"Irritable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were, indeed, independently of such circumstances, some occasional aggravations of those symptoms. Some nights, for example, were passed in sitting up in bed, under a fit of asthma, as it was called; sometimes the mind became uncommonly impatient and irritable; the body gradually emaciated; yet the appetite and digestive functions remained principally unimpaired; and persons around were not sensible of any material alteration in the condition of ...
— Cases of Organic Diseases of the Heart • John Collins Warren
... did not argue further about it, as a nervous headache disinclined her from debate. Mr. Cave was always disinclined. The day passed disagreeably. Mr. Cave was, if anything, more absent-minded than usual, and uncommonly irritable withal. In the afternoon, when his wife was taking her customary sleep, he removed the crystal from ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... perceived Johnson rolling himself, as if about to speak, suddenly stopped him, saying, 'Stay, stay,—Toctor Shonson is going to say something.' This was, no doubt, very provoking, especially to one so irritable as Goldsmith, who frequently mentioned it with strong expressions ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... bald, very cross, and very stout, cast an irritable glance into the room, but, seeing so many people, drew back ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... powerful man, with an enormous red beard and moustache, and a sombrero-like hat that concealed nearly the whole of his face. He seemed an irritable man, too; for he jerked his arms about and stamped in a violent manner as they drew near, and instead of waiting to receive them, he entered the house hastily and shut the door in ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... reached their destination, had gone so far as to suggest that they should turn back to hunt up some show she had heard of in a theatre at the Batignolles. But at that he had somewhat irritably protested: he remembered that, for the first time, they were both rather irritable, and vaguely disposed to resist one another's suggestions. His feet were wet, and he was tired of walking, and sick of the smell of stuffy unaired theatres, and he had said he must really get back to write some letters—and so they had kept ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... it, and makes it impossible, as an undisciplined temper. For of all the things that are to be met with here on earth, there is nothing which can give such continual, such cutting, such useless pain. The touchy and sensitive temper, which takes offence at a word; the irritable temper, which finds offence in everything whether intended or not; the violent temper, which breaks through all bounds of reason when once roused; the jealous or sullen temper, which wears a cloud on the face all day, and never utters a word of complaint; the discontented temper, brooding ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... present clear success, and averse from further risk. He had reached his limitations. It is known now that Douglas agreed with Hood, but he was too loyal to his chief to say so publicly, then or afterwards; and especially, doubtless, to so irritable a talker. ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... merits all the evil epithets that are applied to it. The truth is that, after the torrid days of the hot weather and the humid heat of the rainy season, the European is thoroughly weary of his tropical surroundings, his vitality is at a low ebb, he is languid and irritable, thus he complains bitterly of the climate of September, notwithstanding the fact that it is a distinct improvement on that of the ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... hardly say that I do. I saw her once, nearly eighteen years ago, about the time you were born—but I was not capable of appreciating her then; indeed, was so unhappy and irritable as to be hardly in a condition to either make or receive favorable impressions. I now believe her to be a truly good and noble little woman, though decidedly an oddity in some respects. Then I called her ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... turned upside down, and he was resolved, if his enemy appeared, to give him a run for it. While employed one afternoon in the congenial task of foreclosing a mortgage his creditor begged for another day to raise the money. Tom was irritable on account of the hot weather and talked to him as a good man of the ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... open, we'll keep in the open," cried the gentleman, with the impetuosity of a man rendered irritable by the heat. "You'll have had enough of the cuddy, Miss Le Grand, long before you ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... passed. "Surely she must be ready now," said the General, who grew more excited and irritable every moment. A messenger was thereupon dispatched for her, but she found the door bolted, and amidst the outcry and confusion in the room could only distinguish that Miss Pomeroy was not ready. This message she delivered without entering ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... regarded it less as a friendly office towards Julien than as a duty, an order given by an officer. He was a sergeant, and four years of war had changed him from an irritable and independent friend to a dogged and careful subordinate. He did not like Fanny any the more for the trouble she was giving him; but he did not hold her responsible for his discomforts. She must be got to the river and to the ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... feet from our dining-room door, began to practise upon the French-horn; and being in the very first rudiments of execution, produced such discordant sounds, as might have discomposed the organs of an ass. You may guess what effect they had upon the irritable nerves of uncle; who, with the most admirable expression of splenetic surprize in his countenance, sent his man to silence these dreadful blasts, and desire the musicians to practise in some other place, as they had no ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... also and Walter were seated as far apart from their father and from each other as was possible, and for a few moments not a word was spoken. Then, suddenly remembering himself, the squire dismissed the paper from his hand with an irritable jerk, and, with the words, "I suppose that means dinner," gave his arm to his sister, and conducted her ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... afraid you'll find Gerry very trying. He's awfully irritable and ... and very spiteful. So you must be careful ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... water between them was most beautiful. And Ruth enjoyed herself immensely. That is, she found the occasion enjoyable until they got back to the bungalow and had bidden the Copleys and their party good night. Then the girl of the Red Mill found her roommate rather irritable. Helen pouted and was frankly cross ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... met in the same way. As with nervous pain it seems at first impossible to "relax to it;" but the Rubicon once crossed, we cannot long be irritable,—it is so much simpler not to be, and so much ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... sat down. What then? He might be a gentleman of irascible, nasty temper, and in walking about my room, I might step on his feet. These irritable folk have such large feet, at least they are always in the way, and always being stepped on no matter how careful one tries ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... an irritable race, and justly, if the epithet be understood in its physiological rather than its moral sense. This irritability, which responds to the slightest stimulus, leads to much of the misdirection of talent we have been considering. The greatness of an author consists ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... in Farewell instead of traipsing off over the range like a tomfool. Might not be back for a week, Swing mightn't. Idiotic caper (with other adjectives) of Swing's, anyway. Why hadn't he used his head? Oh, Racey Dawson was an exceedingly irritable young man as he rode out of Farewell. The aches and pains were still throbbingly alive in his own particular head. The immediate future was not alluring. It was ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... grievous." "What is that other?" he inquired. "Death! simply death!" she answered. "Death," said her persecutor, "is not so simple and opportune a thing as you imagine. You are strong and warm with life. Sensitive and irritable as your spirit is, these many months of trouble, this latter thraldom in which I hold you, have scarcely made your cheek paler than I saw it in your girlhood. Miriam,—for I forbear to speak another name, at which ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... remained till the end of his life, which was placid, uneventful, and happy. He made a happy marriage in 1804; and his calm temperament enabled him to bear an amount of abuse which might have broken the health of a more irritable man. Cobbett's epithet, 'parson Malthus,' strikes the keynote. He was pictured as a Christian priest denouncing charity, and proclaiming the necessity of vice and misery. He had the ill luck to be the centre ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... look very promising, and Dorothy asked, in an irritable tone, before she parted with ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... he appeared to be more irritable than ever; and he had got into the way of never speaking to his wife without shouting as if he were in a rage, while she, on the contrary, would lower her voice, be gentle and conciliating, to avoid all argument; but she often wept at night after ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... and their assistants, everlastingly irritable as if the victims of pernicious conspiracies, badgered for information that seemed inevitably non-existent. They desired to know in what mysterious manner one could get ten columns of type into a page that held only seven ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... movement of hysteria, and the citizens were crying, in every accent of anger and alarm, that the new forces must at any cost be brought under control. Prosperity never before imagined, power never yet wielded by man, speed never reached by anything but a meteor, had made the world irritable, nervous, querulous, unreasonable and afraid. All New York was demanding new men, and all the new forces, condensed into corporations, were demanding a new type of man — a man with ten times the endurance, energy, will and mind of the old type ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... not dared to speak for an hour, for fear of slipping a cog in the intricate machinery of creation. The constant struggle to supply "The Opp Eagle" with sufficient material to enable it to fly every Thursday was telling upon the staff; he was becoming irritable. ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... be remembered that the priest left Feemy after his stormy interview in a somewhat irritable mood; she was still chewing the cud of the bitter thoughts to which the events of the last few hours had given rise, and was trying to make herself believe that her brother and Father John and Pat Brady, and all the rest ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... Mateo, Redwood City and Palo Alto were next telephoned to, and when this long and expensive task was done, Ex-Private Bill Peck emerged from the telephone booth wringing wet with perspiration and as irritable as a clucking hen. Once outside the hotel he raised his haggard face to heaven and dumbly queried of the Almighty what He meant by saving him from quick death on the field of honor only to condemn him to be talked to death by B. Cohens ...
— The Go-Getter • Peter B. Kyne
... we saw Donald and Dorothy perched on the sofa, Mr. Reed had been remarkably changeful, and they had been puzzled and grieved by his manner toward Dorothy. He had been kind and irritable by turns, and finally, for some unaccountable reason, had sharply requested her to leave him, to "go away for mercy's sake," and then she had been recalled on some slight pretext, and treated with extra kindness, only to be wounded the next moment by a look from her uncle ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... opposed. His integrity was most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known; no motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to bias his decision. He was, indeed, in every sense of the word, a wise, a good, and a great man. His temper was naturally irritable and high toned; but reflection and resolution had obtained a firm and habitual ascendency ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... been watching with an expression not so irritable as it was wearied. "You are pathetic!" she ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... obligation to keep in idleness men hateful to them, and connected by no ties of blood. (174) Especially would this seem grievous when provisions were dear. What wonder, then, if in times of peace, when striking miracles had ceased, and no men of paramount authority were forthcoming, the irritable and greedy temper of the people began to wax cold, and at length to fall away from a worship, which, though Divine, was also humiliating, and even hostile, and to seek after something fresh; or can we be surprised that the captains, who always adopt the popular ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part IV] • Benedict de Spinoza
... up to shut it himself, and wondered why it was that Esther never did any one mortal thing efficiently or well. Good God! how irritable he felt. It was impossible to write. He must find an outlet for his impatience, rend or mend something. He began to straighten the room, but a wave of disgust came over him before the task was fairly commenced. ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... nurse. Take care of your sister," he added almost appealingly, divided between his knowledge of how poor a nurse Miss Madigan was and how impossible it was to tell this to her niece. "She'll be cross and irritable and—even worse than usual," he said, with a grim smile that recognized the battle-ground upon which the Madigans spent their lives; and this recognition made him seem more human to them than any other adult. "But you just treat her like a teething baby. She's got a hard row ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... his parents ought to make him tender toward them when age or disease has made them irritable or complaining. A love that only accepts, and never gives, is not worthy ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... fourth day Durant's irritable mood had changed to resignation. If he could not altogether adopt Mrs. Fazakerly's attitude and smile pleasantly into the jaws of dulness, he consented to be bored to death with a certain ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... live by plunder, the monks by alms. The haughtiest Abyssinian is not above begging, excusing himself with the remark, "God has given us speech for the purpose of begging.'' The Abyssinians are vain and selfish, irritable but easily appeased; and are an intelligent bright people, fond of gaiety. On every festive occasion, as a saint's day, birth, marriage, &c., it is customary for a rich man to collect his friends and neighbours, and kill a cow and one or two sheep. The principal parts of the cow are eaten raw ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... a thoughtless, expensive, headlong and irascible master, but never one more so than the present owner; added to which, he had the misfortune of being unpopular. Other men, thoughtless, and headlong, and irritable as he, have lived and had friends; but there was something about O'Grady that was felt, perhaps, more than it could be defined, which made him unpleasing—perhaps the homely phrase "cross-grained" may best express it, and O'Grady was essentially ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... to be irritable, revengeful, and implacable; but gay and volatile, passionately addicted to dancing and the jeu de paume, which he never abandons till compelled by positive infirmity. He is very adventurous, and fond of excitement; it is not, ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... not quite himself," she admitted slowly. "He is more nervous, inclined to be short and irritable, than he used to be. You may be right; or it may be simply that his continued failure to stop these crimes is wearing him down. I'll be glad to watch him, to talk with him if he will listen ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... species on Earth that is, or was, very common: the Mimosa Pudica. Perhaps you know it as the sensitive plant. It does not trap insects, but it has a very distinct power of movement, and is extremely irritable. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... weak were friendship could she shake with dread Of thy detraction 'gainst her worthies dead! No! such detraction makes her zeal more just To every claim of their yet speaking dust. Save me, good heaven! and all whom I regard, (Or hasty muse, or irritable bard,) Save us, good heaven! in mild and temperate age, From wounded vanity's vindictive rage! To genuine friendship pure delight is given, Next to the favor of approving heaven; And that delight is most sublimely felt. When nature in vain tears, has ceased to melt: When sorrow, quell'd ...
— Poems on Serious and Sacred Subjects - Printed only as Private Tokens of Regard, for the Particular - Friends of the Author • William Hayley
... avarice, the most suspicious of passions, has in no instance I ever heard of, desired to compose her hoards by an accumulation of the precious metals. The confidence in the credit of our ordinary medium has not been doubted even in the dreams of the most irritable and jealous of ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... toilet every morning, while he loved, and he knew he could dress in four minutes and a quarter, for he had done it often. Love was a great beautifier. In this case I must admit that the lover suffered more than we outsiders, except that he became irritable in his cleanliness. Love should not be scorned, even if it is real and sometimes uncomfortably practical. It is very beautiful, and lovers make a pretty sight. What I protest is, that all creatures should be lovers—or none. It is the half-and-half state ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... to Captain Thorn, I must confess that though a stern commander and an irritable man, he paid the strictest attention to the health of his crew. His complaints of the squalid appearance of the Canadians and mechanics who were on board, can be abated of their force by giving a description of the accommodation of these people. ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... said the nurse could take care of Eunice. As if I'd leave my baby with any nurse that ever lived, for any old dance! The idea! But Jerry went. At first he stayed with me; but the baby cried, and Jerry didn't like that. It made him irritable and nervous, until I was glad to have him go. (Who wouldn't be, with his eternal repetition of "Mollie, can't you stop that baby's crying?" As if that wasn't exactly what I was trying to do, as hard as ever I could!) But Jerry didn't see it that way. Jerry ...
— Mary Marie • Eleanor H. Porter
... of the wrong of slavery extension "abolitionism." This went on for a month. Then Lincoln resolved to force Douglas to meet his arguments, and challenged him to a series of joint debates. Douglas was not pleased. His reply to the challenge was irritable, even slightly insolent. To those of his friends who talked with him privately of the contest, he said: "I do not feel, between you and me, that I want to go into this debate. The whole country knows me, and has me measured. Lincoln, ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... honour) much more recent. You must know that, among many places I dislike, Paris carries the palm. I am bored to death there; it's the home of every humbug. The life is full of that false comfort which is worse than discomfort, and the small, fat, irritable people, give me the shivers. I had been making these reflections even more devoutly than usual one very tiresome evening toward the beginning of last summer, when, as I re-entered my hotel at ten o'clock, the little reptile of a portress handed me your gracious lines. I was ...
— The Point of View • Henry James
... Bo Cualnge, or Cooley Cattle-raid, and it is full of combats and feats of strength and prowess. High character meant high pride, always ready to give account of itself and strike for its ideals: "Irritable and bold", as one historian has it. They were jealous and quick to anger, but light-hearted laughter came easily to the lips of the ancient Irish. They worked cheerfully, prayed fervently to their gods, loved their women and ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... Advertiser under the heading of The Inspector; and also with Smollett, whom he (Fielding) had ridiculed in his second number, perhaps on account of that little paragraph in the first edition of Peregrine Pickle, to which reference was made in an earlier chapter. Smollett, always irritable and combative, retorted by a needlessly coarse and venomous pamphlet, in which, under the name of "Habbakkuk Hilding, Justice, Dealer and Chapman," Fielding was attacked with indescribable brutality. Another, and seemingly unprovoked, adversary whom the Journal of the War brought upon him was ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... light-hearted and gay, but Mabel often had moods of despondency, which, while they never made her cross or irritable, were so pathetic that it worried Patty's ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... said," observes he, "that he was irritable. Such may have been the case at times; nay, I believe it was so; for what with the continual pursuit of authors, printers, and booksellers, and occasional pecuniary embarrassments, few could have avoided exhibiting similar marks of impatience. But it was never so ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... I tell?" Ali sounded irritable. "I can give you oxgy for quarters for about two hours. Depends upon how fast we can move. No telling until we ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... Tripoli has arrived by the way of Derge, avoiding the more dangerous route of Seenawan, by which latter I came here. No mail. All the people now in a hurry to be off to Ghat, as their goods have arrived. I begin to feel extremely irritable and irresolute at the prospect of the new unknown Desert journey. The old bandit called, and asked, "Well, are you going?" I answered, "Yes, very soon, but I must first have a letter of permission from the Pasha of Tripoli, so the Rais says, for the ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... sensitive, his whole personality bespeaking force and decision. Quite different was Harriman; a small, ordinary looking man, with glasses and a scraggy mustache, giving the impression of nervous force rather than of power; an irritable man, easily angered; a fighter clear through, but fighting sometimes when peace were ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... had grown languid; all her usual occupations were pursued with the same weary indifference; she spent hours alone in her own room; she lost her interest in being brightly and prettily dressed; her eyes were heavy, her nerves were irritable, her complexion was altered visibly for the worse—in one word, she had become an oppression and a weariness to herself and to all about her. Stoutly as Miss Garth contended with these growing domestic difficulties, ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... of the upper classes so admirably achieves. He was, in fact, unmistakably a gentleman, at least by birth, though his bored manner held a hint of insolence, a suggestion of the bounder. His hazel eyes, glancing about with irritable restlessness, were curiously devoid of any depths, his mouth showed a mixture of weakness and obstinacy, devil-may-care courage and lack of moral stamina. An after-the-war product, no doubt, nervy ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... spirit, making it light and happy. As she laid her hand on Olivier's bell, her breast throbbed with impatience, and the stair-carpet seemed the softest her feet ever had pressed. But Bertin became gloomy, a little nervous, often irritable. He had his moments of impatience, ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... adverse, baffling, contrary, perverse; petulant, peevish, cynical, surly, unamiable, inaffable, crabbed, crusty, captious, fractious, churlish, vixenish, querulous, fretful, choleric, touchy, waspish, morose, sullen, ill-natured, irascible acrimonious, irritable; inverse, interchanged. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... for the Lord of heaven and earth, how small a whisper do we hear of Him! Some minds are constitutionally ill-adapted for fellowship with Him because they lack what Keats calls "negative capability"—"that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason. Coleridge, for instance, would let go a fine isolated verisimilitude, caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge." We have to trust God with His secrets, ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... you. I don't love you and I can't love you and I won't love you. I resent your actions. You have been making this house headquarters for your diplomatic schemes and when they have gone astray, you have made us all the creatures of your irritable whims. You made me a laughing stock when you backed out of the theatre party, and have done nothing but consider your own convenience irrespective of any plans I may have formed for your entertainment. You were so disagreeable ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... fancied that his uncle had grown to utterly dislike him,—being so irritable and unjust at times; then again his heart was light with joy and hope, for he fancied that the grim man was just on the point of losing his great burden of gloom, and becoming hopeful and unoppressed. But how could he be hopeful for whom there was no ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... did not return till a comparatively late hour; and the necessity of sitting up after her usual time of retiring, by making the old lady irritable, had the effect of giving some additional force to the suggestions of Mr. Calvert. When Margaret did return, she came alone. Stevens had attended her only to the wicket. She did not expect to find her mother still sitting up; and started, with an ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... your head with some more of her nonsense." Mr. Travers spoke in a voice which astonished d'Alcacer as much as the smile, a voice that was not irritable nor peevish, but had a distinct note of indulgence. "My dear d'Alcacer, that craze has got such a hold of her that she would tell you any sort of tale. Social impostors, mediums, fortune-tellers, charlatans of all sorts do obtain a strange influence ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... unencountered, but just as she knocked at the door, Mewks came behind her from somewhere, and snatching the letter out of her hand, for she carried it ready to justify her entrance to the first glance of her irritable master, pushed her rudely away, and immediately went in. But as he did so he put the letter ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... off year after year. This series of postponements—ordered, despite the wishes of the prisoner and (as he contended) against his interests—had got on to Luis de Leon's nerves, had led to occasional moods of depression, and had betrayed him into a few irritable or intemperate outbursts. But these results were unintentional. The Valladolid judges were well aware from the outset that no time was to be lost. As early as July 29, 1572, they delegated a piece of work to one of their commissaries in Salamanca, and impressed on him the ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... patience, trying to attract his absorbed attention from its engrossing speculation till he grew irritable and got up, asking why I would not allow him to have his own time in taking his meals? and saying that on the next occasion I needn't wait—I might set the things down and go. Having uttered these words, he left the house, slowly sauntered down the garden ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... and ate it. She had not been taught any of this business. They had merely said to her, "Play about, Lola," and, being the daughter of artists, she had played about with an unconscious spontaneity that was startling. Had there been an irritable uncle on the scene ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... hard-worked; she hoped to persuade him to get a few days abroad at Whitsuntide. Her manner was quiet, without a trace of either discourtesy or effusion. Cliffe began to twist his mustache, a sign she knew well. It meant that he was in truth both irritable and nervous. ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Here, however, they encountered the most obstinate opposition from the Scottish Commissioners. The mood of these gentlemen (Loudoun, Lanark, Lauderdale, Sir Charles Erskine, Hugh Kennedy, and Robert Barclay), sufficiently irritable before the King's flight from Hampton Court, was now that of the Thistle in full bloom. The King, they declared, had done right in fleeing from the hard usage of the English. Could his Majesty be expected to endure longer ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... this subject: "Mediumship occasionally acts in such a manner that it becomes a stimulant to every organ and function of the system, and the individual becomes excited, nervous, and irritable; hence, the greater the acceleration of physiological functions as the result of psychical influences upon the human body, the more need of caution and restraint in every department of physiological life." But it ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... ambition, seek notoriety—which, by the way, they are near obtaining in more respects than they probably desire—by obtruding themselves on every stranger who touches our shore. Theirs is not a generous and frank hospitality that would fain serve others, but an irritable vanity that would glorify themselves. The liberal and enlightened monikin is easily to be distinguished from all of this clique. He is neither ashamed of, nor bigoted in favor of any usages, simply because they are domestic. With him the ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... that seem to kill the nerve and take away the sense, nor can we ever tell the effect till we see it produced; and so we could not have told beforehand—nay, we would have looked for something quite opposite—that Mysie, shrinking and irritable as she was by nature, was saved from a faint (which had for some moments been threatening her) by the cruel insult which thus had been added to her misfortune. She had even power to have recourse to that strange device of some natures, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... valued his amazing equipment of energy until now, when some subtle ailment had begun to sap it. The change was less in his muscular strength than in his nerves and his mental vigor. He found himself growing peculiarly irritable; his failures excited spasms of blind fury which left him weak and spent; he began to suffer the depressing tortures of insomnia. At times the nerves in his face and neck twitched unaccountably, and this ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... matter with the birds to-day?' said the captain, who was in rather an irritable mood himself. 'They are silent enough generally'—for the voice of the albatross is rarely heard ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... came near quarreling, but not seriously, her disposition to quarrel was so small. Yet, two could not be outspoken and one of them irritable, and those ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... of war, was bombarded with complaints and bickerings of the officers under him; they seemed to revel in annoying one famed for being of the irritable genus. Once he showed his principal a letter written in answer to a general who had abused him and accused him of favoritism. Lincoln listened with his ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... seemed raised more to drown the groans which involuntarily burst forth, than as the echo of the heart. They dared not evince the faintest sign of disapproval, for they stood on precarious ground; a groan even might be punished by their irritable king as treachery; but there was one present who cared little for this charge. Scarcely had the words passed the herald's lips, before a young man, whose bare head and lack of all weapons would have proclaimed him one of the Earl of Hereford's prisoners, had not ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... candor, his ever-present, yet shrinking tenderness, and that sadness of the moral sentiment which the world persisted in regarding as cynicism. This impression deepened with my further acquaintance, and was never modified. Although he belonged to the sensitive, irritable genus, his only manifestations of impatience which I remember were when that which he had written with a sigh was interpreted as a sneer. When so misunderstood, he scorned to set himself right. "I have no brain above the eyes," he was accustomed to say; "I describe what I see." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... after you have come into a large fortune as on the day after you have left your new silk umbrella in the train. Its effect upon you is somewhat similar to what would probably be produced by a combined attack of toothache, indigestion, and cold in the head. You become stupid, restless, and irritable; rude to strangers and dangerous toward your friends; clumsy, maudlin, and quarrelsome; a nuisance to ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... spoken at great length and very dictatorially. Miss Polly Burton did not venture to contradict him, knowing by now that whenever he was irritable he was invariably rude, and she then had ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... they had departed. But now, alas, how welcome would have been the feel of their presence, the frou-frou and swish-swish of their skirts which I had so cordially detested! I am sure, if I ever get home, that I shall never be irritable with them again. They may dose me and doctor me morning, noon, and night, and dust and sweep and put my den to rights every minute of the day, and I shall only lean back and survey it all and be thankful in that I am possessed of a mother and some ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... I resolved to get rid of the cause of sorrow by the aid of ether; not sorry, either, to try its efficacy, after all the marvellous stories I had heard. The first time I inhaled it, I did not for several seconds feel the effect, and was just thinking, "Alas! this has not power to soothe nerves so irritable as mine," when suddenly I wandered off, I don't know where, but it was a sensation like wandering in long garden-walks, and through many alleys of trees,—many impressions, but all pleasant and serene. The moment the tube was removed, ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... the commoner claim, the claim to be felt and respected and regarded in one's own little circle, it is wholesome and humiliating to observe how generously and easily that regard is conceded to affectionateness and kindness, and how little it is won by any brilliance or sharpness. Of course irritable, quick-tempered, severe, discontented people can win attention easily enough, and acquire the kind of consideration which is generally conceded to anyone who can be unpleasant. How often families and groups are drilled and cautioned ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... mood, no other tone, in which he could have addressed her. Did the grave chancellor, then—some one, who in his way, also, is very grave, may ask—did he, by constant fondness, spoil his child? No. It is the fondness which is not constant that spoils. It is the half-love of weak and irritable natures, who are themselves children amongst their children, who can themselves be petulant, selfish, and capricious—it is this that mars a temper. But calm and unalterable love—oh, believe it not that such ever ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... friend to their room, full of irritable reproaches. But Lottie puzzled her again, as she had done before that day. Gayety vanished from the face as light from a clouded landscape, and with an expression that was even scowling and sullen she sat brooding before the fire, heeding Bel's complaining words no more than she would ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... spice, and monotony wearies the soul. After nine years had passed, and his wife absented herself every Friday night, he began to wonder why it could be. His curiosity, to know the reason for her going away, so increased that it so wore on him that he became both miserable in himself and irritable toward others. Everybody in the castle noticed the change in their master, and grieved ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... this fashion when Father Carheil plucked at my sleeve. "Do you think you are running from the Iroquois?" he grumbled, and he pushed his irritable, brilliant face close to mine. It was an old face, lined and withered, and the hair above it was scanty and gray, but never have I met a look that showed more fire and unconquerable will. "The commandant wishes you," he went on. "He asked me to fetch you. I should not have complied—it ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... "Eastward Hoe" achieved the extraordinary popularity represented in a demand for three issues in one year. But this was not due entirely to the merits of the play. In its earliest version a passage which an irritable courtier conceived to be derogatory to his nation, the Scots, sent both Chapman and Jonson to jail; but the matter was soon patched up, for by this time Jonson had influence ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... friend and literary executor, the historian J. A. Froude, of Carlyle's autobiographical Reminiscences and Letters. After Mrs. Carlyle's death Carlyle blamed himself bitterly for inconsiderateness toward her, and it is certain that his erratic and irritable temper, partly exasperated by long disappointment and by constant physical misery, that his peasant-bred lack of delicacy, and his absorption in his work, made a perpetual and vexatious strain on Mrs. Carlyle's forbearance throughout the forty years of their life together. ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... conduct this spontaneity assumed a form of inconsiderate rashness, which brought him into collision with persons of importance, and rendered universities and Courts, the sphere of his adoption, perilous to the peace of so naturally out-spoken and self-engrossed a man. His irritable sensibilities caused him to suffer intensely from the petty vengeance of the people he annoyed; while a kind of amiable egotism blinded his eyes to his own faults, and made him blame fortune for sufferings of which ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... her lap. Her eyes looked as though she was going to cry again. But she didn't cry. That is, not much. Mostly she just sighed. "It isn't as though he was an easy child to understand," she sighed. "He catches cold so easily, and mumps and everything.—And he's so irritable.—He kicks,—he bites,—he scratches!" ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... a dry, irritable, heated condition of the mouth and throat which, as the correspondent surmises, equally affects the stomach and the rest of the digestive organs. He should have a breakfast of fresh fruit only, take salads and grated raw ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... no means of an irritable or envious disposition, but somehow or other the tall man with the brown coat and the bright basket buttons did rouse what little gall he had in his composition, and did make him feel extremely indignant, the more especially as he could now and then observe, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... In this irritable state of the public mind, and critical situation of public affairs, it was to be expected that every day would furnish new matter of discontent and jealousy. General Gage deemed it a necessary measure of security, to fortify Boston neck; and this circumstance induced the inhabitants ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... were not honorable, and able men! Conceive them, for a moment, disposed everywhere to stir up litigation, by availing themselves of their perfect acquaintance with almost all men's circumstances—artfully inflaming irritable and vindictive clients, kindling, instead of stifling, family dissensions, and fomenting public strife—why, were they to do only a hundredth part of what it is thus in their power to do, our courts of justice would ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... one magazine rarely lasted long, and there is much diversity of opinion as to the cause; some ascribing it to Poe's dissipated, irregular habits and irritable temper, others to the meagre support of the magazines, still others to Poe's restless disposition and desire to establish a periodical of his own. His uncontrolled and high-strung nature, so sensitive that a single ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... then he turned slowly on his heel and looked at the man. Willems held himself very straight, but was unsteady on his feet, and moved about nearly on the same spot, like a tipsy man attempting to preserve his balance. After gazing at him for a while, Lingard called, rancorous and irritable— ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... visited oftenest and lay most on the rug was Lydgate's. The two men were not at all alike, but they agreed none the worse. Lydgate was abrupt but not irritable, taking little notice of megrims in healthy people; and Ladislaw did not usually throw away his susceptibilities on those who took no notice of them. With Rosamond, on the other hand, he pouted and ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... strange and forced manner of Ophelia, that the sweet girl was not acting a part of her own, but was a decoy; and his after speeches are not so much directed to her as to the listeners and spies. Such a discovery in a mood so anxious and irritable accounts for a certain harshness in him;—and yet a wild up-working of love, sporting with opposites in a wilful self-tormenting strain of irony, is perceptible throughout. "I did love you once:"—"I lov'd you ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... under his patronage the next term of life, and therefore man in his middle age is fond of work, devoted to labor, and resolute to amass wealth and to husband his resources. The end of life was reserved for the Dog, wherefore the old man is often snappish, irritable, hard to please, and selfish, tolerant only of his own household, but averse to strangers and to all who do not administer to his ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... turn bred a languor which is the sickest, most soul- and temper-destroying affair invented by the devil. They could not muster up energy enough to walk down the beach and back, and yet they were wearied to death of the inaction. After a little they became irritable toward one another. Each suspected the other of doing less than he should. You who know men will realise ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... antiquary in Scott's novel of the name, devoted to the study and collection of old coins, a man with an irritable temper, due to ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... or less of madness, whether solitary or epidemic. It may be very active; it may be very quick at catching at new and grand ideas—all the more quick, perhaps, on account of its own secret malaise and self-discontent; but it will be irritable, spasmodic, hysterical. It will be apt to mistake capacity of talk for capacity of action, excitement for earnestness, virulence for force, and, too often; cruelty for justice. It will lose manful independence, individuality, originality; and when ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... is peculiarly irritable, (from teething,) it is of paramount necessity to withhold all the nostrums which have been so falsely lauded as 'sovereign cures for cholera infantum.' The true restoratives, to a child threatened with disease, are, cool air, ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... and detested the grind of the real-estate business, and disliked his family, and disliked himself for disliking them. The evening before, he had played poker at Vergil Gunch's till midnight, and after such holidays he was irritable before breakfast. It may have been the tremendous home-brewed beer of the prohibition-era and the cigars to which that beer enticed him; it may have been resentment of return from this fine, bold man-world to a restricted region of wives and stenographers, ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... Andrew Henry. It was difficult to get letters from the Federal soldiers unless some messenger came direct, but she guessed how much pleasure the bit of news would be to him. She rode out to the farm occasionally and took a message from Aunt Lois to Andrew. Uncle James was growing quite deaf and irritable in temper, but Aunt Lois softened perceptibly and was always glad to ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... he begged. "I fear that I am a little irritable to-night. This constant espionage gets on one's nerves. Look at them all around us,—Crawshay in the corner, trying his best to get something incriminating out of Nora Sharey; Brightman smoking a cigar out there, with his eyes wandering all the time through the glass ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim |
