"Nerve" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... similar to that experienced by the calling ladies. He could observe no opening that promised anything but an ungracious plunge or an awkward stumble, and the ladies had been wrong in suspecting that his authority as a cleric would nerve him ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... artistic perceptions are moreexquisite than Velasquez's. He knows as much, possibly even a little more, and yet the result is never quite equal. Why? A question of health. C'est un temperament de chatte. He cannot pass from masterpiece to masterpiece like Velasquez. The expenditure of nerve-force necessary to produce such a work as the portrait of Lady Archibald Campbell or Miss Alexander exhausts him, and he is obliged to wait till Nature recoups herself; and these necessary intervals he has employed in writing letters signed "Butterfly" to the ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... permitted to remain in peace, although he had sunk into obscurity. He who was to lead the hosts of Israel through the great and terrible wilderness—who was to endure toil, labours, and privation, needed the nerve, the hardihood, the physical training, which could not be gained in the luxurious courts of the Pharaohs, or in the quiet, and, doubtless, comfortable and abundant homes of the husbandmen of Goshen. Amid the enjoyments of ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... both of which animals the eye is in an almost rudimentary state, and is covered by a tendinous membrane and skin. In the common mole the eye is extraordinarily small but perfect, though many anatomists doubt whether it is connected with the true optic nerve; its vision must certainly be imperfect, though probably useful to the animal when it leaves its burrow. In the tucutuco, which I believe never comes to the surface of the ground, the eye is rather larger, but often rendered blind ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... no battle. It ended as the majority of such jungle encounters end—one of the boasters loses his nerve, and becomes suddenly interested in a blowing leaf, a beetle, or the lice upon his ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... displayed the nerve evinced by this frail and tender woman, for however callous he may be, some feature will betray the torture he is enduring; but a woman can often turn a smiling face upon the person who is racking her very soul. At the mere name of Montlouis the Count ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... not think if I should see that man I could go through my part. It requires nerve, as you know, and my nerves would be so shaken that my life would be in peril. If you ever hear of my meeting with an accident, you may ...
— The Young Acrobat of the Great North American Circus • Horatio Alger Jr.
... depths of the Canyon. There was no well-defined trail, and the slope was steep enough to make one's flesh creep. The site was marked with disaster. Here a pack mule had slipped, fallen, and been dashed to pieces; there a man had fallen and been killed. It was a difficult descent, but nerve and pluck had accomplished it. Beyond was the Pack-a-tha-true-ye-ba Spring, and after seeing its water I determined ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... fight and falls can be classed only as an idiot. What, in the name of Bacchus, is there to compensate a man in drinking again—after he has won his fight—for all the troubles and rigors of the battle from which he has emerged victorious? If he had nerve enough to go through his novitiate and get his degree, why should he deliberately return to the position he voluntarily abandoned? What has he been fighting for? Why did ...
— The Old Game - A Retrospect after Three and a Half Years on the Water-wagon • Samuel G. Blythe
... didn't mean just that," replied Dick, quickly. "I meant that I might lose my nerve after the first flight, and ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... fascination drew me from my seat, drew me with uneven and reluctant footsteps out of the gate and down the narrow straight road. There was still not a soul in sight. I drew nearer and nearer to the spot. Once more I essayed to move him. It was utterly in vain. Such nerve as I possessed had left me wholly and altogether. A sense of repulsion, nauseating, invincible, made a child of me. I stood up and looked around wildly. It was then for the first time I saw what my right foot had trodden into ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... May, And, love extinct, all life were dead to God. And what the charm that at my Laura's kiss, Pours the diviner brightness to the cheek; Makes the heart bound more swiftly to its bliss, And bids the rushing blood the magnet seek— Out from their bounds swell nerve, and pulse, and sense, The veins in tumult would their shores o'erflow; Body to body rapt—and charmed thence, Soul drawn to soul with intermingled glow. Mighty alike to sway the flow and ebb Of the inanimate Matter, or to move The nerves that weave ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... his house, suffering a good deal of physical pain, suffering more from restlessness of nerve caused by his former tense activity, suffering most from the consideration of various things which were ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... in a sickly way at him, and strove to nerve myself manfully for a final exertion. "Very well," I made answer. "Just a moment's more rest, and we'll ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... the north by Hongi, the wretched people of the Thames were between the hammer and the anvil. When at last their persecutors—the Ngapuhi and Te Waharoa—met over their bodies, Te Waharoa's astuteness and nerve were a match for the invaders from the north. In vain the Ngapuhi besiegers tried to lure him out from behind the massive palisades of Mata-mata, where, well-provisioned, he lay sheltered from ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... were released after a discussion in the stifling lodge that had lasted for eleven hours, "with every nerve strained to its utmost tension and momentarily expecting a conflict which must be ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... that neither prosecution nor penalty will prevent me from teaching both Atheism and Malthusianism to all who will listen to me, and since Christianity is still so bigoted as to take the child from the mother because of a difference of creed, I will strain every nerve to convert the men and women around me, and more especially the young, to a creed more worthy ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... to other men, he thought; and perhaps he was right. He went slowly through the cool dusk, looking across the fields, up at the pale, frightened face of the moon hooded in clouds: he did not dare to look, with all his iron nerve, at the dark figure beyond him on the road. She was sitting there just where he had left her: he knew she would be. When he came closer, she got up, not looking towards him; but he saw her clasp her hands behind ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... sentenced to transportation, a penalty afterwards commuted to fine and imprisonment. He was a man of few words, remarkably few, but of deep thought and prompt action, and, in moments of crisis and emergency, a man of unshaken and inflexible nerve. To the casual observer, he seemed only a silent man, or a sullen one, astute or stolid; in times of peril he was a man of iron, but a man of action and passion, too, moving with resistless might. To rouse his powers, mental or physical, ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... warning cry from Ned O'Connor, whose anxiety began to make him very uneasy, the amateur sailors strained every nerve to pull through, while their companion who sat at the helm in the stern of the boat seemed to urge them on to redoubled exertions. Of course their efforts were in vain. The next billow caught the boat on ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... increased his subscription, the funds were still insufficient. But the Ladies made still greater sacrifices; the Sisters of Charity limited themselves to one meal a day, and Vincent, who had already reduced himself to the direst poverty, strained every nerve ...
— Life of St. Vincent de Paul • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes
... ruling class suffer. The invocation of the "Rights of the Child" leaves substantially untouched the children of the rich. It is otherwise with woman. The shot that rips up the wrongs done to her touches a nerve that aches from end to end in the capitalist world. There is no woman, whatever her station, but in one way or other is a sufferer, a victim in modern society. While upon the woman of the working class the cross of capitalist ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... the fittings of a little boat as if they were mere trifles because it held only one man, when they may in any degree be useful to yachts of larger size, and thus to that noble fleet of roaming craft which renew the nerve and energy of so many Englishmen by a manly and healthful enterprise, opening a whole new element of nature, and nursing a host of loyal ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... he faintly said when he reached the fireside again, "is right nerve-racking. It's like one ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... you with all this." Selwyn's voice recalled me and the face in the fire vanished. "But there is no one else I can talk to. I should as soon go to a patient in a nerve sanitarium as to Mildred. As a sister Mildred is not a success. She'd first have hysterics and tell me I was brutal to poor Harrie, and then declare that to marry a million dollars was the chance of a lifetime for him. One of the ten thousand things I can't understand about ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... exclaimed Mr. Damon. "You boys must have had your nerve with you to stay around Sandy Hook after that gun went ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... her father's steps, and fled to her room to nerve herself for the part she must act before him. But she was far from successful; her pale face and abstracted manner awakened his attention and his surmises as to the cause. Having an engagement out, he soon left her to welcome ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... gun seems to point right of its own accord, I have not anything to say to it.' You see, shooting is a matter of eye. Some men may shoot all their lives, and they will never be more than just respectable, while others shoot well the first time that a gun is put in their hands. Want of nerve is what spoils half men's shooting; that and taking too long an aim. Well, it is time for us to be mounting and getting back. I have got to see that the dinner is all ready. I never can trust that black scoundrel, Sam, to do things right while I ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... twopenny ride at the Zoo, few Europeans ever mount or ride a camel, thereby missing an art or a pastime or sport, which to the novice, until he has been thoroughly and literally broken in, is the most back, heart, and nerve-wearing means of locomotion he could possibly choose in all the ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... sight of their own wagon, aunt Corinne and her nephew, toughened by this training, would not have owned to each other a wish to go back and sit in safety and peace of nerve again upon the log. Robert plodded carefully ahead, parting the bushes, and she passed through the gaps with his own figure, clinching his jacket with fingers that tightened or relaxed with ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... stay in an hotel he recommended till I heard from him. He said you had sworn to track down the criminals and hang them with your own hands, and so when I saw you suddenly come up behind me in that dark road to-night—oh, you've no idea how terrified I was! Mr. Rattar had frightened away all the nerve I ever had, and then when I thought I was safely away, you suddenly came up behind me in that ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... kept up a shouting that was intended to nerve his own arm, and possibly help to strike terror into the ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... nerve and patience more than he had anticipated, that first encounter with the population of the Country of the Blind. The place seemed larger as he drew near to it, and the smeared plasterings queerer, and a crowd of ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... visited because there was in it a little mortal very new to this world, he saw Madame Le Maitre riding up the snowy road that he was descending. He felt glad, at the first sight of her, that he was no longer a youth but had fully come to man's estate, and had attained to that command of nerve and conquest over a beating heart that is the normal heritage of manhood. This thought came to him because he was so vividly reminded of the hour in which he had once before sought an interview with this lady—even ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... considerable knowledge of dentistry. Galen (A.D. 131) taught that the teeth were true bones existing before birth, and to him is credited the belief that the upper canine teeth receive branches from the nerve which supplies the eye, and hence should be called "eye-teeth." Abulcasis (10th cent. A.D.) describes the operation by which artificial crowns are attached to adjacent sound teeth. Vesalius (1514), Ambroise ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... it became a passion to the winners; the little girls strained every nerve never to be late or absent; but, alas! some mischance would occur to one or other, and it passed, in its purple and gold, to some strenuous and luckier class in another section of the building, turning to a funeral-banner ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... halfway up the hill before Courtney moved. Every nerve was aquiver as he raised himself to his feet and looked cautiously about. The thing he feared had come to pass, but even as he crouched there in the shelter of the bushes the means of salvation flashed through his mind. He realized that the next fifteen or twenty minutes ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... stated that the dread of an operation which became necessary for a complaint under which he laboured, was the cause of his suicide; this I much doubt, since I have never met with a man of greater fortitude and stronger nerve. I am rather disposed to think that the depressed state of his finances, severing the only hold he had on his dissolute associates, and the attention paid too often to wealth, though accompanied by vice, having disappeared, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... road from the three who stood beside the gate, but the gasping breath of the horses could now be heard, whilst the fierce cries of pursuit had changed to an ominous silence, as though not even a breath was to be wasted—every nerve being strained to the effort ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the king's daughter was shut up in some distant hiding-place, Gunnar strained his wits in every nerve to track her out. Hence, while he was himself conducting the search with others, his doubtful ear caught the distant sound of a subterranean hum. Then he went on slowly, and recognized a human voice with greater certainty. He ordered the ground underfoot ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... It is the sense of the moral death involved, searing of conscience, deadening of heart, blunting of moral faculty, fruits of death brought forth in the soul of the survivor, which are more horrifying to the enlightened consciousness than the dying groans of the stricken can be to the more bodily nerve. The thing to fear is not pain, but trespass; not suffering, but sin—the peculiar sin of war is that it corrupts while it consumes, that it demoralizes whilst it destroys. It is not because war kills that it is the devil, but because it depraves; and ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... would come on till almost within springing distance, when he would stop and lift his great head, wrinkling his chops to show the long white fangs, and rumbling a warning deep in his massive chest. Then the caribou would lose his nerve; he would stamp and fidget and bluster, and at last begin to circle nervously, crashing his way into the scrub as if for a chance to take his enemy in the flank. Whereupon the old wolf would trot quietly along the path, paying no more heed to the interruption; ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... Did Mr. Grey have the nerve to come to my house and steal you away to be made a laughing stock of ...
— Pearl and Periwinkle • Anna Graetz
... they were going to have an easy time, and they probably loafed a little this morning. But now, you see, they know that they're in for a licking if they don't do mighty well, and they'll strain every nerve to beat us." ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Mountains - or Bessie King's Strange Adventure • Jane L. Stewart
... between the pair was, that while the father was violent and a bully, the son had thrice the nerve and courage of the parent, and could not merely make an attack, but resist it; and finding that the moment was now come when the contest between him and his father was to be decided, he took his dinner with perfect coolness and appetite before ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... wonder of odds and patches. The generosity of one of our volunteers, Mr. Francis Sayre, the son-in-law of President Wilson, doubled its capacity. But buildings that are made of green wood, and grow like Topsy, are apt to end like Topsy—turvy. Now we are straining every nerve to obtain a suitable accommodation for the children. We sorely need a brick building, economically laid out and easily kept warm, with separate wings for girls and boys and a creche for babies. Miss Storr was obliged ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... echo of every other wall, the murmur of every stream, aye! the hoots and hisses of every street in the nation, ring it in your ears, and deafen you with their din. The people have a voice of their own, and it must, it will be, sooner or later heard: and I, as in duty bound, will always exert every nerve and every power of which I am master, to hasten the completion of so desirable an event." The ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Harry Benbow gently. "His research hasn't done us any good and it hasn't done the Soviets any good. The poor guy's been on edge ever since he got here. All the pale hide around this place stirs up every nerve in him." ...
— Psichopath • Gordon Randall Garrett
... thereby? Being well acquainted with this prisoner, a few days after the doctor had told me of the circumstances I met him, and asked him what object he had in feigning death the time that he was taken from the mines to the hospital? His reply was that he hadn't the nerve to take his own life, as he believed in a future state of punishment, and that he did not desire to step from the Kansas Hell to the hell of the future, and that by feigning death he hoped to be taken to the hospital, placed in a coffin, then taken out to the prison graveyard, ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... the shore nearly opposite the fort. Allen then made a short address to us. He was never a man of many words. He said he knew our spirit, and hoped we would remember the cause for which we were about to strike; that would nerve the arm of a coward. He concluded by conjuring us to obey orders strictly, and to commit no slaughter that could be done without. Then, with Arnold at his side, Allen led us stealthily up the rocks to the sally-port. ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... building materials suddenly illuminated the gathering gloom of night; and the loud cries of the assailants, who had succeeded in kindling this fire by their missiles, proclaimed the fierceness of the attack. Governor Dorp was himself in the fort, straining every nerve to extinguish the flames, and to hold this most important position. He was successful. After a brief but bloody encounter the Spaniards were repulsed with heavy loss. All was quiet again, and the garrison ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... deal of bruising I escaped unhurt. Closer and closer came the hubbub and the din of the town—the market was not yet over. As I approached the big street, throngs of blue-cottoned yokels, quite out of hand, created a nerve-racking uproar, as they thriftily drove their bargains. I shrugged my shoulders, gazed long and earnestly at the motley mob, and putting on a bold front, pushed through in a careless manner. Ponies with salt came in from the other end of the town, and in ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... and when a muscle is strengthened, the tendons, and the crests of bone to which they are attached, become enlarged; and this must likewise be the case with the blood-vessels and nerves. On the other hand, when a limb is not used, as by Eastern fanatics, or when the nerve supplying it with nervous power is effectually destroyed, the muscles wither. So again, when the eye is destroyed the optic nerve becomes atrophied, sometimes even in the course of a few months.[734] The Proteus is furnished with branchiae as well as with lungs: and Schreibers[735] ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... seized the axe from its owner's trembling hand and placed his own sturdy little shoulder in its place. Katharine was not crying now, but her anxiety altered her appearance strangely, and Moses was wholly past speech. Every nerve of his tortured body was strained to reach a spot where he could sink down and yield to the dreadful weakness which assailed him. Even the hard floor of the barn seemed a paradise of rest, ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... French troops had been withdrawn from the Netherlands. It is remembered that he was at the war office when the operations of Wellington in the Peninsula were crippled for want of supplies; it is forgotten that it was he who selected Wellington, and that he loyally strained every nerve to keep him supplied with troops, provisions, and specie, when few but himself believed in the policy of the Peninsular war, and Sir John Moore had assured him that if the French dominated Spain, they could not be resisted in Portugal. ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... for this was the third night of late hours and nerve racking strain. But it was over two hours since we had eaten the cookies, and Felicity suggested that a saucerful apiece of raspberries and cream would not be hard to take. It was not, for any one but Cecily, who couldn't ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... not strong among creatures of the wild; the chances of their daily life are sufficient stimuli for the beneficial excitement of their nerve centers. It has remained for civilized man, protected in a measure from the natural dangers of existence, to invent artificial stimulants in the form of cards and dice and roulette wheels. Yet when necessity bids there are no ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the gun calmly. He had seen guns before. Moreover he didn't believe the man had the nerve to shoot. He wasn't quite so sure of the two dark shadows in the bushes below, but it was well to be ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... back also. The long white slash down his favourite's side caught the woodsman's eye at once. He looked at it critically, touched the flour with tentative finger-tips, then turned on his wife a look of poignant interrogation. But Mrs. Jabe was ready for him. Her nerve had recovered. The fact that her victim showed no fear of her had gradually reassured her. What Jabe didn't know would never hurt ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... self-abandon, whole-hearted enthusiasm, and genuine exuberance of spirit. There is nothing counterfeit about the Irishman in his play. His one keen desire is to win, be the contest what it may; and towards the achievement of that end he will strain nerve and muscle even to the point of utter exhaustion. And how the onlookers applaud at the spectacle of a desperately contested race, whether between horses, men, motorcars, bicycles, or boats, or of a match ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... envy you the power to say No, Mr Schutzmacher. Of course, I knew I oughtnt to lend money to a young fellow in that way; but I simply hadnt the nerve to refuse. I couldnt very well, you know, ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... susceptible softness of fiber. And this blank habit of mind, when she did not think, and now realized that she was not dreaming, seemed to be the body of Carley Burch, and her heart and soul stripped of a shell. Nerve and emotion and spirit received something from her surroundings. She absorbed her environment. She felt. It was a delightful state. But when her own consciousness caused it to elude her, then she both ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... strongly marked, ascends nevertheless to more than half the height of the parietal bone. On the right superciliary ridge is observable an oblique furrow or depression, indicative of an injury received during life.* ([Footnote] *This, Mr. Busk has pointed out, is probably the notch for the frontal nerve.) The coronal and sagittal sutures are on the exterior nearly closed, and on the inside so completely ossified as to have left no traces whatever, whilst the lambdoidal remains quite open. The depressions for the Pacchionian glands are deep and numerous; and there is ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... is to Romanes' lecture on Medusa, given at the Royal Institution, May 25th. (See "Nature," XVI., pages 231, 269, 289.) It appears from a letter of Romanes (June 6th) that it was the abstract in the "Times" that gave the impression referred to. References to Mr. Spencer's theories of nerve-genesis occur in "Nature," pages 232, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... around Little Rock is about right. I gets a pension. I'm sixty-two years old but I was down sick with nerve trouble several years. I'm better now. I've been gradually coming on up for over a ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... with an accident while he is learning—some sudden and quite unexpected fall—this may have a serious and a permanent influence on his nerves, even if he escapes without injury. It happened frequently in the early days that a promising pupil, a man who showed both confidence and skill, had his nerve ruined, and all his "dash" taken from him, by some unlucky accident while he ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... She tries to read, is beginning to read, knows she ought to read, in the frame of each man the result of a whole history of all his life, of what he is and what makes him so,—of all his fore-fathers, of what they were and of what made them so. Each nerve has a sort of memory of its past life, is trained or not trained, dulled or quickened, as the case may be; each feature is shaped and characterised, or left loose and meaningless, as may happen; each hand is marked with its trade ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... she told him, hurrying away from the dark street as quickly as he could. He was trembling. Every nerve in his body seemed to be strained, and his eyes had the tired feel they always had when ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... intervene in and counteract America's projects, which might, hereafter, clash with the Aguinaldo party's aspirations. At the same time a group of agitators, financed by the priests in and out of the Islands, was straining every nerve to disseminate false reports and create discord between the rebels and the Americans, in the hope of frustrating their coalition. But, even then, with a hostile host before Manila, and the city inevitably doomed to fall, the fate ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... switched off, the door closed, she was alone once more, this time in almost complete darkness. Again she strained her ears upon the retreating steps, afraid yet to move her cramped muscles. The punctured arm throbbed and smarted painfully; every nerve in her body was stretched like a fiddle-string. Finally, far below, sounded the door's slam; a moment later, in front of the house, the whir of a starting engine vibrated upon the still air. The doctor was gone. Now or never, quick, not an instant ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... about Durand, but boy-like made light of the episode though down in their hearts they knew it had required pluck and steady nerve to do as he had done, and their admiration found expression in hauling off their reefers to force them upon him, or in giving him a clip upon the back and telling him he was "all right," and to "come on back to Bancroft for ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... rode through the column toward the spot where the adventurer must alight. The spectators credited the young chief with a generous intent to be of assistance; but agile as a cat, and master of every nerve and muscle, the man gained one of the pillars and slid to the ground. The galleries of ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... because the brain of man is so,—motive and move, motive and move: they sum up life, all life,—from the aspen-leaf turning its back to the wind, to the ecstasy of a saint. See the array of pawns (forces, as the Hindoo calls them): the bodily presence and abilities, power of persistence, endurance, nerve, the eye, the larynx, the tongue, the senses. Do they not exist in life as on the board, to cut the way for royal or nobler pieces? Does not the Imperial Mind win its experiences, its insight, through the wear and tear of its physical twin? Is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... have planned to attempt during the silent watches of the night, his nerve evidently failed him, for he did not venture to make the least move; possibly the combination of these three determined-looking lads awed him more than he could care to admit, or it might be he had other schemes up his ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... this serio-comic strife of the sparrow and the moth, is he pigeon hawk's pursuit of the sparrow or the goldfinch. It is a race of surprising speed and agility. It is a test of wing and wind. Every muscle is taxed, and every nerve strained. Such cries of terror and consternation on the part of the bird, tacking to the right and left, and making the most desperate efforts to escape, and such silent determination on the part of the hawk, pressing the ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... maiden Deeply wronged as I. With grief My true breast is overladen— Tears afford me no relief— Every nerve is strained and aching, And my ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... in every nerve, the probability that a crisis was at hand. It will be remembered that he was profoundly ignorant of the immediate intentions of the Rover. As the fort was not in a state for present service, it would not be difficult for the latter to seize ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... said he. He was in a pitiable state of reaction, with every nerve in a twitter. "I say, Watson, what o'clock ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... Kanchin's shout of 'poshol!' and the horses exerted every nerve without being urged. But with all our speed we could not outstrip the wolves that grew every moment more numerous. If we could only keep up our pace we might escape, but should a horse stumble, the harness give way, or the sledge overturn, we were hopelessly lost. We threw away our furs and cloaks ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... is not free from disease. The disease should be treated properly and judiciously. Whenever disease shows itself we should apply a suitable remedy—one that is suggested by the pharmacy of mutual brotherhood, and yet powerful enough to reach every nerve in our political system. ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... soothing name of peace. We are apt to speak of a low and pusillanimous spirit as the ordinary cause by which dubious wars terminated in humiliating treaties. It is here the direct contrary. I am perfectly astonished at the boldness of character, at the intrepidity of mind, the firmness of nerve, in those who are able with deliberation to face the perils of ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... beside Mrs. Carr, Gabriella soon found out that she was not nearly so rich as her neighbours were, not nearly so rich as her position in society exacted that she should be. She was still not rich enough to be spared the sordid, nerve-racking effort to make two ends meet without a visible break. Her small economies, to Gabriella's surprise, were as rigid as Mrs. Carr's; and though she lived in surroundings which appeared luxurious to the girl, there was almost as little ready money ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... grappled. The battle had begun. Attacked on the other side by another of the ships of Asia, Arminias was in deadly peril. The sight of their comrade's courage and of his danger stopped the retirement of the Greeks. Their rowers were now straining every nerve to come to the rescue of the isolated trireme, and from shore to shore the two fleets met with loud outcry and the jarring crash of scores ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... they were of 'such stuff as dreams are made on,' and vanished at a wink, only to appear in other places; and by and by not only islands, but refulgent and revolving lights began to stud the darkness; lighthouses of the mind or of the wearied optic nerve, solemnly shining and winking as we passed. At length the mate himself despaired, scrambled on board again from his unrestful perch, and announced that we had missed our destination. He was the only man of practice in these waters, our sole ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for his arrival; but when they found he did not come, they had left the city. All that remained to be done was to attempt to save the prince. He was almost beside himself. Apparently he lost his self-command, and men of more nerve and experience did ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... Man, he called him contemptuously—a baby, a woman; not fit for the big north. Tall and slim, with blond hair in spite of his French blood and name, a quiet and unexcitable face, and an air that Blake called "damned superiority." He wondered how the Fiddling Man had ever screwed up nerve enough to kill Breault. Undoubtedly there had been no fight. A quick and treacherous shot, no doubt. That was like a man who played a fiddle. POOF! He had no more respect for him than if he dressed ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... full towards it, they were able to note the chances it offered for their safety. They saw that they were not so bad; and, encouraged by hope, they made efforts more energetic than ever—both of them straining every nerve and muscle in their ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... from the fairy tales; on the contrary, all the fire of the fairy tales is derived from this. Just as we all like love tales because there is an instinct of sex, we all like astonishing tales because they touch the nerve of the ancient instinct of astonishment. This is proved by the fact that when we are very young children we do not need fairy tales: we only need tales. Mere life is interesting enough. A child of seven is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door and saw ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... procession started for the bungalow, the girls, tired out with nerve strain and excitement, bringing up the rear. But they did not know they were tired. The mystery of the three strange little waifs washed up to them by the sea had done a good deal to erase even the ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... lied. The President asked what could be his motive for accusing her unjustly. The widow was silent. Lachaud begged her to answer. "I cannot," she faltered. The President invited her to sit down. After a pause the widow seemed to recover her nerve. ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... "I do not. I told Mr. Sawyer so on the train. It is hotter in the country than it is in the city. I can't bear the ticking of a clock in my room, and I think crickets and owls are more nerve-destroying than clocks, and I positively detest anything that buzzes and stings, like bees, and wasps, ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... practically the end of my story, Miss Morriston. I laid the chisel by the body, went to the window, pulled in the rope, carefully got the centre, adjusted it through the stanchion, and with a last look at the dead man, got out of the window, a rather nerve-trying business, and began to lower myself. I had calculated that the double rope was long enough to take me to within a few feet of the ground, and this proved to be the case. When I came to the end I let go of one side and pulled the other with me as I dropped. Then I drew the rope ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... conception of such an exploit caused his flesh to creep. But he was not of that class of men who fall back dazed before the face of danger. Again and again, led by an impulse he was unable to resist, he studied that precipitous rock, every nerve tingling to the newborn hope. God helping them, even so desperate a deed might be accomplished, although it would test the foot and nerve of a Swiss mountaineer. He glanced again uneasily toward his companion, and saw the same motionless figure, the same sober face turned deliberately ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... of the Cardinal-Archbishop of Toledo, and moved thus in an atmosphere of combined temporal and spiritual dignity such as his soul loved. Very agreeable indeed to him was the honour shown to him at this time. Deep down in his heart there was a secret nerve of pride and vanity which throughout his life hitherto had been continually mortified and wounded; but he was able now to indulge his appetite for outward pomp and honour as much as he pleased. When King ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... he would exert himself, to have a nerve. I could not have thought it was in the power of his capacity to have given us such ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... back to me. Do as I say. We'll peg a little nerve into this bunch. Now I'll go back of the plate ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... beef-time, from the first kyard out of the box down to the turn, no one ever knows why my grandfather does ring it, for he's too onbendin' to tell of his own accord, an' as I states prior, no one on earth has got nerve an' force of character enough to ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... especially as it is sensibly felt high up in the leg near the tuberosity of the tibia, when pulled by the dangling end, my own impression is that the so-called "Guinea worm" is nothing more than the external saphenus or communis tibiae (nerve) exposed in a peculiar manner, probably by a disease, which, by a curious pathological process, absorbs away the muscular parts, leaving the bare nerve detached at its lower extremity, suspended ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... irregular waves, each striving to overtop the other in their plunge upon the city. They broke, indeed, into the back door of the city, and then, with a suddenness that seemed to rock the very foundations of the earth, the wind struck us, in three nerve-racking blasts. ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... hair floated about her as if it were spread upon a wave that upheld her. She was beautiful indeed as she lay there sleeping, and the man, thus suddenly come upon her, anxious and troubled and every nerve quivering, stopped, awed with the beauty of her as if she had been some heavenly being suddenly confronting him. He stepped softly to her side and bending down observed her, first anxiously, to make sure she was alive and safe, then searchingly, as though he would know every detail of the picture ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... set in authority in order that they may pronounce definitive decisions according to the best of their own judgment. It is sometimes their duty to take a decided line. James, who hitherto had always stood between different parties, could not nerve himself at this eventful moment for a firm and straightforward resolve. In the monstrous dilemma in which the various questions at issue were becoming involved he could not come to any decision. The kindest thing that can be said of him is that at this moment his nature was not equal ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... conflicting glances was unbroken for several seconds, and then words came uncontrollably from my mouth and I managed to snap that nerve-cracking tension. ...
— The Homicidal Diary • Earl Peirce
... twice. He said, of course, it would not be so neatly done as by men who had been trained to it; but that, in cases of extreme necessity, anyone who had seen it done once or twice, and had sufficient nerve, could do it; especially if they had, ready at hand, this stuff that makes the wounded man sleep and ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... New England rum, which was the basis of the Jones Bitters? Had not the baker, tremulous from excessive aguardiente, been soothed and sustained by the invisible morphia, judiciously hidden in Blogg's Nerve Tonic? Nor had the wily Ezekiel forgotten the weaker sex in their maiden and maternal requirements. Unguents, that made silken their black but somewhat coarsely fibrous tresses, opened charming ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... was a prize worth racing for! And, moreover, there were two elks, worth twenty-five dollars apiece, buried in the snow under logs. These also would belong to the victor! The poacher dashed ahead, straining every nerve, and reached safely the foot of the steep declivity. The boys were now but a few hundred ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... once more in his stealthy fashion, and took from the mantelpiece a small bottle of nerve-tabloids which he had forgotten, and slipped them into his pocket, and then went out into the dark again. Once he paused at the entrance of the corridor and listened attentively, and then crept down the garden path and found the horses tethered to the paraiso trees. They led them ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... been in detail, so much was proved against him that he was dismissed his ship, and his father was recommended to withdraw him from the service, as being disqualified by want of nerve. Also, it was added more privately, that such vicious tendencies needed home restraint. The big bully, his corrupter, bore witness against him, but did not escape scot free, for one of the captains spoke to him in scathing tones ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... feelings, nor do I pretend to any great virtue in the matter. The truth is, I want the force of character which might enable me to stand against the spirit of the times. The call on all sides now is for young men, and I have not the nerve to put myself in opposition to the demand. Were 'The Jupiter,' when it hears of my appointment, to write article after article setting forth my incompetency, I am sure it would cost me my reason. I ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... hard work for me to obey Mrs. Stewart's command to eat the supper that she soon brought me on a tray. Every nerve was tense in anticipation of the meeting between Dicky and Jack, which I could not avoid, and which I so dreaded. What was happening at my home while I sat here, my hands tied by my ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... hand. She took it and approached, saying, "You are better, and will soon be well." He could only press her hand as the tears flooded over his eyes. With a kerchief white as innocence it was wiped away and the hand that held it laid gently on his brow—that touch thrilled his every nerve. ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... creatures from their hamated station in life; or give them vigour and humour, to imprint the marks of their little teeth. That if the morsure be hexagonal, it produces poetry; the circular gives eloquence. If the bite hath been conical, the person whose nerve is so affected shall be disposed to write upon politics; and so ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853 • Various
... on a hot stove, in an instant a message goes on the nerve telegraph to the brain. It tells that wise thinking part that your finger will burn, if it stays ...
— Child's Health Primer For Primary Classes • Jane Andrews
... indeed. I never had such cause for alarm but once before, and that was a poor widow who was utterly overcome by some good news I was bringing her. My friends usually have sufficient nerve to endure heavy shocks," ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... influence. The Hili-lites in more than a thousand years had fought only one battle, and that five hundred years before; nor had they found necessary any struggle for food, or against rigorous climate. They were a brainy people, and were almost superhumanly perceptive in every sense organ and in every nerve. But they were wanting in that quality possessed by most European peoples and by Americans, which takes practical cognizance of the fact that prompt action and fearlessness is the true protection against danger. In the face of this ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... also be named to the different boats; and their orders ought to be positive never to allow more than the proper crew to enter, nor on any account to permit the boat to be lowered till fully and properly manned. I grant that it requires no small nerve to sanction the delays which an attention to these minute particulars demands; but the adequate degree of faith in their utility will bring with it the requisite share of decision, to possess which, under all circumstances, is, perhaps, one of the most characteristic ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... degrading. Their argument is that it schools the German youth to coolness and courage. If this could be proved, the argument, particularly in a country where every man is a soldier, would be sufficiently one-sided. But is the virtue of the prize-fighter the virtue of the soldier? One doubts it. Nerve and dash are surely of more service in the field than a temperament of unreasoning indifference as to what is happening to one. As a matter of fact, the German student would have to be possessed of much more courage not to fight. He fights ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... the supper-table he had one nerve-racking fear dispelled and another confirmed by his mother's reply to a question put ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... Kautz glacier, and finding their way barred by ice cascades, reached the summit by a thrilling rock climb over the cliff above the South Tahoma glacier. This precipice (see p. 37) they found to be a series of rock terraces, often testing the strength and nerve of the climbers. In Sunset Magazine for November, 1895, Mr. Glascock has told the story of their ...
— The Mountain that was 'God' • John H. Williams
... say, I have taken laborious pains to so trim this book of offense that you'll not lack the nerve to print it just as it stands. I am going to get the proofs to you just as early as I can. I want you to read it carefully. If you can publish it without altering a single word, go ahead. Otherwise, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... instrument is so finely adjusted that the faintest current will cause a deflection of the registering needle, which is delicately swung on a tiny pivot. If the galvanometer be attached to a human nerve, and the end of the nerve be irritated, ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... disastrous kind; it means to drive the mental machinery at an unreasonable and dangerous rate. Worry gives the brain no rest, but rather keeps the delicate cells in constant and continuous action. Work is wear; worry is tear. Overwork, mental strain, and worry lead to a diminution of nerve force and to a prostration of the vital forces and causes a degeneracy of the blood vessels of ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... me commercially. I give up; my nerve is gone. I suppose I ought to be glad; for we're through the court. I don't know as ever I knew how, and I'm sure I don't remember. If it pans out—the wreck, I mean—we'll go to Europe, and live on the interest of our money. ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Jay,[118] but it is a source of deep regret that Jay's profound sagacity did not include a country whose existence as a foreign colony on our northern border has given rise to continued embarrassment. The feeling involuntarily possesses one that he, who owned the nerve to stop all negotiations until Englishman and American met on equal terms as the representatives of equal nations, and dared to break the specific instructions of Congress when he believed France favoured confining the United States between the Atlantic and ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... and slipped her pencil into her pocket; she could not write. And although she thrilled through every nerve over the majestic sentences that followed and was carried to a pitch of enthusiasm almost beyond her control, when the jubilant thunder of thousands of voices rang together in the matchless closing words, "Blessing, and glory, and thanksgiving, and honor, and power, ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... Food Act requiring printed confession as to fluid contents upon the labels of their own goods. It was no uncommon thing in the Sunny Southland to observe a staunch churchgoer who was an outspoken advocate of temperance rising up and giving three rousing hiccups for good old Dr. Bunkum's Nerve Balm. And distinctly I recall the occasion when a stalwart mother in Israel, starting off to attend a wedding and feeling the need of a little special toning-up beforehand, took three wineglassfuls of her favorite Blood Purifier ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... take a whole lot of nerve to do that. After what happened last year, she could hardly hope to be believed." This was Muriel's ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... vanishes on the shore in little gelatinous pools. During those intervals of idleness, when the absence of thought leaves the hand inert upon the modelling tool, Felicia, deprived of the sole moral nerve of her intellect, became savage, unapproachable, sullen beyond endurance,—the revenge of paltry human qualities upon great tired brains. After she had brought tears to the eyes of all those whom she loved, had striven to evoke painful memories or paralyzing anxieties, ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... than two years later. For more than twenty years longer, Adams continued in public life, but his greatest work was before the Declaration of Independence rather than after. There were times when the cause of the patriots must have fallen through but for the nerve and skill of this man. Bowdoin, Cushing, Hancock, Otis, and even John Adams could not have been thoroughly trusted in the last years of the colony to bring affairs to a successful issue. But Samuel Adams was fitted by intellect and character, adroitness and courage, tireless energy ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... go and less than three hours before sunrise. There was a race yet for the life of Daniel Dean. The gallant little mare could cover the stretch with nearly an hour to spare, and Chad, thrilled in every nerve, but with calm confidence, raced against the ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... see, or a steel knife or anything that might express death. Our family physicians are still against hypnotism, and if I should go to a neurologist of my own selection, it might be to one who believed still only in nerve foods, ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... little shops on either side started playing nasty, cheap European phonographs the noise of which was most disagreeable. Most of the records were of Chinese music, the harsh quality of which was magnified tenfold by the imperfections of the instruments. When the nerve-wracking concert became intolerable, they were always good enough to ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... reach him. Such was the respect with which he had inspired the Spaniards, that no attempt was made to break the blockade; and in the meantime Tromp had sent urgent messages to Holland asking the Prince of Orange and the admiralties to strain every nerve to give him as many additional ships as possible. The request met with a ready and enthusiastic response. In all the dockyards work went on with relays of men night and day. In less than a month Tromp ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... during a wild bluster of wind; but always the inevitable kiss had been delayed, had been averted; and only her eager afterthoughts had made romance of their meagre acquaintance. Yet now, when they were alone, together, when every nerve in her body seemed tense with desire for him, he was somehow aloof—not constrained (for then she would have been happy, at the profoundly affecting knowledge that she had carried the day), but unsympathetically and unlovingly at ease. She could not read his face: in his manner she ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... I'll faint at the sight of real blood," she said, "but I shall know pretty well what to do if I can keep my nerve." ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... then, Shirley, did you? It is bright, keen-edged, finely tapered; it is dangerous-looking. I never yet felt the impulse which could move me to direct this against a fellow-creature. It is difficult to fancy that circumstances could nerve my arm to strike home ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... which had been enacted on the hill had been closely watched from the bridge and the town, and Mollie's conduct had been pretty well interpreted though her words could not be heard. The nerve which she had exhibited had excited universal comment, and it needed no second invitation to bring off every hat and send up, in her honor, the shrill yell with which our soldiers ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... verily nerve-strained Being alone, And I moved the things as bidden, One by one, And feigned to push the old ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... ripped the tags out of their ears and sheared 'em for what wool they had. Luke, I'm no relative of Lem Ferguson's when it comes to practical politics. I know just as well as you do who's trying to steal this State, a hunk at a time. They've had the nerve to tackle my district. But if they think that I'm going to ungrip and let them grab it they've got a wrong line ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day |
