"Morbidness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... feeling in him, and what the mere appearance or demonstration or imitation of thought and feeling. Perhaps this peculiarity was what made him such a perfect actor. He was a very melancholy man, with a tendency to moody morbidness of mind which made him a subject of constant anxiety to his sister. His countenance, which was very expressive without being at all handsome, habitually wore an air of depression, and yet it was capable of brilliant vivacity and humorous play of feature. His conversation, when he was in ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... a piece with his morbidness. He is really in love with Miss Caldwell, I think, but he has brooded over the matter as he broods over every thing, and seeing the uncertain nature of matrimony, he like a wise man provides for contingencies. There may be something behind that ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... delineations of the physical and spiritual border-land, between white and red, between civilization and savagery. There is dramatic power of a high order about Mr. Hawthorne, though mixed with a certain morbidness and bad taste, which debar him from ever attaining to the first rank. There is an originality of position about Mr. Emerson, in his resolute setting up of King Self against King Mob, which, coupled with a singular metallic glitter of style, ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... yourself sweet, but God will keep you if He sees that it is your fixed, determined purpose to be kept sweet, and to refuse to fret or grudge or retaliate. The trouble is, you rather enjoy a little irritation and morbidness. You want to cherish the little grudge, and sympathize with your hurt feelings, ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... mental and moral sickness, pointing the way to mental and moral death. It has its source in a violation of that law which makes the health of the mind depend on its activity being directed to an object. When directed on itself, it becomes fitful and moody; and moodiness generates morbidness, and morbidness misanthropy, and misanthropy self-contempt, and self-contempt begins the work of self-dissolution. Why, every sensible man will despise himself, if he concentrates his attention on that important personage! The ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... suddenly sober, turned toward him a face grave and thoughtful. A certain portion of the old morbidness returned to her. "It's not kind of you, Colonel Cal," said she, "to remind me that I'm nobody. I'm worse than an orphan. I'm worse than a foundling. How I endure staying here is more than I can tell. ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... goblin tried to silence him, would have wrung his neck, after he had ridden upon it. The above, nevertheless, deserves the space we give it here, as it shadows forth one of the essential elements of Khalid's spiritual make-up. But this slight symptom of that disease we named, this morbidness incident to adolescence, is eventually overcome by a dictionary and a grammar. Ay, Khalid henceforth shall cease to scour the horizon for that vague something of his dreams; he has become far-sighted enough ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... become if I pottered about here much longer," said Algitha—"morbid; and if there is one thing on the face of the earth that I loathe, it is morbidness." ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... young!" he exclaimed. "You are like the rest of us. You carry your life in your hands. Don't nourish past griefs. Cast the memory of them away. There's nothing which narrows a man more than morbidness. You have a past which may sometimes bring the ghosts around you, but remember the sin was not wholly yours, and there is an atonement which in measured fashion you may commence whenever you please. I have said enough about that. Greatness and gaiety go hand in hand. There! You ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... passing when prudery governed the discussion of sex. Lewdness exists in concealment, suggestion is more provocatory than frankness. The morbidness of men who condemned themselves to celibacy has influenced the world; their fear of sex led to a misguided silence shrouding the wrecks of many ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... declares that "sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things," but there is a certain morbidness in even the sensitive delicacy and intensity of feeling that broods too deeply over the past. It is a great art to learn to let things go—let them pass. They are a part of the "flowing conditions." Even the pain and sorrow that result from failures and ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... bitte fur mich." All three German things, you see. All morbid things. Most of the sentimentality seems to have come from Germany, an essentially brutal place. But of course sentimentality is really diluted morbidness, and therefore first cousin to cruelty. And I have a real and healthy ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... party and the Tory writers. Perhaps unconsciously—certainly not with the conviction of Shelley—Byron was on the side of the new movement in Europe; the spirit of Rousseau, the unrest of 'Wilhelm Meister,' the revolutionary seething, with its tinge of morbidness and misanthropy, its brilliant dreams of a new humanity, and its reckless destructive theories. In France especially his influence was profound and lasting. His wit and his lyric fire excused his ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... must then give a filip to my wife's physical vigor,—dissipate her desperateness and her love in the same manner in which a good game of billiards drives from a man the blues. I must remove all her morbidness. Where could I go but to the great mother Nature? If physical enjoyment, in connection with an appreciative view of the beauties and glories everywhere spread before humanity, on the mountains, the plains, the valleys, and the oceans, does not revive ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the same day blazed down upon a picture which for ghastliness surpassed even the horrors painted by the madman Werth, which, if your mind is steeped in morbidness, you can see for a franc, or for nothing, I really forget which, when ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... wrapped herself about his heart. Daily her wondrous love coiled its soft folds tighter around him, squeezing from his atrabilious soul, drop by drop, its sad taciturnity and inherent morbidness, that it might later fill his empty life with a spiritual richness which he had never ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... people—these teachings naturally led to the assumption that the imps chose certain persons as their very own. Moreover, the constant reminders of the danger of straying from the strait and narrow way, and of the tortures of the afterworld led to self-consciousness, introspection, and morbidness. The idea that Satan was at all times seeking to undermine the Puritan church also made it easy to believe that anyone living outside of, or contrary to, that church was an agent of the devil, in short, bewitched. As it is only the useful that survives, it was essential that the army of ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... nature, but his temper usually struck inward, and his friend Kashkin said that he "never began a quarrel or defended himself when attacked." That is not, I believe, a type to fascinate women for long, and Tschaikovski's moroseness, which bordered on morbidness and always hovered on the brink of insanity, made it perhaps fortunate for at least two women that his negotiations with them ended as they did. And so he drifted—not such a bachelor as Beethoven, yet quite as wifeless. Unlike ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... regarding the morbidness of dreams, I refer again to my observations on the philistinism prevalent among physicians, and I know from very positive experience that there are healthy as well as morbid sensations in sleep, precisely as in the day-life. I ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... protest against "morbidness" was on her lips, but she did not speak it. In the mist-filled room even the bright fire, the electric lights, had grown strangely dim. Only the roar outside was real—terribly, threateningly real. Yet the sound was not so much fierce as lamentable; the voice of Nature mourning the ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... listen to me, dear. Don't take your morbidness with you. Open your heart to the summer, and let its sunshine in, and when you come back in the fall, come prepared to let us all be your friends. We'd like to be, and while friendship doesn't take the place of the love of one's own people, still it is ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... disorders at the monthly period should be relieved from the strain of examinations, the classroom, and lessons which must be learned, although mental hygiene requires that her mind be kept active and her interests in quiet pleasures stimulated. She should not be left to introspection and morbidness or to the sickly sentimental thoughts often recommended for her. This alone would cause her to exhibit some of the so-called "phenomena" of adolescence. Many of these phenomena are abnormal and are traceable to low physical vitality and lack of strong mental interests. The ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... himself. His was a sound and healthy mind, and he would allow no taint of morbidness to enter it. He knew that there was nothing supernatural in the world, but he did believe that this woman with the gray hair, the burning eyes and the sharp chin, looking as if it had been cut from a piece of steel, was the possessor of uncanny wisdom. Beyond a doubt she knew where the ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the feeling that the Church is heartless, I think that is natural. You had a violent mental shock in your illness. That means that your emotions are very sensitive, almost to the point of morbidness. Well, the heart of the Church is very deep, and you have not found it yet. That does not greatly matter. You must keep your will fixed. That is all that God asks. . . . I think it is true that the Church is hard, in a certain sense; or shall we call it a Divine strength? It is largely ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... Galbraith. A wandering band of Indians was camped about a mile away, the only sign of humanity in the waste. Jen sat in the doorway culling dried apples. Though tragedies occur in lives of the humble, they must still do the dull and ordinary task. They cannot stop to cherish morbidness, to feed upon their sorrow; they must care for themselves and labour for others. And well is it for them that ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... mountain; the air is purer about him, his vision is freer; the eye goes straight and clear to the distant view which below on the plain a thousand things would come between to intercept. But there was some morbidness about it too. Disappointment, in two or three instances, where he had given his full confidence and been obliged to take it back, had quickened him to generalize unfavourably upon human character, both ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... WITH YOU INTO SOCIETY.—Seclusion begets morbidness. She needs some of the life that comes from contact with society. She must see how other people appear and act. It often requires an exertion for her to go out of her home, but it is good for her and for you. She will bring back more sunshine. It is wise to rest sometimes. ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... She recognised the morbidness of her condition, even while she felt unable to cope with it; and, leaving Shenstone suddenly, came up to town, and consulted Sir ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... as the saying is, "born happy," another inherits a tendency to look upon the sombre aspect of every matter presented to him. To the latter, the price of cheerfulness is eternal vigilance lest he lapse into morbidness. But after a while habit becomes second nature. I do not advocate the idea of taking life as a huge joke. The man or woman who does this, throws the care and responsibility that should be his or hers upon some other shoulders. ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... Allen to be severe with Mercy, for he loved her as if she were his younger sister; but he honestly thought her to be in great danger of falling into a chronic morbidness on this subject, and he believed that stern words were most likely to convince her of her mistake. It was a sort of battle, however,—this battle which Mercy was forced to fight,—in which no human being can help another, unless he ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... situated—on what was really one of the greatest occasions of her own life. I am half inclined to fear that she may not be quite so strong as we have always thought her, and that she was depressed by the long fasting and fatigue, which would account for a momentary morbidness. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... critic notes when he says modern art has become mondain—surtout demi-mondain. Nowhere does contemporary art seem so healthy and sane, so sure of itself, so consonant with the best nature and gifts of the people, as in the Netherlands: nowhere are its ideals so free from morbidness, affectation or sentimentality. Is it perhaps that in the studios of Amsterdam, in the great school of Antwerp, even in the galleries of Brussels, one is somewhat out of the wildest stream of modern life—less driven to analysis and theorizing and self-consciousness than in London, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... the air, and the odor, and the crying wind drove the violets quite out of both the two heads that drooped silently over that pine log. If Sally had been nervous or poetical, she would have been glad to recollect them; but no such morbidness invaded her healthy soul. She sat quite still till George said, in a suppressed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... peculiarly healthful, and the airy splendor of his wit and humor was the light of his home. He saw too far to be despondent, though his vivid sympathies and shaping imagination often made him sad in behalf of others. He also perceived morbidness, wherever it existed, instantly, as if by the illumination of his own steady cheer; and he had the plastic power of putting himself into each person's situation, and of looking from every point of view, which made his charity most comprehensive. ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... delicacy of her companion's conduct, and the simplicity of the whole situation when stripped of morbidness. The only thing that behooved her was to soothe her husband's last hours on earth—to give out the tenderness of a pitying heart. As her common sense asserted itself she began plying Stephen with the questions that had ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... almond-trees are in bloom, violets cover the grass, and oh! the divine, the celestial, the unheard-of beauty of it all!" It is almost a pang for her, "with its strange mixture of longing and regret and delight," and in the midst of it she says, "I have to exert all my strength not to lose myself in morbidness and depression." ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... Mendelssohn lived, and which Elizabeth Sheppard shared, not led. We lay down these volumes after the third perusal, blessing God for the rich gift of such a life,—a life, sweet, gentle, calm, nowise intense nor passionate, yet swift, stirring, and laborious even to the point of morbidness. A Christian without cant; a friend, not clinging to a few and rejecting the many, nor diffusing his love over the many with no dominating affection for a few near ones, but loving his own with a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... from the shouting tennis players to the teasing golfers, and back from the teasing golfers to the peaceful writing-room, where in a great, lazy chair by the open window he settled down once more with unwonted morbidness to brood over the grimly bizarre happenings of the ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... almshouse, and how he had been found there by the Doctor, and educated by him, with all the hints and half-revelations that had been made to him. He described the singular character of the Doctor, his scientific pursuits, his evident accomplishments, his great abilities, his morbidness and melancholy, his moodiness, and finally his death, and the singular circumstances that accompanied it. The story took a considerable time to tell; and after its close, the Warden, who had only interrupted it by now and then a question to make it plainer, continued to smoke his pipe ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... something morbid in Flaubert's case, and with equal clearness of vision George Sand points out to him the cause of it and the remedy. The morbidness is caused in the first place by his loneliness, and by the fact that he has severed all bonds which united him to the rest of the universe. Woe be to those who are alone! The remedy is the next consideration. Is there not, somewhere in the world, a woman whom he could love and who would make him ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic |
