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More "High-strung" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were thrown more and more together, the girl lost all her self-control. Swift did not in any sense make love to her, though he gave her the somewhat fanciful name of "Vanessa"; but she, driven on by a high-strung, unbridled temperament, made open love to him. When he was about to return to Ireland, there came one startling moment when Vanessa flung herself into the arms of Swift, and amazed him by pouring out a torrent of ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... punk's sure red in the face, I'll bet," the man-about-town said with a chuckle. "Those high-strung paramour types always raising a ruckus. They never do pass the interview. Don't know why ...
— The Perfectionists • Arnold Castle
... among the high-strung and delicately organized can truly say that this fear has never occurred to them. It affects even children, at an age when their minds are supposed to be taken up with the pleasures and pursuits appropriate to their years. ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... politely returned it to the owner. The examination was completed so far as he was concerned; but Captain Dinsmore did not seem to be satisfied, though he made no complaint that anything was wrong in the proceedings. He was evidently a very proud and high-strung man, and appeared to be unable to ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... unpleasant, however, to spend an evening at this water-side inn with people fresh from Paris, bringing with them the spray of the sea that beats against the shores of high-strung life. Nor was it unpleasant to find a little refinement in the kitchen again, and to eat trout not saturated with the essence ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... wall immediately below the ceiling had begun to move, traversing the room from right to left in a gay and spectacular pilgrimage. I did not confide my discovery to Kerner. The artistic temperament is too high-strung to view such deviations from the natural laws of the art of kalsomining. I sipped my absinthe drip and ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... allers hed quite a parcel o' sympathy for Eph," said a short, thickset coasting captain, who sat tilted back in a three-legged chair, smoking lazily. "You see, he wa'n't but about twenty-one or two then, and he was allers a mighty high-strung boy; and then Eliphalet did act putty ha'sh, foreclosin' on Eph's mother, and turnin' her out o' the farm in winter, when everybody knew she could ha' pulled through by waitin.' Eph sot great store by the old lady, and I expect he was putty ...
— The Village Convict - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... He was a high-strung, plucky young fellow, and was reproved by a Federal officer for continuing to wear brass buttons. Irvin retorted sharply, and was hurried into prison. Fearing that he would be searched and his papers found, he slipped them ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... the rest were dispersing, she sat quite still, and closed her eyes. For her soul was too high-strung now to endure the chit-chat she knew would attack her on the road home,—chit-chat that had been welcome enough coming home ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... bustled about, arranging the toilet-table, which had been for a moment discomposed, putting away a cap, folding up a shawl, and indulging in a multitude of inane observations which little harmonised with the high-strung tension of Venetia's mind. Mistress Pauncefort opened a casket with a spring lock, in which she placed some trinkets of her mistress. Venetia stood by her in silence; her eye, vacant and wandering, beheld the interior of the casket. There must have been something in it, the ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... delicately offered kindnesses Mr. and Mrs. Meynell at length won the difficult privilege of helping the shy, nervous, high-strung spirit wandering in pain, hunger and exile amid the indecencies of extreme penury in a great city. They were helped by the friendly sympathy and care of Premonstratensian and Franciscan monks. Thompson had sounded, and become familiar with, the depths of social degradation ...
— The Hound of Heaven • Francis Thompson
... So the high-strung, oversensitive individual must gain control over his nervous system and must subdue his runaway mental and emotional activities into ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... social career, the nerve tension resulting from the unhygienic clothing assumed at this time, the lack of the steadying influence of home responsibilities, and we have ample cause for the nervous, high-strung girl who is becoming so common that we are in danger of regarding her as ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... Ivan himself have gained something of indifference! Could his senses, his jangled, shattered nerves, his bruised and bleeding pride, have acquired that callousness of stupidity, how well would it have been with him! But Ivan was Ivan still: high-strung, keenly apperceptive and receptive; his spiritual, like his physical, nerves, alive to every emotion, every pain or pleasure that rose up into his present. Only to a certain natural extent had he changed. The sudden violent ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... replica of the other in everything except color. Lloyd's eyes were black; Paul's were blue. Under stress of excitement, the blood coursed olive in the face of Lloyd, crimson in the face of Paul. But outside this matter of coloring they were as like as two peas. Both were high-strung, prone to excessive tension and endurance, and ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... that involuntarily she slightly pressed his arm, and whispered, "You know I am not accustomed to this sort of thing." Indeed, it must have formed a vivid contrast to what they were doing and seeing an hour or two earlier the night before, when they were trudging along, with beating hearts and high-strung courage, on the road between Haworth and Keighley, hardly thinking of the thunder-storm that beat about their heads, for the thoughts which filled them of how they would go straight away to London, and prove that they were really two people, and not one imposter. It was no wonder that they returned ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... a high-strung child, too strong and healthy to be actually nervous, but with every faculty always at its fullest—not only in active working order but always actively at work—an admirable subject therefore for the malevolence of an enemy whose constant ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... to Myra until he was sure of himself. It seemed that he would have to choose between woman and work. It seemed as if his work would lead into peril, dirt, disaster, and that he could not ask a delicate, high-strung woman to go with him. The woman could not follow her warrior to the battle, for marriage meant children to Joe, and the little ones must stay back at home with ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... the youngest of all the sons' wives, as her husband was the latest born. She was quite a girl to some of them. Grandma had never more than half approved of her. Dorcas was high-strung and flighty, she said. She had her doubts about living happily with her. But Atherton was anxious for this division of the property, and he was her youngest darling, so she gave in. She felt lonely, and out ...
— The Adventures of Ann - Stories of Colonial Times • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... fast-living, nervous, high-strung man's world Keith took to himself a prominent part. He was so fully-occupied in other directions that his practice did not lead him into criminal law, so he missed an influence that must have either ended by blunting or repelling ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... him during his wanderings, from the recollections of certain men with whom he made acquaintance in stages and on river steamboats, make a curious and striking picture of American character. The feverish, high-strung boy was never dismayed and never a dreamer, ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... the high-strung eloquence with which He had spoken to His enemies that Jesus further showed Peter how inconsistent was his act. It was inconsistent with his Master's dignity; "For," said He, "if I ask My Father, He would presently give Me more than twelve legions of angels;" and what against such a force ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... almost to a scream, and Schmidt, a profound student of human nature, realized that any extra pressure would be fatal. He had succeeded. This girl would keep her promise, of that he was well assured, but if her high-strung temperament was subjected to undue force she would put her back against the wall and ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... timbre was always acute, in sympathy with his intense temperament. All was of one piece in Shelley's nature. This peculiar voice, varying from moment to moment, and affecting different sensibilities in divers ways, corresponds to the high-strung passion of his life, his fine-drawn and ethereal fancies, and the clear vibrations of his palpitating verse. Such a voice, far-reaching, penetrating, and unearthly, befitted one who lived in rarest ether on the topmost heights of ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... the South, the tobacco and cotton belts, with their annual output of three hundred millions' worth of exportable commodities, their high-strung, well-bred gentry accustomed to outdoor life and horseback riding and devoted to the idea of local autonomy in government, were behind the Confederate movement. The people had been better trained in their local militia than their ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... patients belonging to this group are, as a rule, old offenders, who have long been hardened to crime, and whose entire life is an uninterrupted chain of conflicts with the law. To this group also belong those high-strung individuals with early antisocial tendencies, who from childhood show a marked degree of egotism and self-love; who are very vindictive and revengeful in their reaction to frictions in social life. Upon falling into the ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... with you?" called out a burly, high-strung woman, stepping hastily from the group and laying her hand upon the gate still standing temptingly ajar. "It's no time for nonsense," she announced, as she pushed it open and stepped promptly in, followed by the motley group of men and women who, if they lacked courage to lead, ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... get it. I'm one of many here, and I've been so lonesome, Abby. But then I knew you'd come for me all in good time. And, Ben—how is Ben, Abby? does he want to see his old father again? Ah, Ben was a nice little boy—a nice little boy. But 'Liz'beth wan't no kind of a mother for such a high-strung lad. And then he hadn't oughter married that sickly sort of girl that ran off an' left him. Sakes alive! what a temper she had! It sort of broke Ben down living with her as long as he did. But he remembers his old father at last, don't ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... rather good-looking, Kid, when you get hot, but you go at things half-cocked, and you 've got to get over it. That's the whole trouble—you 've never been trained, and I would n't make much of a trainer for a high-strung filly like ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... much of anything now, and that's one thing that is the trouble. You know what a proud, high-strung chap he always was. Well, he's up against it, and it has ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... reinforced concrete are not fully developed. They are developed too highly, developed out of all comparison with the materials dealt with. It is just because reinforced concrete structures are being built in increasing numbers that it behooves engineers to inject some rationality (not high-strung theory) into their designs, and drop the idea that "whatever is ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... right now—you can tell him." Kate's voice was curt, incisive, her tone final. "He can't use a dog on these Rambouillets—they're high-strung, nervous, different from the merinos. Anyway, I won't have it." She swung about to indicate that ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... though calmer, was too weak to leave her bed, and her doctor prescribed rest and absence of worry—later, perhaps, a change of scene. He explained to Ralph that nothing was so wearing to a high-strung nature as monotony, and that if Mrs. Marvell were contemplating a Newport season it was necessary that she should be fortified to meet it. In such cases he often recommended a dash to Paris or London, just to tone up ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... outcome is often for a time in doubt. Yet as the accredited painter of the Faubourg Saint-Germain he contributed an essential element to the development of realistic fiction. No one has rendered so well as he the high-strung, neuropathic women of the upper class, who neither understand themselves nor are wholly comprehensible to others. In 'Monsieur de Camors', crowned by the Academy, he has yielded to the demands of a stricter ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... Bushrod. De Bushrods is de fambly what I cum fum myse'f, kaze w'en ole Miss marry Marster, my mammy fell ter her, en w'en I got big 'nuff, dey tuck me in de house fer ter wait on de table en do er'n's, en dar I bin twel freedom come out. She 'uz mighty high-strung, ole Miss wuz, yit I sees folks dese days put on mo' a'rs dan w'at ole Miss ever is. I ain't 'sputin' but w'at she hilt 'er head high, en I year my mammy say dat all the Bushrods in Ferginny done ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... free metrical treatment give much of romantic effect. In London three years later (1746) Collins put forth his significant work in a little volume of 'Odes.' Discouraged by lack of appreciation, always abnormally high-strung and neurasthenic, he gradually lapsed into insanity, and died at the age of thirty-seven. Collins' poems show most of the romantic traits and their impetuous emotion often expresses itself in the form of the false Pindaric ode which Cowley had introduced. His 'Ode on ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... intensity" is "brought to the grey of the hills"; upon the lovers of In a Balcony evening comes "intense with yon first trembling star." Wordsworth's "quiet" is lonely, pensive, and serene; his stars are not beating with emotion, but "listening quietly." Browning's is hectic, bodeful, high-strung. The vast featureless Campagna is instinct with "passion," and its ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... Shrinking from high-strung duty, the brave way Of an imperial spirit. So to-day Your People bow—in pride. The sympathy of millions is your own. May Glory long be guardian of your Throne, Love ever ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, February 6, 1892 • Various
... sensitive and high-strung. Temperamentally he coveted the good opinion of those about him. Moreover, he wanted to deserve it. No man had ever spoken to him in just the tone of this little Irish cowpuncher, who had come out of nowhere into his life and brought to him ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... have no child to deal with, but a woman in full bloom, a woman fairly aquiver with life and intelligence, a high-strung, sensitive, fine-grained creature, whose educated ignorance will not be educated innocence, remember that! And I tell you, Speed, it's the heaviest responsibility a man ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... bargains and shrewd trading, like Matthew, felt His pull upon their hearts equally with men of pure heart and lofty ideals like Nathanael. By special effort, for a special purpose He drew high-bred, high-strung, scholarly, intense Paul, out of his mad ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... something was done to keep from this high-strung nation a drug so deadly. Clear-minded medical men have recommended its exclusion from the country, believing that its use medicinally should be foregone rather than that such a cursed temptation should be placed in the way of ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... her romance. If you can make Louise feel that you love her so well as to become her gallant suitor, circumstances may soon give you great advantages. She may be cold and indifferent for a time, but like all passionate high-strung natures, present impulses against may turn just as strongly for you. At least, you have not to contend with that most fatal of all attitudes— indifference. A great change in you will be a flattering tribute to her power to which ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... way. During the month in prison he had obtained but little exercise. The lack of food and of water, the cold by night and the terrific heat by day, the long stumbling marches in the darkness, the mental effect upon an extremely nervous, high-strung organization of being hunted, and of having to hide from his fellow men, had worn him down to ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... called—and in one hand he held a closely plaited, stinging black "quirt." He wore a plaid shirt and cotton handkerchief around his neck. That describes the man who rode Rollo first—and no wonder the spirited, high-strung colt was suspicious of saddles, men, and things. I watched the man as he rode away. His horse was going at a furious gallop, with ears turned back, as if expecting whip or spur any instant, and the man sat ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... high-strung expectations were not fulfilled. Though many pretended that the music was nobler and more artistic than that of the author's first work, the success was by no means as great as Mascagni's friends anticipated. In Vienna and Berlin it was even received with partial coolness. But ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... pattens on her feet and her clothes tucked up, mopping the floor of the shop; but in the afternoon much more genteelly attired in silks of an ancient fashion. Mr. Brown was a very quiet, inoffensive person, the wife a little high-strung. It is certain that they had occasional domestic bickerings, perhaps about the young man in the knee-breeches; for on one occasion it is alleged that the old matron was overheard to address her spouse, with a slightly ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... beautiful girl, the first to welcome me as I crossed the threshold of the home. She was a rather reserved, high-strung, aristocratic-looking girl, who did not always take kindly to requests made with regard to little household duties required from each member of the family, health ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... rule. Like everybody else, Jason knew the parental purpose where those two were concerned, and he began to laugh at the daring presumptions of his own past dreams and to worship now only from afar. But he could not know the effect of that parental purpose on that wilful, high-strung young person, the pique that Gray's frank interest in Mavis brought to life within her, and he was not yet far enough along in the classics to suspect that Marjorie might weary of hearing Aristides called the Just. Nor could he know the spirit of coquetry that lurked deep behind her serious eyes, ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... could recite nearly all of these precious relics of heroic times, or rather chant them forth monotonously enough in all probability, yet in a way that riveted his attention forcibly, and roused his high-strung ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... finally I turned on him. "Are you trying to make love to me?" I demanded. "The surest thing you know," he said with a rather moonish smile. "Then let me tell you something," I hissed out at him, with my nose within six inches of his, "I'm a high-strung hell-cat, I am. I'm a bob-cat, and I'm not aching to be pawed by you or any other hare-brained he-mutt. So now, right from this minute, keep your distance! Is that clear? Keep your distance, or I'll break your head in with ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... a thin, brown, choleric, and nervous man, the tragedy would have ended in the first Act. Had he been a fiery Italian, instead of a doubting, deliberating Dane; had he been of a passionate, or yellow complexion, instead of a calm blonde; had he possessed a wiry, high-strung, and nervous constitution; had he, in a word, proved himself a man of action, and not a man of metaphysical tendencies, his sword would have soon cut the perplexing meshes which surrounded him, and he would have executed instant vengeance upon the authors of his misfortune ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... face, and I can almost hear his deliberate words, "You've been at the tea again, and underfeeding, I expect, as usual. Better see my nerve doctor, and then come with me to the south of France." For this fellow, who knows nothing of disordered liver or high-strung nerves, goes regularly to a great nerve specialist with the periodical belief that his nervous system ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... genial personality, has always been a popular figure with the public, and when he began his seemingly hopeless fight, the crowd cheered him wildly. He broke through Church's service and drew even amid a terrific din. Church, always a very high-strung, nervous player, showed that the crowd's partiality was getting on his nerves. The gallery noticed it, and became more partisan than ever. The spirit of mob rule took hold, and for once they lost all sense of sportsmanship. They clapped errors as they rained from Church's racquet; ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... be too careful," remarked Mrs. White, sententiously. "The world's full of gossiping people, and women are very impressionable, especially such high-strung women as that young widow. A man can't possibly be too careful. Read me ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... antipathy to white men, likewise our own dogs towards Indians, which our horses also share in. Horses also have a dread of bears. Once when riding a fine and high-strung horse a bear suddenly appeared in front. Knowing that my mount, as soon as he smelt the bear, would become uncontrollable, I quickly shot the bear from the saddle, and immediately the ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... therefore the more outrage to his dignity, and his anger waxed and waxed. He did not mind the hunger so much, but the lack of water caused him severe suffering and fanned his wrath to fever-pitch. For that matter, high-strung and finely sensitive, the ill treatment had flung him into a fever, which was fed by the inflammation of his parched and ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... change: the clearest minds abandon themselves to it. To [66] feel the change everywhere, yet not abandon oneself to it, is a situation of difficulty and contention. Communicating, in this way, to the passing stage of culture, the charm of what is chastened, high-strung, athletic, they yet detach the highest minds from the past, by pressing home its difficulties and finally proving it impossible. Such has been the charm of many leaders of lost causes in philosophy and in religion. It is the ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... which he himself could not examine, he proceeded to ride towards the ford. The brook was swollen during the night, and the groom could not forbear intimating to his master, that there was considerable danger in attempting to cross it. But Mowbray's mind and feelings were too high-strung to permit him to listen to cautious counsel. He spurred the snorting and reluctant horse into the torrent, though the water, rising high on the upper side, broke both over the pommel and the croupe of his saddle. It was by exertion of great strength and sagacity, that the good horse ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... brain also in its size. The brain of a song-bird is even much larger in proportion than that of the greatest human monarch, and its life is correspondingly intense and high-strung. But the bird's eye is superficial. It is on the outside of his head. It is round, that it may take in a full circle ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... responsive! Something splendid, loyal, generous, loving had passed away. Gone was the vital spark that had quickened and glowed to noble thoughts; gone was the strength that had been weakness; gone the quick, nervous, high-strung spirit; gone the love that had no recompense. The drawn face told of physical suffering. Hard Blair had found the world, bitter the reward of the soldier, wretched the unholy worship of money and luxury, vain and hollow mockery the ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... but a small proportion of the students of both sexes, but that there were two types of individual who showed a special aptitude. One type (probably showing the embryonic form of neurasthenia) was a nervous, high-strung, imaginative type, not easily influenced from without, and not so much suggestible as autosuggestible. The other type, which is significant from our present point of view, is thus described by Miss Stein: "In general the individuals, often blonde and pale, are ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Rattar's housemaid, a very excellent but somewhat high-strung and imaginative young woman, and how much to believe of what she told me I honestly don't know. And the more one can believe, the worse the puzzle gets! However, there is one statement which I hope to be able ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... frowning. The Zenians have a strange way of being right about such things; their high-strung, sensitive natures seem capable of responding to those delicate, vagrant forces which even now are only ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... the family moved to St. Petersburg, and the two younger boys were sent to boarding school. The parting from his home but especially from his mother—though he saw her once a week—nearly broke his heart. Such a school was no place for a sensitive, high-strung boy like Peter, who needed the most tender fostering care. The work of the school was very heavy, the hours long. The boys often sat over their books till far into the night. Besides the school work, Peter had music lessons of the pianist Philipov, and ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... sentence. In describing his case to me, he finally managed to say, "Before I utter a word it takes me a long time and after I utter the word, I become red in the face and so excited that I don't know where I am, or what I am doing!" I found this boy to be extremely high-strung and of a nervous temperament, easily excited. He was of an emotional type, was more-than-ordinarily sensitive about his trouble and brooded over it constantly, having long fits of deep melancholia that were a constant source of worry to his parents. He was ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... spoken word when his power stood in danger of being overthrown. To the boy there seemed indeed to have been no battle either of Church or State, or with enemies in open field in which Mertouns had not fought. Long before the Conquest, Normandy had known their high-strung spirit and fiery valour. At Senlac, Guilbert de Mertoun had stood near William of Normandy when he gave his command to his archers that they should shoot into the air, whereby an arrow sought English Harold for its mark and pierced him through eye and brain, leaving him ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... up over the ledge, a pine tassel in his hand, his languor of other days transformed into high-strung, triumphant intensity, the sparkle of a splendid hope in his eyes, only Firio was there to ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... them to. As for Aunt Elizabeth, she is lovely sometimes, and the way she remembers things that happened when she was young is simply wonderful. She knows how girls feel, too, and how they suffer when they are like Dr. Denbigh says I am—very nervous and sensitive and high-strung. But she admitted to me to-day that she had never before really made up her mind whether I am the "sweet, unsophisticated child" she calls me, or what Tom Price says I am, The Eastridge Animated and Undaunted Daily Bugle and Clarion Call. He calls me that because I know so much about what is ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... teetotalism. The routine of the farm-hand, while by no means ideal in other respects, keeps him from craving drink as intensely as other toilers do. A day's work in the open air fills his veins at nightfall with an opiate of weariness instead of a high-strung nervousness. The strong men of the community are church elders, not through fanaticism, but by right of leadership. Through their office they are committed to prohibition. So opposition to the ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... to himself. "And she will grow more like her as the years go by, so spirited and high-strung. But they'll have to watch her, or she'll ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... absolute stillness was refreshing and restoring after the long-drawn-out emotions of the stormy day. Never, in her short and passionate life, had so many events been crowded into the space of a few hours. Since the morning she had felt almost everything that her wild, high-strung nature was capable of feeling—love, triumph, failure, humiliation—anger, hate, despair, and danger of sudden death. She was amazed when, looking back, she remembered that at noon on that day her life and all its ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... on the High-caste women of India. She should supplement it with one on the High-strung women of Indiana, and thus illustrate the extremes ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... mother's, dearer to me than life. When I go from this lump of clay, if you will open my breast you will find an old man's broken heart, and across the rent your name will be written in the ragged edges. How handsome you are to-night! How fair a lad you were! Such face and form and high-strung soul, the heart of an ancient knight come back to earth, I used to boast! God's grace is wonderful, His ways past finding out. When we seem forsaken, He is but preparing larger blessings on some grander plan whose end we do not see. He ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... crooned. "You're nothing but a bunch of high-strung sensitiveness, with a golden heart in the middle and a golden coat wrapped all around. Gott-fer-dang, Jerry, you're gold, pure gold, inside and out, and no dog was ever minted like you in all the world. You're heart of gold, you ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... the permanent settlement of her sister's husband as minister. She seems to have the idea that all that party are emissaries of Satan. I do not wonder her little girl should be so nervous and excitable, being the child of such a nervous, high-strung woman. But I am going to see them again this afternoon; will you go ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... in the ascendant; and he understood his brother sufficiently well to believe that his attack must run its natural course, as like fevers had done before. From what he had seen he also thought that Amy could deal with Burt better than any one else, for although high-strung, he was also manly and generous when once he got his bearings. In his present mood he would bitterly resent interference from any one, but would be bound to obey Amy and to respect her wishes. Therefore he took especial pains to be most kindly, ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... The Edinburgh Encyclopaedia (1807-29). He likewise held the offices successively of Principal of the United Coll. of St. Salvator and St. Leonard, St. Andrews (1838), and of the Univ. of Edin. (1859). He was knighted in 1831. Of high-strung and nervous temperament, he was somewhat irritable in matters of controversy; but he was repeatedly subjected to serious provocation. He was a man of highly honourable and ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... he was a hypocrite?" she cried. "He is worse than that; at least, more really dangerous. It is these high-strung sentimentalists who do all the mischief; who play on their own lovely emotions, forsooth, till they wear out those fine fiddlestrings, and then have nothing left but the flesh and the D. ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... at all ill-pleased with himself, he strutted off to a table at which a high-strung session of chemin-de-fer was in process, possessed himself of a vacant chair, and in two minutes was so engrossed in the game that the Pack was ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... cursed all high-spirited women and high-strung horses, declaring them to be works of the devil, like automobiles; then he went back to the side of his friend, where other hands less ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... instant, Anthony stood at Susanna's threshold, looking into her antechamber, breathless almost with his sense of her imminence;—and then the tall flunkey said, in the fastidious accents of flunkeydom, "Net et em, sir;" and all my hero's high-strung emotion must spend itself in ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... my money was gone. A student gave me a note with which I intended to get his previous summer's job as a starter on an electric car line owned by a railway company. The position was abolished, however, so I became a conductor on a suburban line. Unfortunately, my motorman was a high-strung, nervous Irishman, who made me so nervous that I often could not give the signals properly, and who made life generally unpleasant for me. He professed a liking for me and did prevent one or two serious accidents. At the same time, he said I was the first 'square' ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... read. It is not all mothers who understand what boys are,—their quick susceptibilities, their precocious manliness, all their mystical ways and oddities. A letter from Mrs. Haughton generally somewhat fretted and irritated Lionel's high-strung nerves, and he had instinctively put off the task of reading the one he held, till satisfied hunger and cool-breathing shadows, and rest from the dusty road, had lent their soothing aid ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... striking girl, of medium height and slender form, but it was her face that fascinated me, with its delicately molded features, intense unfathomable eyes of dark brown, and lips that showed her idealistic, high-strung temperament. ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... about the fair Madame, I must say, in justice both to her and myself, that any grace with which she has been pleased to honor me is not to be misconstrued. You are not to imagine any but the most Platonic of liaisons. She is as high-strung as an Arabian steed,—proud, heroic, romantic, and French! and such must be permitted to take their own time and way, which we in our gaucherie can only humbly wonder at I have ever professed myself her abject slave, ready to follow any whim, and obeying ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... whose name often finds a loving place in these pages. She and Sandy dwelt together in peace and amity, although the little doggie never could have felt any affection for her selfish companion. Rose's nerves were of a delicate and high-strung order, and there was nothing she hated so much as uproarious noise. Every now and then it chanced that during a few days of wet or windy weather, our little house had been filled by passing guests: gentlemen who had called in to ask for supper and a bed, intending ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... principles that awoke in Monsieur the Viscount a desire to imitate his religious example, but the fact that he had applied them to his own life, not only in the time of wealth, but in the time of tribulation and in the hour of death. All that high-strung piety—that life of prayer—those unswerving admonitions to consider the vanity of earthly treasures, and to prepare for death—which had sounded so unreal amidst the perfumed elegances of the chateau, came ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... for the Suppression of Savage Customs had intrusted him with the making of a report, for its future guidance. And he had written it, too. I've seen it. I've read it. It was eloquent, vibrating with eloquence, but too high-strung, I think. Seventeen pages of close writing he had found time for! But this must have been before his—let us say—nerves, went wrong, and caused him to preside at certain midnight dances ending with unspeakable rites, ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... gruesome tragedy had been committed. "And to think that the man's own daughter did it," they would generally add. "Beats all how bloodthirsty some folks can get. He must have cut her short on money or something and she was too high-strung ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... personal appearance, Veronica was not beautiful in face, as her features were irregular; but it was said of her in her early womanhood that if her face had equalled her form she would have been one of the most beautiful women of her time. She was high-strung, enthusiastic, and passionate, but she possessed a character and an intelligence which enabled her to hold herself in check; she was a most devoted wife and entirely domestic in her disposition. Her poetry is addressed ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... he slowly circled the tree behind which the lynx crouched, stopping every few steps to sniff at the bark or to peer up into the branches. For a moment the big cat held his ground, but the sight of the queer apparition bearing down upon him was too much for his high-strung nerves. With a snarl he scrambled up the tree, where he crouched upon a branch, glaring down at the animated leaf-pile. Kagh shambled around the tree, his nose to the ground as if hunting for something. Then he continued on his placid ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... audience. Mr. Booth went away with a jest, and a lightly-spoken "Good afternoon." Strolling down to Pumphreys' stable, on C street, in the rear of the National Hotel, he engaged a saddle horse, a high-strung, fast, beautiful bay mare, telling Mr. Pumphreys that he should call for her in the middle ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... High-strung expectations often insure their own disappointment, but it was not so in this instance; though the august visitor's first act displayed an eccentricity of disposition which must have led more people than one to ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... find behind these acts of despair; but it shows us the slow succession of the little vexations of life, the disintegration of a lonely existence, whose dreams have disappeared; it gives the reason for these tragic ends, which only nervous and high-strung people can understand. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... field most appropriate and available. Probably only a very small proportion of these girls are strong enough physically or nervously to meet the growing demands of the schools. They may do well for a time, some of them unusually well, for it is the sensitive, high-strung organism that is appreciative and effective. After a while the worry and fret of the requirements and the constant nag of the schoolroom have their effect upon those who are foredoomed to failure in that particular ...
— The Untroubled Mind • Herbert J. Hall
... obsessed only with the one idea of having a good time,—never mind who paid for it,—Joan knew nothing of the danger of trifling with the feelings of a high-strung man who had never been denied, a man over-civilized to the point of moral decay. If she had paused in her determined pursuit of amusement and distraction to analyze her true state of mind she might have discovered an angry desire to pay Fate out for the way in which ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... to you readily, if it were safe; but only an expert should ride that horse. As it is, I shall run him four or five miles before I let her mount him. He is awfully high-strung and a little vicious. I'll get you a quiet, safe lady's horse, suitable for a beginner. You will soon acquire confidence and skill. I wouldn't have you incur any risks for ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... sea-air and the sun," she said. "You know he wants two or three more sittings. And do you know, pappy, I have sometimes thought of asking you to tell me honestly—not to encourage me with flattery, you know—whether my face has really that high-strung pitch of expression when I am about to drink the poison in the cell. Do I really look like Mr. Lemuel's ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... friends by most completely deceiving our enemies, have the most brilliant name in war. Therefore, while their careless confidence continues, and they are still thinking, as in my judgment they are now doing, more of retreat than of maintaining their position, while their spirit is slack and not high-strung with expectation, I with the men under my command will, if possible, take them by surprise and fall with a run upon their centre; and do you, Clearidas, afterwards, when you see me already upon them, and, as is likely, dealing terror among ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... interests somewhere; I know that mother used to ask if Nell told me much about him, and she seemed anxious. Nell herself said that mother was much opposed to the match,—didn't seem to take to Rallston at all,—but she was bound to have him, and she did, and she's just that high-strung sort of girl that if disappointed or unhappy would never let on to the mother as long as ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... applauding, too, but their applause did not have the quality of Senor Roca's. Valera's face was still hidden by her fan. Cogan looked to the matador. He seemed to be limp, apathetic. 'The reaction,' Cogan thought, and Torellas, being so young and such a high-strung fellow, maybe it was only natural, and yet, thinking a moment later, it had come rather soon for an athlete in his ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... they did me, and before the week was out the two were constantly together—a godsend in his present state of mind—saved him in fact from a relapse, I thought—Judson's odd way of looking at things, as well as his hard, common sense, being just what the high-strung young fellow needed most. ...
— Homo - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... pringling air he felt excitable and high-strung. His tail curled upward until it ached. Finally he asked Mike Terrier, who lived next door, ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... heat. The individual has a high warm color, does not sleep well, becomes or remains thin no matter how much he or she eats, is abnormally susceptible sexually, may suffer from a definite insomnia, is emotional, and perspires freely. Alert, neurotic or high-strung, magnetic, and imaginative are some of the descriptive adjectives applicable. The eyes are bright and prominent, large and beautiful, when they have not reached the stage entitled "pop-eyed." Or they may even become so protuberant and bulging ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... admiration. Slight as she was, there was yet a gracefully controlled strength in every movement. In his own mind, poor as it necessarily was in comparisons, he compared her to a young doe he had once startled from its resting-place. There was the same fragile beauty, the same grace, the same high-strung energy. In nothing was she like the women painted for him by his father's hand—things for idle, sensuous pleasure, never for ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... that the real problem was to get away from these high-strung, squabbling men, to escape from ...
— Death Wish • Robert Sheckley
... I was not to be disturbed. I won't be disturbed." With a gesture plainly indicative of high-strung nerves, she turned to the table and poured herself out ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... have saved himself the worry of wondering about Tim, for that afternoon's practice gave no time for anything save work. Ted Carter drove the players with a high-strung, nervous vim. He seemed to find time for everything—first a signal drill, then fielding, then sliding ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger
... into a flame, take fire, fire, burn; boil, boil over; foam, fume, rage, rave, rant, tear; go wild, run wild, run mad, go into hysterics; run riot, run amuck; battre la campagne [Fr.], faire le diable a quatre [Fr.], play the deuce. Adj. excitable, easily excited, in an excitable state; high-strung; irritable &c (irascible) 901; impatient, intolerant. feverish, febrile, hysterical; delirious, mad, moody, maggoty- headed. unquiet, mercurial, electric, galvanic, hasty, hurried, restless, fidgety, fussy; chafing &c v.. startlish^, mettlesome, high-mettled^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... trust you, for your promise means more than oath and vows from other people, and if occasion demand, I know you will guard my Bertie, my high-strung, passionate, beautiful boy! Your pretty cottage? Ah, child! when shall we ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... of this sort told on them inescapably, and both being, unfortunately, of a rather high-strung intelligence and youth, recognized it, no matter how much consciousness might deny it, and wondered sometimes, rather pitiably, why they couldn't be always at one temperature, like lovers in poetry, and why either ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... of horsemen they had seen, Beverly confided to the old negress that she was frightened almost out of her boots, but that she'd die before the men should see a sign of cowardice in a Calhoun. Aunt Fanny was not so proud and imperious. It was with difficulty that her high-strung young mistress suppressed the wails that long had been under restraint in Aunt Fanny's huge ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... with a smile of thanks. Her cheeks were a little flushed, her movements quick, her manner high-strung, as all well might be, seeing the horrible sacrilege she had in mind. But she was undeniably lovely; yes, more adorably beautiful than ever with her present thrill of excitement; and when the stair was brought, and she walked down ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... Tremolino. How is this to be translated? The Quiverer? What a name to give the pluckiest little craft that ever dipped her sides in angry foam! I had felt her, it is true, trembling for nights and days together under my feet, but it was with the high-strung tenseness of her faithful courage. In her short, but brilliant, career she has taught me nothing, but she has given me everything. I owe to her the awakened love for the sea that, with the quivering of her swift little body ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... with Fanny to partake of a meal throughout which neither spoke. Isabel had sent word "not to wait" for her, an injunction it was as well they obeyed, for she did not come at all. But with the renewal of sustenance furnished to his system, some relaxation must have occurred within the high-strung George. Dinner was not quite finished when, without warning, sleep hit him hard. His burning eyes could no longer restrain the lids above them; his head sagged beyond control; and he got to his feet, and went lurching upstairs, yawning ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... they were always high-strung, the effects of his cruel treatment as a baby wore little by little and slowly away, until there was left only a faint dread, or rather dislike, of being alone in the dark, and a tendency to awake once in a month or so, crying out from ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... disasters which had broken up his career. He looked into her eyes and almost forgot himself. Then the sense of fair dealing that dominates every true gentleman rose within him and gripped his wavering emotions with ruthless force. Was this a time to play upon the high-strung sensibilities of this youthful daughter of the gods, to seek to win from her a confession of love that a few brief days or weeks might prove to be only a spasmodic, but momentarily all-powerful, gratitude for the protection ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... exclaimed her aunt; "he was always so perfectly devoted to 'little daughter,' as he used to call you. I don't like him myself. We never could get along together at all, because he is so high-strung and overbearing. But I know it would have made your poor mother mighty unhappy if she could ...
— The Little Colonel • Annie Fellows Johnston
... think that love at first sight must be a commoner thing than many people imagine. If it was so real with a sober-sided, hard-headed fellow like myself, who had spent all the years of his manhood in rough-and-tumble warfare, what must it be with romantic and high-strung people who are more naturally prone ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... of Hazlitt's personality may be plainly recognized, and these reveal a triple ancestry. He claims descent from Montaigne by virtue of his original observation of humanity with its entire accumulation of custom and prejudice; he is akin to Rousseau in a high-strung susceptibility to emotions, sentiments, and ideas; and he is tinged with a cynicism to which there is no closer parallel than in the maxims of La Rochefoucauld. The union of the philosopher, the enthusiast, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... have been begun in October, 1685, but it was not till July, 1689, that the commission was actually completed. The portrait exhibits the face of an elderly man distinctly of a high-strung and nervous temperament, though not quite to the extent of being 'sicklied oer with the pale caste of thought.' His right hand, too, which grasps his Sylva is one very characteristic of the nervous disposition. A bright, shrewd intellect, lofty thoughts, high motives, good ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... action, life, and adventure; his life was in the outward and present, not in the inward and reflective; he was a true ten-year old boy, in its healthiest and most animal perfection. What she was, the small pearl with the golden hair, with her frail and high-strung organization, her sensitive nerves, her half-spiritual fibres, her ponderings, and marvels, and dreams, her power of love, and yearning for self-devotion, our readers may, perhaps, have seen. But if ever two children, or two grown people, thus organized, are thrown into ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... around the circle of faces, each one frozen with amazement, and just a suspicion, perhaps of incredulity. "It's particularly unfortunate for her. You all know how high-strung she is, and if the papers should get hold of it—well, we'll all have to make it as easy as ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... faith to an actor man, and each of us with our homes, closed against her, as she feels, and you know we did feel so, too, Calvin; and when I put myself in her place and remember the things she heard me say, I don't blame her for refusing our advice and help. She's young and high-strung, and oh, I've made such a mess of it, and,—and,—say something, Calvin Trent!" Miss Lacey made the addition so explosively that the judge jumped. "Say you'll send some of your detectives to keep watch of her—quick—to-morrow—before she has a chance to get away from that hotel and ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... too wholesome, hearty, and high-strung a young girl to be a model, according to the flat-chested and cachectic pattern which is the classical type of certain excellent young females, often the subjects of biographical memoirs. But the old minister was proud of his granddaughter for all that. She ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... eighteenth century. But her hymns, made familiar to readers in this country by Cowper's translations, were received by many with the same welcome as the works of Madame de Bourignon. If there were few who could appreciate the high-strung mystic aspirations after perfect self-renunciation, self-annihilation, and absorption in the abyss of the Divine infinity, the ecstatic joy in self-denial and suffering, whereby the soul might be so refined from selfishness as to surrender itself wholly to the will of God, and to see the marks ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... years old, is of an old but unconsidered family which had by compulsion emigrated from Sedgemoor, and for King James's purse's profit, so everybody said—some maliciously the rest merely because they believed it. The bride is nineteen and beautiful. She is intense, high-strung, romantic, immeasurably proud of her Cavalier blood, and passionate in her love for her young husband. For its sake she braved her father's displeasure, endured his reproaches, listened with loyalty unshaken to his warning predictions, and went from his house without ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain
... of superior Christian excellence; but never one man of more singleness and integrity of heart; never one man that had a clearer conception of the ultimate purposes and results of Christianity; never a man whose life was more unselfish and self-sacrificing. Being of an intensely nervous and high-strung organization, and doing his work in a mixed population that would have taxed the patience of Job in its management, it is no wonder that Bro. White was sometimes misunderstood, and, like all reformers, was made to feel that he was ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... and sparkled with every movement of the muscles beneath. Wide red- lined nostrils softly expanded and contracted with a restrained eagerness; and soft eyes rolled in the direction of the Sherwoods—keen, lithe, nervous, high-strung creatures, gently stamping little hoofs, impatiently tossing dainty heads, but nevertheless making no movement that would stir the vehicle that stood "cramped" at the steps. Their harness carried no blinders; their tails, undocked, ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... inevitable. The measure, the colour, the imaginative figures, are the product of search, not of spontaneous movements of sensation and reflection combining in a harmony that is delightful to the ear. They are the outcome of a discontent with prose, not of that high-strung sensibility which compels the true poet into verse. This must not be said without exception. The Threnody, written after the death of a deeply loved child, is a beautiful and impressive lament. Pieces like Musquetaquid, the Adirondacs, ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... said the Doctor, "intensely nervous, high-strung temperament, just what we should expect Mr. Vane Maxwell ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... which high-strung nerves could give to a man who is trying to hear the one thing to him worth hearing in the world, I listened. Had a wild beast fixed his claws and teeth into me at the moment I would not have withdrawn ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... "the other way round. She's at any rate delicate sensitive high-strung. She puts so much of herself ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... different forms that it is very difficult to disentangle the truth from its manifold embellishments. Toward the beginning of the eighteenth century this intrepid and independent lady fell in love with Mr. Falconer, who at first did not seem eager to return or notice her affection. High-strung and chivalric by nature, she did not droop and pine under her disappointment, but vowed to herself that she would bring him to her feet. Mr. Falconer coner left the country after some time, and went to London. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... convulsions? Well, you don't want to. It must be only a matter of seconds, but it seems long minutes; and half an hour afterwards the child might be laughing and playing with you, or stretched out dead. It shook me up a lot. I was always pretty high-strung and sensitive. After Jim took the first fit, every time he cried, or turned over, or stretched out in the night, I'd jump: I was always feeling his forehead in the dark to see if he was feverish, or ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... from the luxury and convention of city life, and imbued with the indomitable Yankee spirit of adventure, the prospect was absorbing in its allurements. Especially to the excitable, high-strung Harris, whose great eyes almost popped from his head at the continuous display of tropical marvels, and whose exclamations of astonishment and surprise, enriched from his inexhaustible store of American slang and miner's parlance, burst from his gaping ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... too loose to admit of stiffening. His mind could no more hold principles than a sieve can hold water. He admired principles extremely, and thought Babcock a mighty fine little fellow for having so many. He accepted all that his high-strung companion offered him, and put them away in what he supposed to be a very safe place; but poor Babcock never afterwards recognized his gifts among the articles that ...
— The American • Henry James
... method is of special value in sensitive, high-strung, nervous women of the "higher classes," who so habitually shun the rigors of child bearing—especially in the instance of their ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... which only an outline has been given here. The nuns of Loudun were, as has been said, mostly daughters of the nobility, and were thus, in all likelihood, temperamentally unstable, sensitive, high-strung, nervous. The seclusion of their lives, the monotonous routine of their every-day occupations, and the possibilities afforded for dangerous, morbid introspection, could not but have a baneful effect on such natures, leading ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... her escape without any particular plan in mind. In fact, it had been initiated on impulse. The fellow on guard at her door had excited intense dislike in her. High-strung, and excited by her kidnaping, she had been further annoyed by his officiousness, his fawning, which thinly disguised impudence. The third or fourth time that he intruded on her privacy to ask if she wanted anything she was ready, with the heavy leg, unscrewed from a chair. She felled him ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... enough in dealing with players, and, as any one who has ever had aught to do with them knows, the majority of Thespians must be treated with the greatest tact. They are sensitive and high-strung, yet often as unreasonable as children, and the man who can rule over them with ease should be snapped up by an appreciative government to conduct its most diplomatic of missions. With the theatrical stars of his own day Cibber seems to have been firm but prudent. ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... face still wore that expression of intense and high-strung energy, which showed me that some novel and suggestive circumstance had opened up a stimulating line of thought. See the foxhound with hanging ears and drooping tail as it lolls about the kennels, and compare it with the same hound as, with gleaming eyes and straining muscles, it runs upon a breast-high ...
— The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Charles Martel. The heights are barren. A hot, baked, reddish soil shows a region where chestnuts flourish. The springs, carefully applied to irrigation, water the meadows only, nourishing the sweet, crisp grass, so fine and choice, which produces this race of delicate and high-strung horses,—not over-strong to bear fatigue, but showy, excellent for the country of their birth, though subject to changes if transplanted. A few mulberry trees lately imported showed an intention ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... Her high-strung mare, scenting the homeward road, and excited by the fantastic play of wayside lights and shadows, swept her along at a wild gallop with which the fevered rush of her thoughts kept pace, and when she reached the house she ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... or other necessaries, for they found a store of provisions in one of the huts that had evidently been placed there in case of need similar to their own; so, things jogged on evenly enough. Still, all were in a state of high-strung suspense, looking out eagerly from morning till night for the promised vessel that every one expected was coming ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... Graham answered, his eyes on the spray of color in her cheeks and the tiny beads of sweat that arose from her continuous struggle with the high-strung creature she rode. Thirty- eight! He wondered if Ernestine had lied. Paula Forrest did not look twenty-eight. Her skin was the skin of a girl, with all the delicate, fine-pored and thin transparency of ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... in one of his many disputes with Trotzky, called him "a man who blinds himself with revolutionary phrases,"[17] and the description is very apt. He possesses all the usual characteristics of the revolutionary Jewish Socialists of Russia. To a high-strung, passionate, nervous temperament and an exceedingly active imagination he unites a keen intellect which finds its highest satisfaction in theoretical abstractions and subtleties, and which accepts, phrases as though they ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... good; the general murmured as much. He did not need to say so aloud to the artillery officer responsible for that shooting, who was in touch with his batteries by wire. The officer knew it. He was the high-strung, ambitious sort. You had better not become a gunner unless you are. Any "good-enough" temperament is ruled off wasting munitions. Red was creeping through the tan from his throat to the roots of his hair. To have this ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... broad-brimmed hat they wore, made a quaint and pleasing effect upon the childish figures—while it showed to great advantages the broad shoulders and fine figure of sturdy Nicholas, who was as different as possible in physique and temperament from high-strung sensitive Stephen. ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... A high-strung, ambitious fellow like Carl needed no incentive to make him work hard or to keep him out of mischief, any more than he needed a prize to make him do his best at tennis or keep him from cheating in the score. What an ignoble view of these matters most good people accept! ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... comprehensive glance, with the profound wisdom of her seventeen summers to help her, she had come to the conclusion that Mrs. Cavendish was a high-strung, nervous, fussy little woman of fifty, with an outward show of good-will and an inward intention to rip everybody up the back who opposed her; proud of her home, of her blood, and of her son, and determined, if ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... this direction or not. The determination here taken and acted upon will elaborate quite a different character of man one way or the other. The effort made as the Stoics direct, would mean no yielding to excitement, no poetry, no high-strung devotion, no rapture, no ecstasy, no ardour of love, no earnest rhetoric spoken or listened to, no mourning, no rejoicing other than the most conventional, to the persistent smothering of whatever is natural and really felt, no tear of pity ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... over matter. It is no easy thing for a hero to sit still and helpless while death rattles his bullet fingers against the walls and screams in voices of hate and fury from a distance which every minute diminishes. For a woman burdened with the disability of a high-strung nervous system, it is a martyrdom. Yet these women, brought up on the froth of an enervating, pleasure-seeking society, held out—held out with a martyr's courage and constancy—against the torture of inactivity, of an imagination ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... know to have been the case with Bismarck. There is a contrast between these two men in their very makeup. There is tragedy in Bismarck's soul, in its volcanic eruptiveness and its conflicts. He is nervously high-strung in the extreme, the very embodiment, in Karl Lamprecht's terminology, of the type of "Reizsamkeit." He likes to listen to Beethoven's music and his sense of nature reveals him to be impressionable, sensitive. His gamut of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... passion for the child. It was her heart, not her nerves, that his screams lacerated. Beyond her heavy-eyed fatigue she showed no signs of strain. Henry acknowledged in her that great quality of the nervous temperament, the power of rising high-strung to an emergency. He intimated that he rejoiced to see her on the right track, substituting for the unhealthy excesses of the brain the normal, wholesome life of motherhood. He was not sure now that he pitied her. ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... Werner I had heard a great deal, through interviews, character studies, and other press stuff in the photoplay journals and the Sunday newspaper film sections. Now I found him to be a high-strung individual, so extremely nervous that it seemed impossible for him to remain in one position in his chair or for him to keep his hands motionless for a single instant. Although he was of moderate build, with a fair ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... Dogs,—high-strung dogs,—do not like to have tricks played on them; least of all by strangers. Bruce seemed to take the nurse-disguise as a personal affront to himself. Then, too, the man was not of his own army. On the contrary, the scent proclaimed him one of the horde ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... age of our first portrait-painting, and a fine contemporary portrait of him throws a more plausible light on this particular detail. For it shows him touching, and probably twisting, a ring on his finger, the very act of a high-strung personality who would also fidget with a dagger. And in his face, as there painted, we can study all that has made it worth while to pause so long upon his name; an atmosphere very different from everything before ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... went to stand by the window. He wanted a minute to think it out, to understand clearly before the tale went on. He could see just how Anthony had read Cousin Jasper's character, sensitive, high-strung, with strong affections that not even great wrongs could quite break down. But how mistaken the man had been who thought Jasper Peyton was a weak-willed person ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... they despoil themselves for him, and keep the sacrifice a secret from the family? To his request he knew that they would not fail to respond gladly, and he added to it an appeal to their delicacy by touching the chord of honor that vibrates so loudly in young and high-strung natures. ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... exercise. The side saddle is apt to increase the tendency to curvature of the spine, while tight corsets prevent the good that would come to the heart and lungs and digestive organs. Swimming is good, particularly for nervous, high-strung persons. And the wheel? Well, that best of all exercises—for it is the best when indulged in by the wise woman, not the crooked-back, scorching, silly—is a ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... but feel that the real problem was to get away from these high-strung, squabbling men, to escape from this hot, ...
— Death Wish • Robert Sheckley
... mar the beauty of the Emerald Isle, and I should say that his finest trait is patience under adversity. No nation, for example, could have more calmly endured the terrible sufferings of the famine, more especially as the high-strung nerves of the Celt render him physically and mentally the very ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... appearance, Veronica was not beautiful in face, as her features were irregular; but it was said of her in her early womanhood that if her face had equalled her form she would have been one of the most beautiful women of her time. She was high-strung, enthusiastic, and passionate, but she possessed a character and an intelligence which enabled her to hold herself in check; she was a most devoted wife and entirely domestic in her disposition. Her poetry is addressed chiefly ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... door, but Claude, after his excitement, was lying white and silent, his eyes closed, his profile upturned. Thor was swept by compunction. It had always been part of the family tradition to respect Claude's high-strung nerves. Nothing did him more harm than to be thwarted or stirred up. With a murmured good-night Thor turned out the light, opening ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... ruthless Bounder, all smiles and sneers, strike Nora and snatch her jewels. He also saw the beautiful, high-strung and high-spirited creature, her senses drowned in resentment, snatch up a weapon and rush after him, all the wrong she had ever suffered at his hands ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... efforts in this direction or not. The determination here taken and acted upon will elaborate quite a different character of man one way or the other. The effort made as the Stoics direct, would mean no yielding to excitement, no poetry, no high-strung devotion, no rapture, no ecstasy, no ardour of love, no earnest rhetoric spoken or listened to, no mourning, no rejoicing other than the most conventional, to the persistent smothering of whatever is natural ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... disputes with Trotzky, called him "a man who blinds himself with revolutionary phrases,"[17] and the description is very apt. He possesses all the usual characteristics of the revolutionary Jewish Socialists of Russia. To a high-strung, passionate, nervous temperament and an exceedingly active imagination he unites a keen intellect which finds its highest satisfaction in theoretical abstractions and subtleties, and which accepts, phrases as though they ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... restless, high-strung thoroughbreds and a dozen nervous, scheming jockeys can make life exceedingly interesting for an official starter, particularly if the race be an important one and a ragged start certain to draw a storm of adverse criticism. The boys on the front ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... announce her intention of going to bed. She always insisted that the children go too, though they often won an extra half hour by protesting and teasing. It was a good thing for them, these nine o'clock bed hours, for it gave them the tonic sleep that their young, high-strung natures demanded. ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... of an actor, of high standing in his profession and extremely intelligent, 49 years of age, married and father of a large family. He is sexually vigorous and of erotic temperament. His general health has always been good, but he is a high-strung, neurotic man, with quick mental reactions. His habits had for a long time been decidedly alcoholic, but two years ago, a small quantity of albumen being found in the urine, he was persuaded to leave off alcohol, and has ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... sprung up since he had last seen her! Almost a woman now—and destined to be a beauty! And more than just a beauty: she was colorful, vital, high-strung. Before he had gone away he had regarded her with something akin to the negligent affection of an older brother. But this thing which was already beginning to surge up in him was altogether different, and he ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... all mothers who understand what boys are,—their quick susceptibilities, their precocious manliness, all their mystical ways and oddities. A letter from Mrs. Haughton generally somewhat fretted and irritated Lionel's high-strung nerves, and he had instinctively put off the task of reading the one he held, till satisfied hunger and cool-breathing shadows, and rest from the dusty road, had lent their soothing aid to ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... were to my suffering, they were equally callous to their own when anything befell them. And this was due, I believe, first, to habit; and second, to the fact that they were less sensitively organized. I really believe that a finely-organized, high-strung man would suffer twice and thrice as much as they from ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... and he still pretends to have a little spirit, she goes off into a rage and hysterics, and that usually brings him to heel again. It's a mighty curious thing how a woman who has the appetite and instincts of a turkey—buzzard will often make her husband believe that she's as high-strung and delicate as ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... not always harmful. A minister should not be hurt or angered by disagreement and discussion. No one's ideas are final. Let him expect to stand in the very midst of a high-strung, spirited, and hard-working generation. Let him be turned out of doors. Let him travel, look, learn, meet men and women, and conquer in the arena of manhood. Then, by means of this undaunted manhood, he may the better guide the fiery enthusiasms of men, inspire ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... with their desperate collapse, showed him well enough how she would have met such a proposal. What Miss Birdseye clung to, with benignant perversity, was the idea that, in spite of his exclusion from the house, which was perhaps only the result of a certain high-strung jealousy on Olive's part of her friend's other personal ties, Verena had drawn him in, had made him sympathise with the great reform and desire to work for it. Ransom saw no reason why such an illusion should be dear to Miss Birdseye; his contact with her in the past had ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... can't possibly be too careful," remarked Mrs. White, sententiously. "The world's full of gossiping people, and women are very impressionable, especially such high-strung women as that young widow. A man can't possibly be too careful. Read me the paper ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... was altogether too wholesome, hearty, and high-strung a young girl to be a model, according to the flat-chested and cachectic pattern which is the classical type of certain excellent young females, often the subjects of biographical memoirs. But the old minister was proud of his granddaughter for ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... not sleep well, becomes or remains thin no matter how much he or she eats, is abnormally susceptible sexually, may suffer from a definite insomnia, is emotional, and perspires freely. Alert, neurotic or high-strung, magnetic, and imaginative are some of the descriptive adjectives applicable. The eyes are bright and prominent, large and beautiful, when they have not reached the stage entitled "pop-eyed." Or they may even become so protuberant and bulging as to develop the expression ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... romantic complications, whose outcome is often for a time in doubt. Yet as the accredited painter of the Faubourg Saint-Germain he contributed an essential element to the development of realistic fiction. No one has rendered so well as he the high-strung, neuropathic women of the upper class, who neither understand themselves nor are wholly comprehensible to others. In 'Monsieur de Camors', crowned by the Academy, he has yielded to the demands of a stricter realism. Especially after the fall of the Empire ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... I heard you play the violin at a concert! Oh, if I could tell you the raptures that thrilled my soul at the floods of melody you drew from the insensate strings! Only a poet's spirit, only a high-strung heart could accomplish such strains! I, too, am of a musical spirit; I, too, thrill to the notes of the great masters, if interpreted as they are by you! May I hope that you will not spurn this outburst of a ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... complex. I don't mean in a deceitful way, far indeed from that; but I believed there was much in him which he did not yet know himself, about himself. I fancied that the Southern blood he had in his veins from one side of his family had made him high-strung and passionate, as well as daring, quick to think, and quick to act; and that his study was to hold this side of his nature in check. I felt sure that he was generous even to a fault, yet I was certain that, if driven to desperation, there ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... not at all ill-pleased with himself, he strutted off to a table at which a high-strung session of chemin-de-fer was in process, possessed himself of a vacant chair, and in two minutes was so engrossed in the game that the ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... the profound wisdom of her seventeen summers to help her, she had come to the conclusion that Mrs. Cavendish was a high-strung, nervous, fussy little woman of fifty, with an outward show of good-will and an inward intention to rip everybody up the back who opposed her; proud of her home, of her blood, and of her son, and determined, if she could manage it, to break off his attachment for Jane, no matter at what ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the edge of her bed. The alteration in her features, her dreadful paleness, the lurid fire of fever shining in her eyes, the convulsive trembling which ever and anon shook her frame, showed already the fatal effects of this terrible night upon a susceptible and high-strung organization. At sight of Dr. Baleinier, who, with a sign, made Gervaise and her mate leave the room, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs had intrusted him with the making of a report, for its future guidance. And he had written it too. I've seen it. I've read it. It was eloquent, vibrating with eloquence, but too high-strung, I think. Seventeen pages of close writing he had found time for! But this must have been before his—let us say—nerves, went wrong, and caused him to preside at certain midnight dances ending with unspeakable rites, which—as far ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... but unconsidered family which had by compulsion emigrated from Sedgemoor, and for King James's purse's profit, so everybody said—some maliciously the rest merely because they believed it. The bride is nineteen and beautiful. She is intense, high-strung, romantic, immeasurably proud of her Cavalier blood, and passionate in her love for her young husband. For its sake she braved her father's displeasure, endured his reproaches, listened with loyalty unshaken to ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain
... man, and each of us with our homes, closed against her, as she feels, and you know we did feel so, too, Calvin; and when I put myself in her place and remember the things she heard me say, I don't blame her for refusing our advice and help. She's young and high-strung, and oh, I've made such a mess of it, and,—and,—say something, Calvin Trent!" Miss Lacey made the addition so explosively that the judge jumped. "Say you'll send some of your detectives to keep watch of her—quick—to-morrow—before she has a chance ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... kind of gray fur—"chaps" this article of dress is called—and in one hand he held a closely plaited, stinging black "quirt." He wore a plaid shirt and cotton handkerchief around his neck. That describes the man who rode Rollo first—and no wonder the spirited, high-strung colt was suspicious of saddles, men, and things. I watched the man as he rode away. His horse was going at a furious gallop, with ears turned back, as if expecting whip or spur any instant, and the man sat far over on one side, ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... closed behind the constables, Willy Ray sank exhausted into a chair. The tension of excitement had been too much for his high-strung temperament, and the relapse was swift ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... music. We realize even more vividly the heroic and sublime character of Beethoven when we learn that, as early as 1798, there began the signs of that deafness which altered his whole life. By nature he was hypersensitive, proud and high-strung, and these qualities were so aggravated by his malady that he became suspicious, at times morose, and his subsequent career was checkered with the violent altercations, and equally spasmodic renewals of friendship, which took ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... century. But her hymns, made familiar to readers in this country by Cowper's translations, were received by many with the same welcome as the works of Madame de Bourignon. If there were few who could appreciate the high-strung mystic aspirations after perfect self-renunciation, self-annihilation, and absorption in the abyss of the Divine infinity, the ecstatic joy in self-denial and suffering, whereby the soul might be so refined from selfishness as to surrender itself wholly to the will of God, and to see the ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... a sum total of thirty-seven cents in his pocket. The glimpses we get of him during his wanderings, from the recollections of certain men with whom he made acquaintance in stages and on river steamboats, make a curious and striking picture of American character. The feverish, high-strung boy was never dismayed and never a dreamer, ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... want of food or other necessaries, for they found a store of provisions in one of the huts that had evidently been placed there in case of need similar to their own; so, things jogged on evenly enough. Still, all were in a state of high-strung suspense, looking out eagerly from morning till night for the promised vessel that every one expected was coming ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... the fair Madame, I must say, in justice both to her and myself, that any grace with which she has been pleased to honor me is not to be misconstrued. You are not to imagine any but the most Platonic of liaisons. She is as high-strung as an Arabian steed,—proud, heroic, romantic, and French! and such must be permitted to take their own time and way, which we in our gaucherie can only humbly wonder at I have ever professed myself her abject slave, ready to follow ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... loyalty, as the years passed, she had come to place her last hope that he would be deaf to the siren calls of the great city. Outdoor sports and wholesome friendships he had rejected, even while his solitary nature and high-strung temperament made ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... spirit. "You grow rather good-looking, Kid, when you get hot, but you go at things half-cocked, and you 've got to get over it. That's the whole trouble—you 've never been trained, and I would n't make much of a trainer for a high-strung filly like you. Ever remember ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... no. She's one of them high-strung women that takes everything hard. She fainted over and over when her husband was fetched home dead. I did think then she'd drop off; but joy ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... jump out the window, Roger, remembering to shut the airlock after you?" the Golden Glacier said in tones not unkind. "When are your high-strung, thoroughbred nerves going to accept the fact that I would never consider marriage with a business inferior? You have about as much chance as a starving Ukrainian kulak now that Moscow's ...
— Bread Overhead • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... you have," she insisted; "I know you've had lots to try you, just as you knew that I'd had lots. And you're so high-strung, so sensitive ... I never knew anybody like you. But there are good times coming for ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... fighting it," Graham answered, his eyes on the spray of color in her cheeks and the tiny beads of sweat that arose from her continuous struggle with the high-strung creature she rode. Thirty- eight! He wondered if Ernestine had lied. Paula Forrest did not look twenty-eight. Her skin was the skin of a girl, with all the delicate, fine-pored and thin transparency of the skin ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... loud-complaining Heraclitus of his time, whose very smile had a grimness in it more ominous than his scowl. Poor man! Dyspeptic on a diet of oatmeal porridge; kept wide awake by crowing cocks; drummed out of his wits by long-continued piano-pounding; sharp of speech, I fear, to his high-strung wife, who gave him back as good as she got! I hope I am mistaken about their everyday relations, but again I say, poor man!—for all his complaining must have meant real discomfort, which a man of genius feels not less, ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... its tone to richness; but the timbre was always acute, in sympathy with his intense temperament. All was of one piece in Shelley's nature. This peculiar voice, varying from moment to moment, and affecting different sensibilities in divers ways, corresponds to the high-strung passion of his life, his fine-drawn and ethereal fancies, and the clear vibrations of his palpitating verse. Such a voice, far-reaching, penetrating, and unearthly, befitted one who lived in rarest ether on the ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... swing he set it cracking over his horses' backs. The high-strung beasts plunged at their bits, and the leaders started to rear. Again he swung out his whip, and this time it flicked the plunging leaders. Instantly there was a rush of feet and a scrunch of wheels. The "tugs" pulled taut, and the gush of eager nostrils ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... was at midday and many people were not far off, no screams were heard. A vigorous girl like Elizabeth Fales would not have submitted easily, they held, to any such assault as was charged. In the course of the trial a very moving description of the sufferings such a high-strung, ardent nature as this girl's must have undergone, because of her hopeless love, was used to show the reasons for suicide. And following the habit of the times, the lawyers turned their work to moral ends by beseeching the parents in the crowded court-room to exercise a greater vigilance over ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... Rose's composure, seemed to smite her by contrast with an intolerable sense of personal reproach, and to goad her into rebellion. Rose was conscious of her variable spirits—the heritage of her years—getting more and more uncertain, and of being wrought up to a perilously high-strung pitch. She felt as if she were panting for liberty to breathe, to express her discordant mood in some ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... Marta recalled the contrast between Westerling and Lanstron as they faced each other after the wreck of the aeroplane ten years ago: the iron invincibility of the elder's sturdy, mature figure and the alert, high-strung invincibility of the slighter figure of the ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... what that meant, Ruth repeated the legend as all new girls at Briarwood must learn it. But Ruth and her friends had long since agreed that no other nervous or high-strung girl was to be hazed, as she and Helen had been, when they first came to the Hall. So the ceremony of the marble harp was abolished. It has been described in the former volume of this series, ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson
... were a fine-looking couple, Nora May. Not but what they had their shortcomings. Anne's nose was a mite too long and Gil had a crooked mouth. Besides, they was both pretty proud and sperrited and high-strung. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... As the engine came in sight, the little girl urged the mare to a slow gallop, and, as the cow-catcher got abreast, gave her a sharp cut that sent her forward beside the train. And so swift was the high-strung horse that she was never left behind until a long stretch of road had been covered. The little girl liked best, however, to start the race at the outer edge of the broad meadow that lay west of the station, because, by acquiring speed before the engine came ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... at the front door when breakfast was over. Two darkies had been rubbing on it for an hour, and not a speck could be seen anywhere. There were two horses hitched to it this time, as fitted the occasion. A span of high-strung blacks, with white feet, and they gave the negro at their heads all he could do to keep them from going. They chafed their bits, and stamped, and fretted at the delay, their tiny feet eager to be speeding away. The master was going alone to meet his darling. Springfield had no railway, and ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... that beautiful girl, the first to welcome me as I crossed the threshold of the home. She was a rather reserved, high-strung, aristocratic-looking girl, who did not always take kindly to requests made with regard to little household duties required from each member of the family, health permitting, ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... her like a cat, Mrs. Hopkins, but I can't follow her everywhere,—she won't stand what Susan Posey 'll stand. There's no use our talking to her,—we 've done with that at our house. You never know what that Indian blood of hers will make her do. She's too high-strung for us to bit and bridle. I don't want to see her name in the paper again, alongside of that" (She did not finish the sentence.) "I'd rather have her fished dead out of the river, or find her where she found ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... he looked it, either. Such a high-strung, jumpy party he is, always glancin' around suspicious. And that wanderin' store eye of his, scoutin' about on its own hook independent of the other, sort of adds to the general sleuthy effect. Kind ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... queerly to-day, little Netty," he began, after a short pause. "My nerves are all high-strung with the turn matters ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... of Clark's identity, and of the fact that the boy had lost all memory of what had happened, and even of who he was. He went into that in detail; the peculiar effect of fear and mental shock on a high-strung nature, especially where the physical condition was lowered by excess and wrong-living; his early attempts, as the boy improved, to pierce the veil, and then his slow-growing conviction that it were an act of mercy not to do so. The Donaldsons' faithfulness, the cessation of the ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... worker, and practical in his views and opinions; although his predominantly juristic training and mode of thinking make him at times disputatious, and tend to impede the progress of affairs. In official intercourse he is frank and obliging, so long as his [Bavarian] patriotism, which is high-strung and extremely irritable, is treated with consideration; a foible for which I take ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... jumped at the chance of getting him. But I always stuck up for her—and I know that she did it for the sake of her family, who were all as poor as poor, and were dependent on her after her father went to smash in his business. She was always as high-strung and romantic as she could be, but I don't believe that even then she would have taken Mr. Strange if there had been anybody else. I don't suppose any one else ever looked at her, for the young men are pretty sharp nowadays, ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... reserved and shy in the presence of strangers, of a sweet disposition, and very intense in her sympathies. "Until I was three years old mother says I was a little angel," she once wrote to a friend. Her constitution was feeble, and she inherited from her father his high-strung nervous temperament. "I never knew what it was to feel well," she wrote in 1840. Severe pain in the side, fainting turns, the sick headache, and other ailments troubled her, more or less, from infancy. She had an eye wide open to ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... the Tinker in my ear. "This is a day to remember, this is a—my soul!" he exclaimed and fell suddenly mute as a gorgeous person in powder and silk stockings entered, bearing tea upon a silver tray; a somewhat nervous and high-strung person he seemed, for catching sudden vision of the grimy Tinker's shock head and my shirt sleeves, his protuberant eyes took on a glassy look, he gulped audibly, his knees bent and he set down his ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... Entry into Jerusalem" brought him L1700 by exhibition, and his "Judgment of Solomon," considered his finest work, sold for 700 guineas; despite large sums obtained for "The Mock Election," "The Reform Banquet," &c., he was continually in debt, and his high-strung, sensitive temperament, smarting under imaginary slights and weary of unrealised ambitions, led him to commit suicide by shooting himself in his studio; he was an artist of great but unequal genius; he ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... a parcel o' sympathy for Eph," said a short, thickset coasting captain, who sat tilted back in a three-legged chair, smoking lazily. "You see, he wa'n't but about twenty-one or two then, and he was allus a mighty high-strung boy; and then Eliphalet did act putty ha'sh, foreclosin' on Eph's mother, and turnin' her out o' the farm, in winter, when everybody knew she could ha' pulled through by waitin'. Eph sot great store by the old lady, and ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... that he had been scrutinized by the aid of an electric hand-lamp. The tremulous whisper told him something else—that the speaker suffered from nerves as high-strung as his own. The knowledge gave him inspiration. He cried at a venture, in a guarded voice, "Hands up!"—and struck out smartly with his stick. Its ferrule impinged upon something soft but heavy. Simultaneously he heard a low, frightened cry, the cane ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... was enough for these high-strung athletes, to whom the cry "play ball" was like a bugle call. The fight was close from start to finish, and resulted in a victory for the All-Americans by a ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... here—when both Olga and Mrs. Dixon agreed that he couldn't possibly do a bit of good—announced that I had come through it all like the true Prairie Woman that I was. Then he somewhat pompously and redundantly explained that I was a highly organized individual, "a bit high-strung," as Mrs. Dixon put it. I smiled into the pillow when he turned to my anxious-eyed Dinky-Dunk and condoningly enlarged on the fact that there was nothing abnormal about a woman like me being—well, rather abnormal as to temper and nerves during ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... a word or a sentence. In describing his case to me, he finally managed to say, "Before I utter a word it takes me a long time and after I utter the word, I become red in the face and so excited that I don't know where I am, or what I am doing!" I found this boy to be extremely high-strung and of a nervous temperament, easily excited. He was of an emotional type, was more-than-ordinarily sensitive about his trouble and brooded over it constantly, having long fits of deep melancholia that were a constant ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... service for him with brain and spoken word when his power stood in danger of being overthrown. To the boy there seemed indeed to have been no battle either of Church or State, or with enemies in open field in which Mertouns had not fought. Long before the Conquest, Normandy had known their high-strung spirit and fiery valour. At Senlac, Guilbert de Mertoun had stood near William of Normandy when he gave his command to his archers that they should shoot into the air, whereby an arrow sought English Harold for its mark and pierced him through eye and brain, ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... was the youngest of all the sons' wives, as her husband was the latest born. She was quite a girl to some of them. Grandma had never more than half approved of her. Dorcas was high-strung and flighty, she said. She had her doubts about living happily with her. But Atherton was anxious for this division of the property, and he was her youngest darling, so she gave in. She felt lonely, and ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... me, but I could not disobey the commands of this illustrious lady, the widow of my kindest patron and friend. I went, prepared for tears, for outcries, perhaps for violent resistance, for the ardent and high-strung nature of my beloved Senorita Margarita is well known to me. Figure to yourself, honoured senor, my surprise at finding this charming damsel calm, composed, even smiling. She greeted me with her accustomed tenderness; a more enchanting personality does not, ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... begun in October, 1685, but it was not till July, 1689, that the commission was actually completed. The portrait exhibits the face of an elderly man distinctly of a high-strung and nervous temperament, though not quite to the extent of being 'sicklied oer with the pale caste of thought.' His right hand, too, which grasps his Sylva is one very characteristic of the nervous disposition. A bright, shrewd intellect, lofty thoughts, high motives, good resolves, ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... words, "You've been at the tea again, and underfeeding, I expect, as usual. Better see my nerve doctor, and then come with me to the south of France." For this fellow, who knows nothing of disordered liver or high-strung nerves, goes regularly to a great nerve specialist with the periodical belief that his nervous system ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... He was sensitive and high-strung. Temperamentally he coveted the good opinion of those about him. Moreover, he wanted to deserve it. No man had ever spoken to him in just the tone of this little Irish cowpuncher, who had come out of nowhere into his life and brought to him his first big problem for decision. Even though the ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... suspicions that my son was here improperly are anywhere near correct, then you are entitled to my most hearty apology. Fred is a peculiar and high-strung boy, but I believe his impulses are right in the main. I will add that I believe his account of how he came to be in this strange plight. He took the car early this morning. I am just returning from a spin in our larger automobile. I saw my runabout at the edge of the road and ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... is time something was done to keep from this high-strung nation a drug so deadly. Clear-minded medical men have recommended its exclusion from the country, believing that its use medicinally should be foregone rather than that such a cursed temptation should be placed in the way ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... said, looking around the circle of faces, each one frozen with amazement, and just a suspicion, perhaps of incredulity. "It's particularly unfortunate for her. You all know how high-strung she is, and if the papers should get hold of it—well, we'll all have to make it as easy ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... attachment she had awakened in the man before her, there was for Eugenie at the moment a peculiar temptation. Had she not just given proof that she was set apart—that for her there could be no more thought of love in its ordinary sense? In her high-strung consciousness of Welby's dismissal, she felt herself not only secure against the vulgar snares of vanity and sex, but, as it were, endowed with a larger spiritual freedom. She had sent away the man of whom she was in truth afraid—the man whom she might have loved. ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the Jews he invariably speaks, to begin with, about the heroes of their national history; to the ignorant heathen he talks about the weather and the crops; and to the Athenians he quotes their own poets and delivers a high-strung oration; yet in every case he arrives naturally at his own subject and preaches the gospel to each audience in the language of its own familiar ideas. Even outside of his own peculiar sphere altogether, ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... forms that it is very difficult to disentangle the truth from its manifold embellishments. Toward the beginning of the eighteenth century this intrepid and independent lady fell in love with Mr. Falconer, who at first did not seem eager to return or notice her affection. High-strung and chivalric by nature, she did not droop and pine under her disappointment, but vowed to herself that she would bring him to her feet. Mr. Falconer coner left the country after some time, and went to London. The Countess Mary also traveled ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... now! in festal measure Be spent the evening of this festive day! For thee is opening now a high-strung pleasure; Now, even now, in yonder press-yard they Strike from his limbs the fetters loose away! A little while, and he, the brave Duval, Will issue forth, serene, to ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... well—physically. A queer, high-strung child; so old, yet so young. In some things he will be an infant as long as he lives; in others, he has been old from the cradle. He takes every thing in as much earnest as a man of fifty. What ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... the Tremolino. How is this to be translated? The Quiverer? What a name to give the pluckiest little craft that ever dipped her sides in angry foam! I had felt her, it is true, trembling for nights and days together under my feet, but it was with the high-strung tenseness of her faithful courage. In her short, but brilliant, career she has taught me nothing, but she has given me everything. I owe to her the awakened love for the sea that, with the quivering of her swift little body ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... either chokes off expression, or runs away with itself. Calmness, evenness, poise, the easy control that comes from a degree of relaxation, without loss of buoyancy,—these are the conditions for good accomplishment of any kind. This self-mastery the high-strung, ardent spirit must learn, in order to become really strong. This is accomplished, in the case of a nervous temperament, not by tightening up and trying hard, but by relaxing, by letting down. In the use of these passages the voice will be set at first slightly high in pitch, in order to ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... a propitious moment to "put Mr. Hicks in his place," as Mrs. Stott had phrased it, but Wallie had no desire to nerve himself twice for the same ordeal; therefore, with something of the desperate courage which comes to high-strung persons about to have a tooth extracted, ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... devil of Justice Brack, libertine and house friend, and the deep sea of the debauched genius, Loevborg. To make a four-square of ineluctable fate she is flanked on either side by her mediocre husband and the devoted bore, Thea Rysing—Elvsted. Like a high-strung Barbary mare—she was of good birth and breeding—her nerves tugging in their sheaths, her heart a burnt-out cinder, Hedda saw but one way to escape—suicide. She took that route and really it was the most profound and significant act of her life, ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... that time, Abigail Norman. She was pretty. I swear by all the sacred cats of Egypt, that she was beautiful. She was industrious. The best housekeeper in the state! She was high-strung. I liked her all the more for that. You see a man of imagination is apt to fall in love with a tragedy queen. But this is a digression. ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... you, for your promise means more than oath and vows from other people, and if occasion demand, I know you will guard my Bertie, my high-strung, passionate, beautiful boy! Your pretty cottage? Ah, child! when shall we dwell ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... result from emotional strain such as an unhappy love affair, or the fear of failure in examinations. It may have followed acute illness, like influenza or pneumonia. But the original temperament was nervous, high-strung, delicate; one learns of an appetite that disappeared easily, a sleep readily disturbed, in short, an easily lowered or obstructed ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... be loved differently. The pupil, nay the friend of the learned Groot, the young wife who had grown up in the society of highly educated men, the enthusiastic patriot, felt that she was capable of being more, far more to her husband, than he asked. She had never expected gushing emotions or high-strung phrases from the grave man engaged in vigorous action, but believed he would understand all the lofty, noble sentiments stirring in her soul, permit her to share his struggles and become the partner of his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... He was Scotch and she was an Irish beauty, I can tell you. Looking back on it now, I believe she was of rich and proud people and that they had cast her off for her folly in marrying a man that was rough of cheek and speech, for all his ready good heart. She was as delicate and high-strung and timid, as he was brown, big, and fearless as to anything, be it man or typhoon. And yet it was she who could stick to one purpose as if the character of a bulldog was behind the slender, girlish face of her, while he was always making for this and that end, charging at life with ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... Doctor Ledyard once remarked to Helen Travers, "give me the nervous, high-strung women. They come through shock and danger better, they hold to a climax more steadily. Your phlegmatic woman goes to pieces because she hasn't imagination and vision enough to carry ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... the Viscount a desire to imitate his religious example, but the fact that he had applied them to his own life, not only in the time of wealth, but in the time of tribulation and in the hour of death. All that high-strung piety—that life of prayer—those unswerving admonitions to consider the vanity of earthly treasures, and to prepare for death—which had sounded so unreal amidst the perfumed elegances of the chateau, came back now with a reality gained from ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... myself many evil things which they have done for me. Whatever in my mental make-up is wild and visionary, whatever is untrue, whatever is injurious, I can trace to the perusal of some work of fiction. Worse than that, they beget such high-strung and supersensitive ideas of life that plain industry and plodding perseverance are despised, and matter- of-fact poverty, or every-day, commonplace distress, meets with no sympathy, if indeed noticed at all, by one who has wept over the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... treatment give much of romantic effect. In London three years later (1746) Collins put forth his significant work in a little volume of 'Odes.' Discouraged by lack of appreciation, always abnormally high-strung and neurasthenic, he gradually lapsed into insanity, and died at the age of thirty-seven. Collins' poems show most of the romantic traits and their impetuous emotion often expresses itself in the form of the false Pindaric ode which Cowley had introduced. His 'Ode on the Popular Superstitions ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... democratic, and desired that all men should enjoy freedom and equal rights before the law. When asked once, in court, to produce the proof of his nobility, he pointed to his head and heart, saying, "My nobility is here, and here." His high-strung nervous system would account for many of his peculiarities. By those who did not understand him he was called "a growling old bear." On the other hand, those who appreciated his genius called him "a cloud-compeller of the world of music." ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... well-written story of modern life. The interest centres in the development of the character of the heroine, a New England girl, whose high-strung temperament is in constant revolt against the confining limitations of nineteenth century surroundings. The reader's interest is held to the end, and the book will take high rank among American ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... splendid, loyal, generous, loving had passed away. Gone was the vital spark that had quickened and glowed to noble thoughts; gone was the strength that had been weakness; gone the quick, nervous, high-strung spirit; gone the love that had no recompense. The drawn face told of physical suffering. Hard Blair had found the world, bitter the reward of the soldier, wretched the unholy worship of money and luxury, vain and hollow mockery the ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... nervous strain incident to endeavors to carry on a successful social career, the nerve tension resulting from the unhygienic clothing assumed at this time, the lack of the steadying influence of home responsibilities, and we have ample cause for the nervous, high-strung girl who is becoming so common that we are in danger of regarding her as ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... kindnesses Mr. and Mrs. Meynell at length won the difficult privilege of helping the shy, nervous, high-strung spirit wandering in pain, hunger and exile amid the indecencies of extreme penury in a great city. They were helped by the friendly sympathy and care of Premonstratensian and Franciscan monks. Thompson had sounded, and become familiar ...
— The Hound of Heaven • Francis Thompson
... bees, the cat race is nervous. Their temperaments are high-strung. They would never have become as poised or as placid as—say—super-cows. Yet they would have had less insanity, probably, than we. Monkeys' (and elephants') minds seem precariously balanced, unstable. The great cats are saner. They are intense, they would have needed sanitariums: but fewer asylums. ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... intended to get his previous summer's job as a starter on an electric car line owned by a railway company. The position was abolished, however, so I became a conductor on a suburban line. Unfortunately, my motorman was a high-strung, nervous Irishman, who made me so nervous that I often could not give the signals properly, and who made life generally unpleasant for me. He professed a liking for me and did prevent one or two serious accidents. At the same time, he said I was the first 'square' conductor he ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... greatness, and to commend a writer as "very clever" is not to give him high praise. From this fault of super-subtilty women are free for the most part. They are more likely than men to rely on broad human emotion, and their tendency in error is toward the morbid analysis of a high-strung moral situation. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... were deceived by her," said Mrs. Jeffrey, still bending over the oil; "but it wasn't for me to say so, for you are blinded towards that girl. She's got some of the queerest notions, and then she's so high-strung. She won't listen to reason. But I did my country good service once. I went up in the dead of night to take down the flag, and I don't regret it either, even if it did pitch me to the bottom of the stairs, ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... toned and tuned up to the highest pitch in his wrestling with Nature, and will have been purged and purified in the white region of the highest mountains. And in this high-strung state he will now see that creation and manifestation of Nature which of all natural objects will best declare her meaning, bring him into closer touch with her very Heart, and stir in him the ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... lonesome, Abby. But then I knew you'd come for me all in good time. And, Ben—how is Ben, Abby? does he want to see his old father again? Ah, Ben was a nice little boy—a nice little boy. But 'Liz'beth wan't no kind of a mother for such a high-strung lad. And then he hadn't oughter married that sickly sort of girl that ran off an' left him. Sakes alive! what a temper she had! It sort of broke Ben down living with her as long as he did. But he remembers his old father at last, don't he? And he wants to have me home to ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... responsible for the disasters which had broken up his career. He looked into her eyes and almost forgot himself. Then the sense of fair dealing that dominates every true gentleman rose within him and gripped his wavering emotions with ruthless force. Was this a time to play upon the high-strung sensibilities of this youthful daughter of the gods, to seek to win from her a confession of love that a few brief days or weeks might prove to be only a spasmodic, but momentarily all-powerful, gratitude for the protection he ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... young man, he did not give in. Once he lost a shoe, but a little searching recovered that. On another occasion, a passing dog, seeing things going on in the ditch which in his opinion should not have been going on—he was a high-strung dog, unused to coming upon heads moving along the road without bodies attached—accompanied Percy for over a quarter of a mile, causing him exquisite discomfort by making sudden runs at his face. A well-aimed ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... plainly recognized, and these reveal a triple ancestry. He claims descent from Montaigne by virtue of his original observation of humanity with its entire accumulation of custom and prejudice; he is akin to Rousseau in a high-strung susceptibility to emotions, sentiments, and ideas; and he is tinged with a cynicism to which there is no closer parallel than in the maxims of La Rochefoucauld. The union of the philosopher, the enthusiast, and the man of the world ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... said Temple, slow and heavy and a bit uncertain in his articulation. "High-strung, like her mother. And at times apt to be unreasonable. Come in with me and have a drink, and we'll ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... phenomena, mother's darlings, a Presidential candidate, and other absurdities, accompanying it all with a running comment and imaginative improvisations which had the charm of genius in them, and made us ache with laughter, young and old alike. Such a man, nervous, high-strung, of fine perceptions and sensibilities, must inevitably pass through rapid and extreme alternations of feeling; and, no doubt, an hour after that laughing seance of ours, Mr. Story was plunged deep in melancholy. Yet ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... their charm for him; but during this period they must often have tempted him into the elaborate dinners, the late hours, and the high-strung excitement, which made a retreat to the keen air and plain diet of his Sabine home scarcely less necessary for his body's than it was for his spirit's health. For, much as he prized moderation in all things, and extolled ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... of these wild campaigns on the frontier, a British captain took offense at something young Morgan had said or done, and struck him with the flat of his sword. This was too much for the high-strung teamster. He straightway knocked the redcoat ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... angrily and went to stand by the window. He wanted a minute to think it out, to understand clearly before the tale went on. He could see just how Anthony had read Cousin Jasper's character, sensitive, high-strung, with strong affections that not even great wrongs could quite break down. But how mistaken the man had been who thought Jasper Peyton was a weak-willed person to be ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
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