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Mentality   Listen
noun
Mentality  n.  Quality or state of mind. "The same hard mentality."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Mentality" Quotes from Famous Books



... adapted herself to it as well as she could. It was strange that the longer she lived there the more she thought of Edward. She always saw his face lined with grief and very pale, not tanned and ruddy with fresh air as she had known it. It was as if his mentality reached across the valley to hers and laid its melancholy upon her. Sometimes she was very homesick for Foxy, but she would not have her at Undern. She did not trust the place. She never went out anywhere, for people stared, and when Reddin, with some difficulty, persuaded her to amble round the ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb

... launched, few reached those to whom they were addressed; for my conservator had wisely ordered that my literary output be sent in bulk to him. His action was exasperating, but later I realized that he had done me a great favor when he interposed his judgment between my red-hot mentality and the cool minds of the workaday world. Yet this interference with what I deemed my rights proved to be the first step in the general overruling of them by tactless attendants and, in particular, by a certain ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers

... of a healthy brain be equally subterranean and equally competent? Why have we to think aloud and travel laboriously from syllogism to ergo, chary of our conclusions and distrustful of our premises? Thought, as we know it, is a disease and no more. The healthy mentality should register its convictions and not its labours. Our ears should not hear the clamour of its doubts nor be forced to listen to the pro and con wherewith we ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens

... German mentality is contained in a little conversation which I had with a clergyman in the Province of Posen. He knew England well, by residence and ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin

... Certain feeble minded persons have been known to be adversely affected by moonlight as well as some cases of complete mental aberration. In other words, while moonlight has no practical effect on the normal human in its usual concentration, it does have an adverse effect on certain types of mentality and, despite the laughter of medical science, there seems to be something in the theory of 'moon madness.' This effect Von Beyer attributed to the emanations of lunium, which element he detected in the spectra of the moon, in the form of a wide ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various

... filtering through your father's mentality, which has welded past, present and future. At least, that is the way I see it with the material eye, which is all I have to view it with—if we can call the recognition ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... Johnson answered sharply, with an oath: "I never like a man to be for me more than I am for myself." I have been told that even at home General Butler could never acquire the public confidence. In spite of his conceded mentality and manliness he gave the impression of being something of an ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... the mental powers that we acquaint our children with God: "Faith cometh by hearing." Parents can not be too careful about the impressions made in the mentality of their children; it may affect their morality and spirituality in the whole of after life. Select such books for them as will develop the mental faculties, something that contains food for the brain. There are certain articles of diet that do ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr

... kindly, but very firmly. He knew the impulsive nature of this passionate child. He knew her unusual mentality. He realised, none better, that he was dealing with a strong woman's mind in a girl of childhood's years. He knew that Nancy had inherited largely from her father, that headstrong, headlong creature whose mentality had driven him to every length in a wild endeavour to upset civilisation ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum

... young collegians, and teach them how not to reason, for Aristotle never had a glimmering conception of what the process of reasoning is. Yet all Concordians are not Aristotelians; some of them have more modern ideas, and a vigorous, though misdirected, mentality. ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various

... want to. He said it took mentality and physical endurance as well as some courage to play polo. Father said it did—on the part of the pony. Then s-some of the men heard of it, and there were bets on it—ten to one he wouldn't do it and twenty ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... laid down his life for Gus after the athlete had very deservedly whipped two town bullies that were making life miserable for him. Moreover, the youngster wanted to be like Gus and Bill, in the matter of mentality, and a promise of reward meant money with which ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron

... known and loved was no longer before me. The crown had touched her brows, and her charm which had been mainly sexual up to this hour had merged into an intellectual force, with which few men's mentality could cope. Mine yielded at once to it. From the first instant, I knew that a slavery of spirit, as well as of heart, was henceforth ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green

... the trail is something that is stronger than anything else in Muller's mentality, and now and then it brings him into conflict with the department,... or with his own better nature. Sometimes his unerring instinct discovers secrets in high places, secrets which the Police Department is bidden to hush up and leave untouched. Muller is ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner

... danger and ceaseless struggle had produced a people habituated to the shedding of blood, to the defense of their rights, weapons in hand; the farmers and fishermen of the present day possessed the mentality of their ancestors, and kept up the same customs. There were no villages; there were houses scattered over many kilometers, with no other nucleus than the church and the dwellings of the curate and the alcalde. The only town was the capital, the one called in ancient documents ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... thinkers the world so far has seen; yet they believed in ghosts, omens, and premonitions. (They would smile in lofty scorn at some of the superstitions to-day taught under the Elementary Education Act of 1870.) Unbelief in such things super-natural, therefore, cannot be accepted as a sign of lofty mentality. A journalistic friend was staying with me some few months ago. We were sitting smoking rather late after dinner. "Do you believe in ghosts?" I asked. "Don't be so absurdly foolish!" he cried angrily. "That's all right," I remarked quietly. "Now I know you won't mind sleeping in our haunted ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips

... which rolled damp from the presses could convey it through the avenues and alleys of the city, whose wealthiest citizen he had been, and through the highways and byways of the country, which his marvelous mentality and finesse had so manifestly strengthened in its ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander

... well be introduced by two "wonder-stories" of Nippon. One of these, the Yotsuya Kwaidan,[1] is presented in the present volume, not so much because of the incidents involved and the peculiar relation to a phase of Nipponese mentality, as from the fact that it contains all the machinery of the Nipponese ghost story. From this point of view the reading of one of these tales disposes of a whole class of the native literature. Difference of detail is found. But unless the tale carries some particular ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... life he would take up again some day if he lived through it. He brushed away the thought of death. It was uninteresting. He didn't care anyway. But some day he would want to play the piano again, to write music. He must not let himself sink too deeply into the helpless mentality of the soldier. He ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos

... revival of interest is the new point of view brought forward by Professor Bergson in the paper which is here made accessible to the English-reading public. This is the idea that we can explore the unconscious substratum of our mentality, the storehouse of our memories, by means of dreams, for these memories are by no means inert, but have, as it were, a life and purpose of their own, and strive to rise into consciousness whenever they get a chance, ...
— Dreams • Henri Bergson

... reference to the minutes of past meetings. Now, sir, tell me, as man to man, can I consult with, or listen to suggestions—even to suggestions, though worthy of a gigantic intellect—can I listen to suggestions coming from the mentality of a non-member of our learned body? Before replying, let me say that our society is known throughout all of Egypt—that is, you know, Egypt, Illinois. When a medical savant in Paris, or Leipsig, or London, alleges ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake

... of all psychic phenomena, with scoffers convinced that every medium is an impostor, and that nothing but a little common sense is needed for the exposure. The results have been largely dependent on the mentality of the investigators. Failure to understand this is responsible for much of the disappointment and contempt with which otherwise intelligent critics have dismissed the subject. The accumulated thought-power, the collective ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby

... strive his best to fence away from them. There were those who were plainly curious; there were others who professed not to believe the testimony and who talked loudly of action against the coroner for having introduced the evidence of a woman known by every one to be lacking in balanced mentality. There were others who, by their remarks, showed that they were concealing the real truth of their thoughts and only using a cloak of interest to guide them to other food for the carrion proclivities of their minds. To all of them Fairchild and Harry made the same ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... special classes. Norway followed with a similar city organization, in 1874; and England, Switzerland, and Austria, about 1892. The first American city to organize such classes was Providence, Rhode Island, in 1893. Since that time special classes for children of low-grade mentality have become a common feature of the large city school systems in ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... believe in transmigration in the individual at all, but in the transmigration of classes. Thus, we hold that whenever a given generation of men, in a peculiar state of society, attain, in the aggregate, a certain degree of moral improvement, or mentality, as we term it in the schools, that there is an admixture of their qualities in masses, some believe by scores, others think by hundreds, and others again pretend by thousands; and if it is found, ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... that the others could not execute. His system can be summed up in two phrases; always attack even when on the defensive; fire and take cover only when not attacked. His method was rational, considering his mentality and the existing conditions, but in carrying it into execution he judged his officers and soldiers by himself and was deceived. No dogmatic principles can be drawn from his method, nor from any other. Man is ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq

... condition of absolute calmness and quiescence. I also try to win his confidence by appealing to his own volitional effort to aid me in obtaining the desired clad. I impress upon him that hypnosis in his condition is a benign agency, and far from subjugating his mentality, it becomes intensified to so great an extent as to act ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus

... poet's ears? Very probably, for one and all of Nadaud's rural poems breathe the very essence of the fields, the inmost nature of the peasant, from first to last they reveal Jacques Bonhomme to us, his conceptions of life, his mentality and limitations. ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... "shopping" is as the breath of life—than from any other section of the population. Even such apparently benign Socialist schemes as "communal dining-rooms" or "communal kitchens" appeal less to the working-class mentality than to the upper-class mind ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... to-day and addressing the real sea in these words and accents! Fancy the poet doing it! The mood and the mentality are prehistoric. I would not mind Mr. Noyes putting himself lyrically into the woaded skin of our ancestors. But I do think he might have got a little nearer the mark in indicating the "throne of her fame." Because ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett

... six-inch checks. Life wasn't so bad. Ol' railroad sleepin' car was probably doin' all right. Reasonably sure that tomorrow would lug in new brands of trouble to pester a boy with, the Wildcat steered his somnolent mentality clear of the shoals of surmise and let tomorrow take ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley

... ripping, by Jove! I give you my word, Joey, she tacked on one of those New York British accents for the duke's special benefit. There was a lot of beam to her a's, Mac told me, but blamed little molded depth to her mentality. So they were married in haste, and after the duke had seen his bride in the elevator bound for their rooms at the hotel, he excused himself to get a highball. And I guess he got the highball, because I find it in this expense account ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... the Filipinos. Under the pretext of interesting themselves more than we do in our own welfare, considering us to be blind and incapable to know and distinguish the good from the bad, deeming us eternal indios of inferior mentality, they seek to take us whithersoever they will, where it suits them, thru the dark path where none see but they, they who guide or wish to guide the indio, the eternal child who ought to allow ...
— The Legacy of Ignorantism • T.H. Pardo de Tavera

... words to express the inexpressible? All that we may hope to do is to awaken a keen interest and attention on your part, so that you will practice the Mental Drill, and thus obtain the evidence of your own mentality to the truth. Truth is not truth to you until you have proven it in your own experience, and once so proven you cannot be robbed of it, nor can it be argued away ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka

... remarkable products of the new mentality of a social force were facts, but they needed an intellectual or philosophical justification just as a low-born profiteer, when he has acquired a certain amount of money, needs an expensive club or a coat of arms to regularize his status. Protestantism ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram

... in love with Countess Elisa von Luetzow-Ahlefeldt, wife of the famous old commander of volunteers, Brigadier-General von Luetzow. Elisa, an extremely gifted and spirited woman, had formed a circle of interesting people, in which her husband, a dashing soldier but a man of uninteresting mentality, played a very subordinate part. Immermann and Elisa struggled along against the tyranny of the affinity that drew them together. Immermann wrote a number of dramas, highly romantic, in which the passion and strife within him found varied expression. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... his smallest picture, which is hardly more than an inch in diameter. On that tiny surface he painted the whole story of the crucifixion, and it is now in the Dresden Gallery. To those of us who see little mentality in the faces of the Italian subjects, the German art of Durer, often ugly in the choice of models, and so exact as to bring out unpleasing details, is nevertheless the greater; because in all cases, the faces have sincere expressions. They exhibit human purposes and emotions which ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon

... what could be more interesting than really to observe things and men from the angle of another individual, to install oneself within his mentality and make it one's habitation? To sit in his bones—what glimpses of unexplored regions! Were a man to know what his fellow truly thinks; could he feel in his own body those impulses which drive the other to his idiomatic acts ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... idea. As we have already seen how mathematics aid us in passing back to the first man, so we can easily see how to reach an approximate idea of his mental condition. Physiologically, he might have been a full developed athlete, but in mentality, like the helpless infant. He is at the first uneducated. True, he possesses powers of mind, but they are inactive. No thought has passed through his mind to wake him up. He opens his eyes and immediately he thinks, he hears, and thought is increased. He is connected ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 10. October, 1880 • Various

... foregathered in the McNish home to discuss economic problems over a quiet pipe. He was always conscious of a reserve deepening at times to a sullenness in McNish's manner, the cause of which he could not certainly discover. That McNish was possessed of a mentality of more than ordinary power there was no manner of doubt. Jack had often listened with amazement to his argumentation with the Reverend Murdo, against whom he proved over and over again his ability to hold his own, the minister's superiority as a trained ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor

... Liman, in an excellent character sketch of the Emperor, devotes his first chapter to the subject, thus recognizing the important place it occupies in the Emperor's mentality. Dr. Liman, like all German writers who have dealt with the topic, animadverts on the Hohenzollern obsession by the theory and attributes it chiefly to the romantic side of the Emperor's nature which was strongly influenced in youth by the "wonderful ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw

... Manchester.[22] Their aim was to take a population under the same environmental conditions, and with no discoverable initial differentiation, and inquire whether the temperate and intemperate sections had children differing widely in physique and mentality. Handling their material with the most refined statistical methods, and in an elaborate way, they reached the conclusion that parental alcoholism does not markedly affect the physique or mentality of ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson

... Even after birth the dawn of mind is as slow as it is wonderful. To begin with, there is in the ovum and early embryo no nervous system at all, and it develops very gradually from simple beginnings. Yet as mentality cannot come in from outside, we seem bound to conclude that the potentiality of it—whatever that means—resides in the individual from the very first. The particular kind of activity known to us as thinking, feeling, and willing is the most intimate part of our experience, known to us directly apart ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson

... appealing to that region of the mind in which is stored the capacity for intuitively apprehending truth. We are endeavoring to speak in tones which will awaken a similar vibration in that part of your mentality, and if these vibrations be started into being, then will you be able to feel and know the truth, and then will your Intellect eagerly seize upon the new idea that it finds within itself, and will proceed to apply the same to the various problems that have ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka

... principle and it shows us the place which is occupied by the personal factor, that, namely, of an intelligence which sees beyond the present limited manifestation of the Law into its real essence, and which thus constitutes the instru-mentality by which the infinite possibilities of the Law can be evoked into forms ...
— The Dore Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward

... on patiently investigating. He has had more experience than even Crookes or Lombroso. For forty years he has been searching the dark for these strange forces, and yet he says: 'We create in these seances an imaginary being; we speak to it, and in its replies it almost always reflects the mentality of the experimenter. Spirits have taught us nothing. They have not led science forward a single step.... I must say that if there are spirits, or beings independent of us, in action, they know no more than we do about ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland

... ringing of the door bell told me that the Lesters had come. Dicky welcomed them and introduced me to them. Mrs. Lester was a pretty creature, birdlike, in her small daintiness, and a certain chirpy brightness. I judged that her mentality equalled the calibre of a sparrow, but I admitted also that the fact did not detract from her attractiveness. She was the sort of woman to be protected, to ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison

... breathing and the grip of her hands how agitated she was; but as the car glided smoothly along, driven skilfully by mentality, guided by the controlling thought of a tiny lame back, she became easier and clutched less frantically. He kept the comfort over her head. She had enough to make the change, to see so many strangers all at once, without being ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter

... the stout woman, whom she pitied as far as she was capable of pitying without understanding. She realized that it must be horrible to be no longer young, and so stout that one was fairly monstrous, but how horrible she could not with her mentality conceive. Jack also meant to be kind. He was not of the brutal—that is, intentionally brutal—type, but he had a shrewd eye to the betterment of himself, and no realization of the torture he inflicted upon those who ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... eyes every now and then wandered towards Juliette, as if asking for her help and guidance. She, understanding his frame of mind, responded to the look. Shutting her mentality off from the coarse suggestion of his attitude towards her, she played her part with cunning, and without flinching. With a glance here and there, she directed the men in their search. Droulde himself could scarcely refrain from looking at her; he was puzzled, and vaguely ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... soldiers to exterminate first the treacherous English and to walk over Gen. French's contemptible little army." The rudeness of the remark an Englishman can afford to pass over. What I am interested in is the mentality, the train of thought that can manage to entangle itself even in so brief a space. If French's little army is contemptible it would seem clear that all the skill and valor of the German Army had better not be concentrated on it, but on the larger and ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... their works, but, in so doing, they lose a certain stirring depth which gave the work of their predecessors such an exceptional character. Caught between these two tendencies, Yuean painting takes on new traits, which are perhaps more accessible to European mentality because they are more simple and direct. These observations apply to the general evolution of Chinese painting from the end of the thirteenth to the end of the fourteenth centuries. We must now consider it more in detail, citing by way of illustration a few of ...
— Chinese Painters - A Critical Study • Raphael Petrucci

... mentality of this man than the fact that the thought of "shopping" the girl had not occurred to him before. That was the idea, a splendid idea! Again his lips curled back, and he eyed the detective with a ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace

... the delicate creamy satin of the blonde flashing the scarlet tints of every emotion. Her lips were cherry-red, and as she listened they half parted with a lazy suggestion of tenderness and love; while the face was one of refined mentality, as unconscious as a child's ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon

... Upon the mentality depends the success in life. "It is the mind that makes the body rich." No matter how great an individual's success may seem in the eyes of the public, if the person lacks the proper perspective, the proper vision and the right ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker

... ruin a person of my inclinations. The others of my family had been to college; I always have been too thankful for words that circumstances intervened which saved my brain from being run through a groove in company with dozens of others of widely different tastes and mentality. What small measure of success I have had has come through preserving my individual point of view, method of expression, and following in after life the Spartan regulations of my girlhood home. Whatever ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter

... miserly and peculiar person. The gift surprised him the more for this. He called on her to thank her, found her a brilliant conversationalist, was charmed with her in every way, and concluded that what the gossips considered peculiarities were merely the evidences of an original and positive mentality. Upon the woman, who was in revolt against the restraints of an unhappy married life, Liszt, from whose eyes shone the divine spark, who was as much au fait in the salon as at the piano, and who already had been worshipped by a long succession of women, ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb

... confused recollection of the other flats and apartments we examined on that first day of our career, or "progress," as the recent Mr. Hogarth would put it. Our minds had not then become trained to that perfection of mentality which enables the skilled flat-hunter to carry for days visual ground-plans, elevations, and improvements, of any number of "desirable apartments," and be ready to transcribe the same in black and white at a ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine

... right to vote and to hold office was not democracy; parliamentary majorities and political caucuses were not democracy—at the best these things were only details and not the most important ones; democracy was the right of every man to enjoy, in accordance with his aptitudes of character and mentality, the material and spiritual opportunities that nature and science had placed at the disposition of mankind. This democratic creed had now become the dominating interest of Page's life. From this time on it consumed all his activities. His ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick

... method by which good understanding may be obtained of the types of personality and mentality involved in pathological lying, accusation, and swindling, as well as of the genetics of these tendencies, is by the detailed reading of typical case histories. In this fact is found the reason for the presentation of this monograph. ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy

... His mentality differs from ours; he escapes from our strongly marked and restricted limits, and loves to wander in the fascinating worlds of unreality, a tendency which is also ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori

... presently found themselves dancing as madly as the rest—in these years, there lived in Mayfair, in a slice of a house, Robert Gareth-Lawless and his lovely young wife. So light and airy was she to earthly vision and so diaphanous the texture of her mentality that she was known ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... twice and his fierce passions had made him the father of twenty children before fifty years of age. His first wife had given birth to seven in ten years and died a raving maniac during the birth of her last. Two of his children had already shown the signs of unbalanced mentality. ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon

... so intimately related and connected that it is impossible to cultivate the former without it is properly supplemented by the latter. The work is subdivided into three departments—the first devoted to the preservation and restoration of health and the improvement of mentality; the second to the regulation of the feelings and perfection of the moral character; and the third, to the intellectual cultivation. "EDUCATION COMPLETE" is a library in itself, and covers the ENTIRE NATURE OF MAN. We append below a synopsis of ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells

... story told by Mr. Antony Froude illustrates rural mentality in relation to contemporary politics. Mr. Froude was the tenant of a well-known house in Devonshire, and had come to be on very friendly terms with Mr. Emmot, his landlord's agent, a typical and true Devonian. One day Mr. Emmot came to him in a condition of some perplexity. He had been asked an important ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock

... women don't. They're seldom taught any rational process of arriving at conclusions. You have developed that faculty. It has been my pride and pleasure to cultivate in you what I believed to be a decided mentality. I've tried to show you how to get down to fundamentals, to work out a philosophy of life that's really workable. Knowledge is worth having for its own sake. Once you find yourself in contact with the world—and for you that time is bound to come—you'll apply all ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... CHURCHILL'S famous synonym for "lie" is permanently enshrined in the annals of circumlocution. One of the most offensive words in the language is "idiot"; yet it can be shorn of nearly all its sting when replaced by the definition, "a person of infra-normal mentality." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156., March 5, 1919 • Various

... learning for Mrs. Greech, but she studied them as carefully and conscientiously as a stay-at-home plain- dwelling English child commits to memory the measurements and altitudes of the world's principal mountain peaks. Some women of her temperament and mentality know by heart the favourite colours, flowers and hymn-tunes of all the members of the Royal Family; Mrs. Greech would possibly have failed in an examination of that nature, but she knew what to do with carrots that have ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki

... and in the manner of its development appears to be essentially a non-Italian formation. Its connection with the Middle Ages already shows it to be foreign to the Latin mind, the mediaeval disintegration being the result of the triumph of Germanic individualism over the political mentality of the Romans. The barbarians, boring from within and hacking from without, pulled down the great political structure raised by Latin genius and put nothing in its place. Anarchy lasted eight centuries ...
— Readings on Fascism and National Socialism • Various

... not marry him for a valet, but for a husband; and she was satisfied with her bargain. What if he did suffer under a delusion? The exposure of that delusion merely crystallized into a definite shape her vague suspicions concerning his mentality. Besides, it was a harmless delusion. And it explained things. It explained, among other things, why he had gone to stay at the Grand Babylon Hotel. That must have been the inception of the delusion. She was glad to know ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett

... respect in 1870 a treaty which she ignored in 1914? Even without taking into account the change in German mentality since her victory, military conditions were totally different. The strong chain of fortifications on the French Eastern frontier had not yet been erected, and the strength of the Belgian army appeared ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts

... primitive conditions under which cave dwellers lived, as denoted by the artificial objects which they left, and the low mentality indicated by the skulls, Mr. W.H. Holmes suggests that a careful and extended study of these abodes may disclose a culture lower than that prevailing among out-door dwellers in the same localities. As no effort would be required to secure warmth ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke

... demand, and the process of development will not be as protracted as in early Europe for it may be accomplished here, largely, by the simple means of translating the words already thought out and provided in the white man's language. In so far, then, as we attempt to measure the mentality of the Natives by their language we find that they cannot be relegated to a lower plane than that occupied by the uneducated peasantry of Europe of ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen

... manifesto, which admits of no question. But the most remarkable of his poems, "The Enthusiast," was stated to have been written in 1740, when he was eighteen and his brother only twelve years of age. It is, of course, possible that these verses, which bear no sign of juvenile mentality, were touched up at a later date. But this could only be a matter of diction, of revision, and we are bound to accept the definite and repeated statement of Joseph, that they were essentially composed in 1740. If we accept this as a fact, ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... to find some explanation of the mental and moral inequalities that exist at birth. In the earlier days of the study of evolution it was usually asserted that the human being inherits his mentality and morality from his parents. But even if that were true the injustice of one being born a genius and another a fool would remain. It is the fact of inequality that constitutes the injustice, and it is of no importance whether it comes about through ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers

... joint product, appears far more reasonable, than to ascribe, as many do, the whole to either, some to paternity, others to maternity. Still this decision go which way it may, does not affect the great fact that children inherit both the physiology and the mentality existing in parents at the time they received being ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... deductions. If resistances are not too strong it is often possible to introduce healthy ideas by way of the conscious reason, to break up old habits, and make over the mentality without going to the trouble of uncovering some of the reactions which ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury

... him was not his mind—which lacked elasticity—but his religion, his unquestioning obedience to the will of God and his perfect freedom from cant. His mentality was brittle and he was as quick-tempered in argument as he was sunny and serene in games. There are people who thought Alfred was a man of strong physical passions, wrestling with temptation till he had achieved complete self-mastery, ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith

... mentality, it scarcely occurs to us that this is just as surely heredity as is the transmission of the ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen

... Thought," I have been content with half that number, not—heaven knows!—for any lack of material, but simply for lack of time and energy to make the ingathering. After all, enough is as good as a feast, and I think that the evidence as to the dominant characteristics of German mentality is tolerably complete as ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various

... of degeneration in the mentality of an animal incident to the enervating influence of slavery. Sir John Lubbock's remarks anent the four genera of slave-making ants are so interesting that I may be pardoned for ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir

... of occurrences have been written into this volume, for the purpose of giving the reader all the facts in order that he may form his own opinions of the animal mentality displayed. ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... habits and sentiments of the village from which his forefathers came. An unnatural and unhealthy mode of life, cut off from the sweet and humanizing influences of nature, has produced an unnatural and unhealthy mentality, to which we shall find no parallels in the past. Its chief characteristic is profound secularity or materialism. The typical town artisan has no religion and no superstitions; he has no ideals beyond the visible and tangible world ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins

... of the most striking results of the War has been its effect on the mentality of birds and animals and even fishes. The papers have lately contained accounts of a halibut which swallowed a cormorant and survived the exploit only to fall a victim to the wiles of a North Sea fisherman. As the cormorant is generally regarded to be the dernier cri ...
— Punch, Volume 156, 26 March 1919 • Various

... slightly discoloured, like the winding sheet in which sleeps a memory, and have already gathered a volume, precious, not because it describes such an entertainment or such an event, but because it reveals the mentality of ...
— Marie Bashkirtseff (From Childhood to Girlhood) • Marie Bashkirtseff

... she and her musician, now duller than ever, are united, while the jilted craftswoman is left "full of ideas, sumptious (sic), a little feverish" for village industries which from my impression of her mentality I should judge would be of a devastating order. Lovers of that charming little West-country village in which the author sets her scene will not easily forgive her for naming it and baldly cataloguing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various

... his Detractors called him a Four-Flush and a False Alarm, alleging that a true analysis of his Mentality would be just about as profitable as dissecting ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade

... on a subject thinking you have very little to say, but one idea gives birth to another, and you are surprised to learn that the more you give the more you have to give. This give-and-take of friendly conversation develops mentality, and fluency in expression. Longfellow said: "A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years' study of books," and Holmes whimsically yet none the less truthfully declared that half the time he talked to find out what he thought. But ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... opposition. Then the Cossack commander called his men around, and giving time with his cowhide thong, led them through some of the most weird Cossack war songs it is possible to imagine. The difference in our mentality was never so well illustrated as in the songs of the two people. Ours were lively, happy, and full of frolic and fun; theirs were slow, sad wails, which can only come from the heart of a long troubled people. The ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward

... itself (which is also impossible). There is no escape from this conclusion of the Reason, which, as we have said, agrees with the highest teachings of the Illumined. Just as you, student, may create a Universe of your own in your mentality, so does THE ALL create Universes in its own Mentality. But your Universe is the mental creation of a Finite Mind, whereas that of THE ALL is the creation of an Infinite. The two are similar in kind, but infinitely different in degree. We shall examine more closely ...
— The Kybalion - A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece • Three Initiates

... their circumstances have made the American people a commercial people; but whereas in England a commercial life may not offer scope for any intellectual activity and may even have a necessary tendency to stunt the mentality of any one engaged in it, business in the United States offers exercise to a much larger gamut of abilities and, by its mere range and variety, instead of dwarfing has a tendency to keep those abilities trained and alert. A business in England has not approximately ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... there goes Impetuous rage with lion's breed morose, And cunning with foxes, and to deer why given The ancestral fear and tendency to flee, And why in short do all the rest of traits Engender from the very start of life In the members and mentality, if not Because one certain power of mind that came From its own seed and breed waxes the same Along with all the body? But were mind Immortal, were it wont to change its bodies, How topsy-turvy would earth's creatures act! The Hyrcan hound would flee the onset oft ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius

... institution of intelligence in idiots dated from falls upon the head, but extra mentality has been conferred by such an event Pritchard tells of three idiot brothers, one of whom, after a severe head injury, brightened up and became a barrister, while his brothers remained idiotic. 'Father Mabillon,' says Winslow, 'is said ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... chain which is no stronger than its weakest link and that is the native," said the Minister. "As you build the native, so do you build the whole colonial structure. Hence the importance of a high moral standard. You must conform to the native's traditions, mentality and temperament. Give him a technical education something like that afforded by Booker Washington's Tuskegee Institute. Show him how to use his hands. He will then become efficient and therefore contented. It is a mistake to teach him a European language. ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson

... universe to the world of fact is not unlike the relation between a tapestry picture and the scene which it imitates. You, practical man, are obliged to weave your image of the outer world upon the hard warp of your own mentality; which perpetually imposes its own convention, and checks the free representation of life. As a tapestry picture, however various and full of meaning, is ultimately reducible to little squares; so the world ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill

... his star. But whether the failure of his mad marriage had disturbed his faith in his own persistent luck, or whether Ahmara's influence made for degeneration, in any case, a blight seemed to have fallen on the once great man's mentality. It had been a boast of his that, though he drank freely when "resting on his laurels" in Europe, he was strong enough to "swear off" at any moment. He had accustomed himself to taking tea and water only in blazing African heat; and since ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson

... it! Stanley, it isn't easy to tell it, but I'm going to; I feel as if an X-ray had been turned upon my mentality, showing me what a blamed fool I've made of myself during the last few years, making me wish I could blot it all out and take a sharp turn in another direction. How's that for humble pie! I declare, I don't know ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... been married for quite a time to a gentleman of respectable mentality, a sufficiency of money, and a surplus of leisure—Good things? We would say so if we dared, for we are growing old and suspicious of all appearances, and we do not easily recognize what is bad or good. Beyond the social circumference we are confronted with a debatable ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens

... failed to win the heart of the woman he truly loved. So much for all those physical attributes! They conquered women in the stone age. They might conquer women now, of a kind, but they were futile weapons to employ against a modern woman, benefiting by centuries of progress and culture, with fine mentality and inflexible will. ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild

... old," is a commonplace. The response will probably emphasise the fact. By response to response we spin round a friend the age-web which lengthens into the death-web. In our expressive American vernacular we speak of "wishing" conditions on others, an instinctive folk-recognition of the force of mentality. We do it in a sinister sense more often than by way of helpfulness. We "wish" by thinking, by talking, by creating an atmosphere, by forcing things into the general consciousness. Old age and decay, bad enough in themselves, we intensify ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King

... awakened by the fact that, as a rule, mental healers have not regularly studied pathology, nor even anatomy. But it will be seen that if the principle of mental causation for disease is once admitted, mentality rather than physiology should furnish the field for operations. In order to heal, the mind of the patient must be brought into unison with that of the practitioner, and therefore, the latter must wash his own mind clean of spectres and even of studies ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various

... He is politically adroit. He is conscientious. He has a keen sense of his responsibilities. He has unusual common sense.' And he named other similar virtues, 'Well,' I asked him, 'What is his defect?' 'Oh,' he replied, 'the only trouble with Warren is that he lacks mentality.'" ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous

... mind every conception of right we have inherited from our ancestors—conceptions long since crystallized into inimitable principles of law and confirmed in our charters of liberty. In the German mentality these conceptions do not exist; they think in other sequences; they act according to another principle, if it is a principle, the conviction that there is only one right, one privilege, and that it belongs exclusively to Germany, ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various

... of religion to experience, in which Kant and Schleiermacher would have agreed, and asserting the worthlessness of mentality, which they would have denied, we are not surprised to hear Newman say that without Catholicism doubt is invincible. 'The Church's infallibility is the provision adopted by the mercy of the Creator to ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore

... such an opinion of your own, such a command coming from the sources of your own mentality, obey that, in choosing your studies and course, rather than the counsel of any other man or number of men. Yes, obey that voice in making such a choice, and in making every choice throughout your whole life; ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge

... a moment. Then he reflected that, little as he esteemed the other's mentality, he and Freddie had known each other a long time, and that it would be a relief to confide in some one. And Freddie, moreover, was an old friend of Jill and the man who had introduced ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse

... take but a day or two; but in fact it takes from one to six weeks, according to the character and mentality of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... is not advertisement itself one of the most effective forms of suggestion?). When one miraculous cure after another was announced, money flowed in, and Mrs. Eddy made use of it to increase the numbers of believers. Adapting herself to the mentality of her hearers, or readers, she demanded large fees for the manifestations of the "spirit" which was incarnated in herself and her helpers, and left behind her when she died, an immense personal fortune, and hundreds of prosperous churches. "Matter" does not seem to be altogether ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot

... testing the mentality of a thick-lipped, weak-faced Negro soldier. Among other questions, the specialist asked, "Do you ever hear voices without being able to tell who is speaking, or where ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher

... ten, fifteen, twenty years from now. They would hitch her vision, not to a star, but to a—a tin dipper. You don't understand. You know it seems to me, Mrs. Blair, that most people, women, anyhow, are like great big houses with only half the rooms in use. The mentality closed up and musty from disuse because they have never found or made the keys. I want my child to live roundly—in all her mental rooms. What is the use closing off any part of a house that was meant for light and sunshine? I want her to know the world she lives in from ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... themselves above the human traits, whilst at other times the psychic-felinism sank into a sort of sub-conscious quietude, leaving the subject almost a normal woman. Of the physical reflections which were the visible evidence of her hybrid mentality I have already spoken at length (this refers to a portion of the statement which has been deleted). She invariably wore gloves out of doors and a veil to conceal the chatoyant eyes. She could, as I have explained, see as well in the dark as in daylight, and her agility was phenomenal ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer

... is no such thing as matter—that all is mind. They say that none of us exists, except in the imagination of his fellows, other than as an intangible, invisible mentality. ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... effort and the marvellous results of quickened mentality, a clear space was left in the new woman for harrowing doubt. She never again sank to the thought that Gaston could love her; but she could not utterly blind herself to the fear that he might be hurting himself through others not ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock



Words linked to "Mentality" :   brainpower, intelligence, mental attitude, mental, wit, brain, learning ability



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