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More "Irritable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pleasure, though the wealth of glowing autumn geraniums and verbenas had given place to the few frosted winter chrysanthemums. It was but the middle of the day, and he had risen and had his cup of tea laced with brandy and crowned with brandy, so that the jaded man was comparatively fresh, but irritable to the last nerve, each jarring nerve twanging like harpstrings, sending electric thrills of vexation and rage over his whole body at the ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... occurrence: the rivalry of interest disturbs their continuance; a rivalry greater, where the subject of competition is one so vague, impalpable and fluctuating, as the favour of the public; where the feeling to be gratified is one so nearly allied to vanity, the most irritable, arid and selfish feeling of the human heart. Had Goethe's prime motive been the love of fame, he must have viewed with repugnance, not the misdirection but the talents of the rising genius, advancing with ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... been the "genus irritabile"—the irritable tribe. They not only see deeply, but feel acutely. Often they are too highly sensitized for their own happiness. If they receive a pleasure more exquisite than ours from a flower, a glimpse of the sea, a gracious action, they are correspondingly ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... faded rapidly from the sky and the bewildered girl returned to her own affairs, which were puzzling enough. Of late she had found herself unable to maintain her enthusiasm. She found herself increasingly irritable—from her standpoint the one thing most to be despised in others and which she had supposed most impossible in herself. There were so many unforeseen possibilities within herself that she devoted her ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... she then begin what might perhaps, at the end of half an hour, be termed, by the courtesy of her hearers, an explanation; but scarcely, within that time, could they at all discover the cause, or collect the particulars, of her sudden return. They were far from being an irritable race; far from any quickness in catching, or bitterness in resenting, affronts: but here, when the whole was unfolded, was an insult not to be overlooked, nor, for the first half hour, to be easily pardoned. Without suffering any romantic alarm, in the consideration of their daughter's ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... when we saw Donald and Dorothy perched on the sofa, Mr. Reed had been remarkably changeful, and they had been puzzled and grieved by his manner toward Dorothy. He had been kind and irritable by turns, and finally, for some unaccountable reason, had sharply requested her to leave him, to "go away for mercy's sake," and then she had been recalled on some slight pretext, and treated with extra kindness, only to be wounded ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... house again; and Ester began to think that it couldn't be so very hard to have loving hands ministering to one's simplest want, to be cared for, and watched over, and petted every hour in the day. She was returning to her impatient, irritable life. She forgot how high the fever had been at night, and how the young head had ached; and only remembered how thoroughly tired she was, watching and ministering day and night. So, when she followed Dr. Van Anden to the sitting-room, in answer ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... Barrows continued their conversation about lawn tennis and riding, as if Ted were not there, but the lieutenant observed that Miss Croffut's eyes strayed often toward Ted, and it made him irritable. ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... of animals, which distinguished them from each other, he supposes to have been gradually formed by these same irritable fibres, and to have been varied by reproduction. As to the faculties of sensation, volition, and association, they come in afterwards as matters of course, and in a manner so easy and natural, that the only wonder is, what had ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... to the skin, and even on a scorching day in August that is anything but a pleasant sensation. Then, too, the way was rough, and the briers and brambles along the path scratched their hands and tore at their clothing. Ordinarily all these petty annoyances would have tended toward making them irritable and cross, but on this day all such trifles passed over their heads unnoticed. For had they not between them done a marvelous thing? To save one life—to have brought back from eternity one little soul—was there not joy enough in that to last them all their days? The girls thought ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... was thinking. Believing that the men were seeking her only, she knew that their intention would be directed from her companion when it was found out he was no longer with her, and she dreaded to meet them in his irritable presence. ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... sorry, either, to try its efficacy, after all the marvellous stories I had heard. The first time I inhaled it, I did not for several seconds feel the effect, and was just thinking, "Alas! this has not power to soothe nerves so irritable as mine," when suddenly I wandered off, I don't know where, but it was a sensation like wandering in long garden-walks, and through many alleys of trees,—many impressions, but all pleasant and serene. The moment the tube ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... with contempt and pride, with harshness and barbarity towards all others whom he may deem obnoxious to the resentment of his Heavenly King. Those men, whose folly leads them to view the Deity in the light of a capricious, irritable, and unappeasable despot, can be nothing but gloomy and trembling slaves, ever eager to anticipate the vengeance of God upon all whose conduct or opinions they may conceive likely to provoke the celestial wrath. As soon as the priests have succeeded in reducing men to a state ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... elements of culture, he had only just begun to realise the fact that men labour for their daily bread. Was it the peculiar intensity of his egoism that so long blinded him to common anxieties? Even as the last coins slipped between his fingers, he knew only a vaguely irritable apprehension. Did he imagine the world would beg for the honour of feeding and clothing ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... consumption. To my daughter Mary I bequeath my sallow complexion and torpid liver, which are the result of my gross living; also my melancholy disposition and tendency to look on the dark side of life. To my son Samuel I give my love for alcoholic liquors and my irritable disposition; to my daughter Jane my coarseness of thought and my unwillingness to be restrained in my desires, and also my tendency to ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... with Nature, and his Archimedean endeavours to move the globe with his own hands [an allusion to the motto appended to Queen Mab]. I am bound to state thus much; because, hopeless of recovering his health, under circumstances that made the feeling extremely bitter, an irritable morbidity appears even to have driven his suspicions to excess; and this not only with regard to the acquaintance whom he might reasonably suppose to have had some advantages over him, but to myself, ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... hostess. He now rose, drank off his glass of wine, and with a significant wink promised to bring the Chevalier back, not perhaps to-morrow or the day after, but in any case in good order and condition. Casanova, however, had suddenly grown distrait and irritable. So cold was his farewell to the fond hostess that, at the carriage door, she whispered a parting word in his ear which was anything ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... whatever I chose to tell him, God bless him!" Hugh could be hard and unyielding on occasions, but he was wholly incapable of being suspicious, jealous, malicious, or spiteful. He made friends once with a man of morbid, irritable, and resentful tendencies, who had continued, all his life, to make friends by his brilliance and to lose them by his sharp, fierce, and contemptuous animosities. This man eventually broke with him altogether, and did his best by a series of ingenious ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the prisoner, and of displaying skill had been manifested, and the Bounding Boy was immediately led from the arena, and was warmly rebuked for his intemperate haste, which had come so near defeating all the hopes of the band. To this irritable person succeeded several other young warriors, who not only hurled the tomahawk, but who cast the knife, a far more dangerous experiment, with reckless indifference; yet they always manifested a skill that prevented any injury to the captive. ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... you must not say that. Come and shake hands, Jack, and make it up. I do feel irritable—I don't know what's the matter with me. Remember, Mr. Keller doesn't like your joining in the talk at dinner-time—he thinks it is taking a liberty. That was one reason why I stopped you. And you might have said something to offend Madame Fontaine—that was another. It will not be long before ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... postpone Prince Rupert's departure to the African coast. VanGogh reported the cry that was heard everywhere in London, "Guinea is lost. What now is it possible to do with the Dutch."[131] The Dutch ambassador, who did not cease to haunt the king's chambers over Holmes' seizures, found Charles II irritable and greatly displeased with affairs. When questioned as to whether he would punish Holmes, the king declared that Holmes did not need to fear punishment at home since the Dutch had evidently sent forces to do ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... anywhere, even in a room hitherto untenanted, and to drag thither his greatcoat and other impedimenta, for that room at once to assume an air of having been lived in during the past ten years. Nevertheless, though a fastidious, and even an irritable, man, Chichikov would merely frown when his nose caught this smell amid the freshness of the morning, and exclaim with a toss of his head: "The devil only knows what is up with you! Surely you sweat a good deal, do you not? The best thing you can do is to go and take a ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... depths of my consciousness there was a sensible stir of resentment. The artificial being I had created during my thirty-two years of life had an existence of its own and protested against this threat of instant annihilation. I wanted to defend myself, and I was petulantly irritable because I could ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... and irritable. Sailors are simple-minded men, as a rule; their mental processes are elemental. They began to mutter that the devil-ship of the Turner line ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... superintend them personally. She also spent quite a time in looking after her orchard, where she had planted apple trees, pear trees, etc. Another thing which I began to notice was that when the spring and summer days had passed, she got quite irritable and sad, while in the winter she was simply unbearable. She ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling
... housework. A wife in full sympathy with his work, who coddled him and made him think that everything he wrote was perfect, would never have done at all, nor would a selfish, extravagant, or society-mad woman. Father was temperamental, moody, irritable, easily influenced, easily led, suffering at times with attacks of melancholy, with but one fixed purpose, and that was to write. Mother was economical, thrifty, material, suspicious of people, determined to bring their ship to a snug harbour before old age, and she took ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... irritable, Ned," I then told the harpooner, "and don't ruin things for us with pointless violence. Who knows whether they might be listening to us? Instead, let's try to find out ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... distressed, and becomes the fool of everybody not endowed with precisely the same kind of magnanimity, which for himself he is determined that he will have. To be his friend is the undertaking of all undertakings; for he is so irritable, one need only cough or eat with one's knife, or even pick one's teeth, to offend ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... of the predestined whose ill-fortune is almost certain, we mean restless and irritable men, who are inclined to meddle and tyrannize, who have a great idea of domestic domination, who openly express their low ideas of women and who know no more about life than herrings about natural history. ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... worship of all women to-day and to which Leo subscribes. Man is a lazy, loafing savage. He dislikes to be pestered. He likes tranquillity, repose. And he finds himself, ever since man began, saddled to a restless, nervous, irritable, hysterical traveling companion, and her name is woman. She has moods, tears, vanities, angers, and moral irresponsibilities. He couldn't destroy her. He had to have her, although she was always spoiling his peace. What ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... be at least as tiresome as to walk forwards and be shot at in a city which now held little for him but danger and ennui. Not even Manuela's fortunes could prevail against boredom. As he lay upon his hateful bed, disgust with Spain grew upon him hand over hand. He became irritable. To Gil Perez he announced his determination. This sort of ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... war, was bombarded with complaints and bickerings of the officers under him; they seemed to revel in annoying one famed for being of the irritable genus. Once he showed his principal a letter written in answer to a general who had abused him and accused him of favoritism. Lincoln listened with his quizzing air, and ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... procure an animal that will yield the greatest pecuniary return in the shortest time; or, in other words, soonest convert grass and turnips into good mutton and fine fleece. All sheep will not do this alike; some, like men, are so restless and irritable, that no system of feeding, however good, will develop their frames or make them fat. The system adopted by the breeder to obtain a valuable animal for the butcher, is to enlarge the capacity and functions of the digestive organs, and reduce those of the head and chest, or the mental and respiratory ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... merely remarking, "Very well, bring him in, though I caution you against Sir Philip. He is old and irritable," led the way through the wide hall into a sitting-room beyond, where a wood fire was burning on the hearth, and the furnishings were of the sort in vogue a hundred years ago. Even the disturbed young ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... now and then I have seen Hamilton a little stern with his sisters; he is rather irritable by nature. I don't quite understand things myself, but I have got it into my head that they would be happier without Miss Darrell; she is a splendid manager, but it puts Miss Hamilton out of her ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... king's youngest sister, was married in her sixteenth year to Christian VII., king of Denmark. This monarch was addicted to licentious and degrading pleasures, and was a prince of weak intellect, irritable and capricious, open to flattery, and easily deceived by the crafty. Soon after his marriage he visited England, France, and Germany, where he might, if he had possessed intellect, have obtained such knowledge as would have ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... be irritable, revengeful, and implacable; but gay and volatile, passionately addicted to dancing and the jeu de paume, which he never abandons till compelled by positive infirmity. He is very adventurous, and fond of excitement; it is not, therefore, singular that he should be a hardy smuggler, so cunning and ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... giant scale, I can tell you it's not much. I did try to hook on, once or twice, years ago—to find out something about the business that my father spent his life in helping to build up, but it always ended in my being shooed out of the office by a rather irritable manager who knew I knew nothing about any of it, and who evidently hated above everything else, having amateur directors come horning in on what was no party of theirs. 'If they get their dividends all right, what more do they want?' was his motto. I never was able ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... of what his father had often sought to impress upon his mind,—that the favour of princes was capricious, and that a life of dependence at a court was of all others the most unsatisfactory. Constitutionally disposed to melancholy, irritable and sensitive to the last degree, he brooded over the fancied wrongs and slights which he had received; and at first he was disposed to accept the advice of his father's friend, the well-known Sperone, who strongly dissuaded him from going to the ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... hadn't been such a fool as to keep it to myself. Here it has been worrying my very life out for months, and made me as irritable as a wasp. You are a good fellow, Dick! But, honour bright, I ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... Agustin's statements, sometimes very sharply; the latter often supports them, but sometimes he finds them in contradiction to what he himself has observed. Fray Gaspar's letter impresses the reader, at first, as being the complaint of an irritable and querulous old man (he wrote it at the age of seventy); but another cause for his mental attitude may be found toward the end of his letter, where he argues against the proposed ordination of Filipino natives as priests—a plan which aroused great ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... for weather to be worse than it had been the day before, it was worse this day—wetter, muddier, colder. There were more errands to be done, the cook was more irritable, and, knowing that Sara was in disgrace, she was more savage. But what does anything matter when one's Magic has just proved itself one's friend. Sara's supper of the night before had given her strength, she knew that she should ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... over Legree the kind of influence that a strong, impassioned woman can ever keep over the most brutal man; but, of late, she had grown more and more irritable and restless, under the hideous yoke of her servitude, and her irritability, at times, broke out into raving insanity; and this liability made her a sort of object of dread to Legree, who had that superstitious horror of insane ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... behaved like a primitive rather than a member of one of the oldest human civilizations in the galaxy. He wouldn't bark at a dog that way. He shook his head. Probably he was tired. Certainly he was irritable, and unclad females virtually indistinguishable from human weren't the most soothing objects ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... very unusual case. But nothing is more common than for a child to destroy his own peace, and to make his brothers and sisters continually unhappy by indulging in a peevish and irritable spirit. Nothing is more common than for a child to cherish this disposition until he becomes a man, and then, by his peevishness and fault- finding, he destroys the happiness of all who are near him. His home is the scene of discord. His ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott
... kind of dysentery which does not seem to affect a whole colony, but confines its ravages to a small number of the bees. In the early stages of this disease, those attacked are excessively irritable, and will attempt to sting any one who comes near the hives. If dissected, their stomachs are found to be already discolored by the disease. In the latter stages of this complaint, they not only lose all their irascibility, but seem very stupid, ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... to Annecy led us past gorges and over high precipices and among noble mountains, but my mind was no longer in a condition to receive or retain strong impressions of natural beauty. I was irritable and "out of myself," vainly wishing back the days when the Boy and I, undisturbed by feminine society, had travelled tranquilly, side by side, giving ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... special-school work that women who are not particularly patient would find themselves definitely unfit for it. Indeed, although patience and the hopeful spirit do not figure on the list of qualifications demanded of candidates, they might well head it, for most certainly an irritable or despondent woman could not find any work for which she was more unsuited, or in which she was more likely to be miserable ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... wrong. The wise-headed grey mare loped out to meet him and threw a course of circles around him as he came slowly forward. Plainly she expected him to do something, but what this might be Alcatraz could not tell. Besides, a growing thirst was making him irritable and the insistence of the grey mare made him wish to fasten his teeth over the back of her neck and shake her ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... the bank, several persons are having their skates put on; practised Skaters being irritable and impatient, and others curiously the reverse, at any delay in ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 10, 1891 • Various
... kind; he adds,—"If this be applied to the inhabitants of Africa, it is evident that the men there, accustomed to polygamy, are enervated by the use of so many women, and therefore less vigorous; the women on the contrary, are of a hotter constitution, not only on account of their more irritable nerves, more sensitive organization, and more lively fancy; but likewise because they are deprived in their matrimony of that share of physical love which in a monogamous condition, would all be theirs; and thus for ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... her eyes away from him; they rested upon his little drawing. "I must go to England," she said, with a full consciousness that her tone might strike an irritable man of taste ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... of—but it is better not to mention the department. There is nothing more irritable than departments, regiments, courts of justice, and, in a word, every branch of public service. Each individual attached to them nowadays thinks all society insulted in his person. Quite recently a complaint was received from ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... have friends. I lie to them, and they find me out. I borrow money from them and don't pay it back, and then I'm afraid to face them. I make fools of them in public; I'm irritable with them." ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... power to dispel it. As he moved along beside his dogs he would shoot swift, fearful glances at the heights above, or back over the trail, or on ahead to some deep, dark gorge they might be approaching. He grew irritable. The darkness of the woods would sometimes hold his attention for hours, while the expression of his eyes would tell of the strange thoughts passing behind them. And Ralph, though more unemotional than his brother, was scarcely less affected. It was startling in such ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... once well known in the prosecutions directed against Radicals and so-called Reformers, but Pickwick has given him a greater reputation. The baiting he received from patriotic advocates may have inflamed his temper and made him irritable. He is described by one author, in a most humorous, if personal fashion. He was "a most particularly short man, and so fat that he seemed all face and waistcoat. He rolled in upon two little turned legs, and having bobbed gravely to the bar who bobbed gravely to him, put ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... you mean by your conduct, I say?" repeated the colonel, fiercely; for he mistook and was rendered more irritable by the youth's apparent stupidity. "You have insulted my daughter in ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... be remembered that the priest left Feemy after his stormy interview in a somewhat irritable mood; she was still chewing the cud of the bitter thoughts to which the events of the last few hours had given rise, and was trying to make herself believe that her brother and Father John and Pat Brady, and all the rest of them, were wrong in their detestable surmises, and ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... He struck me as odd and forgetful at times, and sometimes he seemed momentarily to lose touch with his surroundings. He used to be very bright and good-tempered, but he returned from the war irritable and moody, and very silent, disliking, above all things, to be questioned about his experiences at the front. He used to be the very soul of courtesy, but when he returned from the front he refused to attend a 'welcome home' at the ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... and mathematician, was a very irritable man, which led him frequently into passions, of which one was the cause of his death in 1742. In other respects he was reckoned a very amiable character; but was apt to be so absent, or absorbed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 352, January 17, 1829 • Various
... o' tea and stop your tongue, do," said good-humoured Mrs. Kimble, feeling some pride in a husband who must be regarded as so clever and amusing by the company generally. If he had only not been irritable at cards! ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... suffered much that day. She knew that she was in an irritable, nervous state, and therefore she said to herself, in her quality of wise woman, "I must watch myself. I mustn't let myself go." And she thought how reasonable she was. She did not guess that all her gestures betrayed ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... her, to apologise; but the irritable impulse overcame him again, and he had to pace the room till his nerves ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... peepuls, watching the amusing antics of a troop of monkeys in the branches. Their marvellous activity among the trees is here displayed to perfection, as they quarrel and chase one another from tree to tree. The old ones seem passively irritable and decidedly averse to being bothered by the antics and mischievous activity of the youngsters. Taking possession of some particular branch, they warn away all would-be intruders with threatening grimaces and feints. ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... him who wished much to have the honour of making my acquaintance. Now, I wished the big chief farther off, but, as it seemed rude to refuse the request of one who had been so kind to me, I ordered the oxen to be unyoked but kept at hand, and in an irritable frame of mind walked up to the kraal. This was about half a mile from my place of outspan, for as soon as I was sufficiently recovered I had begun to sleep in my wagon, leaving the big hut to ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... I resemble my father. Sleepless, irritable, impatient, and interested, he could skip and dance at the age of sixty better than most young men in their teens, and his last beautiful daughter was born when he was eighty. This is not entirely physical: it comes no doubt from vitality, but it is also a mixture of moral and ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith
... undiverted from your studies, and you must be kept free from everything that will detract from your health and strength. Parties will excite you, deprive you of sleep, fill your mind with foolish fancies, retard you in your school work, and make you thin, pale, and irritable. We should sadly miss our bright, blooming Nellie. Do you wonder we refuse to let ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... guess I am excited," she admitted. "I'm sewing too much for summer days and it makes me irritable. I think I'll let the butterflies wait and I'll go outdoors. Shall I weed ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... Villeroi, carried his outrages further still. No one knows better than myself how unjust these accusations were, and are. I was sensible of the mortification such a reading must have caused to the most sensitive, the most irritable of princes; but I rejoiced at the humiliation that the lady in waiting felt for her share in this unpardonable correspondence. The annoyance that I read for some days on her handsome face consoled me, for the time being, for her ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... d'epine vinette, for which Rouen is famous, are commonly prepared. And the same berries are chosen in England to furnish the kernel for a very nice sugar-plum. The syrup of Barberries will make with water an excellent astringent gargle for raw, irritable sore throat; likewise the jelly gives famous relief for this catarrhal affection. It is prepared by boiling the berries, when ripe, with an equal weight of sugar, and then straining. For an attack ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... modest in point of size, commodious, and favorably known. At this time I was in excellent health and weighed one hundred and forty-three pounds. But from the moment of the public announcement of my lecture, my appetite for food, for meat particularly, began to fail me. "How peevish and irritable he is growing!" I heard one member of the family remark to another. Soon the grocer's scales indicated that my weight was diminishing. It fell to one hundred and forty-one,—then to one hundred and forty,—then to one hundred and thirty-eight,—and finally, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... mood, no other tone, in which he could have addressed her. Did the grave chancellor, then—some one, who in his way, also, is very grave, may ask—did he, by constant fondness, spoil his child? No. It is the fondness which is not constant that spoils. It is the half-love of weak and irritable natures, who are themselves children amongst their children, who can themselves be petulant, selfish, and capricious—it is this that mars a temper. But calm and unalterable love—oh, believe it not that such ever spoilt a child! Maria grew up under the eye of affection, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... to an end as even the dreariest festivities always do. Marion and I dined together in a condition of irritable exhaustion. After dinner we played Patience for an hour in the library. Then Marion took a novel, and I settled down to read The Times. The night was very close and we sat with both ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... the captain, in an irritable voice, "what is there to oh, dear, dear, about? You go down and do as Ay tell you, and you can just say, as the ladies do, you know, 'I hope your tea is to your laiking, sir.' Go now, at once." And as she went, with hesitating footsteps, he threw an ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... pugnacity—secured universal respect. He spent every moment of his spare time in Jimmy's cabin. He tended him, talked to him; was as gentle as a woman, as tenderly gay as an old philanthropist, as sentimentally careful of his nigger as a model slave-owner. But outside he was irritable, explosive as gunpowder, sombre, suspicious, and never more brutal than when most sorrowful. With him it was a tear and a blow: a tear for Jimmy, a blow for any one who did not seem to take a scrupulously orthodox ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... was the minority of a minority; the Catholics, it is usually supposed, though we have no statistics, were the majority of the English nation. Yet the only chance, according to Knox, that England has of escaping the vengeance of an irritable Deity, is for the smaller minority to alter the prayer book, resist the Queen, if she wishes to retain it unaltered, and force the English people into the "discipline" ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... his shoulders. Privations had made him irritable, and he had to bite his lip to keep down a bitter answer. He walked slowly away, with his straight-legged ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... ended. But oh, the emptiness of the morrow! Life without a crime, without a single noble sentiment to brighten it!—no comic uncles, no creamy angels! Oh, the barrenness and dreariness of life! Even my mother at moments was quite irritable. ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... had introduced myself to the physician and asked him for a cigar, explaining that I could not find any in the clothes I had on, I asked him about Lucretia Borgia. I told the doctor how Lucretia seemed restless nights and nervous and irritable days, and how he seemed to be almost a mental wreck, and asked him what ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... cross; only worried and irritable. Hang it, Edie, my pet, it's a horrible wrench to lose her. No hope of that scoundrel Stratton breaking his neck, or repenting, ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... been thus far a pleasure trip, a holiday excursion, turned suddenly into a business journey, and this change in our mood was increased by a slight illness which had attacked the Resident, making the jovial gentleman morose and irritable. ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... illness is more protracted; the liver is more stubborn, the stomach more irritable, and the digestive organs are more rebellious. But after awhile he is out again, goes back to the same dram-shops, and goes the same round of sacrilege against his ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... tearfully at me for a moment; then she went over and sat with Aunt Martha and told her how glad she was we were moving to the country where the pure air would no doubt have a soothing effect on my nerves because I certainly had grown irritable of late. ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh
... mind, the Jewish law had brought the conscience into an extremely irritable state. The same effect, in a less degree, is produced by ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... With headaches, heated, irritable, thirsty, worn out, we arose; the men quiet, the women quarrelsome. The women began to dress, some where they had slept, some in the other room. We went down to Lord A..., and awakened him. He went upstairs, ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... beautiful flowers of literature were attached to him by filaments of memory, as lovely orchids to sapless sticks. Hence he failed to understand the force of language, and became the victim of his own metaphors, mistaking them for facts. He had the irritable vanity and weak nerves of a woman, and was bold to rashness in speculation, destitute as he was of the ordinary masculine sense of responsibility. Yet I hold him to have been the purest and most sincere man of his party. A lover, nay, a devotee of liberty, he thoroughly understood that it ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... curt and irritable after his prolonged drinking bout, and answered chiefly in monosyllables. No, he had not seen any young girl come aboard two days before. Did not know of any ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... not prove all the precentor's doubts to be groundless; but he could sympathise with his friend, and he did so; and Mr Harding felt that he had received that for which he came. There was another period of silence, after which the bishop asked, with a degree of irritable energy, very unusual with him, whether this "pestilent intruder" (meaning John Bold) had any ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... invariably placid. The geologist had an irritable temper, and in certain states of the atmosphere his rheumatic twinges made it advisable to shun argument with him. Godwin, moreover, was distinguished by an instability of mood peculiarly trying to an old man's testy humour. Of a sudden, to Mr Gunnery's surprise and annoyance, he would lose ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... down upon the divan and began nervously to arrange the pillows. "I know I'm not an inspiring object to look upon, but you must be quite frank and sensible about that and get used to it at once, for we've no time to lose. And if I'm a trifle irritable you won't mind?—for I'm ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... fancied your sister might have told you that," said Giovanni, growing more and more irritable, and yet not daring to change the subject, lest he should lose some valuable information. "Because Orsino makes her acquaintance accidentally, every one must say that he ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... bodily conditions which produce general excitability and chronic derangement. A full development of this portion of the brain indicates that the person is naturally dependent, inferior, and subservient to stronger characters. Such a one is fearful, fretful, complaining, irritable, dejected, morose, and, sooner or later, becomes a fit subject for chronic disease.[5] The ultimate result of excessive fear, excitability, and irritability, is functional or organic derangement,—the morbid conditions represented by the word ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... exclusively nocturnal. During his spells of insomnia he led a curiously double existence. In the daytime he was largely the self he had always been, able, assured, ecclesiastical, except that he was a little jaded and irritable or sleepy instead of being quick and bright; he believed in God and the church and the Royal Family and himself securely; in the wakeful night time he experienced a different and novel self, a bare-minded self, bleakly fearless at its best, shamelessly weak ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... know how to treat the idiot. Never one to suffer fools gladly, he grew irritable and would almost certainly have said something that would have put the garrulous young bungler in his place, had not the latter suddenly remembered something, just as he was on the point of getting up ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... Belshazzar and I are accustomed to living here alone and very quietly. He is excited over the Girl's return, because she is his friend, and he has not forgotten her. Then this is the first time in his life he ever heard an irritable voice from a visitor or saw a cane, and it angers him. He is perfectly safe to guard a baby, if he is gently treated, but he is a sure throat hold to a stranger who bespeaks him roughly or attempts ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... was a good old soul, to be made much of and fostered; nursed if ill, entertained if well; borne with if, as might be, she developed into a trial—turned peevish, irritable, what not! Had not Gwen o' the Towers spoken, and was not the taint of Feudalism still strong in Rocestershire half a century back? Gwen o' the Towers had spoken, and that ended ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... a little sorry for himself. Whatever he said seemed to be the wrong thing. This evidently was one of the days on which Claire was not so sweet-tempered as on some other days. It crossed his mind that of late these irritable moods of hers had grown more frequent. It was not her fault, poor girl! he told himself. She had rather ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... supplanted his master as the leader of his party; not because Burke declined in wisdom or energy, but because Fox had more skill as a debater, more popular sympathies, and more influential friends. Burke, like Gladstone, was too stern, too irritable, too imperious, too intellectually proud, perhaps too unyielding, to control such an ignorant, prejudiced, and aristocratic body as the House of Commons, jealous of his ascendency and writhing under his rebukes. It must have been galling to the great philosopher to yield ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... lost interest, had grown lax, irritable, morose. Their white duck was seldom white. Their cheeks were unshaven. When the sun sank into the swamp and the heat still turned Porto Banos into a Turkish bath, they threw dice on the greasy tables of the Cafe Bolivar for drinks. The petty gambling led to petty ...
— My Buried Treasure • Richard Harding Davis
... away in a corner and screened by a dingy green shade, just revealed the closely-curtained bed, and the table near it bearing medicine-bottles and glasses. The only objects on the chimney-piece were a clock that had been stopped in mercy to the sufferer's irritable nerves, and an open case containing a machine for pouring drops into the eyes. The smell of fumigating pastilles hung heavily on the air. To Emily's excited imagination, the silence was like the silence of death. She approached ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... occupied. Katherine went for part of each to read and write and market for the old recluse, and he grew less formidable, but not more likable, as he became more familiar. He was an extraordinary example of a human being converted into a money-making and accumulating machine. He was not especially irritable; indeed his physical powers were weak and dying of every species of starvation; but his coldness was supernatural. Fortunately for Katherine, his former housekeeper was greedy and extravagant, so that his niece's management seemed wise and economical, and ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... coxcombical peer, after seven years' residence in Florence, returned highly "Italianated." The ludicrous motive of this peregrination is given in the present manuscript account. Haughty of his descent and alliance, irritable with effeminate delicacy and personal vanity, a little circumstance, almost too minute to be recorded, inflicted such an injury on his pride, that in his mind it required years of absence from the court of England ere it could be forgotten. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... later in this century, the closing catastrophe must come. The more thoughtful among the natives acquiesce helplessly and patiently in their advancing fate; but the less intelligent, as I had some opportunity of hearing at Hilo, are becoming restive and irritable, and may drift into something worse if the knowledge of the annexationist views of the foreigners is diffused among them. Things are preparing for change, and I think that the Americans will be wise in their generation ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... advanced years, Allan, who was naturally of good and benevolent dispositions, became peculiarly irritable; he fancied that his merits as a poet had been overlooked, and the feeling preyed deeply upon his mind. He entertained extreme political opinions, and conceived a dislike to his native country, which he deemed had ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... remarked Mrs Pendle; 'it is nerves, my dear, nothing else. You hardly eat anything, you start at your own shadow, and at times you are too irritable for words. Go to Droitwich for those unruly nerves of ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... a peculiar kind of dysentery which does not seem to affect a whole colony, but confines its ravages to a small number of the bees. In the early stages of this disease, those attacked are excessively irritable, and will attempt to sting any one who comes near the hives. If dissected, their stomachs are found to be already discolored by the disease. In the latter stages of this complaint, they not only lose all their irascibility, ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... the negotiations has been ascribed to the misunderstanding between Olivarez and Buckingham; and it is no wonder that such a misunderstanding arose, for the latter was conceited and irritable, the former imperious and assuming. But these causes are only of a secondary character; the root of the failure lies in the political, or in the combination of the religious with the political relations of the two countries. While in England Protestantism was moving in a direction opposed ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... three hours of serious mental effort. The child who has spent the day in factory or shop has really pretty nearly used up all his or her available mental energy, and after the evening meal is naturally heavy, stupid, irritable, and altogether in a bad condition for further effort. The evenings ought to be reserved for recreation, for the gymnasium, the singing class, the swimming bath, and even for the concert and ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... us all together, of whom eighty-four survive, including myself. And yet dear papa sometimes seems a little irritable—I wonder why. ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... a male or a female, and will no doubt live till you die. You like to have your own way when you can get it, and when you can't you get very cross and irritable. You are not so young as you were a few years ago, and you dislike pain of any kind. You will remain single until you marry, and whichever you do you will probably ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... Parnassian pursuits."[231] "Those who have not his genius may be so far compensated by avoiding his foibles," Scott said; and some years later he wrote,—"When I first saw that a literary profession was to be my fate, I endeavoured by all efforts of stoicism to divest myself of that irritable degree of sensibility—or, to speak plainly, of vanity—which makes the poetical race miserable and ridiculous."[232] The record of his life clearly shows that his kindness towards other men of letters was not ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... of Brutus was a lioness called Cleopatra, generally kept in another cage. In the order of nature she was at times more affectionate to her husband than at others, and during such periods Brutus became irritable, and difficult to manage. It was hard to keep him down, even with the hot iron. As they wended their way from village to village, and town to town, over the old-fashioned turnpikes, Brutus entered one of the irritable phases of his life, during which, it is hardly ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... time of her arrival till the middle of August, mercury had been continued in various forms, and in doses such as the irritable state of her stomach and bowels would admit of. Spirit. nitri dulc.; sal. tartar, squill, and cantharides were alternately employed as diuretics, but without success, to retard the progress of an universal anasarca ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering
... the king's youngest sister, was married in her sixteenth year to Christian VII., king of Denmark. This monarch was addicted to licentious and degrading pleasures, and was a prince of weak intellect, irritable and capricious, open to flattery, and easily deceived by the crafty. Soon after his marriage he visited England, France, and Germany, where he might, if he had possessed intellect, have obtained such knowledge as ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... somewhat irritable old gentleman, having been thus disturbed two nights in succession, determined that he would no longer subject himself to the nuisance. He bought a single sash and inserted a second window on the other side ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... while others have bequeathed that duty to others. Shakspeare says but little about his sweetheart, while Milton, who was decidedly unsuccessful in matters of the heart, seems to have acted on the motto, 'The least said, the soonest mended.' Poor Pope, miserable invalid though he was, nervous, irritable, and full of hate and spleen, was not beyond the power of the tender passion, and confessed the charms of the lonely Martha Blount, who held the wretched genius among her conquests. Swift, although an ogre at heart, had his chapter ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... He endured a hell of suffering during those radiant summer days. He was melancholy, ecstatic, irritable by turns, ascending to the heights and plunging into the depths with an abruptness and unaccountability that was not only enigmatic to himself but to every one else with whom he came in contact. He kept Mary in a ferment of excitement trying ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... anger rising; for Mr. Dodd, though not irritable, is passionate—at least I think so. I tried to smooth matters. But no; Mr. Talboys persisted in putting this ungenerous question, when all of a sudden Mr. Dodd burst out, 'You wish to know why I love Arthur? Because he is an orphan; and because ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... who had paid scant attention to his remarks and who did not perceive their relevance or their propriety, answered, in a somewhat irritable tone, that all that was to be ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... as is directed in the first part of this receipt, is one of the best breakfasts and suppers that we can recommend to the rational epicure; is the most comforting soother of an irritable stomach that we know; and particularly acceptable to it after a hard day's work of intemperate feasting: when the addition of half an ounce of butter, and a tea-spoonful of Epsom salt, will give it an aperient quality, which will assist the ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... letter on the table with an irritable gesture and scowled as he drank. The arrival of the mail always brought vivid regrets for the glories and comforts he was missing by being condemned to war with "dirty swines of niggers." That was part of the penalty he had had to pay for being a gentleman ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... bed anywhere, even in a room hitherto untenanted, and to drag thither his greatcoat and other impedimenta, for that room at once to assume an air of having been lived in during the past ten years. Nevertheless, though a fastidious, and even an irritable, man, Chichikov would merely frown when his nose caught this smell amid the freshness of the morning, and exclaim with a toss of his head: "The devil only knows what is up with you! Surely you sweat a good deal, do you not? ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... him do any work cheerfully. But it was not congenial or satisfying work. For a time he had no well defined duty, but did what was to be done at the bidding of any one in the office, and often he was left irritable and exhausted after a day, over which he could look back with no pleasure because of anything that ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson
... entered, that, immediately on the receipt of Zack's letter, he had called on Mr. Thorpe, with the kindly purpose of endeavoring to make peace between father and son. His mission had entirely failed. Mr. Thorpe had grown more and more irritable as the interview proceeded; and had accused his visitor of unwarrantable interference, when Valentine suggested the propriety of holding out some prospect of forgiveness ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... have said something of the disrepair of the chamber, but was silenced by the irritable impatience which was expressed in his master's countenance; he lighted the way trembling and in silence, placed the lamp on the table of the deserted room, and was about to attempt some arrangement of the bed, when his master big him begone in ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... wrestlings were almost exclusively nocturnal. During his spells of insomnia he led a curiously double existence. In the daytime he was largely the self he had always been, able, assured, ecclesiastical, except that he was a little jaded and irritable or sleepy instead of being quick and bright; he believed in God and the church and the Royal Family and himself securely; in the wakeful night time he experienced a different and novel self, a bare-minded self, bleakly fearless at its best, ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... afraid," said the baroness, anxiously. "He was of late so nervous and irritable, you know, that the most trifling occurrence caused him to tremble and covered his brow with perspiration. I am afraid these stirring communications may make too powerful ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... Copenhagen, where he died a week later. Christian IV. was a good linguist, speaking, besides his native tongue, German, Latin, French and Italian. Naturally cheerful and hospitable, he delighted in lively society; but he was also passionate, irritable and sensual. He had courage, a vivid sense of duty, an indefatigable love of work, and all the inquisitive zeal and inventive energy of a born reformer. Yet, though of the stuff of which great princes ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... fagged and irritable, and supplemented their hurried dinner with hastily bought food from the ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... beak nearly as big as his body, flew clumsily from stem to stem. The tiny, delicate humming-birds, scarce larger than bees, fluttered from flower to flower and spray to spray, like points of brilliant green. But they were irritable, passionate little creatures, these lovely things, and quarrelled with each other and fought like very wasps! Enormous butterflies, with wings of deep metallic blue, shot past or hovered in the air like gleams of light; and green paroquets swooped from tree to tree and chattered ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... buxom daughters got up one of their celebrated "flare-ups" in his honor, and all the female population of Stillton was set by its ears. Mabel was not present, of course,—fortunately, too, perhaps, for her state of heart and mind was strangely and unnaturably irritable at that time, and his promiscuous attentions to the various country belles might have provoked a feeling of which she would afterward have been very ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... pleasure or displeasure matters much: but you will pardon me if I pass, for my visit was to the Contessa," Sir Tom said, going on quickly. He was in an irritable state of mind to begin with. He thought he ought to have been consulted, even as an old friend, much more as—— And the young ass was offensive. If it turned out that Sir Tom had anything to do with it Montjoie should find that to be the best parti of the season was not a thing ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... of a quick and irritable temper, and he had been a spoilt child all his life. His original education was defective. He lived with the selfish and the self-indulgent, and naturally became selfish and self-indulgent himself. At six years ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... vast majority of attorneys and solicitors were not honorable, and able men! Conceive them, for a moment, disposed everywhere to stir up litigation, by availing themselves of their perfect acquaintance with almost all men's circumstances—artfully inflaming irritable and vindictive clients, kindling, instead of stifling, family dissensions, and fomenting public strife—why, were they to do only a hundredth part of what it is thus in their power to do, our courts of justice would soon be doubled, together with the number ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... intimacy between the two." Still, she gave Beethoven an apartment in her house in 1809, and he writes that she had paid a servant extra money to stay with him—a task servants always required bribing to achieve. But Thayer says that such a menage could not last, as Beethoven was "too irritable, too freakish and too stubborn, too easily injured and too hardly reconciled." Beethoven dedicated to her certain trios, and she erected in one of her parks in Hungary a handsome temple in his honour, with ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... were heightened to an incredible degree by the Black Death, which spread boundless devastation and misery over Italy. Men's minds were everywhere morbidly sensitive; and as it happened with individuals whose senses, when they are suffering under anxiety, become more irritable, so that trifles are magnified into objects of great alarm, and slight shocks, which would scarcely affect the spirits when in health, gave rise in them to severe diseases, so was it with this whole nation, at all times ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... his pipe in the woodlands, without certain precautions, and preliminary fuglings of a devotional nature. [Bollandus, ubi supra.]—From which miracle, as indeed from many other indications, I infer an irritable nervous-system in poor Adalbert; and find this death in the Romova was probably a furious mixture of ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... and anxious? At all events she said no word about the work that so absorbed him. He was excited enough as it was. And now when he was irritable and angry with the children, she did not even look at him reproachfully. They must bear it, both she and the children—it would soon ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... expected to make a bad start on my new journey. Having been fussed I was irritable. I had spent a long day trying to do twenty things in a space of time which would barely have sufficed for ten of them. I had been engaged in an intermittent struggle with various authorities for permission ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... impassively about their business, an organized community, however rude. Here he saw nothing save the enfolding forest he had been passing through since dawn. He scarcely troubled to ask himself why they had stopped. Breyette and MacDonald were given to casual haltings. He sat in irritable discomfort brushing aside the hordes of mosquitoes that rose up from the weedy brink and the shore thickets to assail his tender skin. He did not notice that MacDonald was waiting for him to move. Mike Breyette looked down on him from the ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... truly dreadful. She must sit through the long hot hours, close by the seamstress, almost smothered by the big piece of cotton cloth, which her little fingers could hardly manage, and she grew restless and irritable, for her hands were moist, and the needle refused to be driven through the thick cloth. How often she glanced up at the clock on the wall during those long hours, when the minute hand was surely stuck at ...
— Uncle Titus and His Visit to the Country • Johanna Spyri
... he might there and then have taken was doomed never to be, for he heard the kitchen door open to give vent to a woman's nagging, irritable voice. ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... the property he had bought himself and suddenly married a wealthy half-educated woman who was captivated by his unceremonious and sarcastic manners. But Pigasov's character had become so soured and irritable that family life was unendurable to him. After living with him a few years, his wife went off secretly to Moscow and sold her estate to an enterprising speculator; Pigasov had only just finished building a house on it. Utterly crushed by this last blow, ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... child cause every association with him in the heart of the parent to be disturbing and painful, how can the result be otherwise than alienating and depressing? Let there be two children in a family, one of whom is invariably obedient, gentle, attentive, ingenuous; the other, irritable, insubordinate, careless, secretive, and untruthful. The former shall be idolized, while the latter is regarded with condemnatory repugnance. The fact that a boy is your son, or that a girl is your daughter, cannot wholly neutralize the repulsiveness ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... and sat down on one of the wide divans, and so doing began to know, once more, how very tired she was. A new tiredness seemed, indeed, to have been added to the original one. That first was, at worst, bored and irritable. This was of a different, a more sad and ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... consolingly. "Bless your heart, He is not half so irritable as the parsons fancy; ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... celebrated French priest and mathematician, was a very irritable man, which led him frequently into passions, of which one was the cause of his death in 1742. In other respects he was reckoned a very amiable character; but was apt to be so absent, or absorbed in his studies, as to appear almost wholly insensible to surrounding objects. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 352, January 17, 1829 • Various
... are in some cases irritable, and great restlessness and involuntary movement, accompanied even with twisting of the neck, shows itself. This will yield to skilful cooling of the spinal nerves with damp cloths. See St. ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... to have been on the banks by daylight." Mr. Neckart's sharp, irritable voice jarred somehow ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... Winifred was slightly irritable herself from weakness, and on the last morning of her stay she could bear the sight no longer. Sophy had twice been surly to Lucy's good offices, had given Albinia a look like thunder, and answered her father with a sulky displeasure that made Mrs. Ferrars exclaim, as soon ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... clouded a little as she remembered. He had been severe, the Kapellmeister, caustic, even irritable. How hard he was to satisfy! When she sang her best, he shrugged his shoulders; when she sang badly, he was furious. Occasionally he was kind as to-day, but not often. . . . Siegfried was alone now, carving his reed, trying to ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... unreasonable severity, which hardened and sharpened with the opposition of years into selfish cruelty. Toyner had often seen these scenes before; all that was new to him now was that they stood in the vivid light of a new interpretation. Ah! the father's cruelty, the irritable self-love, the incapacity to recognise any form of life but his own, it was of God,—not a high manifestation: the bat is lower than the bird, and yet it is of God. Bart saw now the one great opportunity of life! He saw that the whole of the universe ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... frame. At noon I disputed with James about the name of an apple. He was very provoking, and said he was thankful he had not got such a temper as I had. I cried, and mother reproved him for teasing me, saying my ill- ness had left me nervous and irritable. James replied that it had left me where it found me, then. I cried a good while, lying on the sofa, and then I fell asleep. I don't see as I am any the better for this Sunday, it has only made me feel unhappy ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... produced either one or the other. There were, indeed, independently of such circumstances, some occasional aggravations of those symptoms. Some nights, for example, were passed in sitting up in bed, under a fit of asthma, as it was called; sometimes the mind became uncommonly impatient and irritable; the body gradually emaciated; yet the appetite and digestive functions remained principally unimpaired; and persons around were not sensible of any material alteration in ...
— Cases of Organic Diseases of the Heart • John Collins Warren
... the further saying, if his scruples had been ever so extreme, not improbably he would at this time have smothered them. He was angry; not as the irritable, from chafing of a trifle; nor was his anger like the fool's, pumped from the wells of nothing, to be dissipated by a reproach or a curse; it was the wrath peculiar to ardent natures rudely awakened by the sudden annihilation of a hope—dream, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... proprietor of Imperial Steam Roundabouts—as well as of half a dozen side-shows, including a Fat Lady and a Try-your-Strength machine—was a small man with a purplish nose and a temper kept irritable by alcohol; and to-day the Fates had conspired to rub that temper on the raw. He swore aloud, and partly believed, that ever since coming ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... was cowardly and abject, quite the contrary; but for some time past he had been in an overstrained irritable condition, verging on hypochondria. He had become so completely absorbed in himself, and isolated from his fellows that he dreaded meeting, not only his landlady, but anyone at all. He was crushed by poverty, but the anxieties of his position had of late ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... do," he said, within himself, and so pushed aside unpleasantly intruding thoughts. But Mrs. Lovell did not fail to observe, that since, her husband's determination to go out of business, he had become more irritable than before, and less at ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... absurd and ridiculous person, under whose conduct she was exposed to the "whips and scorns," the disdain and bitter retaliation, natural to the union of a beautiful and accomplished, though vain and haughty woman, with a very eccentric, irritable, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... at me for a moment; then she went over and sat with Aunt Martha and told her how glad she was we were moving to the country where the pure air would no doubt have a soothing effect on my nerves because I certainly had grown irritable of late. ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh
... the Scotch were mentioned in terms so provoking to that irritable nation, that resolving "not to be offended with impunity," the Scotch lords, in a body, demanded an audience of the queen, and solicited reparation. A proclamation was issued, in which three hundred pounds were ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... When he is a broken man and you and he are become irritable over a war you did not make and cannot end, he will choose absence and imperative duty as ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... passage to Otaheite, Captain Bligh had several disturbances with his men. He had an extremely irritable temper, and would often fly into a passion and make most terrible accusations, and use most terrible language to ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... bloodless complexion, thin, sickly, irritable, gloomy, impatient, egotistic, tyrannical, heartless and infamous. He was a strange compound of revengeful morality, malicious forgiveness, ferocious charity, egotistic humility, and a kind of hellish justice. In other words, he was as near like the God of the ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... and with a significant wink promised to bring the Chevalier back, not perhaps to-morrow or the day after, but in any case in good order and condition. Casanova, however, had suddenly grown distrait and irritable. So cold was his farewell to the fond hostess that, at the carriage door, she whispered a parting word in his ear which was ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... remove her nurse's uniform. And at the same time, she had to constitute herself nurse. Miss Frost, and a woman who came in, and the servant had been nursing the invalid between them. Miss Frost was worn and rather heavy: her old buoyancy and brightness was gone. She had become irritable also. She was very glad that Alvina had returned to take this responsibility of nursing off her shoulders. For her wonderful energy had ebbed ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... torturer hurried home in an irritable frame of mind. The day had been for him one long round of annoyances. When he commenced his duties that morning, already exasperated by the thought that if the drought continued the produce of his tiny patch of ground would be completely ruined, he was aggrieved ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... did happen, later, which at least seemed in some measure to have shaken his faith, and it was noticed that, towards the end of his life, he was not fond of dwelling on the subject—had even been known, in fact, to become irritable when pressed to tell his story. It fell out, a year or two after the events which he had loved to narrate, that Lord Durie had occasion to visit Dumfries. On the way back to Edinburgh, travelling with some colleagues, it chanced that a heavy storm caught them, and necessity drove ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... Stephen's, obstinate vanity, his irritable nervous nature, his impatience of advice and his wonderful confidence in his own genius are admirably brought out in the course of the narrative and the chapter containing his letters to his brother is one of the best in the book. It shows his character humorously and ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... saturated with moisture. It did no good to close the heavy wooden shutters at night: in the morning the air of the room was sticky and clothing was moist to the touch. Stewart, confined to the house, grew irritable. ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... bed, all on one side of the sleeper. They next screwed up the corner of a handkerchief, and began to tickle him on the side farthest from the brushes. The first application of the tickler produced an impatient rub; the second, an irritable scratch; but the third made the sleeper turn right over on to the sharp brushes, and begin to curl and twist about ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... approving; and that it is owing to your encouragement that Ellen defies us all, and exposes herself to the kind of criticism of which Mr. Sillerton Jackson probably gave you, this evening, the hint that has made you so irritable.... Hints have indeed not been wanting; but since you appear unwilling to take them from others, I offer you this one myself, in the only form in which well-bred people of our kind can communicate unpleasant things to each other: by letting you understand ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... unfit to go. No doubt he felt unusually irritable. "By the holy smoke!" he exclaimed. "I wish there wasn't a baby under the Canopy!"—and while I was trying to puzzle out and piece together all these darkling hints and inferences, the Old Squire came up stairs and after a word with Addison and Gram, ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... epithets that are applied to it. The truth is that, after the torrid days of the hot weather and the humid heat of the rainy season, the European is thoroughly weary of his tropical surroundings, his vitality is at a low ebb, he is languid and irritable, thus he complains bitterly of the climate of September, notwithstanding the fact that it is a distinct improvement on that of ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... of the man's presence she ceased to be the tired, discouraged, irritable woman, and became once more the Evelyn Grant whose vivacity and wit had made her conspicuous in the ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... and the passages of silvery water between them was most beautiful. And Ruth enjoyed herself immensely. That is, she found the occasion enjoyable until they got back to the bungalow and had bidden the Copleys and their party good night. Then the girl of the Red Mill found her roommate rather irritable. Helen pouted and was frankly ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... years had passed, and his wife absented herself every Friday night, he began to wonder why it could be. His curiosity, to know the reason for her going away, so increased that it so wore on him that he became both miserable in himself and irritable toward others. Everybody in the castle noticed the change in their master, and grieved ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... blood—including also a small heart and narrow arteries—should be considered as subject structural defects. Upon this depends not only the ready exhaustibility of the cortex, but also the phenomena of irritability, named by Meynert, localized irritable weakness. ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... falling upon some combustibles led to the invention of gunpowder. Irritable tempers have marred the reputation of many a great man, as in the case of Edmund Burke and of Thomas Carlyle. A few bits of seaweed and driftwood, floating on the waves, enabled Columbus to stay a mutiny of his sailors which threatened to prevent the discovery of a new world. There ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... words and actions; such a man naturally conducts himself with contempt and pride, with harshness and barbarity towards all others whom he may deem obnoxious to the resentment of his Heavenly King. Those men, whose folly leads them to view the Deity in the light of a capricious, irritable, and unappeasable despot, can be nothing but gloomy and trembling slaves, ever eager to anticipate the vengeance of God upon all whose conduct or opinions they may conceive likely to provoke the celestial wrath. As soon as the priests have succeeded ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... the way, they are near obtaining in more respects than they probably desire—by obtruding themselves on every stranger who touches our shore. Theirs is not a generous and frank hospitality that would fain serve others, but an irritable vanity that would glorify themselves. The liberal and enlightened monikin is easily to be distinguished from all of this clique. He is neither ashamed of, nor bigoted in favor of any usages, simply because they are domestic. With him the criterions of merit are propriety, ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of Cherubini as a man during this serene autumn of his life. Spohr tells us how cordially Cherubini, generally regarded as an austere and irritable man, received him. The world-renowned master, accustomed to handle instruments in great orchestral masses, was not familiar with the smaller compositions known as chamber music, in which the Germans so excelled. He was greatly delighted when the youthful Spohr turned his attention to ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... dropping." "It is better to dwell in the corner of a housetop than with a brawling woman in a wide house." "It is better to dwell in the wilderness than with a contentious and angry woman." The meaning of all these sayings must be that women are of a very irritable and vexatious character. But did Solomon really believe in the strong terms he used towards them. We should say not to judge by his life, for he had "seven hundred wives, and three hundred concubines;" and although he says that, "as a jewel of gold in a swine's ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... sexton; adding in a half compassionate, half irritable tone, which the old man couldn't hear, 'you're getting very deaf, Davy, very deaf to ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... was the day on which Vere had told Emile the secret she had kept from her mother. How excited Vere had been, almost feverishly excited! And Emile had been very strange. When the Marchesino and Vere went out upon the terrace, how restless, how irritable he— ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... one with having injured them while they have been unconscious during an attack. Then, too, living at home, they are often dangerous to younger members of a family, and they are fault-finding, exacting, and irritable generally. The seizures frequently come on without warning, and the patient drops where he stands, often injuring himself severely. The last annual report of the Craig Colony records more than four hundred injuries within the year to patients ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... more energetic woman. My nervous weakness makes my temper irritable, and I am so easily annoyed. His activity of mind often disturbs me more than it is reasonable or right that it should; for instance, I get regularly into a state of excitement, if he only steadfastly fixes his eyes on a wall, or on any other object. I immediately begin to fancy that ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... were, as Dorothy says, "in great disorder" at this time, it is impossible to say. Lady Leicester is said to have been of a warm and irritable temper, and Lord Leicester is described by Clarendon as "staggering and irresolute in his nature." However, nothing is said of their quarrels; but, on the other hand, there is a very pathetic account in Lord ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... promise them some goods, on their returning peaceably to their own country, and they manifested no other than a peaceable disposition to all parties. The Saulteaux Indians, however, of Red River, between whom and the Sioux nation, a hostile feeling has existed from time immemorial, became very irritable; and a small party of them fired upon a straggling party of the Sioux, in a garden on the Point below the Colony Fort; they killed two, and wounded a third; and fled with such precipitation by swimming the river, and running ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... the school-master, who, though of a gentle disposition, was irritable, taking Andrew for the offender in a certain breach of discipline, gave him a smart box on the ear. Andrew, as readily as if it had been instinctively, turned to ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... and swayed over the table. In an instant he was beside her; for though he had been irritable and ungenerous, he had at bottom a kind heart. Catching up a glass of water, he ran an arm round her waist and held the cup to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the rheumatic attack fastened upon the head and eyes, causing lengthened suffering, and teaching Mr. Egremont that he had never had so gentle, so skilful, so loving, or altogether so pleasant a slave as his wife, the only person except Gregorio whom, in his irritable state, he ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I could do so conveniently I visited my mother and Aunt Patience. Aunt Patience seemed happier than I had ever before seen her. I think the quiet of her home tended to soften her somewhat irritable temper. ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... the cause of sorrow by the aid of ether; not sorry, either, to try its efficacy, after all the marvellous stories I had heard. The first time I inhaled it, I did not for several seconds feel the effect, and was just thinking, "Alas! this has not power to soothe nerves so irritable as mine," when suddenly I wandered off, I don't know where, but it was a sensation like wandering in long garden-walks, and through many alleys of trees,—many impressions, but all pleasant and serene. The moment the tube was removed, I started into consciousness, and put my hand to my cheek; but, ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... a priest's oath," answered Tim Cohill, the most irritable of men, but whose temper was something softened ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 20, No. 562, Saturday, August 18, 1832. • Various
... captain, in an irritable voice, "what is there to oh, dear, dear, about? You go down and do as Ay tell you, and you can just say, as the ladies do, you know, 'I hope your tea is to your laiking, sir.' Go now, at once." And as she went, with hesitating footsteps, ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... the way with anxiety in her heart as to how her mother would behave. Would she show irritable astonishment if Lena treated her with gentle deference, and asked her permission to be out in the evening with a strange young man? But Mrs. Quincy knew a thing or two as well as her daughter, and Dick saw only that the room was very ugly, that Lena moved about with lips compressed ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... friends. I lie to them, and they find me out. I borrow money from them and don't pay it back, and then I'm afraid to face them. I make fools of them in public; I'm irritable with them." ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... that anything more than a change of rooms was intended; nor, as he was carried out at its door to a long closed carriage, that it was anything worse than his new keeper's mistaken idea that drives would be good for him. He was a little irritable at the length and shutupness of the drive, though, as his cot had been swung deftly from the ceiling of the carriage, he was not jarred. But when Wallis and Arthur carried the light pallet on which he lay swiftly up a plank walk laid to the door ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... something about her that I could describe as soothing, if I were aware of ever being irritable, which I ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... Falloden's first irritable instinct was to refuse. Why should he go out of his way to make himself a show for all these eyes? Then a secret excitement—an expectation—awoke in him, and he nodded a laughing comment to Lady Alice, who just stayed to throw him a mocking compliment on his knee-breeches, ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of a clergyman and magistrate giving experienced advice. Mr. Gascoigne had come to the conclusion that Grandcourt was a proud man, but his own self-love, calmed through life by the consciousness of his general value and personal advantages, was not irritable enough to prevent him from hoping the best about his niece's husband because her uncle was kept rather haughtily at a distance. A certain aloofness must be allowed to the representative of an old family; you would not expect him to be on intimate ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... wild interest in this particular doctor?" Parker roused himself and looked at her. He felt irritable, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... quiet and reserved. I attributed it to the fatigue of travelling, to which my own spirits began to succumb; and as the day was drawing to a close, I proposed, at the next stage we reached, that we should rest there, and resume our journey the next morning. But in an irritable and impetuous manner, of which I had never seen the least symptom before, he ordered fresh horses, and bade the postilion drive on with all the speed he could. Still as we travelled he grew more sullen, became restless, incommunicative, and muttered occasionally to himself. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... Mr. Davis. The doctor watches him closely lest he should take opium, and consequently become either very irritable or else quite stupefied. I notice that in his greatest fits of anger he is afraid of Laura and myself. Who knows whether a homicidal mania is not already germinating in the half-insane brain? or maybe he is afraid ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... were of an irritable temperament, as constantly soured and vexed by two mental trials: the first, the consciousness that they had never got enough out of the public; the second, the consciousness that the public were admitted into the building. Under the latter great wrong, a few suffered dreadfully—particularly ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... New officers published to-morrow. Telegraph Clayton to meet you at Cheyenne for conference. Have Alice join. Suggest month's vacation. He is irritable and suspicious. Full code telegrams to you at Cheyenne. Will wait here until you have met him and disposed of ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... these injuries is the remarkable effect of the disturbance to the even flow of the circulation on the heart. This first struck me in two of the cases of carotid arterio-venous aneurism recorded below (Nos. 10 and 11). In these I was inclined at first to attribute the rapid and irritable character of the pulse solely to injury to the vagus, as in each laryngeal paralysis pointed to concussion or contusion of the nerve. The pulse reached a rate of 120-140 to the minute. This disturbance was not of a transitory nature, for in the two cases referred ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... and cutaneous secretions of the body, are also at their maximum. The temperature of the day and night differ so little, that the sedative effects of evening and morning are not sufficient to restore the frame by soothing the sensibilities, overexcited and irritable from the previous warmth. Whence the languor and irritability felt in summer, when the heat is long continued, and the nights are spent in restlessness and anxious oppression. Exhaustion and relaxation of the frame are ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... mid-Victorian novelists, and George Meredith—whose earliest novel, "Richard Feverel," was published about this date—broke many a lance against it, and scolded us and laughed at us, and upset our dignified conception of ourselves, and sometimes, in his irritable affection for his countrymen, took a bludgeon to ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... I wonder what she would think of ME?" There was a slight irritation in her voice—somehow she always became irritable when Oliver spoke of his mother. She was ashamed of ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the seat of the inflammation, but on some parts of the skin far beyond its boundary, is a well-known fact. It is, doubtless, on this principle that the inoculated cow-pock pustule and its concomitant efflorescence may, in very irritable constitutions, produce this affection. The eruption I allude to has commonly appeared some time in the third week after inoculation. But this appearance is too trivial ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... however, I think, a great deal more irritable on the subject of the King, full of anger, and vexation, and complaint of the difficulties in which the Cabinet was placed; every hour increasing those difficulties from the conduct he was pursuing, not only by his flirtation with the Opposition, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... that will yield the greatest pecuniary return in the shortest time; or, in other words, soonest convert grass and turnips into good mutton and fine fleece. All sheep will not do this alike; some, like men, are so restless and irritable, that no system of feeding, however good, will develop their frames or make them fat. The system adopted by the breeder to obtain a valuable animal for the butcher, is to enlarge the capacity and functions of the ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... although every nerve in my body shrank from the whisky-maddened figure which I pictured in the room above, I still answered, in as careless a voice as I could command, that I was ready to go. Some further remark of Lord Roxton's about the danger only made me irritable. ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... becoming unjust, irritable, womanish; everything he had always most despised in a ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... old country. Fond as he was of the historical past, Mr. Holmes remained loyal to the historical present. He was not one of those Americans who are always censuring England, and always hankering after her. He had none of that irritable feeling, which made a great contemporary of his angrily declare that he could endure to hear "Ye Mariners of England" sung, because of his own country's successes, some time ago. They were gallant and conspicuous victories of the American frigates; we ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... upon Pierce Phillips. For weeks now he had toiled among reticent men who regarded him with hostility, who made way for him with reluctance. Haste, labor, strain had numbed and brutalized them; fatigue had rendered them irritable, and the strangeness of their environment had made them both fearful and suspicious. There was no good- fellowship, no consideration on the Chilkoot. This was a race against time, and the stakes went to him who was most ruthless. Phillips had not ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... rows of lockered desks much hacked and carved, arranged symmetrically round each, the big fireplace guarded with high iron bars, I was led across the room, and committed to the care of a little, pompous, stout man, with big side-whiskers, a reddish nose, and an air half irritable, half good-natured, in a short gown, who was holding forth to a class. It was all complete: I had my place and my duty before me; and then gradually day by day the life shaped itself. I had a little cubicle in a high dormitory. ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... idleness men hateful to them, and connected by no ties of blood. (174) Especially would this seem grievous when provisions were dear. What wonder, then, if in times of peace, when striking miracles had ceased, and no men of paramount authority were forthcoming, the irritable and greedy temper of the people began to wax cold, and at length to fall away from a worship, which, though Divine, was also humiliating, and even hostile, and to seek after something fresh; or can we be surprised that the captains, who always adopt the popular course, in ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part IV] • Benedict de Spinoza
... This irritable sensitiveness led him to consider those detestable attacks of the journals worth a threatening denunciation to ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... even go without her usual rest in order to superintend them personally. She also spent quite a time in looking after her orchard, where she had planted apple trees, pear trees, etc. Another thing which I began to notice was that when the spring and summer days had passed, she got quite irritable and sad, while in the winter she was simply ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling
... "He never can bear to hear my poor husband mentioned. Besides, he has had the gout a good deal lately, and is more irritable ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... family erect their separate wills as independent laws, instead of harmoniously blending around a common authority of truth and love, when they live in incessant collisions and stormy insubordination, a poisonous fret of irritable vanity gnawing their heart strings, a fiery sleet of hate and scorn hurtling through the domestic atmosphere, the whole household are in perdition. Their home is a concentrated hell. To be without love, without soothing attentions and encouragements, without fresh ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... grasping at every argument his blunt sense could suggest, then talked Roland much and grandly of the duties men owed,—even if they threw off all love to their father, still to their father's name; and then his pride, always so lively, grew irritable and harsh, and seemed, no doubt, to the perverted ears of the son, unlovely and unloving. And that pride, without serving one purpose of good, did yet more mischief; for the youth caught the disease, but in a wrong way. And ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... it as habitable as we can. He lives in the midst of sinful humanity and accepts the inheritance of earthly conventions. He may choose to live in the slums whilst his spirit clamours for a hermitage amongst the blue hills. His ways may be crotchety and his temper irritable—what does it matter so long as he is carrying out his appointed task in ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... to notice my light for nearly ten minutes, magnificent golden blocks of time, long to be remembered like holidays or geological periods. One evening when I was reading Church history father was particularly irritable, and called out with hope-killing emphasis, "John go to bed! Must I give you a separate order every night to get you to go to bed? Now, I will have no irregularity in the family; you must go when the rest go, and without my having ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... course of this conversation the emperor seemed overstrained and irritable. As William II advances in years, family traditions, the reactionary tendencies of the court, and especially the impatience of the soldiers, obtain a greater empire over his mind. Perhaps he feels some slight jealousy of the popularity acquired by his son, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... heartily. "I expected no less from you. I can't tell you how badly I feel about the loss. No doubt my manner has seemed strange since my return. I have been irritable with everybody—even my dear wife has noticed it. It was only because I did not know how to make a clear breast of it. Since you take it so sensibly, I'll cheer up. I declare I feel like ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... to anyone as his life now seemed to him, Prince Andrew on the eve of battle felt agitated and irritable as he had done seven ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Decidedly something was wrong. The wise-headed grey mare loped out to meet him and threw a course of circles around him as he came slowly forward. Plainly she expected him to do something, but what this might be Alcatraz could not tell. Besides, a growing thirst was making him irritable and the insistence of the grey mare made him wish to fasten his teeth over the back of her neck and ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... glanced at his son, who was sitting opposite to him. It was a loving and tender look, issuing from under long shaggy eyebrows, a beautiful, gentle, almost motherly look, out of accord with the hard-set face of an irritable and ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg
... described as high-tempered, irritable, lacking in physical activity, clumsy, and unsteady. Plays little. Just "stands around." Indifferent to praise or blame, has little sense of duty, plays underhand tricks. Is slow, absent-minded, easily confused, in thought, never shows appreciation or interest. So apathetic ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... and though she was only a baby, be felt chagrined and irritable. Had he dared, he would have struck Harold, who asked him what he meant by being his uncle's hare. But he was afraid of Miss Howard, and remembering it must be time for the inquest, he slipped from the room, whispering fiercely to Harold as he ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... difficult than ever to work with, and Tom, who was in a hard, cynical mood, called him overbearing where, in former times, he would merely have called him decided. The very best of men are occasionally irritable when they are nearly worked to death; and under the severe strain of those days, Raeburn's philosophic calm more than once broke down, and the quick Highland temper, usually kept in admirable restraint, ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... next. Then came a week of wild, snowy weather, when the roads were heaped high, going out was an impossibility, and she had to stay at home. Rose chafed desperately under the restraint, and grew so irritable that it was quite a risk to speak to her. All her old high spirits were gone. Her ceaseless flow of talk suddenly checked. She wandered about the house aimlessly, purposelessly, listlessly, sighing wearily, and watching ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... been tried by want of sympathy, and what seemed to them injustice, when they had thus descended into the perturbed atmosphere of what they were used to regard as a happy home. There was a long mutual communication of grievances—irritable speeches—inattention from their elders—fancies and complaints of Alda's enforced peremptorily by Wilmet—appeals to Felix either quashed or unheeded; the strange thing was, in how short a time so much had managed ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... days are spent in an uneasy, irritable expectation that every hour will bring some news—good or bad—from the world without, bearing on your own especial case; then comes the frame of mind wherein you allow that there must be certain official delays, and begin to calculate, wearily, how far the wire-drawn ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... hastened after her, to apologise; but the irritable impulse overcame him again, and he had to pace the room ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... performed, but at all other times. Even if I could open hives and safely manage at pleasure, still if the result of such proceedings was to leave the bees in an excited state, so as to make them unusually irritable, it would all avail but ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... the influence of the stress incident thereto, they develop an acute paranoid symptom-complex, a delirium of reference, accompanied by ideas of prejudice, isolated elementary hallucinations, and irresistible desire to a depressive recapitulation of their past, and a nervous, irritable temper. Consciousness is not clouded, and they remain perfectly oriented in all spheres. The duration of the disorder may vary from a few months to two years, with occasional intermissions. The delusional formation continues only for a short period, ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... thrust the stick into her face, till she was herself exhausted, and her poor victim covered with blood. This scene was renewed every morning, and the cries and moans of the poor suffering blacks, announced that they were enduring the penalty of slavery, in being the objects on which the irritable and malevolent passions of the whites are allowed to vent themselves with impunity; nor could I help deeply deploring that state of society in which the vilest characters in the community are allowed an almost uncontrolled ...
— The History of Mary Prince - A West Indian Slave • Mary Prince
... anxious about Clissold. He has passed two fairly good nights but is barely able to move. He is unnaturally irritable, but I am told this is a symptom of concussion. This morning he asked for food, which is a good sign, and he was anxious to know if his sledging gear was being got ready. In order not to disappoint him he was assured that all would be ready, but there is scarce a slender chance ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... does not absorb any considerable amount of time. As a rule, he is industrious, but frequent attacks of fever, dysentery, liver and spleen complaints, or pneumonia make him in the end, like all living things here not native to the forests, sluggish in general, and irritable ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... or momentary impulse, and not from the deep and accurate knowledge of those qualities which would most harmonize with your own character. People, to live happily with each other, must fit in, as it were—the proud be mated with the meek, the irritable with the gentle, and so forth. No, my dear Maltravers, do not think of marriage yet a while; and if there is any danger of it, come over to me immediately. But if I warn you against a lawful tie, how ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the Shell-fish in Railsford's presented a very green appearance when they answered to their names next morning, and were in an irritable frame of mind most of the day. Their bad temper took the form of a dead set on the unhappy Monsieur Lablache, who, during the first day of his vicarious office, led the existence of a pea on a frying-pan. They ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
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