"Absorbing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... agitated of them all was the masked beauty; whose heaving bosom, trembling hand—betrayed by the fan it held—and eager attitude—leaning breathlessly forward and intently watching Leander's every movement—would inevitably have borne witness to her great and absorbing interest in him, if anybody had been observing her to mark her emotion; but fortunately for her all eyes were turned upon the stage, so she had time to recover her composure. Leander was surpassing himself in his acting that night, yet ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... ourselves to that which is congenial. It is only to transact some higher business that even Apollo dare play the truant from Admetus. We must all work for the sake of work; we must all work, as Thoreau says again, in any "absorbing pursuit - it does not much matter what, so it be honest;" but the most profitable work is that which combines into one continued effort the largest proportion of the powers and desires of a man's nature; that into which he will plunge with ardour, and from which he will desist with ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he forgot how he had planned to lead up to the subject of his marriage, and had to finish his dinner in silence; but while Florou was carrying the dishes away, he thought of a new pretext for coming back to the absorbing topic. He noticed for the first time a hole in the tablecloth that had been there a ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... part of the vessel, and leaned over the railing. Annie noticed with an absorbing interest that he seemed as indifferent to the delight of the passengers at the prospect of soon being on land, and the bustle on the wharf, as he had appeared at the commencement of the voyage. But she rightly guessed that there was tumult ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... deal more than you can possibly know, Cosmo," answered Mr. Simon. "You have had no communication recognized by you as such, I grant. And I, who am so much older than you, must say the same. If there be any special fitness in the night, in its absorbing dimness, and isolating silence, for such communication—and who can well doubt it?—I have put myself in the heart of it a thousand times, when, longing after an open vision, I should have counted but the glimpse of a ghostly garment the mightiest boon, but never therefrom has the shadow of ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... 1863 and 1864—but as long as Henry Harper occupied the bishop's seat they were bound to be blocked by the episcopal veto. And before the next General Synod the Church was to pass through such tragic occurrences that the question at issue could no longer command the same primary and absorbing interest. ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... birds, viz., partridges, quails and sparrows. And from the mouth wherewith he used to recite the Vedas and to drink the Soma-juice, came out partridges in quick succession. And, O king, O son of Pandu, from the mouth with which he used to look at the cardinal points as if absorbing them all, a number of quails came forth. And from that mouth of the three-headed being which used to drink wine, out flew a number of sparrows and hawks. And the heads having been cut off Indra was freed from his trepidation, and went to heaven, glad at heart. And the carpenter also went back to ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... proofs, acted as a severe and candid though sympathetic critic, and above all cheered and encouraged him, and prevented him from committing suicide in his dark days of distress. On the other hand, the friendship of a man like Balzac must have been of absorbing interest to a woman of great delicacy of feeling, and evidently considerable literary powers, whose surroundings were uncongenial; and his warm and enduring affection helped her to tide over many of the troubles of a ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... other detachments, as the Colony was prepared to receive them. Further locations could then be chosen, and more country broken up, and before a very long period has passed the Colony would be capable of receiving and absorbing a continuous stream ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... "prepare yourself forthwith for 'a New and Powerful Serial of the Most Absorbing Interest'! I am no longer the young man who went out ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... had been times during the past weeks when she had been aware of new and vaguely disquieting portents. Inexperience had led her to belittle them, and the absorbing nature of her work, the excitement due to the strange life of conflict, of new ideas, into which she had so unreservedly flung herself, the resentment that galvanized her—all these had diverted her from worry. At night, hers had been the oblivious slumber of the weary.... And then, as ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... few mount you on hunting days, and send you out with a groom and a second horse. Mrs Thorne went beyond all others in this open-handed hospitality. She had enormous wealth at her command, and had but few of those all-absorbing drains upon wealth which in this country make so many rich men poor. She had no family property,—no place to keep up in which she did not live. She had no retainers to be maintained because they were retainers. She had neither sons ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... the thoughts of the multitude so marshalled as to make the unit of Public Opinion. As we already remarked, the thinking power of the ordinary man does not go far, wide, nor deep. His facility of absorbing ideas is far greater than his power of valuating them. He generally accepts as real value any thing that bears the stamp of current opinion. His belief in the value and weight of number is without recall; his absolute ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... began one of the large roses, near the lilies. Already she had threaded several needles with the silks required, and she embroidered in stitches varying in length, according to the natural position and movement of the petals, and notwithstanding the extreme delicacy and absorbing nature of this work, the recollections of the previous day, which she lived over again in thought and in silence, now came to her lips, and crowded so closely upon each other that she no longer tried to keep them back. So she talked of their setting out upon their ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... man carries a lighter heart than the villain. So does the free woman. Men have always borne personal grief more easily than women; observers remarked the fact. The reason is the same. An absorbing occupation, ordered and regarded as important, which brings a return allowing the recipient to patronize what he or she thinks wise, that brings happiness, not boisterous, but dignified. It may be a holocaust through which Eve gains that pay envelope, but the material possession brings ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch
... Trincomalie, is the Desmanthus natans, with highly sensitive leaves floating on the surface of the water. It is borne aloft by masses of a spongy cellular substance, which occur at intervals along its stem and branches, but the roots never touch the bottom, absorbing nourishment whilst floating at liberty, and only found in contact with the ground after the subsidence of water in ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... the Lieutenant-Governor to be deliberate. There was no need of an immediate appointment, he said. And so for a time things went on about the State-house much as usual, save that the absorbing topic was the senatorial situation, and that every one was watching the new chief executive. The retired Governor now spent part of his time in the South, and part at home. The cotton plantation was not demanding ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... This absorbing life had gone on for two months. It was the beginning of February, and already nature was assuming a new appearance under the influence of spring. One evening, three people—two gentlemen and a lady—stepped out of a carriage at the villa ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... the matter in that way," I said. "An absorbing labor will be good for me. My undertaking may result in overworking you, for you will be obliged to act as my under-study even more frequently than you ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... and quite equally omnivorous, absorbing tea, coffee, claret, sea-water and oxygen to its own perfect satisfaction. It is happiest swimming, I think, the sea being ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... statesman-warrior abounding in contrasts and rich in mystery, or the personal history of a judge trained in the Old Bailey to vulgarize and ensanguine the King's Bench—he luxuriates with a vigour and variety of language and illustration which renders his "History" an attractive and absorbing story-book. And so spontaneously redundant are these errors— so inwoven in the very texture of Mr. Macaulay's mind—that he seems never able to escape from them. Even after the reader is led to believe that all that can be said either of praise or vituperation as to character, of voluptuous ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... something less absorbing than the ball, she held up the paper—a mere folded scrap. Alexia seized it eagerly, held it fast in her hands, ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... time food was the all-absorbing topic of conversation. The men found a certain grim amusement in sitting about the table talking of the kind of "grub" they would order if they were in the States. They could go into such detail as to taste and smell of certain ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... the sailor-man. It provides him with ample leisure for conversation, sleep, or convivial song. When the possibilities of these absorbing pursuits are exhausted, remains a heightened interest in the ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... range of imaginative literature cannot furnish an incident of more absorbing interest; nor can the whole history of the theatre exhibit a situation of more tremendous scenical power than was presented at this moment in that chamber of doom. The four unconscious sleepers with the murderess in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... and adapt their game to it, is very curious and entertaining. The effect is greatly heightened by the universal suddenness and vehemence of gesture; two men playing for half a farthing with an intensity as all-absorbing as if the ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... colors of a rose window in some Gothic cathedral into contrast with the reddish background? Who has not looked long in delight at the effects of sun and rain on a roof of brown tiles, at the dewdrops, or at the variously shaped petals of the flower-cups? Who has not sunk into these idle, absorbing meditations on things without, that have no conscious end, yet lead to some definite thought at last. Who, in short, has not led a lazy life, the life of childhood, the life of the savage without his labor? This life without a care or a wish Raphael ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... brindles. If one has the time the works of an Austrian monk named Mendel are of great interest as bearing somewhat on this subject, and the two English naturalists, Messrs. Everett and J. G. Millais, whose writings contain the result of extensive scientific experiments on dogs and game birds, are of absorbing interest also. ...
— The Boston Terrier and All About It - A Practical, Scientific, and Up to Date Guide to the Breeding of the American Dog • Edward Axtell
... would go. Her glorious eyes sparkled with interest. She would have done with the platitudes and dreariness of private life. A grand career loomed up before her across the ocean, where men lavished millions at the dictate of imagination and put no limit upon enthusiasm. A fig for the dream of an absorbing love, such as for an hour yesterday had flitted through her brain. She would trample on its ashes after she had sated ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... Gulf, far from every civilized thing," Mrs. Conry told him; and it was plain enough that she was meagrely educated,—there had been few advantages in that "tiny place." But her sensuous temperament was now absorbing all that it touched. Rome meant little to her beyond the day's charm, the music it made in her heart; while the man vibrated to every association, every memory of ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... interests more absorbing than pastimes, display, and money-making by the "brace" game of "high finance" with its small risks of losing and smaller risks of being caught, even if he had been married to a less positive and incessant irritant than Theresa was to him, he would still ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... outside. He sat quietly in his own room, smoking his pipe and reading Emerson and Professor Drummond, which, of course, was quite in keeping with the peculiarities of his temperament. He had little to say to Phil as the latter dropped in to see him from time to time; and the all-absorbing topic of the town—DeRue Hannington's big reward—seemed to interest him about as much as did the approaching dissolution of his hold on the ranch he had contracted ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... by Mrs. Hunter, and now, as she sat in the little sun-lighted kitchen, there was neither past nor future to her. The present scene, with its simple, homely details, was all absorbing. ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... which they appear are certainly of the period of Louis XIII. It was probably imported either from Spain or Flanders; it became very fashionable about the middle of the seventeenth century, and ended by entirely absorbing the official orders of the Court of Louis XIV. With this work the name of Boulle is indissolubly associated. Pierre Boulle was lodged in the Louvre about 1642. In 1636 he is on the list for 400 livres annually. Jean Boulle died in the Louvre in 1680. He ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... %566. The Cuban Question.%—Absorbing as were the election and the tariff, there was another matter, which for two years past had steadily grown more and more serious. In February, 1895, the natives of Cuba for the sixth time in fifty ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... itself was rolled into the coach-house, the gates closed, and in a few moments all signs of Monsieur de Troisville's arrival had disappeared. Never did two chemicals blend into each other with greater rapidity than the hotel Cormon displayed in absorbing the Vicomte de Troisville. ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... watches in the silent lobby, with the two men belted and booted on their tressels, the clock ticking gently by his side, like the soft quiet voice of a chatty but not tiresome friend, Frank read book after book with absorbing interest. History, poetry, travel, romance—all kinds were equally devoured. At the particular time of which we write, however, he read more of poetry ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... properties of wool is its hygroscopicity or power of absorbing moisture. As the very structure of wool and fur fibre would lead us to suppose, these substances are able to absorb a very considerable amount of water without appearing damp. If exposed freely to the air in warm and dry weather, wool retains from 8 to 10 per cent., and if ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith
... the images, as they appear.[33] Precisely so, the images of microscope, slide, reflex and scratchy handwriting, as they successively come into focus, conform more and more to the nature of the stimulus, until the approximation ends in the idea of an all-absorbing interest in "scratchy" marks. This visual image hardly reaches precision before it becomes translated and transposed to the tactile field of my ear; smoothly, as if it were one magic lantern view dissolving into another. In fine, the presentation of each image ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... book needed.... Enlightened and persuasive discussion of the negro problem in its present phases and aspects. Not a dry history. Human, dramatic, interesting, absorbing, there is philosophy of national and political life back of it—a philosophy which not only furnished interpretation of past events, but offers guidance for the future.... Impartial and informing.... There is much that tempts quotation.... Mr. Merriam has given us an excellent, high-minded, illuminating ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... he would not look down. But he did look back, and saw the broad band of the Potomac, and beyond it the white dome of the Capitol and the roof of Washington. But his gaze turned again to the South, where his absorbing interest lay, and once more he viewed the quiet country, rolling away until it touched the horizon rim. The afternoon was growing late, and great terraces of red and gold were heaping above one another in the sky until ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of, and not many indeed that we aren't destined to see. Pictures and buildings won't be completely destroyed, because in that case the forestieri, scatterers of cash, would cease to arrive and the turn-stiles at the doors of the old palaces and convents, with the little patented slit for absorbing your half-franc, would grow quite rusty, would stiffen with disuse. But it's safe to say that the new Italy growing into an old Italy again will continue to take her elbow-room ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... another with due sense of all the dramatic force that is to be got out of it. His description of the last moments of the old pirate is one of the most effective pieces of writing he has put to his credit. SIR HENRY MORGAN—BUCCANEER is an absorbing story." ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... aristocratic composure resumed her interrupted task of stuffing a costly bonnet of embroidered cambric and quilled lace with sand. When the bonnet would hold no more, she had arranged to fill her shoe: she was perfectly clear upon the point of having no other engagement so absorbing. ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... Lyric of the Golden Age—a lyric pretty nigh as long as one of Mr. Howitt's volumes—dictated by Mr. (not Mrs.) Harris to the publisher in ninety-four hours; and several extempore sermons, possessing the remarkably lucid property of being "full, unforced, out-gushing, unstinted, and absorbing". The candidate for examination in pure belief, will then pass on to the spirit-photography department; this, again, will be found in so- favoured America, under the superintendence of Medium Mumler, a photographer of Boston: who was "astonished" (though, on Mr. Howitt's ...
— Contributions to All The Year Round • Charles Dickens
... favourable time to begin such an effort. One may learn more about a bird's habits by closely observing its movements for a few hours at this season than by watching it for a month later on. The life that centres about the nest is most {5} absorbing. Few sights are more stimulating to interest in outdoor life than spying on a pair of wild birds engaged in nest building. Nest hunting, therefore, soon becomes a part of the bird student's occupation, and I heartily recommend such a course to beginners, ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... thinks," he pursued, "of the intense interest, the eager excitement which the student of history finds in the narrative of the past as unfolded in dusty records written by the hand of man, one may realize how absorbing must have been that science which professed to unveil the future, and to display to the eyes of the wise the fate of dynasties written with the finger ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... into their proper places, made a sudden break in my train of thought; and, not having anything else to occupy me just then, I became speedily beset with the idea that the luminary just above my head was only awaiting a favorable opportunity to tumble down upon it. The thought became unpleasantly absorbing; and, not having sufficient energy to get up and change my seat, I looked out of the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... cradle. Outside the door of the shop a boy of ten or twelve is cutting some boards and slats, and putting them neatly together. We ask him what he is making. "A box," he answers, "a box for some doves"—and then bends his head over his absorbing task. Even so Jesus must have worked at the shop of Joseph, the carpenter, ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... the countries of Europe about California. I even tell Californians about California. I will say to the credit of Californians though that they listen. Listen! did I say listen? They drink it down like a child absorbing its ...
— The Native Son • Inez Haynes Irwin
... friend. The dear boy is so thoughtful of others and is always ready to give up his own pleasures. And Mr. Whitley too; he will miss the game so much, and Amy loses a strong partner." The company took the hint and talked of other things until the all-absorbing game began. ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... fit to be called by the name of reading, the process itself should be absorbing and voluptuous; we should gloat over a book, be rapt clean out of ourselves, and rise from the perusal, our mind filled with the busiest, kaleidoscopic dance of images, incapable of sleep or of continuous thought. The words, if the book be eloquent, should run thenceforward in our ears like the noise ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... though the printers and the reporters hunted in his trunk and in every place they could think of. But the lonesomest things in the world for him were the machines. The big press grew sulky and kept breaking the web, and his linotype took to absorbing castor-oil as if it were a kind of hasheesh. The new operator could run the new machine, but David's seemed to resent familiarity. It was six months before we got things going straight after he ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... One of his oldest friends drank a bottle of cognac a day, and, as for himself—well, we know that he is eighty, has lived a varied and dangerous life in many lands, has written on carrots, chestnuts, carpets, art, scholarship, all manner of absorbing subjects, ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... of military expenses, which were rapidly absorbing the whole revenue of the country, required his attention, and he gave it without fear of the consequences. As long as the troops were employed by Meer Jaffier and Meer Cossim, these potentates, in order ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... him great expectations, but there was no purpose in his life to act as a burning glass to collect the brilliant rays of his intellect, by which he might have dazzled the world. Most men have ability enough, if they could only focalize it into one grand, central, all-absorbing purpose, to ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... buried in his hands, heedless of the lapse of time, and of anything save his own absorbing emotion, Arthur still sat in the armchair, into which he had thrown himself, his thoughts dwelling, with strange pertinacity, upon the past,—the past that seemed to ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... head of John the Baptist,"—So when tribulation or persecution ariseth by-and-by (immediately) they are offended. Nothing is more mutable than language. Words, like bodies, are continually throwing off particles and absorbing others. So long as they are mere representatives, elected by the whims of universal suffrage, their meaning will be a perfect volatile, and to cork it up for the next century is an employment sufficiently silly, (to speak within bounds,) for a modern Bible dictionary maker. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... traders or pirate ships, which sailed boldly under their own flag; while the Patroon and his merchant colleagues not only traded openly with the buccaneers, but owned and managed such illicit craft. The story of the clash of these conflicting interests and the resulting exciting happenings is absorbing. ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... of novels, even to the writer temperamentally disposed to that form of expression, is as absorbing as play-making. The difference between the novel and the play is the difference between was and is. Something has happened for the writer of the novel and for his people. He describes it as it was; and them as they were. In the play something is happening. Its form is controversial—and ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: In Mizzoura • Augustus Thomas
... promptly and powerfully. If chopped in at the base of the hill it would require a great quantity of rain to dissolve it and make it available to the young plants, for the conical shape of the hill has a tendency to shed the rain instead of absorbing it. I expect soon to receive very accurate results of a crop grown with guano, which Judge Nash represented to me as splendid. If I cultivated tobacco, I should have every confidence of success by planting it on ridges with the Guano buried at a considerable ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson
... is a plain cylindrical pot over the fire. If enough plain cylinder boilers presenting the requisite number of square feet of absorbing surface are put into a cotton mill, experience has shown that they will make a yard of cotton cloth about as cheaply as tubular boilers. If this is so, why do not all put them in? Because it is the crudest and most expensive form of boiler when its ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 • Various
... wanderings a wholly new phase in the morphology of the creature was revealed. This roughened or granular form seized upon and fastened itself to a form in the ordinary condition. The two swam freely together, both flagella being in action, but it was shortly palpable that the larger one was absorbing the lesser. The flagellum of the smaller one at length moved slower, then sluggishly, then fell upon the sarcode, which rapidly diminished, while the bigger form expanded and became vividly active until the two bodies had ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... and give wings to the mind, will my days be spent. I shall be ever absorbing the things great men have written; with such experience I will charge my mind to the full. Nor will I try to give anything in return. Once, in the delusion that Art, loving the recluse, would make his life happy, I wrote a little for a yellow quarterly and had that succes de fiasco which ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... out the complexities of the affair, the more excited he became, and the longer and more rapid were his strides up and down the length of his spacious sitting-room. This was his only outward sign of agitation. When thinking deeply on any all-absorbing topic, he could not remain still. He felt obliged to cast away physical as well as mental restriction on the play of his imagination, and he would at times pace back and forth during unrecorded hours in the solitude of his apartments, finally awakening to a sense of his surroundings by ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... children. Heaps of refuse, heads and feet of game, lie decaying among the wigwams, tainting the air with their disgusting odor. Here and there an ancient withered specimen of humanity sits in the sun, absorbing its rays with a dull animal-like sense of enjoyment, and a group of warriors lie idly talking. Some of the squaws are preparing food, boiling it in water-tight willow baskets by filling them with water and putting in hot stones.[3] Horses are tethered near the lodges, and others are running ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... desiderate^; desire &c 865; be necessary &c Adj. Adj. required &c v.; requisite, needful, necessary, imperative, essential, indispensable, prerequisite; called for; in demand, in request. urgent, exigent, pressing, instant, crying, absorbing. in want of; destitute of &c 640. Adv. ex necessitate rei &c (necessarily) 601 [Lat.]; of necessity. Phr. there is no time to lose; it cannot be spared, it cannot be dispensed with; mendacem memorem esse oportet [Lat.] [Quintilian]; necessitas non ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... spirit which we have described above (Chap. VI) tramples upon the rights of nations because it sees a foe in every equal; because it regards the prosperity of a neighbour as a national misfortune; because it holds that national greatness is only to be realized in the act of destroying or absorbing other nationalities. To those who are not yet visibly assailed, and who possibly believe themselves secure, we can only give the warning: Tua res agitur, ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... agreement all round on the Suffrage question and the enlargement of the electorate. He had always told Linda it was bound to come. "And after it has come, dearie, you mark my words: things will go on pretty much as before." But his real, intense, absorbing interest lay in the new experiments he was about to make in bone grafting and cartilage replacing, and the functions of the pituitary body and the interstitial glands. To carry these out adequately the Zoological Society had accumulated troops of monkeys and baboons. At a certain depot in Camden ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... balanced our judgment. The whole trend of our education had been to make independent thinkers of us. What we saw in the whole problem was a question of justice, and for this we were ready and anxious to work. A new interest was thus brought into our lives, which, in my case, soon became all-absorbing. I was always begging my brother to bring me home fresh books. The driest volumes of political economy, the most indigestible of philosophical treatises, nothing came amiss. From these I passed on to more modern works. Raymond had made friends with a student who was a professed socialist ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... president, RODRIGUEZ ZAPATERO, has initiated economic and social reforms that are generally popular among the masses of people but that are anathema to religious and other conservative elements. Adjusting to the monetary and other economic policies of an integrated Europe, reducing unemployment, and absorbing widespread social changes will pose challenges to Spain over the next ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... effect cool but exhilarating. As she sat in the door of the little passage leading to the platform she scarcely needed the shawl which he wrapped about her with absurdly exaggerated solicitude. One of the most unmistakable symptoms of the lover is the absorbing and superfluous care with which he adjusts the wraps about the object of his affections whether the weather be warm or cold: it is as if he thought he could thus artificially warm her heart toward him. But Miss Dwyer did not appear vexed, pretending indeed to be oblivious of everything ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... had succeeded, would have resulted in my death! I should consider myself amply revenged if I could make you suffer for a single day all the torments that I endured for long months. For this was not all! You had not even the excuse, if excuse it be, of a powerful, all-absorbing passion. Convinced of your treachery, I resolved to ascertain everything, and I discovered that in my absence you had become a mother. Why didn't I kill you? How did I have the courage to remain silent and conceal what I knew? ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... buy a hen. The hen will lay so many eggs, worth so much, for which I will buy me a dress and cap. Then the young men will wish to dance with me, but I shall spurn them all with a toss of the head." Her dream at this point became so absorbing as to get hold of the motor system and call out the actual toss of the head—but we are not after the moral just now; we care simply for the dream as a very true sample of many, many daydreams. Such dreams are a means of getting for the moment the satisfaction ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... the vocal cords are in a state of congestion, for the reason that it requires a period of from ten to fourteen days for the complete relief of this inflammation. During that period, the blood-vessels are fully employed absorbing the products of the inflammation, and any attempt to interfere with this necessary process of nature can end only in disaster or in a prolongation of the difficulty. This is the law of pathology, unalterable and not to be evaded. Physicians ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... Interior was the monarch of France. M. Roland, whose quiet and hidden ambition had been feeding upon its success, smiled nervously at the power which, thus unsolicited, was passing into his hands. Madame Roland, whose all-absorbing passion it now was to elevate her husband to the highest summits of greatness, was gratified in view of the honor and agitated in view of the peril; but, to her exalted spirit, the greater the danger, the more heroic the act. "The burden is heavy," she said; "but Roland ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... only child, first saw the light; and then the cup of their happiness seemed only too full for mortals to quaff. As the child daily grew in beauty, and her engaging ways filled their hearts with delight, then first did they realize the absorbing nature of a parent's love, and regret that they were separated from those who had so felt to Emily's mother, when she lay, a helpless infant, in their arms. Yet pride prevailed, and no overtures were made to those whom they ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... felt a deep and absorbing passion, there can be no doubt. Sir Dynas, the Seneschal, tells the Queen la Belle Isould that Sir Tristram is near: "Thenne for very pure joye la Beale Isould swouned, & whan she myghte speke, she ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... intense excitement in the minds of the sensitive Parisians. I can call to mind no similar occurrence producing so general and so intense an effect. For several weeks, in the discussion of this one absorbing theme, even the momentous political topics of the day were forgotten. The Prefect made unusual exertions; and the powers of the whole Parisian police were, of course, tasked to ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... for three centuries to come, to the all-absorbing authority of the State, the masses of the people made a formidable attempt at reconstructing society on the old basis of mutual aid and support. It is well known by this time that the great movement of the reform was not a mere revolt against the abuses ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... so as to hold all the cuttings in position; gently press on the brick, to cause the cuttings to assume a more natural position, and they will need no other attention until they become rooted; the brick will act as a screen from the hot sunshine, absorbing the heat to the benefit of the cuttings, as it will also absorb superfluous moisture. During the summer I have rooted many offsets in this way. That contact with the brick is favourable to the roots ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... as a text for converse, the three times a day they sat together. Even mutual interests were largely obscured, much of the time, by personal ones, barring only the subject of sickness. All forms of illness were themes commanding instant and absorbing attention. Inordinate anxiety was felt by all for the ills of the one; and for days the "I" would be forgotten if any member of the home-circle was "sick." And the concerns of the patient, whether suffering from ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... to distract thee thus?" exclaimed the countess, forgetting the presence of Stephano Verrina in the all-absorbing interest of her lover's ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... wondrously aggrandized. William, big, black-bearded and smiling, had lost little of his romantic appeal. Frank, still the wag, was able to turn hand-springs and somersaults almost as well as ever, and the talk which followed formed an absorbing review of early ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... It is the absorbing of the radiant heat by your hand that makes you feel the heat the instant you turn an electric lamp on. Try ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... twelve hundred francs per annum. Active and industrious men of business would have bought new type and new machinery, and made an effort to secure orders for cheap printing from the Paris book trade; but master and foreman, deep in absorbing intellectual interests, were quite content with such orders as came to them ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... have done, how distasteful he was finding the task of "working off his culture." Does any one really suppose that the sophomore who is "working off his culture" under faculty compulsion, in order to get his college degree, is really absorbing from his study anything which, as the faculty assumes, makes him a better man and yet, as he himself believes, contributes nothing to effectiveness in his profession? Or take the case of the man who devotes himself with professional earnestness to his ...
— Higher Education and Business Standards • Willard Eugene Hotchkiss
... of the past, that next to executions the most vivid excitement, the most absorbing interest—indeed, the greatest amusement of New Englanders of the half century preceding and that succeeding the Revolutionary War—was found in the lottery. An act of Legislature in 1719 speaks of them as just introduced; but this licensed and highly approved ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... was a quiet, reticent man, who had apparently concentrated every faculty of soul and body on the problem of commercial success. Trained to business from boyhood, he had allowed it to become his life, and he took it very seriously. It was to him an absorbing game—his vocation, and not a means to some ulterior end. He had already accumulated enough to maintain his family in affluence, but he no more thought of retiring from trade than would a veteran whist-player wish to throw ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... rejected: not the finest orchestras, not the prettiest fetes, not the newest chansonettes sung by Judie and Jeanne Granier themselves, can turn the players for a moment from the pursuit of their one absorbing passion. Play goes on at the Casino of Monte Carlo the livelong day, the only relaxation from the couleur gagnante or tiers et tout being when the gamblers step across the way to take a shot at the pigeons or a bet on the birds; for they must bet on something, if it is but ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... in the various adventures participated in by several bright, up-to-date girls who love outdoor life. They are clean and wholesome, free from sensationalism, absorbing from the first chapter to ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... disadvantages as well. One day the head eunuch from the palace of one of the leading princes in Peking came to ask my wife, who was their physician, to go to see some of the women or children who were ill. It was drawing near to the New Year festival and, of course, they had their own absorbing topics of conversation in the servants' courts. ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... being extinguished; probably it was one of the causes which drove him to force his way to Ophelia; whenever he saw Ophelia, it awoke and, the circumstances being what they were, tormented him. But it was not an absorbing passion; it did not habitually occupy his thoughts; and when he declared that it was such a love as forty thousand brothers could not equal, he spoke sincerely indeed but not truly. What he said was true, if I may put it thus, ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... objectively as the fulfilment of capacities, and knowledge was regarded as perfection of function, the exercise of the highest of human prerogatives. But as moral and religious interests became more absorbing, the individual lived more and more in his own self-consciousness. Even before the Christian era the Greek philosophers themselves were preoccupied with the task of winning a state of inner serenity. Thus the ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... could you, could you, could you think that my mental vow not to write on the all-absorbing political catastrophe was because I sing "God save, Ireland" in one sense, and you in another! The vow was made because if once the flood-gates of my eloquence are let loose on that subject, there is a danger that ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... in the wrong place, Tommy—that boy will go on absorbing slang to the end of his days, unless you're foolish enough to shame it out of him. By the time he is ready to go on the stage he will have a stock-in-trade of slang that will be the making of him, ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks
... in the midst of these absorbing occupations I forgot all about the career I had chosen in my boyhood. The law had no longer any charms for me. Yet I found in after life far more use for the law than for physics and astronomy, and little less than for the art and ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... the philosopher. She thinks of nothing except her private affairs. She is indifferent to politics, to literature—in a word, to anything that requires thought. She reads novels of a kind, because novels are all about love, and love had once something to do with marriage, her own peculiar and absorbing business. Beyond this her mind does not stir. Any more positively gross state one cannot imagine. There are women who are by accident more degraded physically. Mutatis mutandis, there are none more degraded, ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... the British Association by their presence, he hoped that that meeting might be the commencement of an international scientific organization, the only means nowadays existing of establishing that fraternity among nations from which politics appeared to remove them further and further, by absorbing human powers and human work, and directing them to purposes of destruction. It would indeed be well if Great Britain, which had hitherto taken the lead in so many things that are great and good, should now direct her attention to the furthering of international organizations ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various
... wisdom of not doing it; and "we learn," say the papers of the day, "that while the two eminent statesmen were trying to find a basis of negotiation, Von Moltke was seated in a corner reading Little Dorrit." Who will doubt that the chapter on HOW NOT TO DO IT was then absorbing ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... approximately half consumed in the first bulb of the absorption apparatus, potassium bicarbonate is formed, and as it is much less soluble than the carbonate, it often precipitates. Its formation is a warning that the absorbing power of the hydroxide is ...
— An Introductory Course of Quantitative Chemical Analysis - With Explanatory Notes • Henry P. Talbot
... ever known. Farther to the west the Italian peninsula, where during three thousand years the protecting envelope of the sea and the walls of Alps and Apennines have enabled a score of states to attain a development; where the Roman nation, absorbing, with its singular power of taking in other life, a number of primitive centers of civilization, grew to power which made it dominant in the ancient world. Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, have each profited by their isolation, and have bred diverse qualities in man and contributed motives which have interacted ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... watercourses and lagoons, but upon riding down even the deepest of them, we invariably found them break off into several insignificant channels, which again subdivided, and in a short distance dissipated the waters, derived from what had appeared the dry bed of a large river, on the absorbing plain; returning in disappointment to the camp, I sent my lightest man and Harry on other horses to look into the channels still unexamined, but they also returned unsuccessful. We had seen late fires of the natives at which they had passed the night without water, and ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... to story-telling the marvels of our own age shrink into insignificance beside the brave deeds and absorbing experiences of the days when fairies were better known; and so we go back to "once on a time" for the tales that we most love—and that children have ever loved since mankind knew ...
— The Enchanted Island of Yew • L. Frank Baum
... to be thankful, ma'am, that you wan't blowed up, with the rest of the poor people," said she, kindly, attempting to turn the lady's attention from her absorbing misery. ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... south, the Greek colonies of Magna Graecia, separated from Rome for the present by many miles of forest and by hostile tribes. Around her in Latium were her own next of kin, the Latins, becoming rapidly inferior to her, but enabled to do her at least this service, that of absorbing the foreign influences which came, and in certain cases latinising them, and thus transmitting them to Rome in a ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... thrilling voice, and with a composed mien which indicates rather the absorbing sense of august duty than an absence of emotion, THE QUEEN announces her accession to the throne of her ancestors, and her humble hope that divine providence will guard over the fulfilment of ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... watching. The world and all its petty pleasures and paltry pains faded away in the presence of the stern tragedy of the hour; and not the finest ball of the season seemed to be worth a thought compared to the all-absorbing question whether her child slept after his draught and whether he ate ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... possessed a highly spiritualised and devotional religion, while the Greeks, if not easy-going polytheists, had at best some rationalistic system of philosophy. The difference is immense. The Hebrew creed, a real and absorbing belief, involved a certain code of laws for the guidance of conduct, certain definite sentiments, certain definite hopes and fears, certain definite axioms as to the aim and end of existence. The highest good and the worst evil had for the ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... fact, affords the greatest maximum of enjoyment, with the smallest minimum of expense; it is at the same time the most pleasingly absorbing, yet the most scientific of games; it is also looked upon as the most ancient, and with, perhaps, the exception of Draughts probably is. The reason why it has been for so many ages, and still is called the "Royal Game" is, because it came to Europe from Persia, and took its ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... Fusion of cultures, traditions, religions "The marriage of East and West" THE OLD RELIGION (1) Its strength: in its ancient tradition in its splendour of art, architecture and ceremony in its oracles, healings and theophanies in its adaptability in absorbing all cults and creeds (2) Its weakness: No deep sense of truth No association with morality Polytheism The fear of the grave (3) Its defence: Plutarch—the Stoics—Neo-Platonism—the Eclectics THE VICTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH (1) Its characteristics (2) Persecuted because it refused to ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... nothing but seeming. These parties perhaps did not break the Sabbath any more directly than the note-writers behind them, but they certainly did it more noisily and with more marked evidence of lack of ordinary culture. The leader of the choir found an absorbing volume in a book of anthems that had been recently introduced. He turned the leaves without regard to their rustle, and surveyed piece after piece with a critical eye, while the occasionally peculiar pucker of his lips showed that he was trying special ones, and that just ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... the sensation—it was like a great, absorbing Force taking him into its control and erasing forever the bungling past. He purposely drifted for an hour in the storm. He was like a moving part of it, and when at last he reached home, he stood in the vestibule for many moments extricating himself—it was more that than shaking the ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... like a lamb. He swaggered slowly through the crowded room, twirling his moustache, and went into the cool of the moonlit deserted garden beyond, where he waited gleefully. He had a puckish knowledge of human nature. After a decent interval, and during the absorbing interest of the newly constituted bank, the Comte de Lussigny slipped unnoticed from the table and went in search of Aristide. He found him smoking a large corona and lounging in one wicker chair with his feet on another, beside a very large whisky ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... him? Why, he was captured long ago, and has since died of old age. I am surprised at your interrupting me with such questions. Pray ask for no more tales till we get to the really absorbing story ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... political and economic problems largely exercised his thoughts, and his historical sketches show that he is constantly alive to their interpenetrating influence. The same may be said of his biographies, notably of his remarkable sketch of Dr Parr. Neither politics nor economics, however, exercised an absorbing influence on his mind,—they were simply provinces in the vast domain of universal speculation through which he ranged "with unconfined wings." How wide and varied was the region he traversed a glance at the titles of the papers which make up his collected—or more properly, selected—works ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... was set up at Cambridge. In 1704 the first American newspaper, "The Boston News Letter," was established. In the Puritan colonies, the minds of the people were quickened intellectually as well as religiously, by the character of the pulpit discourses. Theology was an absorbing theme of inquiry and discussion. In the town-meetings, especially in the closing part of the colonial period, political affairs became a subject of earnest debate. In all the colonies, the representative assemblies furnished ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... education—was exceptionally well qualified for the task. Educated at Cambridge, where he had won a double first; naturally studious, a great traveller, endowed with a singularly happy knack of investing the driest subject with quite an absorbing interest, and a perfect master in the art of instructing, he superintended Bob's studies so effectively that the lad's progress was little short of marvellous. Not content with the two hours of daily tuition which had originally been proposed, Mr Eastlake frequently ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... if you could have them together. In fact, it struck me as such a good plan that I have spoken to your grandmother about it. Your grandfather has taken up some work this winter which will keep him very busy, and he could not give you any time. I would be glad to, but my work grows more and more absorbing and your grandparents will not listen to my teaching you out of school hours, so as it seems a pity for you to lose all these weeks, I proposed that you should go to our house to keep Patty company. You will not have to study ...
— Little Maid Marian • Amy E. Blanchard
... of absorbing interest, but we can only touch it in outline and record-how the groups of converts joined the pastor in repairing, painting, electric lighting of the building, ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... to many, nay, most, of the best critical minds of his day. His criticism had drawn his poetry with it, if not into actual popularity, yet into something like attention. His attempts to obtain some other employment less irksome, less absorbing, and more profitable, had indeed been unsuccessful; but he was rising in his own department, and his work, if still in part uncongenial and decidedly laborious, appears to have been much less severe than in earlier days. Partly this work ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... does not this story of Vashti the queen, Vashti the veiled, Vashti the sacrifice, Vashti the silent, move your soul? My sermon converges into the one absorbing hope that none of you may be shut out of the palace gate of heaven. You can endure the hardships, and the privations, and the cruelties, and the misfortunes of this life if you can only gain admission there. Through the blood of the everlasting covenant you go through those gates, or never ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... possessive, urgent, restless, and often terribly painful; this was tranquil, sure, utterly certain, and passive. The immediate fruit of it was that she regarded all human creatures with a lively interest, an interest too absorbing to allow of hatred or even active dislike. Her love for Martin was now like a strong current in her soul washing away all sense of irritation and anger. She regarded people from a new angle. What were they all about? What were they thinking? ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... The great absorbing question was, Who's for the front and who for the base? Both fleet and army made their rendezvous at Louisbourg; a larger fleet and a smaller army than those of the year before. Two new toasts were going the rounds of the Service: 'Here's to the eye of a Hawke and the heart of a Wolfe!' and ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... for always lurking ready to obtrude before other thoughts about him was the impression that he was very much interested in her. But to-day she was resolved not to repeat her folly of yesterday, as if she were anxious to say anything to him. Indeed, the hunt would be too absorbing. ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... Charles Second, which are here gathered together, the Castles are at their best, reviving all the fragrant charm of those books, like The Pride of Jennico, in which they first showed an instinct, amounting to genius, for sunny romances. The book is absorbing * * * and is as spontaneous in feeling as it is artistic ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... The kaleidoscope that is theatrical New York had altered since she left it. Only one or two of her former friends remained, and she found them uninteresting and narrow with the narrowness of their own absorbing world. She had forgotten that the theater was like an island, cut off from the rest of the world, having its own politics, its own society divided by caste, almost its own religion. Out of its insularity it made occasional excursions to dinners and ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart |
