"Nerves" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... case," said he, "and Elisha on the bum, I guess I'll take a night off. This Sherlock Holmes stuff is wearing on the nerves." ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... enjoyment here below. Only such a creature could have cut down my walnut trees! I can never pardon it. Hear her reasons. The falling leaves made the court wet and dirty; the branches obstructed the light; boys threw stones at the nuts when they were ripe, and the noise affected her nerves; and disturbed her profound meditations, when she was weighing the difficulties of Kennicot, Semler, and Michaelis. Finding that all the parish, particularly the old people, were displeased, I asked ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... put together paltry articles for works which I never read. Indeed, if I have not undergone the doom of almost all individuals whose situation becomes suddenly opposed to their feelings and habits, and if I am not yet a lunatic, I must thank the mechanical strength of my nerves. My nerves, however, will not withstand the threatenings of shame which I have always contemplated with terror. Time and fortune have taught me to meet all other evils with fortitude; but I grow every day more and more a coward at the idea of the approach of a stigma on my ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... from one to the other, and each nodded assent. Now, Chuckley Slough was a pond near one of the railway stations, not very deep, but the waters of which were black, muddy, and somewhat repellent to the olfactory nerves. The station was neared and arrived at; in the meantime the bully's conduct became worse and worse. As they emerged from the station, one of the farmers, aforesaid, said to the fellow, 'Now, will you he quiet?' 'No, I won't,' was the answer. 'You won't, won't you?' asked a second farmer. ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... forward in silence. She was quite nonplussed. To tell the truth, Phoebe's sudden outburst was as great a tax upon her nerves as Mrs. Allen's unwelcome visit. Surely Phoebe had said nothing about a burglar! It was Droop that Mrs. Allen had seen—of course it was. She dared not say so in their visitor's presence, but she wondered mightily at ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... enough that the April situation of 1863 might well shake governmental nerves; for Richmond was being menaced from three points—north, southeast, and south: Fredericksburg due north, Suffolk southeast, Newbern south. Newbern in North Carolina was a long way off. But its possession ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... stand, but with some misgiving. The light was uncertain, and a little fitful wind frolicked across the range in a way very disturbing to a bowman's nerves. His eyes half-anxiously addressed themselves to that box wherein he ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... busy himself with, no baggage, no books: only a paper that he had just bought: he forced himself to read it: but his mind was wandering: he was listening for footsteps in the corridor. All his nerves were on edge with the exhaustion of a day's anxious waiting and ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... to the transcendental, the natural is conceived as dangerous and diabolical. At the moment of the abrupt inner change in Tannhaeuser, Venus and her world must vanish like a phantom of the night. "A consuming, voluptuous excitement kept my blood and nerves tingling while I sketched and composed the music of Tannhaeuser...." says Wagner in one place, and in another he confesses that sensual pleasure, while attracting and seducing him, filled him with repugnance. He speaks of his longing to "satisfy my craving in a higher, nobler ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... is skillfully blended from clean, ripe leaves of the very best tobacco grown. It is neither too strong nor too mild—it is precisely what a knowing pipe smoker likes: fragrant, satisfying, delightful to nerves, nostrils ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... Sir Lucius went on, "there's a great deal in your idea. I've always said so. In the case of any internal disease, nerves you know, and that kind of thing where there's nothing actually visible, I'm sure it works out admirably, quite admirably, but with a sprained ankle! Come now, Juliet, there's the swelling you know. You can't deny the swelling. Hang it all, you can measure the swelling ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... energetic action than at any succeeding or previous period, its properties and laws were but little understood: the extent of the connection of the will and the muscular system, the reciprocal influence of the nerves and the fancy, and the strong and universally pervading sympathy between our physical and moral constitutions, were almost wholly unknown. These important subjects, indeed, are but imperfectly understood at ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... had quite got over the desolation of the moment when standing in the road opposite Mrs Quantock's mulberry-tree he had given vent to that bitter cry of "More misery: more unhappiness!" His nerves on that occasion had been worn to fiddlestrings with all the fuss and fiasco of planning the tableaux, and thus fancying himself in love had been just the last straw. But the fact that he had been Olga's chosen confidant in her ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... had been waiting for him, pale and impatient, as if this little delay were the last straw for his nerves, led him immediately to his favourite corner of the church, that part of the gallery closest to the carved roof and lit by the wonderful window with the angel. The little Latin priest explored and admired everything exhaustively, talking cheerfully but in ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... Meanwhile, and behind all this activity, brute terrors, like the scurrying of rats in a deserted attic, filled the more remote chambers of his brain with riot; the hand of the constable would fall heavy on his shoulder, and his nerves would jerk like a hooked fish; or he beheld, in galloping defile, the dock, the prison, the gallows, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... our nerves had been strained to breaking-point, Ajax and a big-bearded stranger galloped ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... and herself tried the handle. It was as the maid had reported. She, however, was not altogether reassured. She was a young woman whose nerves were in a thoroughly healthy state, and by no means given to imaginative fears. She stood a little away, looking at the handle. It was almost impossible that she could have been mistaken. Her hands clasped for a moment the necklace which hung from her neck. A queer presentiment of evil crept ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... system is made up of folds of the skin tucked in from the surface of the back; so that we can say that the skin, with the organs that belong to it and have grown from it—the eyes, nose, ears, brain, and nerves—forms the most wonderful part of the body. Everything that we know of the world outside of us is told us by the skin and the look-out organs that have grown out of it. The skin is not only the surface part and coating of the body, far superior to ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... But she had a steadiness of gaze—one eye seemed the least heavy lidded—and there was a firmness to the slightly large mouth, which gave an impression of strong lines to what was really a soft, oval face. Yet the temperament could not be mistaken. She was a woman of acute nerves. She was tensely ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... broke down, and told the whole story to Mrs. Terwilliger, omitting no detail, stopping only to bring that worthy lady to on the half-dozen or more occasions when her emotions were too strong for her nerves, causing her to swoon. When he had quite done, she looked him reproachfully in the eye, and said that if he had told her the truth instead of deceiving her on the night of the spectral visitation, he might have been ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... were as real to mankind as the events of life. There are obscure tribes still on earth who cannot distinguish between what they have done and what they have only dreamt they did, and probably every race has gone through that stage of development. I don't know if excessive piety be a disease of the nerves, as some say, although what is piety in one generation does appear to be perversity in the next, as witness the sons of the clergy, and other children of pious people, who don't answer to expectation, as a rule. And I don't go much on churches or creeds, or faith in this personality ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... incident from Edinburgh, perfectly in character. She found in that city private insane hospitals, if they could be dignified by the name, under such conditions of mismanagement as shocked even her experienced nerves. Having reported the facts to the Lord Provost of Edinburgh to no purpose, she was advised to lay the matter before the Home Secretary in London. The Provost knew of this intention and resolved to forestall her by taking the train for London the ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... looking at her uneasily after her last remark, and feeling herself becoming more and more unbalanced and infected, she decided pro tem, as the vicar said at meetings, to put her under the heading Nerves. It was just possible that she ought to go straight into the category Hysteria, which was often only the antechamber to Lunacy, but Mrs. Arbuthnot had learned not to hurry people into their final categories, having ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... had been a doctor, which, perhaps, may have been in part the cause of the unusual tenderness with which I was managed. The left arm was now quite easy, although, as will be seen, it never entirely healed. The right arm was worse than ever—the humerus broken, the nerves wounded, and the hand alive only to pain. I use this phrase because it is connected in my mind with a visit from a local visitor,—I am not sure he was a preacher,—who used to go daily through the wards, and talk to us or write ...
— The Autobiography of a Quack And The Case Of George Dedlow • S. Weir Mitchell
... at the privy to show that I really wanted to go there. When I went back to the house I found Mary had fainted right off in the parlour, and dropped a tray. The shock of fear at being caught had been too much for her nerves, and she rolled on the floor showing her legs. My wife jealously told me to leave. I did, but in a funk for I saw on one of her stockings unmistakeable stains of spunk mixed ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... sanguine pursuers. But their situation they could scarcely realize, their past life seemed more like a dream than a reality. Our brave heroine was again quite overcome. The reaction was too much for her nerves. In being led to the cabin she would have fallen prostrate on the deck had she not been supported. And who can wonder, in view of her fatigues and privations, her hair-breadth escapes and mental anxieties. But she survived it all. Sails are now hoisted to the favoring ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... first thing that ever happened in my life that I could not explain or understand was the affair of the manuscript. You remember the day I stood in your room? I must have looked the picture of misery. The affair had played more havoc with my nerves than you can very well understand. Your mockery hurt me, and yet under all I felt ashamed of my own thoughts concerning this foolish occurrence. I could not explain the phenomenon, and I shivered at the things that it suggested to me. In this condition, which lasted several weeks, I could ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... the delivery, I held my nerves and muscles under absolute command, though the grinning jaws were hurtling toward me at terrific speed. And then I let go, with every ounce of my weight and muscle and science in back of that throw. The stone caught the hyaenodon full upon the end of the nose, and sent him bowling ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... is incurable, but is also checked by frequent bathing. All true lepers come from the coast provinces. A similar disease is produced also among the hills by the eating of tainted fish and fowl. This disease consists in the skin becoming insensible, the nerves inactive, and the patient, who otherwise feels well, finding it impossible to walk. It is also cured completely in very severe cases, by baths, ammonia applied inwardly, castor-oil, Peruvian bark, &c. A third type of this ailment is the bone-disease, ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... rose-trees; we were watching him from our seat on the green bench. Here in the garden, beneath the blue vault, the roses were drooping from very heaviness of glory; they gave forth a scent that made the head swim. It was a healthy, virile intoxication, however, the salt in the air steadying one's nerves. ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... that I can blame him," commented Bob. "I should think that continual jumping around from place to place would get on anybody's nerves." ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... subject. You have quincunxes in heaven above, quincunxes in earth below, and quincunxes in the water beneath the earth; quincunxes in deity, quincunxes in the mind of man, quincunxes in bones, in the optic nerves, in roots of trees, in leaves, in petals, in every thing. In short, first turn to the last leaf of this volume, and read out aloud to yourself the last seven paragraphs of Chap. V. beginning with the words "More considerables," ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... editor of an Athenian newspaper has been fined and imprisoned for declaring that this fiction is not a fact. These ministers are not permitted by King Otho to assemble together in council, unless he himself be present. The assembly would be too democratic for Otho's nerves. In short, the king has a ministry, but his ministers do not form a cabinet; his cabinet is a separate concern. Each minister waits on his majesty with his portfolio under his arm, and receives the royal commands. To simplify business, however, and make the ministers fully sensible of their ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... who would say that the change was merely the mental condition resulting from and corresponding to physical weakness; that repentance, and the vision of the better which maketh shame, is but a mood, sickly as are the brain and nerves which generate it; but he who undergoes the experience believes he knows better, and denies neither the wild beasts nor the stars, because they roar and ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... detect affectation in her most notable vagaries and crotchets. She loved the truth, and spoke it out—we were about to write, manfully; and why not? At heart, she was, to use the words of an intimate and discerning friend, a right brave and heroic woman—shrinking from no duty because of feeble nerves. Numerous illustrations of this occur in the volumes before us. Thus we find her going from a bridal of passing joyfulness to attend a near relative during a formidable surgical operation—or drawing ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various
... the struggle between longing and resolution. He had braced his nerves for a long and hungry waiting, but fate had yielded suddenly; the floods had brought her to him,—his flotsam and jetsam more precious than all the guarded treasures of the earth. She had come, with all her girlish, unconscious beguilements, and all her womanly cares and anxieties ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... Seneca's Iberian nerves were stronger than Chilos; they were not sick, perhaps, but in general his health was bad, for he seemed like a shadow, and recently his hair had ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... lift a weight, and move quickly. On her expressing some surprise, he said, "I do this to ascertain whether the organ is diseased; in that case motion quickens the pulsation; if that effect is not produced, the complaint proceeds from the nerves." I repeated this to my oracle, Quesnay. He knew very little of this physician, but he said his treatment was that of a clever man. His name was Renard; he was scarcely known beyond the Marais. Madame often appeared suffocated, and sighed ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... yours. Nevertheless, thanks to the influence of this bourgeois spirit upon the intellects that in American towns must live with, if not share it; thanks, also, to the magazines through which our finer minds must appeal to the public rather than to a circle or a clique, the nerves of transfer between the community at large and the intellectuals are active, the tendons that unite them strong. I argue much ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... threat after threat of what he would do, but he went on dressing the sheep; and Nic turned, walked back to the house, altered his mind, and went right away toward the bush, but his nerves were all of a quiver, as he thought over the meeting to come with his father, and he did not fire his ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... has denied a refinement of organs, or a continuity of attention, without which the most succulent dishes pass unobserved. Physiology has already recognized the first of these varieties, by showing us the tongue of these unhappy ones, badly furnished with nerves for inhaling and appreciating flavors. These excite in them but an obtuse sentiment; such persons are, with regard to objects of taste, what the blind are with regard to light. The second class are the absent-minded, chatterboxes, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... soul. Music was the fittest utterance for the Italians of the Counter-Reformation period. Debarred from political activity, denied the liberty of thought and speech, that gifted people found an inarticulate vehicle of expression in tone; tone which conveys all meanings to the nerves that feel, advances nothing to the mind that reasons, says everything without ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... free use of the bath; but he was often rubbed with oil, and sweated in a stove; after which he was washed with tepid water, warmed either by a fire, or by being exposed to the heat of the sun. When, upon account of his nerves, he was obliged to have recourse to sea-water, or the waters of Albula [235], he was contented with sitting over a wooden tub, which he called by a Spanish name (132) Dureta, and plunging his hands and feet in the ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... of his, and he was in that condition which is called sleeping with one eye open. The fact is, the extraordinary excitement of his donkey ride, and especially of his last adventure in thus falling into captivity, had so roused his faculties, so affected his nerves, and so sharpened his senses, that even in his sleep there still predominated the thoughts and the purposes of ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... the silence fell, deepened, grew ominous. None breathed, and the overwrought nerves of the court reached the limit ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... Cotton Nightcap Country," and fell for hours into a dull comatose misery. "His eyes were bloodshot, his hair was pushed in disorder about his head, his cheeks were flushed, his hands were trembling, the nerves in his face were twitching. Then he arose, and solemnly cursed Robert Browning. And then he took all his volumes, and, disposing them carefully in the fireplace, set light to them. 'I wish,' he said, 'that I could put the poet there too.'" One other ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... upon her back, daintily sets down one foot after the other, and with an eagerness chastened by the most refined delicacy for the feelings of her victim, and with the air of Velpeau redivivus, drives through crushed and bleeding capillaries, shrinking nerves and injured tissues, a many-bladed lancet of marvellous fineness, of wonderful complexity and fitness. While engorging herself with our blood, we will examine under the microscope the mosquito's mouth. The head (Fig. 61) is rounded, with the two eyes occupying ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... curiosity. Yet, when duty called, when there was need to know both the facts, and the truth to be deduced from the facts, whistling bullets or screeching shells never sufficed to drive him away. His coolness with pen and pencil, amid the dropping fire of the enemy, made heroes of many a soldier whose nerves were not as strong as was the instinct of his legs to run. The lady librarian of Dover, ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... own way; but that you must, willy nilly, in spite of rain, crowd, and offensive smell, stay and help to settle it with them. Into court therefore return, unfortunate witness; other shelter have you none; and now being a man of strong nerves,—except when put into a chair to be stared at by judge, bar, grand jury, little jury, attorney, galleries, &c., &c.,—you can push your way into a seat, and listen with attention to the quiddities of the legally erudite ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... of permanent glooms, if you ask me," replied Griffin airily. "She loves melancholy, though she is an awfully good sort, too. She gets on my nerves, though, ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... can tell you, and if her head swerves in the slightest she will swing round, and over she will go, and it would want some tall swimming to get out of that race. You paddle as well as the chief,—better, I think,—but the chief's nerves are like iron. He has not been practising steering as you have, but as there seem to be no rocks about, that won't matter so much. I ought to be able to keep her straight, if you three paddle hard. It may need ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... stood amazed and confounded. Did she rave? Was she mad? He studied her with a curious, half-doubting scrutiny, and noted the composure of her attitude, the cold serenity of her expression,—there was evidently no hysteria, no sur-excitation of nerves about this calm statuesque beauty which in every line and curve of loveliness silently mutinied against him, and despised him. Puzzled, yet fascinated, he sought in his mind for ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... nerves are delicate things," he said, as he fingered his cravat. "I would have said 'like a woman's,' had I not seen this very day Miss Elspeth's horsemanship." And he bowed to her ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... made acquaintance with Mrs. Searle and Bertha?" asked Sara, after Miss Prue had returned from trotting away with her wraps. "Oh, yes; she's a nice woman when she isn't under the dominion of her nerves, and she says she hasn't been so well in years as she is here; the air seems to agree with her, and she enjoys ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... around the enclosure he saw gathered row on row of men and women. A band was playing and flags were snapping in the breeze. There was a thrill of expectation in the air. Black Eagle felt it, and as he pranced proudly down the track there was lifted a murmur of applause and appreciation which made his nerves tingle strangely. ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... enough before,—don't you admire this—which you have not seen before?" and she touched Faith's holly leaves with the tip of her little glove. "I should think it must stir what Mr. Linden calls your 'nerves of pleasant sensation'." ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... midnight. The flotilla was sweeping through a calm sea miles from the point of debarkation, and tense nerves were beginning to relax. The sky was cloudy and the moon obscured, but the phosphorescence of water common in these latitudes at this season marked the prow and wake of the advancing ships with lines of smoky flame. It was this, perhaps, ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... she said in a voice that set Forel's nerves on edge, and then as the last faint hope died away, stretched out her hands with ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... they could with the least offence to the sense of relish. In every case of recovery there was a history of increasing general strength as the disease declined, of an actual increase of vital power without the support of food that had no more relish than the dose that crucified the nerves of taste. ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... lifted up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of Glory shall come in...." It came on, that heavenly invasion, and all her earthly barriers went down before it. And it was as if something strong in her, something solitary and pure, had cloven its way through the mesh of the throbbing nerves, through the beating currents of the blood, through the hot red lights of the brain, and had escaped into the peaceful blank. She remained there a moment, in the place of bliss, the divine place of the self-surrendered soul, where mortal emptiness ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... fear, simply, of assassination. This, indeed, was the dread which had hitherto hampered every manufacturer and almost every public man in the district. Helstone alone had ever repelled it. The old Cossack knew well he might be shot. He knew there was risk; but such death had for his nerves no terrors. It would have been his chosen, might he have had ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... a novel-reading boy the position is one of instinct like that of a bicycle racer. His eyes are strained, his nerves and muscles at tension—everything ready for excitement—and the book, lying open, leaves his hands perfectly free to drum on the sides of the chair, slap his legs and knees, fumble in his pockets or even scratch his head, as emotion and interest demand. Does anybody deny that the highest ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... activities, and (3) brain processes. Within each of these groups there are innumerable special problems for the comparative physiologist or psychologist. Under class 1, for instance, there is the determining of the rates of impulse transmission in the sensory and the motor nerves, (a) for a variety of stimuli, (b) for different strengths of each stimulus, (c) for different conditions of temperature, moisture, nourishment, fatigue, etc., in case of each stimulus, (d) and all this for hundreds of ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... celebrated for his patience; we may imagine that the disorder of the office tried his nerves. He seems, on the whole, however, to have been rather happy in Keokuk. There were plenty of young people there, and he was a favorite among them. But he had grown dissatisfied, and when one day some weeks later there fell into ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... obvious. The nervous system is the fundamental fact of our earthly life. All other parts of the organism exist and work for it. It controls all, and is the seat of pain and pleasure. The impressions upon the stomach, for example, resulting in a better or worse digestion, must be made through the nerves. This supreme control of the nervous system is forcibly illustrated in the change made by joyful or sad tidings. The overdue ship is believed to have gone down with her valuable, uninsured cargo. Her owner paces the wharf, sallow and wan,—appetite and digestion ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... could shake; there was also a young freeman, named Milsom, and several others, who attended the hustings every day, but held back their votes to the very last, and bravely came up to the bar when called upon. It required nerves, courage, and virtue, of no common cast, to do this, in defiance of all the authorities, as vindictive and virulent a gang of petty tyrants as ever disgraced the robes of office. In this manner the election proceeded from day to day, without any chance ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... arrow-head, if it has been recovered, into the fire. Moreover, they are careful to keep the bow-string taut and to twang it occasionally, for this will cause the wounded man to suffer from tension of the nerves and spasms of tetanus. "It is constantly received and avouched," says Bacon, "that the anointing of the weapon that maketh the wound will heal the wound itself. In this experiment, upon the relation of men of credit (though myself, as yet, am not fully inclined to believe it), ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... noted that Mary worked round the house because she liked the change from office routine, deaf to the complaining maternal voice reciting past glories in which Mary had no part. If the parlour furniture with its tidies and a Rogers group in the front window sometimes got on her nerves she forced herself to laugh over it and say: "It's mother's house, and all she has." She concerned herself far more with Luke, an active, fair-to-middling American boy somewhat inclined to be spoiled. Mary had taken Luke into the office after school hours ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... wide, open space in front of the cottage. On one side of him, and behind, spread the mountain woods but before him and to the right the larger trees were down. There was a vista—for the first time since he had sat upon a keg in the fog he forgot him-self and his foolishness, his hunger, his aching nerves, his smarting pride, everything! The beauty before him filled his heart and mind, leaving not a cranny anywhere for lesser things. Blue sea, blue sky, blue mountains, blue smoke that rose in misty spirals as from a thousand ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... bench, and opened the morning paper that I had brought out unread. During the War one felt it a duty to know the worst before breakfast; now that the English polity is threatened merely from within, one is apt to dally.... Merely from within? Is that a right phrase when the nerves of unrestful Labour in any one land are interplicated with its nerves in any other, so vibrantly? News of the dismissal of an erring workman in Timbuctoo is enough nowadays to make us apprehensive of vast and ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... singer was an accomplished actor. The leading man, in an impassioned ecstasy which possessed him from head to foot, seemed transfigured; once it was as though a strong wind had swept over the stage—their arms, their feathered fingers thrilling with an emotion that shook my nerves as well: heads and bodies followed like a field of grain before a gust. My blood came hot and cold, tears pricked my eyes, my head whirled, I felt an almost irresistible impulse to join the dancers. One drama, I think, I very nearly ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... get on my nerves," said the man. He ripped open his greatcoat and reached under it. "I've been stoned twice, when there were women in the car," he said, apologetically, "and so now at night I carry a gun." He shifted the darkened torch to his left hand, and, moving a few yards, halted ...
— The Scarlet Car • Richard Harding Davis
... all the gracious gifts of Spring, Is there another can safely surpass This delicate, voluptuous thing— This dapple-green, plump-shouldered bass? Upon a damask napkin laid, What exhalations superfine Our gustatory nerves pervade, ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... 'but only the greatest joy and peace I've ever known.' The little glass of calmant was untouched; it was not a drug that had soothed the exhausted nerves. In this room at any rate the spell was working still. 'I was carried through the air by stars, as though my ceaseless yearning to get up and work in the world for ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... of them all. But yield to sleep's soft influence; for to lie All night thus watchful, is, itself, distress. Fear not. Deliv'rance waits, not far remote. 60 So saying, she o'er Ulysses' eyes diffused Soft slumbers, and when sleep that sooths the mind And nerves the limbs afresh had seized him once, To the Olympian summit swift return'd. But his chaste spouse awoke; she weeping sat On her soft couch, and, noblest of her sex, Satiate at length with tears, her pray'r address'd First to Diana ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... been a feeling of wrathful resentment thrilling the nerves of the gallant pony, or it is not beyond belief that he understood the danger of his master. Be that as it may, he was no sooner beside the huge brute, who slightly turned his head on hearing the clatter of the hoofs, than he ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis
... himself. He was not superstitious, but this was rather shaking to the nerves. He hurried back to the window and looked out upon the walk and down the moon-lighted sward. No sound came, save the dashing of the surf. He leaped through the open window and proceeded to inspect the grounds in that vicinity. The ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... fagging life, that generates every sort of nerve complaint, has not yet reached their mountain haunts. On those wild heights the nerves rest; the affections are not tormented; love is pure and, for this, lasting; ambition neither perverts the mind, nor consumes the conscience; there are no honours or favours to arouse envy; no artificial boundaries to ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... town. Lisa played alone and very correct; Lemm woke up, got excited, twisted a piece of paper into a roll, and conducted. Marya Dmitrievna laughed at first, as she looked at him, later on she went off to bed; in her own words, Beethoven was too agitating for her nerves. At midnight Lavretsky accompanied Lemm to his lodging and stopped there with him till three o'clock in the morning. Lemm talked a great deal; his bent figure grew erect, his eyes opened wide and flashed fire; his hair even stood up on ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... stories of houses. The refugees said that many had been killed in Wolf Hall when the floors of that building gave way under the strain of hundreds who had taken refuge there. Reports of death were everywhere exaggerated, owing to the difficulty of accurate knowledge and the shattered nerves of the sufferers. ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... wear that made gallant display in the days of the patriarchs of Communipaw. The language likewise continues unadulterated by barbarous innovations; and so critically correct is the village schoolmaster in his dialect that his reading of a Low Dutch psalm has much the same effect on the nerves as ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... told you that we have been doing this stuff for years in my country." He balanced on one foot, ready for a kick at the knife in case the old man's nerves did not settle down. "I'm not out to steal your secrets, in fact they are pretty small potatoes where I come from since every farmer has a still for cooking up his own mash and saving on taxes. I'll bet I can even put in some ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... they're all so seriously grieved on your account. He places the strokes carefully down over your back as if he were weighing out food, almost as if he were fondling you. But your lungs gasp at each stroke and your heart beats wildly; it's as if a thousand pincers were tearing all your fibers and nerves apart at once. My very entrails contracted in terror, and seemed ready to escape through my throat every time the lash fell. My lungs still burn when I think of it, and my heart will suddenly contract as if it would send the blood out through my throat. Do ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... (See p. 169.) Following the method he has pointed out, we will take a number of animals of the same species, in which the eye is not developed. They may have all the other senses, with the organs of nutrition, circulation, respiration, and locomotion. They all have a brain and nerves, and some of these nerves may be sensitive to light; but have no combination of retina, membranes, humors, etc., by which the distinct image of an object may be formed and conveyed by the optic nerve to the cognizance of the internal perception, or the ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... were alone. For five minutes thereafter the two men sat so in silence; then, at last, despite his muddled brain, the former realised that the big Irishman was observing him with a concentration that was significant. Ever short of temper, the man's nerves were stretched to the jangling point this night, and the look irritated him. ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... fold my papers, make my bow, and conclude an unprofitable business. For my subject is re-reading, the repetition of a message; and the message that we would willingly hear repeated is not that of utility but of emotion. It is the word that thrills the heart, nerves the arm, and puts new life into the veins, not that which simply conveys information. The former will produce its effect again and again, custom can not stale it. The latter, once delivered, has done its work. I see two messengers approaching; ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... "Your nerves shattered?" echoed Belle scornfully. "Tell that to someone who never lived in Gridley, Dick Prescott! You flew at that ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... April day, when the gray clouds chased each other across the leaden sky, now showing a disposition to bring out patches of blue, and again growing black and heavy as the fitful showers came pattering down. Edith was sick. The strong tension of nerves she had endured for four long weeks was giving way. She could not keep up longer; and Richard breakfasted and dined without her, while with an aching head she listened to the rain beating against ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... he frowned in the darkness; Ashton got on his nerves; he rather wished he had not come to see ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... till you got your nerves. We'd a business with Sheila just at first; she's rather fluttersome. Well, anyway, you've got through the ordeal, and now you're a full-fledged 'bud.' Aren't ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... stool the bands on his arms were loosened and they proceeded to unloosen and rewind his arms. This time they wound them tighter than before. At the ends of these bands are brass rings which are placed next to the flesh and made to press upon the nerves. This time Mr. Choi said as they wound his right arm he felt a sharp pain and at once noticed that he had lost the use of his arm. It was paralyzed. Mr. Choi was tortured five times in all—one every three days. The first torture lasted one hour and the succeeding ones were ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... New York, where I soon projected means to live in some measure agreeable to my rank, though I was destitute of cash. My constitution was almost worn out by such a long and barbarous captivity. * * * In consequence of a regular diet and exercise my blood recruited, and my nerves in a great measure recovered their former tone * * * in the ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... that," it said. "The trouble is, I've had such a bad case of war nerves. Why, sometimes I jump out of my skin ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd
... degrees or shades and mixtures, as green, scarlet, purple, sea-green, and the rest, come in only by the eyes. All kinds of noises, sounds, and tones, only by the ears. The several tastes and smells, by the nose and palate. And if these organs, or the nerves which are the conduits to convey them from without to their audience in the brain,—the mind's presence-room (as I may so call it)—are any of them so disordered as not to perform their functions, ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... see what can be done. My first remedy, which you may possibly not care much for, is for you to pass six weeks in the country, where you will not see those objects which impress your brain, acting on the seventh pair of nerves, and causing that lumbar discharge which no doubt leaves you ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... gift God has given us in our power to think. What a mysterious and deep-hid gift it is! Nerves and sensations, a few convolutions in the brain, acts of attention and observation, certain reactions following certain stimuli: the result, a world of worlds spread out before us; unlimited ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... wondering what secret it might veil, I suddenly heard the sound of steps within the room and saw a shadow pass backward and forward against the little slit of dim light which shone out from under the door. A mad, unreasoning terror rose up in me at the sight, Mr. Holmes. My overstrung nerves failed me suddenly, and I turned and ran—ran as though some dreadful hand were behind me clutching at the skirt of my dress. I rushed down the passage, through the door, and straight into the arms of Mr. ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... airlessness, the bustle and the plaster, scaffolding, bricks, and dust all about him, and that special Petersburg stench, so familiar to all who are unable to get out of town in summer—all worked painfully upon the young man's already overwrought nerves. The insufferable stench from the pot-houses, which are particularly numerous in that part of the town, and the drunken men whom he met continually, although it was a working day, completed the revolting misery of the picture. An expression ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... good humour, and that the man she had married was a man without moral qualities, a man who would leave her without resentment, without disgust, who would say good-by to her as to some brief habit. She could hear Bach's interminable twiddles, and this exasperated her nerves and she wept through many preludes and fugues. Later on she must have heard the fugues in a dream, for the door opened; it passed over the carpet softly; and she heard Ned saying that he hoped the piano had not kept her awake. She heard him lay the candle on the table and come over to her bedside, ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... specific association with complex feelings. But the suspension and rush of sound and movement have in themselves a strong effect; we cannot undergo them without profound excitement; and this, like martial music, nerves us to courage and, by a sort of intoxication, bears us along amid scenes which might otherwise be sickening. The vile effect of literal and disjointed renderings of suffering, whether in writing or acting, proves how necessary is the musical quality to tragedy — a fact Aristotle long ago ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana |
