"Hysteria" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the arrival of Timothy with news from Thessalonica. The apostle's reasons for writing were: (a) to calm and encourage the converts whom he had so abruptly left; (b) to urge them to perform their ordinary duties. They had fallen into a state bordering on religious hysteria. Quite determined to be true to Christ, they had been demoralized by the strain of facing constant hostility. They had begun to take excessive interest in unfulfilled prophecy and eschatological speculation. The result ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... language, gross suggestion, and raving obscenity of word and thought that broke out. The writers abandoned all self-restraint under the impression that they were upholding virtue instead of outraging it. They infected each other with their hysteria until they were for all practical purposes indecently mad. They finally forced the police to arrest Mr Daly and his company, and led the magistrate to express his loathing of the duty thus forced upon him of reading an unmentionable and abominable play. Of course the convulsion ...
— How He Lied to Her Husband • George Bernard Shaw
... had a favourite quotation, adroitly mangled, to suit such occasions. "When we begin to inculcate morality as a science, we must discard moralising as a method," she declared; and she would also beg us to stop the hysteria. "It is the mortal malady of all well-beloved measures," she said; "and it spreads to an epidemic if the infected ones are not suppressed ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... and hypocritical; but it is a ground of very solid satisfaction, be the cause what it may, that recent American literature has been so free from the emasculate fin-de-siecle-ism, the nauseating pseudo-realism, the epigrammatic hysteria, that has of late been so rife in certain British circles. Moreover, it is impossible to believe that any really strong talent could have been stifled by the frown of the magazine editor. Walt Whitman made his ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... interest which she was arousing, Audrey leaned on the rail of the screen of flowers, and gave herself up afresh to laughter. Monsieur Dauphin was decidedly puzzled. The affair might have ended in hysteria and confusion had not Miss Ingate, with Nick and Tommy, come ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... held them emotionally taut was ended. With outstretched hands Diane ran toward him, and her broken laugh betrayed the hysteria she was ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... soothe and quiet her. And he had almost succeeded by the time they reached the brownstone house of sitters, bedrooms and baths, gas stoves, cubby-holes, the persistent reek of onions, cigarettes and hot cheese. The hysteria of the artistic temperament, or the natural exaggeration of an artificial life, had worn itself out for the time being. Rather pathetic little sobs had taken its place, it was with a face streaked with the black stuff from ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... headache, vertigo, paralysis of limbs, vomiting, sciatica, or incontinence or suppression of urine, spitting of blood; others, again, simulate hysteria, ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... at the outset, but then they submitted, and they soon found that Nature knew more than they. Babies completed women's lives, they settled their nerves; they gave them something to think about, and saved them from hysteria and extravagance and sentimentalism, and all the rest of ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... may mention that, in the early terrible days of the war, our thoughtful Press, wishing to make money out of public hysteria, had the bright idea of turning this simple, devoted woman into a spy. There was not a pressman who did not laugh in his sleeve at this and openly make a stunt of it, but it had its political uses; and, after the Russians had been seen with snow ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... starve herself to death under the impression that the devil commanded her not to eat was greatly benefited by post-hypnotic suggestion. Suggesting that the devil would not come any more induced pronounced hysteria, but when hypnotized, and told that the devil commanded her to eat, instead of to abstain from food, she took nourishment readily, and soon ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... thanks. They flung themselves to their knees and kissed the edge of Alaire's dress. Their instructions had been plain, and they followed them to the letter, yet their gratitude was none the less genuine for being studied. The little mother's hysteria, for instance, could not have been entirely assumed, and certainly no amount of rehearsals could have taught the child to join his cries so effectively to his parents'. Between them all they made such a racket as to summon a ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... hours' schooling a day (except Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday, when they had none), and how outdoor play the rest of the time was rapidly developing them physically and in the sense of responsibility and judgment. There were no recorded cases of weak eyes, nerves, or hysteria. There were no suicides among the children upon the occasion of failures ...
— If You Touch Them They Vanish • Gouverneur Morris
... committed many other ludicrous things. I verily believe if such a scene were presented on any stage in the world the effect of it would be visible instantaneously on the audience; that had they seen it as I saw it, they would have laughed themselves to hysteria and madness. Finally the Sultan recovered himself, great tears rolling down his cheeks, and his features quivering with laughter, then he slowly uttered the word "kali,"—hot, strong, quick, or ardent ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... to sob and to chatter in a maudlin hysteria of fright and apprehension. He succeeded in finding Frank by the sound of his breathing, and he was pawing at him and wildly calling his name when at his back a match ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... hysteria, and other spasmodic affections have often been mistaken for rabies, there is no doubt, and we can easily imagine the mental effect produced upon an individual of a highly nervous temperament, by the knowledge of his being bitten by an animal known to be hydrophobic; and we ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... was a thin note of hysteria in her voice. "We can't stay here alone. We don't know where to go or what to do. With Ihjel dead, the whole thing's spoiled. We have ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... shall be able to meet your wishes in a much simpler way, and yet throw sufficient safeguards around the new system to keep it from proving hurtful, should an attack of political hysteria overtake you. ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... orotund by that official that all her fears were groundless. "I have been talking with the State House just before you called me, Miss Corson. I am assured on the best of authority that everything is all right, there." He was plainly indulging what he accepted as the vagaries of hysteria—having been apprised by the matter-of-fact Mac Tavish that some nonsensical news might come through an excited female. "I think you must have misconstrued what your father said. My informant is known to me as reliable. Oh no, Miss Corson, I cannot give you his name. It's a rule of the sheriff's ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... into a lampshade; a matron of nearly sixty, who had previously spent eight years in sanatoriums, practically bedridden, was setting type in the printing office with greater activity than she had known before for two decades; two girls, one sixteen and the other twelve, the latter inclined to hysteria and the former once subject to acute nervous attacks, taking the cure in charge of trained nurses, were chattering gayly over a loom in the construction of a silk rug; a prominent business man from a ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... came over the wire in such an outpouring of hysteria that at first Willa could make nothing of it, but at length one ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... British Infantry Regiment would be justly shocked at any comparison being made between their respective charges. But it is a fact that, under certain circumstances, Thomas in bulk can be worked up into ditthering, rippling hysteria. He does not weep, but he shows his trouble unmistakably, and the consequences get into the newspapers, and all the good people who hardly know a Martini from a Snider say: "Take away the ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... inside out and his long hair rose with it until he appeared to be expanding himself like some elastic snake. One gentleman on the front bench below the gangway actually fell from his seat and rolled upon the floor, and the House laughed itself almost into hysteria, whilst the hapless orator stood waving in apologetic dumb show. Now here was a tragedy indeed: to have the dream of a whole lifetime at last actually realised and concrete and then to see it go to ruin in that way. So swift a transition from the very height of triumph to the very gulf! ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... laws and not an outbreak of lawlessness. Another evil result from the impetuous way in which we make laws is that they are not enforced because they are not in harmony with the views of the community. The statute books of every State are encumbered with laws passed in moments of hysteria and never put into operation, or else allowed to lapse after a few months of confusion. Every newspaper in California, for example, breaks the law every day when it prints a news item without appending the name of the writer, and probably we are all of us breaking laws of which ...
