"Breakdown" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... brother's keeper; that a brotherhood of man does exist outside after-dinner speeches. Too many men make the mistake, when they reach the point of enough, of going on pursuing the same old game: accumulating more money, grasping for more power until either a nervous breakdown overtakes them and a sad incapacity results, or they drop "in the harness," which is, of course; only calling an early grave by another name. They cannot seem to get the truth into their heads that as they have ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... on to her face, burying her head deeply into the cushions of the divan, shutting out from her sight the barbaric luxury of her surroundings, shuddering convulsively. She did not cry. The complete breakdown of the first night had never been repeated. Tears of shame and anger had risen in her eyes often, but she would not let them fall. She would not give her captor the satisfaction of knowing that he could make her weep. Her pride was dying hard. Her mind travelled back slowly ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... opinion one of the most valuable contributions anthropologists have made in recent years is the discovery that primitive man is afflicted with essentially the same neurotic conditions as those of us who live a so-called civilized life. They have found savages displaying every symptom of a nervous breakdown among the mountain tribes of the Elgonyi and the Aruntas of Australia. No, Mr. Latham, it's time the stress-and-strain theory was relegated to the junk pile along with ...
— Disturbing Sun • Robert Shirley Richardson
... ill. The machinery is so highly geared, the tension and strain are so great, the effort and the output have alike so increased, that there is cause to dread the ruin that would come from any great accident, from any breakdown, and also the ruin that may come from the mere wearing out of the machine itself. The only previous civilization with which our modern civilization can be in any way compared is that period of Graeco-Roman ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... case, however, is too important to warrant a hasty decision. The final judgment, if it is based on truth, will very strongly influence the nature of the peace, which will either establish good-will and stable conditions in the world, or lead to another and even more complete breakdown of civilization. ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... though he very nearly followed Schiller into the shades. I did the thing myself quite handsomely by spending eighteen months on crutches, having two surgical operations, and breaking my arm. I distinctly noticed that instead of my recuperation beginning when my breakdown ended, it began before that. The ascending curve cut through the tail of the descending one; and I was consummating my collapse and rising for my next ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... him. He said after they left here he had a breakdown; I forgot what he said went wrong. The nurse was in a hurry, so he got her a taxi, put her into it with her luggage, and she drove off. That's ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... side of him that he lets you see," replied the man. "His gaiety is all forced. If you could see him after you leave you would realize that he is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Your father is not an old man in years, but he has placed a constant surtax on his nervous system for the last twenty-five years without a let-up, and it doesn't make any difference how good a machine may be it is going to wear out ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... he, setting his spectacles and leaning forward in his seat, "you've heard what the officer has said. You may consider yourself fortunate—very fortunate—there is not enough evidence to convict you. Don't flatter yourself that a breakdown in the prosecution clears your character. In the eyes of the law you may be clear, but morally, let me tell you, you are far from being so. It's affectation to tell me you could live for three months the centre of a system of fraud and yet have your hands clean. You must make good ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... Bob answered. "I never saw your father wearing his coat. But Mr. Blipper used to have an old ragged coat, and right after we had that breakdown at the Sunday school picnic grounds he had a ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the County Fair • Laura Lee Hope
... to do. He checked quickly to see that he had been undisturbed, and then manipulated the controls of the 'copter. Easing the ship into the sky toward Washington, he searched out a news report on the radio, listened with a dull feeling in the pit of his stomach as the story came through about the breakdown of the Berlin Conference, the declaration of war, the President's meeting with Congress that morning, his formal request for full wartime power, the granting of permission by a wide-eyed, frightened legislature. Shandor settled back, staring dully at the ground moving below him, the whisps ...
— Bear Trap • Alan Edward Nourse
... and seemed of no importance, but it had left him in a state of nervous weakness and prostration, at which Dr Hunt looked grave. Mr Goodwin must have been over-exerting himself for some time past, he declared, and this breakdown was the result. It would probably be some time before he could do any work. Perfect rest, and freedom from all care and agitation, were ...
— Thistle and Rose - A Story for Girls • Amy Walton
... expression in the lovely Iberian Zarzuela.[EN28] The boy Husayn Gennah, a small cyclops in a brown felt calotte and a huge military overcoat cut short, caused roars of laughter by his ultra-Gaditanian style of dancing. I have also reason to suspect that a jig and a breakdown tested the solidity of the plank table, while a Jew's harp represented Europe. In fact, throughout the journey, reminiscences of Mabille and the Music Halls contrasted strongly with the memories of majestic and mysterious Midian. And, to make the shock ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... added strain of these hours of prayer, which were not robbed from his work in the Mission, but from the already short enough time he allowed himself for sleep, told upon his health, and he was ordered by the doctor to take a holiday to avoid a complete breakdown of health. He stayed for two months in Cornwall, and came back with a wife, the daughter of a Cornish parson called Trehawke. Lidderdale had been a fierce upholder of celibacy, and the news of his marriage astonished all who ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... on the verge of another breakdown, and she laid her hand in his for a moment before she went from him hurriedly with ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... unanimously." Sir Isaac, looking shy, gave another lick to the plate, and wagged his tail. "It is true that thou wert once (shall I say it?) in fault at 'Beauty and Worth,'—thy memory deserted thee; thy peroration was on the verge of a breakdown; but 'Nemo mortalium omnibus horis sapit, I as the Latin grammar philosophically expresseth it. Mortals the wisest, not only on two legs but even upon four, occasionally stumble. The greatest general, statesman, sage, is ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... exhaustion more complete or more compelling than the exhaustion of grief, and it is the most restless temperaments that usually suffer from it the most keenly. It is those who have watched constantly, tirelessly, selflessly, for weeks or even months, for whom the final breakdown is the most ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... kitchen to grapple with the problem of providing for the table a satisfactory substitute for flesh. But, thanks to the many-sided character of the great Revolution, the juncture of time at which the growth of humane feeling created a revolt against animal food coincided with the complete breakdown of domestic service and the demand of women for a wider life, facts which compelled the placing of the business of providing and preparing food on a co-operative basis, and the making of it a branch of the public service. So ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... he would not trace them, although he might easily have cabled and caused his son-in-law's arrest. For a month he went about in a sort of daze, speaking to almost no one and sitting for hours alone in his room. The doctor feared for his sanity, but when the breakdown came it was in the form of a second paralytic stroke which left him a helpless, crippled dependent, weak and shattered ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... pressure. In order that these might be carried out efficiently, the whole apparatus had to be carried down to the Hut. Here, Bickerton and Correll were continually in consultation with the meteorologist on the latest breakdown. Cups were blown off several times, and one was lost and replaced with difficulty. Most aggravating of all was a habit the clocks developed of stopping during the colder spells. The old-fashioned method of boiling them was found of assistance, but it was discovered that ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... wonderful fact this breakdown of old Niagara is. How it disturbs the calculations about lengths of time before the river would have reached ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... prevented a continuance of the song; and the breakdown attracted the attention of a firm-standing man of middle age, who kept each corner of his crescent-shaped mouth rigorously drawn back into his cheek, as if to do away with any suspicion of mirthfulness which might erroneously have attached ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... the breakdown of national government, most regions have reverted to either Islamic (Shari'a) law with a provision for appeal of all sentences, or ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... Mother Paisley's comforting influence, she had recovered a measure of her self-possession. The old actress asked no questions as to the cause of Ruth's state of mind. She had seen too many hysterical girls to feel that the cause of her patient's breakdown was at all important. ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... was six. It was only possible to provide a force of twenty old destroyers and forty-five trawlers for the East Coast convoys instead of the numbers recommended by the conference, and owing to the age of a large majority of these destroyers and the inevitable resultant occasional breakdown of machinery, the number available frequently fell below twenty, although it was really marvellous how those old destroyers stuck to the work to the eternal credit of their crews, and particularly the engineering staffs. The adoption of the system, however, resulted ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe
... reasonable amount of study each week, supplemented with close observation of the working of the locomotive, the information necessary to answer satisfactorily the entire list of questions can be easily mastered in the time given. In regard to breakdowns, it is advised that he carefully inspect each breakdown or disabled engine that comes to his notice, see where the parts have given way and in what manner the work of blocking up it done. It is not expected that all the breakdowns which may happen to a locomotive will occur ...
— The Traveling Engineers' Association - To Improve The Locomotive Engine Service of American Railroads • Anonymous
... Wade don't come back soon the young lady will either go after her or she'll have a breakdown," ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... they were all talking together, Milsom came up on to the top of the deck-house with the information that Macintyre fully understood what was wanted and was making elaborate preparations for a perfectly gorgeous breakdown of the engines—the maximum speed of which during the trip would not exceed fourteen knots, at the outside. And presently the cruiser's first cutter pushed off from her parent ship's side and came pulling ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... Wharton? The last letter I had from him he made light of his health. But you know he only just avoided a breakdown in that strike business. We only pulled him through by the skin of his teeth—Mr. ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... cot necks were stretched, and grinning faces watched the show. In the excess of his joy the Kid let out a blast on the trumpet that fairly shook the building. As if it were a signal, the boys jumped out of bed and danced a breakdown about him in their shirt-tails, ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... sped on her way. Every hour brought her nearer to her starting point. When it became evident that the machinery was now in good working order and not liable to a breakdown, the professor ordered a meal gotten ...
— Through the Air to the North Pole - or The Wonderful Cruise of the Electric Monarch • Roy Rockwood
... to the gun crew when standing at the gun. All four wheels are of the disk type and fashioned from heavy sheet steel. The motor develops 40-50 horse-power and, in one type, in order to mitigate the risk of breakdown or disablement, all four wheels are driven. The gun, a small quick-firer, is mounted on a pedestal in a projecting conning-tower. The mounting is placed behind the driver's seat, and is trained and operated from the tonneau. The maximum elevation is 75 degrees, and like the ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... work were telling on him, although he scarcely realized to what extent, and but for a very fortunate circumstance—which seemed to Evan an extremely unfortunate one—he would have experienced a nervous breakdown before long. But more about ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... your sermon last Sunday had caused a scandal. What was it you said? That, in a breakdown of Christianity like the present, we might leave talk of the public-houses and usefully consider Sunday closing of churches and chapels—or something ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... real desire of regaining them. It was even expected that in this year the radicals would lose Louisiana and Florida to the "white man's party." The leaders of the best element of the Republicans, both North and South, looked upon the reconstruction as one of the prime causes of the moral breakdown of their party; they wanted no more of the Southern issue but planned ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... send someone out with him to lend him a hand," said Trenwith. "People around these parts are pretty nice to you if you have a breakdown, and I guess it's partly because they never know when they're going to have ...
— A Campfire Girl's Happiness • Jane L. Stewart
... I told you how he broke down before; but on Sunday morning, in spite of mine own amended Litany, I had just as much hope of the breakdown of the Falls of Niagara, or a nineteen-feet spring tide. You would have said his face was afire, and those great eyes of his were lit up like the red ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... of the House, known to all as "Sister Pat," was compelled to retire from her position on account of a breakdown in health. When she was leaving, the boys presented her with a trifling gift as a mark of their esteem, and to keep them green in her memory. But no gift was needed for that. As she accepted the present, she said: "Boys, Sister Pat will come ...
— Through St. Dunstan's to Light • James H. Rawlinson
... feet tall might easily have frightened Mr. Wordsley into a nervous breakdown by staring at him with that gaunt, hollow-eyed stare, but this creature, though manlike, was fully fifty feet tall, incredibly elongated, and stark naked. Its hair was long and matted; its cheeks sunken, its lips pulled back in an expression which might have ...
— The Marooner • Charles A. Stearns
... him, and the other was the increasing weakness of his father. Molly Culpepper's letters seemed to be growing sad; also they were failing in their length and frequency—the young man felt that they were perfunctory. His father's letters showed a physical breakdown. His handwriting was unsteady, and often he repeated himself in successive letters. The sister wrote about her father's weakness, and seemed to think he was working too hard. But the son suspected that it was worry ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... more to overcome. My eldest brother had a nervous breakdown while working on the DEW Line (he was posted on the Arctic Circle watching radar screens for a possible incoming attack from Russia). I believe his collapse actually began with our childhood nutrition. While in the Arctic all his foods came from cans. He also was working ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... taken place to put the lads from Freeport on the pedestal of fame more noticeably than this experiment. They had easily and modestly staged a complete breakdown of the hazing habit at Marshallton Tech. Strangely perhaps there was no blame nor suspicion put upon Bill and Gus for the subsequent edict from the faculty forbidding it. That seemed to be considered a natural aftermath to the news of the electrical ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... limits of this country in the initial stages of a campaign. For the much larger force which we have actually found it necessary to employ our resources were absolutely and miserably inadequate. The result has been that the department, even by working under conditions which have nearly led to a breakdown, has been barely able to keep pace with the requirements ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... and departing in the roads; help offered by total strangers, grabbed at or thrust aside; the long nightmare crumbling back into sanity one forenoon under a vine-covered trellis, where Attley sat hugging a nurse, while the others danced a noiseless, neat-footed breakdown never learned at the Middlesex Hospital. At last, as the tension came out all over us in aches and tingles that we put down to the country wine, a vision of Mrs. Godfrey, her grey hair turned to spun-glass, ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... those early days, and the first six centuries of Anvharian history were more speculation than fact. The Breakdown occurred about that time, and in the galaxy-wide disruption Anvhar had to fight its own internal battle. When the Earth Empire collapsed it was the end of more than an era. Many of the observation ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... put the question squarely, I'm going to be candid. I'm alarmed about you. The strain on your nerves is too great. This maggot of Socialism in your brain is the trouble. It is the mark of mental and moral breakdown, the fleeing from self-reliant individual life into the herd for help. You call it 'brotherhood,' the 'solidarity of the race.' Sentimental mush. It's a stampede back to the animal herd out of which a powerful manhood has been evolved. This ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... probably have been no question as to the propriety of the means he used. I am fully aware how difficult and often dangerous it is in these matters to argue from a mere fragment, especially in view of the breakdown of so many plays when they come to the unravelling, but it should be borne in mind that in the matter of dramatic construction Jonson stood head and shoulders above all the other writers with whom we have ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... officers who went about in these towns behind the lines with gloomy looks, and whose tempers, never of the sweetest, became irritable and unbearable, so that the soldiers hated them for all this cursing and bullying. A certain battalion commander had a nervous breakdown because he had to meet his colonel in ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... Sir Stephen Glynne and his brother, he succeeded in making what was left of Hawarden solvent. His own expenditure from first to last upon the Hawarden estate as now existing, he noted at L267,000. 'It has been for thirty-five years,' he wrote to W. H. Gladstone in 1882, 'i.e., since the breakdown in 1847, a great object of my life, in conjunction with your mother and your uncle Stephen, to keep the Hawarden estate together (or replace what was alienated), to keep it in the family, and to relieve it from debt with which it ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... soon as he had ordered it, it seemed to him pitiably flat, and he countermanded it. Then they spent weary hours at Liberty's, and other places of the kind, when Bruce declared he felt a nervous breakdown coming on, and left it to Edith, who ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... A worthy aim, I doubt not. One of the chief characters is a drug-taker; and as if that were not enough another is "out of her head," while a third, Dr. Callandar, the Montreal specialist, is in the throes of a nervous breakdown. This seems to me to be distinctly overdoing it. It is the doctor's love-story (a story so complicated that I cannot attempt a precis) which is the designedly central but actually subordinate theme. I have the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 26, 1919 • Various
... room, having in it the statue of a saint, and full of a country air. But I had done too much in this night march, as you will presently learn, for my next day was a day without salt, and in it appreciation left me. And this breakdown of appreciation was due to what I did not know at the time to be fatigue, but to what was undoubtedly ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... impossible at any time," replied Mrs. Burton, "and I shall be only too thankful if he will stay for a while because of poor father. Oh, Katherine, I am afraid this long terrible winter has killed him'" she said, with a quiver of breakdown in her voice. ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... first or only driver to complain of the packed course. The Mercury had scarcely departed when the Marathon car came in, its experienced and steel-fibred pilot on the brink of nervous breakdown. ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... the ship. Her room adjoined Karamaneh's, and she had been one of the passengers aroused by the girl's cries in the night. Strictly adhering to my role, I explained that my patient was threatened with a second nervous breakdown, and was subject to vivid and disturbing dreams. One or two other inquiries I met in the same way, ere escaping to the corner table reserved ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... story, and Compton listened with intense excitement; but the hunter treated the whole thing calmly, with set purpose. He had in his experience seen the effect of a terrible shock, in the complete breakdown of the victim, and, personally, he had known one man die from the shock to his system caused exactly by the sudden and unexpected appearance of a lion at night. He kept Venning's thoughts off the mental picture of ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... these damned geeks, the more they expect from you.... When you get your vehicle re-ammoed, lieutenant, suppose you buzz back to where you machine-gunned that first gang. If there are any more around, they'll have moved in for the free meal by now." This breakdown of the Jeels' taboo against eating fellow-tribesmen was one of the best things he'd heard from the cannibal-extermination project for ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... what to make of it at all. In a weighty leader it welcomed Mr. Vennard's conversion, but hinted that with a convert's zeal he had slightly overstated his case. The Daily Chronicle talked of "nervous breakdown," and suggested "kindly forgetfulness" as the best treatment. The Daily News, in a spirited article called "The Great Betrayal," washed its hands of Mr. Vennard unless he donned the white sheet of the penitent. Later in the day ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... o'clock in the morning until six in the afternoon. The communications asked advice and made suggestions of every conceivable kind, but, above all, they were loaded with problems and difficult situations which had grown out of the breakdown of the financial machinery ...
— The New York Stock Exchange in the Crisis of 1914 • Henry George Stebbins Noble
... his remark and examining). Aye. It just confirms ma first opinion. Ye've had a breakdown ...
— Hobson's Choice • Harold Brighouse
... light. He was passing a wood at the time, and the windy tumult as well as the roaring from the loch made confusion for his hearing; but presently he recognised the intruding sound as the throbbing of a motor. "Some silly fool got a breakdown," he was thinking sympathetically, when a terrific gust caught and fairly staggered him. Ere he fully recovered balance and breath something cold and clammy fell upon his face, was dragged down over his shoulders and arms, blinding, pinioning him. The suit case was ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... excesses contributed to the semi-hysterical condition into which he eventually fell. That is not impossible, but certainly a sense of impotence to save his father and his family from the calamities he clearly saw approaching was the proximate cause of his breakdown. ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... the Irish movement along constitutional lines, were brutally directed to the political execution of Mr O'Brien's friends, who, now that he had gone for good, and was reported to be in that state of physical breakdown which would prevent him from ever again taking an active part in Irish affairs, were supposed to be at the mercy of the big "pots" and their ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... however, did not come to me by inheritance, and for a number of sufficient reasons I have not amassed them. As for those other ambitions which fill the dreams of every healthy boy, a number of them had become of faint importance even before a breakdown of health seemed definitely to forbid their attainment. Here at home, far from London, with restored strength, I find myself less concerned with them than are my friends and neighbours, yet more keenly interested than ever in life and letters, art and politics—all that men and women are saying ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... life, and I might as well tell it here and now. About five years later I had become so disappointed in connection with my work and the unfriendly pressure of life that I had suffered what subsequently appeared to have been a purely psychic breakdown or relapse, not physical, but one which left me in no mood or condition to go on with my work, or any work indeed in any form. Hope had disappeared in a sad haze. I could apparently succeed in nothing, do nothing mentally that was worth ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... his eyes were forever flitting here and there; he chose the outer edges of the sidewalks, and he went nowhere after nightfall unattended. The time was past when he could doubt the constancy of his purpose; but he did fear a nervous breakdown, and even shuddered at the thought of possible insanity. Being in fact as sane a man as ever lived, his irrational nerves alarmed him all the more. He could not conceive that an event was immediately before him which, without making his position safer, ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... "A breakdown!" exclaimed the captain, and so it proved. The screw had become entangled in the limb of a tree, and sufficient damage had been done to render the ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... many accusations in the States with regard to the supposed breakdown of their military organization in France—accusations inspired by generosity towards the Allies. From what I have seen, and I have been given liberal opportunities to see everything, I do not think that those accusations are justified. As a combatant of another nation, ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... in abbreviated skirts and low-cut dress, winking and blinking in ironical shyness, and concluding with a flaunting of her gown, a toe pointed ceilingward, and a lively "breakdown." Then she vanished with a hop, skip and a bow, reappeared with a ravishing smile and threw a generous assortment of kisses among the audience, and disappeared with another hop, skip and a bow, as Impecunious ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... confidential telegrams are sent to the railway authorities concerned, and immediately a thorough inspection of the line the Emperor is about to travel over is ordered. Tunnels, bridges, points, railway crossings, are all subjected to examination, and spare engines kept in immediate readiness in case of a breakdown occurring to the imperial train. The police of the various towns through which the monarch is to pass are also communicated with and their help requisitioned in taking precautions for his safety. Like any private person, ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... he had studied earnestly. But as the hour of the wedding approached his nerves tried him, and between fingering the ring in his waistcoat pocket and repeating his "cues" over to himself, he reached a painful condition of mental confusion which bordered closely on a breakdown. ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... of these her final years. Therefore her thoughts and arguments were myopic, almost necessarily specious. She wanted to see justice done, of course. But most of all she wanted what was best for Larry. If she told the truth, it might result in some kind of temporary breakdown in Maggie's attitude which would bring her and Larry together. That would be disastrous. If not disastrous at once, certainly in the end. Maggie was a victim, and undoubtedly deserved sympathy. But others should not be sacrificed ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... just as the bell for afternoon chapel was going down, and went in. Blake was there, and one look showed him what had happened. In fact he had expected nothing else all day since his breakdown in the Articles. Tom couldn't help watching him during chapel; and afterwards, on that evening, acknowledged to a friend that whatever else you might think of Blake, there was no doubt about ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... according to Wiggins, a patriot of the finest type—only prevented from going to the front by the claims of business, a family of nine, and a certain superfluity of adipose tissue. "When guarding a railway bridge as a special constable a troop train stopped through an engine breakdown. Numbers of finely built men in fur coats descended on to the line. Two of them came to me and, making signs of thirst, said, 'Vodka, vodka.' They embraced me warmly after I had offered them my pocket-flask, and then, shouting 'Berlin,' ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 23, 1914 • Various
... revolutions so much, and the practical work of revolutions so little, that we are apt to see only the stage effects, so to speak, of these great movements; the fight of the first days; the barricades. But this fight, this first skirmish, is soon ended, and it only after the breakdown of the old system that the real work of revolution can be said ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... year!" it says, with a long-drawn breath, a little plaintive, but not complaining or melancholy. At times it indulges in something much more intricate and lark-like while hovering on the wing in mid-air, but a song is beyond the compass of its instrument, and the attempt usually ends in a breakdown. A clear, sweet, strong, high-keyed note, uttered from some knoll or rock, or stake in the fence, is its proper vocal performance. It has the build and walk and flight of the quail and the grouse. ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... tendency to undermine the health, repeated sufficiently often, will ultimately cause a complete breakdown. How often do we see the strength and beauty of early manhood blighted and turned to premature old age and death as a consequence of disregarding the warnings that have just been given! How frequently ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... most perfect constitution and less impaired than any I have examined at your time of life. If you will follow the directions which I give you, you can be perfectly well and sound at the age of one hundred. If you continue your present life until seventy, you will have a nervous breakdown, and thereafter become a nuisance to yourself and everybody else. I advise absolute rest at a remote place in Switzerland. There you will receive no newspapers, and you will hear nothing from the outside world. You will meet there only English who are seeking health, and they will ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... the afternoon of the opening ceremony the Countess's carriage broke down in Sneyd Vale, two miles from Sneyd and three miles from Hanbridge. Fourth, that five minutes later Denry, all in his best clothes, drove up behind his mule. Fifth, that Denry drove right past the breakdown, apparently not noticing it. Sixth, that Jock, touching his hat to Denry as if to a stranger (for, of course, while on duty a footman must be dead ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... fireplace, with a foot on the fender and an arm on the mantelpiece, as her grandfather had done when he came in that night of the opera. She was too near a breakdown to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... The mother's breakdown was not allowed to stop the Boy's education. Both father and older brother were determined on this. They would use the schools at ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... magazine was generally recognized as the most creditable and promising periodical west of the Atlantic seaboard. But along with this increasing prestige came a series of extraneous setbacks and calamities, culminating in a complete physical breakdown of its editor and owner, which made the magazine's ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... imitation of humanity. I cannot work—cannot. Even the Guitar is still undone; I can only write ditch-water. 'Tis ghastly; but I am quite cheerful, and that is more important. Do you think you could prepare the printers for a possible breakdown this week? I shall try all I know on Monday; but if I can get nothing better than I got this morning, I prefer to drop a week. Telegraph to me if you think it necessary. I shall not leave till Wednesday ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... usual amount of agony, and soon arrived at Corner Camp where we left a note to Captain Scott explaining the cause of our breakdown. I told Mr. Evans to say this sledge won't go much farther. After getting about a mile past Corner Camp my engine gave out finally, so here is an end to the motor sledges. I can't say I am sorry because I am not, and the others are, I think, ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... uncertainties. Then, with the fatigue point well passed, he had marshaled the last of his own animal strength and essayed the final blasphemous Vesuvian onslaught that brought about the nervous breakdown, the ultimate collapse. She had wept, then, the blubbering, loose-lipped, abandoned weeping of hysteria. She had stumbled forward and caught at his arm and clung to it, as though it were her last earthly pillar of support. Her huge plaited ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... and shrank with distaste from its narrow walls and meagre furnishings. Yes, indeed! Ned might well declare that she was the greatest sufferer, and it was only right that he should pity her. If this breakdown had happened three months before, her parents would not have consented to her engagement, and it should have been his duty to be well assured of his position before involving another, as she was now involved. The swelling of resentment grew so strong, that, against her better ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... matter with you but breakdown. The result of doing two men's work instead of one. What you need, and all you need, is a complete change of thought and scene. Go off on some ranch and take a ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... Capital.—Now the force which brings about all these movements is the force of competition. Every increase of knowledge, every improvement of communication, every breakdown of international or local barriers, increases the advantage of the big business, and makes the struggle for existence among small businesses more keen and more hopeless. It is the desire to escape from the heavy and harassing strain of trade competition, which practically drives ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... well as you do. In fact, it might be best not to mention business to dad at all. You must remember that this is the third breakdown he has had since we came to Brill, and another such turn might ...
— The Rover Boys in Business • Arthur M. Winfield
... of them: the first being the inadequate rehearsals, which caused Mr. Dickens to tell me on the stage, four or five days only before the first performance, that the play was not then in as good a state as it would have been in at Paris three weeks earlier. The other was the breakdown of the performer of a most important secondary part; a collapse so absolute that he was changed by the management before the second representation of ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... gentlemen were personal and intimate friends of the prisoners: some were connected by closer ties; and one of the most trying experiences for the prisoners was to witness the complete breakdown of the minor officials employed in the carrying out of this tragic farce. The judge's first order was for the removal of all ladies. The wives and relatives of many of the prisoners had been warned by them beforehand of what was likely to happen and had accordingly absented themselves, but there ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... which would have given the machine twenty-one votes, enough for concurrence, or, failing in this, to force the attendance of Senator Stetson, which would have tied the Senate, thus giving Warren Porter the deciding vote. But before Senator Stetson, pale and plainly on the verge of breakdown, could be brought to Sacramento, Senator Black became very ill and was obliged to go to his home at Palo Alto. Thus when Stetson returned, the vote stood 20 to 19, precisely where it had been before. ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... the Sultan might have the right to hold the Balkan passes in time of war. That is to say, the Powers, especially Great Britain and Austria, set aside the claims of a strong racial instinct for purely military reasons. The breakdown of this artificial arrangement was confidently predicted at the time; and Russian agents at first took the lead in preparing for the future union. Skobeleff, Katkoff, and the Panslavonic societies of Russia encouraged the formation of "gymnastic ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... misfiring, fresh hesitations, followed by efforts, as though the engine was pluckily striving to do its duty. And then suddenly came the final failure, a dead stop at the side of the road, a stupid breakdown. ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... Ann Elizabeth, one afternoon as the two of them sat in a frothy litter of the pink and white scraps, "how did you feel that time when you had the nerv—the breakdown?" ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... ways, and compelling him to drive ahead, were soon forced to abandon the useless locomotive. Each such obstacle was a lengthy hindrance, and the kind gentlemen of our party were obliged to organise a breakdown gang to overcome the difficulty. Our trolleys, with all the baggage, had to be transferred to another line. Effort and energy were not spared, and the following midday brought us face to face with the first engine carrying Imperial soldiery towards ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... off now,' he said, 'we will go to the gospodarstwo and you shall give me some nails in case of another breakdown, and I will leave you some of this cordial in return. Mind, if your head or your stomach aches or you are worried and can't sleep, take a glassful of this: all your worries will at once disappear. Take good care of it and don't on any account give a drop away, it's a speciality; my grandfather got ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... stay with you, Mary?" Big tears stood in Helen's eyes and she seemed on the verge of a complete breakdown. ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... breakdown the intervals between intelligent consciousness and insanity had been long. She was herself, or was able to keep herself fairly in hand, the greater part of the time, and chaos, when it came, lasted ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... find her summer planned for her. Instead of joining Uncle Bob and enjoying months of bathing and sailing on the North Shore she helped nurse Uncle Tom Curtis back to health. For the breakdown proved to be of much longer duration than any of them had foreseen. The exhausted system was slow in reacting and it was weeks before the turning point toward recovery was reached. During those tedious hours of waiting Jean was the sole person who could bring a smile to the sick man's face or ...
— The Story of Glass • Sara Ware Bassett
... Negroes was complicated by the fact that many of the draftees, the product of vastly inferior schooling, were incompetent. Where black volunteers had to pass the corps' rigid entrance requirements, draftees had (p. 104) only to meet the lowest selective service standards. An exact breakdown of black Marine Corps draftees by General Classification Test category is unavailable for the war period. A breakdown of some 15,000 black enlisted men, however, was compiled ten weeks after V-J day and included many of those drafted during the war. Category I ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... in their power to exact their bond. As a result of the diminished output due to German destruction in France, of the diminished output of mines in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, and of many secondary causes, such as the breakdown of transport and of organization and the inefficiency of new governments, the coal position of all Europe is nearly desperate;[48] and France and Italy, entering the scramble with certain Treaty rights, ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... 'you may come and dine with us at the Dragon. We were forced to come down to Salisbury last night, on some business, and I got him to bring me over here this morning, in his carriage; at least, not his own carriage, for we had a breakdown in the night, but one we hired instead; it's all the same. Mind what you're about, you know. He's not used to all sorts; he only mixes with ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... the telephone bell rang and Jack languidly went to answer it. Then he came back into the drawing-room. "Radmore's had a breakdown," he said briefly, "he's afraid he can't get here ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... slow in those rough-going times, and a breakdown on a steep bit of road delayed us. Instead of reaching home at sunset, we did not reach the ford of the Neosho until eight o'clock. As I went up Cliff Street I turned by the bushes and slid down the ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... a week at Balmoral by the breakdown of the coach on these dreadful roads, I telegraphed to Hamilton for a conveyance; and the Superintendent of the Sunday School, dear Mr. Laidlaw, volunteered, in order to reduce expenses, to spend one day of his ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... had nursed Gerda by day and worked by night. The middle of October, just when they usually moved into town for the winter, she collapsed, had what the doctor called a nervous breakdown. ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... to be reassured quickly. It was very seldom that her equanimity was disturbed, only in fact when her deepest feelings were concerned, and this made her breakdown the more complete. She apologised tearfully for her foolishness at rehearsal, which she set down to bodily fatigue. She had been to see poor Squinny that morning, and she thought he really was dying at last. ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... had to watch the change in you in the past few months. You're getting ... well, we'll call it hysterical. I could cut off my arm for saying this, honey, but, if we keep Timmy any longer, you'll just have a breakdown, ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... of Inclusionism is in aeronautics. I think that the stronghold of the Old Dominant, when it was new, was in the invention of the telescope. Or that coincidentally with the breakdown of Exclusionism appears the means of finding out—whether there are vast aerial fields of ice and floating lakes full of frogs and fishes or not—where carved stones and black substances and great quantities of vegetable matter and flesh, which may be dragons' flesh, come from—whether there ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... thought I was again on the very edge of a nervous breakdown, I concluded to travel for my health. Where to go was the next question! A medical friend suggested a sea-voyage, but advised me to first take a sail for a day or so on Lake Michigan. I did so and became so seasick that death would have been joyously welcomed. I did not take the proposed ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... before the English forces reached Nankin, and as the Chinese commissioners were sincere in their desire for peace, and as the emperor had sanctioned all the necessary arrangements, there was no reason to apprehend any delay, and much less a breakdown of ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... half-frightened, half-pleased little Belgian scullery maid and whirled her about to waltz music until she dropped for want of breath to carry her another turn; after which he did a solo—Teutonic version—of a darky breakdown, stopping only to join in the ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... have to go alone," she finished, "and when I've had a little rest, I'll come after you in a carriage, in time to bring you home. That will save Nick motoring here and back, and give him a chance to keep his engagement at six, with those men, and no danger of a breakdown with his car. He might burst a tire on that stony road, you see, and be delayed. Those men ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... persecution, but she was becoming aware that, strive as she might, her endurance had its limits. She was but human, and she was intensely sensitive to unkindness. Her nerves were beginning to give way under the strain. There were even times when she felt a breakdown to be inevitable, and only the thought of her step-mother's triumph warded it off. Once down, and she knew she would be a slave, broken beyond redemption to the most pitiless tyranny. And so, though her strength was worn threadbare through perpetual ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... central Kentucky one meets but three surface streams in a hundred miles. Between their valleys surface water finds its way underground by means of sink holes. These are pits, commonly funnel shaped, formed by the enlargement of crevice or joint by percolating water, or by the breakdown of some portion of the roof of a cave. By clogging of the outlet a sink hole may come to be filled by ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... about the disease in cases of bodily breakdown; and that for an excellent reason. Because, though there may be doubt about the way in which the body broke down, there is no doubt at all about the shape in which it should be built up again. ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... over again she lulled herself with the old rhyme, for comfort's sake. But Dickie she could not comfort, since, irony of ironies, she was the cause of his pitiful breakdown. Why, if she spoke, he started; if she moved towards him, he shrank. Yet still Ruth dreamt that if he would only let her touch him, she could bring him reassurance. But meanwhile his appetite was meagre, the rare half-hours he slept were broken with evil dreams, from ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... their comrades were eating as best they could, no one, it appeared, having anything hot. It was at a critical period during the fighting, and the commissary and transportation departments were suffering from a temporary breakdown. Still the men had enough to eat, ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... certain pride in what she had undergone. Her failure to matriculate was forgotten in the sense that she offered a most interesting case of breakdown from undue mental exertion. The doctor had declared his astonishment that she held up until the examination ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... world. Its most universal and important propositions must in a certain sense be truisms. The road has been so broadly trodden by the hosts who have travelled along it, that the main rules of the journey are clear enough, and we all know that the secret of breakdown and wreck is seldom so much an insufficient knowledge of the route, as imperfect discipline of the will. The truism, however, and the commonplace may be stated in a form so fresh, pungent, and free from triviality, as to have all the force of new discovery. Hence the need for a caution, that ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... be hypnotized to the same degree. Just as the normal suggestibility showed itself very different with different persons, the degree of artificial reenforcement varies still more. Practically everybody can be brought to that breakdown of the resistance in which he can no longer open the eyes against the order of the hypnotist, but rather few can be brought to the point of seeing extended hallucinations, or accepting the disappearance of persons who are speaking, or of yielding to the impulse to a dangerous ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... the fact that, when free of all external constraint, growth gains on waste. Indeed, even in the case of old age, the statement remains essentially true, for the phenomena then displayed point to a breakdown of the functioning power of the cell, an approximation to configurations incapable of assimilation. It is not as if life showed in these phenomena that its conditions could obtain in the midst of abundance, and yet its law be suspended; ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... muscular. From a merely handsome man he had developed into a striking personality, released from the bonds of an enforced inactivity and an objectless destiny. By just so much Stafford had altered for the worse. His character was too strong and rigid to allow an absolute breakdown. He still carried himself well; to all intents and purposes, as far as his duty was concerned, he was as hard-working and conscientious as he had ever been, but no strength of will had been able to hinder the change in his face and expression. He looked ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... suddenly, seized with a doubt; and there was a moment's silence. The same idea dawned on all the country-folk. The stranger's arrival at Heberville, the breakdown of his motor, his manner of questioning the people at the inn and of gaining admission to the farm: were not all these part and parcel of a put-up job, the trick of a cracksman who had learnt the story from the papers and who had come to try his ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc |
