"Preoccupation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... influences, of marvels of magnetism; and although he has never given a great deal of thought to any of those matters, he thinks about them since he has felt himself dominated by this singular personage, and Adrian Baker has become, in fact, his fixed idea, his absorbing thought, his unceasing preoccupation, his constant monomania. Berta's father and the housekeeper may very well attribute to him marvellous powers, suggested by their own excited imaginations; but we must not share in those hallucinations, nor are we to conclude from them that Adrian Baker is outside the common ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... roused by a stinging shower of lime-dust. An Englishman in the next balcony had take courteous advantage of her preoccupation, and had flung a scoopful of confetti in her undefended face! It is generally Anglo-Saxons of the less refined class, English or Americans, who do these things at Carnival times. The national love of a rough joke comes to the surface, encouraged by the license of the moment, and all the ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... players were very different. Ruy Lopez played with a preoccupation which was not usual to him, and which rendered him much inferior to his ordinary strength. Don Gusman, on the contrary, stimulated by excitement, played with more than his ordinary skill. At this moment his ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... excitement of spirit of which one note was a reaction against an outworn classicism severed not more from nature than from the genuine motives of ancient art; and a return to true Hellenism was as much a part of this reaction as the sudden preoccupation with things medieval. The medieval tendency is in Goethe's Goetz von Berlichingen, the Hellenic in his Iphigenie. At first this medievalism was superficial, or at least external. Adventure, romance in ...
— Aesthetic Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... crowd, to all of whom he was familiar, considered his success as certain, just as the veteran soldiery anticipate a triumph from the General, who has so often led them to victory that they deem him to have become invincible. But to the thoughtful and more observant, at times he showed signs of preoccupation, strangely at variance with his present undoubted supremely master mood; and as the trial proceeded these fits of wandering from the point increased in duration and intensity. An anxious expression ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... to hear him out, he would carry them all inevitably to his conclusion. They know it and run away. But the press has made our whole world of civilization one great lecture-room, from which no reading man can escape, and the only defence against progress is stolid preoccupation with trade or trifles. Yet this persistency is holding the breath, and can no more be continued in the mind than that in the body. Blundering and falsehood become intolerable to the blunderers; they must return to thought, and that is proper in a single direction, is approached ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... But for all his preoccupation, he had not failed to note the wistfulness in Evelyn's dutifully smiling eyes. He was more than usually tender with her on his return, and successfully banished the wistfulness by giving up his polo to take her for a ride. Honor stood watching ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... but was written plainly in the languid gait, the drooped lids, and the dark patches beneath the eyes. By her side walked Charlemagne, and half a yard behind the three puppies trotted sleepily, Charlot lagging last; even in his anxious preoccupation La Mothe noticed it was Charlot, the best beloved of the three ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... the fireplace, muttering French phrases in humorous imitation of her grace. Observing the King's preoccupation, she tossed a ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... the past two months he had been seen every evening wherever there was high-class revel in Memphis. But he had laughed perfunctorily and lapsed into preoccupation when none spoke to him, and his song had a sorry note in it, however happy the theme. But these were things apparent only to those that ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... The economy has been plagued by high rates of unemployment since the late 1970s. Economic growth accelerated in 1991-94 as domestic conditions began to improve and conditions for foreign investment brightened. In 1995, however, the government's emphasis on populist measures and its preoccupation with the stepped-up Tamil insurgency have clouded Sri Lanka's economic prospects and discouraged foreign investors. A further problem for 1996 is the need to curb ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... biological inheritance. But too often postponed satisfaction takes the violent form of lurid, over-exciting amusements and dissipation. The suppression of the sex instinct not infrequently results in a morbid pruriency in matters of sex, a distortion of all other interests and activities by a preoccupation with the frustrated sex motive. Assaults and lynchings, and the whole calendar of crimes of violence with which our criminal courts are crowded, are frequent evidence of the incompleteness with which man's strong primary instincts have been suppressed by the niceties of civilization. The phenomenal ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... ended all that. The unification of Germany, in the way we have discussed, diverted all their interest from speculation about the universe, life, and mankind, to the material interests of their new country. Germany became the preoccupation of all Germans. From abstractions they turned with a new intoxication to what they conceived to be the concrete. Entering thus late upon the stage of national politics, they devoted themselves, with their accustomed thoroughness, to learning and bettering what ...
— The European Anarchy • G. Lowes Dickinson
... precious, and one is very glad to have always at one's beck and call a species of buffoon endowed with imperturbable good humor. As to the chevalier, he hid under a laughing and careless mask, a sad preoccupation; the end of his journey drew near; the words of Father Griffen had been too sensible, too sincere, too just not to strongly impress our adventurer, who had counted upon passing a joyous life at the expense of the colonists. The coldness with which many of the passengers, ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... journal for the masses. Brilliant as he was, Artemus Ward seemed most effective only when he spoke in weird vernacular through the grotesque mouthpiece of his own invention. Bret Harte sacrificed more and more of the native flavour of his genius in his progressive preoccupation with the more sophisticated refinements of the purely literary. Mark Twain never lost the ruddy glow of his first inspiration, and his style, to the very end, remained as ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... such a result it will be seen that the single preoccupation of this learned society was the destruction of humanity philanthropically, and the perfecting of firearms considered as instruments of civilisation. It was a company of Exterminating Angels, at bottom the best ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... the battlefields of Champagne, Belgium, Galicia, and Hungary the Government is assuming a grave responsibility before the country in deciding to be disinterested in the struggle. The keen popular awakening which is manifested in demonstrations, meetings, and public discussions shows that growing preoccupation and varied uneasiness will not cease so long as the fate of the country is not decided at the right time by men who by temperament are best fitted to be interpreters of the soul and the interests ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... reflected that one hundred and twenty miles, with probably a great deal of climbing on foot, all in three days, was enough to tire any rider. Moreover, it presently developed that Lassiter had returned in a mood of singular sadness and preoccupation. She put it down to a moodiness over the loss of her white herd and the now precarious condition ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... nothing. Her eyes kept open very wide, but no audible remark got past her lips. She paid no attention to the singing nor to the whispered conversation; she ate an enormous tea, finishing up all the cakes that the others neglected in their excitement and preoccupation; but she appeared as calm and unconcerned as the tea- cosy that concealed the heated, stimulating teapot beneath it. She looked more circular and globular than ever. Even the knowledge that this was the eve of her own particular adventure ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... the great centres of population, the common people are more trustworthy than the corporations, the colleges, or the newspapers. The selfishness, the preoccupation, the anti-republicanism of these, are proverbial. We know that editors are echoes, not leaders, printing what will sell, not what is true. Landor declared that there is a spice of the scoundrel in most literary men. Everybody understands that a corporation's gospel is a good fat dividend. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... now his sole preoccupation. If anything had happened to her,—it was through his fault alone; for he began to feel sure she must have come to the Mill House in his absence. What then had become of her? The blood-stained toque pointed to foul play. But if they had murdered her, what ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... way.) She couldn't let Eagle alone; and she showed her feelings so plainly—as a very rich girl sometimes thinks she may do with a comparatively poor man—that even Eagle himself, despite his lack of self-conceit and his preoccupation with thoughts of Di, couldn't help understanding. He kept out of Milly's way as often as he could, but she attributed this retirement to the calls of duty; and at last began to behave so foolishly that for her own ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... confide in me. He was, I think, defending himself against an imputation of slackness and unreliability I had made in relation to a great public movement, in which he had disappointed me. But he plunged suddenly. "I have," he said, "a preoccupation—— ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... his heart were bestowed on few; for in early life they had never been cultivated, but they were singularly warm, pure, and constant; characterized not by the ardour of passion, but by the constant preoccupation of real affection. He had lost his mother, to whom he was fondly attached, early in life; and with his father, a man of coarse feelings and boisterous manners, he had few sentiments in common. Always feeble in constitution, he was unequal to the sports of the field, and to the drinking which ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... this wonderful prophecy by these remarks: "In 1805 or 6, amid the preoccupation of war and military politics, he [Fourier] foresaw and described with accuracy the future formation of vast joint-stock companies destined to monopolize and control all branches of industry, commerce and finance, and ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... was idle, he told himself, as he noted that his speedometer had dropped from sixty to thirty in his preoccupation. He speeded again, but was soon forced to stop and ask his way into Primrose Meadows. The vague directions of a farmer's son lost him nearly eight precious minutes, during which his friend, Captain Strawn of the Homicide Squad, might be bungling things rather badly. But ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... tell was not calculated to encourage Jumping Frog in his high-handed policy. His face fell considerably, and Pepin, taking advantage of his preoccupation, walked off ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... and saw that it was their small luggage carrier. In their preoccupation the girls had both of them ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... preoccupation of his master's scowling brow and grim-set mouth, and, clutching a soft handful of whisker, ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... temper, and annoyed. With an absent air he kissed his mother's hands, and sat himself down before receiving her permission to do so. Considering the strict rules of etiquette established at the court of Anne of Austria, this forgetfulness of customary civilities was a sign of preoccupation, especially on Philip's part, who, of his own accord, observed a respect towards her of a somewhat exaggerated character. If, therefore, he so notoriously failed in this regard, there must be ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... this letter so long and seriously that his wife noticed his preoccupation, and asked him what was the matter. He ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and her eyelids were pale violet and lay heavy on her cheek. White, like a bride, with a nosegay of orange-blossoms, and syringa at her throat, she lay there on her bed, with lightly folded hands and the strange aloofness and preoccupation all the dead have. Only her hair burned ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... half urging, half pushing, half leading, the doctor swept his trio of visitors into the parlor. Despite her start at Miller's appearance at the door, despite his preoccupation and gloom, which several glasses of the doctor's good wine failed to dissipate, Miss Forrest remained after a brief visit to the invalid up-stairs and, saying that she had promised Nellie, sang to them witchingly ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... Othman. Action on the part of the European fleet might arise at any moment, owing to these complications and the rivalries thereby excited between England and Russia—great Eastern powers both of them. Our sole preoccupation therefore during our cruise in the Dardanelles was to get our ships into such condition that they might make a good show in the event of anything of the kind occurring. I have related elsewhere how we succeeded, under the ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... mutter of thunder. In her deep preoccupation, she had not noticed the coming of another shower. It proved a short but heavy one, and she exulted. "The rain will obliterate ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... had not found our camp. Our partner had gone down in the black pool; we could not save him, but chance had made it easy to succor the one man who could bring me sorrow in his necessity. Then, as I struggled to shake off the feeling of sullen resentment, Ormond perhaps noticed my preoccupation, ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... inattention, because he happened to be earnestly thinking about her, he began to talk to Cicely in his liveliest and gayest manner, and she, not wishing him to think that she thought that there was anything out of the way in this, or in his previous preoccupation, ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... murderers, women, children, babies—everybody, indeed, could be seen from morning till midnight, absorbed in one deep project and purpose, and only one—to pen those pigs, work out that puzzle successfully; that all gayety, all cheerfulness had departed from the nation, and in its place care, preoccupation and anxiety sat upon every countenance, and all faces were drawn, distressed, and furrowed with the signs of age and trouble, and marked with the still sadder signs of mental decay and incipient ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sterner months those early days in Paris, in their setting of grave architecture and summer skies, wear the light of the ideal and the abstract. The sudden flaming up of national life, the abeyance of every small and mean preoccupation, cleared the moral air as the streets had been cleared, and made the spectator feel as though he were reading a great poem on War rather than ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... children—indeed, the sole child of any real importance—had arranged that her progress should be arrested at just that stage, and had stationed a calm and diplomatic woman to convince her that her child was indeed the main preoccupation of the Horace Mann School. A pretty sight—the interview! It charmed me as the sight of an ingenious engine in motion ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... was slain, and to exalt the Crescent above the Cross became the duty of every fighting Mohammedan. Into all the ports and harbours of the North African littoral the Moslems intruded themselves, their one preoccupation to revenge themselves upon the Christians, of no matter what race or nationality. There was at this date but small opposition from the rulers of the Pagan States who held in their weak and inefficient hands such strong places of arms as ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... chairs, his figure in deep shadow, but his book was raised above his head so as to catch the red glow of the stove on the printed page. Even then his father's angry interruption scarcely diverted his preoccupation; he raised himself in his chair mechanically, with his eyes still fixed on his book. Seeing which his father quickly regained the paper, ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... preparing three hearty meals a day was a matter that consumed a large amount of time, but gradually, day by day, she found herself systematizing her task and becoming less inexpert. To be sure she made many mistakes; once, indeed, in a fit of preoccupation, while occupied in rearranging the bedroom, burning up ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... sort of tumult within him. He felt angry, he did not know why. His whole body was longing to do something strong, eager, even violent. He hated his latchkey, he hated the long stroll in Hyde Park, the absurd delay upon the bridge, his preoccupation with the Muscovy duck, or whatever bird it was, voyaging over the Serpentine. Why had nothing told him not to lose a moment but to hurry home? He remembered that he had been specially reluctant to leave Rosamund that evening, that he had even said to her, "I don't know why it is, but this evening ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... stories of some palaces which once on a time had housed much fierceness and beauty, treachery and perverse seductiveness. Knowing Antonio's intimate acquaintance with those splendid days, I strove to rouse him by congenial allusions. His preoccupation continued; the historic syllables that issued from my lips were wasted in the clamor of the street. Yet when I pronounced the name of one of those bygone belles, Fiammetta Adimari, he repeated slowly, like a man who has ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... which he was now voyaging as a review of these various anxieties. I have thrown them (for the reader's convenience) into a certain order; but in the mind of one poor human equal they whirled together like the dust of hurricanes. With the same obliging preoccupation, I have put a name to each of his distresses; and it will be observed with pity that every individual item would have graced and commended the cover ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... could not keep his eyes fixed on the book because his thoughts insisted on straying into all sorts of irrelevant fields. But no matter in what direction they started, circuitously they always found their way into the field of main preoccupation. ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... was also a reference to the new law for a return to three years' service which France was introducing to improve the efficiency of her peace establishment. But it was obvious that Russia was the main preoccupation. Germany had forced the pace both in the aggrandizement of her military strength and in the methods of her diplomatic intercourse. Suddenly she found herself on the brink of an abyss. She had gone too far; ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... was great in his own day,[34] and he had a reflected glory in being the friend of Winckelmann, who was reputed to have profited by his teaching in art. Under the inspiration of Oeser Goethe's interest in the plastic arts in general, which had received its first impulse at home, became a permanent preoccupation for the remainder of his life. He took regular lessons in drawing from Oeser, made acquaintance with all the collections, public and private, to be found in Leipzig, and even made a secret visit to the galleries in Dresden, where, he tells us, he gave his exclusive attention to the works of the ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... rites of religion, whether persuasive as in prayer, or compulsory as in sympathetic magic, whether associated with communal or propitiatory sacrifice, whether directed to the earth or to the heaven, all had an intensely practical and terribly real character, due to man's constant preoccupation with the growth and storage of food for man and beast. In the hunting, the pastoral, and above all in the agricultural life, religion was not a matter merely of imagination or sentiment, but one most intimately associated with the daily practice of life, and this practical ...
— Celtic Religion - in Pre-Christian Times • Edward Anwyl
... welcome intruder, he saw a very different man from the one upon whom he had just turned his back with so little ceremony; and there appeared to be no good reason for the change. He had not noted in his preoccupation, how George, at sight of his stooping figure, had made a sudden significant movement, and if he had, the pulling of a necktie straight, would have meant nothing to him. But to Sweetwater it meant every thing, and it was in the tone of one fully at ease with himself that ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... is in charge of Mr. Snowden," continued the showman with a twinkle in his eyes, but which Phil in his preoccupation failed to observe. "I am thinking that Snowden will give you all you want to do, ...
— The Circus Boys on the Plains • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... was the outcast's instant inference, as in a moment of accountable preoccupation on the part of the elders she had escaped to her own happy and familiar country—the world of out-of-doors—where female relatives seldom intruded, and where the lovely ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... advantage of the preoccupation of his captors during the last moments of Theriere to gnaw in two the grass rope which bound him to the mucker, and with hands still fast bound behind him had slunk into the jungle path that led toward ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... His task was easier. In the progress which landscape painting had made, there were hosts of younger painters, each adding a particle of truth, each making an advance in technical skill and daring, and Daubigny profited by it all. Corot, it is true, had never been afflicted with the preoccupation of combining the freshness of nature with the patine with which ages had embrowned the old gallery pictures; but Daubigny, looking at nature with a more literal eye than Corot, ran a gamut of color greater than he. It was Daubigny who said of Corot, in envious admiration: ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... 1526, as appears from his Ricordi. Still the work went on slowly, not through his negligence, but, as we have seen, from the Pope's preoccupation with graver matters. He had a great many workmen in his service at this period, and employed celebrated masters in their crafts, as Tasso and Carota for wood-carving, Battista del Cinque and Ciapino for ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... ornamental criticism; with him the appearance of form and colour, acted upon by light, the relative values of which flesh and draperies consist with reference to the surrounding medium, all this becomes so evident a preoccupation and a basis for decorative effects, as to give certain of his works an almost startling air of being modern. But this tendency comes to nothing: the men of the sixteenth century appear scarcely to have perceived wherein lay the true excellence of this "Andrea senza errori," deeming him ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... This solitary preoccupation with one's own salvation causes the religious teachers of Buddhism to live apart, outside of society, and take no interest in it. There is in the Catholic and Protestant world, beside the monk, a secular priesthood, ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... Out of whom condescension is to flow is a matter of which Heaven takes no cognizance. To use her own words, Puss thought him "stuck up," when he should have been grateful. We know that Stephen was not stuck up, and later Miss Russell learned that likewise. Very naturally she took preoccupation for indifference. It is a matter worth recording, however, that she did not tease him, because she did not dare. He did not ask her to dance, which was rude. So she passed him back to Mr. Carvel, who introduced ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... cared to speak of this memory to any one. In his childhood and youth he was by no means expansive, and talked little indeed, but not from shyness or a sullen unsociability; quite the contrary, from something different, from a sort of inner preoccupation entirely personal and unconcerned with other people, but so important to him that he seemed, as it were, to forget others on account of it. But he was fond of people: he seemed throughout his life to put implicit ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... step or two to my hotel, where I got my lighted candle from the porter and mounted the four flights to my own room. Although I could not deny that I was drunk, I was at the same time lucidly rational and practical. I had but one preoccupation—to be up in time on the morrow for my work; and when I observed the clock on my chimney-piece to have stopped, I decided to go down stairs again and give directions to the porter. Leaving the candle burning and my door open, to be a guide to me on my return, ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... persons were supposed to be able to perform miracles. In the Middle Ages the casuists and theologians seemed never to tire of multiplying distinctions and antitheses about sex.[2191] In fact their constant preoccupation with it was the worst departure from the reserve and dignity which are the first requirements in respect to it. A document of the extremest doctrine is Hali Meidenhad,[2192] of the thirteenth century. The aim of the book is to persuade women to renounce marriage. Marriage is servitude. ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... this preoccupation with him throughout the afternoon. It was still in the hinterland of his thoughts when he returned to ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... left. She had only a cool interested certainty that her side had a perfectly valid foundation for arguing purposes. Mr. Marsh had accomplished that, and more than that, a return from those other centers of feeling to her preoccupation ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... looked about, as if noting for the first time Farrington's preoccupation. "Is he quite well?" he inquired, ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... found him in his commodious lodge, entertaining a couple of headmen from Cheyenne River. He was seated on a low bed opposite the door, and his guests were placed on either hand of him. He glanced up at us, spoke a curt word to Primeau and went on with his story. His cold greeting, and the evident preoccupation of his manner made me feel like an intruder, which I was, and this feeling was deepened when I perceived that my guide was distinctly ill at ease. After all, he was only a half-breed trader, while these men were ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... obliged to meet and vanquish one more proposed treatment of the problem of slavery—founded on an inadequate conception of democracy. In this case, moreover, the inadequate conception of democracy was much more traditionally American than was an exclusive preoccupation either with natural or legal rights; and according to its chief advocate it would have the magical result of permitting the expansion of slavery, and of preserving the Constitutional Union, without doing ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... reticent a man to confide in me. He was, I think, defending himself against an imputation of slackness and unreliability I had made in relation to a great public movement in which he had disappointed me. But he plunged suddenly. "I have" he said, "a preoccupation—" ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... a movement so leisurely and careless that his purpose was accomplished before the other in his preoccupation was aware of it, the adventurer leaned forward and swept up the prints from the counterpane in front ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... will write on one page about the boxing ring, on the next about the theatre, a little farther along about books, farther on yet about politics. He makes excursions into college sports, horse racing and questions of fair play; and the problems of child-rearing are his constant preoccupation. ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... preternatural activity of the imagination in certain directions, of which no very obvious explanation is discoverable. Thus, we sometimes find our minds dwelling on some absent friend, without being able to give any reason for this mental preoccupation. And in this way arise strong temporary leanings to illusory perception. It may be said, indeed, that all unwonted activity of the imagination, however it arises, has as its immediate result a temporary mode of expectation, definite or indefinite, which easily confuses ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... "that old wretch of a G——" caused him to fall into a singular preoccupation. No one could say that the passage of that soul before his, and the reflection of that grand conscience upon his, did not count for something ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... one of her chief characteristics. Although she was a reformer by nature there was no sternness in her composition. Forgetfulness of others there was certainly sometimes, arising from her hopeless absent-mindedness and the preoccupation consequent upon her work; but her whole life was swayed and ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... was to assure himself that such miracles happen but once. He said to himself that his hour was in sight and that it behoved him to keep his eyes upon it, yet that it was also open to him to spend the interval as agreeably as might be consistent with such a preoccupation. With the prospect of losing them the simple use of his faculties became an exquisite pleasure; it seemed to him the joys of contemplation had never been sounded. He was far from the time when he had found it hard that he should be obliged to give up the idea of distinguishing ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... His preoccupation with this matter had the happy effect of preventing him from worrying too much about the perils which lay before Geraldine. Discovering the existence of an Anti-Breakfast League, he joined it, and in less than a week every newspaper in the land announced ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... bramble. The latter, in truth, sometimes acts as if it were not so much fighting us off as drawing us on. Leaning far forward and stretching forth its arms, it buttonholes the wayfarer, so to speak, and with generous country insistence forces upon him the delicious clusters which he, in his preoccupation, seemed in danger of passing untasted. I think I know the human counterparts of both barberry and bramble,—excellent people in their place, though not to be chosen for bosom friends without a careful ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... it is my work?" Brenton interrupted banally, for, in his secret heart, he was painfully aware that it was not the church alone which kept him so preoccupied that his preoccupation had come to be an ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... in our national and private life. Citizens of the older communities of Europe pass their lives among the accumulated art treasures of past ages. The mere daily contact with such forms of beauty engenders a taste for them. Partly through our Puritan origin, partly through our preoccupation with the development of the material resources of our country, we, as a people, have failed to cultivate some of the imponderable things of the spirit. So far as we have had to do with its creation, our environment in town and village is generally ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... silence was very marked, and he appeared to take not the slightest interest in either of us, except to get us indoors, where we could do no further mischief. His manner was cold; and whether this arose from his strange preoccupation, or from annoyance with us, I couldn't decide. In either case, I was thankful when we were in our room, and had taken off our shawls and the beautiful helmets which now ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... ourselves our taste has not this all-important discernment. Preoccupation, trouble, all that concern us, present it to us in another aspect. We do not see with the same eyes what does and what does not relate to us. Our taste is guided by the bent of our self-love and temper, ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... in Egypt. By becoming an Ultramontane that I won over the Italian priests, and had I to govern a nation of Jews I would rebuild Solomon's temple." Never perhaps since Alexander and Caesar has any great man better understood how the imagination of the crowd should be impressed. His constant preoccupation was to strike it. He bore it in mind in his victories, in his harangues, in his speeches, in all his acts. On his deathbed it was still ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... manipulation of his grimy fingers rattled a number of frail-like staves and worked a number of wheels and drums, yet there was no indication of her ignorance in her sparkling eyes and smiling, breathless attitude. Perhaps she was interested in his own absorption; the revelation of his preoccupation with this model struck her as if he had made her a confidante of some boyish passion for one of her own sex, and she regarded him with the same ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... left in the vague was intolerable to me; but my long subjection to Pope, while it was useful in other ways, made me so strictly literary in my point of view that sometimes I could not see what was, if more naturally approached and without any technical preoccupation, perfectly transparent. It remained for another great passion, perhaps the greatest of my life, to fuse these gyves in which I was trying so hard to dance, and free me forever from the bonds which I had spent so much time and trouble to involve myself in. But I was not to know ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... in laying stress upon the psychological side of Lamarck's theory, and disregarding the materialistic dress in which, perhaps under the influence of the materialism current in his youth, he clothed his essentially vitalistic thought? Everything goes to prove it—his constant preoccupation with psychological questions, his tacit assimilation of organ-formation to instinctive behaviour, his constant insistence on the importance of ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... you at Cray I felt that I must never meet you again, either waking or dreaming. The discovery that you were Gogo, after all, combined with the preoccupation which as a mere stranger you had already caused me for so long, created such a disturbance in my spirit that—that—there, you must try and imagine it ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... Roscommon had served his customers was gone. The towel was no longer used after its perfunctory fashion; the counter remained unwiped; the disks of countless glasses marked its surface, and indicated other preoccupation on the part of the proprietor. The keen grey eyes of the claimant of the "Red-Rock Rancho" were always on the lookout for ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... of her former self than was the rest of her conduct. Almost as if from the force of habit, she resumed her thoughtful care for his comfort; but beyond that there seemed to be an apathy, an indifference, a dreary preoccupation hard to combat. ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... herself alone! She meant on the morrow, while her mother was marketing, to pursue the enterprise; the consciousness of this intention was sweet, but she knew not why it was sweet. She only knew that she lived in the preoccupation of a dream. ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... were the outcome of a millennium of experience with the Crusades and extending to the present century. They are the outcome of preoccupation with material incentives that can be stated in two words, ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... and listen closely, and you will hear the wild wail of neglected and unappreciated wives. A woman can forgive a beating, but to be forgotten—never. She hates, by instinct, an austere and self-contained character. Dignity and pride repel her; preoccupation keeps her aloof; concentration ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... gloom that did not lighten even when, after dinner, the girls were left alone in the library with their beloved "one thousand and seventy-four" books. From over the edge of "Vanity Fair" Robin watched anxiously the preoccupation and shadow ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... a sense of his attention by a brighter glow. For several weeks I had been observing in him a growing habit of delay in answering even the most trivial of commonplace questions. His air, however, was that of preoccupation rather than deliberation: one might have said that he ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... he saw the small, mocking eye of the lawyer begin to roam over the shelves, and beheld his jaw drop as it sometimes did when he sought to veil his purpose in an air of mild preoccupation, he knew what the next request would be, as well as if the low sounds which left Mr. Black's lips at intervals had been words instead of inarticulate grunts. He was, therefore, prepared ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... Russian frontier had been artificially drawn so as to make her Polish province an indefensible salient, though properly organized it would have been an almost intolerable threat alike to East Prussia and to Austrian Galicia. But for her preoccupation in the West, Germany could have conquered Poland in a fortnight, and Russian plans, indeed, contemplated a withdrawal as far as the line of Brest-Litovsk. As it was, the German offensive in Belgium and ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... migrated to Massachusetts with Winthrop in 1630? Here we face, unless I am mistaken, that troublesome but fascinating question of Physical Geography. Climate, soil, food, occupation, religious or moral preoccupation, social environment, Salem witchcraft and Salem seafaring had all laid their invisible hands upon the physical and intellectual endowment of the child born in 1804. Does this make Nathaniel Hawthorne merely an "Englishman ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... Henry was never known to choose an unworthy friend; laymen could only grumble that he was accustomed to take advice of bishops and abbots rather than that of knights even about military matters. But theology was not the main preoccupation of the court. Henry, inquisitive in all things, learned in most, formed the centre of a group of distinguished men which, for varied intellectual activity, had no rival save at the university of Paris. There was not a court in Christendom in the affairs of which the ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... exaggerated. So confident was Everard that he even whistled a tune as he walked, and planned how he would stroll into the drawing-room on his return to Casa Bianca, slip the necklace from his pocket, and casually mention where he had been. In his preoccupation he did not give any particular heed to the road, or see movement among the dark shadows of a group of prickly pears that overhung a ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... had failed to turn aside her husband's tongue, her mind became a blank beneath his heavy sarcasms, and sought refuge by drifting far away. She would fix her eyes on the distance in dreary contemplation, and her mind would follow her eyes in a vacant and wistful regard. The preoccupation of her mournful gaze enabled her to meet her husband's sneers with a kind of numb, unheeding acquiescence. She ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... the time had come when our nation felt the imperious need of a fit prose. So, too, the time had likewise come when our nation felt the imperious need of freeing itself from the absorbing preoccupation which religion in the Puritan age had exercised. It was impossible that this freedom should be brought about without some negative excess, without some neglect and impairment of the religious life of the soul; and the spiritual history of the eighteenth century shows us that the freedom ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... of the 8th inst. is full of interest to me, and I shall follow out your hints as far as I can. I rejoice in furnishing facts to others to work up in their bearing on general questions, and feel it the more my duty to do so inasmuch as from preoccupation of mind and time and want of experience I am unable to contribute direct original investigations of the sort to the ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... too appalling to face; it hardly occurred to him that the boys had homes of their own, places which they loved. He only thought of them as figures on the school stage, to be conciliated, tolerated, lived with, his only preoccupation being to shield and guard his own heart and inner life from any intruding influence whatever. He had no desire ever to see one of the crew again, boys or masters. Some indeed were preferable to others, but no one could be trusted for an instant; the only safe course ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... lunch that Randy and Becky walked in the woods. Nellie Custis followed them. They sat down at last at the foot of a hickory tree. Becky took off her hat and the wind blew her shining hair about her face. She was pale and wore an air of deep preoccupation. ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... ambassadors, harassed by this constant preoccupation, had little time or inclination left for any serious pursuit, since, to take a moment's repose or an hour's breathing space was to risk falling behind in the endless and aimless race. Strange as it may appear, the knowledge that they owed place and preferment ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... former preoccupation with the Council's possible intentions. He began to reconsider the details of Howard's behaviour, sinister glances, inexplicable hesitations. Then, for a time, his mind circled about the idea of escaping from these rooms; but whither could he escape into this vast, ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... which was, that no personal preoccupation, whether grave or gay, ought to disturb a clerk in the execution of his duty. Therefore he set himself to his work, apparently as if nothing had happened, but really in a state of moral perturbation ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... steps of his club he seemed again to be thinking deeply; within, his preoccupation did not altogether desert him. In a corner, with the big pages of the Times before him, he read with scant interest the doings of the day; even a perennial telegram concerning a threatened invasion of England did not awaken momentary interest. He passed ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... offend, he had hit upon this means of helping them. Clearly, he had been thus surreptitiously supplying them with fuel for weeks,—a little at a time, to avoid discovery. And Mrs. Farrell, in her anxiety and preoccupation, had not realized that, with the steady inroads made upon it, a ton of coal could not ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... immediately provoking cause of passion removed, reaction against the strain of all that had very sensibly set in. He felt strangely astray, as though drifting at hazard upon the waters of an unquiet, mist-blinded sea. He was conscious of a deep-seated preoccupation regarding some matter, which he was alike unable to forget or to define. Formless images perplexed his vision. Formless thoughts pursued one another, as with the hurry of rumoured calamity, through his mind. A desolating apprehension of ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... closing days of July, 1916, the Franco-British "push" became the principal German preoccupation. The great struggle for Verdun, the longest battle continuously fought in history, from that time on became a military operation ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... dying," Mr. Pettifer corrected. "There seems to have been some little doubt upon that point. But your theory's a little weak, isn't it? To get away unseen would be that thief's first preoccupation, surely?" ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... accordingly sent among them to link them up with their brethren at home, and fan the embers of patriotism which long residence in the Tsardom had not quenched. Little by little, the political fruits of these apostolic labours began to show themselves: the colonists, whose main preoccupation had been to occupy the most fertile soil in the district, began to take over the approaches to Russia's strategic plans, and to display an absorbing interest in Russian politics. Several Zemstvos fell into their hands, and were practically ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... troubles again retarded the voyage, in addition to which the Swallow was as bad a sailer as possible, and one may guess at the weariness, the preoccupation, even the mental suffering of the captain, who saw his crew on the point of starvation. But in spite of all, the voyage was continued by day and night in a westerly direction until the 2nd of July. Upon this day land was discovered to the north, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... and went swaggering off toward the house with it, questing kudos. In the garden he met Finn, who with careless good humor strolled toward him, offering a game. Jan tried his best to growl and to turn up his nose at the same time, indicating serious preoccupation with matters more weighty than play. But finding that his hold upon the mouse was gravely endangered by this process, he gave up the attempt, and swaggered on toward the front entrance, followed quizzingly by the wolfhound. Finding nobody in the porch, Jan fell over the step, dropped ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... propitiatingly and therein lay the sting, that he did not even take the trouble to conceal that he was trying to appease her. Their parting sank to the level of the commonplace for he shook hands hastily, and her look of appeal flattened itself ineffectively against his preoccupation. ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... early as 1893 we have an article on "The Triple Alliance" and in the Magazine of 1898 and 1899 there are papers on "The Colonial Expansion of the Great European Powers", "The Italian Riots of May, 1898", "The Philippine Question", "The Dreyfus Incident." This preoccupation of young college women of the nineteenth century with modern industrial and political history is significant when we consider the part that woman has elected to play in politics and reform since the beginning ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... in a great measure to his preoccupation, which made him deaf at times to what the others were saying. He knew that they were quite impersonal in their talk, and so he drifted into certain other channels ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... the canal bank, they were the only two persons on the pavement. He observed her dreaminess and preoccupation. On reaching the house where she lodged, Sonia turned in at the gate; he followed her, seeming rather surprised. In the courtyard she turned to the right corner. "Bah!" muttered the unknown gentleman, and mounted the stairs behind her. Only then Sonia noticed him. She reached ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... those close quarters there was no room to fence for openings. Instantly the two beasts locked in deadly embrace, each seeking the other's throat. Pan-at-lee watched, taking no advantage of the opportunity to escape which their preoccupation gave her. She watched and waited, for into her savage little brain had come the resolve to pin her faith to this strange creature who had unlocked her heart with those four words—"I am Om-at's friend!" And so she ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... no lonely dinner to-night, for Ed was at home. It was with a grave preoccupation that she made herself ready to ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... but not curly; he had a moustache so trifling that one could not be sure whether it was a moustache or whether he had been too busy to think of shaving. Janet received all these facts into her brain, and then carelessly let them all slip out again, in her preoccupation with his eyes. She said they were sad eyes. The mouth, too, was somewhat sad (she thought), but there was a drawing down of the corners of it that seemed to make gentle fun of its sadness. Janet, perhaps out of ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... the child's preoccupation for a moment, in a tone of half exasperated amusement). Well, but you're the quiet one, surely! (Mary looks up at him with a shy smile, her eyes still full of dreams.) Glory be to God, I'd not know ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... too active to stay quietly at the house of Mr. Huysman. Only their host, Tayoga and he were present at their supper that evening, and, as the man was rather silent, the lads respected his preoccupation, believing that he was concerned with the great affairs in which he was having a part. After supper Tayoga left for the camp on the flats to see an Onondaga runner who had arrived that day, and Mr. Huysman, still ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... with it, or what?" asked Muishkin, still rather absently, as though unable to throw off a deep preoccupation into which the ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... came to Aberdeen to hear me speak, and as I looked down on them from the platform of the opera house, I detected on their faces an expression which was not so much attention, as preoccupation. They were not listening to my words, they were thinking of my relationship to them, of the mystery involved in my being there on the platform surrounded by the men of the county whom they most respected. They could not take my ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... when observing him, noticed that the child did not work simply like the others, but came to her very frequently to know if what he was doing was well or ill done. And this not only during his work with the materials, but also in reference to every act of a moral nature he accomplished; his great preoccupation seemed to be to know whether he was doing right or wrong. Then he endeavored to do right with the most scrupulous exactitude. With regard to his spying tendencies, the teacher noted the child never showed any animosity towards his companions; he watched them ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... went with the rest. His chief preoccupation was to get rid of the detective and his men as quickly as possible. Malipieri opened the doors as he went along, and showed several empty rooms, before he came ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... the art of Kisling. Rarely does he produce one of those pictures so appetizing that one fancies they must be good to eat. What you will find in his work, besides much good painting, is a serious preoccupation with the problem of externalizing in form an aesthetic experience. And as, after all, that is the proper end of art his work is treated with respect by all the best painters and most understanding critics, though it has not yet scored a popular success. "Kisling ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... way home the vision of lovely dark eyes and rippling brown hair with just a hint of red in it, danced before him. Chiniquy, taking advantage of his master's preoccupation, wandered aimlessly against a barbed wire, taking very good care not to get too close to it himself. Jim came to himself just in time to save his leg from a prod from ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... to another, and anyone who goes in wholeheartedly may go in dreadfully deep. Their room came to be strown with all the disconcerting items of a theatrical wardrobe. Cope soon reached the point where he was not quite sure that he liked it all, and he began to develop a distaste for Lemoyne's preoccupation with it. He came home one afternoon to find on the corner of his desk a long pair of silk stockings and a too dainty pair of ladies' shoes. "Oh, Art!" he protested. And then,—not speaking his essential ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... necessary to say that Austin knew nothing whatever about his aunt's preoccupation, and that even if she had taken him into her confidence, he would have paid little or no attention to the matter. I am afraid that his ideas about finance were crude in the extreme, being limited to a sort of vague ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... his regiment, the 82nd, already drawn up in battle formation on the square, was impatiently awaiting; but Pinoteau, with Foucart, had been busy all morning arranging for the despatch of proclamations, and in their preoccupation he had forgotten to shave. Mid-day arrived. Colonel Pinoteau realising that he was unshaven, hurried to put this right; but while he was engaged in this operation, General Virion, escorted by a large number of gendarmes, burst into the room, seized his sword ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... In his preoccupation he forgot that the supper hour was passing, but at last started hastily for his room. As he rapidly turned a sharp corner he nearly ran into two ladies who were coming from an opposite direction, and looking up saw Mrs. Mayhew and ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... Hen did not see, but he said it was of no consequence. Then, coming to the edge of the wharf, he shook hands all round, never noticing, in the preoccupation of his mind, the knife that Franci flashed and brandished in his eyes as a parting dramatic effect. He held John's hand long, and seemed to labour for words, but found none; and so they slipped away and left him standing alone on the wharf, ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards
... and speechless refer to fact or state; taciturn refers to habit and disposition. The talkative person may be stricken dumb with surprise or terror; the obstinate may remain mute; one may be silent through preoccupation of mind or of set purpose; but the taciturn person is averse to the utterance of thought or feeling and to communication with others, either from natural disposition or for the occasion. One who is silent does not speak at all; one who is taciturn speaks when compelled, but ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... of five went ashore, and Kate's principal preoccupation seemed to be to keep as close to Virginia as possible. She had the air of expecting some choice excitement, which she might miss if the girl were lost sight of for a moment. But nothing in the manner of Virginia or her brother or cousin suggested that they had ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... moment came the growling of dogs from the sheds. Instantly his face lost its heavy preoccupation, and under his Quaker's mask became the mischievous countenance of a boy. "That's your friends," he said. ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... The Duchessa's chief preoccupation and anxiety concerned her son's strength to bear the journey. From day to day the family had been on the point of moving to Avellino, and the departure had been put off because Gianluca's condition seemed altogether too precarious. It would ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... moment that their attention had been diverted, the Uhlan had taken advantage of their preoccupation and had silently stolen away to the machine whose engine had been left running. Now he was beyond recall, and in a short time would be again on the eastern side of the fighting line, where he would no ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... peril of the future. Germany has never believed in a French danger. She knew very well that France, single handed, could never have withstood Germany, numerically so much her superior. Russia was the only danger that Germany saw, and the continual increase of the Russian army was her gravest preoccupation. Before the War, when Italy was Germany's ally, the leading German statesmen with whom I had occasion to discuss the situation did nothing but allude to the Russian peril. It was known (and subsequent facts have amply proved it) that the Tsar was absolutely devoid of will power, ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... sayest: "Hasten ye: and desist not! How to do not to be able to succeed in it, and how to do to succeed in it?"(462) No! I stop not, for I arrive; let thy preoccupation get calmed: ...
— Egyptian Literature
... not help but compare the attitude of the two girls at this time, when the failure or success of his best work was still undecided. He felt that as Helen took so little interest in his success he could not dare to trouble her with his anxieties concerning it, and she attributed his silence to his preoccupation and interest in Marion. So the two grew apart, each misunderstanding the other and each troubled in spirit at the ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... fruit of bitter experience in the past, has honeycombed the land with freemasonry and scientific charity and liberalism. So far as I can see, their dirt does not detract from their astuteness—perhaps it aids it, by removing one source of mental preoccupation, cleanliness. The old distinction between Livornese and Tunisian Jews is ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... Necklace; had made Lafleur's acquaintance in Paris, corrupted his facile virtue, and, with the aid of forged testimonials, presented himself in the character in which I had first made his acquaintance. The rascals had counted on the duke's preoccupation with Marie Delhasse for their opportunity. The duke smiled to hear it. Pierre listened to the whole story without a word of protest or denial; his accomplice's cowardly attempt to present him as the only culprit gained no more ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... dress for dinner. But how Hollyhock did miss the Precious Stones and The Garden girls! How dull, how gloomy, was the house! She tried in vain to eat her dinner with appetite, but she saw that her father looked full of preoccupation, that he hardly regarded her; in fact, the one and only speech that he made to her was this: 'Douglas is a good sort, and he has given me a vast lot to do. It will help to pay for the Flowers' education; ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... recover quickly, and it seemed very probable that in that case he would no longer hesitate to marry Hilda. At the thought of her, Rex experienced a disagreeable sensation which even he could not understand at first. Hitherto, his chief preoccupation had been the marriage, and scarcely an hour had passed, so long as he had hoped that Greif would live, in which he had not contrasted the happiness in store for his brother, if he took Hilda, with the misery he would have to encounter if he ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... old Dresden china equipage pleased me, forced itself upon my notice in spite of the deep preoccupation of ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... people, which is not a mere fancy, but a very real physical fact. Personalities radiate very real and unmistakable influences, and probably the undercurrent of thought which happens to be in one's mind when one is with others has an effect, even if one says or does nothing to indicate one's preoccupation. A certain amount of this comes from an unconscious inference on the part of the recipients. We often augur, without any very definite rational process, from the facial expressions, gestures, movements, tones of others, what their frame of mind is. But ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... boot. I can see him now, his eyes in his plate—thinking—thinking. I can see the solicitor glancing from him to me in an apprehension of which I did my best to disabuse him by reassuring looks. At the close Raffles apologized for his preoccupation, called for an A.B.C. time-table, and announced his intention of ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... of the most remarkable Englishmen of the century. This new-found champion of the working-classes was born in London, April 28, 1801. His father was the sixth Earl of Shaftesbury, and his mother was a daughter of the third Earl of Marlborough. The father's preoccupation in public life and his mother's social duties left the early home training of the lad to a pious domestic, an earnest Christian, whose precepts and example did more than anything else to give bent to his life. In later years the Earl freely owned his mother's housekeeper to be the best friend ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... and it began to rain. He ignored the rain. But December rain has a strange, horrid quality of chilly persistence. It is capable of conquering the most obstinate and serious mental preoccupation, and it conquered Priam's. It forced him to admit that his tortured soul had a fleshly garment and that the fleshly garment was soaked to the marrow. And his soul gradually yielded before the attack of the rain, and he ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... was, first, free education for the poor, and secondly, some fairer adjustment of the relations to each other of capital and labor. As to the first, authority has already sanctioned her opinion; the second question, if unsettled, has become a first preoccupation with statesmen and philosophers of all denominations ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... her preoccupation and the quick, dexterous movement of her hands she could feel her pity tightening her throat: pity that hurt like love, that was delicious and exquisite like love. Nothing mattered, nothing existed in her mind but the three wounded men. John didn't matter. John didn't exist. ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... hundred occasions and in countless ways; but more by her actions, her present wretchedness, than by speech. It was perfectly clear to Linda that nothing else mattered. She was even beginning, in a vague way, to think of it in connection with herself; but still most of her preoccupation was in her mother. She decided gravely that a great deal, yet, could be done. For ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the bright color of the world to Paul—his sister's recent engagement to their uncle's partner in the iron works, a very prosperous, young-old bachelor of fifty-odd, whose intense preoccupation with business had never been pierced by any consciousness of the other sex until Madeleine had, as she proclaimed in her own vernacular, "taken a club to him." It was a very brilliant match for her, and justified her own prophecy concerning herself that she was ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... devoted herself with that assiduity and patience for which she was distinguished. The constant loss of sleep, and the incessant and weary vigils which she was forced to maintain, seemed to have but little effect upon her elastic and energetic nature. Zillah, in spite of her preoccupation, could not help seeing that Hilda was doing nearly all the work, and remonstrated with her accordingly. But to her earnest remonstrances ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... shall be criticised! They will tell each other who was decently dressed, and who stepped awkwardly into the boats, and what the price of my boots was!' Such exclamations, murmured at intervals, and followed by chest-drawn sighs, expressed a deep preoccupation. With regard to his boots, he need have had no anxiety. They were of the shiniest patent leather, much too tight, and without a speck of dust upon them. But his nervousness infected me with a cruel dread. All those eyes were going to watch how ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... conception of the citizen. It implies that the greater portion of every man's life must be devoted to some kind of mechanical labour, whose immediate connection with the public good, though certain, is remote and obscure; and that in consequence a deliberate and unceasing preoccupation with the end of the state becomes as a ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... not apparently diminish his power of perception in other directions; and when he attacked a subject, expecting results he had the faculty of keeping his mind alert, so that results different from those which he expected should not escape him through preoccupation. ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... stone balustrade, presiding over the scene with the cold impartiality of a Goddess of Battles. A furious and repeated chorus of "I'll tell muvver" rose from the lodge-children, but the lodge-mother, who was hard of hearing, was for the moment immersed in the preoccupation ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... window with a sigh, and stepped back to the table for the tinder-box, that for the eleventh time he might relight his pipe. He sat down, blew a cloud of smoke to the ceiling, and considered. His nature triumphed now over his recent preoccupation; the matter of the moment, which concerned him not at all, engrossed him beyond any other matter of his life. He was intrigued to know in what relation one to the other stood the three so oddly assorted travellers he had seen arrive. ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini |
