"Nervous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tormentor still haunted me, and loaded me with reproaches. "And is this all the gratitude I am to expect from you, Mr. Schlemihl—you, whom I have been watching all the weary day, until you should recover from your nervous attack? What a fool's part I have been enacting! It is of no use flying from me, Mr. Perverse—we are inseparable—you have my gold, I have your shadow; this exchange deprives us both of peace. Did you ever hear of a man's shadow leaving ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... would never have got this deposition. Cobb wouldn't have been the first to weaken, you may be sure of that. But after she had told the whole story, why, there was no use in holding out. Badly burned? No, strange to say, she was not badly burned, but frightened out of her wits. The nervous shock was too much for her and soon led to fatal results. ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller
... been about her health. It was all that her utmost exertions could accomplish, to appear for a short time in the day—some evenings she came into company only for half an hour, on other days only for a few minutes, just walked through the rooms, paid her compliments to every body, complained of a nervous head-ache, left Belinda to do the honours for ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... was enormous. He ate heavy meat three times a day, but took little or no exercise. The pimples on his face became worse and worse. He grew peevish and nervous. He hated girls, and when in their society was a very bull-calf for bashfulness and awkward self-consciousness. At times the strangest and most morbid fancies took possession of him, chief of which was that every one was looking at him while he was ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... to convey the intelligence to the King of Arles. The baron was himself too much excited with the momentous results at last developed, and the still more momentous sequel already shadowed forth in the uncertain future, to remark the nervous and somewhat jaded appearance of his son. His first words, after hastily ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... commissioners of the board of admiralty, distinguished himself by a noble flow of eloquence, adorned with all the graces of oratory, and warmed with the true spirit of patriotism. Mr. Oswald, of the treasury, acquitted himself with great honour on the occasion; ever nervous, steady, and sagacious, independent though in office, and invariable in pursuing the interest of his country. It must be owned, for the honour of North Britain, that all her representatives, except two, warmly ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... instances are upon record of half-crazed persons being found muttering the spells which were supposed to raise the evil one. When religion and law alike recognised the crime, it is no wonder that the weak in reason and the strong in imagination, especially when they were of a nervous temperament, fancied themselves endued with the terrible powers of which all the world was speaking. The belief of their neighbours did not lag behind their own, and execution was ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... like it, the flies bite so, and the hens are cackling. I wanted to go fishing, but I couldn't find a single worm. Don't you feel rather nervous? ...
— Plays: Comrades; Facing Death; Pariah; Easter • August Strindberg
... were troubled eyes, troubled with possible joy, troubled also with the dark feelings of anger. The husband's, on the contrary, were calm and steady. No strong hope was visiting them, but despair, even disquietude, seemed miles away. Presently the wife's small nervous fingers were stretched out to meet her husband's, his closed over them, he turned his head, met her anxious face, smiled ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... the old man with this new happiness in his heart, through which a procession of various-hued women had worn a path during the forty years of his taking in marriage one month and taking leave the next. Dad wasn't nervous over his prospects, but calm and calculative, as became his age. Mackenzie went smiling now and then as he thought of the team the black nondescript and ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... gentlemen. For Sir Harry Hartman was persuaded that it was Delafield that needed protection, and was inclined to make little of John Hewlett's warning, thinking that it rested on the authority of a sick nervous woman, and that there was no distinct evidence but that of the young man who would not speak out, and only ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... can.... Why will you triumph and talk of platte couture? You have friends on both sides. Smith agrees with me in thinking that you are turned soft by the delices of the French Court, and that you don't write in that nervous manner you was remarkable for in the more northern climates. Besides, what is still worse, you take your politics from your Elliots, ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... in. He was very dapper in a new tailcoat and a flower in his buttonhole. He was very nervous, too, for he was to give the address of the day. He pulled a small box from ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... road, and note the tracks in the thin layer of mud. When do these creatures travel here? I have never yet chanced to meet one. Here a partridge has set its foot; there, a woodcock; here, a squirrel or mink; thee, a skunk; there, a fox. What a clear, nervous track reynard makes! how easy to distinguish it from that of a little dog,—it is so sharply cut and defined! A dog's track is coarse and clumsy beside it. There is as much wildness in the track of an animal as in its voice. Is a deer's track like a sheep's or a goat's? What winged-footed ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... general nervous disturbance, Aconite and Bell. should be given alternately, as often as every half hour, and the Aconite should be given in appreciable doses; it acts powerfully as an anodyne. The soap treatment, or at least, the mode of applying it was first suggested to me ...
— An Epitome of Homeopathic Healing Art - Containing the New Discoveries and Improvements to the Present Time • B. L. Hill
... of yesterday, they jumped on them and murdered them. I heard that other regiments had also revolted; but there were so many rumors afloat that it was not easy to know what to believe. About four in the afternoon, I started for home and found the Nevski full of frightened and nervous people, and hardly any soldiers. No one seemed to know what to expect. Sounds of shooting were heard and they were explained as the battle between the regiments that had revolted and those that had remained loyal. In the distance columns of smoke were seen and report ...
— The Russian Revolution; The Jugo-Slav Movement • Alexander Petrunkevitch, Samuel Northrup Harper,
... Behind this resplendent image came the other priests, two and two, wearing their white satin embroidered robes, chanting the sacred mysteries. Father Carillo walked last and alone. His thin clever face wore an expression of nervous exaltation. ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... into nothing more dangerous than a woman's eyes and grew strangely softer all at once. His mouth had been a hard, tight line under a scrubby upper lip, but his lips had parted now a little and his smile was a boy's—not nervous or mischievous—a ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... remarked the same want of gaiety amongst the Indians of America; and some of them ascribe it to the small development of the nervous system prevalent among these peoples, to which cause also they attribute their wonderful courage in bearing pain. But Tylor observes that the Indian's countenance is so different from ours that it takes us several years to rightly interpret ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... fast asleep. As for Sneezer, he lay with his black muzzle resting on his fore paws, which were thrust out straight before him, until they almost stirred up the white embers of the fire; with his eyes shut, and apparently asleep, but from the constant nervous twitchings and pricking up of his ears, and his haunches being gathered up well under him, and a small quick switch of his tail now and then, it was evident he was broad awake, and considered himself on duty. All continued quiet ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... out-of-doors, it was very odd how it affected him to hear the birds sing. Whenever they began their songs, all sorts of nervous twitchings would come over him, and he would lick his lips and make convulsive movements with his hands; and his attention would become so distracted that he would quite lose the thread of his discourse if he ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth
... her and was more aware of her. She almost seemed a little ashamed of the scene with the piano. She spoke to Karen of it, flushing a little, explaining that she had slept badly and that Karen's rendering of the Bach had made her nervous, emphasizing, too, the rule, new in its explicitness, that the grand piano was only to be played on by Karen when it was left open. "You did not understand. But it is well to understand rules, is it not, my child?" said ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... much of him." This was said in a tone of voice which ought to have sufficed for curing any anxiety in Ralph's bosom respecting his rival. Had he not been sore and nervous, and, as it must be admitted, almost stupid in the matter, he could not but have gathered from that tone that his namesake was at least no favourite with Miss Bonner. "He used to be a great deal ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... the wedding should take place in the early spring at New York. When not on duty he naturally spent a good deal of his time there, and Harold was frequently with him. Since he had been fired at in the woods Isabelle had been in the highest state of nervous anxiety lest her lover's enemy should again try to assassinate him, and she begged Harold always to come over with him, if possible, as the thought of his riding alone through the wood filled her ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... left alone the engine will keep the tracks if he can keep his hand on the throttle and observe the signals. There are some bad signals up in the States. It is overrun with spies who know everything; the navy is in bad shape; the Mexican affair is on; they are nervous about Japan and they have no army. With a publicity bureau such as the Germans have, controlling many newspapers and magazines, the enemy can do a tremendous lot to alienate public sympathy from the allied cause, and until America is touched ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... The girl's nervous start filled Ann with dismay; for now she knew that the trouble rested with Horace. She waited for an answer to her question, and at length Fledra, crestfallen, ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... face would have been sacrilege, and in a helpless, nonplussed way, I kept gazing at the painful workings of the thin, frail fingers. That plucking of the wasted, trembling hands haunts me to this day; and never do I see the fingers of a nervous, sensitive woman working in that delirious, aimless fashion but it sets me wondering to what painful treatment from a brutalized nature she has been subjected, that her hands take on the tricks of one in the last stages of disease. It may be only the fancy of an old trader; but I dare ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... complexity of our life. Always, as an organism increases in perfection the conditions of its life become more complex. Man is the most complex of the products of nature. Character merges into temperament; the nervous system refines itself into intellect. His physical organism is played upon not only by the physical conditions about it, but by remote laws of inheritance, the vibrations of long past acts reaching him in the ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... of the serpent and trail, excepting the singular interest this woman managed to excite, and so deeply as set him wondering how that Resurrection Bell might be affecting her ability to sleep. Was she sleeping?—or waking? His nervous imagination was a torch that alternately lighted her lying asleep with the innocent, like a babe, and tossing beneath the overflow of her dark hair, hounded by haggard memories. She fluttered before him in either aspect; and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... these queer things seriously or laugh at them? From the little that I have seen, I hesitate to pronounce an opinion. Nothing tells us that the bite of the Tarantula may not provoke, in weak and very impressionable people, a nervous disorder which music will relieve; nothing tells us that a profuse perspiration, resulting from a very energetic dance, is not likely to diminish the discomfort by diminishing the cause of the ailment. So far from ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... be denied that among idle, nervous women to-day there is a tendency to take stimulants to excess, and even to ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... "And nervous enough was I to fly!" finished Fred, and went on: "Songbird, if you've got to make up poetry give us something cheerful. Can't you make up something about—er—about circus clowns, or ...
— The Rover Boys in Southern Waters - or The Deserted Steam Yacht • Arthur M. Winfield
... aren't hostile, captain. They seem worried, nervous ... kind of scared. If somebody at the top—the warden or yourself—could convince them things were as usual outside ... ...
— Criminal Negligence • Jesse Francis McComas
... her so vehemently that she was unable to continue and stood with her hand outstretched and her chin twitching with nervous tremors. ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... observed. "There's a draft here. It comes from the other grating. Sometime, when you have time, I'd like to see what's beyond it. I was kind of nervous about going alone." ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... to our own counsels ten minutes longer I believe I might have been tempted to waken the sergeant, which would have given him an opportunity to laugh at us because we had grown nervous over the absence of all danger-signs; but just then Peter Sitz approached, and I whispered to my comrade in a tone of relief that he and I were not the only ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... executed, not for publication, but as a guarantee of good faith, to soothe men, demands nerve. You must not hurry, you must not look nervous, though you know that you are a mark for every rifle within extreme range, and above all if you are smitten you must make as little noise as possible and roll inwards through the files. It is at this hour, when the breeze brings the first salt whiff of the powder to noses rather cold at the ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... those nervous fingers, of the muscles he had proved that morning at gymnastics, of the glittering eyes, the soft voice, and quivering jaws, convinced Vassenka better than any words. He bowed, shrugging his shoulders, and ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... and having fed and dressed Kelpie, strapped her blanket behind her saddle, and, by all the macadamized ways he could find, rode her to the wharf—near where the Thames tunnel had just been commenced. He had no great difficulty with her on the way, though it was rather nervous work at times. But of late her submission to her master had been decidedly growing. When he reached the wharf he rode her straight along the gangway on to the deck of the smack, as the easiest if not perhaps ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... the nervous witness of an affecting scene between his wife and her adopted parents. But no, the greetings were polite and formal. Asako's frock and jewellery were admired, but without that note of angry envy ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... not unfrequent, he seemed discomposed; and when we came to any bad part of the road, he immediately checked his course and walked his horse very slowly, though there really was nothing to make even a lady nervous. Finding that I could perfectly manage (or what he called bully) a very highly-dressed horse that I daily rode, he became extremely anxious to buy it; asked me a thousand questions as to how I had acquired such a perfect ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 20, No. 562, Saturday, August 18, 1832. • Various
... her inmost soul; but the very realization of an inward warning against it, urged her on. She put the key in the lock,—and hesitated; turned it slowly,—and hesitated again; then broke into a nervous little laugh, and tossed the ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... government hostile in the highest degree to the court of Great Britain, and in a state of preparation far exceeding what our cabinet had considered possible. Nelson advised that no time should be lost in attacking the enemy; and Sir Hyde Parker, who was "nervous about dark nights and fields of ice," having yielded to his persuasions, it was determined to force the passage of the Sound. This was done without great loss: on the 31st of March the fleet anchored between the isle ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... a very pretty sight to witness a pair of wood thrushes building their nest. Indeed, what is there about the wood thrush that is not pleasing? He is a kind of visible embodied melody. Some birds are so sharp and nervous and emphatic in their movements, as the common snowbird or junco, the flashing of whose white tail quills expresses the character of the bird. But all the ways of the wood thrush are smooth and gentle, and suggest the melody of its song. ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... the sob passing loudly down his father's throat and opened his eyes with a nervous impulse. The sunlight breaking suddenly on his sight turned the sky and clouds into a fantastic world of sombre masses with lakelike spaces of dark rosy light. His very brain was sick and powerless. He could scarcely interpret the letters of ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... face was more moist than usual, the buffalo-horn moustache more truculent; and though the autumn day was cool, Ito was agitating a fan. He was evidently nervous. Before approaching the sanctum, he had blown his nose into a small square piece of soft paper, which is the Japanese apology for a handkerchief. He had looked around for some place where to cast the offence; but finding none along the trim ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... has a distaste to new faces, to new books, to new buildings, to new customs. He is shy of all imposing appearances, of all assumptions of self-importance, of all adventitious ornaments, of all mechanical advantage, even to a nervous excess. It is not merely that he does not rely upon or ordinarily avail himself of them; he holds them in abhorrence, he utterly abjures and discards them, and places a great gulph between him and them. He disdains all the vulgar artifices ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... yelps and began circling around the fallen tree on which Sam was sitting. He went with what might be called a nervous gallop, frequently turning about and circumnavigating the lad and the log ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... the sermon to that unhappy object of interest in the front pew were many and pointed, his time had not really come until the minister signed to him to advance as far as the second step of the pulpit stairs. The nervous father clenched the railing in a daze, and cowered before the ministerial heckling. From warning the minister passed to exhortation, from exhortation to admonition, from admonition to searching questioning, from questioning to prayer ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... Violent nervous shudders shook his frame: his face became purple. He drew himself up, and, brandishing the letters which he held ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... lack of which was oddly supplied by the remnants of tapestried hangings, window-curtains, and shreds of pictures with which he had bedizened his tatters. His face, too, had lost its vacant and careless air, and the poor creature looked hollow-eyed, meagre, half-starved, and nervous to a pitiable degree. After long hesitation, he at length approached Waverley with some confidence, stared him sadly in the face, and said, 'A' dead and ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... "I am very ungrateful," she said, "but I cannot allow you to be placed in any danger on my account: you make me feel uncomfortable, if not nervous, and I am almost inclined to be angry ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... sit up for him, for he was detained till a late hour, but I obeyed the breakfast-bell with unfashionable eagerness, as I was becoming nervous about our meeting, and really anxious to have it over. After a delay of some minutes, I heard the wedded pair coming leisurely down the stairs, in, ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... thin, nervous hand extended to him, and held it with a grasp that sent courage into the heart of Judge Latimer. It was a hand that had guided bucking bronchos and held lassoed steers, and the man weary with life's ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... anatomy: we lawyers, of course, were the brains; the financial and industrial interests the body, helpless without us; the City Hall politicians, the stomach that must continually be fed. All three, law, politics and business, were interdependent, united by a nervous system too complex to be developed here. In these years, though I worked hard and often late, I still found time for convivialities, for social gaieties, yet little by little without realizing the fact, I was losing zest for the companionship ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... beware, my darling! You are in one of those moments of exaltation and nervous excitement in which a woman sometimes commits a folly that ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... Bud remained with the rustlers the more nervous some of them became. Since morning a number had been wearing masks made of their neckerchiefs, and one man had not shown his face since the moment he rode into camp after the all-night drive. This man's peculiar actions piqued ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... wedding, and should receive—poor little mite—a fatherly kiss from him as soon as he had kissed the forlorn and trembling bride. For Milly, although she professed to like and respect Michael Johnson, shrank somewhat from the prospect of life in another country, and was nervous and excitable to a degree which rather alarmed her mistress. Lettice confessed on reflection, however, that Johnson knew exactly how to manage poor little Milly; and that he had called smiles to her face in the very midst of a last ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... me tunic, I'd a notion I might let down the Rig'mint afther all, an' that would have bruk me heart. But off I wint to see Achille. 'Twas four miles to the village, an' I wint on my blessed feet, an' by the time I got to the place I was as nervous as a mouse in a thrap. Achille's shop wasn't a cafe or an estaminet or a buvette or anny o' thim places. He had a bit of a brass plate on his door wid 'Marchand de Vins' on it. I knew him by raison of a fancy that took me wan day for a dhrop o' brandy. So I wint ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156., March 5, 1919 • Various
... future emperor, for some trifling fault, the disgrace of wearing a penitential dress, and being excluded from the table of the students, and obliged to eat his meal apart. His pride felt the indignity so severely, that it brought on a severe nervous attack; to which, though otherwise of good constitution, he was subject upon occasions of extraordinary irritation. Father Petrault, the professor of mathematics, hastened to deliver his favourite pupil from the punishment by which he ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... newspaper. He had nothing in particular that he desired to say to his lady-love. That morning, as he was shaving himself, he had something to say that was very particular as to which he was at that moment so nervous, that he had cut himself slightly through the trembling of his hand. But that had now been said, and he was nervous no longer. That had now been said, and the thing settled so easily, that he wondered at his own nervousness. He did not know that there was anything that required much ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... loggia, which opposes the free and elegant span of its arches to the dead masonry of the palace; a figure supremely shapely and graceful; gentle, almost, in spite of his holding out with his light nervous arm the snaky head of the slaughtered Gorgon. His name is Perseus, and you may read his story, not in the Greek mythology, but in the memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini. Glancing from one of these fine fellows to the other, I probably uttered ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... nervous system was writhing with the feeling of impotence. Mechanically, unresisting now, he followed his enemy down the main staircase of the chateau and out through the wide open gates. He could not bring himself to believe that he had been so completely foiled, ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... beside herself, bein' as the loss hed piled up on a long sickness o' Sum's, an' a big doctor's bill consequent, an' she nervous anyhow, an' a good deal o' the ribbin tyin' the stems ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... ever since he had surrendered his untouched plate to the butler, had been plunged once more in silent meditation, emerged finally to tell them, with a nervous laugh, a story of how he had once dined with the Duc de La Tremoille, the point of which was that the Duke did not know that George Sand was the pseudonym of a woman. Swann, who really liked Saniette, felt bound to supply him with ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... tapered like a woman's. The nails were filbert-shaped, and grimy with recent climbing. The palms were hard. The knuckle-side was very brown, and showed the tendons prominently. They were those lean, nervous sort of hands which you find out at ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... Madam, for your sheetful of rhymes. Though at present I am below the veriest prose, yet from you everything pleases. I am groaning under the miseries of a diseased nervous system; a system, the state of which is most conducive to our happiness—or the most productive of our misery. For now near three weeks I have been so ill with a nervous headache, that I have been obliged for a time to give up my excise-books, being scare able to lift my head, ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... you do the first time one came at you? I don't want you to tell me as though I were either an old hunter or an admiring audience, or as though you were afraid somebody might think you were making too much of the matter. I want to know how you REALLY felt. Were you scared or nervous? or did you become cool? Tell me frankly just how it was, so I can see the thing as happening to a common everyday human being. Then, even at second-hand and at ten thousand miles distance, I can enjoy it actually, humanly, ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... civilly, by the conductor of the post-carriage in which I had traveled. But, at that hour, the old court-yard of the post-office was thronged with people arriving and departing, meeting their friends and posting their letters. The girl was evidently not used to crowds. She was nervous and confused. After advancing a few steps in the direction pointed out to her, she stopped in bewilderment, hustled by busy people, and evidently in doubt already about which way she was ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... advice (will you not?) if that pain does not grow much better directly? It cannot be prudent or even safe to let a pain in the head go on so long, and no remedy be attempted for it, ... and you cannot be sure that it is a merely nervous pain and that it may not have consequences; and this, quite apart from the consideration of suffering. So you will see some one with an opinion to give, and take it? Do, I beseech you. You will not say 'no'? Also ... if on Wednesday you should be less well than usual, you will come ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... generally successful, I was sometimes tempted to continue my questions for a little longer, and she would go on answering until at length she began to sigh—then I knew that she was tired. And after such extra exertion I would notice the next day both by the pupils of her eyes and her nervous trembling, that she had been over-worked—and the thought of it makes me feel ashamed, even to this day; for, was I not undertaking the whole study for the sake of animal creation, and to think that I might have been inflicting any cruelty was unbearable. And, ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... misfortune to be a very nervous man. A sedentary literary life has helped to increase the morbid love of solitude which, even in my boyhood, was one of my distinguishing characteristics. As I stood upon the quarter-deck of the Transatlantic steamer, I bitterly cursed the necessity ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... parasitic protozoa Trypanosoma; transmitted to humans via the bite of bloodsucking Tsetse flies; infection leads to malaise and irregular fevers and, in advanced cases when the parasites invade the central nervous system, coma and death; endemic in 36 countries of sub-Saharan Africa; cattle and wild animals act as reservoir hosts for the parasites. Cutaneous Leishmaniasis - caused by the parasitic protozoa leishmania; transmitted to humans via the bite ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... unformulated pity for her before they had exchanged twenty words. He himself, by nature, took things easy; if he had put on the screw of late, it was after reflexion, and because circumstances pressed him close. But this pale girl, with her light-green eyes, her pointed features and nervous manner, was visibly morbid; it was as plain as day that she was morbid. Poor Ransom announced this fact to himself as if he had made a great discovery; but in reality he had never been so "Boeotian" ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... we live without mentioning those things? I am nervous to-night. Hideously nervous!" ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a citizen, woman can meddle in politics and vote, because she is a citizen too. When Mr. Beecher based his right, not on the intellect which flashes from Maine to Georgia, not on the strength of that nervous right arm, but solely on his citizenship, he dragged to the platform twelve millions of American women to stand at his side. But the difficulty is, no man can defend his own right to vote, without granting it to woman. The only reason why the demand sounds strange, is because ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... stood up, all at once exhibiting to his watchful visitor that tremendous nervous energy which underlay his impassive manner. "Good God!" he said, in a cold, even voice. "To think that it is here in London. What ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... you suggest?" Cousin Dan'l asked Dickie Deer Mouse. "You see the women are nervous." And he cocked an eye up at the sky, as if he did not feel any too safe himself when he thought ...
— The Tale of Dickie Deer Mouse • Arthur Scott Bailey
... stream, and with the memory of the stories haunting us a little we built only a small fire when we cooked our evening meal, then extinguished it, and camped on a dry point of land a mile or two below. I think we were both a little nervous that night; I confess that I was, and if an unwashed black-bearded individual had poked his head out from the willows and said, "Woof!" or whatever it is that they say when they want to start up a jack-rabbit, we would both have stampeded clear across the border. ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... diminish his speed until he had gone two or three miles, and then, knowing that Shepard had been left hopelessly behind, even if he had attempted pursuit, he brought his horse down to a walk, and laughed. There was a bit of nervous excitement in the laugh. He had outwitted Shepard again. He had never seen the man, but it did not enter his mind that it was not he. Each had scored largely over the other from time to time, but Harry believed that ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... when poor bullied, baited, nervous Muggins had reached his limit and come to the end of his tether—or thought he had. Bumped, banged, bucketed, thrown, sore from head to foot, raw-kneed, laughed at, lashed by the Rough-Riding Sergeant-Major's cruel tongue, blind and sick ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... for a last look at his broken prison house, the cage in which he had spent such exciting hours. He suddenly stiffened and drew back: a nervous trembling seized him—the nervous trembling due to sudden shock. Between the trunk which had been dumped down in the centre of a large square room, without a scrap of furniture in it, and the window, through whose shutters the rays of morning sunshine shone, Fandor had caught sight of ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... collectively entitled "The Principles of Psychology." In these volumes an attempt is made to trace objectively the evolution of mind from reflex action through instinct to reason, memory, feeling, and will, from the interaction of the nervous system with its environment. Subjectively, mental states are analyzed, and it is contended that all of them—including those primary scientific ideas, the perceptions of matter, motion, space, and time, assumed in the "First Principles"—can be analyzed ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... back covers. The only way of ascertaining the date of publication is to hunt for the table of contents. That, however, is a task which few able-bodied men in the prime of life are equal to, not to say a roomful of sick people, nervous with anticipation. Most patients under such circumstances set out courageously, but only to lose themselves in the first half-dozen pages of the advertising section. Yet the result is by no means harmful. There is something about ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... urged thereto, the Editor Within his full portfolio dipped, Feigning excuse while seaching for (With secret pride) his manuscript. His pale face flushed from eye to beard, With nervous cough his throat he cleared, And, in a voice so tremulous it betrayed The anxious fondness of an author's heart, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... you all to go away now," he said. "Painting pictures is very difficult work. It would make me nervous to have so many ...
— The Tale of Jimmy Rabbit - Sleepy-TimeTales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... sent to Maurice, though she said Little more than her thanks for his kindness, he read All her tense nervous feelings between its few lines. Though we study our words, the keen reader divines What we thought while we penned them; thought odors reveal What words not infrequently seek ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... be nervous, and she took more beer than she had ever taken before, because she felt so much more cheerful for a little while, and when the inevitable depression it caused, returned, why then she took ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... you to ask any further questions," interrupted Miss Winstead. She was so nervous and perplexed at the task before her that she was glad even to be able to find fault with the child. It was really reprehensible of any child to take ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... wheat instead of rye. Apparently the American flag could not protect him against the pursuing Nemesis of his limitations; he must expiate the sins of his fathers who slept across the seas. He had been endowed at birth with a poor constitution, a nervous, restless temperament, and an abundance of hindering prejudices. In his boyhood his body was starved, that his mind might be stuffed with useless learning. In his youth this dearly gotten learning was sold, and the price was the bread and salt which he had not been trained to ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... himself; and that physically, as well as morally. To him it is a nasty scrunch of the two hundred and twenty-six bones forming his own admirably designed osseous structure; a dull, sickening wallop of his exquisitely composed cellular, muscular, and nervous tissues; a general squash of his beautifully mapped vascular system; a pitiless stoush of membranes, ligaments, cartilages, and what not; a beastly squelch of gastric and pancreatic juices and secretions of ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... Srutis. Drishtam implies 'Sruti', for it is as authoritative as anything seen. 'Pura' implies a city, a citadel, or a mansion. Here it refers to the body. The avasatha within the pura refers to the chakra or nervous centres beginning with what is called the muladhara. At the time when Brahman is realised, the whole universe appears as Brahman and so nothing exists, besides Brahman, upon which the mind can then dwell. Telang, I think, is not correct in ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... times we want men of nerve in the orchard as well as in the trenches. We need tree planters like Prof. Corsan who, at a former meeting of this association when joked about planting hickories, replied that he wasn't nervous and could watch a hickory tree grow. It takes nerve to be an innovator and to plant some radically different crop from what your conservative neighbors all ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... just before he left the office to dress for the dinner in his honor. Willis Enderby had formally withdrawn from the governorship contest. His statement given out for publication in next morning's papers, was in the office. Banneker sent for it. The reason given was formal and brief; nervous breakdown; imperative orders from his physician. The whole thing was grisly plain to Banneker, but he must have confirmation. He went to the city editor. Had any reporter been sent to ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... and women mulling away on their lives and worrying themselves with themselves, cutting a wide swath of misery wherever they go, have suddenly stopped in a book—have purged away jealousy and despair and passion and nervous prostration in it. A paper-person with melancholia is a better cure for gloom than a live clown can be—who merely goes about reminding people ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... already admitted the danger of analyzing, too closely, the moral character of any of our field sports; yet I think it cannot be doubted that the nervous system of fish, and cold-blooded animals in general, is less sensitive than that of warm-blooded animals. The hook usually is fixed in the cartilaginous part of the mouth, where there are no nerves; and a proof that the sufferings ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various
... think she will find the prediction in my letter to her verified. She might join us at Goshen and go with us, or come here. Why did she not come up with her father? I went to see him last evening, but he was out. Your mother, I presume, has told you of home affairs. She has become nervous of late, and broods over her troubles so much that I fear it increases her sufferings. I am therefore the more anxious to give her new scenes and new thoughts. It is the principal good I anticipate. Love to Rob. Custis still talks of visiting you, ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... and when the Governor explained the circumstances, the Doctor said, 'Go, by all means.' I was nervous at the thought. I was not a nervous man in Africa. I could sleep and hear the lions roar. There seemed so many great folks to meet with. I came to England and by-and-by I ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane
... be getting that truck and take the Grey Eagle boxes aboard the Lena Knobloch!" cried Jack. "The sooner it's over the easier I'll feel. I'm beginning to get nervous about all this ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... last day passed, I was so filled with nervous agitation that I could not control myself, but ran ceaselessly about my cell, like a mouse in a cage. Every moment I thought that the warder would detect the looseness of the bar, or that the sentry would observe the unmortared stone, which I could not conceal ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... overcrowded, and the singing, praying and exhortation were not favorable to the welfare of the sick, nervous or tired. The long severe Winter was a cause of dread and apprehension. This was weather to which English people were not used, and they had not grown accustomed to battle with the snow and ice. Instead of facing it, they went into their houses to protect themselves against ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... there is a family tendency towards any certain disease or weakness, that tendency must determine the whole circumstances of the child's life. That diathesis which is most serious and usually least regarded, the nervous excitable one, is by far the most important and the most difficult to deal with. Every effort should be made to avoid the conditions in which the hereditary predisposition would be aroused into mischievous action, and to encourage development on simple unexciting lines. The child should be confined ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... D. First Assistant Visiting Physician for Diseases of the Nervous System Boston City Hospital, Instructor in Neurology, Tufts ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... people distant far in space A thousand paces behind ours, as much As at a throw the nervous arm could fling, When all drew backward on the messy crags Of the steep bank, and firmly stood unmov'd As one who walks in ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... answered Buck Daniels. "Come along towards evening and he said he was feeling kind of cold. So I wrapped him up in a rug. Then he sat some as usual, one hand inside of the other, looking steady at nothing. But a while ago he began getting sort of nervous." ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... thought from his victim, the settler was in the next moment at the side of Middlemore. Seizing him from behind by the arm within his nervous grasp, he pressed the latter with such prodigious force as to cause him to relinquish, by a convulsive movement, the firm hold he had hitherto ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... nervous and throwing up his arms in distress). Mr. Marden will be so angry with me, and very rightly. Oh, I blame myself. I blame myself entirely. I don't know how I can have been so stupid. (Sits ...
— Mr. Pim Passes By • Alan Alexander Milne
... irritant to the mucous membranes. They have an acrid taste and provoke a flow of saliva, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. If injected directly into the circulation they produce hemolysis, diuresis and direct actions on the central nervous system which may be rapidly fatal. Absorption after oral administration is so poor that saponins produce only local effects. The toxicity of various saponins is ten to a thousand times higher by vein than by mouth and is generally ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... statement that it was transformed. Duke and Sherman were secured to the rear wall at a considerable distance from each other, after an exhibition of reluctance on the part of Duke, during which he displayed a nervous energy and agility almost miraculous in so small and middle-aged a dog. Benches were improvised for spectators; the rats were brought up; finally the rafters, corn-crib, and hay-chute were ornamented with flags and strips of bunting ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... highly decentralized nervous system," nodded Hendricks, who was, as I have said, something of a practical scientific man, although no laboratory worker or sniveling scientist. "And instinct is directing him back toward the sea from which, all unwillingly, ...
— The Terror from the Depths • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... probably continue to annoy newsdealers by reading the magazines on the stalls instead of buying them; that I shall put off having my hair cut; drop tobacco cinders on my waistcoat; feel bored at the idea of having to shave and get dressed; be nervous when the gas burner pops when turned off; buy more Liberty Bonds than I can afford and have to hock them at a grievous loss. I shall continue to be pleasant to insurance agents, from sheer lack of manhood; and to ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... willing, or wants to be willing, but her nerves rebel if, while she is teaching herself to listen quietly, she will take long, quiet breaths very steadily for some time, and will occupy herself with interesting work, she will find it a great help toward dropping nervous resistance. ...
— The Freedom of Life • Annie Payson Call
... sentries. Fever invaded the camp, and, more than all else, the serious illness of the General himself depressed the spirits of his men. Ceaseless anxiety over a hitherto ineffective campaign had played sad havoc with the nervous, high-strung temperament of the English commander; and the grey, inaccessible city still rose grimly to mock his schemes. Only the most invincible spirit could have borne so frail a body through those weeks of hope deferred. A vague melancholy marked the line of his tall ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... jobs. The poor lad was sent to the fore topmast head to splice a new lanyard into the main royal stay. He had done this, and was setting the stay up when the marline spike must have slipped out of the hitch in the lanyard. Suddenly the song he was singing ceased; a jerky, nervous shout attracted attention to what had happened; then the hush of anguish seized the horror-stricken spectators who watched the tragedy, and soon all was over. He tumbled backwards, and the sails all being loosened to air them and the topsail ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... Well, now, that's a pretty good one! Nervous she is, Mr. Clerron, always nervous, when the least thing ails her; and she didn't sleep a wink last night, which is a bad thing for the nerves,—and Ivy generally sleeps like a top. She walked over ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... qualities, much simplicity, and the promise of beauty. Meanwhile Mrs. Carnegie, forewarned of the impending interview, collected herself and prepared for it. She sent Bessie into the rarely-used drawing-room to pull up the blinds and open the glass door upon the lawn; and, further to occupy the nervous moments, bade her gather a few roses for the china bowl on the round table. Bessie had just finished her task, and was standing with a lovely Devoniensis in her hand, when her grandfather appeared, supported by ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr |
