"Absorbed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had now to solve the problem why they should have made three long marches in order to return to their former position. No word came from Jackson to enlighten them. From time to time a courier would gallop up, report, and return to Luray, but the general, absorbed in thought, rode silently across the mountain, perfectly oblivious ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... business. Now," he said, "let us concentrate our attention on him. First let us see whether, by putting our whole minds to it, we can make any impression on his mind whatever. You see how busily he is engaged. He is thoroughly absorbed in his work. That is George all over. Whatever his assignment is, George throws himself right into it, and thinks of nothing else until it ...
— From Whose Bourne • Robert Barr
... floor to escape the first discharge of the tube, and leveled his own. He felt the thing grow hot in his hand, saw a blinding blue-white fire leap into being in the space between them as the rays from the two tubes met and absorbed each other. He shifted, to get out of the line and blast the creature he had too hastily reckoned as dead. But he was not quick enough. A fraction before ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... once went into a Viennese restaurant, and, instead of giving an order, began to write a score on the back of the bill-of-fare, absorbed and unconscious of time and place. At last he asked how much he owed. "You owe nothing, sir," said the waiter. "What! do you think I have not dined?" "Most assuredly." "Very well, then, give me something." "What do ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... me from the soul of my life. [Footnote: "Correspondance," etc., p. 532.] Amidst my absorbing occupations—at the head of my troops, on the march and in the field—my heavenly Josephine ever was foremost in my heart. She occupied my mind; she absorbed my thoughts. If I left you with the impetuosity of the Rhone, I only did so in order to return the sooner to your side. If I ran from my bed at night and continued working, I did so for the purpose of accelerating the moment of our reunion. The most beautiful women surrounded ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... Then he was furious again. He perfectly saw the humour of the situation, but it was not the kind of humour that induced rollicking laughter. He was furious, and employed the language of fury, when it is not overheard. Absorbed by his craft of painting, as in the old Continental days, he had long since ceased to read the newspapers, and though he had not forgotten his bequest to the nation, he had never thought of it as taking ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... absorbed in their work again. Deronda was reading a piece of rabbinical Hebrew under Ezra's correction and comment, and they took little notice when Lapidoth re-entered and took a seat somewhat ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... ago, when a college fraternity absorbed a freshman, the job was worth talking about. There was no half-way business about it. The freshman could tell at any stage of the game that something was being done to him. They just ate him alive, that was all. Why, at Siwash, where I was lap-welded ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... sweet doggie!" cried Rea. She could not believe her eyes. She stopped crying; and she hardly noticed when the Queen herself kissed her in farewell, so absorbed was she in "Fairy" and the blue satin collar. "Oh, you are a very good black man, Signor Jim," she cried. "I never saw such a sweet doggie; I shall carry her in my own arms all the ...
— The Hunter Cats of Connorloa • Helen Jackson
... he said to the lieutenant, "and stuff him underground. I am busy, I am absorbed in work. When I have leisure I will attend to him. You can dig him up again. And I take this opportunity to tell you, Lieutenant, that your visit is most inopportune. For six months you have brought ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... cream puffs so soon after breakfast. The very idea made one shudder. All the same, two minutes later Jose and Laura were licking their fingers with that absorbed inward look that ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... produced by newly discovered art appealed to them strongly. Women, on the other hand, had nothing to do. With the end of the Middle Age, the old-fashioned occupations of women, such as spinning, weaving and embroidering with their maids, went out of existence, and the mechanical work was absorbed and better done by the guilds. Fighting was then a large part of life, but there was something less of the petty squabbling and killing between small barons, which kept their women constant prisoners in remote castles, for the sake of safety; and there was ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... were placed certain sums of money. Looking down, Clarence saw that he was standing before a card that as yet had nothing on it. A single player at his side looked up, glanced at Clarence curiously, and then placed half a dozen gold pieces on the vacant card. Absorbed in the general aspect of the room and the players, Clarence did not notice that his neighbor won twice, and even THRICE, upon that card. Becoming aware, however, that the player while gathering in his gains, was smilingly regarding him he moved in some embarrassment to the other ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... Damaso was committing a sermon, but he must have been absorbed in important things, for he did not offer his hand ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... perhaps because the energy that in many countries goes into the writing of the essay is absorbed in controversy in Ireland that in the past Ireland has produced few essayists. In the battles of the dramatic movement with the patriotic societies and with the official class, Mr. Yeats and Mr. Moore have dealt good blows, and Mr. Russell and "John Eglinton" ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... Siena, where his thoughts had been entirely absorbed in the literary projects which he discussed with his new friend, the grave and good and serious-minded Gori, and one or two Sienese professors, after that first feeling of attraction had died away, and he felt himself covered, ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... social reform the chief concern of all politicians, the idea of a social democracy steadily recedes from the political vision, and the conscious movement to Socialism falters. Socialist workmen in Parliament or on city councils soon find themselves absorbed in the practical work of legislation or administration, and learn that there is neither leisure nor outlet for revolutionary propaganda. The engrossing character of public work destroys the old inclination to break up the existing order, ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... their ears. The Argonauts, powerfully affected by the melody, were making ready to land, when Orpheus perceived the danger, and, to the accompaniment of his magic lyre, commenced one of his enchanting songs, which so completely absorbed his listeners that they passed the island in safety; but not before Butes, one of their number, lured by the seductive music of the Sirens, had sprung from the vessel into the waves below. Aphrodite, however, ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... nothing to cause him fresh anxiety, although he once or twice visited the pond at night. In the daytime his work absorbed his attention, for they were now building a lofty frame on the steepest pitch of the dip. The foot of the longest timber, which was unusually massive, rested in a socket cut in the rock near the water's edge, and it cost them a very ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... every page that Borrow wrote. Perseverance is still more emphasised, because it was the main contribution of Jacob to the human ideal, the quality most lacking in Esau. Tenderness may seem to be less evident; and I know it is a common opinion that Borrow's ideal of life was too self-absorbed to allow of much sympathy with others. I think this view is mistaken. There was undoubtedly a strong stress laid on the duty of protecting one's own life and personality from outside influence, and a corresponding stress on the duty of respect ...
— George Borrow - A Sermon Preached in Norwich Cathedral on July 6, 1913 • Henry Charles Beeching
... to come," said Elizabeth, going to her lunch box and returning with an orange. The bright color attracted the child at once. Elizabeth took her in her arms and began walking up and down. The other passengers, absorbed in their lunches or growling at their own discomfort, ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... Mayo, pacing under the damp gleam of the riding-light, paid but little heed to the hullabaloo. He was too thoroughly absorbed in his own troubles to feel special interest in what his neighbors were doing. He did not even note that a fog-sodden breeze had begun to puff spasmodically from the east and that the ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... unstoppable globe descended through office after office, it neither sought out people nor avoided them. Walls, doors, windows, ceilings, floors and rugs, office furniture and office personnel; all alike were absorbed into and made a part of ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... things when he had so dear and loving a wife as Billy, and so fine and splendid a baby as Bertram, Jr. He told himself, too, that very likely when they were back in their own house again, and when motherhood was not so new to her, Billy would not be so absorbed in the baby. She would return to her old interest in her husband, her music, her friends, and her own personal appearance. Meanwhile there was always, of course, for him, his painting. So he would paint, ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... Absorbed in their talk, they came to an avenue given up to the poorer class of people; with elevated trains rattling by overhead, and rows of little shops along it. Montague noticed a dense crowd on one of the corners, ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... determined to go now in person to the Tuileries, to procure such information as might decide his shattered and irresolute friend. When he was gone, a total silence ensued. Madame d'Auch was absorbed in her fearful enterprise, and Madame d'Henin, finding no one opposed her (for my thoughts were with no one present), walked up and down the room, with hasty movement, as if performing some task. Various persons came and went, messengers, friends, or people upon business. She seized ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... his employer hurried away. English Jim was a young, good-looking man of some education, and, since his promotion from the cook-shed, had indulged himself in a former weakness for tasteful apparel. He had also, though Thurston did not notice it, absorbed just sufficient alcoholic stimulant to render him vivacious in speech without betraying the reason for it, and Millicent, who found him considerably more amusing than Geoffrey, wondered whether, since she had failed with ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... that lit strange gleams across the country without, Felipe could dimly see his father's body, a vague white thing among the shadows. The dutiful son moistened a linen cloth with the liquid, and, absorbed in prayer, he anointed the revered face. A deep silence reigned. Felipe heard faint, indescribable rustlings; it was the breeze in the tree-tops, he thought. But when he had moistened the right arm, he felt himself caught by the throat, a young strong hand held him in a tight ...
— The Elixir of Life • Honore de Balzac
... bench, hearing the spitting rain upon the water below them and watching the leaden mists that slowly gathered over the landscape, Robinette fell upon a moment of soul sickness very unusual to her. Miss Meredith too was silent, absorbed in her own thoughts. ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... fast two days without inconvenience, and had never been hungry but once. What he meant by hungry is not easy to explain, for his every day manner of eating was that of a half-famished man. When at table, he was totally absorbed in the business of the moment; his looks were riveted to his plate, till he had satisfied his appetite; which was indulged with such in-* tenseness, that the veins of his forehead swelled, and generally a strong perspiration was visible. Until he left off drinking fermented liquors altogether, ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... prevail upon the Queen to rescind her resolution, Monsieur reluctantly returned alone to Brussels, where he was soon wholly absorbed by pleasure and dissipation. All his past trials were forgotten. He evinced no mortification at his defeat, or at the state of pauperism to which it had reduced him; he had no sigh to spare for all the generous blood that had been shed in his service; ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... Don Vegal, absorbed in his own researches, soon forgot this singular state of things. He traversed San Lazaro throughout, saw Andre Certa there, enraged and armed, and the Jew Samuel, in the extremity of distress, not for the loss of ...
— The Pearl of Lima - A Story of True Love • Jules Verne
... by, and he thought no more of the meeting. He had reached the copses of Chaville, where, stretched on the ground in a mossy glade, he read once more the last volume of Emile. The delight of reading it had so completely absorbed him that he had ceased to see or hear anything around him. With his cheeks flushed and his eyes moist, he repeated aloud a passage ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... his opposition to evolutionary views, and that Fitton and John Phillips were inclined to support him, but neither of them was ready to come forward boldly as the champions of unpopular opinions. John Herschel, who sympathised with Lyell in all his opinions, was absent at the Cape, Scrope was absorbed in the stormy politics of that day, and it was not till Darwin returned from his South American voyage in 1838, that Lyell found any staunch supporter in the frequent lively debates at the ...
— The Coming of Evolution - The Story of a Great Revolution in Science • John W. (John Wesley) Judd
... his patron, the Duke, and there are many picturesque stories written of its production. It was painted upon the refectory wall of a Dominican convent, the Santa Maria delle Grazie; and at first the work went off well, and the artist would remain upon his scaffolding from morning till night, absorbed in his painting. It is said that at such times he neither ate nor drank, forgetting all but his great work. He kept postponing the painting of two ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... aid, would be buried in the gloom of formless matter. But intellect, and whatever emanates from intellect, is not the foreign, but the proper ornament of the soul, for the being of the soul, when absorbed in intellect, is then alone real and true. It is, therefore, rightly said, that the beauty and good of the soul consists in her similitude to the Deity; for from hence flows all her beauty, and her allotment of ...
— An Essay on the Beautiful - From the Greek of Plotinus • Plotinus
... in the afternoon when Newton arrived at his father's door. To his delight, he perceived through the shop-window that his father was sitting at his bench; but his joy was checked when he perceived his haggard countenance. The old man appeared to be absorbed in deep thought, his cheek resting upon his hand, and his eyes cast down upon the little bench, to which the vice used to be fixed, but from which ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... returning, for the vacation, to the course of reading which I had many years before chosen as especially my own. I have no reason to suppose that the thoughts of Rome came across my mind at all. About the middle of June I began to study and master the history of the Monophysites. I was absorbed in the doctrinal question. This was from about June 13th to August 30th. It was during this course of reading that for the first time a doubt came upon me of the tenableness of Anglicanism. I recollect on ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... illustrations. The scheme, at which the poet was elated, promised at once bread and fame. But, as in so many other instances, he was doomed to bitter disappointment. The increasing stress of the great conflict absorbed the energies of the South; and the promising plan, notwithstanding the poet's popularity, was buried beneath the noise and tumult ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... considerable awe. He did not take much notice of her. It seemed to Stella that he had retired very deeply into his shell of reserve during those days. Even with herself he was reticent, monosyllabic, obviously absorbed in matters of which she ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... passageway and up the curving staircase. Stephen—said her thoughts over and over again— just to get to him,—to put herself in his charge, to awaken from the nightmare of her own fears. Stephen would understand—would make everything right. People noticed her, for even in that self-absorbed crowd, she was a curious figure,—a tall, breathless girl, whose eyes burned feverishly blue in her white face. But Susan saw nobody, noticed nothing. Obstructions she put gently aside; voices and laughter she did not hear; and when suddenly a hand was laid upon her arm, she ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... different man from me. There is such an irony of fate in this! But what is the use of deceiving myself? I am still yoked to my memories. I see before me Aniela, as she appeared to me at Warsaw, as I saw her at Ploszow and Gastein; and I cannot tear myself away from the past. Besides, it has absorbed so much of my strength and life that I am not surprised at it. The difficulty is, not to remember. Every instant I catch myself in the act of thinking about Aniela, and I have to remind myself that she is changed now, that her feelings will be going, have gone already, into another direction, and ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... trotting horse. He never thought of inquiring whether Gibbie had been commissioned by Mrs. Sclater to invite him, or reflected that his studies were not half over for the night. An instant before the arrival of the blessed fact, he had been absorbed in a rather abstruse metaphysico-mathematical question; now not the metaphysics of the universe would have appeared to him worth a moment's meditation. He went pacing up and down the room, and seemed lost to everything. Gibbie shook him ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... near the throne, Lifted his eyes, and lo! he was alone! But all appareled as in days of old, With ermined mantle and with cloth of gold; And when his courtiers came they found him there, Kneeling upon the floor, absorbed in ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... clattered Nat to be immediately absorbed into the embraces of a swarm of relatives who now began to arrive in a steady stream. Old and young, large and small, rich and poor, with overflowing hands or trifles humbly given, all were received alike, all hugged by grandpa, kissed by grandma, shaken ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... qualities was that her interest and her intellect were never wholly absorbed in the passing political questions, but that she could still keep her mind open to other and entirely different subjects. The chamber of her mind seemed to me to be like one of those mysterious apartments about which we read in fairy stories, which were endowed ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... both sat together in silence, and absorbed in their gloomy reflections, and the days passed ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... animal restrictions can be gradually obliterated, how superstition and prejudice must die out of stolid countenances before the steady gaze of republican good-will, how ethnic peculiarities shall subserve the great plan and be absorbed by it. The country no longer will have a conventional creed, that men are more important than circumstances and governments; we always said so, but our opinion was at the mercy of a Know-Nothing club, a slaveholding cabal, a selfish democracy: it will have a living ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... "Pure Duration" (la duree pure), he says, "is the form which the succession of our conscious states assumes when our Ego lets itself live, when it refrains from separating its present state from its former states. For this purpose, it need not be entirely absorbed in the passing sensation or idea, for then, on the contrary, it would no longer 'endure.' Nor need it forget its former states; it is enough that in recalling these states, it does not set them alongside its actual state as one ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... and married Lord Huntingdon, by whom she had four sons and three daughters. From habits of gayety and scenes of dissipation, she became all at once, after a serious illness, grave, reserved, and melancholy. Her thoughts were wholly absorbed by religion, and she employed the ample resources which she possessed in disseminating her principles by the popular arts of Whitefield, Romaine, and others. Not only her house in Park Street was thrown open for the frequent assembling ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... blind to the beautiful sights around him; unmindful, I would venture to lay any wager, of the lessons he had to learn for to-morrow; forgetful of mother, waiting supper, and father preparing a scolding;—absorbed utterly ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... possession. As Ruth clave unto Naomi, so my friend the Philanthropist clave unto me. "Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge." A really kind, good man, full of zeal, determined to help somebody, and absorbed in his one thought, he doubted nobody's willingness to serve him, going, as he was, on a purely benevolent errand. When he reads this, as I hope he will, let him be assured of my esteem and respect; and if he gained any accommodation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... fields more (in one of which he caught his first sight of any of the hounds, in the shape of Ruby, carefully rolling on a dead crow), and then, under the lee of a high bank, he came upon Patsey Crimmeen, the farmers, and the country boys, absorbed in the contemplation of a fight between Tiger, the butcher's brindled cur, and Watty, the ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... open-air room is produced by the stretched carpet of the turf and the firm cushions of the hedges, and a pair of proprietors, perhaps happier than they know, are putting in an afternoon among their tulips, under the flushed apple-trees whose stems are so thin and whose brims so heavy. Are the absorbed couple, at any rate, aware of the surprising degree to which the clustered ruddy roofs of the next small town, over the hedge, off at the left, may remind the fanciful spectator of the way he has seen little dim Italian cities ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... slowly up the hill and down the side streets beneath the pepper and acacia trees of Fremont's beautiful thoroughfares. So absorbed did they become that they did not realize in the slightest where they were going, so that at last they had topped the ridge and, from the stretch of the Sunrise Drive, they looked over into ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... and wealthiest and proudest nation may well go half-way to meet that of its poets. The signs are effectual. There is no fear of mistake. If the one is true the other is true. The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it. ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... in the immense range of the moods in which Nature is seen in the Alps, as least by those who have fully absorbed all the forms, sights, sounds, wonders, and adventures they offer. An hour's walk will show them all in profound contrast and yet in exquisite harmony. The Alps form a book of Nature as wide and ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... their astute prisoner had solved the problem of their destination. As for Boone, he appeared to enter with whole-souled ardor into their project and to be as eager as themselves for its success, seeming so fully in sympathy with them, and so content with his lot, that they absorbed in their enterprise, became less vigilant than usual in watching ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... iron, is very low in carbon; it is tough, and on being broken appears to be made up of a bundle of long fibers. Then the iron was heated to redness for several days in material containing carbon (charcoal) until it absorbed the desired amount, which made it steel, just as case-hardening iron or steel adds carbon to the outer surface of the metal. The carbon absorbed by the iron does not take on a graphitic form, however, as in the case of cast iron, but enters into ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... almost to the center of the valley from each side. Green things grew in the shade under the arches and sparkling waterfalls cascaded down over many of them. A small creek carried the water out of the valley, going out into the chasm a little way before the hot sands absorbed it. ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... vigour. The individuals, as I have said, may or may not deserve punishment, for they are not personally responsible for the general order of things; but they are not unlikely to incur severe penalties, and what we should really hope is that they may be in some way absorbed by judicious medical treatment, instead of extirpated by the knife. At the other end of the scale, we have the parasitic class of the beggars or thieves. They, too, are not personally responsible for the ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... that his regiment was ordered up the country, but she had received no answer to the letter she wrote, describing the services at the church, and the various changes introduced by the vicar. Her aunt had, in the meantime, become less agreeable and communicative even than before. She was constantly absorbed in the books lent her by Mr Lerew, and she very frequently drove over to the Vicarage to see him. Clara had at first felt but little interest in the two works he had presented to her; she had glanced over their pages, and was somewhat startled at the language ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston
... arranged less than artistically gives one a sensation of discomfort. A traveler relates that in a hotel in Brussels he saw window curtains of a delicate pattern; and, since that time, he has sought in many cities for curtains that will fill the measure of the ideal he absorbed in that hotel. Beauty is not in the thing itself, but in the eye of the beholder, and the eye is but the interpreter of the ideal. One person rhapsodizes over a picture that another turns away from, because the latter has absorbed an ideal that is ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... diminished, without our attention or consciousness, in the same manner as the various secretions of fruit, gum, resin, wax, and, honey, are produced in the vegetable world, and as the juices of the earth and the moisture of the atmosphere are absorbed ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... under the circumstances, must win him the respect of master star-star pilots from the Rim. Though Dane doubted whether if they lost, that skill would bring Shannon anything but a long term in the moon mines. The actual jar of their landing contact was mostly absorbed by the webbing of their shock seats and they were on their feet, ready to move almost ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... lying very still, but she will neither speak nor eat. I don't even think she is crying,' said Molly, volunteering this account, for the squire was for the moment too much absorbed in his grandson ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... they were half way to the village, Marcella's uncomfortable feelings had all passed away. Without knowing it, she was becoming too much absorbed in her companion to be self-critical, so long as they were together. It seemed to her, however, before they had gone more than a few hundred yards that he was taking advantage—presuming on what had happened. He offended her taste, her pride, her ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the close of the Civil War, the end of that struggle having found him—for reasons he was never eager to explain—a far richer man than its beginning. He had built the house, not on his own old farm, which was already being absorbed into the suburban portion of the city, but on a ten-acre plot in County Street, which, with its rich bordering fields, its overarching elms, and its lofty sites, was revealing itself even then as the predestined quarter of the wealthy. So long ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... had taken off his cap to her became supremely unimportant. Unluckily the piece of flood-ice was not endless and she had to come back. He was circling around an orange, and she, throwing herself instinctively on to the outside edge, came down towards him in great, sweeping curves, absorbed in the delight of this motion, so new yet so perfectly under her control. Ian Stewart, perceiving that the girl was absolutely unconscious of his presence, blushed in his soul to think that he had been induced to believe himself ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... I must tell you of—"A Musical Story by Chopin"—the boy playing to a group of lads and a tutor. His utterly absorbed face is admirable. It is a very pretty thing. Not marvellous, ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... sensation as they proceeded to their box and more yet when they entered it. They were late—very late—as is the privilege of all box parties and their seating problem absorbed the audience to a degree never ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... call soldiers to "attention"; bring forward &c. (make manifest) 525. Adj. attentive, mindful, observant, regardful; alive to, awake to; observing &c. v.; alert, open-eyed; intent on, taken up with, occupied with, engaged in; engrossed in, wrapped in, absorbed, rapt, transfixed, riveted, mesmerized, hypnotized; glued to (the TV); breathless; preoccupied &c. (inattentive) 458; watchful &c. (careful) 459; breathless, undistracted, upon the stretch; on the watch &c. (expectant) 507. steadfast. [compelling attention] interesting, engrossing, mesmerizing, riveting. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... my brother," he went on, and he turned his gaze from her face and looked at the finger-nails of his left hand with an absorbed attention. "He is, however, so much younger than myself that he has almost been like my son. You will give me credit, I am sure, for not wishing to disparage Reginald, when I tell you that this is not by any means the first time Reginald has thought of marriage." ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... acknowledgment to the vigorous clapping of hands and the hearty "Welcome, Miss Minturn, to Hilton." Then Miss Reynolds led her away, and the interrupted chatter of the magpies was resumed with redoubled animation, but now the new junior absorbed ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... every day, both because of the extraordinary fertility of his own plans and ideas, and because the Science Community was growing so rapidly. Among this heterogenous mass of proselyte strangers that poured into the city and was efficiently absorbed into the machine, it was yet difficult to find executives, leaders, men to put in charge of big things. And he needed constantly more ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... rejoicing and possessing, devoid of all busy imaginations and forced reflections; it was a prayer of the will, and not of the head. The taste of God was so great, so pure, unblended and uninterrupted, that it drew and absorbed the power of my soul into a profound recollection without act or discourse. I had now no sight but of Jesus Christ alone. All else was excluded, in order to love with the greater extent, without any selfish ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... spirit. If I differ with the greatest respect from your Nicaraguan enthusiasm, it is not because a nation or ten nations were against you; it is because civilisation was against you. We moderns believe in a great cosmopolitan civilisation, one which shall include all the talents of all the absorbed peoples—" ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... the interest of the community was suddenly withdrawn by an event which instantly absorbed all attention, and struck terror into every household. In the little town of Pine Level, a village situated a few miles from Montgomery, traces were discovered of a plot having for its object a general uprising of the negroes on ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... always eyeing the baskets at picnics, and the supper-table at parties. And then he never openly takes what he wants,—as Hugh does for instance,—but he always pretends he does not care for anything, that he is too much absorbed in intellectual conversation to attend to anything so sublunary as eating, while all the time he is gloating over the nice things, and sure to outstay everybody at the table. The very way he gets a piece of cake is a study. He never takes it boldly, like any one else, but eyes it awhile; ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... President Davis called upon the Governors of the Southern States for conscripts, and obtained no great number, for the mass of the men had volunteered. The world at large looked on, now and henceforth, with an absorbed regard. The struggle promised to be Homeric, memorable. The South was a fortress beleaguered; seven hundred thousand square miles of territory lost and inland as the steppes of Tartary, for all her ports were blocked by Northern men-of-war. Little news from the fortress escaped; ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... satisfaction they adjourned once more to the library, where, while Mr Rimbolt took a brief nap, he regaled himself with the luxury of a prowl among the bookshelves, by the light of the dawning day. So absorbed was he in this occupation that he did not hear the sound of the dog-cart at the front door, or heed Mr ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... in the scene from which Richard would, oftentimes, have recoiled. To-day he was selfish, absorbed to the point of callousness. If he remarked them at all, it was in bitter welcome, as he had welcomed the chill and staring blankness of the fog. He was indifferent to the fact that Chifney was harsh, the horses testy or wicked, that ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... them, with its farm and its technical training, besides its invitation to the offices of schoolmaster and deacon? If the missionaries' sons were endowed with land of their own, would they not be so much absorbed with its management as to be insensible to the charm of community life and the call of the ministries of the Church? Such thoughts seem to have been working in the mind of the bishop from the time of his arrival, and ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... flower betrothed to the nightingale—of the geranium blazing in scarlet beauty,—till, on approaching the place of promise, he caught a glance of the maid he loved—and, lo! she sate there in the sunlight, absorbed in thought; a book was on her knee, and at her feet lay the harp whose chords had been for his ear so often modulated ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... Asmoneans, and that of Herod, saw the excitement grow still stronger. They were filled by an uninterrupted series of religious movements. In the degree that power became secularized, and passed into the hands of unbelievers, the Jewish people lived less and less for the earth, and became more and more absorbed by the strange fermentation which was operating in their midst. The world, distracted by other spectacles, had little knowledge of that which passed in this forgotten corner of the East. The minds abreast of ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... and going to Mr. Rushton's door, knocked and opened it. The lawyer was not there; Verty looked round—his companion was absorbed ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... felt in his dinner-coat pocket for a cigarette and strolled out onto the wide, semidark veranda, where couples were scattered at tables, filling the lantern-hung night with vague words and hazy laughter. He nodded here and there at the less absorbed and as he passed each couple some half-forgotten fragment of a story played in his mind, for it was not a large city and every one was Who's Who to every one else's past. There, for example, were Jim Strain and Ethel Demorest, who had been privately engaged for three years. Every one knew that as ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... deification of believing humanity, but here he always managed to keep his language essentially within the limits of the Biblical. The various acting aeons of the Gnostics became to him different stages in the saving work of the one Creator and his Logos. His system seemed to have absorbed the rationalism of the Apologists and the intelligible simplicity of their moral theology, just as much as it did the Gnostic dualism with its particoloured mythology. Revelation had become history, the history of ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... The Middleman Willard had to impersonate an inventor, of the absorbed, enthusiastic, self-regardless, fanatical kind. Cyrus Blenkarn is a potter. His genius and his toil have enriched two persons named Chandler, father and son, who own and conduct a porcelain factory in an English town of the present day. Blenkarn has two daughters, and one of them is taken ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... journalists who as such, strictly speaking, have surpassed him. Minds not devoted to particular doctrines, not absorbed in the advocacy of cherished ideas—in a word, minds that believe little and aim only at the passing success of a day—may easily excel one like him in the preparation of a mere newspaper. Mr. Greeley was the antipodes of all such persons. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... told them some thrilling Indian tales, and so interested were his hearers that they gathered close about him, and listened in absorbed silence. ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... Windmill Street, and the relative merits of those establishments over the Casino de Venise in High Holborn. Nor did morning produce any change for the better, for Sir Harry and all the captains came down in their usual flashy broken-down player-looking attire, their whole thoughts being absorbed in arranging for a pool at billiards, in which the ladies took part. So with billiards, brandy, and ''baccy,'—''baccy,' brandy, and billiards, varied with an occasional stroll about the grounds, ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... sense, and was even applied to disbelievers in the apostolical succession.[278] Dr. Parker writes, "Another cause which acted, together with the natural disposition of Cardan, to produce that odd mixture of folly and wisdom in him, was his habit of continual thinking by which the bile was absorbed and burnt up; he suffered neither eating, pleasure, nor pain to interrupt the course of his thoughts. He was well acquainted with the writings of all the ancients—nor did he just skim over the heads and contents of books as some do who ought not to be called learned men, but skilful bookmongers. ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... if not very original as a comic designer, possessed nevertheless a keen sense of humour. One of his pictures (engraved by H. Rolls), entitled Time and Tide Wait for no Man, represents an artist, sketching by the sea-shore, so absorbed in the contemplation of nature that he remains unconscious of the fast inflowing tide, and deaf to the warnings of the fisherman who is seen hailing ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... her filling reams of foolscap paper with choice specimens of prose and poetry; intelligent sympathy with his work is all he demands, and a loving, restful companion, who will soothe his hours of depression, who is never too weary or self-absorbed to listen to the story ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... white sails flashed across the sea. One of these arrested the attention of Buttons, and so absorbed him that he stared fixedly at it for half ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... her in the adjoining room, absorbed in the music; and luckily there was an empty chair beside her, into which he quietly dropped. She smiled her welcome as he sat down beside her, but she had accepted her young countryman into too good a friendship ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... student, the cosmographer, and, with the gentle dignity inseparable from this man who had appeared before kings and at courts, he compliments his host upon his collection. They are soon in earnest consultation, scanning the sea-charts, quoting authorities, advancing theories, becoming so absorbed as to ignore the yawning hangers-on of the admiral's staff, who soon retire, one after another, leaving the ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... raw meat. After 3 hrs. 20 m. there was no change, but when next examined after 23 hrs. 20 m., the outer cells of the glands contained, instead of limpid fluid, spherical masses of a granular substance, showing that matter had been absorbed from the infusion. That these glands secrete a fluid which dissolves or digests animal matter out of the bodies of the creatures which the leaves capture, is also highly probable from the analogy of Dionaea. If we may trust to the same analogy, the concave and inner portions of the two lobes ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... of the clock at Bath, two rounds and a half, in fact, in that we did not leave until the second morning after our arrival, and absorbed as much of the spirit and association of the place as was possible, including sundry gallons of the ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... known under one common name as Assyria. It is in that country that amid its abundance of fruits and ordinary crops, there is a lake named Sosingites, near which bitumen is found. In this lake the Tigris is for a while absorbed, flowing beneath its bed, till, at a great ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... new-lit cigar in his teeth. As he passed the dairy-house, he saw Hilma standing in the doorway, holding out her hand to the rain, her face turned upward toward the grey sky, amused and interested at this first shower of the wet season. She was so absorbed that she did not see Annixter, and his clumsy nod ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... the younger children are at present absorbed in various pets, perhaps the foremost of which is a puppy of the most orthodox puppy type. Then there is Jack, the terrier, and Sailor Boy, the Chesapeake Bay dog; and Eli, the most gorgeous macaw, with a bill that I think could bite through boiler plate, who crawls all over Ted, and whom ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... a tour at night I had absorbed what seemed at one moment the unrealness and at another the stern, unyielding reality of the scenes. The old French territorial, with wrinkled face and an effort at a military mustache, who came out of his sentry box at ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... his bed reading, and was so absorbed that he did not see them enter. But Fritz stepped up boldly to the bed and laid the ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... 1894 Westinghouse had rejected a dazzling scheme of uniting the two institutions on an immense capitalization which would have absorbed millions and millions of the people's savings and earned millions in commissions for its projectors. Wall Street's indignation at his hardihood knew no bounds, and at the time of which I write the yegg-men of the "System" were laying for him ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... not repel his travelling instincts. A superior London he does not credit or desire; but what he seeks is not a superior, it is a different, life;—not new degrees of old things, but new kinds of experience are what he asks. His scale of conception is ampler; whereas, generally, the Frenchman is absorbed into one ideal. Why else is it, that, after you have allowed for a few Frenchmen carried of necessity into foreign lands by the diplomatic concerns of so vast a country, and for a few artists travelling in quest of gain or improvement, we hear of no French travellers as a class? And ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... that some valuable ore had been struck in the region where the secret mine of the dead prospector was said to be located. This kept making him take more and more interest in the finding of Steven and the lost paper. He became absorbed in the hunt, and in the end had three men on ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... Town. They would have gone that way, on to Big Run, San Ramon and down to the railroad. In such a case he would have word of them in the mining-camp. In his present mood he required only a few minutes to come to the new settlement. Had he been less absorbed in his own thoughts he must have been amazed at what he saw about him. He had known men before now to make towns upon dry bare ground and in a mere handful of days; not even he, with his first-hand knowledge of such venturings, had ever seen the like of ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... first pioneers were followed at intervals by continual immigrations of Arabs not only from Arabia but also across the deserts from Egypt and Marocco. The element thus introduced has spread and is spreading throughout the Soudan, as water soaks into a dry sponge. The aboriginals absorbed the invaders they could not repel. The stronger race imposed its customs and language on the negroes. The vigour of their blood sensibly altered the facial appearance of the Soudanese. For more than a thousand years the influence of Mohammedanism, ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... of the photoplays. Only when the war broke out, the great wave of excitement swept away this apathy. The pictures from the trenches, the marches of the troops, the life of the prisoners, the movements of the leaders, the busy life behind the front, and the action of the big guns absorbed the popular interest in every corner of the world. While the picturesque old-time war reporter has almost disappeared, the moving picture man has inherited all his courage, patience, sensationalism, ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... as white and delicate as any young lady from the Saint-Marc quarter. He married her. On his part it was a love match, free from all sordid motives. As for Ursule, she accepted the marriage in order to escape a home where her eldest brother rendered life intolerable. Her mother, absorbed in her own courses, and using her remaining energy to defend her own particular interests, regarded the matter with absolute indifference. She was even glad of Ursule's departure from the house, hoping that Pierre, now that he had no further cause for dissatisfaction, ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... and more how tenacious is the life of races, how firmly they cling to their earliest dwellings. And though we read of races perishing before invaders, this is the mere boasting of conquerors; more often the newcomers are absorbed among the earlier race, and nothing distinctive remains of them but a name. We have abundant evidence to show that at the present day, as throughout the last three thousand years, the four races we have described continue to make ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... numbed by the journey, and stood with the rug bundle in her hand looking about her, half undecided what to do, half absorbed by the bustle and movement ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... he made no answer,—re-absorbed into his cloud. I caught Something like "Yes—courage: only fools will call it fear." If aught Comfort you, my great unhappy hero Clive, in that I heard, Next week, how your own hand dealt you doom, and uttered just the word "Fearfully courageous!"—this, be ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... many objects are right now in the corner of your mind's eye as being within the scope of your vision while your entire attention is apparently absorbed in these lines. You see these other things, and you can look back and realize that you have seen them, but you were not aware of ...
— The Trained Memory • Warren Hilton
... the elements; for flesh differs in species from any of its elements. And thus Christ would be of the same nature neither with His Father nor with His Mother. Thirdly, because there can be no mingling of things widely apart; for the species of one of them is absorbed, e.g. if we were to put a drop of water in a flagon of wine. And hence, since the Divine Nature infinitely exceeds the human nature, there could be no mixture, but the Divine Nature alone ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas |
