"Irritability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... singularly sanguine in his case, for it is rarely that disease of the heart attacks one so young; but it now seemed evident, that even had not anxiety of mind, and great constitutional irritability, hastened the fatal result, that poor George could never have hoped to have survived ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... satisfied with his condition. It may have been that his health became worse; or it may be that, like to many men who are idle and make no effort to work, he became annoyed at the ennui which is so often the result of an unoccupied life. Anyhow, in his letters there crept in a note of irritability, which has ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... her bit of ironing, and began preparing the food she was sure her father needed; for by this time her experience in the degrees of hunger had taught her that his present irritability was increased, if not caused ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... ill, not a picture had been disposed of; and even after he was able to work a little, I could not encourage visitors: he was not able for the fatigue, and in fact shrunk, with an irritability I had never perceived a sign of before, from seeing any one. To my growing dismay, I saw my little stock—which was bodily in my hand, for we had no banking account—rapidly ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... upon the whole subject I can see, from my present point of view, that this irritability had seldom struck me as a personal disadvantage. I do not think it usually makes that impression upon temperaments similarly vitiated. As nearly as I can remember, I thought of myself rather as the possessor of an eccentricity, than as the victim of a vice. My father was an overworked college professor,—a ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... brief, is the cell to whose activities it is possible to trace the fundamental properties of all living things. Cells are endowed with the properties of irritability, contractibility, assimilation and reproduction, and it is thus plainly to the study of cells that we must look for an interpretation of life phenomena. If we can reach an intelligible understanding of the activities of the cell our problem is solved, for the activities of the fully formed animal ...
— The Story of the Living Machine • H. W. Conn
... untiring heart, and a brave will." Nearly all put strength with gentleness, in some form. "All the firmness that does not exclude delicacy, and all the softness that does not imply weakness. Loving, helpful, and trusting, she must be able to soothe anxiety by her presence; charm and allay irritability by her sweetness of temper." Another writes: "A beauty of spirit in which love, gentleness, and kindness are mingled. Patience and meekness, fortitude, a well-governed temper, sympathy, and tenderness," Says another: "Kind, courteous, ...
— Girls: Faults and Ideals - A Familiar Talk, With Quotations From Letters • J.R. Miller
... tempers, the most perfect patience and good nature—one of the things most impressive about them all was the absence of irritability. So far we had only this group to study, but afterward I found it ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... pleasure, quick excitability, and consequent irritability, are the marked ingredients in every strong character; its strength must be employed against itself to ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... higher than that of most men: his nature was prone to introspection, and his constitutional inertness rendered it so difficult for him to live up to his own views, that he was continually dissatisfied with himself; and this, in spite of his sweet unselfish temper, gave his manner at home an irritability, and among strangers a reserve—the very reverse of the joyous merry nature which used to delight in ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... make her cross and capricious, nor did it cause her any of that nervous irritability so common to invalids, and which makes those who are nursing them share their suffering morally. She gave herself entirely up to her fate. Her life was ebbing away without any apparent effort on her part to hold it back or to stop ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... sleep, are important factors in the production of insanity and crime. Over fatigue means a weakening of the power of attention, and hence of will, a paralyzing of the highest brain centers, a lowered resistance to the more primitive instincts and passions. Chronic irritability, moroseness, pathological impulses of all sorts, generally betokens eyestrain, dyspepsia, constipation, or some other bodily derangement. With the regaining of normal health the unruly impulses usually become quieter, sympathy flows more freely, the man becomes kinder, more tolerant, and morally ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... he wrote at the end of February 1866, "I have been very unwell. F. B. wrote me word that with such a pulse as I described, an examination of the heart was absolutely necessary. 'Want of muscular power in the heart,' B said. 'Only remarkable irritability of the heart,' said Doctor Brinton of Brook-street, who had been called in to consultation. I was not disconcerted; for I knew well beforehand that the effect could not possibly be without the one cause at the bottom of it, of some degeneration of some function ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... breakfast of fruit and cereal and chops and wheat cakes and coffee he had laid in to stay him until lunch time, would together have given pause to any but such a physical organization as his. The only evidence of it was a certain slight irritability—but this may have been due to his ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... the outcome of an acute nervous sensibility, amounting at times to an almost neurotic irritability, such as peeps out from his confession that the shape of Earl Grey's head, when he was a Parliamentary reporter in the Gallery, "was misery to me and weighed down my youth". This peculiarity of temperament ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... more distinctly,—all added fresh subject for mirth to the torn cloak and shattered shoe, which have afforded legitimate subjects of raillery against the poor scholar from Juvenal's time downward. It was never known that Sampson either exhibited irritability at this ill usage, or made the least attempt to retort upon his tormentors. He slunk from college by the most secret paths he could discover, and plunged himself into his miserable lodging, where, for eighteenpence a week, he was ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Catholic. Good judges belonging to her own sex describe her as gentle, quiet, soft in her manners, and well-bred. She had the qualities which best fitted and disposed her to soothe the vehemence and irritability of her companion. Though she afterwards conformed to the religion of her husband, it was no insignificant coincidence that in two of the dearest relations of his life the atmosphere of Catholicism was thus poured round the great preacher of ...
— Burke • John Morley
... govern sensory and motor nerves by digital suspension of the abnormal irritability of the sensory nerves on the various parts of the spine as ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... happy fellow he had once been; on the other, there was the test as to whether this could be done without loss of hope in the face of repeated and almost continuous failure, and without the exhibition of irritability or loss of temper when provocations arose at first a score of ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... quarreling equally needs the physician. In the first there is a lack of sufficient energy so to move as to meet and realize some of life's oppositions; in the other there is probably some underlying cause for nervous irritability. ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... Perseverance were my only weapons; and these I resolved to use to the utmost. I determined always strictly to fulfil the threats and promises I made; and, to that end, I must be cautious to threaten and promise nothing that I could not perform. Then, I would carefully refrain from all useless irritability and indulgence of my own ill-temper: when they behaved tolerably, I would be as kind and obliging as it was in my power to be, in order to make the widest possible distinction between good and bad conduct; I would reason with them, too, ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... me so many channels for enjoyment. Still the insufficiency of the palpable and appreciable is paramount; still the everlasting dolor interposes: the appetite is satiated, the aroma palls upon the nostrils, the nerves are affected by irritability, the harmony merges into dissonance; even the beautiful becomes so far an abomination that man is 'mad for the sight of his eyes that he did see.' Such is the sterile and repulsive penalty of the searcher ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... crystal-clear concentric spheres of exquisite symmetry and beauty.[1]" The simplest amoeba however, has no definite form; but the little mass moves about, expands and contracts, throws out projections on one side and draws them in on the other. It exhibits irritability when touched. It may be seen surrounding a tiny particle of food, extracting nutriment from it and growing in size. Ultimately the little body separates or splits up into two, each part thenceforth ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... poet, travelled a good deal, wrote mostly in German, in which he was quite at home; his chief works, a pastoral epic, "Parthenais oder die Alpenreise," and a mock epic, "Adam and Eve"; his minor pieces are numerous and popular, though from his egotism and irritability he ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... exercise to a degree that would be excessive in ordinary constitutions." This leads us to infer that the superfluous energy of the nerves is exhausted by the exercise of the body, and that as the abstraction of blood mitigates inflammations, in like manner does the abstraction of nervous irritability restore tranquillity to the system. This of course applies only to a state of high nervous irritation; but exercise is equally beneficial when the constitution is much weakened, by producing throughout the whole ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 392, Saturday, October 3, 1829. • Various
... neat's foot oil, for want of which your harness is going to destruction. She has blacking as well as oil, but he will call her in for that afterwards. He never concludes two transactions in one day. When he has succeeded in reducing you to such a state of irritability that it is not safe to mention money in your presence, he stops at once and changes tactics. He brings the horse to the door with a thick layer of dust on the saddle and awaits your onset with the intrepid inquiry, ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... hair, when he came on the traces of the girl's presence, reminding him of a line in a certain poem which he had read lately with a new and peculiar interest. He even recalled a curious evidence of exalted sensibility and irritability, in the twitching of the minute muscles of the internal ear at every unexpected sound, producing an odd little snap in the middle of the head, which proved to him that he ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... unfailing instinct for dealing with men as men. One understands also his continual quarrels with his generals, though in that department he was from the first much better served than was the Government at Washington. A sort of nervous irritability, perhaps a part of what is called "the artistic temperament," is everywhere perceptible. Nowhere does one find a touch of that spirit which made Lincoln say, after an almost insolent rebuff to his personal and official dignity from McClellan: "Well, I will hold his horse for him if he ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... Fortune from personal observation, and fully accounts, not only for the difference in colour between the two teas, but also for the effect produced on some constitutions by green tea, such as nervous irritability, sleeplessness, &c.; and Mr Fortune truly remarks, that what Mr Warrington observed in the laboratory of Apothecaries' Hall, may be seen by every one who has a tree or bush in his garden. Mark the leaves which are blown from trees in early autumn; they are brown, or perhaps of a dullish ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... silence—and the whole world rocking with battles—and not a sound up here—not a whisper! I tell you we're four sick men! We've got a grip on ourselves yet, but it's slipping. We're still fairly civil to each other, but the strain is killing. Sullen silences smother irritability, but—" he added in a peculiarly pleasant voice, "I expect we are likely to start killing each other if somebody doesn't get us out of here ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... tell her 'two men and a dog'; that will take her mind off your father." It must be confessed that Dr. Lavendar was out of temper—a sad fault in one of his age, as Mrs. Drayton often said; but his irritability was so marked that Cyrus finally slunk off, uncomforted, and afraid to meet Gussie's eye, even under its bandage of a ...
— An Encore • Margaret Deland
... The water of this spring possesses marked anodyne properties, which render it very valuable whenever the weakened state of the constitution or its irritability requires to be moderately excited. Of all the Vichy waters it contains the least carbonic acid without being more difficult of digestion, and as, on the other hand, it is the most mineralised, it can in many cases profitably replace the ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... proved to be available, and ere long the two were discussing an excellent dinner. Gray lost much of his irritability and began to talk coherently upon topics of general interest. Presently, following an interval during which he had been covertly ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... upon other people. To look at, sitting so withdrawn, her eyes watching something unseen of human gaze, she was perfect; even in intercourse she would have been more nearly so than ever before had it not been for the fits of irritability gave unwonted bitterness to her tongue. There were days when nothing would please her, when she showed all her common strain in the taunts she found to fling at Ishmael and the rest of her little world. Only Archelaus was immune, and in his presence she maintained a sullen silence, ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... excoriation. Diarrhoea is a simple flux of the bowels, without either the sanguinolent discharges or the intestinal excoriation. Lientery is a flux of the bowels with the discharge of undigested food, occasioned by irritability (levitas) of the stomach or intestines. Colical passion and iliac passion derive their names from the supposed origin of the pain in the colon or ileum, a remark which furnishes occasion for the statement ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... the sensorium during their inactive state are termed irritability, sensibility, voluntarity, and associability; in their active state they are termed as ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... sorrow, the cause and cure of diseases through emotional disturbances, and death, usually directly by apoplexy, caused by anger, grief, or joy, have been current and generally accepted. On the other hand, irritability and moroseness caused by disordered organs of digestion, change of acumen or morals due to injury of the brain or nervous system, and insanity produced by bodily diseases, are also accepted proofs of the effect of the body on ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... eccentricities quite as much as he had ever done in college days; his finicky dress, his foreign ways in eating, his tendency to boast about his music, his country, and his forebears, on his good days, balanced by a brooding irritability on his bad days. And he was conscious that his own ways and customs were no less teasing to Radowitz; his Tory habits of thought, his British contempt for vague sentimentalisms and heroics, for all that panache means to the Frenchman, or "glory" ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... she said coldly. "The lines are obscured by cushions of flesh; no heart line at all, mentality small, self-indulgence and irritability very marked." ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... to mention some other effects of the application of the caustic. The first is that, in cases in which there would be much and long continued irritability and pain, as in superficial wounds along the shin, all this suffering, and its consequences in disabling the patient, are completely avoided. A blush of inflammation forms around the eschar, but this gradually subsides without any disagreeable consequences, and the inflammation ...
— An Essay on the Application of the Lunar Caustic in the Cure of Certain Wounds and Ulcers • John Higginbottom
... exist (which I do not believe), they exist only in the mind of the Chancellor of the Exchequer; they emanate from his zeal for the Protestant interest; and, though they reflect the highest honour upon the delicate irritability of his faith, must certainly be considered as more ambiguous proofs of the sanity and vigour of his understanding. By this time, however, the best-informed clergy in the neighbourhood of the metropolis are convinced that the rumour is without foundation; and though the Pope is probably hovering ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... When the nervous irritability engendered by constant work, without relaxation, has made you a brute in your home and a nuisance to those who ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... mentality. From this point of view his mental deformity seems not unlike that of Cavendish's, later, except that in the case of Cavendish it manifested itself as an abnormal sensitiveness instead of an abnormal irritability. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... nothing; at others she anticipated Mr. Lyddell's bringing Elliot back, all his debts paid, to live at home and be a comfort, or some friend was to give Walter a great living, or Clara was to come out, and to be presented in the summer. At the same time the fretful irritability of nerve and temper continued, and any unusual excitement, the talking a little longer in her room, a letter, or a little disappointment, would keep her awake all night. One thing, however, seemed certain, that Lionel's presence had some of the same power over her as her husband's; she was ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... experiments, and says that when he has taken large doses of purin bodies—such as 7 grains of hypoxanthin, 15 to 77 grains of guanin or 7 to 15 grains of uric acid, apparently associated symptoms of general malaise and irritability have frequently appeared. In gouty subjects such moderate or small quantities of purins which are without effect on the healthy subject, may prove a source of irritation to the already weakened ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan
... reminders in giant ruin and deserted cell, in a chance encounter with a string of guns and soldiers on their way to manoeuvres or in the sight of a stale newspaper, of a great world process going on in which he was now playing no part at all. And a curious irritability manifested itself more and more plainly, whenever human pettiness obtruded upon his attention, whenever some trivial dishonesty, some manifest slovenliness, some spiritless failure, a cheating waiter ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... good husbands are wont to unload their irritability on their wives, so Jean was inclined to favor Mlle. Fouchette. And as doting wives who voluntarily constitute themselves drudges soon become fixed in that lowly position, so Mlle. Fouchette naturally became the servant of the somewhat ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... The irritability of genius is forcibly characterised by this circumstance in his literary life. When a close friendship had united him to Jurieu, he lavished on him the most flattering eulogiums: he is the hero of his "Republic of Letters." ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... method. Indifference to need for help. Too close holding to the text. Distant attitude—aloofness. Partiality. Excitability. Irritability. Pessimism—"in the dumps." Indifferent assignments. Hazy explanations. Failure to cover assignments. Distracting facial expressions. Attitude of "lording it over." Sarcasm. Poor taste in dress. Bluffing—"the tables ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... talk." One sees the point, of course; yet I cannot help feeling that it would have been better if the majority of Leaguers had done some bit of constructive work towards a Distributist world and sweated out of their system the irritability that found vent in some of their quarrels. After all the fight for freedom as far as it concerned attacking government was carried on week by week by the small group running the paper. "The main body of Distributists would have learnt ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... which surprises me very much in looking over those days of suffering, is, that during that day a frightful irritability is the emotion that I most remember—an irritability of feeling, not of expression: for I lay quite still upon the bed all day, and only answered, briefly and simply, the questions of Sophie ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... a good look at him, but said nothing. However, his reply and her perusal of his countenance satisfied her that he was a man with very little petty vanity and petty irritability. ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... in a race, just as there is a difference of aptitude for general ideas, so will its religion, art, and philosophy be different. If man is naturally fitted for broader universal conceptions and inclined at the same time to their derangement, through the nervous irritability of an over-excited organization, we find, as in India, a surprising richness of gigantic religious creations, a splendid bloom of extravagant transparent epics, a strange concatenation of subtle, imaginative philosophic systems, all so intimately associated and so interpenetrated with a common ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... bottle of ether in the pocket of his coat, and he rightly judged that a very little of that would put an end to the life that was hanging in the balance. Nearly half an hour passed before either spoke again. Then Keyork looked up. This time his voice was smooth and persuasive. His irritability had ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... whereupon she wept—not so much from pain as from injured feelings—and he had apologized in quite a gentlemanly fashion, and picked up the music that in his burst of temper he had flung upon the floor. In spite of his acknowledged irritability, all the girls who learned from him gave themselves airs of slight superiority over those who only learned from Mademoiselle. Though strict, he was an inspiring teacher, and when, as occasionally happened, he would push his pupil from the stool, and seat himself in her place to show the proper rendering ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... last three days I have had very little real communion with God, and have therefore been very weak spiritually, and have several times felt irritability of temper. May God in mercy help me to have more secret prayer!—Let none expect to have the mastery over his inward corruption in any degree, without going in his weakness again and again to the Lord for strength. Nor will ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, First Part • George Mueller
... blinked the last fragments of sleep out of his system, and became filled with a restless irritability. There was only one instrument in the house which could create this infernal din—the orchestrion in the drawing-room, immediately above which, he recalled, his room ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... the qualities in him which needed control received daily stimulus, and his ardour and high-aiming temper turned into impatience and restless irritability. He had a mistress who was at one time in the humour to be treated as a tender woman, at another as an outrageous flirt, at another as the haughtiest and most imperious of queens; her mood varied, no one could tell how, ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... the effect of accentuating Mrs. Rastall-Retford's always rather pronounced irritability. She was a massive lady, with a prominent forehead, some half-dozen chins, and a manner towards those in her employment which would have been resented in a second mate by the crew of a Western ocean tramp. Even at her best she was no ray of sunshine about the house. And since the beginning of the ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... effect of making him occasionally impatient and irritable, like a spirited horse touched by the spur; though his original good-nature from time to time shone through it all. When the line had been brought to a successful completion, a very marked change in him became visible. The irritability passed away, and when difficulties and vexations arose they were treated by him as matters of course, and with perfect ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... plainly be convinced that the single independent cell has a "psyche," we must as decidedly attribute a soul to every other cell; for the most important active constituent of the cell, the protoplasm, everywhere exhibits the same psychic properties of sensibility or irritability, and motive power or will. The only difference is this, that in the organism of the higher animals and plants the numerous collected cells, to a great extent, give up their individual independence, and are subject, ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... do that which he could not do himself, and always on the verge of a complete breakdown of mind and body. In 1851 he had an effusion of water on the left knee, which stopped his outdoor exercise, on which he had always largely depended. All the irritability of the system then centered in the head, resulting in intense pain and in a restless and devouring activity of thought. He himself says: "The whirl, the confusion, and strange, undefined tortures attending this condition are only to be conceived by one who has felt them." The resources of surgery ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... of success, jealous of the success of others, his natural irritability of temper increased by habits of intemperance, he at length abandoned himself to the practice of reviewing, and became one of the Ishmaelites of the press. In this his malignant bitterness soon gave him ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... tide of life and renew the powers of work, cannot be utilized: there is not vigor enough for enjoyments involving action, and lack of spirits prevents passive enjoyments from being entered upon with zest. In brief, life becomes a burden. The irritability resulting now from ailments, now from failures caused from feebleness, his family has daily to bear. Lacking adequate energy for joining in them, he has at best but a tepid interest in the amusements of his children; and he is called a wet blanket ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... to return. Ammunition needed. The arrangement of the men for scouting and picketing. Leaving security harbor. A plant which devours insects. Venus's fly-trap. How plants absorb food. Irritability. How the leaf digests the fly. Food absorbed by leaves as well as by roots. A cache of human skulls. Head hunters. The vele. A hoodoo. The rattle. The vele and the bamboo box. How it is worked to produce the charm. Evidences of extreme superstitions. Witch doctors. ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... need scarcely be recalled, was extremely fateful for the whole of Europe. The growing restlessness and irritability manifested by the German Empire began to make all the other governments feel exceedingly uneasy. The French expedition to Fez in April was followed by the Anglo-Franco-German crisis of July; war ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... the endless contrivances, such as the viscid glands attached to the pollen-masses of the Orchideae and Asclepiadae, or the viscid or roughened state of the pollen-grains of many plants, or the irritability of their stamens which move when touched by insects etc.—as all these contrivances evidently favour or ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... force-product),[1] and his view of the organic (organisms are self-productive beings, and are regarded by us as ends in themselves, because of the interaction between their members and the whole). The three organic functions sensibility, irritability, and reproduction, on the other hand, Schelling took from Kielmeyer, whose address On the Relations of the Organic Forces, 1793, excited great attention. The concept of life is dominant in Schelling's theory of nature. The organic is more original than the ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... times it bored me fearfully. One longed for movement in spite of everything, and I plunged all at once into dark, underground, loathsome vice of the pettiest kind. My wretched passions were acute, smarting, from my continual, sickly irritability I had hysterical impulses, with tears and convulsions. I had no resource except reading, that is, there was nothing in my surroundings which I could respect and which attracted me. I was overwhelmed with depression, ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... greeted him and moved away when he approached a bush where they sat. Perhaps this crustiness of demeanor was the natural result of his long weeks of anxiety and trouble as protector during their helpless infancy; perhaps he was tired out and exhausted, and it was not irritability, but nervous prostration, that made him appear so unamiable. Indeed, I do not see how it could be otherwise, after his exciting life. And may that not explain the fact that when the young are grown, the singer shakes off all family ties and joins ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... "about the middle of the day yesterday, which took me out there last night. Her cough suddenly ceased almost, and, strange to say, she immediately became aware of her hopeless state; to which she resigned herself, after an hour's unrest and struggle, with extraordinary sweetness and constancy. The irritability passed, and all hope faded away; though only two nights before, she had been planning for 'after Christmas.' She is greatly changed. I had a long interview with her to-day, alone; and when she had expressed some wishes about the funeral, and her being buried in unconsecrated ground" ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... in the vicinity, I would call and see if you've recovered from your—well, your silly fit of irritability," he said, with a grim smile on his grey face as he ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... sometimes irritated by the frequency of his requests for service from them, and his continual insistence on the wonderful perfections of the Hanski family, and their grandeur and importance. Occasionally, too, his letters show an irritability which is a new feature in his character. We must remember, however, in judging Balzac, that he was nearly driven wild by the position in which he found himself. It was necessary that he should always be bright, good-natured, and agreeable to the party at Wierzchownia, and his letters to his family ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... steam-travel; yet Washington certified his opinion that "the discovery is of vast importance, and may be of the greatest usefulness in our inland navigation." James Rumsey, with just a suspicion of the irritability of talent, accused Fitch of "coming pottering around" his Virginia work-bench and carrying off his ideas, to be afterward developed in Philadelphia. It is certain that the development was great. Rumsey died in England of apoplexy at a public ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... second chapter of Coleridge's Biographia Literaria is on the "supposed irritability of men of genius." Ed. 1847, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... reproaches which have been so freely cast upon her memory can not be denied. It will moderate, however, any tendency to censoriousness in our mode of uttering them, if we consider to how little advantage we should ourselves appear, if all the words of fretfulness and irritability which we have ever spoken, all our insincerity and double-dealing, our selfishness, our pride, our petty resentments, our caprice, and our countless follies, were exposed as fully to the public gaze as were those of this renowned and glorious, ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... without referring to events out of Europe, I have been long quite familiar, and I know several others who are equally so, with cholera, in which a perfect similarity to the symptoms of the Indian or Russian cholera has existed: the collapse—the deadly coldness with a clammy skin—the irritability of the stomach, and prodigious discharge from the bowels of an opaque serous fluid (untinged with bile in the slightest degree)—with a corresponding shrinking of flesh and integuments—the pulseless and ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... they do not differ essentially from the oval ones, and in one specimen I found every possible transition between the two states. In another specimen there were no long-headed glands. These marginal tentacles lose their irritability earlier than the others; and when a stimulus is applied to the centre of the leaf, they are excited into action after the others. When cut-off leaves are immersed in water, they alone often ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... words Christie took leave, and scandalized the sable retainer by smiling all through the hall, and laughing audibly as the door closed. The contrast of the plaid boy and beruffled girl's irritability with their mother's languid affectation, and her own unfortunate efforts, was too much for her. In the middle of her merriment she paused suddenly, saying ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... this pure air and in contemplation of this peaceful and silent night: thus she awoke next day calmer and more resigned. Unfortunately, the sight of Lady Lochleven, who presented herself at breakfast-time, to fulfil her duties as taster, brought back her irritability. Perhaps, however, things would have gone on smoothly if Lady Lochleven, instead of remaining standing by the sideboard, had withdrawn after having tasted the various dishes of the courses; but this insisting on remaining throughout the meal, which was ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... friendship would have been developed, and the story of his life would be very different from what it is. There is no doubt that the regrettable parts of the careers of both Byron and Shelley are due to lack of discipline and loving-kindness in their early years. Byron's irritability and bad temper were aggravated by a physical defect, which hindered him from excelling in athletic sports of which he was fond, and embittered all his life. Either at birth or by an accident one of his feet was malformed or twisted so as to affect his gait, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... it on artificial food, the baby will most likely have acquired slight stomach ailments that may be troublesome for some time, because in this case both the quality and the quantity were no doubt wrong. Constipation in the mother will also cause trouble. The child will develop colic and extreme irritability until the ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... transformed into living protoplasm, the continually repeated miracle of life. But it does not remain long in this condition. In contact with the oxygen from the air it is soon oxidized, burned up to furnish the energy necessary for the motion and irritability of the body. We are all of us low-temperature engines. The digestive function exists in all animals merely to bring the food into a soluble, diffusible form, so that it can pass to all parts of the body and be used for fuel or growth. In ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... capable and industrious, such a good farm hand that his father was unwilling to send him away and to lose his services. There was no history of insanity or neurosis in the family, and no injury or illness in his own history. He had spells of moroseness and irritability, however, and had also been a masturbator. Women had no attraction for him, but he would copulate with the mares upon his father's farm, and this without regard to time, place, or spectators. Such a case would seem to stand midway between ordinary bestiality and pathological ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... about, as he sat by David's bedside, was David's attitude toward that threatened return of his. For David had opposed it, offering a dozen trivial, almost puerile reasons. Had shown indeed, a dogged obstinacy and an irritability that were somehow oddly like fear. David afraid! David, whose life and heart were open books! David, whose eyes never wavered, nor ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... rendered impressive by a procession of Turnhill Sunday school teachers. Edwin's activity in connexion with the funeral had been limited to the funeral cards, in the preparation of which his father had shown an irritability more than usually offensive. And now the funeral was over. Darius had devoted to it the whole of Home Rule Tuesday, and had returned to his house at a singular hour and in a ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... thinking about the relation between Will and Dorothea his conjectures had gone beyond the fact. He imagined that there was a passionate attachment on both sides, and this struck him as much too serious to gossip about. He remembered Will's irritability when he had mentioned Mrs. Casaubon, and was the more circumspect. On the whole his surmises, in addition to what he knew of the fact, increased his friendliness and tolerance towards Ladislaw, and made him understand the vacillation which kept him at Middlemarch after he had said that he ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... disparagement of the works of his contemporaries. If ever he spoke favorably of the productions of some particular friend, I ventured boldly to dissent from him, and to prove that his friend was a blockhead; and much as people say of the pertinacity and irritability of authors, I never found one to take offence at my contradictions. No, no, sir, authors are particularly candid in admitting the ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... abstraction must have been a source of acute suffering to him. It is difficult to imagine a more terrible condition of mind than that in which the constant flogging of a tired brain is the only anodyne for its morbid irritability. ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... same way, furnish the diagnosis where the mental variation is only a distant effect of a bodily ailment. The changes in the emotions, for instance, may lead to the recognition of a heart disease; lack of attention may be a hint of the overgrowth of the adenoids; irritability or apathy or delirious character of the mental behavior may indicate whether uraemic acid is in the system or an infectious disease: anaemia and undernutrition may be diagnosed and the psychology of fever demands too a much closer analysis with the means of the psychological ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... island, and a disposition to quarrel with fairy-tales, go to show that while she was decidedly more like herself than in the last chapter, her recovery was not yet complete. In fact Margaret Elizabeth was suffering from the irritability that so often accompanies convalescence. Cantankerousness was Uncle Bob's word for it, and he defended it with all the eloquence of which he was master, his finger on the page in the dictionary where it was to be found ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... boy. Desirous, however, of cherishing the generous spirit and playful humour of Henry, his tutor encouraged a freedom of jesting with him, which appears to have been carried at times to a degree of momentary irritability on the side of the tutor, by the keen humour of the boy. While the royal pupil held his master in equal reverence and affection, the gaiety of his temper sometimes twitched the equability or the gravity of the preceptor. When Newton, wishing to set an example to the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... this trying operation Dick Varley never once betrayed the slightest feeling of irritability or impatience. He did not expect success at first; he was not therefore disappointed ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... province of Spain, he was kept back by his creditors; and he was not allowed to depart until M. Crassus had given security for him. [240] Dicerent. Respecting this subjunctive, see Zumpt, S 551. [241] Mobilitas animi, 'irritability,' or that state of mind which is easily excited, or upon which it is easy to make an impression. Clarius esset is ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... a new activity among the men—a partial relief from the all-pervading nervousness and irritability. Gun and torpedo practice—which brought to drill every man on board except Munson, buried in his wireless room, and one engineer on duty—was inaugurated and continued ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... linen thread or ordinary silk thread will answer. The wound afterwards only requires to be kept clean. For this purpose it should be cleansed and discharges washed away daily with a solution made of carbolic acid 1 part in 40 parts of water. If on account of the irritability the horse is inclined to rub the wound against some object, his head should be tied by means of two halter ropes attached to the opposite sides of the stall to prevent him from opening the wound. Except when at work or eating, the head should be ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... I was suffering from a great irritability of the skin, and was covered all over with a prickly heat; the slightest pressure or rubbing produced inflammation and boils, particularly about the knees: and Mr. Phillips suffered in the same way, at the arm and elbow. Mr. Gilbert had been subject to these boils when we were travelling at Peak ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... glanced at the direction, pushed Harry away from her, started up in a passion, and let loose the whole gathered irritability of contempt, weariness, disappointment, and suffering, upon Margaret. Her dark eyes flashed with rage, and her sallow cheek glowed ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... the inquiry was abandoned he became gradually nervous, more excitable than he had been before, although he mastered his irritability. Sudden noises made him start with fear; he shuddered at the slightest thing and trembled sometimes from head to foot when a fly alighted on his forehead. Then he was seized with an imperious desire for motion, which impelled him to take long walks and to remain up whole nights pacing up ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... sour, from my mother-in-law, which had recalled me to a true sense of the situation. If, Monsieur, you happen to have gone through a similar day of violent effusion and general expansion, you will agree with me that during no other moment of your life were you more inclined to irritability. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... reputation.—In fine, on the morning of February 15th, a letter and a registered parcel left Moscow for the north, addressed to the Director of the Petersburg Conservatoire:—who was at present in a condition of nervous irritability that kept his every pupil in a state of petrified wretchedness ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... Decker betrayed some slight and apparently uncalled for irritability on reaching the Plaza, and presently desired her husband to wheel her back home. Moreover, she was very much astonished at meeting Mr. Oakhurst just as they were returning, and even doubted if it were he, ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... was easily the master. He had that power which our anaemic age can hardly comprehend, of writing, writing, writing, without fear of exhaustion, without irritability or self-criticism, without danger of comparing the better with the worse. Five great volumes of small print, all good—men of that facility never write the really paltry things—all good, and most of it glorious; ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... not disgust them, nor the hardest benches. Often on the table skins of radishes, crusts of bread, cigar stumps, tobacco ashes, herring heads, and cheese rinds form a fragrant melange. The inheritors of this precious legacy push it away without undue irritability. Radishes are carried about by old women called radi-weibers, who do a thriving business besides in nuts and herrings. One cannot find in any other country of the world radishes of such size, tenderness, and flavor—a brown variety inherited by the happy Muencheners with their ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... for treason was being fiercely debated in Washington, the sentiment of the Confederacy naturally concentrated upon its late President. He was, as the single prisoner, the surviving emblem of the contest. His vanities, irritability, and blunders were forgotten. It was natural that, under the circumstances, his people, the people of the South, should hold in memory only the fact that he had been their leader and that he had through four strenuous years borne ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... which accompany feebleness. Not to dwell on the pain, the weariness, the gloom, the waste of time and money thus entailed, only consider how greatly ill-health hinders the discharge of all duties—makes business often impossible, and always more difficult; produces an irritability fatal to the right management of children; puts the functions of citizenship out of the question; and makes amusement a bore. Is it not clear that the physical sins—partly our forefathers' and partly our own—which produce this ill-health, ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... course of evolution in the lower worlds man often introduces into his vehicles qualities which are undesirable and entirely inappropriate for his life as an ego—such, for example, as pride, irritability, sensuality. These, like the rest, are reducible to vibrations, but they are in all cases vibrations of the lower subdivisions of their respective worlds, and therefore they cannot reproduce themselves in the causal body, which is built exclusively ...
— A Textbook of Theosophy • C.W. Leadbeater
... family or circle of friends is so constituted that some are obsessed to do certain things and others are obsessed not to stand them the foundation is laid for a degree of irritability inconsistent with mental health. Mrs. X. simply cannot stand hearing Mr. X. tap the floor, and if he continues, her discomfort becomes acute; the sound so dominates her that she can think of nothing else and can accomplish ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... concerned, from 'the contractility of those organs, and from the regulation of that contractility by an automatically acting nervous apparatus;' that muscular contractility and the automatic activity or irritability of the nerves are 'purely the results of molecular mechanism;' and that 'the modes of motion which constitute the physical bases of light, sound, and heat are transmuted by the sensory organs into affections of nervous matter,' which ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... irritability. Uplifted by the possession of a half crown, he became contemptuous of the present, jealous of the past when such coin was ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... would lift him out of this hell of loneliness, this conviction of impotence, this shame of achievementless maturity. He perceived that he had really known this for a long time, and that it was the meaning of the growing irritability which had of late changed his day in the laboratory from the rapt, swift office of the mind it used to be, to an interminable stretch of drudgery checkered with fits of rage at faulty apparatus, neurotic moods when he felt unable to perform fine movements, ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... music had to be left in the background. His family and companions only considered it as a pastime at best, and without serious significance; he therefore kept his aspirations to himself. The old boyish discontent and irritability, which were the result of his former nervous condition, had now given place to his natural frankness of character and charm of manner, which attracted all who came in ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... Brobdingnagians, Yahoos, and Houynhyms, as a diversion to the more painful knowledge of the world around him: they only made him laugh, while men and women made him angry. His feverish impatience made him view the infirmities of that great baby the world, with the same scrutinizing glance and jealous irritability that a parent regards the failings of its offspring; but, as Rousseau has well observed, parents have not on this account been supposed to have more affection for other people's children than their own. In other respects, and except from the sparkling effervescence of his gall, Swift's ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... that he had lived so far inland, would never wear any but nautical clothes—blue jersey and trousers, reefer coat and jack-boots. But this was not his only peculiarity. His love of grog eventually brought on delirium tremens, and his excessive irritability in the interval between each attack was a source of anxiety to all who came in contact with him. At that time there happened to be a baby in the rooms overhead, whose crying so annoyed the Captain that he savagely informed its mother that if she did not keep it quiet, he would not be answerable ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... months, though, that the husband and wife were together, again at Nohant, the scenes began once more. Dudevant's irritability was increased by the fact that he was always short of money, and that he was aware of his own deplorable shortcomings as a financial administrator. He had made speculations which had been disastrous. ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... changing emotion shone through it as through a window into his soul, told of secret harassment. So also did his tense nerves, which seemed wrought up almost to the snapping point. They vented themselves in frequent bursts of irritability and snarling anger. His secretary noticed that he started at every sudden sound, and sometimes also when she had heard nothing, and that then he would look round him in an alarmed, furtive way, as if he expected ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... the members of the Imperial family alone, who should have been the most satisfied, and certainly the most astonished by their greatness, wore an anxious, almost a grieved look. They alone appeared discontented with their master. Their pride knew no bounds; their irritability was extreme. Nothing seemed good enough, for them. In the way of honors privileges, and when we recall their father's modest at Ajaccio, it is hard to keep from smiling at the vanity of these new ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... the higher animals and mankind develop and mature more rapidly, and diseases run their courses more swiftly; while on the other hand these conditions are more favorable to the simpler forms of life, for the reason that in them the orgasm and irritability are entirely dependent on external influences, and all plants are in the same case, because heat, moisture, and light complete the conditions necessary ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... was grasped as if by reflex action. Some observers have stated that reflex movements of the face were quite noticeable. These movements continued sometimes for upward of an hour, occurring mostly in muscular subjects who died very suddenly, and in whom the muscular irritability or nervous stimulus or both had not become exhausted at the moment of dissolution. Richardson doubts the existence of postmortem movements ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... Pope's constitutional irritability kept him constantly on the wing. Though little interested in politics, he liked to be on the edge of any political commotion. He appeared in London on the death of Queen Caroline, in 1737; and Bathurst remarked that "he was ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... Feverish irritability, a constant absorption in thought, made Calyste almost doltish. Often he would sit for hours with his eyes fixed on some figure in the tapestry. One morning his mother implored him to give up Les Touches, and ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... conviction generated no sense of superiority in Margaret—interfered in no degree with the reverence she entertained for Hester, a reverence rather enhanced than impaired by the tender compassion, with which she regarded her mental conflicts and sufferings. Every movement of irritability in herself (and she was conscious of many) alarmed and humbled her, but, at the same time, enabled her better to make allowance for her sister; and every harsh word and unreasonable mood of Hester's, by restoring her to her self-command and stimulating her magnanimity, made ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... vaulting pole. He walked less than he leaped. This was no work for the half light of an obscured moon. Sometimes he halted for light; but delay annoyed him. A pause of ten minutes—he squatted for rest meantime—threw him into a state of incautious irritability. At this rate it would be past dawn before he made the cottages ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... from the general bleakness around. The water of the pits obtained in the neighbourhood had an execrable flavor, and two donkeys sickened and died in less than an hour from its effects. Man suffered nausea and a general irritability of the system, and accordingly revenged himself by cursing the country and its imbecile ruler most heartily. The climax came, however, when Bombay reported, after an attempt to settle the Muhongo, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... not strong, and she is doing far too much. Dawson and I both think so." Perhaps he spoke with some degree of bluntness, for Mrs. Herrick responded with unusual irritability. ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... know," answered Harry. "The fact is that I only made his acquaintance about three weeks ago; but I fear that he suffers a great deal from nervous irritability. It must ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... commission in the Navy was spent upon the Malabar Coast, where the disease is endemic. There can be do doubt that it has been latent in his system ever since, and that the irritability of temper and indecision of character, of which his family have so often had to complain, were really among the symptoms ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... to be sorry for him. It is out of great misery that malignity for the most part proceeds. To give the ordinary mortal a fair chance, let him be reasonably successful and happy. Do not worry a man into nervous irritability, and he will be amiable. Do not dip a man in water, and he will not ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... few things in the world that can compete with the final rehearsals of an amateur theatrical performance at a country house. Every day the atmosphere becomes more and more heavily charged with restlessness and irritability. The producer of the piece, especially if he is also the author of it, develops a sort of intermittent insanity. He plucks at his mustache, if he has one; at his hair, if he has not. He mutters to himself. He gives vent to occasional despairing ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... days to think, and he began to yearn over this man to whom he had been a sort of traitor. He saw John's wilfulness with Elizabeth—heard many things without being able to avoid hearing them, being pinned to his bed—he saw where John's irritability lost good help during the busy season and left double duty for faithful Jake, his supercilious attitude toward Luther, and his illy concealed contempt for the farmers about them, and one of his ways ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... decisive measure which made the writer an object of suspicion to the more conservative of his fellow-members of Congress, but his reference in one of them to 'the whims, the caprice, the vanity, the superstition, and the irritability of some of his colleagues,' and particularly to John Dickinson as 'a certain great fortune but trifling genius,' made him personal enemies by whom he was ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... finally a monomaniac character of a novel and extraordinary form—hourly and momently gaining vigor—and at length obtaining over me the most incomprehensible ascendancy. This monomania, if I must so term it, consisted in a morbid irritability of those properties of the mind in metaphysical science termed the attentive. It is more than probable that I am not understood; but I fear, indeed, that it is in no manner possible to convey to the mind of the merely general ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... swerved and which alone enabled him to perform the exacting social duties expected of him, he had recently neglected. He felt the impending bodily demoralisation, the threatened mental disintegration; he suspected its symptoms in a new nervous irritability, in lapses of self-command, in unaccountable excesses utterly foreign to ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... however, the meal was over, and when Geordie had lit his pit lamp and stuck his pipe in his mouth, all three started off with a curt "Good morning" to Mrs. Sinclair, who looked after her boys with a smile which chased away the previous irritability from her face. ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... family, in these ambiguous circumstances, is everything that could be desired. My original feeling of irritability has passed away. I should have supposed it to be what Pallas calls "fatigue," a confusion or discord of the nerve-centres, which she tells me is incident to mortality. What Pallas can possibly know about it is more than I can guess, especially, as there were not infrequent occasions ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... to extravagance towards any one who had ever been connected with his fortunes or his travels; playful, light-hearted, witty, and humorous, but not without those occasional fits of black depression and nervous irritability to which such temperaments ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... unwarily passed his word—his word, which, with yeomanly pride, John Cobham held sacred as his bond—to let him remain until he committed some offence; but, for this offence, both he and Daniel watched and waited with an impatience and irritability which contrasted strangely with the honourable self-restraint that withheld him from direct abuse ...
— Jesse Cliffe • Mary Russell Mitford
... to lose his poise and agreeableness under any circumstances. Irritability never attracts business. To say the right thing in the right place is desirable, but it is quite as important, though more difficult, to leave unsaid the wrong thing ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... had meanwhile taken fresh forms. After the failure of his attempt to restore Bartja, (transformed as he fancied into a bow) to his original shape, his irritability increased so frightfully that a single word, or even a look, was sufficient to make him furious. Still his true friend and counsellor, Croesus, never left him, though the king had more than once given him over to the guards for execution. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... house sullenly, followed by Nixon. The sailor was just in that species of drunken humour which made him jealous, passionate, and troublesome, without showing any other disorder than that of irritability. As he walked towards the beach he kept muttering to himself, but in such a tone that his companion lost not a word, 'Smuggling fellow—Aye, smuggler—and, start your cargo into the sea—and be ready to start for the Hebrides, or Sweden—or the devil, I suppose. ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... day he returned amongst us, and we immediately saw that he was not happy. His pallid countenance, drawn features contracted by a perpetual irritability, the violent manners degenerated into a nervous rage, the hollow sound of his once fine ringing laugh, all showed that he was an altered man. Too proud to admit that he had made a mistake, he would, not complain, but the old friends who gathered round him were soon convinced ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... fretful words, they come back to me like echoes. If I bristle all over with irritability, the quills will begin to rise all about me. One thoroughly irritable person in a breakfast-room spoils coffee and toast, sours milk, and destroys appetite for a whole family. He produces ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... applicable to the case of Thomas Roch? One may be permitted to doubt it, even amid the tranquil and salubrious surroundings of Healthful House. As a matter of fact the very symptoms of uneasiness, changes of temper, irritability, queer traits of character, melancholy, apathy, and a repugnance for serious occupations were distinctly apparent; no treatment seemed capable of curing or even alleviating these symptoms. This was patent to ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... religious instruction, but Dr Howe was intent upon not inculcating dogma before she had grasped the essential moral truths of Christianity and the story of the Bible. She grew up a gay, cheerful girl, loving, optimistic, but with a nervous system inclining to irritability, and requiring careful education in self-control. In 1860 her eldest sister Mary's death helped to bring on a religious crisis, and through the influence of some of her family she was received into the Baptist church; she became for some years after ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... seems to have been uninterrupted by any disagreement, except on one occasion when Michelangelo gave way to his suspicious irritability, quite at the close of his long life. This drew forth from Cavalieri the following manly ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... sir. If you were in robust health there would be none of that display of irritability of temper that you evince. You as his messmate must have noticed this irritability, ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... to make them fall about his head like so many pillows. Ink, as it resembles Styx in its colour, should resemble it a little in its operation too; whoever has been once dipt should become invulnerable: But it is not so; the irritability of authors has long been enrolled among the comforts of ill-nature, and the triumphs of stupidity; such let it long remain! Let me at least take care in the worst storms that may arise in public or in private life, to ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... manner and amiable characteristics in his every-day home-life presented a striking contrast to his irritability and indignation under a sense of injury; for whenever he considered himself wronged or insulted his wrath boiled up with the suddenness of a squall at sea. He resented a slight, real or imaginary, with unusual ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... equipped, well formed, well led, went through without trouble—indeed, with real pleasure. Nevertheless the overwhelming testimony is on the other side. Probably this was due in large part to the irritability that always seizes the mind of the tenderfoot when he is confronted by wilderness conditions. A man who is a perfectly normal and agreeable citizen in his own environment becomes a suspicious half-lunatic when ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White |
