|
|
|
More "Nerve" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of this disease appear years after its initial appearance, when the individual has been lulled into a false sense of security by long freedom from its outward symptoms. Many of the obscure cases of stomach or nerve trouble may be traced to this disease. The results not only affect the man, but, should he marry and have children, his innocent babes may come into the world with an inherited taint. These children seldom live to reach adult life and their ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... close to the upper crease of the neck, just above the cervical vertebrae; and, for the moment, completely paralyzed the large nerve of the spine, causing the creature to drop as quickly as though ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... Prophetic Characters, in our hearts; and leaves us no rest, night or day, till it be deciphered and obeyed; till it burn forth, in our conduct, a visible, acted Gospel of Freedom. And as the clay-given mandate, Eat thou and be filled, at the same time persuasively proclaims itself through every nerve,—must not there be a confusion, a contest, before the better Influence ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... Cedric's want of restraint and childish abandon of grief that he was tempted to give up the struggle. Only Elizabeth's pleading voice was in his ears-"You will bear with him—you will be patient with him, will you not?" and then again he would nerve himself to fresh effort. ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... felt a sort of physical impotence. She struggled desperately against the loss of nerve power which kept her there. She would have given anything in the world to have left him, to have run out of the room with a little shriek, out into the streets and squares she knew so well, to breathe the ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... conviction that the kind of government most suitable, in his opinion, to this extensive country, could be established in no other way.... He trusted, moreover, that in the changes and chances of time we should be involved in some war, which might strengthen our union and nerve the executive. He was of all men the most indiscreet. He knew that a limited monarchy, even if established, could not preserve itself in this country.... He never failed, on every occasion, to advocate the excellence of, ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... Ohio in a ferry boat, and Judy strained every nerve to reach it before them. She did so; and hurrying up the stairs with her baby, she clasped the railings, resolved to stay there, unless compelled by violence to leave the boat. But no one noticed her, and she arrived safely on the other ...
— A Child's Anti-Slavery Book - Containing a Few Words About American Slave Children and Stories - of Slave-Life. • Various
... that our most native and original characters do not yet take to literature. It is, perhaps, too early in the day. Iron and lime have to pass through the vegetable before they can reach the higher organization of the animal, and maybe this Western nerve and heartiness will yet emerge on the intellectual plane. Let us hope that it will indeed be Western nerve and heartiness when it gets there, and ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... such team games as cricket and football not only their success in various competitions but also their success in the sterner warfare of life. This success has been obtained on the tented field and in the work of exploring, mountaineering, and other pursuits that make great demand not only on nerve and muscle but also on strength of character ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... nerve was failing her. The convulsive sobs continued, but she ceased to abuse him. He wondered when he should be able to get it out of her. He himself could no more have wept ...
— Bessie Costrell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... odds and patches. The generosity of one of our volunteers, Mr. Francis Sayre, the son-in-law of President Wilson, doubled its capacity. But buildings that are made of green wood, and grow like Topsy, are apt to end like Topsy—turvy. Now we are straining every nerve to obtain a suitable accommodation for the children. We sorely need a brick building, economically laid out and easily kept warm, with separate wings for girls and boys and a creche for babies. Miss Storr was obliged to leave us, and now for over six years a splendid and unselfish English lady, ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... evidently counted on the awakened sympathy of his companion, notwithstanding the difference in their situations, and to be thus thrown off again, unmanned him. He shuddered, and every muscle and nerve appeared about to yield its power. Touched by so unequivocal signs of suffering, Don Camillo kept close at his side, reluctant to enter more deeply into the feelings of one of his known character, and yet unable to desert a fellow-creature ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... unmoved person, squatting down on his heels and thrusting his hand inside David's shirt. "Only a faint. Why, where's your nerve? You're nearly as white ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... that made it very different from clay. He had gone at this piece without any special intent and was shaping it into a cherub merely out of whim, but he was giving to the task every atom of his skill, and his hands worked with every nerve strained to detect and ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... act, and from these individually dead atoms, sensation, thought, and emotion are to rise? Are you likely to extract Homer out of the rattling of dice, or the Differential Calculus out of the clash of billiard balls? ... I can follow a particle of musk until it reaches the olfactory nerve; I can follow the waves of sound until their tremors reach the water of the labyrinth, and set the otoliths and Corti's fibres in motion; I can also visualise the waves of aether as they cross the eye and hit the retina. Nay, more, I am able to pursue to the central organ the motion ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... a plain face, but a strong heart, and when she saw that Amy Holbrook was preferred, with steady hand and unflinching nerve, she wrote to her recreant lover that he was free. And now Amy, to whom the false knight turned, took it into her capricious head that she would not marry a farmer—she had always fancied a physician; and if young B—— ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... you that during her first days of work in the dissecting room she could only sleep when firmly flanked by a friend on each side of her "to keep off the spirits that walk by night." After a few weeks of experience, however, the fascinating search for nerve and muscle, tendon, vein, and artery becomes the dominating state of consciousness, and the scientific spirit excludes all resentment at ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... the belief that Mr. Davis was moving toward military despotism or that he relished the continuance of strife. He saw that the South was in for the war. Desperate situations required desperate remedies. He grasped the government with a strong hand, and lacked neither nerve nor patriotism. The principles of this policy were unsound, but the motives of Jefferson Davis were pure. Nor was there reason to sustain the wholesale denunciation of West Point. That school of soldiers was the backbone of the army, and the ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... mortal man, struggling against such odds, could compass for her comfort and protection. She responded to his appealing glance with a sweet smile, that quickened his pulses and sent a thrill of joy through every nerve. She did not seem at all disheartened or cast down by the greatness of their misery. Her heart was satisfied and happy; why should she be crushed by mere physical suffering and discomforts? She was very brave, although ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... a drink he buys, And there's a fire of red desire within his hollow eyes. And sipping of my Pernod, and a-knowing what I know, Sometimes I want to shriek aloud and give away the show. I've lost my nerve; he's haunting me; he's like a beast of prey, That Spanish man that's watching at the Cafe de ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... Darius had showed skill and energy; and he now for some time encouraged his men, by voice and example, to keep firm. But the lances of Alexander's cavalry, and the pikes of the phalanx now gleamed nearer and nearer to him. His charioteer was struck down by a javelin at his side; and at last Darius's nerve failed him; and, descending from his chariot, he mounted on a fleet horse and galloped from the plain, regardless of the state of the battle in other parts of the field, where matters were going on much more favourably for his cause, ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... "I can't stand what I could once," she confessed, as he aided her into the hotel part of the building. "It's my nerve—seem's like it's all gone. I go to pieces like a ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... observed, for some reason or other the thing was not carried on with spirit, and we soon retired from it; nevertheless, it is a ceremony well worth seeing, and which in truth requires some little nerve to ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... may give us a victory. He who has only learned not to be afraid to die, has not learned much. We have steel and nerve enough in our hearts to dare anything. And after all, it is a triumph so common as scarcely to deserve the name. Felons die on the scaffold like men; soldiers can be hired by tens of thousands, for a few pence a day, to front death in its worst form. Every minute that we live sixty of the human ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... perhaps. He had been on the descent of the path for some little time now, and could not be far from the more level ground which marked the approach to Long Bridge. Determined not to stop or to cast one faltering look to right or left, he hurried on with his eyes fixed upon the ground and every nerve braced to resist the influence of the place and its undying memories. But with the striking of his foot against the boards of the bridge, nature was too much for him, and his resolve vanished. Instead of hastening on, he stopped; and, having stopped, ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... became their enemy, but after much suffering and opposition Gonzales was settled at Potosi, studying the Quichuan language, and hoping to work upon the Indians, while the unwearied Gardiner again returned to England to strain every nerve for the Fuegian Mission, which lay nearest of all to ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... from the Relation of 1647, and the letter of Marie de l'Incarnation to her son, before cited. The woman must have descended the great rapids of Lachine in her canoe: a feat demanding no ordinary nerve and skill. ] ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... to you and to our corps Which we are proud to serve, In many a strife we have fought for life And never lost our nerve; If the army and the navy Ever look on heaven's scenes, They will find the streets are guarded ...
— Rhymes of the Rookies • W. E. Christian
... "Nerve good?" Lanse asked Doctor Churchill, an hour later as they waited in the vestry for the summons ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... is in his heart and hand, The Gaul is in his brain and nerve; Where, cosmopolitanly planned, He ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... an Ash-Colour, inclining to Lead. The Male is easily distinguish'd from the Female, by a black Velvet-Spot on his Head; and besides, his Head is smaller shaped, and long. Their Bite is venomous, if not speedily remedied; especially, if the Wound be in a Vein, Nerve, Tendon, or Sinew; when it is very difficult to cure. The Indians are the best Physicians for the Bite of these and all other venomous Creatures of this Country. There are four sorts of Snake-Roots already discover'd, which Knowledge came ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... sees th' Gull Island Rapids an' I 'most loses my nerve. 'Tis a fearsome torrent at best, as un knows, but now wi' high flood 'tis like ten o' unself at low water. Th' waves ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... colonies had proclaimed their independence, is it just to blame King George, as he often has been blamed, for his steadfast and resolute resistance to that claim? Was it for him, unless after straining every nerve against it, to forfeit a portion of his birthright and a jewel of his crown? Was it for him, though the clearest case of necessity, to allow the rending asunder his empire—to array for all time to come of several millions of his people against the rest? After ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... maddening, nerve racking pace they go. To keep up the gait there is an incessant battle for wealth, and the struggle wears and ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... Williams betimes felt the shock of the strong line of A. P. Hill, which Alexander seconded by opening with his artillery in full action. The Confederates forged ahead with the watchword, "Charge, and remember Jackson!" And this appeal was one to nerve all hearts to ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... the sense of smelling; in the same manner that taste is produced by the particular substance coming in contact with the nerves of the palate. It is thus also that the sensation of sound is produced by the concussion of the air striking against the auditory nerve; and sight is the effect of the light falling upon the optic nerve. These various senses, therefore, are affected only by the actual contact of particles of matter, in the same manner ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... of an able sea boat, engined to drive through sea and wind, and by the nerve and endurance to drive her in any weather. There were times when the Gulf spread placid as a mill pond. There were trips when he drove through with three thousand salmon under battened hatches, his decks awash from boarding ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... that be On the sunny side of the Ceylon Sea, Nerve him still to be Good and Strong. Excellent ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... frequent presence of poisons in the fetal skin demonstrates its physiologic importance. It has probably not a very marked influence on its health. On the contrary, accumulation in the placenta and nerve centers explains the pathogenesis of abortion and the birth of dead fetuses ("mortinatatite") Copper and lead did not cause abortion, but mercury did so in two out of six cases. Arsenic is a powerful abortive agent in the guinea-pig, probably on account of placental hemorrhages. An important ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... is the "bends," or "caisson disease." In the caisson a man works under high air pressure. When he comes out, the pressure on the fluids of the body is reduced, and this sometimes causes the formation of a gas bubble in the vascular system. If this bubble reaches a nerve-center it causes severe pain, similar to neuralgia; if it gets to the brain it causes paralysis. Day after day men will go into the caisson and come out without trouble, but sooner or later from 2 to 8 per cent. of caisson workers are affected. Of 320 "sand-hogs" who ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... right to assume that the Creator works by intellectual powers like those of men? If we must compare the eye to an optical instrument, we ought in imagination to take a thick layer of transparent tissue, with a nerve sensitive to light beneath, and then suppose every part of this layer to be continually changing slowly in density, so as to separate into layers of different densities and thicknesses, placed at different distances from each other, and with the surfaces of each layer slowly changing in form. ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... surrounded rather by a band of demons than of human beings; the walls seemed to drop with blood, and the light tick of the clock thrilled on his ear with such loud, painful distinctness, as if each sound were the prick of a bodkin inflicted on the naked nerve of ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... me!" Flixman interrupted. "Actually the feller is got the nerve to ask me a hundred dollars for drawing a will, and this here feller on Center Street wants only fifty. I bet yer if I would go round there to-morrow or the next ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... their shift-mates and more or less scraped up from the screening-room floor—they were in very bad shape—and carted off to be patched up for questioning. The members of this group had been impractical idealists, and besides, some of them had lost their nerve, as was evidenced by the discovery of abandoned explosives and detonators in the locker room and men's room of ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... long branches are such slender threads that a great number of them together would not be as large as a fine silk thread. A great many of these fine nerve threads are bound up in little bundles which look like white cords. These ...
— First Book in Physiology and Hygiene • J.H. Kellogg
... stealthy movements somewhere. Between them and the doorway, stealthy movements somewhere; but all so still and slow, they stretched the listening nerve almost to the breaking point. Suddenly, a big, hard hand gripped Burleigh's shoulder, and a dead still voice, that Vic could not recognize, breathed into his ear, "Go quick and quiet! I'll stand for ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... from the firm platform of strong scholarship—he was a scholar beyond the rest. It fixed special forms—he the French sonnet. It felt the lives of all things running through it as a young man feels them in the spring woods—he gathered in the cup of his verse, and retains for us, the nerve of all that life which is still exultant in the forest beyond his river. His breeding, his high name, his leisured poverty, his passionate friendship, his looking forward always to a new thing, a creation—all this, was ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... Say, an' it ain't easy. I 'lows my nerve's pretty right fer most things, but when you git monkeyin' wi' religion it's kind o' different. 'Sides, ther's allus fellers ter choke you off. Nassy Wilkes, the s'loon-keeper, he'd had religion bad oncet, tho' I 'lows he'd fergot most o't sence he'd been ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... sounder elements in Dehmel, he was largely responsible for destroying such sanity as the amazing genius of Gabriele D'Annunzio had ever possessed. In D'Annunzio the sensuality of a Sybarite and the eroticism of a Faun go along with a Roman tenacity and hardness of nerve. The author of novels which, with all their luxurious splendour, can only be called hothouses of morbid sentiment, has become the apostle of Italian imperialism, and more than any other single man provoked Italy to throw herself into the great adventure ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... regard to the ordinary shark, however, our divers actually sought them. Their method of capturing them was almost incredible in its simplicity and daring. Three or four of our divers would go out in a boat and allow themselves to drift into a big school of sharks. Then one man, possessed of more nerve than the rest, would bend over the side and smartly prick the first one he came across with a spear taken out for the purpose. The moment he had succeeded in this the other occupants of the boat would commence yelling and howling ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... will nerve thine arm, And courage fill thy breast: And having bravely warred on harm, The cries of victory shall charm Thy dying ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... Vane's business, and he struck off to the right directly, to bear through a denser part of the wood, and come to an opening, which struck him at once as being the one where he had had his encounter with the gipsy lads. The very next moment, with every nerve tingling, he was running toward where he could see his two enemies kneeling upon someone they had got down; and, though he could not see the face, he knew it was Distin whom they were both ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... top of the gate. At the first glance it seemed to be absolutely unchanged—the same really beautiful lips, the same nose, the same look in the eyes. Had a decade passed by her and left no trace? He lost his nerve for an instant, and brought the car to a standstill with less than his usual adroitness. ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... made two or three bounds, sending the stones rushing down heavily, as he regained his old level and went on rapidly. Onward still, but what a length that seemed!—and now I was learning from his progress that the only chance of getting across was to keep right on, exercising all the strength of nerve and muscle one possessed to go forward, for to have stood still meant to begin gliding rapidly downward, sinking more and more in a gathering avalanche of stones as others were loosened from above to fill up the vacancy ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... hit upon a plan to establish himself in what he believed to be the proper light. "It will require nerve," reflected he, doubtingly, "and not only nerve in itself, but a certain exact quantity of it. Too much nerve would destroy me, and too little nerve would do the same thing. I think, however, that ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... leaving them would be happier far in another world, for never in this had a ray of reason shone upon poor Patsy's darkened mind. We have said there were no tears, and yet, although the waters came not to the surface, there was one heart which wept, as with unflinching nerve the cold, stern woman arrayed the dead girl ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... a matter of common knowledge that in the human being there are not only forms organized of blood vessels and nerve fibres, but also skins, membranes, tendons, cartilages, bones, nails and teeth. These have a smaller measure of life than those organized forms, which they serve as ligaments, coverings or supports. For all these entities to be in the heavenly humanity, which is heaven, it cannot be ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... alligator, and the triumph of his conquerors, who were not long in cutting him into pieces and loading their canoes with his flesh, which they immediately carried to the shore and retailed to their countrymen. The success of the plan depended entirely on the nerve and dexterity of the man who pinned the animal's tail to the ground; and his contortions and struggles to keep his ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... cell remembered by all Leideners with anguish. There I (and thousands before and thousands after) had sat to wait my dreaded turn with the professors behind the green-baize table in the room next door. There I—among those other nerve-shattered ones—had scribbled my name and scrawled a sketch or two. "Here sweated Rudolph Brederode," read out Miss Rivers, with a sweet look, as if she pitied me now for what I suffered then. But Miss Van Buren showed sublime indifference. She wished, ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... he faintly said when he reached the fireside again, "is right nerve-racking. It's like one ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... if their own nervous power were cooperating in the struggle, the gallant ship bore her head round to face the driving waves. From the ten huge, red stacks columns of inky black smoke poured out as the stokers crammed the furnaces beneath. It was man against nature, human nerve and mechanical science ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... a relief not to pretend any more nor fight: to let pain take its way, like a slow tide invading every nerve and flooding every recess of thought, till one is pierced and penetrated by it, married to it, indifferent so long as one can drop the mask of that cruel courage which exacts so many sacrifices. Val was still only twenty-nine. Forty years more of a life ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... position to feed them properly, and it would not be humane or fair to keep the soldiers who had the misfortune of falling into our hands without proper food. This, of course, was a very unsatisfactory state of affairs, for we had to fight fiercely, valuable lives had to be sacrificed, every nerve had to be strained to force the enemy to surrender, and to take his positions; and then, when we had captured them, the soldiers were merely disarmed and sent back to the English lines after a little while, ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... want him,' says Starlight. 'You're losing your nerve, governor. Perhaps you'd like to go ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... London girl, who has been through a dozen air-raids without losing any nerve, is not likely to disturb herself over a possible but improbable bushranger, and indeed Mollie was blissfully ignorant on the subject in spite of Grannie's tales; so she went to bed quite peacefully in the little ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... have ever visited. Though the gloom of the prisoner was not made manifest by his haggard countenance, yet I could not prevent the melancholy reflection, that every heart knew its own sorrow. I have seen much of human depravity in this wicked world—I have felt the sensitive nerve made like an ice-drop by the cold finger of scorn—I know how to sympathize with the child of circumstances—with the heart-broken parent, whose pale, care-worn cheek but too plainly speaks, "We feel trouble, but ye know it not." ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... are Swedes and they haven't got the nerve to fight. They couldn't lick a spoon if they tried. These other men are different, though. There are two of them, the old one and a young fellow. I'm a little afraid to mix it up with them, and if their claim wasn't the best in the district, I'd ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... turn that letter over to Merrick it will give him some idea of our proposed trip," said Mr. Rover, "and more than likely he will strain every nerve ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... during a wild bluster of wind; but always the inevitable kiss had been delayed, had been averted; and only her eager afterthoughts had made romance of their meagre acquaintance. Yet now, when they were alone, together, when every nerve in her body seemed tense with desire for him, he was somehow aloof—not constrained (for then she would have been happy, at the profoundly affecting knowledge that she had carried the day), but unsympathetically and unlovingly at ease. She could not read his face: in his manner she ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... sacculus, the lagena, and the three semicircular canals. The cavity of this membranous labyrinth is filled with a fluid, the endolymph; and within the utriculus, sacculus and lagena are masses of inorganic matter called the otoliths. The auditory nerve terminates in eight sense organs, which contain hair cells. There is no cochlea as in the mammalian ear. The assumption commonly made is that vibrations in the water or air by direct contact cause the tympanic membrane to vibrate; this in turn causes a movement of the columella, which is ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... with you may compromise your respectability or undermine your nerve?" He sprawled imperturbably in his place, crossing again, in another sense, his long black legs and showing, above his low shoes, an absurd reach of parti-coloured sock. "I take your point well enough, but mayn't you be after all quite wrong? If ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... how to model or dispose the hands. They are often unduly big; Michael Angelo started with the same mistake: witness his David and the Madonna on the Stairs. It was a mistake soon rectified in either case. But till late in life Donatello never quite succeeded in giving nerve or occupation to his hands. St. Mark, St. Peter, and St. John all have a book in their left hands, but none of them hold the book; it has no weight, the hand shows no grip and has no sense of possession. Neither did Donatello ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... heaving breast, and every nerve in his body quivering with wrath, the proud, unhappy boy strode through the gay streets. They had betrayed him then, these accursed Beauforts! they circled his steps with schemes to drive him like a deer into the snare of their loathsome charity! The roof was to be taken from his head—the ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... The rest are giving me a stone. Unless the field hides something quite unknown I stand a chance. The going favours me. The ploughland will be bogland certainly, After this rain. If Royal keeps his nerve, If no one cannons me at jump or swerve, I stand a chance. And though I dread to fail, This passionate dream that drives me like a sail Runs in my blood, and cries, that I ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... and lastly!—we cannot see more—the mist boils from the ruin of shattered waters and conceals the bottom of the fall. The roar vibrates like thunder in the rocky mountain, and forces the grandeur of the scene through every nerve. ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... Tyrrel, sitting down again, "I will listen to you with calmness, as I would remain calm under the probe of a surgeon tenting a festered wound. But when you touch me to the quick, when you prick the very nerve, you cannot expect me to ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... wherever you go. Of course, all colonels should prevent this, and one of any force and energy could easily do so; but Colonel —— is not of that kind. An excellent company officer, as I judge, he has not the activity and nerve required in the commander of a regiment, and many a wish did I hear expressed in those thirty days that his predecessor, Colonel Martin, were still in command. Confidence in his bravery before the enemy, was universal; but many things ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... spoken already of an atmosphere of warning and aloofness he carried about with him. It is impossible further to analyse the series of little shocks his presence always communicated to my being; but there was that about him which made me instantly on the qui vive in his presence, every nerve alert, every sense strained and on the watch. I do not mean that he deliberately suggested danger, but rather that he brought forces in his wake which automatically warned the nervous centres of my system to be on their guard ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... of every nerve in Ann's body leaping up in frenzy. "God?" she laughed wildly. "Don't drag Him into it! Do you think He cares"—turning upon Mrs. Prescott as if she would spring at her—"do you think for a minute He cares—what kind of ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... you with all this." Selwyn's voice recalled me and the face in the fire vanished. "But there is no one else I can talk to. I should as soon go to a patient in a nerve sanitarium as to Mildred. As a sister Mildred is not a success. She'd first have hysterics and tell me I was brutal to poor Harrie, and then declare that to marry a million dollars was the chance of a lifetime for him. One of the ten thousand ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... you have the nerve to think you are going to report for duty," observed Forgan. "Well, you needn't try. Orders are to sick list you ...
— Ralph on the Engine - The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail • Allen Chapman
... whisper gently to one of the youthful sons of the Sagebrush: "I am afraid to go home in the dark," the gentleman would ring for a messenger boy as an escort, or call a taxi; and if she sighed for sympathy and a stroll by the Truckee, he would think that she needed a doctor, or a nerve specialist. .... The sons of the Sagebrush are not cold-hearted, nor are they lacking in courtesy of any sort, but to use a Western expression, they possess a large percentage of "horse sense!" Meaning, that they are not wearing ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... that price he sot down immovible. They arged, and Josiah Allen even went so far as to use language that grated on my nerve, it wuz so voyalent and vergin' on the profane. But there the man sot, right onto that price, and he had to me the appeerance of one who wuz goin' to sot there on it all night. And so rather than to spend the night out doors, in conversation with him, he a settin' on that price, ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... round the little knoll with such dazzling brilliancy that the entire landscape, almost to its uttermost confines, was nearly as fully revealed as at noonday, while the thunder crashed and rattled and boomed with a nerve-shattering violence that effectually drowned all other sounds. And, to add still further to the weird impressiveness of the scene, the storm had scarcely been raging ten minutes when the swamp was seen to be on fire in several places immediately to leeward of the knoll, the dry herbage having ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... rejuvenated not only in mind, but in the very core and marrow of my body. I had put myself in right relation to Nature; I had established contact, as electricians would say; and as a consequence all the electric current of Nature flowed through me, vitalising and quickening me in every nerve. Men who live in cities are but half alive. They mistake infinite contortion for life. Life consists in the efficient activity of every part of us, each part equally efficient, and moving in a perfect rhythm. ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... her own sweet face was turned towards him, as she spoke with an energy equal to her frankness, in a way to show how little embarrassed were her thoughts, and how sincere were her words. Her countenance was a little flushed, it is true; but it was with earnestness and truth of feeling, though no nerve thrilled, no limb trembled, no pulsation quickened. In short, her manner and appearance were those of a sincere-minded and frank girl, making such a declaration of good-will and regard for one of ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... seventy-seven Indian children existed in 1720, and that they could all read and write English; but adds, that the jealousy of traders and land speculators, who feared it would interfere with their business, caused it to be closed. Alas! this people had encountered the iron nerve of Christianity, without reaping the fruit of ...
— Se-Quo-Yah; from Harper's New Monthly, V. 41, 1870 • Unknown
... of her young heart. In both cases the great drawback to happiness was the absence of self-discipline, self-denial and self-conquest. They could overcome difficulties, brave danger, set the world at defiance, if need be, for each other, and not a coward nerve give way; but when pride and passion came between them, each was a child in weakness and blind self-will. Unfortunately, persistence of character was strong in both. They were of such stuff as martyrs were made of in the fiery times of power ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... one kind of hinge that would answer the purpose—the ball and socket joint—and the Former of the eye has hung it with such a hinge, retaining it in its place partly by the projection of the bones of the face, and partly by the muscles and the optic nerve, which is about as thick as a candlewick, and as tough as leather. Most of you have seen a ship, and know the way the yards are moved, and turned, and squared by ropes and pulleys. The rigging of the eye, though not so large, is fully ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... shift but net loss and headlong decay of the spirit; that modicum of forbearance and equity that is requisite to the conduct of life in a community of ungraded masterless men is seen by these stouter stomachs as a loosening of the moral fiber and a loss of nerve. ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... which the olfactory nerves proceed, are large, whilst the optic and muscular nerves of the orbit are singularly small for so vast an animal; and one is immediately struck by the prodigious size of the fifth nerve, which supplies the proboscis with its exquisite sensibility, as well as by the great size of the motor portion of the seventh, which supplies the same organ with its power of movement ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... sound and movement of the forest seeming to spur us forward and add flight-feathers to our speeding feet. For in my Indians, ascendant now, was the dull horror of the supernatural; and as for me my hatred of the Sorcerers was tightening every nerve to the ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... the bows, as a moment since he had so nearly boxed me in the stern. Once so caught, and nine or ten inches of the blood-stained dirk would be my last experience on this side of eternity. I placed my palms against the mainmast, which was of a goodish bigness, and waited, every nerve upon the stretch. ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not a dishonourable person—at least, he need not be. I saw a monument in Westminster Abbey to a man who was hanged as a spy. A spy must be brave; he must have nerve, caution, and resource. He sometimes does more for his country than a whole regiment. Oh, there are worse persons than spies in ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... he admired nerve. The fact of the Englishman staying alone aboard his wrecked ship appealed to ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... only be liquidated by an absolute cure. He wanted to tie me up and shoot me with an X-ray. He ordered me to wear white socks. He had a long, terrifying look at a drop of my blood. He jerked hairs out of my head to sample my nerve force. He said I was a baffling subject, but that he meant to make me well if it took the last shot in the scientific locker. And he wound up at last by refusing point-blank to be ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne
... were almost touching him, when suddenly a new sound broke the stillness and set every nerve ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... upon the couch beside him and sat with his arm around her. "No, I don't want to lie down just yet," he said. "I just want you. I'm keeping you in suspense, I know; I oughtn't to do that. Jord's life is all right, and he'll be himself again in time, but—well, I've lost my nerve for a bit—I can't talk ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... conscience, without its being embittered to him, not only by the internal rebellion of his feelings against the violence which he exercised over them, but by many accidental circumstances, which, in the course of the banquet, and during the subsequent amusements of the evening, jarred upon that nerve, the least vibration of which ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... end yet with every nerve in my body tingling in hostile response to the Blunt vibration, which seemed to have got into my ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... as to maintaining gold payments, but only temporarily. In Berlin drastic measures were undertaken to accumulate gold in the Reichsbank. Vienna reports it to be well known that Germany had been for eighteen months before straining every nerve to obtain gold. Whatever sums of gold were included in the so-called "war chest" in Spandau (said to be $30,000,000) were also deposited with the Reichsbank. Gold was even smuggled across the borders of Holland on the persons of spies. Urgent demands were made ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... alternate yelp from my ferocious followers made me only too certain that they were in close pursuit. Nearer and nearer they came; I heard their feet pattering on the ice nearer still, until I could feel their breath and hear their snuffing scent. Every nerve and muscle in my frame were ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... hand and to the spine behind, to the last rib laterally, and to the cartilages of the lowest six ribs anteriorly, is a sheet of muscle fibres which form on either side of the chest a dome-like partition between the lungs and the abdominal cavity (vide fig. 2). The phrenic nerve arises from the spinal cord in the upper cervical region and descends through the neck and chest to the diaphragm; it is therefore a special nerve of respiration. There are two—one on each side supplying the two sheets of muscle fibres. ...
— The Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song • F. W. Mott
... latent animation glowed in Anna Leath. In every nerve and vein she was conscious of that equipoise of bliss which the fearful human heart scarce dares acknowledge. She was not used to strong or full emotions; but she had always known that she should not be afraid of them. She was not ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... could not nerve herself to the commission of so great a crime; but it seems more probable that the steward prevented the destruction of the child under the orders of M. de Saint-Maixent. The theory is that the marquis, mistrustful ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... all the blind, fighting spirit which, in gridiron days, had driven him with clinched teeth into the thick of the battering melee. He sprang into a crouching posture, face turned toward the taunting sound, every muscle taut, every nerve tingling, and with but one thought surging through his brain—the desire to charge back ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... years of work among women I found that it was absolutely hopeless attacking the evil from one side only, and I had to nerve myself as best I could to address large mass meetings of men, always taking care clearly to define my position—that I had not come upon that platform to help them, but to ask them to help me in a battle that I had found ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... cab-door and jumped out had he dared, but his nerve failed him, and, indeed, considering the speed of the cab, the leap would have been dangerous to a far more active person. So he was forced to wait resignedly until the station should be reached, when he determined to make Clegg understand his purpose ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... and watched it curl itself away around the chandelier, for notwithstanding the fact that he knew, or should have known, the effects of nicotine on the human system, this aspiring young member of the medical profession wasted money and nerve force in his ...
— The Daughter of a Republican • Bernie Babcock
... large enough to allow of their conversing as they chose under cover of many noises. Gammon had by this time made up his mind to a very bold step, a stratagem so audacious that assuredly it deserved to succeed. Only despair could have supplied him with such a suggestion and with the nerve ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... later. Stay at college till the term is up, and in the meantime try to land a job. However, you won't have any trouble to do that. Keep your nerve, boy, for your mother's sake. It's a hard blow, but we'll weather it, never fear, and ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... it was argued by the prosecution that the weakness of the bomb was a blunder on the part of the socialists, just as its premature explosion, caused by Ernest's losing his nerve and dropping it, was a blunder. And to clinch the argument, there were the several Congressmen who testified to having seen Ernest fumble and drop ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... to cash this bill of exchange, sir," he said. Castanier felt the tones of his voice thrill through every nerve with a violent shock similar to that given by a ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... the voice once more; and as I saw Brennan's arm slowly rise, I lifted mine also, and covered him, noting, as I did so, almost in wonder, with what steadiness of nerve and wrist I held the slender gauge just beneath the visor of his cap. Deliberately, as though he dreaded ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... motionless a full ten minutes. Nor did the horse beside him stir. It was a test of human endurance, the capacity to keep himself absolutely silent, but with every nerve attuned, while he waited for an invisible danger. And those minutes were precious, too. The value of not a single one of them could have been measured or weighed. It was his duty to reach Longstreet at speed, because the general and his veterans must be ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... case—and to my mind the only case of any importance—is that of Brown-Sequard's epileptic guinea-pigs, which inherited the mutilated condition of parents who had gnawed off their own gangrenous toes when anaesthetic through the sciatic nerve having been divided.[55] Darwin also mentions a cow that lost a horn by accident, followed by suppuration, and subsequently produced three calves which had on the same side of the head, instead of a horn, a bony lump attached merely to the skin. Such cases may seem to prove that mutilation ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... had been reinforced the evening before, by six hundred regular troops, and the Queen's American regiment from New York, commanded by Colonel Innis, marching to join Ferguson. Here was a position that would have tried the talent and nerve of the most skillful and brave officer. Advance was hopeless, and retreat impossible. But Shelby was equal to the emergency. He immediately commenced forming a breast-work of brush and old logs, while he detailed twenty-five tried men to reconnoiter and skirmish with the enemy as soon as ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... Celt is in his heart and hand, The Gaul is in his brain and nerve; Where, cosmopolitanly planned, He guards the ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... outlets are sealed, begets a tension of nerve, in which the sensible world comes to one with a reinforced brilliancy and relief—all redness is turned into blood, all water into tears. Hence a wild, convulsed sensuousness in the poetry of the Middle Age, in which the things of nature ...
— Aesthetic Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... her paces to conceal the topsy-turvy doings of her household. Stones are hurled through the windows, cabinets are opened by invisible and silent locksmiths, and I have seen these things and can offer no explanation.'" Britt closed the book. "Right here the old doctor lost his nerve, up to this time he was a fairly acute observer. His next entry is evidently some weeks or, possibly, months later. He says: 'Slowly we have learned to understand the phenomena, but we cannot control them, and the child is still cruelly embarrassed by intrusive tappings and cracklings as she ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... flows the burning tide— Dark storms of feeling sweep across her breast— In loneliness there needs no mask of pride— To nerve the soul, and veil the heart's unrest, Amid the crowd her glances brightly beam, Her smiles with undimmed lustre sweetly shine: The haunting visions of life's fevered dream The cold and careless seek ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... he was present, giving an accurate description of the dinner itself and enclosing a diagram of the manner in which the guests were seated, but without any commentary on the proceedings of the day. It was, after all, one of the nerve-centres of the great world, and an agreeable change from the domestic monotony of the Wayside. Thackeray would have descried rich material for his pen in it, but Hawthorne's studies lay in another direction. Great men were not his ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... dozen Bantu languages. In a minute after that we had the plan well understood and truly laid; and, what was better, they had ceased to believe me a victim of nerves—a fact that gave me back the nerve that had ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... cheek of it set Travis to laughing. He closed the door and said to the man who had followed the dog in: "Carpenter, if I had the nerve of that raw-boned fiend that follows you around, I'd ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... fell on me the judgment of the gods for such rebellion as mine." He turned his sombre eyes full on Livinius. "Would you believe, to see me as I sit here, that mine is a body racked by the tortures of the damned, drained of the very sap of life by disease that eats into every nerve and leaves it raw and quivering, yet that only numbs when its fury is spent, and will not kill? That time after time, when its throes are on me, I have turned craven and begged Claudius for a potion to end it all?" He laughed ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... morning was followed by play of dumb-bells. He had made a cult of physical soundness; he looked anxiously at his lithe, well-moulded limbs; feebleness, disease, were the menaces of a supreme hope. Ideal love dwells not in the soul alone, but in every vein and nerve and muscle of a frame strung to perfect service. Would he win his heart's desire?—let him be worthy of it in body as in mind. He pursued to excess the point of cleanliness. With no touch of personal conceit, he excelled the perfumed exquisite in care for minute perfections. Not in ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... history society has adjusted the organization of its religious activities to social custom and social need. The church in any country is a name for an organized system, with its nerve-centres and its ganglia ramifying into the remotest localities. In the local community it binds together its members in mutual relations, even though they live on different sides of a city, or even in the suburbs. ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... sexual hysteria in woman," King concludes, "is a temporary modification of the nervous government of the body and the distribution of nerve-force (occurring for the most part, as we see it to-day, in prudish women of strong moral principle, whose volition has disposed them to resist every sort of liberty or approach from the other sex), consisting ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... of the two women, 'it's the fire again! it's all round us! O I wisht I hadn't a'come! I wisht I was to hum!'—and she showed the earnestness of the wish by beginning to cry. Her companion sat still and turned very pale. Paler yet, but with every nerve braced, Wych Hazel stood in the road to see for herself. The ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... face of such unanimity of purpose, guided by so much worth and talent, the Ministers lost their nerve, and, like all rulers who do not possess the confidence of the governed, began first to make mistakes, and then to quarrel among themselves. Throughout the years of Macaulay's early manhood the ice was breaking fast. He was still quite young when the concession ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... seconds, elapsed in this preliminary state, which, however powerless, was not without a vague luxurious sense of delight. And then suddenly came pain,—pain, that in rapid gradations passed into a rending agony. Every bone, sinew, nerve, fibre of the body, seemed as if wrenched open, and as if some hitherto unconjectured Presence in the vital organization were forcing itself to light with all the pangs of travail. The veins seemed swollen to bursting, the heart labouring to maintain its action by fierce ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... alas! he was poor, and, what was worse, in debt; "his poverty, but not his will, consented." He was reinstated; but though prodigiously improved as a debater, he felt that he had not advanced as a public man. His ambition inflamed by his discontent, he had, since his return to office, strained every nerve to strengthen his position. He met the sarcasms on his poverty by greatly increasing his expenditure, and by advertising everywhere his engagement to an heiress whose fortune, great as it was, he easily contrived to magnify. As his old house in Great George Street—well ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the suggestion that they should help was put to the others they claimed their izzat indignantly. Izzat and sharm (honor and shame) are the two scarcely distinguishable enemies of honest work, into whose teeth it takes both nerve and resolution to drive a Hillman at the best of times. Nerve King had, but his resolution was asleep. He was too ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... and failed. Once more he was astonished; once more he was humiliated—and as for his anger, it rose to summer-heat. He arranged the balls again, grouping them carefully, and said he would win this time, or die. When a client reaches this condition, it is a good time to damage his nerve further, and this can always be done by saying some little mocking thing or other that has the outside appearance of a friendly remark—so I employed this art. I suggested that a bet might tauten his nerves, and that I would offer one, but that as I did not want it to be an ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... which he had been. His nerve was gone, as well as his conscience; and all the dash and fury of his old ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... pray—praying in the morning had been no use—but he trusted in God, and he labored hard, toiling to and fro, seeking in every nook and behind each stone, and straining every muscle and nerve, till the sweat rolled in a briny dew off his forehead and his curls dripped with wet. At last, with a scream of joy, he touched some soft, close wool that gleamed white as the white snow. He knelt down on the ground and peered behind the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... your normal condition is sympathetically attuned to the vibrations of starlight. Your consciousness is located in your brain, and so long as those vibrations continue to strike with sufficient force upon the optic nerve, you will be conscious of the light. But suppose the machinery of your body were finer—suppose your senses were absolutely in accord with those vibratory movements, instead of only partially so—do you not know that the starlight would reveal ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... ocean. I had almost felt the cold arms of Death about me; but compared to the sickening dread of the cruel Apache, my fears then had been as naught. Facing the inevitable at sea, I had closed my eyes and said good-bye to Life. But in this mysterious darkness, every nerve, every sense, ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... Nelsen figured that numbers, names, and individual variations didn't count for much, just then. They were a crowd with an overall personality—often noisy, sometimes quiet like now, always a bit grim to sustain their nerve before all they had to learn in order to reduce their inexperienced greenness, and before the thought of all the expensive equipment they had to somehow acquire, if they were to take part in the rapid adaptation of the solar system to human uses. Most of all, their courage was needed against ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... hunter bold should follow then, By bog, and rock, and hollow, then, And nestle in the gulley, then, And watch with deep devotion The shadows on the benty grass, And how they come, and how they pass; Nor must he stir, with gesture rash, To quicken her emotion. With nerve and eye so wary, sir, That straight his piece may carry, sir, He marks with care the quarry, sir, The muzzle to repose on; And now, the knuckle is applied, The flint is struck, the priming tried, Is fired, the volley has replied, And reeks in high commotion;— Was better ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... spread for us in apartments strewed with flowers. The table is adorned with them, and the most exquisite wines are handed to us in crystal goblets. When we have glorified God, by the agreeable use of the palate, and the olfactory nerve, we enjoy a delightful sleep of two hours, in bowers of orange trees, roses, and myrtles. Having acquired a fresh store of strength and spirits, we return to our occupations, that we may thus mingle labour with pleasure, which ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... was really a gulf between her and the ordinary worldling. It consisted in little else than a double dose of personality—a richer supply of nerve and emotion. She could not imagine life without money, because she had always lived with rich people. But money was the mere substratum; what really mattered was the excitement of loving, and being loved. She had adored her parents with an absorbing ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... little his clumsy manner of holding, Sometimes touching his hands, as she disentangled expertly Twist or knot in the yarn, unawares—for how could she help it?— Sending electrical thrills through every nerve in ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... both muscle and nerve had been very great, and now came collapse. Removing his shoes and outer clothing he dropped upon a roll of bedding and closed his eyes. But he was grateful, deeply and lastingly grateful. The bread that he had cast upon the waters ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the sort Discarded from a philo-Teuton Court; The tolerant warmth that sheds a kind of lustre Over a stout Ausonian filibuster Does not extend to thoroughly bad hats Like abdicated Hellene autocrats. And, if the Allies feel some slight reserve About resisting your confounded nerve, I, GABRIELE, do not. You may be A kind of subject satrap under me; If not, look out. You shall have cause to know The singing eagles ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... reward, but he did know that there were people who thought such things valuable and paid well for copies of them. If he escaped it might be worth something, and meanwhile it would divert his attention and keep him from losing his nerve. ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... provide a supply of fresh meat for her offspring after her own decease, calls in the science of anatomy to amplify the resources of her instinctive cruelty, and, having made a collection of weevils and spiders, proceeds with marvellous knowledge and skill to pierce the nerve-centre on which their power of locomotion (but none of their other vital functions) depends, so that the paralysed insect, beside which her egg is laid, will furnish the larva, when it is hatched, with a tamed and inoffensive ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... same, but he only darted a look upon his niece, which she felt in every nerve, though to his eyes she only stood hard and stolid. The manager, who found Constance's torrent of words as hard to deal with as Dolores's silence, asked for pen and ink, and begged to take down Miss Hacket's statement ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the young lieutenant and stepped to the door of his tent. He was short, strongly built, and his alert, vigorous movements indicated unusual nerve, ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard
... which a few days before would have made every nerve in Elinor's body thrill with transport, now arrived to be read with less emotion that mirth. Mrs. Jennings wrote to tell the wonderful tale, to vent her honest indignation against the jilting girl, and pour forth her compassion ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... country, the thoughtful and the careless, he who reads much, and he who reads little, all find in his pages more or less to amuse their fancy, to touch their feelings, to quicken their observation, to nerve their convictions, to put into happy phrase the deductions of their experience. His poetical sentiment is not pitched in too high a key for the unimaginative, but it is always so genuine that the most imaginative feel its charm. His wisdom is deeper than it seems, ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... erection is followed by ejaculation. A special nerve centre for ejaculation is also supposed to exist; and the ejaculation centre, like the erection centre, was formerly believed to be situated in the lumbar enlargement of the spinal cord, but recent investigations have shown ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... of place and stretching the ligaments, besides seriously injuring the nerves of her hand and arm. When she came here from Wallingford Community, several weeks after the accident, not only the nerves of her hand were essentially paralyzed, but the trunk nerve of her arm was paralyzed and caused her a great deal of suffering. It was as helpless as though completely paralyzed: she had not sufficient control over her ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... he should be supplied with funds by the Secret Committee of Congress. "I own," he says, "that after I had entered on my department, the applications of the Prisoners were so numerous, and their distress so urgent, that I exerted every nerve to obtain supplies, but in vain—Excepting L600 I had received from the Secret Committee in Bills of exchange, at my first entrance into the Office—I could not by any means get a farthing more, except in Continental ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... brother Guy—murdered him brutally and ruthlessly. Guy had been a playmate of Jean's—a favorite brother. Bill had been secretive and selfish. Jean had never loved him as he did Guy. Guy lay dead down there on the meadow. This feud had begun to run its bloody course. Jean steeled his nerve. The hot blood crept back along his veins. The dark and masterful tide of revenge waved over him. The keen edge of his mind then cut out sharp and trenchant thoughts. He must kill when and where he ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... gilt and varnish and crystal, glorious in plush and silk, heavy with souls and all that correct souls could possibly need in twenty hours, gathered itself up and rolled forward, swiftly, and more swiftly, into the wide, gray landscapes of France. The vibrating and nerve-destroying monotony of a long journey had commenced. We were summoned by white gloves to luncheon; and we lunched in a gliding palace where the heavenly dreams of a railway director had received their most luscious expression—and had then been modestly hidden ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... to her lips; but before tasting the stimulant, she glanced round, as she had often done before, to see if any one was looking at her; a stealthy cunning movement, born of the sense of shame she had never quite lost. Every nerve was quivering with excitement, and her heart was beating quickly. But her glance fell upon her husband's face turned toward her, yet with no watchful, reproachful eyes fastened upon her. The eyelids half closed; the pallid, ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... of a spurious author. But Boyle's edition came forth, as Bentley expresses it, "with a sting in its mouth." This, at first, was like a cut finger—he breathed on it, and would have forgotten it; but the nerve was touched, and the pain raged long after the stroke. Even the great mind of Bentley began to shrink at the touch of literary calumny, so different from the vulgar kind, in its extent and its duration. He betrays the ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... Baptist college campus in this city Oct. 2, and for the brutal assault upon me five days later by a pack of would-be assassins who had waited until my back was unsuspectingly turned before they had the nerve to get out their guns. I can overlook the assault made by the college students, although most of them were grown men, because they were encouraged thereto by their elders. I have positively refused to prosecute them; but the last ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... skin!" cried Bushnell. "You've got a nerve to come hyar! I s'pose Pacheco an' his gang of onery varmints is within ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... the dusty and nerve-racking ride in the automobile a chance for quiet, a bath, and relaxation between the clean coarse sheets of a bed, seemed heavenly to Janice Day. She really did not want to ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... and advanced towards our lines. The distance was barely seventy yards. No shot was fired, but you may be sure that safety-catches were hastily released. Suddenly, in the tense silence, the ambassador's nerve failed him. He bolted back, followed by a few desultory bullets. The reason for his sudden panic was never rightly ascertained, but the weight of public opinion inclined to the view that Mucklewame, who had momentarily exposed himself above the ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... critical moment the comical side of the situation sweeps over me, and out flashes the smile before I can force it back. It is so absurd to see a big grown man sulking like a child! Quite a good thing he does not intend to marry. His wife would have a nerve-racking time. ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... queen depends On you, and will the readier make a show Of mercy; and I may prevail on her To give an audience to her adversary; And by this stratagem we tie her hands Yes! I will make the attempt, strain every nerve. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... but they were of 'such stuff as dreams are made on,' and vanished at a wink, only to appear in other places; and by and by not only islands, but refulgent and revolving lights began to stud the darkness; lighthouses of the mind or of the wearied optic nerve, solemnly shining and winking as we passed. At length the mate himself despaired, scrambled on board again from his unrestful perch, and announced that we had missed our destination. He was the only man of practice in these waters, our sole pilot, shipped for ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... borrowed a half-day from the future on purpose, though she did not want to go at all. But the reality was not bad; only a fluttering, emotional little woman who clung to her hands and talked to her and asked useless questions with a nervous insistence which would have been nerve-wearing for a steady thing, but was only pitiful to ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... for her conscience was troubling her. Her sympathy was divided equally between these unfortunate people who had been saddled with an undesired visitor and herself who had been placed in a position at which every independent nerve in her rebelled. Even as a child she had loathed being under obligations to strangers or those whom she did ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... interposed Dubois, with a flourish of his hand. "I myself shall sit down." When the man returned, bringing only one chair on the plea that he could not find another, Cecilia, whose nerve was returning, offered it to Dubois. He accepted it calmly and sat down upon it, waiting to hear what she had to say. At this signal instance of arch selfishness Cecilia felt her heart tighten and her temples grow cold as if fillets of fire had been ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... pale-faces on horseback were cantering along at no great distance. They had not seen him, he was sure of that, although they were evidently looking for something. He let them pass and go on until he felt safe in following. Every nerve in his body ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... as a section or a party, but as a nation and a people. Let us avail ourselves of that distant and dim glimmer in the heavens which even now is looked upon by the sanguine as the promise of peace, and in its light survey our dangers and nerve ourselves to our duties. We behold, then, a people, bound together by the ties of a common interest, namely, national prosperity and renown, and in possession of a land more favored by natural elements of advantage than any other on the face of the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... herself is Zara seen; Her passions are the passions of a queen. When she to murder whets the timorous Thane,[66] I feel ambition rush through every vein; Persuasion hangs upon her daring tongue, My heart grows flint, and every nerve's new strung. In comedy—Nay, there, cries Critic, hold; Pritchard's for comedy too fat and old: 820 Who can, with patience, bear the gray coquette, Or force a laugh with over-grown Julett?[67] Her speech, look, action, humour, all are just, But then, her age and figure give disgust. Are foibles, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... as quietly as people generally do who are not personally concerned in the calamity they proclaim. But perhaps she hardly anticipated what followed. Her eyes were scarcely ready for the sight of that white livid face, quivering in every nerve with human agony, nor her ears for the fierce cry which broke from ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... Farland said. "I'm not accusing you of doing anything wrong, am I? I can see that you're a law-abiding man. You haven't nerve enough to be anything else. Suppose you step outside with me for a few minutes. I just want to ask you a ...
— The Brand of Silence - A Detective Story • Harrington Strong
... ceased trying to convince her that she was mistaken on this point; but he argued that the memory was of all functions of the brain the most uncertain, that there was no limit to its vagaries, which were mere matters of nerves and circulation, and that Dr. Norton-Smith, the nerve and brain specialist to whom he would take her, would probably turn out to have a dozen patients subject to the same affliction as herself. One never hears of half the ills that flesh is heir to until the inheritance falls to ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... of the muscles is due to derangement of the nerve that supplies them with energy. The muscles of both sides are not supplied by the same nerve; there is a right and a left nerve, each supplying its respective side. The reason why the muscles on the left side are the ones usually paralyzed is owing ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... grunted Arthur, "so don't say any more about it. It gives me the creeps to think of it. That fellow has some nerve. Wonder what he was doing on our road? You can't get anywhere except to Hilltop Academy that way. If he's a new student why didn't he come with ...
— The Hilltop Boys - A Story of School Life • Cyril Burleigh
... feature we see an energetic heroic age, in the hardy North which steels every nerve. The precise duration of the action cannot be ascertained,—years perhaps, according to the story; but we know that to the imagination the most crowded time appears always the shortest. Here we can hardly conceive ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... him to linger long in any one spot. He idled about the streets of the town; twice he wandered aimlessly miles out along roads beyond the town. All the while, without cessation, there was a tugging and nagging at his nerve-ends, a constant inward irritation which laid a hold on his thoughts, twitching them off into unpleasant channels. It kept him from centering his interest upon the casual things about him; inevitably it turned his mind back to inner contemplations. ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... it does git onto a man's nerve the first trip. Strange so many brash ones like you wanter try, but few on 'em ever dast git in ag'in. But I've be'n down so often." Then he peered about the cabin. "Looks like none o' the boys was ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... alone can become the heir of incorporeal and divine things whose whole soul is filled with the salubrious Word."16 "Every one that seeth the Son and believeth on him shall have everlasting life."17 "He strains every nerve towards the highest Divine Logos, who is the fountain of wisdom, in order that, drawing from that spring, he may escape death and win everlasting life."18 "I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread he shall live forever."19 "Lifting up his eyes ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... covered by a tendinous membrane and skin. (3/7. "Philosoph. Zoolog." tome 1 page 242.) In the common mole the eye is extraordinarily small but perfect, though many anatomists doubt whether it is connected with the true optic nerve; its vision must certainly be imperfect, though probably useful to the animal when it leaves its burrow. In the tucu-tuco, which I believe never comes to the surface of the ground, the eye is rather larger, but often rendered ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... dozer's sanctorum ought to be! The only thing attendant on the doze of an inside passenger, is the great chance of being suddenly aroused by the entrance of company. O tell me, ye of the fine nerve, what is more vexing than to be startled from your nest by the creaking slam of the steps, the bleak winter gales galloping along your face, and a whole bundle of human beings pushing themselves into your retreat! There is no rose without its ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... games and play of all sorts are so incomparably superior to the use of dumb-bells and developers, where movement and increase of muscular strength are made ends in themselves; whereas in play we are making relations with the outside world, responding to stimuli, educating our nerve muscular apparatus as an instrument ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... Verplanck, however, thinks there are some passages which relish strongly of an earlier time; while again there are others that with the prevailing sweetness of the whole have such an intertwisting of nerve and vigour, and such an energetic compactness of thought and imagery, mingled occasionally with the deeper tonings of "years that bring the philosophic mind," as to argue that they were wrought into the structure of the play not long before it came from the press. The ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... cry of pain and terror, slipped to the ground, his nerve completely shaken. The sorrel lashed out with his hind feet, and missed his head by a hairbreadth. Pedro turned to ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... things. Concede intellectual power, or the spiritual element, then add this temperament, and there follows a certain subtile, penetrative, radical quality of thought, a characteristic percipience of principles. And principles are not only seen, but felt; they thrill the nerve as well as greet the eye; and the man consequently becomes highly amenable to his own belief. The primary question respecting men is this,—How far are they affected by the original axiomatic truths? Truths are like the winds. Near the earth's surface winds blow in variable ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... few short months before. There was a heaviness about the eyes and there were strange, persistent lines gathering under the soft, white tissues of her skin. But when she at last stepped into the presence of her guests, with ample apologies for her tardiness, she was the picture of life and nerve. So much for the excellent resources of ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... plant perfection in this world at last! "Here," might they say, "shall power's divided reign "Evince that patriots have not bled in vain. "Here godlike liberty's herculean youth, "Cradled in peace, and nurtured up by truth "To full maturity of nerve and mind, "Shall crush the giants that bestride mankind. "Here shall religion's pure and balmy draught "In form no more from cups of state be quaft, "But flow for all, through nation, rank, and sect, "Free as that ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... hand clutched the great knob of the library door and turned it, and when the placid countenance of my step-mother looked up at me from a comfortable easy-chair at the opposite side of the room, I felt that some awful moment had dawned on my existence. With as much nerve and self-control as a child usually displays on such an occasion, I closed the door behind me and walked towards the window ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... Samuel's nerve failed him. He waited, while car after car went by. But then he caught hold of himself. If anyone could do it, so could he. ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... consolation for the loss of their solid privileges. Indeed, the increase of the power of the State has often been urged by artful men, as a pretext for some abridgment of the public liberty. But the scheme of the junto under consideration not only strikes a palsy into every nerve of our free constitution, but in the same degree benumbs and stupefies the whole executive power, rendering Government in all its grand operations languid, uncertain, ineffective, making Ministers fearful of attempting, and incapable of executing, any ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... could not sleep. Driving a plane through clouds, mist and sunshine for hours had made every nerve alert. And the strain of that last sagging slide through the air was not to be relieved instantly. So he lay there in his blankets, a tumult of ideas in his mind. This wheat-field now? Had he really been misdirected by the compass ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... built it up. What peace of mind, what self-respect could be left for us in the remainder of our lives! The weight of dishonor would lie always upon our hearts. And yet this will be surely our fate and our future if we do not nerve our souls and brace our arms for victory. No regrets will avail, no excuses will help, no after-thoughts can profit us. It is now—now—even in these weeks and months that are passing that the final reckoning is being taken, and when once the sum is ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... feet a day, and has been for the last six months. At five dollars a foot—that's the contract price—Old Bible-Back is paying a hundred dollars a day. Now—how many days will that drill have to run to do the annual work? No, you're all right, young man, and I like your nerve, but you don't want to take too much ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... now all nerve, enthusiasm, and hope, bowed. He was satisfied to be allowed to work in his ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... suffice, lady, that she was carried to a place of safety, and every effort used to restore animation, in which we were eventually successful. How shall I describe our meeting, when she recognised me?—it is impossible; I feel it now in every nerve, but to tell you is beyond my power. Through the kindness of a generous officer, I procured her a passage to England, and gave her all that I possessed, with this one request, that she would remain at Plymouth till my return to port. In a few months afterwards we anchored ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 272, Saturday, September 8, 1827 • Various
... the inner suite of apartments are the watchmen, (branches of the auditory nerve,) listening for the approach of Sound. The visitor at length enters the porch, and knocks at the front-door. The watchmen in the antechamber hear the blow close to them, as it is repeated, through the chain, on the window of their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... concerning things of which he knew nothing. One, seeing his arm, began to scold. "Why, man, that's no way to do. You want to fix that thing." He appropriated the lieutenant and the lieutenant's wound. He cut the sleeve and laid bare the arm, every nerve of which softly fluttered under his touch. He bound his handkerchief over the wound, scolding away in the meantime. His tone allowed one to think that he was in the habit of being wounded every day. The lieutenant hung ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... myomeres); M, notochord as seen through the transparent myotomes, the thin double-lined spaces being the connective-tissue septa and the broader spaces the muscular tissue of the myotomes; N, position of brown funnel of left side (atrio-coelomic canal); O, nerve tube ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... call to your recollection what you did me the honour to remark of my letters from Italy. Those were written with her by my side. Every other woman vexed me. This one alone gives me peace, and nerve to work. If I did not desire to work, should I venture to run the chances of an offence to you? Your girls of society are tasteless to me. And they don't makes wives to working barristers. No, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... generous spirit withered by the unkindness, as it had been soiled by the favours, of this evil beauty. [113] The life which began in rapturous devotion ends in hopeless gloom. The poet whose every nerve was strung to the delights of an unselfish though guilty passion, now that the spell is broken, finds life a burden, and confronts with relief the thought of death which, as he anticipated, soon came ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... remained due to his troops. In point of numbers he was still far inferior to the enemy; no computation swelling them higher than three thousand horse, two of them light cavalry, and nine thousand foot. The strength of his army lay in his Spanish infantry, on whose thorough discipline, steady nerve, and strong attachment to his person he felt he might confidently rely. In cavalry, and still more in artillery, he was far below the French, which, together with his great numerical inferiority, made it impossible for him to keep the open country. His only resource was to get possession of ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... traffic; and 007 had hauled the old Mogul over a small pavement of ties, inch by inch, till his flanges bit the rail once more, and he settled down with a clank. But his spirit was broken, and his nerve was gone. ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... the nerve or brain cell whereby one experiences the sensation of amazement was numb. If Paragot had informed me that he had been a boon companion of King Qa and had built the pyramids of Egypt I should not have been surprised. I could only record ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... of will, she would conjure up some recollection of the loved one's appearance, which she saw as if from a great distance. Then, after eternities of torment, she was possessed by a culminating agony. Sweat ran from her pores. Every nerve in her being vibrated with suffering, as if the accumulated pain of the ages was being conducted through her body. More and even more pain. Then, a supreme torment held her, which made all others seem trifling by comparison. The next moment, a new life was born into the world—a new life, with ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... genuine appreciation of literature—and of so much else—to be also an exceptionally bold and hardy sportsman. He is still altogether too reckless; but by my hen-with-one-chicken attitude, I think I shall get him out of Africa uninjured; and his keenness, cool nerve, horsemanship, hardihood, endurance, and good eyesight make him a really good wilderness hunter. We have become genuinely attached to Cunninghame and Tarleton, and all three naturalists, especially ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... the principal honors in the battle of Messines Ridge to the guns and the gunners who served them. For about a fortnight the gunners had worked incessantly with scarcely any sleep in the midst of nerve-racking noises and with death constantly hovering around them. The number of shells used in this battle by the British was incredible. One division alone fired over 180,000 shells with their field batteries and over 46,000 ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... with the growth of the body, proves, as has been shown by Paget, that the organic element of the part does not forget the impression it has received. What has been said about the different nervous centres of the body demonstrates the existence of a memory in the nerve cells diffused through the heart and intestines; in those of the spinal cord, in the cells of the motor ganglia, and in the cells of the cortical substance of ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... see an energetic heroic age, in the hardy North which steels every nerve. The precise duration of the action cannot be ascertained,—years perhaps, according to the story; but we know that to the imagination the most crowded time appears always the shortest. Here we can hardly conceive how so very much ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... its name of "pitcher plant" from the fact of its possessing the following curious characteristics: The median nerve is prolonged beyond the leaves in the manner of a tendril, and terminates in a species of cup or urn. This cup is ordinarily three or four inches in depth, and one to one and a half inches in width. The orifice ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... of the greatest of nerve-destroyers. He deals in superlatives. He views everything emotionally. He talks feelingly of trifles, and ecstatically of friends. He gushes. He flatters. To him everything is "wonderful," "prodigious," "superb," ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... not only that I could not go to sleep, but that I could not even close my eyes. I was wide awake, and in a high fever. Every nerve in my body trembled—every one of my senses seemed to be preternaturally sharpened. I tossed and rolled, and tried every kind of position, and perseveringly sought out the cold corners of the bed, and all to no purpose. ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... that door!" Mexicans assume a threatening attitude. "Back, all of you!" Lieutenant Overton draws his sword. His life hangs on a thread. Greasers cowed by his nerve. Grimmer work ahead. ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock
... licked to a frazzle, And Fritzie is clipped in the comb, We're holding a big razzle-dazzle To welcome our soldier boys home. They bore themselves brave in the battle They kept themselves clean on parade, They herded the Bosches like cattle In many a nerve-racking raid. ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens
... at cards, for the sake of Old Virginia he must not draw back. Mr. Harry found his new acquaintances ready to try him at all these sports and contests. He had a strong head, a skilful hand, a firm seat, an unflinching nerve. The representative of Old Virginia came off very well in his friendly ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sleep. Every nerve in his body jangled. The interview with young Boland, for reasons which will be apparent to the reader later, had aroused in him a smouldering anger. He tossed ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... obviously different from most of the cells that make up the finished product, the body. The latter are highly differentiated and specialized for different functions—blood cells, nerve cells, bone cells, muscle cells, and so on, each a single cell but each adapted to do a certain work, for which the original, undifferentiated germ-cell was wholly unfit. It is evident that differentiation began to take place at ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... his eyes with his hand. The visualising sense, stimulated by the nerve strain of the preceding weeks, beheld with ghastly clearness the face of Melrose in death, with the blood-stain ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... all that I had seen—the submarine shelling the open boats and all the rest of it. She thought it marvelous that we should have been spared in so providential a manner, and I had a pretty speech upon my tongue's end, but lacked the nerve to deliver it. Nobs had come over and nosed his muzzle into her lap, and she stroked his ugly face, and at last she leaned over and put her cheek against his forehead. I have always admired Nobs; but this was ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... slightest wishes will be anticipated and fulfilled in a manner for which thou wilt vainly seek to account,—and, as thou provest thy talents or thy valor, so will promotion open its doors to thee with such rapidity that thou wilt strain every nerve to reach the highest offices in the state—for then only may'st thou hope to receive my hand, and behold the elucidation of the mystery which up to that date will ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... his position in the matter, and that this belief encouraged him to send the French troops into Western Africa. But, with the assistance of Mr. Chamberlain, who is a shrewd diplomatist as well as a man of nerve, Lord Salisbury held firmly to ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 10, March 10, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... was mighty close they swept to a fellow, whistling, shrieking, low overhead; falling to tear out great gouges in the earth. It was enough to wreck one's nerve utterly; but the fellows that drove were all nerve. Just part of the day's work to them! And that was Nat too. Nat hadn't known what fear was—he'd eaten it alive. The adventurer in him had gone ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... for these years' delay. The contrivances and hardships of his Manchester life had been, after all, enjoyment. Without them and the extravagant self-reliance they had developed in him his pride and ambition would have run less high. And at this moment the nerve and savour of existence came to him ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a few feet and comes to a halt again, or slips from the track and turns over in the deep snow. But it is at such times, too, that one appreciates at his full value such a noble puller as our wheel dog Nanook. He spares himself not at all; the one absorbing occupation of every nerve and muscle of his body is pulling. His trace is always taut, or, if he lose footing for a moment and the trace slacken, he is up and at it again that the sled lose not its momentum if he can help it. When the lead line is pulled back that the sled may be started by ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... and take up position to form a most dangerous ambuscade, and half a mile away, straggling through the woods, running or striding, were the men in the colours he loved. They had swept the enemy before them, so far, but trained troops speedily recover from a panic, if they have a leader of nerve, and seeing a noble chance in the angle of this deep-sunk road, the British fugitives turned like boars at bay. Not a sign of them was visible to the Americans. The latter were suffering from too much success. Their usual caution seemed to have deserted them, and trotting in a body ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... in that garage. Had he really intended to steal the car, he would not have had the nerve to take the chances he had taken. He shivered when he recalled how he had slid under the car when the owner came in. What if the man had seen him or heard him? He would be in jail now, instead of splashing along the highway ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... all walked around the valley floor and got stung one at a time. The things did it so quietly that none of us knew what was going on until we got hit ourselves. When we had all been enslaved, we were ready to do their bidding. They can't talk, but they can communicate by means of nerve messages when that ...
— The Judas Valley • Gerald Vance
... The girls, and Molo himself, had described what we would find: a main route leading to the control room where the delicate mechanisms which operated all this were centralized, the nerve center of Wandl. It seemed that we were following ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... aura from the brilliancy of its flashes of colour may often be more conspicuous, the nerve-ether and the etheric double are really of a much denser order of matter, being strictly speaking within the limits of the physical plane, though invisible to ordinary sight. It has been the custom in Theosophical literature to describe ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... one of the men, fixing his eyes on my father's face, bent forward and suddenly struck his hand violently on the hilt of his broadsword and, rattling the weapon, half drew it from its sheath. This nerve-trying experiment was a complete failure, its only effect being to make my father smile up at the man even more pleasantly than before, as if the little practical joke had ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... and the energy of her joy embraced Aminta, that she might nerve all her powers to gain the half-minute for ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... had gained her object, for Stoke was visibly relieved. He told her many things which he had withheld from other inquirers. He cleared Dixon's good name from anything but that liability to error which is only human, and spoke of the captain's nerve and steadiness in the hour of danger. Insensibly they lapsed into a low-voiced discussion of Dixon as of the character of a lost friend ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... shook it off. Was he mad? Life was worth more to him than to other men, he thought; and perhaps he was right. He went slowly through the cool dusk, looking across the fields, up at the pale, frightened face of the moon hooded in clouds: he did not dare to look, with all his iron nerve, at the dark figure beyond him on the road. She was sitting there just where he had left her: he knew she would be. When he came closer, she got up, not looking towards him; but he saw her clasp her hands behind her, the fingers plucking weakly at each other. It was an old, ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... opening for the Blues Their floods of moral influence diffuse, And each of seven its blameless nectar sheds To nerve the spirits of ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... displayed his characteristic qualities, Je ne sais pas being the usual answer to any topographical inquiries with a total absence of nerve, and a general conviction that distances were very great and that the weather would be bad. However, we got on very well, and I was sorry to part ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... was the command ship of the fleet, the nerve center of the entire operation, it was still hardly more than a prison ship for the cadets. In direct contrast, the space liner was bright, gay, and full of life. Everything imaginable for the convenience of the colonists ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... wildly, and a thrill of rapture rushed through every nerve and fibre of his being. He sprang up and peered through the gloom, and moved forward in the direction from which the voice seemed to have come. At this moment he did not stop to consider how Dolores could have got there. It was enough that she really was there, and all other feelings were ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... soaring to the skies, Intent "the topmost arch" of heaven to scale, When heeding naught that would oppose its rise, It breaks with fearless nerve the tempest-gale— And spreads its wings like a majestic sail, Full on the bosom of the raging blast, Thy spirit soar'd—but ah! too like us frail, When the same breeze which bore it from the dust Wing'd home the fatal shaft that tore its ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various
... up, in a small court, among low operators. Such a man as this is unfit for this commercial sphere. He would have been unfit for a pilot, unfit for military command, unfit for any place that demands steady nerve, ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... my teeth were clenched as if in the throes of lockjaw. Had I paused to think for a single instant, all my nerve would have oozed away. But I had no time to spend on thought; I had to work on, to save Miss Falconer. The whole ghoulish business would be futile if the inn servants found the body. The mere flight of all the guests would certainly stir suspicion; let the murder ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... pray" began to straighten their backs a little, the while they wrestled with the kinks that were bothering them from too much stooping. It was a sort of chiropractic process for the alleviation of growing pains—the discovery of the proper nerve to ask and receive, to seek and find. As the People grew more accustomed to the sound of their own Voice it was only natural that the quaver of timidity began to disappear from the tones of it and that their speech grew stronger ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... stranger,' Cleinias addresses him—'inhabitant of Attica I will not call you, for you seem to deserve rather the name of Athene herself, because you go back to first principles.' Thus complimented, the stranger lets himself go. Yet somehow he would seem to have lost speculative nerve. ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... the Northern Commune, remained in Petrograd when the Government moved to Moscow. He is neither an original thinker nor a good orator except in debate, in answering opposition, which he does with extreme skill. His nerve was badly shaken by the murders of his friends Volodarsky and Uritzky last year, and he is said to have lost his head after the attack on Lenin, to whom he is extremely devoted. I have heard many Communists attribute to this fact the excesses which followed ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome
... through her teeth. "Even for that, there are things I haven't the nerve to stand. I have thought I could stand them. But I can't. It does not matter why. I am going to tell you the truth. You represent too much. You have been too great a temptation. Nobody meant anything or planned anything at first. It ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... that steady light in her blue eyes, but they felt by some instinct that she was young and unstable of nerve. At this unexpected move on their part the girl stopped short, suddenly undecided whether to ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... over M. de Pontverre's and again returned to mine, which she read through and would have read again, had not the footman that instant informed her that service was beginning—"Child," said she, in a tone of voice which made every nerve vibrate, "you are wandering about at an early age—it is really a pity!"—and without waiting for an answer, added—"Go to my house, bid them give you something for breakfast, after mass, I will speak ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... the most remarkable stories of this Wagon Mound country dealt with the nerve and bravery exhibited by John L. Hatcher in defence of his life, and those of the men in ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... the battle— I would arm him for the fight; I would give him to his country, For his country's wrong and right! I would nerve his hand with blessing From the "God of battles" won— With His helmet and His armor, I ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... make over two thousand in order to secure the one hundred needed for the present series? The slightest imperfection is enough to render an otherwise perfect record useless. Even the artists themselves would sometimes become discouraged at the enormous difficulties. It is nerve-racking work, for one must be on ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... workman only lighted his pipe. His mind was busy and he needed a nerve-quieter. The train of thought in which he had just indulged was strange, and rather disquieting—altogether he needed ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... Evelyn, with shining eyes, "to think that all the time we were worrying about you and feeling sure you were lost, you were having the time of your life! Oh, if I'd only had the nerve to follow you!" ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... all the forenoon and all the way to Orham on the train and most of that night. And when he heaved anchor, Jonadab had agreed to put up a thousand and I was in for five hundred and Peter contributed two hundred and fifty and experience and nerve. And the "Old Home House" was ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... nothing of the writer, but recognised the name of the vessel as being that in which his son had sailed for the Southern Seas, for our hero had written to tell of his departure, although he had not asked or waited for advice. Mr Jack was a man of strong nerve. Rising quietly from the table, he left the room, but his wife noticed the expression of his face, and followed ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne
... in the very extremity of his apprehensions, there fell of a sudden a knock upon the door, sounding so loud and so startling upon the silence of the room that every shattered nerve in our hero's frame tingled and thrilled in answer to it. He stood petrified, scarcely so much as daring to breathe; and then, observing that his mouth was agape, he moistened his dry and parching lips, and drew his jaws ...
— The Ruby of Kishmoor • Howard Pyle
... those days. There rose within me a feeling that I, too, could do anything—if I only wanted. There was so much to be seen and experienced—and the flow of life was irresistible. Nothing would be needed but a little more nerve, a little more self-assurance, and then to plunge in. ... Yes, that was what I felt while you were talking. ... And then Gabrielle came toward us along the narrow road from the village, between the acacias. She carried her straw hat in her hand, and she nodded to ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... appealing plaintiveness in their expression which drags at your sympathies like the look in the eyes of a hunchback. It means that, with your opportunities, you might have done more with your life. Your mother looks at you that way sometimes in church, when the sermon touches a particularly raw nerve in your spiritual make-up. I always feel like apologizing when a ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... now in his 78th year, thin of face, spare of frame, his body all sinew and nerve, his eyes brilliant with unextinguished fire. I loitered near to hear what he would say to Douglas. He seemed to have a paternal pride in the young Congressman. He entwined his arm with Douglas', patted Douglas on the knee, looked into his ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... so grave that her nerve, normally strong, was fairly shaken; only that morning her husband had said: "Old Mr. Forsyte must be worth well over a hundred ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... marriage is perfectly legitimate. You are as free in your ideas as I am, and, happily, there can be no disagreement between us on that point. As for our future, that ought not to alarm you. I'll work in the sweat of my brow, I'll work day and night— in fact, I will strain every nerve to make Zina happy. Her life will be a splendid one! You may ask, am I able to do it. I am, brother! When a man devotes every minute to one thought, it's not difficult for him to attain his object. But let us go to Zina; it will be a joy to her ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... through which a novice must pass before being admitted to holy orders is a severe tax upon nerve and endurance. In the process of a long ritual, at least three, or even so many as nine, pastilles are placed upon the bald scalp of the head. These are then lighted, and allowed to burn down into the skin until permanent ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... if I lost my nerve I was beaten! If I had lost my nerve no protecting of Marie, no defiance of Semyonov—and, far beyond these, abject submission to my enemy in the forest. If I had lost my nerve!... Had I? Was it only weariness the other night? But twice now I had been properly beaten, ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... climbing up the hill, nor is there any fear of any one attacking him; all he hath to do is on no account to look behind him." And after a short pause she presently added, "O Fakir, albeit a woman yet I have both nerve and thews to carry me through this adventure. I shall not heed the Voices not be enraged thereat, neither will they have any power to dismay me: moreover, I have devised a device whereby my success on this point is assured." ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... that strong stimulation of the gluteal region may, especially under predisposing conditions, produce or heighten sexual excitement, by virtue of the fact that both regions are supplied by branches of the same nerve. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... England will once more open in a response to the necessary comforts which her brave sons call for at her hands, and for which they will not call in vain. Let me give a few hints: Tobacco and cigarettes are, of course, always in demand, and under the peculiar circumstances of this nerve-racking campaign, are more or less of a necessity. Socks, too, are needed, for whether the weather is hot or cold, socks will wear out. The men dearly love sweets, such as toffee, chocolate, peppermints. Cardigan jackets—not too heavy—are largely called for; a packet containing ...
— With The Immortal Seventh Division • E. J. Kennedy and the Lord Bishop of Winchester
... grim rocks rising close beside his vessel, realized that naught could keep her from them now. He saw death peering close to his face. He felt the icy breath of the Grim Reaper upon his brow. A coward at heart, he lost every vestige of his nerve at this crucial moment of his life. Leaping from the wheelhouse to the deck he ran backward and forward shrieking at the top of his lungs begging and entreating someone to save him, and offering fabulous rewards to the man who carried him ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... far greater importance than even the preservation of social order, will believe that Mr. Eyre has committed one of the greatest crimes of which a person in authority can be guilty, and will strain every nerve to obtain a declaration that their belief is in accordance with ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... harder than ever to stand pressed there against the panelling, watching the coming of the stalwart guard, and it took all the doctor's nerve and self-command to stand there so absolutely still of body, while his nerves and thoughts were moving with ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... which he turns out year after year?' said a journalist, who was smoking beside him, an older man than the rest of them. 'I have a hundred things I want to say—but H. is popular—I like him himself—and I haven't the nerve. But what the devil do we want with the Greeks—they painted their world—let us paint ours! Besides, it is an absurdity. I thought as I was looking at H. 's things this morning of what Preault used to say of Pradier: "Il partait tous les matins pour la Grece et arrivait tous les soirs Rue ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... thus proceed from the spine, branch out, like the limbs and twigs of a tree, till they extend over the whole body; and, so minutely are they divided and arranged, that a point, destitute of a nerve, cannot be ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... moment. The swift-footed Army of Northern Virginia was racing for its life, and Grant, inspired with more than his habitual tenacity and energy, not only pressed his enemy in the rear, but hung upon his flank, and strained every nerve to get in his front. He did not even allow himself the pleasure of entering Richmond, which surrendered to Weitzel early on the morning ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... Phebe, but she did not move. It was the voice of one long since dead that rang in her ears—dead, and faithfully mourned over; and every nerve tingled, and her heart seemed to stay its beating. Roland Sefton's voice! She did not doubt it or mistake it. The call had been too real. She had answered to it too many times to be mistaken now. In those days of utter silence, when dumb signs only had passed between her ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... step came, till I saw in the half dark the pretty figure of one of the parlour maids. On tip-toe she crept up to the study door, and then stooping down, listened at the keyhole. Instantly I was on the alert, every nerve strained to watch her. For nearly five minutes she stood there, and then with a glance round, tiptoed quietly along the passage again, closing the baize door ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... at the supper-table he had one nerve-racking fear dispelled and another confirmed by his mother's reply to a question ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... resolved, I became anxious in his behalf, strained every nerve, rode in all directions night and day, and so effectually exerted myself in enquiring who were the independent men likely to be influenced by honest motives, that I procured him above ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... him were priests, naked to the waist, and armed with knives. Behind them again stood the little band of Settlement men, trembling with terror. Nor were their fears groundless, for there among them lay one of their number, dead. This was the man whose nerve had broken down, who shrieked aloud in the darkness, and in reward had been ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... wanting nerve," grinned Weary. "I guess I can stand it if you can." And a very efficient assistant ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... through some nerve-testing experiences, but, as he went to his room, he realized that the severest ordeals often occur in ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... each nerve, they bend them to the oar. The bronze poop reels, so lustily they row, And from beneath them slips the watery floor. The parched lips quiver, as they pant and blow, Sweat pours in rivers from their limbs; when ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... replaced by a fibrous cicatrix. It would appear that portions of muscle transplanted from animals to fill up gaps in human muscle are similarly replaced by fibrous tissue. When a muscle is paralysed from loss of its nerve supply and undergoes complete degeneration, it is not capable of being regenerated, even should the integrity of the nerve be restored, and so its function ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... astonished; once more he was humiliated—and as for his anger, it rose to summer-heat. He arranged the balls again, grouping them carefully, and said he would win this time, or die. When a client reaches this condition, it is a good time to damage his nerve further, and this can always be done by saying some little mocking thing or other that has the outside appearance of a friendly remark—so I employed this art. I suggested that a bet might tauten his nerves, and that I would offer ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... Then Roxy took her place, and Heman bent over his bass-viol. The rehearsal began. Heman forgot all about his keeper sitting by the stove, as the old, familiar tunes swelled up in the little room, and one antique phrase after another awoke nerve-cells all unaccustomed nowadays to thrilling. He could remember just when he first learned The Mellow Horn, and how his uncle, the sailor, had used to sing it. "Fly like a youthful hart or roe!" Were there spices still left on the hills of life? Ah, but only for youth to smell and gather! Boldly, ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... and pure to allow him to desecrate the trust reposed in him to personal ends. Hence the influence derived from the patronage of the General Government was turned against the administration rather than in its behalf; and the singular spectacle was presented of men exerting every nerve to overthrow Mr. Adams, who were dependent upon him for the influence they wielded against him, and for their ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... his report of the affair the work of art which he boasted should come from his hand. It was really a space-man's masterpiece; and it appealed to every nerve in the reader's body, with its sensations repeated through many columns, and continued from page to page with a recurrent efflorescence of scare-heads and catch-lines. In the ardor of production, all scruples and reluctances became fused in a devotion to the interests of the Events and its ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... detrimental to eyesight? How large must be the type in textbooks in order that young children may easily read it? What variations from the present school program are necessary in order to make adequate provision for change in the use of different sets of muscles, and relief from nerve strain? ...
— Health Work in the Public Schools • Leonard P. Ayres and May Ayres
... Bohemia that War is coming back. Nobility all making off, some to Vienna or the intermediate Towns lying thitherward, some to their Country-seats; all out of Prag. Willing mind on the part of the Common People; which the Government strains every nerve to make the most of. Here are fasts, processions, Prayers of Forty-Hours; here, as in Vienna and elsewhere. In Vienna was a Three Days' solemn Fast: the like in Prag, or better; with procession to the shrine of St. Vitus,—little likely to help, I should ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the pipe dropped from his hand. A minimum of sleep and a maximum of tobacco do not tend to steady a man's nerve. ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... words blood and bloody punctuate the largest poem of G.K.C. to the virtual obliteration in our memory of the fine imagery, the occasional tendernesses, and the blustering aggressiveness of some of the metaphors and similes. Not many men would have the nerve, let alone the skill, ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... They were men of nerve, both of them. Neither flinched. Rochester's question had been asked in an absolutely matter-of-fact tone, and Saton's reply was entirely casual. Yet he knew very well that it was only since the coming of the great judge that Rochester had suddenly realized that amongst the ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... so there was the danger of the vessel coming to grief on my account. And, as though to spite me, the closing verse of Psalm 104 reads, "Let the sinners be consumed out of the earth and let the wicked be no more." I strained every nerve to keep Matilda out of my thoughts, but ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... figured that numbers, names, and individual variations didn't count for much, just then. They were a crowd with an overall personality—often noisy, sometimes quiet like now, always a bit grim to sustain their nerve before all they had to learn in order to reduce their inexperienced greenness, and before the thought of all the expensive equipment they had to somehow acquire, if they were to take part in the rapid adaptation of the ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... Arizona. The scenes go on all day and all night in different forms. A number of dogs are being broken in by being tied up to stakes. These keep up a heart-rending and peculiar crying, beginning with a short bark which melts into a yowl and dies away in a nerve-racking wail. This ceases not day or night, and half a dozen of these prisoners are within a ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... my supper and lights, my nerve was utterly gone; and, had the lad been such as I was used to seeing him, I should have kept him (even by force had that been necessary) to take off the edge from my distasteful solitude. But on Felipe, also, ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... just lighted the big lamp in the hall—electricity had not yet found its way into the old house—and the warm cheerfulness of the homely scene went far to rehabilitating Simon's convalescent nerve. Ghosts did not fit into this atmosphere. Bates did—Bates was almost as satisfying as a cabbage. Of course, Ocky would promptly do her best to spoil it—! He could have dispensed willingly with the examination to which she ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... of his so spurred me on, that I Strained every nerve, behind him scrambling up, Until the circle was beneath ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante
... The brilliance and nerve with which she carried through the trick, roused the enthusiasm it deserved, and Arithelli passed out panting and triumphant to the accompaniment of music and cheers, and ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... clouds of smoke over his head and watched it curl itself away around the chandelier, for notwithstanding the fact that he knew, or should have known, the effects of nicotine on the human system, this aspiring young member of the medical profession wasted money and nerve force in his slavery ...
— The Daughter of a Republican • Bernie Babcock
... sort of a bashful boy. Dave was just the opposite. Dave was full of nerve. Bud kept a 'hemming and hawing' trying ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... to listen to you! Half an hour from now you'll be ashamed of yourself... wishing that nobody had heard you! You'll be begging me not to mention it! You... Jim Hegan... the traction king! To lose your nerve over a little thing like this! What's come over you, anyhow... after all the things we've been through ...
— The Machine • Upton Sinclair
... him! Since the night he had flung himself out of her house, tortured in every nerve, she had not for a moment left him. When he walked through the house, she followed him, her stealthy footfall sounding just the merest fraction of a second after his. He avoided the bare polished floors and walked on the rugs whenever possible, that he might not ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... lady Feng was, it is true, much cut up at heart; but she strained every nerve to preserve an exterior of total indifference. Noticing that there was no one present in the apartment, she drew P'ing Erh to her. "I drank yesterday," she smiled, "a little more wine than was good for me, so don't bear me a grudge. Where did I ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... teach that preposterous ignoramus something worth knowing about Sennacherib. Besides I am a bachelor and would sooner spend Christmas, as to whose irritating and meaningless annoyance I cordially agree with you, among strangers than among my married sisters' numerous and nerve-racking families." ...
— A Christmas Mystery - The Story of Three Wise Men • William J. Locke
... which had attacked the steel girders of our civilization even before the work of building was completed, has brought about what Gilbert Murray in speaking of Greek thought calls the failure of nerve. In the seventeenth century men still had the courage of their egoism. The world was a bad job to be made the best of, all hope lay in driving a good bargain with the conductors of life everlasting. By the end of the nineteenth ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... Danaans and full of fury against the Trojans, who, being now no longer in a body, filled all the ways with their cries of panic and rout; the air was darkened with the clouds of dust they raised, and the horses strained every nerve in their flight from the tents and ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... bank, and in the evening the little shops on either side started playing nasty, cheap European phonographs the noise of which was most disagreeable. Most of the records were of Chinese music, the harsh quality of which was magnified tenfold by the imperfections of the instruments. When the nerve-wracking concert became intolerable, they were always good enough to stop it ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... the adjoining room for another light, and had the satisfaction to penetrate the mystery on the spot. Rats abounded in the ancient building she inhabited, and one of these had managed to ensconce itself within her favourite memento mori. Though thus endowed with a more than feminine share of nerve, she entertained largely that belief in supernaturals, which in those times was not considered as sitting ungracefully on the grave and aged of her condition; and the story of the Magic Mirror was one for which she vouched with ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... battles of King Sudas, may have a historical basis. He is represented as a gigantic being of enormous size and vigour and of gross passions. He feasts on the flesh of bulls and buffaloes roasted by hundreds, his potations are counted in terms of lakes, and not only nerve him for the fray but also intoxicate him[150]. Under the name of Sakka, Indra figures largely in the Buddhist sutras, and seems to have been the chief popular deity in the Buddha's lifetime. He was adopted into ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... grave which should be our landmark has not been entirely obliterated by the jungle, as I had thought most likely. Second, we know that it is on this side of the island, for the reason that this chap Tubbs hasn't nerve to go much beyond shouting distance by himself. Third, as Tubbs has tried this hold-up business I believe we should consider the agreement by which he was to receive a sixteenth share null and void, and decide ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... wearying form of nerve trouble which mostly affects the arms and legs. It can, however, originate in any other part of the body through the spinal nerve centres. It may sometimes be due to injury, but the usual cause is some form of thickening or misplacement ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... the resolute nerve of a man, And a voice which he holds as serene as he can, Takes quietly from her the ...
— Beechenbrook - A Rhyme of the War • Margaret J. Preston
... Ryan very intimately and had seen him in action when his temper was up. Bill adjusted an extra horn which he happened to have in stock. One of those terrific things that go far toward making the life of a pedestrian a nerve-racking succession of startles. Casey tried it out on himself before he would accept it. He walked several doors down the street with the understanding that Bill would honk at him when he was some little distance away. Bill waited until Casey's attention was drawn to a lady with thick ankles ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... this rough peasant Hand! Confessed 'Art is null and study void!' So sayest thou? So said not I, Who threw the faulty pencil by, And years instead of hours employed, Learning the veritable use Of flesh and bone and nerve beneath Lines and hue of the outer sheath, {70} If haply I might reproduce One motive of the mechanism, Flesh and bone and nerve that make The poorest coarsest human hand An object worthy to be scanned A whole life ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... her glance or let her eyelids fall, but a change came over her face—that subtle change in nerve and muscle which will sometimes give a childlike expression even to the elderly: it is the subsidence ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... interesting idea, or a strong twinge of recollection, it made him, for the moment, rather heartless. Just now he felt that Gerhardt's flash of high spirits was in some way connected with him. Was it because he had gone in with Willy? Had David doubted his nerve? ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... indignantly. "When I show signs of fear it is time for you to be afraid. Those who have the nerve to load the guns come with me; the rest go and remain with Bertha Eswick and the children. She will shame you, I doubt not, by ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... with a fresh flood of tears, that he should never do wrong when she was by. Then came the apology. It was most necessary, and he owned that it would be much better to be able to tell his father that his grandmother had forgiven him; but he really had not nerve to set out alone, and Albinia, who had begun to dread having him out of sight, consented to go ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with the scalpel, a glance with a lens, and their secret is betrayed. The eyes are a mockery. Externally they are organs of vision—the front of the eye is perfect; behind, there is nothing but a mass of ruins. The optic nerve is a shrunken, atrophied and insensate thread. These animals have organs of vision, and yet they have no vision. They have eyes, ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... out of politics is a vast undertaking, for in politics lies their strength. If they resist, as doubtless they will, it will call for nerve, endurance, and sacrifice on the part of the people. It will be no child's play, for the power of privilege is great. But the power of our people is greater still, and their steadfastness is equal to the need. The task is a tremendous one, both in the demands it will make and the rewards ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot
... minutes she felt her soul being crucified. While Jack stood talking in the hall or on the steps, she tried to conceal from herself what she had done and, when that was impossible, to nerve herself to make reparation. Then she was blinded by the glare of the head-lights and opened her eyes to find that the car had swept beyond reach of ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... [Doyle goes abruptly into the bedroom, slamming the door and shattering the last remnant of Tim's nerve. The poor wretch saves himself from bursting into tears by plunging again into his role of daredevil Irishman. He rushes to Broadbent; plucks at his sleeve with trembling fingers; and pours forth his entreaty with all the brogue ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... a voice which made every nerve within me quiver with deep emotion, "my strength is unequal to my burden; I bend beneath it. I need a helper, a friend. Will ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... deep leather chair. He was tall, handsome, and elegant. The iron gray head pressing the chair-back was one to draw the second glance from a stranger as a matter of course. The clear, blue-gray eyes took in the walls lined with books. The white hands, clasped in front of the broad chest, showed nerve force and strength. ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... appalling silence, and among all these staring windows, I am lost in terrors—oh, lost in them!' she cried, her face blanching at the words. 'I beg you to lend me your arm,' she added with the loveliest, suppliant inflection. 'I dare not go alone; my nerve is gone—I had a shock, oh, what a shock! I beg of you to ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... well known, Mr. Speaker, that there is a LARGE, RESPECTABLE and INTELLIGENT PARTY in Kentucky, who will exert every nerve and spare no efforts to dislodge the subsisting rights to our Slave population, or alter in some manner, and to some extent, at least, the tenure by which that species of property is held."—Speech of the Hon. James T. Morehead in ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... "She 'asn't got the nerve to send young Nugent about 'is business," explained Mr. Kybird; "she feels sorry for 'im, pore fellow; but 'e's got a loving and affectionate 'art, and she can't bear 'im making love to 'er. You can understand what it is, ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... had been times when he had fancied that Garret possessed the stronger spirit, because his words were more full of fire, and he was ever a man of action and strife. But when Garret had been brought face to face with peril his nerve had given way. He had struggled after courage, but all the while he had been ready to fly. He had spoken of coming martyrdom with loftiness of resolution; but he had wavered, and had been persuaded that the time had not ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... he jokes with his three sisters; with what inexhaustible volubility he pours out quotations from his favourite poets, applying them to the lovely scenes around him; and with what a mischievous delight in his superior nerve and mettle, he attempts the feats of charioteering, which fill the heart of the youngest of the party with sudden terrors! Beside him, in a dress of marvellous plainness, and ugliness, stamped with ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... the cafe concert, Sidonie's husband had had a moment of frantic excitement. He leaned on Planus's arm, every nerve in his body strained to the utmost. At that moment he had no thought of going to Montrouge to get ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... began to feel terribly tired and sleepy. At first he fought off the feeling, realizing that his only hope of freedom lay in keeping awake, with all his senses alert. Then he thought of the nerve-racking hours through which he had just passed; the many more which were likely to follow, and decided that he must have rest at any cost. He threw himself upon the floor, his head pillowed upon his arm, and ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... and, in fact, naturally are, in sympathy with one or the other form of New-measurism and revivalism; but Lutherans, who believe in a Gospel of real pardon and power—never. If the Lutheran doctrine of grace and the means of grace is Scriptural, then the work-nerve-and-emotion Christianity of New-measurism is wrong, and vice versa. Not Lutheranism, but Arminianism, Enthusiasm, and Reformedism are the premises of revivalism. The fact that New-measurism was ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... renders even transient sensations permanent, by fondly retracing them. I cannot without a thrill of delight recollect views I have seen, which are not to be forgotten, nor looks I have felt in every nerve, which I shall never more meet. The grave has closed over a dear friend, the friend of my youth; still she is present with me, and I hear her soft voice warbling as I stray over ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... de Bouille could not nerve herself to the commission of so great a crime; but it seems more probable that the steward prevented the destruction of the child under the orders of M. de Saint-Maixent. The theory is that the marquis, mistrustful of the promise made him by Madame de Bouille to marry him after the death of her ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Steno began to interest herself in Lincoln, it was solely for the work of the latter, so much the more as for a year he had perceived not a decline but a disturbance in the painting of that artist, too voluntary not to be unequal. Then Florent had seen, on the other hand, the nerve of Maitland reawakened in the ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... cuddies, ports, spars, levers, hatches, stancheons, floating trunks, bibulous boxes heavy with drink, and the awful, mysterious gloom of the water, which is not night or darkness, but the absence of any ray to touch the sensitive optic nerve. The sense of touch the only reliance, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... resolution was at once taken. He dropped the lighted paper as if by accident, and extinguished it by setting his foot upon it. He knew that if his companion caught so much as a single momentary glimpse of the short but frightfully perilous passage she would have to make, her nerve would utterly fail her, and too probably a dreadful catastrophe would happen. So he resolved upon the hazardous attempt to get her ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... some of the nerve centres controlling the organs of speech became affected, but not sufficiently to compel him to remain absent from the International Theosophical Congress held that year in Paris under the presidency of Colonel Olcott. It was on this occasion that Dr. Pascal received from ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... lads, give way," shouted our skipper, though the men were straining every nerve to the utmost. "Give way, and we shall soon be up ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... experience of the thing, by receiving back the Rebels on their own conditions. Mr. Lincoln has already proclaimed an amnesty wide enough to satisfy the demands of the most exacting humanity, and they must reckon on a singular stupidity in their hearers who impute ferocious designs to a man who cannot nerve his mind to the shooting of a deserter or the hanging of a spy. Mr. Lincoln, in our judgment, has shown from the first the considerate wisdom of a practical statesman. If he has been sometimes slow in making ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... similar to No. 17 were passed in the Province of Quebec, what do you think our duty towards it would be? Supposing Sir Lomer Gouin—I cannot imagine it—but supposing he did have the courage, or the nerve, so to speak, to pass a regulation of that kind. There would be a rebellion in this Province, I think. And here we have our French-Canadian brethren in the sister Province who by constitutional means ...
— Bilingualism - Address delivered before the Quebec Canadian Club, at - Quebec, Tuesday, March 28th, 1916 • N. A. Belcourt
... 'Well, what a nerve the young woman has!' he said at last in tones of admiration, and gazing at Miss Johnson with all his might. 'After all, Jack's taste is not so bad. She's ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... to his mind vividly came the picture of Alice's hurt face, when, that very morning, he had roughly taken from her his old stamp book, his own call came through the air. Every nerve in his body tingled a response! It was Freddie Murdock—they had often talked back and forth across the lake from where, on the Canadian shore, Freddie Murdock's father had a cottage. And the words that ...
— Keineth • Jane D. Abbott
... her father could not get away. He consistently spent his days in overworking, and his evenings in wishing he hadn't overworked. He was attractive, fresh, pink-cheeked, white-mustached, and nerve-twitching with years ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... cafe concert, Sidonie's husband had had a moment of frantic excitement. He leaned on Planus's arm, every nerve in his body strained to the utmost. At that moment he had no thought of going to Montrouge to get the ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... save the nerve-worn and sleepless, or thinkers standing with hands to the eyes on some crag above the multitude, see things thus in skeleton outline, bare of flesh? In Surbiton the skeleton ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... his rear, who were sure to rise the instant the opportunity were given, and avenge the atrocious massacre of neighbors and friends. The only hope that he had was to secure the girl while attempting to reach this place of safety, and there could be no doubt he would strain every nerve to ...
— The Wilderness Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... close intervals; the first and most perceptible intervals are the 8th, 5th, 4th, and 3rd major. Each of the simple sounds which, taken together, constitute the whole sound, causes the vibration of a special group of fibres in the auditory nerve. This fact, often repeated, generates a kind of organic predisposition which is confirmed by heredity. If from any cause one of these groups is set in motion, the other groups will have a tendency ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... and don't funk it like this," said Senor Sperati, who had graciously consented to assist him with his dressing because of the injury to his hand. "The idea of you losing your nerve, you of all men, and because of a little affair like that. You know very well that Nero is as safe as a kitten to-night, that he never has two smiling turns in the same week, much less the same day. Your act's the ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... Commission, once said to him: "Mr. President, I am here at almost every hour of the day or night, and I never saw you at the table, do you ever eat?" "I try to," replied the President; "I manage to browse about pretty much as I can get it." After the long wearing, nerve-taxing days were over in which he was glad to relieve himself occasionally with a good story or a merry laugh, came the nights of anxiety when sleep was often banished from his pillow. He frequently wrapped himself in his Scotch shawl, and at ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... shook his head. "No, he wouldn't do that. But I reckon he'd try to postpone a decision as long as he could. Unless he destroyed her in the first rush of rage, he wouldn't have the nerve to do it until he had made himself crazy drunk. It all depends on circumstances, but my judgment is—if he had a chance and if he didn't think it too great a risk—that he would try to hold her a prisoner as a sort of hostage ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... slackening until the game has been won. It makes no difference if the man you are playing against is your very best friend or your brother, and one has sometimes to pass through the trying ordeal of straining his every nerve to win a match when in his heart of hearts, for some particular reason, he would like the other man to win. I intrude these affairs of our own in these concluding reflections only for the purpose of indicating that, though we love our game and always enjoy it, professional golf is not quite ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... soon dismissed; and though Molinos' examination was much longer, it was generally expected he would have been likewise discharged: but this was not the case. Though the inquisitors had not any just accusation against him, yet they strained every nerve to find him guilty of heresy. They first objected to his holding a correspondence in different parts of Europe; but of this he was acquitted, as the matter of that correspondence could not be made criminal. ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... nodded Joel, every nerve in his body tingling to begin. "Come on, Jenk, if you won't tell where you've put ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... heard a rustling beside me. Every nerve in my body tingled, and I turned my head, with a beating and expectant heart. Pshaw! It was Miss Ringtop, who spread her blue dress on the rock beside me, and shook back her long curls, and sighed, as she gazed at the silver path of the ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... busybody for your pains; you'll have to take your chance of that. With your free-born democratic standards, it's impossible for you to sit still and see things go on as they are. This annual meeting's your opportunity, so you'd best pluck up your courage and nerve yourself for ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... him, incommoded some nerve of envenomed sensitiveness—yes, annoyed him like sand in his salad, to think of his country-woman, with the good faith of a dog in her face, so quoted as to make her ridiculous by a fellow wanting in ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... shells exploding near by miss you, and you become convinced that Fritz does not really have your name and address, yet each explosion registers its shock on the nerve centers. If this be long-continued, the nerves give way and you find yourself a shell-shock patient, tagged and on your way to one of the quiet back areas where you can forget the war and get a ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West
... Higgins! He stood there with his armful of "War, What For?"—trembling with excitement, itching in every nerve and sinew to leap into this conflict, to make his voice heard above the uproar, to play his part as a man—or even as a Comrade Mabel Smith, or a Comrade Mary Alien, or a Comrade Mrs. Gerrity, nee Baskerville. But he was helpless, speechless—bound ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... little flying-squirrel for me to play with (must know my partiality for pets), and last night, while attempting to tame him, the little creature bit his finger, whereupon he naturally let him fall on the ground, (Temper!) which put a period to his existence. He had the nerve to skin him after the foul murder, and sent all that remains of him out to me to prove his original intention. The softest, longest, prettiest fur, and such a duck of a tail! Poor little animal couldn't have been larger than ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... "More nerve than common sense perhaps," chuckled Mr. Bentley. "But you certainly can't help admiring him. He was right there when ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... desperate man and a man of nerve. His hotel, too, is not without attendants devoted to his interests. Had I made the wild attempt you suggest, I might never have left the Ministerial presence alive. The good people of Paris might have heard of me ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... she said, coolly, and traced it delicately along his palm with a sea-shell tinted finger. Like cool delicious fire it spread from nerve to nerve and set aside his reason in a frenzy. He would seize the berry and feel its stain upon his lips ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... herself up-stairs sobbing, starting at every shadow. All her nerve and daring were gone. The thought that she must spend yet another night under the roof of this old woman who hated her filled her with terror. When she reached her room she locked her door and wept for hours in a ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "Rather nerve-racking, wasn't it, Lester?" he remarked, and then his gaze wandered to the couch, and he stepped toward ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... so they started again for the promised land with their infant daughter Louisa. On this journey they were assisted on their way, and made easy and comfortable compared with their hasty flight from Tennessee, from whence they walked with swollen and blistered feet, and every nerve strung to its utmost tension from the fear of pursuit by ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... the whole business and restored what I'd made. By God, I couldn't! I'd spent it! I was no worse than three or four others who had eyes open to their opportunities—two of 'em in the regular army now—bang-up swells, and at last I couldn't stand it and got to drinking, and then I lost my card nerve and the money went with it, and it made me desperate, crazy, I reckon; for one night when I came home drunk and she made a scene I suppose I must have struck her, and then she took sick and got delirious, ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... Frank would perish if assistance were not rendered tended to restore her scattered faculties, and nerve her heart for the duties now required of her; and she rose with a feeling of determination to save her companion or die beside him. Pour child! she little knew the extent of her own feebleness at that moment; but ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... Lived long ago or was never born,— Because no beauty bears the test In this rough peasant Hand! Confessed 'Art is null and study void!' So sayest thou? So said not I, Who threw the faulty pencil by, And years instead of hours employed, Learning the veritable use Of flesh and bone and nerve beneath Lines and hue of the outer sheath, {70} If haply I might reproduce One motive of the mechanism, Flesh and bone and nerve that make The poorest coarsest human hand An object worthy to be scanned ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... in doing business with the pure-bred American is to keep him waiting, for the reason that forced inaction frets the man to a lather, as standing in harness frets a half-broken horse. He comes across a thousand little peculiarities of speech, manner, and thought—matters of nerve and stomach developed by everlasting friction—and they are all just the least little bit in the world lawless. No more so than the restless clicking together of horns in a herd of restless cattle, but certainly no less. They are all ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... plans. The odds were nearly three to one against us. Opposed to these, with, for our antagonists, resolute men, whose knowledge of the consequences that must inevitably follow upon an unsuccessful attempt at piracy would nerve them to desperation—men who were unquestionably full of brute courage, and who, moreover, were doubtless as well armed as ourselves—was I justified in entertaining the slightest hope of success in the event of my submitting the matter to the arbitrament of battle? ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... hard," his mother resumed, "that you have to follow a way of life not of your own choosing, you must remember that you never could be got to express a preference for one way over another, and that your father had to strain every nerve to send you to college—to the disadvantage, for a time at least, of others of the family. I am sorry to have to remind you also that you did not make it any easier for him by your mode of ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... dear, unless perhaps they prosecuted her for obtaining the place with a false character, which I suppose she must have done. Still it required no ordinary pluck for a woman to undertake such a scheme, and it will require patience and nerve to carry it through; but I don't know that I agree with you that she is not the sort of woman I should have thought capable of undertaking such a business. She was quiet enough when we met her in the town; but I believe from what I have heard ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... commentary on some melodic ideas not too grossly evident; and he certainly fetched as much variety and depth of passion out of the piano as that moderately responsive instrument lends itself to, having an imperious magic in his fingers that seem to send a nerve-thrill through ivory key and wooden hammer, and compel the strings to make a quivering lingering speech for him. Gwendolen, in spite of her wounded egoism, had fullness of nature enough to feel the power of this playing, and it gradually turned her inward sob of mortification into an ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... were clinging to the boat. Benjamin Selby, standing in the background, his lips set, his hands clenched, was fighting the hardest battle of his life. He knew that he alone, out of all the men there, possessed the necessary skill and nerve to reach the boat if she could be reached at all. There was a bare chance and a great risk. This man whom he hated was drowning before his eyes. Let him drown, then! Why should he risk—ay, and perchance lose—his life for his enemy? No one could blame him ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... plan that called for nerve, but we were full of spirit, and the more danger there was in an enterprise the more we relished it. At our captain's signal we rushed pell-mell through their camp. Had we dropped from the clouds the Indians could ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... days—fame tells the fact— That Scotland's heroes werena slack The heads o' stubborn foes to crack, And mak' the feckless flee, boys. Wi' brave hearts, beating true and warm, They aften tried the curlin' charm To cheer the heart and nerve the arm— The roarin' ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... short career as an investigator of mysteries had been in many a situation calling for more than womanly nerve and courage. But never—or so it seemed to her at the time—had she experienced a greater depression of spirit than when she stood with Miss Digby before a small door at the extreme end of the cellar, and understood ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... decoying the public from behind cleverly contrived screens and slaughtering it without showing so much as the tip of a gun or nose that could be identified. But to my method there was a disadvantage that made men, who happen to have more hypocrisy and less nerve than I, shrink from it—when one of my tips miscarried, down upon me would swoop the bad losers in a body to give me a turbulent and interesting ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... last year. He was born in the camp and his mother died when he was a baby. God knows how he pulled through! You know what those mining places are. His father, Frank Lee, was killed in a drunken row while I was there, and Abe showed so much cool nerve and downright manliness that I offered him a place with my party. He has been ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... against National banks seemed to increase, and the fiat of a Government so rich and powerful as that of the United States would, it was maintained, suffice to make all the notes it might put out available for money, and the volume ought to be abundant enough to stimulate every nerve ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... longer tolerate Huge Chronicles in Folio, whether they relate to History, to Love or Adventure, to Voyages and Travels, or even to Philosophy, Mechanics, or the Useful Arts. The world wants smart, dandy little volumes, as thin as a Herring, and just as Salt. For these two reasons, then, do I nerve myself to a sudden leap, and entreat you now to think no longer of John Dangerous as a raw youth of eighteen summers, but as a ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... of his utmost eloquence. There was nothing mythical or allegorical in that subject in the opinion of the Reverend Stephen. He believed in it most firmly, and the belief afforded him the keenest satisfaction. It was a nerve-shaking sermon. Had it been of a secular nature, it might almost have been described as inhuman, so obviously was it designed to render his hearers afraid to go home in the dark. But since it was not secular, ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... prairie pards finally find a chance to visit the Wyoming ranch belonging to Adrian, but managed for him by an unscrupulous relative. Of course, they become entangled in a maze of adventurous doings while in the Northern cattle country. How the Broncho Rider Boys carried themselves through this nerve-testing period makes ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... infallible sign of great mental refinement to bespatter our fellow-creatures, while every nerve is writhing in honor of our pigs, our cats, ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... refers to Braham's appearance at the National Theatre, Philadelphia: "Who that heard 'Jephthall's Rash Vow' could ever forget the volume of voice which issued from that diminutive frame, or the ecstasy with which 'Waft her, angels, through the skies' thrilled every nerve of the attentive listener? He ought to have visited the United States twenty years sooner, or not have risked his reputation by coming at all. Like Incledon, he was only heard by Americans when his powers of voice were so ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... say that we could only gain above the poorest of the poor in so far as we could bring hunger for the most delicious foods, and thirst for the richest wines, and weariness to make us woo the deepest slumber. [82] Therefore, we must strain every nerve to win and to keep manhood and nobleness; so that we may gain that satisfaction which is the sweetest and the best, and be saved from the bitterest of sorrows; since to fail of good altogether is not so hard as to lose the good that has ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... wasp, which in order to provide a supply of fresh meat for her offspring after her own decease, calls in the science of anatomy to amplify the resources of her instinctive cruelty, and, having made a collection of weevils and spiders, proceeds with marvellous knowledge and skill to pierce the nerve-centre on which their power of locomotion (but none of their other vital functions) depends, so that the paralysed insect, beside which her egg is laid, will furnish the larva, when it is hatched, with a tamed and inoffensive quarry, incapable either of flight ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... Frau von Erkel was scandalized that a French girl (she systematically ignored the German infusion in her daughters) should wish for hours of solitude. But Aimee had the national genius for pegging away, and her mother, who came in time to feel that one nerve was being gnawed with maddening reiteration, finally ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... from the spine, branch out, like the limbs and twigs of a tree, till they extend over the whole body; and, so minutely are they divided and arranged, that a point, destitute of a nerve, cannot be found on ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... claimed Handy Solomon, and without delay fired off-hand. A puff of dust showed to the right. "Nerve no good," he commented, "jerked her just ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... might see as many lawyers as he pleased, to be looked at, laughed at, and advised that there was but one way out of the scrape. Higgins was, in his speculations, a regular counterpart of Bailly; but the celebrated Mayor of Paris had not his nerve. It was impossible to say, if their characters had been changed, whether the unfortunate crisis in which Bailly was not equal to the occasion would have led to very different results if Higgins had ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... is tall and powerful, left-handed, with something more than a layman's knowledge of surgery, you had better not trouble about him," said Malcolm Sage quietly. "You might also note that the murderer belongs to the upper, or middle class, has an iron nerve, and ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... prospective shift but net loss and headlong decay of the spirit; that modicum of forbearance and equity that is requisite to the conduct of life in a community of ungraded masterless men is seen by these stouter stomachs as a loosening of the moral fiber and a loss of nerve. ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... blind faith. Calamities were raining around the family and saddening his relatives, yet not one grazed the intrepid sub-lieutenant who was persisting in his daring deeds with the heroic nerve of a musketeer. ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... but, Lord bless me, he asked how much the blowers were paid and wanted me to raise their pay on the spot. That was one on me, all right; I'd thought of giving him the works to play with, but I didn't have the nerve to offer it to him after that. 'Fraid he'd either turn it down or take ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... read this plain, unvarnished tale without admiring the stern resolution, the unbending pride, the loftiness of spirit that seemed to nerve the hearts of these self-taught heroes and to raise them above the instinctive feelings of human nature? When the Gauls laid waste the city of Rome, they found the senators clothed in their robes and seated with stern tranquillity in their curule chairs; in this manner ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... an ammophila wasp. Sphex urnaria Klug. Lovely, but vicious, little she-demon. Injects the poison from her sting into the caterpillar's central nerve cord. That not only paralyzes but preserves it. The victim is always stowed away with another one in an underground burrow. The wasp attaches one of her eggs to the body of a worm. When the egg hatches, the grub eats both of the worms. They're alive, but they're completely helpless to resist while ...
— They Twinkled Like Jewels • Philip Jose Farmer
... is the peculiar humour in which I find myself when I have sacrificed too freely to the jolly god: unlike the major part of mankind, my temperament, instead of being invigorated and enlivened by the sparkling juice of the grape, loses its wonted nerve and elasticity; a sombre gloominess pervades the system, the pulse becomes nervous and languid, the spirits flagging and depressed, and the mind full of chimerical apprehensions and ennui. It was in this mood that Eglantine found ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... frazzle, And Fritzie is clipped in the comb, We're holding a big razzle-dazzle To welcome our soldier boys home. They bore themselves brave in the battle They kept themselves clean on parade, They herded the Bosches like cattle In many a nerve-racking raid. ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens
... day in and day out, diplomatic, watchful, Belgian. And he was cheerful. What other people could have retained any vestige of cheer! Sometimes one wondered if it were not partly due to an absence of keen nerve-sensibilities, or to some other of the traits which are a product of the Belgian hothouse ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... were driven back from the mouth of the Arno, the Pisans were driven from Genoa, and scattered and spoiled by a storm. These were but skirmishes; the fight was yet to come. In Genoa they built a hundred and fifty ships of war; the Pisans, too, were straining every nerve. Then came a running fight off Sardinia, in which the Pisans had the worse of it, losing eight galleys and fifteen hundred men. Yet they were not disheartened. They made Alberto Morosini, a Venetian, their Podesta, and with him as Admirals were Count Ugolino della Gherardesca and Andreotto ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... both by land and sea that day, and Coombe had been out for many hours. He did not return to Coombe House until late in the evening. He was tired almost beyond endurance, and his fatigue was not merely a thing of muscle and nerve. After he sat down it was some time before he even glanced at the letters upon his ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... a direct consequence of the vital activity of the organism in which it is seen, of such a nature that no further explanation can be given of it, any more than we can explain why a muscle is contracted under the influence of a nerve-stimulus; or whether it is due to some chemical process more or less analogous to the burning of ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... sensations depend, firstly, on the diversity of the nerves themselves, and, secondly, of the movements that are made in each nerve. We have not, however, as many different senses as there are nerves. We can distinguish but seven principal classes of nerves, of which two belong to the internal, and the other five to the external senses. The nerves which extend to the stomach, the oesophagus, the fauces, and the other internal ...
— The Principles of Philosophy • Rene Descartes
... will come next Wednesday to spend a few days with us. She is very sorry that that must be all—she is on her way to New York to consult a famous nerve specialist. She sends love ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... tooth to be broken away and giving it a sharp rap with a piece of wood. The operation, called "ta-li-han," is a somewhat delicate one, requiring care to prevent breaking through into the soft part of the tooth and exposing the nerve, and is no doubt practiced by only one or two persons in a group, though this fact could not be ascertained. Notwithstanding this mutilation, the teeth seem to be remarkably healthy and well preserved except in ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... that the seriousness of the outbreak had been understood, and the orders had gone out by galloper to "Get a move on!" each commanding officer strained every nerve at once to strike where a blow would have the most effect. There was no thought of anything but action, and offensive, not defensive action. Until some one at the head of things proved still to be alive, and had had time to form a plan, ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... tired, somehow—perhaps with travelling too hard—perhaps with too much anxiety to get on quickly with this Grand Trunk business; but, on the whole, I am very well, and have kept my spirits and nerve up to the mark, generally. I have a great task in hand, and I should like to come ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... limbs refused their office, as might the limbs of one lying under the thrall of a nightmare. The laugh died away, there was a sound like a scraping upon the wall, the candle was suddenly blown out. Then his nerve began to return and with it his control over his limbs. He crawled to the side of the bed remote from the curtains, stole to the little table on which he had left his revolver and an electric torch, snatched at them, and, with the ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... features, at these critical moments when he seemed just falling into the snares so artfully set for him. When she caught his eyes glowing with passionate admiration, she shyly affected to withdraw hers from his gaze, turning on him at times flashes of her dark eyes which electrified every nerve of his sensuous nature. She felt the pressure of his hand, the changed and softened inflections of his voice, she knew the words of her fate were trembling on his lips, and yet they did not come! The shadow of that pale hand at Beaumanoir, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... sort Discarded from a philo-Teuton Court; The tolerant warmth that sheds a kind of lustre Over a stout Ausonian filibuster Does not extend to thoroughly bad hats Like abdicated Hellene autocrats. And, if the Allies feel some slight reserve About resisting your confounded nerve, I, GABRIELE, do not. You may be A kind of subject satrap under me; If not, look out. You shall have cause to know The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... else entered the room, there was the scratching of a match, and a pale thread of light crept under the door of his prison, showing that the lamp had been relighted. He listened intently, jealously, straining every nerve to hear and to understand. Voices whispered; he could distinguish the tones of the two men, but not their words, the muffled muttering was too low; then there came a cry, followed by a rapid movement ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... Nerve-exhaustion and loss of blood soon made themselves felt. Ensconcing himself on a hard sofa that stood at the head of Klitzing's bed, he fell ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... the young man's father; and this friendship, a respectable one in the eyes of the world, excused the son's constant presence in the house, he professing an old attachment, dating from childhood, for Mme. de Saint-Hereen. More than this, in vain did Mme. d'Aiglemont nerve herself to come between Moina and Alfred de Vandenesse with a terrible word, knowing beforehand that she should not succeed; knowing that the strong reason which ought to separate them would carry no weight; that ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... John goes to the intensest, and the most significant incident of this whole section of the book. It is the drastic turning out, by Jesus, of the traders in the temple-area at Jerusalem. This touched at once the national leaders' most sensitive nerve, and touched it roughly. It never ceased aching. This turning of the temple-area into a common market-place, which so jarred on the holy atmosphere of the place, and on Jesus' fine spirit, this was by arrangement with these leaders, and yielded them large profit. ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... the faculties and actions of a man, and to impose a perpetual illusion on the senses of his friends and enemies. Articulate sounds vibrated on the ears of the disciples; but the image which was impressed on their optic nerve eluded the more stubborn evidence of the touch; and they enjoyed the spiritual, not the corporeal, presence of the Son of God. The rage of the Jews was idly wasted against an impassive phantom; and the mystic scenes of the passion and death, the resurrection and ascension, of Christ ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... should be elected who would not favor their end. A cardinal was found,—Ganganelli,—who promised the ambassadors that, if elected pope, he would abolish the order. They, accordingly, intrigued to secure his election. The Jesuits, also, strained every nerve, and put forth marvellous talent and art, to secure a pope who would protect them. But the ambassadors of the allied powers overreached even the Jesuits. Ganganelli was the plainest, and, apparently, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... the net of my nerves gently—yea, verily, in desultory fashion—and brought slight disorder among the threads. And then the Lord withdrew His finger, and there were fibres and delicate root-like filaments adhering to the finger, and they were the nerve-threads of the filaments. And there was a gaping hole after the finger, which was God's finger, and a wound in my brain in the track of His finger. But when God had touched me with His finger, He let me ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... heard me—and so did you! But no, you had to lose your nerve and lose your head just because you'd had a ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... from the papers flared up at once, and she ran down the steps with a roar and a bellow that are fearful to imagine, nerve-racking to hear. ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... soul so that it loses its fixed hold on the calm spirit which inspires it, and the moisture of life breaks forth, drowning knowledge in sensation, then all is blurred, the windows are darkened, the light is useless. This is as literal a fact as that if a man, at the edge of a precipice, loses his nerve through some sudden emotion he will certainly fall. The poise of the body, the balance, must be preserved, not only in dangerous places, but even on the level ground, and with all the assistance Nature gives us by the ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... to be the one certain result of the last General Election that there is a large majority in favour of maintaining our naval position; but we cannot maintain that naval position without straining every nerve to do it, and we shall not be able to put all our energy into maintaining that position if we talk about invasion, and tell the people of this country that the fleet cannot do its duty.... If you put the doctrine ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... morning was in that interest to square me, to get me to deny indignantly and authoritatively (for isn't she my 'favourite sitter'?) that she has anything whatever the matter with any part of her. She sobbed, she 'went on,' she entreated; after we got talking her extraordinary nerve left her and she showed me what she has been through—showed me also all her terror of the harm I could do her. 'Wait till I'm married! wait till I'm married!' She took hold of me, she almost sank on her knees. It seems to ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... serious than she had at first supposed. It was a long time before she could leave her bed. She had injured her back and ankle very badly, and she underwent a long course of massage and baths; but she never permanently got quite well again. She said herself, "Strength, health, and nerve I had hitherto looked upon as a sort of right of nature, and supposed that everybody had them; I never felt grateful for them as a blessing, but I began to learn what suffering was from this date." Henceforth we see her not as the woman who was ready to share any ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... readiness to pass into movement in the absence of all stimulation whatever; the essential requisite being that the nerve-centres and muscles shall be fresh and vigorous...The gesticulations and the carols of young and active animals are mere overflow of nervous energy; and although they are very apt to concur with pleasing emotion, they have an independent source...They are not properly ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... boys, and what they would say if they knew that he had not nerve enough to pot the ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... he would desert her, her deeply wounded pride could not have held out, and she surely must have found refuge in his arms. But her humiliation had been so very deep, and her mood was now such that every nerve was quivering with indignation; so, subduing the pleading of her heart, she sprang away from the outstretched arms. As she faced him the angry color again stole into her cheeks, and she exclaimed, in a suppressed voice: "There are things, Harold, that a woman cannot forgive and retain ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... inner rooms, lady Feng was, it is true, much cut up at heart; but she strained every nerve to preserve an exterior of total indifference. Noticing that there was no one present in the apartment, she drew P'ing Erh to her. "I drank yesterday," she smiled, "a little more wine than was good for me, so don't bear me a grudge. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... and yet unspoil'd Guiana, whose great Citie Geryons Sons 410 Call El Dorado: but to nobler sights Michael from Adams eyes the Filme remov'd Which that false Fruit that promis'd clearer sight Had bred; then purg'd with Euphrasie and Rue The visual Nerve, for he had much to see; And from the Well of Life three drops instill'd. So deep the power of these Ingredients pierc'd, Eevn to the inmost seat of mental sight, That Adam now enforc't to close his eyes, Sunk down and all his Spirits became intranst: 420 But him the gentle Angel ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... that there was sensation in matter, but each time it was overcome by the power of Truth." She would not allow the dentist to use cocaine, but sat there and let him punch and drill and split and crush the tooth, and tear and slash its ulcerations, and pull out the nerve, and dig out fragments of bone; and she wouldn't once confess that it hurt. And to this day she thinks it didn't, and I have not a doubt that she is nine-tenths right, and that her Christian Science faith did her ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... servant whom his Lord, when He cometh, shall find so doing.' It may seem humble work to serve out hunches of bread and pots of black broth to the family of slaves, when the steward is expecting the coming of the master of the house, and his every nerve is tingling with anticipation. But it is steadying work, and it is blessed work. It is better that a man should be found doing the homeliest duty as the outcome of his great expectations of the coming of his Master, than that he should be fidgeting ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... is of gentle nerve, And my grief had moved him beyond control; For his lips grew white, as I could observe, When he speeded her ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... Federals were now forming in line of battle, the Valley soldiers had already given proof of their stubborn qualities on the defensive. The sight of their baptismal battle-field and the memories of Bull Run must have gone far to nerve the hearts of the Stonewall regiments, and in preparing once more to justify their proud title the troops were aided by their leader's quick eye for a position. While it was still dark the divisions which had been engaged at Groveton ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... arrested at the nerve centers and turned back without their reaching the brain ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins
... of exploring, and were perplexed, because the more dangers we surmounted the greater seemed the dangers confronting us. They were beginning to lose the nerve they had temporarily acquired, and were now so scared at the vicious waters that they tried to keep the canoe all the time close to the banks or islands, the river being so deep that they thought this was the best way of saving their lives in case ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... power of detachment, and the day, in consequence, appeared to be interminable. The great national importance of the issue, the suspense in high quarters, the direct nature of the experiment which we were trying—all combined to work upon my nerve. It was a relief to me when at last, after a light dinner, we set out upon our expedition. Lestrade and Mycroft met us by appointment at the outside of Gloucester Road Station. The area door of Oberstein's house had been left open the night before, and it ...
— The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans • Arthur Conan Doyle
... what the people are like," he said. "They are like dumb animals, like sheep. They have suffered so long and so much that their nerve power is numbed. They lack will, they lack initiative. They are narrowed down to a daily life which makes of them something little different from an animal. Yet they can be roused. David Ross himself has done it, done it like none of those other M.P.'s. ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to Breathe—Oriental Methods. Chapter VII. Four Methods of Respiration as Classified by the Yogis—The Yogi Complete Breath. Chapter VIII. How to Acquire the Yogi Complete Breath. Chapter IX. Physiological Effect of the Complete Breath. Chapter X. Yogi Lore—The Yogi Cleansing Breath—The Yogi Nerve Vitalizing Breath—The Yogi Vocal Breath. Chapter XI. Seven Yogi Developing Exercises. Chapter XII. Chapter XIII. Vibration and Yogi Rhythmic Breathing—How to Ascertain the Heart Beat Unit Used by the Yogis as the Basis of Rhythmic Breathing. Chapter ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... had been conscious of penetrating to the nerve centres of her hero; although, fortunately for her peace of mind, she did not know the exact way in which she had accomplished the feat. Early one morning, Mr. Barrett had been strolling along the road nearest the edge of the cliff when as if ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... part of his task had been accomplished. Could he reach the floor in safety? Gradually he worked himself backward over the rail, in imminent danger of falling; but his nerve never wavered, and I could see a wonderful light in his eyes. With something of a lurch, his body fell against the outer side of the railing, to which he was hanging by his chin, the line still held firmly in ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... brief formal call, with the conversation strictly limited to the weather and similarly safe subjects, would make it possible for them to meet thereafter in society without too acute embarrassment. Had he the pluck for this, the nerve to carry it through? That was the only question. There was no doubt as to what he ought to do. It would be an awkward call, to put it mildly. It would be skating on terribly thin ice —a little thinner, perhaps, than a ...
— A Love Story Reversed - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... footsore. Mention of the cold must have become monotonous. But this night's cold touched a sharper nerve of agony than any before. Our 'rest' came, by a refinement of cruelty, not immediately before dawn, but between 2.30 and 4.30 a.m. We were then on bleak uplands, swept by arctic winds. In Baghdad ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... entirely lacking in the former. For we find that although folk song is composed of the same material as savage music, the material is arranged coherently into sentences instead of remaining the mere exclamation of passion or a nerve exciting reiteration of unchanging rhythms and vibrations, as is the case in the music of ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
Copyright © 2025 Diccionario ingles.com
|
|
|