— Morals in Trade and Commerce • Frank B. Anderson
... are ourselves again, and can be reasonable," Valentine began. "Don't let us be hysterical. Spiritualists always suffer from hysteria." ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... system, coming just at the period of rapid development, gave rise to that morbid condition, accompanied with a series of mental and moral perversions, which in ignorant ages and communities is attributed to the influence of evil spirits, but for the better-instructed is the malady which they call hysteria. Few households have ripened a growth of womanhood without witnessing some of its manifestations, and its phenomena are largely traded in by scientific pretenders and religious fanatics. Into this cloud, with all its risks and all its humiliations, Myrtle Hazard ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Conjuring and Ventriloquism are old trades. They must disbelieve all Philosophical Transactions containing the records of painful and careful inquiry into now familiar disorders of the senses of seeing and hearing, and into the wonders of somnambulism, epilepsy, hysteria, miasmatic influence, vegetable poisons derived by whole communities from corrupted air, diseased imitation, and moral infection. They must disbelieve all such awkward leading cases as the case of the Woodstock ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... with every possible inflection. I've had no idea that Peachy would ever get over it. My God, you fellows have no idea what I've been through with her in regard to this question of flying. Why, one night three months ago, she had an awful attack of hysteria because I told her I'd have to cut Angela's wings as soon as she ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... droughts, and blizzards had cleaned him out at various times, and always he had taken his medicine without a whimper; but the loss of so much as a yearling calf by theft threw him into a rage that was like hysteria. ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... and the unlikelihood of her succumbing unexpectedly to ordinary womanly weaknesses. He had thought that he knew her thoroughly, that no circumstance that might arise could alter characteristics so set and inherent. But to-day her present emotion which had come perilously near hysteria, showed her in a new light that made her almost a stranger. He was a little bewildered with the discovery. It was incredible after all these years, just as if an edifice that he had thought strongly built of stone had tumbled ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... of yourselves!" cried Dora after them, and then turned to quiet her mother, who had come downstairs in a state of excitement bordering on hysteria, for, as old readers know, Mrs. Stanhope's ...
— The Rover Boys out West • Arthur M. Winfield
... type will, in seeking such a compensation, escape from the harsh reality into the realm of dreams. This is the basis of what the physician recognizes in hysteria, and in the mental disease termed "Dementia Praecox." The glorious daydreams of the millennium, the time of bliss when all strife and all hate will disappear from the earth, when all the crooked will be made straight, find their best explanation in this peculiarity. They console ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... and Heloise made her sit down, while each held forcibly a hand to prevent an access of hysteria. Mere Ste. Vierge rose and hastily left the chapel ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... exactly," he writes, "since Mr Borrow himself was so agitated that I could get no very clear account of it. I could detect no marked organic affection about the heart or lungs, of which she chiefly complained. It seemed to me to be either a very aggravated form of hysteria, or, what appears more likely, some more serious mental affection. In any case, the chief requisite seemed very careful and intelligent nursing or management, and I doubt very much, from what I saw, whether she gets that with her present surroundings. If it is really the more ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... more; and about this time, owing to the large amount of uric acid in his body, he will probably be subject to attacks of some form of gout or chronic rheumatism." Dr. Haig ascribes to the presence of uric acid in the system, not only gout and rheumatism, but epilepsy, hysteria, mental and bodily depression, diseases of ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan
... wrote, "who are so wise in the ways of those tricky things called nerves, must know that it was only a mild hysteria that made me say those most unladylike things. I have written Norah all about it. She has replied, advising me to stick to the good-fellow role but not to dress the part. So when next you see me I shall be a perfectly safe and sane comrade ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... because she was very much overwrought, G. G.'s mother had a mild little attack of hysteria; and Cynthia beat her on the back and shook her and kissed her until she was over it. Then G. G.'s mother told Cynthia about ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... in that harbor, and found his way to the wharf. His real difficulties confronted him at the village telegraph office. The visiting yachtsmen had flooded the place with messages, and the flustered young woman was in a condition nearly resembling hysteria. She was defiantly declaring that she would not accept any more telegrams. Instead of setting at work upon those already filed she was spending her time explaining ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... couldn't complain too much; I'd asked for it. I think that this group of seven pilots pretty much represented the feelings of a lot of the airline pilots. They weren't wide-eyed space fans, but they and their fellow pilots had seen something and whatever they'd seen weren't hallucinations, mass hysteria, balloons, ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... of men and women aforetime, of all shadowy hosts of progenitors. And the snarl of my anger was blended with the snarls of beasts more ancient than the mountains, and the vocal madness of my child hysteria, with all the red of its wrath, was chorded with the insensate, stupid cries of beasts ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... was administered. Finally, what the Professor had desired came to pass. The three men lay senseless, breathing stertorously. To achieve this result more than a gallon of the best whisky had been used! Mamie and Edna began to exhibit symptoms of hysteria. ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... a bloodless campaign—one that neither required nor brought forth any generalship—but it was a victory and had been personally conducted by Meneptah, so Memphis was preparing to fall into paroxysms of delight, little short of hysteria. ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... least, to be a solace and a resource to her; then graduate before she is eighteen, and come out of school as healthy, as fresh, as eager, as she went in."[1] But it is not true that she can do all this, and retain uninjured health and a future secure from neuralgia, uterine disease, hysteria, and other derangements of the nervous system, if she follows the same method that boys are trained in. Boys must study and work in a boy's way, and girls in a girl's way. They may study the same books, and attain ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... is more or less pleasure, except in that of hysteria, when by a sudden shock the course of Nature is reversed, and excessive grief will produce the signs of joy, as extravagant delight will sometimes exhibit those of sorrow. We should also exclude the laughter caused by inhalation of gas, and that of ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... the crooked river front, on both sides from Independence to the river landing at Westport, the great spring caravan lay encamped, or housed in town. Now, on the last days of the rendezvous, a sort of hysteria seized the multitude. The sound of rifle fire was like that of a battle—every man was sighting-in his rifle. Singing and shouting went on everywhere. Someone fresh from the Mexican War had brought a drum, another a bugle. Without instructions, these began to sound ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... to write with assiduity. Catherine busied herself with her household duties, with the garden and with charities in the neighbouring Parish. Her mother's rather hysterical beliefs lost their hysteria in her, at this period, and were softened and rendered large hearted. Catherine's sympathy with the world was indeed a living thing, not simply a fine idea. While Mark was shut up every morning with his writing she visited the poor, sat by the sick, and played with the village children. The Parish—this ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... is a powerful antispasmodic. It is employed in hysteria, hypochondria, convulsions, and spasms, when unaccompanied by inflammation. Dose—Of the gum or powder, from three to ten grains, usually administered in the form of a pill; of the tincture, from one-half to ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... youth. A smaller boy in the background talked into a telephone. Both were giggling. On seeing me the slightly larger of the two advanced with a half-hearted attempt at solemnity, though unable to resist a Parthian shaft at his companion, who was seized on the instant with a paroxysm of suppressed hysteria. ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... "Sure. It's hysteria. I had it myself once. But I found I could keep busy enough doing nothing without presenting my income to the Senegambians and spending life in a Wall Street office. Of course if I had a pretty fancy for the artistic ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... delicate organisation into manly endurance, yet the sudden anguish of this unexpected blow quite conquered him. A thrilling cry broke from his lips, and the next moment, when the cane again tore his shoulders, a fit of violent hysteria supervened, which alarmed the brutes who were trying to master ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... and repentance. While Bromfield waited and fumed she rode and tramped with Clay. It was not fair to her affianced lover. She knew that. But there were times when she wanted to shriek as dressmakers and costumers fussed over her and wore out her jangled nerves with multitudinous details. The same hysteria welled up in her occasionally at the luncheons and dinners that were being given in honor of her ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... business of carrying the wristwatch in your pocket instead of on your arm," he went on with channeled hysteria. "A neat bit of camouflage, Effie. Very neat. And telling me it was my child, when all the while you've ...
— The Moon is Green • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... was on the edge of hysteria. His senseless giggle threatened that in another instant it would be beyond all control. There was no time to be lost. Olva took him by the shoulders, held him firmly and looked straight into the weak, quivering eyes that were ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... at Souvorin's, in the drawing-room. Met VI. T.... who complained of his hysteria and praised his own books. I saw P. Gnyeditch and E. Karpov, who imitated Leykin showing off ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
... laughter bubbling to his lips, recognized it for the beginning of hysteria, and the impulse ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... old man; who, with her eddying breasts, her palpitating body, her quivering thighs, breaks the energy, melts the will, of a king; she has become the symbolic deity of indestructible Lust, the goddess of immortal Hysteria, the accursed Beauty, chosen among many by the catalepsy that has stiffened her limbs, that has hardened her muscles; the monstrous, indifferent, irresponsible, insensible Beast, poisoning, like Helen of old, all that go near to her, all that look upon her, all ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... his mother?' cried the good woman, her hysteria having much the same effect on Lord Durwent's smoothly developing monologue as a heavy pail dropped by a stage-hand during ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... off her hat and dropped into the armchair, oblivious of its bumps. She began to cry quietly with none of her former hysteria. Holt was nearer to Masters than any one she knew, and she was grateful that he had not seen her in her hours of supreme degradation. If he ever saw Masters again he would tell him of her downfall, of course—and the reason for it; but at least he could ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... innate force to conquer. Certainly he "managed" Hank admirably. It was his nephew, however, hitherto so wonderfully controlled, who gave him most cause for anxiety, for the cumulative strain had now produced a condition of lachrymose hysteria which made it necessary to isolate him upon a bed of boughs and blankets as far removed from Hank as was possible under ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... tendency to crawl back and look at it. I did not care to risk contracting our gas chamber for fear of losing gas. Nothing was less like a fight. I know that in popular magazines, and so forth, all such occasions as this are depicted in terms of hysteria. Captains save their ships engineers complete their bridges, generals conduct their battles, in a state of dancing excitement, foaming recondite technicalities at the lips. I suppose that sort of ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... fact is, you scarcely know what you're doing, my poor Mr. Shawn. You're on wires, that's what's the matter with you—hysteria. I know what it is as well as anybody. You'll excuse me saying so, but you're no ordinary man. You're one of these highly-strung people and you ought to take care of yourself. Well, I'll go now, and if it's mutually ...
— The Great Adventure • Arnold Bennett
... been trying to look over some papers, started up and paced the room hurriedly. "This—this is very curious!" he was trying to say to himself. "Hysteria pure and simple—very interesting— I must note the duration of the paroxysms. Good God! can't somebody stop her? perfectly inhuman, to let a creature ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... feeling as well as common-sense. Some will tell you that this people is feminine in its virtues, as well as in its vices, that the delicate nerves and fine sensibility which cause it to excel in matters of taste and art also make it susceptible to attacks of hysteria, but I am of opinion that any people is manly only by accident, if by a man you mean a reasonable creature—a flattering but baseless idea. Men only use their reason from time to time, and are soon worn out by the effort of thinking; so those do them a favour who act for ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... all there. The insanity of Dona Juana was not seriously doubted by her contemporaries—certainly not by Martyr, whose portrait of her character is perhaps the most accurate contemporary one we possess. He traces her malady from its incipiency, through the successive disquieting manifestations of hysteria, melancholia, and fury, broken by periods of partial and even complete mental lucidity. Such intervals became rarer and briefer ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... then, to explain what was the meaning of her refusal, of the fright she had just shown; and, in a sort of nervous hysteria which she forced herself to control, in the midst of stifled sobs, she told him that if she could ever consent to unite herself to anyone, it would be to him, to him alone, to the hero of her country, to him whose chivalrous devotion she had admired long before she knew ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... is that overindulgence in babyhood so often means wrecked nerves and shattered happiness in later life. So, fond, indulgent parents, do your offspring the very great kindness to fight it out with them while they are young, even if it takes all summer, and thus spare them neurasthenia, hysteria, and a host of other evils ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... emotional than men, and that this peculiarity comes in a great measure from their delicate physical organization, and in a great measure from the encouragement they get from men in indulging their feelings. Nobody admires a woman when her emotions reach the point of hysteria, and, in fact, those who have encouraged her up to that point are often least patient with her when the crisis comes. The general belief about hysteria is that it is caused by the culpable weakness of a selfish nature, and ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... Sickness, however, ensues, and headaches, growing in intensity, are developed. These are frequently attended by obscuration of vision or temporary blindness. Such a girl passes into what appears to her friends and medical adviser as ordinary hysteria. This gradually deepens without warning, until she is suddenly seized with a convulsion, beginning in one half of the face, then involving the arm, next the leg of the same side of the body, until ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... the sally was heard over the whole house, and the audience, relieved of its anxiety for its favorite, laughed with an uproariousness that had in it the note of hysteria. Even Genevieve felt that there was something irresistibly funny in the remark, and the relief of the audience was communicated to her; yet she felt sick and faint, and was overwrought with horror at what she had seen and ...
— The Game • Jack London
... EPIDEMICS OF "POSSESSION." Survival of the belief in diabolic activity as the cause of such epidemics Epidemics of hysteria in classical times In the Middle Ages The dancing mania Inability of science during the fifteenth century to cope with such diseases Cases of possession brought within the scope of medical research ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... prove, and what does its absence prove, on one of these innocent faces? There is nothing in all this world that can lie and cheat like the face and the tongue of a young girl. Just give her a little touch of hysteria,—I don't mean enough of it to make her friends call the doctor in, but a slight hint of it in the nervous system,—and "Machiavel the waiting-maid" might take lessons of her. But I cannot think our Scheherezade is one of that kind, and I am ashamed of ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... dropped and I caught—BECAUSE you are a friend of mine, and because you have learned to trust me. But who else would credit it? I have only my word against his—an unknown nurse's against the great Professor's. Everybody would say I was malicious or hysterical. Hysteria is always an easy stone to fling at an injured woman who asks for justice. They would declare I had trumped up the case to forestall my dismissal. They would set it down to spite. We can do nothing against him. Remember, on his part, the utter ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... "Hysteria," declared Sir Walter. "I don't blame them. It is natural. Everybody is free to go, if they desire to do so. But tell them what you have heard to-night, Masters. Tell them that no good Christian need ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... and who perhaps have been convicted before of some misdemeanor or crime. This is also often true in cases where there is great prejudice against the defendant, either on account of the nature of the case or of the defendant on trial. For instance, during the recent war a wave of hysteria swept over the world, and courts and juries trampled on individual rights and freely violated the spirit of laws and constitutions. The close of the war left the same intense feelings of bitterness which made justice impossible in cases ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... courtyard outside, and feel the trembling of the pillars, the very pillars of the Temple, and the groaning of stone on massive stone in the great, shadowed arches overhead. Above all, the chanting before the altar of the Dark One, rising, rising toward hysteria. ...
— Bride of the Dark One • Florence Verbell Brown
... fire, my pen is a flash of lightning. I see stars, three stars, that is to say, one of the best brands plucked from the burning. I'm going to make your flesh creep. I'll give you fits, paralytic fits, epileptic fits, and fits of hysteria, all at the same time. Have I ever been in Paris? Never. Do I know the taste of absinthe? How dare you ask me such a question? Am I a woman? Ask me another. Ugh! it's coming, the demon is upon me. I must write three murderous volumes. I ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 11, 1891 • Various
... frock now so badly smirched and the white gloves which had split asunder in her fall were treasures beyond compute, and Helena herself loved pretty clothes. She felt a keen sympathy in that and another respect—she had suffered from hysteria and always went prepared for an emergency. Stepping quietly to Mabel's side, she waved aside the ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... Then, when those hats came down, other men would kick them back into the air, shouting at the top of their voices: "He's all right!!" Then I heard others howling for "Underwood, Underwood, first, last and all the time!!" No hysteria about it—just patriotic loyalty, splendid manly devotion to principle. And so they went on and on until 5 o'clock in the morning—the whole night long. I saw men jump up on their seats and jump down again and run around in a ring. I saw two men run towards another man to hug him ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... sea. Neither by day nor by night did the Babel of commerce cease. Unlike other West Indian towns, where such a condition led to gaiety and pleasure, Fort Oranje retained its Dutch character. It was a hysteria, but a hysteria ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... rocking chair in the hall, an erratic creaking responded, and Woolfolk started forward, and stopped as he heard and then identified the noise. This, he told himself, would not do; the hysteria was creeping over him again. He shook his shoulders, wiped his palm and took a fresh ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... elevated), the unsophisticated Eskimos to floods of tears, and sometimes to convulsions of laughter. As, at Benjy's suggestion, he sometimes changed his moods abruptly, the tears often mingled with the convulsions, so as to produce some vivid illustrations of Eskimo hysteria. ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... imagination, given the darkness such as usually fills a carriage at night, becomes a round of terrors. Every moment is freighted with death or disfigurement. Her nerves are like the taut strings of a harp in a wintry wind, ready to snap at any moment; and then, hysteria. With man the play, and only the play, is ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... For a moment he appeared crushed; then leaped to his feet flourishing a long knife he had drawn from his boot. "I'll, not be taken from this place alive!" he shrieked, beside himself with hysteria. "Where are all you brave fellows who were going to see me ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... isolated from its proper connections, and function without issue. The extreme cases of this are the pathological states of mania and depression, where such feelings assume proportions dangerous to the existence of the individual. Intoxication and hysteria present analogous, though more transient phenomena. And one may observe the autonomous development of mere feeling even in the healthy life, as when one remains jolly after all occasion for it has ceased, or angry after the cause for anger has been ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... the first lock on the Thames below Oxford. As it happened, this aunt, a Miss Beale, was lunching with a friend in Oxford today, and some one showed her an early edition of a London evening newspaper containing an account of the murder. Instead of yielding to hysteria, and passing from one fainting fit into another, Miss Beale had the rare good sense to go straight to the police station. One of our men has interviewed her this evening, and she is coming here tomorrow, but in the meantime the Oxford police telephoned the gist of the letter, which is headed ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... with thoughts of heaven and hell, of the immortality of the soul and the life everlasting, of the Redeemer and the Cross of Calvary. The camp ground witnessed an annual muster of the adjacent countryside. The revival was a religious hysteria lasting ten days or two weeks. The sermons were appeals to the emotions. The songs were the outpourings of the soul in ecstacy. There was no fanaticism of the death-dealing, proscriptive sort; nor any conscious cant; simplicity, childlike belief in future rewards and punishments, ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... to be noted that Christ made no special appeal to us in order to evoke our enthusiasm for the heathen. He gave no hint that there is but the one alternative of damnation if they do not receive and accept the Gospel. He had evidently no morbid hysteria on that ground. He simply gave the command; and that ought to be sufficient. He knows what possibilities of grace are in reserve; but that was not the time nor the place to speak ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... hidden deep in the mold—things, foul and all unnameable—long worms—slimy creatures with blind eyes and useless wings—abortions and deformities of the insect tribe born of poisonous vapor—creatures the very sight of which would drive you, oh, delicate woman, into a fit of hysteria, and would provoke even you, oh, strong man, to a shudder of repulsion! But there is a worse thing than these merely physical horrors which come of so-called Christian burial—that is, the terrible UNCERTAINTY. What, if after ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... apparently produced by a sudden shock. The boy was taken to one of the bedrooms, and after some time recovered consciousness, but only to pass into a condition described by the medical man as one of violent hysteria. The doctor exhibited a strong sedative, and in the course of two hours pronounced him fit to walk home, but in passing through the hall the paroxysms of fright returned and with additional violence. The father perceived that the child was pointing at some object, ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... and confounded. Did she rave? Was she mad? He studied her with a curious, half-doubting scrutiny, and noted the composure of her attitude, the cold serenity of her expression,—there was evidently no hysteria, no sur-excitation of nerves about this calm statuesque beauty which in every line and curve of loveliness silently mutinied against him, and despised him. Puzzled, yet fascinated, he sought in his mind for some clue ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... many bleak points of view; she had blamed fate for her undoing, she had blamed Gratton, she had laid the responsibility upon her mother for having allowed her to drift; but always she had looked upon herself as the victim. Now, in her agitation, which had risen close to hysteria, it was suddenly Mark King whom she blamed for everything; he, in the guise ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... later he was back in the ward again (not his ward), and this time he found the courage of hysteria. There in the middle of the ward, under the glaring Christmas lights, with the eyes of every interested man in every bed glued upon us, he presented me with a fan wrapped in white paper: "A little present I bought you, nurse." I took it, eyes ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... on, so nervous that he was half-inclined to take a sleeping powder. The room seemed full of flashes of lightning. He heard sounds which made him cold with horror. He was highly strung nervously, and was really in a state bordering upon hysteria. The mystery which surrounded him was the main cause. He was never himself before an unknown quantity. He had too much imagination. He made all sorts of surmises as to the stranger who was haunting Clemency. Starting with two known quantities, ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... unpunctuality to-day, but the fact is that, at the very moment of starting, I was delayed by one of the most interesting—one of the most extraordinary cases that ever came within my experience, even at the Salpetriere Hospital, where we were familiar with the most marvellous cases of hysteria—a seizure brought on by terror in which the subject's countenance mimics the appearance of the terrible object that has caused it. A truly wonderful case! I have just written ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... strange t'ings dan dat 'round here," began the negress, but the physician hushed her in a seldom employed peremptory, concentrated voice with which he had often allayed hysteria itself. He returned to the other room, closing the door softly behind him. The man on the bed had not moved, but his eyes were open. His lips seemed to form words. Doctor James bent his head to listen. "The money! the money!" was what they ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... and the tension becomes too great; the accumulated passion discharges and dissolves in a fierce gust of double chromatic thirds and octaves. Powerful, repellant, this prelude is almost infernal in its pride and scorn. But in it I discern no vestige of uncontrolled hysteria. It is well-nigh as strong, rank and human as Beethoven. The various editorial phraseology is not of much moment. Riemann uses thirty-second notes for the cadenzas, Kullak eighths and ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... be welcome," she faltered, and trying not to appear alarmed. She was too young and healthy to understand the meaning of the word hysteria, or to guess at the existence of nervous maladies that make some people's lives a long torment to them. Nevertheless, Mrs. Cheyne's singular aspect filled her with vague fear. It did not enter into her mind to connect the coming storm with Mrs. Cheyne's ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... good days gradually drawing ahead and becoming more frequent and more marked. I look for her to recover entirely in a year's time, but she will always retain her sensitiveness and a certain amount of hysteria, so that things that would not bother you or me will hurt her grievously. You must be prepared to expect this to happen. But I see no reason at all why she should not in the near future become a happy wife and mother." The blessings of this good mother were a reward in themselves, and ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower
... voice this man perhaps exaggerated our scruple about parliament. 'I lack,' said D..., 'the bump of reverence;' whereon the wild man shouted 'You 'ave a 'ole.' There are moments when looking back I somewhat confuse my own figure with that of the hatter, image of our hysteria, for I too became violent with the violent solemnity of a religious devotee. I can even remember sitting behind D... and saying some rude thing or other over his shoulder. I don't remember why I gave it up but I did quite suddenly; and I think the push may have come from a young workman who ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... young than go to the expense of bringing them up before they are killed!" she went on, not hysterically, unless frozen intensity is hysteria. "Children clinging to your knees might stop you, but I suppose you would have a police force to tear the children away rather than miss the masculine ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... expression that had puzzled him the day before, but with the flushed cheeks, the firm mouth and the shining eyes, there was now a strange look of excitement, almost of hysteria. ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... her mother, her whole figure trembling. "I know there is danger now, this minute. Oh, what can I do, what can I do?" With this cry all her strength seemed to give way; she sobbed and laughed with the hysteria of long ago; when Ruth strove to put her arms around her, she ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... it for our own comfort and strength. We need it to deliver us from the vanity and hollowness, the fever and hysteria of the present age. We need it to make us better soldiers and workers for every good cause. Peace is coming to all the earth some day through Christ. And those who shall do most to help Him bring it are the men and women to whom He ...
— What Peace Means • Henry van Dyke
... all European literature for nearly a century." He does not pretend that it is a good poem, but "here, for the first time, we find unwaveringly emphasized and repeated what was entirely new in literature, the essence of romantic hysteria." It is in Joseph Warton, according to Mr. Gosse, that we first meet with "the individualist attitude to nature." Readers of Horace Walpole's letters, however, will remember still earlier examples of the romantic attitude to nature. But ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... without recognizable anatomical changes after death, the percentage is very large. In another analysis of one hundred and twenty-four suicides forty-four of these were mentally affected to various degrees. Five of the men and seven women were epileptics, in ten of the families there was hysteria, twenty-four of the men and four of the women were ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... some form of hypnotism. The people of the East are much more subject to influences of this kind than Western peoples are, and there can be no question that the religious orgies of heathendom were merely a form of that hysteria which is so closely related to the modern phenomenon of hypnotism. Though various scientific men spoke of magnetism, and understood that there was a power of a peculiar kind which one man could exercise over another, it was not until Frederick Anton Mesmer (a doctor of Vienna) ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... length this attack of Pascal’s as a well-known form of dynamical paralysis, of a similar nature with hypochondria and hysteria, proceeding from a disordered state of the nervous affections, the result of overwork acting upon a delicate organisation. The result is temporary, as distinguished from the paralysis arising from organic lesion, but indicates ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... hundreds that the Maccabee was attempting to form in his fortress. It came like the gradual velocity of a burning star across the sky. From the ranks nearest the exit from the burrow the murmur issued, growing into intelligible sound, mounting to the wildness of hysteria and prevailing wholly over the Gibborim in the space between heart-beats. Everywhere they cast down their spears and their weapons, everywhere they gazed at him with brilliant threatening eyes and cried in loud voices so ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... niece!" Mr. De Gex said breathlessly. "She—she has been subject to fits of hysteria. The doctor has warned her of her heart. You heard her ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... you you would have laughed, even in the Catacombs, and Dicky and I mutually approached the borders of hysteria in our misplaced mirth. Mrs. Portheris smiled in unison somewhat foolishly, and we saw that slumber was overtaking her. Gradually and unconsciously she slipped down and back, and presently rested comfortably in the sepulchre of her ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... move. The thirty-odd passengers were huddled in a group. Solemn, white-faced men, frightened women. Some of them were sobbing. One Earth-woman—a young widow—sat holding her little girl, and wailing with uncontrolled hysteria. The child knew me. As I appeared now, with my gold-laced white coat over my shoulders, the little child seemed to see in my uniform a mark of authority. She left her ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... every word, were an effervescence. There was something near hysteria in the bright flashes of her wit. However gay, joyous, cynical, Jacqueline may have seemed to herself, to Berthe, terrified though the girl was, Jacqueline's mood was ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... "A bit of hysteria and melodrama, eh?" he queried. "Well, never mind. You licked Cheese-Face, and you'll lick the editors if it takes twice eleven years to do it in. You can't stop here. You've got to go on. It's ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... tragedy lightly. Too busy to stop the activity of their twenty-million-horse-power society, Americans ignore tragic motives that would have overshadowed the Middle Ages; and the world learns to regard assassination as a form of hysteria, and death as neurosis, to be treated by a rest-cure. Three hideous political murders, that would have fattened the Eumenides with horror, have thrown scarcely a ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... asked if I were the doctor from the old Grange. I said I was, and she begged me to come in and see her daughter-in-law. She was very ill, and the local doctor is gone. I found a young, very pretty girl, with a tiny baby, in as bad a state of hysteria as I ever saw. But that is not the story. That I heard by degrees. It seems the father-in-law, a veteran of 1870, now old, and nearly helpless, is of good family, but married, in his middle age, a woman ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... is concerned. When this line is excessively open or separate from the Line of Life, the brain seems to be an extremely excitable one. The subject suffers greatly from excessive blood to the head, mental hysteria, sleeplessness, and all things that affect the brain. If the Line of Head is badly formed with islands, or a broad line with breaks and hair lines (1-1, Plate IV.), it is just as much a mark of another ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... all plain. There is no danger. Close the blinds; I want the room darkened. So! Come into the back room—leave the door ajar." He selected a trustworthy chair and sat down with deliberate care. "Now listen to me, my dear. This is pure hysteria. It may last for days or weeks—it will get well. It is the natural result of birth, education, worry, etc.—and a lot of darned et ceteras. When you let loose a mob of emotions, you get into trouble—they smash things, ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... physiologist:—"On hundreds of occasions one might believe, in effect, that the Energumenes read the thoughts of the ecclesiastics who were charged with the combating of their demons. It is certain that these young women were endowed, during their excesses of hysteria or nervous exaltation, with a penetration of mind altogether unique." The children of the fanatics of the Cevennes, while in their supposed prophetic ecstacies, spoke the purest dialect of French, and expressed themselves with singular propriety. ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... from me instead of money. They want dollars an' cents, an' that's what I want every time, dollars an' cents, an' not soft soap. Yes, it's dollars an'—cents—and not so-ft soa-p." Suddenly the dress-maker, borne high on a wave of hysteria, disclosing the innate coarseness which underlay all her veneer of harmless gentility and fine manners, raised a loud, shrill laugh, ending in a multitude of reverberations like a bell. There was about this unnatural metallic laughter something ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... followed him perforce away from Cariboo Meadows, came back to her with redoubled force that forenoon. She went back into the house, now gloomy without a fire, slumped forlornly into a chair, and cried herself into a condition approaching hysteria. And she was sitting there, her head bowed on her hands, when Bill returned from his hunting. The sun sent a shaft through the south window, a shaft which rested on her drooping head. Roaring Bill walked softly up behind her and put his hand ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... to pray. As a natural result, when all minds were directed to one channel, as they were by prayer, the superstitious feeling which possessed them passed away, and the household, which a few moments ago was on the verge of hysteria, became more calm, and when all rose from their knees, Mrs. Parris asked her visitor to spend the ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... the scene within the temple when he had lain stretched upon the sacrificial altar, while La, with high-raised dagger, stood above him, and the rows of priests and priestesses awaited, in the ecstatic hysteria of fanaticism, the first gush of their victim's warm blood, that they might fill their golden goblets and drink to the ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... grimly. "And think of all the crazy cases of mass-hysteria—that baseball-game riot in Baltimore; the time everybody started tearing off each others' clothes in Milwaukee; the sex-orgy in New Orleans. And the sharp uptrend in individual psycho-neurotic and psychotic behavior. All in connection with music, too, and all after Evri-Flave ...
— Hunter Patrol • Henry Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... action, eating into the foundations of the national character; it worked through the masses of the great cities, unnerved by the three poisons of drink, the Salvation Army, and popular journalism. A mighty force of hysteria and sensationalism was created, seething, ready to burst its bonds ... The canker spread through the country-side; the boundaries of class and class are now so vague that quickly the whole population was affected; the current literature of the day flourished upon it; the people of England, neurotic ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... the water to it through channels. The machine was worked by an Arab who, as far as one could tell, prayed to it. In the garden, full of moist heat and splashes of colour, lived a colony of jackals, those extraordinary spirits of hell, whose wailing and hysteria are so amazing. I do not know how Darwin would have accounted for the particular note they strike. It is probably on a level with the roaring of the lion, in that it is designed to terrify. But the jackal does not terrify by such obvious methods as the lion. He plays on your eerie, ghostly, ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... of insanity, hysteria, and nervous diseases the mumia of the sufferer must be planted, at 2 a.m., with a cutting of white poplar, and as soon as the latter shows evidences of decay, the afflicted will ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... begin to go deeper—if I might speak of delirium, of slumber, of stupor, of epilepsy and catalepsy, and such like, wherein the free and rational spirit is subjected to the despotism of the body—if I might enlarge especially on the wide field of hysteria and hypochondria— if it were allowed me to speak of temperaments, idiosyncrasies, and constitutions, which for physicians and philosophers are an abyss—in one word, should I attempt to demonstrate truth of the foregoing from the bed of sickness, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... twice before she realized its significance. Then, trembling violently, she sank on to a chair, and gave way to what very closely resembled a fit Of hysteria. ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... conclude by naming a few diseases in which the charmers may be expected to charm most wisely and well. They will all be found to come within the category of the diseases characterised above:—Epilepsy, St. Vitus's Dance (Chorea), Hysteria, Toothache, Warts, Ague, Mild Skin-diseases, Tic Douloureux, Jaundice, Asthma, Bleeding from the Nose, St. Anthony's Fire or The Rose (Erysipelas), King's Evil (Scrofula), Mumps, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 27. Saturday, May 4, 1850 • Various
... great deal of the poet-neuropath and very little of the murderer for ambition's sake in this lyrical hysteria. No wonder Lady Macbeth declares she would be ashamed "to wear a heart so white." It is all Hamlet over again, Hamlet wrought up to a higher pitch of intensity. And here it should be remembered that "Macbeth" was written three years after "Hamlet" and probably just before "Lear"; ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... The Trinity Irving Abraham Isaac Jacob Origin of Acts Love Lord Eldon's Doctrine as to Grammar Schools Democracy The Eucharist St. John, xix. 11. Divinity of Christ Genuineness of Books of Moses Mosaic Prophecies Talent and Genius Motives and Impulses Constitutional and functional Life Hysteria Hydro-carbonic Gas Bitters and Tonics Specific Medicines Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians Oaths Flogging Eloquence of Abuse The Americans Book of Job Translation of the Psalms Ancient Mariner Undine Martin Pilgrim's Progress Prayer Church-singing ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... and freckled by nature. I wonder what has become of poor Sybil's letter; and if I had better ask his aid in finding it. But he is going away so soon. Now that I reflect, soberly, what motive could Doctor Heath possibly have for taking that letter? I think I must have been mad, or in hysteria. The man may be an imposter, a man of mystery, and all that; but why must I accuse him of taking a letter that could be of no possible use to him. I had worked myself into a rage. Well, it's done; I can't recall it. Doctor Heath will think ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... say that there may not be a decadent side in Wagner, revealing super-sensitiveness or even hysteria and other modern nervous affections. And if this side was lacking he would not be representative of his time, and that is what every great artist ought to be. But there is certainly something more in him than decadence; and if ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... this chauvinistic hysteria, Swedish politicians have naturally had an exceedingly delicate problem to solve. On one point opinion in Sweden has been unanimous. It has emphatically refused to accept a mere personal Union as a solution of the question. This on two grounds: one for the Union, the other ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund
... recurring convulsions in early infancy; secondly, the existence of a distinct exciting cause for the attacks; thirdly, the rarity of their return far more than their slight severity; and lastly, the more the attacks approach in character to what one knows as hysteria, the less profound the insensibility in the fit, the shorter its duration afterwards, the greater are the grounds for hope that the seizures will ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... direct path. I could see that by the steady increase of the wind and the equally steady fall of the barometer. I wanted to turn and run with the wind on the port quarter until the barometer ceased falling, and then to heave to. We argued till he was reduced to hysteria, but budge he would not. The worst of it was that I could not get the rest of the pearl-buyers to back me up. Who was I, anyway, to know more about the sea and its ways than a properly ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... that, on the night, P——, the great ladies' doctor, had taken me aside and said: "My dear Dickens, you may rely upon it that if only one woman cries out when you murder the girl, there will be a contagion of hysteria all over this place." It is impossible to soften it without spoiling it, and you may suppose that I am rather anxious to discover how it goes on the 5th of January!!! We are afraid to announce it elsewhere, without knowing, ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... the healthier atmosphere of an English churchman's common sense, most unhappily a strong breath of French fanaticism suddenly set across his path, from quite another quarter. And the singular phenomenon now presented itself of an epidemic religious-hysteria commingling with, and emphasizing into lamentable extravagance, all the most dangerous features of the Methodist-Moravian doctrine about the new birth. So wonderfully is all the world connected together! * * * ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 9. September, 1880 • Various
... plain of Biere, where the Angelus of Millet still tolls upon the ear of fancy, a larger air, a higher heaven, something ancient and healthy in the face of nature, purify the mind alike from dulness and hysteria. There is no place where the young are more gladly conscious of their youth, or the old ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... done? I am well aware of your experiments with the y wave, gentlemen—and it was on the y wave that the messages came. You may be interested to know that the number of lives lost, the property damage, the business losses due to the panic, have not yet been fully determined; but it makes the hysteria following the Fantafilm hoax ...
— The Fourth Invasion • Henry Josephs
... "Public hysteria has killed a man before this," he said, when I had read it. "Suppose that woman had been mangled, or the screw of the steamer had cut her head off! How many people do you suppose would have been willing to swear that ...
— The Case of Jennie Brice • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... free, and to be set down in such a splendidly romantic country. Above all, it was good to be heart- whole and unfettered by any woman's spell—men in love were unhappy persons, harassed by a thousand worries and indecisions, utterly lacking in poise. It was a lamentable condition of hysteria with which he decided to have nothing to do. He did not care for women, anyhow. One could scarcely have any dealings with them without becoming involved in some affair that unduly harrowed one's feelings. How much better it was to know the clean spirit of adventure ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... girls were quickly climbing up the strong trellis, and as soon as they reached the tin roof they ran to the window. Here they found a young mother sitting on the floor, rocking a baby back and forth while she cried wildly with hysteria. The child was held so tightly that it, too, ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy |
