"Nerve" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and cheese, sir," he said, after a pause to collect his wits. "Mr. Hilton is clever and well read, and cares nothing about sport, though he has a wonderful steady nerve. Yes, I mean that——" for Winter's prominent eyes showed surprise at the statement. "He's a strange mixture, is Mr. Hilton. He's a fair nailer with a revolver. I've seen him hit a penny three times straight off ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... were not animated with his heroic spirit, nor inspired with his prophetic foresight, that they failed. They were looking after gain, or actuated by selfish ambition, while he was straining every nerve to avert danger. When he swore hatred to the Roman on the altar at nine years of age, he imbibed a principle which the judgment of his maturer years told him was the only means of saving his country. To the prosecution of this object he devoted his life. From his first entrance ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... impossible; and if he declined, Christendom would cry fie upon him. Two successive popes, John XXII. and Benedict XII., preached the crusade, and offered their mediation to settle the differences between the two kings; but they were unsuccessful in both their attempts. The two kings strained every nerve to form laic alliances. Philip did all he could to secure to himself the fidelity of Count Louis of Flanders, whom the King of England several times attempted, but in vain, to win over. Philip drew into close ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... a blood-stained hand, slipped his gun back into its holster and got up. He swayed a little, with the swinging slide of the air-liner and with the weakness that nerve-shock of a wound brings. But coolly enough he slid open the door leading into the main corridor, and passed through, closing the door after him. Where his hand touched the metal, red stains showed. Neither man of the pair now left in the pilot-house made any comments. This ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... blunting of moral faculty, fruits of death brought forth in the soul of the survivor, which are more horrifying to the enlightened consciousness than the dying groans of the stricken can be to the more bodily nerve. The thing to fear is not pain, but trespass; not suffering, but sin—the peculiar sin of war is that it corrupts while it consumes, that it demoralizes whilst it destroys. It is not because war kills that it is the devil, but because it depraves; ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... breast, and every nerve in his body quivering with wrath, the proud, unhappy boy strode through the gay streets. They had betrayed him then, these accursed Beauforts! they circled his steps with schemes to drive him like a deer into the snare of their loathsome charity! The roof was to be taken from his head—the ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... a cause? Let us rather believe with our good King David, that 'Honor must hope always; for no real evil can befall the virtuous, either in this world or in the next!' Were I a man, the justice that leads on the brave Wallace would nerve my arm with the strength of a host. Besides, look at our country; God's gift of freedom is stamped upon it. Our mountains are his seal. Plains are the proper territories of tyranny; there the armies of ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... a look of admiration. "You've got the nerve, all right," he said. "Well, so long, till we meet again," and whirling around he sauntered slowly off in the direction of the forest, ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... celebrated French surgeon, born at Pierre-Buffiere; he was a man of firm nerve, signally sure and skilful as an operator, and contributed greatly, both by his inventions and discoveries, to the progress of surgery; a museum of pathological anatomy, in which he made important discoveries, bears his ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... not fit for the big north. Tall and slim, with blond hair in spite of his French blood and name, a quiet and unexcitable face, and an air that Blake called "damned superiority." He wondered how the Fiddling Man had ever screwed up nerve enough to kill Breault. Undoubtedly there had been no fight. A quick and treacherous shot, no doubt. That was like a man who played a fiddle. POOF! He had no more respect for him than if he ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... replied Rosa, "I do not. I told Mr. Sawyer so on the train. It is hotter in the country than it is in the city. I can't bear the ticking of a clock in my room, and I think crickets and owls are more nerve-destroying than clocks, and I positively detest anything that buzzes and stings, like bees, ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... be afraid. No need of that. It won't be him. It'll be me that comes. But if it should be him, don't let him get close. Shoot him first. It will be to save you from worse than death. Have you got the nerve ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... imitate the faculties and actions of a man, and to impose a perpetual illusion on the senses of his friends and enemies. Articulate sounds vibrated on the ears of the disciples; but the image which was impressed on their optic nerve eluded the more stubborn evidence of the touch; and they enjoyed the spiritual, not the corporeal, presence of the Son of God. The rage of the Jews was idly wasted against an impassive phantom; and the mystic scenes of the passion and death, the resurrection ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... diplomacy winning against politeness, "I never dreamed you'd have the nerve to try that fancy corkscrew throw of yours before all that crowd. Why, after two years to get out of practice, you took an awful chance of making a fool of yourself! Y'see, Bill," he explained with a ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... While a student in the Old World, he performed leading operations with a skill and natural readiness which astonished his instructors as much as they delighted them. He was possessed of a firmness and dexterity of hand, a calm, cool brain, a quick, unfailing eye, a calmness of nerve, a strength of will, and a physical endurance which were Nature's gifts to him, and which rendered him a great surgeon even before he had received his diploma. He did not trust to these natural gifts alone, however, but applied himself to the theory of his profession with a ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... Lord Airlie's in the previous month Lord Beaconsfield, talking to Matthew Arnold, had described the great (that is, the fourteenth) Lord Derby as having been "a man full of nerve, dash, fire, and resource, who carried the House irresistibly along with him." Bishop Samuel Wilberforce was reckoned by Mr. Gladstone as one of the three men who, of all his acquaintance, had the greatest natural ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... the Planeteer's nerve. He knew Bradshaw was in pain, because bleeding into high vacuum was always painful. The crack in the Englishman's helmet had let most of the air out, and his own blood pressure had done the rest. He would carry the marks for days. A few more moments, and all air and all heat would ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin
... angry, do against two hundred, when his own followers refuse to support him. The valour of the peasants was distinctly of that quality whose better part is discretion. The thunder of that fusillade had been enough to shatter their nerve, and to Souvestre's exhortations that they should become martyrs in the noble cause, of the people against tyranny, in whatsoever guise it came, they answered with the unanswerable ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... pay the rent which gave her so much uneasiness, and she exerted every nerve to prevail on her father effectually to succour the family; but the utmost she could obtain was a small sum very inadequate to the purpose, to enable the poor woman to carry into execution a little scheme ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft
... remembered that most British runners can only afford a bare fortnight or three weeks' winter holiday in the Alps, and that they are not always in training when they arrive. Ski-ing is a sport which exercises every nerve and muscle as well as lungs, as is soon discovered during the first 100 feet climb or the first fall in deep snow ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse
... not dwell on the days of anxiety that followed. I do not remember them much myself, except that they were very long and nerve-racking. I will tell you at once how it was that we first actually came ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson
... diamond-shaped bed of Parma violets, kept back so long from bloom that I might have a succession of them; these were the last, and their perfume told it, for it was at once a caress and a sigh. I breathed the gale of sweetness till every nerve rested and every pulse was tranquil as the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... he said to Broussard, "but the news you give me takes all my nerve away, and yet it's the best news I ever heard in my life. You know, sir, it was some words of mine—and God knows I never meant to harm Lawrence—that made him strike me, and then he ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... there any man who, having made a fortune at Monte Carlo, will admit that he owes it entirely to chance? Will he not rather attribute it to his wonderful system, or if not to that, at any rate to his wonderful nerve, his perseverance, or ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... produce innumerable bad results. People who eat bread made from fine white flour naturally crave the food elements which have been eliminated from the wheat, and are thus led to an excessive consumption of meat, and the nerve-starvation and consequent irritability thus induced may also lead to the use of alcoholic drinks. We believe that one of the strongest barriers women could erect against the inroads of intemperance would be to supply the tables of the land with good bread made ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... The most sensitive nerve in the British Empire terminates in Afghanistan, and the ghost of the czar is always dancing about the Khyber Pass, through which caravans laden with merchandise find their way across the mountains between India and the countries of Central Asia. ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... through each change of fortune strange, Racked nerve, and brain all burning, His loving faith in mother-land Knew never shade of turning; By Britain's lakes, by Neva's wave, Whatever sky was o'er him, He heard her rivers' rushing sound, Her blue peaks ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... the nerve-worn and sleepless, or thinkers standing with hands to the eyes on some crag above the multitude, see things thus in skeleton outline, bare of flesh? In Surbiton the skeleton is wrapped ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... reinforce his blind faith. Calamities were raining around the family and saddening his relatives, yet not one grazed the intrepid sub-lieutenant who was persisting in his daring deeds with the heroic nerve of a musketeer. ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... up, got his mouth empty enough to talk. "All right, let's have the story," Greg said, still looking as though he couldn't believe his eyes. "The last we saw, you were blown into atoms out there in that Scavenger ... you've got some nerve turning up now and scaring us half out of ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse
... to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror. The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax, and nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade. This is a regime that has already used poison gas to murder thousands of its own citizens—leaving the bodies of mothers huddled over their dead children. This is a regime that agreed to international inspections—then kicked out ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... was in most respects but the pole, focus, or nerve-knot of the surrounding country life; differing from the many manufacturing towns which are as foreign bodies set down, like boulders on a plain, in a green world with which they have nothing in common. Casterbridge lived by agriculture at one remove further from the fountainhead than the adjoining ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... the hind quarters, mentioned by Dr. Provost, accords perfectly with the action of this poison, as it acts on the nerve centers, especially the cerebro-spinal centers, and produces spasms of the limbs, then of the trunk, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... been rather an aimless man. He was a brilliant sailor, not because he set himself to the task, but merely because seamanship was born in him, together with a dogged steadiness of nerve and a complete fearlessness. It was so easy to be a good sailor that he had not even the satisfaction of having to make an effort. His heart was empty. He had indeed the sea, but his love of it was unconscious. Away from it, he was ill at ease; on its breast, he was not actively happy—he ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... House is cut off. Strain every nerve to open communication with him by James River, or any other way you can. Report ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... hour all the small boats plied back and forth, the rescuers using all their nerve and muscle power ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock
... whether they will live slaves or die freemen." To the governors and State assemblies he added: "On your exertions at this critical period, together with those of the other colonies in the common cause, the salvation of America now evidently depends.... Exert, therefore, every nerve to distinguish yourselves. Quicken your preparations, and stimulate the good people of your government, and there is no danger, notwithstanding the mighty armament with which we are threatened, but you will be able to lead them to victory, to liberty, and to happiness." ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... something white in his hand, actually clambered out of the firing-trench and advanced towards our lines. The distance was barely seventy yards. No shot was fired, but you may be sure that safety-catches were hastily released. Suddenly, in the tense silence, the ambassador's nerve failed him. He bolted back, followed by a few desultory bullets. The reason for his sudden panic was never rightly ascertained, but the weight of public opinion inclined to the view that Mucklewame, who had momentarily exposed himself ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... the latter. "And don't blame a man for too much caution; no offence intended; and these China rivers shake a fellow's nerve. All I want is just to see you're what you say you are; it's only my duty, sir, and what you would do yourself in the circumstances. I've not always been a ship-captain: I was a banker once, and I tell you that's the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... but her father could not get away. He consistently spent his days in overworking, and his evenings in wishing he hadn't overworked. He was attractive, fresh, pink-cheeked, white-mustached, and nerve-twitching with years ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... on the morrow. After halting at Belbeis the troopers gave rein to their steeds; and a ride of nearly 40 miles brought them to the city about sundown. Rumour magnified their numbers; while the fatalism that used to nerve the Moslem in his great days now predisposed him to bow the knee and mutter Kismet at the advent of the seemingly predestined masters of Egypt. To this small, wearied, but lordly band Cairo surrendered, and Arabi himself ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... the varied erudition of the more delightful writer? The parallelist compares Erasmus to "a river swelling its waters, and often overflowing its banks; Budaeus rolled on like a majestic stream, ever restraining its waves within its bed. The Frenchman has more nerve, and blood, and life, and the Hollander ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... was certainly nerve-racking. The Indians ate everything in the house, and from my seat in a dim corner I watched them while my sisters waited on them. I can still see the tableau they made in the firelit room and hear the unfamiliar accents of their speech as they talked together. Occasionally one of ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... indeed very strange, sir. You must summon all your nerve and fortitude to help us through. Never before were your strength and good strong common-sense more needed. I've nearly reached the end of my endurance. Please, sir, for Helen's sake, preserve your self-control and the ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... one of the bravest deeds of your life. Only for that, Frank Merriwell would be dead. Only for your nerve and bravery in shooting that ruffian, one of God's grandest men would have been murdered in cold blood. Since my college days I have loved and admired him above all other men. When you saved his ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... headed them there they would be obliged to run down to the other end of the lake before effecting a landing, while he could not calculate on being able to beat all the canoes, most of which carried four paddlers, who would strain every nerve to retrieve their failure ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... away from her rivals, passed the winning-post a bad fifth, even his iron nerve failed him for once. He uttered no word; but he grew pale as death, and staggered as if about to fall. A moment later, however, he had pulled himself together and was helping Lady Aylesbury to count her small losses. ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... sprung, That 'gainst some forest driving all its might, Plucks off the branches, beats them down and hurls Afar; then onward passing proudly sweeps Its whirlwind rage, while beasts and shepherds fly. Mine eyes he loos'd, and spake: "And now direct Thy visual nerve along that ancient foam, There, thickest where the smoke ascends." As frogs Before their foe the serpent, through the wave Ply swiftly all, till at the ground each one Lies on a heap; more than a thousand ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... strange and susceptible softness of fiber. And this blank habit of mind, when she did not think, and now realized that she was not dreaming, seemed to be the body of Carley Burch, and her heart and soul stripped of a shell. Nerve and emotion and spirit received something from her surroundings. She absorbed her environment. She felt. It was a delightful state. But when her own consciousness caused it to elude her, then she both resented and regretted. Anything that approached permanent attachment to this crude and untenanted ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... still gazing at me fixedly. Some nerve snapped in me under the hypnotic stare. I leapt to my feet and cried, "In the name of God and Democracy and the Dragon's grandmother—in the name of all good things—I charge you to avaunt and haunt this house no more." Whether or no it was the result of the exorcism, there ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... you would be in no bad company. I have a sneaking fondness for the fellow myself, and it has been my ill-fortune never to meet him. By all accounts he is a gallant scoundrel, with a nerve of iron, whereas Crosby—Oh, no, whoever Galloping Hermit may be, ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... herself. Alan's nerve was good, but there was a disturbed note in his voice; besides he would not have asked her help unless it was needed. Wriggling back cautiously, she got level with Thorn, although there was not much room for them side by side. Her feet and ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... as regards its form, colour, varieties, and delicious perfume, description is needless, though I may say, in passing, that its fragrance renders it of value to those whose olfactory nerve is dead to the scent ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... made any such gigantic blunder as that," returned Tom firmly, "then we'd deserve to be run out. We wouldn't have the nerve to put in another ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... family. He told the girl and her parents lies. They believed them and sent me away. He borrowed huge sums of money of me, and never paid—never meant to pay. Always he was my secret enemy, yet when the world knew he was a murderer I strained every nerve to save his life, for his sister's sake. I did save it. But for every one concerned it was better that he should be removed where he could no longer strike at society, and I could scarcely regret his fate. Four years passed; I loved again, this time a beautiful American girl, ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... music; with the excitement of the battle, the camp, the ever-shifting scenes of war, sustained by the hope of victory; the promise of reward; the ambition for distinction; the fire of patriotism kindling every thought, and stimulating every nerve and muscle to action! How much easier is all this, than to wait and watch alone with nothing to ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... them. Miss Prescott need not know anything of the danger. After all, it may amount to nothing. As for Jess, she has as much, and more, nerve ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... susceptibility and our own experience. See to it, friend, before you pronounce a too hasty judgement, that your own moral sensibilities are not of a hoofed or clawed character. The keenest eye will not serve, unless you have the delicate fingers, with their subtle nerve filaments, which elude scientific lenses, and lose themselves in the ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... back, but she seemed like a person stunned with a great blow, and Alice wished grief had had any other effect upon her. It lasted for days. A kind of stupor hung over her; tears did not come; the violent strain of every nerve and feeling seemed to have left her benumbed. She would sleep long heavy sleeps the greater part of the time, and seemed to have no power ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... not have displayed the nerve evinced by this frail and tender woman, for however callous he may be, some feature will betray the torture he is enduring; but a woman can often turn a smiling face upon the person who is racking her very soul. At ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... lay in bed, shaking with fatigue and nerve tension, Ida mumbled drowsily, "Oh, the fresh butter Ma brought me is down in that cave." And she fell asleep. A few moments later I too ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... voice now shrill and quivering and just out of tune, so that it jarred every nerve in Maggie's body, "Thou seest what we are, miserable sinners not worthy of Thy care or goodness, sunk deep in the mire of evil living and evil 'abits, nevertheless, oh God, we, knowing Thy loving 'eart towards Thy sinful servants, do pray Thee that Thou wilt give us Thy blessing before we ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... intelligence upon the whole superior to Matey's in this matter, and, having already satisfied himself by means of hurried investigation that at present he could not escape from the walled-in yard, the Wolfhound stood half a dozen paces distant from the man, waiting, with every nerve and muscle at concert pitch. The man moved forward, with hand outstretched invitingly. The Wolfhound moved backward, with hackles slightly raised. Thus they followed each other round the little yard perhaps six times, the distance between them being maintained with nicety and precision ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... have the nerve to dive off a high cliff into the sea, as you did. Be that as it may, my gratitude to you is none the less. If you want a friend, if you have any trouble about that boat, or anything else, send for me, for I would cross ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... most free-tongued, and therefore the most alive. A classic commonplace becomes in his hands a new intimacy of feeling: where verbal commonplaces have, as it were, glazed over the surface of our sense, he goes behind them to rouse anew the living nerve. And there is no theme on which he does not some time or other dart his sudden and searching glance. It is truly said of him by Emerson that "there have been men with deeper insight; but, one would say, never a man with such abundance of thoughts: he is never dull, ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... along," spoke the captain, loudly, so that it was heard by all the soldiers near at hand. "He never tried to rejoin his detachment. He never had any nerve. He probably saw what was going on and hid himself, never daring even to let us know. Damn these psalm-singing, Sunday-go-to-meeting soldiers anyhow! Here, Howard," he continued, turning to a young trooper who stood silently at his horse's head, "you come with me. Lead ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... nerve. The night operators at Donerail, Schofield and Agua Caliente are all Guilford appointees, and when the new man explains the situation to them, they'll do what they are told to do. But I'm thinking Patsy won't pull up for anything milder ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... deadly coldness. "Keep on, and you'll have the government down on us for violating the anti-trust law. What's the matter? Have you lost your nerve?" ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... sake," I groaned, "for your future, to help you to the better thing. Though God knows I love you well enough as you are, and want you, Diana, want you with every nerve and fibre of me, with every breath. Oh, sir, sir," I cried, "help me to ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... principles of things. Concede intellectual power, or the spiritual element, then add this temperament, and there follows a certain subtile, penetrative, radical quality of thought, a characteristic percipience of principles. And principles are not only seen, but felt; they thrill the nerve as well as greet the eye; and the man consequently becomes highly amenable to his own belief. The primary question respecting men is this,—How far are they affected by the original axiomatic truths? Truths are like the winds. Near the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... another of the players, a grim old jailbird who had escaped from the Ceuta penitentiary and who looked just like a fox. "When a guy has the nerve, he rakes in all the dough," and he made a gesture of scooping up all the coins on the table in ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... found that old textbooks had been discarded and new text-books prepared—books especially suited to Philippine conditions and directed to practical ends. Instead of a general physiology describing bones, arteries, and nerve centres, I found a little book on {169} "Sanitation and Hygiene in the Tropics," written in simple language, profusely illustrated, and with information which the pupil can use in bettering the health of himself, his family, and his neighborhood. Instead of a general ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... lacks nerve, and I have nothing but contempt for him," said the Virginian. "I didn't know but he would challenge me ...
— Frank Merriwell's Nobility - The Tragedy of the Ocean Tramp • Burt L. Standish (AKA Gilbert Patten)
... The author got his nerve back, fathered the book, made corrections; and this edition, too, sold with a rush. Byron returned to Newstead, invited a score of his Cambridge cronies, who came down, entering the mansion between the bear and the wolf, and were received with salvos of pistol-shots. Here they ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... the world would have jumped, or said, "My letter!!!" or shown surprise in some way. But the Old Fellow has a nerve. He looked sideways at Sylvia for a moment and then he said kind of drily, ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... borne by the will of the people will be waged, to be sure, if it has been declared by the constituted authorities who deemed it necessary; it will even be waged pluckily, and possibly victoriously, after we have once smelled fire and tasted blood, but it will lack from the beginning the nerve and enthusiasm of a war in which we are attacked. In such a one the whole of Germany from Memel to the Alpine Lakes will flare up like a powder mine; it will be bristling with guns, and no enemy will dare to engage this furor teutonicus which develops ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... he went on, "that I could make you understand, in your superb health, just all I mean by change of conditions. It means change of food, air, surroundings; every thing in short, which addresses itself to the senses. It means an entire new set of nerve impressions." ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... nothing. I'm sick and tired of framing stuff and then have you throw it down because you've lost your nerve and are afraid of a girl. I'm done, I tell you. If you think you can improve on my plans, go ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... Motets of Lassus. For my own part I had none of this power of detachment, and the day, in consequence, appeared to be interminable. The great national importance of the issue, the suspense in high quarters, the direct nature of the experiment which we were trying—all combined to work upon my nerve. It was a relief to me when at last, after a light dinner, we set out upon our expedition. Lestrade and Mycroft met us by appointment at the outside of Gloucester Road Station. The area door of Oberstein's house had been left open the night before, and it was necessary for me, as Mycroft Holmes ...
— The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans • Arthur Conan Doyle
... shells exploding near by miss you, and you become convinced that Fritz does not really have your name and address, yet each explosion registers its shock on the nerve centers. If this be long-continued, the nerves give way and you find yourself a shell-shock patient, tagged and on your way to one of the quiet back areas where you can forget the war and get a grip upon ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West
... read this plain, unvarnished tale without admiring the stern resolution, the unbending pride, the loftiness of spirit that seemed to nerve the hearts of these self-taught heroes and to raise them above the instinctive feelings of human nature? When the Gauls laid waste the city of Rome, they found the senators clothed in their robes and seated with stern tranquillity in their ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... that sucker to me!" Flixman interrupted. "Actually the feller is got the nerve to ask me a hundred dollars for drawing a will, and this here feller on Center Street wants only fifty. I bet yer if I would go round there to-morrow or the next day ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... the cellar putting in the running gear for the 'cross-the-house conveyors. He has his nerve with him. He's putting in three drives entirely different from the way they are in the plans. He told me just now that there wasn't a man in the office who could design a drive that wouldn't tie itself up in square knots ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... desire to whistle, as he did in the presence of his models, but realized that his nerve was giving way and feared to commit some stupidity. He cut short the sitting under pretense of having an appointment. When they bowed at parting they felt themselves farther apart than the day they first met at ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... desire to open a conversation, as the widow's departure meant the loss of one who had been almost a mother to us rough and homeless laborers. Just as we made ready to retire someone knocked on the bunk house door, and thinking that perhaps some wandering tramp had the nerve to bother us at this late hour in the night, we roughly ordered the intruder to be gone. Instead of going, the knocks continued, and angry at the persistence of the person, we pulled the door open, and ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... the baronet; "and the next thing, I suppose, is to land and commence our climb without loss of time. What a wild-looking spot it is, to be sure; if I were to stand looking at it long I believe I should lose my nerve and ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... no longer. The commander, an Italian named Morandi, was a brave man; any fate appeared better than that which awaited him from an enemy so malignant. He set fire to the powder magazine; the vessel blew up; Morandi perished in the Nile; and all of less nerve, who had previously reached the shore in safety, were put to death to the very last man, with cruelties the most detestable, by their inhuman enemies. For all this Napoleon cared little; but one solitary fact there ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... nerve with you!" exclaimed Willy, half-angrily. "Here you go out in the night and get lost, and we come out after you, and the mine gets flooded, and we get tied up between the solid wall and a bend in the passage, and then you blame us for ...
— Boy Scouts in the Coal Caverns • Major Archibald Lee Fletcher
... skipper, takin' the cook's hand, 'shake! I never knowed a man like you afore,' says he. 'T' my knowledge, you're the on'y man in the Labrador fleet would do it. I'm proud,' says he, 't' take the hand o' the man with nerve enough t' marry Walrus ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... the epidermis (which is in general ciliated) there is over the entire surface of the body a layer of nerve-fibres, occurring immediately outside the basement-membrane which separates the epidermis from the subjacent musculature. The nervous system is thus essentially epidermal in position and diffuse in distribution; but an interesting concentration of nerve-cells ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... to who it might be that thus drove up; the thought was momentous and overwhelming; it might have been sufficient to have destroyed all courage and all presence of mind had her nerves been, by the slightest degree, less strong. But as it was, her nerve sustained her, and her courage did not falter for one single instant. With a calm face and firm step she advanced to the window. With a steady hand she drew the curtains aside and looked out. Little could lie seen amidst the gloom at first; but at length, as she gazed, ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... uncomfortable, he will forget all about it, and I was not scolded, do you understand. It was more manner, but my sisters thought as I did of the significance:—and it was enough to prove to me (if I had not known) what a desperate game we should be playing if we depended on a yielding nerve there. ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... hindered me from doing so. What should I do? I was in the same house with her, I had again rescued her from terrible surroundings, she had spoken kindly to me, and yet I remembered the look she gave me more than a year ago, and I could not nerve myself to ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... true and faithful art, Thy heart can ne'er disown me; Nerve me in fight to bear my part, With victory then crown me! Lay Thou on me The load, by Thee Appointed, that I bear it. When Thou the rod Dost use, my God! In measure may ...
— Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs - Translated by John Kelly • Paul Gerhardt
... me, and I was deeply mortified and annoyed at the discovery of its influence upon me. I first took myself severely to task about it, and then proceeded to seek for the cause of the trouble. I was at first disposed to attribute it to nerve-shock, induced by the occurrences of the preceding twenty-four hours, but a further analysis of my feelings convinced me that my nerves were still to be depended upon as implicitly as ever, and that the real source of my distress lay at my feet, ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... light of day and digs its burrow and seeks its food by wonderfully cooerdinated activities of its muscles and other parts, which are controlled by a double chain of ganglia along its ventral side, connected with a similar pair of grouped nerve-cells above the anterior part of the digestive tract. The ganglia of each segment exercise immediate supervision over the structures of their respective territory, while they pass on impulses to other ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... and that they kept up the drainage, while the pair nearest to me had only had the pressure upon them of the water escaping from the first. And now a good bold swim, and I could have been in the big pit-like opening between the two pairs of gates; but the spirit was gone, the nerve was absent and still clinging to the shelly piece of timber, I closed my eyes, for I felt that near as rescue seemed, I could do nothing to aid it. As for Hodson, in this time of dread, I had forgotten him—forgotten all but the great horror of the water lap, lap, lapping at my lip, ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... accurate scientific instrument, in his experiments. This instrument is so finely adjusted that the faintest current will cause a deflection of the registering needle, which is delicately swung on a tiny pivot. If the galvanometer be attached to a human nerve, and the end of the nerve be irritated, the needle ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... "Darn his nerve, if he ain't wavin' his hand to me to say, 'I see you little boy, you're it!' Spotted me, danged if he didn't, by ginger! an' now the fun's a'goin' to start right along. Wow! this is what I like, an' pays up for a wheen o' lazy days. How the blood does leap through ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... the burning tide— Dark storms of feeling sweep across her breast— In loneliness there needs no mask of pride— To nerve the soul, and veil the heart's unrest, Amid the crowd her glances brightly beam, Her smiles with undimmed lustre sweetly shine: The haunting visions of life's fevered dream The cold and careless seek not ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... virtues, but he was not a good driver, and when the horses grew restive and kicked over the traces, he lacked nerve, hesitated, and was lost. Trained for political life at the side of Pitt,[30] after a distinguished career in diplomacy, which made him known in all the Courts of Europe, he entered the Cabinet of the Duke of Wellington in 1828, and afterwards held the post of Secretary for the Colonies in the first ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... he would exert himself, to have a nerve. I could not have thought it was in the power of his capacity to have given us such ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... in 1796, in which this point is brought out. Being a Quaker, he naturally did not approve of the way those early preachers conducted services. Yet he would not be likely to exaggerate what came under his notice. This is what he says of one he heard: "I thought he exerted every nerve by the various positions in which he placed himself to cry, stamp and smite, often turning from exhortation to prayer. Entreating the Almighty to thunder, or rather to enable him to do it. Also, to smite with the sword, and to use many destroying weapons, at which my mind was led from the more ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... nerve-trying situation, but life or death might depend on their self-control, and they stood the test successfully, although poor Tom had an almost irrepressible desire to sneeze, in conquering which he ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall
... said Doom. He waited for no reply, but paced up and down the room excitedly, the pleats of his kilt and the thongs of his purse swinging to his movements: a handsome figure, as Mont-aiglon could not but confess. "I am still shattered at the nerve to think that I had almost taken your life there in a fool's blunder. You must wonder to see me in ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... switched off, the door closed, she was alone once more, this time in almost complete darkness. Again she strained her ears upon the retreating steps, afraid yet to move her cramped muscles. The punctured arm throbbed and smarted painfully; every nerve in her body was stretched like a fiddle-string. Finally, far below, sounded the door's slam; a moment later, in front of the house, the whir of a starting engine vibrated upon the still air. The doctor was gone. Now or never, quick, not an instant ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... thick enough to make it difficult to see where one was going. People and vehicles passed him, vague phantoms in the darkness. Occasionally the former collided with him. He began to wish he had not accepted his brother's invitation. The unexpected sight of the three masters had shaken his nerve. Till then only the romantic, adventurous side of the expedition had struck him. Now the risks began to loom larger in his mind. It was all very well, he felt, to think, as he had done, that he would ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... hast sped the living light With throat outstretched and every nerve a-strain, Now on thy left hand labors gray-faced Pain, And Death hangs close behind thee on the right. Soon flag the flying feet, soon fails the sight, With every pulse the gaunt pursuers gain; And all thy splendor of strong life must wane And set ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... understood that the flag-flyer should always be shunned and condemned. When his loss amounts to only 100 or 200, or when, not detecting his purpose, the adversaries fail to double, and the loss is, therefore, smaller, the odds favor his exhibition of nerve. Flag-flying, however, is like dynamite: in the hands of a child or of one unfamiliar with its characteristics, it is a danger, the extent of which none can foretell; but used with skill, it becomes a tool ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work
... with a cry of pain and terror, slipped to the ground, his nerve completely shaken. The sorrel lashed out with his hind feet, and missed his head by a hairbreadth. Pedro turned to run, stumbled, and ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... and ridden up and fired their pistols undaunted into the face of death. His father had conquered luxury, and overcome indolence. Here was one who never resisted any temptation; never had a desire but he coddled and pampered it; if ever he had any nerve, frittered it away among cooks, and tailors, and barbers, and furniture-mongers, and opera dancers. What muscle would not grow flaccid in such a life—a life that was never strung up to any action—an endless ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fixed on Cyril's caricature on my left hand; I stood, every nerve in my body seeming to listen to the talk, while the veil of the goddess-queen in the caricature appeared to become illuminated; the tragedy of our love (from the spectacle of her father's dead body shining in the moonlight, with a cross on his ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... to him. Tell him that you want to become a good shot with the pistol, and are willing to pay for lessons. If he takes you in hand it won't be long before he turns you out as a fair shot, whether you ever get beyond that depends on nerve and eye, and I should think that you ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... Nome was picking her way northward. Her engines were thrumming softly, and her movement was a slow and cautious glide, catlike and slightly trembling, as if every pound of steel in her were a living nerve widely alert. He knew Captain Rifle would not be asleep and that straining eyes were peering into the white gloom from the wheel-house. Somewhere west of them, hazardously near, must lie the rocks of Admiralty Island; eastward were the still more pitiless glacial ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... in the calmness with which Ralph Nickleby spoke, when coupled with his face, the expression of the features, to which every nerve and muscle, as it twitched and throbbed with a spasm whose workings no effort could conceal, gave, every instant, some new and frightful aspect—there was something so unnatural and ghastly in the contrast between his harsh, slow, steady voice (only altered by a certain halting of the ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... atmosphere of warning and aloofness he carried about with him. It is impossible further to analyse the series of little shocks his presence always communicated to my being; but there was that about him which made me instantly on the qui vive in his presence, every nerve alert, every sense strained and on the watch. I do not mean that he deliberately suggested danger, but rather that he brought forces in his wake which automatically warned the nervous centres of my system to be on ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... from him. He crouched, every nerve and muscle tense, lips drawn back in a snarl. She saw that in his hand there ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... thing to set against the wholesome life it is adventure," Chaffery was saying. "But let every adventurer pray for an early death, for with adventure come wounds, and with wounds come sickness, and—except in romances—sickness affects the nervous system. Your nerve goes. Where ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... again! it's all round us! O I wisht I hadn't a'come! I wisht I was to hum!'—and she showed the earnestness of the wish by beginning to cry. Her companion sat still and turned very pale. Paler yet, but with every nerve braced, Wych Hazel stood in the road to see for herself. ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... thundering on the flood. It almost brush'd the helm, and fell before: The whole sea shook, and refluent beat the shore, The strong concussion on the heaving tide Roll'd back the vessel to the island's side: Again I shoved her off: our fate to fly, Each nerve we stretch, and every oar we ply. Just 'scaped impending death, when now again We twice as far had furrow'd back the main, Once more I raise my voice; my friends, afraid, With mild entreaties my design dissuade: 'What boots the godless giant to provoke, Whose arm ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... her powers in this line? For when he, Carteret, and Charles Verity, strolling in all innocence along the shore path back from St. Augustin, had to their infinite astonishment met her and her attendant swains face to face, she hadn't turned a hair. Her nerve was invincible. After clasping the hand of each in turn with the prettiest enthusiasm, she had introduced—"My husband, General Frayling—Mr. Marshall Wace, his cousin," with the utmost composure. Thus ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... sword of the Norman duke, and added to the glory of the conquering hero, by their splendid intellectual endowments. All this emulated and roused the Saxons from their slumber; and, rubbing their laziness away, they again grasped the pen with the full nerve and energy of their nature; a reaction ensued, literature was respected, learning prospered, and copious work flowed in upon the scribes; the crackling of parchment, and the din of controversy bespoke the presence of this ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather |
