"Nerve-racking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seam through the presser-foot. And piled between the opposing phalanxes of set faces were billows upon billows of foamy white muslin and lace—the finished garments wrought by the so-many dozen per hour, for the so-many cents per day,—and wrought, too, in this terrific, nerve-racking noise. ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... after the needs of the men who were actually engaged in fighting. Every night the shattered villages were raked and torn above them. Such dugouts could only be left at night or when the firing ceased. The two men who operated these lived a nerve-racking existence. Of course, all pies and doughnuts for these places had to be prepared far to the rear, and no fire could be built as near to the front as this. It was no easy task to bring the supplies back and forth. It was almost always done ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... Though Mrs. Fowler was rich 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 ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... risen when the train, a clattering collection of third-class cars, jangled laboriously over the low elevation on which Alexandria stands. With a series of nerve-racking spasms, it came to a halt on the water-front, where lay several large transports absorbing men, horses ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... good for fast driving, and when a road passes through a wooded space it is nerve-racking. Lockley drove with foreboding, every sense alert and every muscle tense. But just after a painful progress through a series of curves with high trees on either side which he managed by looking up at the sky and staying under the middle of the ribbon of stars he could see, Lockley touched ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... Hale's? Was she June Tolliver who had been and done all that, and now had come back and was slowly sinking back into the narrow grave from which Hale had lifted her? It was all too strange and bitter, but if she wanted proof there was her step-mother's voice now—the same old, querulous, nerve-racking voice that had embittered all her childhood—calling her down into the old mean round of drudgery that had bound forever the horizon of her narrow life just as now it was shutting down like a sky of brass around her own. And when the voice came, instead of bursting into tears as ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... of the most courageous of men. It was terrifying and nerve-racking to face such an unhuman foe—weird, drifting globes and invading jungles whose very source was shrouded in mystery. Against this enemy no weapons seemed to prevail. All the paraphernalia of modern warfare was ...
— The Seed of the Toc-Toc Birds • Francis Flagg
... hotel where he had established himself, he set about interviewing by telephone the Naudains whose names appeared in the directory. It was a nerve-racking task to Bruce, who was unfamiliar with the use of the telephone, and those of the name with whom he succeeded in getting in communication seemed singularly busy folk, indifferent to the amenities and entirely ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... Barrier, that he became familiar with rare scenes (denied to all save submarine adventurers in tropical waters), that he was oft in peril of his life, and that he could pause in the midst of strenuous, nerve-racking work to watch the never-ceasing hostilities of the denizens of the sea, may not ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... feverishly for the first nerve-racking part of the journey to be over, we spoke of the hopes and dangers of the great adventure upon which we were finally embarked. And so ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... the young Duke did call shortly thereafter to consult in regard to her son's matrimonial desires. The nerve-racking round of balls, receptions, and other society functions was quite forgotten by the elated Mrs. Hawley-Crowles, whose ears tingled deliciously under the pompous boastings of the Dowager Lady Altern. The house of Altern? Why, Mrs. Hawley-Crowles was convinced, after a half hour's conversation with ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... buffets aboard and is buried in a brawny human mass. There is a stop, and one wonders fiercely whether a horse is down ahead, and one had better get out at once and run for it. Tightly wedged in the heart of the car, nothing can be seen. It is all very nerve-racking, and I study, for quietness of mind, the familiar advertising card of the white-bearded old man announcing "It is really very remarkable that a cigar of this quality can ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... or three saddles were emptied, one on the side of the Diamond X forces. Nort and Dick heard bullets whistling in the air over their heads, and though they may have ducked, instinctively, they did not after the first two or three of these nerve-racking experiences. ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... Quin was floundering in the bog of poverty, illness and despair, Eleanor Bartlett was triumphantly climbing the peak of achievement. "Phantom Love," after weeks of strenuous rehearsal and nerve-racking uncertainty, had had its premiere performance at Atlantic City ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... and to console the girls for their fright the Maharajah had divided all his ready money among them. Since then he had had one fight with a German, whom he had jostled, and who had called him a black man. Major Norwood had been obliged to use the most nerve-racking exertions to keep his princeling out of a French prison. Slightly subdued, the Maharajah had consented to call at the palace at Monaco, to walk through the beautiful gardens on the Rock with Hannaford, and to visit the Fish Museum; but there was a yearning for new ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... public funeral—and they all discreetly ascribed telling upon a weak heart. Sir Stephen's precarious condition had been known, they said, to his medical adviser, who had for some time past tried to persuade him to relinquish his arduous and nerve-racking occupations, and to ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice |
