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More "Irritability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... interrupted, with some obvious irritability; "let me tell you what I have conceived, and raise any objections afterwards if you wish to raise them. He would tell her the truth himself. He would almost glory in doing so. That is the nature of the man. We have depicted his pride in his own powers, his temptation, his struggle—his ...
— The Collaborators - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... the rain and chew up carpet-tacks and grind Huns into leber-wurst. They were putting through the job—with a fierce and terrifying gaiety; they exulted in their toughness, they called themselves "grizzlies" and "mountain cats" and what not; they sang wild songs about their irritability, their motto was "Treat 'em rough!" It was a scary atmosphere for a dreamer and utopian; Jimmie Higgins shrank into himself, afraid even to reach about for some fellow-Socialist with whom he might exchange opinions about the events of the ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... which had recalled me to a true sense of the situation. If, Monsieur, you happen to have gone through a similar day of violent effusion and general expansion, you will agree with me that during no other moment of your life were you more inclined to irritability. ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... enthusiastic respect. Without one taint of envy in his nature, conscious of his own extraordinary powers, he was quick to recognize genius in others; and his hearty praise of the powers of his rivals shows how sound and generous the heart was under his irritability. His proneness to satire and power of epigram made him enemies, but even these yielded to the suavity and fascination which alternated with his bitter moods. His sympathies were peculiarly open for young musicians. Mendelssohn and Liszt ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... strong. He had been accustomed to picture himself bending with a proud tenderness over his partner in the scene and murmuring some notably good things to her bowed head. How could any man murmur in a pandemonium like this. From tenderness Bruce Carmyle descended with a sharp swoop to irritability. ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... even to extravagance towards any one who had ever been connected with his fortunes or his travels; playful, light-hearted, witty, and humorous, but not without those occasional fits of black depression and nervous irritability to ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... wondering at Mr Preddle's curious ways, and thinking what a pity it was that a gentleman like Mr Denning, who was on a voyage for the sake of his health, should take such a dislike to Mr Frewen and Mr Preddle too. It hardly seemed to be like irritability, for after all he was as merry and friendly with the officers as he was with me. I never went near him without his beckoning to me to come to his side, and both he and his sister were quite affectionate to me, making my first long voyage wonderfully pleasant, ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... colder than this place, where I have tarried in the expectation of obtaining rest. Sligo has very kindly proposed a union of our forces for the occasion, which will be perhaps as uncomfortable to him as to myself, judging from previous experience, which, however, may be explained by my own irritability and hurry. ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... attributed their occasional temperamental outbursts to the altitude, which was "getting on their nerves," it was no secret between them that their irritability was due to exasperation with Disston. With scientific skill and thoroughness they dissected him privately until he was hash, working their scalpels far into the watches of the night with unflagging interest. His words, his actions, his thoughts, as indicated by his changing expressions, ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... discriminating with reference to the characters of persons with whom I found myself in contact, I have made and invariably observed one rule of conduct,—namely, never to associate with those whom I cannot respect. Ignorance, want of refinement, irritability of temper, and even lack of generous impulses, I can forgive, when redeemed by candor and stern honesty of purpose; but arrogance, dissimulation, and all-absorbing selfishness I will not tolerate. In you I hoped and expected better qualities ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... of pomp and continuous grandeur. On the contrary, as the necessity of rousing attention, or of sustaining it, obliged the Attic orator to rely too much on the personality of direct question to the audience, and to use brief sentences, so also the same impatient and fretful irritability forbade him to linger much upon an idea—to theorise, to speculate, or, generally, to quit the direct business path of the question then under consideration—no matter for what purpose of beauty, dignity, instruction, or even of ultimate effect. In all things, the immediate—the instant—the ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... at him; but evidently her depression and irritability were increasing with every moment. Totski was dreadfully alarmed to hear her promise a revelation ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... by a facile exterior. Tender men sometimes have strong wills. We had, in Massachusetts, an old statesman, who had sat all his life in courts and in chairs of state, without overcoming an extreme irritability of face, voice, and bearing: when he spoke, his voice would not serve him; it cracked, it broke, it wheezed, it piped;—little cared he; he knew that it had got to pipe, or wheeze, or screech his argument and his indignation. When he sat down, after speaking, he ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... him from a promise and strengthen both with a legislative endorsement. It was neither an intrepid nor an exalted proposition, but Conkling accepted it. Perhaps his nature required a relief from its high-strung irritability in some sort of violence, and resignation backed by the assurance that he would soon be restored to office and to greater power on the shoulders of the party offered the seductive form which that violence ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Table Bay in twenty-two days from the date of my seeing the Major with the pistol in his hand. His manner had for a week before been marked by an irritability that was often beyond his control. He had talked snappishly and petulantly at table, contradicted aggressively, and on two occasions gave Captain North the lie; but we had carefully avoided noticing his manner, and acted as though he were still the high bred, polished gentleman ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... nights, short hurried breathing, with a feeling and dread of suffocation, evident fulness and enlargement in the region of liver, and inability to turn to the right side. The urine was small in quantity, of a bluish colour, and coagulable, irritability of stomach, and the bowels were obstinate and difficult to move, even with drastic purgatives. The treatment was merely palliative, no stimulant seemed to have any effect in exciting the system. Ascites and general anasarca ...
— An Investigation into the Nature of Black Phthisis • Archibald Makellar
... survived Miss Ladd's boarding house, for a time. At first it went smoothly enough because Maurice couldn't blame Eleanor's cook, and Eleanor couldn't say that "nothing she did pleased Maurice"; so two reasons for irritability were eliminated; but a new reason appeared: Maurice's eager interest in everything and everybody—especially everybody!—and his endless good nature, overflowed around the boarding-house table. Everyone liked him, which ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... the sensorium during their inactive state are termed irritability, sensibility, voluntarity, and associability; in their active state they are termed as ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... eloquent of his state of mind that every changing emotion shone through it as through a window into his soul, told of secret harassment. So also did his tense nerves, which seemed wrought up almost to the snapping point. They vented themselves in frequent bursts of irritability and snarling anger. His secretary noticed that he started at every sudden sound, and sometimes also when she had heard nothing, and that then he would look round him in an alarmed, furtive way, as if he expected to see some menace take form ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... course of a fortnight or so, when his system had covered over its craving after whisky, the irritability of the shoemaker almost vanished. It might have been feared that his conscience would then likewise relax its activity; but it was not so: it grew yet more tender. He now began to give Robert some praise, and make allowances ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... come when that information was to be given; for, about six weeks previous to the action we have described, in which Adams the quarter-master was killed, Admiral De Courcy was attacked by a painful and mortal disease. As long as he was able to move about, his irritability of temper, increased by suffering, rendered him more insupportable than ever; but he was soon confined to his room, and the progress of the disease became so rapid, that the medical attendants considered it their duty to apprise him that all ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... young—" Ronald began; but De Valette waited not to hear the conclusion, for at that moment a light, streaming from a low building opposite, attracted his attention, and, with nervous irritability, he advanced towards it. It was the building used for a Catholic chapel, and the light proceeded from a nuptial procession, which was then issuing from it. Two boys walked before it, in loose black garments, with white scarfs thrown over their shoulders, and bearing flaming torches in their hands. ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... some festivity for the coming week no doubt; but Sally and Mrs. Peel engaged her attention, and she postponed the reading until after they were gone. She observed, however, in Gerald's demeanour during the meal, a curious irritability and preoccupation. He ate next to nothing, drank his cup of coffee with an air of unconsciousness, and got up and strolled away at the first opportunity, not reappearing until Mrs. Peel and Sally were making their farewells in the hall. He and Althea ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... menstrual period would be due. Strong purgatives administered with other drugs on or after the calculated date frequently bring about delivery, whereas previous attempts of this kind prove unsuccessful. To account for this peculiar irritability of the uterus about the fortieth-week of pregnancy, microscopical changes in its tissues have been suggested but sought in vain. Nor will the distention of the organ ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... Little think the youth and maiden who are glancing at each other across crowded rooms with eyes so full of mutual intelligence, of the precious fruit long hereafter to proceed from this new, quite external stimulus. The work of vegetation begins first in the irritability of the bark and leaf-buds. From exchanging glances, they advance to acts of courtesy, of gallantry, then to fiery passion, to plighting troth and marriage. Passion beholds its object as a perfect unit. The soul is wholly embodied, and the ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... was a devoted creature, who had only left her mistress because she was sure that she was in good hands, and because her own approaching marriage made a separation inevitable in any case. Her mistress had, as she confessed with distress, shown some irritability of temper towards her during their stay in Baden, and had even questioned her once as if she had suspicions of her honesty, and this had made the parting easier than it would otherwise have been. Lady ...
— The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in all this history as the difference between Moses when called upon to take responsibility as a military commander, and Moses when, not to mince matters, he acted as a quack. On the one hand, he was all vacillation, timidity, and irritability. On the other, ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... whom few were better judges on this subject, once observed to me that 'Johnson knew more books than any man alive.' He had a peculiar facility in seizing at once what was valuable in any book, without submitting to the labour of perusing it from beginning to end[213]. He had, from the irritability of his constitution, at all times, an impatience and hurry when he either read or wrote. A certain apprehension, arising from novelty, made him write his first exercise at College twice over[214]; but he never took that trouble with any other composition; and we shall see that his ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... the irritability which was a symptom of his disease, an easy guest. He had a lecture at nine in the morning, so did not see Cronshaw till the night. Once or twice Philip persuaded him to share the scrappy meal he prepared for himself in the evening, but Cronshaw ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... language. All this might be as nothing to what strove for delivery now. And this he was desperately engaged in stifling to death; and not the beauty of his mind alone but of his nature, for beyond all doubt his gentleness and sweetness and refinement were as much a part of his genius as irritability and violence were fellows to the ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... charm,—she knew how easily she could command homage wherever she went,—and knowing, she did not care. Or rather—she had not cared. Was it possible she would ever care, and perhaps at a time when it was no use caring? A certain irritability, quite foreign to her usual composure, fevered her blood, and it arose from one simple admission which she had been forced to make to herself within the last few days, and this was, that her husband was as much her kingly superior in heart and mind as he was in rank and power. ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... consequences. In any case his power of controlling instinctive impulse is due to his recognition of its non-intellectual origin. He may even be able to extend this recognition to his own impulses, and to overcome the conviction that his irritability during afternoon school in July is the result of an intellectual conclusion as to the need of special severity in dealing with a ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... certainly some curious quality in the air of this country which affects the nerves: maybe it is the elevation at which one lives—certain it is that many people complain of unwonted irritability and susceptibility to petty annoyances. And, while travelling in Kashmir is easy and comfortable enough along beaten tracks, yet the petty worries connected with all matters of transport and supply are incessant, ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... many channels for enjoyment. Still the insufficiency of the palpable and appreciable is paramount; still the everlasting dolor interposes: the appetite is satiated, the aroma palls upon the nostrils, the nerves are affected by irritability, the harmony merges into dissonance; even the beautiful becomes so far an abomination that man is 'mad for the sight of his eyes that he did see.' Such is the sterile and repulsive penalty of the searcher after happiness. Happiness! O delusive ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... needs, has no weight in that court. When Nature touches a man on the shoulder and says, "Stop!" he stops. The penalty of frayed nerves, overworked brains, and underworked bodies is failure of body and mind. The premonitory symptoms are irritability, quarreling, depression, fierceness and inefficiency of effort, and finally complete breakdown. Three to four hours a week physical exercise under a scientifically tested plan and arrangement will keep these men fit. Is the price in this emergency ...
— Keeping Fit All the Way • Walter Camp
... last three critical days, he needed all his faith to reconcile him to one of the most unfathomable instances of the workings of Providence. His grumbles were loud and long, and the directions which he sent from his sick bed were tinged with irritability. For at last the other side had come to its senses; Sir Winterton was affable again, Lady Mildmay was canvassing, and Mr. Smiley had high hopes. Despondency would have fallen on Foster's spirit but for the report of Quisante's exploits, performed in the teeth of the orders of ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... you sit ever thus over the fire like some old crone?" he growled, voicing at last the irritability that so long had been growing ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... speaking his dialect, etc. The result is more disastrous than one unfamiliar with Australian relationships would imagine; for these relationships are so complicated that to unravel them takes, in the words of Howitt (59), "a patience compared with which that of Job is furious irritability." ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... this trying operation Dick Varley never once betrayed the slightest feeling of irritability or impatience. He did not expect success at first; he was not, therefore, ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... Hine that morning, and something of his own irritability seemed to have passed into her; so that he turned to ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... we know it in our experience, goes back in the history of the race to the primitive sensitivity (or irritability) of living matter, seen in the protozoa. These minute unicellular creatures, though having no sense organs—any more than they have muscles or digestive organs—respond to a variety of stimuli. They react to mechanical stimuli, as a touch or jar, to chemical stimuli ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... husband's enormous confidence in his artistic powers, she had not the stimulus of his faith in his ultimate success to sustain her. Moreover a heart trouble with which she was afflicted resulted, through the strain to which their uncertain material condition subjected her, in a growing irritability which was accentuated by jealousy of women who entered the growing circle of Wagner's admirers as his ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... a pause, for none dared risk reply. Edward's voice had waxed louder and louder, his sallow cheek flushed with wrath, and he raised himself from his couch, as if irritability of thought had ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... the table, turned up my coat to hide the absence of collar, and started for the door. My last sight of Smith showed him standing looking after me, tugging at the lobe of his ear and clicking his teeth together with suppressed irritability. I stumbled down the dark stairs, along the hall, and opened the front door. Vaguely visible in the light of a street lamp which stood at no great distance away, I saw a slender man of medium height confronting me. From the shadowed face two large and luminous eyes looked out into ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... evening; the events of the day had urged her to the course. But its execution depended upon his mood, and she anxiously awaited his manner towards her. She found that it had changed. He showed no further tendency to be angry; he showed something worse. Absolute indifference had taken the place of irritability; and his coldness was such that it encouraged her to departure, even more than hot temper ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... Molly had manifested a certain moodiness and irritability very unlike her usual facile sweetness of disposition, and Sara was somewhat nonplussed to account for it. Finally, she approached the matter by way of ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... there seemed to be no power to rally in the little worn-out frame of the child. His father, for a little while, spoke hopefully of a change of air, and the sea-side; but he could not long so cheat himself with false hopes. The restlessness and irritability, which they had said to one another were hopeful signs, passed away. His smiles were more languid and constrained, and he soon failed to recognise the anxious, loving friends who ministered ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... always quarreling equally needs the physician. In the first there is a lack of sufficient energy so to move as to meet and realize some of life's oppositions; in the other there is probably some underlying cause for nervous irritability. ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... her! ... God! how he had loved her! ... And yet, latterly, how he had got to take his supreme possession of her as a matter of course; had allowed the joy of it to be blunted by depression and irritability over sordid station worries. He remembered with piercing remorse how often he had neglected the trivial courtesies to which he knew she attached importance. How he had been prone to sullen fits of moodiness; ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... and listening to him more and more attentively as that conversation went on. Within the last moment or two Wardour had become instinctively conscious of this. He resented Crayford's conduct with needless irritability. ...
— The Frozen Deep • Wilkie Collins
... second flagon, but drank, or rather seemed to drink, very slowly, in order to gain time for considering how he should introduce his second subject of conversation, which seemed rather delicate for the smith's present state of irritability. At length, nothing better occurred to him than to plunge into the subject at once, with, "I have seen Simon Glover ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... Wagogo seemed to have contracted a bleak hue from the general bleakness around. The water of the pits obtained in the neighbourhood had an execrable flavor, and two donkeys sickened and died in less than an hour from its effects. Man suffered nausea and a general irritability of the system, and accordingly revenged himself by cursing the country and its imbecile ruler most heartily. The climax came, however, when Bombay reported, after an attempt to settle the Muhongo, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... irreparable piece of want of tact, and thence to war. For it is argued that, vanity being at the bottom of it all, and the Emperor finding he is unable to gain the premature immortality he thirsts for by peaceful prodigies, his restless nervous irritability may degenerate into recklessness, and then his megalomania may blind him to the dangers he and, above all, poor blood-soaken Germany may encounter on the war-path[501]." Kaiser William possesses more power of self-restraint than this passage indicates; for, though he has spread a warlike enthusiasm ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... charming face but for the strongly-arched eyebrows and low forehead that gave him a sinister expression, scarlet lips of savage cruelty, and a twitching of the muscles peculiar to Corsicans, denoting that excessive irritability which makes them so prompt to kill in ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... the Master of the House quite irrelevantly, "seem to have experienced a slight twinge of irritability—the past few minutes. Hunger, I've no doubt!... So suppose we all sit down together to this sumptuous—if somewhat chilled repast? After the soup certainly, even after very cold soup, all explanations I'm sure will be—cheerfully and satisfactorily exchanged. Miss—Flame ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... with the charm of manner he knew so well how to assume, "don't mind my irritability; I'm always like that when I'm painting and any one interrupts—it sends me crazy. The light's just right, and it won't be for long. I can't possibly paint with anybody round. Won't you, like a good fellow, get out and let ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... understood the reason for the fellow's morbid irritability, his suicidal recklessness; but when he privately remonstrated he was gruffly told to mind his own business. Branch flatly refused to modify his conduct; he seemed really bent upon cheating the disease that made his ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... up of new centres of activity in the psychic nature of man is frequently attended by temporary loss of control over the normal brain functions. Loss of memory, hysteria, absentmindedness, unconscious utterance of one's thoughts, illusions and hallucinations, irritability, indifference to one's surroundings, and similar perversions, are among the products of the newly-evolved ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial
... front of a hotel, a half-intoxicated man with a tale of woe, because of having been ordered out of the palatial sample room of the late liquor dealer, drew some attention to him and increased his feeling of disquiet and irritability. ...
— The Daughter of a Republican • Bernie Babcock
... he expressed his displeasure had pierced her very soul. She felt as if she were shivering with a sudden chill, and for a long time she could not recover the loving warmth with which she had previously treated him. True, he had soon done everything in his power to atone for the pain which his irritability had inflicted, but the incident had given her the perception that the poets whose songs she sung were right when they made sorrow go hand in hand with the joys ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... arrogance, by acting systematically upon it to that end; and, in a worldly point of view, he succeeded to perfection; with this drawback—which always accompanies false pretensions of the kind—that, knowing to what extent they were false, his mind was kept in a proportionate state of irritability and dissatisfaction; so that his success, after all, was only that of a man who prospers by parading an infirmity. With good intention as a judge in ordinary cases, he had sufficient patience neither to study nor to listen. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... who appeared from thence to have been a former acquaintance of the Countess, and to have enjoyed some share of her confidence. The threatening motion used by Fenella, he no longer considered as worthy of any notice, excepting as a new mark of the irritability ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... his nerves to a pitch of susceptibility that rendered his views of life different from those of a man in the enjoyment of healthy sensations. Perfectly gentle and forbearing in manner, he suffered a good deal of internal irritability, or rather excitement, and his fortitude to bear was almost always on the stretch; and thus, during a short life, he had gone through more experience of sensation than many whose existence is protracted. 'If I die to-morrow,' he said, on the eve of his unanticipated death, ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... 'He must be suffering from nervous irritability.' And aloud, 'I'm not thirsty, thank ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... mankind develop and mature more rapidly, and diseases run their courses more swiftly; while on the other hand these conditions are more favorable to the simpler forms of life, for the reason that in them the orgasm and irritability are entirely dependent on external influences, and all plants are in the same case, because heat, moisture, and light complete the ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... physical zeal ran an exaggerated nervous irritability very hard to bear. Beneath the lash of her aunt's cruel tongue Lucy often writhed, quivered, and sometimes wept; but she struggled to keep her hold on her patience. Ellen was old, she told herself, and the self-centered life she had led had embittered her. ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... of this national taste; but a dinner-party, with its due infusion of barristers, is the best possible exemplification of this give and take, which, even if it had no higher merit, is a powerful ally of good-humour, and the sworn foe to everything like over-irritability or morbid self-esteem. Indeed, I could not wish a very conceited man, of a somewhat grave temperament and distant demeanour, a much heavier punishment than a course of Irish dinner-parties; for even though he should come out scathless himself, ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... condition of its possessor the more unfavourable, generally, has been the effect of genius on his life. That this has not been the case with Clare may, perhaps, be imputed to the absolute depression of his fortune. When we hear the consciousness of possessing talent, and the natural irritability of the poetic temperament, pleaded in extenuation of the follies and vices of men in high life, let it be accounted no mean praise to such a man as Clare that with all the excitements of their sensibility to his station he has preserved a fair character amid dangers which ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... brought into a state either of nervous instability or irritability by ascetic practices, or of nervous insensibility by the persistent withdrawal of all outer disturbance; and the mind is fixed upon a single object,—the one God, the God eternal, absolute, indivisible. Recalling our former scheme for the conditions ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... appeared to the uninstructed mind of Thomas that when three men want to get to the bottom of a mountain, their business is to walk down it; and he put this view of the case, not only with emphasis, but even with some irritability. He was answered from the scientific eminence of the compass on which his companions were mounted, that there was a frightful chasm somewhere near the foot of Carrock, called The Black Arches, into which the travellers were sure to march in the mist, if they risked continuing the ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... motion, and the vote was what he had expected—two for and two against the motion. It was not carried. For a few minutes all sat in silence, the air tingling with suppressed irritability. A word would have condensed it into cruel speech. It was Billy who ...
— The Cheerful Smugglers • Ellis Parker Butler
... will you make? You ought to write verses, languish, nurse your own insignificant thoughts and sensations, amuse yourself with psychological fancies and subtleties of all sorts, but don't at any rate mistake your sickly, nervous irritability and caprices for the manly wrath, the honest anger, of a man of convictions! Oh Hamlet! Hamlet! Thou Prince of Denmark! How escape from the shadow of thy spirit? How cease to imitate thee in everything, even to revelling shamelessly ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... to be for ever following and leaning upon other people. To look at, sitting so withdrawn, her eyes watching something unseen of human gaze, she was perfect; even in intercourse she would have been more nearly so than ever before had it not been for the fits of irritability gave unwonted bitterness to her tongue. There were days when nothing would please her, when she showed all her common strain in the taunts she found to fling at Ishmael and the rest of her little world. Only Archelaus was immune, ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... and always on the verge of a complete breakdown of mind and body. In 1851 he had an effusion of water on the left knee, which stopped his outdoor exercise, on which he had always largely depended. All the irritability of the system then centered in the head, resulting in intense pain and in a restless and devouring activity of thought. He himself says: "The whirl, the confusion, and strange, undefined tortures attending this condition are only to be conceived by one who has felt them." ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... want of success, jealous of the success of others, his natural irritability of temper increased by habits of intemperance, he at length abandoned himself to the practice of reviewing, and became one of the Ishmaelites of the press. In this his malignant bitterness soon gave him a notoriety which his talents had never been ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... three days I have had very little real communion with God, and have therefore been very weak spiritually, and have several times felt irritability ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... Kiametia dozing in her chair at the theater, at dinners, in motors, but had put it down to over-fatigue from too much social gayety. Miss Kiametia's variable likes and dislikes, her sudden whims and fancies, her irritability—all were ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... America and the English possessions, holding that the negroes were an inferior race probably better off while producing something under white masters than if left free in their own ignorance and sloth. Though his obstinacy was a part of his national temperament, and his physical and mental irritability in part a result of his ill-health, any candid estimate of his life cannot altogether overlook them. On the whole, however, there is no greater ethical, moral, and spiritual force in English Literature than Carlyle, and ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... nervous and restless, although he was tired out and half-starved. The irritability of Africa was upon him—had hold over him—gripped him remorselessly. No one knows what it is, but it is there, and sometimes it is responsible for murder. It makes honourable European gentlemen commit crimes of which they blush to think in after days. ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... surface in the shape of small ulcers and boils. One of the most distressing features of the disease was a raging thirst, which could not be appeased by the most copious draughts of water; and the internal heat, which produced this effect, caused also a frightful irritability of the skin, so that the sufferer could not bear the touch of the lightest and most airy fabrics, but lay naked on his bed, in all the deformity of his dire affliction. Of those who recovered, many bore the marks of the sickness to their graves, by the loss of a hand, a foot, or ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... riding to those who knew the filly's irritability, uncertainty. Clean-cut veteran horsemanship, with horse and rider as one; a mechanically precise pace, heart-breaking for a following field. The major slowly climbed off the rail, mechanically eyeing his watch. He was unusually quiet, but there was ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... being a laxative, allays irritability of the stomach; it is consequently useful during dentition, at which period there is both much irritability and a prevailing acescency of the stomach. The dose is from five grains to ten for an infant, increasing the quantity to fifteen ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... when she heard, with her fine sense quickened by the irritability of sickness, a light footfall on the stair, with a cadence unlike that of any inmate ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... mood spurted up with a sudden irritability of jarred nerves again. "Then what are you for? That's what I should ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... they were still faithful, but the stress of exhaustion was beginning to sap their morale; to drive them into irritability so that, under the strain of almost superhuman exertion, they threatened to break. Brent was not of their blood and knew little of how to handle them, and though Parson Acup was indefatigable, his face became more and ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... captivating study for the young, it must be translated into controversial theology. And in what way could such a polemic interest be evoked except through political partisanship? But such partisanship connects itself naturally with the irritability of sectarianism, and but little with the majestic repose of a church such as the Romish or the Anglican, founded upon the broad basis of national majorities, and sheltered from danger, or the sense of danger, by state protection. Dissenters stand upon another footing. The Dissenter from the ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... happiness. It is positively amazing how you can turn every little incident into a sunbeam. And, mark you, it is quite as easy to take the other course. But what a coward a man is who releases in his home all the pent-up irritability and ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... bowel obstruction, in peritonitis, and in osteomyelitis, the real lesion is in the brain-cells. We may, therefore, reasonably conclude that the lassitude, the diminished mental power, the excitability, irritability, restlessness, delirium, and unconsciousness which may be associated with acute infections, are due to physical changes in ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... jeers so often levelled at my friend the poet, would now and then rouse him into rage; and at such times the haughty scorn he would hurl on his foes, was proof positive of his possession of that one attribute, irritability, almost universally ascribed to the votaries of ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... not on the sharp end. Some of these stupid, ignorant women fancied they were doing everything possible to make home pleasant, and wondered at their failure. There they sat, prodding their husbands with hat-pins, and grieved over the poor wretches' irritability. ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... passage to the room that had been assigned to him, and closing the door gave way to some irritability of temper in his efforts to light the lamp and adjust his writing materials. For his excuse to Mr. Nott was more truthful than most polite pretexts. He had, indeed, a letter to write, and one that, being yet young in duplicity, the ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... her! If this thing had happened in England, said they who scoff at our own laws, there wouldn't be any foolishness about the business: the woman would be buried in quick-lime before you could know what you were talking about. The law in this country is a joke, said they, with great irritability. Why can't we do the business up, sharp and quick, as they do in England? Get it over with, that's the ticket. What's the sense of dragging it out for a year? Send 'em to the chair or hang 'em while everybody's interested, not when the thing's half forgotten. ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... just now, in the course of which the MS. of Erewhon turned up, and I was struck with the great difference between it and the MS. of The Authoress of the Odyssey. I have also taken great pains, with what success I know not, to correct impatience, irritability and other like faults in my own character—and this not because I care two straws about my own character, but because I find the correction of such faults as I have been able to correct makes life ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... expectations, the bird was still alive when London was reached, though the cook, who from his connection with the cabin had suddenly reached a position of unusual importance, reported great loss of strength and irritability of temper. It was still alive, but failing fast on the day they were to put to sea again; and the fo'c'sle, in preparation for the worst, stowed their pet away in the paint-locker, ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... taken fresh forms. After the failure of his attempt to restore Bartja, (transformed as he fancied into a bow) to his original shape, his irritability increased so frightfully that a single word, or even a look, was sufficient to make him furious. Still his true friend and counsellor, Croesus, never left him, though the king had more than once given him over ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... quiet in Catalina's bedroom, where Paula and I were seated. My sister was now on the road to a partial recovery, having passed the danger-mark some days before. Another change also I noticed had come over her. Her impatience and irritability had gradually disappeared, day by day, and when she suffered more than ordinarily, she never seemed to complain. The expression of her face had sweetened also, and even a slight but quite natural smile ...
— Paula the Waldensian • Eva Lecomte
... it, and turned over the pages with a trembling hand. Dora flushed, and the tears rose into her eyes. She realised perfectly that this performance was levelled at her at least as much as at David. Daddy's mad irritability had grown of late ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of devotion and delight, the members of the Imperial family alone, who should have been the most satisfied, and certainly the most astonished by their greatness, wore an anxious, almost a grieved look. They alone appeared discontented with their master. Their pride knew no bounds; their irritability was extreme. Nothing seemed good enough, for them. In the way of honors privileges, and when we recall their father's modest at Ajaccio, it is hard to keep from smiling at the vanity of these new Princes ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... in these ambiguous circumstances, is everything that could be desired. My original feeling of irritability has passed away. I should have supposed it to be what Pallas calls "fatigue," a confusion or discord of the nerve-centres, which she tells me is incident to mortality. What Pallas can possibly know about it is more than I can guess, especially, as there were not infrequent ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... middle age. Civilization had restricted his potations or limited them to certain festivals known as "sprees," and his face was less puffy and sodden. But with the accession of sobriety he had lost his good humor, and had the irritability and ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... was deteriorating; I felt clearly how the unemployed and uninterested life which I led, nourished day after day new weeds in the waste field of my soul. Curiosity, a desire for gossip, an inclination to malice and scandal, and an increasing irritability of temper, began to get possession of a mind which nature had endowed with too great a desire for action for it blamelessly to vegetate through a passive life as so many can. Ah! if people live without ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... must be returned. R. Brown, I remember, says pollen-tubes separate from grains before the lower ends of tubes reach ovules. I saw, and was interested by, abstract of your Drosera paper (637/2. A short note on the irritability of Drosera in the "Trans. Bot. Soc. Edin." Volume VII.); we have been at ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... the evenest tempers, the most perfect patience and good nature—one of the things most impressive about them all was the absence of irritability. So far we had only this group to study, but afterward I ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... he has to endure. Educated white men have inherited an infinite capacity for feeling bored; and a hot climate, which fries us all over a slow fire, grills boredom into irritability. The study of oriental human nature requires endless patience; and this is the hardest virtue for a young, energetic white man, with the irritable brain of his race, to acquire. Without it ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... acquired slight stomach ailments that may be troublesome for some time, because in this case both the quality and the quantity were no doubt wrong. Constipation in the mother will also cause trouble. The child will develop colic and extreme irritability until the mother's condition ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... yet another function. It shows, in Macbeth's furious irritability and purposeless savagery, the internal reaction which accompanies the outward decline of his fortunes. And in other plays also the exhibition of such inner changes forms a means by which interest is sustained in this difficult section of a tragedy. There is no point in ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... cell to whose activities it is possible to trace the fundamental properties of all living things. Cells are endowed with the properties of irritability, contractibility, assimilation and reproduction, and it is thus plainly to the study of cells that we must look for an interpretation of life phenomena. If we can reach an intelligible understanding of the activities of the cell our problem is solved, for the activities of the fully formed animal ...
— The Story of the Living Machine • H. W. Conn
... her grandmother was really seriously unwell, and that her irritability she could not help. Mrs. Barnes did not know it herself. Mona only realised that she was almost always cross, that nothing pleased her, that she never ran and fetched and carried, as she used to do, while Mona sat by the fire and read. It was granny who sat by the fire now. She did not read, ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... irritability became suddenly violent, and the muscles of his face contracted as if from ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... up with prosperity and success. But the contrary often happens; afflictions and public calamities naturally embittering and souring the minds and tempers of men, and disposing them to such peevishness and irritability, that hardly any word or sentiment of common vigor can be addressed to them, but they will be apt to take offense. He that remonstrates with them on their errors, is presumed to be insulting over their misfortunes, and any free spoken expostulation ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the dean, in the delivery of this sentence, a satirical acrimony, which his irritability as an author could ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... and silent for days after that, and even his clients detected an irritability in his manner which they had never seen before. "There was nothing ailed him," he said to Ethelyn, when she asked what was the matter, and accused him of being positively cross. She was very gay; Camden society suited her; and as the season advanced, and ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... power of the sun this day in a cloudless sky was so great, that Mr. Rae and I were glad to take shelter in the water while the crews were engaged on the portages. The irritability of the human frame is either greater in these Northern latitudes, or the sun, notwithstanding its obliquity, acts more powerfully upon it than near the Equator; for I have never felt its direct rays so oppressive ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... dismay, Thurston's eyes asked of all around an explanation of this strange and painful phenomenon; but none could tell him, except the doctor, who pronounced it the natural effect of the excessive nervous irritability attending her disease, and urged Mr. Willcoxen to keep away from her ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... pressure on the brain, the simple expedient of withdrawing the fluid by lumbar puncture brings about normal mental life. As the fluid again collects, the mental life becomes cloudy, and the character alters (irritability, depressed mood, changed purpose, lowered will); another lumbar puncture and presto!—the individual is for a time made over more completely than conversion ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... the hollow menacing sound, which grew louder every moment, Rose, who had all the irritability of a sensitive temperament, clung to her father's arm, saying, in a terrified whisper, "It is like the sound of the sea the night before the ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... back, all his debts paid, to live at home and be a comfort, or some friend was to give Walter a great living, or Clara was to come out, and to be presented in the summer. At the same time the fretful irritability of nerve and temper continued, and any unusual excitement, the talking a little longer in her room, a letter, or a little disappointment, would keep her awake all night. One thing, however, seemed certain, that Lionel's presence had some of the same power over her as her husband's; she was too much ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... irritable, like a spirited horse touched by the spur; though his original good-nature from time to time shone through it all. When the line had been brought to a successful completion, a very marked change in him became visible. The irritability passed away, and when difficulties and vexations arose they were treated by him as matters of course, and with ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... conviction generated no sense of superiority in Margaret—interfered in no degree with the reverence she entertained for Hester, a reverence rather enhanced than impaired by the tender compassion, with which she regarded her mental conflicts and sufferings. Every movement of irritability in herself (and she was conscious of many) alarmed and humbled her, but, at the same time, enabled her better to make allowance for her sister; and every harsh word and unreasonable mood of Hester's, by restoring her to her self-command ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... a man who's afraid even when he's passing everywhere as an American syndicate a cowardly custard," rejoined Madame, who appeared to be suffering under that peculiar form of flushed irritability which is apt to follow on heavy thought, indulged in to excess in a recumbent position during the daytime. "There, that's settled. So now let us get to business. Kindly hand me your prophecy of ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... he should 'be content with a sprig of rosemary' thrown on him when the parson of the parish commits his 'dust to dust.' The end of his now suffering existence was near at hand. Irritability, one of the unpitied accompaniments of weakness, seemed to compete with the gathering clouds of mental darkness as the last hour drew on. At intervals there were flashes of a wit that appeared at that solemn moment hardly natural, and that must ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... Christie took leave, and scandalized the sable retainer by smiling all through the hall, and laughing audibly as the door closed. The contrast of the plaid boy and beruffled girl's irritability with their mother's languid affectation, and her own unfortunate efforts, was too much for her. In the middle of her merriment she paused suddenly, saying ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... peaceful and silent night: thus she awoke next day calmer and more resigned. Unfortunately, the sight of Lady Lochleven, who presented herself at breakfast-time, to fulfil her duties as taster, brought back her irritability. Perhaps, however, things would have gone on smoothly if Lady Lochleven, instead of remaining standing by the sideboard, had withdrawn after having tasted the various dishes of the courses; but this insisting on remaining throughout ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... other respects they do not differ essentially from the oval ones, and in one specimen I found every possible transition between the two states. In another specimen there were no long-headed glands. These marginal tentacles lose their irritability earlier than the others; and when a stimulus is applied to the centre of the leaf, they are excited into action after the others. When cut-off leaves are immersed in water, they alone ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... 113 Fahr. The water of this spring possesses marked anodyne properties, which render it very valuable whenever the weakened state of the constitution or its irritability requires to be moderately excited. Of all the Vichy waters it contains the least carbonic acid without being more difficult of digestion, and as, on the other hand, it is the most mineralised, it can in many cases profitably replace ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... indefinitely household tempests, much less to perpetuate them upon himself by lasting bonds. In all this Emma Hart showed herself fully equal to the task. Tenderly affectionate to him, except when carried away by the fits of irritability which both he and Greville had occasion to observe, she complied readily with all his wishes, and followed out with extraordinary assiduity his plans for her improvement in education and in accomplishments. The society ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... beautiful pie," cried Mr. King, a hearty enthusiasm succeeding his irritability, "that ever was baked. I wish you'd make ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... and that all difficulties could be appreciated by the first petty tradesmen who encountered an incidental grievance or by such summary remedies as were to be suggested off-hand by anonymous correspondents. The levity, the ignorance, the hasty and superficial irritability of these reformers, their enormous conceit and imperturbable self-complacency revolted him. English life he declared in the 'Edinburgh Review' is 'too active, English spheres of action too wide, English freedom too deeply rooted, to be endangered ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... Mercedes ceased weeping over the dogs, being too occupied with weeping over herself and with quarrelling with her husband and brother. To quarrel was the one thing they were never too weary to do. Their irritability arose out of their misery, increased with it, doubled upon it, outdistanced it. The wonderful patience of the trail which comes to men who toil hard and suffer sore, and remain sweet of speech and kindly, did not come to these two men and the woman. They had no inkling ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... and unobtrusive attention in her power; and she would have tried to sooth and tranquilize her still more, had not Marianne entreated her, with all the eagerness of the most nervous irritability, not to speak to her for the world. In such circumstances, it was better for both that they should not be long together; and the restless state of Marianne's mind not only prevented her from remaining in the room a moment after she was dressed, but requiring at once solitude and continual ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... tyrant. With the passing years she became more intensely fashionable, more bigoted, more fond of admiration, more difficult to please. She had refused so many offers, while she had coquetted so much, that young men began to avoid her. This greatly increased her natural irritability; made her jealous of the success of every rising belle, censorious, ill natured in remark, and generally disagreeable. When Hiram Meeker first saw Miss Arabella Thorne in her pew at St. Jude's, the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... of pleasure, quick excitability, and consequent irritability, are the marked ingredients in every strong character; its strength must be employed against itself to produce any high ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... fragments of sleep out of his system, and became filled with a restless irritability. There was only one instrument in the house which could create this infernal din—the orchestrion in the drawing-room, immediately above which, he recalled, his room ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... to human senses. With the mining work over, an irritability grew upon Grantline's men. And perhaps since the human mind is so wonderful, elusive a thing, there lay upon these men an indefinable sense of impending disaster. Johnny Grantline felt it. He thought about it ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... girl he brought out from England with him," Colonel Colquhoun answered coarsely, staring hard at the girl as he spoke, and forgetting himself for once in his extreme irritability. "He ought not to bring her here, ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... Cicero's) full of pomp and continuous grandeur. On the contrary, as the necessity of rousing attention, or of sustaining it, obliged the Attic orator to rely too much on the personality of direct question to the audience, and to use brief sentences, so also the same impatient and fretful irritability forbade him to linger much upon an idea—to theorise, to speculate, or, generally, to quit the direct business path of the question then under consideration—no matter for what purpose of beauty, dignity, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... his spouse were, therefore, lost upon Nicholas Forster; and the impossibility of disturbing the equanimity of his temper increased the irritability of her own. Still Mr Nicholas Forster, when he did reflect upon the subject, which was but during momentary fits of recollection, could not help acknowledging that he should be much more quiet and happy when it pleased Heaven to summon Mrs Forster ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... nervously if you are obliged to repeat a remark to some one who did not understand you? I have known a home to be ruined by just such infinitesimal annoyances. It is a habit, like the drug or alcohol habit—this irritability. ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... and she is doing far too much. Dawson and I both think so." Perhaps he spoke with some degree of bluntness, for Mrs. Herrick responded with unusual irritability. ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... more learned than the other, and with a courage which far exceeds the other's, and with an impatience of nature, an irritability of mind, which the other seldom knew, is nevertheless patient of change. He does not lead as decisively as he might. He does not strike as often as he should at the head of error. Perhaps he is still thinking. Perhaps he has not yet made up his mind whether "Art is a Crime ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... third week. He spent the entire day away from her, toward midnight he returned, flushed with liquor. She had gone to bed. "Get up and dress," said he with an irritability toward her which she had no difficulty in seeing was really directed at himself. "I'm hungry—and thirsty. We're ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... great vigour his investigations on the Irritability of Plants. By making the plant tell its own story, by means of its self-made records, he showed that there is hardly any phenomenon of irritability observed in the animal which is not also found in the plant and that the various manifestations of irritability in the plant ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... not part with that excess of moisture from which a drier atmosphere would relieve them; and that living bodies, so circumstanced, are threatened with typhus and typhoid fever. It is highly probable, therefore, that narcotics, in such cases, may allay a morbid irritability of the nerves, or effect a salutary diminution of healthful sensibility; under such circumstances, the desiccating and sedative effects of tobacco-smoking may prove beneficial; while, in all ordinary states of the system and of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 490, Saturday, May 21, 1831 • Various
... himself, as well as to those that loved him. He was not ill, but his usual amount of strength—so small always—became much reduced; neither was he exactly irritable —his sweet temper never could sink into irritability; but he was, as Malcolm expressed it, "dour," difficult to please; easily fretted about trifles; inclined to take sad and cynical ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... hunger, the chemistry of the body produces the muscle-tension that is felt as a craving for food, so this recurring chemical stimulus produces a definite craving in body and mind. This craving brings about an increased irritability or sensitiveness to stimuli which may result either in a joyous ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... myths of plant life may be noticed that curious species of exotic plants, commonly known as "sensitive plants," and which have generally attracted considerable interest from their irritability when touched. Shelley has immortalised this curious freak of plant life in his charming poem, wherein ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... pride not a little." At this time he appeared in the eye of the world most amiable and commendable, outwardly moral, unwearied in application, and exhibited marks of no ordinary talent. One exception to this statement is to be found in an irritability of temper arising perhaps from the treatment he had received at school. On one occasion in sudden anger, he threw a knife at the head of another boy, which providentially missed him and was left trembling in the wall; but it was a narrow escape, and might ...
— Life of Henry Martyn, Missionary to India and Persia, 1781 to 1812 • Sarah J. Rhea
... of the flower. The nectar may be stored in variously shaped receptacles, with the stamens and pistils modified in many ways, sometimes forming trap-like contrivances, and sometimes capable of neatly adapted movements through irritability or elasticity. From such structures we may advance till we come to such a case of extraordinary adaptation as that lately described by Dr. Cruger in the Coryanthes. This orchid has part of its labellum or lower lip hollowed out into a great bucket, into which drops of almost pure water ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... smiles upon me, but they could not re-ignite the smothered flame in my bosom. Wine could only exhilarate for a moment, to be succeeded by a gnawing nausea. Cards could only excite while I lost, to be succeeded by irritability and disgust. ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... to take as much interest in the young man's progress and new spiritual experiences as if he alone were the one interested. His efforts to control his irritability and profanity were both odd and pathetic, and Haldane would sometimes hear him swearing softly to himself, with strange contortions of his wrinkled face, when in former times he would have vented his spite in the ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... frame of mind was thus a fundamental trait in Howe, private as well as public, personal as well as professional; not assumed for the moment, but constant in operation. He had none of the irritability attributed to genius, as also he gives no sign of its inspiration,—of originality. He is seen at his strongest in dealing stage by stage with difficult situations created for him, following step by step, and step by step checking, ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... Gymnadenia penetrating rostellum. I can, if you like, lend you these Reviews; but they must be returned. R. Brown, I remember, says pollen-tubes separate from grains before the lower ends of tubes reach ovules. I saw, and was interested by, abstract of your Drosera paper (637/2. A short note on the irritability of Drosera in the "Trans. Bot. Soc. Edin." Volume VII.); we have been at ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... time. It is both fighting-power and staying-power and strength to resist the mental infections which fear, discouragement, and fatigue bring with them, such as eagerness for any kind of peace if only it gives momentary relief, or the irritability that sees large the defects in one's own side until they seem more important than the need of defeating the enemy. And it is the perpetual ability ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... our plans, observed only his ready laugh, his joke intruded on all occasions, the flow of his spirits which seemed incapable of ebb. Besides, Perdita was with him in his retirement; she saw the moodiness that succeeded to this forced hilarity; she marked his disturbed sleep, his painful irritability—once she had seen his tears—hers had scarce ceased to flow, since she had beheld the big drops which disappointed pride had caused to gather in his eye, but which pride was unable to dispel. What wonder then, that her feelings were wrought to ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... this principle of excessive irritability to be seen at work in our more turbulent passions and pursuits, but even in the formal study of arts and sciences, the same thing takes place, and undermines the repose and happiness of life. The eagerness of pursuit overcomes ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... chose to be, a Titanic artist."[23] Only those who have striven for unity in a narrative can appreciate the tribute contained in these words. It was a struggle, too, for Carlyle. Fifty-six years old when he conceived the idea of Frederick, his nervousness and irritability were a constant torment to himself and his devoted wife. Many entries in his journal tell of his "dismal continual wrestle with Friedrich,"[24] perhaps the most characteristic of which is this: "My Frederick ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... and render the removal of the object more certain and less hazardous. Perforation of the esophagus by the foreign body, or by blind instrumentation, is a contraindication to esophagoscopy. It is manifested by such signs as subcutaneous emphysema, swelling of the neck, fever, irritability, increase in pulsatory and respiratory rates, and pain in the neck or chest. Gaseous emphysema is present in some cases, and denotes a dangerous infection. Esophagoscopy should be postponed and the treatment mentioned at the end of this chapter instituted. After the subsidence ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... himself, and always on the verge of a complete breakdown of mind and body. In 1851 he had an effusion of water on the left knee, which stopped his outdoor exercise, on which he had always largely depended. All the irritability of the system then centered in the head, resulting in intense pain and in a restless and devouring activity of thought. He himself says: "The whirl, the confusion, and strange, undefined tortures attending this condition are only to be conceived by one who has felt them." The ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... hand, and clutched a sheaf of brushes, while another brush was in his mouth, and luckily impeded a rather rough welcome. The look in a pair of keen blue eyes certainly seemed to resent the intrusion, but at the sight of Miss Greeby this irritability changed to a glance of suspicion. Lambert, from old associations, liked his visitor very well on the whole, but that feminine intuition, which all creative natures possess, warned him that it was wise to keep ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... of close confinement, we were permitted to exercise in the hall for four hours during the day, and were locked in for the rest of the time. The nervous irritability induced by this long and close confinement, sometimes showed itself in a manner which would have amused a man whose mind was in a healthy condition. Just as soon as we were permitted to leave our cells in the morning and meet in the hall, the most animated discussions, ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... bestowed upon him his wife. Mrs. Burke, like her father, was, up to the time of her marriage, a Catholic. Good judges belonging to her own sex describe her as gentle, quiet, soft in her manners, and well-bred. She had the qualities which best fitted and disposed her to soothe the vehemence and irritability of her companion. Though she afterwards conformed to the religion of her husband, it was no insignificant coincidence that in two of the dearest relations of his life the atmosphere of Catholicism was thus poured round the great preacher of the ...
— Burke • John Morley
... the Imperial family alone, who should have been the most satisfied, and certainly the most astonished by their greatness, wore an anxious, almost a grieved look. They alone appeared discontented with their master. Their pride knew no bounds; their irritability was extreme. Nothing seemed good enough, for them. In the way of honors privileges, and when we recall their father's modest at Ajaccio, it is hard to keep from smiling at the vanity of these new Princes of the blood. Of Napoleon's four brothers, two were absent and on bad terms ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... man turned away shamefaced. Still, the justice of his capture appealed to the German, trained in the soldier's school, for it was true that he had transgressed the law, and knowingly. That he should have yielded to the weakness aroused his irritability. ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... out at the brilliant flower-beds, and at the black shadow of the tall witch elm which grew on one side of the lawn. She wanted to ask a certain question of Sal, and did not know how to do it. The moodiness and irritability of Brian had troubled her very much of late, and, with the quick instinct of her sex, she ascribed it indirectly to the woman who had died in the back slum. Anxious to share his troubles and lighten his burden, ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... contumelious to a good man, when they are puffed up with prosperity and success. But the contrary often happens; afflictions and public calamities naturally embittering and souring the minds and tempers of men, and disposing them to such peevishness and irritability, that hardly any word or sentiment of common vigor can be addressed to them, but they will be apt to take offense. He that remonstrates with them on their errors, is presumed to be insulting over their ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... Beyond a loving nature, on which all the others rest, I know of nothing more essential than a serene temper. Let a woman be "mistress of herself, though china fall." The daily temptations to irritation are incessant, and irritability will destroy the comfort of any home, even if it is well warmed and lighted and furnished with easy-chairs and sofas, even if everybody is high minded and ready to take part in refined pleasures, and even if room is made in the family circle for ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... immediately sent for to C—— H——. The King, however, I know, was taken by surprise. * * * It is a most unfortunate circumstance, and involves us in very serious difficulties. He means to go abroad. It appears to me to be very doubtful, from the irritability of one great house, and the restlessness of a greater, whether ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... nothing; at others she anticipated Mr. Lyddell's bringing Elliot back, all his debts paid, to live at home and be a comfort, or some friend was to give Walter a great living, or Clara was to come out, and to be presented in the summer. At the same time the fretful irritability of nerve and temper continued, and any unusual excitement, the talking a little longer in her room, a letter, or a little disappointment, would keep her awake all night. One thing, however, seemed certain, that Lionel's presence had some of the same power over her as her husband's; she ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... husband's degradation even to his aunt. She did not want the family at Kingthorpe to know how low he had fallen. Mr. and Mrs. Jardine had been impressed by the change in him, and Bessie had harped upon his lost good looks, habitual irritability, and deteriorated manners; but neither had hinted at an inkling of the cause; and Ida hoped the hideous truth had been unsuspected by either. She decided, therefore, during those few minutes of meditation which she spent in ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... his no comfort, or rather, discomfort at home, and taking his refreshment by excising his sleep, soon pulled him down; so that, after a short illness, he died." On his death-bed, however, he forgave the weeping woman, who, more through physical irritability than wicked design, had caused him so much undeserved discomfort; and by his last will and testament he made liberal provision for her wants. Having made his will, "he said, I am glad it is done," runs the memoir of Sir John King, written ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... an excellent action, from his power of intensely feeling a situation, of intimately associating himself with a character; not from his gift of expression, which rather even leads him astray, degenerating sometimes into a fondness for curiosity of expression, into an irritability of fancy, which seems to make it impossible for him to say a thing plainly, even when the press of the action demands the very directest language, or its level character the very simplest. Mr. Hallam, than whom it is impossible to find a saner and more judicious critic, has had ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... of absence had expired, more than a fortnight before, Natasha had been in a constant state of alarm, depression, and irritability. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... into leber-wurst. They were putting through the job—with a fierce and terrifying gaiety; they exulted in their toughness, they called themselves "grizzlies" and "mountain cats" and what not; they sang wild songs about their irritability, their motto was "Treat 'em rough!" It was a scary atmosphere for a dreamer and utopian; Jimmie Higgins shrank into himself, afraid even to reach about for some fellow-Socialist with whom he might exchange opinions about the events of ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... This conviction generated no sense of superiority in Margaret—interfered in no degree with the reverence she entertained for Hester, a reverence rather enhanced than impaired by the tender compassion, with which she regarded her mental conflicts and sufferings. Every movement of irritability in herself (and she was conscious of many) alarmed and humbled her, but, at the same time, enabled her better to make allowance for her sister; and every harsh word and unreasonable mood of Hester's, by restoring her to her self-command and stimulating her magnanimity, made her sensible ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... from his noble name and high rank, had seemed to him to be things only to be used to amuse and give pleasure to the Earl of Dorincourt; and now that he was an old man, all this excitement and self-indulgence had only brought him ill health and irritability and a dislike of the world, which certainly disliked him. In spite of all his splendor, there was never a more unpopular old nobleman than the Earl of Dorincourt, and there could scarcely have been a more lonely one. He could fill his castle ...
— Little Lord Fauntleroy • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... instantly fell into spasms. In grief and dismay, Thurston's eyes asked of all around an explanation of this strange and painful phenomenon; but none could tell him, except the doctor, who pronounced it the natural effect of the excessive nervous irritability attending her disease, and urged Mr. Willcoxen to keep away from her chamber. ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... changed, as he has been in the last two years, I have never seen," replied Lionel. "None can have failed to remark it. From entire calmness of mind, he has exhibited anxious restlessness; I may say irritability. Mrs. Verner is ill," Lionel added, as they were ascending the stairs. "She has not been out of bed ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... tyrannical passions in a mind not naturally insensible or ungenerous; and to the last we should detect some remains of that open and noble temper which endeared him to a people whom he oppressed, struggling with the hardness of despotism and the irritability of disease. We should see Elizabeth in all her weakness and in all her strength, surrounded by the handsome favourites whom she never trusted, and the wise old statesmen whom she never dismissed, uniting in herself the most contradictory ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... servility to the capricious fancies of the princely boy. Desirous, however, of cherishing the generous spirit and playful humour of Henry, his tutor encouraged a freedom of jesting with him, which appears to have been carried at times to a degree of momentary irritability on the side of the tutor, by the keen humour of the boy. While the royal pupil held his master in equal reverence and affection, the gaiety of his temper sometimes twitched the equability or the gravity of the preceptor. When Newton, wishing to set an example to the prince in heroic ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... victims were made by a special pattern, like the tongue, of ends of nerves, all super-sensitive. The Nerves are a mysterious portion of their being, to whose account everything is laid, from extreme irritability and vexation, to nausea and rheumatism. "My nerves are that sensitive!" is a ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... of silent abstraction must have been a source of acute suffering to him. It is difficult to imagine a more terrible condition of mind than that in which the constant flogging of a tired brain is the only anodyne for its morbid irritability. ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... that state of nervous irritability which seeks relief in rapidity of motion. Public opinion in the neighborhood (especially public opinion among the women) had long since decided that his manners were offensive, and his temper incurably bad. The men who happened to pass ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... last fragments of sleep out of his system, and became filled with a restless irritability. There was only one instrument in the house which could create this infernal din—the orchestrion in the drawing-room, immediately above which, he recalled, ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... makes the nervous temperament a much more formidable difficulty—all the sensitive faculties are more sensitive—irritability becomes an obsession and idleness ...
— The Untroubled Mind • Herbert J. Hall
... He was kindly treated, but would not see it in the right view, and suspected slights, and so on, where no such thing was meant. There was a turn of Savage about Tom though without his blackguardism—a kind of waywardness of mind and irritability that must have made a man of his genius truly unhappy. Lord Minto, with the mildest manners, was very tenacious of his opinions, although he changed them twice in the crisis of politics. He was the early friend of Fox, and made ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... by strength of passion to endure indefinitely household tempests, much less to perpetuate them upon himself by lasting bonds. In all this Emma Hart showed herself fully equal to the task. Tenderly affectionate to him, except when carried away by the fits of irritability which both he and Greville had occasion to observe, she complied readily with all his wishes, and followed out with extraordinary assiduity his plans for her improvement in education and in accomplishments. The society which gathered round them was, of course, almost wholly of men, who one and ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... him out of this hell of loneliness, this conviction of impotence, this shame of achievementless maturity. He perceived that he had really known this for a long time, and that it was the meaning of the growing irritability which had of late changed his day in the laboratory from the rapt, swift office of the mind it used to be, to an interminable stretch of drudgery checkered with fits of rage at faulty apparatus, neurotic moods when he felt unable to perform fine movements, and ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... private recitation or reading of Coleridge's Christabel, written in the year of Scott's marriage, but not published till twenty years later, and more than ten after the appearance of the Lay. Coleridge seems to have regarded Scott's priority with an irritability less suitable to his philosophic than to his poetical character.[16] But he had, in the first place, only himself, if anybody, to blame; in the second, Scott more than made the loan his own property by the variations ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... as chemical—the ethereal part probably producing animal heat and other effects, and the ponderable part contributing to form carbonic acid and other products. The arterial blood is necessary to all the functions of life, and it is no less connected with the irritability of the muscles and the sensibility of the nerves than with the performance ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... in the air, beer mugs were grabbed and banged down, napkins took refuge under the table as if in fright, to be indiscriminately dirtied under foot. The gulped down food, meeting the oncoming throaty expressions of irritability, created much alimentary confusion. Gard almost trembled. Here he had been for weeks dwelling in a friendly society, in an intimate relationship, without any realization of what ugly thoughts were secretly leveled at ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... of his face were in motion; his long, ravenous nose was stirring, and in his voice rang notes of irritability and emotion. ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... faculties of the sensorium during their inactive state are termed irritability, sensibility, voluntarity, and associability; in their active state they are termed as ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... resolve not to lose his poise and agreeableness under any circumstances. Irritability never attracts business. To say the right thing in the right place is desirable, but it is quite as important, though more difficult, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... after a number of these discussions, in which Rechberg had displayed an even unusual warmth and irritability, I found myself opposed to him in a game, the interest of which had drawn around us a large assembly of spectators—what the French designate as la galerie. Towards the conclusion of the game it was my turn to lead, and I ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... inquiring, if no injuria can be proved. But the truth is, there was no animus injuriandi. It was only an animus irritandi[419], which, happening to be exercised upon a genus irritabile, produced unexpected violence of resentment. Their irritability arose only from an opinion of their own importance, and their delight in their new exaltation. What might have been borne by a Procurator could not be borne by a Solicitor. Your Lordships well know, that honores ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... kidneys. Dr. Hall has made a large number of personal experiments, and says that when he has taken large doses of purin bodies—such as 7 grains of hypoxanthin, 15 to 77 grains of guanin or 7 to 15 grains of uric acid, apparently associated symptoms of general malaise and irritability have frequently appeared. In gouty subjects such moderate or small quantities of purins which are without effect on the healthy subject, may prove a source of irritation to the ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan
... for several months past, she had watched the prince growing more and more unhappy. He was less nervous than he used to be, less excitable; and for that he had told her the credit was due to herself. "You soothe me," he had once said to her, in words she would always treasure; and yet as his irritability decreased his unhappiness seemed to grow. She could only infer that he was mourning over the girl to whom he was engaged, and on whom he had inflicted a great wrong. For the last few weeks Letty's mind had occupied itself with her almost more than ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... and especially of boys, was quite remarkable. He could enter into their feelings far better than he could into those of grown men, and the irritability which he could scarcely suppress even among his friends was never displayed towards them. He was always at their service, anxious to amuse them, and to minister to their rather selfish whims. Some accidental remark led ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... there are few things in the world that can compete with the final rehearsals of an amateur theatrical performance at a country house. Every day the atmosphere becomes more and more heavily charged with restlessness and irritability. The producer of the piece, especially if he is also the author of it, develops a sort of intermittent insanity. He plucks at his mustache, if he has one; at his hair, if he has not. He mutters to himself. He gives vent ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... in a good humor or happy mood. The slight spurt of peevish susceptibility which had escaped him in their first interview was a symptom of a perpetually recurring mental ailment, half of it nervous irritability, half of it the heart-bitterness produced by the sense of his deformity. In these fits of susceptibility every glance seemed to him to be charged either with offensive pity or with ill-repressed disgust; ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... to make of Margaret, and I wish you would come down and see her. The good-humour which I have noticed in her of late has given way to a curious irritability. She is so restless that she cannot keep still for a moment. Even when she is sitting down her body moves in a manner that is almost convulsive. I am beginning to think that the strain from which she suffered ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... knew was that during the last two weeks a subtle change had taken place in Kirk. He was less genial, more prone to irritability than of old. He had developed fits of absent-mindedness, and was frequently to be found staring pensively at nothing. To slap him on the back at such moments, as Wren ventured to do on one occasion, Wren belonging to the jovial ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... the sun this day in a cloudless sky was so great, that Mr. Rae and I were glad to take shelter in the water while the crews were engaged on the portages. The irritability of the human frame is either greater in these Northern latitudes, or the sun, notwithstanding its obliquity, acts more powerfully upon it than near the Equator; for I have never felt its direct rays so oppressive within the Tropics as I have experienced ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... others—he became aware, through some subtle channel of sensation, that somebody was standing in the door-way. He was lying in such a position that he could not see the door, so, after waiting a few moments, he exclaimed, with an invalid's irritability: ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... no one to help me, no money to buy books or to pay the expenses of my medical training; I had not a friend; my irascible, touchy, restless temper was against me. No one understood that this irritability was the distress and toil of a man who, at the bottom of the social scale, is struggling to reach the surface. Still, I had, as I may say to you, before whom I need wear no draperies, I had that ground-bed of good feeling and keen sensitiveness ...
— The Atheist's Mass • Honore de Balzac
... apex. In other respects they do not differ essentially from the oval ones, and in one specimen I found every possible transition between the two states. In another specimen there were no long-headed glands. These marginal tentacles lose their irritability earlier than the others; and when a stimulus is applied to the centre of the leaf, they are excited into action after the others. When cut-off leaves are immersed in water, ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... knowledge. From the scanty field of what is known, he launches into the boundless region of what is unknown. He establishes for his guide some fanciful theory of corpuscular attraction, of chemical agency, of mechanical powers, of stimuli, of irritability accumulated or exhausted, of depletion by the lancet, and repletion by mercury, or some other ingenious dream, which lets him into all nature's secrets at short hand. On the principle which he thus assumes, he forms his table of nosology, arrays his diseases into families, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Morel came in. He had been very jolly in the Nelson, but coming home had grown irritable. He had not quite got over the feeling of irritability and pain, after having slept on the ground when he was so hot; and a bad conscience afflicted him as he neared the house. He did not know he was angry. But when the garden gate resisted his attempts to open it, ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... influential of the Canadian clergy. When he came to the colony, their power in the government was still enormous, and even the most devout of his predecessors had been forced into conflict with them to defend the civil authority; but, when Frontenac entered the strife, he brought into it an irritability, a jealous and exacting vanity, a love of rule, and a passion for having his own way, even in trifles, which made him the most exasperating of adversaries. Hence it was that many of the clerical party felt towards him a bitterness that was ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... on the morning of the next day, presented themselves at the gates of the city. The thorough knowledge which Iskander possessed of the Turkish character obtained them an entrance, which was at one time almost doubtful, from the irritability and impatience of Nicaeus. They repaired to a caravansera of good repute in the neighbourhood of the seraglio; and having engaged their rooms, the Armenian physician, attended by his page, visited several of the neighbouring coffee-houses, announcing, at the ...
— The Rise of Iskander • Benjamin Disraeli
... ill-temper is irritability.—We perhaps know what it is to have a tooth where the nerve is exposed. Everything that touches it sends a thrill of pain through us. Some people get into a moral state corresponding to that. The least thing puts them out, vexes them, throws them ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... between his hands, leaning upon the table. He would have been stupidly quiescent in his feeling of loathing and sickness had not an intense irritability in all his nerves tormented ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... the digestibility of Celery is increased by its maceration in vinegar. As taken at table, Celery possesses certain qualities which tend to soothe nervous irritability, and to relieve sick headaches. "This herb Celery [Sellery] is for its high and grateful taste," says John Evelyn, in his Acetaria, "ever placed in the middle of the grand sallet at our great men's tables, ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... manifestation of normal mentality. From this point of view his mental deformity seems not unlike that of Cavendish's, later, except that in the case of Cavendish it manifested itself as an abnormal sensitiveness instead of an abnormal irritability. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... 'two men and a dog'; that will take her mind off your father." It must be confessed that Dr. Lavendar was out of temper—a sad fault in one of his age, as Mrs. Drayton often said; but his irritability was so marked that Cyrus finally slunk off, uncomforted, and afraid to meet Gussie's eye, even under its bandage of a ...
— An Encore • Margaret Deland
... in their natural state fall on the surface of the earth, and having absorbed some moisture the root shoots itself downwards into the earth and the plume rises in air. Thus each endeavouring to seek its proper pabulum directed by a vegetable irritability similar to that of the lacteal system and to the lungs ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... "I am sure it has. But let me finish what I was going to say. I want you to make a distinction for yourself, which I make for you, between mere ill-temper, and the irritability that is the result of a goaded state of the nerves. Until you do that, nothing can be done to relieve you from what I am sure, distresses and grieves you exceedingly. Now, I suppose that whenever you speak to me or the children in this irritated way you lose your own self-respect, for the time, ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... that they took the matter lightly. But they were not smiling; they met his glance with expressions of uniform gravity. To torment a nervous horse is something which does not fit with the ways of the men of the mountain desert, even at their roughest. Besides, there was an edgy irritability about Slim Dugan which had more than once won him black looks. They wanted to see him tested now by a foeman who seemed worthy of his mettle. And Slim saw that common desire in his flickering side glance. He turned a cold ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... Spleen, irritability—the pitiable infirmities of old men, which produce only pain to behold in the realities, counterfeited upon a stage, divert not altogether for the comic appendages to them, but in part from an inner conviction that they are being acted before ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... of healing. Gradually an inner peace and tranquillity came to me in so positive a way that my manner changed greatly. My children and friends noticed the change and commented upon it. All feelings of irritability disappeared. Even the expression of ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... more words Christie took leave, and scandalized the sable retainer by smiling all through the hall, and laughing audibly as the door closed. The contrast of the plaid boy and beruffled girl's irritability with their mother's languid affectation, and her own unfortunate efforts, was too much for her. In the middle of her merriment she paused ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... appetite. One would never have thought so, judging from appearance: his clever, clean-cut face, his small, thin figure, together with the little hand-bag he always carried, rather suggested a lawyer or a clergyman. His eccentricity was a combination of absent-mindedness and irritability. The latter failing, he told me, would at times take complete control of him: for instance, he had to leave a train before his journey was completed, as he felt it impossible to sit in the carriage and look at the alarm bell without pulling it. I have watched him seated in the ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... methodical; the strictest order was observed throughout his establishment; the hours of dinner, of writing, of amusement, were allotted, and the slightest derangement in his own apartment excited a morbid irritability which would interrupt his studies ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... he disliked Otto's little fopperies and eccentricities quite as much as he had ever done in college days; his finicky dress, his foreign ways in eating, his tendency to boast about his music, his country, and his forebears, on his good days, balanced by a brooding irritability on his bad days. And he was conscious that his own ways and customs were no less teasing to Radowitz; his Tory habits of thought, his British contempt for vague sentimentalisms and heroics, for all that panache means to the Frenchman, ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... well formed, well led, went through without trouble—indeed, with real pleasure. Nevertheless the overwhelming testimony is on the other side. Probably this was due in large part to the irritability that always seizes the mind of the tenderfoot when he is confronted by wilderness conditions. A man who is a perfectly normal and agreeable citizen in his own environment becomes a suspicious half-lunatic ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... admitted that he was exceedingly weary with the comments made concerning the fit of the issue uniform that he was compelled to wear. Every man professed innocence, but Larkin did not believe a word of their stout denials. The manner in which he took the joke was evidence of the irritability caused by the days of inaction. Every member of the squadron was looking for something ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... concentrated on subtle interpretations, agreement was impossible. Natural life, denied and set aside at every point, gave place to the unnatural, and every colonist was, quite unconsciously, in a state of constant nervous tension and irritability. The questions that to us seem of even startling triviality, were discussed with a fervor and earnestness it is well nigh impossible to comprehend. They were a slight advance on the scholastic disputations of the preceding century, but they meant disagreement ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... conventional matters, and was as self-distinct in his penmanship as he probably was in his life and thoughts. Anyway, there was an undeniable, an extraordinary similarity, and even Mr. Portlethorpe had to admit that it was—undoubtedly—there. He threw off his impatience and irritability, and became ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... combined votes of the Stalwarts would be sufficient to re-elect them. This would liberate him from a promise and strengthen both with a legislative endorsement. It was neither an intrepid nor an exalted proposition, but Conkling accepted it. Perhaps his nature required a relief from its high-strung irritability in some sort of violence, and resignation backed by the assurance that he would soon be restored to office and to greater power on the shoulders of the party offered the seductive form which ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... artist. This time of suffering throws fresh light upon his character. I have said that sweetness and gentleness were not its only constituents; that he was also fiery and strong. At the time now referred to, his fire was low and his strength distilled away; but the residue of his life was neither irritability nor discontent. He was unfit to mingle in society, for conversation was a pain to him; but let us observe the great Man-child when alone. He is at the village of Interlaken, enjoying Jungfrau sunsets, and at times watching the Swiss nailers making their nails. He ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... at the enormous result of her few minutes' irritability. Such outbursts were not common with her. There was a catch in her voice as ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... your disease. I pride myself on diagnostics. Your wrist, madam, if you please," said the doctor, proceeding to feel the pulse of his patient, with an air intended for a very professional one. "Tense—frequent—this pulse of yours, madam; showing great irritability. Your tongue, now. Ay—rubric—dry and streaked; usual prognostics of neuralgy. Pretty much made up my mind about your complaint coming along, madam, having learned from your lad here something of your troubles and fright ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... specialists. Were these moral means applicable to the case of Thomas Roch? One may be permitted to doubt it, even amid the tranquil and salubrious surroundings of Healthful House. As a matter of fact the very symptoms of uneasiness, changes of temper, irritability, queer traits of character, melancholy, apathy, and a repugnance for serious occupations were distinctly apparent; no treatment seemed capable of curing or even alleviating these symptoms. This was patent to ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... accumulate either in the blood or tissues, or both. In consequence of this retention and accumulation they become poisonous, and rapidly produce a derangement of the vital functions. Their influence is principally exerted upon the nervous system, through which they produce most frequent irritability, disturbance of the special senses, delirium, ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... Navy was spent upon the Malabar Coast, where the disease is endemic. There can be do doubt that it has been latent in his system ever since, and that the irritability of temper and indecision of character, of which his family have so often had to complain, were really among the ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... fellow he had once been; on the other, there was the test as to whether this could be done without loss of hope in the face of repeated and almost continuous failure, and without the exhibition of irritability or loss of temper when provocations arose at first a score of ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... Danish poet, travelled a good deal, wrote mostly in German, in which he was quite at home; his chief works, a pastoral epic, "Parthenais oder die Alpenreise," and a mock epic, "Adam and Eve"; his minor pieces are numerous and popular, though from his egotism and irritability he ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... pressing question related to her own and infant son's subsistence. An elderly man of the name of Tomlins was engaged as foreman; and it was hoped the business might still be carried on with sufficient profit. Mr Renshawe's manner, though at times indicative of considerable nervous irritability, was kind and respectful to the young widow; and I began to hope that the delusion he had for awhile laboured under had ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... diagnosis where the mental variation is only a distant effect of a bodily ailment. The changes in the emotions, for instance, may lead to the recognition of a heart disease; lack of attention may be a hint of the overgrowth of the adenoids; irritability or apathy or delirious character of the mental behavior may indicate whether uraemic acid is in the system or an infectious disease: anaemia and undernutrition may be diagnosed and the psychology of fever demands too a much closer analysis ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... divisions of soul-activity, which are to be met with in the single-celled organism,—the phenomena of irritability, sensation, and motion,—can be shown to exist in all multicellular organisms as functions of the cells of which their bodies are composed. In the lowest Metazoa, the invertebrate sponges and polyps, there are, just as in plants, no special soul-organs developed, and all the ...
— Monism as Connecting Religion and Science • Ernst Haeckel
... traits in an aviator are impatience and irritability. A man who has these temperamental drawbacks in a form which is strongly marked, and who cannot control them, should not think of becoming an aviator. The man who is impatient and irritable finds himself out ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... very good husbands are wont to unload their irritability on their wives, so Jean was inclined to favor Mlle. Fouchette. And as doting wives who voluntarily constitute themselves drudges soon become fixed in that lowly position, so Mlle. Fouchette naturally became the servant of the ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... in the morning and go to bed at a fixed time at night. Their clothing should be loose, and not too tight fitting, and should at all times correspond to the state of the weather. Nothing is more common, and nothing produces irritability, loss of sleep, and even serious general disturbances in infants, more frequently than too much clothing. It is generally customary to use from the time of birth and during the period of infancy a flannel band around the child's abdomen. Just how this acts is not clear, but there ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... a patient man. His Celtic nature still retained all its native irritability, and his foreman, Jim Thorpe, had ample demonstration of it. He had spent several uncomfortable half hours that day with his employer. He was responsible for the working of the ranch. It was his to see that everything ran smoothly, and though the depredations of ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... one successful pupil, and he was destined to have no successor. A few weeks later an elephant in the Dresden Zoological Garden, which had shown no previous signs of irritability, broke loose and killed an Englishman who had apparently been teasing it. The victim's name was variously reported in the papers as Oppin and Eppelin, but his front name was faithfully ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... has turned traitor to the soul, and played the adversary with fearful power. Who can tell the countless temptations to evil which flow in from a neglected, disordered, deranged nervous system,—temptations to anger, to irritability, to selfishness, to every kind of sin of appetite and passion? No wonder that the poor soul longs for the hour of release from ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... impatient and irritable, like a spirited horse touched by the spur; though his original good-nature from time to time shone through it all. When the line had been brought to a successful completion, a very marked change in him became visible. The irritability passed away, and when difficulties and vexations arose they were treated by him as matters of course, and with perfect ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... inability to suppress attention; the hater of clocks and crowing cocks is a neurasthenic." The disease is especially common in the women players of the social game, and its unhappy victims too often seek relief from the nervous irritability which is a common early symptom in still greater nervous excitement. It is a sad commentary on our civilization that one of the means of treatment for these persons which has been found efficacious is to supply them with some restful household occupation such as knitting or plain sewing, ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... found it unbearable. He wasn't used to keeping the curb on himself like this, and he hadn't the least intention of learning how to do it. A fierce, physical irritability overcame him, and he stopped short in the hall, just because he could not stand the silly chatter that was always flowing from these silly people about their foolish affairs. If they only knew ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
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