"Irritable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... when we were riding to-day. He is so clever, and has such beautiful thoughts. He is looking forward most awfully to his life, and says it gets better and better all the time. I feel quite ashamed to remember how depressed and discontented I have been, and how irritable with poor old Maud. She can't help it, poor dear, if she is stupid; one ought to be patient with her, and satisfied with a peaceful home life! I am satisfied now. To-morrow I go to lunch at ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... unwilling attention. This bit of the war seen close at hand was beginning to suggest to her some new vast world, of which she was wholly ignorant, where she was the merest cypher on sufferance. The thought was disagreeable to her irritable pride, and she thrust it aside. She ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that he must have been condemned to death. I make him talk for the purpose of getting at his secret; but he is of a truly Castilian taciturnity, proud as though he were Gonsalvo di Cordova, and nevertheless angelic in his patience and gentleness. His pride is not irritable like Miss Griffith's, it belongs to his inner nature; he forces us to civility because his own manners are so perfect, and holds us at a distance by the respect he shows us. My father declares that there is a great deal of the nobleman in Senor ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... of a depression of spirits which had been growing upon him all day. It was the weather, he argued, affecting his nerves or digestion. The vision of a warm, cosey house, a devoted wife awaiting him, ought to have cheered him, but it did not. He hoped he would not feel irritable when Milly rushed into the hall as soon as his key was heard in the front door, to feel him all over and take every damp thread tragically. Poor dear Milly! What a discontented brute of a husband she had got! The fault was no doubt with himself, and he ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... LOUISE. I am irritable lately, I know it—but I see without our money even Steve couldn't get us a decent position. We might just as well face the truth. Certain people don't appreciate you and me, mamma. We aren't ...
— Her Own Way - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... had been forgotten; and that, a few weeks after her wedding, she was actually obliged to apply to her husband for money to purchase baskets, iron spoons, clothes-lines, &c.; and her husband, made irritable by the want of money, pettishly demanded why she had bought so many things they did not want. Did the doctor gain any patients, or she a single friend, by offering their visiters water in richly-cut glass tumblers, or serving them with costly ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... like our friend, Randal Leslie, acts upon the fallacious principle that "roguery is the best policy," it is curious to see how many points he has in common with the insane: what over-cunning, what irritable restlessness, what suspicious belief that the rest of the world are in a conspiracy against him, which it requires all his wit to baffle and turn to his own proper aggrandizement and profit. Perhaps some of my readers may have ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... he gets home that a meditative man really makes such a trip. All the unpleasant features are strained out or transformed. In retrospect it is all enjoyable, even the discomforts. I am aware that I was often irritable and ungracious, but my companions were tolerant, and gave little heed to the flitting moods of an octogenarian. Now, at this distance, and sitting beside my open fire at Slabsides, I look upon the whole trip with ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... I have been practicing your method since our last conversation, and find it works like a charm. I have but little trouble now, and am determined to keep on as I have begun." Thus he proceeded till released. This man was naturally irritable and easily angered. He had not previously labored to control himself in regard to this important point; but now, when summoning all his better powers to the task, he resolutely addressed his mind to it, and a noble ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... GRAZIER is to procure an animal that will yield the greatest pecuniary return in the shortest time; or, in other words, soonest convert grass and turnips into good mutton and fine fleece. All sheep will not do this alike; some, like men, are so restless and irritable, that no system of feeding, however good, will develop their frames or make them fat. The system adopted by the breeder to obtain a valuable animal for the butcher, is to enlarge the capacity and functions of the digestive organs, and reduce those of the head and chest, or the mental and respiratory ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... him, for the present, he could grin and bear and finally get used to it, as other people did. But Uncle Henry possessed an irritable and excitable temperament, that not one man in ten thousand could boast of, and hence he grew—at length sour, then savage, and, finally, quite meat-axish, towards every outsider who dared to ring his bell, and proffer wooden ware and tin fixins, for rags and ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... the little colony of painters who for longer or shorter periods resided at Barbizon, much could be said if space permitted. It is pleasant to think that the more prosperous Rousseau helped with purse and influence his comrades, and that, by nature sad and irritable, he was always considerate of them in the many discussions which took place. Corot, ill at ease in the revolutionary atmosphere, made an occasional appearance. Diaz, he of meridional extraction, turbulent and emphatic, stamped his wooden leg, and was as illogical in debate as in painting. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... good-humour. It happened, however, one morning, that on examining his slender purse, he found that its contents had fallen to zero; and this unpleasant circumstance caused him, no doubt, to feel in an irritable state of mind. On reaching the studio, and just as he entered the door, he was inundated by the contents of a bucket of water, which one of his companions had suspended over the door, and managed to overturn on ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... who had paid scant attention to his remarks and who did not perceive their relevance or their propriety, answered, in a somewhat irritable tone, that all that was to be ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... not by any means meet with the approbation of those who were immediately concerned; and Bert's spirits, already at a low ebb, were not much elevated by sundry scowling looks directed at him, and by one red-faced, irritable-looking chap seizing the opportunity when Mr. Snelling's back was turned to shake his fist at Bert and Frank, and mutter loudly enough for ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... companion rather than nurse. As before, the rheumatic attack fastened upon the head and eyes, causing lengthened suffering, and teaching Mr. Egremont that he had never had so gentle, so skilful, so loving, or altogether so pleasant a slave as his wife, the only person except Gregorio whom, in his irritable state, he would ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... make the trial, he would be led straight to Malvin's bones. But year after year that summons, unheard but felt, was disobeyed. His one secret thought became like a chain binding down his spirit and like a serpent gnawing into his heart; and he was transformed into a sad and downcast yet irritable man. ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... I became very irritable at the need which confronted me of occasionally cooking some green vegetable—the only item of food which it was necessary to take some trouble over: for all meats, and many fish, some quite delicious, I ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... fitful temper turning even his friends against him, or at any rate tending to make them indifferent to his woes. For Bristol citizens had many more important subjects claiming their attention at this particular time than the angry disappointment of a self-conscious and irritable boy. ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... further attention to Barbara. She managed to remove some of the carmine, and pat down her hair, hot she could not do things as the French maid generally did them to add to her beauty. Feeling dissatisfied with her appearance made Barbara irritable, but she remained in the room criticizing everything the two other girls did or said. Then just before the horn sounded for supper, a knock came ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... would keep away, and not worry her. The "treasure" was the only person she felt she could bear to have about her. Half an hour before it was time to start for church her mother looked her up again. She had grown still paler, if possible, during the interval, and also more nervous and irritable. She threatened to go to bed and stop there if she was not left quite alone. She almost turned her mother out of the room, locking the door behind her. Mrs. Hodskiss had never known her daughter ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... proportion in a population estimated at a million and a half, in an island abounding with elephants, with which, independently of casual encounters, voluntary conflicts are daily stimulated by the love of sport or the hope of gain. Were the elephants instinctively vicious or even highly irritable in their temperament, the destruction of human life under the circumstances must have been infinitely greater. It must also be taken into account, that some of the accidents recorded may have occurred in the rutting season, ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... these circumstances "the observed of all observers," bore his honours meekly. He who shewed symptoms of ill-feeling at the imputations cast upon his hat, only brought upon himself redoubled notice. The mob soon perceive whether a man is irritable, and, if of their own class, they love to make sport of him. When such a man, and with such a hat, passed in those days through a crowded neighbourhood, he might think himself fortunate if his annoyances ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... his very large estates in the West Indies. His voyage was tedious; his residence there, from various accidents, prolonged from time to time, till near three years had at length passed away. Lady Elmwood, at first only unhappy, became at last provoked; and giving way to that irritable disposition which she had so seldom governed, resolved, in spite of his injunctions, to divert the melancholy hours caused by his absence, by mixing in the gay circles ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... his features were sharp, his cheeks were scorched into a dusky red by two fiery little gray eyes; his nose turned up, and the corners of his mouth turned down, pretty much like the muzzle of an irritable pug-dog. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... youngest sister, was married in her sixteenth year to Christian VII., king of Denmark. This monarch was addicted to licentious and degrading pleasures, and was a prince of weak intellect, irritable and capricious, open to flattery, and easily deceived by the crafty. Soon after his marriage he visited England, France, and Germany, where he might, if he had possessed intellect, have obtained ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... a Booking-Clerk may walk leisurely from one pigeon-hole to the other, and ask the passenger to repeat his demand, and then take some time in finding the required amount of change. If the passenger is irritable, and in a hurry, the Clerk can stop to explain, and remonstrate. In the case of an inquiry as to the progress of the trains, a busy Booking-Clerk can refer impatient passengers to the time-table hanging ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 21, 1893 • Various
... through Germany and into Switzerland, where for three or four weeks they trudged over passes and lounged upon blue lakes. At last they crossed the Simplon and made their way to Venice. Mr. Babcock had become gloomy and even a trifle irritable; he seemed moody, absent, preoccupied; he got his plans into a tangle, and talked one moment of doing one thing and the next of doing another. Newman led his usual life, made acquaintances, took his ease in the galleries ...
— The American • Henry James
... to feel dissatisfied. Vaguely he felt that in some almost imperceptible manner she had changed her mood. He could not base his thoughts on a single word, or action, yet he felt the difference—this was not the Natalie of the raft. She was too irritable; too sharp of speech. But then, no doubt, she was tired, worn out, her nerves broken; indeed he found it hard to control himself, and he must not blame her for exhibiting weakness under the strain. ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... his relations with the people he had met and the country he had lived in, and of the vague, restless desires—desires cast in the mould of this material world, yet half mystical in their nature—which had first made him percipient, then critical and dissatisfied, then critical and irritable, then critical and religious, and ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... her nurse's uniform. And at the same time, she had to constitute herself nurse. Miss Frost, and a woman who came in, and the servant had been nursing the invalid between them. Miss Frost was worn and rather heavy: her old buoyancy and brightness was gone. She had become irritable also. She was very glad that Alvina had returned to take this responsibility of nursing off her shoulders. For her wonderful energy had ebbed and ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... after a long, wakeful night, and did not hear the maid who called him. Mr. Quinn, when he was told of the heaviness of Henry's slumber, said "Let him lie on!" and so it was that he did not rise until noon. He came down heavy-eyed and irritable, and wandered about the garden in which he took no pleasure. Marsh came to him while he was there, full of enthusiasm because more pupils had attended the Language ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... this manner, for several years, during which my general temperament and character—through the instrumentality of the Fiend Intemperance—had (I blush to confess it) experienced a radical alteration for the worse. I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others. I suffered myself to use intemperate language to my wife. At length, I even offered her personal violence. My pets, of course, were made to feel the change in my disposition. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... him his appointment—to the editorship of the Daily, Mr. Bitt was set moody and irritable by the fact that he had no opportunity to exercise them over the first issue of ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... many reminiscences of Professor Newman as a teacher, tell me that he had many eccentricities which perpetually aroused their sense of humour. Sir Edward Fry tells me that his manner, when he himself was at college in 1848, was "somewhat nervous, perhaps even a little irritable, and he was not exactly popular as a professor. But his lectures were very interesting and stimulating." He adds that he was "a very brilliant scholar, with ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... looked it, and if my eyes had been seared with a red-hot iron, my hands would have written it. A crime can find a thousand tongues! And now that I have told it, I feel so much happier. You would not believe it, Pepeeta. I am like myself again. I feel as if I should never be unkind or irritable any more. The load has fallen from my heart. Come, now, and kiss me. Let me take ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... you'd leave metaphor and come to plain speaking," cried Lambert in an irritable tone, for the conversation was getting on his nerves by reason of ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... his master being at the Terrace, strongly recommended his customer not to have that quality, as it was from the same quarry as the one which was faulty, but that another should be ordered. To this he assented. When Mr. Furze returned Tom told him what had happened. He was in an unusually irritable, despotic mood. Mrs. Furze had forced him to yield upon a point which he had foolishly made up his mind not to concede, and consequently he was all the more disposed to avenge his individuality elsewhere. After meditating for a minute or two he ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... violent, hypocritical or sincere, but all men who, knowing the fatherland and the Republic in danger, suffered or feigned to suffer the same anguish, to burn with the same ardour; all alike primed to atrocities of virtue or of fear, they formed but one living entity, one single head, dull and irritable, one single soul, a beast of the apocalypse that by the mere exercise of its natural functions produced a teeming brood of death. Kind-hearted or cruel by caprice of sensibility, when shaken momentarily by a sudden ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... Didn't she remember it? A long feud with another boy—ending in a highly organized fight—absolute defiance of tutor and housemaster on Desmond's part—and threatened expulsion. The Squire's irritable pride had made him side ostentatiously with his son, and Pamela could only be miserable and expect the worst. Then suddenly the whole convulsion had quieted down, and Desmond's last year at Eton had been a very happy one. ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of Alfieri may be best appreciated from the portrait which he has drawn of himself in his own Memoirs of his Life. He was evidently of an irritable, impetuous and almost ungovernable temper. Pride, which seems to have been a ruling sentiment, may account for many apparent inconsistencies of his character. But his less amiable qualities were greatly softened by the cultivation ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... bear in mind that many petty causes combined to produce discord and dissension among the members of the Donner Party. Coming from so many different States, being of different nationalities and modes of thought, delayed on the road much longer than was expected, rendered irritable by the difficulties encountered on the journey, annoyed by losses of stock, fearful of unknown disasters on the Sierra, and already placed on short allowances of provisions, the emigrants were ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... to come to me so quickly, Signor Giovacchino," he said; and then turning angrily to the servant, who was leaving the room, added in a cross and irritable voice, very unlike his usual manner, "Why are not those persiane shut? Close them directly, and ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... I said to myself that if Edmee died I should find her again in a better world; that if she survived me and recovered her reason, she would one day succeed in discovering the truth, and that then I should live in her heart as a dear and tender memory. Irritable as I am, and always inclined to violence in the case of anything that is an obstacle or an offence to me, I am astonished at the philosophical resignation and the proud calm I have shown on the momentous occasions of life, and above all ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... bored; and a hot climate, which fries us all over a slow fire, grills boredom into irritability. The study of oriental human nature requires endless patience; and this is the hardest virtue for a young, energetic white man, with the irritable brain of his race, to acquire. Without ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... Rodney was content with a present clear success, and averse from further risk. He had reached his limitations. It is known now that Douglas agreed with Hood, but he was too loyal to his chief to say so publicly, then or afterwards; and especially, doubtless, to so irritable a talker. ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... his wrath quite so far as Elisha, at least not openly; he did not curse me in the name of the Lord, nor did she-bears come out of the wood to devour me; but I soon enough had my share of misfortune. Preachers of peace, it appears, were always irritable: but to do them justice, I believe they are something less so now than ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... way with anxiety in her heart as to how her mother would behave. Would she show irritable astonishment if Lena treated her with gentle deference, and asked her permission to be out in the evening with a strange young man? But Mrs. Quincy knew a thing or two as well as her daughter, and Dick saw only that the room was very ugly, that Lena moved about with lips compressed and voice gentle ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable. ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... and irritable man, and a bitter enemy to every person who stood in the way of his advancement. He hated Mendizabal with undisguised rancour, and never spoke of him but in terms of unmeasured contempt. "I am afraid that I shall have some difficulty in inducing ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... in the one small room they chose as their home, while he went forth to seek employment worthy of his degree at the Calcutta University and of his Rohilla ancestry But alas! work came not to his hands: and as the money slowly dwindled, he grew morose and irritable and often made her weep silently as she sat stitching the embroidery designed to provide the daily meal. She knew full well that vain pride baulked his employment; and after many a struggle she prevailed upon him to become a letter-writer. "An undergraduate, who ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... still aloft when the battery, which had hoisted Spanish colours, opened fire upon us, the first shot severing our larboard main- topgallant back-stay. This damage, slight as it was, sufficed to effectually rouse Captain Pigot's hasty, irritable temper; and, hurrying the men down from aloft, he ordered the larboard broadside to be manned, and the guns to be directed upon the audacious battery. A couple of well-directed broadsides sufficed to silence ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... advanced years, Allan, who was naturally of good and benevolent dispositions, became peculiarly irritable; he fancied that his merits as a poet had been overlooked, and the feeling preyed deeply upon his mind. He entertained extreme political opinions, and conceived a dislike to his native country, which he deemed had not sufficiently estimated his genius. Much in opposition to ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... unsatisfactory to Tom. Though brought up in this roving, improvident way, his better nature often revolted against it; not, however, so strongly and decisively as now. Still, desires, and even longings, for something better had flitted through his mind, only to make him moody and irritable. Doubtless these aspirations were due, in no small measure, to his mother—a woman much superior to her condition, but who, clinging to her husband with a pure and changeless love, accepted the privations of her lot ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... did not look very promising, and Dorothy asked, in an irritable tone, before she parted with her aunt ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... the women irritable after he had gone. Edith felt that her instincts had no longer a value in the market. In this wretched Endicott affair striking disappointment met the most brilliant endeavors. Sonia made ready to return to her hotel. Dolorously the Currans paid her the last courtesies, waiting ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... to excuse her hastiness by her feverish excitement. A bride may be pardoned if she is nervous and irritable at the last moment. The witnesses, the bride-maids, are ready, and the bride's father ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... bits of wood, ingeniously fastened together by seizings of sinnate. When any of the inmates chose to go outside, the noise occasioned by the removing of this rude door awakened every body else; and on more than one occasion I had remarked that the islanders were nearly as irritable as more civilized beings under ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... the thing that he should say. Ordinarily, he quitted her brusquely, as if what had happened were not to last. At every one of their partings she had a confused feeling that they were parting forever. She suffered from this in advance and became irritable. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... seek notoriety—which, by the way, they are near obtaining in more respects than they probably desire—by obtruding themselves on every stranger who touches our shore. Theirs is not a generous and frank hospitality that would fain serve others, but an irritable vanity that would glorify themselves. The liberal and enlightened monikin is easily to be distinguished from all of this clique. He is neither ashamed of, nor bigoted in favor of any usages, simply because they are domestic. With him the criterions of merit are propriety, taste, expediency, ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... began thinking about the proceedings of that time, and felt a little hurt that the doctor had not called upon him to come and act as his assistant, and these thoughts lasted him for about an hour, but did not weary him into dropping off to sleep. They seemed to have the contrary effect, making him irritable; and though he made up his mind to watch the stars peer out through the opalescent sky—he did not call it opalescent, for the simple word dusky took its place—even their soft light had no effect upon him, and to come to the result at once the would-be sleeper gave it ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... that morning at breakfast, he would not hear of any prescription for nerves which did not include his company. Why should she want to be alone? If she was ill or troubled, his place was beside her. He had planned to lunch and spend the afternoon with her. Her faintly irritable "I wish you wouldn't," only wounded and shocked him. Her strength was not equal to discussion, and in the end ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... had protested once, when her friend asked to be allowed to ride a rather high-spirited horse, but when Sylvia retorted hotly, Kathleen offered no further opposition. Thus it came about that Sylvia rode in constant dread, and made a nervous, fidgety horse a thousand times more irritable. ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... that a Ministerial expert in sheep-shock has been sent to the assistance of the surviving mules. But while we may congratulate ourselves on the lifting of the clouds in that direction matters in West Ham give ground for the gravest anxiety. The wood-lice of West Ham are proverbially of an irritable nature, and the attitude of the Government has been calculated ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... cases irritable, and great restlessness and involuntary movement, accompanied even with twisting of the neck, shows itself. This will yield to skilful cooling of the spinal nerves with damp cloths. See ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... phenomena. In firm and lofty character, pain is mastered; in a character so little endowed with cool tenacious strength as Rousseau's, pain such as he endured was enough to account, not for his unsociality, which flowed from temperament, but for the bitter, irritable, and suspicious form which this unsociality now first assumed. Rousseau was never a saintly nature, but far the reverse, and in reading the tedious tale of his quarrels with Grimm and Madame d'Epinay and Diderot—a ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... need not be superstitious about towns, as if that terrific or benefic force did not find us there also, and fashion cities. Nature, who made the mason, made the house. We may easily hear too much of rural influences. The cool, disengaged air of natural objects, makes them enviable to us, chafed and irritable creatures with red faces, and we think we shall be as grand as they, if we camp out and eat roots, but let us be men instead of wood-chucks, and the oak and the elm shall gladly serve us, though we sit in chairs of ivory ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... some combustibles led to the invention of gunpowder. Irritable tempers have marred the reputation of many a great man, as in the case of Edmund Burke and of Thomas Carlyle. A few bits of seaweed and driftwood, floating on the waves, enabled Columbus to stay a mutiny of his sailors ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... does not interdict the further saying, if his scruples had been ever so extreme, not improbably he would at this time have smothered them. He was angry; not as the irritable, from chafing of a trifle; nor was his anger like the fool's, pumped from the wells of nothing, to be dissipated by a reproach or a curse; it was the wrath peculiar to ardent natures rudely awakened by the sudden annihilation of a hope—dream, if you will—in ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... party arrive, he is suspicious and irritable, and, of course, soon excommunicated. Then, as he stands in disconsolate anger, looking over the garden fence at the gay group making dandelion chains, and playing baby house under the trees, he wonders why he is not like other children. He wishes he were different, and yet he does not know ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... of every degree were continually trying to undermine and supplant one another, besieging the minister with mutual charges. Brouillan, the governor, was a frequent object of attack. He seems to have been of an irritable temper, aggravated perhaps by an old unhealed wound in the cheek, which gave him constant annoyance. One writer declares that Acadia languishes under selfish greed and petty tyranny; that everything was ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... reflected in the child both mentally and physically. For instance if the mother be calm, free from worry and happy in anticipation of the coming event, her offspring will have a sound nervous system, shown by a perfect digestion and an excellent disposition: while if the mother be irritable and unhappy her child is inclined to have various digestive ills, as well as to be cross ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... an excellent mechanic, proficient at the anvil and the forge, and proud of his skill in digging ditches and thatching roofs. Interested in music, and devoted to play-acting, he was badly educated, taking the coronation oath in the French form provided for a king ignorant of Latin. Vain, irritable, and easily moved to outbursts of childish wrath, he was half-conscious of the weakness of his will, and was never without a favourite, whose affection compensated him for his subjects' contempt. The household ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... estrades, with little rows of lockered desks much hacked and carved, arranged symmetrically round each, the big fireplace guarded with high iron bars, I was led across the room, and committed to the care of a little, pompous, stout man, with big side-whiskers, a reddish nose, and an air half irritable, half good-natured, in a short gown, who was holding forth to a class. It was all complete: I had my place and my duty before me; and then gradually day by day the life shaped itself. I had a little cubicle in a high ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Scott's novel of the name, devoted to the study and collection of old coins, a man with an irritable temper, due to disappointment ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... autumn geraniums and verbenas had given place to the few frosted winter chrysanthemums. It was but the middle of the day, and he had risen and had his cup of tea laced with brandy and crowned with brandy, so that the jaded man was comparatively fresh, but irritable to the last nerve, each jarring nerve twanging like harpstrings, sending electric thrills of vexation and rage over his whole body at ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... brain receiving a larger quantity of aerated blood than it is entitled to; by the strong development of the circulating system; by the energy of intellect; by the strength and activity of the muscular system; the vivid imagination; the irritable, mobile, ardent and inflammatory temperament, and the indomitable will and love of freedom. Whereas the negro constitution, being the opposite of all this, is not subject to Phthisis, although it partakes of what is called ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... on Harris and found him scolding the boys in the store-room. I saw he was irritable, and would have gone out if I could, but he saw me and I ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher
... have grown so irritable lately, and you talk so darkly and symbolically that you must forgive me if I fail to follow you. I am too ...
— The Sea-Gull • Anton Checkov
... as the Fates would have it, Lady Honoria and her husband had a quarrel. As usual, it was about Effie, for on most other subjects they preserved an armed neutrality. Its details need not be entered into, but at last Geoffrey, who was in a sadly irritable condition of mind, fairly ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... he lost his Health, he became a Nervous Wreck, and was so Irritable and Irascible that his Wife Ceased to live with him and ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... and gay, but Mabel often had moods of despondency, which, while they never made her cross or irritable, were so pathetic that it ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... been hurt, and you cannot put things together yet. It will come right after a little, if you don't get irritable." ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... years ago. She was familiar with his genius, and it no longer surprised her into overlooking his frailty. His fame no longer flattered her. His gentleness was gone, and had left, not hardness nor violence, in its place, but a sort of irritable palsy of discontent. That was what she called it ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... his mental exercise sometimes escaped and mingled with his uttered speech in a manner ludicrous enough, especially as the poor man shrunk himself together after every escape of the kind, from terror of the effect it might produce upon the irritable ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... attempt at assault, would not be easily set right. It required a diplomatic miracle. The slightest lack of self-possession on the part of the seconds is equivalent to a catastrophe. As happens in such circumstances, events are hurried, and the pessimistic anticipations of the irritable Marquis were verified almost as soon as he uttered them. Dorsenne and he had barely left the Palais Savorelli when Gorka arrived. The energy with which he repulsed the proposition of an arrangement which would admit of excuses on his part, served prudent Hafner, and the not less prudent ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... and swayed over the table. In an instant he was beside her; for though he had been irritable and ungenerous, he had at bottom a kind heart. Catching up a glass of water, he ran an arm round her waist and held the cup to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... by your conduct, I say?" repeated the colonel, fiercely; for he mistook and was rendered more irritable by the youth's apparent stupidity. "You have insulted my ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... afternoon of the next day. Gerard was no longer lightheaded, but very irritable and full of fancies; and in one of these he begged Denys to get him a lemon to suck. Denys, who from a rough soldier had been turned by tender friendship into a kind of grandfather, got up hastily, and bidding him set his mind at ease, "lemons he should have in the twinkling of a ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... their psychology, what struck us first was the exaggeration of their modesty; not in a single case would the men allow us to examine their genital organs or the women their breasts; we examined the tattoo-marks on the chest of one of the women, and she remained sad and irritable for two days afterward." They add that in sexual and all other respects these people are highly moral. (Lombroso and Carrara, Archivio di Psichiatria, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... themselves free from masturbation "at the expense of a perpetual and almost fierce activity of mind and muscle." Anstie had found that some of the worst cases of the form of nervosity and neurasthenia which he termed "spinal irritation," often accompanied by irritable stomach and anaemia, get well on marriage. "There can be no question," he continues, "that a very large proportion of these cases in single women (who form by far the greater number of subjects of spinal irritation) ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... that shows in itself that she does not wish for your championship, that in her eyes the trouble in the house is in fact caused by you. You must remember that when a woman loves a man she makes excuses for his faults of temper; his irritable moods, sharp expressions, and what you call snapping and snarling do not seem half so bad to her as they do to a third person, especially when that third person is her partisan. Instead of your adding ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... RELATION OF THE SEXES. Generally speaking, how much more pure, tender, delicate, irritable, affectionate, flexible, and patient is woman than man. The primary matter of which woman is constituted appears to account for this difference. All her organs are tender, yielding, easily wounded, sensible, and receptive; they are made for maternity and affection. Among ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... had gone by the coach we noticed that the old man would smoke a lot, and think as much, and take great interest in the fire, and be a trifle irritable perhaps. ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... it; had they perished, their death would have been due to the folly of their fellow-citizens. The poor basket was so frightened, look, it has shed a thick black dust over me, the same as a cuttle-fish does. What an irritable temper! You shout and throw stones, you will not hear my arguments—not even when I propose to speak in favour of the Lacedaemonians with my head on the block; and yet ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... concocted from sweet, bright-colored syrups, scanning the papers and discussing, with much noise and gesticulation, the political situation and the doings of the peace commissioners in Paris. Save only Barcelona, Fiume has the most excitable and irritable population of any city that I know. When we were there street disturbances were as frequent as dog-fights used to be in Constantinople before the Turks recognized that the best gloves are made from dogskins. As I have said, a few days before our arrival a mob had ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... powerful instrument. The noises that ruin health, temper, and power of work; the noises that cause an incalculable waste of time, money, and power, are all voluntary, and perhaps preventable. Let us examine the working hours of the nervous or irritable musician, mathematician, man of letters, or member of Parliament. On second thoughts, the last may be omitted, as if he cannot sleep in a tedious debate, his case ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... something is taken, will often cast away in anger all that is offered in its place; and in like hasty folly many a man and woman, to their eternal regret, have thrown away life itself. Suicide is often the product of passion as well as of despair; the irritable, headlong protest against evils that might have been and should ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... very pleasant afternoon and they went back to the Washington very happily. Mrs. Schuneman carried Germania in the temporary wooden cage and Mary Rose proudly bore the brass cage. As they went up the steps a man brushed past them. He was tall and thin and had a nervous irritable manner that one felt as well as saw. Mary Rose locked ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett
... and September are generally the driest months, and the most equable. The Vichy treatment lasts from 3 to 4 weeks. The waters are taken in the morning and during the day, and baths daily or every second day. For elderly people with sanguine and irritable temperaments and delicate constitutions the duration of the bath should not be more than 20 ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... income had required economy, and his infirmities a life free from annoyance. As has been shown, Grace had practiced the one with heart as light as her purse; and had interposed her own sweet self between the irritable veteran and everything that could vex him. The calling world had had its revenge. The major was profane, they had said; Grace was proud, or led a slavish life. The most heinous sin of all was, they were poor. There ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... of a jealous nature—they engross, they absorb the soul, and often leave the splenetic humors stagnant and unheeded at the surface. Unheeding the petty things around us, we are deemed morose; impatient at earthly interruption to the diviner dreams, we are thought irritable and churlish. For as there is no chimera vainer than the hope that one human heart shall find sympathy in another, so none ever interpret us with justice; and none, no, not our nearest and our dearest ties, forbear with us ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... battles beyond the blue window seemed to move fast, and now a change was passing across Morano's rejoicings. It was not that he swore more for the cause of the Cross, but brief, impatient, meaningless oaths slipped from him now; he was becoming irritable; a puzzled look, so far as Rodriguez could see, was settling down on his features. For a while he was silent except for the little, meaningless oaths. Then he turned round from the glass, his hands stretched out, his face full ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... "tickle of the sere" to handle. It has been said that, despite its alarming title, there is nothing in the book that even prudery, unless it were of the most irritable and morbid kind, could object to. There is no dwelling on what Defoe ingeniously calls "the vicious part" of the matter; there is no description of it closer than, if as close as, some passages of the Book of Proverbs (which are actually ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... himself to the top button of Mr. Brewster's coat, and was immediately dislodged by an irritable jerk of the ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... sick, nervous and irritable. He has lost all patience with the question of the reform of military organisation; he did not raise that question, it would seem, and has plenty of other things to worry him. He is going to ask Parliament, ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... if I be!" exclaimed Harris, who seemed to be in an irritable mood. "I know what I'm talking about, cap'n! I run my thumbnail along ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... wife of Dr. William Owen and an adventure that befell this lady during a week-end visit to Morristown, N. J., since this adventure has a bearing upon the narrative. As it is, we must be content to know that Mrs. William Owen was an irritable and neurasthenic person, a thorn in the side of her distinguished husband, who was supposed to cure these ailments. He could not cure his wife, however, and had long since given up trying. It was Mrs. Owen who quite unintentionally ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... He was tired, irritable, and eager to be clear of it all. His own cabin at the moment seemed an ideally peaceful retreat. Only his belief that in this girl's small shoe lay the absolute proof of Helen's innocence nerved him to go on with his self-imposed duty. His chief desire was to place these shoes in the coroner's ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... thing," declared Judge George Petty, who was sober and irritable, "if N. K. Rippetoe sends me in any more of that dod-gasted Injun bakin' powder, him and me is goin' to fall out. I warned him once I'd take my trade away and now he's gone and done it again. It won't raise ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... a bachelor who idealized Mrs. Carlyle and who regarded as the simple truth an old man's bitter regrets over opportunities neglected to make his wife happier. Everyone who has studied Carlyle's life knows that he was dogmatic, dyspeptic, irritable, and given to sharp speech even against those he loved the best. But over against these failings must be placed his tenderness, his unfaltering affection, his self-denial, his tremendous ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... et a mouthful an' I doubt if I'll have time to befo' we start," she was saying in an irritable voice, as I settled into my bib and my chair. "Anybody might have thought I'd be allowed to attend a funeral in peace, but I shan't be,—no, not even when it comes to ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... get word to her father, Bet brooded over the loss of the fan and it took all the ingenuity of her three friends to keep her cheerful. For the first time they found Bet inclined to be irritable. ...
— The Merriweather Girls and the Mystery of the Queen's Fan • Lizette M. Edholm
... scholarly ideals. The two continued friends throughout life. "Eastward Hoe" achieved the extraordinary popularity represented in a demand for three issues in one year. But this was not due entirely to the merits of the play. In its earliest version a passage which an irritable courtier conceived to be derogatory to his nation, the Scots, sent both Chapman and Jonson to jail; but the matter was soon patched up, for by this time Jonson had ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... whether in prosing or in versing, there is something in my writings that shall live for ever." And again, he writes to Hunt: "I am full of thoughts and plans, and should do something, if the feeble and irritable frame which encloses it was willing to obey the spirit. I fancy that then I should do great things." It seems almost certain that the incompleteness of many longer works designed in the Italian period, the abandonment of the ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... Gangrene.—The same Medicine gave Relief in other Cases, but they were too far advanced before it was administered. In these Cases, when the villous Coat of the Intestines was inflamed and very irritable, the mucilaginous Medicines, the pulvis e tragacantha, and such others, were of Service; and frequently Starch Clysters and Anodynes gave Relief, when other Remedies had little Effect. Flower, boiled with Milk, and sweetened with Sugar, and given for Breakfast, ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... the amusing antics of a troop of monkeys in the branches. Their marvellous activity among the trees is here displayed to perfection, as they quarrel and chase one another from tree to tree. The old ones seem passively irritable and decidedly averse to being bothered by the antics and mischievous activity of the youngsters. Taking possession of some particular branch, they warn away all would-be intruders with threatening grimaces and feints. The youthful members of the party are skillful ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... connection with Duroc was broken off. Two young hearts were thus crushed, with cruelty quite unintentional. Duroc was soon after married to an heiress, who brought him a large fortune, and, it is said, a haughty spirit and an irritable temper, which embittered ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... danger,) and threaten the mutilation of the empire, are the necessary and inevitable effects of the wicked system adopted by the weak, hot-headed, and petulant men to whom the administration of Ireland was entrusted, operating upon a generous and loyal but irritable ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous
... began to look pitifully mournful and desolate, and to shrink back into a solitude which Edgar never invaded, and whence even Alick was banished; and Edgar was irritable, unpleasant, moody, would take no interest in the approaching marriage, and, save that his settlements on Josephine were liberal, seemed to hold himself personally aggrieved by her choice, and conducted himself altogether as if he had been ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... disappeared in the sea of mist. In front and behind moved infantry. The commander in chief was standing at the end of the village letting the troops pass by him. That morning Kutuzov seemed worn and irritable. The infantry passing before him came to a halt without any command being given, apparently obstructed by ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... begun to realise the fact that men labour for their daily bread. Was it the peculiar intensity of his egoism that so long blinded him to common anxieties? Even as the last coins slipped between his fingers, he knew only a vaguely irritable apprehension. Did he imagine the world would beg for the honour of feeding and clothing Mr. ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... H. is described as high-tempered, irritable, lacking in physical activity, clumsy, and unsteady. Plays little. Just "stands around." Indifferent to praise or blame, has little sense of duty, plays underhand tricks. Is slow, absent-minded, easily confused, in thought, never shows appreciation or interest. So apathetic that he ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... done quoting, however, than his mother peered into the room, claiming the business talk that had been promised. From that talk George emerged irritable and silent. His mother's extravagance was really preposterous!—not to be borne. For four years now he had been free from the constant daily friction of money troubles which had spoilt his youth and robbed him of all power of respecting his mother. And he had hugged his freedom. But ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... cause in operation, some meteorological influence perhaps, electrical or otherwise, disposing the system to be a readier prey to the seizure. As certain constitutions of the year alter the blood and lead to fever or cholera, why should not others render the nervous system irritable and proner to derangement? ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... while he ate his supper, but it stopped, and the evening was marked by a deep stillness. He felt listless and disinclined to move; his guards, to judge by their voices, for they were playing cards outside, were languidly irritable. ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... unpolished material lying hidden beneath them. A little learning is a dangerous thing because it knows all and consequently it stands in the way of learning more or much. Hence, it is sorely impatient of novelty, of improvement, of originality. It is intolerant of contradiction, irritable, thin-skinned, and impatient of criticism, of a word spoken against it. It is chargeable with the Law of Copyright, which is not only legalised plunder of the foreigner, but is unfair, unjust and ungenerous to native talent for ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... least, suffered for a holiday to ramble brainless in the paradise of fools. Memory, imagination, zeal, perceptions of men and things, equally with rank and riches, have often cost their full price, as many mad have known; they take too much out of a man—fret, wear, worry him; to be irritable, is the conditional tax laid of old upon an author's intellect; the crowd of internal imagery makes him hasty, quick, nervous as a haunted hunted man: minds of coarser web heed not how small a thorn ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... seized upon by restlessness or impatience, she grew irritable and exacting, and "ill to do with," as Janet would have said, Graeme stood between her and the wonder and indignation, of her brothers, and, which was harder to do, shielded her from her own anger and self-contempt, when she came to herself again. ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... in quite an irritable mood, and his voice sounded as though he were ready to quarrel with anyone on the smallest pretext. It was therefore with an exclamation of impatience that he realized that Henri, with quick impulsiveness, had gripped him by the arm and ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... quadruped has sometimes given to describing zoologists, at least so it is said, an opportunity of paying a sly compliment, concealing an allusion to the touchy or supposed irritable disposition of the party after whom the species has been named. When Southey wrote the following paragraph, he happily expressed what is too commonly the meaning and wish of critics and criticised. If my readers look ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... "family circles" and "galleries" of the play-houses lower down were moving southward on foot, sharing for a few moments in the brilliancy and wealth of the upper avenue. The surface cars, clamorous, irritable, and timid, jammed at the crossings like sheep at a river-ford, while overhead the electric trains thundered to and fro, crowded with other citizens also theatre-bound. It seemed that the whole metropolis, alert to the drama, had flung its health and wealth ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... Nature, it will still always be needed to furnish the background of sanity, serenity, and cheerfulness to life, to give moral elasticity to our disposition, to round off the wiry edge of our fretfulness, and make us good-humored and easy of approach. Weakness is too apt to be what the doctors call irritable weakness. And that blessed internal peace and confidence, that acquiescentia in seipso, as Spinoza used to call it, that wells up from every part of the body of a muscularly well-trained human being, and soaks the indwelling ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... entered the army in 1813, and had served in all quarters of the globe with such distinction, as to insure promotion without interest. He was clever and agreeable, but excessively plain, weak in stature, and with a squeaking voice which provoked ridicule. He had an irritable temper, and answered some jesting on this topic by calling out the offender and shooting him through the lungs. In 1840 he was made Medical Inspector, and transferred from the Cape to Malta. He went from Malta to Corfu, and when the English Government ceded the Ionian Islands to ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... children for a holiday and we had brought our dog with us, for we knew he would be unhappy with the strangers to whom we had let our house. The weather was very wet and our lodgings were not comfortable; we were kept indoors for days together, and my temper, always irritable, became worse. My wife never resisted me when I was in these moods and the absence of opposition provoked me all the more. Had she stood up against me and told me I ought to be ashamed of myself it would have been better for me. One ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... THE IRRITABLE ULCER is painful and tender, the slightest injury causing it to bleed. It is of a dark purplish hue, and filled with spongy, sensitive granulations. It discharges a thin, bloody matter which is sometimes very fetid and acrid, and excoriates the tissues if it comes in contact with them. The edges ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin, one of the most original of writers, whose work was notably brilliant in the field of politics. From early youth he suffered from some disease of the body that made him cross and irritable, but he was much honored by the poor people of Ireland as their friend and champion. Daniel Defoe, who was about the same age as Swift, and lived at the same time, said Swift was a walking index of all books. It is interesting to note that two of ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... is possible to afford to distress that appears under this respectable and most interesting form, ought surely never to be withheld.—But the greatest care and precaution are necessary in giving assistance to those who have been rendered irritable and suspicious by misfortunes, and who have too much honest pride not to feel themselves degraded by accepting an obligation they never can hope ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... about Burdon. Something was evidently worrying him. For the last few days she had noticed how irritable he ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... in rest, his visor up over the eager, powerful face,—the eye and beak of an eagle, the jaw of a bull-dog, the face of a born ruler, a man of prey. And yet in the converging lines about the eyes, in the premature gray hair, in the nervous, irritable lips, you can see the promise of early decay, of an age that will be the spoil of superstition and bigotry. It is the face of a man who could make himself emperor and hermit. In his son, Philip II., the soldier dies out and the ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... his pleasure prolong his stay on earth, or ascend to heaven and rule over the gods. Rama replies, that he had been born for the good of the three worlds, and would now return to the place whence he had come, as it was his function to fulfil the purposes of the gods. While they are speaking the irritable rishi Durvasas comes, and insists on seeing Rama immediately, under a threat, if refused, of cursing Rama and all ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... truth, women—so far as they are simply women—would be glad to find in the man they marry defects so advantageous. But all men of letters (Adolphe, alas! is barely a man of letters), who are beings not a bit less irritable, nervous, fickle and eccentric than women, are far from possessing such solid qualities as those of Adolphe, and I hope they have not all ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... Dionaea Muscipula there is a still more wonderful contrivance to prevent the depredations of insects: The leaves are armed with long teeth, like the antennae of insects, and lie spread upon the ground round the stem; and are so irritable, that when an insect creeps upon them, they fold up, and crush or pierce it to death. The last professor Linneus, in his Supplementum Plantarum, gives the following account of the Arum Muscivorum. The ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... in his log-book, Mr Ark," the irritable old seaman then resumed, returning to the spot which Wilder had not left during the intervening time. "Though my cook has no great relish for a frog, they who would taste of his skill must seek him. By ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... empowered, as The Master had empowered his more intelligent subjects, to exact the most degraded of submission from all beneath him in the horrible conspiracy. Once, indeed, Bell was humbly implored by a panic stricken man to administer "the grace of The Master" to a moody and irritable child of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... like yours, you ought to make a good nurse. Take care of your sister," he added almost appealingly, divided between his knowledge of how poor a nurse Miss Madigan was and how impossible it was to tell this to her niece. "She'll be cross and irritable and—even worse than usual," he said, with a grim smile that recognized the battle-ground upon which the Madigans spent their lives; and this recognition made him seem more human to them than any other adult. "But you just treat her like a teething baby. She's ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... meant three separate efforts, CANTELUPE escapes. WEDGECROFT has walked to the table, his brows a little puckered. Now TREBELL notices that KENT'S door is open; he goes quickly into the room and finds it empty. Then he stands for a moment irritable and ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... details of the interview from the interviewer himself. The magnate—he had no objection to the description—had been irritable and minced no words. The grass was bad alike for production and boxoffice, taking everyone's mind off the prime business of making and viewing motionpictures. It was injuring The Industry and he couldnt conceal the fact that The Industry, speaking through ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... ma'am: the letters are the same, but the invitation as you call it—" Here Cai paused and cast an irritable glance in the direction of Dinah, who had stepped to the door of the oven to conceal her mirth. If the woman would but go he might be able to explain. "But the invitation don't apply similarly, not in ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... garden, but somehow things seemed to drag. Conversation was fitful, except on the part of Ukridge, who continued to talk easily on all subjects, unconscious of the fact that the party was depressed and at least one of his guests rapidly becoming irritable. I watched the professor furtively as Ukridge talked on, and that ominous phrase of Mr. Chase's concerning four-point-seven guns kept coming into my mind. If Ukridge were to tread on any of his pet corns, as he might at any minute, there would be an explosion. ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... case. But nothing is more common than for a child to destroy his own peace, and to make his brothers and sisters continually unhappy by indulging in a peevish and irritable spirit. Nothing is more common than for a child to cherish this disposition until he becomes a man, and then, by his peevishness and fault- finding, he destroys the happiness of all who are near him. His home is the scene of discord. His family ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott
... of character which I had expected to find among the people of the West. Of all virtues patience would have been the last which I should have thought of attributing to them. I should have expected to see them angry when robbed of their time, and irritable under the stress of such grievances as railway delays; but they are never irritable under such circumstances as I have attempted to describe, nor, indeed, are they a people prone to irritation under ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... to be made by giving lessons! What can one do with a few kopecks?" said he in an irritable tone, rather to himself ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... and that nothing but the substantial benefits by which it declared itself could have induced its object to meet it with even the semblance of gratitude. As this mortifying conviction came home to her bosom, she grew restless, irritable, and captious to excess; she watched all his motions with a self-tormenting jealousy; she fed her own disquiet by listening to the malicious informations of his enemies; and her heart at length becoming callous by repeated exasperations, she began to visit his delinquencies ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... plain. I know his fate. It has long been foreseen and expected, and I have summoned up my equanimity to meet it. Would to Heaven he may find the calamity as light as I should find it! but I fear his too irritable spirit." ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... nation ever treated their best men so badly. I see I must put on a lecture in Aristophanes for your special benefit. Vain, irritable, shallow, suspicious old Demus, with his two oboli in his cheek, and doubting only between Cleon and the sausage-seller, which he shall choose for his wisest man—not to govern, but to serve his whims and caprices. You must call ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... first instance that I can recall is that of a Wagner Opera and its effects upon me. For a number of years I suffered a great deal from insomnia. I could not get two hours of consecutive sleep and the effect of my sufferings was to make me nervous and irritable. Suddenly somebody presented me with a couple of tickets for a performance of Parsifal and I went. It began at five o'clock in the afternoon. For twenty minutes all went serenely and then the music began to work. I fell into a deep and refreshing slumber. The intermission ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... certain, after my late experiences, of not being tied to a sick-bed during the few days he would be able to give me. Thus I spent the winter, calm and resigned in my productive moments, but moody and irritable towards the outside world, and consequently a source of some anxiety to my friends. I was glad, however, when Karl Ritter's arrival in Zurich allowed him to become more intimate with me again. By his selecting Zurich as a settled home, for ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... always well or cheerfully performed, especially Margaret's. Her love for music amounted to a passion, and she grudged the time for practice; then their inexperience tried her mother's patience sadly, and brought the inevitable scoldings, and made Margaret's irritable nerves flash up to meet her mother's. But that Saturday morning that we began to tell about, it was such a very exasperating one all around. One thing after another happened to make things go wrong, till it fairly seemed as ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... indeed, out of His own Divine Brains. To the savage theologian and his more civilised successors that seems an intelligent theory of the Universe. They fail to see that they have merely removed an inevitable difficulty a stage further back. (And we can understand the reply of the irritable old-world theologian to one who asked what God was doing before the creation: "He was making rods for the backs of fools.") For the Evolution of a Creator is no easier a problem than ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... one has to flee from his presence. I never could get on very well with rhinoceroses, but the large deer, bison, and wild cattle have the quality detected by Mr. Butler. So has the gorgeous, well-grown tiger, in full measure, when he purrs in answer to one's voice: but the lion is pompous, irritable, and easily upset. He never purrs. He is unpleasantly and obscurely spotted. He seems to be afraid of losing his dignity, and to be conscious of the fact that his reputation—like that of some English officials—depends on the overpowering wig which ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... enough at leisure to observe little courtesies. Hard workers are in danger of being irritable and hurried and careless of the trifles which add so much to the beauty and dignity of life. Of course my injunction includes some social life. We get much of our best intellectual as well as moral life ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... slimness, even in this poor old country. Fond as he was of the historical past, Mr. Holmes remained loyal to the historical present. He was not one of those Americans who are always censuring England, and always hankering after her. He had none of that irritable feeling, which made a great contemporary of his angrily declare that he could endure to hear "Ye Mariners of England" sung, because of his own country's successes, some time ago. They were gallant and conspicuous victories of the American frigates; we do not grudge them. A fair fight should leave ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang |
