"Irritability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... used internally in an infusion (4-8 grams to 1 liter of water) as an emollient in irritability of the bladder and urethra and has been recommended for such a purpose by Mooden Sheriff. It is a diuretic which frequently acts as a purgative, a fact that is not surprising in view of the above-mentioned properties of the ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... head. Now he turns on his right side, then on his left—presently he starts up, and with muttered curse shakes his little pillow, flinging it down angrily. He cannot sleep—he cannot rest—he cannot keep still. Bursting with irritability, he gets out of bed, and steps to the window, which opening wide, a slight gush of fresh air cools his hot face for a moment or two. His wearied eye looks upward and beholds the moon shining overhead in cold splendor, turning the clouds ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... Feverish irritability, a constant absorption in thought, made Calyste almost doltish. Often he would sit for hours with his eyes fixed on some figure in the tapestry. One morning his mother implored him to give up Les Touches, and leave the ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... not from any perverse love of sophistry, that the word sensibility has been used in these instances instead of irritability, which seems better to characterize the temper of a Dionysius, or a Tiberius; but, in fact, irritability, in common language, merely denotes an excessive or ill governed degree of sensibility. The point of excess must be marked: sympathy must be regulated by education, and consequently the methods ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... extreme form of active illusion and hallucination may be seen, too, by examining the physical conditions of each. As I have already remarked, active illusion has for its physiological basis a state of sub-excitation, or an exceptional condition of irritability in the structures engaged in the act of interpretative imagination. The greater the degree of this irritability, the less will be the force of external stimulation needed to produce the effect of excitation, and the more energetic will be the degree of this excitation. Moreover, it is plain ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... interrupted, with some obvious irritability; "let me tell you what I have conceived, and raise any objections afterwards if you wish to raise them. He would tell her the truth himself. He would almost glory in doing so. That is the nature of the man. We have depicted his pride in his own powers, his temptation, his struggle—his ...
— The Collaborators - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... the rain and chew up carpet-tacks and grind Huns into leber-wurst. They were putting through the job—with a fierce and terrifying gaiety; they exulted in their toughness, they called themselves "grizzlies" and "mountain cats" and what not; they sang wild songs about their irritability, their motto was "Treat 'em rough!" It was a scary atmosphere for a dreamer and utopian; Jimmie Higgins shrank into himself, afraid even to reach about for some fellow-Socialist with whom he might exchange opinions about the events of the ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... which had recalled me to a true sense of the situation. If, Monsieur, you happen to have gone through a similar day of violent effusion and general expansion, you will agree with me that during no other moment of your life were you more inclined to irritability. ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... enthusiastic respect. Without one taint of envy in his nature, conscious of his own extraordinary powers, he was quick to recognize genius in others; and his hearty praise of the powers of his rivals shows how sound and generous the heart was under his irritability. His proneness to satire and power of epigram made him enemies, but even these yielded to the suavity and fascination which alternated with his bitter moods. His sympathies were peculiarly open for young musicians. Mendelssohn and Liszt ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... strong. He had been accustomed to picture himself bending with a proud tenderness over his partner in the scene and murmuring some notably good things to her bowed head. How could any man murmur in a pandemonium like this. From tenderness Bruce Carmyle descended with a sharp swoop to irritability. ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... even to extravagance towards any one who had ever been connected with his fortunes or his travels; playful, light-hearted, witty, and humorous, but not without those occasional fits of black depression and nervous irritability to ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... wondering at Mr Preddle's curious ways, and thinking what a pity it was that a gentleman like Mr Denning, who was on a voyage for the sake of his health, should take such a dislike to Mr Frewen and Mr Preddle too. It hardly seemed to be like irritability, for after all he was as merry and friendly with the officers as he was with me. I never went near him without his beckoning to me to come to his side, and both he and his sister were quite affectionate to me, making my first long voyage wonderfully pleasant, ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... colder than this place, where I have tarried in the expectation of obtaining rest. Sligo has very kindly proposed a union of our forces for the occasion, which will be perhaps as uncomfortable to him as to myself, judging from previous experience, which, however, may be explained by my own irritability and hurry. ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... attributed their occasional temperamental outbursts to the altitude, which was "getting on their nerves," it was no secret between them that their irritability was due to exasperation with Disston. With scientific skill and thoroughness they dissected him privately until he was hash, working their scalpels far into the watches of the night with unflagging interest. His words, his actions, his thoughts, as indicated by his changing expressions, ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... discriminating with reference to the characters of persons with whom I found myself in contact, I have made and invariably observed one rule of conduct,—namely, never to associate with those whom I cannot respect. Ignorance, want of refinement, irritability of temper, and even lack of generous impulses, I can forgive, when redeemed by candor and stern honesty of purpose; but arrogance, dissimulation, and all-absorbing selfishness I will not tolerate. In you I hoped and expected better qualities ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... of pomp and continuous grandeur. On the contrary, as the necessity of rousing attention, or of sustaining it, obliged the Attic orator to rely too much on the personality of direct question to the audience, and to use brief sentences, so also the same impatient and fretful irritability forbade him to linger much upon an idea—to theorise, to speculate, or, generally, to quit the direct business path of the question then under consideration—no matter for what purpose of beauty, dignity, instruction, or even of ultimate effect. In all things, the immediate—the instant—the ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... at him; but evidently her depression and irritability were increasing with every moment. Totski was dreadfully alarmed to hear her promise a revelation ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... by a facile exterior. Tender men sometimes have strong wills. We had, in Massachusetts, an old statesman, who had sat all his life in courts and in chairs of state, without overcoming an extreme irritability of face, voice, and bearing: when he spoke, his voice would not serve him; it cracked, it broke, it wheezed, it piped;—little cared he; he knew that it had got to pipe, or wheeze, or screech his argument and his indignation. When he sat down, after speaking, he ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... him from a promise and strengthen both with a legislative endorsement. It was neither an intrepid nor an exalted proposition, but Conkling accepted it. Perhaps his nature required a relief from its high-strung irritability in some sort of violence, and resignation backed by the assurance that he would soon be restored to office and to greater power on the shoulders of the party offered the seductive form which that violence ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Table Bay in twenty-two days from the date of my seeing the Major with the pistol in his hand. His manner had for a week before been marked by an irritability that was often beyond his control. He had talked snappishly and petulantly at table, contradicted aggressively, and on two occasions gave Captain North the lie; but we had carefully avoided noticing his manner, and acted as though he were still the high bred, polished gentleman ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... nights, short hurried breathing, with a feeling and dread of suffocation, evident fulness and enlargement in the region of liver, and inability to turn to the right side. The urine was small in quantity, of a bluish colour, and coagulable, irritability of stomach, and the bowels were obstinate and difficult to move, even with drastic purgatives. The treatment was merely palliative, no stimulant seemed to have any effect in exciting the system. Ascites and general anasarca ...
— An Investigation into the Nature of Black Phthisis • Archibald Makellar
... survived Miss Ladd's boarding house, for a time. At first it went smoothly enough because Maurice couldn't blame Eleanor's cook, and Eleanor couldn't say that "nothing she did pleased Maurice"; so two reasons for irritability were eliminated; but a new reason appeared: Maurice's eager interest in everything and everybody—especially everybody!—and his endless good nature, overflowed around the boarding-house table. Everyone liked him, which ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... the sensorium during their inactive state are termed irritability, sensibility, voluntarity, and associability; in their active state they are termed as ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... eloquent of his state of mind that every changing emotion shone through it as through a window into his soul, told of secret harassment. So also did his tense nerves, which seemed wrought up almost to the snapping point. They vented themselves in frequent bursts of irritability and snarling anger. His secretary noticed that he started at every sudden sound, and sometimes also when she had heard nothing, and that then he would look round him in an alarmed, furtive way, as if he expected to see some menace take form ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... course of a fortnight or so, when his system had covered over its craving after whisky, the irritability of the shoemaker almost vanished. It might have been feared that his conscience would then likewise relax its activity; but it was not so: it grew yet more tender. He now began to give Robert some praise, and make allowances ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... come when that information was to be given; for, about six weeks previous to the action we have described, in which Adams the quarter-master was killed, Admiral De Courcy was attacked by a painful and mortal disease. As long as he was able to move about, his irritability of temper, increased by suffering, rendered him more insupportable than ever; but he was soon confined to his room, and the progress of the disease became so rapid, that the medical attendants considered it their duty to apprise him that all ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... young—" Ronald began; but De Valette waited not to hear the conclusion, for at that moment a light, streaming from a low building opposite, attracted his attention, and, with nervous irritability, he advanced towards it. It was the building used for a Catholic chapel, and the light proceeded from a nuptial procession, which was then issuing from it. Two boys walked before it, in loose black garments, with white scarfs thrown over their shoulders, and bearing flaming torches in their hands. ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... some festivity for the coming week no doubt; but Sally and Mrs. Peel engaged her attention, and she postponed the reading until after they were gone. She observed, however, in Gerald's demeanour during the meal, a curious irritability and preoccupation. He ate next to nothing, drank his cup of coffee with an air of unconsciousness, and got up and strolled away at the first opportunity, not reappearing until Mrs. Peel and Sally were making their farewells in the hall. He and Althea ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... menstrual period would be due. Strong purgatives administered with other drugs on or after the calculated date frequently bring about delivery, whereas previous attempts of this kind prove unsuccessful. To account for this peculiar irritability of the uterus about the fortieth-week of pregnancy, microscopical changes in its tissues have been suggested but sought in vain. Nor will the distention of the organ ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... Little think the youth and maiden who are glancing at each other across crowded rooms with eyes so full of mutual intelligence, of the precious fruit long hereafter to proceed from this new, quite external stimulus. The work of vegetation begins first in the irritability of the bark and leaf-buds. From exchanging glances, they advance to acts of courtesy, of gallantry, then to fiery passion, to plighting troth and marriage. Passion beholds its object as a perfect unit. The soul is wholly embodied, and the ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... was a devoted creature, who had only left her mistress because she was sure that she was in good hands, and because her own approaching marriage made a separation inevitable in any case. Her mistress had, as she confessed with distress, shown some irritability of temper towards her during their stay in Baden, and had even questioned her once as if she had suspicions of her honesty, and this had made the parting easier than it would otherwise have been. Lady ...
— The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in all this history as the difference between Moses when called upon to take responsibility as a military commander, and Moses when, not to mince matters, he acted as a quack. On the one hand, he was all vacillation, timidity, and irritability. On the other, ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... whom few were better judges on this subject, once observed to me that 'Johnson knew more books than any man alive.' He had a peculiar facility in seizing at once what was valuable in any book, without submitting to the labour of perusing it from beginning to end[213]. He had, from the irritability of his constitution, at all times, an impatience and hurry when he either read or wrote. A certain apprehension, arising from novelty, made him write his first exercise at College twice over[214]; but he never took that trouble with any other composition; and we shall see that his ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... the irritability which was a symptom of his disease, an easy guest. He had a lecture at nine in the morning, so did not see Cronshaw till the night. Once or twice Philip persuaded him to share the scrappy meal he prepared for himself in the evening, but Cronshaw ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... language. All this might be as nothing to what strove for delivery now. And this he was desperately engaged in stifling to death; and not the beauty of his mind alone but of his nature, for beyond all doubt his gentleness and sweetness and refinement were as much a part of his genius as irritability and violence were fellows to the ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... charm,—she knew how easily she could command homage wherever she went,—and knowing, she did not care. Or rather—she had not cared. Was it possible she would ever care, and perhaps at a time when it was no use caring? A certain irritability, quite foreign to her usual composure, fevered her blood, and it arose from one simple admission which she had been forced to make to herself within the last few days, and this was, that her husband was as much her kingly superior in heart and mind as he was in rank and power. ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... consequences. In any case his power of controlling instinctive impulse is due to his recognition of its non-intellectual origin. He may even be able to extend this recognition to his own impulses, and to overcome the conviction that his irritability during afternoon school in July is the result of an intellectual conclusion as to the need of special severity in dealing with a ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... certainly some curious quality in the air of this country which affects the nerves: maybe it is the elevation at which one lives—certain it is that many people complain of unwonted irritability and susceptibility to petty annoyances. And, while travelling in Kashmir is easy and comfortable enough along beaten tracks, yet the petty worries connected with all matters of transport and supply are incessant, ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... many channels for enjoyment. Still the insufficiency of the palpable and appreciable is paramount; still the everlasting dolor interposes: the appetite is satiated, the aroma palls upon the nostrils, the nerves are affected by irritability, the harmony merges into dissonance; even the beautiful becomes so far an abomination that man is 'mad for the sight of his eyes that he did see.' Such is the sterile and repulsive penalty of the searcher after happiness. Happiness! O delusive ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... needs, has no weight in that court. When Nature touches a man on the shoulder and says, "Stop!" he stops. The penalty of frayed nerves, overworked brains, and underworked bodies is failure of body and mind. The premonitory symptoms are irritability, quarreling, depression, fierceness and inefficiency of effort, and finally complete breakdown. Three to four hours a week physical exercise under a scientifically tested plan and arrangement will keep these men fit. Is the price in this emergency ...
— Keeping Fit All the Way • Walter Camp
... last three critical days, he needed all his faith to reconcile him to one of the most unfathomable instances of the workings of Providence. His grumbles were loud and long, and the directions which he sent from his sick bed were tinged with irritability. For at last the other side had come to its senses; Sir Winterton was affable again, Lady Mildmay was canvassing, and Mr. Smiley had high hopes. Despondency would have fallen on Foster's spirit but for the report of Quisante's exploits, performed in the teeth of the orders of ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... you sit ever thus over the fire like some old crone?" he growled, voicing at last the irritability that so long had been growing ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... speaking his dialect, etc. The result is more disastrous than one unfamiliar with Australian relationships would imagine; for these relationships are so complicated that to unravel them takes, in the words of Howitt (59), "a patience compared with which that of Job is furious irritability." ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... this trying operation Dick Varley never once betrayed the slightest feeling of irritability or impatience. He did not expect success at first; he was not, therefore, ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... Hine that morning, and something of his own irritability seemed to have passed into her; so that he turned to ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... we know it in our experience, goes back in the history of the race to the primitive sensitivity (or irritability) of living matter, seen in the protozoa. These minute unicellular creatures, though having no sense organs—any more than they have muscles or digestive organs—respond to a variety of stimuli. They react to mechanical stimuli, as a touch or jar, to chemical stimuli ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... husband's enormous confidence in his artistic powers, she had not the stimulus of his faith in his ultimate success to sustain her. Moreover a heart trouble with which she was afflicted resulted, through the strain to which their uncertain material condition subjected her, in a growing irritability which was accentuated by jealousy of women who entered the growing circle of Wagner's admirers as his ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... a pause, for none dared risk reply. Edward's voice had waxed louder and louder, his sallow cheek flushed with wrath, and he raised himself from his couch, as if irritability of thought had ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... the table, turned up my coat to hide the absence of collar, and started for the door. My last sight of Smith showed him standing looking after me, tugging at the lobe of his ear and clicking his teeth together with suppressed irritability. I stumbled down the dark stairs, along the hall, and opened the front door. Vaguely visible in the light of a street lamp which stood at no great distance away, I saw a slender man of medium height confronting me. From the shadowed face two large and luminous eyes looked out into ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... evening; the events of the day had urged her to the course. But its execution depended upon his mood, and she anxiously awaited his manner towards her. She found that it had changed. He showed no further tendency to be angry; he showed something worse. Absolute indifference had taken the place of irritability; and his coldness was such that it encouraged her to departure, even more than hot temper ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... Molly had manifested a certain moodiness and irritability very unlike her usual facile sweetness of disposition, and Sara was somewhat nonplussed to account for it. Finally, she approached the matter by way of ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... there seemed to be no power to rally in the little worn-out frame of the child. His father, for a little while, spoke hopefully of a change of air, and the sea-side; but he could not long so cheat himself with false hopes. The restlessness and irritability, which they had said to one another were hopeful signs, passed away. His smiles were more languid and constrained, and he soon failed to recognise the anxious, loving friends who ministered ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... always quarreling equally needs the physician. In the first there is a lack of sufficient energy so to move as to meet and realize some of life's oppositions; in the other there is probably some underlying cause for nervous irritability. ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... her! ... God! how he had loved her! ... And yet, latterly, how he had got to take his supreme possession of her as a matter of course; had allowed the joy of it to be blunted by depression and irritability over sordid station worries. He remembered with piercing remorse how often he had neglected the trivial courtesies to which he knew she attached importance. How he had been prone to sullen fits of moodiness; ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... and listening to him more and more attentively as that conversation went on. Within the last moment or two Wardour had become instinctively conscious of this. He resented Crayford's conduct with needless irritability. ...
— The Frozen Deep • Wilkie Collins
... second flagon, but drank, or rather seemed to drink, very slowly, in order to gain time for considering how he should introduce his second subject of conversation, which seemed rather delicate for the smith's present state of irritability. At length, nothing better occurred to him than to plunge into the subject at once, with, "I have seen Simon Glover ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... Wagogo seemed to have contracted a bleak hue from the general bleakness around. The water of the pits obtained in the neighbourhood had an execrable flavor, and two donkeys sickened and died in less than an hour from its effects. Man suffered nausea and a general irritability of the system, and accordingly revenged himself by cursing the country and its imbecile ruler most heartily. The climax came, however, when Bombay reported, after an attempt to settle the Muhongo, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... irreparable piece of want of tact, and thence to war. For it is argued that, vanity being at the bottom of it all, and the Emperor finding he is unable to gain the premature immortality he thirsts for by peaceful prodigies, his restless nervous irritability may degenerate into recklessness, and then his megalomania may blind him to the dangers he and, above all, poor blood-soaken Germany may encounter on the war-path[501]." Kaiser William possesses more power of self-restraint than this passage indicates; for, though he has spread a warlike enthusiasm ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... charming face but for the strongly-arched eyebrows and low forehead that gave him a sinister expression, scarlet lips of savage cruelty, and a twitching of the muscles peculiar to Corsicans, denoting that excessive irritability which makes them so prompt to kill in ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... the Master of the House quite irrelevantly, "seem to have experienced a slight twinge of irritability—the past few minutes. Hunger, I've no doubt!... So suppose we all sit down together to this sumptuous—if somewhat chilled repast? After the soup certainly, even after very cold soup, all explanations I'm sure will be—cheerfully and satisfactorily exchanged. Miss—Flame ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... with the charm of manner he knew so well how to assume, "don't mind my irritability; I'm always like that when I'm painting and any one interrupts—it sends me crazy. The light's just right, and it won't be for long. I can't possibly paint with anybody round. Won't you, like a good fellow, get out and let ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... understood the reason for the fellow's morbid irritability, his suicidal recklessness; but when he privately remonstrated he was gruffly told to mind his own business. Branch flatly refused to modify his conduct; he seemed really bent upon cheating the disease that made his ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... up of new centres of activity in the psychic nature of man is frequently attended by temporary loss of control over the normal brain functions. Loss of memory, hysteria, absentmindedness, unconscious utterance of one's thoughts, illusions and hallucinations, irritability, indifference to one's surroundings, and similar perversions, are among the products of the newly-evolved ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial
... front of a hotel, a half-intoxicated man with a tale of woe, because of having been ordered out of the palatial sample room of the late liquor dealer, drew some attention to him and increased his feeling of disquiet and irritability. ...
— The Daughter of a Republican • Bernie Babcock
... he expressed his displeasure had pierced her very soul. She felt as if she were shivering with a sudden chill, and for a long time she could not recover the loving warmth with which she had previously treated him. True, he had soon done everything in his power to atone for the pain which his irritability had inflicted, but the incident had given her the perception that the poets whose songs she sung were right when they made sorrow go hand in hand with the joys ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... arrogance, by acting systematically upon it to that end; and, in a worldly point of view, he succeeded to perfection; with this drawback—which always accompanies false pretensions of the kind—that, knowing to what extent they were false, his mind was kept in a proportionate state of irritability and dissatisfaction; so that his success, after all, was only that of a man who prospers by parading an infirmity. With good intention as a judge in ordinary cases, he had sufficient patience neither to study nor to listen. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... who appeared from thence to have been a former acquaintance of the Countess, and to have enjoyed some share of her confidence. The threatening motion used by Fenella, he no longer considered as worthy of any notice, excepting as a new mark of the irritability ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... his nerves to a pitch of susceptibility that rendered his views of life different from those of a man in the enjoyment of healthy sensations. Perfectly gentle and forbearing in manner, he suffered a good deal of internal irritability, or rather excitement, and his fortitude to bear was almost always on the stretch; and thus, during a short life, he had gone through more experience of sensation than many whose existence is protracted. 'If I die to-morrow,' he said, on the eve of his unanticipated death, ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... 'He must be suffering from nervous irritability.' And aloud, 'I'm not thirsty, thank ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... mankind develop and mature more rapidly, and diseases run their courses more swiftly; while on the other hand these conditions are more favorable to the simpler forms of life, for the reason that in them the orgasm and irritability are entirely dependent on external influences, and all plants are in the same case, because heat, moisture, and light complete the ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... physical zeal ran an exaggerated nervous irritability very hard to bear. Beneath the lash of her aunt's cruel tongue Lucy often writhed, quivered, and sometimes wept; but she struggled to keep her hold on her patience. Ellen was old, she told herself, and the self-centered life she had led had embittered her. ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... of this national taste; but a dinner-party, with its due infusion of barristers, is the best possible exemplification of this give and take, which, even if it had no higher merit, is a powerful ally of good-humour, and the sworn foe to everything like over-irritability or morbid self-esteem. Indeed, I could not wish a very conceited man, of a somewhat grave temperament and distant demeanour, a much heavier punishment than a course of Irish dinner-parties; for even though he should come out scathless himself, ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... condition of its possessor the more unfavourable, generally, has been the effect of genius on his life. That this has not been the case with Clare may, perhaps, be imputed to the absolute depression of his fortune. When we hear the consciousness of possessing talent, and the natural irritability of the poetic temperament, pleaded in extenuation of the follies and vices of men in high life, let it be accounted no mean praise to such a man as Clare that with all the excitements of their sensibility to his station he has preserved a fair character amid dangers which ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... brought into a state either of nervous instability or irritability by ascetic practices, or of nervous insensibility by the persistent withdrawal of all outer disturbance; and the mind is fixed upon a single object,—the one God, the God eternal, absolute, indivisible. Recalling our former scheme for the conditions ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... appeared to the uninstructed mind of Thomas that when three men want to get to the bottom of a mountain, their business is to walk down it; and he put this view of the case, not only with emphasis, but even with some irritability. He was answered from the scientific eminence of the compass on which his companions were mounted, that there was a frightful chasm somewhere near the foot of Carrock, called The Black Arches, into which the travellers were sure to march in the mist, if they risked continuing the ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... motion, and the vote was what he had expected—two for and two against the motion. It was not carried. For a few minutes all sat in silence, the air tingling with suppressed irritability. A word would have condensed it into cruel speech. It was Billy who ...
— The Cheerful Smugglers • Ellis Parker Butler
... will you make? You ought to write verses, languish, nurse your own insignificant thoughts and sensations, amuse yourself with psychological fancies and subtleties of all sorts, but don't at any rate mistake your sickly, nervous irritability and caprices for the manly wrath, the honest anger, of a man of convictions! Oh Hamlet! Hamlet! Thou Prince of Denmark! How escape from the shadow of thy spirit? How cease to imitate thee in everything, even to revelling shamelessly ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... to be for ever following and leaning upon other people. To look at, sitting so withdrawn, her eyes watching something unseen of human gaze, she was perfect; even in intercourse she would have been more nearly so than ever before had it not been for the fits of irritability gave unwonted bitterness to her tongue. There were days when nothing would please her, when she showed all her common strain in the taunts she found to fling at Ishmael and the rest of her little world. Only Archelaus was immune, ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... and always on the verge of a complete breakdown of mind and body. In 1851 he had an effusion of water on the left knee, which stopped his outdoor exercise, on which he had always largely depended. All the irritability of the system then centered in the head, resulting in intense pain and in a restless and devouring activity of thought. He himself says: "The whirl, the confusion, and strange, undefined tortures attending this condition are only to be conceived by one who has felt them." ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... want of success, jealous of the success of others, his natural irritability of temper increased by habits of intemperance, he at length abandoned himself to the practice of reviewing, and became one of the Ishmaelites of the press. In this his malignant bitterness soon gave him a notoriety which his talents had never been ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... three days I have had very little real communion with God, and have therefore been very weak spiritually, and have several times felt irritability ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... Kiametia dozing in her chair at the theater, at dinners, in motors, but had put it down to over-fatigue from too much social gayety. Miss Kiametia's variable likes and dislikes, her sudden whims and fancies, her irritability—all were ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... America and the English possessions, holding that the negroes were an inferior race probably better off while producing something under white masters than if left free in their own ignorance and sloth. Though his obstinacy was a part of his national temperament, and his physical and mental irritability in part a result of his ill-health, any candid estimate of his life cannot altogether overlook them. On the whole, however, there is no greater ethical, moral, and spiritual force in English Literature than Carlyle, and ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... nervous and restless, although he was tired out and half-starved. The irritability of Africa was upon him—had hold over him—gripped him remorselessly. No one knows what it is, but it is there, and sometimes it is responsible for murder. It makes honourable European gentlemen commit crimes of which they blush to think in after days. ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... surface in the shape of small ulcers and boils. One of the most distressing features of the disease was a raging thirst, which could not be appeased by the most copious draughts of water; and the internal heat, which produced this effect, caused also a frightful irritability of the skin, so that the sufferer could not bear the touch of the lightest and most airy fabrics, but lay naked on his bed, in all the deformity of his dire affliction. Of those who recovered, many bore the marks of the sickness to their graves, by the loss of a hand, a foot, or ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... riding to those who knew the filly's irritability, uncertainty. Clean-cut veteran horsemanship, with horse and rider as one; a mechanically precise pace, heart-breaking for a following field. The major slowly climbed off the rail, mechanically eyeing his watch. He was unusually quiet, but there was ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... being a laxative, allays irritability of the stomach; it is consequently useful during dentition, at which period there is both much irritability and a prevailing acescency of the stomach. The dose is from five grains to ten for an infant, increasing the quantity to fifteen ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... when she heard, with her fine sense quickened by the irritability of sickness, a light footfall on the stair, with a cadence unlike that of any inmate ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... mood spurted up with a sudden irritability of jarred nerves again. "Then what are you for? That's what I should ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... they were still faithful, but the stress of exhaustion was beginning to sap their morale; to drive them into irritability so that, under the strain of almost superhuman exertion, they threatened to break. Brent was not of their blood and knew little of how to handle them, and though Parson Acup was indefatigable, his face became more and ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... captivating study for the young, it must be translated into controversial theology. And in what way could such a polemic interest be evoked except through political partisanship? But such partisanship connects itself naturally with the irritability of sectarianism, and but little with the majestic repose of a church such as the Romish or the Anglican, founded upon the broad basis of national majorities, and sheltered from danger, or the sense of danger, by state protection. Dissenters stand upon another footing. The Dissenter from the ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... happiness. It is positively amazing how you can turn every little incident into a sunbeam. And, mark you, it is quite as easy to take the other course. But what a coward a man is who releases in his home all the pent-up irritability and ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... bowel obstruction, in peritonitis, and in osteomyelitis, the real lesion is in the brain-cells. We may, therefore, reasonably conclude that the lassitude, the diminished mental power, the excitability, irritability, restlessness, delirium, and unconsciousness which may be associated with acute infections, are due to physical changes in ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... jeers so often levelled at my friend the poet, would now and then rouse him into rage; and at such times the haughty scorn he would hurl on his foes, was proof positive of his possession of that one attribute, irritability, almost universally ascribed to the votaries of ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... not on the sharp end. Some of these stupid, ignorant women fancied they were doing everything possible to make home pleasant, and wondered at their failure. There they sat, prodding their husbands with hat-pins, and grieved over the poor wretches' irritability. ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... passage to the room that had been assigned to him, and closing the door gave way to some irritability of temper in his efforts to light the lamp and adjust his writing materials. For his excuse to Mr. Nott was more truthful than most polite pretexts. He had, indeed, a letter to write, and one that, being yet young in duplicity, the ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... her! If this thing had happened in England, said they who scoff at our own laws, there wouldn't be any foolishness about the business: the woman would be buried in quick-lime before you could know what you were talking about. The law in this country is a joke, said they, with great irritability. Why can't we do the business up, sharp and quick, as they do in England? Get it over with, that's the ticket. What's the sense of dragging it out for a year? Send 'em to the chair or hang 'em while everybody's interested, not when the thing's half forgotten. ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... just now, in the course of which the MS. of Erewhon turned up, and I was struck with the great difference between it and the MS. of The Authoress of the Odyssey. I have also taken great pains, with what success I know not, to correct impatience, irritability and other like faults in my own character—and this not because I care two straws about my own character, but because I find the correction of such faults as I have been able to correct makes life ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... expectations, the bird was still alive when London was reached, though the cook, who from his connection with the cabin had suddenly reached a position of unusual importance, reported great loss of strength and irritability of temper. It was still alive, but failing fast on the day they were to put to sea again; and the fo'c'sle, in preparation for the worst, stowed their pet away in the paint-locker, ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... taken fresh forms. After the failure of his attempt to restore Bartja, (transformed as he fancied into a bow) to his original shape, his irritability increased so frightfully that a single word, or even a look, was sufficient to make him furious. Still his true friend and counsellor, Croesus, never left him, though the king had more than once given him over ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... quiet in Catalina's bedroom, where Paula and I were seated. My sister was now on the road to a partial recovery, having passed the danger-mark some days before. Another change also I noticed had come over her. Her impatience and irritability had gradually disappeared, day by day, and when she suffered more than ordinarily, she never seemed to complain. The expression of her face had sweetened also, and even a slight but quite natural smile ...
— Paula the Waldensian • Eva Lecomte
... it, and turned over the pages with a trembling hand. Dora flushed, and the tears rose into her eyes. She realised perfectly that this performance was levelled at her at least as much as at David. Daddy's mad irritability had grown of late ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of devotion and delight, the members of the Imperial family alone, who should have been the most satisfied, and certainly the most astonished by their greatness, wore an anxious, almost a grieved look. They alone appeared discontented with their master. Their pride knew no bounds; their irritability was extreme. Nothing seemed good enough, for them. In the way of honors privileges, and when we recall their father's modest at Ajaccio, it is hard to keep from smiling at the vanity of these new Princes ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... in these ambiguous circumstances, is everything that could be desired. My original feeling of irritability has passed away. I should have supposed it to be what Pallas calls "fatigue," a confusion or discord of the nerve-centres, which she tells me is incident to mortality. What Pallas can possibly know about it is more than I can guess, especially, as there were not infrequent ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... middle age. Civilization had restricted his potations or limited them to certain festivals known as "sprees," and his face was less puffy and sodden. But with the accession of sobriety he had lost his good humor, and had the irritability and ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... was deteriorating; I felt clearly how the unemployed and uninterested life which I led, nourished day after day new weeds in the waste field of my soul. Curiosity, a desire for gossip, an inclination to malice and scandal, and an increasing irritability of temper, began to get possession of a mind which nature had endowed with too great a desire for action for it blamelessly to vegetate through a passive life as so many can. Ah! if people live without ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... must be returned. R. Brown, I remember, says pollen-tubes separate from grains before the lower ends of tubes reach ovules. I saw, and was interested by, abstract of your Drosera paper (637/2. A short note on the irritability of Drosera in the "Trans. Bot. Soc. Edin." Volume VII.); we have been at ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... the evenest tempers, the most perfect patience and good nature—one of the things most impressive about them all was the absence of irritability. So far we had only this group to study, but afterward I ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... he has to endure. Educated white men have inherited an infinite capacity for feeling bored; and a hot climate, which fries us all over a slow fire, grills boredom into irritability. The study of oriental human nature requires endless patience; and this is the hardest virtue for a young, energetic white man, with the irritable brain of his race, to acquire. Without it ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... acquired slight stomach ailments that may be troublesome for some time, because in this case both the quality and the quantity were no doubt wrong. Constipation in the mother will also cause trouble. The child will develop colic and extreme irritability until the mother's condition ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... yet another function. It shows, in Macbeth's furious irritability and purposeless savagery, the internal reaction which accompanies the outward decline of his fortunes. And in other plays also the exhibition of such inner changes forms a means by which interest is sustained in this difficult section of a tragedy. There is no point in ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... cell to whose activities it is possible to trace the fundamental properties of all living things. Cells are endowed with the properties of irritability, contractibility, assimilation and reproduction, and it is thus plainly to the study of cells that we must look for an interpretation of life phenomena. If we can reach an intelligible understanding of the activities of the cell our problem is solved, for the activities of the fully formed animal ...
— The Story of the Living Machine • H. W. Conn
... her grandmother was really seriously unwell, and that her irritability she could not help. Mrs. Barnes did not know it herself. Mona only realised that she was almost always cross, that nothing pleased her, that she never ran and fetched and carried, as she used to do, while Mona sat by the fire and read. It was granny who sat by the fire now. She did not read, ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... irritability became suddenly violent, and the muscles of his face contracted as if from ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... up with prosperity and success. But the contrary often happens; afflictions and public calamities naturally embittering and souring the minds and tempers of men, and disposing them to such peevishness and irritability, that hardly any word or sentiment of common vigor can be addressed to them, but they will be apt to take offense. He that remonstrates with them on their errors, is presumed to be insulting over their misfortunes, and any free spoken expostulation ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the dean, in the delivery of this sentence, a satirical acrimony, which his irritability as an author could ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... and silent for days after that, and even his clients detected an irritability in his manner which they had never seen before. "There was nothing ailed him," he said to Ethelyn, when she asked what was the matter, and accused him of being positively cross. She was very gay; Camden society suited her; and as the season advanced, and ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... power of the sun this day in a cloudless sky was so great, that Mr. Rae and I were glad to take shelter in the water while the crews were engaged on the portages. The irritability of the human frame is either greater in these Northern latitudes, or the sun, notwithstanding its obliquity, acts more powerfully upon it than near the Equator; for I have never felt its direct rays so oppressive ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... dismay, Thurston's eyes asked of all around an explanation of this strange and painful phenomenon; but none could tell him, except the doctor, who pronounced it the natural effect of the excessive nervous irritability attending her disease, and urged Mr. Willcoxen to keep away from her ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... pressure on the brain, the simple expedient of withdrawing the fluid by lumbar puncture brings about normal mental life. As the fluid again collects, the mental life becomes cloudy, and the character alters (irritability, depressed mood, changed purpose, lowered will); another lumbar puncture and presto!—the individual is for a time made over more completely than conversion ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... the hollow menacing sound, which grew louder every moment, Rose, who had all the irritability of a sensitive temperament, clung to her father's arm, saying, in a terrified whisper, "It is like the sound of the sea the night before the ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... back, all his debts paid, to live at home and be a comfort, or some friend was to give Walter a great living, or Clara was to come out, and to be presented in the summer. At the same time the fretful irritability of nerve and temper continued, and any unusual excitement, the talking a little longer in her room, a letter, or a little disappointment, would keep her awake all night. One thing, however, seemed certain, that Lionel's presence had some of the same power over her as her husband's; she was too much ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... irritable, like a spirited horse touched by the spur; though his original good-nature from time to time shone through it all. When the line had been brought to a successful completion, a very marked change in him became visible. The irritability passed away, and when difficulties and vexations arose they were treated by him as matters of course, and with ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... conviction generated no sense of superiority in Margaret—interfered in no degree with the reverence she entertained for Hester, a reverence rather enhanced than impaired by the tender compassion, with which she regarded her mental conflicts and sufferings. Every movement of irritability in herself (and she was conscious of many) alarmed and humbled her, but, at the same time, enabled her better to make allowance for her sister; and every harsh word and unreasonable mood of Hester's, by restoring her to her self-command ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... a man who's afraid even when he's passing everywhere as an American syndicate a cowardly custard," rejoined Madame, who appeared to be suffering under that peculiar form of flushed irritability which is apt to follow on heavy thought, indulged in to excess in a recumbent position during the daytime. "There, that's settled. So now let us get to business. Kindly hand me your prophecy of ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... he should 'be content with a sprig of rosemary' thrown on him when the parson of the parish commits his 'dust to dust.' The end of his now suffering existence was near at hand. Irritability, one of the unpitied accompaniments of weakness, seemed to compete with the gathering clouds of mental darkness as the last hour drew on. At intervals there were flashes of a wit that appeared at that solemn moment hardly natural, and that must ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... Christie took leave, and scandalized the sable retainer by smiling all through the hall, and laughing audibly as the door closed. The contrast of the plaid boy and beruffled girl's irritability with their mother's languid affectation, and her own unfortunate efforts, was too much for her. In the middle of her merriment she paused suddenly, saying ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... peaceful and silent night: thus she awoke next day calmer and more resigned. Unfortunately, the sight of Lady Lochleven, who presented herself at breakfast-time, to fulfil her duties as taster, brought back her irritability. Perhaps, however, things would have gone on smoothly if Lady Lochleven, instead of remaining standing by the sideboard, had withdrawn after having tasted the various dishes of the courses; but this insisting on remaining throughout ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... other respects they do not differ essentially from the oval ones, and in one specimen I found every possible transition between the two states. In another specimen there were no long-headed glands. These marginal tentacles lose their irritability earlier than the others; and when a stimulus is applied to the centre of the leaf, they are excited into action after the others. When cut-off leaves are immersed in water, they alone ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... 113 Fahr. The water of this spring possesses marked anodyne properties, which render it very valuable whenever the weakened state of the constitution or its irritability requires to be moderately excited. Of all the Vichy waters it contains the least carbonic acid without being more difficult of digestion, and as, on the other hand, it is the most mineralised, it can in many cases profitably replace ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... indefinitely household tempests, much less to perpetuate them upon himself by lasting bonds. In all this Emma Hart showed herself fully equal to the task. Tenderly affectionate to him, except when carried away by the fits of irritability which both he and Greville had occasion to observe, she complied readily with all his wishes, and followed out with extraordinary assiduity his plans for her improvement in education and in accomplishments. The society ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... beautiful pie," cried Mr. King, a hearty enthusiasm succeeding his irritability, "that ever was baked. I wish you'd make ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... and that all difficulties could be appreciated by the first petty tradesmen who encountered an incidental grievance or by such summary remedies as were to be suggested off-hand by anonymous correspondents. The levity, the ignorance, the hasty and superficial irritability of these reformers, their enormous conceit and imperturbable self-complacency revolted him. English life he declared in the 'Edinburgh Review' is 'too active, English spheres of action too wide, English freedom too deeply rooted, to be endangered ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... Mercedes ceased weeping over the dogs, being too occupied with weeping over herself and with quarrelling with her husband and brother. To quarrel was the one thing they were never too weary to do. Their irritability arose out of their misery, increased with it, doubled upon it, outdistanced it. The wonderful patience of the trail which comes to men who toil hard and suffer sore, and remain sweet of speech and kindly, did not come to these two men and the woman. They had no inkling ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... and unobtrusive attention in her power; and she would have tried to sooth and tranquilize her still more, had not Marianne entreated her, with all the eagerness of the most nervous irritability, not to speak to her for the world. In such circumstances, it was better for both that they should not be long together; and the restless state of Marianne's mind not only prevented her from remaining in the room a moment after she was dressed, but requiring at once solitude and continual ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... tyrant. With the passing years she became more intensely fashionable, more bigoted, more fond of admiration, more difficult to please. She had refused so many offers, while she had coquetted so much, that young men began to avoid her. This greatly increased her natural irritability; made her jealous of the success of every rising belle, censorious, ill natured in remark, and generally disagreeable. When Hiram Meeker first saw Miss Arabella Thorne in her pew at St. Jude's, the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... of pleasure, quick excitability, and consequent irritability, are the marked ingredients in every strong character; its strength must be employed against itself to produce any high ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... fragments of sleep out of his system, and became filled with a restless irritability. There was only one instrument in the house which could create this infernal din—the orchestrion in the drawing-room, immediately above which, he recalled, his room ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse |
