"Overwrought" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... face in her mother's lap. She was overwrought and desperately tired. Mrs. Clinton felt that except for having done something towards healing the wound made by her late experience she had accomplished little. Cicely's eyes had been partially opened, ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... one of the easy chairs in the improvised office and comforted with an arm around her shoulder, to say nothing of having her hair smoothed back from her face, followed by a kiss on her white forehead, before her overwrought ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... matters. We have only to recall recitations from the platform or before the curtain of some of Mr Kipling's popular poetry to realise, sometimes a little painfully, that verse is for him not a threshold of the authentic Hall of Song, but, too often, a door out of reality into the sentimental and overwrought. ...
— Rudyard Kipling • John Palmer
... individuals to an exaggerated extent. But the number of patients in the hospital was rapidly diminishing, and, for money, those were to be found who could supply Ruth's place. But to her it was owing that the overwrought fear of the town was subdued; it was she who had gone voluntarily, and, with no thought of greed or gain, right into the very jaws of the fierce disease. She bade the inmates of the hospital farewell, and after carefully submitting herself to the purification recommended by Mr Davis, the ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... for the gamin. He was still that. He had not yet been transformed into the gentleman he aspired to become, and in a way that was more honest than courteous he forestalled another hysterical outburst on the part of his overwrought benefactress. ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... first by the anticipation of the catastrophe, then by its description; and the intervening period, when it was actually going forward, is filled up by the recital of sublime lyric poetry, at once causing the stop of time to be forgotten, affording a brief respite to the overwrought feelings, and yet keeping up the enthusiastic and elevated state of mind ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... Pepeeta that sympathy which alone could soothe the sorrow of her soul. The sweet atmosphere of this home; the consciousness that she was among friends; the knowledge that they would do all they could to find the wanderer whom every one loved with such devotion, gave to Pepeeta's overwrought feelings an ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... have," said Alison, lighting a pipe. "Bound to. I feel rather overwrought myself. Let's go and ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... offer innumerable opportunities for intimacies which may or may not fall short of actual sexual relations. Attention has been called to this situation by social workers among wage-earning girls. It has been a distressingly frequent experience in my special practice to find that the young man, overwrought by the excitement of wooing, has exposed himself elsewhere to infection and unwittingly punished the trustfulness of his fiancee by infecting her with syphilis through a subsequent kiss. The publication of banns before marriage is worth while, and unmistakable testimony ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... certain. She was mine the moment I looked upon her. And by the same token she knew that I belonged to her above all men. I strode to her. She half-lifted from her couch as if drawn upward to me. And then we looked with all our eyes, blue eyes and black, until Pilate's wife, a thin, tense, overwrought woman, laughed nervously. And while I bowed to the wife and gave greeting, I thought I saw Pilate give Miriam a significant glance, as if to say, "Is he not all I promised?" For he had had word of my coming from Sulpicius ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... enquiry at her face, the difficulty of answering met and joined with a small tide of indignation at its being demanded of her. She did not want to be angry, and she was very near being ready to cry. Her mind was in that state of overwrought fulness when a little stir is more than the feelings can bear. Among conflicting tides, the sense of the ludicrous at last got the uppermost; and she laughed, as one laughs whose nerves are not just under control; heartily and merrily. Mrs. ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... wastes. Once, when those summer months, Where flown, and autumn brought its annual show Of oars with oars contending, sails with sails, Upon Windander's spacious breast, it chanced That—after I had left a flower-decked room (Whose in-door pastime, lighted up, survived To a late hour), and spirits overwrought Were making night do penance for a day Spent in a round of strenuous idleness— My homeward course led up a long ascent, Where the road's watery surface, to the top Of that sharp rising, glittered to the moon And bore the semblance of another stream Stealing with silent ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... silence there, in which the throbbing of her own frightened heart seemed to her overwrought imagination to fill the ship ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... state of mind, I had not a clear enough insight into my condition to realize that treatment and a restricted degree of liberty were what I needed, since continued freedom might further inflame an imagination already overwrought. ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... the first to recover, and kneeling by the panting, overwrought horse he passed his hand gently over the tangled mane and down the foam-flecked face. The red eye rolled up at him; but it was wonder not hatred, a prayer and not a threat, which he could read in it. As he stroked the reeking muzzle, the horse whinnied gently and thrust his nose into the hollow ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... beaches on the Siberian coast? I'm unable to say. I lost track of the passing hours. Time was in abeyance on the ship's clocks. As happens in the polar regions, it seemed that night and day no longer followed their normal sequence. I felt myself being drawn into that strange domain where the overwrought imagination of Edgar Allan Poe was at home. Like his fabled Arthur Gordon Pym, I expected any moment to see that "shrouded human figure, very far larger in its proportions than any dweller among men," thrown across the cataract that protects the outskirts ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... creep stealthily upon me. I craned my neck about, and stared through the inky darkness for the twin spots of blazing hate which I knew would herald the coming of my executioner. So real were the imaginings of my overwrought brain that I broke into a cold sweat in absolute conviction that some beast was close before me; yet the hours dragged, and no sound broke the ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Elsie, "in the distance, but of course I had no idea who it was. How very kind you have been to me!" and again the tears were trembling in the nervous eyes of the poor, overwrought girl. ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare
... teeth, ribs, and thigh-bones, not improbable that many thereof were persons of minor age, or women. Confirmable also from things contained in them. In most were found substances resembling combs, plates like boxes, fastened with iron pins, and handsomely overwrought like the necks or bridges of musical instruments, long brass plates overwrought like the handles of neat implements, brazen nippers to pull away hair, and in one a kind of opale, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 52, October 26, 1850 • Various
... nightfall," was her conclusion, "and wait his coming, to tell him of my—of my mistake, for otherwise he may bring Joggles back and be captured. If I can only do it without being discovered, for dadda—" and the anxious, overwrought, tired girl wept the rest of the sentence ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... determine no way of expressing in this language. Acts and facts, of course. I shall not attempt to capture the subjectivity which is the charm, only to transcribe the physical datum—perhaps even data, who knows? My companions, for example: They were in appearance overwrought, looking about them continually, stopping entirely and drawing me with them into the shelter of a "door" when another man, this one wearing blue clothing and a visored hat appeared. Yet they were clearly devoted to me, at that moment, since they had put aside their own projects in order to escort ...
— The Day of the Boomer Dukes • Frederik Pohl
... truth. The iron nature, so long overwrought, now utterly unstrung, had yielded for the first time to the stress of nature and of events. The relief from what he had taken to be death had come swiftly, and the reaction brought a lethal calm of its own. If he had indeed recognized ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... explosions, with pitch-dark comers, and those ghost-like forms in the misty heights, but Mr. Hume would not allow his patient time to brood over the surroundings. He shaved off fragments of biltong for him to eat, talking cheerfully all the time, and at last had the satisfaction of seeing the overwrought nerves of the lad quieted in sleep. Then the anxiety that had filled him all the time appeared in the expression of his face, and he stepped away a few yards to send a call for the woman ringing up into the vault. The cry ran away mournfully in a series of diminishing echoes, ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... was still overwrought and nerve-strung: for some reason she could not afterwards have explained, she felt spiteful and uncontrolled, goaded into stupid fury by the look of insolence and of triumph with which ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... obscured. The yawning chasm was not the same. It circled wider, redder, deeper. It was a weird, ghastly mouth of hell. Gale stood fascinated, unable to tell how much he saw was real, how much exaggeration of overwrought emotions. There was no beauty here, but an unparalleled grandeur, a sublime scene of devastation and desolation which might have had its counterpart upon the burned-out moon. The mood that gripped Gale now added to its somber portent an unshakable ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... weird old tree-trunk in the back yard. Thence, I could see the lights from the windows, and at times hear the sound of voices. There, I could stand in the starlight and look up to the heavens. I had been there before, but never in such a heartsick and forlorn condition. I was too overwrought to think, yet had to do something to ease the tension. I moved around and looked toward Jakie's grave, then returned to the side of the tree-trunk which had escaped the ravages of fire, and ran my finger up and down, feeling the holes which the red-headed woodpecker ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... phenomenon. In all the range of human probabilities, what errand could lead her at ten o'clock on such a night to that lonely hilltop, and on down the road into the country beyond? It was manifest that his own mind had shaped the vision from the pale vapours, and he realised how weary and overwrought he had become. His sensation was now almost one of fear, as if he had seen the ghost of a loved one rising out of the mists of a remote and passionate past. A strange impulse seized him to follow the phantom further, but he was shivering with ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... with delight the first visit after several months from her friends Dora and Gerda Leach. During the summer their father's health had suffered so severely that the overwrought man found himself compelled to choose between a long holiday abroad and the certainty of complete collapse if he tried to pursue his ordinary life. The family went away, and returned in November, when it seemed probable that the money-making machine known as Mr. Leach ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... every thing upon the surface of society wore a calm and peaceful aspect; whilst not one note of preparation was heard to warn the devoted inhabitants of woe and death, a gloomy fanatic was revolving in the recesses of his own dark, bewildered, and overwrought mind, schemes of indiscriminate massacre to the whites. Schemes too fearfully executed as far as his fiendish band proceeded in their desolating march. No cry for mercy penetrated their flinty bosoms. No acts of remembered kindness made the least impression ...
— The Confessions Of Nat Turner • Nat Turner
... Anthony's. There was no open quarrel between them. Wollaston dropped into the music room sometimes, late in the afternoon, to ask how the opera was getting along. His manner to March on these occasions was one of, perhaps, slightly overwrought politeness, but the intention of it did not seem hostile. Toward Paula he presented the image of humorous, affectionate concern, the standard ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... while expressing a measure of admiration for the significance of Plautus in literature, he is impelled to say: "The bold, coarse style of Plautus and his famous jokes, savour of his familiarity with the vulgar ... mostly inclines to the farcical, to overwrought and often disgusting drollery." This is doubtless true, but, by making the incidental a criterion for the whole, it gives a gross misconception to one that has not ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... for, ardent as my admiration of Wordsworth's poetry is, I confess that I have not succeeded in imbibing so much of his philosophy as to feel as he would doubtless have felt in a similar situation. Both mine and my companion's overwrought limbs, however, derived no slight advantage from the halt, and well it was that they did so, for the task which awaited them on the morrow was a hard one. After repeated consultations with the burgomaster, ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... to-morrow," he promised, "or rather later on to-day. She's a little overwrought. ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the 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 ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... was awful good chocolate. Oh, Dolly, our cake was so beautiful!" And Dotty's overwrought nerves gave way and she burst ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... are interesting, and contain the solemn and memorable scene of the cremation of Shelley's remains—one of the most vivid and impressive narratives I know. Then there are the chapters of Leigh Hunt's Autobiography which deal with Shelley, a little overwrought perhaps, but real biography for all that, and interesting as bringing out the contrast between the simplicity and generosity of Shelley and the affectation, bad breeding, and unscrupulous selfishness of Byron. Medwin's Biography and Mrs. ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of the secrets and the sorrows that were aching in his own breast. Yet he had not allowed himself to run to waste in the long time since he was left alone to his trials and fears. He had resisted the seductions which always beset solitary men with restless brains overwrought by depressing agencies. He disguised no misery to himself with the lying delusion of wine. He sought no sleep from narcotics, though he lay with throbbing, wide-open eyeballs through all the weary hours ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... respectable, I re-entered the sitting-room, and waited with impatience for the return of my friends. Oh! the horrors of suspense! that tooth-ache of the mind, in which each moment of anxiety r stretched on the rack of expectation, appears to the overwrought senses an eternity of gnawing anguish!—of all the mental tortures with which I am acquainted, ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... almost to the breaking point, and when Sir Otho spoke so repellently, she realised how foolish her little plan had been, and how hopeless was her dream of reconciling this dreadful old man and his daughter. Partly, then, because of her overwrought nerves, and partly because of the downfall of her cherished ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... the door of the outer shop. But Ruth had walked to the gate to see if Babbie was coming and, as Maud emerged from the shop, the two women came face to face. For an instant they did not speak. Maud, excited and overwrought by her experience with the letter and her interview with Jed, was still struggling for self-control, and Ruth, knowing that the other must by this time have received that letter and learned her brother's secret, was inclined ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the neighborhood gathered in front of Brent's and had to be told the particulars, "Billy Ray's daughter" being pronounced the heroine everybody expected her to be, while that young lady herself, now that the affair could be called closed, was in a condition bordering on the electric. "Overwrought and nervous," said Miss Porter, "but laughing ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... was difficult for him to calm his overwrought nerves, and the sun was already high when at last he fell ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... calmness in his confidence. There is nothing hysterical or overwrought or morbid in these brief words, so peaceful in their trust, so moderate and restrained in their rapture. Are our anticipations of the future moulded on such a pattern? Do we think of it as quietly as this man did? Are we as tranquilly sure about it? ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the intensity of my wonder. This face, so ivory pale, wore not the ashen aspect of one that would never wake again. There was a warmth about that pallor. And then I caught my nether lip in my teeth until it bled, and it is a miracle that I did not scream, seeing how overwrought was my condition. ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... decided not to dine downstairs together on that evening—they were, all of them, overwrought and the situation was strained; they were wondering what he was going to do. There were, of course, a thousand things to be done, but he was glad that they had left him alone for that night at any rate. He wanted to ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... Beale or Clive Hammond could have made that trip, on the pretext of speaking to Nita about Ralph!... Motive: murder to end blackmail. Naturally such a theory would not include both of them, but if one of them was being blackmailed and made use of the pretext of warning Nita of Ralph's overwrought condition—" ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... terrible. Reb Shemuel trembled from head to foot. Hannah's cheek was drawn and white. She seemed overwrought beyond endurance. There followed a silence only less ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the traditional horns, would make its appearance, and there would very likely be no apparent evidence of fraud. Even supposing some portion of the absurd theory enunciated by the Duke de Frontignan were true, and some strange thing begotten of electric fluid and overwrought imagination were to make its appearance, that could hardly be considered by a sane man as being equivalent to an interview with the devil. The Abbe told himself that it would be most likely impossible ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... and, because she was overwrought and a trifle hysterical, she laughed a good deal. Galusha laughed even longer than she did, not because he was hysterical, but because laughing was very much easier and safer ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the gods offer you," they sang. "Here in the cold light of day, where there's no question of her being overwrought, she's asking you to settle things for her. Take it, you fool, take it. ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... something?" cried the Professor, unable to restrain his impatience longer, bis overwrought nerves ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Rockies • Frank Gee Patchin
... not broken by a heart-beat. All listened for a stir, a movement where they could see nothing. But the stillness remained unbroken. The silence was absolute. The figure which they had believed themselves to have seen had been a dream, an imagination of their overwrought minds. It could not be otherwise. The door had been locked, entrance was impossible; yet doubt held them powerless. The moments were making years of themselves. To each came in a flash a review of every earthly incident they had experienced, every wicked ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... background, Yoshio, capable and devoted, stood between him and the petty annoyances that inevitably occur in travelling—annoyances that in his overwrought state would have been doubly annoying—with a thoughtfulness that was silently expressed in a dozen different devices for his comfort. That the Jap knew a great deal more than he himself did of the tragedy that had happened in the little house on the hill Craven ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... required the physician's visits, but her mind was very far from being poised in the just balance of its faculties. She was of a good natural constitution and a fine temperament; but she had been overwrought by all that she had passed through, and, though happening to have been born in another land, she was of American descent. Now, it has long been noticed that there is something in the influences, climatic or other, here prevailing, ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Burnside had said. If anybody could manage Max's proud stubbornness, it was Jarvis, with his cool command of himself and his inborn habit of courtesy to everybody. Yet even Jarvis had his hands full to-night. Max's physical condition of fatigue and overwrought nerves made him more than ordinarily captious and ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... the darkness, the silence, and by the identity of the surroundings, the memory of that vision returned to him as he stood there with a vividness which, in the overwrought condition of his nerves, it was impossible for him to distinguish from reality. Once more a radiant figure glided noiselessly from the cabinet, which was darkly outlined in the corner of the room, and stood before him. Once more her eyes burned on his, until, ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... dreadful childish sensation received when I saw my father's body just as it lay at the close of the death-agony, can even now be revived by the sight of a disordered bed; such is the force of early impressions, especially when they are received by a nervous system that has been overwrought by the extreme of ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... some strange heavy fluid, denser than any common air. He could have fancied that the world had sunken in the night, far below its proper level, into some close, thick abysm of its own atmosphere. The Christian people of the town, hardly less terrified and overwrought by the haunting sickness about them than their pagan neighbours, were at prayer before the tomb of the martyr; and even as Marius pressed among them to a place beside Cornelius, on a sudden the hills seemed to roll like a sea in motion, around the whole compass ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... they were clasped in close embrace as if nothing should ever separate them again. Words were impossible, at first, and not till she saw that even joy was dangerous for her overwrought patient did Aunt Sally, the nurse, interpose and bodily lift the daughter from the parent's arms. All at once her own calmness and courage forsook good Mrs. Benton, and now that she saw the lost girl restored, visibly present in the flesh, anger possessed her till she longed to shake, rather ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... conception of the Doge of Venice from the modern drama in our language which purports to relate his story, will wander as far from historic truth as from nature and probability. The Chronicle of Sanuto, which the poet has avowed to be his basis, presents no trace of that false, overwrought, and unintelligible passion which, in the tragedy, is palmed upon us for nice sensitiveness to injured honour. We are told, indeed, that the angry old man had once so far indulged his choleric humour as to fell to the ground a somewhat tardy bishop during the celebration of a holy solemnity. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 481, March 19, 1831 • Various
... that took the elastic out of the arteries and made hard knots of muscle out of Youth's sleek suppleness, that wore out nerve and stamina and made brain and bones weary from excess of effort and endurance overwrought. Yes, he had done better than all of them. There were none of his old fighting partners left. He was the last of the old guard. He had seen them all finished, and he had had a hand in finishing some ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... but borne to the ear on the fresh morning air, foretold the rising of another storm. The sound grew in intensity, even while she listened; and yet for a moment she misunderstood him. "O God!" she cried, out of the agony of nerves overwrought, "will that bell never stop? Will it never stop? Will no ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... girl, always evidently one of dominant emotions, was overwrought, and something told him she had no business to express the thoughts which filled her mind, that she would be sorry later that she had spoken. He had interrupted her by a gesture. Now his voice ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... ask me now! Wait until my nerves get settled. It never stopped, and fast as it reeled off I recognized Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Weber—lots of Weber—Marschner, and Chopin. Yes, Chopin! The orchestration seemed overwrought and coarse and the form—well, formlessness is the only word to describe it. There was an infernal sort of skill in the instrumentation at times, a short-breathed juggling with other men's ideas, but no development, ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... ye winds, whose fitful sound Seems from some faint Aeolian harp-string caught; Seal up the hundred wakeful eyes of thought As Hermes with his lyre in sleep profound The hundred wakeful eyes of Argus bound; For I am weary, and am overwrought With too much toil, with too much care distraught, And with the iron crown of anguish crowned. Lay thy soft hand upon my brow and cheek, O peaceful Sleep! until from pain released I breathe again uninterrupted breath! Ah, with what subtile meaning did ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... him, firstly, in order that no unlicensed hand shall commandeer it unbeknownst, and secondly, so that he shall be ready to go in directly his predecessor is out. There is an ill-concealed restiveness about his movements, as he watches the batsmen getting set, that betrays an overwrought spirit. Then of a sudden one of them plays a ball on to his pad. ''s that?' asks the bowler, with an overdone carelessness. 'Clean out. Now I'm in,' and already he is rushing up the middle of ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... couldn't on account of them on the outside; so there was fights and accidents, and different ones tromped on, and screams of fear. And this brought a lot bigger crowd that pressed in and made the centre ones more anguished. I don't know. That poor animal had been imposed on all day and must of been overwrought. It was sore vexed by now and didn't care who knew it. Lots ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... stripped off all the blossoms of his life; and for several years past he has been insensible to the art for which he once lived. He spends days and days sitting in front of a piece of outstretched primed canvas, with his eyes fixed upon it in a stare; that he calls painting. Into what an overwrought condition the description of such a picture brings him, you have just seen for yourself. Besides this he is haunted by another unhappy thought, which makes my life to be a sad and agitated one; but I regard it as a fatality by which I am swept ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... compels me to submit the ensuing imitation of Macaulay—the most easily parodied of all prose writers—to the judgment of my readers. It was written by the late Abraham Hayward. Macaulay is contrasting, in his customary vein of overwrought and over-coloured detail, the evils of arbitrary government with those of ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... deep and breathless hush of overwrought interest and intense (yet strange to say not unpleasing) terror lay like a mighty and awful ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... a great sob, and remained silent for nearly half a minute, sitting so still that she seemed like one dead. In that brief time she had chained down her overwrought feelings and could speak without a tremor ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... "You're a little overwrought, Gerald," Mr. Fentolin declared. "Sit quietly in my easy-chair for a few moments. Walt until I have examined Mr. Dunster's belongings. Ah! ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the flowery expression; avoid metaphorical speech; flee from the lure of the overwrought style. In the first place it is so old-fashioned that audiences suspect it at once. It fails to move them. It may plunge its user into ridiculous failure. In the excitement of spontaneous composition a man sometimes takes risks. He may—as Pitt is reported to have ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... suddenly shouted the overwrought professor, losing control of himself. "I won't be talked to this way, do you hear? I won't! How can a man think? I'm a member of the faculty of the Imperial University. I've ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... to reach Griffin and bring him to life and safety, when the overwrought system gave way. He loosed his handhold on the ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... a pause, during which Billie allowed her gaze to travel casually about the room. Sam occupied the intermission by staring furtively at her profile. He was by now in a thoroughly overwrought condition, and the thumping of his heart sounded to him as if workmen were mending the street outside. How beautiful she looked, with that red hair peeping out beneath her hat ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... much of these things," he said soothingly—"You are evidently overwrought with study and excessive zeal. Much that you say may be true; nevertheless the Church—OUR Church—stands firm among overwhelming contradictions,—and we, its ministers, do what we can. I myself am disposed to think that the multitude of the saved ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... His overwrought mind and body soon made him ill. He sought by violent emotions and excessive fatigue to escape from the thoughts which were persecuting him like spectres, and driving him to his death. In vain the physicians commanded rest and quiet. ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... changed in her inflexible unyielding look, he felt that he could cope with her. He thought a sudden terror, occasioned by this night-alarm, had subdued her; not the less readily, for her overwrought condition. Throwing open the doors, he followed, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... moment, the tension of her nerves suddenly giving way, she broke down utterly, and burst into a perfect passion of tears. Leslie had sense enough to recognise that this hysterical outburst would probably relieve his companion's sorely overwrought feelings, and do her good; he therefore allowed her to have her cry out in peace, without making any ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... shared, though in different degrees and forms, by the whole little party—the soul of one in it totally absorbed. But owing to some insurmountable obstacles, occasioning delays, by the exhausted state of the overwrought Lady Albina; and notwithstanding the necessity of getting on as fast as possible, to be out of the reach of the enraged earl, should he have missed and traced his daughter to Somerset Castle, the fugitives ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... ceased to struggle; while, as I lowered my head from the painful position into which I had strained it, I felt relieved to know that the poor, overwrought companion of my adventure could forget his sorrows for ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... no time for angry words," said the Pastor Arentz, pushing his way through the group of bewildered men and overwrought women. "He can scarcely be dead; let me look at him, I am something of a doctor," and he knelt by the senseless and ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... the Colonel addressed the Officers at some length. "The old man" always had an impressive way of speaking, and darkness and overwrought nerves doubtless magnified this. He spoke in subdued tones, as if awed by the intense ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... contained an account of the time, place, and other conditions chosen by Temple for some deadly experiment. Sir John most probably re-enacted the scene under precisely similar conditions, and the effect on his overwrought imagination was so vivid as to upset the balance of his mind. The time chosen was no doubt the night of the 23d of October, and I cannot help thinking that the place was one of those evil-looking and ruinous sea-rooms which had so terrifying an effect on Miss Maltravers. ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... was a momentary silence between them. Then the emotion astir within her swept all before it. Turning suddenly, she flung both arms round his neck and hid her face upon his shoulder, her breath coming in short, dry sobs, like the breath of an overwrought child. ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... office, went no farther, but ventured timidly into the open vestibule of Haddo's Hole. Any doubts they might have had about this being the right place were soon dispelled. Bobby heard them and darted out to investigate. And suddenly they were all inside, overwrought Ailie on the floor, clasping the little dog and ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... of the lessons and the tasks imposed; even the realm of my young dreams seemed closing against me little by little. The first dismal, foggy weather, and the first gray days added a greater desolation and sadness to my already overwrought feelings. The uncouth chimney-sweeps had returned, and their yearly autumn cry was again heard in the streets. Theirs was a cry that in my earlier years wrung my heart and caused my tears to flow. When ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... with overwrought wives. In the prison the men were suffering real hardship. The sanitary arrangements were shocking. Twenty-two Reformers were crowded into a room thirty feet by ten. This room had been hastily built of corrugated ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond
... her overwrought state, and invented some excuse for her non-appearance, for no inquiries were made or calls given. At half-past six the sun settled down upon the levels with the aspect of a great forge in the heavens; and presently a monstrous pumpkin-like moon arose on the other hand. The pollard willows, tortured ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... the garden the night through. Nobody thought of going indoors; but after a while we became so weary with watching and overwrought with excitement that, despite the danger and the noise we could not keep our eyes open. Before the southern cross began to bend we were all asleep, Angela and I wrapped in our cobijas, the others on the turf ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... don't know," she answered, drying her averted eyes. "I suppose I am overwrought from not sleeping, and from thinking how we should ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... this conversation the Emperor, moreover, appeared overwrought, and irritable. As the years begin to weigh upon William II. the family traditions, the retrograde feelings of the Court, and, above all, the impatience of the soldiers, are gaining more ascendency over his mind. Perhaps he may feel I know not ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... notice of her words. He knew that she was overwrought and broken-hearted, and that it was no time now ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... the sea was blowing fresh and free over the village, and beyond it to the little churchyard, the God's acre of Northbourne. Kneeling beside one of the grassy mounds therein was Theo Carnegy, tears rolling down her earnest face. The girl was overwrought by home-worries, for Theo was none of the crying sort, as a rule. But there are times in the lives of each of us when all things seem too difficult for our feeble hands to smooth out; the knots, the difficulties, become hopelessly entangled; we ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... QUEEN: Your brain is overwrought with these deep thoughts. Come, I will sing to you; let us go try These airs from Italy; and, as we pass The gallery, we'll decide where that Correggio Shall hang—the Virgin Mother 475 With her child, born the King of heaven and earth, Whose reign is men's salvation. And you shall see ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... wanted to love; if her brother were to die to- morrow, she didn't believe she would really care. It was terrible; if people only knew what she was like they would look the other way when she passed down the street.... But, no, all this was morbid nonsense; she was overwrought, and nervous, and that proved that she had a heart. ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... time, she's really gone," and the excited news-bringer burst into tears. The poor soul was completely overwrought; she looked tired and wan, as if she had spent her forces in sympathy as well as hard work. She felt in her great bundle for a pocket handkerchief, but was not successful in the search, and finally produced a faded gingham apron with long, narrow strings, ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... the line. They, however, were recovered; and, on the whole, I feel grateful to the check system of the American railways. And then, too, one never hears of extra luggage. Of weight they are quite regardless. On two or three occasions an overwrought official has muttered between his teeth that ten packages were a great many, and that some of those "light fixings" might have been made up into one. And when I came to understand that the number of every check was entered in a book, and re- entered at every change, I did whisper to my wife ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... while carpenters hastily propped up tottering roofs and walls, the occasional warning shouts when men fell back to watch other huge masses of rock fall into the black drift, and the instants when some rescuer, overwrought, thought he heard sounds of "rock telegraphing" and bade the others pause and listen. There were those among the men on the street who had seen the desperate, melancholy conclusions, when hope, flaming ever ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... the middle of work. It's the duty of both they are well aware To preserve their precious lives with care; It's their duty, when feeling overwrought, To preserve their lives with Puddin' ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... "that handsome young lad. Could it he possible? Oh, how miraculous!" He folded his hands and stood in silence, till his overwrought feelings broke forth in a torrent of tears. At last he said: "How was he saved? How did he reach this house and these ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne
... Its familiar features seemed to be drawn into a diabolical grimace of contempt at his stupidity, and it looked as if it were conscious and wanted to throw the wrongly-made piece at his head. But he was overwrought just then and ...
— The Little City Of Hope - A Christmas Story • F. Marion Crawford
... dismal howl. The pastor sat listening mournfully to this tempestuous commotion. Once he thought he heard a noise as of a door opening near by him, and softly closing; but as he saw no one, he concluded it was his overwrought fancy that had played him a trick. He seated himself again in his easy-chair before the stove, which spread a dim light from its draught-hole into the ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... waiting for her overwrought emotion to subside. At length he gently asked, "Do you wish ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... tanner, hoarsely, "I ha' come about a matter." There he stopped, not knowing what to say, for he was overwrought. ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... a milder ray, Like summer clouds all silvery, smooth, and fair, Till slowly charged with thunder they display Terror to earth, and tempest to the air, Had held till now her soft and milky way; But overwrought with Passion and Despair, The fire burst forth from her Numidian veins, Even as the Simoom[244] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... you are still overwrought," she countered lightly. "Why, the very atmosphere of this beautiful night ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... to tell you, child." His voice was hoarse. "You are overwrought and overstrung. I have nothing to say ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... know what the matter is," said Peggy gently, "you're tired and overwrought. Come, let us get to bed, for Mr. Bell has ordered in early start in ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... character of Ernest unnatural and impossible. But in all his idiosyncrasy, he is the Ernest Linwood of Grandison Place, just such as I have delineated him, just such as I knew and loved. I know that there are scenes that have seemed, that will seem, overwrought, and I have often been tempted to throw down the pen, regretting the task I have undertaken. But, were we permitted to steal behind the scenes of many a life drama, what startling discoveries would we make! Reality goes beyond the wildest imaginings of romance,—beyond the majestic sweep ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... Mr. Macrae, with paternal tenderness, 'you are overwrought. You have not slept all night. I must insist that you go to bed, and do not rise till you are called. The man is certainly guilty of conspiracy, that will be proved when the real Gianesi comes to hand. If not, I do not doubt that I can secure his silence. You forget ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... economic exploitation in France and of the crass commercial climate of ante-bellum America; and, (3) its constant exploration of American social, moral, and cultural issues. This said, it must be admitted that the telling of Adrienne's sad plight in Paris becomes a bit overwrought; and that the inept wooing of Mary Monson by the social cad Tom Thurston is so drawn out and sarcastic as to suggest snobbery on Cooper's part as well as on that of his elite hanky. Finally, the heroine-handkerchief's protracted ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... like that which he had suffered when Rachel said, "My head aches." He stilled it by reflecting that Helen was overwrought, and he was upheld in this opinion by his obstinate sense that she was opposed to him ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... chattel—as a thing in the hands of an owner, a beast under the lash of a driver? All this, apart from every thing incidental and extraordinary, belongs to the RELATION, in which slavery, as such, consists. All this—well fed or ill fed, underwrought or overwrought, clothed or naked, caressed or kicked, whether idle songs break from his thoughtless tongue or "tears be his meat night and day," fondly cherished or cruelly murdered;—all this ENTERS VITALLY INTO THE RELATION ITSELF, by which every slave, AS ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... rare skill calmed Miss Guerrero's dry-eyed hysteria into a gentle rain of tears, which relieved her overwrought feelings. We silently withdrew, leaving the two women, ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... some concern. She seemed so fatigued and overwrought after the long journey that he begged her to let him call Mrs. Middleton that she might have a cup of tea and go to her room before Elsie's return. The latter had gone into town but would be back very soon, for she went into the library ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... as being a very normal girl: nothing morbid about her, nothing nervous or false or overwrought. You did not expect to find her introspective. You felt sure that her mental life was not at all the result of thoughts and reflections germinating from within, but rather of impressions and sensations that came ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... literary eclipsed warlike fame; but with the revival of letters came the revolutionary spirit before exhibited on the battle-field and in cabinets. For the artificial and elegant was substituted the melodramatic and effective; lyrics from the overwrought heart broke in dreamy sweetness from Lamartine and in simple energy from Beranger; fiction the most elaborate, incongruous, and exciting, here quaintly artistic, there morbidly scientific, revealed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... herself down upon the bed, and her overwrought feelings found relief in tears. How long she would have so remained would be impossible to say, but she had barely succeeded in locking herself in when she was startled by a gentle ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... Overwrought and excitable, he did not dare remain for the latter portion of the drama; better leave before the last act, he told himself, and, dazed by the reappearance of that vision, the old man fairly ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... that that story of yours was a ridiculous lie!" responded the Prince, brutally, being, indeed, greatly overwrought. "How do I know," he added, suddenly, "that you did not intentionally deceive me? I have only your word—what is that worth? How do I know that it was not a trick—a trick on the part of your government to involve me with England? That would be like ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... he was gone Tamara loathed the moments. She was overwrought and overstrung. Harassed by the wailing and expostulations of her family for what they termed her "rash act," worried by dressmakers and dozens of letters to write, troubled always with the one dominating fear, at last she collapsed and for two days lay ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... sound that in some fashion expressed what the drawing of his lips had made her feel. "Sweetheart—to-morrow!" he said, and kissed her again with a lingering persistence that to her overwrought nerves had in it something that was almost unendurable. It made her think of an epicurean tasting some favourite dish and smacking ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... companionship. The feel of the warm, soft body, and the thought of the velvety brown eyes which he could not see in the dark, but knew were fixed upon him with their intense, loving gaze, were soothing to his overwrought nerves. Here was something whose love could be counted upon—something as dependent upon him as he was upon Mr. Allan; yet what a joy he found in the very dependence of this devoted, soft-eyed creature! Never would he taunt Comrade ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... with some of the neighbors, Madge met him at the door and held up a warning finger. The overwrought woman had been soothed into the blessed oblivion of restoring sleep, the first she had for many hours. A motherly-looking woman whispered her intention of remaining with Mrs. Wendall all night. Mr. Wendall took Madge's ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... in this change. In his morbid and overwrought condition it seemed murderous. At last a new resolution set his lips in a stern line, and when the curtain fell on the last act his mind was made up. "I will write one more play for the sensation-loving fools, for these ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... in applause as he pilloried his opponents, the ferocity of his attacks being surpassed only by the eloquence of his periods. With Clinton, speaking was serious business. He lacked the oratorical gift and the art of concealing the labour of his overwrought and too elaborate sentences; but his addresses afforded ample evidence of the capacity and richness of his mind. In spite of great faults, both candidates commanded the loyalty of followers who swelled with pride because of their courage and splendid ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander |
