"Nerve" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... upon the couch beside him and sat with his arm around her. "No, I don't want to lie down just yet," he said. "I just want you. I'm keeping you in suspense, I know; I oughtn't to do that. Jord's life is all right, and he'll be himself again in time, but—well, I've lost my nerve for a bit—I can't talk ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... conscience, without its being embittered to him, not only by the internal rebellion of his feelings against the violence which he exercised over them, but by many accidental circumstances, which, in the course of the banquet, and during the subsequent amusements of the evening, jarred upon that nerve, the least vibration of which ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... end yet with every nerve in my body tingling in hostile response to the Blunt vibration, which seemed to have got into my ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... as to maintaining gold payments, but only temporarily. In Berlin drastic measures were undertaken to accumulate gold in the Reichsbank. Vienna reports it to be well known that Germany had been for eighteen months before straining every nerve to obtain gold. Whatever sums of gold were included in the so-called "war chest" in Spandau (said to be $30,000,000) were also deposited with the Reichsbank. Gold was even smuggled across the borders of Holland on the persons of spies. Urgent demands were made ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... alternate yelp from my ferocious followers made me only too certain that they were in close pursuit. Nearer and nearer they came; I heard their feet pattering on the ice nearer still, until I could feel their breath and hear their snuffing scent. Every nerve and muscle in my frame were ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... hand and to the spine behind, to the last rib laterally, and to the cartilages of the lowest six ribs anteriorly, is a sheet of muscle fibres which form on either side of the chest a dome-like partition between the lungs and the abdominal cavity (vide fig. 2). The phrenic nerve arises from the spinal cord in the upper cervical region and descends through the neck and chest to the diaphragm; it is therefore a special nerve of respiration. There are two—one on each side supplying the two sheets of muscle fibres. ...
— The Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song • F. W. Mott
... latent animation glowed in Anna Leath. In every nerve and vein she was conscious of that equipoise of bliss which the fearful human heart scarce dares acknowledge. She was not used to strong or full emotions; but she had always known that she should not be afraid of them. She was not ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... could not nerve herself to the commission of so great a crime; but it seems more probable that the steward prevented the destruction of the child under the orders of M. de Saint-Maixent. The theory is that the marquis, mistrustful ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... all the blind, fighting spirit which, in gridiron days, had driven him with clinched teeth into the thick of the battering melee. He sprang into a crouching posture, face turned toward the taunting sound, every muscle taut, every nerve tingling, and with but one thought surging through his brain—the desire to charge back ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... years of work among women I found that it was absolutely hopeless attacking the evil from one side only, and I had to nerve myself as best I could to address large mass meetings of men, always taking care clearly to define my position—that I had not come upon that platform to help them, but to ask them to help me in a battle that I had found ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... cab-door and jumped out had he dared, but his nerve failed him, and, indeed, considering the speed of the cab, the leap would have been dangerous to a far more active person. So he was forced to wait resignedly until the station should be reached, when he determined to make Clegg understand his purpose ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... and watched it curl itself away around the chandelier, for notwithstanding the fact that he knew, or should have known, the effects of nicotine on the human system, this aspiring young member of the medical profession wasted money and nerve force in his ...
— The Daughter of a Republican • Bernie Babcock
... large enough to allow of their conversing as they chose under cover of many noises. Gammon had by this time made up his mind to a very bold step, a stratagem so audacious that assuredly it deserved to succeed. Only despair could have supplied him with such a suggestion and with the nerve ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... later. Stay at college till the term is up, and in the meantime try to land a job. However, you won't have any trouble to do that. Keep your nerve, boy, for your mother's sake. It's a hard blow, but we'll weather it, never fear, and ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... it was argued by the prosecution that the weakness of the bomb was a blunder on the part of the socialists, just as its premature explosion, caused by Ernest's losing his nerve and dropping it, was a blunder. And to clinch the argument, there were the several Congressmen who testified to having seen Ernest fumble and drop ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... to cash this bill of exchange, sir," he said. Castanier felt the tones of his voice thrill through every nerve with a violent shock similar to that given by a ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... the voice once more; and as I saw Brennan's arm slowly rise, I lifted mine also, and covered him, noting, as I did so, almost in wonder, with what steadiness of nerve and wrist I held the slender gauge just beneath the visor of his cap. Deliberately, as though he dreaded ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... motionless a full ten minutes. Nor did the horse beside him stir. It was a test of human endurance, the capacity to keep himself absolutely silent, but with every nerve attuned, while he waited for an invisible danger. And those minutes were precious, too. The value of not a single one of them could have been measured or weighed. It was his duty to reach Longstreet at speed, because the general and his veterans must be ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... case—and to my mind the only case of any importance—is that of Brown-Sequard's epileptic guinea-pigs, which inherited the mutilated condition of parents who had gnawed off their own gangrenous toes when anaesthetic through the sciatic nerve having been divided.[55] Darwin also mentions a cow that lost a horn by accident, followed by suppuration, and subsequently produced three calves which had on the same side of the head, instead of a horn, a bony lump attached merely to the skin. Such cases may seem to prove that mutilation ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... had been reinforced the evening before, by six hundred regular troops, and the Queen's American regiment from New York, commanded by Colonel Innis, marching to join Ferguson. Here was a position that would have tried the talent and nerve of the most skillful and brave officer. Advance was hopeless, and retreat impossible. But Shelby was equal to the emergency. He immediately commenced forming a breast-work of brush and old logs, while he detailed twenty-five tried men to reconnoiter and skirmish with the enemy as soon as ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... Celt is in his heart and hand, The Gaul is in his brain and nerve; Where, cosmopolitanly planned, He guards the ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... outlets are sealed, begets a tension of nerve, in which the sensible world comes to one with a reinforced brilliancy and relief—all redness is turned into blood, all water into tears. Hence a wild, convulsed sensuousness in the poetry of the Middle Age, in which the things of nature ...
— Aesthetic Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... became their enemy, but after much suffering and opposition Gonzales was settled at Potosi, studying the Quichuan language, and hoping to work upon the Indians, while the unwearied Gardiner again returned to England to strain every nerve for the Fuegian Mission, which lay nearest of ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... her paces to conceal the topsy-turvy doings of her household. Stones are hurled through the windows, cabinets are opened by invisible and silent locksmiths, and I have seen these things and can offer no explanation.'" Britt closed the book. "Right here the old doctor lost his nerve, up to this time he was a fairly acute observer. His next entry is evidently some weeks or, possibly, months later. He says: 'Slowly we have learned to understand the phenomena, but we cannot control them, and the child is still cruelly embarrassed by intrusive tappings and cracklings as she ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... flows the burning tide— Dark storms of feeling sweep across her breast— In loneliness there needs no mask of pride— To nerve the soul, and veil the heart's unrest, Amid the crowd her glances brightly beam, Her smiles with undimmed lustre sweetly shine: The haunting visions of life's fevered dream The cold and careless seek ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... nerve was dancing against Mrs. Samstag's right temple. Alma could sense, rather than see, the ridge ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... he was present, giving an accurate description of the dinner itself and enclosing a diagram of the manner in which the guests were seated, but without any commentary on the proceedings of the day. It was, after all, one of the nerve-centres of the great world, and an agreeable change from the domestic monotony of the Wayside. Thackeray would have descried rich material for his pen in it, but Hawthorne's studies lay in another direction. Great men were not his ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... dozen Bantu languages. In a minute after that we had the plan well understood and truly laid; and, what was better, they had ceased to believe me a victim of nerves—a fact that gave me back the nerve that had ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... cheek of it set Travis to laughing. He closed the door and said to the man who had followed the dog in: "Carpenter, if I had the nerve of that raw-boned fiend that follows you around, I'd ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... fell on me the judgment of the gods for such rebellion as mine." He turned his sombre eyes full on Livinius. "Would you believe, to see me as I sit here, that mine is a body racked by the tortures of the damned, drained of the very sap of life by disease that eats into every nerve and leaves it raw and quivering, yet that only numbs when its fury is spent, and will not kill? That time after time, when its throes are on me, I have turned craven and begged Claudius for a potion to end it all?" He laughed ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... morning was followed by play of dumb-bells. He had made a cult of physical soundness; he looked anxiously at his lithe, well-moulded limbs; feebleness, disease, were the menaces of a supreme hope. Ideal love dwells not in the soul alone, but in every vein and nerve and muscle of a frame strung to perfect service. Would he win his heart's desire?—let him be worthy of it in body as in mind. He pursued to excess the point of cleanliness. With no touch of personal conceit, he excelled the perfumed exquisite in care for minute perfections. Not in ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... nerve was failing her. The convulsive sobs continued, but she ceased to abuse him. He wondered when he should be able to get it out of her. He himself could no more have wept than iron and ...
— Bessie Costrell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... history society has adjusted the organization of its religious activities to social custom and social need. The church in any country is a name for an organized system, with its nerve-centres and its ganglia ramifying into the remotest localities. In the local community it binds together its members in mutual relations, even though they live on different sides of a city, or even in the suburbs. ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... sexual hysteria in woman," King concludes, "is a temporary modification of the nervous government of the body and the distribution of nerve-force (occurring for the most part, as we see it to-day, in prudish women of strong moral principle, whose volition has disposed them to resist every sort of liberty or approach from the other sex), consisting ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... of the two women, 'it's the fire again! it's all round us! O I wisht I hadn't a'come! I wisht I was to hum!'—and she showed the earnestness of the wish by beginning to cry. Her companion sat still and turned very pale. Paler yet, but with every nerve braced, Wych Hazel stood in the road to see for herself. The ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... face of such unanimity of purpose, guided by so much worth and talent, the Ministers lost their nerve, and, like all rulers who do not possess the confidence of the governed, began first to make mistakes, and then to quarrel among themselves. Throughout the years of Macaulay's early manhood the ice was breaking fast. He was still quite young when the concession ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... that letter over to Merrick it will give him some idea of our proposed trip," said Mr. Rover, "and more than likely he will strain every nerve ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... seconds, elapsed in this preliminary state, which, however powerless, was not without a vague luxurious sense of delight. And then suddenly came pain,—pain, that in rapid gradations passed into a rending agony. Every bone, sinew, nerve, fibre of the body, seemed as if wrenched open, and as if some hitherto unconjectured Presence in the vital organization were forcing itself to light with all the pangs of travail. The veins seemed swollen to bursting, the heart labouring to maintain its action by fierce ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... alas! he was poor, and, what was worse, in debt; "his poverty, but not his will, consented." He was reinstated; but though prodigiously improved as a debater, he felt that he had not advanced as a public man. His ambition inflamed by his discontent, he had, since his return to office, strained every nerve to strengthen his position. He met the sarcasms on his poverty by greatly increasing his expenditure, and by advertising everywhere his engagement to an heiress whose fortune, great as it was, he easily contrived to magnify. As his old house in Great George Street—well ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the suggestion that they should help was put to the others they claimed their izzat indignantly. Izzat and sharm (honor and shame) are the two scarcely distinguishable enemies of honest work, into whose teeth it takes both nerve and resolution to drive a Hillman at the best of times. Nerve King had, but his resolution was asleep. He was too ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... and failed. Once more he was astonished; once more he was humiliated—and as for his anger, it rose to summer-heat. He arranged the balls again, grouping them carefully, and said he would win this time, or die. When a client reaches this condition, it is a good time to damage his nerve further, and this can always be done by saying some little mocking thing or other that has the outside appearance of a friendly remark—so I employed this art. I suggested that a bet might tauten his nerves, and that I would offer one, but that as I did not want it to be an ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... which he had been. His nerve was gone, as well as his conscience; and all the dash and fury of his old ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... pray—praying in the morning had been no use—but he trusted in God, and he labored hard, toiling to and fro, seeking in every nook and behind each stone, and straining every muscle and nerve, till the sweat rolled in a briny dew off his forehead and his curls dripped with wet. At last, with a scream of joy, he touched some soft, close wool that gleamed white as the white snow. He knelt down on the ground and peered behind the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... your normal condition is sympathetically attuned to the vibrations of starlight. Your consciousness is located in your brain, and so long as those vibrations continue to strike with sufficient force upon the optic nerve, you will be conscious of the light. But suppose the machinery of your body were finer—suppose your senses were absolutely in accord with those vibratory movements, instead of only partially so—do you not know that the starlight would reveal ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... ocean. I had almost felt the cold arms of Death about me; but compared to the sickening dread of the cruel Apache, my fears then had been as naught. Facing the inevitable at sea, I had closed my eyes and said good-bye to Life. But in this mysterious darkness, every nerve, every sense, ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... Nelsen figured that numbers, names, and individual variations didn't count for much, just then. They were a crowd with an overall personality—often noisy, sometimes quiet like now, always a bit grim to sustain their nerve before all they had to learn in order to reduce their inexperienced greenness, and before the thought of all the expensive equipment they had to somehow acquire, if they were to take part in the rapid adaptation of the solar system to human uses. Most of all, their courage was needed against ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... hunter bold should follow then, By bog, and rock, and hollow, then, And nestle in the gulley, then, And watch with deep devotion The shadows on the benty grass, And how they come, and how they pass; Nor must he stir, with gesture rash, To quicken her emotion. With nerve and eye so wary, sir, That straight his piece may carry, sir, He marks with care the quarry, sir, The muzzle to repose on; And now, the knuckle is applied, The flint is struck, the priming tried, Is fired, the volley has replied, And reeks in high commotion;— Was better ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... spread for us in apartments strewed with flowers. The table is adorned with them, and the most exquisite wines are handed to us in crystal goblets. When we have glorified God, by the agreeable use of the palate, and the olfactory nerve, we enjoy a delightful sleep of two hours, in bowers of orange trees, roses, and myrtles. Having acquired a fresh store of strength and spirits, we return to our occupations, that we may thus mingle labour with pleasure, which ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... was really a gulf between her and the ordinary worldling. It consisted in little else than a double dose of personality—a richer supply of nerve and emotion. She could not imagine life without money, because she had always lived with rich people. But money was the mere substratum; what really mattered was the excitement of loving, and being loved. She had adored her parents with an absorbing ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... little his clumsy manner of holding, Sometimes touching his hands, as she disentangled expertly Twist or knot in the yarn, unawares—for how could she help it?— Sending electrical thrills through every nerve in ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... both muscle and nerve had been very great, and now came collapse. Removing his shoes and outer clothing he dropped upon a roll of bedding and closed his eyes. But he was grateful, deeply and lastingly grateful. The bread that he had cast upon the waters ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the sort Discarded from a philo-Teuton Court; The tolerant warmth that sheds a kind of lustre Over a stout Ausonian filibuster Does not extend to thoroughly bad hats Like abdicated Hellene autocrats. And, if the Allies feel some slight reserve About resisting your confounded nerve, I, GABRIELE, do not. You may be A kind of subject satrap under me; If not, look out. You shall have cause to know The singing eagles ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... reward, but he did know that there were people who thought such things valuable and paid well for copies of them. If he escaped it might be worth something, and meanwhile it would divert his attention and keep him from losing his nerve. ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... provide a supply of fresh meat for her offspring after her own decease, calls in the science of anatomy to amplify the resources of her instinctive cruelty, and, having made a collection of weevils and spiders, proceeds with marvellous knowledge and skill to pierce the nerve-centre on which their power of locomotion (but none of their other vital functions) depends, so that the paralysed insect, beside which her egg is laid, will furnish the larva, when it is hatched, with a tamed and inoffensive ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... same, but he only darted a look upon his niece, which she felt in every nerve, though to his eyes she only stood hard and stolid. The manager, who found Constance's torrent of words as hard to deal with as Dolores's silence, asked for pen and ink, and begged to take down Miss Hacket's statement ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the young lieutenant and stepped to the door of his tent. He was short, strongly built, and his alert, vigorous movements indicated unusual nerve, ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard
... which a few days before would have made every nerve in Elinor's body thrill with transport, now arrived to be read with less emotion that mirth. Mrs. Jennings wrote to tell the wonderful tale, to vent her honest indignation against the jilting girl, and pour forth her compassion ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... country, the thoughtful and the careless, he who reads much, and he who reads little, all find in his pages more or less to amuse their fancy, to touch their feelings, to quicken their observation, to nerve their convictions, to put into happy phrase the deductions of their experience. His poetical sentiment is not pitched in too high a key for the unimaginative, but it is always so genuine that the most imaginative feel its charm. His wisdom is deeper than it seems, ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... erection is followed by ejaculation. A special nerve centre for ejaculation is also supposed to exist; and the ejaculation centre, like the erection centre, was formerly believed to be situated in the lumbar enlargement of the spinal cord, but recent investigations have shown ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... of place and stretching the ligaments, besides seriously injuring the nerves of her hand and arm. When she came here from Wallingford Community, several weeks after the accident, not only the nerves of her hand were essentially paralyzed, but the trunk nerve of her arm was paralyzed and caused her a great deal of suffering. It was as helpless as though completely paralyzed: she had not sufficient control over her ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... he should be supplied with funds by the Secret Committee of Congress. "I own," he says, "that after I had entered on my department, the applications of the Prisoners were so numerous, and their distress so urgent, that I exerted every nerve to obtain supplies, but in vain—Excepting L600 I had received from the Secret Committee in Bills of exchange, at my first entrance into the Office—I could not by any means get a farthing more, except in Continental ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... brother Guy—murdered him brutally and ruthlessly. Guy had been a playmate of Jean's—a favorite brother. Bill had been secretive and selfish. Jean had never loved him as he did Guy. Guy lay dead down there on the meadow. This feud had begun to run its bloody course. Jean steeled his nerve. The hot blood crept back along his veins. The dark and masterful tide of revenge waved over him. The keen edge of his mind then cut out sharp and trenchant thoughts. He must kill when and where he ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... gilt and varnish and crystal, glorious in plush and silk, heavy with souls and all that correct souls could possibly need in twenty hours, gathered itself up and rolled forward, swiftly, and more swiftly, into the wide, gray landscapes of France. The vibrating and nerve-destroying monotony of a long journey had commenced. We were summoned by white gloves to luncheon; and we lunched in a gliding palace where the heavenly dreams of a railway director had received their most luscious expression—and had then been modestly hidden ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... to her lips; but before tasting the stimulant, she glanced round, as she had often done before, to see if any one was looking at her; a stealthy cunning movement, born of the sense of shame she had never quite lost. Every nerve was quivering with excitement, and her heart was beating quickly. But her glance fell upon her husband's face turned toward her, yet with no watchful, reproachful eyes fastened upon her. The eyelids half closed; the pallid, ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... of a spurious author. But Boyle's edition came forth, as Bentley expresses it, "with a sting in its mouth." This, at first, was like a cut finger—he breathed on it, and would have forgotten it; but the nerve was touched, and the pain raged long after the stroke. Even the great mind of Bentley began to shrink at the touch of literary calumny, so different from the vulgar kind, in its extent and its duration. He betrays the ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... Baptist college campus in this city Oct. 2, and for the brutal assault upon me five days later by a pack of would-be assassins who had waited until my back was unsuspectingly turned before they had the nerve to get out their guns. I can overlook the assault made by the college students, although most of them were grown men, because they were encouraged thereto by their elders. I have positively refused to prosecute them; but the last ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... skin!" cried Bushnell. "You've got a nerve to come hyar! I s'pose Pacheco an' his gang of onery varmints is within ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... the dusty and nerve-racking ride in the automobile a chance for quiet, a bath, and relaxation between the clean coarse sheets of a bed, seemed heavenly to Janice Day. She really did not want to ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... and advanced towards our lines. The distance was barely seventy yards. No shot was fired, but you may be sure that safety-catches were hastily released. Suddenly, in the tense silence, the ambassador's nerve failed him. He bolted back, followed by a few desultory bullets. The reason for his sudden panic was never rightly ascertained, but the weight of public opinion inclined to the view that Mucklewame, who had momentarily exposed himself above the ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... critical moment the comical side of the situation sweeps over me, and out flashes the smile before I can force it back. It is so absurd to see a big grown man sulking like a child! Quite a good thing he does not intend to marry. His wife would have a nerve-racking time. ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... queen depends On you, and will the readier make a show Of mercy; and I may prevail on her To give an audience to her adversary; And by this stratagem we tie her hands Yes! I will make the attempt, strain every nerve. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... but they were of 'such stuff as dreams are made on,' and vanished at a wink, only to appear in other places; and by and by not only islands, but refulgent and revolving lights began to stud the darkness; lighthouses of the mind or of the wearied optic nerve, solemnly shining and winking as we passed. At length the mate himself despaired, scrambled on board again from his unrestful perch, and announced that we had missed our destination. He was the only man of practice in these waters, our sole pilot, shipped for ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... borrowed a half-day from the future on purpose, though she did not want to go at all. But the reality was not bad; only a fluttering, emotional little woman who clung to her hands and talked to her and asked useless questions with a nervous insistence which would have been nerve-wearing for a steady thing, but was only pitiful to ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... for her conscience was troubling her. Her sympathy was divided equally between these unfortunate people who had been saddled with an undesired visitor and herself who had been placed in a position at which every independent nerve in her rebelled. Even as a child she had loathed being under obligations to strangers or those whom she did ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... interposed Dubois, with a flourish of his hand. "I myself shall sit down." When the man returned, bringing only one chair on the plea that he could not find another, Cecilia, whose nerve was returning, offered it to Dubois. He accepted it calmly and sat down upon it, waiting to hear what she had to say. At this signal instance of arch selfishness Cecilia felt her heart tighten and her temples grow cold as if fillets of fire had been ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... pale-faces on horseback were cantering along at no great distance. They had not seen him, he was sure of that, although they were evidently looking for something. He let them pass and go on until he felt safe in following. Every nerve in his body ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... as a section or a party, but as a nation and a people. Let us avail ourselves of that distant and dim glimmer in the heavens which even now is looked upon by the sanguine as the promise of peace, and in its light survey our dangers and nerve ourselves to our duties. We behold, then, a people, bound together by the ties of a common interest, namely, national prosperity and renown, and in possession of a land more favored by natural elements of advantage than any other on the face of the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... herself is Zara seen; Her passions are the passions of a queen. When she to murder whets the timorous Thane,[66] I feel ambition rush through every vein; Persuasion hangs upon her daring tongue, My heart grows flint, and every nerve's new strung. In comedy—Nay, there, cries Critic, hold; Pritchard's for comedy too fat and old: 820 Who can, with patience, bear the gray coquette, Or force a laugh with over-grown Julett?[67] Her speech, look, action, humour, all are just, But then, her age and figure give disgust. Are foibles, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... as quietly as people generally do who are not personally concerned in the calamity they proclaim. But perhaps she hardly anticipated what followed. Her eyes were scarcely ready for the sight of that white livid face, quivering in every nerve with human agony, nor her ears for the fierce cry which broke from ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... Farland said. "I'm not accusing you of doing anything wrong, am I? I can see that you're a law-abiding man. You haven't nerve enough to be anything else. Suppose you step outside with me for a few minutes. I just want to ask you a ...
— The Brand of Silence - A Detective Story • Harrington Strong
... ceased trying to convince her that she was mistaken on this point; but he argued that the memory was of all functions of the brain the most uncertain, that there was no limit to its vagaries, which were mere matters of nerves and circulation, and that Dr. Norton-Smith, the nerve and brain specialist to whom he would take her, would probably turn out to have a dozen patients subject to the same affliction as herself. One never hears of half the ills that flesh is heir to until the inheritance falls to ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... of the muscles is due to derangement of the nerve that supplies them with energy. The muscles of both sides are not supplied by the same nerve; there is a right and a left nerve, each supplying its respective side. The reason why the muscles on the left side are the ones usually paralyzed is owing ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... grunted Arthur, "so don't say any more about it. It gives me the creeps to think of it. That fellow has some nerve. Wonder what he was doing on our road? You can't get anywhere except to Hilltop Academy that way. If he's a new student why didn't he come with ...
— The Hilltop Boys - A Story of School Life • Cyril Burleigh
... feature we see an energetic heroic age, in the hardy North which steels every nerve. The precise duration of the action cannot be ascertained,—years perhaps, according to the story; but we know that to the imagination the most crowded time appears always the shortest. Here we can hardly conceive ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... him to linger long in any one spot. He idled about the streets of the town; twice he wandered aimlessly miles out along roads beyond the town. All the while, without cessation, there was a tugging and nagging at his nerve-ends, a constant inward irritation which laid a hold on his thoughts, twitching them off into unpleasant channels. It kept him from centering his interest upon the casual things about him; inevitably it turned his mind back to inner contemplations. ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... it does git onto a man's nerve the first trip. Strange so many brash ones like you wanter try, but few on 'em ever dast git in ag'in. But I've be'n down so often." Then he peered about the cabin. "Looks like none o' the boys was ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... alone can become the heir of incorporeal and divine things whose whole soul is filled with the salubrious Word."16 "Every one that seeth the Son and believeth on him shall have everlasting life."17 "He strains every nerve towards the highest Divine Logos, who is the fountain of wisdom, in order that, drawing from that spring, he may escape death and win everlasting life."18 "I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread he shall live forever."19 "Lifting up his eyes ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... covered by a tendinous membrane and skin. (3/7. "Philosoph. Zoolog." tome 1 page 242.) In the common mole the eye is extraordinarily small but perfect, though many anatomists doubt whether it is connected with the true optic nerve; its vision must certainly be imperfect, though probably useful to the animal when it leaves its burrow. In the tucu-tuco, which I believe never comes to the surface of the ground, the eye is rather larger, but often rendered ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... dozer's sanctorum ought to be! The only thing attendant on the doze of an inside passenger, is the great chance of being suddenly aroused by the entrance of company. O tell me, ye of the fine nerve, what is more vexing than to be startled from your nest by the creaking slam of the steps, the bleak winter gales galloping along your face, and a whole bundle of human beings pushing themselves into your retreat! There is no rose without its ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... games and play of all sorts are so incomparably superior to the use of dumb-bells and developers, where movement and increase of muscular strength are made ends in themselves; whereas in play we are making relations with the outside world, responding to stimuli, educating our nerve muscular apparatus as an instrument ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... Verplanck, however, thinks there are some passages which relish strongly of an earlier time; while again there are others that with the prevailing sweetness of the whole have such an intertwisting of nerve and vigour, and such an energetic compactness of thought and imagery, mingled occasionally with the deeper tonings of "years that bring the philosophic mind," as to argue that they were wrought into the structure of the play not long before it came from the press. The ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... cry of pain and terror, slipped to the ground, his nerve completely shaken. The sorrel lashed out with his hind feet, and missed his head by a hairbreadth. Pedro turned to ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... things. Concede intellectual power, or the spiritual element, then add this temperament, and there follows a certain subtile, penetrative, radical quality of thought, a characteristic percipience of principles. And principles are not only seen, but felt; they thrill the nerve as well as greet the eye; and the man consequently becomes highly amenable to his own belief. The primary question respecting men is this,—How far are they affected by the original axiomatic truths? Truths are like the winds. Near the earth's surface winds blow in variable ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... few short months before. There was a heaviness about the eyes and there were strange, persistent lines gathering under the soft, white tissues of her skin. But when she at last stepped into the presence of her guests, with ample apologies for her tardiness, she was the picture of life and nerve. So much for the excellent resources of ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... plant perfection in this world at last! "Here," might they say, "shall power's divided reign "Evince that patriots have not bled in vain. "Here godlike liberty's herculean youth, "Cradled in peace, and nurtured up by truth "To full maturity of nerve and mind, "Shall crush the giants that bestride mankind. "Here shall religion's pure and balmy draught "In form no more from cups of state be quaft, "But flow for all, through nation, rank, and sect, "Free as that ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... hand clutched the great knob of the library door and turned it, and when the placid countenance of my step-mother looked up at me from a comfortable easy-chair at the opposite side of the room, I felt that some awful moment had dawned on my existence. With as much nerve and self-control as a child usually displays on such an occasion, I closed the door behind me and walked towards the window ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... Samuel's nerve failed him. He waited, while car after car went by. But then he caught hold of himself. If anyone could do it, so could he. ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... consolation for the loss of their solid privileges. Indeed, the increase of the power of the State has often been urged by artful men, as a pretext for some abridgment of the public liberty. But the scheme of the junto under consideration not only strikes a palsy into every nerve of our free constitution, but in the same degree benumbs and stupefies the whole executive power, rendering Government in all its grand operations languid, uncertain, ineffective, making Ministers fearful of attempting, and incapable of executing, any ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... could not sleep. Driving a plane through clouds, mist and sunshine for hours had made every nerve alert. And the strain of that last sagging slide through the air was not to be relieved instantly. So he lay there in his blankets, a tumult of ideas in his mind. This wheat-field now? Had he really been misdirected by the compass ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... built it up. What peace of mind, what self-respect could be left for us in the remainder of our lives! The weight of dishonor would lie always upon our hearts. And yet this will be surely our fate and our future if we do not nerve our souls and brace our arms for victory. No regrets will avail, no excuses will help, no after-thoughts can profit us. It is now—now—even in these weeks and months that are passing that the final reckoning is being taken, and when once the sum is ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... feet a day, and has been for the last six months. At five dollars a foot—that's the contract price—Old Bible-Back is paying a hundred dollars a day. Now—how many days will that drill have to run to do the annual work? No, you're all right, young man, and I like your nerve, but you don't want to take too much ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... now all nerve, enthusiasm, and hope, bowed. He was satisfied to be allowed to work in his ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... suffice, lady, that she was carried to a place of safety, and every effort used to restore animation, in which we were eventually successful. How shall I describe our meeting, when she recognised me?—it is impossible; I feel it now in every nerve, but to tell you is beyond my power. Through the kindness of a generous officer, I procured her a passage to England, and gave her all that I possessed, with this one request, that she would remain at Plymouth till my return to port. In a few months afterwards we anchored ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 272, Saturday, September 8, 1827 • Various
... the inner suite of apartments are the watchmen, (branches of the auditory nerve,) listening for the approach of Sound. The visitor at length enters the porch, and knocks at the front-door. The watchmen in the antechamber hear the blow close to them, as it is repeated, through the chain, on the window of their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... concerning things of which he knew nothing. One, seeing his arm, began to scold. "Why, man, that's no way to do. You want to fix that thing." He appropriated the lieutenant and the lieutenant's wound. He cut the sleeve and laid bare the arm, every nerve of which softly fluttered under his touch. He bound his handkerchief over the wound, scolding away in the meantime. His tone allowed one to think that he was in the habit of being wounded every day. The lieutenant hung ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane |
