"Mental" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from mental fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand Till we have built Jerusalem In England's green ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... cantering horse had broken into a gallop. The gay company seated in the stern amused themselves by watching the brawny arms, the tanned faces, and sparkling eyes of the rowers, the play of the tense muscles, the physical and mental forces that were being exerted to bring them for a trifling toll across the channel. So far from pitying the rowers' distress, they pointed out the men's faces to each other, and laughed at the grotesque expressions on the faces of the crew who were straining every muscle; but in the fore ...
— Christ in Flanders • Honore de Balzac
... lads in large hats, who are made men before they are boys, hurry along in pairs, with their first coat carefully brushed, and the white trousers of last Sunday plentifully besmeared with dust and ink. It evidently requires a considerable mental struggle to avoid investing part of the day's dinner-money in the purchase of the stale tarts so temptingly exposed in dusty tins at the pastry-cooks' doors; but a consciousness of their own importance and the receipt ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... must look like a sucker if they think I can be taken in by a trick like that," was my mental comment. I charged the scheme up to my snake-eyed friend and had a poorer opinion of his intelligence than I had hitherto entertained. Yet I was astonished that he should, even with the most hearty wish to ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... conscious of a merry laugh. It could not mean trouble, and she stopped short, watching the lights that seemed now to have stopped by the river's bank, trying to fit them in somehow with a solution of her trouble. Still all was mental darkness, when she was conscious of a shout or two which made her start, but only to realise directly afterwards as she heard replies, followed by the splash of oars, that some one must be departing ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... hiding to a stranger's words, and report them exactly after an interval of more than an hour; but Narayan Singh did better than that, for he reproduced the speaker's gesture and inflexion, so that we had a mental picture of the scene that he described. Mabel offered him stewed tannic acid in the name of tea, and Ticknor suggested a chair, but he waved both offers aside and continued as if the picture before his mind ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... imperceptibly as the frame; but the mind acquires that knowledge of life which forms its exercise, its use, and perhaps its essence, by bounds and flights. This moonlight walk with my old and honoured Mentor, was the beginning of my mental adolescence. My manhood was still to come, and with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... because the fact is sufficiently well known. It is commonly said: "So many men, so many minds; everyone is wise in his own way; brains differ as completely as palates." All of which proverbs show, that men judge of things according to their mental disposition, and rather imagine than understand: for, if they understood phenomena, they would, as mathematicians attest, be convinced, if not attracted, by what I ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... an economic explanation for the emigration of the Pilgrim Fathers to Plymouth, for the Quaker agitation that supported John Woolman in his war upon slavery or for most of the Christian missionary enterprises of the present day. Also it would take a mental microscope to find the economic cause for the extermination of the Moriscos in Spain by Philip III. or the expulsion by Louis XIV. of the Huguenots from France. These two great crimes of history had important economic ...
— Socialism and American ideals • William Starr Myers
... niece an elaborate education, believing that a girl's mental training should be as severe as a boy's, and Viola knew her Greek and Latin and mathematics better than I knew mine, though all these had lately given way to the study of music, for which she had a great and ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... cook's wrist as he dumped them and picked them up. If they had been appetizing I should have been sharply interested in the idea of becoming a Catholic, but their entire absence of relish convinced me that the Italians lacked mental grasp and salvation at a single swoop: and this in spite of the fact that one of my mother's most valued friends, Mrs. Ward, had lately joined the Church. It was her husband who said of her, "Whatever church has Anna, has ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... by adding to its length? What, in 1818, was the unanimous testimony of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church? Why, after describing a variety of influences growing out of slavery, most fatal to mental and moral improvement, the General Assembly assure us, that such "consequences are not imaginary, but connect themselves WITH THE VERY EXISTENCE[15] of slavery. The evils to which the slave is always exposed, often take place ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... the pressing nature of one's needs, the look of unutterable perplexity that comes over the face of a Bengali villager, to-day, when I ask him to obtain me something to eat, would be laughable in the extreme. "N-a-y, Sahib, n-a-y." he replies, with a show of mental distraction as great as though ordered to fetch me the moon. An appeal for rice, milk, dhal, chuppatties, at several stalls results in the same failure; everybody seems utterly bewildered at the appearance ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... approval, and the governor's wife began to speak of Rostov in Mary's presence, praising him and telling how he had blushed when Princess Mary's name was mentioned. But Princess Mary experienced a painful rather than a joyful feeling—her mental tranquillity was destroyed, and desires, doubts, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... the house in a state of mental bewilderment not easily described. Was he not Hector Roscoe, after all? Had he been all his life under a mistake? If this story were true, who was he, who were his parents, what was his name? Why had the man whom he had supposed ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... easy, good-natured expression. He was always scrupulously well-dressed, even in the vilest of weather; and there was just the faintest perceptible trace of Bond-street dandyism in his air, conveying at first an impression of slight mental weakness—an impression, however, which was rapidly dispelled upon a more intimate acquaintance. His manner was quiet and imperturbable to an astonishing degree; and the more exciting the circumstances ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... original value. And then, Socrates, this valuable invention [36] is so easy to learn that you who have but heard it know and understand it as well as I myself do, and can go away and teach it to another if you choose. Yet my father did not learn it of another, nor did he discover it by a painful mental process; [37] but, as he has often told me, through pure love of husbandry and fondness of toil, he would become enamoured of such a spot as I describe, [38] and then nothing would content him but he must own it, in order ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... a state of mental stupor, and, with his discovery, something of the glamour of his late intoxication was passing away. He had no regret, there was nothing which he would have recalled; but his eyes were stronger to pierce the mists, and he was able to bring the ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and apprehension, as though I expected the scenes which had passed in it, and the moral changes it had undergone, would be every where visible; but the gloomy ideas produced by a visit to this metropolis, are rather the effect of mental association than external objects. Palaces and public buildings still remain; but we recollect that they are become the prisons of misfortune, or the rewards of baseness. We see the same hotels, but their owners are wandering over the ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... coquetry. The pallor of her cheeks, the less brilliant carnation of her lips, her long eyelashes lowered and relieving their dark fringe against that white skin, lent her an unspeakably seductive aspect of melancholy chastity and mental suffering; her long loose hair, still intertwined with some little blue flowers, made a shining pillow for her head, and veiled the nudity of her shoulders with its thick ringlets; her beautiful hands, purer, more diaphanous, than the Host, were crossed on her bosom in an attitude of pious ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... of Fu-Manchu, I considered all the recognized Mongolian types, and, in quest of hirsute mankind, even roamed, far north among the blubber-eating Esquimaux; although I glanced at Australasia, at Central Africa, and passed in mental review the dark places of the Congo, nowhere in the known world, nowhere in the history of the human species, could I come upon a type of man answering to the description ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... you will see the highest, look on the heights. If you look at me, look at me where I am: not among those whose infancy was cradled in leisure and luxury, whose life from the beginning has been carefully attuned to the finest issues, who for purity of language and dignity of mental bearing may throw down the gauntlet to the proudest nation in the world,—but among those children of the soil who take its color, who share its qualities, who give out its fragrance, who love it and lay their hearts to it and grow with it, rocky and rugged, yet cherish, it may be hoped, its little ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... invalid, but I suffer from giddiness, a feeling of suffocation, with excruciating pains, and apparent cessation of the heart's action. I am also so nervous, that, whenever the door is opened, I begin to scream loudly. My mental feebleness finds vent in puns that have alienated my oldest friends. Could some Correspondent explain these symptoms? I do not believe in Doctors, but am taking "Soft-sawder's Emulgent Balsam of Aconitine." It does not seem to have done ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... this failure must be ascribed to a radically false conception of the way to combine studies of nature with studies of art. The Eclectics in general started with the theory that a painter ought to form mental ideals of beauty, strength, dignity, ferocity, and so forth, from the observation of characteristic individuals and acknowledged masterpieces. These ideal types he has to preserve in his memory, and to use living persons only as external means for bringing ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... serves as a means for the expression of thought; and in expressing our thoughts we give expression to ourselves. When once the art of writing is learned we are no longer conscious of the mental and manual effort required to form the letters. It becomes, as it were, a second nature to us. We do it mechanically, just as we form our words when talking, without realizing the complex processes of mind and ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... she might have said was prevented by the entrance of Betsy Jane, who informed them that dinner was ready, and with a mental groan, as she thought how she was about to be martyred, Madam Conway followed her to the dining room, where a plain, substantial farmer's meal was spread. Standing at the head of the table, with her good-humored face all ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... not interrupt her meditations. The nature of her profession had rendered her familiar with all the changing mental and physical phenomena that attend the development of disease and the gradual loosening of the silver cords of a present life. Certain well-understood phrases everywhere current among the mass of the people in New England, ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... been made, comments on it, and on the whole transaction, in the following terms: "From the course then adopted and carried through, I presume it is now to be considered part of our constitution that if ever, during the natural life of the sovereign, he is unable by mental disease personally to exercise the royal functions, the deficiency is to be supplied by the two Houses of Parliament, who, in their discretion, will probably elect the heir-apparent Regent, under such restrictions as they may please to propose, but who ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... bound to Loretto, with the mental offerings of certain Christians, who are too much occupied with their daily concerns to make the journey in person," answered the pilgrim, who never absolutely threw aside his professional character, though ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... to overthrow the entire religious creed of a human being,—perhaps a youth just entering upon that hazardous enterprise of life in which he needs every jot and tittle of eternal truth to guide and protect him,—when the enticement assumes this purely mental form and aspect, it betokens the most malignant and heaven-daring guilt in the tempter. And we may be certain that the retribution that will be meted out to it, by Him who is true and The Truth; who abhors all falsehood and all lies ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... was walking on alone, while the horses rested, I arrived upon a little scene, which, by one of those singular mental operations of which we are all conscious, seemed perfectly familiar to me, and which I see distinctly now. There was not much in it. In the blood red light, there was a mournful sheet of water, just stirred by the evening wind; upon its margin a few trees. In the foreground ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... Wherewith thou wontest to inspire All self-dead souls: my life is gone; Sad solitude's my irksome won; dwelling. Cut off from men and all this world, In Lethe's lonesome ditch I'm hurled; Nor might nor sight doth ought me move, Nor do I care to be above. O feeble rays of mental light, That best be seen in this dark night, What are you? What is any strength If it be not laid in one length With pride or love? I nought desire But a new life, or quite to expire. Could I demolish with mine eye Strong towers, stop the fleet stars in sky, Bring down to earth the ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... relaxation. But since undue physical indolence would unfit people for resistance to parasites and hostile neighbors, the languid would perish. Relaxation of mind, however, brought no penalties. The climate in fact not only discourages but prohibits mental effort of severe or sustained character, and the negroes have submitted to that prohibition as to many others, through countless generations, with excellent grace. So accustomed were they to interdicts of nature that they added many ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... congregation of Nonconformist Radicals in the meeting-house at the Old Jewry, the prospect was definite and the place of the millennium was merely the England over which George III. ruled. The hope was a robust but pedestrian "mental traveller," and its limbs wore the precise garments of political formulae. It looked for honest Parliaments and manhood suffrage, for the triumph of democracy and the abolition of war. Its scene as Wordsworth ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... he leaned over the table and stretched out his hand in greeting. "I'm glad to see you," he continued cordially. He held the young man's hand for an instant, peering steadily into the latter's unwavering eyes, apparently making a mental estimate of him. Then he dropped the hand and sat back, a half smile on his face. "You look like your father," ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... the ordinary channels of opinion were blocked up. Books were still not only read, but discussed and thought over, and every slight allusion to the times was instantly applied. In the prevailing listlessness, the mere fact of increased mental activity was of importance. A spark of genius does much to raise a nation. It is in itself the incontrovertible proof that the race lives: a dead people does not produce men of genius. Whatever awakes one part of the intelligence reacts on all its parts. You cannot lift, any more ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... poverty-stricken women who now crowd our cities, above the temptation, the necessity, to sell themselves in marriage or out, for bread and shelter." "Women," she told them, "must be educated out of their unthinking acceptance of financial dependence on man into mental and economic independence. Girls like boys must be educated to some lucrative employment. Women like men must have an equal chance to earn ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... God's character, and of our consequent duty, which preceded the repetition of the covenant. 'I am the Almighty God.' The aspect of the divine nature, made prominent in each revelation of Himself, stands in close connection with the circumstances or mental state of the recipient. So when God appeared to Abram after the slaughter of the kings, He revealed Himself as 'thy Shield' with reference to the danger of renewed attack from the formidable powers which He had bearded and beaten. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... mental note of his thoughtfulness; but, not for worlds would I have shown any doubt of his power to blast his way, if necessary, through all the wood and iron in the universe; and I was glad that the blue clouds of our smoke mingled for a ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... said the Mason, "and the view of life you mention, and which you think is the result of your own mental efforts, is the one held by the majority of people, and is the invariable fruit of pride, indolence, and ignorance. Forgive me, my dear sir, but if I had not known it I should not have addressed you. Your view of life is ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... here was something fresh, sparkling, human, warm, ardent and provocative. It was a crowd with a flutter of laughter in it, a crowd that had a personality, an insouciance, an independence in its friendliness. It was a crowd that I shall always put beside other mental pictures of big crowds, in that gallery of clear vignettes of things impressive ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... their frames or make them fat. The system adopted by the breeder to obtain a valuable animal for the butcher, is to enlarge the capacity and functions of the digestive organs, and reduce those of the head and chest, or the mental and respiratory organs. In the first place, the mind should be tranquillized, and those spaces that can never produce animal fibre curtailed, and greater room afforded, as in the abdomen, for those that ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... miles, of the extraordinary accuracy of the fire of the British fleet. Virtually all the forts defending the Dardanelles were bombarded by indirect fire, remember, the whole width of the peninsula separating them from the fleet. To get a mental picture of the situation you must imagine warships lying in the East River firing over Manhattan Island in an attempt to reduce fortifications on the Hudson. Men who were in the Gallipoli forts during the bombardment told me that, though they ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... emotions which two youthful, ingenuous, and well-educated girls would experience at their escape from a death so horrid as the one which had impended over them, while they pursued their way in silence along the track on the side of the mountain; nor how deep were their mental thanks to that Power which had given them their existence, and which had not deserted them in their extremity; neither how often they pressed each others arms as the assurance of their present safety came, like a healing balm, ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... Vassili Petrovitch, which his lethargic, sober-minded friend regarded as indicating temporary insanity in the speaker, represented fairly the mental condition of very many Russian nobles at that time, and were not without a certain foundation. The idea about a secret clause in the Treaty of Paris was purely imaginary, but it was quite true that the country was entering on an ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... the control room then, and the effect of his mental dominance became more pronounced. Suddenly the dwarf let out a shriek of terror when he looked through the port and saw the brilliant body that now loomed so close. Blaine experienced a savage joy in the knowledge that the hunchback was ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... that you are dealing with a dear confiding girl who will make you a life mate. Then you must know, too, that her mind is worthy of your own. So many men to-day are led astray by the merely superficial graces and attractions of girls who in reality possess no mental equipment at all. Many a man is bitterly disillusioned after marriage when he realises that his wife cannot solve a quadratic equation, and that he is compelled to spend all his days with a woman who does not know that X ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... him mute. He crossed himself and prayed to the Virgin; then, raising his eyes, he saw through the broken roof a space of sky in which a star shone brilliantly. It brought him comfort; but the next moment he remembered Sagaris, and mental anguish blended with ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... 20. MENTAL ANALYSIS.—Scene, a class in Arithmetic at recitation. The teacher gives them an example in addition, requesting them, when they have performed it, to rise. Some finish it very soon, others are very slow in ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... new type of intellectual has come to the front. A product of a more generalized mental environment than his predecessor, he is more daring in his retrospects and his prospects. He is just as ready to advance an "economic interpretation of the constitution" as to advocate a collectivistic panacea for the existing industrial and social ills. Nor did this new intellectual come at an ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... been as an open book, he would surely have become a figure of interest. His mental attitude was that of a professional beau of acknowledged preeminence; he was comparing the self at home in the mummy case with the remnants of defunct Pharaohs here exposed under glass, and he was ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... not always equally capable of performing the functions of life. When we have been engaged in any exertion, either mental or corporeal, for some hours only, we find ourselves fatigued, and unfit to pursue our labours much longer; if in this state, several of the exciting powers, particularly light and noise, be withdrawn; and if we are laid in a posture which does not require much ...
— A Lecture on the Preservation of Health • Thomas Garnett, M.D.
... student, he had imbibed deeper draughts of knowledge, and made himself a riper scholar. While Goldsmith's happy constitution and genial humors carried him abroad into sunshine and enjoyment, Johnson's physical infirmities and mental gloom drove him upon himself; to the resources of reading and meditation; threw a deeper though darker enthusiasm into his mind, and stored a retentive memory with ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... gentlemen, to ignore this request as you would ignore the statements of any person ... er, slightly demented. I should like to offer a recommendation that the general's sanity be investigated, and an inquiry be made as to the mental health of anyone else connected ...
— Navy Day • Harry Harrison
... baffled; for he could not afford to surrender the favor of the Senate which promised him means to achieve in his own special field; and he groaned in spirit while the wide halls of the Frari, with their treasure of ancient MSS. rose before his mental vision as the most tempting spot on earth, with his own magnum opus lying there unfinished, yet far toward completion. And for one who had meant to chronicle the complete history of a movement, who had sought ever to weigh and sift in the interests of truth ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... again a childish finger over the rough surface of the faded Utrecht velvet chairs, and smelled again the strong fragrance of the white lilac tree, blowing in through the open parlour-window. He savoured anew the pleasant mental atmosphere produced by the dainty neatness of cultured women, the companionship of a few good pictures, of a few good books. Yet this home had been broken up years ago, the dear familiar things had been scattered far and ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... for young men at Philippopolis, and that for girls at Eski Zagra, conciliated favor. The former had fourteen pupils, who made good improvement in mental and moral character, and manifested a good degree of religious feeling, a spirit of benevolence, and a readiness to labor for the good of others. During vacation, six of them were employed as colporters. Nearly all the older students seemed ready to take their stand on the Bible, ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... receiving in both equal honorary degrees; the establishment of Wellesley College, with full professorships and capable women to fill them; the agitation of the question in Washington of the establishment of a university for women, all show a mental awakening in the popular mind not hitherto known. A new era is opening in the history of the world. The seed sown twenty-five years ago by Mrs. Stanton and other brave women ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... service, unpaid, loving, intimate, must have left the strongest kind of a mental habit in its wake. Women, when they emerged from the seclusion of their homes and began to mingle in the world procession, when they were thrown on their own financial responsibility, found themselves willy nilly in the ranks of the ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... regretted the necessity of having to employ him. There was, of course, no real necessity why he should have employed Wally. New York was full of librettists who would have done the work equally well for half the money, but, like most managers, Mr Goble had the mental processes of a sheep. "Follow the Girl" was the last outstanding musical success in New York theatrical history: Wally had written it: therefore nobody but Wally was capable of rewriting "The Rose of America." The thing had for Mr Goble the inevitability of Fate. Except for deciding mentally ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... congregation of St. Maur, in 1636. St. Winwaloe was sensible that the spirit of prayer is the soul of a religious state, and the comfort and support of all those who are engaged in it: as to himself, his prayer, either mental or vocal, was almost continual, and so fervent, that he seemed to forget that he lived in a mortal body. From twenty years of age, till his death he never sat in the church, but always prayed either kneeling or standing unmoved, in the same posture, with his hands lifted ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... merely playing with the food on his plate, watched her with sullen, pained eyes, trying to solve the riddle of her. One could almost see the simple mental operations. Sam got along with her by jollying her. Very well, he ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... obstructing the police. An inspector has been round to see me this morning and he tells me there is practically no hope. He advises me, as between friends, to make a clean breast of it, return the boodle, betray my accomplices, plead mental deficiency and trust to the clemency of the Court. It's pretty rough, after making all arrangements for spending a cheerful Christmas in Algiers, to have it changed to cold porridge in Parkhurst or Princetown. Of the two I hope it'll be Parkhurst, for Princetown, so habitues tell ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... her own affairs, was not so engrossed by them as to behold with indifference a scene of such unjustifiable extravagance; it contributed to render her thoughtful and uneasy, and to deprive her of all mental power of participating in the gaiety of the assembly. Mr Arnott was yet more deeply affected by the mad folly of the scheme, and received from the whole evening no other satisfaction than that which a look of sympathetic concern ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... discriminating analysis of The Education of Henry Adams. Both writers attack subjects of considerable complexity and difficulty, and both succeed in clarifying the thought of the discerning reader and inducing in him an exhilarating sense of mental and spiritual enlargement. ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... has no heart," was his mental opinion. "Very few girls would have waited an hour, knowing their lover lay at the point of death. But it's none of my business, though I do wish noble young Doctor Gardiner had made a better selection for ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... at her again long and earnestly, understanding in part, and in part guessing, that she had suffered a secret disappointment on that day and had come to him rather in the hope of some kind of mental excitement than with any idea of obtaining consolation. To him, filled as he was with the lofty thoughts inspired by the mission thrust upon him, there was something horrible in the woman's frivolity—or cynicism. ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... strangle with his own hands the woman he had loved so dearly, had at one time adored on his knees. The count rushed out of the room with gestures of desperation, muttering incoherent words; and as he shewed plain signs of mental aberration, his father, Charles of Artois, took him away, and they went that same evening to their palace of St. Agatha, and there prepared a defence in case they ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the average southern white man gives no more thought to the matter than does the Negro. As I tried to make clear at the outset, the status of superior and inferior is simply an inherited part of his instinctive mental equipment—a concept which he does not have to reason out. The respective attitudes are complementary, and under the mutual acceptance and understanding there still exist unnumbered thousands of instances of kindly and affectionate relations—relations ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... to the galleries and palaces; she looked at the pictures and statues that had hitherto been great names to her, and exchanged for a knowledge which was sometimes a limitation a presentiment which proved usually to have been a blank. She performed all those acts of mental prostration in which, on a first visit to Italy, youth and enthusiasm so freely indulge; she felt her heart beat in the presence of immortal genius and knew the sweetness of rising tears in eyes to which faded fresco and darkened marble grew dim. But the return, every day, was even pleasanter ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... complexion they were, he decided, probably hazel. From his purely scientific or rather artistic investigation of the girl's face, he started suddenly to find that those eyes were viewing him with an unmistakably humorous disdain. But only for a second. Then as though some mental picture had been vaguely limned in her mind, she looked at him again, quickly, this time with a curious expression, as of a person trying to remember, not quite certain whether she should bow. She did n't. Instead, she turned to her mother, ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... upon my permanent materialization. It has been an obsession with him that some day this thing could be accomplished and the future of Lothar assured. He asserted that matter was nonexistent except in the imagination of man—that all was mental, and so he believed that by persisting in his suggestion he could eventually make of me a permanent suggestion in the minds of ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... no craving for any prohibited literature at that moment, but I told him that I would endeavor to cultivate a taste in that direction to oblige him; and I suggested that, as his knowledge of me was confined to the last ten minutes, I did not quite understand how he could pass judgment as to what mental and moral food was suited to my constitution, and as to the use I might make of it. He laughed amiably, and said: "Nitchevo,—that's all right; you may have whatever you please." I never had ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... Department of Commerce and Labor, in order to provide for a more rigid execution of the law. In 1907 the classes of persons denied admission were widened to embrace those suffering from physical and mental defects and otherwise unfit for effective citizenship. When the Department of Labor was established in 1913 the enforcement of the law was placed in the hands of the Secretary of Labor, W.B. Wilson, who was a former leader in the ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... stories of his deeds. We can scarcely call these historical tales: they are legendary; yet it may well be that a stratum of fact underlies the aftergrowth of romance; certainly they were history to the people, and as such, with a mental reservation, they shall be history to us. We propose, therefore, here to convert into prose "a ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... of the animal or the man is essentially a device to make action effective and to keep it safe. The animal is a machine in action. Toward the end of motion all other mental processes tend. All functions of the brain, all forms of nerve impulse are modifications of the simple reflex action, the automatic transfer of sensations derived from external objects into movements ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... necessary for a woman. Cultivate if possible in a girl a taste for reading and study first, then she will soon find time for intellectual pursuits, which, from being in a measure denied to her, will become dearer. In her attempts to secure moments for the indulgence of her mental desires she will unconsciously learn order, management and economy of time and labor, thus will her mind be strengthened. But I am digressing, dear reader. I am sadly talkative on this subject, and sometimes fancy ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... man of science, whatever this may have amounted to, has been determined, as far as I can judge, by complex and diversified mental qualities and conditions. Of these, the most important have been—the love of science—unbounded patience in long reflecting over any subject—industry in observing and collecting facts—and a fair share of invention ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... moved his body irritably in his chair. His terrible eyes watched Otrepiev mistrustfully. He had reached the mental stage in which he ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... Haney and the Chief and Mike were not beautiful to look at. They were begrimed from head to toe, and their eyes were bloodshot, and they were exhausted to the point where they did not even notice any longer that they were weary. And their mental processes were not at all normal, so that they were quarrelsome and arbitrary and arrogant to the men with the flat-bed trailer who came almost reverently to move their work. They went jealously with the thing they had rebuilt, ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... very maturity of her mental and physical powers, felt that this great work was the most congenial task that she could possibly have undertaken, and her future life now seemed open before her in a series of worthy endeavors in which her conscientious feelings in regard to her responsibilities, and her desire ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... is shackled by no fatalism. Formative influences there are, deep seated, far reaching, escaped by few, but like those which of yore astrologers imputed to the stars, they potently incline, they do not coerce. Language, pursuits, habits, geographical position, and those subtle mental traits which make up the characteristics of races and nations, all tend to deflect from a given standard the religious life of the individual and the mass. It is essential to give these due weight, and a necessary preface therefore to an analysis of the myths of the red ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... surface of life, rather than dig mines into geological strata. Masses of experience, anecdote, incident, cross-lights, quotation, historical instances, the whole flotsam and jetsam of two minds forced in and in upon the matter in hand from every point of the compass, and from every degree of mental elevation and abasement - these are the material with which talk is fortified, the food on which the talkers thrive. Such argument as is proper to the exercise should still be brief and seizing. ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... interpreter—I am being placed in possession of the emotional key-notes of the drama. Every subject is first distinctly enunciated, and then all are wondrously blended together. There is the pain of sacrifice—the mental agony, the bodily torture; there are the alternate pauses of Sorrow and respite from sorrow long drawn out, the sharp ache of Sin, the glimpses of unhallowed Joy, the strain of upward Endeavor, the serene peace of Faith and Love, crowned by the blessed ...
— Parsifal - Story and Analysis of Wagner's Great Opera • H. R. Haweis
... Rome all those petty lords whom most people call vicars of the Church, but whom Alexander called the shackles of the papacy. We saw that he had already begun this work by rousing the Orsini against the Colonna family, when Charles VIII's enterprise compelled him to concentrate all his mental resources, and also the forces of his States, so as to secure his own ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... cannot conceive that "to be loved" is in any wise "to be acted upon," pronounces it "fatally defective!" His argument is a little web of sophistry, not worth unweaving here. One of the best scholars cited in the reverend Doctor's book says, "Of mental powers we have no conception, but as certain capacities of intellectual action." And again, he asks, "Who can be conscious of judgment, memory, and reflection, and doubt that man was made to act!"—EVERETT: Course of ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... LADIES.] I am not a little surprised that the two ladies who accompanied the party had courage to descend into such a place. In my opinion, excursions like these are by no means adapted to either the mental or corporeal delicacy of the fair sex; and, however disagreeable the position might have momentarily proved to them, it was impossible to witness the tall slender figure of one of them, grasped in the arms of a bearded swarthy Greek, now squeezed ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... Free-thought will be happy to expire in the blaze of its triumph. There is no joy in fighting superstition, any more than there is joy in attacking disease. Each labor is beneficent and is attended by a relative satisfaction; but health is better than the best doctoring, and mental ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... shores came from the East, and we cannot tell what profundities of astrologic science they carried with them. It is generally acknowledged that when the rough Teutons came they encountered and checked a mental culture higher than their own. But we can only conjecture dimly, and leave the ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... most admire in the midst of all this activity is his perfect mental balance, his charity and humor in the strife of many sects. He was badgered for years by petty enemies, and he arouses our enthusiasm by his tolerance, his self-control, and especially by his sincerity. ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... permanent modifications, as previously noted, are established in the nervous system, including both sensory and motor adjustments. Since, moreover, these sensory and motor adjustments give rise to ideas, they result in corresponding associations of mental imagery. As these neural and mental elements are thus organized into more and more complex masses, the recurrence of any element within an associated mass is able to reinstate the other elements. The result is that when a certain sensation is received, ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... keep him indoors, for it was his pride rather than his body that had received deep and bitter wounds. He chafed and fumed when he thought how, in all likelihood, the details of his defeat could not be suppressed in the clubs and cafes. This anticipated publicity he took in ill part, fanning his mental disorder with brandy, mellow and insidious with age. But beneath the dregs of indulgence lay an image which preyed upon his mind more than his defeat beneath the Oaks: a figure, on the crude stage of a country tavern; in the manor window, with an aureole around ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... daily by a man is influenced by the activity of his mind, as well as by that of his body. A man engaged in physical labor wears out more of his body than one who does no work; and a man occupied in a pursuit involving intense mental application, consumes a greater proportion of his tissue than the man who works only with his body.[13] In each of these cases, there is a different amount of tissue disorganised, and consequently a demand for different amounts ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... watery in the eye? Why is the country so flat, so foggy, so desolate; and why are the peasants so lumpish and miserable? Russia before the Revolution could not have been so dreary as this; the prevailing grimness must be due to some mental obfuscation of her writers. I do not refer to the gloomy, powerful realism of the stories of hopeless misery. There, if one criticizes, it must be only the advisability of the choice of such subjects. One does not doubt the truth of the picture. I mean ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... weeping in an uncontrollable manner that filled them with dismay. The doctor decided that while Dan was a good fellow in most ways, he evidently had not a soothing influence on 'Tana, possibly not realizing the changed mental condition laid on her by her sickness. The doctor further made up his mind that, without hurting Dan's feelings, he must find some other mouthpiece for his ideas concerning her or ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... change is wholly mental. Although in fact, the new mental attitude does result in certain physical modifications. For instance, a person who in his normal condition may be most punctilious and neat in his dress is likely to become unkempt and slovenly in the new character ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... the helpless, irresponsible man whom I tended for fifteen months. His intellectual condition has undergone no change, and his reason will return only when he is spoken to about his inventions. The Count d'Artigas is perfectly aware of this mental disposition, having had a proof of it during his visit, and he evidently relies thereon to surprise sooner or later the inventor's secret. ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... the characteristic tokens of a gambler's life, all the vicissitudes which attend his unholy calling, followed close upon each other in grim succession. Most marked was the disturbance which his mental equilibrium was undergoing. Fits of gloomy despondency were succeeded, with alarming rapidity, by periods of tumultuous exaltation. One moment it would seem as though Gudule and the children were to him the living embodiment of all that was precious and lovable, whilst at other times ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... looking positively handsome; but when did a too sunny dawn escape a cloud ere noon? Bertie seemed different somehow,—was not certain he could get more leave,—was even doubtful about asking for it; and Cecil's mental Mercury, which had been "set fair," went down to "change." In reality, Du Meresq not being so etherealized by love, felt out of sorts, and not up to the mark that morning, and, therefore, ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... these mental epidemics is easier to trace than their causes. Certainly, reason does nothing to control them. In almost every case there are a few sane men to point out, with perfect rationality, the nature of the folly to their contemporaries, but in all cases their words fall on deaf ears. ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... unto Thee with my whole heart. Whence also, on behalf of myself and of all commended to me in prayer, I offer and present unto Thee the jubilation of all devout hearts, their ardent affections, their mental ecstasies, and supernatural illuminations and heavenly visions, with all the virtues and praises celebrated and to be celebrated by every creature in heaven and earth; to the end that by all Thou mayest worthily be ...
— The Imitation of Christ • Thomas a Kempis
... them tempted him strongly. He was beginning to realize that those shaky legs of his were tiring in this, the longest walk they had attempted since the accident. He had a mind to sit down upon the bank beneath the apple trees and rest. Then he remembered the mental picture of the tramps on the park benches and stubbornly refused to yield. Leaning more heavily upon his cane, he ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... play began, and by the time the first act was over Alice had taken a mental inventory of her "bogie" and made up her mind that she was no bogie at all. When the curtain fell, Mrs. Nason began chatting with Alice in the pleasantest way possible, and with seemingly cordial ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... her household and her numerous family, and her endurance had consisted in 'suffering, and being still.' No murmur had escaped, but only by force of silence. She had not weakened his energies by word or look of repining; but while his physical life was worn out by toil and hardship, her mental life had almost been extinguished in care, drudgery, and self-control; and all his sweetness, tenderness, and cheerfulness had not been able to do more than just to enable her to hold out, without manifesting her suffering. Enid had been a very suitable name for her; though without ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he be like when I met him again? Still lively, witty, light-hearted, and enthusiastic, or in a state of mental torpor through provincial life? A man can change a great deal in the course of ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... into his amazing proposition, her clearing brain began to discern the rift in his armor. Not that she saw a sign of weakness beyond, but that the humanness of his strength was being revealed to her. There was an authority in his offer that dispelled all doubt as to the cloudiness of his mental vision. He was seeing things clearly. His sacrifice lay in the willingness to forego the joy of killing another man before he carried out his original design to make way with himself. She studied his face for a moment ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... Soto was this same kind of sumptuous magnificence; and Peter experienced the mental effect which it was contrived to produce upon him—a sense of bedazzlement and awe, a realization that those who dwelt in the midst of this splendor were people to whom money was nothing, who could pour out treasures in a ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... stroke finished him. His bodily health gave way under his mental distress. Gastric fever set in, and he was lying tossing and raving in delirium, while Robert Penfold was being tried at ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... and write as other poor men's children; though, to my shame, I confess, I did soon lose that little I learnt even almost utterly." In after life, his time was occupied in obtaining a livelihood by labour. When enduring severe mental conflicts, and while he maintained his family by the work of his hands, he was an acceptable pastor, and extensively useful in itinerant labours of love in the villages round Bedford. His humility, when he had used three common Latin words, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... island and who presumes to write its history evade that duty? My chief desire is to set down in plain language the sobrieties of everyday occurrences—the unpretentious homilies of an unpretentious man—one whose mental bent enabled him to take but a superficial view of most of the large, heavy and important aspects of life, but who has found light in things and subjects homely, slight and casual; who perhaps has queer views on the pursuit of happiness, and who above all has an inordinate ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... even more important that because of his inheritance from a remote ancestral environment man is energetic, inventive, and long-lived in certain parts of the American continent, while elsewhere he has not the strength and mental vigor to maintain even the degree of civilization to which he seems ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... look at them to see that no great feats of bravery could be expected of them. They were under-developed, exhausted, eaten up by the most terrible complaint of the blood. The lives in which they merely vegetated were without any mental stimulus. Many suffered from goitre, others had chests that were pitiful to look at, so under-developed were they; all continually complained, every time you spoke to them, of headache, toothache, backache, or some other ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... explained that he was susceptible to any abnormal physical or mental condition of mine, not to the vagaries of my bicycle. "As an example, madame, if the elder of two twins were killed in a railway accident, it would be no reason for thinking that an accident must befall a train by which the younger travelled. What sympathy ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... inferences are drawn from the same facts by persons of different mental conditions. For example, in 1635 or 1636, Cuthbert Burbage, brother of Richard, the famous actor, Will's comrade, petitioned Lord Pembroke, then Lord Chamberlain, for consideration in a quarrel about certain theatres. Telling the history ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... schemes he had cherished in the East and on the way home, of marrying Mary Lyster, or more correctly, Mary Lyster's money, and so resigning himself to the inevitable boredoms of an English existence. For her the mental horizon was full of Kitty—Kitty insolent, Kitty triumphant. For him, too, Kitty made the background of thought—environed, however, with clouds of indecision and resistance that would have raised happiness in Mary could she ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... during my life been a sharer of the strongest emotions of joy or of sadness man can feel; but never had I experienced such real, heartfelt joy as when I heard Anna's words. It is easy to imagine the state of my mind in recollecting the bitter grief I was in for ten days; then can be understood the mental anguish I felt. Having witnessed such strange scenes for a considerable time, it would not have been surprising had I lost my senses. I was an actor in a furious battle; I had seen the wounded falling around me, and heard the death-rattle. After the frightful execution, ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... gazing with wide-staring eyes at everything about him, a colored porter entered the car and languidly glanced from one to another of the occupants, as though making a mental calculation of the tips he would receive, when his eyes fell on the poorly-clad figure of Bob, holding his box of lunch on ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster
... ideals and enter into the very substance of that character. "For as he thinketh in his heart," said Solomon, "so is he." It is a saying, obviously, that one may easily fill with fantastic meanings, as the prevailing gabble of the mental healers, New Thoughters, efficiency engineers, professors of scientific salesmanship and other such mountebanks demonstrates, but nevertheless it is one grounded, at bottom, upon an indubitable fact. Deep down in every man there is a body of ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... test is for each boy to stand in front of a store window for just two minutes, making a mental map of the same, and then go off to jot down as many objects as he can ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster
... rest, but on her breast is memory. But at night! when the mental and bodily energies are alike worn out by the internal struggle;—when hushed is each sound—softened each feature—dimmed each glaring hue;—a calm which is not deceptive, steals over us, and we regard our woes as the exacted ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... corner of the railway-carriage, with his eyes closed, and the most observant of his fellow-travelers might have envied him his apparent slumber. Toward morning slumber really came, as an effect of mental rather than of physical fatigue. He slept for a couple of hours, and at last, waking, found his eyes resting upon one of the snow-powdered peaks of the Jura, behind which the sky was just reddening with the dawn. But he saw neither ...
— The American • Henry James
... senses flagged he spurred them with all sorts of stimulants. Meanwhile he observed himself curiously ; the result in his poems is an impression of peculiarly wilful depravity. They reflect his physical and mental experience, are always without sobriety, often lacking in sanity. The title, les Fleurs du mal, is both appropriate and suggestive; they invite no epithets so ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... many towns full of idle people, if that is what you mean. But it was splendid, Cameron! I have one more dream,—to go up and down the Western coast, and over the Rocky Mountains; but I want to digest this first. I have no fancy for mental dyspepsia," and he gave a ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... of many industries. Many men in all classes of society are content to do their job, take their money, go home and work in their gardens, or course dogs or fly pigeons. They are very good citizens. Many others, equally good citizens, take a more mental and active interest in their job, and want to have some share in the direction of it. This class is increasing and should not be discouraged. They constitute our problem. The Liberal solution of a gradually extended franchise has cured ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... Hierophants being often themselves ignorant of the danger they incur—one and all of these "Teachers" are subject to the same inviolable law. From the moment they begin really to teach, from the instant they confer any power—whether psychic, mental, or physical—on their pupils, they take upon themselves all the sins of that pupil, in connexion with the Occult Sciences, whether of omission or commission, until the moment when initiation makes the pupil a Master and responsible in his turn. There is a weird ...
— Studies in Occultism; A Series of Reprints from the Writings of H. P. Blavatsky • H. P. Blavatsky
... has stayed a while in England to form an idea of the tone, the habits, the aspect of English social life before its classic insularity had begun to wane, as all observers agree that it did, about thirty years ago. It is true that the mental operation in this matter reduces itself to fancying some of the things which form what Mr. Matthew Arnold would call the peculiar "notes" of England infinitely exaggerated—the rigidly aristocratic constitution of society, for instance; the unaesthetic temper of the people; the private character ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... into a mistake in reference to Mr Sudberry's character. We have said that he was violent, but it must not be supposed that he was passionate. By no means. He was the most amiable and sweet-tempered of men. His violence was owing to physical rather than mental causes. He was hasty in his volitions, impulsive in his actions, madly reckless in his personal movements. His moral and physical being was capable of only two conditions—deep repose ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... Clarence, this interest lay deeper than in the surface of courtly breeding. Gratitude had first bound to him his adopted son, then a tie yet unexplained, and lastly, but not least, the pride of protection. He was vain of the personal and mental attractions of his protege, and eager for the success of one whose honours would reflect credit ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... part which he had to act is one very difficult to any actor. The carrying an external look of indifference when the heart is sinking within,—or has sunk almost to the very ground,—is more than difficult; it is an agonizing task. In all mental suffering the sufferer longs for solitude,—for permission to cast himself loose along the ground, so that every limb and every feature of his person may faint in sympathy with his heart. A grandly urbane deportment over a crushed spirit and ruined hopes is beyond the physical strength ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... easy thing it was to bear the yoke of Christ. The offender was told that sin consisted in wilfulness, and wilfulness in the perfect knowledge of the nature of sin, according to which doctrine blindness and passion were sufficient exculpations. They invented the doctrine of mental reservation, on which Pascal was so severe. Perjury was allowable, if the perjured were inwardly determined not to swear. A man might fight a duel, if in danger of being stigmatized as a coward; he might betray his friend, if he could thus ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... idleness. The really idle man is a poor creature, incapable of strong sins. It is far more often the man of superior gifts, with faculties overwrought and nerves strained above concert pitch by excessive mental exertion, who turns to vicious excitement for the sake of rest, as a duller man falls asleep. Men whose lives are spent amidst the vicissitudes, surprises and disappointments of the money market are assuredly less idle than country gentlemen; ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... still lingering on the now deserted deck, was conscious of a very unwonted sensation. The spell which he had derided so bitterly when beholding others drawn within its toils had begun to weave itself around him. This vague stirring of his mental pulses, what did it mean? Heavens! it was horrible. It brought back old memories, whose tin-pot unreality was never recalled save as subject matter for bitter gibe and mockery. He could ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... columns and golden-colored couches, makes a scene of enchantment, behold Esther, with her royal apparel thrown aside, kneeling on the tesselated floor. There she has been two days and nights, neither eating nor drinking, while hunger, and thirst, and mental agony have made fearful inroads on her beauty. Her cheeks are sunken and haggard—her large and lustrous eyes dim with weeping, and her lips parched and dry, yet ever moving in inward prayer. Mental and physical suffering have crushed her young heart within her, ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... had deprived him of a more brilliant fortune and a loftier fame; for it may reasonably be doubted whether all his laborious investigations of the deepest recesses of the human mind, and his extensive acquaintance with the theory of mental phenomena, would have enabled him accurately to ascertain the practical capabilities of his own mind, and to arrive at those just conclusions which should indicate to him that path of life on which it was most expedient ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... short time he came under the influence of Newman, and contributed to his Lives of the English Saints, and in 1844 he took Deacon's orders. The connection with Newman was, however, short-lived; and the publication in 1848 of The Nemesis of Faith showed that in the severe mental and spiritual conflict through which he had passed, the writer had not only escaped from all Tractarian influences, but was in revolt against many of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity. One result of the book was his resignation of his Fellowship at Oxf.: another was his loss of ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... shall have the purse," answered the marquis, smiling blandly. "No mental reservations, though; I do not forget your antecedents, ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... it. Origen recognised the problem and the problems, and elevated the pursuit of Christian theology to the rank of an independent task by freeing it from its polemical aim. He could not have become what he did, if two generations had not preceded him in paving the way to form a mental conception of Christianity and give it a philosophical foundation. Like all epoch-making personalities, he was also favoured by the conditions in which he lived, though he had to endure violent attacks. Born of a Christian family which was faithfully attached to the ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... wakened to a renewed mental clearness by the threatening of all that he desired, that—as Millie had intimated—life was too complicated to be solved by a simple longing; love was not the all-powerful magician of conventional acceptance; there were other, no less ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... attempt at off-hand friendliness of manner, in itself infinitely touching to any one with eyes to take in the whole situation and judge it and him accordingly. But those eyes are not ours in early life, more especially in boy-life. We must have our powers of mental vision quickened and cleared by the magic dew of sad experience—experience which alone can give sympathy worth having, ere we can understand the queer bits of pathos we constantly stumble upon in life, ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... the annals of science, and there, dimly seen as a star of the least magnitude, have perhaps earned that remote and obscure corner by painful self-denial, by unwearied toil! And yet not only these, but others who have added to diligence high mental acumen or profundity, whose wells of thought are, compared with those of the general mass, unfathomable, earn but a careless, occasional notice—are known but to few of those who daily reap the harvest which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... not feel sure that this counsel was disinterested, for there could be no danger of his taxing the mental powers of the little one too severely, but her ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... them, and the history of modern civilization and modern knowledge is in so large a part the history of emancipation from the tyranny of the theological spirit,—that is, the clerical opposition to mental and material advancement, both of which are as necessary to moral advancement as they are to the happiness of men. This spirit has been the same in every country and in every age, when the spiritual has exceeded the ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... seemingly on the eve of hailing the omnibus, suddenly transferred their attention to a younger couple a few steps from them, who appeared to have met them entirely by accident. The elderly lady threw out her arms toward the younger man with an expression on her face of intensest mental suffering. She seemed to cry out; but the deafening rattle of the omnibus, as it approached them, intercepted the sound. All four of the persons seemed, in various ways, to experience the most violent feelings. The young man more than once moved as if about to start ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... religion, nor were the Jewish nation led to obedience by motives of a life to come. To them God was revealed, both as a father and a civil ruler, and obedience to laws relating solely to this life was all that was required. So low were they in the scale of civilization and mental development, that a system which confined them to one spot, as an agricultural people, and prevented their growing very rich, or having extensive commerce with other nations, was indispensable to prevent their relapsing ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... great matter that you should be perfectly sane and well-balanced. Now education helps sanity. It shows the proportion of things. An American essayist bids us "keep our eyes on the fixed stars." Education helps us to do this. It helps us to live the life we have to lead on a higher mental and spiritual level ...
— Three Addresses to Girls at School • James Maurice Wilson
... at her with some surprise. He found her eyes fixed with penetrating observation upon his face. He mentioned the number, and she evidently made a mental note of it. She was silent ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... as he is like a Frenchman. But he reads Shakspeare through the medium of his own vernacular, and has to undergo the penance of a foreign tongue before he can understand Moliere. He separates himself from England in politics and perhaps in affection; but he cannot separate himself from England in mental culture. It may be suggested that an Englishman has the same advantages as regards America; and it is true that he is obtaining much of such advantage. Irving, Prescott, and Longfellow are the same to England as though she herself ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... out of the shop; and Messrs. Quirk, Gammon, and Snap dashing past him in a fine carriage, with six horses, and paying no attention to him as he ran shouting and breathless after him; Huckaback following, kicking and pinching him behind. These were the few little bits of different colored glass in a mental kaleidoscope, which, turned capriciously round, produced those innumerable fantastic combinations out of the simple and ordinary events of the day, which we call dreams—tricks of the wild sisters Fancy, when sober ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... autumn. In reality Strindberg was at this time almost impossible to live with. Persecution mania and hallucinations took possession of him and his morbid suspicions knew no bounds. In spite of this he was half conscious that there was something wrong with his mental faculties, and in the beginning of 1895, assisted by the Swedish Minister, he went by his own consent to the St. Louis Hospital in Paris. During his chemical experiments, in which among other things he tried to produce ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... autumn leaves, as it were, of images in wax still hang outside the Crowning with Thorns chapel, but the chapels are, for the most part, now without them. Each chapel was supposed to be beneficial in the case of some particular bodily or mental affliction, and Fassola often winds up his notice with a list of the Graces which are most especially to be hoped for from devotion at the chapel he is describing; he does not, however, ascribe any ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... flashily withal; not too foppish, he was evidently a young gallant of the better class. He staggered somewhat from wine, and carried a magnificent breadth of shoulder, denoting considerable strength. This was my mental catalogue from the glimpse ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... occasionally the wildest ideas, the most extraordinary projects, are conceived by him? I wish you not, to act on any thing that Mr. Graham, or that I may tell you, but to judge for yourself. Without this, indeed, you would hardly understand the danger of these mental paroxysms. So fearful are they, that I confess I should be inclined to adopt any remedy, make any sacrifices which promised the ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... here, and have invested two or three millions, which will pay large interest to their grandchildren. Their long avenue is loyally named "Victoria." A thrifty Canadian crazed by the "boom," the queerest mental epidemic or delusion that ever took hold of sensible people, bought some stony land just under Rubidoux Mountain for $4000. It was possibly worth $100, but in those delirious days many did much worse. It is amazing to see what hard work and water and good taste will do for such ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... if you do so quietly. Please touch fingers, so as to make a complete circuit. I don't think it really necessary, but it sometimes helps to produce the proper mental state; singing softly also tends to harmonize the 'conditions,' as the professionals say. Don't argue and don't be too eager. Lean back and rest. Take a passive attitude toward the whole problem. I find the whole process ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... of their people. The bishops who had had so large a part in the foundation of the several kingdoms had a recognised part in their future government. Holding one faith, and educated in the law of the Romans, and joined on to the preceding ages by their mental culture as well as their belief, they contributed to these kingdoms a stability and cohesion which were wanting to the Teuton invaders in themselves. They incessantly preached peace as a religious necessity ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... some mode of insensibility or distraction, such as must occupy a considerable time. The logic of the case, in short, all rested upon the ultra fiendishness of Williams. Were he likely to be content with the mere fact of the child's death, apart from the process and leisurely expansion of its mental agony—in that case there would be no hope. But, because our present murderer is fastidiously finical in his exactions—a sort of martinet in the scenical grouping and draping of the circumstances in his murders—therefore ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... will enjoy the battle of wits when he is pitted against a yellow-black tiger. I began to catch on to the ways of this snow; I began, as it were, to study the mentality of my enemy. Though I never kill, I am after all something of a sportsman. And still another thing gave me back that mental equilibrium which you need in order to see things and to reason calmly about them. Every dash of two hundred yards or so brought me that much nearer to my goal. Up to the "half way farms" I had, as it were, been working uphill: ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... at the outset to indicate exactly what it is proposed to include in the present investigation into "Spiritualism." The alleged phenomena of Spiritualism may be roughly divided into two classes—physical and mental. Those which belong entirely to the latter class are outside the scope of this book. It is proposed to examine those phenomena of the former class, the reality of which may fairly be assumed to be proved by scientific evidence. The scope of the work is thus reduced to reasonable ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... leg of his stocking. His heart quailed. He seemed doomed. He had been so near success; now he seemed so far. He inwardly shuddered at the prospect ahead. It would be death, and death of a cruel and unrefined kind. Oh, the mental horror of that moment. It was worse than a bayonet in the stomach, and that is bad enough. He longed for death—death, sure and sharp. But it did not come. He was seized and bound, then thrown into a corner to await the ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... known only too well today by those who seek to know, that back of all such physical conditions as nervousness, prostration, temporary insanity, nervous disorders, pains resembling rheumatism, hay fever, heart troubles, mental symptoms, nervous chills, morbid forebodings and mild mania, there lurks the abnormal activity of the psychic or "thought body" caused by thoughts and feelings acting abnormally upon the vital centers of the nervous ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... noble close of that noble career. To the physicians the king returned his thanks graciously and gently. 'I know that you have done all that skill and learning could do for me, but the case is beyond your art; and I submit.' From the words which escaped him he seemed to be frequently engaged in mental prayer. Burnet and Tenison remained many hours in the sick-room. He professed to them his firm belief in the truth of the Christian religion, and received the sacrament from their hands with great seriousness. ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... allegiance, and to bring their tributes "before the face of the king." Taking everything into account, the condition of the Pharaoh's subjects might have been a pleasant one, had they been able to accept their lot without any mental reservation. They retained their own laws, their dynasties, and their frontiers, and paid a tax only in proportion to their resources, while the hostages given were answerable for their obedience. These hostages were as a rule taken by Thutmosis from among ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... petted her now and then a little, met her requests in the main good-humoredly, paid her bills, and would protect her with his life; yet a sort of dull wonder came over her as she admitted to herself that he was a stranger to her. She knew little of his work and duty, less of his thoughts, the mental realm in which the man himself dwelt. What were its landmarks, what its characteristic features, she could not tell. One may be familiar with the outlines of a country on a map, yet be ignorant of the scenery, productions, inhabitants, governing forces, and principles. ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe |
