"Nerve" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the observed disturbances of speech of both kinds. In the first class, which comprises the impressive processes, we have to consider every functional disturbance of the peripheral ear, of the auditory nerve and of the central ends of the auditory nerve; in the second class, viz., the expressive processes, we consider every functional disturbance of the apparatus required for articulation, including the nerves belonging to this in their whole extent, ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... to follow, his meditations all gone, and gone his resolutions. A trembling seized him, and every nerve of him tingled. He could feel his heart as if it ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... I assure you, my dear Mac, the knowledge that I was a ghoul, or a vampire, would cause me less nausea than the reflection that I am one and the same with that odious little Whitechapel bounder. When I think of him every nerve in ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... Straightway put thy throat to him and drink the steaming blood, and devour with ravenous jaws the banquet of his body. Then renewed strength will come to thy limbs, then shall undreamed-of might enter thy sinews, and an accumulation of stout force shall bespread and nerve thy frame through-out. I myself will pave the path to thy prayers, and will subdue the henchmen in sleep, and keep them snoring ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... on the first day owing to rain. On the second day Somerset scored 157. Rain fell again and Kent were unable to commence their innings till the afternoon of the third day. Obviously they had to strain every nerve to accomplish two things: (1) to avoid getting out and (2) to avoid scoring more than 157. At all hazards they must neither win nor lose on the first innings. They could not win the match. There was no time. And either a win ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 24, 1914 • Various
... the moment quite overcome, and unable to comply with the proposal of taking an immediate flight from the enemy's country. She soon, however, regains her sober senses, and is able to grasp the reality of the situation, and fully prepared with mental nerve and courage to face the scenes of hardship and fatigue which lay before them. The thought of flight was, indeed, a hazardous one. The journey to the sea board was far and dangerous; roads were miserably constructed, and these, for the most part, had to be avoided; unbroken forests, ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... lifted his head and shook it; he was plainly on the verge of tears; as for Cardlestone, it was evident that his nerve was completely gone. And Breton pointed Spargo to an ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... exertion was made by Mr. Hobhouse and his friends, aided by the powerful influence, and still more powerful purse, of Sir Francis. The Westminster Committee now found it necessary to exert their utmost, and to strain every nerve. Canvassing committees were formed in every parish, and meetings were called, at which Mr. Hobhouse attended in person, to solicit the favour of the electors. The reports of these meetings I watched very narrowly, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... interest herself in Lincoln, it was solely for the work of the latter, so much the more as for a year he had perceived not a decline but a disturbance in the painting of that artist, too voluntary not to be unequal. Then Florent had seen, on the other hand, the nerve of Maitland reawakened in the warmth of that ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... your nerve about you, I'll say that," McKenna commented. "You sit there and talk about it like it was something that was going to happen to Joe Doakes and Oscar Zilch." He looked at Rand intently. "You want us to ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... life Guy Livingstone had done and dared more than most men, but he never ventured on any thing so thoroughly brave, and valiant, and strong-hearted as when he left me, without another word, on that errand. For myself, though weak both in body and nerve, I swear I would rather have gone up the breach at Badajoz with the forlorn hope, than up that bank with the certainty before me of ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... Jesus! Lord, keep it ever Sealed on the heart, and engraved on the life; Pulse of all gladness, and nerve of endeavor, Secret of rest and ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... square. Here they would sing a hymn which always attracted a crowd. Next, any one who wanted a tooth pulled was invited to come forward. Many accepted the invitation gladly and sometimes a long line of twenty or thirty would be waiting, each his turn. The Chinese had considerable nerve, the Canadian discovered, and stood the pain bravely. They literally "stood" it, too, for there was no dentist's chair and every man stood up for his operation, very much pleased and very grateful ...
— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith
... gave one lightning glance, and surveyed the whole situation. He did not move, but his form was rigid, and every nerve was braced, and his eyes gleamed fiercely. He saw it all—the crowd of women, the calm face of Minnie, and the uncontrollable agitation ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... of the verandah that had been turned into an extra ward by screening it off with native reed-fencing was Gilfillan, the most perfect patient. Propping his foot against the wall to correct the foot-drop that division of the nerve of his leg had caused, he had passed many sleepless nights in his long and ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... companions and marshal music; with the excitement of the battle, the camp, the ever-shifting scenes of war, sustained by the hope of victory; the promise of reward; the ambition for distinction; the fire of patriotism kindling every thought, and stimulating every nerve and muscle to action! How much easier is all this, than to wait and watch alone with nothing ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... accomplished this, and he is simply incomparable in his compromise between what is severe and classical, and what is suave and delightful, or passionately exciting. In these works the musician finds nerve, sparkle, elan, and brightness combined with technical charm and richness of thought. Spohr's unconscious and spontaneous force in this direction was the direct outcome of his remarkable power as a solo player, or, more properly, ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... It took a little nerve to shut him off; Van Emmon was the one who did it. Somehow they all felt immensely relieved when the gigantic voice was silenced; and at once began discussing the thing with great earnestness. Jackson was for assuming that the first record was worn ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... our disciples. I do not think that church or chapel would have done them much good. Preachers are like unskilled doctors with the same pill and draught for every complaint. They do not know where the fatal spot lies on lung or heart or nerve which robs us of life. If any of these persons just described had gone to church or chapel they would have heard discourses on the usual set topics, none of which would have concerned them. Their trouble was not the forgiveness ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... intermixture of effects is also found in organic processes (which, indeed, are partly chemical): as when a man eats bread and milk, and by digestion and assimilation converts them into nerve, muscle and bone. Such phenomena may make us wonder that people should ever have believed that 'effects resemble their causes,' or that 'like produces like.' A dim recognition of the equivalence of cause and effect in respect ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... Constantine,'—which Mr. Newman says had not spread. On the contrary; he assumes that the Christians were 'a small fraction,' and thus does dismiss in two sentences, I might have said three words, what Gibbon had strained every nerve in his ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... in this matter, the former has the advantage. The East, rather than allow the present tendency of the commercial current to set well in toward the Gulf, and wear a channel for itself, should strain every nerve to keep it steadily moving toward its own maritime cities. The great cities of the Atlantic seaboard can better afford to construct a water-line over the mountains at their own cost than to run the risk of the Mississippi River becoming the commercial avenue for its vast valley and drainage, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... resolute and persevering ambition; and this ambition was the governing faculty of his soul. His energies were undistracted by small objects; for he went little into general society, and he especially sought in his studies those pursuits which nerve and brace the mind. He was a profound thinker, a deep political economist, an accurate financier, a judge of the intricacies of morals and legislation—for to his mere book studies he added an instinctive penetration into men; and when from time to time ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Mess. He radiated good fellowship and even bandied witticisms with the junior subaltern in an admirable spirit of give-and-take. He had enjoyed excellent sport. Later, in the ante-room, he delivered a useful little homily on the surmounting of obstacles, on patience, on presence of mind and on nerve, copiously illustrated from a day's triumph that will resound on the Murman coast as the unconditional surrender of the intimidated roach. He described how he had cunningly outmanoeuvred the patrols, defeated the vigilance of the pickets, pierced the line of resistance, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various
... nurses and nursemaids. That this arrangement is advantageous on the whole cannot be doubted. In America and on the Continent, where the children often mingle all day in the general life of the household, and occupy the ordinary living rooms, experience shows that nerve strain and its attendant evils are more common than with us. Nevertheless, the arrangement of a separate nursery has its disadvantages. Nurses are sometimes not sufficiently educated to have much appreciation of the mental processes of ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... made Finn's intelligence upon the whole superior to Matey's in this matter, and, having already satisfied himself by means of hurried investigation that at present he could not escape from the walled-in yard, the Wolfhound stood half a dozen paces distant from the man, waiting, with every nerve and muscle at concert pitch. The man moved forward, with hand outstretched invitingly. The Wolfhound moved backward, with hackles slightly raised. Thus they followed each other round the little yard perhaps six times, the ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... of the pursuit had taken me far from my starting-point, and with the reaction that set in when I was alone in the wood, with all its memories and its ghastly memorials of the carnage, I found it required all my strength of nerve to push me on. I had to plough through open spaces, two feet and more deep in snow, through undergrowth, not knowing at what moment I might stumble across some unseen thing. Above all, I had but the barest recollection ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... did mean the offer as an insult, Merriwell; and I presume I was too hasty. I am rather quick at times, and, as Dare says, I was beaten at my own game, which made me hot. You had nerve, Merriwell; take the ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... thorough spring-cleaning with feather dusters. Before imperturbable and mighty chamberlains, up to his ankles in crimson carpet and generally struck with the magnificence of his surroundings, Mac for a moment lost his nerve, but speedily recovering himself, informed a tarbooshed individual that it was a fine day. Unfortunately this conversation did not prove fruitful, for, besides the fact that the subject of the weather in Egypt is a quickly exhausted topic, the gentleman to whom the remark ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... down again, every nerve in her trembling, but forcing herself to go steadily and methodically to work. She made a cup of strong coffee, cooked a nice bit of beefsteak she had in the house, rejoicing that she had it; and while the ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... to the ideas of Jesus came especially from orthodox Judaism, represented by the Pharisees. Jesus became more and more alienated from the ancient Law. Now, the Pharisees were the true Jews; the nerve and sinew of Judaism. Although this party had its centre at Jerusalem, it had adherents either established in Galilee, or who often came there.[1] They were, in general, men of a narrow mind, caring much for externals; their devoutness was haughty, formal, and self-satisfied.[2] ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... her own little room with the door locked, Innocent opened the sealed packet. She found within it a letter and some bank-notes. With a sensitive pain which thrilled every nerve in her body she unfolded the letter, written in Hugo Jocelyn's firm clear writing—a writing she knew so well, and which bore no trace of weakness or failing in the hand that guided the pen. How strange it was, she thought, that the written words should look so living and distinct when ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... of the vertebra becomes completely filled up. In the thoracic region of Crustacea it is not the whole segment with part of the carapace which corresponds to a vertebra, but merely the part round the ventral nerve-cord (endophragmal skeleton). ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... therefore, he strained every nerve to draw away from his enemies, while they strove, with equal desperation, to ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... from the north by Hongi, the wretched people of the Thames were between the hammer and the anvil. When at last their persecutors—the Ngapuhi and Te Waharoa—met over their bodies, Te Waharoa's astuteness and nerve were a match for the invaders from the north. In vain the Ngapuhi besiegers tried to lure him out from behind the massive palisades of Mata-mata, where, well-provisioned, he lay sheltered from their bullets. When he did make a sally it was to catch half a dozen stragglers, whom, in mortal defiance, ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... speeches, bid defiance to Austria, Russia, and Germany. Great was his disappointment when he learned that, in order to acquire citizenship, he would be obliged to go to the United States and remain there five years. As he was trying to nerve himself for this sacrifice, I presented some serious considerations to him. Knowing him to be a man of honor, I asked him how he could reconcile it with his sense of veracity to assume the rights of American citizenship ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... after having been left an orphan. She was not bright, but he persevered in drilling her into memorising a child's catechism, and it was a most amusing picture to see her standing before him with fixed attention, as if she were straining every nerve, and reciting her answers with the drop of a curtsey at each word. She had not been taught to do this, but it was such an effort for her to learn that ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... now as the fascinated toad watches the snake that is about to devour it. He saw the graceful limbs and symmetrical body motionless as a marble statue as the creature crouched in the concealment of the leafy foliage. Not a muscle, not a nerve moved. He saw the deer coming slowly along the trail, down wind and unsuspecting. He saw a buck pass—an old buck—and then a young and plump one came opposite the giant in ambush, and Schneider's eyes went wide and a scream of terror almost broke from his lips as he saw the agile beast at his ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... are! Just plain scoundrels! When I accuse them of swindling me and others in that Landmark Building deal they have the nerve to ask me to invest money in some secret dye formulae they claim will revolutionize the industry! Bah! They're scoundrels, that's what they are—Field and Melling are scoundrels, and I'm going ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... beyond. There were but few people around; it was hardly possible that he thought his movements had not been perceived by the man he was following. "As a sleuth you're an amateur," thought Evan. "You don't care whether I'm on to you or not. But I must say you have your nerve with you. ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... of the Nerves, though the object be absent, the Soul has presently the same {310} sensations, as it would have, if it were present. As, if one should knock on's head forcibly against a wall, the shaking, which the blow gives to the Brain, moving the interior extremities of the Nerve, which causes the sensation of Light, the Soul has the same sensation, which it would have, if it saw a thousand Candles: On the contrary, if the interior extremities of the nerves are not shaken, though the object be present, it causes no sensation; whence it ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... that!" Louis remarked sarcastically. "I like your nerve. You do it on the sly. You don't say a word to me; and not content with that, you give him all of it. Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you ask me for ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... [Degree of power.] Strength.— N. strength; power &c. 157; energy &c. 171; vigor, force; main force, physical force, brute force; spring, elasticity, tone, tension, tonicity. stoutness &c. adj.; lustihood[obs3], stamina, nerve, muscle, sinew, thews and sinews, physique; pith, pithiness; virtility, vitality. athletics, athleticism[obs3]; gymnastics, feats of strength. adamant, steel, iron, oak, heart of oak; iron grip; grit, bone. athlete, gymnast, acrobat; superman, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... logging season he would annex Joyce Birkdale to his few belongings—the cabin, his dog and gun. The idea had not roused him much, but it had been a pleasurable conclusion to arrive at; and now? Every nerve was aching and the boy's heart was thumping heavily. Again he dropped his head, and he cursed everything his thought touched upon—even the girl he meant, in some way, still ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... colonial. He had repeatedly visited England, and had been called to our bar. He takes a keen interest in mineralogical science, and in the course of his career has exhibited on more than one occasion great personal bravery and indomitable nerve. That such a man, so highly connected, so carefully trained, with the intellect of a lawyer and the experience of a statesman, should be in our midst claiming to be endowed with the gift of healing spoken of in the New Testament as vouchsafed to the Christians of apostolic times, is a portent indeed, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various
... illustrations of the narrow scope of this Method of Accidents, though genuine within that scope, and how, in all cases, by the Synthetic Method we can find in the facts to be remembered the means of their recollection. One case more: In regard to memorising the statement that "the Posterior Nerve of the Spinal Column is Sensory, and the Anterior Nerve is Motor," using this Method of Accidents, "You observe that Posterior and Sensory go together, and that Anterior and Motor go together. The initial letters of Posterior and Sensory are P and S, and the ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... screw up his nerve, His fingers he'd snap and he'd dance— And LORD LARDY would smile and observe, "How strange ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... of epilepsy also in animals born of parents having been rendered epileptic by the section of the sciatic nerve. ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... the voice of the cataract not only roared night and day through every chamber of the house, but the whole building vibrated incessantly with the shock of the mighty fall. I have still health and nerve and spirits to cope with the grand exhibitions of the powers of Nature: the majesty and beauty of the external world always acts as a tonic on me, and under its influence I feel as if a strong arm was put round me, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... temper and character of the officers at the commencement of the voyage. When this is the case, the first night after leaving port will decide the question whether the officers or the men will have command of the ship. If the officers are not firm and peremptory; if they are deficient in nerve, and fail to rebuke, in a prompt and decided manner, aught bordering on insolence or insubordination in the outset, farewell to discipline, to good order and harmony, for the ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... to frequent potations, were quickly maddened by the spirit, which mounted to their brains and rushed through their veins like wildfire, causing every nerve in their strong frames to tingle. Their characteristic gravity and decorum vanished. They laughed, they danced, they sang, they yelled like a troop of incarnate fiends! Then they rushed in a body towards their prisoners, and began a species of war-dance round them, flourishing their ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... position. If help was to come to the boy above him, that help must come from where he stood; and, with the recollection of his own peril when he was being hauled up by the rope, forcing itself upon him, he began to act with a feeling of desperation which was ready to rob him of such nerve as he possessed. ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... affects one eye, and spreads a little way on that side of the nose, and may sometimes be relieved by pressing or cutting the nerve, where it passes into the bone of the orbit above the eye. When it affects a small defined part on the parietal bone on one side, it is generally termed Clavus hystericus, and is always I believe owing to a diseased dens molaris. The tendons of the muscles, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... that Ed couldn't get John Gilly to come around and call after you. Ed says he'd never get him to steam up his nerve enough to call at a girl's house after her; but ain't it enough he's coming to Gert's to-night just to meet you? You ought to heard him when Ed got to telling him what kind of a girl you was. 'Gee!' Ed says he says. 'Big blue eyes like saucers sounds good to me! Well,' he says, Ed says ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... nerve to tell that to a man dying of starvation?" demanded Sergeant Noll with heat. "Kelly, it takes me four seconds to get my overcoat off, and only two seconds to get off ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... Nervous Control of the Heart. The regular, rhythmic movement of the heart is maintained by the action of certain nerves. In various places in the substance of the heart are masses of nerve matter, called ganglia. From these ganglia there proceed, at regular intervals, discharges of nerve energy, some of which excite movement, while others seem to restrain it. The heart would quickly become exhausted if the exciting ganglia had it all their own way, while it would stand ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... related to him, and whom, besides, he had not seen for such a long period of time. To every such emotion, however, he was absolutely insensible; there was no beating pulse, no heaving of the bosom, not a nerve disturbed by the tremulous vibrations of awakened affection, no tumult of the heart, no starting tear—no! there was nothing of all this—but, on the contrary, a calm, cold, imperturbable spirit, so dead and ignorant of domestic ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... are," exclaimed the baronet; "and the next thing, I suppose, is to land and commence our climb without loss of time. What a wild-looking spot it is, to be sure; if I were to stand looking at it long I believe I should lose my nerve ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... all right, and don't you worry about that," said Sandlot. "I've got plenty of nerve so I don't have to brace it up with booze, and you ain't. That's what's the matter with you. You saw that feller as well as I did. Didn't you ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... at him stupidly, as if his nerve had failed, or he thought the order too risky to obey. There was only one thing to be done, and since it must be done at once, Dick must undertake it himself. The engine was now running down the line after the truck, which had not gathered much speed yet, and he climbed ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... How these things nerve us to increased efforts to save the children and youth from these ways of death. Our hope for the land is in saving them, and our work is largely for them. We have many Sunday-schools connected with our churches and many others where we furnish some helps and where ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 1, January, 1889 • Various
... stript of their upper garments to their shirts, the open purple heath about them, the jewelled sky above, this first fresh scent of day was in their lungs and nostrils. That which stirred John Oxon to fury and at the same time shook his nerve, though he owned it not to himself, and would have died rather, was the singular composure of the man who was his opponent. Every feature, every muscle, every fibre of him seemed embodied stillness, and 'twas not that the mere ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... cousin, then at her aunt, then back at her cousin. Mrs. Murray involuntarily laid her hand on her son's knee, and watched his face with an expression of breathless anxiety; and Edna saw that, though his lips blanched, not a muscle moved, not a nerve twitched; and only the deadly hate, that appeared to leap into his large shadowy eyes, told that the name stirred some ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... about one; for anyone who loses his temper has but a poor chance indeed against another who keeps cool. Moreover a man who can box well will always keep his head in all times of danger and difficulty. It gives him nerve and self-confidence, and enables him at all times to protect the weak against ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... Blackadon Down at this hour of night! My word, sirs, and saving your reverence, but you had a nerve, if you'd ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... spectacle through every sense, What sudden ecstasy of joy is flowing! I feel new rapture, hallow'd and intense, Through every nerve and vein with ardour glowing. Was it a god who character'd this scroll, The tumult in my spirit healing, O'er my sad heart with rapture stealing, And by a mystic impulse, to my soul, The powers of nature all around revealing. Am I a God? What light intense! In these ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... was conscious in the purple of the mountain, the colour of the trees, and all that magic of light and shade which filled the valley—a pleasure involuntary, physical, automatic, depending on certain delicacies of nerve and brain—rose and persisted, while yet his mind was full ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... generally apt to produce skin diseases. They contain, in almost every instance, substances which are either directly or indirectly poisonous to the skin. The "tooth washes," "powders," and "dentifrices," are hurtful. They crack or wear away the enamel of the teeth, leave the nerve exposed, and cause the teeth to decay. If you are wise, dear reader, you will never use a dentifrice, unless you know what it is made of. The principal constituent of these dentifrices is a powerful acid, and there are some ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... proud eagle soaring to the skies, Intent "the topmost arch" of heaven to scale, When heeding naught that would oppose its rise, It breaks with fearless nerve the tempest-gale— And spreads its wings like a majestic sail, Full on the bosom of the raging blast, Thy spirit soar'd—but ah! too like us frail, When the same breeze which bore it from the dust Wing'd home the fatal shaft that ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various
... of capital punishment without having the nerve to see it inflicted, I suppose," Ideala commented, "and be convinced that it would be good for the human race to have a certain number of their children drowned, like kittens, every year, and yet not be able to see a single one disposed of in ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... the nation's nerve whenas swift crises come? What of the brawn that should heave the guns on the beck of ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... not very large,—there are less than eighty pieces, but it is so handled and drilled, that when we hear it give one of the symphonies of Beethoven or Mendelssohn, there is little left to be desired. Bulow is a wonderful conductor, a little man, all nerve and fire, and he seems to inspire every instrument. It is worth something to see him lead an orchestra: his baton is magical; head, arms, and the whole body are in motion; he knows every note of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... nothing to alarm you in all this. I want you to think of it quite differently. I want to make it nerve you, and ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... old Whist will do once she finds herself away from the lee of the breakwater t'night, Bud, but we'll go, and if they're there and we stay afloat, we'll get 'em. And Bo, I could play this hand all night, but two round blue moons to see what you got. Hah? King full, eh? The nerve of you! What did y' think I was only taking one card f'r? There, feast your eyes on that fat black collection, will yuh? In a row? Sure in a row. Look at 'em—a three-toed black regiment of 'em. And these other little round red, white, and blue boys, ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... steady nerve and a thoroughly convincing roar. They have fought their kind and the elements for centuries and centuries, and know no fear. This, then, was the animal we sought in order to secure food for our dog teams. I can conceive of no form of big game hunting so conducive to great mental ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... air, which braces every nerve, and invigorates every limb, causing all the senses to awake and share, as it were, this daily waking up of Nature, fresh as a rose? For what rosiness, in the brightest summer days, can compare with that kiss of the winter's sun on the tree-tops, slowly creeping down their ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... cruise to write about, for nothing really occurred. We were only on the watch for some untoward happening; that made it nerve wracking. But even when we sighted the spur of land which we knew marked the southern boundary of the de la Plata—the widest mouth of any river on the globe, for it is not masked by islands at all—we were not out of danger. The peril of gales still ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... strange guide going on at random, or did he know—something? A suspicion leaped to St. George's mind that made his heart beat. The king—might he be down here after all, and might this weird old man know where? His own consciousness became chiefly conjecture, and every nerve was alert in the pursuit; not the less because he realized that if he were to lose this strange conductor who went on before, either in secure knowledge or in utter madness, he himself might wander for the rest of his life ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... bed about three weeks. The doctor, who was also a personal friend, was shrewd enough to suspect that the brandy was the effect, rather than the cause of the nerve trouble. ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... her legs touched the ground. She was three feet high, and nearly five in length; her elastic and fleshy spine, the sinews of her thighs as well developed as those of a race-horse, her deep chest, her enormous jutting shoulders, the nerve and muscle in her short, thick paws—all announced that this terrible animal united vigor with suppleness, and ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... flashed away again just as he spied his treasure on the brink of the dashing water. He sprang to save it, intent upon naught else; but in that instant there came a roar such as he had not heard before—a sound so compelling, so nerve-shattering, that even he was arrested, entrapped as it were by a horror of crashing elements that made him wonder if all the fiends in hell were fighting for his soul. And, as he paused, the swirl of a great wave caught him in the darkness like the blow of a concrete thing, ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... thirty-two years, strong and vigorous, with no lack of nerve-energy, calls to have his teeth attended to, with the disease in the first stage throughout the mouth. Upon examination, he observes upon the gum of one of the lower cuspids a dark purplish ring encircling the neck, from one-sixty-fourth ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... turned with a broad stare on Lady Isabel; but there was something about her which caused them to drop their glasses and their ill manners together. After an interval, there appeared another, a tall, handsome, gentlemanly man. Her eyes fell upon him; and—what was it that caused every nerve in her frame to vibrate, every pulse to quicken? Whose form was it that was thus advancing and changing the monotony of her mind into tumult? It was that of one whom she was soon to find had never ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... blockade, until further reinforcements could reach him. Such was the respect with which he had inspired the Spaniards, that no attempt was made to break the blockade; and in the meantime Tromp had sent urgent messages to Holland asking the Prince of Orange and the admiralties to strain every nerve to give him as many additional ships as possible. The request met with a ready and enthusiastic response. In all the dockyards work went on with relays of men night and day. In less than a month Tromp ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... leave the place. As she did so, she felt a touch on her hand—the hand she laid for a moment on the gate—as she stood giving a last sad look at the mound of earth she was leaving, a touch light and soft as a breath, but which thrilled her through every nerve. ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... coronations of the kings of France. The adoption of these titles was, indeed, perfectly consonant with the taste and feeling of those ages, in which the gests of chivalry were the favourite theme of oral and historical celebration; and when the names of Durlindana, of Curtein, or Escalibere, would nerve the warrior's arm with ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... features marked with inconceivable truth and precision, but that preserve the same unaltered air and attitude. Shakspeare's are historical figures, equally true and correct, but put into action, where every nerve and muscle is displayed in the struggle with others, with all the effect of collision and contrast, with every variety of light and shade. Chaucer's characters are narrative, Shakspeare's dramatic, Milton's epic. ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... the nerve or living muscle of a frog is suddenly dropped upon another living muscle so as to come in contact with its longitudinal and transverse sections, the first muscle will contract on account of the stimulation of its nerve ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... heart were a hundred things; among them fear, that miserable depression which comes with the first defeats of life, the falling of the mercury from passionate activity to that frozen numbness which betrays the exhausted nerve and despairing mind. The horse could not go fast enough; the panic of flight was on him. He was conscious of it, despised himself for it; but he could not help it. Yet, if he were overtaken, he would fight; yes, fight to the end, whatever ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... measure it. Further to illustrate this position: we do not see with our outward eye any more than we do with spectacles. The apparent ocular apparatus is but the passive, unconscious instrument to transmit images thrown through it upon a fine interior fibre, the optic nerve; and even this does not take cognizance of the object, but is only another conductor, carrying the image still farther inward, to the intellectual nerves of the brain; and not until it reaches them do we see the object, not until then is its individuality ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... I'm sorry for poor old Kilbourne. I daresay he didn't kill his wife; but something's happened to him, and she did die uncommonly sudden. Anyhow, from what Bryant said, it's evident he's lost his nerve and his courage. At that rate, he'll precious soon lose ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... into other hands. But our spirit and temper is the same as of old. It has found a new world in the air. War in the air, under the conditions of to-day, demands all the old gallantry and initiative. The airman depends on his own brain and nerve; he cannot fall back on orders from his superiors. Our airmen of to-day are the true inheritors of Drake; they have the same inspired recklessness, the same coolness, and the same chivalry ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... Started from his bed of branches, From the twilight of his wigwam Forth into the flush of sunset Came, and wrestled with Mondamin; At his touch he felt new courage Throbbing in his brain and bosom, Felt new life and hope and vigor Run through every nerve and fibre. ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... world and the communist domain-our politics and our economy, our science and technology against the best they can do—our liberty against their slavery—our voluntary concert Of free nations against their forced amalgam of "people's republics"—our strategy against their strategy-our nerve against ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Harry S. Truman • Harry S. Truman
... he taken on his head and hands this new burden of toil, which was greater than all the others? Why, in general, this climbing a sky-touching ladder with exertion of all his strength of nerve and brain? To what kind of heaven could he climb upon that ladder? New profits, ever-increasing wealth? But he had ceased to desire these! Although that seemed marvellous to the man himself, he had ceased really. ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... on foot to agitate the question of abolishing slavery. The movement was exceedingly unpopular, and it required considerable nerve to profess abolition sentiments. Now, when no other principle is avowed, it scarcely seems possible that men, now among us in the prime of life, had to endure obloquy, ridicule, and even danger, for expressing sentiments that no one now dreams of ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... Alcando quietly. "If I'm to do this sort of work in the jungle, along our railroad, I'll need to have my nerve stiffened." ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... harping upon this question. Lord Kitchener had informed the House of Lords on the 15th day of March that the supply of war material was "causing him considerable anxiety." There was not the slightest doubt, even allowing for the tendency of men exposed to nerve-racking experiences or placed in positions of anxious responsibility to find fault, that our army in France and Flanders was at a terrible disadvantage as compared to that opposed to it in the matter of artillery ammunition. The state of affairs was perfectly well known, not merely to the ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... that powerful nerve-irritation, such as produces shock, is painless, and this accounts for the fact that wounds received during ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... looked a little flushed. At Bed-time she got the start of me, as usuall; and, on entering our Chamber, I found her quite undrest, sitting at the Table, not reading of her Bible, but with her Head resting on it. I should have taken her to be asleep, but for the quick Pulsation of some Nerve or Muscle at the back of the Neck, somewhere under the right Ear. She looks up, commences rubbing her Eyes, and says, "My Eyes are full of Sand, I think. I will give you my new Crown-piece, Deb, if you will read me to sleep ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... the country nearly so. The press strain every nerve to produce excitement, and the 'Times' has begun an assault on the bishops, whom it has marked out for vengeance and defamation for having voted against the Bill. Althorp and Lord John Russell have written grateful letters to Attwood as ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... then, And nestle in the gulley, then, And watch with deep devotion The shadows on the benty grass, And how they come, and how they pass; Nor must he stir, with gesture rash, To quicken her emotion. With nerve and eye so wary, sir, That straight his piece may carry, sir, He marks with care the quarry, sir, The muzzle to repose on; And now, the knuckle is applied, The flint is struck, the priming tried, Is fired, the volley has replied, And reeks in high commotion;— Was ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... there came a loud report—a nerve-shattering sound. She whizzed round. He had a gun, then. She had not seen that he ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... Smell. The most delicious viands are spread for us in apartments strewed with flowers. The table is adorned with them, and the most exquisite wines are handed to us in crystal goblets. When we have glorified God, by the agreeable use of the palate, and the olfactory nerve, we enjoy a delightful sleep of two hours, in bowers of orange trees, roses, and myrtles. Having acquired a fresh store of strength and spirits, we return to our occupations, that we may thus mingle labour with pleasure, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 1 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... inner rooms, lady Feng was, it is true, much cut up at heart; but she strained every nerve to preserve an exterior of total indifference. Noticing that there was no one present in the apartment, she drew P'ing Erh to her. "I drank yesterday," she smiled, "a little more wine than was good for me, so don't bear me a grudge. Where did I ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... "The nerve! And that poor little Mrs. Wempner goes to extra trouble in your honor. I hear she's to have pennies attached to the tally cards. Pretty idea, pennies for Penny. Well, I'm not going to worry my life away! Work it out your own way. I'll send you home a steak and some quinine ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... world, the outer impression of pain must have been very intense in order to awaken its proper reflex. The attention may, however, not be disturbed at all and yet the reflex may fail. If we suppose that a reflex action is one brought about through the excitement of an afferent sensory nerve which receives the stimulation and brings it to the center from which the excitement is transferred to the motor series (Landois[1]), we exclude the activity of the brain. But this exclusion deals only with conscious activity and the direct transition through the reflex center ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... I sit down to reason, think to take my stand nor swerve, While I triumph o'er a secret wrung from nature's close reserve, In you come with your cold music till I creep through every nerve. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... was what the mutter in the ante-room had meant. Sebert would not have been young and a soldier if he had not felt keen delight tingle through every nerve. Indeed, his pleasure was so great that he dared say little in acknowledgment, lest it betray him into too great cordiality toward this stern young ruler who, though in reality a year younger than he, seemed to have become many years his senior. He said shortly, "If ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... no compiler as such can have—because the moment he has it he ceases to be a compiler, and becomes an artist—the sense of grasp, the power to put his finger, and to keep it, on the central pulse and nerve of the story. That he did this deliberately is so unlikely as to be practically impossible: that he did it is certain. The Arthurian Legend is the greatest of mediaeval creations as a subject—a "fable"—just as the Divina Commedia is the greatest ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... difference as there is between the thumb of a man and that of a gorilla. Secondly, the palm is proportionally thicker than ours—the texture of the skin infinitely finer and softer—its average warmth is greater. More remarkable than all this, is a visible nerve, perceptible under the skin, which starts from the wrist skirting the ball of the thumb, and branching, fork-like, at the roots of the fore and middle fingers. "With your slight formation of thumb," said the philosophical young Gy, "and with the absence of the nerve which you ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... great mosaic, from the Fillmore-street hill, at once creates a nerve-soothing impression most uncommon in international expositions, and for that matter, in any architectural aggregate. One is at once struck with the fitness of the location and of the scheme of architecture. Personally, I am greatly impressed with the architectural scheme ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... give her my soul, if it would serve her," said Bold, still addressing his sister; "everything I have is hers, if she will accept it; my house, my heart, my all; every hope of my breast is centred in her; her smiles are sweeter to me than the sun, and when I see her in sorrow as she now is, every nerve in my body suffers. No man can love better ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... Service men succeeded in unearthing all the details of the plot against Tom. His life, at times, had been in danger, but at the last minute the man detailed to harm him lost his nerve. ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton
... him—the figure of Ste. Marie who knew. His reason told him that if due care were used this danger need not be too formidable, and, indeed, in his heart he rather despised Ste. Marie as an individual; but the man's nerve was broken, and in these days fear swept wavelike over reason and had its way with him. Fear looked up to this looming, portentous shadow and saw there youth and health and strength, courage and hopefulness, ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... may not know, my specific assignment is to locate the nerve center of rebellious activity," said Maya. "It seems that the rebels have an intelligence network about as effective as the government's, and it was felt that a woman tourist from Earth might be successful where any unusual probing by ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... long leave Aram to the support of his own unassisted presence of mind and calmness of nerve; he advanced, and led the conversation, with his usual tact, into a course which might at once please Aram, and afford him the opportunity to shine. The Earl had imported from Italy some of the most beautiful specimens of classic sculpture which this country now possesses. ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... him. We turned and spit on our hands, and begun to pull up on the old horse, and he began to get his legs untangled and to go. We forgot about the sausage butcher, as we went down, the fresh air making every nerve ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... idiot! Don't go on drivelling there. How you ever had the nerve to play your part as you did I can't think." She stamped her foot. ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... to her Royal Highness, a full year before he could bring it to bear; and that the very same party in the city who, by dint of intrigue, contrived at that period to prevent the Common Hall, likewise strained every nerve to prevent the Address being carried, when the worthy Alderman did at length get a Hall of the Livery convened. Mr. Waithman, who found that there was a great public feeling in favour of the Princess of Wales, brought forward Mr. Sturch, (who had acquired a considerable ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... his horse refused the spur—or whether the rider's nerve was gone: but neither appeared to make an effort, till the animal ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... and dull though our skies, There 's a might in our arms and a fire in our eyes; Dauntless and patient, to dare and to do— Our watchword is "Duty," our maxim is "Through!" Winter and storm only nerve us the more, And chill not the heart, if they creep through the door: Strong shall we be In our isle of the sea, The home of the brave and the boast of the free! Firm as the rocks when the storm flashes forth, We 'll stand in our courage—the Men ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Lemage triumphantly, "no 'a'! Of all the stupid pigs I am he. But I had not given you the credit of such nerve, M. Rohscheimer. I had forgotten how once you lived the rough life in South Africa. It is so? I did not think you had the courage to write—though wobbly—those lying words in presence of the dead Gottschalk. Why did you do it, you bad, foolish fellow? The yataghan already ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... man, inured to danger and trained to emergencies, one who had faced death in many forms. But the lack, of arms shakes the bravest, and it needed even his nerve to confront without a quiver the fate that, if his fears were justified, lay before them: the sudden, violent death, and the black bog-water which would swallow all traces of the crime. But he did not lose his firmness or lower his crest ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... the beautiful West, She shall look, and not in vain - For out of its broad and boundless store Come muscle, and nerve, and brain. Let the bards of the East and the South be dumb - For out of the West ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... passed through the post-graduate courses of strait-jacketing. Oh, it is no easy trick to keep the brain in such serene repose that it is quite oblivious to the throbbing, exquisite complaint of some tortured nerve. ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... even them it drives to drink. Will the world learn that we never learn anything that we did not know before? The artist, the poet, painter, musician, and novelist go straight to the food they want, guided by an unerring and ineffable instinct; to teach them is to destroy the nerve of the artistic instinct, it is fatal. But above all in painting ... "correct drawing," "solid painting." Is it impossible to teach people, to force it into their heads that there is no such thing as correct drawing, and that if drawing were correct it would be wrong? Solid painting; ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... tell you what the people are like," he said. "They are like dumb animals, like sheep. They have suffered so long and so much that their nerve power is numbed. They lack will, they lack initiative. They are narrowed down to a daily life which makes of them something little different from an animal. Yet they can be roused. David Ross himself has done it, done ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... ammophila wasp. Sphex urnaria Klug. Lovely, but vicious, little she-demon. Injects the poison from her sting into the caterpillar's central nerve cord. That not only paralyzes but preserves it. The victim is always stowed away with another one in an underground burrow. The wasp attaches one of her eggs to the body of a worm. When the egg hatches, the grub eats both of the worms. They're alive, but they're completely ...
— They Twinkled Like Jewels • Philip Jose Farmer
... related to electricity; and the same sort of argument which demonstrates the two latter to be related to one another shows that the nervous forces are correlated to electricity; for the experiments of M. Dubois Reymond and others have shown that whenever a nerve is in a state of excitement, sending a message to the muscles or conveying an impression to the brain, there is a disturbance of the electrical condition of that nerve which does not exist at other times; and there are a number of other facts and phenomena of that sort; so that we come to the ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... so singularly disproportionate in size, were yet so perfectly matched in the vastly more important qualities of brain and nerve that the contest lost all sense of inequality. Theydon felt himself of no account in this duel. He was like an urchin watching open-mouthed ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... and autumn will speak to one of decay and death, to another of sleep and rest, after toil, to prepare for a new and brighter awakening. All the glory of dawn and sunset is but etheric waves thrilling the vapory air and impinging on the optic nerve; but behind it all is the magician who sees and knows, who thinks and loves. "It is the mind that makes the body rich." Thoughts take shape and coloring from souls through which they pass; and a free and open mind looks upon the world ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... camp, isolated from the usual social life, July 2 and 3 and 4, Independence Day, was indeed a test of nerve, already tried and sore and raw, for the young Negroes in training. Why should men train to fight for a country that permitted such barbarous atrocities against their race with impunity. In savage Memphis charred ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... must, as it seemed to me, have been a novice or else have lost his nerve in this disturbance, for he drove vilely on the way to the station. Twice we nearly had collisions with other equally erratic vehicles, and I remember remarking to Summerlee that the standard of driving in London had very much declined. Once we brushed ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle |
