"Hysteric" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bailing. "Tip her a little more," I cried, and the next instant we were both rolled into the water. It was an absurd experience, and after scrambling out, our clothes so heavy we could scarcely step, we vowed, between hysteric fits of laughter, to keep our tip-over ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... natives prevented this last warning from being heard, and at the third shot the unhappy thief was killed. Two other natives who were in the canoe leaped overboard, but soon got in again, and threw away the stanchion. One of them sat baling the blood and water out of the canoe, uttering a kind of hysteric laugh, while the other, a youth of fifteen, looked at the dead body with a serious and dejected countenance. The latter was found to be the son of the man who had been killed. Immediately on this, the natives took ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... faiths on which his hard, cold course of living has necessarily trampled rough-hooved. He is so bright and intelligent, as a rule, that you wonder why he is so phenomenally vulgar. But his brightness and intelligence are of the quality, nearly always, that throws into hysteric giggles the "summer girl" on piazzas of third-rate hotels. Ordinarily, too, he has not the faintest conception of how deeply and darkly he bores people who would live apart from him, from his bejewelled ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... others, we would no more award the death penalty if the motive has been exclusively political, because they are much less dangerous than the criminal born. On the other hand, commitment to the asylum of the epileptic and the hysteric would be a practical measure, especially in France, where ridicule kills them. Martyrs are venerated ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... smile, "hysteric, as I told you. Well, will you come to-morrow about eleven, and then afterwards we can come back here ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... the shore which rose between Newlyn and the course of the wind, the returning boats found safety at their accustomed anchorage; and as one by one they made the little roads, as boat after boat came ashore from the fleet, tears, hysteric screams and deep-voiced thanks to the Almighty arose from the crowd of men and women massed at the extremity of Newlyn pier beneath the lighthouse. Cheers and many a shake of hand greeted every party as, weary-eyed and worn, it landed and climbed the slippery steps. From such moments even those ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... Bishop, much astonished, does now eagerly answer his Prussian Majesty, "Was from home, was ill, thought he had answered; is the most ill-used of Bishops;" and other things of a hysteric character. [Ib. ii. 85, 86 (date, 16th September).] And there came forth, as natural to the situation, multitudinous complainings, manifestoings, applications to the Kaiser, to the French, to the Dutch, of a very shrieky character on the Bishop of Liege's part; sparingly, if at all noticed ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... leave pamphlets in people's entries, to be picked up by nervous misses and hysteric housemaids, full of doctrines these people do not approve. Some of your friends stop little children in the street, and give them books, which their parents, who have had them baptized into the Christian fold and give them what they consider proper religious instruction, do not think ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... with them. The girls stood about uneasily, flushed, panting, tidying their hair and their dress unconsciously, and watching him. He looked at none of them. He espied his cap in a corner, and went and picked it up. He put it on his head, and one of the girls burst into a shrill, hysteric laugh at the sight he presented. He, however, took no heed, but went straight to where his overcoat hung on a peg. The girls moved away from contact with him as if he had been an electric wire. He put on his coat and ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... a grating; They will dream of cotton petals, endless, crimson, suffocating, Never of a wild-rose thicket nor the singing of a cricket, But the ambulance will bellow through the wanness of their dreams, And their tired lids will flutter with the street's hysteric screams. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... movement they eyed one another. In his heart each hated the other, but in David the hate had come suddenly, the hysteric growth of a night's anguish. The mountain man's was tempered by a process of slow-firing to a steely inflexibility. He hated David that he had ever been his rival, that he had ever thought to lay claim ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... eyes are generally dilated and fixed, sometimes natural and fixed, sometimes contracted,—that violent excitement sometimes manifests itself attended with the persistence or even exaltation of the ordinary sensibility,—that sometimes hysteric fits are brought on; sometimes a state resembling common intoxication,—you will have had the means of forming a sufficiently exact and comprehensive idea of the features ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... from a child, now and again had manifested itself in her—though happily unattended by morbid or hysteric tendencies, thanks to her radiant health—grew with her growth. To her, in certain moods and under certain conditions, the barrier between things seen and unseen, material and transcendental, was pervious. It yielded before the push of her apprehension, sense of what it guards, what it ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... slaving with his sick and wounded, saw how haggard and worn the commander was growing, and spoke a word of caution. Something told him it was not all on account of those woeful conditions at the front. From several sources came the word that Mrs. Plume was in a state bordering on hysteric at department headquarters, where sympathetic women strove vainly to comfort and soothe her. It was then that Elise became a center of interest, for Elise was snapping with electric force and energy. "It is that they ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... soul had bowed itself to meet sorrow more patiently and peacefully, it was at the expense of the bodily frame. Already weakened by the intermittent fever, the long strain of nursing had told on her; and that hysteric affection that had been so distressing at the time of her brother's trial recurred, and grew on her with every occasion for self-restraint. The suspense in which she lived—with one brother in the camp, in daily peril from battle and disease, the ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thundered the voice of Big James. It was the first word he had spoken, and he did not speak it in frantic, hysteric command, but with a terrible and convincing mildness. The phrase fell on the apprentice like a ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... gave a long sigh, then sobbed, and at last broke out into hysteric tears. It was evident to her now that the man was sparing her,—was endeavouring to spare her. He had told no one as yet. "The least said the soonest mended." Oh yes;—if he would say never a word to any one of what had occurred between them that day, that ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... they might gaze on him." The Arabs are highly imaginative, and their world is peopled with supernatural beings, whilst Ovid is surpassed in the number and ingenuity of their metamorphoses. Their nerves are highly strung, they are emotional to the hysteric degree, and they do everything in the superlative fashion. They love at first sight, and one glimpse of a face is enough to set them in flames; they cease to sleep or to eat until they are admitted to the adored presence, they ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... eyes, hitherto glazed, fixed, and inexpressive, looked enquiringly, yet with stupid wonderment, around. She started from the embrace of her lover, gazed alternately at his disguise, at himself, and at Clara; and then passing her hand several times rapidly across her brow, uttered an hysteric scream, and threw herself impetuously forward on the bosom of the sobbing girl; who, with extended arms, parted lips, and heaving bosom, sat breathlessly awaiting the first dawn of the returning reason ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... I get ready, Abby Atkins! I ain't afraid of them if you be. They dassen't hit me. Scab, scab!" the girl yelled back, with a hysteric laugh. ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... James." There was the old quiet, persistent way he had known in many happy days, reinforced by hysteric incapacity to comprehend the maze of difficulties ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... excitement, in her old fashion; he was used to these spasms of bodily languor,—a something he pitied, but could not comprehend. It was an odd symptom of the thoroughness with which her life was welded into his, that he alone knew her as weak, hysteric, needing help at times. Gaunt or her father would have told you her nerves were as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... up from that big assembly, a mingled sound of groans and smothered outcries, and also what one might have sworn—had it not seemed impossible—was wild hysteric laughter. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... brutal announcement the poor girl herself gave a hysteric giggle, which I at first thought proceeded from heartlessness, but I was told afterwards, by the person under whose immediate protection she came out, and who was a sister of her betrothed, that the tender ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... Majesty had probably never enjoyed the happiness of hearing—but before the Queen could reply, before I had time to inquire into the cause of the agony and shame which were mingled in Lady Greville's looks, she covered her brow with her hands, and exclaimed with hysteric violence, 'No, never more—never again. ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore
... what plague has fallen on the practitioners of theology? I will tell you, then. It is Spiritualism. While some are crying out against it as a delusion of the Devil, and some are laughing at it as an hysteric folly, and some are getting angry with it as a mere trick of interested or mischievous persons, Spiritualism is quietly undermining the traditional ideas of the future state which have been and are still accepted,—not ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... youthful enthusiasm I even confided to her my love for Consuelo, and begged her to be "good" and not disgrace herself and me before my Dulcinea. In my foolish trustfulness I was rash enough to add a caress, and to pat her soft neck. She stopped instantly with a hysteric shudder. I knew what was passing through her mind: she had suddenly become aware of ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... most faithful followers refuse to recognize a "hysteric temperament," and are quite right, if such a conception is used to destroy the conception of hysteria as a definite disease. We cannot, however, fail to recognize a diathesis which, while still apparently healthy, is predisposed to hysteria. So distinguished a disciple of Charcot as ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... when he was not by. If he ever appeared to doubt the truth of her report, she would burst into tears, complain of his want of love and little confidence in her, and sometimes thought proper to shew her grief at such treatment by a pretended hysteric fit, always ready at call to come to her assistance, though really so unnecessarily lavished on one easily duped without those laborious means, that it appeared a wantonness of cunning, which was thus exerted only for its own indulgence. She soon perceived that ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... when he comes up to you in the field he puffs and blows, and his tongue is invariably hanging out of his mouth. We never see this on a point, and to check it suddenly must give the dog pain. And yet, how silent he is! how eager he looks! and if a sudden hysteric gasp is heard, it ceases in a moment. Surely he is the most perfect ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... taller than I am, dearest," says her mother, blushing over her whole sweet face—"and—and it is your hand, my dear, and not your foot he wants you to give him;" and she said it with a hysteric laugh, that had more of tears than laughter in it; laying her head on her daughter's fair shoulder, and hiding it there. They made a very pretty picture together, and looked like a pair of sisters—the sweet simple matron seeming younger than her years, and her daughter, if not older, ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... the flood of malignity which she mistook for inspiration, the speaker was silent. Her voice was succeeded by the hysteric shrieks of several women, but the feelings of the audience generally had not been drawn onward in the current with her own. They remained stupefied, stranded as it were, in the midst of a torrent, which deafened them by its roaring, but might not move them ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... that exactly the tune to sing? Then too there was the other cry that also made a fearful ringing in the ears of the much alarmed Executive Committee. There was wild talk in the air of an armistice. The hysteric Greeley had put it into a personal letter to Lincoln. "I know that nine-tenths of the whole American people, North and South, are anxious for peace—peace on any terms—and are utterly sick of human slaughter ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... saw her eye stir, And ope like an oyster wide, As in accents hysteric she whispered, "No, FELIX—I'd ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... her will to conquer that of her friend and Lena's hysteric opposition was no match for it. Little by little the tense form beneath the blankets relaxed. Her stormily drawn breath became more even. At last she slept, which gave Kate an opportunity to slip out to buy a new tube for the lamp and adjust it properly. She felt quite safe in lighting it, for Lena ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... September to June with no witnesses but the clouds and winds to hinder. She had forgotten the insistent declaration of Gladys that she had seen a light flicker from these blank windows the preceding night. Indeed, even at the time she had accounted it but the hysteric adjunct of their panic in the illusion of a stealthy step on the veranda of the bungalow. She was animated only by the simplest impulse of idle curiosity when she laid her hand on the bolt. The big door swung open at once on well-oiled hinges, and she found herself in the spacious hotel office, ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... intervals, hailing from Paris, Naples, Prague, and finally Petersburg. Then followed silence, broken only by rumours furtively conveyed by a former associate, one Pascal Pelletier—an angel-faced, long-haired, hysteric creature, inspired by an impassioned enthusiasm for infernal machines and wholesale slaughter in theory, and, in practice, by a gentle doglike devotion to Mrs. Iglesias and young Dominic. He would arrive depressed ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... towards his own door removed him an emotional league from the scene in the hall, and as the throb of Viola's agonized voice died out of his ears the crisis in her life grew hysteric, unsubstantial, and at last unreal. Her gestures, her plea for help, her descent of the stairway, came to seem like the climaxes in a singular drama powerfully acted. "God! what an actress—if she is an actress!" he exclaimed, as the tragic intensity ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... one of our prettiest girls, the Lena of Sor Tullio the blacksmith, with ashy, terrified face under her flowered kerchief. I determined to speak to the child, but without startling her now, for she is a nervous, hysteric little thing. So I sat on the rocks, screened by the myrtle-bushes, waiting till the girl had gone. Dionea, seated listless on the sands, leaned over the sea and took some of its water in the hollow of her hand. "Here," she said to the ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... chosen her own husband; and was not the man, let him be ever so mad, still her husband? Madame Goesler was sore of heart, as well as broken down with sorrow, till at last, hiding her face on the pillow of the sofa, still holding the Duchess's letter in her hand, she burst into a fit of hysteric sobs. ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... from the slave markets and Negro pens, unheard and unheeded by man, up to his ear; mothers weeping for their children, breaking the night-silence with the shrieks of their breaking hearts. From some you will hear the burst of bitter lamentation, while from others the loud hysteric laugh, denoting still deeper agony. Most of them leave the market for cotton ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... Spirit in and through us is conditioned by certain great laws, which call for our definite and accurate obedience. Not on emotion, nor on hysteric appeals, nor on excitement, but on obedience, does the power of God's Spirit pass into human hearts and lives. Therefore, let us walk in the Paracletism of the Paraclete, continually in the current of His gracious influences, which will bear us on their bosom ever nearer to our Lord. ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... rope, Joan ran to the washstand and dipped a towel in the pitcher. But Julie called to her, "Bring the jug of water here, we've got to break this hysteric spell!" ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... league, with the new ideas of Wagner's later drama. Both men adopted the symbolic motif as their main melodic means; with both mere iteration took the place of development; a brilliant and lurid color-scheme (of orchestration) served to hide the weakness of intrinsic content; a vehement and hysteric manner cast into temporary shade the classic mood of tranquil depth in which alone ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... possesses powers of various sorts which he habitually fails to use. He energizes below his maximum, and he behaves below his optimum. In elementary faculty, in co-ordination, in power of inhibition and control, in every conceivable way, his life is contracted like the field of vision of an hysteric subject—but with less excuse, for the poor hysteric is diseased, while in the rest of us it is only an inveterate habit—the habit of inferiority to our full ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... in our happy land, How with this woman will you make account, How answer her shrill question in that hour When whirlwinds of such women shake the polls, Heedless of every precedent and creed, Straight in hysteric haste to right all wrongs? How will it be with cant of politics, With king of trade and legislative boss, With cobwebs of hypocrisy and greed, When she shall take the ballot for her broom And sweep away ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... successful, and that he was about to be crowned at Scone. The shades of evening were fast setting in as, overcome with the joyous prospect of seeing her husband home again, she withdrew to her chamber, and, flinging herself on her bed in a state of hysteric delight, fell asleep. But her slumbers were broken, for at every sound she started, mentally exclaiming "Can that ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... to the probability that M. de Gasparin, in seeking an explanation of these marvellous phenomena, may have proceeded in the right direction. Modern physicians admit, that, at times, during somnambulism, complete insensibility, resembling hysteric coma, prevails.[60] But if, as is commonly believed, this insensibility is caused by some modification or abnormal condition of the nervous fluid, then to some other modification or changed condition of the same fluid comparative invulnerability may be due. For there is connection, to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... bull; But visions of an apple and a bee, To take us from our natural rest, and pull The whole Oda from their beds at half-past three, Would make us think the moon is at its full. You surely are unwell, child! we must see, To-morrow, what his Highness's physician Will say to this hysteric ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... lamentations, shrieks and screams, servants frantically tearing their hair, throwing themselves on the ground, or running distractedly about, lamenting. Tom and Miss Ophelia alone seemed to have any presence of mind; for Marie was in strong hysteric convulsions. At Miss Ophelia's direction, one of the lounges in the parlor was hastily prepared, and the bleeding form laid upon it. St. Clare had fainted, through pain and loss of blood; but, as Miss Ophelia ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... situation for a young man to find himself in, watching by the roadside the hysteric frenzy of a maddened girl; but as he had been unconscious on the day he stood, an unclad man, giving the aid that would save a life, so he thought now of naught but the agony he saw in this poor creature's awful eyes and heard in her strangled cries. It mattered naught to him ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... for either, as long as one can find anything else to do. I don't doubt there is some truth in the phenomena of animal magnetism, for instance; but when you ask me to cradle for it, I tell you that the hysteric girls cheat so, and the professionals are such a set of pickpockets, that I can do something better than hunt for the grains of truth among their tricks and lies. Do you remember what I used to say in my lectures?—or were you asleep just then, or cutting your initials on the rail? (You see I ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... turned round. Never had she been much more amazed in her life. Her maid, her well-bred Jane Cupp, who had not drawn an indecorous breath since assuming her duties, was running after her calling out to her, waving her hands, her face distorted, her voice hysteric. ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the third shot. Two others in the same canoe leaped overboard, but got in again just as I came to them. The stanchion they had thrown over board. One of them, a man grown, sat bailing the blood and water out of the canoe, in a kind of hysteric laugh; the other, a youth about fourteen or fifteen years of age, looked on the deceased with a serious and dejected countenance; we had afterwards reason to believe he ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... would loathe himself. Yet it is so strong that it must force an outlet for itself; hence it becomes necessary to entertain whole systems of false beliefs in order to hide the nature of what is desired. The resulting delusions in very many cases disappear if the hysteric or lunatic can be made to face the facts about himself. The consequence of this is that the treatment of many forms of insanity has grown more psychological and less physiological than it used to be. Instead of looking for ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... connexion between religion and neuroticism. To quote Professor James' vigorous protest, "medical materialism finishes up St Paul by calling his vision on the road to Damascus a discharging lesion of the occipital cortex, he being an epileptic. It snuffs out St Teresa as an hysteric, St Francis of Assisi as an hereditary degenerate. George Fox's discontent with the shams of his age, and his pining for spiritual veracity, it treats as a symptom of a disordered colon. Carlyle's organ-tones of ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... the stage manager was worse than the conductor, and that, when Cleo once lost her head, which she did very easily at rehearsals, she became almost hysteric. She was, however, always ready to explain away her exhibitions of temper, saying that the stupidity of the players and the worry of making things go right were trying beyond human endurance. Which explanation ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... their own experiences, but the experiences of a great number of other persons, and can suffer, as it were, for a whole mass of people, and fill all the parts of a drama by means of their own personalities alone. It will here be objected that this is well-known hysterical imitation, the ability of hysteric subjects to copy all the symptoms which impress them when they occur in others, as though their pity were stimulated to the point of reproduction. But this only indicates the way in which the psychic process is discharged in hysterical imitation; the way in which a psychic act proceeds and the ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... given us—are my riches," said he, gazing at her with unspeakable tenderness. "Even should it be the will of Heaven that this affair should go against us—so long as they cannot separate us from each other, they cannot really hurt us!" She suddenly kissed him with frantic energy, and an hysteric smile gleamed ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... expression of what they perceive to be genuine sympathy. So it proved with poor Hepzibah; for, when she saw the young man's smile,—looking so much the brighter on a thoughtful face,—and heard his kindly tone, she broke first into a hysteric giggle and then began ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... loved when their love had grown to have more of earnest purpose in it, and its first hysteric ecstasy had passed into the more solemn ardours of the love that goes not with spring, but loves even unto the winter and beyond. It is marked all through in pencil by Narcissus; but on one page, where it opens easily, there are written initials, in a woman's hand, against ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... cared for more. Her dry fixedness gave way with a gasp, and she broke into hysteric tears, rocking herself backwards and forwards, crooning over the insensible body, or stooping to kiss it. She had no sense nor heed for the lover of ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... that he can cure a spirit of infirmity, an hysteric or paralytic patient, by shedding forth on them his own vital energy; and, therefore he will have it, that Christ's miracles were but mesmeric feats. I grant, for the sake of argument, that he possesses the power which he claims; though I may think his facts too new, too undigested, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al |
