"High-strung" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their charm for him; but during this period they must often have tempted him into the elaborate dinners, the late hours, and the high-strung excitement, which made a retreat to the keen air and plain diet of his Sabine home scarcely less necessary for his body's than it was for his spirit's health. For, much as he prized moderation in all things, and extolled "the mirth that after no repenting draws," good wine, ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... think that love at first sight must be a commoner thing than many people imagine. If it was so real with a sober-sided, hard-headed fellow like myself, who had spent all the years of his manhood in rough-and-tumble warfare, what must it be with romantic and high-strung people who are ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... a high-strung child, too strong and healthy to be actually nervous, but with every faculty always at its fullest—not only in active working order but always actively at work—an admirable subject therefore for the malevolence ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... points out the attitude of German Labor. "For modern labor the feeling that human life is first of all a matter of eternal life, and only secondarily a matter of this world, has been entirely lost. The high-strung eschatologic mood, or expectation of Jesus, has no sounding board in the masses of the proletariat of to-day. The Christian epoch in history is obviously on its way to extinction. The eschatological mood of Christianity has been a handicap, ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... groomed until they rippled and sparkled with every movement of the muscles beneath. Wide red- lined nostrils softly expanded and contracted with a restrained eagerness; and soft eyes rolled in the direction of the Sherwoods—keen, lithe, nervous, high-strung creatures, gently stamping little hoofs, impatiently tossing dainty heads, but nevertheless making no movement that would stir the vehicle that stood "cramped" at the steps. Their harness carried no blinders; their tails, undocked, swept the ground; but their ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... humiliation one man had brought her to the waiting love of the one who should have been her first choice by the divine right of natural selection. This strong man had loved her for years, but he would never allow her to imperil either his dignity or her own. He was just the man her impulsive, high-strung nature could accept as a refuge, beat against and buffet if need be, then learn ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... warm color, does not sleep well, becomes or remains thin no matter how much he or she eats, is abnormally susceptible sexually, may suffer from a definite insomnia, is emotional, and perspires freely. Alert, neurotic or high-strung, magnetic, and imaginative are some of the descriptive adjectives applicable. The eyes are bright and prominent, large and beautiful, when they have not reached the stage entitled "pop-eyed." Or they may even become so protuberant and bulging as to develop the ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... all very comfortable, he had advised delay. It had been thought best not to inform the family as to the state of affairs, lest it should in some way become known to Lane and the surgeon, and lead to attempted escape. The Barkdales, moreover, were high-strung people, and might entertain some chivalric ideas about turning over their guests ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... supposed—by his unfortunate wife at least—to have been the scion of a proud and aristocratic family, who had not been too proud, however, to leave her to starve. Altogether, Miss Husted was an exceedingly romantic, high-strung, middle-aged spinster, miles and miles above her station in life, whose heart and purse were open to any foreigner who had discernment enough to see her weakness and tact enough to pander to it by hinting at his noble lineage. This love of things and beings aristocratic was more than a ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... to himself. "And she will grow more like her as the years go by, so spirited and high-strung. But they'll have to watch her, or she'll ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... sea-air and the sun," she said. "You know he wants two or three more sittings. And do you know, pappy, I have sometimes thought of asking you to tell me honestly—not to encourage me with flattery, you know—whether my face has really that high-strung pitch of expression when I am about to drink the poison in the cell. Do I really look like Mr. Lemuel's portrait ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... could be obtained in two sittings from all but a small proportion of the students of both sexes, but that there were two types of individual who showed a special aptitude. One type (probably showing the embryonic form of neurasthenia) was a nervous, high-strung, imaginative type, not easily influenced from without, and not so much suggestible as autosuggestible. The other type, which is significant from our present point of view, is thus described by Miss Stein: "In general ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... surged through dull and confused, a medley of clanking hatch-covers, complaining tackle, deep-throated protests of donkey-engines, outlandish commands from stevedores, and the yelps of high-strung ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... head of the Kumamoto Boys' School during the period of its fierce struggles and final collapse, whom I have already referred to as the Hero-Principal,[AS] is another example of this impractical high-strung visionariness. No sooner had he reached Kumamoto, than there opened before our enchanted eyes the vision of this little insignificant school blooming out into a great university. True, there had been some of this bombast before his arrival; but it took ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... lecture on the High-caste women of India. She should supplement it with one on the High-strung women of Indiana, and thus illustrate the extremes of ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... right now—you can tell him." Kate's voice was curt, incisive, her tone final. "He can't use a dog on these Rambouillets—they're high-strung, nervous, different from the merinos. Anyway, I won't have it." She swung about to indicate ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... of dress is called—and in one hand he held a closely plaited, stinging black "quirt." He wore a plaid shirt and cotton handkerchief around his neck. That describes the man who rode Rollo first—and no wonder the spirited, high-strung colt was suspicious of saddles, men, and things. I watched the man as he rode away. His horse was going at a furious gallop, with ears turned back, as if expecting whip or spur any instant, and the man sat far over on one side, that leg quite straight as though he was ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... iron pattens on her feet and her clothes tucked up, mopping the floor of the shop; but in the afternoon much more genteelly attired in silks of an ancient fashion. Mr. Brown was a very quiet, inoffensive person, the wife a little high-strung. It is certain that they had occasional domestic bickerings, perhaps about the young man in the knee-breeches; for on one occasion it is alleged that the old matron was overheard to address her spouse, with a slightly Hibernian accentuation,—"Brune, ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... and delicately offered kindnesses Mr. and Mrs. Meynell at length won the difficult privilege of helping the shy, nervous, high-strung spirit wandering in pain, hunger and exile amid the indecencies of extreme penury in a great city. They were helped by the friendly sympathy and care of Premonstratensian and Franciscan monks. Thompson had sounded, and become familiar ...
— The Hound of Heaven • Francis Thompson
... recorded by contemporary annalists, of which only an outline has been given here. The nuns of Loudun were, as has been said, mostly daughters of the nobility, and were thus, in all likelihood, temperamentally unstable, sensitive, high-strung, nervous. The seclusion of their lives, the monotonous routine of their every-day occupations, and the possibilities afforded for dangerous, morbid introspection, could not but have a baneful effect on such natures, leading inevitably to actual insanity ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... went to stand by the window. He wanted a minute to think it out, to understand clearly before the tale went on. He could see just how Anthony had read Cousin Jasper's character, sensitive, high-strung, with strong affections that not even great wrongs could quite break down. But how mistaken the man had been who thought Jasper Peyton was a weak-willed person to ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... any one who starts with the idea of the old high-strung work done, as it were, under military discipline, any one who cherishes the remotest idea that this system can ever return, in spite of the fact that its clamps and springs have been dashed to pieces, may well lament these unsettlements. One who starts from ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... the window, Roger, remembering to shut the airlock after you?" the Golden Glacier said in tones not unkind. "When are your high-strung, thoroughbred nerves going to accept the fact that I would never consider marriage with a business inferior? You have about as much chance as a starving Ukrainian kulak now that Moscow's ...
— Bread Overhead • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... answered. "But you're a woman, with a rather complex nature even for your sex. If your heart and your head ever clash over anything like that, you'll be in perfect hell until one or the other gets the upper hand. You're a thoroughbred, and high-strung as thoroughbreds are. It takes something besides three meals a day and plenty of good clothes to complete your existence. If I can't make it complete, some other man will make you think he can. Why don't you try? Haven't I got any possibilities as a lover? Can't you throw a little halo of romance ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... that he saw them together, they seemed to be, each in a way different from the other, under a great strain. He was haggard, woebegone, nervous; she high-strung, resolute,—with "eyes that shone like lamps," ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... richness; but the timbre was always acute, in sympathy with his intense temperament. All was of one piece in Shelley's nature. This peculiar voice, varying from moment to moment, and affecting different sensibilities in divers ways, corresponds to the high-strung passion of his life, his fine-drawn and ethereal fancies, and the clear vibrations of his palpitating verse. Such a voice, far-reaching, penetrating, and unearthly, befitted one who lived in rarest ether on the ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... the double doors, looks in, and then enters. She is an adorable little human being, pretty, high-strung, temperamental, full of certain feminine fascination that defies analysis, which is partly due to the few faults she possesses. She is, of course, dressed in the conventional wedding-dress, a tulle veil thrown ...
— The Girl with the Green Eyes - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... is certainly true that while a person easily hypnotized is by no means weak-minded (indeed, it is probable that most geniuses would be good hypnotic subjects), still such persons have not a well balanced constitution and their nerves are high-strung if not unbalanced. They would be most likely to be subject to a person who had such a strong and well-balanced nervous constitution that it would be hard to hypnotize. And it is always safe to say that the strong ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... good; the general murmured as much. He did not need to say so aloud to the artillery officer responsible for that shooting, who was in touch with his batteries by wire. The officer knew it. He was the high-strung, ambitious sort. You had better not become a gunner unless you are. Any "good-enough" temperament is ruled off wasting munitions. Red was creeping through the tan from his throat to the roots of his hair. To have this happen in the presence of that veteran general, after all his efforts to try to ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... where those two were concerned, and he began to laugh at the daring presumptions of his own past dreams and to worship now only from afar. But he could not know the effect of that parental purpose on that wilful, high-strung young person, the pique that Gray's frank interest in Mavis brought to life within her, and he was not yet far enough along in the classics to suspect that Marjorie might weary of hearing Aristides called the Just. Nor could he know ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... yacht after Peter left. At two o'clock Varney went down to a solitary luncheon. At quarter past, followed by the reproachful gaze of McTosh, he came out again. In the pit of his stomach reposed a great emptiness, but it was not hunger. He felt restless, high-strung, all made of nerves. He wanted to do something of a violent, physical sort, the more grueling the better; and his task was to loll in an easy-chair under a pretty awning and ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... or other necessaries, for they found a store of provisions in one of the huts that had evidently been placed there in case of need similar to their own; so, things jogged on evenly enough. Still, all were in a state of high-strung suspense, looking out eagerly from morning till night for the promised vessel that every one expected was coming to ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... the rest were dispersing, she sat quite still, and closed her eyes. For her soul was too high-strung now to endure the chit-chat she knew would attack her on the road home,—chit-chat that had been welcome enough coming ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... was altogether too wholesome, hearty, and high-strung a young girl to be a model, according to the flat-chested and cachectic pattern which is the classical type of certain excellent young females, often the subjects of biographical memoirs. But the old minister ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... little Netty," he began, after a short pause. "My nerves are all high-strung with the turn matters ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... had heard a great deal, through interviews, character studies, and other press stuff in the photoplay journals and the Sunday newspaper film sections. Now I found him to be a high-strung individual, so extremely nervous that it seemed impossible for him to remain in one position in his chair or for him to keep his hands motionless for a single instant. Although he was of moderate build, with a fair suggestion of flesh, there were yet the marks of ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... always knew it, but never so much as now. Something has happened recently—no matter what—that has elevated her higher than ever in my estimation. There is something grand about the girl—something too great and noble in that high-strung nature of hers, for such a reprobate as I! This is entre nous, though; if I tell you I am a reprobate, it is in confidence. I am a lucky fellow, am I not, to have two of earth's angels to choose ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... Elizabeth, she is lovely sometimes, and the way she remembers things that happened when she was young is simply wonderful. She knows how girls feel, too, and how they suffer when they are like Dr. Denbigh says I am—very nervous and sensitive and high-strung. But she admitted to me to-day that she had never before really made up her mind whether I am the "sweet, unsophisticated child" she calls me, or what Tom Price says I am, The Eastridge Animated and Undaunted Daily Bugle and Clarion Call. He ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... Mrs. Dixon agreed that he couldn't possibly do a bit of good—announced that I had come through it all like the true Prairie Woman that I was. Then he somewhat pompously and redundantly explained that I was a highly organized individual, "a bit high-strung," as Mrs. Dixon put it. I smiled into the pillow when he turned to my anxious-eyed Dinky-Dunk and condoningly enlarged on the fact that there was nothing abnormal about a woman like me being—well, rather abnormal as to temper and nerves during the last few months. ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... the method is of special value in sensitive, high-strung, nervous women of the "higher classes," who so habitually shun the rigors of child bearing—especially in the instance of their ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... "Before I utter a word it takes me a long time and after I utter the word, I become red in the face and so excited that I don't know where I am, or what I am doing!" I found this boy to be extremely high-strung and of a nervous temperament, easily excited. He was of an emotional type, was more-than-ordinarily sensitive about his trouble and brooded over it constantly, having long fits of deep melancholia that were a constant source of worry to his parents. He was furthermore at a critical age, ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... But some poor punk's sure red in the face, I'll bet," the man-about-town said with a chuckle. "Those high-strung paramour types always raising a ruckus. They never do pass the interview. Don't know ...
— The Perfectionists • Arnold Castle
... been toned and tuned up to the highest pitch in his wrestling with Nature, and will have been purged and purified in the white region of the highest mountains. And in this high-strung state he will now see that creation and manifestation of Nature which of all natural objects will best declare her meaning, bring him into closer touch with her very Heart, and stir in him the deepest emotions. Between him and this object ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... deceitful way, far indeed from that; but I believed there was much in him which he did not yet know himself, about himself. I fancied that the Southern blood he had in his veins from one side of his family had made him high-strung and passionate, as well as daring, quick to think, and quick to act; and that his study was to hold this side of his nature in check. I felt sure that he was generous even to a fault, yet I was certain that, if driven to desperation, there ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the family moved to St. Petersburg, and the two younger boys were sent to boarding school. The parting from his home but especially from his mother—though he saw her once a week—nearly broke his heart. Such a school was no place for a sensitive, high-strung boy like Peter, who needed the most tender fostering care. The work of the school was very heavy, the hours long. The boys often sat over their books till far into the night. Besides the school work, Peter had music lessons of the pianist Philipov, and ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... "Beatriz Weatherbee isn't the kind of woman you think she is. She has faults, of course, but she has tried to make the best of her life. If she made a mistake—or thought she had—no one else knew it. She braved it through. She's been high-strung, too." ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... praise. From this fault of super-subtilty women are free for the most part. They are more likely than men to rely on broad human emotion, and their tendency in error is toward the morbid analysis of a high-strung moral situation. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... escape without any particular plan in mind. In fact, it had been initiated on impulse. The fellow on guard at her door had excited intense dislike in her. High-strung, and excited by her kidnaping, she had been further annoyed by his officiousness, his fawning, which thinly disguised impudence. The third or fourth time that he intruded on her privacy to ask if she wanted anything ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... "brought to the grey of the hills"; upon the lovers of In a Balcony evening comes "intense with yon first trembling star." Wordsworth's "quiet" is lonely, pensive, and serene; his stars are not beating with emotion, but "listening quietly." Browning's is hectic, bodeful, high-strung. The vast featureless Campagna is instinct with "passion," and its "peace ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... girl, the first to welcome me as I crossed the threshold of the home. She was a rather reserved, high-strung, aristocratic-looking girl, who did not always take kindly to requests made with regard to little household duties required from each member of the family, health ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... behind the constables, Willy Ray sank exhausted into a chair. The tension of excitement had been too much for his high-strung temperament, and the ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... motoring and golf, able in a moment's conference at lunch to "shift the policy" and to bring instant poverty to the families of forty clerks or four hundred workmen in the shops. When they jovially entered the elevator together, some high-strung stenographer would rush over to one of the older women to weep and be comforted.... An hour from now her ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... young man, he did not give in. Once he lost a shoe, but a little searching recovered that. On another occasion, a passing dog, seeing things going on in the ditch which in his opinion should not have been going on—he was a high-strung dog, unused to coming upon heads moving along the road without bodies attached—accompanied Percy for over a quarter of a mile, causing him exquisite discomfort by making sudden runs at his face. A well-aimed stone settled this little misunderstanding, and Percy proceeded on his journey alone. ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... about the fair Madame, I must say, in justice both to her and myself, that any grace with which she has been pleased to honor me is not to be misconstrued. You are not to imagine any but the most Platonic of liaisons. She is as high-strung as an Arabian steed,—proud, heroic, romantic, and French! and such must be permitted to take their own time and way, which we in our gaucherie can only humbly wonder at I have ever professed myself her abject slave, ready to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... perhaps, Mark was not sorry to be convinced that what he had resolved to do was impossible. The high-strung mood in which he had been ready to proclaim his wrong-doing was already passing away. Vincent ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... and pringling air he felt excitable and high-strung. His tail curled upward until it ached. Finally he asked Mike Terrier, who lived next door, what ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... predestined to the same fate. I saw them growing up in complete destitution of those country sights and sounds which had made my own youth delightful; acquiring the superficial sharpness of the city child and his slang; suffering at times by the anaemia and listlessness bred of vitiated air; high-strung and sensitive as those must needs be whose nerves are in perpetual agitation; and when, in chance excursions to the country, I compared my children with the children of cottagers and ploughmen, I felt that ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... can't possibly be too careful," remarked Mrs. White, sententiously. "The world's full of gossiping people, and women are very impressionable, especially such high-strung women as that young widow. A man can't possibly be too careful. Read me ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... the victories of the second. That is not my mood when I recall the relation between the Countess and myself. For sometimes, while passion becomes less fierce, aspiration grows less exalted. The man who calls most, if not all, things vanity, will yield to desires which some high-strung ideal in the boy would rout. At forty the feelings are not so strong as at twenty, but neither are the ambitions, the dreams, the conception of self. It is easier to resist, but it may not seem so well worth while. Thus it is with me. I wonder not at the beginning ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... the lady boarders, the wife of a senator, treated her with marked coolness; and these various circumstances so worked on her high-strung temperament that she was thrown into an uncontrollable fit of passion, during which she broke the windows in ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... been put in madhouses, whereas the society that calls those men crazy is always finding its way there. It takes but little to make a lunatic of poor Lady Smith-Tompkins. Poor thing! you know she is so very "high-strung," such delicate sensibilities! She has an idee fixe—so very sad. Ah yes! that is it. She never had an idea before, and now that she has one she cannot get rid of it, and it will ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... high-strung duty, the brave way Of an imperial spirit. So to-day Your People bow—in pride. The sympathy of millions is your own. May Glory long be guardian of your Throne, Love ever at ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, February 6, 1892 • Various
... very smile had a grimness in it more ominous than his scowl. Poor man! Dyspeptic on a diet of oatmeal porridge; kept wide awake by crowing cocks; drummed out of his wits by long-continued piano-pounding; sharp of speech, I fear, to his high-strung wife, who gave him back as good as she got! I hope I am mistaken about their everyday relations, but again I say, poor man!—for all his complaining must have meant real discomfort, which a man of genius feels not less, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... explained to the crowd. He was plainly a sick man. Whispers of sympathy ran about the court-room. Every one knew how he had sacrificed a friend to his sense of civic duty, and everyone knew what pain that act must have caused a man with such a high-strung conscience. ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... one by his swift transitions from solemn discourse to humorous descriptions of persons, places, experiences. And as the Misses Cabot and my mother alike regarded healthful laughter, cheery sallies, and childlike gayety as a wise relief for overwrought brains or high-strung sensibilities, our fireside sparkled with brilliant repartees and scintillating mirth. It is [137] pleasantly remembered that, in such by-play, Dr. Dewey, while often satirical, and prone to good-tempered banter, was never cynical, and was intolerant of personal gossip or ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... were the state-house on Beacon hill suddenly occupied by Italian, Polish and Russian laborers,—placed and kept there by a foreign conqueror. Add to the comparison the prouder height of the slaveholder, and the lower depth of his serf. Put this as the case of a people high-strung and sensitive, still fresh from the passion of war, still smarting from defeat. They had fought to exhaustion, and their banner had fallen without disgrace. Now the victors who had won by superiority of force had placed their late bondmen as their rulers. The offices from which ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... him as he requested; I felt that I owed him some little reparation for having denied him the great wish of his heart. It was my duty to make up to him in other ways for what I had felt obliged to do. I knew him for a nervous, high-strung man, overwrought by brooding for years on what he called his wrongs, and I did not know what he might do if I refused his request. It was not of myself I thought in this connection, but of the girl at home who looked to me ...
— The Case of the Registered Letter • Augusta Groner
... alert with critical and jealous watchfulness, there was no evading the square, cold, rigid test of skill in argument and truth in principle. The processions and banners, the music and fireworks, of both parties, were stilled and forgotten while the audience listened with high-strung nerves to the intellectual ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... sick, and began to think what if I had killed him. I didn't, Cloudy; they say I only hit his knee; but wouldn't it have been awful all my life to have to think I had killed a man? I couldn't have stood it, Cloudy!" and with sudden breaking of the tension the high-strung child flung herself down in a little, brilliant heap at Julia Cloud's knees, buried her bright face in her aunt's lap, ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... you will open my breast you will find an old man's broken heart, and across the rent your name will be written in the ragged edges. How handsome you are to-night! How fair a lad you were! Such face and form and high-strung soul, the heart of an ancient knight come back to earth, I used to boast! God's grace is wonderful, His ways past finding out. When we seem forsaken, He is but preparing larger blessings on some grander plan whose end we do not see. He is my ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... he set it cracking over his horses' backs. The high-strung beasts plunged at their bits, and the leaders started to rear. Again he swung out his whip, and this time it flicked the plunging leaders. Instantly there was a rush of feet and a scrunch of wheels. The ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... in a room at the club, for the doctor said she was such a high-strung child it would be wise to keep her perfectly quiet for a few hours and take precautions against pneumonia. Then Josephine went around asking for ...
— Different Girls • Various
... himself have gained something of indifference! Could his senses, his jangled, shattered nerves, his bruised and bleeding pride, have acquired that callousness of stupidity, how well would it have been with him! But Ivan was Ivan still: high-strung, keenly apperceptive and receptive; his spiritual, like his physical, nerves, alive to every emotion, every pain or pleasure that rose up into his present. Only to a certain natural extent had he changed. The ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... silently, and wretched as only a lonely, uncomprehended, and uncomplaining child can be. No one had the faintest conception of what she suffered. Her naughtinesses were remembered against her, but her latent tenderness was never suspected. Once the old Doctor said: "That's a peculiarly sensitive, high-strung, nervous child; you must be gentle with her," and both parents had stared at him. They were matter-of-fact creatures themselves, comparatively speaking, with a notion that such nonsense as nervousness should be shaken ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... get his previous summer's job as a starter on an electric car line owned by a railway company. The position was abolished, however, so I became a conductor on a suburban line. Unfortunately, my motorman was a high-strung, nervous Irishman, who made me so nervous that I often could not give the signals properly, and who made life generally unpleasant for me. He professed a liking for me and did prevent one or two serious accidents. At the same time, he said I was the first 'square' conductor he had ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... callous, ruthless Bounder, all smiles and sneers, strike Nora and snatch her jewels. He also saw the beautiful, high-strung and high-spirited creature, her senses drowned in resentment, snatch up a weapon and rush after him, all the wrong she had ever suffered at his hands ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... allers bed quite a parcel o' sympathy for Eph," said a short, thickset coasting captain, who sat tilted back in a three-legged chair, smoking lazily. "You see, he wa'n't but about twenty-one or two then, and he was allus a mighty high-strung boy; and then Eliphalet did act putty ha'sh, foreclosin' on Eph's mother, and turnin' her out o' the farm, in winter, when everybody knew she could ha' pulled through by waitin'. Eph sot great store by the old lady, and I expect he was putty mad ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... sprung up since he had last seen her! Almost a woman now—and destined to be a beauty! And more than just a beauty: she was colorful, vital, high-strung. Before he had gone away he had regarded her with something akin to the negligent affection of an older brother. But this thing which was already beginning to surge up in him was altogether different, and he ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... bees, the cat race is nervous. Their temperaments are high-strung. They would never have become as poised or as placid as—say—super-cows. Yet they would have had less insanity, probably, than we. Monkeys' (and elephants') minds seem precariously balanced, unstable. The great cats are saner. They are intense, ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... past two years, than of his own disappointment in her. But she did not understand the words in this way, and thinking he wanted her to know what a terrible mistake he had made when he married her, five years ago, her high-strung, nervous temperament was aroused still more, and rising quickly, she ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... approaches, until finally I turned on him. "Are you trying to make love to me?" I demanded. "The surest thing you know," he said with a rather moonish smile. "Then let me tell you something," I hissed out at him, with my nose within six inches of his, "I'm a high-strung hell-cat, I am. I'm a bob-cat, and I'm not aching to be pawed by you or any other hare-brained he-mutt. So now, right from this minute, keep your distance! Is that clear? Keep your distance, or I'll break your head in with ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... spending his nights alone with diagrams and little dummies on a miniature gridiron, his days in careful coaching. He had taken a huge, ungainly Nova Scotian lad named Ringold for centre; he had placed a square-jawed, tow-headed boy from Duluth in the line; he had selected a high-strung, unseasoned chap, who for two years had been eating his heart out on the side-lines, and made him into ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... came up over the ledge, a pine tassel in his hand, his languor of other days transformed into high-strung, triumphant intensity, the sparkle of a splendid hope in his eyes, only Firio was there to ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... a striking girl, of medium height and slender form, but it was her face that fascinated me, with its delicately molded features, intense unfathomable eyes of dark brown, and lips that showed her idealistic, high-strung temperament. ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... terrier, whose name often finds a loving place in these pages. She and Sandy dwelt together in peace and amity, although the little doggie never could have felt any affection for her selfish companion. Rose's nerves were of a delicate and high-strung order, and there was nothing she hated so much as uproarious noise. Every now and then it chanced that during a few days of wet or windy weather, our little house had been filled by passing guests: gentlemen who had called ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... boil over; foam, fume, rage, rave, rant, tear; go wild, run wild, run mad, go into hysterics; run riot, run amuck; battre la campagne [Fr.], faire le diable a quatre [Fr.], play the deuce. Adj. excitable, easily excited, in an excitable state; high-strung; irritable &c (irascible) 901; impatient, intolerant. feverish, febrile, hysterical; delirious, mad, moody, maggoty- headed. unquiet, mercurial, electric, galvanic, hasty, hurried, restless, fidgety, fussy; chafing &c v.. startlish^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... X.—A.H., aged 62. Belongs to a family which cannot be regarded as healthy, but there is no insanity among near relations. Father a very virile man of high character and good intelligence, but not sound physical health. Mother was high-strung and nervous, but possessed of indomitable courage and very affectionate; she lived very happily with her husband. She became a chronic invalid and died of consumption. A.H. was a seven months' child, the third in the family, who were born very rapidly, so that there ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... no child to deal with, but a woman in full bloom, a woman fairly aquiver with life and intelligence, a high-strung, sensitive, fine-grained creature, whose educated ignorance will not be educated innocence, remember that! And I tell you, Speed, it's the heaviest responsibility a ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... of a twig brought her around as a sudden tight rein does a high-strung horse. The man had emerged from the prickly pears and was close upon her. His steps dragged. The sag of his shoulders indicated extreme fatigue. The dark hollows beneath the eyes told of ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... he knew well caught him, and he laughed. It was the possession that had held in him in every action which he had so far been in. It lifted his high-strung spirit into an atmosphere where there was no dread and no disgust, only a keen rapture in throwing every atom of soul and body into physical intensity; it was as if he himself were a bright blade, dashing, cutting, ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... that a procession of bacchantes limned on the wall immediately below the ceiling had begun to move, traversing the room from right to left in a gay and spectacular pilgrimage. I did not confide my discovery to Kerner. The artistic temperament is too high-strung to view such deviations from the natural laws of the art of kalsomining. I sipped my absinthe drip ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... weeks ago I heard you play the violin at a concert! Oh, if I could tell you the raptures that thrilled my soul at the floods of melody you drew from the insensate strings! Only a poet's spirit, only a high-strung heart could accomplish such strains! I, too, am of a musical spirit; I, too, thrill to the notes of the great masters, if interpreted as they are by you! May I hope that you will not spurn this outburst of a sympathetic nature, and accept this tribute ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... Pervyse. The brand new motor ambulance was standing in the roadway, waiting her need. Its brown canopy was shiny in the sun. A huge Red Cross adorned either side with a crimson splash that ought to be visible on a dark night. The thirty horse-power engine purred and obeyed with the sympathy of a high-strung horse. Seats and stretchers inside were clean and fresh for stricken men. From Hilda's own home town of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, had come a friendship's garland of one hundred dollars. She liked to fancy that this particular sum of money had passed into the front ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... possess the porcupine, for he slowly circled the tree behind which the lynx crouched, stopping every few steps to sniff at the bark or to peer up into the branches. For a moment the big cat held his ground, but the sight of the queer apparition bearing down upon him was too much for his high-strung nerves. With a snarl he scrambled up the tree, where he crouched upon a branch, glaring down at the animated leaf-pile. Kagh shambled around the tree, his nose to the ground as if hunting for something. Then he continued on his placid way, disappearing ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... actor man, and each of us with our homes, closed against her, as she feels, and you know we did feel so, too, Calvin; and when I put myself in her place and remember the things she heard me say, I don't blame her for refusing our advice and help. She's young and high-strung, and oh, I've made such a mess of it, and,—and,—say something, Calvin Trent!" Miss Lacey made the addition so explosively that the judge jumped. "Say you'll send some of your detectives to keep watch of her—quick—to-morrow—before she has a chance to get ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... received seemed to upset you more than the punch," he diagnosed in a concerned voice. "You Americans are a high-strung nation." He paused a moment philosophically. "I daresay you're right about not drinking spirits. With your nervous organism, it would set you on fire. But our foggy English climate and stodgy people call for it. Sets our pulses going. A thought just here—Climate and ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... magnetic, he originated no innovations, burst into no flights of imaginative oratory. His state papers were planned with painstaking care—first, frequently, jotted down in his diary and then elaborated, revised, recopied and revised again. The vivid imagination and high-strung emotions that made Clay and Blaine great campaigners were lacking in Hayes. He was gentle, dignified, simple, systematic, thoughtful, serene, correct. In making his judgments on public questions he was sensitive to moral forces. The emancipation ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... however, that the dear child must be allowed to enjoy his Christmas. "He is so high-strung," she said, "not like ordinary children. He can't be controlled like them. I can't bear to cross him and break ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... was an Irish beauty, I can tell you. Looking back on it now, I believe she was of rich and proud people and that they had cast her off for her folly in marrying a man that was rough of cheek and speech, for all his ready good heart. She was as delicate and high-strung and timid, as he was brown, big, and fearless as to anything, be it man or typhoon. And yet it was she who could stick to one purpose as if the character of a bulldog was behind the slender, girlish face of her, while he was always ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... justified, for at this time Churchill was in a very bad way. During the month in prison he had obtained but little exercise. The lack of food and of water, the cold by night and the terrific heat by day, the long stumbling marches in the darkness, the mental effect upon an extremely nervous, high-strung organization of being hunted, and of having to hide from his fellow men, had worn him down to a ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... a few minutes. She must find the children, and she must not trouble any one else in the school about them. Dr. Ashley had paid his morning visit, and there was quietness in the corridor just outside Betty's room. Martha went there and listened. The high-strung, anxious voice was no longer heard crying aloud piteously for what it could not obtain. The door of the room was slightly ajar. Martha ventured to peep in. Betty was lying with her face towards the wall, her long, thick black ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... understood the situation at a glance, and promised their aid. They had all looked upon Inga as "high-strung" and "queer," and it did not surprise them to hear that she had been frightened out of her wits at their request for the loan of little Hans. Forming a line, with a space of twenty feet between each man, they began to beat the bush, climbing the steep slope toward the mountains. Inga, ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... which he was specially liable in regard to living things—to feel that it was his right to curb the spirit and tame the rebellion of whatever was restive to his control. There was something in this haughty, high-strung creature, poising herself in silence to stand upright in the face of fate, that would have called forth his impulse to dominate her will, to subdue her lips to his own, if he had really cared. Fortunately, he didn't care, and so could seek her ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... nuggety little fellow, hard as cast iron, good-hearted, but very excitable; and when the bashed Redmond was being carted off (poor Uncle Bob was always pretty high-strung, and was sitting on a log sobbing like a great child from the reaction), Duigan made some sneering remark that only Jimmy Nowlett caught, and in an instant he was up and ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... were thrown more and more together, the girl lost all her self-control. Swift did not in any sense make love to her, though he gave her the somewhat fanciful name of "Vanessa"; but she, driven on by a high-strung, unbridled temperament, made open love to him. When he was about to return to Ireland, there came one startling moment when Vanessa flung herself into the arms of Swift, and amazed him by pouring out a torrent ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr |
