"Nerves" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... clears the head o'doited Lear; Thou cheers ahe heart o' drooping Care; Thou strings the nerves o' Labour sair, At's weary toil; Though even brightens dark Despair Wi' ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... alleviate the wretched annoyance of the business. I have always said that there is nothing like pain; toothache, dumb-ague, arthritic gout, it does not matter what you call it, if the screw is put upon the nerves sufficiently strong, there is nothing left in heaven or in earth that can interest the sufferer. Still, even to this there is the consolation that it cannot last for ever. Either you will be relieved and have a good hour again before the sun goes down, or else ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... aloud. The tears rolled down their cheeks. In their terror there was nothing ludicrous; they were in as great physical pain as were some of the hundreds in Rheims who had been hit. And yet others of their fellow townsmen living in the same street, and with the same allotment of brains and nerves, were treating the bombardment with the indifference they would show to ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... decaying corpse; and to cook blood and give it another name (gravy) may be an artifice to please the palate, but it is blood, (blood that once coursed through the body of a highly sensitive and nervous being), just the same. Surely a person whose olfactory nerves have not been blunted prefers the delicate aroma of ripe fruit to the sickly smell of mortifying ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon
... peculiar one—the wild rush, the bleats of terror, gasps of agony, and the fiendish growls of attack and the sounds of ravenous gluttony. With every hair bristling, Satan rose and sprang from the woods—and stopped with a fierce tingling of the nerves that brought him horror and fascination. One of the white shapes lay still before him. There was a great steaming red splotch on the snow, and a strange odor in the air that made him dizzy; but only for a moment. Another white shape rushed by. A tawny streak followed, and then, ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... groped his way to the rude seat, cut in the rocky wall, which was his only accommodation. He put forth his hand. It touched the slimy fur of some wild animal, that instantly sprang away, its fiery eyes sparkling in the dark. Alroy recoiled with a sensation of woe-begone dismay. His shaken nerves could not sustain him under this base danger, and these foul and novel trials. He could not refrain from an exclamation of despair; and, when he remembered that he was now far beyond the reach of all human solace and ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... returned the City man. "You see, I thought it would be more agreeable that they should be all together until their nerves are calmed, so I had mattresses, blankets, etcetera, brought down. Being a bachelor, as you know, I could do nothing more than place the wardrobes of my domestics at the disposal of the ladies. The things are not, indeed, a very good fit, but—this ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne
... great war ships, built at a cost of ten or more millions and peopled by hundreds of mariners, are in constant danger of being sent to the bottom with all on board a contingency likely to shake the nerves of the steadiest Jack Tar or admiral ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... every thing, which has an odor (or can be smelled), is evaporating. The odor is caused by parts of the body floating in the air, and acting on the nerves of the nose. This is an invariable rule; and, when we perceive an odor, we may be sure that parts of the material, from which it emanates, are escaping. If we perceive the odor of an apple, it is because parts of the volatile oils of the apple enter the nose. The same is true when we ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring
... that the burning on his poor forehead was her brand there; that the scorching in his poor throat was the clutch of her fingers, and the torment in all his miserable body her fine manipulation of his nerves. She knew the secret of the world; and had no sort of hesitation about telling it; it sounded to him uncommonly like something that he had heard before. He recognized her as the form and voice of his own desire, the loathsome familiar body ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... his, a well-known ex-wrestler whose fame for this sort of work was great. Here I was booked for six weeks, all expenses paid, until I should "be on my feet again," as he expressed it. Then he left, only to visit and revisit me until I returned to the city, fairly well restored in nerves if not in health. ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... only the way I want it," she said, "but that's the way it always has been and always will be. Second, I have been getting tired of this nickname 'Tomboy'. If we're going to be racked this close together, you'll grate on my nerves less if you use my right name. It's just plain 'Nora' but I'd like to hear it once ...
— The Big Fix • George Oliver Smith
... Meg up from her seat on the sand. He realized that her domestic duties were what her nerves needed; they had lately been greatly taxed, first by her vision of Akhnaton and now by the excitement of their entry into ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... wouldn't scrape your feet along the floor so. It gets on my nerves and I am so worn out. Would he not have told you what? ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... and glad when we at last succeeded in abstracting his boots and manoeuvring him to his bedroom, for the exciting events of the last twenty-four hours had been too much for his weak frame and delicate nerves. ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... black eyes long and earnestly. And as she looked there stole into her heart a sense of companionship, of protection, of complete understanding, that spread like a warm glow over her tense nerves. It was a sense that every child should grow up with, yet that Lydia had not known ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... employment of the various mineral waters, many of the spas adopt special means by which they increase or modify their influence, e.g. the so-called "aromatic" or "medicated" baths, in which substances are mixed to exert a special influence on the skin and peripheral nerves. Of these the "pine-needle" bath has the greatest repute; it is made by adding a decoction of the needles or young shoots of firs and pines. Fir wood oil (a mixture of ethereal oils) or the tincture of an alcoholic extract acts equally well. The volatile ethereal constituents are supposed ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... ignorance of the subject. As respects Mr. Blunt, however, he had an unpleasant distrust of the result, the quiet manner of that gentleman denoting more confidence in himself, and a greater practical knowledge of the laws. Still, to try the extent of the other's information, and the strength of his nerves, he rejoined in a magisterial ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... images of barbaric sacrifice, of slaughtered lambs and fountains of precious blood, a most repulsive and incomprehensible idiom to me, and expressing itself by shouts, clangour, trumpeting, gesticulations, and rhythmic pacings that stun and dismay my nerves, I find, the same object sought, release from self, and the same end, the end of identification with the immortal, successfully if perhaps rather insecurely achieved. I see God indubitably present in these excitements, and I see personalities I could easily ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... three graces of health, beauty, and good temper; to health, in putting the body into its best state; to beauty, in clearing and tinting the skin; and to good temper, in rescuing the spirits from the irritability occasioned by those formidable personages, "the nerves," which nothing else allays in so quick and entire a manner. See a lovely passage on the subject of bathing in Sir Philip Sydney's "Arcadia," where "Philoclea, blushing, and withal smiling, makeing ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... to his feet again and looked about him. After all, did that golden hair, that white woman's hair, mean nothing? What was that? He sprang back toward Kazan, his weakened nerves shattered by a sound and a movement from the farthest and darkest part of the igloo. Kazan tugged at his traces, panting and whining, held back by the sledge wedged in the door. The sound came again, a human, wailing, ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... that he thought drill any particular fun, or desired the destruction of his fellow-creatures, or ever indulged in dreams of medals, bars, triumphal arches, and the thanks of parliament, but simply because he might get to India, stick pigs, and shoot tigers. Shooting! hunting! Gould's words made his nerves tingle from head to foot with excitement. And he had thought the fellow who now offered him a taste of such pleasures a muff, a bore, a sycophant, and done his best to avoid him! How wrong it is to ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... alluding to Schobl's curious paper (I forget when published) (269/2. J. Schobl, "Das aussere Ohr der Mause als wichtiges Tastorgan." "Archiv. Mik. Anat." VII., 1871, page 260.) on the hairs of the ears being sensitive and provided with nerves. I presume he made fine sections: if you are accustomed to such histological work, would it not be worth while to examine hairs of tail of mice? At page 189 I quote Henslow (confirmed by Gunther) on Mus messorius (and other species?) using tail as ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... waist, He sits in stone and hardens by a charm Into the marble of his throne high-placed. Mild benediction waves his saintly arm— So, good! but what we want's a perfect man, Complete and all alive: half travertine Half suits our need, and ill subserves our plan. Feet, knees, nerves, sinews, energies divine Were never yet too much for men who ran In such hard ways as must be this of thine, Deliverer whom we seek, whoe'er thou art, Pope, prince, or peasant! If, indeed, the first, The noblest, ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... craving for the drug which Adams had denied her, she had turned at last to the immoderate use of wine. So, hopelessly but with unfailing courage, he had brought her again to New York where he had placed her in the charge of a specialist in obscure diseases of the nerves. ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... that to get his best work he must be insured the freedom from disturbances which the creative power absolutely demands, more absolutely perhaps in these slighter artists than in the great masters. His nerves must be steady for him to finish a rose-leaf or the fold of a nymph's drapery in his best manner; and they will be unsteadied if he has to perform the honest drudgery which another can do for him quite as well. And it is just so with the poet, though he were only finishing ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... all things that are, a community with what we experience within ourselves. If we reason we would be understood; if we imagine, we would that the airy children of our brain were born anew within another's; if we feel, we would that another's nerves should vibrate to our own, that the beams of their eyes should kindle at once, and mix and melt into our own; that lips of motionless ice should not reply to lips quivering and burning with the heart's best blood:—this is Love. This is the bond and the sanction ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 344 (Supplementary Issue) • Various
... instead of trying to tear it out of my heart. But, of course, being in love I'm neither the one nor the other. The only explanation for the impulse to pour out a confession like this is overcharged nerves. Or, after all, is it just unconscious egotism?" His composure had slipped off and ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... all betrays the worst. It had been no phantom called into being by their overtaxed nerves. A woman lay before them, face downward on the hard floor. A woman dressed in black, with hat on head and a little satchel clutched in one stiff, outstretched hand. Miss Demarest's mother! The little old lady who had come into the place ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... swung over her hatchway; lifeless matter, looking heavier and bigger than anything aboard of her. When they started lowering it the surge of the tackle sent a quiver through her from water-line to the trucks up the fine nerves of her rigging, as though she had shuddered at the weight. It seemed cruel to load her so. ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... am I? — this mortal flesh, These shrinking nerves, this feeble frame, For ever racked with ailments fresh And scarce from day to day the same — A fly within the spider's mesh, A moth ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... on, "there's a great deal in your idea. I've always said so. In the case of any internal disease, nerves you know, and that kind of thing where there's nothing actually visible, I'm sure it works out admirably, quite admirably, but with a sprained ankle! Come now, Juliet, there's the swelling you know. You can't deny the swelling. Hang it all, you can measure ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... patriarchal bonhomie, counteracted, however, by the scintillation of two little yellow eyes which trembled in their orbits like two louis-d'or upon quicksilver. The curve of his nose presented an aquiline silhouette, which suggested the Oriental or Jewish type. His hands—thin, slender, full of nerves which projected like strings upon the finger-board of a violin, and armed with claws like those on the terminations of bats' wings—shook with senile trembling; but those convulsively agitated hands became firmer than steel pincers ...
— The Mummy's Foot • Theophile Gautier
... less than five musket-balls through his chest. His passage into another state of existence had been sudden as the flight of the electric spark. Of his late companions, several were dead also; though most were still enduring the pain of fractured bones and bruised nerves. The boat itself slowly touched the rocks, raising fresh cries among the wounded by the agony they endured from the shocks of rising and ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of the earth, a man with no special abilities and no outstanding vices. In that short space of time I had saved one man's life, nearly taken that of another, and seemed in a fair way to make money out of my twin attributes of steady nerves and good shooting. I was still thinking in this strain when we rounded the bluff and commenced to crawl across the intervening stretch of spinifex grass. I say "crawl" advisedly. Bryce was far too heavy to do more than lumber along and my feet were steadily getting worse. The spinifex grew knee-high ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... his lordship's absence, met with any excess of respectful civilities from her ladyship; and, of course, though now affectionately invited, their visits by no means appeared to augment her felicity. Lady Nelson's nerves could not bear the constant presence of his lordship's young nephews and nieces; while his lordship, fond of virtue in every shape, never felt happier than when surrounded by the amiable children of his brother and sisters. Here was another want of unison in ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... dizzy with the struggle between longing and resolution. He had braced his nerves for a long and hungry waiting, but fate had yielded suddenly; the floods had brought her to him,—his flotsam and jetsam more precious than all the guarded treasures of the earth. She had come, with all her girlish, ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... Lois has been chattering," he argued—nor did this line of reasoning at all console him. Sidney Geary, meanwhile, felt as though some one had suddenly applied a slab of melting ice to those grammatical nerves which Cambridge had tended ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... water, do at that time emit odors greatly agreeable to a Dutch taste, but not so pleasant to any other. Those perfumes, with the assistance of a fair wind, begin to affect persons of quick olfactory nerves at a league's distance, and increase gradually as you approach. In the same manner did the smell I have just mentioned, more and more invade us, till one of the spirits, looking out of the coach-window, ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... of thing that gets on a fella's nerves," said the Colonel. "I don't know as I ever felt helpless in any part of the world before. But a man counts for precious little up here. Do you notice how you come to listen ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... "Your nerves are not in a healthy state, that's the fact, Macleod," said the major, as they walked along. "The climate of London is too exciting for you; a good, long, dull winter in Mull will restore your tone. But in the meantime don't cut my throat, or your ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... different tongues that caught his ear, as he made his way through the crowd, confused him terribly. Greek, Italian, French, English, Arabic, Turkish, and Persian, all shouting at once, as it seemed to him, jarred on his nerves, and he wondered if this pandemonium went on ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... fainted upon his bosom. After that my dreams were haunted by gory battle-fields, in which P. Crandall figured in every imaginable scene of suffering and danger. My delicate nerves had received a severe shock, and yet I did not mean to be weak, in the hour of trial, for it is the duty of a faithful wife, such as I sought to be, to sustain her partner in ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... to which it is likely to give birth. Sitting with my back propped against the windlass and the newly purchased rifle across my knees, I found that cowardice, like other base passions, may suddenly develop an infection. With nerves twittering and muscles tensely set, I was ready to become a homicidal maniac at the snapping of a twig or the rolling of a ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... began to tear at her nerves. She felt along the wall for the switch, and flooded ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... Lady Hartletop heard it, she did not betray the hearing. Lady Glencora for a moment put her hands to her ears as she laughed, but she did it as though the prettiness of the motion were its only one cause. The fine nerves of Mrs Conway Sparkes, the poetess, bore it all without flinching; and Mrs Chaucer Munro with her bevy rushed forward so that they might lose nothing ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... Hood had left the fireplace and was crossing the room with his alert, quick step. His nerves showed in that step; and it was nerve power that made him a dreaded gunfighter. His gloom seemed to have vanished now. He smiled here; he paused there for a cheery word; and so he came to where Bull Hunter sat with his long legs stretched before him and the unchanging, dreamy ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... much good, as the glimpse of comfort which he gets by sleeping in a good bed in a well-appointed room does to an Italian peasant; such a glimpse gives him an idea of higher potentialities in connection with himself, and nerves him to exertions which he would not otherwise make. On the whole, therefore, we concluded that if the British Museum reading-room was in good economy, Oropa was so also; at any rate, it seemed to be making a large number of very nice people quietly ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... from the financiers, I endeavored not to hear their words; and in this much I was successful; but their inappropriate presence had got, I suppose upon my nerves; at any rate, go where I would in the little church, or attend as I might and did to what Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael said about the tablets, and whatever traditions their inscriptions suggested to her, that quiet, low, persistent ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... mainsail. The wind had hauled round to the north-west early in the morning, and blew a smashing breeze, just such as Donald wanted for the great occasion. In fact, it blew almost a gale, and the wind came in heavy gusts, which are very trying to the nerves of an inexperienced boatman. The Penobscot, gayly dressed with flags, was moored in her position for ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... hast lost thy plumage, thou shalt fly to my mistress! Is it not better to be nibbled by her than mumbled by a cardinal? I, too, will feed on thy delicate beauty. Sweet bird! thy companion has fled to my mistress; and now thou shalt thrill the nerves of her master! Oh! doff, then, thy waistcoat of wine-leaves, pretty rover! and show me that bosom more delicious even than woman's. What gushes of rapture! What a flavour! How peculiar! Even how sacred I Heaven at once sends both manna and quails. Another little wanderer! ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... continued to watch him ineffable relief stole slowly over her, relaxing her strained nerves and exhausted body. He knew, then... he knew... it was because he knew that he had married her, and that he sat there in the darkness to show her she was safe with him. A stir of something deeper than she had ever felt in thinking of him flitted through her tired brain, and cautiously, noiselessly, ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... strength, to carry her through. She began her anatomical practice upon detached portions of the human frame, which were brought into the demonstrating room—dissecting the eye, the ear, and a small tangle of muscles and nerves—an occupation which had not much more savor of death in it than the analysis of a portion of a plant out of which the life went when it was plucked up by the roots. Custom inures the most sensitive persons ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... that the manifestations of God are always made under one or other of these signs. These three agents support the life of man. There is a Trinity in the body (1) the heart and blood-vessels; (2) the organs of respiration; (3) the nerves, the instruments of sensation; these three departments are the three moving principles of nature continually acting for the support of life. 'Therefore,' he concludes, 'as the life of man is a Trinity in Unity, and the powers which act upon it are a Trinity in Unity, the Socinians being, ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... exhausted this subject," answered the Millionaire with the bruskness of a man whose nerves have worn thin; with the menace, too, of one who, having divorced his first wife, would divorce ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... timbered door, studded with ancient nail heads in a design whose artistry did not arrest her. From a peg beside it he took down a key of brass, fitted it to the lock and turned it with a deliberation maddening to her tense nerves. ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... rest! We had barely arrived when a delayed action shell battery opened up on us with a steadily-increasing fire, and, as the pace grew hotter every moment, I felt as if my nerves couldn't hold out longer; but the knowledge that these men were in my care helped me again to take hold of myself. But the rest of the fellows were commencing to show signs of giving way to the shock effect. My best pal, Billy McLean, staggered toward me. "They've ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... color. Many of the glowing sentences belong rather to passionate poetry than to tamer prose. The agonized resolution that turns the panting fugitive's blood and body to fire,—the fear, so vividly portrayed that the reader's nerves thrill with the shock that brings the hunted negro's heart almost to his mouth with one wild throb,—the matchless picture of the forest and marsh, lengthening and widening with dizzy swell to the weary eye and failing brain,—all are the work of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... In a considerable percentage of cases it is situated so far back in the jaw that there is no room for it to erupt properly, and it produces inflammatory disturbances and painful pressure upon the nerves of the face and ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... irregularly. In rearing them the parents do not think of themselves so much as they do of them.... That is not practical. I did not get spoiled, and did not grow obstinate (both these things happen with only children), but my nerves were unstrung before their time; in addition to which I was of rather feeble health—I took after my mother, to whom I also bore a great facial resemblance. I shunned the society of lads of my own age; in general, I was shy of people; I even talked very ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... spinal disease came on, and now Phoebe is bedridden. She suffers a good deal at times, but her worst trouble is that her nerves are disordered, most likely from the dulness and monotony of her life. She suffers cruelly from low spirits; and no wonder, lying all day in that dull little back room. Her sister cannot sit with her, as Phoebe cannot bear the noise of the sewing-machine, and the sight of the ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... danger, ta or tha am, art, tu or thu thou, troimh or throimh through, tar or thar over, am beil or am bheil is there? dom or domh to me, &c. Has not this remission or suppression of the articulations the effect of enfeebling the speech, by mollifying its bones and relaxing its nerves? Ought not therefore the progress of this corruption to be opposed, by retaining unaspirated articulations in those instances where universal practice has not entirely superseded them, and even by restoring them in some instances, where ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart
... like astronomy, has become Copernican. It has no centre, no significance, or, if any, one beyond our ken. Gravitation drives us, not love. We are attracted and repelled by a force we cannot control, a force that resides in our muscles and our nerves, not in our will and spirit. "Click—click—click—tick—tick—tick," so goes the economic clock. And that clock, with its silly face, has shut us out from the stars. It tells us the time; but behind the dial of the hours is now for us no vision of the solemn ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... little darlings the goldfish. Hector, unfortunately absent, had a mouth-organ, to whose strains the fishes would listen so motionless that you could see they were spellbound. Yvonne ran back into the house to get it, but for some cause returned with nerves so shaken that the fishes would do nothing but run wildly to and fro. Still, that was just as startling ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... forward to the hike in the snow as a diversion that would rest their tired nerves and help them to see ...
— The Merriweather Girls and the Mystery of the Queen's Fan • Lizette M. Edholm
... Amelie, straining her nerves to the tension of steel to preserve her composure, "Colonel Philibert is most welcome; he has never been forgotten in this house." She glanced at her aunt, who smiled approvingly ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... hours I had been breathing the atmosphere of the sixteenth century. That atmosphere was the air which for two hundred years had been fastened up in those empty hogsheads. I had drawn it into my lungs; it had gone into my blood, my nerves, my brain. I was as a man who swash-buckles—a reckless mariner of the olden time. I longed to take my cutlass in my teeth and board a Spaniard. As I looked upon the villainous stock-broker before me, ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... lamp, rather wondering at Mrs. Williamson's unusual exhibition of nerves. She was generally so calm ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Mr. Newdegate was Mr. Bradlaugh! He was the very picture of suppressed fire, of rampant energies held in leash: the nerves of the face playing like the ripple on water, the whole frame quivering, and the eyes ablaze. It was wonderful how he managed to keep his intellect alert and his judgment steady. Six hours of such work as he had in court that day were enough to tax the greatest strength. Before it was over ...
— Reminiscences of Charles Bradlaugh • George W. Foote
... what she could toward constructing a lunch and then walked down to the shore with Cope to compose her nerves. No stroll today along the ridged amphitheatre of the hills, whence the long, low range of buildings, under that tall chimney, was so plainly in view. Still less relishing the idea of a tramp through ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... more, feels deeper, thinks higher, and wills better things than we. According to the analogy of the human organism, both the heavenly bodies and plants are to be conceived as beings endowed with souls, although they lack nerves, a brain, and voluntary motion. How could the earth bring forth living beings, if it were itself dead? Shall not the flower itself rejoice in the color and fragrance which it produces, and with which it refreshes us? Though its psychical life may not exceed that of an infant, ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... a little. This pet name, only too appropriate, always got a little on her nerves, but she felt bound to play up in an amateurish sort of way to ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... bad!" She could say no more for her breathless agitation. The afternoon, and the parting with Will, had weakened her nerves for any after-shock. ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... also. And I beg you, too," she continued, in a low voice, and with a deep flush upon her face, "I beg you to forgive me if I have hitherto cast unworthy reproaches upon you. I have lived through so many sad and dreadful days, that it will be set down to my favor if my nerves are agitated and easily excited. I shall probably learn to accept evil days with calmness, and to bow my head patiently beneath the yoke which my enemies are laying upon me! But still I feel the injury, and the proud habits of my birth and life war against ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... day; but if you are lucky enough to break a wheel before you get to Darlington, she will have told you all her history and shared your sherry by the time you have reached that town. Arabella was very much shocked by the dreadful accident she had seen. Her nerves had suffered, though it may be doubted whether her heart had been affected much. But she was quite conscious when she reached her room that the poor Major's misfortune, happening as it had done ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... plagues, coming upon me at once, have perhaps a little disconcerted my nerves, and the advice and assistance of a generous friend at such a juncture would be indeed serviceable. If the journey were not so long and so costly I would ask you to come. Be assured that whatever may be your decision in any of these relations, ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... she said in a voice that set Forel's nerves on edge, and then as the last faint hope died away, stretched out her hands ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... thing lower!" he exclaimed sharply. "It's as I suspected—this is where Gladwyne got across; though he has better nerves than I thought he had. The broken end of a branch or two rested right here, and he was smart enough to heave the butt off the other bank, after he'd crawled over. Looks to me as if it had broken off yonder stump. Guess there'll ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... as the clerks called it, was greater than usual. The attendants were nervous and irritable, answered sharply and saucily, until Sommers felt that the place was intolerable. All this office practice got on his nerves. It was too "intensive." He could not keep his head and enter thoroughly into the complications of a dozen cases, when they were shoved at him pell-mell. He realized that he was falling into a routine, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... get on the track somehow," said Dick. But how, was the question. He could not sleep and after the others had retired took a long walk, just to settle his nerves. ...
— The Rover Boys on the Ocean • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... the faith of Agnes obliged her to lay open her whole soul, who had a right with probing-knife and lancet to dissect out all the finest nerves and fibres of her womanly nature, was a man who had been through all the wild and desolating experiences incident to a dissipated and irregular life in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... from beside the dog. Shoot Chance? Not so long as he could keep between the dog and the cowboy's gun. The puncher, half in jest, reached for his holster. Sundown's overwrought nerves gave way. He dropped to his knees and lifted his long arms imploringly. "Don't! Don't!" he wailed. "He ain't dead! Don't ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... grandfather and every low little government clerk punched him in the face. Our grandfather thrashed our father, and our father thrashed us. What has your distinguished family done for us? What sort of nerves, what sort of blood, have we inherited? For nearly three years you've been arguing like an ignorant deacon, and talking all sorts of nonsense, and now you've written—this slavish drivel here! While I, while I! Look at me. . . . No elasticity, ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... and sprang toward the place where he had last seen the vision. But now there was nothing visible: the figure, whatever it was, had disappeared. Now, Harry had a strong, robust, healthy nature, a good digestion, tough nerves, and he was not in the least superstitious; yet this event certainly made him feel as he had never felt before. It was the suddenness of it, as well as the incomprehensibility. He had to assure himself over and over again that ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... that the New Yorker was looking at his gun-metal watch about every two minutes with an expression of alarm. Jake Berger noticed it, too, and again leaned heavily on the conversation. "Not keeping you up, are we?" says Jake. And this continual watch business must of been getting on Ben's nerves, too, for now, having fought his steak to a finish, he says to his little guest that they two should put up their watches and match coins for 'em. The New Yorker was suspicious right off and looked Ben's watch over very carefully when Ben handed it to him. It was one of these thin ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... worker breaks down and has bad moods so often that you never know where he may be when you most need his help,—he may be having one of his 'bad days.' We say that so many of our fellow-countrymen collapse, and have to be sent abroad to rest their nerves, because they work so hard. I suspect that this is an im- mense mistake. I suspect that neither the nature nor the amount of our work is accountable for the frequency and severity of our breakdowns, ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... almost hysterically, her tense nerves suddenly shaken again. "What's that? Something's happened down at ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... fortunate in weather, for there cannot be too much, or too warm sunlight for this scene, and the skies have been lowering, with cold, unkind winds. My nerves, too much braced up by such an atmosphere, do not well bear the continual stress of sight and sound. For here there is no escape from the weight of a perpetual creation; all other forms and motions ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... the expected had come at last Heritage's nerves grew calmer. He made out that the newcomers were trying the door, and he waited to hear it fall, for such a mob could soon force it. But instead a voice ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... steamboat accident that shattered my nerves, and preceded the long illness, I was browsing at a bookstall, on my way up from college homeward, when I came across a copy of Charlotte Temple—one of the dozen later editions—printed in New York by one R. Hobbs, in 1827, its ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... social and political people of the city. With an air of triumph, De Lacy piloted Ranald through the crowd and presented him to Maimie. Ranald was surprised to find himself shaking hands with the woman he had once loved, with unquickened pulse and nerves cool and steady. Here Maimie, who was looking more beautiful than ever, and who was dressed in a gown of exquisite richness, received Ranald with a warmth ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... disgusting frequency with which the words "Beryl and Terence Weaver" appeared; that did rather get on my nerves, and I did ask Edith once if Terence Weaver was the only man in New York. In fact, I was at one time on the point of going to New York myself and taking it out of Mr. Terence Weaver. I just ached to give him a run for his money. But when I hinted it—going to New ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... steady nerves, and resolute action, not only for this year but for many years to come. It demands collective efforts to meet this new threat to security in the Persian Gulf and in Southwest Asia. It demands the participation of all those ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... now; but be d—d careful how you say it," was the reply, with a sneer that would have stung an abject slave into a longing for revenge, and that grated on Mr. Billings's nerves in a way that made him clinch his fists and involuntarily grit his teeth. Could it be that O'Grady detected it? One quick, wistful, half-appealing glance flashed from the Irishman's eyes towards the subaltern, and then, with ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... the venture ended in failure, and all the personal library which he had collected through patient years was swallowed up in the disaster. After this he returned to Brentano's, where he remained until his death. About a year before his death he was run over by a taxicab, which shook his nerves a ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... natives paddle alongside to sell fish; a peevish little man in a sun hat, who, in order to save Leopold three salaries, holds four port offices, is being rowed to the gangway; on shore the only other visible inhabitant of Banana, a man with no nerves, is disturbing the brooding, sweating silence by knocking the rust off the plates of a stranded mud-scow. Welcome to our city! Welcome to busy, bustling Banana, the port of entry ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... the voyage to restore his shattered nerves. From the first the captain disliked Henry. He was utterly unused to the sea and was nervous and fidgety in the extreme. He complained that at sea his genius had not a sufficient degree of latitude. ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... wearing out the deck and your nerves walking back and forth like that. Everything will be O.K." Tom tried hard to keep any apprehension out ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... velocipede; I really do not know How they could ever do it, But then, he teased them so, And so abused their patience, And dulled their nerves of right, That they just lost their senses And ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... realize the danger of the room; and I could see, generally, that he was in a pretty frightened state. All the same, I had to make the room so that I should know if anything material entered it; so I asked him not to bother me, unless he really heard or saw something. He was beginning to get on my nerves, and the 'feel' of the room was bad enough, without ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... well, had assembled in large numbers to see the ships sail. Clara's eyes wandered affrightedly hither and thither among the strange faces in the crowd; searching for the one face that she dreaded to see, and not finding it. So completely were her nerves unstrung, that she started with a cry of alarm on suddenly hearing ...
— The Frozen Deep • Wilkie Collins
... smiled again. Her sensitive highly strung nerves permitted these sharp alternations ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... cowardly, useless lubber," cried he; and while Jack, who had recoiled into his normal state of nerves with almost ridiculous rapidity, was heaving out ballast, David discharged another rolling ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... is the new system of nerves for the rural organism, but the telephone is a cold, steel wire instead of the warm and cordial personal meetings with which the countryside was once enlivened. In eighty country towns in Pennsylvania, of which fifty are purely agricultural, ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... in the terrible darkness sounded a low but perfectly audible thud! thud! thud! thud!—and also the subtle noise of some rough surface rasping gently over the stone. His nerves crisped ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... the petitioner; I have neither head nor nerves to present it. That confounded supper at Lewis's has spoiled my digestion and my philanthropy. I have no more charity than a cruet of vinegar. Would I were an ostrich, and dieted on fire-irons,—or any thing that my gizzard could ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... color, and not only does the stain run on further than the spot of contact, but it discolors other of the threads. And remember that the threads are living—are like electric wires, more, are like quivering nerves. How far, then, must the stain, the drag awry, be communicated! But eventually the long strands, the living threads which in their unbroken continuity form the individual, pass out of the shadow into ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... young inventor; "but they may lose their homes. They can sue the water company for damages, though. Now don't do any more worrying, but get to bed, and be ready for the test tomorrow. And the first thing I do I'm going to have a little flight in the Humming Bird to get my nerves in trim. This long rain has gotten me in poor shape. Koku, you must be on the alert tonight. I don't want anything to happen to my gun at ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... Recalling our former scheme for the conditions of the sense of personality, we shall see that we have here the two poles of consciousness. Then, as the tension is sharpened, what happens? Under the artificial conditions of weakened nerves, of blank surroundings, the self-background drops. The feeling of transition disappears with the absence of related terms; and the remaining, the positive pole of consciousness, is an undifferentiated Unity, with which the person must feel himself one. The feeling of personality is ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... French or German or Italian, pronounced its nationality in dress and bearing; one of the many dark subject races of Great Britain was represented in the swarthy skin and lustrous black hair and eyes of a solitary individual; there were doubtless various colonials among the spectators, and in one's nerves one was aware of some other Americans. But these exceptions only accented the absolutely English dominance of the spectacle. The alien elements were less evident in the observed than in the observers, where, beyond ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... sent physical pains tingling down the nerves of my body; and yet, turn as I would, my eyes would keep coming back t it, such fascination has the gruesome ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... period of to-and-fro, there fell (as it were) the very calmness of reconciliation. Peace seemed to be made, and I think that all of us were glad of it, for the suspense and an increasing tension of the nerves were telling on ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett |
