"Absent-minded" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... questions. He will wear the kind of tie that his sister prefers, and they may set any date they please for the musicales at home. He hears the "copy" which Moses has prepared for his advertisements; and then he sits, absent-minded, while they talk about him. Music is in his thoughts, and gradually it steals into his aspect and the gestures of his hand. They watch him, and a pall comes over them: until at last the mother exclaims that he makes her nervous, ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... body's dogged hold on life, and steals away to view its future domain, to draw in advance upon its coming freedom—now lingering, now swifter than a hawk—and then it comes back and we say that we have been absent-minded. Alf started—his soul had returned. "And weren't you surprised to see them drive ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... always flying from him. He drives everything so fiercely, his life is so vigorous, so complicated, that happiness can not find a home with him very long. Nor does he understand why. He has money, health; but he always has that restless far-away, absent-minded gaze into something beyond, and I do not think he is ever really very happy. His whole manner of living is extremely complex. He does not seem to know where to find happiness. He has evidently mistaken the very nature of happiness. He thinks it consists in making a great ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... desperation. For he would take his stick and his hat and would walk to the window, and look perfectly absent-minded and very ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... holiday, we remembered the Volchaninovs and went over to Sholkovka. They were all at home. The mother, Ekaterina Pavlovna, had obviously once been handsome, but now she was stouter than her age warranted, suffered from asthma, was melancholy and absent-minded as she tried to entertain me with talk about painting. When she heard from her daughter that I might perhaps come over to Sholkovka, she hurriedly called to mind a few of my landscapes which she had seen ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... regulations of their life; she did not remind him of the study-hours, the music-hours, the hours of wild outdoor play. She read under the firs, alone; she studied faithfully, alone; she climbed and swam, alone—or with his absent-minded, fitful company; she worked in her garden, alone. At night, when he was asleep, she lay with her hand pressed against her heart, staring at the darkness, listening to the night, waiting. Curiously enough, his inevitable returns of passion and interest, the always decreasing flood-mark, ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... pretty well used to it by this," replied Miss De Courcy, with the same joyless little laugh, giving the lace skirt an absent-minded kick with her red morocco toe. "I lived in the country before—when I ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... with the absent-minded deliberation that so annoyed many people. He was rather awful in many ways, but he was a kind man, his temper was good, and he would doubtless be an amiable, ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... strangely and suddenly into another world. Out of the abyss of the subconscious there rose a gesture prophetic and immense. The trivial phrase and that intercepted look opened a great door of wonder in his heart. In a second he grew "absent-minded." Or, rather, something touched a button and the whole machinery of his personality shifted round noiselessly and instantaneously, presenting an immediate new facet to the world. His normal, puny self-consciousness slipped a moment into the majestic calm of some far larger ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... tense and rigid when Telzey laid her arm across it, and except for an absent-minded dig with her forehead against Telzey's shoulder, TT refused to let her attention be distracted from whatever had absorbed it. Now and then, a low, ominous rumble came from her furry throat, a half-angry, half-questioning sound. Telzey began to feel a little uncomfortable. ...
— Novice • James H. Schmitz
... the germ of my great discovery. But you are wrong to say that we cannot move about in Time. For instance, if I am recalling an incident very vividly I go back to the instant of its occurrence: I become absent-minded, as you say. I jump back for a moment. Of course we have no means of staying back for any length of Time, any more than a savage or an animal has of staying six feet above the ground. But a civilized man is better off than the savage in this respect. ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... greatest rages and worst language were when certain young gentlemen of the upper classes visited the spot to amuse themselves by baiting the lavanderas. The young gentleman would saunter about in an absent-minded manner and presently walk right on to a beautifully embroidered and belaced nightdress or other dainty garment spread out to dry on the sward or rock, and, standing on it, calmly proceed to take out and light a cigarette. ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... that particular hiding-place, the one just under our eyes, within reach of our hands! How could one imagine that a thief would leave sixty thousand francs in an open cardboard box, in which he places his hat when he comes in, with an absent-minded air? That's just the one place we don't look in.... ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... eyes looked at her shrewdly from behind the mask of his clean shaven face, the greatest poker face, men said, that had ever gone its inscrutable way up and down the city of fogs and wet winds. He had asked his few questions in an absent-minded sort of fashion which disappointed and distressed the girl. He evinced not a whit more interest than he would have done in watching a stranger stamp the mud off his feet, or, for that matter, than he would have shown ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... closed the door behind me. Tourville remained seated at the end of the table, with one hand clenched on the cloth before him, while with the other he plucked quickly and impatiently at his thick beard and then combed it through with his fingers, "glowering" moodily at me meanwhile, in an absent-minded fashion, as though he scarcely realised my presence. At length he pulled himself together with an effort, and, pointing ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... George would settle down on some suitable girl of good family! But he was so queer and restless. She was afraid for him. Ever since she had taken him away to Europe, when she was so ill, she had been afraid for him. He seemed so moody and absent-minded then and afterwards. Now this Miss Bailey was said to be as beautiful as she was good. If only George would ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... we miss Gifford," said Miss Deborah, who had gone out into the hall to put on her overshoes. "He was such a useful child." Lois came to help her, for Mr. Denner was far too timid to offer assistance, and the rector too stout, and Mr. Dale too absent-minded. As for Mr. Forsythe, he did not notice how Miss Deborah was occupied, until Lois had joined her; and then his offer was not accepted, for Miss Deborah felt shy about putting out her foot in its black kid slipper, tied about the ankle with a black ribbon, in the presence of ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... that alarmed him. Never upon the face of a living being had he beheld a pallor so chilling, so death-like. The features were more than pale. They were ghastly as sunless frost. Carringer's powers of observation had been sharpened by the absinthe, and after having detected the stranger in an absent-minded effort on several occasions to stroke a beard which had no existence, he reflected that some of the whiteness of the face might be due to the recent shaving and removal of a full beard. The eyes were black, and his lower lip was purple. The hands were fine, white and thin, ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... But the Professor still looks vexed at his blunder. So Sally says in confirmation, "I've forgiven you. Shake hands!" And doesn't make matters much better, for her action seems unaccountable to the absent-minded one, who says, "Why?" first, and then, "Oh, ah, yes—I see. Shake hands, certainly!" On which the Sphinx, at the far end of the table, wondered whether the ancient Phoenicians were ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... fast, the terrier released, and fern-box and lunch-basket slung over Amherst's shoulder, the three explorers set forth on their journey. Amherst, as became his sex, went first; but after a few absent-minded plunges into the sedgy depths between the islets, he was ordered to relinquish his command and fall to the rear, where he might perform the humbler service of occasionally lifting Cicely ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... so absent-minded when I, get to thinking! I never wear an umbrella in the house—did anybody 'notice it'? What-asleep? Indeed? And did you wake me sir? Thank you—thank you very much indeed. It might have fallen out of my hands and been injured. Admirable article, sir—present from a ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... second-hand books on angling. She replaced it in a conspicuous position. But she did not argue further about it, as a nervous headache disinclined her from debate. Mr. Cave was always disinclined. The day passed disagreeably. Mr. Cave was, if anything, more absent-minded than usual, and uncommonly irritable withal. In the afternoon, when his wife was taking her customary sleep, he removed the ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... La Fontaine in vain endeavored to gain attention to his verses; Sorel wanted to obtain a hearing for his quatrain. He was obliged to retreat before M. le Comte de Chanost whose arm Fouquet had just taken. L'Abbe Fouquet perceived that the poet, absent-minded, as usual, was about to follow the two talkers, and he interposed. La Fontaine seized upon him, and recited his verses. The abbe, who was quite innocent of Latin, nodded his head, in cadence, at every roll which La ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... 'Talk about getting absent-minded in my old age,' he declared. 'Her name did use to be Sanchia; I changed it to Helen. Think of my sliding back to the ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... Rowena is! So absent-minded and stupid. She doesn't listen to half one is saying, and smiles to herself in the silliest way.—I think the housekeeping must be too much for her brain!" Dreda declared to her mother, and Mrs Saxon smiled in response and ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... succour me and speak to me!' And he shook it with his hand; but it spake not neither stirred from its stead. Thereupon quoth the Personage, 'What aileth thine idol that it speaketh not?'; and quoth the King, 'Methinks he is absent-minded or asleep.' Exclaimed the other, 'O enemy of Allah, how canst thou worship a god that speaketh not nor availeth unto aught and not worship my God, who to prayers deigns assent and who is ever present and never absent, neither ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... commented the women of Farlingford. But perhaps they were wrong. If he had forgotten, he might be expected to go round by the south side of the church by accident occasionally, especially as it was the shorter way from the rectory to the porch. He was an absent-minded man, but he always remembered, as River Andrew himself admitted, to go north about. And his wife's grave was overgrown by salted grass ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... Tommy Atkins had hardly been so spoilt before—not even by some good ladies in England—as he was during these eventful weeks at Durban. The letters and messages sent home were in many cases of a most touching and tender character, and once more Tommy Atkins proved himself to be anything but an 'Absent-minded Beggar.' ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... was strangely tense. Everywhere people stood together in couples and whispered with serious faces. The professor's daughters sat a little neglected on the verandah, talking together in low voices. At times Egon joined them and flirted with them in a half-hearted, absent-minded way. Billy had withdrawn to her room, whither Countess Betty carried up quantities of raspberry-juice, and Marion was incessantly racing back and forth between the garden and Billy's room, carrying messages. No one was comfortable. Lisa walked around between the flower-beds under her red ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... 'mill,' as certain profane students were wont to name the Seminary, wherein (did you believe the exhibition tickets) our 'daughters' were ground into 'corner-stones' polished after the 'similitude of a palace,' was a man of unusually modest humility, and somewhat absent-minded. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... unless one gives, isn't it so? I want to be able to give—!" she declared vaguely. Yet whenever Imogen strove to pay her tithes and plunged bravely into her plans for study next winter, Flavia grew absent-minded and interrupted her by amazing generalizations or by such embarrassing questions as, "And these grim studies really have charm for you; you are quite buried in them; they make other things seem light ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... of fur, various peltry, blankets, valuable gear of every sort to be staked on the result of the game, and soon the men were betting heavily. All the various tones of the gamut were on the air,—the deep bass guttural laugh of the braves; the shrill callow yelping of boys; the absent-minded bawl of spoiled pappooses interested in the stir, but with an ever-recurrent recollection of the business of vocally disciplining their patient mothers; the keen treble chatter of women,—all were suddenly resolved into a strong dominant chord ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... to the dinner-horn, the plowman came riding slowly home, it was evident from his unwonted seriousness of look and manner that a thought had struck the mind, not a bullet the body of Burlman Reynolds. It was further evident from the absent-minded way in which he fed Cornwallis, throwing him two dozen instead of one dozen ears of corn; and further still, from the absent-minded way in which he fed himself, leaving his bacon untoasted and eating ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... neither did he shine as a clerk in the post office, nor as an assistant to the local expressman. In desperation he began to learn the carpenter's trade and, because he liked to handle tools, did pretty well at it. But he continued to be "queer" and his absent-minded dreaminess was in ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... of my own irritability or not I do not know, but Dicky seemed to grow more indifferent and absent-minded each day. He was not irritable with me, he simply had the air of a man absorbed in some pursuit and indifferent to ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... are embarrassed by the unpunctuality of others. He was fully attired, hob-nailed shoes, leggings, leather coat and cap, gloves, scarf round his throat and all—and he behaved as if there was not a minute to lose. He had barely time to shake perfunctorily the hand Thorpe offered him, and utter an absent-minded ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... know the Jervaises particularly well?" she inquired. For one moment she glanced down at her poised hands, but almost instantly returned to her rather absent-minded gazing through the ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... this speech as if he had been expecting to hear those very words, or else did not mind at all what Heyst might say. He muttered an absent-minded "Ay, ay," played with a bit of biscuit, sighed, and said, with a peculiar stare which did not seem to carry any distance, but to stop short at a point in the air ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... and an opera-hat. The great trouble which Marshall had on these nightly expeditions was getting home. I do not mean to insinuate that it was to find Miss Minion's door. It was to pass Miss Minion's door. There were several absent-minded old gentlemen living in the house who had a way of forgetting that they were not its sole occupants. Coming in from their weekly or monthly trip to the theatre, the hour would to them seem horribly ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... things I ever see for makin' a man absent-minded," he communed that night, as he crawled into his blankets. Nor did he forget to call up the hillside, "Good night, ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... of letters of introduction, I am reminded of a brother artist, who, although a caricaturist, was entirely devoid of guile, and, in addition, was as absent-minded as the popularly-accepted type of ardent scientist or professor of ultra-abstruse subject. Well, this curious species of satirist was setting forth on travels in foreign climes, and in order to lighten in some measure the vicissitudes inseparable from peripatetic wandering, ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... himself from speaking the truth he was silent. From the four doors of the room servants now appeared bearing large silver trays covered with glasses of champagne. Loulou stood by the chimney-piece and gave several forced and absent-minded answers to the young man. She followed with her eyes the minute-hand on the clock, and at a slight sign from her little hand a servant came up to her. She took the glass in which the wine sparkled, and at the same moment, the hands of the clock ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... guy over in Washington," Troy said as they worked their way down through the trees, "that won the DivAg award as the most absent-minded engineer of ...
— The Thirst Quenchers • Rick Raphael
... anyway, and see how she'd take it. But as a matter of fact I never could seem to find just the right openin' until, there one night after dinner, as she finishes a new piece she's tryin' over on the piano, I wanders up beside her and starts absent-minded tearin' little bits off a ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... pieces of furniture, on doors and walls, seven hearts, that is to say one less than there were players, for old Brotteaux had obligingly joined the rest. They danced round in a ring singing "La Tour, prends garde!" and at a signal from Elodie, each ran to put a hand on a heart. Gamelin in his absent-minded clumsiness was too late to find one vacant, and had to pay a forfeit, the little knife he had bought for six sous at the fair of Saint-Germain and with which he had cut the loaf for his mother in her poverty. The game went on, and one after the other Blaise, Elodie, ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... rattle of coin repaid them. Absent-minded Ernest had entirely forgotten that his father had taken the contents to the savings bank for him the preceding month, and that he had not been able to ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... anxiety. The three men descended the broad steps together, the bishop remarking upon the lateness of the season and the clemency of the air. When they reached the street, he turned with Cobbens in the direction of his house, with an absent-minded ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... self-satisfaction, seriousness, smugness, and general invincibility. And he thought of her continually—no particular thought, but a comprehensive, enveloping, brooding, static thought. And he was strangely jolly and uplifted, full of affectionate, absent-minded good humour towards ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... and the too frequent applications he had made to the brandy, it happened that for the moment he was by no means certain of his purpose. He sat for a little while wondering rather hazily what had brought him there. As often happens with absent-minded people, his hands remembered what had been required of them before his brain began to act again, and by and by the fact that he had unbuttoned his overcoat, and had taken a bundle of papers from his pocket, ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... memory, that although he eateth with hunger, if he chance to look back, remembreth no more his meat, and departing searcheth for other." Who would not visit Calabria, if only on the chance of beholding the speckled posterior of the absent-minded Luzard? ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... give Robert the odd five thousand pounds. His state of mind might even lead him to make it guineas. He heard not a word of the sermon, and throughout the service he rose up and sat down several instants after the rest of the congregation, because he was so absent-minded. ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... But in what mood should you enter? Certainly not in accordance with the rules of the previous Meditation. In a rage then? Still less should you do that. You should come in with good-natured carelessness, like an absent-minded man who has forgotten his purse, the statement which he has drawn up for the minister, ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... before I reached my "home town" of Monterey Centre, I had camped within two or three miles of the settlement. I forgot all that day to inquire where I was: so absent-minded was I with all my botheration because of losing Virginia. I was thinking all the time of seeing her again, wondering if I should ever see her alone or to speak to her, ashamed of my behavior toward her—in my thoughts at least—vexed ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... the other, who had taken his seat. 'I'll let you hear from me, you know, about the Scheme and—other things. Don't wait.' He seemed curiously unobservant of these strange folk, almost absent-minded. ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... alone with her maid, and was looking out of the window at nothing in particular, and the station-master, who was watching the train go, chanced to meet her glance. Again there was the same smile and bow, quite mechanical, quite absent-minded, distinctly gracious. The station-master stared in astonishment after the receding carriage. The detective roused himself from his reverie sufficiently to step forward and neatly swing himself into the guard's van: there being nothing ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... same magnificence as Marfinka's birthday, although Vera had roundly declared that on that day she meant to go on a visit to Anna Ivanovna Tushin, or to her friend Natasha. But how Tatiana Markovna had changed since Mass. As she talked with her guests she was thinking only of Vera, and gave absent-minded answers. The excuse of a cold had not deceived her, and as she had touched Vera's brow on leaving her, she had realised that a cold could be nothing but a pretext. She remembered that Vera and Raisky had vanished ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... stable and carefully pulled two hairs from the pony's silvery-gray tail. The operation was borne with most obliging patience, but when he stooped to pick up another beautiful long hair from the straw—for when you are making snakes you might as well make plenty, alas! the pony was so absent-minded as to step back—and down came the iron-shod hoof on the small, ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... the bed-room and began singing to the children again, although they had long been asleep; she sang various songs, but most of all the waltz to which she had danced with John. John listened to her as if bewildered, and seemed to be absent-minded when he spoke. Rose went into the room, and told ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... miles to reach the fishing-ground. We found the water there alive with fish, and anchored where they were thickest; and then the person who was guiding the expedition discovered that he had left the bait on the wharf. He is the most absent-minded man south of the Ohio anyhow. In the old days before Georgia went dry he had to give up carrying a crook-handled umbrella. He would invariably leave it hanging on the rail. So I should have kept the bait in mind myself—but I didn't, being engaged at ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... the captive raised one limb and gave an absent-minded tug to the belt it wore. Shann, noting that gesture, was struck by a wild surmise, leading him to study the prisoner more narrowly. Allowing for the alien structure of bone, the nonhuman skin; this creature was delicate, graceful, in its way beautiful, with a fragility of limb which backed up ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... look at her, one glance was enough to convince him that she, too, had noticed the parallel—had been forced to recognize her own features in the portrait he had constructed of an ideal. And she had caught him in absent-minded contemplation of the hands he had been describing. He knew that his face was the face of a ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... there was no doubt at all that Dr Budge was really grateful, and as the days went on Ambrose began to like his master more and more, and to feel quite at home with him. He seemed, since the recovery of the jackdaw, to be much less absent-minded, and looked at Ambrose now as though he were a boy and not a volume. Ambrose felt the difference in the gaze which he often found kindly fixed on him, and it made him think that he would like to ask Dr Budge's help in other ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... esteemed by Laura's sister, Mrs. Jaynes, a sharp-visaged little woman, to whose energetic control her absent-minded, studious husband surrendered the parsonage and all it contained. Nay, she even shared his labors in the moral vineyard of his parish; for while he remained at home among his favorite volumes, she used to go about from house to house, collecting donations in aid ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... that, but only the other day. It was a most unexpected windfall. I was delighted to hear about it." Jean looked at him and wondered if he were well. His long holiday did not seem to have improved his spirits; he was more absent-minded than ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... Conrad Lagrange had found Aaron King so absorbed in his mother's letters, the artist continued in his silent, preoccupied, mood. The next morning, it was the same. Refusing every attempt of his friend to engage him in conversation, he answered only with absent-minded mono-syllables; until the novelist, declaring that the painter was fit company for neither beast nor man, left him alone; and went off ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... family was the object of Camille's secret study. It struck Mademoiselle des Touches that the Consul looked rather too absent-minded for a ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... while listening in an apparently absent-minded way to these depositions, or rather these scandals, carefully examined the wall and the gate. He now turned, ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... you," he said, in an absent-minded way, as already his thoughts had rushed off to something ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... and no matter how much money a young feller's got I think he's better off doin' somethin'. That's the gospel accordin' to Elisha. Well, good luck and a pleasant v'yage. See you again soon. Say," turning back, "keep an eye on George, will you? Folks in love are l'ble to be absent-minded, they tell me, and I should not want him to be absent with any of my money. ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... will get to know each other and be friends, gentlemen," Sipiagin exclaimed with the amiable, stately, though absent-minded smile characteristic of him. ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... in London with an absent-minded friend, and while crossing a street you say, "Look out, there's a motor coming." He will glance round and jump aside without the need of any "mental" intermediary. There need be no "ideas," but only a stiffening of the muscles, followed quickly ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... nerves for inhaling and appreciating flavors. These excite in them but an obtuse sentiment; such persons are, with regard to objects of taste, what the blind are with regard to light. The second class are the absent-minded, chatterboxes, persons engrossed in business or ambition, and others who seek to occupy themselves with two things at once, and eat only to be filled. Such, for example, was Napoleon; he was irregular in his meals, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... went up to my governess, Mlle. de Brabender. Her lips were firmly pressed together, and she looked shocked, just as she did sometimes when my godfather told some story that she did not approve at table. My uncle, Felix Faure, was gazing at the floor in an absent-minded way; the notary had a spiteful look in his eyes, my aunt was holding forth in a very excited manner, and M. Meydieu kept shaking ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... my Sophy girl—changed in a month. You have become so dull and absent-minded, and have lost all your pretty colour. Of course, I know the reason, but you can do no good—no, not a scrap. You had much better have gone home when you discovered the secret—you are as thin as a walking-stick, and look as if you sat up ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... last, and went down to breakfast in the cabin below. The stress did not lighten with the little changes and chances of the voyage to the lake. He was never much given to making acquaintance with people, but now he found himself so absent-minded that he was aware of being sometimes spoken to by friendly strangers without replying until it was too late even to apologize. He was not only steeped in this gloom, but he had the constant distress of the effort he involuntarily made to trace it back ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... noises in the park. They sounded like small working sounds, blending in eerily mysterious fashion with a chorus of small voices. I thought at first it might be children at play, but then at the time I was a bit absent-minded. I tiptoed to the edge of the trees, not wanting to deprive any small scalawags of their pleasure, and peered out between the branches. And what do you suppose I saw? Not children, but a group of little ...
— Houlihan's Equation • Walt Sheldon
... the streets where there is danger of upsetting the unwary or absent-minded pedestrian, the Allan and Darling Team headed down the trail with real pleasure in the prospect of a ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... way he dismissed the poor people who had come running out of their houses to help him, and his stateliness in rewarding that little cooper, and his heroic parting from his cherished overcoat,—which of course he can't replace in Quebec,—and his absent-minded politeness in taking my hand under his arm, and marching off with me so magnificently. But the worst thing, Fanny,"—and she bowed herself under a tempest of long-pent mirth,—"the worst thing was, that the iron, you know, was the cooper's branding-iron, and I had ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... to have had the full approval of both parents all along. But a rather curious change had come over her father, she thought, a few months ago. What it was that had caused it she could not say, but he grew nervous and moody, often absent-minded, and sometimes even short-tempered and snappish, a thing she had never known before. Also he read the daily papers with much care and eagerness. It was plain that Miss Peytral had no idea of any cause which might have led to a quarrel ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... a suspicious temper, he might not," interposed the man in gray calmly, "it is one of the imbecilities of the suspicious person to fancy that every stranger, however absent-minded, he sees so much as smiling or gesturing to himself in any odd sort of way, is secretly making him his butt. In some moods, the movements of an entire street, as the suspicious man walks down it, will seem an express pantomimic jeer at him. In short, ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... of the large sums of money that passed through my hands, crowded my days with schemes and anxieties, and kept me tossing, sleepless yet with wearied brain, through many a night. For pleasure I had no time; Sally I saw only for a hurried or an absent-minded hour or two at meals, or when I came up too tired to think or to talk in the evenings. Often I fell asleep over my cigar after dinner, while she dressed and hastened, with her wreathed head and bare shoulders, to a reception or a ball. A third of my time was spent in New ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... rejoicing over their reunion. Who would have thought, to see them there, that any thing could be wanting to the perfect happiness of these four people? But Rico knew another tale. In the midst of all the merriment, he became absent-minded, and fell into one of his old dreamy moods. It did not last as long as formerly, however. He must have reached a satisfactory conclusion pretty soon; for suddenly his reverie was over, and he said these words, with the utmost decision, "Stineli must be my wife this very ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri
... Whitwell explained. "I got it out of him in spite of him, I guess." He had sat down with his hat on, as his absent-minded habit was, and he now braced his knees against the edge of the table. Cynthia sat across it from him with her head drooped over it, drawing vague figures on the board with her finger. "What are ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... to break up housekeeping and go to Europe on a matter of business. This was the first of January. The fact that the weather suddenly turned cold to the extent of thirty degrees below zero did not seem to attract his attention. He was absent-minded on that question! When it came to going out to hire an expressman to haul his effects to a storehouse he found no one would venture out with his horse until the thermometer should rise, and his astonishment knew no bounds! ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... she told Lydia and Sally, on a hot afternoon when they were upstairs in the cool window end of the hallway, patiently going over boxes and boxes of old letters. She had been absent-minded and silent that day, and Sally had once or twice looked at her ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... abs and trahere), the process or result of drawing away; that which is drawn away, separated or derived. Thus the noun is used for a summary, compendium or epitome of a larger work, the gist of which is given in a concentrated form. Similarly an absent-minded man is said to be "abstracted,'' as paying no attention to the matter in hand. In philosophy the word has several closely related technical senses. (1) In formal logic it is applied to those terms which denote qualities, attributes, circumstances, as opposed ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... different from his tall younger brother. He was slimly built, scarcely the average height, and not prone to many words. He was given to day-dreams, too, and often did such absent-minded things as to cause his father much mental perturbation, and at times to wish that he had not given him so much schooling, but had trained him for a farmer instead of a school-teacher. Still he was immensely proud of his two sons, and as he saw them standing together, he decided that they looked ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... and remained gloomy; absent-minded rather than thoughtful, feeling in his soul a new anxiety as yet undefined, the secret ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... who had first miscalled her shadow a "shabby"; who had asked to be "merinded to merember," like her absent-minded Aunt Anne; and who had unconsciously parodied Split's passionate rendering of a line of the old song, "I feel his presence near" into "I feel ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... with frayed carpets and faded hangings in which penniless woman-haters (the last of a noble line) sit and brood, living alone with equally gruff, woman-hating family retainers. Sometimes, too, there was an absent-minded dreamer, and villainous business men worked indefatigably in the interests ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... meant, was constrained and short. The maiden was absent-minded, and though she would have entered into it with heart and soul, she found herself unable to bend her will, and even while confessing, her thoughts were fixed on her lover, whom she knew was impatiently waiting to embrace her as soon as she had ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... was hurriedly examining the visitor. He was a young man, about twenty-seven, decently dressed, well made, slender and dark, with a pale, rather muddy-coloured face and black lustreless eyes. He seemed rather thoughtful and absent-minded, spoke jerkily and ungrammatically, transposing words in rather a strange way, and getting muddled if he attempted a sentence of any length. Liputin was perfectly aware of Stepan Trofimovitch's alarm, and was obviously pleased at it. He sat down in a wicker chair which he ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... hands was to start a "sing-song". The general tone of these concerts was decidedly patriotic. "God save the Queen" and "Rule Britannia" were thrown in every now and then, but seldom, if ever, I am glad to say, that wearisome doggerel "The Absent-Minded Beggar". It is quite a mistake, by the way, to suppose that Mr. Kipling's poetry is widely appreciated by the rank and file of the army. From what I have noticed, the less intelligent soldiers know nothing at all ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... occasion, when he had called old Mr. Sanderson's attention to the fact that he had signed a letter to a firm of stockbrokers, "Your loving husband, Macnaughton, Macnaughton, Macnaughton, Macnaughton & Macnaughton." Mr. Sanderson, always a little absent-minded, corrected the error, and promised the boy his articles. Five years later John Blunt was ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... equal propriety "Beauty and the Beast." Monsieur Ballanche's face had been frightfully disfigured by an operation, and though his friends thought that his fine eyes and expression redeemed his appearance, he was, to strangers, particularly unprepossessing. He was, moreover, very absent-minded. When he joined Madame Recamier at Rome, she noticed, during an evening walk with him, that he had no hat. In reply to her questions, he quietly said, "Oh, yes, he had left it at Alexandria." He had, in fact, forgotten it; and it never occurred to him to replace it by another. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... meetings are not communities consisting of whole men, but assemblages in which each man takes a part and is present, indeed, with his whole body, but by no means with his whole being. The masses are absent-minded; and presence of mind only comes to them when through the lips of some true prophet the Spirit descends upon them. But when that happens, they take no decisions; they do not get beside themselves; rather, they sink into themselves. ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... that he hasn't extrodinary teeth. His complexion is very fair, and he doesn't ware a beard. He is a very good man and a very funny one. He has got a temper, but we all of us have in this family. He is the loveliest man I ever saw or ever hope to see—and oh, so absent-minded. He does tell perfectly delightful stories. Clara and I used to sit on each arm of his chair and listen while he told us stories about ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... she was quiet, and absent-minded, and as soon as the meal was over she went back to ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... awfully absent-minded these days; you would laugh at some of the funny things I do. I ride on the cars miles past my street, and wander about and forget where I am going. Sometimes I think of things and then ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... at one time Newman "took to walking from his house" (in town) "to the college and back in cap and gown." This, however, was not such a startling vagary of costume in a London street as was that of a certain professor of my acquaintance, very absent-minded and dreamy, who, intent on making some abstruse point clear to a young lady pupil, walked one evening round and round a London square with her, talking earnestly, and attired in ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... unless it was that an uneasy conscience had driven him from the field. It did not occur to her that the man had under strong provocation merely yielded to the prompting of a somewhat hasty temper. In the meanwhile he crossed the room in an absent-minded manner and presently found himself near Jessy, who made room for him at ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... I go to heaps." He wondered if his reply sounded very foolish and absent-minded. He rushed on to cover it. "I've seen this particular play a dozen times; it's a great favourite of mine. I—I'm very keen ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... silent in her uncertainty. His expression was grave, almost absent-minded. And again her troubled eyes rested on the disturbing symmetry of feature and figure in all the unconscious grace of repose; and in his immobility there seemed something even of nobility about him which she ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers |
