"Mental condition" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shot, we must solve a mental condition that corresponds in a way to that of beginners in golf. And we must master some ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey
... waterproof from below, or garrets that leak from above. Their houses are so built that the clammy air cannot escape. They are supplied bad, tattered, or rotten clothing, adulterated and indigestible food. They are exposed to the most exciting changes of mental condition, the most violent vibrations between hope and fear; they are hunted like game, and not permitted to attain peace of mind and quiet enjoyment of life. They are deprived of all enjoyments except that of sexual indulgence and drunkenness, are worked every day to the point ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... since her step-son's attempted murder; and though his bodily health seemed good, no change for the better had taken place in his mental condition. ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... is to be found in the mental condition of the observer; if he be excited or deeply moved his account cannot but be affected, and essential details will ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... finally to the accomplishment of his one great resolve. And so he determined to communicate with his friend's father, the physician, and ascertain from him in confidence his opinion of his mother's mental condition, and whether there was any possibility of her restoration to sanity. The reply to his inquiries was that his mother's case was far from hopeless; and with this he was satisfied. Then he took the letter which conveyed the opinion of the physician to him, and, ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... without. Hence the well-known futility of belligerent controversy. No possible logic will lead a man ahead of his own intelligence; neither will any take from him the persuasions which correspond to his mental condition. A good logical pose may sometimes serve to lower the crest of an obstreperous sophist, as boughs of one species of ash are said to quell the rattlesnake; but with both these sinuous animals the effect is temporary, and the quality of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... anxiety of soul. Anyone who marks the general tone of editorials in colored newspapers is apt to be impressed with this idea. If the mass of Negroes took their present and future as seriously as do the most of their leaders, the race would be in no mental condition to sustain the terrible pressure which it undergoes; it would sink of its own weight. Yet it must be acknowledged that in the making of a race overseriousness is a far lesser failing than its reverse, and even the faults resulting from it lean ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... traits observable in the character of some boys is the willingness, and even the desire, under certain circumstances, to get into trouble. A young gentleman, feeling that he has been slighted, or his merit overlooked, permits himself to fall into a mental condition in which he feels no responsibility for his conduct; in which he recklessly breaks through all regulations, places himself in an attitude of opposition to constituted authority, and seems to court the heaviest ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... coloured Mrs Verloc's ghastly and motionless face. Having done with the visions of the past, she had not only heard, but had also understood the words uttered by her husband. By their extreme disaccord with her mental condition these words produced on her a slightly suffocating effect. Mrs Verloc's mental condition had the merit of simplicity; but it was not sound. It was governed too much by a fixed idea. Every nook and cranny of her brain was filled with the thought that this man, with whom she had lived without ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... he put the paper into a pigeon-hole and forgot all about the matter. That day seemed to be more than usually dull and the hours to drag wearily on. He was conscious of a sort of suspense. He was waiting for something, or for someone. He did not choose to analyse this mental condition. Had he done so, the explanation was simple—and one that ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... His mental condition was equally unsatisfactory. There was not a friend, he tells us, whom at one time or another he had not annoyed by his caprice, or offended by his "morbid spirit of contradiction" and sullen avoidance of intercourse. All through his life Goethe seems to ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... I was mad with indignation at this ruffian's gross behaviour but feebly expresses my mental condition; to such a state of fury was I stirred that but for the restraining hold of the fair girl upon my arm— from which she by no means suffered me to breakaway—I should most assuredly have "run amok" among ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... Gale marked the most significant change. Her collapse the preceding day might never have been. She was lame and sore; she rode her saddle sidewise, and often she had to be rested and helped; but she had found a reserve fund of strength, and her mental condition was not the same that it had been. Her burden of fear had been lifted. Gale saw in her the difference he always felt in himself after a few days in the desert. Already Mercedes and he, and all of them, had begun to respond to the ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... slavishly copied from that master of feigning, they would undoubtedly have reminded her hearers of him, had they not mostly been drawn from an easeful section in society which is especially characterized by the mental condition of knowing nothing about any author a week after they have read him. The few there who did remember De Foe were impressed by a fancy that his words greeted them anew in a winged auricular form, instead of by the weaker channels of print and eyesight. The reader may imagine what an effect this well- ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... first State Constitutions is likely to cause a rude shock. A shrewd English observer, traveling a generation later in the United States, went to the root of the whole matter in remarking of the Americans that, "When their independence was achieved their mental condition was not instantly changed. Their deference for rank and for judicial and legislative authority continued nearly unimpaired."* They might declare that "all men are created equal," and bills of rights might assert that government rested upon the consent of the governed; but these constitutions carefully ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... through it. To the right and the left, the woods were half hidden by moving white billows, and Claudet walked between fluid walls of vapor. This hidden sky, these veiled surroundings, harmonized with his mental condition. It was easier for him to hide his chagrin. "Some one else! Yes; that's it. She loves some other fellow! how was it I did not find that out the very first day?" Then he recalled how Reine shrank from him when he solicited a caress; how she insisted on their betrothal being kept ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... what was to be accomplished, in order to transform the young cretin into an active, healthy child, it is necessary that we should glance at his physical and mental condition, when ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... from the city, and had returned to her own home. They lingered the most over this last point, and I did not take it in the best part; for I could discover in it, not a voluntary departure, but only a shameful banishment. My bodily and mental condition was not improved by this: my distress now only augmented; and I had time enough to torment myself by picturing the strangest romance of sad events, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... to character. There are, we fear, a number of people who regard Falstaff as a worthless fellow, and who would refrain (if they could) from laughing at his jests. These people do not understand his claim to grateful and affectionate regard. He did more to produce that mental condition of which laughter is the expression than any man who ever lived. But for the cheering presence of him, and men like him, this vale of tears would be a more terrible dwelling-place than it is. In short, Falstaff has done an immense deal ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... book progressed famously. Alice was in fine mental condition and Rosa seemingly took as much interest in its progress as did her employer. In three weeks the three opening chapters had been written. "I wonder what Mr. Sawyer and Mr. Ernst will think of that?" said Alice, as Rosa wrote the last line of the ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... is, Tibbie?" said Annie, whom Milton had set meditating on Tibbie's physical in relation to her mental condition. ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... concealed in an inner pocket in Captain Rushton's vest, and escaped the attention of the surgeon. So, nameless and unknown, he was carried to Calcutta, which he reached without any perceptible improvement in his mental condition. ...
— Brave and Bold • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... only to remember her as beautiful, seductive, soothing, and mourning her as deeply, doubtful as she had proved herself to be, as he had loved her fondly when he believed her honest. It was a curious mental condition for a man to cherish, but it satisfied him, and his regret was not robbed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... significance of an experience in relation to his own needs; it must be recognized that not all consciousness manifests this meaningful quality, or this relation to a felt aim, or end. While lying, for instance, in a vague, half-awake state, although one is conscious, the mental condition is quite devoid of the meaningful quality referred to, and entirely lacks the feeling of reaction, or of mental effort. In this case there is no distinct reference to the needs of the self, and a lack of that focusing ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... was very fine in her picture of her mental condition, when she realised, as she seemed periodically to do, that it was no longer possible for her son to make a respectable marriage with a woman of his own nation. The unadorned fact was that both she and Sir Nigel were infuriated by the simplicity which made Rosalie slow in comprehending ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of a city where the old local religion had never had any such power, and where the masses were now left without a particle of aid or comfort from any religious source. The story seems to ring true, and gives us a most valuable glimpse into the mental condition of the Roman ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... mere sound of the instruments or sight of a bit of bunting tied to a pole was sufficient to enable them to dare a broken head, or even death. Beer may have been partly the cause of this peculiar mental condition, but not entirely, for sober persons felt the contagion. We may laugh at it if we please, and no doubt it is evidence of the weakness of human nature; but, like much more evidence of the same order, it is double-voiced, and testifies ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... until he had banished those factitious desires that pushed him into contention for wealth, power, or celebrity; nor unless he behaved with justice to all, and with active devoted friendship towards a few. Such a mental condition, which he thought it was in every man's power to acquire by appropriate teaching and companionship, constituted virtue; and was the sure as well as the only precursor of genuine happiness. A mind thus ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... intents and purposes guilty of the gravest of crimes. But the first shock was no sooner over than he began to think what effect the news would have on Elsie. He imagined that there was a kind of friendly feeling between them, and he feared some crisis would be provoked in his daughter's mental condition by the discovery. He would wait, however, until she came from her chamber, before disturbing her with ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... kept her own counsel. She had a full month before her during which to consider the situation, but it was clear to her that these young people must be brought together again. Her estimate of Reardon's mental condition had undergone a sudden change from the moment when she heard that a respectable post was within his reach; she decided that he was 'strange,' but then all men of literary talent had marked singularities, and doubtless she had been too hasty in interpreting ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... any considerable value. Similar attempts have been made by hypnotic experimenters among other peoples, the hypnosis sometimes being self-induced. From some Old Testament passages especially we may well believe that this sort of extraordinary mental condition was sought for in the so-called schools of the prophets in the olden days of Israel. The astonishing peculiarity about the Scriptures, however, is not that there is so much reliance on this trance experience as that there is so little. ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell
... the money had been spent; the "Ditch" had been purchased by a company of Boston capitalists, fired by the glowing description of an Eastern tourist, who had spent one drunken night at Five Forks; and I think even the mental condition of Hawkins might have remained undisturbed by criticism, ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... of the village in which any business was being done. Again and again he asked for work, and as often the offer was refused or declined or relegated into the uncertain future for a decision. The surplus in his pocket had grown lamentably small. As he made his way homeward in a physical and mental condition which made it impossible for him either to argue to himself or to express a sense of hope to any extent, he passed the shop of Larry Highgetty. Larry was a shoemaker. Sam had worked at shoemaking while he was in State prison. He felt, although Larry might have been offended ...
— All He Knew - A Story • John Habberton
... The mental condition of the French emigrants at Coblentz during this summer of 1791 is nothing short of a psychological marvel. They regarded the Revolution as a jest, and the flight to the Rhine as a picnic. These beggared aristocrats, male and female, would throw their money away by day among the wondering natives, ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... something, and another to see what you can get up and do. For a time the spectre of fear had me in its power. The physical facts couldn't be denied, and beyond the physical facts I could discern nothing. It was conceivable that one might react against a mental condition; but to react against a mysterious malady coupled with possibly approaching blindness was hardly to be thought of. When one added one's incapacity to work and earn a living, with all that that implies, it seemed as if it would take the faith ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... ingenious Louis invented for the discomfort of his favorites and the folly of future collectors. It creaked whenever Harrigan sighed, which was often, for he was deeply immersed (and no better word could be selected to fit his mental condition) in the baneful book which he had hurled out of the window the night before, only to retrieve like the good dog that he was. To-day his shoes offered no loophole to criticism; he had very well attended to that. His tie harmonized with his shirt and stockings; his suit was ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... "The mental condition of almost every former resident of Johnstown is one of the gravest character, and the reaction which will set in when the reality of the whole affair is fully comprehended can scarcely fail to produce many cases of ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... the disposition of his property. If it appears that the testator was incapable of exercising discretion and sound judgment and of fully realizing the effect and consequences of the will, though he may not be absolutely insane, he will not be in such mental condition that he can make a legal will. If he is of weak mind and it appears that he was imposed upon or unduly influenced, such facts will invalidate the will. A testator having testamentary capacity may dispose of his property in any manner, ...
— Legal Status Of Women In Iowa • Jennie Lansley Wilson
... that are not ordinary men) would reply that the happiness is incomplete; that it is like the Madeleine without the altar; that a man must love and be loved, or love without return, or be loved without loving, or love at cross purposes. Now for happiness as a mental condition. ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... Whole congregations of educated men and women, day after day, year after year, confessing themselves "miserable sinners," with no evident improvement from generation to generation. And this confession is made in a perfunctory manner, as if no disgrace attended that mental condition, and without hope or promise of a change from that ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... how to develop memory and how to read past lives. They say, time and space exist in relation to our present mental condition; if we can rise above this plane, our higher mind sees the past and future just as we see things before our eyes. Those who wish to satisfy the idle curiosity of their minds may spend their energy by trying to recollect their past lives. But I think it will be much ...
— Reincarnation • Swami Abhedananda
... Government should continue its solicitous care for the 8,500,000 women wage earners and its efforts in behalf of public health, which is reducing infant mortality and improving the bodily and mental condition of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... us to realize, in these days of a lamentably cheap press and a cheaper literature, the mental condition of men and women who have no education, no newspaper, no news of the world, no communication with the universe. To them the mystery of the Moscow doctor was as incomprehensible as to us is the Deity. They were so near to the animals that Paul could not succeed in teaching ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... was Ida's growing conviction that her husband's frequent doses of soda and brandy, and the champagne which he drank at dinner, and the port or Burgundy which he took after dinner, had a great deal to do with his altered mental condition. Painful as it was to speak of such a thing, she took courage one morning, and told him plainly that she believed he was suffering from, the effect ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... at her fiance. Absolutely unjustified, in my opinion, but nevertheless she cast it. But it had no effect at all. Terror had stunned Bream Mortimer's perceptions. His was what the doctors call a penumbral mental condition. ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... such a mental condition," Hodson eagerly commented, "I'd call a doctor or join the Salvation Army." "Why haven't you written more short stories?" inquired Merville. "Because I've never had the time," Cintras sadly answered. "Once I tried to condense what novelists usually spread over hundreds of pages, and say ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... the mental condition of Honore at the time when he was regarded by his masters as a dullard, a mediocre pupil who might as well be left to reap the consequences of his own laziness. Clad in his grey uniform, ill shod and with hands red and swollen from chilblains, he held aloof from his comrades, indifferent ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... be kept in mind that the entire apparatus of the body is accommodating a changed condition, and though that condition is a natural one, it requires perfect health for its successful accomplishment. This means a perfect physical and mental condition,—a condition that is dependent upon good digestion, good muscles, healthy nerves, clean bowels, and so on. The slightest deviation from absolute health tends to change the character of the body excretions, the quality of the blood, etc. If the excretions are not properly eliminated, ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... their minds relieved upon this point than they were filled with apprehension on another, namely, poor Senora Montijo's mental condition, which seemed to steadily grow worse. For the first few months of the unfortunate lady's affliction she had been very quiet, giving no trouble at all, and appearing to suffer chiefly from complete loss of memory. ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... quarter. It was a faint one, but any glimmer was welcome. Remembering a remark made by Mr. Jeffrey in his examination, that Mrs. Jeffrey had not been the same since crossing the fatal doorstep of the Moore house, I asked myself if we had paid enough attention to the mental condition and conduct of the bride prior to the alarm which threw a pall of horror over her marriage; and caught by the idea, I sought for a fuller account of the events of that day than had hitherto been supplied by ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... pondered unavailingly upon this medley, and were apparently reduced to the same mental condition as was Mrs. Carlyle when she read "Sordello." Unfortunately for Jane Carlyle there were in her day no Browning societies, with their all-embracing knowledge, to which Browning himself conveniently referred all persons who questioned him as to the meaning of certain passages. One ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... the ball as an external counterpart of the child in the first stages of his development, its undivided unity corresponding to his mental condition, and its movableness to his instinctive activity. Through its recognition he is led to separate himself from the external world, and the external world ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of taking the vow, he received from the Pope friendly admonition that his true mission lay within his art, and that by renouncing the world his usefulness would be lessened. It can scarcely, however, be doubted that asceticism became so much the habit of his life as to afflict his mental condition, and to impoverish his art. Some critics indeed point to the early picture of The Seven Years of Famine as the origin of a certain starved aspect in subsequent compositions. Pharaoh's lean kine have ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... Miss Vancourt's ways or Miss Vancourt's looks appeared to displease rather than to entertain the Reverend John, he avoided the subject altogether. This course of action on his part, if the truth must be told, was equally annoying to Walden, who was in the curious mental condition of wishing to know what he ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... man. "The dying world holds your imagination within a morbid clutch. It is all a matter of mental condition. Free your mind of this fascinating influence and come with us to visit other worlds, many of them are both beautiful and new. You will then feel a ...
— The Jameson Satellite • Neil Ronald Jones
... most professions have special characteristics in writing and these are all liable to change, according to circumstances and writing is the clearest proof of both bodily and mental condition, for in case of paralysis, or mental aberration, the doctor takes it ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... desperate, and as we were without Cowan we were in the same mental condition. It was hammer and tongs from that time on. I don't know that there was any intention to put players out of business, but there was not much ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... those who care little for mere beauty of style—or who cannot stand the loss of it in translation—may find here a vivid picture, by a hand of the most qualified, of the mental condition which produced the masterpieces of 1825-1850. And the contrast with the "discouraged generation" which ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... which we have enumerated are plainly atavistic and pathological. They belong to a mental condition which would conduct an individual to the prison or the gallows. We do not argue seriously whether the career of the highwayman or burglar is legitimate and desirable; and it is impossible to maintain that what is disgraceful for the ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... express the shades of meaning and kindle emotion. The writer wishes to give his thoughts a literary form. This is for others, not for himself; consequently he must, before all things, desire to be intelligible, and to be so he must adapt his expressions to the mental condition of his audience. If he employs arbitrary symbols, such as old words in new and unexpected senses, he may be clear as daylight to himself, but to others, dark as fog. And the difficulty of original writing lies in this, that what is ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... thousand times more than myself, and should I selfishly wish to unite her fate to a man who was insane, only because that man was myself? And perhaps my mental condition would grow ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... muscle, its physical condition, the work it has done, and the mental condition of the individual, all modify the state of fatigue. In those difficult acts which involve a special effort of the will, the matter of nerve exhaustion is largely concerned. Thus, the incessant movements in St. Vitus' dance result in comparatively little fatigue, because there ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... in Germany provoked by the curb placed upon her submarines by President Wilson caused the eyes of Washington to be fixed anxiously on the uncertain situation. It was solely a psychological and mental condition, but of a character that seemed premonitory of an outbreak on Germany's part. Dr. von Bethmann-Hollweg, in a cryptic remark to the Reichstag on September 28, 1916, succeeded in aggravating American concern, though he may not ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... we may as well call sexual insanity, which is dangerous in direct proportion to its intensity. This causes many a "bad" show elephant to be presented to a zoological garden, where the dangers of this mental condition can at least be reduced to their lowest terms. Our Indian elephant who was known as Gunda was afflicted with sexual insanity, and he gradually grew worse, and increasingly dangerous to his keepers, until ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... instance of the credulity of unbelief. Think of the mental condition which could swallow such an explanation of such a Worker and such work. It is more difficult to believe the explanation than the alternative which it is framed to escape. So it is always. The difficulties of faith are small by comparison with those of unbelief, gnats beside camels, and that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Guantanamo and one at Culebra, would in time of war in the Caribbean, add a value to our fleet that might make the difference between defeat and victory. The effective work that a fleet can do is a function of the material condition of the ships themselves, and of the physical and mental condition of the personnel that man them. Fighting is the most strenuous work that men can do; it calls for the last ounce of strength, the last effort of the intellect, the last struggle of the will; it searches out every physical imperfection in men, in ships, in engines, ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... remark, and gradually made up his mind. It must be remembered that he was in a confused mental condition, and that the only thing he realised clearly was that Bob had pulled him out of an uncommonly nasty hole. It seemed to him that it was necessary to repay Bob. He thought the thing over more fully during school, ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... opposing feelings will not even then be comic, rather it will appear the essence of seriousness if these two feelings through their very distinctness complete each other, develop side by side, and make up between them a composite mental condition, adopting, in short, a modus vivendi which merely gives us the complex impression of life. But imagine these two feelings as INELASTIC and unvarying elements in a really living man, make him oscillate from ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... side and stood looking down at me very hard. I saw a woman in the indefinable seasons past fifty. In my vague mental condition, the impression of her came slowly. First it was as though I saw three cubes, one above the other, the largest in the middle. Then these took on clothing, blue calico with large polka dots, and the topmost one crowned itself with thin wisps of hair, parted in the ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... diary can be accepted as a faithful representation of his mental condition it will appear that he had on that fatal Friday submitted himself to the influence of three strong passions. He had accepted the South as his country, and he had come to look upon Mr. Lincoln as a tyrant ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... Contracts create Obligations—how then can the two be included under the same name or same general conception? This, like many similar embarrassments, has been occasioned by the error of ascribing to the mental condition of an unformed society a faculty which pre-eminently belongs to an advanced stage of intellectual development, the faculty of distinguishing in speculation ideas which are blended in practice. We have indications not to be mistaken of a state ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... old families of the inner circle are in a tragic state of decay, owing to inbreeding; others, in a more wholesome physical and mental condition, are perpetually wrestling with the heritage of poverty left over from the War—"too proud to whitewash and too poor to paint"—clinging desperately to the old acres, and to the old houses which are ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... dwelt on the surface details of Hetty's life at St. Mary's, and have said little about her mental condition and experiences: this is because I have endeavored to present this part of her life, exactly as she lived it, and as she would tell it herself. That there were many hours of acute suffering; many moments when her courage wellnigh failed; when she was almost ready to go back to her ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... conditions upon the one hand, and on the other the empty and temporary honor of serving as an elector on the Blaine Republican ticket. His convictions, his manhood and his self-respect were on one side; his material interests and family obligations were on the other. His mental condition during that period can better be imagined than described. After giving thoughtful consideration and sleepless nights to the matter, he at length decided to yield to the pressure and decline the ...
— The Facts of Reconstruction • John R. Lynch
... wires in the music-room, the mirror swung, the light travelled on the scale, the arrow was moved by Dr. Guthrie, and her varying emotions were recorded indelibly upon the revolving sheet of paper, recorded in such a way as to show their intensity and reveal to the trained scientist much of the mental condition of the subject." ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... of the hall, Andrey Yefimitch understood that it had been a committee appointed to enquire into his mental condition. He recalled the questions that had been asked him, flushed crimson, and for some reason, for the first time in his life, felt bitterly grieved for ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... their heads when they talked of it and agreed with the opinion expressed by the director of the insane asylum that Dr. Absalom had made use of some trick, the influence of which could not be permanent, but would soon be dissipated, when the poor, deluded Viscount would instantly fall into a worse mental condition than before. ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... also the opinion of Hegel, who supposes our primitive mental condition to be capable of descrying objects remote in space and time. Mr. Myers, as we saw, is of the opposite opinion, as to the relative dignity and relative reality of the present everyday self, and the old original fundamental Self. Dr. Dessoir refrains from pronouncing ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... one of the talking kind like Gideon Fish," said Hugh. "Gid is always telling everybody about his 'emotional nature,' and his inner 'consciousness.' He seems to think his mental condition, a subject of public interest, and constantly sends out bulletins for the benefit of anxious friends. His manuscript was poetical, but I took good care to hide it in the bottom of the basket. By the way, Sibyl, how did you like Graham Marr's Lyric? ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... which represent an important stage in the gradual development of Medicine as a science. And especially noteworthy among medical amulets are those inscribed with mystic sentences, words, or characters, for by their examination and study we may acquire some definite knowledge of the mental condition of the people who made ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... his two sons, and the feelings of these characters are as unnatural as Lear's relation to his daughters, or even more so, and therefore it is still more difficult for the spectator to transport himself into the mental condition of Gloucester and his sons and sympathize with them, than it is to do so into that ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... refinement far surpassing the normal condition of her character, even as the extra fining off of already delicate features by illness will make them surpass by far their healthy degree of beauty. In such a mental condition the sense of what her husband was must have exasperated her imagination quite as much as his actual loathsomeness must have repelled her feelings; the knowledge of the frightful moral and intellectual fall of Charles Edward must have been ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... his own mental condition, Dostoievsky gives us a picture of it in Injury and Insult: "As soon as it grew dusk I gradually fell into that state of mind which so often overmasters me at night since I've been ill, and which I shall call mystic ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... could not drag their disabled comrades. Hickey volunteered to remain, while Sontag, Ohlsen, and Petersen should go to the brig for help. The three men finally reached the Advance, but they were so physically exhausted and in such mental condition that they could not even indicate in what direction ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... had managed to alter that considerably, although not so completely as she wished. Depression, following inevitably on insomnia, had fixed its claws in her. She felt deadly, almost terrible, and as if her face must be showing plainly the ugliness of her mental condition. For she seemed to have lost control over it. The facial muscles seemed to have hardened, to have become fixed. When the servant came to tell her that Louth and the horses were at the door she was almost afraid to go down, lest he should see at once in her face the ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... been my business lately to inquire into the mental condition of some of the individuals who have reported the most remarkable occurrences. I cannot—it would not be fair— say all I could with regard to that mental condition; but I can only say this, that it all fits in perfectly well with the result of my previous studies upon the subject, namely, ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... enigma of Ibsen's character it was believed that his private correspondence might supply a key. His letters were collected and arranged while he was still alive, but he was not any longer in a mental condition which permitted him to offer any help in comment to his editors. His son, Mr. Sigurd Ibsen, superintended the work, and two careful bibliographers, Mr. Halvdan Koht and Mr. Julius Elias, carried out the scheme in two volumes [Note: Breve fra Henrik Ibsen, ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... and loneliness. Thoreau went to Walden; Carlyle to Craigenputtock; Brahms at any rate retired from public musical life. They worked out their own salvation. Wagner felt he must do the same; as we know, he did the same: hence many of those terrible volumes of prose-writings. His mental condition is indicated in another few sentences from ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... group. Pressing with his elbow upon the package of cigarettes in his pocket, he murmured, inaudibly, "My Little Sweetheart, always for you!"—a repetition of his vow that, come what might, he would forever remain a loyal smoker of that symbolic brand. In fact, William's mental condition had never shown one moment's turn for the better since the fateful day of the distracting ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... intervals, and through broken and equivocal hints, another singular feature of his mental condition. He was enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling which he tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had never ventured forth—in regard to an influence whose supposititious force was conveyed in terms too shadowy here to ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... as he paced the floor, Jones was in the mental condition of a dog in proximity to a hutched badger. Then he began to think clearly. The obvious fact before him was that Voles, the Plinlimons and Mulhausen were a gang; the presumptive fact was that the money paid in blackmail had ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... he is patently and plainly a victim of senility, an individual prematurely in his dotage—any utterances by him will be of no value whatsoever in aiding the conscience and intelligence of the court to arrive at a fair and just conclusion regarding the defendant's mental condition." ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the carriage drove off that his eye was caught by the face of a man who sat beside her. A gleam from a gas-lamp had fallen full upon it, revealing the regular, passionless features, the dark eyes and pale complexion of Ethel's lover. And as soon as he saw that face, a great change came over the mental condition of Francis Trent. He stood for a moment as if paralyzed, his worn features strangely convulsed, a strange lurid light showed itself in his haggard eyes. Then he threw his arms wildly in the air, uttered a choked, gasping cry, ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... came," I shouted, "and you knew nothing about the work of the Chemical Staff on my formulas. Now see here, doctor, you had your try and you have failed. Your diagnosis of my mental condition is just as much a fraud as the formulas on which the Chemical Staff have been wasting their time—only it is not so clever. I fooled them and you have not fooled me. Waste no more time, but go back and report to His Majesty that your little ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... if, as is so often pretended, there is an inherent, irreconcilable repulsion on the part of the white towards the negro race. All the southern children that I have seen seem to have a special fondness for these good-natured childish human beings, whose mental condition is kin in its simplicity and proneness to impulsive emotion to their own, and I can detect in them no trace of the abhorrence and contempt for their dusky skins which all questions of treating them with common justice is ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... of intense intellectual development, it is not given to many to return sincerely to a mental condition that recalls that of the earliest times. Even if we come near it, we still find a difference. Primitive man puts life, consciousness, activity, into everything; symbolism does likewise, but it does not believe in an autonomous, distinct, particular soul inherent in each ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... important determining factor in the result of the performance. A powerful but lackadaisical fellow might, with only a few dollars at stake, make a very poor showing; yet to preserve his life he might make a really wonderful leap. What effect, then, did mental condition exert on a man like Peters under the circumstances attending this unparalleled leap? Think of the enormous muscular power developed by the message received through the nerves from a mind thus affected! His ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... commendable enthusiasm and success, Hugh played up, supported—as far as his physical and mental condition allowed—by the enfeebled Vic, till they had safely deposited their charges at the Rectory door, whence, refusing an invitation to stop for cocoa, they took their ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... I will give one extreme example, which may serve to illustrate, the sanguine mental condition of many who read of large returns in fruit culture. A young man who had inherited a few hundred dollars wrote me that he could hire a piece of land for a certain amount, and he wished to invest the balance—every cent—in plants, thus leaving himself no capital with which to ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... out of thought every man knows who has for any length of time practised self-control and self-purification, for he will have noticed that the alteration in his circumstances has been in exact ratio with his altered mental condition. So true is this that when a man earnestly applies himself to remedy the defects in his character, and makes swift and marked progress, he passes rapidly through a ...
— As a Man Thinketh • James Allen
... Pilchard's voice. He was talking to another man. They were leaning heavily against the rough wall of Swan's shanty. A horrible sensation came over the sick man, that sensation experienced by men who emerge from some unnatural mental condition, who are recalled by one sentence, often by one word, which acts like a key and opens again to their terrified vision the horrible realities of actual life. Swan raised his arms to bring that woman's face close to his, but he could not ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... offer an explanation. Anne Catherick was the daughter of one of his old family servants, and in consideration of her mother's past services he had sent her to a private asylum instead of allowing her to go to one of the public establishments where her mental condition would otherwise have compelled her to remain. Her animus against Sir Percival was due to the fact that she had discovered that he was the cause of her incarceration. The anonymous letter was evidence of this ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... eyes were keenly watchful. This flare-up on Haydon's part was merely a phase of his confused mental condition. He saw that Haydon did not mean to use his gun—that he intended to ignore it, no doubt planning to regain his authority when the men of the outfit returned—when he might enlist the support of some ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... Lulu's were 'household eyes,'—but now she never speaks of husband or children, of house or home. Now that is not a suitable mental condition. Let us hope that this intellectual effervescence will subside, and leave her some thoughtfulness and care for others, and the meditation which will make her accomplishments something to enrich and strengthen, rather than excite ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... None of the poetry indeed by him cultivated was of any sort requiring study. The difficulty Hester found in his song came of her trying to see more than was there; her eyes made holes in it, and saw the less. Vavasor's mental condition was much like that of one living in a vacuum or sphere of nothing, in which the sole objects must be such as he was creator enough to project from himself. He had no feeling that he was in the heart ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... mental condition in which the only solid ground beneath him was his determination to do to the uttermost that lay within him for Gloria, he broke into mutterings, voicing aloud fragments of speech, forcing himself toward steadiness of ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... flexible. Only one or two aspects, no doubt, of that rich, self-tormented nature, reared amid the most complex movements of European intelligence, were really plain to him. And those aspects were specially brought home to him by his own mental condition. No matter. ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... not if his mental condition is any index to his physical. He is eager as a boy over the way his work is coming in. Did I tell you he has an assistant coming, day after to-morrow? Poor little Dennison has been swamped, for two weeks, in the rising tide of things that he knew nothing at all about. I must say he's been ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... I hope. A hundred years—of my life! No. the most loving friend I have would not wish it for me." Then, suddenly, as with an impulse created by the sad events of the day—the stormy night— and the disturbed state of his own mental condition, inclining him to any sort of companionship, "Cousin, I am going to trust you, specially, in a matter of business which I wish named to the Cardrosses. I should have done so before they left to-night. May I confide ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... In his excited mental condition it was impossible to judge accurately of the passage of time, but it seemed to him that he had been in waiting fully fifteen minutes, yet not the slightest sound reached him from that direction. The lad remained in a state of suspense which was intensified by his ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... upon sinner or saint. We are tempted to inquire as to the strange mental process that could have led any human being to believe in such a Creator. Regardless of doctrine, creed, or theology, we cannot totally dissociate our earthly mental condition from that in the future state; we cannot refuse to believe that we shall have the same intelligent mind, and the same ability to understand, perceive, and love. Apparently, however, the Puritan found no difficulty in believing that the future existence entailed an ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... the night Madeline fell asleep. In the morning she was pale and languid, but in a mental condition ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... one, "you don't know how strong a mind I have." I reply: Losses, accident, bereavement, and sickness may shipwreck the best physical or mental condition. There are those who have been ten years in lunatic asylums who had as good a mind as you. While they had their minds they neglected God, and when their intellect went, with it went their last opportunity for heaven. Now ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... drawn from the facts of military activity throw a special light on the methods and mental condition of those who so solemnly urge them; for the error by which these arguments are vitiated is of a peculiarly glaring kind. It consists of a failure to perceive that military activity is, in many respects, a thing altogether apart, and depends on psychological and physiological conditions ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... write, but to go himself to England and confer with him in person. When he reached London, he was surprised to learn that Hanwell was the most celebrated insane asylum in Great Britain. Had he reflected on the mental condition of Marie-Gaston, he might have guessed the truth. As it was, he felt completely bewildered; but not committing the blunder of losing his time in useless conjectures, he went on without a moment's delay to Hanwell, which establishment is only about nine miles ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... late breakfast glad to be undisturbed in her thoughts. Her mind was still in a confusion of opinions; some, long-cherished being crowded, so to say, to the wall; others, more than once rejected, growing bolder. It was in this mental condition that her seclusion was invaded ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... God! I did not make it in vain. Agnes loved me, and in the deep, quiet bliss which this knowledge gave I felt the promise of deliverance. She knew and lamented my connection with the Spiritualists; but, perceiving my mental condition from the few intimations which I dared to give her, discreetly held her peace. But I could read the anxious expression of that gentle ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... sight the truth that the real quality of the Renaissance was intellectual—that it was the emancipation of the reason for the modern world—we may inquire how feudalism was related to it. The mental condition of the Middle Ages was one of ignorant prostration before the idols of the Church—dogma and authority and scholasticism. Again, the nations of Europe during these centuries were bound down by the brute ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... spirit is compared to a shadow, a dream, or a waft of smoke. "Alas!" cries Achilles, after a visit from the ghost of Patroclus, "I perceive that even in the halls of Hades there is a spirit and a phantom, but understanding none at all"; for the mental condition of these cold, uncomfortable ghosts is as feeble as their bodily form is shadowy and unsubstantial. They hover about with a fitful motion, uttering thin, gibbering cries, like the voice of a bat, and before they can obtain strength to converse with a visitor from the other world, they have to ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... Patsy Horan, proprietor of the Vendome, consuming a hasty supper ere the evening rush of business. Also, Patsy Horan was angry with the world. He had got out of the wrong side of bed that morning, and nothing had gone right all day. Had his barkeepers been asked, they would have described his mental condition as a grouch. But Carter Watson did not know this. As he passed the little hallway, Patsy Horan's sullen eyes lighted on the magazine he carried under his arm. Patsy did not know Carter Watson, nor did ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... races, is even now to some degree part of the living creed of savages. Civilised myths, then, they urge, are survivals from a parallel state of belief once prevalent among the ancestors of even the Aryan race. But how did this mental condition, this early sort of false metaphysics, come into existence? We have no direct historical information on the subject. If I were obliged to offer an hypothesis, it would be that early men, conscious of personality, ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... fears and forebodings of every kind of evil; he was striving to fortify his mind against the dire misgiving that the Confederacy was in a very bad way, and that a general breaking up might take place. Indeed his mental condition was not far removed from that of a man who dreads lest the hitherto immutable laws of nature are about to end in an inconceivable state of chaos. What would happen if the old order of things passed ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... Mr. Rogers shows himself totally unable to comprehend the mental condition of men in past ages. If an Apostle has a dream or sees a vision, and interprets it according to the ideas of his time and country, instead of according to the ideas of scientific England in the nineteenth century Mr. Rogers thinks he must ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... sentimental devotion, through which its object became indolent, degraded, and lost to all moral and intellectual excellence. Then came the influence of those Political changes produced by Christianity, which, while they somewhat elevated the mental condition of this sex, left them still subordinate in many respects to man. At length a republic was founded on these shores, tending, in its true uses, to elevate all classes, but still to render each individual, when his own best ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... HYPOCHONDRIA. A morbid mental condition characterized by undue solicitude regarding the health, and undue attention to ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... 'death-bed wraiths,' are 'survivals' of the liveliest and most interesting kind. Here are parsons, solicitors, soldiers, actors, men of letters, peers, honourable women not a few, all (as far as wraiths go), in exactly the mental condition of a Maori. Anthropology then will seek out these witnesses, these contemporary survivals, these examples of the truth of its own hypothesis, and listen to them as lovingly as it listens to a garrulous old village wife, or ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... then, as has been said, was brilliant with notables from Continental countries, and with the historic wealth of the peerage of England. Only one cloud overspread it; and that was the mental condition of the king. We have become accustomed to think of George III as a dull creature, almost always hovering on the verge of that insanity which finally swept him into a dark obscurity; but Thackeray's picture of him is absurdly untrue to the actual facts. ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... stranger, and to be upon one's guard before a neighbor as before some lurking traitor. Hypocrisy became an instinct of self-preservation; every one carefully avoided speaking of those things of which the heart was full, and Berlin afforded an insight into the mental condition of the people of Spain during the most flourishing period of the Inquisition, or of Venice in the days when anonymous denunciations poured into the yawning jaws of the Lions of St. ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... at Mother Carey's outstretched hand and smothered cry of "Help, Judy!" she felt herself gathered into the heart of the laughing, boisterous group. That hand, had she but known it, was stretched out to her because only that day a letter had come, saying that Allan Carey was much worse and that his mental condition admitted of no cure. He was bright and hopeful and happy, so said Mr. Manson;—forever sounding the praises of the labor-saving device in which he had sunk his last thousands. "We can manufacture it at ten cents and sell it for ten dollars," ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... over which you are walking. The soldier does not seem to feel pangs of sorrow when arms clash the loudest; he does not see danger and suffering and ghastly sights until all is over and quiet restored. Those who are unacquainted with the mental condition of the soldier in time of battle, wonder and ask why it is that those whom he knows so intimately are wounded and many times killed by his side without knowing the nature of their wounds or the circumstances of their ...
— History of the Eighty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, during its term of service • John R. Kinnear
... moment something happened which put a most unexpected end to the orator's speech. All this heated tirade, this outflow of passionate words and ecstatic ideas which seemed to hustle and tumble over each other as they fell from his lips, bore evidence of some unusually disturbed mental condition in the young fellow who had "boiled over" in such a remarkable manner, ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... pleading. Errington was silent. He considered the request a mere proof of the poor creature's disorder. The very idea that Sigurd seemed to entertain of his doing him any harm, showed a reasonless terror and foreboding that was simply to be set down as caused by his unfortunate mental condition. To such an appeal there could be no satisfactory reply. To sail away from the Altenfjord and its now most fascinating attractions, because a madman asked him to do so, was a proposition impossible of ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... Reynolds. 'You were both wrong about this,' said he; 'at least I think so. Real fortitude does figuratively, go helmeted and plumed. She endures so perfectly that she does not seem to endure. In this representation the lion shows you the mental condition which lies hid behind that fair, stern front. Now is Marie Antoinette like that?' He turned the ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... reasonable inference from this clear-cut result that Dr. Brinkley is right in his opinion that a second transplantation of the goat-glands into a human being after a lapse of years, when the first implant may be expected to have worn itself thin, will result in the same improvement in the physical and mental condition of either man or woman as took place upon the first implant. This is, in fact, the basis of his theory that the normal age of man and woman today can be surely extended from the three score and ten limit to possibly twice that number of years. You are invited ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower |
