25 Metaphors for nerves

But he was not made of such common-place stuff, His nerve was all steel, and his muscle all pith.

Fra Paolo's nerve and knowledge were the central forces of the resistance of the Republic in this crisis.

The former is a materialist in psychology (the nerves are the man, ideas are secretions of the brain), considers consciousness a property of organic matter (the soul is not a being, but a faculty), and makes moral sympathy develop out of the animal instincts of preservation and nourishment.

Frank knew all the time that he was pitted against a hard man, and so his muscles were strained and his nerves were taut.

If their nerves were a-tingle, they gave no hint or sign of it.

The motor nerve of the tongue is the ninth pair, the hypoglossal.

Hence they become half-baked, as it were; their nerves are unstrung, their flesh flabby

I declined; telling him plainly that his strange talk and manner frightened me, and I had neither the nerve nor the will to be his companion alone.

His nerves were not entirely tranquil.

Your nerves are a little on the blinkfrom all you've been doing.

My nerves were a good deal overwrought, as I can see now.

The optic nerve is the channel by which the mind peruses the hand-writing of Nature on the retina, and through which it transfers to that material tablet its decisions and its creations.

To speak more truly, the olfactory "nerve" is not a nerve at all, he says, but a part of the brain, in intimate connection with its anterior lobes.

Her nerves are all a-quiver.

"A merchant's nerves are delicate things," he said, as he fingered his cravat.

For care and trouble set your thought, Ev'n when your end's attainèd; And a' your views may come to nought, Where ev'ry nerve is strainèd.

But though we perceive all objects by a double organ, yet we never see the objects double, because the two nerves that are subservient to sight in our eyes are but two branches that unite in one pipe, as the two glasses of a pair of spectacles unite in the upper part that joins them together.

His nerve was a politician's, cynical, simple.

Nerves, or sinews, are membranes without, and full of marrow within; they proceed from the brain, and carry the animal spirits for sense and motion.

According as the nerve operated on is the plantar or the median, the operation is known as plantar or median neurectomy.

From the context ensuing, it might seem that the 'circumstance' which prevented Keats from staying with Shelley in Pisa was that his nerves were in so irritable a state as to prompt him to move from place to place in Italy rather than fix in any particular city or house.

That sponges have nerves is a discovery of recent date by a member of the Royal Microscopical Society.

'Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant, Oh life, not death, for which we pant; More life, and fuller, that I want.

He forgot his rags; every nerve became iron; and when the curtain was rung up, a beggar with the bearing of a prince advanced to the foot-lights, was received with derisive laughter by some, with glances of surprise and indignation by others, and, with a sad and patient smile on his countenance, gracefully saluted the brilliant audience.

Last month he was full of courage, his nerves were like iron; to-day he was a poor vacillating creature, walking in a hazel-wood, uncertain lest delay had taken the savour out of his adventure, his attention distracted by the sounds of the wood, by the snapping of a dry twig, by a leaf falling through the branches.

25 Metaphors for  nerves