Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Frame of mind   /freɪm əv maɪnd/   Listen
Frame of mind

noun
1.
A temporary psychological state.  Synonym: state of mind.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Frame of mind" Quotes from Famous Books



... your cousin," he said to Lance, and turned to Dick with a smile. "Soldiers have a particular claim on our hospitality, but my house is open to anybody of cheerful frame of mind. One must relax now and ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss

... times intellectual men were busy in trying to set each other right, and in disputing and arguing with those who believed themselves to be right. It was an era of intellectual pugilism, and nothing was done in physics. In fact, this frame of mind is incompatible with any marked success in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various

... in the frame of mind to receive so soft a speech composedly. A strong tremor ran over him and he averted his face. The murket came to his side and ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... is our frame of mind, we find it no longer difficult to restrain ourselves in the gratifications of eating and drinking, the most gross enjoyments of sense. We take what is necessary to preserve health and vigour, but are not ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... agreed, and the boys hurried through the woods to the lake shore in a pleasant frame of mind. ...
— Out with Gun and Camera • Ralph Bonehill

... then, I forget my stance and Paisley long enough to send the ball in a beautiful parabola right on to the green, and when I do—oh, brother!—the things I say to Paisley put him in such a frame of mind that I could play the rest of the course with a paddle and a basket-ball and still beat him. This particular afternoon he had tried to play the seventh hole as it should be played, and though we had ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny

... let me go in first," he whispered, when they stood at Roseleaf's door. "He is in an excitable frame of mind, I fear." ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter

... frame of mind of a traveller with a night's journey behind him and an ocean crossing ahead of him, is not enviable. Frederick's condition was aggravated by a whirl of painful, partially warring recollections, which crowded ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann

... between Rodomont and Mandricar, who both admire the same lady. They are about to fight for her favor, when the umpire of the lists pertinently suggests the lady be allowed to express her preference! She frankly does so, and Rodomont, rejected, departs in high dudgeon. In this unhappy frame of mind he attacks everybody he meets, and after many victories is defeated in a battle with the Christians. During this last encounter Rogero is too grievously wounded to be able to join Bradamant, who, hearing a fair lady is nursing her lover, is consumed by jealousy. She therefore—notwithstanding ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... knew that her secret hope was that she might never see Red Creek again. It was all quickly arranged; perhaps he was not sorry to have her go, although he kissed her good-bye affectionately, and wandered away from the station in a rather lonely frame of mind when she was gone. ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris

... another occasion. Drood's evidence, if it was what I have suggested, would sound like the dream of an intoxicated man, and what other evidence could be adduced? Thus I had worked out Drood's condition, if he really was not killed, in this way: I had supposed him to escape, in a very mixed frame of mind, when he would be encountered by Grewgious, who, of course, could make little out of him in his befogged state. Drood could not even prove that it was not Landless who attacked him. The result would be that Drood would lie ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang

... my asylum with precaution, I sought a back-stairs which conducted directly to the kitchen. All in that region was fire and commotion; the soup and fish were in the last stage of projection, and the cook hung over her crucibles in a frame of mind and body threatening spontaneous combustion. In the servants' hall two coachmen and three gentlemen's gentlemen stood or sat round the fire; the abigails, I suppose, were upstairs with their mistresses; the new servants, that had been hired from Millcote, were bustling about everywhere. Threading ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... thought of the pleasant frame of mind in which Pesita might now be expected to receive the news that eight of his troopers had been killed and his two "guests" safely removed from the sphere of ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... concern, heard her in a softer tone add a but, which showed she was not quite willing to break from Mr. Mountague for ever. Dashwood was alarmed beyond measure; but the lady did not long continue in this frame of mind, for, upon going into her dressing-room to rest herself, she found ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... that this, [viz. that the Bible is the Word of God,] is always remembered. It cannot be said that they who write respecting the Bible, even Christian writers who are looked up to, always appear to have been in that frame of mind while contemplating the statements of the Sacred Volume, which they, the same men, would have been in if they had been listening for a voice out of a cloud; a word reaching them which was simply, and in that ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... were happy or were despondent in exact accord with young Mrs. Lawrence's mood. If the great lady were ungracious, were cold, or dissatisfied, Lydia trembled, for the little sum she earned by teaching was more than two-thirds of all that she and Mary had. If Mrs. Lawrence were in a happier frame of mind, Lydia brightened, and gratefully accepted the occasional flowers or candy, that meant to both sisters so much more than ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris

... seen and spoken with hundreds of men of all classes and all parts of the country, and all these people, taken singly or united in groups, display a very definite frame of mind. To describe this new psychology we must record the incontestably closer union which has been formed between the political sections of the country. There are no longer any political parties, there are Belgians in Belgium, and that is all; Belgians ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... the horse dashed into a gallop, and Mark was left looking after him in a disturbed frame of mind. ...
— Making His Way - Frank Courtney's Struggle Upward • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... must approach the study of the several divisions of our subject in this frame of mind. We must meet many difficulties, of which the chief one is perhaps our own human nature. For we as men are involved, and it is hard indeed to take an impersonal point of view,—to put aside all thoughts of the consequences to us of evolution, ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton

... very amiable frame of mind, therefore, that he received Colwyn's card with a pencilled request for an immediate interview. Merrington disapproved of all private detectives as an unwarrantable usurpation of the functions of Scotland Yard, but he particularly disapproved of a private detective like Colwyn, whose popular renown ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees

... called Beautiful, the rest of us have to find our way to it through Ezekiel's low-bowed door and the vault full of creeping things and all manner of abominable beasts. Nevertheless, there is a certain frame of mind to which a cemetery is, if not an antidote, at least an alleviation. If you are in a fit of the blues, go nowhere else. It was in obedience to this wise regulation that the other morning found me lighting my pipe at the entrance to Old Greyfriars', thoroughly sick of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Thus a part of the winter passed. I was in a very happy frame of mind—others might call it exaltation, but it was natural to me. By the fortress wall that surrounded the large garden there was a watch-tower with a broken ladder inside. A house close by had been broken into, and though the thieves could not be traced it was believed they were ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... temptress, with simple dignity. "I go to search for my dear wife, madame, in a frame of mind which I would strongly advise you to ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell

... retraced his steps and visited Wilkinson at St. Louis. But Wilkinson was no longer in the same frame of mind as at Fort Massac. He had tested his officers, to see if they could be drawn into any disloyal movement, and had found that they were honorable men, firm in their attachment to the Union; and he was beginning to perceive ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt

... but not fools enough in the long-run to pay for being taught to be foolish. They pay us ministers of religion, Agatha, a tidy lot of money, if you take all Europe over: and we are not delivering the goods. In their present frame of mind they will soon be discovering that, for any use we are, they had better have saved the cash and put it into ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... Lavretzky set out on the return journey. The sounds of the preceding day took possession of him, the image of Liza arose in his soul in all its gentle transparency; he melted at the thought that she loved him,—and drove up to his little town-house in a composed and happy frame of mind. ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff

... at once from his manner that he was in a very bad frame of mind, and so attempted to lead the conversation into a safe channel. "I hear we will be having a fine young man next Sabbath," he commenced hopefully, "Mr. Murray. I would be hearing Mr. ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith

... watching for their opportunity. He had suggested that they might have swung farther to the west, with the plan of descending upon the valley from the north, and MacDonald had pointed out how unlikely this was. In spite of this, Aldous was not in a comfortable frame of mind as they hurried after Joanne. She had half an hour's start of them when they reached the mouth of the gorge, and not until they had travelled another half-hour up the rough bed of the break between the two mountains, and MacDonald ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood

... his huge form as it intercepted the comfortable blaze. I pictured him making his tea, broiling some of William's trout, and spreading his things before the fire to dry. I could see the animals moving around the glow. It was my home. How I yearned for it! How should I reach it, if ever? In this frame of mind the attempt was irresistible. I started as near as I could from opposite the two islands. As on horseback, I got pretty easily to the first island. Beyond this I was taken off my feet by the stream; and only with difficulty did I once more ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... a stool at the foot of the bed, she folded her arms upon her bosom, saying within herself, "From this place will I not rise till I am in a better frame of mind;" and so placed, by dint of tearing the veil from the motives of her little temporary spleen against her sister, she compelled herself to be ashamed of them, and to view as blessings the advantages of her sister's lot, while its embarrassments were the necessary consequences of ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... household affairs; but her nerves were so strong, that she could sit in her easy chair and see a woman whipped, till the blood trickled from every stroke of the lash. She was a member of the church; but partaking of the Lord's supper did not seem to put her in a Christian frame of mind. If dinner was not served at the exact time on that particular Sunday, she would station herself in the kitchen, and wait till it was dished, and then spit in all the kettles and pans that had been used for cooking. She ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)

... and meant to live out his years of work, with their failure or success, without love and without a wife. He would always be grateful to Joe, but that would be all, and he would be glad to see her whenever an opportunity offered, just as he would be glad to see any other friend. In this frame of mind he arrived in Newport on the morning of the wedding, and reached the little church among the trees just in time to ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford

... with rule and compasses; for the present he was kept busy copying a few worn-out working-drawings, or "filling in." He felt in a curiously exalted frame of mind—as though he had been slightly intoxicated; this was the first time in his life that he had been employed on work that was of a clean nature and allowed him to wear good clothes. It was particularly curious to survey life from where ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... Dean was smiling scornfully at his weakness of the night before. He paid for a train ticket for New York via Toronto in a newly confident frame of mind. He was ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg

... they were, was very hard for him. Since George Kent's disclosure of his feelings and hopes those meetings were harder still. Each one made his task, that of helping the boy toward the realization of those hopes, so much more difficult. He was ashamed of himself, but so it was. No, in his present frame of mind he did not want to meet her. He would wait there, out of sight, until she ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... the speaker's hand; this seemed to have a bracing effect, for he led them into his employer's presence in a brighter frame of mind. Dr. Mercer was seated at the table in his dining-room. A napkin was tucked in his collar, his fat hands were folded across his stomach, and he was ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre

... with those who thought differently the matter did not weigh very heavily. They had already fallen into the true campaigning frame of mind which takes things as they come—good quarters and bad; fighting and resting; outpost duty or guarding stores, even wounds ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough

... In this frame of mind he reached Sour Creek and its hotel. While he wrote his name in the yellowed register he over-heard loud conversation in the farther end of the room. Two men had been outlawed that day—John Gaspar, the schoolteacher who killed Quade, and ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand

... short, on one hand there were within his grasp, riches, pleasure, all manner of enjoyment; on the other, pitiless creditors, ruin, misery, and contempt. The tempter, moreover, offered to initiate his listener in his infallible method of getting rich. In his frame of mind Olivier yielded to the temptation, with the full determination, if not to get money by cheating at cards, at any rate to learn the method which might serve as a means of self-defence should he not think proper to use ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... to consider the best mode in which marital authority might be assumed to raise the question of the right of habeas corpus. I had returned to my room before the opening of the Registration Court at Lambville-cum-Minton, in rather a disturbed frame of mind. Truth to tell, my Wife, having learned that political feeling was rising so high in the town that it was possible that the Deputy-Assistant-Revising-Barrister might be assaulted by either or both of the rival factions, had ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 2, 1891 • Various

... submit Colonel Baden-Powell's suggestion to the Kriegsraad on the following morning, and to apprise me of the result, I wished him good-night, and went to bed once more on the wretched sofa, in anything but a hopeful frame of mind. However, as is so often the case, my spirits revived in the morning, and, on considering the situation, I could not see what object the Transvaal authorities could have in detaining me a prisoner. I was certainly very much in the way of the hospital ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson

... of Queen Victoria. The Sergeant smiled like the carved head of a Swiss nutcracker, and the other gentlemen in my neighborhood, by nods and gestures, evinced grave approbation of so suitable a tribute to English superiority; and we finished our stave and sat down in an extremely happy frame of mind. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... give Bess and me parties, and most of them did, that is, as many as we could get in at the rate of three a day between dressmakers and milliners and other clothing engagements. Owen got perfectly furious and exhausted, but Matthew kept in an angelic frame of mind through it all. I think the long days with Polly out in the open helped him a lot, though at times I detected a worried expression on the faces of them both, and I felt sure that they were dying ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess

... these things simply emparadised me; it lifted me into a heaven of hope that I, too, might some day meet such elect spirits and converse with them face to face. My mood was sufficiently foolish, but it was not such a frame of mind as I can be ashamed of; and I could wish a boy no happier fortune than to possess it for a time, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... in no frame of mind to put up with Duncan Woodward's actions, and when he spoke of giving me a good drubbing I prepared ...
— True to Himself • Edward Stratemeyer

... and excited she had been all that week! The famous composition of which she had spoken to Giselle, the subject of which had so astonished the young girl brought up by the Benedictine nuns, felt the inspiration of her emotion and excitement. Jacqueline was in a frame of mind which made reading those three masterpieces by three great poets, and pondering the meaning of their words, very dangerous. The poems did not affect her with the melancholy they inspire in those who have "lived and loved," but she was attracted by their tenderness and their passion. Certain lines ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon

... to Uliassutai in the company of these criminals was very unpleasant. My friend and I entirely lost our usual strength of spirit and healthy frame of mind. Kanine persistently brooded and thought while the impudent woman laughed, smoked and joked with the soldiers and several of our companions. At last we crossed the Jagisstai and in a few hours descried at first the fortress and then the low adobe houses huddled on the plain, ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski

... the morning he drank—an occupation suggested by the heat of the day, which blazed cloudless. The liquor did not cheer him, but inspired a sullen courage, a reckless resolve. And in this frame of mind he presented himself ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing

... identified himself as Saint Germain, Jesus, George Washington, and Godfre Ray King, were convicted of using the mails to defraud by obtaining money on the strength of having supernaturally healed hundreds of persons, they found the Court in a softened frame of mind. Although the trial judge, carefully discriminating between the question of the truth of defendants' pretensions and that of their good faith in advancing them, had charged the jury that it could pass on the latter but not the former, this caution did not avail with the Court, which ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... his coat-collar up about his ears, and was in a comfortable frame of mind. He liked walking alone in the dark. Formerly its yawning emptiness had filled him with a panic of fear, but the prison had made his mind familiar with it. He used to look forward to these lonely night walks home across the fields. The noises of the city died away behind him, ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... was in anything but a pleasant frame of mind, and looked sneeringly at Ted, and at the tired ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor

... greeted this assertion. It did more than anything else to put the boys in a better frame of mind—unless perhaps it might have been the return of the ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Ozarks • Frank Gee Patchin

... through the arcades of the Rue de Rivoli, turned into the boulevards and made their purchases. They dined at the Grand Hotel. She was in a sunny frame of mind and tried to cheer him up. But he ...
— Married • August Strindberg

... 'may not have any money in the house, but he's bound to have some in the bank, and he's going to write us a cheque for a thousand dollars, provided we let him off, and don't kick his brains out this time.' The other burglar, who was in that benevolent frame of mind that Irish whiskey and conscious virtue sometimes produce, agreed to the suggestion, and Hoskins was therefore unbound and seated at the table, and told to draw a cheque at once if he had the least regard for his life. As he was ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... to be used in place of the originals. This bit of thoughtfulness on his part was eminently cheering, and when soon afterward he took hasty leave of Grace and Mrs. Gray the latter appeared to be in a less lugubrious frame of mind. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower

... resolutely from the first, and maintain it to the end;—sure of his cause, and safe against the new attack which he saw now the devil was making; unyielding and defiant towards his old Papal enemies and their new calumniations. And in this frame of mind he took just now a step, calculated to sharpen all the tongues of slander, but one in which he saw the fulfilment of his calling. Freed from unchristian monastic vows, he entered into the holy state of matrimony ordained by God. We first hear him speaking decidedly on this subject in a letter to ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin

... than a little difficult for us, living at the present day, to understand this curious frame of mind; yet it certainly existed, and existed where it might least have been expected to exist. Nor is it quite extinct to-day, though it only lingers in the less instructed class of persons. The misconception arose from a confusion ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle

... adventures our bank account is going to undergo during that period, and whether our customary technique of being aloof with the receiving teller and genial and commentary with the paying ditto is the right one. We always believe in keeping a paying teller in a cheerful frame of mind. We would never admit to him that we think it is going to rain. We say, rather, "Well, it may blow over," and try not to surmise how many hundreds there are in the pile at his elbow. Probably we think the explanation for the really bizarre architecture of our bank is to keep ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley

... William and Jenny to themselves. From that walk Jenny returned to her home much happier than she left it. She had seen William,—had talked with him of the past, present, and future,—had caught from his hopeful spirit the belief that all would be well in time, and in a far more cheerful frame of mind, she re-entered her sister's room; and when Rose, who was awake, and noticed the change in her appearance, asked what had happened, she could not ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes

... devotion, to meditation, and to study. Her mother's spirit of religion was exerting a powerful influence over her, and one evening she fell at her feet, and, bursting into tears, besought that she might be sent to a convent to prepare to receive her first Christian communion in a suitable frame of mind. ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... at the town office next morning in a frame of mind distinctly unamiable. Though his house was far out of the village, the unearthly racket of the night had floated up to him—squawking horns, and clanging bells, and exploding powder. The hundred cannons at sunrise brought a vigorous ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... being apt to be unduly influenced by particular events, and not by the totality of what we have seen; that the reason why some one recollection has prevailed is that the case was sharply defined, or had something unusual about it, or that our frame of mind was at the time of observation susceptible to that particular kind of impression. I have had exactly the same difficulties with the composites. If one of the individual portraits has sharp outlines, or if it is unlike the rest, or ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton

... carried on in a mood in which all imaginative people, whether artists or poets, love to indulge. In this frame of mind, they sometimes find their profoundest truths side by side with the idlest jest, and utter one or the other, apparently without distinguishing which is the most valuable, or assigning any considerable value to either. The resemblance between the marble Faun and their ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... What I mean is that we can die but once, and it is a glorious thing to die for a great principle. Give me that rope. I can pull like an ox in my present frame of mind. You run down on the opposite side of the brook, take that big stick wade right in—you are barefooted,—brandish the stick, and, if necessary, do more than brandish. I would go myself, but it is better she should recognize ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... keep his place in the firing line. Some of his friends have seen him in a state of real weakness, particularly of physical weakness, and for myself I have never once found him in a truculent or self-satisfied frame of mind. I believe he is at heart a modest man, and I am quite certain he is a delicate and a suffering man. But for the devotion of his wife I think he could not have held ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie

... and lofty soul spirit, they would perceive they will only do more harm than good by going against nature and trying to force inclinations. But the absurd thing is, that neither has yet had the perspicacity to perceive the other's unwilling frame of mind. That exactly bears out my point. These heroic attitudes do not suit the exigencies of everyday life. If they weren't both so bent on doing the noble thing, they would perceive they are merely making fools of themselves, and incidentally straining my powers of resource beyond all reason. ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page

... ministration of religion, fall within the meaning of the law which forbids the profanation of God's name; especially as that law is extended by Christ's interpretation. They are moreover inconsistent with a religious frame of mind: for as no one ever either feels himself disposed to pleasantry, or capable of being diverted with the pleasantry of others, upon matters in which he is deeply interested; so a mind intent upon the acquisition of heaven rejects with indignation every attempt ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin

... of old codgers got into a quarrel and landed before the local magistrate. The loser, turning to his opponent in a combative frame of mind, cried: "I'll law you to the ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher

... she was in a very happy frame of mind, and said that she had had precious visits from her Saviour; he had told her that he was coming soon, and would fulfill her heart's desire in taking her to him. Her mother said, that during the previous night she had been constantly reaching up, and sometimes ...
— Mary S. Peake - The Colored Teacher at Fortress Monroe • Lewis C. Lockwood

... place—to feel, sitting at a board for the first time, the ease and affection of an old guest, and to be at once on such intimate terms with the family as to have a homely, genuine interest in its every member—it is, I say, something to be in this novel and happy frame of mind. And, as it is of your creation, and owes its being to you, I have no reluctance in urging it as a reason why, in addressing you, I should not so much consult the form and fashion of my speech, as I should employ that ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens

... learned to mark his progress by this or that passage in a refrain. Sometimes he sang, too (also off key), and you heard his genial roar all over the house. The louder he roared, and the more doleful the tune, the happier his frame of mind. Milly Brewster knew this. She had never known that she knew it. Neither had he. It was just one of those subconscious bits of marital knowledge that make ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various

... and false teaching, sadder proof 215 Of immaturity, and in the teeth Of desperate opposition from without— Have cleared a passage for just government, And left a solid birthright to the State, Redeemed, according to example given 220 By ancient lawgivers. In this frame of mind, Dragged by a chain of harsh necessity, So seemed it,—now I thankfully acknowledge, Forced by the gracious providence of Heaven,— To England I returned, [M] else (though assured 225 That I both was and must be of small weight, No better than a landsman on the ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth

... purpose. "Will you be kind enough to write me a list of what you consider the best books for the history of the Reformation; Menzel and Buchholz I know; especially any exposing the characters of the leading reformers?" In the same frame of mind he asked him what pope there was whose good name had not been vindicated; and Doellinger's reply, that Boniface VIII. wanted a friend, prompted both Wiseman's ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... into the smoker again, Chubby dear. It will take a half-dozen more cigars to put you in your usual sweet frame of mind. Run along now. Ta-ta!" ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan

... of the Nile, a Genoese galley awaited the king; and, while every eye was strained towards the shore with an anxiety which was not without cause, Walter Espec and Bisset, the English knight, stood on deck in no enviable frame of mind. ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar

... Gobo, who had now found his feet, I went on to extricate our unfortunate companion from the aloe bush. This we found a thorny task, but at last he was dragged forth uninjured, though in a very pious and prayerful frame of mind. His 'spirit had certainly looked that way,' he said, or he would now have been dead. As I never like to interfere with true piety, I did not venture to suggest that his spirit had deigned to make use of my ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard

... Monday. Mrs. Nevill Tyson was seen to come down to breakfast in an unusually cheerful frame of mind. Tyson was away; he had been up in town for three weeks, and was expected home that evening. She looked for letters. There were two—one from the master of the house; one also from Stanistreet, placed undermost by the discreet ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair

... three days, from Dinard in a depressed and somewhat puzzled frame of mind. He had found no trace whatever of Arthur Benham, either at Dinard or at Deauville, and, what was more, he was unable to discover that any one even remotely resembling that youth had been seen at either place. The matter of identification, it seemed to him, should ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman

... the contrary, the antitheses, night, error, dominion of demons, death and light, truth, deliverance, life, proved more telling in the Gentile Churches. The consciousness of universal sinfulness was first made the negative fundamental frame of mind ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... years since then, A youth who scarce had seen his twentieth year Was Wallenstein, when he and I were friends. Yet even then he had a daring soul: His frame of mind was serious and severe Beyond his years: his dreams were of great objects, He walk'd amidst us of a silent spirit, Communing with himself; yet I have known him Transported on a sudden into utterance Of strange ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)

... quickly upon men doing the work to which Martin Hillyard had been assigned during the last two years. Nothing is easier than to reach a frame of mind which drives you about with your finger to your lips, whispering "Hush! hush!" over the veriest trifles. Hillyard had not reached that point, but, like many other persons of his service, he was on the way to it. He gave no information now to any ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason

... the following day in a somewhat lofty frame of mind, for there was now only one letter to struggle over, and when Heidi began the lesson with ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri

... awoke late, and in no happy frame of mind. It was an age of duels, and with his first waking thoughts there came the memory of the insult which had been passed upon him by the Laird of Balmawhapple. His position as an officer and a Waverley left him no alternative ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... much put out indeed. The ten minutes during which she had to wait seemed to her like an hour; and when Celestina's mother came to the door to show her visitors out, it was not difficult for her to see that the little girl was not in at all a happy frame of mind. ...
— The Rectory Children • Mrs Molesworth

... "purely sentimental reasons of the petitioners" to have any weight, and said: "The mere fact that this amendment is asked as a compliment to the leading advocate of woman suffrage on the attainment of her eightieth birthday, is evidence of the emotional frame of mind which influences the advocates of the measure, and which is scarcely favorable to the calm consideration that should be given to fundamental political principles." Miss Anthony's birthday had not been mentioned by any speaker ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... discontent to the right side. "How fond he is of me!" she thought. "A year's waiting is quite a hardship to him." She returned to the house, secretly regretting that she had not heard more of Frank's complimentary complaints. Miss Garth's elaborate satire, addressed to her while she was in this frame of mind, was a purely gratuitous waste of Miss Garth's breath. What did Magdalen care for satire? What do Youth and Love ever care for except themselves? She never even said as much as "Pooh!" this time. She laid aside her hat in serene silence, and sauntered languidly into the ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... Anne's maid, came to help her dress. It was very difficult, Mary found, to do things for one's self with a broken arm. Her head ached because of the disturbed sleep and the pain of the broken limb. Simmons had come to her in a somewhat hostile frame of mind. She did not hold with picking up gutter-children from no one knew where and setting people as were respectable to wait upon them. But at heart she was a good-natured woman, and her indignation disappeared before the unchildish pain and weariness ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan

... man said he could never stay there and enjoy himself in bed and think of his wife, groping around in the dark below stairs after it. After telling him that he would probably come up with a pickle, ehe let him go. Carefully he got out of bed, in an angelic frame of mind and a night shirt, and barefooted he prepared to make the descent. As he stopped to hold one foot in his hand, the instep of which had struck the rocker of the baby crib, she told him the doughnuts were in the third crock in the pantry on the floor. He said it ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck

... To have to do things in stereotyped order distresses me; I must go where my fancy leads. When I'm cooped up and confined, I feel I must break loose, even if it leads to havoc." He laughed. "Of course, such a frame of mind is beyond ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss

... execration emitted was rather moderate than otherwise. Our charioteers had taken good care to obtain their pay for carrying us some time before, and we suffered ourselves to be taken to our predestined hotel in a frame of mind approaching Christian resignation. In fact, when I had been shown up to a nice bed-room, with clean sheets and (for France) a fair supply of water, and had taken time to reflect that there is no accommodation for sleeping on any of these European river-boats, I was rather glad we had been ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... over that one in particular); you must do me the favor to peruse it much more carefully," drawing on his gloves coolly, "before you make your final decision. You are very comfortable here, my dear girl," glancing around benignly, "but you have no conception of the frame of mind, bare walls, utter solitude, a fireless hearth and a frugal table, would bring about in a very few days or weeks, or even in one as resolute and defiant as yourself. I should be loath to try such an experiment or deprive you of your child—but necessitous ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... than its successor, Olaf Liliekrans) it is the weakest thing that Ibsen admitted into the canon of his works. He wrote it in 1870 as "a study which I now disown"; and had he continued in that frame of mind, the world would scarcely have quarrelled with his judgment. At worst, then, my collaborator and I cannot be accused of marring a masterpiece; but for which assurance we should probably have shrunk from ...
— The Feast at Solhoug • Henrik Ibsen

... interview was concerned with financial details. Merton usually left these vague, but in Mr. Warren he saw a client who would feel more confidence if everything was put on a strictly business footing. The client retired in a hopeful frame of mind, and Merton went to look for Miss Martin at her club, where she was usually to be found at ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang

... once realize that by driving away pessimistic, angry and bitter thoughts we drive away sickness and misfortune to a great extent, and that by seeking the kinder and happier frame of mind we seek at the same time success and health and good luck, we will find a new impetus in the control ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... of Paris has its secrets!" thought Zilah, as he slowly descended the stairs, which he had mounted in such a different frame of mind, ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie

... about to transfer themselves immediately to this new sphere of activity, and Dolly of course must go along. Her books were hastily fetched from school, her clothes packed up; and Dolly and her kind friends in Walnut Street sat together the last evening in a very subdued frame of mind. ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner

... in a very contented frame of mind, both as regarded himself and the world at large. Here he was, a strong, healthy young man, with a generous share of this world's goods, and the pleasurable thought that he was engaged to be married to a girl who suited him, and ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner

... this lowly strain he went home to the solitude of his lodging, sat down before his tea-table, thrust both hands into his pockets, and, in a by no means unhappy frame of mind, brooded over his trials ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne

... profoundly humiliated. Yet, on the strength of these two interviews, you are apparently prepared to contradict the result of a careful induction of mine and the lady's own express statement. I don't know how you manage to work yourself into a frame of mind in which that ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham

... too," growled Beamish, who seemed to be in an unenviable frame of mind. "Damned nuisance their coming round. I should like to know ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts

... madame—mad so to talk of resisting him, as you are mad to call me coward. I'll leave you till you are come to a more tranquil frame of mind." And turning upon his heel, his face on fire from the lash of her contempt, he strode down the hall and passed ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini

... no danger in this trip," said Dick, but he was mistaken—there was to be great peril and of an unusual kind. If the treasure hunters could have seen what was before them they would not have started off in such a confident frame of mind. ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)

... arrived home and wired from an hotel in London that they were coming up to see me the next day my trepidation increased. Supposing they came to me with reproaches, even recriminations? I awaited their visit in a subdued frame of mind. ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick

... that of which he should have enforced the rendering before he had parted with his own money; and this they did because they knew that he would be unwilling to take harsh legal proceedings against a bed-ridden old man! In this frame of mind he went to the Ross Markt, and there he was assured over and over again by Ziska Zamenoy—for Karil Zamenoy was not to be seen—that Nina Balatka had the deed in her own keeping. The name of Nina Balatka was becoming very grievous to ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope

... was heavy, but Karin rather liked to feel the pain in her arm, from bearing her unusual burden. She easily found her way along the upward path, and exhilarated by the exercise and the pleasure she was about to give, she entered the cottage in a very cheerful frame of mind. All ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker

... whether the frame of mind in which the boys went to bed that night under their mother's eye, for Rachel could be firm in a case of conscience, was more improving than the frivolity of ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote

... wound in and out of her brown hair in the Romney fashion. Of course she looked her best. Women always do if they wish to please one man when others are there, and she was in the slightly exalted frame of mind that her reflection in the ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson

... passing the winter in Berlin for the sake of its music. Mr. Apthorp told of his own similar struggle, and how he had entered a public school and sat for months with ten-year-old-boys, reciting their lessons and catching their phrases. The idea suited Adams's desperate frame of mind. At least it ridded him of the university and the Civil Law and American associations in beer-cellars. Mr. Apthorp took the trouble to negotiate with the head-master of the Friedrichs-Wilhelm-Werdersches Gymnasium for permission to Henry Adams to attend the school as a member of the Ober-tertia, ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... look beyond the tomb, Yet cannot hope for peace before.' Such an unhappy frame of mind, I am sure, madam, must excite your commiseration. It is perhaps owing, in part at least, to the solitude in which I have lived, I may say, even in the midst of society; when I have mixed in it; ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving

... one of them, "we are checkmated; we have already through fear of death or of banishment despaired of 'freedom'; every one sighs, no one ventures to speak." More the confederates could not desire. But though the majority of the aristocracy was in this desirable frame of mind, there was, of course, no lack of Hotspurs among this party. Hardly had Caesar laid down the consulship, when some of the most violent aristocrats, Lucius Domitius and Gaius Memmius, proposed in a full senate the annulling of the Julian laws. This ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... that journey in sections. All my trouble in New York was to get across the continent. I let the Pacific take care of itself, being sure I could conquer that difficulty when the time came. I recommend this frame of mind to all travellers. I acquired the habit myself in the United States when I jumped trains instead of paying my fare. It is most useful to think of no more than the matter in hand, for then we can use one's whole faculties at one time. Too much forethought ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts

... himself on Nozdrev's departure, Chichikov felt in a most unenviable frame of mind. Full of inward vexation, he blamed himself bitterly for having come to see this man and so wasted valuable time; but even more did he blame himself for having told him of his scheme—for having acted as carelessly as a child or a madman. Of ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... we must not merely glance at it, or rush through it, or read it in order to talk or write about it. One must compose oneself into the right frame of mind. Of course for one's own sake one will read Poetry in times of agitation, sorrow, or anxiety, but that is ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock

... are reaching a changed condition, less apparent perhaps, in the newer regions than in the old, but sufficiently obvious to extend the commencement frame of mind from the college to the country as a whole. The swift and inevitable current of the upper reaches of the nation's history has borne it to the broader expanse and slower stretches which mark the nearness of the level sea. The vessel, no longer carried along ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner

... self-possession—a confidence in my own capacity to parry all dangerous questions—which I had not experienced before. I cared not how soon, or for how long a time, I might find myself in company with Clara or my father. It was well for the preservation of my secret that I was in this frame of mind; for, on opening my study door, I was astonished to see both of them in ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins

... Antiphonarium, the work to conform to the strictest rules, with double counterpoint and fugue. In consequence of the nervous feeling due to the limit of time allowed, candidates very often failed. Mozart, however, took his paper in the cheerful frame of mind which everywhere distinguished him, and was duly locked up. In less than three-quarters of an hour he rapped at his door and asked to be let out. The authorities sent him word not to be discouraged, but to keep on trying, as he had yet three hours, and might accomplish it. They ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews

... journey of eight or ten miles, to relate to Lincoln this incident, which in her mind had doubtless taken the form of prophecy. Lincoln placed her at her ease, chatted with her of old times, and dismissed her in the most happy and complacent frame of mind. ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... her then and there, even if he had not come to Pleasant River for that especial purpose. Of course he forgot the speech, but his gestures were convincing, and he mumbled a sufficient number of extracts from it to convince Huldah that he was in a proper frame of mind—this phrase meaning to a woman the one in which she can do anything ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... who took part in almost every battle in Natal, and these were the individuals who understood the frame of mind of some of their countrymen, and determined that they must take upon themselves the responsibilities of fighting and winning battles. Among those who were most forward in fighting were the Johannesburg police, the much-despised "Zarps" of peaceful times; the Pretoria commando, and the younger men ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas

... poets are judged by the frame of mind they induce; and to them, of all men, the severest criticism ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... game for 'most anything if you say so, and 'most anything's what we're liable to get at that Holt shebang. I don't want you to think I've got any personal grudge. When it comes to that I'm—ho! ho!—well, I'm a good deal in the frame of mind Kenelm Parker was at the revival meetin' some year ago. Kenelm just happened in and took one of the back seats. The minister—he was a stranger in town—was walkin' up and down the aisles tryin' to influence the mourners to come forward. He crept up on Kenelm ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln

... conviction that the man who reads will say, "Of course! How else are we to look at women except as females? They are females, aren't they?" Yes, they are, as men are males unquestionably; but there is possible the frame of mind of the old marquise who was asked by an English friend how she could bear to have the footman serve her breakfast in bed—to have a man in her bed-chamber—and replied sincerely, "Call you that thing there ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... in part, what must lie under Gloria's look of distress. Surely circumstance had placed her in an equivocal position to-night. Summerling was the type to blab; he was in no charitable frame of mind; he had found her alone here with men, had come to marry her to one man, and now had seen her in the arms of another. There was but one ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory

... without mishap; and the brisk air having revived him much, he gradually came into a placid frame of mind. ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick

... and ask his permission that they should leave the kingdom to go and make pilgrimages to various foreign shrines, in order to fulfill vows and offer oblations and prayers for the restoration of his majesty's health. The king was of a very devout frame of mind, and his thoughts were accustomed to dwell a great deal on religious subjects, and especially on the performance of the rites and ceremonies customary in those days, and it seemed to comfort him very ...
— Margaret of Anjou - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... was light, for the long days had come now, the tired little girl sprang from her bed, and dressed herself, in a very unhappy frame of mind. She must decide very soon now, and she began to see more and more clearly that that money did not belong to her, but to the owner of the vest in which she had found it. To be sure, she could not now find the original owner, but Mr. Mountjoy certainly owned it, because he had bought ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow

... of social forces. To these capacities, some embryonic, some perfectly formed, add the fact that he was now a cosmopolitan, and there will be outline, relief, and color to his character. "I am in that frame of mind," he said of himself about this time, "in which men are when on the eve of battle, with a persistent conviction that since death is imminent in the end, to be uneasy is folly. Everything makes me brave death and destiny; and if this goes on, I shall in the end, my friend, no longer ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane



Words linked to "Frame of mind" :   mental state, mental condition, thinking cap, psychological condition, psychological state, temporary state, case



Copyright © 2024 e-Free Translation.com