"Nerve" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a frog's, if ever (in short) a human face was all that a human face should be, it was the face of that resentful and respectful cabman. I looked up and down the street; an unusually dark twilight seemed to be coming on. And for one second the old nightmare of the sceptic put its finger on my nerve. What was certainty? Was anybody certain of anything? Heavens! to think of the dull rut of the sceptics who go on asking whether we possess a future life. The exciting question for real scepticism is whether we ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... Spugg's massive face as he went on with his meal. Not a nerve of it moved. If he felt any fear, at least he showed no trace ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... distinctly uncomfortable dowager still in command who can't even arrange her dinner-parties and fails to marry her sons to the right people. Perpetually Hatchways is wiping the eye of Holmer, and this touches the nerve of the great lady. Her sons, Wickford, the authentic but hardly reigning duke, and Lord Iveagh Suir, the queer impressionable (on whom the author has spent much pains to excellent effect), both take their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various
... close to the upper crease of the neck, just above the cervical vertebrae; and, for the moment, completely paralyzed the large nerve of the spine, causing the creature to drop as quickly as though ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... heart is hushed, my tongue is mute, My life is centred in your will; You play upon me like a lute Which answers to its master's skill, Till passionately vibrating, Each nerve becomes a throbbing string. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... hurrying on in his country Kosciuszko, himself ready to strain every nerve in her cause, wrote in the April of 1792 ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... It took a lot of nerve to start on that trip too, let me tell you. Even the Indians were afraid of the river and every one of them said he didn't know really what ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... military arbitrament, and the South African war has proved conclusively how erroneous was that idea. The use of the torpedo-boat and of the weapons which it carries must always demand, like that of the bayonet, men of the strongest nerve, and of the greatest devotion to their duty ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... which began on September 15th, was more nerve-racking for the lawyers than for the defendant. For the witnesses were elusive. The trial seemed to be regarded by the majority of those connected with it as a gracious act of Providence for the redistribution ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... first to get saddled and mounted, and now came up at a steady, swinging gallop, in two platoons, saber and revolver in hand, and led by two Sergeants-Key and McWright,—printer boys from Bloomington, Illinois. They divined the object of the Rebel dash, and strained every nerve to reach the gun first. The Rebels were too near, and got the gun and turned it. Before they could fire it, Company M struck them headlong, but they took the terrible impact without flinching, and for a few minutes ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... be afraid. The doctor said she would live." He did not mean to lay any particular emphasis on the word "live," but somehow he did, and she, whose every nerve vibrated with anxiety, caught ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... strained every nerve, but had found no trace of the missing boy. He had been to Lee, and had seen Dennett, the green-grocer, and his wife, and had satisfied himself that they were seldom sober enough to attend to anything. Poor Mrs. Penn's habit of intemperance had been strengthened ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney
... of moral faculty, fruits of death brought forth in the soul of the survivor, which are more horrifying to the enlightened consciousness than the dying groans of the stricken can be to the more bodily nerve. The thing to fear is not pain, but trespass; not suffering, but sin—the peculiar sin of war is that it corrupts while it consumes, that it demoralizes whilst it destroys. It is not because war kills that it is the devil, but because it depraves; and it ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... profitably present itself. Here also is one encompassed and struggling even as they now are. This man also had said to himself, not in mere Catechism-words, but with all his instincts, and the question thrilled in every nerve of him, and pulsed in every drop of his blood: "What is the chief end of man? Behold, I too would live and work as beseems a denizen of this Universe, a child of the Highest God. By what means is a ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... was argued by the prosecution that the weakness of the bomb was a blunder on the part of the socialists, just as its premature explosion, caused by Ernest's losing his nerve and dropping it, was a blunder. And to clinch the argument, there were the several Congressmen who testified to having seen Ernest fumble and ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... abhorred it, and had attempted to dissuade his associates from carrying their design into effect. For a man bred to civil pursuits, Wade seems to have had, in an unusual degree, that sort of ability and that sort of nerve which make a good soldier. Unhappily his principles and his courage proved to be not of sufficient force to support him when the fight was over, and when in a prison, he had to choose between death ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... had proclaimed their independence, is it just to blame King George, as he often has been blamed, for his steadfast and resolute resistance to that claim? Was it for him, unless after straining every nerve against it, to forfeit a portion of his birthright and a jewel of his crown? Was it for him, though the clearest case of necessity, to allow the rending asunder his empire—to array for all time to come of several millions of his people against the rest? After calling on his ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... the command ship of the fleet, the nerve center of the entire operation, it was still hardly more than a prison ship for the cadets. In direct contrast, the space liner was bright, gay, and full of life. Everything imaginable for the convenience of the colonists had been installed aboard the massive ship. As ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... actually clambered out of the firing-trench and advanced towards our lines. The distance was barely seventy yards. No shot was fired, but you may be sure that safety-catches were hastily released. Suddenly, in the tense silence, the ambassador's nerve failed him. He bolted back, followed by a few desultory bullets. The reason for his sudden panic was never rightly ascertained, but the weight of public opinion inclined to the view that Mucklewame, who had momentarily exposed himself above the ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... mothers occasionally experience when domestic cares oppress them. Want of exercise robs them of cheerfulness, and too much devotion to that idol of American women, the teapot, makes them feel as if they were all nerve and no muscle. ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... used me worse than ever. He couldn't break my nerve, but I lost my health; and then he began knocking the children about. I couldn't stand that. I wouldn't go back now, if ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... to Bennett, hypnosis was characterised by alterations in the functional activity of the nerve tubes of the white matter of the cerebral lobes. He suggested that a certain proportion of these became paralysed through continued monotonous stimulation; while the action of others was consequently exalted. As these tubes connected the cerebral ganglion-cells, suspension ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... ended, and laughter and song were hushed. The stillness of the Arctic night fell upon the Nugget Road House, lying in the somber shadow of the Sawtooth Mountains. And to Baldy and all the others came rest and forgetfulness of such trials as nerve-racking sounds that destroy well-earned sleep, and the enforced companionship of advanced females that insist upon having a paw in the management of affairs that should ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... slaves or tyrants; left to those who had monopolized the soil, the defense of their property: and these, being few in numbers, parsimonious after the nature of their class, and effeminate from luxurious living and habits of indolence, fell easy victims to the rapacity and iron nerve of Goth and Vandal. The great French Revolution would have never occurred but for the monopoly of land, which, after long ages, became centered in a few hands, who by reason of this were a privileged class ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... the servants, or to receive some message sent to him. Never was he more indefatigable. He was generally rather disagreeable, and even with his jokes he brought to bear a certain scornful manner, either real or assumed, that made him more formidable. But now he strained every nerve in the matter, for it was a question of the most stupendous and best-arranged farce that the town of Lancia had ever witnessed since the monks of San Vicente came to found it. The cause of it was that Fernando Estrada-Rosa was to marry (the pen scarcely dares write it), Fernanda ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... "He had his nerve with him," said Old Billee. "But, boys, we mustn't let him get ours. He came to spy out and see ...
— The Boy Ranchers at Spur Creek - or Fighting the Sheep Herders • Willard F. Baker
... said to him: "Mr. President, I am here at almost every hour of the day or night, and I never saw you at the table, do you ever eat?" "I try to," replied the President; "I manage to browse about pretty much as I can get it." After the long wearing, nerve-taxing days were over in which he was glad to relieve himself occasionally with a good story or a merry laugh, came the nights of anxiety when sleep was often banished from his pillow. He frequently wrapped himself in his Scotch shawl, and at midnight stole across to the War Office, and listened ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... a week he suffered. He lay bent over, unable to straighten himself, as if a nerve had been wound up too tightly in the left side. He was fed on gruel and beef-tea, the room was kept very warm; it was not until the twelfth day that he was taken ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... 'Never in my life had I realized the effect which a cool, courageous man could have upon a crowd of men. Call it a miracle if you like,—indeed I always shall think of it as a miracle,—but without once losing his nerve, or once revealing the slightest lack of confidence, he worked upon the fears and hopes of those Boches in such a way that he persuaded them to follow him, and give themselves up in a body as prisoners. ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... unbroken fading of one class of society into another. Sperate miseri, cavete felices! In such a state of social organization, we find the utmost and freshest productive activity at every round of the great ladder. Those at the bottom are straining every nerve to rise, and those higher up, not to fall below. But where the rich and the poor are separated by an abyss which there is no hope of ever crossing, how pride on the one side and envy on the other rage! and especially in the foci of industry, the great cities, where the deepest misery is found ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... glossing over, as it had, indeed, been glossed over, by the sudden shock with which they had forced that scene upon him; or, failing in that, they had counted on the fact that his, or any other man's nerve would have failed when it came to open defiance based on a supposition which might, after all, be wrong, ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... of the odds they might have to face. Though the Hadendowas were well armed, and outnumbered them by two to one, Royson felt that the presence of the Englishmen, all of whom were ex-sailors of the Royal Navy, would nerve his Arab helpers to attack and defeat Alfieri's band of cutthroats. Moreover, von Kerber and his small escort were evidently making a fight of it, and, while daylight lasted, the Hadendowas, once discovered, would endeavor ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... 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 ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... unbroken wilderness, numbered even in 1846 87,000 inhabitants; and the emigration to the "Far West" is now greater than ever. A giant is therefore growing up there, who will soon be able and disposed to rule the destinies of the United States. The Church of Rome is straining every nerve to have that giant in her own keeping, and already shouts the song of triumph. Says one of her sanguine sons, "The Church is now firmly established in this country, and persecution will but cause it to thrive. Our countrymen may grieve that ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... 