"Insomnia" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... melts away, chattering down the road; it forms again, from another quarter, and again dissolves. Meaningless shouts and cries and songs resound from the hidden city. In the gypsy camp beside us insomnia reigns. A little forge is clinking and clanking. Donkeys raise their antiphonal lament. Dogs salute the stars in chorus. First a leader, far away, lifts a wailing, howling, shrieking note; then the mysterious unrest ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... WEG,—Many thanks for the testimonial; many thanks for your blind, wondering letter; many wishes, lastly, for your swift recovery. Insomnia is the opposite pole from my complaint; which brings with it a nervous lethargy, an unkind, unwholesome, and ungentle somnolence, fruitful in heavy heads and heavy eyes at morning. You cannot sleep; well, I can best explain my state ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... group assembled near him, finishing his survey upon Tommy's burning countenance. "Yes—Monck," he said. "He's staying with Barnes at Khanmulla to see this affair through. If I were Mrs. Monck I should be pretty anxious about him. He says it's insomnia." ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... that in both these passages, as in a hundred similar ones, we find Shakespeare himself praising sleep as only those tormented by insomnia ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... which I lived alone with a faithful coloured servant by the name of Sawyer, was not a house to which I could think of bringing a bride, much less so dainty a one as Edith Bartlett. Being a sufferer from insomnia, I had caused a secret sleeping chamber to be built of stone beneath the foundation, and when even the silence of this retreat failed to bring slumber, I sometimes called in a professional mesmeriser to put me into a hypnotic sleep, from which Sawyer knew ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... twenty-second was a negro. The twenty-third—! He was a tall, youngish man, narrow-shouldered, rather commonplace-looking, with beautiful blue eyes, and a timid, winning, deprecatory manner. I told him I was suffering from insomnia. After raking over my grandfathers again and bringing the family history down by stages to the very moment I was shown into his office he said he should have to ask me to undergo a thorough physical—! But I was tired of being slapped and punched and breathed ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... be done most easily by children, it is an excellent food, but where sweets are over-eaten, and not properly digested, they give rise to a great accumulation of gas in the intestine, and produce in many persons a marked acidity of the stomach, frequently accompanied by severe insomnia. Nothing so quickly relieves such sleeplessness, caused by a "sour stomach," as allowing ten or fifteen grains of ordinary cooking-soda to slowly dissolve in the mouth and swallowing the saliva rendered alkaline ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... had had together. I remembered especially that evening when we had found this valley and given rein to our fancies. What horrid alchemy in the place had turned a gentleman into a brute? I thought of drink and drugs and madness and insomnia, but I could fit none of them into my conception of my friend. I did not consciously rescind my resolve to depart, but I had a notion that I would ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... consider the case of a person suffering from insomnia. If he does not make any effort to sleep, he will lie quietly in bed. If on the contrary he tries to force himself to sleep by his will, the more efforts he makes, ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue
... finger pulse of the right wrist is superficial and devoid of vigour, as the spleen must be affected injuriously by the liver. The weak action of the heart, and its febrile state, should be the natural causes which conduce to the present irregularity in the catamenia, and insomnia at night; the poverty of blood in the liver, and the sluggish condition of that organ must necessarily produce pain in the ribs; while the overdue of the catamenia, the cardiac fever, and debility ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... answer came the next day, nor the next. "Overdue" lay untouched upon the table, and each day the heap of returned manuscripts under the table grew larger. For the first time Martin's glorious sleep was interrupted by insomnia, and he tossed through long, restless nights. Three times he called at the Morse home, but was turned away by the servant who answered the bell. Brissenden lay sick in his hotel, too feeble to stir out, and, though Martin was with him often, he did not worry ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... to bed late that night, his ears tingling with the adulation of the multitude, and in his excited insomnia understanding for the first time in his life the words: "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." He realized more fully now that his shipmaster days had given him a taste for command, and that he had come ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... it on a threadbare coat, a worn muffler, or coarse gloves rubbing against each other. It drenches the shivering blouses, the waterproofs thrown over working dresses; it blends with all the breaths, hot with insomnia or alcohol, buries itself in the depths of empty stomachs, penetrates the shops which are just opening their doors, dark courtyards, staircases, where it stands on the balusters and walls, and fireless garrets. That is why so little of it ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... asleep over my figures, and that my experience was a dream. As a matter of fact, I was never more vividly awake in my life. I was able to argue about it even as I looked at it, and to tell myself that it was a subjective impression—a chimera of the nerves—begotten by worry and insomnia. But why this particular shape? And who is the woman, and what is the dreadful emotion which I read in those wonderful brown eyes? They come between me and my work. For the first time I have done less ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... danger that I foresee in all this work that I have planned is that it may produce overstimulation. Some one was telling me that the trees on the Embankment there in London are dying of arboreal insomnia. The light of the sun keeps them awake all day, and the electric lights keep them awake all night. So the poor things are dying from lack of sleep. Macbeth had some trouble of that sort, too, as I recall ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... articles of food are so well understood also, that most cures are brought about simply by dieting. This, reminds me of the mistakes perpetrated on a friend of mine who called in Dr. Grave-Powders, one of the old-school physicians, to be treated for insomnia and dyspepsia. This old numskull restricted his diet, gave him huge doses of medicine, and decided most learnedly that he was daily growing worse. Concluding that he had but a short time to live, my friend threw away the nauseating ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... which I had left my betrothed was a rather early one for a lover, but the fact was no reflection on my devotion. I was a confirmed sufferer from insomnia, and although otherwise perfectly well had been completely fagged out that day, from having slept scarcely at all the two previous nights. Edith knew this and had insisted on sending me home by nine o'clock, with strict orders to ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... great a distance; I also deplore my stupidity, and am extremely apprehensive of my inability in performing the functions devolving upon me. Since the sixth or seventh moon of the year before last I have suffered from insomnia. A year ago my spirits became daily more abattu. In the second month of last year I suddenly experienced phlegm rising in my mouth, and vomited fresh red blood, without being able to stop it, so that in a trice a basin would get quite full. I consider ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... out on deck again, aroused Achleitner, and led him to his cabin, resisting and mumbling incomprehensible words, though half asleep. Then, in dread of the agonies of insomnia, he went to his ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... cruelly ill he had slept since her coming, nor how little a man tortured by insomnia can be held responsible for his utterances; and the significance of his last words so startled her that ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... antelope. The book-shelves are half-emptied, some of the remaining volumes have fallen down. My coffee cup lies on a pile composed of Rotuli Hundredorum, a Placita Abbreviatio, and a Testa de Nevil. But it is good fun, if exhausting, and a sovereign cure for insomnia. Our book-hunter usually leaves him about one o'clock in the morning, and the genealogist is ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... solitary street was presenting its usual aspect, the breeze was gently moving the leaves. A solemn peace seemed to be spreading itself through space. The houses appeared wrapped in slumber, but behind the closed windows might be surmised the insomnia of the reddened eyes, the sighs from hearts anguished by the threatened danger, the tremulous agility of the hands preparing the war outfit, perhaps the last loving greetings exchanged without pleasure, ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Lincoln. Dedication of the Church of the Covenant. Growing Insomnia. Resolves to try the Water-cure. Its beneficial Effects. Summer at Newburgh. Reminiscences of an Excursion to Palz Point. Death of her Husband's Mother. Funeral of her Nephew, ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... and depressing, especially to one fresh from Europe. This train has one advantage, there is no rattle or roar about it, as it steals like a silent ghost across the desolate steppes. As a cure for insomnia it would be invaluable, and we therefore sleep a good deal, but most of the day is passed in the restaurant. Here the military element is generally engrossed in an interminable game of Vint[1] (during the process of which a Jew civilian is mercilessly rooked), but ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... great resolution. I have devoted the week to the envisagement of things, and while I lay awake last night the solution came to me as something final and irrevocable. Mistrusting the counsels of the night, when the brain is unduly excited by nervous insomnia, I have applied the test of ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... properly appreciate them. By the light of his success, breaking forth like the sun, she feared that the greatest error of her life had been made when she miscomprehended him. In her dreams as well as her insomnia, it was Clemenceau that she beheld, and not the gallants who had flashed across her uneven path, not even the viscount, whose spoil was her nest-egg. Alas! it was a mere atom to the solid ingot which her misunderstood husband's genius had ensured. ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... and if we consume the midnight oil, use perforce another system of illumination also—we burn the candle at both ends. A great novelist who adopted this baneful practice and indirectly lost his life by it (through insomnia) notes what is very curious, that notwithstanding his mind was so occupied, when awake, with the creatures of his imagination, he never dreamt of them; which I think is also the general experience. ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... alone in his grandeur! And as soon as ten o'clock strikes, after saying the Rosary with his familiars, he shuts himself up in his room. But, although he may go to bed, he sleeps very little; he is frequently troubled by insomnia, and gets up and sends for a secretary to dictate memoranda or letters to him. When any interesting matter requires his attention he gives himself up to it heart and soul, never letting it escape his thoughts. And ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... assured by a policeman that their quest was worse than idle they went back to the tenders. "I suppose," said Perry disgustedly, "they close all the stores early so they can go to the movies. I wish now we'd had some soda at that drug store where the man had insomnia." ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... like the equivalent of one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. A novel feature was a hall where musicians played day and night, and another where story-tellers were employed, so that persons troubled with insomnia were amused and melancholiacs cheered. Those of a religious turn of mind could listen to readings of the Koran, conducted continuously by a staff of some fifty chaplains. Each patient on leaving the hospital received some gold pieces, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... the matter of beds all ships have been badly edited, ignorantly edited, from the beginning. The selection of the beds is given to some hearty, strong-backed, self-made man, when it ought to be given to a frail woman accustomed from girlhood to backaches and insomnia. Nothing is so rare, on either side of the ocean, as a perfect bed; nothing is so difficult to make. Some of the hotels on both sides provide it, but no ship ever does or ever did. In Noah's Ark the beds were simply scandalous. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... or something that prevents me from answering your two letters, which are important and dear to me, especially the last. First it was Baturlin, then bad health, insomnia, then the arrival of D——, the friend of H—— that I wrote you about. He is sitting at tea talking to the ladies, neither understanding the other; so I left them, and want to write what little I can of all that I ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy
... of course, violently attacked; and it was a period of terrible strain for me. What with anxiety and overwork I began to suffer from insomnia, and that soon produced a bad condition of my nerves. One morning I went down to The World and called for the editorials which were ready for me to go over. I always read every line of editorial copy. When I picked ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... bore," said Raffles. "The ladies have been out somewhere—trust them to spoil the show! They would get to bed before the stable folk, but insomnia is the curse of their sex and our profession. Somebody's not home yet; that will be the son of the house; but he's a beauty, who may not ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... impaired by the trip. He was threatened with absolute blindness, and was compelled to have all his notes read to him and to dictate his histories. For years he was forbidden literary work on account of insomnia and intense cerebral pain which threatened insanity, and on account of lameness he was long confined to a wheel chair. He rose above every obstacle, however, and with silent fortitude bore his sufferings, working whenever he ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... smitten his vanity to the quick. He writhed with jealousy, and grew thin and sleepless and sick. At the same time he sustained defeat after defeat in his own campaign in Asia against the Persians. Musing, during nights of insomnia, the emperor blamed himself for ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... the prison, having learned from the prisoner the real cause of his sufferings, which sometimes assumed an acute form of violence and threats. During one of these painful minutes, when K.'s will power was weak, as a result of insomnia, from which he was suffering, I seated myself on his bed and treated him in general with fatherly kindness, and he blurted out everything to ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... "highly recommended for insomnia; friends we never speak to, and always cut if we want to know ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... dead shadows stirred from the bunks, and the hollow-eyed victims of insomnia crept out to curse their tormentor. We organised an expedition to hunt him down. It was ridiculous enough, six strong men prowling for the life of one poor little insect. We did not find him, however, though we succeeded in silencing him. But no sooner were we ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... debt being, as yet, unknown quantities to young Tom Verity, it followed that insomnia, with its thousand and one attendant miseries, was an unknown quantity likewise. Upon the eve of the stiffest competitive examination those, now outlived, years of tutelage had imposed on him, he could still tumble into bed secure of lapsing into unconsciousness as soon as his ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... so faithful. But when Jack died in that dreadful, sudden way, then for the first time I felt remorse—horrible remorse, for a while.... I thought he was taken from me by God as a punishment—the one human being I'd ever loved dearly! And I got insomnia, because his spirit seemed to be near, looking at me, knowing everything. But the feeling passed. I suppose I'm not deep enough to feel anything for long. I lived down the remorse. And it was fortunate for me I had a child; ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... unsatisfying slumber which sometimes follows a night of insomnia I was awakened by the laughter and shouts of children. When I looked out I saw brooding above the hollow a still gray day, in whose light the woodlands of the park were all in sombre brown, and the trout stream between its sedgy banks ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... Coffee in large doses is undoubtedly a means of de-nutrition, and so, too, in no less extent, is tea; both act vigorously owing to the contained alkaloids, though, to be sure, they sometimes, at first, tend to insomnia and palpitation, to which no attention need be paid, however. The ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various
... obesity, gout, rheumatism, and sluggish metabolism, because it is felt that the shorter ultra-violet rays may be harmful. These rays are said to increase the pulse, respiration, temperature, and blood-pressure and may even start hemorrhages and in excessive amounts cause headache, palpitation, insomnia, and anemia. These same authorities condemn sun-baths to the naked body of the tuberculous, claiming that any cures effected are consummated despite the injury done by the energy of short wave-length. There is no doubt that these rays are beneficial in local lesions, but it ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... in which to make complete her reconciliation with her former friends who now ruled Paris and France with a relentless and perpetually bloodstained hand. No wonder that during the night which followed the receipt of this momentous document, Demoiselle Candeille suffered gravely from insomnia. ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... bit awkward," she confessed thoughtfully. "But can't you say that you have insomnia, and can't sleep unless you are above the noise ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... she cried out in a low, passionate voice. "It seemed as though everything that meant anything had gone out of my life. I became worn out, nervous; and though the days were bad enough, the nights were a source of dread. I began to suffer from insomnia—I could not sleep. This was even before my supposed uncle came. I used to read for hours and hours in my room after I had gone to bed. But"—she flung out her hand with an impatient gesture—"there is no need to dwell on that. One night, about a week after that man had arrived, and a little ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... constant over-excitement, feverish restlessness, an inexhaustible propensity for scribbling, that mental automatism and single-mindedness of purpose constrained and ruled by a fixed idea. In addition to this, he displays the usual physical symptoms, such as insomnia, a pallid complexion, hot-headed, foulness of dress and person,[3101] with, during the last five months of his life, rashes and itching all over his body.[3102] Issuing from ill-matched stock, born of a mixed blood and tainted with ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... little bureaucrat found himself part of it all and without fury or futile violence he felt only a calm strength. All was "well" with him, well in mind, well in body. He had no more insomnia, and for the first time in years his stomach gave him no trouble—because he had forgotten all about it. He even got through the winter without taking cold—something that had never been heard of before. He ceased to find fault with everything and everybody, ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... wonderful cures. Shell-shock, insomnia, nervous depression, lumbago, suicidal mania, family life—anything." Neville's attention was straying to Grandmama, who was coming slowly towards them down the path, leaning on her stick, so she did not see ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... physical signs. There are pains, insensitive areas, hypersensitive areas, changes in the pupils of the eyes, unrestrained reflex action, and partial loss of muscular control, as shown in talking, walking, and writing. Constipation and insomnia are very early symptoms of disease in a very large proportion of ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... continued, as it often is every day, the quality of the blood will suffer seriously, and many individuals are the victims of neuralgic pains, headaches, nervousness, insomnia, anemia, and general broken health as a direct ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... Simplicity, in fact, was its most annoying characteristic. Mrs. Coombe, it appeared, had been for a long time somewhat of a sufferer from an obscure trouble, referred to generally as "nerves." For the relief of this trouble, one of whose symptoms was insomnia, she had, from time to time, had recourse to narcotics which, as everyone knows, are dangerous, if not, as many thought, positively immoral. Undoubtedly the poor lady had died from an overdose. It was easy, the coroner said, for a sympathetic mind to reconstruct the details of the terrible ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... light that came in through the chinks in the closed windows. His mother was sleeping in a room close by; he could hear her breathe—the labored respiration of a deep sleep that spelled recovery from the insomnia of the days of his love trysts. He could still feel the criminal shudder that rippled through him at a slight rattle of the keys, which had been left with the confidence of unlimited authority ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... first. Frequently the pressure makes it necessary to get up several times during the night to empty the bladder. In a few cases also the compression of the chest interferes somewhat with breathing. When insomnia is due to the pressure of the womb against neighboring parts of the body, it can be partially counteracted by getting into a comfortable position; but it is also necessary to have the surroundings as conducive ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... suspected there was anything serious the matter with her, although her health of late had been far from good. I happened to be staying in the house just then, and found, that for some reason or other, I could not sleep. I do not often suffer from insomnia, so that the occurrence struck me as somewhat extraordinary. My bedroom opened on to a large, dark landing. In one corner of it stood a very old grandfather's clock, the ticking of which I could distinctly hear when the house was quiet. For the first two or three nights of my visit the ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... say that the preaching about sex-hygiene that is going on in recent books and in the periodical press is immoral in its tendency. It is like saying, 'Don't lie, for if you do, you won't sleep at night, and insomnia is ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... up feeling desperately nervous and almost lightheaded. On looking in the glass she had been shocked at her appearance, but she had managed to alter that considerably, although not so completely as she wished. Depression, following inevitably on insomnia, had fixed its claws in her. She felt deadly, almost terrible, and as if her face must be showing plainly the ugliness of her mental condition. For she seemed to have lost control over it. The facial muscles seemed to have hardened, to have become fixed. When the servant came ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... they roused me from a well-earned sleep. They shouted and sang and made mingled and indistinguishable uproars which rose wildly through the narrow deep space and burst into my open window. After long endurance I rose and shut it, preferring heat to insomnia. But in the day, after that discord, I always had the harmonious compensations of true colour. Even when the sun shone brilliantly I could not distinguish the grey blue of the deep shadows, so much blue was in the painted or distempered outer ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... resulted in insomnia, and a fearful heat in the head; for several days he seemed like one stunned, but his youth and health stood him in hand, he rallied, and, undaunted, again sallied forth to the woods with dog and gun. In three years' time ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... interest But in camp in the wilderness no sporting stories were obtainable. The one novel which remained to the mess dealt with the sex problem, a subject originally profoundly uninteresting to Maitland, who had a healthy mind He read it, however, as a remedy for insomnia. It proved effective. A couple of chapters sent him to sleep every night, so the book lasted a ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... *Insomnia*, or sleeplessness, on account of its effects upon the nervous system, is to be regarded as a serious condition, and hygienic means for relieving it should be diligently sought. Having its cause in nervousness, a disturbed circulation of the brain, or some form of nervous exhaustion, it is benefited ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... they'll be much use. Most people will fling the book down with yawns before they're half through the first volume. If I knew a doctor who had many cases of insomnia in hand, I would recommend "Mr Bailey" to him ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... houses and does not pay two per cent." [Footnote: Related in the New York "Times," issue of December 9, 1885.] In the same breath that he boasted of his wealth he would bewail the ill-health condemning him to be a victim of insomnia and indigestion. ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... or watchful for good as well as against evil; he is wary in view of suspected stratagem, trickery, or treachery. A person may be wakeful because of some merely physical excitement or excitability, as through insomnia; yet he may be utterly careless and negligent in his wakefulness, the reverse of watchful; a person who is truly watchful must keep himself wakeful while on watch, in which case wakeful has something of mental ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... ever undressed on such occasions, knowing, as he no doubt did, perfectly well what his program for the night would be. She had decided that the nocturnal excursions were not due to insomnia but were carefully planned to avoid possible observation. When all the countryside was wrapped in slumber the old gentleman stole from his cottage and went—where? Doubtless to some secret place that had an important bearing on his life and occupation. It would be worth while, Josie believed, ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... woman for woman in case she bought the neighbouring farm, to seclude all my animals and fowls from 5 P.M. till 10 A.M. each morning, as she must get her sleep, for, like her father, she was a life-long sufferer from insomnia. I would have done this if it were possible to repress the daybreak cries natural to a small menagerie which included chickens, turkeys, ducks, and geese, besides two peacocks and ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... horror, the exploits of latter-day iconoclasts, who would fain convince the credulous that what has been was not and that he who once wrought never existed. It was Mr. Head who gave to the world several years ago the charming brochure wherein Shakespeare's relations and experience with insomnia were so pleasantly set forth, and now the public is to be favored with a second essay, one of greater value to the Shakespearian student, in that it deals directly and intimately and explicitly with the earlier years ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... hobby-horses and ride errant through sundry lands, thrusting their creations on an unwilling world. But the particular kind of white night of which Volapk was born is the nuit blanche, literally "white night," but idiomatically "night of insomnia." ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... suppose, Ruiz executed one or two brilliant forays clear away at the rear of our forces, and defeated the detachments sent out to cut off his retreat. General Robles nearly had a stroke of apoplexy from rage. He found another cause of insomnia than the bites of mosquitoes; but against this one, senores, tumblers of raw brandy had no more effect than so much water. He took to railing and storming at me about my strong man. And from our impatience to end this inglorious ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... five-thirty). A shocking sight afflicted my eyes. My bench was occupied by a bum. Hearing the measured footsteps of Terry the Cop, guardian of our destinies, I looked for a swift and painful eviction. Terry, after a glance, passed on. Nothing is worse for insomnia than an unsolved mystery. Slipping into my clothes, I made my way softly to the spot. There in the seat where I was wont to pursue my even tenor as an orchid slumbered Martin Dyke, amateur desecrator of other men's houses, challenger of the wayward fates, fanatic of a will-o'-the-wisp pursuit, ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... and wishing that he had not been such a greenhorn as to disturb his comrades for nothing. Royal, who lay on his right, was of a less excitable temperament. Although he had been awakened, he was now snoring lustily, insomnia being ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... geminae somni portae, quarum altera fertur Cornea, qua veris facilis datur exitus umbris: Altera candenti perfecta nitens elephanto, Sed falsa ad coelum mittunt insomnia manes. ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... "Argonaut" says that a woman in Milpites, a victim of almost crushing sorrow, despondency, indigestion, insomnia, and kindred ills, determined to throw off the gloom which was making life so heavy a burden to her, and established a rule that she would laugh at least three times a day, whether occasion was presented or not; so she trained herself to laugh heartily at the least provocation, and would retire ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... a paragraph in a Medical Journal advising persons suffering from Insomnia to try a musical box in their bed-rooms; and I therefore purchased a rather expensive one, which plays six tunes, with drum and trumpet accompaniment. Something seems to have gone wrong with the mechanism, as, after being fully wound up, it remains obstinately silent for an hour ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... length of Mulberry Street had acquired a local standing and the right to be counted and rounded up by the political bosses. Now the old houses were filled with newspaper offices and given over to perpetual insomnia. Week-days and Sundays, night or day, they never slept. Police headquarters was right across the way, and kept the reporters awake. From his window the chief looked down the narrow passageway to the bottom of the alley, and the alley looked ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... sparingly and only at certain hours of the day, caused him to renounce the project. Since he could not have floods of water playing on him from the nozzle of a hose, (the only efficacious means of overcoming his insomnia and calming his nerves through its action on his spinal column) he was reduced to brief sprays or to mere cold baths, followed by energetic massages applied by his servant with the aid of a ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... very moment that success came to him, the malady that never afterwards left him came also, and, seated motionless at his side, gazed at him with its threatening countenance. He suffered from terrible headaches, followed by nights of insomnia. He had nervous attacks, which he soothed with narcotics and anesthetics, which he used freely. His sight, which had troubled him at intervals, became affected, and a celebrated oculist spoke of abnormality, asymetry ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... your valuable journal I am always deeply interested in the views of your readers as expressed in its columns. The recent letters on the cure of insomnia have interested me particularly. Although I have read your paper for many years, always eaten standard bread, study most diligently each morning my lesson on Government wobble and waste, grow sweet peas, keep fowls, take my holidays early (in Thanet) and read the feuilleton, in short perform ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 15, 1920 • Various
... derangement of the uterine mechanism. Her symptoms all pointed to the nervous system as the fons et origo mali. First general debility, that concealed but ubiquitous leader of innumerable armies of weakness and ill, laid siege to her, and captured her. Then came insomnia, that worried her nights for month after month, and made her beg for opium, alcohol, chloral, bromides, any thing that would bring sleep. Neuralgia in every conceivable form tormented her, most frequently in her back, but often, also, in her head, sometimes ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... been almost constantly in peril of his life. Almost every night he had had to stay awake and watch so as not to be set upon and killed. He had been back in England a short time and had completely recovered from the privations and sufferings he had experienced, but he suffered desperately from insomnia. On his return he had slept well, but a month before his sleep had suddenly begun ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... quiet—at least there was an air of repose about it when we arrived. Before we had been in residence twenty-four hours most of the repose had vanished 'like a dutiful bream,' as Adrian expressed it. However, nothing unduly outrageous happened till last night, when Adrian had a fit of insomnia and amused himself by unscrewing and transposing all the bedroom numbers on his floor. He transferred the bathroom label to the adjoining bedroom door, which happened to be that of Frau Hoftath Schilling, ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... Madge, "is Miss Wildmere so bad as that? Poor, pale victim of insomnia! By the way, do you and Mr. Arnault keep a ledger account of the time you receive? or do you roughly go on the principle of 'share and share alike'?" and with eyes flashing back laughter at his reddening face, she ran ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... period suffer largely from despondency, insomnia, and a feeling of martyrdom. Like the Positive type of the same Mount, they are also much inclined towards rheumatism and disorders brought on through ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... attempts, of which we know but little, to get at Eltham are frustrated, presumably by his curious 'defenses.' An attempt in a train fails owing to Miss Eltham's distaste for refreshment-room coffee. An attempt here fails owing to her insomnia. ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... and in an instant reads off his own position on the earth's surface and the amount of time that has elapsed during his slumbers; but this ordered procession is apt to grow confused, and to break its ranks. Suppose that, towards morning, after a night of insomnia, sleep descends upon him while he is reading, in quite a different position from that in which he normally goes to sleep, he has only to lift his arm to arrest the sun and turn it back in its course, and, at the moment of waking, he will have no idea of the time, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... for a moment at Kendrick as if trying to collect his thoughts. Then he explained that he had been troubled with insomnia and got up to smoke a cigarette. He had been fool enough to perch up on the brass rail at the rear of the private car, thinking the fresh air might make him sleepy. The train had been hitting up a fast pace on a down grade and as they swung a curve he had lost his balance ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... assurances that these were favorable symptoms, I was secretly convinced that I had forfeited what little mental health I had retained; but was consoled by the fact that I slept all night and a part of the day: I had suffered from insomnia since my duties at the ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... any other the Emperor rose often in the night, put on his dressing-gown, and worked in his cabinet: frequently he had insomnia, which he could not overcome; and when the bed at last became unbearable, he sprang from it suddenly, took a book and read, walking back and forth, and when his head was somewhat relieved lay down again. It was very rarely he slept the whole of two nights in ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... [5301] "Insomnia, aerumna, error, terror, et fuga, Excogitantia excors immodestia, Petulantia, cupiditas, et malevolentia; Inhaeret etiam aviditas, desidia, injuria, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... no desire for sleep. The moon, perhaps? Certainly there is nothing in the mere business-like prospect of engaging a permanent secretary to cause insomnia. The professor supposed it was simply his state of health in general. It might be a good idea to drop a line to his medical man. He had promised to report symptoms. Besides, it was only fair to prepare John. The candle was burnt out, but the moon would ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... they would alleviate. A laugh rested him, and any teller of good stories, any writer of lively adventures, received a hearty greeting from him. He told Dickens that his "Pickwick Papers" had for years been his remedy for insomnia, and Sam Weller had helped him to many an hour of rested nerves. He loved and admired Longfellow and Lowell, and they were his most cherished friends, but the lively wit of Holmes had a special charm for him, and jolly times they had whenever they met. The witty talk and merry letters ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... ugliness Fred's verses were not good, but they were full of dejection Hang out the bush, but keep no tavern A familiarity which, had he known it, was not flattering His sleeplessness was not the insomnia of genius Importance in this world are as easily swept away as the sand Natural longing, that we all have, to know the worst Notion of her husband's having an opinion of his own Pride supplies some sufferers with necessary courage Seemed to enjoy themselves, ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Immortals of the French Academy • David Widger
... time might have drawn twenty or thirty years later. His lips made a straight line, and his eyes, although he had hardly slept three hours a night for as many nights, had a look in them that was not to be accounted for by ordinary insomnia. ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... insured myself a night of insomnia. I don't think I have ever had such a night. I had some bad times before my business collapse, but the very worst of those was sweet slumber compared to this infinity of aching wakefulness. I was suddenly in the most enormous funk at the thing we ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... Chalky deposits in Shoulder-joints, Arm-joints, Hand-joints, Insomnia, Atrophy of the muscles of Arms. Shoulders, Stiffness of all those joints, Excruciating pains most of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... suggestion. As a matter of course, just these have an eminent value for psychotherapy. I may suggest to-day that the subject will overcome to-morrow his desire for the morphine injection, or that he will feel to-night the restfulness which will overcome his insomnia. But if the suggestion of an idea means belief, and if belief means a preparation for action, we have indeed no new factor before us if the action for which we prepare the subject is from the start related to a definite time. If we do not link ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... disease the patient feels ill, complains of headache and pains in the limbs, the temperature rises to 104 or even to 106 F., and assumes a pyaemic type. The pulse becomes rapid and weak. The tongue is dry and brown. There is profuse sweating, albuminuria, and often insomnia with delirium. Death may take place within a week, but more frequently occurs during the second or ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... not alone the unquiet slumbers of the soldiers who had fallen in the streets, the blending of inarticulate sounds produced by that gathering of guns, men, and horses; what he fancied he could distinguish was the insomnia, the alarmed watchfulness of his bourgeois neighbors, who, no more than he, could sleep, quivering with feverish terrors, awaiting anxiously the coming of the day. They all must be aware that the capitulation had not been signed, ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... vivit—nova forte marita. Ah, dolor! alterius nunc a cervice pependit. Vos, malefida valete accensae insomnia mentis, Littora amata ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... "Insomnia," said Pearce, huskily. "I can't sleep. Suppose you saw me at work through the window?" There was almost an eager haste ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood
... would remain up at literary work till he heard the church clocks strike four in the morning. The evil results of this abuse of health soon made themselves manifest. He had lost all appetite for food. His rest was broken by fits of insomnia, during which his heart would beat so loud as to be distinctly heard by his brother in the same room. In the streets he would be suddenly attacked by swooning fits, during which he would have to support himself by leaning on gate posts and sitting on door-steps. At the earnest solicitation ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... only powerful in our own bed, that on which it has acted on unnumbered nights. We cannot, as we say, sleep in a strange bed. It is suggestion, not direct will power, that acts. No one can absolutely will himself to sleep. In insomnia it is the attempt to replace the unconscious auto-suggestion by a conscious voluntary effort of will that causes the difficulty. A thousand times in the night we resolve that now we will sleep. If we could but cease to make these fruitless efforts, sleep might come of ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... theatre, and as a result of all this, and also on account of her unfortunate choice of a role, her appearance was a failure. There could be no question of her being taken on at that theatre. Although her weakness increased, and she suffered from constant insomnia, she still tried, in her magnanimity and her shame, to hide from me the awkwardness of her situation. She went to a cheaper inn, the 'Stadt Frankfurt,' where she intended to wait and see the result of sparing her nerves as far as possible. ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... SUPREME: Go back to Nature; be a fine animal. Get into the sunshine, the silent woods, the open fields. Magnetize your body by walking thru the dew barefooted, by sleeping on the grass, or half buried in the sand. Tuberculosis, rheumatism, insomnia are unknown to wild animals. Our bodies are sick and weak because we have denatured ourselves. Make friends of the wild animals, they will teach you how to keep well. They have not a single case of nervous prostration ...
— Supreme Personality • Delmer Eugene Croft
... attention of passers-by was drawn to a four-post bed, which was being trundled along the Strand by eight stalwart footmen. On it reposed the Duke of Sleepyacres. It appears that his Grace, on return from active service, found that the confined air of an ordinary bed-room engendered insomnia. He therefore conceived the idea of sleeping in the open-air and caused his bed to be placed in the centre of the Strand, opposite the entrance to the Savoy Hotel. The presence of the sleeping nobleman might have been unnoticed, had not Mr. SMILLIE chanced to pass the spot on his way from dining ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... chief of scouts, was harassed nearly to insomnia over the change in his friend. At the bottom of the mystery there must be inspiration for a glowing line, and with pen ready poised over the violet fluid of romance, it was disheartening to have the solution elude him. He proposed ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... WAKEFULNESS, OR INSOMNIA, is present in many cases; in others, there is unusual drowsiness but sleep gives neither rest nor strength; often it is disturbed by dreams that exhaust the vitality and leave the patient more tired than when ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... A martyr to insomnia threatens, unless the Government stops the whistling for taxis, to let Mr. MCKENNA whistle ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various
... be telling you nothing new when I say that Aristotle, Pliny, all the sages of antiquity, attributed medical and divine virtues to them. According to the pagans, agate and carnelian stimulate, topaz consoles, jasper cures languor, hyacinth drives away insomnia, turquoise prevents falls or lightens the ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... desultory sort the Colonel, Rad and I went up to our rooms. Whether it was the excitement of the evening or the coffee I had drunk, in any case I was not sleepy. I turned in, only to lie for an hour or more with my eyes wide open staring at a patch of moonlight on the ceiling. My old trouble of insomnia had overtaken me again. I finally rose and paced the floor in sheer desperation, and then paused to stare out of the window at the peaceful moonlit picture ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... the affair fairly well, he thought. Indeed, he had a talent for chicane, and none knew it better than himself. It would have been dangerous if the servants had been left in the castle. They might have suffered from insomnia, and heard William Smith, and interfered with the operations of William Smith. On the other hand, Sir Jee had no intention whatever of leaving the castle uninhabited to the mercies of William Smith. He felt that he himself must be on the spot to see that everything ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... been 'another awful effect of the spiritual delusion' to chronicle. The honest verdict of the first century would have been: 'Another possessed of devils or devil-crazed.' The wretches well knew that insomnia is an excellent preparation ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... resigned, owing to ill-health, with a pension of L120. After his retirement he spent a nomadic life wandering from Nice to Venice, and from the Engadine to Sicily, ever in quest of health and sunshine, racked by neuralgia and insomnia, still preaching in the desert, still plunging deeper and deeper into solitude. And as the world refused to listen to him, Nietzsche became more and more convinced of the value of his message. His last book, "Ecce Homo," ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... the feathery soot of a smoky lamp, and smutted first the bedquilt, then the hearth-rug, then the window-seat, and then at last the great, stormy, faraway outside world. But sleep did not come. Oh, no! Nothing new came at all except that particularly wretched, itching type of insomnia which seems to rip away from one's body the whole kind, protecting skin and expose all the raw, ticklish fretwork of nerves to the mercy of a gritty blanket or a wrinkled sheet. Pain came too, in its most brutally high night-tide; and sweat, like the smother ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... Nervousness. The psychoneuroses are of many forms.[3] To some people "nerves" means nervous prostration, breakdown, fatigue, weakness, insomnia, the blues, upset stomach, or unsteady heart,—all signs of so-called neurasthenia or nerve-weakness. To others the word "nerves" calls up memories of strange, emotional storms that seem to rise ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... Kotze undertook several journeys to the Free State and Cape Colony, ostensibly to rid himself of insomnia, but in reality, as results proved, in order to employ a judge for this trial. His choice eventually fell upon Mr. Gregorowski, formerly a judge in the Free State, and at that time State-Attorney ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... crystalline, odourless, slightly bitter. Best in ten to fifteen grain cachets. Does not affect circulatory or respiratory systems or temperature. Toxicity low: 135 gr. taken with no serious result. Unreasonable use for insomnia, however, ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... soon found that I was being overworked, I had some "let up" of this strenuous system. The extra work in addition to the regular afternoon practice, made my days pretty severe going and when night came I was not troubled with insomnia. ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... she's healthy and strong and all that," he explained, "but she was born with insomnia. She never could sleep. She couldn't sleep as a little baby even. But it's never hurt her any, because she's got a will, and won't let it get on her nerves. She's just about as tense as they make them, yet, instead of going wild when she can't sleep, she ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... to his berth on reaching the station, and while the car remained in the train shed, slept. The departure wakened him, and after useless striving he resigned himself to his insomnia, raised his window curtain, and lay watching the staid procession of Dutch-named towns picketting the river banks. A mimic tempest fretted the Tappan Sea, whose bravado dwindled to mere guerilla marauding ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... further end of the Suspension Bridge, when he heaved a deep sigh, and remarked, "In the midst of life we are in Brooklyn." Another favourite anecdote in New York is that of the Philadelphian who went to a doctor and complained of insomnia. The doctor gave him a great deal of sage advice as to diet, exercise, and so forth, concluding, "If after that you haven't better nights, let me see you again." "But you mistake, doctor," the patient replied; "I sleep all right at night—it's in ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... be unkind to wake this dear bedfellow merely because he himself could not sleep. He clasped his hands behind his head, and by a prolonged effort of will remained motionless. But insomnia was exciting every nerve in his body; each memory seemed to light up the entire labyrinth of his brain; each sense-message came inward like a bomb-shell, reaching with its explosion the highest as well as ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... from her own height of purity was a profanation. The quarters and the hours chimed, until the gray spring dawn crept through the interstices of the blinds, and fatigue grew more leaden than ever. But the devil of insomnia was unconquerable. He relit his candles, found a book, and tried to read; but that was as ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... of society such as that which exists in the north, such a thing as a nightwatch is undreamed of. Insomnia is likewise unknown there. At eleven o'clock every soul in Fort Enterprise was drowned deep ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... and save the life of some solitary nigger who brought it to Liverpool, and you'll be a baronet in a fortnight and a member of all the European academies in a month. But study colds, indigestion and insomnia, and change a thousand lives a year from despair to felicity, and no authority will take the slightest notice of you ... As with physical, so with mental diseases—or spiritual, if you like to call them ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... all her life—sunk into the death-blackness of sleep with her mother limned to the last on her fading consciousness. But this mother was not the Daisy of the plains nor of the daguerreotype. They had been before Saxon's time. This that she saw nightly was an older mother, broken with insomnia and brave with sorrow, who crept, always crept, a pale, frail creature, gentle and unfaltering, dying from lack of sleep, living by will, and by will refraining from going mad, who, nevertheless, could not will sleep, and whom not even the whole ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... resemblances to different people, rough outlines of objects, omens in embryo, symbols of trifles, which told her that she would be victorious. She wanted to see these things and she compelled herself to discover them. Under her tense gaze the porcelain became alive with the visions of her insomnia; her disappointments, her hatreds, the faces she detested, arose gradually from the magic plate and the designs drawn thereon by chance. By her side the candle, which she forgot to snuff, gave forth an intermittent, dying light: ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... things that can happen to make a man stop caring. But I brought her away, just the same. I—I woke up—or something. I have been awake all night—I have been thinking—I had nothing else to do. Insomnia has made me insane—one night of it!" He laughed when the old man blinked at him. "I'm so crazy that I want you to help me find some good woman who will take this child to board in a ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... wakefulness, and that night after perhaps an hour's heavy slumber I became thinly alert and very weary in body and spirit, and I do not think I slept again. The pain in my leg that the panther had torn had been revived by the day's exertion. For the greater part of my life insomnia has not been disagreeable to me. In the night, in the stillness, one has a kind of detachment from reality, one floats there without light, without weight, feeling very little of one's body. One has a certain disembodiment and one can achieve a magnanimity of thought, forgiveness and self-forgetfulness ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... work or of amusements, then the mechanism of its production is obvious. The fatigue poisons produced during the day and normally completely neutralized and burned up during sleep are not entirely disposed of and remain in the tissues to torture the nerves. The headache of insomnia, or habitual sleeplessness, on the other hand, is not, strictly speaking, caused by loss of sleep. Paradoxical as it may sound, the fatigue poisons, which in moderate amounts will produce drowsiness and promote sleep, in excessive amounts will cause wakefulness and inability to sleep. ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... with wind, and a griping in their bellies, or bellyache, belch often, dry bellies and hard, dejected looks, flaggy beards, singing of the ears, vertigo, light-headed, little or no sleep, and that interrupt, terrible and fearful dreams," [2459]Anna soror, quae, me suspensam insomnia terrent? The same symptoms are repeated by Melanelius in his book of melancholy collected out of Galen, Ruffus, Aetius, by Rhasis, Gordonius, and all the juniors, [2460]"continual, sharp, and stinking belchings, as if their meat in their stomachs were putrefied, or that they ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... energy, the strengt of daring. 2. The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity, and revolt. 3. Literature having up to now glorified thoughtful immobility, ecstasy, and slumber, we wish to exalt the aggressive movement, the feverish insomnia, running, the perilous leap, the cuff and the blow." While I am quite willing to exalt the cuff within reason, it scarcely seems such an entirely new subject for literature as the Futurists imagine. It seems to me that even through the slumber which fills the Siege of Troy, the ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... race for priority, which kills off so many American journalists, sometimes, it would seem, almost before their time (but that is a matter of opinion), is unknown in London. A man who reads the "London Times," regularly and conscientiously, is guaranteed forever against insomnia. London "Punch" is a paper which the severest ascetic may read, all through Lent, without danger to his ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... the Holy Spirit as the Paraclete there is also a cure for insomnia. For two awful years, I suffered from insomnia. Night after night I would go to bed apparently almost dead for sleep; it seemed as though I must sleep, but I could not sleep; oh, the agony of those two years! It seemed as if I would lose my mind ...
— The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit • R. A. Torrey
... continued for eternity. You suffered for an hour, a day, a thousand years, and were no nearer to the end; ten thousand, a million years, and yet, as at the very first, it was for ever, and for ever still it would always be for ever! I suffered also from insomnia about this period. ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... sleep would be impossible until Isabel returned. She hoped that Aunt Francesca would not want her to read aloud, but, as it chanced, she did. However, the chosen book was of the sort which banishes insomnia, and, in less than an hour, Madame was sound asleep, with Mr. Boffin purring in his luxurious silk-lined basket at ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... The last particle of his nervous force had been expended in the wonders and agonies of this day full of surprising failures coming at the end of a harassing month of scheming and insomnia. He was tired. A man isn't made of stone. Hang everything! Mr Verloc reposed characteristically, clad in his outdoor garments. One side of his open overcoat was lying partly on the ground. Mr Verloc wallowed on his back. But he longed for a more perfect ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... Prejudice": "the serious object of her life was to get her daughter married; its solace, gossiping and news." Also she had much of the same querulousness, and complained every night of nerves, and each morning of insomnia. ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... her by the idle chatter of strangers. A curious rigidity, as if she had been suddenly paralyzed, passed from her heart, which seemed to have ceased beating, and crept through her limbs to her motionless hands and feet. Though she longed to call out and awaken Oliver, who, complaining of insomnia, spent the night in the adjoining room, this immobility, which was like the graven immobility of death, held her imprisoned there as speechless and still as if she lay in her coffin. Only her brain seemed on fire, so ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... always marked Frohman's close personal relations were not lacking in those nights when the life of the valiant little man hung by a thread. When all other means of inducing sleep failed, Potter found a sure cure for insomnia. ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... practically nothing. He had had to struggle from his college days with an obscure disorder of the brain, aggravated by the hardships of his Oregon Trail journey, and by ill-considered efforts to harden his bodily frame by over-exertion. His disease took many forms—insomnia, arthritis, weakness of sight, incapacity for sustained thought. His biographer Farnham says that "he never saw a perfectly well day during his entire literary career." Even when aided by secretaries and copyists, ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... compound—one of the toxins secreted by intestinal bacteria and responsible for many of the symptoms of senility. It used to be thought that large doses of indol might be consumed with little or no effect on normal man, but now we know that headache, insomnia, confusion, irritability, decreased activity of the cells, and intoxication are possible from it. Comparatively small doses over a long time produce changes in organs that lead to ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... My debts double, and my income seems to sizzle away under the influence of a hot, sleepless night; and it was just here that a certain awful thing saved me from the insanity which is a certain result of parboiled insomnia. ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... current represented Charles as completely prostrated by his disaster. This was only half true. His efforts to retrieve himself were immediate but, physically, he certainly showed the effects of this campaign. He was attacked by a low fever, his stomach rejected food, insomnia afflicted his nights, and dropsical swellings appeared on his legs. This condition was attributed to his fatigues and exposure in a hard climate, and to his habit of drinking warm barley-water in the morning. He was urged to use a soft feather-bed instead ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... Since the day before he had thought of Therese. He had all night dreamed and yearned over her image. He saw her again, delightful, but in another manner, and even more desirable than he had imagined in his insomnia; less visionary, of a more vivid piquancy, and also of a mind more mysteriously impenetrable. She was sad; she seemed cold and indifferent. He said to himself that he was nothing to her; that he was becoming importunate and ridiculous. This irritated ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... the usual auspices. At eleven o'clock the lights were all extinguished, and the whole household asleep, with the possible exception of Mr. Hasbrouck himself, who, being a man of large business responsibilities, was frequently troubled with insomnia. ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... couldn't get over was insomnia. I could never sleep at the right time and I was always dead tired on duty. Once I worked forty-three hours at a stretch and after that I had to do a guard in our trench. I felt sleepy all of a sudden. I pinched myself ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... spiritual songs and to soft music, he fell asleep. Sometimes he would summon his brother's "Nine Gems of Science," and give ear to their learned discourses. But it was observed that the viceroy reserved this exercise for nights when he was troubled with insomnia—the words of wisdom being to him an ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... specially from town to see Mr. Gabriel Chestermarke, and that, being an old friend of mine, he had first come to see me. Joseph therefore said that we were too late to find his uncle at home: Gabriel, he went on, had been suffering terribly from insomnia, and, by his doctor's advice, he was trying the effect of a long solitary walk every night before going to bed, and he had just started out over the moor at the back of his house. Turning to Hollis, he asked if he could do anything—was his visit ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... have been quite so positive as that," he said, "even then; but I cannot deny that this ridiculous fancy haunted me for many hours when I was endeavoring to snatch a little sleep amid the insomnia that a too active brain produced. Yes, there were moments when these two beings with greenish eyes, sinuous movements, golden hair, and mysterious ways, seemed to me to be blended into one, and to be merely the double manifestation of a single entity. ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... flushed. "I cannot understand, John; it is absurd to say that you cannot sleep on a feather-bed. Mr Hare told me you complained of insomnia, and there is no surer way of losing your health. It is owing to the hardness of those college mattresses, whereas in ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... ills, there are two to which I never have been, and probably never shall be, subject—namely, gout and insomnia. My immunity from the former might be difficult to account for, but my exemption from the latter may, I think, be attributed to the operation of a mind at peace with all below. Nevertheless, it used to be my habit to wake punctually at 2 a.m., for the purpose of remembering whether I had to listen ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... received a letter from her which much alarmed us. It was written from Naples and dated October 25. John, she said, had been ailing of late with nervousness and insomnia. On Wednesday, two days before the date of her letter, he had suffered all day from a strange restlessness, which increased after they had retired for the evening. He could not sleep and had dressed again, telling ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... the Countess, less capable of looking a situation in the face and of advancing to it, such an evening would have marked the prelude to one of those nights of insomnia when the mind exhausts in advance all the agonies of probable danger. Countess Steno did not know what weakness and ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... bracing himself back on all four of his absurd little feet, and sometimes tumbling over in his excitement; and he rolled over her and growled and worried her until she must have been almost on the verge of insomnia! Yet she never boxed his ears once, much as he ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 20, March 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... break out of the zareba of life, who lay violent hands upon themselves, do so with a complete reasoning, which in itself is proof of their insanity. It may be domestic tragedy, or ill-health, or crime, or broken faith, or shame, or insomnia, or betrayed trust— whatever it is, many a one who suffers from such things, tries to end it all with that deliberation, that strategy, and that cunning which belong only to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... tinkling its quarter miles in the great silence of the sea. I don't mean to say that our passengers dreamed aloud of Almayer, but it is indubitable that two of them at least, who could not sleep, apparently, and were trying to charm away the trouble of insomnia by a little whispered talk at that ghostly hour, were referring in some way or other to Almayer. It was really impossible on board that ship to get away definitely from Almayer; and a very small pony tied up forward and whisking its tail inside the galley, to the great embarrassment of our Chinaman ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... are large, airy, with almost no furniture, floors of varnished wood, and at the bed-head, in case of insomnia, one shelf of books of a particular and dippable order, such as "Pepys," the "Paston Letters," Burt's "Letters from the Highlands," or the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tallow-dip and go to bed, lying awake until long after all the rest of the world slumbered. This lying awake soon became a habit. The slightest sound broke his sleep—the gnawing of a mouse behind the mopboard, or a change in the wind; and then insomnia seized upon him. He lay there listening to the summer breeze among the elms, or to the autumn winds that, sweeping up from the sea, teased his ear with muffled accents ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... lapses, but withal I was simply astonished to find how, by perseverance, habitual calm not only grew on me, but how decidedly it increased. I most assuredly have experienced it to such a degree as to marvel that the method is not more employed as a cure for nervous suffering and insomnia. ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland |
