"Irritability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... play, or both, are symptoms of social conditions where the native endowments of man are handicaps rather than assets, dead weights rather than motive forces. It means that society is working against rather than with the grain. Discontent, ranging from mere pique and irritability to overt violence, is the penalty that is likely to be paid by a society the majority of whose members are chronically prevented from satisfying their normal human desires. No one who has seen whole lives immeasurably brightened by the satisfaction ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... indeed!" said Oliver, whose deadly faintness was giving way to irritability, caused by the sharp pain. "I only, as I said before, wish I knew who shot me. How could ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... his large and important business, and indulging, during the time, more deeply than ever in his favourite potations. It was in vain that his distressed family endeavoured to rouse him into activity. All their efforts were met by an irritability and a moroseness of temper so unlike what he had been used to exhibit towards them, that they gave up all idea of influencing him ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... already a sufficient ground for irreconcilable difference. Marlow who was lanky, loose, quietly composed in varied shades of brown robbed of every vestige of gloss, had a narrow, veiled glance, the neutral bearing and the secret irritability which go together with a predisposition to congestion of the liver. The other, compact, broad and sturdy of limb, seemed extremely full of sound organs functioning vigorously all the time in order to keep up the brilliance of his colouring, the light curl of his coal-black ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... impressions and took the sick man's hand. It was dry and wiry, yet small and strong; I found the pulse quick, feverish, and denoting great irritability. ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... the judgment of the general reader is wayward, and his attitude undecided, with a leaning toward hypocrisy. The story of the domestic tribulations and the conjugal bickerings of a great writer, of the irritability that belongs to highly nervous temperaments, and which has always made genius, like the finest animals, hard to domesticate, has lost none of its savour with the public. But if all letters that record such scenes and sayings are faithfully reproduced in preparing the votive tablet upon which the ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... self-revelations. So also with all the mental qualities we shall find, I believe, the same connection between the special characters of woman and those of genius. Woman's mental mobility, her tendency towards nervous outbursts, with a corresponding irritability and greater susceptibility to fatigue, except under the support of excitement, as also in the resulting qualities of her power of ready adaptation to changes of habits and response to new influences, ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... of sensitiveness] Excitability — N. excitability, impetuosity, vehemence; boisterousness &c adj.; turbulence; impatience, intolerance, nonendurance^; irritability &c (irascibility) 901; itching &c (desire) 865; wincing; disquiet, disquietude; restlessness; fidgets, fidgetiness; agitation &c (irregular motion) 315. trepidation, perturbation, ruffle, hurry, fuss, flurry; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... babies. It never occurs in babies who are fed moderately on natural, clean food, not to exceed three or four times a day. The child is cross. The mother thinks that it is cross because it is hungry and accordingly feeds. The real cause of the irritability is the overfeeding that has already taken place. The baby has had so much milk that it is unable to digest all of it. A part of the milk spoils in the digestive tract. This fermented material is partly absorbed and irritates the whole system. A part of it remains ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... periods came at irregular intervals; but, all in all, the intervals were shortening and the revels were increasing. Beatrix learned their symptoms far too quickly; she learned to know the depression and irritability which greeted her every effort to rouse and to please him. It was at such times that Lorimer made bitter revolt against what he termed her narrowness and prejudice, or burst into occasional angry petulance, if she tried to urge him ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... of an acute nervous sensibility, amounting at times to an almost neurotic irritability, such as peeps out from his confession that the shape of Earl Grey's head, when he was a Parliamentary reporter in the Gallery, "was misery to me and weighed down my youth". This peculiarity of temperament had established ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... conquer the Behemoth, Magog Mowbray himself. His own fears of being vanquished and the advice of his friends had indeed, for years, prevented him from proceeding to an open rupture with his parish, and the Squire at its head: but his irritability had been gradually increasing ever since the departure of my uncle Elford. The progress of his avarice at first was slow; but it gained strength as it proceeded, and there was now no one whose opinion had sufficient ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... strength of passion to endure indefinitely household tempests, much less to perpetuate them upon himself by lasting bonds. In all this Emma Hart showed herself fully equal to the task. Tenderly affectionate to him, except when carried away by the fits of irritability which both he and Greville had occasion to observe, she complied readily with all his wishes, and followed out with extraordinary assiduity his plans for her improvement in education and in accomplishments. ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... rattling noise, as if money was being shaken up in a box. A loud crashing bang, as if someone had banged the box down on a table. A rap, as if a knife had been dropped. Then somebody, in a petulant voice full of vexation and irritability, ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... those that loosen the links of most such marriages," and writes several pages on the trite theme that great genius is incompatible with domestic happiness. Negative instances abound to modify this sweeping generalization; but there is a kind of genius, closely associated with intense irritability, which it is difficult to subject to the most reasonable yoke; and of this sort was Byron's. His valet, Fletcher, is reported to have said that "Any woman could manage my lord, except my lady;" and Madame ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... medical terms," said the Minister for Health. "The condition begins with a period of great irritability or depression. The depression is so great that suicide is not infrequent. If that doesn't happen, there's a period of suspiciousness and secretiveness—strongly suggestive of paranoia. Then there's a craving for—unusual food. When it becomes ...
— The Hate Disease • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... very much in looking over those days of suffering, is, that during that day a frightful irritability is the emotion that I most remember—an irritability of feeling, not of expression: for I lay quite still upon the bed all day, and only answered, briefly and simply, the questions ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... desert island, and a disposition to quarrel with fairy-tales, go to show that while she was decidedly more like herself than in the last chapter, her recovery was not yet complete. In fact Margaret Elizabeth was suffering from the irritability that so often accompanies convalescence. Cantankerousness was Uncle Bob's word for it, and he defended it with all the eloquence of which he was master, his finger on the page in the dictionary where it was to be found ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... English language. All this might be as nothing to what strove for delivery now. And this he was desperately engaged in stifling to death; and not the beauty of his mind alone but of his nature, for beyond all doubt his gentleness and sweetness and refinement were as much a part of his genius as irritability and violence were fellows to the genius of ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... from the care and apprehensions of her mother. The joint was stiff, and there was considerable deformity. The pain always increased when she was tired or unhappy. Again, a girl had some slight cystitis with frequent micturition, and this passed by slow degrees into a purely functional irritability of the bladder, which called for micturition at frequent intervals both by day and night. In such cases treatment must endeavour to control both factors—the local organic disturbance must if possible be removed, and the ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... true-hearted man all the worrying little acerbities of to-day; and he had no small merit in doing so; for in him, as in his mother, the reaction after intense excitement had produced its usual effect in increased irritability of ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... between my father and me," said this reasonable young lady, now in an ungovernable state of feminine irritability. ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... asserted roundly that the Duke had taken advantage of an ambiguity in Mr. Huskisson's letters, in order to have a pretext for inflicting this injury on the government. And, unhappily, Mr. Canning himself, carried out of parliamentary decorum by an irritability of temper, springing from the difficulties of his position and from his advancing illness, went so far as publicly to declare that the Duke of Wellington, great man as he was, had been but in instrument in the hands of others. History, he said, afforded parallel the ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
... in hundreds of cases that these belt and spring trusses press against the femoral artery so severely that heart disorders result. Causing dizziness, headaches, irritability, etc. Yet the patient seldom associates his truss with these troubles, seldom ...
— Cluthe's Advice to the Ruptured • Chas. Cluthe & Sons
... upon great occasions, he had little of that small irritability that goes with an egotistical mind and feminine fiber, so he merely hung his head, blamed nobody, and was sad in a manly way. While he leaned against the portico in this dejected mood, a little hand pulled his coat-tail. ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... much to counteract the destroying influences of spasmodic labor at unseasonable hours, and to ward off premature decay. But if they apply excitement of one kind to repair the ravages of excitement of another kind, they must be content to live a life of nervous irritability, and to grow ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... with the difficulties of flying,—his schemes grew more and more expansive and hazardous, and his spending wilder and laxer. I believe that a haunting sense of the intensifying unsoundness of his position accounts largely for his increasing irritability and his increasing secretiveness with my aunt and myself during these crowning years. He dreaded, I think, having to explain, he feared our jests might pierce unwittingly to the truth. Even in the privacy of his mind he would not face the truth. He was accumulating ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... full of sketches and drawing-material: these attracted visitors, and visitors were a trouble. Perhaps there was impertinence in their curiosity, very likely their presence hindered him; but, nevertheless, it was by no means like the sweet-tempered Clarian to show irritability and petulance, and finally, closing his door obstinately against all comers, to elect for solitude and silence at his work. No,—the boy was changed, grown morbid, a pervert, ripe for whatever Devil's sickle might be put forth to gather ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... for the irritability which was a symptom of his disease, an easy guest. He had a lecture at nine in the morning, so did not see Cronshaw till the night. Once or twice Philip persuaded him to share the scrappy meal he prepared for himself in the evening, but Cronshaw was too restless to stay ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... child and that they have failed, but the fault largely lies in the parents undertaking the task with every expectation of failure, and the chief characteristics noticed by the child have been the parental irritability, impatience and incompetence. Having estimated these the child then knows exactly how to gain its own ends and has sufficient determination to persevere until it does. A certain amount of harsh treatment will suffice, until the child is old enough ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... or solace. She foresaw for her child only a future of degradation. Having a strong, clear mind, without any imagination, she believed that she beheld an inevitable doom. The tart remark and the contemptuous comment on her part, elicited, on the other, all the irritability of the poetic idiosyncrasy. After frantic ebullitions, for which, when the circumstances were analysed by an ordinary mind, there seemed no sufficient cause, my grandfather always interfered to soothe with good-tempered commonplaces, and promote peace. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... indeed there is perhaps no one thing that so equally contributes to the three graces of health, beauty, and good temper; to health, in putting the body into its best state; to beauty, in clearing and tinting the skin; and to good temper, in rescuing the spirits from the irritability occasioned by those formidable personages, "the nerves," which nothing else allays in so quick and entire a manner. See a lovely passage on the subject of bathing in Sir Philip Sydney's "Arcadia," where "Philoclea, blushing, and withal smiling, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... same way, furnish the diagnosis where the mental variation is only a distant effect of a bodily ailment. The changes in the emotions, for instance, may lead to the recognition of a heart disease; lack of attention may be a hint of the overgrowth of the adenoids; irritability or apathy or delirious character of the mental behavior may indicate whether uraemic acid is in the system or an infectious disease: anaemia and undernutrition may be diagnosed and the psychology of fever demands too a much closer analysis with the means of the ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... to trouble me as to the robe?" at length she replied with an irritability of manner to which she too often yielded. "Why do I entertain two lazy hussies, but to see after my robings, and save me the trouble of thinking ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... Have to?" he repeated, with a new note of irritability sounding in his voice. "He hasn't been doing anything foolish, has he? Nothing ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... retorted Fanny with great irritability; 'yes, indeed! And then what happens? I no sooner recover, in a visiting point of view, the shock of poor dear papa's death, and my poor uncle's—though I do not disguise from myself that the last was a happy release, for, if you are not ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... of the British empire showed indications of intense irritability against the English, and, indeed, everywhere amongst Mohammedans, animosity to Europeans appeared ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... busy years at Palgrave, during which, in spite of her cheerful energy, Mrs. Barbauld had been much harassed by the nervous irritability of her invalid husband, the Barbaulds gave up their school and treated themselves to a year of Continental travel. On their return they settled at Hampstead, where Mr. Barbauld became pastor of a small Unitarian congregation. The nearness to London was a great advantage to Mrs. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... nectar may be stored in variously shaped receptacles, with the stamens and pistils modified in many ways, sometimes forming trap-like contrivances, and sometimes capable of neatly adapted movements through irritability or elasticity. From such structures we may advance till we come to such a case of extraordinary adaptation as that lately described by Dr. Cruger in the Coryanthes. This orchid has part of its labellum or lower lip hollowed ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... downstairs. There Colonel Churchill met him heartily enough, but presently business with his overseer had taken the Colonel away. Rand found himself cornered by Major Edward and drawn into a discussion of the impeachment of Judge Chase. Rand could be moved to the blackest rage, but he had no surface irritability of temper. To his antagonists his self-command was often maddening. Major Churchill was as disputatious as Arthur Lee, and an adept at a quarrel, but the talk of the impeachment went tamely on. The Republican would not fight at Fontenoy, and at last the Major in a cold rage went away to the library—first, ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... be the most beautiful pie," cried Mr. King, a hearty enthusiasm succeeding his irritability, "that ever was baked. I wish you'd make me one ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... touched by the spur; though his original good-nature from time to time shone through it all. When the line had been brought to a successful completion, a very marked change in him became visible. The irritability passed away, and when difficulties and vexations arose they were treated by him as matters of course, and ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... impartial critic must admit that it is much worse, at any rate for Emperors. Undeterred by the fate of his predecessors Wu-Tsung began to take the elixir of immortality. He suffered first from nervous irritability, then from internal pains, which were explained as due to the gradual transformation of his bones, and at the beginning of 846 he became dumb. No further explanation of his symptoms was then given him and his uncle Hsuan Tsung was raised to the throne. His first act was to revoke the anti-Buddhist ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... leber-wurst. They were putting through the job—with a fierce and terrifying gaiety; they exulted in their toughness, they called themselves "grizzlies" and "mountain cats" and what not; they sang wild songs about their irritability, their motto was "Treat 'em rough!" It was a scary atmosphere for a dreamer and utopian; Jimmie Higgins shrank into himself, afraid even to reach about for some fellow-Socialist with whom he might exchange opinions about the events ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... enormous result of her few minutes' irritability. Such outbursts were not common with her. There was a catch in her voice as ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... mind of Sobieski much of this anticipating irritability; and it was with a very haughty step that he turned back to hear what the printseller meant ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... or point the moral of the following sketch from the last number of Blackwood's Magazine. The parents of the writer were of "a serious cast," and attached to evangelical tenets, which he soon imbibed, together with an occasional tendency to gloom and nervous irritability.] ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 374 • Various
... the list of promotive causes is considerably augmented by maltreatment and the employment of injudicious remedies. We should therefore suggest to all prudent persons the wisdom and importance of consulting competent authority only. Self-enervation in the first instance brings about that irritability which evinces itself in nocturnal discharges, afterwards in inappreciable but exhaustive diurnal discharges, and subsequently in complete debility of the whole generative system. This seminal fluid, such indeed as it is—weak, effete and devoid of all generative power—is undoubtedly ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... the highest order—with which he has discharged his portion of the duty of conducting these proceedings, unprecedented in their harassing complexity and their overwhelming magnitude. He has manifested throughout—'bating a little irritability and strictness in petty details at starting—a self-possession; a resolute determination; a capability of coping with unexpected difficulty; a familiarity with constitutional law; a mastery over the details of legal proceedings; in short, a degree of forensic ability, which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... the buffeted earth, which seemed panting for a repose it had no strength to gain. Ding dong! Ding dong! The wild and far-away light grew to flame and faded to darkness. In the darkness the bells seemed clearer, for light deafens the imagination. Uniacke felt a strange irritability coming upon him. He moved uneasily in his chair, watching the motionless, stretched figure of ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... for those who in any capacity serve you, is always an evidence of ill-breeding, as well as of inexcusable selfishness. Occasionally a so-called "lady" who has nothing whatever to do but drive uptown or down in her comfortable limousine, vents her irritability upon a saleswoman at a crowded counter in a store, because she does not leave other customers and wait immediately upon her. Then, perhaps, when the article she asked for is not to be had, she complains to the floor-walker about the saleswoman's stupidity! Or having ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... be examined by a physician; a child who is always quarreling equally needs the physician. In the first there is a lack of sufficient energy so to move as to meet and realize some of life's oppositions; in the other there is probably some underlying cause for nervous irritability. ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... this book that he said it ought to be burnt by the common hangman. But he must have approved of the picture of the Petersburg group, who under a thin veneer of polished manners are utterly inane and cynically vicious. One of them had "an expression of constant irritability on his face, as though he could not forgive himself ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... and distressing them all by his extraordinary conduct—at one time in the highest spirits, at another, in the deepest depression—accusing himself of blackest guilt and treachery, without specifying what they were; and altogether evincing an irritability of disposition ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... effects of his constitutional irritability and impatience upon his social intercourse and his domestic relations, and that his bodily infirmities did not allow him a free expression of the tenderness and love of his heart. Who does not feel the pathos and inconsolable regret which dictated ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... days I have had very little real communion with God, and have therefore been very weak spiritually, and have several times felt irritability ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... of his constant irritability, her husband had become more affectionate than customary since ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... graces, this and many another story prove that she had a rare gift of diplomacy. She had, moreover, an unfailing cheerfulness and goodness of heart which quickly endeared her to the moody and capricious Peter. In his frequent fits of nervous irritability which verged on madness, she alone had the power to soothe him and restore him to sanity. Her very voice had a magic to arrest him in his worst rages, and when the fit of madness (for such it undoubtedly was) was passing away she would ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... of impatience and irritability during Mr. Forbes's address, and he now said, with his peculiar snarl for which he was famous, "Once upon a time there was a great redistribution of land in Egypt, and the fifth part of the increase was given to Pharaoh, and the other four parts were left to be food to the ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... their return was a dark one for everybody. Max and Wally had to meet the enemy at eleven, in the lawyer's office. The air was electric with Mrs. Bryce's irritability. She left the two culprits in ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... be excluded; his irritability Is so terrible on that theme that it gives immediately to his face the expression of a man who is going to defend himself from murderers. I can give you only a few little detached traits of what passed, as ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... want of success, jealous of the success of others, his natural irritability of temper increased by habits of intemperance, he at length abandoned himself to the practice of reviewing, and became one of the Ishmaelites of the press. In this his malignant bitterness soon gave him a notoriety which his talents had never been able to attain. We shall ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... will add to the gloom of his grave and brooding nature, render his restless scheming and wandering still more capricious, and increase his suspiciousness and irritability." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... internally in an infusion (4-8 grams to 1 liter of water) as an emollient in irritability of the bladder and urethra and has been recommended for such a purpose by Mooden Sheriff. It is a diuretic which frequently acts as a purgative, a fact that is not surprising in view of the above-mentioned ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... that, being in the vicinity, I would call and see if you've recovered from your—well, your silly fit of irritability," he said, with a grim smile on his grey face as he ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... the last fragments of sleep out of his system, and became filled with a restless irritability. There was only one instrument in the house which could create this infernal din—the orchestrion in the drawing-room, immediately above which, he recalled, his ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... manifested a certain moodiness and irritability very unlike her usual facile sweetness of disposition, and Sara was somewhat nonplussed to account for it. Finally, she approached the matter by way ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... epistle, which is addressed to 'My brothers Carl and Johann Beethoven,' and which they are admonished to 'read and execute after my demise,' Beethoven pleads for consideration both on account of his irritability and his apparent lack of affection. To his misfortunes, not to his faults, must be attributed the obstinacy, the hostility, or the misanthropic attitude which he has shown towards those whom he loves, and by whom he is loved in return. 'My heart and my mind,' he says, as if in extenuation ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... where the letter is, or what has become of Masters?" continued Mulrady, with a matter-of-fact gravity, that seemed to increase Slinn's vagueness and excite his irritability. ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... cross laid upon her for her sins. Her suffering body itself was to preach Jesus crucified. It was difficult indeed to be an enigma to all persons, an object of suspicion to the greatest number, and of respect mingled with fear to some few, without yielding to sentiments of impatience, irritability, or pride. Willingly would she have lived in entire seclusion from the world, but obedience soon compelled her to allow herself to be examined and to have judgment passed upon her by a vast number of curious ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... the most satisfied, and certainly the most astonished by their greatness, wore an anxious, almost a grieved look. They alone appeared discontented with their master. Their pride knew no bounds; their irritability was extreme. Nothing seemed good enough, for them. In the way of honors privileges, and when we recall their father's modest at Ajaccio, it is hard to keep from smiling at the vanity of these new Princes of the blood. Of Napoleon's four brothers, two were absent and on ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... be available, and ere long the two were discussing an excellent dinner. Gray lost much of his irritability and began to talk coherently upon topics of general interest. Presently, following an interval during which he had been ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... I to accuse Olivia? What did these angry emotions of my soul forebode? Perhaps that my habitual irritability, were she mine, would make ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... go on to the second mistake—enforced silence. Moderate reading aloud is good: but where there is any tendency to irritability of throat or lungs, too much moderation cannot be used. You may as well try to cure a diseased lung by working it, as to cure a lame horse by galloping him. But where the breathing organs are of average health, let it be said once and for all, that ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... honey of probability in it, and be the more eager because their enjoyment would end with sunset. Our impulses, our spiritual activities, no more adjust themselves to the idea of their future reality than the beating of our heart, or the irritability of our muscles." ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... very intellectual and lofty, a look of remarkable sagacity and depth of thought, and a smile of extreme goodness. His naturally harmonious voice became full of kindness when he spoke to the lunatics; thus the suavity of his tone and the benevolence of his words seemed oft to calm the natural irritability of these unfortunate people. He was among the first to substitute, in his treatment for madness, commiseration and benevolence for the terrible coercive means employed formerly; no more chains, no more blows, no more shower-baths; above all (save in some few cases), no more ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... of nature draw me vehemently to your side. I was thought in the days of my childhood much to resemble my mother; and in my natural temper, of which at the age of fifty-eight I must be supposed to be a competent judge, can trace both her, and my late uncle, your father. Somewhat of his irritability; and a little, I would hope, both of his and of her—I know not what to call it, without seeming to praise myself, which is not my intention, but speaking to you, I will even speak out, and say good nature. Add to all this, I deal much in poetry, as did our venerable ancestor, ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... was grasped as if by reflex action. Some observers have stated that reflex movements of the face were quite noticeable. These movements continued sometimes for upward of an hour, occurring mostly in muscular subjects who died very suddenly, and in whom the muscular irritability or nervous stimulus or both had not become exhausted at the moment of dissolution. Richardson doubts the existence of postmortem ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... disorder, statistics showing a death rate of from thirty to fifty per cent. Even when the patient lives, bad after effects are common. Peculiar sensibility to moderate heat is a frequent complaint. Loss of memory, weakened mental capacity, headache, irritability, fits, other mental disturbances, and impairment of sight and hearing are among the more usual sequels, occurring in those who do not subsequently avoid the direct rays of the sun, as well as an elevated ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... movement he makes. There are many kinds of nods. The quick, sharp tipping of the head indicates unhesitating, clean-cut decisions. Such judgments on the spur of the moment are not always right, but they are apt to be pretty conclusive. Irregular, jerky nods are signs of irritability, of rash or very impulsive decisions, and often of unreasoning prejudice. The nod made directly forward signifies frankness, dignity, and straight thinking. The tilting of the head a little to one side suggests a habit of indirectness and ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... hired that carriage by the hour, and so am in no hurry. Your excuse for your irritability will be, I suppose, that it is constitutional, and not to be controlled. A selfish, paltry, miserable excuse! I have turned down a leaf in Dr. Johnson's works, and will read what he says in regard to ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... taken fresh forms. After the failure of his attempt to restore Bartja, (transformed as he fancied into a bow) to his original shape, his irritability increased so frightfully that a single word, or even a look, was sufficient to make him furious. Still his true friend and counsellor, Croesus, never left him, though the king had more than once given him over to the guards for execution. But the guards knew their master; they took good care not ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... out his hands, as though acknowledging a check. "Still, the voice described as metallic seems to have been Mr. Saffron's; at a certain moment at least. As a merely medical question of some interest, I wonder if such a symptom or sign of—er—irritability could be intermittent, coming and going with the—er—fits! Irechester didn't say anything on that point. ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... very fond of the doctor, but who had an exceedingly irascible temper. He was the victim of some obscure malady which medicine apparently failed at times to relieve. This seemed to increase his irritability a great deal, so much so that the doctor had at last discovered that if he could get Mr. Pegram angry enough the malady would occasionally disappear. This seemed at times as good a remedy as any, and in consequence he was ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... way Noble was being improved by the experience. His two previous attacks of love (one at twelve, and the other at eighteen) had been incomparably lighter, and the changes in him, noted at home, merely a slight general irritability and a lack of domestic punctuality due to too much punctuality elsewhere. But, when his Julia Atwater trouble came, the very first symptom he manifested was a strange new effort to become beautiful; his mother even discovered that he sometimes worked with pumice stone upon ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... penetrating rostellum. I can, if you like, lend you these Reviews; but they must be returned. R. Brown, I remember, says pollen-tubes separate from grains before the lower ends of tubes reach ovules. I saw, and was interested by, abstract of your Drosera paper (637/2. A short note on the irritability of Drosera in the "Trans. Bot. Soc. Edin." Volume VII.); we have been at ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... found it unbearable. He wasn't used to keeping the curb on himself like this, and he hadn't the least intention of learning how to do it. A fierce, physical irritability overcame him, and he stopped short in the hall, just because he could not stand the silly chatter that was always flowing from these silly people about their foolish affairs. If they only knew what ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... every changing emotion shone through it as through a window into his soul, told of secret harassment. So also did his tense nerves, which seemed wrought up almost to the snapping point. They vented themselves in frequent bursts of irritability and snarling anger. His secretary noticed that he started at every sudden sound, and sometimes also when she had heard nothing, and that then he would look round him in an alarmed, furtive way, as if he expected to see some menace take form out of the air. To her relief he did not return to the ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... worn-out frame of the child. His father, for a little while, spoke hopefully of a change of air, and the sea-side; but he could not long so cheat himself with false hopes. The restlessness and irritability, which they had said to one another were hopeful signs, passed away. His smiles were more languid and constrained, and he soon failed to recognise the anxious, loving friends who ministered to ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... other incentives to irritability was that the voters for Mr. Dease had to be escorted by ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... his memoranda, where Lord Byron accuses himself of irritability of temperament in his early youth, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... animals and mankind develop and mature more rapidly, and diseases run their courses more swiftly; while on the other hand these conditions are more favorable to the simpler forms of life, for the reason that in them the orgasm and irritability are entirely dependent on external influences, and all plants are in the same case, because heat, moisture, and light complete the conditions ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... to make of Margaret, and I wish you would come down and see her. The good-humour which I have noticed in her of late has given way to a curious irritability. She is so restless that she cannot keep still for a moment. Even when she is sitting down her body moves in a manner that is almost convulsive. I am beginning to think that the strain from which she suffered is bringing on some nervous disease, ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... dead food particle has been transformed into living protoplasm, the continually repeated miracle of life. But it does not remain long in this condition. In contact with the oxygen from the air it is soon oxidized, burned up to furnish the energy necessary for the motion and irritability of the body. We are all of us low-temperature engines. The digestive function exists in all animals merely to bring the food into a soluble, diffusible form, so that it can pass to all parts of the body and be used for fuel or growth. In our body a circulatory system is necessary ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... state of the coalition of which William was the head. There were moments when he felt himself overwhelmed, when his spirits sank, when his patience was wearied out, and when his constitutional irritability broke forth. "I cannot," he wrote, "offer a suggestion without being met by a demand for a subsidy." [292] "I have refused point blank," he wrote on another occasion, when he had been importuned for ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... clearer, the spirits much better, the temper more even, and "less irritability pervades the system." The mind can continue a laborious investigation longer than when she subsisted on a ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... who has so clearly distinguished between instinct and intelligence in animals, 'instinct is a natural and inherent faculty, like feeling, irritability, or intelligence. The wolf and the fox who recognize the traps in which they have been caught, and who avoid them; the dog and the horse, who understand the meaning of several of our words, and who obey us,—thereby show intelligence. The dog who hides the remains of his ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... brown study, and began wondering at Mr Preddle's curious ways, and thinking what a pity it was that a gentleman like Mr Denning, who was on a voyage for the sake of his health, should take such a dislike to Mr Frewen and Mr Preddle too. It hardly seemed to be like irritability, for after all he was as merry and friendly with the officers as he was with me. I never went near him without his beckoning to me to come to his side, and both he and his sister were quite affectionate to me, ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... exquisite symmetry and beauty.[1]" The simplest amoeba however, has no definite form; but the little mass moves about, expands and contracts, throws out projections on one side and draws them in on the other. It exhibits irritability when touched. It may be seen surrounding a tiny particle of food, extracting nutriment from it and growing in size. Ultimately the little body separates or splits up into two, each part ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... Bessie having cooked some eggs, which Bessie ate alone, since Thaddeus and Liscomb were compelled to take the eight-o'clock train to town, hungry and forlorn. Liscomb was very good-natured about it to Thaddeus, but his book-keeper had a woful tale to tell of his employer's irritability when he returned home that night. As for Thaddeus, he spoke his mind very plainly—to Liscomb. Bessie never knew what he said, nor did any of the servants; but he said it to Liscomb, and, as Liscomb remarked later, he seemed ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... you take notice of your irritability as you did not use to do, and because you have constantly before your eyes that great pattern ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... tenderness over his partner in the scene and murmuring some notably good things to her bowed head. How could any man murmur in a pandemonium like this. From tenderness Bruce Carmyle descended with a sharp swoop to irritability. ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... tenderness and pride; width of mind and feebleness of will; the two men of St. Paul; a seething chaos of contrasts, antinomies, and contradictions; humility and pride; childish simplicity and boundless mistrust; analysis and intuition; patience and irritability; kindness and dryness of heart; carelessness and anxiety; enthusiasm and languor; indifference and passion; altogether a being incomprehensible and intolerable ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a curious, nervous irritability was taking possession of him. He knew by this time that many arrests had been made in both Leghorn and Pisa; and, though still ignorant of the extent of the calamity, he had already heard enough to put him into a fever of anxiety for the ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... trust, be colder than this place, where I have tarried in the expectation of obtaining rest. Sligo has very kindly proposed a union of our forces for the occasion, which will be perhaps as uncomfortable to him as to myself, judging from previous experience, which, however, may be explained by my own irritability and hurry. ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... friends, generous even to extravagance towards any one who had ever been connected with his fortunes or his travels; playful, light-hearted, witty, and humorous, but not without those occasional fits of black depression and nervous irritability to which such temperaments ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... the sway of any passion more difficult of gratification, for they have no means of communicating with the busy world except through European travellers; and these, in consequence I suppose of that restlessness and irritability that generally haunt their wanderings, seem to have always avoided the bore of giving any information to their hosts. As for me, I am more patient and good-natured, and when I found that the kind monks who gathered round me at ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... as were the expectations he had built on his justice and magnanimity, the chance of this unfortunate prince's reinstatement in his kingdom was as distant as ever. The inactivity and contradictory policies of the English court had abated the zeal of Gustavus Adolphus, and an irritability which he could not always repress made him on this occasion forget the glorious vocation of protector of the oppressed, in which, on his invasion of Germany, he had ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... religious instruction, but Dr Howe was intent upon not inculcating dogma before she had grasped the essential moral truths of Christianity and the story of the Bible. She grew up a gay, cheerful girl, loving, optimistic, but with a nervous system inclining to irritability, and requiring careful education in self-control. In 1860 her eldest sister Mary's death helped to bring on a religious crisis, and through the influence of some of her family she was received into the Baptist church; she became for some years after this more self-conscious and rather ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... physical zeal ran an exaggerated nervous irritability very hard to bear. Beneath the lash of her aunt's cruel tongue Lucy often writhed, quivered, and sometimes wept; but she struggled to keep her hold on her patience. Ellen was old, she told herself, and the self-centered life she had ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... anger, shame, pride and fear—fear for the future, fear of her father, for she had never before seen him look as he had since he had met her on the piazza the evening before. He had manifested none of his usual traits of irritability alternating with a coldness corresponding to her own. He seemed to have passed beyond these surface indications of trouble to the condition of one who sees evils that he cannot avert and who rallies sufficient manhood to meet them with a dignity ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... may invade our little movement . . . our main business is to talk." One sees the point, of course; yet I cannot help feeling that it would have been better if the majority of Leaguers had done some bit of constructive work towards a Distributist world and sweated out of their system the irritability that found vent in some of their quarrels. After all the fight for freedom as far as it concerned attacking government was carried on week by week by the small group running the paper. "The main body of Distributists would ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... suddenly recalled her state of dependence, and she rose and dressed in a mood of irritability that she was usually too prudent to indulge. She knew that such emotions leave lines on the face as well as in the character, and she had meant to take warning by the little creases which her midnight ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... nail, you see that which is irregular in your life, and you avoid it. Then the pain stops, without any necessity of stifling it. Our pain arose from the irregularity of our life, and also my jealousy, my irritability, and the necessity of keeping myself in a state of perpetual semi-intoxication by hunting, card-playing, and, above all, the use of wine and tobacco. It was because of this irregularity that my wife so passionately ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... alone, with no one to help me, no money to buy books or to pay the expenses of my medical training; I had not a friend; my irascible, touchy, restless temper was against me. No one understood that this irritability was the distress and toil of a man who, at the bottom of the social scale, is struggling to reach the surface. Still, I had, as I may say to you, before whom I need wear no draperies, I had that ground-bed of good feeling and keen sensitiveness which must always ...
— The Atheist's Mass • Honore de Balzac
... Dick Varley never once betrayed the slightest feeling of irritability or impatience. He did not expect success at first; he was not, therefore, ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... good husbands are wont to unload their irritability on their wives, so Jean was inclined to favor Mlle. Fouchette. And as doting wives who voluntarily constitute themselves drudges soon become fixed in that lowly position, so Mlle. Fouchette naturally became the servant of the somewhat ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... days the cretin will get warmer, and require much less wrapping and bed-clothing. With the improvement in circulation, the color becomes better and the extremities lose their coldness. In a week or so, irritability and resentment at disturbance appear. He will begin to recognize and know his parents, smile and play. There is a gradual return to the normal of the facial appearance, and a resumption of growth. All kinds of marvelous growth effects ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... people to quarrel with you. The irritability which crowded conditions aggravate makes it necessary to adhere, from principle, to the rule ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... that Court all the qualities in him which needed control received daily stimulus, and his ardour and high-aiming temper turned into impatience and restless irritability. He had a mistress who was at one time in the humour to be treated as a tender woman, at another as an outrageous flirt, at another as the haughtiest and most imperious of queens; her mood varied, ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church |
