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More "Forgetfulness" Quotes from Famous Books



... sound he had made was just da da, or truly and intentionally dadda, had washed him in the utmost detail, and wrapped him up in soft, warm blankets, and smothered him with kisses. A regal time that was, and four and thirty years ago; and a merciful forgetfulness barred Mr. Polly from ever bringing its careless luxury, its autocratic demands and instant obedience, into contrast with his present condition of life. These two people had worshipped him from the crown of his ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... have been checked in such silly efforts to do good through forgetfulness of the fact that usually the poorest are the proudest. Even the luxurious debris of London Club kitchens must be flung into swill-barrels for pigs, because starving men and women will not demean themselves to ask for it at the buttery-hatch. Moreover, that such are often extravagant ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... been but the unreasoning suggestions of girlish romance, too carelessly indifferent to the exigencies of poverty and diverse nationality; and that, if he had ever returned to claim her, mutual explanation and forgetfulness could have been their only proper course. There was, therefore, nothing for which she could reproach herself, or for which he could justly blame her, were he to recognize her as ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... first great kings of the world are forgotten, and the names of all those whose power we envy will drift to forgetfulness soon. What does the most powerful man in the world amount to standing at the brink of Niagara, with his solar plexus trembling? What is his power compared with the force of the wind or the energy of one small wave sweeping ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane

... anything against his unwavering faith, and pure and fervent love for Ellen Langton. A sorrowful and repining disposition is not the necessary accompaniment of a "leal and loving heart"; and Edward's spirits were cheered, not by forgetfulness, but by hope, which would not permit him to doubt of the ultimate success of his pursuit. The uncertainty itself, and the probable danger of the expedition, were not without their charm to a youthful and adventurous spirit. In fact, Edward would not have been altogether satisfied ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... and with entire forgetfulness of his exhaustion he crept slowly forward, worming through the brush and long grass behind a snake fence. Slowly he progressed until only a muddy road intervened between him and the north end of the platform. Taking advantage of a noisy blow-off from ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster

... if, perchance, she might hear his; listened, and held her breath, and quivered all over with hope and fear: then crept back to her miserable bed, covered her head with the ragged quilt, and cried herself into a few hours of forgetfulness. ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden

... whom he mourns? Who, even when the tomb is closing upon the remains of her he most loved—when he feels his heart, as it were, crushed in the closing of its portal—would accept of consolation that must be bought by forgetfulness? ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof

... feelings would undoubtedly have prompted. He therefore relinquished the care of her (with great reluctance we may naturally suppose) to Bathsheba, who had inherited not only her mother's youthful smile, but that self-forgetfulness which, born with some of God's creatures, is, if not "grace," at least a manifestation of native depravity which might well ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... very delicate girls who need special care, but I am speaking to the average girl. Do not forget that a cold is a terrible thing, but also remember that it can be avoided by a little care at the right time, and by entire forgetfulness at other times. ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}

... their fate was interwoven. Still no consciousness of love colored Gro's attitude. She longed for Soelver's strong handclasp because it made her will strong to withstand her sorrow. She could think of herself lying upon his broad, deep breast, only however because there slumber would come in sure forgetfulness. There was moreover a tenderness in her look, when in a fleeting moment she let her glance rest upon his, such as the realization of another's goodness awakens in us, especially when the goodness is undeserved and disinterested. Yet there was never any of love's surrender. ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger

... this daylight world teems, And sleep comes with forgetfulness or fraught with lovely dreams; And there is magic in the touch, and music in the sigh, And, far more eloquent than speech, a ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... encouraged by example and by the impunity of lesser thieves, the greater ones soon took part in the robberies. Amurath seized part of Hungary. Mathias Corvinus took Lower Austria, and Frederic consoled himself for these usurpations by repeating the maxim, Forgetfulness is the best cure for the losses we suffer. At the time we have now reached, he had just, after a reign of fifty-three years, affianced his son Maximilian to Marie of Burgundy and had put under the ban of the ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... when he calls us off from contemplating our misfortunes is an imaginary action; for it is not in our power to dissemble or to forget those evils which lie heavy on us; they tear, vex, and sting us—they burn us up, and leave no breathing time. And do you order us to forget them (for such forgetfulness is contrary to nature), and at the same time deprive us of the only assistance which nature affords, the being accustomed to them? For that, though it is but a slow medicine (I mean that which is brought by lapse of time), is still a very effectual one. You order ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... and that my non-arrival caused considerable disappointment. I apologized as well as I could, by saying that I had been out on a scout and had got lost, and had forgotten all about the dinner; and expressed my regret for the disappointment I had created by my forgetfulness. August Belmont, the banker, being ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody

... for what even I have heard you say; let me warn you, madam, that you have sailed pretty close to the wind already in the way of indictable slander. You seem to forget that my wife was tried and acquitted by twelve of her fellow-countrymen. You will at least apologize for that forgetfulness before you ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung

... what had just occurred—a forgetfulness which insensibly carried her back to the moment when she had given me some order which involved my departure from the room—she impetuously called out over her shoulder which she had turned ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green

... A whim, a fantastic, unaccountable whim; the whim of a woman seeking forgetfulness, not counting the cost nor caring; simply a whim. She had brought him here to crush him for his impertinence; and that purpose was no longer in her mind. Was she sorry? Did he cause her some uneasiness, ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath

... of absolute self-forgetfulness and indomitable spirit occurred at another part of the line. A shell burst near to our wire and projected a tangled heap of it forward. A piece of barbed wire encircled a man's neck. The barbs bit into the flesh. ...
— Over the Top With the Third Australian Division • G. P. Cuttriss

... their association with machinery, without thinking how far the arts still come short of the trades. If any sculptor could feel it, what a magnificent bas-relief just that thing would make!" He turned round to look at the men again: in their different poses of self-forgetfulness and interest in their work, they had a beauty and grace, in spite of their clumsy ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells

... by them, and sank down and crept along for some distance on the ground. "A grave! dig me a grave!" sounded again in her ears, and she would have gladly buried herself, if in the grave she could have found forgetfulness of her actions. ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... mean yours truly," Aggie exclaimed, not in the least abashed by her forgetfulness in an affair that concerned herself so closely. "Hope he's brought the money. ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana

... to a wider vision in life and if she looks around she will find forgetfulness in helping others. It is never ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley

... inscribed on his nervous tissues.[203] Mr. Buckle assures us that certain underlying but indefinable laws of society, as indicated by statistics, control human action irrespective of choice or moral responsibility. Even accidents, the averages of forgetfulness or neglect, are the subjects of computation. To support his position he cites the averages of suicides, or the number of letters deposited yearly in a given post-office, the superscription of which has been forgotten. Thus, underlying all human activity ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... turn their minds to other thoughts, cast into the wine a drug that lulled pain and brought forgetfulness—a drug which had been given to her in Egypt by Polydamna, the wife of King Theon. And when they had drunk the wine their sorrowful memories went from them, and they spoke to each other without regretfulness. Thereafter King Menelaus told of his adventure with the Ancient One ...
— The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tales of Troy • Padriac Colum

... at last, and with it forgetfulness; morning, too, came in due season, and with it, the daily call ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... is handed him from the well of life. He is not yet capable of understanding that one such as he, filled with the glory and not the duty of victory, could not but fail, and therefore ought to fail; but his dismay and chagrin are soothed by the forgetfulness the days and nights bring, gently wiping out the sins that are past, that the young life may have a fresh chance, as we say, and begin again unburdened by the weight of a too ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald

... am quite ashamed of not having acknowledged your kind present earlier, but that unknown something, which was never yet discovered, though so often speculated upon, which stands in the way of lazy folks answering letters, has presented its usual obstacle. It is not forgetfulness, nor disrespect, nor incivility, but terribly like all ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... Snevellicci had no sooner swallowed another glassful than he smiled upon all present in happy forgetfulness of having exhibited symptoms of pugnacity, and proposed 'The ladies! Bless their hearts!' in a most ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... which has spread over a very small part of the people and garrison of this capital; the forgetfulness of honour and duty, have caused the defection of a few soldiers, whose misconduct up to this hour has been thrown into confusion by the valiant behaviour of the greatest part of the chiefs, officers, and soldiers, who have intrepidly followed the example of the valiant general-in-chief ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... revolutions then take place in the human mind, without the apparent co-operation of the passions of man, and almost without his knowledge. Men lose the object of their fondest hopes, as if through forgetfulness. They are carried away by an imperceptible current which they have not the courage to stem, but which they follow with regret, since it bears them from a faith they love, to a scepticism that plunges ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al

... victor to whom she must submit. Besides, she had memories of past tenderness to cherish, smiles, words, and even tears, to con over, which, though remembered in desertion and sorrow, were to be preferred to the forgetfulness of the grave. It was impossible to guess at the whole of her plan. Her letter to Raymond gave no clue for discovery; it assured him, that she was in no danger of wanting the means of life; she promised in it to ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... excitement and to drive away sorrow by a bold diversion, the doctor supped every evening alone with His Majesty, and poured out intoxication and forgetfulness with a liberal hand. Wieduwillst did not spare himself, but wine had little effect on his strong brain; he would have defied Bacchus and Silenus together with Charming. While the prince, by turn noisy and silent, plunged into the ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various

... that we constantly blame others when we have only ourselves to blame; and the philosopher must acknowledge, however reluctantly, that there is an element of chance in human life with which it is sometimes impossible for man to cope. That men drink more of the waters of forgetfulness than is good for them is a poetical description of a familiar truth. We have many of us known men who, like Odysseus, have wearied of ambition and have only desired rest. We should like to know what became of the infants 'dying almost as soon as they were born,' ...
— Gorgias • Plato

... string, And both may jar: it may be, that in vain I would essay as I have sung to sing. Yet, though a dreary strain, to this I cling, So that it wean me from the weary dream Of selfish grief or gladness—so it fling Forgetfulness around me—it shall seem To me, though to none else, a not ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron

... lowest abyss of evil, or rises to the highest degree of virtue and glory. In the sin of Eve the first degree was a certain intemperance of language, which led her to reply to the insidious questions of the devil; in appearance this forgetfulness was very slight. To answer a question, give an explanation requested of you, clear up a doubt, render an account of a precept of the Lord, seem at first sight something natural and permitted. It is quite easy to be deceived ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi

... her to do, and that was to get up and dress and go down to her father's library and read herself into forgetfulness ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey

... carried him to the castle, big enough to ride in. But he never told anyone—even his mother—the whole story of his adventures. Perhaps he did not remember them clearly himself; for the fairies protect their secrets well, and draw in sleep the veil of forgetfulness over much that we ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt

... author wrote this tale in entire forgetfulness of Hawthorne's "Rapaccini's Daughter," which nevertheless he had ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett

... had been thinking furiously during this little speech. He saw the mistake he had made in taking the high line, and his wretched forgetfulness of the fourth place at table. He must make terms, though it ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... figure was tall, and in its outline somewhat sharp and angular; but she had an ease and grace about her that made one forget she was not molded as softly and roundly as others. She seemed just the woman on whose bosom a tired, worn, over-burdened man might lay his weary head, and find rest and forgetfulness. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... cavalier, I meant to say. He asked me why I did not wear my Order of the Spur. I said I had one in my head quite hard enough to carry. He was so obliging as to dust my coat a little for me, saying, "One cavalier may wait upon another." In spite of which, the same afternoon—from forgetfulness, I suppose—he left his spur at home, (I mean the outward and visible one,) or at all events contrived to hide it so effectually that not a vestige of it was to be seen. In case I forget it again, I must tell you that ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

... mind was so full of dark suspicions, that she found it difficult to lay a finger upon the real cause of the mischief. Possibly truth is only discoverable by chance. A day came, however, at length when Julie flashed out before her aunt's astonished eyes into a complete forgetfulness of her marriage; she recovered the wild spirits of careless girlhood. Mme. de Listomere then and there made up her mind to fathom the depths of this soul, for its exceeding simplicity was as ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac

... was streaming brightly through the open bamboos, but no one was stirring. After surveying the fine attitudes into which forgetfulness had thrown at least one of the sleepers, my attention was called off to the general aspect of the dwelling, which was quite significant of the superior ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville

... meet him without betraying, by some faint sign, that there was neither forgetfulness nor indifference in her mind as to ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... use it. Let me look at that chocolate. I guess I'll take some of it"—and his hand went slowly into his pocket—"but, hold on! We've got chocolate! Confound my forgetfulness; I'll buy out your store directly. Do you ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon

... it waste of time to be always weighing herself and her feelings in a nicely-adjusted balance. 'Know thyself,' said an old thinker; but Audrey Ross would have altered the saying: 'Look out of yourself; self-forgetfulness is better than any ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... travellers since his time. Very significant is it to see the New Testament injunction, "Remember Lot's wife," so utterly forgotten. These later investigators seem never to have heard of it; and this constant forgetfulness shows the change which had taken place in the enlightened thinking ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... reserved to it. (Applause.) Let those who are restrained by the fear of persecutions and troubles out of their country return to it in safety. In order to extinguish hatreds let us consent to a mutual forgetfulness of the past. (The tribunes and the left renewed their acclamations.) Let the accusations and the prosecutions which have sprung solely from the events of the constitution be obliterated in a general reconciliation. I do not refer to those ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... only to see the shapes of trees through the fine grey light, he was overcome by a desire to escape, to have done with this suffering, to forget that Rachel was ill. He allowed himself to lapse into forgetfulness of everything. As if a wind that had been raging incessantly suddenly fell asleep, the fret and strain and anxiety which had been pressing on him passed away. He seemed to stand in an unvexed space of air, on a little island by himself; he was free and immune ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf

... springs of solitude; come and drink of those fountains which are hidden in the desert, and which gush forth to heaven. Careworn soul, come, and possess that which thou desirest! Heart greedy for joy, come and taste true joys—poverty, retirement, self-forgetfulness, seclusion in the bosom of God. Enemy of Christ now, and to-morrow His well-beloved, come to Him! Come, thou whom I have sought, and thou wilt say, 'I ...
— Thais • Anatole France

... moments—that she was beset with this inability to see more than one side of a subject at a time. The odd thing about it was that one never knew which side, the pathetic or the humorous, would strike her. Generally, however, it was the one that related least to herself personally. This self-forgetfulness, with a keen sense of the ludicrous, led her sometimes, when she had anything amusing to relate, to overlook considerations which would have kept ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand

... of interpretation led him to the theory generally known by the name of "accommodation."(685) He felt a strong reaction against the forgetfulness shown by the old dogmatic orthodoxy, which had regarded the Bible as one book, instead of a collection or historic series of books, and had confounded together the Jewish and Christian dispensations, and taken no cognizance ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar

... growling at each other, as I had seen the stranger lynxes growling once before over the caribou. In a moment they had torn the carcass apart and were crouched, each one over his piece, gnarling like a cat over a rat, and stuffing themselves greedily in utter forgetfulness of the mother lynx, which lay under a bush some distance ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long

... absorbing interest for the glowing glories of the planet, seemed to be beguiled into comparative forgetfulness of the charms of his comet; but no astronomical enthusiasm of the professor could quite allay the general apprehension that some ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne

... Letter* duly, some time ago, with many welcomes; and have as you see been too remiss in answering it. Not from forgetfulness, if you will take my word; no, but from many causes, too complicated to articulate, and justly producing an indisposition to put pen to paper at all! Never was I more silent than in these very months; and, with reason too, for the world at large, and my own share of it in small, are both ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... on by the wearing excitement of ceaseless and excessive literary toil." As 'Ben Karshook's Wisdom,' though it has been reprinted in several quarters, will not be found in any volume of Browning's works, and was omitted from "Men and Women" by accident, and from further collections by forgetfulness, it may be fitly quoted here. Karshook, it may be added, is the Hebraic word ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp

... in England, believed perhaps by some, half believed by many more, which is only consistent with original ignorance, or complete subsequent forgetfulness, of all the antecedents of the contest. There are people who tell us that, on the side of the North, the question is not one of slavery at all. The North, it seems, have no more objection to slavery than the South have. Their leaders never ...
— The Contest in America • John Stuart Mill

... loud murmur of disappointment, mingled with exclamations of dissent and reproach. Once more I was plied with questions, and then, my son, there came to me, singularly clouded in forgetfulness until that instant, the memory of that fruitless message which we received about a year ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap

... gentleman to play to, I appreciated what a life that was to them, and what it should be; not cold-blooded skill, aiming only at excellence or preexcellence and at setting up the artist, but a fire and a joy, a self-forgetfulness which whirls the soul away as the soul of the Moenad went with the stream adown the mountains,—Evoe Bacchus! This feeling is deep in the heart of the Hungarian gypsy; he plays it, he feels it in ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland

... those whose daily work compels them under penalty to pay close and undeviating attention to their surroundings. This is true of sailors, hunters, plainsmen, cowboys, and tugboat captains. It was especially true of the old-fashioned river-driver, for a misstep, a miscalculation, a moment's forgetfulness of the sullen forces shifting and changing about him could mean for him maiming or destruction. So, finally, to one of an imaginative bent, these eyes, like the "cork boots," grew to seem part of the uniform, one ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White

... your breast;" and so he rested, now and then speaking lowly to himself, "It's only that I miss my mother; but Heaven's will be done." He repeated this many times, until the Heaven he obeyed sent him in its mercy forgetfulness, and his thoughts no longer wandered to his earthly home. I heard glad words feebly uttered as I bent over him—words about "Heaven—rest—rest"—a holy Name many times repeated; and then with a smile and a stronger ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole

... the discreet Manicamp, saluting the princess, "let us bury this affair altogether in forgetfulness, for it will never be quite ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... their natural end, curtailed of the due catastrophe—it is then that we find for the swift sad bright lightnings of laughter from the lips of the sweet and bitter fool whose timeless disappearance from the stage of King Lear seems for once a sure sign of inexplicable weariness or forgetfulness on Shakespeare's part, so nauseous and so sorry a substitute as the fetid fun and rancid ribaldry of Pandarus and Thersites. I must have leave to say that the coincidence of these two in the scheme of a single play is a thing hardly bearable by men who object ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... Christian demonstrations of sumptuous honors and abundant alms which they give for their deceased, as we shall relate in the proper place. But I shall not defer the telling of one which may prove a matter of reprehension to our neglect and forgetfulness, in what is more important to us, namely, that they are wont to have the coffin prepared during the lifetime for their burial. They make those coffins out of one single piece, and from incorruptible woods. They keep them under their houses where they can see them whenever they descend from or ascend ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin

... gold, it had been very generally conceded that there was no such striking resemblance, after all, betwixt the ignoble features of the ruined merchant and that majestic face upon the mountain-side. So the people ceased to honour him during his lifetime, and quietly consigned him to forgetfulness after his decease. Once in a while, it is true, his memory was brought up in connection with the magnificent palace which he had built, and which had long ago been turned into a hotel for the accommodation ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... instantly uprooted, and dragged along to a second obstacle, a house, whose roof was carried off. At this moment the two cables of the anchors were broken without the voyagers being aware of it. Foreseeing the successive shocks that were about to ensue—the moment was critical—the least forgetfulness might cause death. To add to the difficulty, the balloon's inclined position did not permit of operating the valve, except on ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon

... an equally ideal hostess; the principle of both is the same. A ready smile, a quick sympathy, a happy outlook, consideration for others, tenderness toward everything that is young or helpless, and forgetfulness of self, which is not far from the ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... and pleased, to this learned dissertation. For he is rejoiced to perceive, that the thoughts of his young companion are beginning to find some abstraction and forgetfulness, of that upon which they have been so long sadly dwelling. Cypriano, too, appears to take an interest in the subject of discourse; and to encourage it the gaucho rejoins, ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid

... true idea of Christianity, who has not understood that it demands not so much that one should be careful about his own spiritual perfection, that he should watch himself, and by private remorse and tears seek a far-off heaven, as by a generous self- forgetfulness and self-devotion, seek to build up the kingdom of peace and love among men, and make heaven a reality here, and not the hope only of a distant future and ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman

... little phial of laudanum in the medicine-cupboard that always leered at me from among the other bottles like a serpent's eye. Thrice happy thought! Who would miss such a poor imitation? Even the mere soap-vending tradesmen bid us 'beware of imitations.' Dark wine of forgetfulness.... No, that was a quotation. However, here was the phial. I drew the cork, inhaled for a moment the hard dry odour of poppies, and prepared to drink. But just at that moment I seemed to hear a horrid little laugh coming out of the bottle, and ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne

... new life which had now fairly begun for Oliver, it was partly as he had foreseen; he was apt to forget many things, and he had a fretting consciousness of this forgetfulness. When he was in the house playing with Dolly, or reading to her, the shop altogether slipped away from his memory, and he was only recalled to it by the loud knocking or shouting of some customer in it. On the other ...
— Alone In London • Hesba Stretton

... evidently fatal to selfishness and self-assertion; and in such an atmosphere good manners will spring up spontaneously among the children, and will scarcely need to be inculcated, for the essence of courtesy is forgetfulness of self and consideration of others in the smaller affairs of social life. The general bearing of the Utopian children hits the happy mean between aggressive familiarity and uncouth shyness,—each a form of self-conscious egoism,—just as their bearing in school hits ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes

... Eliza, did not especially interest Smith, who continued his favorite occupation—or rather, joint occupations, of whittling and expectorating. Nevertheless, the letter to Sister Eliza was written, and not a minute sooner than was necessary; for, the little soul that was to bring with it forgetfulness for all the agony through which its mother had lived during that awful year, came very soon after the ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer

... alone has drawn more baronets, virtuous and vicious, handsome and hideous, than would have colonized Ulster ten times over and left a residue for Nova Scotia. Sir Pitt Crawley and Sir Barnes Newcome will live as long as English novels are read, and I hope that dull forgetfulness will never seize as its prey Sir Alfred Mogyns Smyth de Mogyns, who was born Alfred Smith Muggins, but traced a descent from Hogyn Mogyn of the Hundred Beeves, and took for his motto "Ung Roy ung Mogyns." His pedigree is drawn in the seventh ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... true," Sylvester had said coolly. But he had not felt cool. He had felt shaken and confused. The boy's entire self-forgetfulness, his entire absence of fear, had made Hudson feel that he was talking to a stranger, a ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt

... nearly forgot the duchess," said I. To tell the truth, I was at first rather proud of my forgetfulness; it argued a complete triumph over that unruly impulse at which I have hinted. But it also smote me with remorse. I leaped ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope

... a place immediately behind the bride, to hold her gloves and handkerchief, and flowers; her companions range themselves close to, and slightly in the rear of the principal bridesmaid. If any difficulties occur from forgetfulness, or want of knowledge, the woman who is usually in attendance at the church ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... which was large and somewhat distended at the middle, like that of the old Greek statues. Her glance had the expression of the moonlight of her country rather than of its sun. It was the expression of timidity mingled with confidence in the indulgence of another, emanating from a forgetfulness of her own nature. In fine, it was the image of good-feeling, impressed as well on her air as on her heart, and which seem confident that others are like her. It was evident that this woman, who was yet so agreeable, must in her youth have been most attractive. She yet had what the people (the ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various

... waiting Dick, almost weeping with rage and wrath, caught a passer-by, who introduced him to a friendly policeman, who led him to a four-wheeler opposite the Albert Hall. He never told Mr. Beeton of Alf's forgetfulness, but... this was not the manner in which he was used to ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling

... been in such a whirl that he had striven to forget everything and had strenuously kept from seeking out Nana while avoiding an explanation with the countess. He thought, indeed, that he owed his dignity such a measure of forgetfulness. But mysterious forces were at work within, and Nana began slowly to reconquer him. First came thoughts of her, then fleshly cravings and finally a new set of exclusive, tender, ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola

... the threats of her mother, the sick woman, who was still sobbing 'It's a lie! A lie!' at last spoke. It was a young fellow of the huerta whom she had never seen again... an indiscretion committed one evening... she no longer remembered. No, she could not remember!... And she insisted upon this forgetfulness as if it were an ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... voice and said, "Whoever he may be who says that Don Quixote of La Mancha has forgotten or can forget Dulcinea del Toboso, I will teach him with equal arms that what he says is very far from the truth; for neither can the peerless Dulcinea del Toboso be forgotten, nor can forgetfulness have a place in Don Quixote; his motto is constancy, and his profession to maintain the same with his life ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... eat. Keziah wanted to get back to her old man, and how could she go, unless Ruth kept in trim to attend to her two charges? Who could say that old Phoebe, at eighty, would not give in under the strain? Ruth had always a happy faculty of self-forgetfulness; and now, badly as she had felt the shock, she so completely lost sight of herself in the thought of the greater trouble of the principal actors, as to be fully alive to the one great need ahead, that of guarding and preserving what was left of the old life, the tending of which ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... contains two other characters who are unmatched in fiction as the incarnation of pure love and self-forgetfulness. Giles Winterbourne, whose devotion to Grace is without wish for happiness which shall not imply a greater happiness for her, dies that no breath of suspicion may fall upon her. He in turn is loved by Marty South with a completeness which destroys all thought ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent

... morning bath, fell in a cataract over the polished amplitudes of bosom and shoulders. Save when feeling shot them with tawny flashes—as waving branches filter mottled sunlight on brown waters—her eyes were dark as the pools of Lethe, wherein men plunge and forget the past. They brought forgetfulness to Paul of his moral tradition, racial pride, the carefully conned apology which he did not remember until, an hour later, he fed her entire stock in trade to his dog. It was better so. Black, brown or white women are alike sensitive to the language of flowers, and the lilies he ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various

... said he, 'that I have a proper coat, and that not contempt nor poverty, but forgetfulness, sent me to ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various

... of war to play the peacemaker! Surely I have chosen the safer path in open breach and battle, though would that my war was ended, and I sitting spinning again beside my dear mother." Hereon her face grew more tender and sad than ever I had seen it, and there came over me forgetfulness of my private grief, as of a little thing, and longing to ride at the Maiden's rein, where glory was to ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang

... Babylonia, of which the world had quite forgot the names, only vague rumors remaining in song or legend of Nimrod and Chedorlaomer and Ur of the Chaldees,—only what was preserved in the dimmest records of the Hebrew Scriptures. Empires were lost, buried in chiliads of forgetfulness; ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord

... rang in her ears. Her misery, made by her own thoughts, left her, as a headache leaves a sufferer when a sedative has been administered. The gentle voice, the divine attendant, achieved its work. Meg had asked for rest and for forgetfulness. Her prayer was being answered. It repeated to her the tender words of Akhnaton; it told her in Michael's own dear way the true explanation of her vision. With tightly-closed eyes and her head bowed, she saw again the whole scene. It was unnaturally vivid—the luminous figure, with the pitying, ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... all time. Counts, marquises, Churchmen—all have passed upon the scroll of those three hundred years; some left indelible marks for good, some for evil; whilst others, effete and useless, are buried in forgetfulness. The Spanish character, architecture, institutions, and class distinctions were now indelibly stamped upon the people of Mexico. The Aztec regime had passed for ever; the Indian race was outclassed and subordinate; and the mestizos, ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... and suffering. Later in life John knew what the Master's words meant. He found his place nearest to Christ, but it was not on the steps of an earthly throne; it was a nearness of love, and the steps to it were humility, self-forgetfulness, and ministry. ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller

... thoughts at that moment, could have known the oppression of gratitude in the heart of the agitated girl toward the stranger who had just saved her father from a horrible death, and whose presence of mind and self-forgetfulness were to be repaid by the paltry sum of thirty pounds a year! "Papa!" she exclaimed, and then in her forbearance ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... her own personality a thing which was stifling her life. Since she was a child she had craved for understanding and sympathy, but nature and her upbringing had made it impossible for her to accept them when they were offered. Lacking the power of self-expression, and consequently self-forgetfulness, her own individuality oppressed her. It was like an iron mask which she could not remove, and which ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter

... observed so often that several bad ice-years come together, and this was evidently none of the best. Though I would hardly confess the feeling of depression even to myself, I must say that it was not on a bed of roses I lay these nights until sleep came and carried me off into the land of forgetfulness. ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen

... and my sister did not arrive. Her house is at some distance from mine, and though her arrangements had been made with a view of residing with us, it was possible that through forgetfulness, or the occurrence of unforeseen emergencies, she had returned ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... a sleep and a forgetting; The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar, Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education

... Plautus' frequent forgetfulness of his Greek environment and the interjection of Roman references—what De Quincey calls "anatopism"—is another item of careless composition too well known to need more than passing mention. The repeated appearance of the Velabrum,[179] ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke

... past smiling fields and sleepy villages bowered 'mid the green. They rode ever by sequestered paths, skirting shady wood and coppice where birds sang soft a drowsy lullaby, wooing the world to forgetfulness and rest; fording prattling brook and whispering stream whose placid waters flamed to the glory of sunset. And thus they came at last to Blaen, a cloistered hamlet beyond which rose the grey walls of the ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... to perform a commission which a friend intrusted to you. Forgetfulness denotes lack ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway

... Ministers, some of whom had been stout Republicans on paper but a few years before; and by the Chamber, which, such is the blessed constitution of French elections, will generally vote, unvote, revote in any way the Government wishes. With a wondrous union, and happy forgetfulness of principle, monarch, ministers, and deputies issued the restriction laws; the Press was sent to prison; as for the poor dear Caricature, it was fairly murdered. No more political satires appear now, and "through the eye, correct the heart;" no more poires ripen on ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... dim watchfires of some darkling hour, Whose fame forlorn time saves not nor proclaims For ever, but forgetfulness defames And darkness and the shadow of death devour, Lift up ye too your light, put forth your power, Let the far twilight feel your soft small flames And smile, albeit night name not even their names, Ghost by ghost passing, flower blown down ...
— Sonnets, and Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650) • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... there are five times as many Scripture passages claiming for man that all ends in death as there are for animals. Over and over we are told that those who have died have no remembrance of God, and cannot praise Him. The Bible speaks of death as the "land of forgetfulness,"—the place of darkness, where all man's thoughts perish. Nothing more than this could be said of the ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon

... demonstration of the sort. Julius Caesar did not kick at this, because it was too trifling a matter. Far better would it have been for Julius Caesar had he kicked then and there, but the relation of why comes later on. Lost in their sorrows, Cocoanut and Billy communed together, and Cocoanut, in the forgetfulness of deep reflection began plaiting together the end of the string of firecrackers and the hairs in the tail of Julius Caesar. He was a good plaiter, was Cocoanut—they do such work with grasses and things in and about Honolulu, ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo

... other, played into each other's hands, forgotten that they were anything but parts of one great, smoothly moving, swiftly running machine. And, having so tested his fellows, each one would play with the confidence and self-forgetfulness that alone can ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield

... telescope, abandoning the instrument finally to observe the retreating shadow. All this we went over twenty times, while looking at the actual sun, and keeping him in the middle of the field. It was my object to render the repetition of the lesson so mechanical as to leave no room for flurry, forgetfulness, or excitement. Volition was not to be called upon, nor judgment exercised, but a well-beaten path of routine was to be followed. Had the opportunity occurred, I think the programme would ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... Forgetfulness.—There is nothing, no, nothing, innocent or good that dies and is forgotten: let us hold to that faith or none. An infant, a prattling child, dying in the cradle, will live again in the better thoughts of those that loved it, and ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... seem to be, dependent for good or evil on circumstances which we do not make for ourselves. This dependence is in itself, no doubt, a fact; but it ceases to be so for us when we contemplate it in forgetfulness of that spring of potential freedom which underlies it, and of the law of duty correlative to freedom. To the exclusive consideration of it we owe those profitless recipes for eliciting moral health from circumstances which are the plague of modern literature, and which one of our ablest writers ...
— An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times • Thomas Hill Green

... the weary hours of toil, It brought forgetfulness to debtors; Time and again from wretched men It struck oppression's ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field

... artillery, and other military objects symbolical of his various campaigns; and gold plate at intervals all round the table was supplemented by triumphal wreaths. The duke told me afterward that all these decorations were due to his own forgetfulness. He had for years been accustomed to celebrate the anniversary of the battle of Waterloo by a banquet to certain officers who had been present at it, and who still survived; but the number of these had ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock

... the question off-hand she herself might have been at a loss to word it, though she knew quite well what it was. It was the old clash between the cause of Sally and its result. It was the thought that, but for a memory that every year seemed to call for a stronger forgetfulness, a more effective oblivion, this little warm star that had shone upon and thawed a frozen life, this salve for the wound it sprang from, would have remained unborn—a nonentity! Yes, she might have had another child—true! But would that child have ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... it becomes the more important to fathom the essential conditions of processes like dream building. It will be probably a surprise to hear that neither the state of sleep nor illness is among the indispensable conditions. A whole number of phenomena of the everyday life of healthy persons, forgetfulness, slips in speaking and in holding things, together with a certain class of mistakes, are due to a psychical mechanism analogous to that of the dream and the ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud

... of Shakspeare is his self-forgetfulness. In reading what is written, you do not think of him, but of his productions. "The perfect absence of himself from his own pages makes it difficult for us to conceive of a human being having written them." This remark applies with obvious force to the Bible. The authors of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... which can never be exhausted or lose its power is the theme of our message. The mists of gathering ages wrap in slowly thickening folds of forgetfulness all other men and events in history, and make them ghostlike and shadowy; but no distance has yet dimmed or will ever dim that human form divine. Other names are like those stars that blaze out for a while, and then smoulder down into almost complete invisibility; but He is the very Light ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... midst the cherub band? Or dost thou laugh in Paradise, or now Upon the Islands of the Blest art thou? Or in his ferry o'er the gloomy water Does Charon bear thee onward, little daughter? And having drunken of forgetfulness Art thou unwitting of my sore distress? Or, casting off thy human, maiden veil, Art thou enfeathered in some nightingale? Or in grim Purgatory must thou stay Until some tiniest stain be washed away? Or hast returned again to where thou wert Ere thou ...
— Laments • Jan Kochanowski

... intellect, who gave up to mankind what was meant for himself, and worked as a labourer in the vineyard of humanity, never crying that the grapes were sour; of a man uniformly cheerful and of good courage, living in that forgetfulness of self which is the truest antidote to despair. And yet there was not quite wanting the note of pain to jar the harmony and make it human. Richard Elton, his chum from boyhood, and vicar of Somerton, in ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill

... with a forgetfulness of the Reverend Melchisedech, which nothing but his desperate circumstances ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... sound of the water, and the singing of our sails, and all the various rumour of wind and sea. After all, it was a good music to sleep to, and, for all my scorn of sleeping landsmen, an irresistible drowsiness stretched me out on the roof of the little cabin, wonderfully rocked into forgetfulness. ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne

... consolation to the hearts of the miserable, lightning vengeance against the wrongs of Providence, imprecations against society, blasphemies against the existence of God, the enjoyments and bestialities of the corporeal nature, purchased by complete forgetfulness of the moral nature, and enjoyed in a debauch of ideas, and ...
— Atheism Among the People • Alphonse de Lamartine

... question. I have the best excuse in recrimination. I wrote to Kilmore from Leyden in Holland, from Louvain in Flanders, and Rouen in France, but received no answer. To what could I attribute this silence but to displeasure or forgetfulness? Whether I was right in my conjecture I do not pretend to determine; but this I must ingenuously own that I have a thousand times in my turn endeavored to forget them, whom I could not but look upon as forgetting me. I have attempted to blot their ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving

... drunkenness of one who drinketh wine, But with the honey of his mouth fulfilled of languishment. All loveliness comprised is within his perfect form, So that o'er all the hearts of men he reigns omnipotent. By God, forgetfulness of him shall never cross my mind. What while I wear the chains of life, nor even when they're rent! Lo, if I live, in love of him I'll live; and, if I die Of love-longing for him, I'll say, ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous

... One large brass saucepan lay lorn near the doorstep, a proof that Foster was human. For everything except that saucepan a place had been found. That saucepan had witnessed sundry ineffectual efforts to lodge it, and had also suffered frequent forgetfulness. A tin candlestick had taken refuge within it, and was trusting for safety to the might of the obstinate vessel. In the sequel, the candlestick was pitched by Edwin on to the roof of the van, and Darius Clayhanger, coming fussily out of the shop, threw ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... had never declared his love, but involuntarily it had betrayed itself on several occasions. Insensibly Caroline was thus led to feel for him more than she dared to avow even to herself, when the sudden change in his manner awakened her from this delightful forgetfulness of every object that was unconnected with her new feelings, and suddenly arrested her steps as she seemed entering the paradise ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth

... Does forgetfulness efface faults or destroy their consequences? Could the assassin, who has lost all memory of the crime committed the previous evening, change his deed or its results in the slightest degree? Rebirths are nothing more than the morrows of former lives, and though the merciful waters of Lethe ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal

... love hath a very different effect from what it causes in the puny part of the species. In the latter it generally destroys all that appetite which tends towards the conservation of the individual; but in the former, though it often induces forgetfulness, and a neglect of food, as well as of everything else; yet place a good piece of well-powdered buttock before a hungry lover, and he seldom fails very handsomely to play his part. Thus it happened in the present case; for though Jones ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... into the corner, and remained in that position till evening. Her soul was in torment. That which Nekhludoff told her opened to her that world in which she had suffered and which she had left, hating without understanding it. She had now lost that forgetfulness in which she had lived, and to live with a clear recollection of the past was painful. In the evening she again bought wine, which she drank with ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy

... Enspheres them brilliant in our blue, From firmest base to farthest leap, Because their love of Earth is deep, And they are warriors in accord With life to serve, and pass reward, So touching purest and so heard In the brain's reflex of yon bird: Wherefore their soul in me or mine, Through self-forgetfulness divine, In them, that song aloft maintains To fill the sky and thrill the plains With showerings drawn from human stores, As he to silence nearer soars, Extends the world at wings and dome, More ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various

... affected in their parliamentary orations to be on the side of the popular theory of free trade, and often made speeches so glaringly inconsistent with those previously made by them as to damage the reputation of public men in the national esteem. Presuming upon the ignorance, or forgetfulness, of the population at large, the peer and the commoner have frequently spoken as though they had been the invariable champions of freedom of commerce, and of civil and religious liberty. In 1851 they were the persistent and acrimonious opponents ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... fatal injury. Chloral is a powerful drug that has been much resorted to by unthinking persons to produce sleep. Others, yielding to a morbid reluctance to face the problems of life, have timidly sought shelter in artificial forgetfulness. To all such it is a false friend. Its promises are treason. It degrades the mind, tramples upon the morals, overpowers the will, and destroys ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell

... murmurs, "one teaching I shall still hold fast. My first draught, to faithful love, Bruennhilde, I drink to you!" With which secret toast to the absent beloved he sets the horn to his lips and drains it—to the motif of Evil Enchantment, the motif of the Cup of Forgetfulness, closely resembling the Tarnhelm-motif, but sweeter,—cruel as a treacherous caress. This whole passage, surpassingly exquisite to the ear, is painful to the heart as hardly another in the opera, fertile as this ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... when I first saw him that he could possibly, at his time of life, bear the rough and tumble of the heaviest fighting in history, and come through with buoyancy of spirit younger men envied and older men recognized as the sign and fruit of self-forgetfulness and the ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott

... carries his sister to the apple close of the Celtic paradise (Barzaz Breiz). Only in Brittany do the sad-hearted people think of the land of death as an island of Avalon, with the eternal sunset lingering behind the flowering apple trees, and gleaming on the fountain of forgetfulness. In Scotland the channering worm doth chide even the souls that come from where, "beside the gate of Paradise, the birk grows fair enough." The Romaic idea of the place of the dead, the garden of Charon, whence "neither in spring or summer, nor when grapes are gleaned ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... out of the room; all but Fareham, who watched Lady Castlemaine as she stood by the hearth in an attitude of hopeless self-forgetfulness, leaning against the lofty sculptured chimney-piece, one slender foot in gold-embroidered slipper and transparent stocking poised on the brazen fender, and her proud eyelids lowered as if there was nothing in this world worth looking at but the pile ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... debility prevails, attended with a morbidly accumulated excitability; hence, those remedies afford relief, which produce a quick exhaustion of this principle, and thus blunt the feelings, and lull the mind into some degree of forgetfulness of its woes. Hence opium, tobacco, and the fetid gums are often resorted to; and in the hands of a judicious practitioner, they will afford great relief, provided he carefully watch the patient, and prevent their abuse; for, if left to the discretion of the patient, he finds that kind of ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett

... placid sky, which spread so wide and blue above his head, as if he expected to see the Almighty eye itself beaming from the heavenly vault. But impressions of a serious character are seldom lasting on minds long indulged in forgetfulness. The hesitation of the squatter was consequently of short duration. The language, however, as well as the firm and collected air of the speaker, were the means of preventing much ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper

... sermon, and had spent from eleven to one at his church, attending to small matters, writing notices, fixing hymns, holding the daily half-hour Service instituted during wartime, to which but few ever came. He had hurried back to lunch, scamping it so that he might get to his piano for an hour of forgetfulness. At three he had christened a very noisy baby, and been detained by its parents who wished for information on a variety of topics. At half-past four he had snatched a cup of tea, reading the paper; and had spent from five to seven visiting ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... Five things cause forgetfulness:—Partaking of what has been gnawed by a mouse or a cat, eating bullock's heart, habitual use of olives, drinking water that has been washed in, and placing the feet one upon the other ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

... the key note to Miss Anthony's strongest characteristic, utter forgetfulness of self, total self-abnegation, self-sacrifice without a consciousness that it was such. Mrs. Hooker's statement that she "had come in at the death" shows the strong faith of most of these early workers that it would ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... hours of toil, It brought forgetfulness to debtors; Time and again from wretched men It struck oppression's ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field

... benedictions, while the multitude fell upon its knees as one man. Such were the daily spectacles of coloured pomp and of antique solemnity, which so long as the sun was shining, at any rate— dazzled the onlooker into a happy forgetfulness of the reverse side of the Papal dispensation— the nauseating filth of the highways, the cattle stabled in the palaces of the great, and the fever flitting through the ghastly tenements ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey

... an old school-friend, a young barrister from London, staying with him, and that both had been asked to supper that evening at Cotherstone's house. But Cotherstone's annoyance was not because of his own forgetfulness, but because his present abstraction made him dislike the ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher

... victory's note; Not with armor gayly glistening, and with flags that proudly float; Not with air of martial vigor, nor with steady, soldier tramp, Come they grandly marching to us—for the boys are all in camp. With forgetfulness upon it—each within his earthy bed, Waiting for his marching orders—is our Army ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton

... temperaments of the Teutonic stock, as among us of warmer blood. Do not this placid hill-side, yon lake, and the starry heavens, look as if they regretted their late unseemly violence, and wished to cheat the beholder into forgetfulness of their attack on our safety, as an impetuous but generous nature would repent it of the blow given in anger, or of the cutting speech that had escaped in a moment of spleen? What hast thou to say to my opinion, Signor Sigismund, for none know better ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... see what you brought on yourself, Bob, by your forgetfulness. Here we have had all the trouble in life to get Carrie to agree to your going while, had she read this letter first, she would not have had a leg to stand upon—at least, metaphorically speaking; practically, no one would doubt it, for ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty

... founded at home an elective monarchy. The true Bedawin of the Old Testament are the Amalekites, and between the Israelite and the Amalekite there was the difference that there is between the peasant and the gypsy. The fact is important, and the forgetfulness of it has led ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce

... little touched with sobriety and expectation; in short, a more embarrassingly attentive audience never greeted the first effort of a young minister. Under these circumstances there was something touching in the fervent self-forgetfulness which characterized the first exercises of the morning—something which moved ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... delights us more than to overhaul some dingy tome and read a chapter gratuitously. Occasionally, when we have opened some very attractive old book, we have stood reading for hours at the stall, lost in a brown study and worldly forgetfulness, and should probably have read on to the end of the last chapter, had not the vendor of published wisdom offered, in a satirically polite way, to bring us out a chair. "Take a chair, sir; you must be tired."' The first Lord Lytton had a fancy for these plebeian book-marts; whilst Southey ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts

... emphasis to the faint line which had begun to display itself, not unattractively, between her eyebrows and the irregular curve of her brown hair. She was growing very weary of it all, the distraction which she had sought, the forgetfulness of self which she had hoped to achieve, by living perpetually in a crowd. Indeed, to such a point had she carried her endeavours, that Mrs. Lightmark's beauty was already becoming a matter of almost public interest. She was a person to be recognised and recorded by sharp-eyed journalists ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... occasionally to pleasanter scenes and places, but the necessity to keep the course, or some hitch in the surface, quickly brings them back. There have been some hours of very steady plodding to-day; these are the best part of the business, they mean forgetfulness and advance. ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... crowds for which, at present, the underworld spreads its nets? The great mass of the people, packed in dreary tenements, slaves of machinery by day, slaves of their own starved souls by night, must go somewhere for relaxation and forgetfulness. What would happen if the church should invite them, not ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr

... speak to him with an openness which she uses to no one else; she says, and in this sentence she gives the secret of much which has appeared inexplicable to the world: "One thing more in regard to myself. The absence and wandering of mind and forgetfulness that so often vexes you is a physical infirmity with me. It is the failing of a mind not calculated to endure a great pressure of care, and so much do I feel the pressure I am under, so much is my mind darkened and ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields

... of that were plain enough; yet it was delicately fair all the same, and perhaps more than ever, with the heightened spirituality of the expression. The writing on her features, of love and purity, habitual self-devotion and self-forgetfulness, patience and sweetness, was so plain and so unconscious, that it made her a very rare subject of contemplation, and, as her companion thought, extremely lovely. Her attitude spoke the same unconsciousness; her dress was of the simplest description; her brown hair was tossed into ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner

... storm had grown terrific—the heavy clouds trailing to the earth and the lightning flashes lit up dusky corners. Evilena had proposed darkening the windows entirely, lighting the lamps to dispel the gloom, and dressing in their prettiest to drive away forgetfulness of the tragedy of the elements; it was Kenneth's last day at home; they must be gay though the ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan

... farther that the large Tower or Belfry was built by such a one, and the smaller Belfry was built by &c. &c.—Till human nature can stand no more of it; till human nature desperately take refuge in forgetfulness, almost in flat disbelief of the whole business, Monks, Monastery, Belfries, Carucates and all! Alas, what mountains of dead ashes, wreck and burnt bones, does assiduous Pedantry dig up from the Past Time, and name it History, and Philosophy of History; till, ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle

... for a great cause. That sacrifice is the one noble and chivalrous element which gives interest to war—the one thing that can be disentangled from its hideous associations, and can be transferred to higher regions of life. That spirit of lofty consecration and utter self-forgetfulness must be ours, if we would be Christ's soldiers. Our obedience will then be glad when we feel the force of, and yield to, that gentle, persuasive entreaty, 'I beseech you, brethren! by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice.' ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... cup, put it to his lips and he drank. Then the joy of life streamed in his blood; the whole world seemed to belong to him. "Why torment one's self? Every thing is made for our enjoyment and happiness! The stream of life is the stream of joy, and forgetfulness is felicity!" He looked at the young girl, it was Annette and then again not Annette; still less, an enchanted phantom, as he had named her, when he met her near Grindelwald. The girl on the mountain was fresh as the newly fallen snow, blooming ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen

... Bliss, the residence of the witch Acras'ia, a beautiful and most fascinating woman. This lovely garden was situated on a floating island filled with everything which could conduce to enchant the senses, and "wrap the spirit in forgetfulness."—Spenser, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... bright fire, and a new book, proved too strong for her. The book was one of her favourite Indian stories, and she lost herself in the delightful depths of the "forest primeval" with an entire and blissful forgetfulness of England and common sense. But she roused herself, with a start of no little surprise, when her father suddenly ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill

... and brought too brief forgetfulness. It was not till the dull grey light of morning was glimmering through the blinds that Mr. Bultitude awoke ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey

... this while? He essayed speech; but the lines about his mouth were constricted, and his breath came in quivering gasps, as the vision of torture, suffered for honor's sake, rose up before him. Ah! if ever he had sinned,—and the temporary forgetfulness appeared such a little thing to Jack's generous ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... of immortality, an utter incapacity to change. As the act was, as the word had been spoken, so would act and word be for ever and for ever. And now this undying thing must be caged and cast about with the semblance of death and clouded over with the shadow of an unreal forgetfulness. Oh, it was bitter, very bitter! What would it be now to go away, quite away from him, and know him married to her own sister, the other woman with a prior right? What would it be to think of Bessie's sweetness slowly creeping ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard

... infinite satisfaction. He could sit for hours gazing at a solitary flower and philosophizing about the mysteries and riddles of being. A blue heron on a tiny crescent of sandy beach, a silvery splatter of flying fish, or a sunset of pearl and rose across the lagoon, could entrance him to all forgetfulness of the procession of wearisome days and of the ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London

... be alone, and amuse themselves by a perpetual succession of companions: but the difference is not great; in solitude we have our dreams to ourselves, and in company we agree to dream in concert. The end sought in both is forgetfulness of ourselves. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson

... self-conscious. This quality of Russian writers is evidently racial, for even in the most artful of them—Turgenev—it is as apparent as in the least sophisticated. It is part, no doubt, of their natural power of flinging themselves deep into the sea of experience and sensation; of their self-forgetfulness in ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy

... three had honestly and openly withdrawn from the position that Henry would be able to go to the prize-giving. They seemed to have silently agreed to bury the futile mendacity of the earlier afternoon in everlasting forgetfulness. ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett

... what you'll do!" And with such passionate determination did she clutch and tug, never losing a grip of him somewhere, though George tried as much as he could, without hurting her, to wrench away—with such utter forgetfulness of her maiden dignity did she assault him, that she forced him, stumbling upward, to ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington

... the hearts in the house swell to the bursting-point, what went on in the shadowed souls and issued from them in part, in the self-forgetfulness of fear, or became a deed, a deed of desperation—all that may pass through the memory of the man with whom we have been occupied. It is thirty-one years today since he returned to his home town from ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... the last request, O Lord. I shall not ask any more: The tears do not dry up in the eyes of our old women crying for those who have perished. Take their memory away, O Lord, and give them strong forgetfulness. There are still other trifles, O Lord, but let the others pray whose turn has come ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev

... of her making my step light. I was going to be near her again, at least, if only for an hour; perhaps, whether I succeeded or failed, she would hear my name mentioned. Even that would be better than forgetfulness, and she was one to appreciate a deed like this. I should like to see her eyes when they told her—when they spoke my name. I wondered where Captain Le Gaire was, and whether he had been her escort back through ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish

... in wakeful restlessness, I turn me wearisome; while all around, All, all, save me, sink in forgetfulness; I only wake to watch the sickly taper Which lights me to my tomb.—Yes, 'tis the hand Of Death I feel press heavy on my vitals, Slow sapping the warm current of existence My moments now are few—the sand of life Ebbs fastly to its finish. Yet a little, And the last fleeting ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White

... all concerned if it had been carried out, and it was therefore fortunate that De Morgan was consulted in time. Mrs. De Morgan speaks of the consultation in these words: "My husband, who was very sensitive on such points, was charmed with Mrs. Fry's voice and manner as much as by the simple self-forgetfulness with which she entered into this business; her own very uncomfortable share of it not being felt as an element in the question, as long as she could be useful in promoting good or preventing mischief. I can see her now as she came into our room, took off her little round ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... "Yes,"—why, then he must go on, he must tell her something of what passed between Luttrell and himself, how he delivered his message and what answer he received. Let him wrap that answer up in words, however delicate and vague, she would see straight to the answer. Her heart would lead her there. To plead forgetfulness would be merely to acknowledge that he slighted her; and she would not believe him. So ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason

... snug corner where lay the remains of the nest in which he had been born. Winter, weary and monotonous to most of the wildlings of the field, passed quickly over his head. Scarce-broken sleep and forgetfulness, when skies are grey and tempests rage—such are Nature's gifts to the snake, the bee, and the flower, as well as to the squirrel in the wood and the vole in the burrow beneath the moss. Occasionally, it is true, when at noon the sun was bright and spring seemed to have come to ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees

... replenishment at which the saints refresh their parched throats. An acute sensitiveness to the suffering of others, without a corresponding power to reach the sources of comfort, leads to the abyss of madness. Nature imposes limits to sympathy in most minds, barriers of forgetfulness without which healthy thought is impossible. The danger to the mind of indulging in unlimited sympathy has been emphasized by the most divergent students of psychological law. Herbert Spencer analysed it with characteristic thoroughness. Nietzsche ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby

... position of the leaves not having been acquired through natural selection, from not being of any special importance to the plant. I well remember being formerly troubled by an analogous difficulty, namely, the position of the ovules, their anatropous condition, etc. It was owing to forgetfulness that I did not notice this difficulty in the 'Origin.' (Nageli's Essay is noticed in the 5th edition.) Although I can offer no explanation of such facts, and only hope to see that they may be explained, yet I hardly ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... of what you have thought is, I fancy, based on a strange forgetfulness of your former experience. If you have known Christ (whom to know is eternal life)—and that you have known him I am certain—can you really say that a few intellectual difficulties, nay, a few moral difficulties if you will, ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant

... the scourging of our sins. Flagellation is not of the body—it is of the soul. Remorse is as a scorpion-whip, and memory beats us with many stripes. The first sin that besets us is forgetfulness of God. Apathy creeps over the spirit, and sloth winds itself about our deeds. Nothing is more pathetic than the decline of the merely forgetful soul. "Be sleepless in the things of the spirit," says Pythagoras, "for sleep in ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown

... prepared supper. There was no reconciliation, at least on her side. She was not capable of reconciliation. Her temper exhausted itself gradually. With her the storm never broke up nobly and with magnificent forgetfulness into clear spaces of azure, with the singing of birds and with hot sunshine turning into diamonds every remaining drop of the deluge which had threatened ruin; the change was always rather to a uniformly obscured sky and a cold ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford

... time the dwarf had ceased to speak, Julian's desire of sleep had returned; and after a few glances around the apartment, which was still illuminated by the expiring beams of the holy taper, his eyes were again closed in forgetfulness, and his repose was not again disturbed in the course of ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... sun and shower Doth momently to fresher beauty rise. To us the leafless autumn is not bare, Nor winter's rattling boughs lack lusty green: Our summer hearts make summer's fullness where No leaf or bud or blossom may be seen: For nature's life in love's deep life doth lie, Love,—whose forgetfulness is beauty's death, Whose mystic key these cells of Thou and I Into the infinite freedom openeth, And makes the body's dark and narrow grate The ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard

... he came during the year of our acquaintance for counsel and kindness in all his many anxieties and griefs, he never spoke irreverently of any woman save one, and then only in my defense; and though I rebuked him for his momentary forgetfulness of the respect due to himself and to me, I could not but forgive the offense for the sake of the generous impulse which prompted it. Yet even were these sad rumors true of him, the wise and well-informed knew how to regard, as they would the ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... wisdom, doubted not compleating, before long, the subjection of her unfortunate tenderness. Nor was her task so difficult as she had feared; resolution, in such cases, may act the office of time, and anticipate by reason and self-denial, what that, much leas nobly, effects through forgetfulness and inconstancy. ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... boots were allowed to grow rusty and chins unshaven, as the boys gradually drank and worked themselves into a dumb forgetfulness of their ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton

... whack the dry stalks of mullen with his cane. I remember he let down some bars after a long walk and stepped into a smooth roadway. He stood resting a little while, his basket on the top bar, and then the moon that I had been watching went down behind the broad rim of his hat and I fell into utter forgetfulness. My eyes opened on a lovely scene at daylight Uncle Eb had laid me on a mossy knoll in a bit of timber and through an opening right in front of us I could see a broad level of shining water, and the great green mountain on the further shore ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller

... was looking at him in a strange silence; whatever might have been in the past there was no spell now in those glorious eyes which could dazzle her soul into forgetfulness; shade after shade of repressed emotion passed over her features as she gazed, leaving them at last white ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens

... ought not to have been out after nine o'clock, because my gating would not finish. But I must say that when the Subby sent for me, and I explained what had happened, he congratulated me on getting my blue, and said that under such exceptional circumstances he would excuse my forgetfulness. ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley

... confidence in you and talked frankly to you, as I never did to any one else. And you know I've had a hard time. I was never meant for the tiresome, lonely life I've had. I never wanted to be a pattern and model of usefulness and self-forgetfulness, but they would have me so, and I couldn't go out in the streets and tell them I was not. I've had to play the part till I'm tired. I've had to walk demurely, and talk and smile to people I despised, and do all sorts of miserable things. But I never pretended to you. You knew I was not satisfied ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various

... conviction, I repeat to you in writing that Theodor Kullak's forgetfulness ought to be made good by his heirs. Otherwise it would be severely denounced as unfaithfulness to his position as an artist. A fortune of several millions gained by music-teaching ought not to remain ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated

... her task well in this instance, for she had thoroughly blasted his life! He would pretend to forget, but nevertheless he would see to it that she was undeceived, and that the injury she had done him remained an ever-present reproach to her. That would be his revenge. Real forgetfulness, of course, was out of the question. How could he assume such an attitude? As he pondered the question he remembered that there were artificial aids to oblivion. Ruined men invariably took to drink. Why shouldn't he attempt to drown his sorrows? After all, might there not be real and actual ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... evolvement. When it reaches the utmost height of spiritual capacity, and is strong enough to know and see and understand, then it will remember all from the beginning. Nothing can ever be forgotten, inasmuch as forgetfulness implies waste, and there is no waste in the scheme of the Universe. Every thought is kept for use,—every word, every sigh and tear is recorded. Life itself, in our limited view of it, can be continued indefinitely on this earth, if we use the means given to us to preserve ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... effected by presenting frequently in a day contrary ideas to shew the fallacy, or the too great estimation, of the painful ideas. 2dly. By change of place, and thus presenting the stimulus of new objects, as a long journey. 3dly. By producing forgetfulness of the idea or object, which causes their pain; by removing all things which recal it to their minds; and avoiding all conversation on similar subjects. For I suppose no disease of the mind is so perfectly cured by ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... excessive literary toil." As 'Ben Karshook's Wisdom,' though it has been reprinted in several quarters, will not be found in any volume of Browning's works, and was omitted from "Men and Women" by accident, and from further collections by forgetfulness, it may be fitly quoted here. Karshook, it may be added, is the Hebraic word for ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp

... that it not unfrequently leads to the imitation of the weaknesses as well as of the strength of the master. It is only such over-faithfulness which can account for a "strong mind really saturated with the historical sense" (p. 153) exhibiting the extraordinary forgetfulness of the historical fact of the existence of David Hume ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... morrow Maurice accompanied his grandmother, Bertha, and Count Tristan to the residence of the Marchioness de Fleury. Count Tristan's malaise evinced itself by his unusually fretful and preoccupied manner, his querulous tone, and a partial forgetfulness of those polite observances of which he was rarely oblivious. He allowed his mother to stand, looking at him in blind amazement, before he remembered to open the door; was very near passing out of the ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... body; it is my mind only that is ill at ease; my heart only that is sick—sorely sick. Here I shall find employment, and, I trust, partial forgetfulness. Put me to work at once; that will be my ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... recollections has thought that if the examination of his earliest years was to be undertaken at all, it should be attempted while his memory is still perfectly vivid and while he is still unbiased by the forgetfulness or the sensibility of ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... the country. Nor is the climate less favourable than the soil; for here an eternal spring and summer seem to have fixed their abode. No frost nor snow is ever known to chill the atmosphere, which is always perfumed with the smell of aromatic plants that grow on every side, and bring on a pleasing forgetfulness of human care. But, alas! these blessings, great as they may appear, produce the effect of curses upon the inhabitants. The ease and plenty which they enjoy, enervate their manners, and destroy all vigour both of body and mind. ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day

... cheap as that of animals—which has been characteristic of Spaniards of all time. Counts, marquises, Churchmen—all have passed upon the scroll of those three hundred years; some left indelible marks for good, some for evil; whilst others, effete and useless, are buried in forgetfulness. The Spanish character, architecture, institutions, and class distinctions were now indelibly stamped upon the people of Mexico. The Aztec regime had passed for ever; the Indian race was outclassed and subordinate; and the mestizos, the people of mixed native and Hispanic blood, ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... first conscious thought of her since he had stepped out of the train, almost his first since leaving her at Fort Ellsworth. He was half shocked at his forgetfulness of such a jewel, so nearly his, the jewel so many other men wanted. He wanted her, too, desperately, now that the clouds had parted for an instant to remind him of the bright world where she ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson

... arrived safely at the door. He knocked loudly, rather enjoying the idea that the old fellow would be frightened at the sudden noise. He heard no movement in reply: all was silence in the cottage. Was the weaver gone to bed, then? If so, why had he left a light? That was a strange forgetfulness in a miser. Dunstan knocked still more loudly, and, without pausing for a reply, pushed his fingers through the latch-hole, intending to shake the door and pull the latch-string up and down, not doubting that the door was fastened. But, to his surprise, at this double motion the ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

... need have told him; his action of forgetfulness had made him so angry with himself that he flushed through his tan. "I don't know what I am coming to!" he exclaimed, savagely. "Ah—I was not once like this!" Tears of vexation were ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... and asks the reason he knows not; what are those spreading streams, or who are they whose vast train fills the banks? Then lord Anchises: 'Souls, for whom second bodies are destined and due, drink at the wave of the Lethean stream the heedless water of long forgetfulness. These of a truth have I long desired to tell and shew thee face to face, and number all the generation of thy children, that so thou mayest the more rejoice with me in finding Italy.'—'O father, must we think that any souls travel hence into upper air, and return again to bodily fetters? why ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... uppermost in mind, would not the sight of human foot-tracks on the snow half way between the two camps have excited hope, instead of "suspicion," and prompted some of the party to pursue the lone wanderer with kindly intent? Does not each succeeding day's entry in that journal disclose the party's forgetfulness of its declared mission to the mountains? Can any palliating excuse be urged why those men did not share with Keseberg the food they had brought, instead of permitting him to continue that which famine had forced upon him, and which later ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton

... I'd give my heart's blood to subdue to a mood of womanly tenderness and dependence. Up to this, my position is that of a very humble courtier in the presence of a queen, and she takes care that by no momentary forgetfulness shall I lose sight of ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... money on all sides. She would have given her golden hair, her slender white fingers, her tiny feet, her life itself, in order to save her child. And she was as sincere in her despair and her love as in her unconscious forgetfulness. Baron Larrey returned to Paris, leaving my mother, Aunt Rosine, and the surgeon with me. Forty-two days later, mother took back in triumph to Paris the nurse, the foster-father, and me, and installed us in a little house at Neuilly, on the banks of the Seine. ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt

... resemblance, after all, betwixt the ignoble features of the ruined merchant and that majestic face upon the mountain-side. So the people ceased to honour him during his lifetime, and quietly consigned him to forgetfulness after his decease. Once in a while, it is true, his memory was brought up in connection with the magnificent palace which he had built, and which had long ago been turned into a hotel for the accommodation of strangers, multitudes of whom came, every summer, to visit that famous natural curiosity, ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... cause; burning with indignation at the wrongs she had suffered; thrilled with an adoring love for the idea she embodied; eager to make manifest this love at whatever cost of pain and sorrow and suffering to himself,—through all this the man never once was steeped in forgetfulness in the soldier; the divine passion of patriotism never once dulled the ache, or satisfied the desire, or answered the prayer, or filled the longing heart, that through the day marches and the night watches cried, and would not be ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson

... Joseph; but come with me and I'll tell thee much about him. No better shepherd than he ever ranged the hills. I wouldn't have thee forget, mate, another man said, that he's gone without leaving us his great cure for scab. True for thee, mate, answered the first, for a great forgetfulness has been on him this time past.... A great cure, certainly, which he might have left us. And the twain fell to discussing their several cures for scab. Another shepherd came by and passed the remark ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore

... his wounds, and no peace for his mind. Cosmopolitan, always, is sorrow; at home In all countries and lands, thriving well while we roam In vain efforts to slay it. Toil only, brings peace To the tempest tossed heart. What in travel Maurice Failed to find—self-forgetfulness—came with his work For the suffering poor in the ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... adequate return, and that she must have been disappointed in him in consequence. He extols her pleasant conversation, her active benevolence, her disposition to aid him in all his labors, and her noble forgetfulness of self, in ministering to his comfort, in sickness and imprisonment. "She was the meetest helper I could have had in the world," is his language. "If I spoke harshly or sharply, it offended her. If I carried it (as I am apt) with ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... God!" cried Colonel Sheraton; swinging his hands aloft, tears rolling down his old gray cheeks. "It is war! Now we may find forgetfulness!" ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough

... titles, or possessions, but from grace renewing and sanctifying the heart, and a life of true devotedness to Christ and his service. 3. We are taught to lay no stress on present prosperity, but to do God's work, looking for the recompense of reward which He gives. A noble forgetfulness of self, and mortification to the favour of the world, have characterized all Christ's most approved servants. Dr. Payson relates about himself, what has been experienced by many faithful men, "When I thought myself to be something, I never knew happiness of mind; since I came to feel myself ...
— The Life of James Renwick • Thomas Houston

... this forgetfulness, and there was the Dane gazing into the flames, and seeming heedless of all that was going on. Nor do I think that I had ever seen one look so sad as looked that homeless man, as he forgot the busy talk and movement around him in ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler

... rocky place a trout will dart out and catch his prey. A flutter at once passes through the whole school. Yet, strange to say, the trout will sometimes swim around such a body and either stupify them with fear, or hypnotize them into forgetfulness of their presence, for they will float quietly in the center of the mass, catching the minnows one by one as they need them without exciting the least fear or attention. The minnows generally remain in fairly shallow water, and keep so closely together that a line of demarcation is ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... magic circle. With a wrench that tore his very heart-strings he set his face down the road and followed submissively in the track of the Rat, while faint, thin little smells, still dogging his retreating nose, reproached him for his new friendship and his callous forgetfulness. ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame

... words. "Let me lay my head upon your breast;" and so he rested, now and then speaking lowly to himself, "It's only that I miss my mother; but Heaven's will be done." He repeated this many times, until the Heaven he obeyed sent him in its mercy forgetfulness, and his thoughts no longer wandered to his earthly home. I heard glad words feebly uttered as I bent over him—words about "Heaven—rest—rest"—a holy Name many times repeated; and then with a smile and a stronger voice, "Home! home!" And ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole

... dotted with silent, two-penny cottages. Sometimes Picton mounted his pyramid of trunk-leather for a mile or so of nods; sometimes I essayed the high perch, and holding on by a cord, dropped off in a moment's forgetfulness, with the constant fear of waking up in a mud-hole, or under the wagon-wheels. But even these respites were brief. It is not easy to ride up hill and down by rock and rut, under such conditions. We were very soon convinced it was best ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens

... the knowledge occur to the mind so as to occupy its powers of contemplation at the moment when the sight work is to be done, the mind retires inward, fixes itself upon the known fact, and forgets the passing visible ones; and a moment of such forgetfulness loses more to the painter than a day's thought can gain. This is no new or strange assertion. Every person accustomed to careful reflection of any kind, knows that its natural operation is to close his eyes to the external world. While he is ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin

... are shocked or frighted at seeing the improprieties and sins, which are openly countenanced. Alas! there are persons, doubtless (though God forbid it should be the case with any here present!), whose consciences have been so early trained into forgetfulness of religious duties, that they can hardly, or cannot at all, recollect the time I speak of; the time when they acted with the secret feeling that God saw them, saw all they did and thought. I will not fancy this to be the case with any who hear ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman

... friend the mocking-bird, neglecting his faithful wife and letting his home go to decay, kept dropping in, all hours of the day, tasting the berries' rank pulp, stimulating, stimulating, drowning care, you know,—"Lost so many children, and the rest gone off in ungrateful forgetfulness of their old hard-working father; yes;" and ready to sing or fight, just as any other creature happened not to wish; and going home in the evening scolding and swaggering, and getting to bed barely able to hang on to the roost. It would have been bad ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... twilight of the farther end of the barn, where he found the earthen floor bedded a foot deep with straw. He lay down here, drew straw over himself in lieu of blankets, and was soon absorbed in thinking. He had many griefs, but the minor ones were swept almost into forgetfulness by the supreme one, the loss of his father. To the rest of the world the name of Henry VIII. brought a shiver, and suggested an ogre whose nostrils breathed destruction and whose hand dealt scourgings and death; but to this boy the name brought only ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... that unfortunate volume, I had at first put off a little, and then a little longer, the answering of her last letter, because I was interested just then in writing well and not particularly interested in anything else; and I had finally approximated to forgetfulness of the ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al

... looked at each other with one of those sudden cravings for solitude and forgetfulness common to lovers. Ah! how sweet it would be to love one another there in the depths of that nook, so far away from everybody else! But they smiled. Was such a thing to be thought of? They had barely time to catch the train that was to take them back to Paris. And the old ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... form, but, that it would lead to false conclusions if we did not recollect that this destruction of the enemy's force is comprised in that object, and that this object is only a weak modification of it. Forgetfulness of this led to completely false views before the Wars of the last period, and created tendencies as well as fragments of systems, in which theory thought it raised itself so much the more above handicraft, the less it supposed itself to stand in ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz

... instances of forgetfulness on the part of some, that they have in keeping the yet unsullied reputation of the army, and that the duties exacted of us by civilization and Christianity are not less obligatory in the country of the ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... was generally profound, but he would sometimes discourse incoherently for a long while in his sleep. At six he would suddenly compose himself, even in the midst of an animated narrative or of earnest discussion, and he would lie buried in entire forgetfulness, in a sweet and mighty oblivion, until ten, when he would suddenly start up, and rubbing his eyes with great violence, and passing his fingers swiftly through his long hair, would enter at once into a vehement argument, or begin to recite verses, either of his own composition ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb

... to each man who was about to fire, especially Nicholls, the cook, with whom she seemed quite in love, patting him on the back, clapping her small hands, squeaking out her delight, and jumping about like a crow with a shirt on. While the fight was in progress, in the forgetfulness of his excitation, my black boy Tommy began to speak apparently quite fluently in their language to the two spies, keeping up a running conversation with them nearly all the time. It seemed that the celebrated saying of Talleyrand, "Language was only given to man to conceal his thought," ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... and sorrow, through the paths of service and suffering. Later in life John knew what the Master's words meant. He found his place nearest to Christ, but it was not on the steps of an earthly throne; it was a nearness of love, and the steps to it were humility, self-forgetfulness, and ministry. ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller

... careful of inflicting suffering. The full blood sings of nothing but itself. It is careless of others. It is careless of God, not malignantly cruel, nor deliberately atheistic, but selfish with a sort of self-absorption which is often, very gracious in its forms and infidel with a mere forgetfulness of God. Who of us does not know, and who of us, wavering between his standards and his feelings, has not very often found it hard to tell just how he ought to value the enthusiastic and arrogant self-sufficiency of ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser

... stirred her not. The deadliest fatigue was thus confessed in every language of the sleeping flesh. The traveller smiled grimly. As though he had looked upon a statue, he made a grudging inventory of her charms: the figure in that touching freedom of forgetfulness surprised him; the flush of slumber became ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson

... who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey, This pleasing anxious being e'er resign'd, Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, Nor cast one ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various

... The girl was half child, half woman, and the man grey and bearded, but with brave blue eyes. It was seventeen years since the night she had stolen across the way and talked with this man in his hour of terror, but time did not cloud the little Madonna's memory with the dust of forgetfulness. ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various

... be all right erelong, if you will only drop your morbidness!" But in all seriousness, can such bald animal talk as that be treated as a rational answer? To ascribe religious value to mere happy-go-lucky contentment with one's brief chance at natural good is but the very consecration of forgetfulness and superficiality. Our troubles lie indeed too deep for THAT cure. The fact that we CAN die, that we CAN be ill at all, is what perplexes us; the fact that we now for a moment live and are well is irrelevant to that perplexity. We need a life not correlated ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... thought his self-esteem suffered cruelly. He felt a natural impulse to spring into a carriage and drive to the dwelling of Eugenie Gontier, and there to seek forgetfulness. But he felt that his bitterness would make itself known even there, and that such a course would be another affront to the dignity of a woman of heart, whose loyalty to himself he ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... men, forgetfulness of good turns, defiling of souls, changing of kind, disorder in ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous

... noticed this untruth, and attributes it to mere forgetfulness. We leave it to him to reconcile his very charitable supposition with what he elsewhere says of the remarkable ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Manicamp, saluting the princess, "let us bury this affair altogether in forgetfulness, for it will never be ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... found the paymaster wearily, anxiously patrolling his self-assumed post out beyond the westward wall. The presence of common danger, the staff official's forgetfulness of self and his funds in his determination to aid the wretched women whom he firmly believed to have been run off by the Apaches, had won from the sergeant the tribute of more respectful demeanor, even though he held the story of the raid ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King

... to improve this faculty. The clerk or employee [Transcriber's Note: The original text reads 'employe'] in receiving instructions from his principal should endeavor to impress every point clearly on his mind, and retain them there until they are carried out in action. Carelessness and forgetfulness often causes the discharge of otherwise worthy and competent young persons, as employers do not like to repeat ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs

... wearied in sitting up two nights, I could not give that good account of Mr. Coleman, which I did afterwards when I consulted my papers;' as if in giving the names of many meaner persons, he should from forgetfulness overlook one so considerable as Coleman. The testimony of Oates was confirmed by Bedlow, who did not hesitate to swear to any thing that the more inventive genius of his ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various

... being re-issued in modern spelling not too many books had actually been condemned as subversive—only a few works on history, politics, philosophy, and the like, together with some scientific texts restricted for security reasons; but one by one, the great old writings were sent to forgetfulness. ...
— Security • Poul William Anderson

... anything themselves against a woman, still they will be more likely to help than to hinder us, if I should need their assistance. Then, when the Egyptian is ruined, if you have done as I wish, the king will remember your sad pale face, your humility and forgetfulness of self. The Achaemenidae, and even the Magi, will beg him to take a queen from his own family; and where in all Persia is there a woman who can boast of better birth than you? Who else can wear the royal purple but ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... that dreadful day when Agag was murdered, and it was always before his eyes that he was doomed, and that there was another man in the land, who was to rule in his stead. I tried to appease him. I told him that life to all of us is short, that in the grave there is forgetfulness, and bade him drink wine, lie in my bosom, and shut out the morrow, but it was of no avail. There was nothing to be dreaded in the thought that some one would supplant him, and other men would have endured it in peace; ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford

... tasseled cap sat on a head which in every line and movement expressed defeat and disgrace. So they all listened who stood around; I read it as well as if I had heard the words they were hearing. I saw dejection, profound sorrow, absorbed attention, utter forgetfulness of present bodily discomfort. I noticed that one man who carried an umbrella had put it down, and stood listening in the rain. Occasionally the soldier raised his arm to eke out his words with a gesture; and then moved ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell









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