"Nerve" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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, and should never be indulged in until ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... supper-table he had one nerve-racking fear dispelled and another confirmed by his mother's reply to a question put ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... considered by many to detract from a doctor's value and to stand in the way of his career. Doctor Meyer Isaacson did not find this so. Although he was not a nerve specialist, his waiting-room was always full of patients. If he had been married, it could not have been fuller. Indeed, he often thought it ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... flows the burning tide— Dark storms of feeling sweep across her breast— In loneliness there needs no mask of pride— To nerve the soul, and veil the heart's unrest, Amid the crowd her glances brightly beam, Her smiles with undimmed lustre sweetly shine: The haunting visions of life's fevered dream The cold and ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... 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 she had ever received. ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... the hand into condition, and keeps it up to the mark, so that difficult compositions are more readily within the grasp, and the technical requirements in them are more easily met. When the hand is in fine condition, exhaustive technical practise in pieces is not necessary, and much wear and tear of nerve force is saved. In this technical practise, to which I give an hour or more daily, I use very simple exercises, but each one contains some principle of touch, movement or condition. Hand over thumb and thumb under hand; different qualities of tone; ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... something better. The spectacle of the heathen sage, who, amidst the thick gloom, the 'palpable obscure,' which involved this subject, gazed intently into the darkness, and 'longed for the day,'—who strained every nerve of an insufficient logic, and was willing to take even the whispers of hope for the oracles of truth, rather than part with the prospect of immortality,—is, to my mind, much more attractive. As to the originality ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... to bend him back and strike one blow, I saw not why it might not win. And as for strength, I have learned this in war: that so the rage be hot enough 'twill nerve a dying man to hack and hew and stab as ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... serious matter. There are men that it weakens one to talk with an hour more than a day's fasting would do. Mark this that I am going to say, for it is as good as a working professional man's advice, and costs you nothing: It is better to lose a pint of blood from your veins than to have a nerve tapped. Nobody measures your nervous force as it runs away, nor bandages your brain and marrow ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... related in this story. The cunning savage has always thought it inadvisable to pick his fighting men till their courage had been thoroughly tested, and in dull days of peace the headmen of the tribes racked their brains to discover nerve-shaking ordeals to try the daring of the growing youth. The safety of the tribe depended upon the valour of the fighting line, and it would have been an inexcusable blunder to put the nervous ones ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... participated in," said the doctor out in the hall after he had finished telling us how near the sight of both eyes had come to being destroyed from not being kept drained. "And the two youngsters are the most remarkable I have yet encountered. Miss Phyllis, let me congratulate you on a nerve and a talent for imaginative description the like of which I have never met before. But please somebody explain that boy to me before I catch ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... said Evelyn, with shining eyes, "to think that all the time we were worrying about you and feeling sure you were lost, you were having the time of your life! Oh, if I'd only had the nerve ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... there is no question of pluck. I'm taking the bull by the horns because I must. Mr. Travers, I can't live in the same place with you and not know if you are going to explode the mine under our feet or not. I may have nerve, but I haven't ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... lightning glance, and surveyed the whole situation. He did not move, but his form was rigid, and every nerve was braced, and his eyes gleamed fiercely. He saw it all—the crowd of women, the calm face of Minnie, and the uncontrollable ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... would happen. And he knew that at a quarter past eight he would summon his nerve and reach for his hat, and that his wife would deliver this speech ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... been nervous and flurried the first time you were called upon to play the part of a man, it would have seemed to me but natural; now it gladdens me indeed to know that even in your first essay you should have thus shown that you possess nerve and coolness as well as courage. Anyone can rush into a fight and deal blows right and left, but it is far more rare to find one who, in his very first trial at arms, can keep his head clear, and be able to reply to a question, as Edgar says you did, ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... Rather ought we, in Michelangelo's case, to dwell upon the remarkable sobriety of his life, his sustained industry under very trying circumstances, his prolonged intellectual activity into extreme old age, the toughness of his constitution, and the elasticity of that nerve-fibre which continued to be sound and sane under the enormous and varied pressure put upon it over a period of ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... won't say that you can have everything you want—that means having nothing, in reality. But if you decide what it is you want most, YOU CAN GET IT." His eye caught hers for a moment. "Not everybody can, but you can. Only, if you want a big thing, you've got to have nerve enough to cut out all that's easy, everything that's to be had cheap." Dr. Archie paused. He picked up a paper-cutter and, feeling the edge of it softly with his fingers, he added slowly, as if ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... and get his saddle and bridle, for he rightly concluded that the savages had been so anxious to capture him that they had not time to go in and see if he had left anything behind him. It required considerable nerve to do this, but Elam had already shown that he had a good share of it. He had not gone many miles on his way until he began to meet some sheep-herders and cattle-men who were fleeing from their homes and going to the fort for protection. The men were ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon
... of the old merchant's mouth was something painful to witness. It seemed as if every nerve was pulled to its utmost tension by the excitement in his soul. He obviously had to make a strong effort to speak when he said, "Do you suppose, sir, that a merchant of my standing is going to leave his property ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... time; they were beginning 'to fear that old Morin's nerve had weakened at the eleventh hour, when they beheld a skiff approaching the shore. It glided closer, entered the shade of the bathhouse, then ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... 