"Unobservant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... quite unobservant of the sinister air, breasted the ascent. He set down his rifle by the door of the tower, and followed Tinker up ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... not been unobservant of her—indeed it would not be too much to say that he had been acutely conscious all the time ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... us, of Mr. Goodyear's work upon "Gum-Elastic and its Varieties," presents at least something unique in the art of book-making. It is self-illustrating; inasmuch as, treating of India-rubber, it is made of India-rubber. An unobservant reader, however, would scarcely suspect the fact before reading the Preface, for the India-rubber covers resemble highly polished ebony, and the leaves have the appearance of ancient paper worn soft, thin, and dingy by numberless perusals. ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... her sex, and it was not discovered until after her death, when she had been an Inspector General of the Army Medical Department for many years. And there have been women in the ranks too, and at sea. It was really not extraordinary that an unobservant and unsuspicious creature like ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... ill dressed, in or out of season, of good or bad flavor, preferable or inferior to this or that other thing of the kind, so that I was bro't up in such a perfect inattention to those matters as to be quite indifferent what kind of food was set before me, and so unobservant of it, that to this day if I am asked I can scarce tell a few hours after dinner what I dined upon. This has been a convenience to me in traveling, where my companions have been sometimes very unhappy for want of a suitable gratification of their ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... every vision of her on the stage, deepened the impression she made upon him when they first met. It gratified him to see that, among the shower of bouquets she was constantly receiving, his was the one she usually carried; nor was she unobservant that he always wore a fresh rose. But she was unconscious of his continual guardianship, and he was careful that she should remain so. Every night that she went to the opera and returned from it, he assumed a dress like the driver's, and sat with him on the outside ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... house early on Sunday morning, and her unobservant aunt did not notice the marks the young girl's sleepless night had left upon her countenance. Aunt 'Mira was too greatly distracted just then about a new gown she, with the help of Mrs. John-Ed. Hutchins, had made and was to wear for the first time ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... always been my humble experience that one learns more of use in one hour's keen observation than by reading all the books in the world, and when that sense is keenly developed it is quite extraordinary with what facility one can do things which the average unobservant man thinks utterly impossible. It most certainly teaches one to simplify everything and always to select the best and easiest way in all one undertakes, which, after all, is the way ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... thrown away upon Brother Bonaday, whom preoccupation with trouble had long ago made unobservant. Brother Copas reeled in a few ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... condition of the body, and in the expression of the face. So the motives of man festoon his personality with flaunting and infallible signs to be known and read by all men who care to take the trouble to learn. Some of them are so plain that there is scarcely any grown person so unobservant as not to have seen them. Others are more elusive, but none the less ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... seemed succumbing to the apathy of it all. The frost was benumbing his spirit. He plodded on with bowed head, unobservant, mechanically rubbing nose and cheeks, and batting his steering hand against the gee-pole in ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... a rule, unobservant; they go on in the old way until the horse flinches in action or stands "pointing" in dumb appeal to his owner, telling with mute but touching eloquence of his tight-ironed, feverish foot, the dead frog, and the insidious disease, soon to destroy the free action ...
— Rational Horse-Shoeing • John E. Russell
... prettily he could blush with that complexion of his, delicate as a woman in his last days); these sufficiently told me that he had not the ghost of an idea of the perturbation that had been seething in me. It took him the rest of the week to cease regretting that he had been so unobservant, and never again during the remaining eight-and-twenty years that we fished together at different times and in divers places did he once depart from his resolve "never to do so no more." During our long and happy acquaintance that was the only cloud flitting over the sunshine of our friendship, ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... was his wont, and speaking cheerily to the boy, learned that his name was "Jackie." A stick of candy from Tom's pocket was greedily accepted by Jackie. Tom was feeling blue that day thinking of his father from whom had come no word, of his mother and sister, and his old home. He wandered on unobservant of the fact that it was growing dark, and that a storm was fast approaching. He was suddenly called to a sense of his surroundings by hearing a cry behind him, and turning back saw that little Jackie was ...
— The Dare Boys of 1776 • Stephen Angus Cox
... come Mr Thornton often sympathised with his wife on the amount of work she had undertaken in order to entertain the squire's guests; but, even to his unobservant eyes, it was apparent that, so far from being exhausted, she throve beneath it, and appeared brighter and younger than for years past. All work and no play has an even more depressing effect upon Jill than on Jack, and Mrs Thornton was by instinct ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... mushrooms may arrest our attention. The discovery of new specimens, the learning their names, the knowledge of their curious organizations, will all add an interest to our lives. It will inspire us with a love of nature, and open our eyes to many objects of which we have before been unobservant. Besides this it obliges us to be accurate. Our descriptions must be exact or ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin
... of the Mammalia and Birds, the fauna of Ceylon has, up to the present, failed to receive that systematic attention to which its richness and variety most amply entitle it. The Singhalese themselves, habitually indolent, and singularly unobservant of nature and her operations, are at the same time restrained from the study of natural history by the tenet of their religion which forbids the taking of life under any circumstances. From the nature of their avocations, the ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... fellow-men, our neighbors, or even our own households, in all moods, in all discordances between the world without us and the frames within, in all states of health, of solicitude, of preoccupation, and show no signs of impatience, ungentleness, or unobservant self-absorption,—with only kindly feeling finding expression, and ungenial feeling at least inwardly imprisoned;—we shall be ready to acknowledge that the man who has thus attained is master of himself, and in the graciousness of ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... the usefulness of sailors at any time and under any circumstances; but if that is the only reason for asking the Government to pay owners part of the cost of manning their ships, then they are living in a fool's paradise, and are much too credulous about public philanthropy, and very unobservant and illogical too if they imagine that national interests are entirely centred in the industry they happen to be engaged in. It would be just as reasonable for Armstrong's or Vickers' to request a subsidy for training their men because their business happens ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... pretty villa on the banks of the Hudson, a mile or two away. Burt, with all his proposed lifelong constancy, had speedily discovered that Mr. Hargrove had a very pretty daughter. Of course, he was quite indifferent to the fact, but he could no more meet a girl like Gertrude Hargrove and be unobservant than could Amy pass a new and rare wildflower with unregarding eyes. Miss Hargrove was not a wildflower, however. She was a product of city life, and was perfectly aware of her unusual and exotic beauty. Admiring eyes had followed her even ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... entirely unobservant of all that had been going on. She had had her qualms, but business must be business, and so long as Joan did not interfere with that she had not felt called upon to remonstrate with her on her growing friendliness with the ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... so utterly wanting in Theological instinct, or so depraved of taste; so utterly unused to the study of GOD'S Word, or so unobservant of the characteristic method of it,—as to imagine that there is something trifling in the specimens of Interpretation before us. I am only concerned to maintain that they are Divine. You may think what you please about them. They are the teaching of ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... all I took to my room, coming down only for meals. I couldn't eat a thing, and Cyrus noticed it—it is queer how observant men are about some things and how unobservant about others. He didn't tell me what he was going to do, but in the afternoon Dr. Denbigh came to see me. That's the way they do—I'm liable to have the doctor sent in to look me over any time, whether I want him or not. Dr. Denbigh is ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... of his old fatal influence over Elwood, he appeared morose and dissatisfied. Something had not worked to his liking in the complicated machinery of his plans, and he showed his vexation so palpably as soon to attract the attention of his submissive but by no means unobservant wife, who, after a while, plucked up ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... power or wish to obstruct his flight. I thought of it with transport, and once more threw myself upon the bed, and wrapped my averted face in the carpet. He would probably pass this door, unobservant of me, and my muffled face would save me from the agonies connected with the sight ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... father was changed. Eyebright was no longer careless or unobservant, as before her mother's death, and she noticed how fast papa's hair was turning gray, and how deep and careworn the lines about his mouth and eyes had become. He did not seem to gain in cheerfulness as time went ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... my father and I were to sleep that night at Marais's stead, returning home on the following morning. But my father, who had been a silent but not unobservant witness of all this scene, coming to the conclusion that after what had happened we should scarcely be welcome there, and that the company of Pereira was to be avoided just now, went up to Marais and bade him farewell, saying that we would send ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... no more, Mr. Mackellar," said she. "You have done most properly in what you too modestly call your interference. I am much to blame; you must think me indeed a very unobservant wife" (looking upon me with a strange smile), "but I shall put this right at once. The Master was always of a very thoughtless nature; but his heart is excellent; he is the soul of generosity. I shall write to him myself. You cannot think ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... once, a clever woman now, had not been unobservant of some things in Lydia's past, some things that Lydia supposed to be buried in the grave of her own heart. A kind-hearted girl, Jane had never used this knowledge. But now knowledge was power. She would use it in ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade
... the steps outside and the knock at the door, which would surely renew the unwarrantable attempt to saddle him with the charge of the child. He listened too, as he sat after supper, holding up the newspaper in front of his unobservant eyes; and he listened most of the night as he tossed on his sleepless pillow—listened to the wind that had risen and moaned and sobbed round the house like a living thing in pain—listened to the pitiless rain that followed, pelting down on the ivy outside and on the tiles ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... man with the 'soo-vy-neer matches,' quickly and deftly metamorphosed to escape the unobservant or untrained eye, but the same, notwithstanding. And now my interest grew apace. I knew that at last we were in the presence of that powerful official who dispensed virgin two-dollar notes to the unwitting foreigner ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... do the public, the great unobservant public, who could hardly tell a weaver by his tooth or a compositor by his left thumb, care about the finer shades of analysis and deduction! But, indeed, if you are trivial. I cannot blame you, for the days of the great cases are ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... Lhari slipped unobserved out of Raynor's house and hiked unnoticed to the edges of a small city nearby, where he mingled with the crowd and hired a skycab from an unobservant human driver to take him to the spaceport city. The skycab driver was startled, but not, Bart judged, unusually so, to pick up a ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... cortege. All his friends remember the curious exaltation in his manner a few days before the ceremony, and I cannot help thinking that in a moment of enthusiasm, realising that this was his only chance of burial in the Abbey, he took advantage of the bowed unobservant heads during the prayer of Committal and crept beneath the pall into the great actor's tomb. What his feelings were at the time, or afterwards when the vault was bricked up, would require the introspective pen of Mr. Henry James and the curious imagination of Mr. H. G. Wells to describe. I have ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... an education peculiarly fitted for a Poet, without which genius and sensibility can hardly fill the circle of their capacities. No education, indeed, can entitle to this appellation a dull and unobservant mind, or one, though neither dull nor unobservant, in which the channels of communication between thought and expression have been obstructed or closed. How far it is my fortune to belong to either of the latter classes I cannot know. I aspire to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... faces, a smile that had nothing to do with Sergey Kuzmich—a smile of bashfulness at their own feelings. But much as all the rest laughed, talked, and joked, much as they enjoyed their Rhine wine, saute, and ices, and however they avoided looking at the young couple, and heedless and unobservant as they seemed of them, one could feel by the occasional glances they gave that the story about Sergey Kuzmich, the laughter, and the food were all a pretense, and that the whole attention of that company was directed ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... man! egotistical, proud, unobservant, Since I with man's grief dare to sympathise thus; Why scoff?—fellow-creature I am, fellow-servant Of God, can man fathom ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... unobservant," he said crossly. "This place is playing the very deuce with my mental processes! But stay: surely your hair is arranged differently? It wasn't brought over your ears like that, the first time I saw you, I ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... to his unhappiness and disturb a relation which even in its incompleteness was dear to him. The human yearning to confess, to win even the sad luxury of pity beset the man. In his constant habit of introspection, he had become unobservant and had no least idea that the two young people he loved so well were nearing what was to him ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... 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 ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... own fault, and but for it he now thought he should not have been so unobservant of things about him. Could he, but for such weary nights of sleepless wandering and watching, have let his darling boy drive those young horses, filling the carriage so full of his brothers and sisters that there was no room for ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... a mere bugbear of the indolent, the languid, the purposeless, the careless, the indifferent; that, as a rule, the man who fails does not see or seize his opportunity. Opportunity is coy, is swift, is gone, before the slow, the unobservant, the indolent, or the careless can ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... Her full eyes looked as if privacy only was wanted for them to overflow with floods of tears. But they fell not. Her gaze was fixed on vacancy, or else cast toward the ground. She seemed like one unobservant of all around her, and buried in thoughts to which all else were strangers, and had nothing in common with. They were in Palmyra, and with her slaughtered multitudes. Yet though she wept not, others did; and one could, see all along, wherever she moved, the Roman hardness yielding to pity, and melting ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... did, being naturally of an unobservant and easy-going nature; and I will answer for him, that he would have sat quietly in his seat in that Sentry Box or the House from February to September (which you know were his favourite months for serious Session) with an eye as fine and soft as the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 22, 1893 • Various
... laid ten cents, and scarcely knew whether she won or lost, so intent was she on watching Graham go down the room, although she did know that Bert Wainwright had not been unobservant of her gaze and its direction. On the other hand, neither she nor Bert, nor any other at the table, knew that Dick's quick-glancing eyes, sparkling with merriment while his lips chaffed absurdities ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... not been unobservant of these steady encroachments upon Chinese territory, and while a military occupation of the peninsula was necessary at this time, it was viewed with uneasiness; but none was prepared for what followed. Before peace was actually concluded, Russia approached ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... thing is that, although I had been conscious of something odd, I never thought they were girls. Directly I knew it, I knew that I had been the most unobservant ass alive; for they couldn't possibly be ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... she forgot her prayer, and Cummins did not notice it. He failed to notice it the next night, and the next. Plunged deep in his own gloom, he was unobservant of many other things, so that, in place of laughter and joy and merry rompings, only gloomy and oppressive shadows of things that had come and gone filled the life of ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... hidden recesses of the Chinese Empire. One may be little given to philosophizing, and possess but scanty skill in putting into words the conclusions which form themselves in one's mind, but it is impossible to cross China entirely unobservant. One must begin, no matter how dimly, to perceive something of the causes which are at work. By the incoming of the European to inland China a transformation is being wrought, not the natural growth of a gradual evolution, itself the result of propulsion ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... shoulder, and pulled off his remnant of felt in salutation of Miss Carroll. As she stopped to speak to him, he stared earnestly at her horse's neck; but kind Nature permits even a shy man's vision to take a wide range, and Bud by no means was unobservant of the brilliant skin framed by a glory of red hair; of the velvet dark eyes with their darker lashes; and of the corduroy habit, brownly harmonious with the sorrel horse and the clay road, ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... hostility. So she tapped at the kitchen door and a large cook of sound principles who loved neither Esther nor Sophy, let her in and passed her up the back stairs. Esther had strangely never noted this adventurous way of entering. She was rather unobservant about some things, and she would never have suspected a lady born of coming in by the kitchen for any reason whatever. Esther, too, had some ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... with a sudden keen eye for sharks, of which I never once had thought until now. Then I tightened the belt about my hollow body, and just sat there with the problem. The past hour I had been wholly unobservant; the inner eye had had its turn; but that was over now, and I sat as upright as possible, seeking greedily for a sail. Of course I saw none. Had we indeed been off our course before the fire broke out? Had we burned to cinders aside and apart from the regular track of ships? Then, though my present ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... Many unobservant persons think and say that all Negroes, or all Chinamen, as well as all animals of a kind, look alike. But just as surely as each human being differs from the next, so surely each animal is different from its fellow; ...
— Johnny Bear - And Other Stories From Lives of the Hunted • E. T. Seton
... To the unobservant eye the muskrat house in the alders might have looked like a mass of drift in which the rank water-grass had taken root. But within the clumsy pile, about a foot below the centre of the dome, was a shapely, small, warm chamber, ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... between St. John and the Synoptics respecting the scene of our Lord's ministry, the character of His discourses, the miracles ascribed to Him, and the day of His Crucifixion, or rather of His partaking of the Paschal feast. The most ignorant and unobservant would notice these differences; and the more labour required to reconcile the statements or representations of the last Gospel with the three preceding ones, the more certain it is that none would have ventured to put ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... had communicated his news—in the first place, to Magdalen, and afterward, on getting back to the house, to his wife and Miss Garth. He was too unobservant a man to notice that Magdalen looked unaccountably startled, and Miss Garth unaccountably relieved, by his announcement of Frank's good fortune. He talked on about it, quite unsuspiciously, until the luncheon-bell rang—and then, for ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... important political result of the vast range of new knowledge started by Darwin's work may prove to be the extension of the idea of conduct so as to include the control of mental processes of which at present most men are either unconscious or unobservant. The limits of our conscious conduct are fixed by the limits of our self-knowledge. Before men knew anger as something separable from the self that knew it, and before they had made that knowledge current by the invention of a name, the control of anger was not ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... things in nature, has a three-fold aspect corresponding to our own make-up as body, soul, and spirit. The outer form, the composition and actual structure, represents the "body" of music: that part which is visible even to the unobservant eye and audible to the indiscriminating ear. This is a matter of notes and tones quite apart from any real meaning or value. Such would be an academic exercise, or a technically correct but unconvincing ballad. It might possibly ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... as they entered; saw Notely enter with his easy, unobservant swagger, lest the unexpected visit of this fashionable company should embarrass her. He walked across the room, humming an air, ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... room with its three windows appear, and satisfied its tenant that his choice after all had not been a bad one. When he was almost dressed he walked to the middle one of the three windows to look out at the weather. Another shock awaited him. Strangely unobservant he must have been last night. He could have sworn ten times over that he had been smoking at the right-hand window the last thing before he went to bed, and here was his cigarette-end on the ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... have said, to converse upon some sensible theme. Their attention being directed to other things, they were seldom troubled about their food, and became almost indifferent to what was placed on the table. Benjamin said, in his manhood, on referring to this subject: "I am so unobservant of it, that to this day I can scarcely tell, a few hours after dinner, of what dishes it consisted. This has been a great convenience to me in travelling, where my companions have been sometimes very unhappy for the want of a suitable gratification of their more delicate, ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... neither did I love you, though I was able to hide it from you. And it has often irritated me that you were so unobservant. You know now the cause of many of my difficult moods, which ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... description of his familiar gestures. She had the woman's anxiety for his bodily health, she wished to know whether he had changed in face or figure, and, if so, how and in what measure. But she glanced at the obtuse, unobservant countenance of Captain Willoughby, and she understood that however much she craved for these particulars, ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... lay in the chance of being discovered in the deed. One day when the master had left the room to confer with some visitor at the door, he spied Annie in the act of tying her shoe. Perceiving, as he believed, at a glance, that Alec Forbes was totally unobservant, he gave her an ignominious push from behind, which threw her out on her face in the middle of the floor. But Alec did catch sight of him in the very deed, was down upon him in a moment, and, having already proved that a box ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... sooner were we all gay and happy in the house again, running out as we pleased, beginning to think of parties and drives and theatres and all enjoyment—and rather unobservant, as young folks are apt to be unobservant of Aunt Pen's slight habitual pensiveness in the absence of guests or excitement, and of her ways generally—than Aunt Pen would challenge some lobster-salad to mortal combat, and, of course, come out floored by the colic. A little whiskey ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... far between that we should have taken—the one would not have turned round the other, but when the oar chanced to drop out of his listless hand—and the canoe would have been allowed to drift with the stream, unobservant we of our backward course, and wondering and then ceasing to wonder at the slow-receding beauty of the hanging banks of grove—the cloud-mountains, immovable as those of earth, and in spirit ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... she made to Mrs. Graham's sense of propriety. There was an old lady who had once been Clara's governess—a gentle, mild-tongued, unobservant person, who was greatly in want of a home. Mrs. Alison was easily induced to promise the support of her presence to Lettice during the days or weeks which Lettice hoped to spend at Bute Lodge. She ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... observe its ways, when neither relationship nor personal interest was involved. Small encouragement she would have felt to approach any that she met. Men of middle-age walked by as in dreams, cold, unobservant, listless; the younger ones, fuller of life, strode on with high heads, and flinging glances that were harder to bear than stony indifference, even. Ladies clothed in costly furs scanned the pretty face under the mourning bonnet with prying eyes, or tossed her a hasty, scornful look. Shop-girls ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... Colstoun's servants I sent him a billet asking for an interview, and received a summons to meet him at once in a private house of the town. Here I found him alone in a chamber; from his face there was nothing to be gleaned; yet I was not so unobservant but what I spied some halberts in the hall, and not so stupid but what I could gather he was prepared to arrest me there and then, should it ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... who invited them to desert, no fear was ever entertained of an insurrection of the slaves. During a war of seven years, with our country in possession of the enemy, no such danger was ever apprehended. But should we, therefore, be unobservant spectators of the progress of society within the last twenty years; of the silent but powerful change wrought, by time and chance, upon its composition and temper? When the fountains of the great deep of abomination were broken up, even the ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... and her eyes red. She looked anything but lovely. Grant, however, was instantly so moved that he did not notice her homeliness. Also, he was one of those unobservant people who, having once formed an impression of a person, do not revise it except under compulsion; his last observation of Margaret had resulted in an impression of good looks, exceptional charm. He bent upon her a look in which understanding ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... was mute, and poured forth those tears on his account, which my own unhappiness had been unable to extort. In the midst of my tears, I was not unobservant of his motions. These were of a nature to rouse some other sentiment than grief or, at least, to mix with ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... Christian people ought to make in the world. They should be recognised, by even unobservant eyes who know nothing of the inner secret of their lives, as plainly belonging to another order. If we seek to keep fresh in our own minds the consciousness that we do so, it will make itself manifest in all our bearing and actions. So that exhortation to cultivate the continual sense ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... fingers on Diana's hand seemed to indicate that he was instinctively pursuing his wild dream of love. At last he slowly raised his head, and his lips being almost on a level with Diana's face, he made an effort to touch those of his lovely guest, but as if unobservant of the movement, ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... was engrossed by the concerns of his theatre, and saw nothing that did not immediately relate to it. Edmund, between his theatrical and his real part—between Miss Crawford's claims and his own conduct—between love and consistency, was equally unobservant: and Mrs. Norris was too busy in contriving and directing the general little matters of the company, superintending their various dresses with economical expedients, for which nobody thanked her, and saving, with delighted ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... all too short and too narrow, so that the lad seemed likely to crack them at every motion. The seams were white, the edges curled, the buttonholes torn in spite of many mendings; the whole presenting to the most unobservant eyes the heart-breaking stigmas of honest penury. This livery contrasted sadly with the youth of the lad, who now disappeared munching a crust of stale bread with his strong and handsome teeth. He breakfasted thus on his way to the rue Saint-Jacques, ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... between the Greek and mediaeval modes of regarding Nature is not a little remarkable. Both Greeks and monks, judged by nineteenth-century standards, were unobservant of natural beauties. They make but brief and general remarks upon landscapes and the like. The [Greek: pontion te kumaton anerithmon gelasma] is very rare. But the Greeks stopped at the threshold of Nature; the forces they found there, the gods, were inherent in Nature, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... unobservant of the general expectation, nor ungratified; for that great man, with all his grand genius, solid intellect, sound virtue, had one small miserable weakness; he was not proud, but vain; vain beyond the feeblest and most craving ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... conscious that there was something about her different from her mates. And what worried Matthew was that the difference impressed him as being something that should not exist. Anne had a brighter face, and bigger, starrier eyes, and more delicate features than the other; even shy, unobservant Matthew had learned to take note of these things; but the difference that disturbed him did not consist in any of these respects. Then ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... sea-coast, and in winter a most uncomfortable journey. But few trees are met with; a banyan here and there, but no camphor-trees along this route; but there is one extremely interesting feature on it that would strike the most unobservant traveller, viz.; the Loyang bridge, one of the wonders of China." Had Polo travelled by this route, he would certainly have mentioned it. Pauthier remarks upon Polo's silence in this matter: "It is surprising," says he, "that Marco Polo makes ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... not perceive this. In the first flush of conquest all men are a trifle fatuous, unobservant. No woman is. Miss Quiney's arms did not suddenly go out to Ruth. Ruth noted it. She was just: she understood. But (I repeat) she was a woman, and women remember indelibly whatever small thing happens at this ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... unobservant, Mr. Brent," he said. "Our profession, as you know, sir, leads us to the cultivation of that faculty. Now, I've thought a good deal about this matter, and I'll tell you a conclusion I've come to. Do you remember that when Dr. ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... sleeps. At that moment Mrs. Y. should fall on her knees and rejoice. She would if she could leave young Jack or Jill; but she can't—she—never—can. That's what sent Mr. Y. to sleep. It is just as well perhaps that Mrs. Y. is unobservant. ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... in the business and socialities of daily life, it brings visions of glory and adventure, of emotion and of broad human interest. It gives glimpses of the heights and depths of character and experience, setting him thinking and wondering even in the midst of amusement. To the most torpid and unobservant it exhibits the humorous in life and the sparkle and finesse of language, which in dull ordinary existence is stupidly shut out of knowledge or omitted from particular notice. To all it uncurtains a world, not that in which they live and yet not other than it—a world in which interest ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... him, too, perhaps, and at this moment he welcomed the thought of it! Thus, a little exalted in spirit, Dominic walked on rapidly across the Green between the iron railings, conscious of colour, of light, and of sound; but unobservant of the details of his immediate surroundings, until a drifting female figure barred his path, undulating uncertainly before him. He moved to the right to let it pass. It moved to the right also. He moved to the left, ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... obvious even to unobservant Mr. Lyle, who longed for an opportunity of asking him what ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... fling down the conquered body of the brute, tossing its horns in vain towards the skies. Thence backwards he retraced his steps 'midst great laud, guiding his errant footsteps by means of a tenuous thread, lest when outcoming from tortuous labyrinthines his efforts be frustrated by unobservant wandering. But why, turned aside from my first story, should I recount more, how the daughter fleeing her father's face, her sister's embrace, and e'en her mother's, who despairingly bemoaned her lost daughter, preferred to all ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... a piece of supercherie as the History of Prince Radamanthus, professedly re-printed from a unique copy by Wynkyn de Worde, or the Life and Death of Mother Shipton, dated 1687, and actually issued in the latter half of the last century, are scarcely apt to impose on any but the most unobservant. It stands differently, however, with the Declaratioun of the Kings maiesties intention and meaning toward the lait acts of parliament, 1585, republished in 1646 in facsimile: with Marlowe's Ovid, originally printed in 1596, and repeatedly brought ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... witness of scenes like these, who laid them up deeply in her heart. Mrs. Williams was not unobservant of the gradual but steady falling off in Eric's character, and the first thing she noticed was the blunting of his home affections. When they first came to Roslyn, the boy used constantly to join his father and ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... nothing, looking up into Mother's face. Marise was extremely annoyed. She was glad that Elly was the only one who was looking at her, because, of course, dear old Mr. Welles' unobservant eyes didn't count. She was glad that Mr. Marsh kept his gaze downward on the photograph marked "Rome from the Pincian Gardens," although through the top of his dark, close-cropped head she could fairly feel the racing, inquiring speculations whirling about. Nor had she any right ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... consciously or not,—since we have no other way of judging. And the judge himself was so simple, so sincere, so essentially honest, that he could not doubt one who was in a way a member of his own family. And then he was absent-minded, unobservant, easy-going, indolent, and the slave of habit, as such a nature is apt to be. Moreover, he was not always master of the slight power of observation which had been given him. That very day, while on his way home from the court-house, he had ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... force Gives birth to flowers and fruits of holiness. Here is Macarius; Romoaldo here: And here my brethren, who their steps refrain'd Within the cloisters, and held firm their heart." I answ'ring, thus; "Thy gentle words and kind, And this the cheerful semblance, I behold Not unobservant, beaming in ye all, Have rais'd assurance in me, wakening it Full-blossom'd in my bosom, as a rose Before the sun, when the consummate flower Has spread to utmost amplitude. Of thee Therefore entreat I, father! to declare If I may gain such favour, as to gaze Upon ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... Tappertit, who seemed, physically speaking, to have grown smaller with years (particularly as to his legs, which were stupendously little), but who, in a moral point of view, in personal dignity and self-esteem, had swelled into a giant. Nor was it by any means difficult for the most unobservant person to detect this state of feeling in the quondam 'prentice, for it not only proclaimed itself impressively and beyond mistake in his majestic walk and kindling eye, but found a striking means of revelation ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... Gawtrey, with whom Philip often observed him engaged in whispered conferences, to which he was not admitted. His eye, however, was less idle than his lips; it was not a bright eye: on the contrary, it was dull, and, to the unobservant, lifeless, of a pale blue, with a dim film over it—the eye of a vulture; but it had in it a calm, heavy, stealthy watchfulness, which inspired Morton with great distrust and aversion. Mr. Birnie not only spoke French like a native, but all his habits, his gestures, his tricks ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... physiognomy as in her character, and even the lines of the mouth gave evidence of strength and restlessness, rather than peace. Before her lay a book on geometry, and, engrossed by study, she was unobservant of Dr. Hartwell's entrance. Walking up to the grate, he warmed his fingers, and then, with his hands behind him, stood still on the rug, regarding his protegee attentively. He looked precisely as he had done more than three ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... Some dull, unobservant people might think that our road was walled on one side by gray-blue rocks, but in reality they are dark, uncut sapphires, a facade decoration for the Fairy King's palace. Those same dullards might talk of scattered boulders. They are trophies, teeth of giants slain by Fairy warriors. Fairies ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... Elsie Gossamer!" she cried, and took her letter and sat, unobservant of him, for several moments, the little frown that his words had brought out still on her brow. Presently she looked up and saw that he had read his letter, and had put it in his pocket; he was tilted back against the crab-apple tree ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... for difference of any sort or to any degree—anything which could have justified a mutual falling off from the old intimacy! But William Edgerton was meekness and kindness itself. His confidence in me was of the most unobservant, suspicionless character; either that, or I succeeded better than I thought in the effort to maintain the external aspects of old friendship. He saw nothing of change in my deportment. He seemed not to see it, at least; and came as usual, or more ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms |
