Spasmodicality

We can hardly tell which is the more wonderful, their abuse of us or their glorification of themselves. To read their glowing descriptions of life in Richmond, the angelic calmness and patience of the people, the wisdom, firmness, courage, fortitude and all the other virtues which, if we are to believe them, find there a congenial abode, and are momentarily displayed on every hand, one can hardly help breaking out in the words of the poet: “For, oh! if there is an Elysium on earth, / It is this; it is this.” The very spasmodicality (if we may coin a word,) of this self-laudation, is indicative of a great strain upon the nerves.

Short sketches of a page or so with nothing in them but an intolerable violence and spasmodicality of language.

The specimens of type 1 were deformed by fault formation with characteristic spasmodicality on the compression curve.

I have more zest than a boat pushing the sea aside, because it pushes it evenly. I enjoy spasmodically. As if the sun would be put out and be born again. For this is worth getting addicted. To be able to be dragged out, to be whipped as a kind of Christ. But engineers who made the paw to the bridge, the girders, don’t remain in history. They lack spasmodicality. If my car would be thrown from the bridge over Loire, or at least would be finely shaken, I’d remember it.