"Nerve" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... every side, and knowing that the South intend the destruction of this Union—were I to stand before the congregated world, I would declare it—I will hew slavery from crest to hip, from hip to heel, and cut my way through white, black, and yellow—nerve, muscles, bone—tribes and races, to the Gulf of ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... supreme, it is nothing. Our cousin and Flora were not formally engaged, but their betrothal was understood by all of us as a thing of course. He did not allude to the stranger; but as day followed day, he saw with every nerve all that passed. Gradually—so gradually that she scarcely noticed it—our cousin left Flora more and more with the soft-eyed stranger, whom he saw she preferred. His treatment of her was so full of tact, he still walked and talked with her so familiarly that ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... only. To live for thee shall satisfy both my heart and my ambition. If thou wilt be kind, no softer loveliness shall be desired by me. George Robinson has never been untrue to his vows, nor shalt thou, O my chosen one, find him so now. For thee will I labour, straining every nerve to satisfy thy wishes. Woman shall henceforward be to me a doll for the adornment of whose back it will be my business to sell costly ornaments. In no other light will I regard the loveliness of her form. O sweet Commerce, teach me thy lessons! Let me ever buy in the cheapest market and ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... of will and nerve he forced his left hand across the gyrating key-bank to the Bergenholm switch. He snapped it, and in the instant of its closing a vast, calm peace descended, blanket-like. For, fortunately, the Berg still worked; the flitter and all her contents and appurtenances were inertialess. Nothing ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith
... talk of nerves and muscles, sense-organs, reflex arcs, stimulation, and muscular response, and we feel that somehow these things do not reach the core of the matter, and that they never can; that spirit is not nerve or muscle; and that intelligent conduct, to say nothing of conscious thought, can never be reduced to reflex arcs and the like—just as a printing press is not merely wheels and rollers, and still less is it chunks of iron. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... face. Eight o'clock, and they have been in saddle almost incessantly since yesterday afternoon, weighed down with the tidings of the fell disaster that has robbed them of their comrades, and straining every nerve to ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... I doubt if that would reassure Cayley. The brown suit hid a secret, and therefore the brown suit had to be hidden. We all know that in theory the safest hiding-place is the most obvious, but in practice very few people have the nerve to risk it." ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... read this plain, unvarnished tale without admiring the stern resolution, the unbending pride, the loftiness of spirit that seemed to nerve the hearts of these self-taught heroes and to raise them above the instinctive feelings of human nature? When the Gauls laid waste the city of Rome, they found the senators clothed in their robes and seated with stern tranquillity in their curule chairs; in this manner they suffered ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... Government for the injuries done its people was righteous and proper. It was open to it to bear them under adequate protest, sympathizing with the evident embarrassments of the old cradle of the race; or, on the other hand, to do as she was doing, strain every nerve to compel the cessation of outrage. The Administration preferred to persist in its military and naval economies, putting forth but one-half of its power, by measures of mere commercial restriction. These impoverished its own people, and divided national sentiment, ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... to carry out some sweeping act of confiscation, and this naturally added to the excitement. For the first time in Irish history a genuinely contested election took place. Both parties strained every nerve, both felt their future interests to depend upon the struggle. When at last all the members were collected it was found that the Government had a majority, though a narrow one, of twenty-four. Barely, however, had Parliament assembled, before a violent quarrel broke out ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... was severe; but it was insignificant as compared to that of any other minute of the past six weeks. The limb was removed very near to the shoulder-joint. As the second incision was made, I felt a strange lightning of pain play through the limb, defining every minutest fibril of nerve. This was followed by instant, unspeakable relief, and before the flaps were brought together I was sound asleep. I have only a recollection that I said, pointing to the arm which lay on the floor: "There is the pain, and here am I. How queer!" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... lot since you rescued us, and what we've just heard has given me the nerve to say it. Steve, of course, wouldn't dare suggest such a thing until we're safely back on Earth, so I will." Her deep brown eyes held his steadily. "All those girls got married—why, some of them have babies ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... I suspected that he had been drinking to nerve himself to what he regarded as a disagreeable but unavoidable duty. I calmed him as well as I could, and he ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... with the triumphant jeers of the excited councillors, but my friend's teeth were tightly clenched and his face blanched to the lips. Again and again cries of agony escaped him as the red-hot iron touched him, although he exerted every nerve to maintain a dogged silence. From his back, shoulders, and chest the brutal negro ruthlessly tore pieces, holding them up to the assembled court in triumph, while the air was filled with the nauseating odour of ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... me. 'That was a wonderful shot!' he exclaimed. 'I could never have believed a woman could show such nerve and coolness.' ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... frantic women, set out for Versailles on the morning of the 5th of October, under the leadership of the ruffian Maillard who had distinguished himself at the capture of the Bastille. They overran the palace. The king again showed superb nerve; and the mob, abashed and admiring, calling "Long live the king!" withdrew to the courtyards. The unfortunate brawl in the courtyard followed; and the mishap of the night. The next day the Royal Family had to make their humiliating journey ...
— Vigee Le Brun • Haldane MacFall
... you would be in no bad company. I have a sneaking fondness for the fellow myself, and it has been my ill-fortune never to meet him. By all accounts he is a gallant scoundrel, with a nerve of iron, whereas Crosby—Oh, no, whoever Galloping Hermit may be, he ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... (since the ear also has an apparatus by which various external differences in rapidity of vibrations are distributed into different parts of the organ). But this discriminated manifold is a manifold of pitches, not of positions. How does it happen that the manifold conveyed by the optic nerve appears in consciousness as spatial, and that the relation between its elements is seen ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... says, "appetencies; give him a portion of living irritable matter (a nerve or the clipping of a nerve) to work upon; give also to his incipient or progressive forms the power of propagating their like in every stage of their alteration; and if he is to be believed, he could replenish the world with all the vegetable and animal productions which we now ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... mad, and she was curious, and she was amazed, and she was disarmed; for the very nerve of his bringing me to her staggered her so that she could hardly believe she'd seen ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... He longed for human companionship. A peon, despite the danger otherwise, would have been welcome. The whole land took on fantastic aspects. It was not normal and healthy like the regions from which he came north of the Rio Grande. Every nerve quivered. ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... was evidently a fierce one. Oldershaw's blood, in spite of his principles, was quickly up, and he evidently thought very little about me or anything else, except getting on deck as fast as he could, and joining in the fray. Our crew strained every nerve to get alongside. As we pulled by, the shouts and cries increased. The whole deck seemed one blaze of fire from the rapid discharge of pistols and muskets, while every now and then fearful shrieks burst from the bosoms of those ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... one schoolmaster—strong on facing facts and callous to camouflage, and one temperamental cheese man. (It turned out afterward, however, that the janitor could make the best cheese of them all.) Developing a cheese business is a good deal like conducting a love affair—it blows hot and cold in a nerve-racking way. It is "the Public." You never can tell about the Public! Sometimes it wants small packages for a small sum, or large packages for more, but mostly, what it frankly wants is a large package for a small sum! ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... uncertainty; it seemed to be now at Donchery, now at Bazeilles; which, it was impossible to decide, there was such a ringing, buzzing sensation in her head. At last the feeling of suspense became so acute that she felt she could not endure it longer; she must know; every nerve in her body was quivering with the ungovernable desire, so she threw a shawl over her shoulders and left the house in quest ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... twilight of his wigwam Forth into the flush of sunset Came, and wrestled with Mondamin; At his touch he felt new courage Throbbing in his brain and bosom, Felt new life and hope and vigor Run through every nerve and fibre. So they wrestled there together In the glory of the sunset, And the more they strove and struggled, Stronger still grew Hiawatha; Till the darkness fell around them, And the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah, From her ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... hast seen me in that hour, When every nerve of life was new, When pleasures fann'd youth's infant flower, And Hope her ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 400, November 21, 1829 • Various
... of acting as well as writing pieces. Assurance was one of the main features of his character, and to it he owed his success in society; but it is a remarkable fact, that on his first appearance before an audience he entirely lost all his nerve, turned pale, and could scarcely utter a syllable. He rapidly recovered, however, and from this time became a favourite performer in private theatricals, in which he was supported by Mathews and Mrs. Mathews, and some amateurs who were almost equal to any professional ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... injected intravenously in cats have no effect on respiration or blood pressure; hemolytic doses produce a sudden drop in pressure owing to liberation of potassium from the erythrocytes. The saponin increases the activity of the isolated frog heart, then stops it in systole. In frog nerve muscle preparations of this saponin reversibly interrupt stimulus ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... trembled and shivered a moment before they now became rigid and lifeless. The throttling grip of the poison at the base of his brain drew his head back until his muzzle was pointed straight up to the sky. Still he made no cry. For a space every nerve in his body was at ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... * * * * * * But that a father durst dishonour the bed of his firstborn, Folk all swear, and the house hapless with incest bewray; Or that his impious mind was blunt with fiery passion 25 Or that his impotent son sprang from incapable seed. And to be sought was one with nerve more nervous endowed, Who could better avail zone of the virgin ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... nerve to stand fire," faltered Christian. "But as to marrying, I own I've asked here and there, though without much fruit from it. Yes, there's some house or other that might have had a man for a master—such as he is—that's now ruled ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... long talk, and Ostrello seemed to be angry about something. Then this Styles seemed to threaten Ostrello and the young man seemed to lose all his nerve and wilt. I never saw a fellow change so. 'You can't do it!' I heard him say and Styles answered: 'I can and I will, if you try to interfere with my business.' Then they talked in a low tone and Styles went off in a buggy, saying he was going ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... lustful animal appetite is too powerful; it demands the sordid pleasures which the possession of gold makes possible. Nor will it be satisfied with anything else. A tramp gold-seeker is irreclaimable. His joy lies in his quest and the dreams of fortune which are all too rarely fulfilled Every nerve centre is drugged with his lust, and, like all decadents, he must fulfil the destiny which his own original weakness ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... had even the most elementary experience of driving, but Raymonde, as the elder, and the one who in general possessed the greater amount of nerve, boldly seized the reins and armed herself with the whip. Geordie released Dandy's head, and gave him a sounding smack as a delicate hint to depart, a proceeding which brought clouds of dust from his shaggy coat, and caused ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... hallway of the strange house and paused to look about him, his only emotion a keen interest that kept every nerve alert. The hallway round which he looked displayed no original features: it was a lofty, rather narrow space, the walls of which—painted to resemble marble—were defaced by time, by the passing of many skirts and the rubbing of ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... deeply flushed, her eyes so bright that they looked dark as night; but Kitty, equally excited, her heart beating, every nerve highly strung, only showed her excitement by a dewy look in the great big grey eyes, and a wild-rose bloom on the ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... of doing; nor indeed do we know how to adjust the action of the different parts, and to manage the repairs so as to get the best possible work out of it. Some overstrain it, others take needless trouble about the repairs. As yet the capacities of human muscle and nerve have never been adequately tested. We are carrying the experiments in this matter farther than they have ever gone before. We cannot know the full strength of a cord till it is broken; but we grow cautious when we see that the fibres are ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... boy? Is 't mine? and have they netted my young fledgeling? Now heaven support me, if they have! He'll own me, And share his father's ruin! But a look Would put him on his guard—yet how to give it! Now heart, thy nerve; forget thou 'rt flesh, be rock. They come, they come! That step—that step—that little step, so light Upon the ground, how heavy does it fall Upon my heart! I feel my child! (Enter Sarnem with Albert, whose eyes are riveted on Tell's bow, which Sarnem carries.) ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... moment of conception it is a minute, undifferentiated mass of protoplasm, just a single fertilized cell; at the moment of birth it consists of millions and millions of cells, which have become differentiated into numerous harmoniously working organs, and different tissues, such as brain and nerve tissue, muscular tissue, connective tissue, bone, cartilage, etc., etc. A truly wonderful process. And in the meantime this child, which is biologically a parasite (though it is not a nice name to call it by) draws its sustenance from the mother's blood, and the mother ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... music was bad enough in all conscience, whatsoever it might become when sung by youth or beauty. As it fell from the lips of Senora Moreno the air was a succession of vocal nasal disharmonies, high-pitched, strident, nerve-wracking. ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... thirty of whom were Mormons, and only eight Mormons took part in the fight. I was an entire stranger to all who were engaged in the affray, except Stewart, but I had seen the sign, and, like Samson when loaning against the pillar, I felt the power of God nerve my arm for the fray. It helps a man a great deal in a fight to know that God ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... possibility of such work from any hand of man, and if not, where has the spirit that made it vanished, and what hope may men share of its return? Not one, if the day's work must mean labor in its most exhausting form; for many women, fourteen to sixteen hours at the sewing machine, the nerve-force supplied by rank tea, and the bit of bread eaten with it, the exhausted bodies falling at last on whatever may do duty for bed, with no hope that the rising sun will bring release from trial or any ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... gave him a look of admiration. "You've got the nerve, all right," he said. "Well, so long, till we meet again," and whirling around he sauntered slowly off in the direction of the forest, ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... this: 'In the condition of society, dignified in those days with the name of civilisation, the only source of hope was the persistence of the quality called courage. Amongst a thousand nerve-destroying habits, amongst the dramshops, patent medicines, the undigested chaos of inventions and discoveries, while hundreds were prating in their pulpits of things believed in by a negligible fraction of the population, and thousands writing down today what nobody would want to read ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... death involved, searing of conscience, deadening of heart, blunting of moral faculty, fruits of death brought forth in the soul of the survivor, which are more horrifying to the enlightened consciousness than the dying groans of the stricken can be to the more bodily nerve. The thing to fear is not pain, but trespass; not suffering, but sin—the peculiar sin of war is that it corrupts while it consumes, that it demoralizes whilst it destroys. It is not because war kills that it is the ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... were beautiful in their light of strength and happy content. She was no longer a struggling girl, battling with all circumstances, and fighting her way into work, but a woman, restful, yet not resting, in perfect success; for every nerve was still alert to further progress, and every wish and ambition had been sacrificed to one great desire, which would next year be satisfied; she was going to Europe. Masters and travel awaited her eager heart, and her own hand had carved the way. Her studio in New York was filled ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... Alston was almost stunned. He had strained every nerve, yet here he was behind the children-pickers, behind the gray old women stiff with rheumatism and broken with childbearing and with doing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... year his yoke had been thrown off, his petty princes expelled, and Tirhakah reinstated as sole monarch over the "Two Regions."[14169] It was the determination of Asshur-bani-pal, on becoming king, to strain every nerve and devote his utmost energy to the re-conquest of the ancient kingdom, so lightly won and so lightly lost by his father. Baal's perfidy was thus forgiven or overlooked. A great expedition was prepared. The ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... no move to leave his seat, the steely fingers on his wrist ran up his forearm and pressed down hard upon a nerve-center. The pain was almost unbearable, and for the moment his arm was paralyzed. A quick jerk brought him to the ground. As he alighted, stumblingly, Maku caught him by the other arm. He was held in such a way that for the moment it seemed futile to struggle. Arima, meantime, spoke ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... said Peter; and the tone touched John, though he detested slang. "And what's croquet, after all, to a fellow that's used to exercise? I suppose I shall be all right again hunting, when I've got my nerve back a bit. At present it's rotten. A fellow feels so beastly helpless and one-sided. However, that'll wear off, ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... once during the whole time. Sir Joseph Westmoreland, the great London nerve specialist, who advised ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... held the lance ready poised as we drew nearer and nearer, and I was ready with set teeth and every nerve tingling to deliver the thrust, when whish! splash! the brute gave its tail a tremendous lash, and darted away, swimming along with its back fin ploughing the water, and apparently as strong ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... the door when they gave out nerve, either!" declared Tommy. "Here these boys come here and steal our grub and you seem to think they did a noble thing! ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... resolute and daring, had completely lost his nerve, and his teeth were chattering in his head. His father, on the other hand, was emotionless and impassive ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... flinched as he saw it coming. His eyes were fixed upon the descending fist, his every nerve centered on the task of ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... deck, his eyes peering about on all sides, trying to pierce the veil, every nerve taut, every sense alert. The girl crept close beside him, so that she touched him, and there she remained, while all the terrors of the ghostly ship arose to confront her. The weed-hung, slimy rails and wave-bitten deck stretched away in ever-fading perspective to the foremast where everything ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... soldier, with a wisp of something white in his hand, actually clambered out of the firing-trench and advanced towards our lines. The distance was barely seventy yards. No shot was fired, but you may be sure that safety-catches were hastily released. Suddenly, in the tense silence, the ambassador's nerve failed him. He bolted back, followed by a few desultory bullets. The reason for his sudden panic was never rightly ascertained, but the weight of public opinion inclined to the view that Mucklewame, who had ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... Lucia had been thrilled and delighted to know that Olga so much wanted to come in after dinner and see the tableaux, so he found it quite easy to induce Lucia to nerve herself up to an ordeal so passionately desired. Indeed he himself was hardly less excited at the thought ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... still let me gaze upon thee, Let me strain ev'ry nerve with ravishment, And all my life be center'd in my vision. To see thee thus, to hear thy angel voice, It is, indeed, a luxury of pleasure!— Speak, speak again, for oh! 'tis heav'n to hear thee! Celestial sweetness dwells ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey
... while doing so. 'Here I sit,' he said, 'like a great ogre, eating up people's little hopes.' Then he showed me his waste-paper basket, and added—'But what am I to do? Look here!' I confess I never saw, except on pavement in coloured chalks, such nerve-twisting horrors as the paper sketches people sent." It is obvious from this that the writer never watched the pictures entering the ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... soul. And I further make oath, O despisers of the offerings of my higher self, that I shall meet your every fresh wound with face the more uplifted because thereof, and to better meet all that you have to hand out to me, I shall keep company with the Spirit that makes nerve food of disasters ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... which each man studies the others. Suspicion is always the first impulse at such meetings. Their attitudes are exactly that of strange dogs which encounter each other for the first time, and walk round and round, with the hair on their backs raised, and with their tails straight out, every nerve on a tension, and every impulse ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... over sideways, glaring at me with his one strange eye. It was just about as close a shot as was William Tell's at the apple. But I knew that reputation for nerve depended on it, so I fired. As the duck rose ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... halting and the marching taken up afresh. Towards dawn everything grew silent. At first it would be broken occasionally by the hurried trot of cavalry or the shuffling footsteps of a straggler. Then it grew into the absolute silence of death. It was nerve-racking and terrible. One could almost hear the breathing of the listening people in all the other houses. I do not know how time went or what was the hour. I could endure the suspense no longer. They might kill me, but ... Ah well, at my age after nearly three years ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... last that she might be going too far, and she made an effort to pull up. But it was of no avail; Victor had got the bit firmly between his teeth, and nothing could hold him. Luckily, the girl did not lose her nerve, but waited until she could tire him out, and get him in hand again; and I verily believe she would have succeeded in mastering him, and turning him safely on his homeward course, had not the way been unexpectedly ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... effort at flapjack making proved an elegant success, since not one of the mess was left. But if the truth were told it would be found that the cook himself accounted for something like three-fourths of the number. And then he had the nerve to declare that he had made only one mistake, which was in limiting the amount of ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... energy—probably that which is the main-spring of the universe. Modern science is more and more inclined to find the explanation of all vital phenomena in electrical stress and change. We know that an electric current will bring about chemical changes otherwise impracticable. Nerve force, if not a form of electricity, is probably inseparable from it. Chemical changes equivalent to the combustion of fuel and the corresponding amount of available energy released have not yet been ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... a correlation between nervous energy and physical energy is, however, pretty definitely proved by experiments along different lines. The first step in this direction was to find that a nervous stimulus can be measured at least indirectly. When the nerve is stimulated there passes from one end to the other an impulse, and the rapidity with which it travels can be accurately measured. When such an impulse reaches the brain it may give rise to a conscious sensation, and ...
— The Story of the Living Machine • H. W. Conn
... Europe and sell it and so fill the treasury with honest gold!—not with this delusion of wealth, these sheafs of Promises to Pay the Government is issuing. Five million bales of cotton idle in the South! With every nerve strained, with daring commensurate to the prize, we could get them out—even now! To-morrow it will be too late. The blockade will be complete, and we shall rest as isolated as the other side of the moon. Well! Few countries or men are wise till ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... innumerable bad results. People who eat bread made from fine white flour naturally crave the food elements which have been eliminated from the wheat, and are thus led to an excessive consumption of meat, and the nerve-starvation and consequent irritability thus induced may also lead to the use of alcoholic drinks. We believe that one of the strongest barriers women could erect against the inroads of intemperance would be to supply the tables of the land ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... against odds and far within the enemy's country. He flew more than any of us, never missing an opportunity to go up, and never coming down until his gasolene was giving out. His machine was a sieve of patched-up bullet holes. His nerve was almost superhuman and his devotion to the cause for which he fought sublime. The day he was wounded he attacked four machines. Swooping down from behind, one of them, a Fokker, riddled Chapman's plane. One bullet cut deep into his scalp, but Chapman, a master pilot, escaped ...
— Flying for France • James R. McConnell
... had spoken, "to foresee possibilities is one thing, and to meet them is another; but the anticipation does something to nerve one for the ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... you got to keep your nerve! Look here, Mount Hope ain't going to talk of anything but the McBride murder; you are going to hear it from morning to night, and that's one of the reasons you got to keep sober. You've done your best so far to queer yourself, ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... nerve with them—to show themselves anywhere near Colby Hall after what happened!" burst ...
— The Rover Boys Under Canvas - or The Mystery of the Wrecked Submarine • Arthur M. Winfield
... occasion Cicely had been conscious of penetrating to the nerve centres of her hero; although, fortunately for her peace of mind, she did not know the exact way in which she had accomplished the feat. Early one morning, Mr. Barrett had been strolling along the road ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... dis or un to reverse the meaning: as, please, displease; qualify, disqualify; organize, disorganize; fasten, unfasten; muzzle, unmuzzle; nerve, unnerve. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... girl he thought she was, the girl he had made dreams about and wanted to marry without a moment's notice, would have seen that what he offered, ridiculous as it was when offered to Anita Flagg, was not ridiculous when offered sincerely to a tired, nerve-worn, overworked nurse in a hospital. It was because Anita Flagg had not seen that that she could not now make up to him for the girl he had lost, even though she herself had inspired that girl and for a ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... passing them from hand to hand. Of what tragedies were they not the cause! In August 1851, Antonio Sciesa, of Milan, was shot for having one such leaflet on his person. The gendarmes led him past his own house, hoping that the sight of it would weaken his nerve, and make him accept the clemency which was eagerly proffered if he would reveal the names of others engaged in the patriotic propaganda. 'Tiremm innanz!' ('come along') he said, in his rough Milanese dialect, and marched incorruptible to death. On ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... entreated to go forth and try to be a better woman. And sometimes, but not often, she had decided that a shoe clerk, no matter his age, would take her request as a mere incident in the day's trade. Other women wore such things, and perforce must buy them in a public manner. She had steeled her nerve to the ordeal, and now she flushed with a fine new confidence, for the clerk merely said, "Certainly, madam"—in the later shops of Newbern they briefly called you madam—and with a kind of weary, professional politeness fell to the work of equipping her. A joyous relief succeeded ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... resting for two nights on the right side, and for two nights on the left. It was deemed essential that the place to which a man resorted for this purpose should be unfrequented, where few or no persons had walked; and it must also be a place that tried the nerve, where there was some danger. Such situations were mountain peaks; or narrow ledges on cut cliffs, where a careless movement might cause a man to fall to his death on the rocks below; or islands in lakes, which could only be reached by means of a raft, and where ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... however, as conviviality developed among his reverend friends many defects, opinions, and failings, which he never suspected them to possess, so did he begin to gather courage and facility of expression. By degrees he proceeded modestly from the mild and timid effort at wit to the steadier nerve of moderate confidence—another step brought him to the indifference of a man who can bear an unsuccessful attempt at pleasantry, without being discomposed; the third and last stage advanced him to downright assurance, which having reached, he stopped at nothing. From this forward he began ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... basis of mind and its history. In the earliest stages of human embryology no nervous system whatsoever is present, and it is unreasonable to suppose that there is anything going on which corresponds to human thought. A little later a cellular tube is established as a primitive nerve axis, which at first is nearly uniform throughout its entire length and displays no differentiation into brain and spinal cord. Before long an enlargement of the anterior end expands and develops into a primitive three-parted brain. It is not yet a real brain, however, and it is entirely ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... as he was, he was somewhat innocent. He did not know that New York hotels are formidable only when your money gives out. To get past all these brass-buttoned lackeys and to go on as though he really had business within took no small quantity of nerve. However, he slipped by the outpost without any challenge and boldly approached the desk. A quick glance at the register told him that they had indeed put up at this hotel. He could not explain why he felt so happy over his ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... necessary to render them effective, and from their habits of subordination already formed, this would be a task of less difficulty. Though morally most timid, they are by no means wanting in physical strength of nerve. They are excitable by praise; and directed by those in whom they have confidence, would rush fearlessly and unquestioning upon any sort of danger. With white officers and accompanied by a strong white cavalry, there are no troops in the world ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... on year after year, but her advance towards her expected goal was very slow. She would occasionally nerve herself to speak a few words of admonition in a small meeting, make a short prayer, or quote a text of scripture, but her services were limited to these efforts. She often feared that she was restrained by her desire that ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... "Is it Hannah? why she always says she hasn't a nerve in her whole body. She's sometimes almost cross with me ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... is not given to all emigre's to become great capitalists or great leaders. Some who have the opportunity have not the ability, and the majority would not, for all the rewards that greatness offers, choose careers that entail long years of nerve-wracking, unflagging labor. But on a minor scale the same process of making over takes place. One case ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... continuing to do so. Still, Beatrice was vindictively determined upon one point. Let Keith Cameron cross her path, and she would do something she had never done before; she would deliberately lead him on to propose—if the fellow had nerve enough to do so, which, she told ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... whose great Citie Geryons Sons 410 Call El Dorado: but to nobler sights Michael from Adams eyes the Filme remov'd Which that false Fruit that promis'd clearer sight Had bred; then purg'd with Euphrasie and Rue The visual Nerve, for he had much to see; And from the Well of Life three drops instill'd. So deep the power of these Ingredients pierc'd, Eevn to the inmost seat of mental sight, That Adam now enforc't to close his eyes, Sunk down and all his Spirits became ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... it ever, As o'er the ark of old; And here, O may we never In our great strife wax cold. Nerve every arm and spirit For each successful blow, Till Temperance shall inherit All ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... very pleasant chap," he remarked; "also he has a most astonishing nerve. He actually tried to bribe me for a copy of the ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... I peered through them—and nerve and muscle were locked in the grip of a paralyzing awe. I felt then as one would feel set close to warring regiments of stars, made witness to the death-throes of a universe, or swept through space and held above the whirling coils of Andromeda's nebula to watch its birth ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... eighty-two proved to be Kentucky's year of blood. The British at Detroit had strained every nerve to drag into the war the entire Indian population of the northwest. They had finally succeeded in arousing even the most distant tribes—not to speak of the twelve thousand savages immediately tributary to Detroit. [Footnote: Haldimand MSS. Census for 1782, 11,402.] So lavish had ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... keep itself on a level in this particular with any two of its rivals in sea power. While it has not quite succeeded in this, the United States and Germany pushing it closely, it is well in the lead as compared with any single Power, and to keep this lead it is straining every nerve and fiber of its ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... and rejoined his comrades at the canoe. They pushed out into the river, but held the boat in the current by an occasional paddle-stroke, and waited listening. Back at the foot of the tree the captive strained every nerve and muscle in one mighty effort to break the cords that bound him; but it was useless, and he lay back with set teeth and rigid muscles, while his eyes sought in vain through their thick covering to see the approach of his foes. Presently a fierce outburst of howls ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... energy; and he now for some time encouraged his men, by voice and example, to keep firm. But the lances of Alexander's cavalry, and the pikes of the phalanx now gleamed nearer and nearer to him. His charioteer was struck down by a javelin at his side; and at last Darius's nerve failed him; and, descending from his chariot, he mounted on a fleet horse and galloped from the plain, regardless of the state of the battle in other parts of the field, where matters were going on much more ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... son, with such a sweet and brave honesty of simplicity he eyed me, and for the sake of Mary Cavendish, who might find his love for her precious, and I wished with all my heart that I might fling him to the floor where he stood; every nerve and muscle in me tingled with the restraint of the desire, for such an enhancement of a woman's beauty as was Mary Cavendish's that night, will do away with the best instincts of men, whether ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... his lanky legs, dragging along anyhow, were ever lagging behind one another. But when he opened the piano and put hands and feet to keys and pedal, he was not the same individual. He would turn on nerve and muscle-power, and would hurl avalanches of music and torrents of notes at his audience till he, in his turn, was overwhelmed with thunders of applause. And those were the days, we must remember, when but few men could play at a greater rate than twenty to twenty-five ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... Vandeloup felt every nerve in his body tingling. Here was a chance to make money. If he only had a few hundreds he could buy up all the Magpie shares he could get and reap the benefit of the rise. Five hundred pounds! If he could obtain that sum he could buy two thousand five hundred shares, ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... reach of his arrow, and so good and true was his aim, that it hit the animal hi the throat a little above the chest; the stag now turned again, but Wolfe was behind, and pressed him forward, and again the noble animal strained every nerve for the shore. Louis now shot his arrow, but it swerved from the mark, he was too eager, it glanced harmlessly along the water; but the cool, unimpassioned hand of Hector sent another arrow between the eyes ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... and towed her toward the spreading shelter. I followed them at first, then began to lag with an odd unwillingness. I had been only half serious in my objection, but all at once that tree exercised an odd repulsion on me; an imaginary picture of the electric fluid coursing through my shriveling nerve-channels grew unpleasantly vivid. ...
— Disowned • Victor Endersby
... and material; of all goodness, human or Divine; the center of all thought, from brutal instinct to Deific wisdom; of all creations, from starry systems to man, and from man back again to invisible gas; of all action, from the imperceptible vibrations of nerve energy to the awful destruction of worlds. All creative potency lies within a Sun sphere. Light is life. The planets are but the offspring of light and life. So in this symbol, we read the source of the human Ego, of our own life. We are, as it were, the planets of the ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... West, the beautiful West, She shall look, and not in vain - For out of its broad and boundless store Come muscle, and nerve, and brain. Let the bards of the East and the South be dumb - For out of the West ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... where men give and take hard blows. I ask you not upon the ship's deck at all, my friend, nor shall I require your company one step farther than the roof of the great sugar warehouse of Bomanceaux et fils. Still, it will require steady nerve to do even what little I require, and, if you doubt your courage, say so now, and I will seek among the slaves for stouter ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... tempted to kill and rob you. Fortune befriended me ever after; but the richer I grew, the more keenly I felt how wicked I had been, and the more I foresaw that my victim's vengeance would some day overtake me. Haunted by this thought, I lost my nerve, till one night I beheld your spirit, and from that time fell ill. But how you managed to escape, and are still alive, is more than I ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... traveller. After wandering many days over dry, and stony, and desert places, where the lip thirsted for the stream, is it not delicious to sit at the brink of a wild, impetuous torrent, to gaze on its white foam and breaking waves, till you can almost feel their gush in every nerve and fibre, and can bathe your very soul in them. And while you slowly smoke your pipe of purest tobacco, the sands of the desert, and their burning sun, rise again before you, when you prayed for even the shadow of a cloud on your way. The ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... Arden's sensitive nature to the very depths. Hiding his feelings from all save his mother, and often from her; appearing to his neighbors stolid and sullen in the extreme, he was, in fact, in his whole being, like a morbidly-excited nerve. He did not shrink from the world because indifferent to it, but because it wounded him when he came in contact with it. He seemed so out of tune with society that it produced only jarring discord. His father's ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... had kept his nerve through several years of racking strain which, even an American is seldom called upon to survive, wondered if he were losing his mind. To business and all its fluctuations and even abnormalities, he had been bred; there was probably no condition possible in the world of finance and commerce ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... pause. "Does he want to ADOPT you?" Then more quickly and sadly, though also a little as if lacking nerve to push the research: "We couldn't give ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... outfit. From what I knew about Miss Dobson, I deduced that she would be a great success. That was all. Had I had the instinct that was given to those Emperors in stone, and even to the dog Corker, I should have begged Clio to send in my stead some man of stronger nerve. She had charged me to be calmly vigilant, scrupulously fair. I could have been neither, had I from the outset foreseen all. Only because the immediate future was broken to me by degrees, first as a set of possibilities, then as ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... exception to it. The periodical movements which characterize and influence woman's structure for more than half her terrestrial life, and which, in their ebb and flow, sway every fibre and thrill every nerve of her body a dozen times a year, and the occasional pregnancies which test her material resources, and cradle the race, are, or are evidently intended to be, fountains of power, not hinderances, to her. They are not infrequently spoken of by women themselves with half-smothered ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... interest of who could say what wretched frivolity, what preposterous policy; amid which she had been condemned so ignorantly, so pitifully to sit, to walk, to grope, to flounder, from the very dawn of her consciousness. Didn't poor Mr. Pitman just touch the sensitive nerve of it when, taking her in with his facetious, cautious eyes, he spoke to her, right out, of the old, old story, the everlasting ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... this rather good, remembering, as I did, that previous to our arrival, and before we knew how extensive was the bed, the skipper had been straining every nerve to reach the island before his rival, with the avowed intention of sweeping the shoal clean if he could before the arrival of the Kingfisher. I said nothing, however, but, seizing the bucket containing the pearls which I had gathered ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... exhilarating stunt, that is. Before you know where you are, you've got to put two hundred and fifty-six pounds on an even chance to get one back. With a limit of four hundred and eighty staring you in the face, that takes a shade more nerve than I can produce. I did try it once—at Madeira. Luck was with me. After three hours I'd made four shillings and lost half a stone.... Incidentally, when a man starts playing Roulette on a system, it's time to pray for his soul. I admit there are hundreds who do it—hundreds of intelligent, ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... is undoubtedly right," he said, looking down at Stevens. "But I am quite sure the young woman is capable of taking care of herself. Quade has a tremendous amount of nerve, setting Slim to follow her, hasn't he? Slim may run up against a ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... for the fallen house of Bourbon? There is no nerve in France that will respond to such an appeal. That house has no place in the affections of the people. It was forced upon them, at the point of the bayonet, in 1814. It has been tried a second time: found to be incurably despotic, and every indication attests that the revolution ...
— Celebration in Baltimore of the Triumph of Liberty in France • William Wirt
... beyond the rest. It fixed special forms—he the French sonnet. It felt the lives of all things running through it as a young man feels them in the spring woods—he gathered in the cup of his verse, and retains for us, the nerve of all that life which is still exultant in the forest beyond his river. His breeding, his high name, his leisured poverty, his passionate friendship, his looking forward always to a new thing, a creation—all this, was the Renaissance ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... not hit, the steersman lost his nerve, and shrank from the coming shock. The galley's helm went up to port, and her beak slid all but harmless along Amyas' bow; a long dull grind, and then loud crack on crack, as the Rose sawed slowly through the bank of oars from stem to stern, ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... history was reserved for the reformers. The reformer, in his inmost nature, is related to the people; his soul is agitated by formulas and ceremonies, to which the mystic is indifferent; they are to him obstacles to his faith and he strains every nerve to destroy them. He has every appearance of the truly free spirit, but he is secretly dependent on that against which he is fighting. He suffers under its inefficiency; his deed is the final reaction against ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... frighten Sir Louis. The father he had never been able to frighten. But there are men who, though they fear death hugely, fear present suffering more; who, indeed, will not bear a moment of pain if there by any mode of escape. Sir Louis was such: he had no strength of nerve, no courage, no ability to make a resolution and keep it. He promised the doctor that he would refrain; and, as he did so, he swallowed down his cup of coffee and brandy, in which the two ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... anything," said the lawyer, "except that I could bear testimony to the effect that your experience with flat life was similar to mine. This young person, with his customary nerve, tries to make it appear that I said you sang comic ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... dissolute manners of the voluptuous inhabitants; the ill effects of their example were not immediate: he did not fall into the commission of glaring enormities; but his virtue was secretly and imperceptibly undermined, his heart was softened by their pernicious society; and the nerve of resolution was slackened: he every day beheld with diminished indignation the worship which was offered to Venus; the disorders of luxury and prophaneness became less and less terrible, and the infectious air of the country enfeebled his courage, ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... many and severe disappointments by this time, I found, had told on health and nerve, through long quarantines, expensive fumigations, and ruinous doctors' visits, which had swept my dollars into hands other than mine. However, with still a "shot in the locker," and with some feelings of our own in the matter of how we should ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... out one of the kingdom's eyes by clouding our mother university; and (if this Scotch mist farther prevail) he will extinguish the other. He hath the like quarrel to both, because both are strung with the same optic nerve, knowing loyalty. ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... commencement of the voyage. When this is the case, the first night after leaving port will decide the question whether the officers or the men will have command of the ship. If the officers are not firm and peremptory; if they are deficient in nerve, and fail to rebuke, in a prompt and decided manner, aught bordering on insolence or insubordination in the outset, farewell to discipline, to good order and harmony, for the remainder ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... crept to the window. Two horsemen were at the gate. The door opened below him, his host went out, and the three talked in whispers for a while. Then the horsemen rode away, his host came back into the house, and all was still again. For half an hour the boy waited, his every nerve alive with suspicion. Then he quietly dressed, left half a dollar on the washstand, crept stealthily down the stairs and out to the stable, and was soon pushing his old nag at a weary gallop ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... furthest and darkest corner, tied him securely to a ring in the wall. His bonds were loose enough to permit him to lie down on the hard earth and stone floor, but he sat with his back against the wall, wide awake, every nerve tense and quivering. ...
— The Boy Scouts in Front of Warsaw • Colonel George Durston
... submit to it. Your very silence, my countrymen, may be construed a submission, and those who would perswade you to be quiet, intend to give it that turn. Will it be likely then that your enemies, who have exerted every nerve to establish a revenue, rais'd by virtue of a suppos'd inherent right in the British parliament without your consent, will recede from the favorite plan, when they imagine it to be compleated by your submission? ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... developed his idea, and I consented to try the experiment, though with grave scruples. It would require much nerve to talk to strange people upon an excitable topic; and a camp fever, which among other things I had gained on the Chickahominy, had enfeebled ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... dreaded the new experience of this first meeting with a woman-farmer, from whom he desired employment simply because he was very badly off, he was getting old, and Mr. Wellin's widow had treated him shabbily. He had lost his nerve for new ventures. But Miss Henderson had made things easy. She had struck him as considerate and sensible—a "good sort." He would do his best ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... battleships or cruisers can protect England's frontiers and secure imports from oversea. Technical progress, in the shape of submarines, has put into the hands of all England's enemies the means at last to sever the vital nerve of the much-hated enemy, and to pull him down from his position of ruler of the world, which he has occupied for centuries with ever-increasing ruthlessness and selfishness. What science has once begun ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... was a Russki with long hair," says I, "or even a fiddlin' Czech, they might stand for it; but to ask 'em to listen to a domestic unknown from Bridgeport, Conn.——I wouldn't have the nerve, Snick. Why not take him around to the ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... of the verandah that had been turned into an extra ward by screening it off with native reed-fencing was Gilfillan, the most perfect patient. Propping his foot against the wall to correct the foot-drop that division of the nerve of his leg had caused, he had passed many sleepless nights in his ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... In many lives; through many a nerve she feels; From child to child the quick affections spread, For ever wand'ring, yet for ever fix'd. Nor does division weaken, nor the force Of constant operation e'er exhaust Parental love. All other passions change With changing circumstances; rise or fall, Dependent on their ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... serfdom encrusted with tyrannies. It was a gigantic social experiment, the results of which none could foresee. Alexander's predecessors had thought and talked of it, but had not dared to try it. Now the time was ripe, and the man on the throne had the nerve required for ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... Tobacco.—Tobacco, of all nerve sedatives, is the most universally used. In moderation it could not be said that it is followed by any apparent ill effects in the majority of people, but if used in excess oftentimes sets up serious disturbances. It is peculiarly injurious to boys, ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... instances the reader will see that the measures taken were both prompt, and such as would require more nerve than is possessed by the ordinary run of mortals. In the above cases, also, the bitten part was capable of being removed; but for a bite on the wrist, had such an extreme measure as immediate dismemberment ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... told no one, but he meant to, unless things got better. 'I haven't the nerve for this job, Davie,' he said; 'I'll have to resign. And it's a pity, for the place suits my health fine. You see I know too much, and I haven't your whinstone nerve and ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... rest; for, although the six miles of country he had crossed was a trifle, as regarded distance, to a lad of nineteen, the rugged mountain-path by which he had come would have tried the muscles of a Red Indian, and the nerve of a goat. "You were wont to keep to time better in days gone by. Truly it seems to me a strange thing that I should thus be made a sort of walking post between my mother's house and this bay, all for the benefit of a man who seems to me ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... more in possession of the cup, was unable to get up sufficient nerve to make the fateful cast. He shook it as if he meant to wear a hole in the tin. He offered to let Husky shoot first, and when he refused tried to pick a ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... though the object be absent, the Soul has presently the same {310} sensations, as it would have, if it were present. As, if one should knock on's head forcibly against a wall, the shaking, which the blow gives to the Brain, moving the interior extremities of the Nerve, which causes the sensation of Light, the Soul has the same sensation, which it would have, if it saw a thousand Candles: On the contrary, if the interior extremities of the nerves are not shaken, though the object be present, it causes no sensation; whence it comes, that if a strong Ligature ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... he blazed, "since when! I admire your nerve to ask that question of me! Since six years ago, when you first began living with me. Since the day when you and the boy,—and not a preacher within a hundred miles—" Words, a flood of words, were ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... usual order, and she seems to regard this as conclusive proof of their logical truth. She says, "The metaphysics of Christian Science, like the rules of mathematics, prove the rule by inversion. For example: there is no pain in Truth, and no truth in pain; no nerve in Mind, and no mind in nerve; no matter in Mind, and ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... epilepsy also in animals born of parents having been rendered epileptic by the section of the sciatic nerve. ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... or consulate to take care of England's manifold interests. It seems strange that when thousands of British heroes of the army are dying brave deaths on the fields of battle, not a single British hero was to be found in the diplomatic corps with nerve enough to risk the inconveniences of a siege. The Ambassador of another country, who fled with the crowd, left in spite of orders from his king absolutely directing him to remain. Apparently he has sacrificed his career to his ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... father supports them chiefly now. The unfortunate has a shingle up, in a small court, among low operators. Such a man as this is unfit for this commercial sphere. He would have been unfit for a pilot, unfit for military command, unfit for any place that demands steady nerve, cool ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... own conditions. Mr. Lincoln has already proclaimed an amnesty wide enough to satisfy the demands of the most exacting humanity, and they must reckon on a singular stupidity in their hearers who impute ferocious designs to a man who cannot nerve his mind to the shooting of a deserter or the hanging of a spy. Mr. Lincoln, in our judgment, has shown from the first the considerate wisdom of a practical statesman. If he has been sometimes slow in ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... about him. He is a sublimated soul that treads the heights and breathes refined ether—in self-comparison with the prize-fighter. The man who walks in his sleep ignores the flesh and all its wonderful play of muscle, joint, and nerve. He feels that there is something godlike in the mysterious deeps of his being, denies his relationship with the brute, and proceeds to go forth into the world and express by deeds ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... of manhood, and Mr. Muir had found the past week a trying one. He had been lured into an enterprise that at the time had seemed certain of success, even to his conservative mind, but unforeseen elements had entered into the problem, and it now required all his nerve, all his resources, to meet the strain. Neither Madge nor his wife knew anything of this. Indeed, it was not his habit to speak of his affairs to any one, unless the exigencies of the case required explanation. In this emergency he was obliged ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... of such an exploit caused his flesh to creep. But he was not of that class of men who fall back dazed before the face of danger. Again and again, led by an impulse he was unable to resist, he studied that precipitous rock, every nerve tingling to the newborn hope. God helping them, even so desperate a deed might be accomplished, although it would test the foot and nerve of a Swiss mountaineer. He glanced again uneasily toward his companion, and saw the same motionless figure, the same sober ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... face as he went on with his meal. Not a nerve of it moved. If he felt any fear, at least he showed no ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... was still—silent— not a feature moved. The eyes are more untamable than the tongue. When the wild beast can not get out at the door, nothing can keep him from the windows. The eyes flash when the will is yet lord even of the lines of the mouth. Not a nerve of Hesper's quivered. Though a mere child in the knowledge that concerned her own being, even the knowledge of what is commonly called the heart, she was yet a mistress of the art of self-defense, socially ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... floor the element of execution feels it may more or less confidently DANCE; in which case puzzling questions, sharp obstacles, dangers of detail, may come up for it by the dozen without breaking its heart or shaking its nerve. It is the difficulty produced by the loose foundation or the vague scheme that breaks the heart—when a luckless fatuity has over-persuaded an author of the "saving" virtue of treatment. Being "treated" is never, in a workable ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... whether I'll faint at the sight of real blood," she said, "but I shall know pretty well what to do if I can keep my nerve." ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... could neither eat, nor sleep, nor rest. Her temples throbbed, her eyes ached; every nerve was a barbed wire; her soul was manacled by promises; she would not use her reason; the fever in her veins was not to be quelled, and the one agitating relief to her physical suffering was a constant perusal of David Rennes's letter. It was the first passionate love-letter ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... idle away a couple of years; and then, because their funds come to an end or because angry parents refuse any longer to support them, drift away from the hospital. Others find the examinations too hard for them; one failure after another robs them of their nerve; and, panic-stricken, they forget as soon as they come into the forbidding buildings of the Conjoint Board the knowledge which before they had so pat. They remain year after year, objects of good-humoured scorn to ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... Satanette came in a blue-flannel suit, the collar turned well back from the throat, and in a broad straw hat wound with pink and white tarlatan. He looked like a flower,—if any flower ever expressed along with its beauty the powerful nerve of manliness. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... offered me half. You didn't see the brute look at me that night at dinner as much as to say: "You blasted fool!" It made me mad. That wasn't a bad jump-twice over. Nothing in the war took quite such nerve. [Grimly] ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... talent in the earth.' Our Lord would teach us all with that pregnant word the great truth that if once a man gets it into his head that God's principal relation to him is to demand, and to command, you will get no work out of that man; that such a notion will paralyse all activity and cut the nerve of all service. And the converse is as true, namely, that the one thought about God, which is fruitful of all blessing, joy, spontaneous, glad activity, is the thought of Him as giving, and not of demanding, of bestowing, and not of commanding. Teach ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... ages. And though, from all that is known respecting them, this line of life had not been attended with much success or emolument, yet Columbus's zeal was not thereby damped; and his parents, still anxious that their son should pursue the same line which his ancestors had done, strained every nerve to give him a suitable education. He was accordingly taught geometry, astronomy, geography, and drawing. As soon as his time of life and his education qualified him for the business he had chosen, he went to sea; he was then fourteen years ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson |
