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Mental   Listen
adjective
Mental  adj.  Of or pertaining to the mind; intellectual; as, mental faculties; mental operations, conditions, or exercise. "What a mental power This eye shoots forth!"
Mental alienation, insanity.
Mental arithmetic, the art or practice of solving arithmetical problems by mental processes, unassisted by written figures.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Mental" Quotes from Famous Books



... would ask the indulgence of my readers for such scientific terms and details as cannot well be dispensed with, begging them to remember that a long and tedious road may bring us suddenly upon a glorious prospect, and that a clearer mental atmosphere and a new intellectual sensation may well reward us for a little weariness in the outset. Besides, the time has come when scientific truth must cease to be the property of the few, when it must be woven into the common life of the world; for we have reached the point where the results ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various

... and conscientiously, and, as a rule, triumphs over him, he does not generally, being what I have described him, brag of these victories, nor, indeed, does he care to talk about them. "There, but for the grace of God, goes Velveteens," must be the mental exclamation of many a good keeper when he hears his enemy sentenced to a period of compulsory confinement. I do not wish to be misunderstood. There are poachers and poachers. And whereas we may have a certain ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 28, 1893 • Various

... unpainted board fronts looked flimsy, transient. Compared to the substantial buildings of the East, Manti's structures were hovels. Here was the primitive town in the first flush of its creation. Miss Benham did not laugh, for a mental picture rose before her—a bit of wild New England coast, a lowering sky, a group of Old-world pilgrims shivering around a blazing fire in the open, a ship in the offing. That also was a band of first citizens; that picture and the one made by Manti typified the ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer

... what agony could be—things unknown in the world where the chief portion of his life had passed. He was a war-hardened campaigner, trained in the ruthless school of African hostilities; who had seen every shape of mental and physical suffering, when men were left to perish of gun-wounds, as the rush of the charge swept on; when writhing horses died by the score of famine and of thirst; when the firebrand was hurled among sleeping encampments, and defenseless women were torn from their rest by the ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... shadow: small wonder then if her nature was blighted and her view of life soured. Lady Gore smiled to herself, a little wistfully perhaps, as she tried to put herself in Miss Martin's place—of all mental operations one of the most difficult to achieve successfully. Lady Gore's sheer power of sympathy might enable her to get nearer to it than many people, but still she inevitably reckoned up the balance, after ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell

... of the bleached hair, and the flaccid face, and the bizarre wrapper; behind the coarseness and vulgarity and ignorance, Emma McChesney's keen mental eye saw something decent and clean and beautiful. And something pitiable, and ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber

... was anything to laugh at, in itself. After all, the year was 1962, and there were almost as many serious articles about mental health as there were cartoons about psychoanalysts, even in the magazines that specialized in poking fun. In certain cities—including Los Angeles—and certain industries—especially advertising—"I have an appointment with my psychiatrist" was a perfectly acceptable ...
— The Sound of Silence • Barbara Constant

... are of a mournful sadness, and, while charming the ear, rend the heart. There is one of them which occurred to him on a dismal rainy evening which produces a terrible mental depression. We had left him well that day, Maurice and I, and had gone to Palma to buy things we required for our encampment. The rain had come on, the torrents had overflowed, we had travelled three leagues in six hours to return in the midst ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... that it might destroy me, at the same time that it stopped the sensations of new-born life, which I felt with indescribable emotion. My head turned round, my heart grew sick, and in the horrors of approaching dissolution, mental anguish was swallowed up. The effect of the medicine was violent, and I was confined to my bed several days; but, youth and a strong constitution prevailing, I once more crawled out, to ask myself the cruel question, 'Whither ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft

... mental note never to seem fairly friendly to an explorer. If you do, he always decides to stay ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse

... Insupportable gloom oppressed his spirit. Pale and haggard, he wandered through the rooms of his palace, the image of woe. At night he tossed sleepless upon his bed, moaning in anguish which he then did not attempt to conceal, and giving free utterance to all the mental tortures which were goading him to madness. The queen became seriously alarmed lest his reason should break down beneath such a weight of woe. It was clear that neither reason nor life could long withstand ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... profession for the nobility, especially when the nobility were unable, through narrow circumstances, properly to support the profession of arms. Cortes, therefore, was in receipt of a liberal education for his day. His letters, some of which will be quoted hereafter, are evidences of his mental training. In some respects they are as interesting as are the famous ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... trivial and familiar: there is a sense in which we have all asked them ever since we were born. Yet as a methodical programme of scientific inquiry, I doubt whether they have ever been seriously taken up. If answered fully; almost the whole of mental science and of the science of conduct would find a place under them. I propose, in what follows, to press them on the reader's attention in an ...
— Memories and Studies • William James

... Platte had shone to the eyes of their imaginations as a threadlike streak almost as far away as California. Now they would soon be there. At sunset they stood on eminences and pointed in its direction, let their mental vision conjure up Grand Island and sweep forward to the buffalo-darkened plains and the river sunk in its league-wide bottom, even peered still further and saw Fort Laramie, a faint, white dot against the ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner

... character of the Guanches was the fashionable topic, as we in our times laud the Arcadian innocence of the inhabitants of Otaheite. In both these pictures the colouring is more vivid than true. When nations, wearied with mental enjoyments, behold nothing in the refinement of manners but the germ of depravity, they are pleased with the idea, that in some distant region, in the first dawn of civilization, infant society enjoys ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... followed with the same stigma on their foreheads. This is the way the author wishes to have it, and one must agree with him. In what way, however, can a history of one family exceptionally attainted with a mental disorder be at the same time a picture of French society, the author does not explain to us. Had he said that during the Empire all society was sick, it would be a trick. A society can walk in the perilous ...
— So Runs the World • Henryk Sienkiewicz,

... account of some blemishes of his coat. He was very gentle, however, and the Darbois soon felt confidence in him. Doctor Potain had recommended a great deal of physical exercise for the patient, to counteract the excess of mental work ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt

... ontogenetic fact is supremely important, for the most far-reaching conclusions may be drawn from it. In the first place, we have a clear perception that man, like all the other complex animals, inherits all his personal characteristics, bodily and mental, from his parents; and further, we come to the momentous conclusion that the new personality which arises thus can lay no claim to ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge

... and in his scrapbook at home there were pages of description about New York hotels, cut from the Sunday papers. When he was shown to his sitting room on the eighth floor he saw at a glance that everything was as it should be; there was but one detail in his mental picture that the place did not realize, so he rang for the bellboy and sent him down for flowers. He moved about nervously until the boy returned, putting away his new linen and fingering it delightedly as he did so. When the flowers came he put them hastily into water, and then ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather

... in this state of ferment at Barchester, there was not much mental comfort at Plumstead. Our friend the archdeacon had many grounds for inward grief. He was much displeased at the result of Dr Gwynne's diplomatic mission to the palace, and did not even scruple to say to his wife that had he gone himself he would have managed the affair ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... dismiss out of his thoughts, though he was in reality a fugitive from it, flying the vicinity, the possible sight, the spectre of a ruin which was beyond description. Merely to think of this amid an innocent company, around this decorous table, brought a sickening sensation, a giddiness both mental and physical. He turned his head away from the eyes of the mother, who, he felt, must, in her experience, divine something from the expression in his, to meet the pleased and guileless look with which Chatty was listening to that laughing disclaimer which he had just made. She was sitting ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... and personal property. Probably the assurance of Napoleon, the he had sought death on the battle-field but had not found it, was literally true; at any rate, the fate of the unhappy man, bowed down as he was both by physical and mental suffering, was so solemn and tragic that there was no room for hypocrisy, and that he had exposed himself to personal danger was admitted on all sides. Accompanied by Count Bismarck, he stopped at a small and mean-looking laborer's inn on the road to Donchery, where, ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall

... men to form a band, you shame dexterous trickery and imitation sounds. Then for the difference of real instruments from clever shams! Oh, ay, one will set your organ going; that is, one in front, with his couple of panting air-pumpers behind—his ministers!' Dr. Shrapnel laughed at some undefined mental image, apparently careless of any laughing companionship. 'One will do it for you, especially if he's born to do it. Born!' A slap of the knee reported what seemed to be an immensely contemptuous sentiment. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... yesterday's incidents, she threw herself across the foot of the bed, and clasped her hands over her throbbing temples. No sound disturbed tier, save the occasional roll of wheels on the street below, and very soon the long lashes drooped, and she slept the heavy deep sleep of mental and ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... and I went to Washington, as suggested by Colonel Lawrence, to see Secretary Stanton. When we arrived at Mr. Stanton's door I discovered the mental makeup and character of Wiegel. Mr. Stanton, in manner, was not pleasant to interview. He was brusque, rough, and appeared to think the world was made for him. Wiegel had much avoirdupois, but not deep brain convolutions. He had been on General Butler's staff in New Orleans. He was full of ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith

... pair of deep blue eyes. Following upon a sigh, he thrust his papers aside with a brusque movement of relief. Then he raised a hand to his broad forehead and smoothed his disheveled fair hair, which seemed to have undergone some upheaval as a result of the mental disturbance his efforts had inspired in the brain beneath. The handsome eyes smiled a reassuring smile into the ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum

... important facts of human nature, let us examine them as we do all other natural phenomena,' it would never do for such a man to say that without qualification. So he concluded his essay in the pooh-pooh tone of voice. He first gives a sketch of abnormalities in mortal experience, as in the case of mental epidemics, of witchcraft, of the so-called prophets in the Cevennes, of the Jansenist marvels. He mentions a nunnery where, 'in the sixteenth century,' there occurred, among other phenomena, movements of inanimate objects, pottery specially ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang

... bit off the end, and spat it on the floor, as if preoccupied. His brow wrinkled, as if the mental exercise were ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson

... a light diet is conducive to good brain work, and as I later learned, the object of this systematic weight control was not alone to save food but to increase mental efficiency, for a fat man is phlegmatic and a lean one too excitable for the best mental output. It would also help my disguise by keeping me the exact weight and build of the original ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings

... on each side. The form of the Sphinx was intended to express some spiritual thought to the Egyptians, and the stories about it are very interesting. Its form certainly denotes the union of physical and mental power. The form of which we have spoken as being that of the great Sphinx is called the androsphinx (Fig. 3). Another has the body of the lion with the head of the ram, and is called the kriosphinx (Fig. 4); still another has the same body and the head of a hawk; this is called ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement

... (Duke d' Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV.), King of Spain, grave questions raised by his accession, 151; his character, 154; Mad. des Ursins governs him through the Queen, 154; in disguise, meets his bride at Hostalnovo, 157; his mental defects—rather constituted to serve than reign, 166; his first entrance into Spain radiant with youth and hope, 166; Europe forms a coalition to snatch the two peninsulas from the domination of France, 167; compels the recall of Cardinal d'Estrees, ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... decorations, the screens, the niches, the chimney-pieces, the book-shelves, were all Gothic; and most of these were designed by Horace himself; and, indeed, the description of Strawberry Hill is too closely connected with the annals of his life to be dissevered from his biography. Here he gathered up his mental forces to support and amuse himself during a long life, sometimes darkened by spleen, but rarely by solitude; for Horace, with much isolation of the heart, was, to the world, a ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... M. Clifford Johnston of the Newark Johnstons, who calls Astounding Stories trash and its Readers morons. Well, there are various degrees of mental incompetence, and the moron is far ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various

... cease; that you gave in to it, much against your feelings, and with a decided notion of its impropriety and danger, and merely out of a sincere solicitude to calm Her Majesty's mind in a critical time, and to prevent the ill effects which great and mental agitation might have produced on her health. That this part of your purpose now being most happily achieved, you thought yourself in duty bound to advise Her Majesty to cease all her communications to you on political subjects, as you felt it wrong within yourself ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria

... none of you to emigrate to this country; for we know not who among you prefers rational independence and the honest respect of his fellow men, to the mental sloth and careless poverty, which you already possess, and your children will inherit after you, in America. But if your views and aspirations rise a degree higher—if your minds are not as servile as your present condition, we can decide the question at once; ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... possibilities of the little cow pony they put me on seemed more awe-inspiring than those of a locomotive. But I have been reading Professor William James and acquired from him the idea (I hope I do not malign him) that the accomplishment of a thing depends largely upon one's mental attitude, and this was mine all nicely taken—in ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson

... inevitable. A statue and a symphony can be reduced to a common denominator most easily if the states of mind which they induce are compared. Thus the analysis of objects passes naturally over to the analysis of mental states—the point of view ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer

... was marked and rapid; both as to his bodily and mental growth and progress. His happiness in his studies; his regular morning and evening walks to and from school; his abundant and nutritious noontide meals with the young Middletons; even his wood-cutting at the hut; his whole manner of life, in fact, had tended to promote ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... of the Mohawk warriors awoke, but the young Philadelphia captain and his men slept on, plunged in the utter stupor of exhaustion. Tayoga, who had made a supreme effort, both physical and mental, also continued to sleep, and Robert, lying with his feet to the ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler

... there is no indication of female scorn: there is exceeding pride, but no egotism in the sentiment or the expression;—no want of wifely and womanly respect and love for him, but on the contrary, a sort of unconsciousness of her own mental superiority, which she betrays rather than asserts, as interesting in itself as it is most ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... life that is possible for our remote posterity. Again and again has religious enthusiasm pictured a life to be eliminated from the grossness and imperfections of our material existence. The Spirit—the Mind—that mental gift, by or through which we think, reason, and suffer, is by one tragic and awful struggle to free itself from temporal blemishes and difficulties, and become spiritual and perfect. Yet, who, sweeping the limitless fields of space with a telescope, glancing at myriads of worlds that a lifetime ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley

... bluebird," said Colin, as a faint pee-weeing came with a thin melancholy note from a telegraph wire. And we both listened attentively, with a learned air, as though making a mental note for some ornithological society in New York. "Bluebird seen in Erie County, October 1, 1908!" So might Sir John Mandeville have noted the occurrence of birds of paradise in the domains of ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne

... The mental picture of the cow using the typewriter produced such hilarity that it was a few moments before the letter ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells

... the river Sarayu (now Sarju) flow from the Manasa lake; the sources of the river are a little to the south about a day's journey from the lake. See Lassen, Indische Alterthumshunde, page 34." GORRESIO. Manas means mind; manasa, mental, mind-born. ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... "I'll make a mental note of what I've got to avoid, but I expect they'll slip out sometimes. But about that pan, please! Might the janitor go out and buy it for me? I can't make any Fudge till I get it, and I reck—that is to say, I mean to teach those girls to make Fudge. ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil

... for all that his face was now beginning, as they stared upon it, to wear the blank wan look of one who is about to succumb to a swoon of exhaustion induced by intense physical exertion or by acutely prolonged mental strain or by both together—Mr. Bob Slack detected in this fabulous oddity a resemblance to his associate in the practice of law ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... ideas, but that mere executive art is subject to contingencies and depends for effect on the occasion. Managers will be obstinate; actors are bent on display—the audience is inattentive and unruly. Their object is relaxation, and they are disappointed if mental exertion be required, when they expected only amusement. But if the Theatre be made instrumental toward higher objects, the pleasure of the spectator will not be increased, but ennobled. It will be a diversion, but a poetical one. All Art is dedicated to pleasure, and there can ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)

... interested in their work. I began to view the various phases of human life from the standpoint of the evolutionist. In China I read Confucius; in India, Buddha and the sacred books of the Hindoos; among the Parsees, in Bombay, I studied Zoroaster. The result of my journey was to bring a certain mental peace. Where there had been chaos there was now order. My mind was at rest. I had a philosophy at last. The words of Christ "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you," had a new meaning for me. Not in the past or in the future, but now and here is Heaven within ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie

... Hyacinthe King at twenty—a curious compound of beauty, unspent verve, irritated longings, half-superstitious imaginings, and half-developed impulses, ideas and mental powers; practically, an assistant to the worn mother in her household duties, a haunter of the beautiful places in the city of her adoption, an occasional mingler in the scant festivities of artists, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various

... misinformed," I replied. "Your work interests me, because I am a student of nervous and mental diseases." ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... exercising great economy in the matter of food without making a similar reduction in the allowance of his drink. Under ordinary circumstances Vjera would have rejoiced at the quantity of work to be done, and as it was, her mental suffering did not make her fingers awkward or less nervously eager in the perpetual rolling of the little pieces of paper round the glass tube. Even acute physical pain is often powerless to affect the mechanical skill ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford

... beginning to gather over both North and South, and signs of an approaching conflict were ominously clear in Washington, where slavery sentiments swayed all departments. Clara Barton saw with keen mental vision all the signs of the times, and there was much to worry her, for from the first she was clearly and uncompromisingly on the unpopular side of the disturbing question, and believed with Charles Sumner that "Freedom is national; slavery is sectional." ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... destroyed the animation in his fingers on one hand, that it was necessary to amputate three of them a short time after, notwithstanding all the care and attention paid to him by the medical gentlemen. The effect which exposure to severe frost has in benumbing the mental as well as the corporeal faculties, was very striking in this man, as well as in two of the young gentlemen who returned after dark, and of whom we were anxious to make inquiries respecting Pearson. When I sent for them into my cabin, they looked wild, spoke thick and indistinctly, ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry

... be cultivated to the exclusion of the others, just as health-cranks may declare that diet should be watched in complete disregard of recreation, sanitation, exercise, the need for medicines, and one's mental attitude to life. But the sum of human experience, rather than fanaticism, must determine our procedure. Moreover experience has shown that the various successful methods of bringing words under ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... required of me before answering; but he did not say. He insisted, rather, on my answering his question FIRST.... To be perfectly frank I was not anxious to commit myself unreservedly without knowing ALL he expected of me, but it sounded cowardly ... so with a mental reservation I finally said: 'You don't look like a man who would ask another to commit suicide. Go ahead! I've decided to take a chance.'... Colonel Z—— S—— looked me straight in the eye and said: 'We expect ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe

... worship the wolf, and that though they call the volcano and many other things kamoi, or god, they do not worship them. I ascertained beyond doubt that worship with them means simply making libations of sake and "drinking to the god," and that it is unaccompanied by petitions, or any vocal or mental act. ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... held. "Andre," said General Washington in a private letter, "has met his fate with that fortitude which was to be expected from an accomplished man and a gallant officer; but I am mistaken if at this time Arnold is undergoing the torments of a mental hell. He wants feeling. From some traits[47] of his character which have lately come to my knowledge, he seems to have been so hardened in crime, so lost to all sense of honour and shame, that, while his faculties still enable him to continue his sordid pursuits, there ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall

... not achieved without a sort of mental wrestle. She was not quite sure it was spiritual enough to pray over; in fact, nothing just like this had come into her life before. She was not the kind of stuff out of which missionaries were made, and this wasn't just charitable ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas

... No. 9. Soiled, worn, cotton lace curtains hung behind not over-clean windows; behind these again were dusty, carefully closed Venetian blinds. Mavis passed and repassed the house, uncertain whether or not to call. Before deciding which to do, she made a mental calculation (she was always doing this now) of exactly how much she would have left after being paid by Mr Poulter and settling up with Mrs Scatchard. As before, she reckoned to have exactly seven pounds fifteen shillings. She had no intention of asking Perigal for ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... eyes half closed and his finger-tips together, as if he were taking a mental inventory of the facts in the case, "her nerves are so shattered that she will be years in recovering, if she ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds

... Massafuera. They were helpless to bring the boat near to the Island. Whale-boats were steered by an oar. There was not a single man able to lift an oar. In addition to starvation, thirst, weakness, mental anguish, their legs began to swell with a sort of scurvy, giving them excessive pain. Their condition can scarcely be imagined. The breath of life was ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... true, these questions have not been solved as dogmatism, in its vain fancies and desires, had expected; for it can only be satisfied by the exercise of magical arts, and of these I have no knowledge. But neither do these come within the compass of our mental powers; and it was the duty of philosophy to destroy the illusions which had their origin in misconceptions, whatever darling hopes and valued expectations may be ruined by its explanations. My chief aim in this work has been ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant

... physical hurt went away, leaving only the mental pain; the horror of knowing that the girl that I loved could never hold me in her arms. I shuddered. All that I wanted out of this life was marriage with Catherine, and now that I had found her again, I had to face the fact that the first embrace ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith

... its being aware of the nauseating potion, or experiencing any uncomfortable consequences. The flood of popularity produced by the Opium-Confessions among that large intellectual class of readers who, notwithstanding their mental capacity, yet insist upon the graces of composition and upon a subject of immediate and moving interest, was sufficient to float into a popular haven many a ship of heavier freightage, which might else have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... quarrel; but Lucien knew thenceforward that it was no easy matter to deceive them. He soon fell into despair, which he was careful to hide from such stern mentors as he imagined them to be; and the Southern temper that runs so easily through the whole gamut of mental dispositions, set him ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac

... answer the mental question he saw a figure—the figure he had been pursuing—dash from the woods on the right and make for the path he had just left. Drake swung round sharply and tore after him. The man looked over his ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice

... to him, Stevenson would discuss some sentence in an article, or read some amended paragraph out loud and ask whether Bok though it sounded better. To pass upon Stevenson as a stylist was, of course, hardly within Bok's mental reach, so he kept discreetly silent when Stevenson ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok

... sah; thank you kindly," said Toby, with the mental resolution that he would throw that tell-tale paper into the fire as soon as the visitor took his leave. "If I see dat man agin I'll tell him I don't want no mo' dat sort of trash to read. I'll be back in jes' ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon

... the room, and a remaining crowd of students hurried out after her. The crowd included two blinking boys, awakened by the bell from what had certainly been a trance. Forrester made a mental note to inquire after their records and to speak with the boys himself when he ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett

... mental results and conditions the whole being sympathizes. The perception of a certain range of truth, such as is indicated by Plato, Hegel, Swedenborg, and which is very far from what is called "religious" or "moral," I should regard as ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs

... hair with him, near his heart. Many a French officer had he seen since that day; many a dreadful night, in searching with men and lanterns for his wounded, had he relieved French officers lying disabled; but the mental picture and the ...
— The Seven Poor Travellers • Charles Dickens

... Moreover, where before had I heard that Voice, had I seen that Face? My Memory rolled back over the hills and valleys of years; but the Mountains were too high, and the Recesses behind them inaccessible without Mental Climbing, for which ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... bare brow, with its cot-building,—the three main associations of human energy to which we owe the architecture of our earth, (in contradistinction to the dens and caves of it,)—are curiously and eternally governed by mental laws, corresponding to the physical ones which are ordained for the rocks, the clouds, ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin

... happened?—that the peril of these northern invaders roused Malwa to exert its fullest strength; the military effort spurring up national feeling; the national feeling, creative energies spiritual, mental and imaginative;—until a great age in Ujjain had come into being. It is what we often see. The menace of Spain roused England to Elizabethanism; the Persian peril awakend Athens. So King Vikramaditya ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... the power to take my stand, and say— Bluntly, I will not! Am I in the toils? Has fate so weakened me, to work its end? There seems a fascination in it, too,— A morbid craving to pursue a thing Whose issue may be fatal. Would that I Were in the wars again! These mental weeds Grow on the surface of inactive peace. I'm haunted by myself. Thought preys on thought. My mind seems crowded in the hideous mould That shaped my body. What a fool am I To bear the burden of my wretched life, To sweat and toil ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker

... I care about reading. Sit down and talk. I suppose I am too indolent to-day. I thought, when I came on board, that I would do a lot of reading, but I believe the sea-air makes one lazy. I must confess I feel entirely indifferent to mental improvement.' ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr

... insane. In consequence of his pertinacious refusal to submit to the supreme will of Napoleon, the Pomeranian provinces and Finland had been lost to the kingdom. The monarch's personal behaviour unfortunately was so extravagant as to furnish some grounds for suspecting him of mental aberration. He was arrested in his palace, and, an act of abdication for himself and his children being extorted, deposed: his uncle, the Duke of Sudermania, was called to the throne in his room, as Charles XIII.; and, amicable relations being soon established between the Courts ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

... Esq. He came into possession of my mother long before I was born. I was brought up in the Counties of Shelby, Henry, Oldham, and Trimble. Or, more correctly speaking, in the above counties, I may safely say, I was flogged up; for where I should have received moral, mental, and religious instruction, I received stripes without number, the object of which was to degrade and keep me in subordination. I can truly say, that I drank deeply of the bitter cup of suffering and ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb

... However, as nothing past in it which can be thought material to this history, or, indeed, very material in itself, I shall omit the relation; the rather, as I have known some very fine polite conversation grow extremely dull, when transcribed into books, or repeated on the stage. Indeed, this mental repast is a dainty, of which those who are excluded from polite assemblies must be contented to remain as ignorant as they must of the several dainties of French cookery, which are served only at the tables of the great. To say the truth, as ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... bromide of potassium—or bromide of sodium, which is possibly somewhat safer still though not quite so certain in its action—is used as a hypnotic, as the standard anaphrodisiac, as a sedative in mania and all forms of morbid mental excitement, and in hyperaesthesia of all kinds. Its most striking success is in epilepsy, for which it is the specific remedy. It may be given in doses of from ten to fifty grains or more, and may be continued without ill effect for long periods in grave cases of epilepsy (grand mal). Of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... 'But all this is nothing to me. I must consider Mary and nothing else.' Then in a very few minutes I was wondering if the monkeys would ask me questions—if they have as strong a desire to know about us as we have to know about them. From such questions how much I might learn in regard to the mental distance between us and them! But again I put all this away from me and began to plan anew what I should say to Mary. And then again it was not very long before I found myself thinking how intensely interesting it would be to know what the tree-toads say, and what ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton

... immense ruins form one of the most remarkable features in the modern scenery of Rome. He built, too, the Temple of Peace and a public library. He appointed lecturers upon rhetoric, with a salary of 100 sesterces, but was possessed himself of little mental cultivation. He is even said to have disliked literary men, and, in the year A.D. 74, expelled the Stoic and Cynic ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence

... During this mental tangle I confided in no one. There was no one who could sympathize with my varying view of the subject, and I knew there was no one with whose view of the subject I could agree. Sometimes it was almost impossible for me ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton

... the enthusiastic boy, but they were never to be realized. Always delicate as a child, he grew more and more so as he became older, so that at last all mental labor was put aside, and when he was sixteen, and Lucy nineteen, they took him to St. Augustine, where he could hear the moan of the sea and fancy it was the Mediterranean in far-off Italy. Lucy was of course with him, and made him see everything with ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes

... his business and take no harm, but after such condemnation he was conducted there with the usual ceremonies and very shortly perished like any other uninitiated person. Whether this issue was due to magic or to mental collapse, or to the previous administration of poison, no one seemed to know, not even Nya herself. So, at ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard

... we ask of you two things, writers and thinkers of America. We ask, first of all, that you should defend freedom, that you should safeguard its conquests and extend them: political freedom and mental freedom, an unceasing renewal of life through freedom, through this great and ever-flowing river of ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland

... which die in the Lord from henceforth," etc. (chap. 14:13); that is, "Write down now these words of comfort." The apostle, therefore, wrote down his visions one after another immediately after they were received. When he wrote he was not in a state of unconsciousness, but of mental and spiritual exaltation above his ordinary condition. To affirm that he could not have received this series of visions without being deprived of the capacity to record them at the time, would be to limit the modes of divine revelation by our ignorance. If we cannot ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows

... by a man is influenced by the activity of his mind, as well as by that of his body. A man engaged in physical labor wears out more of his body than one who does no work; and a man occupied in a pursuit involving intense mental application, consumes a greater proportion of his tissue than the man who works only with his body.[13] In each of these cases, there is a different amount of tissue disorganised, and consequently a demand ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron

... waste. Circumstance had no power to conquer his spirit. His hearty good-humor never gave way. His sense of honor, which was sometimes even fantastic in its delicacy, freed him from the very temptation to wrong. He knew there was a better time coming for him. Conscious of great mental and bodily strength, with that bright outlook that industry and honor always give a man, he was perfectly secure of ultimate success. His plans mingled in a singular manner the bright enthusiasm of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various

... different from his tall younger brother. He was slimly built, scarcely the average height, and not prone to many words. He was given to day-dreams, too, and often did such absent-minded things as to cause his father much mental perturbation, and at times to wish that he had not given him so much schooling, but had trained him for a farmer instead of a school-teacher. Still he was immensely proud of his two sons, and as he saw them standing together, he decided that they looked far superior ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith

... lessons; Puritanism tempered character as steel is tempered with fire and ice, and the necessity of getting one's bread not as a parasite, but as a fighter, has had just as important results on character. Shakespeare is no longer an ideal to us; no single man can now fill our mental horizon; we can see around and above the greatest of the past: the overman of to-day is only on the next round of the ladder, and our children will smile at ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... I was acquainted took a sudden fit of mental derangement, and screamed and talked violently to herself. Her friends and neighbours concluded that she was under the spell of the evil one. The late Dr. Mitchell was sent for to pray for her, but when he began ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier

... machinery or shows a picture of it with a catalogue number. The "goods" are to be delivered later. However, the selling process is finished; though only the mind's eye of the buyer has seen what he anticipates getting on his order. The salesman has presented nothing except certain ideas to the mental vision of the prospect. But these ideas have been sold so realistically to the imagination of the purchaser that he gives his order for what ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins

... the gifts with which man is adorned, those of the soul are the most noble and most important—for instance, the characteristics or bent, and the skill or understanding in the exercise of a man's reasonings and mental operations. And since the soul is so dependent on the body and on its sensations, the spiritual operations are tempered by the bodily characteristics. These characteristics (in the judgment of Galen, Plato, Aristotle, and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various

... merchant, or a vintner "at the corner of Kirton Lane" — it is plain, from Chaucer's whole career, that he had introductions to public life, and recommendations to courtly favour, wholly independent of his genius. We have the clearest testimony that his mental training was of wide range and thorough excellence, altogether rare for a mere courtier in those days: his poems attest his intimate acquaintance with the divinity, the philosophy, and the scholarship of his time, and show him to have had the sciences, as then ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... angrily away, for the thought of the secret passage brought back his mental struggle, as to which course he ought to pursue, and flight being certainly the easiest, he was about to hurry off, when once more the low harsh moan smote ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn

... like the productions of bad taste in architecture, where there is massy and cumbrous ornament without strength or solidity of column. This has exposed learning, and especially classical learning, to reproach. Men have seen that it might exist without mental superiority, without vigor, without good taste, and without utility. But in such cases classical learning has only not inspired natural talent; or, at most, it has but made original feebleness of intellect, and natural bluntness ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... certain soreness and discomfort in his tone, as though his talk represented a good deal of mental struggle in the past. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... the syllable ticking from the clock of Time. 'Now' is the watchword of the wise. 'Now' is on the banner of the prudent. Whenever anything presents itself to us in the shape of work, whether mental or bodily, we should do it with all our might, remembering that 'now' is the only time for us. It is a sorry way to get through the world by putting off till to-morrow, saying, 'Then' I will do it. 'Now' is ours; ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... with men. They will not undergo the labor and servitude of long study at their trades. They will not give themselves up to an apprenticeship. They will not enter upon their tasks as though they were to be the tasks of their lives. They may have the same physical and mental aptitudes for learning a trade as men, but they have not the same devotion to the pursuit, and will not bind themselves to it thoroughly as men do. In all which I quite agree with Mrs. Dall; and the English of it is—that the young women want ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope

... 279: Huli-wale. To turn about, here used as the name of a place, is evidently intended figuratively to stand for mental indecision.] ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... Oxford.[401] The "Mr. Radcliffe" to whom he refers, and to whose malady his skill was called upon to administer, was Colonel Thomas Radcliffe, the uncle of Lord Derwentwater: the patient was at the time suffering from mental delusion, in consequence of ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson

... character, and love of independence, no people among the aboriginal race have ever exceeded, if any has equalled the Iroquois." [Footnote: Schoolcraft.] They occupied a region surpassed by no other on the continent, for grandeur and beauty united, and inherited from this or some other source, a mental constitution of noble structure, which placed them in the fore-front of their race, and when united, no tribe on this continent could stand before them. This has served to render their history, a matter of earnest ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard

... while the memory of her calmly loved betrothed husband grew rather dim. Then came her meeting with the handsome and accomplished young Duke of Cumbervale, and the infatuation, the hallucination that enslaved her imagination for a period. Then began the mental conflict between inclination and duty, ending in her resolution to forget her English lover and to be ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... politically and socially a unit, at rest but for the labors of peace; and in the sixteenth century, when the area fit for the support of man was suddenly doubled, when the nominal value of his possessions was additionally doubled by the mines of Mexico and Peru, and when his mental implements were in a far greater proportion multiplied ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various

... every apprentice carried. I have always been puzzled to know from whence they derive their belief. When pressed to state definitely what arguments they have to give in favour of such a demand, their mental processes seem to become confused. They are driven to prophetic allusions to future naval war, and the usefulness of seamen in that event. Of course no one can dispute the usefulness of sailors at ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman

... 'Mwanga whom I had kicked out of the store. Happily I was so dusty that he could scarcely recognize me, but I kept my face turned away from him. What with the light and the warmth, the drone of the water, the silence of the folk, and my mental and physical stress, I grew drowsy ...
— Prester John • John Buchan

... simply nodded an assent, showing no sign that he comprehended why his assistance was not desired. For all that, he understood it, he too having observed the mental condition of the sailor. Rising silently from their seats, and advancing toward the dead body, the captain and carpenter, as agreed upon, laid hold of and raised it up in their arms. Even weak as both ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid

... mental and bodily feebleness which seemed to characterize the dauphin, Mary's husband, who now, by the death of his father, became King of France, the event of his accession to the throne seemed to awaken his energies, and arouse him to animation and effort. He was ...
— Mary Queen of Scots, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... safest test of the reality of Love is to ask yourself how much you have suffered on account of it. I don't speak of such trifles as tears, heartaches, sleepless nights, fevers of jealousy and despair, sacrifices, or discomforts, but of real genuine self-torment and mental torture which only this passion is capable of inflicting on its victims. The most sceptical will acknowledge that its powers in this line are only excelled by its apparent animosity. To discover the life that completes and contents our own is not given to many of us poor ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various

... his face, and a hatchet and a tomahawk fell to the ground. One of the sailors immediately seized the two weapons to take them to the purser. I shall never forget the scrutinising glance of the man; he had evidently made a mental note of the features of the sailor, and I breathed a fervent prayer that the two might never meet in a ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt

... repudiated this mental cautioning, crying out to her to go to him, to pour out her love and need, to capture him safely in her arms. More than once she nerved herself for such an effort, only to become incapable of the least expression at his approach. Emotionally ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale

... it in vain to oppose, allowed himself to be sewn up in the camel's skin with the loaves and water, recommending himself by mental prayer to the protection of Allah and his prophet. The magician having finished his work retired to some distance, when, as he had said, a monstrous roc, darting from a craggy precipice, descended with the rapidity of lightning, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... a sad case: a woman young, friendless—dying, perhaps, and probably labouring under some mental affliction, and yet refusing to have recourse to the consolations of religion, and the ministry of the church," said Mr. Lacy, speaking rather to himself than to Mrs. Denley. "Have you," added he, turning to her, "any reason to suppose that this poor woman, notwithstanding her ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton

... to the county jail and put into the cell which had been occupied by Watkins the murderer. At the close of her letter she says, "If all the prisoners are as happy as I am, I can assure you they do not bear much mental suffering." ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 5: Some Strange and Curious Punishments • Henry M. Brooks

... of Bicetre, who is well-known to the scientific world by his profound works on mental derangement and the anatomy of the brain, died on the sixth of January, at Nancy, his birthplace, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... themselves in touch with country life by cultivating allotments during their period of urban residence, and precedence has been given to those who have shown a real desire to return to the land. Other essentials are a good character, both personal and as a worker, bodily and mental health, and total abstention from any form of alcohol. No creed test is required, and there are men of various religious faiths upon the Settlement, only a ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard

... on their raised tribune, while Cyrene and Dominique were pushed by the guards into some rows of benches in front of but not facing them. The individuals on these benches were as yet few, and Cyrene looked apprehensively around the place, while Dominique took mental notes. They saw, forming the sides of the hall, two amphitheatres filled with Jacobin women knitting, patching trousers or waistcoats, and watching the benches of supplicants for the cards of civism, and made remarks to ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall

... call up a mental picture of the little toy-seller. I didn't have much luck. I'd seen him only in that one swift glance from beneath his hood. "Juli, have you ever seen a little man, like a chak only smaller, twisted, ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... if she would join therein. Lentulus had ordered his freedmen not to deny her amusements; anything, in fact, that would divert her from her morbid infatuation for Drusus. The consul-designate had indeed reached the conclusion that his niece was suffering some serious mental derangement, or she would not thus continue to pursue a profitless passion, obviously impossible of fulfilment. So Cornelia had every chance to make herself a centre to those gay pleasure-seekers who were still at Baiae; for the summer season was a little past, and all but ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... and one could hardly allow a girl of that age to be thrown warm and living to the wolves and vampires of Barcelona. Perhaps he had been wrong in letting her do some things—drink absinthe, for example. One lost one's sense of mental and moral perspective in a place like this. At least he had guarded her well. If he had not met her that day at the station, she might have fallen into worse hands than his own. Things could not go on indefinitely as ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward

... search the ancient records of our race, To learn the dire effects of time and change, Which in ourselves, alas! we daily trace. Yet, at the darkened eye, the withered face, Or hoary hair, I never will repine: But spare, O Time, whate'er of mental grace, Of candour, love, or sympathy divine, Whate'er of fancy's ray, or friendship's flame, ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie

... prevails in our mental lives will in time produce its correspondences in our physical lives. As we understand better these laws of correspondences, we will be more careful as to the types of thoughts and emotions we consciously, or unwittingly, ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine

... tincture of Greek besides. That is no longer the standard. German must be the standard. The German exercise must be the pivot on which all things turn. When in the exit examination (Abiturientenexamen) a student hands in a German essay, one can judge from it what are the mental acquirements of the young man and decide whether he is fit for anything or not. Of course people will object—the Latin exercise is very important, very good for instructing students in other languages, and so on. ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw



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