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More "Inattention" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... looked on with listless inattention, but two days later she returned in a change of mood which put to blush the worldly materialism ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... to hunt this morning he returned in the evening unsuccessfull as to the chase but brought with him some cranberries for the sick. Gibson is on the recovery fast; Bratton has an obstenate cough and pain in his back and still appears to be geting weaker. McNeal from his inattention to his disorder has ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... genius have, very frequently, impaired their constitutions by study, or careless inattention to their health, and the violence of their passions bearing a proportion to the vigour of their intellects, the sword's destroying the scabbard has become almost proverbial, and superficial observers have inferred from thence, that men of genius have commonly weak, or ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... of 1846 wore on, Poe's habits of frequent intoxication and his inattention to the means of support reduced him to much more than common destitution. He was now living at Fordham, several miles from the city, so that his necessities were not generally known even among his acquaintances; ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... the feeling that Buston Hall was to be his own, and had not regarded his uncle as the donor. His father, with his large family, had never exacted much,—had wanted no special attention from him. And if not his father, then why his uncle? But his inattention, his absence of gratitude for peculiar gifts, had sunk deep into Mr. Prosper's bosom. Hence had come Miss Thoroughbung as his last resource, and Miss Thoroughbung had—called him Peter. Hence his mind had wandered to Miss Puffle, and Miss Puffle had gone off with ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... better by not attending at all? And what else of the things in life is done better by those who do not use attention? Does he who works in wood work better by not attending to it? Does the captain of a ship manage it better by not attending? and are any of the smaller acts done better by inattention? Do you not see that when you have let your mind loose, it is no longer in your power to recall it, either to propriety, or to modesty, or to moderation; but you do everything that comes into your mind in obedience to ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... treachery of the commanders of the convoys, wherever it had been found, would have been punished, but they would not have charged them with those miscarriages which were produced only by the obstinacy or inattention of the masters ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... by itself. From the humblest of organised beings to the higher vertebrates which come immediately before man, we witness an attempt which is always foiled and always resumed with more and more art. Man has triumphed; with difficulty, it is true, and so incompletely that a moment's lapse and inattention on his part surrender him to automatism again. But he has triumphed..." ("Report of the French Philosophical ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... and Carlino appealed to Jeanne. Which star would she prefer? Jeanne did not know; she had not been listening. Carlino was greatly annoyed; he seemed to want to reprove her, not so much for her inattention, as for the hidden thoughts which had caused it; and then, fearing to say too much, he sent her away to meditate, to dream, to write the philosophy of smoke and clouds. But when she, not in the least annoyed, was about to leave the ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... continued to thread the narrow passage; the slightest inattention would have brought her upon the reefs. Those who could employ their eyes kept looking now at the approaching stranger—now at the direction where they hoped the frigate would appear. At length old Doull's deep voice was heard exclaiming, ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... girls who paid him in their coin, which, although it answered his purpose, would neither buy him goods or pay his rent, and he found his stock rapidly dwindling away without his receiving any cash to replenish it. By dissipation and inattention his new business proved unsuccessful to him. He resolved to abandon it and again try the sea for a subsistence. With a hundred dollars in his pocket, the remnant of his property, he embarked in the ship John, for ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... in, as we have shown, with strict rules and regulations, backed by fines in case of the slightest inattention, and the certainty of prompt dismissal in case of gross neglect or disobedience, with the possibility of criminal prosecution besides looming in the far distance, our friend, John Marrot, knowing his duties well, and feeling perfect confidence in himself and his superiors, consulted his chronometer ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... rolling and cutting and sawing, there is yet, in spite of all the safeguards the law compels, the saying still heard in these shops: "It takes three fingers to make a stamper." Carelessness often; but where two must work together, as is necessary in tending many of these machines, the partner's inattention is often responsible, and mutilation comes through no fault of one's own. Add to all these the suffering of little children taught lace-making at four, sewing on buttons or picking threads far into ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... of inattention, for he could not hear; but instead, he made his observations and gave vent to his philosophical reflections as ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... three centuries in Ireland has been contemporaneous with a system of partial and abusive government, varying in degree of culpability, but rarely, until of later years, when we have been forced to look at the subject and to feel it, to be exempted in common fairness from the reproach of gross inattention (to say the very least) to the interests of ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... Holland has produced, and not less distinguished by the brilliant qualities of his mind, did not, in his youth, seem to show any happy disposition for study. His father, who formed an unfavourable opinion of his talents, was much distressed, and frequently reproached him in severe terms for his inattention and idleness, to which young Bilderdyk did not appear to pay much attention. In 1776, the father, with a newspaper in his hand, came to stimulate him, by showing the advertisement of a prize offered by the Society of Leyden, and decreed to the author of a piece of poetry, signed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... were admitted. It was bourgeois absolutely, but bosses could not imbibe and play freely in the presence of their employees whom they might have to reprimand severely for bad habits, nor scold them for inattention to trade when their employers spent precious ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... very remiss in her lessons, she unrelentingly required the count's attendance, and sometimes, not in the most gentle language, reproached him for a backwardness in learning she owed entirely to her own inattention and stupidity. The fair Diana would have been the most erudite woman in the world could she have found any fine-lady path to the temple of science; but the goddess who presides there being only to be won by arduous climbing, poor Miss Dundas, like the indolent monarch who made the same demand ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... muffled tone, she requested the baron to take her back to the tent, but while fulfilling her wish he wondered at the long strides of the capricious young lady at his side, and the mortifying inattention with which she received ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... discoursing with him, upon account of his attendance at the court of the savages, and not having books in the island, he had consequently many words to learn of this country's language when he arrived in England. This task his retentive memory made easy to him; but his childish inattention to their proper signification still made ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... preoccupation now, and he was bent upon doing what he wished to do. Talbot and the two editors rallied him upon his absence of mind, and even Helen, despite her new interest in Wood, looked a little surprised and perhaps a little aggrieved at his inattention; but none of these things had any effect upon him. His mind was now thrown for the time being into one channel, and he could not turn it ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... Norwegians, for they are tender-hearted, kind, and generous to strangers; but fear had superseded the sympathy of the old lady's expansive heart; and had men of riper years than her sons been present, we should not have met with so much inattention to our necessities. Even the girl, young though she was, desired to administer to our need; but sweetness of manner, simplicity, tenderness, and noble generosity are unchanging types of the youthful female character in every ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... through half-closed lids. He looked tired, and rather ill, Fanny thought, but distinctly a personage. She wondered if he held them or they him. That recalled to her the little Winnebago Temple and Rabbi Thalmann. She remembered the frequent rudeness and open inattention of that congregation. No doubt Mrs. Nathan Pereles had her counterpart here, and the hypocritical Bella Weinberg, too, and the giggling Aarons girls, and old Ben Reitman. Here Dr. Kirsch had risen, and, ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... the law was in large part responsible for this lack of prestige. "Too great inattention," complained a Boston lawyer, in the Columbian Centinel in 1801, "has hitherto prevailed as to the preservation of the decisions of our courts of law. We have neither authorized nor voluntary reporters. Hence we are compelled to the loose and interested recollections of counsel, or ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... been served at leisure, her tea had rarely been hot, and her modestly tinkled bell irregularly answered. Often her far from liberally supplied fire had gone out on chilly days, and she had been afraid to insist on its being relighted. Her sole defense against inattention would have been to complain to Mr. Temple Barholm, and when on one occasion a too obvious neglect had obliged her to gather her quaking being together in mere self- respect and say, "If this continues ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... course, I did not understand till long afterwards, but I too unhappily understood, or at least fancied I did, the dreadful images of eternal torments, and the certainty that they would soon be mine. First of all, either from inattention, or from want of comprehension, these denunciations made but a faint impression upon me. But the frightful descriptions took, gradually, a more visible and sterner shape, till they produced effects that proved all ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... breach of good breeding which can hardly be due to inattention. There is a homely proverb to the effect that one "should wash her dirty linen at home," and it is to the violation of this advice that I refer. Discussing home matters, complaining of the actions of members of your family, or confiding their ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... considers the state of religion in regions that have not yet received the heathen world before the light of revealed truth; above revelation, and its (5) present all, let him mark not merely the state in those (11) places (8) natural inattention and ignorance which have borrowed no light of the masses, but also the from (5) it; particularly (19) the doubtful language held even by a doubtfulness of some of the (12) Socrates on even so vital a greatest men concerning things of subject as[36] the immortality of the utmost (11) importance, ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... the mind of any member, more than if the scheme and information were given privately at the Secretary's office?" Merely to call for information would not be advantageous to the House. "It will be no mark of inattention or neglect, if he take time to consider the questions you propound; but if you make it his duty to furnish you plans ... and he neglect to perform it, his conduct or capacity is virtually impeached. This will be furnishing an ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... and composition are continually occurring, not from ignorance but inattention. This little book brings such into distinct consciousness, and by so doing ensures more ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... taken up in the discussion of a letter of Edgar's, more than usually discontented with his employment; and another of Alda's, who had been laid under orders to write to her eldest brother, and desire him to remonstrate with Edgar on his inattention, laziness, and pleasure-seeking. The anxiety had long been growing up; Felix had come to write his difficult letter by the light of Geraldine's sympathy, and they were weighing what should be said, when the door-bell rang, some sounds puzzled them, and just as Felix ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... student too pedantic, too much attached to systems, which, formed in solitude, he was unwilling to renounce, even when contradicted by the voice and testimony of experience; and, moreover, considered his utter inattention to the quality of what he eat and drank, as unworthy of a rational, that is, of a cooking creature, or of a being who, as defined by Johnson, holds his dinner as the most important business of the day. Cargill did not act up to this definition, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... more!" Bossuet had better understood what ought to be the aim of a king's education. "Remember, Monseigneur," he constantly repeated to him, "that destined as you are to reign some day over this great kingdom, you are bound to make it happy." He was in despair at his pupil's inattention. "There is a great deal to endure with a mind so destitute of application," he wrote to Marshal Bellefonds; "there is no perceptible relief, and we go on, as St. Paul says, hoping against hope." He had written a little treatise on inattention, De Incogitantia,—in the vain hope of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... belief, by hiding these truths beneath an elaborate adornment that disguises or completely conceals them, is to be faithless to the commission of Jesus Christ to be a witness unto Him before the world; to neglect such witness-bearing, or by carelessness or inattention to detail, to render it in a manner so ineffective as to disparage the truth in the eyes of beholders, is to be none the less unfaithful ...
— Presbyterian Worship - Its Spirit, Method and History • Robert Johnston
... yearn now to give you, but must not, for every moment that voice may reach me from beyond the grave, and I would be recreant to the most sacred obligations, and deep responsibilities that seem now to shape themselves before me, to our common humanity, if I forfeited an instant of inattention. I beg you to remember all this and wait, wait, until the depthless power of my love for you can ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... hunting party is cited by Captain Bonneville to show the importance of vigilant watching and judicious encampments in the Indian country. Most of this kind of disasters to traders and trappers arise from some careless inattention to the state of their arms and ammunition, the placing of their horses at night, the position of their camping ground, and the posting of their night watches. The Indian is a vigilant and crafty foe, by no means given to hair-brained assaults; he seldom attacks when he finds his foe well prepared ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... hour; when the man, starting from his slumbers, perceived with terror and despair the countenance and occupation of his general. He fell on his knees before him. "My friend," said Napoleon, "here is your musket. You had fought hard, and marched long, and your sleep is excusable; but a moment's inattention might at present ruin the army. I happened to be awake, and have held your post for you. You will be ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... diplomats usually give large entertainments. The arranging of the seats at the dinner table is a delicate matter, as the rule of precedence has to be observed, and inattention to the rule, by placing a wrong seat for a gentleman or lady who is entitled to a higher place, may be considered as a slight. It is at such functions as these that the professional story-teller, the good reciter, the clever reader, the perfect entertainer would ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... awaiting dinner. Although she was quicker than usual in her efforts to entertain their guest, the meal was hurried and uncomfortable. When in repose McNally's face was clouded, and the occasional spells of interest into which he somewhat studiously aroused himself could not conceal his general inattention. Her father, too, was preoccupied, and was so abrupt in his conversation as to leave small trace of the easy lightness of manner that Katherine ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... constant wakefulness of the adversary, by his knowledge of their weakness, and by his command of opportunity. But this is a fault lying rather in the conditions of human life than in political institutions. There is no known mode of making attention and inattention equal in their results. It is enough to say that in England, when the nation can attend, it can prevail. So we may say, then, that in the American Union the Federal Executive is independent for each four years both of the Congress and of the people. But the British Ministry ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... from Mojaisk we had to cross the Kologa. It was but a large rivulet: two trees, the same number of props, and a few planks were sufficient to ensure the passage; but such was the confusion and inattention that the emperor was detained there. Several pieces of cannon, which it was attempted to get across by fording, were lost. It seemed as if each corps was marching separately, as if there were no staff, no general order, no common tie, nothing, in short, that bound them together. ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... hungrier than ever—the heaps of loaves and cakes on the counter within; heedless of the supplicating looks the men turned on him, and of the confidential attempts of one or two at a begging whisper (but his hurry was in nowise chargeable with that inattention); heedless of everything but finishing his errand and getting home, Mr. Griffin pushed through the crowd in the store, and, reaching the counter, beckoned to a light-haired, light-eyed, and red-cheeked youth, in a blue tie and black waistcoat that, through constant ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... remark of the keeper of the table. He had overheard my counsellor. He felt his losses, and was angry. I saw that, and it determined me. I took the counsel of the stranger. I was the more willing to do so, as I reproached myself for my inattention to my friend. It was time to see what had been his progress, and I prepared to leave the theatre of my own success. Before doing so, I turned to my counsellor, and thus addressed him: "Your advice has made me win; I trust I will not offend a gentleman who has been so courteous, by requesting ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... as he said, a little doggie which belonged to him, began to halt and whistle for the animal. This signal, repeated more than once, gave offence to the rigour of his companion, the rather because it appeared to indicate inattention to the treasures of theological and controversial knowledge which was pouring out for his edification. He therefore signified gruffly, that he could not waste his time in ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... standing as a scholar, will in nine cases out of ten be his power and habit of attention. There are indeed lamentable cases of wilful and intentional disorder. Yet every teacher knows that by far the greater portion of the things which interrupt and disturb a school arise from thoughtlessness and inattention. There are also equally undoubted cases of ignorance that is no crime. Yet the great majority of those who fail in their studies, fail simply because they do not attend. To attend, however, means something more than merely to be bodily present, more even ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... that, vexed by the inattention of the scholars, and by whispering, in which Miss Annie joined, I hastily told her ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... ancient and modern learning, useful and ornamental knowledge, I am charmed with the prospect; but when I view you in another light, and represent you awkward, ungraceful, ill bred, with vulgar air and manners, shambling toward me with inattention and distractions, I shall not pretend to describe to you what I feel, but will do as a skilful painter did formerly, draw a veil before the countenance of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... weather to encourage free growth where it is desirable. Plants swelling their fruit to be supplied occasionally with clear liquid manure. The succession plants to be supplied with water at the roots, as inattention to that particular during hot weather is very likely to cause some of the plants ...
— In-Door Gardening for Every Week in the Year • William Keane
... soon, sir. I thought you were on duty; I am glad to have an opportunity of explaining that I never saw you till the moment I left the ball-room, and this lady (pointing to the Duchesse de Montsorel) must be the excuse of my inattention. ...
— Vautrin • Honore de Balzac
... operations on their throats for chronic diseases of various descriptions; now, my observation and experience assure me that, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the root of the evil is chronic inattention to food and raiment. It is a common thing to hear a singer say, 'I never touch such-and-such food on the days I sing.' My dear young friend, unless you are an absolute idiot, you would not partake of anything on the days you sing which might ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... not overpower them at places where the free use of the oars could not be had on account of the surrounding rocks or the masses of seaweed with which the water was everywhere encumbered at low tide. This order had been thoroughly impressed upon the men, as carelessness or inattention to it might have proved fatal to all ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... indolence fixed him, during most of his reign, in a very prudent inattention to foreign affairs, there happened this year an event in Europe of such mighty consequence as to rouse him from his lethargy, and summon up all his zeal and enterprise. A professor of divinity, named Vorstius, the disciple of Arminius was ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... haughty soul was so torn with anguish that he could hardly stand without leaning against something. At such times he has been known to shed tears into his sustenance till it diluted to utter inefficiency. Inattention of this nature is not the act of a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... life of the polite and gay may be said to roll on with a strong and rapid current; they float along from pleasure to pleasure, without the trouble of regulating their own motions, and pursue the course of the stream in all the felicity of inattention; content that they find themselves in progression, and careless whither they are going. But the months of summer are a kind of sleeping stagnation without wind or tide, where they are left to force themselves forward by their own labour, and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... singular or a plural noun. It ought to be recollected, however, that when used as the representative of a singular noun, this word retains its original plural form; and, therefore, the verb connected with it, should always be plural. Inattention to this peculiarity, has betrayed some writers into the erroneous conclusion, that, because you implies unity when it represents a singular noun, it ought, when thus employed, to be followed by a singular verb; ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... mentis', exist, (which I more than doubt,) what could a wise man do but stare—and leave him? Christ wrought many wonderful works, implying admirable power, and directed to the most merciful and beneficent ends; and these acts were such signs of his divine mission, as rendered inattention or obstinate averseness to the truths and doctrines which he promulgated, inexcusable, and indeed on any hypothesis but that of immoral dispositions and prejudices, utterly inconceivable. In what respect, I pray, can this statement be strengthened by any reasoning about the nature and distinctive ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... that does not bear the stamp of mathematical or judicial certainty, we risk losing as we go along most of the opportunities or clues which the great riddle of this world offers us in its moments of inattention or graciousness. At the beginning of an enquiry we must know how to content ourselves with little. For the incident in question to be convincing, previous evidence in writing, more or less official statements would be required, whereas we have only the declarations of the husband, ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... see I lost two years going to school—from seven to nine years old. I was put out of all the private schools for incorrigible "inattention"—then it was discovered that I had been partially deaf and not guilty—but my schooling ended there and I was turned loose on my father's library to get an education by main force—got it by reading everything—had ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... and Wilfrid turned off from him sulkily. He saw in fancy the robber-Greek prowling about Wilson's farm, setting snares for the marvellous night-bird, and it was with more than his customary inattention to his sisters' refined conversation that he formed part of their male escort ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... inattention. Eric disposed of it skilfully; but the thread of thought was snapped, and he looked round the table to see what had been happening since his reverie began. Agnes had been set at liberty by Geoff and was watching ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... in the lowest form because of his ignorance of Latin and Mathematics, and here every one was younger and weaker. During school hours there was comparative peace, and he sat with perplexed brow and inky fingers, or was sent down to the bottom for inattention. It was not inattention but rather a complete incapacity for grasping the system on which everything worked. Meanwhile in this first week he had earned a reputation and made three friends, and although he did not know it that was not a ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... one of the debarkations a midshipman, who was ordered to lie within the reef, that he might attend the boats coming to shore, imprudently suffered his own boat to drive into the surf, and was lost, with four men. He had been once before overset in consequence of a similar inattention, and then had lost one man. On the coast of the island are several small bays, and there are still hopes that a better landing place may be discovered; but the necessity of employing all the men in sheltering themselves and the stores from the weather, or in clearing ground for various purposes, ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... necessary to have such books as 'Nare's English Orthoepy' (in a late edition), and others of that class, lying on the table; because the accentuation of Milton's age was, in many words, entirely different from ours. And Mr. Landor is not free from some suspicion of inattention as to this point. Over and above his accentual difference, the practice of our elder dramatists in the resolution of the final tion (which now is uniformly pronounced shon), will be found exceedingly important to the appreciation of a writer's verse. Contribution, ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... them Christians and commence the work; the establishment of which bishopric I am very sure will be made, please our Lord, and the revenues will soon come from here and be carried there." These are his words. How much truth he spoke and how clear a case there was of inattention and remissness and lukewarmness of charity in the men of that day, spiritual or ecclesiastical and temporal, who held the power and resources, not to make provision for the healing and conversion of these peoples, so disposed and ready to receive the faith, the ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... maidens, On my father's Isle of Refuge." Wept the maidens on the island, Long lamenting, loudly calling To the hero sailing homeward: "Whither goest, Lemminkainen, Why depart, thou best of heroes? Dost thou leave from inattention, Is there here a dearth of maidens, Have our greetings been unworthy?" Sang the magic Lemminkainen To the maids as he was sailing, This in answer to their calling: "Leaving not for want of pleasure, Do not go from dearth of women Beautiful the island-maidens, ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... coast, it was finally judged and considered best, and a more wise, important, and fitting relief, for Captain Esteban Rodriguez to make his expedition. Thereby those dangers, or the majority of them, would be checked and relieved, as well as others which would grow or increase by inattention. Thus matters were arranged with him in the form that your Majesty will see by the copy accompanying this letter. As he will have plenty to do on this expedition, your Majesty, having been advised in the meantime, will ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume IX, 1593-1597 • E. H. Blair
... first appearance on the stump in the course of the canvass was at Pappsville, about eleven miles west of Springfield, upon the occasion of a public sale. The sale over, speech-making was about to begin, when Lincoln observed some strong symptoms of inattention in his audience which had taken that particular moment to engage in a a general fight. Lincoln saw that one of his friends was suffering more than he liked, and stepping into the crowd he shouldered them sternly away from his man until he met a fellow who refused to fall back. Him he seized ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... danced to the insectile anthem as for twenty minutes or more he lay there as one dead. But at the first flutter of inattention among the doctors he sat up with closed eyes and called out ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... morning or afternoon, in the impossibility of a final deglutition, chewing and chewing at the savoury morsel. Should this have happened, it was in vain for Turkey to hope escape from the discovery of his inattention, for the milk-pail would that same evening or next morning reveal the fact to Kirsty's watchful eyes. But fortunately for us, in so far as it was well to have an ally against our only enemy, Hawkie's morbid craving was not confined to old shoes. One day when ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... doctor had his pick in the flogging way, but he never allowed them to know anything of our other proceedings, or to imagine that the birching which took place was otherwise than as a punishment for faults or inattention. However, I was generally the chosen companion of these whippings, in which I acted as horse, or holder of the boy to be flogged. Of course I took good care to expose as much as possible their lovely cocks, ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... under comparison. Now what holds good of primaeval and savage man holds good also of civilized, perhaps even of ourselves among our machine made and easily replaced properties. The shape of the things we make and use offers itself for contemplation in those interludes of inattention which are half of the rythm of all healthful work. And it is this normal rythm of attention swinging from effort to ease, which explains how art has come to be a part of life, how mere aspects ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... Profiting by his inattention, Rosa wriggled out of his grasp and ran to Evangelina, who lay face down in the dirt, her limbs sprawled loosely. She flung herself upon the prostrate body and cried the black woman's name, but ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... over yet, however. Witness that little encounter before dinner; and once or twice the honest fellow replied rather smartly during the repast, taking especial care to atone as much as possible for his wife's inattention to Jack and Mrs. Muchit, by particular attention to those personages, whom he helped to everything round about and pressed perpetually to champagne; he drank but little himself, for his amiable wife's eye ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... against the corner of the wall, made a couch of the bench on which he sat, and began to chew crust, until such time as his repast should be ready. There had been that momentary interruption of the talk about the stove, and that temporary inattention to and distraction from one another, which is usually inseparable in such a company from the arrival of a stranger. It had passed over by this time; and the men had done glancing at him, ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... emotion he had looked for did not come. An essential part of him was elsewhere,—following the pale lady in the black riding-habit, trying to get a clearer vision of her face, blaming him for his inattention when she had been palpable before him, wondering who ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... allow us the pleasure of your company for a few weeks at Haworth. I will leave it to you to fix whatever day may be most convenient, but let it be an early one. I received a letter from Pag Taylor yesterday; she was in high dudgeon at my inattention in not promptly answering her last epistle. I however sat down immediately and wrote a very humble reply, candidly confessing my faults and soliciting forgiveness; I hope it has proved successful. Have ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... considered your remarks on big genera (but your general concurrence is of the HIGHEST POSSIBLE interest to me); nor shall I be able till I re-read my MS.; but you may rely on it that you never make a remark to me which is lost from INATTENTION. I am particularly glad you do not object to my stating your objections in a modified form, for they always struck me as very important, and as having much inherent value, whether or no they were fatal to my notions. I will consider and ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... second-timers was codding afront of me, and 2001 and the young chap as was dying of the consumption was wheeling and filling ahead. Well, up comes the governor right in front of 2001, and shouts, 'Warder,' he shouts, 'you're fined for inattention.' Then off he goes. All right, Mr. 2001, I says, I'll ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... another. If we unwittingly utter what is contrary to fact, that is error; if we so clumsily translate our thoughts as to give a false impression of what we mean, and we do the best we can, that is a blunder; if in a moment of listlessness and inattention we speak in a manner that conflicts with our state of mind, that is temporary mental aberration. But if we knowingly give out as truth what we know is not the truth, we ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... they had learned, they would lounge upon the sofa, lie on the rug, stretch, yawn, talk to each other, or look out of the window; whereas, I could not so much as stir the fire, or pick up the handkerchief I had dropped, without being rebuked for inattention by one of my pupils, or told that 'mamma would not like ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... failure of the human race. [60] Yet the number of citizens still exceeded the measure of subsistence: their precarious food was supplied from the harvests of Sicily or Egypt; and the frequent repetition of famine betrays the inattention of the emperor to a distant province. The edifices of Rome were exposed to the same ruin and decay: the mouldering fabrics were easily overthrown by inundations, tempests, and earthquakes: and the monks, who had occupied the most advantageous stations, exulted in their base ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... nothing suggestive is offered against their testimony, if they do not contradict each other, and especially if there are no contradictions in the testimony of any single individual. This inner contradiction is rather frequent, and the inattention with which the protocols, as a rule, are read, and the scanty degree in which the testimony is tested logically and psychologically, are shown clearly by the fact that the inner contradictions are not observed and worked over more frequently. As evidence of this, let ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... constituents of that art remain to be acquired—Enunciation and Inflection. These are best learned by Recitation. Thus far there is no great novelty: the most interesting part of the chapter is what relates to Stammering. This defect is held by the Experimentalist to result from inattention to rhythmus: so much he thinks has been proved by Mr. Thelwall. Whatsoever therefore compels the pupil to an efficient perception of time and measure, as for example, marching and music (p. 32), ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... which the nature, origin, and history of the dogmas you teach are enveloped. Imposed by force and authority, inculcated by education, maintained by the influence of example, they were perpetuated from age to age, and habit and inattention strengthened their empire. But if man, enlightened by experience and reflection, summon to the bar of mature examination the prejudices of his infancy, he presently discovers a multitude of incongruities and contradictions, which awaken his sagacity, ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... up, her life being confined to two or three small rooms in the south- east corner. The great apartments through which they now whisperingly walked wore already that funereal aspect that comes from disuse and inattention. Triangular cobwebs already formed little hammocks for the dust in corners of the wainscot, and a close smell of wood and leather, seasoned with mouse-droppings, pervaded the atmosphere. So seldom was the solitude of these chambers intruded on by human feet that more than once a mouse stood and ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... steered with an oar, and the boy bailed out the water which the hissing crests of wind-lashed waves flung into the boat. "It required the utmost exertion to prevent broaching to; a single wrong movement or a moment's inattention would have sent us to ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... consideration, meditation, study, lucubration, speculation, deliberation, pondering; head work, brain work; cerebration; deep reflection; close study, application &c. (attention) 457. abstract thought, abstraction contemplation, musing; brown study &c. (inattention) 458; reverie, Platonism; depth of thought, workings of the mind, thoughts, inmost thoughts; self-counsel self-communing, self- consultation; philosophy of the Absolute, philosophy of the Academy, philosophy of the Garden, philosophy of the lyceum, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... one, and the vulgar eagerness of the other, furnish an instance of the judgment of the ancient Sculptors in their nice discrimination of character. They are both equally true to nature, and equally admirable.' After a few observations on the limited means of the art of sculpture, and the inattention of the ancients to almost everything but form, we meet with ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... silent. Inattention dies a quick and sure death when a speaker does that. The stillness gives warning that something is coming. All palms and finger balls went down now, all slouching forms straightened, all heads came up, all eyes were fastened upon Wilson's ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... strained his ears to listen till his head ached, but the talkers had been careful, and he had heard nothing that threw light on their deliberations. He had now given up his vain attempt, and sat in listless inattention, ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... acquired, too, the art of asking unobtrusive questions of a tentative kind, so as to feel out the interests of his companion, and draw him out; not in that professional way which so-called influential people often acquire—the melancholy confidential smile, the intimate manner, and the air of bland inattention with which they receive your remarks, only to be detected in the fixed or wandering eye. He had learnt the art of being interested in other people, and in what they had to say, and of indicating by a subtle tact in speech that he was following them, ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... leaving Cap St. Louis, that is, Brant Point, had aimed to double Cape Cod, and had directed their course, as they supposed, to accomplish this purpose. Owing, however, to the strength of the wind, or the darkness of the night, or the inattention of their pilot, or all these together, they had passed to the leeward of the point aimed at, and before morning found themselves near a harbor, which they subsequently entered, in Cape Cod Bay. It is plain that this port, which they named Oyster ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... He was lying against a huge slab of the war map. To it there stuck and from it there dangled little wooden objects, the symbols of infantry and cavalry and guns, as they were disposed upon the frontier. He did not seem to be aware of this at his back, he had an effect of inattention, not indifferent attention, but as ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... difficult to distinguish, in so-called states of dispersed attention. The latter states are rare in normal individuals, although they may be rather frequent in certain types of low-grade mental defectives. This of course means that states of "inattention" do not exist in normal people. So long as consciousness is present one must be attending to something. The "day dream" is often accompanied by concentrated attention. Only when we are truly thinking ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... and lounged in a most exasperating manner, and at times exhibited a dullness that was very hard to bear patiently, because Marion felt so certain that it was either feigned or the result of willful inattention. Several times had Marion to speak decidedly to the young ladies in her seat, once or twice directly to Grace herself, and at last, losing all patience with ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... have grasped an argument by Follett. The mind was intensely receptive, when it was receiving at all. But I remember, too, that, when the great judge began to speak, then his mind was (so to speak) streaming out; and he was particularly impatient of inattention or interruption, and particularly non-receptive of anything that might be suggested ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... questions with which she should be familiar, she always manifests more or less of hesitation, and what she ventures to express is very commonly in the form of a question. In these, as in all exercises, there is an inattention to general instructions. Unless what is said be addressed particularly to herself, her eyes are directed toward another part of the room; it may be, her thoughts are employed about something not at all connected with the school. If reproved by her ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... violence. Antonio had just left the helm, and, according to his usual custom, proceeded to draw a bucket of water from alongside, in which to immerse his face and hands. But while he was stooping, in the very act of performing his ablutions, the brig, through the inattention of the helmsman, was run off her course nearly before the wind, the staysails were becalmed and the main-topmast staysail sheet, that is, the rope which kept the sail in its proper position, give ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... thundered the teacher, "you are aware, I believe, that I permit no conversation in this class. Stupidity and inattention are not to be supported in any student, and I must ask you to leave ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... companion's place empty. The repetition of so strange an incident at length incited him to mention it to Clithero. The latter was confounded at this intelligence. He questioned Ambrose with great anxiety as to the particulars of this event, but he could gain no satisfaction from the stupid inattention of the other. From this time there was a visible augmentation of his sadness. His fits of taciturnity became more obstinate, and a deeper ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... were lowered, and, in their place, the emblem of the house of Braganza was loosened to the breeze. Still the stranger pursued his course in sullen inattention, eating closer and closer to the wind, as it is termed in nautical language, in order to lessen the distance between him and his chase as ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... doubt, by lack of ammunition, or by plenty of ammunition which did not happen to suit the guns; and many a salmon has been lost, ay, and many a trout, for want of carefulness, and through a culpable inattention to the soundness of your gut, and tackle generally. What fiend is it that prompts a man just to try a hopeless cast, in a low water, without testing his tackle? As sure as you do that, up comes the fish, and with his first dash breaks your casting line, and leaves you lamenting. This ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... did not hurt yourself?" he asked. The whole occurrence seemed indistinct, as though some one had told something which he had not understood—as we sometimes listen to a person reading aloud, and, missing by inattention the verb of the sentence, remain confused, and ask ourselves ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... most inconvenient and displeasing to them. The preservation of silence was insisted upon most rigidly, and penances of such a nature were imposed for breaking it, that it was a constant source of uneasiness with me, to know that I might infringe the rules in so many ways, and that inattention might at any moment subject me to something very unpleasant. During the periods of meditation, therefore, and those of lecture, work, and repose, I kept a strict guard upon myself, to escape penances, as well as to avoid sin; and the silence of ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... almost every time that, pointer in hand, she sat down to show him the French alphabet, she so longed to pour her own knowledge quickly and easily into the child—who was already afraid that Auntie might at any moment get angry—that at his slightest inattention she trembled, became flustered and heated, raised her voice, and sometimes pulled him by the arm and put him in the corner. Having put him in the corner she would herself begin to cry over her cruel, evil nature, and little Nicholas, following her example, would sob, and without permission ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... as independent of mere treatment and skill as any Christian scientist. When he expands into oratory or scientific exposition, he is as energetic as Walpole; but it is with a bland, voluminous, atmospheric energy, which envelops its subject and its audience, and makes interruption or inattention impossible, and imposes veneration and credulity on all but the strongest minds. He is known in the medical world as B. B.; and the envy roused by his success in practice is softened by the conviction that he is, scientifically considered, a colossal humbug: the ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... default, was one Mrs Fenton, commonly called the Tappit-hen, who kept a small change-house, not of the best repute, being frequented by young men, of a station of life that gave her heart and countenance to be bardy, even to the bailies. It happened that, by some inattention, she had, one frosty morning, neglected to soop her flags, and old Miss Peggy Dainty being early afoot, in passing her door committed a false step, by treading on a bit of a lemon's skin, and her ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... There seems to be a prevailing tendency to copy simply, without sufficient neglect of minor points, a process which should be left to the youngest children, since it furnishes little mental training, uses a great deal of time, keeps the writer needlessly indoors, and fosters habits of inattention, because it is easy to copy with one's mind elsewhere. The necessity for using judgment after the article has been found is illustrated by the case of some children who came for the life of Homer. Champlin, in about a column, mentions the limits within which the conjectures as to the time ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... resisted—to claim priority, was the thought of the dear man with the blue eyes about to be a guest, once again, under this roof. This gave her a little thrill, a little gasp, wrapping her away to the borders of sad inattention to Louisa Taylor's somewhat academic discourse.—The girl's English was altogether too grammatical for entire good-breeding. In that how very far away from Carteret's!—Damaris tried to range herself with present company. But the man with ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... When his parishioners annoyed him he seems to have comforted himself with epigrams on them; when they slumbered during one of his sermons the manuscript was suddenly hurled at them with a curse for their inattention. ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... comparison. Now what holds good of primaeval and savage man holds good also of civilized, perhaps even of ourselves among our machine made and easily replaced properties. The shape of the things we make and use offers itself for contemplation in those interludes of inattention which are half of the rythm of all healthful work. And it is this normal rythm of attention swinging from effort to ease, which explains how art has come to be a part of life, how mere aspects have acquired for our feelings an importance ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... splendour to the rocks in vain, and that this flower should be without fruit, if any one would take the pains to penetrate deeply into the bowels of the earth; if any one, I say, would extract honey from the rock, and oil from the stone. Indeed many riches of nature lie concealed through inattention, which the diligence of posterity will bring to light; for, as necessity first taught the ancients to discover the conveniences of life, so industry, and a greater acuteness of intellect, have laid open many things to the moderns; as ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... mention numerous other diseased conditions which grow out of inattention to the laws of health relating to the sexual organism; but to dwell longer upon this part of the subject would be to depart from the plan of this work, and we must forbear. This whole class of maladies is noted for obstinacy in great numbers of cases when the morbid conditions ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... countenance and occupation of his general. He fell on his knees before him. "My friend," said Napoleon, "here is your musket. You had fought hard, and marched long, and your sleep is excusable; but a moment's inattention might at present ruin the army. I happened to be awake, and have held your post for you. You will be ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... one gross breach of good breeding which can hardly be due to inattention. There is a homely proverb to the effect that one "should wash her dirty linen at home," and it is to the violation of this advice that I refer. Discussing home matters, complaining of the actions of ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... His droll way of telling it was more amusing than the long-winded story, and he himself was more tickled by it than was the violinist, a lanky German-American boy, with oily black hair and a pimpled face. Throughout, both tuned their instruments assiduously, with that air of inattention ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... made any mischief herself, or interfered with anyone. She worked like a drudge; she tramped through the wet streets, carrying parcels and baskets; she labored with the childish inattention of the little ones' French lessons; as she became shabbier and more forlorn-looking, she was told that she had better take her meals downstairs; she was treated as if she was nobody's concern, and her heart grew proud and sore, but she never ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... movement of the Quartett began. The daylight had diminished so much that the yellow curtains had to be drawn back. Several other ladies left. A low hum of conversation was audible here and there. The fatigue and inattention which invariably marks the end of a concert began to make itself apparent in the audience. By one of those strange and abrupt manifestations of moral elasticity, Andrea experienced a sudden sense of relief, not to say ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... bunt of the fore-yard; the third mate forward, and one on each quarter. Two of the best hands were at the wheel; while the captain and first mate were moving about with their eyes everywhere. All knew that the slightest inattention might cause the destruction ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... no principal and axiomatical truth that regulates subordinate positions. His chance of errour is renewed at every attempt; an oblique view of the passage, a slight misapprehension of a phrase, a casual inattention to the parts connected, is sufficient to make him not only fail, but fail ridiculously; and when he succeeds best, he produces, perhaps, but one reading of many probable, and he that suggests another will always be ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... with an ostentation that could not but attract all eyes. She stopped at Miss Madigan's chair, asked a question,—which Split knew well was utterly irrelevant and immaterial,—and received an answer in Aunt Anne's company manner: a compound of sweetness and flustered inattention which no one could mimic ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... no doubt that good health wards off worry. Deep breathing of fresh air by producing well oxygenated pure blood, will do much to restore mental balance, especially if this want of mental balance is, as is often the case, partly due to inattention ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... Christian scientist. When he expands into oratory or scientific exposition, he is as energetic as Walpole; but it is with a bland, voluminous, atmospheric energy, which envelops its subject and its audience, and makes interruption or inattention impossible, and imposes veneration and credulity on all but the strongest minds. He is known in the medical world as B. B.; and the envy roused by his success in practice is softened by the conviction that he is, scientifically considered, a colossal ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... smuggled through and shuffled by, under the cognomen of a "letter," which a member of Synod answered on behalf of the court, as though it were a matter of the smallest importance imaginable! We solemnly testify against this manner of disposing of a weighty matter at that time, whether through inattention or design. We protest also against the violent conduct of those ministers, and others on the same occasion, who made the place of solemn worship and judicial deliberation, a scene of confusion, by vociferations, gesticulations and physical force, in ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... German grocer. "I didn't mean to insult you, Schults," said he, reaching over and helping himself from a barrel of apples which stood close by. "I jes thought I'd warn you." "Now, dere's dat Gheorge Bohn," continued Schults, with apparent inattention to what George had said. "I see his nhame in der bapers as one uv der leaders in dis supremacy humbug. Who makes Bohn whadt he is on Dry Pon'? Who makes Gheorge Bohn whad he is in dis counthry? Dem very peeples ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... drifting with the tide; expensive habits of life; extravagance: envy; failure to appreciate one's surroundings; failure to grasp one's opportunities; frequent changes from one business to another; fooling away of time in pursuit of a so-called good time, gambling; inattention; incompetent assistants; incompetency; indolence; jealousy. Lack of attention to business; of application; of adaptation; of ambition; of business methods; of capital; of conservatism; of close attention to business; of confidence in self; of careful accounting; of careful observation; of definite ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... first I almost fancied I was dreaming. But I felt still more surprised when, after anxiously attending to what was said for a few minutes, I found the sermon was as easy to understand as my mother's conversation after a Bible reading: all inattention was gone, and for the first time in my life I was listening with interest deep and anxious, whilst the clergyman, in simple language, explained the text so clearly that not one in the church ...
— The Story of the White-Rock Cove • Anonymous
... himself, by sawing and splitting alternately. This principle applies to the labor of the horse and ox; and it is also applicable to all kinds of employment. With the invalid convalescing from fever, relapses result from inattention to these laws. When a patient is recovering from sickness, his physician should take care that his exercise be proper, neither too much, too little, nor too ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... in extent is made up by its solidity. Minus juvat gloria lata quam magna. I have great satisfaction in considering the delicacy and discernment of those readers I have, and in ascribing my want of popularity to the ignorance or inattention of those I have not. All the world may forsake an author, but vanity will never forsake him. Yet, notwithstanding so sincere a confession, I was once induced to show my indignation against the public, by discontinuing my endeavours to ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... up,—that is, as long as we continue to reiterate the ideas that we hear,—we may remember them; but when our minds flag, or wander; in other words, when we cease to reiterate the ideas of the speaker, the sounds enter our ear, but the matter is gone. All that has been said during that period of inattention has been lost; it never has formed, and never can form, ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... withdrew him from the most regular attendance to public business and the affairs of his kingdom. His knowledge of mankind was profound, and he had sought it in the private walks of life, in which he often personally mingled; and, though naturally proud and haughty, he hesitated not, with an inattention to the arbitrary divisions of society which was then thought something portentously unnatural, to raise from the lowest rank men whom he employed on the most important duties, and knew so well how to choose them, that he was rarely disappointed in their qualities. Yet there were ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... visible. As soon as a rough copy is executed, it should again be considered in all its details, for then alone will it assume the semblance of a picture. In the second place, all these towers, terraces and structures must be distinctly delineated; for with just a trifle of inattention, the railings will slant, the pillars will be topsy-turvy, doors and windows will recline in a horizontal position, steps will separate, leaving clefts between them, and even tables will be crowded into the walls, and flower-pots piled on portieres; and won't it, instead ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... the United States to the other, and be certain of the most courteous and considerate treatment everywhere. Nor did I ever once, on any occasion, anywhere, during my rambles in America, see a woman exposed to the slightest act of rudeness, incivility, or even inattention." Conditions have changed since then. Women had not left their homes to go into offices and factories, but unless we can hold to the standard described by the Englishman, the change has not been for the better, for any of the ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... in front of the cottage, and discovered Mrs. Hunt playing hide-and-seek with Alison and Michael—with Alison much worried by Michael's complete inattention to anything in the shape of a rule. Michael, indeed, declined to be hid, and played on a steady line of his own, which consisted in toddling after his mother whenever she was in sight, and catching her with shrill squeaks of joy. It was perfectly satisfactory to him, but somewhat ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... by the inattention of his servants, was about to rise from his chair to go and learn the reason, and to punish them, when suddenly a low-toned laugh struck on his ears. It startled him, for it was the familiar laughter of his sister—his sister, whom ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... far indeed from paying no attention, or little, to metre and versification. Except in some of his later blank verse, and in a few other cases, his very errors are just as often the result of hazardous experiments as of carelessness and inattention. In one very important matter, that of rhyme, he is perhaps the greatest master in our language; in single and double, in simple and grotesque alike, his rhymes are as accurate as they are ingenious. His lyrical poems contain more structural varieties of ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... deceit, whether prejudice, self-deceit, or the wish to deceive others; nervousness or fear, inducing reticence and concealment of faults, excess of modesty or the occasional tendency of persons of genius to underrate their own powers, inattention to studies, want of application, power to learn too easily, lack of retentive memory, exaggeration and boldness, bad temper, sullenness, disposition to quarrel, cowardice, cruelty, caprice as distinct from versatility, selfishness, greediness, laziness, and its various causes, and generally ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... words, she should be praised into loquaciousness, and so forfeit the good opinion which a person always maintains with her friends, who knows when she has said enough.—It was, finally, a rule with her, 'to leave her hearers wishing her to say more, rather than to give them cause to show, by their inattention, an uneasiness that she ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... the extreme difficulty which sometimes attends the discrimination of ideas of sensation from impressions of sensation, when the ideas are very vivid, or the impressions are faint. Who has not "fancied" he heard a noise; or has not explained inattention to a real sound by saying, "I thought it was nothing but my fancy"? Even healthy persons are much more liable to both visual and auditory spectra—that is, ideas of vision and sound so vivid that they are taken for new impressions—than is commonly supposed; ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... that as possible; never over; and if the child be fed out of doors in its carriage it is well to have a flannel bag of some kind to slip over the bottle to keep it at the same temperature until the meal is finished. Many cases of colic are caused by inattention to ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... slain by a tile thrown from the housetop, and numerous other incidents have occurred in connection with it. The most interesting is the story of the Grecian mother who, with her infant, was on the roof, when, in a moment of inattention, the child crept to the edge, and was balanced on the very verge. To call to it, to touch it, would have insured its destruction; but the mother, without a second's thought, bared her breast, and the child eagerly ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... to her, and she really had nothing to complain of on the score of inattention. Mary, who happened to be the only daughter at home, took her in charge and put her through a steady course of gardens, glasshouses, family pets, and old furniture—for none of which Mittie cared a rap. What she had wanted was a gay young party, plenty of ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... cogitation, consideration, meditation, study, lucubration, speculation, deliberation, pondering; head work, brain work; cerebration; deep reflection; close study, application &c (attention) 457. abstract thought, abstraction contemplation, musing; brown study &c (inattention) 458; reverie, Platonism; depth of thought, workings of the mind, thoughts, inmost thoughts; self-counsel self-communing, self- consultation; philosophy of the Absolute, philosophy of the Academy, philosophy of the Garden, philosophy of the lyceum, philosophy of the Porch. association ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... dare say you are on the verge of a somewhat similar predicament, my boy," he went on. "I am afraid things have reached a crisis, Joe. I have watched it coming on for a year now—your poor scholarship, your carelessness and inattention, your constant desire to be out of the house and away in search of adventures of one ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... goods, so insignificant in bulk, are worth over two lakhs of rupees. A precious load indeed, sir. This delay is naturally a cause of vexation to my distinguished superior, but it is not due to any idleness or inattention on my part. It is caused by the surprising difficulty of getting the dastaks countersigned by the Faujdar {officer in command of troops, and also a magistrate}—Without his signature, as you know, the goods can not be removed. ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... contests were over and that force of circumstances was converting us into a military from a naval nation. The belief in the efficacy of naval defence was not extinct, but it had ceased to operate actively. Even whilst the necessity of that form of defence was far more urgent, inattention to or ignorance of its true principles had occasionally allowed it to grow weak, but the possibility of substituting something else for it had not been pressed or even suggested. To this, however, we had now come; and it was largely a consequence of ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... it, and although the inattention of the young shopmen annoyed them, they sat well sideways in their chairs that they, too, might take a peep at the lady without ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... say, last night, that you had not been apprised of my intention to offer for Westminster on the apprehended vacancy. I am confident you have acted under that impression; but I must impute to you either great inattention to what fell from me in our last conversation on the subject, or great inaccuracy of recollection; for I solemnly protest I considered you as the individual most distinctly apprised, that at this moment to succeed that great man and revered friend in Westminster, should ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... a muballir* on his left opened a copy of the Koran on a cushion on his lap and began to read from it in a nasal singsong. There were various degrees of devoutness, and even of inattention shown by those who listened. Some knelt and prostrated themselves. Others, including Anazeh, sat bolt upright, closing their eyes dreamily at intervals. Over the way, Jim Suliman ben Saoud Grim was especially formally devout. His very life ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... musing dream of meditation, repeating over and over in low sweet tones the holy phrases, and not always rousing himself when his pupil made a remark or asked a question. Yet he was always concerned at his own inattention when awakened, and would apologise in a tone of humility that always made Hal feel grieved and ashamed of having been importunate. For there was a dignity and gentleness about the hermit that always made the boy feel the contrast with his own roughness and uncouthness, ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... treated, the Proprietor wisely insists on a treatment vigorously succinct for each in particular. I myself, it suddenly strikes me, must have been the chief offender against this reasonable law: but my offences were committed in pure ignorance and inattention, faults which henceforth I shall guard against with a penitential earnestness. Reformation meanwhile must begin, I fear, simultaneously with this confession of guilt. It would not be possible (would it?) that, beginning the penitence this month of November, I should ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... both of Scotch and English paper money, whatever vacuities this excessive circulation occasioned in the necessary coin of the kingdom, the Bank of England was obliged to supply them. The Scotch banks, no doubt, paid all of them very dearly for their own imprudence and inattention: but the Bank of England paid very dearly, not only for its own imprudence, but for the much greater imprudence of ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... paste, arrives when it is on the road to aid the convoy, or even simply to pretend to help, in order that when the moment has come he may claim a share in the coveted meal, or even carry it all away if he can profit by a momentary inattention on the part of the lawful proprietor. I followed one of these Coleoptera for more than five metres from the place where his labour began. After having deposited his ball he began to dig up the earth around it;[55] but the ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... interests of his companion, and draw him out; not in that professional way which so-called influential people often acquire—the melancholy confidential smile, the intimate manner, and the air of bland inattention with which they receive your remarks, only to be detected in the fixed or wandering eye. He had learnt the art of being interested in other people, and in what they had to say, and of indicating by a subtle tact in speech that he was following ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... was usually very cheerful and patient with the children, this was a serious matter. Carelessness and inattention were faults that Mother Bunker was always trying to correct. For those two faults, as she pointed out so frequently, led often to much trouble, as in this case. The loss of the wrist watch and the stick-pin could not be ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's • Laura Lee Hope
... was sullen, and at first, of course, he spoke broken French with an Italian accent. Open-mouthed and with sparkling eyes, however, he listened attentively to the first rehearsal of his task; repetition he heartily disliked, and when rebuked for inattention he coldly replied: "Sir, I know that already." On April twenty-first, 1779, Napoleon, according to the evidence of his personal memorandum, left Autun, having been admitted to Brienne, and it was to Marbeuf that in later life he correctly attributed ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... at study, instead of affording you any real instruction, have only given you habits of inattention, which you will find very difficult to overcome; for your eyes have wandered over the page, while your thoughts have been with the fool's, to the ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... he must be at home, as far as the mind of man can be at home, among such things as these, and then he will begin to understand Behmen, and will still strive better and better to understand him; and, where he does not as yet understand him, he will set that down to his own inattention, incapacity, want of due preparation, and want of the proper ...
— Jacob Behmen - an appreciation • Alexander Whyte
... rhythmical faults of the poem, even in these passages. But there is a vast difference between such blemishes of the unrhymed heroic measure as terminating a line with "and," "of," or "but," or inattention to the caesural pauses, and that mathematical precision of foot and accent, which, after all, can scarcely be distinguished from prose. Whatever may be his shortcomings, Mr. Heavysege speaks in the dialect of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... Bentinck, whom the king raised to the dignity of earl of Portland. The English favourite, Sidney, was a man of wit and pleasure, possessed of the most engaging talents for conversation and private friendship, but rendered unfit for public business by indolence and inattention. He was ennobled, and afterwards created earl of Romney; a title which he enjoyed with several successive posts of profit and importance. The stream of honour and preferment ran strong in favour of the whigs, and this appearance ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... Since that he has thought proper to justify himself, not by clearing himself of receiving bribes, but by saying that no bad consequences resulted from it, and that, if any such evil consequences did arise from it, they arose rather from his inattention to money than from his desire ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the second act had begun, more visitors came to pay their respects to Lady Bray, and I endeavoured to recollect myself and shake off a behaviour that might well be construed inattention, if not ill manners; and might injure me even in that point on which I was then so deeply intent. I uttered two or three sentences; and her ladyship complimented me on ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... without reflection, and, therefore, he ate; the doctor helped himself three times, while Madame Caravan, from time to time, fished out a large piece at the end of her fork, and swallowed it with a sort of studied inattention. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... preach ever failed to be startled at first by his tremendous rapidity of delivery—averaging two hundred words a minute—or failed to find himself, at first, lagging behind the equal rapidity of thought. But once accustomed to these—once realizing that, in listening to him there could be no inattention or wandering of wits—his sermon became a source of keenest intellectual delight ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... the girl held more of his attention than the complaint of the don, just then, and that the sting of injustice under which Don Andres squirmed seemed less poignant and vital than the hurt he himself was bearing. He answered him at random; and he might have betrayed his inattention if they had not at that moment caught sight of ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... verses, it is scarcely possible to avoid them; for a considerable part, even of our common language, is composed of iambics. To these, however, the hearer is easily reconciled; because custom has made them familiar to his ear. But through inattention we are often betrayed into verses which are not so familiar;—a fault which may easily be avoided by a course of habitual circumspection. Hieronymus, an eminent Peripatetic, has collected out of the ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... Leslie found to be a very kind but very firm master; while he made every allowance for a boy's incapacity or sheer inability to learn a particular task, he showed no mercy to those who could learn and would not, either from idleness or inattention. There were three other masters beside the doctor, who followed in the steps ...
— Leslie Ross: - or, Fond of a Lark • Charles Bruce
... reminds Messala of the true point in question; Messala proceeds to assign the causes which occasioned the decay of eloquence, such as the dissipation of the young men, the inattention of their parents, the ignorance of rhetorical professors, and the total neglect ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... their persons. Their not expressing that surprise which one might have expected from their seeing men so much unlike themselves, and things, to which, we were well assured, they had been hitherto utter strangers; their indifference for our presents; and their general inattention; were sufficient proofs of their not possessing any ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... wilderness, in which the land was barren, the waters impure, and the air infectious. Yet the number of citizens still exceeded the measure of subsistence; their precarious food was supplied from the harvests of Egypt and Lybia; and the frequent repetitions of famine betray the inattention of the emperors to a distant provice."—GIBBON, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... again once or twice, but her brief replies did not encourage him. At first, he concluded that her inattention and indifference must be due to self-consciousness; then, slightly annoyed, he decided they were not. And, very gradually, he began to realise that the unconventional, always so attractive to the casual young man, did not interest ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... agree in fixing our minds upon something else than war. And since we fix our minds on other things, war becomes possible and probable through our general inattention. We do not observe it, and meanwhile the people who really care for war and soldiering fix their minds upon it. They scheme how it shall be done, they scheme to bring it about. Then we discover suddenly—as the art and social development, the industry and pleasant ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... resumed: "When I sang Sunday, I remembered something that Mr. Bond had said. I was afraid lest some inattention or failure to just grasp and mean the sentiments I sang might make my worship unacceptable. But I remembered that in the Tabernacle service after the priest had done all he could—at the brazen altar, and ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... to fact, that is error; if we so clumsily translate our thoughts as to give a false impression of what we mean, and we do the best we can, that is a blunder; if in a moment of listlessness and inattention we speak in a manner that conflicts with our state of mind, that is temporary mental aberration. But if we knowingly give out as truth what we know is not the truth, ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... said [Footnote: Bernard Berenson, The Central Italian Painters of the Renaissance, pp. 60, et seq.] that "what with the almost numberless shapes assumed by an object. ... What with our insensitiveness and inattention, things scarcely would have for us features and outlines so determined and clear that we could recall them at will, but for the stereotyped shapes art has lent them." The truth is even broader than that, for the stereotyped shapes lent to the world come not merely from ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... demeanour. A rigid observer might have thought, that to this indulgent but indolent master the poor steward owed his ruin; his habits of "forgiving" his tenants their rent debts so often, having extended themselves to the former, further increased by the strange inattention of the new landlord. The gratitude of Bevan was, however, deserved—for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... her to regain her freedom—through inattention or weakness—must then make use of the "counts" familiar to all generations of children, to decide which of them shall take the place ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... or moths were discovered in the hive. Instances of this kind frequently occur, and the true cause is unknown, from inattention. ...
— A Manual or an Easy Method of Managing Bees • John M. Weeks
... but must not, for every moment that voice may reach me from beyond the grave, and I would be recreant to the most sacred obligations, and deep responsibilities that seem now to shape themselves before me, to our common humanity, if I forfeited an instant of inattention. I beg you to remember all this and wait, wait, until the depthless power of my love for you ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... now, and he was bent upon doing what he wished to do. Talbot and the two editors rallied him upon his absence of mind, and even Helen, despite her new interest in Wood, looked a little surprised and perhaps a little aggrieved at his inattention; but none of these things had any effect upon him. His mind was now thrown for the time being into one channel, and he could not turn it ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... observed her with a shrewd eye. In spite of his inattention of the night before, the interest of Miss Mallory's appearance upon the scene at Tallyn had not been lost upon him, any more than upon other people. The rumor had preceded her arrival that Marsham ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... not be had on account of the surrounding rocks or the masses of seaweed with which the water was everywhere encumbered at low tide. This order had been thoroughly impressed upon the men, as carelessness or inattention to it might have proved fatal to ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... of modern occupancy, and vanities of foolish present aristocracy. The same difference of feeling, I think, attends us between entering an empty and a crowded church. In the latter it is chance but some present human frailty—an act of inattention on the part of some of the auditory—or a trait of affectation, or worse, vain-glory on that of the preacher—puts us by our best thoughts, disharmonizing the place and the occasion. But wouldst thou know the beauty of holiness? go ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... listening to your demonstrations; and he says, "Yes, yes, I see, I know, I understand," with trembling eagerness, whilst through the mist and confusion of his fears, he can scarcely see or hear, much less understand, any thing. If you mistake the confusion and fatigue of terror for inattention or indolence, and press your pupil to further exertions, you will confirm, instead of curing, his stupidity. You must diminish his fear before you can increase his attention. With children who are thus, from timid anxiety to please, disposed to exert their faculties ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... case at the disposal of individuals, in the other case at the disposal of political bodies. A concise review of the events that have attended confederate governments will further illustrate this important doctrine; an inattention to which has been the great source of our political mistakes, and has given our jealousy a direction to the wrong side. This review shall form the subject ...
— The Federalist Papers
... dawdling, in fact; and "amusements" are, when they are not excitements, that is to say, stimulations to deficient energy, full of such "doing nothing." Think, for instance, of "amusing conversation" with its gaps and skippings, and "amusing" reading with its perpetual chances of inattention. ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... at its instantaneous effects upon the mind and conduct of their children. The whole aspect of the school was changed; and the children, who had but a few minutes before been conspicuous only for their apathy, restlessness, or inattention, were instantly aroused to life, and energy, and delight. Similar effects in some children are still witnessed; but, happily for education, the first exhibition of it to a whole school is not so common. One striking proof of ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... precaution of binding them down by the most stringent conditions as to their obedience and orderly conduct before admitting them on the same terms as the rest to the common membership of the community—it being clearly put before them that the least lache or inattention to orders would subject them to expulsion, when they would have to shift for themselves and give a wide berth to ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... by the sufferance of his fellows. Thereupon he begins to doubt whether it is worth while to court a verdict of so grave possibilities, or to risk offending a judge—whose customary geniality is merely the outcome of a fixed habit of inattention. In doubt whether to speak or keep silence, he takes a middle course, and while purporting to speak for himself, is careful to lay stress only on the points whereon all are agreed, to enlarge eloquently on the doubtfulness of things, and to give to words the very least meaning ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... certainly is no necessary circumstance, essential to the condition of a slave, that he be uneducated; yet this is the general and almost universal lot of the slaves. Such extreme, deliberate, and systematic inattention to all mental improvement, in so large portion of our species, gives far too much countenance and encouragement to those abject persons who are contented to be rude and ignorant."—Jonathan Boucher's A View ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... father gave Antonie his arm and led her from the room. But Frau von Eschenhagen, already highly incensed, felt that her son's inattention to his sweetheart was an additional insult, and now turned upon poor Willibald in ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... the young girl, surprised, accused him of having profited by her inattention. Julio, trained to seek and find the lost balls, as if they were partridges fallen among the bushes, sprang behind her to get the ball rolling in the grass, seized it in his jaws, and brought it back, ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... time to look round; and he did gaze into one of the basement rooms, in which were several children. It seemed to be used partly for school purposes, and partly for play; it was not certainly the regular study hours, for there was too much inattention, although a governess was present and giving directions. A girl of twelve years old was practising a music lesson; and a younger one, seated at a table, was writing—all three of the inmates too much occupied to observe the young intruder, who was now so near ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers
... mail-carrier had been apprised of the amazing incidents which had occurred during his temporary inattention, he vowed vengeance in a mighty voice, and his threats found echo in the throats of his two companions. But the bartender took them ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... that absent-minded chap, Sir James Jackson, who went to the RIGHT dinner-party by mistake?' he asked, 'and apologized like mad, by Jove! and insisted he couldn't stay. The people nearly had to tie him down in his—' Captain Gordon stopped, arrested by his companion's sudden and complete inattention. ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... the parent because the parent is not really paying attention to the child. We hear ourselves saying, "Look here, you pay attention to me." We say it in desperation because we know that our angry command will not accomplish the desired result. The inattention that we receive from one another discourages us personally and blocks the possibility of the dialogue ...
— Herein is Love • Reuel L. Howe
... day, Sunday, he took her to church, at St. James's in Piccadilly, where they had difficulty in getting seats, and where several pious dowagers were scandalised at the inattention of their male company to the service. Ned walked out alone in the afternoon, but, to his surprise, he was not accosted by any gentleman pretending to recognise him as some one else, as a means of knowing him ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... great mind's grasping it so intently, as he might have grasped an argument by Follett. The mind was intensely receptive, when it was receiving at all. But I remember, too, that, when the great judge began to speak, then his mind was (so to speak) streaming out; and he was particularly impatient of inattention or interruption, and particularly non-receptive of anything that might ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... his new job he did not mean that it should be from inattention, and nothing was too trifling for his notice. He would do the work of a range boss twelve hours out of the day, and then put in extra time on a night ride to the cantina at the south ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... the girls soon found that what their father demanded was application, and that inattention displeased him much more than stupidity. His smile, though rare, was one of the sweetest things in the world, and his approbation was delightful, and gave a stimulus to the entire day's doings. Mysie was more than ever in dread of being handed over to ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he ignored her peculiarities, and talked as though everything must necessarily give her pleasure. Her face proved that at all events the physical influences of this day in the open air were beneficial. The soft breeze had brought a touch of health to her cheek, and languid inattention no longer marked her gaze at sea and shore; she was often absent, but never listless. When she spoke, her voice was subdued and grave; it always caused Mallard to glance in ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... content with the form of the colonial governments, being probably of Pope's opinion that "the system that is best administered is best." In Grenville's opinion, the Massachusetts government was good enough, and all the trouble arose from the inattention of royal officials to their manifest duties and from the pleasant custom of depositing at Governor Bernard's back door sundry pipes of wine with the compliments of Mr. Cockle. Most men in England agreed that such pleasant customs had been tolerated long enough. To their suppression ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... is no such thing as inattention; when pupils appear inattentive, they are singly attentive to something ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... task. She seized a slate, arranged two slate-pencils to work together and expedite her task and wrote: "Elizabeth Bruce detained for inattention." ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... autumn of 1846 wore on, Poe's habits of frequent intoxication and his inattention to the means of support reduced him to much more than common destitution. He was now living at Fordham, several miles from the city, so that his necessities were not generally known even among his acquaintances; but when the dangerous illness of his wife was added to his ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... having attended may occasion some surprise at the deficiency of my scholarship. For this, various reasons are assignable, all of which, however, hinge upon these two formidable obstacles—the inconveniency of local position, and the thoughtless inattention of youth. In remote country places, long and rough ways, conjoined not unfrequently with wild weather, require that children, before they can enter school, be pretty well grown up; consequently, they quit it the sooner. They are ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... occupation of tracing the broguing of her shoes with the long stalk of a chestnut leaf. For a moment she watched the slim brown hand, as carefully intent on this useless task, as if working on a canvas; then she suddenly withdrew her foot, feeling almost vexed with him for his inattention and ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... speech go on, Peter, Mr. Pell and the chairman chatting over the plan, while the contractor went to sleep. The agitator tried to continue, but as the inattention became more and more evident, his speech became tamer and tamer. Finally he said, "That is my opinion," and ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... insignificant chief. Monomoizes was formed from Moiza or Muiza, the singular of the word Babisa or Aiza, the proper name of a large tribe to the north. In the transformation of this name the same error has been committed as in the others; and mistakes have occurred in many other names by inattention to the meaning, and predilection for the letter R. The River Loangwa, for instance, has been termed Arroangoa, and the Luenya the Ruanha. The Bazizulu, or Mashona, are spoken of ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... and harbour. It may be we have been struck with one of fortune's darts; we can scarce be civil, so cruelly is our spirit tossed. Yet long before we were so much as thought upon, the like calamity befell the old man or woman that now, with pleasant humour, rallies us upon our inattention, sitting composed in the holy evening of man's life, in the clear shining after rain. We grow ashamed of our distresses new and hot and coarse, like villainous roadside brandy; we see life in aerial perspective, under the heavens of faith; and out of ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of Carthage were anything but sober, industrious, modest, and orderly youths. They were indocile and turbulent; not only disturbing by their wild pranks the peace of the city, but interrupting by their noisy behavior and inattention the master's discourses and lectures. It was next to impossible to preserve any semblance of discipline in the classes. So Augustine left in disgust and set out for Rome, the ancient mistress of the world. He had been enamoured by her ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... phase in the history of Greek philosophy was a curtailment, but only in the most superficial sense a criticism, of the activity of the philosopher. In the Periclean Age philosophy suffered more from inattention than from refutation. The scepticism of the sophists, who were the knowing men of this age, was not so much conviction as indisposition. They failed to recognize the old philosophical problem; it did not appeal to them as ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... but have a doll with bluer eyes." That's the right temper to work in, and to get work done for you in. But the vain, aged, highly-educated nation is satiated with beautiful things—it has myriads more than it can look at; it has fallen into a habit of inattention; it passes weary and jaded through galleries which contain the best fruit of a thousand years of human travail; it gapes and shrugs over them, and pushes its way past them to ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... concrete ideas, to sympathy, affection and amusement? We may see daily, in nearly every family, parents finding fault with their children, in a vexatious, irritated or sorrowful tone of voice, to which the children reply by inattention, or tears, or more often by a repetition of the same tone of irritation. These scoldings pass through the child's mind without leaving any trace of an effect. Such stereotyped scenes produce in the intelligent observer the painful impression of two ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... some gossip of the servants, and hints dropped by Susy of a violent quarrel between Peyton and Pedro, which resulted in Pedro's dismissal, but which now seemed clearly attributable to some graver cause than inattention and insolence. He recalled Mary Rogers's playful pleasantries with Susy about Pedro, and Susy's mysterious air, which he had hitherto regarded only as part of her exaggeration. He remembered Mrs. Peyton's unwarrantable uneasiness about Susy, which he had either overlooked ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... little cared for; while the profit and encouragement to enterprise on the part of the professional baker was proportionately diminished, since every family of wealth probably prepared its bread at home. But the same inattention to the useful arts runs through everything that they did. Their skill in working metals was equal to ours; nothing can be more beautiful than the execution of tripods, lamps, and vases, nothing coarser than their locks; while at the ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... interest and cooperation of the younger folk he formed a choir wholly of young people and gave them a place in the front of the building. This gave them a feeling of responsibility and overcame to a great extent the possibility of inattention or irreverence on their part. He thought it gave him a better chance of winning them for Christ, and that was his special aim in the meetings, the winning ...
— The Hero of Hill House • Mable Hale
... have," she replied; and Miss Desmond, whose habitual state seemed to be intense inattention to whatever directly addressed itself to her, cut in ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... Wilson availed himself of this privilege, and netted to himself a batch of young coopers, as we have said. So much can one earnest wish to be of real use to a cause or a generation enable a single individual to do! We may be sure that when we talk of our inability to do good, we mean our inattention to means, not our incapacity ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... again so soon, sir. I thought you were on duty; I am glad to have an opportunity of explaining that I never saw you till the moment I left the ball-room, and this lady (pointing to the Duchesse de Montsorel) must be the excuse of my inattention. ...
— Vautrin • Honore de Balzac
... parts. I have even heard surgeons affirm that a gangrenous wound which had been thoroughly cleansed by maggots, healed more rapidly than if it had been left to itself. This want of cleanliness on the part of the nurses appeared to be the result of carelessness and inattention, rather than of malignant design, and the whole trouble can be traced to the want of the proper police and sanitary regulations, and to the absence of intelligent organization and division of labor. The abuses were in a large measure due ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... comprehend how he had missed it, the terrier left the water, stood on the roots of a tree over the entrance to the vole's burrow, and furiously barked instructions to his companions swimming in the pool. Disgusted at last by their inattention to his orders, he plunged headlong into the stream and vanished for a few moments; then he reappeared, proud of his superior bravery, sneezing and coughing, and with a mouthful of stones and soil ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... nature, the origin, the history of the dogmas which you teach. Imposed by authority, inculcated by education, and maintained by example, they pass from age to age, and strengthen their empire from habit and inattention. But if man, enlightened by reflection and experience, brings to mature examination the prejudices of his childhood, he soon discovers a multitude of incongruities and contradictions which awaken his sagacity and ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... by his knowledge of their weakness, and by his command of opportunity. But this is a fault lying rather in the conditions of human life than in political institutions. There is no known mode of making attention and inattention equal in their results. It is enough to say that in England, when the nation can attend, it can prevail. So we may say, then, that in the American Union the Federal Executive is independent for each four years both of the Congress ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... it, so there may be a consciousness of freedom without the reality. It may be regarded as a higher degree of knowledge when we not only know but know that we know. Consciousness is opposed to habit, inattention, sleep, death. It may be illustrated by its derivative conscience, which speaks to men, not only of right and wrong in the abstract, but of right and wrong actions in reference to ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... efforts to entertain their guest, the meal was hurried and uncomfortable. When in repose McNally's face was clouded, and the occasional spells of interest into which he somewhat studiously aroused himself could not conceal his general inattention. Her father, too, was preoccupied, and was so abrupt in his conversation as to leave small trace of the easy lightness of manner ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... The inattention of Pere Grandet, or, to speak more truly, the preoccupation of mind into which the reading of the letter had plunged him, did not escape the vigilance of the notary and the president, who tried to guess the contents of the letter by the almost imperceptible motions of the miser's face, which ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... important consideration in connexion with glueing operations that must not at any time be lost sight of—that of atmospheric temperature. Much trouble may be brought about by inattention to this help or obstruction, for it will act both ways according to circumstances. In the glueing of important parts in the construction of pianofortes, the operators are careful to have the temperature of the surrounding atmosphere sufficiently elevated, as well as ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... of this poem have arisen, not from the misconception of the subject only, but from an inattention to the method of it. The latter was, in part the genuine consequence of the former. For, not suspecting an unity of design in the subject it's interpreters never looked for, or could never find, a consistency ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... made in a true direction,—falls forward on the road, not into the ditch beside it; and they are sure to be corrected by the next comer. But the blunt and dead mistakes made by too many other writers on art—the mistakes of sheer inattention, and want of sympathy—are mortal. The entire purpose of a great thinker may be difficult to fathom, and we may be over and over again more or less mistaken in guessing at his meaning; but the real, profound, nay, quite bottomless, ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... admiral, in order to its being more readily distinguished at a distance, or through smoke, &c. Frigates and small vessels out of the line were deemed repeating ships, and enforced signals by guns. The repeat from a superior intended to convey rebuke for inattention, is usually accompanied by ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... appearance, and they generally indicate thoughtlessness and inattention. To make use of them in order to convey assurances of respect to the person to whom you write, or to those who are intimately connected with him, is particularly improper; it seems to imply that the sentiments you express are so ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... necessary laws. And if we have not yet been able to reduce the movements of mind, like the movements of the planets, to statistics, and have not already obtained accurate prevision of its successions or sequences as we have of physical phenomena, it is simply the consequence of our inattention to, or ignorance of, all the facts. We answer, there are no facts so directly and intuitively known as the facts of consciousness; and, therefore, an argument based upon our supposed ignorance of these facts is not likely to have much weight against our immediate consciousness ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... harmony. In the translation of the Iliad, which has been considered as his masterpiece in style and execution, he continually changes the tenses in the same sentence for the purposes of the rhyme, which shews either a want of technical resources, or great inattention to punctilious exactness. But to ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... unwillingly." When the days are short the school opens before daybreak, and the smoky lamps and lanterns create an evil smell and atmosphere in the raw and chilly morning. That is no time to be amiable towards inattention or stupidity. There were many other circumstances to try the temper, and the Roman temper, except among the highest classes, was, as it is, quick and loud. No real boy who had been a Roman school but knew what it was to have ears pinched and to take his punishment on his hands ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... inquiring what style of accommodation she provided, and could she accommodate me; and strolling up the broken street, while a few larrikins at corners, by way of entertaining themselves and me, made remarks upon my appearance, I dropped it in the post-office, but had to endure a week's inattention at Jimmeny's, and no end of yarns from outside folk I encountered as to how Mrs Jimmeny robbed the "swipes" who took their poison at her bar, before I was honoured by a ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... often resting her little head upon Eveena's knee or mine; generally silent, but never so silent as to seem to be a spy upon our conversation, rather as a favourite child privileged, in consideration of her quietude and her supposed harmlessness and inattention, to remain when others are excluded, and to hear much to which she is supposed not to listen. Having no special duties of her own in the household, she would wait upon and assist Eveena whenever ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... tutela of Nightmare Abbey, the spirit of black melancholy, began to set his seal on her pallescent countenance. Scythrop perceived the change, found his tender sympathies awakened, and did his utmost to comfort the afflicted damsel, assuring her that his seeming inattention had only proceeded from his being involved in a profound meditation on a very hopeful scheme for the regeneration of human society. Marionetta called him ungrateful, cruel, cold-hearted, and accompanied her reproaches with many sobs and tears; poor Scythrop growing every moment more soft and ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... morose, inattention to each other succeeds to the subsidence into their seats, lasting till well into the first entree, but interspersed with remarks such as, "Tom's bad again; I can't tell what's the matter with him!" "I suppose Ann doesn't come ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of the landscape. All the earth was now obscure: stars sparkled in the dome of the sky. From a high, sandy neck their path surmounted, he beheld the minarets of the town, seeming to cut the sky above the sharp sea-line. The timbre of his mother's voice made for inattention like the monotonous shrill note of the cicada; and he had at all times a trick of projecting his wits into the scene around him, whence it needed a shout to re-collect them, as she knew to her grievance. She shouted now, and ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... regulations, inattention to its recommendations, if not disobedience to its authority, not only in individuals but in States, soon appeared with their melancholy consequences—universal languor, jealousies and rivalries of States, decline of navigation and commerce, discouragement ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... was roused for breakfast at sunrise. But MacLeod had said his say. He abhorred vain repetition. Since it takes two to keep an argument going, Thompson's beginning was but the beginning of a monologue which presently died weakly of inattention. When he gave over trying to inject a theological motif into the conversation, he found MacLeod responsive enough. The factor touched upon native customs, upon the fur trade, upon the vast and unexploited resources ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... part, that he should have made even his type of the old feudal order which he execrates so bitterly, a heroic, if ever so little also a diabolic, personage. There is everything that is cruel, merciless, unflinching, in Lantenac; there is nothing that is mean or insignificant. A gunner at sea, by inattention to the lashing of his gun, causes an accident which breaks the ship to pieces, and then he saves the lives of the crew by hazarding his own life to secure the wandering monster. Lantenac decorates him with ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... whom we live, and move, and have our being." That the discovery of this great truth, which lies so near and obvious to the mind, should be attained to by the reason of so very few, is a sad instance of the stupidity and inattention of men, who, though they are surrounded with such clear manifestations of the Deity, are yet so little affected by them that they seem, as it were, blinded with excess ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley
... free from that exacerbated, timid vanity which seals so many vain-glorious lips. He talked to her in his restrained voice, gazing at the tip of her shoe, and thinking that the time was bound to come soon when her very inattention would get weary of him. And indeed on stealing a glance he would see her dazzling and perfect, her eyes vague, staring in mournful immobility, with a drooping head that made him think of a tragic Venus arising before him, not from the foam of ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... guiltless of inattention, for he could not hear; but instead, he made his observations and gave vent to his philosophical reflections as ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... current of contemporary history. There is, however, no lack of such history, and an exhaustive account of the country and age in which the hero of the story lived is given by one of his own nation—a most painstaking and laborious historian. "How shall we excuse the supine inattention of the Pagan and philosophic world to those evidences which were presented by the hand of Omnipotence, not to their reason, but to their senses? During the age of Christ, of his apostles, and of ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... great attention. Kenrick lost no time in issuing A Review of Doctor Johnson's New Edition of Shakespeare: in which the Ignorance or Inattention of that Editor is exposed, and the Poet defended from the Persecution of his Commentators, 1765. Johnson was "above answering for himself," but James Barclay, an Oxford student, replied for him, to his annoyance, in An Examination ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
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