"Overwrought" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... me" is a beautiful hymn, but really its beauties began to pall when it had been sung through from beginning to end nine times running. Neither my nephew nor I could get any sleep that first night owing to the blatant devotional exercises of the overwrought negroes. ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... flown, and autumn brought its annual show Of oars with oars contending, sails with sails, Upon Winander's spacious breast, it chanced That—after I had left a flower-decked room (Whose in-door pastime, lighted up, survived 375 To a late hour), and spirits overwrought Were making night do penance for a day Spent in a round of strenuous idleness—[U] My homeward course led up a long ascent, Where the road's watery surface, to the top 380 Of that sharp rising, glittered to the moon And ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... are overwrought. The sooner we learn that William Carmody has ceased to exist the better it will be for both of us. I bid ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... heard the sounds of their search. So overwrought was he that there was a moment when he thought of swimming to the edge and making across the country to the north while they were hunting the meadows to the east; but he repressed the impulse and stayed on. ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... splints and rolls of linen down on the table with a professional air, while I was inwardly execrating my father's negligence. I emptied the portmanteau in the hope of finding some small phial or box. Any opiate would have been welcome to me, that would have dulled the overwrought nerves of the girl in the room within. But the practice of using any thing of the kind was not in favor with us generally in the Channel Islands, and my father had probably concluded that a Sark woman would not consent to use them. At any rate, there ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... in 1889 was a great refreshment bodily, mental, and spiritual, to the overwrought labourer. The voyage itself, enforcing rest from all ordinary avocations, by removing Mr. Gilmour from the depressing surroundings amid which he had spent so much of the last three years, began the restorative process. He was beginning to feel ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... on the outside; so there was fights and accidents, and different ones tromped on, and screams of fear. And this brought a lot bigger crowd that pressed in and made the centre ones more anguished. I don't know. That poor animal had been imposed on all day and must of been overwrought. It was sore vexed by now and didn't care who knew it. Lots ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... away from her for the pleasure of looking at her again, of realizing that my overwrought senses were not cheating me. Yes, there she was, in all the luster of that magnetic beauty I can not think of even now without an upblazing of the fire which is to the heart what the sun is to a blind man dreaming of ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... night with that youth wrestling for his soul; and in the morning not only was he a Christian, but his hair was as white as snow. (Lentulus falls in a dead faint). There, there: take him away. The spirit has overwrought him, poor lad. Carry him gently to his house; and leave ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... marvellous patterns and intricate designs! Little wonder that the best examples are treasured by the nation. The men of the family wore a white linen smock for weddings and great occasions. So thickly are these overwrought with needlework that they will stand alone, and seem to have a woman's lifetime spent upon them. Needless to say, these family garments were handed down as ...
— Denmark • M. Pearson Thomson
... pair of boots, a couple of suits of clothes, a dozen shirts, a dozen bandana handkerchiefs, four waistcoats, a superb pipe given to him by Pons, with an embroidered tobacco-pouch—these were all his belongings. Overwrought by a fever of indignation, he went into his room and piled his clothes upon ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... and watched the stage, waiting for her turn. She felt greatly overwrought by the happenings of that entire day. She closed her eyes and became rapt in a quiet meditation of the words of Grzesikiewicz, who had again recurred to her memory, but suddenly, she started with a shudder, for behind his face she saw ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... to have been born with overwrought nerves, and in his passionate desire to excel, he was often led to the brink of some rash step; and yet, having resolved upon such a step, when the moment arrived, he invariably proved too sensible to take it. He was ready, in the same way, to do a ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... I am a little stern and severe except with children: for these I have endless elasticity and patience. Many of my faults are physical. If I could have chosen my own life— more in the hills and less in the traffic—I should have slept better and might have been less overwrought and disturbable. But after all I may improve, for I am on a man-of-war, as a friend once said to me, which is better than being on a pirate-ship and is ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... find that nine-tenths of these troublesome things have been well taken care of during his absence. Moreover, now that he has come back in a state of physical health and with nerves that are normal, he sees that these awful problems were simply exaggerated in his own mind by his overwrought physical condition. ...
— Keeping Fit All the Way • Walter Camp
... the garden the night through. Nobody thought of going indoors; but after a while we became so weary with watching and overwrought with excitement that, despite the danger and the noise we could not keep our eyes open. Before the southern cross began to bend we were all asleep, Angela and I wrapped in our cobijas, the others on the turf and ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... no child there, my dear," urged the man; "you are overwrought, excited, nervous. The ...
— And Thus He Came • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... the Flagship, the sun set exactly behind the purple island of Imbros, and as it disappeared sent out long flame-coloured streamers into the sky. The effect was that of a bird of Paradise bringing balm to our overwrought nerves. ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... say I had expected to see Cyril showing a few more traces of last night's battle. I was looking for a bit of the overwrought soul and the quivering ganglions, if you know what I mean. He seemed pretty ordinary and ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... that you are frightfully overwrought, and that you are making yourself ill. Can't you imagine what it means to me to have you acting in this way? Here I am at one of the gravest crises of my life; I am working day and night, under ...
— The Machine • Upton Sinclair
... you attempt to relate another reminiscence while in my employ, I shall make a deduction from your wages. I warn you—I warn you in the presence of this witness. My overwrought nerves can endure no more. Between your inexpiable English and your inopportune reminiscences, I am a nervous wreck!" The little man's ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... was that was with me I could not tell; I could not even guess. It was as though something in my mental organisation had been stricken by a sudden paralysis. It may seem childish to use such language; but I was overwrought, played out; physically speaking, at my last counter; and, in an instant, without the slightest warning, I was conscious of a very curious sensation, the like of which I had never felt before, and the like of which I pray ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... but a few of the rare inventors, calculators, and speculators will have become pale, pulpy, and cretinous from fatty or other degeneration, and behold around them a scanty hydrocephalous offspring. As to the breed of the ingenious and intellectual, their nervous systems will at last have been overwrought in following the molecular revelations of the immensely more powerful unconscious race, and they will naturally, as the less energetic combinations of movement, subside like the flame of a candle in the sunlight Thus the feebler race, whose ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... he is often grand and affecting, full of life and power, he never shows the creative imagination. But if he falls short on the poetic side, there is the counterbalancing advantage that there is never a false note nor an overwrought description which offends our taste ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... am overwrought. I should be thankful. But—but, isn't it deception—I mean, will it be fair to conceal from Richard the real condition of affairs?" He took ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... in his overwrought condition the words were almost like a voice from heaven, a sacred command. To be a man meant to face the hardest thing he had ever had to face in his life. It meant marrying Madeline Taylor, not leaving her like a coward to pay by herself ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... vengeance. He no longer had control of his overwrought senses. Like a cat he pounced onto the girl in the middle of the sleep-sofa. Now she fought him off. Ready, with anxious eyes, to ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... paraded by her discerning lord, to carry her smiles of welcome and her pretty ways. Grifone, grave, attentive, in black, was there, be sure, waiting his turn. It came, and with it Molly, blushing and overwrought, new from the very kindly salutations of the Greek. To Grifone she proffered a greeting which was no less kind because her heart was troubled. Her well of trust in mankind was not yet dry. Grifone took her hand and bent over it; it was as ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... been silently introduced into our prose. In this we have oscillated from freedom to restraint;—from the easy, natural, and colloquial style of Swift, Addison and Steele, to the perpetually strained, ambitious, and overwrought stiffness, of which the author we are now considering affords a striking exemplification. "He's knight o' the shire, and represents them all." There is not the smallest keeping in his composition:—less solicitous what he shall ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... slow-yielding rock, the calls for a rest while carpenters hastily propped up tottering roofs and walls, the occasional warning shouts when men fell back to watch other huge masses of rock fall into the black drift, and the instants when some rescuer, overwrought, thought he heard sounds of "rock telegraphing" and bade the others pause and listen. There were those among the men on the street who had seen the desperate, melancholy conclusions, when hope, flaming ever more feebly, guttered out as a burned ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... The desolate boy welcomed this dumb, affectionate companionship. The feel of the warm, soft body, and the thought of the velvety brown eyes which he could not see in the dark, but knew were fixed upon him with their intense, loving gaze, were soothing to his overwrought nerves. Here was something whose love could be counted upon—something as dependent upon him as he was upon Mr. Allan; yet what a joy he found in the very dependence of this devoted, soft-eyed creature! Never would he taunt Comrade ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... all remained silent; nearly half an hour had elapsed since he had heard the steps upon the stairs. His situation began to prey upon his nerves, it irritated them—it became intolerable. It was not now fear that he experienced, it was the overwrought sense of mortal enmity—the consciousness that a man may feel who knows that the eye of a tiger is on him, and who, while in suspense he has regained his courage, foresees that sooner or later the spring must come; the suspense itself becomes ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... stepped out of the unknown and, by the most whimsical jest of fate, into the custody of the one person most interested of all in that self-same world. It was unbelievable. She wondered if it were not a dream, or the hallucination of an overwrought mind. Spurred by the sudden doubt as to the reality of the object before her, she stretched out her hand and touched the ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... come home?" she whispered. Aunt Maria's hearing was slightly defective, especially when she was nervously overwrought. ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... cold and clear, but the words were scarcely uttered when he fell to his knees again, with a subdued cry of overwrought feeling. ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... being overwrought by sorrow, it may be, my father said that he would have the doctor-woman from Wolf Cove to ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... vindictively, though his eyes continued to search the dark shroud overhead that inclosed them as in a tomb. A dark form loomed downward through the mist. It was Hozier, alone, coming back to them. A frenzied cheer broke from the lips of those overwrought men. They knew what that meant. Somewhere, high above the black rocks and the flying scud, was hope throned in the blessed sunshine. They drew him in cautiously until Coke was able to grasp his hand. They were quick to see ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... the range of human probabilities, what errand could lead her at ten o'clock on such a night to that lonely hilltop, and on down the road into the country beyond? It was manifest that his own mind had shaped the vision from the pale vapours, and he realised how weary and overwrought he had become. His sensation was now almost one of fear, as if he had seen the ghost of a loved one rising out of the mists of a remote and passionate past. A strange impulse seized him to follow the phantom further, but he was shivering ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... attitude! with brede Of marble men and maidens overwrought, With forest branches and the trodden weed; Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral! When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... protested, "a Royalist was a monster to our overwrought feelings. I am telling you this in order not to be suspected of the slightest tenderness towards that old Royalist's daughter. Moreover, as you know, my affections were engaged elsewhere. But I could not help ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... much to say, but it could be said over and over again in various ways. It was the one night of the world, and her overwrought feeling sought relief. It would not be so again. She would be more reticent and more coquettish about her lover, but now it was ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... "You're a little overwrought, Gerald," Mr. Fentolin declared. "Sit quietly in my easy-chair for a few moments. Walt until I have examined Mr. Dunster's belongings. Ah! ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... you," said Elsie, "in the distance, but of course I had no idea who it was. How very kind you have been to me!" and again the tears were trembling in the nervous eyes of the poor, overwrought girl. ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare
... men stopped short as a slight sound in the passage caught their attention. A silence fell upon them that they could not break, and they stood dumbfounded, nervous and overwrought. ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... in amazement. As the spell of her influence seemed to calm the overwrought mind of the girl there succeeded a hardness in her tone that was wholly out of keeping with her youth. There was something that breathed of a past where there should have been nothing but the thought ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... processes connected with the culture of the grape, had a flavor of poetry about them. The toil that produces those kindly gifts of nature which are not the substance of life, but its luxury, is unlike other toil. We are inclined to fancy that it does not bend the sturdy frame and stiffen the overwrought muscles, like the labor that is devoted in sad, hard earnest to raise grain for sour bread. Certainly, the sunburnt young men and dark-cheeked, laughing girls, who weeded the rich acres of Monte Beni, ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... by the two great Tartarin books and by the chief novels, Fromont, Jack, The Nabob, Kings in Exile, and Numa, aided by the artistic sketches and short stories contained in Letters from my Mill and Monday Tales (Contes du Lundi). The strong but overwrought Evangelist, Sapho—which of course belongs with the chief novels from the Continental but not from the insular point of view—and the books of Daudet's decadence, The Immortal, and the rest, cost him few friendships, ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... His overwrought mind and body soon made him ill. He sought by violent emotions and excessive fatigue to escape from the thoughts which were persecuting him like spectres, and driving him to his death. In vain the physicians commanded rest and quiet. ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... you think you're taking this a little too seriously? You're getting stale, overwrought. You need a fresh point of view. Lots of our people feel as you do at one time or another, but most of us learn to live with these necessary regulations, and do our work in spite of them. Let me make a suggestion, relax, take a little time off, develop a hobby. Why not do some reading in a field ...
— Security • Ernest M. Kenyon
... overwrought," said Dr. Wilkinson, kindly; "he has gone through a great deal lately. We will take him up stairs and let him lie down; I think he wants ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... "Overwrought? Ay, body and soul too," answered Mrs Clere, softening a little in response to Rose's tone. "Well! folks know their own troubles best, I reckon, and it's no good harrying other folks with them. What priced ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... the first to recover, and kneeling by the panting, overwrought horse he passed his hand gently over the tangled mane and down the foam-flecked face. The red eye rolled up at him; but it was wonder not hatred, a prayer and not a threat, which he could read in it. As he stroked the reeking muzzle, the horse whinnied gently and thrust his nose into ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... with a cloudless face and a willingness to make such amends as could be brought about without too much self-abnegation. In the broad light of day the mother could not hold to the horrors of the evening before. She had been nervous and overwrought; it wasn't so bad ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... hastily descended from the carriage and felt her son's pulse with much solicitude. "He has only fainted," she said. "He is apt to have such attacks when overwrought. It's a part of his disease. Miss Jocelyn, you see he is a reed that must be supported, not leaned upon," she added, looking straight into the young girl's troubled eyes. "I mean you kindness as truly as I mean kindness to him. He will soon be better. He has often ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... know it can't be too late," exclaimed Adam, his old irritability getting the better of him: then, with a sudden revulsion of his overwrought susceptibilities, he cried, "Oh, Eve, Eve, bear with me to-night: I'm not what I want to be. The words I try to speak die away upon my lips, and my heart seems sunk down so low that nothing can rejoice it. To-morrow ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... sheer nonsense. It comes from nervousness, from an overwrought mind. But the point is: Why have I done this? For you. To shorten my apprenticeship. To compel Success to hasten. And my apprenticeship is now served. I know my equipment. I swear that I learn more each month than ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... overwrought imagination it seemed miles away. I suddenly felt an overwhelming terror of the cloudless sky, the rolling waves, even of the girl who had ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... the influence of that faint air of overwrought delicacy, almost of wantonness, which was so strong a characteristic of the poetry of the Troubadours. The Troubadours themselves were often men of great rank; they wrote for an exclusive audience, people of much leisure and great ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... must have guessed her overwrought state, and invented some excuse for her non-appearance, for no inquiries were made or calls given. At half-past six the sun settled down upon the levels with the aspect of a great forge in the heavens; and presently ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... babies always thrived. The passive acquiescence of her nature was a blessing to them. The currents of their blood were never rendered unhealthful by overwrought nerves or disturbed temper in their mother. Their infancy was as placid and quiet as if they had been kittens. Not until they were old enough to understand words, and to comprehend deprivations, did they suffer because of their poverty. Then a serious look began to settle upon their faces; ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... and overwrought. Shall we go in and wait for father? He will be getting anxious about me." And without waiting to see if he followed her, she turned ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... dear, you are ill and overwrought," cried Mrs. Colebrook, hastening to the bedside. "It is just as I said, you are not fit to get up." Then, to Susan, sharply: "You may put Master Keith's clothes back in the closet. He will ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... ribs, and thigh-bones, not improbable that many thereof were persons of minor age, or woman. Confirmable also from things contained in them. In most were found sub- stances resembling combs, plates like boxes, fastened with iron pins, and handsomely overwrought like the necks or bridges of musical instruments; long brass plates overwrought like the handles of neat implements; brazen nippers, to pull away hair; and in one a kind of opal, ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... but brokenly, and then overcome by this unexpected succor she sank prone upon the floor weeping passionately; the tension on her nerves had given way and her overwrought feelings had to ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... events, brother," replied Eric, laughing in his old fashion at the possibility of such a thing. The lad was quite overwrought with emotion at parting with the old skipper as well as his late companions in the ship; and, tears and mirth being closely allied, he would have felt inclined to laugh at anything then—just because ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... time the lion paced, growling and moaning, beneath the tree in which Jane Clayton crouched, panting and trembling. The girl was a prey to the nervous reaction from the frightful ordeal through which she had so recently passed, and in her overwrought state it seemed that never again should she dare descend to the ground among the fearsome dangers which infested the broad stretch of jungle that she knew must lie between herself and the nearest ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a mood to torment herself that night and she lay awake to listen for that dread voice from across the woods. She lay on her left side so they would have good luck next day. She was greatly overwrought and when at last she did hear the sound, loud and heartless with its sudden beginning and sudden end, it startled and terrorized her as if it were indeed that gloomy, windowless equipage of the State Orphan Home, ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... the shadow behind the monolith at the opening to the avenue opposite her. She hoped that it might be but the figment of an overwrought imagination. ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... could have happened, or just when, no one knew, but on the very day after her husband's departure she had gone quietly on deck while the rest of the company were at supper and never was seen again; nor till the sea gives up its dead shall any know the story of that poor overwrought soul's ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... among the guests again she was pale, her lips were set, and she held her head high. Her mother said the dear child was quite overwrought, but she saw only what she expected to see through her own tear-bedimmed eyes, and other people were differently impressed. They thought Evadne was cold and preoccupied when it came to the parting, and did not seem to feel leaving her friends at all. She went out dry-eyed after kissing her ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... of Artemus Ward; but it had just appeared; it pleased all the Ministers except Stanton, to whom the frivolous reading he sometimes had to hear from Lincoln was a standing vexation; and it was precisely that sort of relief to which Lincoln's mind when overwrought could always turn. Having thus composed himself for business, he reminded his Cabinet that he had, as they were aware, thought a great deal about the relation of the war to slavery, and had a few weeks before read them a draft Proclamation on this subject. Ever ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... be sure, and without any recognizable form or theme; and yet, like a Liszt rhapsody, it perfectly answers its purpose,—that is, it gives the performer full scope to show what he can do with his instrument. You may laugh a little, if you like, at an occasional grotesque or overwrought passage, but unless you are well used to it you will surely be astonished. Such power and range of voice; such startling transitions; such endless variety! And withal such boundless enthusiasm and almost incredible endurance! Regarded as pure music, one strain of the hermit thrush is to ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... beyond their means, in the gratification of luxurious desires or the effort to appear as well as others. Stress and strain are voluntarily invited. Children are pushed in their studies and overloaded with too many subjects. Genius and insanity, worry and dementia, proceed among us hand in hand; the overwrought brain ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... least not loudly complaining. Now and then a door softly opened or closed; a woman's figure or that of some coloured servant passed from dimness to dimness. They passed and the whole was quiet again. Mother and son spoke low. "I will not wake Miriam until just time to say good-bye. She is overwrought, poor child! She had ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... Ah, don't ask me now! Wait until my nerves get settled. It never stopped, and fast as it reeled off I recognized Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Weber—lots of Weber—Marschner, and Chopin. Yes, Chopin! The orchestration seemed overwrought and coarse and the form—well, formlessness is the only word to describe it. There was an infernal sort of skill in the instrumentation at times, a short-breathed juggling with other men's ideas, but no development, no final cadence. Everything ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... the walks in a state of complete discomfort, in one of those attacks of religious spleen which determine, while they last during years, the "taedium vitae" of the cloisters. He had a horror of any life but this, and the soul overwrought by prayers was failing in a body insufficiently rested and ill-nourished; it had no further desire, asked only to be let alone, to sleep, to fall into one of those states of torpor in which everything becomes indifferent, in which one ends by losing consciousness gently, by being ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... He had a letter from Jacks, a sensible and calmly worded letter, saying that Irene was overwrought by recent agitations, that she had spoken of putting an end to their engagement, but that doubtless a few days would see all right again. Arnold must now be apprised of what had happened, and, as all consideration was due ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... a great sob, and remained silent for nearly half a minute, sitting so still that she seemed like one dead. In that brief time she had chained down her overwrought feelings and could speak without a tremor in ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... entertaining. Has a way of soothing a man's nerves, which few women possess. You, my dear, have often a most irritating way with you; not that I complain—we all have our faults. You inherit this intense overwrought sort of ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... request Less noise while we're having a well-earned rest. For the Judge and the Usher never must shirk A well-earned rest in the middle of work. It's the duty of both they are well aware To preserve their precious lives with care; It's their duty, when feeling overwrought, To preserve their lives with ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... "You're blasphemous! and you're overwrought about the few cases of need here. Think of those two million people that have just starved to ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... on one occasion sent back over the line. They, however, were recovered; and, on the whole, I feel grateful to the check system of the American railways. And then, too, one never hears of extra luggage. Of weight they are quite regardless. On two or three occasions an overwrought official has muttered between his teeth that ten packages were a great many, and that some of those "light fixings" might have been made up into one. And when I came to understand that the number of every ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... thinking; but when the body had recovered its vigour, the mind grew active, and the self-torture recommenced. For some hours—he never knew how many—he suffered in this way; then a strange calm fell upon him. Was it the Divine help which had come at last, or despair, or the fatigue of an overwrought spirit? He knelt down and prayed once more, but this time his prayer consisted simply in placing before his Heavenly Father the exact state of the case. He was powerless; God should do with him according to His purpose, only he felt unable to resist if the temptation came up against him. Jesus, ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... of the light I lay still, watching it beneath my lowered lids, and thus I suddenly caught the glitter of the thing as it moved and knew it for a very bright, human eye that watched me through the knot-hole. Now this may seem a very small matter in the telling, but to me at that moment (overwrought by my long sojourn in the dark) it ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... in some contiguous passage, and might creep stealthily upon me. I craned my neck about, and stared through the inky darkness for the twin spots of blazing hate which I knew would herald the coming of my executioner. So real were the imaginings of my overwrought brain that I broke into a cold sweat in absolute conviction that some beast was close before me; yet the hours dragged, and no sound broke the grave-like ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... no time for angry words," said the Pastor Arentz, pushing his way through the group of bewildered men and overwrought women. "He can scarcely be dead; let me look at him, I am something of a doctor," and he knelt by the senseless and ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... swift and as noiseless as a tiger's I lit beside the guardsman who had moved. My hands hovered about his throat awaiting the moment that his eyes should open. For what seemed an eternity to my overwrought nerves I remained poised thus. Then the fellow turned again upon his side and resumed the even respiration of ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... attorney, was so hurried and overwrought with the work he had been engaged on that morning (the lending of L1323 to a widow at 5 1/4 per cent., [which heaven knows is reasonable!] on security of a number of shares in the London and North-Western ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... owl, I suppose," muttered Katherine, and limped down the bank to the wharf, frightening the nervous, overwrought Betty almost out of her wits at first, and then vastly relieving her by taking the entire direction of affairs into her ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... perhaps a diameter of a foot or a foot and a half. As Mr. Brown of the Sillet Light Infantry informed me most correctly, many would make fine spars; but Mr. Cracroft's language in one of the Journals of the Asiatic Society when describing these firs, seems rather overwrought. During our march I picked up a pretty species of Sonerila. A small stream runs at the foot of the descent, by what name it goes I know not. Near the Bustapanee, flowing along a valley about two hours' walk from ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... left Montgomery, Maroney had been executing a series of strategic movements, and now that he had undoubtedly thrown his pursuers, if there were any, off his track, why should he not ease his overwrought mind by sleep, that sweetest of ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... this passionate, thoroughly aroused woman be his cold, self-contained daughter? He could not understand, as so many cannot, that such natures when aroused are tenfold more intense than those whom little things excite. A long and peculiar train of circumstances, a morbid and overwrought physical condition, led to this outburst from Christine, which was as much a cause of surprise to herself afterward as to her father. He judged correctly that a great deal had occurred between Dennis and herself of which he had no knowledge, and again ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... and was even more anxious about the fate of his compositions than he had been in his youth, having less confidence in himself as he declined in years, and on the occasion of Ali Baba he was especially overwrought. Berlioz got a seat in the house, and made his disapproval of the performance very marked by his manner. Finally he cried out toward the end of the first act, "Twenty francs for an idea!" During ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... period. The preaching was of the most formal and methodical texture. It assumed a rhetorical and poetical appearance; the people calling it the Italian style. Petrarch had given shape to Italian thought, and through his influence Germany became sated with poetic imagery and overwrought fancy. Sagittarius founded a stipend for the preaching of a yearly sermon in the University Church "which should be more a practical illustration of Christian doctrine than of lofty speech." Emblematical sermons were ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... went, and he has left on record the burning indignation aroused in him at the signs of satisfaction, complacency, and even mirth that he discovered in that house of death. The Queen herself, however, overwrought by the events, and perhaps conscience-stricken by the tragedy which in the eleventh hour she had sought to avert, burst into tears at sight of Sully, and brought in the Dauphin, who flung himself ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... discover it till too late.... And with these many other visions formed and dissolved in dream-like phantasmagoria; but of them all the strongest and most recurrent was that of the girl in the black riding-habit, walking by his side down the aisle of trees. So that presently the tired and overwrought man believed himself talking with her, reasoning, arguing, pleading desperately for his heart's desire;... and wakened with a start, to hear the echo of her voice as though she had spoken but the instant gone, to find ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... instances the panic still held possession of individuals to an exaggerated extent. But the number of patients in the hospital was rapidly diminishing, and, for money, those were to be found who could supply Ruth's place. But to her it was owing that the overwrought fear of the town was subdued; it was she who had gone voluntarily, and, with no thought of greed or gain, right into the very jaws of the fierce disease. She bade the inmates of the hospital farewell, ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... full of the chase and its results, and there was an excited and dramatic recital going on in the servants' hall at that moment; but she dared not go there, though she was in an agony of anxiety to know the whole truth and the fate of her lover. Her face, her overwrought condition, would have betrayed her; so, at the least, would have caused surprise and aroused suspicion. She could not face the servants' hall, but she knew that the gentlemen would be discussing the affair in the smoking room, and that if she could listen unseen ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... clever, clever as he can be," said Carroll, not anxious to have Kennedy go as long as he would listen to the story which was bursting from his overwrought mind. "He was able to cover up the checks by juggling the accounts. But that didn't satisfy him. He was after something big. So he started in to issue the treasury stock, forging the signatures of the president and the treasurer, that is, my signature. Of course that sort of game couldn't last forever. ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... ridiculed. "You mean, if we don't have any more play of fancy imaginations, and thunderings of overwrought ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... the gift of strength in women beyond ornamental whiteness. Are they not of nature warriors, like men?—men's mates to bear them heroes instead of puppets? But the devouring male Egoist prefers them as inanimate overwrought polished pure metal precious vessels, fresh from the hands of the artificer, for him to walk away with hugging, call all his own, drink of, and fill and drink of, and forget that ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sir," he said. "There's nothing like maraschino and gin when one is a bit overwrought. I've known many a gentleman in my part of the country who would take nothing else, after a hard day to hounds, to brace him up for those ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... influence had wrought in him, and how nothing but her love was needed to keep him steadfast in the future; and, in truth, he more than half believed what he said. The whole scene was quite in the key of the play, and her overwrought feelings drifted toward the man pleading thus earnestly for affection. Harry saw the advantage of the situation, and urged on her an immediate decision. Henrietta, still shaken by passionate excitement, and without rest in herself, was on the point of promising eternal affection, ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... one to the other through her glasses, seemed suddenly impenetrable, and the prismatic world of the girl's rapture burst like a bubble against it. There is no explanation of the effect outside of temperament and overwrought sensibilities. She stared across the room at her mother, who had not heard her, and then she broke into a storm ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... saw the pup ease his heart Of his instinct for chasing, and sink Overwrought by excitement so new: A scene that for Koby to view Was the seizure of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Holmes, I have been a little overwrought. Thank you, if I might have a glass of milk and a biscuit, I have no doubt that I should be better. I came personally, Mr. Holmes, in order to insure that you would return with me. I feared that no telegram would convince you of the absolute ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... him much better than I; you were with him longer. He is getting so horribly suspicious of people, and sees a spy or an enemy in every strange face. That is usually a bad sign, but I think he has been a little overwrought lately." ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... out laughing and, because she was overwrought and a trifle hysterical, she laughed a good deal. Galusha laughed even longer than she did, not because he was hysterical, but because laughing was very much easier and ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... a very normal girl: nothing morbid about her, nothing nervous or false or overwrought. You did not expect to find her introspective. You felt sure that her mental life was not at all the result of thoughts and reflections germinating from within, but rather of impressions and sensations that came to her from without. There was nothing ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... That being overwrought by the struggle you mention (a struggle we can possibly understand when we consider the unavoidable consciousness which must be his of the great change which would be effected in all his prospects if Gwendolen should not be found), he gave the name of guilt to feelings which some ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... came into it—were scrambling up a hill higher and higher, with that flood pouring after us. Sort of splashing into a foam of faces and helmets and bayonets—and clutching hands—and red stuff.... Well, Mr. Britling, I admit I'm a little bit overwrought about it, but I can assure you you don't begin to realise in England what it ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... careless. Oh, well," he continued, rising and going to the humidor, "there's plenty more where that came from. Out of evil cometh good," said Parker philosophically. "If the guv'nor hadn't been in such a overwrought state tonight, he'd have remembered not to leave the key in the key-hole. Help yourself to another glass of port, Ellen, and ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... was a momentary silence between them. Then the emotion astir within her swept all before it. Turning suddenly, she flung both arms round his neck and hid her face upon his shoulder, her breath coming in short, dry sobs, like the breath of an overwrought child. ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... her about Shocky's safety. I shall not write down the conversation here. Critics would say that it was an overwrought scene. As if all the world were as cold as they! All I can tell is that this refined woman had all she could do to control herself in her eagerness to get out of her prison-house, away from the ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... into the darkness; and the lawyer sat for a moment with pursed lips. Yes, of course the boy was overwrought: anyone could see that: he had stammered a little—a sure sign. But why make all this fuss? A week in the ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... overwrought; I must get to bed," thought he. With sensuous visions such as these before his eyes, depressed and ill at ease, Yourii went hurriedly indoors. When in bed, after vain efforts to sleep, his thoughts ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... literature. The prestige of the scholar revived, and literary eclipsed warlike fame; but with the revival of letters came the revolutionary spirit before exhibited on the battle-field and in cabinets. For the artificial and elegant was substituted the melodramatic and effective; lyrics from the overwrought heart broke in dreamy sweetness from Lamartine and in simple energy from Beranger; fiction the most elaborate, incongruous, and exciting, here quaintly artistic, there morbidly scientific, revealed the chaos and the earthquakes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... may be, the end was, that Webster and Company became very shaky. They did not, indeed, go into the Gazette, but they got into very deep water; and the principal, ere long, having overwrought all his powers, was ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... understand you, Dmitri Fyodorovitch," the prosecutor said slowly, in a soft and almost compassionate tone. "But all this, if you'll excuse my saying so, is a matter of nerves, in my opinion ... your overwrought nerves, that's what it is. And why, for instance, should you not have saved yourself such misery for almost a month, by going and returning that fifteen hundred to the lady who had entrusted it to you? And why could you not have explained things ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... woman to sympathize with her. Men had not the courage. Poor Fanny! She was such a lady, and so straight and magnificent. And yet everything seemed to do her down. Every time she seemed to be doomed to humiliation and disappointment, this handsome, brilliantly sensitive woman, with her nervous, overwrought laugh. ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... wandered up the river-bank toward where he saw the two half-breeds placing the canoe in the still water at the further end of the village. Half-way there he was relieved to meet the genial Ed. Mason, who greeted him, as Trenton thought, with a somewhat overwrought effusion. There evidently was something on the genial ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... quarrel between them. Wollaston dropped into the music room sometimes, late in the afternoon, to ask how the opera was getting along. His manner to March on these occasions was one of, perhaps, slightly overwrought politeness, but the intention of it did not seem hostile. Toward Paula he presented the image of humorous, affectionate concern, the standard behavior of the ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... "Edith is a little overwrought," says Brooks. "It's true enough that you're not quite an agreeable person to live with. Still, I hardly feel that I have treated you just right in this matter. I shouldn't have deceived you about the ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... to Bellingham's "frightful agitation" as he sat on the bench, and all this dreadful work was going on; and I return to it, to describe it as far as words can convey an idea of the shocking spectacle. I could only imagine something like it in the overwrought painting of a powerful romance-writer, but never before could conceive the physical suffering of a strong muscular man, under the tortures of a distracted mind. Whilst his language was cool, the agonies which shook his frame were ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... said pityingly to himself, as he laid her down in her own berth; and then he added aloud, "You are overwrought and done up, Mrs. Tracey. Rest awhile, and you will soon ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke
... mind had been overwrought, and she caught insinuation in his voice. "You mean Tom Fairing!" Her eyes blazed. "You are quite right—I did not need you. Tom Fairing is a man that all the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and yet ... and yet I walked along with a certain gladness in my step. The tears trembling on my lashes were not tears of helplessness, but of a too-insistent energy, for they came above all from my overwrought nerves. My mind saw clear and rent my remorse ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... later portion of the manuscript differed from the pages which he had just been reading. Signs of an overwrought brain showed themselves, here and there, as the outline of the play approached its end. The handwriting grew worse and worse. Some of the longer sentences were left unfinished. In the exchange of dialogue, questions and answers were not always attributed respectively to the right ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... cried, departed Burke, All chivalrous romantic work Is ended now and past! That iron age—which some have thought Of mettle rather overwrought— ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... exchanged a long look with Alma Marston when he came up the steps. Love, pity, and greeting were in his eyes. Her countenance revealed her vivid emotions; she was overwrought, unstrung, half-crazed after a night spent with her fears. When he came within her reach caution was torn from her as gossamer is flicked away by a gale. Impulse had always governed her; she gave way to ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... Glaucus; and he closed at once with the Egyptian. Meanwhile, Apaecides raised his sister, now lifeless, from the ground; his strength, exhausted by a mind long overwrought, did not suffice to bear her away, light and delicate though her shape: he placed her, therefore, on the couch, and stood over her with a brandishing knife, watching the contest between Glaucus and the Egyptian, and ready to plunge his weapon in the bosom of Arbaces should ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... could hear a rustling in the women's end of the dressing-room tent. Fevered, he listened to it. Fevered, he changed to an outing-shirt, open at the throat. He ran out, not to miss a moment with her.... She had not yet come. He was too overwrought to heed a small voice in him, a voice born of snow-fields colored with sunset and trained in the quietudes of Henry Frazer's house, which insisted: "Go slow! Stop!" A louder voice throbbed like the pulsing of the artery ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... already pouring some wine into a glass. With a woman's instinct she saw that the old man was overwrought and faint. It was a Friday, and in his simple way there was no more austere abstinent than Father Concha, who had probably touched little food ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... of her overwrought feelings was so droll that Bessie with some difficulty refrained from laughing outright, but she knew how very real all this was to Hatty, so she exercised self-control, and ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... true? Was it not merely some illusion of my overwrought and distracted spirit? Why should that hour yesterday seem to me ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... has had to face for many centuries, perhaps not since the embassy of the Goths to the Emperor Valens—the ministry or cabinet which but dares, dares to trust this people's resolution, will find that this enthusiasm is not that of men overwrought with war-fever, but the deep-seated purpose of a people strong to defend the heritage of its fathers, and not to swerve from the path which fate itself has marked out for it amongst the empires of the earth. This, I maintain, is the verdict of ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... different when it came to Masie. The little lady had to be coaxed into one of the easy chairs in the improvised office and comforted with an arm around her shoulder, to say nothing of having her hair smoothed back from her face, followed by a kiss on her white forehead, before her overwrought anxieties ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... as the soul of man grows upward into comprehension, is the apostle of an ever widening truth. And over the richly sculptured central arch which forms the entrance to the choir, against the incongruous glitter of gold and jewels and magnificent garments and lights and sumptuous, overwrought details—the very extravagance of the Renaissance—a great black marble crucifix bore aloft the most solemn Symbol of ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... but reflected. These gushes of feeling on the part of Miss Burney sometimes appeared to me a little overwrought and designed to conceal a sharpness of wit and observation which she feared to exercise in courtly circles. In this resolve she was doubtless discreet, but it gave her conversation a turn of unreality which impressed as might the use of some perfume of Araby to conceal a less romantic ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... and breathless hush of overwrought interest and intense (yet strange to say not unpleasing) terror lay like a mighty and awful ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... detail with what you have heard, I cannot explain or defend myself. Will you not sit down? You are looking pale and overwrought." ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... time, she's really gone," and the excited news-bringer burst into tears. The poor soul was completely overwrought; she looked tired and wan, as if she had spent her forces in sympathy as well as hard work. She felt in her great bundle for a pocket handkerchief, but was not successful in the search, and finally ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... And then, being utterly overwrought, I was giving out, and I suddenly felt a queer giddiness coming over me; and if it had not been for her, I should have fallen and maybe fainted, and she saw it, and got me to a couch from which she had started when ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... the truth. The iron nature, so long overwrought, now utterly unstrung, had yielded for the first time to the stress of nature and of events. The relief from what he had taken to be death had come swiftly, and the reaction brought a lethal calm of its own. If he had indeed ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... danger to be avoided, however. We may become so taken up with the overwrought descriptions of the emotions as found in literature or on the stage that the common humdrum of everyday life around us seems flat and stale. The interpretation of the writer or the actor is far beyond what we are able to make for ourselves, ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... old man, "that handsome young lad. Could it he possible? Oh, how miraculous!" He folded his hands and stood in silence, till his overwrought feelings broke forth in a torrent of tears. At last he said: "How was he saved? How did he reach this house and these ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne |
