Excitement

“ It is the love of adventure, of excitement, a restlessness for something new, a desire for change. This impulse is controlled, shaped by circumstances of early life, by education and association; but the foundation of it at last is the thirst for excitement, the love of adventure. ”

“ Onward we move, with expectation at its highest, led by the irresistible charm of novelty, almost panting with excitement, even when every step seems to add certainty to the conviction that all that is beyond resembles all that has been seen. ”

“ You are in the prime of life; excitement is as necessary to you as his sweetheart to a Frenchman or his golf to an Englishman. You have just brought off one of the finest coups which has ever been planned. ”

“ But it makes all the difference whether the excitement takes place in a mind already stored with thought, and ready to pierce instantaneously to the deepest meaning of a particular scene or incident, or in a mind incapable of sustained reflection, and accustomed to see things by brilliant flashes which reveal only their partial and superficial aspects. ”

“ I can imagine no moment more propitious for the pleading of your cause, than one snatched from the confusion and excitement of such an hour, when the heart is made suggestive by strains of music and peals of laughter and sounds of gaiety and gladness everywhere. ”

“ The love of excitement grows upon what it feeds and soon, to the habitual pleasure-seeker, the quiet atmosphere and love of the home no longer appeal; he has begun a chase for excitement and pleasure which will never satisfy him. ”

“ Men go to a fire for entertainment. When I see how eagerly men will run to a fire, whether in warm or in cold weather, by day or by night, dragging an engine at their heels, I am astonished to perceive how good a purpose the love of excitement is made to serve. ”

“ Yet could you add to its tranquillity an excitement that never exhausts itself,—that becomes refreshed, not sated, with every new possession, then you would obtain happiness. There is only one excitement of this divine order,—that of intellectual culture. ”

“ Expectancy is in the air; we seem to live with greater zest; there's hushed excitement everywhere. With leaves the Honeysuckle's dressed. The hazel catkins are in flow'r; they patiently await the bees. ”

“ I answered, “the briefer the preparation, the greater the excitement, and what in life is equal to that?”
“True,” answered Bolingbroke; “to some natures, too restless to be happy, excitement can compensate for all,—compensate for years wasted, and hopes scattered,—compensate for bitter regret at talents perverted and passions unrestrained. But we will talk philosophically when we have more leisure. ”

“ Events so strikingly opposite in their character and influences succeed so rapidly one upon another that the mind is kept in one whirl of excitement, and at length accustoms itself to change with every phase of circumstances; and between joy and grief, hope and despondency, enthusiasm and depression, there is neither breadth nor interval,—they follow each other as naturally as morning succeeds to night. ”

“ That is the first bright hour of excitement, of trembling, but hopeful and felicitous anxiety. Then we think we never can display enough of talent, of imagination, of all that can interest, of all that can dazzle. ”

“ That excitement is by no means to be desired. Its tendency is to produce reaction, and, when the fire passes, to leave nothing but ashes behind. We may receive the Word with joy, and yet it may soon wither; and also give our bodies to be burned, and yet be nothing. Mere excitement is next door to grossness and licentiousness. Both have the same sensuous elements in them. Had we our choice, we would prefer a revival without any excitement. ”

“ Gesticulation, mimicry, acting, sensationalism, slang and weepy stories follow, until the ferment of excitement is developed to a high pitch, and droves flock down the sawdust trail to be made over on the instant into sanctified beings. ”

“ Excitement, like enthusiasm, sometimes renders us unconscious to the things of earth. ”

“ Only the unexcitable by nature can be supposed to endure continual external occasions of excitement. As if there were not enough—too much—that is exciting from within. For my own part, I can't understand the craving for excitement. ”

“ Here, though we know before-hand what to expect, we enter into them with eagerness, in quest of a pleasure already experienced. This is the pleasure constantly attached to the excitement of surprise from new and wonderful objects. ”

“ There is naturally a sort of excitement which takes possession of one, and which, I think, works on you to the same extent as a couple of glasses of champagne. You forget all fatigue, and your wits are more than usually sharpened. ”

“ I seem to feel the general excitement throughout the country tingling in me too; I like to see the children eagerly delighted, and the houses decorated with evergreens, and the old folk pleased and happy with the enthusiasm of the youngsters. ”

“ But in minds of a less healthy temperament, the emotion of pleasure, and the consequent excitement, is disproportionate to the strength of the faculties. The efficient power of the understanding is therefore overborne, and left in the rear; there is more of commotion than of action; more of movement than of progress; more of enterprise than of achievement. ”

“ In truth, without being absolutely satiated with pleasures, their first excitement having long abated, they become chary of the more sensitive enjoyments, and feel happy in consecrating to them the greater portion of their existence. ”

“ He had worked himself into a state of great excitement, but he checked it, took two or three short breaths, swallowed as often, and stretching out his hand towards me said, in a reassuring manner, "I ain't a going to be low, dear boy!" ”

“ What I understand by excitement is the working up of mere nature, and the putting forth of such efforts of nature as are designed to work on the natural feelings—all high pressure—all that is merely sensational. ”

“ Hence it is, that while all those means of excitement are employed which quicken the physical sensibilities, the deeper sensibilities of the soul are also addressed, and yet always by the intervention of dramatic or poetic images. A plain and undisguised appeal to the heart is unknown to the system. ”

“ The feverish agitation and insatiable thirst for enjoyment which seem to prevail among all ages and classes of the present day is enigmatical. Life now-a-days must be passed in a state of constant excitement. ”

“ The cheerfulness of the wake, however, is intermitting:—every hour or two the most melancholy howling that human voices could raise is set up by the keeners, and continued long enough to give the recurrence to mirth and fun increased excitement. ”

“ But if the words by which this excitement is produced are in themselves powerful, or the images and feelings have an undue proportion of pain connected with them, there is some danger that the excitement may be carried beyond its proper bounds. ”

“ In well-understood moderation, excitement is identical with attention, mental engrossment, the concentration of the forces upon the plastic or cementing operation, the rendering permanent as a recollection what lies in the focus of the blaze. Excitement, so defined, is worthless as an end, but is valuable as a means ”

“ The thrill of excitement will keep the reader in a state of suspense, and he will become personally concerned from the start, as to the central character, a very real man who suffers, dares—and achieves! ”

“ You like excitement and emotion and change, you like remarkable sensations—whereas I go in for a holy calm, for sweet repose.” ”

“ He who remembers his own adolescence, or who watches the boy or girl of that age, sees the excitement in the readiness to laugh, cry, fight or love that is so striking.
Undoubtedly the mother-stuff of all emotion is the feeling of excitement. Before any emotion reaches its characteristic expression there is the preparatory tension of excitement. Joy, sorrow, anger, fear, wonder, surprise, etc., have in them as a basis the same consciousness of an internal activity, of a world within us beginning to seethe. ”

“ There must therefore be some nervous excitement on which the feeling of amusement directly depends, although this excitement may most often coincide with a sudden transition to an incongruous or meaner image. ”

“ Here to-day, up and off to somewhere else to-morrow! Travel, change, interest, excitement! The whole world before you, and a horizon that’s always changing! ”

“ The intellectual excitement inseparable from those professions which call forth all our sensibility to pleasure and pain, requires some corresponding physical excitement to support our failure, and not a little to allay the ferment of the spirits attendant on success. ”

“ Yet it must be granted that those extremes, in matters of opinion or practice, which sometimes render even torpor conspicuous by its absurdities, have always originated with minds susceptible of high excitement. ”

“ To argue that this liability to strong excitement is a proof of the imbecility of our mind, or of our tendency to fanatical illusions, is nothing less than a begging of the question—a species of artifice which cannot be tolerated. ”

“ But the almost frenzied excitement into which he is so often thrown by the action of others subsides at intervals, when he feels the need for mental concentration—a craving which he satisfies in the solitary reflections forming his monologues. ”

“ I want excitement; and I don't care what form it takes or what I pay for it, so long as it makes my heart beat." ”

“ It may be remarked that in times of popular excitement, when passions are rife and the rude enthusiasm of the mass has beaten down the more calmly weighed opinion of the few, that there is a strange pleasure felt in the detection of any real or supposed lapse of one once esteemed. ”

“ The spectators of these sights get so deeply interested that it is not an extraordinary matter for them to appear as if almost deranged. Their excitement breaks out into exclamations of encouragement and applause, until at [pg 501] last they can control themselves no longer, and, on their own account, commence making bodily demonstrations of joy by jumping about. ”

“ How often must the novice, who had been at first carried away by enthusiasm and excitement, have felt crushed by the daily monotony of his life, and have pined for the joys and pleasures of common humanity ”

“ Others get from music, pictures, theatres, fashion, novels, newspapers, or travel, a quieter form of excitement, which, though often running into dissipation, is less harmful than ordinary narcotic stimulation. How far the ballroom, the political campaign, or the religious revival, may be the equivalent of a drinking spree, we will not pretend to say, but that they are all marked by a common character stimulation of pleasurable feeling carried to a pitch of excitement which ends in reaction more or less exhausting—is not to be denied. ”

“ To me, the excitement is nothing—to you, it is overpowering. You are a gamester, or rather, you have it in your disposition. Take, therefore, the advice of a friend, if I may so call myself, and do not go there again. ”

“ The greatest excitement prevailed—which means, you know, that people—animals, I mean—were laughing and talking, and wondering, and squeezing, and pushing, and treading on one another's toes, and saying "Where are you shoving to?" ”