scarum, madcap, madman, weirdo, loony, lunacy, tearaway, sick person, bedlamite, looney



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