"Hysteric" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... burst of almost hysteric laughter, Mercy sprang to her feet, and threw herself in his arms. It was not the less a new bewilderment that it was an unspeakably delightful change from the last. Was he awake or dreaming? Was the dream of his boyhood ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... through the thin wooden partition, the movements of Sarah Gailey in the next room. And the image of the mournful woman returned to disquiet her. What could be the meaning of that hysteric appeal and glance? Then she heard the door of the bedroom open violently, and the figure of Sarah Gailey passed like a flash across the doorway of the parlour. And the footsteps of Sarah Gailey pattered up the stone stairs; and the front door banged; ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... Gradually the hysteric emotion spent itself, and Madame Patoff grew more calm. Then she spoke, and, to Hermione's ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... uncoiled the rope, Joan ran to the washstand and dipped a towel in the pitcher. But Julie called to her, "Bring the jug of water here, we've got to break this hysteric spell!" ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... in our normal existence, but the opposite is true. No mental disease introduces elements which do not occur in the sphere of health. A degenerated brain cell looks differently under the microscope from a normal one, but the ideas of a paranoiac, the emotion of a maniac, the volition of a hysteric, the memory idea of a paralytic is each in its own structure not different from such elements in any one of us. The total change lies thus only in the proportion; there is too much or too little of it. The pathological mental life is like a caricature of a face—each ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... James." There was the old quiet, persistent way he had known in many happy days, reinforced by hysteric incapacity to comprehend the maze of difficulties in ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... the sleeve and pointing long fingers and crooked nails, two, three and four at a time, as markers, in their ready reckoning, a writhing mass of humanity, intoxicated by the smell of gold, mad for its possession, half hysteric with the fear of losing it, timid, yet dangerous, poisoned to the core by the sweet sting of money, terrible in intelligence, vile in heart, contemptible in body, irresistible in the unity of their greed—the Jews of ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... his own door removed him an emotional league from the scene in the hall, and as the throb of Viola's agonized voice died out of his ears the crisis in her life grew hysteric, unsubstantial, and at last unreal. Her gestures, her plea for help, her descent of the stairway, came to seem like the climaxes in a singular drama powerfully acted. "God! what an actress—if she is an actress!" he exclaimed, as the tragic intensity ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... Hillsboro is the wild yell of excitement going up from the great cities, where people seem to be doing everything that was ever done or thought of except just living. City dwellers make money, make reputations (good and bad), make museums and subways, make charitable institutions, make with a hysteric rapidity, like excited spiders, more and yet more complications in the mazy labyrinths of their lives, but they never make each others' acquaintances ... and that is all that is worth ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... was hesitating and stretching his neck to look into the apartment, his head became visible to Jenny Dennison, who had ensconced herself in said pantry as the safest place in which to wait the issue of the assault. So soon as this object of terror caught her eye, she set up a hysteric scream, flew to the adjacent kitchen, and, in the desperate agony of fear, seized on a pot of kailbrose which she herself had hung on the fire before the combat began, having promised to Tam Halliday to prepare his breakfast for him. ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Take me to her, my precious one; where is she?" cried the baroness, with a loud burst of hysteric laughter on hearing ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 357, October 30, 1886 • Various
... down each time more passionately on the palm of his left hand. But his humor had grown savage, and with his eyes glowing like hot coals in his blackened visage he went on, his tone rising to a hoarse, hysteric yell: "Thou shalt oppress the poor, and forbid to teach the gospel in the schools, lest they learn to cry unto their God, and He hear them, and they ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... same hysteric contagion marks the "Revivals" of a later period, down to the last mad outbreak in Ireland. The translator hopes some day to work out ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... man, and appoint time and instruments. But as the man present was leaving the room, the Lieutenant * *, before he could shut the door after him, ran out roaring 'Help and murder' most lustily, and fell into a sort of hysteric in the arms of about fifty people, who all saw that I had no weapon of any sort or kind about me, and followed him, asking him what the devil was the matter with him. Nothing would do: he ran away without his hat, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... and stared at Calverley, who was still shaking with hysteric laughter; while I, now consumed with curiosity, walked over to the closet to discover the cause of their singular behaviour. As I flung open the door, which the lawyer had closed, I must confess to being very considerably startled; for though ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... delusive; in her we find, under an appearance of an artificial springtime, a soil which is cold as well as greedy, and senses which are utterly dulled. The Calabrian doctors prescribed the dance as a remedy for the hysteric affections which are common among the women of their country; and the Arabs use a somewhat similar recipe for the highbred mares, whose too lively temperament hinders their fecundity. 'Dull as a dancer' is a familiar proverb at the theatre. In fact, the best ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... I get ready, Abby Atkins! I ain't afraid of them if you be. They dassen't hit me. Scab, scab!" the girl yelled back, with a hysteric laugh. ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... for going that moment to the army. She besought her brother with tears to conduct her thither. Her doubts and terrors reached their paroxysm; and the poor girl, who for many hours had been plunged into stupor, raved and ran hither and thither in hysteric insanity,—a piteous sight. No man writhing in pain in the hard-fought field fifteen miles off, where lay, after their struggles, so many of the brave—no man suffered more keenly than this poor harmless victim of the war. Jos could not bear the sight of her pain. He left his sister ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... master to thee, if the world would let me. Oh, that we were once more by my own fair fountain! The thought is madness. And Miriam too! I fear I am sadly tender-hearted.' He leant against his horse's back, with a feeling of utter exhaustion, and burst into hysteric sobs. ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... was not the man, let him be ever so mad, still her husband? Madame Goesler was sore of heart, as well as broken down with sorrow, till at last, hiding her face on the pillow of the sofa, still holding the Duchess's letter in her hand, she burst into a fit of hysteric sobs. ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... respiratory apparatus primarily, although if intense it may involve not only the extraordinary muscles of respiration, but most of the muscles of the body. There are many degrees of laughter, from the mere brightening of the eyes, a fleeting smile, tittering andgiggling, to hysteric and convulsive laughter. Under certain circumstances, laughter may be so intense and so long continued that it leads to considerable exhaustion. The formation of tears is sometimes associated with laughter. When integrated with laughter, the nervous system ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... bowed itself to meet sorrow more patiently and peacefully, it was at the expense of the bodily frame. Already weakened by the intermittent fever, the long strain of nursing had told on her; and that hysteric affection that had been so distressing at the time of her brother's trial recurred, and grew on her with every occasion for self-restraint. The suspense in which she lived—with one brother in the camp, in daily peril from battle and disease, ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... shore which rose between Newlyn and the course of the wind, the returning boats found safety at their accustomed anchorage; and as one by one they made the little roads, as boat after boat came ashore from the fleet, tears, hysteric screams and deep-voiced thanks to the Almighty arose from the crowd of men and women massed at the extremity of Newlyn pier beneath the lighthouse. Cheers and many a shake of hand greeted every party as, weary-eyed ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... from the mouth of a man whom she had honoured with her affection and esteem! It was not simply horror, grief, or indignation, that she felt, in consequence of this unworthy treatment, but the united pangs of all together, which produced a sort of hysteric laughter, while she told him that she could ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... sign of life; not a movement, except in one house. The front of that house had gone, exposing the hollow inside, the collapsed floors and hanging beams, and showing also a doll with a foolish smirk caught in a wire and dangling from a rafter. The doll danced in hysteric merriment whenever hidden guns were fired. That was the only movement in Richbourg S. Vaast, and the guns made the only sound. I was a survivor from the past, venturing at peril among the wreckage and hardly remembered relics of ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... what it's worth? Never, girl! No! The Lord will provide," said she, between her clenched teeth, with a sort of hysteric chuckle. "The Lord ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... it couldn't 'ave 'appened. 'No time for 'osspitles,' ses I. She's not twenty breaths to dror; let 'er die in 'er own bed, pore thing!" And both she and her baby breaking into wails at one and the same time, other women, some hysteric, some maudlin with gin, joined them in a ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... shut inside its closed doors—particularly Robert's room which was so hideously close to her own, and where there seemed still to lie moveless on the bed, the stiff hard figure. It was when she recalled this that the unnatural silence of the drawing-rooms was intruded upon by the brief half-stifled hysteric shriek, and the moaning which made its way through the ceiling. She felt almost as if the door handle might turn and something stiff and ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... amazed in her life. Her maid, her well-bred Jane Cupp, who had not drawn an indecorous breath since assuming her duties, was running after her calling out to her, waving her hands, her face distorted, her voice hysteric. ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... ... you want?" it said. Its trepidation was out of all proportion to the needs of the case. So thought Mr. Wix, and decided that this Aunt M'riar was some poor nervous hysteric, ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... a piercing scream, burst into an hysteric laugh, and fell backwards in the arms of ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... crimson, suffocating, Never of a wild-rose thicket nor the singing of a cricket, But the ambulance will bellow through the wanness of their dreams, And their tired lids will flutter with the street's hysteric screams. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... from which hysterical conditions arise, penetrate the disguises which these repressed impulses or wishes must assume in order to appear in the consciousness. Such transformed impulses are found in normal people, too, sometimes. The hysteric suffers mostly from reminiscences which, paradoxically, ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... subsistence. Jessica, armed with certificates of examinational prowess, got work as a visiting governess. At the same time, she nourished ambitions, discernible perhaps in the singular light of her deep-set eyes and a something of hysteric determination about her lips. Her aim, at present, was to become a graduate of London University; she was toiling in her leisure hours—the hours of exhaustion, that is to say—to prepare herself for matriculation, which she hoped to achieve in the coming winter. Of her ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... unexplained feeling of suffocation, and drew great breaths,—she could not have said why,—but she could not help it; and presently she became giddy, and had a great noise in her ears, and rolled her eyes about, and was on the point of going into an hysteric spasm. They called Dr. Hurlbut, who was making himself agreeable to Olive just then, to come and see what ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... is beyond the world, exercises a curious fascination over them. Everywhere you will meet with traces of it, and I have in another chapter told some of the principal phases of these. But the religion has kept itself pure. No hysteric visions, no madman's dreams, no clever conjurer's tricks, have ever shed a tawdry glory on the monkhood of the Buddha. Amid all the superstition round about them they have remained pure, as they have from passion and desire. Here in the far East, the very home, we think, of the ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... is that of a forty-year-old hysteric, who in her marriage remained completely anesthetic sexually, although her husband was thoroughly sympathetic to her and very potent. Her father's favorite child, she strove in vain in early childhood for the affection of the mother, ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger |
