"Hysterical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... returned Joan, with what was nearly an hysterical laugh, trying to shake off the fear that grew upon her; "the last thing is to stand up and call the ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... in slightly hysterical laughter. She was already in better spirits. There was something exciting—exhilarating even—in the duel between herself and Winnington, which was implied in the conversation. His journey up to town, the look in his grey eyes meant—"I shall prevent you from doing ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... broken every glass on the table. It would not have surprised him in the least if she had torn handfuls of hair off the King's head. To his amazement she laughed. It was a most unpleasant laugh. But it was not the laugh of a lunatic. It was not even hysterical. ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... up her lovely eyebrows and lip, and burst into hysterical sobs. Here was a disaster—her ingenious ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... pushed her aside and threw herself upon the sofa. Her first feeling was a horrible joy at not hearing the name of Octave; but she tried to smother her hysterical utterances by pressing her mouth against the cushion upon which her face ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... attention, he began by despatching a courier to Robespierre at Chartres—where he knew the Incorruptible to be. That done, he resorted to measures for La Boulaye's detention. But this proved a grave matter. What if, after all, that half-hysterical girl's story should be inaccurate? In what case would he find himself if, acting upon it in the meantime, he should order Caron's arrest? The person of a Deputy was not one to be so lightly treated, and he might find himself constrained to answer a serious charge in consequence. ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... It was useless, he was too weak. He lay, breathing heavily. He felt that he should be hysterical with fear but somehow he was not, that barrier in ...
— The Stars, My Brothers • Edmond Hamilton
... vibrations is dominated by the stronger and more active vibrations of the higher nervous system. It is true that at a later stage of evolution psychic sensitiveness reappears, but it is then developed in connection with the cerebro-spinal centres, and is brought under the control of the will. But the hysterical and ill-regulated psychism of which we see so many lamentable examples is due to the small development of the brain and the dominance ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... you would grow thin!" She gave a little half-hysterical laugh. And then something stole over her, an impression vague, inexplicable, that she did not quite belong to herself. Was there someone who had a better right than Allin? Before she gave herself irrevocably to this delightful young lover, she ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... face as he did so. While she looked he restored the scrap to his pocket-book, and the pocket-book to his pocket. Hastily she turned to the telephone again and continued, in a voice which a quick ear would have detected was slightly hysterical. ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... his confidence. There is nothing hysterical or overwrought or morbid in these brief words, so peaceful in their trust, so moderate and restrained in their rapture. Are our anticipations of the future moulded on such a pattern? Do we think of it as quietly as this man ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... his bosom and burst into hysterical crying. Her hat was in the way and she took it off. He had never dreamt that she was capable of crying like that. He kissed her again and again. It seemed to ease her ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... heard the racket as a former Nobel prize-winner's stilted questions about the children were drowned out. This was not a planned invasion. It was a totally chaotic rushing-about of people who'd been half hysterical to start with, who had been crushed in a senselessly swaying mob, had been pushed bodily into a building-lobby jammed past endurance, and escaped into a maze from which they'd blundered into a studio ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster
... pass through a cycle influenced but little by treatment. But faith curists do not so understand, and neither does the mass of people, so that neither one nor the other separates "post hoc" from "propter hoc." If the truth were told, most of the miracle and faith cures that are not of hysterical origin are due to coincidence. Faith curists report in detail their successes, but we have no statistics whatever of ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... and those not any hysterical country rags, but the big metropolitan dailies, and there was one thing to be noted in regard to their statements that seriously needed rectifying. What is the purpose of the great dailies but to keep the people correctly ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... saw the figure of a man turn into the street and stride rapidly away in the opposite direction from the one I was then pursuing. My heart gave a great leap, I hardly knew why, and the blood rushed into my face, something caught in my throat and I gave a short, hysterical cough. I had reached the gate, and the air around it was yet laden with the scent of a rich cigar, though the figure had passed ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... sickly. If she'd only act just once as a normal female should! Maybe Irma had been a hysterical, cold-blooded fool, but she couldn't have been that much different from other women—even the books indicated Ellen should be anything ...
— Pursuit • Lester del Rey
... was taken behind the curtain in a dishevelled and hysterical condition which increased De Kock's pity for her. We paid the waiter—or rather De Kock did—and left, not seeing Giuseppe again to speak to, though he came in and removed the parrot, ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... witness his dramatic despair as the croupier drew in the last remnant of his fortune and mechanically invited the other Messieurs and Mesdames to make their game; secretly, we might even have been willing to see something hysterical on the part of the Mesdames if fate frowned upon them, or something scandalously exuberant if it smiled. If our motives were not the worst, they were, at any rate, not the best; I suppose they were the usual human motives, and I ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... grinned at the recollection of the officer, the quick, hard-struck blow, and the hysterical screams and laughter of the girls as they were seized in the strong arms of their companions, rushed across the sidewalk, and swung bodily into the ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... failure of it!" Cherry said, sadly. "I know I ought to struggle on, but I can't. Just a few days of it, just a few weeks of it make me—make me a different woman! I get nervous, I get hysterical, I don't sleep! I have no individuality, Peter, I have no personality! ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... this whimpering beauty, when Alice had seen her successfully through a flood of hysterical tears, 'that I was silly enough to give up dear Edward. I am punished for it now, indeed I am; and it was very wicked of me—it was a great sin. I broke his heart. But you know, Alice dear, that it was all mamma's fault; she urged me on; and you know how I refused, ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... the contraction and dilatation of the heart become irregular; it flutters, and palpitates; hence all the secretions become irregular, some of the glands acting too powerfully, others not at all; hence the increased action of the kidneys, and hence a burst of tears; hysterical affections, epilepsy, and syncope, frequently succeed, in which every muscle of the body becomes convulsed. Indeed, many terrible diseases originate from this source, which were formerly ascribed to witchcraft, ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... The NAACP spelled out the challenge even more clearly in its monthly publication, The Crisis, which declared itself "sorry for brutality, blood, and death among the peoples of Europe, just as we were sorry for China and Ethiopia. But the hysterical cries of the preachers of democracy for Europe leave us cold. We want democracy in Alabama, Arkansas, in Mississippi and Michigan, in the District of Columbia—in the Senate of ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... in the hallway at the end of the noon hour to enter animatedly into a discussion of waists, hats, and lingerie, to ogle and exchange persiflages with the young men of the paymaster's corps, to giggle, to relate, sotto voce, certain stories that ended invariably in hysterical laughter. Janet detested these conversations. And the sex question, subtly suggested if not openly dealt with, to her was a mystery over which she did not dare to ponder, terrible, yet too sacred to be ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... said, "looking yellow and dowdy, and you are feeling blue and hysterical; if you don't go away at once you'll go on doing both for ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... crushed, stunned. It never once has seemed to cross his mind that this thing could be final; and now the fact has knocked him over. As for Mrs. Opdyke, I worry less. She has lost all grip on herself and is hysterical, with Ramsdell in attendance till I can send somebody in. That leaves Reed alone, to hear the echoes of the general unsettlement, and to think them over. Damn it all, Olive! It's bad enough to be knocked out, in the first place; but it's ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... is, Mrs. Wells. There is a lot to live for. Those hallucinations and dreams are not as uncommon as you think. I could give you cases of shell shock patients who have suffered in this way and come back to normal health. You have been through enough, my young friend, to bring about a somewhat hysterical condition that is susceptible of cure, if you will put yourself in favorable conditions. Do you mind if I ask you straight out whether you have any objections to ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... uttered a sigh of relief. There was that in his face which made Mary, with her eyes bright and a flush upon her cheeks such as had not been seen there for a year, run to him and fling her arms about his neck, as she went into a wild fit of joyful hysterical sobbing, which it was long ...
— A Life's Eclipse • George Manville Fenn
... is my proof of the good of being does not rest on passion. The unclean fires that consume the loutish and degenerate are not of love. You quote instances of the hyperphysical and hysterical. The feeling that I would have you obey for your soul's sake and without which you are but half alive, is not the blind passion of an oversexed sentimentalism. Rousseau was never in love in his life, though to say it were ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... him, in his half hysterical condition, was to make him want to cry and cheer at the same time. The room he had just left was dark in contrast to the bright sunshine outside; but he could see the knife and the dead body of the negro, from which ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... stooping to kiss me. I cannot account for my action or condemn it sufficiently. It was hysterical—the outcome of an overstrung, highly excitable, and nervous temperament. Perhaps my vanity was wounded, and my tendency to strike when touched was up in arms. The calm air of ownership with which Harold drew near annoyed me, or, as Sunday-school teachers would explain it, Satan got ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... once and closed them again. She laughed a little—a high-pitched, semi-hysterical laugh. The hand which gripped her fan was straining so that the blue veins stood out ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... green parasol, and with clumsy, shaking fingers opened it, and stood on tiptoe to hold it over her head, crying, meantime, as piteously as she, such was the contagion of hysterical terror. Then, with one accord, we lifted up our voices, weak with weeping, in a thin screech. I said "Help! help! help!" she cried, "Murder! murder!" and "Cap'n Ga-a-tes!" We made enough noise to startle the ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... into prose. It must have happened to you now and again to have had the photograph of your friend's beloved produced for your inspection and opinion. It is a terrible moment. If she does happen to be a really pretty girl—heavens! what a relief. You praise her with almost hysterical gratitude. But if, as is far more likely, her beauty proves to be of that kind which exists only in the eyes of a single beholder, what a plight is yours! How you strive to look as if she were a new Helen, and how hopelessly unconvincing ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... and rushed for a farther corner of the church, while the more hysterical fainted. Even strong men ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... rang her bell. Presently Miriam came in, attired in a flannel dressing-gown which was hopelessly unbecoming. Barbara was moved to hysterical laughter, but ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... separated the three, and proceeded to question them. Jenny declared point blank, as well as she could by signs, that all the rest of us were dead! and only those three left. Serena pretended not to understand, and fell into such hysterical tears at being separated from Schillie, that after awhile ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... the old hall, "don't be angry, my dear fellow, but Maria is in a—hum—in a delicate situation, expecting her—hum"—(the eleventh)—"and do you know you frighten her? It was but yesterday you met her in the rookery—you were smoking that enormous German pipe—and when she came in she had an hysterical seizure, and Drench says that in her situation it's dangerous. And I say, George, if you go to town you'll find a couple of hundred at your banker's." And with this the poor fellow shook me by the hand, and called for a fresh ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sex and its "sublimation," she had suggested notable "moral equivalents" for vice, but when she touched the white slave traffic its horrors were so great that she also put her faith in the policeman and the district attorney. "A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil" is an hysterical book, just because the real philosophical basis of Miss Addams' thinking was not deliberate enough to withstand the ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... Madame herself. All the looms were at their noisy spider work; reels of gold thread were ordered in twenties; the bobbins began to dance around the maypole, sewing-machines sang lustily; the telephone only ceased ringing to deliver messages. Miss Rabbit became hysterical, vehement, cross; Gertie's intervention became necessary to prevent a strike ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... to a gas-jet that lighted up the whole room. Between him and Dunn lay the packing-case, and Dunn was surprised to see that it was still there and that nothing had changed or moved; and then again he said to himself that this was a foolish thought only worthy of some excitable, hysterical girl. ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... him with the horror of that night still upon her might overcome her sense of duty; she dreaded the renewed protestations, the self abasement, the sight of the maudlin shame of the man. She had gone through the hysterical scenes so many times that it was growing difficult, especially in her present condition of weakness, to arouse the necessary spirit to undergo it. Not only this, but she found herself inevitably pitting ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... perfect-mannered Englishman that was tending us said was brought by a messenger. Young Angus glanced at the page and broke out indignantly. 'The thieving old pirate!' he says. 'Last night he thought it would be about eighteen hundred dollars, and that sounded hysterical enough for the few little things we'd scratched or mussed up. I told him he would doubtless feel better this morning, but in any event to send the bill to me and I would ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... by the theory that individual sacrifice is unavailing: indeed, it is as useless as giving charity, quite. A case of intense suffering is brought under the notice of a bourgeois; it awakens in him a certain hysterical pity, or, I should say, remorse, for he feels that a system that permits such things to be cannot be wholly right. He relieves this suffering, and then he thinks he is a virtuous man; he thinks he has done a good action; but a moment's reflection ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... bizarre costumes of the masked revelers on the dance floor and at the tables, unearthly in themselves, were made even more so by the altering light. Music flooded the room from unseen sources. Laughter—hysterical, drunken, filled with utter abandonment—came from the dance floor, the tables, and the private booths and rooms hidden ...
— A Bottle of Old Wine • Richard O. Lewis
... of Mr. Thrale's illness is very terrible; but when I remember that he seems to have it peculiar to his constitution, that, whatever distemper he has, he always has his head affected, I am less frighted. The seizure was, I think, not apoplectical but hysterical, and, therefore, not dangerous to life. I would have you, however, consult such physicians as you think you can best trust. Broomfield seems to have done well and, by his practice, appears not to suspect an apoplexy. ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... mother ran about tearful, incoherent, wringing their hands, believing no one and yet believing the impossible, praying, crying, talking, hindering everything in their supreme parents' right to be in the way and nearest to what they loved best—hysterical with joy, both of them, at the end, when the physician said that Gianluca was to live, and was not dead as they had thought him, and wildly, pathetically, insanely ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... about for a few moments, Mary looking up at the portrait of Jane Oglethorpe in her flaming youth. But the hostess ordered them all to sit down and exclaimed peremptorily: "Now, Mary, tell them all about it or I'll have a lot of fainting hysterical women on my hands. We're still human if we are old and ugly. Go to it, as Janet would say. I believe you have met that estimable exponent of the later New York manner. You are no more extraordinary yourself ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... time an interesting interruption occurred. From the underbrush at the foot of the Camel's Back emerged three elderly women, their clothing in tatters, and in the wildest excitement. They insisted that the outlaws were in the cave, and hysterical with fright from their terrible experience, declared that they had been holding the bandits in check and demanded the reward for their capture. They were rational enough in other ways and explained that they had been on a walking tour with ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... activity, did not readily content themselves with the less exciting successes of literary life. The applause of the lecture-room was a poor substitute for the thunders of the assembly. Hence arose a declamatory tone, which strove by frigid and almost hysterical exaggeration to make up for the healthy stimulus afforded by daily contact with affairs. The vein of artificial rhetoric, antithesis, and epigram, which prevails from Lucan to Fronto, owes its origin to this forced contentment with an uncongenial sphere. With the decay of freedom, ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... significant motif is in both of his symphonies. But almost all the traits that startled and moved the world in Tschaikowsky's symphonies are revealed in this far earlier music: the tempestuous rage of what might be called an hysterical school, and the same poignant beauty of the lyric episodes; the sheer contrast, half trick, half natural, of fierce clangor and dulcet harmonies, all painted with the broad strokes of the orchestral palette. Doubly striking it is ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... cried. "I was frightened. You—you were gone so long. I thought you'd never come back." Then to his utter amaze she burst into a wild fit of hysterical weeping. "Oh, take me away,—take me away from this dreadful place, or ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... The twinkle was gone from his eyes and he extended his hand to Hardy. The latter reached out with an impulsive gesture, wrung the proffered hand, and then slipping back into his chair broke into hysterical laughter. ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... immense, raw people pick up my jealous head for me, and kindly put it on?' Snub-nosed Hilda" ["Ah, you've caught it now, young lady," from Archie] "being nearest, handed him his head, which had rolled to her idolatrous feet. The hysterical gnome immediately clapped it on—wrong side before. 'Never mind,' he said. 'Now I can go to school, or from school, just as I like, and nobody will ever know what I'm doing.' The dumpy party then went on their way exploring, ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... candle round her head until the motion extinguished it; then, eddying round her sister in narrowing circles, she seized Lottchen's candle also, blew it out, and then interrupted her own singing to attempt a laugh. But the laugh was hysterical. The darkness, however, favored her; and, seizing her sister's arm, she forced her along, whispering, "Come, come, come!" Lottchen could not be so dull as entirely to misunderstand her. She suffered herself to be led up the first flight of stairs, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... bit hysterical; it was merely a sudden blow of disappointment, and she would have been over it in a moment, but that Sir Otho made matters worse ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... He looked up frankly. "I saw no reason for speaking. She accuses herself without a shadow of reason; it's mere hysterical conscientiousness. We have known each other for half a year or so, and I have made love to her, but I never had the least encouragement. I knew all along she didn't care for me. How is she to blame? A girl is under no obligation to speak ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... Peggy should not catch her white face. She knew instinctively the message was from John Vaughan. It may have been written with his last breath and sent by a friend. She broke the seal with slow, nervous dread, looked quickly, and laughed aloud when she had read, a joyous, half hysterical ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... all turns on getting him off to sleep quietly, and not disturbing him, and she is too excited and restless to do anything with her; she has startled him twice already, and then gets upset—tired out, poor thing! and will end in being hysterical if she does not get fed and rested, and then we shall be done for! Now I want you to take charge of her. See, here's her room, and I have ordered up some tea for her. You must get her quieted down, make her have a tolerable meal, and when she has worked off ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... could do or say to comfort her. She grew so alarmingly hysterical as he watched her, that it occurred to him he must find medical aid for her. Fortune favored him; he found a doctor seated in the compartment next to him. The gentleman was only too glad to be able to render him ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... gentleman and an artist, with almost as much notion of work as I have of piano playing; and Allan, who has more brains than the rest of you put together; and Carrie, who is half a saint and slightly hysterical; and your poor little self; and then comes that nondescript article Jack. Why in the world do you call a feminine creature Jack? And poor little Dot, who will never earn a penny for himself—humph, six of ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... nerves threatened hysterical laughter, made no reply to this, but hurried toward the small figure by the ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... and again I had escaped. I remember that I laughed at them and that the sound was crazy and hysterical, and I remember that as I laughed I shook out my arms to show them I was unhurt. And as I did that someone in the cafe cried, "Thank God!" And another shouted, "That's enough of this damn nonsense," and a big man with a bushy red beard sprang up and pulled ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... the sound of his footsteps, and of the gate as he passed through it, died away. Then she raised her head, and pushing back her hair, came and sat down at her mother's feet, hiding her flushed face and laughing a little half hysterical laugh. ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... nearly out of her senses with distress and uncertainty, and being still weak, was less able to endure. She burst into violent hysterical weeping, and had to be helped up to her own room, where she sometimes lay on her bed; sometimes raged up and down the room, heaping violent words on the head of the tardy cowardly German; sometimes talking ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... old Richard Norton with the banner leading; the new Communion table had been cast out of doors, the English Bible and Prayer-book torn to shreds, the old altar reverently carried in from the rubbish heap, the tapers rekindled, and amid hysterical enthusiasm Mass had been said once ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... special agent. He went in the night time and Beverly did not see him. The week which followed his departure was the longest she ever spent. She was troubled in her heart for fear that he might not return, despite the declaration she had made to him in one hysterical moment. It was difficult for her to keep up the show of cheerfulness that was expected of her. Reticence became her strongest characteristic. She persistently refused to be drawn into a discussion of her relations with the absent one. Yetive was piqued ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... that these cases frequently evidenced vivid auditory and visual hallucinations. At the same time there existed a more or less distinct clouding of consciousness, with the simultaneous presence of hysterical stigmata, especially total analgesia. After a short time recovery took place, the patients suddenly awoke as if from a dream and evidenced a more or less complete amnesia of ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... to the canon edge, looking far out to the desert. Rhoda, panting and half hysterical, watched him. The moment which she had so dreaded had arrived, and she found herself, after all her planning, utterly unprepared to meet it ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... time he'll notice my 'Christmas Crossing' sign!" she chuckled with sudden triumph. "Talk about surprises!" Very diplomatically as she spoke she broke another doughnut in two and drew all the dogs' attention to herself. Almost hysterical with amusement she surveyed the scene before her. "Well, at least we can have 'grace' before the Preacher comes!" she laughed. A step on the gravel walk startled her suddenly. In a flash she had jerked down the blind-folding handkerchief across her eyes again, and folding ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... raining and blowing at Eldridge's Crossing. From the stately pine-trees on the hill-tops, which were dignifiedly protesting through their rigid spines upward, to the hysterical willows in the hollow, that had whipped themselves into a maudlin fury, there was a general tumult. When the wind lulled, the rain kept up the distraction, firing long volleys across the road, letting loose miniature cataracts from the hill-sides ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... of the fair stranger rebounded at the words which thus seemed to destroy a last hope that lingered in her soul; and a hysterical shriek burst from her lips as she threw her snow-white arms, bare to the shoulders, around the head ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... to what I have to say! I want to tell you that your comedy not only wearies me, but is beginning to anger me. I am still too little a hysterical actress and too much a normal woman to take pleasure in such acting. I was never taught by my mother, the secret code of a woman's conduct toward a man, nor did they warn me of man's falsehood and baseness. I observed that quickly enough for myself, and see it every day behind the scenes. ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... snow, the dim shape of the fortress, and passed one by one the landmarks I had come to know so well during the last six years-the Summer Garden, the British Embassy, and the great Palace Square where I had seen armoured cars flaunting about during the July rising, soldiers camping during the hysterical days of the Kornilov affair and, earlier, Kornilov himself reviewing the Junkers. My mind went further back to the March revolution, and saw once more the picket fire of the revolutionaries at the corner that night when the remains ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome
... it; I don't believe in it. My dear, your strong mind is all humbug, or you would not look so frightened," and again she was on the verge of hysterical laughing; "it is only that I can't stand a chorus of old ladies in commotion. How happy Alick must be to have his prediction verified by some one tumbling over a hoop!" Just then, however, seeing Mr. Carleton still lingering near, she ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had left me just in an hysterical mood; and try all I would, I could not resist laughing at the ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... Bansemer's power was gone! His lips would be sealed forever. She laughed aloud in the frenzy of hope. She laughed to think what a fool she would have been to forbid the marriage. The marriage? Her salvation! Jane found her almost hysterical, trembling like a leaf. She was obliged to confess that she had heard part of their conversation below, in order to account for her manner. When Jane confided to her that she had promised to marry Graydon in September—or June—she urged her to avoid a long engagement. She ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... soldier of the Central Powers—or ten thousand observers have been deceived. As for the intelligence of the publics upon whose moral the opposing forces ultimately depend, it is undeniable that the German public is extremely hysterical, and far more gullible even than ourselves at our very worst. The legends believed by the German public today are ridiculous enough to stamp Germany for a century as an arch-simpleton among nations. Its ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... the result of a considerable intellectual experience, he was, in social and political matters, a reactionary. I suppose he was very conceited, for he was much addicted to judging his age. He thought it talkative, querulous, hysterical, maudlin, full of false ideas, of unhealthy germs, of extravagant, dissipated habits, for which a great reckoning was in store. He was an immense admirer of the late Thomas Carlyle, and was very ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... lay open, as Mary Matchwell had left it. Nutter stood on the door-step, where he could hear faintly, from above stairs, the cries and wails of poor, hysterical Mrs. Nutter. He remained there a good while, during which, unperceived by him, Dr. Toole's pestle-and-mortar-boy, who had entered by the back-way, had taken a seat in the hall. He was waiting for an empty draught-bottle, in ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... waxen statue of a man lying on his back. My name was written on it, and though it was badly moulded, my features were recognizable. The image bore my cross of the Order of the Golden Spur, and the generative organs were made of an enormous size. At this I burst into a fit of hysterical laughter, and had to sit down in an arm-chair ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... particulars, the reader knows. It only remains to say that good fortune favored the conspirators at every turn, and that they covered their tracks with amazing effectiveness. Utterly cut off from the eyes of the world, the captive found herself powerless to communicate with the hysterical people who were seeking her in every ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... where Caroline, in a high state of excitement, was ordered to bed by a physician; but, after soothing medicines had calmed certain hysterical symptoms, she fell into a deep sleep, which the doctor said was worth more than all the apothecaries could compound. In fact, she did not wake till late next morning, and in a day or ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... their courage, and soon they too were in full flight, carrying off with them their killed and wounded. A shout of triumph rose from the two parties of whites, and a scene of wild delight took place; the women, now that the excitement was over, cried and laughed alternately in hysterical joy; the children shouted, while the men grasped each ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... this with a fierce look and a hysterical sob. Without more words he drew out his clasp-knife, and, ripping up the cuffs of the man's coat, laid bare his muscular arm. Meanwhile Alice untied his neckcloth, and Poopy tore open his Guernsey frock and exposed his broad ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... not a life was actually lost in the fire,[118:1] though some old Londoners (among them Edmund Calamy's grandfather) died of grief, and others (and among them Shirley the dramatist and his wife) from exposure and exhaustion. One hysterical foreigner, who insisted that he lit the flame, was executed, though no sensible man believed what he said. It was long the boast of the merchants of London that no one of their number "broke" in consequence of ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... as the darkness changed to gray, and the black bulk of the Cafe Ducrot came into view, his interest quickened. He encouraged himself with the thought that while in New York the wording of the note would be improbable, hysterical, melodramatic, in hot, turbulent Venezuela it was in keeping with the country ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... read—she heard it not, her brain was bewildered. She was led back to her seat, and then it was that all her courage, all her constancy and fortitude gave way; and during the remainder of the ceremony, she filled the cathedral with her wild hysterical sobbing; all entreaties or threats being wholly lost ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... hysterical words as these and blinded by a gush of weak, unmanly tears, I sent her from me, unheeding alike her piteous entreaties and the clasp of her imploring hands. When she was gone I sank into my chair and suffered my tears to flow unchecked, ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... oldest society of communists in the United States. The parent society at Mount Lebanon, New York, was established in 1792, being the outgrowth of a religious revival in which there were violent hysterical manifestations or "shakes," from which they took their name. In this revival one Ann Lee, known among them as "Mother Ann," was prominent. This woman, of English birth, emigrated to Niskayuna, New York, about seven miles north-west of Albany, where ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... Peter to the hysterical questions. "It's the lumber camp. They've broken loose and set the woods afire. You've got to get all the men you can together and rush them down there. Where's Brierly? On the way? Oh, all right. Good. He'll take me down and I'll send him back.... ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... acquaintance of John Conrad Dippel, and tried to lead that straying sheep back to the Lutheran fold. He visited Budingen in Hesse, discoursed on Christian fellowship to the "French Prophets," or "Inspired Ones," and tried to teach their hysterical leader, Rock, a little wisdom, sobriety and charity. He attended the coronation of Christian VI., King of Denmark, at Copenhagen, was warmly welcomed by His Majesty, received the Order of the Danebrog, saw Eskimos from Greenland and ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... forth as fast as the words would come out of Molly's mouth, but before they had all streamed forth, Judith was choking in a hysterical fit, so like a convulsion that Johnnie could only cry, "Aunt! aunt! Mother, look!" And Molly herself was frightened, and began to say, "There! there!" while she helped him to hold her sister, and little Judy flew off, half in terror and half in search of help, ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... or not. A week passed and then another week. I don't know how I lived through it. Then, one day, I was told to pack up and rejoin my unit. I don't know exactly what I did, but I think I must have gone hysterical. I remember some N.C.O. saying I ought to stay a bit because I wasn't well enough to go up the line. He said he'd speak to the officer and get me a few days' rest. But the thought of staying in that place made me shiver. I said I was absolutely all right and went ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... several apartments, with their hair in crimping-pins. Miss Granger was too perfect a being to crinkle her hair, or to waste three hours on dressing, even for a wedding. Lady Laura showed herself among her guests, for a quarter of an hour or so, in a semi-hysterical flutter; so anxious that everything should go off well, so fearful that something might happen, she knew not what, to throw the machinery of her arrangements out ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... take the dismal news. Would she become hysterical and go all to pieces? Would the prospect of a week of propinquity be too much for her, even though thick walls intervened to put them into separate worlds? Or, worst of all, would she reveal an uncomfortable spirit of bravado, rashly casting discretion to the winds in order to show ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... never confided but he had been betrayed; he had never forgiven but to sharpen enmity. He was amidst a ferocious people, uncertain friends, wily enemies; and misplaced mercy would be but a premium to conspiracy. Yet the struggle he underwent was visible in the hysterical emotions he betrayed. He now wept bitterly, now laughed wildly. "Can I never again have the luxury to forgive?" said he. The coarse spectators of that passion deemed it,—some imbecility, some hypocrisy. But the execution produced the momentary ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... than I thought," said the old groceryman as he laughed a hysterical laugh through the long whiskers, and he hugged the boys as though he had a liking for them, notwithstanding the suffering they had caused him. "By gosh, I thought you were nothing but common robbers, who just wanted my money. You are old ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... towards the door. "I will not leave you till you promise me; I'll cling to you in the street; I'll kneel to you before all the people. You shall promise me this, you shall promise me this, you shall—" And she clung to him with fixed tenacity, and reiterated her resolve with hysterical passion. ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... with patient number one before she turned to patient number two. Ted was much ashamed, and quite broken in spirit, when he found how he had failed at the critical moment, and begged them not to tell, as he really could not help it; then by way of finishing his utter humiliation, a burst of hysterical tears disgraced his manly soul, and did him ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... side, put her lips to his ear, and said in low tremulous tones, "Papa, papa, please wake up, I'm so frightened; there's a fire and the Ku Klux are there. O papa, I'm afraid they'll come here and kill you!" and she ended with a burst of almost hysterical weeping, rousing both father ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... hall, mounted the flight to the roof, he groaning and urging, she sobbing, hysterical, and frenzied. She climbed the ladder with him, threw back the trap, and helped him ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... Rose-Marie, looking at him, felt a sudden primitive desire to see him dirty and mussed up. She wished, and the wish surprised her, that she might sometime see him with his hair rumpled, his collar torn, his eye blackened and—she could hardly suppress a hysterical desire to laugh as the thought struck her—his nose bleeding. Somehow his smooth, hard neatness was more offensive to her than his mother's dirty apron—than his small brother's frankly grimy hands. She spoke to him in a cool little ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... good time, liked pretty clothes, a ride in an automobile, theaters, excitement, bright lights, night life—a girl with a romantic disposition in whom all that was repressed at home. He knew it," she repeated, raising the tone to an almost hysterical pitch, "led me on, made me love him because he could give them all to me. And when I began to show the strain of the pace-they all show it more than the men—he cast me ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... tightening round the brows as if her cap-band were a ring of iron,—and then her neuralgias, and her backaches, and her fits of depression, in which she thinks she is nothing and less than nothing, and those paroxysms which men speak slightingly of as hysterical,—convulsions, that is all, only not commonly fatal ones,—so many trials which belong to her fine and mobile structure,—that she is always entitled to pity, when she is placed in conditions ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... in the everexpanding affairs of Consolidated Pemmican and Allied Industries, as we now called the parent company, I could not get away from the grass. Each hour's eastward thrust was reported in detail by an hysterical radio and every day the newspapers printed maps showing the newly overrun territory. Once more the grass was the most prominent thought in men's minds, not only over the land of its being, but throughout the world. ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... God!" cried the girl, brokenly; and then, all in a moment, the tension of her nerves suddenly giving way, she broke down utterly, and burst into a perfect passion of tears. Leslie had sense enough to recognise that this hysterical outburst would probably relieve his companion's sorely overwrought feelings, and do her good; he therefore allowed her to have her cry out in peace, without making any attempt to ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... the delirious woman began to laugh, vacantly and foolishly at first, and with short interruptions of silence, but then more loudly, and by degrees more continuously, till the spasms grew wild and hysterical, and bad to hear. Sister Giovanna went quickly to her and at once tried to put a stop to the attack. The Princess was rolling her head from side to side on the pillows, with her arms stretched out on each side of her and her white hands clawing at the broad hem of the sheet ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... pleased the Old Man all right," says Ben. "He's kind of had his eye on me ever since. He said the way I worded that report showed I wasn't one to lose my head and get hysterical, the way he had known some green hands ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... fell from his lips Lucy caught at the wall, and with an almost hysterical cry of joy threw ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the destroyer. She proved to be one of Uncle Sam's boats, and the joy with which she was greeted was vociferous and perhaps a little hysterical. She had learned by wireless of the appearance of the French craft in the danger zone, and had come to fulfill her mission. She had been delayed by a slight accident, or she would have been on hand ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the War Front - Or, The Hunt for the Stolen Army Films • Victor Appleton
... know what to do,' said Cynthia, taking down her hands from her tear-stained face, and appealing to Molly, and sobbing worse than ever; in fact, she became hysterical, and though she tried to speak coherently, no intelligible words ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell |