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^, stamina, nerve, muscle, sinew, thews and sinews, physique; pith, pithiness; virtility, vitality. athletics, athleticism^; gymnastics, feats of strength. adamant, steel, iron, oak, heart of oak; iron grip; grit, bone. athlete, gymnast, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... on the calm spirit which inspires it, and the moisture of life breaks forth, drowning knowledge in sensation, then all is blurred, the windows are darkened, the light is useless. This is as literal a fact as that if a man, at the edge of a precipice, loses his nerve through some sudden emotion he will certainly fall. The poise of the body, the balance, must be preserved, not only in dangerous places, but even on the level ground, and with all the assistance Nature gives us by the law of gravitation. So it is with the soul, it is the link between the ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... 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 ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... foreign chlorophyl performing the respiratory function of native haemoglobin! And the resemblance becomes closer when we bear in mind that haemoglobin sometimes lies as a stationary deposit in certain tissues, like the tongue muscles of certain mollusks, or the nerve cord of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... Sewall. The first, they say, has not wit enough to write anything; the second swears off; and the third must plead guilty or not guilty as soon as I see him. Till matters are settled in England, I dare not leave this town, as men's minds are in such a situation, that every nerve is requisite to keep them from running to some irregularity and imprudence; and some are yet wishing for an ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... peculiar powers of this poet, than would have been afforded by that catastrophe he has chosen to alter. Was the opportunity felt to be too great? Had the poet become wearied and exhausted with his theme, and did he feel indisposed to nerve himself afresh for scenes which called for the strenuous efforts of his genius? We know that it was not his original intention to make this violent departure from history, and that he came to the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... intrigues, and on whose back the adroit chevalier would in any case have put those sins with his customary cleverness, was in the dock with no lawyer to defend him. Athanase, the only guest loyal enough to stand by du Bousquier, had not the nerve to emit his ideas in the presence of those potentates of Alencon, whom in his heart he thought stupid. None but provincial youths now retain a respectful demeanor before men of a certain age, and ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... of Dale's absence I paid her my promised visit. It was a dull day, and the room, lit chiefly by the firelight, happily did not reveal its nerve-racking tastelessness. Lola Brandt, supple-limbed and lazy-voiced, talked to me from the cushioned ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... Hollanders were allowed to have a small place of residence in front of a large city and at the head of a land-locked harbor. There, the foreigners being isolated and under strict guard, the government could have, as it were, a nerve which touched the distant nations, and could also, as with a telescope, sweep the ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... 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 tore ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various
... house as for the barn? How much water does an ordinary family need for all purposes in a day? How much time does it take to pump and carry this quantity by hand or to draw it from a well? How much strength and nerve force are thus expended that might be saved for more important work? Does lack of time or strength cause the homekeeper to "get along" with less water in the house than is really needed? Is there any natural means at hand for pumping the water—any "brook that ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... resumed, 'is self-willed and resolute; and as these people naturally strain every nerve to catch him, I can entertain very little hope, Mr Clennam, that the thing will be broken off. I apprehend the girl's fortune will be very small; Henry might have done much better; there is scarcely anything to compensate for the connection: still, ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... as my brother did, and get stung, as he was; because I thought that would drive you away, because I thought then that I didn't want you down here. I'm ashamed of myself, and I don't know where I'm getting the nerve to tell you this. I hope you will stay on—on and on ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... of each day. Every device is tried to tickle his dead palate; but the succession of dainties is of no avail, for the man cannot assimilate what is set before him, and he becomes soft of muscle, devoid of nerve—a weed of civilisation. Are not the cases analogous to those of the sound reverent student and the weary blase skimmer of books? So, in sum, I say that, even if our enormous output of printed matter goes on increasing, and if the number of readers increases by millions, yet, so long as ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... horse refused the spur—or whether the rider's nerve was gone: but neither appeared to make an effort, till the animal was close ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... the bishop was there, sitting all alone and looking as wretched as a man could. His face was grey and drawn—he had aged so markedly since Mrs Pendle's garden-party that Mr Cargrim was quite shocked—and he started nervously when his chaplain glided into the room. A nerve-storm, consequent on his interview with Mother Jael, had exhausted the bishop's vitality, and he seemed hardly able to lift his head. The utter prostration of the man would have appealed to anyone save Cargrim, but that astute young parson had an end to ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... cry shows it. If they hadn't been so mad they'd have followed our trail without a sound. I wish I could have seen the faces of the Ojibway and the Frenchman when they came back and noticed our trace at the end of the tree. They're mad in every nerve and fiber, because they did not conclude to go upon it. It was only one chance in a thousand that we'd be there, they let that one chance in a thousand ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of church, when in that room I goes, 'Oldin' me breaf an' walkin' on me toes. Fer 'arf a mo' I feared me nerve 'ud fail To see 'er lying there so ...
— The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke • C. J. Dennis
... the players, a grim old jailbird who had escaped from the Ceuta penitentiary and who looked just like a fox. "When a guy has the nerve, he rakes in all the dough," and he made a gesture of scooping up all the coins on the table in his fingers—"and ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... case when the vision has become dim through over exertion of the eyes. It was with "Euphrasy and Rue" the visual nerve of Adam was ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... I think of this awful moment, which cannot be conceived in all its horror. My natural instinct made me almost unconsciously strain every nerve to regain the parapet, and—I had nearly said miraculously—I succeeded. Taking care not to let myself slip back an inch I struggled upwards with my hands and arms, while my belly was resting on the edge of the parapet. Fortunately the ladder was safe, for ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... in some way which she had not seen fit to confide to him, if she were forced to make this tremendous sale, if she were mad or had at last lost her nerve, frightened at the thought of the heavy sums of money to be raised at the end of the winter, well, then it still could do no harm for him to speak his mind to her. Hampton had told him the price which the horses were to bring; it was pitifully small and Lee meant to tell her ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... combinations in the nervous system. For it is obvious that a tail-fin must be used in quite a different way from a tail, which serves as a fly-brush in hoofed animals, or as an aid to springing in the kangaroo or as a climbing organ; it will require quite different reflex-mechanisms and nerve-combinations in ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... with an odd little smile. He had evidently recovered his nerve, and seemed to take pleasure in piquing Charlie's ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... predecessor, partly by the "aching void" of her own life, adopted the disowned son of the premier, and called him, with reproachful significance, P'hra Nah Why, "the Lord endures." And her strong friend, Nature, who had already knit together, by nerve and vein and bone and sinew, the father and the child, now came to her aid, and united them by the finer but scarcely weaker ties of habit and companionship ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... fellow, would you be so kind and obliging as to kick me hard once or twice. No? Well, never mind; I daresay somebody else will, sooner or later, so I will excuse you. But, I say, Lascelles," he continued, as serious now as myself, "it is an awful risky thing to do; do you think we have nerve and—and—impudence enough to carry it through without being found out? We are only two against ten, you know, on board here; and if we are detected it will be a sure case of,"—and he drew his ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... world of the dead much like APO LEGGAN of the Kayans; and the journey involves the crossing of the river on a single log, the passage of which is disputed by a malign being, who tries to shake the nerve of the ghost by flinging ashes at him as he traverses the bridge. Other Malanaus (of Muka) describe this opposing power as a twoheaded dog, MAIWIANG by name, whom it is necessary to propitiate with the gift of a valuable bead. For this reason a bead of some ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... imperceptible nerve was dancing against Mrs. Samstag's right temple. Alma could sense, rather than see, the ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... were drawn up in three ranks on the shore nearly opposite the fort. Allen then made a short address to us. He was never a man of many words. He said he knew our spirit, and hoped we would remember the cause for which we were about to strike; that would nerve the arm of a coward. He concluded by conjuring us to obey orders strictly, and to commit no slaughter that could be done without. Then, with Arnold at his side, Allen led us stealthily up the rocks to ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... saucepan with the fork; and while doing so she stretched forth her left hand, obtained some salt, and sprinkled the saucepan therewith. The business seemed to be exquisitely delicate and breathless. Her face was sternly set, as though the fate of continents depended on her nerve and audacity in this tremendous crisis. But what she was doing to the interior of the saucepan James Ollerenshaw could not comprehend. She stroked it with a long gesture; she tickled it, she stroked it in a different direction; she lifted it and ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... taking care to stamp heavily with my sea-boots at the foot of the cabin stairs, I made my second entry. But for this unexpected glimpse, no act of his during the next twenty-four hours could have given me the slightest suspicion that all was not well with his nerve. ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... the Englishman's four and a half, but with better living, more instruction, and improved tools (for the French tools were very poor at first) the Frenchmen came to earn four francs. In the severe and dangerous work of mining, however the Englishman maintained his superiority in nerve and steadiness. The Piedmontese were very good hands especially for cutting rock and at the same time well conducted, sober and saving. The Neapolitans would not take any heavy work, but they seem to have been temperate and thrifty. The men from Lucca ranked midway between the Piedmontese ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... that put out one of the kingdom's eyes by clouding our mother university; and (if this Scotch mist farther prevail) he will extinguish the other. He hath the like quarrel to both, because both are strung with the same optic nerve, knowing loyalty. ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... an awful thought, and for a moment, every nerve in her body tingled with pain. All her strength fled, and she dared not question him further on that point, for her own sake, ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... her name Alan's voice was dead, and he made no movement. He could not disbelieve. It was not a mental illusion or a temporary upsetting of his sanity. It was truth. The shock of it was rending every nerve in his body, even as he stood as if carved out of wood. And then a strange relaxation swept over him. Some force seemed to pass out of his flesh, and his arms hung limp. She was there, alive! He could see the whiteness leave her face ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... off in all directions. Of the particles which vibrate with any particular velocity, some are gathered by the optical apparatus of the eye, and deflected so as to impinge on the retina and on the fibres of the optic nerve therewith connected, producing in these fibres a change which is followed by other changes in the brain, which, again, by virtue of some inscrutable union between the brain and the mind, create a feeling or consciousness of colour. What the particular colour shall be, depends either on the ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... kept me to it, with my tongue hanging out; again and again I seemed to have him; every time I missed him by an hour or so; and that convinced me that he was straining every nerve, and that he probably had the whole of the loot still with him. At last, I seemed to have him in a perfect trap—Ensenada, on the Peninsula. You get into and out of Ensenada by steamboat only, except back to the mines on foot or donkey. The two days I had to wait over in San Diego for the boat ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... the gun calmly. He had seen guns before. Moreover he didn't believe the man had the nerve to shoot. He wasn't quite so sure of the two dark shadows in the bushes below, but it was well to be on ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... brought about. Instantaneously lassitude and vain repinings were replaced by hopefulness and energy. In a twinkling the young man was on his feet, every nerve a-thrill ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... "Well, I like your nerve!" said she. "Darry's my brother. And I've known Burd Alling since he and Darry went to primary school. And so has Jess. I guess they are not likely to take strangers off on that yacht with them before they ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... the general disturbances of the past five years. The causes are many and obvious. Man is generally guided, not directly by the automatic instincts, working through the lower nerve centers, but rather by ideas acting in the higher nerve centers of his brain. Instincts with him are not instinctive, but are checked and supervised by intelligence. Only when a great shock, a sudden fear or joy, occurs does the instinctive working replace ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... for bravery as though it were a fact which everyone accepted, and was begging me not to make her suffer. What added to my perplexity was that she asked me to act only as I desired to act, but she asked it in such a manner that every nerve ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... Hastings heard, but did not change color. There was no sense in losing nerve over a disaster that had ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... valuable information concerning the connection between disease conditions and misplacements of vertebrae and other bony structures, contractions or abnormal relaxation of muscles and ligaments, and inflammation of nerves and nerve centers. ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... scalpel, the hidden motives and springs of action. We dream of an art that shall take into account the natural daily decay and up-building of cell-life; the wars that go on in the blood; the fevers of the brain; the creeping paralysis of nerve-exhaustion; above all, we must be able even now from a few bare facts, to re-create a man and make him live and love again for the reader, just as the biologist from a few scattered bones can reconstruct some prehistoric bird or ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... terror-inspiring roar is to the Boer stripling pure romance and non-sense; but what he does realize is that he must hit the animal in a vital spot at the right moment or else run the risk of being clawed and bitten. The confidence, however, which he has in his gun gives him all the requisite nerve, and mishaps are of very rare occurrence. Those lion hunts used to be very profitable, not only for the valuable skins, but especially when a number of young cubs were also caught, which would realize considerably high prices ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... know; but I also knew that if I could nerve myself to bear the pain and the fatigue, I could train the girls as well as ever, and I knew, too, that if you sent me away in the middle of term you would be less likely to take me back. It means everything to me, you see. ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Every nerve in my body seemed to be strung tensely. I was icy cold, expectant, and prepared for ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... were at the gate. The door opened below him, his host went out, and the three talked in whispers for a while. Then the horsemen rode away, his host came back into the house, and all was still again. For half an hour the boy waited, his every nerve alive with suspicion. Then he quietly dressed, left half a dollar on the washstand, crept stealthily down the stairs and out to the stable, and was soon pushing his old nag at a weary gallop ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... at Niagara, 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, and was lifting me over stony places; and I nothing doubt that the great anthem ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... of course I will, if you want me to," said the Duke, in a more gentle voice. "But you seem awfully upset, and you're upsetting me too. We shan't have a nerve between us soon, if you ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... tolerant warmth that sheds a kind of lustre Over a stout Ausonian filibuster Does not extend to thoroughly bad hats Like abdicated Hellene autocrats. And, if the Allies feel some slight reserve About resisting your confounded nerve, I, GABRIELE, do not. You may be A kind of subject satrap under me; If not, look out. You shall have cause to know The singing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... my teeth were clenched as if in the throes of lockjaw. Had I paused to think for a single instant, all my nerve would have oozed away. But I had no time to spend on thought; I had to work on, to save Miss Falconer. The whole ghoulish business would be futile if the inn servants found the body. The mere flight of all the guests would certainly stir suspicion; let the murder transpire as well, and ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... humiliated at the confession. "I didn't fire a shot. Couldn't, somehow. Everybody was blazin' away at 'em. That's the kind of nerve I've ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... now before long and I hadn't made no break at all. I set and set, and didn't have no nerve. By and by it was too late to ...
— The Man Next Door • Emerson Hough
... and rob you. Fortune befriended me ever after; but the richer I grew, the more keenly I felt how wicked I had been, and the more I foresaw that my victim's vengeance would some day overtake me. Haunted by this thought, I lost my nerve, till one night I beheld your spirit, and from that time forth fell ill. But how you managed to escape, and are still alive, is ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... the house the mourners laughed and lit cigarettes and pipes. If no new visitor came they fell to chatting and smoking, but the sight of a fresh and unharrowed person started them off again in their mechanical, though nerve-racking, cry. ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... I've no doubt it frets her to be kept in the dark, and it may make her doubly anxious about me and the others. But it is best as it is. It is better to be disappointed and worried in such a way now than to have her nerve broken. The doctors were quite right to insist on her being kept out of this dreadful business. I must be firm, for on me this particular burden of silence must rest. I shall not ever enter on the ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... essence of the man. And now what is left? An arched whitish putty-like mass, some fifty odd ounces in weight, with a number of white filaments hanging down from it, looking not unlike the medusae which float in our summer seas. But these filaments only serve to conduct nerve force to muscles and to organs which serve secondary purposes. They may themselves therefore be disregarded. Nor can we stop here in our elimination. This central mass of nervous matter may be pared down on all sides before we seem ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... in the running gear for the 'cross-the-house conveyors. He has his nerve with him. He's putting in three drives entirely different from the way they are in the plans. He told me just now that there wasn't a man in the office who could design a drive that wouldn't tie itself up in square knots in the first ten minutes. I wonder what ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... courageously at the front." In Brazil (and in other mission fields, too,) there is in many places a marvelous breaking away from the old attitude of indifference. The little handful of missionaries we have on the field are straining every nerve to meet the opportunities that are pressing upon them. They are not discouraged. They are as busy as life trying to meet the increasing demands. They are looking to the future with the largest hope. They are a band of the most incurable optimists ...
— Brazilian Sketches • T. B. Ray
... on the carpet. His wife sat near the window, watching the swallows cutting black circles in the dusky air. Eva was seated at the piano, half turned from it, while with one hand she felt about to touch the nerve of some half-forgotten tune. McElwin dropped down in ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... the steersman lost his nerve, and shrank from the coming shock. The galley's helm went up to port, and her beak slid all but harmless along Amyas' bow; a long dull grind, and then loud crack on crack, as the Rose sawed slowly through the ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... did not need his words for emphasis. He fairly reeked the beast of prey. She had to nerve herself against faintness. She must not swoon. She ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... 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, and, best of all armors, a righteous cause. How was an ill and tired and wicked old man ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... very cleverly, Mrs. Cortlandt," he said. "Of course, I had no chance to win against a person of your diplomatic gifts. I had my nerve to try." ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... have the nerve to dive off a high cliff into the sea, as you did. Be that as it may, my gratitude to you is none the less. If you want a friend, if you have any trouble about that boat, or anything else, send for me, for I would cross the continent to ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... pain quicksilver indeed, there could not be a more striking impression of ebb and flow every second against some stout elastic diaphragm whose percussion seems the pain which is felt. This is especially the case along the course of the sciatic nerve and all its branches, where the pulse of pain is so agonizing that the sufferer can not keep his legs still for an instant. There is occasionally severe pain of this kind in the arms also, but this is very rare. The suffering which usually accompanies ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... not!" came from Jack indignantly. "We will have to do something—protest—make a class matter of it. After what happened at the old mill, for those snobs to have the nerve to come back to ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman
... connecting things as I find them with the life of this Brassfield. I must take with me the bridge which spans the chasm between Brassfield and Amidon—I mean our friend Clara. Without her, I shall never go back. I haven't the nerve. I should soon find myself in a tangle of mistakes from which I could never extricate myself—I've thought it all out. The Cretan Labyrinth would be like going home ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... his knees and breathed out piercing supplications. Every nerve and fibre within him seemed tense with his agony of prayer. It was not the outcry for purity and peace, not a tender longing for forgiveness, not a filial remorse for sin, but the nervous anguish of him who shrieks in the immediate apprehension of an unendurable torture. It ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... almost entirely comprised in gum mastic and ivory. At the factory of Mr. Watkins the traveller secured certain figures which he calls "idols"—they are by no means fitted for the drawing-room table. He also noticed the "peace of the household," a strip of manatus nerve, at ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... nights of frenzied fear of the supernatural desire to appease the power above, a fierce quivering excitement in every inch of nerve and blood vessel, there comes a time when nature cannot endure longer, and the spring long bent recoils. We sink down emasculated. Up creeps ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... can you get away from God, nor be rid of yourself. You are on wretched terms with both, and will be, whatever happens, until your nature is brought into harmony with God's will. We are so made, so designed in our every fibre, that evil tortures us like a diseased nerve; and it always will till we get rid of it. Therefore, Egbert, remember—O that I could burn it into your consciousness—the best that you can gain from your proposed evil course is a brief respite in base and sensual stupefaction, or equally artificial ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... at last gave Barbara courage to speak. It seemed to nerve her for the ordeal, and, at the same time, to point a ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... Madison was willing to meddle with destiny. "Nature had decreed the union of Florida with the United States," Claiborne affirmed; but he was not so sure that nature could be left to execute her own decrees, for he strained every nerve to prepare the way for American intervention when the people of West Florida should declare themselves free from Spain. Holmes also was instructed to prepare for this eventuality and to cooperate with Claiborne in West Florida "in diffusing ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... busy time with the captain. Only a day or so out from Bombay, now, he was straining every nerve to restore the vessel to something like her normal condition before they should enter port, and it seemed to his daughters that they could scarcely get a daily greeting from him, even, in his intense absorption. ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... cafe concert, Sidonie's husband had had a moment of frantic excitement. He leaned on Planus's arm, every nerve in his body strained to the utmost. At that moment he had no thought of going to Montrouge to get the letter ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... they had plenty of ammunition. Then I made Stephen lie down to sleep, telling him that I would wake him to watch later on. This, however, I had no intention of doing as I wanted him to rise fresh and with a steady nerve on the ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... the Cardinal-Archbishop of Toledo, and moved thus in an atmosphere of combined temporal and spiritual dignity such as his soul loved. Very agreeable indeed to him was the honour shown to him at this time. Deep down in his heart there was a secret nerve of pride and vanity which throughout his life hitherto had been continually mortified and wounded; but he was able now to indulge his appetite for outward pomp and honour as much as he pleased. When ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... that I had seen—the submarine shelling the open boats and all the rest of it. She thought it marvelous that we should have been spared in so providential a manner, and I had a pretty speech upon my tongue's end, but lacked the nerve to deliver it. Nobs had come over and nosed his muzzle into her lap, and she stroked his ugly face, and at last she leaned over and put her cheek against his forehead. I have always admired Nobs; but this was the first time ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... recovering nerve and again rising to her feet. "As I've said, he'll dare anything—will Don Antonio Lopez De Santa Anna. Besides, what has he to fear? Nothing. He can show good cause for our imprisonment, else he would never have had us arrested. Enough to ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... found courage to wait quietly for the care of John. His "dear Grace," had thrilled on every nerve, and she afterwards often laughed at Emily for her terror when there was so little danger. The horses were not in the least frightened, and after a little mending, John declared all was safe. To ask Emily to enter, ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... was uttered with cold deliberateness. There was nothing to show that a pang quivered on every nerve of the speaker. ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... Bunn, generously, and he seemed to have added something to his nature through his nerve-racking experience. He had been near death, or at least the possibility of it, and it ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope
... the body do not all have the same degree of life,—that is, the same degree of irritability. The bone cells and the hair cells, for instance, can hardly be so much alive—or so irritable—as the muscle cells; nor these as intensely alive as the nerve and brain cells. Does not a bird possess a higher degree of life than a mollusk, or a turtle? Is not a brook trout more alive than a mud-sucker? You can freeze the latter as stiff as an icicle and resuscitate it, but not the former. There is a scale of degrees in life as clearly as ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... the door closed, she was alone once more, this time in almost complete darkness. Again she strained her ears upon the retreating steps, afraid yet to move her cramped muscles. The punctured arm throbbed and smarted painfully; every nerve in her body was stretched like a fiddle-string. Finally, far below, sounded the door's slam; a moment later, in front of the house, the whir of a starting engine vibrated upon the still air. The doctor was gone. Now or never, quick, not an instant to waste, every second lost lessened her ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... Jessie Bain!" shouted his wife, in an ear-splitting voice that made every nerve in Jessie's ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... quite often. Often, too, the motors would go silent altogether, and the NX-1 would rest almost motionless as her commander felt for an opening. It was a tense, nerve-wringing ordeal. The silence, the waiting, the dainty ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... monolith, chrysolite Logos word, study theology, dialogue Metron measure barometer, diameter *Micros small microscope, microbe Monos one, alone monoplane, monotone *Morphe form metamorphosis, amorphous *Neos new, young neolithic, neophyte *Neuron nerve neuralgia, neurotic Nomos law, science, astronomy, gastronomy, economy management *Onoma name anonymous, patronymic *Opsis view, sight synopsis, thanatopsis, optician *Orthos right orthopedic, orthodox *Osteon bone osteopathy, periosteum *Pais, paidos child paideutics, pedagogue, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... England. The English and American peoples are the greatest sportsmen in the world. Whenever an American workman plays baseball, or an English workman plays cricket, it is safe to say that he strains every nerve to secure victory for his side. He does his very best to make the largest possible number of runs. The universal sentiment is so strong that any man who fails to give out all there is in him in sport is branded as a "quitter," and ...
— The Principles of Scientific Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... lives like his The slumberous river washes soft and slow; The lapping water rises wearily, Numbing the nerve and will to sleep; and we Before the goal and crown of mysteries Fall back, and dare ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... Afognak are extremely dangerous, for the great tides from Cook Inlet draw through this narrow passage. My nerve was tested a bit as the baidarka swept by the shore, for had it once got well started we should have been drawn into the rapids and then into a long line of angry breakers beyond. At one point it seemed as if we were heading right into these dangerous waters, and then abruptly ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... men with great physical endurance are not as great in moral and spiritual stature! While there are achievements for those who are bent all their days with sickness—achievements of patience, achievements of Christian endurance—I call upon men of health to-day, men of muscle, men of nerve, men of physical power, to devote themselves to the Lord. Giants in body, you ought ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... head of smell—steam, I mean. Over Southwark Bridge, fizz, kick, bang, rattle! Flew along Old Kent Road; knocked down two policemen on patrol duty ('Knocked 'em in the Old Kent Road'); fizzed on through New Cross and Lewisham at awful nerve-destroying, sobbing pace, 'toot toot-ing' horn all the way. No good, apparently, to some people, who would not, or possibly could not, get out of the way. Cannoned milk-cart entering Eltham village, ran into 'bus, but shot off it again, at a tangent, ...
— Mr. Punch Awheel - The Humours of Motoring and Cycling • J. A. Hammerton
... while Joseph and Hareton were at their work, he came into the kitchen again, and, with a wild look, bid me come and sit in the house: he wanted somebody with him. I declined; telling him plainly that his strange talk and manner frightened me, and I had neither the nerve nor the will ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... he, "it is impossible that I should make you understand my feelings, nor do I pretend to any great virtue in the matter. The truth is, I want the force of character which might enable me to stand against the spirit of the times. The call on all sides now is for young men, and I have not the nerve to put myself in opposition to the demand. Were 'The Jupiter,' when it hears of my appointment, to write article after article setting forth my incompetency, I am sure it would cost me my reason. I ought to be able to bear with such things, you will say. Well, my dear, I own that I ought. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope |
