"Overstrain" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lodging in her hold and hollop, whereby I doubt her planks are rotted, so that she cannot choose but fall to pieces in a short time. I have done all in my power to keep her tight and easy, and free from sudden squalls that might overstrain her. And here have been the doctors, who have scuttled her lower deck, and let out six gallons of water. For my own part, I wonder how the devil it came there; for you know as how it was a liquor she never took in. But as for those fellows the doctors, they ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... to be quite on my legs again in a few days. My present indisposition is nothing but an overstrain and knock-up, which a couple of days' rest and some homoeopathic powder will easily set right. Probably we shall see one another in the early days of next week at Leipzig; but don't let us speak of it before-hand, as I have already been three times prevented ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... writing to her by this same mail, but I know the New England conscience will suggest to Deena that anything amusing is wrong, and so you might explain that I am nervous about Polly's health, and that I look to her to help me get settled without overstrain to my wife—in short, administer a dose of duty, and she may see her ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... in the country; and secondly, that the period of lassitude which follows great efforts, whether of men or nations, is not altogether the condemnation of the effort, but partly the weakness of humanity. Nations as well as men, if they aim high, must sometimes overstrain themselves, and weariness must ensue. Nor did the Commonwealth of England come to nothing, though in a society not half emancipated from feudalism it was premature, and therefore, at the time, a failure. It opened a glimpse of a new order of things: it was the first example of a great national ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... mental and physical exhaustion. Reaction from fear brings a fatigue more profound than that which follows physical overstrain. But the healthy mind, like the healthy body, disposes very thoroughly of toxics which arise ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... fifteenth day, when that we had gotten up and washt and eat and drank, the Maid did look unto my bandages; and did consider that I be healed very good, if but that I not to overstrain my body. And we then to dance, half in play and half in victory, but gentle; and afterward she to come with me that she give me aid that we get the trees ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... that no tears were shed during the composition of this letter would be to overstrain fortitude beyond natural bounds. With difficulty Alicia checked the effusions of her pen. She wished to have said much more, and to have soothed the agony of renunciation by painting with warmth her tenderness and her regret; but reason urged that, in exciting his feelings and displaying her own, ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... the most indefatigable, the most docile, the most ambitious in the world. But they are also qualities which urge him to efforts in excess of his natural powers, with the frequent result of mental and moral enervation. The nation has entered upon a period of intellectual overstrain. Consciously or unconsciously, in obedience to sudden necessity, Japan has undertaken nothing less than the tremendous task of forcing mental expansion up to the highest existing standard; and this ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... in that disruptive moment, Canning was far the more visibly perturbed. If women think with their emotions, Carlisle's emotions, rebelling at long overstrain, had now run away with her. She was never a docile girl, as her mother well knew. To Canning she had dealt the ultimate unbelievable buffet. Through all her incredible obstinacy, through all his knowledge of the capabilities of her spirit, he had hardly ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... time we've done," said Gertrude, with apparent indifference. Her mother had not sufficient subtlety of perception to see that the indifference was now assumed, to hide the quiver of nerves, irreparably injured by excitement and overstrain. ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... rather insolent, you know, At being disappointed in your wish To supersede all warblers here below, And be the only blackbird in the dish. And then you overstrain yourself, or so, And tumble downward like the flying fish Gasping on deck, because you soar too high, Bob, And fall for lack of ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... could strike her, we have to grant that, but why it should interest her is a question which can easily overstrain the imagination and bring on nervous prostration, or something like that, and is better left alone by the judicious, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... barefooted journeys and in sermons, but sit in elegant slippers with their hands crossed over their paunches, in charming cells wainscoted with cyprus-wood. And when they are obliged to quit the house, they ride comfortably, as if for their amusement, on mules and sleek, quiet horses. They do not overstrain their minds with the study of many books, for fear lest knowledge might put the pride of Lucifer in the place ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... pleasure, at the same time yielding an equally undisguised inspection of their own. This was their principle reason, but they also considered it advisable as a restorative, and a useful precaution not to overstrain the energies of the youths they both so much enjoyed. My late experiences at home had already taught me the advantage and utility of a quiet night's rest after frequent contests in the fields of ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... mere languor which now begins to oppress him;—it is a sense of vital exhaustion painful as the misery of convalescence: the least effort provokes a perspiration profuse enough to saturate clothing, and the limbs ache as from muscular overstrain;—the lightest attire feels almost insupportable;—the idea of sleeping even under a sheet is torture, for the weight of a silken handkerchief is discomfort. One wishes one could live as a savage,—naked in the heat. One burns with a thirst impossible to assuage—feels a desire for stimulants, ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... harmful to nervous tissue. It is these fatigue toxins that account for many of the nervous and mental disorders which accompany breakdowns from overwork. On the whole, the evil effects from mental overstrain are more to be feared than ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... from is neuritis in your right arm, which will become chronic if you neglect it much longer. I have the same thing myself, so I ought to know, and unless I can stop operating for a while I believe my fingers will become useless. Also something is affecting my sight, overstrain, I suppose, so that I am obliged to wear stronger and stronger glasses. I think I shall have to leave Ogden" (his partner) "in charge for a while, and get away into the sun. There ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... the result of all this overstrain in the prevalence of eye-diseases in India. Western countries set us a good example in the physical training of their boys, who leave school strong and healthy. I have heard in England that in the poorer schools the ...
— Education as Service • J. Krishnamurti
... vertebrae ached from the shaking and jolting. I couldn't stand or sit or lie.... But on the other hand, all pains in my head and chest have vanished, my appetite has developed incredibly, and my haemorrhoids have subsided completely. The overstrain, the constant worry with luggage and so on, and perhaps the farewell drinking parties in Moscow, had brought on spitting of blood in the mornings, which induced something like depression, arousing gloomy thoughts, but towards the end ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... this unsatisfied yearning must have come to us across the ages which separate the primeval mist from the consciousness of to-day. I do not think that any holder of the Evolution hypothesis would say that I overstate or overstrain it in any way. I merely strip it of all vagueness, and bring before you, unclothed and unvarnished, the notions by which it must ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... hastening this process. There is, however, a way to assist nature and to prevent mistakes. That way is to remain in bed a sufficient length of time to allow proper contraction of the womb. While the ligaments and muscles are still lax, to not undertake any muscular effort that will overtax or overstrain them,—a condition that favors displacement by weakening the support of the womb. A woman cannot understand why she should stay in bed when she feels well enough to get up. It is, however, unjust ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... found this language used, in prose or verse, it would be memorable. The thought is not a mere text of the schools; it is strongly and finely conceived, and put in a form that anticipates the ardent and lofty manner of Lucan, without his perpetual overstrain of expression. Other passages, showing the same mental force, occur in the Astronomica; one might instance the fine passage on the power of the human eye to take in, within its tiny compass, the whole immensity of the heavens; or another, suggested by the mention of the constellation ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... pulled myself together and rubbed my eyes and then I seemed to be going to the governor's for an explanation. Nothing of the kind ever happened to me, before or after, and I can only explain these strange dreams like memories, by ascribing them to overstrain of the nerves. I lived again through the scene in the slaughter-house and the conversation with the governor, and at the same time I was ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... exercise that occupies the whole child, his mental as well as his physical side—and later, also, the moral side. In play the exercise is regulated by the interests, so that, while there may be extreme exertion, there is not the same danger of overstrain as is possible with work that he is forced to do. In play the exercise is carried on with freedom of the spirit, so that the flow of blood and the feeling of exhilaration make ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... affairs. Overflowing with details, he probed the facts of history to the quick, and felt for its heart. Fertile in theory, he preserved the truth of science so pure as 'in the sight of God,' not 'to write the very smallest thing as certain, of which he was not fully convinced,' nor to overstrain the weight of a conjecture, nor even to cite as his own the verified quotation he had gained from another. Practicing on his own maxim to 'open the heart to sincere veneration for all excellence' in human act and thought, not even his profound admiration ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... only serious obstacles to acceptance of Darwinism seem to me to be of the author's own creation. Now and then he appears somewhat needlessly to overstrain his principles, as for instance when he intimates his conviction that 'all individuals of the same species, and all the closely allied species of most genera,' will hereafter be discovered to 'have descended from one parent and to have migrated from some one birthplace.' ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... however, determined on persuading him to patience, reinforcing her assurances with Dr. Dagger's opinion, that though Kalliope's constitution needed only quiet and rest entirely to shake off the effects of the overstrain of that terrible half-year, yet that renewed agitation would probably entail chronic heart-complaint; and she insisted that without making any sign the lover should go out of reach for several months, making, for instance, the expedition to Norway ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the half-despair of his expression to Froude about the Deity Himself, "He does nothing." Professor Masson says that "Carlyle had abandoned the Metaphysic of Christianity while retaining much of its Ethic." To reverse this dictum would be an overstrain on the other side: but the Metaphysic of Calvinism is precisely what he retained; the alleged Facts of Revelation he discarded; of the Ethic of the Gospels he accepted perhaps the lesser half, and he distinctly ceased to regard the ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... investigation, while it left unremoved the conviction that the horse had been doctored, could not explain when or how, or by what medicines. Forest King had simply "broken down"; favorites do this on the flat and over the furrow from an overstrain, from a railway journey, from a touch of cold, from a sudden decay of power, from spasm, or from vertigo; those who lose by them may think what they will of "roping," or "painting," or "nobbling," but what ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... Al. "they will overstrain themselves with the hare in sight, and break a blood-vessel." See Arrian, xxxi. 4, {regnuntai gar ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... of what he considered our backwardness, he became naturalized as a British citizen. In 1916, received the Order of Merit (O.M.), the highest honor for literary men conferred in England. His death in 1916 was attributed to overstrain caused by the War and his efforts to help ...
— Contemporary American Literature - Bibliographies and Study Outlines • John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert |
