Basically, the chief symptom of mania is an elevated, expansive mood.  This mood is thought to progress along a continuum which includes the following states:

1. normal states: happiness, pleasure, joy
2. moderate elations: hypomanic or cyclothymic personality; here a person experiences heightened self esteem, increased creativity and work ability, decreased need for sleep                        
3. mania: symptoms start interfering with social and physiological function.
4. "delirious" or psychotic manic: sever overactivity, hostile attitude, destruction of property, assaultiveness, paranoid delusions or hallucinations. 

Specific symptoms again influence areas of feelings, thinking, body, behaviors, all of which have the quality of being in high gear, and bursting at the seams.

	elevated mood, feeling high, elated, euphoric, ecstatic
	irritability, excessive anger over trivial things, over-reacting to stimuli
	labile, rapid emotional changes:  feeling happy one minute and then angry the next for no apparent reason
	hostile

	inflated self-esteem, grandiosity, thinking one is more powerful that one really is
	ideas pour in at an incredible pace and mental associations occur so that speech can be full of jokes, plays on words and amusing irrelevancies
	misinterpretations of events. distortion of the meaning of ordinary comments
	distractibility
	racing thoughts, flight of ideas, jumping quickly from one topic to the other
	poor judgment, one will probably not recognize that one is ill and is apt to refuse treatment, will blame others for things that go wrong
	loss of touch with reality - hearing voices (hallucinations) or having strange ideas (delusions) about being persecuted, controlled.

	excessive energy
	decreased sleep - sometimes only a couple of hours a night
	a heightening of all the senses, especially in the perceptions of colours and light

	involvement with grandiose money making schemes
	compulsive desire to be socially involved prompting phone calls to friends at all hours of the night to discuss plans
	overspending, giving money away, going on shopping sprees, incurring heavy debts, moving from one activity to another without stopping.
	socially intrusive, headstrong, targeting the self-esteem of others, alienating family members
	angry and demanding
	talking more than usual, sometimes loudly and quickly
	a new interest in collection of clothes, possessions or other objects
	increased sexual activity, may want sexual intercourse several times a day, may pick up partners indiscriminately