"Excitable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a very excitable state, it was thought best that she should remain a few weeks under the superintendence of his daughter, Mrs. Gibbons, before she went to the home provided for her. She was slightly unsettled at times, but was disposed to be industrious and cheerful. Having earned a little ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... that weather-beaten and chin-bearded face, was the hub of the summit of Hampstead. He was as richly local as the pond there—that famous pond which in hot weather is so much waded through by cart-horses and is at all seasons so much barked around by excitable dogs and cruised on by toy boats. He was as essential as it and the flag-staff and the gorse and the view over the valley away to Highgate. It was always to Highgate that his big blue eyes were looking, ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... enthusiasm. We disembarked yesterday morning at ten o'clock, and took two hours to come here. The most perfect order was maintained in spite of the immense mass of people assembled, and a more good-humoured crowd I never saw, but noisy and excitable beyond belief, talking, jumping, and shrieking instead of cheering. There were numbers of troops out, and it really was a wonderful scene. This is a very pretty place, and the house reminds me of dear Claremont. The view of the Wicklow Mountains from the windows is very ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... of the theft, the old man became strangely agitated. "Who was it?" said he. At once the spirit indicated a desire to use the alphabet. As we went over the letters, (always a slow method, but useful when you want to observe excitable people,) my visitor kept saying, "Quicker. Go quicker." At length the spirit spelt out the words, "I know not his name." "Was it," said the gentleman,—"was it a—was it one of my household?" I knocked yes, without hesitation; who else could it have been? "Excuse me," he went on, "if ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... press, pamphlets, and private letters of the English and French, dealing with the war, have from the first been characterised by a self-control and calm determination, which in the case of the French has especially astonished Americans; for we expected the French to be more excitable. Taken as a whole, the Teutonic literature has from the first been characterised by an uncontrollable bitterness and violent denunciation of the enemy and of neutrals; which has also surprised Americans, for we expected ...
— Plain Words From America • Douglas W. Johnson
... the wilderness, excitable, ready for any hazard, drawn by the longest odds, and to serve a woman gave ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... new and unexpected fact to one of her excitable Southern blood, easily raised, and easily depressed—she discovered that neither her husband, nor Winter, nor Geri, nor Wenoch, nor Ranald of Ramsey, nor even the romancing harping Leofric, thought that all was lost. She argued ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... dressed in the most suitable manner, made a perfect contrast to poor, excitable Kitty. Kitty's words had been plainly audible, and ...
— Wild Kitty • L. T. Meade
... breakfasted alone. He was in a most excitable state over the occurrence of the night before, which Judge Clarkson was called on to relate, and concerning which he made all the reservations possible, all of them entirely acceptable to his listeners with the exception of Miss Loring, who ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... the village on his way to the Hall, and of course had made a great sensation in that most excitable place, where every event is a matter of gaze and gossip. The report flew like wildfire, that Starlight Tom was in custody. The ale-drinkers forthwith abandoned the tap-room; Slingsby's school broke loose, and master and boys swelled the tide that came rolling ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... hunting-exploration trip to some part of Central America; I don't know what they weren't going to do, but it was to be a big affair, and they were to come back loaded up with natural-history specimens and to make a pile of money out of the venture, too. And he was telling me all about it in his eager, excitable way when the other man came in, and I was introduced to him. And, gentlemen, that's the man I saw—under the name of Sir Gilbert Carstairs—on the bench at Berwick only the other day! He's changed, of course—more than I should have thought ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... storm of indignation in Xanthe's breast. Her excitable blood fairly seethed, and she was obliged to put the utmost constraint upon herself not to throw her roses ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Bunk, had been for some years inhabited by an elderly half-pay naval officer, Captain Carnegy, and his motherless boys and girls. The other house was the Vicarage, the habitation of Mr. Vesey, the good old vicar, his invalid wife, and a pair of excitable Yorkshire terriers, Splutters and Shutters, thus curiously named for the sake of rhyme, it is to be presumed. They were brothers, and as tricky a pair as one could meet, ever up to their eyes in mischief from morning until night. Indeed, Splutters and Shutters kept what would have ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... personal point of view, with no disguises or reticences of any kind. It is written with great art. Rousseau's style, like his matter, foreshadows the future; his periods are cast in a looser, larger, more oratorical mould than those of his contemporaries; his sentences are less fiery and excitable; though he can be witty when he wishes, he is never frivolous; and a tone of earnest intimate passion lingers in his faultless rhythms. With his great powers of expression he combined a wonderful aptitude for the perception of the subtlest shades ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... very much like caterwauling, and I need not say that there is no fascination in it—on the contrary its tendency is to destroy any other kind of attraction. It is generally far more due to an ill-trained, unregulated, excitable, nervous temperament than ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... shouting; everything was quiet. Harry Fleming saw a wonderful sight a whole people aroused and determined. There was no foolish boasting; no one talked of a British general eating his Christmas dinner in Berlin. But even Dick Mercer, excitable and erratic as he had always been, seemed to have undergone ...
— The Boy Scout Aviators • George Durston
... been in the last twenty years the sixteenth century more responsive than Lodge to the shifting moods of that excitable period. Lodge was the son of a Lord Mayor of London, and was a contemporary at Oxford with Sidney, Gosson, Chapman, Lyly, Peele and Watson. His life included a round of varied experiences. A student at Lincoln's Inn, a young aspirant for literary honours, friends with ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... Ug, the son of Zug. He was one of the nicest young prehistoric men that ever sprang seven feet into the air to avoid the impulsive bite of a sabre-tooth tiger, or cheered the hearts of grave elders searching for inter-tribal talent by his lightning sprints in front of excitable mammoths. Everybody liked Ug, and it was a matter of surprise to his friends that he had ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 7, 1914 • Various
... already heard a good deal of Stavrogin, and of how much it was to his interest to murder his wife. Yet, I repeat, the immense majority went on listening without moving or uttering a word. The only people who were excited were bawling drunkards and excitable individuals of the same sort as the gesticulatory cabinet-maker. Every one knew the latter as a man really of mild disposition, but he was liable on occasion to get excited and to fly off at a tangent if anything struck him in a certain way. I did not see Liza and Mavriky Nikolaevitch arrive. ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... own a cotton farm or a sugar plantation well stocked with negroes. Facts have in many instances verified the truth of this assertion. Men have frequently emigrated from the free states to the South, professedly abolitionists, and after getting into one or two difficulties with the excitable Southerners, they would all at once throw off their garb of abolitionism, and then, they too, must have slaves. Perhaps they thought that a change of location justified a change of opinion; or, it may be, that they reasoned thus: poor creatures, they are in bondage, and why should ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... government; to give a new impulse to literature, art, and science, and to show how impossible it is to extinguish the fires of liberty when once kindled in the breasts of patriots, or to put a stop to the progress of the human mind among an excitable, intelligent, though fickle people, craving with passionate earnestness both popular rights and constitutional government in accordance with those laws of progress which form the basis of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... majority of people are not susceptible to hypnotic influence, and that those whose will can be so completely subjected to that of another are comparatively few. Very few such have yet been found in France. In America, the realm of a less excitable people, still fewer could ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... morning, any curious eyes to watch the conduct of the gentleman who had come to rent a sporting estate, they would probably have surmised that he had found something to please his fancy strangely, and yet that some perplexity still persisted. They would also have put him down as a much more excitable, and even demonstrative, young man than they had imagined. On a lonely stretch of shore hard by the little town he paced for nearly an hour, his face a record of the debate within, and ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... the excitable disposition of Mad Bess we took our way along the least bustling streets we could select; directing our course towards the outskirts of the town, behind which extended for some miles a 40portion of the range of hills known as the South Downs, over the smooth green turf of which we promised ourselves ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... thin, dark, and handsome. He was unmistakably English, although he had an excitable and nervous way about him which did not savor of British coolness and composure. He seemed a person not to take anything easily. Even the moonlight, and the solitude, and the indescribably soothing and philosophic influence of the contemplation of a silent city from ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... the nightmare; that is all. She's an excitable, nervous person: she construed her dream into an apparition, or something of that sort, no doubt; and has taken a fit with fright. Now, then, I must see you all back into your rooms; for, till the house ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... lively eyes, and a bright red-brown colour on thin cheeks. The village applied to her the epithet which John's thoughts had applied to Muster Hill's widow. They said she was "caselty," which means flighty, haphazard, excitable; but she was popular, nevertheless, and had ...
— Bessie Costrell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... himself generally disagreeable to his neighbours with whom he was for ever at cross-purposes. This contentious personage had two sons,—Jeffrey and Amadis,—also knights-at-arms, inheriting the somewhat excitable nature of their father; and the younger of these, Amadis, whose name I bear, was selected by the Duc d'Anjou to accompany him with his train of nobles and gentles, when that 'petit grenouille' as he called himself, went to England ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... cry of danger from the outskirts was soon taken up in the centre of the city, and now nothing was to be seen in any direction but a dashing and scampering of the mercurial and excitable citizens of the place, each to his lodge or burrow. Far as the eye could reach was spread the city, and in every direction the scene was the same. We rode leisurely along until we had reached the more thickly settled portion of the city, when we halted, and after taking the bridles from our horses ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... fairly trembling with excitement; but that was no unusual thing for her, as she was an ardent, excitable little mortal, and ever in a fever of some kind or another. The young knight who had brought the news looked at her with unmistakable admiration and pleasure, and seemed as though he would gladly have obeyed any behest of hers; but he was fain to wait for the decision of the stately Eleanor, ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Sometimes only a hand, sometimes only a foot, shadowed itself out of the dim obscurity. She tried to persuade herself that it was all done, somehow or other, by Funkelstein, yet she could not help watching with a curious dread. She was not a very excitable woman, and her nerves were ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... best-fitted to carry out the plan. I think you will agree with me that, if a single nation is to undertake it, it must be one of the five great nations. In world-politics, the others are negligible. Well, let us see. France, a nation of peacocks, excitable, impressionable, easily angered, making much of trifles, jealous of their dignity, a dying nation which grows smaller and weaker every year. England, also a degenerate nation, soaked in gin, where a hundred ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... have learned not to be spontaneous, try to forget it. In any event, never repress any desire for gayety or romping or what-not in this house. You don't at all need to be quiet oh your Aunt Milly's account. She isn't strong and she is excitable, and yet she isn't somehow what is called nervous at all. She doesn't mind noise or even tumult; indeed, she likes to feel that things are going on in the house even if ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... inventor was introduced in the first volume of this series, called "Tom Swift and his Motor Cycle." It was Tom's first venture into the realms of invention, after he had purchased from Mr. Wakefield Damon a speedy machine that tried to climb a tree with that excitable gentleman. ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... Ned when he gets back, if you really want to know. But don't, for goodness sake let Horace hear you. His imagination is so lively that he would think it was a stampede every time the cattle moved. I think it was because Horace is so excitable that Mr. Wilder had us stay home. He probably thought we were older and could steady him down. Now don't try to think up any more things that might happen. I'm tired and want to go to sleep." And turning his back to his brother, Tom ...
— Comrades of the Saddle - The Young Rough Riders of the Plains • Frank V. Webster
... a row with the civil authorities. In the army the Italian still fights his duello, but these affairs never get into the newspapers, as in France. Seldom, however, is any one seriously hurt. They are excitable, and consequently a good shot is likely to shoot wildly at a pinch. So there you are, ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... who takes no part in the philosophical discussion is the excitable Apollodorus, the same who, in the Symposium, of which he is the narrator, is called 'the madman,' and who testifies his grief by the most violent emotions. Phaedo is also present, the 'beloved disciple' as he may be termed, who is described, if not 'leaning on his bosom,' as ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... avowed his guilt, and boasted of what he had done. His name he gave as Jean Poltrot, and he claimed to be lord of Merey, in Angoumois; but he was better known, from his dark complexion and his familiarity with the Spanish language, by the sobriquet of "L'Espagnolet." He was an excitable, melancholy man, whose mind, continually brooding over the wrongs his country and faith had experienced at the hands of Guise, had imbibed the fanatical notion that it was his special calling of God to rid the world ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... class of the London population except the army and navy. As Mr. N.C. Macnamara has pointed out, it is found that London men do not possess the necessary nervous stability and self-possession for police work; they are too excitable and nervous, lacking the equanimity, courage, and self-reliance of the rural men. Just in the same way, in Spain, the bull-fighters, a body of men admirable for their graceful strength, their modesty, courage, and skill, nearly always come from country districts, although ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... to come out of paradise. That last night I felt as if I simply couldn't leave you, my darling. But I'm glad and thankful I've done it. I have to do everything for him. The doctor's rather an ass, very French and excitable, but he does his best. But I have to see to everything, and be always there to put on the poultices and the ice, and—poor fellow, he does suffer so, but he's awfully brave and determined to live. He says he will live if it's only to prove that I came in time to save him. And yet, when I look ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Why"—jerking his head towards the cathedral with a gesture which signified that if he had not seen the thing himself he never could have believed it—"why, you loose yourself in there kompletely!" Then he asked the Tenor to sing again, which the Tenor did, being careful, however, not to give his excitable visitor too much lest the intoxicating draught should bring on ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... downstairs, and as I appeared the jay flew, with two catbirds after him, still crying in a way I had never heard before. I expected nothing less than to find a young catbird injured, but I found nothing. Whether the blue jay really had touched one, or it was a mere false alarm on the part of the very excitable catbirds, I could not tell. This is the only thing I have seen in the jay that might have been an interference with another bird's rights; and the catbirds made such a row when I came near their babies that I strongly suspect the only guilt of the jay was alighting ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... and began to flutter up and down the room; poor excitable creature. "Part with her!" cried he; "I shall never be a painter if I do; what is to keep my heart warm when the sun is hid, when the birds are silent, when difficulty looks a mountain and success ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... neuralgic affection, "false angina," and that his heart was sound, but that he must diminish his work. He pleaded to be allowed to finish his imminent engagements; the doctor said that he might do that, if he would put off all subsequent ones. This was wisely done, in order to reassure him, as he was an excitable though not a timid patient. He was at Hare Street for a day or two, and his trusted servant, Mr. Reeman, tells me that he seemed ill and out of spirits. The last words he said as he drove away, looking round the lime-encircled lawn, were, "Ah! the leaves ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of any political party. Directly the Irish Courts sought to translate the paper safeguards of the Home Rule Bill into practical effect, they would be faced by the violent hostility of an ignorant and excitable assembly stimulated by an irresponsible and inexperienced executive. The result would be recriminations and friction which must deplorably injure and lower the reputation and prestige of both the ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... husband? Is it not reasonable? and, whether due to temperament or reason with them, the Quiquendonians seem to us to be in the right in thus prolonging their courtship. When marriages in other more lively and excitable cities are seen taking place within a few months, we must shrug our shoulders, and hasten to send our boys to the schools and our daughters to the pensions ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... from the lips of the watchers in the adobe. It was all that Kid Wolf could do to hold back the excitable younger Robbins, who wanted to avenge ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... a trader on the island of Apiang, one of the Gilbert Group, recently annexed by Great Britain. He was very old, very quiet in his manner, and about the last kind of man one would expect to see earning his living as a trader among the excitable, intractable native race which inhabit the Line Islands. His fellow-trader, Bob Randolph, a man of tremendous nerve and resolution, only maintained his prestige among the Apiang natives by the wonderful control he had learnt to exercise over a naturally ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... journey, and that of the four shoes, he would warrant that no two had been made in the same county. This remark was quoted the next day, and the mysterious circumstance, trifling as it was, was sufficient, in the highly excitable state of the public mind, to awaken attention. People came to see the horse, and to inquire for the owner, but they found that both had disappeared. They immediately determined that the stranger must have been the king, or at least some distinguished personage ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... a serious predicament. Fortune had favoured him so long that to be thus blocked by a mean little stump was too much for his excitable nature. He raged and railed against everything and everybody in general. But the tall stately trees were silent witnesses to his passionate outbursts, and poor sympathisers. When sober thoughts at length came to him, he began to realise the seriousness of his position. Out of ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... saddling and packing of the animals occupies much time. We start about nine o'clock with nine animals, six burros, two horses and one mule. My Belshazzar is slow but very sure. Mr. James rides the mule, a red creature, very nervous and excitable and which they tell me is not well broken and does not ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... will be killed; but that we must expect. This, in substance, was the ground taken by Sharpe, who, as a slave, had always been a favorite both with his master and others. This was the commencement of the great insurrection. Its leader had not counted upon the excitable spirit of the slaves when once aroused. Holding as sacred the property of his master, he believed his followers would do the same, until the light of burning barns and out-houses revealed the mischief ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... many varieties of him that he is confusing. He comes from the various provinces of Russia, from the conglomerate empire of Austro-Hungary, and from the Balkan states. In physique he is sturdier than the Italian and mentally he is less excitable and nervous, but he drinks heavily and is often murderous when not sober. The Slav has come to America to find a place in the sun. At home he has suffered from political oppression and poverty; he has had little education of body or mind; he is subject to his ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... these parts in a body. We could not remain with a Catholic Parliament in Dublin. We should not be safe but for the English shield that covers us. The people, as a whole, are quiet enough—when left alone. But they are very excitable. Kind and civil as they may seem, they turn round in a moment. They will believe anything they are told, their credulity is wonderful, and their clergy have them entirely in their hands. The people might be tolerant, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... most southrons, she did not like to finish. There is an impatience of toil—of its duration at least—in the southern mind, which leaves it too frequently unperforming. This is a natural characteristic of an excitable people. People easily moved are always easily diverted from their objects. People of very vivid fancy are also very capricious. There is yet another cause for the non-performance of the southern mind—its fastidiousness. ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... tone of this note which gave me great uneasiness. Its whole style differed materially from that of Legrand. What could he be dreaming of? What new crotchet possessed his excitable brain? What "business of the highest importance" could HE possibly have to transact? Jupiter's account of him boded no good. I dreaded lest the continued pressure of misfortune had, at length, fairly unsettled the reason of my friend. ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... the two travellers who descended from the carriage at the door of the Hotel du Palais-Royal had reason to fear the state of mind in which the always excitable papal town might be at that time; for just before reaching Orgon, at a spot where three crossroads stretched out before the traveller—one leading to Nimes, the second to Carpentras, the third to Avignon—the postilion had stopped his ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... before with Brother Lefferts and others, two of them could not sit still to read something that wanted to be read; they walked the floor, one holding the candle, the other the paper; both fighting mosquitos with both hands. I am of a less excitable temperament—for I contrive to ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... of delight Lucy swept her off her chair, and twirled her about the room as excitable young ladies are fond of doing when their joyful emotions need a vent. When both were giddy they subsided into a corner and a breathless discussion of the ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... The excitable young man suddenly became the picture of resignation, and answered in a formula of words as if he ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... engaged them on behalf of Colonel Taylor in Edinburgh last evening. They had all good characters, and were well recommended. We told them nothing, of course, of the reputation of the house, and were careful to choose persons of mature age, and not excitable girls. ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... steala your job," he repeated craftily. And with a sinking heart Alex saw that the rest of the easily excitable foreigners had ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... threatening look, her single step of advance, without tremor or lowering of the eyes. She even released her grasp upon the uplifted knife, as if in utter contempt. For a moment they confronted each other, and then, as suddenly as she had broken into flame, the excitable young Mexican burst into tears. As though this unexpected exhibition of feeling had inspired the action, the other as ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... and related all that was necessary concerning the fraud practised upon the institution by introducing into it an unfortunate woman, represented to be mad, but really only sorrowful, nervous and excitable. And to prove the truth of his words, Traverse desired Herbert to read from the confession the portion relating to this fraud, and to show the doctor the signature of the ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... place in my cousin. Hitherto his amiability, even when he was most unendurable, had been a part of him. Obviously he was losing that lightness of spirit which we once disliked and now began to regret. He was inclined to be excitable and sullen by turns, and often of late I had been obliged to go to the bottom of my diplomacy in preventing some painful scene. As I have said, neither my wife nor I had spoken definitely of this ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... of a lady—the appearance and bearing of one was inseparable from her. It was with much difficulty that he persuaded the weeping and indignant Belle to remain with the children, for he well knew that she was far too excitable to deal with the police. Having made every provision possible for Mildred's comfort, they soon reached the station-house, and the sergeant in charge greeted them politely; but on learning their errand he frowned, and said to Mrs. Jocelyn, "No, you can't see her ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... baggage check!" exclaimed the excitable man, as he shook hands with Tom and Ned and noted the packing evidences all about. "You're ready to go to the land ...
— Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders - or, The Underground Search for the Idol of Gold • Victor Appleton
... opinion is that the difficulties in the poem are caused partly by the poet's conception of the violent, wavering, excitable, and unstable character of Agamemnon; partly by some accident, now indiscoverable, save by conjecture, which has ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... tortures of His creatures are pleasant to Him; that, after bestowing upon us reason for our guidance, He makes it of no avail by interposing contradictory revelations and arbitrary commands,—there is nothing to prevent one of a melancholic and excitable temperament from excesses so horrible as almost to justify the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... large open nests are rarely seen. The explanation of this phenomenon appears to be the fact that the nest is well concealed high up in a tree. Moreover, the pie, possessing a powerful beak which commands respect, is not obliged constantly to defend its home after the manner of small or excitable birds, and thus attract attention ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... blow had fallen. He had put his hand to the plough and looked back. Faithlessness towards herself had been passed over unrecognized, faithlessness towards his self-consecration was quite otherwise. That which had absorbed her affections and adoration had proved an unstable, excitable being! Alas! would that long ago she had opened her eyes to the fact that it was her own lofty spirit, not his steadfastness, which had first kept it out of the question that the mission should be set aside for human love. The crash of her idolatry ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... historical Christianity offers will not always be despised. The modernists think the church is doomed if it turns a deaf ear to the higher criticism or ignores the philosophy of M. Bergson. But it has outlived greater storms. A moment when any exotic superstition can find excitable minds to welcome it, when new and grotesque forms of faith can spread among the people, when the ultimate impotence of science is the theme of every cheap philosopher, when constructive philology is reefing its sails, when the judicious ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... muttering a good deal," said the doctor before leaving, "but that is of no very great moment. The important thing is to watch him to prevent his getting out of bed, if he should become excitable. We must have no undue ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... and Mrs. Maynard stroked the flushed brow of her energetic and excitable daughter. "But when you come in from your play, you must be a little bit quieter and more ladylike. I don't want to think that these merry companions of yours ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... motor impulses in the mind of the onlooker. It is well known that from the eleventh to the sixteenth century Europe suffered from dancing epidemics. They started from pathological cases of St. Vitus' dance and released in the excitable crowds cramplike impulses to imitative movements. But we hear the same story of instinctive imitations on occasions of less tragic character. It is reported that in the eighteenth century papal Rome was indignant over the passionate ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... medium of orders; consequently, he had no expenditure, with the exception of that required for his toilet, as he eschewed all those many and various ways mentioned for running through money, which more excitable but less conscientious mortals than himself find ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... and in due time received a formal appointment to the office. Apart from the wretched state of his health, undermined by gout and dropsy, he was in most respects well fitted for it; but his deportment at once gave umbrage to the excitable Champigny, who declared that he had never seen such hauteur since he came to the colony. Another official was still more offended. "Monsieur de Frontenac," he says, "was no sooner dead than trouble began. Monsieur de Callieres, puffed up by his new authority, claims ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... ever, Belinda,' exclaimed the excitable Cymon, as two strongly-defined tears chased each other down his pale face—it was so long that there was plenty of room for a chase. ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... a philosopher, and on the whole it was a great blessing that he was so. No man needed to be possessor of a philosophical temperament more than he, for, in addition to being a resident of Dumfries Corners, Carson had other troubles which, to an excitable nature, would have made life a prolonged period of misery. He was the sort of a man to whom irritating misfortunes of the mosquito order have a way of coming. To some of us it seemed as if a spiteful Nature took pleasure in pelting Carson with petty annoyances, none of them large enough to excite ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... towards the door and the sunny green, while the organ played deafeningly. But play as exultantly as it might, it could not drown the babble of human voices. Every one wanted to utter those excitable commonplaces that seem somehow to cover ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... child in suffering with pain of the stomach is loud, excitable and spasmodic. The legs are drawn up and as the pain ceases, they are relaxed and the child sobs itself to sleep, and rests ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... intelligent and active youngsters, full of mischief. The great secret in training him is first to gain his affection. With firmness, kindness, and perseverance, you can then teach him almost anything. The most lively and excitable dogs are usually the easiest to train. It is advantageous to teach your dog when you give him his meal of biscuit, letting him have the food piece by piece as a reward when each trick is duly performed. Never attempt to teach him two new ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... French people to a pleasurable elation in others' adventure is, I think we must all agree, one of the great charms of this excitable race: anything will serve as a pretext for setting this sympathetic vibration in motion. What they all crave as a nation is a daily, hourly diet of the unusual, ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... justification of Napoleon's celebrated and bitter reproach, that we are a nation of shopkeepers. It would seem, in truth, that we do not possess that quick perception of the beautiful which is enjoyed by the more excitable and imaginative sons of the south. In painting, we believe we possess a school second to none of modern art. But, beautiful as their works may be, can we place our Reynolds, Lawrence, Hogarth, and Gainsborough in competition with Raphael, Correggio, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... go back to our other hero, or, rather, to another of our heroes. Arthur Wilkinson is our melancholy love-lorn tenor, George Bertram our eager, excitable barytone, and Mr. Harcourt—Henry Harcourt—our bass, wide awake to the world's good things, impervious to sentimentality, and not over-scrupulous—as is always the case with your true ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... colours, and the agreeable sensations produced by others, were much more marked among the excitable Italians than was the case in the St. Vitus's dance with the more phlegmatic Germans. Red colours, which the St. Vitus's dancers detested, they generally liked, so that a patient was seldom seen who did not carry a red handkerchief for his gratification, ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... time past the ardent young Tientietnikov's excitable heart had also beat at the thought that one day he might attain the senior class described. And, indeed, what better teacher could he have had befall him than its preceptor? Yet just at the moment when he had been transferred thereto, just at the moment when ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... The ghosts of their past crimes rise and swell the present horror. Remorse and despair are added to the double gloom of solitude and darkness. You don't know what you are doing when you shut up a poor lost sinner of excitable temperament in that dreadful hole. It is a wild experiment on a human frame. Pray be advised, pray be warned, pray let your heart be softened and punish the man as he deserves—but do not destroy him! oh, do not! do not ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... looks; but they are a queer race. You must not trust him too much," continued Oswald, in an undertone, "until you have tried him, and are satisfied of his fidelity. They are very excitable, and capable of strong attachment if well treated. That I know, for I did a gipsy a good turn once, and it proved to be the saving ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... result of these scenes, repeated almost every day, a revolution took place in that excitable, extreme character, which knew no middle course, in that heart in which the most violent passions were constantly clashing. Love, in which poison had long been at work, became decomposed and changed to hate. Germinie began ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... you please so far as I am concerned," he said in a low tone, "but I warn you that you are taking big risks. Allie is nervous and excitable at any time, and to-night she is close to hysterics, and she won't get over the shock of even a simple operation in a hurry, especially if he is fool enough to attempt it without ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... his own selection, and the other, to study without being observed. Among one of his own tales (butterflies) he told of a chase he once had made in the mountains of the Moors, in Abyssinia. To illustrate it he took up one of the nets standing in the corner. In his excitable way he was a very good actor. And when he swooped down the net to demonstrate the end of the story, it caught on a ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... conqueror, "created to be the father of soldiers," and aided, if not directly sent, by God, to show forth the power and the glory of France. The Russian peasant, more thoughtful by nature as well as less excitable and combative in temperament, admits that Napoleon was sent on earth by God, but connects him with one of the deep problems of life by using him to show the divine nature of sympathy and pity, and the cruelty, immorality, and unreasonableness ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof
... trouble, and found a small craft about to sail for California—took passage in her, and, in due time, arrived at San Francisco. The gold-fever had just set in there. The whole town was in an uproar of confusion. Excitable men had given up their ordinary work, or shut their shops, and gone off to the diggings. Ships were lying idle in the bay, having been deserted by their crews, who had gone to the same point of attraction, and new arrivals were constantly swelling the tide of gold-seekers. Here Will Osten ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne
... well-born, normal-minded, healthy-bodied child, who has wise and careful guardians or parents to assist in his mental guidance, the public school forms a good basis on which to build an education. For the average American child of excitable nerves and precocious tendencies, it is like deep surf swimming for the ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... at intervals in the wall immediately behind, were certain tiny green buttons, practically unnoticeable, which on being pressed permitted a soothing and persuasive narcotic to rise invisibly about the occupant of the chair. The effect upon the excitable patient was rapid, admirable, and harmless. The green study was further provided with a secret spy-hole; for John Silence liked when possible to observe his patient's face before it had assumed that mask the features of the human countenance invariably wear in the presence of another person. ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... light of love and duty, and never in all her dreamy ease had she been as cheerful and lighthearted as in the midst of hardship and rigid economy. Her equable temper and calm composure came to her aid; and where a more nervous and excitable woman would have preyed upon herself, and sunk under imaginary troubles, she was always ready to soothe and sustain the anxious and sensitive nature of her husband. After all, hers was the lightest share ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Less excitable, the editor-in-chief calmed this first ebullition, but Sallenauve's absence from the royal session seemed to him ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... on to the floor, and I lay upon my face crying, "Glory to God! Glory to God!" I could not stop. Some power, not my own, had taken possession of my lips and my whole person. The writer is not of an excitable, hysterical or even emotional temperament, but I lost control of myself absolutely. I had never shouted before in my life, but I could not stop. When after a while I got control of myself, I went to my wife and told her what had happened. I tell this experience, ...
— The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit • R. A. Torrey
... Minnesota. He was a man of marked ability and one of the ablest and most effective orators in the whole Dakota nation. Yet withal, Shakpe was a petty thief, had a "forked tongue," a violent temper, was excitable, and vindictive in his revenge. These characteristics led him to the scaffold. He was hanged at Fort Snelling, in 1863 for participation in the bloody massacre of '62. He and his followers were so noted for their deception and treachery, that Mr. Pond doubted ...
— Among the Sioux - A Story of the Twin Cities and the Two Dakotas • R. J. Creswell
... wilderness, dresses like a peasant, and eats the meanest and most meagre of food—a man of the desert and of solitude. And the whole life reacts on him and we can see him, lean and worn, though still a young man, a keen, rather excitable spirit—in every feature the marks of revolt against a civilization which he views as an apostasy. Luke, using a phrase from the Old Testament, says, "The word of God came upon John in the wilderness" (Luke 3:2). Luke leans to Old Testament phrase, and here is one that hits off the man to ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... these impressions, or the idea of it, recurs, it tends to excite the idea of the other. The third law is, that greater intensity in either or both of the impressions is equivalent, in rendering them excitable by one another, to a greater frequency of conjunction. These are the laws of ideas, on which I shall not enlarge in this place, but refer the reader to works professedly psychological, in particular ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... had witnessed Jacob's punishment I felt miserable. I was restless and excitable, and did not know what to do with myself. I thought my heart would burst within me. I asked myself all kinds of questions: What am I doing here? What did I come here for? What are all those people to me? As if I had come there ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg
... his duties as President about a month, when the States-General of France met in the famous convention which was to pull down the ancient French monarchy and engulf all Europe in seas of blood. The overtaxed and excitable Frenchmen were maddened by the contrast afforded in their sufferings and the blessings achieved by their late allies on the other ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... her torpor had been collapse, how much the effect of the accident, could not be guessed. She herself was greatly roused for the present, dwelt on the necessity of trying to get up the next day, and was altogether in a state excitable enough to make ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... could not be allowed to pass by my people without a tremendous quarrel. Our blacks seemed to be in a peculiarly excitable state. Ali, especially, who has distinguished himself for several days in the obstreperous line, has had a regular turn-to with his father-in-law; and not satisfied with this, nearly strangled Moknee's son. The Mandara black ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... As we were creeping along slowly, the engines were almost noiseless, and there was hardly a ripple as our fore-foot cut the dark water. Suddenly there was a wild cry from the bridge—Italians are certainly very excitable; hoarse commands were given to the Quartermaster at the wheel; the engine-room bell clanged. On the instant, as it seemed, the ship's head began to swing round to starboard; full steam ahead was in action, and before one could understand, the Apparition was fading in the distance. ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... be sure, reasons and to spare why the name should make her sit up straight. Her curiosity had turned the key, and lo, with a click, here was an entirely changed, immensely complicated, intensely poignant situation. But our excitable old friend was an Englishwoman: dissimulation would be her second nature; you could trust her to pull the wool over your eyes with a fleet and practised hand. Instinctively, furthermore, she would seek to extract from such a situation all the fun it promised. Taken off her guard, for the span ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... been eligible as one of his pupils. He had the reputation of being peppery tempered, therefore she walked into the room to take her first lesson with her heart performing a sort of jazz dance under her jersey. Dr. Linton, like many musicians, was of an artistic and excitable temperament, and highly eccentric. Instead of sitting by the side of his new pupil, he paced the room, pursing his lips in and out, and drawing his fingers through his long lank ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... excited at having grass beneath their feet; and hence it was that when they were camping for the night, and Bart's beautiful cob with long mane and tail had been divested of saddle and bridle, and after being watered was about to be secured by its lariat to the tether-peg, the excitable little creature, that had been till now all docility and tractableness, suddenly uttered a shrill neigh, pranced, reared up, and before Bart could seize it by the mane, went off across the ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... for the deep cellars underneath the building, but for the open street. The white faces of a few of the guests showed that they had, perhaps, a little anxiety, but for the most part an excitable curiosity took possession of ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... then the speaker would be interrupted by his excitable listeners with some exclamation of wonder, horror, incredulity, derision, pity, or the like—which, being in Anglo-Congo or ebony lingo, must needs be unintelligible to many of my readers. Therefore, for the enlightenment and edification of the unlearned, have I thought it best to give a list ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... something red and green to-day," and she called out, "Oh! cherries." She cut out a round of paper and tried to sew round it, holding it in place with her other hand. I suggested putting in a stitch to hold the paper. Cecil was absorbed in sewing, and it seemed quieting for such an excitable boy and good for his weak hands. One child said, "Fancy a boy sewing," so I told how soldiers and sailors sewed. They sewed just ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... stillness in the church, when she saw the lady's face bowed in her hands, as if in prayer, Betty stole softly out of the building, and retraced her steps along the road, sobbing as she went. It had been too much for her excitable little brain; she always had been passionately fond of music, but was more accustomed to the street organs in London than to any other sort, and this was as great a contrast to those as heaven ...
— Odd • Amy Le Feuvre
... women that gathered in this manner, and where there was eating and drinking, should create scandal. It is absolutely certain that some of this scandal had a basis in fact. The Rev. S. Baring-Gould confesses that "at Corinth, and certainly elsewhere, among excitable people, the wine, the heat, the exaltation of emotion, led to orgiastic ravings, the jabbering of disconnected, unintelligible words, to fits, convulsions, pious exclamations, and incoherent ravings." And unless St. Paul was deliberately slandering his fellow-believers ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... turned to the west, and saw a sunset that from the excitable condition of their minds seemed to reflect the scenes recently enacted, and to portend those in prospect now for years to come. Lines of light and broken columns of cloud had ranged themselves across the western arch of the sky, and almost from the horizon to the zenith ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... taller, is black-skinned, frizzly-haired, bearded, and hairy-bodied. The former is broad-faced, has a small nose, and flat eyebrows; the latter is long-faced, has a large and prominent nose, and projecting eyebrows. The Malay is bashful, cold, undemonstrative, and quiet; the Papuan is bold, impetuous, excitable, and noisy. The former is grave and seldom laughs; the latter is joyous and laughter-loving,—the one conceals his emotions, the ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... one thing for which to thank Virginia Beverly; the suggestion that she should call for help when the Bella Cuba had steamed into the harbour of Samoa. At once her excitable brain seized the picturesqueness of a dramatic situation. She saw herself, effectively dressed, rushing to the rail and hailing any passing ship which might be nearest. Sir Roger Broom, or her late friend George Trent, might ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... I said, "I can't see why I shouldn't. The only trouble is that some of your excitable friends might see me in your company and include me in the ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... one of these days of vacillation when Micaela, the most excitable and violent of the Pensioner's four undines, appeared at the Quinones' house. She came for the purpose of asking Amalia's advice about a dress that she was planning for the next ball at the Casino. In spite of her thirty ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... speak to Amy, nurse, and Master Tom; but Amy is less excitable. Send them to me on the stairs here; we must not ...
— Troublesome Comforts - A Story for Children • Geraldine Glasgow
... was the largest and most important city of Greece. The commerce of the world flowed through its two harbours. The population consisted of Greeks, Jews, Italians, and a mixed multitude; it was excitable, pleasure loving, and mercurial. In this city was held a perpetual vanity fair. The vices of the east and west met and clasped hands in the work of human degradation. The Greek goddess Aphrodite had a magnificent temple ...
— Bible Studies in the Life of Paul - Historical and Constructive • Henry T. Sell
... or no impression. A calmly uttered word, in which there is an expression of interest in and sympathy for the child, does more than the sternest commands. This I have long since discovered. I never scold my children; scolding does no good, but harm. My oldest boy is restless, excitable, and impulsive. If I were not to provide him with the means of employing himself, or in other ways divert him, his hands would be on every thing in the house, and both he ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
... flowers, and spilling water at each shift. At six o'clock had arrived a large square white box, which the footman had carried to the rear and there exhibited, allowing a palpitating cook, scullery maid and divers other excitable and emotional ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the ladies' library, full of the most touching romances about Roland, and Walter of Aquitaine, and Sir Tristram, and a great number of other excitable young fellows, whose behaviour had invariably got them into dreadful difficulties, but had as invariably made them, in the eyes of every damsel they saw, the most attractive, fascinating, sweet, dear creatures in the world. Nobody ever read any of these books except Mrs. Mistletoe and the ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... been growing on the excitable girl during the absence of Stephen, and now she could do nothing beyond going up again to her room as she had done before. Instead of lying down she sat again in the darkness without closing the door, and listened with a beating heart to every sound from downstairs. The servants ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... the muscular fibres lose their degree of excitability from age, as in the above examples; and as may be observed in the tremulous hands and feeble step of elderly persons; but the organs of sense become less excitable by the stimulus of external objects; whence the sight and hearing become defective; the stimulus of the sensorial power of sensation also less affects the aged, who grieve less for the loss of friends or for other disappointments; it should nevertheless be observed, ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... day badly. He took me out and lost me. It would be so much better, would he consent to the usual arrangement, and allow me to take him out. I am far the abler leader: I say it without conceit. I am older than he is, and I am less excitable. I do not stop and talk with every person I meet, and then forget where I am. I do less to distract myself: I rarely fight, I never feel I want to run after cats, I take but little pleasure in frightening children. I have nothing to think about but the ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... be so excitable! There are no bears to shoot where we thought of going, nor wild animals of any kind, you may be quite sure, or we should not have dreamed of taking Stella and Michael there for ...
— Paul the Courageous • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... one of the bretherin on the platform, "Brother Jones," he says, "can't you git down to the back of the hall an' say somethin' to quiet Brother Smith? Smith's a good man, an' a pious man," the moderator says, "but he's very excitable, an' I'm 'fraid he'll git the boys to goin' back there an' disturb the meetin'." So Jones he worked his way back to where Smith was, an' the moderator watched him go up to Smith and jest speak to him 'bout ten seconds; an' after that Smith never peeped once. ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... crosswise in an easy-chair, over an arm of which his slender lower limbs limply dangled, and elaborately performed one of the grander works of BACH upon an irritable accordion. Now, winking with intense rapidity, and going through the muscular motions of an excitable person resolutely pulling out an obstinate and inexplicable drawer from somewhere about his knees, he produced sustained and mournful notes, as of canine distress in the backyard; anon, with eyes nearly closed and the straw nimbus sliding still further back, his manipulation ...
— Punchinello Vol. II., No. 30, October 22, 1870 • Various
... of great importance in our excitable country, where so many minds are overtasked, so many brains too early stimulated, and insanity so rapidly on the increase. We heartily commend it to all readers interested in the subjects of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... and it is highly probable that, but for the kindliness and comparative wisdom of his composition master, Lesueur, he would have broken down from sheer lack of any influence which could command the respect of an excitable youth starving in the pursuit of a fine art against the violent opposition of his family. Only when Mendelssohn, at the age of seventeen, visited Paris in 1825, did Cherubini startle every one by praising a young composer to ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... as far as that—yet. But I have come across certain things which, to my mind, need elucidation before it is possible to pronounce definitely on Ronald's guilt or innocence. To take them consecutively, let me repeat that I cannot reconcile Ronald's excitable conduct at the Durrington hotel with his supposed actions at the inn. In the former case he behaved like a man who, whether insane or merely excited, had not the slightest fear of the consequences. At this inn he acted like a crafty cautious scoundrel who had weighed the consequences ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... attraction for excitable, excitement-loving Violet; yet even she, interested for the moment, presently forgot them again, as something reminded her of the dear little sister, who was not lost but gone before ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... vents itself in bodily exercise carries its own sedative with it. And in comparing Wordsworth's nature with that of other poets whose career has been less placid, we may say that he was perhaps not less excitable than they, but that it was his constant endeavour to avoid all excitement, save of the purely poetic kind; and that the outward circumstances of his life,—his mediocrity of fortune, happy and early marriage, and absence of striking personal charm,—made it easy for him ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... a sort of snap-dragon wit, which flares up in an instant, is as soon out, and generally burns somebody's fingers. It may be urged on the contrary that many celebrated wits as Mathews, Leech, and others, have been melancholy men. But despondency is often found in an excitable temperament which is not unfavourable to humour, for the man who is unduly depressed at one moment is likely to be immoderately elated at another. Old Hobbes was of opinion that laughter arose from pride, upon which Addison remarked that according to that theory, if we heard a man laugh, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... seemed only another link in the already long existing bond of union. But, as many wise men have remarked, a uniform happiness, which only attaches women more and more, has often upon men a precisely contrary effect, and so it was with Martin Guerre. Of a lively and excitable temperament, he wearied of a yoke which had been imposed so early, and, anxious to see the world and enjoy some freedom, he one day took advantage of a domestic difference, in which Bertrande owned herself to have been wrong, and left his house and family. He was sought ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... look for the how and the why and wherefore?" shouted the hasty and somewhat excitable blacksmith. "Injustice is often done and might is ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... in hopes that he was about to settle down again for he became engaged to Rachel Howells, our second house-maid; but he has thrown her over since then and taken up with Janet Tregellis, the daughter of the head game-keeper. Rachel—who is a very good girl, but of an excitable Welsh temperament—had a sharp touch of brain-fever, and goes about the house now—or did until yesterday—like a black-eyed shadow of her former self. That was our first drama at Hurlstone; but a second one came to drive it from our minds, and it was prefaced ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... in horror at the sight that met his gaze, and then broke into such a torrent of French that Tom, with all the experience he had had of excitable Frenchmen, was unable to ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... state of the line) going at the same pace as himself, he suddenly saw some people in it whom he knew. We will suppose for the sake of our theory that these people were a woman whom he loved and a man whom he hated—and who in return hated him. The young man was excitable and impulsive. He opened the door of his carriage, stepped from the footboard of the local train to the footboard of the express, opened the other door, and made his way into the presence of these two people. The feat (on the supposition that the ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of an excitable race, and your childhood was passed in too deep poverty. You will grow out of all that, gradually. Stay here; oh, keep with me, for I have need of you and you require a companion-soul, soothing like mine. The kind ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... being. All the same, the deep store of hidden sentiment which this queer idealist possessed had been touched by the position. The young woman isolated and childless, so charming, so nobly sincere, so full of heart—was she to be always Ariadne, and forsaken? The man—excitable, nervous, selfish, yet, in truth, affectionate and dependent—what folly, or what chivalry kept him unmarried? Ever since the death of M. le Comte de Pastourelles, dreams concerning these two people had been stirring in the brain of Watson, and these dreams ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... excitable young girl. "She might even lose her eyesight if she's not careful. My! it must be dreadful to get poisoned with that nasty ivy. I'll be afraid to go into the woods the ...
— Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures - Or Helping The Dormitory Fund • Alice Emerson
... is a shame to human nature that the silly lies put forth by this precious gang should have found believers. But the solemn pretensions to divine revelation, mixed with elements borrowed from the prevalent revivalism, and from the immediate adventism which so easily captivates excitable imaginations, drew a number of honest dupes into the train of the knavish leaders, and made possible the pitiable history which followed. The chief recruiting-grounds for the new religion were not in America, but in the manufacturing ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... red. He was but a figurehead, for the hotel, though so grandly named but a frame building of two storeys, was managed by his wife, a tall, gaunt Australian of five and forty, with an imposing presence and a determined air. The little man, excitable and often tipsy, was terrified of her, and the stranger soon heard of domestic quarrels in which she used her fist and her foot in order to keep him in subjection. She had been known after a night of drunkenness to confine him for twenty-four hours to his own room, and then he could ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... commonplace, it was through nothing remarkable in his mind, which was simply clear and practical, but through some combination of qualities of the heart that made men trust him, and women call him sweet—a word of theirs which conveys otherwise indefinable excellences. Some of the more nervous and excitable said that Tom Corey was as sweet as he could live; but this perhaps meant no more than the word alone. No man ever had a son less like him than Bromfield Corey. If Tom Corey had ever said a witty thing, no one could remember ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... he would very much belie his French origin. Take him all in all, however, Jean-Baptiste, as he is familiarly known, from the patron saint of French Canada, has many excellent qualities. He is naturally polite, steady in his habits, and conservative in his instincts. He is excitable and troublesome only when his political passions are thoroughly aroused, or his religious principles are at stake; and then it is impossible to say to what extreme he will go. Like the people from whom he is descended—many of whose characteristics ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... majority, however, do not intend to fight outside the ramparts. I was reading yesterday the account of a court-martial on one of these heroes, who had fallen out with his commanding officer, and threatened to pass his sword through his body. The culprit, counsel urged, was a man of an amiable, though excitable disposition; the father of two sons, had once saved a child from drowning, and had presented several curiosities to a museum. Taking these facts into consideration, the Court condemned him to six days' imprisonment, his accuser apologised to him, and shook hands with him. What is to be ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... that in my own instance the natural cowardice with which I was femininely endowed was unusually or unduly cultivated in childhood; but with a highly susceptible and excitable nervous temperament and ill-regulated imagination, I have suffered from every conceivable form of terror; and though, for some inexplicable reason, I have always had the reputation of being fearless, have really, all my life, been ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... hearty laughs with her aunts—James's eldest daughter, Anna—differed widely from her cousin, Edward's daughter, Fanny. She was more brilliant both in looks and in intelligence, but also more mercurial and excitable. Both occupied a good deal of Jane's thoughts and affections; but Anna must have been the one who caused her the most amusement and also the most anxiety. The interest in her was heightened when she became engaged to the son of Jane's old friend, Mrs. Lefroy. Anna's giddiness ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... a breath to anyone but your father. He'll be here to-morrow? Break it gently to him, you know; he's an excitable man; can't take things quietly, like ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... imagination of the Italians. The Popes of the first half of the thirteenth century were shrewd enough to discern the political and ecclesiastical importance of movements which seemed at first to owe their force to mere fanatical revivalism. They calculated on the intensely excitable temperament of the Italian nation, and employed the Franciscans and Dominicans as their militia in the crusade against the Empire and the heretics. Again, it is necessary to distinguish what was essentially national from what was common to all Europeans ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... for catarrhal diarrhoea, the tincture is very serviceable; also for female monthly difficulties its use is always beneficial and safe. As a medicine it best suits persons of a mild, gentle disposition, and of a lymphatic constitution, especially females; it is less appropriate for quick, excitable, energetic men. Anemonin, or Pulsatilla Camphor, which is the active principle of this plant, is prepared by the chemist, and may be given in doses of from one fiftieth to one tenth of a grain rubbed up with dry sugar of milk. Such a dose (or a drop of the tincture with ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... hesitate until she could turn the matter over in her thoughts more carefully. Pride had its influence. She did not care to admit that she had been in error and Hartley right as to Major Willard. But there was a more sober aspect of the case. Hartley was excitable, brave and strong-willed. She feared the consequences that might follow if he were informed of Major Willard's outrageous conduct. A personal collision she saw to be almost inevitable in this event. Mortifying publicity, if not the shedding ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... no great tumult created, however. Election was approaching, and that absorbed all the excitable matter of the people, in spite of the newspapers. The disputes and defences of the faith which Murty O'Dwyer had to maintain since the departure of the young, "beautiful Irish girl," as Bridget was called, were many and critical; but an event now happened, ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... rounds of all duty posts, please, and give special attention to the disintegrator ray operators. The ray generators are to be started at once, full speed." Hendricks, I might say, was a junior officer, and a very good one, although quick-tempered and excitable—failings of youth. He had only recently shipped with us to replace Anderson Croy, who—but ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... reasonable want, security against every danger, and the high prerogatives of conscious and elevated freedom, we are still the most unhappy of the sons of Adam. They assert that we grow old before our time; are restless, excitable, and ever worrying for an attainment, in reference to some ruling passion beyond our reach. Comfort, health, calmness, and content, are sacrificed to grasp at something more. Our cheeks grow pale, our brows wrinkled, our hearts clouded, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... this train had a jaw breaking name that I never heard before or since. It was Sam Molujean, and I know he was the most excitable man that I ever saw. When Capt. Molujean got excited he could not talk at all for stuttering, so one day the guards concluded to have a little sport at the expense of the Captain. We were now nearly ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan |
