"Diverting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a good citizen by those bell-pulling, gate-whacking, back-door-pounding infernal collectors of time and care-worn boots. The old boot gatherers were almost as diverting as novel to me, when I first located in Boston; but I have long since learned to hate and abhor them, and their co-laborers in the tin-pan, tape, tea-pot, willow work, and white pine ware trade, with a most ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... and more vast enterprise contributed towards the stability of the government by draining off its bolder spirits, and diverting the popular attention from domestic to ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... gratifie the common people with them, as an argument of a fatherly affection, and loving goodnesse towards them: and that in populous and frequented cities, there should be Theatres and places appointed for such spectacles; as a diverting of worse inconveniences, and secret actions. But to come to my intended purpose there is no better way to allure the affection, and to entice the appetite: otherwise a man shall breed but asses laden with Bookes. ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... separate: indifferent to me, or nearly so; but it is good to be plucking out tiresome burning sticks, stick after stick. I hope you amuse yourself at Berlin: at Leipzig nothing but balls and redouts; my Nephews diverting themselves amazingly. Madam Friedrich, lately Garden-maid at Seidlitz [Village in the Neumark, with this Beauty plucking weeds in it,—little prescient of such a fortune], now Wife to an Officer of the Free Hussars, is ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... and invaluable services in protecting the rear and flanks of the armies, and by their magnificent raiding expeditions into the enemy's country, destroying his supplies, injuring his communications, diverting his forces, and liberating his slaves. No sufficient accounts of such expeditions and of the numerous cavalry conflicts have been published; yet they are very desirable. They would furnish most interesting narratives, and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... was half done and at its best. I allowed her another moment, a moment in which she laughed confidentially to herself, a little dry, throaty laugh. I knew that laugh. She would be marshalling certain events in their just and diverting order. But they seemed to be many and ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... of the Massachusetts,—hunting, fishing, and fowling more, and working on the land less. Nor do they keep the Lord's Day so strict; many of the young people going abroad, both riding and walking, visiting each other, and diverting themselves, especially after the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... no reply to my question; and on looking round I saw only Joseph bringing in a pail of porridge for the dogs, and Mrs. Heathcliff leaning over the fire, diverting herself with burning a bundle of matches which had fallen from the chimney-piece as she restored the tea-canister to its place. The former, when he had deposited his burden, took a critical survey of the room, and in cracked tones grated out—'Aw wonder ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... with a Scotch antiquary and herald as one of the things which soothed him most. "I do not know anything which relieves the mind so much from the sullens as trifling discussions about antiquarian old womanries. It is like knitting a stocking, diverting the mind without occupying it."[7] Thus his love of romantic literature was as far as possible from that of a mind which only feeds on romantic excitements; rather was it that of one who was so moulded by the ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... they went about this matter as other people would do in their situation. "St. Louis," he continued, "as a commercial place may desire that this bridge should not stand, as it is adverse to her commerce, diverting a portion of it from the river; and it may be that she supposes that the additional cost of railroad transportation upon the productions of Iowa will force them to go to St. Louis if this bridge is removed. The meetings in St. Louis are ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... made trash must be set to make munitions, or to fight, or in some way to second the Army. Those who still were ready to waste labour on trash for themselves were no longer obeying the laws of supply and demand; they were diverting labour from its proper task; they were unpatriotic, they were helping the Germans. Money, in fact, had no longer the right to an absolute command over labour. A man, before he spent a sovereign, ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... stage manager or prompter—this reality which frequently never gets to the fifth act, merely because the hero happens to be struck on the head by a brick in the second. I make the curtain rise when the plot takes a diverting turn, and I drop it the moment I have proved myself in ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... habit of diverting herself, when visiting portrait galleries, by looking for faces that resembled those of her heroines. She was continually on the watch for Elizabeth, but never came upon her. She found Mrs. Bingley, "in a white gown ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... with humour, that the constant contemplation of a man trying to wriggle out of the flesh through some spiritual key-hole, made by his own imagination, into a form of existence much higher than agreeable, would be, to say the least of it, diverting. ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... animated composition; yet it is very singular,—it is a faithful representation of a scene out of my own life, reproducing the portraits of the parties concerned in it in a manner startlingly lifelike. You will, however, agree with me that diverting memories also have the power of strangely moving the mind when they suddenly spring up in this extraordinary and unexpected way, as if awakened by the wave of a magician's wand. That's the case ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... This diverting incident brings me to a consideration of one of the difficulties which stand in the way of effective stage pictures combined with action in the case of some of the most admired of the subjects for oratorios ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... authentic repositories of national prestige, and they are therefore unreflectingly presumed by their several aggregations of subjects to be of some substantial use also in some other bearing; but it would be a highly diverting exhibition of credulity for any outsider to fall into that amazing misconception. But the like is manifestly true of commercial turnover and export trade among modern peoples; although on this head the infatuation is so ingrained ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... army under Buell, wrest from the South the possession of Tennessee and Alabama—as a base for attack upon Georgia and cutting through to the seaboard; and to push the army under Grant down through Mississippi to the Gulf. These movements would not only weaken the Confederacy, by diverting so many men, ill to be spared, to watch the various columns; but would, moreover, wrest from it the great grain-producing and cattle-grazing sections from which the armies were mainly fed. Simultaneously with these a heavy force was ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... mind. It was quite true that she could not watch that little adventurous spirit with the same absence of anxiety as she had felt for her own son in her younger days, and Anne had to devote herself to soothing and diverting her mind, till Dr. Woodford knocked at the door to read and ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... reminds me of the time we came so near crossing together," he broke out, diverting the subject in his inconsequent fashion. "D'ye remember that Dr. Mead who dressed our wounds for us after our little argument? It appears that he and a Dr. Woodward fell into some professional dispute as to how a case should be treated, and Lud! nothing would satisfy them but ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... moment in which a rapid change might have been effected in royal or national councils, had telegraphic wires and express trains been at the command of Henry, or Burghley, or Barneveld, or the Cardinal Albert, need not and cannot be decided. It is almost diverting, however, to see how closely the intrigues of cabinets, the movements of armies, the plans of patriots, were once dependent on those natural elements over which man has now ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... conditions which were the only ones possible; still there was no other task upon which Leslie could employ himself—and he felt that it was imperative to do something, if only to while the time away and interest his companion, thus diverting her thoughts and preventing her from dwelling too much upon the horrors of their present situation. He therefore set manfully to work and, shaping a course by the run of the sea, proceeded to propel the raft to windward, resting his hand upon its after end and striking ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... bolstering will ever make it into a comedy. You may add a lot of knockabout and perhaps get an acceptable farce, or you can write in sensation and get travesty, but you cannot by these means change the unfit into comedy, and the broad use of 'comedy' to apply to anything intended to be diverting is a misuse of an ancient and honorable word.... To my way of thinking comedy is first of all a good story. It is a story and not merely an incident or a collection of incidents. There must be a plot to obtain and hold the ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... violate, and unsettle the root; which is likewise to be practis'd upon all those which you did not transplant, unless you find them very thriving trees; and then it shall suffice to prune off the branches, and spare the tops; for this does not only greatly establish your plants by diverting the sap to the roots; but likewise frees them from the injury and concussions of the winds, and makes them to produce handsome, streight shoots, infinitely preferable to such as are abandon'd to nature, and accident, without this discipline: By this means the oak will become excellent timber, ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... diverting," said Sibyl, "it's cruel, it's mean, it's wrong; it's lies—black lies. Now ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... care of his person, than became one who had so much at stake. He wandered about England for ten weeks after that, hiding from place to place. But, under all the apprehensions he had then upon him, he shewed a temper so careless, and so much turned to levity, that he was then diverting himself with little houshold sports, in as unconcerned a manner, as if he had made no loss, and had been in no danger at all. He got at last out of England. But he had been obliged to so many, ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... a fête—the new-year’s day of the Mussulmans. {40} Most of the people were amusing themselves in the beautiful lawns and shady groves without the city. The men (except myself) were all remotely apart from the other sex. The women in groups were diverting themselves and their children with swings. They were so handsome, that they could not keep up their yashmaks. I believe that they had never before looked upon a man in the European dress, and when they now saw in me that strange phenomenon, and saw, too, how they could ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... told, has writ a romance since his retirement in the isle of Lundy, and Mr. Waller they say is making one of our wars, which if he does not mingle with a great deal of pleasing fiction, cannot be very diverting, sure, ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... consolation, they took various means of diverting his mind with worldly amusements, and one was a visit to a traveling variety troupe, then performing in the town. The result of the visit was briefly told by Whisky Dick. "Well, sir, we went in, and I sot the old man down in a front seat, and kinder propped him ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... education; but these doubts had now vanished, and for ever. The arrangements for bodily exercise, connected with mental and moral improvement, especially delighted him. He was amused as well as instructed by the well-applied admixture of diverting expedients to keep the children alive and alert. It was 'seria mixta jocis,' but there was practical sense in the seemingly most frivolous part of the plan. He trusted that the time was not far distant when there should be many such institutions. ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... this road in the exercise of our useful calling of odd- jobbing? Your great shoulders bowed under an enormous load of pots, pans, kettles, umbrellas, and everything that required your surgical skill; and my little back bent beneath the basket of tools?" inquired Ishmael, by way of diverting him. ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... Square of creation and pointed out to me that the numbers three and seven are the basis of everything. He advised me not to avoid intercourse with the Petersburg Brothers, but to take up only second-grade posts in the lodge, to try, while diverting the Brothers from pride, to turn them toward the true path self-knowledge and self-perfecting. Besides this he advised me for myself personally above all to keep a watch over myself, and to that end he gave me a notebook, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... of doubt in my mind she enjoyed it greatly, suh, greatly, and I consider the cause of diverting her grief has advanced a hundred per cent by her consenting to go at all. Did any of the other Sweetbriar friends avail themselves of the Providence invitation—Miss Rose Mary and er—any of the other ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... as a prelude to this lonely adventure of mine—a prelude full of movement and contrast; but I had no premonition of any equally diverting sequel. ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... first reports, when a quiet investigation of facts would have changed his view and saved the feelings of his subordinates. An order forbidding the use of hospital boats for other military purposes, diverting them from hospital use, had been issued on February 8th, the day we reached Cape Fear Inlet after our sea voyage, [Footnote: Id., p. 342.] and by another coincidence Schofield had made the "Spaulding" his temporary ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... passengers in utter despair. In the midst of this general panic, cries of vengeance were heard against the principal author of our misfortunes, wishing to throw him overboard; but some generous persons interposed, and endeavoured to calm their spirits, by diverting their attention to the means of our safety. The confusion was already so great, that M. Poinsignon, commandant of a troop, struck my sister Caroline a severe blow, doubtless thinking it was one of his soldiers. ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... the following afternoon Jerkline Jo's freight outfit, minus the diverting Mr. Tweet of the twisted nose, was wending its way empty back toward the distant mountains, hauling the necessary water ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... title to interfere in the local affairs of Ireland, only to perjure herself subsequently, by creating rotten boroughs and dispensing titles and millions of gold, for the purpose of controlling those very same affairs, not only more effectually than ever, but with the further view of diverting all the resources of the country out of their legitimate channels into her own hands, so that she should be at once the tyrant, and the purse and conscience keeper of our race. They remember all this, we say, and now they are about ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... stared at him. "A merry way of waking, and ludicrous enough," said the Chevalier; "what is the matter, and whom do you laugh at!" "Faith, Chevalier," said Matta, "I am laughing at a dream I had just now, which is so natural and diverting, that I must make you laugh at it also. I was dreaming that we had dismissed our maitre-d'hotel, our cook, and our confectioner, having resolved, for the remainder of the campaign, to live upon others as others have lived ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... and soulful black eyes, and of his broad forehead and sensitive lips. There was also a complete description of their domestic menage, including the chafing-dish and the odor of lamb-chops. There was a highly diverting account of how they had "eloped" with only eight dollars in the world; together with all the agonies of their parents, as imagined by ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... Jewish youth, worthy of being an ideal for young men. We certainly do have in his life as now interpreted exactly what youth needs above all things,—ambition, enthusiasm, idealism, all of them absorbing, all of them diverting physical and sensuous energy into the very highest culture sphere, sublimating desire, and making us understand that youth is not complete without a great effort at achievement. The very essence of youth is excitement. There must be tension, strain, a tiptoe attitude, ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... course. On the contrary, I embraced the opportunity even with fervour, and far from discouraging my friend from views to which I know he is fatally, even ridiculously, wedded, I looked forward to this expedition as the possible means of diverting his mind from some opinions, and, I might add, some influences, which I am persuaded can eventually entail upon him nothing but disappointment and disgrace.' And here Fakredeen shook his head, with that air of confidential mystery ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... accordingly laid siege to Aden in 1513, but was repulsed; and a voyage into the Red Sea, the first ever made by a European fleet, led to no substantial results. In order to destroy the power of Egypt, he is said to have entertained the idea of diverting the course of the Nile and so rendering the whole country barren. His last warlike undertaking was a second attack upon Ormuz in 1515. The island yielded to him without resistance, and it remained in the possession of the Portuguese until 1622. Albuquerque's ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... of large state firms have been passed. However, most of the early privatization will involve converting state firms into joint-stock companies. The selling of shares to the public has not yet been worked out. Furthermore, the government has halted the old policy of diverting food from domestic consumption to hard currency export markets. So far, the government does not seem willing to adopt a thoroughgoing market system, that is, there is great caution in decontrolling prices because of public opposition. The government ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... stranger for his mother's sake, the while robbing him of his small change; who was so struck by the fine points of his Honolulan horse that he hung his hat on one of them; who rode glaciers as gaily as he rode Mexican plugs, and found diverting programmes of the Roman Coliseum, in the dust and rubbish ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... sure, are placed in the mouth of an imagined sailor, but they are none the less diverting. The stanza containing the distich ends with ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... It is diverting enough to hear the different Language held forth concerning me, by a kind of Men whom I despise beyond Expression. In New England they say I am averse to an Accommodation with Great Britain, and make that an Exception against ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... the outside world he might safely have been termed rather rum, but here in this backwater, so full of the oddest flotsam, his waywardness was rather less than the average. He had, for instance, a diverting habit of modifying the time, and even the tune, of the hymns on Sunday, and he confessed to having kissed all the nurses and housemaids except three. But both Escott and Sherlaw declared they had never met a ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... Huysman did not contribute much wisdom to it beyond the assertion of her conviction that such things were wicked and should be stopped by law, at which her daughter was sufficiently unfilial to draw a diverting picture of a stalwart policeman trying to arrest an elusive adept who could probably make himself invisible at will, or call to his aid fire-breathing dragons, just as easily as he could make a tennis ball evaporate into thin air, or grow ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... says Jack, wiping his face with the skirt of his coat, ''cause why?—you see pocket-handkerchiefs weren't invented in them times: 'why, thin, may I never live to see yesterday, if there's not as much rale beauty in that smile that's diverting itself about them sweet-breathing lips of yours, and in them two eyes of light that's breaking both their hearts laughing at me, this minute, as would encourage any poor fellow to expect a good turn from you—that is, whin you could ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... have said before, many major decisions of strategy have been made. One of them—on which we have all agreed—relates to the necessity of diverting enemy forces from Russia and China to other theaters of war by new offensives against Germany and Japan. An announcement of how these offensives are to be launched, and when, and where, cannot be broadcast over the radio at ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... Ep[iscopus.]" It is rare that a bit of broken stone paves the way to such discoveries. But it must be a man of genius who walks over the pavement. Cardinal Wiseman has given an imperfect account of these discoveries in his diverting novel, Fabiola.] ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... the panoramic series of views of the River Thames, from Greenwich to the Nore, on the passage of the Royal flotilla for Scotland, and its arrival in Leith Roads, probably surpass everything of the kind before exhibited. There are several diverting tricks and ingenious changes. Grimaldi's equipment of a patent safety coach at Brighton, in particular was highly amusing. The machinery, which is, in many instances, of a most complicated description, worked remarkably well for ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... formally declared the aerodrome opened, and turned on the flute diverting the waters of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 24, 1917 • Various
... first year of Cyrus in Babylonia was one of the two intermediate years 209, 210. Cyrus invaded Babylonia in the year of Nabonassar 209; [398] Babylon held out, and the next year was taken, Jer. li. 39, 57. by diverting the river Euphrates, and entring the city through the emptied channel, and by consequence after midsummer: for the river, by the melting of the snow in Armenia, overflows yearly in the beginning of summer, but in the heat of dimmer grows low. [399] And that night ...
— The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended • Isaac Newton
... to eat at that time,' he said, 'but milk and stirabout and potatoes, and there was a fine constitution you wouldn't meet this day at all. I remember when you'd see forty boys and girls below there on a Sunday evening, playing ball and diverting themselves; but now all this country is gone lonesome and bewildered, and there's no ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge
... him and my mother talk together, and their disputes, though frequent, seemed generally extremely amicable, and as diverting to themselves as to us. On one occasion he ended their discussion (as to whether some lady of their acquaintance had or had not gone somewhere) by a vehement declaration which passed into a proverb in our house: "Yes, yes, she did; for a woman will go anywhere, at any time, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... civilization. No wonder that the stern moralists who would keep beauty for the clean and holy have been afraid of art! Yet the delight of sense, because its emotional effect is diffused, does not interfere with the contemplative serenity of art, as unbridled passion does; it even quiets passion by diverting the attention to itself; hence may always be employed by the artist. A good example of the aesthetic fascination of sensation is Von Stuck's "Salome" in the Art Institute of Chicago. For all normal feeling, Salome dancing ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... in opinion proved unlucky, diverting, as it did, Ehrenthal's anger against the baron instead. "Why do I speak of Pinkus?" he screamed; "he has acted as a man of his stamp will act. But you—you, who are a nobleman, how could you deal so with me? You have carried ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... self-indulgence, and artificial austerities, which frequently belonged to the degenerate monasticism of the day, furnished him with engaging themes of satire. But in his Praise of Folly, and in his Colloquies, the two most diverting of his productions, he lashes the foibles and sins of many other classes, among whom kings and popes are not spared. By such works as his editions of the Church Fathers, and his edition of the Greek Testament, as well as by his multifarious correspondence, he exerted a powerful ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... have thought," I said, "that you'd have been pleased. You were talking to me the other day about the necessity for pulling off some coup of a striking and theatrical kind by way of diverting the sympathy of ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... whole fleets of these Nautili may be seen diverting themselves; but when a storm rises, or they are disturbed, they draw in their legs, take in as much water as makes them specifically heavier, than that in which they float, and then sink to the bottom. When they rise ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 381 Saturday, July 18, 1829 • Various
... way he had been dimly suspicious of this since the day he had begun this pretence of work for his grandfather's old friend. To-day, at sight of a girl's steady concentration upon a wearisome task in spite of his own supposably diverting presence, it had been brought home to him with force that he was unquestionably reaping that inevitable product of protracted idleness: the loss of the power ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... company, had pretended to leave with the rest and concealed himself in her dressing-room; as she was undressing, thinking herself alone, he burst from his hiding-place, a bottle of champagne in either hand and laughing like a mad-man. The new lover was less diverting. However, she asked ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... she was diverting by holding her up to the window, began to clap her hands, and Mrs. Richards settled herself back into her ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... the street, where the hose was fastened to the hydrant, the little pests of Metz clustered eagerly, standing on the hose pipe where the bursts were tied with string, and by dexterous pressure diverting the leaks into gay fountains that flew up and pierced the windows opposite. As the mud rolled off under the blast of the hose and left the car streaky and dripping, the little boys dipping their feet into ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... intent admiration too fully for her to be unaware that he was staring at her. She coloured a little, but after the first moment of rosy confusion at his evident admiration of her, she flew to the attack, diverting his confusion at thus being caught, to the defence of himself ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... and pure in heroic poetry. One knows—at least every schoolboy has known—that a passage of Homer, rolling along in the hexameter or trumped out by Pope, will give one a hot glow of pleasure and raise a finer throb in the pulse; one knows that Homer is the easiest, most artless, most diverting of all poets; that the fiftieth reading rouses the spirit even more than the first—and yet we find ourselves (we are all alike) painfully pshaw-ing over some new and uncut barley sugar in rime, which a man in the street asked us if we had read, or ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... Between whiles she related to Alresca all the news of their operatic acquaintances—how this one was married, another stranded in Buenos Ayres, another ill with jealousy, another ill with a cold, another pursued for debt, and so on through the diverting category. ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... London, where he became, says Walpole, "topsy-turvey with success." In the intervals of supplying an ever increasing demand with more "Tristrams" he composed and published volumes of sermons. Their popularity proved that he was as eloquent in his pulpit gown as he was diverting without it. The turmoil of eighteenth century social and literary life soon shattered his already failing health, and he died on March 18, 1768, the first two volumes of "A Sentimental Journey" appearing ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... in front of a cafe, where men were playing guitar and mandolin, and girls were dancing with castanets. The sight of light and life pleased the boy who had been so long in prison. These people were diverting themselves and they smiled and laughed. They seemed to have kindly feelings for everybody, but he remembered that cruel Spanish strain, often dormant, but always there, ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... relate may seem to some merely to be curious and on a party with the diverting story of M. Boisrose, which I have set down in an earlier part of my memoirs. But among the calumnies of those who have never ceased to attack me since the death of the late king, the statement that I kept from his majesty things which should have reached his ears ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... walked the whole way, but I am here at my time. Konstantin Dmitrievitch, my respects"; he turned to Levin, trying to seize his hand too. But Levin, scowling, made as though he did not notice his hand, and took out the snipe. "Your honors have been diverting yourselves with the chase? What kind of bird may it be, pray?" added Ryabinin, looking contemptuously at the snipe: "a great delicacy, I suppose." And he shook his head disapprovingly, as though he had grave doubts whether this game were ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... now say something about my rather diverting Tarantula-hunts. The best season for them is the months of May and June. The first time that I lighted on this Spider's burrows and discovered that they were inhabited by seeing her come to a point on the first floor of her dwelling—the ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... to observe the weekly truce, and, by means of the dreaded penalty of excommunication, met with some success. With the opening of the Crusades in 1096, the popes undertook to effect a general pacification by diverting the prevailing warlike spirit ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... would deny Cinna the Applause of an agreeable and facetious Wit; or could possibly pretend that there is not something inimitably unforced and diverting in his Manner of delivering all his Sentiments in Conversation, if he were able to conceal the strong Desire of Applause which he betrays in every Syllable he utters. But they who converse with him, see that all the Civilities they could do to him, or the kind Things they could say ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... world needs, and it is the only true religion; all others, all that seek to make something else sacred, that make men put their trust in "God" or Christ or the Virgin or the Bible or the Church or its sacraments and rites, are a diverting of man from the real issue; they are the blind leading of the blind; they are a delusion and ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... deep in a discussion of Hatiheu church. Brother Michel spoke always of his labours with a twinkle of humour, underlying which it was possible to spy a serious pride, and the change from one to another was often very human and diverting. "Et vos gargouilles moyen-age," cried I; "comme elles sont originales!" "N'est-ce pas? Elles sont bien droles!" he said, smiling broadly; and the next moment, with a sudden gravity: "Cependant ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was scarcely lively. Cecil maintained an offended silence, and Jim was too angry to talk, while Norah was silent and a little pale. However, Cecil retired to his room immediately he had finished; and the boys set themselves to the task of diverting Norah, fearful lest the evening's adventure should have any bad effect on her. They succeeded so well that by bedtime Norah had forgotten all her troubles, and was weak with laughter. When Wally set out "to blither," as he said, he did not do things ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... patrician ladies in Venice. Just as Arthur was a different man in the operating theatre, Dr Porhoet was changed among his books. Though he preserved the amiable serenity which made him always so attractive, he had there a diverting brusqueness of demeanour which contrasted quaintly ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... services to the House, in diverting for nine years long the late King our Father, and doing the honors of our Court during the now Reign, cannot refuse such request; but do hereby certify, That the said Baron has never assassinated, robbed on the highway, poisoned, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Shakespeare has here represented the animal impulse itself, so as to preclude all sympathy with it, by dissipating the reader's notice among the thousand outward images, and now beautiful, now fanciful circumstances, which form its dresses and its scenery; or by diverting our attention from the main subject by those frequent witty or profound reflections, which the poet's ever active mind has deduced from, or connected with, the imagery and the incidents. The reader is forced into ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... without a tremendous depth of conviction. At all events, supported by such writers as Weil, Sprenger, and Muir, we will say that it was a powerful religious movement founded on sincerest conviction, but gradually turned aside, and used for worldly purposes and temporal triumphs. And, in thus diverting it from divine objects to purely human ones, Mohammed himself led the way. He adds another, and perhaps the greatest, illustration to the long list of noble souls whose natures have become subdued to that which they worked in; who have sought high ends by low means; who, talking ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... king's daughter. She was now diverting herself by the banks of the river; and seeing a cradle borne along by the current, she sent some that could swim, and bid them bring the cradle to her. When those that were sent on this errand came to her with the cradle, and she saw ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... have recovered her best bow anchor. Feenou, understanding that I meant to proceed directly to Tongataboo, importuned me strongly to alter this plan, to which he expressed as much aversion, as if he had some particular interest to promote by diverting me from it. In preference to it, he warmly recommended an island, or rather a group of islands, called Hepaee, lying to the N.E. There, he assured us, we could be supplied plentifully with every refreshment, in the easiest manner; and, to add weight to his advice, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... had planned to reduce with a small force while the main bulk of his levies were gathering for the siege of Milan. The attack on Crema was cordially seconded by the citizens of the neighbouring Cremona, who gave their assistance in diverting the watercourses which ran through the city, and lent Frederic the most famous of living engineers to make his siege-machines. Crema was completely invested; and every known method of assault was tried. The moat was filled with fascines, and movable towers of wood, so high as to overtop the ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... something about madmen's cunning and diverting suspicion, and relapsed into silence. Trevor seized the opportunity to make the proposal he had come to make, that Donaldson's v. Seymour's should be played on the ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... France had not been far more bitterly opposed to each other than to him. Indeed, it is difficult after all to justify, even as a matter of policy, his interference in French affairs, except as a means of diverting public attention from the fact that he inherited from his father but an indifferent title even to the throne of England. And though success attended his efforts beyond all expectation, he most wilfully endangered the safety not only of himself, but of his gallant army, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... water control projects have drained most of the inhabited marsh areas east of An Nasiriyah by drying up or diverting the feeder streams and rivers; a once sizable population of Shi'a Muslims, who have inhabited these areas for thousands of years, has been displaced; furthermore, the destruction of the natural habitat poses serious threats to the area's wildlife populations; inadequate ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... necessary to lighten the canoes. Having missed the path through the woods we walked two miles in the water upon sharp stones, from which some of us were incessantly slipping into deep holes and floundering in vain for footing at the bottom, a scene highly diverting notwithstanding our fatigue. We were detained in Sandy Lake till one P.M. by a strong gale when, the wind becoming moderate, we crossed five miles to the mouth of the river and at four P.M. left the main branch of it and entered a little rivulet called ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... cap; her skirts and jackets were skimp and dowdy, and her features and complexion unattractive, yet the authority and ease, the whole manner of the true lady made her a delightful companion, and she would have been equally diverting and diverted at a Royal Audience in Buckingham Palace or at a bean-feast on an Indian reserve. She displayed ornaments that were not precisely jewels, the value of which was of genealogical order; thus, she wore her grandfather's fobs and seals, her mother's bracelets of bog-oak ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... plague, or conflagration, though by all it was smitten—overwhelmed the city whose place in Europe had been so distinguished. The decadence of enterprise, the growing discredit put upon industry, the final discovery by Vasco da Gama of the passage around the Cape of Good Hope, diverting traffic into new channels—these laid their silent and tightening grasp on the ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley
... even in the Platform. And Joe's gang privately tipped off the noncommissioned personnel of the Moonship. Thereafter, no enlisted man ever saluted Lieutenant Brown without first gently detaching his magnet-soled shoes from the floor. When a man was free, a really snappy salute gave a diverting result. The man's body tilted forward to meet his rising arm, the upward impetus was one-sided, and every man who saluted Brown immediately made a spectacular kowtow which left him rigidly at salute floating somewhere overhead with his back to Lieutenant Brown. With ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... wouldn't be more diverting to listen for hours to you improvising enharmonic variations on the Lament for ...
— Control Group • Roger Dee
... before her, Skadi took a fancy to a pair which she flattered herself, from their fine proportions, must be those of Baldur. They were however Njord's, and Njord was accordingly given her for a husband, and as Loki managed to make her laugh, by playing some diverting antics with a goat, the atonement was fully effected. It is even said that Odin did more than had been stipulated, by taking out Thjassi's eyes, and placing them to shine ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... excitability, and renders them incapable of being amused by a variety of common objects, which would naturally be their entertainment. We do not here speak of the attempts made to sooth a child who is ill; "to charm the sense of pain," so far as it can be done by diverting the child's attention from his own sufferings to outward objects, is humane and reasonable, provided our compassion does not induce in the child's mind the expectation of continual attendance, and that impatience of temper which increases bodily ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... of the English language. "Few works," it has been observed by one of his biographers, "exhibit a nicer perception, or more delicate delineation of life and manners. Wit, humor, and sentiment pervade every page; the vices and follies of the day are touched with the most playful and diverting satire; and English characteristics, in endless variety, are hit off with the ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... about her for something diverting. At no great distance was a little baby in a blue cloak. Not a very attractive baby, but a great deal ...
— Dotty Dimple Out West • Sophie May
... the offside oil lamp, which was hot to the touch, were most diverting, and twice he returned to the window to ask us to make less noise. At last, however, with the assistance of Fitch, the lamp was unhooked, and a moment later our absurd link-boy advanced cautiously in the direction ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... recitation; nobody ever sang like her, and still less did anybody ever look like her while she sang. Practical jokes of very doubtful taste were the fashion of that day, and remembering what wonderfully coarse and silly proceedings were then thought highly diverting by "vastly genteel" people, it is not, perhaps, much to be wondered at that so poor a piece of wit as this should have furnished diversion to a couple of light-hearted girls, with no special pretensions to elegance or education. Once they were driving together in a post-chaise on the ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... diverting extravaganza, rather in the style of Jules Verne.... The apology of the translator for the lack of verisimilitude in the last scene is entirely unnecessary; otherwise she has done her work with credit, while M. Veilliemin's spirited illustrations heighten the attractions of a most entertaining ...
— Stamp Collecting as a Pastime • Edward J. Nankivell
... undergone before, save in that one instance. In the language of scripture, "we strake sail, and so were driven." The sky was as pitch, the waves furious, the wind awful. Night and day passed without thought or heed. Working at the pumps had done us all good, diverting our minds from the loss we had sustained, and preventing us from dwelling on the perils surrounding us. But now we had nothing to do, and we experienced, in its full force, that heart-sickness consequent upon hope deferred. ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... acquaintance and spread broadcast a body of important knowledge which would develop as the young men mature and contribute immensely toward world peace and world progress. If some broad plan of international effort such as is here suggested were organized the expense of maintenance might well be met by diverting so much as is needful from the large sums set aside for the expansion of navies for such steps as these, taken in the interests of world uplift and world peace, could not fail to be more efficacious and less expensive than increase in fighting equipment. It would cultivate the ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... with the stomach empty. It is true that food puts one to sleep at first, by diverting blood from the head; but it disturbs sleep later. Water, unless it induces bladder-action during the night, or even fruit, may be taken without injury before retiring. If one goes to bed with an empty stomach, he can often get along well with ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... their number, leaping from the window, asked with a very fierce air what the devil we meant. The others thrust out their faces, swollen and flushed with the wine they had drunk, and with many oaths backed up his question. Not feeling myself called upon to interfere, I prepared to see something diverting. ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... his most diverting "properties" is the set of "morals" he draws to everything, of nonsensical literalness and infantile gravity, the perfection of solemn fooling. Thus in the 'Lay of St. Cuthbert,' where the Devil has captured the heir of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... does it prove the existence of such steady and extensive commercial relations as such a theory of the megalithic monuments would seem to require. Immigration is often forced on a race. Change of climate or the diverting of the course of a great river may make their country unfit for habitation, or they may be expelled by a stronger race. In either case they must migrate, and we know from history that they often covered long distances in their attempt ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet
... 1-6, 23-29 of the prophecy were delivered at this epoch: the remainder he believes to have been written during Sennacherib's campaign against Judah, and suggests that the prophet added on his previous oracle to them, thus diverting it from its original application. Others, such as Stade and Wellhausen, regard the opening verses as embodying a mere rhetorical figure. Jerusalem, they say, appeared to the prophet as though changed into Samaria, and it is this transformed city which he calls "the crown of pride of the drunkards ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... ARISTIPPUS.—Crates of Thebes is also mentioned, less insolent and better-mannered, yet also a despiser of the goods of this world; and Menippus, the maker of satires, whom Lucian, much later, made the most diverting interlocutor of his amusing dialogues. In an opposite direction, at the same epoch, Aristippus, a pupil of Socrates, like Antisthenes, founded the school of pleasure, and maintained that the sole search worthy ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... neighbors, however,—the friends of the house—had smiled and passed on. They had no such forebodings. On the contrary nothing so diverting—nothing so enchanting—had happened around Kennedy Square in years. In fact, when one of these humorists began speaking about it, every listener heard the story in a broad grin. Some of the more hilarious even ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... which the Ambassador alluded to the other member of the States-General who opposed the decree was still more diverting. It was "Grotius, the Pensioner of Rotterdam, a young petulant brain, not unknown to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... was beset. Presently he stopped and waited on the terrace opposite the grove of trees, watching for Madame's departure. More than half an hour passed away; and as he was at that moment quite alone, the comte could hardly have had any very diverting ideas at his command. He drew his tablets from his pocket, and, after hesitating over and over again, determined to write these words—"Madame, I implore you to grant me one moment's conversation. Do not be alarmed at this request, which contains nothing in any way opposed to the profound respect ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... ashes, puffing in my face until I was nearly blinded. Neither veil nor silk handkerchief afforded an effectual protection, and I was glad when the arrival of our huntsmen, with a quantity of ducks, gave me an opportunity of diverting my thoughts from my own sufferings, by aiding the men to pick them and get them ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... had not more difficulty in amusing Louis XIV. when grown old and devout, than had Madame de Pompadour in diverting his successor, who, though still young, seemed like a man who had exhausted all the pleasures and enjoyments of life. About the time when the marchioness used to transform herself into milkmaids and peasant girls, she commenced building a very romantic hermitage in ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... speaking of divers sorts of demons, mentions some which they commonly called fauns or satyrs, which the pagans regard as kinds of divinities of the fields or groves, who delighted, not so much in tormenting or doing harm to mankind, as in deceiving and fatiguing them, diverting themselves at their expense, and sporting with ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... to mean that the living original of Falstaff was as richly humorous, as inexhaustibly diverting as the dramatic counterfeit who is now a citizen and chief personage in that world of literature which outlasts all the fleeting shows of the so-called real world. It seems to me to be possible for a good reader to notice not only Shakespeare's lapses and faults ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... afternoon Sir Colin made a feint to the left of our position for the purpose of diverting the attention of the enemy from the real line of advance. He massed the Artillery in this direction, and ordered a constant mortar fire to be kept up during the night on the Begum palace and the barracks. ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... of unusual or commonly unperceived analogies or relations between things apparently unrelated, and has been said to depend upon a union of surprise and pleasure; it depends certainly on the production of a diverting, entertaining, or merrymaking surprise. The analogies with which wit plays are often superficial or artificial; humor deals with real analogies of an amusing or entertaining kind, or with traits of character that are seen to have a comical side as soon as brought to view. Wit is keen, sudden, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... more exuberant as he made the wine flow the more generously. Seeing a way of diverting mademoiselle from her sad thoughts, I set him to telling of the things he had done in battle when controlled by the sanguinary spirit of his father. He had a manner of narrating these deeds of slaughter, which took all the horror out of them, ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... thinking that there is no sort of harm in a heavy breakfast. After having passed a pleasant night in eating and flirting, he goes to bed betimes about four o'clock in the morning; and, as Bewick observes, makes a blowing hissing noise, resembling the snoring of a man. Indeed nothing can be more diverting to a person annoyed by blue devils, than to look at a white Owl and his wife asleep. With their heads gently inclined towards each other, there they keep snoring away like any Christian couple. Should the one make a pause, the other that instant awakes, and, fearing ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... mental diversion; he brought me books on anatomy, on science, and persuaded me to study them; and out of his busy life would steal an hour to explain to me knotty points on physiology. He saw that if I were to be brought back to reasonable life, it could only be by diverting thought from the channels in which the current had been running to a dangerous extent. I have often felt that I owed life and sanity to that good man, who felt for the helpless, bewildered child-woman, beaten down by the cyclone of doubt ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... at Bessie, who blushed furiously, but said nothing, realizing that silence was the best means of diverting her father's attention from the subject, and preventing his ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... lie, but led me on to some fresh feat, some brook or fence to leap, or inaccessible flower or berry to bring her. Already I got out of difficulties by changing the subject, by evading the challenge and diverting her to some other object, play or plan to which she as readily listened. How proud, how important and superior I felt and with what trust the little siren permitted it. Among all my apprenticeships this to ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... baby-tyrant into the least injurious of tyrannies. From the plunder of a province he would divert him by the carnage of the circus. From the murder of a senator he could lure him by some new lust at home. From the ruin of the Empire, he could seduce him by diverting him with the ruin of a noble family. And Seneca did this with the best of motives. He said he used all the power in his hands, and he thought he did. He was one of those men of whom all times have their share. The bravest ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... undoubting faith and devotion—wholly ignorant of the constant amusement she gave him by a thousand little feminine peculiarities, which struck him with a continual sense of oddity. It was infinitely diverting to him to see the solemnity of her interest in his shirts and stockings, and Sunday clothes, and to listen to the subtle distinctions which she would draw between best and second-best, and every-day; to receive ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... was well pleased with this story. "I must confess," said he to the Jew, "the story you have told me is very singular; but I declare freely, that of the little hump-back is: yet more extraordinary, and much more diverting; so you are not to expect that I will give you your life, any more than the rest. I will have you all four executed." "Pray, sir, stay a minute," said the tailor, advancing, and prostrating himself at the sultan's feet. "Since your majesty loves pleasant stories, I have ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... the village assemble together, and commence drumming and singing, halloing and yelling; and continue their boisterous lamentations for about 48 hours, day and night, relieving each other as they require. This they do, because they imagine it is diverting to the person deceased. They bury the body at a particular place back of their houses, and use mats for a coffin. After the ceremony of interment is performed, they plant two cocoanut trees, one at the head and the other at the feet of ...
— A Narrative of the Mutiny, on Board the Ship Globe, of Nantucket, in the Pacific Ocean, Jan. 1824 • William Lay
... his wife in the last month of pregnancy, taking the air with great composure and serenity, on the steps of a church in Florence; and nothing is more common, than to see the most execrable villains diverting themselves in the cloysters of ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... organized round some central principle of life, and that principle in itself imperishable. It must have a heart and members; the members must be soundly compacted and the heart superior to decay. Compared with Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders is only a string of diverting incidents, the lowest type of book organism, very brilliant while it is fresh and new, but not qualified to survive competitors for the world's interest. There is no unique creative purpose in it to bind the whole together; it might ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... had no book to read. And yet, unless I found out some method of diverting my mind, I felt certain that I was in the condition to imagine all sorts of horrors; to rack my brain with forebodings of every possible and impossible danger; in short, to pass the night in suffering all conceivable varieties ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... blackberries." And directing my attention to a little fragment of a broken wall no greater than a tombstone, he told me, for an example, a story of its earlier inhabitants. Years after it chanced that I was one day diverting myself with a Waverley Novel, when what should I come upon but the identical narrative of my green-coated gentleman upon the moors! In a moment the scene, the tones of his voice, his northern accent, and the very aspect of the earth and sky and temperature of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Then they led him to a room and told him to strip for a bath; after which he had to walk down a long gallery, past the grated cell doors of the inmates of the jail. This was a great event to the latter—the daily review of the new arrivals, all stark naked, and many and diverting were the comments. Jurgis was required to stay in the bath longer than any one, in the vain hope of getting out of him a few of his phosphates and acids. The prisoners roomed two in a cell, but that day there was one left over, ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... course of Philosophy. I doubt whether during the whole time he ever heard a word of his benefactress—if indeed it was the act of a benefactress to pay for a lad's schooling for three years without a thought of his future prospects, after diverting him from a career in which he might have found happiness. The circumstances of the time, and Louis Lambert's character, may to a great extent absolve Madame de Stael for her thoughtlessness and her generosity. The gentleman who was to have kept up communications between her and the boy left ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... fulcrum of the brain; and describes it as a piece of Gothic architecture. "It is in the nose that the arch of the forehead properly rests, the weight of which, but for this, would mercilessly crush the cheeks and the mouth." He enters into the philosophy of noses with diverting enthusiasm, and finally concludes, "Non cuique datum est habere nasum:"—it is not every one's good fortune to have a nose! A sharp nose has been considered the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 367 - 25 Apr 1829 • Various
... ideas. I have examined the matter and I have come to the conclusion that you must be amused. It is therefore my duty to provide you with amusement. As I cannot sing, nor dance, and as you do not play cards, I cannot think of any more fitting method of diverting you than by reading aloud. German literature offers much variety. You have only to choose the author you prefer, and I will read as much ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... believe, have amused me for hours with legends of the said spirits, and indeed every river and lake, every mountain and valley in this district bears its peculiar legend, always improbable, generally absurd, and though from that very cause diverting for the moment, I fear that the naive taste amongst our "savans" which delighted in the history of Jack the Giant-killer being fast on the wane, they would not be gratified by a lengthy recital; but I must still take the liberty of repeating as well as I could follow the vile jargon of ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... the top floor of the Westcott House and were famous in the house for being at the same time prime favorites of the matron and the ringleaders in every plot against her peace of mind, and outside for their unique and diverting methods of recreation. It was they who had successfully gulled Mary Brooks with a rumor as absurd as her own; and accounts of the "spread" they had handed out to the night-watchman in a tin pail, and dangled just out of his reach, in the hope ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... nothing but dictionaries and grammars. I am trying whether it be possible to learn without a master; I am not certain (and dare hardly hope) I shall make any great progress; but I find the study so diverting I am not only easy, but pleased with the solitude that indulges it. I forget there is such a place as London, and wish for no company but yours. You see, my dear, in making my pleasures consist of these unfashionable diversions, I am not of the number who cannot be easy out of the mode. ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... the social relations of man, that part of the social organization which is termed Society, and which has been developed by the idle as a diverting game, is a fertile source of nervous disease and even of insanity, affecting particularly females. The strenuosity of the life, the nervous excitement alternating with ennui, the lack and improper times of sleep, the lack of rest and particularly of restful occupation, the not infrequent use of ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... either De Artigny, or De Tonty, it was scarcely probable that any of the garrison would make serious effort to interfere with their plans. De Tonty's apparent indifference, and his sudden friendliness with De Baugis and Cassion, did not worry me greatly. I realized his purpose in thus diverting suspicion. His pledge of assistance had been given me, and his was the word of a soldier and gentleman. In some manner, and soon—before midnight certainly—I ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... its anticipations, and had committed itself to somewhat comprehensive engagements in connection with the furnishing of further war material. So that, almost synchronizing with the downfall of the Romanoff dynasty and the setting up of a new regime, this country found itself let in for diverting munitions of all sorts, in addition to what had already been promised, to an Ally in whom trust could no longer be placed. On one occasion in the course of the winter I had defeated the combined forces of Sir W. Robertson and the Master-General of the Ordnance before the War Cabinet ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... diverting simplicity, complained one day, in a mixed company, of Lord Camden. 'I met him (said he) at Lord Clare's house[914] in the country, and he took no more notice of me than if I had been an ordinary man.' ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... Magazine." Yet there was a pride of literature about him from being amongst books (he was librarian), and from some scraps of doubtful Latin which he had picked up in his office of entering students, that gave him very diverting airs of pedantry. Can I forget the erudite look with which, when he had been in vain trying to make out a black-letter text of Chaucer in the Temple Library, he laid it down and told me that—"in those ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... tell you!" returned Bridgie, truthfully enough. "And— excuse me, me love, it's not a very diverting suggestion for the time of year! Let me keep my millionaire, if it's only for the day, for by the same token I'm quite attached to him in prospect! Will you come and visit me, Therese, when I'm comfortably established ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... incidents, since it is not only common but perpetual in the world, may surely be allowed upon the stage, which pretends only to be the mirror of life. The impropriety of suppressing passions before we have raised them to the intended agitation, and of diverting the expectation from an event which we keep suspended only to raise it, may be speciously urged. But will not experience shew this objection to be rather subtle than just? Is it not certain that the tragick and comick affections ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... during the day on land sleep in boats on the various rivers. This condition of things corresponds in some degree to that described by Captain Marryat in that fine old story "Jacob Faithful," in the early chapters of which we get diverting glimpses of life on board a Thames lighterman. But the river population of China is still more absolutely aquatic in manner of life than the Thames barge-folk. The boats in which this class of the population live have an awning of bamboo and matting fore and ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... street railway. Its glory is departing: the mercer's showy counter and shelves are gradually replaced by vegetable and fruit stores. Stately shops on Desfosses, Crown and Craig streets are rapidly diverting the Pactolus of the city custom northwards. In the dark ages of the Ancient Capital, when this lengthy, narrow lane was studded with one-story wooden or stone tenements, Old Sol occasionally loved to look down and gladden with his rays its miry footpaths. To our ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... Mr. Idle diverting the conversation to grouse, custards, and bride- cake, Mr. Goodchild followed in the same direction. The bride-cake was as bilious and indigestible as if a real Bride had cut it, and the dinner it completed was ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... noise behind me that I thought the whole crew was at my heels. The pedlar kept glancing behind; he knew very little about running. He doubled from street to street, like a man at his wits' ends. I could see that he was blown. When he entered into that conspiracy, he had counted on the horsey man diverting suspicion from him. Suddenly, after twisting round a corner, he darted through a swing door into a stone-paved court, surrounded by brick walls. I was at his heels at the moment or I should have lost him there. ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... Vizier cried, 'Be the will of Allah achieved and consummated!' and he was silenced by her wisdom and urgency, and sat where he was, diverting not the arch on his brow from its settled furrow. He was as one that thirsteth, and whose eye hath marked a snake of swift poison by the water, so thirsted he for the Event, yet hung with dread from advancing; but Noorna bin Noorka busied herself about the roof, drawing circles ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... risky thing. He seemed to think only of diverting or stopping the runaway team—anything to keep the spirited horses from reaching the dangerous point ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster
... of observing the Christmas festival in the time of George the Second is described in an amusing little book entitled "Round about our Coal Fire, or Christmas Entertainments," published in 1740, and "illustrated with many diverting cuts." ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... at a spot within the immediate neighbourhood, a person of illustrious name and ancestry, who would doubtless be gratified to witness the diverting actions of which this one has recently been a spectator. As the reward of a tael cannot be unwelcome to a person of your inferior appearance and unpresentable garments, take up your box without delay, and follow the one who is ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... snigger, crow, snicker, chuckle, cackle; burst out, burst into a fit of laughter; shout, split, roar. shake one's sides, split one's sides, hold both one's sides; roar with laughter, die with laughter. Adj. amusing, entertaining, diverting &c. v.; recreational, recreative, lusory[obs3]; pleasant &c. (pleasing) 829; laughable &c. (ludicrous) 853; witty &c. 842; fun, festive, festal; jovial, jolly, jocund, roguish, rompish[obs3]; playful, playful as a kitten; sportive, ludibrious|. funny; very funny, hilarious, uproarious, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... volumesful of observations at first hand about the man who was the source and origin of that dark and swollen stream. Personally, we doubt the general zeal in this matter—not of Prussianism but of FREDERICK. However, DE CATT, looking at a king from a queer angle, is extraordinarily diverting. "Reader" was a euphemism for a patient audience, including claque. FREDERICK, incognito on a Dutch barge, picked up the young scholar and marked him down as one who could be induced by florins and flattery to take on the job of listening to his patron's bad French ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152. January 17, 1917 • Various
... us, in this work-a-day world, find no small benefit from allowing our minds to lie fallow at certain times, as farmers do with their fields. In the following pages, however, I believe wisdom and wit, the didactic and the diverting, will be found in ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... time as it passes is commonly said to depend on the amount of consciousness which we are giving to the fact of its transition. Thus, when the mind is unoccupied and suffering from ennui, we feel time to move sluggishly. On the other hand, interesting employment, by diverting the thoughts from time, makes it appear to move at a more rapid pace. This fact is shown in the common expressions which we employ, such as "to kill time," and the German Langweile. Similarly, it is said that when we are eagerly anticipating an event, as ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... New Generation, was the earliest and in some ways the best of the trilogy. It is still highly diverting as a novel, and, as we see to-day, was charged with potent ideas and searching criticism. It was far more real and effective as a romance than anything Disraeli had previously written. There are ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... child screamed on, and his voice came ringing upon her ears. Nurse was cross, and took no pains to hush his cries; so the mother's special attendant remained, for some time, away from the sick-chamber. By slow degrees she succeeded in diverting the child's mind from his disappointment; but it was many minutes after his crying ceased before he would consent ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... after nor avoided.—But what then, it will be asked, is the purport of those sentences which, at any rate, have the appearance of injunctions; such as, 'The Self is to be seen, to be heard about?'—They have the purport, we reply, of diverting (men) from the objects of natural activity. For when a man acts intent on external things, and only anxious to attain the objects of his desire and to eschew the objects of his aversion, and does not thereby reach the highest aim of man although desirous of attaining it; such texts ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... add to my fun to have a million in the bank—I, with an income of two thousand a week? Do you suppose I should find it diverting to be at the beck and call of a board of directors—I, the supreme fount of authority? Do you suppose it would be my delight to consider eternally the interests of a pack of shareholders—I, who consider nothing but my fancy? And, finally, do you suppose it would amuse me, Hugo, ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... upon each other. Afterwards the Balkan countries found that it was better for them when the Great Powers fought each other there than when they came to friendly understandings. It was profitable and diverting for Albania when the Austrians and the Italians glowered at each other in that silent land: it was terrible in 1878 for Bosnia and Herzegovina when the Great Powers were on such good terms with one another that they allowed one of themselves to make off with those two waifs ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... be unfair to judge him by yourself. Boys of to-day are not having the early training that fell to your lot, and their latent ability is just that much slower in showing itself. You see so much of the serious side of life, it will be diverting to hear the frank expressions of one of the younger generation. I am curious to know what you ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... the owner of Vaux, seemed, by the obstinate persistence of his gloomy thoughts, to do his utmost to recall Louis's attention, which the magnificence of the spectacle was already, in his opinion, too easily diverting. Suddenly, just as Louis was on the point of holding it out to Fouquet, he perceived in his hand the paper which, as he believed, La Valliere had dropped at his feet as she hurried away. The still stronger magnet of love drew the young prince's ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Many a diverting story is told about this. Sir Patrick above all things was fond of sheep's head. One day while the children were eating their broth, Grisell had conveyed a whole sheep's head into her lap. Her brother Sandy (who was afterwards Lord Marchmont) looked up as soon as he ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various |
