"Irritable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ideals. The two continued friends throughout life. "Eastward Hoe" achieved the extraordinary popularity represented in a demand for three issues in one year. But this was not due entirely to the merits of the play. In its earliest version a passage which an irritable courtier conceived to be derogatory to his nation, the Scots, sent both Chapman and Jonson to jail; but the matter was soon patched up, for by this time Jonson had influence ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... you," he begged. "I fear that I am a little irritable to-night. This constant espionage gets on one's nerves. Look at them all around us,—Crawshay in the corner, trying his best to get something incriminating out of Nora Sharey; Brightman smoking a cigar out there, with his eyes wandering all the ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... mind, she is a very natural child. She is fond of fun and frolic, and loves dearly to be with other children. She is never fretful or irritable, and I have never seen her impatient with her playmates because they failed to understand her. She will play for hours together with children who cannot understand a single word she spells, and it is pathetic to watch the eager gestures and excited pantomime through which her ideas and emotions ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... Colonel Vaughan sigh, and thought, as she said 'good-night,' and hastened upstairs, that she ought to be thankful that the imperturbable and dull Wilhelmina Nugent had been the choice of that discontented and irritable colonel, instead of ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... and excitement that caused every one to be so irritable and to so misunderstand things. Certainly Tavia had some worry, and Ned did not act like himself, while Nat looked miserable. It would be a queer holiday ...
— Dorothy Dale's Queer Holidays • Margaret Penrose
... over, and discoursed and answered him in my head as I went in the morning to the College. I am by nature a doer and only by the way a critic; his philosophical assertion of the incalculable vagueness of life which fitted his natural indolence roused my more irritable and energetic nature to active protests. "It's all so pointless," I said, "because people are slack and because it's in the ebb of an age. But you're a socialist. Well, let's bring that about! And there's a purpose. There ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... over some last details of the transfer of the sawmill. Athalia could not tear herself from arms that placidly consented to her withdrawal; so there had been no rending ecstasies. In consequence, on the journey up to the community she was a little morose, a little irritable even, just as the drunkard is apt to be irritable when sobriety is unescapable.... But at the door of the Family House she had her opportunity: she said, dramatically, "Good-night—Brother Lewis." It was ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland
... endured a hell of suffering during those radiant summer days. He was melancholy, ecstatic, irritable by turns, ascending to the heights and plunging into the depths with an abruptness and unaccountability that was not only enigmatic to himself but to every one else with whom he came in contact. He kept Mary in a ferment of ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... in dealing with Chinese is control of temper. I do not mean that one should not possess a temper, on the contrary, it is a distinct advantage to have one, only it must be kept well in hand. A man of irritable, rasping temperament quickly loses respect and weakens control, while he who can keep calm under any circumstances, and only very rarely gives rein to a fierce outburst at the psychological moment, invariably compels admiration and obedience, for, it is reasoned, if a man who has command ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... of several nurses who appeared to look upon their work as tasks to be executed mechanically, instead of duties to be performed with pleasure. Then again, others who really preferred the work were either kept away from it entirely, or else made dull, peevish and irritable by the great number of hours they were forced to be on duty each day, thus turning what should have been pleasant employment into a drudgery. And like the nurses, so were the orderlies; their daily work hours were so long and their pay so small that only the least intelligent and ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... to Captain Thorn, I must confess that though a stern commander and an irritable man, he paid the strictest attention to the health of his crew. His complaints of the squalid appearance of the Canadians and mechanics who were on board, can be abated of their force by giving a description of the ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... of the family, as well as our grandmother, agree in approving; and that it is owing to your encouragement that Ellen defies us all, and exposes herself to the kind of criticism of which Mr. Sillerton Jackson probably gave you, this evening, the hint that has made you so irritable.... Hints have indeed not been wanting; but since you appear unwilling to take them from others, I offer you this one myself, in the only form in which well-bred people of our kind can communicate unpleasant things to each other: by letting you understand that I know you mean to see ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... of the lungs, or, owing to the difficulties of nursing, bed-sores may form and death result from absorption of toxins. Frequently the prolonged confinement to bed, the continuous pain, and the natural impairment of appetite wear out the strength. In many cases the patient becomes peevish, irritable, or mentally weak. ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... at once so happily and so respectfully, that the change of his tone and manner made obviously a more favourable impression on the Count than he had entertained from his prisoner's conduct during the preceding evening, when, rendered irritable by the feelings of his situation, he was alternately moodily silent or fiercely argumentative. The veteran soldier began at length to take notice of his young companion as a pretty fellow, of whom something might be made, and more than ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... in which the squire had come home appeared to have passed off completely. Bessie had seen him often crabbed and sarcastic, but never so irritable as he was that evening. Nothing went right, from the soup to the dessert, and Jonquil even stirred the fire amiss. Some matter in his correspondence had put him out. But as he made no allusion to his grievance, Bessie was of course ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... movements had grown languid; all her usual occupations were pursued with the same weary indifference; she spent hours alone in her own room; she lost her interest in being brightly and prettily dressed; her eyes were heavy, her nerves were irritable, her complexion was altered visibly for the worse—in one word, she had become an oppression and a weariness to herself and to all about her. Stoutly as Miss Garth contended with these growing domestic difficulties, her own spirits ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... was a man of pleasing and attractive manners, artistic in his tastes—he was especially fond of music—not a very profound or remarkable chemist, but a pleasant social companion. His temper was hasty and irritable. Spoilt in his boyhood as an only child, he was self-willed and self-indulgent. His wife and daughters were better liked than he. By unfriendly criticics{sic} the Professor was thought to be selfish, fonder of the good things of the table and a good cigar than was consistent ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... other girls, and hastily made up her arrears of education, as best she might, at a private school in Watauga. She would always be frail; the invalid habit had gotten into both mind and body; she would continue dependent, demanding; and somewhat irritable; yet there was a fragile prettiness about her, and her very childishness ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... in quite an irritable mood, and his voice sounded as though he were ready to quarrel with anyone on the smallest pretext. It was therefore with an exclamation of impatience that he realized that Henri, with quick impulsiveness, had gripped him by the arm and ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... At all events she said no word about the work that so absorbed him. He was excited enough as it was. And now when he was irritable and angry with the children, she did not even look at him reproachfully. They must bear it, both she and the children—it would soon ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... were still aloft when the battery, which had hoisted Spanish colours, opened fire upon us, the first shot severing our larboard main- topgallant back-stay. This damage, slight as it was, sufficed to effectually rouse Captain Pigot's hasty, irritable temper; and, hurrying the men down from aloft, he ordered the larboard broadside to be manned, and the guns to be directed upon the audacious battery. A couple of well-directed broadsides sufficed to silence its fire, and the boats were ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... be the matter with the birds to-day?' said the captain, who was in rather an irritable mood himself. 'They are silent enough generally'—for the voice of the albatross is ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... as a foreign minister. He belonged to the reigning party and was the choice of New England. Moreover he had the prestige of a great name. He was, it is true, far from popular, was cold and severe in manners, and irritable in temperament; but he was public-spirited, patriotic, incorruptible, lofty in ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... I'll consider what you say," answered Commander Babbicome; who, though obstinate and irritable under ordinary circumstances, was cool enough in moments of danger. Murray, who had been below, confirmed the carpenter's report. The boatswain was ordered to get a sail up and prepare it as proposed, while the drummer beat to ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... not strike you as funny, you know. What is a joke for one man is apt to be a serious matter for another, particularly when that other is of a taciturn and irritable disposition." ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... assurance in the tone, soft, but undoubtedly there. And yet what assurance should a woman have who did not find this house small? She discovered that she was still a little irritable, ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... mercenaries. At the same time Egypt shared the fate of all nations that intrust too great a power to auxiliaries. Greeks defended her, but Greeks conspired against her. The adventurers from whom she derived a fatal strength were of a vain, wily, and irritable temperament. A Greek removed from the influence of Greece usually lost all that was honest, all that was noble in the national character; and with the most refining intellect, he united a policy like that of the Italian in the middle ages, fierce, faithless, and depraved. Thus, while the Greek ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... September dawned upon Jordan County like an irritable old woman with a shawl over her shoulders and a broom in her hands. The sun rose clear, but there was a hint of frost in the air and the east wind was blowing. Ironweeds and goldenrods upon the hills bent low before it. The cotton fields looked dishevelled with ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... the idea of a king. Indeed, he was very blunt, and often rough and overbearing in his manners, not unfrequently doing and saying things which would scarcely be pardoned in a person of inferior station. When thwarted or opposed in any way he was irritable and violent, and he evinced continually a temper that was very far from being amiable. In a word, though his society was eagerly sought by all whom he was willing to associate with, he seems to have made no real friends. Those who knew him admired his intelligence and his ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... and it also fixes the date of the happy change that influenced every thought and every action of his future life, which gave the energy of virtue to his exertions, soothed the asperities of a temper naturally impetuous and irritable, and enabled him, at a period when manhood is full of hope and promise, to view the approaches of death with the calmness of a philosopher, and the resignation ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... in one of his most sunshiny humors, but perhaps the long morning service, so trying in its present arrangement of lengthy prayers, praises, and preaching, to a restless and irritable temper, is to blame ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... with any one magazine rarely lasted long, and there is much diversity of opinion as to the cause; some ascribing it to Poe's dissipated, irregular habits and irritable temper, others to the meagre support of the magazines, still others to Poe's restless disposition and desire to establish a periodical of his own. His uncontrolled and high-strung nature, so sensitive that a single glass of wine or swallow ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... in her own palm. The clear blue-white of their eyes, the softness of their hair, the very feel of their firm, strong bare legs gave her an actual pang of joy. But a half hour—an hour—with them, and she grew restless, irritable. She didn't try ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... are in some cases irritable, and great restlessness and involuntary movement, accompanied even with twisting of the neck, shows itself. This will yield to skilful cooling of the spinal nerves with damp cloths. See ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... was not a bad-hearted man; but he was a formal man, and an irritable one. The tone his shopboy (for so he considered Philip) assumed to him, before his own wife too (examples are very dangerous), ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... week of this traveling at last began to tell on their morale. Not that they grew testy or irritable, but the silences were longer, the repartee less gay, and even buoyant Peter's ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... he lost his Health, he became a Nervous Wreck, and was so Irritable and Irascible that his Wife Ceased to live with him and Returned to her ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... each can lay claim to; with what ineffable satisfaction the richer society crushes the poorer beneath its inventory of houses, and farms and paper securities! Envy and hateful jealousy, rendered still more irritable by the leisure of a cloistered life, are the necessary consequences of such a comparison; and yet nothing is less Christian—in the adorable acceptation of that divine word—nothing has less in common ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... became still worse when we got into the carriage, as he had miscalculated on which side, after leaving the town, we should first see the river, and had placed me on the left side of the car, when it suddenly appeared, in all its glory, on the right. He almost lost his temper, we all know how irritable he can become, and exclaimed impatiently,—"Well, are we now on this side of the river or the other?" but his puzzle at Philadelphia was from the river which we then came upon, being the Schuylkill, while ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... simply, he did not expect ever again to spend such pleasant years anywhere as at the old office; and as for his spells of ill-temper—oh, yes, they needn't shake their heads; he knew he often was irritable—he had meant well and trusted they would forgive him. If he had his life to live over again he would try really to deserve all that they had said of him on this evening. And he was very, very sorry to leave them. "Very sorry, boys; very sorry. Very sorry!" he finished ...
— The Tipster - 1901, From "Wall Street Stories" • Edwin Lefevre
... so far compensated by avoiding his foibles," Scott said; and some years later he wrote,—"When I first saw that a literary profession was to be my fate, I endeavoured by all efforts of stoicism to divest myself of that irritable degree of sensibility—or, to speak plainly, of vanity—which makes the poetical race miserable and ridiculous."[232] The record of his life clearly shows that his kindness towards other men of letters was not limited to words. ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... said Fisher, "but he had a sort of fussy irritable way that old gentlemen sometimes have and I somehow got it fixed in my mind that he was old. As a matter of fact, he was about forty-five, he may have ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... may even lose in weight. It no longer exhibits its usual energy and playfulness, but is either listless and indifferent or cross, fretful and irritable, and is apt to sleep poorly. It grows pale and anaemic and its tissues become soft and flabby. When the milk is scanty it will often nurse a long time at the breasts, sometimes three quarters of an hour, before stopping. At ...
— The Care and Feeding of Children - A Catechism for the Use of Mothers and Children's Nurses • L. Emmett Holt
... Avillius, whose name is carved on the temple of Tentyra with that of the emperor. He was a man who united all those qualities of prudent forethought, with prompt execution and attention to business, which was so necessary in controlling the irritable Alexandrians, who were liable to be fired into rebellion by the smallest spark. Justice was administered fairly; the great were not allowed to tyrannise over the poor, nor the people to meet in tumultuous mobs; and the legions were regularly ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... declared, on examination next morning, that some readjustment of the amputated limb was necessary, which was submitted to by the Major in a very irritable humor. Friends and enemies of the wounded man were all kind and full of sympathy. Miss Eliza was in a flutter of dreary apprehension that rendered her incapable of doing anything effectively. Benjamin was as tender and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... Hester's irritable nerves relaxed. She stretched out her small, neatly shod foot in front of her, leaned her back against the wall, and presently could afford ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... the unsuccessful issue of his attempt to restore the king, in August, 1648. The Earl, who was a conspicuous character during the whole of Charles's reign, and frequently in employments of considerable trust, appears to have been very wavering in his politics, and of an irritable disposition. In 1638, we find him retired to his house at Kensington, in disgust, because he was not made Lord Admiral. At the eve of the civil war, he was employed against the Scots; when the army was disbanded, having received some new cause of offence, he ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 374 • Various
... growing enjoyment in the conversation was ripped to shreds. She had been irritable and vindictive all day, and it seemed to him that for this moment he hated her hard selfishness. He stared morosely at ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... youngest sister, was married in her sixteenth year to Christian VII., king of Denmark. This monarch was addicted to licentious and degrading pleasures, and was a prince of weak intellect, irritable and capricious, open to flattery, and easily deceived by the crafty. Soon after his marriage he visited England, France, and Germany, where he might, if he had possessed intellect, have obtained such knowledge as would have made him a better man. He returned, however, to his dominions the same character ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... seems to me to be this—that a man shall definitely commit himself to a course of life in which he shall be compelled to exercise virtues which are foreign to his character, and any lapses of which will be penalised in a straightforward, professional way. If a man, for instance, is irritable, impatient, unpunctual, let him take up some line where he is bound to be professionally bland, patient, methodical. That would be the act of a philosopher; but, alas, how few of us choose ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... background of sanity, serenity, and cheerfulness to life, to give moral elasticity to our disposition, to round off the wiry edge of our fretfulness, and make us good-humored and easy to approach. Weakness is too apt to be what the doctors call irritable weakness. And that blessed internal peace and confidence, that acquiescentia in seipso, as Spinoza used to call it, that wells up from every part of the body of a muscularly well-trained human being, and soaks the indwelling soul of him with satisfaction, ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... country I became very irritable at the need which confronted me of occasionally cooking some green vegetable—the only item of food which it was necessary to take some trouble over: for all meats, and many fish, some quite delicious, I find already prepared in forms which will remain good ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... caprice, or momentary impulse, and not from the deep and accurate knowledge of those qualities which would most harmonize with your own character. People, to live happily with each other, must fit in, as it were—the proud be mated with the meek, the irritable with the gentle, and so forth. No, my dear Maltravers, do not think of marriage yet a while; and if there is any danger of it, come over to me immediately. But if I warn you against a lawful tie, how much more against an illicit one? You are precisely at the age, and ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... seem possible that when a few minutes ago he didn't know whether she was dead or alive, that he could now seat himself here and hope to hear her voice. His hand trembled as he took down the receiver. It seemed an eternity before he got central; another before she connected him with Belmont. He grew irritable with impatience over the length of time that elapsed before ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... fancied that his uncle had grown to utterly dislike him,—being so irritable and unjust at times; then again his heart was light with joy and hope, for he fancied that the grim man was just on the point of losing his great burden of gloom, and becoming hopeful and unoppressed. But how could ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... He had a fairly clear idea of the conditions at the ranch; daily riding, some little reading, and a great deal too much of each other. A sick man, too, unhappy in his exile, chafing against his restrictions, lonely and irritable. The girl, early seeing her mistake, and Clark's jealousy of her husband. The door into their apartment closing, the thousand and one unconscious intimacies between man and wife, the breakfast for two going up the stairs, and below that hot-eyed ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... be applied to the inhabitants of Africa, it is evident that the men there, accustomed to polygamy, are enervated by the use of so many women, and therefore less vigorous; the women on the contrary, are of a hotter constitution, not only on account of their more irritable nerves, more sensitive organization, and more lively fancy; but likewise because they are deprived in their matrimony of that share of physical love which in a monogamous condition, would all be theirs; and thus for the above reasons, the generality ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... the packet ready with her warps, and bundled ourselves on board in a hurry. We sought separate cabins for the night, and in mine, as in a sort of moral bath, the drastic cross seas of the Channel cleansed me of my irritable humour, and left me like a rag, beaten and hung on a clothes-line to the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pause succeeded these words. I felt that the angry, irritable mood was passing over, and when my hand was next influenced to write, the words that came were not the usual curt "None of your business," but an apology for his rude reception of my efforts to help him, and a full confession, which entirely ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... Irritable, crabbed, and low-spirited, his campaign had proved a disastrous failure. Instead of planning battles, he had planned pillaging and foraging expeditions, and his hungry and disaffected army had converted the rich fields of Bohemia into ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... irritable and intense thinker a certain amount of solitude seems necessary. Voltaire occasionally grew weary of the delicious quiet of Civey, and the indictment against him having been quashed, he would go away to Paris or elsewhere. On these trips if he ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... Mr Bray, putting out his hand, and opening and shutting his bony fingers with irritable impatience. 'Let me see. What are you talking about, Madeline? You're sure? How can you be sure of any such thing? Five ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... northward to meet the theatre-goers of the up-town streets, while the humbler patrons of the "family circles" and "galleries" of the play-houses lower down were moving southward on foot, sharing for a few moments in the brilliancy and wealth of the upper avenue. The surface cars, clamorous, irritable, and timid, jammed at the crossings like sheep at a river-ford, while overhead the electric trains thundered to and fro, crowded with other citizens also theatre-bound. It seemed that the whole ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... was wrong. The wise-headed grey mare loped out to meet him and threw a course of circles around him as he came slowly forward. Plainly she expected him to do something, but what this might be Alcatraz could not tell. Besides, a growing thirst was making him irritable and the insistence of the grey mare made him wish to fasten his teeth over the back of her neck and shake ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... irritable insect it positively trembled. Here was that woman moving—actually going to get up—confound her! He struck the canvas a hasty violet-black dab. For the landscape needed it. It was too pale—greys flowing into lavenders, and one star ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... came, as Geoffrey came, to defy me,' said the old man, trembling in his chair. 'What is your obedience worth when I have measured theirs: Henry's obedience! Geoffrey's obedience! Pish, man, what words you use.' He got up and stamped about the tent like an irritable dwarf, crook-legged and long-armed, pricked, maddened at every point. 'And you tell me of your men, your lands, your company! Good men all, a fair company, by the Rood of Grace! Tell me now, Richard, have you Raimon of Toulouse in ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... will not wait, we must look upon these projects as if they had never been entertained." The count bit his lips till the blood almost started, to prevent the ebullition of anger which his proud and irritable temper scarcely allowed him to restrain; understanding, however, that in the present state of things the laugh would decidedly be against him, he turned from the door, towards which he had been directing his steps, and again confronted the banker. A cloud settled on his brow, evincing decided anxiety ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... sensible of an abatement of the irritable and painful symptoms of his loathsome malady; and, in a short time, by persevering in the use of the remedy which the natural sagacity of his humble companions had suggested, he became wholly cured of the leprosy and was delighted to find himself ...
— The Children's Portion • Various
... however, that Lionel's anxiety and interest in Caroline's affairs, were drawing his attention from his own trouble, and he was much less irritable and unhappy than before. Perhaps this might have been in part owing to his conversations with Walter, who could venture on giving him more lessons on the right principle of endurance than Marian had ever dared to put before him. She was more pleased than she had been for ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... entered, every eye was turned upon him. To an outside spectator he would have seemed rather like a very well-dressed Daniel introduced into a den of singularly irritable lions. Five pairs of eyes were smouldering with a long-nursed resentment. Five brows were corrugated with wrathful lines. Such, however, was the simple majesty of Psmith's demeanour that for a moment ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... manner that prisoners and offenders were treated in the strong-holds of the robber counts of Germany in old times; confined him in a dungeon and inflicted on him such hardships and indignities that the irritable temperament of the young count was roused to continual fury, which ended in insanity. For six months was the unfortunate youth kept in this horrible state, without his brother the prince being informed of his melancholy condition or of the cruel treatment to which he was ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... broke off the music, and dropped her arm in irritable resignation. Louisa looked round ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... greatly tended to impede the progress of the illustrious pupil; and it consequently ceases to be matter of surprise that at his majority he had by no means attained to the degree of knowledge common to his age. Louis XIII knew little Latin; cared nothing for literature; but although either irritable or inert when compelled to study, could develop great energy when he was engaged in gunnery, horsemanship, or falconry. The latter pursuit was his principal amusement, His purity of heart and propriety of language were extreme, and deserve ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... to put down a good many of his offences to its sister jealousy. The personal and the public sentiments are so invariably blended in his mind that neither he nor anybody else could have analysed their composition. He was apt to be the more moody and irritable because his resentments clothed themselves spontaneously in the language of some nobler emotion. If his friends are cold, he bewails the fickleness of humanity; if they are successful, it is not envy that prompts his irritation, but the rarity of the correspondence between merit and reward. ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... the wish to project herself into the new atmosphere, or at least to be generous personally; so that, oddly enough, the fear that most glanced before Olive was not that this high, free matron, slightly irritable with cleverness and at the same time good-natured with prosperity, would bully her son's bride, but rather that she might take too fond a possession of her. It was a fear which may be described as a presentiment ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... appearing in society afterwards—that society in which he had been accustomed to pose up to now as a young man of rather brilliant prospects. All these concessions and rebuffs of fortune, of late, had wounded his spirit severely, and his temper had become extremely irritable, his wrath being generally quite out of proportion to the cause. But if he had made up his mind to put up with this sort of life for a while, it was only on the plain understanding with his inner self ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... who resembles an irritable baboon, I have little to do. The marchioness—a strong woman is also, mercifully, too much engaged upon works of supererogation, which, in a rich bass, she styles "her manifold duties," to observe my existence. Lord Pomfret Fresne, ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... America shortly afterward I crossed the country to spend a few days with him, but he was so sickly and irritable that I could do nothing to cheer his spirits. He continually brooded over the case he had been investigating, and I should have known at that time there was a dangerous neurotic compulsion stirring ...
— The Homicidal Diary • Earl Peirce
... been out of order for some time past—nervous and irritable. He first complained of having taken cold on November 13 last; he passed a wakeful and feverish night, and remained in bed the next day. Her ladyship proposed sending for medical advice. He refused to allow her to do this, saying ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... height, so that the jaguar can conceal himself among them, to spring upon the mules and horses that cross the plain. Mingled with these gramina some plants of the dicotyledonous class are found; as turneras, malvaceae, and, what is very remarkable, little mimosas with irritable leaves,* called by the Spaniards dormideras. (* The sensitive-plant Mimosa dormiens.) The same breed of cows, which fatten in Europe on sainfoin and clover, find excellent nourishment in the herbaceous sensitive plants. The pastures where these shrubs particularly abound are ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... that lay in wrinkles. They looked pretty well on top, but honestly I was relieved to have Martha and her big eyes out of the way. Though we snatched our books and ran through the corridors we were two minutes tardy in reaching the Latin room. The instructor was so irritable that she laid down her book and the whole class waited while Lila and I tiptoed to our seats in the middle of ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... work the works, and speak the tones, of Love. It cannot exist and give no sign, or a false sign. It cannot be a spirit of Love, and mantle into irritable and selfish impatience. It cannot be a spirit of Love, and at the same time make self the prominent object. It cannot rejoice to lend itself to the happiness of others, and at the same time be seeking its own. It cannot be generous, and envious. It cannot be sympathizing, ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... for the purpose of getting at his secret; but he is of a truly Castilian taciturnity, proud as though he were Gonsalvo di Cordova, and nevertheless angelic in his patience and gentleness. His pride is not irritable like Miss Griffith's, it belongs to his inner nature; he forces us to civility because his own manners are so perfect, and holds us at a distance by the respect he shows us. My father declares that there is a great deal of the nobleman in Senor ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... were almost exclusively nocturnal. During his spells of insomnia he led a curiously double existence. In the daytime he was largely the self he had always been, able, assured, ecclesiastical, except that he was a little jaded and irritable or sleepy instead of being quick and bright; he believed in God and the church and the Royal Family and himself securely; in the wakeful night time he experienced a different and novel self, a bare-minded self, bleakly fearless at its best, shamelessly weak at its worst, critical, sceptical, joyless, ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... Mr. Ledbetter, is a round-faced little man, whose natural mildness of eye is gigantically exaggerated when you catch the beam through his glasses, and whose deep, deliberate voice irritates irritable people. A certain elaborate clearness of enunciation has come with him to his present vicarage from his scholastic days, an elaborate clearness of enunciation and a certain nervous determination to be firm and correct upon all issues, important and unimportant ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... present time, in remote parts), no Czech blows into his pipe in the woodlands, without certain precautions, and preliminary fuglings of a devotional nature. [Bollandus, ubi supra.]—From which miracle, as indeed from many other indications, I infer an irritable nervous-system in poor Adalbert; and find this death in the Romova was probably a furious mixture of ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... all, Heaven forefend! But once I did mean to cut a man, I forget why. So I cut the wrong man, a harmless acquaintance whose feelings I would not have hurt for the world. Of course I accidentally cut all the world. Some set it down to an irritable temper, and ask, "What can we have done to The MACDUFFER?" Others think I am proud. Proud! I ask, what has a Duffer to be proud of? Nobody, or very few, admit that I am just a Duffer; a stupid, short-sighted, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 23, 1892 • Various
... am quite certain that this heat makes me feel horribly irritable. These boys take it all as coolly as—what do they say?—as cucumbers. ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... day, and still there was no cessation of the professor's discomposure. He was the most miserable of mortals. If really his calculations and his observations were at variance, this, in a man of his irritable temperament, would account for his perpetual perturbation. But he entered into no explanation; he only climbed up to his telescope, looking haggard and distressed, and when compelled by the frost to retire, he would make his way back to his study more furious ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... fellow would come,' he said presently, in an irritable tone, as he rose and walked to and fro.... Don't let that child paw you about like that, Nell.... Hallo, here ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... soda and ammonia, chlorine compounds, but none of these has at present come much into favour, and some had only ephemeral existence. Of the many drugs that it has been suggested to admix in soap for use in allaying an irritable condition of the skin, the majority are obviously better applied in the form of ointments, and we need not consider ...
— The Handbook of Soap Manufacture • W. H. Simmons
... the moment, of an action; and D'Alincourt, son of Villeroi, carried his outrages further still. No one knows better than myself how unjust these accusations were, and are. I was sensible of the mortification such a reading must have caused to the most sensitive, the most irritable of princes; but I rejoiced at the humiliation that the lady in waiting felt for her share in this unpardonable correspondence. The annoyance that I read for some days on her handsome face consoled me, for the time being, for her ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... far less real and tangible than the black shadows thrown by them across the sand, and by day the blinding glare of the sun thrown back from the all-surrounding sand so fiercely that in spite of their sun-goggles they were nearly blinded, combined to make them high- strung and irritable. On the fourth night it fell to young Frank Halloran to take first watch. He had grumbled at it as unnecessary, for so far they had seen no living creature not even a bird. But though he grumbled he kept a sharp look-out, ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... use of the strong kind of tobacco, which soldiers affect, is often very injurious to them, especially to very young soldiers. It renders them nervous and shaky, gives rise to palpitation, and is a factor in the production of the irritable or so-called "trotting-heart" and tends to impair the ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... excellent health and weighed one hundred and forty-three pounds. But from the moment of the public announcement of my lecture, my appetite for food, for meat particularly, began to fail me. "How peevish and irritable he is growing!" I heard one member of the family remark to another. Soon the grocer's scales indicated that my weight was diminishing. It fell to one hundred and forty-one,—then to one hundred and forty,—then to one hundred and thirty-eight,—and finally, when the 30th ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... wrong to forget the oats, but that he would go to the granary immediately, and serve them out to the groom. Perhaps Stafford's usual exactness might have rendered his omission pardonable to any less irritable and peremptory ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... hospital, of the superintendent of nurses, who was a trial to all the young nurses, "all superintendents are tyrants, I think," said Anna, "and we just have to shut our teeth and bear it! But it's all so unnecessarily hard, and it's wrong, too, for nursing the sick is one thing, and being teased by an irritable woman like that is another! However," she concluded cheerfully, "I'll graduate some day, and forget her! And meantime, I don't want to worry mother, for Phil's just taken a real start, and Bett's doctor's bills are paid, and the landlord, by some miracle, ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... insect-eating quadruped has sometimes given to describing zoologists, at least so it is said, an opportunity of paying a sly compliment, concealing an allusion to the touchy or supposed irritable disposition of the party after whom the species has been named. When Southey wrote the following paragraph, he happily expressed what is too commonly the meaning and wish of critics and criticised. If my readers ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... adventure that befell this lady during a week-end visit to Morristown, N. J., since this adventure has a bearing upon the narrative. As it is, we must be content to know that Mrs. William Owen was an irritable and neurasthenic person, a thorn in the side of her distinguished husband, who was supposed to cure these ailments. He could not cure his wife, however, and had long since given up trying. It was Mrs. Owen who quite ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... gum, which is hotter, of a deeper red, than natural, and intolerant of the slightest pressure. There is often great determination of blood to the head, which a mother may recognise by the cheeks being red, hot, and swollen; the eyes red, irritable, and watery; and the saliva running from the mouth profusely. The fever is great, and the thirst extreme. The child is at one time restless and irritable, and at another heavy and oppressed: the sleep will be broken, and the infant frequently ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... the rabble to dictate his policies. He would not do so now. When petitions came from the frontiersmen, asking leave to go out against the Indians, he returned a brusk and angry refusal.[503] A delegation from Charles City county met with a typical reception from the irritable old man. As they stood humbly before him, presenting their request for a commission, they spoke of themselves as the Governor's subjects. Upon this Berkeley blurted out that they were all "fools and loggerheads". They were subjects of the King, and so was he. He would grant them no commission, ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... use their venom to kill their victims, and also to kill any possible foe which they think menaces them. Some of them are good-tempered, and only fight if injured or seriously alarmed. Others are excessively irritable, and on rare occasions will even attack of their own accord when ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... In the irritable condition of my mind, at the time of which I am now writing, the abortive result of my journey to the Sergeant's cottage simply aggravated the restless impulse in me to be doing something. On the day of ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... instance I ever heard of, desired to compose her hoards by an accumulation of the precious metals. The confidence in the credit of our ordinary medium has not been doubted even in the dreams of the most irritable and ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... her veil of smoke, knocked the ash from her cigarette into the fireplace, and looked, with an odd expression of solicitude, at the irritable man. ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... bridge table. The sleuth of the Wire was a very solemn-looking young man, with a round, simple face. The sleuth of the Planet was a tall, dark man, with an impatient and slightly worried air, who looked uncommonly like an irritable actor-manager. ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... pulse of the hand Houseman held, beat with as steadfast and calm a throb, as in the most quiet mood of learned meditation; although Aram could not but be conscious that a mere accident, a slip of the foot, an entanglement in the briars, might awaken the irritable fears of his ruffian comrade, and bring the knife to his breast. But this was not that form of death that could shake the nerves of Aram; nor, though arming his whole soul to ward off one danger, was he well sensible of another, that might have seemed equally ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... When this was done, Mr. Bell was able to turn a screw and adjust the instrument to the pitch desired. Watson admits in a book he has himself written that he was out of spirits that day and feeling irritable and impatient. The whiners had got on his nerves, I fancy. One of the springs that he was trying to start appeared to stick and in order to force it to vibrate he gave it a quick snap with his finger. Still it would not go and he snapped it sharply several times. Immediately ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... finished his quotation and went to the wide doorway, across which a shadow had fallen, and from whence the sound of an irritable: "Whoa-oa, ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... expressed as to Captain Cook's temper. That he was, at times, hasty and irritable, there seems to be no doubt; but this fault was greatly counterbalanced by his kind-hearted and humane disposition. He seems to have had the power of attracting both officers and men to his person; hence many who had accompanied him in his first voyage volunteered to serve under him again in ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... proportion, and several of the species are beautifully coloured with longitudinal stripes. Their structure is very simple: near the middle of the under or crawling surface there are two small transverse slits, from the anterior one of which a funnel- shaped and highly irritable mouth can be protruded. For some time after the rest of the animal was completely dead from the effects of salt water or any other cause, this ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... voyage was tedious; his residence there, from various accidents, prolonged from time to time, till near three years had at length passed away. Lady Elmwood, at first only unhappy, became at last provoked; and giving way to that irritable disposition which she had so seldom governed, resolved, in spite of his injunctions, to divert the melancholy hours caused by his absence, by mixing in the gay ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... be working members of the bar lived much more under the observation of their older relations, and in closer intercourse with their mothers and sisters than they do at present. Now-a-days young Templars, fresh from the universities, would be uneasy and irritable under strict domestic control; and as men with beards and five-and-twenty years' knowledge of the world, they would resent any attempt to draw them within the lines of domestic control. But in Elizabethan and also in Stuart London, law-students ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... we see him now, with his unruly troop of Sunday scholars (in training for some important festival, to the due celebration of which their labours were essential) singing, bawling we should say, out of time and tune, to the utter discomfiture of his irritable temper, (there is nothing like a false note for throwing your musical man into a perfect tantrum,) and the bringing down on their unlucky heads a smart tap with the bow of his violin, which led the harmony. There ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... I felt that he was more capable of leading than I. He kept perfectly cool, I was excited and irritable. Moreover, a nameless dread had laid hold of me. We kept close by the northeast coast of the island, while at frequent intervals Eli would hide behind a rock or lie flat on the ground, listening intently ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... meant three separate efforts, CANTELUPE escapes. WEDGECROFT has walked to the table, his brows a little puckered. Now TREBELL notices that KENT'S door is open; he goes quickly into the room and finds it empty. Then he stands for a moment irritable and ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... the dissecting-room about one o'clock, his fellow-students administer to him a pint of ale, warmed by the simple process of stirring it with a hot poker, with some Cayenne pepper thrown into it, which he is assured will set to rights the irritable mucous lining of his stomach. The effect of this remedy is, to send him into a sound sleep during the whole of the two o'clock anatomical lecture; and awakened at its close by the applause of the students, he thinks he is still at the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 16, 1841 • Various
... certainly the choice of a Catholic family was much limited, points apparently to the old Hampshire connection of his father. Here an incident occurred which most powerfully illustrates the original and constitutional determination to satire of this irritable poet. He knew himself so accurately, that in after times, half by way of boast, half of ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... sooner done quoting, however, than his mother peered into the room, claiming the business talk that had been promised. From that talk George emerged irritable and silent. His mother's extravagance was really preposterous!—not to be borne. For four years now he had been free from the constant daily friction of money troubles which had spoilt his youth and robbed him of all power of respecting his mother. And he had hugged ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... see its beauty—see what the picture really is. No man is a hero to his own valet. And that is not because a man is not a hero, but because the valet is too close to see the real man. Cecil Rhodes at close quarters was peevish, irritable, and like a big spoilt child. Now at a distance we know him, with all his faults, to have been a great-souled man. Social reformers near at hand are often intolerable bores and religious fanatics frequently a pestilential ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... be very hard for father and mother," she reiterated. "Father is an old man now, and must soon give up his school; so they will have even less to live upon than before. When he has no work to take up his mind, he will become restless and irritable. Mother won't have an easy time with him. They'll be very unhappy, both of them. Of course it would have been quite different could I have stayed ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... week of idleness was not the worst. John and Greenwood found plenty to do among the idle looms, but after all repairs and alterations had been completed, then John felt the stress of hours that had no regular daily task. For the first time in his life his household saw him irritable. He spoke impatiently and did not know it until the words were beyond recall. Jane had at such times a new feeling about her husband. She began to wonder how she could bear it if he were always "so short and dictatorial." She concluded that it must be his mill ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... of woman was allowed to run riot. The child was coddled; the girl was allowed to grow up without any of the discipline which young men receive in their college and business life, and little or no attention was paid to her physical development. The woman naturally became a bundle of nerves, highly irritable, unreasonable, and hysterical. All this reacted in the most detrimental manner upon her ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... hall, and said with a friendly smile: "I'm afraid Harold gets a bit irritable sometimes. I often tell him to count ten before he lets himself go, but he forgets. Did he ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... were beyond the sound of voices. He began, rather inarticulately, to say how glad he was to see me, and that he hoped he was going to have better times now; but I could make no response to his wishes; the suspicion that he had a serious liking for me was disgusting. As he talked on I grew irritable, and replied shortly. When we reached our house, I slipped my hand from his arm, and ran up the steps, turning back with my hand on the door-knob to say, "Good-night." The lamp in the hall shone through the fanlight upon his face; it looked intelligent with pain. ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... "I'm just tired and irritable, Bunny, and I'm taking it out on you.... Because you were always kind—and even when foolish you were often considerate.... That's a new waistcoat, ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... allow himself to worry, and look serenely at whatever might be the outcome. This seemed to me uncommonly high-minded. I think that Davidson's conviction of immortality had much to do with such a superiority to accidents. On the surface, and towards small things, he was irritable enough, but the undertone of his character was remarkable for equanimity. He showed it in his final illness, of which the misery was really atrocious. There were no general complaints or lamentations about the personal ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... kind of you to come to me so quickly, Signor Giovacchino," he said; and then turning angrily to the servant, who was leaving the room, added in a cross and irritable voice, very unlike his usual manner, "Why are not those persiane shut? Close them directly, and ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... silence, he determined—though so proud, so irritable, so vain of his bravery—to throw himself on the mercy of this vulgar man, who had so roughly spoken the austere language of probity. "Sir, you give me a proof of interest for which I thank you; I regret the harshness of my opening words," said ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... outcome of his early trip through the ranges in the search for window glass. He worked at his redesigning with a single minded passion that set him apart from the others. All of them except Felicia found him tense and at times irritable. ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... unuttered. Beach Thomas, the most amiable of men, the Peter Pan who went a bird-nesting on battlefields, a lover of beauty and games and old poems and Greek and Latin tags, and all joy in life—what had he to do with war?—looked bored with an infinite boredom, irritable with a scornful impatience of unnecessary detail, gazed through his gold-rimmed spectacles with an air of extreme detachment (when Percy Robinson rebuilt the map with dabs and dashes on a blank sheet of paper), and ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... instead of coming to sleep in the tent Leo sat himself down at the entrance to the cave. I asked him why he did this, but he answered impatiently, because he wished it, so I left him alone. I could see, indeed, that he was in a strange and irritable mood, for the failure of our search oppressed him. Moreover, we knew, both of us, that it could not be much prolonged, since the weather might break at any moment, when ascents of ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... all his friends put together. In their breezy good-nature and cheerfulness they are a fine antidote to the impression one gets of him in Haydon's account, 'lying in a white bed with a book, hectic and on his back, irritable at his weakness and wounded at the way he had been used. He seemed to be going out of life with a contempt for this world, and no hopes of the other. I told him to be calm, but he muttered that if he did not soon get better ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... dressed young gentlemen was one who was especially noticeable. His handsome face wore a rather reckless, petulant expression, which, however, could not conceal a certain brightness and fire of genius that at moments eclipsed the irritable look and rendered his countenance unusually attractive. It was Gilbert Stuart, the young portrait painter, but recently returned from England, where he was famed both as artist and wit. It was even said by his admirers (and indeed Mr. Adams had but lately written it home from London) that there ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... openly; he did not curse me in the name of the Lord, nor did she-bears come out of the wood to devour me; but I soon enough had my share of misfortune. Preachers of peace, it appears, were always irritable: but to do them justice, I believe they are something less so now than they were ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... system was in a state of irritable weakness through the monomania of a fixed idea," was the reply—"too much seclusion and concentration on one object, to the exclusion of all ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... equivocation is to the equivocation of ordinary men what a tropical fern is to the stunted representatives of the same species in England. It grows until the fowls of the air can rest on its branches. His mendacity in short amounts to a monomania. That a man with intensely irritable nerves, and so fragile in constitution that his life might, without exaggeration, be called a 'long disease,' should defend himself by the natural weapons of the weak, equivocation and subterfuge, when exposed to the brutal horseplay common in that day, is indeed not surprising. But Pope's delight ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... captain of one of the brigantines, Pedro de Umbria, reached Veragua, a catastrophe befell. Being a man of irritable disposition, he resolved to separate from his companions and seek a region where he might establish himself independently. He selected twelve sailors and departed in the largest ship's boat belonging to one of the greater vessels. The tide rolls in on that coast with as dreadful roarings ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... visiting her that day, which made our arrival inconvenient and tried her temper—she was so very cross. She ran through a hasty account of each room in injured tones, but she resented questions, refused explanations, and was particularly irritable if anybody strayed from the exact order in which she chose to marshal us through the house. A vein of sarcasm in her remarks ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... taking a fancy to the owner, told him to make himself at home in Leicester House. That was enough for John Stuart. Having got a foothold, he made himself useful to Fred, and especially to the princess dowager. George II. was getting on in years and irritable. The old king took it upon himself to pick out a wife for the prince, selecting the daughter of Charles, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbuettel; but the prince said he wasn't going to be Wolfenbuttled by his grandsire. Just what he meant by it ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... was putting the finishing touches to his scheme of flight, the colonel paced his room, whistling the "Soldiers' Chorus" jerkily. He was restless and nervous, and rendered all the more irritable by the disappearance of his servant, a minor member of the gang, who had been a participant in every act of villainy, and who had been in charge of the arrangements for the abduction of Maisie White. Twice in the course of the evening he wandered through the hall, opened the ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... characteristic of a whole school of mid-Victorian novelists, and George Meredith—whose earliest novel, "Richard Feverel," was published about this date—broke many a lance against it, and scolded us and laughed at us, and upset our dignified conception of ourselves, and sometimes, in his irritable affection for his countrymen, took a bludgeon to us, and broke ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... task gallantly enough. But he had had no important surgical case since he began his cure. In his heart he lived in fear of one; for he was not quite sure of himself. In spite of effort to the contrary he became irritable, and his old pleasant fantasies changed ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... as for the Lord of heaven and earth, how small a whisper do we hear of Him! Some minds are constitutionally ill-adapted for fellowship with Him because they lack what Keats calls "negative capability"—"that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason. Coleridge, for instance, would let go a fine isolated verisimilitude, caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge." ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... happily. Mrs. Schuneman carried Germania in the temporary wooden cage and Mary Rose proudly bore the brass cage. As they went up the steps a man brushed past them. He was tall and thin and had a nervous irritable manner that one felt as well as saw. Mary Rose locked up and ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... red letter hour for Dawson. He had a vague feeling that some influence, perhaps his evil genius, was bestirring itself. At all events, he was ill at ease, something of his accustomed self-conceit was lacking and he was, as the result, somewhat irritable, though he dared not manifest ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... of this self there is in each of us. It is so often self who tries to live the Christian life (the mere fact that we use the word "try" indicates that it is self who has the responsibility). It is self, too, who is often doing Christian work. It is always self who gets irritable and envious and resentful and critical and worried. It is self who is hard and unyielding in its attitudes to others. It is self who is shy and self-conscious and reserved. No wonder we need breaking. As long as self is in control, God can do little with us, for all the fruits of the Spirit ...
— The Calvary Road • Roy Hession
... their offerings, it was a maxim to defraud God for the profit of the idol, not a more potent, but a more irritable, patron, (Pocock, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... one is somewhat "tickle of the sere" to handle. It has been said that, despite its alarming title, there is nothing in the book that even prudery, unless it were of the most irritable and morbid kind, could object to. There is no dwelling on what Defoe ingeniously calls "the vicious part" of the matter; there is no description of it closer than, if as close as, some passages of ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury |
