"Itch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 'a worthy creature after all,' 'a capital fellow at last,' and have his praises echoed from every beer-bench in the parish. Nobody ever thought of asking how Klaus got possessed of his new money. He had it; that fact was all-sufficient for the multitude. One or two might itch to make their comments upon the quick metamorphosis, but self-love kept them quiet; for every man already licked his lips in anticipation of the marriage-feast that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... common malady, as well as numerous other diseases of the skin. All of which doubtless arises from the filthy habits of the people. Doby itch is very common. It is a very bad skin disease, and hard to cure when it gets a firm hold, and will have fatal results in a few years in that warm climate. One doctor said that it would require three or four years' careful ...
— A Soldier in the Philippines • Needom N. Freeman
... examples of cure, through a moderate fit of anger, of inveterate dyspepsia; and through fright,—as in the case of a fire—of rheumatic pains and lameness apparently incurable. But even dysentery has sometimes resolved an internal stoppage, and the itch has been a cure for melancholy madness and insanity: is the itch, for this, less a disease?—is ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... gives further light on the "boring in" process begun by theoretical Socialists with an itch for revolution—paper soldiers anxious to get a-straddle of the great strike-conducting war-horse of I. W. W.'ism and ride into "the dictatorship of the proletariat." This ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... and were sunk, or stuck pretty deep into my skin. After I had thus rubb'd it for a pretty while, I felt very little or no pain, in so much that I doubted, whether it were the true Couhage; but whil'st I was considering; I found the Down begin to make my hand itch, and in some places to smart again, much like the stinging of a Flea or Gnat, and this continued a pretty while, so that by degrees I found my skin to be swell'd with little red pustules, and to look as if it had been itchie. But suffering it without rubbing or scratching, the itching ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... refer to yourself in conversation or to record your own good works, or to itch after commendation, when you can truly love to be unknown—that ...
— Food for the Lambs; or, Helps for Young Christians • Charles Ebert Orr
... be a greater degree of titillation, and to be owing to the stimulus of some acrid material, as the matter of the itch; or of the herpes on the scrotum, and about the anus; or from those universal eruptions, which attend some elderly people, who have drank much vinous spirit. It occurs also, when inflammations are declining, as in the healing of blisters, or in the cure ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... indoors to scour, they began on the yard, orchard, barn and road. Mother even had Leon stack the wood pile straighter. She said when corded wood leaned at an angle, it made people seem shiftless; and she never passed a place where it looked that way that her fingers didn't just itch to get at it. He had to pull every ragweed on each side of the road as far as our land reached, and lay every rail straight in the fences. Father had to take spikes and our biggest maul and go to the bridges at the foot of the Big and the Little Hill, ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... and roll like a thing in pain, and swore when all was done. But he did not shoot, though one could see how his fingers must itch for the ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... must fill a want of their own similar to that filled by novel-writing in the case of others: i.e. a flight from one's self, an ascetic extirpation of their cultural impulses, a desperate attempt to annihilate their own individuality. From our degenerate literary art, as also from that itch for scribbling of our learned men which has now reached such alarming proportions, wells forth the same sigh: Oh that we could forget ourselves! The attempt fails: memory, not yet suffocated by the mountains of printed paper ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... little account between us," said Dunsey, carelessly, "and Wildfire made it even. I accommodated him by taking the horse, though it was against my will, for I'd got an itch for a mare o' Jortin's—as rare a bit o' blood as ever you threw your leg across. But I shall keep Wildfire, now I've got him, though I'd a bid of a hundred and fifty for him the other day, from a man over at Flitton—he's ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... Graham—prig; What was thy delighted musing? Now accepting, now refusing, Till on the Admiralty pitch'd, Still would that thought his speech prolong; To gain the place for which he long had itch'd, He call'd on Bobby still through all the song; But ever as his sweetest theme he chose, A sovereign's golden chink was heard at every close, And Pollock grimly smiled, and shook his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 5, 1841 • Various
... Thus they'd be able to put an end to their own thinking and bury themselves in their own little alleys and be happy again. You know as well as I, it makes them miserable to think. Restless, irritable, indignant. It's like having bites—the more they're scratched the worse they itch. It's the war, of course. The war has been a failure. The race has caught itself red-handed in a lie. Now everybody is running around trying to confess to everybody else that what he said in the past was a lie and that the real truth is as follows. And there's where the ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... the close comes round, Or leave the substance to preserve the sound; You never wander after words that fly, For all the words you need before you lie. But I, who—smarting for my sins of late— With itch of rhyme am visited by fate, Expend on air my unavailing force, And, hunting sounds, am sweated like a horse. In vain I often muse from dawn till night: When I mean black, my stubborn verse says white; If I should paint a coxcomb's flippant mien, I scarcely can forbear to name the Dean; ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... them forward, in defeat and in darkness. All creatures wish to live, and to perpetuate their species, of course; but those two wishes alone evidently do not carry any race far. In addition to these, a race, to be great, needs some hunger, some itch, to spur it up the hard path we lately have learned to call evolution. The love of toil in the ants, and of craft in cats, are examples (imaginary or not). What other such lust could exert great ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... certainty. Probably enough this may have been one of his motives, which were doubtless of a mixed nature. That he was sincere in his advocacy of Reform must in all fairness be conceded, though his itch for notoriety must always be considered in reviewing and estimating his actions. This tendency of his mind would readily lead him to select journalism as his vocation in life, more especially as he found that his opinions were regarded as having some value. As compared with his life ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... this question every prudent tradesman may make for himself: if his pleasure is in his shop, and in his business, there is no danger of him; but if he has an itch after exotic diversions—I mean such as are foreign to his shop, and to his business, and which I therefore call exotic—let him honestly and fairly state the case between his shop and his diversions, and judge impartially for himself. So much ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... came flying all abroad? I sought no homage from the race that write; I kept, like Asian monarchs, from their sight: 220 Poems I heeded (now be-rhymed so long) No more than thou, great George! a birthday song. I ne'er with wits or witlings pass'd my days, To spread about the itch of verse and praise; Nor like a puppy, daggled through the town, To fetch and carry sing-song up and down; Nor at rehearsals sweat, and mouth'd, and cried, With handkerchief and orange at my side; But sick of fops, and poetry, and prate, To Bufo ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... know," said Miguel, smiling still. "There must be no shooting. Once that begins—" He shrugged his shoulders with that slight, eloquent movement, which the Happy Family had come to know so well. He was speaking to them all, as they crowded up to the scuffle. "The man who feels the trigger-itch had better throw his gun away," he advised coolly. "I know, boys. I've seen these things start before. All hell can't stop you, once you begin to shoot. Put it up, Bud, or give ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... His couch would have been the bare earth, dry or wet as the weather might be; and from that couch he would have risen half poisoned with stench, half blind with the reek of turf, and half mad with the itch, [322] ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... disorder as well as order, in nature. If there is evidence of design in a rose, there is at least as much evidence of design in the tubercle bacillus, and the tetanus bacillus. Whatever in nature produced the peacock produced the itch-mite; whatever produced man produced the spirochete of syphilis. If this earth is evolving for the better, the past is still vivid in all its cruelty. The old and familiar argument from design and beauty in nature is so inconsistent with the facts at hand, that most theists have abandoned ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... for an Indian Image: Did Inigo Impey itch for an Indian Image? If Inigo Impey itched for an Indian Image, Where's the Indian Image ...
— Peter Piper's Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation • Anonymous
... it'll probably be harder sledding out amongst the disk-harrow boys. Everybody reads the papers these days, only the Rube believes what he reads and the city guy don't. I hate to go, but I ain't comfortable where I am. When my scalp begins to itch like it does now that's a sign of a close hair-cut coming on. I've got educated dandruff,' I says, 'and it ain't never fooled me yet. In short,' I says, 'I've been handed the office to skiddoo, and in such cases I believe in skiddooing. ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... hand and pulled away a quantity of charred hair. His forehead began to itch, and, rubbing his finger across it, he realized that his eyebrows were gone. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... we Pigs Were bless'd as nightingales on myrtle sprigs, 40 Or grasshoppers that live on noonday dew, And sung, old annals tell, as sweetly too; But now our sties are fallen in, we catch The murrain and the mange, the scab and itch; Sometimes your royal dogs tear down our thatch, 45 And then we seek the shelter of a ditch; Hog-wash or grains, or ruta-baga, none Has yet been ours since ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... of a thousand Patagonian sights and sounds, helped to sway me to my wish. With other men, perhaps, such things would not have been inducements; but as for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts. Not ignoring what is good, I am quick to perceive a horror, and could still be social with it—would they let me—since it is but well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... implements, a fowl-house, the household things, and everything, in a way that I cannot describe. But I dare not confess to you all my misdeeds, because speaking of them makes my mouth water, and the thing with which God curses me makes me itch dreadfully. If this folly bites and pricks me, and slays my virtue, will God, who has placed this great love in my body, condemn me ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... was ashamed before Azariah of his son's eagerness to leave home; a subtlety that escaped Rachel who chided Dan saying: try to remember if it wasn't the same with thee, for I can remember thine eyes sparkling at the sight of a horse and thy knees all of an itch to be on to him. Well, said Dan, he'll have enough riding before the day is over, and I reckon his little backside will be sore before they halt at the gates of Arimathea; a remark that caused Rachel ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... couldn't escape—Edith Curzon, a great big brunette whom I knew Jack had been pretty soft on, and little Mabel Moore, a nice roly-poly blonde, and it didn't take me long to see that they were watching Jack with a hair-pulling itch in their finger-tips. In fact, it looked to me as if the young scamp was a good deal more popular than the facts about him, as I knew them, warranted him ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... inferior to him in quality, but, their lot and circumstances being the same, it was decidedly a mistake to make the others feel their inferiority, and, as I think, a mark of ill breeding to boot. His few words were sneers, and he had a contemptuous way of looking at a man that made one itch to thrash him. At length he was thrashed, and very smartly, by a man in our dormitory, and after that he was utterly ignored, by general consent. It happened ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... down, there was apparently not a mosquito in the woods; but the "no-see-ems," as Thoreau's Indian aptly named the midges, soon found us out, and after the fire had gone down annoyed us very much. My hands and wrists suddenly began to smart and itch in a most unaccountable manner. My first thought was that they had been poisoned in some way. Then the smarting extended to my neck and face, even to my scalp, when I began to suspect what was the matter. So, wrapping myself up more thoroughly, ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... good thing for John, don't you think,' said Rose briskly, covering a parish library book the while in a way which made Catherine's fingers itch to take it from her, 'and for us? It's some use having a ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... ashamed of such maladies as affect others, and are either dangerous or disagreeable to them. Of the epilepsy; because it gives a horror to every one present: Of the itch; because it is infectious: Of the king's-evil; because it commonly goes to posterity. Men always consider the sentiments of others in their judgment of themselves. This has evidently appeared in some of the foregoing ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... reasons, sleeping out in the open on fine nights, it was, according to them, because I wished to spare the tent to sell it again at a higher price when I returned home! They discussed these things in a high voice and in a most offensive way, making my hands itch on many occasions and my blood boil. But I had made up my mind that I would never lose my temper with them, nor my calm; and I never did, trying as it was ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... itch, and you endeavor to escape contact, you will stand in fear of distressing results when your endeavors will ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... in practice he is still an infant; striving presumptuously in boyhood to live an angel, now that he comes to die he is hardly a man. And Solomon himself is no more than man; the truth-compelling ring extorts the confession that an itch of vanity still tickles and teazes him; the Queen of Sheba, seeker for wisdom and patroness of culture, after all likes wisdom best when its exponents are young men tall and proper, and prefers to the solution of the riddles of life by elderly monarchs one small kiss from a fool. Lilith in ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... causes your shade to appear before his sacred tribunal, and according as the number of the dead whom you have raised to life is judged sufficient or not, as the touch of your tibia or coccyx has cured the itch or scrofula or not, ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... child, and made more so by the disgust with which the Spanish roadside bill-of-fare inspired the more civilized French stomach. They were forced to make a part of the journey in wagons with the common soldiery and camp-retainers, and Aurore in this manner took the itch, to her mother's great mortification. Arrived at Nohant, however, the care of Deschartres, joined to a self-imposed regime of green lemons, which the little girl devoured, skins, seeds, and all, soon healed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... and sought his mat, while the Hunter continued to look down on the unholy feast in the bowels of the earth, with an itch to send a bullet smashing into the midst of ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... Touch — N. itching, pruritis [Med.] &c v.; titillation, formication^, aura; stereognosis^. V. itch, tingle, creep, thrill, sting; prick, prickle; tickle, titillate. Adj. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... tall climbing plant of the West Indies and other warm climates. It is called the cowage, or cow-itch, on account of the seed pods being covered with short brittle hairs, the points of which are finely serrated, causing an unbearable itching when applied to the skin, which is relieved by rubbing the part with oil. It is employed as a vermifuge. In East Africa it is called Kitedzi. The sea ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders
... which they stand? Courage, that a poor private carrying a musket has to spare of; that does not fail a weasel or a rat; that is a brutish faculty? I to fail there, I wonder? But what is courage, then? The constancy to endure oneself or to see others suffer? The itch of ill-advised activity: mere shuttle-wittedness, or to be still and patient? To inquire of the significance of words is to rob ourselves of what we seem to know, and yet, of all things, certainly to stand still is the least heroic. Nance," he said, "did ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mules with their great brass frontlets and trappings seem proud to carry them; no wonder men itch to be soldiers;" and in the midst of this innocent admiration the troop ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... self-confident system of the ancients, that kept the world dark so many centuries. It is [Greek] versus Induction. "[Greek]," ladies, is "divination by means of an ass's skull." A pettifogger's skull, however, will serve the turn, provided that pettifogger has been bitten with an insane itch for scribbling about things so infinitely above his capacity as the fine arts. Avoid this sordid dreamer, and follow, in letters as in science, the Baconian method! Then you will find that all uninspired narratives ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... Agathon's. Perhaps some day—but no, I am not one To clip my wings, and wind about my feet A net, whose self-made meshes are as stern As they are soft. To me is ever present The outer world with its untravelled paths, The wanderer's dream, the itch to see new things. A single tie could never bind me fast, For life, this joyous, busy, ever-changing life, Is only dear to me with liberty, With space of earth for feet to travel in And space ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... educated men then fell mainly into two classes. One class would be always thrusting themselves forward with unprovoked argumentation to cut to pieces all belief in God. Like the hunter whose hands itch, no sooner he spies a living creature on the top or at the foot of a tree, to kill it, whenever these came to learn of a harmless belief lurking anywhere in fancied security, they felt stirred up to sally forth and demolish it. We had for a short time a tutor of whom this was a ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... to him!" cried the little fat man. "It is even thus, Dicon! Wit, lad, is a catching thing, like the itch or the sweating sickness. I exude it round me; it is an aura. I tell you, coz, that no man can come within seventeen feet of me without catching a spark. Look at your own case. A duller man never stepped, and yet within the week you have said three things ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Tetter (Herps), Scald head, Milk scald, Plant poisoning, Hives, Mosquito bites, Small burns or scratches, Barbers' Itch, Parasitic diseases, Scaly or scabby eruptions of the skin, Itching piles, Acne, Psoriasis, Pimples, Blackheads, Cracked hands and lips, etc. A perfect antiseptic ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... I'd quit working," said E. Eliot. "I said I'd quit business. That's another thing. There's plenty of real work in the world that won't earn you a living. Lord! Don't I see it going by right here in this office! There are things I just itch to get my hands into, and I have to wait and tell myself 'some day, perhaps!' There's a thing I'd like to do now, and that's to take a hand in this political campaign for district attorney. It would kill my business deader than Pharaoh's ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... ideal condition," said Mr. Gordon with enthusiasm. "My feet itch to be off on the webs myself. After breakfast we will try them out. Now remember the rules I have been telling you, and see how well you can all learn ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson
... season, when manchets and mantequillas abound in Seville; and I was so well supplied with them, that many an Antonio was pawned or sold that I might breakfast. In short, I spent a student's life, without hunger or itch, and that is saying everything for it; for if hunger and itch were not identified with the student's life, there would be none more agreeable in the world; since virtue and pleasure go hand in hand through it, and it is passed in learning and taking diversion. This happy life ended too soon ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the alcalde, who will quickly render them harmonious by laughing at the matter of the quarrel. Let him handle books, but not cards. [110] Let him [not] direct the Indians in the government of his village, but let him leave them to those who govern them; for the wish to command is a sort of itch in Filipinas. Consequently, let him leave to each one the care of what God has given him. Let him check sins, but not lawful games and amusements, since thereby other and illicit amusements will be prevented. Let him eradicate drunkenness, but not prohibit ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... says, "of the decadence of contemporary literature is found, to my thinking, in the vice which has been very graphically called effectism, or the itch of awaking at all cost in the reader vivid and violent emotions, which shall do credit to the invention and originality of the writer. This vice has its roots in human nature itself, and more particularly ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... man of eccentric dress, much given to talking to himself—particularly as he wandered about the streets of Richmond. The gallery of the House loved him from the first for his funny habit of scratching his arm when the itch of eloquence attacked him. And he always addressed the Speaker as "Mr. Cheerman." They loved him particularly for that. The eccentric Judge had a peculiarly fierce antipathy to Foote. Words of defiance had passed between them on more than one ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... say to the children of Israel, "Go and prepare a bath for us unto the delight of our flesh and our bones." Therefore they were doomed to suffer with boils that inflamed their flesh, and on account of the itch they could not leave off scratching. While the Egyptians suffered thus, the children of Israel ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... for this malady may be coined in Esperanto: malsano lingvotrudema officious or intrusive disease, consisting in an itch for coining language. ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... To-morrow, at dawn, when the slaves are at work in the peristyle, I can make myself heard; then I can go forth and seek her. I shall be sure to find and bring her back, before Arbaces knows a word of the matter. Ah! that's the best plan. Little traitress, my fingers itch at thee: and to leave only a bowl of water, too! Had it been wine, it would have been ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... and provoke naughty interrogatories in more naughty law Latin; while the good judge, tickled with the proceeding, simpers under a grey beard, and fidges off and on his cushion as if he had swallowed cantharides, or sate upon cow-itch. ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... caused by nettles produces effects analogous to those which are observed in persons afflicted with the itch, the ring-worm and leprosy. The lubricity of those unfortunates is sometimes uncontrolable; they suffer violent priapisms, which are followed by ejaculation, whenever a severe itching forces them to scratch themselves with a kind ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... prayin' too much, I reckon, when a man's a d——d hippercrit, is 'bout as bad as swearin'. But, I tell you, the decent folks up North haint ablisheners. They look on 'em jest as we do on mad dogs, the itch, or the nigger traders. ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... make up for that in prayin'—and prayin' too much, I reckon, when a man's a d—d hippercrit, is 'bout as bad as swearin'. But I tell you, the decent folks up North han't ab'lisheners. They look on 'em jest as we do on mad dogs, the itch, or the nigger-traders. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... instructor or idea but those of parasitism. She was honest and earnest, was eager to learn the truth. She might be put to some use. At any rate he had been unworthy of his own ideals when he, assuming without question that she was the usual capitalistic snob with the itch for gratifying vanity by patronizing the "poor dear lower classes," had been ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... hath naught to say to thee," replied Birnier, "but the fingers of Tarum will to make thee to itch even as his fingers." ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... visit there were in the infirmary 7 men laid up: 1 with itch, 1 with diarrhoea, 1 with neuralgia, 1 with an abscess in the neck, 1 with articular rheumatism, and 1 with gastritis. A prisoner who had been trepanned by the doctors on account of damage done to his skull before his capture, was gradually recovering ...
— Turkish Prisoners in Egypt - A Report By The Delegates Of The International Committee - Of The Red Cross • Various
... the midst of its career, and robbed of its chosen object; and what is painful is to have an organ lacerated or destroyed when it is still vigorous, and not ready for its natural sleep and dissolution. We must not confuse the itch which our unsatisfied instincts continue to cause with the pleasure of satisfying and dismissing each of them in turn. Could they all be satisfied harmoniously we should be satisfied once for all and completely. Then ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... stuck close to him All on the road from Moscow. There was Tormazow and Jemalow, And all the others that end in ow; Milarodovitch and Jaladovitch, And Karatschkowitch, And all the others that end in itch; Schamscheff, Souchosaneff, And Schepaleff, And all the others that end in eff: Wasiltschikoff, Kotsomaroff, And Tchoglokoff, And all the others that end in off; Rajeffsky, and Novereffsky, And Rieffsky, And all the others that end in effsky; ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... scalp, such as ringworm and dandruff, are due to other forms of vegetable germs, and may be cured by their proper poisons; while others, such as the so-called "prairie itch" (scabies), and lice in the hair, are due to the presence of ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... were crawling about emaciated creatures covered with loathsome sores, living heaven knows how. They were called by the common name of lepers, and probably the leprosy strictly so called was awfully common. But the children must have swarmed with vermin; and the itch, and the scurvy, and the ringworm, with other hideous eruptions, must have played fearful havoc with the ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... to see them again," Frank exclaimed eagerly. "Addington, I can write a monograph on those flying-maidens that will make the whole world gasp. This is the greatest discovery of modern times. Man alive, don't you itch to get to paper ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... was going on a journey, too. In his trotting around after Harriet, while Mother was telephoning a last good-by to some friend, he found a square white box on the parlor table, neatly tied with red string—one of that mysterious kind that makes your fingers fairly itch to untie the string and look inside. Sunny Boy went in ...
— Sunny Boy in the Country • Ramy Allison White
... might have been scared, but he had the kale-itch in his fingers. "All I know," says he, "is that Loppy allus goes into the William Street lobby ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... indeed when they do come, and it seldom rains but it pours, the identical afternoon of the lecture a strange lady descended from the Rouen Accommodation and was greeted on the platform by the wealthiest citizen of the county. Judge Briscoe, and his daughter, Minnie, and (what stirred wonder to an itch almost beyond endurance) Mr. Fisbee! and they then drove through town on the way to the Briscoe mansion, all four, apparently, in a fluster of pleasure and exhilaration, the strange lady engaged in earnest conversation with Mr. ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... no Disorder so common in the military Hospitals as the Itch. It is of an infectious Nature, and now most commonly believed to be entirely owing to little Insects lodged in the Skin, which many Authors affirm they have seen in the Pustules by the Help of a Microscope; ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... Kamalgata is the seed of the lotus; gai ka matha is buttermilk; nagar sowasan, 'the happiness of the town,' is turmeric, because married women whose husbands are alive put turmeric on their foreheads every day; khaj, dad and sehua are itch, ringworm and some kind of rash, perhaps measles; ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... the heath; Dare in the teeth Of the balk and the failure; The clasp and the linger Of loosening finger, Loth to dissever; Thrill of the comrade heart to its fellow Through droughts that sicken and blasts that bellow From purple furrow to harvest yellow, Now and forever. How our feet itch to keep time to their measure! How our hearts lift to the lilt of their song! Let the world go, for a day's royal pleasure! Not every ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... common habit is the one so frequently heard,—a little laugh when there is no feeling of merriment and no occasion for it.) Motor activity discharges tension and is pleasurable and these tics furnish a momentary pleasure; they relieve a feeling that some of the victims compare to an itch and the habit thus is based on a seeking of relief, even though that relief is obtained in a way that distresses the more settled purposes of ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... all the magnificence of Kings and Chronicles, turned Dr. Frank Crane and so botched his Writ with Proverbs.... A weakness that we must allow for. Whenever Dreiser, abandoning his fundamental scepticism, yields to the irrepressible human (and perhaps also divine) itch to label, to moralize, to teach, he becomes a bit absurd. Observe "The 'Genius,'" and parts of "A Hoosier Holiday" and of "A Traveler at Forty," and of "Plays of the Natural and the Supernatural." But in this very absurdity, it ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... of venereal disease, which we will describe in a few words. To these may be added certain parasites, such as crab-lice and the itch, which are easily communicated by sexual intercourse with infected persons, but also ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... absolutely essential in the Middle Ages when every one wore wool; the result of the common use of linen had been at first to put them out of fashion; under Louis XVI. they were coming in again. The itch, so common in Auvergne early in the century that in the schools a separate bench was set apart for the pupils who had it, was almost unknown in 1786. Leprosy had nearly disappeared from France before the end of the seventeenth century. The plague ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... gold in the sunbeam; then it replied, "A conscience dark, either with its own or with another's shame, will indeed feel thy speech as harsh; but nevertheless, all falsehood laid aside, make thy whole vision manifest, and let the scratching be even where the itch is; for if at the first taste thy voice shall be molestful, afterwards, when it shall be digested, it will leave vital nourishment. This cry of thine shall do as the wind, which heaviest strikes the loftiest summits; and that will be no little argument of honor. Therefore ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... Europe, and to every spot of the earth where a villain may hope to find refuge from justice, can at all doubt that they are most distressingly affected in their heels with a species of running itch? ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... I had some painful minutes. As they dragged by, an abominable curiosity took hold of me, an itch to open the door of the shed, strike a match, and have a look at the dead face I had never seen. Then came into my mind a passage in the Republic which I had read a fortnight before—how that one Leontius, the son of Aglaion, ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... India" (No. 5) has puzzled the commentators. It is probably not the true reading; if the true reading, it may only mean a Nettle of extra-stinging quality; but it may also mean an Eastern plant that was used to produce cowage, or cow-itch. "The hairs of the pods of Mucuna pruriens, &c., constitute the substance called cow-itch, a mechanical Anthelmintic."—LINDLEY. This plant is said to have been called the Nettle of India, but I do not find it so named in ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... of our lives fill a great part of them with the uneasinesses of hunger, thirst, heat, cold, weariness, with labour, and sleepiness, in their constant returns, &c. To which, if, besides accidental harms, we add the fantastical uneasiness (as itch after honour, power, or riches, &c.) which acquired habits, by fashion, example, and education, have settled in us, and a thousand other irregular desires, which custom has made natural to us, we shall find ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... not say it in that fashion;—that's easy. You must say it at some moment when the itch of play is on you; when there shall be no one by to hear: when the resolution if held, shall have some meaning in it. Then say, 'there's that money which I had from old Grey. I am bound to pay it. But if I go in there I know ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... "I am slow as the itch about sewing, and these are not going to be plain dresses when it comes to making them. There are going to be edgings of plain green, pink, and brown to the bias strips, and tucks and pleats around the hips, fancy belts and collars, and all ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... had my HEDDUS roll on. Aunt Storer said it ought to be made less, Aunt Deming said it ought not to be made at all. It makes my head ach and burn and itch like anything Mama. This famous Roll is not made wholly of a Red-Cow Tail but is a mixture of that & horsehair very coarse & a little human hair of a yellow hue that I suppose was taken out of the back part of an old wig. But D. (the barber) made it, all carded together ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... course, quite a different matter. This objection is a mere childish prejudice reinforced by outworn superstitions. The religious terror excited by certain formidable free-thinkers and anti-social philosophers in earlier days went much deeper than this, and was quite free from that mere prurient itch of perverted sensuality which inspires the Puritans ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... was waiting for him, engine idling, at the curb. He got in, tossing his briefcase and topcoat ahead of him to the far side of the front seat. His back began to itch, insistently, and he rubbed it against ...
— Double Take • Richard Wilson
... seen cowards turn pale, but never the colour washed from a brave man's face. The sight made my fingers itch to ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... a man who is at all tainted with the itch of gaming to leave off play in such a situation, especially when he is likewise heated with liquor, I leave to the gamester to determine. Certain it is that Booth had no inclination to desist; but, on the ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... Indian who has set a trap for eagles, and is watching it, would not eat rosebuds on any account; for he argues that if he did so, and an eagle alighted near the trap, the rosebuds in his own stomach would make the bird itch, with the result that instead of swallowing the bait the eagle would merely sit and scratch himself. Following this train of thought the eagle hunter also refrains from using an awl when he is looking after his snares; for surely if he were to scratch with ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... however, destined moreover to place my friends in anxiety and trouble by means of a prank in which I indulged. Among us young people who had been at Leipzig, there had been maintained ever afterwards a certain itch for imposing on and in some way mystifying one another. With this wanton love of mischief I wrote to a friend in Frankfort (he was the one who had amplified my poem on the cake-baker Hendel, applied it to /Medon/, and caused its general circulation) a letter dated from Versailles, in which ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... in a pun". 'Mr. W. is so notorious a punster, that Doctor Goldsmith used to say, it was impossible to keep him company, without being 'infected' with the 'itch of punning'.' ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... hilt, and was all pulse and granite. Then he began to talk in his quiet way about hunting and fishing; about stalking in the Highlands and tiger-hunting in India; and wound up with some wonderful stuff about moose-hunting, the sport of Canada. This made me itch like sin, just to get my fingers on a trigger, with a full moose-yard in view. I can feel it now—the bound in the blood as I caught at Malbrouck's arm and said: 'By George, I must kill moose; that's sport for Vikings, and I was meant to be a Viking—or a gladiator.' ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... perspire that way, in rivers, there comes a time when you—when you—well, when you itch. You are inside, your hands are outside; so there you are; nothing but iron between. It is not a light thing, let it sound as it may. First it is one place; then another; then some more; and it goes on spreading and spreading, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... his right hand and honor and riches in his left hand, but whenever I open dat left hand dere is nothin' in it. 'Spect dat promise is comin' tho', when de old age pension money gits down here from Washington. When you 'spect it is comin'? De palm of my hand sho' begin to itch for dat greenback money. So you think it's on de way? Well, thank God for dat but it seem 'most too good to be true. Now I'll quit askin' questions and just set here and smoke and answer, whilst you do de puttin' down on ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... true master if the town but knew! {40} We merely kept a governor for form, While this man walked about and took account Of all thought, said and acted, then went home, And wrote it fully to our Lord the King Who has an itch to know things, he knows why, And reads them in his bedroom of a night. Oh, you might smile! there wanted not a touch, A tang of. . .well, it was not wholly ease, As back into your mind the man's ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... for skull That's empty when the moon is full; 160 Such as take lodgings in a head That's to be let unfurnished. He could raise scruples dark and nice, And after solve 'em in a trice; As if Divinity had catch'd 165 The itch, on purpose to be scratch'd; Or, like a mountebank, did wound And stab herself with doubts profound, Only to show with how small pain The sores of Faith are cur'd again; 170 Although by woeful proof we find, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... stay at his own homestead, and not take mastership here, to trouble us with his humours ere the portion be his. His younger brother Oliver is worth a whole pack of such down-looked, smooth-faced hypocrites. Oliver Chadwyck is the boy for a snug quarrel. His fingers itch for a drubbing, and he scents a feud as a crow scents out carrion. The other—mercy on me!—is fit for nought but to be bed-ridden and priest-ridden like his father and his mother ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... the gentle swine, To ease her itch against the stump, And dismally was heard to whine, All as ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... him almost frantic, by rubbing his handkerchief which always laid by his side, and with which he was accustomed to wipe his face every five minutes (for he was profuse in his perspiration), with what is called cow-itch: not being aware of what was the cause, he wiped his face more and more, until he was as red as a peony, and the ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... dangerously ill with the gout in his stomach. We understood that cultivation was nearly at a stand there. The grounds were so over-run with two great enemies to agriculture, rats, and a pernicious weed called cow-itch*, that the settlers despaired of ever being able to ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... reached the interior of Mrs. Ch'in's apartments. As soon as they got in, a very faint puff of sweet fragrance was wafted into their nostrils. Pao-yue readily felt his eyes itch and his bones grow weak. "What a fine smell!" he exclaimed several ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... stink!" Ramos once laughed. "They must be rotten. They're sore, and they itch something awful, and I can't scratch them, or change my socks, even. The fungus, I guess. Just ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... like so many good men, he has been dead now many months. His words, which have proved true, were the first to turn my mind definitely to war-thoughts. Besides, the man whose trade is writing has always, when events are stirring, the itch to ...
— With Botha in the Field • Eric Moore Ritchie
... says: "Poca barba e niun colore, sotto il cielo non vi ha peggiore" (There is nothing worse under Heaven than a scanty beard and a colourless face), and in Piedmont there is a saying, "Faccia smorta, peggio che scabbia" (An ashen face is worse than the itch). The Venetians have a number of proverbs expressing distrust of the criminal type: "Uomo rosso e femina barbuta da lontan xe megio la saluta" (Greet from afar the red-haired man and the bearded woman); "Vardete da chi te parla e guarda in la, e vardete da chi tiene i oci bassi e da ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... there was such lovely moonlight along the river and on the snow that I was taken with an itch for movement, and I walked for two hours and a half imagining all sorts of things, pretending that I was travelling in Russia or in Norway. When the tide came in and cracked the cakes of ice in the Seine and ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... from half a crown to three or four shillings. The goodwife was fond of it because her betters made use of tea; a pound of it would last her a month, which made her breakfast very cheap, so she made no account of the sugar which she took up only in ounces. In short, the itch spread; the refuse of the vilest teas were run into this country from Holland, sold and bought at the prices I have mentioned; and at present there are very few cobblers in any of the burghs of this country who do not sit down gravely with their ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... him at the tip of the snout. When replaced in his cage, the Mole keeps on scratching his nose with his broad paws. The thing seems to burn, to itch. Henceforth, less and less of the provision of Cicadae is consumed; on the evening of the following day, it is refused altogether. About thirty-six hours after being bitten, the Mole dies during the night and certainly not from inanition, for there are still half a dozen live Cicadae ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... Where 's George the Third? Where is his will? (That 's not so soon unriddled.) And where is 'Fum' the Fourth, our 'royal bird?' Gone down, it seems, to Scotland to be fiddled Unto by Sawney's violin, we have heard: 'Caw me, caw thee'—for six months hath been hatching This scene of royal itch and loyal scratching. ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... with vinegar, it heals the itch certainly: As to other uses the swelling bunches, which are now and then found in the old trees, afford the inlayer pieces curiously chambletted, and very hard, &c. but the faggots better for the fire, than for the draining of grounds by placing them (as the guise ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... you're to keep that as a little present. You've no idea how perfectly it suits you just like this." And having satisfied for the moment her sense of niceness and that continual itch to part with everything she had, she surveyed her granddaughter, lighted up by that red flower, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... that means anything. I've seen grizzlies bite hunks out o' trees an' scratch 'em just as a cat might, an' in the summer when they get itchy an' begin to lose their hair they stand up an' rub against trees. They rub because they itch an' not because they're leavin' their cards for other bears. Caribou an' moose an' deer do the same thing to get ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... theory. We infer from his language that speculation in his day was active respecting the causes of this plague, according to the vague and fanciful physics, and scanty stock of ascertained facts, which was all that could then be consulted. By resisting the itch of theorizing from one of those loose hypotheses which then appeared plausibly to explain everything, he probably renounced the point of view from which most credit and interest would be derivable at ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... not for United States troops, these beautiful objects would be mutilated by relic-hunters. Hence, another duty of our soldiers is to watch the formations constantly, lest tourists should break off specimens, and ruin them forever, and lest still more ignoble vandals, whose fingers itch for notoriety, should write upon these glorious works of nature their worthless names, and those of the towns unfortunate enough to have produced them. All possible measures are taken to prevent this vandalism. ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... hand was endeavouring to look as if she were totting up figures. As the pages were blank this was a little difficult. And it was difficult to sit there quiet. She wanted to get down and go and chat with the guest; she felt she had quite a good deal she could say to him; she had a great itch to go and talk, but Mr. Twist had been particular that to begin with, till the room was fairly full, he and she should leave the guests ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... they burst into the redoubt after it was found that the Browns had gone, all, even the judge's son, were the war demon's, own. The veneer had been warped and twisted and burned off down to the raw animal flesh. Their brains had the fever itch of callouses forming. Not a sign of brown there in the yard; not a sign of any tribute after all they had endured! They had not been able to lay hands on the murderous throwers of hand-grenades. Far ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... a kind of man afflicted with an itch to put all he sees on paper. What's the use? Fifty men might sit down and write what the grey of a badger's like; and they can't, because there's no words for it. All they can say is that 'tis badger's-grey—which means nought to a man that hasn't seen one; and a man that has don't want to be ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... origin, though the result of eating this is rather to provoke dyspepsia than to prevent it. Formerly, in the East, these seeds were in use as part payment of taxes: "Ye pay tithe of mint, anise [dill?], and cummin!" The oil destroys lice and the itch insect, for which purpose it may be mixed with lard or spermaceti as an ointment. The seed has been used for smoking, so as to ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... and tastes they could not satisfy without our aid; and they knew these men would very soon desert them unless they received occasionally alluring presents to make them contented. But finessing is a kind of itch with all Orientals, as gambling is with those who are addicted to it; and they would tell any lie rather than gain their object easily by the simple truth, on the old principle that "stolen things are sweetest." Had Bombay only ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... fume. All is over. Look out, see the gipsy, Our tinker and smith, Has arrived, set up bellows and forge, And down-squatted forthwith To his hammering, under the wall there; One eye keeps aloof The urchins that itch to be putting His jews'-harps to proof, 240 While the other, thro' locks of curled wire, Is watching how sleek Shines the hog, come to share in the windfall —Chew, abbot's own cheek! All is over. Wake up and come out now, And down ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... with a cheaper kind mixed in. Inferior brown sugars are often full of a certain crab-like animalcule or minute bug, often visible without a microscope, in water where the sugar is dissolved. It is believed that this pleasing insect sometimes gets into the skin, and produces a kind of itch. I do not believe there is much danger of adulteration in good loaf or crushed white sugar, or ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... in the direction of Matammeh, some lying down with their ears to the ground to hear the farther. But all was still as the desert only can be, and the great battle which was expected had certainly not yet begun. But expectation of a fight excites men, and if at a distance they itch to be in it, this feeling even actuating men who fail to show any particular heroism ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... as heavy as is the catalogue given by another philosopher of the number of authors he mastered before his twelfth year. Two attacks of the plague, agues, tertian and quotidian, malignant ulcers, hernia, haemorrhoids, varicose veins, palpitation of the heart, gout, indigestion, the itch, and foulness of skin. Relief in the second attack of plague came from a sweat so copious that it soaked the bed and ran in streams down to the floor; and, in a case of continuous fever, from voiding ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... Night found us faint and spent and ravenous for water and none to be found, and to add further to our agonies, these accursed flies were all about us still, singing and humming, and whose bite set up a tickling itch, so that what with these and our thirst we ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... men who had been left without women were anxious to procure some, and one day saw the shape of human beings sliding down the trees, whom they could not catch. But by employing four men who had rough hands from a disease like the itch, these four ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... ancient capitals, a breath blown from the festering lips of half-forgotten harlots, a stench from the sepulcher of centuries devoid of shame. Uncle Sam may now proceed to fumigate himself after his enforced association with royal bummers and brazen bawds; may comb the Bradley-Martin itch bacteria out of his beard, and consider, for the ten-thousandth time, the probable result of his strange commingling of royalty- worshiping millionaire and sansculottic mendicant—how best to put a ring in the nose of the golden calf ere it become a Phalaris bull and relegate him to its belly. ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... Lord, my teeth do—itch! He's going to give me a welcome on my arrival, he surely is,—a fisty welcome! He's a kind-hearted soul, I do believe. Seeing how master's kept me awake all night, he's going to up with his fists now and put me to sleep. Oh, I'm dead entirely! For God's sake look at the ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... any taste in dress. Her skirts were always awry, and she frequently scratched herself, no matter on what part of her person, totally indifferent as to who might see her, and so persistently, that anyone who saw her might think that she was suffering from something like the itch. The only adornments that she allowed herself were silk ribbons, which she had in great profusion, and of various colors mixed together, in the pretentious caps which she wore ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... excellent scholar [one that hath a head fill'd with calves' brains without any sage in them,] come crouching in the hams to you for a night's lodging? [that hath an itch in 's hams, which like the fire at the glass-house hath not gone out this seven years] Is he not a courtly gentleman? [when he wears white satin, one would take him by his black muzzle to be no other creature than a maggot] You are a goodly foil, I ...
— The White Devil • John Webster |
