"Excitable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... impressionable, excitable or arousable. Things do not "stir him up" as they do other people. He is more self-contained, self-controlled and self-sufficient than any other. He is not easily carried off his feet and seldom yields to impulse. It is difficult to get him to do anything on the spur of the moment. He usually ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... for me to say, and, of course, I don't know the rights of it, bein' only a servant, but they say there was a sudden quarrel last night between Mr. Peytral and Mr. Bowmore. I think myself that Mr. Peytral was getting a bit excitable lately, whatever it was. On Thursday night, just after dinner, he went strolling off in the dusk, alone, and presently Mr. Bowmore—he came down in the afternoon—went strolling off after him. It ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... successively engaged—each recommended, by the lady whom she had last served, with that utter disregard of moral obligation which appears to be shamelessly on the increase in the England of our day. The first of the two maids, described as "rather excitable," revealed infirmities of temper which suggested a lunatic asylum as the only fit place for her. The second young woman, detected in stealing eau-de-cologne, and using it (mixed with water) as an intoxicating drink, claimed merciful construction of her misconduct, on the ground ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... prince," said I, "the excitable mood you were in when this apparition surprised you, and how all the circumstances conspired to inflame your imagination. Quitting the dazzling light of day and the busy throng of men, you were suddenly ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... little more sanity between you. Remember there is insanity on her side and insanity on yours, and you both of you seem half-cracky already, to my mind. Then you are cousins. The relationship is near, unpleasantly near. You are both very much alike, extremely excitable, and with both your heads stuffed full of nonsense. She is exceedingly delicate, and no wonder, sitting up all night sketching and sitting in all day painting! I wish you could have chosen some strong, ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... Jerrold was a member, a fierce Jacobite, and a friend, as fierce, of the cause of William the Third, were arguing noisily, and disturbing less excitable conversationalists. At length the Jacobite, a brawny Scot, brought his fist down heavily upon the table, ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... with extreme caution, not to disturb Mrs. Ducharme and Preston, who became excitable when awakened suddenly. They drank their coffee in silence, and Sommers had stood ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... persons of such impetuous and excitable temperaments as Elizabeth and Essex both possessed, though usually very ardent for a time, is very precarious and uncertain in duration. After various petulant and brief disputes, which were easily reconciled, there came at length a serious quarrel. There was, at that time, great ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... wonderful. He never left him, and since he succeeded to the leadership of the tribe he has lived continuously amongst his people, absorbed in them and his horses, carrying on the traditions handed down to him by his predecessor and devoting his life to the tribe. They are like children, excitable, passionate and headstrong, and he has never dared to risk leaving them alone too long, particularly with the menace of Ibraheim Omair always in the background. He has never been able to seek relaxation further afield than ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... "Because he's too excitable, as a rule," replied Baldwin. "You see, Mister Edgar, it takes a cool, quiet, collected sort of man to make a good diver, and Irishmen ain't so cool as I should wish. Englishmen are better, but the best of all are ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... Anglo-Canadian was quite so stolid, serious and impressive with homely common sense as Sir Lomer Gouin, the Premier of Quebec. This man spoke slowly, massively, almost gutturally like a Saxon, in fluent but accented English. He was far less excitable than the Premier of Ontario on the ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... beside himself that he hardly knew what he was doing. You can see that he is of a very excitable temperament. Then the rest of it is easy to imagine. Poor, poor fellow! how he must have suffered! Didn't you think him ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... environment,—their outdoor life, their daily exercise, the healing balsam of the mountain air, their enforced temperance in diet, and the absence of all enervating pleasures,—it was nevertheless the incontestable fact. Whether it was the result of the nervous, excitable temperament which had brought them together in this feverish hunt for gold; whether it was the quality of the tinned meats or half-cooked provisions they hastily bolted, begrudging the time it took to prepare ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... in tete-a-tete, he went ahead and talked copiously, but this was rather the exception than the rule. I have not thought it worth while to try to give the effect of our own talk. We were young, excitable, and argumentative, and, though it was at the time often delightful and stimulating, it was also often very crude and immature. Father Payne was good at helping a talker out, and would often do justice to a clumsily-expressed remark which he thought was interesting. But he was ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... from a blister. The excretory ducts of glands terminate in membranes, and are endued with great irritability, and many of them with sensibility; the latter perhaps in consequence of their facility of being excitable into great action; instances of this are the terminations of the gall-duct in the duodenum, and of the salivary and lachrymal glands in the mouth and eye; which produce a greater secretion of their adapted fluids, when the ends of their ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... of bedlam you call the "excitable wards." They who enter leave all hope (of the friends) behind. Is there special need in these regions of despair and mental chaos that the mere pounds and strength shall be kept up? What will be lost by protracted fasts? Nothing in the kitchen. As for the brain and those sick centres, they ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... Corinth was the largest and most important city of Greece. The commerce of the world flowed through its two harbours. The population consisted of Greeks, Jews, Italians, and a mixed multitude; it was excitable, pleasure loving, and mercurial. In this city was held a perpetual vanity fair. The vices of the east and west met and clasped hands in the work of human degradation. The Greek goddess Aphrodite had a magnificent temple in which a ...
— Bible Studies in the Life of Paul - Historical and Constructive • Henry T. Sell
... an expression of interest in and sympathy for the child, does more than the sternest commands. This I have long since discovered. I never scold my children; scolding does no good, but harm. My oldest boy is restless, excitable, and impulsive. If I were not to provide him with the means of employing himself, or in other ways divert him, his hands would be on every thing in the house, and both he and I ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
... with trucks, carriages and engines, also large dumps of material. Everywhere, crowds of enemy troops were to be seen rushing about; apparently in a state of great panic. In these circumstances a squadron of the Deccan Horse went down to "look into things" and after "dealing" with a few of the excitable "Johnnies" the remainder surrendered. About 900 prisoners were taken that morning. Later on in the day the Brigade moved down to the station and encamped, the horses being watered from a trough which was discovered about a ...
— Through Palestine with the 20th Machine Gun Squadron • Unknown
... down by degrees, and told Ursula various circumstances about the parish and the people which brought him down out of his anger and comforted her after that passage of arms. But the commotion left him in an excitable state, a state in which he was very apt to say things that were disagreeable, and to provoke his children to wrath in a way which Ursula thought was very much against the ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... cold rain was falling, and the soldiers, half-clad, were running wildly hither and thither, while the officers were frantically calling them to arms. Mary woke at the first terrible roar and fled to her mother's room. The excitable negro servants uttered most piercing shrieks. The poor little children were too frightened to scream, but clung, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... let you see the flabby devil was running that show. White men with long staves in their hands appeared languidly from amongst the buildings, strolling up to take a look at me, and then retired out of sight somewhere. One of them, a stout, excitable chap with black mustaches, informed me with great volubility and many digressions, as soon as I told him who I was, that my steamer was at the bottom of the river. I was thunderstruck. What, how, why? Oh, ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... afraid that I am a little late, but I am not quite my own master, you know. I am sorry that Miss Sutherland has troubled you about this little matter, for I think it is far better not to wash linen of the sort in public. It was quite against my wishes that she came, but she is a very excitable, impulsive girl, as you may have noticed, and she is not easily controlled when she has made up her mind on a point. Of course, I did not mind you so much, as you are not connected with the official police, but it is not ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... patho-sexualism. The cases of insane criminals, that is, of the criminals whose vice is the cause of their insanity, is also divisible into two classes. There is that uninteresting class who on account of their irregular, immoral and excitable life become insane, and there is another class. These latter frequently escape the penalty of their crimes. Insanity is disclosed and they have no criminal record, therefore they are discharged. It would be a nice ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... thing for which to thank Virginia Beverly; the suggestion that she should call for help when the Bella Cuba had steamed into the harbour of Samoa. At once her excitable brain seized the picturesqueness of a dramatic situation. She saw herself, effectively dressed, rushing to the rail and hailing any passing ship which might be nearest. Sir Roger Broom, or her late friend George Trent, might try to stop her, but their violence would ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... me to go to a negro church in Washington. Upon arriving we were given a seat well down in front. The pastor was a "visiting evangelist," and in a short time had these excitable and ignorant people in a frenzy, several being carried out of the church in a semicataleptic condition. Suddenly the minister began to pray for the strangers, and especially "for the heathen in our midst," for the unsaved from pagan lands, that they might be saved; and I could not but wonder at ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... gratitude very warmly; Kassandane allowed me to kiss her forehead, and gave me all the jewels she had worn at the time of the accident, as a present for my future wife. Atossa took a ring from her finger, put it on mine and kissed my hand in the warmth of her emotion—you know how eager and excitable she is. Since that happy day—the happiest in my life—I have never seen your sister, till yesterday evening, when we sat opposite to each other at the banquet. Our eyes met. I saw nothing but Atossa, and I think she has not forgotten the man who saved her. Kassandane ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... John, usually the most excitable member of our party, was the calmest of the three, and simply remarked quietly, ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... ensued was almost too much for the excitable Ducklow. His strength went out of him. For a little while there seemed to be nothing left of him but tremor and cold sweat. Difficult as it had been to get the old mare in motion, it was now even more difficult to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... before I leave. Until they declare themselves, I cannot arrange to leave for home; cannot complete my plans, or do anything, in fact. It is annoying—but the negociation is serious, and I must have patience. I know, from painful experience, how, when the nerves and brain are excitable from over tension and exertion, and anxiety and constant worry and wear, little matters are magnified. But already I feel myself so much stronger in nerve and courage that I look now complacently upon much which in the last ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... on the grating or racquet principle, would probably be the best, the only alternative seeming to be to perfect the principle of the lawn mowing shoe. 'Perhaps,' he adds, 'we shall come to both kinds: the first for the quiet animals and the last for the more excitable. I am confident the matter is of ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... Mr. Watson, 'a terror to the shallow and wordy, and a merciless exposer of platitudes and shams.' Mr. Watson describes a famous scene in the October term of 1849 which may sufficiently illustrate his position. 'There was at that time at Trinity a cleverish, excitable, worthy fellow whose mind was a marvellous mixture of inconsistent opinions which he expounded with a kind of oratory as grotesque as his views.' Tradition supplies me with one of his flowers of speech. He alluded to the clergy ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... all things look for the how and the why and wherefore?" shouted the hasty and somewhat excitable blacksmith. "Injustice is often done and might is the ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... however, lowered this and looked searchingly at me, while I wondered what I had better do next. For this was an opportunity—here was a lad of my own age who might be ready to become friends and be of great service to us; but he was as suspicious and excitable as a wild creature, and ready to dash away or turn his weapons against ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... after I had witnessed Jacob's punishment I felt miserable. I was restless and excitable, and did not know what to do with myself. I thought my heart would burst within me. I asked myself all kinds of questions: What am I doing here? What did I come here for? What are all those people to me? As if I had come there only the day before, and of ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg
... excitable manager could stand, and he rushed onto the stage, shaking his fist at Uncle Tom ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... sleeping purposes, and that is all. One cannot travesty the word by calling such dens and lairs "homes." The traditional silent and reserved Englishman has passed away. The pavement folk are noisy, voluble, high- strung, excitable—when they are yet young. As they grow older they become steeped and stupefied in beer. When they have nothing else to do, they ruminate as a cow ruminates. They are to be met with everywhere, standing on curbs and corners, and staring into vacancy. Watch one of them. He will stand there, motionless, ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... had heard of the discourses in praise of love spoken by Socrates and others at the banquet of Agathon is desirous of having an authentic account of them, which he thinks that he can obtain from Apollodorus, the same excitable, or rather 'mad' friend of Socrates, who is afterwards introduced in the Phaedo. He had imagined that the discourses were recent. There he is mistaken: but they are still fresh in the memory of his informant, who had just been repeating them to Glaucon, and is quite prepared ...
— Symposium • Plato
... those gifted for real talk! There are fine merry fellows, full of mirth and shrewdly minted observation, who will not abide by one topic, who must always be lashing out upon some new byroad, snatching at every bush they pass. They are too excitable, too ungoverned for the joys of patient intercourse. Talk is so solemn a rite it should be approached with prayer and must be conducted with nicety and forbearance. What steadiness and sympathy are needed if the thread of thought is to be unwound ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... of New York. A whirlwind of noise and smell and hovering shadows. The jargon of Jewish matrons in brown shawls and orthodox wigs, chaffering for cabbages and black cotton stockings and gray woolen undershirts with excitable push-cart proprietors who had beards so prophetic that it was startling to see a frivolous cigarette amid the reverend mane. The scent of fried fish and decaying bits of kosher meat, and hallways as damnably rotten ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... which she means to enter, and she needs as well originality, a fund of ideas, courage, initiative, imagination, that feeling of capacity for responsibility and enterprise which is like love of adventure, judgment, nerve and character. She should not be too excitable and yet she ought to be keen. She should not be easily disturbed and she ought to be a steady worker. Above all, she requires to be able to deal with people, both ...
— The Canadian Girl at Work - A Book of Vocational Guidance • Marjory MacMurchy
... Midlands and up North. But though the watch-fires of their pickets burned upon the veld, and though the Boer lay in laager over the Border, of him they said not one word. That reticence upon the vital point was characteristically English. The excitable Gaul would have wept, kneaded his manly bosom, and alluded to his mother; the stolid Muscovite would have wept also, referring to his Little Father, the Czar; the Teuton would have poured forth oceans of turgid ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... trust in this arch-juggler? Can it have been that from the painter's native Strasbourg had come to him unimpeachable accounts of Cagliostro's feats during his stay there, which had preceded his nefarious expedition to Paris? But the artist is ever excitable, receptive, impressible—the ready prey of the dealer in illusion and trickery. De Loutherbourg is soon at the feet of the quack Gamaliel; soon he is proclaiming himself an inspired physician, practising mesmerism. Cosway and his wife declared themselves clairvoyants. Other painters ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... of the child in suffering with pain of the stomach is loud, excitable and spasmodic. The legs are drawn up and as the pain ceases, they are relaxed and the child sobs itself to sleep, and rests until awakened ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... Pachmann, with dignity, "that I consider Germany best-fitted to carry out the plan. I think you will agree with me that, if a single nation is to undertake it, it must be one of the five great nations. In world-politics, the others are negligible. Well, let us see. France, a nation of peacocks, excitable, impressionable, easily angered, making much of trifles, jealous of their dignity, a dying nation which grows smaller and weaker every year. England, also a degenerate nation, soaked in gin, where a hundred thousand men are unemployed, and where ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... What would have been in itself sordid, gained a sweetness from the light of love and duty, and never in all her dreamy ease had she been as cheerful and lighthearted as in the midst of hardship and rigid economy. Her equable temper and calm composure came to her aid; and where a more nervous and excitable woman would have preyed upon herself, and sunk under imaginary troubles, she was always ready to soothe and sustain the anxious and sensitive nature of her husband. After all, hers was the lightest share of the trial. To her, the call was to act, ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the phenomena were the more striking because they were gathered within a short compass of time, and took place among a people proverbial for the versatility and extravagance of their impressions. The French are an excitable race, who carry whatever they do or suffer to the last extreme of theatrical effect; and for that reason it might be supposed that the tremendous revulsions we have alluded to were owing in part to national temperament. But similar effects have been wrought, by similar ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... Smith was as unreasoning and violent as was her liking for the excitable little man whom she had helped up the hill, and whose wagon was now rumbling close at ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... you how overwhelmingly pathetic it is—the sight of these brave Frenchmen. Every one has remarked it. Once and for all the tradition that the French are an excitable, emotional people with no grip on their passions and no rein on their impulses—that fiction is dead ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... the half!" said the excitable little editor, who, despite the frequency of his gestures and the volubility of his explanations was busily working with diagrams the while. "You know there was a census ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... temptations connected with this business even when carried on legitimately. So there are dangers to the engineer on a railroad. He does not know what night he may dash into the coal-train. But engines must be run, and stocks must be sold. A nervous, excitable man ought to be very slow to undertake either the engine or the ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... of graining . . . why, it all reminds one of the French Revolution." After one or two dissociations of this sort, the expected Morris Carleon enters through the French window; he is rather young and excitable, and America has overlaid the original Irishman. Morris immediately asks for Patricia and is told that she is wandering in the garden. The Duke lets out that she sees fairies; Morris raves a bit about his sister ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... write to him," cheerfully resumed Dick. "I didn't want the kid to know. He is so excitable, he would have blabbed it right out. I'll sure be glad to see the boy again. He's impulsive, but his heart's all right. I know you've kept a ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... their criticisms only to listen in religious silence to Wagner's music banged out on the piano by the girls of the family. A friend with a tenor voice used to sing Lohengrin in Catalan. Enthusiasm made the most excitable roar, "the hymn ... the hymn!" It was not possible to misunderstand. For them there was only one hymn in existence, and in a trilling undertone they would accompany the liturgic music of Los Segadores (The Reapers). [The revolutionary song of Catalunia, originated by ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... court-martial on one of these heroes, who had fallen out with his commanding officer, and threatened to pass his sword through his body. The culprit, counsel urged, was a man of an amiable, though excitable disposition; the father of two sons, had once saved a child from drowning, and had presented several curiosities to a museum. Taking these facts into consideration, the Court condemned him to six days' imprisonment, his accuser apologised to ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... kindliness, one thing was impossible with him—that is, a real confidence in his sincerity; and, therefore, on the whole, it may, perhaps, be reckoned as a piece of good fortune for the most wayward and excitable of sane mankind, that if he never fully gained the most essential condition of all human happiness, he yet formed a deep and lasting attachment to a woman who, more or less, returned his feeling. In a life so full of bitterness, so harassed by ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... when Mr Brown, not without emotion, made his {43} statement to a hushed and expectant House, and declared that he was about to ally himself with Sir George Cartier and his friends, for the purpose of carrying out Confederation, I saw an excitable, elderly little French member rush across the floor, climb up on Mr Brown, who, as you remember, was of a stature approaching the gigantic, fling his arms about his neck, and hang several seconds there ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... his day, for he sometimes wrote it mobb. Mob is, of course, quite good English now to describe a disorderly crowd of people, and we should think it very curious if any one used the full expression for which it stands. Mob is short for the Latin phrase mobile vulgus, which means "excitable crowd." ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... his cheek at the mention of Dr. Ferris, but the expression of his face underwent no change. "Of course," he said simply, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, "I have forgiven your father. He was very young—very excitable—inexperienced." ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... north-south road will drift in badly only under exceptional circumstances. It is the east-west grades that are most apt to give trouble. Not that I minded my part of it, but I did not mean to kill my horses. I had sized them up in their behaviour towards snow. Peter, as I had expected, was excitable. It was hard to recognize in him just now, as he walked quietly along, the uproar of playing muscle and rearing limbs that he had been when we first struck the snow. That was well and good for a short, supreme effort; but not even for Peter would it do in ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... and to maturer views of government; to give a new impulse to literature, art, and science, and to show how impossible it is to extinguish the fires of liberty when once kindled in the breasts of patriots, or to put a stop to the progress of the human mind among an excitable, intelligent, though fickle people, craving with passionate earnestness both popular rights and constitutional government in accordance with those laws of progress which form the basis ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... of mental stilt-talking I indulged in that day, seeing only the golden side. No doubt it seems very romantic and silly to the reader; but I have known young men, taken badly with that distemper called first love, just as romantic and excitable. In fact, many of us as we grow older recall our sensations, acts, and deeds, felt and performed during that strange delirium, with something like a smile upon our lips, though at the time every reader will agree with me I was somewhat ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... An Englishman is self-assured, as being a citizen of the best-organized state in the world, and therefore as an Englishman always knows what he should do and knows that all he does as an Englishman is undoubtedly correct. An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily forgets himself and other people. A Russian is self-assured just because he knows nothing and does not want to know anything, since he does not believe that anything can be known. The German's ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... suffered a check which lasted long, from the consciousness of a misapplied agitation; sane as well as excitable, he judged severely his moments of aberration into futile eagerness, and felt discredited with himself. All the more his mind was strained toward the discernment of that friend to come, with whom he would have a calm certainty of fellowship ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... inquiries by telephone. He tried again the following morning, but it was only after hearing of the suicide—he begged pardon—the death of Mr. Singleton, that he recalled the fact that all of Singleton's discourse over the telephone had been unusual, excitable to a degree, while all acquaintances of the dead man knew him as a quiet, reserved man, really unusually reserved, almost to the point of the secretive. Mr. James was struck by the unusual note of panic in his tones, but as a carload of horses was of considerable financial value, ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... being rather excitable she even clapped her hands just once. She turned to him: 'Now ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... then in the beginning of the morbid attacks which some time later destroyed his health completely. He was sleepless, excitable, and possessed by the monomania of persecution. His family had tried to induce him to go away for a change, but the morbid condition made him unwilling to do so, and he never left his house until late ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... him, for the present, he could grin and bear and finally get used to it, as other people did. But Uncle Henry possessed an irritable and excitable temperament, that not one man in ten thousand could boast of, and hence he grew—at length sour, then savage, and, finally, quite meat-axish, towards every outsider who dared to ring his bell, and proffer wooden ware and tin ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... of feeling. The assault of the old woman on two harmless strangers seemed too wanton to be tolerated. Ludlow's easy manner and calm language restored them fully to their senses, and the sight of his revolver effectually overawed the more excitable or reckless. They were also jealous of the good name of the town, and now began to be enraged with the old woman. A murmur passed through them. Curses were freely lavished upon her, and the threats which but a short ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... have been accustomed to military rule all their lives, and to withdraw it in toto and tell them to go in and govern themselves is an experience which many regard as dangerous. Of a race excitable, with blood that courses quickly and with wrongs of many years' standing, the natives are intoxicated with their freedom. Their delirium has but one course—revenge—and when the entire population is fully awake to the ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... one of the most turbulent bands of Indians in the valley of the Minnesota. He was a man of marked ability and one of the ablest and most effective orators in the whole Dakota nation. Yet withal, Shakpe was a petty thief, had a "forked tongue," a violent temper, was excitable, and vindictive in his revenge. These characteristics led him to the scaffold. He was hanged at Fort Snelling, in 1863 for participation in the bloody massacre of '62. He and his followers were so noted for their deception ...
— Among the Sioux - A Story of the Twin Cities and the Two Dakotas • R. J. Creswell
... Sunday profess to believe in a communion of such. These are the feelings rather than the opinions of the most Protestant of Irish Protestants, and it is intelligible that they should have been produced by the close vicinity of Roman Catholic worship in the minds of men who are energetic and excitable, but not ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... also to accustom himself, while in this stage, to the engine controls which have been explained already; and he is not likely to be guilty of the error of one excitable novice who, while driving his machine back on the ground towards the sheds at an aerodrome, after his first experience in "rolling" became so confused, as he saw the buildings looming before him, that he lost his head completely and forgot to switch off his motor. ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... won't let you see it, Tom, but I'll read portions of it to you. I'll have to expurgate it or you'd have a rush of blood to the head, you're so excitable. It makes a lot of fun of us. Tells that old joke, 'hay foot, straw foot,' when we drill. Says the Yankees now have three hundred thousand men under the best of commanders, and that the Yankee fleet will soon close up all our ports. Says a belt of steel ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... has a nervous, wiry temperament. This often makes a man rash and headlong, and hence not reliable; but when combined, as in him, with perfect self-possession and self-control, imparts enormous power. It matters not how nervous and excitable a man is, if danger and responsibility instead of confusing and unsettling him, only winds him up to a higher tension, till he becomes like a tightly-drawn steel spring. Excitement then not only steadies him, but it quickens his perceptions, clears his judgment, gives rapidity to his decisions, ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... English and French, dealing with the war, have from the first been characterised by a self-control and calm determination, which in the case of the French has especially astonished Americans; for we expected the French to be more excitable. Taken as a whole, the Teutonic literature has from the first been characterised by an uncontrollable bitterness and violent denunciation of the enemy and of neutrals; which has also surprised Americans, for we expected you to be more logical and self-contained than the French, ...
— Plain Words From America • Douglas W. Johnson
... into all sorts of recognizances to keep the peace," was the reply; "but I should have thought you might trust me by this time. It's that excitable husband of yours that wants disciplining. I'll give him some soda-water by way of a precaution. Then, when you have sacrificed to friendship sufficiently, you will lionize Miss Tresilyan? The Castle first, of course. Shall we meet ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... Dotty's more excitable nature had been thoroughly upset by the shock of the accident, the pain of her injury and the remorse that she felt at feeling herself responsible ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... very prominent politician. In Chinese poetry there is an apparent absence of passion which is due to the same practice of under-statement. They consider that a wise man should always remain calm, and though they have their passionate moments (being in fact a very excitable race), they do not wish to perpetuate them in art, because they think ill of them. Our romantic movement, which led people to like vehemence, has, so far as I know, no analogue in their literature. Their old music, some of which is very beautiful, makes so little noise that ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... "how is Mrs. Liebling?" It was his habit to obtrude himself upon everybody. From the gossip of Bulke, his valet, he had learned of Rosa and her cross. The difficult lady she served was the excitable person of whom the barber had told Frederick and with whom he was acquainted from certain impressions of his hearing. Rosa, who was carrying Ella Liebling, a girl of five years, on her crimson ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... a people fall easy victims to agreeable sentiment, indulged extravagant hopes from war in the air, and expected great achievements from their Zeppelins. On the other hand, the English, who are less excitable, were comparatively slow as a nation to appreciate the importance of the new invention. Conservative and humorous minds are always conscious chiefly of the immutable and stable elements in human life, and do not readily pay respect to novelty. ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... worship at his lodgings, broke into a fervent and involuntary petition for the success of the enterprise against Louisburg. We of the present generation, whose hearts have never been heated and amalgamated by one universal passion, and who are, perhaps, less excitable in the mass than our fathers, cannot easily conceive the enthusiasm with which the people seized upon the project. A desire to prove in the eyes of England the courage of her provinces; the real necessity for the destruction ...
— Biographical Sketches - (From: "Fanshawe and Other Pieces") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... we treat is the man who is making great efforts to keep other people from getting his money away from him. Such a man is always in a nervous, excitable state. In fact our statistics show that many died from this strain. The typical case gets a temperature daily, from what he sees in the papers, about the attacks which radical persons are constantly making on property. Inflammation sets in, and his outbursts grow more noisy and violent. ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... deserting that sagebrush metropolis to its just fate, and plan to add the influence of my presence to the future development of Glencaid. I learn that the climate there is more salubrious, more conducive to long living, the citizens of Placer being peculiarly excitable and careless ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... its audacious ear against the snowy glass. This was a fat, excitable little man, long in the service, but destined forever, it seemed, to hammer brass in the Panama intermediate run. A skillful operator, but his arm broke, as wireless men say, whenever faced by emergency. He distinctly heard ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... again. Then an ugly twist of his ankle, and he lay in a humiliating heap in the shadow of the vines on the lawn, crying out and beginning to curse with the pain that gripped him in sharp teeth, and stung through his whole excitable inflamed being. ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... awakened from sleep. The sheriff, tall and rangy, showed little interest in the affair. To him it was a clear case. The man had been shot. The negro had been seen in the neighborhood with a gun. What more proof could any one want? The brother of the man who had been shot, a nervous, excitable chap, was there and wanted to lynch Dan'l immediately. One of the sheriff's men, keen and watchful, stood beside his prisoner, his hand ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... tarnished frames. An hour, and another hour passed—and still Marston paced this melancholy chamber, a prey to his own fell passions and dark thoughts. He was not a superstitious man, but, in the visions which haunted him, perhaps, was something which made him unusually excitable—for, he experienced a chill of absolute horror, as, standing at the farther end of the room, with his face turned towards the entrance, he beheld the door noiselessly and slowly pushed open, by a pale, thin hand, and a figure dressed in a loose white ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the temptations of an enthusiastic temperament. He was a mathematician rather than a poet, an artisan rather than an artist, and he did not see things invested with a false halo. He was deliberate, not impulsive; calm and not excitable. He naturally weighed every word before he spoke, and scrutinized every statement before he gave it form with pen or tongue. And therefore the very qualities that, to some people, may make his narrative bare of charm, and even repulsively prosaic, add to its value ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... they have presented little but Horror—to many they will seem less terrible than barroques. Hereafter, perhaps, some intellect may be found which will reduce my phantasm to the common-place—some intellect more calm, more logical, and far less excitable than my own, which will perceive, in the circumstances I detail with awe, nothing more than an ordinary succession of very natural causes ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... these men of the wilderness, excitable, ready for any hazard, drawn by the longest odds, and to serve a woman gave the last zest ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... feminine charm and beauty, and superficially susceptible and excitable, with all this, as many women knew, Harry was ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... a trader on the island of Apiang, one of the Gilbert Group, recently annexed by Great Britain. He was very old, very quiet in his manner, and about the last kind of man one would expect to see earning his living as a trader among the excitable, intractable native race which inhabit the Line Islands. His fellow-trader, Bob Randolph, a man of tremendous nerve and resolution, only maintained his prestige among the Apiang natives by the wonderful control he had learnt to exercise over a naturally fiery temper ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... for us, I expect. Our friend, Nehal, is of an excitable disposition. I hope you haven't had to wait long for me, Nicholson. You said you had some business you wanted ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... however, retirement was as essential as routine. He was one of those outwardly calm and inwardly excitable and nervous people we sometimes encounter without detecting the fire beneath the marble, the ever-burning lamp in the sarcophagus, unless we lift the lid of rock to find it—an effort scarcely worth the making in any case, for at best ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... beauty or for his repose of manner; for Mr. Baxter's bald head was covered with a smooth yellow wig, and his figure presented every appearance of having its joints so tightly wired together that they could not play freely in their places, while it was a matter of common report that his nervous, excitable manner had worried his wife until she was glad to be ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... Rook," Alban answered. "I see I surprise you; but I really mean what I say. Sir Jervis's housekeeper is an excitable woman, and she is fond of wine. There is always a weak side in the character of such a person as that. If we wait for our chance, and turn it to the right use when it comes, we may yet succeed in making ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... cheering and shouting; everything was quiet. Harry Fleming saw a wonderful sight—a whole people aroused and determined. There was no foolish boasting; no one talked of a British general eating his Christmas dinner in Berlin. But even Dick Mercer, excitable and erratic as he had always been, seemed to ...
— Facing the German Foe • Colonel James Fiske
... a nervous and excitable man, and the game was beginning to tell upon his temper. He writhed, fumed, shifted his seat; and the beating of his heart was almost audible. Venn sat with lips impassively closed and eyes reduced to a pair of unimportant twinkles; he scarcely appeared ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... perception of truths which we had deemed far above their comprehension. Madelon's precocity was of quite another order. In her quick, impulsive, energetic little mind there was much that was sensitive and excitable, little that was morbid or unhealthy. One might see that, with her, action would always willingly take the place of reflection; that her impulses would have the strength of inspirations; that she would be more ready to receive impressions than to reason ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... Noanoa Tiare. "That is too good for you not to know. You know that the French are excitable, n'est-ce pas? B'en, a French officer, Major Marchand, put up the tricolor in some place called Fashoda in Africa, and the English objected. There was some parleying between the two nations, and the information arrived ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... traveled together in a motor omnibus from their rooms at Chelsea to Northumberland Avenue. Tavernake was getting quite used to the programme by now. They sat in a dimly-lit waiting-room until the time came for Beatrice to sing. Every now and then an excitable little person who was the secretary to some institution or other would run in and offer them refreshments, and tell them in what order they were to appear. To-night there was no departure from the ordinary ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... pretend to be a broker's man in for the rent," continued the excitable lady, rapidly. "When Mr. Cox turns up after his spree, tell him what his doings have brought you to, and say you'll have ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... of odoriferous spruce your excitable partner was chump enough to buy from the Ricks Lumber & Logging Company. On the receipt this morning of a communication from my exceedingly capable representative in Papeete I came to the conclusion that I could afford to allow the rebate claimed by the excessively sour-balled ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... and the eloquence of Solon produced its natural effect upon his spirited and excitable audience, and the public enthusiasm permitted the oligarchical government to propose and effect the repeal of the law [198]. An expedition was decreed and planned, and Solon was invested with its command. It was but a brief struggle to recover ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and excitable. I dislike a woman showing any emotion. Of course, you are only a child yet, but I trust if I have the care of you, which I fully expect to have—for it is scarcely likely you will for a single moment win this ridiculous Scholarship—I trust that I shall ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... past seventy, was nervous, excitable,—and, well, just a wee bit cranky; and when the play was about half over, he came "off," angrily talking to himself, and ran against Mr. Lewis and me, as we were just about "going on." Instantly he exclaimed, "Look here! look here!" taking from his vest pocket a ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... of those sensitive, excitable natures, on which every external influence acts with immediate power. Stimulated by the society of her energetic, buoyant little neighbor, she no longer seemed wishful or pensive, but kindled into a perfect flame of wild delight, and gamboled about ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... as soon as possible," said his Majesty to the prior. "The monk's keen repentance touches me; his brain is still excitable; it needs fresh air and change. I will appoint him to a curacy at Saint Domingo, and desire him to leave for that place at the earliest opportunity. Do not ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... excitable than a crowd; but certain events— national insults, threats of invasion, &c.—may arouse it instantly. Such a phenomenon was observed on several occasions during the Revolution, notably at the time of the insolent manifesto issued by the Duke ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... facial developments generally correspond with the activity of the organs expressed, the rule is not invariable, as the reader will learn hereafter that the facial developments may be moderate when the character is not excitable or demonstrative. ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... less barred with darkest brown above, much lighter below. Usually carry their short tails erect. Wings are small, for short flight. Vivacious, busy, excitable, easily displeased, quick to take alarm. Most of the species have scolding notes in addition to their lyrical, gushing song, that seems much too powerful a performance for a diminutive bird. As a rule, wrens haunt thickets or marshes, but at least one species is thoroughly domesticated. ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... with unbounded means of happiness, affluence for every reasonable want, security against every danger, and the high prerogatives of conscious and elevated freedom, we are still the most unhappy of the sons of Adam. They assert that we grow old before our time; are restless, excitable, and ever worrying for an attainment, in reference to some ruling passion beyond our reach. Comfort, health, calmness, and content, are sacrificed to grasp at something more. Our cheeks grow pale, our brows wrinkled, our hearts clouded, from a settled, taught, established habit of discontent ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... and excess of moisture. It is consequently, as compared with the male, open to infection, exposed to disease, unequal to vigorous treatment, and, in particular, liable to mania. With their emotional, mobile, excitable tendencies on the one hand, and their defective bodily strength on the other, women fall an easy prey ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... Berkeley, he whom Swift, writing to Lord Carteret, recommends as "one of the first men in the kingdom for learning and virtue," and of whom Pope exclaims, "To Berkeley every virtue under heaven," found here this fascination, what wonder that more excitable pilgrims of Latin blood made of it a Mecca? The French particularly came often to Newport in early colonial days, and have left jottings of their stay and the pleasure it afforded them. Monsieur de Crevecoeur visited it in 1772, and found delight in its natural beauties. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... soul's upper region, lofty and serene, free from the vapours and disturbances of the inferior affections?" In truth there was no upper region at all, and very little serenity in Michael's composition. He had been a wayward and passionate boy. He was a restless and excitable man—full of generous impulses, as I have hinted, but sudden and hasty in action—swift in anger—impatient of restraint and government. His religious views were somewhat dim and undistinguishable even ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... book can teach one to have presence of mind, a cool head, or to restrain a more or less excitable temperament in the midst of sudden danger, yet assuredly with proper knowledge for a foundation, a certain self-confidence may be acquired which will do much to prevent hasty action, and to maintain a useful amount ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... who shared these hearty laughs with her aunts—James's eldest daughter, Anna—differed widely from her cousin, Edward's daughter, Fanny. She was more brilliant both in looks and in intelligence, but also more mercurial and excitable. Both occupied a good deal of Jane's thoughts and affections; but Anna must have been the one who caused her the most amusement and also the most anxiety. The interest in her was heightened when she became engaged to the son of Jane's old friend, ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... affection has something bellicose and excitable on it. Those who thus suffer are as violent in their antics as pythonesses, as frantic as monads, as excited as bacchantes; it is a revival of antiquity, ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... Mrs. Donegan's troubles this time which summoned her, although that excitable old woman met her, crying and wringing her hands. It was for a neighbor's misfortunes that she invoked Mary's aid. Dena Barowsky, a frail girl in the room above hers, who supported a family by her work in the factory, had had ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Simon, Staff soberly escorted the woman to the lounge, meaning to leave her there while he enquired for Eleanor at the office; but they had barely set foot in the apartment when their names were shrieked at them in an excitable, shrill, feminine voice, and Mrs. Ilkington bore down upon them in full ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... at least, that one read him through; and that one was Edmund Burke. The dashing rhetoric, and headlong statements of Bolingbroke; his singular affluence of language, and his easy disregard of fact; the boundless lavishing and overflow of an excitable and glowing mind, on topics in which prejudice and passion equally hurried him onward, and which the bitter recollections of thwarted ambition made him regard as things to be trampled on, if his own fame was to survive, was incomparably transferred by Burke to his own pages. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... trouble, that forgets the little necessities of time, that is by nature lazy. I never wanted really but one thing in my life and that I got. Any person inspecting 60 Overstrand Mansions may see that somewhat excitable thing—free of charge. In another person, whom with maddening jealousy I suspect of being some inches taller than I am, I believe I notice the same tendency towards monomania. He also, being as I have so keenly ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... to the class of excitable, nervous people who exaggerate their feelings by an unconscious wildness of tone and of manner, his face bore the traces of a trouble too ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... interview with the marquis. This was Monsieur Perigord, who, after being admitted into his master's presence, began, with much agitation, by imploring him to interfere in an affair of the most terrible importance. The marquis, who was well acquainted with the excitable disposition of his old chef de cuisine, supposed that some slight had been put upon him by the inferior domestics, or perhaps even by M. Boulederouloue himself, so he kindly told the old man that he would take ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... no word that was said. But De Sylva's animated gestures and flashing eyes were enough. Ever and anon, the excitable citizens of Maceio would turn and gaze at one or other of the three, while loud cries of "Bravo!" punctuated the President's oratory. When Coke's turn came for these demonstrations, he tried to grin, but was only able to scowl. For once in his stormy life he ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... officers, he boldly avowed his guilt, and boasted of what he had done. His name he gave as Jean Poltrot, and he claimed to be lord of Merey, in Angoumois; but he was better known, from his dark complexion and his familiarity with the Spanish language, by the sobriquet of "L'Espagnolet." He was an excitable, melancholy man, whose mind, continually brooding over the wrongs his country and faith had experienced at the hands of Guise, had imbibed the fanatical notion that it was his special calling of God to rid the world of "the butcher of ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... "it is tasteful, and something more. It illustrates, as you well say, the better side of our excitable neighbours across the Channel. Setting patriotism apart and regarding the question merely in its—ah—philosophical aspect, it has often occurred to me to wonder how a nation so expert in the arts of life, so—how shall I ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... imitate—short, painstaking yet withal so characteristic of the man. The arrival of the worldrenowned headsman was greeted by a roar of acclamation from the huge concourse, the viceregal ladies waving their handkerchiefs in their excitement while the even more excitable foreign delegates cheered vociferously in a medley of cries, hoch, banzai, eljen, zivio, chinchin, polla kronia, hiphip, vive, Allah, amid which the ringing evviva of the delegate of the land of song (a high double ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Ned when he gets back, if you really want to know. But don't, for goodness sake let Horace hear you. His imagination is so lively that he would think it was a stampede every time the cattle moved. I think it was because Horace is so excitable that Mr. Wilder had us stay home. He probably thought we were older and could steady him down. Now don't try to think up any more things that might happen. I'm tired and want to go to sleep." And turning his back to his brother, Tom refused to talk ...
— Comrades of the Saddle - The Young Rough Riders of the Plains • Frank V. Webster
... must hear of them one day, and I think it quite as well that he should hear of them, since hear he must, with the comments of an old man, and that old man his best friend, than find them out by the teachings, and judge of them according to the light views of his young and excitable associates. He who is forewarned is fore-weaponed. I was kept pure, as it is termed—or in other words, kept ignorant of myself and of the world I was destined to live in, until one fine day I was cut loose from the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various |
