"Abstracted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... very ancient custom, which the Ptolomies revived in Egypt. At any rate here is the picture of the Family in its patriarchal form, wholly separated from other connections and set apart by itself, on the brass-bound precipitous island. The Family is abstracted from the rest of the world and given ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... is;" and there Peter was, standing in his favourite attitude, his legs wide apart and his thumbs in his armholes, superior, abstracted, motionless till the train stopped, when he ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... of geometrical inquiry are so entirely abstracted from those pursuits which stir up and put in motion the unruly passions of the human heart, that mankind, without difficulty, adopt not only the more simple theorems of the science, but even those abstruse paradoxes which, ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... from Dr. Martineau he had parted also from that process of self-exploration that they had started together, but now he awakened to find it established and in full activity in his mind. Something or someone, a sort of etherealized Martineau-Hardy, an abstracted intellectual conscience, was demanding what he thought he was doing with Miss Grammont and whither he thought he was taking her, how he proposed to reconcile the close relationship with her that he was now embarked upon with, in the ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... have guessed that Jorgenson had heard a single word of that emphatic declaration if he had not addressed himself to Lingard with the question neither more nor less abstracted ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... murder should have been committed on a mistake in fact also. Joseph furtively abstracted a will, and expected Mr. White would die intestate; but, after the decease, the will, the last will, was found by his heirs in its proper place; and it could never have been known, or conjectured, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... lesson Thea had felt that Harsanyi was restless and abstracted. Before the hour was over, he pushed back his chair and said resolutely, "I am not in the mood, Miss Kronborg. I have something on my mind, and I must talk to you. When do you intend to ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... off two imitations of Burton, quite abstracted from any modern allusions, which it was my intent only to lug in from time to time to make 'em popular. Stuart has got these, with an introductory letter; but, not hearing from him, I have ceased from my labours, but I write to him today to get ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... have pursued; but it by no means follows, that the thinking power had not a great share in it. It is from the very rapidity and certainty of the mental process, from the utmost clearness of understanding, that thinking in a poet is not perceived as something abstracted, does not wear the appearance of reflex meditation. That notion of poetical inspiration, which many lyrical poets have brought into circulation, as if they were not in their senses, and like Pythia, when possessed by the divinity, delivered oracles unintelligible ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... to take breath and wipe his mouth with his coat sleeve, and after a moment's abstracted gaze at the vista of tall fir trees ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... inquiries took much longer than 15 minutes. Indeed some had several days spent on them by one or more members of the reference staff. Such questions are not answered by merely marking a passage in a book or two; they require the material to be abstracted and rewritten ready for use by the member making the inquiry. This service is becoming increasingly popular with members who cannot themselves afford the time needed to ...
— Report of the Chief Librarian - for the Year Ended 31 March 1958: Special Centennial Issue • J. O. Wilson and General Assembly Library (New Zealand)
... some dear idle time, (Not plagued with headaches, or the want of rhyme) Stands in the streets, abstracted from the crew, And while he seems to study, thinks of you; Just when his fancy paints your sprightly eyes, Or sees the blush of soft Parthenia rise, Gay pats my shoulder, and you vanish quite, Streets, chairs, and coxcombs rush upon my sight; Vex'd to be still in town, I knit ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... he murmured, "I shall master it." Immoral to hurt anybody but himself. Little things are all big with the past Lived in thoughts about events rather than in events themselves Love for open air and facts Low opinion of human nature Man abstracted, faintly contemptuous of other forms of life One's got to draw the line." "Ah!" said Cecilia; "where?" Pabulum of varying theories of future life Pass out of the country of the understanding of the young People do miss things ...
— Quotations from the Works of John Galsworthy • David Widger
... away from her into the crowd of silver willows beside the brook, she stood looking after him with the abstracted gaze of one who dwells not in the world of objects, but in the exalted ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... unfavorable case possible: that the whole amount borrowed and destroyed by the Government was abstracted by the lender from a productive employment in which it had actually been invested. The capital, therefore, of the country, is this year diminished by so much. But, unless the amount abstracted is something enormous, there is no reason in the nature of the case why next ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... Randy repeated the talk he had heard. Jack's father listened with keen interest. He was astonished when Randy mentioned the papers which had been abstracted from his desk. ...
— Randy of the River - The Adventures of a Young Deckhand • Horatio Alger Jr.
... from our mental strength, which we might have applied to some useful intellectual exercise. The strength of the mind is no more indefinite than that of the body. We have but a certain limited amount; and all that we apply to idle or bad purposes is just so much abstracted from ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... the cock. Now, this little buoy, of course, rises and falls with the water in the trough. When the trough is full, the buoy rises and raises the lever so as to shut off the water entirely. At every sip the animal takes, the buoy descends and lets on again, to a drop, a quantity equal to that abstracted from the inside compartment. Thus the trough is always kept full of pure water, without losing a drop of it through a waste-pipe or overflow. Where a great herd of cattle and a drove of horses have to be supplied from a deep well, as in the case of Mr. Jonas, at Chrishall Grange, ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... eating all their salt pork, but had never once opened the cask of beef since Eric abstracted the piece he roasted the year before "for a treat"; and, now, on going to get out a good boiling piece, in order to cook it in a more legitimate fashion, they found to their grief that, whether through damp, or exposure to the air, or from some other cause, the cask ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... additions of its own to the thing posited for knowledge by sense-awareness is merely a way of shirking the problem of natural philosophy. That problem is to discuss the relations inter se of things known, abstracted from the bare fact that they are known. Natural philosophy should never ask, what is in the mind and what is in nature. To do so is a confession that it has failed to express relations between things perceptively known, ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... run some hazard of being tedious, in order to be sure that I am perspicuous; and, after taking the utmost pains that I can to be perspicuous, some obscurity may still appear to remain upon a subject, in its own nature extremely abstracted. ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... weeks preceding the opening of the present book relating of the Boy Inventors, Mr. Chadwick had been closeted in his own private laboratory. The boys had seen him only at rare intervals, and then he had appeared abstracted and preoccupied. This, the boys knew, was a sure sign that he was at work on a ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... unimpaired and weight fails not a whit. Just so, when vanished the bouquet of wine, Or when an unguent's perfume delicate Into the winds away departs, or when From any body savour's gone, yet still The thing itself seems minished naught to eyes, Thereby, nor aught abstracted from its weight— No marvel, because seeds many and minute Produce the savours and the redolence In the whole body of the things. And so, Again, again, nature of mind and soul 'Tis thine to know created is of seeds The tiniest ever, ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... in his posthumous work,[6] says, "There is nothing more difficult than a good definition of chemistry; for it is scarcely possible to express, in a few words, the abstracted view of an infinite variety of facts. Dr. Black has defined chemistry to be that science which treats of the changes produced in bodies by motions of their ultimate particles or atoms; but this definition is hypothetical; for the ultimate particles or atoms are mere creations ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... in a closet, from the wall of which some of the loose plaster had fallen down. In the morning, the honey being wanted, the pot was found with a considerable portion abstracted. Outside of it was a heap of mortar reaching to the edge, forming an inclined plane, while inside a similar structure had been raised with the loose plaster. From the marks on the shelf, it was clearly the work of a mouse; which had thus, by means of a well-designed structure, obtained ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... stooped to the particular, he perceived. Her thoughts were ranging wide over an unknown country whither, for the moment, he could not follow. He studied her abstracted face with its strangely aloof expression, like that of a saint or a fanatic, with a faint renewal ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... when he learned that Merrick had fallen in with a captain of a tramp vessel who was ready to go on a hunt for the treasure. And he was still more worried when Dick told him of the letters which had been abstracted from his coat pocket by the thieves. Among them was one from Mrs. Stanhope mentioning the treasure hunt and how she would be on hand at Philadelphia to board the steam yacht with Dora ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... the latter, smiling at first one and then the other. "This is very good of you. I don't often find people treat me so kindly as this. You see, I am such an abstracted, dreamy man. I devote myself so much to my studies that I think of nothing else. My friends have given me up, and—and I'm afraid they laugh at me. I am writing, you see, a great work upon the old Roman occupation of—. Dear me! I'm ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... was truthful, and he had but a lame story to tell. Nineteen-and-sixpence had been abstracted from the till. Nobody knew how it had been done, and nobody had the least idea who was the thief. Mrs. Church, who would have given her niece unlimited time to return the money had there been a real, proper, bloodthirsty burglary, was not at all inclined ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... a rolling sheet of vapour retiring Back upon itself, and disclosing objects in succession, until the eye could embrace all that came within its extent of vision. As the officers yet lingered near the rude grave of their companion, watching with abstracted air the languid and almost mechanical action of their jaded men, as they emptied shovel after shovel of the damp earth over the body of its new tenant, they were suddenly startled by an expression of exultation from Sir ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... dessert, and when my sister was with us especially—I am talking now of our grownup days—for she had great power in "drawing him out." At such times although he might sit down to dinner in a grave or abstracted mood, he would, invariably, soon throw aside his silence and end by delighting us all with his genial talk and his quaint fancies about people and things. He was always, as I have said, much interested in mesmerism, and the curious influence exercised by one personality over another. One illustration ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... army might be ready in case of any emergency. We thought it no harm to practice with our neighbours' goods, though we meant to turn them against themselves. But Smart knew where their magazine was, and in a most unprincipled manner we abstracted whatever we could that would ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... lamplight showed him more clearly, and the worried look in his eyes could not be hidden. He was listless, too, his kindly, boisterous manner seemed to have forsaken him, and he had acquired a great habit of abstracted silence. He asked about recent events in the House, commenting shrewdly enough, but without interest. When Wratislaw in turn questioned him on his doings, he had none of the ready enthusiasm which had been used to accompany ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... did not appear that day; Wylder was glowering and abstracted—worse company than usual; and Rachel seemed to have quite ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... in quiet villages, snug and neat even in their poverty; or wend our way, in the midst of sunshine, through endless vistas of fruit-laden woods, the public road being one rich orchard of red-dotted cherry-trees: purchasable for a mere fraction, but not to be feloniously abstracted. Through Altenburg, Zwickau, Oederon, and Chemnitz; up steep hill paths, and by the side of unpronounceable villages, until, on the morning of the fourth day, we ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... directed towards the great breast center of the woman. Her wakeful fear is terror of the great breast-and-shoulder, upper rage and power of man, which may pierce her defenseless lower self. The terror and the desire are near together—and go with an admiration of the slender, abstracted bull loins. ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... July and 29th August I received the morning of my arrival, and they gave me real comfort after so long a privation. I now trust that, in a few weeks, we shall be re-united, no more to part! It is my firm intention to remain, for some time at least, entirely abstracted from active service. If I can do so, and retain the command of the ship, well and good; if not, I shall apply to ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... attacked with a red hot poker, or blown out of a closet full of fireworks, and where Douglas Jerrold on the Bridge of Ludgate makes the innkeeper tells Charles II., in his disguise, all the bad stories he has heard about his Majesty, we merely see the humour, unless we are so far abstracted as to regard the scene as ludicrous. In the same way a conversation between foolish men on the stage may be ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... A.D.C. was not deluded and later, on the flight back to Washington, he observed that General O'Reilly was unusually abstracted and pensive, lost in thought. But since a major does not ask a lieutenant general about such ...
— The Golden Judge • Nathaniel Gordon
... tolerable to the race. For poetry is not merely the comfort of the refined and the delight of the educated; it is the alleviator of poverty, the pleasure-ground of the ignorant, the bright spot in the most dreary pilgrimage. We cannot conceive the abject animal condition of our race were poetry abstracted; and we do not wonder that this should be so when we reflect that it supplies a want higher than the need for food, for raiment, or ease of living, and that the mind needs support as much as the body. The majority of mankind live ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of sorrow and disappointment, leading a checkered life, doomed to envy, ingratitude, and neglect; rarely understood, and never fully appreciated even by those who employed and honored him. He was an isolated man; grave, abstracted, lonely, yet not unhappy, since his world was that of glorious and exalting ideas, even those of grace, beauty, majesty, and harmony,—the world which Plato lived in, and in which all great men live ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... contrast, however, was the effect produced upon the doctor, who merely raised his dark eyes in an abstracted gaze, gave a careless and rather contemptuous nod of recognition, and then turned to examine one of the richly-inlaid cabinets which adorned the saloon. All these various phases of sympathy, attraction, or contempt ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... as his companion was, by the fascination of the shells and sea curiosities to be picked up on them. Many a mile have I trotted along beside him or behind him, gathering these treasures, while he strode forward, abstracted, with his gaze fixed towards the long ridge of the horizon. The sands at Rhyl, near which Milton's friend was said to have been lost, were like a rolling prairie; at low tide the white fringe of the surf could ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... around her waist, a blue vein in her dropped eyelid, a curve in her soft, full, bird-like throat, the arch of her in-step in her small boots—all these were plainer to him than the future, or even the present. But a voice in his ear, a figure before his abstracted eyes, at ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... simplicity of manners, a life and conversation adorned with every Christian virtue, and peace, the effect of righteousness. Drawing his doctrine from the pure source of religious truth, the New Testament, and the conviction of his own mind, abstracted from the comments of men, he asserted the freedom of man in the liberty of the gospel against the tyranny of custom, and against the combined powers of severe persecution, the greatest contempt, and keenest ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... pushed his chair from the table, and I knew sat watching me. I would give him no opportunity, for my opportunity I could not have then. I kept quiet till the ladies moved; I moved with them; and sat all the evening abstracted in my own meditations, without paying Preston any attention; feeling indeed very old and grey, as no doubt I looked. When I was ordered to bed Miss Pinshon desired I would hold no conversation with ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... in a quiet corner, evidently enjoying the pleasures of a flirtation, while one pair, more romantic or more serious than the others, had strayed out upon the balcony, to indulge more unrestrainedly in the conversation, which, to judge by their low and earnest tones, and abstracted air, seemed ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... foot rose nor upon the heel as it fell. He never wore his shoes out at the heel and the toe, as most men do, more than at the middle. Yet his gait was not altogether awkward, and there was manifest physical power in his step. As he moved along thus, silent and abstracted, his thoughts dimly reflected in his sharp face, men turned to look after him as an object of sympathy as well as curiosity. His melancholy, in the words of Mr. Herndon, 'dripped from him as he walked.' If, however, he met a friend in the street, and was roused by a hearty 'Good-morning, ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... expression. It is an Albanian female who walks yonder, wondering, and asking questions, at every thing she sees. The proud Jewess, supported by her husband and father, moves in another direction. She is covered with brocade and flaunting ribbons; but she is abstracted from everything around her, because her eyes are cast downward upon her stomacher, or sideways to obtain a glimpse of what may be called her spangled epaulettes. Her eye is large and dark; her nose is aquiline; her ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... consider the Godhead merely as he is an object of the understanding, which forms a complex idea of power, wisdom, justice, goodness, all stretched to a degree far exceeding the bounds of our comprehension, whilst we consider the divinity in this refined and abstracted light, the imagination and passions are little or nothing affected. But because we are bound, by the condition of our nature, to ascend to these pure and intellectual ideas, through the medium of sensible ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... unusually silent and abstracted. During the last ten days of enforced idleness he had considered the subject for hours at a time and from every conceivable angle, with the result that a certain possibility occurred to him and persisted in lingering ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... with a small, abstracted part of his mind, someone talking to Hilary in the hall. The low-toned conversation vaguely worried his subconscious self; he wished people would converse more audibly. But probably it was private.... ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... one word to me about the tragedy which we had witnessed, but I observed all the morning that he was in his most thoughtful mood, and he gave me the impression, from his vacant eyes and his abstracted manner, of a man who is striving to recall something to his memory. We were in the middle of our lunch when he suddenly sprang to his feet. "By Jove, Watson; I've got it!" he cried. "Take your hat! Come with me!" He hurried at his top speed down Baker Street and along Oxford Street, until ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... nothing could escape his eye. 'Not a bird could fly up,' says one of his students, 'but he observed it.' And he endeavored to establish the same habit of observation in others. Riding in a chaise, one day, with a student of his, who was apt to be abstracted from surrounding things, he suddenly exclaimed, almost indignant at his indifference, 'S—— keep your eyes open!' The lesson was not lost. It made a deep impression on the mind of the student. Though by no means distinguished in his ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... Sapling Gully or along Quartz Ridge, and criticize old ground, and talk of past diggers' mistakes, and second bottoms, and feelers, and dips, and leads—also outcrops—and absently pick up pieces of quartz and slate, rub them on their sleeves, look at them in an abstracted manner, and drop them again; and they would talk of some old lead they had worked on: "Hogan's party was here on one side of us, Macintosh was here on the other, Mac was getting good gold and so was Hogan, and now, why the blanky blank weren't we on gold?" And the mate would always agree ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... poured upon a Solution of Bay-salt: whence was abstracted a liquor, that by the smell and Taste appeared to be a spirit of salt. In which operation, the mixture, by working a great change of Texture, did so alter the nature of the compounding Bodies, that the sea-salt, though a considerably fixt Body, was distill'd over in a moderate Fire of ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... second Jane, and my youngest brother Henry, a posthumous child, feeble, and in his nurse's arms, but on this morning showing signs of unusual animation and of sympathy with the glorious promise of the young June day. Whirling round on his heel, at a little distance, and utterly abstracted from all around him, my next brother, Richard, he that had caused so much affliction by his incorrigible morals to the Sultan Amurath, pursued his own solitary thoughts—whatever those might be. And, finally, as regards myself, it happened that I was standing close to the edge of ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... child!" observed Mrs. Jellyby with an abstracted air as she looked over the dispatch last opened; "what ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... to carry off much greater quantities of water from lands in this country than in England. We add a table of the greatest fall of rain in any one day, for each month, and for the year, from April, 1824, to 1st January, 1859. It also was abstracted from the manuscript of observations by Dr. Hobbs, and will be, ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... on an acre, (200 tons,) would require over 20 tons of coal. Of course a considerable—probably by far the larger,—part of the heat taken up in the process of evaporation is furnished by the air; but the amount abstracted from the soil is great, and is in direct proportion to the amount of water removed by this process; hence, the more we remove by draining, the more heat we retain ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... in word at all events. She was submitting again to physical oppression; her head drooped, and her abstracted gaze was veiled with despondent lassitude. Reuben talked idly, ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... way, proposed, as he had before, to cut his throat; but the proposal was overruled as unnecessary. He was unbound, and, upon his solemn promise to return without giving the alarm, one of the band returned him his silver and a little money they had abstracted from his chest. In consideration whereof he made to the nearest house and gave the alarm, impelled by instinct ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... for I thought their fears had magnified the visit of some neighbour's dog into a bear, or some other wild beast; but they appeared unconvinced, being both frightened and positive. My wife declared, that in the morning she found some of the salt-pork had been abstracted from the barrel, which stood in one corner of the kitchen, by ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... of matter and form, with Aristotle, corresponds to the opposition between the element of generality and the element of particularity. Matter is indeterminate; form is determinate. Matter, abstracted from form, in thought, is entirely without predicate and distinction; form is that which enters into the definition of every subject, and without which it could not be defined. Matter is capable of the widest diversity of forms, but is itself ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... more sour and eager as we get onit already partakes somewhat of old Scaliger's style. I fear the rogue will get some scent of that story of Ochiltree'sbut at worst, I have a hard repartee for him on the affair of the abstracted AntigonusI will show you his last epistle and the scroll of my ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... such as stopping at a station, or when the thunderous rumble of crossing a viaduct woke the echoes of the hills or cliffs around us. On each such occasion she would plunge into the conversation, taking such a part in it as to show that, whatever had been her abstracted thought, her senses had taken in fully all that had gone on around her. Towards myself her manner was strange. Sometimes it was marked by a distance, half shy, half haughty, which was new to me. At other times there were moments of passion in look and ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... occurred what he had dreaded most and probably thought he had escaped. She had stared at him, at the stewardess, at the walls, with abstracted, vacant, and bewildered, but always undimmed and unmoistened eyes. A sudden convulsion shook her whole frame, her blank expression broke like a shattered mirror, she threw her hands over her eyes and fell forward ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... to take large sums of money from the Bank of England, issued to it on account of the treasurer of the navy, and to place it in his own name, with his private banker; and that he had permitted Trotter to apply the money so abstracted to purposes of private emolument, and had himself derived profit therefrom." Lord Melville pleaded "not guilty" to these charges, and then Whitbread produced his evidence to prove his guilt. In this, however, he failed as regard's Melville's personal delinquency. All that ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... is, however, something very remarkable in the frequency of superficial, thin beds of earthy calcareous matter, in districts where the surrounding rocks are not calcareous. Major Charters, in a Paper read before the Geographical Society April 13, 1840 and abstracted in the "Athenaeum" page 317, states that this is the case in parts of Mexico, and that he has observed similar appearances in many parts of South Africa. The circumstance of the uppermost stratum round the ragged ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... one house in New York where I have grave doubts if the host and hostess are quite sure of my name when I dine there; after an abstracted welcome, they rarely put themselves out to entertain their guests. Black coats and evening dresses alternate in pleasing perspective down the long line of their table. Their gold plate is out, and the chef has been allowed to work ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... exceedingly abstracted." Merely to hear her speak agonized me greatly. Then she turned to Fanny, embraced her, kissed her forehead twice, and said to ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... the postoffice, pried open a window, unlocked the mail bag that was ready for Jim Bennett to carry to the morning train at Chargrove and from it abstracted a number of letters which he unsealed and read with great care. They had all been written and posted by Hezekiah Cragg. The man spent a couple of hours here, resealing the envelopes neatly and restoring them to the mail bag, ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... Circumstance of Glory and Triumph. At such a time the Mind of the Prosperous Man goes, as it were, abroad, among things without him, and is more exposed to the Malignity. But I shall not dwell upon Speculations so abstracted as this, or repeat the many excellent Things which one might collect out of Authors upon this miserable Affection; but keeping in the road of common Life, consider the Envious Man with relation to these three Heads, His Pains, His Reliefs, and ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the sacrifice of truth to abstracted principles; and if in the most remote degree, I excite the interference of my countrymen in behalf of the African, extend our commerce, and enlarge the circle of civilized and Christian Society, I shall think that I have ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... ask," said the examiner, "if you have anything further to say that bears directly upon the question of those abstracted securities?" ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... be gratified by this, though he made no remark to that effect and continued to preserve his abstracted look and quiet demeanor. So Sweetwater waited, and while waiting managed to steal a glimpse at the small object to which his professional friend still paid ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... Presently he took from his coat pocket a wallet, placed the paper carefully in it, and deposited both in a writing desk, which he locked. He now grew more composed in his demeanor; but his original air of enthusiasm had quite disappeared. Yet he seemed not so much sulky as abstracted. As the evening wore away he became more and more absorbed in reverie, from which no sallies of mine could arouse him. It had been my intention to pass the night at the hut, as I had frequently done before, but, seeing my host in this mood, I deemed it proper to take leave. He did not press ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... fairly out at sea towards the land of liberty, my mind became calm, and my spirits very much depressed at thought of my wife and children. Before, I had little time to think much about them, my mind being on my journey. Now I became silent and abstracted. Although fond of company, no one ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... then he appeared at the Scenic Railway, abstracted and viewing with a calculating eye the furnishings of the engine-room and workshop. From there disappeared a broken chair, a piece of old carpet, discarded from a car, and a large padlock, but the latter ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... what the churchwarden had said, and her manner was so mysterious and coldly dignified as to convince Anastasia that some cause for serious annoyance had occurred. Did Anastasia remark that it was a close morning, her aunt looked frowningly abstracted and gave no reply; did Anastasia declare that she had not been able to get any 14 knitting-needles, they were quite out of them, her aunt said, "Oh!" in a tone of rebuke and resignation which implied that there were far more serious matters in the ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... careful in drawing our inferences, for Prince Henry frequently told Falstaff that the ring was copper; and on one occasion, when Falstaff alleged that his pocket had been picked at the Boar's Head, and this seal-ring and three or four bonds of forty pounds apiece abstracted, the Prince assessed ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... three did, but I haven't told you yet what Elizabeth Ann did. And it is worth telling. As Cousin Ann stepped in, glancing suspiciously from her sober-faced and abstracted parents to the lamb-like innocence of old Shep, little Elizabeth Ann burst into a shout of laughter. It's worth telling about, because, so far as I know, that was the first time she had ever laughed out heartily in all her life. For my part, I'm half surprised to know ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... dark, somewhat stooping passenger, noticeable among the blonde Hollanders by his noble Spanish face with its black eyebrows and long curly locks, stepped off the trekschuyt on to the canal-bank at s' Gravenhage, his abstracted gaze did not at first take in the scowling visages of the idlers, sunning themselves as the tow-boat came in. He was not a close observer of externals, and though he had greatly enjoyed the journey home from ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... breast, into which passers-by drop copper or silver coin, until sufficient has thus been obtained to defray the expense of interment; and that a soldier stands at the head of the body to see that no money is abstracted; for, in Portugal, even the sacred purpose for which it is intended would not ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 560, August 4, 1832 • Various
... deliberation with which they were performed, indicated an extensive confederacy. The subordinate police, prone to connive with offenders, was ill-regulated and insufficient. Goods were carried off in masses: bags of sugar and chests of tea were abstracted from the stores; cart loads of property were swept off at once. The habits of the populace were daring, profane, and intemperate; and to coerce such materials into order, required the utmost ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... industrious and steady, working earnestly, whether he was assisting his master's designs or carrying out his own fancies of monsters, old myths, and classic fairy stories. No doubt the two boys, Mariotto and Baccio, found little companionship in this abstracted young man always dreaming over his own ideas. If they told him an anecdote, he would look up vacantly at the end not having heard a word; at other times every little noise or burst of laughter would annoy him, and he would ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... to find something to take the place of the abstracted documents. In his pocket were some printed prospectuses of the mine which he had come to Chicago to investigate. In shape and thickness they were not dissimilar to the documents which he had taken. He slipped the prospectuses into the ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... accumulated was with him at the time of his death. Following, nevertheless, the advice of our excellent pastor, a reward of fifty dollars was advertised, and just one week from the fatal day the body was brought to our now desolated home. But the wallet, with its contents, had been abstracted. The little fund my mother had always managed to keep on hand was too small to meet this heavy draft of the reward in addition to that occasioned by the funeral, so that, when that sad ceremony was over, we found ourselves beginning ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... the colour leave his cheeks, and his hand shook as he hastily abstracted the note, and he could scarcely master the meaning of the next ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... that this discussion of modesty is highly generalized and abstracted; it deals simply with the formal mechanism of the process. Hohenemser admits that fear is a form of psychic stasis, and I have sought to show that modesty is a complexus of fears. We may very well accept the conception of psychic stasis at the outset. The analysis of modesty has still to be carried ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... keen spirit of triumph, this uncontroulable eagerness of anticipation, which seems to dilate her form and take possession of all her faculties, this solid, substantial flesh and blood display of passion, exhibit a striking contrast to the cold, abstracted, gratuitous, servile malignity of the Witches, who are equally instrumental in urging Macbeth to his fate for the mere love of mischief, and from a disinterested delight in deformity and cruelty. They are hags of mischief, obscene panders to iniquity, malicious from their impotence of enjoyment, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... this paragraph is true, some of the statements even of Lamb and of Coleridge about the Witches are, taken literally, incorrect. What these critics, and notably the former, describe so well is the poetic aspect abstracted from the remainder; and in describing this they attribute to the Witches themselves what belongs really to the complex of Witches, Spirits, and Hecate. For the purposes of imagination, no doubt, this inaccuracy is of small consequence; ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... agencies of this kind which operated in educing the various forms of being. Light is found to be essential to the development of the individual embryo. When tadpoles were placed in a perforated box, and that box sunk in the Seine, light being the only condition thus abstracted, they grew to a great size in their original form, but did not pass through the usual metamorphose which brings them to their mature state as frogs. The proteus, an animal of the frog kind, inhabiting the subterraneous waters ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... but his thoughts were diverted instantly, and he went from me at once abstracted. But again he came back. "If you return," said he, "you shall serve upon my staff. You will care to view our operations," he added, motioning towards the intrenchments at the river. Then he stepped quickly away, and I was taken by an officer to the river, and though ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Reflection, whenever he deigned to penetrate the pericranium of my cousin Horatio, took entire possession of the citadel, and left him not even the smallest loophole for the observation of any passing event. He was just fixed in one of these abstracted reveries of the mind, traversing over the halcyon scenes of his collegiate days, and re-associating himself with his early friend, the author of the eccentric volume then in his hand, when the above monition sprung from his ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... incomparably well. Boileau had undoubtedly some of the qualities of a great critic. He wanted imagination; but he had strong sense. His literary code was formed on narrow principles; but in applying it, he showed great judgment and penetration. In mere style, abstracted from the ideas of which style is the garb, his taste was excellent. He was well acquainted with the great Greek writers; and, though unable fully to appreciate their creative genius, admired the majestic simplicity of their manner, and had learned from them to despise bombast and ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that she would take his letter to his father at Barrington Park. Faithful to her word she reluctantly prepared to depart, when to her dismay she found that a cheque for a large amount had been abstracted from Arthur's desk, and further search discovered that nearly every article of value had been perloined during her illness. Their charges were so exorbitant, that it took nearly all the money she had to satisfy their demands, and when she mentioned the cheque, ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... manner that she must have reason to believe that the guest was identical with some one of whom she had heard very often. Her manner was abstracted and she seemed ill at ease. But that might ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... the contrary, It is written (1 Cor. 14:32): "The spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets." Now this were impossible if the prophet were not in possession of his faculties, but abstracted from his senses. Therefore it would seem that prophetic vision is not accompanied by abstraction ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... names and works of Sorel, Scarron, Furetiere, and the capital ones of Madame de la Fayette and Hamilton. According to the plan previously pursued, less attempt will be made to give exhaustive or even full lists of practitioners than to illustrate their practice thoroughly by example, translated or abstracted, and by criticism; and it is necessary that this latter course should be used without mercy to readers or to the historian himself in this first chapter. For there is hardly any department of literature which has been ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... young Maitland of Lethington, and one of the old lairds of Buccleuch. The cause of their being stationed in Elfland probably arose from the manner of their decease; which, being uncommon and violent, caused the vulgar to suppose that they had been abstracted by the Fairies. Lethington, as is generally supposed, died a Roman death during his imprisonment in Leith; and the Buccleuch, whom I believe to be here meant, was slain in a nocturnal scuffle by the Kerrs, his hereditary enemies. Besides, they were both attached to the cause of Queen Mary, ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... formidable part of their general character is, the contempt for religion which is so frequently and openly expressed. In all countries there are men of a selfish and abstracted turn of mind, who are more disposed than others to religious argument and doubt; and in all, there are a greater number, whose worldly passions lead them to the neglect, or hurry them on to the violation of religious precepts; but a great nation, ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... his triumph in his own heart was the affair of the ten-pound note, which she had stolen (or abstracted if you will) and then restored to him with such dramatic haughtiness. That ten pounds was an awful trial to him. It rankled, not only with him, but (he felt sure) with her. Still, if she had her pride, he also had his. He reckoned that she had not rightly behaved in taking ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... an abstracted sort of way, went to the sideboard, poured himself out a whisky and soda, took a sip, and sat ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... The Raja approached his friend and, "from the manner these two persons discoursed, side by side, mutually quenching the fire of their afflictions, they appeared as if endowed with royal prosperity. Having allowed him to eat, the thero (Mahanamo) in various ways administered consolation and abstracted his mind from all desire to prolong his existence." The king then bathed in the tank; and pointing to his friend and to it, "these," he exclaimed to the messengers, "are all the ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... while it was impossible to do it. This was probably very bewildering to his brother-politicians; for politicians always whitewash what they do not destroy. But for all that this inconsistent consistency beat the politicians at their own game, and this abstracted logic proved the most practical of all. For when the chance did come to do something, there was no doubt about the thing to be done. The thunderbolt fell from the clear heights of heaven; it had not been tossed about and lost like a common missile ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... unprincipled man, watched the report in its circulation, and saw the snares closing round his victim. He waited on him one morning, accompanied by a person of a grave, though somewhat repulsive appearance. Stanton was as usual abstracted and restless, and, after a few moments' conversation, he proposed a drive a few miles out of London, which he said would revive and refresh him. Stanton objected, on account of the difficulty of getting a hackney coach (for it is singular that at this period ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... moments silently report Each action, motive, and unuttered thought; May this fair page no added witness bring Of time mis-used, as musing thought may spring. No, rather let my muse abstracted turn; Forget to muse, and of my Saviour learn That rare humility, so highly prized By Him, who sees the heart all undisguised. From Him my subject come, my thought proceed; To Him my motive tend, my action ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... when the man ceased. Words would not come. Her bosom heaved, and she placed her hand to her forehead in an abstracted manner. Her eyes were fixed full upon the constable's face, though she did not see him. Her thoughts were away from that room, out through the storm and darkness to an old grey-headed man battling somewhere with the tempest, for the sake of others. What had happened? ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... his cloak, threw himself on the back seat of the carriage, too abstracted in his grief to observe that he was the only occupant of the vehicle. There was a sound of wheels grating on the gravelled avenue, and then all was silence again in the cemetery of Montmartre. At the main entrance the carriages parted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... thought. A graceful, brilliant woman, like Bertha, who smiled on morning callers, made a figure in ball-rooms, and was capable of that light repartee which, from such a woman, is accepted as wit, was secure of carrying off all sympathy from a husband who was sickly, abstracted, and, as some suspected, crack-brained. Even the servants in our house gave her the balance of their regard and pity. For there were no audible quarrels between us; our alienation, our repulsion from each other, lay within the silence of our own hearts; and if the mistress went out a great deal, ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... listen to a tale humdrum, And with attention read Tom Thumb; My spirits with my body progging, Both hand in hand together jogging; Sunk over head and ears in matter. Nor can of metaphysics smatter; Am more diverted with a quibble Than dream of words intelligible; And think all notions too abstracted Are like the ravings of a crackt head; What intercourse of minds can be Betwixt the knight sublime and me, If when I talk, as talk I must, It is but prating to a bust? Where friendship is by Fate design'd, It forms a union in the mind: But here I differ from the knight In ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... be philosophical and say his quid refert, but it was easier tried than done; for Jacques Pontiac's words kept rankling in his mind, and he found himself carrying round a vague load, which made him abstracted occasionally, and often a little reckless in action and speech. In hunting bear and moose he had proved himself more daring than the oldest hunter, and proportionately successful. He paid his servants well, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... too much abstracted by her distress to hear this. She looked around at them all, one after another, and said in a low, composed, and solemn voice, "All is over now between that young man and me—and here is one request which I ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... papers full of spontaneous combustion story. Record had exclusive story yesterday, but all papers to-day feature even more. Is it true? Please wire additional details at once. Also immediate instructions regarding loss of will. Has been abstracted from safe. Could Lewis Langley have taken it himself? Unless new facts soon must make loss public or issue statement ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... superstition when the most trivial occurrence seemed to point in some way to an elucidation of the mystery of his treasure. His eyes had mechanically fallen to the ground again, as if he half expected to find in some other waif a hint or corroboration of his imaginings. Thus abstracted, the figure of a young girl on horseback, in the road directly before the bushes he emerged from, appeared to have sprung ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... [22] 'Abstracted' rather, I should have said, and with perfect skill, by Mr. Collingwood (the joint translator of Xenophon's Economics for the 'Bibliotheca Pastorum'). So also the next following ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... shore: often in the open light of day, while I sat there (after my duties on the sick-wharf were over) selling stores, or administering medicine to the men of the Land Transport and Army Works Corps, and others, who soon found out my skill, valuable things would be abstracted; while there was no limit to the depredations by night. Of course we hired men to watch; but our choice of servants was very limited, and very often those we employed not only shut their eyes to the plunder of their companions, but helped themselves ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... one still alive. Putnam felt that in a girl of her age this mood was too unnatural to last, and he reckoned not unreasonably on the reaction that must come when her youth began again to assert its rights. He was now thoroughly in love, and as he sat watching her beautiful abstracted face he found it hard to keep back some expression of tenderness. Often, too, it was difficult for him to tone down his spirits to the proper pitch of respectful sympathy with her grief. His existence was golden with new-found life and hope: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... a feather blown onwards by the wind was gone. She was conversing with her partner, but without the soft animation that usually shone out upon her countenance. And when she was brought back to her seat Molly noticed her changed colour, and her dreamily abstracted eyes. ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... unconscious of a half-sigh as she withdrew abstracted eyes from the wide panorama which had filled the vision of so many other men and women and little children before the white man came to claim the New World. "They who builded here and lived and died here. What has become of them? Where did ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... certainly after ten o'clock, Gen'l Darrington was murdered. His vault was forced open, money was stolen, and most significant of all, the WILL was abstracted. Criminal jurisprudence holds that the absence of motive renders nugatory much weighty testimony. In this melancholy cause, could a more powerful motive be imagined than that which goaded the prisoner ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... he was very nearly so. Suddenly he was aware that there was something moving in or near the hut. He looked up, and just at the entrance he saw a huge brown monster, his eyes looking curiously in, while with its paws it had abstracted one of the fish which had been hung up to the doorpost to keep cool. The stick which Philip had used as a poker was in a flame, so, springing up, he dashed it into the face of the intruder—a big bear—grasping ...
— The Log House by the Lake - A Tale of Canada • William H. G. Kingston
... In this abstracted mood he passed Foundation's gloomy portals and Laloo standing in his door gazing down the road, and took the leafy path ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... said pleasantly. 'The episode is closed. I am a man of peace, and I take it that you would not keep on lying quietly on that bed while I went into the other room and abstracted our young friend? Unless you have changed your mind again, would a ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... instant, and behind them came the cavalry at a speed that threatened to hurl them headlong to the foot of the rocky declivity. Joy and fury shone on the faces of the men: only Marcus Decius seemed troubled and abstracted. ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... had been adjusting his spectacles on his nose, unconscious, poor old gentleman, that Dick, according to promise, had abstracted the glasses from them that morning. He took up his documents to read, made sundry wry faces, turned the papers up to the light,—now on this side, and now on that,—but could make out nothing; while Dick gave a knowing wink at Murphy. The old gentleman took off his spectacles ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... generally, having all of them been induced to regard John Caldigate with horror. Hester's nurse, of course, sympathised with her and her baby. During these two hours the packing was completed, but Hester found that her strong walking-boots and her bonnet had been abstracted. Did they really think that at such a time as this boots and bonnets would be anything to her? They could know nothing of her nature. They could not understand the sort of combat she would carry on if an attempt were made to take from her her liberty,—an attempt made by those who had ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... in his pocket, and did not immediately miss the roll of bills which the sneak thief had so cleverly abstracted from his person. ...
— From Farm to Fortune - or Nat Nason's Strange Experience • Horatio Alger Jr.
... news, and enquired of one of the waiters the name of the gentleman who had thus proclaimed the action of the Court. The waiter quietly approached the seat of the Governor, and, whilst he was looking in another direction, abstracted the card near his plate which bore my name. Here was, indeed, a grand item for a sensational paragraph. Straight way the newsgatherer communicated it to a newspaper in Washington, and it appeared under an editorial ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham |
