"Overwrought" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Aye, thou'rt overwrought, dear lady. Come, rest you until the holy Angelo be come, so shalt be thine own sweet ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... place. He began to discover afresh the people around him, even those who had been most hostile to him, the intellectuals, and the politicians; and he saw plainly their wrinkles, their white hair, the bitter lines about their mouths, their bent backs, their shaky legs.... Overwrought, nervous, ready to break down,... how much they had aged in six months! The excitement of the fight had kept them up at first; but as it went on and, no matter what the issue, the ruin became plain; each one had his griefs, and each feared to lose the ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... that have reduced us from the most flourishing empire in the world, to be one of the most compact and unenviable powers on the globe! Oh, wonderful rights! that are likely to take from us all that yet remains!" This picture of the nation's misery, however, was greatly overwrought. England was not yet reduced to the abject state in which Burke would have had the house believe she was in. Her empire on the seas was not yet lost, nor was she shorn of her rank among the nations. Provinces, islands, men, money, and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... silence fell, deepened, grew ominous. None breathed, and the overwrought nerves of the court reached the limit ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... The overwrought girl dropped her head and wept without restraint upon her mother's neck. She let herself be guided to a chair, and there, while Aurora nestled close to her side, yielded a few moments to reverie before she was called ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... this time, she's really gone," and the excited news-bringer burst into tears. The poor soul was completely overwrought; she looked tired and wan, as if she had spent her forces in sympathy as well as hard work. She felt in her great bundle for a pocket handkerchief, but was not successful in the search, and finally produced a faded gingham apron with long, narrow strings, with which she ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... the anticipation of the catastrophe, then by its description; and the intervening period, when it was actually going forward, is filled up by the recital of sublime lyric poetry, at once causing the stop of time to be forgotten, affording a brief respite to the overwrought feelings, and yet keeping up the enthusiastic and elevated state of mind ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... practicable. Thus life passes away in the feverish irritation of pursuit and the certainty of disappointment. By degrees, nothing but this morbid state of feeling satisfies us: and all common pleasures and cheap amusements are sacrificed to the demon of ambition, avarice, or dissipation. The machine is overwrought: the parching heat of the veins dries up and withers the flowers of Love, Hope, and Joy; and any pause, any release from the rack of ecstasy on which we are stretched, seems more insupportable than the pangs which we endure. We are suspended between tormenting ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... gushed the Griffin. "I could swoon with joy, I feel so overwrought that I shall go to one of the fountains and ask the dear Dolphins for ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... his words coming quick and eager, "don't do that! Do you think I can't see that you're all overwrought? How can I let you go tramping out there in the streets again? You couldn't go—you mustn't go! Stay here with good Mrs. Trapes, I beg of you, and I swear I'll bring Arthur to you! Only you must promise me to wait here and be patient, ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... was still overwrought and nerve-strung: for some reason she could not afterwards have explained, she felt spiteful and uncontrolled, goaded into stupid fury by the look of insolence and of triumph with which ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... wolf pack in a way eased the anguish of his ruin by diverting his mind. But the lack of cigarettes served only to put a more frightful strain on his overwrought nerves. He felt it first in a vague discomfort that set his hands to groping automatically through his pockets. The absence of the usual box roused his consciousness, with a dismayed start, to the realization that he was absolutely without ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... "Overwrought? Ay, body and soul too," answered Mrs Clere, softening a little in response to Rose's tone. "Well! folks know their own troubles best, I reckon, and it's no good harrying other folks with them. What priced serge would ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... then he'd look at Sonny, an' then he'd look at the class,—an' then he'd turn a page, like ez ef he couldn't make up his mind, an' was afeerd to resk it, less'n it might be missed, an' be referred back to the class. I never did see a man so overwrought over a little thing in my life—never. They do say, though, that school-teachers feels mighty bad when their scholars ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... the priest, now quite beside himself in his fanatical exaltation. "He speaks again, he speaks again! Woe, woe to the city of Doom!" Once more the firmament seemed cleft in twain, and the earth trembled under the reverberations of the tremendous electrical discharges. The effect upon the overwrought nerves of the throng was instantaneous; as one man the crowd turned and made for the exits from the Citadel Square. Even the personal attendants upon Dom Gillian were affected by the panic, and leaped ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... appeared to me too minutely ornamented; it is rich, elaborate, but all in small detail, too subdivided and intricate and overwrought to be as imposing and good in effect as if ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... he said; "it's all right. You're only a little overwrought. It's that cheap perambulator. I've arranged for a bath-chair man to come round ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... much of these things," he said soothingly—"You are evidently overwrought with study and excessive zeal. Much that you say may be true; nevertheless the Church—OUR Church—stands firm among overwhelming contradictions,—and we, its ministers, do what we can. I myself am disposed to think that ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... French from a distance of millions of miles as clearly as if he were in the room? The thing was incredible! How could a Martian know a language evolved here on Earth? Was the whole thing then a delusion of an overwrought mind? I stood staring at the instrument ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... who had seemed overwrought, Babbitt who had been the protecting big brother, Paul became clear-eyed and merry, while Babbitt sank into irritability. He uncovered layer on layer of hidden weariness. At first he had played nimble jester to Paul and for him sought amusements; by the end of the week Paul ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... he said in a caressing tone. "You are overwrought. I will hear the rest another time—when you feel stronger and send for me. I am going to say good-night now, so that you may rest. But before I go I want to say that nothing you have told me can make the ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... self-control is being practiced. After all it does seem that being easily moved and swayed may furnish the lever by which the wise and prudent may begin to lift them to the higher ground of religious life. No doubt in most cases there is deep down beneath the easily overwrought feelings a true religious disposition, with much ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... space of a second Father Honore shrank within himself. He could not tell at that moment whether he had here to do with an overwrought brain, with a mind obsessed, or with an awful fact. But he answered without hesitation and out of his ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... masons reminded him that it was the custom to deliver up a prisoner to the people at the time of the Passover. At the time of the Passover, he repeated.... At last, realising what had happened, his face became overwrought; his eyes and mouth testified to the grief he was suffering; and he pressed his spurs to his horse's side, and would have been away beyond call if two of his workmen had not seized the bridle and almost forced the horse on his haunches. ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... a pause, during which Billie allowed her gaze to travel casually about the room. Sam occupied the intermission by staring furtively at her profile. He was by now in a thoroughly overwrought condition, and the thumping of his heart sounded to him as if workmen were mending the street outside. How beautiful she looked, with that red hair peeping out ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... if it was awful good chocolate. Oh, Dolly, our cake was so beautiful!" And Dotty's overwrought nerves gave way and she burst into ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... action and idleness of reflection, into which my young years were divided, that the impress of my character was stamped: that fitfulness of temper, that affection for extremes, has accompanied me through life. Hence, not only all intermediums of emotion appear to me as tame, but even the most overwrought excitation can bring neither novelty nor zest. I have, as it were, feasted upon the passions; I have made that my daily food, which, in its strength and excess, would have been poison to others; I have rendered my mind unable ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wrong when you say that. Come—we are both unnerved to-night. Perhaps I was injudicious to speak at a time when I should have known that you would be overwrought, but I could not keep back the love which you ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... self-justification, although the wound was evidently long in healing. What recourse has a man who places himself before the public against the envenomed shafts of an invisible adversary? Of this at least we may be satisfied, that whatever is extravagant and overwrought always brings its own reaction in due course; and Doctor Holmes's reputation does not appear to have suffered permanently from this attack. The general public, especially the republic of womankind, forms its own opinion, ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... beside her before she opened her eyes. 'It is only a nightmare,' I would say to her as she clung to me like a frightened child; but it was not always easy to banish the grisly phantoms of a diseased and overwrought imagination. The morbid condition of her mind was aggravated and increased by physical weakness; at the least exertion she had fainting-fits that ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... don't ask me now! Wait until my nerves get settled. It never stopped, and fast as it reeled off I recognized Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Weber—lots of Weber—Marschner, and Chopin. Yes, Chopin! The orchestration seemed overwrought and coarse and the form—well, formlessness is the only word to describe it. There was an infernal sort of skill in the instrumentation at times, a short-breathed juggling with other men's ideas, but no development, no final cadence. Everything in suspension until my ears fairly longed for one perfect ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... to moment she had sent up prayers for him, every breath a cry to God, she suddenly had been unable to pray more, and this she felt was a sign that petition for his life was now vain. Miss Morton strove to convince her that this was but an effect of overwrought ...
— An Echo Of Antietam - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... of the British Colonies in America, declared on the 4th of July, 1776, is not an isolated fact; nor is the Declaration itself a hasty and overwrought production of a young and enthusiastic adventurer ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... Tartarin books and by the chief novels, Fromont, Jack, The Nabob, Kings in Exile, and Numa, aided by the artistic sketches and short stories contained in Letters from my Mill and Monday Tales (Contes du Lundi). The strong but overwrought Evangelist, Sapho—which of course belongs with the chief novels from the Continental but not from the insular point of view—and the books of Daudet's decadence, The Immortal, and the rest, cost him few friendships, but scarcely gained him many. His delightful essays ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... son-in-law?" Mr. Brewster swallowed a few more times, Archie the while watching with a frozen fascination the rapid shimmying of his new relative's Adam's-apple. "Go away! I want to have a few words alone with this—This—WASSYOURDAMNAME?" he demanded, in an overwrought manner, addressing Archie ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... to appreciate the true meaning of the phrase about the horns of a dilemma. The horns of this dilemma occupied his attention until the end of the dinner. He shifted uneasily from one to the other and back again. He rose from the table in a thoroughly overwrought condition of mind. And then, somehow, in the course of the evening, he found himself alone in the hall, not a dozen feet from the ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... clear, but the words were scarcely uttered when he fell to his knees again, with a subdued cry of overwrought feeling. ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... that if he opened the next thought in his mind, an undertaker would rise out of the ground with a coffin. This astonishing man, coming upon his overwrought state, made him feel hysterical. He turned to Effie and gave her both his hands. "The doctor's taking you, Effie. It's been dreadful for you. It's all over now. Try to leave it out of your mind ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... charm which I can determine no way of expressing in this language. Acts and facts, of course. I shall not attempt to capture the subjectivity which is the charm, only to transcribe the physical datum—perhaps even data, who knows? My companions, for example: They were in appearance overwrought, looking about them continually, stopping entirely and drawing me with them into the shelter of a "door" when another man, this one wearing blue clothing and a visored hat appeared. Yet they were clearly devoted to me, at that moment, ...
— The Day of the Boomer Dukes • Frederik Pohl
... felt, as he crouched there watching the plains, that something very terrible was going to happen ere long. At another time he would have been drowsy, but now sleep was the last thing of which he thought, all his nerves being overwrought; and as his eyes swept the wide flat plain, he kept on fancying that sooner or later he would see the Apaches coming up to them with the slow, silent ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... this passionate, thoroughly aroused woman be his cold, self-contained daughter? He could not understand, as so many cannot, that such natures when aroused are tenfold more intense than those whom little things excite. A long and peculiar train of circumstances, a morbid and overwrought physical condition, led to this outburst from Christine, which was as much a cause of surprise to herself afterward as to her father. He judged correctly that a great deal had occurred between Dennis and herself of which he had no knowledge, and again his ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... as I have often said a better school wherein to model life than by incessantly exposing to it the diversity of so many other lives, fancies, and usances, and by making it relish a perpetual variety of forms of human nature. The body is, therein, neither idle nor overwrought; and that moderate agitation puts it in breath. I can keep on horseback, tormented with the stone as I am, without alighting or being weary, eight or ten ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... with reverent eyes! Cathedral-like its noble size; With store of pictures overwrought, And rhymes that tell of pious thought. Of such I learned full many a word, While the old stove from out its hoard Would draw them forth for young and old, When the snow fell and winds blew cold. Here you may see where on the tile Stands Bishop Hatto's towered ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... off wild beasts, or scare any other unknown enemies. On a shelving rock, against which the waves gently broke, we had our first meal, one never to be forgotten by me, for the many mixed feelings with which it was partaken. All hearts were too full to say much. The overwrought mind of the captain showed itself in his profound silence, while slowly and at intervals a single large tear rolled down his cheeks. Madame swallowed as many tears as tea. Schillie gulped down her food in convulsive starts while ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... addressed the Officers at some length. "The old man" always had an impressive way of speaking, and darkness and overwrought nerves doubtless magnified this. He spoke in subdued tones, as if awed by the intense ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... moments of strain, when even trifles can turn the overwrought attention. Glaucon knew that the stranger was looking from him to Lycon, from Lycon back to himself, measuring each with shrewd eye. Then the gaze settled on the Athenian. The ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... in the midst of all a fountain stood Of richest substance that on earth might be, So pure and shiny that the crystal flood Through every channel running one might see; Most goodly it with curious imagery Was overwrought, and shapes of naked boys, Of which some seemed with lively jollity To fly about, playing their wanton toys, Whilst others did themselves ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... some word of Joan's revealed the altered aspect of their affairs; and then, overcome by the helplessness of their forlorn condition, he would entreat Reuben to stand by them—not to forget Joan, not to forsake her. And Reuben, strangely moved by sight of this poor giddy nature's overwrought emotion, would try to calm him with the ready assurance that while he lived Joan should never want a friend, and, touched by his words, the two would clasp his hands together, telling each other of all the kindness he had showed them, praying God would pay him back in blessings for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... of course over-tired, his nerves overwrought with the excitement of what he had gone through, and his head throbbing painfully, he could not go to sleep. Every time he closed his eyes his ears began to sing after the same fashion as they did directly following the explosion, and after ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... said Elsie, "in the distance, but of course I had no idea who it was. How very kind you have been to me!" and again the tears were trembling in the nervous eyes of the poor, overwrought girl. ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare
... conversation. That it had not been a friendly conversation would have been evident to the most casual observer from the manner in which Mike stumped off, swinging his cricket-bag as if it were a weapon of offence. There are many kinds of walk. Mike's was the walk of the Overwrought Soul. ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... no one knew, but on the very day after her husband's departure she had gone quietly on deck while the rest of the company were at supper and never was seen again; nor till the sea gives up its dead shall any know the story of that poor overwrought soul's last fierce struggle ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... and content of it stealing in upon him; then the consciousness of all that he had gone through and was going through smote him, and he was resentful. By what right did this ragged beachcomber, in dungaree trousers and a cotton shirt, suggest such a thing as peace and content to him and his overwrought, exhausted soul? The captain did not reason this; it was the unconscious process of emotion ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... thanked her, but brokenly, and then overcome by this unexpected succor she sank prone upon the floor weeping passionately; the tension on her nerves had given way and her overwrought feelings had to ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... indeed, I troubled myself but little. I think her old fear of my claiming the place came on her again, and though she always tried to treat me civilly, the effort in the end proved too great for her overwrought nerves, as you shall ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... that day it is difficult to record. I paced my cell in a frenzy until I could pace no longer. I completed my design on the wall, fumbled with my fingers, and dozed. But the hours seemed to drag as if they were years. By now I was so overwrought that I declined to send ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... One night, being overwrought by sorrow, it may be, my father said that he would have the doctor-woman from Wolf Cove to help ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... up to be God's witnesses, Miriam. Our creed is naught but prayer-mumbling and pious mummeries. The Christian Apostles went through the world testifying. Better a brief heroism than this long ignominy." He burst into sudden tears and sank into a chair overwrought. ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... her restless walk to and fro, with her long white fur cloak thrown back over her shoulders, and her loose hair and floating veil tangled together below her fur cap. In her large, wide-opened eyes, and in the whole face, there was the tense expression of overwrought emotion and exhaustion. In her walk she several times passed a tall lady, very simply dressed, who was looking intently into the luggage van, round which a busy little group had collected. Once, just as Theresa passed the group, an officer came up ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... he had crossed the lawn, and had been hoping desperately that the resolver of mysteries (whose reputation was as great below-stairs as elsewhere) would send for her. For one thing, she felt the need to make a scene; her nerves were overwrought. But her scenes were at a discount with the other domestics, and as for Mr. Murch, he had chilled her into self-control with his official manner. Trent, her glimpse of him had told her, had not the air of a policeman, and at a distance he had ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... could stay upright. But she herself was steady and calm enough, bent on keeping emotion away, and somehow getting him back along the river-path, abandoned now to the moon and the bright, still spaces of the night and the slow-moving, whitened water. Why had she not felt from the first that he was overwrought and only ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... yet, like a Liszt rhapsody, it perfectly answers its purpose,—that is, it gives the performer full scope to show what he can do with his instrument. You may laugh a little, if you like, at an occasional grotesque or overwrought passage, but unless you are well used to it you will surely be astonished. Such power and range of voice; such startling transitions; such endless variety! And withal such boundless enthusiasm and almost incredible endurance! Regarded as pure ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... Masie. The little lady had to be coaxed into one of the easy chairs in the improvised office and comforted with an arm around her shoulder, to say nothing of having her hair smoothed back from her face, followed by a kiss on her white forehead, before her overwrought anxieties were allayed. ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... something horrifying in this change. In his morbid and overwrought condition it seemed murderous. At last a new resolution set his lips in a stern line, and when the curtain fell on the last act his mind was made up. "I will write one more play for the sensation-loving fools, for these flabby business men and their ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... thoughtless boy comprehend the cruelty of his neglect. In the underground rooms of the City lodging-house, the voluntary prison of the shame-faced, half-owned wife, the overwrought headache, incidental to her former profession, made her its prey; nervous fever came on as the suspense became more trying, and morbid excitement alternated with torpor and depression. Medical advice was ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... overwrought nerves, her excitement and agitation, lent beautiful Marguerite Blakeney much additional charm: escorted by a veritable bevy of men of all ages and of most nationalities, she called forth many exclamations of admiration from everyone as ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... atmosphere of this home; the consciousness that she was among friends; the knowledge that they would do all they could to find the wanderer whom every one loved with such devotion, gave to Pepeeta's overwrought ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... through the closed blinds of the palatial Stafford home. Through the dark nocturnal hours its inmates—master, guests and servants, had slumbered peacefully, all but one and to her sleep refused to come. Hysterical, mentally overwrought, physically exhausted from continual weeping, Virginia had tossed feverishly on her pillow until at last dawn had mercifully come to dispel the terrors of ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... childish sensation received when I saw my father's body just as it lay at the close of the death-agony, can even now be revived by the sight of a disordered bed; such is the force of early impressions, especially when they are received by a nervous system that has been overwrought by the extreme of ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... clearly outlined were now dim, obscured. The yawning chasm was not the same. It circled wider, redder, deeper. It was a weird, ghastly mouth of hell. Gale stood fascinated, unable to tell how much he saw was real, how much exaggeration of overwrought emotions. There was no beauty here, but an unparalleled grandeur, a sublime scene of devastation and desolation which might have had its counterpart upon the burned-out moon. The mood that gripped Gale now added to its somber portent ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... this is no time for angry words," said the Pastor Arentz, pushing his way through the group of bewildered men and overwrought women. "He can scarcely be dead; let me look at him, I am something of a doctor," and he knelt by the senseless and bleeding Adrian ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... unbeknownst, and secondly, so that he shall be ready to go in directly his predecessor is out. There is an ill-concealed restiveness about his movements, as he watches the batsmen getting set, that betrays an overwrought spirit. Then of a sudden one of them plays a ball on to his pad. ''s that?' asks the bowler, with an overdone carelessness. 'Clean out. Now I'm in,' and already he is rushing up the middle of the pitch to take ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... strained." (An uncomfortable pause.) "Of course, now, that is but my opinion. It will not seem of any value to you, perhaps, but while I read it I could not get away from the fact that it was not altogether natural. It seemed hysterical and overwrought in places—it gives the effect of crudeness. It is rather hard, you know, to expect a man who sits at a desk all day to follow you in such very strenuous flights." (A ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... lids, and thus I suddenly caught the glitter of the thing as it moved and knew it for a very bright, human eye that watched me through the knot-hole. Now this may seem a very small matter in the telling, but to me at that moment (overwrought by my long sojourn in the dark) it ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... the men in our union getting together with John and his crowd and sending the Jake Vodells back to whatever country they came from." When her father spoke John's name, the young woman's face colored with a quick blush. The next moment, unable to control her overwrought emotions, she burst into tears and started to leave the room. But at the door Captain Charlie caught her in his arms and held her close until the first violence ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... other, and only if I may assume that no one has been inconvenienced in this manner will it give me pleasure to spend the money on a trip of recreation. That trip, on which I start tomorrow, has come just in time; uninterrupted work has again strongly affected me, and the nerves of my brain are so overwrought that even these few lines put me in a state of violent excitement, wherefore I must ask you not to be angry if I make them very short. I feel that I am still capable of doing good things, but only by keeping very strict diet, and especially by frequently interrupting my work and entirely diverting ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... Helen heard, and, overwrought as she was by nights of assiduous care, the speech both pained and angered her. Geoffrey's answer was not audible, as they passed on. He came back alone, off his guard for a moment, looking worn and weary, and Mrs. ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... specially created for the purpose, no doubt; but he, a practical, everyday, intensely real sort of being—what had he to do with things so far away? Oh, no! It was not for him. Let him put aside the overwrought fancies of the day, and return ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... it lasts, if only it lasts! She's so overwrought; living on her nerves. And pregnant again. But what splendid resolution she shows, and how she's matured in these two years! But it has cost her a ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... overwrought Nor cease thy preparations for the voyage. Work tranquilly and do not be disturbed, For thou canst put away his armor last. What am I saying! For he wears no mail, Nor doth he need ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... said pityingly to himself, as he laid her down in her own berth; and then he added aloud, "You are overwrought and done up, Mrs. Tracey. Rest awhile, and you will soon ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke
... these sturdy mothers in Israel, who so willingly give their lives that others may live, often find vent for overwrought feelings by scolding; and I, for one, cheerfully grant them the privilege. Washington's mother scolded and grumbled to the day of her death. She also sought solace by smoking a pipe. And this reminds me that a noted specialist in neurotics has recently said that if women would use the ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... and kindred wast thou brought, Nor laid 'mid trampled dead of battle won,— Nor after long life filled with duty done Was thine such death as thou thyself had'st sought! No, sadder far, with horror overwrought That end that gave to thee thy cruel grave Deep in blue chasms of some glacier cave, When Cervins perils thou, the first, had'st fought And conquered, Douglas! for in thee uprose In boyhood e'en a nature ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... Wyndham had left her. Miss Craven and Katherine had gone upstairs, and she was alone with Ted. Suddenly she clenched her hands together, at the full length of her white arms, and turned to him in an agony of tenderness, clinging to him like an overwrought child, and lavishing more sweetness on him than she had done since the day of their engagement. Ted was touched with the unusual pathos of her manner. He put it down to sorrow at their separation during the whole of a ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... Majesty is more overwrought than he has ever seen him. You are to come to the Palace at once. I have an ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... train for Harwick, and within a few hours was rubbing his hands over an open fire in the parsonage, whose stiff and cheerless aspect bespoke the lack of a woman's humanizing touch for the Reverend Mr. Prentice was a widower. Overwrought with anxiety and strain, the clergyman, as soon as he had taken his coat, began a hurried, inconsequential narrative, broke off, tried again, fell into an inextricable confusion of words, and, dropping his head in ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... men rode away, leaving a perfectly furious one standing in the road shaking his fists after them. And he was the more angry because he felt that he had been hastier with the constable than even his overwrought state of mind warranted. Then, as he reflected on the graveyard matter, his curiosity began to get the better of his wrath, and to the surprise of his Vienna antagonist he abandoned the field without another word and started for Smyrna ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... patients suffering from overstimulation of the brain and nervous system consult their doctor, his advice in almost every instance is: "Your nerves are weak and overwrought. You need plenty of good, nourishing food (broths, meat and eggs), ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... there, my dear," urged the man; "you are overwrought, excited, nervous. The music ...
— And Thus He Came • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... Milt, don't you think you're taking this a little too seriously? You're getting stale, overwrought. You need a fresh point of view. Lots of our people feel as you do at one time or another, but most of us learn to live with these necessary regulations, and do our work in spite of them. Let me make a suggestion, relax, take a little time off, develop a hobby. Why ...
— Security • Ernest M. Kenyon
... at her, and his eyes did not seem human. He breathed stertorously, and in his throat were the queer little gasping noises of one overwrought. ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... me" is a beautiful hymn, but really its beauties began to pall when it had been sung through from beginning to end nine times running. Neither my nephew nor I could get any sleep that first night owing to the blatant devotional exercises of the overwrought negroes. ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... the girl still found strength to open a door on the opposite side of the room and motion for the man to pass through. As he did so she slammed it behind him and locked it. Then her overwrought feelings gave way, and she sank into ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... bursting, that took the elastic out of the arteries and made hard knots of muscle out of Youth's sleek suppleness, that wore out nerve and stamina and made brain and bones weary from excess of effort and endurance overwrought. Yes, he had done better than all of them. There were none of his old fighting partners left. He was the last of the old guard. He had seen them all finished, and he had had a hand ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... were but an overwrought imagination and the strangeness of the situation, acting upon a mind eagerly grasping out after adventure, being set free from the oppression of those dreadful years ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... as if upon business with him, it being frost and dry, as far as Paul's, and so back again through the City by Guildhall, observing the ruines thereabouts, till I did truly lose myself, and so home to dinner. I do truly find that I have overwrought my eyes, so that now they are become weak and apt to be tired, and all excess of light makes them sore, so that now to the candlelight I am forced to sit by, adding, the snow upon the ground all day, my eyes are very bad, and will be worse if not helped, so my Lord Bruncker do advise as a certain ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... searching in a day or two, had stepped out of the unknown and, by the most whimsical jest of fate, into the custody of the one person most interested of all in that self-same world. It was unbelievable. She wondered if it were not a dream, or the hallucination of an overwrought mind. Spurred by the sudden doubt as to the reality of the object before her, she stretched out her hand and ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... to that modern Eden for the overwrought nerves of kings and commoners—Baden-baden, where we spent ten days. At the end of this time we returned to Paris to enjoy the Exposition at our leisure. Paris is always a place of brightness and pleasure. ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... the intensity of my wonder. This face, so ivory pale, wore not the ashen aspect of one that would never wake again. There was a warmth about that pallor. And then I caught my nether lip in my teeth until it bled, and it is a miracle that I did not scream, seeing how overwrought ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... I have written all this commonplace talk, not regarding its dulness in your eyes, but because I felt weary and also somewhat overwrought and sad; and it has done me much good, and ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... would have daunted a less courageous girl. Lady Caroline had risen, and was staring sternly. Percy was pulling the puffs of an overwrought soul. Lord Marshmoreton, whose thoughts had wandered off to the rose garden, pulled himself together and tried to look menacing. Maud went on without waiting for a reply. She was all bubbling gaiety and insouciance, a charming ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... begin our story on the morning of July 1, 1776, in the Continental Congress at Philadelphia. For nearly three hours the Lee Resolution has been the subject of furious debate. The members are all excited, anxious, overwrought. The debate has become bitter, for some of the members are unalterably opposed to independence. It is about noon when Dr. Franklin rises to ...
— Caesar Rodney's Ride • Henry Fisk Carlton
... was the second day out—when they were among the missing. For two days and two nights, while the good ship floundered on the tempestuous bosom of the overwrought ocean, they were gone from human ken. On the afternoon of the third day, the sea being calmer now, but still sufficiently rough to satisfy the most exacting, a few hardy and convalescent souls sat in a shawl-wrapped row on the lee side ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... three in number. As I opened the first of them the singing upstairs ceased. For a moment there was something almost oppressive in the sudden change from noise to silence. I suppose my nerves must have been overwrought. The next sound in the house—nothing more remarkable than the creaking of a man's boots descending the stairs—made me shudder all over. The man was no doubt the singing-master, going away after giving his lesson. I heard the house door close on him, and started at the familiar ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... is heard but the patter of the rain-drops, and, after a few bars from a love-song, a favorite of Kate's, the music glided into the simple strains of "Home, Sweet Home." And as the oppressed and overheated atmosphere is cleared by the brief storm, so the overwrought feelings of those present were relieved by ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... merely like the grating of overwrought nerves. But it is more than that. All religions grew out of that most human mood. And whenever one is deeply moved, he feels it. For even the most matter-of-fact person of us all has now and then a suspicion that this life is merely episodic—that curtain after curtain of ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... to be said for Carlyle's insistence that great men are creators as well as creatures of their age. Doubtless, as we advance in history, direct personal influence, happily or unhappily, declines. In an era of overwrought activity, of superficial, however free, education, when we run the risk of being associated into nothingness and criticised to death, it remains a question whether, in the interests of the highest civilisation (which means opportunity for every capable citizen to lead the highest life), the ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... in exchange for my discreet smile had no hidden mirth in it. Her eyes seemed hollowed, her face gone wan in a couple of hours. We had been laughing too much. Overwrought! Overwrought by the approach of the decisive moment. After all, sincere, courageous, and self-reliant as she was, she must have felt both the passion and the compunction of her resolve. The very ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... was a fresh buzzing. Another fly had dashed in, and the two were playing a duet that was maddening to my overwrought senses. ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... that produces those kindly gifts of nature which are not the substance of life, but its luxury, is unlike other toil. We are inclined to fancy that it does not bend the sturdy frame and stiffen the overwrought muscles, like the labor that is devoted in sad, hard earnest to raise grain for sour bread. Certainly, the sunburnt young men and dark-cheeked, laughing girls, who weeded the rich acres of Monte Beni, might well enough have passed for inhabitants of an unsophisticated ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... did not escape her. Her overwrought imagination made of it a sinister omen: the bough on his shoulder rested there as the old forest claim; the boughs about his feet were the ancestral forest tether. As he had stepped backward from her, Nature had asserted the earlier right to him. ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... speech in the denunciation of immeasurable wrong, and some of the greatest utterances in history have been hard, bitter, vehement words torn from agonized hearts. It is true that Socialists now and then use violent language, but no Socialist—unless he is so overwrought as to be momentarily irresponsible—advocates violence. The great urge and passion of Socialism is for the peaceful transformation ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... Reb Shemuel trembled from head to foot. Hannah's cheek was drawn and white. She seemed overwrought beyond endurance. There followed a silence only less terrible than ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Griffiths, overwrought by sun and sickness, exploded. All his bitterness of spirit rose up in his face and twisted his ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... He had a letter from Jacks, a sensible and calmly worded letter, saying that Irene was overwrought by recent agitations, that she had spoken of putting an end to their engagement, but that doubtless a few days would see all right again. Arnold must now be apprised of what had happened, and, as all consideration was due to him, the Doctor despatched a telegram asking him to call as soon as ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... that strange, strange fever-sleep! In which all my limbs grew stiff As if fettered, yet each sense, Overwrought, ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... gentleman by birth, and has been a court usher and provincial secretary, suffers from the mania of persecution. He either lies curled up in bed, or walks from corner to corner as though for exercise; he very rarely sits down. He is always excited, agitated, and overwrought by a sort of vague, undefined expectation. The faintest rustle in the entry or shout in the yard is enough to make him raise his head and begin listening: whether they are coming for him, whether they are looking for him. And at such times his face expresses ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... morning till late at night, and they never met. Mrs Pratt in the room below, and her little dying daughter, had many a tale of kindness and devotion to tell about him; and when presently the little life fled, she heard with grateful tears of his act of mercy to the poor overwrought mother, and ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... institutions to those who are bewildered concerning them either because of their personal experiences, or because of preconceived theories, would seem to lie in the direct path of its public obligation, and yet it is apparently impossible for the overwrought community to distinguish between the excitement the Settlements are endeavoring to understand and to allay and the attitude of the Settlement itself. At times of public panic, fervid denunciation is held to be the duty of every good citizen, and if a Settlement ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... look with Alma Marston when he came up the steps. Love, pity, and greeting were in his eyes. Her countenance revealed her vivid emotions; she was overwrought, unstrung, half-crazed after a night spent with her fears. When he came within her reach caution was torn from her as gossamer is flicked away by a gale. Impulse had always governed her; she gave ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day |
