"Jumpy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... strain of the last half-hour. "I did some scouting work for General Greene in the Carolinas. I've lain low in sight of the watch-fires of Cornwallis' cavalry, but I'm damned if I ever had as close a shave as that. I felt jumpy, and that's a fact. I think it was the sight of your bare back, Neal, and that blackguard brandishing his belt over you that played up ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... to tell in which direction you are going to hit the ball. The late Miss Robb, who was a magnificent mixed doubles player, used to play in this way. Men have told me it was impossible to anticipate her returns. Keeping your head down will also help you from getting flurried or put off, however "jumpy" the opposing man is, or however much he is running across. You can always have a mental vision of him to tell you where he is ...
— Lawn Tennis for Ladies • Mrs. Lambert Chambers
... knowledge that you are doing it. We had been talking, and the sight of that building, so unexpected, startled us into silence. It would any one. Believe me, your imperturbable man with perfect, cool, self-possession does not exist. Man's a jumpy thing, given to nerves. You may deny it and talk about the unexcitability of the American citizen and all that bunk, but let me tell you that your journalists and moving picture producers and preachers and politicians have caught on to the fact that man is ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... to toil a week. Yet there was to be said in favour of the Simsbury position that it steadily endured. Each week brought its fifteen dollars, pittance though it might be, while the art of the silver screen was capricious in its rewards, not to say jumpy. Never, for weeks at a stretch, had Gashwiler said with a tired smile, "Nothing to-day—sorry!" He might have been a grouch and given to unreasonable nagging, but with him there was always a very definite something to-day which he would specify, in short words if the occasion seemed to demand. There ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... in the tiled roof. The worm-eaten old floors had rotted into holes, and Raymonde had to walk warily to avoid putting her foot through in tender places. Many of the rooms had cupboards—dark, mysterious, cobwebby recesses—into which she peered with a rather jumpy sensation that a bogy might suddenly pop out. The whole atmosphere of the place was ghostly, ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... low! Give it to 'em—give it to 'em, horns and hoofs, sabre and carbine!" he shouted in a high, jumpy voice. "Give it to 'em! Make 'em weep! Make 'em ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... devil was he up to, was my secret preoccupation. He fussed about me with a nervous hospitality, talking in jumpy fragments, rubbing his hands together, and taking peeps at me over and round his glasses. As I sat down in his leather-covered armchair, I had an odd memory of the one in the Clayton dentist's operating-room—I know ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... flutter of a pocket-handkerchief is seen, he finishes with "And blass the Prince of WAILES!" After which he subsides, occasionally breaking the silence to sigh aloud, "O Maman!" and thenceforth, for the greater part of the journey to Paris, he slumbers in a more or less jumpy manner. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... of it. "No, Jack, no! Don't be so jumpy! Of course she hasn't. As if she would! She hasn't said a thing. But I know how she feels, and I should feel exactly the same in her place. Now do be sensible! You must see my point. I'm getting on, you know, Jack. I'm twenty-five. Just fancy! You've ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... said. "Getting jumpy. Are in receipt of my favor of the 7th inst, and are at a loss to understand—all sorts of things. ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... must have wandered aimlessly about, not returning home until late in the afternoon. During dinner he appears to have been rather restless and nervous—"jumpy," according to the evidence of the little serving maid. Once he sprang out of his chair as if shot when the little serving maid accidentally let fall a table-spoon; and twice he upset the salt. It was at mealtime that, as a rule, the Professor found his attitude towards Malvina most sceptical. ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... one place, you silly cuckoo!" said Jimmy. "You make me feel all jumpy. He had indeed jumped rather violently. "Here, walk between Cathy and ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... obviously lawyer, avocat type, little bald on top, sneaky civility, smells of bad perfume or, at any rate, sweetish soap; tiny red-headed person, also civilian, creased worrying excited face, amusing little body and hands, brief and jumpy, must be a Dickens character, ought to spend his time sailing kites of his own construction over other people's houses in gusty weather. Behind the Three, all tied up with deference and inferiority, mild ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... He was feeling jumpy about the treasure, and dreaming of it all night long in a way that did not make the waking fears more comfortable. A whole company of sappers bad been sent for; and because of the need of secrecy for the present, a special appropriation had had to be made to cover the cost of lumber ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... couched in the most delightfully modulated of English, when the activity of a particularly giddy week-end brought them back a little too shaky of hand, a little too brilliant of eye and a trifle jumpy as to pulse. Hogarty had a way of telling them just how little they actually amounted to, which, no matter how wickedly it cut, ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... Dust Bin during the night. It hadn't exactly fought its way back from the river but had had enough casualties to make the men nervous and jumpy without tempering them at all. One of the casualties had been Lt. Colonel Upton. Now Major Chapelle was in command. The men of the battalion were nervous but Chapelle was riding on the thin edge of panic. ...
— Narakan Rifles, About Face! • Jan Smith
... oil amalgamation. In these days of aeroplane travel, when it is next to impossible to watch the comings and goings of important individuals, or even to get wind of directors' meetings, the City is apt to be a little jumpy, and to respond to wild rumours in a fashion extremely trying to the nerves of ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... realized I really had nothing to go by. He might have been answering a call of nature, and the movement of the lantern accidental. And if someone had jumped me from behind, I might have pulled a knife on him myself. So I only said, "Don't do it again. We're all too jumpy." ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... days later the atmospheric conditions got worse. Several boats were blown ashore and the piers damaged. About 8 p.m. rain descended and drenched those whose dugouts afforded little protection. During the worst period the enemy became "jumpy" and opened a heavy fire on the hill above. The prospect of having to ascend the slippery tracks was forbidding. However, quiet returned and daybreak revealed the sea ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... pleasantly. She left on my mind the impression of a certain odd mixture of shyness and sharpness; as if she knew the world well, but was still a little harmlessly afraid of it. Perhaps the possession of so jumpy and incalculable a husband had left her a little nervous. Anyhow, when she had retired to the inner chamber once more, that extraordinary man poured forth his apologia and autobiography ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... wanted her to help, she didn't take any interest. I never saw such a change. And she is so—so fidgety and—and nervous and high-spirited and silly. She laughed at nothing and kept jumping up and walking about and sitting down again. I declare! it made ME jumpy just ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... much to show for it. My platoon has lost some of its best men, and I've been pretty badly hit, as some of them were real chums of mine—the bravest and dearest fellows. And I don't know why, but for the first time, I've been feeling rather jumpy and run down. So I went to a doctor, and he told me I'd better go off duty for a fortnight. But just then, luckily, the whole battalion was ordered, as I told you a week ago, into what's called "divisional rest," so here we are—for three weeks! Quite good billets—an old French farm—with ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... one scratching upon the tree-trunk. And being of a very curious nature, he crawled half through the hole and peered out to see what was happening. Daddy Longlegs was all ready for a fright. He was so upset, on account of being caught away from home on a windy day, that he was unusually jumpy and fidgety. But—as it often happens at such times—he met with a pleasant surprise. For there sat Sandy Chipmunk, with his long tail curled over his back, and something very like a smile ...
— The Tale of Daddy Longlegs - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... I was a mass of bruises and aches, to say nothing of jumpy nerves. I was not inclined to make light of my ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... happened that made both those jumpy gentlemen change their minds. From not wanting to be called Grasshoppers, they decided suddenly that they liked the name. And each claimed that the other had no ...
— The Tale of Kiddie Katydid • Arthur Scott Bailey
... slow torsion and crisping of all his nerves, beginning at his ankles, spread to every corner of his body till he had to shut his fists and teeth against the blind impulse to leap from his bed screaming. His hands felt light and, as he told himself, "jumpy." All at once he felt a peculiar sensation in them: they seemed to swell, the fingers puffing to an enormous size, the palms bulging, the whole member from the wrist to the nails distended like a glove when one has blown ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... that tanner 'e owes me," he mused, "and yet I don't know what else it can be. I never see a man so jumpy." ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... to make a fuss about," she said with a frown of irritation. "I wish you weren't so jumpy this morning,—or perhaps, it's I that am. All I meant was that home isn't a comfortable place for me and I won't go back there if I can help it—only I am afraid I can't. That's the trouble I wanted to talk to ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... himself, he is likely to come around a bush smack on one. And a dozen times a day the throat-stopping, abrupt crash and smash to right or left brings him up all standing, his heart racing, the blood pounding through his veins. It is jumpy work, and is very hard on the temper. In the natural reaction from being startled into fits one snaps back to profanity. The cumulative effects of the epithets hurled after a departing and inconsiderately ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... Chillicothe, Ohio, to Singapore, Malaya, and back again. There were permanent trouble spots at various places where practically anything was likely to happen at any instant. The people of every nation were jumpy. There was constant pressure on governments and on political parties so that all governments looked shaky and all parties helpless. Nobody could look forward to a peaceful old age, and most hardly hoped to reach middle age. The arrival of an object from outer space was nicely ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... mysterious powers of the Christian religion. For he is surely by temperament one of the most unstable of minds, and yet by the power of religion he has become a coherent personality of almost rigid singleness of purpose. In conversation with him one cannot help feeling that he is jumpy and excitable; every movement of his extremely mobile face suggests a soul of gutta-percha stretched in all directions by the movements of his brain, and twitching with every thought that crosses his mind; but at the same time one is aware in him of a power which is never ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... who was with Mason's forces on their march to Toledo gives a description of the soldiers' jumpy nerves. Various jokers had circulated dark stories of the number of sharp-shooting Buckeyes waiting for them at Toledo, which so alarmed this amateur legion that nearly one half of those who had marched boldly from Monroe availed themselves ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... so jumpy lately, I thought maybe it might be a good thing if I kind of got off by myself and ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... drunk at supper two cups of strong coffee instead of his usual one. His thought had been that the stimulant would tend to keep him awake on duty. The effect the coffee had on him was to make his nerves jumpy. He lay on the knoll, rifle clutched fast in his hands, acutely sensitive to every sound, to every hazy shadow of the night. The very silence was sinister. His imagination peopled the sage with Utes, creeping toward him with a horrible and deadly patience. ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... his antics and looked over my way. He gave one glance at me, and then started to run inshore with short, jumpy little steps. Something seemed to have struck him all of a sudden, and I was just beginning to wonder what the deuce it could be when, out of the corner of my eyes, I caught sight of a pile of neatly folded clothes thrust into the cleft of ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... bear the slightest burden, but the nilgao will carry a man. I had one in my collection of animals which I trained, not to saddle, for such a thing would not stay on his back, but to saddle-cloth. He was a little difficult to ride, rather jumpy at times, otherwise his pace was a shuffling trot. I used to take him out into camp with me, and made him earn his grain by carrying the servants' bundles. He was not very safe, for he was, when excited, apt to charge; and a charge ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... sir," the young man declared, "and I am sure we are very sorry to trouble you. In a week or two's time you can go into business again as much as you like. It's only while we are fiddling around here that the Admiral's jumpy about things. May my man have a cup of coffee, sir? I'd like to be on the way back in ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... But I'm still jumpy, and this sort of carelessness makes me nervous, particularly as the story is going about that the King came near being assassinated in the station of his home town when he was leaving. Man fired point blank at his face, but gun didn't go off or some one knocked up the man's ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... devil's trouble,' said he,' in pulling the boat over here, when there is a beautiful place at the other end of the barrage, where you can go down with the current? The water is a bit jumpy, but ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... I, saluting. But under my breath I swore. I had no desire to take my men along the plateau, because, whereas the road under the cliffs was well sheltered, the tableland was exposed to all the guns on Achi Baba, every one of which—so jumpy was the Turk—seemed manned and firing. And I had set my heart on getting my company—all twenty-eight of them—off the Peninsula without the loss of a single man. The route, too, lay over Hunter Weston Hill, and I wanted to avoid seeing and ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... the trenches to the comparative safety of the dressing station is usually done by combatants. A man has to live continually under shell-fire to acquire the immunity to fear which passes for courage. The bravest man is likely to get "jumpy," if he only faces up to a bombardment occasionally. There are other reasons why combatants should do the stretcher-bearing which do not need elaborating. The combatants have an expert knowledge of their own particular ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... was not a coward, neither was he a superstitious man, but he had imagination. The steady strain of his and Frank's long flight, the certainty of pursuit close behind, had frayed his nerve and rendered him jumpy. For a man in his condition to be awakened out of a trancelike sleep by an intruder at once invisible, dumb; to feel the presence of that mysterious visitor and actually to see him—it—bulked dim and formless among the darting ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... the Irishman, a little sharply. "And I wasn't aware that I'd been looking at you in any unusual way. You're precious jumpy to-day, if you want to know.... Look here!" He came back a step, frowning. "Look here!" he repeated. "I don't quite make you out. Are you keeping back anything? Because if you are, for Heaven's sake have it out here and now! We're all in this game together, and we can't afford to be anything but ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... over," he reported. "From what I can make out, as soon as the stoats, who were very nervous and jumpy already, heard the shrieks and the yells and the uproar inside the hall, some of them threw down their rifles and fled. The others stood fast for a bit, but when the weasels came rushing out upon them they thought ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... and upset; he was firmly convinced that he was the most ill-used beggar in the whole of London. Remorse was gnawing hard at his heart, though he was trying to believe that it was entirely another emotion. He had not slept properly for nights; his head ached, and his nerves were jumpy. ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... time the sight of a coiled rope made me jumpy and I dreamed of snakes writhing, coiling, moving in undulating lines. At noon one day I was alone, making up the paper. I stood at the form table working, when I turned abruptly. A snake's slimy head was thrust through a big knothole ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl |
