"Nervous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... carried the old man back to Loringwood, while the other darkies continued their 'possum hunt. Nelse said very little after his avowal of the "sign" and its relation to his lease of life. He had a nervous chill by the time they reached the house and Pluto almost repented of his fiction. Finally he compromised with his conscience by promising himself to own the truth if the frightened old ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... he was ready for me, I went to the hotel. After the half hour was up I began to get nervous. It was an hour and a half before he came. I hadn't then learned that the best way to do is to go with your customer from his store to yours, instead of sitting around and waiting for him to come to you. This gives him a chance to get ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... "There were two horrid men who seemed to be watching me when I came in here. I half thought I remembered one of them: an old man with a stoop. I believe I must have seen him aboard my father's ship. I felt rather nervous—because it's such a dark alley." She ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... style amongst the members of Pike Street, would have been like a wild seagull in a farmyard of peaceful, clucking, brown-speckled fowls. All the chapel maidens and matrons, of course, were serious; but their seriousness was decent and in order. Mrs. Coleman was therefore scandalised, nervous, and dumb. Jean, as his manner was when his daughter expressed herself strongly, was also silent. His love for her was a consuming, hungry fire. It utterly extinguished all trace, not merely of selfishness, but of self, in him, ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... build, yet with the appearance of having lived more in the open than does the average man, his face had, yet, a strange pallor not in keeping with his robust frame. And his manner was certainly nervous. ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele
... to Congress as a representative of the rights of the laboring classes was Eli Moore, a New York journeyman printer, who had organized trades unions and successfully engineered several strikes by mechanics against their employers. He was a thin, nervous man, with keen, dark hazel eyes, long black hair brushed back behind his ears, and a strong, clear voice which rang through the hall like the sound of a trumpet. He especially distinguished himself in a reply to General Waddy Thompson, of South Carolina, who had denounced ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... into the house soon after, and as they separated for the night, Dorothy clung to her mother with a little nervous laugh. ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... had there been introduced to his hostess, had been a sort of revelation to the languid, fashionable guests assembled; sudden quick whispers were exchanged—surprised glances,—how unlike he was to the general type of the nervous, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Dicker, withdrawing his nervous glance from the wart, and locking his hands over one ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... will see what I can do with him. If I fail, recollect that he is not proverbial for pliability. Look here—are you nervous? Your fingers twitch, and so do your eyelids, occasionally, and your pulse is twenty ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... when it can just as well be carried out by the fingers, certainly involves a waste of psychophysical energy. A stronger psychophysical excitement is necessary in order to secure the innervation of the big muscles in the central nervous system. This difference in the stimulation of the various muscle groups has been of significant consequence for the differentiation of work throughout the development of mankind.[25] Labor with the large muscles has, for these psychophysical reasons, never been easily combined ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... of General Chemistry at that time; but the subject did not become a compulsory part of the course until the appointment in 1890 of Dr. William J. Herdman, '72, who had been a member of the Medical Faculty since 1875, as Professor of Nervous Diseases and Electro-Therapeutics. Practical instruction in pathology was inaugurated in 1879 under Dr. Herdman and Dr. Victor C. Vaughan, but the beginnings were modest and laboratory work only became incorporated in the course in 1888 under Dr. Heneage Gibbes, Aberdeen, '79, called ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... sentenced to the wood-pile for four hours for enquiring of Adam why he called the Yak a Yak when everybody knew he looked more like a Yap. Adam is getting very nervous ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... that these boys and girls are to be the men and women of to-morrow, with all the responsibilities of the world resting upon their shoulders? Do we want them to enter upon the duties of life stoop-shouldered, flat-chested, spectacle-eyed? Do we want them to be anaemic, pessimistic, nervous wrecks? Do we want them to be mental weaklings and moral cowards? Do we want them even to approximate these conditions? No? Then, with all our provisions for their wants and their needs, let us be sure to develop those things which minister so largely to the development ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... left footmarks where he trod. He felt thoroughly despicable as he lay there, listening to his mother's story, knowing that he could explain all, and so save every one much alarm and trouble. "I should not have told Stella and Michael," she went on, "lest they should be nervous another time, but they had heard it all from the maids before I ...
— Paul the Courageous • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... men came down to breakfast Sunday morning. What with the storm and the worry about stocks keeping them awake most of the night, they were without exception nervous and cross, particularly Billoo. He looked like an owl that had been first stuffed and then boiled. Blenheim told me later that at various times during the night he had carried four several pints of champagne to Billoo's room; and at 7 A.M., bicarbonate of soda ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... because he is a citizen, woman can meddle in politics and vote, because she is a citizen too. When Mr. Beecher based his right, not on the intellect which flashes from Maine to Georgia, not on the strength of that nervous right arm, but solely on his citizenship, he dragged to the platform twelve millions of American women to stand at his side. But the difficulty is, no man can defend his own right to vote, without granting it to woman. The only ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... volunteers. He had had a pretty fair education, a taste for the military profession, and was of tall and slender build, all of which gave him a student-like appearance. He was extremely excitable and nervous when anticipating a crisis, but always calmed down to cool deliberation when the critical moment came. With such a man I could not be less than well satisfied, although the officer whom he replaced—Colonel Laiboldt —had performed efficient ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 2 • P. H. Sheridan
... to crimson, and she rose with a nervous laugh. "It was ungenerous," she conceded. "I suppose I'm jealous for you. ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... guessed that they must by now have entered the territory where Cale Martin, the slippery old poacher, held forth. Jim seemed to look about him more than before. He also started at the least unusual sound, showing that while he might try to disguise the fact, he was really nervous. Still, he did not give the slightest indication of showing the white feather, or backing down, before a dozen ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... 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 with, ...
— The Hound of Heaven • Francis Thompson
... of his gorgeous equipage, he hurried back to Uncle Jim, grasping his ten-thousand dollar draft in his pocket. He was nervous, he was frightened, but he must get rid of the draft and his story, and have it over. But before he could speak he was unexpectedly stopped ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... editor of Chesterfield's Works says (ii. 3l9), 'that being desirous of giving a specimen of his Lordship's eloquence he has made choice of the three following speeches; the first in the strong nervous style of Demosthenes; the two latter in the witty, ironical manner of Tully.' Now the first of these speeches is not Johnson's, for it was reported in The Gent. Mag. for July, 1737, p. 409, nine ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... distract my thoughts from their object. My leg became so painful, that for a week I was on the sofa, Timothy every day going out to ascertain if he could find the person whom we had seen resembling me, and every evening returning without success, I became melancholy and nervous. Carbonnell could not imagine what was the matter with me. At last I was able to walk, and I sallied forth, perambulating, or rather running through street after street, looking into every carriage, so as to occasion surprise to the occupants, who believed me mad; ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... got a full view of the face, which he did at that moment, from the opportune circumstance of the lady returning at the instant with a light she had been to her own chamber to procure, even he, Marchdale, with all his courage, and that was great, and all his nervous energy, recoiled a step or two, and uttered ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... turning round horror-stricken; for close beside me was a miserable man, apparently in the last stage of disease. He was pale as death, yet eaten up with sores. His body was agitated by a nervous trembling. He seemed to shuffle along on hands and feet, as though the ordinary mode of locomotion was impossible to him, and yet was in possession of all his limbs. Pain was written in his face. I drew away to leave him room, with mingled pity and horror that this poor wretch should be the ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... wrong, my dear husband; but sickness and suffering have made me, I fear, not only nervous and frightened, but selfish: I must and will shake it off. Hitherto I have only been a clog and an incumbrance to you; but I trust I shall soon behave better, and make myself useful. If you think, then, that it would be better ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... depth, with his wild sincerity; and he looked so strange, among the elegant Euphemisms, dainty little Falklands, didactic Chillingworths, diplomatic Clarendons! Consider him. An outer hull of chaotic confusion, visions of the Devil, nervous dreams, almost semi-madness; and yet such a clear determinate man's-energy working in the heart of that. A kind of chaotic man. The ray as of pure starlight and fire, working in such an element of boundless hypochondria, unformed black ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... "He was here already this morning. He was nervous, oh! very, and expected you to be here. Already two days he is ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... president, Dr. Carroll Cutler, petitioned the board of trustees to discontinue coeducation at the college, for the assumed reasons that girls require different training from boys, never "identical" education; that it is trying to their health to recite before young men; "the strain upon the nervous system from mortifying mistakes and serious corrections is to many young ladies a cruel additional burden laid upon them in the course of study"; "that the provision we offer to girls is not the best, and is even dangerous"; ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... you; I am best by myself; I can endure in solitude; you cannot comprehend these nervous attacks, happily for you; go away, and enjoy yourself with ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... godmother. It cheers me to hear you say so. But you see it is so hard to bring up a child well, when you work, work, work, all day. When he was out of employment, I couldn't always keep him near me. He got fractious and nervous, and I was obliged to let him go into the streets. And he never did well in the streets, he never did well out of sight. How often it happens ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... as they were to conciliate foreign public opinion, dared not allow a free run to the newspaper representatives. Apart from the considerations I have mentioned, which must govern any modern war, there were special reasons why the Bulgarians should be nervous of observation. They were waging war on "forlorn hope" lines with the slenderest resources, with the knowledge that officers and men—especially transport officers—had to do almost the impossible to win through. Further, they had the knowledge that in some cases the ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox
... that there are occasional individuals whose nervous and spiritual makeup may be such that, though they erode rapidly and may suffer complete breakdown under combat conditions, they still may be wholly loyal and conscientious men, capable of doing high duty elsewhere. Men are not alike. In some, however willing the spirit, ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... I were not in a nervous condition. I looked about me in the sparsely filled hall. People didn't wriggle; perhaps their souls wriggled. They neither smiled nor wept. Yet on the wharf of hell the lost souls disembarked and wept and lamented. ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... had been progressing favourably, according to the doctor's report, since he was wounded, but he was nervous and fanciful, poor little fellow! and wanted more tender nursing than the rough, albeit kind-hearted, treatment he could obtain on board. Captain Hudson would gladly have landed him, could he have found any friends on shore ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... with riding Bucephalus on the giddy-go-round. Mrs. Johnson had explained to Miss Jessamine that the reason Tony was so easily upset was the unusual sensitiveness (as a doctor had explained it to her) of the nervous centers in her family—"Fiddlestick!" So Mrs. Johnson understood Miss Jessamine to say; but it appeared that she only said "Treaclestick!" which is quite another thing, and of ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... sufficiently account for the partial intelligence. Then the report found its way back to Rome, and Epaphroditus got home-sick and was restless, uneasy, 'sore troubled,' as the Apostle says, because they had heard he had been sick. In his low, nervous state, barely convalescent, the thought of home and of his brethren's anxiety about him was too much for him. It is a pathetic little picture of the Macedonian stranger in the great city—pallid looks, recent illness, and pining for home ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... are indebted to M. Charles Nodier. Although some have imagined this to be the original "Tigre" which cost the lives of Lhomme and Dehors, it needs only a very superficial comparison of the two to convince us that the poem is only an elaboration, not indeed without merit, of the more nervous prose epistle. The author of the latter was without doubt the distinguished Francois Hotman. This point has now been established beyond controversy. As early as in 1562 the Guises had discovered this; for a treatise published ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... as she seemed, he knew even now how awful a power she held in the slender little hand whose nervous clasp he could still feel upon his own, and this knowledge seemed to raise an invisible yet impassable barrier between him and the possibility of looking upon her as under other circumstances it would have been natural for a man to look ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... me that I was in some little danger for Helms had his big pistol at full cock, and as it pointed at me quite as often as it did at anybody, I expect I dodged around a little to keep out of range. Helms was terribly nervous, and trembled as he cursed, but Holman was cool and drew his weapon deliberately, daring Helms to raise his hand or he would kill him on the instant. Helms now began to back off, but carefully kept his eye ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... feet, not even myself. I can stand off that stage driver so easy, that you'll wonder I don't take it up as a profession. Now, don't raise any more objections—please don't,' says he. 'I can't tell you how nervous you make me, always finding some fault with everything I try to do. That's no way for a hired man to ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... Genoese was of the kind which has tided men over obstacles and difficulties and troubles throughout the ages. He was undoubtedly of the nervous and highly-wrought temperament common to one of his genius. He loved the dramatic. There are few who have not heard the story of the egg with the crushed end which stood upright. But there are innumerable other instances of the demonstrative powers of Columbus. For instance, ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... has more foreign representatives than native genera, among which are Coffea, Cinchona, and Ipecacuanha (Uragoga), all of which are of economic importance. The members of this family are noted for their action on the nervous system. Coffee, as is well known, contains an active principle known as caffein which acts as a stimulant to the nervous system and in small quantities is very beneficial. Cinchona supplies us with quinine, while Ipecacuanha ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... error is the reverse of all this. The common error is to pull the horse's head towards the object of his fear, and when he is facing it, to begin with whip and spur. Expecting to be crammed under the carriage-wheel, the horse probably rears or runs back into a ditch, or at least becomes more nervous and more riotous at every carriage that he meets. Horses are instantaneously made shy by this treatment, and as instantaneously cured by the converse of it. It is thus that all bad riders make all high-couraged horses shy, but none ever remain ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... owe to you. I am in somewhat better trim, although the getting out of doors and into the pony-carriage, from which Mr. May hoped such great things, has hardly answered his expectations. I am not stronger, and I am so nervous that I can only bear to be driven, or more ignominiously still to be led, at a foot's pace through the lanes. I am still unable to stand or walk, unless supported by Sam's strong hands lifting me up on each side, still obliged ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... man, W.K., a tailor by trade, a well-conducted man, but who felt the importance of his office to an extent that made him nervous, or (what is as bad) made him fancy he was nervous. The church was capacious, and the population over ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... were again separated. Blanquette was enjoying herself amongst the pigs and ducks of La Haye, whence she wrote letters in which her joy in country things mingled with anxiety as to the neglected condition of the Master; I led a pleasant but somewhat nervous life in Somersetshire, spending hours in vain attempts to reconcile the cosmic views of Paragot and an English vicar, and learning sometimes with hot humiliation the correctitudes of English country vicarage behaviour; and Paragot, his long legs dangling on each side of his ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... He came to his feet, and gripped the duke's shoulder in his strong, nervous hand. "Break off this coronation, and never let me hear of it again. That will suffice. Thus I can rid my mind of apprehensions, and leave Paris ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... the right," I advised at last, nervous from inaction, "I will try the left, until we meet again. Keep close against the ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... We did not think you would be here so soon," exclaimed the lady as she gave him her delicate nervous hand, which contracted three or four times with intense emotion as it came in contact ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... I have collected very many) the consequence has been either sudden death, or fits, or idiocy, or mania, or a brain fever. Whence comes the difference? evidently from this,—that in the one case the whole of the nervous system has been by slight internal causes gradually and all together brought into a certain state, the sensation of which is extravagantly exaggerated during sleep, and of which the images are the mere effects and exponents, ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... ground, was deep in the booking-office among the black and red placards, and the portraits of fast coaches, where he was ignominiously harassed by porters, and had to contend and strive perpetually with heavy baggage. This false position, combined with his nervous excitement, brought about the very consummation and catastrophe of his miseries; for when in the moment of parting he aimed a flower, a hothouse flower that had cost money, at the fair hand of Mercy, it reached, instead, the coachman on the box, who thanked him ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... never complained. She did everything she had been used to doing, was particular about all her duties; but a nervous cough attacked her, and her frame wasted, and her cheek grew hectic. Try as she would she could not eat: all she confessed to, when questioned by Mrs. Ashton, was "a pain in her throat;" and Mr. Hillary was called in. Anne laughed: there was nothing the matter with her, ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... thoughtful man, considerate of the little as well as the great wants of others. I can never forget his gentle ministrations in the sick room of my most precious mother, who was for many years his neighbor and friend. She had been brought to a condition of great feebleness by a slow nervous fever, and was painfully sensitive to anything discordant, abrupt, or harsh in the voices and movements of those about her. Every day, at a fixed hour, this good neighbor would glide in, noiselessly as a spirit, and, either reading or repeating a few ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... body, seems to cripple me in every other respect. As the evening approaches I grow more alert, and when I am retiring to bed am more fit for mental occupation than at any other time. So it fares with us whom they call nervous." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... of the symptoms that, as early as 1521, the failure of his issue had made Henry nervous and susceptible about the succession. Even in 1519, when Charles V.'s minister, (p. 183) Chievres, was proposing to marry his niece to the Earl of Devonshire, a grandson of Edward IV., Henry was suspicious, and Wolsey ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... my feet," she said; and he had not replied when we heard footsteps in the passage—wild footsteps. There was a moment of sharp clicking at the door latch, as if a nervous hand had touched it, and then Millie broke into the room. Her face was white, her hair hung about ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... Nance who sat close beside her on the couch and whispered, "Judy is as nervous as a witch these days. She has probably thought of something to ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... have remarked the same want of gaiety amongst the Indians of America; and some of them ascribe it to the small development of the nervous system prevalent among these peoples, to which cause also they attribute their wonderful courage in bearing pain. But Tylor observes that the Indian's countenance is so different from ours that it takes us ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... wondered that his tail should be yellow and his body striped with blue and orange like the stripes of a zebra. Then she looked at Zeb, whose face was blue and whose hair was pink, and gave a little laugh that sounded a bit nervous. ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... this period of his life, young Otis gave strong evidence of the excitable temperament with which he was endowed. In the intervals of his study his nervous system, under the stimulus of games or controversial dispute, would become so tense with excitement as to provoke remark. Nor may we in the retrospect fail to discover in this quality of mind and temper the premonitions of that malady which finally prevailed over the lucid understanding, and rational ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... I have got to look after, and my thoughts are bothered enough about them and their sicknesses, so I would rather, if you please, turn our conversation to people who are not ill. The wife here is a bit nervous, too, and she is never the better for hearing people talk about what they call 'bad cases.' I think it is the worst thing in the world for people to keep talking of their maladies, or even about other people's maladies. My motto ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade
... that Doctor and Mrs. Sherman were waiting at the curb, he descended with something more like his usual cast of countenance. Elsie and her husband were in the tonneau, and as Blake crossed the sidewalk to the car she stretched out a nervous hand and gave him ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... them too nervous, Martin," Rose had once remarked. "Better run out, darling, until we finish and then come help auntie ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... only tell you half that she has done! I am not intimate with her, but I have many ways of knowing about her. If you could know all that she has done for her family! She was the eldest daughter, and her mother was a very delicate, nervous woman, and the charge of the younger children fell to her when she was quite a girl. Then when her father failed, she opened a school and the whole family depended on her. She helped her sisters till they married, and liberally ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... Academic Board by walking across the floor. Very good excuse, for the floor was covered with a very thick carpet. We must surely give the Academic Board credit for so much good judgment and foresight, for it would have been a very sad affair, indeed, for those gentlemen to have been made so nervous (especially the Professor of Philosophy) as to be unable to see how 'manifestly incompetent' Cadet Smith was, and it would have deprived the Secretary of War of the blissful consciousness that 'he did for him what had never been done for a white boy in ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... farewell address, to aid him in clothing his thoughts in a proper dress, which he felt himself unable to give them. His tendency was to be too diffuse and too involved, but as a rule his style was sufficiently clear, and he could express himself with nervous force when the occasion demanded, and with a genuine and stately eloquence when he was deeply moved, as in the farewell to Congress at the close of the war. It is not a little remarkable that in his letters after the first years there is nothing to betray any lack of early ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... the idea, though, directly, and went on, forcing himself to master the nervous sensation and to do his duty like ...
— Son Philip • George Manville Fenn
... in their lives. He felt that he was not alone. But the feeling seemed, when he recalled it, to have been altogether different from that with which we recognise the presence of the most unwelcome bodily visitor. The whole of his nervous skeleton seemed to shudder and contract. Every sense was intensified to the acme of its acuteness; while the powers of volition were inoperative. He could not move ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... not a very desirable pet; he is restless in a cage, and too large to be quite convenient when loose in a room; again, his great timidity is a drawback—the least noise, the sight of a cat or dog, puts him in a nervous fright, and he flutters about with anxious notes of alarm. He is seen to best advantage hopping about on a lawn, where he may be attracted by acorns being strewn in winter and spring. It is a pity that his marauding habits in game preserves lead to his being ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... enthusiasm for art and music, and he seems to have held to the old paths of religion and charity. He did not pluck perpetually at his sword and dagger because his only pleasure was in cutting throats; he probably did it because he was nervous. It was the age of our first portrait-painting, and a fine contemporary portrait of him throws a more plausible light on this particular detail. For it shows him touching, and probably twisting, a ring ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... VII. GILDING STAND.—For nervous persons the gilding stand is a useful article. It is adjusted to a perfect level by thumb screws ...
— The History and Practice of the Art of Photography • Henry H. Snelling
... were nearly dancing. Then I leisurely produced my passport, as if to satisfy a curiosity of my own, and began scanning it. Seeing this, they rudely thrust forth their hands to seize it; but I had my eye on them. "Not so quick, my friends," I said, soothingly. "Be calm; nervous irritability is a fruitful source of trouble. See, here is my passport; here is the official seal, and here the name of your unworthy servant. Now I fold it up carefully and—put it back in my pocket. But here is a copy, which is at your service. If you wish to show the ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... vicarage, determined to speak to Mrs Hawthorne that very same day, for until it was over she felt she should not have a moment's comfort. She had brooded over it so constantly, and held so many imaginary conversations about it, that she had become highly nervous, and was odder in manner and more abrupt in speech than ever. As she sat at tea with Mrs Hawthorne, she answered all her inquiries about Nearminster strangely at random, for she was saying to herself over and over again, "It is my duty; I must ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... a nervous little laugh, "perhaps I was mistaken, after all." She placed a hand lightly on the driver's arm. And the words she spoke then were not audible to the rider, so softly were they uttered. And the driver laughed with satisfaction. ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... differently affected soever they are: For it understands and remembers in the Brain, it is angry in the Heart, it lusts in the Liver, it hears with the Ears, sees with the Eyes, smells with the Nose, it tastes in the Palate and Tongue, and feels in all Parts of the Body which are adjoined to any nervous Part: But it does not feel in the Hair, nor the Ends of the Nails; neither do the Lungs feel of themselves, nor the Liver, nor perhaps the ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... not seriously uneasy about Ermine's health, for these nervous attacks were not without precedent, as the revenge for all excitement of the sensitive mind upon the much-tried constitution. The reaction must pass off in time, and calm and patience would assist in restoring her; but the interview with Lord Keith had been a revelation ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cold," replied she; and with that nervous affection which often follows inquiries after the health, she gave a half-suppressed cough. "Have you ...
— Rich Enough - a tale of the times • Hannah Farnham Sawyer Lee
... talk of the circus animals had made Freddie nervous, or whether he did dream of them, he could not clearly tell afterward. All he knew was that he did not sleep well, and, some time after going to bed he awakened with ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Meadow Brook • Laura Lee Hope
... a moment. "I do not know, godfather! We have not seen Le Gardeur since our arrival." Then after a nervous silence she added, "I have been told that he is at Beaumanoir, hunting with ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Sammie. "I s'pose that's one of them fairies. I'm not going to notice her," and with that he tossed his baseball up in the air, careless like, to show that he didn't mind. But he was a bit nervous, all the same, and his hand slipped and his best ball went right down in a deep, dark, muddy puddle of water. Then Sammie felt pretty bad, I tell you, and he was going to get a stick to fish the ball out, when he heard the crashing in the bushes again, and what should appear but—no, not a fairy, ...
— Sammie and Susie Littletail • Howard R. Garis
... left in the adjacent villages. Crowded to excess, what could be the consequence but contagious diseases? especially as there was such a scarcity of the necessaries of life—and unfortunately a most destructive nervous fever is at this moment making great ravages among us, so that from 150 to 180 deaths commonly occur in one week, in a city whose ordinary proportion was between 30 and 40. In the military hospitals there die at least 300 in a day, and frequently from 5 to 600. By this extraordinary ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)
... Delicate and nervous invalids, who have unfortunately a sensitive palate, and have been accustomed to a luxurious variety of savoury sauces, and highly seasoned viands; those who, from the infirmity of age, are become incapable of correcting habits created by absurd indulgence in youth, are entitled to ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... not equal to those of American children, and they cannot be forced into a temporarily heavy grind, but neither do they suffer from the extremes of indolence and application which are the penalty of the nervous energy of our own race. They are attentive (which the American child is not) but not retentive, and they can keep up a steady, even pull at regular tasks, especially in routine work, at which American children usually rebel. In fact, they prefer ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... A man from the front Reported a tree athwart the road. "Go round it, then; no time to bide; All right—go on! Were one to stay For each distrust of a nervous mood, Long miles we'd make in this our ride Through Mosby-land.—Oh! with ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... of sharp cries from women, the hasty shuffling of feet, and the nervous tension manifest in every one, gave proof that a panic was probably imminent. I called softly to the band, "Yankee Doodle!" and the men quickly responded by playing the good old tune from memory in the darkness, quickly following it with "Dixie" on my orders. The audience began to ...
— The Experiences of a Bandmaster • John Philip Sousa
... Crane," spoke up a little, dark, nervous woman, from the depths of a velvet easy chair, whose stiff brocades and diamonds flashing on nearly every finger of the coarse, rough hands, showed unmistakable signs of a sudden and unexpected promotion from the kitchen to ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... high cravat, and showed him to a place between Anna Zaharovna and Kolia. Anna Zaharovna was an old maid, a sister of Sipiagin's father; she exhaled a smell of camphor, like a garment that had been put away for a long time, and had a nervous, dejected look. She had acted as Kolia's nurse or governess, and her wrinkled face expressed displeasure when Nejdanov sat down between her and her charge. Kolia looked sideways at his new neighbour; the intelligent boy soon saw that his tutor was shy and uncomfortable, that he did not raise ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... of players ever had situations so fraught with danger of failure. They were very nervous. Mr. Warfield appeared in the part for several weeks before he felt at ease as the living man who returns as his ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco
... echo of it, as it were—a shrill, nervous little whinny; the boys whirled round to see whence it came. The persistent rasping noise of the sorghum mill and the bubbling of the caldron had prevented them from hearing an approach. There, quite close at hand, peering through ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... through the audience. Very many recognised him, and all had heard of him—the history of his late banishment and self- approving punishment were familiar to them. He climbed the steps of the platform alertly, and the chairman welcomed him with nervous pleasure. Any word from a Quaker, friendly to the feeling of national indignation, would give the meeting the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... master, quite different from submission to rightful authority. Whatever the law may say, the rightfulness of prison authority is never admitted by prisoners. Honest authority is tranquil and secure; prison authority goes armed, conscious of its unrighteousness, and there is unremitting nervous stress on both sides. Both sides seem secretly to await a signal to ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... interested assemble, in whose presence each suspect is made to chew a mouthful of raw rice, which, when it is thoroughly masticated, is ejected on to a dish. Each mouthful is examined, and the person whose rice is the driest is considered guilty. It is believed that the guilty one will be most nervous during the trial, thus checking a ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... the ground just as Arthur and I reached her, while Crass immediately came flying down to her feet. Having satisfied ourselves that the snake was really killed, we hastened back with Marian to the settlement, followed by Crass, which came willingly after its mistress. She was so nervous, however, that she could with difficulty walk. At every instant she started, as if expecting to see another snake appear before her to dispute her passage. Quacko, who knew very well that he had been ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... was annihilated. The two hundred miles over which the ancient Briton had wearisomely laboured, were reduced to twenty, and before I could satisfy myself that our journey was more than begun, my horseless coach, and fifty more besides, had actually gone over them. I experienced a nervous palpitation at the heart as I proceeded from the outskirts of the city, and grew more and more fidgety the nearer I approached the din and noise of the prosperous seat of business. I could not account for the feeling, until I detected myself walking as briskly as I could, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... practice, and make clock-work of the internal machinery, he quite likely defeats the very object he has in view. A school-teacher who pretends to notice every aberration from order and propriety is quite likely to have his hands full, and just so with parents. Some children cannot keep still. Their nervous temperament does not admit of it. I once heard an elderly gentleman say, that when riding in a coach, he was so confined that he felt as if he should die because he could not change his position. Oh! if he could ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... gone without an interview with Oriana, but that would have seemed strange to Beverly. However, Oriana, although pale and nervous, met them in the morning with more composure than they had anticipated. Harold, just before starting, drew her aside, and placed ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... dead hush, and Eric tried once or twice in vain to utter a word. At last, by a spasmodic effort, he regained his voice, and read, but in so low and nervous a tone, that not even those nearest him heard ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... last Sunday and Monday, and the Ember Prayer in the morning (when I was at Ottery) fairly upset me, but I don't think anybody saw it; now, I am thankful to say, I am very well, and feel thoroughly happy. I shall be nervous, no doubt, on Sunday, and especially at reading the Gospel, but not I think so nervous as to break down or do anything foolish; so when you know I am reading—for you won't hear me, if you are in the stalls, don't distress yourself ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... distress in the country, so it would seem not improbable that the innutritious dietary and other deprivations of the majority of the population of Ireland must, when acting over many generations, have led to impaired nutrition of the nervous system, and in this way have developed in the race those neuropathic and psychopathic tendencies which ...
— What's the Matter with Ireland? • Ruth Russell
... down and Pee-wee could feel that it was turning into another road. His unwitting captors were evidently either nervous or sleepy, ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... waiting with the Marchioness' lady-in-waiting with a short petition in her hands that had been drawn up by D'Andilly. After a few minutes she lay prostrate at the king's feet, unable to speak a word. The throbbing blood was driven quicker and faster through the poor girl's veins owing to anxiety, nervous confusion, shy reverence, love, and anguish. Her cheeks were died with a deep purple blush; her eyes shone with bright pearly tears, which from time to time fell through her silken eyelashes upon her beautiful lily-white bosom. The king appeared to be struck with the surprising ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... critics of the miracles recorded in the Gospels can hardly doubt that Christ possessed some special power of calming and healing nervous maladies and perhaps others. Sick people naturally turned to him: they were brought to him when he arrived in a town. Though the Buddha was occasionally kind to the sick, no such picture is drawn of the company about him and persons afflicted with certain diseases ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... chop logic so early in the morning," was the surly reply. "I'm cold and nervous. Say, did you lift anything before we got away?" Arved smiled the significant smile of ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... a slope, thickly clothed with undergrowth. A few hundred yards farther his knees suddenly crumpled under him and he sank down, seized at the same time with a fit of nervous trembling. He had passed through so many ordeals that strong and seasoned as he was and high though his spirits, the collapse came all at once. He knew what was the matter and, quietly stretching himself out, he lay still that the ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Jenny's usual volubility; but her voice quivered, her cheek was thin and pale, the tears stood in her eyes, her hand trembled, her manner was fluttered, and her whole presence bore marks of recent suffering and privation, as well as nervous and hysterical agitation. ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... tribes. [Footnote: Agaricus muscarius or fly-agaric.] Taken in large quantities it is a violent narcotic poison; but in small doses it produces all the effects of alcoholic liquor. Its habitual use, however, completely shatters the nervous system, and its sale by Russian traders to the natives has consequently been made a penal offence by Russian law. In spite of all prohibitions, the trade is still secretly carried on, and I have seen twenty dollars' worth of furs bought with a single ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... old. Thin, nervous, of medium height, with very brown hair, skin somewhat swarthy, he ought to be strong. Had he received any instruction? Yes; that appeared in certain observations which escaped him sometimes. Besides, he never spoke of his past life, he said not a word about ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... an hour more than a day's fasting would do. Mark this that I am going to say, for it is as good as a working professional man's advice, and costs you nothing: It is better to lose a pint of blood from your veins than to have a nerve tapped. Nobody measures your nervous force as it runs away, nor bandages your brain ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... well not to be perfectly frank. How much of last night was just—what shall I say—nervous tension? Supposing some other girl had been in ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... as a whole takes place from the cessation of the action of the central nervous system or of the respiratory system or of the circulation. There are other organs of the body, such as the intestine, kidney, liver, whose function is essential for life, but death does not take place immediately on the cessation of their ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... wide-open eyes; and my impulsive phrases strike with such force against her stupefaction that each one of them seems by degrees to fall back upon myself. I in my turn am left utterly dumfounded; she is so ill at ease that I myself become nervous; her astonishment embarrasses me; I secretly laugh at my own discomfiture; and I end by ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... note of pathetic, ominous sadness in her voice. Even in his first study of this lovely face, the doctor's experienced eye told him that here was a case of complicated nervous breakdown. He wondered if she could have had a slight touch of shell shock. What a ghastly thing for a high spirited, sensitive young woman to be out on those ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... modesty of its author, has induced her to put, in the least obtrusive form, the wisdom and erudition—the least fragment of which would have furnished forth a host of modern Sciolists with the most ostentatious paragraphs—the deep thought and nervous eloquence by which almost every page of the volume before us is illustrated, sufficiently establish her title to rank among the most distinguished writers of this age and country. If, indeed, we were ungrateful enough to quarrel ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... between mother and offspring, is passed as it were in sleep, and no one can make any statement in regard to the mind of the unborn child. Even after birth the dawn of mind is as slow as it is wonderful. To begin with, there is in the ovum and early embryo no nervous system at all, and it develops very gradually from simple beginnings. Yet as mentality cannot come in from outside, we seem bound to conclude that the potentiality of it—whatever that means—resides in the individual from the very first. The particular kind of activity known to us as ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... fitted to the bowstrings, ready to shoot when the first volley of the deadly and silent poisoned arrows had been fired. Farther back were the spear-men with spears unsheathed, and finally came the three brave and ferocious club-men. Of these last warriors, a tall athlete was visibly nervous, not from fear but from anticipation. The veins of his forehead stood out, pulsating with every throb of his heart. He clutched the heavy club and continually gritted his white, sharp-filed teeth in concentrated rage. It was wisely calculated that the Peruvians would unconsciously wedge themselves ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... enough alike—small weapons, rather heavier than they looked, firing a tiny ten-grain bullet at ten thousand foot-seconds. On impact, such a bullet would almost disintegrate; a man hit anywhere in the body with one would be killed instantly, his nervous system paralyzed and his heart stopped by internal pressure. Each of the pistols carried twenty rounds ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... or Plant Animals; and the texture of it, which the Microscope discovers, seems to confirm it; for it is of a form whereof I never observ'd any other Vegetable, and indeed, it seems impossible that any should be of it, for it consists of an infinite number of small short fibres, or nervous parts, much of the same bigness, curiously jointed or contex'd together in the form of a Net, as is more plainly manifest by the little Draught which I have added, in the third Figure of the IX. ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... Desperiers was more of a satirist than of an amorist, and though the charges of atheism brought against him are (v. inf. again) scarcely supported by his work, he was certainly no pietist. I should imagine that he revised a good deal and sometimes imparted his nervous and manly, but, in his own Contes, sometimes too much summarised style. But some striking phrases, such as "l'impossibilite de nostre chair,"[112] may be hers, and the following remarkable speech of ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... very queer and unhappy girl. She should have been, long ago, not in a house of ill-fame, but in a psychiatric ward, because of an excruciating nervous malady, which compels her to give herself up, frenziedly, with an unwholesome avidity, to any man whatsoever who may choose her, even the most repulsive. Her mates make sport of her and despise her somewhat ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... on, Doris, for all her sturdy self-reliance, began to feel a little nervous inwardly. She had been quite well-educated, first at a good High School, and then in the class-rooms of a provincial University; and, as the clever daughter of a clever doctor in large practice, she had always been in ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... of "girls' work" from such an authority emboldens the writer to add a word in favor of teaching boys how to do work that may be a relief to a nervous, sick, worried, and overworked mother or wife, and be of important and instant use in emergencies. A hungry man who cannot prepare his food, a dirty man who cannot clean his clothes, a dilapidated man who is compelled ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... Kippen quickly, a dingy and defiant young woman carrying a tablecloth. She is a nervous creature, driven half-mad by the burden of her cares. Conceiving life, necessarily, as a path to be traversed at high speed, whenever she sees an obstacle in her way, whether in the physical or ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... haste the boys put on their shoes, snowshoes and caps. Then they took one of the sleds and loaded it with as many of their traps as they could find. They were in such an excited and nervous frame of mind that they overlooked a most important matter. They failed to bind Sparwick. It never occurred to them that he might recover consciousness in a ...
— The Camp in the Snow - Besiedged by Danger • William Murray Graydon |
