"Preoccupied" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... place where his diagram ought to have been visible on the screen—and so it was again so soon as the darkness was restored. I remember him then as a most ordinary, slightly nervous-looking dark man, with an air of being preoccupied with something else, and doing what he was doing just then under an ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... land that God had promised to give him, Abram found it already inhabited by great and warlike nations—not by one nation, but by a number of nations. What could he do, a solitary man, in that land? Not only was his faith tested by finding the land preoccupied by other strong and hostile nations, but he had not been there a great while before a great famine came upon him. No doubt a great conflict was going on in his breast, and ...
— Men of the Bible • Dwight Moody
... Completely preoccupied again, Matt went to a big switch and threw it. The dynamo hummed, raised its pitch to a high, almost intolerable keening note. The ring of pseudo-searchlights seemed in an ominous sort of way to spring into life. The impression must have been entirely imaginary; actually the projectors ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... from the table quickly in apparently a preoccupied manner, and the conversation was thus ...
— Aunt Hannah and Seth • James Otis
... mysteriously disappeared from her partners in the dance. Lady Lundie had mysteriously abandoned her guests. Blanche had not come back. Lady Lundie had returned with an artificial smile, and a preoccupied manner. She acknowledged that she was "not very well." The same excuse had been given to account for Blanche's absence—and, again (some time previously), to explain Miss Silvester's withdrawal from the croquet! A wit among the gentlemen ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... to do the same. He remained just as long as it was necessary in order to efface the unpleasant impression of my abrupt entrance with a frightened face. He went away with an air of satisfaction at the conclusions arrived at. As for me, I was perfectly sure that, in comparison with that which preoccupied them, the question of music was indifferent to them. I accompanied him with especial courtesy to the hall (how can one help accompanying a man who has come to disturb your tranquillity and ruin the happiness of the entire family?), and I shook his white, ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... the glance with surprise. She had been too preoccupied to notice Darrow, whose crudely modelled face was always of a dull pallour, to which his slow-moving grey eye lent no relief except in rare moments of expansion. Now the face had the fallen lines of a death-mask, in which only the smile he turned on Dick remained alive; and the sight smote ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... ugly altogether, as I always told him. To tell the truth, he was not so ugly as he had been; for the months with the contessina had refined him singularly, and perhaps he had caught a certain grace of manner from the baroness. He had grown more silent too, and seemed always preoccupied, as well he might be: but he had concealed his affair with the Lira family from me until that day, and I supposed him anxious ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... had got the start of the clergyman, as he very often does, after all. The wretches who have been for three years pouring their leperous distilment into the ears of Great Britain had preoccupied the ground, and were determined to silence the minister, if they could. For this purpose they looked to the heathen populace of the nominally Christian British cities. They covered the walls with blood-red placards, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... lower nature was preoccupied, the supreme critical faculty performed its functions with precision. The arithmetical method was perhaps suggested by the other calculation. He could not be quite sure, but he believed he had summed up ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... absorbed in his conversation with Maurice Trott. Thereupon he went and sat down beside Madame Jenkins, whose isolation was no less marked than his. But, while he talked with the poor woman, who was as languid as he himself was preoccupied, he watched the baroness do the honors of that salon, so much more comfortable than his ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... get a fish-hook?" he queried, squinting toward Ken with a preoccupied eye. (He sold hardware and fishing-tackle, as well as attending to the duties ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... a certain power of attorney necessitated a conference more confidential than could be safely compassed by correspondence. They discussed this as they sat in the spacious reception hall, and had Bayne been less preoccupied he must have noticed at once the embarrassment, nay, the look of absolute dismay, with which Briscoe had risen to receive him, when, unannounced, he appeared in the doorway as abruptly as if he had fallen from the clouds. As it was, the brief colloquy on the business interests ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... noncommittally. This is unsatisfactory to Carmen. However, she is equal to the occasion. When is she so fascinating as when quite preoccupied?—she will try it ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... been so preoccupied, if they had looked out of that window, they would have seen a horse and buggy approaching over the dunes. Seth and Mrs. Bascom were on the buggy seat, and the lightkeeper was driving with one hand. The equipage had been hired at the Eastboro livery stable. Joshua was undergoing ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... where she stood reading the letter, her back toward me. Presently I heard a stifled sob. The letter was crushed in her hand. Then moments passed ere she confronted me once more. But her manner as all changed; she was agitated and preoccupied, and for all that she forced herself to talk of me and my affairs, her mind was clearly elsewhere. At last she left me, nor did I see her again during the time I was confined to ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... which Bradley had remained, was shooting in and out from the cliffs with great violence, now straining the line by which she was held, and now whirling against the rock as if she would dash herself to pieces. An effort was made to pass another rope to Bradley, but he was so preoccupied that he did not notice it, and the others saw him take a knife out of its sheath and step forward to cut the line. He had decided that it was better to go over the falls with her than to wait for her to be completely ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... true womanly nature, capable of love, anger, and devotion. She had a look, too, of refinement, like one who might have been a better lady than most, had she been allowed the opportunity. When alone she seemed preoccupied and sad; but she was not often alone; there was usually by her side a heavy, dull, gross man in rough clothes, chary of speech and gesture—not from caution, but poverty of disposition; a man like a ditcher, unlovely and uninteresting; whom she ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shared with all his brother-popes, that he boldly treated the antique ruins of the city as quarries for his new buildings, not without protest and remonstrance from many, yet with the calm of a mind preoccupied and seeing nothing so great and important as the work upon which ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... notice the cloud upon his brow, or that he spoke only in order to lead her to talk. She was too much preoccupied with herself for her customary quick sympathy with the moods of others. She made no inquiries as to how he had spent the day, and seemingly had forgotten him as completely as he had been absorbed in her. He saw with a deeper regret than he could understand that, except when he awakened ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... who makes shoes is sure of his wages; the man who makes a book or a tragedy is never sure of anything." She advises him to make friends of women rather than of men. "By means of women, one attains all that one wishes from men, of whom some are too pleasure-loving, others too much preoccupied with their personal interests not to neglect yours; whereas women think of you, if only from idleness. Speak this evening to one of them of some affair that concerns you; tomorrow at her wheel, at her tapestry, you will find her dreaming of it, and searching ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... would say, gravely, handing me it. And I would accept it with preoccupied mien, take a deep bite, and ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... at last to the one addressed, he took it in a preoccupied manner, and spoke between labored pulls on ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... yards of debris and boulders above the level of all but the high spring tides. Beyond lay a string of seaweedy pools and then the hard sands of the burnfoot. There was excellent cover among the big stones, and apart from the distance and the dim light, the man by the fire was too preoccupied in his task to keep much look-out towards the land. I remember thinking he had chosen his place well, for save from the sea he could not be seen. The cliffs are so undercut that unless a watcher ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... once a king in the country of Syria named Malik-es-Saleh, very pious and just, and continually preoccupied with the state of his subjects. They say that every night he went to the mosque, cemeteries, and other solitary places, in search of strangers, fakirs, and poor people who had neither home nor family. One night, arriving near a mosque, he heard the voice of a man inside ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... way to understand schools and styles and to appreciate their respective functions and successes is to consider first what region of nature preoccupied the age in which they arose. Perception can cut the world up into many patterns, which it isolates and dignifies with the name of things. It must distinguish before it can reproduce and the objects which attention distinguishes are of many strange ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... the dining room. It was a long, melancholy room, ill lighted by tall, narrow windows, having in fact been used as a table d'hote for ecclesiastics until the Astiers took it. There she found her husband already at table, looking preoccupied and almost grumpy. In the ordinary way 'the Master' came to his meals with a smiling serenity as regular as his appetite, and with teeth which, sound as a foxhound's, were not to be discouraged by stale bread or leathery meat, or ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... ancient friend," said the preoccupied Geoffrey, pouring hot water on the sugar in two glasses; "there's nothing like Irish whiskey ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... fully comprehended and enjoyed. They seemed to me full of deep architectural meanings, such as must drop gently into the mind one by one, after infinite tranquil contemplation. But even to the hurried and preoccupied traveller the solemn little chapel- yard in the city's heart, in which they stand girdled by their great swaying curtain of linked and twisted iron, is one of the most impressive spots in Italy. Nowhere ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... descry her, walking about the yard in the pale sunshine. He had expected to find her preoccupied as usual; but to-day she was strolling restlessly to and fro in front of the house, quite near it and quite idle. When she saw him coming, scarce aware of her own actions, she went round the house and walked on quickly away ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... an upraised hand and fetched a chair for the girl. She rested an arm on the back of it, but did not sit down. She did not understand why she had been brought to this room, and stared with hard, preoccupied eyes at the tall man ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... that the evening, spent in that strangely noisy, oscillating, onward-rushing dwelling-place of a railway-carriage, was not without a certain subdued brightness of intercourse and conversation. Katherine was neither preoccupied nor distrait, or unamused even by the small accidents and absurdities of travel. Later, while preparations were being made by the servants for the coming night, she went out, with the two gentlemen and Honoria St. Quentin, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... to the door and back, evidently much preoccupied. SASHA sits down in her former place. IVANOFF silently shakes hands ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov
... porch, moody, preoccupied, somber, all the time. Only a little of his mind was concerned with me. Manifestly there were strong forces at work. Both men were strained to a last degree, and Wright could be made to break at almost a word. Sampson laughed mockingly at this sally of mine, and that stung Wright. ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... searching he found the beginning of the trail, and started along it with a know-it-all, cheerful confidence in the little bit of wood-lore which he had acquired. Hence he now found it considerably more difficult to follow the spotted trees. His brain was excited and preoccupied; and when once in fancied security he suffered his eyes and thoughts to stray for a minute from the trail, every unfamiliar woodland sight and sound tempted ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... grin. He may be chewing, but he does not smoke. He does not beg; at least in so far as I observed him he stood in no posture and assumed no gestures belonging to the mendicant. He looms at you with a dull, stony, preoccupied gaze, as though his thoughts were a thousand miles away in the unknown land; while once in every quarter of an hour or so he woke up to a momentary consciousness that he was a thing neither rich nor rare, and so wondered how in thunder he got there. He is ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... Annette stood, holding out their hands to the friendly warmth. She was watching with interest the preparations for supper, but he had grown silent and preoccupied. ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... of herself. She beckoned to Cousin Jim, who came up and shook hands with the widow with grave sympathy. But he seemed preoccupied, and, while they were preparing to return to the ruined farm, he was pulling his big beard and meditating with ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... dinner but conversation lagged. Each one seemed preoccupied and no one minded the long silences. We were so quiet that the Angelus ringing at Charly, some four miles away, roused us with something of ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... to him Felicia, grown up, and Felicia was still the little Charley Preble of the swimming pool. It was a confusion of personalities that might easily have grown into romance had not Roger been too completely and honestly preoccupied ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... in obedience to a few strokes of his pen on a piece of paper; and when it had opened sufficiently often, he loved to issue from his inner chamber with documents in his hands, visibly important, with a preoccupied expression on his face that might have suited a Prime Minister advancing to meet his Cabinet. By his orders the table had been decorated beforehand with six sheets of blotting-paper, with six pens, six ink-pots, a tumbler and ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... elbow. Upon observing its position, the waiter—a secret agent on the case—deliberately tipped over a champagne glass that stood within a few inches of the bag. Of course, Mademoiselle was worried lest the wine run over on her gown and while thus preoccupied, the waiter, stammering apologies, mopped up the table cloth with his serviette—mopped up the wine and cleverly covering the bag folded it in the napkin and hurried away. In two minutes he had opened it, abstracted the letter from the young ordnance ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... not been so preoccupied, he would certainly have heard the raucous shouts of newsboys running frantically along the boulevards. That is to say, he heard, but did not heed, else some shadow of a strange destiny must have ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... before he began his address, he looked over the audience with the self-possession of an accomplished orator. The attention of every person in the room was at once arrested. They all recalled their wandering or preoccupied thoughts, lifted their bowed heads and fixed their eyes upon the ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... French, or the dwellers of the Balearic Islands, were all fish sent by a bountiful Providence to be enclosed in his net, and he seized upon them without distinction. When in the full tide of his success there was but one thing which preoccupied the mind of the corsair, which was to find a ready market for his spoils and a convenient place in which to rid himself of an embarrassing number of captives. This, however, did not present an insuperable difficulty, as we have already seen in the case of Curtogali, and a similar ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... moorland, and then in the evening after supper made myself very much at home amid my uncle's books and the burnt sacrifice of tobacco. I was not, however, very long in the house before I found that my uncle was uncommonly preoccupied; something seemed to be weighing upon his mind, for though he unbent at supper-time, and talked by starts excellently over the port wine at dessert, he frequently fell into an abstraction from which only with a mighty effort could he pluck himself ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... Sheila was wholly preoccupied with her companion and his efforts. He had had one or two rises, but had struck either too soon or too late, until at last there was a terrific plunge and rush, and again the line was whirled out. But Duncan did not like ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... opens unconsciously to the sights and sounds of the quiet hour. The fields are given over to silence and the gathering darkness; the roads cease to be thoroughfares of toil; and over all things the peace of night settles like an unspoken benediction. To the most preoccupied there comes a consciousness that the world has changed, and that, while the old framework remains intact, a strange and transforming beauty has touched and spiritualised it. At eventide one feels the ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... always reminds me of a beautiful and charmingly gowned woman, perpetually young, interested in art, in music, in literature, always ready for a stroll, a dance or a flirtation. Trieste, on the contrary, is a busy, preoccupied, rather brusque business man, wholly self-made, who has never devoted much time to devote to pleasure because he has been too busy making his fortune. Venice says, "If you want a good time, let me show you how to spend your ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... preoccupied, he stumbled out some words of welcome, spoke to Belle on the stage, took the suitcase out of Bradley's hand and led Kate into the house. In the large room that she entered stood a long table and a big fireplace opened at the ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... read this than I went to her at once. She was gentle and sedate as usual, but evidently absent and preoccupied. Her eyes rested on the dew lying on the grass in the garden, and her ears were intent upon the melancholy singing of the autumn insects. It was as if we were in a real ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... furious profanity; for there, in the empty court-room, stood young Trudgian and his wife, covered, indeed, with white dust, but blissfully wrapt in their own marvellous escape; and young Trudgian for the moment was wholly preoccupied in probing with two fingers for a piece of plaster which had somehow found its way down his Selina's back between the nape of the neck and ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... thirteen and fifteen respectively, such an occasion was no small cause for excitement. For that reason they were very slow to admit that they were not enjoying themselves, but the truth at last could not be denied. Cousin Jasper, preoccupied and anxious, left them almost completely to their own devices, neglected to provide any amusement for them, and seemed, at times, to forget ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... sins, and reminded myself that I was unworthy to hold communication with the Lord God. Then I retired into myself, and tried to look at nothing; and so, walking without noticing the streets, I proceeded on my way. Everything had an empty air, and everyone whom I met looked careworn and preoccupied, and no wonder, for who would choose to walk abroad at such an early hour, and in such weather? Next a band of ragged workmen met me, and jostled me boorishly as they passed; upon which nervousness overtook me, and I felt uneasy, ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... especially, people fancied that all must be tame and second-hand, everything long since duly analyzed and distributed and put up in appropriate quotations, and nothing left for us poor American children but a preoccupied universe. And yet Thoreau camps down by Walden Pond and shows us that absolutely nothing in Nature has ever yet been described,—not a bird nor a berry of the woods, nor a drop of water, nor a spicula of ice, nor summer, nor ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... moment Athanase, leaning pensively on his elbow at the breakfast table, was twirling his spoon in his empty cup and contemplating with a preoccupied eye the poor room with its red brick floor, its straw chairs, its painted wooden buffet, its pink and white curtains chequered like a backgammon board, which communicated with the kitchen through a glass door. As his back was to ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... by Janice to keep Philemon at arm's length would hardly have succeeded for long, had not the squire been so preoccupied with the election and with the now active farm work that he paid little heed to the course of true love. Poor Phil was teased by him now and again for his "offishness;" but Janice carefully managed that their interviews were not held in ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... and happiness there might be a fate awaiting me too horrible for thought. Yet I did not wish to borrow trouble. What I had seen and heard was quite enough for one occasion. I was anxious, rather, to forget it all. Nor did Almah's words or manner in any way reassure me. She was silent and sad and preoccupied. It was as though she knew the worst, and knowing it, dared not speak; as though there was something more horrible which she dared not reveal. For my part, I feared it so that I dared not ask. It was enough for me just then to know that my mild and self-denying and generous ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... up on the roof and left him to his mystery. Anne drank her tea in a preoccupied silence, with half-closed eyes, an attitude that boded ill to somebody. The rest were feverishly gay, and Aunt Selina, with a pair of arctics on her feet and a hot-water bottle at her back, sat in ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... awhile, and taking his pen, wrote the line on a printed copy of it lying on his table. 'This,' said he, 'shall be its future motto.' 'Pity,' cried I, 'that Dr. Young's Night Thoughts have preoccupied it.' 'So,' replied he, 'indeed it is.'" Gray himself tells the story of its success on the margin of the manuscript copy of the Elegy preserved at Cambridge among his papers, and reproduced in fac-simile in Mathias's elegant edition of the poet. ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... as for what pertained to me alone, I knew he would see that also as I did. I no longer asked for any one. I never inquired why no message came from them; why during the week I lay there, waiting and growing stronger, I never heard their name spoken. Preoccupied with my own searchings for the right way, and with my feeble but determined fight against despair, I simply acquiesced in Jack's reticence, taking for granted that he was afraid to speak of them, lest I should turn unruly and insist on seeing them. Meanwhile I said over ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... be "careful not to overdo just now." Katherine was entirely absorbed in her determination to get "over ninety" in every one of her final examinations; and Mr. and Mrs. Gray were both so busy and so preoccupied that Edith and Peter were left to pursue the course of true ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... and Constance Channing. Roland, in much inward commotion, was striding through the cloisters on his way to find that reverend divine, when he strode up to the throng of disputants, who were far too much preoccupied with their own concerns to observe him. The first distinct voice that struck upon Roland's ear above the general hubbub, was that of his ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... waiting at the cross-roads for an ambulance; our cook had lifted him on to a bench inside the cafe and was giving him tea. The colonel, who remained in the mess, in telephone touch with the brigadier-general, C.R.A., and the brigade-major, had never seemed so preoccupied. Days afterwards, he confided to me that when the Hun bombardment started he feared a repetition of the overpowering assault of ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... think my conversation with Miss Treherne was brilliant. She has since told me that I appeared self-conscious and preoccupied. This being no compliment to her, I was treated accordingly. I could have endorsed Clovelly's estimate of her so far as her reserve and sedateness were concerned. It seemed impossible to talk naturally. The events of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Robert Turold led the way into a front sitting-room lighted by a window overlooking the sea. There was an air of purpose in his movements, but an appearance of strain in his careworn face and twitching lips. He glanced at the others in a preoccupied way, but started perceptibly as his eye ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... the sorrows of the restless heart beating in that virginal bosom. He paced the veranda of the Club gravely preoccupied till the midnight hour. Long before that, Justine Delande had sought her rooms in a feeble flutter of excitement over the harmless assignation of the morrow. There was a stern old man pacing his ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... who conducts a "weather bureau"—as, for example, the chief of the United States signal-service station in New York—is so preoccupied with the observation of this phenomenon that cyclone-hunting might be said to be his chief pursuit. It is for this purpose, in the main, that government weather bureaus or signal-service departments have been established all over ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... pardon him; the thought of the visit I was about to make to that room, the scene of his dead happiness, overcame him, he said. He, indeed, seemed singularly agitated and preoccupied, as though undergoing ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... thinking about?" Armine continued, earnestly. "I noticed how preoccupied you were even when you came ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... Joyeuse had, as we have seen, left this scene, and were walking side by side in the streets generally so populous but now deserted, for every one was in the Place de Greve. Henri seemed preoccupied and sad, and Anne was unquiet on account of his brother. He ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... at last, but he is preoccupied, and his words and acts do little to reassure Agathe. She wants to know what luck he had at the shooting-match, and he replies that he did not participate in the target-shooting, but had nevertheless ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... sliding standstill against a heavy hall-table. On this he leaned heavily for a moment or so above the tobacco jar he had so luckily salvaged from the wreckage. His back to the preoccupied couple he flashed his sensitive fingers into the jar, collecting and thrusting into his pockets the watch and the thick roll of bills and as much of the small change as his fast-groping ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... in order to be more sure of seeing the hour at any time of the night, by the light of the sacred lamps. He gets up betimes in the morning, asking: "Well, did I behave properly?" and dresses in haste, preoccupied ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... off by herself and played on the piano, and read, and had various kinds of good times, scrupulously keeping out of the way of her busy and preoccupied cousin. ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... man lying there helpless on the desert. But what else could she do? What a strange adventure had befallen her! At the following thought that it was not yet concluded she felt a little stir of excitement at her pulses. She was so strangely preoccupied that she forgot it was necessary for her to have a step to mount Sage King. She realized it quickly enough when she attempted it. Then she led him off in the sage till she found a rock. Mounting, she turned him straight across ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... &c. v.; alert, open-eyed; intent on, taken up with, occupied with, engaged in; engrossed in, wrapped in, absorbed, rapt, transfixed, riveted, mesmerized, hypnotized; glued to (the TV); breathless; preoccupied &c. (inattentive) 458; watchful &c. (careful) 459;. breathless, undistracted, upon the stretch; on the watch &c. (expectant) 507. steadfast. [compelling attention] interesting, engrossing, mesmerizing, riveting. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... down into comfort even with the coming of the tea-things. Tea at the gardener's cottage was a serious meal, with a big cake and little cakes, and preserves and fruit, a fine spread upon a table. You must imagine me, sullen, awkward, and preoccupied, perplexed by the something that was inexplicably unexpected in Nettie, saying little, and glowering across the cake at her, and all the eloquence I had been concentrating for the previous twenty-four ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... annoyed the high-spirited girl to find that she kept thinking of him, and wondering where she would meet him, and what he would say or do, and how she ought to appear. And yet it was perfectly natural that such should be the case. Thanks to his persecution, he had preoccupied her mind with his personality for so long a time that it was impossible the new phase of her relations toward him should not strongly affect her fancy. The first time they actually did meet, she found herself quite agitated. Her heart beat oddly when she saw ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... without stopping till she reached the orange-trees in front of the verandah, where, reassured by the lights from the windows, she paused to consider. Not that she was troubled by Jantje's mysterious howling; indeed, she was too preoccupied to give it a second thought. What she debated was whether she should say anything about her encounter with Frank Muller. Young ladies are not, as a rule, too fond of informing their husbands or lovers that somebody has kissed them; first, because they know it ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... afternoon, and when my lord Duke was announced he entered the saloon, to behold my lady sitting by the firelight in a carven gilded chair, her eyes upon the glowing coals, her thoughts plainly preoccupied. On hearing his name she slightly started, and on his entry rose and gave him her soft warm hand, which he did not kiss because its velvet so wooed him that he feared to touch it with his lips. 'Twas not a hand which he could touch ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of these guerilla bands kept thousands of Union troops pinned down on rear area security guard duty, and preoccupied the forces assigned to Fairfax Court House. The difficulty of their task under the circumstances that prevailed in Northern Virginia was dramatized in the famous Confederate raid on Fairfax Court House by men under the command of Col. John S. Mosby when, on the night of March 8, 1863, the Confederate ...
— The Fairfax County Courthouse • Ross D. Netherton
... supplement, Willy Woolly being specially photographed therefor, a gleam of transient glory, which, however it may have gratified our local pride, left both of the subjects quite indifferent. Stepfather Time might have paid more heed to it had he not, at the time, been wholly preoccupied in a ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... take it for granted that the best work of their own authors is as a matter of course inferior to the work of a well-known Englishman. It may not be many years before the American public will be so much preoccupied with its own literary output—before that output will be so amply sufficient for all its needs—that it will become as contemptuously indifferent to English literature of the day as Englishmen have, in the past, shown ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... load was a little lightened, and he was able to devote himself to his money-making and to the weaving of the web that was to destroy his rival, Edward Cossey, with a mind a little less preoccupied with ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... horse, sent under the conduct of C. Centenius, propraetor, by Servilius to his colleague, were cut off by Hannibal in Umbria, to which place, on hearing of the battle at Trasimenus, they had turned their course. The report of this event variously affected the people. Some, having their minds preoccupied with heavier grief, considered the recent loss of cavalry trifling, in comparison with their former losses; others did not estimate what had occurred by itself, but considered that, as in a body already labouring under disease, a slight ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... certainly cause some evil. Jules' mind is preoccupied, disturbed; he is nursing thoughts he ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... steadily. It was a long ride, but Sundown's mind was so preoccupied with the preparing of his proposed appeal to the sheep-man that the morning hours and the sunlit miles swept past unnoticed. The dark green of the acacias bordering the hacienda, the twinkling white of the speeding windmill, and the dull brown of the adobes became distinct and ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... extreme fecundity of nature, who, as before stated, has in all the varieties of her offspring a prolific power much beyond (in many cases a thousandfold) what is necessary to fill up the vacancies caused by senile decay. As the field of existence is limited and preoccupied, it is only the hardier, more robust, better suited to circumstance individuals, who are able to struggle forward to maturity, these inhabiting only the situations to which they have superior adaptation and greater ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... gave it up, but were so preoccupied, and anxious to be alone in order to reflect and deliberate, that, without waiting for supper, they took leave of Mme. Fauvel and her niece, ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... Preoccupied as she was, Letty must needs flush and smile, so well she knew from his eager eye that she pleased him, that he noticed the pretty gown she had put on for luncheon, and that all the petting his absence had withdrawn from her for an hour or two had come ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... curs to snarl," he said. "But his impertinence grows insufferable and must be muzzled." Linking his arm into La Mothe's he drew him slowly along the garden path. Both were preoccupied by the same desire, to win the other to his own way of thinking, but it was the more cautious elder who spoke first. He would appeal to the very affection Villon had ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... was too preoccupied for society. In a few minutes he begged that the ladies would excuse his withdrawing; he had two or three letters to write before post-time, ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... enjoying his pipe before the heat of the day. His eyes furtively followed his wife as she moved about near him, sometimes passing close to his chair in search of something she had mislaid. There was colour in her cheeks; her eyes, though preoccupied, were bright; there was a lightness and buoyancy in her step which she set to a little dancing air she was humming under ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... down to breakfast braced to grapple with fresh adversity, but were surprised to find our garrulous friend of the previous day—he was late in making his appearance—strangely silent and (apparently) preoccupied. Having polished off our porridge, we ran out to feed the rabbits, explaining to them that a beast of a tutor would prevent their enjoying so much ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... Lui have been so preoccupied with the question of the rights and wrongs of the originals in their behavior to each other, so inclined to judge of the book according to its supposed accuracy or inaccuracy as a matter of history, that its force, as a study of the attraction that so often leads two exceptional but hopeless, ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... settled with Jed Muggs that morning for the damage caused by Teddy. Jed had named an excessive price, but Mr. Rushton had been in no mood to haggle and had paid him what he asked. But it was not this that kept him silent and preoccupied. ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... between men's minds and Nature, who never does the same thing twice, or makes one man like another, till minds, whose patriotism is perhaps great enough to carry them to the scaffold, cry down natural impulse with the morbid persistence of minds unsettled by some fixed idea. They are preoccupied with the nation's future, with heroes, poets, soldiers, painters, armies, fleets, but only as these things are understood by a child in a national school, while a secret feeling that what is so unreal needs continual defence makes them bitter ...
— Synge And The Ireland Of His Time • William Butler Yeats
... over the centre of the group, and long after Wilbur could remember the grisly scene—the punk-sticks, the bread-pan full of hunks of meat, the horrid close and oily smell, and the circle of silent, preoccupied Chinese, each sitting on his bunk-ledge, devouring stewed pork and holding his pannikin of Black Jack between his feet against the rolling ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... thing filial piety is to contemplate! If the daughter of the Baron Von Swillenhausen had pleaded a preoccupied heart, or fallen at her father's feet and corned them in salt tears, or only fainted away, and complimented the old gentleman in frantic ejaculations, the odds are a hundred to one but Swillenhausen Castle ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... uppermost in Zillah's mind was one which she hardly knew how to introduce. It was of such delicacy that the idea of mentioning it to the Earl filled her with repugnance. For the first day she was distrait and preoccupied. Other days followed. Her nights were sleepless. The Earl soon saw that there was something on her mind, and taxed her with it. Zillah burst into tears and ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... like hope in their brief lines, while the imagination might read as it chose between the lines. The marvel was that any but troop trains should run. All night in that third-class coach from Dieppe to Paris! Tired and preoccupied passengers; everyone's heart heavy; everyone's soul wrenched; everyone prepared for the worst! You cared for no other man's views; the one thing you wanted was no bad news. France had known that when the war came it would be to the ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... Helena stood preoccupied and hesitant, hardly hearing what he said, as I fancy. At once L'Olonnois' attitude changed. Folding his arms, ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... receive the confessions of a subtle psychologist, who must unlock the tumultuous story of his soul "before he can sing." And these confessions are of a kind rare even amongst self-revelations of genius. Pauline's lover is a dreamer, but a dreamer of an uncommon species. He is preoccupied with the processes of his mind, but his mind ranges wildly over the universe and chafes at the limitations it is forced to recognise. Mill, a master, not to say a pedant, of introspection, recognised with amazement the "intense self-consciousness" of this poet, and ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... but monosyllables, and the jolly Charley actually snubbed the various cheery openings of his "little chum"—as he used to call her at times,—but not at that time. No doubt the couple were nervous and preoccupied. For all this we have evidence, and for the fact that Flora being offended with the delightful nephew of her profoundly respected governess sulked through the rest of the evening and was glad to retire early. Mrs., Mrs.—I've really forgotten her name—the governess, invited ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... preoccupied and the competitors too numerous. So, getting no encouragement, Clinton turned to the hero of New Orleans. "In Jackson," he wrote Post, "we must look for a sincere and honest friend. Whatever demonstrations ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Country Club by day and the town clubs by night, always preoccupied and figuring, much to the astonishment of his friends and cronies. He scribbled inexplicable figures on the backs of golf ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... The miners were giving the youth all the assistance they could by devising hindrances for the police. Barrows, picks, shovels, buckets, and hide-bags found their way under the legs of the pursuers, windlass-ropes were stretched to trip them up, and preoccupied miners jostled them at every turn, and endeavoured to ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... to the apple-tree, too preoccupied to inquire further into the reason for the gun and the presence of Bill's dog, George ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... monster, but a decidedly self-centered child. If my sister had seemed unhappy it would have troubled me; but I am ashamed to recall that I did not consider how little it was that contented her. I was so preoccupied with my own happiness that I did not half perceive the splendid devotion of her attitude towards me, the sweetness of her joy in my good luck. She not only stood by approvingly when I was helped to everything; she cheerfully waited on me herself. And ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... along Pall Mall. The Prince had lit a large cigar, and was apparently on the best of terms with himself and the world in general. Brott, on the contrary, was most unlike himself, preoccupied, and ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... already occupied by a pleasant-faced, matronly looking German woman, who was complacently listening to the chatter of a couple of small children. Randall threw himself upon the unoccupied end of the bench, rather hoping that his gloomy and preoccupied air might cause them to depart and leave him to his melancholy revery. And, indeed, it was not long before the children stopped their play and gathered timidly about their mother, and soon after the bench tilted slightly as she relieved it of her substantial charms, saying ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... household words, to buy a copy of London (Williams and Norgate) for inclusion in his permanent library. If I should insist upon his reading it then and there he would reply, as one ignorant fellow to another, that he had not the necessary understanding of the remote past and was too preoccupied with the affairs of the present. Be it so, but none the less let him buy it and at any rate glance at its many curious and admirable illustrations. Later he will dip into it in search of further episodes after the manner of that I quote, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... open to Goethe's objection (an objection showing very nice perception of nature)—that extreme thirst was not likely to happen to a man who had lately passed through a stream on a rainy day, and whose clothes must have been saturated with moisture—nor in the traveller's preoccupied state of mind, is it probable that he would have so much felt the mere physical want. With less reason has it been urged by other critics, that the sudden relenting of the tyrant is contrary to his character. The tyrant here has no individual character ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... had forgotten all about it. His thoughts were entirely concerned with Adrienne, and he was unusually grave and preoccupied. ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... the world knows, but only the initiated know how much we owe to the fact that the talents and energies which would otherwise be employed in thwarting our just intentions and phlebotomising the ryot are largely preoccupied with the more useful work of thwarting and undermining ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... out the effect of segregation on the performance and attitude of black soldiers. Ray believed that the Gillem Board policy, with its quota system and its provisions for the integration of black specialists, would eventually lead to an integrated Army. Preoccupied with practical and imminently possible racial reforms, Ray, along with Secretary Patterson and other reformers within the Army establishment, tended to overlook the tenacious hold that racial ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... though apparently preoccupied, could not fail to admire this quaint and pretty nook—just such a spot as one could sit in and dream their life away; a sort of lotus bed, where one inhaled the beguiling odors, and cast all worldly cares to the shores ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... conversation proceeded in fairly safe channels. Dunmore was anxious to avoid any further reference to the sum of ten thousand dollars; when Gladys induced Rand to talk about his military experiences, he lapsed into preoccupied silence. Several times, Geraldine and Nelda aimed halfhearted feline swipes at one another, more out of custom than present and active rancor. The women seemed to have erected a temporary ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... excuses for Mrs. Carew, just at that time," said I. "You forget the new interest which had come into her life. It was natural that she should be preoccupied." ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... reporter, and Herbert, after spending an hour on the plateau of Prospect Heights, again descended to the beach, and returned to Granite House. The engineer was thoughtful and preoccupied, so much so, indeed, that Gideon Spilett inquired if he apprehended any immediate danger, of which the eruption might directly or indirectly ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... avails. Summer gives complements and accessories to the good things in a human face. Winter affords nothing save disclosure. In the uncompromising cleanness of that wash of Winter light, Ebenezer Rule was himself, for anybody to see. Looking like countless other men, lean, alert, preoccupied, his tall figure stooped, his smooth, pale face like a photograph too much retouched, this commonplace man took his place in the day almost as one of its externals. With that glorious pioneer trio, mineral, vegetable and animal; and with intellect, that worthy tool, he did his day's work. His face ...
— Christmas - A Story • Zona Gale
... flag before the detective was announced. He looked tired and preoccupied when he came in, but his shrewd, pleasant face brightened with a cheery smile when he saw Hermione, who was pretending to ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... affairs of a great empire, and direct his diplomatic agents in every country of Europe. He finds that the sanctum of a one-man power is not a bed of roses. Sometimes he seeks rest and recreation on one of his estates, but labors and public duties follow him wherever he goes. He is too busy and preoccupied even for pleasure, unless he is hunting boars and stags. He seems to care but little for art of any kind, except music; but once in his life has he ever visited the Museum of Berlin; he never goes to the theatre. He appears as little as possible in the streets, but when recognized he is stared at ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... give you this hint—don't commit anything at all to writing, the publication of which would be annoying to us. There are many things that I would rather not know than learn at some risk. I shall write at greater length to you with a mind less preoccupied, when my boy Cicero is, as I hope he will be, in a good state of health. Pray be careful to let me know to whom I should give the letter which I shall then send you—to Caesar's letter-carriers, for him to forward them direct to you, or to those ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... breakfast in their own rooms. I think nothing is more dreary than a long breakfast-table, laid for large numbers, with half a dozen picnicking at it among the debris left by earlier ravages. Evelyn, behind the great silver urn, looked pale and preoccupied, and had very little to say for herself when I journeyed up to her end of the table and sat down by her. She asked me twice if I took sugar, and was not bright and alert and ready in conversation, as I think girls should be. Carr, ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... instantaneous reward for having conscientiously striven to honour him? That there should be love on his side had not hitherto seemed of so much importance; probably she had taken it for granted; she had been so preoccupied with her own duties. Yet now it had all at once become of moment that she should know. 'Be a good girl.' She repeated the words over and over again, and made much of them. Perhaps she had given him no opportunity, no encouragement, ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... other main character in his work, appears preoccupied by the same central preoccupation of Unamuno. In one word, all Unamuno's characters are but incarnations of himself. But that is what we expected to find ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... came here to-night simply to mingle my grief with yours at the loss of one of our most distinguished citizens, and, indeed, I feel more like silence than like words. I am awe-stricken in the presence of this vast assemblage, and my mind goes back to the past. It is preoccupied by memories coming in prominent review of the frequent and ever-varying vicissitudes which have characterized the last ten years. I find myself in the presence of a vast assemblage of the people of this great and growing city, who meet together, without distinction of party, and presided over ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... collapsed-matter problem. Then, there were about a dozen implicitly-trusted technicians and guards, who had been secretly gathered in MacLeod's office the night before and informed of the crisis that had arisen. Their associates could not miss the fact that they were preoccupied with ...
— The Mercenaries • Henry Beam Piper
... went to and fro like the shuttle of a weaver. He blinked in rapidity of thinking, and stole shifty glances at his comrade. He tugged his moustache and said "Imphm" many times. Then his eyes went off in their long preoccupied stare, and the sound of the breath, coming heavy through his nostrils, was audible in the quiet room. Wilson was one of the men whom ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... course it's very annoying...." Raskolnikov muttered in reply, but with such a preoccupied and inattentive air that Dounia gazed at him ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... had an opportunity of observing their graces of mind and manner, till I came to Washington, whose porcine citizens appeared to enjoy a larger liberty than many of its human ones. Stout, sedate looking pigs, hurried by each morning to their places of business, with a preoccupied air, and sonorous greeting to their friends. Genteel pigs, with an extra curl to their tails, promenaded in pairs, lunching here and there, like gentlemen of leisure. Rowdy pigs pushed the passers by off the side walk; tipsy pigs hiccoughed their ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... his lips, but he watched for her coming as a shipwrecked mariner watches for a sail. When a boy ponders and worries over something for which he dares not ask an explanation, he is apt to become sullen and preoccupied. On the day that the long-suffering landlord served notice, Dan told no one of his mother's absence. Behind closed doors he packed what things he could, clumsily tying the rest of the household goods in the bedclothes. ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... were closed for the day, Teddy went home to his hut, and it was noticed by one who met him on the road that his manner was very preoccupied, and his walk unusually slow. Shortly afterwards he was seen to stroll over to the police camp, and go ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... point of fact, the inconsistency of Seneca's life was a conscious inconsistency. "To the student," he says, "who professes his wish to rise to a loftier grade of virtue, I would answer that this is my wish also, but I dare not hope it. I am preoccupied with vices. All I require of myself is, not to be equal to the best, but only to be better than the bad." No doubt Seneca meant this to be understood merely for modest depreciation; but it was far truer ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... down to meet him, as he had proposed, but he had sent his outlandish American gig with his groom to fetch John. While he was at the vicarage the latter was probably too much occupied with conversation to notice that Mr. Ambrose seemed preoccupied and changed, and the vicar was to some extent recalled to his usual manner by the presence of his pupil. Mrs. Ambrose had taxed her husband with concealing something from her ever since the previous day, but the good man was obstinate and merely said that he felt unaccountably nervous and irritable, ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... acquaintance it was desirable to cultivate. Moreover, the words opera singer raised ecstatic visions of a possible future introduction to some "ravishing tenor," the remote idea of which caused her to be so visibly preoccupied, that Miss Kling took her leave with angry sniffles, and returned home to ponder ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... flurried, so preoccupied by vague fears that I hardly saw or heard anything. Porters came up with our trunks and asked me where they were to place them, but I scarcely know how I answered them, although I was aware that everything—both my husband's luggage and mine—was being taken into the large ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... contained had leaked from any source and there had been no hint of a break in the Wilson cabinet. Supposedly, all was harmony. Yet this correspondent, judging from the excited manner of the Secretary of State, the sharpness of his noncommittal replies, and his preoccupied air as he emerged from the cabinet room, scented the trouble and published the following story hours before other correspondents had their eyes opened to the history-making events occurring ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... walked not less than half a mile before pausing. Then she drew forth the concealed matches and began the piteous pleading—"Will you please buy a box of matches?" spoken in a low tremulous voice to each passer-by, unheeded by those who were preoccupied with their own thoughts, by all others looked scornfully at, until at last, tired and dispirited, she turned to retrace the long hopeless road. And now the thoughts of home became at every yard of the way more painful and even ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... While preoccupied with conjectures, she raised her head. At a second glance, she discerned a crowd of people, as thick as flowers in a bouquet, pursuing their way also into the I Hung court. On looking fixedly, she ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... dry and warm and with a cup of tea beside her which she had found it easier to accept than to refuse, looked about her and invoiced the changes of four years which in her preoccupied state of mind during her former visit she had neglected to think upon. There were many little changes in the household arrangement, due to the observations of the winter spent in Topeka. In personal appearance Aunt ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... see their offspring. The butterfly uses the utmost care in selecting a suitable leaf on which to deposit her eggs. She selects one that will be nourishing food for the larvae when hatched out, and, after carefully observing whether it is preoccupied by the eggs of some other butterfly (in which case she abandons it), she proceeds to deposit her eggs. "Having fulfilled this duty, from which no obstacle short of absolute impossibility, no danger however threatening, can divert ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... consideration for the Queen my Mother, and will sate her (RASSASIERAI) with honors; but I do not mean that she shall meddle in my affairs; and if she try it, she will find so.'" What a speech; what an outbreak of candor in the young man, preoccupied with his own great thoughts and difficulties,—to the exclusion ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... baron's mind was evidently preoccupied; his whole air was that of a man who felt a strong impulse to do something or other, but could not quite make up his ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... that Ralph would not find it very pleasant "boarding out" all the time he was entitled to spend at Pete Jones's. For in view of the fact that Mr. Pete Jones sent seven children to the school, the "master" in Flat Creek district was bound to spend two weeks in that comfortable place, sleeping in a preoccupied bed, in the "furdest corner," with insufficient cover, under an insufficient roof, and eating floating islands of salt pork fished out of oceans of hot lard. Ralph was not slow to accept the relief offered by the hospitable justice of the peace, whose principal business ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... and fallows sloped away into middle distance, softly and imperceptibly. Wild weeds of the hedgerow straggled into the flower-garden, and wallflowers and garden bushes made counter-raids into farmyard and lane. Sleepy-looking hens and solemn preoccupied ducks were equally at home in yard, orchard, or roadway; nothing seemed to belong definitely to anywhere; even the gates were not necessarily to be found on their hinges. And over the whole scene brooded the sense of ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... and incredible and terrifying manifestations of the Bootstrap-lifting impulse. There is, I discover, a regular propaganda on foot; a long time ago—no man can recall how far back—the Wholesale Pickpockets made the discovery of the ease with which a man's pockets could be rifled while he was preoccupied with spiritual exercises, and they began offering prizes for the best essays in support of the practice. Now their propaganda is everywhere triumphant, and year by year we see an increase in the rewards and emoluments of the prophets and priests of the cult. The ground is covered ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... on the contrary, stared at the lady and put the envelope in his mouth, to the great mortification of Mrs. Chints, who had been so preoccupied with the Chints side of the affair, and the impression they were making on the extemporized audience, that she had no eyes for ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... Trapes brewed the tea, while Ravenslee gazed at Hermione again, at her shapely arms, her dimpled elbows, her preoccupied face—a face so serenely, so utterly unaware of his regard, of course, until he chanced to look away, and then—Hermione ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... pupils, represents the maturest treatment of the subject which we possess. The author was modest enough to express a strong unwillingness to write it, either fearing to come forward as an author so late in life, or judging the ground preoccupied already. However, it was produced at last, and no sooner known than it at once assumed the high position that has been accorded to it ever since. The treatment is exhaustive; as much more thorough than the popular treatises of Cicero as it is more attractive ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... the real test; it was a mercy for her that she had not that added immorality on her conscience. The ladies Mrs. Farrinder meant (it was to be supposed she meant some particular ones) might speak for themselves. She wished to work in another field; she had long been preoccupied with the romance of the people. She had an immense desire to know intimately some very poor girl. This might seem one of the most accessible of pleasures; but, in point of fact, she had not found it so. There were two or three pale shop-maidens whose acquaintance she had ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... listen, and it is the wonder of wonders, how much there is in this old world which we never dreamed of, how many beautiful, curious, interesting sights and sounds there are which ordinarily make no impression upon our clogged, overfed and preoccupied minds. I have also had the feeling—it may be unscientific but it is comforting—that any man might see like an Indian or smell like a hound if he gave to the senses the brains which the Indian and the hound apply to them. And I'm pretty sure about the Indian! It is marvellous what a man can ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson |
