"Aberration" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... burglary and was acquitted; they pronounced him mentally deranged, and yet look at him, he is the picture of health. Scoundrels are very often acquitted nowadays in Russia on grounds of abnormality and aberration, yet these acquittals, these unmistakable proofs of an indulgent attitude to crime, lead to no good. They demoralize the masses, the sense of justice is blunted in all as they become accustomed to seeing vice unpunished, and you know in our age one may boldly say in the ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... committed some overt acts of treason. The best excuse for him, over and above that general excuse which applies to all that he has done since his parting with Miss Walladmor, namely, his state of utter distraction (some say positive aberration) of mind,—the best excuse for him, I say, in all his political conduct, is this; that, having lived so much of his life in foreign and convulsed states of society, where every body was engaged in active hostilities ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... stiletto. In the end the badness of their cause was proved by the recourse they had to conspiracies of pimps, friars, murderers, and fanatics, in order to stifle that voice of truth which told them of their aberration from the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... New Vetzlar Eye-pieces, as exhibited at the Academy of Sciences in Paris. The Lenses of these Eye-pieces are so constructed that the rays of light fall nearly perpendicular to the surface of the various lenses, by which the aberration is completely removed; and a telescope so fitted gives one-third more magnifying power and light than could be obtained by the old Eye-pieces. Prices of the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... the subject close and earnest attention. To the first query, the reply must be made that in one-half, or nearly one-half, of the cases of this variety of insanity there is traceable a hereditary tendency to aberration of mind. Usually one or more of the direct progenitors, or of the near relatives of the patient, will be found to have manifested unmistakable marks of unsoundness of mind. In the remaining one-half cases no such tendency can be traced, and in these it must be presumed that the mania is a purely ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... unpremeditated. Murder, willful and premeditated, involves in my opinion a process of mind so similar to that found in lunatics that it is impossible to distinguish the one from the other, and I am quite ready to believe that all premeditated murders are brought about by mental aberration in the murderer. On the other hand, manslaughter, quick, sudden, and unplanned, is the result of more or less inhuman instincts, and those who commit the crime are people who approach more or less nearly to wild ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... repeated and testified to by countless millions of civilized men and women in all nations and all degrees of culture. It signifies not whether the conversion be sudden or gradual, though, as a psychological phenomenon, it is more remarkable when sudden and there is no symptom of mental aberration otherwise. But even as a gradual growth in mature age, its evidential value is not less. ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... I think, that the mysterious telephone call was due to mental aberration on the part of Norris West, was gnawing at his mustache impatiently when his assistant returned. I administered the powerful restorative, and although, as later transpired, chloral was not responsible for West's condition, ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... aberration of the sexual instinct, or the tendency of men to feminine occupations and of women to masculine occupations, had been referred to in the Medical Times and Gazette, February 9, 1867; Sir G. Savage first described a case of "Sexual ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... contemplating the patent fact that "perfection here below" is relative, not absolute—and illustrating this by the circumstance that European animals, and especially plants, are now proving to be better adapted for New Zealand than many of the indigenous ones—that "the correction for the aberration of light is said, on high authority, not to be quite perfect even in that most perfect organ, the eye." And then follows the second extract of the reviewer. But what is the position of the reviewer upon his own interpretation of these passages? If he insists that green woodpeckers ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... school insisted that tics are not morbid entities but episodic syndromes of mental degeneration. Charcot referred to tic as a sort of hereditary aberration, which, I may add, is surely true when we view it from the phylogenetic standpoint, as representing a resurrection of what was at one time a normal tendency or reaction. Noir has called attention to the fact that the movements found in the tics ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... treated acute sickness in all its forms, and you have had many cases in which, because of irritable stomachs, neither food nor medicine could be given. Day after day you have seen the wasting of the bodies, and you have also seen mental aberration or stupor lessen day by day as the disease lessened its grasp upon the brain-centres, and finally when the point of natural hunger was reached, you never found the lost pounds a matter of physical discomfort or mental abnormality or weakness; rather you have always found at this point ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... philosophical expositions of his theory lack the clearness which generally—not always—results from a course of strict preparatory training, and we have more than sufficient foundation for the reports of his mental aberration. On personal acquaintance he proves to be a remarkably earnest, thoroughly convinced, and winning man, although he does not deliberately do or say anything to attract one. His very earnestness is ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... picturesque poetry than it is incomparably the most offensive to good taste and natural instinct on the score of style and treatment. Marlowe's "Hero and Leander" can only be classed with these elaborate studies of sensual aberration or excess by those "who can see no difference between Titian and French photographs." (I take leave, for once in a way, to quote from a private letter—long since addressed to the present commentator by the most illustrious ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... nearly similar have been observed repeatedly. Better nourished individuals have produced more deviating leaves on one plant, partly owing to the larger number of stems and branches, and poor or average specimens have mostly been without any aberration or with only one or two abnormal leaves. No further improvement could be attained. Quadrifoliolate leaves were always rare, never [360] attaining a number that would put its stamp on a whole bed. I have endeavored to get some six- and seven-bladed crimson clover leaves, but in vain; ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... them in all, Paul, the newcomer making the tenth. They were all advanced in years, except one young woman, who was prevented by mental aberration from supporting herself outside ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... This demeanour became even more majestic when in the next hand the Major led out of turn. The moment he had done it, Miss Mapp hurriedly threw a random card out of her hand on to the table, in the hope that Irene, by some strange aberration, would ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... Rev. Dr. John M. Krebbs, of New York, states through this clairvoyant that the cause of his mental aberration while on earth was a misinterpretation by him of a spiritual vision which he was permitted to receive. Thus misunderstanding the aim of his spiritual visitants, he became haunted with a fallacy which ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... bowed head, and, squatting like some metal Buddha in this weird light that ministered to its needs, it seemed to Denton in certain moods almost as if this must needs be the obscure idol to which humanity in some strange aberration had offered up his life. His duties had a varied monotony. Such items as the following will convey an idea of the service of the press. The thing worked with a busy clicking so long as things went well; but if the paste that came pouring through a feeder ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... enough to learn that the monstrous and outlandish figure, the magot chinois whom I believed to be but a memorial of our forefathers' mental aberration, that grotesque potiche, works! The absurd and hollow creature of clay seems to be alive with a sort of (surely) unconscious life worthy of its traditions. It heaves its stomach, it rolls its eyes, it brandishes a monstrous arm: ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... This mortal spirit from his primal source; Him, canst thou seize, thy power exert And lead him on thy downward course, Then stand abash'd, when thou perforce must own, A good man in his darkest aberration, Of the right path ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... but there was perhaps more politics in his madness than perversity; for it was an attempt to introduce into Rome the dynastic marriages between brothers and sisters which had been the constant tradition of the Ptolemies and the Pharaohs of Egypt. This oriental custom certainly seems a horrible aberration to us, who have been educated according to the strict and austere doctrines of Christianity, which, inheriting in these matters the fine flower of Greco-Latin ideas, has purified and rendered them more rigorous. But for centuries in Egypt,—that is, in ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... Scripture; if, on the other hand, you affirm absence of motive on its part, you must affirm absence of activity also.—Let us then assume that just as sometimes an intelligent person when in a state of frenzy proceeds, owing to his mental aberration, to action without a motive, so the highest Self also created this world without any motive.—That, we reply, would contradict the omniscience of the highest Self, which is vouched for by Scripture.—Hence the doctrine of ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... adopted towards men like Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Morley, who have identified themselves heart and soul with Ireland. Of course, they are far above being turned for a moment from their course by any such comments, but it must be a pain to them nevertheless. It almost seems aberration of mind in Mr. Parnell to be deaf to Mr. Gladstone's words of true patriotism, echoed as they are throughout England and Scotland, and I cannot but believe in thousands of Irish hearts besides. Surely this must have gone far to ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... the disgraceful spectacle of the drunken old man apostrophizing her in the presence of a band of loafers and street-walkers. Suddenly, vividly, she relived again the horrible moment when he had tried to force himself into her room, and what she had before supposed to be a mad aberration now appeared to her as a vulgar incident in a debauched and ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... will, albeit, not improbably, with a touch (as was thought by several) of mental aberration, the result of his illness, he threw himself, with characteristic energy, into the work of religious proselytism, in support of the special views with which he was now inspired. He became a kind of religious clairvoyant, living an ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... consult them, although he knew that they entirely rejected his Progressivism. General Luke E. Wright, who remained a devoted friend but did not become a Progressive, used to explain what the others called the Colonel's aberration, as being really a very subtle piece of wisdom. Experienced ranchmen, he would say, when their herds stampede in a sudden alarm, spur their horses through the rushing cattle, fire their revolvers into the air, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... than one bath in the one day; and after Katherine, on Hardy's part, had suggested sundry innovations, involving the condemnation of all the pictures and ornaments she could lay her hands on,—a piece of sacrilege which Mrs. Rogers regarded more in sorrow than in anger, as indicating a pitiable aberration of intellect,—the rooms were taken from ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... misfortune, until they forgot their regiments, companies, places and date of capture, and finally, even their names. I should think that by the middle of January, at least one in every ten had sunk to this imbecile condition. It was not insanity so much as mental atrophy—not so much aberration of the mind, as a paralysis of mental action. The sufferers became apathetic idiots, with no desire or wish to do or be anything. If they walked around at all they had to be watched closely, to prevent their straying over the Dead Line, and giving the young ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... my culpable silence to 'aberration.' I am out of my orbit, rather, and you must have patience till I come in again. The book is out to-day, and I am going to Captain Washington to see about copies to yourself, the Governor, the Bishop, Fairbairn, Thompson, Rutherfoord, ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... partial hypnosis with consequent howling and evident pain in the eyes. Certain feeble minded persons have been known to be adversely affected by moonlight as well as some cases of complete mental aberration. In other words, while moonlight has no practical effect on the normal human in its usual concentration, it does have an adverse effect on certain types of mentality and, despite the laughter of medical science, there seems to be something in the theory of 'moon madness.' This effect Von ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... is the same tune as the one known by the names of Yellow Stockings and the Virgin Queen, the latter title seeming to connect it with Queen Elizabeth, as the name of Mad Moll does with the history of Mary, who was subject to mental aberration. The words of Mad Moll are not known to exist, but probably consisted of some fulsome panegyric on the virgin queen, at the expense of her unpopular sister. From the mention of Hence, Melancholy, and Mad Moll, it is presumed that ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... husband and her children. This is not right. Like man, woman is born and lives in society, and she can not and must not remain indifferent to social distress and suffering. To think otherwise would be selfishness and aberration and would leave society a prey to much suffering which only the blessed hand of woman can cure or relieve. Let woman be the glory and happiness of the home; but do not forget that she must extend her beneficent action beyond the confines of the household, that she must make the world ...
— The Woman and the Right to Vote • Rafael Palma
... must not take too seriously those "calf" courtships, prematurely fostered by boys and girls, under the pressure of the high-school tendency to anticipate all of life's riper experiences. But even here jesting and teasing will only tend to confirm and make permanent what would be but a temporary aberration. In that case either silence or kindly, simple advice will help ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... be any other conclusion, because any other would be a madman's mental aberration, the breaking of the rules of sense and logic. And now do you know how the cycle of these novels really ended? By a hymn in the worship ...
— So Runs the World • Henryk Sienkiewicz,
... culture of Greece an aberration of the amazing political impulse towards [Greek: aristeyein]. The [Greek: polis] utterly opposed to ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... spectacles and took out his handkerchief. 'What we must do, eh, my dear,' he half turned to Mrs Lawford, 'what we must do is to consult, yes, consult together. And later—we must have advice—medical advice; unless, as I very much suspect, it is merely a little quite temporary physical aberration. Science, I am told, is making great strides, experimenting, groping after things which no sane man has ever dreamed of before—without being burned alive for it. What's in a name? ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... under which they have enjoyed such boundless prosperity. No friend of the Union entertains any serious thought of disregarding or destroying the great principle that governments are only rightly founded on the consent of the governed. But it is not every temporary aberration of thought, nor every outbreak of revolutionary violence, which may properly be allowed to avail in changing the forms of an established government. Some respect is due to obligations once assumed ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... an occasional remark of "good" or "bad." The conclusion was at last forced upon me that he had been endeavoring to commit suicide by a slow course of starvation and exposure. Either as the cause or the result of this attempt, I read, in the final notes, signs of an aberration of mind. This also explained the singular demeanor of the man when found, and his refusal to take medicine or nourishment. He had selected a long way to accomplish his purpose, but had reached the ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... to swamp the Court which received the approval of four-fifths of the House of Representatives cannot be lightly dismissed as an aberration. Was it due to a fortuitous coalescence of local grievances, or was there a general underlying cause? That Marshall's principles of constitutional law did not entirely accord with the political and economic life of the nation at this period must be admitted. The ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... Law to the Spiritual World has decided and necessary limits. And if elsewhere with undue enthusiasm I seem to magnify the principle at stake, the exaggeration—like the extreme amplification of the moon's disc when near the horizon—must be charged to that almost necessary aberration of light which distorts every new idea while it is yet slowly ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... embarrassment and with such apparent unconsciousness of the blue eyes that were following him, and the light, graceful figure,—which was so near his own that in some of his gestures his grimy hands almost touched its delicate garments,—that, accustomed as she was to a certain masculine aberration in her presence, she was greatly amused by his naive acceptance of her as an equal. Suddenly, looking frankly ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... Anna with a bitter smile, "yes, the virtuous Empress Anna blushed in the arms of her lover, Biron, at this aberration of her sold and coupled niece. She found it very revolting that the poor sixteen-year-old Anna Leopoldowna dared to have a heart of her own and to feel a real love. They must therefore rob her of the only happiness Heaven had vouchsafed her. Consequently, ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... chanced that the Bishop of Ohio visited Paris, and Mr. Forbes, then English chaplain at the Church of the Rue d'Aguesseau, arranged to have a confirmation. As said above, I was under deep "religious impressions," and, in fact, with the exception of that little aberration in Germany, I was decidedly a pious girl. I looked on theatres (never having been to one) as traps set by Satan for the destruction of foolish souls; I was quite determined never to go to a ball, and was prepared to "suffer for conscience' sake "—little prig that I was—if I was desired ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... about among books to some trifling extent, but the taste for study had never taken him. The silly mode of culture which he had undergone availed nothing against the instincts of his race. His grandfather was a sort of living aberration—a queer variety such as Nature will sometimes interpolate amid the most steady of strains; but young Ellington's moods, and tendencies, and capabilities reverted to the old line. Yet, despite his restless energy, despite his incapacity for that active ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... armful the regalia of his aberration—the blue tennis suit, shoes, hat, gloves and all, and threw them in a pile at ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... her throne; and it was not till after months of suffering and agony, that she recovered, if that could be called recovery, which gave back a deformed and hapless lunatic, bereft of intellect and of beauty, in place of the once gay and fascinating Rosalie. The dread aberration of intellect was attributed by her medical attendants to the fatal and sudden shock which she had sustained, and to its effect on a mind weakened by previous anxiety and sorrow; while they feared her ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... Drug poisons are added to the waste and morbid matter which are already clogging the channels of life. And, of course, under such unnatural treatment, in many instances things go from bad to worse. Flushes, headaches, rheumatic and neuralgic pains, melancholia, irritability, mental aberration, partial paralysis and a multitude of other symptoms appear ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... especially used in the figurative sense: as in ethics, a deviation from the truth; in pathology, a mental derangement; in zoology and botany, abnormal development or structure. In optics, the word has two special applications: (1) Aberration of Light, and (2) Aberration in Optical Systems. These subjects receive treatment ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... and nothing to select. To put it briefly, I will end by using the language of psychiatry: if one denies that creative work involves problems and purposes, one must admit that an artist creates without premeditation or intention, in a state of aberration; therefore, if an author boasted to me of having written a novel without a preconceived design, under a sudden inspiration, I should ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... scandal, sent for him, and demanded of him (he was still very angry), if he had sworn to live and die mad. This might have been, from the sequel, taken as a prediction; for the unfortunate general died at last in a fit of mental aberration. He replied in such improper terms to the reprimands of the Emperor that he was sent, perhaps in order that he might have time to calm himself, to the army of England. It was not only in gaming-houses, however, that ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... be occasionally afflicted with results more from an excessive indulgence in liquor than from any other cause. Be that, however, as it may, there is no question but that he is occasionally seized with fits of mental aberration. From what you tell me, and his exaggerated suspicions of a plot between you and Sir Thomas Gourlay, I think it most probable that he is your ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... perverted sexuality.... It is true that in the vast collection of religious phenomena, some are undisguisedly amatory—e.g. sex deities and obscene rites in polytheism, and ecstatic feelings of union with the Saviour in a few Christian Mystics. But then why not equally call religion an aberration of the digestive functions, and prove one's point by the worship of Bacchus and Ceres, or by the ecstatic feelings of some other saints about the Eucharist?" Or, seeing that the Bible is full of the language of respiratory oppression, "one might almost as well interpret religion as a perversion ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... during that dark period, forbid us to suppose that his intellect ever crossed the line which separates reason from insanity. From out the gloom that surrounds the whole case two points stand out clear and indisputable, that no indiscretion of conduct or aberration of mind on the part of Tasso can possibly have merited the sufferings to which he was subjected, and that whatever may have been Alfonso's suspicions, his fiendish vengeance is one of history's darkest crimes, and covers the tyrant ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... some secret sin, Some aberration fraught with morbid gloom, A buried hope which ever burst its ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... Pritty! Her hysterical fit was now quite over, but pale cheeks and a trembling exhausted frame told eloquently of her recent sufferings. Mr Hazlit's limbs were also shaky, and his face cadaverous, showing that his temporary aberration of reason ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... Zephoranim, I would in the first place say that the poem so greatly admired by your Majesty, is totally devoid of common sense. It is purely a caprice of the imagination,—and what is imagination? A mere aberration of the cerebral nerves,—a morbidity of brain in which the thoughts brood on the impossible, —on things that have never been, and never will be. Thus, Sah- luma's verse resembles the incoherent ravings of a moon-struck madman,—moreover, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... third gave himself up to gross debauchery, and confessed it, with ineffectual sobs and tears, to his chosen Guru. A fourth got entangled with a person of the other sex and fell out with his dearest and truest friends. A fifth showed signs of mental aberration and was brought into Court upon charges of discreditable conduct. A sixth shot himself to escape the consequences of criminality, on the verge of detection! And so we might go on and on. All these were apparently sincere searchers after truth, and passed in the world for respectable persons. ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... like the heart, through certain epochs and transitions, but its development is not so often portrayed. Men seem to have been satisfied with unfolding the passions in their extremes, their aberration, and their results, without considering how closely they are bound up with the intellectual constitution of the individual. Degeneracy in morals roots in a one-sided and wavering philosophy, doubly dangerous, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... flour from behind the tree as he passed it, and keeping the clump of timber well between him and the surveyors' camp, lest the cook should glance round, and, noticing the increased bulk of his load, get some new ideas concerning mental aberration. ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... of their number went, so far as to pick quarrels with members of the rival class, in hopes of a fight. But in this they were not successful. The Sixth chose to look upon this display of feeling among their juniors as a temporary aberration of mind, and were by no means to be tempted into hostilities. They asserted their authority wherever they could enforce it, and sacrificed it whenever it seemed more discreet to do so. Only one thing evoked a temporary display of vexation ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... patience and threw them off in course of time. He was happy in his marriage and in his family, and such troubles and distresses as were inevitable he accepted calmly and quietly. In his death, as in his life, he was fortunate: he had no long or painful illness, and he was spared the calamity of aberration of intellect, the saddest of ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... as an unfortunate aberration; and if you regret it, and change your mind, you will be free at any time you like to come back and nothing shall be ever said about it. But I'm not begging you to do so. I may be wrong; perhaps she's the woman to make you happy. Let me know within three months how you ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... bring themselves to forgive him for thinking more of the great and illustrious families with which his marriage had connected him than of his own genius and marvelous talents. Hugo most unjustly accused my aunt of encouraging this "aberration," as he called it, of Balzac's mind; in which judgment of her he was vastly mistaken, because she was the person who suffered the most through it, and by it. But this unwarranted suspicion made him antagonistic to her, and probably inspired ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... mention of insanity in the domesticated animals in any of our modern authors, whether treating on agriculture, horsemanship, or veterinary medicine, and yet there are some singular and very interesting cases of aberration of intellect. The inferior animals are, to a certain extent, endowed with the same faculties as ourselves. They are even susceptible of the same moral qualities. Hatred, love, fear, hope, joy, ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... it is but just to go one step further and to question whether the alleged necessity of thought is, in any case and properly speaking, a real necessity. Unless those who advance the present argument are the victims of some mental aberration, it is overwhelmingly improbable that their minds should differ in a fundamental and important attribute from the minds of the vast majority of their species. Or, to continue the above quotation, "They may fairly be asked to consider, whether it is not more likely that they are mistaken ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... to my interest in their experience. It is gratifying to one who would above all things avoid the insanity of fancying himself a more momentous or touching object than he really is, to find that nobody expects from him the least sign of such mental aberration, and that he is evidently held capable of listening to all kinds of personal outpouring without the least disposition to become communicative in the same way. This confirmation of the hope that my bearing is not that of the self-flattering lunatic is given me in ample measure. ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... no longer might dread reproof for their noise,—all this was less touching than the effect the event had upon the old dowager mother. While the senses of others were stunned by the blow, hers became awakened by the shock; all her absurd aberration passed away, and she sat in intellectual self-possession by the side of her son's death-bed, which she never left until he was laid in his coffin. He was the first and last of her sons. She had now none but grandchildren to ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... discovered for what purpose most of these holes were dug, but we dug them; and as a special treat we were allowed to dig an extra big hole, lined and roofed with sandbags, wherein to hide two hundred thousand rounds of S.A. ammunition lest the Turks in a moment of aberration should drop a bomb on it. All this in a temperature of over 100 deg. in the shade at nine ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... cold within her. She dared not realize. And she chid and checked her ward, restored her to the usual impulsive, affectionate demureness. Then she dismissed the whole matter. It was just an accidental aberration on the girl's part from her own true nature. Miss Frost taught Alvina thoroughly the qualities of her own true nature, and Alvina believed what she was taught. She remained for twenty years the demure, refined creature ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... That you should be so base!" she cried. "For more than forty-eight hours I have closed my eyes to reason; deluded myself that you acted from temporary mental aberration—that Sinclair Spencer's death was unpremeditated. My impulse was to help—to save. Ah, you wooed me well this winter." Her voice broke and she drew a long quivering breath. "It is a pitiful thing to kill a woman's love. Some ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... but he remained a little uncertain as to the delight; the immediate effect of Miss Harden's presence being an intellectual disturbance amounting almost to aberration. It showed itself, first of all, in a frightful exaltation of the consciousness of self. To Mr. Rickman, striving to be noiseless, it seemed that the sound of his boots, as he crossed the library, reverberated through the immensity of space, while the creaking ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... under the sun. If, for instance, I steal somebody's money, the disgrace falls upon me, and not upon the man who is robbed, according to the world's rule of honor; but if I rob him of his wife, it is not I, but the robbed man who is disgraced. What does it mean? Is it a mere aberration of the moral sense, or is it that between stealing a man's purse and stealing his wife, there is such a vast difference that the two cases cannot be even compared? I have often thought over this, and have come to the conclusion that ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... and irresolute society. The farther we go toward the end of the empire the more its energy seems to fail and the character of men to weaken. The number of strong healthy minds incapable of a lasting aberration and without need of guidance or comfort was growing ever smaller. We note the spread of that feeling of exhaustion and debility which follows the aberrations of passion, and the same weakness that led to crime impelled men ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... more especially as it bears particular reference to Park:—"Like the ghostly lover of Leonora, he mounts at midnight, and traverses in darkness paths which, to those less accustomed to them, seem formidable in daylight, through straits where the slightest aberration would plunge him into a morass, or throw him over a precipice, on to cabins which his horse might ride over without knowing they lay in his way, unless he happened to fall through the roofs. When he arrives at such a stately termination ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... the hand of death. We never can be sufficiently distrustful of present opinion, so largely is it directed by passion or interest. But we may rely with confidence on the judgment of successive generations on departed eminence; for it is detached from the chief cause of present aberration. So various are the prejudices, so contradictory the partialities and predilections of men, in different countries and ages of the world, that they never can concur through a course of centuries in one opinion, if it is not founded in truth and justice. The vox populi ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... against a crime so un-English as that of assassination from revenge, yet when the national prejudices of the prisoner had been explained, which made him consider himself as stained with indelible dishonour, the generosity of the English audience was inclined to regard his crime as the aberration of a false idea of honour, rather than as flowing from a heart naturally savage, or habitually vicious. I shall never forget the charge of the venerable ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 282, November 10, 1827 • Various
... body of invalided men, who had fought at Weissenburg or Worth, made their way into Paris, looking battle and travel-stained, some with their heads bandaged, others with their arms in slings, and others limping along with the help of sticks. It is difficult to conceive by what aberration the authorities allowed the Parisians to obtain that woeful glimpse of the misfortunes of France. The men in question ought never to have been sent to Paris at all. They might well have been cared ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... failed to notice a change in Mrs. Dinneford. She was not able to hide her troubled feelings. Edith was watching her far more closely than she imagined; and now that she was temporarily out of her mind, she did not let a word or look escape her. The first aspect of her temporary aberration was that of fear and deprecation. She was pursued by some one who filled her with terror, and she would lift her hands to keep him off, or hide her head in abject alarm. Then she would beg him to keep ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... Savonarola's nature as greater than her own made a large part of the strength she had found. And the trust was not to be lightly shaken. It is not force of intellect which causes ready repulsion from the aberration and eccentricities of greatness, any more than it is force of vision that causes the eye to explore the warts on a face bright with human expression; it is simply the negation of high sensibilities. Romola was so deeply moved by the grand energies of Savonarola's nature, that she found herself listening ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... wayward depression increased every day, although his intellect was not wholly obscured; but at the times that it was clearest, he seemed to suffer more than during its hours of partial aberration. He gave way less than at first to fits of violent irritation; the terrible expressions he used to utter, and the murmurs and curses which rose to his lips with such frightful bitterness, were at an end. He even ceased to ask that ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... means devoid of articulation and sense. Take, for instance, this—I do not remember just now a propos of which composition, but it is very appropriate to those we are now discussing:—"The whole striving of the composer must be regarded as an aberration, based on decided talent, we admit, but nevertheless an aberration." You see the most hostile of Chopin's critics does not deny his talent; indeed, Rellstab sometimes, especially subsequently, speaks quite patronisingly ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... somebody with a ray of the imagination necessary to a comprehension of Poe's genius given us at least a decent sketch of his brief life! Was Poe in a state of mental aberration when he made Griswold his literary executor? Is the world forever to hear of him only from those who see the dark side of his life and know nothing of his life's work?—from those who look at his life and his life's work through the smoked ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... which is to happen in eternal life." If, in respect of the high estimation of prophecy, our age were to follow in the steps of Jesus, it would also most readily agree with Him as regards the subject of the prophecy before us. This alone is the cause of the aberration from Him, that people confined and shut up the prophet within the horizon of his time, and then imagined that he could not know anything of the suffering of Christ. It was altogether different in the [Pg 249] ancient ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... didn't destroy him. He should have known better than to fire into a tractor. I'll have to admit, I did slip a little. I assumed he was the usual type of drone. I didn't recognize the full extent of his aberration." ...
— The Players • Everett B. Cole
... measurements of the diameter of the star on the plate. A simple mathematical relation then permits us to determine m'. The diameter of a star image increases with the time of exposure. This increase is due in part to the diffraction of the telescope, to imperfect achromatism or spherical aberration of the objective, to irregular grinding of the glass, and especially to variations in the refraction of the air, which produce an oscillation of the ...
— Lectures on Stellar Statistics • Carl Vilhelm Ludvig Charlier
... do so as yet; for I felt myself, as I lay, under the influence of a pleasure quite new to me; and listened, in a kind of peaceful aberration, to the gentle murmurs of the summer wind, as it breathed on me through the closed window-blinds above me. Then I fancied I heard a voice that spoke to me from the end of the sacristy: it whispered so low that I could not catch the words. I remained motionless, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... number, only seventeen were marked with the g which signified that their friendship was trusted. We cannot disassociate Swift from his own time, nor can we attribute simply to a melancholy life or to mental aberration the revolting conceptions which his works contain. The coarseness and corruption which marked the private and public life of Swift's day had their share in the production of such poems as The "Lady's Dressing-Room," and such degrading views of human nature as are expressed in the "Voyage ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... who lives with Mrs. Prichard, or for the parents of the little Dave Wardle, to inquire of them has she been subject to attacks or is this new. I should tell you that she has now been free from any aberration of mind, so Dr. Nash says, for nearly two days, mostly knitting quietly to herself, without talk, and sometimes laying down the needles like to think. Dr. Nash says to talk to her when she talks, but to keep her off of bygones, and the like. She has asked for things to ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... another light: "War ich doch selber jetzt das lebende Gesetz der Moral und der Quell alles Rechtes und aller Befugnis; die anruechigsten Magdalenen wurden purifiziert durch die laeuternde und suehnende Macht meiner Liebesflammen,"[279] a moral aberration which he attributes to an imperfect interpretation of the difficult philosophy of Hegel. If further evidence were necessary to show the perversity of Heine's moral sense, the following paragraph from a letter to Varnhagen would suffice, in its way ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... of right and wrong and realizes that the act he committed was against the law. Medically he may have a slight aberration, but only ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey
... 10 deg. F. The elevation of the body temperature, which represents tissue change or combustion, is accompanied with an acceleration of the heart's action, a quickening of the respiration, and an aberration in the functional activity of the various organs of the body. These organs may be stimulated to the performance of excessive work, or they may be incapacitated from carrying out their allotted tasks, or, in the course ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... give herself to him; and when one night love prevails, and she proves it by a voluntary act of devotion, he murders her in the act, that her nobler and purer self may be preserved. Such a crime might be committed in a momentary aberration, or even intense excitement, of feeling. It is characterized here by a matter-of-fact simplicity, which is its sign of madness. The distinction, however, is subtle; and we can easily guess why this and its companion poem did not retain their title. A madness which ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... Majesty in the morning, she was nearly in a state of mental aberration. When I saw her again in the evening, the King by her side, surrounded by her family, the Princesse Eizabeth, and yourself, madame' said the kind Count, 'she appeared to me like a person risen from ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... his fortunes. This was the truth that lay in the Platonic doctrine that all sin is ignorance; but Plato did not take account of any possible depravity in the will. Nor is what has been illustrated above true of the mind and the will only. In the region of emotion and of beauty, there may be similar aberration, if these are not grasped in their vital nature, in organic relation to ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... couple of dark lanterns, while Legrand contented himself with the scarabaeus, which he carried attached to the end of a bit of whip-cord; twirling it to and fro, with the air of a conjuror, as he went. When I observed this last, plain evidence of my friend's aberration of mind, I could scarcely refrain from tears. I thought it best, however, to humor his fancy, at least for the present, or until I could adopt some more energetic measures with a chance of success. In the meantime I endeavored, but all in vain, to sound him in regard to the object ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... Lucy appeared as a mere aberration. His overwhelming eagerness for life, for new faces, scenes, sensations, had whirled him from the true path of his happiness. Thank God, it was not too late! Joy alone was his true mate, his true love, the real need of his being, ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... led in solemn procession to the altar, where they made some small offering of alms, and where it is probable that many were, through the influence of devotion and the sanctity of the place, cured of this lamentable aberration. It is worthy of observation, at all events, that the dancing mania did not recommence at the altars of the saint, and that from him alone assistance was implored, and through his miraculous interposition a cure was expected, which was beyond the reach of human skill. The ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... following his romantic quest so far. It was unworthy of the president of the Sylvan Silver Hollow Company, and he was not quite sure but that his confidences with Collinson might have imperiled even the interests of the company. To atone for this momentary aberration, and correct his dismal fancies, he resolved to attend to some business at Skinner's before returning, and branched off on a long detour that would intersect the traveled stage-road. But here a singular incident overtook him. As he wheeled into the turnpike, he heard the trampling hoof-beats ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... the scriptures. And the monarch also heard the harmonious cackle of the geese sporting in the lakes. Beholding such exceedingly wonderful sights, the king began to reflect inwardly, saying, 'Is this a dream? Or is all this due to an aberration of my mind? Or, is it all real? O, I have, without casting off my earthly tenement, attained to the beatitude of heaven! This land is either the sacred country of the Uttara-Kurus, or the abode, called Amaravati, of the chief of the celestials! O, what are these wonderful sights that ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... I may be forgiven my temporary fit of aberration. I cannot thank you sufficiently, ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... nor understand—these were contingencies which, though desirable, were certainly not probable. The precise and legal language of the instruments, provoked much ridicule, and might justify a smile. They were chiefly dictated by a gentleman, whose mental aberration led to his removal from office. It is, however, difficult to suggest more explicit forms, and the announcement of the plans of government was a proper preliminary ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... recurred to the din and crash of the battle-field, with the mad bounding of the war-horse, and the loud clang of the trumpet. Perhaps the acute pain of my swollen and suffering arm gave the character to my mental aberration; for I have more than once observed among the wounded in battle, that even when torn and mangled by grape from a howitzer, their ravings have partaken of a high feature of enthusiasm,—shouts of triumph and exclamations ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... sometimes, because they are ancient, especially doctrines in religion, because truth is before error, and falsehood is but an aberration from truth and therefore there is so much plea and contention among men, about antiquity, as if it were the sufficient rule of verity. But the abuse is, that men go not far enough backward in the steps of antiquity, that is, to the most ancient rule, and ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... return from church is in all ten parts temporary aberration," I returned. "It is what you might call Seventh Day affection. Quiet, and no doubt sincere, but it is dissipated by the rising of the Monday sun. It is like our good resolutions on New Year's Day, which barely ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... I am liable to fits of delirium but by a sudden and alarming aberration while waiting for her answer I became mentally aware of three trained dogs dancing on their hind legs. I don't know why. Perhaps because of the pervading solemnity. There's nothing more solemn on earth than a ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... Destructive Type.' We do not denounce Smith as a murderer, but rather as a murderous man. The type is such that its very life— I might say its very health—is in killing. Some hold that it is not properly an aberration, but a newer and even a higher creature. My dear old friend Dr. Bulger, who kept ferrets—" (here Moon suddenly ejaculated a loud "hurrah!" but so instantaneously resumed his tragic expression that Mrs. Duke looked everywhere else for the sound); Dr. Pym continued somewhat sternly—"who, ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... surveying once more the great design of his career, he found it an effort to bring up—from the far recesses of his experience—the poor little sentimental episode, so insignificant and commonplace, which, in a kind of aberration, he had taken for an affair of the heart. He returned to England. He threw himself with vigour into the questions which were then disturbing Churchmen. He revived a touching acquaintance with Agnes Carillon, an ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... serene, smiling face showed no sign of any aberration of intellect, and Margery took Grace's hand, and hurried her through the crowd, resolved that she should not, for another instant, stand by and ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... chickens. But just as I was about to commence operations, some one announced, that, if eggs are inverted during the process of incubation, the chickens from them will be crazy. Appalled at the thought of a brood of chickens laboring under an aberration of mind, yet fired with the love of scientific investigation, I inverted one by way of experiment, and placed it in another nest. The next morning, when I entered the barn, Biddy stretched out her neck, and declared that there was no use in waiting any longer, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... these reasons Bradley had set up this instrument at Kew, to attempt the proof of the earth's motion by observing the annual parallax of stars. He certainly found an annual variation of zenith distance, but not at the times of year required by the parallax. This led him to the discovery of the "aberration" of light and of nutation. Bradley has been described as the founder of the modern system of accurate observation. He died in 1762, leaving behind him thirteen folio volumes of valuable but unreduced observations. Those ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... all that," the accuser insists, "Socrates taught sons to pour contumely upon their fathers (25) by persuading his young friends that he could make them wiser than their sires, or by pointing out that the law allowed a son to sue his father for aberration of mind, and to imprison him, which legal ordinance he put in evidence to prove that it might be well for the wiser to imprison the ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... and brand of our failure—it is our aberration from the normal type as it is fully revealed in Christ. "Nothing is so unnatural as sin,"[56] nothing is so irrational, nothing so abnormal—it is always a break from the unity of the divine Life, a movement towards isolation and self-solitariness, ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... after an illness of 25 days. His complaint was a remittent fever, taken on our short journey into the interior. On the third day after our return, he took to his bed, from which he never rose again, excepting on the day previous to his death, when, under a state of mental aberration, he secretly took off his shirt, and threw himself from out of the port-hole near his bed into the sea; he was soon taken up, but his delirium continued until he expired. At five this afternoon he was buried in Paradise. My other companion, John Debenham, has also been ill ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... could have settled a large sum on the people who looked after him, and of course it is evident that some money must have been paid, though the lawyers could find no trace of it amongst her papers. The only other hypothesis is that it is a case of some extraordinary aberration of memory, and that, the child she disliked having been removed, she forgot about him altogether. All my life I never remember hearing him mentioned; and as my mother did not return to Bowshott until I was nearly eight years old, very little may have been said to her that would ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... in a professional aunt, desirable if not indispensable, is tact. If she should be possessed of ever so little, it will save her a considerable amount of bother. She won't, in a moment of mental aberration, praise dark-eyed children to Zerlina, whose children have blue eyes. Should she do so, by some unlucky chance, it would take several expeditions to the Zoo, and probably one to Kew, before things were as they were. If Zerlina, ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... whatever they had demonstrated two truths which shone like beacon lights: that Manhattan Island was overpopulated as long as both he and Ekstrom remained on it; that Ekstrom had been goaded to the verge of aberration by the discovery that Lanyard had come safely through the Assyrian debacle to take up anew his self-appointed office of Nemesis to the Prussian spy system in general and to the genius of its American ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... overwhelmed. All the scaffolding of his joys, so rapidly run up, fell. This strange fact had occurred, in the impulse of joy he had felt since daybreak he had wholly forgotten that he had to confess. He had a moment of aberration. "But I am forgiven," he thought; "the proof is that state of happiness, such as I have never known, that truly wonderful expansion of soul which I experienced in the chapel and ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... his momentary aberration, looked around him with astonishment, passed his hand over his face, collected his thoughts, and said to his daughter, "It seems to me I have forgotten myself for a moment—fatigue—sorrow. What did ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... indicates that every human being, however normal and "good," has somewhere in him a touch of insanity and a vein of anti-social aberration. But no human being, however abnormal or however "criminal," is born into the world without this ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... Speak of the "sphere's aberration," Mention the "leathery globe," Say he got "free transportation"— Though that try the patience of Job. But if you're wise you'll discard en- Cumbrances such as we thwack— Especially "sinister garden" ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... the velocity of light, founded upon his study of "the aberration of light," is even less worthy ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... Burdoch, and struck a bargain, and Sir Charles was to be shifted to Burdoch's asylum, and nobody allowed to see him there, etc., etc.; the old system, in short, than which no better has as yet been devised for perpetuating, or even causing, mental aberration. ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... to adopt the broad bean for the establishment of her family I could well understand the exuberant allowance of eggs to one pod; a rich food-stuff easily obtained evokes a large batch of eggs. But the case of the pea perplexes me. By what aberration does the mother abandon her children to starvation on this totally insufficient vegetable? Why so many grubs to each pea when one pea is ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... his own motives with a severer judgment than that of the world, as his scrutiny is more close, and his self-knowledge more minute. He knows the secret sin, the mental act, the spiritual aberration. He knows the distance between his highest effort and that lofty standard of perfection to which he has pledged his purposes. Alone, alone does the great conflict go on within him. The struggle, the self-denial, the pain, and the victory, are of the very essence of martyrdom,—are the chief ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... itself was essentially one of unity. The idea of one God, of a creative, productive, governing unity, resided in the earliest exertion of thought: and this monotheism of the primitive ages, makes every succeeding epoch, unless it be the present appear only as a stage in the progress of degeneracy and aberration Everywhere in the old faiths we find the idea of a supreme or presiding Deity. Amun or Osiris presides among the many gods of Egypt; Pan, with the music of his pipe, directs the chorus of the constellations, as Zeus leads the solemn procession of the celestial troops in the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... confessed, her sins are behind her, and it would be so inconvenient—" The Prioress's thoughts faded away; for even to herself she did not like to admit that it would be inconvenient for Evelyn to confess to Father Daly the sins she had committed—if she had committed any. Perhaps it might be all an aberration, an illusion in the interval between her father's death and her return to the convent. "Her sins have been absolved, and for guidance she will not turn to Father Daly but to me." The Reverend Mother reflected that a man would not be able to help ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... wraps," she said, parodying another famous dictum; "and I should not like to be able to understand the state of mind a lady was in when she bought herself a blue woollen shawl; but I could believe she was suffering at the time from a temporary aberration of intellect—only, if she wore it afterwards the thing would be quite inexplicable." Claudia drew the wrap round her with dignity, and made no reply; then Ideala laughed and turned to me. "Certainly your friend," she said, alluding to a ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... cached the sled and then went prowling about. As he fully intended, he fell in with the Leader—that "bully Nigger dog." His master not in sight—nobody but some dirty children and the stranger there to see how the Red Dog, in a moment of aberration, dared offer insolence to the Leader. It all happened through the Boy's producing a fish, and presenting it on bended knee at a respectful distance. The Leader bestowed a contemptuous stare upon the stranger and pointedly turned his ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... State of the Most Serene Republic that the books of magic found by their apparitors in his possession—"The Clavicula of Solomon," the "Zecor-ben," and other kindred works—had been collected by him as curious instances of human aberration. But the Inquisitors of State would not have believed him, for the Inquisitors were among those who took magic seriously. And, anyhow, they had never asked him to explain, but had left him as if forgotten in that abominable verminous cell under the leads, until his patrician friend had ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... supernatural agency in this play, and the final aberration from the truth of history, have been considerably censured by the German critics: Schlegel, we recollect, calls Joanna's end a 'rosy death.' In this dramaturgic discussion, the mere reader need take no great interest. To require our belief in apparitions ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... he flatters the prevailing direction of taste. But those of the race who follow after, scorn what those before them have admired, and exactly what those of one time have prized as progressive innovations, they who come after reject as mere aberration. What the artist has himself accomplished, I mean his so-called personal comprehension or his capricious interpretation of nature, passes away; but what he simply and honorably reproduces, as he has truly ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... of Spherical Aberration.—Spherical aberration gives rise to an ill-defined image, due to the central and peripheral ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... narrative, I have endeavoured to give as nearly as possible the ipsissima verba of the valued friend from whom I received it, conscious that any aberration from HER mode of telling the tale of her own life would at once impair its accuracy and ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... myself." But his day did not last many years. "Lamb was but fifty when he quitted the service of the company; yet less than ten years of life were left to him. Not only so, but the happiness he had expected to find proved more and more elusive. The increasing frequency of his sister's aberration was a heavy burden for a back which grew daily less able to bear the strain. The leisure to which he had looked forward so eagerly was spent in listening to incoherent babblings, that rambling chat which was to him 'better than the sense and ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... dead, which is one of the ways in which the tendency manifests itself, is, regarded from the side of economic progress, a decided step backward. It marks, in fact, the beginning of a melancholy aberration of the human mind, which has led mankind to sacrifice the real interests of the living to the imaginary interests of the dead. With the general advance of society and the accompanying accumulation of property these sacrifices have at certain ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... gravity, and will not have either its rest or motion disturbed by any irregularities lying in the direction of that line, which may be safely supposed the case with our earth. The simple addition of any fluid matter to a body so circumstanced, will not cause any aberration, as it will distribute itself in the parts nearest to the centre of gravity, without regard to the centre of the body, which may or may not be the same. The principal tracts of both land and sea may ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... feel A glowing ardour, an intense delight, On every subject but the one that lifts The soul above its sensual, vain pursuits, And elevates the mind and thoughts to God! Zeal in a sacred cause alone is deemed An aberration of our mental powers. The sons of pleasure cannot bear that light Of heavenly birth which penetrates the souls Of men, who, deeply conscious of their guilt, Mourn o'er their lost, degraded state, and seek, ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... him? was he the prey to fits of mental aberration which would produce so extraordinary an effect upon him? had he taken a sudden loathing and disgust to herself? or had he discovered anything in respect to her which had converted his love ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... this way, madame, he enticed our poor friend to England, where, as you will already have supposed, he has placed him in charge of Doctor Ellis, who, they say, has not his equal in Europe for the treatment of this particular form of mental aberration. ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... according to Plotinus, is to teach us the meaning of order and limitation ([Greek: taxis] and [Greek: peras]), which are qualities belonging to the Divine nature. This is a very valuable thought, for it contradicts that aberration of Mysticism which calls God the Infinite, and thinks of Him as the Indefinite, dissolving all distinctions in the abyss of bare indetermination. When Ewald says, "the true mystic never withdraws himself wilfully from the business of life, no, not even from the smallest business," he ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... minutes with his uncle. Old Malcolm seemed to have shaken off his aberration, and greeted the colonel with ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... to be better known; and am grateful to M. de Sacy, notwithstanding the prolixity and occasional repetition in his two large volumes, for the full examination of the most extraordinary religious aberration which ever extensively affected the mind of man. The worship of a mad tyrant is the basis of a subtle metaphysical creed, and of a severe, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... historical theory of it, like Nietzsche's; but this objection cannot be made to Mr Stuart-Glennie, the successor of Buckle as a philosophic historian, who has devoted his life to the elaboration and propagation of his theory that Christianity is part of an epoch (or rather an aberration, since it began as recently as 6000BC and is already collapsing) produced by the necessity in which the numerically inferior white races found themselves to impose their domination on the colored races by priestcraft, making a virtue and a popular religion of drudgery ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... was something portentous in this mad outbreak; she did not see how life could go on after it. Tom was vexed; it was no use to talk so. The aunts were silent with surprise for some moments. At length, in a case of aberration such as this, comment presented itself as more expedient than ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... a poet,' he said apologetically. 'I can't help going off like that. It isn't a mental aberration. I do it ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... answered my father, 'and do not wish to dispute the fact upon which it is based. It may be that in Freeland conjugal fidelity is without exception the rule, and that unfaithfulness is regarded as a kind of mental aberration; but if it is so, then the men and women of Freeland are themselves exceptions, and to deduce a formal law of nature from their behaviour seems to me to be premature. Because in this country—it matters ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... which, with my pocket sextant, I could ascertain our true position, which proved to be very wide of my intended course. It was, like many other accidental frustrations of my plans in this journey, an aberration that did us good, for we had thereby avoided the bad scrub formerly passed through, and also a rocky part of the range. We next descended into a valley in which, after following down a dry watercourse two miles, we found a fine pond of water, exactly as the sun was setting. This day I had ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... was a hard-working general practitioner in Birmingham, where his name is still remembered and respected. About ten years ago he began to show signs of mental aberration, which we were inclined to put down to overwork and the effects of a sunstroke. Feeling my own incompetence to pronounce upon a case of such importance, I at once sought the highest advice in Birmingham ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle |
