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adjective
Raving  adj.  Talking irrationally and wildly; as, a raving lunatic.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Raving" Quotes from Famous Books



... that I meant what I said and that I was not "raving distracted," which I think was her first diagnosis of my case, Hephzy's practical mind began to unearth objections, first to her going at all and, second, to going on ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln

... terror, he endeavored to force my hands, as it was not large enough to afford us both a secure grasp. I never felt deeper grief than when I saw him attempt this act—although I knew he was a madman when he did it—a raving maniac through sheer fright. I did not care, however, to contest the point with him. I knew it could make no difference whether either of us held on at all; so I let him have the bolt, and went astern to the cask. This there was no great difficulty in doing; for the smack flew ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... Juana was delirious and raving for many days. The shock itself was sufficient to cause her illness, but it was surmised that the arrow, which had slain Pepito, had entered an inch or so into her arm. In the excitement of her sudden appearance ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter

... into the cuddy. And the ship running for her life, touch and go all the time, any minute her last in a sea fit to turn your hair grey only a-looking at it. I understand that the skipper, too, started raving like the rest of them. The man had been deprived of sleep for more than a week, and to have this sprung on him at the height of a furious gale nearly drove him out of his mind. I wonder they didn't fling me overboard after getting the carcass of their precious ship-mate ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad

... her day and the satisfactory knowledge that every one has been raving about Monica, is making herself specially agreeable to her companion, who, nothing loath, draws her out and grows almost sycophantic in his attentions. She becomes genial with him, not knowing ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown

... water-practice, having formerly had a medal from the Humane Society for some rescue. By his advice the patient was put between blankets; and when I came home at four to dinner, I found G.D. a-bed, and raving, light-headed with the brandy-and-water which the doctor had administered. He sang, laughed, whimpered, screamed, babbled of guardian angels, would get up and go home; but we kept him there by force; and by next morning he departed sobered, and seems ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb

... night as well as by day, we struggled forward, staggering, stumbling, some raving with fever, others with set faces, biting their yellow lips ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis

... married. I'm afraid you'll all break your hearts about it. Mother met the gentleman at a party the other night. She says he looks clever, but isn't at all handsome, which is a pity, for Mrs. Florence is a raving beauty in my opinion. He's an excellent preacher, we hear; and won't she manage the parish to perfection? How shall you like being left to the tender mercies of Mrs. Nipson?' Now did you ever hear any thing so droll in ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge

... is a lesson for architects. Build no shutters to a house when the man that has to live in it has a spark of imagination, else will he go stark raving mad before the mortar's dry. Window shutters are window shutters, but they are the doors of Bedlam as well. Now Gaydon should have slept in this room. Gaydon's a great man. Gaydon has a great deal of observation and common sense, and was never plagued with a flim-flam of fancies. To be ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason

... pomps of joy or of sorrow, as evolved out of universal human nature, and as, through sunshine and tempest, typified in the outside world,—but never for one instant did he seek alliance, on the one side, with the shallow enthusiasm of the raving Bacchante, or, on the other, with the overshadowing despotism of gloom; nor can there be found on a single page of all his writings the slightest hint indicating even a latent sympathy with the power which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... see Betty, but it was no use, she would see no one. And soon after I heard she was ill, typhoid fever. It had been working on her for some time. There was almost no hope from the very first. She became delirious at once, and in her raving kept calling on The Don for forgiveness. Your mother was a great help to them, relieving the nurse. They all seemed to depend upon her. Of course, I was in and out every day, and brought reports to The Don, who haunted our house day and night. I ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor

... wild-turkey wing, with iron pot hung by a chain from the chimney hook, with pewter or wooden plates from which to eat with horn-handled knives and iron spoons. But yet are we so modern that we have fine new houses with bay windows, ornamental cupolas, and porches raving woodenly in that frettish fever which the infamous scroll-saw put upon fifty years of our land's domestic architecture. And these houses are furnished with splendid modern furniture, even with black walnut, gold touched and upholstered in blue ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... delirious tones, and immediately knows that the boy is ill, and the old woman gladly accepts her kind offer to sit by him until she returns with the physician, though she says it is too much for a lady to consent to, and she is fearful the boy will do her some harm in his raving mood. ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith

... action by suggestion is the basis of the Greek sculptured art of the highest period. Much of the argument of Lessing's elaborate essay on the "Laocoon" is aimed at this point, which is brought out in its completeness in his discussion of Timomachus' treatment of the raving Ajax. "Ajax was not represented at the moment when, raging among the herds he captures and slays goats and oxen, mistaking them for men. The master showed him sitting weary after these crazy deeds of heroism, ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore

... excuse," I hastened to assure her. "When the thing frightened De Croix and me, and even set so old a soldier as Captain Wells to raving, it was no wonder it unnerved a girl, however brave she might prove in the presence of real danger. But you can sleep now, convinced it was naught but ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish

... now her brain was growing clearer, came from a determined effort to cover her tracks and perhaps those of a man—unworthy, undoubtedly, and Cameron believed this man to be the "Pat" to whom his patient had so frantically referred in her raving. ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock

... the armourer lay quiet for a few minutes. Not for long, however; he soon began to toss restlessly about once more; and by the time that the hands returned from their day's work at the shipyard he was in a raging fever—raving mad in fact; and Lance was at last compelled to have him laced up in his hammock to prevent him from ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood

... saw it first, after the gas-attack, was strangely quiet, I remember. There was "nothing doing," as our men used to say. The German gunners seemed asleep in the noonday sun, and it was a charming day for a stroll and a talk about the raving madness of war ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... speak; she seemed to be making an effort to understand him, and as David repeated his agonizing question she gave a sign of assent, causing a still wilder look to cross the man's face. He called to her again to tell him where; but the woman seemed to be sinking back into her raving, and she only ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair

... her raving fits of crying more vehement than those preceding, Black Pussy again came to her mind, and suddenly she was taken back to the wintry night she had lost him. Feebly she put the events of that evening ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White

... make my head tired," I said. "What with remembering the names of the people and all the different crimes, I should go raving mad." But what still amazed me was the fact that this little man, habitually meek, frightened and easily trodden down in most ordinary matters, should be able to turn himself upon occasion into a fierce and howling wolf of scandal, baying his betters, waiting for the time when an ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane

... King's ship Royal Fortune, which had been sent in search of them, and beat her off after a night action of five hours, the drunken, raving crews fighting naked in the light of the battle-lanterns, with a bucket of rum and a pannikin laid by the tackles of every gun. They ran to Topsail Inlet in North Carolina to refit, and then in the spring they were at the Grand Caicos, ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle

... sea-gull runs upon the sand, the young creature flew across the now level raft toward the sea, but a strong hand clutched her as she was about to step overboard, and compelled her back to her place on the platform, where, bound with cords, she lay raving, until sleep or unconsciousness mercifully supervened to spare me the spectacle of her agony, which no ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield

... This raving discourse she continued with prodigious volubility, walking on at a great pace, and dragging Ratcliffe along with her, while he endeavoured, in appearance at least, if not in reality, to induce ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... longer, until Connor, coming to chain Jimmie up, found him gnawing off the ends of his fingers. That was really serious, so they sent for the prison-surgeon, who had to make but a brief inspection to convince himself that Jimmie Higgins was a raving madman. Jimmie fancied himself some kind of fur-bearing animal, and he was in a trap, and was trying to gnaw off his foot so as to escape. He snapped his teeth at everyone who came near him; he had to be knocked senseless before a straight-jacket ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair

... upon the tree. It means doom. He was king of the forest once, perhaps; but no matter. His time has come. Oh, Lord, thou hast tormented me with hot burning coals!" he cried, in a sudden access of pain; and in the next minute he was raving. ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... sake. I see how he, a pure, strong, resolute man, is deliberately being goaded to lunacy and to destruction, that the Government may be rid of him! I know, and they know, that his heart is weak, and so they provoke him, and drag him to a ward for raving lunatics. It is too dreadful, too dreadful. And when I come home, I hear that the one member of our family who understood—not me but the truth—has thrown over both her betrothed to whom she had promised ...
— The Light Shines in Darkness • Leo Tolstoy

... hands with the squire till both those fine old gentlemen were purple in the face. Long Kirby selected a small man in the crowd, and bashed his hat down over his eyes. While Tammas, Rob Saunderson, Tupper, Hoppin, Londesley, and the rest joined hands and went raving round like ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant

... ribald snatches of Latin songs in a shrill voice. When the porter approached him he said he was a hippogriff, and that in another ten minutes he intended to fly to Iffley and back in half a second. He was carried up to bed raving horribly. On the following day he grew calmer, and in a week he was himself again. But by that time, of course, the examination was over, and DUBBIN was soon afterwards announced ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 16, 1892 • Various

... most wantonly and unnecessarily began a furious declamation against the regicides as he termed them, who had taken refuge in the Canton, and intimated pretty plainly how pleasing it would be to God Almighty that they should be expelled from it. This intolerant discourse, more worthy of a raving Jesuit than of a Protestant minister, was deservedly scouted by the inhabitants of Lausanne; but this did not hinder poor Mlle Michaud from being much affected at the opprobrious tirade directed against a set of men, among whom her father bore a conspicuous ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye

... a blind rage seized me. Raving like a madman, I stormed the police station with paving-stones from the gutter. The fury of my onset frightened even the sergeant, who saw, perhaps, that he had gone too far, and he called two policemen to disarm and conduct me out of the precinct ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis

... patient walking up the steps which led to the door of Scarsdale, his opposite neighbour. Scarsdale had a fairly busy practice, and received his people at home from ten to twelve, so that I got quite used to seeing Cullingworth fly out of his chair, and rush raving to the window. He would diagnose the cases, too, and estimate their money value until he ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro

... without any food, without any one to speak to for two days and two nights, you feel you must speak to some one, whatever comes of it. If I'd had to wait out there, listening, listening, for another night, I should have been mad, raving mad ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden

... is useless to linger While others are calling your care; There is need for your delicate finger, For your womanly sympathy there. There are sick ones athirst for caressing, There are dying ones raving at home, There are wounds to be bound with a blessing, And shrouds to ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... came to her. Yes, it was the only possible thing. She would take him home. There, with the help of the household, she might have a chance of concealing him—a poor one, certainly! but here, how was she even to keep him to the house in his raving fits? ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald

... for this opportune supply of ways and means for murder. Castaldo calls the bilbo a "fated aspic," upon the edge of which his "eye-balls crack to look," and makes a raving exit from the stage, to a roaring laugh ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... tremendous and most diabolical sound, a prolonged lupine yell or yowl, as if a stupendous wolf, as big, say, as the Anglo-Bavarian brewery, had howled his loudest and longest. This infernal row, which makes Shepton seem like a town or village gone raving mad, was merely to inform the men, and, incidentally, the universe, that it was time for them ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson

... however, there would be a lucid interval, in which he became for a short time truly conscious and could make sensible and rational remarks. For example, on one occasion when he was in the middle of a paroxysm of loud, violent, and incoherent talk, almost approaching raving, he suddenly turned to his wife or daughter with an apology of bewildering poignancy. "I do wish that man on the sofa would keep quiet. I am afraid his noise worries you. It worries me quite as much." Even stranger, more curious, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... was soon made out, and in fifteen minutes, Dawsey, raving like a wild animal, was driven off to jail at Trenton. Mrs. Dawsey, too much injured to be removed, was left under guard at the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... into a military office which had evidently been hurriedly extemporised from a lumber room. The crowd outside increased in denseness and hostility. They were shouting and raving with all the power of their lungs. These vocal measures proving inadequate, stones and other missiles commenced to fly. They could not see through the windows of the room so an accurately thrown brick shivered the pane of glass. Through the open space I caught glimpses of the most ferocious and fiendish ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney

... Tiralla noticed that he was listening intently to what Marianna was saying she grew as red as she before had been pale. Then, with a short, forced laugh, she said, "Nonsense. Poison? Where should you have got it from? You're raving, my girl. Come," she added, helping the girl to rise, "lean on my arm. You're already better, aren't you? I'll put you to bed. I'll make you a strong cup of tea. I'll give you a hot-water bottle. And then, when ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig

... is winning!' 'He's winning! He's winning! Bravo!' The bookies are raving, the ladies are waving, The Stand is all shouting for Jo. The horse is clean done, but the race may be won By the Newmarket lad on his back; For the fire of the rider may bring an outsider Ahead of ...
— Songs of Action • Arthur Conan Doyle

... waving In ringlets on the gale, And the tempest join'd its raving, To the hapless maiden's wail; Wild was the storm's commotion, Yet careless of the scene, Like the spirit of the ocean Sat lovely ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... insult to the person you are talking with. It implies utter indifference to or sublime contempt for his remarks, no matter how serious. I speak of total depravity, and one says all that is written on the subject is deep raving. I have committed my self-respect by talking with such a person. I should like to commit him, but cannot, because he is a nuisance. Or I speak of geological convulsions, and he asks me what was the cosine of Noah's ark; also, whether the Deluge was not a deal huger than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... disturbed. He is quite harmless. You heard him raving about a king? He suffers from pernicious megalomania. That's all—nothing more. ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard

... the ship; and here I met an old comrade of mine, one Peter Williams, who gave me a good character to the captain. This gentleman treated me with kindness, and desired I would let him know what place I came from last and whither I was bound; which I did in few words, but he thought I was raving, and that the dangers I underwent had disturbed my head; whereupon I took my black cattle and sheep out of my pocket, which, after great astonishment, clearly convinced him of my veracity. I then showed him the gold given me by the Emperor of Blefuscu, together with ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten

... Europeans either, else why did the ladies of the last century patch their faces, if not (originally) to set off the clearness of their complexion by contrast with the little black wafer?—though (afterwards) often to hide a pimple! Eastern poets are for ever raving over the mole on a pretty face. Hafiz ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... money, enough to live on. He used to urge me to leave him, to go back to England, and live in peace. As if I could have done such a thing! And so we struggled on, making a desperately hard fight for it, till one awful night when he came home in raving delirium. I can't describe that to you. I don't want you to know what it was like. I nursed him through it, but it was terrible. He did not always know what he was doing. At ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell

... gullies and buildings yielded men who soon crowded around the hotel. A young doctor, lately graduated, appeared. It was his first case, but he eased Johnny. Then he went over to Hopalong, who was now raving, and attended to him. The others were patched up as well as possible and the struggling young physician had his pockets crammed full of gold and ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford

... how horrible war is. Mrs. Guest told me of a sight she had herself seen. Some men, horribly wounded, were being sent away by rail in a covered waggon ("fourgon"). One man had only his mouth left in his face. He was raving mad, and raged up and down the van, trampling on other men's wounded ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan

... scenes here of our wonderful men suffering their physical torments like the heroes they were. One, in particular, sitting on a box making a cigarette, had a broad smile on his face, though the whole of his elbow was shot completely away. Another came in, helped along by two other men; he was a raving lunatic, his eyes ghastly and horrible to look upon, and he was foaming at ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins

... give an actor grace, All must to him resign the foremost place. When he attempts, in some one favourite part, To ape the feelings of a manly heart, His honest features the disguise defy, And his face loudly gives his tongue the lie. Still in extremes, he knows no happy mean, Or raving mad, or stupidly serene. In cold-wrought scenes, the lifeless actor flags; In passion, tears the passion into rags. 580 Can none remember? Yes—I know all must— When in the Moor he ground his teeth to dust, When ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... time my father remained in silence and deep thought. He then carefully lifted up the body of my sister, replaced it in the grave, and covered it over as before, having struck the head of the dead animal with the heel of his boot, and raving like a madman. He walked back to the cottage, shut the door, and threw himself on the bed; I did the same, for I was ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat

... translate Pindar, word for word, it would be thought that one madman had translated another: as may appear, when he, that understands not the original, reads the verbal traduction of him into Latin prose, than which nothing seems more raving.' I then proceeded with his own free version of the second Olympic, composed for the charitable purpose ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... degrees the insupportable solitude and barrenness of the place rouses him from this stupor, and when the trap in his grated door is opened, he humbly begs and prays for work. 'Give me some work to do, or I shall go raving mad!' ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens

... thought it a physical thing after all. As for his chronology, I believe, those who are most competent to judge, rely on it less and less every day. His lucubrations on Daniel and the Revelations seem to me little less than mere raving. ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... boys, you silly boys! what materials for a wife do you think you will get out of the empty-headed coquettes you are raving and tearing your hair about. Oh! yes, she is very handsome, and she dresses with exquisite taste (the result of devoting the whole of her heart, mind and soul to the subject, and never allowing her thoughts to be distracted from it by any other mundane or celestial object whatsoever); ...
— Evergreens - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome

... whom they had lured to proffer them divine honours were exchanging obeisance for scorn and worship for shame; that holy rites were being accounted sacrilege, and fixed and regular ceremonies deemed so much childish raving. Fear was in their souls, death before their eyes, and one would have supposed that the fault of one was visited upon the heads of all. So, not wishing Odin to drive public religion into exile, they exiled him and put one ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... serve under, as grim and strict as a Prussian, but very just, and runs things in a way that secures all our admiration—though we may fuss a bit when, expecting two or three comfortable days in port, we get chased out on short notice into a raving gale outside. ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various

... period of his career he had contracted vicious habits, the most pernicious for him being that of drink, for when sober he was in his right mind, but the moment the drink was in his common sense departed, and he became a raving maniac, ready to fight or perpetrate any other act of folly. Up to this time he had never been tempted to steal only in order to ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell

... was raving," replied Bob cheerfully. "What do you think he accused me of this time? Stealing an unrecorded deed! Did you ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson

... did not escape Shih-yin's ear; but persuaded that they amounted to raving talk, he paid no ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... Raving for water now they dig the plains Seeking for hidden fountains, not with spade And mattock only searching out the depths, But with the sword; they hack the stony heights, In shafts that reach the level of the plain. No further flees from light the pallid wretch Who tears the bowels ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan

... ugly, Mary Ware," insisted Joyce, in a most reproving big-sisterly voice. "Everybody can't be a raving, tearing beauty, and anybody with as bright and attractive a little face as yours ought to be satisfied to let well ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston

... killed M. Sipiaguine, Russia's Minister of the Interior, was asked if he had accomplices he replied: "So many that it is impossible to name them." He also said that he nor they expected grace or mercy; that he and they worked for those who came after. Some will call this the raving of an anarchist. But these know nothing of the conditions against which Balmascheff and his kind are warring. The Balmascheffs would prefer to gain their ends by peaceful means, but know from experience that life is too short ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various

... over Danglar's wrist, another as the other cuff was snapped shut around the iron hand-railing of the fire escape. The act seemed to arouse Danglar, both mentally and physically. He tore and wrenched at the steel links now, and burst suddenly, raving, ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard

... terrible scene at the Cardinal's death-bed. The Cardinal is discovered in bed "raving and staring as if he were madde." He has poisoned his old enemy, the Duke Humphrey. Now he is dying; the murder is on his soul, and nothing has been gained by it. The path is made clearer for his enemies perhaps. ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield

... revile me, that I do not choose To share thy raving! No! Our life together Is done! The gods have cursed our union long, As one with deeds of cruelty begun, That since hath waged and found its nourishment In horrid crimes. E'en granting thou didst not ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... 'Set your heart at rest, nurse, I've found her!' Then he told me how he went down to see his old uncle. Mr. Wayland had been urging him on one side that 'twas no more than his duty; and her Ladyship, on the other, would have it that Mr. Belamour was right down melancholy mad, and would go into a raving fit if his nevvy did but go near ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... quickly as he would a fly. Still, an officer of the needed prudence and skill, by studying his infirmity and managing with due discretion, would have but little trouble with him, and he would readily earn his living. He would be an unsafe man to go at large, as dangerous, if fired with anger, as any raving maniac. He should ever be under firm control somewhere, ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby

... me, and again I did not believe her and began to look upon it all as some wild dream or the distempered fancies of a disordered brain. This thought calmed me and I spoke gently to her and even tried to take her hand. But she herself was raving now, and clung about my knees, murmuring words of such anguish and contrition that my worst fears returned and, only stopping to take the key of the Moore house from my bureau, I left the house and wandered ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green

... suffering; a dull, hopeless misery in their sunken eyes, a pathetic patience fit to touch a heart of stone; while others still have grown frantic with that terrible pain, the hunger gnawing at their very vitals, and go staggering about, wildly raving in their ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley

... she rose from bed, and staggering as if intoxicated, recovered her speech, uttering despairing cries. Lucrezia heard the tidings with more firmness, and proceeded to dress herself to go to the chapel, exhorting Beatrice to resignation; but she, raving, wrung her, hands and struck her head against the wall, shrieking, "To die! to die! Am I to die unprepared, on a scaffold! on a gibbet! My God! my God!" This fit led to a terrible paroxysm, after which the exhaustion of her body enabled her mind to recover its balance, and from ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... of a horse ever so swift, but yet in his senses, compared with the raving madness of a crazy courser, that, despising all subjection, and mocking at the bridle, dashes ahead, foaming with the sense of freedom and unrestraint, uncontrollable as the surge ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach

... We feel the difference between a modern Venus and an ancient one. There is a statue in the Vatican of a Roman emperor, of which every one says that it ought to wear clothes; and the reason is because the face has such a modern look. A raving Bacchante may be a good acquisition to an art museum, but it is out of place in a public library. A female statue requires more or less drapery to set off the outlines of the figure and to give it dignity. We feel this even ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... said to himself: Am I dead or dreaming? And what does it all mean? Is it a delusion of the Creator, or a mirage and a madness of the desert, out of which I have never yet escaped at all? Aye! beyond a doubt, I am wandering still in the waste of sand, raving mad, and dying; and haunted by phantoms that are the ...
— An Essence Of The Dusk, 5th Edition • F. W. Bain

... a quick movement, the Bishop lifted his head. The library was far removed from the courtyard; but surely he heard the clatter of horses' hoofs upon the raving stones. ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay

... "you could talk architecture with 'em from now to Christmas, and nothing'd happen, but it would take an iceberg to write a book with Hugh and see him alone six days out of seven. Chiltern knocks women into a cocked hat. I've seen 'em stark raving crazy. Why, there was that Mrs. Slicer six or seven years ago—you remember—that Cecil Grainger had such a deuce of a time with. And there was Mrs. Dutton—I was a committee to see her, when the old General ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... and then Jenny proceeded to open her budget of news concerning the inmates of the poor-house. "Sal Furbush," said she, "is raving crazy now you are gone, and they had to shut her up, but yesterday she broke away and came over to our house. Tasso was with her, and growled so at Henry that he ran up garret, and then, like a great hateful, threw bricks at the dog. I told Sally I was coming to see you, and ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes

... own hands lives that had become pitiably linked to the destiny of a financier whom most of them had never seen. In Paris a well-known banker walked quietly out of the Bourse and fell dead upon the broad steps among the raving crowd of Jews, a phial crushed in his hand. In Frankfort one leapt from the Cathedral top, leaving a redder stain where he struck the red tower. Men stabbed and shot and strangled themselves, drank death or breathed it as the air, because in a lonely corner of England the life ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley

... gathereth the mandrake shall surely die; Blood for blood is his destiny. Some who have plucked it have died with groans, Like to the mandrake's expiring moans; Some have died raving, and some beside— With penitent prayers—but all have died. Jesu! save us by night and day! From the terrible ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... Gibson I employ with me in it. This week my people wash, over the water, and so I little company at home. In the evening, being busy above, a great cry I hear, and go down; and what should it be but Jane, in a fit of direct raving, which lasted half-an-hour. Beyond four or five of our strength to keep her down; and, when all come to all, a fit of jealousy about Tom, with whom she is in love. So at night, I, and my wife, and W. Hewer called them to us, and there I did examine all the thing, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... quickly!' and fixes the day, and seems in a hurry for it, and when it begins to come near she feels frightened; or else some other idea gets into her head—goodness knows! you've seen her—you know how she goes on—laughing and crying and raving! There's nothing extraordinary about her having run away from you! She ran away because she found out how dearly she loved you. She could not bear to be near you. You said just now that I had found her at Moscow, when she ran away from ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... fatal news was brought her, though not from the quarter she expected it: Mr Monckton, in one of his raving fits, had sent for Lady Margaret to his bed side, and used her almost inhumanly: he had railed at her age and her infirmities with incredible fury, called her the cause of all his sufferings, and accused her as the immediate agent ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... at the mouth and raving like a madman. He ordered the steward to bring up his pistols to shoot the rascals, and when it seemed likely the offenders would escape, he called upon me, and another boy, by name, and in language neither courteous nor refined ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... teaches me that a wound so violent, made with a cutlass in such a part, must be mortal. But mortality to me is a blessing. To live would indeed be misery. Torments never yet were imagined equal to those I have for some time endured: but, though I have lived raving, I do not mean to die canting. Take this last adieu therefore, dear Fairfax, and do not because you once esteemed me endeavour to palliate my errors. Let my letters to you do justice to those I have injured. To have saved his life ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... wonderment filled his face as he bent close to the door and listened, and for a moment his heart throbbed with a terrible fear. He had returned too late— perhaps a day— two days. Pelliter had gone mad! He could hear him raving inside, filling the cabin with a laughter that sent a chill of horror through his veins. Mad! A sob broke from his lips, and he turned his face up to the gray sky. And then the laughter turned to song. It was ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood

... when the coffin was lowered into the grave; and they could only remove her from the cemetery by the same means when the burial-service was over. From that time her life alternated, for a few weeks, between fits of raving delirium and intervals of lethargic repose. At the annual ball given in the asylum, when the strict superintendence of the patients was in some degree relaxed, the alarm was raised, a little before midnight, that Ariel was missing. The nurse in charge had left ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins

... but instead of release, the dead-cart went its daily rounds, bearing its ghastly burden. That was their exchange, and they looked upon the shallow trenches as the only home which they would ever reach. Hope died out and despair set in. Some prisoners lost their reason, and became raving maniacs, while others became only gibbering idiots. Some who still retained their reason, who all their lives had believed that the Almighty is a God of justice and truth, began to doubt if there be a God. Although they had cried and begged for deliverance, there was no answer ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin

... and insolence of demeanor towards every rank and class in Rome, which made him ask a senator to supper, and ply him with drunken toasts, on the very evening on which he had condemned his son to death; sometimes in sheer raving blasphemy, as when he expressed his furious indignation against Jupiter for presuming to thunder while he was supping, or looking at the pantomimes; but most of all in a ferocity which makes Seneca apply to ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar

... already sat upon his lips. His hat was tipped with an air of challenge over his eye. Between his teeth, a cigar stump was tilted at the angle of defiance. He walked with a certain swing of the shoulders which appalled the timid. He glanced over into the vacant lot in which the little raving boys from Devil's Row seethed about the shrieking and ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane

... want to see him. When they were all ranting and raving at me just now I wished he was there—I told them so. But now I don't feel like that—I can ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James

... papers, and nearly every time that Wichita Eagle would have some falsehoods concerning me, always giving out that I "was crazy," "was in a padded cell," "only a matter of time when I would be in the insane asylum;" that I used "obscene language" and "was raving." The bible says: "All liars shall have their part in the lake that burns with fire;" so the Murdocks of Wichita ought to tremble. I associate the name "Murdock" with murderer. The real depravity of such people was shown, when a lone old woman ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation

... with the Red Cross at Sir Patrick Dun's, which was crowded with casualties, poor fellows! one raving and asking "Is the school taken?—is the school taken?": for this point had been the strategic point in the Battle of Mount Street Bridge. ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard

... winters more at Torquay. But I don't believe that he could stay here even if she were well. Bramshill has fallen into the hands of a Puseyite parson, who, besides that craze, which is so flagrant as to have made dear Mr. K—— forbid him his pulpit, is subject to fits of raving madness,—one of those most dangerous lunatics whom an age (in which there is a great deal of false humanity) never shuts up until some terrible crime has been committed. (A celebrated mad-doctor said the other day of this very man, that he had "homicidal madness.") You may fancy what such a Squire, ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... are eagerly caught at, and such accounts of them as they are able to make out are treasured up as revelations. This fact is of no slight importance as an element in the hinting basis of the beliefs of uncultivated tribes. Many a vision of delirium, many a raving medley of insanity, has been accepted as truth.3 Another phenomenon, closely allied to the former, has wrought in a similar manner and still more widely. It has been a common superstition with barbarous nations in every ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... before this blind zeal drew down on the people a punishment from Heaven, by the destruction of Jerusalem under the Roman chief, Titus. Read the work of Flavius Josephus, and you will behold the noble firmness and perseverance of the Israelites on one side, and on the other the melancholy truth, that raving enthusiasm and blind obstinacy precipitated the ruin of the most flourishing people in the world. The last siege and capture of Jerusalem will ever be memorable in the history of mankind. How violent was the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various

... loss for a word, there is just that much of difficulty in finding it which gives a heightened expression to her beautifully calm face, and makes it lovely. You may see how she has fascinated me, for I could go on raving about her ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... went crazy. So raging and raving crazy that when I came partially to my senses, I did not recollect what I had been saying or doing since I heard the awful truth. I had been removed from the dark and bloody ground in some way and by somebody, for I was lying on my mother's bed. The consciousness of where I ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland

... to be a wreck like me? Paolo, look at me. Is there a line, In my whole bulk of wretched contraries, That nature in a nightmare ever used Upon her shapes till now? Find me the man, Or beast, or tree, or rock, or nameless thing, So out of harmony with all things else, And I'll go raving with bare happiness,— Ay, and I'll marry Helena of Greece, And swear ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker

... from the little creature's brain, a sensible expansion had taken place in the intellectual faculties of attention, observation, and animation. It renewed the case of our great modern poet, who, on listening to the raving of the midnight storm, and the crashing which it was making in the mighty woods, reminded himself that all this hell ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... in black, whom Eric now recognized as a prominent French heart-specialist, was dancing before the window, waving his bag frantically, raving at the ...
— The Cosmic Express • John Stewart Williamson

... spectacle of despair, which the stoutest heart could not withstand. Fear had produced not only all the helplessness of despondency, but all the mischievous freaks of insanity. In one place stood the captain, raving, stamping and tearing his hair in handfuls from his head. Here some of the crew were upon their knees, clasping their hands and praying, with all the extravagance of horror depicted in their faces. Others were flogging their images ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick

... clutched Last Bull maliciously around the base of his horns and tried to twist his neck. This enterprise, however, was too much even for the elephant's titanic powers, for Last Bull's greatest strength lay in the muscles of his ponderous and corded neck. Raving and bellowing, he plunged this way and that, striving in vain to wrench himself free from that incomprehensible, snake-like thing which had fastened upon him. Bong, trumpeting savagely, braced himself with widespread pillars of legs, and ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts

... lashing herself into a fury, screamed for vengeance on the people who had broken the chain-belt with the Long House. Raving and frothing, she burst into a torrent of prophecy, which silenced every tongue and ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers

... fury; his more direful propensity made itself declared; he sprang into the midst of his frightened listeners, seized Mr. Vigors by the throat, and would have strangled him but for the prompt rush of the superintendent and his satellites. Foaming at the mouth, and horribly raving, he was then manacled, a strait-waistcoat thrust upon him, and the group so left him in charge of his captors. Inquiries were immediately directed towards such circumstantial evidence as might corroborate the details he had so minutely set forth. The purse, recognized as Sir Philip's, by ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... true his words! the brave, great-hearted Karl, A raving maniac, battled with his chains For three fierce days. The fourth saw him free; For Death's strong hand had loosed the martyr's bonds; Where his freed spirit soars, who dares ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... mail and severed bone! Watch the man there—he slices off the tough thorn as though it were straw. He notes not the beauty of the beech above him, nor the sun, nor the sky; but on the other hand, when the sky is hidden, the sun gone, and the beautiful beech torn by the raving winds neither does he heed that. Rain and tempest affect him not; the glaring heat of summer, the bitter frost of winter are alike to him. He is built up like an oak. Believe it, the man that from his ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... summits are lost in the burning void, high overhead. On! through and through these mountain-piles, into countless, limitless corridors, reared on pillars lurid and rosy as molten lava. Far down the corridors rise visions of flying phantoms, ever at the same distance before us—their raving voices clanging like the hammers of a thousand forges. Still on and on; faster and faster, for days, years, centuries together, till there comes, stealing slowly forward to meet us, a shadow—a vast, stealthy, gliding shadow—the first darkness that has ever ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins

... author was careful to explain that he had not in view the declasses but rather those persons who live in a limbo external to society, and refuse the statistic badge. The central figure Osmond Waymark is of course Gissing himself. Like his creator, raving at intervals under the vile restraints of Philistine surroundings and with no money for dissipation, Osmond gives up teaching to pursue the literary vocation. A girl named Ida Starr idealises him, and is helped thereby to a purer life. In the four years' interval between this somewhat hurried work ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... soon effected a metamorphosis in Shelley's serious verses, by which they became unmistakably ridiculous. Having achieved their purpose, they now bethought them of the proper means of publication. Upon whom should the poems, a medley of tyrannicide and revolutionary raving, be fathered? Peg Nicholson, a mad washerwoman, had recently attempted George the Third's life with a carving-knife. No more fitting author could be found. They would give their pamphlet to the world as her work, edited by an admiring ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... of expediency, if Wright did not realize it, and he pulled the raving man out of the place. He hurried Wright down the street, leaving the ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey

... it did not show itself. So she cried with vexation and nervous exhaustion, stamped her foot, and made the emphatic assertion that she felt like shooting Johnny Jewel for making her come all this long way to be driven raving distracted. ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower

... of whose stories we smile, was a wiser man. He writes: "It appears certain to me, by a great variety of proofs, that Cambyses was raving mad; he would not else have set himself to make a mock of holy rites and long-established usages. For, if one were to offer men to choose out of all the customs in the world such as seemed to them the best, they would examine the whole number, ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton

... was soon undeceived by a sudden breaking-off in the continuity of the words, or a return to confused, half-meaningless sentences. It was only by the constant repetition that Abdul learned the whole truth. A bit out of one raving fitted into another, and things hard to explain were ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... conversation could have been diverted into the desired channel of Number 13, had not the lawyer at this moment begun to sing, and to sing in a manner which could leave no doubt in anyone's mind that he was either exceedingly drunk or raving mad. It was a high, thin voice that they heard, and it seemed dry, as if from long disuse. Of words or tune there was no question. It went sailing up to a surprising height, and was carried down with a despairing moan as of a winter wind in a hollow chimney, ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various

... the walls and chains of their prison compel them to mingle,—is, that a great many of the prisoners have died, some have sought to terminate their woe by suicide, while others have been carried raving to a madhouse. Mr Freeborn assured me that several of his Roman acquaintances had been carried to these places sane men, as well as innocent men, and, after a short confinement, they had been brought out maniacs and madmen. He would have preferred ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie

... devoting themselves to the solacing of human misery; eager sympathies are evinced by different countries in the sufferings of distant lands; ready and substantial aid is gladly tendered in cases of pestilence and famine; and religious intolerance and bigotry are raving themselves to rest. Christ is more and creeds are less than of old. The fact that a free government is now in successful operation, in which (when one false element, slavery, shall be forever eliminated) the voluntary annexation of new states and new countries would be but new ties of strength, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... would have led them, it is idle to conceive. Gustavus returned to Stockholm while the delirium was at fever heat, and his presence in an instant checked its course. He called the leaders of the riot before him, and demanded sharply if this raving lunacy seemed to them religion. They mumbled some incoherent answer, and, the fury having spent its force, most of them were reprimanded and discharged. Melchior with one or two others was kept in jail awhile, and then sent back to Holland, with orders not ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson

... to treat your guest," Hildreth interposed, "the way you've been raving about him, too. 'Johnnie Gregory' this, and 'Johnnie Gregory' that!—and the minute he arrives, first you try to make him put up at the community inn; and now ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... vulnerable. They carried him to a near-by house. His head had been wonderfully smashed by the falling roof. His eyebrows and hair were left behind in the smother of flame. He was fire-licked from toe to heel. He was raving. But the child was safe. And that wreck and that rescue went ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson

... surviving from the wrecks of the Athenian stage, is reputed the supreme artist [5] if not the most impassioned poet, with what horror he would have overwhelmed Addison, when read by the light of those principles which he had himself so scornfully applied to the opera! In the very monsoon of his raving misery, from calamities as sudden as they were irredeemable, a king is introduced, not only conversing, but conversing in metre; not only in metre, but in the most elaborate of choral metres; not only under the torture of these lyric difficulties, ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... hunt for his dead among the rubbish. Given a violent convulsion (only just such a slipping of strata as carelessly piled volumes will accomplish in a book-case) and behold, the heir of all the ages is stark, raving mad—a brute among the dishevelled hills. Set a hundred of the world's greatest spirits, men of fixed principles, high aims, resolute endeavour, enormous experience, and the modesty that these attributes bring—set them to live through such a catastrophe as that which wiped out Nagoya ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling

... town, he immediately sent for his friend Shortreed, whose {p.251} memorandum records that the evening of the 30th September, 1797 was one of the most joyous he ever spent. "Scott," he says, "was sair beside himself about Miss Carpenter;—we toasted her twenty times over—and sat together, he raving about her, until it was one in the morning." He soon returned to Cumberland; and the following letters will throw light on the character and conduct of the parties, and on the nature of the difficulties which were presented by the prudence and prejudices of the young advocate's family connections. ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... the post. Then they dance all together, and this is the most frightful scene. They affect the most horrible and dreadful gestures, threatening to beat, cut, and stab each other. To complete the horror of the scene, they howl as dreadfully as in actual fight, so that they appear as raving madmen. Heckewelder's description agrees herewith. He remarks, that "Previous to going out on a warlike campaign, the war dance is always performed around the painted post. It is the Indian mode of recruiting. Whoever joins in the dance is considered as having enlisted for the campaign, ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... was raving mad, (To slander I'm unwilling) For tho' a barber, Nicky cut His heir ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various

... be raving mad," said Henri, "unlucky in love, and thwarted in ambition, he is unable to bear his griefs like a man. What a phantasy has jealousy created in his brain But Agatha was right; a man who could speak of her, even in his madness, as he has now spoken, was not ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope



Words linked to "Raving" :   declamation, raving mad, rave, ravingly



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