"Hysterical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tears flowed faster. Hysterical tremors agitated the recumbent mass. "I—I can't get up," she exploded at length, ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... to me some time ago," said la Peyrade, "about marrying a girl who was rich, fully of age, and slightly hysterical, as you were pleased to ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... them in the most shameless way. I once forced a little maid of mine to wear the regular maid's dress of black, with muslin cap and apron, and she was certainly a joy to the eye; but one day I sent her out on an errand, and she came back almost hysterical under the torrent of ribald admiration which my thoughtlessness had brought upon her. A seamstress will not remain alone in your house while you run into a neighbor's on an errand without bolting herself in the room; and, if you ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... the girl, with an hysterical laugh. "I been to the play, and there was a man in it was a thief, you know, miss!" And with ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... consistent, and to compare them by intuitive analogy with the order of nature, is the occasion of the starting at the clapping to of a door, or the fall of a key, which occasions violent surprise with fear and sometimes convulsions, in very feeble hysterical patients, and is not owing I believe (as I formerly supposed) to increased sensation; as they are less sensible to small stimuli than when ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... sentence seemed to be repeated over and over again by the rustling night wind. Her first impulse was to save him from the consequences of such an act. Were not the names of Moore and Essex familiar to her? And what was their fate for even a suspected treason? Her hysterical imagination placed vividly before her the head of the father she loved, lying bleeding in that patch of ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... operation, and take the form of restlessness, sleeplessness, low incoherent muttering, and picking at the bedclothes. It is not necessarily attended by fever or by muscular tremors. The patient may show hysterical symptoms. This condition is probably to be regarded as a form of insanity, as it is liable to merge into mania ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... put stink-bombs in public places and write threatening letters and give warnings of bombs about to go off—and sometimes set them—and stuff dirt into cold rocket-nozzles and sometimes kill people and go incontinently hysterical because they didn't mean to. Delinks do most of the damaging things that have no sense to them. There is no cop who has not wanted to kill some grinning, half-scared, half-defiant delink who hasn't yet realized that he's destroyed half a million credits' worth of property or crippled ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... that is fitting. It is necessary also to take account, in the case of some of these criminals, of their noble altruism which renders them worthy of certain regard. Many of these people are souls that have gone astray and are hysterical, like Vaillant and Henry, who, had they been engaged in some other cause, far from being a danger, would have been able to be of use in this society ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... a man in great pain checked her hysterical sobs. Dazed, she passed her hand over her face as if to clear away the dark shades that were obstructing her vision. Another groan—and like a flash she was down on her knees lavishing endearments upon ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... man. "Why, Speed can't—" He was about to explain everything when the memory of Willie's words smote him like a blow. That fiend had threatened to kill him, Lawrence Glass, without preliminary if it became evident that a fraud had been practiced. Manifestly this was no place for hysterical confidences. Larry's mouth closed like a trap, while the Californian watched him intently. At length he did speak, but in a strangely softened tone, and at utter variance ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... second day following, he found himself able to light a cigarette; and, glancing about him with faint pluckings of convalescent interest, began to recognize some landmarks. On the third day, he was frankly wondering whether a girl with such overstrained, not to say hysterical ideals of conduct, would, after all, be a very comfortable person ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... fury, Mignon turned and ran down the stairs, her slender body trembling with the anger of a defeat born of the failure of her plan and her own betraying haste. Gaining the shelter of her dressing room, she gave herself up to a paroxysm of rage that ended in a burst of hysterical sobs. ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... on her back, in the posture customary to her, the arms being stretched down by the sides under the bed-quilt. Her features were drawn slightly askew; the skin was shiny; the eyes stared as though Mrs. Maldon had been a hysterical subject. It was evident that she had passed through a tremendous physical crisis. Nevertheless, Rachel was still astounded at the change for the better in her, wrought by sleep and the ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... vision of the saloon of the Korosko danced like a mirage before their eyes, and they saw the white napery, the wine-cards by the places, the long necks of the bottles, the siphons upon the sideboard. Sadie, who had borne up so well, became suddenly hysterical, and her shrieks of senseless laughter jarred horribly upon their nerves. Her aunt on one side of her and Mr. Stephens on the other did all they could to soothe her, and at last the weary, over-strung girl relapsed into something between a sleep ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... him, trying to grasp the meaning of the words. Meaning would not come. He uttered a short, hysterical laugh that was like a bark. "You're crazy, Doc. You've completely flipped ...
— The Memory of Mars • Raymond F. Jones
... For I love him, my dear Piney! Bless you, for I love him, my dear Piney!" he kept saying over and over, with an hysterical quaver in his voice, his lips pale and moving constantly. "Oh, may God bless you, for I love him, my dear Piney!" It was what Salome Madeira had said to him when he had left her, a white, angelic figure, swaying ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... I'm not a ghost!" shouted Gay, but the only response came in an hysterical babble of moans from the negro quarters somewhere in the rear and in the soft whir in his face of a leatherwing bat as it wheeled low in the twilight. There was no smoke in the chimneys, and the square old house, with its hooded roof and its vacant windows, assumed ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... fail to arouse the jaded spirit of the reading public,—novelty and mystery, united to that scarce and seldom recognised power called genius. He or she had produced a Book. Not an ephemeral piece of fiction,—not a "Wells" effort of imagination under hydraulic pressure—not an hysterical outburst of sensual desire and disappointment such as moves the souls of demimondaines and dressmakers,—not even a "detective" sensation—but just a Book—a real Book, likely to live as long as literature itself. It ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... young couple returned to their native soil, they received a letter which caused Preston the greatest astonishment, and Mabel some hours of hysterical weeping. This letter was written by Judge Lawrence, and announced his marriage to Baroness Brown. Judge Lawrence had been a widower more than a year when the Baroness took the book of his heart, in which he supposed the hand of romance had long ago written "finis," and turning ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... had come out in a torrent of increasing force, until her voice was almost a scream, and this violence had its climax in a hysterical outburst of weeping, as she sank upon a chair and hid her face upon the back thereof. In this attitude she remained, her ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... he said something that sounded like, "Not on the stand yet." Then, leaning toward me, across the table, resting on his elbow until his face was level with my own, "I know you must have been much frightened at what you saw, child, and it's possible you may have been a little hysterical, isn't it? It's possible you might have fancied a revolver in his hand, isn't it, when there ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... if by a meracle, ailments hysterical, Dad, wid one dose of bread pills he can smother, And quench the love sickness wid comical quickness, Prescribin' the right boys and girls to each other. And the sufferin' childer! Your eyes 'twould bewilder, To see the wee craythurs his coat-tails unravellin'— Each of them fast on some treasure ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... Susan thought that she heard a dim commotion from the direction of the hallway—Kenneth's voice, Ella's voice, high and angry, some unfamiliar feminine voice, hysterical and shrill, and Mrs. Saunders, crying out: "Tottie, don't speak that way ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... wasn't very cool. She was bordering on the hysterical. She and her children are now living with friends, for their house ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... whether much of the evidence given, especially by the Belgian witnesses, may not be due to excitement and overstrained emotions, and whether, apart from deliberate falsehood, persons who mean to speak the truth may not in a more or less hysterical condition have been imagining themselves to have seen the things which they say that they saw. Both the lawyers who took the depositions, and we when we came to examine them, fully recognized this possibility. The lawyers, as already observed, took pains to test each witness and either rejected, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... danger and pitiful condition, thinking only of those dear lost ones there in that abode of hell, and maddened at the impossibility of rescuing them. It was a wild hurly-burly of voices and of tongues, of despairing yells, hysterical sobs, heart-rending prayers; and as I stumbled over the twisted and broken rails, that stood upright like bent wires, and stooped over the bulwark, I beheld a spectacle so terrible that every nerve of my body, every heart-string, revolted at ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... conscience, in order that she may have the qualified satisfaction of acquitting herself, whilst returning against her relatives a verdict of guilty on every count of the indictment. In short, she becomes a thoroughly morbid and hysterical young woman, suspicious, and resentful even of the sympathy which is rarely offered to her. In the meantime, two of her younger sisters are wooed and won in the orthodox manner by steady-going gentlemen, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 6, 1890 • Various
... electric shocks, which galvanised her, and for an hour brought her atrocious intensity of life. She would lie on her bed rigid, with her eyes open; then hiccoughs would come upon her and she would writhe and struggle, acquiring the frightful strength of those hysterical madwomen whom one has to tie down in order to prevent them from breaking their heads against a wall. This return to former vigour, these sudden attacks, gave her a terrible shock. When she came to again, she would stagger about with such a scared, stupefied look, that the gossips ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... irritability to which every woman is occasionally subject, and makes me rave with impatience and excitement, they will report me a dangerous lunatic, subject to periodical attacks of violent frenzy; but, young man, even at my worst, I am no more mad than any other woman, wild with grief and hysterical through nervous irritation, might at any time become without having ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... another to a tune of a single monotonous musical phrase, which they repeated in chorus, accompanied by several local drums and tambourines. The hushed trill of the latter mingled with the forest echoes and the hysterical moans of two little girls, who lay under a heap of leaves by the fire. The poor children were brought here by their mothers, in the hope that the goddesses would take pity upon them and banish the two evil spirits under whose obsession they were. Both mothers were quite young, and sat on their heels ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... said a hoarse trembling voice which it was difficult to recognise as Bainton's; "For the Lord's sake, don't make that noise, gel! Think o' Passon!—do'ee think o' Passon! We must break it to 'im gently like—-" But the hysterical sobbing broke out ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... resembled sobs. And the Hungarian czardas, symbolizing thus the dance of these martyrs, kept still, will always keep, the characteristic of contortions under the lash of bygone days; and, slow and languishing at first, then soon quick and agitated, tragically hysterical, it also is interrupted by melancholy chords, dreary, mournful notes and plaintive accents like drops of blood from a wound-from the mortal wound of Prince Sandor, lying there in ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... tombs of the Dorntons and their effigies in brass and marble, yet, as Randolph glanced at the stately sarcophagus of the unknown ticket of leave man, its complacent absurdity, combined with his nervousness, made him almost hysterical. Yet again, it seemed to him that something of the mystery and inviolability of the past now invested that degraded dust, and it would be an equal impiety to disturb it. Miss Eversleigh, again believing his agitation caused by the memory of his old patron, tactfully hurried him away. Yet it was ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... over there would come to us on the quiet at night. But one afternoon I saw a big crowd on the front campus. It grew every moment, became a mob, shoving and surging, shouting and jeering. I climbed some steps to look into the center, and saw two painted terrified girls, hysterical, sobbing, swearing and shrieking. So they were shoved, a hidden spectacle, to the station and put on the train. Nothing like that on our front campus! Nothing like "sex" in the front rooms of our minds. The crowd returned ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... resigned to conduct the first one on the Furnace Bomb and the Discovery to the Bay. Perhaps wrong signals in the harbours did lead the searchers' ships to bad anchorage. At any rate Arthur Dobbs announced in hysterical fury that the Company had bribed Middleton with L5000 not to find the Passage. Middleton had come back in 1742 saying bluntly, in sailor fashion, that 'there was no passage and never would be.' At once the Dobbs faction went into a frenzy. Baseless charges were ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut
... in that action, at that time, shocked and humiliated her. Completely misunderstanding him, she thought he was reminding her of the distance that separated them in social rank. Oh, the shame of it! the shame of it! Would other governesses have taken a liberty with their master? A fit of hysterical sobbing burst its way through her last reserves of self-control; she started to her feet, and ran out of ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... thought his generosity should stop, he withdrew from the advances of the Opera-House Siren with perfect coolness and skill, leaving her to exercise her blandishments upon some more easy victim. In vain the mermaid's hysterical mother waited upon Harry, and vowed that a cruel bailiff had seized all her daughter's goods for debt, and that her venerable father was at present languishing in a London gaol. Harry declared that between himself and the bailiff there could be no dealings, and that ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Presently the hysterical fit passed away, and, laying her hands upon my shoulders, she gazed for a while into my face, as though trying to read it—something I said to her, but it was clear that she did not hear it. Her face looked so dark and despondent that I began to fear for ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... human element in life's experiences was matchless. He spoke humorously when lightness and gaiety were in order, and seriously when the word of faith was needed. There is much to be learned from his approach. Called one day to a humble dwelling on Mt. Adams where a mother was hysterical because her boy had just undergone an emergency operation, Mr. Nelson tore a button from his coat before entering the room, and said in an off-hand manner, "Oh! this has just come off! Will you ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... gone to God. It is good for many souls that she lived upon earth a little. There was nothing sentimental, visionary, or hysterical in her character. Nor, in giving her great heart with her pure soul to her Saviour, did she ever quite learn to despise the sweetness of earthly love. Not all a Saint. Yet the children of those women who most were swayed ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... within stood my father, his face white and malignant, and glaring close in mine. He cried in a terrible voice, 'Death!' Out went Madame's candle, and at the same moment, with a scream, I waked in the dark—still fancying myself in the library; and for an hour after I continued in a hysterical state. ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... that a great actor should neglect a passage that paints with one touch Hamlet's half-hysterical state. Given as it might be given, it would curdle the blood in your veins. I asked the best Hamlet it has been my fortune to see, why he left out these lines. "I have often thought I would speak them; but I don't know how." That was his answer, and a very honest one it was. But such a reason is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... self-control, aided by an occasional glance from her husband, she managed to preserve her calm until he returned from seeing the visitor to her tram. Then her pent-up feelings found vent. Quietly scornful at first, she soon waxed hysterical over his age and figure. Tears followed as she bade him remember what a good wife she had been to him, loudly claiming that any other woman would have poisoned him long ago. Speedily finding that tears were of no avail, and that ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... after her death, and virtually disproved by the testimony of an eye-witness who makes no allusion to it, but who tells us instead that she behaved like a very weak woman instead of a very brave one, giving way to hysterical screams, and so distressing the sufferer that he bade four of his knights to carry her out of the room. Again, Edward's affectionate regret did not cause the erection of the famous Eleanor Crosses wherever the bier rested on its journey. Leonor ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... ever. . . . The day the newspapermen saw him a very junior officer who has since distinguished himself came to report breathlessly, 'That last one, sir, got my tent!' He was excited and just a trifle hysterical; but two words from the General seemed to calm him at once. 'That so?' he said, with the same quiet interest that a farmer might have received news that a certain hen had at last laid an egg. 'I thought that last one sounded ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... afterward, in her own room, thought, with a gale of hysterical laughter, "She just looked at me." And Anne couldn't find a word to crush the little termagant. Everything that seemed to pertain was either satirical, as to ask, "Did she tell you so?" or compassionate, implying cerebral decay. But ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... in this respect, without any value that the latter may possess as a retarder of waste. It has a special influence upon those nerve centers that supply will power, exalting their sensibility beyond normal activity, and may even produce hysterical symptoms, if carried far enough. Its active principle, theine, is an exceedingly powerful drug, chiefly employed by nerve specialists as a pain destroyer, possessing the singular quality of working toward the surface. That ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... further consequent of such an attitude, teachers of this class repudiate with an almost hysterical outcry, not only the thought that the Lord will come a second time to this world, but that those who love Him and yearn to see Him will ever behold Him coming in visible glory so that they may stand face to face with Him and get the very touch of ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman
... already been exploded by the Bollandists, it has lately been revived by Professor Don Arturo Perales Gutierrez of Granada, and Professor Don Fernando Segundo Brieva Salvatierra of Madrid, who considered her a subject of hysterical derangements. The discussion carried on for some time, not only in Spain but also in France, Germany, and other countries, has been ably summed up and disposed of by P. Gregoire de S. Joseph: La pretendue Hysterie ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... was too much for poor Muriel's overwrought nerves. She, too, gave way in a tempest of sobs, and, subsiding on one of the native stools hard by, burst into tears herself with half-hysterical violence. ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... well, you'd better keep with your sister after this, and look after your own passengers," with a glance at the dead cat, "instead of mine, eh? Now, now, Hope, don't cry so!" for, quite worn out by all this excitement, the girl was sobbing in a somewhat hysterical manner. ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... may remember, was a student of human nature, believed that Miss Whyte lived on her nerves, and he had therefore planned to leave her alone for a few moments to allow any hysterical tendency to exhaust itself. When he returned, he found her looking straight before her with the document ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... matter-of-fact touch almost set Marjorie off again in hysterical laughter. Being eloped with by a gentleman who thoughtfully set towels and water outside her door was really too much. She pinned the tent together with a hatpin, slipped off some of her clothes—it did not seem enough like going to bed to undress altogether, and she mistrusted the balsam ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... obviously preparing a second edition. Pixie was no niggard in sympathy, but for the moment she had other views. Two charming young men were waiting without in the sunshine, and any ordinary human girl prefers the sunshine and masculine society, to a room indoors and an hysterical sister. Therefore, being excessively human, Pixie flounced, and looked bored and impatient. She entered the room and shut the door ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... Horrocks, with a gust of hysterical laughter. Their hands came together on the back of the chair. "Here it is!" he said. She had an impulse to warn him in an undertone, but she could not frame a word. "Don't go!" and "Beware of him!" struggled in her mind, and the ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... "your message quite upset your poor mamma. She said, 'How could she?' and began to get almost hysterical. And those hysterical fits end ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... looking at his watch, he beckoned to one of his sons to take his place; and quietly left the room. He only stopped once, as he crossed the hall, to ask news of his daughter from one of the servants. The reply was, that she had had a hysterical fit; that the medical attendant of the family had been sent for; and that since his arrival she had become more composed. When the man had spoken, Mr. Langley made no remark, but proceeded at once to the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... started in affright; and perhaps his conscience smote him for the trick he had played with regard to the false Bible. But the woman, whose excited and unstrung nerves led her astray from one subject to another with preternatural celerity, said, with an hysterical laugh, "See, Dummie, they come in state for me; give me ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... especially, God and the Man. It is a matter of surprise and regret that one of Buchanan's undoubted powers should have thrown himself away as he has done. All the same, the man who wrote God and the Man and The Shadow of the Sword, hysterical as the latter may be, deserves a place in such a book as yours, and an honest criticism, such as I am sure you could give, might lead him, even yet, to give us a work worthy of ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... body and the organs of the senses—lead us to believe, that in somnambulism there is an increased intensity of sleep, producing an extreme degree of unconsciousness in regard to the physical organization, very similar to that which we find in hysterical, cataleptic, and many other nervous affections. The mental phenomena exhibited in this state are those connected with exaggerated dreams, and as the physiology of dreams is by no means well understood in the healthy state, still less can they be explained ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... their friends. Out they came, tumbling, pushing, jostling; greeting scowls and smiles with grins of insolent good-humor. In their hands were decorated walking-sticks and flags, ragged and tattered as if from long use in a heavy gale. Dignified old gentlemen dived among them in pursuit of top-hats; hysterical matrons hustled daughters into carriages and slammed ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... garage, over past Eighth Avenue, you know, where two johns come up along side o' me. One rubs me with his elbow and the other applies that brass knuckle,—then they gets pinched. I got dressed up in a drug store, got the chauffeur's license number, and goes on down to my office to see this girl. She's hysterical about his family using all their money to put her in jail. I looks at her, and says, 'You won't need their money to get to jail. That old man's dead!' Her eyes was as big as saucers. 'I thought old Daddy Van Cleft was drunk.' I tells her, 'He was dead in that taxi, with a chorus ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... on the first night at the Lyceum, in 1874, was not of that electrical, almost hysterical splendour which has greeted the momentous achievements of some actors. The first two acts were received with indifference. The people could not see how packed they were with superb acting—perhaps because the new Hamlet was so simple, so quiet, so free from the exhibition ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... with her accustomed urbanity and politeness, while they cast wondering glances toward each other; probably that they had not found Mrs. Orville in hysterical tears. But Miss Sharpwell, nothing daunted, and determined to sympathize, readily expressed her admiration of Mrs. Orville's fortitude of mind, that she could support herself with so much calmness, ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... Examination showed intelligence not equal to that of eight years with moral inferiority on account of this weakness. II. A feebleminded girl of vacillating, weak judgment. Father insane. Her lies were marked by their fantastic nature. III. Lively, fanciful, unstable, hysterical girl. Poor record at school. IV. Hysterical liar with peculiarities united with splendid mental ability. V. Unusually intelligent, 15 years old, illegitimate child; normal mother who later had five ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... tending us said was brought by a messenger. Young Angus glanced at the page and broke out indignantly. 'The thieving old pirate!' he says. 'Last night he thought it would be about eighteen hundred dollars, and that sounded hysterical enough for the few little things we'd scratched or mussed up. I told him he would doubtless feel better this morning, but in any event to send the bill to me ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... prepare for danger, is both foolish and wicked in such a nation as ours; and past experience has shown that such fatuity in refusing to recognize or prepare for any crisis in advance is usually succeeded by a mad panic of hysterical fear once the crisis has ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... last," returned Joan, with what was nearly an hysterical laugh, trying to shake off the fear that grew upon her; "the last thing is to stand up and ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... going too far to say that these individuals are all hystericals in the pathological sense, but it is strictly accurate to say that the class exhibits marked hysterical characteristics and that it closely resembles the large class of over-emotionalized religious enthusiasts which furnish so many true hystericals. It is probable that accidents of environment account for the fact that their emotionalism takes sociological rather than religious forms. If the ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... tender expression, and recalled the time when she used to declare that she could dwell with him in a desert; her only replies were bitter reproaches and upbraidings for his treachery and deceit, mingled with floods of tears, and interrupted by hysterical sobs. Provoked at her folly, yet softened by her extreme distress, Douglas was in the utmost state of perplexity—now ready to give way to a paroxysm of rage; then yielding to the natural goodness of his heart, he sought to soothe her into composure; and, ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... did not allow herself to be vexed. Since the singular hysterical embrace in the twilight of the kitchen, she had felt for her mother a curious, kind, forbearing, fatalistic indulgence. "Mother is like that, and there you are!" And further, her mood had been so changed and uplifted by excitement and expectation that she could not be genuinely harsh. She had been ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... stretchers and the nouveaux clients; mussy bundles of blue rags and bloody blankets turned into human beings; an overworked, nervous medecin chef shouted contradictory orders at the brancardiers, and passed into real crises of hysterical rage. ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... me, and my first acquaintance with masculine toes close to my face came very near being disastrous. The feet stood straight up, and the toes looked so very funny, with now and then a twitch back or front, that soon I wanted to laugh, and the more I tried not to the more hysterical I became. My shoulders were shaking, and the owner of the toes—a pompous man—began to suspect that I was laughing and probably at the toes. Still he continued to twist them around—one under the other—in ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... born at Nadia in 1485 and came under the influence of the Madhva sect. In youth he was a prodigy of learning,[636] but at the age of about seventeen while on a pilgrimage to Gaya began to display that emotional and even hysterical religious feeling which marked all his teaching. He swooned at the mention of Krishna's name and passed his time in dancing and singing hymns. At twenty-five he became a Sannyasi, and at the request of his mother, ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... reached home at noon, we found her mother white and hysterical. She would listen to no explanations. She told me that I should have brought Kathy back the night before—that she had missed her train and thus her appointment with us. And she told me that I was in ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... would not grant me the lettre de cachet nor keep his promise for her removal. He even gave me her life! But he lied; he did not mean it. He loved her too well, and meant to deceive me and marry her, and I have deceived him and shall marry him, that is all!" and Angelique laughed a hysterical laugh, such as Dives in his torments may ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... seeds of a suspicious temper were nourished by prosperity itself. The author of the Armida and the Jerusalem began to think the attentions he received unequal to his merits; while with a sort of hysterical mixture of demand for applause, and provocation of censure, he not only condescended to read his poems in manuscript wherever he went, but, in order to secure the goodwill of the papal licenser, he transmitted it for revisal to Rome, where it was mercilessly criticised for the space ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... for us!" growled Eliashib Sparks, the biggest of the three, surprising Sally into a little hysterical laugh, and surprised himself still more at this unexpected sequence to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... moment across the level top of the street. Then came the first slope of the hill—they plunged forward. She heard Rosie's hysterical shriek, Dicky's vociferous cheers and Billy's blood-curdling yells, but she herself was as silent as a little image. They struck the second slope of the hill—then she screamed, too. The houses on either side shot past like pictures in the kinetoscope. She felt ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin
... this without sobbing, but not without that almost hysterical emotion which indicates that tears are being ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... when I was in the convent—than my life, when I was on my perilous journey—had taken his measures to shake me off, and transfer me, as a privileged wanton, to the protection of his libertine friend. At first the stranger laughed at my tears and my agony, as the hysterical passion of a deluded and overreached wanton, or the wily affection of a courtezan. My claim of marriage he laughed at, assuring me he knew it was a mere farce required by me, and submitted to by his friend, to save ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... than once and she interested me very much. She was a clever woman—sensible, too, which doesn't always follow, you know. So far as I could tell, she never handled a case she wasn't able to attend to, which may seem an odd thing for me to say, but happens to be so. I know of a dozen nervous, hysterical women—emotional spend-thrifts—that she bullied into shape and got so they could stand up without her behind them, too. They were cured, and they stayed cured. More than that, I sent more ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... "You must think me hysterical and silly, but whilst father and I have been away from Redmoat perhaps the usual precautions have been neglected. Is there any creature, any large creature, which could climb up the wall to the window? Do you know of anything with a ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... against the old crone, were Betty and Amy, disheveled and almost hysterical, but otherwise ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Ocean View - Or, The Box That Was Found in the Sand • Laura Lee Hope
... cried excitedly, and with a hysterical laugh. "The words I use to myself when I think of the mystery which they strove so carefully to conceal from me, but which for all their cunning I have discovered. When first I came here, I saw, either in hell or in heaven, the faces of most of the dead ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... fierce look and a hysterical sob. Without more words he drew out his clasp-knife, and, ripping up the cuffs of the man's coat, laid bare his muscular arm. Meanwhile Alice untied his neckcloth, and Poopy tore open his Guernsey frock and exposed ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... with, is the historic atmosphere in which this thing was born. It is a peculiar atmosphere, and luckily not likely to last. Real progress bears the same relation to it that a happy girl laughing bears to an hysterical girl who cannot stop laughing. But I have described this atmosphere first because it is the only atmosphere in which such a thing as the Eugenist legislation could be proposed among men. All other ages would have called it to some kind of logical ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... man in these directions is increased and intensified, and exercised upon a superior plane, when it is utilized by intelligent spirit operators. It is not true that sensitiveness is confined to those who are diseased, weak of will, neurotic, or hysterical. Those who are susceptible to psychic influence may be impulsive, warm-hearted, spontaneous, sociable, and not by any means, or of necessity, weak-minded or vicious." Dr. Dean Clake says: "The word mediumship, as understood ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... had at least good primary school teaching. But though they read—clean, healthy English books—this, so far from making them inclined to favour frantic or immoral social experiments, should have, one may hope, just the opposite effect. Far from being a spectacled, angular, hysterical, uncomfortable race, perpetually demanding extravagant changes in shrill tones, they are, at least, as distinguished for womanly modesty, grace, and affection, as Englishwomen in any other part ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... mystery once removed, a dozen hysterical people seemed startled into normal activity. No one knew exactly what to do, but some ran for water and towels, and some ran for the doctor, and one young woman with astonishing acumen slipped out of her white silk ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... diseases at the elbow include syphilitic disease in young children, bleeder's joint, hysterical affections, and loose bodies, and do not call for ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... about 15 yards from the object, which had never moved. I have seen wild savages frenzied by the exciting war-dance, but I never witnessed such an instance of hysterical fury as that exhibited by Bisgaum. It is impossible to describe the elephantine antics of this frantic animal; he kicked right and left with his hind legs alternately, with the rapidity of a horse; trumpeting and screaming, he threw his trunk in the air, twisting it about, and shaking his ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... intended to be mixed with. The Metanoia; which painted a sober, reflective turning of the mind, had been so overcharged with the dramatic that sober, reflective people could hardly use the expression any more. Repentance had come to have so strong a gloss of the hysterical as to be almost discredited by men of common sense. It was a relief, therefore, to remember that it implied no more than a turning to God by a process of thought; and that a process of thought ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... door!" I retorted. I was half hysterical, but it was no time to weaken. She looked me straight in the eye for fully ten seconds; then, to my surprise, she winked at me. But when she turned on Mr. Sam she was cold rage again ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... forward, and butted against Beaumanoir in his haste. Felix, whose skin was always sallow, became livid; but nothing happened, and he snatched the bomb from its dangerous resting place. Then he burst into a paroxysm of hysterical laughter which drowned for an instant a ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... the journey, his nerves have broken down. We were not half-way on the road, and as we had the railway-carriage to ourselves, I was talking to him with imprudent earnestness, when he began to tremble all over, and went into an hysterical paroxysm of mingled tears and laughter. I wished to stop at the next station, but he was not long recovering, and insisted on coming on. Still, as we approached Fawley, after muttering to himself, as far as I could catch his words, incoherently, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... up my arms, shouted a ghostly shout, and set off in vast leaps towards it. I missed one of my leaps and dropped into a deep ravine and twisted my ankle, and after that I stumbled at almost every leap. I was in a state of hysterical agitation, trembling violently, and quite breathless long before I got to it. Three times at least I had to stop with my hands resting on my side and in spite of the thin dryness of the air, the perspiration ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... marry a poor girl. But that would be a dear-bought victory. Let her keep what faith in him she can. No; in families, the ones who can control themselves have to give in—to those who can't. If you argue with Christine she simply gives way, and then she gets hysterical, and then she is ill. It's a disease. Mothers know how their children—Christine was marked—marked with trouble! I am thankful she has any mind at all. She needs me more than Paul does. I cannot be parted from my power to ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... There is no longer a common temple for civilized states. Our house is divided against itself and is falling asunder. Peace reigns everywhere save on the banks of the Vaal, but it is an armed peace, an odious peace, a poisoned peace which is eating us up and from which we are all dying."[5] Such hysterical outbursts in France were not taken seriously by the Government, and the feeling which inspired them was possibly more largely due to historic hatred of England than to the inherent justice of the ...
— Neutral Rights and Obligations in the Anglo-Boer War • Robert Granville Campbell
... the gathering dusk, I saw the figure of a man turn into the street and stride rapidly away in the opposite direction from the one I was then pursuing. My heart gave a great leap, I hardly knew why, and the blood rushed into my face, something caught in my throat and I gave a short, hysterical cough. I had reached the gate, and the air around it was yet laden with the scent of a rich cigar, though the figure had passed ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... course, but I'm beginnin' to realize the responsibility of havin' riches. Ah hum! I laugh, Mr. Bangs, but you mustn't think it's because I don't realize what you—I mean... well, I guess I laugh because I'm kind of hysterical and—happy. I haven't been so happy for a long, long time. I won't say it again because you don't want me to, but for this once more, thank ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... his head and loosened a burst of high, hysterical laughter. It echoed back and forth between the metal walls like a torrent from a burst dam. It went on and on, as if now that the dam was gone, the ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn
... his thigh was smashed and bleeding terribly; she had ripped up his trousers with her knife, and with strips of it had bound a pad to the wound; she found a cup somehow and filled it with water for him from the overhead hose for filling engines. Instead of being hysterical and useless, she was as cool and ready to do the right thing as if she had been in bomb-raids every day of her life. Well, that is what any girl can do if she only ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... been making at a raft, With little hope in such a rolling sea, A sort of thing at which one would have laughed,[112] If any laughter at such times could be, Unless with people who too much have quaffed, And have a kind of wild and horrid glee, Half epileptical, and half hysterical:— Their preservation ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron |
