"Overwrought" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said Elsie, "in the distance, but of course I had no idea who it was. How very kind you have been to me!" and again the tears were trembling in the nervous eyes of the poor, overwrought girl. ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare
... culture of the grape, had a flavor of poetry about them. The toil that produces those kindly gifts of nature which are not the substance of life, but its luxury, is unlike other toil. We are inclined to fancy that it does not bend the sturdy frame and stiffen the overwrought muscles, like the labor that is devoted in sad, hard earnest to raise grain for sour bread. Certainly, the sunburnt young men and dark-cheeked, laughing girls, who weeded the rich acres of Monte Beni, might well enough have passed for inhabitants of an unsophisticated ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... overwrought," said Mademoiselle. "It is a luxury my family has not been allowed for many years. I say your father was an honest man, as men go, and a brave one too, and that you have changed him, and I warn you to leave him alone in the ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... to his room. He was thankful, as he thought that sleep would bring tranquillity and relief to Margaret's overwrought brain. He went to bed and fell asleep, for he was exhausted by the fatigue of the day and the anxiety of the night. Poor Clement fell asleep, and dreamt that he met Margaret Wilmot by moonlight in the park around Maudesley Abbey, walking with a DEAD MAN, whose face was strange to ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... during the holidays. In his earlier days especially, when overwrought by the stress of his life in London, he used to go off with a friend for a week's walking tour in Wales or the Lakes, in Brittany or the Eifel country, or in summer for a longer trip to Switzerland. In this way he "burnt up the waste products," as he would say, ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... can be made on this score, it is still no little impeachment of his temper, or his understanding, that he should lend his ear to the poisonous breathings of one whose spirits are so well known to "toil in frame of villainies." As to his rash and overwrought scheme of revenge for Hero's imputed sin, his best excuse therein is, that the light-minded Prince, who is indeed such another, goes along with him; while it is somewhat doubtful whether the patron or the favourite is more at fault in thus suffering ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... at all hazards. An additional spur was the thought of the gracious apparition which he had seen—or dreamt he saw—from the farther bank. Was she indeed but an apparition?—or the single reality amidst the throng of fantasies evoked by his overwrought mind?—beaconing him through misty errors to a fate better than he knew! In all seriousness, who could she be? Had Doctor Glyphic crowned his eccentricities by marrying, and begetting ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... he had left Montgomery, Maroney had been executing a series of strategic movements, and now that he had undoubtedly thrown his pursuers, if there were any, off his track, why should he not ease his overwrought mind by sleep, that ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... state of mind, I had not a clear enough insight into my condition to realize that treatment and a restricted degree of liberty were what I needed, since continued freedom might further inflame an imagination already overwrought. ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... Sir Charles, speaking fast and with much fierceness: "that lady there—poor thing, she is ill, you can see that for yourself, suffering, overwrought; she asked for a glass of water, and this brute, triple brute, as you say in French, refused to ...
— The Rome Express • Arthur Griffiths
... Burnside had said. If anybody could manage Max's proud stubbornness, it was Jarvis, with his cool command of himself and his inborn habit of courtesy to everybody. Yet even Jarvis had his hands full to-night. Max's physical condition of fatigue and overwrought nerves made him more than ordinarily ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... bed-chamber, I was even more keenly sensible of those weird night-noises in the heavy furniture of a room, of those sudden settlements of extinct coals in the grate, so familiar to bad sleepers, so startling to overwrought nerves! It is not a scientifically correct statement, but it exactly describes my condition, that night, to say that one half of me was asleep ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... "He's overwrought and not himself, probably. I don't think he quite grasps the immediate situation. He seems to be looking far ahead already, whereas the most pressing matter should be a ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... than any common air. He could have fancied that the world had sunken in the night, far below its proper level, into some close, thick abysm of its own atmosphere. The Christian people of the town, hardly less terrified and overwrought by the haunting sickness about them than their pagan neighbours, were at prayer before the tomb of the martyr; and even as Marius pressed among them to a place beside Cornelius, on a sudden the hills seemed to roll like a sea in motion, around the whole compass of the ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... respect for himself, the mason will be faithful in his calling. There is none who has more need to feel in himself the consciousness of what he is. When the house is finished, when the soil is smoothed, the surface plastered over, and the outside all overwrought with ornament, he can even penetrate through all disguises and still recognize those exact and careful adjustments to which the whole is indebted for its ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... after an instant of staring, broke into a little fit of nervous, overwrought laughter, and covered ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... this manner will it give me pleasure to spend the money on a trip of recreation. That trip, on which I start tomorrow, has come just in time; uninterrupted work has again strongly affected me, and the nerves of my brain are so overwrought that even these few lines put me in a state of violent excitement, wherefore I must ask you not to be angry if I make them very short. I feel that I am still capable of doing good things, but only by keeping very strict diet, and especially by frequently interrupting my work and entirely ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... half-breeds placing the canoe in the still water at the further end of the village. Half-way there he was relieved to meet the genial Ed. Mason, who greeted him, as Trenton thought, with a somewhat overwrought effusion. There evidently was something on the ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... to me that that was a singularly calm and phlegmatic letter! My nerves were a good deal overwrought, as I can ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... Holmes; I have been a little overwrought. Thank you, if I might have a glass of milk and a biscuit I have no doubt that I should be better. I came personally, Mr. Holmes, in order to ensure that you would return with me. I feared that no telegram would convince you of the ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... understood them, the masons reminded him that it was the custom to deliver up a prisoner to the people at the time of the Passover. At the time of the Passover, he repeated.... At last, realising what had happened, his face became overwrought; his eyes and mouth testified to the grief he was suffering; and he pressed his spurs to his horse's side, and would have been away beyond call if two of his workmen had not seized the bridle and almost forced the horse ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... was so hurried and overwrought with the work he had been engaged on that morning (the lending of L1323 to a widow at 5 1/4 per cent., [which heaven knows is reasonable!] on security of a number of shares in the London and North-Western Railway) ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... as a slight sound in the passage caught their attention. A silence fell upon them that they could not break, and they stood dumbfounded, nervous and overwrought. ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... Helen heard, and, overwrought as she was by nights of assiduous care, the speech both pained and angered her. Geoffrey's answer was not audible, as they passed on. He came back alone, off his guard for a moment, looking worn and weary, and Mrs. ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... the Colonel addressed the Officers at some length. "The old man" always had an impressive way of speaking, and darkness and overwrought nerves doubtless magnified this. He spoke in subdued tones, as if awed by the intense silence ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... unusual folk, specially created for the purpose, no doubt; but he, a practical, everyday, intensely real sort of being—what had he to do with things so far away? Oh, no! It was not for him. Let him put aside the overwrought fancies of the day, and return ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... of those moments of strain, when even trifles can turn the overwrought attention. Glaucon knew that the stranger was looking from him to Lycon, from Lycon back to himself, measuring each with shrewd eye. Then the gaze settled on the Athenian. ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... among the guests again she was pale, her lips were set, and she held her head high. Her mother said the dear child was quite overwrought, but she saw only what she expected to see through her own tear-bedimmed eyes, and other people were differently impressed. They thought Evadne was cold and preoccupied when it came to the parting, and did not seem to feel leaving her friends at all. She went out dry-eyed after kissing ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... diametrically opposite in its tendency, has been silently introduced into our prose. In this we have oscillated from freedom to restraint;—from the easy, natural, and colloquial style of Swift, Addison and Steele, to the perpetually strained, ambitious, and overwrought stiffness, of which the author we are now considering affords a striking exemplification. "He's knight o' the shire, and represents them all." There is not the smallest keeping in his composition:—less solicitous ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... Nicanor walked all that day, and at nightfall reached Corinium, five and twenty miles away. Here his overwrought strength gave out, and he slept as the dead sleep, in the fields outside the town. Hours before dawn he woke, haunted by the demon of unrest which rode him, begged food and a cup of milk at a farmhouse by the road, and started on again. All that day he walked, a mere machine dominated by a ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... during his absence. Moreover, now that he has come back in a state of physical health and with nerves that are normal, he sees that these awful problems were simply exaggerated in his own mind by his overwrought ...
— Keeping Fit All the Way • Walter Camp
... but he grew to see that even these sad hours only brought out for him, with deeper and clearer significance, the essential truth of the vision, which did indeed transform his life. When he was ill, anxious, overwrought, he grew to feel that he was being held quietly back for a season; and it led to a certain deliberate disentangling of himself from the lesser human relations, from a consciousness that his appointed work was not ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... background, Yoshio, capable and devoted, stood between him and the petty annoyances that inevitably occur in travelling—annoyances that in his overwrought state would have been doubly annoying—with a thoughtfulness that was silently expressed in a dozen different devices for his comfort. That the Jap knew a great deal more than he himself did of the tragedy that had happened in the little house on ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... thought now began to rage in all its wildness. Overwrought and trembling, she dropped the rein upon Pansy's shoulders, and vowed she would be led whither the horse ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... vehemence, there followed a scene that stands memorable even in the long series that succeeded it in the following Parliament. Mr. James Lowther was profoundly moved; whilst as for Mr. Cavendish Bentinck, his feelings of loyalty to the Throne were so overwrought that, as was recorded at the time, he went out behind the Speaker's chair, and crowed thrice. Amid the uproar, someone, anticipating the action of Mr. Joseph Gillis Biggar on another historic occasion, "spied strangers." ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... not overwrought Nor cease thy preparations for the voyage. Work tranquilly and do not be disturbed, For thou canst put away his armor last. What am I saying! For he wears no mail, Nor doth he ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... her breath with a great sob, and remained silent for nearly half a minute, sitting so still that she seemed like one dead. In that brief time she had chained down her overwrought feelings and could speak without ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... equally apprehensive. Yet there were younger men who shared none of these fears. To be sure, the political atmosphere of Washington was electric. The House spent weeks wrangling over the Speakership, so that when the serious work of legislation began, men were overwrought and excitable. California with a free constitution was knocking at the door of the Union. President Taylor gave Congress to understand that at no distant day the people of New Mexico would take similar action. And then, as though he were addressing ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... taxi sputtered at the curb, but just as he dashed down the steps a limousine drew up, and Denning sprang from its opened door. His hand fell heavily upon Gard's shoulder as he stooped to enter the cab. Gard turned, his overwrought nerves stinging with the shock ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... no words to address to an overwrought soul, mastered by passion. But, as I have said, I was terrified and bewildered. The strong desire I felt to treat him with all the gentleness and tender consideration I could muster, must have been to some extent neutralized by my anxiety to put an end to the interview. As I spoke, his eyes ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... Notwithstanding the numbers of miracles he wrought, a generation had to be cut off because of unbelief. Our own elevation, also, has been the work of centuries, and, remembering this, we should not indulge in overwrought expectations as to the elevation which those who have inherited the degradation of ages may attain in our day. The principle might even be adopted by missionary societies, that one ordinary missionary's lifetime of teaching should ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... gave me in exchange for my discreet smile had no hidden mirth in it. Her eyes seemed hollowed, her face gone wan in a couple of hours. We had been laughing too much. Overwrought! Overwrought by the approach of the decisive moment. After all, sincere, courageous, and self-reliant as she was, she must have felt both the passion and the compunction of her resolve. The very strength of love which had carried ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... Slocum would have been fascinated at the idea of a tete-a-tete with this interesting, stalwart man of the mountains. But something in his manner, and her own overwrought nerves, told her there was trouble ahead. Should she run away, should she use a woman's wiles in self-defense, or should she confide in this handsome man? Distracted by these conflicting thoughts, she presented a charming picture of alarmed innocence, as ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... which Billie allowed her gaze to travel casually about the room. Sam occupied the intermission by staring furtively at her profile. He was by now in a thoroughly overwrought condition, and the thumping of his heart sounded to him as if workmen were mending the street outside. How beautiful she looked, with that red hair peeping out beneath her ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... been their task to set the soul above the fairest fortune and the gift of strength in women beyond ornamental whiteness. Are they not of nature warriors, like men?—men's mates to bear them heroes instead of puppets? But the devouring male Egoist prefers them as inanimate overwrought polished pure metal precious vessels, fresh from the hands of the artificer, for him to walk away with hugging, call all his own, drink of, and fill and drink of, and forget that ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... wires. It would not be a fair stand-up fight, this murder-rush of hundreds of men against twelve who were penned in and could not maneuver nor escape. And the thought of it was doing queer things to the rookie's overwrought nerves. ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... he say something?" cried the Professor, unable to restrain his impatience longer, bis overwrought nerves almost at ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Rockies • Frank Gee Patchin
... me, Stephen! Won't you understand that I want to do what is best for you? Won't you trust me?' Her answer came harshly. A more experienced man than Harold, one who knew women better, would have seen how overwrought she was, and would have made pity the pivot of his future bearing and acts and words while the interview lasted; pity, and pity only. But to Harold the high ideal was ever the same. The Stephen whom he loved was no subject for pity, but for devotion ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... been lovely having her," said Audrey softly. In her overwrought state, she felt inclined to cry at the mere thought of losing her. Indeed, she felt so stupid, so miserable, so tongue-tied, she could not stand there any longer lest the sharp-eyed old gentleman ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... His overwrought feelings expressed themselves in a nervously rebelling stomach, culminating in a disgraceful moment over the nearest gutter. The rest of the afternoon he spent in ...
— Native Son • T. D. Hamm
... outlined were now dim, obscured. The yawning chasm was not the same. It circled wider, redder, deeper. It was a weird, ghastly mouth of hell. Gale stood fascinated, unable to tell how much he saw was real, how much exaggeration of overwrought emotions. There was no beauty here, but an unparalleled grandeur, a sublime scene of devastation and desolation which might have had its counterpart upon the burned-out moon. The mood that gripped Gale now added to its somber portent ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... a sudden sound outside, a scuffling on the porch. Involuntarily Gloria, prone to nervous alarm in her overwrought condition, moved hastily back toward him from whom just now she had escaped. They glanced toward the sound; they saw at the window the puckered and perplexed face of the "judge"; they were just in time to ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... written all this commonplace talk, not regarding its dulness in your eyes, but because I felt weary and also somewhat overwrought and sad; and it has done me much good, and given me ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... came home to her, her spirit began to falter for the second time. It is comparatively easy to endure while there is something to be done; but it is almost intolerable, specially to the young when life is strong in them, merely to sit by and wait. Katherine's overwrought nerves began to play cruel tricks upon her, carrying her back in imagination to that other hideous hour of waiting, in the dining-room, four evenings ago. Again she seemed to hear the short peremptory tones of the surgeons, and those worse things—the stifled groan of one in the ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... whole world would be searching in a day or two, had stepped out of the unknown and, by the most whimsical jest of fate, into the custody of the one person most interested of all in that self-same world. It was unbelievable. She wondered if it were not a dream, or the hallucination of an overwrought mind. Spurred by the sudden doubt as to the reality of the object before her, she stretched out her hand ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... that kind of voice which carries a long distance. But the maid's statement occupied all my mind. "Madame n'est pas heureuse." It had a dreadful precision . . . "Not happy . . ." This unhappiness had almost a concrete form—something resembling a horrid bat. I was tired, excited, and generally overwrought. My head felt empty. What were the appearances of unhappiness? I was still naive enough to associate them with tears, lamentations, extraordinary attitudes of the body and some sort of facial distortion, all very dreadful to behold. I didn't know what I should see; but in what I did see there ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... her usual energy, but seemed nearly overcome by fatigue. She made no complaint, but presently Gus saw that she was crying, and that scared him. In his inexperience he could not know that it was only overwrought nerves. He felt he must make speed in carrying out his intentions to get help to George and put the authorities on the track of Thad. Gus could see but one thing to do properly and his natural diffidence was cast aside by his generous and ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... Thy record is not clean, If but tradition wears a truthful garb. Plug hats and coats of a latest Tammany style And "pleasure saturnine" did figure cut When first thy mouth did voice the burning thoughts That trickled from a brain much overwrought By meditation on conditions here Which bore so heavy on this ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... upon Moll, who stands before him with bowed head and clasped hands, wrung to her innermost fibre with shame, remorse, and awful dread, and for a terrible space I heard nothing but the deep, painful breathing of this poor, overwrought man. ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... changed in her inflexible unyielding look, he felt that he could cope with her. He thought a sudden terror, occasioned by this night-alarm, had subdued her; not the less readily, for her overwrought condition. Throwing open the doors, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... friend of his had smuggled into the prison in his mouth. He came out "emaciated to a skeleton, down-hearted for want of news from home, down-headed for weariness." On his voyage to Fortress Monroe an incident occurred which, although told in somewhat overwrought language, is a fitting climax to ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... Rachel rose and walked to her hut. She was utterly dazed, she could not understand. Was this but a fiction of an overwrought and disordered mind, or had she seen a vision of things passing, or that had passed, far away? If it were a dream, then this was but another drop in her cup of bitterness. If a true vision—oh! then what did it mean to her? It meant ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... too much for poor Muriel's overwrought nerves. She, too, gave way in a tempest of sobs, and, subsiding on one of the native stools hard by, burst into tears ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... here in a dull lethargy, undoubtedly induced by my overwrought state, quite understandable in the light of what is to happen in a few hours, my eyes on the seams of the deck, reviewing all the things I have written in my book, preparing myself, a way, for the glorious and triumphant ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... my character was stamped: that fitfulness of temper, that affection for extremes, has accompanied me through life. Hence, not only all intermediums of emotion appear to me as tame, but even the most overwrought excitation can bring neither novelty nor zest. I have, as it were, feasted upon the passions; I have made that my daily food, which, in its strength and excess, would have been poison to others; I have rendered my mind unable ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... were clasped in close embrace as if nothing should ever separate them again. Words were impossible, at first, and not till she saw that even joy was dangerous for her overwrought patient did Aunt Sally, the nurse, interpose and bodily lift the daughter from the parent's arms. All at once her own calmness and courage forsook good Mrs. Benton, and now that she saw the lost girl restored, visibly present in ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... to his former health, terms which we are to understand the virtuous witness refused. It is pleasant to know that Master Enger was "distrustfull of the truth" of this tale. One fears that these spectres were not the products of overwrought imagination, as were many others, but were merely fabrics of elaborate fiction.[29] In any case they were not the groundwork of the proof. In the Fairfax prosecutions at York in 1622 the charges against the six women accused rested entirely upon a great tissue of spectral evidence. The three children ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... phantasy, of course, the sick imaginings of a mind overwrought. I had not slept and had scarcely tasted food for more than thirty hours; for, following up a faint clue supplied by Burke, Slattin's man, and, like his master, an ex-officer of New York Police, my friend, Nayland Smith, on the previous evening ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... good deal jumbled, to be sure, and without any recognizable form or theme; and yet, like a Liszt rhapsody, it perfectly answers its purpose,—that is, it gives the performer full scope to show what he can do with his instrument. You may laugh a little, if you like, at an occasional grotesque or overwrought passage, but unless you are well used to it you will surely be astonished. Such power and range of voice; such startling transitions; such endless variety! And withal such boundless enthusiasm and almost incredible endurance! ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... determine no way of expressing in this language. Acts and facts, of course. I shall not attempt to capture the subjectivity which is the charm, only to transcribe the physical datum—perhaps even data, who knows? My companions, for example: They were in appearance overwrought, looking about them continually, stopping entirely and drawing me with them into the shelter of a "door" when another man, this one wearing blue clothing and a visored hat appeared. Yet they were clearly devoted to me, at that moment, since they had put ...
— The Day of the Boomer Dukes • Frederik Pohl
... attempt to relate another reminiscence while in my employ, I shall make a deduction from your wages. I warn you—I warn you in the presence of this witness. My overwrought nerves can endure no more. Between your inexpiable English and your inopportune reminiscences, I am a nervous wreck!" The little man's voice ended on ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... occupations than preparing his manuscript for the printer's hands. He was ill and overwrought, and small things became magnified out of all proportion to their actual importance. There had been a dispute between Borrow's dog and that of the rector of Oulton, the Rev. E. P. Denniss, and as the place was small, the dogs met frequently and renewed their feud. Finally ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... What had happened? Had the plot failed? Was he even now lying wounded unto death as the result of his effort to escape captivity? A hundred horrid thoughts raced through her throbbing, overwrought brain. He should have been with her two hours ago—he should now be far on his way to freedom. Alas, something appalling had happened, she was sure ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... lad's strong striving was beginning to bear its fruit, and he found it daily easier to keep hold of the bridle, as Miss Goldthwaite termed it. Keziah had been dismissed also, and Lucy's burden was sometimes more than she could bear. Miss Hepsy refused to see what others saw—that the girl was overwrought; and her feelings had been blunted so long, that only a very sharp shock would bring them into use again. And the time had not come yet. For more highly favoured young folks than Tom and Lucy Hurst, these frosty days brought innumerable ...
— Thankful Rest • Annie S. Swan
... supremely happy," says Mr. Petalengro, "in our wandering existence. We contrasted in our semi-consciousness of mind our absence from a thousand anxious cares which crowd upon the social position of those who take part in an overwrought state of extreme civilisation. How long we should have continued our half-dormant reflections which might have added a few more notes upon the philosophy of life, we knew not, but we were roused by the rumble of a stolk-jaerre ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... peace and content of it stealing in upon him; then the consciousness of all that he had gone through and was going through smote him, and he was resentful. By what right did this ragged beachcomber, in dungaree trousers and a cotton shirt, suggest such a thing as peace and content to him and his overwrought, exhausted soul? The captain did not reason this; it was the unconscious process of emotion ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... drama—it is this. You imagine that I am occupied with the Council of State, the Chamber, the Courts, Politics.—Why, dear me, seven hours at night are enough for all that, so much are my faculties overwrought by the life I lead! Honorine is my real concern. To recover my wife is my only study; to guard her in her cage, without her suspecting that she is in my power; to satisfy her needs, to supply the little pleasure she allows herself, to be always about her like a sylph without ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... momentous crisis, a crisis such as I think no council of men has had to face for many centuries, perhaps not since the embassy of the Goths to the Emperor Valens—the ministry or cabinet which but dares, dares to trust this people's resolution, will find that this enthusiasm is not that of men overwrought with war-fever, but the deep-seated purpose of a people strong to defend the heritage of its fathers, and not to swerve from the path which fate itself has marked out for it amongst the empires of the earth. This, I maintain, is the verdict of ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... three in number. As I opened the first of them the singing upstairs ceased. For a moment there was something almost oppressive in the sudden change from noise to silence. I suppose my nerves must have been overwrought. The next sound in the house—nothing more remarkable than the creaking of a man's boots descending the stairs—made me shudder all over. The man was no doubt the singing-master, going away after giving ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... was in the overwrought mood in which a man damns everything. Quagmire and bramble and the derision of Olympus-that was the end of his vanity of an existence. Suppose he was elected—what then? He would be a failure-the high gods in their mirth would see to that—a puppet in Frank Ayres' hands until ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... disappointment. By degrees, nothing but this morbid state of feeling satisfies us: and all common pleasures and cheap amusements are sacrificed to the demon of ambition, avarice, or dissipation. The machine is overwrought: the parching heat of the veins dries up and withers the flowers of Love, Hope, and Joy; and any pause, any release from the rack of ecstasy on which we are stretched, seems more insupportable than the pangs which we endure. ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... knew, but on the very day after her husband's departure she had gone quietly on deck while the rest of the company were at supper and never was seen again; nor till the sea gives up its dead shall any know the story of that poor overwrought soul's last fierce struggle ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... indignant men rode away, leaving a perfectly furious one standing in the road shaking his fists after them. And he was the more angry because he felt that he had been hastier with the constable than even his overwrought state of mind warranted. Then, as he reflected on the graveyard matter, his curiosity began to get the better of his wrath, and to the surprise of his Vienna antagonist he abandoned the field without another word and started for Smyrna village ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... overwrought; she could not meet any of the crowd, and took refuge in one of the deserted wings, until, as she hoped, every one had dispersed. As she was quietly leaving the wings she was met, much to her annoyance, ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... overwrought," Sullivan murmured in my ear. "Nerves, you know. Women are like that. Wait till you're married. Take no notice. ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... overwrought; I must get to bed," thought he. With sensuous visions such as these before his eyes, depressed and ill at ease, Yourii went hurriedly indoors. When in bed, after vain efforts to sleep, his thoughts reverted to Lialia ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... strange sounds all around him, in the room itself! His nerves were tensely strung: he was overwrought. Someone was certainly walking in the corridor!... He had felt a movement along the wall ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... cigarette, an indulgence with which in these days of worry and stress he propitiated his overwrought nerves. He drew in the smoke with all the relish of a connoisseur, and ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... platform they found Miss Holt and a number of other friends waiting. There was a great deal of clanging and whanging and scuffling, it seemed to the poor, overwrought girl. Miss Holt took her in charge at once and tried to keep her cheerful. When they had checked her trunk and the train was about ready to start, Ans looked uneasy and fidgeted about. Bert looked on, silent ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... have been born with overwrought nerves, and in his passionate desire to excel, he was often led to the brink of some rash step; and yet, having resolved upon such a step, when the moment arrived, he invariably proved too sensible to take it. He was ready, in the same way, ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... shall commandeer it unbeknownst, and secondly, so that he shall be ready to go in directly his predecessor is out. There is an ill-concealed restiveness about his movements, as he watches the batsmen getting set, that betrays an overwrought spirit. Then of a sudden one of them plays a ball on to his pad. ''s that?' asks the bowler, with an overdone carelessness. 'Clean out. Now I'm in,' and already he is rushing up the middle of the pitch to take possession. When he gets to the wicket a short argument ensues. 'Look here, ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... and laid a firm brown hand, for a moment, on the white fluttering fingers. "You are overwrought by the suspense of these past weeks. You know perfectly well that Lord Ingleby volunteered for this border war because he was so keen on experimenting with his new explosives, and on trying these ideas for using ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... the garden the night through. Nobody thought of going indoors; but after a while we became so weary with watching and overwrought with excitement that, despite the danger and the noise we could not keep our eyes open. Before the southern cross began to bend we were all asleep, Angela and I wrapped in our cobijas, the others on the turf and ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... touching instance of this in the last days of Sir Walter Scott, the publication of whose latter works, deeply to be regretted on many accounts, was yet, perhaps, on the whole, right, as affording a means of studying the conditions of the decay of overwrought human intellect in one of the most noble of minds. Among the many signs of this decay at its uttermost, in Castle Dangerous, not one of the least notable was the introduction of the knight who bears on his black armor the ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... tromped on, and screams of fear. And this brought a lot bigger crowd that pressed in and made the centre ones more anguished. I don't know. That poor animal had been imposed on all day and must of been overwrought. It was sore vexed by now and didn't care who knew ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... Grimm," soothed the rector. "Nothing at all, I assure you. My wife is a trifle overwrought this morning. Nothing of any consequence. I mean—that is, of course—we must all keep ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... juncture her hair became unfastened, and rolled down about her shoulders. The least accident at such critical periods is sufficient to confuse the overwrought intelligence. She lost sight of his intended direction for one instant, ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... longbow, shoot with a longbow; deal in the marvelous. out-Herod Herod, run riot, talk at random. heighten, overcolor^; color highly, color too highly; broder^; flourish; color &c (misrepresent) 544; puff &c (boast) 884. Adj. exaggerated &c v.; overwrought; bombastic &c (grandiloquent) 577; hyperbolical^, on stilts; fabulous, extravagant, preposterous, egregious, outre [Fr.], highflying^. Adv. hyperbolically &c adj.. Phr. excitabat enim fluctus ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the lion paced, growling and moaning, beneath the tree in which Jane Clayton crouched, panting and trembling. The girl was a prey to the nervous reaction from the frightful ordeal through which she had so recently passed, and in her overwrought state it seemed that never again should she dare descend to the ground among the fearsome dangers which infested the broad stretch of jungle that she knew must lie between herself and the nearest village ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... how impossible it was, amid all the attractions of society, for him to escape the power of one who had bidden to all earthly societies an everlasting farewell. That his regrets over his early bereavement did not arise from overwrought dreams of excellence in the departed, is evident from the character she bore with others; and this is illustrated by the following extract from a faded copy of the Commercial Advertiser, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... with events. Sincerely I wish your Lordship strength of body to go through—and to all others, your strength of mind." Testy even to petulance as these two great seamen were at times in small matters, when overwrought with their manifold anxieties, they nowhere betray any egotistic concern as to the value attached by others to their respective speculations, the uncertainties of which none knew better than they, who had ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan |