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 ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... driving over to Poynders in the afternoon, and could manage a previous visit at Pensham by coming an hour earlier, his wife instructed him that it would never do for him to be absent, seeing that there was no knowing how indisposed she herself might be. There never is, with nerve cases, and she was a nerve case. So Sir Hamilton really must arrange to stay at home just this one afternoon, that Lady Ancester's visit should not be absolutely sterile. If the nerve case's plight and Sir Hamilton's isolation were communicated to her on her arrival, she could choose ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... his face changed, with that look of real and cruel suffering which none can counterfeit. He leaned back against the penthouse, looking straight before him. Then she, seeing that she had touched the nerve in an unhealed wound, glanced sidelong at him, bit upon her sprig of rosemary again, turned, and with half-bent head walked slowly along to the next buttress; she turned again there, and coming back stood close before him, laying one hand upon his folded arm and looking ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... over frightening the girl. She had nerve enough. Think of her tackling that ranch proposition, with just that cub brother to help! When Starr thought of that slim, big-eyed, smiling girl in white fighting poverty and the white plague together out there on the rim of the desert, a lump ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... guests were boating on the lake. When he had finished his cigar it would be time to join the party in the smoking-room. Cartwright was something of a gambler and liked the American games. They gave one scope for bluffing, and although his antagonists declared his luck was good, he knew his nerve was better. In fact, since he lost his money by a reckless plunge, he had to some extent lived by bluff. Yet some people ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... rifle, a gun which, with a slight twist of the wrist, will throw sixteen bullets in almost that many seconds. I have no doubt he will render his command very efficient and useful, for he has wonderful energy and nerve, and is, besides, sensible and practical. Colonel Harker is greatly disappointed because he was not confirmed as brigadier-general during the last session of Congress. He is certainly young enough to afford to wait; but he seems to fear that, after commanding a brigade for ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... Lincoln, it was solely for the work of the latter, so much the more as for a year he had perceived not a decline but a disturbance in the painting of that artist, too voluntary not to be unequal. Then Florent had seen, on the other hand, the nerve of Maitland reawakened in the warmth of ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... been effectual, the flames flared up, and the soldiers strained every nerve to conquer them. Their cries mingled with the crackling and snapping of the dry wood, and the roar of the flames, with the trumpet calls of the awakening troops, and the beating of drums. The young princes appeared at a window; they had tied their clothes together ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... they might go to bed. The experiment he was going to make demanded that the place should be cleared of any disturbing presence. He had been thinking it over for sometime past. He had sat in the private room of the great nerve specialist in London and had talked it over with him. He had talked of it with the duke on the lawn at Stone Hover. There had been a flush of color in the older man's cheek-bones, and his eyes had been alight as he took his part in the discussion. ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... farisah): the phrase has often occurred and isour "trembled in every nerve." As often happens in Arabic, it is "horsey;" alluding to the shoulder-muscles (not shoulder-blades, Preston p. 89) between neck and flank which readily quiver in blood-horses when ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... and of nerve as he was, he could not help but shudder at the numberless traces of sudden and pitiless death ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... with him, revealed itself only in a more calm and leisurely demeanor; but when on stepping from the elevator he realized that his hands were like ice, he was for the moment irritated at his lack of nerve, and then he quickly bolstered himself up with the reflection that the day of destiny comes only once in a lifetime and one would have arrived at a state of vegetable stolidity to meet it unmoved. Then he laughed at himself for clinging so obstinately to the belief that this was ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... of insulting God to serve the Pope, and of preferring the interests of their bodies to the care of their souls. In place of exhorting their countrymen to aid the Emperor, who was straining every nerve to defend their country—in place of infusing into their minds the spirit of patriotism and religion, these teachers of the people were incessantly inveighing against the wickedness of the unionists and the apostasy of the Emperor. So completely did their bigotry extinguish ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... from puny collectors to big burly fellows smothered with sufficient braid and decorations to pass as field-marshals. But one and all seemed to be entrusted with swords too big for them which clanked and clattered in the most nerve-racking manner. They strutted up and down the platform with true Prussian arrogance, jostling the fatigued, cursing the helpless who lounged in their path, ignoring the distress of the children, sneering at the pitiful pleadings of the women—in fact caring ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... devoted exclusively to the charge of their respective missions. Two or three times in the year, they all, or nearly all, assembled at Sainte Marie, to take counsel together and determine their future action. Hither, also, they came at intervals for a period of meditation and prayer, to nerve themselves and gain new ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... Minute, and embryon; nerve from nerves arise; And blood from blood, by countless drops increased. Gold, too, from golden atoms, earths concrete, From earths extreme; from fiery matters, fire; And lymph from limpen dews. And thus throughout From primal ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... to walk now," said Krause, rising suddenly, and speaking in a low, trembling tone. I motioned to him to sit down again. He shook his head and remained standing, his brawny hand grasping the back of the chair to steady himself, for every nerve in his body ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... suppose you did mean the offer as an insult, Merriwell; and I presume I was too hasty. I am rather quick at times, and, as Dare says, I was beaten at my own game, which made me hot. You had nerve, Merriwell; take the ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... of Hasdrubal caused intense anxiety at Rome. Every nerve was strained to prevent the union of the two brothers. The Consuls for this year (207) were GAIUS CLAUDIUS NERO, a patrician, and MARCUS LIVIUS, a plebeian. To the former was intrusted the task of keeping Hannibal in check in ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... thought she should be suffocated under it. An intolerable restlessness took possession of her, while the pain in her injured foot throbbed madly, the cut in her head seemed to burn, and her temples beat with an agonizing headache that contracted the muscles of her eyes. Every nerve in her body, every thought of her brain was a separate torture, and at the same time she felt herself without a stay, without protection, and wholly abandoned to some cruel influence, which tossed and tore her soul as the storm tosses the crowns ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... ear. There was no mistaking that fearful voice. I had been deceived by and answered it a dozen times while threading the forest, with the belief that it was a friendly signal. It was the screech of a mountain lion, so alarmingly near as to cause every nerve to thrill with terror. To yell in return, seize with convulsive grasp the limbs of the friendly tree, and swing myself into it, was the work of a moment. Scrambling hurriedly from limb to limb, I was soon as near the top as safety would ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... Listening with every nerve fiber on the alert, Bud found the night peopled with a multitude of sounds that on an ordinary occasion would have passed unnoticed. So acute did his sense of hearing become that the crack of a board in the house contracting ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... past, and happily forgotten by him. The present had still its possibilities, if only the past might remain forgotten. Surely she could rely on herself to find the nerve to go through what was, after all, a mere act of duty. Knowing, or rather feeling, that Fenwick would ask her to marry him as soon as he dared—it was merely a question of time—her duty was plainly to forewarn him—to ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... been shot under me; again and again have I seen the comrades who walked beside me in an instant laid for ever in the dust; again and again have I been in the thick of battle, and of its mortal dangers, and never felt my heart shake, or a single nerve tremble: but now, helpless, manacled, imprisoned, doomed, forced to watch the approaches of an inevitable fate—to wait, silent and moveless, while death as it were crept towards me, human nature was taxed to the uttermost to ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... place." "A miracle! if 'twere not told by you, I scarce should credit it." "And yet 'tis true." "Ah, well, you double my desire to rise To special favour with a man so wise." "You've but to wish it: 'twill be your own fault, If, with your nerve, you win not by assault: He can be won: that puts him on his guard, And so the first approach is always hard." "No fear of me, sir: a judicious bribe Will work a wonder with the menial tribe: Say, I'm refused admittance for to-day; I'll watch my time; I'll ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... towards Potts: he never gains our affections like Don Quixote and Pickwick: he has not even the infatuate courage of Tappertit. But we dare not laugh at him, because, somehow, we recognize ourselves in Potts. We may, some of us, have enough nerve, enough muscle, enough luck, enough tact or skill or address or knowledge to carry things off better than he did; to impose on the people who saw through him; to fascinate Katinka (who cut Potts so ruthlessly at the ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... excite my pity. I know they have strength to bear their sufferings, and that through them they are giving great glory to God. But I compassionate greatly those who are not Saints, and who do not know how to profit by suffering. They indeed awake my pity. I would strain every nerve to help and ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... a springless vehicle, two miles distant from the county-seat, the pains of labour came upon her. She steeled every nerve and had herself carried to the house of the county-physician whose daughter was ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... business; he was the party in the quarrel who went away, who left the dreariness of the scene of battle with all its corpses of dead illusions, and got off to fresh places and people who had never heard of him. Just being in a train, he found, and rushing on to somewhere else was extraordinarily nerve-soothing. At Clark there would be gloom and stagnation, the heavy brooding of a storm that has burst but not moved on, a continued anger on his mother's side, naturally increasing with her inactivity, with her impotence. He was ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... comparable. It had been the theory of many superficially-judging persons, he knew, that he was wasting that life in a surrender to sensations, but he had tasted of no pleasure so fine as his actual tension, had been introduced to no sport that demanded at once the patience and the nerve of this stalking of a creature more subtle, yet at bay perhaps more formidable, than any beast of the forest. The terms, the comparisons, the very practices of the chase positively came again into play; there were even moments ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... their work, and unless he is constantly on the watch valuable time is lost daily. In the harvest, however, he has an advantage. The corn is reaped by piece-work, and the labourers therefore strain every nerve to do as much as they can. But then he must be on the lookout to see that ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... the cook's hand, 'shake! I never knowed a man like you afore,' says he. 'T' my knowledge, you're the on'y man in the Labrador fleet would do it. I'm proud,' says he, 't' take the hand o' the man with nerve enough t' marry Walrus Liz o' ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... the earldom of Torrington and the command of the fleet; but his indolence suffered the seas to be swept by French privateers, and his want of seamanship was shown in an indecisive engagement with a French squadron in Bantry Bay. Meanwhile Lewis was straining every nerve to win the command of the Channel; the French dockyards were turning out ship after ship, and the galleys of the Mediterranean fleet were brought round to reinforce the fleet at Brest. A French victory off the English coast would have brought serious political danger; ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... They saved a good many, but if Jim had but been close enough he would have seen that his prophecy with regard to the sharks had proved only too true; for the voracious monsters, darting hither and thither, snapped up the unfortunate men before the very eyes of the comrades who were straining every nerve to save them, the fierce fish sometimes leaping half their length out of the water in their furious efforts to snatch their prey back even when the man had been hauled up on ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... trail all winter," was Shorty's comment. "An' them geezers, soft from layin' around their cabins, has the nerve to think they can keep our stride. Now, if they was real sour-doughs it'd be different. If there's one thing a sour-dough can do ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... before, when I prided myself on my knowledge of the stock market and its idiosyncrasies. Then, in the confidence of youth, I might have risen to a situation like this, might have tackled it and had the nerve to pull it through or blame the other fellow if I failed. Now I was neither youthful nor confident. Whatever I did would be, in all human probability, the wrong thing, and to do the wrong thing now meant, perhaps, ruin for the sick man ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... though the crew of the Catamaran were now contending against fate, and without hope. This, however, was not the case; for there was still something like a hope to cheer them on, and nerve them to continue their exertions. What ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... moreexquisite than Velasquez's. He knows as much, possibly even a little more, and yet the result is never quite equal. Why? A question of health. C'est un temperament de chatte. He cannot pass from masterpiece to masterpiece like Velasquez. The expenditure of nerve-force necessary to produce such a work as the portrait of Lady Archibald Campbell or Miss Alexander exhausts him, and he is obliged to wait till Nature recoups herself; and these necessary intervals he has employed in writing letters signed "Butterfly" to the papers, quarrelling ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... "that I could make you understand, in your superb health, just all I mean by change of conditions. It means change of food, air, surroundings; every thing in short, which addresses itself to the senses. It means an entire new set of nerve impressions." ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... functions disabled. The maddening thought that will not be downed, the haunting, ever-present idea that is not or cannot be banished by a supreme effort of the will, is the theoretical hammer which diminishes the vitality of the sensitive nerve organisms, the minuteness of which makes them visible to the eye only under a powerful microscope. The 'worry,' the thought, the single idea grows upon one as time goes on, until the worry victim cannot throw it off. Through this, one set or area of cells is affected. The cells are intimately ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... hare. We have already seen that some kinds of lizards and various snakes, when excited, rapidly vibrate the tips of their tails. It would appear as if, under strong excitement, there existed an uncontrollable desire for movement of some kind, owing to nerve-force being freely liberated from the excited sensorium; and that as the tail is left free, and as its movement does not disturb the general position of the body, it ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... with a morbid curiosity; and whenever J. P. was going up or down the gangway I always found myself, in common, I may add, with a considerable proportion of the ship's company, leaning over the side watching this nerve-racking exhibition. ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... the albatross is master of the wind and waves. Sailors, straining every nerve to guide the laboring, struggling ship through tempestuous seas, look up, and see far above their heads the albatross calmly breasting the gale, its majesty unruffled, and its great out-stretched wings as motionless as on a still, sunny day. Its strength of flight is marvellous, and is said ...
— Harper's Young People, April 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... most vital tissues of the body poorly nourished, and tend to produce 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 ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... rifles were in order and that they had plenty of ammunition. Then I made Stephen lie down to sleep, telling him that I would wake him to watch later on. This, however, I had no intention of doing as I wanted him to rise fresh and with a steady nerve on the occasion of ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... declared war, Great Britain was straining every nerve and muscle in a death struggle with the most formidable military despotism of modern times, and was obliged to entrust the defence of her Canadian colonies to a mere handful of regulars, aided by ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... him just once, but I suppose you won't tell me where he is. I don't dare let on to you how grateful I really feel to you, because I might lose my nerve and I've just got to hang on to that. It's my only asset in trade. We have to use lots of bluff. Besides, someway you make me feel contrary. Maybe I am the lightning ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... what was coming, or at least a possibility of it crossed his mind. If Mr. Gall had been a more observant man he would have seen that Mr. Juxon grew a shade paler and changed one leg over the other as he sat. But in that moment he had time to nerve ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... him to the battle— I would arm him for the fight; I would give him to his country, For his country's wrong and right! I would nerve his hand with blessing From the "God of battles" won— With His helmet and His armor, I ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... have no sense that he was placing himself in grave peril. He had no fear in his makeup, and his every nerve was centered on capturing the desperate, revengeful man who had not only assaulted Phil, but who had caused so much damage to the ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... Suddenly he sat straight up in his chair, listening: he thought he heard a sound in the next room—it was impossible even to imagine of what—it was such a mere abstraction of sound. He listened with every nerve, but heard nothing more; crept to the door of the wizard's chamber, and listened again; listened until he could no longer tell whether he heard or not, and felt like a deaf man imagining sounds; then crept back to his own room and went to bed—all ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... journey he displayed his characteristic qualities, Je ne sais pas being the usual answer to any topographical inquiries with a total absence of nerve, and a general conviction that distances were very great and that the weather would be bad. However, we got on very well, and I was sorry to ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... hulls, while every ball found its way through their own towering sides. This time the San Martin was in the thick of it. Her double timbers were ripped and torn; the holy standard was cut in two; the water poured through the shot-holes. The men lost their nerve. In such ships as had no gentlemen on board notable signs were ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... had given orders to all the men of their mess that Halket was to be left in quiet, and no questions were to be asked him; and the men, fearing the Colonial's size and the Englishman's nerve, left him in peace. The men laughed and chatted round the fire, while the big Colonial ladled out the mealies and rice into tin plates, and passed them round to the men. Presently he passed one to Halket, who lay half behind him leaning on his elbow. ...
— Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland • Olive Schreiner
... she turned round majestically, but with an anxious heart, and walked away to her room, every nerve in her trembling. When she got there, Phoebe locked the door hastily, in genuine terror; and then she laughed, and then she cried a little. "And to think it was here all the time!" she said to herself, taking out the little Russia leather purse out ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... through his mind, he was not sorry to notice ahead of him the dust of the down stage. At that particular stretch of the road it would be less nerve-wearing to ride beside it a way. He overtook the wagon and to his surprise found McAlpin on the box. McAlpin, overjoyed to see him, explained with a grin he was filling in for a sick man. In reality, he had substituted for the northern ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... position: we do not see with our outward eye any more than we do with spectacles. The apparent ocular apparatus is but the passive, unconscious instrument to transmit images thrown through it upon a fine interior fibre, the optic nerve; and even this does not take cognizance of the object, but is only another conductor, carrying the image still farther inward, to the intellectual nerves of the brain; and not until it reaches them do we see the object, not until then is its ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... the children in the house with the servants, while she went on with March to look up a dwelling of some sort in New York. It made him sick to think of it; and, when it came to the point, he would rather have given up the whole enterprise. She had to nerve him to it, to represent more than once that now they had no choice but to make this experiment. Every detail of parting was anguish to him. He got consolation out of the notion of letting the house furnished for the winter; that implied their return to it, but it cost him pangs ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and repassing the same heap of hedge-clippings as he went round the field. I think he used to feel surprised at himself, when he remembered how bold a rider he had been, and how utterly old age and bad health had taken away his nerve. He would say that riding prevented him thinking much more effectually than walking—that having to attend to the horse gave him occupation sufficient to prevent any really hard thinking. And the change of scene which it gave him was ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... is strange," interrupted Gordon, looking at her with deepening interest. "You have the gift of the sympathetic listener. I noticed no disturbance, but I did come near fainting. I have had a hard day—one of fierce nerve-strain." ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... said that unmoved person, squatting down on his heels and thrusting his hand inside David's shirt. "Only a faint. Why, where's your nerve? You're nearly as white as ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... the one hand they restored the estates plundered by the Cromwellians thirty-six years before, and gave compensation to all innocent persons—while they strained every nerve to exclude the English from our trade, and to secure it to the Irish—while they introduced the Statute of Frauds, and many other sound laws, and thus showed their zeal for the peaceful and permanent welfare of the People, they were not unfit to grapple with the great military crisis. ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... with the unctuous resin of the wood and the good draught I had given, my furnace worked so well that I was obliged to rush from side to side to keep it going. The labour was more than I could stand; yet I forced myself to strain every nerve and muscle. To increase my anxieties, the workshop took fire, and we were afraid lest the roof should fall upon our heads; while, from the garden, such a storm of wind and rain kept blowing in, that it ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... better, steadily and slowly moving up through all her relapses. My knee never gets the least better; it hurts to-night, which it has not done for long. I do not suppose my doctor knows any least thing about it. He says it is a nerve that I struck, but I assure you he ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... from that they hear practically nothing. How much better it would be if they could be warned very definitely of coming suffering, if they are not now delivered from their sins. So long as there is sin there will be suffering. I am convinced that the nerve of the preacher's message is often cut by this want of a definite ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... power, or the spiritual element, then add this temperament, and there follows a certain subtile, penetrative, radical quality of thought, a characteristic percipience of principles. And principles are not only seen, but felt; they thrill the nerve as well as greet the eye; and the man consequently becomes highly amenable to his own belief. The primary question respecting men is this,—How far are they affected by the original axiomatic truths? Truths are like the winds. Near the earth's surface winds blow in variable directions, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... action. Madly she struggled again and again to get her hind legs to work. All the force of desperate intent she brought to bear. It was like putting forth tenfold power to force the nervous fluids through their blocked-up channels as she dragged herself with marvellous speed downhill. What is nerve but will? The dead wires of her legs were hot with this fresh power, multiplied, injected, blasted into them. They had to give in. She felt them thrill with life again. Each wild shot from the gun lent vital help. Another fierce attempt, and ...
— Johnny Bear - And Other Stories From Lives of the Hunted • E. T. Seton
... she went on, without heeding him, "I care nothing, for, as I tell you, I have their antidote at hand. You have known me for many years, tell me, did you ever see my nerve desert me? Do you suppose that I am a woman who would bear failure when I could choose death? No, George, I had rather pass into eternity on the crest of the wave of my success, such as it has been, and let it break and grind me to powder there, or else ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... opposite condition of hyperidrosis, and is characterized by diminution or suppression of the sweat secretion. It occurs to some extent in certain systemic diseases and also in some affections of the skin, such as ichthyosis; nerve-injuries may ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... 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 ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... came through the canon, for two pale-faces on horseback were cantering along at no great distance. They had not seen him, he was sure of that, although they were evidently looking for something. He let them pass and go on until he felt safe in following. Every nerve in his body ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... 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, merrily whistling as ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... later. Stay at college till the term is up, and in the meantime try to land a job. However, you won't have any trouble to do that. Keep your nerve, boy, for your mother's sake. It's a hard blow, but we'll weather it, never ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... buccaneer by persuasion, seeming compliance, or by force, for a short space, all would be well. For she never doubted that her lover would come for her. Even if he had to come single-handed and alone to fight for her, she knew he would be there. Therefore, with every nerve strained almost to the breaking point to ward off his advances and to delay any action he might contemplate, ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... honesty of intention, the admission that life and nights were short, lacking in the fever at the Eastlake dancing; here, rather than unsettled restraint, was the determination to spend every excited nerve on sensation, to obtain the last drop from glasses the contents and odors of which uniquely resembled the drinks of pre-prohibition. These girls, consciously animating their shapely bodies with the allurement if not the ends of creation, prostitutes of both temperament and fact, were, Lee Randon ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... How do you suppose? I'll go right now, before I lose my nerve. [She powders nose before ...
— Class of '29 • Orrie Lashin and Milo Hastings
... Covenanters were apprised, and for the third time the roads converging upon Edinburgh were filled with their dauntless ranks. They came on foot, on horses, and in wagons; old men with white locks and young men with iron nerve; ministers and elders, noblemen and commoners. These were men who were exalted into Covenant with the Almighty; they had tasted the sweetness of the liberty of the sons of God; they had felt the energy of the Holy ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... pursuit of learning interfered for several hours with the far more important object which she had at heart to-day; and it was not until two o'clock that she found herself at liberty to do what every nerve and fibre of her young organism was straining ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... were so obvious and unaffected. In general society people passed him over as a shy, harmless, unmeaning little man; but those who really knew him affirmed that his courage was not to be damped, nor his nerve shaken, by extremity of danger—that he was always ready with succour for the needy, with sympathy for the sorrowful. In short, as they tersely put it, that "his heart was in ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... afield as she dared, while the doctor made his visit, which was apt to be a long one in the lonely country houses. This morning she had possessed herself of a square, thin volume which gave lists and plates of the nerve system of the human body. The doctor had nearly laughed aloud when he caught sight of it, and when Nan opened it with decision and gravity and read the first page slowly, she was conscious of a lack of interest in her ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... for the expenses of his family; for the last year it had not sufficed. It was necessary for the success of his business, or, he supposed, it was necessary that he should be considered a rich man; and he had harassed himself and strained every nerve to keep up appearances, and now he was saying to himself that this new claim upon him could not possibly be met. He was not a hard man, though he had sometimes been called so. At this moment, his heart was very tender over the widow and her children; ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson
... for his chief's welfare. He knew that he would succeed, but he would have liked to have spared him much of the physical fatigue and the nerve-racking strain of these hours that lay between the daring deed and the hope of safety. Therefore he was conscious of an acute tingling of his nerves, which went on even during the brief patches of fitful sleep, and through the numbness that invaded his whole body ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... am tiring rapidly of this great fool who comes shouting and tramping into our home. And when I am annoyed beyond my nerve capacity, I ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... violently that the pipe dropped from his hand. A minimum of sleep and a maximum of tobacco do not tend to steady a man's nerve. ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... in this great event, for he felt in his heart that the honor of his country depended entirely upon the skill he displayed in riding the flying horse. He was also not a little concerned lest his secretary should fail to carry himself with becoming nerve, and encouraged him with promises to permit him to say things creditable to himself in his first letter to the New ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... emphatically from the old inventor. "I've got some courage but not enough for that. You see, the man that marries her has got to have the nerve to face the whole village—brave Zenas Henry, the three captains, an' Abbie Brewster, besides winnin' the girl herself. 'Twill be some contract. No, you can be mortal sure I shan't go meddlin' in no such love affair as ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... and unsought for; above all, a precision and sureness of expression which people soon began to find were not within the power of most of those who tried to use language. Such English, graceful with the grace of nerve, flexibility, and power, must always have attracted attention; but it had also an ethical element which was almost inseparable from its literary characteristics. Two things powerfully determined the style of these sermons. One was the intense hold which the vast realities ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... Any special function of the mind may have in certain animal groups an especially high development, and we see certain parts correspondingly developed. The dog has certainly a keener sense of smell than the man—the part of the brain which is in direct connection with the olfactory nerve is correspondingly much bulkier in the dog's brain than in the human organism. Here too, of course, research may be carried to the subtlest details and the microscope has to tell the full story. Not the differences ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... might's well have the handlin' of it as let it rot where it's at. I tells him so an' agrees that if he tips off his cache to me I'll retaliate by givin' him the gun. He swears he ain't got no cache. He's blow'd everything he had, his nerve's gone, an' he's headin' fer Wolf River fer to gouge yeh out of some dinero. He claims yeh collected reward on them two yeh got in the Yellowstone an' what's more the dudes tuk up a collection of a thousan' bucks an' ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... forest starts back with dismay as he comes suddenly upon one of these venomous reptiles, and hears its ominous rattle when too near to escape. He must muster all his nerve, and strike it with his stick as it springs; for a wound from its fangs will, as he knows, bring certain death, far-away ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... soul, those senses of the mind—if I may be allowed the expression—which connect us with, and link us to those awful obscure realities—an all-powerful and equally beneficent God, and a world to come, beyond death and the grave. The first gives the nerve of combat, while a ray of hope (p. 164) beams on the field: the last pours the balm of comfort into the wounds which ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... too freely to passionate impulse, by preventing the escape of the rejuvenating agent. The means of nourishing the body and brain being therefore insured as to supply, it is not reasonable to suppose that the nerve-cells of the rejuvenated man can fail to receive their proper nourishment for many succeeding years, and, passing by the rat as a fallacious parallel, we cannot see any good reason why the human body and ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower
... Swiss magnetizer. He thought the whole thing a comedy; a week after, he attended a second exhibition, saw that the patient could not open his eyes, and concluded that this was ascribable to some physical cause. The fixity of gaze must, according to him, exhaust the nerve centers of the eyes and their surroundings. He made a friend look steadily at the neck of a bottle, and his own wife look at an ornamentation on the top of a china sugar bowl: sleep was the consequence. Here hypnotism had its origin, and the fact was established that sleep could be induced ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... the afternoon Terry had been dimly conscious that the headache had returned, that his face was flushed and hot, but the fast pumping blood seemed to energize his faculties. Never had he felt so keyed-up, so sinewy of nerve. ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... must speak to, Terror still vibrates in her every nerve. Her fancy mingles fire with all she thinks of. Asleep, her soul seems busy; but awake, Absent: now less than brute, now more ...
— Nathan the Wise • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... cough; my friends said I had consumption; was reduced in flesh and nerve till the least work or exercise would ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... and the appearance of the party above him, in devising the means necessary to his liberation. As it was, few men, unaccustomed to the giddy elevations of the mast, could have mustered a sufficient command of nerve to maintain a position on the ledge where he stood. Even he could not have continued there, without steadying his form by the ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... say, a little in advance of it—by reason of the air banking up there. But having only his rule-of-thumb knowledge to apply in the premises, the apparent scientific contradiction of his own practical notions as to what was going to happen confused him and made him irritable—the nerve-stirring state of the atmosphere no doubt having also a share in the matter—as was made plain by his sharp quick motions, and by the way in which on the smallest provocation he fell to swearing at the men. And so the day wore itself out to nightfall: with the steel-gray ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... expressly for himself by the obliging and now defunct Don Pomponio, might be permanently abolished. It was not a pleasant prospect. Mr. Freddy Parker was rather too old to start knocking about the world again. He was losing what he called his "nerve." ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... nerve to undertake the delivery of such a summons in the present heated and turbulent state of the Moorish community. Such a one stepped forward in the person of a cavalier of the royal guards, Hernan Perez del Pulgar by name, a youth of noble descent, who had ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... my whole finger and part of my hand shocked me with the most excruciating agony that the hide of man ever felt. Flashes and waves of pain darted up my arm to the elbow and the muscles in my forearm jumped. The sensitive nerve in my elbow sang and sent darting waves of zigzag needles up to my shoulder. My hand was a source of searing heat and freezing cold and the pain of being crushed and twisted and wrenched out of joint all ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... could all read and write English; but adds, that the jealousy of traders and land speculators, who feared it would interfere with their business, caused it to be closed. Alas! this people had encountered the iron nerve of Christianity, without reaping the fruit ...
— Se-Quo-Yah; from Harper's New Monthly, V. 41, 1870 • Unknown
... been over to Curraunbeg," said Priscilla, "to see how his old boat is looking. After what Jimmy Kinsella is sure to have told him about the way they're treating her he's naturally a bit anxious. I wonder will he have the nerve to charge them anything extra at the end for dilapidations. It's curious now that we don't see the tents on Curraunbeg. I saw them yesterday from Craggeen. Perhaps they've moved round to the other ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... jaws; but he put his hand ruefully to the back of his head where a bump marked the place where the girl had struck him and a moment later a half-smile played across his lips. He could not help but admit that she had tricked him neatly, and that it must have taken nerve to do the thing she did and to set out armed only with a pistol through the trackless waste that lay between them and the railway and beyond into the hills ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Leipsic, 1880, 44 pp.). The author defends in this the "principle of the least effort." He thinks the child begins with the sounds that are made with the least physiological effort, and proceeds gradually to the more difficult sounds, i. e., those which require more "labor of nerve and muscle." This "law" is nothing else than the "loi du moindre effort" which is to be traced back to Maupertuis, and which was long ago applied to the beginnings of articulation in children: e. g., by Buffon in 1749 ("Oeuvres ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... Has he not earned it, Signor Keralio? Is it not because of his courage and daring that you are here—ze master in this house? Who but Keralio would have had ze nerve to ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... all its energies for the struggle of the election. Crassus and Caesar staked their money—whether their own or borrowed—and their connections to procure the consulship for Catilina and Antonius; the comrades of Catilina strained every nerve to bring to the helm the man who promised them the magistracies and priesthoods, the palaces and country-estates of their opponents, and above all deliverance from their debts, and who, they knew, would keep his word. The aristocracy was in great perplexity, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... death, I see my dear mother and my revered grand-father. I strive to raise you; you push me from you, and shrieking cry—'Charlotte, thou hast murdered me!' Horror and despair tear every tortured nerve; I start, and leave my restless ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... the thick of it," objected Barkleigh. "When the danger is so close you can see it, a woman's nerve isn't as good as a man's. It can't be. She ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... straight to the point. She wanted to talk to the people. She wanted to get at them. If she had been a man, she would have taken a chair and gone to Hyde Park. As it was, she hadn't the nerve for Hyde Park. At least she was afraid she hadn't. It might have to come to that. There was a trembling in her voice that annoyed her. She was so afraid she might cry. She wasn't out for anything crazy. She wanted only those things done that could be done if the people would but lift ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... As such, they characterize precisely those polar relationships of the second order on which the threefold structure of man, we found, is based. For from the physical, as much as from the superphysical aspect the nerve-system represents the 'dry' part, and the metabolic system the 'moist' part of man's being. The same is true of the relationship between the soul and the surrounding world at both poles. Here we have the antithesis between the 'dry' onlooker-relationship ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... blood if I had not warmed it by dashing out to make discoveries. Try this in bed, in the dead of the night: try this at your own comfortable fire-side, in the life of the night. You can fill any house with noises, if you will, until you have a noise for every nerve in ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... fascinating book.... Pen and pencil sketches alike have grace, nerve, and humour, and are alive with ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... the animals straining every muscle and nerve, their flanks heaving and flecked with foam. No sound broke upon the stillness of the night, save the rapid hoof-strokes of the mustangs, and occasionally the yelp of a coyote that was startled ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... He realized instinctively, with a tightening of his heart, that he was listening to one of the great songs of which Janin had spoken. It hung for a minute or more in his hearing, thrilling every nerve, and then died away. It stopped actually, but its harmony rang in Harry Baggs' brain. Instantly it had become an essential, a permanent part of his being. It filled him with a violent sense of triumph, a richness of possession that gave birth to a ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... non-striped muscles in the body, and this action upon the muscular coats of the arteries, and especially of the arterioles, causes a great rise in blood-pressure shortly after its absorption, which is very rapid. The terminals of the vagus nerve are also stimulated, causing the heart to beat more slowly. Later in its action, the drug depresses the intra-cardiac motor ganglia, causing prolongation of diastole and finally arrest of the heart in dilatation. A ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... 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 discovery. There are certain exultations ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... school life is to some extent responsible; "the holidays," he adds, "are sufficiently long to counteract it, however, provided the boy has sisters and they have friends; the change from school fare and work to home naturally results in a greater surplus of nerve-force, and I think most boys 'fool about' with servants or their sisters' friends." Moll (Kontraere Sexualempfindung, 1889, pp. 6 and 356) does not think it proved that a stage of undifferentiated sexual feeling always occurs, although we have to recognize that it is of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... straight. The match was continued at 10 balls more each. By this time things had become a little exciting. Over $1500 was bet; many were betting $4 to $1 against me, thinking that I would lose my nerve and go to missing. Mr. W. walked to the score for the third time and broke 9 balls out of 10 shot at; it then came my turn to shoot, and I hit nine balls in succession when I was interrupted by a big fellow who offered to bet $25 I would miss the 10th ball; this bet was ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... processes of mind which were called into operation the first time the stimulus in question started a mental reaction. The nervous system of man is so constituted that in the acquirement of knowledge, each time the nerve centers react to the same stimulus, the tendency so to react becomes stronger, under the mere presence of the stimulus, starts up an automatic sort of reaction, and we say that the child knows the meaning of ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... his luxurious inner office with its deep rugs and eye-relaxing colors and its comfortable wide desk with its speaker box and telephones that were like the nerve wires of power, and sat down comfortably like a king on a throne or a mule skinner in the driver's seat with ten pairs of reins in each hand. He never felt completely awake and up to his full size in the morning until ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... be considering their carriage as a castle, and they looked as if their terror had made them physically incapable of leaving it. Coleman stood waiting. Behind him the clapper-tongued crowd was moving ominously. Marjory arose and stepped calmly down to him. He thrilled to the end of every nerve. It was as if she had said: " I don't think there is great danger, but if there is great danger, why * * here I am * ready * with you." It conceded everything, admitted everything. It was a surrender without a blush, and it was only possible in the shadow of the crisis when ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... impossible part of his task had been accomplished. Could he reach the floor in safety? Gradually he worked himself backward over the rail, in imminent danger of falling; but his nerve never wavered, and I could see a wonderful light in his eyes. With something of a lurch, his body fell against the outer side of the railing, to which he was hanging by his chin, the line still held firmly in his teeth. Slowly he slipped his chin from the rail, and then hung suspended ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... him than the Laird of the Ewes, took to his natural arms, and dispatched Mr. Crawfurd a challenge to fight him on the Corn-Cockle Moor. No refusal was possible then, none except for a man of rare principle, nerve, and temper. The Laird of the Ewes had no pretensions to mighty gifts; so he walked out with his second one autumn morning when his reapers were flourishing their sickles, met his foe, and though without the ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... parent lives 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 object; claim ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... only the blacksmith outfit. She might have made perhaps twenty-four miles under such conditions, had it not been for the counteracting softness of the teams. Loaded, they would make from ten to twelve miles daily, which seems intolerably slow in these days of speed and nerve-wracking restlessness. But with six of the teams working steadily the outfit would transport upward of thirty tons twelve miles a day, which represents an enormous amount of provisions for man ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... each half-drachm contained the half-digested substance of a pound of beef. I'm surprised at Spondee!" continued Mr. Rightbody aggrievedly. "Exhausting his brain and nerve force by the highest creative efforts of the Muse, he prefers perfumed and diluted alcohol flavored with carbonic acid gas. Even Mrs. Faringway admitted to me that the sudden lowering of the temperature of the stomach by the introduction ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... completely isolated in the dark, cold tube. The voices of his companions were not audible. It was a time to test the nerve of ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... Jagerfeld has talked of you a great deal, and very enthusiastically," she said, in a musical, somewhat deep, resonant voice, which thrilled his every nerve like the sound of bells, and as he bowed, she added, smiling mischievously: "And of me to you; I watched you ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... refreshment of mind and body: I will not have it turned into a time of toil. I know you, Phillis; you would work till your poor fingers got thin, and your spirits were all flattened out, and every nerve was jarring and set on edge; and you would call that duty! No, darling,—never! Dulce shall keep her roses, and we will have battledore and shuttlecock every evening; but, if I have to keep the key of the work-room in my ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... and lecturer, born, 1852. Is the author of "Studies on Life and Sense," "Leisure Time Studies," "Science Stories," "Chapters on Evolution," "Wild Animals," "Brain and Nerve," etc., and is a constant contributor on scientific subjects to the magazines and newspapers, contributing weekly "Science Jottings" to the "Illustrated ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... admiration, to note with what swift and sure strides her genius and judgment developed and expanded in the forecasting and handling of the securities of both the material and spiritual markets. He was proud of her nerve and daring in exploiting worldly stocks, and just as proud of her conservative caution in working her spiritual deals. He noted that she never lost her head in either case; that with a splendid courage she often went short on worldly futures, but heedfully drew the line there—she was always long ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... moment Ruyler, who 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 ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... "Toxemia is the basic cause of all so-called diseases. In the process of tissue-building (metabolism), there is cell-building (anabolism) and cell destruction (catabolism). The broken-down tissue is toxic. In the healthy body (when nerve energy is normal), this toxic material is eliminated from the blood as fast as it is evolved. But when nerve energy is dissipated from any cause (such as physical or mental excitement or bad habits) the body becomes weakened or ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... effort that his limbs refused their office, as might the limbs of one lying under the thrall of a nightmare. The laugh died away, there was a sound like a scraping upon the wall, the candle was suddenly blown out. Then his nerve began to return and with it his control over his limbs. He crawled to the side of the bed remote from the curtains, stole to the little table on which he had left his revolver and an electric torch, snatched at them, ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... regulating their commerce and navigation, consists the mutual happiness and prosperity both of England and America. She derived assistance and protection from us; and we reaped from her the most important advantages. She was, indeed, the fountain of our wealth, the nerve of our strength, the nursery and basis of our naval power. It is our duty, therefore, my Lords, if we wish to save our country, most seriously to endeavor the recovery of these most beneficial subjects; and in this perilous crisis, perhaps the present moment may be the only ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... desperate man, and a man of nerve. His hotel, too, is not without attendants devoted to his interests. Had I made the wild attempt you suggest, I might never have left the Ministerial presence alive. The good people of Paris might have heard ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... way. In a little more than a half hour they were all ready and then they fled southward, Shif'less Sol, this time, leading the way, the guide Ross at the rear, eye and ear noticing everything, and every nerve attuned to danger. ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler |
