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Mental   /mˈɛntəl/   Listen
Mental

adjective
1.
Involving the mind or an intellectual process.  "Mental calculations" , "In a terrible mental state" , "Mental suffering" , "Free from mental defects"
2.
Of or relating to the mind.  "Mental development" , "Mental hygiene"
3.
Of or relating to the chin- or liplike structure in insects and certain mollusks.
4.
Of or relating to the chin or median part of the lower jaw.  Synonym: genial.
5.
Affected by a disorder of the mind.  "Mental illness"



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"Mental" Quotes from Famous Books



... upon as a great delicacy for the table. The male is the largest; and two species are said to exist. The exploits of Mr. Gordon Cumming give us a lively picture of their habits; but there is nothing in his work which affords the slightest interest in their mental faculties. The following account from the pen of Captain Owen who explored so large a portion of the African shores, is the only instance I have met with which wears the semblance of almost unprovoked anger on the ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee

... one of the earliest effects of the anti-stimulating regimen, in those cures in which the system was in low condition. The animal spirits became more cheerful, buoyant, and uniformly pleasurable. Mental and bodily labor was endured with much less fatigue, and both intellectual and corporeal exertion was ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott

... entered the Imperial Parliament, at the request of Fox. An English constituency was found for him. At the same time, Plunket was brought into the house by Pitt; and thus these two famous men, the one so full of the brilliant, and the other so full of the powerful, gifts of mental science, again pleaded their country's cause together, and in perfect harmony, though differing on some political points. When Grattan first rose to address the British Senate, there was a hushed attention to his every word; as his eloquence kindled ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... office whose presence was an insuperable bar to any intelligent action: even in that mechanical routine which, in the eyes of the Emperor Francis, constituted the life of the State, everything was antiquated and self-contradictory. In all that affected the mental life of the people the years that followed the peace of Luneville were distinctly retrograde. Education was placed more than ever in the hands of the priests; the censorship of the press was given to the police; a commission was charged with the examination of all the ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... they are distinguished among the learned, their characters are in harmony with their pursuits, and they are recognized everywhere for disinterestedness, philanthropy, and public and private virtue. While Mental Philosophy, has made but little progress since the times of Plato, and the world is but little better for scholastic disputations, Natural Science has civilized man, elevated his condition, increased the circle of his exertions, and, by the development of some of its simplest principles, united ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... that the soul, which we invest with such high and perfect attributes, should commit such frivolous and irrational acts as these which take place so constantly in our dreams. "Methinks," observed Locke, "every drowsy nod shakes this doctrine." All we remark, is, that some of the ordinary mental faculties act in such cases with increased energy. But beyond this we can not go. We are informed by Cabains, that Franklin on several occasions mentioned to him, that he had been assisted in his dreams on the issue of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... is still, however, a hopeless and passive and negative state, in which the man anchors himself to some mere platitudes of submission to the Divine Will, misunderstanding and misinterpreting and misapplying the great and sublime law of obedience and translating it into conditions of spiritual and mental inactivity that are only a degree less degrading than the cowardice and ignorance that rushes into suicide; and the third, of learning the great lesson involved in the disappointment. Submission to the Divine Will is all very well; it is one of the sublimest of the divine ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting

... latter there is hardly any complaisance but among the publicans." [In regard to two exceptional instances of politeness on the part of innkeepers, Smollett attributes one case to dementia, the other, at Lerici, to mental shock, caused by a recent earthquake.] Idleness and dissipation confront the traveller, not such a good judge, perhaps, as was Arthur Young four-and-twenty years later. "Every object seems to have shrunk in its dimensions since I was last in Paris." Smollett was an older man ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... The child himself should be encouraged to make his own selections from this large and varied collection, the child's enjoyment being the object in view. A real and lasting interest in literature or in scholarship is only to be developed through the individual's enjoyment of his mental occupations. ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten

... the heavy work and was proud of it. He was in splendid health, for his insubordination had, from a very early age, saved him from drugging either mental or physical. The lighter gardening became part of my treatment for consumption. By having me each day lie on the floor on my back without a pillow, and gentle use of dumb-bells, mother straightened my spine and developed ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm

... defiance a man who had boasted a long career of success was the way to rouse his pride, and determine him to overcome her resistance. Angelique was not mistaken. Bigot saw her resolution, and, although it was with a mental reservation to deceive her, he promised to banish ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... it is the ultimate haven of peace, refuge, and happiness to which they pass after this life and wherein an eternity of eternities is spent amidst the delights of the flesh which appeal most strongly to this race of mental giants and moral pygmies." ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... know what I should have said or done, my mental state being that of a hen in front of a motor, if at that instant Mrs. Winston herself hadn't appeared. It was as if my subconscious self had made a dash and dragged her out by the hair! Winston was with her (as Mrs. Shuster ingenuously remarked one ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)

... of a course of lectures recently given by the writer in the Queen Street Hall, Edinburgh. Its purpose is to indicate the Natural Principles governing the relation between Mental Action and Material Conditions, and thus to afford the student an intelligible starting-point for the practical study of ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward

... left her the evening before, sweet, gentle and confiding; I found her cold, stern, repelling and talking to me as if she had never seen me before. Her manner was so convincing that nothing had passed between us, that I found it necessary to take a rapid mental survey of all the occurrences of our expedition to the Andelys to prove to myself that I was not somebody else. I may have a thousand faults, but vanity is not among them. I rarely flatter myself, consequently ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin

... That mental conformation created by the diffusion of this superstitious spirit is an obstacle, an insuperable barrier set up against the development of the moral sense. We shall sow principles of morality as the farmer ...
— The Legacy of Ignorantism • T.H. Pardo de Tavera

... blow for justice that marked the beginning of a new era of national life. And yet apparently the only men to profit by it were the giants who rode the storm it had created. The people were left in mental bewilderment. To their short-ranged vision the young District Attorney who lay prostrate on a bed of illness was a man who had been tried and found wanting. He had either wilfully and corruptly played into the hands of a powerful group of millionaires ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon

... The mental clouds dispelled as Sybil felt the freshness and fragrance of nature. The colour came to her cheek; the deep brightness returned to her eye; her step that at first had been languid and if not melancholy, at least contemplative, became active and animated. She forgot the cares of life and ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... the banquet, Edward, as was then the daily classic custom, relaxed his fatigues, mental or bodily, in the hospitable bath, the archbishop sought the closet ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... theology; who possessed the language of the Greeks and Latins; and whose versatile genius could maintain their opposite creeds, according to the interest of the moment. The indiscretion of an ascetic revealed to the curious traveller the secrets of mental prayer and Barlaam embraced the opportunity of ridiculing the Quietists, who placed the soul in the navel; of accusing the monks of Mount Athos of heresy and blasphemy. His attack compelled the more learned to renounce ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... half-way up, he suddenly became conscious that he was very hungry. He hurriedly ate some sandwiches and drank some water, and then, again, he gave himself up entirely to mental labor. When, at last, the noise of machinery above him and the sound of voices aroused him from his abstraction, the car emerged upon the surface of the earth, Clewe hastily slid back the door and ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton

... revelation. And, besides, it must be said, that for some moments his reason had deserted him; at each moment his ideas became more obscure; then he fell into that vacuity of thought which is to the mind what night is to the sight: formidable symptoms of mental alienation. Yet Morel answered, in a quick, dull, and a mournful tone, "Oh! yes, it is very ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... afterwards, that husband was pacing a parlor back and forth, with uneven strides, his whole appearance indicative of mental agony.—Pausing, he exclaimed— ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn

... violent death of an unfortunate fellow-creature by the very circumstances of that death, by the part which he had played in the affair and the occupation which it had imposed upon him. On his way to the commissary's he felt as calm and as free from mental care as though he had been on his way to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France

... little cook was seated by a hot kerosene-lamp, at a table covered with picture-papers, soft Japanese books, and writing-materials. He was in his stocking-feet and shirt-sleeves, and his mental efforts appeared to have had a confusing effect on his usually sleek black hair, which stood all ways distractedly, while his sleepy eyes blinked under Mr. Thorne's ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote

... affliction and sorrow, and this last blow brought her to her end. She pined away, perpetually restless and distressed. She lost all desire for food, and refused, like others who are suffering great mental anguish, to take the sustenance which her friends and attendants offered and urged upon her. At length she died. They said she starved herself to death; but it was, probably, grief and despair at being thus left, in her declining years, ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... six. Perhaps he had made it up with Mrs Raymond?... For the next ten minutes she suffered extraordinary mental tortures, then her anger consoled her a little. He had treated her too rudely! It was amazing—extraordinary! He was not worth caring for. At any rate, it showed he didn't care for her.... If it was some unavoidable accident, couldn't he have telephoned or telegraphed?... No; it was one of those ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson

... connection between the first and second volumes than he had imagined," and begging that the reprint may be the same as the first. "It would take nearly a month to refashion the book," he continues, "and I believe a month's mental labour at the present time would do me up." The weather in particular affected, him. For years he had been accustomed to sun- warmed Spain, and the gloom and greyness ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... that Bertie Stanhope was a man without principle. He certainly was so. He had no power of using active mental exertion to keep himself from doing evil. Evil had no ugliness in his eyes; virtue no beauty. He was void of any of those feelings which actuate men to do good. But he was perhaps equally void of those which actuate ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... the leading position among the writers of this century, we are clothing him with no ordinary honors—honors which no man can rightfully enjoy without mental endowments at once multiform and transcendent. Our age thus far has been prolific in genius, inferior, indeed, to no other, except, perhaps, the Elizabethan; and, even here, inferior only at two ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... of Miss Madison's wardrobe. She had hoped to reach Washington for the opening of Congress, but her mother had been ill, prolonging the last visit a fortnight, and gowns must be consulted upon, fitted and altered did the world itself stand still. And this was the one period of mental rest that Betty had experienced since her parting from ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton

... Dell, in a dazed way, recovered his horse, mounted, and aimlessly followed his bunkie. On reaching their saddles, the mental fog lifted, and as if awakening from a pleasant dream, the boy dismounted. "Did I have it?—the buck ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams

... innocent of impiety towards persons and places holding, until now, first claim on his obedience and affection. All this fell in admirably with his natural bent. Self-reliant, agreeably egotistical, convinced of the excellence of his social and mental equipment, Tom was saved from excess of conceit by a lively desire to please, an even more lively sense of humour, and an intelligence to which at this period nothing came amiss in the way of new ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... you, my friends. If you don't believe in Phrenology when I dismiss you to-night, remember that you are in the minority in this audience, and a very small minority at that, composed of unprogressive mossbacks and persons of small mental capacity, and if you will call at my rooms to-morrow, I'll tell you to which of these classes ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor

... in certain other worlds, such wide extremes of bodily formation and mental capacities, that a picture of them in word or art would only be unbearable and in some instances decidedly revolting, just because we are trained here to one set of standards and chained to one surface of world conditions. ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris

... the Czar in his PETIT APPARTEMENT, Private Rooms [a fine free-and-easy nook of space!]. The company there consisted of the Countess Woronzow, a creature without any graces, bodily or mental, whom the Czar had chosen for his Mistress [snub-nosed, pock-marked, fat, and with a pert tongue at times], whom I liked the less, as there were one or two other very handsome women there. Some Courtiers ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... When, after much mental arithmetic, Vincenzo solved the problem to his own satisfaction the little scrap of bad tobacco in its paper lining was smoked out. He looked at his watch, a Christmas present from Jean, and seeing that it was past the hour he began to wonder. There were no ghosts, and in any ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton

... film removed, Which that false fruit that promised clearer sight Had bred; then purged with euphrasy and rue The visual nerve, for he had much to see; And from the well of life three drops instilled. So deep the power of these ingredients pierced, Even to the inmost seat of mental sight, That Adam, now enforced to close his eyes, Sunk down, and all his spirits became entranced; But him the gentle Angel by the hand Soon raised, and his attention thus recalled. Adam, now ope thine eyes; ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... with a reproachful little laugh—'That is unkind! You know I never have a plot really, not the bona fide plot one looks for in a novel. An idea comes to me, or I to it', she says, airily, 'a scene—a situation—a young man, a young woman, and on that mental hint I begin to build', but the question naturally arises, she must make a beginning? 'Indeed, no', she replies; 'it has frequently happened to me that I have written the last chapter first, and so, as it were, ...
— Mrs. Hungerford - Notable Women Authors of the Day • Helen C. Black

... mouth," and very quiet at times; but never divining the reason, they had put it down to the wrong cause, or thought very little about it; and then Abe had so often roused himself out of these moods of mental abstraction by taking "another glass," and having another song, that he had kept his companions completely ignorant of the work which was going on in his mind. So now it burst upon them like a gun-shot; they were amazed; but the devil seldom deserts ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell

... angles suggesting the interior of a ship's cabin during a storm, or a party of revellers, returning homeward, after the night before, gravely hilarious. Behind the platform a blackboard, cracked into irregular spaces, preserved the mental processes of the pupils during their working hours, and in sharp contrast to these the terribly depressing perfection of the teacher's exemplar in penmanship, which reminded the self-complacent slacker that "Eternal vigilance is ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor

... short one, and began amid much mental confusion. "A certain man," he began, "went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves; and the thieves sprang up and choked him; and he said, 'Who is my neighbor?' You all know who your neighbors are, O my friends." Here followed a ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth

... the habitat of the bird, or the water of the fish. When the divine statement is made, "Without Me ye can do nothing," it is simply that of a literal fact. The gloom, the depression, the irritation that so often prevail and persist in mental conditions, do not arise, primarily, from any outward trial or perplexity; they are the result—the inevitable result—of the soul's lack of union with God; the lack of that rapport between the spirit of ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting

... pleasure, though assuredly not with unmixed pleasure, the appearance of this work. That a young politician should, in the intervals afforded by his parliamentary avocations, have constructed and propounded, with much study and mental toil, an original theory on a great problem in politics, is a circumstance which, abstracted from all consideration of the soundness or unsoundness of his opinions, must be considered as highly creditable to him. We certainly ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... tranquilly I lie At anchor from all storms of mental strain; With absent vision, gazing at the sky, "Like one that ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley

... a mental picture of John Quincy Forrest doing any manual labor with an axe or spade. During our short acquaintance that had been put to the test too often to admit of question; but I encouraged him to fly right at the bank, assuring him that in case his tools became heated, ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams

... of Vassili Petrovitch, which his lethargic, sober-minded friend regarded as indicating temporary insanity in the speaker, represented fairly the mental condition of very many Russian nobles at that time, and were not without a certain foundation. The idea about a secret clause in the Treaty of Paris was purely imaginary, but it was quite true that the country was entering on an epoch of great reforms, among which the Emancipation question ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... dinner," exclaimed the incensed mistress of the house; "for he always makes his appearance when we have anything he likes. I hope I know my duty, and can put up with what cannot be mended," continued Mrs Morgan, with a sigh, and a mental reference to the carpet in the drawing-room; "but there are some things really that would disturb the temper of an angel. I don't know anybody that could endure the sight of a man always coming unasked to dinner;—and he to speak of Mr Wentworth, ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... fifth—afterwards France and Spain. As time goes on, and as colonisation and conquest work their changes, we see a great association of nations formed, of which the Roman Empire is the maturity and the most intelligible expression: an association, however, not political but mental, based on the same intellectual ideas and advancing by common intellectual methods.... In its earliest age it included far more of the Eastern world than it has since; in these later times it has taken into its compass a new hemisphere; in the Middle ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... believed was to some extent one of rewards and punishments. The souls of most of the dead, however, were supposed to descend to the realms of Ha'des, where they remained, joyless phantoms, the mere shadows of their former selves, destitute of mental vigor, and, like the spectres of the North American Indians, pursuing, with dreamlike vacancy, the empty images of their past occupations and enjoyments. So cheerless is the twilight of the nether world that the ghost of Achilles informs Ulysses ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... of utter loneliness and desolation had not come upon Barny until now; but he put his trust in the goodness of Providence, and in a fervent mental outpouring of prayer resigned himself to the care of his Creator. With an admirable fortitude, too, he assumed a composure to his companions that was a stranger to his heart; and we all know how the burden of anxiety is increased when we have none with whom to sympathize. And this was not ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various

... me time—time to recover from my mental illness, since I had done no evil willingly. Since I had kept my troth as well as I could. Since I had vowed to love and serve you all the days of my life. You should have given me time, Rule, to recover my senses and ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... noticed that two of the chairs were standing close to the table, while two others were moved slightly back from the table as if people had been sitting in them. On the floor under one of these chairs he found a few spots of cigarette ashes. To Morgan's quick mind this carried a mental picture. Of course, the police who had been in the apartment the night before might have accidentally or intentionally moved the chairs, but he was quite sure that under the circumstances not one of them would have sat down to smoke a cigarette. At some time quite recently, therefore, ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne

... religion be false, only let it be supposed to be true, and it will tame mental ferocity, restrain lusts, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... Norton's life, and the difficulties that intervened were too absorbing for her to think much whether her son would find happiness in marriage; nor was it natural to her to set much store on the refining charm and the uniting influences of mental sympathies. Had she not passed the age when the sentimental emotions are liveliest? And the fibre was wanting in her to take into much account the whispering or ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore

... rain sweeping upon their faces was a tonic, both mental and physical, after the close heat of the train. They did not know why they had disembarked, but they surmised with good reason that an attack was threatened and they were ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler

... The mental activity of Catholics, all things considered, is far more remarkable than that of our non-Catholic countrymen; and, in proportion to their numbers and means, they contribute far more than any other class of American citizens to the purposes ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller

... hardly concluded when the veil under which Richard had shrouded his real temper began to be dropped. His craving for absolute power, such as he witnessed in the Court of France, was probably intensified from this moment by a mental disturbance which gathered strength as the months went on. As if to preclude any revival of the war Richard had surrendered Cherbourg to the king of Navarre and now gave back Brest to the Duke of Britanny. He was said to have pledged himself at his wedding to restore ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green

... marvelling at the strange perversity that could wilfully exclude every possible alleviation; there must be some sad warp or twist of the mental nature that could be so prolific of unwholesome fancies. As I turned to the bed I thought Phoebe looked even more ghastly in the daylight than she had done last evening; her skin was yellow and shrivelled, like the skin of an old ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... instruction. They will gratify the taste of those who love to read, and, what is more important, beget the appetite for books among the dull and indifferent. He who can stimulate children and young men and women to read renders a signal service to society at large. Mental growth depends much upon reading, and the fertilization of the original soil by the habit wisely directed connects vitally with the outcome and harvest ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald

... laughter, to fury or to love. Alone among the nations of northern Europe they had the susceptibility, the vivacity, the natural turn for acting and rhetoric, which are indigenous on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. In mental cultivation Scotland had an indisputable superiority. Though that kingdom was then the poorest in Christendom, it already vied in every branch of learning with the most favoured countries. Scotsmen, whose dwellings and whose food were as wretched as those of the Icelanders ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... English gentleman, of considerable property, and of more pride, whose estate lay in the vicinity of Ashton's native town. His father intended him for the Church, not because there were any manifestations that he was peculiarly qualified for holy orders, either by mental or moral endowments, but because he did not know what else to do with him, he concluded he would ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter

... many exalted sayings of the wise and venerable Confucious constructed so as to be of service and consolation in moments of strong mental distress. These for the greater part recommend tranquillity of mind, a complete abnegation of the human passions and the like behaviour. The person who is here endeavouring to bring this badly-constructed account of his dishonourable career to a close pondered these for some moments ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah

... of the boy, by a gloomy restraint of his mental faculties, was the only method of securing to themselves the highest approbation of his royal parents. The whole of our prince's childhood wore a dark and gloomy aspect; mirth was banished even from his amusements. All his ideas of religion were accompanied by some frightful ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... to happen? How would Sir Knight set to work to slay or expel the obnoxious dragon? Harrington felt mildly curious despite his sardonic emotions, and while he took mental note of what was taking place around him he contrived to keep an eye on his censors. He had observed that the young man's face while she talked to him had worn a worried expression, as though he were already meditating ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant

... hinted at escape. He could not imagine that any man could be a slave without feeling a yearning for liberty; yet these men lived through the unvarying round; eating, toiling, sleeping, without any apparent mental revolt. He could only surmise that all manliness and spirit had been crushed out of them, and from motives of prudence he ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang

... any time whatever during the campaign. The Boer army numerically was the most unstable known to history,[78] varying in strength as it varied in fortune in the field, varying even with the weather, or with that mercurial mental condition of which, in irregular forces, the numbers present at the front best mark the barometer. Those numbers, even in the heroic stages of the campaign, ranged from about 55,000 men to 15,000, with every intermediate graduation. ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice

... is the supreme expression in art. I heard one of the keenest men in London say the other day, 'The man who writes a book that everybody agrees with is one of two things: a mere grocer of amusement or a mental ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain

... all; and from women, no doubt, a kindness much more generous. When Ledyard and Parke, in Blackmansland, were persecuted by the men, did they not find the black women pitiful and kind to them? Women are always kind towards our sex. What (mental) negroes do they not cherish? what (moral) hunchbacks do they not adore? what lepers, what idiots, what dull drivellers, what misshapen monsters (I speak figuratively) do they not fondle and cuddle? Gumbo was treated by the women as kindly as many people ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... 2.—Camp 4. Made a start at last. Roused out at 7, left camp about 10.30. Atkinson and Crean remained behind—very hard on the latter. Atkinson suffering much pain and mental distress at his condition—for the latter I fear I cannot have much sympathy, as he ought to have reported his trouble long before. Crean will manage to rescue some more of the forage from the Barrier edge—I ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... a trifle grim and somber. The nose was prominent and boldly arched, the ears large and pronounced and standing well away from the head; the mouth was thin-lipped and mobile. Alaire tried to read that bronzed visage, with little success until she closed her eyes and regarded the mental image. Then she found the answer: Law had the face and the head of a hunter. The alert ears, the watchful eyes, the predatory nose were like those of some hunting animal. Yes, that was decidedly the strongest impression he gave. And yet in his face there ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach

... my instructions, I made one or two mental reservations. For instance, if Dr. Rendall himself was mixed up in the affair, he would scarcely refrain from putting questions to find out all about his guest; but I felt I need scarcely trouble my worthy uncle to compose ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston

... means of knowing in what frame of mind Mr Sawley spent the Sunday, or whether he had recourse for mental consolation to Peden; but on Monday morning he presented himself at my door in full funeral costume, with about a quarter of a mile of crape swathed round his hat, black gloves, and a countenance infinitely ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... In deference to those who professed to doubt Riel's sanity, a stay of execution was granted. Sir John Macdonald sent to Regina two medical men, who, with the surgeon of the North-West Mounted Police, were instructed to examine into Riel's mental condition. They reported that, except in regard to certain religious matters on which he appeared to hold eccentric and foolish views, he was quite able to distinguish between right and wrong and that ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope

... of your mental testimony, Polly. In the kitchen, with steam, working utensils, and crowed sense of room, everything takes on a sordid look and feeling. But out in God's sunshine and fresh air, everything looks and feels better. That is why sun and air are the best physician ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... few of the Dean's first editions and presentation copies, but Tom rather resented it, breaking as it did the harmony of the whole and pulling the eye to it with its reflecting panes. He had from the first made the mental reservation that, were the house his, he should take away ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis

... half a century has passed since the study of consciousness was switched into the tracks of exact scientific investigation. Five decades ago the psychologists began to devote themselves to the most minute description of the mental experiences and to explain the mental life in a way which was modeled after the pattern of exact natural sciences. Their aim was no longer to speculate about the soul, but to find the psychical elements and the constant laws which control their connections. Psychology became experimental and physiological. ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg

... now passed, from cellar to sitting-room in a flutter of excitement, her tongue, otherwise dormant, moving like a mill-clapper in the enlivening society of her spiritual fathers. These were the shepherds of the different adjoining parishes, whose custom it was to derive mental and corporeal comfort in sipping their acid wine and smoking their cheap tobacco in company. There might not have been any great harm in it, but nevertheless it seemed an apparent falling away from the singularly bright example which a good man, born only ten ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various

... the steamy wet clothes hanging on the kitchen pulleys as she cooked the supper, those Saturday nights when she and her mother had to wait for the cheap pieces at the butcher's among a crowd that hawked and spat and made jokes that were not geniality but merely a mental form of hawking and spitting; of the way that in those days her attention used to leap like a lion on the shy beast Beauty hiding in the bush, the housewifely briskness with which her soul took this beauty and simmered it in the pot of meditation into a meal that nourished ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... railway to the steamer, eating at the stations, and so forth. As before, he was convinced that everything would be cleared up there, and accordingly he banished from his thoughts all memories and speculations, contenting himself with one thing,—the mental preparation of the speech in which he was to set forth to Clara Militch's family the real reason of his trip.—And now, at last, he had attained to the goal of his yearning, and ordered the servant to announce him. He was admitted—with surprise ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... was very wealthy and was the owner of extensive estates. His chief and only passion was love of science, universal science. I have never yet been able to arrive at how this passion arose in him! It fitted him about as well as a saddle on a cow. He managed with difficulty to maintain himself at his mental elevation, he was almost without the power of speech, he only rolled his eyes with expression and shook his head significantly. I never met, brother, a poorer and less gifted nature than his.... In the Smolensk province there are places like that—nothing but sand and a few tufts ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev

... an end, and the reader looked up to note the effect upon his hearers. They both sat in most attentive attitudes, and each face wore an expression of puzzled astonishment. Not being able to reach their "inner consciousness," and read the mental comparisons there being drawn between this report and the very dissimilar summing up of the tramp detective, Mr. Belknap drew his inferences, as do we all, poor mortals that we are, seeing only the outside ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch

... open his eyes to the widest. He fancied that in the confusion of his head he had not clearly comprehended the meaning of the cura's speech; and he preferred this fancy to the alternative of supposing that the worthy priest of Caracuaro was himself suffering from mental aberration. ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid

... Jimmy that he could not think fast enough nor clearly enough to save himself from a mental disaster if he continued to argue with the shameless young woman, so he contented himself by rocking to and fro and murmuring dismally that he had "known from the first that it was ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo

... man want to marry the girl?" was Mrs. Montague's mental query, as she glanced keenly at her companion. "I begin to believe I should like ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... by the white men and women, and their progress has been rapid. It is the belief of all that only in enlightened public sentiment can safety be found for our peace and liberties; and thus the State is doing all that can be effected for the culture and mental improvement of all classes ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore

... punished; the laws must be enforced." History tells us that this was the language of King GEORGE and Lord NORTH when the colonies renounced their allegiance to the mother country. The former of these worthies, we are told, spent much of his life in a state of mental darkness—in other words, he was a lunatic. The other received from nature a narrow intellect, and inherited prejudices common to the aristocracy of that period and of all other periods of the world's history. Their errors were the natural offspring of incapacity and the false ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden

... critics, seem to me to glitter with the brightest dew of nature's own poetry, and to contain those very touches that make us feel akin, not only with Homer or Shakespeare, but even with Lapps, and Finns, and Kaffirs." [47] Vico discovered the value of myths, as an addition to our knowledge of the mental and moral life of the men of the myth-producing period. Professor Flint tells us that mythology, as viewed by the contemporaries of Vico, "appeared to be merely a rubbish-heap, composed of waste, worthless, and ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley

... Both were naturally meek and gentle; both led lives of retirement and contemplation; both loved solitude; both were celebrated for self-control; both were brave; both held their pupils spell-bound by their brilliant mental gifts; both passed their time in lecturing to the schools (what the Pythagoreans were to Plato, the Benedictines were to the angelical); both shrank from the display of self; both were great dialecticians; both reposed on eternal ideas; both were oracles to their generation." ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord

... incapacity to decipher foreign names or words, even when they stand before him in the clearest print,—an incapacity of which his book affords numerous examples,—and that this incapacity, and not any mental hallucination, has been the cause of the blunder which we have corrected. But we must add that he does evidently labor under an hallucination when he calls this letter of M. St. Hilaire a "flattering notice." He has been misled ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various

... anxious about Mrs. Brand, but more so for her physical than for her mental strength. For her powers were evidently failing in every direction, and the doctor spoke warningly to Janetta of the weakness of her heart's action, and the desirability of shielding her from every kind of agitation. It was impossible to provide ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... hours. Words had flown in his head once. He smiled. "Wings, what are they?" He remembered having spoken and thought a great deal about wings. Now the idea seemed somewhat absurd. They were not a part of life. Inventions. An invention. A phrase to explain an unusual state of physical and mental excitement.... Sleep intruded and the sadness melted out of him. As he closed his eyes his hand reached dreamily for Rachel and ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht

... stamped and endorsed. Did any old wizard's magic-box ever hold greater promise in smaller compass! Certainly not more than the bride saw in imagination as she read the figures upon the crisp bit of tissue. Walls, roof and stately chimneys arose in pleasant pictures before her mental vision. There were broad windows taking in floods of sunshine; fireplaces that glowed with living flames and never smoked; lazy lounging places and cosy corners for busy work or quiet study; sleepy bed-rooms; a kitchen that made housework the finest art and the surest science, ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner

... that made her look her finest and most superior and most beautiful? Having nothing else to do, she spent several hours in trying various toilets. She was not long in deciding against disguising herself as a working woman. That garb might win his mental and moral approval; but not by mental and moral ways did women and men prevail with each other. In plain garb—so Jane decided, as she inspected herself—she was no match for Selma Gordon; she looked awkward, out of her element. So much being settled, there remained to ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips

... In the highest 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" ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs

... and try the Smithsonian. You would have been the one, naturally, for me to turn to, but even if I'd had the inclination, which I hadn't, Roger absolutely wouldn't stand for the suggestion. So I went to Washington, all sort of strung up, you understand, and in bad mental trim because of—of everything. And in Washington I got a good swift kick. So I went to New York and spent the rest of Elsa's good money on Broadway. It didn't take me very far but when I went broke, I looked up your friend Werner. This ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie

... successful captures at the Debateable Ford was the more abiding, because more practicable hope. She had no further ideas, except perhaps to elude her mother's severity, and to desire her brother's success in chamois-hunting. The only mental culture she had ever received was that old Ursel had taught her the Credo, Pater Noster, and Ave, as correctly as might be expected from a long course of traditionary repetitions of an incomprehensible language. And she knew besides a few German rhymes and jingles, half Christian, half ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge

... through the rest of the day, unmolested by any remark from the rest of the family, but absorbed in her own thoughts, and the night passed in acute mental distress; with longings after Violet to soothe her, and to open to her hopes of the good and right ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... He had other mental troubles to torment him. For some time past he had had a confessor who, although a Jesuit, kept as tight a hand over him as he could. He was a gentleman of good birth, and of Brittany, by name le Pere du Trevoux. He ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... well-known scrap of evidence, there is a deeper meaning than is usually attached to it. I do not know, but it may be—I have a strong suspicion that it is—a clue to the slow growth of the crime, and its gradual development in the mind. More than this; a clue to the mental connection of the deed, with the punishment to which the doer of that deed is liable, until the two, conjoined, give birth to monstrous and ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens

... a little more," said the Frenchman; "fatigue of body is the best antidote to such severe mental labor as ours. I'll run up the ladder a bit." So saying, he paid another visit to the upper portion of the Projectile and remained there awhile whistling Malbrouk, whilst his companions amused themselves in ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne

... a little girl like me to lead him and be good to him," was her next mental comment, and the wild idea crossed her brain that possibly Mrs. Atherton would let her come up to Collingwood and be his waiting maid. This brought to mind a second time the object of her being there now, and she began to devise the best plan for delivering the bouquet. "I don't believe he cares ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes

... those who care little for mere beauty of style—or who cannot stand the loss of it in translation—may find here a vivid picture, by a hand of the most qualified, of the mental condition which produced the masterpieces of 1825-1850. And the contrast with the "discouraged generation" which immediately followed is ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... was no mind. Indeed, many facts suggest the conclusion that wherever there is life there is some degree of mind—even in the plants. Or it might be more accurate to put the conclusion in another way, that the activity we call life has always in some degree an inner or mental aspect. ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson

... hearers, but in a veritable ecstasy—that Cromwell claimed to stand before God, as one who 'had learned too much of God, to dally with him,' still it must be felt, that such an assertion, coming from such a Protector, reveals a mental condition that baffles the understanding. But as man, when he shrinks from passing judgment on another, ever takes the better part; and as even with the best amongst us, the relation of the soul to God is a question which, of all others, should not be intermeddled with, ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various

... glance at Bob, who listens attentively to the theme of conversation, she continues: "Say no more of bad influence coming of slaves, when the corruptest examples are set by those who hold them as such,—who crash their hopes, blot out their mental faculties, and turn their bodies into licentious merchandise that they may profit by its degradation! Show me the humblest slave on your plantation, and, in comparison with the slave-dealer, I will prove him a nobleman of God's kind,—of God's image: his simple nature will be his clean ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams



Words linked to "Mental" :   mind, moral, noetic, unhealthy, psychical, intellectual, mental age, psychological, rational, biological science, mentum, physical, psychic, psychogenic, biology



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