"Hysterical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... one of his sons to take his place; and quietly left the room. He only stopped once, as he crossed the hall, to ask news of his daughter from one of the servants. The reply was, that she had had a hysterical fit; that the medical attendant of the family had been sent for; and that since his arrival she had become more composed. When the man had spoken, Mr. Langley made no remark, but proceeded at once to the library. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... only a little shaken," answered Winnie, with a little laugh that was half hysterical. "I am strong enough to ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... to! I doubt her developing into either a blinded saint or a coquette with amiable complacence for others. We should lead a peppery life, I fear. But don't you think, my brother, that we are a bit hysterical over our family's extermination? After all, I am only twenty-eight; and in my opinion thirty-five is a suitable age for a man to marry. How old are you, Sandro—thirty-seven, is it not? And Leonora is nearly three years less. Of a ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... the type of the nice woman who sins and loves, and becomes regenerated by an unnatural kind of self-sacrifice, done for French family reasons. She is the Parisian whom Sarah Bernhardt impersonates perfectly in that hysterical and yet deliberate manner which is made for such impersonations. Duse, as she does always, turns her into quite another kind of woman; not the light woman, to whom love has come suddenly, as a new sentiment coming suddenly into her life, but the simple, ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... however, maintained so little system in the management of their slaves that the public problem of social control was relatively intense. It was a state of affairs conducing to severe legislation, and to hysterical action in emergencies. ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... hear me. Let us go down that little path; there is a seat there, and we will talk this out quietly;" and taking her arm, he gently guided her to the bench. "Sit down and recover yourself," he continued kindly; for she was drawing deep breaths as though she were on the verge of an hysterical attack. Malcolm felt secretly frightened at the result of his experiment. It was clear to him that the mere utterance of her married name almost maddened her—that for some occult reason it was not ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... children screamed and rushed for a farther corner of the church, while the more hysterical fainted. Even strong men ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... them a cheery good-night. The factory girls drifted away, in little groups, leaving Genevieve, bedraggled and hysterical, clinging ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... so naturally, as if she were speaking of the most ordinary thing, that Young felt a hysterical desire to laugh. It was a dreadful thought, this of the rat in the box ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... come in for artillery retaliation, and your guns begin to stamp the ground like stallions; in the darkness on every side you can see them snorting fire. Then stillness again, while Death counts his harvest; the white rockets grow fainter and less hysterical. For an ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson
... you fool! I'm not a ghost!" shouted Gay, but the only response came in an hysterical babble of moans from the negro quarters somewhere in the rear and in the soft whir in his face of a leatherwing bat as it wheeled low in the twilight. There was no smoke in the chimneys, and the square old house, with its hooded roof and its vacant windows, ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... palpitating silence; a woman's hysterical laugh—and a deep-mouthed bellow rent the expectant air: shouts, screams, hat-tossings, back-clappings blending in a din that made the many-winding waters of the Silver Lea ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... She was an estimable woman, and Shelley had had reason to like her, and did like her; but along about this time his feeling towards her changed. Part of Shelley's plan, as he wrote Hogg, was to spend his London evenings with the Newtons—members of the Boinville Hysterical Society. But, alas, when he arrived early in December, that pleasant game was partially blocked, for Eliza and the family arrived with him. We are left destitute of conjectures at this point by the biographer, and it is my duty to supply ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the cane, smashed it, and hurled the pieces into their midst. "Now then, you cads, you can't lick me, you brutes, you fools! Come for me—you lot of great devils!" He roared this at them, and the last words were shouted in a burst of hysterical crying. With head down he charged into Stanley, crashing his fist on ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... encouragement. One regretted that the country was being kept so much in the dark—the best is never got out of the Anglo-Saxon race until it is in a tight place. A special edition of the Times, issued on Sunday morning the 30th of August, which contained a somewhat lurid account of the retreat by some hysterical journalist, and which, it turned out, had been doctored by the head of the Press Bureau, caused great anger in some quarters. But for my part I rather welcomed it. Anything that would help to bring home to the public ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... forthcoming. A delicate girl would probably become more delicate if she did not play games in moderation and take exercise. A friend of mine, an old doctor, told me the other day that in his youth the great plague of his life was the hysterical female. She would put in an appearance obtrusively at critical moments, and the anticipation of a scene always shadowed his arrangements. We rarely see this type now. Games have driven her away. The woman ...
— Lawn Tennis for Ladies • Mrs. Lambert Chambers
... information which he had of anything did not go beyond his orange gardens and his tunny fishing. His chief merit was that he was conscious of his incapacity; and, detesting a service into which he had been fooled by a hysterical nun, his only anxiety was to carry home the still considerable fleet which had been trusted to him without further loss. Beyond Scotland and the Scotch Isles there was the open ocean, and in the open ocean there ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... employer continued, "unfortunately—or perhaps fortunately from our professional point of view—our lawmakers from time to time get rather hysterical and pass such a multiplicity of statutes that nobody knows whether he ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... extremes by everywhere urging upon excitable young men the duty to become preachers like himself. He had introduced a kind of intoning at public meetings. This tended to create nervous irritability and hysterical outbursts of religious emotionalism, and these, Davenport taught his disciples, were the signs of God's approval of them and their devotion to Him. The government, watching these tumultuous meetings, concluded that it was time to show its ancient authority ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... around him, Aunt Olivia's lips trembling, her hand fast in Georgiana's. Young Chester Crofton gave a subdued whoop of joy, and pretty Rosalie, scarcely out of emotional girlhood, burst into hysterical crying which she ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... self-possession, so, as swiftly, had the daughter journeyed to the confines of tragedy and learned there some of those deeper lessons which the world is ever ready to teach. Anna returned from Henley so greatly changed that her altered appearance rarely escaped remark. Defiant, reckless, almost hysterical, her unnatural gaiety could not cloak her anxiety nor all her artifice disguise it. If she had told the truth, it would have been to admit a position, not only of humiliation but of danger. A whim, by which she would have amused herself, ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... Clavering; it is too late to keep it from you now," said poor Foker; and the distracted woman, having cast her eyes over it, again broke out into hysterical screams, and convulsively ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... pouring out, her voice high, almost hysterical. And if it surprised Johnnie, who had never before seen Cis other than quiet and gentle and sweet, modest, wistful and shrinking, it appalled Barber. Those eyes of his bulged still more. His ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... happened came fierily back, and made the pressing darkness burn. His wrath was brimming on the edge, ready to burst, and he felt proudly that it would no longer ebb in fear. Whisky had killed fear, and left a hysterical madman, all the more dangerous because he was so weak. Let his father try it on now; ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... eagerly. "Our logs! We'll call them our logs. Don't mind because I seemed strange a little while ago. You'll understand, some day. But now hurry! Hurry!" She forced herself to smile. She was eagerly in earnest, almost hysterical. She spoke his name, though with effort. "Remember, Ward! Our logs! Bring ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... steps as she fled, and he fancied that he heard therewith a mocking laugh, but it was a sob, a hysterical sob. She would have helped him, if she dared; but her wits were gone in panic. She knew not of his shattered limbs and horrible plight; and it flashed across her that this was another trick of his—to destroy her and the baby, while he ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... things actual reveal their natural order and variety; these not only can entertain the mind abstractly, but they can offer a thousand material rewards in observation and action. In their presence, a private dream begins to look rather cheap and hysterical. Not that existence has any dignity or prerogative in the presence of will, but that will itself, being elastic, grows definite and firm when it is fed by success; and its formed and expressible ideals then put to shame the others, which have remained vague for ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... he would have anything just then, at the opportunity of resolving his doubts. Saunderson was ushered in quietly; when he bent over the patient, the latter wrenched the proffered hand with hysterical strength. ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... exhausted by her toil and the want of food, for Adrienne had eaten her last morsel, half a roll, at breakfast, she continued to toil; but the work was nearly done, and the dear girl's needle fairly flew. Of a sudden she dropped me in her lap and burst into a flood of tears. Her sobs were hysterical, and I felt afraid she would faint. A glass of water, however, restored her, and then this outpouring of an exhausted nature was suppressed. I was completed! At that instant, if not the richest, I was probably the neatest and most tasteful ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... coursing over her cheeks and mingling with the dust of her flight; blighted hope, shame, fear, rage, all tearing her bosom in turn, till with a hysterical shriek she fell over the bars and into Rebecca's arms outstretched to receive her. The other Daughters wiped her eyes and supported her almost fainting form, while Thirza, thoroughly frightened, burst into sympathetic tears, ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... in a half-hysterical manner, and he remembered what she had said about the treasury, and that fares ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... more nearly despairing than he had ever been. He could not argue with a hysterical woman. He hated cowardice, but far deeper than that was his conviction that she had already exacted some sort of promise. And the boy was not like her in that respect. He regarded a promise as almost in the nature of an oath. He himself had taught him that in the creed of a gentleman a promise ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... nothing can be compared. Yes, yes, all those frightful secrets kept under lock and key, hidden, buried deep in her own heart, so that neither our eyes, nor our ears, nor our powers of observation ever detected aught amiss, even in her hysterical attacks, when nothing escaped her but groans: a mystery preserved until her death, and which she must have believed would be buried with her. And of what did she die? She died, because, all through one rainy winter's ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... laughed—it was the fierce, hysterical laugh of a madman. His eyes fell on the arquebuses flanking the picture of the Mother of Mercy. He took one of them down, then caught the boy by the collar of his doublet and dragged him ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... in her hysterical weeping, shrank from the repugnant body. The women of the Cabanal raised their voices in weird lamentation and trooped in company behind the wooden box that was carried at once to the cemetery. For a week tio Pascualo was the subject of every conversation. ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... subject; then hurling him aside he gave another shout, and began to dance a violent hornpipe on the floor, to the still further horrification of the kitten (which was now a feline maniac), and the general scatteration of the mingled mass of crockery and cream. Seeing this, Bounce uttered a hysterical cheer. Hawkswing, being excited beyond even savage endurance, drew his scalping-knife, yelled the war-cry and burst into the war-dance of the Seneca Indians. In short, the widow's cottage became the theatre of a scene that would have done credit to the violent wards of a lunatic asylum—a ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... raised voice, and dad's. It was evidently a row. Sally ran to the door, and they listened to what was passing. Down the half-lighted stairway they could just discern two figures, faintly outlined in the wavering flutter of gas. Obviously dad was drunk, for he was haranguing a rather hysterical Mrs. Clancy, who stood at the foot of the stairs and shouted after him. She said that he was drunk, that he ought not to come in at that time of night stumbling about like an ostrich, that decent people liked a little quiet, if ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... cut him short with a laugh. It rang out frank and free enough, and only I, crouching by the wall, understood the hysterical ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... was the mother that spoke rather than the wife, for she saw Hortense laughing with her Cousin Betty—the reckless laughter of heedless youth; and she knew that such hysterical laughter was quite as distressing a symptom as the tearful reverie of ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... Fatuous self-complacency or vanity, or short-sightedness in refusing to prepare for danger, is both foolish and wicked in such a nation as ours; and past experience has shown that such fatuity in refusing to recognize or prepare for any crisis in advance is usually succeeded by a mad panic of hysterical fear once ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... exegesis. As to the Song of Solomon, its influence upon Christian Mysticism has been simply deplorable. A graceful romance in honour of true love was distorted into a precedent and sanction for giving way to hysterical emotions, in which sexual imagery was freely used to symbolise the relation between the soul and its Lord. Such aberrations are as alien to sane Mysticism as they ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... the floury cobwebs. The people could scarcely see their way to the stairs by the glimmer, and there was more talking with nervous laughter than there had been outside. One of the Hounds called out, "I don't want any of you girls to kiss me!" and gave the relief of indignation to the hysterical emotion of the believers; the more serious of the unbelievers found escape in their helpless laughter from their tense expectation of triumph in the failure of the ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... challenging the social order by the philosophic touchstone of Bakunin and of Herbert Spencer, somewhat startled by the radicalism of his fiery young son and much comforted by the German domesticity of his wife and daughter. Perhaps it was but my hysterical symptom of the universal excitement, but it certainly seemed to me more than I could bear when a group of his individualistic friends, who had come to ask for help, said: "You see what becomes of your boasted law; the authorities ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... to announce the hack; and the two gray-garbed women hurried away amid the hysterical snivel of servants and the friendly mewing of Missy, who trotted after them to the front door, tail erect, followed by her latest progeny on diminutive and ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... laughing. Nothing Danbury could have said would so prove the inconsequence of his injuries. It relieved his strained nerves until, in reaction, he became almost hysterical. ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... could not restrain them when once they began, and her struggles to check them only brought an increase of them. Her sobs grew so violent that Laura, much alarmed, made a sign to Charlotte to fetch her mother; and Mrs. Edmonstone, coming in haste, found it was indeed the beginning of a frightful hysterical attack. The bodily frame had been overwrought to obey the mental firmness and composure, and now nature asserted her rights; the hysterics returned again and again, and when it seemed as if exhaustion had at length produced quiet, the opening of a door, or a ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... moved! How terrible was the suspense! A great silence fell upon the waiting people. It was unbroken save by the creaking of the rollers on the slope, the pattering of raindrops, and an occasional hysterical sob. ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe
... further improved the occasion by sitting with her eyes fastened on her husband, like two great black notes of interrogation, severely inquiring, Are you looking into your breast? Do you deserve your blessings? Can you lay your hand upon your heart and say that you are worthy of so hysterical a daughter? I do not ask you if you are worthy of such a wife—put Me out of the question—but are you sufficiently conscious of, and thankful for, the pervading moral grandeur of the family spectacle on which you are gazing? These inquiries proved very harassing to R. W. ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... rotter. Actors who can't act believe in themselves; and debtors who won't pay. It would be much truer to say that a man will certainly fail, because he believes in himself. Complete self-confidence is not merely a sin; complete self-confidence is a weakness. Believing utterly in one's self is a hysterical and superstitious belief like believing in Joanna Southcote: the man who has it has 'Hanwell' written on his face as plain as it is written on that omnibus." And to all this my friend the publisher made this very deep and effective reply, "Well, if a man is not to believe ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... and perhaps his conscience smote him for the trick he had played with regard to the false Bible. But the woman, whose excited and unstrung nerves led her astray from one subject to another with preternatural celerity, said, with an hysterical laugh, "See, Dummie, they come in state for me; give me the ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Nan. "You look so foolish standing there with that wad of cotton in your hand. And the keyholes look as if they had the earache. Oh, oh!" and she went off again into half hysterical laughter. ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... hysterical glee, treading air up and down the office. "Ho!" he cried, as the bridegroom entered the office. "Let me get hold of you. Ho!" he shouted louder as he shook Lyman's hand. "Maybe we haven't got the situation by the forelock. Who ever heard of such a thing! Shake ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... restored, but at intervals the girls broke into ripples of hysterical laughter. Then Chook saw the organ, with its rows of painted pipes, and ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... if you are going to obfuscate yourself in this foolish manner," I said, my voice disclosing my contempt, "at least take my advice and don't lock yourself in. None but hysterical ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... which, as it might have proved more dangerous to the king, was on its discovery attended with more fatal consequences to themselves. Elizabeth Barton, of Aldington, in Kent, commonly called the "holy maid of Kent," had been subject to hysterical fits, which threw her body into unusual convulsions; and having produced an equal disorder in her mind, made her utter strange sayings, which, as she was scarcely conscious of them during the time, had soon after entirely ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... so embarrassing, and at the same time so ridiculous, that I could with difficulty resist a hysterical inclination to laugh. Here I was, at all events, a close prisoner till Captain Lovell should go to bed, and he seemed to have no idea of that rational proceeding, though it was now past three o'clock. He walked about the room, whistling softly. Once he came so near my ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... walked to the canon edge, looking far out to the desert. Rhoda, panting and half hysterical, watched him. The moment which she had so dreaded had arrived, and she found herself, after all her planning, utterly unprepared to meet it ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... thinks more of the organisation than the practice of charity, esteems a penny saved as three halfpence gained, had liefer detect an impostor than help a deserving man. He is apt to label all generous emotions as hysterical, and in this he errs; for when a man calls the generous emotions hysterical he usually means that he would confuse them with hysterics if ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... until he spoke sharply that the hysterical woman was able to make known that the child had been absent for hours, no one knew where. When she learned that noon that her big brother would not be back till night, Dollie had pouted because he had gone off without telling ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... not been there McLean would have made a better case, would have pleaded with her, would have made less of a situation that roused her resentment and more of his love for her. He was very hard hit, very young. He was almost hysterical with rage and helplessness; he wanted to slap her, to take her in his arms. He writhed under the restraint of Peter's ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... hope but little," he replied. "The excitement of some hysterical outbreak is what ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... relation to the general woman- worship of all women to-day and to which Leo subscribes. Man is a lazy, loafing savage. He dislikes to be pestered. He likes tranquillity, repose. And he finds himself, ever since man began, saddled to a restless, nervous, irritable, hysterical traveling companion, and her name is woman. She has moods, tears, vanities, angers, and moral irresponsibilities. He couldn't destroy her. He had to have her, although she was always spoiling his peace. What was he ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... flung themselves on the ground, fainted, cried out that they were possessed by evil spirits. Wesley rather encouraged these manifestations, and indeed quite believed in their genuineness. No doubt for the most part they were genuine: that is, they were the birth of hysterical, highly strung natures, stimulated into something like epilepsy or temporary insanity by the unbearable oppression of a wholly novel excitement. No such evidences of emotion were ever given in the parish church where the worthy clergyman read his duly ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... after defeat;" and at the close of the convention said: "It furnished during its entire sessions an example of pluck and patience such as should forever quiet the calumny that women do not know how to govern themselves—that they become hysterical in the face ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... must!" Lahoma was growing slightly hysterical. "I won't mind any hardship, any danger—but what are we to do? You won't let me ride on alone—and you wouldn't be willing to leave me here and ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... utterance so thick that even she could not mistake the cause, she was bewildered and bitterly disappointed by the apparent contradictoriness of his action; and when he, too far gone for dissimulation, described and acted out in pantomime the doctor's plight and appearance, she became half hysterical from her desire to laugh, to cry, and to give vent ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... her glorious history the adventures of the false Maid, who pretended to be Joan come again, and people doubted as to whether she really died at Rouen. In modern times, some wiseacres have called the strongest and healthiest of women 'hysterical,' which is their way of accounting for her Voices. But now, thanks mainly to Monsieur Quicherat, and other learned Frenchmen, the world, if it chooses, may know Joan as she was; the stainless Maid, the bravest, gentlest, kindest, and wisest ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... stride rapidly away in the opposite direction from the one I was then pursuing. My heart gave a great leap, I hardly knew why, and the blood rushed into my face, something caught in my throat and I gave a short, hysterical cough. I had reached the gate, and the air around it was yet laden with the scent of a rich cigar, though the figure had ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... broken every glass on the table. It would not have surprised him in the least if she had torn handfuls of hair off the King's head. To his amazement she laughed. It was a most unpleasant laugh. But it was not the laugh of a lunatic. It was not even hysterical. ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... for diagnostic purposes. The hypnotic state may bring to memory forgotten experiences of which the physiological effects may have lasted in the brain and which may have brought injury to the psychophysical system. Hypnotic inquiry can thus lead to the recognition of the first causes in many hysterical states and where hypnotism is not the best adjusted tool, a certain dreamlike staring may be more effective. We have to return to much of that later in full detail because just for instance in hysteria, the clear recognition of the sources and of the character of the disease may at the ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... dragging shuffle of his slippers upon the floor of the hall. The sound jarred on her. She pinned on her hat again, ran downstairs, gave orders that she would not be in for lunch, and drove at once to Mrs. Willoughby's. She arrived in a state little short of hysterical. ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... lighted corner and arrived beneath Zoie's window to find one shade up and one down. In his perplexity he emitted a faint whistle. Immediately he saw the other shade lowered. Uncertain as to what arrangement he had actually made with Zoie, he ventured a second whistle. The result was a hysterical running up and down of the shade which left him utterly bewildered as to what disposition he was supposed to make of the wobbly bit of humanity pressed ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... from the table, dragging the cloth askew in her trailing, hysterical stagger. She lurched to the French window that, thrown back against the wall, opened onto the little garden. And she stood there, leaning against the long window and pressing her handkerchief to her mouth till the storm of her sobbing ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... being childish and weak. London, New York, Chicago were names, they were spots thousands of leagues away: Ladysmith was just across that mountain. If our horses held out at the pace, we would be—after Dundonald—the first men in. We imagined that we would see hysterical women and starving men. They would wring our hands, and say, "God bless you," and we would halt our steaming horses in the market-place, and distribute the news of the outside world, and tobacco. There would be shattered houses, roofless homes, deep pits in the roadways where the shells had ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... remorseful countenance, others seen in profile only, while many are whisperings at dusk. Most of them are called feminine, a term psychologically false. The poetic side of men of genius is feminine, and in Chopin the feminine note was over emphasized—at times it was almost hysterical—particularly in these nocturnes. ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... over spiritual enthusiasm. What is a revival? We confound it with a local excitement, a community-sensation of an hysterical and passing type—with sensational disturbances, falling exercises, shouts, weeping, and the like. A revival is something far different. A revival is an awakening of the community heart and mind. It is a quickening of dead, backsliding, ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... judgment I obtained admission to a saloon carriage to find myself the only Englishman among a hysterical crowd of forty Germans. They danced, whistled, sang and joked as if bound on a wayzegoose. Badinage was exchanged freely with friends standing on the platform. Anticipating that things would probably grow lively during the journey, ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... terror to hysterical laughter as the driver pulled up short and a group of barefooted children broke in front of his horses and scuttled out of the dust into the road-side bushes like a covey of quails. There seemed to be a dozen of them, nearly all the same in size, but there turned out to be only five ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... the company of a phantom! A request that the Government would graciously permit me to get rid of five ghosts and an airy 'rickshaw by going to England. Heatherlegh's proposition moved me to almost hysterical laughter. I told him that I should await the end quietly at Simla; and I am sure that the end is not far off. Believe me that I dread its advent more than any word can say; and I torture myself nightly with a thousand speculations as to the manner ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... hind legs and fly apart forever. And to play at love here? ... Well, for that I'm no hero out of their sort of novel. I'm not handsome, am shy with women, uneasy, and polite. While here they thirst for savage passions, bloody jealousy, tears, poisonings, beatings, sacrifices,—in a word, hysterical romanticism. And it's easy to understand why. The heart of woman always wants love, while they are told of love every day with various sour, drooling words. Involuntarily one wants pepper in one's love. One no longer wants words of passion, but tragically-passionate deeds. ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... Professor Cornill's book, The Prophets of Israel. My opinion as to how far his reading of this proverb-question will bear criticism is of no value. It may be open to debate whether, historically, he has not placed certain hysterical phenomena recorded of these prophets much too late. But whatever scholarship may have to say about his interpretation of our text, the interpretation commends itself to my judgment, and it serves the purpose before me. It has, I venture to think, a very timely ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... credit for more acute feelings than I possess; for though I feel tolerably miserable, yet I am at the same time subject to a kind of hysterical merriment, or rather laughter without merriment, which I can neither account for nor conquer, and yet I do not feel relieved by it; but an indifferent person would think me in excellent spirits. 'We must forget these things,' and have recourse ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... and slam and some one rushing up the stairway: and then Cousin Willie broke into the room, all panting and excited, and his face grey with fright and gasping out, "Hide me, hide me!" He ran from room to room whining and hysterical, and his breath coming in a sort of sob, but he seemed incapable of deciding what to do. I would have hidden him if I could, but at the very next moment I heard the policemen coming in below, and the voice of the landlady. Then they came upstairs, big strong-looking men in ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... to the confusion and alarm. In a few minutes every house was empty, and the entire population of the village swarmed around the exhausted woman and heard her brief story, broken by gasps for breath and by hysterical sobs. She insisted that a fleet was bearing down upon the coast with the purpose of spreading carnage and devastation along the whole lake frontier, that the vessels were crowded with British troops ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... impulsion. It is the best of all methods of organizing instincts. Its cathartic or purgative function regulates irritability, which may otherwise be drained or vented in wrong directions, exactly as Breuer[24] shows psychic traumata may, if overtense, result in "hysterical convulsions." It is also the best form of self-expression; and its advantage is variability, following the impulsion of the idle, perhaps hyperemic, and overnourished centers most ready to act. It involves play illusion ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... Ring sought out Gus Briskow and again resigned. By this time, however, the novelty of her resignation had largely worn off, for seldom did more than two weeks elapse without a hysterical threat to quit. But this one required more than the usual amount of persuasion, and it was not without long and patient pleading, coupled with the periodical raise, that the father induced her to change her mind. Gus told himself somberly that the price of Allegheny's ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... that life held dear, robbed of their children at the sweet age of seven years old, broken on the wheel, hunted among the mountains of the Cevennes, beggared, insulted, tortured, massacred—what wonder that these poor Protestants lost the balance of their mental powers and engendered a hysterical disease? The disease is (I believe), under its strangely mutable forms, well known to medical science, though science has never yet been able to probe all its mysterious depths. Its seat is, apparently, the great nervous ganglia of nutrition, which lie in the center of the body, and whose strange ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 9. September, 1880 • Various
... to be hysterical, but I couldn't help crying and laughing alternately, especially when the Prince would have taken my hands and begun ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... giggle at that, for Si Snubbins was funny, whether intentionally so or not. Nan continued to try to soothe the almost hysterical Mrs. Morton. ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... a sort of hysterical composure. He opened the chest. It was patently artificial. There were such details on the inside as would be imagined in a container needed to fit something snugly. At the edges of the opening there were fastenings like the teeth of a zipper, but somehow ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... neighbors gathered to collect the logs of a newly cleared lot for burning; and at house-raisings, where they kindly aided to set up the frame of a cabin for a new-comer; at camp-meetings, where the hysterical excitement of a community whose religion was more than half superstition found clamorous and painful vent;[30] or perchance at a hanging, which, if it met public approbation, would be sanctioned by the gathering of ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... the destroyer. She proved to be one of Uncle Sam's boats, and the joy with which she was greeted was vociferous and perhaps a little hysterical. She had learned by wireless of the appearance of the French craft in the danger zone, and had come to fulfill her mission. She had been delayed by a slight accident, or she would have been on hand ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the War Front - Or, The Hunt for the Stolen Army Films • Victor Appleton
... doctor had been in the house, and at this moment had been waiting in an adjoining apartment. The cry of Zillah startled him, and he hurried into the room. He saw her prostrate on the bed, with her arms around her father, uttering low, half-hysterical words of fondness, intermingled with laughter ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... king uttered a loud, hysterical laugh, descended from his palace, and ran into the park, a ...
— The Young Captives - A Story of Judah and Babylon • Erasmus W. Jones
... outlined against a distant light. She saw Margaret's hand thrust out—was she clutching his sleeve—and heard the murmur of voices. And then the man precipitating himself into the street. His hat catapulted ahead of him and a quick outburst of half-hysterical laughter broke ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... clinging to the steps she felt weak and a little hysterical. She wanted to summon her strength, to have her own back from him. After all he had taken the virtue from her, he might have the grace to say thank you, and treat her as if she were ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... hysterical lamentations and outpourings with what patience he could assume; until by degrees the dreadful truth began to dawn on him, that he was selected to replace the faithless Lothario! Of late Cossie's manner had become jealously possessive, She seemed to hold him by a nipping ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... the employ of the friars and contemptuously hostile to Rizal, but who has since 1898 been giving quite a spectacular demonstration of waving a red light after the wreck, having become his most enthusiastic, almost hysterical, biographer: "Rizal is what is commonly called a character, but he has repeatedly demonstrated very great inexperience in the affairs of life. I believe him to be now about thirty-two years old. He is the Indian of most ability among those who ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... Those were necessary. No more turbulent and fickle population lived in the known world—not even in Alexandria. Whenever an earthquake shook down blocks of buildings—and that happened nearly as frequently as the hysterical racial riots—the Romans rebuilt with a view to making communications easier from the citadel, where the great temple of Jupiter Capitolinus frowned ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... people the slave of their eye and ear, that many of the servants really thought that Missis was the principal sufferer in the case, especially as Marie began to have hysterical spasms, and sent for the doctor, and at last declared herself dying; and, in the running and scampering, and bringing up hot bottles, and heating of flannels, and chafing, and fussing, that ensued, there was ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... shriek of laughter from Toby, and she doubled up in her corner with hysterical mirth, gasping and gasping for breath, till he sat squarely down beside her and pulled her into the circle ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... us both together, and I was enjoying it and would have enjoyed it more if Mrs. L'Hommedieu had had more appetite. But she ate scarcely anything and seemed very anxious and unhappy, though she laughed now and then with sudden gusts of mirth too hysterical to be real. It was not late, and yet we were both very much surprised when there came a knock at the door, followed by the entrance ...
— The Gray Madam - 1899 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... when a hysterical laugh startled the man, who leaned back on the front seat, with his arms crossed tightly over a heart throbbing with ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... Her lips parted in an odd little way they had showing the small white teeth and forming the dimples in cheeks and chin. So great was the girl's relief; so appalled was she at what might have been, that the conflict of emotions made her almost hysterical. ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... top. He looked up along the row of notched steps I had made, as if fixing them in his mind, then with a nervous spring he whizzed up and passed me out on to the level ice, and ran and cried and barked and rolled about fairly hysterical in the sudden revulsion from the depth of despair to triumphant joy. I tried to catch him and pet him and tell him how good and brave he was, but he would not be caught. He ran round and round, swirling like autumn leaves in an eddy, lay down and rolled head over heels. I told him we still ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... his bow with a firm hand, he drew from the instrument a shrill note, which overpowered the deafening barks of the coyotes, and silenced them as if by enchantment. This silence henceforth continued, only interrupted by the hysterical sounds which the fiddle produced under the fear-stiffened fingers of the ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... because he stood to her as the living symbol of her daily inescapable servitude in this household. Jenny could never have felt that she would like to kill Pa. Emmy sometimes felt that. She at times, when he had been provoking or obtuse, so shook with hysterical anger, born of the inevitable days in his society and in the kitchen, that she could have thrown at him the battered pot which she carried, or could have pushed him passionately against the mantelpiece in her fierce ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... amazement and horror. Too late, then, the speaker realized his mistake. He could not stop, he must go on to the ghastly end. And somehow he did it, while "there fell a silence weighing many tons to the square inch, which deepened from moment to moment, and was broken only by the hysterical and blood-curdling laughter of a single guest, whose name shall not be handed ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... years are not very often affected. A physician writes: One of the saddest chapters in the history of human deception, that of the Salem witches, might be headed, "Hysteria in Children," since the tragedy resulted directly from the hysterical pranks of girls under twelve years of age. During late years it has been quite frequent among men and boys. It seems to occur oftener in the warm and mild climates than in the cold. There are two predisposing causes that are ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... size," Frank Merrill went on, and his voice had grown almost hysterical. "They could carry one of us off. We're not safe. We must take measures at once to protect ourselves. Why, at night—We must make traps. If we can capture one, or, better, a pair, we're famous. We're a ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... ironworkers are looked upon with contempt, as an inferior grade of beings. Their kinsmen even ascribe to them the power of transforming themselves into hynas, or other savage beasts. All convulsions and hysterical disorders are attributed to the effect of their evil eye. The Amhara call them Buda, the Tigr, Tebbib. There are also Mahomedan and Jewish Budas. It is difficult to explain the origin of this strange superstition. ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... Avenue, you know, where two johns come up along side o' me. One rubs me with his elbow and the other applies that brass knuckle,—then they gets pinched. I got dressed up in a drug store, got the chauffeur's license number, and goes on down to my office to see this girl. She's hysterical about his family using all their money to put her in jail. I looks at her, and says, 'You won't need their money to get to jail. That old man's dead!' Her eyes was as big as saucers. 'I thought old Daddy Van Cleft was drunk.' I tells her, 'He was dead in that taxi, with a chorus girl, ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... of the ludicrous, and the transition from what he had been singing to the funereal and most inappropriate words was almost too much for her. To her impotent anger and self-disgust she felt a hysterical desire to laugh, and only controlled herself by keeping her head down and her lips firmly pressed together during the ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... to be equal to such a situation. She could not think of anything to say. She knew what had happened, but, somehow, she had never imagined Sara could look like this—so odd and poor and almost like a servant. It made her quite miserable, and she could do nothing but break into a short hysterical laugh and exclaim—aimlessly and as if without any meaning, "Oh, Sara, ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... drew her friend in. Lilian of a sudden lost her physical strength; she had to be supported, almost carried, into the sitting-room. The words of kindness with which Mrs. Wade sought to recover her had a natural enough effect; they invited an hysterical outbreak, and for several minutes the sufferer wailed helplessly. In the meantime she was disembarrassed of her out-door clothing. A stimulant at length so far restored her that she could ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... beat of a man's footsteps on the side veranda. Mrs. Ranger started up, listened, sat again. "Oh," she said, in the strangest tone, and with a hysterical little laugh, "I thought it was your father coming home to dinner!" Then from her throat issued a stifled cry like nothing but a cry borne up to the surface from a deep torture-chamber. And she was talking on again—with Adelaide sobbing and Arthur fighting back the tears. ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... her hand he was never afterwards able to tell; for at its electric touch the room began to swim around him. But this could not have lasted for long; because, as he looked into her eyes, still seeking an explanation, she broke off the half-hysterical laugh that answered him, and pulled her hand away sharply at ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... of the masked revelers on the dance floor and at the tables, unearthly in themselves, were made even more so by the altering light. Music flooded the room from unseen sources. Laughter—hysterical, drunken, filled with utter abandonment—came from the dance floor, the tables, and the private booths and rooms ...
— A Bottle of Old Wine • Richard O. Lewis
... Hilliard suddenly stopped her ears and grovelled on her knees full in the light of the torches, her shoulders quivering with hysterical sobs. There was a ripple of sensation at the prominence of the convert, and triumphant peals of "Saved by His precious blood," "Saved by the Lamb," "Look to Him, sister, look to Him," and the like. Then big ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... us. Finding Schillie grew more and more reserved and angry, he separated the three, and proceeded to question them. Jenny declared point blank, as well as she could by signs, that all the rest of us were dead! and only those three left. Serena pretended not to understand, and fell into such hysterical tears at being separated from Schillie, that after awhile they ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... gone! His lips would be sealed forever. She laughed aloud in the frenzy of hope. She laughed to think what a fool she would have been to forbid the marriage. The marriage? Her salvation! Jane found her almost hysterical, trembling like a leaf. She was obliged to confess that she had heard part of their conversation below, in order to account for her manner. When Jane confided to her that she had promised to marry Graydon in September—or June—she urged ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... such hysterical words as these and blinded by a gush of weak, unmanly tears, I sent her from me, unheeding alike her piteous entreaties and the clasp of her imploring hands. When she was gone I sank into my chair and suffered my tears to flow unchecked, while the blackbird ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... care, however, and felt that Miss Wildmere was making too much use of the liberty she had provided for. She, like many others, could be half hysterical while the violence of the storm lasted, and yet, when quiet was restored, was capable of making a jest of her fears and the most of a delightful conjunction of affairs, which placed two eligible men at her beck, ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... replied the Dominie, his Houyhnhnm laugh sinking into a hysterical giggle,—"I will be facetious no more under these remembrances—but look at that ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... with him, as the day was so fine. She excused herself; he would hear no refusal. At last she appeared to consent, on condition that the man would assist at her toilet. There was a little laughter, almost hysterical on the part of Mary, whose voice evidently quivered ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... this fatal news had reached me? It may be all for the best, but it is hard for me to bear. I must, and will, revenge the dreadful wrong done to Phillip Lawson, and I must save my child from what is worse than death! Death, did I say?" exclaimed Mr. Verne, in hysterical tones. "I could see her decked in the robes of the grave without a murmur, and strew flowers over her form without a sigh—but to give her up to that monster of deception. Oh, God! it is dreadful!" And the heart-broken man uttered a groan that would ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... rather a trying moment for the four chums, who were seized with a hysterical desire to laugh and cry in the same breath. Grace made a slight motion toward the door, which her friends were not slow to comprehend. It was her intention to slip quietly away and leave the mother and daughter alone with their ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower |
