"Excitability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... only in your somewhat—shall we say, lyrical imagination? I laid the circumstances before the woman and she acted as she saw fit to act. Hugh, my dear boy, I wish that you would try to restrain your—your growing tendency to excitability. I know that this is a trying day ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... indicates equally extreme sensibility of body, and those persons capable of fully expressing the highest emotions are especially susceptible to bodily sensations. Tears are physical emblems of grief, and fellow-feeling calls forth sympathetic tears. Excessive anxiety of mind produces general excitability of body, which soon results in chronic disease. Pleasurable emotions stimulate the processes of nutrition, and are restorative. This concomitance of mental and bodily states is very remarkable. Joy and Love, as well as jealousy and anger, flash in the eye and mould ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... often indicated by irritability of temper. This coming on is generally a warning that a period of rest must be taken. An overheated brow is also another indication. If this shows itself in a child during or after school, together with listlessness and excitability, all idea of lessons should at once be laid aside for a time. It is nothing less than cruelty to work an overheated brain in such a case. Let the child go free from school till all the head trouble is removed. Also let the head be soaped (see ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... infinitely in playing upon the excitability of Moses,—in awaking his curiosity, and baffling it, and tormenting him with a whole phantasmagoria of suggestions and assertions, which played along so near the line of probability, that one could never tell which might be fancy and which might ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... extreme. The paroxysms of agitation and terror which they sometimes excite, and which are often spontaneously renewed by darkness and solitude, and by other exciting causes, are of the nature of temporary insanity. Indeed, the extreme nervous excitability which they produce sometimes becomes a real insanity, which, though it may, in many cases, be finally outgrown, may probably in many others lead to lasting ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... in limbs otherwise paralytic, it is an indication that electric shocks may be employed with advantage, as the excitability of the limb by irritation is not extinct, though it be disobedient both ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... from a drunkard's disease, but her end is shown as the ineluctable consequence of her life, its early greyness and monotony, the sudden shock of a new and strange environment and the resultant weakness of will which a morbid excitability inevitably brought about. The novel, that is to say, deals with a "rhythmical series of events and follows them to their conclusion"; it gets at the roots of things; it tells us of something which we know to be true in life whether we care to read it in fiction ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... acknowledged nervous energy and excitability, Americans often show a good deal of a quality that rivals the phlegm of the Dutch. Their above-mentioned patience during railway or other delays is an instance of this. So, in the incident related in Chapter XII. the passengers in the inside coach ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... The gradually freshening breeze had now dispersed the mist, and the two vessels were clearly in view from the shore and to each other. The remarkable interest of the scene increased with each moment. Don Herero, with all the excitability of his nationality, could hardly contain himself as he walked rapidly back and forth, always keeping his eyes ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... constantly drawing nearer to windward. At length Greenly, himself, reported that the Plantagenet had "turned the hands-to," again. At this intelligence, Sir Gervaise started, as from a reverie, smiled, and spoke. We will here remark, that now, as on the previous day, all the natural excitability of manner had disappeared from the commander-in-chief, and he was quiet, and exceedingly gentle in his deportment. This, all who knew him, understood to denote ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... stimuli—the Nervous System. But from this specialisation we are not justified in ascribing to the nervous system any monopoly of the function, even when it is as highly developed as in Man. . . . Just as the direct excitability of the nervous system has progressed in the history of the race, so has its capacity for receiving imprints; but neither susceptibility nor retentiveness is its monopoly; and, indeed, retentiveness seems inseparable ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... distinctively sadistic character, finally of hysterics, whose motor activity is strongly affected, who also suffer with convulsions, tremor, paralyses or contractures. It should be merely briefly mentioned that the heightened motor excitability also establishes a disposition to a special muscle erotic, which in fact was easily demonstrable in every one of the cases of sleep walking and moon walking which have become known to me. The disturbance of the night's rest was ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... December, 1861, expenditures were racing ahead of receipts, and there was a deficit of $143,000,000. It must not be forgotten that this month was a time of intense excitability and of nervous reaction. Fremont had lately been removed, and the attack on Cameron had begun. At this crucial moment the situation was made still more alarming by the action of the New York banks, followed by all other banks, in suspending specie payments. They laid the responsibility ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... perhaps a couple of years, and seems to suffer none from either its isolation or antiquity. He thrives very well, like the generality of parsons, and will be a long liver if careful. He has what a phrenological physiologist would call a vitally sanguine constitution—has a good deal of temper, excitability, and determination in his character. You may persuade him, but he will be awkward to drive. He has a somewhat tall, gentlemanly, elastic figure; looks as if he had worn stays at some time; is polished, well-dressed, and careful; respects scented soap; hates ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... why animals become feeble and diseased after a time, though nourished with the same food which increased their growth from infancy, and afterwards supported them for many years in unimpaired health and strength, must be sought for from the laws of animal excitability, which, though at first increased, is afterwards diminished by frequent repetitions of its adapted stimulus, and at ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... recent attack was a strong nervous excitability, which was induced by very slight causes, and Hazlet had not long returned to Saint Werner's when the dissipation of his life began once more to tell perniciously upon his state of health. It must not be imagined that because he was the easiest possible victim of temptation, he suffered no upbraidings ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... channels, such as branches from the superior intercostal arteries which enter the anterior spinal artery. While total anaemia of the brain instantaneously abolishes consciousness, partial anaemia is found to raise the excitability of the cortex cerebri. By estimation of the exchange of gases in the blood which enters and leaves the brain, it has been shown that the consumption of oxygen and the production of carbonic acid in that organ is not large. Further, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various
... speak of the study of music, as it is usually pursued. From the tradition of David's soothing Saul by his harp, has, I believe, arisen an idea that music is a thoroughly healthful, refreshing influence, with a wonderful soothing power over the nerves. And yet the nervous excitability, and even irritability, of musicians is proverbial. We must make nice distinctions. The influence of hearing music is one thing, the study of music is another. Unquestionably the power of music to lift the mind into fresh regions of enjoyment, to change the current of thought, ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... transactions mentioned above with the director of the theatre regarding my new opera. But I soon realised that it was out of the question for me to remain in my native town, and in the disquieting proximity of my family, from which I was restlessly anxious to get away. My excitability and depression were noticed by my relations. My mother entreated me, whatever else I might decide to do, on no account to be drawn into marriage while still so young. To this I made no reply. When I took my leave, Rosalie accompanied me to the head of the stairs. ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... may well be, then, that it is not the hereditary temperament of the Negro, so much as the habit, which he shares with other peoples at the same level of culture, of living and acting in a crowd, that accounts for his apparent excitability. But after all, "mafficking" is not unknown in civilized countries. Thus the quest for a race-mark of a mental kind is ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... very real impression of the man. He was one of those strange, unbalanced creatures that never reach maturity; he was a child all his short life; he had the generosity, the affection, the impulsiveness of a child, and he had, too, the timidity, the waywardness, the excitability of a child. If a project came into his mind, he flung himself into it with the whole force of his nature; it was imperatively necessary that he should at once execute his design. No considerations of prudence or common-sense availed to check him; life became intolerable ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Christian Schwartz was one to influence all around him. He seems to have had all the quiet German patience and endurance of hardship, without much excitability, and with a steadiness of judgment and intense honesty and integrity, that disposed every one to lean on him and rely on him for their temporal as well as their spiritual matters—great charity and warmth of heart, and ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... whenever he reported progress to her, that there was a certain sort of repressed excitability about him, a wistful nervousness very foreign to his assured independence and self-confidence, and he several times seemed as if he were going to make some disclosure to her; all of which made his young mistress think that he had something on his mind which he was half ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... continually passing from the stewpan to his tongue; nothing but frequent tasting his sauces, ragouts, &c. can discover to him what progress they have made, or enable him to season a soup with any certainty of success; his palate, therefore, must be in the highest state of excitability, that the least fault may be perceived ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... are classed as "nervousness." Hyperthyroidism, or Graves' Disease, a condition in which there is overactivity of the thyroid gland and which is particularly prevalent among young women, is one of those diseases. In this condition excitability, irritability, emotional outbursts, fatigue, restlessness, digestive disorders, vasomotor disorders, appear before the characteristic ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... leaves him the most vigorous. Mere sexual excitement, a wild, fierce, furious rush of passion, is not only not sexual vigor, but in its inverse ratio; and a genuine insane fervor caused by weakness; just as a like nervous excitability indicates weak nerves instead of strong. Sexual power is deliberate, not wild; cool, not impetuous; while ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... but whether the wit be great or little, the "thin partition" separating madness from sanity is equally mysterious. It is true that the excitability attendant upon genius approximates so closely to madness, that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between them; but, without the attendant "genius" to hold up the train of madness, and call for our special permission and respect in any of ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... had been made as comfortable as possible by a sort of bed which was made up for him in the roomy carriage, seemed, after a short period of restlessness and excitability, to sink into sleep. ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... crowded town was making considerable ado about some expected official. I saw none, more than a courteous youth—to whom, of course, I was quite unknown and deaf and dumb—who graciously shifted goods and chattels from the inn's best room to hand it over to me for my occupation. With due tact and some excitability, I protested vigorously against his coming out. He insisted. Smiling upon him with grave benignity, I said that I would take a smaller room, and gave orders to that effect to my man, adding that my whole sense of right and justice towards ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... shall not die of years, but of sheer want of strength.' In begging one of his friends at a distance to visit him once more, he reminds him that, in his present state of health, he must not forget that it might be for the last time. No wonder then if his natural excitability was often morbidly increased. He always looked forward with joy to his leaving this 'wicked world,' but as long as he had to work in it, he exerted all his powers no less for his own immediate task than for the general affairs of the Church, ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... and contract unequally, and hence the various movements are produced—that the many anomalous effects, hitherto ascribed to 'specific sensibilities,' are due to the 'differential sensibilities'—differential excitability of anisotropic structures and to the opposite effects of external and internal stimuli—that all varieties of plant movements are capable of a consistent mechanical explanation. Dr. Bose's "latest investigations recently communicated ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... which Brown-Sequard discovered, quite by accident, in the course of his researches. He found that certain artificially-produced lesions of the nervous system, so small even as a section of the sciatic nerve, left, after healing, an increasing excitability which ended in liability to epilepsy; and there afterwards came out the unlooked-for result that the offspring of guinea-pigs which had thus acquired an epileptic habit such that a pinch on the neck would produce a fit, inherited an epileptic habit of like kind. It has, indeed, been ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... always jested, boiled in his veins. If the Poles have furnished many heroes for dramas and modern romances, they have remained, through their faults, so dearly atoned for, the race the most chivalrously, the most madly brave in Europe. When men of so intemperate and so complex an excitability are touched to a certain depth, they think of a duel as naturally as the descendants of a line of suicides think ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... the heart of this mystery when she appeared at the lawn fete to help the Tapp girls and their mother entertain. She was introduced at that time to the Taffy King. Louise thought him rather a funny little man, and his excitability vastly amused her. ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... been recently made by Mr. Sanson with a view to settling the question whether oats have or have not the excitant property that has been attributed to them. The nervous and muscular excitability of horses was carefully observed with the aid of graduated electrical apparatus before and after they had eaten a given quantity of oats, or received a little of a certain principle which Mr. Sanson succeeded in isolating from oats. The chief results of the inquiry ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... lecture-room the student, possessing his share of the vivacity and excitability of the south, would stamp, spring from his seat, shout and applaud, calling out in Greek "splendid!" "inimitable!" "capital!" "prettily said!" and so forth. Plutarch writes a little essay on the proper manner of behaving in the lecture-rooms, and he tells us: "You should sit in a proper ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... of excitability. Health. Comparison with a furnace. Oxidation. Electricity. Hydrogen. Theory ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... under the morbid impression produced so repeatedly. These are the ordinary antecedent symptoms characteristic of the incubation of insanity; to which are frequently added somatic exaltation, or, in popular language, physical excitability—a disposition to knit the brows—great activity of the mental faculties—or else a well-marked decline of the powers of the understanding—an exaggeration of the normal conditions of thought—or ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... wondered that both my mother and myself (persons of exceptional impatience of disposition and irritable excitability of temperament) should have taken such delight in so still and monotonous an occupation, especially to the point of spending whole days in an unsuccessful pursuit of it. The fact is that the excitement of hope, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... Conneau, nor his grounding in technique, was nevertheless a born aviator; a man of a natural and exceptional skill. In energy, courage, and determination he was unexcelled; but such qualities, though of extreme value in a long and trying contest, were marred by an impetuosity and an excitability which Vedrines could not master, and which more than once cost him dear. He had not, besides, as was shown in the Circuit of Britain, that skill in steering by map and compass which aided Lieut. Conneau so ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... intellects, and superior intellects more commonly have normal nervous systems. But the psychopathic temperament, whatever be the intellect with which it finds itself paired, often brings with it ardor and excitability of character. The cranky person has extraordinary emotional susceptibility. He is liable to fixed ideas and obsessions. His conceptions tend to pass immediately into belief and action; and when he gets a new ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... insensibility. But, admitting this, we have in the first place to remember, in imagining the opening scenes, that she is deliberately bent on counteracting the 'human kindness' of her husband, and also that she is evidently not merely inflexibly determined but in a condition of abnormal excitability. That exaltation in the project which is so entirely lacking in Macbeth is strongly marked in her. When she tries to help him by representing their enterprise as heroic, she is deceiving herself as much as him. Their attainment of the crown presents itself to her, perhaps ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... reading of tired readers. To do the work in their way, they required to be brooded over, or had at least the aid of tune and of impassioned recitation. Stories which are to be told to children in the age of eagerness and excitability, or sung in banquet halls to assembled warriors, whose daily ideas and feelings supply a flood of comment ready to gush forth on the slightest hint of the poet, cannot fly too swift and straight to the mark. But Mr. Macaulay ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... trifles, or of two Irish-American millionaires trying to ruin each other for trash. But the very pettiness of the pretext and even the purpose illustrates the same conception; which may be called the virtue of excitability. And it is really this, and not any rubbish about iron will-power and masterful mentality, that redeems with romance their clockwork cosmos and its industrial ideals. Being a live wire does not mean that the nerves should be like wires; but rather that the very wires should ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... full speed, so that the loss of time on the journey implied either contrary winds, a mistaken course, or a serious mishap. Kate was so little in the mood for talking that Barracombe in responsive silence could toss the various probabilities about in his mind until he felt a nervous excitability that annoyed him. ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... of impartial observers: of these, the most just at once, and eloquent, that we remember to have read, is that contained in an ever-memorable letter from a Mr Tomkins to a Mrs Jenkins, attributed (with what justice, deponent knoweth not) to a noble and learned lord, supreme in natural theology and excitability, remarkable for versatile nose and talents, and distinguished for chequered fortunes, and "inexpressibles" to match. This learned lord, or Tomkins aforesaid, or whoever may have been the inditer of the epistle ad Jenkins, is eloquent exceedingly upon the narcotine of fashionable ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... in the life of those who are to be men, and to govern society, be passed in a sort of outlawry,—a rude warfare with all existing institutions? The years between ten and twenty are full of the nervous excitability which marks the growth and maturing of the manly nature. The boy feels wild impulses, which ought to be vented in legitimate and healthful exercise. He wants to run, shout, wrestle, ride, row, skate; and all these together ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... exasperation, malignity; fit, paroxysm; orgasm, climax, aphrodisia[obs3]; force, brute force; outrage; coup de main; strain, shock, shog[obs3]; spasm, convulsion, throe; hysterics, passion &c. (state of excitability) 825. outbreak, outburst; debacle; burst, bounce, dissilience[obs3], discharge, volley, explosion, blow up, blast, detonation, rush, eruption, displosion|, torrent. turmoil &c. (disorder) 59; ferment &c. (agitation) 315; storm, tempest, rough weather; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... forces may help us to distinguish some of the most favourable conditions of good letter-writing. They were men of highly nervous mental constitution of mind, on whom the ideas and impressions that had been secreted produced an excitability that was discharged upon correspondents in a torrent of language, sweeping away considerations of reserve or self-regard, and submerging the commonplace bits of news and everyday observations which accumulate in the letters of respectable notabilities. To whomsoever the letters may be addressed, ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... system, beer tranquillizes and calms it. The action of a particular kind of daily drink, used for centuries, must in this respect have been more or less potent. Hence, perhaps, the Teuton's phlegm and the Gaul's excitability. ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... Governor—always remain. The young part of the board is the fluctuating part, and the old part is the permanent part; and therefore it is not surprising that the young part has little influence. The Bank directors may be blamed for many things, but they cannot be blamed for the changeableness and excitability of ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... them very much,' answered Insarov, 'especially the daughter. She must be a nice girl. She is excitable, but in her it's a fine kind of excitability.' ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... one man in all the world who can hear and understand, and sympathise," exclaimed Mr. Mudge, grasping his hand and holding it tightly while he spoke. The nailed chair prevented further excitability. ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... recover the natural tone of his mind, and to resume his old habits of work, his son sickened and died. The young man had never been strong: he had inherited his mother's delicacy of constitution, and her nervous excitability as well; but he had rare qualities of mind, and gave great promise as a scholar. The news of his death was a blow to every heart that loved his father. "This will kill the Parson," was said by ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... realized what his master had thus imagined. Perhaps no one ever caught more from others than Raffaelle. I do not allude to his "borrowing," so ingeniously, not soundly, defended by Sir Joshua, but rather to his excitability, (if I may here apply a modern term,)—that inflammable temperament, which took fire, as it were, from the very friction of the atmosphere. For there was scarce an excellence, within his knowledge, of his predecessors or contemporaries, which did not in a greater or less degree contribute to the ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... however, repeatedly observing, through the mingled tone of levity and solemnity with which he rapidly descanted upon matters of little importance, a certain air of trepidation—a degree of nervous unction in action and in speech—an unquiet excitability of manner which appeared to me at all times unaccountable, and upon some occasions even filled me with alarm. Frequently, too, pausing in the middle of a sentence whose commencement he had apparently forgotten, he seemed ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... part of Germany," said Tom, his heavy manner of talking contrasting strangely with Frenchy's excitability. "So you were a German citizen before you got to be an American; and your people over there ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... unusual excitability, with its too evident explanation, and the thought of being alone with him, with her friend out of reach upstairs, at the other end of the great empty house, did not conduce to a ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... his father had never said "Philippe" like this before. "Listen to me, my son," continued the dying man. "I have been a great sinner, and all my life I have thought about death. Formerly I was the friend of the great Pope Julius II. This illustrious pontiff feared that the excessive excitability of my feelings would cause me to commit some deadly sin at the moment of my death, after I had received the blessed ointment. He made me a present of a flask of holy water that gushed forth from a rock in the desert. ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... Her father's growing excitability and irritation, and the bad accounts of Maurice, troubled her sorely. It was only that morning Mr. Barron had become aware that Maurice had lost his employment, and was again adrift in the world. Theresa had known ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Pisan climate depress the vital force, induce an overwhelming lassitude, and are, in my opinion, most unfavourable elements in a climate so generally recommended for pulmonary consumption. Whatever effect the humid mildness of the air may have in diminishing excitability, and in allaying pulmonary irritation in patients of a nervous temperament, it is decidedly injurious in those of a feeble and lymphatic habit.... The delusion of an Italian climate, as regards the cure or prophylaxis of tubercular consumption, is in no part of that country, so delightful ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... is suffering from incipient insanity, connected with an extraordinary excitability of the nervous system, which sometimes occasions, if I may so express myself, the strange phenomenon of sleeping and waking at the same time, as in ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... familiar in my acquaintance with men of wide authority and outstanding ability. What disturbed me was that his blindness, his ill health, and his suffering had united to these traits an intense excitability and a morbid nervousness. ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... heightened when Dick told him of the Senator's achievements during the past few weeks. The brilliant society which surrounded the Count was quite different from that which the Senator had found in Florence. The people were equally cultivated, but more serious. They had less excitability, but more deep feeling. Milan, indeed, had borne her burden far differently from Florence. Both hated the foreigner; but the latter could be gay, and smiling, and trifling even under her chains; this the former could never be. The thoughtful, earnest, and somewhat pensive ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... know Tarasconese excitability, it is easy to imagine the frantic condition of the little town after Tartarin's abrupt disappearance. Et autrement, pas moins, differemment, they lost their heads, all the more because it was the middle of August and their brains boiled ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... so different from that of Europe. There the excitability and impatience of bondage was a reflection from its history into its literature. Its expression was consistent with its feeling. The roaring of the storm was heard because a storm was really raging. The breeze therefrom that ruffled our little ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... remark that they get the impression that it can be controlled at will. If once the diagnosis is made that the want of appetite or the vomiting is of nervous origin, the treatment of the condition is clear. Sedative drugs directed towards quieting the nervous excitability may be of service, but tonics, appetisers, laxatives, and drugs with a direct action on the stomach will have but little effect. Nor is there as a rule anything to be gained by modifying the diet or by excluding this or that article of food. The ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... was a young man who seemed to be afflicted with a species of religious mania. Mr. Justice Charles gave great weight to his testimony. He invited the jury to say that "although there was, in his correspondence which had been read, evidence of excitability, to talk of him as a young man who did not know what he was saying was to exaggerate the effect of his letters." He went on to ask with much solemnity: "Why should this young man have invented a tale, which must have been unpleasant to him to ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... function of the accumulated semen in the reservoirs for the sexual products. Experiences with the exhaustibility of the sexual mechanism speak for the same thing. Where there is no stock of semen it is not only impossible to accomplish the sexual act, but there is also a lack of excitability in the erogenous zones, the suitable excitation of which can evoke no pleasure. We thus discover incidentally that a certain amount of sexual tension is itself necessary for the excitability of the ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... India have evidently proved injurious in the disease so denominated in Russia. As a security against the contagion, our correspondent recommends brandy with laudanum; the former to keep up the vigour of the abdominal viscera, and the latter to prevent morbid excitability of the system, which predisposes the body to the action of the contagion. In India, brandy and laudanum have been very successfully administered in cases of the cholera of that country. As the recommendation ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 493, June 11, 1831 • Various
... of this excitability occurred some years ago. The viceroy of a province had succeeded in organizing a contingent of foreign-drilled troops, under the guidance and leadership of two qualified foreign instructors. After some time had elapsed, and it was thought that the troops were sufficiently ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... atony exercised a profound influence on practice, particularly in this country, where it had the warm advocacy of Benjamin Rush. Even more widespread became the theories of a pupil of Cullen's, John Brown, who regarded excitability as the fundamental property of all living creatures: too much of this excitability produced what were known as sthenic maladies, too little, asthenic; on which principles practice was plain enough. ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... frankness of his nature, his well-known good sense, the sound clearness of his judgment, so unmistakably evinced in his profession, precluded the possibility of attributing his adoption of the Catholic faith to weakness of mind, duplicity, sentiment, eccentricity, or excitability.' ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... much the specific function of certain nerves as a general function which any part of the nervous system may exert upon other parts under the appropriate conditions. The higher centres, for example, seem to exert a constant inhibitive influence on the excitability of those below. The reflexes of an animal with its hemispheres wholly or in part removed become exaggerated. You all know that common reflex in dogs, whereby, if you scratch the animal's side, the corresponding hind leg will begin to make scratching movements, usually in the air. Now in dogs ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... shown by the fact that the production of electricity is extremely small behind a glass colored with cuprous oxide, and behind a film of a solution of quinine sulphate; while it is not appreciably diminished by a film of a solution of alum. The photo-electric excitability of fluor-spar crystals is increased by a moderate heat ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... pleasure, quick excitability, and consequent irritability, are the marked ingredients in every strong character; its strength must be employed against itself to produce any ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... Ramon Hamilton presented himself at Henry Blaine's office in answer to the latter's summons, he found the great detective in a mood more nearly bordering upon excitability than he could remember having witnessed before. Instead of being seated calmly at his desk, his thoughts masked with his usual inscrutable imperturbability, Blaine was pacing restlessly back and forth ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... silence brooded over the city. A few hundred people paraded the chief avenues, crying "down with war!", while a separate crowd of equal size sang the national hymn. With these exceptions there was no cheering or enthusiasm, such as I would have expected from my preconceived idea of French excitability. Men spoke in undertones, with a quiet but subdued intensity of feeling rather than ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... smile their weaknesses. In this truest, perhaps, of all the portraits that have ever been drawn of the Poles, we see the gallantry and devotion, the generosity and hospitality, the grace and liveliness in social intercourse, but also the excitability and changefulness, the quickly inflamed enthusiasm and sudden depression, the restlessness and turbulence, the love of outward show and of the pleasures of society, the pompous pride, boastfulness, and other little ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... in the position of a young student—that is to say, in a position which, in our present age of bewildering movement and feverish excitability, has become an almost impossible one. It is necessary to have lived through it in order to believe that such careless self-lulling and comfortable indifference to the moment, or to time in general, are possible. In this condition I, and a friend about ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... the drunkenness of troops traversing a rich wine-growing country, have often accounted for an honest, but quite mistaken belief in the minds of German soldiers, without excusing at all the deeds to which it led. Of this abnormal excitability, the old Cure of Senlis gave one or two ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... unnatural privation of all light is very trying to all God's creatures, to none more so than to man, and among men it is most dangerous and distressing to those who have imagination and excitability. Now Robinson was a man of this class, a man of rare capacity, full of talent and the courage and energy that vent themselves in action, but not rich in the tough fortitude which does little, feels little and ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... and hollow cheek, I had to quit the desk again and ride mournfully home, the remainder of the day being consumed in a rest, which only increased my melancholy feelings, because it made me more than ever conscious of my feebleness and excitability. ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... misery is the increasing physical weakness of the female and the increasing nervous weakness of the male, with an increasing sexual excitability, two factors of tragic effect for the wife. Here is seen the unfortunate result of teaching two kinds of morals, one for men and ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... great consequence what it was in the composition which set her off into this nervous paroxysm. She was in such a state that almost any slight agitation would have brought on the attack, and it was the accident of her transient excitability, very probably, which made a trifling cause the seeming occasion of so much disturbance. The theme was signed, in the same peculiar, sharp, slender hand, E. Venner, and was, of course, written by that wild-looking girl who had excited the master's curiosity and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Brown's theory, life, diseases, and methods of cure are explained by the property of "excitability." All exciting powers were supposed to be stimulating, the apparent debilitating effects of some being due to a deficiency in the amount of stimulus. Thus "the whole phenomena of life, health, as well as disease, were supposed ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... it belongs to the body rather than to the brain. I once made a rabbit live an hour without its head. With a man that experiment would need careful manipulation—I would like to try it. Or is it all a question of that phantom, Vitality? Then the presence of the soul depends upon the potential excitability of the nerves, and, as far as we know, it must leave the body not more than twenty-four hours after death, and it certainly does not leave the body at the moment of dying. But if of the nerves, then what is the condition of the soul in the hypnotic state? ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... power of convincing itself of anything which it desires to believe, its debility, its childishness. If the professions of so-called mediums were true, why cannot they exhibit their powers in some open and incontestable way, not surrounding themselves with all the conditions of darkness and excitability, in which the human power of self-delusion finds its ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... grave; and there was a sober light in the dark, steady eyes. In the St. James Club, which he had just left, perhaps the most sedate, certainly the most exclusive club in New York, it had been the one topic of conversation. Elderly gentlemen, not usually given to excitability, had joined with the younger members in a hectic denunciation of the police as criminally inefficient, and had made dire and absurdly vain threats as to what they, electing themselves for the moment a ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... British zone and trespassed upon French territory. The slope, from the beach upward, was as alive with French and Senegalese as a cloven ant-hill is alive with ants. The stores of the whole French army seemed accumulated in the neighbourhood. There was an atmosphere of French excitability, very different from the stillness of the British Zone. Stepping from the British Zone into the French was like turning suddenly from the quiet of Rotten Row into the bustle of the Boulevard des Italiens. It was prenez-garde ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... whispered in one another's ears, imparting excessively mysterious information of the utmost importance, putting a finger to their lips, screwing up their eyes to enjoin secrecy. A provincial flavor distinguished them all, with differences of inflection, Southern excitability, the drawling accent of the Centre, Breton sing-song, all blended in the same idiotic, strutting self-sufficiency; frock-coats after the style of Landerneau, mountain shoes, and home-spun linen; the monumental assurance of village clubs, local expressions, ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... be little fitted for the slightest interposition on that subject. A sensibility, morbid in the highest degree, was never more awakened among those who have the largest stake in that species of interest, and the most violent against any governmental movement in relation to it. The excitability at the moment, happened, also, to be not a little augmented by party questions between the South and the North, and the efforts used to make the circumstance common to the former a sympathetic bond of co-operation. I scarcely express myself too strongly in saying that any allusion in the Convention ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... and headlong, was always likely to come right in the end; but internally, we may perceive, his modesty, self-distrust, anxiety and other unexpected qualities, must have been great. And then his explosiveness, impatience, excitability; his conscious dumb ignorance of all things beyond his own small horizon of personal survey! An Orson capable enough of being coaxed and tickled, by some first-rate conjurer;—first-rate; a second-rate might have failed, and got torn to pieces for his pains. But Seckendorf ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... indifferent, and excitable. Their disposition is irritable; they frequently exhibit fits of great excitability of temper and passion. They cry or weep without cause. They often have hallucinations and while asleep have attacks resembling night terrors. They complain of pains in the joints, and are frequently treated ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... of a visual impression upon the retina of the eye after the exciting cause is removed. The length of time varies with the intensity of the light and the excitability of the retina, and ordinarily is brief, though the duration may be for hours, or even days. The after image may be either positive or negative, the latter when the bright part appears dark and the colored parts in their ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... his own, projected and sheltered by what only aggravated his; but my visit gave me proof that he had really very little overstated the effect upon himself. Making allowance, which sometimes he failed to do, for special peculiarities, and for the excitability never absent when he had in hand an undertaking such as Copperfield, I observed a nervous tendency to misgivings and apprehensions to the last degree unusual with him, which seemed to make the commonest things difficult; and though he stayed out his time, and brought away nothing that his happier ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... hand, either naked or armed with metal, the shock is most commonly felt by both at once. However, it sometimes happens that, in the most severe shocks, the person who comes into immediate contact with the fish alone feels them. When the gymnotus is exhausted, or in a very reduced state of excitability, and will no longer emit strokes on being irritated with one hand, the shocks are felt in a very vivid manner, on forming the chain, and employing both hands. Even then, however, the electric shock takes place only at the will of the animal. Two persons, one of whom holds ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... may determine, for instance, the degree of attention with its resistance against distracting stimuli, the power of memory under various conditions and on various material, the mental excitability and power of discrimination, the quickness and correctness of perception, the chains of associations, the rapidity of the associative process for various groups, the types of reaction, the forming of habits and their persistence, the conditions of fatigue and of exhaustion, the emotional expressions ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... to produce such an effect, the last words aroused the "Bounding" warrior to fury. The same nervous excitability which rendered him so active in his person, made it difficult to repress his feelings, and the words were scarcely past the lips of the speaker than the tomahawk left the hand of the Indian. Nor was ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper |
