"Abstractedly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Tai-y to her senses. She at length realised that her legs felt rather tired. After lingering about abstractedly for a long while, she quietly returned into the Hsiao Hsiang lodge, supporting herself on Tzu Chan. As soon as they stepped inside the entrance of the court, her gaze was attracted by the confused shadows of the bamboos, which covered the ground, and the traces of moss, here thick, there thin, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... said the emperor abstractedly. "I thought I had already dined; Champagny, however, reminded me that this was not the case. Well, Josephine, let us eat!" And he commenced eating the soup which ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... professor abstractedly, as she comes to a full stop. He has never seen her dressed like this before. She is all in black to be sure, but such black, and her air! She looks quite the little heiress, like a little ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... Sikes, looking hard at Oliver, and putting his hand abstractedly into the pocket where ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... quite a party,' said Ernest, seating himself, and looking abstractedly round the room. 'Why, Berkeley,' as his eye fell upon the Venetian vase, 'you've positively got some more gew-gaws here. This one's new, isn't ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... riding silently and abstractedly along. The tall dry grass—now ripe, and shedding its seeds on every side—rose frequently above his head; for he was mounted on a low strong horse, and he had not observed the cloud that had attracted the attention of the younger travelers. He now paused, and looked earnestly to the south, ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... Abstractedly, Houston picked it up and glanced at the specifications,—for railroad ties by the million, for lumber, lathes, station-house material, bridge timbers, and the thousands of other lumber items that go into the making of a road. Hastily he scanned the printed ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... her gloves had been secured when the refolding of the letter came. Jeff deliberately, but abstractedly, returned it to its cover. His smile was scarcely a happy one ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... seemed to have something weighty on his mind. He kept pulling at his streaked, reddish-gray mustache when his fingers should have been wholly occupied with his food, and he stared abstractedly at the ground after he had finished his first cup of coffee and before he took his second. Once Bill Holmes caught him glaring with an intensity which circumstances in no wise justified—and it was Bill Holmes who first shifted his gaze in vague uneasiness when ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... eyes rather abstractedly from the paper he was reading, and then cordially shook hands ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... estimates correct; And when the skies I contemplate, I know what to expect. When dark'ning clouds obscure my sight, I think perhaps 'twill rain; And when the stars are shining bright, I know 'tis clear again." And then abstractedly he scanned The heavens, hour by hour, Old ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing colour and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind. Abstractedly speaking, government, as well as liberty, is good; yet could I, in common sense, ten years ago, have felicitated France on her enjoyment of a government (for she then had a government) without inquiry what ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... brother joined them at the end of the week a dullness of despair had come upon her. Again she saw herself trapped and helpless, lacking even the spirit to attempt escape. She greeted Jack almost abstractedly, and he observed her throughout the evening with anxiety in his eyes. When it was over he drew her aside for a moment as she ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... Babbitt had won from his family by speaking of a new car evaporated as they realized that he didn't intend to buy one this year. Ted lamented, "Oh, punk! The old boat looks as if it'd had fleas and been scratching its varnish off." Mrs. Babbitt said abstractedly, "Snoway talkcher father." Babbitt raged, "If you're too much of a high-class gentleman, and you belong to the bon ton and so on, why, you needn't take the car out this evening." Ted explained, "I didn't mean—" and dinner dragged on with normal domestic ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... agrees with Paley that 'virtue evidently consists in educing from the materials which the Creator has placed under our guidance the greatest sum of human happiness.'[230] He adds to this that our 'natural impulses are, abstractedly considered, good, and only to be distinguished by their consequences.' Hunger, he says, as Bentham had said, is the same in itself, whether it leads to stealing a loaf or to eating your own loaf. He agrees with Godwin that ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... and Skinner and that lot," rejoined Astor M'Kree abstractedly, being again buried in his letter. He was a boat-builder by trade, and this change in things might make a considerable difference ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... picture over and gazed abstractedly at the three words written there: "Lest we forget!" Beneath this pertinent quotation appeared ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... found there his aunt, engaged in combing the hair of her daughter Ibla, whose ringlets, black as the night, floated over her shoulders. Antar was struck with surprise, and Ibla, as soon as she knew that he had seen her, fled and left him with his eyes fixed abstractedly on her disappearing form. ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... (or on any other) on the pure ground of principle, antiquity and precedent cease to be authority, and hoary-headed error loses its effect. The reasonableness and propriety of things must be examined abstractedly from custom and usage; and, in this point of view, the right which grows into practice to-day is as much a right, and as old in principle and theory, as if it had the customary sanction of a thousand ages. Principles have no connection with ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... stranger darkly. He paused, and then suddenly, as if recklessly accepting a dangerous risk, unbuckled his revolver and handed it abstractedly to the young girl. But the sheath of the bowie-knife was a fixture in his body-belt, and he was obliged to withdraw the glittering blade by itself, and to hand it to her in all its naked terrors. The young girl received the ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... up the book abstractedly, and carelessly turned the leaves, wondering how he should say what was in his heart. A loose paper fluttered to the floor. He picked it up. It was the newspaper cutting that Winifred had saved, but had forgotten to copy, in the stress of ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... to be a half-holiday, and a baseball match of unusual interest was to come off on the school ground that afternoon; but, somehow, I didn't go. I hung about the house abstractedly. The Captain went up town, and Miss Abigail was busy in the kitchen making immortal gingerbread. I drifted into the sitting-room, and had our guest all to myself for I don't know how many hours. It was twilight, I recollect, when the Captain ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... abstractedly, without appearing to hear this inquiry, "that they improve after they've been in Washington a few years. Take Mrs. Baker, the Secretary of the Interior's wife, receiving to-night. When her husband came to Washington three years ago she had ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... discerned the extreme difficulty that there must essentially be, in applying to the Christian Evidences a principle, which, many years before, I had abstractedly received as sound, though it had been a dead letter with me in practice. The Bible (it seemed) contained two sorts of truth. Concerning one sort, man is bound to judge: the other sort is necessarily beyond his ken, and is received only by information from without. The first part ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... good fellow,' pursued Sir Joseph, looking abstractedly at Toby; 'your only business in life is with me. You needn't trouble yourself to think about anything. I will think for you; I know what is good for you; I am your perpetual parent. Such is the dispensation of an all-wise Providence! ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... peculiar to itself. It gives a premium to intelligence. To set out the arguments required to determine political action with such force and effect that they really should determine it, is a high and great exertion of intellect. Of course, all such arguments are produced under conditions; the argument abstractedly best is not necessarily the winning argument. Political discussion must move those who have to act; it must be framed in the ideas, and be consonant with the precedent, of its time, just as it must speak its language. But within these marked conditions good discussion ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... my friend answered abstractedly. 'Of course, of course; things were all so very big in those days, you ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... as red as a red bear," said he, abstractedly. "He came from the north; they said so in the galley when he looked for rowers—not slaves, but free men. Afterward—years and years afterward—news came from another ship, or else he came back"—His lips moved in silence. He was rapturously ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... I'm sure, Pollyanna," rejoined Mrs. Carew, abstractedly. On Mrs. Carew's face there was ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... had ceased speaking, Vetranio sat up on the couch, called for a basin of water, dipped his fingers in the refreshing liquid, dried them abstractedly on the long silky curls of the singing-boy who stood beside him, gazed about him once more, repeated interrogatively the word 'daybreak', and sunk gently back upon his couch. We are grieved to confess it—but the author of the Nightingale ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... not feel certain of her own opinion, and, instead of supporting or contradicting, looked thoughtfully down, and abstractedly brought her hands together on her bosom, till her fingers met ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... half-abstractedly at the upturned young faces, pushed his way through the little group, and taking up a parcel of papers and a surgical case which lay near, went straight to his carriage, which was heard immediately afterwards to bowl ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... after Tess's arrival Clare, sitting abstractedly reading from some book, periodical, or piece of music just come by post, hardly noticed that she was present at table. She talked so little, and the other maids talked so much, that the babble did not strike him as possessing a new note, and he was ever in the habit of neglecting ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... but one man on the premises, a big, benevolent-looking fellow, whose placid face wore an unaccustomed expression of nervous tension. He came stumbling out of the house, and walked abstractedly around the horses. He was making strange motions with his head, strongly indicative of a tendency to strangulation, and ever and anon he clutched his white collar and looked toward the house with an air of desperation. ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... all this was over," she rejoined, abstractedly, "when my hands were drawn as you see them by neuralgia ten years since. But I did not suffer as much then, I believe, as I do now; besides, I was younger, happier, ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... out of the way corners of life never steadily shines in its higher beaten ways; and that beside his pictures of what man is or does, there is no attempt to show, by delineation of an exalted purpose or a great career, what man is able to be or to do. In the charge abstractedly there is truth; but the fair remark upon it is that whatever can be regarded as essential in the want implied by it will be found in other forms in his writings, that the perfect innocence of their laughter and tears has been itself a prodigious blessing, and that ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... portion of duck abstractedly. "Thus to dive into the refuse-heap of last year's slang does not quite cover the requirements of the case. For I wish—only I hardly dare ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... cigarette and felt about himself abstractedly for a match, in this pocket, where Grace Kerr's little handkerchief still lay, with no explanation or defense for its presence contrived or attempted; in that pocket, where his ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... mumbled, caught off guard by the change of direction, rubbing abstractedly at the reddened tip of his prominent nose. "Of course it is winter. Ice, there must be ice at the higher lakes in the mountain, they are always frozen at this time of the year. But what do you ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... place for meditation, especially if the moralizer's bedchamber be next the yard where carriages roll, and hostlers swear perpetually; yet so situated, I, this morning as I lay awake in my bed, thought so abstractedly and attentively, that I heard neither wheels nor hostlers. I reviewed the whole of my past life; I regretted bitterly my extravagance, my dissipation, my waste of time; I considered how small a share of enjoyment my wealth had procured, either ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... enemy in check? At such times, the good name, the valor, the bravery of the troops and of the officers who command them is reviewed. He weighs character. He knows who are reliable and who inefficient. He studies, examines papers, consults reports, makes calculations, sits abstractedly, walks nervously, and lies down to dream it all over again ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... volition and opportunity, and how much less a work of special endowment and intuitive recognition is the literature of History than that of Poetry, Psychology, or Philosophy, notwithstanding all these may be fused therein. "Whatever may be the use of this sort of composition in itself and abstractedly," observes a judicious critic,[B] "it is certainly of great use relatively and to literary men. Consider the position of a man of that species. He sits beside a library-fire, with nice white paper, a good pen, a capital style, every means of saying everything, but nothing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... thinking," said Josephine, looking abstractedly at her mother, "that I would try to get John to take her to San Francisco this winter. The Careys are expected, you know; she ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... "Of course," he announced abstractedly, "the pressing problem is food. We've quite a number of fishermen, and a few hunters. We've got to have a lot of food at once, and everything considered, I think we'd better count on the fishermen. At sunrise ...
— The Runaway Skyscraper • Murray Leinster
... or object he omitted to praise was Kesiah—for in his heart he regarded it as an outrage on the part of Providence that a woman should have been created quite so ugly. While he talked he kept his eyes turned away from her, gazing abstractedly through the window or at a portrait of Mrs. Gay, painted in the first year of her marriage, which hung over the sideboard. In the mental world which he inhabited all women were fair and fragile and endowed with ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... stove, rocking to and fro, and gazing abstractedly before her. Her mood was a reminiscent one and I knew if I gave her time enough she would launch forth into one of the interesting narratives of which she possessed a goodly store. To have interrupted her train of thought by even a whisper would ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... "Correlation and Conservation of Force," p. 341). "Although the word cause may be used in a secondary and subordinate sense, as meaning antecedent forces, yet in an abstract sense it is totally inapplicable; we can not predicate of any physical agent that it is abstractedly the cause of another" (p. 15). "Causation is the will," "creation is the act, of God" Grove on "Correlation of Physical Forces," (p. 199). "Between gravity and motion it is impossible to establish the equation required for a rightly-conceived ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... merits and defects of the other features. It is hard to see that the lower part of the face is too delicately refined away towards the chin to be in full and fair proportion with the upper part; that the nose, in escaping the aquiline bend (always hard and cruel in a woman, no matter how abstractedly perfect it may be), has erred a little in the other extreme, and has missed the ideal straightness of line; and that the sweet, sensitive lips are subject to a slight nervous contraction, when she smiles, which draws them upward a little at one corner, ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... said abstractedly, his mind revisiting the banks of the Vistula; "no, I am not in pain. I ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... reprobate and unlovable, He deliberately accepted Judas, and included him in the circle of the chosen. The disciples were disturbed and murmured under their breath, but He would sit still, with His face towards the setting sun, and listen abstractedly, perhaps to them, perhaps to something else. For ten days there had been no wind, and the transparent atmosphere, wary and sensitive, continued ever the same, motionless and unchanged. It seemed as though ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... refuge and ultimate hope came to him with so much force as to cause him to reel like one on whom a severe blow had been dealt. He stood for some time, seemingly bewildered, in the din and noise of the wharf, noting abstractedly the many bales of cotton, as truck after truck-load was rushed aboard an outward bound steamer. The bales seemed to fascinate him completely. A stevedore yelled at him to move out of the way and aroused him into action, but in ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... him, too, in his trick of snapping his fingers, and his habitual absence of mind. Of this latter peculiarity it is related that on one occasion, when a chaplain in Marlborough's wars, he strolled abstractedly into the enemy's lines with his beloved AEschylus in his hand. His peaceable intentions were so unmistakable that he was instantly released, and politely directed to his regiment. Once, too, it is said, on being ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... comes now to me oftener than it did, and I do not know when I may again write to thee with my own hand; so I resolved I would e'en empty my whole budget at once. Thy mother is well and blooming; she is, at the present, abstractedly employed in a prodigious piece of tapestry which old Nicholls informs me is the wonder of all ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... me!" he murmured, abstractedly, scarcely thinking of what he was saying, and only conscious of the thrill and ecstasy of love which seemed to him the one thing necessary for existence ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... with mother sitting rocking beside me, and complaining of every one in peace, when Dr. Denbigh drove up to the horse-block, flung his weight out of the buggy, and hurried up the steps. He shook hands with us hastily and abstractedly, and asked if he might speak to me ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... the novel was finished and thrown aside, and Mrs. Elwyn sat with her feet on the low fender gazing abstractedly into the fire. Now was the time Agnes thought, and approaching her ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... night as I was lying awake. It struck me that, if either of us was to clear out of this place, the other would have a fair chance. You know what I mean—with Her. At present we've got each other stymied. Now, how would it be," said Peter, abstractedly spreading marmalade on his bacon, "if we were to play an eighteen-hole match, the loser to leg out of the neighbourhood and stay away long enough to give the winner the chance to find out exactly how ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... in his own happy thoughts, sped up the stairs all unheeding, abstractedly returning such neighbourly salutes as he happened to notice; reaching his lofty habitation in due course he let himself in, and was in the act of filling his pipe when Mrs. Trapes appeared. In one hand she grasped a meat skewer and in the other an open testament, ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... birthday, was now a tall, broad-shouldered fellow, lording it in the Upper Fifth, and the hero of the cricket field of which he himself had once been a cadet. In face he was not greatly altered. Still the old curly head and bright eyes. He was noticed occasionally to stroke his chin abstractedly; and some envious detractors went so far as to rumour that, in the lowest recesses of his trunk he had a razor, wherewith on divers occasions, in dread secret, he operated with slashing effect. Be this as it might, Charlie was growing ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... what ails you today?" said her mistress, when Eliza had upset the wash-pitcher, knocked down the workstand, and finally was abstractedly offering her mistress a long nightgown in place of the silk dress she had ordered her to ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... not answer him; she was stunned, and sat gazing abstractedly on the wallflowers rendering golden the mossy court wall, or far away on the misty Otter sea. She thought he had relapsed into his reveries, was with the past, the spring-tide of his life, the passion of his early manhood, while she was a little school-girl tripping demurely and safely ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... twins and Connie came into an empty room, and chattered away to themselves abstractedly for an hour. Then Prudence came down. Instantly Connie was asked the ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... stranger in the house he finally isolated himself in the midst of the company, huddling into a capacious Morris chair and reading steadily from a thin volume he had drawn from his pocket. As he read, he abstractedly ran his fingers, with a caressing movement, through his hair. Martin noticed him no more that evening, except once when he observed him chaffing with great apparent success with several ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... table, she slid her ruby ring up and down her finger abstractedly. She frowned at the rows of leather-bound books opposite her. Ralph looked keenly at her. Very pale, but sternly concentrated upon her meaning, beautiful but so little aware of herself as to seem remote from him also, there was something distant and abstract about her which exalted him and ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... everything now lay at hand, Kenny never doubted. Already he had rocketed sentimentally into inspiration. If a certain vagueness of detail sent him roving abstractedly around the studio with the letter in his hand, the inspiration in itself was amazingly clear. Yes, he would fare forth and find Brian. He would tramp every mile of the road as Brian had done. He would find the farmhouse, the ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... find me. I have been fooling long enough, and now I am getting down to business." He tore the paper into bits, and then strode slowly up and down the room. Presently he took down his hat, rubbed it abstractedly with the sleeve of his coat, and went out, remarking that he might not be back that day. He felt like a criminal as he stepped upon the sidewalk. But he was stiff, and merely nodded to the tradesmen who bowed to him cringingly. He was looking for Sawyer, but ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... characters of human beings in variety. There must be something abstractedly in the nature of mind, which renders it accessible to these varieties. For the present we will call it taste. One man feels his spirits regaled with the sight of those things which constitute wealth, another in meditating ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... them that Jenny was asleep, and they went up softly. Lawrence wrote out his directions for the night and came down, Stella accompanying him. At the door he paused a moment abstractedly. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... plot. These expedients are fully justified by their success, and nothing more consummate in their way is to be found in Shakespeare than Othello's speech to the Senate and Iago's two talks with Roderigo. But the fact that Shakespeare can make a plan succeed does not show that the plan is, abstractedly considered, a good plan; and if the scheme of construction in Othello were placed, in the shape of a mere outline, before a play-wright ignorant of the actual drama, he would certainly, I believe, feel grave misgivings about the ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... moved back and forth in front of the easel; drew away from or bent over to closely scrutinize the canvas; shifted the easel a hair breadth several times; sat down; stood erect; hummed and muttered to himself abstractedly; cleared his throat with an impressive "Ahem"; squinted through nearly closed eyes, with his head thrown back, or turned in every side angle his fat neck would permit: peered through his half-closed fist; peeped through funnels of paper; sighted over and under his open ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... was empty. Ten minutes later Willoughby paid it a visit, and found it untenanted by the person he had engaged to be there. Vexed by his disappointment, he paced up and down, and chanced abstractedly to catch the rug in his hand; for what purpose, he might well ask himself; admiration of ladies' work, in their absence, was unlikely to occur to him. Nevertheless, the touch of the warm, soft silk was meltingly feminine. A glance at the mantel-piece clock told him Laetitia was twenty minutes behind ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... coming along the road with a great cackling and with a cloud of dust flying before it. It was a flock of geese returning from the pasture on the Holderwasen. Amrei abstractedly imitated their cackling for a long time. Then her eyes ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... of the table sat a fine-looking old gentleman, who took the newspaper abstractedly which ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... he did not answer at all—at others, he answered incoherently to the questions of Verkhoffsky, by whom he rode, gazing abstractedly around him. The Colonel, thinking that, like an eager hunter, he was engrossed by the sport, left him, and rode forward. At last, Ammalat perceived him whom he was so impatiently expecting, his hemdjek, Saphir Ali, flew to meet ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... beginning to grow more than a trifle anxious, especially as shortly after midday the weather became more gloomy and the wind freshened very considerably. He betook himself to the poop, up and down which he paced rapidly, with his hands behind his back, and his eyes fixed abstractedly on the deck, except when he raised them from time to time to gaze long ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... laboriously over the arm of his chair with the intention, perhaps, of crowding the crumpled map into his waste-basket. Instead, he gave it several neat and careful folds and thrust it abstractedly into one of his pigeon-holes. It found place alongside of a bill for doctor's services handed in that morning. A porter who had fallen down three floors of the elevator shaft had been attended by one of his own friends. The bill was exorbitant—everybody ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... She spoke abstractedly and wearily. The General felt that it was not for this that she had thus visited him, but that something more lay behind. Still he answered her remark as if he took it in good faith. He hastened to reassure her. It was no intrusion. ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... bass-notes—the music seemed to be jumbled into confusion, and the ear was stunned by a painful and intolerable dissonance. On looking more intently, he perceived that the composer had let one hand fall abstractedly upon the key-board, while the other executed, by itself, a passage of extraordinary difficulty and involution. Then, for the first time, the thought struck him that the musician was deaf.[17] Alas! the supposition was too true: Beethoven was cursed with the loss of his most precious ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... face deepened in thought as he folded the message and remarked abstractedly, "She works all right when you are aboard." Then he recalled himself. "Let us try ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... Toto was abstractedly passing his fingers through his hair, and reflecting with all the wisdom of a muddled brain. Finally, he came to the conclusion that he might speak, and, ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... in a lost, distressed sort of a way. "Dear me, what for, I wonder?" and he passed his hand abstractedly over his forehead. ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... approach to plain English; but the man contemplated the block abstractedly, wholly unconscious that any antagonism ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... shriller chattering of monkey-language. He beheld his plump diminutive servitor, clad only in a waistcoat and a pair of socks, storming ineffectually at the monkey which was seated on a low branch of an apple tree, abstractedly fingering the remainder of the boy's outfit, which he had removed just out of ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... or two Cynthia struggled with herself. Abstractedly she knew that she ought not to go to Sandy Morley alone. Something that some one—she could not remember who or where—taught her, warned her that it was not right for her to leave ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... placed my foot on the quarter-deck. The approving smile of the captain—the hearty shake by the hand—the praises of the officers—the eager gaze of the ship's company, who looked on me with astonishment and obeyed me with alacrity, were something in my mind, when abstractedly considered, but nothing compared to the inward feeling of gratified ambition, a passion so intimately interwoven in my existence, that to have eradicated it, the whole fabric of my frame must have been demolished. ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Quest going to the right across the lawn to pick up a glove which had dropped upon the grass, while Edward Cossey slowly sauntered towards them. When he was about nine paces off he too halted and, stooping a little, looked abstractedly at a white Japanese chrysanthemum which was still in bloom. Mrs. Quest turned, as the Colonel thought, to put the gun back against the wall. He would have offered to take it from her but at the moment both his hands were occupied in extracting one of ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... my discovery of the unit particle of thought? Must I explain again how the cosmons, chronons, spations, psychons, and all other particles are interchangeable? And that," he continued abstractedly, "leads to certain interesting speculations. Suppose I were to convert, say, a ton of material protons and electrons into spations—that is, convert matter into space. I calculate that a ton of matter will ...
— The Point of View • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... Peter nodded abstractedly. It was the second time he had heard that. "It's all so jolly different from what I expected," he ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... I. Abstractedly from, and independently of, all sensible substances, and the bodies, wills, faculties, and affections of men, has the Devil, or would the Devil have, a personal self-subsistence? Does he, or can he, exist as a conscious ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the greater the number of variations which are needed in order to effect an improvement, the less will be the probability of their all occurring at once. It is no reply to this to say, what is no doubt abstractedly true, that whatever is possible becomes probable, if only time enough be allowed. There are improbabilities so great that the common sense of mankind treats them as impossibilities. It is not, for instance, in the strictest sense of the word, impossible that a poem and a mathematical ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... Crocodile," said Rames abstractedly as he stared at the boiling waters, "which has lived here during the reigns of eight Pharaohs, and perhaps longer. ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... man turned a laughing eye on his companion. Marsham merely smiled, a little vaguely, without reply. Ferrier observed him, then began abstractedly to study the carpet. After a ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... abstractedly, and leaning forward to administer a gentle pull to the flowered waistcoat. "This coat, sir, is very well, I think, and yet—y-e-es, perhaps it might be a shade higher in the collar, and a thought tighter at the waist. Still, it is very well on the whole, ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... countenance changed from an expression of pleasant badinage to one of sentimental interest, while he gazed abstractedly in the young lady's face, without making ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... letter from the lid of her workbox, and handed it to him. Knight took the missive abstractedly, but struck by its appearance murmured a few words and ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... his tin cups and plates and cooking utensils. He put a box in front of the fire and folded a flour-bag on top of it for a seat for me, and hung the billy over the fire. He sat on his heels and poked the burning sticks, abstractedly I thought, or to keep his hands and ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... don't know, I'm sure," replied Billy, abstractedly; then, with sudden fervor: "Oh, Bertram, hasn't Mr. ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... I can't make him out," resumed Barker, abstractedly; "he never opens his mouth without saying something so indescribably half-witted that to call him a fool seems the very feeblest attempt at characterisation. But there's another thing about him that's rather ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... do," interrupted North, only half concealing his disgust as he rose and carried the baby to the other room, beyond the reach of names that might shock its ladylike ears. The next morning he met the from-dance-returning Bessy abstractedly, and soon took his leave, full of a disloyal plan, conceived in the sleeplessness of her own bedchamber. He was satisfied that he owed a duty to its unknown parents to remove the child from the ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... and heat of Sim's presence died quickly away; the house was without a sound; General Jackson lay like an effigy in ravelled black and buff wool. Gordon assembled the scattered papers on the table into an orderly pile. He moved into the kitchen, abstractedly surveyed the familiar walls; he walked through the house to the sitting room, where he stood ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... where he had crowded for the holidays, he found his cousin, upon the hearth-rug, looking abstractedly into the flames. ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... but it won't hurt me to walk. Nothing hurts me—Leah Mordecai the despised." Then, averting her face, the young girl gazed abstractedly into the street, and began ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... Barney halted, gazed abstractedly at the strong face with the keen grey eyes compelling his attention, then, with an effort, ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... inspired with a blind hatred of Culpepper, was jibbing across the terrace, close at hand. Henry became abstractedly interested in the struggle. The woman swayed forward ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... the platform, abstractedly striking his right hand into his left. When he reached the ticket window he put one hand against the frame as if to steady himself, and stood ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... reached that very important part where the "fly," as an ocular witness, gives his substantial and straightforward evidence. I had a little narrow block between my fingers, and was glancing carefully among the unused pieces for its mate, repeating abstractedly all the while: ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... thoughts. He had been down to the vicarage once or twice, he had met her once in the lanes, and he had longed for a glimpse of her daily; as yet he had done nothing else. He opened his letters on this particular morning slowly and abstractedly, tossing them into the fire, one after the other, as he read them, and not paying very much attention to ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... gas-jet that hung in the middle of the room. The hard white light showed her somewhat haggard-looking as she reached up to it. But Albert watched her, smiling abstractedly. It seemed as if his words came off him without affecting him at all. He did not think about what he was feeling, and he did not feel what he was thinking about. And therefore she hardly heard what he said. Yet she believed he ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... brought, and then seating herself by the window Maggie looked out abstractedly, seeing nothing, and hearing nothing save the sound of the pen, as it wrote down words of love for the gentle Rose. It was not a long epistle; and, as at the close of the Douglas letter he had asked a message from ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... gave it up in despair and abstractedly felt for his watch-fob. Which wasn't there. Neither, investigation developed, was the watch. At which crowning stroke of misfortune,—the timepiece must have slipped from his pocket into the water while he was tinkering with ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... and thence they will have given a lasting wound to liberty: for what king will ever call 'Etats again, if he can possibly help it! The new legislators were pedants, not politicians, when they announced the equality of all men. We are all born so, no doubt, abstractedly; and physically capable of being kept so, were it possible to establish a perfect government, and give the same education to all men. But are they so in the present constitution of society, under a bad government, where most have had no education at all, but ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... served him better than nice legal knowledge in despatching such simple business as fell to his hands in this Court. To-day Dr. Chalkfield, the Mayor for the year, being absent, the corn-merchant took the big chair, his eyes still abstractedly stretching out of the window to the ashlar front ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy |
