"Abnormal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was thrown into an abnormal and almost universal attitude of independence toward God; and this continues beyond the Cross with increasing confusion and darkness, to the end of the age. The only exception to this rebellion is the little company of believers; ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer
... the powerful factor in politics. With an abnormal desire to hoard money, an unbridled temper, and a violent and domineering disposition, she became the most powerful and dangerous, as well as the most feared, woman of all France. During her regency the state coffers were pillaged, ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... not then understand such a view-point. But I could now. In the removal of the long abnormal tension one's pent-up spirits seek out an equally abnormal channel for expression. I, too, felt like an uncaged spirit suddenly let loose. I didn't get drunk, but I very nearly got arrested again. ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... I guess, from his bad habits, his mind is warped. He is abnormal, and your refusal, coupled with the fact that you are probably going to a team that he has tried his best to make, and can't, simply made him wild. So, if I were you, I should be ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... maternity its functions are incompletely performed because she can not nurse, and this implies defective motherhood and leaves love of the child itself defective and maimed, for the mother who has never nursed can not love or be loved aright by her child. It crops out again in the abnormal or especially incomplete development of her offspring, in the critical years of adolescence, although they may have been healthful before, and a less degree of it perhaps is seen in the diminishing families of cultivated mothers in the one-child system. These women are ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... seemed as frozen by the sudden shock of the tremendous revelation so unconsciously made to him by Ella, began to stir and move again, and almost at once, with an extraordinary and abnormal rapidity. ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... chap who announces himself as T'tum turns out to be Petite Homme, the squat mate of The Beloved. It would be interesting to know just how each of the next couple acquired his name, for neither Trois-Pouces and Owl-Plucked-Out-His-Eye bears evidence of abnormal conditions. On a whole the names are more striking than our John Smiths; Richard Roes, and Tom Browns, as for instance the next three—Le Pere des Carriboux, Geroux the Eldest, Alixi To-rong-jo. The-man-who-stands-still is evidently a stand-patter, ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... duty; but neither does their existence affect the foundations of morality. Such pathological deviations from true manhood are merely the halt, the lame, and the blind of the world of consciousness; and the anatomist of the mind leaves them aside, as the anatomist of the body would ignore abnormal specimens. ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... had the fate to be worshipped as a half-god, on the one side; and on the other, to be despised and laughed at. It seems to me that he was a man of genius, of wide learning, of deep and genuine piety But he had an abnormal, queer sort of mind, dreamy, dozy, clairvoyant, Andrew-Jackson-Davisy; and besides, he loved opium and strong coffee, and wrote under the influence of those drugs. A wise man may get many nice bits out of him, and be the healthier for such eating; but if he swallows Swedenborg ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... this girl's character, but it had never been developed by the pressure of circumstances. Reserve she had seen practised by her father, but the actual advantages thereof were only now beginning to be apparent to her. The body, we are told, adapts itself to abnormal circumstances; so is it with the mind. Already Dora was beginning, as they say at sea, to find her feet; to take that stand amidst her environments which she was forced to hold, practically ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... powerful dream of life. In his terrible and touching naivete he believed that a man could be great, and neither time nor misfortune made him lose that idea. His youth, or rather his sublime adolescence, lasted as long as he lived, because life never brought him a real maturity. Such is the abnormal state of men of action. They live entirely in the present, and their genius concentrates on one point. The hours of their existence are not connected by a chain of grave and disinterested meditations. ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... existence. They hate every deviation from the accepted type with the hatred of an ancient orthodox divine for a heretic. The Eton boys of that day regarded an 'up-town boy' with settled contempt. His motives or the motives of his parents for adopting so abnormal a scheme were suspect. He might be the son of a royal footman or a prosperous tradesman in Windsor, audaciously aspiring to join the ranks of his superiors, and if so, clearly should be made to know his place. In any case he was exceptional, and therefore a Pariah, to associate with whom might ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... preparation for the culminating work as disorder, intervenes, calling the children to her, and making them rest, etc., their restlessness persists, and the subsequent work is not undertaken. The children do not become calm: they remain in an abnormal state. In other words, if they are interrupted in their cycle, they lose all the characteristics connected with an internal process regularly ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... I was looked upon as a weird sort of creature, because, forsooth, I was a socialist. Reporters from local papers interviewed me, and the interviews, when published, were pathological studies of a strange and abnormal specimen of man. At that time (nine or ten years ago), because I made a stand in my native town for municipal ownership of public utilities, I was branded a "red-shirt," a "dynamiter," and an "anarchist"; and really decent fellows, who liked ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... grasshopper of abnormal size went up with a whir. Big he was, in comparison with his kind, as the monster steer in the side-show, the Cardiff giant, ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... few plain rings. The man's face was a distinguished one, and he wore a very fine black beard; slight baldness added to the height of a forehead naturally large. But what struck the Princess most, although she had little heart to observe the man very closely, was the abnormal size of his head and the number of wrinkles that ran right across his temples, following the ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... enough of heart to enter upon a combat, to judge by thy appearance; tell me, then, how thou hast obtained this existence among the gods to which thou hast aspired?" Shamashnapishtim yields to his wish, if only to show him how abnormal his own case was, and indicate the merits which had marked him out for a destiny superior to that of the common herd of humanity. He describes the deluge to him, and relates how he was able to escape from it by the favour of Ea, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... any particularly intelligent individual, as all mankind is tempted to do in discussions of the intelligence of the dog, the cat, the horse, parrot and ape. On the contrary, it is our desire to reveal the mental capacity of every elephant living, tame or wild, except the few individuals with abnormal or diseased minds. It is not to be shown how successfully an elephant has been taught by man, but how all elephants in captivity have been taught, and the mental capacity of ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... the old days," Kersdale explained, "there was no certain test for leprosy. Anything unusual or abnormal was sufficient to send a fellow to Molokai. The result was that dozens were sent there who were no more lepers than you or I. But they don't make that mistake now. The Board of Health tests are infallible. The funny thing is that when the test was discovered they ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... indeed, been in all ages of the world temperaments of supernormal or abnormal responsiveness to influences which seem to make little or no impression upon the ordinary mind. In all periods natures of this type have been looked upon as organs of religious revelation. So valuable have abnormal experiences seemed that all manner of expedients ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell
... was cursed with the usual abnormal pupil in a silly overgrown girl called Sary Myers. Sary's parents were shiftless and ignorant people and though Sary was almost fifteen years old, and a woman in size, she was still among ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... animation, looks much like what he did in the railway-carriage—the same strong-looking man with well-marked cheek-bones, very thick brown hair and bushy brows, a skin rather tanned, and a scar on the bridge of the nose; very strong hands with a tattoo-mark showing on the wrist and an abnormal crop of hair on the back, running on to the fingers, but flawed by a scar or two. Add to this the chief thing you would recollect him by, an Elizabethan beard, and you will have all the particulars about him that a navy-blue serge suit, with shirt to match, allows to be seen of him. ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... 3. He who dated the Christian era is the Ensample in Christian Science. Careless comparison or irreverent reference to Christ Jesus is abnormal in a Christian Scientist, and is prohibited. When it is necessary to show the great gulf between Christian Science and theosophy, hypnotism, or spiritualism, do it, but without hard words. The wise ...
— Manual of the Mother Church - The First Church of Christ Scientist in Boston, Massachusetts • Mary Baker Eddy
... old city of Champlain, whose zinc roofs were shining like reflectors in the sun. The "Albatross" must thus have reached the forty-sixth degree of north latitude, and thus was explained the premature advance of the day with the abnormal prolongation of ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... its old-time condition. They pointed out cold-bloodedly that the Faith Healer had failed three times where he had succeeded once; and that, admitting the successes, there was no proof that his religion was their cause. There were such things as hypnotism and magnetism and will-power, and abnormal mental stimulus on the part of the healed—to say ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... they were about in the room where his mother lay and it was curious that the house could remain silent during so many long hours. It seemed held by the command of some strong power, and his mind, overstrained and abnormal, waited for some outbreak of noise—many noises, clattering, banging, whistling through the house. But his grandfather slept on, no step was on the stairs, the room was very dark and evening fell beyond the long ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... but they were inexperienced in public affairs, and knew (with one or two exceptions) as little of Europe as he did, and they were only called in irregularly as he might need them for a particular purpose. Thus the aloofness which had been found effective in Washington was maintained, and the abnormal reserve of his nature did not allow near him any one who aspired to moral equality or the continuous exercise of influence. His fellow-plenipotentiaries were dummies; and even the trusted Colonel House, with vastly more knowledge of men and of Europe than the President, from whose sensitiveness ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... brought with him from Paris, a thermometer to use in determining the extraordinary temperature of this fire. He examined her with this instrument while she felt this divine fire, but failed to find any abnormal increase; her pulse at the time was 72. "I made this experiment," he says, "to satisfy my scientific conscience, [God save the mark!] but I ought to say that I was ashamed of myself for presuming to measure this divine fire by such ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... execute." Against crimes of other orders the English judges were willing enough to act; and nothing is more startling to one who is new to such facts than to find how much of their business, in pious and Presbyterian Scotland, consisted in trials of cases of hideous and abnormal sexualism. But, indeed, very strange isms of quite another sort, and of which mere modern theory would have pronounced the Scotland of that time incapable, lurked underneath all the piety, all the preaching, all the exercise of Presbyterian ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... statements of the noble lord, I hold, Have not been candidly interpreted By grafting on to them a headstrong will, As does the honourable baronet, To rob the French of Buonaparte's rule, And force them back to Bourbon monarchism. That our free land, at this abnormal time, Should put her in a pose of wariness, No unwarped mind can doubt. Must war revive, Let it be quickly waged; and quickly, too, Reach its effective end: though 'tis my hope, My ardent hope, that ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... a child, and which should be an appendage of sociological studies, is commenced betimes; while physical geography, comprehensible and comparatively attractive to a child, is in great part passed over. Nearly every subject dealt with is arranged in abnormal order: definitions and rules and principles being put first, instead of being disclosed, as they are in the order of nature, through the study of cases. And then, pervading the whole, is the vicious system of rote learning—a system of sacrificing the spirit to the letter. See the results. What ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... imperfections. Once there, once identified with his object, he can observe its irregularities without being irritated or perturbed. As for that Rhadamanthine criticism which sits aloof from its object, and treats every aberration from a straight line as something abnormal and abominable, he leaves it to the immaculate. In truth, such criticism, with all its pretences to authority, is open to this fatal objection,—it tends to destroy our relish for literature; instead of stimulating ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... the spirit of his class as to say, "Science is bound, by the everlasting law of honor, to face fearlessly every problem which can fairly be brought before it. If a probable solution, consistent with the ordinary course of nature, can be found, we must not invoke an abnormal act of Creative Power." And, therefore, instead of invoking Creative Power, he accounts for the origin of life on earth by falling meteors. How he accounts for its origin in the places whence the meteors came, he ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... could detect, with polite avoidance of any direct reference to myself, or any obtrusive scrutiny of my appearance. Yet I was the first creature of that variety of the human race to which I belong that they had ever beheld, and was consequently regarded by them as a most curious and abnormal phenomenon. But all rudeness is unknown to this people, and the youngest child is taught to despise any vehement emotional demonstration. When the meal was ended, my guide again took me by the hand, and, re-entering ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... mother with the baby boy, delighted and serene and secure, Anna was at first puzzled, then gradually she became indignant, and at last her little life settled on its own swivel, she was no more strained and distorted to support her mother. She became more childish, not so abnormal, not charged with cares she could not understand. The charge of the mother, the satisfying of the mother, had devolved elsewhere than on her. Gradually the child was freed. She became an independent, forgetful little soul, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... first appeared, its effect upon the reader was as that of something abnormal, something new and strange, and certainly unexampled in Canadian verse. For here was a girl whose blood and sympathies were largely drawn from the greatest tribe of the most advanced nation of Indians on the continent, who spoke out, "loud and bold," not for ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... formulas, slowly feels its way. The Congress is composed of better elements than is the administration, and it is ludicrous to see how the administration takes airs of hauteur with the Congress. This Congress is in an abnormal condition for the task of directing a revolution; a formula can be thrown in its face almost at every bold step. The administration is virtually irresponsible, more so than the government of any constitutional ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... up. There is a problem of the Mines. No sensible person should be deceived by the quiescence of the last twelve abnormal months. Without using extravagant language, the coal-mining industry is a volcano liable at any moment to erupt and involve the whole community in loss and suffering. Therefore, as a body of citizens, we are under a duty to seek a solution ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... offences? [Footnote: Ibid.] On the other hand, Ṣubḥ-i-Ezel and his advisers were capable of almost anything from poisoning and assassination to the forging of spurious letters. I do not mean to say that they were by any means the first persons in Persian history to venture on these abnormal actions. ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... his mother because she is the best mother in the world,[7] or a man in love will give an elaborate explanation of his perfectly normal feelings, which he describes as an intellectual inference from alleged abnormal excellences in his beloved. The candidate naturally intellectualises in the same way. One of the most perfectly modest men I know once told me that he was 'going round' a good deal among his future constituents 'to let them see what a good fellow I am.' Unless, indeed, the process can be intellectualised, ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... Broadway was a storm, a cyclone, an abnormal unholy congestion of human souls. The friction of feet on the pavement was like the hissing of waves on the beach. The passing of trucks jarred upon our ears like the sevenfold thunders of Patmos, but we kept on, shoulder to shoulder, watchful, alert, till we reached Union Square, ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... in old age. As the years multiply the system absorbs an abnormal and ever increasing amount of calcareous matter. The bones become unduly hard and brittle and are easily broken. Bony matter is liable to be deposited in and about the joints, when they become stiff and painful. ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... Venice to retain her ascendency over Caterina by intensifying her dependence, by fostering the distinctively feminine and predominant side of her nature—by insisting upon abnormal claims to her duty, her obedience, ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... competition and the narrow, private life of trade and saving and suspicious isolation as though such things were in some exceptional way proper to the human constitution, and as though openness of mind and a preference for achievement over possession were abnormal and rather unsubstantial qualities. How wrong that was the history of the decades immediately following the establishment of the world republic witnesses. Once the world was released from the hardening ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... trained and equipped for it. In his solicitude he went to the Executive Secretary and asked, "Do you have staff meetings? I want you to have her there in your office. Give her the knowledge that she is dealing with the abnormal, and that not all life is perversion." The welfare of each individual in his church was ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... satisfactorily accounted for on ordinary grounds. These may possibly be due to atmospheric effects on the planet itself, but in many cases the alleged variations have doubtless been more imaginary than real. The changes in our own climate are so rapid and striking, and occasion such abnormal appearances in celestial objects that we are frequently led to infer actual changes where none have taken place; in fact, observers cannot be too careful to consider the origin of such differences and to look ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... believing that peace was the normal condition of Greek life. He was born just before the great period began during which Pericles gave Greece a long respite from quarrels, and seems to have been quite nonplussed by what to him was an abnormal upheaval. His bright hopes soon faded and he seems to have given up thinking about peace or war during a period of eight years. In the meanwhile Athens had attacked Sicily; perhaps a change had come over comedy ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... shrine—into the door of which I was curious enough to peep—I discovered two skinny, repulsive old women, with sunken, discoloured eyes, untidy locks of scanty hair, long unwashed, bony arms and legs, and finger and toe nails of abnormal length. They were clad in a few dirty rags, and were busily attending to the lights burning on several primitive stone candlesticks along the walls of the shrine. There were also some curiously-shaped stones standing upright among the candlesticks. The ceiling of this place of worship was ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... in ships," but such genius as our family has displayed has, so history assures us, shone best on a quarter-deck; and on this occasion it pleased God ultimately to add another naval victory to our credit. It is generally admitted that an abnormal mentality accompanies this not uncommon experience of human life, and I found my lack of appreciation of the rapid voyage paralleled by a wicked satisfaction that my mother preferred the brass four-poster, so thoughtfully provided for ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... superhuman effort, and putting such a seal upon their lips as never mortals put before, the two girls succeeded in keeping their wonderful news to themselves; although it was obvious to all beholders that they were in an extraordinary and abnormal state of mind. ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of a neatly folded tent. The last-named was evidently the leader of the little expedition, while the manner and attitude of the man in the bows suggested the servitude of a disciplined soldier slightly relaxed by abnormal circumstances. ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... general his novels must always be a kind of caviare; for they have no analogue in letters, but are the output of a mind and temper of singular originality. To the honest Tory, sworn to admire and unable to comprehend, they must seem inexplicable as abnormal. To the professional Radical they are so many proofs of innate inferiority: for they are full of pretentiousness and affectation; they teem with examples of all manner of vices, from false English to an immoral ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... among ourselves and among nations, has been expanded, excessive, inflated, abnormal, and there is a madness in finance which no American policy alone will cure. We are a creditor Nation, not by normal processes, but made so by war. It is not an unworthy selfishness to seek to save ourselves, when the processes of that salvation are not only not denied ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Warren Harding • Warren Harding
... and "thank you." My husband suggested that we order ten kittens, but I let the good work go on with one, for the time being. Gradually, I learned that the immovable exterior was the natural protection against an abnormal sensitiveness both to praise and blame. Besides the cat, she had two other "weak spots"—an unswerving devotion to a widowed sister with two children, whom she partially supported, and a love for flowers ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... of this principle in every part of the human system constitutes health; its abnormal ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... in itself. He had the most practical common sense—well-balanced habits of thinking and living, supported by an intellect so clear and so keen that I knew of none to excel it. What the Science Community was, no one knew exactly; but that there was something abnormal, fanatical, about it, no ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... understood what was wanted; for how was it possible the good man could form any reasonable judgment about the matter? Mr Stelling's duty was to teach the lad in the only right way,—indeed he knew no other; he had not wasted his time in the acquirement of anything abnormal. ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... the mind incapable of appreciating nice distinctions in regard to familiar objects or persons. Thus to the residents of the town there is nothing abnormal in their condition. It is only to the observer from without that the horrors of the Pennsylvania town are apparent. That such a spot should develop in a State high in rank, and among the oldest of those comprising the greatest republic, seems incomprehensible. In the very State where the ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... with the normal type; that is to say, that the children would be half and half, some taking the peculiarity of the father, and the others being of the purely normal type of the mother; but you see we have a great preponderance of the abnormal type. Well, this comes to be mixed once more with the pure, the normal type, and the abnormal is again produced in large proportion, notwithstanding the second dilution. Now what would have happened if these abnormal types had intermarried with each other; ...
— The Perpetuation Of Living Beings, Hereditary Transmission And Variation • Thomas H. Huxley
... of description. He was at this time about twenty-seven years of age, a little above the medium height, and of a well-knit, robust, manly frame. He had prominent features, and thick dark hair falling loosely over a square, full forehead which rose in the coronal region into an almost abnormal development. His eyes were large, of a light blue, and shaded by heavy dark eyebrows; and they had an habitual look of introspection, showing a mind of more than common thoughtfulness. He was grave, earnest, self-contained, with the quiet consciousness of power which is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... dinner, and Barfoot, thoroughly enjoying the abnormal state of things, continued ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... the conduct of the other—and a corresponding jealousy may be thus awakened in the mind of the junior commanding—and that harmony which is so necessary to efficiency may become impaired. Independently of these considerations, there is the fact that this condition is abnormal and highly irregular. The men and subaltern officers will recognize it to be so, and it may become more difficult to maintain the requisite subordination and respect for rank. It is a great deal better than to follow this practice—to adopt and run almost to extremes, the ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... elapsed after their return before Shad could eat a meal with any assurance that it would not be followed by distress. His normal appetite, however, had begun to return before they broke camp on the Great Lake, and had quickly developed into a highly abnormal appetite. ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... reader will it appear possible that to any gentleman there could be a doubt. Instead of the existence of a difficulty, there was a flood of light upon his path,—so the reader will think;—a flood so clear that not to see his way was impossible. A man carried away by abnormal appetites, and wickedness, and the devil, may of course commit murder, or forge bills, or become a fraudulent director of a bankrupt company. And so may a man be untrue to his troth,—and leave true love in pursuit of tinsel, and beauty, and ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... spread of information as to the lower races in recent years the topic has become so familiar that I need not stop to illustrate it by instances. I will merely say that among savages the theory of inspiration or possession is commonly invoked to explain all abnormal mental states, particularly insanity or conditions of mind bordering on it, so that persons more or less crazed in their wits, and particularly hysterical or epileptic patients, are for that very reason thought to be peculiarly favoured by the spirits ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... ignorant are the most positive that stamp collecting is only a passing fancy of which its votaries will tire, sooner or later; and yet for the last forty years, with a brief exception, due to an abnormal depression in trade, it has always been on the increase. Indeed, it has never in all those years been more popular with the cultured classes than it is to-day. The Philatelic Society of London has an unbroken record of ...
— Stamp Collecting as a Pastime • Edward J. Nankivell
... beauty led to a study of natural science; thence it was but a step to the "night-sides" of nature; and spiritism, mesmerism, occultism, and abnormal psychology fill the minds of such men as the Romantic philosopher Schubert, and of the physicians Carus and Passavant. Justinus Kerner wrote of the Seeress of Prevorst, and Clemens Brentano watched for years at the bedside of a stigmatized nun. On the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... life-inspiring liquid. Drink, to drink long and thirstily ... the relief, the new vitality. Food vanishes with abnormal rapidity, every crumb, however minute, is carefully searched for, gathered into the ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... she began, casting off desire and wrath, to take the lives of living creatures when the time came (for their dissolution). It is only living creatures that die. Diseases spring from living creatures themselves. Disease is the abnormal condition of creatures. They are pained by it. Therefore, indulge not in fruitless grief for creatures after they are dead. The senses, upon the death of creatures, go with the latter (to the other ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... disease seem to have a marvellously refining effect on the countenance; producing an ethereal clearness of skin, and brightness of eye, and a spiritual expression, which are seen on no other faces. Rachel Barlow was a striking instance of this almost abnormal beauty. As her fair face looked up at you from her pillow, your impulse was to fall on your knees. Not till she smiled did you feel sure she was human; but when she smiled, the smile was so winningly warm, you forgot you had thought her an angel. For two years she had not moved ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... arouse pity for a creature whose grotesque story expressed the Greek abomination for Phoenician barbarism. Nothing but the Philistine, or in this case Phoenician, realism of the twentieth century, can account for Mr. Hewlett's attempt to elicit fine feeling from an abnormal ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... the tuning wire will be pressing firmly against the tongue at the point B, but said tuning wire will not be subjected to any abnormal strain. ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... unhealthy condition of the intellectual faculties, or at least was demonstrated to me as such by a scientific friend of my own who, seeing I was miserable, took great pains to make me more so if possible. He proved,—to his own satisfaction if not altogether to mine,—that the abnormal position of certain molecules in the brain produced an eccentricity or peculiar bias in one direction which, practically viewed, might be described as an intelligent form of monomania, but which most people chose to term 'genius,' and that from a purely scientific standpoint it was evident ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... of Ireland if they would lead. They would not lead, and meanwhile the people perished. Therefore he would urge the people to save themselves. The policy of the Confederation in normal times would have been nationally sound. The circumstances had become abnormal, and Mitchel's policy was suited to the abnormal circumstances. His conviction that the British Government was deliberately using the potato-crop failure for the purpose of reducing the Irish population—which then was equal to more than half the population of England and a menace to that country, ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... stockbroker's fate to enter the money market at a time when fortunes were acquired with an abnormal facility. He had made the most of his advantages, and neglected none of his opportunities. He had seized Good Fortune by the forelock, and not waited to find the harridan's bald and slippery crown turned to him in pitiless derision. He had made only one mistake—and ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... will in time respond to these influences. There are, unfortunately, some children that will not develop beyond this stage of primitive, savage instincts; but such abnormal children are rare and we cannot deal with ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... "the same passions," and have in temper, tradition and language, so much in common. The ages of the Courts of Love, whom Chaucer reflected and whose ideas passed on through him to Spenser, are to us simply strange and abnormal states through which society has passed, to us beyond understanding and almost belief. The perpetual love-making, as one of the first duties and necessities of a noble life, the space which it must fill in the cares ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... the Referendum with the plebiscite: "The Referendum looks at first sight like a French plebiscite, but no two institutions can be marked by more essential differences. The plebiscite is a revolutionary or at least abnormal proceeding. It is not preceded by debate. The form and nature of the questions to be submitted to the nation are chosen and settled by the men in power, and Frenchmen are asked whether they will or will not accept a given policy. Rarely, ...
— Direct Legislation by the Citizenship through the Initiative and Referendum • James W. Sullivan
... picked it up, and sat staring at it in vague and dreamy fashion until, rousing at his master's second bidding, he proceeded to mix brandy and soda, his gaze still profoundly abstracted and his whiskers drooping with an abnormal meekness. ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... excessive grief will produce the signs of joy, as extravagant delight will sometimes exhibit those of sorrow. We should also exclude the laughter caused by inhalation of gas, and that of maniacs, which arising from some strange and unaccountable feeling is abnormal and imperfect, and known by a hollow sound peculiar to itself. None of these kinds of laughter are primary, they are but imperfect reflections of our usual modes of expression, and, excepting such cases, we may agree that ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... man, who was either very diplomatic or very exhausted, in a languid manner. "There is something abnormal in you." ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... that in which he normally goes to sleep, he has only to lift his arm to arrest the sun and turn it back in its course, and, at the moment of waking, he will have no idea of the time, but will conclude that he has just gone to bed. Or suppose that he gets drowsy in some even more abnormal position; sitting in an armchair, say, after dinner: then the world will fall topsy-turvy from its orbit, the magic chair will carry him at full speed through time and space, and when he opens his eyes again he will imagine that he went to ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... normal woman has the abnormal ability to do and then to undo a garment hitching behind. Nature, which so fashioned her elbows that she cannot throw a stone at a hen in the way in which a stone properly should be thrown at a hen, made ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... forces. And that was all; there would be no more oppressors, no more rich, no more poor; the domain of the earth with its natural treasures and its implements of labour would be restored to the people, its legitimate owners, who would know how to enjoy it with justice and logic, when nothing abnormal would impede their expansion. And then only would the law of love make its action felt; then would human solidarity, which, among mankind, is the living form of universal attraction, acquire all its power, bringing men closer and closer together, and uniting them in one sole ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... was praiseworthy. She hated and avoided debt, and when relief came (a civil list pension of L300 a year) she spent most of it upon her son. Fairly well educated, she was not without a taste for books, and her letters are sensible and to the point. But the violence of her temper was abnormal. Her father committed suicide, and it is possible that she inherited a tendency to mental derangement. If Byron owed anything to his parents it ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... be more ludicrous than the self-satisfaction, the abnormal conceit of this remark, made by that shrivelled piece of mankind, in a nervous, hesitating tone of voice? Polly made no comment, but drew from her pocket a beautiful piece of string, and knowing his custom of knotting such an article while unravelling his mysteries, she handed ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... a man in a flat-bottomed boat was punting his way towards her. She stood and waited for him, admiring his height, and the long powerful strokes with which he propelled his clumsy craft. He was very tall, and against the flat background his height seemed almost abnormal. As soon as he had attracted her attention he ceased to shout, and devoted all his attention to reaching her quickly. Nevertheless, the salt water was within a few feet of her when he drove his pole into the bottom, and brought the punt to a momentary standstill. She ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... thus violating well founded and generally accepted canons of taste. In respect to primitive works we may distinguish four steps in the acquisition of esthetic features of form, three of which are normal, the fourth abnormal: First, we have that in which functional characters alone are considered, any element of beauty, whether due to the artist's hand or to the accidents of material, construction, or model, being purely adventitious; second, ...
— A Study Of The Textile Art In Its Relation To The Development Of Form And Ornament • William H. Holmes
... Lady Swansdown in her prettiest way—she seems, indeed, exceptionally gay even for her, who, as a rule, is the life of every party. Her spirits seem to have risen to quite an abnormal height, and her charming laugh, soft as it is sweet, rings gaily. With the advent of Baltimore, however, Lady Swansdown's attention veers aside, and Joyce, feeling Dysart at her elbow, ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... venerable, and the reticent owner rejoiced to be relieved of an expensive burden at good rates. Knowing nothing of these facts in natural history, I pondered deeply over the double phenomenon. I said the hens seemed normal only as to appetite; the ducks proved abnormal in this respect. They were always coming up to the back door, clamoring for food—always unappeased. They preferred cake, fresh bread, hot boiled potatoes, doted on tender bits of meat, but would gobble up anything and everything, ...
— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... came to understand was that the whole of psychology is ruled by the most exact and immutable laws, in which there is nothing fortuitous or abnormal, and that the exact course of an emotion can be predicted with perfect certainty if only ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... which any person, and especially a woman, would naturally have from the idea of being regarded as something abnormal and uncanny, and mingled with this was, perhaps, a certain sacred shamefacedness, at the thought that this most intimate and vital mystery of her second birth had been witnessed and was ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... although no one denies, His heart was of abnormal size, Yet he'd have acted otherwise If he had been acuter. The end is easily foretold, When every blessed thing you hold Is made of silver, or of gold, You long for simple pewter. When you have nothing else to wear But cloth of gold and ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... We can reduce the abnormal expenditures, and we will. We can strike at war taxation, and we must. We must face the grim necessity, with full knowledge that the task is to be solved, and we must proceed with a full realization ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... then it was withdrawn. The Holy Spirit still remained in the Church, and was revealed in a diversity of operations. His presence was proved by the changed characters of converts more effectually than by abnormal gifts—and similarly the religious ecstasy of Eldad and Medad and their comrades was soon exchanged for their abiding spirit of wisdom ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... Cotton grown in Cuba belongs to the herbaceous type and is remarkable for its large pods, which contain an abnormal number of seeds. The so-called "Nankeen" cottons are said to be "Colour variations" of the herbaceous Cotton plant. Many varieties of Egyptian cottons are produced from this particular class, as well as the ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson
... the large educational associations of this and other countries, are problems dealing largely with the child, such as the treatment of backward children, treating of abnormal children, care of the blind, of the deaf, special treatment for incorrigibles, the feeble minded, and many other kinds ...
— Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt • William James Edwards
... prayers, we cannot help thinking that, grotesque and ill-imagined as they are, they must have been of unspeakable value for the instruction of a people whose spiritual digestion was not of a sort to be injured by the presence of a quite abnormal quantity of husk and saw-dust in their food. And occasionally we find verses of true poetic feeling, such as the following, in "The Fall ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... slight attack of catalepsy. Both the vision and the fit, dear, took their rise in some abnormal state of the nervous system,' said Philip Dubarry; and feeling almost pleased with his own explanation of the mystery, he tried to persuade himself that it ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... give success with juries, particularly in criminal practice: he is represented as ignorant of the law, indolent, and grossly negligent of business,—with nothing, in fact, to give him the least success in the profession but an abnormal and quite unaccountable ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... matter which gives it a rich, dark blue tone with greenish tints in it and bright yellow patches. The earth all round is of a warm burnt sienna colour, intensified, when I saw it, by the reddish, soft rays of a dying sun. It has all the appearance of having been subjected to abnormal heat. The characteristic shape of the peaks of the range is conical, and a great many deep-cut channels and holes are noticeable in the rocky sides of these sugar-loaf mountains, as is frequently the case in mountains of ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... "Has this abnormal condition affected you in the exercise of your special gift?" he asked. Brand's face brightened and ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... this kind, working upon Maud Enderby's natural temperament, resulted in an abnormal character, the chief trait of which was remarkable as being in contradiction to the spirit of her time. She was oppressed with the consciousness of sin. Every most natural impulse of her own heart she regarded as a temptation to be resisted with all her strength. Her ideal ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... with peculiar force to the people of America. Do we want the millions of abortions performed annually to be multiplied? Do we want the precious, tender qualities of womanhood, so much needed for our racial development, to perish in these sordid, abnormal experiences? Or, do we wish to permit woman to find her way to fundamental freedom through safe, unobjectionable, scientific means? We have our choice. Upon our answer to these questions depends in a tremendous degree the character and the ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... separate spheres, however near they may approach each other in the abstract, and that when united, the one is apt to prove a hamper on the other, through the introduction of error and corruption; while, separated, they act as a mutual restraint, each tending to control the abnormal development of the other. For these reasons reform in this particular must move from the people to the government, not from the government ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... resemble one another through the equal retentive quality that they possess in the organism of some favored individuals, and this emotional factor becomes a bond of association. Observe that this hypothesis explains also the much more unusual cases of "colored" smell, taste, and pain; that is, an abnormal association between given colors ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... Lane had seen and felt in people during the short twenty-four hours since his return home. All of them had stung and astounded him, flung into his face the hard brutal facts of the materialism of the present. Surely it was an abnormal condition. And yet from the last quarter where he might have expected to find uplift, and the crystallizing of his attitude toward the world, and the sharpening of his intelligence—from the hard, grim mother of the girl who had jilted him, ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... even of visual fact, but at the transference to another mind of his own mental condition—his inner judgment as to "things seen"—by means of necessarily imperfect pictorial mimicry. He must therefore avoid startling or abnormal truthfulness of observation of the unessential and even more strictly must he refuse to make his picture a scientific diagram demonstrating what "is" rather than what is "seen" or is ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... as other wedding feasts. People ate and drank and made believe to be intensely glad, and drank more sparkling wine than was good for them at that abnormal hour, and began to feel sleepy before the speeches, brief as they were, had come to an end. The August sun shone in upon the banquet, the creams and jellies languished and collapsed in the sultry air. The wedding-cake was felt to be a nuisance. The cracker-cake exploded faintly in ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... j'ai peut-etre mis de plus raisonnable sur le theatre." The word strikes oddly on our ears, but every stage of the passion of Phedre is indeed reasonable, logical, as only a French poet, since the Greeks themselves, could make it. The passion itself is an abnormal, an insane thing, and that passion comes to us with all its force and all its perversity; but the words in which it is expressed are never extravagant, they are always clear, simple, temperate, perfectly precise and explicit. The art is an art exquisitely balanced ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... medicine," he said; "but I'm one of those poor devils who can't help telling a patient the truth. There's nothing whatever the matter with you, Mr. Westoby, except that your skin has a slightly abrased look, and I seem to notice an abnormal sensitiveness to touch." ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... on their armour, and heightened their exaggerated and restless movements. To a calm eye they seemed like men acting in a nightmare. Their fitful talk and disjointed gestures, their sweating brows and damp hair, no less than the sullen, brooding silence of one here and there, bespoke the abnormal and the terrible. There were livid faces among them, and twitching cheeks, and some who swallowed much; and some again who bared their crimson arms and bragged insanely of the part they had played. But perhaps the most striking thing was the thirst, ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... distantly related to Mr. Rickman the young man about town. And that made four. Besides these four there was a fifth, the serene and perfect intelligence, who from some height immeasurably far above them sat in judgement on them all. But for his abnormal sense of humour he would have been a Mr. Rickman of the pure reason, no good at all. As it was, he occasionally offered some reflection which was enjoyed ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... is indicated in the voice, as in other kinds of mechanism by some sign of friction—by a harsh tone from a constrained throat; by a nasal or a muffled tone, from some obstruction in the nasal passages of the head, either because of abnormal physical conditions, or because of an unnatural direction of the breath, mainly due probably to speaking with a closed mouth; by a bound-up, heavy, "chesty" tone, resulting from a ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... the stern of a tow-boat. They are identified with summer vacations in the country, than which a boy's memory holds no more honeyed recollections. The hours before "turning in" (the very fact of an abnormal night and bed was a joy to the juvenile mind, despite the incessant and unearthly noises of the live-stock on board) were spent in wandering among the mountains of "produce," inhaling the savor of Orange County butter and baled ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... has such a constitutional horror of dirt that he really keeps up his muscle by the use of the clothes-brush; still, though I afterward saw him spread his Sunday beans with mustard and his Monday bacon with oil, it was not till late on the latter evening that I came to a just appreciation of his abnormal state. Without knocking he bolted into my ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... is less abnormal. Esli, whose placid soul had been sadly stirred at the time of the infliction of the "mark," was so impressed by its salutary effect that she conceived a new respect for the methods of King Solomon. The application of "morning glory" is a privilege reserved, as a rule, for ourselves; ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... All-wise and an All-good; that in the wildest illusions by which muititudes are frenzied, there may be detected gleams of prophetic truths; that in the fiercest crimes which, like the disease of an epidemic, characterise a peculiar epoch under abnormal circumstances, there might be found instincts or aspirations towards some social virtues to be realised ages afterwards by happier generations, all tending to save man from despair of the future, were the whole society to unite for the joyless hour of his race in the ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... principal of which are its not yet having been found attached to the shore, and the invariable absence of fructification—it seems probable that those botanists are in the right who consider the gulf weed (Sargassum bacciferum) to be merely an abnormal condition, propagating itself by shoots, of S. vulgare, which in its normal state grows upon the shores of the Atlantic and its islands. See note by Dr. J.D. Hooker in Memoirs of Geological Survey of Great Britain volume ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... AL. That King, although no one denies His heart was of abnormal size, Yet he'd have acted otherwise If he had been acuter. The end is easily foretold, When every blessed thing you hold Is made of silver, or of gold, You long for simple pewter. When you have nothing else to wear But cloth ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... the time when men still imagined that to be a pivotal man in some way enhanced their chances of being demobilised that an abnormal wave of acquisitiveness passed over us. Before it passed, I regret to say, it hovered, chiefly on account of the prospect of a speedy return home and the desire to take back some kind of trophy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156., March 5, 1919 • Various
... helped me to dress for the farce, but she took good care never to tell any one the secret. No doubt had the blacks ever learned that it was all done for effect on my part, the result would have been very serious; but I knew I was pretty secure because of the abnormal superstition ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... each day saw the stream higher, no one experienced any actual anxiety from the conditions, although everybody granted they were abnormal. Of course, there was more ice in the river than there had been for many years. Even Grandfather Fernald, who had lived in the vicinity for close on to half a century, could not recall ever having witnessed such a spring freshet; nor did he deny that the weight of ice ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... not until the Colonel had passed over the shoulder above the stone-walled house that he escaped from the jabber of the crowd and the jeers of the younger members of this savage tribe, who, noting something abnormal in the fashion of the stranger's clothes, followed him a space. On descending the farther slope, however, he found himself alone in the silence of the waste. Choosing without hesitation one of two tracks, ill-trodden, but such as in that district and at that ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... he was normal there are only moments when, through some recorded speech or action of his, we can peer past the man's personality into his brain; how great a sealed mystery must his thoughts remain to us when held in that abnormal state by Eliot Leithgow's V-27! Envision it: this arch-foe of Hawk Carse and Leithgow helping their designs, lending all his intellect, his great skill, to their purposes, aiding them in everything! Certainly, afterwards, the memory of what he had been forced to do must have occasioned ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore
... abnormal and—" A moment's pause, then with ironic pauses—"and quite unnecessary save as a matter of display, unless you think you need it to sustain you through the ordeal you are courting. You wish to help me finish and ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... clearing on which the forest had once more begun to encroach; such was my appearance nearly a quarter of a century ago, and such, with some modification, it is to this day. Like Cain, I was branded—branded by Nature with the stamp of abnormal ugliness, as I was gifted by Nature with iron and abnormal strength and considerable intellectual powers. So ugly was I that the spruce young men of my College, though they were proud enough of my ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... might be a very skilful fisherman. A kingfisher is a kind of bird. Here again we have an abnormal association of words and as the compound word is the name of a specific sort of bird there is no hyphen. A king-fisher, if it meant anything, would probably mean one who fished for kings, as a pearl-diver is one who ...
— Compound Words - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #36 • Frederick W. Hamilton
... it was wonderfully quiet. The shout of a child or the peaceful crow of a cock was the loudest sound you heard. Once a gentleman from London town came down to spend a week at the parsonage. Towards evening on the very first day he grew restless and complained of the abnormal stillness. "I like a quiet place well enough," he exclaimed, "but this tingling silence I can't stand!" And stand it he wouldn't and didn't, for on the very next morning he took himself off. Many years ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... joints, that is, flexors and extensors, being equally contracted. It is impossible to bend this leg at any joint except by the use of very great force. The reflexes everywhere are lively but are equal on the two sides, and none of the abnormal reflexes is present, including in this term Babinski, Gordon ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... cabinet; no tener su alma en su —, not to have one's soul in the right place; to have one's soul in an abnormal condition. ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer |
