"Highly strung" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... some fertile brain conceived the notion of applying a knob of rubber to each corner, slates went out, and I suppose only doctors buy them nowadays to hang on the doors of their offices. Maybe the teacher's nerves were too highly strung to endure the squeaking of gritty pencils, but I think the real reason for their banishment is, that slates invited too strongly the game of noughts and crosses, or tit-tat-toe, three in a row, the champion ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... there, perhaps to protect him—at all events, to be with him—and she did not know, even know whether he cared about her—whether he would miss her—whether she counted for anything in his thoughts and his plans and his life—whether he would remember or whether he would forget her. She was in a highly strung, and, if the expression may be used, an exalted frame of mind. She had not slept much. After all the wildness of the disturbance was over Sir Rupert had insisted on her going to bed and not getting up until luncheon-time, and she had quietly submitted, and had been undressed, ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... probably right, that want of proper discipline in childhood was the reason of this variableness, which she deplored, but could neither combat nor conceal. Temperament must also have had something to do with it. Her nervous system was too highly strung, she was too sensitive, too emotional, too intense. She reflected phases of feeling with which she was brought into contact as a lake reflects the sky above it, and the bird that skims across it, and the boats ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... while saying this. Both of them were fairly quivering with the excitement, just as highly strung race horses can be seen quivering while prancing up and down awaiting the tap of the bell that summons them to the ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... man, as a rule, but he had a highly strung nervous system and it had been worked up. The unaccustomed whiskey and soda had taken him in its charge, comforting him and conducting his steps, and now the bar keeper, a cheery person, combined with the champagne cocktail, the cheeriest of drinks, so raised ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... of procedure which proves sometimes a little exasperating to the highly strung, and I watched Mitchell's face anxiously to see how he was taking his first introduction to it. The unhappy lad had blenched visibly. He turned to me with the air of one ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... hideous to her. She exaggerated her loneliness in the midst of society. She had mentally constructed for herself a new life with Louth as her husband. Imaginatively she had lived that life until it had become strangely familiar to her, as an imagined life can become to a highly strung woman. The abrupt and brutal withdrawal of all possibility of it as a reality had made the solitude of her widowhood seem suddenly terrible, unnatural, a sort of nightmare. She had moments of desperation in ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... nine children of the marriage—two girls and seven boys. Robert appeared on the ninth of February, 1859. He inherited in exaggerated degree his mother's highly strung nervous nature. Melancholy, weak and sickly as a child, he was not expected to live. To avoid the damp and cold of English winters he was periodically taken to the south of France. Deemed too delicate for school, a private tutor was provided. Joining in sports ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... been drinking champagne at the ball? Had the lights, the music, the dancing, the perfumes, her own verses gone to her head? Whatever was the cause, her nerves were certainly very highly strung, and only calmed down when the morning was well advanced, and she had exhausted herself in a thousand ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... at the age of eighteen, a prisoner in your own bedroom you will be able to feel with Betty. Not otherwise. Even your highly strung imagination will be impotent to present to you the ecstasy of rage, terror, resentment that fills the soul when locked door and barred windows say, quite quietly, but beyond appeal: "Here you are, and here, my good ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... stripping, and the tying of the rope in readiness for its appliance. To increase the terror these preliminaries excited, a pang of physical pain was added by tightening a cord round the wrists. This often sufficed to extract a confession from women or men of highly strung nerves. ...
— The Cenci - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... weary, the days that had been so short and pleasant. To the children there was no such thing as time. Having absolute and perfect health, they enjoyed happiness as far as mortals can enjoy it. Emmeline's highly strung nervous system, it is true, developed a headache when she had been too long in the glare of the sun, but they ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole |
