"Mental strain" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to. Her health suffered through anxiety and hard work. She was too proud to complain, but the sight of her dumb unacceptance of what had come to her through him undoubtedly added the last straw to her husband's mental strain. ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... with physical fatigue and weeks of mental strain, came repeatedly against the dead wall of ignorance when she tried to fathom the change that had taken place between herself and John Gilman and between herself and Eileen. Daniel Thorne was an older man than Doctor Strong. He had ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... once more in sight, again he prepared himself for action, and for a few minutes the task would be Herculean—the mental strain equally phenomenal. His keen, swift, unerring glance never once at fault, his rapid movements almost mechanically sure, he plied his pole, whilst lightly as a feather our little boat danced from cascade to cascade, all but touching ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... wearing his clothes, his hat, and his shoes, and smoking his beloved pipe, and of the perplexities and agitations consequent upon his sentiments toward Mrs. Himes, that he did not believe he could bear the mental strain ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... other pituitary disturbances which tinctured his life were certain "brain storms," attacks of vomiting followed by "stupor verging on unconsciousness" brought on by outbursts of temper, physical overexertion, mental strain, or sexual excitement. It has been shown that such epileptic tendencies are present in subjects of pituitary disease, particularly those with pituitary instability. In Napoleon's case the brain attacks may have ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... crowd would have run us down within twenty-four hours. And Monte Carlo is ruled out because it's exactly the kind of place everybody expected us to go. So—with all respect to you—it wasn't much of a mental strain to decide on Como." ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... he said at last, when the creaking of the table, slight as it was, became insupportable. "My name is Richard Yates, and I come from New York. I am camping out in this neighborhood to relieve, as it were, a mental strain—the result of years ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... children till they have been given a clean bill of health. Nor should children be begotten when the body is weakened by temporary disease or during the stage of debilitating after-effects. For disease and fatigue affect sex cells unfavorably. So do mental strain, depression and overexcitement. Unhealthy physical and mental states in the parents lead to debilitated or deficient offspring. They open the way to the operation of undesirable hereditary factors which generations of self-controlled ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... person in anxiety, or overstrained, will seem to be, probably, fortuitous coincidences like the others. All percipients, of all sorts of hallucinations, hits or misses, were asked if they were in grief or anxiety. Now, out of 1,622 cases of hallucination of all known kinds (coincidental or not), mental strain was reported in 220 instances; of which 131 were cases of grief about known deaths or anxiety. These mental conditions, therefore, occur only in twelve per cent. of the instances. On the whole, it does not seem fair to argue that anxiety produces so much hallucination that it will account by itself ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... from her exhaust, a sign of exhaustion, told Rick that Jan was tired. Probably the mental strain more than the exercise had left her too weak for further swimming. He slung the camera from a belt hook, took her hand and shook it solemnly, then led the way ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine
... walk and returned to the hotel for dinner. The evening was spent in the hotel parlors, where the team was entertained and had opportunity for relaxation from the mental strain that was necessarily a part of the situation. A general reception took place in the corridors, players of old days came around to see the team, to revive old memories, and cheer the men of ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... hob-nails in the Subaltern's boots began to press through the soles. To put his feet to the ground was an agony, and they swelled with the pain and heat. The bones of them ached with bearing his weight. They longed for air, to be dangling in some cool, babbling stream. The mental strain of the morning's action was as nothing compared to the physical pain of the afternoon. The Colonel, seeing his plight, offered to lend him his horse, but he thanked him and declined, as there is a sort ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... early outlined to him the grounds for her father's suspicions, but said nothing concerning the Browning case. She emphasized my action which had frightened her father, but did not go into details, for Jim was too weak to stand the mental strain she feared might be imposed on him if he were to enter into a discussion of the matters her father had told her were conclusive evidence that Jim was a notorious criminal. It was all too ridiculous for her to believe. Her ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... his labors the manufacturing of leather, from all kinds of hides, with the chemistry of fine tanning, which is equal to all previous mental motions. Add and you find 4250 revolutions all drawing on his brain each minute of the day. Add to this mental strain the increased action of his body which has to perform these duties and you see the beginning of a worry of both mind and body, to which you add manufacturing of engines, iron puddling, rolling, etc.; a delegate to a national convention, thoughts of the death of a near relative; add to this ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... Fear of the North, the mental strain, and the ravages of the disease, they lost all semblance of humanity, taking on the appearance of wild beasts, hunted and desperate. Their cheeks and noses, as an aftermath of the freezing, had ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... distance. The wearing suspense of the long waiting, while standing on our feet; the exasperating halts following those false starts, when everybody was almost frantic with impatience to go on; the excessive physical fatigue, combined with the intense mental strain when already haggard from much loss of sleep during the three days and nights preceding, make that night memorable as by far the most trying in nearly four years of soldiering. It afforded unspeakable relief when, just as daylight was beginning to dawn, ...
— The Battle of Spring Hill, Tennessee - read after the stated meeting held February 2d, 1907 • John K. Shellenberger
... laughingly found for him, when he had so joyously announced the completion of the last page of his book, he turned the leaves idly,—reading here and there a sentence with curious interest. The terrific mental strain of his situation completely divorced him, as it were, from the life which he had lived during those happy months just past, and which was so fully represented ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... where his forces had foiled the Confederate cavalry. For more than a week he had been constantly in the saddle, moving from one point on his lines to another and begrudging even the time for food and sleep in his efforts to hasten the pursuit. But the tremendous physical and mental strain to which he had subjected himself had already begun to tell upon him, and he had passed the previous night under a surgeon's care endeavoring to put himself in fit condition for the final struggle which Lee's refusal to surrender led him to expect. The dawn of April ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... not shake off the memory of his comrade's face. Larry had made no protest, but Breckenridge could understand what he was feeling. The ranch was very quiet, but he did not think his comrade slept; in this, however, he was wrong, for, worn out by physical effort and mental strain, Larry ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... was sleeping quietly, and, while he was examining him, Sir Arthur arrived, and was told that he had been taken ill shortly after dinner, and this the Doctor explained was probably due to the very severe mental strain to which he had subjected himself during the last week or so. He went up to his room and found Koda Bux on guard. ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... it. And the tiredness comes from mental strain. Poor Mary! It seems so hard for her to be happy, yet in all her life she has never lacked anything she wanted save one, and even that I am in hopes she will get yet, if only she has the patience to wait ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... and on October 30th Goethe left Frankfort with Italy as his intended goal. Heidelberg was to be his first stage, and on the way thither he began the Journal in which he meant to record the narrative of his travels. The two pages he wrote are the intense expression of the mental strain in which he set forth on a journey which was to have such a different issue from what he dreamt. The parting from Lili was uppermost in his thoughts. "Adieu, Lili," he wrote, "adieu for the second ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... rode sleepily; the Gulab warm and happy, cuddled in the protecting cloak, and Barlow grim, oppressed by fatigue and the mental strain of feared disaster. Now the muscles of the horse rippled in heavier toil, and his hoofs beat the earth in shorted stride; the way was rising from the plain as it approached the plateau that was like an immense shelf let into the wall of the world above the lowland; a shelf that ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... "helm of the ship" lead a life of comparative ease and security. But if we consider the fearful responsibilities that they have to carry and the tremendous mental strain under which they are continuously, we can readily see that their lot is not to be envied. Of course, their rewards are equally great if they are successful. But what if they fail? At any rate they, as well as the troops who fight under them, have the glamour ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... it seemed to see him out. With one and all the young man was very blithe, though he let them do most of the talking. They all told him heartily that he was looking wonderfully well, while they ignored with the understanding of the intelligent certain signs which spoke of physical and mental strain. ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... hoarse clamour died away after a while. She sat there, head bent, silent, impassive, acquiescent under the physical and mental strain to which she had never become thoroughly hardened. How many such scenes had she witnessed! She could not count them. They differed very little in detail, and not at all in their ultimate object, which was to get what money ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... near his comrade, and for an hour neither of them said anything. Wyllard, at least, was worn-out physically, and limp from the last few hours' mental strain, while Lewson very seldom said more than was absolutely necessary. Then they made a very frugal meal, and long afterwards Wyllard was haunted by the memory of that dreary afternoon during which he ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... in hysterics," says Mr. Robert, "and his sweetheart. Think of the suspense, the mental strain they must be under. If we can find Penrhyn we must do so as quickly as possible. Let's go back to the office and look ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... received the telegram last November telling me of my husband's death, I had a very bad nervous breakdown. I do not think it was caused so much by my loss, as by a prolonged mental strain, which had preceded it. Just as I had moved to town and was getting better, full details arrived, and I had to be told that it had been an accident. You know all about the question as to whether I should hear the name or not. You also know my decision. The ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... greatest sorrow perhaps of his whole life. I have already spoken of the sudden death of the little son in whom so much of his own and his wife's happiness was centred. The suddenness of the blow made it all the more crushing, and the mental strain, intensified by the sight of his wife's inconsolable grief, brought him perilously near a complete breakdown. But the birth of another son, on December 11, gave the mother some comfort; and as the result of a friendly conspiracy between her and Dr. Tyndall, Huxley himself was carried off for a ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... grasp the thought that she was actually of his race, a runaway slave, or permit his tongue to utter any words of equality. Indeed, I could not prevent my own glance from being constantly attracted in her direction, also. Whatever had been her mental strain and anguish, the long hours of the night had in no marked degree diminished her beauty. To me she appeared even younger, and more attractive than in the dim glare of the lamplight the evening before; and this in spite of a weariness in her eyes, and the lassitude of her manner. She spoke but little, ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... who assumed full responsibility for the dismissal of the Mercier administration, were respectively attorney-general and premier in the cabinet who so deeply resented a similar action in 1878. But Mr. Letellier was then dead—notoriously as a result of the mental strain to which he had been subject in the constitutional crisis which wrecked his political career—and it was left only for his friends to feel that the whirligig of time brings its revenge even ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... throwing that dang doctor up at me!" Adams interrupted, peevishly. "He said I'd be good for SOME kind of light job—if I could find just the right thing. 'Where there wouldn't be either any physical or mental strain,' he said. Well, I got to find something like that. Anyway, I'll feel better if I can just get ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... of the swiftest method of escape. He was not fleeing from justice or pursuit. When the mind is in torture and the spirit is torn, the instinctive effort is to bodily activity, to force physical exertion, as if there must be compensation for the mental strain in the weariness of nature. The priest obeyed this instinct, as if it were possible to walk away from himself, and went on, at first with almost no sense ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... strain of these walks on the hillside was accompanied by a mental strain almost as distressing. It would have been bad enough if one's only responsibility had been to keep Mr. Pulitzer from being crushed against the hillside, or being run over; but this was only half the problem. The other half was ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... to realize at last that her health was suffering from such constant grieving, and that she must find something to occupy her time more fully and take her thoughts from herself, or she would soon break down beneath such severe mental strain. ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... tired for another. She took no interest in anything that had distracted her before; she would only read, and write letters to you and in the end she renounced even these relaxations. The doctors suspect that some mental strain may have been worrying her, but I can think of none. All that we could do to make her happy and comfortable we did, and I have never heard her complain, or wish for anything that she had not already. What will I do if I lose her?" Madame de Beaumont suddenly cried, burying her ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... nearly exhausted, for they had had a tiresome tramp, during all of which they were under a severe mental strain. They felt that, at last, they could sit down and rest themselves before resuming ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... frankly: "Without the mental strain, I should not regret this year. Sometimes, when I am sure it is a dream, and that presently we shall waken, I can't help wondering whether we shall not wish we had fretted less and enjoyed it more. When I come to think of it, I believe it is the first time since I was a child that ways ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... necessaries of life, and possibly, with some of its comforts, will materially wipe out a large percentage of that class of diseases and death that proceed from such causes as worry, excess of work, physical and mental strain, late hours, broken ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... as he thought there was no physical reason he should feel shaken. He was used to strenuous effort, and danger could not be avoided when one engaged in construction work. It was mental strain that was wearing him out; the constant endeavor to finish a task in less than the necessary time. Want of money was, however, the main cause of his difficulties, and when he had got his cheque it would be possible to take things easier. Comforting himself ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... his breath lest he be noticed, he edged his way along. He had plenty of time for thought. This was not so easy a job as he had fancied, not the physical part, but the mental strain. He could shoot a man who was shooting at him, he could batter a man over the head who was trying to do the same to him, but this stalking a man in cold blood was different somehow. Cold blood! He laughed soundlessly at his recurrent fancy. He went a little more ...
— And Thus He Came • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... Silverdale, and a crisis is coming that none of us are prepared for. Even Dane is scarcely fitted to help my brother to face it, and the rest are either over-fond of their pleasure or untrained boys. Brave lads they are, but none of them have been taught that it is only by mental strain, or the ceaseless toil of his body, the man without an inheritance can win himself a competence now. This is why they want a leader who has known hardship and hunger, instead of ease, and won what he holds with his own hand in place ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... strove as never before to pierce the darkness enveloping his brain. Long he knelt there, his hands clinching the bedclothes convulsively, even the muscles of his body tense and rigid under the terrible mental strain he was undergoing, while at times his powerful frame ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... period of severe mental strain Mr. Excell sat beside Lawyer Brown, motionless as a statue, save when now and again he leaned forward to whisper a suggestion. He did not look at his son, and Harold seldom looked at him. Jack Burns sat as near the prisoner as the sheriff ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... came with startling swiftness, relieving the party from the mental strain. In one voice—the professor ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... he went on, "her nerves are completely unstrung. She seems to have been under a great mental strain and her surroundings are not—" He paused, and then added, "Is the young lady ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... entire side of the body is due to pressure on the brain, and this is caused by defective circulation, induced by an unnaturally distended colon. While in this condition some severe physical exertion or mental strain increases the pressure beyond the power of resistance and a rupture is the result—when the patient falls, wherever he ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... was ill; the mental strain caused by two great conflicting passions had attacked his bodily strength, and whilst his brain and heart fought their battles together, his ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... burst near where I lay. Of bodily pain I had little. The discomfort was great; the thirst was appalling. I thought I should bleed to death before help reached me. But there was nothing to compare with the mental strain of waiting—waiting—waiting for a shell to burst. Where would it drop? Would the next ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... remarkable to that extent that it can be explained only on the ground that the intense mental strain prevented his seeing things as they were. He had subjected his muscles to such a tension that he was obliged to pause every few minutes and rest. One of his feet was scarified and bleeding, and the other only a little better. When he looked upward ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... anxiety and torment I found some relief from the mental strain in practical parish work, nursing the sick, trying to brighten the lot of the poor. I learned then some of the lessons as to the agricultural labourer and the land that I was able in after-years to teach from ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... father and mother under great mental strain. "We're so glad you came," they said; "we're sure you ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... gave Morey a doubtful, sarcastic look. "Sounds like a good idea, only I wonder if this constant terrific mental strain—" ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... ground nervously, and Eddie could see that he was under a most severe mental strain. Several times he halted in his tracks and peered anxiously at his guest. Then he seemed to make ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... things have happened before—the mental strain is too great for sensitive nerves to bear. So I must lose no time. Now to come to business. I want you to tell me all you can about Mr. Langmore's life and his business dealings with people ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... "The mental strain on poor Pym was almost enough to make him a madman. There strode the maniac, to and from the edge of the abyss, rhythmically, rarely varying the distance by a yard—twenty yards off, then back again, then away. On every third or fourth approach he stepped literally ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... one second, it seemed that all the years of overwork, of mental strain and bodily deprivation rose up and took their due. I tried to speak, stuttered foolishly, and fell like dead over the door-sill of the house I ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... the summons. A stranger stood at the threshold. He was a dignified, well-dressed gentleman, but seemed to be laboring under some severe mental strain, for ...
— Ralph on the Engine - The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail • Allen Chapman
... Point—has borne the difficulties of his position; how for four years he has had to stand apart from his classmates as one with them but not of them; and to all the severe work of academic official life has had added the yet more severe mental strain which bearing up against a cruel social ostracism puts on any man; and knowing that he has done this without getting soured, or losing courage for a day—any one, I say, who knows all this would be inclined to say that the young man deserved ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... brings about a feeling of relief, the unreasoning fear of failure seems for the time to have left almost entirely; the mental strain under which the sufferer ordinarily labors seems to be no longer present; there is but little worry about either present condition or future prospects; the nervous condition seems to have very materially improved, ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... pupil is the greatest mental strain that a man can experience. Every moment the fact that he is up in the air, supported only by wood, wires, and fabric, may be on his mind. He is making desperate efforts to remember everything his instructor has told him since he started his dual. He tries to keep that nose on the ...
— Opportunities in Aviation • Arthur Sweetser
... is necessary to retain a single eyeglass in place and keep it out of the soup, year after year, draws the mental stimulus that should go to the thinker itself, until at last the mind wanders away and forgets to come back, or becomes atrophied, and the great mental strain incident to the work of pounding sand or coming in when it rains is more than it ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... interested. Between her studies and her efforts to obtain the proper clew by which she could in her own mind reduce the present political chaos to order, she found more than enough wherewith to fill her days. As always happened with her, the mental strain reacted upon her physical health, and her old enemies, depression of spirits and ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... his eager hands, and swinging around once more so that he could have a clear view of the water where this excitement was transpiring. And yet at the time it seemed to him as though an hour must have elapsed, so great was the mental strain. ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne |
