"Overwrought" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... still no little impeachment of his temper, or his understanding, that he should lend his ear to the poisonous breathings of one whose spirits are so well known to "toil in frame of villainies." As to his rash and overwrought scheme of revenge for Hero's imputed sin, his best excuse therein is, that the light-minded Prince, who is indeed such another, goes along with him; while it is somewhat doubtful whether the patron or the favourite ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... tell thee something. [Draws near him.] Look, look there! The bride! That is our master's bride! And see how pale and overwrought. ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... and reflections which passed through his mind during that delirium of more than two hours. He even remembered the senseless bray of laughter which, to the sympathetic mind, is not the least impressive feature of that iniquitous trial. His overwrought nerves being temporarily relieved by the cachinnation, he regained for a few minutes some measure of composure and sanity. With the return of reason came a returning sense of injustice and oppression. He made a brief but ineffectual attempt to argue the matter with the Chief Justice, ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... unbeknownst, and secondly, so that he shall be ready to go in directly his predecessor is out. There is an ill-concealed restiveness about his movements, as he watches the batsmen getting set, that betrays an overwrought spirit. Then of a sudden one of them plays a ball on to his pad. ''s that?' asks the bowler, with an overdone carelessness. 'Clean out. Now I'm in,' and already he is rushing up the middle of the pitch ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... his home, the deliberate loudness of an old clock, the minute warring of his mother's bone needles, her sister's fits of coughing, painfully restrained, soothed his harried being; subjected to an intolerable strain his overwrought nerves had suddenly relaxed; he sank back in a loose, almost somnolent, state. A mental indolence possessed him; the keen incentives of life appeared far, unimportant, his late rebellions and desires inexplicable. Even the iron was a heavy load; the necessity of constantly ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... ensuing season, by cleaning with the greatest nicety not only such wheat as was intended for seed, but such as was received into the public store from settlers. It was occasioned by the ground being overwrought, from a greediness to make it produce golden harvests every season, without allowing it time to recruit itself from crop to crop, or being able to afford it manure. Had this not happened, the crops would most ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... late at night, and they never met. Mrs Pratt in the room below, and her little dying daughter, had many a tale of kindness and devotion to tell about him; and when presently the little life fled, she heard with grateful tears of his act of mercy to the poor overwrought mother, ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... be allowed; for, ardent as my admiration of Wordsworth's poetry is, I confess that I have not succeeded in imbibing so much of his philosophy as to feel as he would doubtless have felt in a similar situation. Both mine and my companion's overwrought limbs, however, derived no slight advantage from the halt, and well it was that they did so, for the task which awaited them on the morrow was a hard one. After repeated consultations with the burgomaster, which ended ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... this passionate, thoroughly aroused woman be his cold, self-contained daughter? He could not understand, as so many cannot, that such natures when aroused are tenfold more intense than those whom little things excite. A long and peculiar train of circumstances, a morbid and overwrought physical condition, led to this outburst from Christine, which was as much a cause of surprise to herself afterward as to her father. He judged correctly that a great deal had occurred between Dennis and herself of which ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... his words coming quick and eager, "don't do that! Do you think I can't see that you're all overwrought? How can I let you go tramping out there in the streets again? You couldn't go—you mustn't go! Stay here with good Mrs. Trapes, I beg of you, and I swear I'll bring Arthur to you! Only you must promise me to wait here and be patient, however long ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... the later portion of the manuscript differed from the pages which he had just been reading. Signs of an overwrought brain showed themselves, here and there, as the outline of the play approached its end. The handwriting grew worse and worse. Some of the longer sentences were left unfinished. In the exchange of dialogue, questions and answers ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... to that modern Eden for the overwrought nerves of kings and commoners—Baden-baden, where we spent ten days. At the end of this time we returned to Paris to enjoy the Exposition at our leisure. Paris is always a place of brightness and pleasure. King Leopold of Belgium was among the distinguished guests of the French capital, ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... overwrought by the terrible adventure which she had just gone through, were threatening to reel; she heard the massive door close, shutting out the yells of baffled rage, the ironical laughter, the obscene words, which sounded in her ears like the shrieks of ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... her inflexible unyielding look, he felt that he could cope with her. He thought a sudden terror, occasioned by this night-alarm, had subdued her; not the less readily, for her overwrought condition. Throwing open the doors, he ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... smoke, and redolent of fumes of wine. Mechanically I led the chorus, straining every nerve to hear a sound from outside. I was growing dizzy with the movement, and, overwrought with the strain on my nerves. I knew a few minutes more would be the limit of endurance, when at last I heard a loud shout and ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope
... up a hill higher and higher, with that flood pouring after us. Sort of splashing into a foam of faces and helmets and bayonets—and clutching hands—and red stuff.... Well, Mr. Britling, I admit I'm a little bit overwrought about it, but I can assure you you don't begin to realise in England what it is you've ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... was still overwrought and nerve-strung: for some reason she could not afterwards have explained, she felt spiteful and uncontrolled, goaded into stupid fury by the look of insolence and of triumph with which Candeille ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... reassured when at last they set eyes on each other again. Indeed each was surprised to find something almost agreeable in the appearance of the other. Dr. Martineau at once perceived that the fierceness of Sir Richmond was nothing more than the fierceness of an overwrought man, and Sir Richmond realized at a glance that the curiosity of Dr. Martineau's bearing had in it nothing personal or base; it was just the fine ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... happened, or just when, no one knew, but on the very day after her husband's departure she had gone quietly on deck while the rest of the company were at supper and never was seen again; nor till the sea gives up its dead shall any know the story of that poor overwrought soul's last fierce struggle ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... you scoffed at and struck me. I sat up all night with that youth wrestling for his soul; and in the morning not only was he a Christian, but his hair was as white as snow. (Lentulus falls in a dead faint). There, there: take him away. The spirit has overwrought him, poor lad. Carry him gently to his house; and ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... head, Not on his feet, I know not what had chanced. Then to the shuddering Orient skies there rose A marvellous great shriek, the splintering noise Of shattered ash-plant and of battered shank, Mixed with a higher. For Susan, overwrought, Lost footing, and with one clear dolorous wail Fell headlong, only more so. And I saw, Clothed in black stockings, mystic, wonderful, That which I saw. The coolies yelled. The crowd Closed round, and so the ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... patients suffering from overstimulation of the brain and nervous system consult their doctor, his advice in almost every instance is: "Your nerves are weak and overwrought. You need plenty of good, nourishing food (broths, meat and eggs), and ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... nightmare, that still held on to him with cold, clammy hands, and was trying to draw him back once more into its web. Visions rose before him of shrieking showmen's booths, blinking with tawdry yellow eyes. Emmie's hoarse laugh grated on his ears; he was overwrought and wanted to shout, to shriek, to give some vent to his feelings. But he seemed chained to the long bench, and his tongue was tied so that he could only mouth out silly platitudes about the weather ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... and a half. As Mr. Brown of the Sillet Light Infantry informed me most correctly, many would make fine spars; but Mr. Cracroft's language in one of the Journals of the Asiatic Society when describing these firs, seems rather overwrought. During our march I picked up a pretty species of Sonerila. A small stream runs at the foot of the descent, by what name it goes I know not. Near the Bustapanee, flowing along a valley about two hours' ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... sexual relations. Attention has been called to this situation by social workers among wage-earning girls. It has been a distressingly frequent experience in my special practice to find that the young man, overwrought by the excitement of wooing, has exposed himself elsewhere to infection and unwittingly punished the trustfulness of his fiancee by infecting her with syphilis through a subsequent kiss. The publication of banns before marriage ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... these things," he said soothingly—"You are evidently overwrought with study and excessive zeal. Much that you say may be true; nevertheless the Church—OUR Church—stands firm among overwhelming contradictions,—and we, its ministers, do what we can. I myself am disposed ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... be imagined, these remarks did not conduce to Lottie's serenity. She did not understand herself; nor why she felt so miserable and out of sorts. She had fallen into the "Slough of Despond," and was experiencing that depression which usually follows overwrought emotional states, and—her ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... though I appreciated the fact that I was by no means in a normal state of mind, I had not a clear enough insight into my condition to realize that treatment and a restricted degree of liberty were what I needed, since continued freedom might further inflame an imagination already overwrought. ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... Gnecco we neither of us for one instant suspected, but we felt some degree of uncertainty about the others. Whether or no there had been some amount of unclean work going on, it was anyway quite certain that a great part of Giannoli's suspicions were the outcome of his overwrought and exhausted mental condition. ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... action and idleness of reflection, into which my young years were divided, that the impress of my character was stamped: that fitfulness of temper, that affection for extremes, has accompanied me through life. Hence, not only all intermediums of emotion appear to me as tame, but even the most overwrought excitation can bring neither novelty nor zest. I have, as it were, feasted upon the passions; I have made that my daily food, which, in its strength and excess, would have been poison to others; I have rendered ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... explosions, with pitch-dark comers, and those ghost-like forms in the misty heights, but Mr. Hume would not allow his patient time to brood over the surroundings. He shaved off fragments of biltong for him to eat, talking cheerfully all the time, and at last had the satisfaction of seeing the overwrought nerves of the lad quieted in sleep. Then the anxiety that had filled him all the time appeared in the expression of his face, and he stepped away a few yards to send a call for the woman ringing up into the vault. The cry ran away mournfully in a series of diminishing ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... cozy quarters here. Especially as I fancy Vere's 'earthquake' was the tremor of an approaching thunderstorm. I felt it, myself. Let us light all the lamps and draw the curtains to shut out the fog which has got on everyone's nerves by its long continuance. We are overwrought beyond reason. Suppose we sit here together, strong in numbers, for the few hours until daylight? I think that should be safeguard enough. Tomorrow we will do all we had planned for tonight. Come in, Vere, ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... Griffiths, overwrought by sun and sickness, exploded. All his bitterness of spirit rose up in his face and twisted his mouth into ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... from the sea was blowing fresh and free over the village, and beyond it to the little churchyard, the God's acre of Northbourne. Kneeling beside one of the grassy mounds therein was Theo Carnegy, tears rolling down her earnest face. The girl was overwrought by home-worries, for Theo was none of the crying sort, as a rule. But there are times in the lives of each of us when all things seem too difficult for our feeble hands to smooth out; the knots, the difficulties, become hopelessly entangled; we sit down ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... also is held responsible for the manner of introducing the immorally suggestive, for the introduction of learned quotations and references to authorities, for the sport made of the learned professions and the satire upon all kinds of pedantry and overwrought enthusiasm. Though the direct, demonstrable influence of Sterne upon Wieland's literary activity dies out gradually[30] and naturally, with the growth of his own genius, his admiration for the English favorite abides with him, passing on into succeeding periods ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... later, Alymer finished his speech, and sat down instantly turning his head to look for her. Instead of the familiar, eager face of the first hour, he saw the empty space, and his overwrought mind sank to a dull level ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... "Overwrought? Ay, body and soul too," answered Mrs Clere, softening a little in response to Rose's tone. "Well! folks know their own troubles best, I reckon, and it's no good harrying other folks with them. What priced ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... The girl's overwrought nerves gave way. She had only breath enough to say, "I said 'Good evening, Captain Farnham!' Wasn't it too perfectly ridiculous?" and then burst into a flood of mingled laughter and tears, which nothing could ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... the bare backs of berserk mules, or hoisted by blazing petards, or douched with mysterious cascades of icy water. Pat Valdo had written: "I am glad to hear you are going to clown a bit. I hope you both will enjoy the experience." To our overwrought imaginations this sounded a little ominous. What would Pat and his lively confreres ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... quarrel, at all events, brother," replied Eric, laughing in his old fashion at the possibility of such a thing. The lad was quite overwrought with emotion at parting with the old skipper as well as his late companions in the ship; and, tears and mirth being closely allied, he would have felt inclined to laugh at anything then—just because ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... especially if it is done consciously and, as it were, of malice prepense; because, for one thing, there is in the theatre a very varied yet united audience which has to give a simultaneous and immediate verdict—an audience not inclined to some kinds of overwrought subtleties and casuistries, however clever the technique. If The Master of Ballantrae (which has some highly dramatic scenes and situations, if it is not in itself substantially a drama) were to be put on the stage, the playwright, if wisely ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... time for angry words," said the Pastor Arentz, pushing his way through the group of bewildered men and overwrought women. "He can scarcely be dead; let me look at him, I am something of a doctor," and he knelt by the senseless and bleeding Adrian ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... much for poor Muriel's overwrought nerves. She, too, gave way in a tempest of sobs, and, subsiding on one of the native stools hard by, burst into tears herself with ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... mountains, honey-combed with dens and caves; arid valleys and barren hills; dreary deserts that glistened under the blinding glare of the sun that poured its heat upon them steadily all the year; strange, grotesque rocks and peaks that assumed all sorts of fantastic shapes to the overwrought fancy; in many places no water, no verdure, and scarcely a thing in motion; the crocodile and the bird lazily seeking their necessary food and stirring only as compelled; unbounded expanse in the wide star-lit heavens; unbroken quiet ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... rapidly outgrown and more self-control is being practiced. After all it does seem that being easily moved and swayed may furnish the lever by which the wise and prudent may begin to lift them to the higher ground of religious life. No doubt in most cases there is deep down beneath the easily overwrought feelings a true religious disposition, with ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... her what moral miracles her influence had wrought in him, and how nothing but her love was needed to keep him steadfast in the future; and, in truth, he more than half believed what he said. The whole scene was quite in the key of the play, and her overwrought feelings drifted toward the man pleading thus earnestly for affection. Harry saw the advantage of the situation, and urged on her an immediate decision. Henrietta, still shaken by passionate excitement, and without rest in herself, was on the point of promising eternal affection, ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... were dead," she said dully. "Drowned. I mean—oh, of course, it's the same thing, isn't it?" And she laughed, the shrill, choking laughter of overwrought nerves. ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... they do. But the "better" is only a deceitful sham, kept up by excited and overwrought nerves,—the same thing that we see over and over and over again in all lives which are temporarily kindled and stimulated ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... said to me then," he pursued, in the same cruel quietness of tone—"what you said to me then, as to the influence of a bad woman in a man's life, seemed to me—what shall I say?—not precisely exaggerated, but somewhat overwrought. I didn't know it could be so true to the actual facts of experience. My friend's words at times were almost an echo of your own. He had been the lover of ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... room. He was thankful, as he thought that sleep would bring tranquillity and relief to Margaret's overwrought brain. He went to bed and fell asleep, for he was exhausted by the fatigue of the day and the anxiety of the night. Poor Clement fell asleep, and dreamt that he met Margaret Wilmot by moonlight in the park around Maudesley Abbey, walking with a DEAD MAN, whose face was strange to him. This was the ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... lovely having her," said Audrey softly. In her overwrought state, she felt inclined to cry at the mere thought of losing her. Indeed, she felt so stupid, so miserable, so tongue-tied, she could not stand there any longer lest the sharp-eyed old gentleman should see the tears in her eyes. What a weak, ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... upon the year 1850; I had decided to go to Paris, if only for the sake of peace, but had to postpone my journey on account of ill-health. The reaction following upon the terrible excitement of recent times had not failed to have its effect on my overwrought nerves, and a state of complete exhaustion had followed. The continual colds, in spite of which I had been obliged to work in my very unhealthy room, had at last given rise to alarming symptoms. A certain weakness of the chest became apparent, and this the doctor (a political ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... As the spell of her influence seemed to calm the overwrought mind of the girl there succeeded a hardness in her tone that was wholly out of keeping with her youth. There was something that breathed of a past where there should have been nothing but ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... revived, and literary eclipsed warlike fame; but with the revival of letters came the revolutionary spirit before exhibited on the battle-field and in cabinets. For the artificial and elegant was substituted the melodramatic and effective; lyrics from the overwrought heart broke in dreamy sweetness from Lamartine and in simple energy from Branger; fiction the most elaborate, incongruous, and exciting, here quaintly artistic, there morbidly scientific, revealed the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... live in superlatives. You don't know what happiness or unhappiness means. You were badly overwrought then, so you cried ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... food-supply to keep the laborers from starving. Into the city flows much of the best blood of the country, which seeks opportunity for achievement. The great city is inevitable so long as great society insists on gigantic production and as great consumption, but the city idea is overwrought beyond its natural condition. If some power could equalize the transportation question, so that a factory might be built in a smaller town, where raw material could be furnished as cheaply as in the large city, and the distribution of goods be as convenient, there is no reason why ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... with a longbow; deal in the marvelous. out-Herod Herod, run riot, talk at random. heighten, overcolor^; color highly, color too highly; broder^; flourish; color &c (misrepresent) 544; puff &c (boast) 884. Adj. exaggerated &c v.; overwrought; bombastic &c (grandiloquent) 577; hyperbolical^, on stilts; fabulous, extravagant, preposterous, egregious, outre [Fr.], highflying^. Adv. hyperbolically &c adj.. Phr. excitabat enim fluctus ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... being too firmly set on my own will and way. But, I pray you to believe, I ever valued your counsel and could scarce have lived without your friendship. Last night, on first entering the Castle, I fear I spoke wildly and acted strangely. I was sore overwrought. I came in, out of the night, not knowing whom I should find in the hall chamber; and—for a moment, my lord, for one wild, foolish moment—I took you not for yourself but ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... The overwrought girl dropped her head and wept without restraint upon her mother's neck. She let herself be guided to a chair, and there, while Aurora nestled close to her side, yielded a few moments to reverie ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... silence when the Colonel ceased, and then a clearing of the throat and a preliminary movement of the arms gave warning that Mrs. Gradinger was going to speak. The unspoken passage from Racine evidently sat heavily on her chest. Abstracted and overwrought as he was, these symptoms aroused in Sir John a consciousness of impending danger, and he rushed, incontinent, into the breach, before the ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... her, and his eyes did not seem human. He breathed stertorously, and in his throat were the queer little gasping noises of one overwrought. ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... pushed him into my car, preferring to take the wheel rather than have him drive. I can always think better when I have a steering wheel in my hands, and knowing with what speed Jim drove ordinarily, I didn't care to trust my precious body to him in his overwrought condition. ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... and breathless hush of overwrought interest and intense (yet strange to say not unpleasing) terror lay like a mighty and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... But the maid's statement occupied all my mind. "Madame n'est pas heureuse." It had a dreadful precision . . . "Not happy . . ." This unhappiness had almost a concrete form—something resembling a horrid bat. I was tired, excited, and generally overwrought. My head felt empty. What were the appearances of unhappiness? I was still naive enough to associate them with tears, lamentations, extraordinary attitudes of the body and some sort of facial distortion, all very dreadful to behold. I didn't know what I should see; but in what I did see there ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... Be not overwrought Nor cease thy preparations for the voyage. Work tranquilly and do not be disturbed, For thou canst put away his armor last. What am I saying! For he wears no mail, Nor doth ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... air, while I was inwardly execrating my father's negligence. I emptied the portmanteau in the hope of finding some small phial or box. Any opiate would have been welcome to me, that would have dulled the overwrought nerves of the girl in the room within. But the practice of using any thing of the kind was not in favor with us generally in the Channel Islands, and my father had probably concluded that a Sark woman would not consent to use them. At any rate, ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... appeal. Overwrought as I was, I nearly succumbed to the false reasoning which was but the expression of my desire. And then once more the vision of those deadly inroads of disease ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... and dispose of him as a chattel—as a thing in the hands of an owner, a beast under the lash of a driver? All this, apart from every thing incidental and extraordinary, belongs to the RELATION, in which slavery, as such, consists. All this—well fed or ill fed, underwrought or overwrought, clothed or naked, caressed or kicked, whether idle songs break from his thoughtless tongue or "tears be his meat night and day," fondly cherished or cruelly murdered;—all this ENTERS VITALLY INTO THE RELATION ITSELF, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Bellingham's "frightful agitation" as he sat on the bench, and all this dreadful work was going on; and I return to it, to describe it as far as words can convey an idea of the shocking spectacle. I could only imagine something like it in the overwrought painting of a powerful romance-writer, but never before could conceive the physical suffering of a strong muscular man, under the tortures of a distracted mind. Whilst his language was cool, the agonies which shook his frame were actually terrible. His countenance ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... favourable to the engendering of self-conceit and sufficiency, so utterly at variance with that lowliness of spirit which constitutes the best test of piety. The sneerers and scoffers at religion do not spring from amongst the simple children of nature, but are the excrescences of overwrought refinement, and though their baneful influence has indeed penetrated to the country and corrupted many there, the fountain-head was amongst crowded houses where nature is scarcely known. I am not one of those who look for perfection amongst the rural population of any country; ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... very quiet," he said reassuringly. "If you hear any sound in the house you can go back. You're overwrought, dearest, and I've only come to be near you. Nobody will see me except yourself, but if at any time before daylight you want me, come to your window and raise the blind. I'll be where ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... dear. I want to explain why I asked you to come to me at this late hour—never dreaming my message would find you so overwrought.... You quite see how needless it was to permit yourself to be upset by such a ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... overwrought, dear lady. Come, rest you until the holy Angelo be come, so shalt be thine ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... remained a great lady, and in the ordinary relations of society her manners were exquisite, as they were, according to Joinville, in the court of Saint Louis, when tempers were not overwrought. The very brutality of the brutal compelled the courteous to exaggerate courtesy, and some of the royal family were as coarse as the king was delicate in manners. In heaven the manners were perfect, and almost as stately as those of Roland and Oliver. ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... sheds Such treasure in the air, Recking naught else but that her graces give Life to the moment, I would bid them live As roses might, in magic amber laid, Red overwrought with orange and all made One substance and ...
— Hugh Selwyn Mauberley • Ezra Pound
... whispered to advantage, till the people came to Moosu, saying they were hungry and demanding the fulfilment of prophecy. And there was a loud shout of "Itlwillie! Itlwillie!" (Meat.) So he cried peace to his womenfolk, who were overwrought with anger and with hooch, and led the tribe even to thy meat caches. And he bade the men open them and be fed. And lo, the caches were empty. There was no meat. They stood without sound, the people being frightened, and in the silence I lifted my voice. "O Moosu, where is ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... orderliness gave him a good reception. He sometimes took money or begged it in order to read masses for poor souls. In one village he said he had come to reconnoiter for a site to build a hospital. Some cloister brothers in one place took him for a swindler and decided he was overwrought religiously, and that he really thought he was what he wished to become. He was studied at length in prison where he had one attack of maniacal behavior and tried to hang himself. The physician there ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... from a distance of millions of miles as clearly as if he were in the room? The thing was incredible! How could a Martian know a language evolved here on Earth? Was the whole thing then a delusion of an overwrought mind? I stood staring at the ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... "in the distance, but of course I had no idea who it was. How very kind you have been to me!" and again the tears were trembling in the nervous eyes of the poor, overwrought girl. ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare
... centuries, perhaps not since the embassy of the Goths to the Emperor Valens—the ministry or cabinet which but dares, dares to trust this people's resolution, will find that this enthusiasm is not that of men overwrought with war-fever, but the deep-seated purpose of a people strong to defend the heritage of its fathers, and not to swerve from the path which fate itself has marked out for it amongst the empires of the ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... strife with himself. Now he walked the floor in visible agitation; and now sat motionless, with head bowed, and arms folded across his bosom. The impression of sleep was far from his overwrought brain. One thing he decided, and that was to leave Saratoga by the earliest morning train, and go with all possible haste to Newport. Suspense in regard to Mrs. Dexter he felt it would be impossible for him ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... remained in this condition she could not afterward tell, but it could not have been for long, since she was strong and healthy, and it was merely a case of overwrought nerves, and a severe mental shock, which did ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... fights—the kind that worked the heart and lungs to bursting, that took the elastic out of the arteries and made hard knots of muscle out of Youth's sleek suppleness, that wore out nerve and stamina and made brain and bones weary from excess of effort and endurance overwrought. Yes, he had done better than all of them. There were none of his old fighting partners left. He was the last of the old guard. He had seen them all finished, and he had had a hand in finishing some ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... the door of the outer shop. But Ruth had walked to the gate to see if Babbie was coming and, as Maud emerged from the shop, the two women came face to face. For an instant they did not speak. Maud, excited and overwrought by her experience with the letter and her interview with Jed, was still struggling for self-control, and Ruth, knowing that the other must by this time have received that letter and learned her brother's secret, was inclined to be coldly defiant. She was the first to break the ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... abandoned her, she entered almost unconsciously, and with a feeling of rapidly-increasing weakness. She approached the bell to ring for her maid, which she was able to do with difficulty; and having done so, she attempted to reach the sofa; but exhausted and overwrought nature gave way, and she fell just sufficiently near it to have her fall broken and her head supported by it, as she lay there apparently lifeless. In this state Alley Mahon found her; but instead of ringing an alarm, or attempting to collect a crowd of the servants to witness a scene, ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... others, including myself, and his subsequent commerce with her was achieved by his own personal force. You may say that she had been prepared to see him by belief and desire, by belief and desire acting upon a mind greatly distressed and probably overwrought. You may say that she saw what she ardently desired to see. It is quite true, I cannot deny it; but I point to his previous manifestations, and leave ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... to tell you, child." His voice was hoarse. "You are overwrought and overstrung. I have nothing to say to you but ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... "You are overtired and overwrought by the heat, and the excitement of the sermon has been too much for you. But you will be all right ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... coast? I'm unable to say. I lost track of the passing hours. Time was in abeyance on the ship's clocks. As happens in the polar regions, it seemed that night and day no longer followed their normal sequence. I felt myself being drawn into that strange domain where the overwrought imagination of Edgar Allan Poe was at home. Like his fabled Arthur Gordon Pym, I expected any moment to see that "shrouded human figure, very far larger in its proportions than any dweller among men," thrown across the cataract that protects ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... now dim, obscured. The yawning chasm was not the same. It circled wider, redder, deeper. It was a weird, ghastly mouth of hell. Gale stood fascinated, unable to tell how much he saw was real, how much exaggeration of overwrought emotions. There was no beauty here, but an unparalleled grandeur, a sublime scene of devastation and desolation which might have had its counterpart upon the burned-out moon. The mood that gripped Gale now added to its somber portent an unshakable ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... ..." An ungloved hand stirred from her lap and for the merest instant rested lightly above his own, or hovered rather, barely touching it with a touch tenuous and elusive, no sooner realised than gone. "I mean," she murmured, "I am a bit too overwrought, ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... nevertheless. Hortense, overwrought by fatigue and her desire to know what was happening, continually questioned Rnine, who replied evasively, with his eyes turned to the esplanade, which they could see through ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... faces, waiting like statues for the enemy that never came. A dead, petrified world, the only living thing the sunshine, which played in peaceful indifference upon the scene of an old and a new tragedy! Lois thought of her mother. By the power of an overwrought imagination she looked back through a quarter of a century to a day of which this present was a strange and horrible repetition. For a moment she lived her mother's life, lived through the hours of ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... horse he reserved for his own use. "Did you not hear the order," he retorted, striking the man with his whip, "everyone on foot." Rarely did this great man mar a noble action by harsh treatment: the incident sufficiently reveals the tension of feelings, always keen, and now overwrought by physical suffering ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... overwrought. I should be thankful. But—but, isn't it deception—I mean, will it be fair to conceal from Richard the real condition of affairs?" He took ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... together with John and his crowd and sending the Jake Vodells back to whatever country they came from." When her father spoke John's name, the young woman's face colored with a quick blush. The next moment, unable to control her overwrought emotions, she burst into tears and started to leave the room. But at the door Captain Charlie caught her in his arms and held her close until the first violence of ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... understood, especially by the immediate age in which he lived, than Louis XVI. He was the victim of natural timidity, increased by the horror of bloodshed, which the exigencies of the times rendered indispensable to his safety. He appeared weak in intellect, when he was only so from circumstances. An overwrought anxiety to be just made him hesitate about the mode of overcoming the abuses, until its procrastination had destroyed the object of his wishes. He had courage sufficient, as well as decision, where others were ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... dead." I could not speak. In the presence of her great affliction we all stood silent, and with bowed heads. I had thought Darrow's attack the result of an overwrought mental condition which would speedily readjust itself, and had so counted upon his daughter's influence as all but certain to immediately result in a temporary cure. When, therefore, I found him dead without any apparent cause, I was, for the time ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... Overwrought as I was, I was forced to bring my common sense to bear on the situation. Here was a tragedy, a real and terrible one. Suppose we had, in some queer fashion, touched its outer edges that night? Then how was it that there had come, ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... demesne of the past and of the imagination. Having known all the picturesqueness and beauty of England, he settled himself in the old Vassall (or Craigie) House, in Cambridge, with serene enjoyment and appreciation. This house was then in a retired spot, and overwrought as he frequently found himself, the repose of the place was helpful to him. In 1842 he again visited Europe, for the third time. His health suffered from solitude and the continued activities of his mind. "I sometimes think," ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... The overwrought man threw himself face down on the table in front of his grim accuser, like a child's broken doll, and wept with great sobs that shook his frame as the wind lashes the waters ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... people around him, even those who had been most hostile to him, the intellectuals, and the politicians; and he saw plainly their wrinkles, their white hair, the bitter lines about their mouths, their bent backs, their shaky legs.... Overwrought, nervous, ready to break down,... how much they had aged in six months! The excitement of the fight had kept them up at first; but as it went on and, no matter what the issue, the ruin became plain; each one had his griefs, and each feared to lose the little—but that little, ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... overworked and overwrought, imagining things that don't exist. Instead of standing there slanging me you ought to go ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... the masons reminded him that it was the custom to deliver up a prisoner to the people at the time of the Passover. At the time of the Passover, he repeated.... At last, realising what had happened, his face became overwrought; his eyes and mouth testified to the grief he was suffering; and he pressed his spurs to his horse's side, and would have been away beyond call if two of his workmen had not seized the bridle and almost forced the horse on his haunches. Loose my bridle, ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... journals would ever give him his death-blow, as they did Halvdan, the hero of his drama 'Redaktoeren' (The Editor); or that he would yield, as so many modern poets have yielded, to the temptation of resorting to pernicious stimulants or to dissipation as antidotes for the overwrought or depleted state of the nervous system occasioned by creative activity. Nothing has injured Bjoernson's spine; his lungs are without blemish; a cough is unknown to him; and his shoulders were fashioned to bear without discomposure the rude thrusts ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... overwrought energies suddenly failed her, and she burst out crying. "I don't know how I shall get over the ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... must have guessed her overwrought state, and invented some excuse for her non-appearance, for no inquiries were made or calls given. At half-past six the sun settled down upon the levels with the aspect of a great forge in the heavens; ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... is to be said for Carlyle's insistence that great men are creators as well as creatures of their age. Doubtless, as we advance in history, direct personal influence, happily or unhappily, declines. In an era of overwrought activity, of superficial, however free, education, when we run the risk of being associated into nothingness and criticised to death, it remains a question whether, in the interests of the highest civilisation ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... later found Roland still sitting, where she had left him, his head in his hands. The groan of an overwrought soul escaped him. ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... Ricardo, after studying the matter over and seeing no other way out of it, proceeded to have a fit. No one, not even the illustrious Signor, could tell just how much of that fit was deliberate and artificial, and just how much was due to an overwrought sensitive organization, but certain it was that the Signor Ricardo was quite unable to go on with the performance, and Monsieur Noire himself, as agitated as a moment before the great Ricardo had been, frantically ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... "You were overwrought, Mademoiselle Stephanie," he said. "I was not sure of your intentions. But I see that the precaution ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... the sorrow of her soul. The sweet atmosphere of this home; the consciousness that she was among friends; the knowledge that they would do all they could to find the wanderer whom every one loved with such devotion, gave to Pepeeta's overwrought ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... there, my dear," urged the man; "you are overwrought, excited, nervous. The music starts. Let ...
— And Thus He Came • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... He became so overwrought by this agonising possibility that instead of listening for the striking of the clock, he began to listen for the sound of some passing footstep—the footstep of someone passing by chance who might be sent to the parson with ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... my patient swallowed only the desired water and doses which did not corrode, a desire for food coming at the end of the month. The only day and night nurse was an overwrought mother, who got into bed with the same disease as soon as the daughter got out of it. There was another month of severer sickness, when without food and without the horror of dosage, as before, the call for food marked the close of the disease. ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... to the fact that she was nervous and overwrought, as well as physically tired out, rendered her unable to use her really good ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... was overwrought. Perhaps my fancy ran away with me. But I didn't doubt for a second. I rose from my seat, and in a tremulous voice called Jane into the room. Without one word I laid both pictures down before her together. Jane glanced first at the one, then turned quickly ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... spring as swift and as noiseless as a tiger's I lit beside the guardsman who had moved. My hands hovered about his throat awaiting the moment that his eyes should open. For what seemed an eternity to my overwrought nerves I remained poised thus. Then the fellow turned again upon his side and resumed the even respiration of ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... fresh morning air, foretold the rising of another storm. The sound grew in intensity, even while she listened; and yet for a moment she misunderstood him. "O God!" she cried, out of the agony of nerves overwrought, "will that bell never stop? Will it never stop? Will no one ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... heaven, like the desert child of God—for so the everyday world would say of her if they had known—in the spiritual source of the amazing message, she ceased to question the why or the wherefore of it. She could not treat it as the mere creation of her own overwrought imagination, and yet she would be true to Freddy in the sense that she would do absolutely nothing to get into closer touch with the world behind the veil. She would make no effort to ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer |
