"Jumpy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his glass. "The fact is," said he, "this war is a nerve-racking business. I never dreamed I was so jumpy until I came home. I hate being by myself. I've kept my poor devoted mother up till one o'clock in the morning. To-night she struck, small blame to her; but, after five minutes on my lones, I felt as if I should go off my head. So I routed out the car and came along. But of course ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... encounter desperate characters in the house; but as a fact, it was the supernatural element which decided me. I do not like the idea of the supernatural; my nerves, excellent in their way and in their own sphere, are inclined to get jumpy ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... start, I discovered something moving about in my hat— something soft and jumpy. I whipped it off, and a ruffled pigeon—no doubt a confederate—dropped out and ran on the counter, and went, I fancy, into a cardboard box ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... slowly. That buckskin you're on isn't so young as he has been, and my pony has to lug around two hundred pounds. We'll get back sooner by being moderate. Besides you don't wish to knock up old Buck. He is about the only one of these jumpy cow ponies that ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... very cheerful. No matter, indeed, how much we might play and whisper about gifts and tinsels and jolly-colored candles, Christmas never, I think, seemed really probable to any of us until that one jumpy moment, just at the end of the Thanksgiving dinner, when, heralded by a slam in the wood-shed, a hoppytyskip in the hall, the dining-room door flung widely open on Carol's eyes twinkling like a whole skyful ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... sight of it. "No, Jack, no! Don't be so jumpy! Of course she hasn't. As if she would! She hasn't said a thing. But I know how she feels, and I should feel exactly the same in her place. Now do be sensible! You must see my point. I'm getting on, you know, Jack. I'm twenty-five. Just ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... yollow light did rest Upon the bank toward the west, An' twitt'ren birds did hop in drough The hedge, an' many a skippen shoe Did beaet the flowers, wet wi' dew, As underneaeth the tree's wide limb Our merry sheaepes did jumpy, dim, They ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... in good control, but he had a jumpy feeling when he realized that he was actually in charge. Once, and only once, he got a little panicky, and, turning to the officer ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... and for fear of inadvertently stopping with twice, it is best always to do everything three times and be safe." That is the report of a naturally timorous young man. We all know the somewhat similar experience of being "nervous" or "jumpy" after escaping from some danger; the organic fear state, once aroused, stays awhile, and predisposes us to make avoiding reactions. In the same way, let a man be "all riled up" by something that has happened at the office, and he is likely to take it out on his ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... had been leaning over farther and farther, did a Brodie out of his chair and lit on his eye. We dug him out of the sand and put him back where he belonged, and he immediately departed into another dreamless but jumpy slumber. At this juncture somebody sold Dick six tickets at a dollar per for a ball that had been given over a month ago by the Varnish Makers' Union, K. of L., No. 229. Upon learning that he had been ...
— Billy Baxter's Letters • William J. Kountz, Jr.
... means, and give them tea and barley-water, but don't do it as if you were administering a bowl of deadly nightshade. It upsets them. Then when you nurse sick people, and find them not as well as could be expected, why go into hysterics? MAR. Why not? DES. Because it's too jumpy for a sick-room. MAR. How strange! Oh, Master! Master!—how shall I express the all-absorbing gratitude that—(about to throw herself at his feet). DES. Now! (Warningly). MAR. Yes, I know, dear—it shan't occur ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... mending to do, and what was left of the ironing to get through and Whinnie's work-pants to veneer with a generous new patch, and thirteen missing buttons to restore to the kiddies' different garments. My back ached, my finger-bones were tired, and there was a jumpy little nerve in my left temple going for all the world like a telegraph-key. And then I ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... the Prince of WAILES!" After which he subsides, occasionally breaking the silence to sigh aloud, "O Maman!" and thenceforth, for the greater part of the journey to Paris, he slumbers in a more or less jumpy manner. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... readers would not have stood this in instalments: you had to provide some bite or promise of bite in each—if possible—indeed to leave each off at an interesting point. But this itself rather tended to a jumpy and ill-composed whole—to that mechanical shift from one part of the plot to another which is so evident, for instance, in Trollope: and there was worse temptation behind. If a man had the opportunity, the means, ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... would have had to toil a week. Yet there was to be said in favour of the Simsbury position that it steadily endured. Each week brought its fifteen dollars, pittance though it might be, while the art of the silver screen was capricious in its rewards, not to say jumpy. Never, for weeks at a stretch, had Gashwiler said with a tired smile, "Nothing to-day—sorry!" He might have been a grouch and given to unreasonable nagging, but with him there was always a very definite something to-day which he would specify, in short words if the occasion ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... and spent the interval in smoking a cigarette. As he lit it the thought came to him that perhaps it was the last cigarette he would ever smoke. He tried to dismiss the thought, but it persisted uncomfortably. He argued with himself and told himself that he mustn't get jumpy, that the surest way to get shot was to be nervous about being shot, that the job was bad enough but was only made worse by worrying about it. As a relief and distraction to his own thoughts, he listened to catch the ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... heartless, senseless, semi-delirious life of the bar, and every possible temptation is put in their way to draw them from home, from refinement, from high thoughts, from chaste and temperate modes of life. Horrible it is to hear fine lads talking familiarly about the "jumpy" sensations which they feel in the morning. The "jumps" are those involuntary twitchings which sometimes precede and sometimes accompany delirium tremens; the frightful twitching of the limbs is accompanied ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... antics and looked over my way. He gave one glance at me, and then started to run inshore with short, jumpy little steps. Something seemed to have struck him all of a sudden, and I was just beginning to wonder what the deuce it could be when, out of the corner of my eyes, I caught sight of a pile of neatly folded clothes thrust into the cleft of the rock a little ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... It was a jumpy thing to enter that darkened room, with the feeling you couldn't shake off that Old Dibs was peering in at us, and that every minute we'd hear his footstep, everything laid out just as he had last touched them, and almost warm, ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... though your letters have been rather jumpy. My dear girl, when you pounce on me like that you frighten me out of my wits. You really mustn't, ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... doing it. We had been talking, and the sight of that building, so unexpected, startled us into silence. It would any one. Believe me, your imperturbable man with perfect, cool, self-possession does not exist. Man's a jumpy thing, given to nerves. You may deny it and talk about the unexcitability of the American citizen and all that bunk, but let me tell you that your journalists and moving picture producers and preachers and politicians have caught on to the fact ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... one another, and then bang—right under our feet. More bangs, and creaks and groans; for that ice was moving and splitting like glass. The cracks went off all round us, and some of them ran along for hundreds of yards. Afterwards we got used to it, but at first the effect was very jumpy. From first to last during this journey we had plenty of variety and none of that monotony which is inevitable in sledging over long distances of Barrier in summer. Only the long shivering fits following close ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... 'em backwards or forwards, whichever way you like—but I give you my word, after you've passed the first, and take the second turn, you'll find yourself in the third valley—or take it the other way, you'll be in the first. It's made me jumpy before now, looking for it. However, that hasn't anything to do with the ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... Dudley and Macartney were in the living room, talking. Any other time I might have wondered why Dudley looked so jumpy and bad-tempered, but all I was thinking of then was my ugly news. But before I could tell it, Dudley flew at me. "Where the devil have you been all day? And what's happened ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... told you I would not have an American," said the Duke, reproachfully. "Think how jumpy they are, and I can't explain to her that I simply want her to stay at home and have lots of children and do ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... household) lingered a little, talking slightly and pleasantly. She left on my mind the impression of a certain odd mixture of shyness and sharpness; as if she knew the world well, but was still a little harmlessly afraid of it. Perhaps the possession of so jumpy and incalculable a husband had left her a little nervous. Anyhow, when she had retired to the inner chamber once more, that extraordinary man poured forth his apologia and autobiography over the ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... like the girls back there, they're kind of nervous and jumpy," thought Nelson. "Well, I don't blame them. ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... him to, Mr. Lester," he said. "I got so lonesome and jumpy here by myself that I just had to have somebody to talk to. Especially, after the ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... obviously lawyer, avocat type, little bald on top, sneaky civility, smells of bad perfume or, at any rate, sweetish soap; tiny red-headed person, also civilian, creased worrying excited face, amusing little body and hands, brief and jumpy, must be a Dickens character, ought to spend his time sailing kites of his own construction over other people's houses in gusty weather. Behind the Three, all tied up with deference and inferiority, ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings |
