"Irritability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... himself, and always on the verge of a complete breakdown of mind and body. In 1851 he had an effusion of water on the left knee, which stopped his outdoor exercise, on which he had always largely depended. All the irritability of the system then centered in the head, resulting in intense pain and in a restless and devouring activity of thought. He himself says: "The whirl, the confusion, and strange, undefined tortures attending this condition are only to be conceived ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... popular Essay on the Concealed Causes of Nervous Debility, Local and General Weakness, Indigestion, Lowness of Spirits, Mental Irritability, and Insanity; with Practical Observations on their Treatment and Cure. By SAMUEL LA'MERT, Consulting Surgeon, 9 Bedford street, Bedford square, London; Matriculated Member of the University of Edinburgh; Honorary Member of the London Hospital Medical Society; Licentiate ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... medical terms," said the Minister for Health. "The condition begins with a period of great irritability or depression. The depression is so great that suicide is not infrequent. If that doesn't happen, there's a period of suspiciousness and secretiveness—strongly suggestive of paranoia. Then there's a craving for—unusual ...
— The Hate Disease • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... from any perverse love of sophistry, that the word sensibility has been used in these instances instead of irritability, which seems better to characterize the temper of a Dionysius, or a Tiberius; but, in fact, irritability, in common language, merely denotes an excessive or ill governed degree of sensibility. The point of excess must be marked: sympathy must be regulated by education, and consequently the methods of directing sensibility to useful and amiable purposes, must be anxiously studied by ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... Navy was spent upon the Malabar Coast, where the disease is endemic. There can be do doubt that it has been latent in his system ever since, and that the irritability of temper and indecision of character, of which his family have so often had to complain, were really among ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... eternal punishment. It is rather an amusing phenomenon that those who have no visible basis for pride are likely to be the most consumed with it. The pride of Diogenes was visible through the holes in his carpet; the pride of liberalism is visible in its irritability whenever the subject of sin, especially original sin, is mentioned. Yet the very complacency of liberalism about the perfection of man, is but another evidence (if we needed another) of his inherent sinfulness, ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... with this pure air and in contemplation of this peaceful and silent night: thus she awoke next day calmer and more resigned. Unfortunately, the sight of Lady Lochleven, who presented herself at breakfast-time, to fulfil her duties as taster, brought back her irritability. Perhaps, however, things would have gone on smoothly if Lady Lochleven, instead of remaining standing by the sideboard, had withdrawn after having tasted the various dishes of the courses; but this insisting on remaining throughout the ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Elsie, when she heard, with her fine sense quickened by the irritability of sickness, a light footfall on the stair, with a cadence unlike that of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... like so dreadful as if she bored him. Then indeed her vanity would have been sadly ruffled. For now that Rose was not able to say her prayers she was being assailed by every sort of weakness: vanity, sensitiveness, irritability, pugnacity —strange, unfamiliar devils to have coming crowding on one and taking possession of one's swept and empty heart. She had never been vain or irritable or pugnacious in her life before. Could it be that San Salvatore was capable of opposite ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... himself with impunity to a tropical sun. If preferred coffee should always be taken with cream or milk and sugar, because it is then less irritating to the stomach. One of the symptoms of native fever is said to be nervous irritability of the stomach; hence, all exciting causes to irritation of that part should be avoided as much as possible. Such fruits as best agree with each individual should be most indulged in; indeed, all others ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... occasionally exhibited in a stroll for exercise up and down the aisle. Yet no one would call her a beauty. Her eyes were of a somewhat fishy and uncertain blue; the lids were tinged with an unornamental pink that told of irritation of the adjacent interior surface and of possible irritability of temper. Her complexion was of that mottled type which is so sore a trial to its possessor and yet so inestimable a comfort to social rivals; but her features were handsome, her teeth fine, her dress, bearing, and demeanor ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... the bird was still alive when London was reached, though the cook, who from his connection with the cabin had suddenly reached a position of unusual importance, reported great loss of strength and irritability of temper. It was still alive, but failing fast on the day they were to put to sea again; and the fo'c'sle, in preparation for the worst, stowed their pet away in the paint-locker, ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... penetrating rostellum. I can, if you like, lend you these Reviews; but they must be returned. R. Brown, I remember, says pollen-tubes separate from grains before the lower ends of tubes reach ovules. I saw, and was interested by, abstract of your Drosera paper (637/2. A short note on the irritability of Drosera in the "Trans. Bot. Soc. Edin." Volume VII.); we have been at very much the ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... fence; and though I have carefully abstained from using my foot since I did so, it is still so weak that I am afraid of standing upon it much, and must consequently abide the results (invariable with me) of want of exercise, headache, sideache, and nervous depression and irritability. When I get to Philadelphia, if I am no better, I will hire a horse for a little while, and ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... shadows she had thrown around her had darkened the atmosphere of her dwelling, and were now reflected back upon her heart, enshrouding it in deeper gloom. The want of harmony among her children increased her mental disturbance, obscured her perceptions, and added to her state of irritability. She could not speak calmly to them, nor wisely endeavour to restore the harmony which had been lost. Her words, therefore, while, by their authoritative force, they subdued the storm, left the sky black with clouds that poured down another and ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... in these ambiguous circumstances, is everything that could be desired. My original feeling of irritability has passed away. I should have supposed it to be what Pallas calls "fatigue," a confusion or discord of the nerve-centres, which she tells me is incident to mortality. What Pallas can possibly know about it is more than I can guess, especially, as there were not infrequent occasions on Olympus ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... harmless; but what is moderate and what is not, must be determined in each individual case, according to the habits and constitution of the subjects. If it cures asthma, it may destroy digestion; if it soothes the nerves, it may, in excess, produce a chronic irritability. ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... readiness of man at all times to astonish on the one hand, and to court the marvelous on the other, is abundantly proved by present and past experience. That the nervous system may be worked upon by it to such a degree that a state either of extreme irritability, or of sleep and coma, may be induced, in the latter case paralyzing the senses so as to become deadened to pain, is certain; and a highly sensitive temperament may exhibit phenomena beyond the reach of explanation; but it requires very little experience to know that we are wonderfully affected ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... which I have fallen, but the humble position from which I have risen. As long as I have my brother and you with me, let those fellows be hanged, drawn, and quartered for all I care: I can play the philosopher with you. That part of my soul, in which in old times irritability had its home, has grown completely callous. I find no pleasure in anything that is not private and domestic. You will find me in a state of magnificent repose, to which nothing contributes more than the prospect of your return. For there is no one in the ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... berated Jim because the biscuits were cold (which was not Jim's fault), and because the coffee was hot (which was according to his orders). Trivial annoyances, most of them of his own making or imagining, multiplied on all sides, fomenting his irritability until, by the time he strode out of the cottage, his temper was at white heat. What might have happened to the patient, devoted men about the stable and corrals is not difficult of conjecture, but they were saved by Sunnysides. Almost the first object that caught ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... her grandmother was really seriously unwell, and that her irritability she could not help. Mrs. Barnes did not know it herself. Mona only realised that she was almost always cross, that nothing pleased her, that she never ran and fetched and carried, as she used to do, while Mona sat by the fire and read. It was granny who sat by ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... in an aviator are impatience and irritability. A man who has these temperamental drawbacks in a form which is strongly marked, and who cannot control them, should not think of becoming an aviator. The man who is impatient and irritable finds himself out of harmony with the whole theory of aerial navigation. ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... that singular sensation in the roots of the hair, when he came on the traces of the girl's presence, reminding him of a line in a certain poem which he had read lately with a new and peculiar interest. He even recalled a curious evidence of exalted sensibility and irritability, in the twitching of the minute muscles of the internal ear at every unexpected sound, producing an odd little snap in the middle of the head, which proved to him that he was ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... corridor by this time, and I heard the full, cosy tones of Mrs. Garnett's voice in "Hush a bye, baby," and the sound of rockers on the floor. The sound made me indignant that my baby should be soothed with that wooden tapping. No wonder so many children suffered from irritability of the brain; for I was as full of ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various
... business, and indulging, during the time, more deeply than ever in his favourite potations. It was in vain that his distressed family endeavoured to rouse him into activity. All their efforts were met by an irritability and a moroseness of temper so unlike what he had been used to exhibit towards them, that they gave up all idea of influencing him ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... contrasting her own burning sensations with this quaint, innocent devotion to Art and passion for music, felt in a manner guilty; and whenever he stormed with additional violence, she became suppliant, and seemed to bend and have regrets. Mr. Pericles would then say, with mollified irritability: "You will come to Italy to-morrow?—Ze day after?—not at all?" The last was given with a roar, for lack of her immediate response. Emilia would find a tear on her eyelids at times. Surround herself as ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... cheeks were hollow, the complexion as yellow as that of the typical Anglo-Indian. The special character of the mouth was hidden by a fine black moustache, but his prevailing expression varied between irritability and a kind of plaintiveness. The conspicuous blue eyes were as a rule melancholy; but they could be childishly bright and self-assertive. There was a general air of breeding about Richard Boyce, of that air at any rate which our common generalisations connect with the pride of old family; ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... well as on all other occasions of display or grievance, and of course she did not spare poor Ormond. Age and drunkenness had made sad inroads on his constitution and looks during the last half year. His fretful irritability sometimes amounted almost to madness, when thirty female tongues joined in the chorus of their leader's assault. They boldly charged him, singly and in pairs, with every vice and fault that injured matrimony habitually denounces; and as each item of this abusive ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... drawing-material: these attracted visitors, and visitors were a trouble. Perhaps there was impertinence in their curiosity, very likely their presence hindered him; but, nevertheless, it was by no means like the sweet-tempered Clarian to show irritability and petulance, and finally, closing his door obstinately against all comers, to elect for solitude and silence at his work. No,—the boy was changed, grown morbid, a pervert, ripe for whatever Devil's sickle might be put forth ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... away his rising irritability, and replied, "I think, Ronald, your mind is so full of poetic arrows that one could not take a step, or lift a finger, or draw a breath, without your being able to hit him with ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... degradation. Having a strong, clear mind, without any imagination, she believed that she beheld an inevitable doom. The tart remark and the contemptuous comment on her part, elicited, on the other, all the irritability of the poetic idiosyncrasy. After frantic ebullitions, for which, when the circumstances were analysed by an ordinary mind, there seemed no sufficient cause, my grandfather always interfered to soothe with good-tempered commonplaces, and promote peace. He was a man who ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... his thinking and feeling. We cannot see within his mind. But experience with ourselves and others has taught us that certain attitudes of body, certain shades of countenance, certain gestures, tones of voice, spontaneous or willed actions, represent anger or joy, impatience or irritability, stern control or poise of mind. We realize that the average man has learned to conceal his mental reactions from the casual observer at will. But if we see him at an unguarded moment, we can very often get a fair idea ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... matches. It seemed probable that with four members of the School Eleven in the team, the ancient house must prove invincible. But to John's surprise, as this delightful probability ripened into conviction, Warde betrayed unwonted anxiety and even irritability. Miss Iris confided to Desmond, who paid her much court, that she couldn't imagine what was the matter with papa. And mamma, it transpired (from the same source), really feared that the strain at Lord's had been too much, that her indefatigable husband was about to break down. Finally, John ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... as he sat by David's bedside, was David's attitude toward that threatened return of his. For David had opposed it, offering a dozen trivial, almost puerile reasons. Had shown indeed, a dogged obstinacy and an irritability that were somehow oddly like fear. David afraid! David, whose life and heart were open books! David, whose eyes never wavered, ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... that smote Him, and bid the daughters of Jerusalem not to weep; could open paradise to the dying thief, and the door of John's home to the reception of His mother. Few things betray the presence of His peace more than the absence of irritability, fretfulness, and feverish haste, which expend the tissues ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... continually repeated miracle of life. But it does not remain long in this condition. In contact with the oxygen from the air it is soon oxidized, burned up to furnish the energy necessary for the motion and irritability of the body. We are all of us low-temperature engines. The digestive function exists in all animals merely to bring the food into a soluble, diffusible form, so that it can pass to all parts of ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... I should be ashamed to have recorded, for I lost my temper entirely. Neither I nor those who were with me saw her again till we reached the Inn at Broughton, seven miles. This may perhaps in some degree excuse my irritability on the occasion, for I could not but think she had been much to blame. It appeared, however, on explanation, that she had remained on the rock, calling out and waving her handkerchief as we were passing, in order that we ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... of considering herself or her children abused, accepting her lot as the natural one of woman, who was created to be a child-bearer, and to keep man well fed and comfortable. The only variation from the deadly monotony of her mechanical and unceasing labor was found in her habit of irritability with her stepchild. She considered Tillie "a dopple" (a stupid, awkward person); for though usually a wonderful little household worker, Tillie, when very much tired out, was apt to drop dishes; and absent-mindedly she would ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... however, a man of the kindest heart, and the strictest honor. But, after all, he was one of the round men put into the square holes of Provincial Government by the "authorities" at home. Still, on the whole, a noble character, and in very truth a gentleman. His chronic ailment led to some irritability of temper; and when, during the visit of the Prince of Wales, one of the Governor's aides-de-camp was pushed over from the steamer at Detroit by the press of the crowd, and fell into the water, Colonel Irving said:—"Ah! there was no danger whatever to ——'s life. The Governor-General has ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... mask this piece of startled irritability with a vague platitude did not deceive his audience in the smallest degree. Doubt became conviction in Mrs. Barraclough's mind. She did not know in what way this man was connected with her son's affairs but none the less she was certain he represented a positive barrier ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... being a laxative, allays irritability of the stomach; it is consequently useful during dentition, at which period there is both much irritability and a prevailing acescency of the stomach. The dose is from five grains to ten for an infant, increasing the quantity to fifteen grains or twenty ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... sallied forth, very much overdressed, and in a youthful hat, to use the waters. They are valued chiefly for the complexion, I learned; I wondered then why Lady Georgina came there—for she hadn't any; but they are also recommended for nervous irritability, and as Lady Georgina had visited the place almost every summer for fifteen years, it opened before one's mind an appalling vista of what her temper might have been if she had not gone to Schlangenbad. The hot springs ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... would show clearly enough what is alone of importance to me. In addition to this, I will undertake to avoid in my writings, even of a purely artistic nature, such combative expressions open to misapprehension as may have escaped me formerly in my irritability. Considering all these declarations, the future need be dealt with no longer, only the past. And over that it would be well, in the case of an artist, to throw the veil of forgetfulness, not to make it a cause for revenge. All this you might in conversation ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... have my say," Charles asserted with increasing irritability. "And it's lucky for you with your fool sentiments that you've got somebody to think ahead for you, else you'd all starve to death. I tell you that famine's coming. I've been studying the situation. Flour will be two dollars a pound, or ten, and no ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... bodily organs concerned, from 'the contractility of those organs, and from the regulation of that contractility by an automatically acting nervous apparatus;' that muscular contractility and the automatic activity or irritability of the nerves are 'purely the results of molecular mechanism;' and that 'the modes of motion which constitute the physical bases of light, sound, and heat are transmuted by the sensory organs into affections ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... touched by the spur; though his original good-nature from time to time shone through it all. When the line had been brought to a successful completion, a very marked change in him became visible. The irritability passed away, and when difficulties and vexations arose they were treated by him as matters of course, and with perfect ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... of fruit and cereal and chops and wheat cakes and coffee he had laid in to stay him until lunch time, would together have given pause to any but such a physical organization as his. The only evidence of it was a certain slight irritability—but this may have been due to his state ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... fanning their faces as they headed out to sea, Dickie's irritability vanished. Desirous of starting conversation after a protracted silence, she began: "Who do you think I saw down-town the ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... not take manifest faults like irritability or selfishness—we all strive against those, but I would suggest turns of mind that are often ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... of course, seeing that you make such a point of it, but I'm not specially proud of the business, I can assure you," Mrs. M'Kree said, with a touch of irritability very unusual with her. "Oily Dave was up here about a week ago, and he said that he had some buckets of rough fat that would do for greasing sledge runners, or to mix with caulking pitch. He told us he bought the stuff from one of the ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... rattling noise, as if money was being shaken up in a box. A loud crashing bang, as if someone had banged the box down on a table. A rap, as if a knife had been dropped. Then somebody, in a petulant voice full of vexation and irritability, ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... strong, and she is doing far too much. Dawson and I both think so." Perhaps he spoke with some degree of bluntness, for Mrs. Herrick responded with unusual irritability. ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... pieces nervously if you are obliged to repeat a remark to some one who did not understand you? I have known a home to be ruined by just such infinitesimal annoyances. It is a habit, like the drug or alcohol habit—this irritability. ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... of fright or sorrow, the cause and cure of diseases through emotional disturbances, and death, usually directly by apoplexy, caused by anger, grief, or joy, have been current and generally accepted. On the other hand, irritability and moroseness caused by disordered organs of digestion, change of acumen or morals due to injury of the brain or nervous system, and insanity produced by bodily diseases, are also accepted proofs of the effect of the body ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... so impressive in all this history as the difference between Moses when called upon to take responsibility as a military commander, and Moses when, not to mince matters, he acted as a quack. On the one hand, he was all vacillation, timidity, and irritability. On the ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... Prussian we have just mentioned, but is a frequent hectic symptom—often an associate of febrile and inflammatory disorders—frequently accompanying inflammation of the brain—a concomitant also of highly excited nervous irritability—equally connected with hypochondria—and finally united in some cases with gout, and in others with the effects of excitation produced by several gases. In all these cases there seems to be a morbid degree of sensibility, with which this symptom is ready to ally itself, and which, though inaccurate ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... with the patient that same afternoon, and towards evening the Major dropped in, glass in eye, and sat talking for a bit, with Bracy fighting hard to keep down his irritability, for the Major was a bad ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... their occasional temperamental outbursts to the altitude, which was "getting on their nerves," it was no secret between them that their irritability was due to exasperation with Disston. With scientific skill and thoroughness they dissected him privately until he was hash, working their scalpels far into the watches of the night with unflagging interest. His words, his actions, his thoughts, as indicated by his changing expressions, were ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... subtle interpretations, agreement was impossible. Natural life, denied and set aside at every point, gave place to the unnatural, and every colonist was, quite unconsciously, in a state of constant nervous tension and irritability. The questions that to us seem of even startling triviality, were discussed with a fervor and earnestness it is well nigh impossible to comprehend. They were a slight advance on the scholastic disputations of the preceding century, ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... drug habit would explain; often that winter she had found Miss Kiametia dozing in her chair at the theater, at dinners, in motors, but had put it down to over-fatigue from too much social gayety. Miss Kiametia's variable likes and dislikes, her sudden whims and fancies, her irritability—all were traceable to ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... think the youth and maiden who are glancing at each other across crowded rooms with eyes so full of mutual intelligence, of the precious fruit long hereafter to proceed from this new, quite external stimulus. The work of vegetation begins first in the irritability of the bark and leaf-buds. From exchanging glances, they advance to acts of courtesy, of gallantry, then to fiery passion, to plighting troth and marriage. Passion beholds its object as a perfect unit. The soul is wholly embodied, and ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... to the more painful knowledge of the world around him: they only made him laugh, while men and women made him angry. His feverish impatience made him view the infirmities of that great baby the world, with the same scrutinizing glance and jealous irritability that a parent regards the failings of its offspring; but, as Rousseau has well observed, parents have not on this account been supposed to have more affection for other people's children than their own. In other ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... the sun this day in a cloudless sky was so great, that Mr. Rae and I were glad to take shelter in the water while the crews were engaged on the portages. The irritability of the human frame is either greater in these Northern latitudes, or the sun, notwithstanding its obliquity, acts more powerfully upon it than near the Equator; for I have never felt its direct rays so oppressive within the Tropics as I have experienced ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... fever went away, but there seemed to be no power to rally in the little worn-out frame of the child. His father, for a little while, spoke hopefully of a change of air, and the sea-side; but he could not long so cheat himself with false hopes. The restlessness and irritability, which they had said to one another were hopeful signs, passed away. His smiles were more languid and constrained, and he soon failed to recognise the anxious, loving friends ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... to the quick, "surely even a baron, a knight, a franklin, a poor priest like myself, would rise against the man who dictated to his hospitality. Is a king less irritable than baron, knight, franklin, and priest,—or rather, being, as it were, per legem, lord of all, hath he not irritability eno' for all four? Ay, tut and tush as thou wilt, John, but thy sense must do justice to my counsel at the last. I know Edward well; he hath something of mine own idlesse and ease of temper, but with more of the dozing lion than priests, who have only, look you, ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... lowering, shading it, experimenting, to bring out all that might still be seen of the withdrawn image on its faintly glinting field of gold. His face was keen with interest; the love of beautiful things in this moment of satisfaction smoothed away from it every line of dejection and irritability. ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... insatiable appetite. One would never have thought so, judging from appearance: his clever, clean-cut face, his small, thin figure, together with the little hand-bag he always carried, rather suggested a lawyer or a clergyman. His eccentricity was a combination of absent-mindedness and irritability. The latter failing, he told me, would at times take complete control of him: for instance, he had to leave a train before his journey was completed, as he felt it impossible to sit in the carriage and look at the alarm bell without ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... in the room with me had a headache, or any kind of nervous irritability, which made it particularly necessary for others to be quiet, and if I was in an especial desire unto the same, I was sure, while stepping around on tiptoe, to fall headlong over a chair, which would give an introductory push to the shovel, which would fall upon the tongs, which ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... burst forth, with explosions more or less Vesuvian, in the inner man of Herr Diogenes; as indeed how could it fail? A nature, which, in his own figurative style, we might say, had now not a little carbonized tinder, of Irritability; with so much nitre of latent Passion, and sulphurous Humor enough; the whole lying in such hot neighborhood, close by "a reverberating furnace of Fantasy:" have we not here the components of driest Gunpowder, ready, on occasion of the smallest spark, to blaze up? Neither, in ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... which seems to me weak—that about the claws of lobsters and the tails of lizards moving and acting when detached from the body. It may be argued, fairly, that this is only an incidental result of the extreme muscular irritability and contractibility of the organs, which might have been caused on Lamarckian as well as on the Darwinian hypothesis. The running of a fowl after its head is chopped off is an example of the same kind of ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... towards him were not, and could not be, those of trust and confidence. He was extremely severe at times, often much more so than the occasion warranted, this being partly natural in a strong authoritative man, and partly the result of irritability brought on by his habit of drinking. When inflamed with brandy he became positively dangerous, and I had a well-founded dread of his presence. At all times he was very uncertain—he might greet me with a kind word or ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... day, when his old habits of impatience and irritability reappeared, more marked than ever, the captain said to his wife: "My dear, an evening walk will do me a world of good; an old sailor like myself cannot bear to sit around the house after dinner. Nevertheless, if you ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... pains to induce every member of the Expedition to do his. It was impossible for him not to be anxious as to how the team would pull together, especially as he knew well the influence of a malarious atmosphere in causing intense irritability of temper. In some respects, though not the most obvious, this was the most trying period of his life. His letters and other written papers show one little but not uninstructive effect of the pressure and distraction that now came on him—in the great change which his handwriting ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... taunts and jeers so often levelled at my friend the poet, would now and then rouse him into rage; and at such times the haughty scorn he would hurl on his foes, was proof positive of his possession of that one attribute, irritability, almost universally ascribed to the votaries of Parnassus ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... face were in motion; his long, ravenous nose was stirring, and in his voice rang notes of irritability ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... now. She had wanted to write. Without doubt he had helped her, comforted her loneliness; had given her a charming friendship, a delightful comradeship. Much of his work had been written for her, to her. It was fine work. She had been proud of her share in it. Even allowing there were faults—irritability, shortness of temper, a tendency to bossiness!—underneath it all was a man. The gallant struggle, the difficulties overcome, the long suffering, the high courage—all that she, reading between the lines, had divined of his life's battle! Yes, ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... bestowed upon him his wife. Mrs. Burke, like her father, was, up to the time of her marriage, a Catholic. Good judges belonging to her own sex describe her as gentle, quiet, soft in her manners, and well-bred. She had the qualities which best fitted and disposed her to soothe the vehemence and irritability of her companion. Though she afterwards conformed to the religion of her husband, it was no insignificant coincidence that in two of the dearest relations of his life the atmosphere of Catholicism was thus poured round the great preacher of the crusade against ...
— Burke • John Morley
... immune from interruption?" muttered Mr. Belford, with the nearest approach to irritability of which his equable temper ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... had summoned malignant spirits from outer space only to be destroyed by them. Not in Corsica or Sicily, in Africa nor the south of France, did Guy fight off his rapidly growing disease. He worked hard, he drank hard, but to no avail; the blackness of his brain increased. Melancholia and irritability supervened; he spelled words wrong, he quarrelled with his friends, he instituted a lawsuit against a New York newspaper, The Star; then the persecution craze, folie des grandeurs, frenzy. The case ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... into the willing ears of the sympathetic woman the details of her gradual awakening from Dalton's spell as his irritability, cowardice, and selfishness became more and more apparent. Nor yet of her growing anxiety as their resources declined; an anxiety which had so weighed upon her mind that she could neither sleep nor rest, despite his ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... room adjoining this one was where Montesquieu's secretary worked. He was the drudge of a literary man, who was probably not exempt from the constitutional irritability of those who carry a whirling grindstone within their brains for the sharpening and polishing of thought. The unremembered scribe may have done good service to literature while undergoing his purgatory ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... with his condition. It may have been that his health became worse; or it may be that, like to many men who are idle and make no effort to work, he became annoyed at the ennui which is so often the result of an unoccupied life. Anyhow, in his letters there crept in a note of irritability, which ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... all put strength with gentleness, in some form. "All the firmness that does not exclude delicacy, and all the softness that does not imply weakness. Loving, helpful, and trusting, she must be able to soothe anxiety by her presence; charm and allay irritability by her sweetness of temper." Another writes: "A beauty of spirit in which love, gentleness, and kindness are mingled. Patience and meekness, fortitude, a well-governed temper, sympathy, and tenderness," Says another: "Kind, courteous, humble, ...
— Girls: Faults and Ideals - A Familiar Talk, With Quotations From Letters • J.R. Miller
... human body naturally divide themselves into two principal classes. The first class embraces those which no known laws and phenomena of the physical world enable us to comprehend; and to these belong the sensibility of the nerves and the irritability of the muscles. Inasmuch as it has hitherto been impossible to penetrate the economy of the invisible, men have sought to interpret this unknown mechanism through that with which they were already familiar, and have considered the nerves as a canal ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... seasoned to care what amount of liquor he drank; Philip had what was called a weak head, and disliked muddling himself with drink because of the immediate consequence of intense feelings of irritability, and the more distant one of a racking headache next day; so both these two preserved very much the same demeanour they had held at the beginning ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... he was made to seem morally obtuse, cut Douglas to the quick. Even upon his tough constitution this prolonged campaign was beginning to tell. His voice was harsh and broken; and he gave unmistakable signs of nervous irritability, brought on by physical fatigue. When he rose to reply to Lincoln, his manner was offensively combative. At the outset, he referred angrily to Lincoln's "gross personalities and base insinuations."[761] In his references to the Springfield resolutions and to his mistake, or rather ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... occurred to Victoria, in the light of a new discovery, that in the past her father's irritability had not extended to her. And this discovery, she knew, ought to have some significance, but she felt unaccountably indifferent to it. Mr. Flint walked to a window at the far end of the room and flung apart the tightly ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... of his constant irritability, her husband had become more affectionate than customary since ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... newspaper where she filled the post of secretary and typist, she was a sort of cheerful institution to smooth worried faces and call up a smile amidst the irritability and frowns. ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... all the qualities in him which needed control received daily stimulus, and his ardour and high-aiming temper turned into impatience and restless irritability. He had a mistress who was at one time in the humour to be treated as a tender woman, at another as an outrageous flirt, at another as the haughtiest and most imperious of queens; her mood varied, no one could tell how, and ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... as the Antipodes. His mind is after all rather the recipient and transmitter of knowledge, than the originator of it. He has hardly grasp of thought enough to arrive at any great leading truth. His passions do not amount to more than irritability. With some gall in his pen, and coldness in his manner, he has a great deal of kindness in his heart. Rash in his opinions, he is steady in his attachments—and is a man, in many particulars admirable, in all ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... there was a constant tremor in Hepzibah's frame. With all her affection for a young cousin there was a recurring irritability. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... re-elect them. This would liberate him from a promise and strengthen both with a legislative endorsement. It was neither an intrepid nor an exalted proposition, but Conkling accepted it. Perhaps his nature required a relief from its high-strung irritability in some sort of violence, and resignation backed by the assurance that he would soon be restored to office and to greater power on the shoulders of the party offered the seductive form which ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... they could scarcely have yielded themselves to the sway of any passion more difficult of gratification, for they have no means of communicating with the busy world except through European travellers; and these, in consequence I suppose of that restlessness and irritability that generally haunt their wanderings, seem to have always avoided the bore of giving any information to their hosts. As for me, I am more patient and good-natured, and when I found that the kind monks ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... household affairs, his orders for sudden and expensive changes in the palaces, his substitution of German for English servants, his frequent visits to the stables unaccompanied by the equerry, his irritability on the most trifling occasions, and, alternating with this undignified bustle, fits of somnolence which at times overtook him even on horseback. Then, too, there were quarrels with the Queen, whose conduct, said Villiers, was such as to aggravate these ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... in our experience, goes back in the history of the race to the primitive sensitivity (or irritability) of living matter, seen in the protozoa. These minute unicellular creatures, though having no sense organs—any more than they have muscles or digestive organs—respond to a variety of stimuli. They ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... trying operation Dick Varley never once betrayed the slightest feeling of irritability or impatience. He did not expect success at first; he was ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... said Oliver, whose deadly faintness was giving way to irritability, caused by the sharp pain. "I only, as I said before, wish I knew who shot me. How could a man ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... States and from the complex relations of their citizens. The State may identify its infinitude and honor with every one of its single aspects. And if a State, as a strong individuality, has experienced an unduly protracted internal rest, it will naturally be more inclined to irritability, in order to find an occasion and field ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... declared, with a note of irritability in her tone. "You would appear to be trying to destroy a comradeship which has been very, very pleasant. For you know that I have made up my mind to dig a little way into life single-handed. I, too, want to understand—to walk with my head in the light. Love is a great thing, and happiness a ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... hired that carriage by the hour, and so am in no hurry. Your excuse for your irritability will be, I suppose, that it is constitutional, and not to be controlled. A selfish, paltry, miserable excuse! I have turned down a leaf in Dr. Johnson's works, and will read what he says in regard to ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... the lot of every public man, and I leave one account to balance the other." So serene was the aged philosopher, a real philosopher, not one who, having played a part in life, was to be betrayed in the weakness and irritability of old age. He felt none of the mental weariness which years so often bring. He was by no means tired of life and affairs in this world, yet he wrote in a characteristic vein to the Bishop of St. Asaph: "The course of nature must soon put a period to my present mode of existence. ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... feeling of irritability that he heard the quick sharp note of the "Whip-poor-will," as she flew from bough to bough of an old withered tree beside him. Another, and again another of these midnight watchers took up the monotonous never-varying cry of "Whip-poor-will, Whip-poor-will;" and then came forth, from many ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill |
