"Unbalanced" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... contemplate no motive, however weighty, nor entertain any other thought, be it ever so interesting, than how to relieve its present wretchedness. When, then, can the unhappy man find peace with God amid this tumult of his unbalanced faculties, this perturbation of his unholy passions? How utterly unfitted to perform those duties which are requisite ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... this unfortunate business," said Cowperwood, coming in with brisk assurance. "I never knew my wife to become so strangely unbalanced before. It was most fortunate that I arrived when I did. I certainly owe you both every amend that can be made. I sincerely hope, Mrs. Sohlberg, that you are not seriously injured. If there is anything I can possibly do—anything either of you can suggest"—he ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... like a boy who'd keep out of sight, old warrior," he said. "Far more likely to thrust himself into the front with all the unbalanced rashness of a boy. A nice pair indeed! But I should like to have a thousand of you, all the same. No, I don't think I ought to take you, boy," he continued, slowly, with a very severe frown gathering on his forehead. ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... on which it can revolve in equilibrio. Suppose the axis of the earth to shift forty-five degrees; then cut it into one hundred and eighty slices, making every section in the plane of a circle of latitude, perpendicular to the axis: every one of these slices, except the equatorial one, would be unbalanced, as there would be more matter on one side of its axis than on the other. There could be but one diameter drawn through such a slice, which would divide it into two equal parts. On every other possible diameter, the parts would hang unequal. This would produce an irregularity in ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... convulsive jerk on the rope and jerked it through Charley's hand. The sudden pull completely unbalanced him and he fell from the limb. But instantly he tightened his clutch on the slipping rope and in a second was dangling in air, frightened but safe. He slid to the ground, and drew the rope taut. Now he had the rope over a limb, as he wanted it, but ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... as the French battalions remained to support it. When they withdrew, Maximilian was deposed, court-marshalled, and shot. The wild folly of the Mexican enterprise, from which France had nothing to gain, illustrated in an expensive form the unbalanced judgment and the soaring megalomaniac propensities of "the man of December." That he should institute such inquiries as are indicated by the document described by Lord John Russell's biographer, even though the preservation ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... opposite clan, backed up by the Numidians, objected. At their head was a wealthy Spanish woman named Lucilla, an unbalanced devotee, who, it seemed, always carried about her person a bone of a martyr, and a doubtful one at that. She would ostentatiously kiss her relic before receiving the Eucharist. The Archdeacon Caecilianus ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... the ground in simulated agony with a long iron skewer thrust through their cheeks. They catch them young; and these scholars, or aspirants, are indubitably frauds and often worse than frauds. Mixed with them are a certain proportion of unbalanced, half-crazy individuals, who really work themselves into a frenzy and give the semblance of veracity to the entertainment. A judge of native physiognomy can generally tell the two types apart. There are also a few sensible men—butchers, porters, and the like—who do not ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... the Great Powers may have deprecated Rakovski as much as he deprecated them. It must have been exasperating for those solid persons subsequently to acknowledge—if they did so—that this unbalanced agitator weighed them very well. But the Balkan countries were too weak; they had to suffer being thrown aside, pushed here and there, and trampled on; for when the Great Powers came down to the Balkans they could really ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... her grandchildren, a whole swarm of descendants, called by the pet name of Aunt Dide, did not even turn her head at the noise. In her youth hysterical troubles had unbalanced her mind. Of an ardent and passionate nature and subject to nervous attacks, she had yet reached the great age of eighty-three when a dreadful grief, a terrible moral shock, destroyed her reason. At that time, ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... human bliss only to hurl me thence into the lowest depths of grief and humiliation. Then your wonderful physical resemblance to your mother caused me to dread that you would also inherit her character, and that you would grow up deceitful and untrustworthy. Connect those two feelings with the unbalanced state of my mind and you will easily understand ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... in our own day that the personal characteristics of St. Paul have been intelligently studied; and the most valuable books about him are later than the unbalanced tirades of Lagarde and Nietzsche, and the carping estimate of Renan. In the nineteenth century, Paul was obscured behind Paulinism. His letters were studied as treatises on systematic theology. Elaborate theories of atonement, ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... few in whom we do not notice something painfully wanting. We do not always understand what it is, but we know that, while we may accord to them good sense, and even genius, they fail to satisfy us. There is some good thing which they lack—something unbalanced and partial and one-sided about them. We presume that this is often the result of a constitutional defect, but in most instances it is attributable to insufficient nourishment in some department of their nature. "All but," is the appropriate epitaph for the tombstone ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... The Emperor read it and bent his weary steps towards Chalons; Bazaine read it and said, "There is time;" MacMahon, Canrobert, Leboeuf, Ladmirault read it and wondered idly what it meant, till Vinoy turned a retreat into a triumph, and Gambetta, flabby, pompous, unbalanced, bawled platitudes from ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... and 72 per cent of the protein are digested.[12] Compared with other foods, potatoes are often a cheap source of non-nitrogenous nutrients. If used in excessive amounts, however, they have a tendency to make the ration unbalanced and too bulky. ...
— Human Foods and Their Nutritive Value • Harry Snyder
... antimacassar home-and-mother stuff on me. Ask Bernard Shaw, ask Freud, ask Mrs. Gilman, how good it is for children's stronger, better selves, to live in the enervating, hot-house concentration on them of an unbalanced, undeveloped woman, who has let everything else in her personality atrophy except her morbid preoccupation with her own offspring. That's really the meaning of what's sentimentally called 'mothering.' Probably it would be the best thing in the world for the Powers children if their mother ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... run out the back door and across to the neighbors," she told herself. "If anything comes in the back way, I shall hear and have time to run out the front door; and I know there is nothing in the house." But she could not reassure herself, since what terrified her, and even temporarily unbalanced her, ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... time being my religious scruples on the question of boxing, not only on boxing, but fighting, and I had set aside a good deal of my prejudice in my struggle for an education, and my success in the thing I started out to do almost unbalanced me. ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... to see fulfilled. They gave largely to its support, and were never happier than when within its walls. Mrs. Dalton, whom the world pitied so generously, here found her sphere, as did many others who had felt long unbalanced. She taught the children music, drawing, and the languages, and extended her life and interest throughout the dwelling, to every heart therein. Thus the maternal was satisfied each day, and each hour she felt less need of a union which the wise ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... times, had to face many difficulties which were removed in later times. The study of science and the examination of the forces of nature were not only not as popular as they became later, but frequently were looked upon as blasphemous, savouring of sorcery, or as a sign of an unbalanced mind. ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... in it is to be ridiculous, and to be just Greek is to be what has already perfectly and sufficiently been. If one wished to breathe the atmosphere of Greek poetry, with its sensuous love of beauty and of life, its pathetic acceptance of events as fate, its warped and unbalanced conscience, its abhorrence of death, and its conception of a future sad as annihilation, we had already the Greek poets; and does it profit us that Mr. Morris can produce just their effects and nothing more ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... affairs of the physical man in the "practical" world, the other dealing with the spiritual economy in the subconscious. To attend to the latter alone was to be a useless dreamer among men, unpractical, unbalanced; to neglect it wholly for the former was to be crassly limited, but half alive; to combine the two in effective co-operation was to achieve that high level of a successful personality, which some perhaps term genius, some prophet, and others, saint. ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... which is so simple and bright; the absence of the noise of the city, where hundreds of wind-mills are stupidly flapping their long arms before your very nose, and finally the complete solitude, undisturbed by anything—all these have restored to my unbalanced view of the world all its former steadiness and its iron, irresistible firmness. I look upon my future calmly and confidently, and although it promises me nothing but a lonely grave and the last journey to an unknown distance, I am ready to meet death ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... to our own well-worn grooves of expression that they have come to be felt as inevitable. Yet destructive analysis of the familiar is the only method of approach to an understanding of fundamentally different modes of expression. When one has learned to feel what is fortuitous or illogical or unbalanced in the structure of his own language, he is already well on the way towards a sympathetic grasp of the expression of the various classes of concepts in alien types of speech. Not everything that is "outlandish" is intrinsically illogical or far-fetched. It is often precisely ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... Vibray committed suicide. Her letter states her intention. The authenticity of this letter has not been disputed. The disastrous revelations, contained in Messieurs Barbey-Nanteuil's communication, proved too severe a shock for the poor lady's unbalanced brain: the news of her ruin, abruptly conveyed, drove her to desperation. The death of the Baroness de Vibray was voluntary ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... is not necessarily folly. Across the murky clouds of madness shoots and gleams, at times, the deepest insight into the heart of things. And the fact that Swedenborg was unbalanced does not warrant us in rejecting all he said and taught as false and faulty. He was always well able to take care of himself and to manage his affairs successfully, even to printing the books that contain ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... which diminishes the chances of existence, and the seriousness of the ailment depends upon the degree of this diminishing power. Seen from a strictly psychological point of view, we must expect thus a broad borderland region between the entirely normal well-balanced mental life and that unbalanced disorder of functions which really interferes with the chance for self-protection and effectiveness. That the melancholic who declines to take any nourishment, or the paranoiac who misjudges his surroundings, is unable to secure by his own energies the ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... writer may have believed himself thus inspired, and was thus self-deceived But in this case far gone in disease must his mind have been; nor could it fail constantly to give striking evidence of being thus unhinged in other parts of his writings. This is a subject with which unbalanced minds have shown their inability to be much occupied without the most sorrowful evidences of the disease under which they suffer. Let there be independence of the Scriptures (as there confessedly is in this ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... As to his decadent tendencies we side with the opinion of Mr. Frank Jewett Mather, Jr.: "Certain pedants have written as if the world would be better without its disorderly geniuses. There could, I think, be no sorer error. We need the unbalanced talents, the poetes damnes of every craft. They strew the passions that enrich a lordlier art than their own. They fight valiantly, a little at the expense of their fame, against the only unpardonable sins, stupidity and indifference. Greco should ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... a hell. If we leave scripture and human belief aside, science reveals to us that nature has her catastrophes—that there is just so much of the failed cycle, of the unrecovered, the unbalanced, the incompleted, the fallen-short, in her motions, that the result must be collision, shattering resumption, the rage of unspeakable fire. Our world and all the worlds of the system, are, I suppose, doomed to fall back at length into their parent furnace. Then ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... to be the principal mass of frozen water on the globe. The frigid cap of the north was nothing in comparison with it. It had long been believed that that tremendous accumulation unbalanced the globe and was the principal cause of the unsteadiness of ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... calmly I have borne Good, and reserved my pride against the hate Which shall not whelm me, let me not have worn This iron in my soul in vain, shall THEY not mourn? And thou who never yet of human wrong Left the unbalanced scale, great Nemesis, Here where the ancients paid their worship long, Thou who didst call the Furies from the abyss, And round Orestes bid them howl and hiss For that unnatural retribution,—just ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Crump and his little charges. Arcane had found it best to carry Charley on his back, as it relieved the burning sensation, caused by the eruption on his skin, which was aggravated by the close quarters of the pockets. Thus leaving the pockets unbalanced, Bennett had to carry his baby also. This made it harder for them, but every one tried to be just as accommodating as they could and each one would put himself to trouble ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... mode: /n./ What a {washing machine} or, by extension, any hard disk is in when it's being used so heavily that it's shaking like an old Maytag with an unbalanced load. If prolonged for any length of time, can lead to ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... curtains of his bed, and bent towards him, fixing upon him great eager eyes that he recognised. They were singular eyes, these, at once full of sweetness and full of fire, of audacity and of candour; a child, a grand soul, an unbalanced weakling—all this in one was in ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... have everything, a young person utterly unfit to be his wife would have to be enough. He continued to draw out her story, not because he cared anything about hearing it, but in order to spring his question finally without making her think him more unbalanced than he was. ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... first time it occurred to him that she might be unbalanced. In that revealing Look which he had surprised a while ago she seemed to have given herself to him. He had been strangely conscious of proprietorship in her, a sort of responsibility for her, ever since. By his strategy he had secured her unconsciousness ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... suggested should not, however, blind the reader to some of Lanier's better work. The history of criticism, especially of romantic criticism, is full of just such unbalanced judgments. It is often true in criticism that a man "should like what he does like; and his likings are facts in criticism for him." Without very great learning and with strong prejudices in some directions, Lanier yet had remarkable insight into ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... Miss Laniston, "you seemed to me, at the time, to be in a decidedly unbalanced state of mind, but I think I acted most unwarrantably in speaking of Marcia as I did. In fact, I often act unwarrantably. It is one of my habits. And to prove it to you, I am going to act unwarrantably again. Having brought the elder Miss Raynor before you in a way that might ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... "extremes, my dear, ought always to be avoided. To be constantly running from one extreme to another shows an unbalanced character. A medium path is the wisest which one can choose, and one should show neither undue elation nor foundless depression at the events of life. I remember a proverb which we used to quote as children: 'Laugh in the morning, ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... they have sudden temptations—but that a strong will can overcome them. I was very much moved about your grief that afternoon, and the suppressed emotion, and the exasperation you had caused me, unbalanced me—I am quite unlikely ever to feel again—if you will marry me, I will give you my word I will never touch you, or expect anything, of you except what you agree to give in the bargain. You can lead your own life—and I can ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... Hundred had revelled in the luxury of a hot bath. "Casey," who had found and hurriedly slipped into his trouser pocket a full packet of "fags" inadvertently left behind by some individual with an unbalanced mind, portrayed his bare arm for general admiration of the four small ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... Elizabeth's turn to become unnerved. She has a mind that is peculiarly open to impressions, and communion with the spirits unbalanced her. She justified her expenditure of a shilling weekly by placing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 13, 1920 • Various
... Legislative Council the other day in Calcutta, that Lord Minto and the Secretary of State had saved India from drifting into chaos. I owe you an apology, Mr. Vice-Chancellor and gentlemen, for pressing upon your attention points suggested by criticisms from politicians of generous but unbalanced impulse. But they are important, and I am glad you have allowed me to say what ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... This almost unbalanced me, and only an exaggerated sense of responsibility as nurse and housekeeper kept back the tears that were pricking like ten thousand needles at my eyes. Savagely I reproached myself for having been away, and for having no foreknowledge of the ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... question of Jones," said Amelia, with dignity. "He doesn't concern us. It was a perfectly unjustifiable thing for Uncle John to do, this taking him into his own house and nursing him. Perfectly. But it only shows how unbalanced Uncle John ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... of his class; his wife had been like him in this respect, and her influence had intensified the trait. Queer people with abnormal manners excited his intense aversion. The most charitable view that he could take of Mrs. Mumpson was that her mind—such as she had—was unbalanced, that it was an impossibility for her to see any subject or duty in a sensible light or ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... needed only to look at him to be convinced that it was impossible. His body was not perfumed with love; everything about him revealed calm peace, without interests or desires. Perhaps it was a whim of his fancy, some unbalanced caprice which led him to repel her. And encouraged by this belief, she relaxed, forgetting her anger, speaking to him affectionately, caressing him with a fervor in which there was something at once of the mother and of ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... boulevards to my hotel in excellent spirits. Amid the jostling of the crowd I thought, not without irony, of my terrors and surmises of the previous week, because I believed, yes, I believed, that an invisible being lived beneath my roof. How weak our mind is; how quickly it is terrified and unbalanced as soon as we are confronted with a small, incomprehensible fact. Instead of dismissing the problem with: "We do not understand because we cannot find the cause," we immediately imagine terrible mysteries and ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... MacGlue. I had the honor of presenting my respects at your house yonder when you first came to live in this neighborhood. You don't remember me at present, which is natural enough in the unbalanced condition of your mind, consequent, you will understand (as a professional person yourself) on ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... philosopher, gave to one of his books the title "Joyful Wisdom"—an absurd misnomer. That which he mistook for joy was the delirium of an unbalanced mind. The philosophy of Christ might with propriety be called Joyful Wisdom; it leads one into the path of happiness that is ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... the wreckage of war. While the world's embittered travail did not leave us devastated lands nor desolated cities, left no gaping wounds, no breast with hate, it did involve us in the delirium of expenditure, in expanded currency and credits, in unbalanced industry, in unspeakable waste, and disturbed relationships. While it uncovered our portion of hateful selfishness at home, it also revealed the heart of America as sound and fearless, and beating in ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... lose, under the influence of a small competence, that practical training which gives to the working man, made strong by wholesome necessity, chivalry, endurance, courage, and self-restraint; whose business morality is made up of the lowest and narrowest maxims of the commercial world, unbalanced by that public spirit, that political knowledge, that practical energy, that respect for the good opinion of his fellows, which elevate the large employer. On the hustings, of course, this description of the average free and independent elector would be ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... nothing profane about it—if they stopped much longer. They wanted other people to share the honours; they did not see why every man should not have a turn at the same duty.... I was glad these Americans were making this fuss, for everything is just as unbalanced as it was at the beginning, and there is no sort of confidence anywhere. After three days of siege the only clear thing I can see is that there are a lot of bad tempers, and that the few good men are saving the situation by acting independently ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... evil, and yet mingled with the sheer wickedness of it was also a certain perverseness—the perversity of the unbalanced mind." ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... Panza represents the type of person who does not have imagination or spiritual ideals. Not much less ridiculous, though much more deserving of sympathy, is Don Quixote, who represents the type of person who is controlled by imagination and fanciful ideals, unbalanced by practical judgment. The life of a person of either type ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... overstudied in college, with the result that in the middle of his junior year he broke down altogether and was ill for a long time. Worry about his condition finally affected his mind and he became quite melancholy at times and mentally unbalanced. It was nothing permanent, the doctors said, and the mental trouble would pass away if he regained his health, but Clement was morbidly sensitive about it and was terribly afraid people would find it out and consider ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... our moral derelictions is due to an unbalanced life from which amusements are largely omitted. The "bad" boy in the city streets is usually following his instinct for amusement, of which the lack of playgrounds has deprived him. Dissipations of ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... might be compared to a comet,—a body with a bright head and a nebulous tail. Like all radicals and reformers they had a fringe of unbalanced and crotchety folk. It must be said, too, that absorption in a topic remote from the concerns of one's daily life is apt to be somewhat distracting and demoralizing. Dr. Joseph Henry Allen—an admirable ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... continued, "the words of the man was words of prayer. Never in my life was I taken so unawares or was so unbalanced as when I heard the voice of that man I had mistook for an animal break out in prayer. For a minute the blood stopped in my heart and my hair moved in my scalp; then I shook like a man with the chills. I had come that nigh being a ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... any great fondness for her, I'm bound to say. In fact, he was always bullying her. But he wouldn't need to be very fond of any one to go crazy with jealousy about her. He was a man of strong passions and quite unbalanced. I suppose he had been so utterly spoilt as a child, a boy, and a young man, that he never acquired any power of ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... insinuating bird had stolen the girl's heart from him at Cannes I had given, as I have indicated, little credence, considering it the mere unbalanced apple sauce of a bereaved man. It was, of course, the shark, and nothing but the shark, that had caused love's young dream to go temporarily off the boil, and I was convinced that a word or two with the cousin at this ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... the shallow dales of Hertfordshire there lies a village of great beauty, and I doubt not of admirable virtue, but of eccentric and unbalanced literary taste, which asked the present writer to come down to it on Sunday ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... is an excellent thing for milch cows, but it is a very unbalanced ration and needs alfalfa or something else to balance it up. Green corn, for example, contains only about one per cent of digestible protein and 11.5 per cent of digestible carbohydrates and 0.4 per cent fat, or a nutritive ratio of about ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... quotation was a swindle, like the flimsy superstructures it was intended to prop. The genuine paragraph is a fair sample of Robinson, and of the art of withholding opinion by means of expression. But as quoted, by a fraudulent suppression of one half, the unbalanced half is palmed off as a whole, and an indecision perverted into a decision. I might just as fairly cite him as describing our situation to be 'hollow in its basis, artificial in its superstructure, flimsy in its general result.' Since you value names, I will cite you one man that has commented ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... that was how it seemed. But the leg was not broken; he could still move his toes and expand his foot. Otherwise he could do nothing with it. The leg might not have been there, for all the use it was to him; it would have been better if it had not been there, for it hampered his flight, or unbalanced him, or something, so that he was incapable of traveling now beyond the snow, even if he would. Undoubtedly the air-rifle ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... as funny, because it duplicated experiences he had had and seen, but he made an effort to suppress his mirth. He laughed silently upon his own unbalanced return-sheet until his nervous system was satisfied, then ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... self-evident, if we compare them with other, subtle, refined, barely perceptible cases, the origin of which is a subject for supposition, for guessing rather than for clear comprehension. It is, moreover, a sort of imagination belonging to very few people: certain artists and some eccentric or unbalanced minds, scarcely ever found outside the esthetic or practical life. I wish to speak of the forms of invention that permit only fantastic conceptions, of a strangeness pushed to the extreme (Hoffman, Poe, Baudelaire, ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... from one group to another, drawn by some sentence such as, "Well, she certainly was the prettiest bride I ever laid my two eyes on, but not many of us would want to stand in her shoes now." Or from across the room, "They do say it was what happened the night of the wreck that unbalanced his mind, but I've always thought it was having things go at sixes and sevens at ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... shouted. Just then the racket was distracting, a pair- horse trolly lightly loaded with loose rods of iron passing slowly very near us. "I wasn't trusted so far." And remembering Mrs. Fyne's hints that the girl was unbalanced, I added: "Was it an unreserved ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... thoroughly enjoys a number of its causes. Sitting up too late at night is what he enjoys; smoking too much, drinking too much, yielding to the exhausting sway of the divine efflatus for longer hours at a time than he has any business to, bolting unbalanced meals, and ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... statue of melancholy. Stanton spoke to him but got no answer, and presently took his own road home. He had no taste for histrionic scenes. And as he went his way he meditated. Mad, beyond doubt. Not without power in him, but unbalanced, hysterical, alternating between buffoonery and these schoolgirl emotions. He reflected that if the American nation contained much stuff of this kind it might prove a difficult team to drive. He was thankful that he was going home next day to ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... like his insistence on the idea that Miss Malroy is mentally unbalanced. It's a question of some delicacy—the law, sir, fully recognizes that. It seems to me he is overanxious to account for her disappearance in a manner that ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... Catherine, became the wife of Henry VIII. of England. Happily the mother did not live to witness this child's unhappiness; but her heart-breaking losses and domestic griefs were greater than she could bear. The unbalanced condition of Joanna, upon whom rested all her hopes, was undermining her health. The results of the expedition of Columbus had exceeded the wildest dreams of romance. Gold was pouring in from the West enough ...
— A Short History of Spain • Mary Platt Parmele
... is said to have wept because he found no more worlds to conquer. The man who bemoans the loss of a world and the man who bemoans the loss of coffee are to my mind equally unbalanced and equally in need of forgiveness. The desire for a cup of coffee and the desire for a crown, the hankering after the flavor or even the fragrance of the drink and the hankering after fame, are equally mad ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... Maya watched with fear-struck eyes, the tube flashed once more. Gunnar and Odin stood there for a second. They fell like unbalanced ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... smiled, "and I think, from your point of view, you are right. You see, we are nearly all mushroom growths, sprung up in a night—and we have not had time for poise, or the acceptance with calmness of our good fortune. We are as yet unbalanced by it, and don't know ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... when—, 247-m. Religious teachings conveyed through "exhibition", 355-m. Religious Truths inculcated by Masonry, 576-l. Repining because we are not angels in a world of no changes is folly, 696-m. Repose unbalanced by an analogous movement will not be happiness, 847-l. Republic, danger of government by party, 83-u. Republic, for services to be rendered in the future is one entitled to office in a, 81-u. Republic ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... same school, whose minds had become unbalanced by overwork, worry or disease, George Howe was born a fool. Being a child of honorable and respectable parentage, the playmates with whom he associated in his early youth were of that class who regarded his imbecility as a terrible affliction, were ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... the interruption. Nor did they take notice when another door opened and Andy and Randy came into view. Brassy managed to break away and land a blow on Jack's arm, and in return received a crack in the chin which sent his head backward and all but unbalanced him. ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer
... beating about the bush. I feel sorry for the nervous woman at all times and every day in the week, but there's no chance of a doubt that the nervous woman is mentally unbalanced for want of courage and lack of will power. Some place, way back in the far corners of her intellect, there are numerous little sore spots that need the healing tonic of level-headedness and the bravery of belief in her own strength. Those wise gentlemen of pellets and pills ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... a further degree, the cerebral or brain centres become influenced; they are reduced in power, and the controlling influences of will and of judgment are lost. As these centres are unbalanced and thrown into chaos, the rational part of the nature of the man gives way before the emotional, passional or organic part. The reason is now off duty, or is fooling with duty, and all the mere animal instincts and sentiments are laid atrociously bare. The coward shows ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... Provost of Oriel, and turned his activity into a channel of obstinate and prolonged antagonism, of resistance and protest, most conscientious but most uncompromising, against two great successive movements, both of which he condemned as unbalanced and recoiled from as revolutionary—the Tractarian first, and then the Liberal movement in Oxford. Of the former, it is not perhaps too much to say that he was in Oxford, at least, the ablest and most hurtful opponent. From his counsels, from his ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... who never yet of human wrong Left the unbalanced scale—great Nem'esis! Thou who didst call the Furies from the abyss, And round Orestes bade them howl and hiss For that unnatural retribution—just, Had it but been from hands less near—in this, Thy former realm, I call thee ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... after that critical age, and only then would they begin to breathe freely. Indeed, many people became insane from the very fear of becoming insane. It cannot be subject to any doubt that many people do become mentally unbalanced from the fear that they will become unbalanced. Fear has a tremendous influence on the purely bodily functions, but its influence on the mental functions is incomparably greater, and a person will often get that which he fears ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... her son anxiously. His words meant absolutely nothing to her, for Henry had not told any one of his letter to his captain. Suddenly she feared that perhaps something had fallen on Henry's head and momentarily unbalanced him. ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... view is always objective. It might be maintained, though the thing sounds like a paradox, that his very temperament is objective. Certainly it is a temperament averse to any outbursts of unbalanced enthusiasm. ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... gowns and collars, is written in a style of courteous friendliness.** Both letters, in orthography and sentiment, do credit to Amy's education and character. There is certainly nothing vague or morbid or indicative of an unbalanced mind in these ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... all, was this woman?—An unbalanced mind in a sensually inclined body. As with all who are greedy of pleasure, the foundation of her moral being was overweening egotism. Her dominant faculty, her intellectual axis, so to speak, was ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... ("cracked"), applied to a native of Spain who was considered to be mentally unbalanced from too ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... swept it away with her other habits of thought and feeling? Or could it be that she felt that all earthly interests were becoming of little account to her, and wished to place herself right with one to whom she had displayed a wayward movement of her unbalanced imagination? She welcomed Mr. Bernard as quietly as she had received Helen Darley. He colored at the recollection of that last scene, when he came into her presence; but she smiled with perfect tranquillity. She did not speak to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... person of unbalanced mind, nor was he superstitious in his interpretations of signs, visions and dreams to which so many attach supernatural importance; he was simply a successful man of the world, full of life and buoyancy, devoted to his occupation, that of a ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... some ways; that's just it," Alice said eagerly. "He has always been singularly—well, unbalanced, in some ways. Don't you know there was always a sort of simplicity, a sort of bright innocence about Warren? He believed whatever anybody said until you laughed at him; he took every one of his friends on his own valuation. It's ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... case. He was not the kind of man that the sluggers and holdups of the place practiced upon, sober and straight as he always had been. Then it must be, argued Bentley, that the doctor had his own reason for remaining away. His unexpected luck might have unbalanced him and set him off on a celebration such as was common ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... was approaching the group, Captain Bergen turned about, and without a word, walked slowly away in the direction of the cabin, his manner showing still more clearly than ever that his mind was unbalanced—a fact which caused Storms great discomfort. Aside from his love for the good, honest man, he saw that he had already imperiled, and was likely still further to imperil, their great possessions by his rambling, and ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... machinations; after discoveries respecting the conduct of Mary which impeached her of guilt so heinous, and covered her with infamy so indelible; prudence and honor alike required that he should abandon for ever the thought of linking his destiny with hers. But in the light and unbalanced mind of Norfolk, the ambition of matching with royalty unfortunately preponderated over all other considerations: he speedily began to weave anew the tissue of intrigue which the removal of the conferences had broken off; and turning once more ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... indeed, was his first contract, for it resulted in a profit of several thousand dollars. Men did not become millionaires in such short order then as now, and so much money so easily obtained almost unbalanced the young contractor. It made him less careful in his estimates, and, as may be easily judged, his next job swallowed the whole of his capital, and compelled him to ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... better now," I said. The more I studied my squabby Neptunes the less I liked 'em; and Arion was a pure flaming shame atop of the unbalanced dolphins. ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... trough which we had made beneath it. For a moment I was disappointed, for like that, it was as hopeless as before—no signs of a cave-mouth showing above it. But as I looked upward, I saw the top coming very slowly away from the mountainside. We had unbalanced it below. As it moved apart from the face of the mountain, sounds of human voices, crying gladly in a strange tongue, issued from behind. Faster and faster the top swung forward, downward. Then, with a roaring crash which shook the whole mountain-range beneath our feet, ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... one sex is equally true of the other. Most men and women between twenty and sixty jolly well know what they want, and generally they want something reasonable. We don't legislate for the freaks, the unbalanced, the abnormal; or if we do restrict the vote in those cases, let's restrict it for males as well as females—But don't you see at the same time what a text I should furnish to this malign creature if I ran away to Paris with Michael, and made the slightest ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston |
