"Psychological" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he remarked, looking up at the ceiling and speaking as though to himself, "would make an admirable heroine for the psychological novelist. She is a bundle of fancies; one can never rely upon what she is going to do. What other girl in the world would get engaged on the Thursday, and come down here on the Friday to think it over—leaving, of ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... respecting the condition of the planets, because those ideas were based (though unconsciously) upon the science of his day, in which he was no mean proficient. And even where his mysticism went beyond what his scientific attainments suggested, a psychological interest attaches to the workings of his imagination. It is as curious a problem to trace his ideas to their origin as it sometimes is to account for the various phases of a fantastic dream, such a dream, for instance, as that which Armadale, the doctor, ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... well—a small enough foundation for happiness, yet one which every woman knows, for happiness is made up of small and acceptable things and, given the psychological moment, a bunch of primroses has a greater value than a ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... humour. We hardly recognize in the obstinate defensive system which he now began the same general who had carried on the offensive with almost unequalled impetuosity and boldness; it is marvellous in a psychological as well as in a military point of view, that the same man should have accomplished the two tasks set to him—tasks so diametrically opposite in their character—with ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... modern times, any historian, however little affecting the praise of a philosophic investigator, would feel himself called upon to remove a little the taint of the miraculous and preternatural which adheres to such anecdotes, by entering into the psychological grounds of their possibility; whether lying in any peculiarly vicious education, early familiarity with bad models, corrupting associations, or other plausible key to effects, which, taken separately, and out of their natural connection ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... related of Byron that he never wrote a description whilst the scene was actually before him; and this fact points to an important psychological principle. The human mind, so long as it is compelled to strain the receptive faculties, cannot engage in that "poetic" activity—to use the term in its Greek sense—which is commonly called "original creation." And as with individuals, so with nations. By accepting in a lump a foreign culture ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... a single thrilling moment to study the full effect of her handiwork, the first psychological puzzle of her life smote sharply across her senses. Namely, that you never really get the whole fun out of anything unless you are absolutely alone.—But the very first instant you find yourself absolutely alone with a Really-Good-Time you begin ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... assumes the entire burden. Of course, there are many factors which enter into such a consideration and an important one is the desirability of working at night. It is not the intention to touch upon the psychological and sociological aspects but merely to look coldly upon the facts pertaining to artificial light ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... she was covered by the American guns. At 1:30 P.M. she gave over her flight and made for shore some forty-five miles west of Santiago. The victory was won. It has often been the good fortune of Americans to secure their greatest victories on patriotic anniversaries and thereby to enhance the psychological effect. Admiral Sampson was able to announce to the American people, as a Fourth of July present, the destruction of the Spanish fleet with the loss of but one of his men and but slight damage ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... become acclimated. Fourth, you will not have wasted space and time with any backward black sheep among the lot, as these should be discarded at the second planting. And then there is one further reason, psychological perhaps, but none the less important; you will watch these little trees, which are largely the result of your own labor and care, when set in their permanent positions, much more carefully than you would those direct from the nursery. I know, both from ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... subject, and it ought to be treated seriously and reverently. But, it seems to me, Sir George Campbell's conclusion is exactly the opposite one from the conclusion now being forced upon men of science by a study of the biological and psychological elements in this very complex problem of heredity. So far from considering love as a 'foolish idea,' opposed to the best interests of the race, I believe most competent physiologists and psychologists, especially those of the modern evolutionary school, would regard it rather as an ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... this is a case which will have to be approached entirely through psychological reactions. You and I will have to become familiar with the studio and home life of all the long list of possible suspects. I shall analyze the body fluids of the deceased and learn the cause of death, and I will find out what it is on the towel, but"—sighing—"there are so many different ramifications, ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... He knew intimately every nook and cranny of Mrs. Radcliffe's Gothic abbeys. He had viewed with trepidation their blood-stained floors, their skeletons and corpses, and had carefully calculated the psychological effect of these properties. He had gazed with starting eye on the lurid horrors of "Monk" Lewis, and had carried away impressions so distinct that he, perhaps unwittingly, transferred them to the ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... babel about him a voice spoke that fell pleasantly on his ear and in the sound was something that he remembered. When the voice ceased speaking, some psychological reaction slipped a slide in the brute mind, the impression of which had been gained many years before, and the great bear saw, as plainly as he had seen it then, the farmhouse with the chicken-coops in the ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... the discussion extremely. I had no idea that novels raised points of such psychological interest. I must find ...
— Frivolous Cupid • Anthony Hope
... composure, however. There I lay, fettered, in the same room with this man whose existence was a menace to the entire white race, whilst placidly he pursued an experiment designed, if his own words were believable, to cut me off from my kind—to wreak some change, psychological or physiological I knew not; to place me, it might be, upon a level with such brute-things as that which now hung, half floating, in the ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... centres in the development of the character of the heroine, a New England girl, whose high-strung temperament is in constant revolt against the confining limitations of nineteenth century surroundings. The reader's interest is held to the end, and the book will take high rank among American psychological novels. ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... the other hand, is 7/-2. See "The magical number seven, plus or minus two: some limits on our capacity for processing information" by George Miller, in the "Psychological Review" 63:81-97 (1956). This classic paper established the number of distinct items (such as numeric digits) that humans can hold in short-term memory. Among other things, this strongly influenced the interface design of the ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... stick this pair of scissors into your heart you will die, my dear fellow." He was silent, and a frown began to gather on his brow. "Yes," I continued, "your psychological deductions are not entirely valid. The fear of death still exists, but now limited to a small sphere. In that sphere, it will operate with extreme intensity." I picked up the scissors and made a stealthy movement towards him. To my amazement I obtained an ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... what he had heard but the first plan, although upon the insistent protestation of that friend he did not work out the story as it had been first conceived nor so glaringly. "I saw," writes our poet, "at first only the psychological interest in this material. The problem was to present the story as well as possible and this was indeed a significant one for the narrator. A distinctly esthetic interest would not be possible in ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... play. With the first of these phrases few will be disposed to quarrel. In his period of experiment Shakespeare's style was as yet comparatively unformed, and his attention was so much occupied with problems of technic that even the most psychological of critics finds here little revelation of personality, and must be content to describe the stage as one of professional apprenticeship. In the terms used of the three later periods, however, there is an implication that the tone and mood of the plays in each are the direct reflection ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... novels and poems. Browning was much in her mind. She saw herself as the heroine of psychological drama. How interesting! How thrilling! During her life at Northampton, she had dreamed of such things, with no expectation of their ever befalling her. Truly, she was fortune's favourite. Destiny had raised her to the sphere where her powers and ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... after the Empire of the Caesars passed away. The continuity of Roman history has been psychological. Humanity has "held a thought." Rome became a fixed idea. It exerted an hypnotic influence over the barbarians who had overcome all else. The Holy Roman Empire was a creation of the Germanic imagination, and yet it was a real power. ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... elements is near perfection. The drama has come fully to life, but the religion has not yet faded to a formality. The Agamemnon is not, like Aeschylus' Suppliant Women, a statue half-hewn out of the rock. It is a real play, showing clash of character and situation, suspense and movement, psychological depth and subtlety. Yet it still remains something more than a play. Its atmosphere is not quite of this world. In the long lyrics especially one feels that the guiding emotion is not the entertainer's wish to thrill an audience, not even perhaps the pure artist's wish to ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... often used forbidden words with much ferocity in private. Once he had had a long philosophic argument with Tom Orgreave on the subject of profanity. They had discussed all aspects of it, from its religious origin to its psychological results, and Edwin's theory had been that it was only improper by a purely superstitious convention, and that no man of sense could possibly be offended, in himself, by the mere sound of words that had been deprived of meaning. He might ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... an incident occurred which I will relate for the benefit of psychological students; they may, perhaps, be able to explain it, I never could. My father had some time before issued invitations for a dance which was to take place in two days' time—on Monday, the 17th October, 1853. On the Saturday morning he appeared disturbed ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... be of great psychological interest to ascertain whether the change which has taken place in a peaceful direction is progress or decadence. Notwithstanding all the interest which the honesty, peaceableness, and innocent friendliness ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... I shall here, however, give an instance of it in a case in which he makes it remarkably clear, without exhibiting any design or affectation in the matter; for he was a real artist and never set out from general ideas. His method was obviously to work up to the psychological truth which he grasped directly and intuitively, regardless of the fact that few would notice or understand it, and without the smallest idea that some dull and shallow fellows in Germany would one day ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... the lure of coffee, its place in a rational dietary, its universal psychological appeal, ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... (that for me is a political error) is an enormous damage to the study of the customs, beliefs, and psychological peculiarities of the people with whom we are in contact, for they will back out of every enquiry or investigation, will either refuse to respond or will tell you lies, and this accounts for the contradictory reports that different travellers give ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... of logic by writers like Carlyle is deeper and somewhat different. The fault of the great mass of logicians is not that they bring out a false result, or, in other words, are not logicians at all. Their fault is that by an inevitable psychological habit they tend to forget that there are two parts of a logical process—the first the choosing of an assumption, and the second the arguing upon it; and humanity, if it devotes itself too persistently to the study ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... throughout the room for a few minutes. Then Cass, believing that the psychological moment had arrived, loudly called Carmen Ariza to the stand. The dramatic play must be continued, now that it had begun. The battle which had raged back and forth for long, weary days, could be won, if at ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... therefore, they are often destitute; the characters are ordinarily mere types; and motivation is little considered. There were, however, exceptional authors, genuine artists, masters of meter and narrative, possessed by a true feeling for beauty; and in some of the romances the psychological analysis of love, in particular, is subtile and powerful, the direct precursor of one of the ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... St. Luke we owe the account here given of Peter's awakening; but he also refers to the crowing of the cock, the only cause mentioned by the other Evangelists. There is no difficulty in understanding that such a psychological crisis may have been due to two ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... "effect" only as pure CONCEPTIONS, that is to say, as conventional fictions for the purpose of designation and mutual understanding,—NOT for explanation. In "being-in-itself" there is nothing of "casual-connection," of "necessity," or of "psychological non-freedom"; there the effect does NOT follow the cause, there "law" does not obtain. It is WE alone who have devised cause, sequence, reciprocity, relativity, constraint, number, law, freedom, motive, and purpose; and when we interpret and intermix this symbol-world, as "being-in-itself," ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... to stem the crime wave. I sat down and wrote an article on the subject, pointing out that this was a going back to the days of barbarism when lunatics were whipped behind the cart's tail. I made a strong plea for the psychological treatment of the criminal, basing my plea on the fact that crime is the result of unconscious workings of the mind, and stating that instead of sending a poor man to penal servitude we ought to analyse his mind and cure him of his ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... you 'care nothing'—in order that he may bring my enemies about me, in order that he may hand me over to the barbarous law of England. Now, you 'cannot bear' so light a rebuke as the whip. Here, I perceive, is some deep psychological change. Such protests do not belong to the women of my country; they are never heard in the zenana, and would provoke derision in the harems ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... if preoccupied, said to him in his most kindly tone, "I am very much occupied at this moment, my son; won't you come in to-morrow evening?" The young man went back to his room already half conquered by the affectionate manner, but the important point gained in the doctor's tactics was that the psychological moment of combat in the student had been reached and could not be kept up for a day, and when on the next evening the interview took place, his combativeness had given place to perplexity and complete demoralization. In this state the doctor gave him a paternal ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... attempted this theme, would have made no attempt after subtlety of character painting and still less after correctness of historic color. He would have given small shrift to Olaf Skaktavl, the psychological outlaw. But he would have drawn Inger, the Mother of her People, in majestic strokes, and we should have had a great simplicity, a noble outline with none of the detail put in. Ibsen, already, cannot be satisfied with this; to him the detail is every thing, and the result is a hopeless ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... poet of great and deserved celebrity;'—but whether Lord Byron, the praiser of 'the Christabel,' or the Laureate, the praiser of Princes, we are not informed. As far as Mr Coleridge's 'own opinions are concerned,' it is published, 'not upon the ground of any poetic merits,' but 'as a PSYCHOLOGICAL CURIOSITY!' In these opinions of the candid author, we entirely concur; but for this reason we hardly think it was necessary to give the minute detail which the Preface contains, of the circumstances attending its composition. Had the question regarded 'Paradise Lost,' or 'Dryden's ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... something on the most salient points in piano technic; perhaps we should say, the points that are most important to each individual; for no two students are exactly alike, nor do any two see things in precisely the same light. This is really a psychological matter. I believe the subject of psychology is a very necessary study for both teacher and student. We all need to know more about mental processes than we do. I am often asked how to memorize, for instance—or the best means for doing this; another psychological process. ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... sugar-loaf granite, compared with which the Palisades of the Hudson become insignificant as a garden-fence. The least poetical man who traverses these giant fissures cannot help feeling their fitness as the avenues to a paradoxical region, an anomalous civilization, and a people whose psychological problem is the most unsolvable of the nineteenth century. During the Mormon War, Brigham Young made some rude attempts at a fortification of the great Echo Canon, half a day's journey from his city, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... Her descriptions and anecdotes possess a wonderful charm and display unusual power of analysis; in them, Victor Cousin recognizes a truly virile spirit. In the history of the French novel, she forms a transition period, her productions having both a psychological interest and a historical value of a very high degree. Through her finesse and marvellous feminine penetration, her truthful, delicate and fine portraitures, which were widely imitated later, she has ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... so calm, nor yet so pure, as it had been up to this moment. It often happens that certain actions of human life seem, literally speaking, improbable, though actual. Is not this because we constantly omit to turn the stream of psychological light upon our impulsive determinations, and fail to explain the subtile reasons, mysteriously conceived in our minds, which impelled them? Perhaps Eugenie's deep passion should be analyzed in its most delicate fibres; for it became, scoffers might say, a malady which ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... will ever so make the student of life participant of the innermost experience of the tramp, his experience of dull despair, his loss of his grip on life, as Beranger's "The Old Vagabond." No expert in nervous diseases, no psychological student of mental states, normal and abnormal, can give the reader so clear an understanding of that deep and seemingly causeless dejection, which because it seems to be causeless seems also to be well-nigh incurable, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... and the craving for her dominated him again and took psychological shape. He grew moody and abstracted. His voice had a new note in it to her ear. He was fighting with himself and did not guess what was in her mind, or how unconsciously ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... Through his powers of intellect, articulate language has been evolved; and on this his wonderful advancement has mainly depended. As Mr. Chauncey Wright remarks (66. Limits of Natural Selection, 'North American Review,' Oct. 1870, p. 295.): "a psychological analysis of the faculty of language shews, that even the smallest proficiency in it might require more brain power than the greatest proficiency in any other direction." He has invented and is able to use various weapons, tools, traps, etc., ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... me. You know who I am"—(he broke off). "I'm Father Jervis. I know about these things. I've been through the psychological schools. You'll be all right presently, I hope. But you ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... not to be thereafter broken without violating what should be sacred in our nature. How finely is the true Shakespearian scene contrasted with Dryden's vulgar alteration of it, in which a mere ludicrous psychological experiment, as it were, is tried—displaying nothing ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... understood. The advertisers in metropolitan newspapers and magazines of large circulation are the ones who have most at stake. But whatever the field to be reached, it is well to bear in mind certain facts based on the Laws of Recall that have been established by psychological experiment. ...
— The Trained Memory • Warren Hilton
... "Maeve" "a psychological drama in two acts." It relates the story of the last day and night in the life of a visionary girl, the hereditary princess of Burren in Clare, in the west of Ireland. On the eve of her marriage to Hugh Fitz Walter, a rich young Englishman, whom she will ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... Further strength arises to such an exception, if the very moulding accidents of the life, if the very external coercions are themselves unusually romantic. They may thus gain a separate interest of their own. And, lastly, the whole is locked into validity of interest, even for the psychological philosopher, by complete authentication of its truth. In the case now brought before him, the reader must not doubt; for no memoir exists, or personal biography, that is so trebly authenticated by proofs and attestations ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... I should fail in this purpose if my remarks were to confine themselves solely to physiology. I hope to show how far psychological investigations also afford not only permissible, but indispensable, aid to ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... because all its parts are in the service of one purposive end. An army is a unit, a flock of gregarious birds, a colony of ants or bees, is a unit because the spirit and purpose of one is the spirit and purpose of all; the unity is psychological. ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... topic with the poor youth; but he had a peculiar faculty, with his smooth tones and his sanctimonious smiles, of thrusting red-hot needles into any wounds which he either knew or suspected under the coarse woollen robes of his brethren. He appeared to do it in all coolness, in a way of psychological investigation. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... in a soulful voice, betrayed angelic sensibility. D'Arthez was deeply moved. The curiosity of the lover became, so to speak, a psychological and literary curiosity. He wanted to know the height that woman had attained, and what were the injuries she thus forgave; he longed to know how these women of the world, taxed with frivolity, cold-heartedness, and egotism, could be such angels. Remembering how the princess had already ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... had won from books; his mind had opened rapidly then, in the direction of a kind of poetical metaphysic, not deep speculation on the ultimate nature of things, so much as reflection on the more psychological problems of character and personality. It seemed to Hugh that his own mind, and the minds of those with whom he had lived, had been a mass of prejudices, of half-formed and inconsistent theories. None of them had had any policy into which they fitted the ideas that came to ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... clumsily at an urchin who got in his way on the sidewalk. A college professor of Marion happened to be passing at the moment and saw the act and knew what the colonel was carrying in his arms. The professor made a mental note of fresh material for his lecture on "The Psychological Phenomena of the Bizarre in the Emotions." The professor had just met a woman wheeling a ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... that the transmutation which the subject of the Allegro undergoes just before the close of the symphony is of the same psychological order as that of the Fate motive—a change from clouds to sunshine, ...
— Futurist Stories • Margery Verner Reed
... study me so slyly and yet so obviously? I had no intention of intruding upon him. Nor was I a psychological "specimen," though I began to suspect that "that ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... the place, if he can get it," she was saying to herself for the fiftieth time, as the mantel clock chimed out the half-past ten. "I am swept under by a queer psychological wave of repulsion. I hope I ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... read or see"). Proscribing the distribution of such material to minors is constitutionally justified by the government's well-recognized interest in safeguarding minors' well-being. See Reno v. ACLU, 521 U.S. 844, 869-70 (1997) ("[T]here is a compelling interest in protecting the physical and psychological well-being of minors which extend[s] to shielding them from indecent messages that are not obscene by adult standards . . . .") (internal quotation marks and citation omitted); New York v. Ferber, ...
— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
... formulization. For a long time it has been the "spook science" per se, and the imagination, now analyzed by M. Ribot in such a masterly manner, has been one of the most persistent, apparently real, though very indefinite, of psychological spooks. Whereas people have been accustomed to speak of the imagination as an entity sui generis, as a lofty something found only in long-haired, wild-eyed "geniuses," constituting indeed the center of a cult, our author, Prometheus-like, ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... all that pertains to morality and the rules of discipline for the government of the Sangha, or Order; the second contains instructive discourses on ethics applicable to all; the third explains the psychological teachings of the Buddha, including the twenty-four transcendental laws explanatory of the ...
— The Buddhist Catechism • Henry S. Olcott
... time at which our period begins (and which, though psychological epochs rarely coincide exactly with chronological, is sufficiently coincident with the accession of Elizabeth), it cannot be said with any precision that there was an English literature at all. There were eminent English writers, though ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... which an exalted sentient force prepares itself for the repose of a future life. But our reckless Karlee took no thought for the everlasting rest into which his soul should enter "when removed from this world of care," according to the ingenious psychological system of the amiable Kerr Sahib; for when he had anything to do, he kept on doing it until it was done, and when he caught the punka-wallah reposing in a dream of absolute quiescence, he bumped his head against ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... fiction is a true and living and important branch of English literature when it numbers among its younger exponents such men as the author of 'The Remnant.' We welcome this book as an addition to the small body of good psychological ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... foreign to our manners. The explanation is to be obtained, not by speculations based on far-fetched metaphors supposed to have existed in the speech of early races, nor in philological puzzles, but by soberly inquiring into the facts of barbarian and savage life and into the psychological phenomena of which the facts are the outcome. The evidence of these facts and phenomena is to be found scattered up and down the pages of writers of every age, creed and country. On hardly any subject ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... outside the village, dress himself in beggar's rags, and then go to his mother's house to solicit alms. He would draw from her the account of the son who had been lost when he was a little child, and, at the psychological moment, when the poor lady was weeping, Ah Fu would cry out: 'Behold your son returned to you, not a beggar, as I appear, ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... normal character of the religious experience. Faith had been regarded as the product of deception or as an aberration of the human spirit; it now is established as a natural element in a fully developed personality. A psychological literary critic, Sainte Beuve, writes: "You may not cease to be a skeptic after reading Pascal; but you must cease to treat believers with contempt." William James has given us a great quantity of Varieties ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... certainly was, in teaching medical practitioners to place more reliance upon nature. Most scientific men see through its deceptions at a glance. It may be practised by shrewd men and by honest ones; rarely, it must be feared, by those who are both shrewd and honest. As a psychological experiment on the weakness of cultivated minds, it is the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... human. One wondered whether these two women belonged to the same scheme of creation. One was secretly amazed to see them standing together, speaking to each other, having words in common, understanding each other. And yet! . . . Our psychological sense is the crudest of all; we don't know, we don't perceive how superficial we are. The simplest shades escape us, the secret of changes, of relations. No, upon the whole, the only feature (and yet with enormous differences) which Therese had in common ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... it—this power to sway men—to command them to certain death, even though those men cursed the very ground their commanders stood upon. MacNair is a powerful personality. In all the North there is not his equal. I cannot explain it. It is a psychological problem none can explain. For, although his Indians hate him, they make no attempt to free themselves from his yoke, and they will fight to the ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... already passing into a new edition. It has simply displaced all its predecessors except one, that of Southey, which is the vade-mecum of British patriotism, a stimulant of British loyalty, literature of high quality, but in no sense a serious historical or psychological study.... The reader will find in this book three things; an unbroken series of verified historical facts related in minute detail; a complete picture of the hero, with every virtue justly estimated but with no palliation of weakness or fault; ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... of 1798 and the summer of 1801, in which he completed his thirtieth year. "Jane Talbot" appeared somewhat later. In scenery and character, these romances are entirely unreal. There is in them an affectation of psychological purpose which is not very well sustained, and a somewhat clumsy introduction of supernatural machinery. Yet they have a power of engaging the attention in the rapid succession of startling and uncanny incidents and in adventures in which ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... commands—any religion consisting in a belief of a supreme power or powers, governing the world, and in the worshiping of such power or powers. That men have the power to become religious is too evident to require a word in argument; even Tyndal admitted that there was a place in man's psychological nature for religion. Now, since man possesses this, and as all his other powers and faculties were made for use, it is but reasonable that this faculty should also have its proper ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 11, November, 1880 • Various
... of hatchets and axes had a value beyond many fields of the boundless earth. The Dove appeared before them, too, at the psychological moment. They had just discussed removing, bag and baggage, from the proximity of the Iroquois. In the end, these Indians sold to the English their village huts, their cleared and planted fields, and miles of surrounding forest. Moreover they stayed long enough in ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... attention to the author, both on account of its unusual theme and striking form. It was a new kind of realism that had nothing to do with photographic reproduction of details. It was a professedly psychological study that had about as much in common with the old-fashioned conceptions of man's mental activities as the delirious utterances of a fever patient. It was life, but presented in the Impressionistic temper of a Gauguin or Cezanne. On the appearance of the completed novel in 1890, ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... own recollections of childhood have not grown faint, but will feel the profound truth of the spirit of the narrative, which is of a kind that occasional exaggerations in the letter cannot depreciate in value as a psychological history. For an account of her early life it must always remain the most ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... to linger. The duke approached him, and, in his mood, he found it easier to talk to men than to women. Male conversation is of a coarser grain, and does not require so much play of thought and manner; discourse about Suez Canal, and Arab horses, and pipes, and pachas, can be carried on without any psychological effort, and, by degrees, banishes all sensibility. And yet he was rather dreamy, talked better than he listened, did not look his companion in the face, as the duke spoke, which was his custom, and his eye was wandering. Suddenly, Bertram having joined them, and speaking to his ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... heightened to its utmost intensity in me, because Bertha was the only being who remained for me in the mysterious seclusion of soul that renders such youthful delusion possible. Doubtless there was another sort of fascination at work—that subtle physical attraction which delights in cheating our psychological predictions, and in compelling the men who paint sylphs, to fall in love with some bonne et ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... MANNING was born in 1807 and died in 1892. His life was extraordinary in many ways, but its interest for the modern inquirer depends mainly upon two considerations—the light which his career throws upon the spirit of his age, and the psychological problems suggested by his inner history. He belonged to that class of eminent ecclesiastics — and it is by no means a small class — who have been distinguished less for saintliness and learning than for practical ability. Had he lived in the Middle Ages he ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... been thought necessary to discuss the psychological and physiological processes involved in perception, real or false. Every "hallucination" is a perception, "as good and true a sensation as if there were a real object there. The object happens not to be there, that is all." ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... where it was the psychological time to close, he stopped and stood a long instant facing them, and then he asked softly, "Did any man among you ever see the woman to whom he had given a strong man's first passion of ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... or "the struggle for existence," to use the respective terms coined by each of these authors, as the chief means by which the effects of variation are accumulated and perpetuated so as to build up the modern complexities of the plant and animal kingdoms. Partly because it was a psychological moment, from the fact that the uniformitarian geology of Lyell with its graded advance of existences from age to age seemed absolutely to demand some evolutionary explanation; partly because artificial selection was a familiar idea of proved value in selective breeding, and "natural selection" seemed ...
— Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation • George McCready Price
... It was the psychological moment to buy up the outstanding stock. The finances of the town and its citizens were at the lowest ebb—on the verge of collapse, in fact, if something did not turn up. Furthermore—he imparted the information in a voice lowered to a confidential pitch—he had it from a reliable source that ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... fail to settle the point at issue, the State abandons the policy in question, defers action to enforce it, or adopts stronger measures. Such measures may take the form of psychological, political, or economic pressure. They may even include the threat to employ armed force before actually resorting to the imposition of physical violence. During actual hostilities, also, every means of pressure known to man, in addition to physical violence, ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... classical economists said, it would cause late marriages and a reduction in the supply of labor, but solely because the wage earner will refuse to work for less than enough to maintain his standard of living. Steward possessed such abundant faith in this purely psychological check on the employer that he made it the cornerstone of his theory of social progress. Raise the worker's standard of living, he said, and the employer will be immediately forced to raise wages; no more ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... for a neat confession, and add, "unhappily in this case you guessed wrong." Did she suspect? Then, at the psychological moment, the girl bumped the door open with her tray and brought in the coffee ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... In a psychological point of view, it is perhaps questionable whether from birth and genealogy, how closely scrutinized soever, much insight is to be gained. Nevertheless, as in every phenomenon the Beginning remains always the most notable moment; so, with regard to any great ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... political conditions of the one, while, on the contrary, they were actively warmed and fostered by those of the other. It was not a literary aptitude in the nation for raison raisonnante, which developed the political theories of Rousseau, the moral and psychological theories of Diderot, the anti-ecclesiastical theories of Voltaire and Holbach. It was the profound disorganisation of institutions that suggested and stimulated the speculative agitation. 'The nation,' wrote the wise and far-seeing Turgot, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 8: France in the Eighteenth Century • John Morley
... that I began taking notes. There is something psychological to the Blind Spot, weird and touching on the spirit. I know not what it is; but I can feel it. It impinges on to life. I can sense the ecstasy of horror. I am not afraid. Whatever it is that is dragging me down, it is not evil. ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... then, to guide him in forming his judgment, he had the advantage of some psychological knowledge of the case, which, in a greet degree, was a sealed book to the poor puzzled physician. We laugh very often at the errors of medical men; but if we would only, when we consult them, have strength of mind enough to extend to them something better ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... pansy family. We had some tag-ends of Moet and Chandon '84 to drink and a bottle of the old Chartreuse. In the second place, it was the last time I was ever to sit at meat under John Fulton's roof. The dinner had psychological peculiarities. I was in love with my hostess; she with me. Twice I could have run away with the girl in honor of whose engagement the dinner was being given. My host, who personally had insisted on my presence, would have been delighted to hear of my sudden death. The waitress would have ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... motives of action have all this common characteristic, that they point as their ultimate end to the happiness of the agent. The first seeks that happiness in external circumstances; the second and third in psychological conditions. There is, however, a fourth kind of motive which may be urged, and which is the peculiar characteristic of the intuitive school of moralists and the stumbling-block of its opponents. It is asserted that we are so constituted ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... attachments. All their fervor was thrown into the campaign. Any vast body of people with deep convictions have the power to greatly impress others. The settled conviction of the Negroes that their very destiny in America hinged, it seemed, upon the outcome of this election, was not without its psychological effect upon the ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... I said. "I am also a married man—irrevocably wedded to science. I desire no other spouse. I am ineligible; and everybody knows it. If at times a purely scientific curiosity leads me into a detached and impersonally psychological investigation of certain—ah—feminine idiosyncrasies—" ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... ignorance regarding what is not known as lazy in acquiring such knowledge as is at hand; and even those who have not been lazy sometimes take it into their heads to disparage their science and to outdo the professional philosophers in psychological scepticism, in order to plunge with them into the most vapid speculation. Nor is this insecurity about first principles limited to abstract subjects. It reigns in politics as well. Liberalism had been supposed ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... called my attention to the fact that the psychological conditions under which we view "The Lion" are the most subtle and complete that man can devise; and these are the things that add the last touch to art and cause us to stand speechless, and which make the unbidden tears start. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... life of Dickens was probably responsible for the wonderful genius of his art. The blacking factory that nearly killed the physical Dickens gave birth to the literary Dickens. Dickens was, in fact, born at the psychological moment, which is not to say that we are born at the unpsychological moment, but that Dickens was born at a time that allowed his natural powers to be used ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke |
