"Nervous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... up there hurrying from one finger-exercise to another as if she could not get enough of that exquisite amusement, and Wili is seated at her side in a similar condition of nervous industry, waiting for ...
— Uncle Titus and His Visit to the Country • Johanna Spyri
... trifle nervous when he went to the front to shoot, he did his best to control it. Taking as careful aim as possible, ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer
... was seated down on the deck against one of the guns, and Mesty, putting on the look of a demon, extended above him his, long nervous arm, with the sharp knife clutched, as if ready every instant to strike it into his heart. The Spanish captain felt his situation anything but pleasant. He was then interrogated as to the number of men in the ship, officers, etc, ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... because they have an idea of the location of what they want and blindly strike out for it with a certain nervous desire to cover the intermediate ground as quickly ...
— Sam Lambert and the New Way Store - A Book for Clothiers and Their Clerks • Unknown
... flashed to and fro, and then fixed on Mulvey and his Mexican companion. That glance singled out these two, and the sudden rush of nervous men proved it. Mulvey and the sheep-herder were left alone in the center ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... little nervous attack.—There is your father," she added, recognizing the Baron's way of ringing the bell. "Say ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... infinite in his brief existence by realising the certainty of indefinite progress. His doctrine was a logical extension of the theories of Locke and Condillac. If our knowledge is wholly derived from sensations, our sensations depend on our sensory organs, and mind becomes a function of the nervous system. ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... been held. He could not go now, and once more Harley breathed that deep sigh of relief. Twenty minutes passed, and he heard far off in the east a faint rumble. He knew it was the Denver Express, and, in spite of his resolution, he began to grow nervous. Suppose the woman should ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... She felt that Grace should be warned at once. And there was a look in Lily's face when she mentioned this Cameron creature that made Mademoiselle nervous. ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... friends met in George's room. George was in low spirits, nervous and fretful. It was plain to see his friend's protest had come too late to be of much use, for he had grown more and more worn every day; and the additional hours spent in bed had only been a source of worry and vexation. Jim, on the other hand, was doing ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... words calmly, looking steadily, not at Allan, but into the depths of the Argand lamp. There was no nervous movement of her hands; her interlaced fingers lay motionless on the ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... a lozenge, which he ate reluctantly, chumbling it with nervous haste. He was so afraid that she would give him another that he told ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... back." He was rather pale and nervous, but there was a dogged, resigned look in his eyes. "I've made up my mind," he added, "that I cannot stand it. Turn me loose on one of your plantations to—to boss niggers. You said once I was fit for an overseer. Perhaps you weren't wrong. ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... please. I'm coming to that right away, commissioner," protested the accused lieutenant with a sort of glib nervous agility; yet for all of his promising, he paused for a little bit before he continued. And this pause, brief enough as it was, gave the listening La Farge time to discover, with a small inward jar of surprise, that somehow, some way, he was beginning to lose some of ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... month of May, I entered a crowded car at Cedar Rapids, Ia., and took the only empty seat beside a gentleman who seemed very nervous about a crying child. I was ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... aboard an Amsterdam Avenue car, leaving me to kill eight nervous hours of my weekly day ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... nervous thing, but there is nothing like going boldly at your subject. "Fiat experimentum in corpore vili," is a capital maxim in the Justiciary Court. The worse your case, the less chance you have to spoil it; and I never had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... had a good deal to say. He seemed to multiply his defences in proportion to the little he had to defend; in strong contrast to his antagonist's short, nervous, home-thrust arguments. The Court generally seemed tired with ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... a head that instantly attracted attention by its unusual size and its statuesque shape. He was bronzed almost to the complexion of a mulatto, but without any touch of yellow in the bronze. He was dark by nature, of intensely nervous temperament, and obviously a man capable of enormous determination ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... acts as a very powerful stimulant: then as a sedative, and finally as an anodyne and narcotic, allaying pain in the most extraordinary manner, by acting directly upon the nervous system. In acute rheumatism it is a most excellent medicine when combined with calomel and tartrate of antimony; but its exhibition requires the judicious care of ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... the bedclothes with a nervous, convulsive movement. He had no power to reflect upon his situation; but he felt that he was lost. Alone and unaided, he could not hope to combat the evil designs of two men, a single one of whom he knew was vastly his superior in strength. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... cultivating your friendship and that of Lady Beaumont, and of seeing a little of the world at the same time. But as the wish is strong there are also strong obstacles against it; first, though I have lately been tolerably industrious, I am far behind-hand with my appointed work; and next, my nervous system is so apt to be deranged by going from home, that I am by no means sure that I should not be so much of a dependent invalid, I mean a person obliged to manage himself, as to make it absolutely ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... involuntary and irrational, like a person who has inhaled laughing-gas. It was not till next day that the Highland word "Fey" came into my mind. I am scarcely inclined now, wholly to deride that old superstition. Is it possible that the foreshadow of doom does, in some mysterious way, affect certain nervous systems, when the soul, within a few hours, must pass out free through the rugged doors ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... way he said "all right." It seemed to her, she said, as if he intended to do something which would be all right for him, but not at all so for us. I saw she was nervous about it, for that evening she began to ask me questions about the traveling propensities of soap-makers, upholsterers, ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... impulsive phrases strike with such force against her stupefaction that each one of them seems by degrees to fall back upon myself. I in my turn am left utterly dumfounded; she is so ill at ease that I myself become nervous; her astonishment embarrasses me; I secretly laugh at my own discomfiture; and I ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... heard of his eloquence, and all I had conceived of his great abilities, was more than answered by his performance. Nervous, clear, and striking was almost all that he uttered: the main business, indeed, of his coming forth was frequently neglected, and not seldom wholly lost , but his excursions were so fanciful, so entertaining, and so ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... side, seems to like Miss Batchford on better acquaintance. When I first presented him to her, he rather surprised me by changing color and looking very uneasy. He is almost distressingly nervous, on certain occasions. I suppose my ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... said of Coleridge: "I believe it to be notorious that he first began the use of opium, not as a relief from any bodily pains or nervous irritations—for his constitution was strong and excellent—but as a source of luxurious sensations." Hartley Coleridge, in the biographical supplement to the "Biographia Literaria," replies with what we now know to be truth: "If my Father sought more from opium ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... to the barn in which his helpless family had taken up their temporary residence, Owen stood for a moment to collect himself; but he was nervous, and trembled with repressed emotion. They then entered; and Kathleen, on seeing her beloved and affectionate husband, threw herself on his bosom, and for some time felt neither joy nor sorrow—she ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... increased severity of his annual hay-fever,—all contributed to debilitate him. His iron constitution weakened in various ways, and especially by frequent periods of intense mental exertion, to which were superadded the excitement and nervous strain inseparable from his career, was beginning to give way. Slowly but surely he lost ground. His spirits began to lose their elasticity, and he rarely spoke without a tinge of deep sadness being apparent in all he said. In May, 1852, ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... left alone, he stood by the fire, thinking. He had been preparing for this moment for so long that now that it was actually here he was frightened, nervous. He had so often imagined that first arrival in England, the first glimpse of London; then the first meeting and the first evening at home. Of course, all his thoughts had centred on Robin—everything else had been secondary, but he had, in some unaccountable way, never ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... he forced himself into an appearance of composure. He feared that he might startle and offend her if he gave expression to the ardors that throbbed in his heart and brain. "She must be tired and nervous," he thought, "and I will try to ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... kind of you." If the marquis was excited, or nervous, there was nothing on his face ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... Ibsen, Homer, and Oscar Wilde are compounded—and, of course, a few manuals of archeology. Agamemnon was neurasthenic and Achilles impotent: they lamented their condition at length, and naturally their outcries produced no change. The energy of the drama was concentrated in the role of Iphigenia—a nervous, hysterical, and pedantic Iphigenia, who lectured the hero, declaimed furiously, laid bare for the audience her Nietzschian pessimism and, glutted with death, cut her ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... after church she came up to dine at the Hall and spend the day there; for Lady Maxwell was thoroughly nervous and upset: she trembled at the sound of footsteps, and cried out when one of the men came into the ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... relieved to learn that the boys had met with no harm, but still somewhat nervous from the hours of fretting he had passed when the lads failed to return, now hastened to get ready to accompany Ned. On the way he explained bow Stacy Brown had been fanned by another bullet when ...
— The Pony Rider Boys with the Texas Rangers • Frank Gee Patchin
... Pilgrimages, the Convulsionaires, the Revival epilepsies and swoons, which have so often accompanied fits of religious devotion worked up into frenzy; these diseases being merely the result of excitement of the senses, which convulse the mind and powerfully affect the whole nervous system. ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... little late and found an official envelope on his desk. He hurriedly broke the seal and began to read. His color came and went. The teachers looked at him wonderingly. The president laid the document aside and began the devotional exercises. He was nervous throughout, and made several blunders. He held his hymn book upside down while they were singing, much to the amusement of the school. It took him some time to find the passage of scripture which he desired to read, ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... dome of the colossal command ship just beyond Pluto, every nervous clearing of a throat rasped through the silence. Telescopes were available but most of the scientists and high officials preferred the view on the ...
— Irresistible Weapon • Horace Brown Fyfe
... going to do anything to him," returned Average Jones, "because, in the first place, I suspect that he is far, far away, having noted, doubtless, the plugged keyhole and suffered a crisis of the nerves. It's strange how nervous your scientific murderer is. Anyway, Ross is only an agent. I'm going to ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... one single particle of a second. So then I thought of stepping in to Miss Nugent; for the young ladies are talking so fast, says I to myself, at the door, they will never know how time goes, unless I give 'em a hint. But now my lady is below, there's no need, to be sure, to be nervous, so we may take the thing quietly, without being in a flustrum. Dear ladies, is not this now a very sudden motion of our young lord's for Ireland? Lud a mercy! Miss Nugent, I'm sure your motions is sudden enough; and your dress behind ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... rather subject to this sort of nervous fits, and she has been much harassed of late by grief and apprehension. When she recovers from them it is a few minutes before she can collect her ideas, and during such intervals—to speak very confidentially to you, my ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... beginning to get warm, and I of course to get better. There has been a good deal of nervous headache here this Ramadan. I had to attend the Kadee, and several more. My Turkish neighbour at Karnac has got a shaitan (devil), i.e. epileptic fits, and I was sent for to exorcise him, which I am endeavouring to do with nitrate of silver, etc.; but I fear imagination ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... of the blood is simply a matter of mechanism, and results from the structure and arrangement of the parts of the heart and vessels, from the contractility of those organs, and from the regulation of that contractility by an automatically acting nervous apparatus. The progress of physiology has further shown, that the contractility of the muscles and the irritability of the nerves are purely the results of the molecular mechanism of those organs; and that the regular movements of the respiratory, alimentary, and other internal ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... A nervous hand, bony as a skeleton's, came hesitatingly forth to him at length, and he gripped and held it for several ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... them. The human intelligence is made for infinity; the heart is not. The being who really suffers in his heart, and not merely in his mind or in words, by the suffering of others whom he neither sees nor touches, is a nervous abnormality, and he cannot be argued from as an example. The repulse of reason, the stain of absurdity, torture the intelligence in a more abundant way. Simple as it may be, social science is geometry. Do not accept the sentimental meaning they give to the word "humanitarianism," ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... and sheepish grins, Like men found out in secret sins, Glug gazed at Glug in nervous dread; Till one with claims to learning said, "Sir Stodge is talking Greek, you know. He may be bad, ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... never mind, Mr. Barradas. We mustn't be too particular," she said merrily, "but I should like some hot water to clean my hands. Please tell the steward. When is the wedding to be, Mr. Barry? The bride that is to be is very nervous, and, in fact, says she'd rather Velo married her in native fashion. But I'm not going to let her disappoint me. Big Joe is to be her best man, and the bridegroom is to be 'supported' ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke
... some dangerous and abusive exaggeration. Examples: empiricism, idealism, radicalism. What is best among things and most perfect among beings slips through these categories. The man who is perfectly well is neither sanguineous—[to use the old medical term]—nor bilious nor nervous. A normal republic contains opposing parties and points of view, but it contains them, as it were, in a state of chemical combination. All the colors are contained in a ray of light, while red alone does not contain a sixth ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... moves on the borders of the lake, Bonaparte now sought to make Beaulieu nervous about his communications with Tyrol through the river valley of the Adige; he completely succeeded: seeking to guard the important positions on that river between Rivoli and Roveredo, Beaulieu so weakened ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... Malatesta's reception, I heard by chance these two words, 'l'improductivite slave.' I experienced the same relief as does a nervous patient when the physician tells him that his symptoms are common enough, and that many others suffer from the same disease. . . . I thought about that 'improductivite slave' all night. He had his wits about him who summed ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... not hampering their playing in the least. Ruth Hale and Nina Merrill were playing with honest vim and in silence. Their sturdy work was equal to that of any of the opposing team save Phyllis. She was as brilliant a player as her cousin, Robin Page. Being, however, of a nervous, high-strung temperament, the three Sans' tactics had effected her most of all. As a consequence, she missed the basket two different times. Besides that, she grew disheartened with the thought that she was playing badly and missed opportunities at the ball that would ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... idea of deliverance to which I have previously alluded, and of which a moiety only floated indeterminately through my brain when I raised food to my burning lips. The whole thought was now present—feeble, scarcely sane, scarcely definite,—but still entire. I proceeded at once, with the nervous energy of despair, to attempt ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... given him the location of Bassett's apartment house, and he found it quickly. He was in a state of nervous irritability by that time, for the sense of being a fugitive was constantly stressed in the familiar streets by the danger of recognition. It was in vain that he argued with himself that only the police were interested in his movements, and the casual roundsman ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... pathological observation and the superficiality of their self-made psychology. Thus the desire arose in their own medical circle to harmonize their psychological means of diagnosis and therapy with the schemes of modern scientific psychology. The physician who examines the sensations in a nervous disease, or the intelligence in a mental disease, or heals by suggestion or hypnotism, tries to apply the latest discoveries of the psychological laboratory. But here, too, the same development as in pedagogy can be traced. The physicians at first ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... showed him to a place between Anna Zaharovna and Kolia. Anna Zaharovna was an old maid, a sister of Sipiagin's father; she exhaled a smell of camphor, like a garment that had been put away for a long time, and had a nervous, dejected look. She had acted as Kolia's nurse or governess, and her wrinkled face expressed displeasure when Nejdanov sat down between her and her charge. Kolia looked sideways at his new neighbour; the intelligent boy soon saw that his tutor was shy and uncomfortable, ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... apparitions:—in every instance I have known or heard of (and I have collected very many) the consequence has been either sudden death, or fits, or idiocy, or mania, or a brain fever. Whence comes the difference? evidently from this,—that in the one case the whole of the nervous system has been by slight internal causes gradually and all together brought into a certain state, the sensation of which is extravagantly exaggerated during sleep, and of which the images are the mere ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... his position, glancing from the settlement below him to the approaching Apaches, with that quick, nervous motion which showed only too plainly that he felt a crisis was at hand, and he could delay only ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... Clara sleeps; we must not disturb her." She seated herself then on the same ottoman where I had left her in the morning resting on the beating heart of her Raymond; I dared not approach her, but sat at a distant corner, watching her starting and nervous gestures. At length, in an abrupt manner she ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... wild elephants were in a state of terror and nervous excitement. Now they would all stand huddled together, not knowing what to do; then one, braver than the rest, would advance, and by degrees the others would follow, and the whole herd made a desperate rush towards the end ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... said, coming back to his place, "let us consider the Rosario matter disposed of. Let us go back for a moment to Starling. Tell me why you and your sister saw danger to yourselves in Starling's nervous breakdown? Tell me why, when I returned to Pelham Lodge with her that night, she found a dead man in her room, a man whose body was ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of the first year Ursula got through her Intermediate Arts examination, and there came a lull in her eager activities. She slackened off, she relaxed altogether. Worn nervous and inflammable by the excitement of the preparation for the examination, and by the sort of exaltation which carried her through the crisis itself, she now fell into a quivering ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... however, in store. As May drew to an end it was plain that there was no government at all left in Peking. The last phase had been truly reached. Yuan Shih-kai's nervous collapse was known to all the Legations which were exceedingly anxious about the possibility of a soldiers' revolt in the capital. The arrival of a first detachment of the savage hordes of General Chang Hsun added Byzantine touches to a picture already lurid with a sickened ruler and the Mephistophelian ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... pride passed over his fine face. "There is no more need of silence; I am free and proud to claim you, darling. Uncle knows all, and bids me bring you to him. He was very ill. I nursed him and his life was spared. The fatigue, and more than all the worry of mind about you, brought on a severe nervous fever. I have been very ill. Julia knew it. Did you not hear? In my ravings I told all. Uncle has changed much since his recovery. He is no longer ambitious, except for my happiness, and is now waiting ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... sniper got him in the leg, but he held to until he repaired it, and was in touch with headquarters, reporting that he had mended the break, when the wire was again cut. The bleeding from his wound now made it necessary for him to mend that break first, and he bandaged it as quickly as his nervous fingers would work. Again he took hold of the wire, crawling and stumbling along until he again came to the break, and again mended it. He was being closely watched now, as the bullets were whistling about him ceaselessly. ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... of the peaceful seclusion of the railway carriage the duke's excitement had returned; and now that the real ordeal was at hand, he had grown uncommonly nervous. It may be that he was unused to deceit. He had set Emily Gibbs beside the chauffeur that he might have Pollyooly to himself; and all the way he poured jumbled instructions into her ear in a fashion which would have brought her to the ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... Cecilia, what a fuss you are in!—you make me quite nervous to look at you. You had better go down to the breakfast-room, and you will hear all about it from the fountain-head." "Has Katrine the book or not?" cried ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... flushed hotly, came into the house, and began to re-arrange the teacups with a nervous haste; for she heard Jamie's steps on the rocky road, and his voice, clear as a blackbird's, whistling gayly "In ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... with its stinging flagellations, had begun to still the nervous tremors which followed the reunion of his two natures, so powerfully disunited for a time; he was drawn towards the parsonage, then towards Minna, by the sight of the every-day home life for which he thirsted as the wandering European thirsts ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... by taking him one side and pulling one from a cart. It was a long, yellow-stocked smoothbore, with a flintlock. It had many brass tacks driven into the stock, and was bright in its cheap newness. As the Bat took it in his hand he felt a nervous thrill, such as he had not experienced since the night he had pulled the dripping hair from the Absaroke. He felt it all over, smoothing it with his hand; he cocked and snapped it; and the little brown bat on his scalp-lock fairly yelled: "Get your ponies, get your ponies—you ...
— The Way of an Indian • Frederic Remington
... Whiffs of delectable fragrance swim by; Spice-laden vagrants that float and entice, Tickling the throat and brimming the eye. Ah! what rejoicing and crackling and roasting! Ah! How the boys sing as, cackling and boasting, The angels' old wives and their nervous assistants Run in to ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... Mr. Parasyte had been very uneasy and nervous. It was plain to him that he ruled the boys by their free will, rather than by his own power; and this was not a pleasant thing for a man like him to know. Doubtless he felt that he had dropped the reins of his team, ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... bit nervous when he got ready for a trial flight in the new dirigible balloon. To tell the truth he much preferred aeroplanes to balloons, but he realized that in a country where the jungle growth prevailed, and where there ...
— Tom Swift in the City of Gold, or, Marvelous Adventures Underground • Victor Appleton
... comin' from 'way up in his little round pulpit. He is tellin' us why we should be thankful, an', as he quotes Scriptur' an' Dr. Watts, we boys wonder how anybody can remember so much of the Bible. Then I get nervous and worried. Seems to me the minister was never comin' to lastly, and I find myself wonderin' whether Laura is listenin' to what the preachin' is about, or is writin' notes to Sam Merritt in the back of the tune-book. I get thirsty, too, and I fidget about till ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... out of humour with herself and everything. She was disappointed in her mother's advice about her writing. She was angry with herself for failing in her duty, she was nervous about Joan, and over and above all she was disappointed in her Sunday. It did not seem like a Sunday—the happy beautiful day that comes bringing sunshine to the heart and sweetness and peace to the home, giving to all strength and courage to take ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... the whole town knew that I was going to Mien Dien (Burma). Confessedly with a sad heart—for I carried with me memories of kindnesses such as I had never known before—I led my nervous pony, Rusty, out through the Dung Men (the East Gate), with twenty enthusiastic scholars and a few grown-ups forming a turbulent rear. As I strode onwards the little group of excited younkers watched me ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... out but he was at the door directly: she could not go out but he was at her heels. This pleased her at first and thrilled her with the sense of sweet and hot pursuit: but by-and-by, situated as she was between him and her mother, it worried her a little at times, and made her nervous. She spoke a little sharply to him now and then. And that was new. It came from the nerves, not the heart. At last she advised him to go back to Oxford. "I shall be the ruin of your mind if we go on like ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... his obliging offer, Nicholas jumped out, and, giving Smike his arm, accompanied the manager up High Street on their way to the theatre; feeling nervous and uncomfortable enough at the prospect of an immediate introduction to a scene so ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... girl called up all her strength into her heart for this supreme moment; she walked with a firm step; having reached the threshold, she turned round and waved him a farewell, preventing herself by a nervous contraction from bursting into tears, but as soon as she was in the corridor, a sob broke from her bosom, and Gabriel, who heard it echo from the vaulted roof, thought that ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... vibrated with noises made by hidden colossal things. The infantry tramplings, the heavy rumbling of the artillery, made the earth speak of gigantic preparation. Guns on distant heights thundered from time to time with sudden, nervous roar, as if unable to endure in silence a knowledge of hostile troops massing, other guns going to position. These sounds, near and remote, defined an immense battle-ground, described the tremendous width of the stage of ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... others, have wrongly assumed to be the outcome of harmonious physical and mental health. There is a pathetic exception in the outward lives of so many men of genius, the bloom being, to the instructed eye, only the indication of some subtle nervous derangement, only the forerunner of decay." The overmastering cerebral agitation that obsessed Wagner's life, was as with Chopin a symptom, not a sickness; but in the latter it had not ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... Fletcher asked us to excuse him for a while, as he wished to run over to the Greenes', who lived across the bay. Miss Bond was completely prostrated by the death of her uncle, he said, and was in an extremely nervous condition. Meanwhile if we found any need of a machine we might use his uncle's, or in fact anything ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... unwillingly. "Oh, don't make a scene!" he said irritably. "Your mother is nervous, so I have given it up for ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... gallery. The lighted windows of the Chapel-master's little room threw a square of red on the opposite roofs. They could hear the harmonium playing slowly and sadly, and when it stopped the shadow of the musician passed and repassed over the square of light with his nervous gestures, which, enlarged by the reflection, appeared the ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... wonderful power, only to be matched by as admirable a simplicity, Miss Jewsbury has narrated the history of a child. For nobility of purpose, for simple, nervous writing, and for artistic construction, it is one of the most valuable works of the ...
— Cat and Dog - Memoirs of Puss and the Captain • Julia Charlotte Maitland
... worthiness of matter—as the curious carved stones of the temple were to the disciples—be amiable to thine eyes, and nervous sentences, solid observations, with a kind of insinuating, yet harmless behaviour, be taking with thy spirit, here they are also, and acquainting thyself with them, either as the sinner or the saint, which thine own conscience shall best inform thee of, there shall be ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... of cases of consumption has been reported to the Benevolent Fund of the National Union of Teachers. In addition to this, the strain (already referred to) under which teachers in the Metropolitan and larger urban districts work, is resulting in an increasing number of nervous breaksdown. ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... goodness he won't shoot himself. [Pause] I'm so nervous, I'm worried. I went into service when I was quite a little girl, and now I'm not used to common life, and my hands are white, white as a lady's. I'm so tender and so delicate now; respectable and afraid of everything.... ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... them, this man becomes an object of their love. But he, who neglects a girl thinking she is too bashful, is despised by her as a beast ignorant of the working of the female mind. Moreover, a girl forcibly enjoyed by one who does not understand the hearts of girls becomes nervous, uneasy, and dejected, and suddenly begins to hate the man who has taken advantage of her; and then, when her love is not understood or returned, she sinks into despondency, and becomes either a hater of mankind altogether, or, ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... that they had neglected to follow the instructions of their doctors and made no preparation for nursing the child; as a result, when I insisted that it must be done, shrieks of pain, painful enough as I could see, resulted in a nervous chill for the mother, more inhumanity in me, and the boy was turned over to a hired woman with his first breath and to begin unnatural life. I watched the little chap all I could; he was strong and ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... the extreme. The Spanish party had again taken heart, and were whispering caution in the Queen's ear. Even Burghley grew nervous that she would repent; but at last he got sailing-orders sent off, and, with a sigh of relief, entered in his diary that Drake had gone. To his horror came back a letter from the admiral still dated from Plymouth, instead of from Finisterre, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... passed away after the conversation related in the last chapter, and one evening Hilda was in her boudoir alone, as usual. She was somewhat paler, more nervous, and less calm than she had been a few months previously. Her usual stealthy air had now developed into one of wary watchfulness, and the quiet noiselessness of her actions, her manner, and her movements had become ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... would be a confession of defeat. There was something abhorrently vulgar in thus lowering the pitch of their life. They had come pretty near it often this last summer. But each feared what the other might think. Edwards especially was nervous about the impression it might make on his wife, if he should discuss the matter. Mrs. Leicester's talk, however, had opened possibilities for the imagination. So little of Uncle James's money, she mused, would make them ideally happy—would put her husband on the road to fame. She had almost ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... Captain Aylmer's turn to begin, and Captain Aylmer felt that he wished he could read the newspaper. He had nothing in particular that he desired to say to his lady-love. That morning, as he was shaving himself, he had something to say that was very particular as to which he was at that moment so nervous, that he had cut himself slightly through the trembling of his hand. But that had now been said, and he was nervous no longer. That had now been said, and the thing settled so easily, that he wondered at his own nervousness. He did not know that there was anything ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... Trotter. It interested him very much. But it no longer filled him with mingled fear and revolt. He was, indeed, no longer envious, just as he was no longer nervous. He was as calm as a Nihilist with a bomb in ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... and nearer. Now and then a vivid flash of lightning split the sombre clouds. At such times the nervous girls would jump in their seats, and there would follow hysterical, though quickly subdued, bursts of laughter from their more stolid mates, or ...
— The Outdoor Girls of Deepdale • Laura Lee Hope
... know I am not a chap who goes hunting for trouble; I'm nervous; I don't like to be troubled with other people's troubles. This afternoon I was over to Bob Eaton's, and you know he has got some cottages up at the other end of the lake ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy
... traditions of demure sixteen hanging by one-inch shoulder straps, and who could not walk across a hardwood floor without sliding the last three steps, teetered in bare arm-in-arm groups, swapping persiflage with pimply, patent-leather-haired young men who were full of nervous excitement and eager to excel ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... said the mother soothingly. "She don't want the whole township tramplin' up there to eye over her chiny. Make her as nervous as a witch. Here's the ha'-bushel basket, an' some paper to put between 'em. You go, Jonas, an' I'll clear ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... a few minutes later he came to confront the clerk he saw that his task was not likely to prove quite so easy as his former experience had led him to expect. Save for a slight nervous trembling of limb and shoulder—surely not unnatural after such a night—Jake bore himself with very much the same indifferent ease he had shown the ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green |
