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Mental attitude   /mˈɛntəl ˈætətˌud/   Listen
Mental attitude

noun
1.
A complex mental state involving beliefs and feelings and values and dispositions to act in certain ways.  Synonym: attitude.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Mental attitude" Quotes from Famous Books



... that he had managed to manufacture under the noses of the guards. They had examined everything he brought from the worksite, since he had been working in the evenings in his room, but ignored everything he manufactured as being beyond their comprehension. This primordial mental attitude had been of immense value for in addition to the sword he carried a sack of molotails, a simple weapon of assault whose origins were lost in pre-history. Small crocks were filled with the most combustible of ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey

... mother's choice, and that these qualifications were plainly visible to men older in life and the banking business than himself? At times Evan felt underfitted for the bank, and at other times overfitted. His spirits varied accordingly. Most of the time, however, his mental attitude "balanced," and inactivity of thought was the result. He had reached inertia of mind before his conversation that night with Jones ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen

... the same footing with her as he had in the fall, except that he called her Flora, in the familiarity which comes of daily association; to his secret discomfort she had fulfilled her own prophecy and called him Billy Boy. Though he liked the familiarity, he emphatically did not like the mental attitude which permitted her to fall so easily into the habit of calling him that. Also, he was in two minds about the way she would come to the door of the living room and say: "Come, Billy Boy, and dry the dishes ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower

... lobsters—please to look at them, and see if you can so much as guess their age, their capabilities, or their intentions. I fancy that the difference between the feelings with which they and the fishes inspire us is much the same as that between our mental attitude towards hill-men or house-elves, and towards men ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... first four months in the school I thought I saw a general improvement in him. He held himself better for one thing—with his head higher and his shoulders well back. This wasn't due to his physical training either. It meant a changed mental attitude. Ruth says she didn't notice any difference and she thinks this is nothing but my imagination. But she's wrong. I was looking for something she couldn't see that the boy lacked before. Dick to her was always all right. ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton

... traveller speaks of the countries from which he has returned, when he spoke of poetry it was like one who speaks of his native country. At first I found it a little difficult to accustom myself to his permanent mental attitude there, with his own implied or stated pre-eminence (Tennyson and Barnes on the lower slopes, Browning vaguely in sight, the rest of his contemporaries nowhere), but, after all, there was an undisguised simplicity in it, which was better, because franker, than the more customary 'pride ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... of the treasonable organizations believed to exist in Indiana emphasizes the change of mental attitude of Judge Davis between 1863 and 1866. During the progress of the Vallandigham case, General Burnside conceived a distrust of the wisdom of the course pursued by Brigadier-General Carrington, who commanded at Indianapolis, and sent ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... brother's organ, was not surprising; but it was monstrous that she, Hilda, the secretary, the priestess, should share this uncivil apathy; and it was unjust to mark the newspaper, as somehow she had been doing, with the stigma of her mother's death. She actually began to characterize her recent mental attitude to her past ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... well to retire to rest in a mental attitude of deliberate calm, repressing every sort of jerky movement and constraining oneself to lie ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke

... irritable, impatient, intolerant, fiercely proud, occasionally hasty in his judgments though he was, preserving to the last, nor caring to get rid of, certain Scottish and Annandale rusticities of manner and mental attitude, no one was ever more essentially self-controlled, patient, and humble than he, or ever faced the real misfortunes of life with a calmer courage; that he was as incapable of conscious injustice, unkindliness, or vindictiveness, as he was of insincerity or impurity; that in pecuniary straits, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... complicated game, which varied from day to day according to the weather and time of year, and had many beautiful surprises. She didn't understand it all, but was determined to be in it and get all the fun she could out of it. This mental attitude came out strikingly one day when we had a funeral— always a feast to the villagers; that is to say, an emotional feast; and on this occasion the circumstances made the ceremony a peculiarly ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson

... of no small importance in the rating of a people to take account of their disposition toward nature. If there has been a failure to appreciate truly the mental attitude of the "savage," and especially of the Polynesian savage, the Hawaiian, toward the book of truth that was open to him in nature, it is always in order to correct it. That such a mistake has been made needs no further proof than ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... valued it so lightly. How Horace Endicott had raved over this whited sepulcher five years ago, believed in her, sworn by her virtue and truth! And to-day he regarded her without feeling, neither love nor hate, perfect indifference only marking his mental attitude in her regard. Somehow one liked to feel that love is unchangeable, as with the mother, the father; as with God also, for whom sin does not change relationship with ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith

... had in imagination been playing the role of director of the popular feeling of "the heart of Russia." Not only did it seem to him (as to all administrators) that he controlled the external actions of Moscow's inhabitants, but he also thought he controlled their mental attitude by means of his broadsheets and posters, written in a coarse tone which the people despise in their own class and do not understand from those in authority. Rostopchin was so pleased with the fine role ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... had considered Lawford Tapp's tendencies toward living such an irresponsible existence as all wrong—for him. The rather exciting information she had just gained changed her mental attitude toward ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper

... success of the vespers," says his biographer, "which were seldom elsewhere so impressive or seemed so genuine as a devotional act. They needed, for their perfect effect, the influence of a leader with whom worship was an habitual mental attitude, and who, combined with the instinct of religion the art of a poet and of a musician."[12] The form of service thus initiated was adopted in many other churches, and slowly had its influence in giving greater beauty and spiritual expressiveness to ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke

... The mental attitude of the Indians toward the cattlemen and cowboys was a curious one. They were suspicious of them. They resented their presence in the country. But they felt a very wholesome respect for them. These leather-chapped youths could outride and outshoot them. With or without reason, the Utes felt ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine

... Her husband's mental attitude toward the doctor, if the truth be told, was one of the things that had never ceased to trouble her. Polite as he was to everybody, he had been so particularly polite to Sperry that it always aroused her suspicions. She knew he had sent for him purely to oblige her and to help her over the chasm ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith

... had an opportunity of resting during the solo number, ought also to be taken into consideration; and it may not be unreasonable for the organist to wish for a moment's pause in order that he may adjust his mental attitude from that demanded by the preceding number to that which is appropriate to the number to follow. All this is especially to be noted in performances of sacred music, in which no time is taken between the numbers for applause. In any ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens

... pseudo-philosophy of mine—"pollyanalytics," as one of my respected critics might say—is deduced from the novels and poems, not the reverse. The novels and poems come unwatched out of one's pen. And then the absolute need which one has for some sort of satisfactory mental attitude towards oneself and things in general makes one try to abstract some definite conclusions from one's experiences as a writer and as a man. The novels and poems are pure passionate experience. These "pollyanalytics" are inferences made afterwards, ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence

... not quite know what, in Caroline Briggs's look, or manner, or surmised mental attitude that day, had gone home to her. And that remark, "He may be her husband," followed by, "she may be very rich, too," had dropped upon her like ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens

... as an ingredient in our mental attitude is strongly insisted on by the scientific philosophers of the present day; but by a singularly arbitrary caprice they say that it is only legitimate when used in the interests of one particular proposition,—the proposition, ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... we are to the innocent gaieties of the Classical Tripos, these measures to discourage the study of Virgil may appear drastic, as the mental attitude of Gregory and Alcuin towards the Latin hexameter (so closely resembling that of Byron towards the waltz) not far removed from foolishness. But there you have in its quiddity the mediaeval mind: and the point I now ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... us, an environment that corresponds to our thoughts. [9] Secondly, we discharge or emit an influence, silent and invisible, that no doubt affects other people. They are probably not aware of it, but they are either repelled or attracted by this silent influence. Thus, if our thoughts and mental attitude are of the wrong type, not only are our actions affected thereby, but also we exert a silent influence that assists in driving the right type of friends, opportunity, success and every possible good away from us. The reverse also is equally true. By right thoughts and a correct mental ...
— Within You is the Power • Henry Thomas Hamblin

... and an insult, rather than otherwise, to Byamee. He knows; why weary him by repetition, disturbing the rest he enjoys after his earth labours? But a prayer need not necessarily be addressed to the highest god. I think if we really understood and appreciated the mental attitude of the blacks, we should find more in their so-called incantations of the nature of invocations. When a man invokes aid on the eve of a battle, or in his hour of danger and need; when a woman croons over her baby an incantation to keep him honest and true, ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker

... we get the Louis XVI period, again masculine in its straight rigidity of line, its perfectly poised proportions, the directness of its appeal to the eye, a "reflection of the more serious mental attitude of the nation." Louis XVI had an aristocratic sobriety and was masculine in a light, alert, mental way, if one can so express it, which stimulates the imagination, in direct contrast to the material and literal type of Louis XIV which, as we have said, was masculine in its ponderous ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood

... previous chapter it directly follows that the political conduct of the State, while affecting the mental attitude of the people, exercises an indirect but indispensable influence on the preparation for war, and is to some degree a preparation for ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi

... armies, is used merely as a tool for foreign dominion and for the subjugation of independent nations; for the former have everything to lose, the latter have merely something to gain. But even a whim can prevail over the mental attitude which regards war as a game of hazard for temporal gain or loss, and which, even before the game starts, has fixed the limit of the stake. Think, for example, of a Mohammed—not the real Mohammed of history, concerning whom I confess that I have no judgment, but the Mohammed of ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... part, not daunted by those evidences of the invaders' numerical superiority and of their magnificent equipment. The more there were of the Germans the fewer of them there would be to come back when the Allies, over the French border, fell on them. This we conceived to be the mental attitude of the villagers and the peasants; but now they were different. The difference showed in all their outward aspects—in their gaits; in their drooped shoulders and half-averted faces; and, most of all, in their eyes. They had felt ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb

... the solicitations of theory or prejudice. No one can read the plays in connection with the literature of the time, or of any time, without marveling at their freedom from vulgarity, pettiness, or narrowness of mental attitude. If they do not afford evidences of a profound culture in philosophy, letters, or science, they offer no trace of intellectual blindness or conceit, and they leave no doubt that their author had thought greatly and freely. Even ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson

... ceremonies and customs of other religions, which may be intrinsically as reasonable and reverent as our own, strike upon our minds unpleasantly because they are unwonted. It would, therefore, be somewhat difficult for us to put ourselves into a mental attitude before either of these great religions, in which we should be able to do full justice to ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden

... much the mental attitude of my aunt Phoebe, and it was only under strong pressure from me and one or two others of her younger and more enterprising section of Bishopsthorpe society that she at last reluctantly consented to patronise the ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various

... dining-room ceiling was so low that he could not have anything for dinner but soles. Sir John thought this could have been said only by an American, only by one accustomed to have a joke swiftly catalogued as a joke, and suffered to pass. An English jester must always take into account the mental attitude which finds "Gulliver's Travels" "incredible." When Mr. Edward FitzGerald said that the church at Woodbridge was so damp that fungi grew about the communion rail, Woodbridge ladies offered an indignant denial. When ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier

... helped himself to the relics of St. Lewinna, a British convert, which reposed in St. Andrew's Monastery. The adventures that overtook the relics and their illegal guardian during the journey back to Flanders make up a medieval romance of much interest and throw a curious light on the mental attitude of the religious, as regards the rights of property, ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes

... themselves on the subject of women in the trades is the measure of their own sense of incompetence to handle it. The mingled apathy and impatience with which numbers of union men listen to any proposal to organize the girls with whom they work arises from the same mental attitude. "These girls have come into our shop. We can't help it. We didn't ask them. They should be at home. Let them ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry

... rapidly our acquaintance had progressed. Already we had laid aside all formality of speech and manner, and if the girl had not really discovered my mental attitude toward her, at least I think she must ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells

... Finally I was led to conclude that he usually knew exactly what was going on and had in his furtive way noted all of the essential features of the situation, and that his manner was extremely indicative of his mental attitude of limited trust. Both Julius and Skirrl went to the opposite extreme in the matter of directness, or as we should say in human relations, frankness. They would look the experimenter directly in the eye, and they usually ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes

... therefore not altogether inconsistent when, after the outrages, he condemned the revolution, however much the facts which he describes may tend to explain the inevitableness of the catastrophe. At any rate, his views are worth notice by the indications which they give of the mental attitude of a typical ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... be hard for an individual of average purpose to understand or comprehend this mental attitude where the individual is fired with such zeal that he is willing to suffer physical ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... wish you wouldn't think of me in he, him, and his; I never personalize you in my thoughts: you remain always a vague unindividualized essence, not quite without form and void, but nounless and pronounless. I call that a much more beautiful mental attitude toward the object of one's affections. But if you must he and him and his me in your thoughts, I wish you'd have ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... vanity but also of sympathy, was overlaid by the powerful contempt of a man who longs to traverse misstatements but is forced by circumstances to keep silence. And so certain was Malling that the cause of Mr. Harding's perturbation lay in Chichester's mental attitude, that he longed to spring up, to take the curate by the shoulders and to thrust him out of the church. Then all would be well. He knew it. The rector's self-confidence would return and, with ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens

... fallen. This exercise gave her a curious satisfaction, and when she saw that the mark had subsided and was blending more to the colour of her skin she felt disappointed. Startled, she analysed this curious mental attitude and again came to Beale. She wanted Beale to see the place. She wanted Beale's sympathy. She wanted Beale's rage—she was sure he ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace

... data concerning such primitive types of house structures are quite rare. It is also thought to be of interest to the archeologist and ethnologist as well as to the general reader, for it is well known that no one product of a people's art exhibits so clearly their mental attitude and their industrial status as the ...
— Navaho Houses, pages 469-518 • Cosmos Mindeleff

... sure, swift hand will wrap a bright shawl about her, tie a flaming bit of silk about her dark head, and with an assumed manner, born of her garb, cast a magic spell over the small band which she leads on, to that which, without her intense conviction and their susceptibility to her mental attitude toward the masquerade, could ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank

... became of age, in 1832, he came into possession of a comfortable fortune, returned to England, and settled down in the Temple to study law. Soon he began to dislike the profession intensely, and we have in Pendennis a reflection of his mental attitude toward the law and the young men who studied it. He soon lost his fortune, partly by gambling and speculation, partly by unsuccessful attempts at running a newspaper, and at twenty-two began for the first time to earn his own living, ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... or his opinion upon Social questions of sufficient importance to excite curiosity, but I confess that when I listen to an address intended to be thoughtful, I enjoy it more or at any rate endure it better, if I have some knowledge of the mental attitude of the speaker toward his general subject. Thinking that possibly those who hear me this evening may have the same feeling, I begin by saying that I earnestly favor a just distribution of comfort. I suppose that if I should analyze the mental processes leading to that wish, I should find ...
— The Inhumanity of Socialism • Edward F. Adams

... Ruth's mental attitude toward men was rapidly changing. She had never in her life before thought so much about boys, or young men, as she had during this week that Luke Shepard remained at the house with his sister. He seemed quite unlike any other person that Ruth ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill

... fortune had robbed this unoffending young couple. She wished that it had not been so, and vaguely reproached herself without reasoning the matter out to a conclusion. At all events, she was remorsefully sympathetic in her mental attitude towards Mrs. Osborn, and being sure that she was frightened of her husband's august relative, felt nervous herself because Lord Walderhurst bore himself with undated courtesy and kept his monocle fixed in his eye throughout the interview. If he had ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... idea. His, also, the amplifying apparatus. The mental attitude was Miss Clarke's, modified by Dr. Malloy. The lead bracelets were Mme. Le Fabre's suggestion; they work fine. Sir Henry was the one who pointed out the advantage of the microphone I am using. If my hands become paralysed I can easily call for help ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

... into the IDEA which gives rise to the work, that we can derive all the enjoyment and benefit from it which it is able to bestow. If we cannot enter into the Spirit of it, the book, the picture, the music, are meaningless to us: to appreciate them we must share the mental attitude of their creator. This is a universal principle; if we do not enter into the Spirit of a thing, it is dead so far as we are concerned; but if we do enter into it we reproduce in ourselves the same quality of life which ...
— The Dore Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward

... cannot be misunderstood by any one who takes the word in its literal meaning. The Theist is one who believes in a personal God. The Atheist is one who is without belief in a personal God. The meaning is clear, and the implied mental attitude is plain. It is opposed to theism, and has no significance apart from Theism. And, as will be seen, when non-theists quarrel with it, it is only because it is ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen

... very feminine woman though she had a mental attitude rightly held to be more characteristic of men. Being so feminine, so enraged under her calm and ease, she was, of course, not completely consistent. She was still angry, and very scornful of Miss Townsend. She was hurt with her; she felt a friend had played ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson

... does not 'weep' over the failure of 'a theory of the quantification of the predicate', nor 'shriek' over the fall of a philosophical formula. A kind of humour is one of the conditions of the true mental attitude in the criticism of past stages of thought. Humanity cannot afford to be too serious about them, any more than a man of good sense can afford to be too serious in looking back upon his own childhood. Plato, whom Coleridge claims as the first ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... altogether. On the ground of secular history and secular evidence both might reasonably meet, as regards the facts, though not perhaps as to their interpretation; but the reason why they ultimately differ is to be found simply in the difference of their mental attitude towards the nature of "knowledge,'-itself a difference of opinion as to the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... in a serious matter in my life, and it wasn't a mistake my sendin' you there in the first place. And I'm goin' to prove it—I'm goin' to send you back there and vindicate my judgment. Gurney says it's all 'mental attitude.' Well, you're goin' to learn the right one! He says in a couple more months this fool thing that's been the matter with you'll be disappeared completely and you'll be back in as good or better condition than you were ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington

... the young man. Unfortunately, a large proportion of young men do not realize that they have any problem in this field to solve until circumstances, more or less accidental, have already established in them a mental attitude and, perhaps, a habit of life that may not be either wholesome ...
— The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction - Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the Male • Winfield S. Hall

... Man is the only animal that walks erect. He is the only animal in whom old age brings a forward bending of the spine. The hanging head, which is the attitude of hopelessness, and which is caused to a very large extent by the mental attitude that goes with approaching old age, no doubt does a great ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden

... you crazy woman!" snarled John Flint, his face going brick-red. "Stop licking my hand, and get up!" Although he did not know it, Katya symbolized the mental attitude of every laborer in Appleboro toward him ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... the machine induces either an adverse mental attitude or physical condition of the worker, it will sooner or later be adverse to the economic ...
— Industrial Progress and Human Economics • James Hartness

... held briefly that her stepdaughter had fallen, and now, knowing her condition, had informed some man of it, with the result that from him came this unutterable gift. That the money made an enormous difference to Mrs. Tregenza's mental attitude must be confessed. She found herself fashioning absolute excuses for Joan. Girls so often came to ill through no fault of their own. The man must at least have been a gentleman to pay for his pleasure in four figures. ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts

... far more important things. Whoever poured out this sweet meditation in the psalm before us, his tender longings for, and his jubilant possession of, God remain the same. It is either the work of a king in exile, or is written by some one who tries to cast himself into the mental attitude of such a person, and to reproduce his longing and his trust. It may be a question of literary interest, but it is of no sort of spiritual or religious importance whether the author is David or a singer of later date endeavouring to reproduce his ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... shelter of the wall and watch the birds than to burrow in the crumbling dust for that small harvest. Yet I could understand and even appreciate their work, although it is probable that the glow I experienced was in part reflected. Perhaps my mental attitude, when standing in that sheltered place, and when getting on to the windy wall I looked down on the workers and their work, was merely benevolent. I had pleasure in their pleasure, and a vague desire for a better understanding, a closer ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson

... they did not like me; perhaps it was because I failed to appreciate a certain something that was the key note to their mental attitude. However that may have been, I always felt wretched in their company, and my attempts at saying something out of the ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... The influence of mental attitude on the matter we study raises a question as to the wisdom of assigning the committing of poetry, or Bible verses, or the reading of so many pages of a literary masterpiece as a punishment for some offense. How many of us have carried away associations of dislike ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts

... about the house. Its occupant was, however, oblivious to his surroundings and sat very still in his chair, with pouches under his fixed eyes and his lips set tight. He looked malignant and dangerous, and perhaps his mental attitude was not quite normal. Close study and severe physical toil, coupled with free indulgence, had weakened him; there were drugs he was addicted to which affected the brain, and he had long been possessed by one fixed idea. By degrees it had become a mania, and ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss

... defiance of subjection, a determination, so to speak, of physical and emotional chastity, she welcomed these intimations of the essential inviolability of nature, finding in them justification and support of her own mental attitude—of the entire wisdom of which she had, it must be owned, grown slightly ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... not have explained at all. His was a nature that demanded more than a life of healing could give him. There was the ceaseless call of the original man in him. It was a call so insistent that it must be obeyed, even while his mental attitude ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum

... just the discovery of convenient phrases or labels, such as "pessimist," or "socialist," or "pacifist" or "Bolshevik." When any puzzling mental attitude comes before their notice, they pin one of their labels to it, and, having labelled it, they think they understand it. The Press supplies them with these labels, and, consciously or unconsciously, they store them up in their minds and always have a few ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt

... sense which Prussianism or militarism is here used it denotes a mental attitude or view. It is a condition of mind which is partisan, exaggerated and egotistical, and is developed by environment and training. Just as the professional spirit in any other occupation leads to an exhibition of exaggerated ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller

... they cannot understand and articulate words that the experiment is valuable; for it separates the effect of the tone from the effect of the word spoken. He who speaks, speaks twice. His words convey his thought, and his tone conveys his mental attitude towards the person spoken to. And certainly the attitude, so far as friction goes, is more important than the thought. Your wife may say to you: 'I shall buy that hat I spoke to you about.' And you may reply, quite sincerely, 'As you please.' But it will depend on your tone whether you convey: 'As ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett

... views of things and people were more generous than she had expected. She had anticipated his attitude would be a little cynical, but to her surprise he oozed loving-kindness. Had she known Mr. Marcus Stepney as well as Jean knew him, she would have realised that he adapted his mental attitude to his audience. He was a man whose stock-in-trade was a knowledge of human nature, and the ability to please. He would no more have attempted to shock or frighten her, than a first-class salesman would shock or annoy ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace

... answer. He was a quiet patient, and lay all day with wide-open, dreaming eyes. He seemed to be waiting for something. This, indeed, was his mental attitude as presented to his neighbours, and perhaps to the few friends he possessed in Dantzig. He had waited through the years during which Desiree had grown to womanhood. He waited on doggedly through the first month of ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman

... almost imperceptibly, the gist of the songs changed to the sentimental, and before very long the heat and fatigue gradually overcame the men, and songs ceased altogether. As a general rule, after two o'clock the mental attitude of the troops might be described as ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"

... Moors, who died when he was a child; of the examinations he had passed and of their exceeding and increasing difficulty; of his dreams of a shop in London; of his hate for the price-cutting Co-operative stores; and, most interesting, of his mental attitude towards customers. ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling

... cautiously to the right and left. None was ever kept for a pet or allowed in the house or fed. They lived on rats, mice, birds, and the field mice, and were practically wild animals. In their frightened, suspicious actions at sight of a human being, Geraldine recognized a reflection of her own mental attitude; and she pitied the poor things even while they ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham

... bias; but if this was perceived it was by no means thought a matter for protesting measures, especially as they would be bound to involve expense. The injury was too vague, too remote, to be more than sturdily discounted by a mental attitude. Belief in England was in the blood, it would not yield to the temporary distortion of facts in the newspapers—at all events, it would not yield with a rush. Whether there was any chance of insidious sapping ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... has made Asia Chinese and nations hermits. As a rule, the only way in which foreigners could come peacefully into China or the countries which she intellectually dominated was as vassals, tribute-bearers, or "barbarians." The mental attitude of China, Korea, Annam and Japan has for ages been that of the Jews in Herodian times, who set up, between the Court of Israel and the Court of the Gentiles, their graven stones of warning ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... and my Aunt Amanda may both be right. I strongly suspect they are. I also strongly suspect that Sir Christopher himself has much to do with my change of mental attitude: He is well-mannered, good to look upon, quite adorable, independent and patient. (Indeed, if people were half as patient as my cat this would be a different world to live in.) More: He has taught me many things, he talks without making ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various

... two errors in the play; and they are all due to the primary error of despising the mental attitude of romance, which is the only key to real human conduct. For instance, the love making of the young poet is all wrong. He is supposed to be a romantic and amorous boy; and therefore the dramatist tries to make him talk turgidly, about seeking for "an archangel with purple wings" who shall be ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... tries to wear becoming clothes but tries to put on an equally becoming mental attitude. No one is ever asked out very much who is in the habit of telling people all the misfortunes and ailments she has experienced or witnessed, though the perfect guest listens with apparent sympathy to every one else's. Another attribute of the perfect ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... merciless philosophy, he had crumpled down in his chair, and when she had sprung up, he had risen perfunctorily and wearily to his feet, but at her last words he had straightened up as if involuntarily every muscle grew tense, an outward and visible indication of his mental attitude. Inherited and traditional pride was in the haughty and surprised uplift of his head; a bright flush had risen on his cheek and his eyes sparkled with a thousand ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... due to mental influence. The whole of the alimentary process is under the control of the nervous system, which has its seat in the brain, consequently, a cheerful mental attitude favors digestion. It is well known that a fit of anger may temporarily stop digestion. The mind exerts such a vast influence over every function that it is impossible to set bounds to it. We are the creatures of habit. ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell

... do, of course—that is, so far as their reception of the man who had befriended her, and whose mother had befriended her was concerned. They were gentlewomen. And she knew quite certainly about her father. But she wondered as to their real attitude, their mental attitude, and she wondered still more with regard to Anderson. Would he expect to be invited in? In what fashion did he read his own social status in the village. Anderson also was considering, during the last of the way, if he should ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... was so struck with the unique and convincing nature of these arguments that he could scarcely restrain his admiration, and he confessed to himself afterward, that unless Simpson's mental attitude could be changed he was perhaps a fitter subject for medical science than the ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... this kind it is not required that there be a plainly formulated purpose of deceiving another; an implicit intention, a disposition to allow our words to run their natural course, is sufficient to give such utterances a character of mendacity. For, independently of our mental attitude, it is in the nature of a lie to deceive; an intention, or rather a pretense to the contrary, does not affect that nature. The fact of lying presupposes that we intend in some manner to practise deception; if ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... story, At the Earth's Core, not so much because of the probability of the tale as of a great and abiding wonder that people should be paid real money for writing such impossible trash. You will pardon my candor, but it is necessary that you understand my mental attitude toward this particular story—that you may credit ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... so fascinated by our transition from the twentieth century to the fifteenth that we forgot we were climbing. Effort is a matter of mental attitude. Nothing in the world is hard when you are interested in ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons

... to do is to change the mental attitude in regard to the whole matter of sex; to hold it in thought as sacred, holy, consecrated to the highest of all functions, that of procreation. Recognize that, conserved and controlled, it becomes a source of energy to the individual. Cleanse the mind ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen

... eloquence of "the drop" was amply sufficient to enforce obedience. Farnham be hanged! He felt slight inclination at that moment to die for the sake of Farnham. Winston, accustomed to gauging men, easily comprehended this mental attitude of his prisoner, his eyes smiling in appreciation of the other's promptness, although his glance never once wavered, his guarding hand never fell. Burke was safe enough now, yet he was not to be trifled with, ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish

... such as Mr. W. S. GILBERT would use in his Creatures of Impulse, his Fogarty's Fairy, and his Sorcerer, whenever he wishes to bring about a sudden and otherwise inexplicable transition from one mental attitude to another, and entirely opposite. But for the earnestness of the actors, this reductio ad Fairydum would have imparted an air of unreality to the characters and incidents which does not belong to them. The plot is a model of neat construction; and, to everyone ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various

... wrong time. Two years ago it would not have entered his free-lance heart to be reticent with any man, high or low, about any pleasure in which he saw fit to indulge; to-day he had been shy over confessing to the commanding officer his leaning to cock-fights—a sign of his approach to the correct mental attitude of the enlisted man. Being corporal had wakened in him a new instinct, and this State-House affair was the first chance he had had to show himself. He gave the order to proceed at a walk in such a tone that one of the troopers ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister

... both sides of the question, Bok decided upon a negative answer. He felt that American women were not ready to exercise the privilege intelligently and that their mental attitude ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok

... they are reported to do, they are evidently in a state of mind to do so. This means that the dog has highly developed susceptibility to the appreciation of others, and that the species which he represents has had no history except a sexual history capable of developing this mental attitude. In connection with courtship he developed a fund of organic susceptibility, and this condition is involved in his more general relation to man; the machinery set up in sexual relations is played on by stimuli in general. A ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas

... saw, the more did he turn toward the same divorced mental attitude. He realized how truly the typical Villa Elsa, though in quite a different key, justified Anderson's conclusions. The performance Frau Bucher had gone through verified another variant in racial traits—a variant which ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry

... His face was pale, with an almost unhealthy pallor, from which his small dark eyes glittered restlessly; his thin lips, tightly closed, were set in an almost straight line. Clean-shaven, sleek of hair, he wore an expression of cautious slyness that implied a mental attitude ever on guard against some sudden exposure of his real feelings. Such was ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice

... of moral and spiritual life in our day, its accelerated movement, is not to be claimed by or traced to any one set of influences or propaganda. The awakening has been all along the line; and it has resulted in a new mental attitude toward the human life of the world, both as a whole and in its various parts. Its great outcome is the learning to live with, rather ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various

... which the plot of the play stirs up. We discussed the feelings in which we sympathize with the characters of the scene, in which we share their suffering and their joy; and we also spoke about that other group of emotions by which we take a mental attitude toward the behaviour of the persons in the play. But there is surely a third group of feelings and emotions which we have not yet considered, namely, those of our joy in the play, our esthetic satisfaction or dissatisfaction. We have omitted them intentionally, because ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg

... traditions and stop drifting, you will make the fact evident. If you haven't it would be useless for me to attempt to drag, drive, or coax you out of old ways. I am too busy a man to attempt the useless. But until you tell me your present mental attitude, and what has led to it, we are talking somewhat at random. I have merely aimed to give you the ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe

... of mental attitude cannot be brought about till we have laid hold of some fact which is sufficient to afford a reason for the change. We require some solid ground for our belief in this higher law. Ultimately we find this ground in the great Truth of ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward

... bit of description lies in the few words expressive of the mental attitude of the onlookers. And it is a nice distinction which Hardy makes when he says that 'imaginative inhabitants who would have felt an unpleasantness at the discovery of a comparatively modern skeleton in their gardens were quite unmoved ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent

... result of his visit to young Dunn at the latter's office. Malcolm had surrendered, perhaps not gracefully or unconditionally, but he had surrendered, and the condition—secrecy—was one which the captain himself had suggested. Captain Elisha's mental attitude toward the son of the late Tammany leader had been a sort of good-natured but alert tolerance. He judged the young man to be a product of rearing and environment. He had known spoiled youths at the Cape and, in ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln

... and we may acknowledge ourselves more interested in the mental attitude which it displays than in the detail of its criticism. The author insists, with much force, on the value of a grandiose melancholy and a romantic horror in creating a poetical impression, and he allows himself to deplore ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... true that the average child to-day is less often and less severely punished than the child of the past. If it disobeys, it has less fear of the consequences, so the importance of obedience becomes a dwindling factor in its mental attitude and its behavior. ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)

... Nothing is accomplished by telling a child it will not hurt when you know that it will hurt, or that the medicine tastes good when you know it is bad-tasting. Every physician can recall unnecessary disturbances in the office because a mother has allowed a child to acquire a wrong mental attitude toward the ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler

... process was not deleterious. Her nature was at once stimulated and steadied by Lewes's boundless faith in her powers, and boundless admiration for their manifestation. Nor was it a case of sitting like an idol to be praised and incensed. Her own mental attitude towards Lewes was one of warm admiration. She thought most highly of his scientific attainments, whether well foundedly or mistakenly I cannot pretend to gauge with accuracy. But she also admired and enjoyed the sparkling brightness of his talk, and the dramatic vivacity with which he entered into ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... fully cognizant of the fact that all the knowledge acquired by the human race has been the result of human inquiry, the result of reasoning processes, and the exercise of mind alone, then secularism will have overcome the long night of supernaturalism. And it is this mental attitude of securalism that proceeds with an ever accelerated rapidity to overcome the problems that confront humanity by substituting human inquiry for divine revelation. Thus this attitude of man to proceed through life dependent only on his own resources will expand and strengthen his ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... our tour efforts were being made to systematise these organisations. The Department of Agriculture wanted a farmer at the head of each society, the War Office an ex-soldier. There can be no doubt that the militarists have been doing their best to give the societies the mental attitude ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... explanation was gone. All she had to do now was to adjust herself, so that the spikes of that unwilling penance which conscience imposed should not gall her. With a sort of mental shiver, she resolutely changed her mental attitude. There had been a little pause, during which she had not turned away her eyes; and with a sudden break into ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... is now my usual method: I rarely begin treatment the first time I see a patient, but confine myself to making his acquaintance, hearing his account of his case, and ascertaining his mental attitude with regard to suggestion. I usually find, from the failure of other methods of treatment, that he is more or less sceptical as to the chance of being benefited. I endeavour to remove all erroneous ideas, and refuse to begin treatment until the patient is satisfied of the safety and desirability ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various

... never attain his mental attitude of philosophic tolerance. I do not feel that Gorman is in any way right about the Irish landlords. I felt, though I like the man personally, that he and his friends are deliberately and ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham

... still, something of this unquiet spirit hovers about India, and the incompatibility between the ideas of twentieth-century Englishmen and those of Indian peoples whose mental attitude approaches that of Europeans of the twelfth century is a ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... arguments, contentions in newspapers, magazines, campaign literature, or the actual textbooks. Few students complete their course in logic with a keener insight into thought and with a maturer or more aggressive mental attitude. ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... those who loved her, none seemed to understand so fully as Laetitia Rowly the change in her mental attitude, or rather the development of it. Now and again she tried to deflect or modify certain coming forces, so that the educational process in which she had always had a part would continue in the right direction. But she generally ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker

... Christian reader regards this mental attitude as unsound, far be it from us to defend it! It must, nevertheless, be admitted that whoever feels the strong stirring of power in his head and hands will learn its limits from no purely subjective source. The lesson must begin from without, and the only argument ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... at the root of all, lies their attitude toward the Divine Being. Jesus was preeminently a God-intoxicated Being, while the most manifest mental attitude of Gautama was his agnosticism. Christ never ceased speaking of and communing with His Father in heaven. He was wont to retire regularly from human society in order that He might enjoy the Heavenly Presence whose very radiance shone in and upon Him daily. He declared that He did nothing ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

... A decent and customary mental attitude in the presence of wealth or power. Peculiarly appropriate in an employee ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... talking as she went. "I really haven't the self-assertion to walk up to strange students and tell them the error of their ways. To me, that course of action savors too much of conceit of our own virtues. The best we can do is to be perfectly honorable about the examinations. Our mental attitude toward dishonorable proceedings ought to have its influence without our going about making ourselves odious ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird

... was utterly unfitted. Any criticism was taken personally. He found it impossible to let the jibes, criticisms, and heated words of his opponents trickle off from him as easily as water does from a duck's back, which is the proper legal mental attitude in regard to such things. He told us that sharp, harsh, or bitter words entered his soul like barbed iron and he was upset and unstrung for hours afterward. A man with such an emotional nature as his and such an intellect is especially qualified for literature, and we are glad to say that ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb

... other excited children getting ready for school that morning. They had both slept on their troubles, but were very differently prepared to meet the day. Ada Singer's mental attitude was, "I'll never give in, and Lucy Berry will ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham

... mental attitude of one anxious to justify the other man, ended by seeing only his employer's argument. He did not perceive that the latter's proposition introduced into the transaction a gambling element. It became possible for Morrison & Daly to get a certain amount of work, short of absolute completion, ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White

... than that which we had been accustomed to at the front. Of course Montreuil held the brains of the army, and it was quite right that the directing intelligences there should feel the loftiness of their position. I made up two lines as I was having tea, which I thought hit off the mental attitude of some of the officers present, when they saw a stranger and looked him up ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott

... always clinging to his thoughts. At present, however, she was not inclined to judge him too hardly; although visibly unstrung, unwise in his sweeping condemnation, coarse in his anger, and somewhat grandiloquent in his pose, there was still much of real heroism in his mental attitude. Braced by the fiercest party spirit, he stood staunch in his loyalty to Smith and the cause, with no thought of yielding an inch ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall

... them, but sometimes he finds them in contradiction to what he himself has observed. Fray Gaspar's letter impresses the reader, at first, as being the complaint of an irritable and querulous old man (he wrote it at the age of seventy); but another cause for his mental attitude may be found toward the end of his letter, where he argues against the proposed ordination of Filipino natives as priests—a plan which aroused great opposition from the religious orders. The MS. which we use ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin

... help the Old Man so long as you are explaining in undertone and whisper, by gesture and suggestion, by thought and mental attitude, that he is a curmudgeon and his system dead wrong. You are not necessarily menacing him by stirring up discontent and warming envy into strife, 5 but you are doing this: You are getting yourself upon a well-greased chute that will give you a ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell

... an open book, he would surely have become a figure of interest. His mental attitude was that of a professional beau of acknowledged preeminence; he was comparing the self at home in the mummy case with the remnants of defunct Pharaohs here exposed under glass, and he was sniffing, in spirit, at their lack of kingly dignity and their inferior state of preservation. ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson

... please. By thought you can greatly increase your efficiency and strength. You are surrounded by all kinds of thoughts, some good, others bad, and you are sure to absorb some of the latter if you do not build up a positive mental attitude. ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont

... means a quiet[A] realisation of the fact that the floor is yours, everybody wants to hear you, there is time[A] enough for every point and shade of meaning, and no one will think the story too long. This mental attitude must underlie proper control of speed. Never hurry. A business-like leisure is the true ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant

... and inclined her head on the rail before her. As Maurice did the same there shot through his mind a wonder at the change there must be in the mental attitude of the woman who spoke with haughtiness almost insulting to the stranger, and the penitent who bent to ask pity and forgiveness from heaven. He tried to fix his thoughts on his own prayer, but the words ran on as mechanically as might water flow over a stone. ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates

... I understood the mental attitude which induced him to prefer that the information should seem to come ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh

... I direct my thoughts elsewhere, when the sensation is there to occupy my attention?" Obviously he can not without changing his mental attitude, so folly ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.

... and find out by the rude impact of the thought of those people upon his reorganized condition of mind, how sharp the change had been. He would have preferred to stay away. He expected that now he should hear nothing except sentiments which would be a reproach to him in his changed mental attitude, and he rather wished he might be excused. And yet he didn't quite want to say that, he didn't want to show how he did feel, or show any disinclination to go, and so he forced himself to go along with Barrow, privately purposing to take an early ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... arrows is itself very significant of the mental attitude of primitive man, and of the way that mental attitude has coloured all subsequent thinking and superstition upon this very subject. Curiously enough, to the present day the conception of the thunderbolt is essentially one of a ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... evidence available was not sufficient to decide it. It was perfectly possible at one time for a scientific or a religious man to hold either view. Neither view interfered with his fundamental standing or with his mental attitude towards either sun or earth. In this respect—important as the question is in itself—it might be said to be a mere detail, almost a ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder

... heart and why she felt as she did when he saw Linda and Peter together and heard their manner of speaking to each other, and made mental note of the many points of interest which seemed to exist between them. He returned to San Francisco with a good deal of a "See-the-conquering-hero-comes" mental attitude. He went directly to his office, pausing on the way for a box of candy and a bunch of Parma violets. His first act on reaching the office was to send for Miss Thorne. Marian came almost immediately, a worried look in her eyes. She sat in the big, cushioned ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter



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