"Hysterical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... amour with a person in Victoire's position could be admitted; but a serious, solid affection, leading to marriage, this would break his mother's heart, and indeed not without reason. The reader must remember that this is a chapter out of French society, on which account we suppress all hysterical comment upon a state of things universally received and acknowledged therein. Maurice's trivial, and we should say, unprincipled pursuit of Victoire would be considered perfectly legitimate in the sphere which made the world to him. The sequel, perhaps, would not have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... ran forward and, throwing her arms about her guardian's neck with a little hysterical sob, she exclaimed, "Oh, ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... sober facts. Time has softened much; even the Civil War begins to stand forth in some firmness of outline and clarity of atmosphere. But when we come to reconstruction—grave historians grow almost hysterical, romancers pass the bounds of possibilities, and even official figures contradict one ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... do not know what to do,' said Cynthia, taking down her hands from her tear-stained face, and appealing to Molly, and sobbing worse than ever; in fact, she became hysterical, and though she tried to speak coherently, ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... for the first time the hysterical cry of a man whose nerve had given way. He picked up an arm and threw it far out in front of the trenches, shouting as he did so in a way that made one's blood run cold. Then he sat down and started crying ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... succeeded. Mrs. Germaine grew sullen, low-spirited, nervous, and hysterical. Among fashionable medical dowagers, she became an interesting personage: but this species of consequence was by no means sufficient to support her self-complacency, and, as she declared, she felt herself incapable of supporting the intolerable ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... played almost any night in the Jerusalem hotels. It sounded to us partly like an echo of ancient legends kept alive by dragomans and officials for purposes of revenue, and partly like an outcrop of the hysterical habit in people who travel in flocks and do nothing without much palaver. In our quiet camp, George the Bethlehemite assured us that the sheikhs were "humbugs," and an escort of soldiers a nuisance. So we placidly made our preparations to ride on the morrow, ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... whether much of the evidence given, especially by the Belgian witnesses, may not be due to excitement and overstrained emotions, and whether, apart from deliberate falsehood, persons who mean to speak the truth may not in a more or less hysterical condition have been imagining themselves to have seen the things which they say that they saw. Both the lawyers who took the depositions, and we when we came to examine them, fully recognized this possibility. The lawyers, as already observed, took pains to test each witness and either ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... further to do an' less to be said. That cavalcade, erstwhile so gala an' buoyant, drags itself wearily homeward, the exhausted dogs in the r'ar walkin' stiff an' sore like their laigs is wood. For more'n a mile the complainin' howls of the hysterical yeller dog is wafted to our years. Then they ceases; an' we figgers his sympathizin' master has done took him into the shanty an' ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... hereditary impulsion. It is the best of all methods of organizing instincts. Its cathartic or purgative function regulates irritability, which may otherwise be drained or vented in wrong directions, exactly as Breuer[24] shows psychic traumata may, if overtense, result in "hysterical convulsions." It is also the best form of self-expression; and its advantage is variability, following the impulsion of the idle, perhaps hyperemic, and overnourished centers most ready to act. It involves play illusion and is the ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... example of the former theory and the most successful application of it are found in Christian Science. Perhaps it is not so difficult to understand the frame of mind which brought about this theory on the part of Mrs. Eddy. Here was an hysterical, neurotic woman who knew nothing all her life but illness and misfortune. She had suffered much from many physicians and was none the better but rather worse. One physician had called her disease one thing, another had designated it another, until confusion and uncertainty ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... Martin, somewhat abashed by the violence of her broken words and gasping sobs. "You're hysterical. You're doing yourself as much harm right now as that ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... retorted. I was half hysterical, but it was no time to weaken. She looked me straight in the eye for fully ten seconds; then, to my surprise, she winked at me. But when she turned on Mr. Sam she was cold rage again ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... over the increasing dissatisfaction with quick embraces in the automobile, and the final indignities of lying names and rooms of pandering and filthy debasement. The almost inevitable exposure followed, the furies and hysterical reproaches. That, indeed, would have involved them fatally: in such circumstances the world would be invincible, crushing; holding solidly its front against such dangerous assault, it would have poured over Savina and him a conviction of sin in which they would unavoidably ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... would be the last of Currie. But he emerged as calm and smooth and pink as ever. . . . The day the newspapermen saw him a very junior officer who has since distinguished himself came to report breathlessly, 'That last one, sir, got my tent!' He was excited and just a trifle hysterical; but two words from the General seemed to calm him at once. 'That so?' he said, with the same quiet interest that a farmer might have received news that a certain hen had at last laid an egg. 'I thought that last ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... The hysterical giggle was gone from Cecille's voice. She shut tight her teeth and raised her chin. Felicity felt that it was safe now to remain silent. And she was right, partly right. She only failed to realize that ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... Ginevra, and that his presence only made things worse for her. But he saw also that she was unhappy about him, and that must not be. He broke into such a merry laugh—and it had need to be merry, for it had to do the work of many words of reassurance—that she could scarcely refrain from a half-hysterical response as he walked from the room. The moment he was out of the house, he began to sing; and for many minutes, as he walked up the gulf hollowed by the Glashburn, Ginevra could hear the strange, other-world voice, and knew it was meant ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... home, and then, without waiting for anything to eat himself, the good man was off again to Braeside to see if anything were wanted there. He found that the girls were not much the worse for their adventure—a little hysterical and excited, but that was all. He was pleased to find that Maud, who had been the first cause of all the mischief, had given a true and honest account of the whole thing, and was now bitterly sorry for the part ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... replied Mrs. Campbell; "and Emma has begun to laugh again; but her laugh is rather hysterical and forced; they will come out at dinner-time. It appears they are indebted to John for their preservation, for they say the wolf was about to spring upon them when he came to their assistance. We ought to be very grateful to Heaven for their preservation. I had no idea, ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... the hysterical woman on the bed was loud and distinct, as she grasped the arm of the terrified little governess, who chanced to be within her reach. "Jeffrey, either leave my house at once, or speak more deferentially of Miss Miller. You will call her by that name, too. It matters ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... telling you, colonel, that you're no beauty," said Dick, who felt a sort of hysterical wish to laugh. "You look as if the whole Southern army had tried to shoot you up, but had merely clipped ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the family returned home, and the poor young mother flew through the house in search of her child. To her surprise and joy she found him sleeping peacefully in her own room. Her hysterical caresses awakened him and the little fellow could not understand ...
— Bengal Dacoits and Tigers • Maharanee Sunity Devee
... frankly, the bad ones amused me much more. However, I am not ungrateful, and I have specially prized one able description of my attitude which appeared in the Globe, the manly strain of the writing of which is in healthy contrast to the hysterical effusions tainted with adjectival mania of those who wanted me shot, but were too cowardly to fire at ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... Deborah and Barney sat in the north parlor, where Ephraim lay. Deborah's hoarse laments, which were not like the ordinary hysterical demonstrations of feminine grief, being rather a stern uprising and clamor of herself against her own heart, filled ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... was growing perfectly unstrung, like a hysterical woman. One evening that we were sitting alone in the smoking-room, he began unexpectedly a rambling discourse about his wife; how he had first known her when they were children, and they had gone ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... Gloria's hysterical, joyous laughter rang in his ears like triumphant bells, and through the Agronian atmosphere that burned his face and smarted his eyes he dimly saw George's image as he rushed to the control board. He held his breath but realized that his death was certain. He could never hold his breath ...
— No Hiding Place • Richard R. Smith
... embarrassing, and at the same time so ridiculous, that I could with difficulty resist a hysterical inclination to laugh. Here I was, at all events, a close prisoner till Captain Lovell should go to bed, and he seemed to have no idea of that rational proceeding, though it was now past three o'clock. He walked about the room, whistling softly. ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... to Peter's side, and though he attempted to speak in a whisper, so out of breath, and so filled with hysterical terror was he that his words came out in gasps that were audible to many of those who ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... wagons filed back again into the little hamlet where Johnny waited, daily astonishing the natives by a series of lies profoundly adventurous and thrilling. Rex's furious bark of welcome at the sight of his young mistress was no whit less hysterical than Johnny's instant groan of relief, or the incoherent manner in which he detailed an unforgettable interview with Aunt Agatha, who had appeared one night from heaven knows where and pledged him with tears and sniffs innumerable to telegraph her when ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... "Oh! oh! oh!" he half sobbed, and, throwing himself again upon the ground, he buried his face in his hands, and lay gently rolling from side to side, trying to stifle the hysterical fit which had attacked him; for it was mingled with relief from what he had looked upon as certain death, anger with himself for making such a blunder, ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... left me, the bonds of sanity had not snapped, but for the time I was hysterical, and I only knew that all were well and safe excepting Marvin, who was drowned. A big mug of coffee was given to me, I drank a spoonful; a glass of spirits was handed me, I drank it all, and I was guided to my cabin, my fur clothes were taken off, and ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson
... a curious meal. A little hysterical, but stronger at every mouthful. The little man watched ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... day that she had set for a letter to come arrived, and she grew feverish, almost hysterical while waiting for the mail ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... hysterical! Don't you see that a man who is capable of planning a wholesale murder in the night would be quite able to lie to you? No, no! Whatever you do, you must promise me not to speak a word of this to anyone, most ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... the youth still continued. He fixed his eyes on my face with an expression of forced and unnatural calmness, that pained me more than the death-like inanity of the still beautiful countenance of his son, or the hysterical excitement of the mother. He at last seized my hand and proceeded along to the cell hurriedly, as the turnkey was crying loudly for the friends to depart. We entered and stood for a moment. He stood and gazed at his son, as the latter was still kept moving by the men; but Eugene was apparently ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... a baying mob ramped through the street, with jangle "Hang him! Hang him! String him up!" Borne on by a hysterical company I saw, first a figure bloody-chested and inert flat in the dust, with stooping figures trying to raise him; then, beyond, a man bareheaded, whiskered, but as white as death, hustled to and fro from clutching hands and suddenly forced in firm grips up the street, ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... family since the marriage. She was an estimable woman, and Shelley had had reason to like her, and did like her; but along about this time his feeling towards her changed. Part of Shelley's plan, as he wrote Hogg, was to spend his London evenings with the Newtons—members of the Boinville Hysterical Society. But, alas, when he arrived early in December, that pleasant game was partially blocked, for Eliza and the family arrived with him. We are left destitute of conjectures at this point by the biographer, and it is my duty to supply one. I chance the conjecture ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... self-control, aided by an occasional glance from her husband, she managed to preserve her calm until he returned from seeing the visitor to her tram. Then her pent-up feelings found vent. Quietly scornful at first, she soon waxed hysterical over his age and figure. Tears followed as she bade him remember what a good wife she had been to him, loudly claiming that any other woman would have poisoned him long ago. Speedily finding that ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... observe how on these three also, questionable as they surely are, the old process is repeating itself; how these also are getting known in their true likeness. A second generation, relieved in some measure from the spectral hallucinations, hysterical ophthalmia, and natural panic-delirium of the first contemporary one, is gradually coming to discern and measure what its predecessor could only execrate and shriek over; for, as our proverb said, the dust is sinking, the rubbish-heaps disappear; the built ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... I saw her down in the elevator to her car. In fact, the doctor, who had arrived; said that the sooner she was taken home the better she would be. She was quite hysterical." ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... in gaol!" cried the girl aghast. "For heaven's sake, what do you mean, father? What fear is there of your being sent to prison, because I won't marry Stephen Whitelaw? I'm not a baby," she added, with a hysterical laugh; "you can't frighten ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... particular, she centres this frenzy of hers upon one definite privilege, to wit, the alleged privilege of promiscuity in amour, the modern droit du seigneur. Read the books of the chief lady Savonarolas, and you will find running through them an hysterical denunciation of what is called the double standard of morality; there is, indeed, a whole literature devoted exclusively to it. The existence of this double standard seems to drive the poor girls half frantic. They bellow raucously for its abrogation, and demand that ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... charges, there are other things to be done. There is a woman half hysterical because her daughter is missing. A couple of people walk in to hand over a gold match box and a purse found in the streets. These things have to be entered in official documents for prompt ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... of prolonged sleep during which the sleeper naturally took no nourishment. In his Magic Disquisitions, Delvis cites the case of a countryman who slept for an entire autumn and winter. Pfendler relates that a certain young and hysterical woman fell twice into a deep slumber which each time lasted six months. In 1883 an enceinte woman was found asleep on a bench in the Grand Armee Avenue. She was taken to the Beaujon Hospital, where she was delivered a few days after while ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... have interrogated on this matter have fortified this opinion. But that which to us has passed to the condition of incontestable proof, is the prevalence of uterine troubles, of enervation among the married, hysterical symptoms which are met with in the conjugal relation as often as among young virgins, arising from the vicious habits of the husbands in their conjugal intercourse.... Still more, there is a graver affection, which is daily increasing, and which, if nothing ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... perhaps fortunately from our professional point of view—our lawmakers from time to time get rather hysterical and pass such a multiplicity of statutes that nobody knows whether he is committing crime ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... of her face. The one intolerable condition, the condition she had deprecated above all others, was that of Fitzpiers's reinstatement there. "Oh, I won't, I won't see him," she said, sinking down. She was almost hysterical. ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... not allow herself to be vexed. Since the singular hysterical embrace in the twilight of the kitchen, she had felt for her mother a curious, kind, forbearing, fatalistic indulgence. "Mother is like that, and there you are!" And further, her mood had been so changed ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... pray God we be not too late," was the answer; and then the poor woman sank into a chair, covered her face with her hands, and broke into sobs that were almost hysterical. ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... were all seated in the car Milly looked at Billy Bob and burst into a gale of hysterical laughter. But Billy Bob's spunk was up by this time and he was all on the side of ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... held her hand he was never afterwards able to tell; for at its electric touch the room began to swim around him. But this could not have lasted for long; because, as he looked into her eyes, still seeking an explanation, she broke off the half-hysterical laugh that answered him, and pulled her hand away sharply at ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the door, not in order to leave—no, certainly not in order to leave. An audacious notion seized me—if there had been a key in the door, I would have turned it and locked myself in along with the rest to escape going. I had a perfectly hysterical dread of going ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... her terrible emotions, made Zita half hysterical. Trembling in every limb, she made her way to Locke and fell on her knees by him. She wrapped her arms about him and held his ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... seriously amiss with the central figure. He was often sullen and morose, often violent and even hysterical. To calm his nervous agitation the court physician ordered warm baths, which he spent hours in taking. Then again he was irregular in his habits, being often somnolent during the daytime, but as frequently breaking his rest at midnight to set the pens of ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... folks we care a pin about—either of us. You've got plenty to do with, and nothing to spend it on. I can't get myself out of their way by dying without going against what's Scripture and proper, but—" Her steely calm broke. She burst out in a screaming, hysterical voice: "You've just got to, Emma Hulett! You've just got to! If you don't, I won't never go back to 'Niram's house! I'll lie in the ditch by the roadside till the poor-master comes to git me—and I'll tell everybody that ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... with the manager of the hotel. What transpired in those rooms during the next fifteen minutes would be quite impossible to narrate short of an entire volume. Edith promptly collapsed. Subsequently she became hysterical. She begged for time, and, getting it, proceeded to ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... getting hysterical, and he saw that it was quite useless to try to reason with her; the one way to allay her terror was to make the promise ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... smile break upon John's face. And, seeing it, he came as near hysterical laughter as a man of his character and temperament can come. He perceived that John, for some amazing reason, had played the scape-goat; that, in fact, he was innocent—not a humbug, not a hypocrite, not a brazen-faced sinner. And the relief was so stupendous that the tutor flung himself ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... lady looked for a moment into Drusilla's eyes; then she broke into the hysterical sobbing of the ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... has at all stages of his national history defied an attitude of indifference in others. His country has been at many times the head and at all times the heart of Europe. His hysteria has made Europe hysterical, while his sober national sense at critical moments has held the whole continent to good behaviour. For a half-dozen centuries there was never a squabble at any remote part of Europe in which France did not stand ready and willing to take a hand on ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... Combat), "Schwert" (Sword), "Glu'ckseligkeit" (Felicity of Fatima), and "Ausgespielt" (Spent Strength and Spilled Blood), when blended in one majestically discordant whole, produce upon us a feeling of profound grief mingled with hysterical mirth? ...
— Bluebeard • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the broken machinery, and the heaps of rubbish, they rushed frantically here and there seeking for the bread-winners of their families, many uttering piteous wails when they sought in vain for their loved ones; while others, when they were discovered, bursting into shrieks of hysterical laughter, as they flung their arms round the men's necks, led them off to their homes. Some of the miners had, it appeared, come up just before the explosion; but what was the fate of the rest, far beyond a hundred in number, still below? Some, it was ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston
... the horse's reins over his back and took him by the head, carrying the bird-cage and its hysterical occupant in the other hand. "Come on!" he said grimly to the Mole. "It's five or six miles to the nearest town, and we shall just have to walk it. The sooner we make a start ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... duke, who had been walking slowly, stood quite still, and for some seconds he looked like a tailor's dummy standing and staring outside some antiquated shop. Then March heard his voice, and it was high and almost hysterical: ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... and exclaiming, alternately, Miss POTTS abruptly ended her beautiful bronchial noise with violent distortion of countenance, as though there were a spider in her mouth, and sank upon a chair in a condition almost hysterical. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... respectful admonition on one occasion and even to oppose French policy with firmness and to express sympathy with the Germans might afterwards acclaim the great virtues of France and oppose itself to the German nation without any loss of our respect. In the one case the inconsistency arises from hysterical and immoral passion, in the other from ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... said, trying to speak cheerfully. She saw that something terrible was happening, and it was only by a desperate effort that she controlled the violent hysterical emotion that rose like a ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... making Wilton jump with a little rap of the cane, which he then broke, and flung out of the window. And then, his whole manner changing instantly into an almost womanly tenderness, he sat by poor little Charlie, soothing and comforting him till his hysterical sobs had ceased; and, when he felt sure that the fit was over, gently bade him good-night, and went out, leaving the room in dense silence, which no one ventured to break but the warm-hearted little Hanley, who, going to Charlie's ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... address; popular banquets were held. The influence of woman, of which something has already been said, was widened by the action of these societies; that influence a little later tended to give the Revolution the hysterical turn ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... perhaps not much in it; but the picture thus suggested to my abnormally excited imagination seemed so supremely ridiculous that I incontinently burst into a violent and uncontrollable fit of hysterical laughter (the precise effect which I afterwards ascertained Smellie was anxious to produce); so highly exasperating the fetish-man that, with eyes fairly sparkling with rage, he advanced and struck me ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... made her a very Hamlet of postponement and inaction. Hamlet had only a ghost for counselor, and a mother to be the first victim of his rashness. No wonder he hesitated. And Marie Louise had only hysterical suspicion to account for her thoughts; and the victims of her first step would be the only father and mother she had ever really known. America itself was another Hamlet of debate and indecision, weighing evidences, pondering theories, deferring the sword, hoping that Germany ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... prostration and collapse of power which a great and sudden blow is apt to produce. She stared at the woman who first conveyed to her tidings of the tragedy, and then for a moment seated herself at the bedside. But the violent sobbings and hysterical screams of Madame Melmotte soon brought her again to her feet, and from that moment she was not only active but efficacious. No;—she would not go down to the room; she could do no good by going thither. But they must send for a doctor. They should send for a doctor immediately. She was ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... of hysterical weeping the woman drew back, endeavoring to close the cabin door. But Darrin's foot across the sill defeated ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock
... lips once and closed them again. She laughed a little—a high-pitched, semi-hysterical laugh. The hand which gripped her fan was straining so that the blue veins stood out almost ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... his face was honest; the widow's brain was bewildered. She believed him, and clung to him in white terror. Dan saw that she was safe from any hysterical screaming, enjoined silence on both, and passed on towards the parlour where Basil was sitting. He paused for a moment to draw his sword, then tip-toed to the door. Leaning against the oaken post, he heard the rustling of paper. He set his ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... sudden she began digging furiously in the debris in the box, throwing out its contents by handfuls until she had uncovered the bottom without finding any sign of what she had thought to find. Then she paused, meeting his gaze with one half-wrathful, half-hysterical. ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... two or three paragraphs are roughly paraphrased from Professor Cornill's book, The Prophets of Israel. My opinion as to how far his reading of this proverb-question will bear criticism is of no value. It may be open to debate whether, historically, he has not placed certain hysterical phenomena recorded of these prophets much too late. But whatever scholarship may have to say about his interpretation of our text, the interpretation commends itself to my judgment, and it serves the purpose before me. It has, I venture ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... was met at the door and swept backward by a wild rush of men and women. What happened in the next few minutes I do not recollect, though I have a clear remembrance of pulling down life-preservers from the overhead racks, while the red-faced man fastened them about the bodies of an hysterical group of women. This memory is as distinct and sharp as that of any picture I have seen. It is a picture, and I can see it now,—the jagged edges of the hole in the side of the cabin, through which the grey fog swirled and eddied; the empty upholstered seats, littered with ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... slippers upon the floor of the hall. The sound jarred on her. She pinned on her hat again, ran downstairs, gave orders that she would not be in for lunch, and drove at once to Mrs. Willoughby's. She arrived in a state little short of hysterical. ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... Mime at last gives up his job in despair. Mime, we must remember, is a half-comic personage; and were his music allotted to some heroic man facing an impossible task it would be much the same, save that Wagner would not have so exaggerated the hysterical emotion. To depict a being facing an impossible task with no noble, but with only an ignoble, motive requires such an exaggerated mode of expression. Mime's grief is real enough, but the cause of it contemptible. After a considerable deal in this mournful key comes the sudden entry of the ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... faint plaintiveness at intervals and again their jingling was rapid and hysterical, as he tried to make up the distance lost through a lapse in effort. He had ceased altogether to wiggle the sliver of ear—the baton with which he conducted his orchestra—because this was clearly a waste of energy. P.D.'s steps still retained their dogged persistence, ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... humorously when lightness and gaiety were in order, and seriously when the word of faith was needed. There is much to be learned from his approach. Called one day to a humble dwelling on Mt. Adams where a mother was hysterical because her boy had just undergone an emergency operation, Mr. Nelson tore a button from his coat before entering the room, and said in an off-hand manner, "Oh! this has just come off! Will ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... the stand yet." Then, leaning toward me, across the table, resting on his elbow until his face was level with my own, "I know you must have been much frightened at what you saw, child, and it's possible you may have been a little hysterical, isn't it? It's possible you might have fancied a revolver in his hand, isn't it, when ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... two o'clock the following morning; and then she came against her will in a litter borne by two tired guides, while two others walked beside her and held her hands; and she was protesting at every step that she positively could not and would not go another inch; and she was as hysterical as a treeful of chickadees; her hat was lost, and her glasses were gone, and her hair hung down her back, and altogether she was ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... final word of cheerful assurance would have proved absolutely disastrous to me had I not been sitting close to my friend and able to whisper to her: "Please dig your nails into my wrist—hard." Any bodily pain was preferable to the hysterical laughter which had been so long ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... neck, and whispered the last words in my ear with a passionate delight in uttering them which it almost broke my heart to hear. All the long restraint she had imposed on herself gave way in that first last outburst of tenderness. She broke from me with hysterical vehemence, and threw herself on the sofa in a paroxysm of sobs and tears that shook her from head ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... cagel is the so-called bitter orange peel, the best of which comes from Curaao and Barbadoes. It is tonic and is used in decoction and in syrup. The infusion of the leaves, 5-10 grams to the liter, is useful as a sedative and diaphoretic in hysterical and nervous attacks; the infusion of the flowers is similarly used. When distilled the flowers yield a very sweet essential oil called neroli, which is used as a ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... however, and I would have enjoyed it greatly, if Mrs. L'Hommedieu had shown more appetite. But she ate scarcely anything and seemed very anxious and unhappy, though she laughed now and then with sudden gusts of mirth too hysterical to be real. It was not late, and yet we were both very much surprised when there came a knock at the door, followed by the entrance of ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... for full knowledge of all that pertains to motherhood; make the motherhood a pure and beautiful manifestation of physical activity if you will, but without forgetting that it is only simple and natural; avoiding that hysterical glorification of the function in poetry and the hiding of it in actual life as if it were an unclean thing. But the important matter is to understand that a woman has a right to bear a child if she ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... being hysterical? I have perhaps been that also, I am perhaps; but I don't know anything about it, never having profoundly studied the thing, and having heard of it without having studied it. Isn't it an uneasiness, an anguish caused by the desire of ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... the bridal party marched up the hall to the office of the justice of the peace. Just as he was about to pronounce the last sad rites a hurdy-gurdy started playing 'Don't Get Married Any More, Ma,' with variations. Well, it made Mamie so nervous. You know she always was a hysterical creature. It made her so nervous that she had to have Wilbur—that's her husband—go out and put a bug on the Ginny before she would allow the flag to drop. Then we went out and had our wedding breakfast. There were six or eight in the crowd, I ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... clasped over her knee. They had still the lack of confidence or repose, the almost hysterical look. He winced as he saw them. Then he laughed mirthlessly. She put her fingers between her lips. His slim, black, tortured body lay quite still in the chair. She suddenly took her finger from her ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... percolated to the mucker's numbed perceptive faculties. He was being counted out! Nine! Like a flash he was on his feet. He had forgotten the crowd. Rage—cool, calculating rage possessed him—not the feverish, hysterical variety that takes its victim's ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... may remember, was a student of human nature, believed that Miss Whyte lived on her nerves, and he had therefore planned to leave her alone for a few moments to allow any hysterical tendency to exhaust itself. When he returned, he found her looking straight before her with the document ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... were the likeliest in the world to be alarmed; and the noise of swords is made to draw only two poor women thither, who were most certain to run away from it. Upon Lucia and Marcia's coming in, Lucia appears in all the symptoms of an hysterical gentlewoman:— ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... the stretchers and the nouveaux clients; mussy bundles of blue rags and bloody blankets turned into human beings; an overworked, nervous medecin chef shouted contradictory orders at the brancardiers, and passed into real crises of hysterical rage. ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... collection, however, of unsupported trumpery, but authenticated cases staidly evidenced, and circumstantially detailed; no Mother Goose-cap's tales, no Dick the Ploughman's dreams, no stories from the 'Terrific Register,' nor fancies of hysterical females in Adult asylums; even Merlin witch-finders, and Taliesins should be excluded: and, in lieu of all such common-places, I should propose an anecdotic treatise in the manner scientifical. Macnish's 'Philosophy of Sleep,' Scott's 'Demonology,' treatises on Apparitions, and ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... his room at once: he was almost hysterical. Leighton brought out some tea for her, and she sat drinking it on the little ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... sought out Gus Briskow and again resigned. By this time, however, the novelty of her resignation had largely worn off, for seldom did more than two weeks elapse without a hysterical threat to quit. But this one required more than the usual amount of persuasion, and it was not without long and patient pleading, coupled with the periodical raise, that the father induced her to change her mind. Gus told himself somberly that the price of Allegheny's education was mounting so ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... had not seen Mr. Brimsdown before did not lessen the hysterical gratitude with which Mrs. Pendleton received this piece of information. The events of the last forty-eight hours had shaken her badly. Her brother's tragic death, and the terrible suspicion which enveloped Sisily, ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... obliviousness of the couple in the room above a rational sequence. The dazed Ira was set aside, after half a dozen contemptuous questions; the chivalry of a Californian jury excused the attendance of a frightened and hysterical woman confined to her room. By noon they had departed with the body, and the long afternoon shadows settled over the lonely plain and silent house. At nightfall Ira appeared at the door, and stood for some moments scanning the plain; he was seen later by two packers, who had glanced ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... the usual remedies, but even when she revived it was some time before the girl could speak intelligibly. Her voice was broken by hysterical sobs; she trembled in every limb. It was evident that her nerves had ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... regular clergy as "unconverted men," but who pushed his religious enthusiasm to great extremes by everywhere urging upon excitable young men the duty to become preachers like himself. He had introduced a kind of intoning at public meetings. This tended to create nervous irritability and hysterical outbursts of religious emotionalism, and these, Davenport taught his disciples, were the signs of God's approval of them and their devotion to Him. The government, watching these tumultuous meetings, ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... haunted his brain, but he saw no loophole anywhere. Who could have committed the deed but she? There was the fact of the knife, the fact of the wild threats she had uttered, the fact of her going out into the night alone, the fact that when he returned in the morning he had found her in an almost hysterical state of mind in her bedroom, the fact that his knife was buried in Wilson's heart. No, no; there could be no doubt about it. He did not love her the less, rather the more. He did not regard her ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... life, when I was on my perilous journey—had taken his measures to shake me off, and transfer me, as a privileged wanton, to the protection of his libertine friend. At first the stranger laughed at my tears and my agony, as the hysterical passion of a deluded and overreached wanton, or the wily affection of a courtezan. My claim of marriage he laughed at, assuring me he knew it was a mere farce required by me, and submitted to by his friend, to save some reserve of delicacy; and expressed his surprise that I should ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... tact at command. For myself, I said that I had scorched my hand against a red-hot rock, which was strictly true; for Camille, that it were wisest to take no early advantage of the reason that God had restored to him. She was voluble, tearful, half-hysterical with joy and ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... go through Rudolph's heart like a death-knell. His love for her was a jealous, fantastic, weird, hysterical love. Scores of times they were on the point ...
— La Boheme • Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica
... niece was intended to annihilate every vestige of frivolity. Her ample bosom struggled in its purple velvet casement. Sadie Burton actually shook in her tiny boots as she pictured her aunt in one of her hysterical outbursts right there in the midst of a host of strangers who seemed to the unsophisticated miss from Omaha to represent the very cream of New ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... naturally, as if she were speaking of the most ordinary thing, that Young felt a hysterical desire to laugh. It was a dreadful thought, this of the rat in the ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... doubt that the scene had its origin not merely in the imagination of the sixteenth century, but reached further back to the hideous "Danse Macabre" of the fourteenth century, when the Black Death was slaying high and low so fast that men were seized with a panic of hysterical convulsion and leaped frenziedly about the streets and churches, even in the cemeteries themselves. The numberless carvings on the cathedrals, representing the Devil and his myrmidons struggling for mastery with a living soul, provided an ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... their feet. Hector had turned Trimmer's greatest danger into the means of victory. The Trimmer people led one of those extraordinary hysterical processions round the aisles that you see sometimes in a convention (a thing I never get used to), and it was all Trimmer, or rather, it was all Hector. Trimmer was nominated ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... evidence is rarely forthcoming. A delicate girl would probably become more delicate if she did not play games in moderation and take exercise. A friend of mine, an old doctor, told me the other day that in his youth the great plague of his life was the hysterical female. She would put in an appearance obtrusively at critical moments, and the anticipation of a scene always shadowed his arrangements. We rarely see this type now. Games have driven her away. The woman of the present generation is calm, collected, ...
— Lawn Tennis for Ladies • Mrs. Lambert Chambers
... another to get hold of the child, and on one occasion she disappeared with it into the street for hours. David was amazed by the whim, but neither he nor anyone else could control it. At last, Mrs. Mason was more or less hysterical all day long, and hardly sane when Louie was within reach. As for the husband, who managed to be more at home during the days of his wife's weakness than he had yet been since David's tenancy began, he complained to David and spoke ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the sitting-room deliberately, and walked in with a certain formal precision. But the figure of a woman arose from the sofa, and with a slight outcry, half playful, half hysterical, threw herself upon his breast with the single exclamation, "Jim!" He started back from the double shock. For the woman was NOT his wife! A woman extravagantly dressed, still young, but bearing, even through her artificially heightened color, a face worn with excitement, excess, ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... upon her face and figure. Through his growing indignation Rand was still impressed and even startled with the change the few last months had wrought upon her. In place of the silly, fanciful, half-hysterical hoyden whom he had known, a matured woman, strong in passionate self-will, fascinating in a kind of wild, savage beauty, looked up at him as if to read his ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... who were lying in the steamer-chairs gave up the struggle and went down to their cabins. There was a momentary excitement as one chair broke from its fastenings and slid down with a crash against the bulwarks. The occupant was picked up in a hysterical condition and taken below. The deck steward tied the chair more firmly, so that the accident would not happen again. The young English girl was opposite John Kenyon when this disaster took place, and her attention being diverted by fear for the safety of the occupant of the sliding ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... the power of prayer by refusing to believe that his prayer was answered, even though the prophecy was unintelligible. And later, when the passionate cadences of the spirit were in English, and were found to be only trite or foolish words, repeated and repeated in a wailing chant by some sincere, hysterical woman, he still believed that a new day of Pentecost had dawned upon a sinful world! "For," said he, "when I asked for bread, would God give ...
— The Voice • Margaret Deland
... stretched out to help the two young men from the water. The mamas, hysterical, wept, laughed, and prayed. Ibarra was unharmed. The helmsman had a slight scratch ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... were no longer within my grasp; but at the I same time my discontent was not wholly unreasonable. I had learnt more of myself in three months than I had in all my life before, and from being a nervous, hysterical boy I had arrived at a complete understanding of my emotions, which I studied with an almost adult calmness of mind. I knew that in returning to the society of my healthy, boyish brothers, I was going back to a kind of life for which I was no longer fitted. I had changed, but I had the ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... is not low-spirited at all, and though her voice sounds rather hysterical, it is merely her manner of speaking, slightly accentuated perhaps by more trouble than usual. She is fairly well used to such events by now. Yarty himself is angry. His ordinary habits are bound to be upset for a few days; ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... by instinct, before anybody told me; for suddenly the whole story came back just as I heard it from my father, not as I've read it in books of history. So vividly did he paint each detail, that I used to grow hysterical in my infantine way, and he was scolded by mother for "filling the child's ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... high audacity of those who have overcome fear, she now, with a hysterical cry of menace, ran at the two lynxes, to drive them from ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts |
