"Excitability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in the reservoirs for the sexual products. Experiences with the exhaustibility of the sexual mechanism speak for the same thing. Where there is no stock of semen it is not only impossible to accomplish the sexual act, but there is also a lack of excitability in the erogenous zones, the suitable excitation of which can evoke no pleasure. We thus discover incidentally that a certain amount of sexual tension is itself necessary for the ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... Franco-German war there was no cheap heroism, no feminine excitability producing litters of heroes; no slobbering, osculatory advertising; no press undertaking the duties of a general staff, which in our Spanish war almost completely clouded the real heroism and patriotism that were in evidence. There were no newspaper-made ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... &c. 739; ferocity, rage, fury; exacerbation, exasperation, malignity; fit, paroxysm; orgasm, climax, aphrodisia[obs3]; force, brute force; outrage; coup de main; strain, shock, shog[obs3]; spasm, convulsion, throe; hysterics, passion &c. (state of excitability) 825. outbreak, outburst; debacle; burst, bounce, dissilience[obs3], discharge, volley, explosion, blow up, blast, detonation, rush, eruption, displosion|, torrent. turmoil &c. (disorder) 59; ferment ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Tarasconese excitability, it is easy to imagine the frantic condition of the little town after Tartarin's abrupt disappearance. Et autrement, pas moins, differemment, they lost their heads, all the more because it was the middle of August and their brains boiled in the sun ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... stood at the Font; but the languor and indolence of the voice indicated that the tropical indifference was far from conquered, and it was an anxious question whether the life destined for him might not be exceptionally perilous to his peculiar temperament of nonchalance and excitability. ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... theoretical conceptions of disease, and Cullen's theory of spasm and atony exercised a profound influence on practice, particularly in this country, where it had the warm advocacy of Benjamin Rush. Even more widespread became the theories of a pupil of Cullen's, John Brown, who regarded excitability as the fundamental property of all living creatures: too much of this excitability produced what were known as sthenic maladies, too little, asthenic; on which principles practice was plain enough. Few systems of medicine have ever stirred ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... part of the members of the group, a deep-seated emotional attachment to the group itself, solidarity will be very precarious. The intensity and solidarity, of feeling exhibited so markedly during war-time is made possible by the intense excitability of this instinct when the group is under conditions of stress or danger. Any scheme for enlisting a great number of individuals in modern society in a scheme of social reform or improvement, must and does, when it is successful, arouse in him a heightened sense of loyalty to a group more than ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... comparison will show that among the best dogs now living are some which might have been the model for this picture. It is true that in the interval the white and black Newfoundlands have been coarser, heavier, higher on the legs, with an expression denoting excitability quite foreign to the true breed, but these departures from Newfoundland character are passing away—it is to be hoped for good. The breed is rapidly returning to the type which Landseer's picture represents—a dog of great beauty, dignity, and benevolence ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... to suggest the impropriety of resorting to prayer alone when sexual excitability has arisen from a culpable neglect to remove the physical conditions of local excitement by the means already mentioned. Such physical causes must be well looked after, or every attempt to reform will be fruitless. God requires of every individual to do for himself all ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... equally extreme sensibility of body, and those persons capable of fully expressing the highest emotions are especially susceptible to bodily sensations. Tears are physical emblems of grief, and fellow-feeling calls forth sympathetic tears. Excessive anxiety of mind produces general excitability of body, which soon results in chronic disease. Pleasurable emotions stimulate the processes of nutrition, and are restorative. This concomitance of mental and bodily states is very remarkable. Joy and Love, as well as jealousy and anger, flash in the eye and mould the features to their expression. ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... whether the wit be great or little, the "thin partition" separating madness from sanity is equally mysterious. It is true that the excitability attendant upon genius approximates so closely to madness, that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between them; but, without the attendant "genius" to hold up the train of madness, and call for our special ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... celestial graces of politics! (Renewed laughter). I will admit that woman is an excitable creature, and I will admit that politics needs no more excitement; but sometimes, you know, things are homoeopathic. A woman's excitement is apt to put out a man's; and if she should bring her excitability into politics, it is likely that it would neutralize the excitement that is already there, and that there would be a grand peace! (Laughter). But, not to trifle with it, woman is excitable. Woman is yet to be educated. Woman is yet to experience ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... puts aside are the sufferings other than his own, projected and sheltered by what only aggravated his; but my visit gave me proof that he had really very little overstated the effect upon himself. Making allowance, which sometimes he failed to do, for special peculiarities, and for the excitability never absent when he had in hand an undertaking such as Copperfield, I observed a nervous tendency to misgivings and apprehensions to the last degree unusual with him, which seemed to make the commonest things difficult; and though he stayed out his time, and brought away nothing that ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... importance consists of changes in the blood circulation. Increase of intellectual activity means an increase of work in the cortical cells, dependent on a congested, sometimes a temporarily anaemic state. Hyperaemia seems rather the rule, but we also know that slight anaemia increases cortical excitability. "Weak, contracted pulse; pale, chilly skin; overheated head; brilliant, sunken, roving eyes," such is the classic, frequently quoted description of the physiological state during creative labor. There are numerous inventors who, of their own accord, ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... leaves to which no meat had been given had fully re-expanded. Judging, however, from the subsequent action of a weak solution of carbonate of ammonia on one of these latter leaves, it had not perfectly recovered its excitability and power of movement in 22 hrs.; but another leaf, after an additional 24 hrs., had completely recovered, judging from the manner in which it clasped a fly placed on ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... repeated the last verse. It was plain that nothing so pathetic had been heard at the Three Mariners for a considerable time. The difference of accent, the excitability of the singer, the intense local feeling, and the seriousness with which he worked himself up to a climax, surprised this set of worthies, who were only too prone to shut up ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... fact which Brown-Sequard discovered, quite by accident, in the course of his researches. He found that certain artificially-produced lesions of the nervous system, so small even as a section of the sciatic nerve, left, after healing, an increasing excitability which ended in liability to epilepsy; and there afterwards came out the unlooked-for result that the offspring of guinea-pigs which had thus acquired an epileptic habit such that a pinch on the ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... or three weeks, Arthur had been very quiet and taciturn, but on the morning of this day he had seemed restless and nervous, and his nervousness and excitability increased until a violent headache came on, and Charles, the servant, who attended him, reported to Mrs. Tracy that his midday meal had been untouched and that he really seemed quite ill. Then Frank went to him, and sitting down ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... again dropped the raisins.... I don't know how Musa was behaving all this time, I tried not to look at her. I don't imagine Punin's agitation proceeded from any extreme attachment to my person; it was simply that his nature could not stand the slightest unexpected shock. The nervous excitability of these poor devils! ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... time on the journey implied either contrary winds, a mistaken course, or a serious mishap. Kate was so little in the mood for talking that Barracombe in responsive silence could toss the various probabilities about in his mind until he felt a nervous excitability that annoyed him. ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... impassioned; later, boys, because her wanting sexual warmth leaves him the most vigorous. Mere sexual excitement, a wild, fierce, furious rush of passion, is not only not sexual vigor, but in its inverse ratio; and a genuine insane fervor caused by weakness; just as a like nervous excitability indicates weak nerves instead of strong. Sexual power is deliberate, not wild; cool, not impetuous; while all false ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... conspirators seemed to him as astounding. He had started forward, half expecting that the complacent and self-confessed spy would be immolated by his infuriated dupes. But to his surprise the shock seemed to have changed their natures, and given them the dignity they had lacked. The excitability, irritation, and recklessness which had previously characterized them had disappeared. The deputy and his posse, who had advanced to the assistance of their revealed chief, met with no resistance. They ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... pleasure in the possession of his wonderful flowers was exhausted. Their textures and nuances palled on him. Besides, despite the care he lavished on them, most of his plants drooped. He had them removed from his rooms, but in his state of extreme excitability, their very absence exasperated him, for his eyes were ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... going and coming, busy with a thousand details; at one time bent over the lower glass, at another roosting in the heights of the projectile, and always singing. In this microcosm he represented French loquacity and excitability, and we beg you to believe that they were well represented. The day, or rather (for the expression is not correct) the lapse of twelve hours, which forms a day upon the earth, closed with a plentiful supper carefully prepared. No accident of any nature had yet happened ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... influenced, on account of different external conditions, and contract unequally, and hence the various movements are produced—that the many anomalous effects, hitherto ascribed to 'specific sensibilities,' are due to the 'differential sensibilities'—differential excitability of anisotropic structures and to the opposite effects of external and internal stimuli—that all varieties of plant movements are capable of a consistent mechanical explanation. Dr. Bose's "latest investigations recently communicated ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... as comfortable as possible by a sort of bed which was made up for him in the roomy carriage, seemed, after a short period of restlessness and excitability, to sink ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... and usually appears when the horse has traveled a short distance after having been stabled for a few days. The characteristic symptoms of this disease in an animal are: Excitability without apparent cause; actions seem to indicate injury of the hind quarters or loins. Animal has a peculiar goose-rumped look, owing to the muscles over the quarters being violently contracted, and are hard on ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... convincing itself of anything which it desires to believe, its debility, its childishness. If the professions of so-called mediums were true, why cannot they exhibit their powers in some open and incontestable way, not surrounding themselves with all the conditions of darkness and excitability, in which the human power of self-delusion ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... upon life through an exceptional sensibility. Strindberg laid hold on life through an exceptional excitability—even an exceptional irritability. In his plays, novels, and essays alike, he is a specialist in the jars of existence. He magnified even the smallest worries until they assumed mountainous proportions. He was the ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... only from one-tenth to three-tenths of farmers' wives are unequal to this natural demand. There is indeed little doubt that the mass of our women possess that peculiar nervous organization which is associated with great excitability, and, unfortunately, with less physical vigor than is to be found, for example, in the sturdy English dames at whom Hawthorne sneered so bitterly. And what are the causes to which these peculiarities are to be laid? There are many who will say that late hours, styles ...
— Wear and Tear - or, Hints for the Overworked • Silas Weir Mitchell
... correspondent of the Daily News, "I am led to infer that there is really something extraordinary in the mental or physical organization of this young girl, as she alternates between a dormant state, resembling magnetic sleep, and a strong degree of hysterical or nervous excitability; but whatever may be the real cause of the second sight or preternatural knowledge which she has, according to public rumor, so frequently displayed, it is certain that many persons of this city, including ecclesiastics of high rank, have profited by the opportunity of getting a peep into ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... the taking of too much iodine. Great sorrow, great joy, a sudden severe jolt to the nervous equilibrium, sexual excitement, an overwhelming anger or grief may leave in their wake a permanent hyperthyroidism. The symptoms are the reverse of cretinism and myxedema. There is an over-excitability of the nerves in place of sluggishness, and an over-reactivity of the whole organism to its environment. The heart's action is too fast, and under the slightest stimulus gets faster to the point of obtruding itself into the conscious mind as a palpitation. Instead ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... excitements is violent in the extreme. The paroxysms of agitation and terror which they sometimes excite, and which are often spontaneously renewed by darkness and solitude, and by other exciting causes, are of the nature of temporary insanity. Indeed, the extreme nervous excitability which they produce sometimes becomes a real insanity, which, though it may, in many cases, be finally outgrown, may probably in many others lead to lasting ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott |
