"Obsessed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gentlemen; who in their turns, although separately, had never failed to be genially appreciative. The flavor of war, which filled the air as a restless spirit since diplomatic relations with Germany had come to an end—the numb fear with which he had been obsessed but a moment ago—were completely relegated to the limbo of forgetfulness as he now issued forth in search of praise wherewith ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... in Washington. He regarded the Monroe Doctrine as the root from which such an extension of power might grow. It was no business of mine to argue with him, though I am convinced that the citizens of the United States are of all peoples the least obsessed by the imperial idea. I tried, by looking sympathetic, to induce him to develop his theory. In the end I gathered that he hoped for security from the imperial peril through the increase of wealth and therefore power in ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... withdrawn the men to lay a new trap, it was obvious that Annette's flight had upset his plans. For the time being at least his mind was too inflamed with rage over her daring in thwarting his will, to admit the consideration of any other problem. He would be too obsessed with thought for gratifying his revengeful lust to trouble ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... were crowded, and preoccupied as he was, it struck Vanno oddly, as it always did strike him anew in the Casino, to hear every one who passed talking of the all-absorbing game. They were obsessed by it, and threw questions to each other, which elsewhere would have meant nothing, or some very different thing; but here no explanations were needed. "Doing any good?" asked a pallid young man with a twitching face, like that of a galvanized corpse, as he met ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Arabia. And then too, the eyes of the statue, how often have we not seen them? And did we not know that they were capable only of their one fixed stare? Why is it then that their motionless regard surprises and chills us, even while we are obsessed by the smile of the sealed lips that seem to hold back the answer to the ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... an artist came along who was not wholly obsessed with the new craze. He studied the thing on the wall, and after a while he said: "Someone is guying you. That isn't a picture. It's ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... rail. Indeed, the exodus was almost as brisk as the immigration, just at this time of year. A moderate proportion of those going out had been successful, but the great majority were disappointed. They were tired, and discouraged, and homesick; and their minds were obsessed with the one idea—to get back. We who remained saw them go with considerable envy, and perhaps a good deal of inner satisfaction that soon we were to follow. Of the thousands who were remaining in California, those who had definitely and permanently cast their lot with the country were ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... none of them bearing out the broad general statements as to the First Consul's plans and intentions. Not a scrap of evidence is adduced from memoirs, letters, or state papers. To represent Napoleon as obsessed with magnificent ideas of universal dominion, scanning, like Milton's Satan from the mountain height, the immensity of many realms, and aspiring to rule them all—to do this is to present an enthralling ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... 'all spiritual wisdom,' of 'walking worthily of the Lord unto all pleasing,' of 'fruit in every good work,' and now of 'all power,' and lastly of 'all patience and longsuffering.' These are not instances of being obsessed with a word, but each of them has its own appropriate force, and here the comprehensive completeness of the strength available for our many-sided weakness is marvellously revealed. There is 'infinite riches in a narrow room.' All power means every kind of power, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... tourist who was serving his term in a basha was perplexed to find that the passengers were charged, some first-, some second-and some third-class fare. While he clung to his upright and shook with every lurch of the conveyance this problem of unequal fares obsessed him. It was like the persistent "punch-in-the-presence-of-the-passengare." What possible advantage, he pondered, could he as first class be getting over the second and the second class over the third? At length at a steep part of the road the vehicle stopped. The driver came ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... tea, I took whatever she offered; doubtless I drank it, but I don't remember. Nor do I remember what she said at first, for somehow I began thinking about my lions, and the thought obsessed me even while striving to listen to her, even in the tingling maze of other thoughts which kept me dumb under the exquisite spell of this ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... irony of fate, all the colonel's wealth came into my hands. At first I thought of refusing the legacy. It seemed odious to take a sou of that inheritance; it seemed worse than the reward of a hired assassin. For three days this thought obsessed me; but more and more I was thrust against this consideration: that my refusal would not fail to awake suspicion. Finally I settled upon a compromise; I would accept the inheritance and would distribute it ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... Bakuma was obsessed by terror inspired by the fact that Bakahenzie had discovered her presence; the inherent awe of the witch-doctor which had been temporarily allayed by the presence of the white, was revived, as ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... and wholesale production, as being something far truer to realities than any of the issues of party and patriotism upon which men were spending their lives. So far as this rivalry between England and Germany, which so obsessed the imagination of Europe, went, I found that any faith I may have had in its importance had simply fallen out of my mind. As a danger to civilization, as a conceivable source of destruction and delay, it was a monstrous business enough, but that in the long run it ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... Union of the "good old thirteen States" on terms set by New England was believed to be well within the bounds of possibility. Radical newspapers referred with enthusiasm to the erection of a new federal edifice. Little wonder that the harassed President was obsessed with the idea that New England was ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... voice of man is still ringing in my ears. It is like the dead-march of a gnat amid the trumpeting of elephants and the roaring of lions. It is insatiable with microscopic desire. I now I'm making a fool of myself, but the thing has obsessed me. You are—I don't know what you are—you are wonderful, that's all. But how do you do it? How ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... eyes that night as he lay in bed. One vague dream after another filled his sleep, and Sally took part in them all—kissing him, scorning him. His mental vision was obsessed with the ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... it's too fantastic. Here is the story of Tugh in our Time. He came to me some three years ago; in 1932, I think. He offered any price if I could cure his crippled body. All the New York medical fraternity knew him. He seemed sane, but obsessed with the idea that he must have a body like other men. Like Faust, who, as an old man, paid the price of his soul to become youthful, he wanted to have the beautiful ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... capable and efficient in one's work is a splendid thing; but efficiency can be made a great mechanical device that robs life of far more than it returns it. A nation can become so possessed, and even obsessed, with the idea of power and grandeur through efficiency and organisation, that it becomes a great machine and robs its people of the finer fruits of life that spring from a wisely subordinated and coordinated individuality. Here again it is the ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... the pitch of engagement, to Mr. Rathbone-Sanders, may be forgiven if in the full tide of her success she does not altogether grasp the intention of her husband's discourse. It seemed to her that he was obsessed by a responsibility for civilization and the idea that he was aristocratic. (Secretly she was inclined to doubt whether he was justified in calling himself aristocratic; at the best his mother was county-stuff; but still if he did there was no great harm in it nowadays.) ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... his beauty vanished, his eyes seeming to grow closer like an ape's. The mania for murder that obsessed him tautened his sinews. Cheeks, neck, forearms swelled with knotted strength. ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... forcing his way through the press, his clinched fists waving over his head, was young, pallid, typically an academic devotee of radicalism, a frenetic disciple, obsessed by furor loquendi He was calling to the mob, trying to rouse followers. "You have been standing here, freezing in the night, damning tyrants, boasting what you would do. Why don't you do it? Do you let a smirking ruler bluff all the courage of real men out of you? He's only doing ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... obsessed by the mysteries of love and death, the veils of Isis, the secrets of Moses. While others were delving in the American soil his soul sped afar; he is not even a cosmopolitan; he is a Greek, a Brahmin, a worshipper of ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... then he removed his Dyak war-coat and threw it over her, but it was hours before her exhausted body overpowered her nervous fright and won a fitful and restless slumber. Several times Virginia became obsessed with the idea that Bulan had left her alone there in the jungle, but when she called his name he answered ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... with a pre-existing eating disorder will become obsessed with fasting and colon cleansing as a justification to legitimize their compulsion. During my career while monitoring hundreds of fasters, I've known two of these. I discourage them from fasting or colon cleansing, and refuse to assist them, because ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... deeper, and accompanied by a far more involved philosophy of self-recognition. At the same time, while acutely conscious of his absolute need of Susan Brundon, he was at a loss to discover its essence, shape. Before he had known her he had been obsessed by a distaste for his existence; he had desperately wanted something without definition ... And Susan was that desire, delicate, clear-eyed Susan. Yet, still, the heart ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... also bought travelling necessities. His intention was to wander for a couple of months. It would help him to clear his brain from the tangle of financial matters which still obsessed it against his will. He wanted to sweep out the Hudson Bay scheme, Lars Larssen, Olive, and many other matters from the living-room of his mind. He wanted a couple of months in which to settle himself in the new personality; plan out his future ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... had cultivated Nickleby's confidence. It was apparent from the first that the man was utterly devoid of common honesty. It was his idea that government graft was an established method of revenue and he seemed to be obsessed with the belief that no Minister of the Crown would allow his oath of office to interfere with the acquisition of personal wealth. As their relations had ripened he had grown bolder and had organized a construction company ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... that Dr. Jackson, who afterwards claimed to have given Morse all his ideas, apprehend the tremendous importance of that chance remark. The fixed idea had, however, taken root in Morse's brain and obsessed him. He withdrew from the cabin and paced the deck, revolving in his mind the various means by which the object sought could be attained. Soon his ideas were so far focused that he sought to give them expression on paper, and he drew from his pocket one of the little sketch-books ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... back in its place. Aennchen is inclined to be playful and roguish, and serves as a pretty foil to the sentimental Agathe. She playfully scolds the nail which she is hammering into the wall again for so rudely dropping the old ranger to the floor, and seeks to dispel the melancholy which has obsessed her cousin by singing songs about the bad companionship of the blues and the humors of courtship. She succeeds, in a measure, and Agathe confesses that she had felt a premonition of danger ever since a ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Suddenly obsessed by the idea that he was master in his own house, he began strutting about the kitchen, taking mental note of the things that needed attention, with a view to reproving Bridget when she came back to the fold. He burnt his fingers trying to straighten the stovepipe, smelt of ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... blood that flowed! It was a job to dress; I hobbled bravely down the road And reached a C.C.S.; Nor was I so obsessed with gloom At leaving thus the field of doom As one might easily assume ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... led her to overdo persuasion. That cooing interpolation of "your sincere friend"—too strongly honeyed—suddenly recalled the Prophet to the fact that Lady Enid was not, and could never be, his confidante in the matter that obsessed him. He therefore sat down, but with an abrupt air of indefinite social liveliness, and exclaimed, not unlike Mr. ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... his way to the Cardews Willy Cameron, suddenly remembering the uncanny ability of Jinx to escape and trail him, remaining meanwhile at a safe distance in the rear, turned suddenly and saw Joe, walking sturdily along in rubber-soled shoes, and obsessed with his high ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... out comes the dead man and holds him enthralled by the hour. The dead are such good company that one may come to think too little of the living. It is a real and a pressing danger with many of us, that we should never find our own thoughts and our own souls, but be ever obsessed by the dead. Yet second-hand romance and second-hand emotion are surely better than the dull, soul-killing monotony which life brings to most of the human race. But best of all when the dead man's wisdom and strength in the living of our own ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... The King dismissed his secretaries, and without turning on the light sat and thought alone. The effervescence had all gone from his brain, melancholy ruled him; and as he sat ruminating upon the past and his own present position his mind became obsessed by all the historical characters who had preceded him in the exercise of those royal functions now grown so exiguous in his hands, who had sat and labored at Statecraft in that very room, some of them, perhaps, in the very chair in ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... the human body in its state of death until the end of all earthly time—to that day when the earth would return to the sun from which it had sprung. Quite suddenly one day he had conceived the answer to the puzzling problem which obsessed his mind, leaving him awed with its wild, ...
— The Jameson Satellite • Neil Ronald Jones
... features of criminals," was the retort. "No, Wensdale, you are obsessed by the finger-print heresy, quite regardless of the fact that none but an amateur ever leaves such a thing behind him, and the amateur is never ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... as Carlyle was occupied entirely with the past. Emerson shared the open expectation of the new world, Carlyle struggled under the gloom and pessimism of the old—a greater character, but a far less lambent and helpful spirit. Emerson seems to have been obsessed with the idea that a new and greater man was to appear. He looked into the face of every newcomer with an earnest, expectant air, as if he might prove to be the new man: this thought inspires the last stanzas of ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... disposition in certain directions to repress the Natives. He (the speaker) believed that there was a feeling that white men had some divine right to the labour of the black, that the black people were to be hewers of wood and drawers of water, and he wanted to say that while men were obsessed with that feeling they would never be able to legislate fairly. They had no more divine right to the labour of the black people than they had to the labour of the white. To his mind the great point was, should their policy be one of repression or a policy of inspiration? They ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... the details of dissolution, the falling jaw, the eye-balls fixing, the sharp-headed worm. Aged poets do not usually write in this manner, because death seems more realistic than romantic. It is a fact rather than an idea. When a young poet is obsessed with the idea of death, it is a sign, not of morbidity, ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... strongest fortresses of the country, La Rochelle, Montauban, Cognac, and La Charite were to be delivered to them for their protection and as a guarantee of good faith. The whole policy of Charles IX. underwent a complete change. Obsessed with the idea that the Catholic party, led by the Duke of Anjou, was becoming too powerful to be trusted, he turned to Coligny and the Calvinists, broke off the alliance concluded with Spain the previous year, and sought to bring over France to the side ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... diligently performs all his tasks with a dread of making mistakes which may become positive anguish; who learns all his lessons, thus of necessity depriving himself of a walk, a saunter, an hour of rest. Obsessed by anxiety to be the first, or even stimulated by illusions of a future more brilliant than that of his companions, exhilarated by the praises and prizes which make him believe himself to be "one of the hopes of his country," ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... encouragement Bob put in the next two weeks to good advantage. In fact, so obsessed was he with his new employment that it was not long before his imaginary bet with Cady assumed reality in his mind. Moreover, it became gossip around his clubs; and in quarters where he was well known his method of winning the wager was deemed ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... was obsessed with his thoughts and feelings against the man James. With every passing day his resentment against him piled up, till now he could think of nothing much else but a possible way to dislodge him from the pinnacle of his local notoriety, and so rid ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... herself and all the other people in the world, a wall had been built up and that she was living just on the edge of some warm inner circle of life that must be quite open and understandable to others. She became obsessed with the thought that it wanted but a courageous act on her part to make all of her association with people something quite different, and that it was possible by such an act to pass into a new life as one ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... obsessed by the notion that he had some trouble with a judge in Concord, New Hampshire. He said fiercely, "I will buy two guns, go to Concord, kill Judge Stanton with one, and shoot myself with the other, or else wait quietly till ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... countries as to who first should attain the mastery of the air. The British nation, as usual, started well behind in the race, and their handicap would have been increased to a dangerous extent had Germany not been obsessed by the possibilities of the air-ship as opposed to the aeroplane. Fortunately for us the Zeppelin, as has been described in an earlier chapter, failed to bring about the destruction anticipated by its inventor, and so we gained breathing space ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... of his sister crying for food; he remembered that in the old Bursley days he had always distrusted John Stanway, that conceited fussy imposing young man of twenty-two whom his father had taken into partnership and utterly believed in. He forgot that he had hated his father, and his mind was obsessed by a sentimental ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... he was obsessed was how he should save Sir Hugh from disgrace. His connection with the Criminal Investigation Department placed at his disposal a marvellous network of sources of information, amazing as they were unsuspected. ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... he retorted, as he mopped the bubbles with a napkin. "You've started in badly." Shirley mentally disagreed. His stupor still obsessed him, but he noted with interest that Warren paid the check for his bottle with a new one-hundred dollar bill. Warren could elicit nothing from Helene but silly laughter, and so he arose impatiently, as Shine Taylor returned to whisper something in his ear. "I must be getting back to my apartment. ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... whom I could not tolerate, however, was his wife, who, to my fancy, more resembled a vessel, a very unattractive vessel, full of vinegar than a woman. Her name was Sarah and she was small, plain, flat, sandy-haired and odious, quite obsessed, moreover, with her jealousies of the Rev. Basil, at whom it pleased her to suppose that every woman in the countryside ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... meals when reft of appetite— Though hungry, bound to wait a stated hour— Your dearest contemplation broken off By the appointed summons to your bath; Racked with more thought for those whom you may flog Than for those dear; obsessed by your possessions With a dull round of stale anxieties;— Soon maintenance grows the extreme reach of hope For those held in respect, as in a vice, By citizens of whom they are the pick. Of men the least bond is the roving seaman Who hires himself to merchantman or pirate For single ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... of it," said Sir Richmond with conviction. "There was always a tremendous lot of variety in my mind. In fact the thing I liked least in the real world was the way it was obsessed by the idea of pairing off with one particular set and final person. I liked to dream of a blonde goddess in her own Venusberg one day, and the next I would be off over the mountains ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... Ames, standing rigidly before his desk exclaimed, "Just a moment longer, please, Mr. Secretary! Some of these facts you know unless Field was so obsessed with the thought of his brother's alleged wrongs that he did not mention them, but I'll state them anyhow. The mining and smelting property that caused the whole row was originally owned by an old timer named Post who struck it rich late in life, married and died soon after, leaving everything ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... conspicuous for a most impressive manner of stamping his front foot when impatient. Concerning his other virtues I know little, for I learnt no details of his private life save what I saw with my eyes, and they were not always worthy of imitation. He was a polygamist, or worse; obsessed, moreover, by a deplorable habit of biting off the tails of his own or other people's children. He went even further. For sometimes, without a word of warning, he would pounce upon some innocent youngster and carry him in his powerful jaws far ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... began, after satisfying himself of the identity of the murderer, to cast about for the motive of the crime. Motive, motive! How desperately he had sought for another, turning his back upon that grim thought, that Marlowe—obsessed by passion like himself, and privy perhaps to maddening truths about the wife's unhappiness—had taken a leaf, the guiltiest, from the book of Bothwell. But in all his investigations at the time, in all ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... the public mind, be it understood, up to the time of the notorious and scandalous defection of this obsessed creature, an occasion which I cannot recall without shuddering, and which inspired me to a course that was later to have the most inexplicable ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... was comforted. He wondered how, in the old days that were only yesterdays, people could have endured separation without any means of communication, and he blessed the name of Marconi as cordially as he cursed the name of Brutgal. To exasperate him further, the rest of the day seemed obsessed by Victor Mahr. He was in the elevator that took him up to his office; he was at the club in the afternoon; he was a guest at the Chamber of Commerce banquet in the evening, and was placed opposite Marcus Gard. Despite his desire to let the man alone, he could not resist ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... wonder of flower-love. From the lanai drifted the love-caressing strains of "Hanalei" sung by the singing boys. Vaguely Lee Barton remembered—perhaps it was from some Maupassant story—the abbe, obsessed by the theory that behind all things were the purposes of God and perplexed so to interpret the night, who discovered at the last that the night ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... that followed Marcella often tried to find out what had caused the Miracle—for Miracle it seemed to her. The desire for whisky that had obsessed him for ten years seemed to have died: he frankly admitted that it gave him no trouble now at all. When she seemed inclined to praise him for his bravery he laughed at her; there was no bravery in doing a thing that was perfectly easy and natural to him. He looked different: ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... be appeased. He was just drunk enough to become obsessed with the ugly idea that Pete had laid a trap to insult him, and, regardless of Code, kept ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... shook, so that the shuffling of his slippered feet became audible. He inclined his head to show that he had heard, but made no other reply. I think, even then, he was sore put to it to keep himself in hand. I knew what he was struggling against. As Dr. Silence had warned me, he was about to be obsessed, and was savagely, though ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... such as would naturally be dictated by the general mood of artificiality in an age when dreams were lived and the ruling classes obsessed by a passion for amusements, invented to divert the mind from actualities. This colour scheme was beautifully light in tone and harmoniously gay, whether in tapestries, draperies and upholstery of velvets, or flowered ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... shake off the odd feeling of presentiment which obsessed her. But it persisted, and it was a real relief when at last the opening of a door and the sound of voices in the hall heralded Lady Susan's return. Unpleasant premonitions and such-like ghostly visitants were prone to melt away in her cheery, optimistic presence like dew ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... pulled his slouch hat over his eyes and sat with hunched shoulders staring at the Yale team as it left the field for the intermission. He had forgotten about his story of the game. The old spectre of failure obsessed him. It was already haunting the pathway of his boy. Was he also to be beaten by one colossal blunder? Henry Seeley felt that Ernest's whole career hung upon his behavior in the second half. How would the lad "take his medicine"? Would it break his heart or rouse him to ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... entirely obsessed by woman. His life centres round woman. You observe I use the singular. I do that because it is so much more plural than the plural in this case. His life is passed in love-affairs, in a ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... lonely man, obsessed, going up and down the China Coast, shipping at distant ports, one after another, on fruitless quests, looking for a place to disembark. The proper place to disembark, the place which he should recognise, should know for his own place, which would answer the ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... had fed him with liquid foods. Some glorious half-seen stranger had taken him under her care; but her face was hidden in a queer mist that floated before his eyes. At times he had tried to rise from the bed, his unbalanced mind obsessed with the idea of washing for gold, but those same strange, soft hands had always ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... that the leaders of this Jewish conspiracy set up the Socialist movement and fostered it, while at the same time they enlisted their ablest minds to defeat it. Surely for the normal mind that is not obsessed this is a theory too absurd ...
— The Jew and American Ideals • John Spargo
... One idea still obsessed Bob's consciousness. "What he said about June—I'll not let him get away with it. He's got to tell you-all he ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... now, as if he bore a stifling secret; he calls up multitudes, and still more multitudes. He is obsessed by multitudes—"Men, men!" he says. The soil is caressed by some sounds of sighs, terribly soft, by confidences which are interchanged without their wishing it. Now and again, the sky collapses into light, and that flash of instantaneous sunshine changes the shape of ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... historically in two sentences: Wagner was the revolutionist of society; Wagner recognised the only artistic element that ever existed hitherto—the poetry of the people. The ruling idea which in a new form and mightier than it had ever been, obsessed Wagner, after he had overcome his share of despair and repentance, led him to both conclusions. Influence, the greatest possible amount of influence to be exercised by means of the stage! —but over whom? He shuddered when he thought ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... were obsessed by perpetual fear of robbers. That, and no other motive, made them tolerate the hectoring of Rustum Khan, who had constituted himself officer of transport, and brought up the rear on his superb bay mare. As he had promised us he would, he rode well ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... he averted his eyes from the irreparable present of the war and its dead, and looked towards the living, and the future which is in our hands. We are hypnotised, obsessed by the thought of those that we have lost, and the morbid temptation to bury our hearts in their graves, but we must tear ourselves away from the baleful vapours that rise, as in Rome, from The Way of the Tombs. March on! This is no time to halt. We have ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... death—those horrible, chaotic months when, in a vain endeavour to stifle thought, to deaden remorse, he had invoked the aid of the poppy, and by so doing had almost precipitated a moral catastrophe which should have been more overwhelming than the first. "For God's sake, Mrs. Carstairs, don't become obsessed by that idea. The morphia habit is one degrading slavery of mind and body, and only the miserable victims know how delusive are its promises, how unsatisfactory its rewards. What can you expect from a cult whose highest reward—the ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... the reign of Shomu, when faith in the potency of supernatural influences obsessed men's minds, was severely dealt with by Konin. Office-seekers resorted to the device of contriving conflagrations of official property, rewarding the incendiaries with the plunder, and circulating rumours that these calamities were visitations of heaven to punish the malpractices of the provincial ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... The thing so obsessed his mind that he must speak of it, if it be only to his lackey. Rabecque's sharp face assumed a chastened look. He sighed most dutifully. He sought for words of ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... of the truth began to penetrate McEachern's consciousness. He had become obsessed with the idea that, as the captive was not Spike, it must be Jimmy. The possibility of Mr. Galer's being the subject of discussion only ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... were interested in the Legion!" Already he was obsessed by thoughts of it. Sidi-bel-Abbes, which at first had struck him as being a dull provincial town, now seemed the only place where he could have lived through his dark hours. Elsewhere he would have felt surrounded by a gay and happy world in which a man with his back to the wall had no place. ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... humour? Perhaps. Would she be able to go home again without seeing him once more? Good heavens, no! And a sensation almost of terror thrilled through her at the thought. Had not, then, her life during the past few days been, as it were, obsessed by him? And all the years that lay behind her, had they been meant for anything else, at all, than to lead her back to him at the right moment? Ah, if she only had a little more experience, if she were a little more worldly-wise! She would have liked to possess the capability of marking out for ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... not numerous, but they left an undying impression on his neighbors and fellow townsmen; for the late private had a way all his own. He was a big Welshman, so strong that he never knew how strong he was; and when he became obsessed with the desire to get drunk, no one could stop him. He had to have it out. At such times his one ambition was to ride a horse up the steps of the hotel, and then—George Washington-like—rise in his stirrups and deliver an impassioned address on what we owe to the Old Flag. If he were ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... cause of failure was the system of management. For the most part the men who took Spangenberg's place in America—such as John de Watteville and John Nitschmann—were obsessed with Zinzendorf's ideas about settlements; and, instead of turning the numerous preaching places into independent congregations they centralized the work round the four chief settlements of Bethlehem, Nazareth, Lititz and Salem. We have seen how the settlement system worked in England. It ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... for him. The character is that of a stout, somewhat bulky and unwieldy young person who possesses an inordinate appreciation of her own imaginary charms. Her father, whom I might designate as a fly-by-night sort of a gentleman, a character which I once ventured to portray myself, is obsessed by the one thought of getting rid of her as quickly as possible, but all the would-be suitors the moment they set eyes on her beat a hasty retreat. There were, of course, very many more pieces that Mr. Pittar played ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey
... Marriage and motherhood she had known, not as the flowering of love, not as an eager fulfilling of her natural destiny, but as something extraneous, an avenue of escape from an irksomeness of living, a weariness with sordid things, which she knew now had obsessed her out of all proportion to their reality. She had never seen that tenderness glow in the eyes of a mating pair that she did not envy them, that she did not feel herself hopelessly defrauded of ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Ratisbon to Ellwangen, where by the mere word of command, "Cesset" (Give over), he cured the lame and blind, but especially those who were afflicted with epilepsy and convulsions, and who were thereby supposed to be obsessed. His cures were not permanent in some cases, and before he died ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... developed into a big-gun duel, in which the French continued to maintain undoubted mastery, and they were firmly established once more on the left bank of the Meuse, which the Germans had intended to hold at all costs. Thus ended the last hope of the Crown Prince of Germany, who apparently was obsessed with the desire to conquer Verdun, in the neighborhood of which thousands of the flower of the German army found only a burial place, without any laurels ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... shall go on wanting it, my dear Charles," declared the woman, who was so well versed in the ways of men. "Louise likes him. She has told me so. But he only tolerates her—that's all! He's obsessed by the mystery of ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... had the original idea—a theme for a melody. Perhaps the lyric writer had one line—an idea for a song. It does not matter at all which had the idea originally, both are obsessed ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... the bank of the river again. They were in the heart of the willow glade, still shorn of its summer beauty. The man was standing, large, dominating before her, but obsessed by every unmanly fear. The girl was sitting on a fallen tree-trunk, whose screen of tilted roots set up a barrier which shut her from the view of the frowning glances of the aged Fort above them, and whose winter-starved branches formed ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... I read pages and pages of Plato and was conscious that the words were going over in my head without conveying the slightest meaning, and that the other part of my mind was absorbed with thoughts of Miss Sharp—. If I only dared to be natural with her we surely could be friends, but I am always obsessed with the fear that she will leave me if I transgress in the slightest beyond the line she has marked between us—. I see that she is determined to remain only the secretary, and I realize that it is her breeding which makes her act as she does—. If she were ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... obsessed by his dismal meditations, when a shadow appeared in the doorway, and he looked up to see Rackliff, the stub of a cigarette in his fingers, gazing at him. For a full minute, perhaps, neither boy spoke; and then Herbert, tossing the ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... days. We are told that it is the false and antiquated doctrine of a hard-hearted and coarse-minded age, which thought that unemployment was usually a man's own fault, which saw a malingerer in every recipient of relief, which was obsessed by the bad psychology of pains and penalties and looked instinctively for a deterrent as the cure ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... like that of Lucretius, owed more to Epicureanism than modern critics—too often obsessed by a misapplied odium philosophicum—have been inclined to admit. It is all too easy to compare this philosophy with other systems, past and present, and to prove its science inadequate, its implications unethical, ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... indeed, was the popular mind at that time obsessed with the rivalry of routes that a rumour was started imputing to the directors of the Oswestry and Newtown Company the intention of "disuniting the line between Oswestry and Welshpool." As if there were not disunion enough already! More genial humorists ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... the striking, he wrecked the life and happiness of those he had assisted for his own selfish purpose mattered little to him. He had so long brooded and thought upon one idea, so planned and schemed to bring about one thing, that a desire for revenge fairly obsessed him. ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... back and surveyed the quiet building. It occurred to me that here one could obtain a real conception of the Benton family, and of Miss Emily. The church had been the realest thing in their lives. It had dominated them, obsessed them. When the Reverend Samuel Thaddeus died, they had built him, not a monument, but a parish house. When Carlo Benton died (however did such an ungodly name come to belong to a Benton?) Miss Emily according to the story, had done without fresh mourning and ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Germany was obsessed by the idea that Britain was trying to strangle her by an encircling policy, is apparent in a diplomatic document quoted by Professor Oncken. Its author's name is not given, and it was doubtless a secret report sent to the German Foreign Office in 1912; its freedom ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... pirate treasure, if they found it, be to Allen Drew? This bitter query obsessed him. He would gladly give every coin and jewel Ramon Alvarez had buried here, were it his to give, to see Parmalee, leaning on his cane, walk out ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... nations, does not invalidate the proceedings, nor give us the right to regard Annas and Caiaphas as worse men than the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Head Master of Eton. If Jesus had been indicted in a modern court, he would have been examined by two doctors; found to be obsessed by a delusion; declared incapable of pleading; and sent to an asylum: that is the whole difference. But please note that when a man is charged before a modern tribunal (to take a case that happened the other day) of having asserted and maintained that he was ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... with birthdays could satisfactorily define. They have lived, they have eaten, drunk, loved, bathed, suffered, talked, danced in the night and rejoiced in the dawn, warmed, in fact, both hands before the fire of life, but still they are not ready to depart. For they are behindhand with time, obsessed with so many worlds, so much to do, the petty done, the undone vast. It depressed Milton when he turned twenty-three; it depresses all those with vain and ambitious temperaments at least once a year. Some call it remorse for wasted days, and are proud of it; others call it vanity, discontent ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... the attention of the fashionable world. The craze for making shoes suddenly obsessed Society. Shoemakers unexpectedly found themselves the most favoured of mortals. Lessons in their art were demanded on all sides and at all costs. They were so busy teaching it, they had little time to practise it. Men and women ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... deliberately excited, stirred up and wasted, to the sapping of their physical well-being and the defilement of their minds. Habits of self-abuse, when once they are established, are apt to be extremely difficult to break. The minds of their victims are liable to be morbidly obsessed by the physical facts of sex, and their thoughts continually directed into turbid channels. But it is possible by the grace of GOD to conquer, though there may be relapses before the final victory is won. It is ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... ran into the river, a little way off, a narrow canal bordered by poplars, and along the banks of this after their day's work they often wandered. They spent all day painting. Like most of their generation they were obsessed by the fear of the picturesque, and they turned their backs on the obvious beauty of the town to seek subjects which were devoid of a prettiness they despised. Sisley and Monet had painted the canal with its poplars, and they felt a desire to try their hands at what was so typical of France; but ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham |
