"Hysterical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... down a tray of glasses, and broke into open, shaking, hysterical laughter. Paul surveyed her grimly. Her excitement had flushed her cheeks and darkened her eyes, and her sudden, apparently light-hearted, mirth put the finishing touch to a picture that could seem to her husband nothing but a care-free, not to say childish, attitude toward a situation ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... the benevolence of her heart. Imagination aiding her, she realised suddenly the horror of his death throes, and this vivid realisation was followed by the actual simulacrum of the torture. We have seen hysterical subjects simulate in the same manner diverse diseases of which they themselves are organically free, such as epilepsy, or the like. But Lady Landale's condition is otherwise serious. She is alive; more I ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... be a French tenor whom they were worshiping. It might as well have been anybody or any thing else. They were both at that period of girlish growth when the young female bosom is torn by a hysterical craving to worship something—any thing. They had been studying music and they had selected the tenor who was the sensation of the hour in New York for their idol. They had heard him only on the concert stage; they were never likely to see him nearer. But it was a mere matter of chance ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... find none of those appear, who were the likeliest in the world to be alarmed; and the noise of swords is made to draw only two poor women thither, who were most certain to run away from it. Upon Lucia and Marcia's coming in, Lucia appears in all the symptoms of an hysterical gentlewoman: ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... weary thee. I have looked to that also. Holy One, my heart is very heavy for my many carelessnesses towards thee.' An hysterical catch rose in his throat. 'I have walked thee too far: I have not picked good food always for thee; I have not considered the heat; I have talked to people on the road and left thee alone ... I have—I have ... Hai mai! But I love thee ... and ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... an almost hysterical laugh at having been so successful in her somewhat clumsy scheme, and, without uttering another word, darted down the alley. She passed rapidly round by a back way to another point of the same street she had left—well ahead of the spot ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... to the highest pitch of bitterness by the speech of the War Minister. In a sharp, commanding voice he told them that the military officers had only done their duty, that they would not be swerved from their path by press agents or hysterical individuals, that Forstner was a very young officer who had been severely punished, but that this kind of courageous young officer was the kind that the country needed, etc. Immediately after this ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... ceased. Again came a hot silence as Bakahenzie paused in front of MFunya MPopo. Then with a piercing yell, the witch-doctor spun on his toes. The drums broke into an hysterical rhythm. Bakahenzie leaped high in the air; whirled around and around screaming hoarsely; ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... "Kate, you are hysterical! Don't you see that a man who is capable of planning a wholesale murder in the night would be quite able to lie to you? No, no! Whatever you do, you must promise me not to speak a word of this to anyone, most of all, ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... in less time than it has taken to tell it, her own ten beautiful ducks were close about her, and that she was kissing each one somewhere with her great red bill. And then she saw that upon the bank a nervous, hysterical guinea-hen was tearing along, and in a voice like a carving-knife screeching aloud with terror. It went through Quackalina's bosom like a neuralgia, but she didn't mind it very much. Indeed, she forgot it instantly when she looked down upon her ducklings again, and she even forgot ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... hysterical "yes" that issued from her pallid lips caused Ballantyne to turn his keen grey eyes upon her intently. Then something of the truth must have flashed across his mind, for he walked up to the tree and ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... room she was surprised to see a fine crack of light coming from under it. She paused, wondering if she was going to be caught, and if she had better run back and take to the back stairs despite Pringle's well-earned rest; and as she hesitated she heard a sob, then another—wild, hysterical sobs. The girl looked startled and then went on, shaking her head. What people like that had to cry about beat her. But she was glad, because she knew such a splendid bit of news would soften the heart of the cook when she took ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... dragging shuffle of his slippers upon the floor of the hall. The sound jarred on her. She pinned on her hat again, ran downstairs, gave orders that she would not be in for lunch, and drove at once to Mrs. Willoughby's. She arrived in a state little short of hysterical. ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... discovered, from her broken ejaculations, that the grief of her husband's illness had been able, in its strength, to fight its way to her heart, through all her bodily agonies produced by his poison. My questions regarding her own condition were answered by hysterical sobs, mixed with ejaculations of pity, and requests to know how he was, and what was the nature of the complaint by which he had been attacked—hinting, in dubious terms, that she had been the cause of his illness, by entailing upon him the necessity of attending ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... I've talked it. But your telling me that you threw it all over—that little home out there, and a man that was driving down deeply the stakes of his home—threw it over because the black spot from his collar button made you feel hysterical—Oh, I tell you there is a grin through the scheme of things. A laugh. What old man Metz used ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... essay, praises with singularly delicate art a feathered creature whose charms lie not on the surface. The concluding paragraph, condemning the wanton slaughter of this winged friend to mankind, is especially apt at a time of hysterical peace agitation. While the well meaning advocates of peace call wildly upon men to abandon just warfare against destructive and malignant enemies, they generally pass over without thought or reproof the ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... of a principle which has a much wider bearing than as a method of biblical exegesis. As to the Song of Solomon, its influence upon Christian Mysticism has been simply deplorable. A graceful romance in honour of true love was distorted into a precedent and sanction for giving way to hysterical emotions, in which sexual imagery was freely used to symbolise the relation between the soul and its Lord. Such aberrations are as alien to sane Mysticism as they are ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... together without the slightest embarrassment, but now, perhaps from the reaction, and being a little unstrung, she felt a most distressing sensation of it, besides which the anti-climax of his occupation after her overwrought anticipations of their mutual fate, gave her an hysterical inclination to ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... of us indicate our true natures in hysterical outbreaks, fits of bitterness and suspicion; but this involuntary frankness is generally discounted by some ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... echoes and re-echoes through the pit. She turns her ear, and with a listless countenance listens attentively, then breaks out into an hysterical laugh. "Yes! ye loathsome denizens. Like me, no one seeks you, no one cares for you. I am poor, poor maniac Munday. The maniac that one fell error brought to this awful end." Again she lowers her voice, flings her hair back over her shoulders, and gives vent to her tears. Like one burdened ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... the admonition by making Wilton jump with a little rap of the cane, which he then broke, and flung out of the window. And then, his whole manner changing instantly into an almost womanly tenderness, he sat by poor little Charlie, soothing and comforting him till his hysterical sobs had ceased; and, when he felt sure that the fit was over, gently bade him good-night, and went out, leaving the room in dense silence, which no one ventured to break but the warm-hearted little Hanley, who, ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... the hallway at the end of the noon hour to enter animatedly into a discussion of waists, hats, and lingerie, to ogle and exchange persiflages with the young men of the paymaster's corps, to giggle, to relate, sotto voce, certain stories that ended invariably in hysterical laughter. Janet detested these conversations. And the sex question, subtly suggested if not openly dealt with, to her was a mystery over which she did not dare to ponder, terrible, yet too sacred to be degraded. Her feelings, concealed under an exterior ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... is about 400 pounds a year, and that is a sum which the generality of people would not object to. He is a good reader, is clear and energetic, but shakes his head a little too much. In the pulpit he never gets either fast asleep or hysterical. He can preach good original sermons—carefully worked out, well-balanced, neatly arranged; and he can give birth to some which are rather dull and mediocre. His action is easy, yet earnest—his style quiet yet dignified; his matter often scholarly, and never stolen. He is not a, "gatherer ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... press and orators became hysterical, denouncing him as "vile," "wicked," "malicious," and "vicious." The Herald called him an "arch-agitator," more dangerous than Beecher, Garrison, or Theodore Parker. It was denied that any conflict existed except such as he was trying to foment. Even ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... in a turmoil. Other men were appearing from outside. But they stood now well away from us. Alan backed against me. His laugh rang out, half hysterical with the madness upon him as ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... put together and felt irritated to be left alone by the rest of the party as she looked around at the medley of old and new jumbled together in that Hopi village. And then the next reaction left her nervous and somewhat hysterical as she tried to imagine such a thing in a book. She actually laughed and the next moment Miss Gray and Walter appeared, at the edge of the kiva. Miss Gray came ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... wonderful that a great actor should neglect a passage that paints with one touch Hamlet's half-hysterical state. Given as it might be given, it would curdle the blood in your veins. I asked the best Hamlet it has been my fortune to see, why he left out these lines. "I have often thought I would speak them; but I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... tending us said was brought by a messenger. Young Angus glanced at the page and broke out indignantly. 'The thieving old pirate!' he says. 'Last night he thought it would be about eighteen hundred dollars, and that sounded hysterical enough for the few little things we'd scratched or mussed up. I told him he would doubtless feel better this morning, but in any event to send the bill to me and I would ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... wicked delight. But presently, when alone in the carriage, I felt angry with myself and disgusted,—disgusted because I became conscious of the littleness of all I had thought and felt, based as it was upon overstrung and fanciful nerves worthy an hysterical woman, not a man. It was a heavy journey, far heavier than the one when after my return from abroad I went the first time to Ploszow. I was reflecting upon that terrible incapacity for life which casts its shadow upon my existence and the existence of those like me, and came to the conclusion ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... house,' through hope deferred and the delays of a Chancery suit. Similar causes contributed to the final wreck of Charles. The thought of a Restoration was his Chancery suit. A letter of November 1753, written by the Prince in French, is a mere hysterical outcry of impatience. 'I suffocate!' he exclaims, as if in a fever of unrest. He had indulged in hopes from France, from Spain, from Prussia, from a Highland rising, from a London conspiracy. Every hope had deceived him, every Prince had ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... a clangorous nasal eloquence from antique gesticulative mustachio-figures, witty and indignant,—who are now gone to silence again, and their fruitless bivouacs, and frosty and fiery toils, tumbling pell-mell after them. This of Pisek was but one of the many unwise hysterical things poor Broglio did, in that difficult position; which, indeed, was too difficult for any mortal, and for Broglio ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... with Miss Nipper, Walter found that Florence, much refreshed by sleep, had dined and come to be on terms of perfect confidence and ease with old Sol. Miss Nipper caught her in her arms, and made a very hysterical meeting of it. Then, converting the parlor into a private tiring-room, she dressed her in proper clothes, and presently led her forth to ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... Hysterical tears poured forth as I joyfully stroked and pinched my regained possession-a body free from any bullet hole in the breast. I rocked to and fro, inhaling and exhaling to assure myself that I was alive. Amidst these self-congratulations, ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... continued, "unfortunately—or perhaps fortunately from our professional point of view—our lawmakers from time to time get rather hysterical and pass such a multiplicity of statutes that nobody knows whether he ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... lot of stuff in it against me. Most of it demagoguing, of course, but more or less hysterical campaigning. The only nasty article about me—a downright personal attack on my sincerity—was ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... probably due to the fact that here a highly developed 'stregheria' was already in existence, resting on a different set of ideas. The Italian witch practiced a trade, and needed for it money and, above all, sense. We find nothing about her of the hysterical dreams of the Northern witch, of marvelous journeys through the air, of Incubus and Succubus; the business of the 'strega' was to provide for other people's pleasures. If she was credited with the power of assuming different shapes, ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... realise their hope but little," he replied. "The excitement of some hysterical outbreak is ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... steam, and I knew it and encouraged it. My impulse was to lie down on the couch and shout with hysterical laughter, but I suspected that would be indiscreet. He made some further comment on the propriety of offering a visitor a cue, and suddenly began to sing a travesty of ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... a hysterical feminine voice. "Oh, can't you stop the car and go down and get him? He pushed me in, and I thought he was right behind me. Aren't ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... in ill-fitting black knee-breeches and a not very clean shirt, a red handkerchief round his neck, he proceeded to give great extravagant blows at the tree. He was like a caricature. In the doorway Maria was encouraging him rather jeeringly, whilst she winked at me. Marco was stifling his hysterical amusement in his mother's apron, and prancing with glee. Paolo and Giovanni stood by the fallen tree, very grave and unmoved, inscrutable, abstract. Then the youth came away to the doorway, with a flush mounting on his face and a grimace distorting its youngness. Only Paolo, unmoved ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... long-boat, fully manned, and she was coming straight to me. There could be no more doubt of it; I had passed through much suffering, but it was all child's play to the "might have been"; and in the reaction I laughed aloud like an hysterical woman, and blushed to remember those great tears which had rolled over my face not an hour gone. And all the time I never took my eyes from the boat; but feasted on it as a beggar-child feasts in imagination ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... by a meracle, ailments hysterical, Dad, wid one dose of bread pills he can smother, And quench the love sickness wid comical quickness, Prescribin' the right boys and girls to each other. And the sufferin' childer! Your eyes 'twould bewilder, To see ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... as well as mystified. The spectacle of the old man—at one moment boasting ingenuously of his career, and at the next almost hysterical with woe—roused his pity in a very disconcerting manner, and from his sight the Lucas & Enwright factotum vanished utterly, and was supplanted by a tragic human being. But he had no idea how to handle the unexampled situation with dignity; he realized painfully ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... to Harold in a state of agitation which was almost hysterical. She buried her face ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... said; and the answer came like a blow in the face. For the moment she hated him as bitterly as if he had been all the world to her; but she carried off her mortification by a rather hysterical laugh. ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... a fellow is always sure that these ornamental little wives have no other consolation for themselves or any one else, but in the copious tears that swell up into their pretty eyes, they must sit down and sob to break their dear little hearts with every now and then a hysterical sentence from behind the dainty lawn handkerchief, saying "what will everyone think? What will Lady Featherly say? We wont be asked to any more 'at homes' now, and the ball at 'Rideau' is next week, oh dear—boo—hoo—hoo!" Of course the merciless husband gets ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... A sort of thing at which one would have laughed,[112] If any laughter at such times could be, Unless with people who too much have quaffed, And have a kind of wild and horrid glee, Half epileptical, and half hysterical:— Their preservation would ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... that if the strain continued longer she would go mad; with a laugh that was half hysterical, she tore herself loose by main force, and sprang up, reminding the other that he had a train to catch. Mr. Harrison demurred, but the girl would hear no more, and she took him by the hand and led him to the door, still laughing, and ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... hysterical weeping the woman drew back, endeavoring to close the cabin door. But Darrin's foot across the ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock
... took note of a sound—a wary, muffled sound, as if some one were creeping up the stair, fearful of being heard. Slowly! It seemed to count a hundred between the laying down of each foot. She gave a hysterical gasp. Where ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... I feel different, not quite so close to earth, lonely. I can't explain. I wonder how Lazarus felt? I know I'm alive, dearest, and here with you, but—don't laugh or think me hysterical—in some other way, a way I can't speak about, I feel as if I had been dead and come back. I've seen what no one else has, I've been where neither you nor Freddy ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... was afraid she would, and then it would have been all over with us; but I dragged her safe into the school-room, and there she was so hysterical that I nearly relented.' ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... effect of the news was such that her maid found her lying insensible in her chair some time afterwards, and thought it best to call me. I easily revived her from the fit of fainting, and when she came to herself she thrust your letter into my hand, and insisted that I should read it. She was very hysterical, and I judged that I should comply with her request. The scene ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... pent-up feelings found vent in a few hysterical tears from the Duchess, some bad language from Mother Shipton, and a Parthian volley of expletives from Uncle Billy. The philosophic Oakhurst alone remained silent. He listened calmly to Mother Shipton's desire to cut somebody's heart out, to the repeated statements of ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... girl met her cousin at the door; Maria had fainted, and la zia was hysterical; as to Orazio, he was sitting on the sofa crying, with his mean, mouse-coloured head buried in ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... struggled, flung themselves on the ground, fainted, cried out that they were possessed by evil spirits. Wesley rather encouraged these manifestations, and indeed quite believed in their genuineness. No doubt for the most part they were genuine: that is, they were the birth of hysterical, highly strung natures, stimulated into something like epilepsy or temporary insanity by the unbearable oppression of a wholly novel excitement. No such evidences of emotion were ever given in the parish church where the worthy clergyman read his ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... gold. and silversmiths are highly regarded, but that the ironworkers are looked upon with contempt, as an inferior grade of beings. Their kinsmen even ascribe to them the power of transforming themselves into hynas, or other savage beasts. All convulsions and hysterical disorders are attributed to the effect of their evil eye. The Amhara call them Buda, the Tigr, Tebbib. There are also Mahomedan and Jewish Budas. It is difficult to explain the origin of this strange superstition. ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... on the handwriting of hysterical patients, I have shown that under the influence of suggested emotions, or under the influence of sensorial stimulations, the handwriting of a hysterical patient may be modified. It gets larger, for example, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... ceremonies of the hour, until the ladies rose and retired. Then, after looking at his watch, he beckoned to one of his sons to take his place; and quietly left the room. He only stopped once, as he crossed the hall, to ask news of his daughter from one of the servants. The reply was, that she had had a hysterical fit; that the medical attendant of the family had been sent for; and that since his arrival she had become more composed. When the man had spoken, Mr. Langley made no remark, but proceeded at once to the library. He locked the door behind him, as soon ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... Her lips parted in an odd little way they had showing the small white teeth and forming the dimples in cheeks and chin. So great was the girl's relief; so appalled was she at what might have been, that the conflict of emotions made her almost hysterical. ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... and sisters of Denis were now drowned in tears; and the grief of his sister Susan was absolutely hysterical. Old Denis's brow became pale and sorrowful, his eye sunk, and his hand trembled. His friends all partook of this serious disappointment, and sat in silence and embarrassment around the table. Young Denis's distress was truly intense: he could ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... have proved more dangerous to the king, was on its discovery attended with more fatal consequences to themselves. Elizabeth Barton, of Aldington, in Kent, commonly called the "holy maid of Kent," had been subject to hysterical fits, which threw her body into unusual convulsions; and having produced an equal disorder in her mind, made her utter strange sayings, which, as she was scarcely conscious of them during the time, had soon after entirely escaped her memory. The silly people in the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... The hysterical passion swelled in her bosom—her quickened convulsive breathing almost beat on my face, as she held ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... Frank! oh, Master Frank!" said her ladyship, almost in an hysterical fit of joy; and then she hugged and kissed him as she had never kissed and hugged her own son since that son had ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... not until he spoke sharply that the hysterical woman was able to make known that the child had been absent for hours, no one knew where. When she learned that noon that her big brother would not be back till night, Dollie had pouted because he had gone off without telling her. She ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... breathless silence they stood before me, unable to utter a word, but with countenances beaming with expression which no words could convey, and which no language can now describe. As they began to see the truth of what they had heard, and to realize their situation, there came on a kind of hysterical, giggling laugh. After a pause of intense and unutterable emotion, bathed in tears, and with tremulous voices, they gave vent to their gratitude, and implored the blessings of God on me. When they had in ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... at Minnie Peters and asked her to behave herself. But she gave a few hysterical sobs on her own part, and Minnie Peters echoed them ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... with an hysterical laugh; "Mr Sullivan, when I select a paramour, it shall be a handsome young man—not ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... fear were the emotions that had driven Hamlin to this rather hysterical threat. Lawler resisted an impulse to laugh, though he felt a pulse of grim humor shoot ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... the weaker men. I have heard a number of cold, half-starved, homesick lads crying like women in the middle of the night. It makes me feel like letting go myself. There is one man who swears like a trooper when it begins. I suppose that I shall be as hysterical as the rest of them in time. I don't believe General Howe knows what is going on here. The jail is run by American Tories, who are wreaking their hatred ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... occupation could distract his thoughts from that. The horror of it seemed ever chilling his veins. He longed to share his knowledge with some one, to talk it over with her. Neither was possible. Solitude had never oppressed him more. He grew daily more nervous and hysterical. ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... chintz curtains in a most flattering state of expectancy. There was a good deal of rustling and whispering behind the curtain, a trifle of lamp smoke, and an occasional giggle from Amy, who was apt to get hysterical in the excitement of the moment. Presently a bell sounded, the curtains flew apart, and the operatic ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... Shaw touches, whether it be the half-hysterical impulse that sometimes passes current for heroism, as in Arms and the Man, or, as in the Devil's Disciple, the conventional picturesqueness of a Don Juan—that maker of laws, breaker of hearts, so familiar with the limelight, so unused to the illumination by laughter, who finds himself ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... height. A certain resemblance was observed in his face and head to the traditional head and face of Christ, and it was the humour of the populace to discover some mystical relations between him and the divine figure. Hysterical women kissed his hand and even hailed him as their Saviour. He protested and remonstrated, but all to no purpose. The delusion grew, ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... this little speech knew no bounds, and one of the girls became quite hysterical. I called Yamba, and introduced her as my wife, and they then came forward and clasped me by the hand, crying, shudderingly, "Oh, save us! Take us away ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... dominates the crowd. Of the temporary effects produced by these preachers there can be no question. The changes which they wrought in states and cities prove that the enthusiasm they aroused was more than merely hysterical. Savonarola, the greatest of his class, founded not only a transient commonwealth in Florence, but also a political party of importance, and left his lasting impress on the greatest soul of the sixteenth century in Italy—Michael Angelo Buonarroti. There was a real ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... Mr. Storey, and others. It was new to the House of Commons twenty-two years ago, and when Mr. Auberon Herbert (to-day a sedate gentleman, who writes good Tory letters to the Times) seconded the motion in a speech of almost hysterical vehemence, there followed a scene that stands memorable even in the long series that succeeded it in the following Parliament. Mr. James Lowther was profoundly moved; whilst as for Mr. Cavendish Bentinck, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... the woman. This thought stung him like a reproach of cowardice. He had forgotten her! And she was but the instrument in the deed, for he had taught her that this care of a worthless life was sentimental, hysterical. He had urged her to put it away in some easy fashion, to hide it at least, in some sort of an asylum. That she had steadfastly refused to do. Better death outright, she had said. And that which he had feared to undertake, she had done, fearlessly. He had recoiled; it ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... and once or twice I felt I didn't care about anything. I didn't care whether I died or not. A week passed and then another week. I don't know how I lived through it. Then, one day, I was told to pack up and rejoin my unit. I don't know exactly what I did, but I think I must have gone hysterical. I remember some N.C.O. saying I ought to stay a bit because I wasn't well enough to go up the line. He said he'd speak to the officer and get me a few days' rest. But the thought of staying in that place made me shiver. I said I ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... saw a big crowd on the front campus. It grew every moment, became a mob, shoving and surging, shouting and jeering. I climbed some steps to look into the center, and saw two painted terrified girls, hysterical, sobbing, swearing and shrieking. So they were shoved, a hidden spectacle, to the station and put on the train. Nothing like that on our front campus! Nothing like "sex" in the front rooms of our minds. The crowd returned chuckling. Immoral? ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... mid-winter now," said Lady Studley. "The queer symptoms began to show themselves in my husband in October. They have been growing worse and worse. In short, I can stand them no longer," she continued, giving way to a short, hysterical sob. "I felt I must come to someone—I have heard of you. Do, do come and save us. Do come and find out what is the matter with my ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... ghastly exhortations harried my soul with dread, and I longed for the coming of the ecstasy which was the recognizable sign of the grace of God, I could not rise to the participation in it which the most material and hysterical of the congregation enjoyed, and day after day I went home saddened by the conviction that I was still one of the unregenerate. The sign never came, but several years later I went to make a visit to my brother Charles, who had then removed to ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... investigate. So disguised as a Shazli, he attended their meetings and listened while Forner imparted the principal dogmas of the Catholic faith. His common sense soon told him that the so-called miraculous sights were merely hallucinations, the outcome of heated and hysterical imagination. He sympathised with the Shazlis in that like himself they were seekers after truth, and there, as far as he was concerned, the matter would have ended had the scenes been in any other country. But in Syria religious freedom was unknown, and the cruel Wali Rashid Pasha ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... madder, at last turned into a horrible whimpering and frightful howling. I sprang out of bed in a terrified condition, to discover that the sound proceeded from my servant Lieschen, who had been attacked with hysterical convulsions as she lay in bed in the room overhead. My host's maid went to help her, and a doctor was summoned. While I was horrified at the thought that the girl would soon die, I could not help wondering at the curious tranquillity of the others who were present. I was told that such fits ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... Mr. Fortescue falls into the usual maze of self-contradiction and obscurity when he tries to give an intelligible account of a war which lasted seven long and weary years, and yet was "factitious," initiated by an hysterical rabble, stimulated and sustained by the basest and pettiest motives, and which, he contends, was "the work of a small but energetic and well-organized minority towards which the mass of the people, when not directly hostile, was mainly indifferent." Happily, ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... A loud tapping at my door. The church clock chiming twelve. The agitated, weeping figure of Mrs. Gunton-Cresswell approaching my hammock. A telegram thrust into my hand. Mrs. Gunton-Cresswell's hysterical exclamation, "You infamous monster—you—you are ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... all jumped from one leg to another to a tune of a single monotonous musical phrase, which they repeated in chorus, accompanied by several local drums and tambourines. The hushed trill of the latter mingled with the forest echoes and the hysterical moans of two little girls, who lay under a heap of leaves by the fire. The poor children were brought here by their mothers, in the hope that the goddesses would take pity upon them and banish the two evil spirits under whose obsession they were. Both mothers were quite young, ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... a struggle between offended dignity and decided crossness. Rose was a little hysterical, Graeme thought, or she never would have laughed about such an important matter in Hannah's face. For Hannah knew her own value, which was not small in the household, and she was not easily propitiated when a slight was given or imagined, as no one knew better than ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... the little hysterical gulp and took it for tribute. "Won't you have it, then? I'll send it over to your house ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... convulsions. She was in the writhing tail of the crocodile when "Jack the Ripper Again" caused it almost to swoon, and she was in its weeping head when "Death of the Duke of Clarence" and "Loss of H.M.S. Victoria" struck its orderly coils into a tangled and hysterical knot. ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... vivid fashion by becoming absorbed in everything she had ever heard about him. She asked Kastager about him and Tage, and every morning and night she kissed a medallion-portrait of his which belonged to her. She longed with a somewhat hysterical desire for some letters from him which she had left at home, and for things which ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... door. "I will not leave you till you promise me; I'll cling to you in the street; I'll kneel to you before all the people. You shall promise me this, you shall promise me this, you shall—" And she clung to him with fixed tenacity, and reiterated her resolve with hysterical passion. ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... a semi-imbecile old dotard, round whom his evil—but terrified—brood have clustered; they fawning on him in terror, he fondling them in shaky, decrepit fondness. Note the flaccid paunch, the withered top, and the foolish, hysterical face. How the full-dress cocked hat ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... through all the years, of the divine passion. She had come to him disillusioned and weary. He had come to her with a queer superstitious gratitude for help in the past and a full recognition of present sympathy and service. As the French say, they had made together un bon menage. Save for a few half-hysterical days during the war—and in that incomprehensible pre-war period at the end of which the birds came to her rescue, there had been little talk of love and dreams of delight and the rest of the vaporous paradise of the mutually infatuated. He could ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... unrolled its huge red, white and blue folds against the shining Southern skies the crowd burst into hysterical applause. ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... worshipper of heroes, there is a great deal left to the goddess Chance, in the picking of them," I answered. "Admiration for human beings should not be hysterical." ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... a good deal to be borne in the last days, and the brunt of it fell on Mrs. Lethbury. Jane marked her transition to the married state by an appropriate but incongruous display of nerves. She became sentimental, hysterical and reluctant. She quarrelled with her betrothed and threatened to return the ring. Mrs. Lethbury had to intervene, and Lethbury felt the hovering sword of destiny. But the blow was suspended. Mr. Budd's chivalry was proof against all his ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... mineral water but more contract the fibrillae, by operating like so many wedges, which ultimately tear, rend, or divide the tender filaments. It must, however, be admitted that mineral waters are very beneficial in cachexies, scurvies, jaundice, hypochondriacal and hysterical affections. Having paid this tribute to their virtues, it is evident that what is above stated respecting their pernicious effects has been dictated by candour, and with no illiberal disposition to deny their absolute virtues[3]. These few remarks have only been made in order to ...
— A Treatise on Foreign Teas - Abstracted From An Ingenious Work, Lately Published, - Entitled An Essay On the Nerves • Hugh Smith
... Confederate general of subsequent years; the undignified haste of his trial and condemnation by the Virginia authorities; the interviews of Governor Wise, Senator Mason, and Representative Vallandigham with the prisoner; his sentence, and execution on the gallows on December 2; and the hysterical laudations of his acts by a few prominent and extreme abolitionists in the East, kept public opinion, both North and South, in an inflamed and feverish ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... caught blindly at the reins; another hand closed over it. Then there was silence again in the buggy, broken by panting sounds and little sobs. At the end of it Judith, forced back into her corner and held there, was really crying now, with hysterical sobs that hurt, and hot tears that ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... tears, almost hysterical. Jenny, in her absence, had stepped from the room for a moment. She had not returned. She could not be found. I went on the streets, I searched everywhere. I drove to the open squares, to the Battery. I enlisted the aid of policemen, ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... me to-night, Arnold," she implored. "It has been such a wonderful day, and I am not used to so much excitement. I am afraid that I am a little hysterical. Do be kind and help me ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to her; but it would not do. She was too highly wrought up for common interests. The reading was broken off by her hysterical sobs; and it was clear that the best thing to be done was to get her to bed, under Morris's care, that all agitating conversation might be avoided. When Mr Hope returned, he found Margaret sitting alone at the tea-table. If she ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... collection. The question was: had anyone wanted it badly enough to kill Fleming? And if so, how had he done it? Here is a mystery, told against the fascinating background of old guns and gun-collecting, which is rapid-fire without being hysterical, exciting without losing its contact with reason, and which introduces a personable and intelligent new private detective. It is a story that will keep your nerves on a hair trigger even if you don't know the difference between ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... that the laugh was partly hysterical, and closely followed Henry who was now turning toward the west, leading them through rolling country, clothed in the same unbroken forest and undergrowth. It was his idea to find a creek or brook and then wade in it for a long distance to break the trail, the simplest ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the wounded man across the ring and through the draped arch under the music gallery. Under any other circumstances the group would have excited a laugh, for the audience was in that condition of almost hysterical excitement when only the least effort of a clown is necessary to cause a wave of laughter. But the moment the wounded man was lifted from the ground, the whole strong light from the brilliant chandelier ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... so!" exclaimed the almost hysterical Bess. "When he learns of this he will not be able to do ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... powerless to portray the subsequent scene in the Pensioner's peaceful dwelling. What cries of rage! what bitter sarcasm! what hysterical laughter! what wringing of hands! what banging of chairs! and what exclamations of woe! And in the midst of such a scene, terrible enough to strike terror into the heart of the most serene, the four parasols, the innocent cause of all the ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... hips, loins, and back, and her feet and ankles are oftentimes swollen. The menstrual discharge is either suspended or very partially performed, if the latter, it is usually almost colourless. Hysterical fits not unfrequently occur during ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... of Providence; the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor the prophecy to the wise. The Spirit bloweth where He listeth, and sends on his errands—those who deny Him, rebel against Him—profligates, madmen, and hysterical Rousseaus, hysterical Shelleys, uttering words like the east wind. He uses strange tools in His cosmogony: but He does not use them in vain. By bad men if not by good, by fools if not by wise, God's work is ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... It ended all secrecy—that hysterical weakness of mine. It might have frustrated our hopes; that it did not do so was in no measure due to me. But in a sort of passionate whirl, the ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... this without sobbing, but not without that almost hysterical emotion which indicates that tears ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... prospect of such overwhelming depression, that he could only conclude his evidence with the significant but heartrending warning that he could face it no longer! The Witness here fairly broke down, and, bursting into a hysterical fit of weeping, had to be led from the room by a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
... that was in Nigel, curiously side by side with a certain cruel hardness, he now felt a little sorry for her. It must be awful to be waiting like this. And she really had been in the wrong. It was an appalling thing to do—mad, hysterical, dangerous. It might have caused far more trouble than it had! Suppose Percy had ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... he demanded frantically. "I was outside with Webb. What has happened?—Oh!" He caught sight of Lois in Nicholson's arms, and his cry was high and hysterical, like a ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... introducing various hard and rounded objects into the vagina and imitating the movements of coitus; often also by rubbing the crossed thighs against each other. In the insane, masturbation is sometimes practiced to an excessive extent. Some hysterical women introduce objects into the urethra during masturbation and cause severe inflammation of ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... intervals, Jinny apologising for her boisterousness with reiterations—"Misser Johnssing say he been see 'em cousin belonga me light 'em pipe!" Jinny still rehearses the story at frequent intervals, and with hysterical outbursts. ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... us right back to where we were in the beginning, and perhaps accounts for everyone's liking to divulge their dental secrets to others. It may be a sort of hysterical relief that, for the time being, it is ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... hysterical fit of despair, she burst into sobs. "I beg you, leave me in peace. For the last fortnight you have been torturing me with that child, by keeping him near me, with the idea that I should end by nursing him. You bring ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... she used to declare that she could dwell with him in a desert; her only replies were bitter reproaches and upbraidings for his treachery and deceit, mingled with floods of tears, and interrupted by hysterical sobs. Provoked at her folly, yet softened by her extreme distress, Douglas was in the utmost state of perplexity—now ready to give way to a paroxysm of rage; then yielding to the natural goodness of his heart, he sought to soothe her into composure; and, at length, with much difficulty ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... know what else to do; so she sat down in a chair, and laughed with hysterical vehemence at the strange aspect of the affair. The old man opened his eyes, and opened his mouth; but he did not forget to hold on with all his might to the arm of the unfortunate lieutenant, who was just ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... the telephone," Mrs. Williams said hoarsely "She wants to talk to you, too. She CAN'T talk much—she's hysterical. She says they lured Georgie into the cellar and had him beaten ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... her correspondence with Adrien Leroy, from prudential motives. But he recognised the handwriting, and the faint Oriental scent her ladyship invariably used, and hastened to open it, fearing a lengthy epistle full of hysterical reproaches. To his intense relief he found that it contained ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... do you mean by your customers and overcharges?" shrieked Major Brown, whose keen feminine nature, steady in pain or danger, became almost hysterical in the presence of a long and exasperating mystery. "Who are you? I've never seen you or your insolent tomfool bills. I know one of your cursed brutes tried to ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... thus the dance of these martyrs, kept still, will always keep, the characteristic of contortions under the lash of bygone days; and, slow and languishing at first, then soon quick and agitated, tragically hysterical, it also is interrupted by melancholy chords, dreary, mournful notes and plaintive accents like drops of blood from a wound-from the mortal wound of Prince Sandor, lying ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... strange, incredible life in their public harems, outcast by society, accursed by the family, victims of the social temperament, cloacas for the excess of the city's sensuality, the guardians of the honour of the family—four hundred foolish, lazy, hysterical, barren women. ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... laugh, she could sing, and he was not there to ask questions. For one moment after she had heard the outer door close behind him she almost hesitated as to which she should do, for she was half hysterical with the long outward restraint of herself while, inwardly, she had allowed her thoughts to run wild as they would. She stood for a moment, and there was a vague, uncertain look in her face. Then her ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... than my freedom, when I was in the convent—than my life, when I was on my perilous journey—had taken his measures to shake me off, and transfer me, as a privileged wanton, to the protection of his libertine friend. At first the stranger laughed at my tears and my agony, as the hysterical passion of a deluded and overreached wanton, or the wily affection of a courtezan. My claim of marriage he laughed at, assuring me he knew it was a mere farce required by me, and submitted to by his ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... became the wife of this cherished son, James Bansemer's power was gone! His lips would be sealed forever. She laughed aloud in the frenzy of hope. She laughed to think what a fool she would have been to forbid the marriage. The marriage? Her salvation! Jane found her almost hysterical, trembling like a leaf. She was obliged to confess that she had heard part of their conversation below, in order to account for her manner. When Jane confided to her that she had promised to marry Graydon in September—or June—she ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... Sanders said he did not touch that string when he played. Of course he will play on it for me, even if he will not cut it off, and then if he says he loves me, and only me, I will believe him. I want to believe him; I want to believe him," all this in a semi-hysterical way addressed to the violinist's portrait on ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... said he was the son of the rich East Indian, Mr. Thorneycroft," said the young woman with a hysterical sob; "and here," she added, "is his picture in his wedding-dress—that of an officer of the Gloucestershire Yeomanry. He gave it me ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren |
