"Abnormal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... most beautiful, and the verger had just brushed the carpet within the chancel to such immaculate dustlessness that he could not bring himself to let us walk over it. He let us walk round it, and we saw the chapel as a favor, which we discharged with an abnormal tip after severe debate whether a person of this verger's rich respectability and perfect manner would take any tip at all. In the event it ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... Fraeulein Anna serves us sedately, holding her own with decent self-respect against the inrush of the revellers. She is quite alone; but are not her father and mother in bed above, and within earshot? Besides, the Comus, even at this abnormal hour and after an abnormal night, is well conducted. Things seem slipping into a decorous wine-party, when Leporello readjusts the broad-brimmed hat upon his head, and very cleverly acts a little love-scene for our benefit. Fraeulein Anna takes this as a delicate compliment, and the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... been able to answer to his own complete satisfaction, and now he preferred silence. But no reply seemed to be expected, as the Secretary continued to talk of the Southern Confederacy, the plan upon which it was formed, and its abnormal position in the world, expressing himself, as he had said he would, with the most perfect frankness, displaying all the qualities of a keen analytical and searching mind. He showed how the South was one-sided, how it had cultivated only one or two forms of intellectual endeavour, ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... to put Lady Blakeney's sudden infatuation down to foreign eccentricity, and finally consoled itself with the thought that after all this nonsense could not last, and that she was too clever a woman and he too perfect a gentleman to keep up this abnormal state of things for ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... at the number of somewhat similar cases we find among our patients. Since coming here I've gone in for a little library of books on the subject. Every physician during his practice comes upon one or more of these abnormal cases which, as Randall says, we label, for convenience, 'hysteria,' and I'm free to say that I don't think we're at the bottom of the matter. Let's be just to this girl. There ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... struggle, he seemed suddenly to have dropped his mask on the floor, and broken it. His authentic self-describing passport, his complete and satisfactory idea of himself suddenly became a rag of paper, ridiculous. What on earth did it matter if he was nice or not, if his chin was normal or abnormal. ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... and might thus present us with a test of such uniform development as to be reliable for nicer discrimination than any of the more regular tests can be pushed to, — it would seem fair to expect confirmation of great importance from a properly constructed Table of Abnormal Rhythmic Accents in Shakspere." ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... of it quite naturally, too, as though it were the right thing to do. He looked upon me as his one friend, and perhaps the abnormal condition of his life made him do what under other circumstances he would never have thought of. Anyhow, he told me, while I listened incredulous, ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... company with a thin, fatigued and wispy lady in a very long vermilion gown, and an extremely small gentleman—apparently of the Hebrew persuasion—who was smartly dressed, wore white gloves and a buttonhole, and indulged in a great deal of florid gesticulation while talking with abnormal vivacity. Miss Minerva, who was playing quietly with a lemon ice, looked even more sensible than usual, the Prophet thought, in her simple white frock. She seemed to be quite at home and perfectly happy with her silly friends, but, as soon as she ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... what botanists or naturalists may tell us to the contrary, we habitually think of plantlife as fixed and stolid, insensate and quiescent. But this abnormal growth was no passive lawn, no sleepy patch of vegetation. As I stood there with fascinated attention, the thing moved and kept on moving; not in one place, but in thousands; not in one direction, but toward ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... less abnormal. Esli, whose placid soul had been sadly stirred at the time of the infliction of the "mark," was so impressed by its salutary effect that she conceived a new respect for the methods of King Solomon. The application of "morning glory" is a privilege reserved, ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... powerful dream of life. In his terrible and touching naivete he believed that a man could be great, and neither time nor misfortune made him lose that idea. His youth, or rather his sublime adolescence, lasted as long as he lived, because life never brought him a real maturity. Such is the abnormal state of men of action. They live entirely in the present, and their genius concentrates on one point. The hours of their existence are not connected by a chain of grave and disinterested meditations. They succeed themselves in a series of acts. ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... evolutionists to the contrary notwithstanding. "Like produces like" is a universal and unchangeable law. God has forbidden species to pass their boundaries; and, if any individual seems to threaten to do so, by possessing abnormal peculiarities, these are soon corrected, often in the next generation. Even Professor H. H. Newman says, "On the whole, the contributions of biometry to our understanding of the causes of evolution are rather ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... few minutes? For a very good reason: in this case the rapid inhalations are preceded by the violent throes of the heart to propel the carbonized blood from the overworked tissues and have them set free at the lungs where the air is rushing in at the normal ratio of four to one. This is not an abnormal action, but is of necessity, or asphyxia would instantly result and the runner would drop. Such sometimes occurs where the runner exerts himself too violently at the very outset; and to do so he is compelled ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... would have thought, also to have been the most deep-sighted. But no. The reviewer turns the strange thing over and over, and inside out—and some fifteen years after it has vanished out of the world, having said out its say and done all that it had to do, he still finds it too utterly abnormal to make up his mind about in any clear or consistent way, and gets thoroughly cross with it, and calls it hard names, because it will not fit into any established pigeon-hole or drawer of the then existing anthropological museum. Burns is "a literary prodigy," and yet it is "a derogation" ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... was never one of those abnormal creatures who got Christmas all ready by the Fourth of July. The true spirit of the celebration has just now begun to work on me—three days late. In this respect the spirit is very like Christmas plum-pudding. Moreover, we've just got the patriotic ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... the three rooms they were shown, every one was a face—faces of all nationalities, all ages, all conditions—faces happy and faces tragic, faces homely, faces beautiful, faces irradiating the fascination of those abnormal developments of character, good and bad, which give the composite countenance of the human race its distinction, as the characteristics themselves give it intensities of light and shade. She saw angels, beautiful and ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... their separate sphere, were entitled to supreme authority. Meantime, as if here were not already sufficient elements of dissension and doubt, came a sudden and indefinite interregnum, a provisional, an abnormal, and an impotent government. To the state-council was deputed the executive authority. But the state-council was a creature of the States-General, acting in concert with the governor-general, and having no actual life of its own. It was a board of consultation, not of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... explanation which is gravely put forward, and is the prevailing one now, sustains itself by reference to undeniable facts in the history of religious movements, and of such abnormal attitudes of the mind as modern spiritualism. On the strength of which analogy we are invited to see in the faith of the early Christians in the Resurrection of the Lord a gigantic instance of 'hallucination.' No doubt there have ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... cheap. That was one of the secrets of his astounding career. Though he possessed no education and could scarcely trace his own name, he possessed the most acute brain of any lawyer or banker in Petrograd. In every sense he was abnormal, just as abnormal as Joan of Arc, Saint Anthony, Saint Francis, or a dozen others ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... the Republic was contemplated by none; the Prince of Orange absolutely refused to stretch forth his own hand; who then was to receive the sceptre which was so soon to be bestowed? A German Prince—had been tried—in a somewhat abnormal position—but had certainly manifested small capacity for aiding the provinces. Nothing could well be more insignificant than the figure of Matthias; and, moreover, his imperial brother was anything but favorably disposed. It was necessary to manage Rudolph. To treat the Archduke with indignity, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... relation ought to obtain between values and prices. The public no longer had to be "catered to." There was even a "public be damned" attitude in many places. It was intensely bad for business. Some men called that abnormal condition "prosperity." It was not prosperity— it was just a needless money chase. Money chasing is ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... and resources upon scientific developments, has responded with many improvements which have increased the efficiency of light-production. Some figures of the Census Bureau may be of interest. These are given for 1914 in order that the abnormal conditions due to the recent war may be avoided. The figures pertaining to the manufacture of gas for sale which do not include private plants are as follows for the year 1914 for ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... Salem witchcraft, and not a few considered it direct dealing with the Evil One. Ben was deeply interested. He and Joe talked over clairvoyance and mesmerism,—a curious power developed by a learned German, Dr. Mesmer, akin to that of some of the old magicians. Ben was very fond of abnormal things; but Joe set down communication with another world as an impossibility. Still, a ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... effort, I returned to my study and threw myself upon a sofa. More fully than ever before, I entered that state where one far distant may make himself perceived and known. The occult power of foreknowing events, the delicate perception of forbidden things, worked their abnormal invigoration in the brain. I became conscious that a carriage miles off was rolling nearer and nearer; I knew that it would stop at my door. I waited, waited long into the night. One by one went out the scattered ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... acquirement of which is physiological, are learned like articulate speech, and nobody calls the person that can not swim an anomaly on that account. The inability to appropriate to one's self these and other co-ordinated muscular movements, this alone is abnormal. But we can not tell in advance in the case of any new-born child whether he will learn to speak or not, just as in the case of one who has suffered an obstruction of speech or has entirely lost speech, it is not certain whether he will ever ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... Your Majesty's Guards consist mostly of men who suffer from an abnormal growth. These giants, so they say, have periods where they shoot up to such an extent that they grow and grow beyond the tree-tops and disappear altogether from ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... be Petite Homme, the squat mate of The Beloved. It would be interesting to know just how each of the next couple acquired his name, for neither Trois-Pouces and Owl-Plucked-Out-His-Eye bears evidence of abnormal conditions. On a whole the names are more striking than our John Smiths; Richard Roes, and Tom Browns, as for instance the next three—Le Pere des Carriboux, Geroux the Eldest, Alixi To-rong-jo. The-man-who-stands-still is evidently a stand-patter, while ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... can't help it, you are in an abnormal condition, you have lost self-control,—it is a mild type of mental derangement. You must attack your bad habit of worrying as you would a disease. It is definitely something to be overcome, an infirmity that you are ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... yet, despite the already long continuance of the calm, the heavens were still as brass to us, clear, cloudless, blue as the fathomless depths beneath our feet, not the merest vestige of cloud to be seen, the mercury still persistently steady at an abnormal height, the sea as smooth and motionless as a sheet of glass, and not the smallest sign to justify us in hoping for any change. The heat was something absolutely phenomenal; the deck planking was so hot that we all had ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... other man had been a master-stroke of policy—felt almost at his wits' end. Standing by the mantelpiece mechanically filling his pipe, he watched Desmond set out his books and papers on the table near the window, intent on a morning of abnormal industry; and the pathos of it all caught at his heart. For the first time in his controlled and ordered life he felt impelled to carry a situation by storm—the result possibly of playing Providence to Theo for the ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... Stevens' betraying glass, picked it up, and sat staring at it in vague and dreamy fashion until, rousing at his master's second bidding, he proceeded to mix brandy and soda, his gaze still profoundly abstracted and his whiskers drooping with an abnormal meekness. ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... to the making of a successful amuser of people. Men will spend endless time and pains, and devote concentration, persistence, self-denial, diligence, to learning how to play upon some instrument, how to swing upon a trapeze, how to twist themselves into abnormal contortions. Jugglers and fiddlers, and circus-riders and dancers, and people of that sort spend far more time upon efforts to perfect themselves in their profession, than ninety-nine out of every hundred professing Christians do to make themselves true followers ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... 2nd and 29th of May, colonized eleven Snail-shells, a prodigious task. This industrious one was also exceedingly prolific. She supplied me with a family of twenty-six, the largest which I have ever obtained from one Osmia. Well, this abnormal progeny consisted of twenty-five males and one female, ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... and it has never been observed in the wild Species, where, on the contrary, everything shows the closest adherence to the distinct, well-defined, and invariable limits of the Species. It surely does not follow, that, because the Chinese can, under abnormal conditions, produce a variety of fantastic shapes in the Golden Carp, therefore water, or the physical conditions established in the water, can create a Fish, any more than it follows, that, because they can dwarf a tree, or alter ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... in the combination against Germany and Austria-Hungary seems to the average American an abnormal phenomenon; because Russia is itself a military monarchy with marked territorial ambitions; and its civilization is at a more elementary stage than that of France or England; but he resists present apprehension on this score by recalling that Russia submitted to the "Concert of Europe" ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... dreams of elixirs of life or homunculi. Thy highest aspiration nowadays would be to find the mechanical equivalent of thought—to prove that Shakespeare's and Dante's imagination was due only to a slightly abnormal movement of brain-molecules—to find some method of measuring faith, hope and charity in foot-pounds and thine own genius in electric volts. Thou wouldst live and die, as other eminent scientists of these latter days have done, in the certain hope ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... to furnish it to a biographer, she was warned against doing so by the President himself, who said there was too much truth in it for print. The only significance the episode possesses is in showing this almost abnormal development of conscience in the young man who was perfectly ready to enter into a marriage which he dreaded simply because he thought he had given a young woman reason to think that he had such intentions. While we ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... so adorable I find it deplorable, Absurd and abnormal. To cling to the formal 'Twere such a good omen To drop the cognomen. So I beg you to promise That you'll call me "Thomas," Or better yet, "Tommie," Instead of th' abomi- Nable "Mr. Gilfoyle." You can, ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... new novels die so quickly, and why the old fairy tales endure for ever. The old fairy tale makes the hero a normal human boy; it is his adventures that are startling; they startle him because he is normal. But in the modern psychological novel the hero is abnormal; the centre is not central. Hence the fiercest adventures fail to affect him adequately, and the book is monotonous. You can make a story out of a hero among dragons; but not out of a dragon among dragons. The fairy tale discusses what a sane man will do in a mad world. ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... generally, had been recognized or studied as we now study them, so Fechner's stock of analogies is scant compared with our present one. He did the best with what he had, however. For my own part I find in some of these abnormal or supernormal facts the strongest suggestions in favor of a superior co-consciousness being possible. I doubt whether we shall ever understand some of them without using the very letter of Fechner's conception of a great reservoir in which the ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... decorum, an establishment; she desired to avoid waste, she desired to keep up appearances. She was utterly and entirely normal even in her utterly undeniable beauty. But I don't mean to say that she acted perfectly normally in this perfectly abnormal situation. All the world was mad around her and she herself, agonized, took on the complexion of a mad woman; of a woman very wicked; of the villain of the piece. What would you have? Steel is a normal, hard, polished substance. But, if you put it in ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... a beetle which belongs to the same group of Coleoptera as Meloe. We cannot but think, from observations made on the humble bee, the wasp, two species of moths and several other insects, that this "hyper-metamorphosis" is not so abnormal a mode of insect metamorphosis as has been supposed, and that the changes of these insects, made beneath the skin of the mature larva before assuming the pupa state, are almost as remarkable as those of Meloe and Sitaris, though less easily observed ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... these additions, and the results of those most carefully conducted show how very slightly the combined causes affect the general composition of our atmosphere; and although the present refined methods of chemists enable them to detect the presence of an abnormal amount of some substances, no research has yet been successful in determining how far this varies from the natural quantity at all times necessarily ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... it appeared to Julie as though he were shaking off with difficulty some abnormal and trancelike state. But he ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of the adults have abnormal feet. The most common and most striking abnormality is that known as "fa'-wing"; it is an inturning of the great toe. Fa'-wing occurs in all stages from the slightest spreading to that approximating forty-five degrees. It is found widely scattered among the barefoot ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... system. From this constantly acting irritation the child needs security. In the second place, he requires liberty to develop his own initiative, which should be stimulated and sustained and directed. Without liberty and without security conduct cannot fail to become abnormal. ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... wardrobe, cabinet; no tener su alma en su —, not to have one's soul in the right place; to have one's soul in an abnormal condition. ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... on April 13, did he realize how anxious he had been. 'In a normal season no thoughts of its having been in danger would have occurred to me, but since the loss of the ponies and the breaking of Glacier Tongue, I could not rid myself of the fear that misfortune was in the air and that some abnormal swell had swept the beach.' So when he and his party turned the small headland and saw that the hut was intact, a real fear was mercifully removed. Very soon afterwards the travelers were seen by two men at work near the stables, and then the nine occupants ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... meaningless antics. Confess that everywhere, in shop, street, church, theatre, barroom, official chair, are pervading flippancy and vulgarity, low cunning, infidelity—everywhere the youth puny, impudent, foppish, prematurely ripe—everywhere an abnormal libidinousness, unhealthy forms, male, female, painted, padded, dyed, chignon'd, muddy complexions, bad blood, the capacity for good motherhood decreasing or deceas'd, shallow notions of beauty, with a range of manners, or rather lack of manners (considering the advantages enjoy'd) probably the ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... to modify the main tempo to meet the various requirements of the thematic combinations (e.g., at the proper moment to relax the rate of speed), has already permitted the main tempo to grow so quick as to exclude the possibility of any further increase—unless, indeed, the strings choose to risk an abnormal rush and run, such as I remember to have heard with astonishment, though not with satisfaction, from this very Viennese orchestra. The necessity for such an eccentric exertion arose in consequence of the main tempo having ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... have him in a factory, untrained and unintelligent as he was. It was much easier for his bright, English-speaking little girl to get a chance to paste labels on a box than for him to secure an opportunity to carry pig iron. The effect on the child was what no one concerned thought about, in the abnormal effort she made thus prematurely to bear the weight of life. Another little girl of thirteen, a Russian-Jewish child employed in a laundry at a heavy task beyond her strength, committed suicide, because she had borrowed three dollars from a companion which she could not repay unless she confided ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... normally, and it is not until the girl's health has been spoiled by over-exertion of body or mind, by unwise exertion during the period, or by continued exposure to damp or cold, that it becomes painful and abnormal in time or ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... about town. And that made four. Besides these four there was a fifth, the serene and perfect intelligence, who from some height immeasurably far above them sat in judgement on them all. But for his abnormal sense of humour he would have been a Mr. Rickman of the pure reason, no good at all. As it was, he occasionally offered some reflection which was enjoyed but seldom ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... and I was called upon for advice. In every respect except the weight-loss the improvement was wonderful. After much thought there was a sudden flash of the truth: there were an abnormal weight and bulk, due to the general dropsy of debility, similar in character to the swelling of the feet and limbs in the old and feeble. The thickened walls of the bloodvessels, toned with health, caused absorption; but the eyes of the friends would ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... mistress. Mouser, too, went miaow-wowing about the house at nights, as if he likewise shared in the family despondency—not once being caught in the act of stealing the breakfast cream, a predilection for which had hitherto been an abnormal failing on his part. So changed, indeed, became the old cat that he did not possess spirit enough to put up his tail and "phit" and "fiz" at Burgher Jans' terrier, when that predatory animal made an occasional excursion into the parlour at meal ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... tempting little arithmetical sums by which it is demonstrated that paying so much for ten acres of barren land, and so much for planting it with vines or oranges, the income in three years will be a competence to the investor and his family. People do not spend much time now in gaping over abnormal vegetables, or trying to convince themselves that wines of every known variety and flavor can be produced within the limits of one flat and well-watered field. Few now expect to make a fortune by cutting arid land up into twenty-feet lots, but notwithstanding ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... hold good for eternity. Do not endeavor to form a definite idea of the future as you may think it should be after the lapse of several decades. No man's foresight, I hold, can reach as far as that. The conditions are abnormal; they had to be so—our entire task was so—not only as regards the mode of taking possession of Alsace, but also as regards the present owners. An alliance of sovereign princes and free cities making ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... to-day, either in open recrimination, or in a still more distressing interference with all Sophy's personal desires and occupations. The servants were, in a measure, compelled to take part in the unnatural quarrel; and before three weeks were over, Sophy's condition was one of such abnormal excitement that she was hardly any longer accountable for her actions. The final blow was struck while she was so little able to bear it. A letter from Archie, posted in Christiania and addressed to his wife, came one morning. ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... determine by their normal growth the development of the state. But this individual growth must be normal. A huge and disproportionate development of the individual of classes, would prove as fatal to society as abnormal growths are to living organisms. Freedom therefore is due to the citizen and to classes on condition that they exercise it in the interest of society as a whole and within the limits set by social exigencies, liberty being, like any other individual right, ...
— Readings on Fascism and National Socialism • Various
... the "Association." At the outbreak of the Revolution six main reasons, some of which were old and of slow growth, others peculiar to the abnormal situation of that time, led to concerted action against the slave-trade. The first reason was the economic failure of slavery in the Middle and Eastern colonies; this gave rise to the presumption that like ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... vessels show considerable uniformity of proportion, the widely exceptional specimens being also exceptional in decorations. As indicating size and proportion I give here the measurements of some typical as well as some abnormal specimens. ...
— Illustrated Catalogue Of The Collections Obtained From The Indians Of New Mexico And Arizona In 1879 • James Stevenson
... learning or vealt', I might pity her vit' equal injustice, but I cannot. She vill not let me. She does not know t'at she is a failure. She prides herself upon being so mis-made. She cannot help t'at; neit'er can I help despising her. Such vomen are abnormal, monstrous, in a vord, failures. Let t'em die! You, I t'ink, are not so. You study to bide t'e time. You haf a fine carriage. You comb t'e hair, you haf pretty ribbons, you make t'e body strong and supple, you look in t'e glass and vish for ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... hydrocephalus (or water on the brain), where there is an abnormal secretion of cerebro-spinal fluid acting to increase the pressure on the brain, the simple expedient of withdrawing the fluid by lumbar puncture brings about normal mental life. As the fluid again collects, ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... sensational way; and the sober discussion of the subject, which followed after its novelty had worn off, led to the general opinion that, while every one might be quite willing to see his dead neighbors cremated, no one would acquiesce in the disposal of his friends and relatives in so abnormal a manner. Hence, with the single exception of the late revolting exhibition in Pennsylvania, which we alluded to at the time, the dead in this country have continued to be deposited in their hallowed resting places, and have not been packed away, in an incinerated state, in ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... very necessary to the individual who gives himself to the public. That any man should so bestride the narrow world like a colossus that the multitude must stop to gaze, and thousands feed upon his words, is an abnormal condition. The only thing that can hold the balance true is solitude. Relaxation is the first requirement of strength. Watch the cat, the tiger or the lion asleep. See what complete absence of intensity—what ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... as it really was. But, after all, it is not quite impossible that a similar awaking may await the grown man who imagines himself to have mastered something of the real philosophies of life. The cadaverous peeler with the abnormal appetite fades out of recollection, and my next hero is a blacksmith, who, in a countryside once rich in amateur pugilists, had earned a local distinction for himself before he made a settlement for life at the "Farriers' Arms," in Queen Street. ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... he concealed, and on occasions denied his connexion, he no doubt inspired the editors and contributed articles to its pages, especially during its early years. It is a singular fact—or rather, it would have been singular, had Pope been a man of less abnormal character—that he should have devoted so much energy to this paltry subterranean warfare against the objects of his complex antipathies. Pope was so anxious for concealment, that he kept his secret even from his friendly legal adviser ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... to encourage bravery or foster hope; when every moment was pregnant with ghastly possibilities; when death and abominable torture hobnobbed in the Roman streets with riots of disgusting indulgence, abnormal lusts, filthiness parading unabashed. He speaks of the horrors, the gruesome impalings; deprecating them in a general way; not daring to come down to particulars, and rebuke Nero. Well; Nero commanded the legions, and was kittle cattle to rebuke. If sometimes you see tinsel and tawdriness about ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... Herculean task to cope with the handicap of wealth. Mediocre men can endure failure; for, as Robert Louis the beloved has pointed out, failure is natural, but worldly success is an abnormal condition. In order to stand success you must be of very stern fiber, with all the gods on ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... fence. Before I had gone three-quarters of a mile, my attention was arrested by the peculiar apple-green hue of a tall, healthy-looking pine, standing about a hundred and fifty yards from the fence. Knowing that this abnormal deviation in colour, if not forthwith inquired into, would harass me exceedingly in after years, I turned aside to inspect the tree. It was worth the trouble. The pine had been dead for years, but every leafless twig, right up to its spiry summit, was ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... the same as the volume to be brought out at two guineas. In the zenith of his fame as an illustrator, at a time when tip-top authors and editors were all clamouring for his drawings, he did not despise humbler admirers and clients. His delight in his work was only equalled by quite abnormal physical and mental powers. Sleep, food, fresh air, everything was forgotten in the engrossment of work. At this time he would often give himself three hours ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... change," said Dr. Lett blandly. "They are not sick and they do not die because they are paras. The condition itself is no more abnormal than ... than diabetes! Diabetics require insulin. Paras ... something else. But there is prejudice against what paras need! It is as if some men would rather die than use insulin and those who did use it became outcasts! I do not say what causes this condition. I do not object if the Minister ...
— The Hate Disease • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... sensibilities urge you too far, my friend, but fortunately the world is not near its end. This is not the first time. And there will be many others. What is happening today is painful, certainly, but not in the least abnormal. War has never kept the earth from turning on its axis, nor prevented the evolution of life; it is even one of the forms of its evolution. Let an old scholar and philosopher oppose his calm inhumanity to your holy Man of Sorrows. In spite of all it may ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... fruits effective enough for commemoration in the pages of biography, such religious geniuses have often shown symptoms of nervous instability. Even more perhaps than other kinds of genius, religious leaders have been subject to abnormal psychical visitations. Invariably they have been creatures of exalted emotional sensibility. Often they have led a discordant inner life, and had melancholy during a part of their career. They have known no measure, ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... exactly, but as a whole, it has an ordinary, indifferent, French look which does not suit. The sentiment is not given, and I almost wonder whether I should not have done better to falsify the perspective—Japanese style—exaggerating to the very utmost the already abnormal outlines of what I see before me. And then the pictured dwelling lacks the fragile look and its sonority, that reminds one of a dry violin. In the pencilled delineation of the woodwork, the minute delicacy with which it is wrought is ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... of a feverish imagination. Had I been persuaded that all I thought I saw, I really did see, I should have opened my lips long ago, let the consequences to myself have been what they might. But there is the crux. The happenings were of such an incredible character, and my condition was such an abnormal one,—I was never really myself from the first moment to the last—that I have hesitated, and still do hesitate, to assert where, precisely, fiction ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... soft the least jar would punch a hole in her; she's wrecked and strained from fifty years of service; her engines are worn out, her boilers are burned out, her gear is antiquated, and even in these times of abnormal freight rates she's too far gone to patch up and keep running. They kicked her up in the mud of Oakland Inner Harbor yesterday, and there she'll be stripped of everything of value and left to rot. My plan, Mike, ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... had been interminable, and the evening exasperating in the highest degree. What an evening! Why had Albert and Clara and Auntie Hamps all of them come up just at supper-time? At first they would not be persuaded! No! They had just called—sheer accident!—nothing abnormal! And yet the whole of the demeanour of Auntie Hamps and Clara was abnormal. Maggie herself, catching the infection, had transformed the meal into a kind of abnormal horrible feast by serving cold beef and pickles—flesh-meat being ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... another step had to be taken by men in control of the State. The memory of what was classical was kept though in an ever-fading condition, and now and again some point of memory fructified to almost its original suggestive beauty in the fortuitously abnormal brain of a genius, and thus the state work of hygiene had to be done over again; for curiously enough people everywhere rose like a tide, and moved spontaneously towards these manifestations of liberty and beauty, and away from their loyalty to the God-State. A ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... Bailey, a second-year psychology major who had been attending his classes two semesters. Very intelligent, reclusive, not a local-grown product. Her work had a grimness about it, as though psychology was a dire obsession, especially abnormal psychology. One of her theme papers had been an exhaustive, mature but somehow overly determined, treatise on self-induced hallucination and auto-suggestion. He had not been too impressed because of an unjustified emphasis on supernatural ...
— Strange Alliance • Bryce Walton
... their movements in relation to the day and night was wholly lost. Thus, one leaf descended during the first two nights (i.e. between 10 P.M. and 7 A.M. next morning) instead of ascending, and on the third night it moved chiefly in a lateral direction. The second leaf behaved in an equally abnormal manner, moving laterally during the first night, descending greatly during the second, and ascending to an unusual height during the ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... in general they are difficult and based on his own manner and style of playing. As he himself has remarked: 'I could play the violin just as well with three as with four fingers.' Kreisler is fond of 'fingered' octaves, and these, because of his abnormal hand, he plays with the first and third fingers, where virtuose players, as a rule, are only too happy if they can play them with the first and fourth. To verify this individual character of his revisions, one need only glance at his edition of Godowsky's '12 Impressions' for ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... interesting to observe that, whenever there was a violent and abnormal outbreak of crime, the Irish Parliament did not hesitate to pass special laws to meet the case. Such measures as the Whiteboy Act of 1787, or the Insurrection Act and the Habeas Corpus Suppression Act of 1796, which were ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... abnormal in her way than Sir Richard. She had shared his wanderings, and was intimate, as no one else was, with the eccentricities of his thoughts and deeds. Whatever these might happen to be, she worshipped her husband notwithstanding. For her he was the standard of excellence; all ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... say, that you have been upset and half-drowned, and your canoe-load of goods lost three times in a week, that your paddles are always breaking, and the amount of snags in the river and so on is abnormal, you judge that your canoe-charm has stopped. Then you go to the medicine man who supplied you with it and complain. He says it was a perfectly good charm when he sold it you and he never had any complaints before, but he will investigate ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... Eternal City really wanted to make out the processes of this abnormal mind. He wrinkled his brows, and ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... been suppressed until long after his day. The ignorant Israelites could not have been trained under the discipline of the Law if they had had at the same time the fiery, cynical, half-skeptical, and enigmatical commentary which the Book of Job furnishes. There is nothing abnormal or contrary to the conception of an inspired revelation in the development of truth by wider views and deeper analysis through successive sacred writers. But it is repulsive to conceive an inspired teacher as first gaining the ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... has as yet been attained by the Dottoressa.[6] In order to make this clear, it is proposed to compare the theories of Froebel with the conclusions of a biologist. For biology has a wider and a saner outlook than medical science; it does not start from the abnormal, but with life under ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... of the flowering of a great literary style among the bleak and desolate moors of Yorkshire? Who can tell why among three daughters of an Irish curate of mediocre ability but tremendously passionate nature one should have developed an abnormal imagination that in Wuthering Heights is as powerful as Poe's at his best, and another should have matured into the ablest woman novelist of her day and her generation? These are freaks of heredity which science utterly fails ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... tireless enemy who cannot be awed or hurt and even more against their own feelings of fear and despair which must come upon them constantly as they get farther into this green desert, farther from natural surroundings, deeper into the silence and mystery of the abnormal barrier they have undertaken to cross. They are supermen and only supernatural means ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... Notwithstanding the abnormal condition of naval affairs above described, and the difficulties to be dealt with, not all the vessels in San Francisco Bay are crewless. A few still retain their full complement of hands—these being mostly men-of-war, whose ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... explanations, plainly invented to account for women's predominance at a time when such power had come to be considered as unusual. The same may be said of many of these old myths. Man's fancy begins to weave poetic inventions around anything he considers abnormal or is not able to understand. The idea or custom for which an explanation is being sought must, however, have been present for long in the common life and thought of the people. Without realising this, all these old stories become unintelligible. I believe they have been greatly ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... unreasonable. A thousand difficulties had to be overcome—scientific difficulties and manufacturing difficulties. This invention, like most others, had to go through steady historical developments and evolution, and follow the recognized laws of nature, which are against abnormal and instantaneous maturity. The period of maturity has also been retarded by injudicious treatment, but the ultimate success was inevitable. Great advances have been made within the last few years, and I propose now to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various
... Hebrews from the first, made every Jew desirous to leave descendants who might witness happier times, and one of whom might even be the promised Deliverer of his people. No Hebrew of either sex was allowed to be a servant of vice; abnormal practices, though screened by Canaanite religion, were far less common than in Greece or Italy. To this wholesome morality Christianity added the doctrines of the value, in the sight of God, of every human life, ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... her mother's plea to Mr. Newell. He had supposed her to be either unconscious of the transaction, or else too much engrossed in her own happiness to give it a thought; and he had forgiven her the last alternative in consideration of the abnormal character of her filial relations. But now he saw that he must readjust his view ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... it. They marched on and on through the night, throwing out the usual advance guard and flank patrols, but otherwise unprotected. By all the rules of war the brigade should have been cut off. But in this twilight-time—this Goetterdaemmerung of the end, conditions were abnormal, and the two regiments marched on through forest country, right through the enemy lines towards the Meuse, for about eight kilometres, capturing machine-gunners asleep at their guns, and rounding up parties of ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had the skrenning ability. In their misshapen bodies were unusual powers and talents, odd and abnormal abilities which the normal man shunned by day but secretly courted by night. Mutants were said to be in the particular favor of The Black One. Some people felt that the great art of Black Magic, about which the priests boasted, could only be performed by a mutant; but one never said so in the presence ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... That King, although no one denies His heart was of abnormal size, Yet he'd have acted otherwise If he had been acuter. The end is easily foretold, When every blessed thing you hold Is made of silver, or of gold, You long for simple pewter. When you have nothing else to wear But cloth of gold and satins rare, ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... four years have been full of incident, outcry, and bloodshed. The state of things, indeed, prevailing in the world for some time past is extraordinary. A visitant from another planet would imagine that normal peace and abnormal war had changed places, and that civilized mankind now regard peace as an interlude of war, not war as an interlude of peace. He would be wrong, of course, but the race in armament, which threatens to leave the nations taking part in it financially ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... the latest writer on inheritance of disease (Stuttgart, 1882—Cotta—Uber Dererbung von Krankheiten), names alcoholism among the transient abnormal conditions which, during conception, exert their influence, so that children of intemperate parents acquire pathological, and especially neuro-pathological, dispositions. Intemperance, says this author, in its acute, as well as in its ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various
... one or two commonplace adventures in Italy, in which probably the climate accounted for his success, no woman had ever smiled upon Pons. Plenty of men are doomed to this fate. Pons was an abnormal birth; the child of parents well stricken in years, he bore the stigma of his untimely genesis; his cadaverous complexion might have been contracted in the flask of spirit-of-wine in which science preserves some extraordinary foetus. Artist ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... house, Henry worked with tireless energy, taking down the coded messages as they flashed from the skilled fingers of the Government operators in the great War, State, and Navy Department but a stone's throw away. Suddenly, above the click of the sounder his abnormal sense of hearing caught a faint noise on the other side of the closed panel. One movement of his hand and the chamber was in darkness and the telegraph instrument stilled. Backing into a corner, Henry waited, his eyes still blinded ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... this so, there would, of course, be no more to be said. But this I wholly deny. It is, of course, incompatible in some respects with exalted conceptions of the most advanced Christianity; but there is no reason why Christianity should not be allowed to exist alongside of abnormal social growths, and why, in short, Christianity should not be stretched to tolerate caste, in the same way that it was allowed by the apostles to exist alongside of evils with which the institution of caste cannot, for iniquity or for general ill effects, be for one moment compared. ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... that had ensued since the discovery of the abnormal mental powers of "Blackjack" Donnely, rumors had spread all over the world. There were supposed to be men who could levitate—fly through the air at will. Others could walk through walls, and still others could make themselves invisible. The ...
— The Penal Cluster • Ivar Jorgensen (AKA Randall Garrett)
... witness the blessing of a calf by a Brahmin. Inside a diminutive shrine—into the door of which I was curious enough to peep—I discovered two skinny, repulsive old women, with sunken, discoloured eyes, untidy locks of scanty hair, long unwashed, bony arms and legs, and finger and toe nails of abnormal length. They were clad in a few dirty rags, and were busily attending to the lights burning on several primitive stone candlesticks along the walls of the shrine. There were also some curiously-shaped stones standing upright ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... to understand was that the whole of psychology is ruled by the most exact and immutable laws, in which there is nothing fortuitous or abnormal, and that the exact course of an emotion can be predicted with perfect certainty if only all the ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Christian ethics) the precise people who ought to govern are the people who have not the cheek to do it. There is a strong example of this truth in my friend in the train. The only two types we hear of in this argument about crime and punishment are two very rare and abnormal types. ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... animal, or vegetable, will not be hurried, or she produces the abnormal. Until about a hundred years ago everything seemed to be moving on with a very slow and gradual evolution. Some things changed a little, others it would seem, not at all. And then, after the first quarter of the nineteenth century, Science and Invention appeared to join hands, and, with small ...
— Three Things • Elinor Glyn |
