"Irritable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... 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, and bawled out to the housekeeper (he had rang the bell ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... 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
... irritable, melancholy and jaundiced; sat up all night half-buried in his mounds of state papers; dictating telegrams, quarreling with callers, denouncing, adjusting, scheming; four o'clock found him in bed; he tossed about till seven, when he managed to get to sleep; and was not seen again till late in the ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... 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 |
