"Abstracted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I'll never tell a story about it, but I don't see any harm in just getting the things away and saying nothing. 'Taint as if you were throwing the blame on somebody else," pursued Meta, gathering up the articles abstracted from the closet and replacing them, as nearly as possible ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... evidently always on the watch. In Bond Street especially, where much of their business lay, her eyes were in constant inquiry; and in whatever shop the party were engaged, her mind was equally abstracted from every thing actually before them, from all that interested and occupied the others. Restless and dissatisfied every where, her sister could never obtain her opinion of any article of purchase, however it might equally concern them both: she received no pleasure from anything; ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... name to her, and a girlhood, lonely and brightened chiefly by the companionship of books, had not given her self-confidence. She had casually met Lady Manorwater at some political meeting in her father's house, and the elder woman had taken a strong liking to the quiet, abstracted child. Then came an invitation to Glenavelin, accepted gladly yet with much fear and searching of heart. Now, as she looked out on the shining mountain land, she was full of delight that she was about to dwell in the heart of it. Something of pride, too, was present, that she was to be ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... with revelations and predictions, frightened all the vassals with blue lights and chemical illusions, and venturing even into the usurper's own private chamber, while the tyrant was tossing restless on the couch, over which hung his terrible sword, abstracted from his coffer the deeds that proved the better rights of the persecuted Bandit! Then, when he woke before she could escape with her treasure, and pursued her with his sword, with what glee she apparently set herself on fire, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... matter and form, with Aristotle, corresponds to the opposition between the element of generality and the element of particularity. Matter is indeterminate; form is determinate. Matter, abstracted from form, in thought, is entirely without predicate and distinction; form is that which enters into the definition of every subject, and without which it could not be defined. Matter is capable of the widest diversity of forms, but ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... we may gather, not only that Chaucer was, as the "Host" of the Tabard's transparent self-irony implies, small of stature and slender, but that he was accustomed to be twitted on account of the abstracted or absent look which so often tempts children of the world to offer its wearer a penny for his thoughts. For "elfish" means bewitched by the elves, and hence vacant ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... little abstracted, and turned as if to go. "I think you'll do well to rest a while just now, and keep as close hid as possible until afternoon. The trail is a mile away at the nearest point, but some one might miss it and stray over here. You're quite safe if you're careful, and stand by the ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... up two large caskets with your own jewels, those of Cacama, and some of the most valuable stones and jewels from the royal treasury—leaving all the royal ornaments worn on state occasions, so that the usurper will not know that any have been abstracted." ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... at first one and then the other. "This is very good of you. I don't often find people treat me so kindly as this. You see, I am such an abstracted, dreamy man. I devote myself so much to my studies that I think of nothing else. My friends have given me up, and—and I'm afraid they laugh at me. I am writing, you see, a great work upon the old Roman occupation of—. Dear me! I'm wandering ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... Lillyvick was intent upon the game in progress, and as all should be fish that comes to a water-collector's net, the dear old gentleman was by no means scrupulous in appropriating to himself the property of his neighbours, which, on the contrary, he abstracted whenever an opportunity presented itself, smiling good-humouredly all the while, and making so many condescending speeches to the owners, that they were delighted with his amiability, and thought in their hearts that he deserved to be Chancellor ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... in Egypt. At any rate here is the picture of the Family in its patriarchal form, wholly separated from other connections and set apart by itself, on the brass-bound precipitous island. The Family is abstracted from the rest of the world ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... whenever you sell the liberty of a man, you have the power only of alluding to the body: the mind cannot be confined or bound: it will be free, though its mansion be beset with chains. But if, in every sale of the human species, you are under the necessity of considering your slave in this abstracted light; of alluding only to the body, and of making no allusion to the mind; you are under the necessity also of treating him, in the same moment, as a brute, and of abusing therefore that nature, which cannot otherwise ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... with food and drink, and my companion said that after all I must surely have seen some good acquaintance of mine, some little friend or other - for I was so quiet, so abstracted and yet ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... die some day," was the abstracted answer. "Hardly an original observation, is it? But it would be folly to let such a chance pass, and I must try to spare you. If you really feel it, I sympathize with you, and had no intention of wounding your sensibilities, but as, unfortunately, circumstances force us to consider these questions ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... the influence of grateful feelings; and his cheerful vivacity and private worth caused him to stand highly in the estimation of those who were honoured by a participation in his hours of recreative enjoyment. The necessary consequence of his abstracted devotion to the service of the settlement, for a long period, was the obtainment of a thorough knowledge of every subject connected with its welfare; and in the application of that knowledge to the practical improvement of the settlement, no man could have been more happy, none ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann
... was much worried when he learned that Merrick had fallen in with a captain of a tramp vessel who was ready to go on a hunt for the treasure. And he was still more worried when Dick told him of the letters which had been abstracted from his coat pocket by the thieves. Among them was one from Mrs. Stanhope mentioning the treasure hunt and how she would be on hand at Philadelphia to board the steam yacht with Dora and ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... takes out; you know it by its large, flat head. It seems sleepy and stupid, but its bite is deadly. It is possible, of course, that he has abstracted the poison-fangs which make its bite fatal, but even without them I shouldn't care to handle it. It is a huge beast, seven or eight feet long I should guess. See how he teases it; he is making it rise up on its coils and swing this ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... the direct empiricist argument for phenomenalism, Berkeley now gives the rationalistic motive an opportunity to express itself in the queries of Hylas as to whether there be not an "absolute extension," somehow abstracted by thought from the relativities of perception. Is there not at least a conceivable ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... through the spectator who surveys it from below. This feat Byron performed one Sunday morning, while the heads of the dons and dignitaries were yet buried in their pillows, 'full of the foolishest dreams.' He had abstracted three surplices from the college chapel, which he bore with him along the dangerous route I have described. When the bell, at eight o'clock, rung out its deep-toned summons to the usual morning devotions, and the fellows ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... hard-hearted man," she cried, and left him in high dudgeon, to disappear into the garden. As the gate closed behind her, John Parker drew forth his pocket book and abstracted from it a hundred-dollar bill, which he ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... Jim Smith, in appropriating his uncle's wallet, abstracted therefrom a five-dollar bill before concealing it ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... there must be servants. These conditions of men in society are like the electrical power in nature, which never indicates its positive qualities without creating corresponding negations; and which, when equally diffused, exhibits no phenomena. If then men are rich merely because they have abstracted or absorbed the wealth of others, their obligations, as moral and sympathetic creatures towards those by whose abasement they are exalted, can require no formal proof. The laws may allow, and the arrangements of society may require, as a condition of civilization, ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... man when he yields for the first time to the fatal fascination of the lottery. He may fail time after time, but continue to hug the delusion that the next time will bring him luck. There are clerks in New York and other large cities who have not only squandered all their own savings, but abstracted money from their employers, led on by ...
— Sam's Chance - And How He Improved It • Horatio Alger
... pope himself, above three hundred years since, and they say it is the self-same vessel still, tho often put upon the careen and trimmed. This made me think of that famous ship at Athens; nay, I fell upon an abstracted notion in philosophy, and a speculation touching the body of men, which being in perpetual flux, and a kind of succession of decays, and consequently requiring, ever and anon, a restoration of what it loseth of the virtue of the former ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... iron of the quality of charcoal iron. An important feature in the process is, that by stopping it at a particular stage, immediately following the boil, before the whole of the carbon has been abstracted by the oxygen, the crude iron will be found to have passed into the condition of cast-steel of ordinary quality. By continuing the process, the metal losing its carbon, it passes from hard to soft steel, thence to steely iron, and last of all to very soft iron; so that by interrupting ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... murmured a polite "Well, I'm sure that's fine!"; but the words were plainly abstracted, and the frown had not left his brow. Nor did it quite leave till some time later, when Billy, in answer to a question of his about another operetta, cried, ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... that it is through Brahman that all the gods and all the senses of man could work. The whole process of Upani@sad thought shows that the magic power of sacrifices as associated with @Rta (unalterable law) was being abstracted from the sacrifices and conceived as the supreme power. There are many stories in the Upani@sads of the search after the nature of this great power the Brahman, which was at first only imperfectly realized. They identified it with the dominating power ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... Abstracted. Surprisingly for a sedentary profession, more hackers run to skinny than fat; both extremes are more common ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... room with a weary abstracted look,—he was much worn by watching,—and, seeing that he was in no mood for words, I took up a book which lay upon the table. It chanced to be one of Alger's, which somebody had lent to the Doctor ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... then make will not concern its original and genuine beauty. Every work of art is jealous; to appreciate it aright, you must for the moment appreciate it singly, without thought of another. Finally, the impressionist or skeptic would maintain that an alleged aesthetic principle would necessarily be abstracted from extant works of art; hence could not be applied to new art. A thing which does not belong within a class cannot be judged by principles governing that class. In so far, therefore, as a work of art is original, it must frustrate ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... from the inside of the corral. She opened one of them, seized upon the first lamb at hand and put it in, and when the fond mother put her nose in after it Janet gave her a good push from behind and sent her in also; then she abstracted the rightful lamb and put the other in its place. Having closed the opening she climbed over the fence and sat down on the prairie beside the pen where she could look in between the rails and ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... from the circulation of a portion of its vital fluid: and whether it be pus or serum that is drawn from the body; or whether it be from any permanent failure in the supplies of nutriment to it, the effect will be the same, as if a certain quantity of blood was daily abstracted from the system." ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... earnestness. And the daughter from the window and the wife from her work directed tender, anxious eyes towards the still, thoughtful form so dear to both. For the last day or two, Riccabocca had been peculiarly abstracted, even to gloom. Each felt there was something stirring at his heart,—neither, as yet, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... abounding in their university erudition, are apt to fill their sermons with philosophical terms and notions of the metaphysical or abstracted kind, which generally have one advantage, to be equally understood by the wise, the vulgar, and the preacher himself. I have been better entertained, and more informed by a chapter[10] in the "Pilgrim's Progress," than by a long discourse upon the will and ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... Venetian landscape, on the other hand, has in its material conditions much which is hard, or harshly definite; but the masters of the Venetian school have shown themselves little burdened by them. Of its Alpine background they retain certain abstracted elements only, of cool colour and tranquillising line; and they use its actual details, the brown windy turrets, the straw-coloured fields, the forest arabesques, but as the notes of a music which duly accompanies the presence of their men and women, presenting us with ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... he preferred to be left alone. He had moved a little away from his son, and sat scarcely ten feet distant on my left. When the jury returned, in less than half an hour, he bent upon them the same abstracted gaze and unmoved countenance. ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... easily imagine the light necessarily shining in them as the culmination of the luminous workmanship around. The groundwork of the face was hopefulness; but over it now lay like a foreign substance a film of anxiety and grief. The grief had been there so shortly as to have abstracted nothing of the bloom, and had as yet but given a dignity to what it might eventually undermine. The scarlet of her lips had not had time to abate, and just now it appeared still more intense by the absence of the neighbouring and more transient colour ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... fields of breezy grass Where black-wing'd swallows haunt the glittering Thames, To bathe in the abandon'd lasher pass, Have often pass'd thee near Sitting upon the river bank o'ergrown: Mark'd thine outlandish garb, thy figure spare, Thy dark vague eyes, and soft abstracted air; But, when they came from bathing, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... he writes, with the glow of his first enthusiasm still upon him, 'and opened my eyes to the light only to be conscious of my high pursuit. I sprang from my bed, dressed like one possessed, and passed the day, noon, and the night, in the same dream of abstracted enthusiasm; secluded from the world, regardless of its feelings, impregnable to disease, insensible to contempt.' He painted his heads, figures, and draperies over and over again, feeling that to obliterate was the only way to improve. His studio soon filled with fashionable folk, ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... expand against and to get up velocity in itself. The jet of steam is then made to impinge against vanes or to react against the moving orifice from which it issues, in either of which cases its velocity and energy are more or less completely abstracted and appropriated by the revolving member. The Parsons turbine utilizes a combination of ...
— Steam Turbines - A Book of Instruction for the Adjustment and Operation of - the Principal Types of this Class of Prime Movers • Hubert E. Collins
... was always in the evening that he had most longed to see "his girl"; when the day's work was done; when the political and financial stress had subsided; or when he had abstracted himself from it all and turned his face towards home. For the big place in Park Lane had really been home to him, chiefly because, or alone because, Jasmine had made it what it was; because in every room, in every corner, was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the penalty of such sacrilege: but "the Republic has nothing to fear," said Caesar; "I have released it from its oaths by subjugating Gaul. There are no more Gauls." He caused the door to be forced, and the treasure was abstracted and distributed to the troops, Gallic and Roman. Whatever Caesar may have said, there were still Gauls, for at the same time that he was distributing to such of them as he had turned into his own soldiers the money reserved for the expense of fighting them, he was imposing upon Gallia ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... spirit, in beauty, in dress, and now estranged,—one naive and thoughtful, the other thoughtful and gravely abstracted,—were far too preoccupied to think of giving the order awaited by the courtiers for the amusements of the evening. The carefully concealed drama, played for the last six months by the mother and son was more than suspected by many of the courtiers; ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... began by avoiding each other's look. Samuel seemed indisposed for conversation; he sipped at a cup of tea with an abstracted and somewhat weary air, ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... gratified by this, though he made no remark to that effect and continued to preserve his abstracted look and quiet demeanor. So Sweetwater waited, and while waiting managed to steal a glimpse at the small object to which his professional friend still ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... feat of entertaining at a restaurant a cynosure like Irene Wheeler. George had expected quite another sort of company at dinner, for he had publicly dined with Lucas before. All day he had been abstracted, listless, and utterly desolate. All day he had gone over again and again the details of the interview with Mr. Haim, his telegram to Marguerite and her unspeakable telegram to him, hugging close a terrific grievance. Only from pique against Marguerite had he accepted ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... speech, partly because he is not attending to it himself, his thoughts being busy with the approaching crisis of his fortune, and drawn away to the other matters which he has in hand, and partly because in her trance of wonder at what he is relating she seems abstracted and self-withdrawn from the matter of his discourse. His own absent-mindedness on this occasion is aptly and artfully indicated by his broken and disjointed manner of speech. That his tongue and thought are not beating time ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... and turning round I offered her my hand, and bade her good-bye. 'Farewell, child,' said the old woman, 'and God bless you!' I then moved along the bridge until I reached the Southwark side, and, still holding on my course, my mind again became quickly abstracted from all surrounding objects. ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... of people to see who would take whom in to dinner, with abstracted frownings over the map of the table, seemed to Daisy an admirable accompaniment for disjointed questions, and one which would give her an adventitious advantage, since at any moment she could be absorbed in the task she was so kindly occupying herself with, ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... recorded on tape. They went inside. The boy Hod, and the younger girl Mal lay on their stomachs on the floor, doggedly working at what would be lessons. Zani sat in a chair with a book before her and her hand seemingly shielding her eyes. Her expression was abstracted. ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster
... Huntley to begin the English Language lesson, for though every one was of course very abstracted, it gave some ostensible occupation. Before the hour was over Miss Bishop sailed into the room. She looked pale and anxious, but spoke ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... arts, relation of one object, part, or atmospheric plane of a picture to the others, with reference to light and shade, the idea of HUE being abstracted. ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... respect and good will of all parties.... That a young politician should, in the intervals afforded by his Parliamentary avocations, have constructed and propounded, with much study and mental toil, an original theory, on a great problem in politics, is a circumstance which, abstracted from all considerations of the soundness or unsoundness of his opinions, must be considered as highly creditable to him. We certainly cannot wish that Mr. Gladstone's doctrine may become fashionable among public men. But we heartily wish that his laudable desire to penetrate beneath the surface of ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... his father's face, and knew by its abstracted expression that the vicar's thoughts were very far away from any question of pigs—as indeed they were, for they were busy with the subject of the pamphlet he ...
— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton
... was commenced with knives abstracted from the table. These knives—square at the end of the blade instead of pointed—made excellent chisels, and were the very best tools for the inauguration of the labor. Putting out pickets to prevent surprise, they pecked ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... directed towards the great breast center of the woman. Her wakeful fear is terror of the great breast-and-shoulder, upper rage and power of man, which may pierce her defenseless lower self. The terror and the desire are near together—and go with an admiration of the slender, abstracted bull loins. ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... unnatural to last, and he reckoned not unreasonably on the reaction that must come when her youth began again to assert its rights. He was now thoroughly in love, and as he sat watching her beautiful abstracted face he found it hard to keep back some expression of tenderness. Often, too, it was difficult for him to tone down his spirits to the proper pitch of respectful sympathy with her grief. His existence was golden with new-found life and hope: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... with sunny blue-gray eyes belying the gloomy curve of his mouth, was everywhere; arranging for bearers, selecting hymns, conferring with the family, keeping abstracted old women off the seats reserved for the mourners, and maintaining an anxious lookout ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... all suffering a slight tension. The men, who can see no reason why the ambulance should not have been sent out last night, are restless and abstracted and impatient for the order to get up and go. No wonder. They have been waiting five ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... sprinkled with water, which is said to be necessary for preventing worms from getting into them. Those persons who are sent for this commodity in the company's ships, practise a fraud of this nature, in order to conceal their thefts: For, having abstracted a certain quantity or proportion from the cloves received on board, they place two or three hogsheads of sea-water among those remaining, which is all sucked up in a few days by the cloves, which that recover their former weight. By this ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... did I regret the busy scenes of fashionable folly! Unquestionably the Creator formed me with a strong propensity to adore the sublime and beautiful of his works! But it has never been my lot to meet with an associating mind, a congenial spirit, who could (as it were abstracted from the world) find a universe in the sacred intercourse of soul, the ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... is pilfering from the tree of knowledge and has something sexual to hide. Hug-Hellmuth has convincingly demonstrated the erotic connection of the child's enthusiasm for plants as well as the different synesthesias. (See her study, "ber Farbenhren," Imago, Vol.I, pp.218ff. Abstracted in Psa. Rev., Vol.II, No.1, ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... of manipulation, the withdrawal of heat from the calorimeter should be at just such a rate as to exactly compensate for the heat developed by the resistance-coil. Under these conditions, then, there would be no heat abstracted from nor stored by the calorimeter and its temperature should remain constant throughout the whole experiment. Practically this is very difficult to accomplish and there are minor fluctuations in temperature above and below ...
— Respiration Calorimeters for Studying the Respiratory Exchange and Energy Transformations of Man • Francis Gano Benedict
... the past twelve months, there was stolen, abstracted, or taken from the chambers in Fountain Court, Temple, occupied by Mr. Stephen Aylmore, M.P., under the name of Mr. Anderson, a walking-stick, or stout staff, of foreign make, and of curious workmanship, which stick was probably used in the murder of John Marbury, or Maitland, ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... Eily received him with rapture and affection, and every other feeling was banished from his mind. But in the course of the evening she remarked that he was more silent and abstracted than she had ever seen him, and that he more frequently spoke in connection of some little breach of etiquette, or inelegance of manner, than in those terms of eloquent praise and fondness which he was accustomed to lavish upon her. The next ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... run some hazard of being tedious, in order to be sure that I am perspicuous; and, after taking the utmost pains that I can to be perspicuous, some obscurity may still appear to remain upon a subject, in its own nature extremely abstracted. ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... Book, states that Mr Lemon's father had "often observed to me that 'those fellows the Jesuits, in the time of the Powder Plot (not the Gunpowder Plot) had stolen away some of the most damning proofs against Garnet.' That thievery of some kind abstracted such documents as the Treatise of Equivocation, with Garnet's handwriting on it—the most important of the interlocutions between Garnet and Hall in the Tower—and all the examinations of Garnet respecting the Pope's Breves, is quite clear. The first thievery I have ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... accuse Saurin there of having come to this house, one Saturday when we were all out; of having gone into my room, taken my keys out of the pocket of a coat lying there, opened the cricket and football japanned box, and abstracted four pounds twelve shillings from a purse inside it. Then I assert that he put the keys back in the coat-pocket, having first locked the box and put it back in its place, and ran back to his tutor's house, where he changed and went out ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... speech. Attention of House drawn to him his dilemma discovered: shout of laughter burst forth as hat gradually tilted forward, and GORST, deftly catching it by brim on tip of his nose, balanced it for fifteen seconds by Westminster Clock. Chairman seized opportunity of abstracted attention to put question, and when GORST, recapturing MACARTNEY'S hat, had fixed it again on summit of his head, division was called; too late for ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 27, 1893 • Various
... slaves in charge were constantly bribed to abstain from repairing damages which had arisen, or to cause new ones to arise, and these abuses reached such a pitch that one aqueduct (Tepula) brought no water whatever to Rome during several years, the whole having been wasted, or rather abstracted on its way. The irregularities of the water supply were still further increased by the nature of the mains and distributing pipes, which, as I have mentioned, were mere lead plates soldered into a pear-shaped section, incapable of resisting even the most moderate pressure and ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... simple motion of your eye may provoke a speaker; a butterfly, or the figure in a carpet may engage your attention in preference to him; or if these objects be absent, the simply averting your eye, looking through the window in quest of outward objects, will show that your mind has not been abstracted, and will display to him at least your wish of not attending. He may, however, possibly have lost the habit of watching your eye for approbation; then you may assault his ear: if all other resources fail, beat with your foot that dead march of the spirits, that ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... jests, and laugh myself awake at the con- ceits thereof. Were my memory as faithful as my reason is then fruitful, I would never study but in my dreams, and this time also would I choose for my devo- tions: but our grosser memories have then so little hold of our abstracted understandings, that they forget the story, and can only relate to our awaked souls a con- fused and broken tale of that which hath passed. Aris- totle, who hath written a singular tract of sleep, hath not, methinks, thoroughly defined it; nor ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... warmly greeted by the family. The girls rose and courtesied, blushing with the coquetry of their race. Roldan cared little for girls at any time, and to-night was doubly abstracted, his ear straining at every distant hoof-beat. He retired as early as he politely could, but not to sleep. Indeed, he became so nervous that he could not wait ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... of maintaining more than a hundred thousand priests and ministers, in supporting foreign and domestic missions and in publishing religious literature; besides the taxes applied to the care of the religious insane, and realize the fact that all of this vast sum of money is abstracted from the resources of the people, we would not have to go outside of our own country to appreciate the fact that religion is the burden of all burdens to society; and when we contemplate the great disturbance to the social relation, resulting from sectarian strife, and the almost ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... so abstracted was I in thought, that I neither saw nor heard any thing. Every attention of Talbot was lost upon me. I continued in my sullen stupor, and forgot to read the little book which dear Clara had given, and which, for her sake, I had promised to read. I wrote to Eugenia on my arrival; ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Monastery. Brother Guillaume Coiffier was beguiled by an accomplice to St. Mathurin to say mass; and during his absence, his chamber was entered and five or six hundred crowns in money and some silver plate successfully abstracted. A melancholy man was Coiffier on his return! Eight crowns from this adventure were forwarded by little Thibault to the incarcerated Tabary; and with these he bribed the jailer and reappeared in Paris taverns. Some time before or shortly after this, Villon set out for Angers, as he ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with American marines, dropping down the river from Pekin, cut across my abstracted gaze ... ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... Truth only valuable, Part of Mankind, have a Turn for one sort of Business or other, but with great variety of Taste. Some are addicted to deep Thought and Contemplation: Some to the abstracted Speculations of Metaphysicks; some to the evident Demonstrations of the Mathematicks; some to the History of Nature, built upon true Narration, or accurate Observations and Experiments: Some to the Invention ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill
... and he hurried back to the flat, the little boy violently emulating his giant stride up the stairs and arriving flushed and panting at the door. Julian, who was entirely abstracted in his agitation, made for the tentroom without another word to the boy, seized pen and paper and began to write, urgently requesting Dr. Levillier to come at once to see Valentine. Abruptly a childish voice intruded itself ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... of the fight,—so said our third lieutenant, or something to that effect. We watched the Ariadne, as long as her topsails appeared above the horizon, with no little interest, for Mr Vernon's sake. He at length came back, after a long pull, and was for several days somewhat grave and abstracted at times; but that mood wore off by degrees, and there was a buoyancy in his step, and a light in his eye, which showed that he loved, and was conscious ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... pay? Who is to do no work, and for what pay? And there are curious moral and religious questions connected with these. How far is it lawful to suck a portion of the soul out of a great many persons, in order to put the abstracted psychical quantities together and make one very beautiful or ideal soul? If we had to deal with mere blood, instead of spirit (and the thing might literally be done—as it has been done with infants ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... through speaking, a scout hat was going around and the goodly jingle of coins within it, testified to the troops' enthusiasm for what he had been saying. Tom dropped in three quarters, but no one noticed that. He seemed abstracted and unusually nervous. The hat was not passed to little Alfred McCord. Perhaps that was because he ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... it could have happened—but—you had better come up and have a look at the safe. The key must have been abstracted from my bedside, the safe opened, and the keys replaced—all while I was fast asleep. Though I had no occasion to look into the safe until just now, I should have discovered my loss before going to business, for I intended to take the diamonds away ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... Bertha, who smiled on morning callers, made a figure in ball-rooms, and was capable of that light repartee which, from such a woman, is accepted as wit, was secure of carrying off all sympathy from a husband who was sickly, abstracted, and, as some suspected, crack-brained. Even the servants in our house gave her the balance of their regard and pity. For there were no audible quarrels between us; our alienation, our repulsion from each other, lay within the silence of our own hearts; and if the mistress went out ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... that he hardly heard the service, except for the music, which was of a sort to make its own way into the most abstracted consciousness. But the quiet spirit of the place had its effect upon him, and when he knelt beside Ruth it seemed the most natural thing in the world to form a prayer in his heart that he might be a fit husband for the wife he was so soon to take to himself. Once, during a long period of ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... point abstracted her mind from the former subject. 'I don't see what you have to grieve about, Stephen,' she said. 'People who accidentally get friends don't, as a first stroke, tell the history of ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... not; but he was hungry. He ate Marie's portion, too, half apologetically. There was one thing, however, which, very sensibly, he omitted to do; he had the tact not to open the morning paper. There are some things which a woman will not stand, and one is the sight of an abstracted man behind a paper, letting his crumbs fall down his ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... carried on throughout the whole length of the colon. Not until the very end of the intestine is reached is all the nutrition abstracted. The bowel-content can properly be called waste matter only after it has reached the rectum or pouch at the lower end of the colon. Even then, this waste matter is not poison, but merely indigestible material ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... abstracted youth like you, but utterly unpractical. I want you to hire a forge this side of Warren. I will insure you custom enough ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... rush of letters, even chickens must have been forgotten by a race whose predilection for them has furnished the point for many a joke, as well as the occasion for painful if not indignant regret on the part of those whose fowls may have been abstracted. And it is a hopeful sign for the future of the Negro that while his first wild enthusiasm for the school-house has been moderated, his real desire for educational improvement continues strong and steady. He will go to school—the public school—when he can, and ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... a pleasant, fresh-faced, smiling man, perhaps of thirty-five, took me to the pantry, and gave me a glass of liqueur to stay me until dinner. We had some talk, or rather I should say he listened to my prattle indulgently enough, but with an abstracted air, like a spirit with a thing of clay. And truly, when I remember that I descanted principally on my appetite, and that it must have been by that time more than eighteen hours since Father Michael had so much ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... get bored with William was when he turned inventor. It came rather as a surprise to us; and when he began to be abstracted, profoundly meditative, almost sullen, with an apparent desire to be alone, we thought at first that it was the onset of hydrophobia. In fact, we looked it up on the back of ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... distilled only in the furnace-glow of earnest and long-continued thought. Or perchance his sensitive temperament was invigorated by the loud and piercing music that swelled heaven-ward, and uplifted him on its ascending wave. Nevertheless, so abstracted was his look, it might be questioned whether Mr. Dimmesdale even heard the music. There was his body, moving onward, and with an unaccustomed force. But where was his mind? Far and deep in its own region, busying itself, with preternatural activity, to marshal ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... periods, with a hopeful birth and a disappointing death, have begun to accumulate, and to bear a fruit of generalities; his glance sometimes seeming to state, 'I have already thought out the issue of such conditions as these we are experiencing.' At other times he wore an abstracted look: 'I seem to have ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... one of great power, and which he began by an eloquent reference to the battle of Concord Bridge, which, he said, was fought by Concord farmers that their children might enjoy the blessings of an impartial administration of justice under the law, he said that it was unlikely that Wyman could have abstracted large sums from the bank and no trace of the money be found in his possession. He was a man of small property, living simply and plainly, without extravagant habits or anything which would have been likely ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... he had but a lame story to tell. Nineteen-and-sixpence had been abstracted from the till. Nobody knew how it had been done, and nobody had the least idea who was the thief. Mrs. Church, who would have given her niece unlimited time to return the money had there been a real, proper, bloodthirsty burglary, was not at all inclined to ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... the wind was gone. She was conversing with her partner, but without the soft animation that usually shone out upon her countenance. And when she was brought back to her seat Molly noticed her changed colour, and her dreamily abstracted eyes. ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... to see it closer, and to hold it in my hand. But I was ashamed of this fascination—ashamed, I mean, to have any one know that I could be moved by such a childish impulse; so, instead of taking the box itself, which might easily be missed, I simply abstracted the tiny vial, and, satisfied with its possession, carried it about till I got to my room. Then, when the house was quiet and my room-mate asleep, I took it out and looked at it, and feeling an irresistible desire to share my amusement with my cousin, ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... found, at a moment of peril and fear, when he had need to grasp unseen strength, sitting in an abstracted mood, tracing on the table with his finger the words 'Vivit! vivit!'—'He lives! He lives!' It is our hope for ourselves, and for God's truth, and for mankind. Men come and go; leaders, teachers, thinkers speak and work for a season and then fall silent and impotent. He ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... back to catch my train, I suddenly found that I had been in an abstracted mood, for I was still standing with my ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... because he was sulking at Aratoff for the failure of his introduction,—the good-natured fellow was incapable of such a thing,—but he had, evidently, found some occupation which engrossed all his time, all his thoughts;—for thereafter he rarely came to the Aratoffs', wore an abstracted aspect, and soon vanished.... Aratoff continued to live on as before; but some hitch, if we may so express ourselves, had secured lodgment in his soul. He still recalled something or other, without himself being quite aware what it was precisely,—and that "something" referred to the ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... morning in a friend's house in the city. It was a curious let-down to my enthusiasm. A caged song in a city chamber in broad daylight, in lieu of the wild, free song in the gloaming of an English landscape! I closed my eyes, abstracted myself from my surroundings, and tried my best to fancy myself listening to the strain back there amid the scenes I had haunted about Haslemere and Godalming, but with poor success, I suspect. The nightingale's song, like the ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... drawers in vain, but at last, on some shelves in the closet where his clothes had hung, he found several large sheets of coarse white paper. The shelves were covered with it loosely for the sake of cleanliness. He abstracted one of these sheets, and cut it into squares of the ordinary note-paper size, and he sat down and wrote a brief letter to Richard Hartley, stating where he was, that Arthur Benham was there, the O'Haras, ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... I have briefly abstracted these opinions for the sake of showing those who have never attended to such subjects, how perplexing they are. It would, therefore, be useless for my purpose to give a sketch of the conspicuous differences between the several ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... grave, abstracted-looking man, with an iron-grey moustache and dark, piercing eyes, looked up with a desponding shake of the head, ...
— Probable Sons • Amy Le Feuvre
... unzoned robes, and loosest dishabille, They show the world they've nothing to conceal! But sit abstracted in their own George Sand, And dote on Vice in sentiment so bland! To necklaced Pug appropriate a chair, Or sit alone, knit, shepherdise, and stare! These seek for fashion in a mourning dress, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... with a strange vein of mysticism and a curious self-forgetfulness. As he grew up he felt the visitation of a mysterious internal voice, to which or to his own internal communings he would sometimes be observed to listen in abstracted stillness for hours. The voice within him was felt as a restraining force, limiting his action in various ways, but leaving him free to wander about among his fellows, to watch their doings and interpret their thoughts, to question unweariedly his fellows of every class, high and low, ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... dark, somewhat stooping passenger, noticeable among the blonde Hollanders by his noble Spanish face with its black eyebrows and long curly locks, stepped off the trekschuyt on to the canal-bank at s' Gravenhage, his abstracted gaze did not at first take in the scowling visages of the idlers, sunning themselves as the tow-boat came in. He was not a close observer of externals, and though he had greatly enjoyed the journey home from Utrecht along the quaint water-way ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... both he and the Finn folks were at Berg church, and he secretly abstracted a handful of mould from one of the Finn graves, and put it in his pocket. The same evening, when they came home, he strewed the mould over his father's lines unobserved. And, oddly enough, the very next time his father cast his lines, ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... whether to unlock it or not. She could hear Miss Norton breathing just behind her, and was almost tempted to try the experiment of shooting back at least one bolt, but decided it was wiser not to run the risk. Instead she walked into the house mistress's study, turned over a few papers in an abstracted fashion, threw them back on to the table, and went towards the window. Here again Miss Norton shadowed her closely, evidently suspecting that she had designs of opening it and climbing out. She turned round, however, and, ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... If it were in my power, every man that drew his sword, unless in the Service, or purely to defend his life, person, or goods, from violence (I mean abstracted from all punctos or whims of honour) should ride the wooden horse in the Tilt Yard[387] for such first offence, for the second stand in the pillory, and for the third be prisoner in Bedlam ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... value in their bearing upon the origin of hospital gangrene. Up to the present war, the results of chemical investigations upon the pathology of the blood in scurvy were not only contradictory, but meager, and wanting in that careful detail of the cases from which the blood was abstracted which would enable us to explain the cause of the apparent discrepancies in different analyses. Thus it is not yet settled whether the fibrin is increased or diminished in this disease; and the differences which exist in the statements of different writers appear to be referable to the ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... country gentleman, and very few individual traits to distinguish him from the general portrait of that worthy class of mankind. He was proud of small advantages, angry at small disappointments, incapable of forming any resolution or opinion abstracted from his own prejudices—he was proud of his birth, lavish in his housekeeping, convivial with those kindred and acquaintances, who would allow his superiority in rank—contentious and quarrelsome with all that crossed his pretensions—kind ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... The abstracted look passed, and the slight color and delicate mobility of her face returned. "To end, dandy boy?" she repeated lazily. "You didn't think ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... bill in an envelope addressed to the proper party, seal the envelope and put it in the mailing drawer. During the period from September, 1897, to October, 1899, in twenty-four separate instances Davis abstracted one of the envelopes from the mailing drawer, opened it, obliterated by acids the name of the payee and the amount specified in the check, then made the check payable to cash and raised its amount, in the majority of cases, by the sum of $100. He ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... in the remains of sparkling limado, of Brothers Frank and Percy, one on each side trying to borrow simultaneously half-crowns, and of Muriel, flushed but demure, making bread-pellets and throwing them in an abstracted way, one by one, at the Coppin cat, which had wandered in ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... Beauclerc? She read on till Lady Davenant, having finished her packet, rang a silver handbell, as was her custom, to summon her page. At the first tingle of the bell Helen started, and Lady Davenant asked, "Whose letter, my dear, has so completely abstracted you?" ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... no strong box from which this sum can be abstracted, and if you are resolved to take from the State treasury the sum necessary for this purpose, so will this also be exhausted during ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... that you are not in the least inclined to ring your bell and send for a constable to give me in charge for being in possession of a pocket-book abstracted from your safe, containing twenty thousand pounds in Bank of ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... is identical with the genitive case. The substance, therefore, although deprived of all its qualities will still retain its essence unimpaired, will still be equally a substance, just as a pincushion continues equally a pincushion after its last pin has been abstracted. Conceive, then, all the qualities of matter to be abstracted, and consider what remains—a substance without qualities of any sort. But a substance neither solid, nor fluid, nor yet gaseous; neither coloured nor colourless; ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... been irritated, and my curiosity had been continually piqued, by finding that certain books—most of them plays of the time of Charles II—would be taken away from me and secreted if I happened to have abstracted some such stray volume from a bookcase; but here I was my own master. My grandfather's library was, as I have said already, particularly rich in literature of this semiforbidden class, and rows of plays and poems by Congreve, Etheridge, Rochester, Dryden, and their contemporaries ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... topic, he returned to the matter of the repairs required on Sparkes' farm, and for a few minutes the two men were engrossed in details connected with the management of the estate. But Ann noticed that Coventry seemed curiously abstracted. He allowed his cigarette to smoulder between his fingers till it went out beneath their pressure, and presently, bringing the discussion with Robin to a sudden close, he got up to go. He tendered his farewell somewhat abruptly, mounted ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... for a fortnight, by which time their saucer-like depression in the rock was full, while about half of the entire catch was in a sufficiently advanced stage of decomposition to admit of being examined and the pearls abstracted therefrom. This, as will be supposed, was a most disgusting and intensely disagreeable task, but the returns were so unexpectedly rich that the revolting character of the work was quickly lost sight of in the interest with which discovery after discovery was made of pearls that, for ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... both dull and constrained." At Fontainebleau, "amidst splendors and pleasures," there is no real enjoyment nor anything agreeable, not even for himself. "I pity you," said M. de Talleyrand to M. de Remusat, "you have to amuse the unamusable." At the theatre he is abstracted or yawns. Applause is prohibited; the court, sitting out "the file of eternal tragedies, is mortally bored.... the young ladies fall asleep, people leave the theatre, gloomy and discontented."—There is the same constraint in the drawing-room. "He did not know how to appear at ease, and ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... in the least his fault that he did not see that under the broad white brow and sunny ringlets was a brain in which, like the sky in a dew-drop, a whole world was reflected, with ever changing pageantry, and that the abstracted expression in the boy's eyes that he thought could only mean that he was "hatching mischief," really indicated that the creative faculty in budding genius was awake ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... it was that made him so abstracted, and then so suddenly merry?" was the thought in ...
— Dick Prescott's Third Year at West Point - Standing Firm for Flag and Honor • H. Irving Hancock
... the story of cooling suns and worlds. At a low enough temperature all chemical activity ceases. In our own experience we find that frost will blister like flame. In the one case heat passes into the tissues so quickly and in such quantity that a blister ensues; in the other, heat is abstracted so quickly and in such quantity that a like effect is produced. In one sense, life is a thermal phenomenon; so are all conditions of ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs |
