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Physical   Listen
adjective
Physical  adj.  
1.
Of or pertaining to nature (as including all created existences); in accordance with the laws of nature; also, of or relating to natural or material things, or to the bodily structure, as opposed to things mental, moral, spiritual, or imaginary; material; natural; as, armies and navies are the physical force of a nation; the body is the physical part of man. "Labor, in the physical world, is... employed in putting objects in motion." "A society sunk in ignorance, and ruled by mere physical force."
2.
Of or pertaining to physics, or natural philosophy; treating of, or relating to, the causes and connections of natural phenomena; as, physical science; physical laws. "Physical philosophy."
3.
Perceptible through a bodily or material organization; cognizable by the senses; external; as, the physical, opposed to chemical, characters of a mineral.
4.
Of or pertaining to physic, or the art of medicine; medicinal; curative; healing; also, cathartic; purgative. (Obs.) "Physical herbs." "Is Brutus sick? and is it physical To walk unbraced, and suck up the humors Of the dank morning?"
Physical astronomy, that part of astronomy which treats of the causes of the celestial motions; specifically, that which treats of the motions resulting from universal gravitation.
Physical education, training of the bodily organs and powers with a view to the promotion of health and vigor.
Physical examination (Med.), an examination of the bodily condition of a person.
Physical geography. See under Geography.
Physical point, an indefinitely small portion of matter; a point conceived as being without extension, yet having physical properties, as weight, inertia, momentum, etc.; a material point.
Physical signs (Med.), the objective signs of the bodily state afforded by a physical examination.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Physical" Quotes from Famous Books



... sick with disgust,—not terror, but honest physical loathing. Lawson, gashing his fat body, affected me with an overpowering repugnance. I wanted to go forward and stop him, and I wanted, too, to be a hundred miles away. And the result was that I stayed still. I believe my own will held me there, but ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan

... The united force of truth and slander and insult put over heavy a strain on Tom Yorkfield's powers of restraint. In his right hand he held a useful oak cudgel, with his left he made a grab at the loose collar of Laurence's canary-coloured silk shirt. Laurence was not a fighting man; the fear of physical violence threw him off his balance as completely as overmastering indignation had thrown Tom off his, and thus it came to pass that Clover Fairy was regaled with the unprecedented sight of a human being scudding and squawking across the enclosure, like the hen that ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki

... that its different aspects, as viewed from soul and from body, would not give it piquancy. No question so trivial that its discussion on material and on spiritual grounds would not lend it importance. Nor was any enjoyment so keen as not to be enhanced by the contrast of its physical with ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... roared a chorus which was remarkable chiefly for requiring that archness and playfulness in execution which he lacked. As the whole house seemed to dilate with the sound, and the wind outside to withhold its fury, Mr. Rylands felt that physical delight which children feel in personal outcry, and was grateful to his wife for the opportunity. Laying his hand affectionately on her shoulder, he noticed for the first time that she was in a kind of evening-dress, and that her delicate ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... game in which these two participated; and when he had lost his wages to Johnny Behind the Deuce, the engineer sought solace first in vituperation, then in physical maltreatment. Whereat Johnny Behind the Deuce shot him. Charleston's constable took the slayer into custody. The rustlers and other exiles from Tombstone knew the prisoner for a friend of the Earps, and so they decided to lynch him. ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt

... woman of certainly not less than forty years of age. But the figure, and the rounded grace and fulness of it, together with the features and the eyes, completed as fine a specimen of physical and mental health as ever it has been my fortune to meet; there was something so full of purpose and resolve—something so wholesome, too, about the character—something so womanly—I might almost say manly, and would, ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley

... endeavouring to gain all hearts. Cambrai is a place much frequented; through which many people pass. During the war the number of wounded soldiers he had received into his house or attended to in the hospitals passes all belief. He spared nothing for them, neither physical comforts nor spiritual consolations. Thus it is incredible to what an extent he became the idol of the whole army. His manners, to high and low, were most affable, yet everywhere he was the prelate, the gentleman, the author of "Telemachus." ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... memory; but would have sown with curses and misery the soil of Europe for succeeding ages. The territory of the Netherlands is narrow and meagre. It is but a slender kingdom now among the powers of the earth. The political grandeur of nations is determined by physical causes almost as much as by moral ones. Had the cataclysm which separated the fortunate British islands from the mainland happened to occur, instead, at a neighbouring point of the earth's crust; had the Belgian, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... posts around the heights so that often one would see guns and barbed wire intrenchments at a height of more than ten thousand feet among the crevasses of the glaciers. The Alpini performed wonderful feats of physical endurance, but the plains of Lombardy were ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... and the force of the sun terrific. It seemed to possess actual physical weight, and to press us down from above. We filled our canteens many times at the swift-running stream, and emptied them as often. By two o'clock F. was getting a little wobbly from the sun. We talked of stopping, when an unexpected thunder shower rolled ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White

... Bose, in expounding Kanada's theory, says: "The general idea of mind is that which is subordinate to substance, being also found in intimate relations in an atom, and it is itself material." The early Buddhist philosophers also taught that physical elements are among the five "skandas" which constitute the phenomenal soul. Democritus and Lucretius regarded the mind as atomic, and the primal "monad" of Leibnitz was the living germ—smallest of things—which enters into ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... physical science rests ultimately upon the mechanical arts. It is true that in a well-appointed laboratory, where apparatus is collected together in greater or less profusion, the appeal is often very indirect, and to a student carrying ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall

... abed; and if I said my prayers, it was backward, cursing my day as bitterly as patient Job himself. The truth was, the hot-house warmth of a town residence, and the luxurious life in which I indulged myself, had taken much of the pith out of my physical system; and the wintry blast of the preceding day, together with the general chill of our airy old farmhouse, had got fairly into my heart and the marrow of my bones. In this predicament, I seriously wished—selfish as it may appear—that the ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... danced before Dorothy's eyes, a sudden stopping of the heart, a hot flush, a painful dizziness that was at once physical and mental, made her clutch at the table for support. She dropped the letter, and stood staring at it, fascinated, as in ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford

... Biblical Geography and History. New York, $1.50. A clear portrayal of the physical characteristics of Palestine and of the potent influences which that land has exerted throughout ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks

... God and man," to which the appeals of the innocent and helpless are more potential than the voices of angry thunder or destructive artillery. Such a man was John Brown. He was strong in his moral and mental nature, as well as in his physical nature. He was born to lead; and he led, and made himself the pro-martyr of a cause rapidly perfecting. All through his boyhood days he felt himself lifted and quickened by great ideas and sublime purposes. He had flowing in his veins the blood of his great ancestor, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams

... little large, and her full red lips opened on singularly white teeth as even as almonds; while a low Grecian forehead and a neck graceful in every curve gave Esperance a total effect of aristocratic distinction that was beyond dispute. Her low vibrant voice produced an impression that was almost physical on those who heard it. Quite without intention, she introduced into every word she spoke several inflections which made her manner ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt

... overlooks the certainty which personal sovereignty gives: the absence of a moment's possible doubt on which side is that supreme arbiter, sure to be backed by nine-tenths of the physical forces of society. He underrates, if he does not altogether ignore, the much wider and deeper influence of the Royal name; its power over passion as well as over ignorance. The omnipotence of Parliament, even when, in the belief of half the nation, a Parliamentary majority represents ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various

... San Martin recklessly flung it away in ostentation and bribes. In return for the means of prodigality, the Minister was permitted to carry on the Government just as he chose, the Protector meanwhile indulging in the "otium cum dignitate" at his country palace near La Legua—his physical powers prostrated by opium and brandy, to which he was a slave, whilst his mental faculties day by day became more torpid from the same debilitating influence. This was well known to me, and alluded to in my letter to him of August 7th, 1821, in which I adjured him to banish his ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald

... of charitable and reformatory institutions. Their necessity springs from the defects of social life; therefore their existence is a comparative rather than a positive good; and he is the truest friend of the race who does most to remove the causes of poverty, ignorance, insanity, mental and physical weakness, moral waywardness, ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell

... dear boy, love which is only the camouflaged aspect of the creative instinct, cannot really hold, but a clever woman acts as a spur to the mind, keeps it hunting in the abstract, as well as gratifying, not too generously, the physical desires. Unfortunately it has never been my good fortune to encounter such a being, so I have never been able to remain faithful. You are very much in luck if Bobby's girl shows intelligence. She ought to be a remarkable creature because she was born at the white heat of passion on both ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn

... openly and directly with him, when he is perfectly prepared to resist, as, by a cool opposition and indirect means. There are different methods of attaining the same end; and those which are the least obvious to the animal should be adopted: a lady cannot rival him in physical strength, but she may conquer him by mere ingenuity, or subdue him by a calm, ...
— The Young Lady's Equestrian Manual • Anonymous

... in others, it is even more natural, more universally innate than egoism; for egoism may be conquered by nature, whereas only by reflection do we get the better of vanity. It does not seem, indeed, as if men were ever born modest, unless we dub with the name of modesty a sort of purely physical bashfulness, which is nearer to pride than is generally supposed. True modesty can be nothing but a meditation on vanity. It springs from the sight of others' mistakes and the dread of being similarly deceived. It is a sort of scientific ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson

... A physical storm is caused by two areas of unequal temperature coming together. The storm is the process of coming together and equalizing of the atmospheric conditions. The inference here would seem to be that the time of action has come to straighten ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon

... Indeed, one might imagine that Mr. Holly would under ordinary circumstances have easily outstripped him in the favour of She. Can it be that extremes meet, and that the very excess and splendour of her mind led her by means of some strange physical reaction to worship at the shrine of matter? Was that ancient Kallikrates nothing but a splendid animal loved for his hereditary Greek beauty? Or is the true explanation what I believe it to be—namely, ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard

... same kind of thing as joy and love. It belongs to that family of intangible, unseen realities of life. They have to do with the spiritual part of our nature, and through them we rise higher or sink lower than we can through any mere physical feelings or actions. Faith, joy, love, are spiritual qualities, spiritual things, things of the soul, affecting it favorably or adversely according as they themselves are affected by causes good or bad. Doubt, unbelief, anger, wrong ambition, pride, and such are as intangible as ...
— Adventures in the Land of Canaan • Robert Lee Berry

... any part of them, we generalize or throw them into groups. Thus we speak familiarly of the "solar system," the "animal, vegetable or mineral kingdom." Now, just transfer these systematized objects from the material and physical, to the moral and spiritual world. Then consider what relation any one object bears to the system, and what influence it has upon the other objects of which it is a part, and its import may be generally, satisfactorily ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele

... advances its hands, so to speak, toward annihilation, when our soul forms a violent resolution, there seems to be an independent physical horror in the act of touching the cold steel of some deadly weapon; the fingers stiffen in anguish, the arm grows cold and hard. Nature recoils as the condemned walks to death. I can not express what I experienced while waiting ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset

... proceeded, "has no rules by which debate can be limited or brought to an end, no rules by which dilatory tactics of any kind can be prevented. A single member can stand in the way of action, if he have but the physical endurance. The result in this case is a complete paralysis alike of the legislative and of the executive branches ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... New France was militant, and in its vanguard of warriors was the Jesuit missionary. Members of the Society of Jesus first came to Quebec in 1625; others followed year by year and were sent off to establish their outposts of religion in the wilderness. They were men of great physical endurance and unconquerable will. The Jesuit went where no others dared to go; he often went alone, and always without ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro

... it begins to talk about efficiency. So it is that when a man's body is a wreck he begins, for the first time, to talk about health. Vigorous organisms talk not about their processes, but about their aims. There cannot be any better proof of the physical efficiency of a man than that he talks cheerfully of a journey to the end of the world. And there cannot be any better proof of the practical efficiency of a nation than that it talks constantly of a journey to the end of the world, a journey to the Judgment Day and ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... visible and physical ill one can deal; one can thrust a knife into a man at need, one can give a woman money for bread or masses, one can run for medicine or a priest. But for a creature with a face like Ariadne's, who had believed in the old ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... dark skin, eyes black as beads, round, alert face, and a nose like the ace of clubs. The General Attorney was no taller than his superior officer, but differed from him in a figure so spare and starved that it snapped its fingers at description. As though to make amends for a niggardliness of the physical, Providence had conferred upon our legal one a prodigious head. A facetious opponent once said that he had a seven and a half hat and a six and a half belt, being, as steamboat folk would put it, over-engined for his beam. Both the President ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... an exercise in physical culture," cried one of the Trojans, in the tone and manner of the professor in that line of instruction. "One of our Grecian heroes will kindly ascend and ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang

... achievements of what, as Christian art, is often falsely opposed to the Renaissance, were another result. This outbreak of the human spirit may be traced far into the middle age itself, with its qualities already clearly pronounced, the care for physical beauty, the worship of the body, the breaking down of those limits which the religious system of the middle age imposed on the heart and the imagination. I have taken as an example of this movement, this earlier Renaissance within the middle age itself, and as an expression ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater

... in grievous physical pain to an attendant, bidding him speedily remove the armor, while the duke's fool, more deeply stirred than he cared to show, ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... the equal development of all the physical powers. If this development is equal, how is the power of ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... with almost equal speed, and all in the same direction. I even see the purple tinge given by the setting sun to the dust and smoke of battle. I see unutterable defeat, the success of the rebellion, a great catastrophe, a moral and physical cataclysm. ...
— "Shiloh" as Seen by a Private Soldier - With Some Personal Reminiscences • Warren Olney

... those demands. The troubles pose a threat to men of flavorlessness and grayness and the loss of essential meanings, a threat of diminished humanity. For dependence on that environment, intricate and deep-rooted, psychological as well as physical, has not grown less with the human ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior

... her way, strong in the strength of a resolution that had so taken possession of all the deepest feelings and affections of a most ardent little nature, that nothing but absolute physical inability could have held her back from keeping to it now. It was perhaps well for her, however, that with her childish pleasure in planning every detail, she had arranged everything beforehand with such minuteness, that she had no need to reflect now as to what she ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter

... he did not possess the qualities which just then pleased the pagan public in a rhetorician. The importance that the ancients attached to physical advantages in an orator is well known. Now, according to an old tradition, Augustin was a little man and not strong: till the end of his life he complained of his health. He had a weak voice, a delicate chest, ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand

... Claude awoke with such a sense of physical well-being as he had not had for a long time. The sun was shining brightly on the white plaster walls and on the red tiles of the floor. Green jalousies, half-drawn, shaded the upper part of the two windows. Through their slats, he could see the forking branches ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather

... idleness on a sledge journey may safely be reckoned among the experiences it is difficult to go through without a good deal of mental suffering. I say nothing of the purely physical discomfort of having to pass the day in a sleeping-bag. That may be endured; in any case, so long as the bag is fairly dry. It is a far worse matter to reconcile oneself to the loss of the many solid ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen

... not been in my unnatural position for many minutes before I began to suffer agonies, agonies not only physical but mental; for standing there like some prisoner of the Inquisition, it came to me how this dismantled apartment must be the focus of the dreadful forces of ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer

... time at death;—and after contemplating the inscrutable relation between brain and consciousness, and finding that we can get no evidence of the existence of the last without the activity of the first,—we seem obliged to relinquish the thought that consciousness continues after physical organization has become inactive." ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn

... whatever that she was a very handsome woman, and that her physical type—that of the more lethargic and heavily built Neapolitan—suggested very happily the mad and melancholy Queen. She had superb black hair, eyes profoundly dark, a low and beautiful brow, lips classically fine, a powerful head and neck, and ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward

... away. "No, I shall not take any more medicine. You think everything is physical. Why don't you ask at once to ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells

... can you be a good engineer out in that awful rough country unless you have the best kind of a physical foundation? Use ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow

... to that which convokes the tribes of pot-bellied chefs and saucemakers. She had lived on credit and not killed it; she was ignorant of nothing that honest women ignore; she spoke all languages: she was one of the populace by experience; she was noble by beauty and physical distinction. Suspicious as a spy, or a judge, or an old statesman, she was difficult to impose upon, and therefore the more able to see clearly into most matters. She knew the ways of managing tradespeople, and how to evade their snares, and she was quite as well versed in ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac

... were, have been brought to light,—such as the fall of stones from meteors in the atmosphere, the disarming of a thunder-cloud by a metallic point, the production of fire from ice by a metal white as silver, and referring certain laws of motion of the sea to the moon,—that the physical inquirer is seldom disposed to assert, confidently, on any abstruse subjects belonging to the order of natural things, and still less so on those relating to the more mysterious relations of moral events and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various

... sadness into her face, that he found himself able to readjust his tangled impressions. Then he realised that she was no longer a girl, that she was indeed a woman, beautiful, graceful, serious, with all the charm of her greater physical and spiritual maturity. ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... are now, into an utterly worthless, disreputable blackguard, a confirmed drunkard, a hardened liar, and—a contemptible thief! With my constitution completely shattered, I was obliged to resign my post, to avoid being kicked out, and I returned home a moral and physical wreck. But, even then, my poor father and mother had no suspicion of the truth, for I told them that my condition was due to fever contracted in the discharge of my duty. It was, however, impossible for me ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood

... has since followed. A people who were able to surmount in their infant state such great perils would be more competent as they rose into manhood to repel any which they might meet in their progress. Their physical strength would be more adequate to foreign danger, and the practice of self-government, aided by the light of experience, could not fail to produce an effect equally salutary on all those questions connected with the internal organization. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson

... many of their inherited usages and laws, is as certain as that one age has interests different from another; one set of circumstances governing principles at variance with those which preceded them; but it would be well also to remember that, while moral changes are as necessary as physical exercise, there are truths that are eternal, and rules of right and prudence which can never be ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... a full comprehension of his position, while the details thereof fixed themselves like an instantaneous photograph upon his mind. The mental agony chased away the physical, and he gasped as he realised that he was bound hand and foot with green rotan cane; that Ned was in a similar condition lying alongside, but with his face away; that they were in an opening on the mountain side shut in by rocks ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn

... Paradise and a constant shirker of work. Therefore, she disliked him. Had she actually known him and talked with him, she might have liked him better in spite of these faults and shortcomings, for he was really a pleasant, easygoing youth, who wallowed in intellectual sloth, but loved physical activity; who will presently drop easily, and comfortably, and without an effort or a doubt, into the bosom of the Church, and will develop later on into an admirable country parson, unless they ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant

... that long way. My emotions and sensations were childlike and chaotic inasmuch that they were very intense and primitive, and that I lay very helpless in their unrelaxing grasp. If one could have kept a record of one's physical sensations it would have been a fine collection of absurdities and contradictions. Hardly touching the ground and yet leaden-footed; with a sinking heart and an excited brain; hot and trembling with a secret faintness, and yet as firm as a rock and with a sort of indifference ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... this Church house formed a fitting counterpart to the spiritual condition of the people who worshipped (?) there. Physical, spiritual, and moral spelled ...
— The Deacon of Dobbinsville - A Story Based on Actual Happenings • John A. Morrison

... uninitiated, and there have not been wanting certain sinister suggestions that now and then, during the monotonous delivery of some of the longer poems, elderly and corpulent devotees listen only with the spiritual ear, the physical sense being obscured by an abstraction not to be distinguished by an ordinary observer from slumber. The reader, however, is bound to assume that all are listening, and if some sleep and others consider their worldly concerns or speculate upon the affairs of ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates

... me a shock, this vivid reminder from Burbank of the slavery of ambition—ambition, the vice of vices. For it takes its victims' all—moral, mental, physical. And, while other vices rarely wreck any but small men or injure more than what is within their small circles of influence, ambition seizes only the superior and sets them on to use their superior powers to blast communities, states, ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips

... useless after being found? Man today is the same as man was when these monuments, which cause the wonder of the modern traveller, were reared. Is he not influenced by the same instincts, the same wants, the same aspirations, the same mental and physical diseases? ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.

... glimmered like a moonstone. He plunged hastily in, till the cool ripples touched throat and hair, and then dipped his head right under, as though he would have wiped away the stain of some shameful memory. When he stepped out he felt almost at peace. The exquisite physical conditions of the moment had dominated him, as indeed often happens in the case of very finely-wrought natures, for the senses, like fire, can ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde

... looked at his puny stature. "Women have to protect themselves from men like you," she said, amidst great laughter, for the physical difference between her and the man ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume

... have lately given rise to various questions of disputed rights regarding the erection of stake-nets, and the privilege of catching salmon with the same. These questions involve the determination of several curious though somewhat contradictory points in physical geography, geology, and the natural history of fishes ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... to hear Mr. H.G. Wells's lecture last Thursday at the Times Book Club on "The Scope of the Novel." Despite the physical conditions of heat, and noise, and an open window exactly behind the lecturer (whose voice thus flowed just as much into a back street as into the ears of his auditors), the affair was a success, and it is to be hoped that ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett

... the police learned that the trouble had arisen from the attempt of the customer to eat the sandwich which had been served with his drink. The barkeeper objected, and, finding remonstrance in vain, resorted to physical force to rescue the sandwich from the clutches of the hungry stranger. The police restored the sandwich to the ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis

... wall, indifferent to what went on around him, hardly listening any more for Gustav's footsteps. He had ceased to expect him. He had ceased to expect anyone. He sat motionless, suffering bodily now, a strange feeling in his head, his thoughts dwelling dully on his physical discomforts, on the closeness of the cell, on the horrible nights. He made a great effort to eat some dinner, but could not. What would become of him if he could neither eat nor sleep? On what stores of energy would he be able to ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp

... has been often noticed with surprise; viz. that the legendary Hercules was never delineated by the Greek artists as more than an athletic man of the ordinary standard with respect to height and bulk. The Greek imagination was extravagantly mastered by physical excellence; this is proved by the almost inconceivable value attached to gymnastic merit. Nowhere, except in Greece, could a lyrical enthusiasm have been made available in such a service. But amongst physical qualities they did not adequately value ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey

... precious stones were used in the manufacture of amulets. The Scandinavians carried metal effigies carved out of gold or silver, or incised upon tiles, perpetually as amulets. They were safeguards against diseases and physical infirmities. They were also administered internally in cases where powerful ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten

... to be noted are, first, the violent movement of the sticks, which the men could hardly hold; next, the physical agitation of the men. The former point is illustrated by the confession of a civil engineer writing in the 'Times.' This gentleman had seen the rod successfully used for water; he was asked to try it himself, and he determined that it should not twist in his hands ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang

... to penetrate into the humble underworld of society is not slow to discover great misery, physical and moral. And the closer he looks, the greater number of unfortunates does he discover, till in the end this assembly of the wretched appears to him like a great black world, in whose presence the individual and his means of relief are reduced to helplessness. ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner

... do anything at all, M'sieu'!" The Seigneur started. He thought the remark had reference to his physical disability. His fingers itched to take the creature by the throat, and choke the tongue from his mouth. Before he could speak, the man continued ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... must be frequent in order to keep up a nation's virility has also been disproved. Universal service both in France and Germany through forty years of peace, had been an important influence in the better physical development of the race, which led to the fortitude, precision, and courage exhibited. At the same time, a realization of the seriousness of war on the part of all men, because they knew before this ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various

... was left alone by his master, as recorded in a former chapter, he sat himself down in a cheerful frame of mind on the sunny side of a large rock, and gave himself up to the enjoyment of thorough repose, as well mental as physical. The poor lad was in that state of extreme lassitude which renders absolute and motionless rest delightful. Extended at full length on a springy couch of heath, with his eyes peeping dreamily through the half-closed lids at the magnificent prospect of mountains and glens that lay before ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne

... a success in any business a man must have capacity, that is, he must have enough of intelligence to meet the demands of the business, and he must have physical strength to support it. A man may have apparently the kind of sense required by a branch of business, and for a time display ability in it, but as the business increases, and its demands become more in volume and intensity, he fails ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor

... the Scriptures was weakened; but he soon discovered a wondrous change of heart towards those who claimed to be intermediaries between the worlds of matter and of spirit. He turned his attention to the study of the physical evidences of ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... when Lowell was present, he was talking of changes in physical conditions. Dr. Holmes said, now, at the age of fifty-four, he could eat almost anything set before him, which he could by no means do formerly. Lowell found opportunity somehow at this point to laugh at ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields

... clear issue was to be blurred in the blinding glare of the King's lunacy. The causes of the malady of February 1801 were partly physical, partly mental. While still agitated by the dismissal of his trusted Minister, the King, two days later, went to church on the day appointed for the National Fast. That day of supplication for delivery from the perils of the time was shrouded in gloom and snow. He remained ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... approaching to the Father. 1. Unrighteousness and guilt, whereby we are legally banished, because of the broken covenant, and the righteous sentence of God according to that covenant. And, 2. Wickedness, impurity, and unholiness, which is, as a physical bar, lying in our way; because nothing that is unclean can dwell and abide with him, who is of purer eyes than he can behold iniquity; and nothing that is unclean can enter in there where he is. So ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)

... is, since the age of Charlemagne. Vassili was in the midst of these plans of aggrandizement when death came with its unexpected summons. He was in the fifty-fourth year of his age, with mental and physical vigor unimpaired. A small pimple appeared on his left thigh, not larger than the head of a pin, but from its commencement attended with excruciating pain. It soon resolved itself into a malignant ulcer, which rapidly exhausted all the vital energies. The dying king was exceedingly anxious ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... Vermont. He was a veteran of the Mexican and Indian Wars, in which he had gained great experience, and from which he became justly famous as one of the finest soldiers of his time. A man of striking countenance, great physical vigor and dauntless courage, he was an ideal leader of the Vermont men and at once won their confidence and respect. It is one of the traditions of the times that under him "The Iron Brigade," as it soon came to be known throughout the ...
— Heroes of the Great Conflict; Life and Services of William Farrar - Smith, Major General, United States Volunteer in the Civil War • James Harrison Wilson

... slightest ground for such an accusation. Studied with the severest eye, his various enterprises, and the manner in which he bore himself throughout them, would seem to prove that he had courage enough for any undertaking. Princes seldom show any want of physical courage. They are trained from their very birth to regard themselves as always on parade; and even if they should feel their hearts give way in presence of danger, they are not likely to allow it to be seen. It was not lack of personal bravery ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... West. Her father had been a country physician in New Hampshire, migrating to the dry winters of Minnesota for his young wife's health. The migration had been too long postponed to save the mother's life; but it had made a beautiful woman of the daughter, dowering her with the luxuriant physical charm which is the proof that transplantation to fresher soil is not less beneficial to human- ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... to separate off and consecrate the beautiful, to bring the beautiful together and organise it, not renouncing the machine, but only taking from it the service necessary for our physical needs, in no case being ruled or guided by it or its exigencies. When we have accomplished that, a miracle is promised. The outside world will take shape against our walls and receive its life through our gates—it will come into relation to us even to the ends of the earth. The new heart means the ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham

... long since passed away as living things, now exist in their astral forms as pepper-boxes and tobacco-jars. They probably belonged, in life, to the same species as a friend of mine here, who exhibits one of their chief physical features. He sits immovably still, so far as his body—his jar or pepper-reservoir—is concerned; indeed, if he is not disturbed, he sits immovably altogether, and sleeps. When he is disturbed he wakes in instalments, opening one eye at a time. He fixes you with his wild, fiery eye, his indignant ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... his patient so completely unnerved; but, observing her efforts to compose herself, he forbore any allusion to an agitation which he suspected was referable to mental rather than physical causes. Bravely the stubborn woman struggled to steady her voice, and still the twitching tell-tale muscles about her mouth; but the burden of anxiety finally bore down all resolves, and, covering her face with her broad hand, ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... and as the proprietors had fixed that night for a second benefit which they gave me, I was very glad that it was so. I was very nicely dressed, and to my own fancy acted well, though I dare say my performance was a little flat occasionally. But considering my own physical powers, and the immense size of the theatre, I do not think I should have done better on the whole by acting more broadly; though I suppose it would have been more effective, I should have had to sacrifice something of repose and refinement to make it so. I was very sorry to ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... rifts to better account. A modern governess would require to be a host in herself to supply the varied demands of a girl's education, in the subjects to be taught, in companionship and personal influence, in the training of character, in watching over physical development, and even if she should possess in herself all that would be needed, there is the risk of "incompatibility of temperament" which makes a tete-a-tete life in the school-room trying on both sides. School has ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart

... such a machine as I describe, even when placed under the superintendence of well-selected intelligent lads, in whom the faculty of good sight and nicety of handling is naturally in a high state of perfection, any deficiency in their physical strength is amply compensated by these self-acting machines. The factory engine supplies the labour or the element of Force, while the machines perform their work with practical perfection. The details of machinery ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... out through the darkness which lay about the orchard with no thought of sleep. She had the feeling that no one in the house was asleep yet, not even Julia whom she could hear now and then moving as softly as physical conditions permitted in her room. That her father and mother were awake, she knew from the drone of their voices coming ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory

... came in useful. To stretch its fifteen hundred miles of length over wild mountains and valleys in that bleak north of the world, some little labor was needed; and scholars and academicians were many and, for most purposes, useless; and they needed to be brought into touch with physical realities to round out their characters;—then let them go and build the wall. He buried enough of them—alive, it is to be feared: an ugly Ts'in custom, not a Chinese,—to make melons ripen in mid-winter over their common grave; the rest he sentenced to four years of wall-building,—which meant ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... rocks; of the intense joy which seized you when you raised to your lips a leather goblet brimming with that life-saving water.... I can say this with authority, with good authority, indeed; passion, spiritual or physical, is a thing for those who have eaten and ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit

... sensitive, than to ridicule on the subject of his unhappy failing—his propensity to fear; and there is no failing to which schoolboys are more intolerant. Of moral courage—that is, of courage in the cause of right—Charles had plenty; of physical courage, little. Apart from the misfortune of having had supernatural terror implanted in him in childhood, he would never have been physically brave. Schoolboys cannot understand that this shrinking from danger (I speak of palpable danger), which they call ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood

... studies; his regular morning and evening walks to and from school; his abundant and nutritious noontide meals with the young Middletons; even his wood-cutting at the hut; his whole manner of life, in fact, had tended to promote the best development of his physical organization. He grew taller, stronger, and broader-shouldered; he held himself erect, and his pale complexion cleared and became fair. He no longer ate with a canine rapacity; his appetite was moderate, and his habits temperate, because his body ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... himself? What is that awful Something that makes things happen just when you're guarding against 'em? For that's what I was doing. I had just looked up to caution you when you pressed so close, and then came the stroke!" He groaned again, as if in physical pain, then presently went on in a moaning voice: "Oh, Will, if you can hear me, believe me and not what other folks may say. They all believe it was me, but that I was so crazy over it I couldn't bear ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... knight, he dreamed, even to see one. Would he had lived in the olden times when knighthood was in flower. But having been born centuries too late he tried in every way to live as the knights had lived. Daily he exercised, practiced physical feats, restrained himself from over indulgence, following out the program of those who would be knights. With shining eyes he would often repeat his motto, the motto of Arthur's knights: "Live pure, speak the truth, right the wrong, ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various

... into the physical structure of the man, his character as revealed by his choice of profession, and so on. Briefly, he is hyper-sensitive to the thought of physical pain, that's all. So I gave him a simple choice. Talk to us in such a way that what he said could ...
— Take the Reason Prisoner • John Joseph McGuire

... transformed into the youthful sun of spring and early morning;** Dumuzi, like Merodach, became the sun before the summer. Their moral qualities naturally were affected by the process of restriction which had been applied to their physical being, and the external aspect now assigned to each in accordance with their several functions differed considerably from that formerly attributed to the unique type from which they had sprung. Ninib was represented as valiant, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... yourself with the names of the planets and their symbols. These can be found opposite Page 1 in the Nautical Almanac. All the planets differ greatly in size and in physical condition. Three of them—Mercury, Venus and Mars—are somewhat like the earth in size and in general characteristics. So far as we know, they are solid, cool bodies similar to the earth and like the earth, surrounded by atmospheres of cool vapors. The outer planets on the ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper

... his physical prostration did but so much the more abbreviate it. In an instant's compass, great hearts sometimes condense to one deep pang, the sum total of those shallow pains kindly diffused through feebler men's whole lives. And so, such hearts, though summary in each one suffering; ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... where they bumped their heads against the walls, and stumbled and fell down over the inequalities of the floor. They got a good many impressions during these excursions, and some of them were mental and some were physical. And sometimes they explored their mother, and went scrambling and sprawling all over her, probably getting about as well acquainted with her as it is possible to be with a person whom one has never seen. For their eyes were still closed, ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert

... life the thing which has struck me as wanting on the stage is variety. Some people are "tone-deaf," and they find it physically impossible to observe the law of contrasts. But even a physical deficiency can be overcome by that faculty for taking infinite pains which may not be genius but is certainly a good substitute ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... stronger. Under strict supervision it comes to only an abortive attack, similar to what happens in cases of dipsomania, or of tendency to rove in which the repressed outbreak expresses itself in tormenting psychical and physical unrest. While the normal liar and swindler is forced to be on his guard lest he divulge something of the actual state of affairs, and is therefore either taciturn or presents an evil and watchful appearance, ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy

... forgot my father's advice on this subject, and have experienced mental, physical, and spiritual benefit as ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne

... the inspired Volume, her sons shall be left to follow the dictates of their own conscience, having none to molest or make them afraid.' The great body of Lutheran divines among us, according to the same writer, doubt or deny the corporeal or physical presence of Christ in the elements of the Eucharist. It is not difficult to predict that ere long the great mass of well-informed Lutherans, at least in this country, will be substantially united, in regard to this subject, with the other Reformed Churches." ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente

... more vigorous in disposition every day. The sun and the wind across the open country called forth something in her that had never been there before, an innocent pleasure in her own body and a physical appetite that made her teeth white and gleaming. She was radiant with delight when Pelle brought her little things to adorn herself with; she did not use them for the children now! "Look!" she said once, holding up a piece of dark velvet ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... betokened physical or mental disorder. A mediaeval doctor would have called him saturnine. His face, which carried the entire tale of his years, was of the brown tint of Dublin streets. On his long and rather large head grew dry black hair and a tawny moustache did not quite cover an unamiable mouth. His ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce

... Constitution, though a blessing to Englishmen, is very ill-suited to nations not accustomed to the climate and its variations. Every country has peculiarities of thought and manners resulting from the physical influence of its sky and soil. Whenever we lose sight of this truth, we naturally lose the affections of those whose habits ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe

... of war, and what follows in its train, I need not dwell upon. We could not have a higher object than the adoption of any proper and honorable means which would lessen the chance of armed conflicts. Men endure great physical hardships in camp and on the battle-field. In our Civil War the death-roll in the Union Army alone reached the appalling aggregate of 359,000. But the suffering and perils of the men in the field, distressing as they are to contemplate, are slight in comparison with the woes and anguish of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... is manifest by fine eyes and personal beauty, courage and endurance, and delicate behaviour, so the slave nature is manifested by cowardice, treachery, unbridled lust, bad manners, falsehood, and low physical traits. Slaves had, of course, no right either of honour, or life, or limb. Captive ladies are sent to a brothel; captive kings cruelly put to death. Born slaves were naturally still less considered, they were flogged; ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... destined never to forget. Across the gallery and down the stair—it might have been the Golden Stair linking Near with Far—came a score of exquisite women in all the glory of their youth, of perfect physical beauty and splendid strength and fullness of life; and the wonder was not their beauty more than a kind of dryad delicacy of that beauty, which was yet not frailty but a look of angelic strength. But they were not remote—they were gloriously human, almost, one would say, divinely human, all gentle ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale

... before their eyes, not even a completed episode in one. It so happened that they saw no one in tears or in liquor; on the contrary, they saw many who laughed, many children playing games with and tricks upon one another. Yet in its mirth the region was mirthless; its energy was not physical, but nervous. It had an air of living intensely in the present, for fear of remembering, for fear of looking ahead. And it needed but a misunderstanding or a catchword to turn in a moment from recreation to violence. Indeed, the mere ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris



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