"Distracting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... circumstance. Bestial thoughts crystallize into habits of drunkenness and sensuality, which solidify into circumstances of destitution and disease: impure thoughts of every kind crystallize into enervating and confusing habits, which solidify into distracting and adverse circumstances: thoughts of fear, doubt, and indecision crystallize into weak, unmanly, and irresolute habits, which solidify into circumstances of failure, indigence, and slavish dependence: lazy thoughts crystallize into habits ...
— As a Man Thinketh • James Allen
... concert most people are instinctively anxious to see the performers, thus distracting the purely musical impression, and the reasonable suggestion of Goethe that the performers should be invisible is ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... have said, a younger brother remarkably like him in character and appearance, who greatly assisted in his escape. This brother, Michael, made his appearance now in one part of the country, now in another, letting it be supposed that he was Brian; thus distracting the attention of those in search of the culprit. He is himself, from what I have heard, fully as determined a ruffian as Brian, and has long followed the same ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... and offered prayers and supplications for the averting of this plague. This order consisted chiefly of persons of the lower class, who were either actuated by sincere contrition or who joyfully availed themselves of this pretext for idleness and were hurried along with the tide of distracting frenzy. But as these brotherhoods gained in repute, and were welcomed by the people with veneration and enthusiasm, many nobles and ecclesiastics ranged themselves under their standard; and their bands were not unfrequently augmented by children, honorable women, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... be fairly acting, But this is most distracting! If, when in liquor he would kick ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... expanded abbreviations, are shown in the e-text with braces ("curly brackets"): co{n}nyng{e}. Readers who find this added information distracting may globally delete all braces in the body text; they are not used for any other purpose. Italic markings were omitted from forms such as "Fol. 51a." where the a or b was consistently italicized. Whole-word ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various
... and carried into the nearest house, more dead than alive. There she found Mrs. Archbold in a pitiable state. That lady had been looking on the fire, with the key in her pocket, by taking which she was like to be a murderess: her terror and remorse were distracting, and the revulsion had thrown her into violent hysterics. Mrs. Dodd plucked up a little strength, and characteristically enough tottered to her assistance, and called for the best remedies, and then took her hand and pressed it, and whispered soothingly ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... progress. The poet, the painter, the sculptor, the novelist, the dramatist, if their work is to be other than ephemeral, need an atmosphere of repose and quietude wherein the mind can work and fashion those ideas which are to be given material expression free from all distracting and disturbing influences. Where can the aspiring artist, under modern conditions of life, find such a haven of rest? And even if he find it I fear he too often has no desire to cast anchor there. The distractions of life are frequently alluring, and the embryonic artists ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... an immense additional advantage from his habitual seclusion, from his unconcern with the distracting customs of society, and, most of all, from the imperturbable abstraction under which he studied and observed. With him there was no blending of collateral subjects, no permitted intrusion of things irrelevant or trivial, so that the channels of his thoughts were always ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... Chichester Fortescue. He is agreeable and gentlemanlike and good, and Lotty and Harriet got on very well with him, which is more than I am doing with my letter, for they are singing me out of all my little sense—"Wha's at the window" was distracting enough, but "Saw ye the robber" ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... thing after a few moment's consideration thereof. The average person allows his involuntary attention to rest upon every trifling thing, and to be distracted by the idlest appeals to the senses. He finds it most difficult to either shut out these distracting appeals to the senses, and equally hard to hold the attention to some uninteresting thing. His attention is almost free of control by the will, and the person is a slave to his perceptive powers and to his imagination, instead of, being ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... pistol cut her short. Then, instantly, in the dim depths of the house, shot followed shot in bewildering succession, faster, faster, filling the place with a distracting tumult. ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... atmosphere of another house rolled in, overwhelming and fiery, seductive and cruel, through the Blunt vibration, bursting through it as through tissue paper and filling my heart with sweet murmurs and distracting images, till it seemed to break, leaving an empty stillness ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... justify Mather's words, when he stigmatizes the necromancy of his day as 'a terrible Plague of Evil Angels,' or, in still plainer speech, as 'a prodigious descent of devils upon divers places near the centre of this Province.' And how better can we characterize this confused and distracting babblement which gives no good ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... exclaimed, "I am a changed, a converted man. These strange, sweet emotions, this unspeakable gladness of heart in the midst of so much that is painful and distracting, prove that I am. I have not taken this journey ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... a victim, might save us by distracting them until we could get away," he went on, "just as the wolves stop to devour the dogs and give the sleigh another start. But—I see no chance of any other ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... in his dress and not given to overmuch speech. The Engineer-Lieutenant, whose outlook on life alternated between moods of fierce hilarity and brooding melancholy, according to the tenour of a correspondence with a distracting Red Cross nursing sister exposed to the perils of caring for good-looking military officers in the plains of Flanders. Lastly, the Captain of Marines; he was the musician of the Mess, much in demand at sing-songs; editor, moreover, of the Wardroom ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... one hearkening for a finer voice amid all this distracting noise; she could hear neither. She made feverish haste to clear away and wash her dishes, that she might creep to her own room under the eaves. Through her open casement came up to her the sounds of the April night: a ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... impudence of the rogue intensified the atmosphere of unreality, which was most distracting. Doggedly my bewildered brain was labouring in the midst of a litter of fiction, which had suddenly changed into truth. The impossible had come to pass. The cracksman of the novel had come to life, and I was reluctantly witnessing, in comparative comfort and at my own ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... amid the splendor of their purfled silks and the glitter of their torchlight pageantry, has yielded to sullen cynicism—the cynicism of arrested ruin and unreverend age. All that was satisfying to the senses and distracting to the eyesight in their transitory pomp has passed away, leaving a sinister and naked shell. Remembrance can but summon up the crimes, the madness, the trivialities of those dead palace-builders. An atmosphere of evil clings to the dilapidated walls, as though the tainted spirit of the infamous ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... this farewell, it is distracting to come precipitately upon the fine gentleman with the great wig and the Frenchified airs. This is nothing against "hearty, cheerful Mr. Cotton's strain" of which, in Walton's own setting and in his own poetical issues, I am a sufficient admirer. Cotton was a clever literary ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... like that of a more southern region), the precision of the outlines in the clear air and the beauty of the colors in their transparency—so the enjoyment of nature is here a purely artistic one, free from everything distracting. Everywhere else the ideas of contrast appear and the enjoyment of nature is elegiac or satiric. It is true that these sentiments exist only for us. To Horace, Tibur seemed more modern than does Tivoli to us, as is proved by his 'Beatus ille qui procul negotiis,' but it ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... outdistance the clumsy brute in the open, I dropped from my leafy sanctuary intent only on distracting the thing's attention from Perry long enough to enable the old man to gain the safety of a larger tree. There were many close by which not even the terrific strength of that ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... principles of vacancy (nirwana?) and abstraction from all material objects, in order that truth maybe studied in solitude and silence, and the unfathomable point of principle attained free from the distracting influences of sound or smell."—Ts[)i]h-foo yaen-kwei, A.D. ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... precincts; I should have cried out against the wickedness; but I let Mansoul lie wallowing in it, until it had driven Emmanuel from its borders!' With these things he also charged all the lords and gentry of Mansoul, to the almost distracting ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... my landing at Alexandretta was alone responsible for the continuance of my dotage, and hoped that fresh scenes would banish Carlotta's distracting image. But no, it was one of the many vain reflections on which I based a false philosophy. Whether in Beyrout, or the land of the "sweet singer of Persephone," or Alexandria, or on the Cannebiere of Marseilles, or in ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... space to work out with herself the question, whether care had best be driven out or grappled with. Mrs. Lyddell was indeed in no state to grapple with it, and there was nothing to be done but to take the best present means of distracting her attention; yet it was to be feared that, though put aside, the enemy was not conquered,—and might there not be ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... my desk in my quiet room on Elm Street, with a feeling of being half-in and half-out of the state of matrimony. In some ways I liked being alone. A greater power of concentration resulted. With no disturbing household influences, no distracting interests, I wrote all the morning, but at night, when my work was done, my mind went out toward my young wife. To have her moving about the room would have been pleasant. To walk with her to the studio would have been a joy. As a novelist, I bitterly ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... the boundary between Pahang and Selangor. They went, at the invitation of the British Government, to bring to a final conclusion the protracted struggles, in which Malay Rajas, foreign mercenaries, and Chinese miners had alike been engaged for years, distracting the State of Selangor, and breaking the peace of the Peninsula. A few months later, the Pahang Army, albeit sadly reduced by cholera, poured back again across the mountains, the survivors slapping their chests ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... extravagantly rich. The next morning, as he was about to settle himself to tasks for some time terribly neglected, with a sense that after all it was rather a relief not to be sitting so close to Sir Dominick Ferrand, who had become dreadfully distracting; at the very moment at which he habitually addressed his preliminary invocation to the muse, he was agitated by the arrival of a telegram which proved to be an urgent request from Mr. Locket that he would immediately ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... when the bank was closed Mostyn went home. He walked for the sake of the exercise and with the hope of distracting his mind from the many matters which bore more or less heavily on his tired brain. As he approached the gate the sight of his little son playing on the lawn with a miniature tennis racket and ball gave him a thrill of delight. The boy was certainly beautiful. He had great brown eyes, rich ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... was chiefly occupied in considering the distracting fact of his own yielding to the wishes of a man he disliked as sincerely as he did Mr. Aston's cousin. Peter Masters was taking him with him in precisely the same manner he had made Christopher convey him to Marden. It was quite useless to pretend he was going of his own will; ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... life. In modern dress, as in his pictures to many of Mrs. Molesworth's stories, there is a certain unlikeness to life as we know it, which does not detract from the effect of the design; but while this is perhaps distracting in stories of contemporary life, it is a very real advantage in those of folk-lore, which have no actual date, and are therefore unafraid of anachronisms of any kind. The spirit of his work is, as it should be, intensely serious, yet the conceits which are ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... In the hope of distracting his thoughts from his disappointment, Prince Pueckler decided to make a lengthened tour through Wales and Ireland, and with this object in view he set out in July 1828. Before his departure, however, he had an interesting ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... under the lace of her sleeve. If she moved her left hand to frighten them off from one point, another band fixed themselves upon her right hand. Not only did they flutter and sting, but they sang in a heathenish manner, distracting her attention as she tried to write, as she tried to waft them off. Nor was this all. Myriads of June-bugs and millers hovered round, flung themselves into the lamps, and made disagreeable funeral-pyres of themselves, tumbling noisily on her paper in their last unpleasant ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... how two of the Three Epicurean Principles (which, I need not tell, you [Transcriber's Note: tell you,] are Magnitude, Figure and Weight) are Themselves Deducible from Matter and Motion; since the Latter of these Variously Agitating, and, as it were, Distracting the Former, must needs disjoyne its parts; which being Actually separated must Each of them necessarily both be of some Size, and obtain some shape or other. Nor did I add to our Principles the Aristotelean ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... manufactures, and the growth of its emigration, all quickened by the richness of its marvellous new gold-fields,—until, unexpectedly and suddenly, it found itself once again plunged into political controversy more distracting and more ominous than the worst it ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... foreign policy Cromwell was irresolute, vacillating and tricky. "A study of the foreign policy of the Protectorate," writes Mr. Gardiner, "reveals a distracting maze of fluctuations. Oliver is seen alternately courting France and ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... went off into fits of laughter at the long and quizzical shadows on the ground. When the cadets dance a figure, their shadows look like a company of sickly, melancholy monkeys, which dodge about in a distracting way, and look so irresistibly funny, that everybody shouts with laughter—and it is a very ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... sits for hours and hours, with not even a book for an apology, staring down into the black old roaring pot. It has a sort of hypnotic effect after a time. And you'd be surprised how quickly one gets used to the noise. To me it's even less distracting than sheer silence. You don't know, after all, what on earth sheer silence means—even at Widderstone. But one can just realize a water-nymph. They chatter; but, thank Heaven, it's not articulate.' He handed Lawford a cup with a certain niceness and ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... thrills of misgiving we see In the artless champaign at this harlequinade, Distracting a vigil where ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... readily be imagined how distracting such a life must have been, how fatal to all mental concentration on high objects, not to speak of the habits, of which it was too sure to sow the seeds. The frequent visits to Dumfries, which his Excise work entailed, ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... cornets, with a strong force, both of foot and horse, marching directly toward the Saracens, with loud shouts, and attacked their army with great spirit. The land attack was assisted by the Christian navy, which approached the shore, making a horrible noise, and distracting the attention of the Saracens, who feared to be attacked in flank and rear. After a sharp encounter, the Saracens fled towards Ascalon, many being slain in the battle and pursuit, and others drowned, by ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... carried away by passion, wild, raving, frantic, mad, distracted, beside oneself, out of one's wits, ready to burst, bouleverse[obs3], demoniacal. lost, eperdu[Fr], tempest-tossed; haggard; ready to sink. stung to the quick, up, on one;s high ropes. exciting, absorbing, riveting, distracting &c. v.; impressive, warm, glowing, fervid, swelling, imposing, spirit-stirring, thrilling; high- wrought; soul-stirring, soul-subduing; heart-stirring, heart-swelling, heart-thrilling; agonizing &c. (painful) 830; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... remained on the defensive. Philip, with creditable exertion, collected an army of 50,000 men, to take advantage of the opportunity. Fixing his own residence at Cambray, he gave the command in the field to the Duke of Savoy; and Philibert, after having succeeded in distracting the attention of the enemy, and leading them to expect him in Champagne, turned suddenly into Picardy, and invested the town of St. Quentin. The garrison must soon have yielded, had not Coligny, the Admiral of France, broken through the siege lines and carried in reinforcements. ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... is more attractive than the Appian. Reading the classics, or conversing with those old Greeks and Latins in their surviving works, is like walking amid the stars and constellations, a high and by way serene to travel. Indeed, the true scholar will be not a little of an astronomer in his habits. Distracting cares will not be allowed to obstruct the field of his vision, for the higher regions of literature, like astronomy, ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... struggle longer against such injustice, he lived through the night, and came down late to breakfast, which he found stale, and without the compensating advantage of finding himself alone at the table. Some ladies had lingered there to clear up on the best authority the distracting rumors concerning him which they had heard the day before. Was it true that he had intended to spend the rest of the winter in logging? and was it true that he was going to give up the Free Press? and was it true that Henry Bird was going to be the ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... ornaments of tarnished silver, and an eagle's plume was fastened into his cap with a large gold Italian coin. He stared hard at the maiden, but vouchsafed her no token of greeting—only distressed her considerably by distracting her father's attention from her mule by his questions about the journey, all in the same rude, coarse tone and phraseology. Some amount of illusion was dispelled. Christina was quite prepared to find the mountain lords dangerous ruffians, but she had expected the graces of courtesy ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... spoken at the wrong moment, in the wrong tone, might be disastrously misunderstood; and the distracting sense of being purely responsible for his own trouble, stung him to renewed irritation. All capacity for work had been dispelled by that vexatiously engaging son of his, with his heart in India and ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... average, and recruiting died down to manageable proportions. There was a quite genuine belief that the war might easily be too exclusively considered; that for the great mass of people it was a disturbing and distracting rather than a vital interest. The phase "Business as Usual" ran about the world, and the papers abounded in articles in which going on as though there was no war at all was demonstrated to be the truest form of patriotism. "Leave things ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... evening of the last day of June, 2,000 picked men, headed by Gustavus Hamilton's grenadiers, dashed into the ford at the stroke of a bell. At the same instant all the English batteries on the Leinster side opened on the Irish town, wrapping the river in smoke, and distracting the attention of the besiegers. Saint Ruth was, at this critical moment, at his camp two miles off, and D'Usson, the commandant, was also absent from his post. In half an hour the Williamites were masters of the heap of rubbish which had once been ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... husband's uncle took a cruel revenge for the disappointment, of which she had been the cause, by awakening suspicion of the fidelity of Josephine in the mind of her husband. The distracting doubts he raised made his nephew wretched; to such a degree was his jealousy excited, that he endeavored, by legal proceedings, to procure a divorce; but the evidence he adduced utterly failed, and after some ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... Gradually the distracting noise had subsided. The boats came no longer in splashing clusters of three or four together, but dropped alongside singly, in a subdued buzz of expostulation cut short by a "Not a pace more! You go to the devil!" from some man staggering up the accommodation-ladder—a dark figure, with a long ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... secured within the Union may be sought for without it, must be evident to even a careless observer of our race. It is time to be up and doing. There is yet time to remove the causes of dissension and alienation which are now distracting, and have for years past ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... whirled and reeled through the great street of Toledo at this season bewildered and pained me. Though I knew and was accustomed to the wild vagaries of carnival, yet this year they seemed to be out of place, distracting, senseless, ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... avoid it at that time. The ceremonies, in general, are of the most tedious and wearisome kind; the heat and crowd at every one of them, painfully oppressive; the noise, hubbub, and confusion, quite distracting. We abandoned the pursuit of these shows, very early in the proceedings, and betook ourselves to the Ruins again. But, we plunged into the crowd for a share of the best of the sights; and what we saw, I will describe ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... blushing, and showing a distracting row of little teeth in one of her infrequent laughs, "oh, you know what I mean." She withdrew her arm gently, and became interested in the selection of certain wayside bay leaves as they passed along. "All the same, I don't believe in this treasure," she said abruptly, ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... his favorite city, he turned his back on its walls, and made a growling retreat to his bowery, or country seat, which was situated about two miles off; where he passed the remainder of his days in patriarchal retirement. There he enjoyed that tranquillity of mind which he had never known amid the distracting cares of government, and tasted the sweets of absolute and uncontrolled authority, which his factious subjects had so often dashed ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... make a strong and stalwart man turn pale with sickness and horror, much less a baby-boy of three or four years old. There lay the man, all through the dreadful night, with swarms on swarms and myriads upon myriads of stinging insects, biting and sipping, and sucking his life-blood with distracting agony away. Ah! think of the hellish torture often practiced by those bloody pirates upon their victims in the West Indies! The bound man's eyes were closed, the lips and cheeks puffed and swollen out of all human proportions, and the inflamed body was one glowing red and angry surface. No needle ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... on excluding from the solitude of her soul every distracting thought and care thus the better to dispose it for the permanent abode of the divine Guest who will have the heart to Himself, she withdrew more and more from all intercourse with creatures, except that required by charity and courtesy. Seeing in the recreative reading provided ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... It seemed to take all life out of my limbs. I thought I might just as well stand where I was and wait. I did not think I had many seconds. . . ." Suddenly the steam ceased blowing off. The noise, he remarked, had been distracting, but the silence ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... this leafy retreat, both of whom we have seen before, but under circumstances so distracting that we took little note of their appearance, fine as it undoubtedly was in either case. However, we are more at leisure now, and will pause for an instant to give you some idea of these two prominent men, with one of whom our story will henceforth ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... "She isn't posing," he thought, "but she ought to be painted. She ought always to be painted, each time one sees her, for everything about her suggests a portrait. That blue ribbon in her hair is fairly distracting! What the dickens is the reason one wants to look at her all the time! ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... circles and triangles, globes, rings, stars, flowers, figures of animals, even parts of the human body,—mystic symbols, to be deciphered only by the initiated. Ah! could I but have read them as in a book, construing all their allegorical significance, how near might I not have come to the distracting secret of this people! Gazing upon them, my thought flew back a thousand years, and my feeble, foolish conjectures, like butterflies at sea, were lost in ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... volumes display their freshly marbled edges; women sing, husbands whistle, children shout; the carpenter saws his planks, a copper-turner makes the metal screech; all kinds of industries combine to produce a noise which the number of instruments renders distracting. ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... are they?" asked Sara, in the most delighted bewilderment. The friendly little things fluttered and chattered and chirruped around her in the most distracting way, brushing her face with their wings in their eagerness to get acquainted, and even getting their silver sandals tangled in ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... his father, he had been famed for his temperance and discretion. But when Mardi was forever shut out; and he remembered the law of his isle, interdicting abdication to its kings; he gradually fell into desperate courses, to drown the emotions at times distracting him. ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... the apartment. Hastening toward them, she fell on the bosom of her father; and while she bathed his face and hands with her glad tears, he, too, wept, and mingled blessings with his caresses. No coldness here met his paternal heart: no distracting confusions tore her from his arms; no averted looks, by turns, alarmed and chilled the bosom of tenderness. All was innocence and duty in Helen's breast; and every ingenuous action showed its affection and its joy. The estranged heart ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... material, the style of the textile is changed, elongated if the stripe is vertical, and widening if it is horizontal. If the main stripe is cut at right angles with a second stripe, the textile appears more complicated and repose is lost. The same is true of checks, but no pattern is more distracting than large plaids, especially when used for waists, because the regularity of the design renders very conspicuous any inequalities in the shoulders or bust, and the great variety of colors detracts from the dignity of the dress. With small checks and narrow, ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... set out on the mission in a state of comic ill-humour, which bid fair to render Mrs. Aikinside's will a very original document indeed, and foreboded for that good old lady herself an unprecedented and distracting afternoon. ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... Henrietta ceased, she found that Barbara had fainted; and the minister, in a whirl of distracting thoughts to which he was unaccustomed, ascribing his child's swoon to terror, placed the ominous paper in the Bible, and determined to make known the whole mysterious case at once to Mr. Craigie, the chief magistrate of Aberdeen. Not for a single instant ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... is not a psychological unity, nor a "single being," subject to "the mental unity of crowds."[296] The panic is the crowd in dissolution. All effective methods of dispersing crowds involve some method of distracting attention, breaking up the tension, and dissolving the ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... popular. He prided himself on the fact that his playing was addressed rather to the hearts than to the sensitive ears of his audiences, and during his later years he adopted certain mannerisms by way of distracting attention from his somewhat imperfect performances. He never made any pretension to being a musician of the modern school, nor of any regularly recognised school of music, but his concert pieces were his own compositions, of no great merit, and he still more delighted his audiences ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... the Episcopal church, where the service was beautifully read and sung; but in a city in which men preponderate the congregation was mainly composed of women, who fluttered their fans in a truly distracting way. Except for the church-going there were few perceptible signs of Sunday in Denver, which was full of rowdies from the mountain mining camps. You can hardly imagine the delight of joining in those grand old prayers after so long a deprivation. The "Te Deum" sounded heavenly in its magnificence; ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... The distracting operations of settling the studio, and the frequent excursions to neighboring shops to buy articles necessary to our meagre housekeeping, did much towards taking my mind off the incident of the night, but every time I entered the sitting-room or the bedroom ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... make them out if satisfied as to the eligibility of the parties for such a contract, he dismissed the aspirant for marital honors. As the judge entered the shaded coolness of his library after a distracting day spent in the discussion of a complicated will-case, the refreshing atmosphere of refinement and quiet and home exercised so powerful an influence over his tired nerves that he straightway forgot all professional and other cares, and stretching ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... sentiments, of powerful sympathies, of vague apprehensions, suddenly seized on the breast of the young Countess! One can hardly imagine their force—to the very verge of distracting her. She turned on her fauteuil and closed her beautiful eyes, as if to keep back the tears which rolled under the fringe ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... a bank, who advances not only the land, but the money to work it, and doesn't ride around in a buggy with a couple of charmingly distracting young ladies." ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... attempt to extricate myself. Excuse me for a part I cannot play. In this remote apartment, you perhaps Have sought a refuge from the world, to pour The inmost wishes of your secret heart Remote from man's distracting eye. By me, Unhappy that I am, your heavenly dreams Are all disturbed, and the atonement now Must be my speedy ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Love, can steadily endure Clash of opposing interests; perplexed web Of crosses that distracting clog advance: In thickest storm of contest waxes stronger At momentary thought of home, of her, His gracious wife, and ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... vitality involved him in a web of other men's fortunes, and in national crises. A biographer is constantly being beguiled into describing an era as well as its representative, into writing history instead of a life. Within an author's legitimate province the perplexities are numberless and distracting. Never surely was there a career more beset with insoluble riddles and unmanageable dilemmas. At each step, in the relation of the most ordinary incidents, exactness of dates, or precision of events, appears unattainable. Fiction is ever ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... coos Eulalia, glidin' up and huggin' her impetuous, "how could anyone keep their heads straight before such absolutely distracting beauty? See, you have inspired them all with the spirit of chivalry. And now you must put them to the test. Name some heroic deed for each to perform. Begin with Reggy. ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... "Your distracting sex," said he with a moment's gallantry, "is usually the cause of quarrel. I've noticed that they both seemed to admire Miss Irene ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... voice, to die, "If death will cure his heaving heart of pain— "His heaving heart now bleeds— "Foul tyrant! o'er the gilded hour "That beams with all the blaze of power, "Remorse shall spread her thickest shroud; "The furies in thy tortur'd ear "Shall howl, with curses deep, and loud, "And wake distracting fear! "I see the ghastly spectre rise, "Whose blood is cold, whose hollow eyes "Seem from his head to start— "With upright hair, and shiv'ring heart, Dark o'er thy midnight couch he bends, And clasps thy shrinking frame, thy ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams
... a spotty or too often repeated design is distracting. Blues and violets soothe, while reds, yellows, and sometimes greens are exciting and stimulating colors. We so often send our children to study and amuse themselves in their room, but have we done our share in providing them ...
— Better Homes in America • Mrs W.B. Meloney
... packets of 50, 20, and 10 sen notes, and some rouleaux of very neat copper coins. The initiated recognise the different denominations of paper money at a glance by their differing colours and sizes, but at present they are a distracting mystery to me. The notes are pieces of stiff paper with Chinese characters at the corners, near which, with exceptionally good eyes or a magnifying glass, one can discern an English word denoting ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel in his heart by any means waggish then. The truth is, that he tried to be smart, as a means of distracting his own attention, and keeping down his terror; for the spectre's voice disturbed the very marrow in ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... descendant of the blood-thirsty wolf or jackal. Even frogs and toads and fishes may be tamed, provided they have the uniform sympathy of one person, with whom they become intimately acquainted without the distracting and varying attentions of strangers. And surely all God's people, however serious and savage, great or small, like to play. Whales and elephants, dancing, humming gnats, and invisibly small mischievous microbes,—all ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... nervous excitement, when the noise of a light footstep is distracting. In such a condition were the authors of the Tracts in 1833, and all their subsequent proceedings have shown that the disorder was still upon them. Beset by their horror of the nineteenth century, ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... Gnosticism which had not essentially affected Christendom,[FN339] found in Al-Islam a rich fallow and gained strength and luxuriance by the solid materialism and conservatism of its basis. Such were a few of the distracting and resolving influences which Time had brought to bear upon the True Believer and which, after some half a dozen generations, had separated the several schisms by a wider breach than that which ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... the evils that were distracting Europe, a general council was summoned to meet at Constance. The council was called at the desire of the emperor Sigismund, by one of the three rival popes, John XXIII. The demand for a council had been far from welcome ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... Doc rush at me—but too late. The letter and contents have wholly vanished. The youngest Miss Mills quiets us—urgently distracting us, in fact, by calling our attention to the immediate completion of our joint production; "For now," she says, "with our new reinforcement, we can, with becoming diligence, soon have it ready for both printer and engraver, and then we'll wake up the ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... dirtiest and darkest streets that ever were seen in the world (I thought) and in such a distracting state of confusion that I wondered how the people kept their senses, until we passed into sudden quietude under an old gateway and drove on through a silent square until we came to an odd nook in a corner, where there was an entrance up a steep, broad flight of ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... cold, then finally announced that tubercular complications had set in, and as nearly as Von Barwig could find out the boy was now rapidly wasting away with the dreaded white disease. Von Barwig looked around him helplessly; the light was bad, the air rank poison and the noise and commotion distracting. ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... with experience, and when you no longer have any grave fears about your ability to make a living at the trade, your mind turns from elementary problems to the less distracting task of finding out how to make your discovered degree of talent count for all that it may be worth. After trying your hand at a variety of subjects, you will find your forte. But take your time about it. Every adventure in composition teaches you something new about yourself, your art and the ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... distracting thing to solve. It was not only perplexing, but exceedingly trying, to feel that at any moment a visit might be ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... skipper as being unwell and quite unfit for duty; but that scarcely conveys a correct impression of his condition. The fact was that he was well enough to be up and about on deck, but he was constantly worried with headache of the most distracting kind, and, what was still worse, his intellect seemed to be failing him: he suffered from frequent total lapses of memory, stopping short in the midst of a conversation simply because he forgot in a moment what he was talking about; and he was ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... examples of two different ways in which inconvenient or distracting particulars of history or tradition might be reduced to serve the ends of imagination and the heroic design. Njla keeps up, more or less, throughout, a continuous history of a number of people of importance, but always with a regard for the principal plot of the story. ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... inside and out with my handkerchief, I offered it to her with distinguished grace. She sat hurriedly down on the ground with as much dignity as possible, and then, recognising me as the person who picked up the contents of Aunt Celia's bag, she said, dimpling in the most distracting manner (that's another thing there ought to be a law against): 'Thank you again; you seem to be a sort ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... hitherto disastrous results of those ill-fated words, and would only too willingly have done anything in her power to make atonement for the wrong that had been committed in the past. It was whilst almost frenzied with thoughts of this distracting kind, that vague rumours reached her ears of a great battle which had been fought, and ere long this was followed by the news that the Pretender's forces had been successful, and that he was about to be crowned at Scone. The shades of evening were fast ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... Botha, with the double intention of making an offensive move and of distracting the wavering burghers from a close examination of Lord Kitchener's proclamation, assembled his forces in the second week of September in the Ermelo district. Thence he moved them rapidly towards Natal, with the result that the volunteers of that colony had once more to grasp ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Martin's-le-Grand, and communicated it to the Cowfold mail-cart driver. All round the shop were clocks of numerous patterns, but mostly of two types, one Dutch, and one with oak or mahogany case. Perhaps a dozen or so were generally going, and it was rather distracting to a visitor to see the pendulums of the Dutch clocks wagging at different rates, some with excited haste, others with solemn gravity, and no two at the same speed. Each seemed confident it was in direct communication with Greenwich Observatory, and paid not the slightest attention to the others. ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... exclaimed, almost beside herself. And without reflecting and hesitating, regardless of the fact that she was undressed, her shoulders bare, and her feet incased in small slippers of crimson velvet—forgetful of every thing but the distracting thought that the emperor was leaving her, without even a farewell, she ran across the room toward ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... it might say, "Sorry, I just glitched". 2. /vi./ To commit a glitch. See {gritch}. 3. /vt./ [Stanford] To scroll a display screen, esp. several lines at a time. {{WAITS}} terminals used to do this in order to avoid continuous scrolling, which is distracting to the eye. 4. obs. Same ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... desire to turn his work over to another. He tried instead to find out what it was that seemed to be distracting the attention of the people and keeping them from making purchases. Nor was he long getting at ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... sea is not unmixed with many things hurtful." Her face blushed with shame and she continued limpingly: "And my love is not—is not without evil. Oh, John, I feel deep shame in telling you, but my love is terribly jealous. At times a jealousy comes over me so fierce and so distracting that under its influence I am mad, John, mad. I then see nothing in its true light; my eyes seem filled with—with blood, and all things appear red or black and—and—oh! John, I pray you never again cause me jealousy. It makes a ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... conducted by her partner, selecting such gentlemen as she pleased, and grouping them in one spot, in order to form a bouquet. "You couldn't have done it better if you had been taught in Paris.—Forward! forward!" to a timid couple, to whom the intricacies of the figure were evidently distracting. "Belle donne! belle donne! Victory to the brave! Fear nothing.—Orsetti, keep the circle down there; you are out of your place. You will never form the bouquet if you don't—Louder! louder!" to the musicians, holding up his stick at them ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... old stone house with time enough for a leisurely walk amid the music of the bells, arriving at the church-door before the service commenced, without hurry, quiet and composed, and ready to join in the worship without distracting thoughts. The church was full, Aunt Faith had two pews, one for herself with Gem and Tom, another immediately behind for Sibyl, Bessie, and Hugh. As the organ was pealing out the opening voluntary, a young girl came up the aisle and entered the first seat; ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... of any positive news from the field of battle, even in the heart of Brussels, at this crisis, when everything that was dear and valuable to either party was at stake, was at one instant nearly distracting in its torturing suspense to the wrung nerves, and at another insensibly blunted them into a kind of amalgamation with the Belgic philosophy. At certain houses, as well as at public offices, news, I doubt not, arrived; but no means were taken to - promulgate ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... enjoyment was upon him. "Such a trip as we had into Cornwall just after Longfellow went away! . . . Sometimes we travelled all night, sometimes all day, sometimes both. . . . Heavens! If you could have seen the necks of bottles, distracting in their immense varieties of shape, peering out of the carriage pockets! If you could have witnessed the deep devotion of the post-boys, the wild attachment of the hostlers, the maniac glee of the waiters! If you could ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... was as nothing compared to that of her God, who would punish her for denying His existence with everlasting fire. Unable to hide her terrible agitation, she would fly to her room, her heart bursting with anguish, and casting herself on her knees cry out for deliverance from such distracting thoughts. After one of these stormy periods, followed by swift compunction, she would be able again to meet and speak to her daughter in a frame of mind which by contrast ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... set up a louder and more distracting yell. Getting desperate, Anson seized her in his arms, and, despite her struggles, began tossing her on his shoulder. The child understood him and ceased to cry, especially as Gearheart began to set the table, making a pleasant ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... of religion in a community so mixed must depend on the progressive education and elevation of the people. As more and more of them are freed first from distracting wants and cares, and then from sordid and materialistic views, their spiritual nature will expand. The need for God himself rather than for his gifts, will arise and increase in their hearts, and they will grow capable ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... her too well to suppose that the professor would ever captivate her imagination. He had always been within her horizon, and he served the useful purpose, from the bishop's point of view, of distracting her attention ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... much with local affairs, employing the supreme power of the State in cutting small knots which there ought to be other and better means of untying. The enormous amount of private business which takes up the time of Parliament and the thoughts of its individual members, distracting them from the proper occupations of the great council of the nation, is felt by all thinkers and observers as a serious evil, and, what is ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... engraving, or brown, antiquated autograph, fading in a little black frame, or a signet ring hanging against the book written by the crumbled hand that once wore it—only relics having the power to excite thought without distracting attention—- unobtrusive memorials of the dead with whom I am soon to live. Rich, black, old bookcases, carved all over in high relief, hold their immortal works or the records of their undying deeds. Even the writings ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... seriously. He had a first-rate power of work and an ambition as minutely organised as a German plan of invasion. His only real recreation was to go to church, but he went to parties when he had time. If he was in love with Rose Tramore this was distracting to him only in the same sense as his religion, and it was included in that department of his extremely sub-divided life. His religion indeed was of an encroaching, annexing sort. Seen from in front he looked diffident and blank, but he was ...
— The Chaperon • Henry James
... afternoon, when the curious name Zoe, sounding across the church in the strange clergyman's voice, startled the organist, who had not expected the christening to take place that day, one of the distracting thoughts which made him make so many mistakes in the music, was wondering what Jane Sands would think of the name, and whether it would rouse any suspicion in her mind and enlighten her a little as to who the baby at Mrs Gray's really was. The name was full of memories and associations to him; ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... sheep-man to talk to himself is considered a bad sign; but the present hermit had no chance to go farther in this course. The dog, dashing suddenly ahead, stopped at the corner of the shack and growled. So occupied had the herder been with his distracting duties that he had not taken much notice of the shack as he drew nearer to it; but now that the dog raised the alarm he looked and saw a blue wraith of smoke hovering over the roof. His fire-hole, it seemed, was lit. This was not unwelcome news, as any one may imagine who has lived even a few ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... you had deserted us for good, Mr. Hill," she said graciously. "I suppose Paris is very, very distracting. You must come and tell me all about it, although I am not sure whether we shall forgive you for not having written to ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... disturbed. Of course, not always and very rarely can you obtain this condition. Never mind. Do your best where you are and the great law will at least find for you all necessary conditions. Shut out all distracting conditions and impressions from the outer world. After a little effort you will be able to do so anywhere, at any time, and under any condition. All mental ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... of the room was a mirror, and Anne could just see herself in it. It was a distracting vision, for Judy had done Anne's hair up that morning, and had puffed it out over her ears and had tied it with broad black ribbon, and this effect, in combination with the sweeping blue robe, ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... off from the church, and from all other haunts where he was likely to encounter Marian, and as gradually began to frequent the Catholic chapel, and to visit Luckenough, and to throw himself as much as possible into the distracting company of the pretty elf Jacquelina. But this—while it threw Dr. Grimshaw almost into frenzy, did not help Thurston to forget the good and beautiful Marian. Indeed, by contrast, it seemed to make her ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... The distracting beauty of this coast is what are called gulches— narrow deep ravines or gorges, from 100 to 2,000 feet in depth, each with a series of cascades from 10 to 1,800 feet in height. I dislike reducing their glories to the baldness of figures, but the depth of these clefts ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... minute, he hung suspended over the dark and working water, expecting to see the student return; and, when hope was reluctantly abandoned, he arose to his feet, a startled and admonished man. Still discretion did not desert him. He saw the uselessness, and even the danger, of distracting the attention of the workmen, and the ill-fated scholar was permitted to pass away without a word of regret or a comment on his fate. None knew of his loss but the wary mariner, nor was his person missed by any of those who had spent the ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... It was a distracting time; but I determinedly, and with much self-effort, kept down the nervous agitation which might have otherwise rendered me incapable of fulfilling the duties I had undertaken to perform. By eleven o'clock in the forenoon I had secured the ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... service. These disorderly interruptions occurred on every Lord's Day, growing weekly more constant and more universal, and must have been unbearable. Some few disgusted members withdrew from the church, giving as reason that "the distracting and disturbing tumults and noises made by persons under diabolical power and delusions, preventing sometimes our hearing and understanding and profiting of the word preached; we having after many trials and experiences found no redress in this case, accounted ourselves under a necessity ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... numerous. She was a wonderful manager. Every penny of Tommy's thirty-six or thirty-eight shillings a week was bestowed to the greatest advantage, and Tommy never ventured to guess how much of it she saved. Her cleanliness in housewifery was distracting to behold. She met Simmons at the front door whenever he came home, and then and there he changed his boots for slippers, balancing himself painfully on alternate feet on the cold flags. This was because she scrubbed ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... through the market I had bought a young negress. In the evening, when I retired to rest, I perceived that my wives had prepared no bed for her, and that the unfortunate girl was extended on the ground. I rolled up my trowsers and laid them under her head as a kind of pillow. In the morning the distracting cries of the poor slave made me run to her, and I found her nearly sinking under the blows of my four wives; for once they ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... exercised in that day and limited to so small a class, it was a most vital point that this class should be qualified to discharge so responsible a duty in a spirit of devotion to the general weal unbiased by distracting motives. But under the system of private capitalism, which made every person and group economically dependent upon and exclusively concerned in the prosperity of the occupation followed by himself and ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... genius?—have been accustomed to view in so many ludicrous lights as this same subject of death; and the reason is at once obvious—yet recherche—videlicet, Death is, in itself and all that belongs to it, such a sad, cold, wild, dreary, dismal, distracting, and dreadful thing, that at times men talking about it cannot ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... a coldness, and generality, and wandering of mind in prayer: the things that are on the heart, that are distracting the mind, that have filled the soul so full that there is no room for any thing else, are all considered too small and undignified to come within the pale of a prayer, and so, with a wandering mind and a distracted heart, the Christian offers up his ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... settled down before he fell in love with you. I'm dealing with a man who has his work still to do. He thinks if he had about three years of peace and quiet and hard work, he'd put something big across. He put it up to me as a fellow-artist. I know just how he feels. I suppose I am very distracting! ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... fourth officer and half-a-dozen seamen. From her they learned the vessel's name and whereabouts, and having directed her on her way to the Porth, hurried forward again. They passed another boat similarly laden, and presently heard the distracting cries of swimmers, and drove straight into the wreckage and the struggling crowd of bodies. The life-boat rescued twenty-seven, and picked up four more on a second journey: the first seine-boat accounted for a dozen: the second (in which Hobart pulled an oar) was less fortunate, saving five only—and ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... in amusing him, or distracting his attention from anything which her intuition warned her might lead to dangerous questioning. She sang to him, and read to him, choosing lighter stories from the magazines, and preferably those in which the plot was laid ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... are quite respectable. Of course, you may not find everything just as you like it, and if it is really unpleasant, you can write me, and I shall arrange for you to return here. But Paris would be more distracting for you to live in, and in a week or two far too hot ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... wholly untrained, and in her the doctrine falls upon stony ground, for she avails herself of every unoccupied moment to stare at the horsemen and chariots that pass on the way to the Hippodrome. By this inquisitive gaping she fills her head with a thousand useless and distracting fancies; I am not always at home, and so it will be best to have the pernicious window ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Miss Davis, when she saw all these toys, "do you think you will be able to keep your mind on lessons with these delightful and distracting presents arranged around the room? Or shall I put them in the cloak room for ...
— Sunny Boy and His Playmates • Ramy Allison White
... grief and anger tortured him until midnight. Then he had a high fever and a distracting headache, and, the physical torment being the most insistent and distressing, he gave way before it. With such agonizing tears as spring from despairing wounded love he threw himself upon his bed, and his craving, suffering heart at length ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... way with the innocent and single-minded! This is what we sincere and diffident men have to contend with in affairs of the heart. Our bosoms may be torn with ten thousand distracting cares, and yet the modesty of a truly virtuous female heart shall be so absorbed in its own placid serenity as to be indifferent to the pangs it ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... regrettable was the carelessness of the shepherd who left the branches they had torn down to become dry like tinder. He spoke of many forest fires, and told all the stories he could remember in the hope of distracting Joseph's thoughts from the length of the journey. We are now about half-way, he said, disguising the truth. We shall see the city upon the evening glow in about another hour. The longest hour that I have ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... gone to the devil for him, stood and faced the drift of opinion for his sake, that Judith could have understood. But what was the spinning of verses to a woman's portion of loving and being loved? Even Alida, through all her distracting anxieties, had in her heart the thrice-blessed leaven, reasoned the woman of the plains, who might, according to modern standards, be reckoned a trifle primitive in her psychological deductions. And, withal, Judith was forced ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... American had not as good a right as any ancient of them all to say, Ubi libertas, ibi patria. It is no real paradox to affirm that a man's love of his country may often be gauged by his disgust at it. But we think it might fairly be argued against him that the very absence of that distracting complexity of associations might help to produce that solitude which is the main feeder of imagination. Certainly, Hawthorne, with whom no modern European can be matched for the subtlety and power of this marvellous quality, is a strong case on the ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... a pleasant mood, and the reason was not far to seek. The distracting period of inaction, of doubt, of hesitation was past, and now at last something would be done. His term of service along the line of the Canadian Pacific Railway construction had been far from congenial ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... to pay frugally for her living until she could make one for herself, while too indifferent even to see her; but Thinkright's talks had turned a searchlight upon her own predilections and expectations, with the effect of distracting her attention somewhat from the shortcomings of others. Her present excitement in the discovery of her uncle was mingled with mortification at the remembrance of what her thought had once demanded of him. The boat rocked gently over the blue ripples; the sunshine ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... his strong and haughty spirit; and, when he uncovered his face, no one could read on his brow the trouble and agony of his heart. Still, every hour brought fresh tidings of disaster. Messenger after messenger came spurring into the city, distracting it with new alarms. The infidels, they said, were strengthening themselves in the land; host after host were pouring in from Africa: the sea-coast of Andalusia glittered with spears and scimitars. Bands of turbaned ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... these distracting pleasures, I kept on the watch for an opportunity to speak to Aunt Gary alone. Christmas day I could not. I could not get it till near the ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... to finish this task. He looked more than once at his visitor as he did so, in a preoccupied, impersonal way. To the other's notion, he seemed the personification of business—without an ounce of distracting superfluous flesh upon his wiry, tough little frame, without a trace of unnecessary politeness, or humour, or sensibility of any sort. He was the machine perfected and fined down to absolute essentials. He could understand a joke if it was useful to him to do so. He could ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... to struggle against the darkness; then stars, or what appeared to be stars, were seen, as through a mist. Then they would suddenly change into every variety of color, and reveal the existence of massive columns of basaltic rock supporting the arch. Still the distracting sounds were heard, but no order was given concerning the ship, scarcely a word exchanged between the men. They felt that they were drifting into some unknown sea, perhaps some place of enchantment, where death was certain, and from whence nothing more would ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams |
