"Insomnia" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... (almost complete strangers to each other), had assumed attitudes of serious amiability round our table. A waiter approached for orders and it was then, in relation to my order for coffee, that the absolutely first thing I learned of Captain Blunt was the fact that he was a sufferer from insomnia. In his immovable way Mills began charging his pipe. I felt extremely embarrassed all at once, but became positively annoyed when I saw our Prax enter the cafe in a sort of mediaeval costume very much like what Faust wears in the third act. I have ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... subject of sleep, we should note the benefit to be derived from regularity in sleep. All Nature seems to move rhythmically and sleep is no exception. Insomnia may be treated by means of habituating one's self to get sleepy at a certain time, and there is no question that the rising process may be made easier if one forms the habit of arising at the same time ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... around the little group assembled near him, finishing his survey upon Tommy's burning countenance. "Yes—Monck," he said. "He's staying with Barnes at Khanmulla to see this affair through. If I were Mrs. Monck I should be pretty anxious about him. He says it's insomnia." ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... to the immortal Mrs. Bennet in "Pride and Prejudice": "the serious object of her life was to get her daughter married; its solace, gossiping and news." Also she had much of the same querulousness, and complained every night of nerves, and each morning of insomnia. ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... *Insomnia*, or sleeplessness, on account of its effects upon the nervous system, is to be regarded as a serious condition, and hygienic means for relieving it should be diligently sought. Having its cause in nervousness, a disturbed circulation of the brain, or some form of nervous ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... gesture she pushed these thoughts from her as though they were tangible things. No, no! she would not be beaten! Insomnia, narcotics and stimulants had unnerved her for the time, but she was strong enough to pull herself together and stay the circumstances which threatened to swamp her midway in her career. Bolstered for the moment by this resolve, she threw back her ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... what she took for her insomnia. Aunt Angela said she fed it exclusively on bromides. Edward said he gave his veronal and SCHOPENHAUER, five grains of the former or a chapter ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 18th, 1920 • Various
... 2. The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity, and revolt. 3. Literature having up to now glorified thoughtful immobility, ecstasy, and slumber, we wish to exalt the aggressive movement, the feverish insomnia, running, the perilous leap, the cuff and the blow." While I am quite willing to exalt the cuff within reason, it scarcely seems such an entirely new subject for literature as the Futurists imagine. It seems to me that even through the slumber which fills the Siege of Troy, the Song of Roland, and ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... sparingly and only at certain hours of the day, caused him to renounce the project. Since he could not have floods of water playing on him from the nozzle of a hose, (the only efficacious means of overcoming his insomnia and calming his nerves through its action on his spinal column) he was reduced to brief sprays or to mere cold baths, followed by energetic massages applied by his servant with the aid ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... trainer soon found that I was being overworked, I had some "let up" of this strenuous system. The extra work in addition to the regular afternoon practice, made my days pretty severe going and when night came I was not troubled with insomnia. ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... in his own course. After getting into a violent passion at her silliness, he said to himself that, after all, perhaps she was right. Then began the era of doubts, twinges of reflection which brought about cramps in the stomach, insomnia, feverishness and disgust with himself. He had the courage to make some retouchings, but without much heart, and with a feeling that ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... a bore," said Raffles. "The ladies have been out somewhere—trust them to spoil the show! They would get to bed before the stable folk, but insomnia is the curse of their sex and our profession. Somebody's not home yet; that will be the son of the house; but he's a beauty, who may not come home ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... from his college days with an obscure disorder of the brain, aggravated by the hardships of his Oregon Trail journey, and by ill-considered efforts to harden his bodily frame by over-exertion. His disease took many forms—insomnia, arthritis, weakness of sight, incapacity for sustained thought. His biographer Farnham says that "he never saw a perfectly well day during his entire literary career." Even when aided by secretaries and copyists, six lines a day was often the limit of his production. His own Stoic words about the ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... crosses, but it is all very mournful and depressing, especially to one fresh from Europe. This train has one advantage, there is no rattle or roar about it, as it steals like a silent ghost across the desolate steppes. As a cure for insomnia it would be invaluable, and we therefore sleep a good deal, but most of the day is passed in the restaurant. Here the military element is generally engrossed in an interminable game of Vint[1] (during ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... that I foresee in all this work that I have planned is that it may produce overstimulation. Some one was telling me that the trees on the Embankment there in London are dying of arboreal insomnia. The light of the sun keeps them awake all day, and the electric lights keep them awake all night. So the poor things are dying from lack of sleep. Macbeth had some trouble of that sort, too, as I recall it. I'm going to hold on to the vocational stimulation ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... Vanity is full of resources when it is wounded. But her attacks of sudden faintness she could not control; they represented the only genuine feature of her indisposition,—at least they, and the continued insomnia ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... belated window light. At the Garden a Wild West show with rings and side performances had long ago disgorged its crowds and quieted its pandemonium of brass bands. Len Haswell had been walking with the aimlessness of insomnia, and asking himself over and over one question: "What changed it all?" In answer he accused himself and argued the case for the woman without whom he was too lonely to go home and ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... the questions go round like the hands of a clock; the very words sounded as loud and distinct in her brain as the ticking of a clock. Her nerves were shattered, and life grew terribly distinct in the insomnia of the hot summer night. ... She threw herself over and over in her burning bed until at last her soul cried out of its lucid misery: 'Give me a passion for God or man, but give me a passion. I cannot live ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... of ours (which is just now suffering from an indigestion and needs a doctor—but having also a complication of insomnia cannot recollect his name) has been multifarious incredibly—but in ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... travelled the length of Mulberry Street had acquired a local standing and the right to be counted and rounded up by the political bosses. Now the old houses were filled with newspaper offices and given over to perpetual insomnia. Week-days and Sundays, night or day, they never slept. Police headquarters was right across the way, and kept the reporters awake. From his window the chief looked down the narrow passageway to the bottom ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... recipes are not so complicated, but more sensible and effective than those of his immediate successors. He understood the use of enemas and artificial feeding. In cases of insanity he recognized that improvement followed the use of narcotics in the treatment of the accompanying insomnia. He recognized also morbid illusions. He recommended lotions and salves for the treatment of ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... debt being, as yet, unknown quantities to young Tom Verity, it followed that insomnia, with its thousand and one attendant miseries, was an unknown quantity likewise. Upon the eve of the stiffest competitive examination those, now outlived, years of tutelage had imposed on him, he could still tumble into bed secure of lapsing into unconsciousness as ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... strong racing and betting interest But in camp in the wilderness no sporting stories were obtainable. The one novel which remained to the mess dealt with the sex problem, a subject originally profoundly uninteresting to Maitland, who had a healthy mind He read it, however, as a remedy for insomnia. It proved effective. A couple of chapters sent him to sleep every night, so the book lasted a ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... enough, but as they were sleeping with some intensity all the time we were there, and making dreadful noises in the courtyard, we could only infer that they were making up for at least a week of insomnia. ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... "I've had insomnia lately," he said, after a perceptible pause. "It plays the deuce with one's nerves. I believe I need a change. This cursed country gets into one's bones if one stays out too long. I've forgotten what England ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... moments. One is not very ready to prescribe sleeping draughts for unknown patients, but still, insomnia is a very distressing condition. In the end, I temporised with a moderate dose of bromide, deciding to call and see if more ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... in residence twenty-four hours most of the repose had vanished 'like a dutiful bream,' as Adrian expressed it. However, nothing unduly outrageous happened till last night, when Adrian had a fit of insomnia and amused himself by unscrewing and transposing all the bedroom numbers on his floor. He transferred the bathroom label to the adjoining bedroom door, which happened to be that of Frau Hoftath Schilling, and this morning from seven o'clock onwards the old lady ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... silence of the sea. I don't mean to say that our passengers dreamed aloud of Almayer, but it is indubitable that two of them at least, who could not sleep, apparently, and were trying to charm away the trouble of insomnia by a little whispered talk at that ghostly hour, were referring in some way or other to Almayer. It was really impossible on board that ship to get away definitely from Almayer; and a very small pony tied up forward and whisking its tail inside the galley, to the great embarrassment ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... seemed so inseparable, that she had never found it difficult to believe that this last misfortune would befall her. She had thought it over, and had decided that it would be unendurable to live any longer, and had borne many a terrible insomnia so that she might collect sufficient chloral to take her out of her misery; and now, as she sat thinking, she remembered that she had never, never been happy. Oh! the miserable evenings she used to ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... I say that the preaching about sex-hygiene that is going on in recent books and in the periodical press is immoral in its tendency. It is like saying, 'Don't lie, for if you do, you won't sleep at night, and insomnia is bad for ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... passer-by carries away a little of it on a threadbare coat, a worn muffler, or coarse gloves rubbing against each other. It drenches the shivering blouses, the waterproofs thrown over working dresses; it blends with all the breaths, hot with insomnia or alcohol, buries itself in the depths of empty stomachs, penetrates the shops which are just opening their doors, dark courtyards, staircases, where it stands on the balusters and walls, and fireless garrets. That is why so little of it remains out-of-doors. But in that open, ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... with almost no furniture, floors of varnished wood, and at the bed-head, in case of insomnia, one shelf of books of a particular and dippable order, such as Pepys, the Paston Letters, Burt's Letters from the Highlands, or the ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with horror, the exploits of latter-day iconoclasts, who would fain convince the credulous that what has been was not and that he who once wrought never existed. It was Mr. Head who gave to the world several years ago the charming brochure wherein Shakespeare's relations and experience with insomnia were so pleasantly set forth, and now the public is to be favored with a second essay, one of greater value to the Shakespearian student, in that it deals directly and intimately and explicitly with the earlier years of the poet's life. This essay ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... of the Holy Spirit as the Paraclete there is also a cure for insomnia. For two awful years, I suffered from insomnia. Night after night I would go to bed apparently almost dead for sleep; it seemed as though I must sleep, but I could not sleep; oh, the agony of those ...
— The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit • R. A. Torrey
... for a moment at Kendrick as if trying to collect his thoughts. Then he explained that he had been troubled with insomnia and got up to smoke a cigarette. He had been fool enough to perch up on the brass rail at the rear of the private car, thinking the fresh air might make him sleepy. The train had been hitting up a fast pace ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... the case of a person suffering from insomnia. If he does not make any effort to sleep, he will lie quietly in bed. If on the contrary he tries to force himself to sleep by his will, the more efforts he makes, the more restless ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue
... tortures of insomnia, the pains of violent rheumatism, the dreadful imprisonment of a partial paralysis. I was in and out of hospitals. I spent months on my back, entertained only by my lurid memories. My mind became starved ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... degenerates, till there had even come a whisper of insanity. Certainly there was something hardly human about the colonel's wolfish pursuit of pleasure, and his chronic resolution not to go home till morning had a touch of the hideous clarity of insomnia. He was a tall, fine animal, elderly, but with hair still startlingly yellow. He would have looked merely blonde and leonine, but his blue eyes were sunk so deep in his face that they looked black. They were a little too close together. He had very long yellow moustaches; ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... much troubled at a dream he has had, in which he apparently died through going back to school. Still complains of insomnia. Says he did not close his eyes all night. Wished to "punch the head" (to adopt his own phraseology) of his younger brother for saying, that he had heard him snoring. However, recovered towards the evening sufficiently to accompany the rest of the family to the Circus at ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, January 18, 1890 • Various
... unsatisfying slumber which sometimes follows a night of insomnia I was awakened by the laughter and shouts of children. When I looked out I saw brooding above the hollow a still gray day, in whose light the woodlands of the park were all in sombre brown, and the trout stream between its sedgy banks ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... curse was milder, but the victims raged. They swam on vasty deeps, they knocked at rusty gates, they shouldered all the weapons of black Insomnia's armoury and became her soldiery, doing her will upon themselves. Of her originally sprang the inspired teaching of the doom of men to excruciation in endlessness. She is the fountain of the infinite ocean whereon the exceedingly sensitive soul is tumbled ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and comradeship which always marked Frohman's close personal relations were not lacking in those nights when the life of the valiant little man hung by a thread. When all other means of inducing sleep failed, Potter found a sure cure for insomnia. ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... autumn of 1816 she returned to Paris, and spent a number of months very happily in her old style—in the society of the salon. Though devoured by insomnia, enervated by the use of opium, and besieged by fear of death, she accepted all invitations, and kept open house herself, receiving in the morning, at dinner, and in the evening; and though at night she paced the floor for hours or tossed about on her bed until morning, she was ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... and in Barlinney I had been playing a part. When the occasion demanded I could be as cool as I was with Captain Robinson. But that was a strain and it took it out of me. During these following days I was nervous; I had insomnia; I paced my cell at night. The feeling of a jail ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... my telegram would put some insomnia in Ninety-sixth Street when the great work closed for the night at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, and the protector of the household returned to rest those tired wheels that had been whirring fast in his head since 2 P. M., short-belted to the ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... as it often is every day, the quality of the blood will suffer seriously, and many individuals are the victims of neuralgic pains, headaches, nervousness, insomnia, anemia, and general broken health as a direct consequence of ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... range of the wordy shrapnel, the literary scrimmage is amusing. "Gulliver's Travels" made many a heart ache, but it only gladdens ours. Pope's "Dunciad" sent shivers of fear down the spine of all artistic England, but we read it for the rhyme, and insomnia. Byron's "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" gave back to the critics what they had given out—to their great surprise and indignation, and our amusement. Keats died from the stab of a pen, they say, and whether 't was true or not we know that now a suit of Cheviot is sufficient ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... sleeping coach for Washington. Just before retiring for the night my mind, somehow or other, reverted to an editorial article recently published in the New York Times, half serious, half earnest, concerning the latest theory of an English physician as to the prepotent cause of insomnia and nervous disorders generally. It may be remembered that to the abandonment of the night cap of our grandfathers (the cotton or flannel article, not the alcoholic) was attributed the modern tendency of sleeplessness ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... great pain and anxiety now opened for him. But his neurasthenia increased; he suffered from insomnia, obscure cerebral discomfort, stammering, chronic conjunctivitis, inability to concentrate his attention, and dejection. Meanwhile his homosexual emotions strengthened, and assumed a more sensual character. He abstained from indulging them, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... sleep on the side, and for some of them this position is awkward at first. Frequently the pressure makes it necessary to get up several times during the night to empty the bladder. In a few cases also the compression of the chest interferes somewhat with breathing. When insomnia is due to the pressure of the womb against neighboring parts of the body, it can be partially counteracted by getting into a comfortable position; but it is also necessary to have the surroundings as conducive ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... sluggish metabolism, because it is felt that the shorter ultra-violet rays may be harmful. These rays are said to increase the pulse, respiration, temperature, and blood-pressure and may even start hemorrhages and in excessive amounts cause headache, palpitation, insomnia, and anemia. These same authorities condemn sun-baths to the naked body of the tuberculous, claiming that any cures effected are consummated despite the injury done by the energy of short wave-length. There is no doubt that these rays are beneficial in local lesions, but ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... late that night, his ears tingling with the adulation of the multitude, and in his excited insomnia understanding for the first time in his life the words: "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." He realized more fully now that his shipmaster days had given him a taste for command, and that he had come into his ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... "we didn't hear a sound. Mr. Curtis, who has insomnia the worst way, poor devil, heard them and sent some one out to see what all the racket was about. It wasn't till half an hour or so ago that De Soto and I were routed out of our peaceful nests and ordered,—virtually ordered, mind you,—to get up and guard the house. Mr. Curtis was ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... a bit awkward," she confessed thoughtfully. "But can't you say that you have insomnia, and can't sleep unless you are above ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... ignoratio elenchi in his teeth, and, at once, you have him annihilated. If he dares to reply, you can tell him from Lucan (here it is) that speeches are mere anemonae verborum, anemone words. The anemone, with great brilliancy, has no smell. Or, if he begins to bluster, you may be down upon him with insomnia Jovis, reveries of Jupiter—a phrase which Silius Italicus (see here!) applies to thoughts pompous and inflated. This will be sure and cut him to the heart. He can do nothing but roll over and die. Will you ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... would bite her ears and pull at her tail, bracing himself back on all four of his absurd little feet, and sometimes tumbling over in his excitement; and he rolled over her and growled and worried her until she must have been almost on the verge of insomnia! Yet she never boxed his ears once, ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 20, March 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... state of society such as that which exists in the north, such a thing as a nightwatch is undreamed of. Insomnia is likewise unknown there. At eleven o'clock every soul in Fort Enterprise was ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... next day, nor the next. "Overdue" lay untouched upon the table, and each day the heap of returned manuscripts under the table grew larger. For the first time Martin's glorious sleep was interrupted by insomnia, and he tossed through long, restless nights. Three times he called at the Morse home, but was turned away by the servant who answered the bell. Brissenden lay sick in his hotel, too feeble to stir out, and, though Martin was with him often, he did ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... Charles as completely prostrated by his disaster. This was only half true. His efforts to retrieve himself were immediate but, physically, he certainly showed the effects of this campaign. He was attacked by a low fever, his stomach rejected food, insomnia afflicted his nights, and dropsical swellings appeared on his legs. This condition was attributed to his fatigues and exposure in a hard climate, and to his habit of drinking warm barley-water in the morning. He was urged to use a soft feather-bed instead of his ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... that most cures are brought about simply by dieting. This, reminds me of the mistakes perpetrated on a friend of mine who called in Dr. Grave-Powders, one of the old-school physicians, to be treated for insomnia and dyspepsia. This old numskull restricted his diet, gave him huge doses of medicine, and decided most learnedly that he was daily growing worse. Concluding that he had but a short time to live, my friend threw away the nauseating medicines, ate whatever he had a natural desire for, and was soon ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... set, and there were lines in his face which time might have drawn twenty or thirty years later. His lips made a straight line, and his eyes, although he had hardly slept three hours a night for as many nights, had a look in them that was not to be accounted for by ordinary insomnia. ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... insomnia over this affair, Mr. Folsom. Let's settle it one way or the other, for ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... my experience was a dream. As a matter of fact, I was never more vividly awake in my life. I was able to argue about it even as I looked at it, and to tell myself that it was a subjective impression—a chimera of the nerves—begotten by worry and insomnia. But why this particular shape? And who is the woman, and what is the dreadful emotion which I read in those wonderful brown eyes? They come between me and my work. For the first time I have done less than the ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... months in the Admiral. His trouble is said to be with his liver. There is no question the strain upon him has been more wearing than the public have realized. Last summer his anxieties afflicted him with insomnia at night, and he has not for a day since he left Hongkong in April been free from burdens of harrassing care. His last words on the deck of the China to the Author of this Book were that the President had invited him to go home and counsel with him, but he had written the substance of ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... mental and moral stupor. What does it profit a man to be content with his lot, or to experience the rapture of the saints, if he has lost his soul? The saving of a soul is a much more serious matter than the cessation of worry or the curing of insomnia, or even than the acquiring of a habit of delirious joy. Tranquillity and happiness are, it is true, the legitimate fruits of religion, but only provided they be infused with goodness and truth. If religion is to be a spiritual tonic, and not merely a physical tonic, it must be based on ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... boy." said Uncle Chris affably. "I will leave you to turn the whole thing over in your mind. Act entirely as you think best. How is your insomnia, by the way? Did you try Nervino? Capital! There's nothing like it. It did wonders for me! ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... is a heightened temperature, one or two degrees above the normal, and a feeling of heat. The individual has a high warm color, does not sleep well, becomes or remains thin no matter how much he or she eats, is abnormally susceptible sexually, may suffer from a definite insomnia, is emotional, and perspires freely. Alert, neurotic or high-strung, magnetic, and imaginative are some of the descriptive adjectives applicable. The eyes are bright and prominent, large and beautiful, when they have not reached the stage entitled "pop-eyed." Or ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... Suspension Bridge, when he heaved a deep sigh, and remarked, "In the midst of life we are in Brooklyn." Another favourite anecdote in New York is that of the Philadelphian who went to a doctor and complained of insomnia. The doctor gave him a great deal of sage advice as to diet, exercise, and so forth, concluding, "If after that you haven't better nights, let me see you again." "But you mistake, doctor," the patient replied; "I sleep all right at ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... feels ill, complains of headache and pains in the limbs, the temperature rises to 104 or even to 106 F., and assumes a pyaemic type. The pulse becomes rapid and weak. The tongue is dry and brown. There is profuse sweating, albuminuria, and often insomnia with delirium. Death may take place within a week, but more frequently occurs during the second ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... Christmas. No one at the time suspected there was anything serious the matter with her, although her health of late had been far from good. I happened to be staying in the house just then, and found, that for some reason or other, I could not sleep. I do not often suffer from insomnia, so that the occurrence struck me as somewhat extraordinary. My bedroom opened on to a large, dark landing. In one corner of it stood a very old grandfather's clock, the ticking of which I could distinctly hear when the house was quiet. ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... uneasy. Since the day before he had thought of Therese. He had all night dreamed and yearned over her image. He saw her again, delightful, but in another manner, and even more desirable than he had imagined in his insomnia; less visionary, of a more vivid piquancy, and also of a mind more mysteriously impenetrable. She was sad; she seemed cold and indifferent. He said to himself that he was nothing to her; that he was becoming importunate and ridiculous. This irritated him. ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... frequent occurrence, and so detrimental to the general health, that it appears to me to merit special consideration. This holds good especially in this connection, because, even where electric baths fail to influence the disease giving rise to the insomnia, they almost invariably remove this, irrespective of its cause. Even where, the disease itself remaining uncured, the insomnia must return sooner or later, the sleep is very much improved while the baths are being had recourse to. We must of ...
— The Electric Bath • George M. Schweig
... were his best friends have become his bitterest enemies; they wag their venomous tongues at banquets, in conversation, in the confessional, in sermons, in lectures, at court, in vehicles and ships. The minor enemies, like troublesome vermin, drive him to weariness of life, or to death by insomnia. He compares his tortures to the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, pierced by arrows. But his is worse, for there is no end to it. For years he has daily been dying a thousand deaths and that alone; for his friends, if such there are, are deterred ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... limited intelligence that nothing remotely resembling an attempt to smuggle anything ashore had ever been made; still, it would be awkward in the extreme if one or more of them should happen to be troubled with insomnia on that particular night, and elect to pass the sleepless hours on deck: but Don Hermoso might be trusted to attend to that matter when he should arrive on board about four o'clock, or a little after, as he did, accompanied by Senora Montijo and Dona Isolda. The difficulty was explained ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... the grey flood which was now running across the silver plain and trying at them treacherously through the creeks that lay loverlike beside them. Then she turned approvingly to the litter which betokened that this was a bedroom visited by insomnia more often than by sleep: the half-dozen boxes of different sorts of cigarettes, the plate of apples and figs, the pile of books, the portfolio of prints. It had been dreadful, that night at the hotel, with nothing to read. She was very glad to ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... went, popping her head in at one to ask if there was anything she could do for this girl, listening at the next door for sounds of insomnia, creeping stealthily on through the corridors to learn if any girl who ought to be en route for Sleepy Town had ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... to be in it? Wot does your dirty little town mean by comin' and stickin' itself in the road to anywhere?"—all are closely scanned and noted, as they mount or descend Strood Hill in perennial procession. Dickens was himself a sturdy and inveterate pedestrian. When he suffered from insomnia he would think nothing of rising in the middle of the night and taking a thirty miles' ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... limned to the last on her fading consciousness. But this mother was not the Daisy of the plains nor of the daguerreotype. They had been before Saxon's time. This that she saw nightly was an older mother, broken with insomnia and brave with sorrow, who crept, always crept, a pale, frail creature, gentle and unfaltering, dying from lack of sleep, living by will, and by will refraining from going mad, who, nevertheless, could not will sleep, and whom not even the whole tribe of doctors could make sleep. Crept—always ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... of which we know but little, to get at Eltham are frustrated, presumably by his curious 'defenses.' An attempt in a train fails owing to Miss Eltham's distaste for refreshment-room coffee. An attempt here fails owing to her insomnia. ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... OF THIS TENDENCY: This period of recurrence is accompanied by almost total loss of the power-of-will, a marked weakening in the ability to concentrate, and if it does not result in insomnia (inability to sleep) puts the mind in such a state as to make sleep of little value in building up the body, replacing worn-out tissue ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... Kotze undertook several journeys to the Free State and Cape Colony, ostensibly to rid himself of insomnia, but in reality, as results proved, in order to employ a judge for this trial. His choice eventually fell upon Mr. Gregorowski, formerly a judge in the Free State, and at that time State-Attorney ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... patent and so inevitable is the essential unity of the Anglo-Saxon world that such an essay as this ought really to be superfluous; but its practical justification is found in the silly clamour of those Anglophobes who are unfortunately permitted to reside within our borders. "Insomnia," by Winifred Virginia Jordan, is a remarkable piece of verse whose dark turns of fancy are almost worthy of a Poe. The grotesque tropes, the cleverly distorted images, the bizarre atmosphere, and ingeniously sinister repetitions all unite to produce one of the season's most notable ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... effect of which is identical to that of external suggestions. An idea, a sentiment, dominates the mind, overcomes all its antagonists and produces a strong suggestive effect on the whole nervous system in the direction which it symbolizes. The idea of being unable to sleep often produces insomnia; the idea of sexual impotence may at once inhibit erection and render coitus impossible. The idea of yawning makes one yawn; that of coitus provokes erections; the idea of shame causes blushing; that of fear blanching; ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... which I lived alone with a faithful coloured servant by the name of Sawyer, was not a house to which I could think of bringing a bride, much less so dainty a one as Edith Bartlett. Being a sufferer from insomnia, I had caused a secret sleeping chamber to be built of stone beneath the foundation, and when even the silence of this retreat failed to bring slumber, I sometimes called in a professional mesmeriser to put me into ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... smoky lamp, and smutted first the bedquilt, then the hearth-rug, then the window-seat, and then at last the great, stormy, faraway outside world. But sleep did not come. Oh, no! Nothing new came at all except that particularly wretched, itching type of insomnia which seems to rip away from one's body the whole kind, protecting skin and expose all the raw, ticklish fretwork of nerves to the mercy of a gritty blanket or a wrinkled sheet. Pain came too, in its most brutally high night-tide; and sweat, like the smother ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... going to bomb them out! The twenty-second was a negro. The twenty-third—! He was a tall, youngish man, narrow-shouldered, rather commonplace-looking, with beautiful blue eyes, and a timid, winning, deprecatory manner. I told him I was suffering from insomnia. After raking over my grandfathers again and bringing the family history down by stages to the very moment I was shown into his office he said he should have to ask me to undergo a thorough physical—! But I was tired of being slapped and punched and breathed on ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne
... and go to bed, lying awake until long after all the rest of the world slumbered. This lying awake soon became a habit. The slightest sound broke his sleep—the gnawing of a mouse behind the mopboard, or a change in the wind; and then insomnia seized upon him. He lay there listening to the summer breeze among the elms, or to the autumn winds that, sweeping up from the sea, teased his ear with muffled accents of wrecked ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... she's healthy and strong and all that," he explained, "but she was born with insomnia. She never could sleep. She couldn't sleep as a little baby even. But it's never hurt her any, because she's got a will, and won't let it get on her nerves. She's just about as tense as they make them, yet, instead of going wild when she can't sleep, she just ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... ward it off. Like death, it comes to high and low alike. One woman, whose name became famous with her first concert, told me that she spent the first year over here in tears. Nothing that friends can do, no amount of kindness or hospitality avails as a preventive. You can take bromides and cure insomnia. You can take chloroform, and enough of it will prevent seasickness, but nothing avails for Heimweh. And like pride, "let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." I have been in the midst of an animated, recital ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... for coffee, Maryan. Some time ago I drank much coffee, but I saw that it injured my nerves and deprived me of sleep. It is very disagreeable not to sleep, and better to give up a favorite luxury than suffer from insomnia." ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... ought to have passed a wakeful night she had overslept more than an hour. Indeed, she had had the first sound and prolonged sleep that had come to her since the honeymoon began; for until then she had slept alone all her life and the new order had almost given her chronic insomnia. She rang for her maid and began to dress. The maid did not come. She rang again and again; apparently the bell was broken. She finished dressing and went out into the huge, grandly and gaudily furnished salon. Harding ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... father and I were to each other!" she cried out in a low, passionate voice. "It seemed as though everything that meant anything had gone out of my life. I became worn out, nervous; and though the days were bad enough, the nights were a source of dread. I began to suffer from insomnia—I could not sleep. This was even before my supposed uncle came. I used to read for hours and hours in my room after I had gone to bed. But"—she flung out her hand with an impatient gesture—"there is no need to ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... get over was insomnia. I could never sleep at the right time and I was always dead tired on duty. Once I worked forty-three hours at a stretch and after that I had to do a guard in our trench. I felt sleepy all of a sudden. I pinched myself and banged the butt of my rifle on my toes, but everything seemed to ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... duty was to make our beds. Mattress and pillow were stuffed stiff with what felt like wood chips, and was probably straw and corn-husks; the pillow was cylindrical; the mattress was hillocked and hollowed by the uneasy struggles with insomnia of countless former users. There was a campstool whose luxuries we might share. We had, each, a prison toothbrush, and a comb. In the ceiling of the cell, beyond reach of an outstretched arm, was an electric bulb which would be darkened at ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... to the right arm was a preventive as well as a cure for epilepsy. There is almost no end to such instances. The list of charms and incantations is quite as curious. There are forms of words which will cure insomnia and indeed, if one may trust current observation, forms of words not primarily so intended may ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... into the bedroom and opened his portmanteau. From the pocket of the partition he took a little bottle of chloral hydrate, a drug which he was in the habit of using when insomnia pressed heavily upon him, as it periodically did. The chloral was in five-grain tabloids. His usual dose was three tabloids or fifteen grains. He now counted twenty tabloids into a tumbler, which he half filled ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... then, and that is possible, I may take the Cecelia, and make the Caribbean trip. It's a little longer, but on my return I would join Dorothy and Mrs. Trevor, crossing directly from Bermuda to Florida. It's absurd, isn't it, to play the invalid! But insomnia is really getting its hold on me. A good sleep would be a novelty just now, and bromides depress me, so—there you are! I suppose I must take the doctor's advice and my maid, and fly for my ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... over we adjourned to the Colonel's billet for afternoon tea and music. The Colonel was exceedingly fond of his gramophone, and, being troubled somewhat with insomnia, would sometimes rise in the middle of the night and put on a few of his favorite records, much to the annoyance of the rest of the staff billeted in the same house. Knowing this, one did not think it so strange as it might otherwise have seemed, that, during the course of a move of ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... there to the ranch-house. I find H. Ogden, Esquire, lying asleep on his little cot bed. I guess he had been overcome by anti-insomnia or diswakefulness or some of the diseases peculiar to the sheep business. His mouth and vest were open, and he breathed like a second-hand bicycle pump. I looked at him and gave vent to just a few musings. 'Imperial Caesar,' says ...
— Options • O. Henry
... scouts, was harassed nearly to insomnia over the change in his friend. At the bottom of the mystery there must be inspiration for a glowing line, and with pen ready poised over the violet fluid of romance, it was disheartening to have the solution elude him. ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... with age, having served at so great a distance; I also deplore my stupidity, and am extremely apprehensive of my inability in performing the functions devolving upon me. Since the sixth or seventh moon of the year before last I have suffered from insomnia. A year ago my spirits became daily more abattu. In the second month of last year I suddenly experienced phlegm rising in my mouth, and vomited fresh red blood, without being able to stop it, so that in a trice a basin would get quite full. I consider ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... successive nights, however, all four girls slept soundly until the seven-o'clock bell rang. They were generally tired, and none of them suffered from insomnia. On the third night Betty heard the clock strike two, and, going into ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... Dedication of the Church of the Covenant. Growing Insomnia. Resolves to try the Water-cure. Its beneficial Effects. Summer at Newburgh. Reminiscences of an Excursion to Palz Point. Death of her Husband's Mother. Funeral of her ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... in those heroic days when he substituted himself for the story-book knight who stood beneath the battlements and defied the covetous ogre. His thoughts, however, did not contemplate the Princess fair in a state of wretched insomnia, with himself as the ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... forty the devil entered into Owen. It came in the form of insomnia. Loss of sleep will make any man irritable and unreasonable, but hardly dishonest. With the sleeplessness, however, came the temptation to take drugs. Owen shifted from one narcotic to another, finally, ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... not desire the perpetual possession of that desolate locality; in fact, the mere vision of it arising before his mind in the still watches of the night had the power to exasperate him into hours of hot and agitated insomnia. ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... was in bed, the servant brought me a night-lamp with a dial, and I remained alone. Except in France I have never had such a good bed as I had that night. It would have cured the most chronic insomnia, but I was not labouring under such a disease, and I slept for ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... away, chattering down the road; it forms again, from another quarter, and again dissolves. Meaningless shouts and cries and songs resound from the hidden city. In the gypsy camp beside us insomnia reigns. A little forge is clinking and clanking. Donkeys raise their antiphonal lament. Dogs salute the stars in chorus. First a leader, far away, lifts a wailing, howling, shrieking note; then the mysterious unrest that torments ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... people usually think of when they think "allergic reaction." Food allergies can cause many kinds of symptoms, from sinusitis to psychosis, from asthma to arthritis, from hyperactivity to depression, insomnia to narcolepsy—and commonly the symptoms don't manifest immediately after eating. Frequently, allergic reactions are so low grade as to be unnoticeable and may not produce an observable condition until many years of their grinding down the vital force has passed. When the ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... with thoughtful purpose. One is vigilant against danger or harm; he may be alert or watchful for good as well as against evil; he is wary in view of suspected stratagem, trickery, or treachery. A person may be wakeful because of some merely physical excitement or excitability, as through insomnia; yet he may be utterly careless and negligent in his wakefulness, the reverse of watchful; a person who is truly watchful must keep himself wakeful while on watch, in which case wakeful has something of mental quality. Watchful, from the Saxon, and vigilant, from the ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... remembered what a fine fellow Lawson had been, what good times we had had together. I remembered especially that evening when we had found this valley and given rein to our fancies. What horrid alchemy in the place had turned a gentleman into a brute? I thought of drink and drugs and madness and insomnia, but I could fit none of them into my conception of my friend. I did not consciously rescind my resolve to depart, but I had a notion that I would not act ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... suffer largely from despondency, insomnia, and a feeling of martyrdom. Like the Positive type of the same Mount, they are also much inclined towards rheumatism and disorders brought on through ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... was in fact causing her sleepless nights. Mr. Rose, who was suffering from the same form of insomnia, had taken her into his confidence, and ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... repeat to themselves and to others many times a day. At night they ask themselves why they can not sleep. They do it so often that it becomes a powerful negative suggestion frequently strong enough to prevent their going to sleep. It is an obsession. Real insomnia exists only in the mind of the sufferer. Every physician, sooner or later, has experience with people who say that they can not sleep. The doctors who give such patients sleeping powders or potions make a grave mistake. These drugs ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... from insomnia will find himself puzzling at night over questions which have no particular concern for him at other times. And one seems to be more wide awake, during those moments, than by day. Yet the promptings of the brain, which ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... endowment amounted to something like the equivalent of one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. A novel feature was a hall where musicians played day and night, and another where story-tellers were employed, so that persons troubled with insomnia were amused and melancholiacs cheered. Those of a religious turn of mind could listen to readings of the Koran, conducted continuously by a staff of some fifty chaplains. Each patient on leaving the hospital received some gold pieces, that he need not ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... with his nerves went to pieces, he suffered from insomnia and did his work badly. He consulted a doctor. The prescription cost him three crowns; and such a prescription! He was to stop working; he had worked too hard, his brain was overtaxed. To stop work would mean starvation for all of them, and ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... Brown of Ossawatomie!" There's freedom in the phrase! St. John with prohibition and old Peffer with his craze! And now the world is waiting for the fire-works and the sights When Trusts will get insomnia and lie awake of nights; For she will take the bakery and capture every bun, When Kansas gets her dander up ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... wrongdoing. Knowing that I was very fond of music, my mother persuaded me to take her on several occasions to the opera and the theatre. She with more difficulty persuaded me to consult a medical man upon the subject of my insomnia; and at last I agreed, though very reluctantly, to consult Dr. Mivart, late of Raxton, who was now living in London. Mivart attributed my ailment (as I, of course, knew he would) to hypochondria, and I saw that he was fully aware of ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... would say, if their opinion was asked for, that holding up a train would be a hard job. Well, it isn't; it's easy. I have contributed some to the uneasiness of railroads and the insomnia of express companies, and the most trouble I ever had about a hold-up was in being swindled by unscrupulous people while spending the money I got. The danger wasn't anything to speak of, and we didn't ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... stones. I shall be telling you nothing new when I say that Aristotle, Pliny, all the sages of antiquity, attributed medical and divine virtues to them. According to the pagans, agate and carnelian stimulate, topaz consoles, jasper cures languor, hyacinth drives away insomnia, turquoise prevents falls or lightens the shock, amethyst ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... finds in very many insane patients marked physical signs. There are pains, insensitive areas, hypersensitive areas, changes in the pupils of the eyes, unrestrained reflex action, and partial loss of muscular control, as shown in talking, walking, and writing. Constipation and insomnia are very early symptoms of disease in a very large proportion of ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... sharp distinction is noticed between the religious and the non-religious healers, viz., the religious healer sees no limit to his healing power, and affirms that cancer and Bright's disease are as easily cured, in theory at least, as neuralgia or insomnia; the non-religious healer, sometimes designated as the "scientific healer," on the contrary, recognizes that there are some diseases which are more easily cured than others, and that of those others some are practically incurable ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... assiduity; assiduousness &c adj.; sedulity; laboriousness; drudgery &c (labor) 686; painstaking, diligence; perseverance &c 604.1; indefatigation^; habits of business. vigilance &c 459; wakefulness; sleeplessness, restlessness; insomnia; pervigilium^, insomnium^; racketing. movement, bustle, stir, fuss, ado, bother, pottering, fidget, fidgetiness; flurry &c (haste) 684. officiousness; dabbling, meddling; interference, interposition, intermeddling; tampering with, intrigue. press of business, no sinecure, plenty to do, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... edited, ignorantly edited, from the beginning. The selection of the beds is given to some hearty, strong-backed, self-made man, when it ought to be given to a frail woman accustomed from girlhood to backaches and insomnia. Nothing is so rare, on either side of the ocean, as a perfect bed; nothing is so difficult to make. Some of the hotels on both sides provide it, but no ship ever does or ever did. In Noah's Ark the beds were simply scandalous. Noah set the fashion, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... heart shining through its porcelain shade, gave her a mystic and familiar companionship. Felicie opened her eyes and at a glance drank in the white milky glimmer which brought her peace of mind. Then, closing them once more, she relapsed into the tumultuous weariness of insomnia. Now and again a few words of her part recurred to her memory, words to which she attached no meaning, yet which obsessed her: "Our days are what we make them." And her mind wearied itself by turning over and over some four or ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... that success came to him, the malady that never afterwards left him came also, and, seated motionless at his side, gazed at him with its threatening countenance. He suffered from terrible headaches, followed by nights of insomnia. He had nervous attacks, which he soothed with narcotics and anesthetics, which he used freely. His sight, which had troubled him at intervals, became affected, and a celebrated oculist spoke of abnormality, ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... surprised him one night while he was watering with his tears the ink he was putting to so sorry a use. She had been aware that he sat up late at night—his sleeplessness was not the insomnia of genius—for she had seen the glare of light from his little lamp burning later than the usual bedtime of the chateau, in one of the turret ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... pertaining to the tilling of the land. He groped his way along guided by the light that came in through the chinks in the closed windows. His mother was sleeping in a room close by; he could hear her breathe—the labored respiration of a deep sleep that spelled recovery from the insomnia of the days of his love trysts. He could still feel the criminal shudder that rippled through him at a slight rattle of the keys, which had been left with the confidence of unlimited authority in ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... avoid writing a word; but inevitably there came a relapse and a more desperate debauch in literature. Try as he might he could not avoid the temptation. An incident, a trifle out of the ordinary in his commonplace life, a sudden thrill at the reading of another man's story, a night of insomnia, and resolution was in tatters, and shortly thereafter Calmar Bye's pencil would be coursing with redoubled vigor over a sheet of ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... exhibited themselves in all degrees of ugliness Fred's verses were not good, but they were full of dejection Hang out the bush, but keep no tavern A familiarity which, had he known it, was not flattering His sleeplessness was not the insomnia of genius Importance in this world are as easily swept away as the sand Natural longing, that we all have, to know the worst Notion of her husband's having an opinion of his own Pride supplies some sufferers with necessary courage Seemed to enjoy themselves, or made believe they did ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Immortals of the French Academy • David Widger
... Shell-shock, insomnia, nervous depression, lumbago, suicidal mania, family life—anything." Neville's attention was straying to Grandmama, who was coming slowly towards them down the path, leaning on her stick, so she did not see Mrs. ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... soul of Constantius, and smitten his vanity to the quick. He writhed with jealousy, and grew thin and sleepless and sick. At the same time he sustained defeat after defeat in his own campaign in Asia against the Persians. Musing, during nights of insomnia, the emperor blamed himself ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... For, unlike mere insomnia, lying awake at night in the woods is pleasant. The eager, nervous straining for sleep gives way to a delicious indifference. You do not care. Your mind is cradled in an exquisite poppy-suspension of judgment and of thought. Impressions ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... sleep. The faithful St. Michael's kept him well aware of this fact. He lit a candle and tried to read, smoked a cigarette and then, blowing the candle out, tried to sleep. But insomnia had him fairly in her grip; to-night there was no escape from her and he lay whilst the moon, creeping through the sky, cast her light on ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... like other people (only more purely), and if we consume the midnight oil, use perforce another system of illumination also—we burn the candle at both ends. A great novelist who adopted this baneful practice and indirectly lost his life by it (through insomnia) notes what is very curious, that notwithstanding his mind was so occupied, when awake, with the creatures of his imagination, he never dreamt of them; which I think is also the general experience. But he does not tell us for how many ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... thanks for the testimonial; many thanks for your blind, wondering letter; many wishes, lastly, for your swift recovery. Insomnia is the opposite pole from my complaint; which brings with it a nervous lethargy, an unkind, unwholesome, and ungentle somnolence, fruitful in heavy heads and heavy eyes at morning. You cannot sleep; well, I can best explain my state thus: I cannot wake. Sleep, like the lees of a posset, lingers ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the look equally steadily.] Suppose I don't: I should still be a fool to question it. The child who doubts about Santa Claus has insomnia. The child who believes ...
— Magic - A Fantastic Comedy • G.K. Chesterton
... porter was cooking up my attack of insomnia I went out in the smoking-room to drown my sorrow, but I found such a bunch of sorrow killers out there ahead of me that I had to hold the comb and brush in my lap and sit up on the towel rack while I ...
— Skiddoo! • Hugh McHugh
... out of the zareba of life, who lay violent hands upon themselves, do so with a complete reasoning, which in itself is proof of their insanity. It may be domestic tragedy, or ill-health, or crime, or broken faith, or shame, or insomnia, or betrayed trust— whatever it is, many a one who suffers from such things, tries to end it all with that deliberation, that strategy, and that cunning which ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... friendship with Edward Irving (q.v.), and met Margaret Gordon, afterwards Lady Bannerman, believed by some to be the prototype of Blumine in Sartor. Returning in 1819 to Edin. he for a time studied law and took pupils; but his health was bad, he suffered from insomnia and dyspepsia, and he tired of law. He was also sorely bestead by mental and spiritual conflicts, which came to a crisis in Leith Walk in June 1821 in a sudden uprising of defiance to the devil and all his works, upon which the clouds lifted. For the next two years, 1822-24, he acted as tutor ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin |
