"Itch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... party, but we had a feerce time gettin sugar. You no mister Hoover the new minister I was telling you about? Well he has got reel exited about sugar, and he has told the shopkeepers they must give only one pound to itch family, and miss Betty she wanted more than that to make my cake, because she sez it is hard enuf to cook with things but it is the limit to cook without them. And she dident no what to do until ...
— Deer Godchild • Marguerite Bernard and Edith Serrell
... Aristotle to school-divinity. He has sounded both religions, and anchored in the best, and is a protestant out of judgment, not faction; not because his country, but his reason is on this side. The ministry is his choice, not refuge, and yet the pulpit not his itch, but fear. His discourse is substance, not all rhetoric, and he utters more things than words. His speech is not helped with inforced action, but the matter acts itself. He shoots all his meditations at one but; and beats upon his text, not the cushion; making his hearers, not the ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... Tarum hath naught to say to thee," replied Birnier, "but the fingers of Tarum will to make thee to itch even ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... themselves. Why are they again before the public? Had they hopes of skulking into obscurity among the motley multitude of certificates which throng the folio of the book? or have they like one of the moral personages in Hudibras, "catch'd the itch on purpose to be scratch'd?" It now requires an eye less keen than that of a ministering spirit to pierce the cob web veil which ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector
... coffee-pot dance and roll like a thing in pain, and swore when all was done. But he did not shoot, though one could see how his fingers must itch for the ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... marvels of a thousand Patagonian sights and sounds, helped to sway me to my wish. With other men, perhaps, such things would not have been inducements; but as for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts. Not ignoring what is good, I am quick to perceive a horror, and could still be social with it—would they let me—since it is but ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... thus rubb'd it for a pretty while, I felt very little or no pain, in so much that I doubted, whether it were the true Couhage; but whil'st I was considering; I found the Down begin to make my hand itch, and in some places to smart again, much like the stinging of a Flea or Gnat, and this continued a pretty while, so that by degrees I found my skin to be swell'd with little red pustules, and to look as if it had been itchie. But suffering it without rubbing or scratching, the itching ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... metallic effort. I found this brown room of the Commons-house, with its green benches, and grilled galleries, so agreeable to my mood, that I went again the next morning, and listened to more records, till they tired me: for what I had was a prurient itch to hear secret scandals, and revelations of the festering heart, but these cylinders, gathered from a shop, divulged nothing. I then went out to make for Woolwich, but in the car saw the poet's note-book in which I had written: and ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... and as fine as they make 'em. I don't reckon he'd care for a house as grand as that but you see he's married. Funny how some women first want to get married, then want their men to get rich, then instead of bein' satisfied get the society itch and after that are forever scratchin', ain't it? Mrs. Sayers spends about half her time in Europe. Schools here weren't good enough for her girl Margaret, so she took her over to some of those nunneries in ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... some rare natures, is the unbroken pastime of a life. These are enviable natures; people shut in the house by sickness often bitterly envy them; but the commoner man cannot continue to exist upon such altitudes: his feet itch for physical adventure; his blood boils for physical dangers, pleasures, and triumphs; his fancy, the looker after new things, cannot continue to look for them in books and crucibles, but must seek them on the breathing stage ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fifteen years of slow and torturous dying by inches, succumbed to the same disease, absorbed the mercurial poison in his boyhood days while attending a boarding school. He was twice salivated by mercurial ointments applied to cure the itch (scabies), a disease which was epidemic at times among the boys. He likewise never ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... unfrequently troubled with diseases of the skin, which are often supposed to be the itch: for these eruptions they generally use repellant external applications; this plan of treatment ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... and see Mrs. Flynn now," said Pen. She was really eager for a visit with Jane Ames. She wondered if Iron Skull might not have been over-suspicious regarding Sara's purposes. Sara had an unquenchable itch for money-making. During all his long illness he had never ceased, with his father's help, to trade in real estate. Pen suspected that the savings of many Greek immigrants were absorbed in Sara's and his ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... tenet, that as Sayyidn (our Lord) dam had died intestate, so all men (Arabs) have a right to all things, provided the right can be established by might. Hence the saying of the Fellah, "Shun the Arab and the itch." Thus encouraged by the Shaykhs, the "dodges" of the clansmen became as manifold as they were palpable. They wanted us to pay for camping-ground; they complained aloud when we cut a palm-frond for palms, or used ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... my feet itch, and my tongue too. I've got commissions from all the rival hair people; none of them give more than thirty per cent discount; we must manage forty on every hundred remitted, and I'll answer for a hundred thousand ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... smiled. "He has but one failing," said he, "an itch for horse-dealing; but for that he might be a much richer man than he is; he is continually buying and exchanging horses, and generally finds himself a loser by his bargains: but he is a worthy creature, and skilful in his profession—it ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... way of mending the matter—that's curing the itch by scratching the skin off. I could not give your tall fellows less than a crown a-piece, and I could buy off the bloodiest Mohawk in the kingdom, if he's a Whig, for half that sum. But, thank Heaven, the supper ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... persisted in trying to scratch an itching back on parade. Military discipline, I need not tell you, Major, doesn't take into account the sensitiveness of a recruit's back. It flatly denies such a phenomenon. Now I think I can defy anything in God's quaint universe to make me itch. But that's by the way. I tore the letter up and never answered it. You do these things, sir, when the whole universe seems to be a stumbling-block and an offence. Phyllis was the stumbling-block and the rest of the cosmos was the other thing. That's why I have reason on my side ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... forth the gentle swine, To ease her itch against the stump, And dismally was heard to whine, All as she scrubb'd her ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... All the drawbacks against the equivalent gains, Ere you finally settled the point. What remains But to stick to your choice? You want money: 'tis here. A settled position: 'tis yours. A career: You secure it. A wife, young, and pretty as rich, Whom all men will envy you. Why must you itch To be running away, on the eve of all this, To a woman whom never for once did you miss All these years since you left her? Who knows what may hap? This letter—to ME—is a palpable trap. The woman has changed since you knew her. Perchance She yet seeks to renew her ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... clothes hang from them. Their flesh is often caked with dirt. They do not smell sweet. Their manners are crude: I think they must all have studied Guides to Good Society. They spit when and where they will. Some of them writhe in a manner so suggestive as to give you the itch. This writhe is known as the Spitalfields Crawl. There is a story of a constable who was on night duty near the doors of one of the doss establishments, when a local doctor passed him. "Say," said the doctor, with a chuckle, "you're standing rather close, aren't you? Want to take something away ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... to help me in this work, by filing and classifying the various slips of paper on which I made notes. Now that she has got married and cannot help me any more I have given up the idea of finishing my great work. I am satisfying my evil itch for writing by setting down an account of the short struggle between north-eastern Ulster and the ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... which numerous communities are generally more exposed than others, chose not to live in the great monastery on the summit, but in a hermitage on the descent of the mountain, under the discipline of Martyrius, a holy ancient anchoret. By silence, he curbed the insolent itch of talking about every thing, an ordinary vice in learned men, but usually a mark of pride and self-sufficiency. By perfect humility and obedience, he banished the dangerous desire of self-complacency in his actions. ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... and sure enough, there sat Tommie Bankson, and even from where we were placed we could see his hands tremble with the itch for possession, and his lips go dry with excitement as he thought of the material assets in full view under the glare of ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... his fingers itch for a draw. Instead of asking for a hand, though, he took a letter from his pocket and wrote on the back of it something for memorization. Then he told the boys he had not yet eaten supper, and they excused him with good-natured remarks. After indulging ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... pauses the fret and jar of the labouring train gave place to a babel of voices—shouting, expostulating, denunciating in every conceivable key. For the third-class passenger in the East is nothing if not vociferous, and the itch of travel has penetrated even to ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... heath; Dare in the teeth Of the balk and the failure; The clasp and the linger Of loosening finger, Loth to dissever; Thrill of the comrade heart to its fellow Through droughts that sicken and blasts that bellow From purple furrow to harvest yellow, Now and forever. How our feet itch to keep time to their measure! How our hearts lift to the lilt of their song! Let the world go, for a day's royal pleasure! Not every summer such waifs ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... (Indeed, a common habit is the one so frequently heard,—a little laugh when there is no feeling of merriment and no occasion for it.) Motor activity discharges tension and is pleasurable and these tics furnish a momentary pleasure; they relieve a feeling that some of the victims compare to an itch and the habit thus is based on a seeking of relief, even though that relief is obtained in a way that distresses the more ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... Harriet, while Mother was telephoning a last good-by to some friend, he found a square white box on the parlor table, neatly tied with red string—one of that mysterious kind that makes your fingers fairly itch to untie the string and look inside. Sunny Boy ...
— Sunny Boy in the Country • Ramy Allison White
... being smashed flatter'n a pancake, do you? I don't see why you had to go and pick out one of the upper berths, just because you imagined it was a mite bigger'n any other. 'Tain't fair, I tell you. Go easy now, and quit that moving about. If you've got the itch say so, and we'll rub you down with something. Stop ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone
... hitting and hurting one or more of them. It was taught also that, if, when young and old were in the lodge and the fire had burned low, an older person were to lay the unburned ends of the sticks upon the fire, all the children in the lodge would have the scab, or itch. So, at the call "Look out for the scab!" some child would always jump to the fire, and ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell
... the morning, and whilst I was in bed, the king sent his pages to request me to visit his royal mother, with some specific for the itch, with which her majesty was then afflicted. I said I could not go so far in the sun; I would wait till I received the promised palace near her. In the meanwhile I prepared to call on him. I observed, in fact, that I was an object of jealousy between the two courts, ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... she said. "I shall just have it pointed white and do the doa—I'm not su' how I shall do the doa. Whetha I shall do the doa gold or a vehy, vehy 'itch blue." ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... the consequences of it were ever lacerating his uneasy spirit, and thus he never allowed himself to be forgotten; restrictions impishly vexatious were ordered with monotonous regularity. Napoleon aptly described Lowe as "being afflicted with an inveterate itch." ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... around, And wise men walk'd as on enchanted ground. But now when time has made the imposture plain (Late though he follow'd truth, and limping held her train), What new delusion charms your cheated eyes again? The painted harlot might a while bewitch, But why the hag uncased, and all obscene with itch? ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... without a 'itch. It is not so difficult to secure the cat. 'E is asleep in the drawing-room. There is nobody at hand. I have in my bedroom a 'at-box which I have brought from Paris. I have brought it with me to the drawing-room. I have placed in it the cat. I have escaped from ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... spring, I run, I smash up the wash-tubs, the pots, the farm implements, a fowl-house, the household things, and everything, in a way that I cannot describe. But I dare not confess to you all my misdeeds, because speaking of them makes my mouth water, and the thing with which God curses me makes me itch dreadfully. If this folly bites and pricks me, and slays my virtue, will God, who has placed this great love in my body, condemn ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... on the "boring in" process begun by theoretical Socialists with an itch for revolution—paper soldiers anxious to get a-straddle of the great strike-conducting war-horse of I. W. W.'ism and ride into "the dictatorship of the proletariat." This ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... yourself three times with oil all o'er, Then swim the Tiber through from shore to shore, Taking good care, as night draws on, to steep Your brain in liquor: then you'll have your sleep. Or, if you still have such an itch to write, Sing of some moving incident of fight; Sing of great Caasar's victories: a bard Who works at that ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... to wield a weapon," he rejoined, "and he will itch to use it." I think we were both a little sententious because of the approach of the train. "Your argument is, I suppose, that the country is ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... indoors to scour, they began on the yard, orchard, barn and road. Mother even had Leon stack the wood pile straighter. She said when corded wood leaned at an angle, it made people seem shiftless; and she never passed a place where it looked that way that her fingers didn't just itch to get at it. He had to pull every ragweed on each side of the road as far as our land reached, and lay every rail straight in the fences. Father had to take spikes and our biggest maul and go to the bridges at the foot of the ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... tell you what has been a great improvement to you; it is your own writings. This itch of scribbling has been a charming help. For here, having a natural fund of good sense, and prudence above your years, you have, with the observations these have enabled you to make, been flint and steel ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... they do come, and it seldom rains but it pours, the identical afternoon of the lecture a strange lady descended from the Rouen Accommodation and was greeted on the platform by the wealthiest citizen of the county. Judge Briscoe, and his daughter, Minnie, and (what stirred wonder to an itch almost beyond endurance) Mr. Fisbee! and they then drove through town on the way to the Briscoe mansion, all four, apparently, in a fluster of pleasure and exhilaration, the strange lady engaged in earnest conversation with Mr. Fisbee ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... iron, be often in the dumps, and frig and wriggle it. He would flay the fox, say the ape's paternoster, return to his sheep, and turn the hogs to the hay. He would beat the dogs before the lion, put the plough before the oxen, and claw where it did not itch. He would pump one to draw somewhat out of him, by griping all would hold fast nothing, and always eat his white bread first. He shoed the geese, kept a self-tickling to make himself laugh, and was very steadable in the kitchen: made a mock at the gods, would cause sing Magnificat at matins, and ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... was tuberculous in mind and body, and the only novel of his I read, pretty well turned my stomach. Mr Aronson's strong point was jokes about the war. If he heard of any acquaintance who had joined up or was even doing war work his merriment knew no bounds. My fingers used to itch to box the ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... with the ointment of sulphur, and keep the body gently open by taking every day a small dose of sulphur and treacle. When the cure is effected, let the clothes be carefully fumigated with sulphur, or the contagion will again be communicated. The dry itch requires a vegetable diet, and the liberal use of anti-scorbutics: the parts affected may be rubbed with a strong ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... candles with which fire is set to the pile. All young married pairs are expected to range themselves about the fire and to dance round it. Young men leap over the flames, but girls and women content themselves with going round them, while they pray to be preserved from the itch and other skin-diseases. When the ceremony is over, the people eagerly pick up charred sticks or ashes of the fire and preserve them or scatter them on the four corners of the roof, in the cattle-stall, in the garden, and on the pastures; for these holy ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... ha peggiore" (There is nothing worse under Heaven than a scanty beard and a colourless face), and in Piedmont there is a saying, "Faccia smorta, peggio che scabbia" (An ashen face is worse than the itch). The Venetians have a number of proverbs expressing distrust of the criminal type: "Uomo rosso e femina barbuta da lontan xe megio la saluta" (Greet from afar the red-haired man and the bearded woman); "Vardete da chi te parla ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... every child hates Shylock, though his soul Still sits at squat, and peeps not from its hole. At half mankind when generous Manly raves, All know 'tis virtue, for he thinks them knaves: When universal homage Umbra pays, All see 'tis vice, and itch of vulgar praise. When flattery glares, all hate it in a queen, While one there is who charms us with his spleen. But these plain characters we rarely find; Though strong the bent, yet quick the turns of mind: Or puzzling contraries confound the whole; Or affectations quite reverse ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... Green's, over the way, yesterday towards evening, I took a walk with cousin Sally to see the good folks in Sudbury Street, & found them all well. I had my HEDDUS roll on, aunt Storer said it ought to be made less, Aunt Deming said it ought not to be made at all. It makes my head itch, & ach, & burn like anything Mamma. This famous roll is not made wholly of a red Cow Tail, but is a mixture of that, & horsehair (very course) & a little human hair of yellow hue, that I suppose was taken out of the back part of an old wig. But D—— made it (our head) all carded together ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... whom I was surrounded. I had a rapacious mind, and there was ample satisfaction for it in the men who haunted my salon and were constantly to be met elsewhere. European men are instruits. They are interested in every vital subject, intellectual and political, despite the itch of amor, their deliberate cult of sex. They like to talk. Conversation is an art. My mind was never uncompanioned. But that deeper spiritual rapacity, one offspring of passion as it may be, they could not satisfy; for love with them is always too confused with animalism and is desiccated in the ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Baba should be satisfied with the oblivion-mantle of knighthood and relapse into dingy respectability in the Avilion of Brompton or Bath; but since he has taken to wearing stars the accompanying itch for blood and ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... healthful and well-provisioned, so that the Spaniards who are stricken with sickness in other islands go thither to recover their health. The natives are healthy and clean; and although the island of Cubu is also healthful and has a good climate, most of its inhabitants are always afflicted with the itch and buboes. In the island of Panay the natives declare that no one of them had ever been afflicted with buboes until the people from Bohol—who, as we said above, abandoned Bohol on account of the people of Maluco—came to settle in Panay, and gave the disease to some of the natives. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583 • Various
... accidentally discharged;— Invoking still a "song o' sixpence" from The Scottish fiddle of each lusty palm, Thy Judges, California, skilled to play This silent music, through the livelong-day Perform obsequious before the rich, And still the more they scratch the more they itch! ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... seen cowards turn pale, but never the colour washed from a brave man's face. The sight made my fingers itch to strangle ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... his will?[603] (That's not so soon unriddled.) And where is "Fum" the Fourth, our "royal bird?"[604] Gone down, it seems, to Scotland to be fiddled Unto by Sawney's violin, we have heard: "Caw me, caw thee"—for six months hath been hatching This scene of royal itch and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... sae muckle the waur, Robin," replied the Bailie, averting his eyes from the money, though, like Caesar on the Lupercal, his fingers seemed to itch for it—"Rebellion is waur than witchcraft, or robbery either; there's gospel ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... pain had subsided to an over-all smarting itch. He'd have to bear with that until his work was finished and he could enjoy a hot bath. He got another bottle out of the first-aid kit—a flat pint, labeled "Old Overholt," containing a locally-manufactured specific for inward and subjective wounds—and medicated himself copiously from ...
— Police Operation • H. Beam Piper
... home seventy-three guineas, and let my old governess see what good luck I had at play. However, it was her advice that I should not venture again, and I took her counsel, for I never went there any more; for I knew as well as she, if the itch of play came in, I might soon lose that, and all the rest of what ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... would elide it altogether, were it possible, but as you will presently see, that is not possible if I am to make myself intelligible. And I find that the more I write of myself the more I am affected by the same poor itch for self-exposure which has made Pepys and Casanova and Rousseau famous, and ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... plant or plants dedicated to Saint Roch: the pennyroyal, and two species of Inula, one with bright yellow flowers, a purgative that cures the itch. Formerly on Saint Roch's day branches of this herb were blessed and hung in the cow-houses to preserve the ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... the soul grows cold again, it also forgets this grace received, and waxeth carnal, begins again to itch after the world, loseth the life and savour of heavenly things, grieves the Spirit of God, woefully backslides, casteth off closet duties quite, or else retains only the formality of them, is a reproach to religion, grieves the hearts of them that are awake, and tender of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... with tar like sheep. His couch would have been the bare earth, dry or wet as the weather might be; and from that couch he would have risen half poisoned with stench, half blind with the reek of turf, and half mad with the itch, [322] ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... itch and he saw that he was near an ant hill. Then the cactus at his right boomed out mournfully and a hole appeared in it. He fired at the smoke and a yell informed him that he had made a hit. "Go 'way!" ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... away quietly, and Rawling shivered at this cool fury. The rattles made his spine itch, and suddenly his valley seemed like a place of demons. The lanterns circling on the lawn seemed like frail glow-worms, incredibly useless, and he leaned on the window-pane listening with ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... hark to him!" cried the little fat man. "It is even thus, Dicon! Wit, lad, is a catching thing, like the itch or the sweating sickness. I exude it round me; it is an aura. I tell you, coz, that no man can come within seventeen feet of me without catching a spark. Look at your own case. A duller man never stepped, ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the matter, you dissentious rogues, That rubbing the poor itch of your opinion Make ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... Seward is a blockhead of the provoking species. In his itch for correction, he forgot the words—"lies my safe way!" The bear is the extreme pole, and thither he would travel over the space contained between ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... poor are hardly ever free from such temptation; hardly ever free from it. I know. I, with all the advantages behind me of traditions, associations, memories, hopes, knowledge, and tastes, to which most very poor people are strangers, I have felt my fingers itch, my stomach crave woundily, as I passed along a mean street in which food-stuffs were exposed outside shop windows; a practice which, upon a variety of counts, ought long since to ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... did very wisely root out the roses from the collar of the order and plant the thistles in their stead, as the nobler flower of the two. For which reason it is conjectured by profounder antiquaries that the satirical itch, so prevalent in this part of our island, was first brought among us from beyond the Tweed. Here may it long flourish and abound; may it survive and neglect the scorn of the world with as much ease and contempt as the world ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... I had some painful minutes. As they dragged by, an abominable curiosity took hold of me, an itch to open the door of the shed, strike a match, and have a look at the dead face I had never seen. Then came into my mind a passage in the Republic which I had read a fortnight before—how that one Leontius, ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... earnest, was eager to learn the truth. She might be put to some use. At any rate he had been unworthy of his own ideals when he, assuming without question that she was the usual capitalistic snob with the itch for gratifying vanity by patronizing the "poor dear lower classes," had been ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... heavy as is the catalogue given by another philosopher of the number of authors he mastered before his twelfth year. Two attacks of the plague, agues, tertian and quotidian, malignant ulcers, hernia, haemorrhoids, varicose veins, palpitation of the heart, gout, indigestion, the itch, and foulness of skin. Relief in the second attack of plague came from a sweat so copious that it soaked the bed and ran in streams down to the floor; and, in a case of continuous fever, from voiding a hundred and twenty ounces of urine. As a boy he was a sleep-walker, and he never became warm ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... its small thrills. But never now did he read more than one paper in a single day; the lesson of those two months had sunk in. No temptation, howsoever strong—the desire to know how the divorce trial of the H. K. Peabodys turned out, the itch of yearning to learn whether the body of the man found drowned in Exeter Pond was identified—proved potent enough to pull him away from his rule. That the news he read was anywhere from ten weeks to four months old when it reached him ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... of Touch. — N. itching, pruritis &c. v[Med].; titillation, formication[obs3], aura; stereognosis[obs3]. V. itch, tingle, creep, thrill, sting; prick, prickle; tickle, titillate. Adj. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... into all the kingdoms of the earth. And thy carcase shall be meat unto all fowls of the air, and unto the beasts of the earth, and no man shall fray them away. The Lord will smite thee with the botch of Egypt, the scab and the itch, with madness and blindness, that thou shalt grope at noonday, as the blind gropeth in darkness. Thou shalt not prosper in thy ways, and thou shalt be only oppressed and spoiled evermore, and no man shall save thee. Thou ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... premature blast, after all I've learned he's plannin' to slip us, if I wasn't sure that he's going to get it, worse than I could ever give it to him, from that girl herself? Well, I would. He makes me shiver, that man; makes me crawl and itch to take his head in one hand and his throat in the other and exert a little strength in opposite directions. Give our entry time! The game is running dead against him at present, I'll admit, but he's husbanding his chips. He ain't drawing wild and squandering ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... little itch of fear for the ore-mad people, "legal forms are being put to fearful strains, are they not, with all ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... Bruno was unable to comprehend just what was being said, thanks to his complete ignorance of the language employed; but he felt morally certain that ugly threats were passing through those thin lips, and even so soon his hands began to itch and his blood to glow, both urging him ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... you know that type of woman, with an itch to get into Society. Perhaps she thought that the marriage of her niece to a Penreath of Twelvetrees would open doors for her. At any rate, I remember there was a great deal of tittle-tattle at the time to the effect that she manoeuvred desperately hard to bring about ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... servile kind, as I showed you in the close of the last Lecture,—while, on the other hand, we have absolutely ceased from the exercise of faithful imagination; and the only remnants of the desire of truth which remain in us have been corrupted into a prurient itch to discover the origin of life in the nature of the dust, and prove that the source of the order of the universe is the accidental concurrence ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... been left without women were anxious to procure some, and one day saw the shape of human beings sliding down the trees, whom they could not catch. But by employing four men who had rough hands from a disease like the itch, these four strange beings ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... one, how he grinds his teeth; Still farther would I speak, but am afraid Lest he to scratch my itch ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... But if we gossip about another in all corners and stir the filth, no one will be reformed, and afterwards when we are to stand up and bear witness, we deny having said so. Therefore it would serve such tongues right if their itch for slander were severely punished, as a warning to others. If you were acting for your neighbor's reformation or from love of the truth, you would not sneak about secretly nor shun the day and ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... him at the tip of the snout. When replaced in his cage, the Mole keeps on scratching his nose with his broad paws. The thing seems to burn, to itch. Henceforth, less and less of the provision of Cicadae is consumed; on the evening of the following day, it is refused altogether. About thirty-six hours after being bitten, the Mole dies during the night and certainly not from inanition, for there are still half a dozen live Cicadae in the receptacle, ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... the other. It enrages me to see the airs of superiority they give themselves. They scarce seem even to see us as we walk in their streets; and as to the soldiers as they stride along with helmet and shield, my fingers itch to meet them in the forest. No; I promised to walk so far with you, but I go no farther. How ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... his success with the Sellers play and his itch to follow it up, Mark Twain realized what he believed to be his literary limitations. All his life he was inclined to consider himself wanting in the finer gifts of character-shading and delicate portrayal. Remembering Huck Finn, and the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... heavy head. The shoulders ache under the galling weight of sword and haversack, and every inch of clammy skin on the body seems ten times as sensitive as it normally is. The nerves in the face and hands feel like swelled veins that itch so that they long to be torn by the nails. The tongue and eyes seem to expand to twice their usual size. Sound itself loses its sharp conciseness, and reaches the brain only as a blurred ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... bloomless and now brown with autumn—and I paced its gravelled paths up and down, at the same time favoring Mr. Beasley's house with a covert study that would have done credit to a porch-climber, for the sting of my blunder at the table was quiescent, or at least neutralized, under the itch of a curiosity far from satisfied concerning the interesting premises next door. The gentleman in the dressing-gown, I was sure, could have been no other than the Honorable David Beasley himself. He came not in eyeshot now, neither he nor any other; there was no sign of life about the place. ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... skin, 3.3 per cent. rheumatism, 2.5 per cent. diseases of the brain and nervous system, 1.4 per cent. frost-bite or mortification produced by low vitality and chills, 13, or one in 12,000, had sunstroke, 257 had the itch, and 68 per cent. of all were of the zymotic class,[47] which are considered as principally due to privation, exposure, and personal neglect. The deaths from these classes of causes were in a somewhat similar proportion to the mortality from all stated causes,—being 58 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... and purifies the eyesight, and makes traitors behold nothing but innocence in the blackest malefactors. 'Tis a mighty cordial for a declining cause; it stifles faction or schism, as certainly as the itch is destroyed by butter and brimstone. In a word, it makes wise men fools, and fools wise men, and both knaves. The very colour of this precious balm is bright and dazzling. If it be properly applied to the fist, that is in a decent manner, ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... chief-inquisitor, The town's true master if the town but knew! We merely kept a governor for form, While this man walked about and took account Of all thought, said and acted, then went home, And wrote it fully to our Lord the King Who has an itch to know things, he knows why, And reads them in his bedroom of a night. Oh, you might smile! there wanted not a touch, A tang of ... well, it was not wholly ease As back into your mind the man's look came. Stricken in ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... and St. Fiage, against syphilis. St. John, against epilepsy and poison. St. Lawrence, against diseases of the back and shoulders. St. Liberius, against the stone and fistula. St. Maine, against the scab. St. Margaret and St. Edine, against danger in parturition. St. Martin, against the itch. St. Marus, against palsy and convulsions. St. Otilia and St. Juliana, against sore eyes and the headache. St. Pernel, against the ague. St. Petronilla, St. Apollonia, and St. Lucy, against the toothache. ——, and St. Genevieve, against fevers. ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... head and Steele were not the only notable figures to be seen at Button's. Pope was a constant visitor there, as he was reminded by Cibber in his famous letter. Those were the days when, in Cibber's phrase, the author of the "Dunciad" was remarkable for his satirical itch of provocation, when there were few upon whom he did not fall in some biting epigram. He so fell upon Ambrose Philips, who forthwith hung a rod up in Button's, and let Pope know that he would use it on him should ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... but the sport of others, by running your head into unnecessary danger; and since this youth, who got out of the scrape so handsomely, has beat you at your own game, it may cure you of that cursed itch for tongue-trifling, upon which you so much pride yourself. 'Twould have done, and it did very well at the county sessions, in getting men out of the wood; but as you have commenced a new business entirely, it's but well to leave off the ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... who was becomingly affable to one of inferior station, express the perfunctory hope that he hadn't kept Nogam waiting long, and Nogam reply to the simple effect of "Oh, not at all, sir." To this he added that he 'oped there had been no 'itch, he was most heager to be installed in his new situation, and would do his best to give satisfaction. Karslake replied airily that he was sure Nogam would do famously, and Nogam said "Thank you, sir." Then Karslake ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... in laughing, laugh in biting, hide himself in the water for fear of rain, go cross, fall into dumps, look demure, skin the fox, say the ape's paternoster, return to his sheep, turn the sows into the hay, beat the dog before the lion, put the cart before the horse, scratch where he did not itch, shoe the grasshopper, tickle himself to make himself laugh, know flies in milk, scrape paper, blur parchment, then run away, pull at the kid's leather, reckon without his host, beat the bushes without catching the birds, and thought that bladders were lanterns. He always looked ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... end to their own thinking and bury themselves in their own little alleys and be happy again. You know as well as I, it makes them miserable to think. Restless, irritable, indignant. It's like having bites—the more they're scratched the worse they itch. It's the war, of course. The war has been a failure. The race has caught itself red-handed in a lie. Now everybody is running around trying to confess to everybody else that what he said in the past was a lie and that the real truth is as follows. And there's where the trouble ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... you; but by the same Argument, Circumcision of the Flesh may be defended; for that moderates the Itch of Coition, and brings Pain. If all hated Fish as bad as I do, I would scarce put a Parricide ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... so common in the military Hospitals as the Itch. It is of an infectious Nature, and now most commonly believed to be entirely owing to little Insects lodged in the Skin, which many Authors affirm they have seen in the Pustules by the Help of a Microscope; and that the Disorder is entirely communicated by ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... sunbeam; then it replied, "A conscience dark, either with its own or with another's shame, will indeed feel thy speech as harsh; but nevertheless, all falsehood laid aside, make thy whole vision manifest, and let the scratching be even where the itch is; for if at the first taste thy voice shall be molestful, afterwards, when it shall be digested, it will leave vital nourishment. This cry of thine shall do as the wind, which heaviest strikes ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... changing places with her, to be a goddess for a few hours every week, to have more money than she could spend on herself, and to be pursued with requests for autographs and grand pianos, not to mention invitations to supper from those supernal personages whose uneasy heads wear crowns or itch for them; and Senorita da Cordova told herself rather petulantly that Lady Maud would rather starve than be the most successful soprano that ever trilled on the high A till the house yelled with delight, and ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... inches of them, and who, when he did read, moved book or paper back and forth in front of his spectacles in a droll, owlish, improbable way, instead of letting his eyes travel across the lines of print, was skeptical at first. He suspected Bonbright of being a youth scratching the itch of a sudden and transient enthusiasm. But he became interested. Bonbright compelled his interest, for he was earnest, intense, not enthusiastic, not effervescing with ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... Mr. Goadby is not much above his countryman in literary acquirements, if we may judge by his treatment of the names of Schwann and Lieberkuhn, whom he repeatedly calls Schawn and Leiberkuhn, and by the indignity which he offers to the itch-insect by naming it Aearus Scabiaei. It is not necessary to give further examples; but, if the general statement be disputed, we are prepared to speckle the book with corrections until it looks like a sign-board with a charge of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... smite thee with the botch of Egypt, and with the emerods, and with the scab, and with the itch, whereof thou canst ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... rank falsehood. Fear'st thou not death? Fie, there's a knavish itch In that salt blood, an utter foe to smarting! Had Jaffier's wife proved kind, he'd still been true. Faugh—how ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway
... like time. During the Chartist agitation there were frequently as many as 5,000 to 6,000 copies of Feargus O'Connor's Northern Star sold here, and many hundreds a week of the Weekly Dispatch, a great favourite with "the people" then. Cacoethes scribendi, or the scribbling itch, is a complaint many local people have suffered from, but to give a list of all the magazines, newspapers, journals, and periodicals that have been published here is impossible. Many like garden flowers have bloomed, fruited, and lived their little ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... a man who is at all tainted with the itch of gaming to leave off play in such a situation, especially when he is likewise heated with liquor, I leave to the gamester to determine. Certain it is that Booth had no inclination to desist; but, on the contrary, was so eagerly ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... York City they came down from 35 to 20 miles and Fry could read the marquee of the Fulton Theater. "The Seven Year Itch" ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... circumstances being the same, it was decidedly a mistake to make the others feel their inferiority, and, as I think, a mark of ill breeding to boot. His few words were sneers, and he had a contemptuous way of looking at a man that made one itch to thrash him. At length he was thrashed, and very smartly, by a man in our dormitory, and after that he was utterly ignored, by general consent. ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... with infinite labour. — Sir, I have lately cured a woman in Bristol — a common prostitute, sir, who had got all the worst symptoms of the disorder; such as nodi, tophi, and gummata, verruca, cristoe Galli, and a serpiginous eruption, or rather a pocky itch all over her body. By the time she had taken the second pill, sir, by Heaven! she was as smooth as my hand, and the third made her sound and as fresh as a new born infant.' 'Sir (cried my uncle peevishly) I ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... certain fact I'll now relate, That's true indeed without debate. A bundling couple went to bed. With all their clothes from foot to head, That the defence might seem complete, Each one was wrapped in a sheet. But O! this bundling's such a witch The man of her did catch the itch, And so provoked was the wretch, That she of him a bastard catch'd. Ye bundle misses don't you blush, You hang your heads and bid me hush. If you wont tell me how you feel, I'll ask your sparks, they best can tell. But it is custom you will say, And custom always bears ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles
... it is severed with a sharp knife there flows from the cane a fluid bright and limpid as a judge's summing up; occasionally it is all as dry as dust and as sneezy, and its prickly leaf sheathes the abode of that vexing insect which causes the scrub itch. ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... until I see'd the blackies jump out of the bushes, and then I knowed at once what a reg'lar fix you was in. I see'd ye fire at 'em, lad, and bring 'em up with a round turn, and my fingers was just all of a itch to be alongside of ye with one of them same revolvin' rifles in my fist, though I'm, a'ter all, no great matter of a shot. Well, I see'd ye run, and I see'd the little lady here step into the canoe and lie down; and then in ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... (Herps), Scald head, Milk scald, Plant poisoning, Hives, Mosquito bites, Small burns or scratches, Barbers' Itch, Parasitic diseases, Scaly or scabby eruptions of the skin, Itching piles, Acne, Psoriasis, Pimples, Blackheads, Cracked hands and lips, etc. A perfect ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... day and night ever since the evenings years ago when one of their earliest coteries had gathered in our Brooklyn home. And talking they had multiplied and ramified all over the town. There was nothing under heaven their fingers did not itch to change. Here close by my side were three of them, two would-be Ibsen actresses and one budding playwright who had had two Broadway failures and one Berkeley Lyceum success. But were they talking of plays? ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... with mutiny on her face. "All right, slave driver," she muttered as she picked up the clothing, "but I hope you'll itch someday and ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... are, but a nose decidedly in earnest to make the best of itself and of things in general,—a nose that would push its way up in life, but so pleasantly that the most irritable fingers would never itch to lay hold of it. With such a nose a man might play the violoncello, marry for love, or even write poetry, and yet not go ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... I do itch to go thro' stich The needle-beard to amend, Which, without any wrong, I may call too long, For man can ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews
... House of Peers withholds Its legislative hand. And noble statesmen do not itch To interfere with matters which They do not understand, As bright will shine Great Britain's rays, As ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... they would say to the children of Israel, "Go and prepare a bath for us unto the delight of our flesh and our bones." Therefore they were doomed to suffer with boils that inflamed their flesh, and on account of the itch they could not leave off scratching. While the Egyptians suffered thus, the children of Israel ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... know the reasons why they did or failed to do a thing, instead of satisfying one's curiosity they go quietly away and say nothing. Women in the same position itch to justify, to excuse, to exonerate. Men keep silent and let one think what one pleases—a form of moral cowardice which remains at once their ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... slaves, whose whims and tastes they could not satisfy without our aid; and they knew these men would very soon desert them unless they received occasionally alluring presents to make them contented. But finessing is a kind of itch with all Orientals, as gambling is with those who are addicted to it; and they would tell any lie rather than gain their object easily by the simple truth, on the old principle that "stolen things are sweetest." Had Bombay only opened his ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... climbing plant of the West Indies and other warm climates. It is called the cowage, or cow-itch, on account of the seed pods being covered with short brittle hairs, the points of which are finely serrated, causing an unbearable itching when applied to the skin, which is relieved by rubbing the part with oil. It is employed as a vermifuge. In East Africa it is called Kitedzi. ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders
... fra' t' Knott scarce gat to t' spot, Afore she lost her bustle, Which sad mishap quite spoil'd her shap, An' meade her itch an' hustle. ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... our labors, I became afflicted with the itch, which was then epidemic in that part of the country. A neighboring high school had been closed because of this disagreeable affliction. Previous to taking the disease myself, I had met some of the saints who had it, and who ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole
... of "spots" are found, and the four sensations of touch, warmth, cold and pain are believed to be the only elementary skin sensations. Itch, stinging and aching seem to be the same as pain. Tickle is touch, usually light touch or a succession of light touches. Smooth and rough are successions of touch sensations. Moist is usually a compound of smooth and cold. ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... A contagious prurient eruption. There are two kinds of itch, that which appears between the fingers, and under the joints of the knees and elbows; and that which seldom is seen in these places, but all over the other parts of the body. The latter is seldom thought to be the itch, as it does not easily infect ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... flinging the silver on the desk, he exclaimed, "There, Captain Riga, you may keep your tin! It has been in your purse, and it would give me the itch to ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... on, never ceasing, it stirred the Dragon's blood in Kan Wong's veins. The pick and shovel irked his hands as he swung them; his palms began to itch for the weapons that the soldiers bore. Now and then he came upon a gun where it had dropped from its owner's useless hands. He studied its mechanism, even asking the Foreign Devil overseer how it was worked, and, being shown, he remembered and practised its use whenever ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... torch of romance and run with it, I doubt if Stevenson would have offered himself. I almost think in that case he would have consigned with Nature and sat at ease, content to read of new Ivanhoes and new D'Artagnans: for—let it be said again—no man had less of the ignoble itch for merely personal success. Think, too, of what the struggle meant for him: how it drove him unquiet about the world, if somewhere he might meet with a climate to repair the constant drain upon his ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... my teeth do—itch! He's going to give me a welcome on my arrival, he surely is,—a fisty welcome! He's a kind-hearted soul, I do believe. Seeing how master's kept me awake all night, he's going to up with his fists now and put me to sleep. Oh, I'm dead entirely! For God's sake look ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... master, let me define a mere scholar. I heard a courtier once define a mere scholar to be animal scabiosum, that is, a living creature that is troubled with the itch; or, a mere scholar is a creature that can strike fire in the morning at his tinder-box, put on a pair of lined slippers, sit rheuming[91] till dinner, and then go to his meat when the bell rings: one that hath a peculiar gift in ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... said Mr. Gordon with enthusiasm. "My feet itch to be off on the webs myself. After breakfast we will try them out. Now remember the rules I have been telling you, and see how well you can all learn to shuffle ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson
... than Wild took an occasion, from seeing the cards lying on the table, to inveigh against gaming, and, with an usual and highly commendable freedom, after first exaggerating the distressed circumstances in which the count was then involved, imputed all his misfortunes to that cursed itch of play which, he said, he concluded had brought his present confinement upon him, and must unavoidably end in his destruction. The other, with great alacrity, defended his favourite amusement (or rather employment), and, having told his friend the great success ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... ——- "and rejoic'd in a pun". 'Mr. W. is so notorious a punster, that Doctor Goldsmith used to say, it was impossible to keep him company, without being 'infected' with the 'itch of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... her that: his own act had rendered it impossible, that act the outcome of wilful trifling with his infirmity, his itch ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... have paid his passage to Hong-Kong, and achieved his ends quite as handily as in his present role of wireless operator. But his fingers had begun to itch again for the heavy brass transmission-key, and his ears were yearning for the drone of radio voices ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... in the open on fine nights, it was, according to them, because I wished to spare the tent to sell it again at a higher price when I returned home! They discussed these things in a high voice and in a most offensive way, making my hands itch on many occasions and my blood boil. But I had made up my mind that I would never lose my temper with them, nor my calm; and I never did, trying as it was to ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... falter when the close comes round, Or leave the substance to preserve the sound; You never wander after words that fly, For all the words you need before you lie. But I, who—smarting for my sins of late— With itch of rhyme am visited by fate, Expend on air my unavailing force, And, hunting sounds, am sweated like a horse. In vain I often muse from dawn till night: When I mean black, my stubborn verse says white; If I should paint a coxcomb's flippant mien, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... stir the blood, proving uncontestibly that Undy Scott was as real to Trollope as he is to us: 'The figure of Undy swinging from a gibbet at the broad end of Lombard Street would have an effect. Ah, my fingers itch to be at ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... Brother, whose Life is in your Hands. To make the Matter short, when this crafty Fellow, with such Expressions as these, had clear'd himself from all Suspicion of a Design, and had gain'd Credit, that he understood one Way perfectly well, Balbinus's Mind began to have an Itch to be meddling. And at last, when he could hold no longer, Away with your Methods, says he, of Curtation, the Name of which I never heard before, I am so far from understanding it. Tell me sincerely, Do you throughly understand Longation? Phoo! says he, perfectly ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... with his slow, generous eyes fixed on the boy's face. "Thou art a good boy, Erdman!" ... "It is only thy fingers that itch to know things." He patted them gently, where they lay on ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... but it is for the most part an experience far down the scale below divine experience; it is often love only in so far as it shares the name with better things; it is greed, it is admiration, it is desire, it is the itch for excitement, it is the instinct for competition, it is lust, it is curiosity, it is adventure, it is jealousy, it is hate. On a hundred scores 'lovers' meet and part. Thereby some few find true love and the spirit of God ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... diseases sometimes have a local origin, as in the case of ague caused by miasma of swamps; and then they are named endemic. In other cases, they are caused by personal contact with the diseased body or its clothing, as the itch or small-pox; or else by effluvia from the sick, as in measles. Such are called contagious or infectious. In other cases, diseases result from some unknown cause in the atmosphere, and affect numbers of people at the same time, as in influenza ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... father's hand once more, and rubbed her head against it like a cat. This new method of expressing filial affection seemed to interest Mr. Gallilee. "Does your head itch, my dear?" he asked. The idea was new to Zo. She brightened, and looked at her father with a sly smile. "Why do you do it?" Miss Minerva asked sharply. Zo clouded over again, and answered, "I don't know." Mr. Gallilee rewarded her with a kiss, and ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... Douglas loses the vote of the great slave-holders, the vote of the solid South, that he has been fostering ever since he has had the itch to be President. Without the solid South the Little Giant will never live in the White House. And unless I'm mightily mistaken, Steve Douglas has had his aye as far ahead as 1860 ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... was only just beginning to itch and wiggle and search and wonder what the matter could be. It was the women, the mothers, who scented trouble first. The men were still placidly doing the same old Saturday afternoon tasks, mowing lawns, talking road improvements, swapping yarns and brands ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... Steele. Think I'd ever hunted him out and extended the fraternal grip, or him me? Not if everyone else in the world was deaf and dumb and had the itch! We're about as much alike in our tastes and gen'ral run of ideas as Bill Taft and Bill Haywood; about as congenial as our bull terrier and the chow dog next door. Yet here we are, him hailin' me as Shorty, and me callin' him anything from J. B. to Old Top, and confabbin' reg'lar most every ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford |
