"Mental condition" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... another party to cross the mountains into California. Fifteen persons volunteered. Not all of them were men—some were mothers, and one was a young woman. Their mental condition was little short of desperation. Only, in the midst of their intense hardships it seemed to all, somewhere to the westward was California, and that there alone lay any hope. The party traveled four miles the first day; and their camp ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... it—but in sincerity I must call your attention to the fact that every new phase of her grief has tended to some extreme manifestation, showing a disposition toward, not exactly mental weakness, but certainly an abnormal mental condition. I speak of this that you may intelligently guard against it. If due precaution is used, the happy mean between these reactions may be reached, and both mind and body recover a healthful tone. I advise that you all seek some ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... book progressed famously. Alice was in fine mental condition and Rosa seemingly took as much interest in its progress as did her employer. In three weeks the three opening chapters had been written. "I wonder what Mr. Sawyer and Mr. Ernst will think of that?" said Alice, as Rosa wrote the last ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... can be accepted as a faithful representation of his mental condition it will appear that he had on that fatal Friday submitted himself to the influence of three strong passions. He had accepted the South as his country, and he had come to look upon Mr. Lincoln as a tyrant and as its enemy. Hence he was influenced with ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... ghost stories, their contagious infatuations like those of sheep, their blind fury like that of bulls, and all those traits of character the Revolution was about to bring to light. Twenty millions of men and more had scarcely passed out of the mental condition of the middle ages; hence, in its grand lines, the social edifice in which they could dwell had necessarily to be mediaeval. It had to be cleaned up, windows put in and walls pulled down, but without disturbing the foundations, or the main building ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... incongruous combinations I spoke of; and forthwith I passed into the Co-operative Hall, resolving to defer my visit to the phrenologist. There are some facts of which it is better to remain contentedly ignorant; and I have no doubt my own mental condition belongs to that category. ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... stranger, and to be upon one's guard before a neighbor as before some lurking traitor. Hypocrisy became an instinct of self-preservation; every one carefully avoided speaking of those things of which the heart was full, and Berlin afforded an insight into the mental condition of the people of Spain during the most flourishing period of the Inquisition, or of Venice in the days when anonymous denunciations poured into the yawning jaws of the Lions of ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... truth that the real quality of the Renaissance was intellectual—that it was the emancipation of the reason for the modern world—we may inquire how feudalism was related to it. The mental condition of the Middle Ages was one of ignorant prostration before the idols of the Church—dogma and authority and scholasticism. Again, the nations of Europe during these centuries were bound down by the brute weight of material necessities. Without the power over the outer world which ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... vividly to himself the mental condition which gave rise to special arts and institutions, or which these evolved in the people. He must ascertain whether they increased or diminished the joy of living, or stimulated the thirst for knowledge and the love of the true and ...
— An Ethnologist's View of History • Daniel G. Brinton
... boy can't be a day over seventeen," gasped Dan Dalzell. "Anyway, fellows, I'm overjoyed that you all saw him! That takes a load off my mind as to my mental condition." ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... the motives which we have enumerated are plainly atavistic and pathological. They belong to a mental condition which would conduct an individual to the prison or the gallows. We do not argue seriously whether the career of the highwayman or burglar is legitimate and desirable; and it is impossible to maintain that what is disgraceful for the individual is creditable ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... at Culebra, would in time of war in the Caribbean, add a value to our fleet that might make the difference between defeat and victory. The effective work that a fleet can do is a function of the material condition of the ships themselves, and of the physical and mental condition of the personnel that man them. Fighting is the most strenuous work that men can do; it calls for the last ounce of strength, the last effort of the intellect, the last struggle of the will; it searches out every physical ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... the state can, as a rule, be depended upon to deal properly and considerately with the known insane. The insane are more trying and difficult than the criminal. Courts and juries and the public, however, recognize their mental condition and do not visit them with vengeance. It is appreciated and understood that they cannot with safety be left at large; but they are given the care and consideration that their condition demands. If the criminal should ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... present condition was anything but an added menace to the party. A half hour's questioning convinced Wilson that it was literally true that the last fifteen years were a blank to the man and that his mental condition at present was scarcely superior to that of a child. Consequently, in the event of an attack by the aroused natives either Manning would be thought to have been captured by the party, which would bring down swift vengeance, ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... drawn from the facts of military activity throw a special light on the methods and mental condition of those who so solemnly urge them; for the error by which these arguments are vitiated is of a peculiarly glaring kind. It consists of a failure to perceive that military activity is, in many respects, a thing altogether ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... bed with her face buried in the pillows, weeping in an uncontrollable manner that filled them with dismay. The doctor decided that while Dan was a good fellow in most ways, he evidently had not a soothing influence on 'Tana, possibly not realizing the changed mental condition laid on her by her sickness. The doctor further made up his mind that, without hurting Dan's feelings, he must find some other mouthpiece for his ideas concerning her ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... so, as JULIUS 'ANNIBAL, naturally well-posted up in this epoch of history, reminds me, NERO fiddled whilst Rome burned. Fact is, MACLURE in terrible funk; mental condition shared by his Chairman, Co-director, and the Manager. The latter, resolved to sell his life dearly, brought in his umbrella, which gave him a quite casual hope-I-don't-intrude appearance as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 16, 1892 • Various
... regarding insanity are common, and are apparently fostered by the reportorial writers of the daily papers. We read of people who are "insane on a subject." This is an impossibility. Many people can be drawn out and led into a betrayal of their mental condition only when a certain topic or idea is discussed. But although exhibiting their insane condition only when this topic is broached, they are in no respect sane. Not every act of an insane man is an insane act, we must remember. Forgetfulness of this fact ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... the home women and the visiting women—les femmes d'interieur, and les femmes du monde; the exact theory of the mariage de convenance, which is popularly but wrongly considered as based on mere mercenary motives; and the mental condition of the peasant, with his natural quickness of intellect and his stupendous ignorance, his adherence to tradition and ingrained superstitiousness, and his suspicion of the nobles and tendency to emancipate himself from clerical influence. It is France in a state of transition ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... God. Of his mental condition we learn something from these words: "In the enormous machine of the universe, amid the incessant whirl and hiss of its jagged iron wheels, amid the deafening crash of its ponderous stamps and hammers—in the midst of this whole terrific commotion, ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume 1, January, 1880 • Various
... Head Surgeon was talking with him, he relapsed into a state of mental apathy which caused that worthy man to remove his bandage and examine the wound in his head. After which the Colonel would leave the room with a puzzled expression. And in consequence of this curious mental condition, it was thought wise to defer the visit of the officer of the law until the patient's mind should show a change for the better. There was even a consultation upon the advisability of another operation upon the head, but the patient showed such encouraging marks of growing lucidity ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... nothing whatever of the questions at issue, that the mere sound of the instruments or sight of a bit of bunting tied to a pole was sufficient to enable them to dare a broken head, or even death. Beer may have been partly the cause of this peculiar mental condition, but not entirely, for sober persons felt the contagion. We may laugh at it if we please, and no doubt it is evidence of the weakness of human nature; but, like much more evidence of the same order, it is double-voiced, and ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... eyes now showed more plainly than words his deranged mental condition, and in a low tone added, "The Devil is in you, ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... held strong theories about the importance of the mental condition when work was in hand. Once fairly engaged upon a picture, he painted very fast, labored without cessation, and separated himself as far as might be from every outside influence. No new interests were suffered ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... is exaggerated and false has been written about the mental condition of passengers as they came aboard: we have been described as being too dazed to understand what was happening, as being too overwhelmed to speak, and as looking before us with "set, staring gaze," "dazed with the shadow ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... look at anyone who came to my window. The cashier did everything he could for me. No use: I quit my position, lost most of my friends, had to leave a happy home and came to Seattle to work for an old school friend. In the first year, owing to new environments, I managed to conceal my mental condition to a certain degree. All of a sudden, I was again plunged into the depths of black despair. It took me about two years to (partially) forget it, when the same thing occurred again, and I lost my grip. The last time ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... idea. It is a singular thing that most of my grandfather's savings disappeared at the same time. On account of his mental condition he can never tell us what became of his little fortune; but luckily the returns from the farm, which we rent on shares, and my own salary as teacher of the district school, enable us to live quite comfortably, although we must ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... As for his own mental condition, Dostoievsky gives us a picture of it in Injury and Insult: "As soon as it grew dusk I gradually fell into that state of mind which so often overmasters me at night since I've been ill, and which I shall call mystic fear. It is a crushing ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... character. There are, we fear, a number of people who regard Falstaff as a worthless fellow, and who would refrain (if they could) from laughing at his jests. These people do not understand his claim to grateful and affectionate regard. He did more to produce that mental condition of which laughter is the expression than any man who ever lived. But for the cheering presence of him, and men like him, this vale of tears would be a more terrible dwelling-place than it is. In short, Falstaff has done an immense deal to alleviate misery and promote positive happiness. ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... unendurable. Whether he had been strong or weak in electing to go straight to perdition when Life had scourged him, he neither knew nor cared. He began to drink on the steamer, determined to forget for the present, at least; but the mental condition induced was far more agreeable than those moments of sobriety when he felt as if he were in hell with fire in his vitals and cold terror of the future in his brain. In New York, driven by his pride, he had made one or two attempts to recover himself, but the writing ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... condition even the change from Harkutt's feeble candle to the outer darkness for a moment blinded Elijah Curtis, yet it was part of that mental condition that he kept moving steadily forward as in a trance or dream, though at first purposelessly. Then it occurred to him that he was really looking for his horse, and that the animal was not there. This for a moment confused and frightened him, first with the supposition that he had ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... to the Reynolds. 'You were both wrong about this,' said he; 'at least I think so. Real fortitude does figuratively, go helmeted and plumed. She endures so perfectly that she does not seem to endure. In this representation the lion shows you the mental condition which lies hid behind that fair, stern front. Now is Marie Antoinette like that?' He turned the ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... threats, Sarah sued them for a fortune in those days, L500 damages, and got judgment for L5, with costs. The Ackleys appealed, and at the trial the jury awarded Sarah damages of ls., and also stated that they found the Ackleys not insane—a clear demonstration that the mental condition of witchcraft accusers was taken account of in the later ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... strengthen his conscience,[536] was to be driven out of a city where the old local religion had never had any such power, and where the masses were now left without a particle of aid or comfort from any religious source. The story seems to ring true, and gives us a most valuable glimpse into the mental condition of the ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... Mortimer Arbuckle had consented. Dick saw his father was in no mental condition to locate claims, form a new mining company, and do other labor of this sort, and trusted that the days to be spent with the boomers would make him much stronger in both body ...
— The Boy Land Boomer - Dick Arbuckle's Adventures in Oklahoma • Ralph Bonehill
... know very little about the young fellow from the physiological point of view; in fact we don't know him at all; but it seems that his family is not altogether normal, and I understand that his mother's mental condition is precarious. If for a moment we regard Charles Rambert as a hysterical subject, we can associate him with the murder of the Marquise de Langrune without thereby destroying our case that the crime is a crapulous one, for a man of only medium physical strength, when suffering from an attack of ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... probability killed his wife in a sudden access of rage, provoked by some taunt or reproach on her part, and then, instead of calling in a policeman and telling him what he had done, made clumsy and ineffectual efforts to conceal his crime. Medical opinion was divided as to his mental condition. Those doctors called for the prosecution could find no trace of insanity about him, those called for the defence said that he was suffering from melancholia. The unhappy man would appear hardly to have realised the gravity ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... this reassured her much, lunatics not being supposed to be very good judges of their own mental condition, but she was so accustomed to obey, that she drew back as I opened the door before me and entered. The surprise on the face of the poor Chinaman when he turned and saw before him a lady of years and no ordinary appearance, daunted me for an instant. But another look only showed me that his very surprise ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... and through broken and equivocal hints, another singular feature of his mental condition. He was enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling which he tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had never ventured forth—in regard to an influence whose supposititious force was conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be re-stated—an influence which ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... own thoughts, Jewett disturbed the "conditions" by changing his position, and muttering short invocations, addressed to the shades of those he wished to behold. The operator finally declared he could not proceed, and postponed his performance for that day. So, excuses were made, until the mental condition of Mr. Jewett had reached that state which permitted the photographer to expect the most complete success. Everything being prepared, Jewett breathlessly awaited the expected presence. Quietly the operator produced the spectral representation of the elder Adams. Jewett scrutinized the ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... spoke with so much apparent candor that he was half inclined to believe the man's story concerning Toglet's mental condition. Besides, as Martin had said, what reason could there have been for such an attack if it was not that of ...
— The Young Bridge-Tender - or, Ralph Nelson's Upward Struggle • Arthur M. Winfield
... he ran off joyfully toward the town. This meeting maintained us in our previous mental condition; but it lessened our ...
— A Drama on the Seashore • Honore de Balzac
... mental energy, which fill them with wonder; yet all those high intellectual endowments have disappeared ages ago, no one knows how nor precisely when. It is clear that the nation which produced them has fallen into a kind of unconscious stupor, which has been its mental condition ever since, and which to-day raises puny Europe to the stature of a giant ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... of soul. Anyone who marks the general tone of editorials in colored newspapers is apt to be impressed with this idea. If the mass of Negroes took their present and future as seriously as do the most of their leaders, the race would be in no mental condition to sustain the terrible pressure which it undergoes; it would sink of its own weight. Yet it must be acknowledged that in the making of a race overseriousness is a far lesser failing than its reverse, and even the faults ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... was writhing inwardly, praying for Matilda's mercy. It was the most excruciating pain I had ever experienced. I remember it distinctly in every detail. If I now wished to imagine a state of mind driving one to suicide I could not do it better than by recalling my mental condition ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... the music-room, the mirror swung, the light travelled on the scale, the arrow was moved by Dr. Guthrie, and her varying emotions were recorded indelibly upon the revolving sheet of paper, recorded in such a way as to show their intensity and reveal to the trained scientist much of the mental condition of the subject." ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... condition to do jury duty"? The other men gathered around and endeavored to calm me. The judge, who had risen from his chair, dropped into it again with a frightened look, and with a voice scarcely audible, said, "Your mental condition will excuse you," and then asked one of the men to assist me out of the office. And I needed his assistance. I was so weak I could hardly stand. I wondered afterwards the judge did not commit me for examination ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... institutions all the afflicted. The point at which compulsory methods should be used might be placed at a widely differing level by many most acquainted with the need for some form of social control of and for this class. Parents in particular would resent any snap judgment and should do so as to the mental condition of children not obviously imbecile. It is certain that the high-grade moron makes much trouble and gives social tragedies without number, but it is still more certain that no social machinery has yet been devised ingenious enough to really classify ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... mental condition accurately enough. The heart of the little man was swelled to the point of breaking. A twenty-hour vigil had whitened his face, drawn in his cheeks, and painted his eyes with shadow; and now he wanted ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... made to polish the floor in an automatic fashion, but never spoke, and five years after admission she was transferred to another hospital, where she died (eleven years after admission to the ward of the Institute) without any change in her mental condition ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... more to do with the act of the next than the fact of cream being churned into butter in a dairy one day has to do with other cream being churnable into butter in the following week—either say this, or else develop some mental condition—which I have no doubt you will be very well able to do if you feel the want of it—in which you can make out a case for saying that oxygen and hydrogen on being brought together, and cream on being churned, are in some way acquainted with, and mindful of, action taken ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... the Rioters had given him, and remained in the same mental condition down to the last moment of his life. It was like to have been brought to a speedy termination by the first sight of his first grandchild, which appeared to fill him with the belief that some alarming ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... disposition of his property. If it appears that the testator was incapable of exercising discretion and sound judgment and of fully realizing the effect and consequences of the will, though he may not be absolutely insane, he will not be in such mental condition that he can make a legal will. If he is of weak mind and it appears that he was imposed upon or unduly influenced, such facts will invalidate the will. A testator having testamentary capacity may dispose of his property in any manner, ...
— Legal Status Of Women In Iowa • Jennie Lansley Wilson
... great difficulty in keeping myself from laughing in the doctor's face at his odd fancy, but the thought came to me with some force that I must not let his mental condition become known to the men of Mars around us; and so, instead of replying to his question, I turned to Thorwald and asked him if he could tell us how the moon had landed us so ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... business lately to inquire into the mental condition of some of the individuals who have reported the most remarkable occurrences. I cannot—it would not be fair— say all I could with regard to that mental condition; but I can only say this, that it all fits in perfectly well with the result of my previous studies upon the subject, namely, ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... the becoming and of the absurd. If the capacity for laughter be one of the things which separates men from brutes, the quality of laughter draws a sharp dividing-line between the trained intelligence and the vacant mind. The humour of a race interprets the character of a race, and the mental condition of which laughter is the expression is something which it behooves the student of human nature and the student of national traits ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... against myself. I had let slip words which, if she reflected on them, might rouse in her a suspicion of my abnormal mental condition—a suspicion which of all things I dreaded. And besides that, I was ashamed of the apparent baseness I had committed in uttering them to my brother's betrothed wife. I wandered home slowly, entering our park through a private gate instead of by the lodges. As I approached the house, ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... anthropologists ought to feel fortunate. Here, in the persons of witnesses, say, to 'death-bed wraiths,' are 'survivals' of the liveliest and most interesting kind. Here are parsons, solicitors, soldiers, actors, men of letters, peers, honourable women not a few, all (as far as wraiths go), in exactly the mental condition of a Maori. Anthropology then will seek out these witnesses, these contemporary survivals, these examples of the truth of its own hypothesis, and listen to them as lovingly as it listens to a garrulous old village wife, or to an ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... like an American," said T. B.; "even making allowances that one must for his mental condition, there is no inducement to ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... Evidently it is a mental condition in some respects more similar to the first than to the second stage. The second stage of human psychologic evolution is an aberration, a divorce, a parenthesis. With its culmination and dismissal the mind passes back into the simple state of union with the ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... the beldame seldom neglects to give her special version of the affair. So it happened here. Some miserable rumour was whispered about to the detriment of Dickens' morals. He was at the time, as we have seen, in an utterly morbid, excited state, sore doubtless with himself, and altogether out of mental condition, and the lie stung him almost to madness. He published an article branding it as it deserved in the number of Household Words for the 12th ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... knowledge of Physics, and to imbue the minds of our students with correct dynamical principles, have been long regarded as among our highest functions, and very few of us can now place ourselves in the mental condition in which even such philosophers as the great Descartes were involved in the days before Newton had announced the true laws of the motion of bodies. Indeed the cultivation and diffusion of sound dynamical ideas has already effected a great change in the language and thoughts even ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell
... again, I'll strike the lies aff his black mouth wi' my ain hand." She found a safe vent for her emotions in the subject, and she continued it until her visitors went. But it was an unwise thing. Raith had kin and friends in Pittenloch; all that she had said in her excited mental condition was in time repeated to them, and she was eventually made to feel that there was a "set" who regarded ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... with a sickly and sentimental devotion, through which its object became indolent, degraded, and lost to all moral and intellectual excellence. Then came the influence of those Political changes produced by Christianity, which, while they somewhat elevated the mental condition of this sex, left them still subordinate in many respects to man. At length a republic was founded on these shores, tending, in its true uses, to elevate all classes, but still to render each individual, when his own best interests were ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... overthrown, and for a time no other takes its place with the great mass of the reading public. This state of affairs is, however, by no means one that need make us despair of the literary future of America. It reminds me of the mental condition of a kindly American tourist who once called at our office in Leipsic to give us the benefit of the corrections he had made on "Baedeker's Handbooks" during his peregrination of Europe. "Here," he said, "is ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... Millville, and contained the captain's name. But this was concealed in an inner pocket in Captain Rushton's vest, and escaped the attention of the surgeon. So, nameless and unknown, he was carried to Calcutta, which he reached without any perceptible improvement in his mental condition. ...
— Brave and Bold • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... Worsley the chances of reaching South Georgia before the winter locked the seas against us. Some effort had to be made to secure relief. Privation and exposure had left their mark on the party, and the health and mental condition of several men were causing me serious anxiety. Blackborrow's feet, which had been frost-bitten during the boat journey, were in a bad way, and the two doctors feared that an operation would be necessary. They told me that the toes would have to be amputated unless animation could be restored ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... we may as well call sexual insanity, which is dangerous in direct proportion to its intensity. This causes many a "bad" show elephant to be presented to a zoological garden, where the dangers of this mental condition can at least be reduced to their lowest terms. Our Indian elephant who was known as Gunda was afflicted with sexual insanity, and he gradually grew worse, and increasingly dangerous to his keepers, until finally it was necessary ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... instance in which some undesirable mood was caused by your physical condition? By some disturbing mental condition? What is your characteristic mood in the morning after sleeping in an ill-ventilated room? After sitting for half a day in an ill-ventilated schoolroom? After eating indigestible food before going ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... She had no desire to do anything but what she was told. Her mental condition was one of complete dependence, and had she been left to herself she would have been ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... that I was mad with indignation at this ruffian's gross behaviour but feebly expresses my mental condition; to such a state of fury was I stirred that but for the restraining hold of the fair girl upon my arm— from which she by no means suffered me to breakaway—I should most assuredly have "run amok" among the mutineers, ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... Constitutions is likely to cause a rude shock. A shrewd English observer, traveling a generation later in the United States, went to the root of the whole matter in remarking of the Americans that, "When their independence was achieved their mental condition was not instantly changed. Their deference for rank and for judicial and legislative authority continued nearly unimpaired."* They might declare that "all men are created equal," and bills of rights might assert that government rested upon the consent of the governed; but ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... your last assertion most thrillingly," said Dawn, "for I know that a purely mental condition is antagonistic to spiritual light. How beautiful life becomes as we grow into the recognition of its laws, and learn of Him, who is law itself, and whose daily revealings, are the protecting arms ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... for his characters, he is equally deserving of it for his exhibition of passion, taking this word in its widest signification, as including every mental condition, every tone, from indifference or familiar mirth to the wildest rage and despair. He gives us the history of minds; he lays open to us, in a single word, a whole series of their anterior states. His passions do not stand at the same height, from first to ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... also know what I have to do. You have summoned me to assist you in this investigation. I obey; and I declare officially, that the mental condition of this unfortunate man makes his evidence utterly worthless. I appeal ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... not tardy to Sunday School, and, considering his mental condition, he gave a good account of himself in the class. He heard whispered ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... day, rose to some high thorny hedge, or stiff rail. He was perfectly honest; the consequence he sought was only in his own eyes—and in hers; there was nothing of vulgar patronage in the feeling; not an atom of low purpose for self in it. The whole mental condition was nothing worse than the blossom of the dream of his childhood—the dream of being the benefactor of his race, of being loved and worshiped for his kindness. But the poison of the dream had grown more active in its blossom. Since then the credit of goodness with himself had ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... do you arrive at a knowledge of the mental condition of your ignorant fellow-countrymen? Have you a special board for this purpose; and do no unpleasantnesses ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... check or change that sequence of events once it is started. It is a fixed quantity, and a part of the scheme is a mental condition during certain moments usually of sleep—when the mind may reach out and grasp some of the acts which are still ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... right to be born well. An undesired child never should be brought into the world. An undesired child or a child of parents who are not in good bodily or mental condition comes into the world with an inheritance that perhaps never is overcome. How can we expect children of parents with criminal tendencies ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... watch the performance. The mystery of the silent night, the thoughts of the danger which threatened the two girls, and the glimpses of the astounding performance within the cavern brought a dazed mental condition that made us ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... course, very considerate to the bereaved husband. He tried by circumlocution to get at the point he wanted, namely, Mrs. Hazeldene's mental condition lately. Mr. Hazeldene seemed loath to talk about this. No doubt he had been warned as to the existence of the small bottle found in his ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... not know; he did not know anything about her. But he meant to. Selwyn's threat, still fairly fresh in his memory, had given him no definite idea of Alixe, her whereabouts, her future plans, and whether or not her mental condition was supposed to be ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... Brinkley is right in his opinion that a second transplantation of the goat-glands into a human being after a lapse of years, when the first implant may be expected to have worn itself thin, will result in the same improvement in the physical and mental condition of either man or woman as took place upon the first implant. This is, in fact, the basis of his theory that the normal age of man and woman today can be surely extended from the three score and ten limit to possibly twice that number of years. You are invited ...
— The Goat-gland Transplantation • Sydney B. Flower
... brightness of tone and disposition; he has carried hope into the sick chamber; he has left it there. In fact, the very hope and good cheer he has carried with him has taken hold of and has had a subtle but powerful influence upon the mind of the patient; and this mental condition imparted by the physician has in turn its effects upon the patient's body, and so through the instrumentality of this mental suggestion ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... things were created. They taught also the doctrine of a resurrection and that of the immortality of the soul. It was at this time that they originated, or at least propounded, the doctrine of hell and the devil, a belief exactly suited to the then weakened mental condition of mankind, and from which humanity has not yet gained sufficient intellectual and moral strength to free itself. This Persian devil, which had become identified with winter or with the absence of the sun's rays, ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... found that most professions have special characteristics in writing and these are all liable to change, according to circumstances and writing is the clearest proof of both bodily and mental condition, for in case of paralysis, or mental aberration, the doctor takes it ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... a new millionaire, and which, if the true facts be known, the ingenious Louis invented for the discomfort of his favorites and the folly of future collectors. It creaked whenever Harrigan sighed, which was often, for he was deeply immersed (and no better word could be selected to fit his mental condition) in the baneful book which he had hurled out of the window the night before, only to retrieve like the good dog that he was. To-day his shoes offered no loophole to criticism; he had very well attended ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... times more than myself, and should I selfishly wish to unite her fate to a man who was insane, only because that man was myself? And perhaps my mental condition would grow worse ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie
... has been said, was brilliant with notables from Continental countries, and with the historic wealth of the peerage of England. Only one cloud overspread it; and that was the mental condition of the king. We have become accustomed to think of George III as a dull creature, almost always hovering on the verge of that insanity which finally swept him into a dark obscurity; but Thackeray's picture ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... Florence's expression denoted a mental condition slightly disturbed. "No," she said. "It's goin' to be printed in The North End ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... only they couldn't communicate on account of Viola's mental condition." Then, with unshakable conviction, she added: "If I doubted them I should ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... the gateways to the presence of God. In simple forms of verse, music, and rhythmical movement it can be encouraged—as the Salvation Army has discovered—to give this happy adoration a natural, dramatic, and rhythmic expression: for the young child, as we know, reproduces the mental condition of the primitive, and primitive forms of worship will ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... Mandeville's Travels? What light does it throw on the mental condition of the age? What essential difference do you note between this book and ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... man is constantly open to all sorts of impressions, and immediately perceives all the little trifling things that go on in his environment: the lightest whisper, the most trivial circumstance, is sufficient to rouse his attention; he is just like an animal. Such a man's mental condition reveals itself in his face, in his whole exterior; and hence that vulgar, repulsive appearance, which is all the more offensive, if, as is usually the case, his will—the only factor in his consciousness—is a base, selfish ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... hearer's own spirit that convinces him. Conviction cannot be forced upon one from without. Hence the well-known futility of belligerent controversy. No possible logic will lead a man ahead of his own intelligence; neither will any take from him the persuasions which correspond to his mental condition. A good logical pose may sometimes serve to lower the crest of an obstreperous sophist, as boughs of one species of ash are said to quell the rattlesnake; but with both these sinuous animals the effect is temporary, and the quality ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... all day along the old Crook road where the year before we had encountered so many obstacles. I remembered most of the road, but how strange it seemed to me, and what a proof of my mental condition on that memorable trip, that I did not remember all. Usually forest or desert ground I have traveled over I never forget. This ride, in the middle of October, when all the colors of autumn vied with the sunlight to make the forest a region of golden enchantment, was ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... no doubt, of that rich, self-tormented nature, reared amid the most complex movements of European intelligence, were really plain to him. And those aspects were specially brought home to him by his own mental condition. No matter. Broadly, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... proceeded a strange battle of ideas. Will's audacity awakened less resentment than might have been foreseen. The man had bent before the shock of his daughter's secret marriage and was now returning to his customary mental condition. Any great altitude of love or extremity of hate was beyond Mr. Lyddon's calibre. Life slipped away and left his forehead smooth. Sorrow brought no great scars, joy no particular exaltation. This temperament he had ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... paper into a pigeon-hole and forgot all about the matter. That day seemed to be more than usually dull and the hours to drag wearily on. He was conscious of a sort of suspense. He was waiting for something, or for someone. He did not choose to analyse this mental condition. Had he done so, the explanation was simple—and one that he dared ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... towards the close of the eighteenth century there sat in a back room in a little inn at Portsmouth three midshipmen, forlorn-looking and depressed to a degree quite at variance with the commonly accepted idea of the normal mental condition of midshipmen. It was a room, not in the famous "Blue Posts"—that hostelry beloved by lads of their rank in the service—but in a smaller, meaner, less frequented house in a very different quarter of the town, a quarter none too savoury, if ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... quickly, "of your meeting with Francis Heathcote, and the most unfortunate mistake he has made as to your identity. I cannot tell you how deeply grieved I am that this has happened. He has also told me of the very extraordinary change which that meeting has brought about in Francis' mental condition. Up to this point I can only be truly grateful to you for your kindness and sympathy with one whose life has been so pitiably wrecked, but beyond this—well, it is a very different matter. I understand the doctor has suggested to you that you should ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... dog—was there. But she soon allowed herself to be quieted by Paula, and she answered the questions put to her so rationally and gently, that her nurse called the physician who could confirm Paula in her hope that a favorable change had taker place in her mental condition. Her words were melancholy and mild; and when Paula ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... was the mental condition of our folk. Depressed by rain and dear food, beset by stories of plotters from Paris, or harrowed by the tales of misery of the French emigres, Britons came to look on France as a land peopled by demons, ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... the idea that money wants you will help you to the right mental condition. Be a pot of honey and ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... influence, had been completely banished from his eyes, and in its stead he became sensible of a profound depression of spirits. Physically, he was entirely comfortable, nor could he trace to any sensation from without either this sudden awakening or the mental condition in which he found himself. It was not that he thought of anything in particular that was gloomy or discouraging, but that all the ends and aims, not only of his own individual life, but of life in general, had assumed an aspect so empty, vain, and ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... fairly well used up wondering about you," Cameron was saying as if the whole matter were an everyday affair, but rather annoying; "queer things happen in a big city. We've done our best to locate your friends; I think some of the officials I have consulted have their doubts as to my mental condition. I kept under cover as well as I could until you were well enough to act ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... father and the mother should be in the best possible physical and mental condition during the time of conception and even before conception, and the mother should take the very best care of herself—she should be in good health and as calm a spirit as possible during the entire period of ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... they are no doubt an exceptionally thrifty and thriving tribe), is to-day ten times as great as it was fifty or sixty years ago. Here is a fact of serious import for the future. Two races, far removed from one another in civilization and mental condition, dwell side by side. Neither race is likely to extrude or absorb the other. What then will be their relations, and how will the difficulties be met to which their juxtaposition ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... and flowers he helped the bare earth to clothe herself with verdure, and that by playing the death and burial of winter he drove that gloomy season away, and made smooth the path for the footsteps of returning spring. If we find it hard to throw ourselves even in fancy into a mental condition in which such things seem possible, we can more easily picture to ourselves the anxiety which the savage, when he first began to lift his thoughts above the satisfaction of his merely animal wants, and to meditate on the causes of things, may have felt as to the continued operation of what we now ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... poor creature's disorder. The very idea that Sigurd seemed to entertain of his doing him any harm, showed a reasonless terror and foreboding that was simply to be set down as caused by his unfortunate mental condition. To such an appeal there could be no satisfactory reply. To sail away from the Altenfjord and its now most fascinating attractions, because a madman asked him to do so, was a proposition impossible of ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... could not die, so soon, had kept out of doors and in the city, until suddenly he did collapse. Or, rather, he met his favorite doctor, an intellectual savage like himself, who with some weird desire to appear forceful, definite, unsentimental perhaps—a mental condition L—— most fancied—had told him to go home and to bed, for he would be dead in forty-eight hours!—a fine bit of assurance which perhaps as much as anything else assisted L—— to die. At any rate and in spite of the ministrations of his wife, who wished to defy the ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... Krummacher, and bearing his name, was the daughter of a physician, who had come to this country, hoping to find a place as governess. Poor girl! she was a mere wreck when I found her, and all my efforts to raise her up were in vain. She was sick, and in a terrible mental condition. We took her into our house, nursed her and cared for her, and, when she had recovered, supplied her with work; for which we paid her so well, that she always had three dollars a week, which paid for her board ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... sinner or saint. We are tempted to inquire as to the strange mental process that could have led any human being to believe in such a Creator. Regardless of doctrine, creed, or theology, we cannot totally dissociate our earthly mental condition from that in the future state; we cannot refuse to believe that we shall have the same intelligent mind, and the same ability to understand, perceive, and love. Apparently, however, the Puritan found no difficulty in believing that the ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... of the crimes themselves, Donaldson admitted that his memory was very much clouded. He had committed the assaults when in a mental condition that left them in his memory only as evil dreams. The substantiation of this must come through his identification by the witnesses. He could remember nothing of what he had done with the purses, or the jewels and papers which they contained. ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... and as often the offer was refused or declined or relegated into the uncertain future for a decision. The surplus in his pocket had grown lamentably small. As he made his way homeward in a physical and mental condition which made it impossible for him either to argue to himself or to express a sense of hope to any extent, he passed the shop of Larry Highgetty. Larry was a shoemaker. Sam had worked at shoemaking while he was in State prison. He felt, although Larry might ...
— All He Knew - A Story • John Habberton
... look at her fiancee. Absolutely unjustified, in my opinion, but nevertheless she cast it. But it had no effect at all. Terror had stunned Bream Mortimer's perceptions. His was what the doctors call a penumbral mental condition. He was in ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... love if not his faith unshaken, caring only to remember her as beautiful, seductive, soothing, and mourning her as deeply, doubtful as she had proved herself to be, as he had loved her fondly when he believed her honest. It was a curious mental condition for a man to cherish, but it satisfied him, and his regret was not robbed of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... 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 ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... humour displayed itself in another serious case; one in which a farm-servant was charged with maiming his master's cattle by cutting off their tails. A consultation was held on the question of the man's mental condition at which the farmer was present, and at the close of it some conversation took place about the disposal of the cattle. Turning to the farmer Cockburn said that they might be sold, but that he would have to dispose of them wholesale for he ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... numerous associates that diversity of fortitude which I should have expected would mark their conduct—forming, as it were, a descending series, from the decided heroism exhibited by some, down to the lowest degree of pusillanimity and frenzy discoverable in others,—I remarked that the mental condition of my fellow-sufferers was rather divided by a broad but, as it afterwards appeared, not impassable line; on the one side of which were ranged all whose minds were greatly elevated by the excitement ...
— The Loss of the Kent, East Indiaman, in the Bay of Biscay - Narrated in a Letter to a Friend • Duncan McGregor
... "There have indeed been processions that surpassed this in outward glory and show; but in inner significant value it cannot yield to any." But making allowance for the author's personal weakness of head, his book is a singular and instructive picture of the mental condition of "Young Germany" and its teachers at that time—a subject that caused such extravagant anxiety to Governments, and so seriously affected the course of political history. It requires some effort to get behind the ridiculous side of the students' Teutonism; but there were elements of ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... fight o'er my mental condition, Hypnotists swear I was somebody's tool; And if I'm condemned, why a Monster Petition Will promptly be signed ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various
... Verloc's ghastly and motionless face. Having done with the visions of the past, she had not only heard, but had also understood the words uttered by her husband. By their extreme disaccord with her mental condition these words produced on her a slightly suffocating effect. Mrs Verloc's mental condition had the merit of simplicity; but it was not sound. It was governed too much by a fixed idea. Every nook and cranny of her brain was filled with the thought that this man, with whom she had lived without ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... stopped, I could not call him a fool; neither could I, in the face of his perfect composure and undisturbed eyes, exhibit a concern greater than his own. An uneasy recollection of what he confessed had been his mental condition immediately after his accident came over me. Had he been the victim of a strange hallucination regarding his house and family all these years? Were these dreams of revenge, this fancy of creating a new village, only an outcome ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... not to write, but to go himself to England and confer with him in person. When he reached London, he was surprised to learn that Hanwell was the most celebrated insane asylum in Great Britain. Had he reflected on the mental condition of Marie-Gaston, he might have guessed the truth. As it was, he felt completely bewildered; but not committing the blunder of losing his time in useless conjectures, he went on without a moment's delay to Hanwell, which establishment is only about ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... the mental condition of a player, the best results cannot be obtained. If a trick has been lost, it is gone. Thinking over it cannot bring it back, but may very quickly give it one or more comrades. As soon as each deal is completed, it should be erased from the mind just as figures from ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work
... of opinions, the chairman of the meeting advocated, with grave dignity, that all religious newspapers should be more conformed to the tastes and the level of a hungry world. "There is too great a contrast," said he, "between the mental condition of the laymen and the high, cold tone of the average religious paper. Let the editor of a church paper do as did his Master Jesus Christ,—come down to the level of the world, where he can reach the heart and the ear of ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... continue its solicitous care for the 8,500,000 women wage earners and its efforts in behalf of public health, which is reducing infant mortality and improving the bodily and mental condition of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... and so the adult whose movements are no longer directed by his eyes, feels utterly helpless and bewildered, as one who finds himself on a strange road, very late at night, with no ray of light to guide him. As the blinded soldier is uppermost in our thought today, I am considering the mental condition of an adult suddenly deprived of eyesight, not that of the man whose blindness has ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley
... isn't one of the talking kind like Gideon Fish," said Hugh. "Gid is always telling everybody about his 'emotional nature,' and his inner 'consciousness.' He seems to think his mental condition, a subject of public interest, and constantly sends out bulletins for the benefit of anxious friends. His manuscript was poetical, but I took good care to hide it in the bottom of the basket. By the way, Sibyl, how did you like Graham Marr's Lyric? ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... looked with serene complacence. If my companion had not deserted me I should not have turned back, but his defection destroyed all my plans. In several of my maturer ventures, I can recognize the same mental condition of serene indifference to danger while doing what I thought my duty, owing, perhaps, in a great measure to ignorance or incapacity to realize the danger, but also largely to ingrained confidence in ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... passed since her step-son's attempted murder; and though his bodily health seemed good, no change for the better had taken place in his mental condition. ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... in a surly frame of mind, a mental condition faithfully reflected in the attitude of his hired man who jerked back his chair and subsided into it with a grunt. Betty's irrepressible sense of humor pictured the dog (the Peabodys kept no dog because the head of the house considered that dogs ate more than they were worth) tucking ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson |
