"Nerves" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... discomposing, had composed my nerves for the while. I expected no sleep; had, indeed, an hour ago, deemed it impossible I should sleep that night. Yet, in fact, my head was scarcely on the pillow before I slept, and ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... from Dover as he sailed to Calais. Fortune favoured him. The Euphrates Valley Railway was newly opened, and he was the first man who took ticket direct from Calais to Calcutta—thirteen days in the train. Thirteen days in the train are not good for the nerves; but he covered the world and returned to Calais from America in twelve days over the two months, and started afresh with four and twenty hours of precious time to his credit. Three years passed, and John Hay religiously ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... ancient town—and it was market-day. The roadway was thronged with red-faced men and women; and flocks of sheep, herds of cattle and pigs, provided the motor-cyclist with a severe probation to the nerves. With much risk to myself, and not a little to other people, I emerged from this place of danger and joyfully swept over the bridge into the broad highway ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... inches to 3 inches in length and 1 inches to 1 inches in width, while those on vigorous shoots attain a length of 5 inches, with a width of about half the length. They are slightly hairy on both surfaces. The long acuminate points, the sharper serratures, the more numerous nerves (nine to fourteen in number), and the more papery texture distinguish Z. acuminata easily from its Caucasian relative, Z. crenata. The foliage, too, seems to be retained on the trees in autumn longer than that of the species ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 417 • Various
... Perch, after a short silence, and another cough, 'it mightn't be best for me to tell him, that if he was seen here any more he would be given into custody; and to keep to it! With respect to bodily fear,' said Mr Perch, 'I'm so timid, myself, by nature, Sir, and my nerves is so unstrung by Mrs Perch's state, that I could take my ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... condition, it is a good time to damage his nerve further, and this can always be done by saying some little mocking thing or other that has the outside appearance of a friendly remark—so I employed this art. I suggested that a bet might tauten his nerves, and that I would offer one, but that as I did not want it to be an expense to him, but only a help, I would make it small—a cigar, if he were willing—a cigar that he would fail again; not an expensive one, but a cheap native one, of the Crown Jewel breed, such as is manufactured ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... a low, guarded voice. There was a tone in it which somehow jarred on the good minister's sensitive nerves. The girl's voice was pitifully fluttering, ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... would not do, and so she tried to invent some way out of the trouble. One morning she woke up with a splendid idea, and she could hardly wait to have breakfast before she sent for the General-in-Chief. Her nerves were all gone, and as soon as she saw him, she yelled at him: 'A sham battle—to-day—now—this very instant! Right away, ...
— Christmas Every Day and Other Stories • W. D. Howells
... swift eddy does it dart and dance along; even so the maiden's heart quivered in her breast. And the tear of pity flowed from her eyes, and ever within anguish tortured her, a smouldering fire through her frame, and about her fine nerves and deep down beneath the nape of the neck where the pain enters keenest, whenever the unwearied Loves direct against the heart their shafts of agony. And she thought now that she would give him the charms to cast a spell on the bulls, now that she ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... one fellow sprang upon the step and waved a stick above our heads. I pushed him off, but we were glad when we had got clear of them and safe out of the park. These little events, coming one after the other, left me very jangled in my nerves, and I could see from my companion's petulant manner that his own patience had ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... animal or man all knowledge of the external world. The brain, sitting in absolute darkness, judges these sensations, and sends out corresponding impulses to action. The sensory nerves are the brain's sole teachers; the motor nerves, and through them the muscles, are the brain's only servants. The untrained brain learns its lessons poorly, and its commands are vacillating and ineffective. In like manner, the brain which has been misued [Transcriber's note: misused?], shows ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... that evening produced a somewhat deep impression upon me and excited my nerves. I do not know for certain whether I now believe in predestination or not, but on that evening I believed in it firmly. The proof was startling, and I, notwithstanding that I had laughed at our forefathers and their obliging astrology, ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... Janet's nerves were taut. There had been times during the past weeks when she had been aware of new and vaguely disquieting portents. Inexperience had led her to belittle them, and the absorbing nature of her work, the excitement due ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... presentation of her daughter; she would not have missed it for any consideration. That morning she had felt more pain than usual, and had been obliged to have recourse to restoratives; but once more to join the gay and fashionable throng—the very idea braced her nerves, rendered her callous to suffering, ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... energy of their spirits must be given to make cogs and compasses of themselves. All their attention and strength must go to the accomplishment of the mean act. The eye of the soul must be bent upon the finger-point, and the soul's force must fill all the invisible nerves that guide it, ten hours a day, that it may not err from its steely precision, and so soul and sight be worn away, and the whole human being be lost at last—a heap of sawdust, so far as its intellectual work in this world is concerned; saved only by its Heart, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... depend upon the eyes and ears. The nervous system can really cause no suffering. "Nerves are not the source of pain or pleasure." "Nerves have no more sensation, apart from what belief bestows upon them, than the fibre of a plant." What really suffers is mind, or belief; and, if we change that belief, the pain will disappear. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... threw himself over the cliff, holding on by the rope, and began to descend. It must have been somewhat trying even to his nerves, for the rope swung backwards and forwards, being at a considerable distance from the cliff. How the black came to conceive that we should venture down, it was difficult to say; as he himself certainly could never have climbed up or down such a rope, it must have been a ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... dissipations, over which custom has thrown an influence well nigh omnipotent! Oh, the tauntings, and the high looks, the stiff neck, and the contemptuous sneer, with which wealth and station conduct themselves towards the lowliness of Christian meekness! Oh, the power that nerves itself against holiness! Wealth and imposing splendour, eloquence and numbers, are in its ranks. Perjury and cruel mockings are among its weapons. Oh, the chains of darkness and gates of death, with which the strong man ...
— The National Preacher, Vol. 2. No. 6., Nov. 1827 - Or Original Monthly Sermons from Living Ministers • William Patton
... never did the austerities of monk or anchorite so entirely cast all these away as his peculiar nature removed them from him. It may be questioned if he ever knew what it was "to eat a good dinner," or could even comprehend the nature of such a felicity. Yet in all the sensuous nerves which connect as it were the body with the ideal, he was painfully susceptible. Hence a false quantity or a wrong note in music was agony to him; and it is remembered with what ludicrous solemnity he apostrophised his unhappy ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... the weird twilight grew on his nerves. He tried to whistle to cheer himself but forebore when the uncanny echoes rocketed in the dismal ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... when with a secret bracing of my nerves I looked up and met his eyes fixed with that baffling expression upon mine, I own that I felt an inward alarm, as if something vaguely dangerous had reared itself in my path, which by its very charm instinctively bade me beware. I, however, subdued my apprehensions, ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... physical match for these Turcos, who eat dates and drink water," said Richard Harding Davis, who saw the end of the fighting at Meaux. "They are as lean as starved wolves. They move like panthers. They are muscle and nerves and they have the warrior's disregard of their own personal safety in battle, and a ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... time Bruce was silent. Now that the excitement was over he realized he was homesick. Then, too, the dangers of yesterday had shaken his nerves. He was thinking, also, of La Vaune working her way through the academy when money, much money, belonging to her lay idle; and of Timmie, who awaited their return to assist him in the retrieving of his good name. ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... people,—stomach and bowels, to take care of the food they eat and turn it into blood to nourish them; lungs to breathe with, and keep the blood pure; heart to beat and thus pump the warm blood into all parts of the body; brain and nerves, which are what birds think and feel with, just as we do with ours; and all their bones, which together make what we call the skeleton, or framework of the body, to keep the flesh in shape and support the ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... not looking at you strangely, dear; it is not possible that you could have heard aright. It must have been simply a fancy of yours, born of the state of your nerves. You could not really have understood." But Ramon Hamilton looked away from her as he spoke, with a peculiarly significant gleam in his candid eyes. After a slight pause he went on: "No one in the world could have attempted to blackmail your father. He was the soul of honor ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... occurred at Storta, to induce them to attach very great importance to the shock George's nerves had experienced; but in after life, Sir Henry always thought, he could date many fatal symptoms from that ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... philosopher and physician; wrote "Observations on Man, his Frame, his Duty, and his Expectations"; ascribed sensation to vibration in the nerves, and applied the doctrine of the association of ideas to ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... me's 'ad a bit of a row," he said companionably. "Gits on me nerves; I'm not used to it. She was in a raid, and 'er nerves are all gone funny; ain't they, old girl? Makes me feel me 'ead. I've been wounded there, you know; can't stand much now. I might do somethin' if she was to go ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... was then called "The District of Lake Michigan"—"Streeterville," in local parlance—to find himself panting and terror-struck in the bleak east end of Chicago Avenue. It was not until then that he secured control of his nerves and resorted to the stealth and cunning of the ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... of the War Baxendale began complaining about his nerves. Somehow he didn't enjoy his food and couldn't get a proper night's sleep. He'd tried Benger's Food last thing at night and Quaker Oats for breakfast, but nothing seemed to do him ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... the cunning Wosky—'plenty of nourishment, and, above all, we must keep our nerves quiet; we positively must not give way to our sensibilities. We must take all we can get,' concluded the doctor, as he pocketed his fee, 'and we must ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... the ray-pistol, that latest and deadliest of man-made small-arms—a thing that moved like a walking mountain and stared with terrible, stony eyes at its prey! That was what the fellow said he had faintly made out in the darkness before his nerves had finally given way. ...
— The Planetoid of Peril • Paul Ernst
... kinds; his dullness in regard to finer shades of sound—from the shrieks of squalling babies and other domestic explosions in which he lives from the cradle to the grave. That is why these people have no "nerves"; terrific bursts of din, such as the pandemonium of Piedigrotta, stimulate them in the same way that others might be stimulated by a quartette of Brahms. And if they who are so concerned about the massacre of small birds in this country would devote their energies to the ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... unjustly to the hand of Fortune, Had all preserv'd her in her prime like D'Ambois; No envie, no disjunction had dissolv'd, Or pluck'd one stick out of the golden faggot In which the world of Saturne bound our lifes, 105 Had all beene held together with the nerves, The genius, and th'ingenious soule of D'Ambois. Let my hand therefore be the Hermean rod To part and reconcile, and so conserve you, As my combin'd embracers ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... out of bed and scratched his scalp through the close-cropped brown hair that covered his squarish skull. He did not feel well, and that was a fact. Of course, he had been up half the night fighting the blaze, and that hadn't helped any. He fancied he had a bit of a headache, and his nerves seemed a little jangled. His insides were probably in their usual balky state. He sighed, wished he were in better health, and glanced around at the other members of the company as they rose grumpily from ...
— Cum Grano Salis • Gordon Randall Garrett
... a sun-dyed white building deep under brown eaves. Cesare, it was reported, was quite alone with his moods, now consumed by fidgety remorse for what he might have lost in his brother's blood, now confident and inclined to blusterous hilarity, now shuddering under an obsession of nerves. In any guise he was dangerous, but worst of all when the black fit of suspicion was upon him. So he now seemed; for being told who waited upon him, he refused point-blank to see anybody. Amilcare, at the door, heard his "Vattene, vattene! Non ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... and comfort, and seeking the strong excitement of danger to give zest to his life. Even in the time of the greatest peril from the savages he would not stay shut up in the forts, but continued his roving, wandering life, trusting to his own quick senses, wonderful strength, and iron nerves. He even continued to lie out at night, kindling a fire, and then lying down to sleep far from it. [Footnote: Southwestern Monthly, Nashville, 1852, vol. II. ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Lord Jesus Christ." The outbreak was nothing but a frenzied burst of religious mania; but its effect showed how dangerous was the state of the nation of which this was a symptom. All London was thrown into wild alarm. Only those of strong nerves could make a stand against what was, with ludicrous exaggeration, represented to be a popular movement on a vast scale. The Lord Mayor won mighty renown for having the courage to summon a great body of adherents, and advance ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... was suffering under a touch of the gout, accompanied by a gnawing tooth-ache!—The horrid noise without made his trembling nerves jangle like the loose strings of an ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... sensitive to every question affecting political organization. We are brought thus to the same point which we reached by an observation of the township system—the fact that every part of society is permeated by the general political circulation. It is like the human organism: nerves and blood-vessels extend, with size and capacity proportioned for their work, to the most remote extremity, and the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... MacDermott. "I don't believe from what I've heard of him that the man has even that much in him. It's just what his father says, poetry and nerves. And he's coming here for the good of his health. It's Mr. Bertram they ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... is laid in the fifteenth century, when the feudal system, which had been the sinews and nerves of national defence, and the spirit of chivalry, by which, as by a vivifying soul, that system was animated, began to be innovated upon and abandoned by those grosser characters who centred their sum of happiness in procuring the personal objects on which they had fixed ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... steadily on for a fortnight, by which time we had accumulated some three hundred and eighty thousand oysters, and had laid them out upon the island to undergo the process of decay in the scorching rays of the sun. And that they were undergoing that process at a very rapid rate our olfactory nerves soon informed us; for the odour of them became perceptible as early as the fourth day, while by the end of the fortnight it was so strong as to be scarcely endurable even on the oyster bank itself, which was about a mile to leeward ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... enemy. An armada of big planes drove in from beyond. Formations were blocking space above.... Every branch of the service was there, Thurston exulted, the army, Marine Corps, the Navy. He gripped hard at the dry ground in a paralysis of taut nerves. The battle was on, and in the balance hung the fate ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... place at the table, to control the shriek of horror that was on her lips, as she had struggled to produce that feigned laugh ten days ago, with all her might. But the protracted strain was almost more than she could bear, and she felt that her exhausted nerves might leave her helpless at any moment. She had read in books vivid descriptions of the agony of death, but she had never fancied that it could be so horrible as this, so long drawn out, ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... to think of dozing at such a time. He rolled round heavily and gazed at her through half-closed eyelids. "A daisy breathes," he murmured, "and drinks and eats; sap circulates in its little body. Probably it feels as well. Delicate threads like nerves run through it everywhere. It knows when it is being picked or walked on. Oh, yes, a daisy is alive all right enough." He sighed like a big dog that has just shaken a fly off its nose and lies waiting for the next attack. It ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... the bridge near the Cascades, thinking what to do next. The wind coming from that direction blew a cloud of spray into my face. This caused me a pleasant sensation and relieved the tension of my nerves. I bared my head and exposed it to the spray until my hair was quite wet. I felt a purely animal delight in the coolness. I had regained all my self-possession. There remained now only the distinct and decided wish to thwart Aniela. I said to her, ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... regard to the intellectual faculties. More or less of delicacy in these organs, of heat in the blood, of promptitude in the fluids, more or less of suppleness or of rigidity in the fibers and the nerves, must necessarily produce the infinite diversities which are noticeable in the minds of men. It is by exercise, by habitude, by education, that the human mind is developed and succeeds in rising above the beings which surround it; man, without culture and without experience, is a being as devoid ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... death, as from over-anxiety for her beloved brother, she got up in the night to find out how he was. His cold had been better when he went to Dreux, then he met the procession, and walked with it bareheaded to the church; this seems to have given him a new cold. His nerves are also a good deal shaken, and this renders him very irritable. He is much occupied about some of the arrangements connected with poor Aunt's fortune; she left her landed property to Nemours, Joinville, ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... her father's death left Cambridge and moved her mother from Harley Street to Queen Anne's Mansions so that with her shattered nerves and loss of interest in life she might have no household worries, or at any rate nothing worse than remonstrating with the still-room maids on the twice-boiled water brought in for the making of tea; or with the culinary department over the monotonous character of ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... fidgeting with it, pulling it first to one side, then to the other, or dragging at it with her thin and crooked yellow fingers. The parrot watched her steadily. Her hideous voice played upon Hermione's nerves till they felt raw. At length, looking back, as she walked, with bloodshot eyes, she went into the kitchen, followed by the young woman. They began talking together in sibilant whispers, like ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... young architect was too broken down physically and mentally to decide any question of real moment. His will power was gone and his nerves unstrung. The kindest thing therefore that any friend could do for him, would be to step in and conduct the fight without him. Garry's wishes to keep the situation from Corinne would be respected, but that did not mean that his own efforts should be relaxed. Yet ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... But somehow my nerves had suffered a shock, and since there was no one near to witness my poltroonery, and as, moreover, the night was chilly enough to warrant reasonable precautions against cold, I preferred on the whole to keep my head under the clothes, and drop for a season, so to speak, ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... of the hideous indignity inflicted upon his old master, and allowing it to pass sub silentio, is one of the many occasions that stirred Mr. Grosart's wonder. Nerves were tough in those days. Pepys tells us unconcernedly enough how, after seeing Lord Southampton sworn in at the Court of Exchequer as Lord Treasurer, he noticed "the heads of Cromwell, Bradshaw, and Ireton ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... trembled all over. Wondering at the intensity of her emotion, he passed his arm tenderly round her waist and drew her closely to him. Thus, leaning upon his heart, she listened with her whole being, from the inmost recesses of her soul, throughout all her nerves, to her very fingers' ends. When the sounds died away, she sobbed out: "O, how like Rosa's voice! It seemed as if she had ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... Mrs. Bonny that it was like taking an afternoon walk with a good-natured Indian. We used to carry her offerings of tobacco, for she was a great smoker, and advised us to try it, if ever we should be troubled with nerves, or "narves," as she pronounced the ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... but you must not get yourself mixed up in it. I see by The Standard that she was seventeen. I should have thought she was almost younger than that. She looked such a child, and seemed to know so little about acting. Dorian, you mustn't let this thing get on your nerves. You must come and dine with me, and afterwards we will look in at the Opera. It is a Patti night, and everybody will be there. You can come to my sister's box. She has got some ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... that I was an invalid, but my constitution was delicate and my temperament nervous. I tried to make some progress in the study of a profession, under my excellent guardian, but was forced to give it up as too trying to my nerves. The excitement of a court-room I could not endure for a day, much less for a lifetime. Before I was twenty-five, my income had so much increased that I could afford to travel. I have gained in this way my health, which, however, would become impaired should I return to a sedentary life; ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... goes to the head, nor pulls the nerves, which many do as if they were guitar-strings. I drink a couple of bottles a day, winter and summer, and never am the worse for it. You gentlemen of the Agennois have better in your province, and indeed the very best under the sun. I do not ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... an ability to ride almost any kind of horse, and he had nerves that made him unafraid to do circus tricks at great heights. As a boy he had climbed the village church steeple, to the delight of his companions and the horror ...
— Joe Strong, the Boy Fish - or Marvelous Doings in a Big Tank • Vance Barnum
... can scarcely be placed even in the second class. Their compositions, when compared with the works of the great continental masters, are tame, spiritless, and insipid; we find in them no flashes of real genius, no harmonies that thrill the nerves, no melodies that ravish the sense, as they steal upon the ear. Effort is discernible throughout this music, the best of which is formed confessedly upon Italian models; and nowhere is the universal law, of the inferiority of all imitation, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... matter of training," he told her. "Of course, you must have good eyes and steady nerves, but you have those already. The rifle is yours whenever you want it, and all the ammunition you can carry. There's just one stipulation—for the first week shoot only at ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... Once, nerves at a wire edge from the strain on him, he thought he saw a moving figure. Throwing up his gun, he fired quickly. But he must have been mistaken, for, shortly afterward, he heard some one crashing through ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... the nerves; and although so fatal, if immediate means are resorted to, a person who is apparently dead from it may be brought to life again by the same process as is usual in the recovery of drowned or suffocated people. A donkey upon which the poison had acted was ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... resulting modulated wave goes back to the educator. There it is heterodyned with another wave—this second frequency was found after thousands of trials and is, I believe, the exact frequency existing in the optic nerves themselves—and sent to the receiving headset. Modulated as it is, and producing a three-dimensional picture, after rectification in the receiver, it reproduces exactly what has been 'viewed,' if due allowance has been made for the size and ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... his sanity. Though he was fearless in thought, he was a prey to his diseased nerves; with his ardent soul in his rickety body, he was driven on to the fight and was unfitted for it. The animosity of certain opinions ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... importance in the world of fashion, and her friend Maria, obtained her a place. There was a reason that secretly influenced Charlotte in electing her evening's amusement, that was not known, however, even to her friend.—George Morton played on the German flute in a manner that vibrated on her nerves with an exquisite thrill that she often strove to conquer, and yet ever loved to indulge. His musical powers were far from being generally applauded, as they were thought to be deficient in compass and variety; but Charlotte never ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... from the world? To pass into another sphere without leaving this mortal life behind; to live on two different planets at once, to mount from earth to heaven, to pass again from heaven to earth, there to entertain angels, and here to live for money—alas! this was no task for human nerves. He would lose his reason ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... disturbed you," went on Russ. "I didn't mean to be quite so hasty; but he got on my nerves, ...
— The Moving Picture Girls - First Appearances in Photo Dramas • Laura Lee Hope
... very successful, and as he had the promise of a repetition of his success, he rented a fine villa at Penzing, near Vienna, and proceeded to enjoy life for a change. Who can blame him for this? As he said to a friend not long after this, "I am differently organized from others, have sensitive nerves, must have beauty, splendor, and light. Is it really such an outrageous thing if I lay claim to the little bit of luxury which I like,—I, who am preparing enjoyment for the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... shake; there was also a young freeman, named Milsom, and several others, who attended the hustings every day, but held back their votes to the very last, and bravely came up to the bar when called upon. It required nerves, courage, and virtue, of no common cast, to do this, in defiance of all the authorities, as vindictive and virulent a gang of petty tyrants as ever disgraced the robes of office. In this manner the election proceeded from day to day, without any ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... Archduchess had picked up some knitting to soothe her jangled nerves. "You may play now, ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... utmost, the downfall of all self-reliance. In place of these extinct forces, fear, with its destructive properties of expansion, rushes into the vacuum left, and completes the prostration. It is a real shock upon the nerves, which one of the two athletes receives from the electric spark of victory. And that effect, however different in its degrees, is never completely wanting. Instead of every one hastening with a spirit of determination to aid in repairing the disaster, every one fears that his ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... but an athlete with muscles and nerves of steel could have performed such a feat, or that which made Dennis Ryer, of the crew of Engine No. 36, famous three years ago. That was on Seventh Avenue at One Hundred and Thirty-fourth Street. A flat was on fire, and the tenants had fled; but one, a woman, bethought ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... ever written in any language. Finally, he was something more: he was what not one of the great Latin poets was, a Christian; that is, in his latter days, when he began to feel the vanity of all human pursuits, when his nerves began to be unstrung, his hair to fall off, and his teeth to drop out, and he then composed sacred pieces entitling him to rank with—we were going to say Caedmon; had we done so we should have done wrong; ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... atmosphere, with its jostling and over-reaching in the Forum, and its callers and dinner-parties in the house, had some sinister influence on men's tempers and nerves, there can be no doubt. Cicero dearly loved the life of the city, but he paid for it by a sensibility which is constantly apparent in his letters, and diminished his value as a statesman. When he wrote from Cilicia ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... "It's in the nerves, Juffrouw Zipperman. But he has the little nightcap and nightgown, in which she has sweated, you know; and he says that it will come ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... for he will never cease from acknowledging the obligation he is under to love, nor cease from rendering thanks to him because he has presented before the eyes of his mind such an intelligible conception through which, in this earthly life, shut in this prison of the flesh, wrapped in these nerves and supported by these bones, it is permitted to him to contemplate the divinity in a more suitable manner than if other conceptions and similitudes than ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... The jangled nerves snapped at last under the tension, and Mrs. Hooven, suddenly shaking Hilda roughly, cried out: "Stop, stop. Doand say ut egen, you. My Gott, you kill ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... this, as you may imagine; still, as I knew my brother-in-law had a very poor opinion of the nerves of Englishwomen, I made an effort to say, as lightly as I could: 'What a very extraordinary country, to be sure! And do you always shoot anybody you may happen to see standing by the roadside of a ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... and turned out to be. The rogue of a Yankee had made a sort of bargain with Sambo, and arranged a scheme by which to draw the attention of the passengers in a natural manner to the famous Palmyra salve. Seldom or never had the risible nerves of the burly backwoodsmen on board the Ploughboy steamer, been so enormously tickled as by the discovery of this Yankee trick. The laughter was deafening, really earsplitting; and was only brought to something like an end by the appearance ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... Isocrates; and the Muses themselves are said to have spoken from the lips of Xenophon; and, to say no more, the great Plato is acknowledged in majesty and sweetness to have far exceeded all who ever wrote or spoke. But their language has neither the nerves nor the sting which is required in the Orator's, when he harangues the crowded Forum. They speak only to the learned, whose passions they rather choose to compose than disturb; and they discourse about matters of calm and untumultuous ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... ceased not to press Weber upon his audiences; and Weber at that period appears to have gone temporarily out of favour. Wagner lived in an atmosphere of depreciation and disapprobation which must have got upon his nerves and hastened the catastrophe—that of his taking active part in the attempted revolution. Sneers from artistic enemies outside; whimpering and nagging inside because he would not conform to court rules, and seek popularity as a good livery-wearing conductor should—no wonder he gave ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... "I feel badly." "He looks badly." The former sentence implies defective nerves of sensation, the latter, ...
— Write It Right - A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults • Ambrose Bierce
... as he was out of pain and began to recover the tone of his nerves at all, I saw that he wanted me beside him more than ever, and that Charlotte Benson, with all her skill and cleverness, was as nothing to him in comparison. No doubt he dissembled this with care; and was very ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... quintessence of trashy sentimentalism; but our audiences cry and sob at it till we can hardly hear ourselves speak on the stage, and the public in general rejoices in what the servant-maids call "something deep." My father acts the Stranger with me, which makes it very trying to my nerves, as I mix up all my own personal feelings for him with my acting, and the sight of his anguish and sense of his displeasure is really very dreadful to me, though it is only all about "stuff ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... Aconite and Aconitine.—-Aconite first stimulates and later paralyses the nerves of pain, touch and temperature, if applied to the skin, broken or unbroken, or to a mucous membrane; the initial tingling therefore gives place to a long-continued anaesthetic action. Taken internally aconite acts ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... caught a peculiar gleam in the eye of Augusta Hall and followed the line of her vision which was leveled at Bill Hopkins. There was no enmity in the latter's mien, but Dominie Graves knew that when the elderly deacon toyed with the white wart his nerves were vastly disturbed. For an instant the thought traveled through the clergyman's brain, that if Tessibel Skinner could work with her magic words on the dull protrusion upon Hopkins's glistening head the former deacon would lose his favorite occupation. He looked ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... neck and ears. Anon she would rise to her feet and shake herself, walk off a few rods, return and lie down again by my side. I did not know what to make of it, unless the excitement of the day had been too much for her sensitive nerves. I spoke to her kindly and petted her. In response she would rub her nose against me, and lick my hand with her tongue—a peculiar habit of hers—like a dog. As I was passing my hand over her head, I discovered that it was hot, and the thought of the old wound flashed ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... that, is a post, and goes down with the first bursting of the dam. He has tried compromise and discovered that it does not appease the Fates; is not even a makeshift-mending at this hour. He is a man of nerves, very sensitively built; as quick—quicker than a woman, I could almost say, to feel the tremble of the air-forerunner ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... that lone hope, Eiblin a ruin, That nerves this heart to cope, Eiblin a ruin. With peril and with pain, And surging of the brain, More boisterous than ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... handkerchief, and then set to work steadily to write his name and address upon each of the seven papers. I sat opposite to him and read Punch. I always take the old humour when travelling; I find it soothing to the nerves. ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... off from it came down a little lower than the rock behind which the canoe now lay. There was a furious gush of water between them and this eddy, but the men knew what the canoe could bear, and their nerves were strong and steady. Across they went like a shot. They were swept down to the extreme point of the eddy, but a few powerful strokes of the paddle sent them into it, and next moment they were floating behind the second rock, a few ...
— Away in the Wilderness • R.M. Ballantyne
... rage in the kitchen. She had been up in the garret, and a mouse had run across her foot. Mice always get on Ismay's nerves. ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Her face became bloated, her expression horrible to witness. One day, as she passed through the streets in one of these frenzies, she met Mat Blake. She shivered in every limb, and a pang, as from the thrust of a dagger, passed through her heart. But she attempted all the more to steel her nerves, and to harden her face. She raised her eyes and glared, but the eyes fell, and she ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... My nerves were steady enough to do the work. When the smoke floated aside, I could see the little creature bleeding upon the grass, her head resting against the body ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... Like fast feeders, they gulp them too grossly, to taste them curiously. We love to chew the cud of a foregone vision: to collect the scattered rays of a brighter phantasm, or act over again, with firmer nerves, the sadder nocturnal tragedies; to drag into day-light a struggling and half-vanishing night-mare; to handle and examine the terrors, or the airy solaces. We have too much respect for these spiritual communications, to let them go so lightly. We are not so stupid, or ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... Falls Church welcomes the jaded fathers and mothers from the city to the place where children may enjoy life with nature, where the climate, conducive to refreshing sleep, soothes tired nerves and makes life to such again buoyant with youthful hopes ...
— A Virginia Village • Charles A. Stewart
... daylight, then you realize suddenly that the most wonderful part of a deer's education shows itself, not in keen eyes or trumpet ears, or in his finely trained nose, more sensitive a hundred times than any barometer, but in his forgotten feet, which seem to have eyes and nerves and brains packed into their hard shells instead of the senseless matter ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... an exclamation of horror. Katie patted the shoulder beside her soothingly, understandingly, and as if begging for calm. Even under her light touch she seemed to feel the nerves leap up. ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... the people of such a Press as I have described is obvious. It excites the nerves of the feeble, it presents a hideously false standard of life, it suggests that nobody is secure from the omnipotent eavesdropper, and it preaches day after day at the top of its husky voice the gospel of snobbishness. But it is not merely the public ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... through praeoral region near termination of nerve tube. a, Olfactory ciliated pit on animal's left side, its wall confluent with substance of nerve tube; b, pigment spot (rudimentary eye) on anterior termination of nerve tube; c, first pair of nerves in section; d, fin ray; e, myotome; f, notochord; g, space round myotome (?artifact or coelom); h, subchordal canal (? blood-vessel); i, a symmetrical ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... him. If he had learned the secret of his birth through any other channel he would assuredly have been very wroth and very deeply pained, but after his quarrel with his brother, after the violent and brutal betrayal which had shaken his nerves, the agonizing emotion of his mother's confession had so bereft him of energy that he could not rebel. The shock to his feelings had been so great as to sweep away in an irresistible tide of pathos, all prejudice, and all the sacred delicacy of natural morality. Besides, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... from the duty before me, and, as I knelt down sorrowfully by the dead form and respectfully composed his stiffening limbs, I thought that it was unjust of fate to place a well-meaning man, whose nerves were not of ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... fell, deepened, grew ominous. None breathed, and the overwrought nerves of the court reached the ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... the little bark tent into which he had been thrown, and whistled through its many chinks, and made him shiver. No cheerful fire burned in the centre, and there was not a person in the wigwam to offer aid. Every bone and muscle in his body seemed to ache, and his mind was so distracted and his nerves unstrung that he was thoroughly miserable. He was nearly destitute of clothing, for he had been carried out from the circle just as he had danced and fallen, and now here he was nearly naked and shivering with the cold. ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... Lollypop's nerves were of the very best, but this was altogether too much for him. He refused suddenly and with a snort, whipped about, swift as a top, slid up, and collapsed on ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... without being salted, in the sun and air; and, as they have little fat or moisture, they grow as dry as wood. When they are to be prepared for eating, they arc beaten very hard with the back part of a hatchet, by which they are divided into filaments like nerves; after which they are boiled, and dressed with butter and spices to give them a relish. The people of this country carry on a considerable trade with these dried stockfish into Germany. The halibuts, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... show-windows she usually allowed herself to be swept back into the shelter of a side-street, and finally regained her own roof in a state of breathless bewilderment and fatigue; but gradually, as her nerves were soothed by the familiar quiet of the little shop, and the click of Evelina's pinking-machine, certain sights and sounds would detach themselves from the torrent along which she had been swept, and she would devote the rest of the day to a mental reconstruction ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... study, real research was difficult. Doc also needed an electron microscope. He was reasonably sure that the disease must travel through the nerves, but he had found no proof beyond the hard lump at the base of the neck. There it was a fair-sized organism. Elsewhere he could find nothing, ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... of life alarmed her and seemed unnatural. She protested as strongly as she could, without upsetting her equanimity, for to go beyond that she felt was unladylike and bad for both nerves and digestion. It was a grief for her to see Gloria actually working with anyone, much less Philip, whose theories were quite upsetting, and who, after all, was beyond the pale of their social sphere and was impossible as ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... and further antics being dangerous on that account, the performers retired again downstairs, Picotee of necessity following. Her nerves were screwed up to the highest pitch of uneasiness by the grotesque habits of these men and maids, who were quite unlike the country servants she had known, and resembled nothing so much as pixies, elves, or gnomes, peeping up upon ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... tablets decorated with the design called "Young Pine," made but two mistakes; while the holder of the "White-Lily" set made only one correct guess. But it is quite a feat to make ten correct judgments in succession. The olfactory nerves are apt to become somewhat numbed long before the game is concluded; and, therefore it is customary during the Ko-kwai to rinse the mouth at intervals with pure vinegar, by which operation the ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... it made a change to have anybody coming in from the outside world. The one disadvantage of a boarding-school is that mistresses and pupils, shut up together, and seeing one another week in, week out, are rather apt to get on each others' nerves. At a day school the girls take their worries home at four o'clock, and the mental atmosphere has time to clear before nine next morning; but, when there is no home-going until the end of the term, little trifles are ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... alliance of magnitude to French Guiana, the Brazils, and the Spanish settlements of South America, from whence, in the existing situation of Europe, the insatiate ambition of our inveterate enemy derives an important sinew of finance, which nerves his arm in wielding the sword against the liberties and the existence of the United Kingdom, they become infinitely enhanced, and are of still more ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... his powers perpetually at their best.—Into work or play or study he enters with the energy and zest which come of good digestion, strong muscles, steady nerves, and a clear head. He works hard, plays a strong game, thinks quickly and clearly; because he has a surplus of vitality to throw into whatever he undertakes. He prospers in business because he is able to prosecute it with energy. He makes friends because ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... the change, but, unlike Cargrim, they did not ascribe it to a consciousness of guilt, but to ill health. Mrs Pendle, who was extremely fond of her husband, and was well informed with regard to the newest treatment and the latest fashionable medicine, insisted that the bishop suffered from nerves brought on by overwork, and plaintively suggested that he should take the cure for them at some German Bad. But the bishop, sturdy old Briton that he was, insisted that so long as he could keep on his feet there was no necessity ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... Glenn," she whispered. "How strange! I wonder will he be glad." She felt a sweet, glowing assurance of that. Sleep did not come readily. Excitement had laid hold of her nerves, and for a long time she lay awake. After a while the chug of motor cars, the click of pool balls, the murmur of low voices all ceased. Then she heard a sound of wind outside, an intermittent, low moaning, new to her ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... a bundle of pipes and strainers, fitted to one another after so wonderful a manner as to make a proper engine for the soul to work with. This description does not only comprehend the bowels, bones, tendons, veins, nerves, and arteries, but every muscle and every ligature, which is a composition of fibres, that are so many imperceptible tubes or pipes interwoven on all sides with ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... Samuel Rodman was on deck, and they hoisted the mainsail. The wind had hauled round to the north-west early in the morning, and blew a smashing breeze, just such as Donald wanted for the great occasion. In fact, it blew almost a gale, and the wind came in heavy gusts, which are very trying to the nerves of an inexperienced boatman. The Penobscot, gayly dressed with flags, was moored in her position for ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... horses up the steep trail. There was utter silence now among the men. Mannix, too, was cool and collected. He had not drawn his gun. He surveyed the quaking Sautee with a look of extreme contempt. The mine manager's nerves had gone to pieces before Rathburn's menacing personality. All he cared for now was his life. The black reputation he had given to Rathburn led him to believe that the man could not be depended upon, and that he was liable to carry out his threat ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... "Sparing no man with fearefull execrable curses and banning."] Nothing seems to shock the nerves of these witch historiographers so much as the utter want of decorum and propriety exhibited by these unhappy creatures in giving vent to these indignant outbreaks, which a sense of the wicked injustice of their fate, ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... the natives are white when they are born, but they soon turn brown, as they are rubbed with bear's oil and exposed to the sun. They rub them with oil, both to render their nerves more flexible, and also to prevent the flies from stinging them, as they suffer them to roll about naked upon all fours, before they are able to walk upright. They never put them upon their legs till they are a year old, ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... unworthy of you, Holmes. It shows me very clearly the state of your own nerves. But if you have no confidence in me I would not intrude my services. Let me bring Sir Jasper Meek or Penrose Fisher, or any of the best men in London. But someone you MUST have, and that is final. If you think that ...
— The Adventure of the Dying Detective • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Coventry got on his nerves so that he couldn't pull up enough at review and the writs," replied Pierson. "He wasn't one of the bright men, ...
— Dick Prescott's Third Year at West Point - Standing Firm for Flag and Honor • H. Irving Hancock
... minute of the last day of this delightful little supplementary season, this autumnal climax of their camping life. But aside from this resolution they cared not what they did. Pee-wee, instead of getting on their nerves, had gotten into their spirits. A change of location wouldn't be half bad. And Pee-wee was right too, in much that he had said; they realized this. ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... over to the Point with me and Derby here," indicating the young fellow in the other racing craft who had drawn his boat up close to them and was looking on with interest. "We will get you something to steady your nerves a bit. We had a pretty narrow squeak that time, and it's no wonder ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope |
