"Abstracted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... driven to conjoin with it, not only an extensive knowledge of languages, but many of the rudest tasks of the mechanist's art; and chemistry was, in some of his researches, summoned to his aid. By degrees, the tyranny that a man's genius exercises over his life, abstracted him from all external objects. He had loved his wife tenderly, but his rapid waste of his fortune in the purchase of instruments and books, then enormously dear, and the neglect of all things not centred in the hope to be the benefactor of the ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... brooch in a jeweller's window caught my fancy. I bought it with the idea of presenting it to Carlotta, when an occasion offered, as a reward for peculiar merit. Now, however, to show her that I was in no way angry, I abstracted the bauble from the drawer of my writing-table, and put it in ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... the case of the motormen I abstracted from the study of single elementary functions and turned my attention to that mental process which after some careful observations seemed to me the really central one for the problem of accidents. I found this to be a particular complicated ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg
... it evidently seemed from a reverie, looked hastily up. Meeting Mr. Gryce's bland smile, he returned the bow, but haughtily, and as it appeared in an abstracted way. ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... When she grew up she showed, therefore, the stronger nature of the two, and her father, as was his wont, gave way. He laughed at his little tyrant, whose great delight was to ruffle his thick curling hair. When, in his half-abstracted way, the old gentleman would tell her stones which threatened to end unpleasantly, she would scold him well; but when, from some cause or other, he was really displeased with her, it affected her so much that the impression remained for a long time. ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... of the bearing earth gave her a calm that took no heed of passing hours. Even her father, the abstracted man of affairs, nodded to dusty people along the road; to a jolly old man whose bulk rolled and shook in a tiny, rhythmically creaking buggy, to women in the small abrupt towns with their huge red elevators and ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... large, palpable bones, joints and knuckles; his face was long and preternaturally pale, and bore an abstracted expression which deepened almost to idiocy when bent above ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... coaxingly. "You would be more comfortable here, wouldn't you, than in a garret?—You won't let her do anything rash?" she continued, setting a costly stand before him, covered with dishes abstracted from her mistress' dinner-table, lest the cook should suspect that her mistress had a ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... when it became soiled. Blue would be very becoming to the minister's daughter, and perhaps she would like it as well as her gull's wing. There was another sly visit to the chilly spare chamber. Minty took the summer Sunday hat from its bandbox in the closet, and carefully abstracted the blue feather. It was slightly faded, and there were some traces of the wetting it had received in a thunderstorm in spite of the handkerchief which Aunt Kittredge carefully pinned over it; but Minty thought it still a very beautiful feather. She put it into a little pasteboard ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... wrought, for that forsook her bed, Awake alike to duty and the dead; She would have grieved, had friends presum'd to spare The least assistance—'twas her proper care. Here will she come, and on the grave will sit, Folding her arms, in long abstracted fit; But if observer pass, will take her round, And careless seem, for she would not be found; Then go again, and thus her hour employ, While visions please her, and while woes destroy. Forbear, sweet Maid! nor be by Fancy led, To hold mysterious converse with ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... charge of his being "a serpent": "Prove it," said Mr. Winkle, warmly. It is to be suspected that the marriage with the amiable Emily was not a success. The author throws out a hint to that effect: "Mr Snodgrass, being occasionally abstracted and melancholy, is to this day reputed a great poet among his acquaintance, though we do not find he has ever written anything to encourage the belief." In other words he was carrying on the old Pickwick game of "Humbug." So great an intellect had quite ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... are popularized in speeches, headlines, plays, moving pictures, cartoons, novels, statues or paintings, their transformation into a human interest requires first abstraction from the original, and then animation of what has been abstracted. We cannot be much interested in, or much moved by, the things we do not see. Of public affairs each of us sees very little, and therefore, they remain dull and unappetizing, until somebody, with the makings of an artist, has translated them into a moving picture. Thus the abstraction, ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... She stood there, gazing across my balcony towards the sea of wooded country that spread dim and vague in the obscurity of the dusk. The deepening shadows entered the room, I fancied, from the grounds below. Following her abstracted gaze a moment, I experienced a curious sharp desire to leave, to escape. Out yonder was wind and space and freedom. This enormous building was oppressive, ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... him," said Patty, smiling, "but I've been introduced to him. Just as I was leaving Marie's to-day, he came in. But he was very abstracted in his manner. He merely bowed, and without a word he went straight on to the piano and began fussing with ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... reprinting Wynkyn de Worde's Boke of Keruynge, which I had not at first thought of, was because its identity of phrase and word with many parts of Russell,—a thing which came on me with a curious feeling of surprise as I turned over the leaves,—made it certain that de Worde either abstracted in prose Russell's MS., chopping off his lines' tails,—adding also bits here[14], leaving out others there,—or else that both writers copied a common original. The most cursory perusal will show this to ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... grew fast and furious, and might have been continued for any length of time, but for a sudden alarm that was raised respecting worms, for Harry had just abstracted the last unfortunate wriggler from ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... sequence in the material order, as results of a designed and skilful dealing of accomplished fingers with precious forms of matter for the delight of the eyes. Greek sculpture has come to be regarded as the product of a peculiarly limited art, dealing with a specially abstracted range of subjects; and the Greek sculptor as a workman almost exclusively intellectual, having only a sort of accidental connexion with the material in which his thought was expressed. He is fancied to have been disdainful of such matters as the mere tone, the fibre or texture, of his marble ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... had left their owner's nose and, as they had a way of doing when the old man was abstracted, swung like a ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... Don't be gone long, Lem," responded Lon. Fledra was not too abstracted to notice the uneasy tone ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... by no means follows that the thinking power had not a great share in it. It is from the very rapidity and certainty of the mental process, from the utmost clearness of understanding, that thinking in a poet is not perceived as something abstracted, does not wear the appearance of reflex meditation. That notion of poetical inspiration, which many lyrical poets have brought into circulation, as if they were not in their senses, and, like Pythia when possessed by the divinity, delivered oracles unintelligible to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... uncertainty of what might be over there made his answers to Ganz's questions about his journey curt and abstracted. He gave no explanation of his failure to see the celebration at Bala Bala and the ruins of Susa, which Ganz supposed to be the chief objects of his excursion. Yet he found himself looking with a new eye at the anomalous exile whom the Father of Swords called ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... have been understood. The Baron de Becasse wore a painfully neutral smile, which froze his face into a quaint gargoyle; the Crown-Prince of Monaco looked at his polished fingernails with a startled yet abstracted resignation. Clearly the young Countess had not a sympathizer ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... whether the fact of slave-owning would cause the insertion of an item in the mortal warrant forming the exception to a peaceful conclusion with the Father's forgiveness. He felt as if he would surely die during the night past, and his mind became so abstracted about what he had done in his life,—what was to come, how negro property had been treated, how it should be treated,—that, although he had opinions now and then widely-different, it had left a problem which would take him all his life-time ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... convert the contest into a vigorous offensive war. I say nothing of the advantages to the trade of both nations, nor how much it would facilitate our supplies. With respect to us, it seems to be one of two deciding points, and it appears to be the interest of our allies, abstracted from the immediate benefits to this country, to transfer the naval war to America. The number of ports friendly to them and hostile to the British, the materials for repairing their disabled ships, the ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... see that there is something in his mind besides Monte. For although the play is running high, and large bets are being laid, he seems regardless about the result of the game—for this night only, since it has never been so before. His air is at times abstracted—more than ever after hearing that name—while he deals out the cards carelessly, once or twice making mistakes. But as these have been trifling, and readily rectified, the players around the table have taken no particular notice ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... of capital spent: for a thousand pounds invested in merchandise is unproductive so many days as the transport is tedious. That part of the capital of an individual which is employed in the carrying of his goods to and from market, is so much abstracted from his means of producing more of the article in which he exerts his ingenuity and labour, whether it be ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 20, No. 567, Saturday, September 22, 1832. • Various
... thrown by the sight of the marvellous banquet aforesaid, was to the Colosseum; but his account of the wonders of this celebrated place of resort, perhaps from his faculties still being in some measure abstracted, is less full than might have been expected. The ascending-room (which the Persian prince describes as "rising like an eagle with large wings into the atmosphere, till, after an hour's time, it stopped ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... form, with Aristotle, corresponds to the opposition between the element of generality and the element of particularity. Matter is indeterminate; form is determinate. Matter, abstracted from form, in thought, is entirely without predicate and distinction; form is that which enters into the definition of every subject, and without which it could not be defined. Matter is capable of the widest diversity of ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... we do Horace no service, even according to our view of the matter, by rejecting the scholiast's explanation. No two eggs can be more like each other than Horace's Malthinus and Seneca's Mecenas."— Philological Museum, Vol. i, p. 477. "Acting, conduct, behaviour, abstracted from all regard to what is, in fact and event, the consequence of it, is itself the natural object of this moral discernment, as speculative truth and [say or] falsehood is of speculative ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... No man's ever been so kind to me as you have. They've all been—the other sort. I used to think of you a good deal, and I wanted to do some little thing to show you I was really grateful. On the boat I used to notice you because you were so quiet and abstracted. Then you were grandfather's room-mate and gentle and kind to him. You looked different from the others, too; your ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... chimney-pots; and a cresset here and there, on church or citadel, produced a fine pictorial effect, and, in places where the ground lay unevenly, held out the right hand of conduct to the benighted. But, sun, moon, and stars abstracted or concealed, the night-faring inhabitant had to fall back—we speak on the authority of old prints—upon stable lanthorns two storeys in height. Many holes, drilled in the conical turret-roof of this vagabond Pharos, let up spouts of dazzlement into the bearer's ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... once, and then but casually, when he was home on a short furlough. His figure was not much changed from what it had been; but the many sunrises and sunsets which had passed since that day, developing her from a comparative child to womanhood, had abstracted some of his angularities, reddened his skin, and given him a foreign look. It was interesting to see what years of training and service had done for this man. Few would have supposed that the white and ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... articles on early Spanish Kings and Bishops, for a historical Dictionary, and they were already in proof, how on my daily visits to the Bodleian I began to be puzzled by the fact that some of the very obscure books I had been using were "out" when I wanted them, or had been abstracted from my table by one of the sub-librarians. Joannes Biclarensis—he was missing! Who in the world could want that obscure chronicle of an obscure period but myself? I began to envisage some hungry German Privatdozent, ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... volunteered to break the silence. It was done in obedience to a request of Karl who, having noticed the abstracted air of his brother, had asked for ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... Astronomy is the story of cooling suns and worlds. At a low enough temperature all chemical activity ceases. In our own experience we find that frost will blister like flame. In the one case heat passes into the tissues so quickly and in such quantity that a blister ensues; in the other, heat is abstracted so quickly and in such quantity that a like effect is produced. In one sense, life is a thermal phenomenon; so are all conditions of fluids ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... at her. Her expression was abstracted, her eyes had an inward look. He hoped her headache had not got worse. She did not look at all pretty now. She seemed a frail little creature with a sad thoughtful face and an air of being alone in the midst of a merry company. Poor little thing! He felt ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... intensity of thought may seem excessive in the case of an annalist who applies himself to relate the events of his own time. However abstracted and detached we may be from surrounding things, we nevertheless resent their influence. I have consulted the original manuscript of Johannes Talpa in the National Library, where it is preserved (Monumenta ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... spontaneous combustion story. Record had exclusive story yesterday, but all papers to-day feature even more. Is it true? Please wire additional details at once. Also immediate instructions regarding loss of will. Has been abstracted from safe. Could Lewis Langley have taken it himself? Unless new facts soon must make loss public or issue statement Lewis ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... than twenty crowns to Lisette; as to Crispin, he had never heard of him. The answer is always, "C'est votre lethargie." While perplexed and hesitating, the old man discovers that a large sum in notes has been abstracted from his hoard. Ergaste had secured them as an alleviation in case of the worst, and had placed them in the hands of Isabelle. She promises to return them, if Geronte will make Ergaste his heir and her husband. In his anxiety for his money, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... went, she was evidently always on the watch. In Bond Street especially, where much of their business lay, her eyes were in constant inquiry; and in whatever shop the party were engaged, her mind was equally abstracted from every thing actually before them, from all that interested and occupied the others. Restless and dissatisfied every where, her sister could never obtain her opinion of any article of purchase, however it might equally concern them both: she received no pleasure from ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... efficacy in prayer, it's my honest, unbiased opinion that there never wuz in the history uv the world, nor never will be agin, sich a magnificent chance to make it manifest. Try yoorself particularly on Custer; tho', after all," continyood he, in a musin, abstracted sort uv a way, wich he's fallen into lately, "the fellow is sich a triflin bein, that he reely kin hardly be held 'sponsible for what he's doin; and the balance uv em, good Hevens! they'r mostly druv to it by hunger." And the Secretary ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... distilled only in the furnace-glow of earnest and long-continued thought. Or, perchance, his sensitive temperament was invigorated by the loud and piercing music, that swelled heavenward, and uplifted him on its ascending wave. Nevertheless, so abstracted was his look, it might be questioned whether Mr. Dimmesdale even heard the music. There was his body, moving onward, and with an unaccustomed force. But where was his mind? Far and deep in its own region, busying itself, with preternatural activity, to marshal ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of the eyebrows and bracing up were matters of frequent occurrence, as Frank grew more and more silent and abstracted, and now after he had sat through a funny story told by Mr. St. Claire and had not even smiled, or given any sign that he heard it, he suddenly caught Dolly's eye and saw that both eyebrows, and nose, and chin were up as marks of unusual ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... could be his intentions? Did he really wish to win Angelica's heart? Alas! whether he wished so or not, it was but too evident to all that he had gained her preference. In her blushing cheek and downcast eyes, and tremulous voice and embarrassed manner, when he was present, in her abstracted mind, and restless air of wandering glances when he was absent, the truth was but ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... nature; and unbelief, into that which opposeth this, or that makes the heart backward and sluggish therein. This is also gathered from what you aver of the divine moral laws, that they be of an indispensable and eternal obligation (p. 8), things that are good in themselves (p. 9), considered in an abstracted notion (p. 10). Wherefore, things that are good in themselves, must needs be better than those that are in themselves but indifferent; neither can a positive precept make that, which of itself is neither good nor evil, better than that which in its own ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Argemone that morning in the library, as usual; but he soon found that she was not thinking of Homer. She was moody and abstracted; and he could not help ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... Here and there sat a couple in a quiet corner, evidently enjoying the pleasures of a flirtation, while one pair, more romantic or more serious than the others, had strayed out upon the balcony, to indulge more unrestrainedly in the conversation, which, to judge by their low and earnest tones, and abstracted air, seemed deeply interesting ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... on in a leisurely, thoughtful fashion, not too abstracted, however, to wave his hand slightly as knots of boys saluted him in passing. Audrey had a nod and smile for them all. At the Hill houses and at the school-house Geraldine might be the acknowledged favourite; but ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... came in. In general, so high did party spirit run, Grace Hickson only tolerated his visits, finding herself often engaged at such hours, and being too much abstracted in thought to show him the ready hospitality which was one of her most prominent virtues. But to-day, both as bringing the latest intelligence of the new horrors sprung up in Salem, and as being one of the Church militant (or what the Puritans ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... battalion was in action. In the event of the battalion being obliterated by casualties, they would form the nucleus of a new unit. Choice generally fell upon those who were considered due for a rest from the line. When the necessary officers and men had been abstracted the Company Commanders were Capt. Tinker, "A," Capt. Nidd, "B," 2nd-Lt. Harland, "C," and Capt. J. Baker, "D." Headquarters comprised the C.O., Capt. J. R. Creagh, Adjutant; Lt. C. S. Wood, Signals; and Lt. S. J. Wilson, I.O.; while Capt. Philp, the M.O., ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... truly prodigious!——It has stretch'd out this diminutive mere Grain of Mustard-seed, (a poor Girl's little, innocent, Story) into a Resemblance of That Heaven, which the Best of Good Books has compar'd it to.——All the Passions are His, in their most close and abstracted Recesses: and by selecting the most delicate, and yet, at the same time, most powerful, of their Springs, thereby to act, wind, and manage, the Heart, He moves us, every where, with the Force of ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... and he hurried back to the flat, the little boy violently emulating his giant stride up the stairs and arriving flushed and panting at the door. Julian, who was entirely abstracted in his agitation, made for the tentroom without another word to the boy, seized pen and paper and began to write, urgently requesting Dr. Levillier to come at once to see Valentine. Abruptly a childish voice intruded ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... on the following Thursday, and Thorne was walking from the office to Bellevue street. He had adopted a quicker and more business-like pace than in old days, and came down the street with long steps, his head high and an abstracted expression on his face. Suddenly he stopped. "Miss Lisle!" he exclaimed. "Good ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... tablets, in the belief that the spirits of the dead occupy the tablets and enjoy the offerings. The latter are afterward eaten by the family; but pious Chinese assert that the flavour of the food and wine has been abstracted. Similar offerings are made once a year at the tombs where ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... Paul alone, with an abstracted expression on his face, as he stood aside from the crowd, unnoticed ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... he turned to Miss Rainsfield, and met her gaze, which was fixed upon his features with a smile of approval. She hastily removed her eyes, when she perceived John had noticed her; but not before the momentary glance had penetrated his heart, and rendered him thoughtful and abstracted for the ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... of a current represents energy abstracted from that of the inducing circuit, the direction of the induced current is determined by (Lenz's Law) the rule that the new current will increase already existing resistances or develop new ones to the disturbance of ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... with the assistance of Flora, romantic again when her feet were warm, all went as they planned. Clothes were packed, savings-banks opened, and a chaise abstracted from the ...
— An Encore • Margaret Deland
... whom I would wish were ordered to join me immediately. Some of them, I believe, are absent. Lieutenant-colonel Littlefield had it in intention to go with most of the men this evening on an expedition to West Farms and Morrisania. Abstracted from your verbal instructions, the plan appeared to me premature. The men here are not half officered; the country by no means sufficiently reconnoitred; the force very inadequate, even for covering parties. As there was a prospect that each of the inconveniences would shortly be removed, ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... intercept his sight further than to give a darkened aspect to all living and inanimate things. With this gloomy shade before him good Mr. Hooper walked onward at a slow and quiet pace, stooping somewhat and looking on the ground, as is customary with abstracted men, yet nodding kindly to those of his parishioners who still waited on the meeting-house steps. But so wonder-struck were they that his greeting hardly ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... years closely approaches five thousand and without doubt the total number far exceeds this. I am inclined to the belief that constantly, by day as well as by night, we are dreaming; that unnoticed and independent trains of thought are carried on. At times when resting if I fall into an abstracted state—not of set purpose—I find myself in the midst of a stream of thought appearing, for the moment, perfectly natural, familiar and intelligible, as if I knew the beginning and end of the matter. But only for a moment will consciousness remain at this lower level. ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... Morton?" asked Mrs Edmonstone, seeing him look about the room, as he was doing, in an abstracted manner, and fancying that he wished probably to be introduced to a partner. The instant her voice recalled his scattered senses, "Thank you," he answered; "I so seldom have had opportunities of doing ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... moments silently report Each action, motive, and unuttered thought; May this fair page no added witness bring Of time mis-used, as musing thought may spring. No, rather let my muse abstracted turn; Forget to muse, and of my Saviour learn That rare humility, so highly prized By Him, who sees the heart all undisguised. From Him my subject come, my thought proceed; To Him my motive tend, my action lead: In all, I henceforth think, or speak, or do, The ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... approach'd it. O thou Lombard spirit! How didst thou stand, in high abstracted mood, Scarce moving with slow dignity thine eyes! It spoke not aught, but let us onward pass, Eyeing us as a lion on his watch. But Virgil with entreaty mild advanc'd, Requesting it to show the best ascent. It answer to his question none return'd, But of our country ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... seemed depressed, or abstracted," he replied. "It's a pity. She's very beautiful and womanly. She loved ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... caller a polite glance and handshake—evidence of merest surface interest in him, of amiable patience with an intruder. Norman saw in the neatness of his clothing and linen further proof of the girl's loving care. For no such abstracted personality as this would ever bother about such things for himself. These details, however, detained Norman only for a moment. In the presence of Hallowell it was impossible not ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... had been rattling on just in the merry way that Russell now most loved to hear, but, as he was talking, he caught the touch of sadness on Russell's face, and saw his long, abstracted, eager look ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... Jean had seen specimens in the possession of the fathers. Instruments of witchcraft, if such existed, must have been in the upper story: none were visible. All this splendour was manifestly inconsistent with the homely taste and abstracted mode of thought of the sorceress. In point of fact she was hardly aware of its existence. The decorator was Tita, in whom was the instinct of the connoisseur, supported by no inconsiderable knowledge to which she had attained in those early years of which she never ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... told Peter later that she had been surprised at Cherry's quietness; Cherry had looked pale and abstracted, and had not ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... the feelings of Mrs. Dexter. She soared, altogether, too far up into the mental atmosphere for him. He thought her ideal and transcendental; and she felt that only the sensual principles in his mind were living and active. Conversation died between them, and both relapsed into that abstracted silence—musing on one side and moody on the other—which filled so large a portion ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... nothing could escape his eye. 'Not a bird could fly up,' says one of his students, 'but he observed it.' And he endeavored to establish the same habit of observation in others. Riding in a chaise, one day, with a student of his, who was apt to be abstracted from surrounding things, he suddenly exclaimed, almost indignant at his indifference, 'S—— keep your eyes open!' The lesson was not lost. It made a deep impression on the mind of the student. Though ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... me,' said Mr Merdle. 'What is the—what have I—what may you have to complain of in me, Mrs Merdle?' In his withdrawing, abstracted, pondering way, it took him some time to shape this question. As a kind of faint attempt to convince himself that he was the master of the house, he concluded by presenting his forefinger to the parrot, who expressed his ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... especially with respect to domesticated productions, by printed inquiries, by conversation with skillful breeders and gardeners, and by extensive reading. When I see the list of books of all kinds which I read and abstracted, including whole series of Journals and Transactions, I am surprised at my industry. I soon perceived that selection was the keystone of man's success in making useful races of animals and plants. But how selection could be applied to organisms living in a state of nature, remained for some ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... three times as valuable then as it is now, and the rental would have been about 10,500 l. It is now nearly six times that amount. By what means was the revenue of the landlord increased? Was it by any expenditure of his own? Did any portion of the capital annually abstracted from the estate return to it, to fructify and increase its value? Did the landlord drain the swamps, reclaim the moors, build the dwellings and farmhouses, make the fences, and plant the orchards? He did nothing of the kind. Nor was it agricultural industry ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... A glass case has been broken open, and a silver cup and oar, prizes for sports at college, I believe, have been abstracted. Also the money from the till below; and I am sorry to say, young Hornblower is absconded, and suspicion lies heavy on him. They do say the young man staked heavily on that ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of glasses was placed on the table with great solemnity by the "wricht," who made no sign and invited none. 2. You might have supposed that the circumstance F2b had escaped the notice of the company, so abstracted and unconscious was their manner, had it not been that two graven images a minute later are standing ...
— The Writing of the Short Story • Lewis Worthington Smith
... Yes, that is true. But the people of Brazil are not well off. They have everything that is necessary to make a great nation; but we are not a great nation, far from it." The hermit sighed deeply as he ceased speaking, and fell into an abstracted frame of mind. ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... as they had taken it up, turned to their own affairs again. In a few minutes Wharton appeared on the scaffolding and went to his regular work-place. After a time they saw him coming to their corner. He looked paler than usual and more abstracted, and, what was unusual, he carried a brush in his hand, as though he had broken off his work without thinking what he was doing. He hardly noticed them, but sat down, holding the brush with both hands, though it was ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... and Lydia fried them, with the daintiness and skill that seemed to have been born in her. She laid an envelope at her father's plate and when he sat down, silent and abstracted, without heeding the fish, she shook her head at Lizzie who ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... the peasants; "shout, the boy may hear you!" "Alas," answered the father, " he cannot hear; you forget that my child is deaf and dumb!" At that instant, Theodor, who for a brief while had stood apart, abstracted and silent, approached St. Aubyn and grasped his hand. "Shout!" repeated he, with the earnestness of a command; "call your boy by his name!" St Aubyn looked at him with astonishment; then in a clear piercing ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... Lear, Bertuccio, and Lucius Brutus they were conspicuously manifest. But the controlling attribute,—that which imparted individual character, colour and fascination to his acting,—was the thoughtful introspective habit of a stately mind, abstracted from passion and suffused with mournful dreaminess of temperament. The moment that charm began to work, his victory was complete. It was that which made him the true image of Shakespeare's thought, in the glittering halls of Elsinore, on its midnight battlements, ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... have taught the world wisdom.' Laputa was speaking English in a strange, thin, abstracted voice. 'There would have been no king like me since Charlemagne,' and he strayed into Latin which I have been told since was an adaptation of the Epitaph of Charles the Great. 'Sub hoc conditorio,' ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... flat daylight as filtered through the ground-glass windows and skylights, leaving a black sediment upon the panes, showed the books and papers, and the figures bending over them, enveloped in a studious gloom, and as much abstracted in appearance, from the world without, as if they were assembled at the bottom of the sea; while a mouldy little strong room in the obscure perspective, where a shaded lamp was always burning, might have represented the cavern of some ocean monster, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... individual. Can such a man caress his wife, or kiss his child, when he knows not how many hearts are bursting with joy, or breaking with sorrow, from the tidings he has conveyed? To our mind, a postman should be an abstracted visionary being, endowed with a peculiar countenance, betraying the unnatural sparkle of the opium-eater, and evincing intense anxiety at the delivery of each sheet. But these,—they wait not to hear the joyful shout, or heart-rending moan—to know if hope deferred ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... he had dreaded most and probably thought he had escaped. She had stared at him, at the stewardess, at the walls, with abstracted, vacant, and bewildered, but always undimmed and unmoistened eyes. A sudden convulsion shook her whole frame, her blank expression broke like a shattered mirror, she threw her hands over her eyes and fell forward with her face to the back of ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... on our way, with careworn face, Abstracted eye, and sauntering pace, May pass one such as he, Whose mind heaves with a secret force, That shall be felt along the course ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... silent and abstracted. The raillery of his friends failed to awaken him into anything like liveliness. He smiled a bit at their jokes and chaffing, but any one could ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... with the murkiness of a settled and dismal day. Perchance his thoughts wandered with his childhood's sweetheart amid the fertile vales of far away Anjou. Nothing was more distant from him than the gilded furnishings, the frescoes, the marble Venus at his elbow. Beside her table, alone, and abstracted as Jerome, the woman toyed with a dainty fan; her impassive beauty, born of rigid training, betrayed not the inner desolation. Her face was calm and serious enough, the skin lay smooth and glowed with all those delicate tints ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... pass you the eggs, or bacon, or both, Serena?" George Lovegrove inquired, his childlike blue eyes meanwhile humbly imploring pardon for his lack of sorrow at her impending departure. Serena's manner was stiff and abstracted. This, combined with the rustling of her petticoats, filled him with anxiety. Was it ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... her misfortunes set her crying again, and again, with quiet patience, he consoled her. Presently she was babbling cheerfully of her home, her mother, and her dolls, and asking many questions. He made the replies politeness demanded, but he lent an abstracted ear to her talk, for he was considering different plans for escaping Mr. Biggleswade, most of them useless by reason of the slowness of Elizabeth. He could only make up his mind that they must dash for a cab as quickly as they could, and ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... more ado and with the same abstracted gleam in his eyes he stooped swiftly and jerked one of the quilts out ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... preceding the opening of the present book relating of the Boy Inventors, Mr. Chadwick had been closeted in his own private laboratory. The boys had seen him only at rare intervals, and then he had appeared abstracted and preoccupied. This, the boys knew, was a sure sign that he was at ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... pungently hot and dry, the whole surface of the body should be sponged with cold water, or with vinegar and water. The heat is by this means rapidly abstracted, and the child refreshed; and this may again and again be resorted to, as the heat again returns. By this application alone, "the pulse has been diminished in frequency, the thirst has abated, the tongue ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... natural self, with abstracted intervals, in which he lashed the helm to finger a distant rope, with such speed that the movements seemed simultaneous. Once he vanished, only to reappear in an instant with a chart, which he studied, while steering, with a success ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... for a moment, during which Mrs. Goyte remained with her head dropped, sinister and abstracted. Suddenly she lifted her face, ...
— Wintry Peacock - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • D. H. Lawrence
... less vivacity and good nature, was accessible, and, to people who did not cross him, civil. But of this sociableness William was entirely destitute. He seldom came forth from his closet; and, when he appeared in the public rooms, he stood among the crowd of courtiers and ladies, stern and abstracted, making no jest and smiling at none. His freezing look, his silence, the dry and concise answers which he uttered when he could keep silence no longer, disgusted noblemen and gentlemen who had been accustomed to ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... ministers, in supporting foreign and domestic missions and in publishing religious literature; besides the taxes applied to the care of the religious insane, and realize the fact that all of this vast sum of money is abstracted from the resources of the people, we would not have to go outside of our own country to appreciate the fact that religion is the burden of all burdens to society; and when we contemplate the great disturbance to the social relation, ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... they were locking up and making secure that which would destroy their hopes. They seemed under the conviction that the will was in the bureau; and if they had been men otherwise than merely what, as the world goes, are called honest, they might have abstracted the document; for the generous Rachel never even looked at their proceedings, grieved as she was at the death of her father. They ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... is the first and most instructive lesson in morality. It has a peculiar impressiveness, not only because it is so promptly and unmistakably verified, but because it is so close to life. Its meaning is unlikely to be obscured through being abstracted from the real interests whose saving is the proof of its virtue. Furthermore, although prudence is not the highest principle in life, it is a mistake to suppose that it is therefore unnecessary in the highest spheres of life. There is a problem of prudence that underlies every ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... rain and snow and melting ice), renders the sea light;—in addition to which corallines and shell-fish everywhere abstract the lime that is in the sea, by secreting it on their bodies in the form of shells, and thus increase the lightness of those particles of water from which the lime has been abstracted. The other particles of water being generous in their nature, hasten to impart of their lime and salt to those that have little ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... and abstracted. During the last ten days of enforced idleness he had considered the subject for hours at a time and from every conceivable angle, with the result that a certain possibility occurred to him and persisted ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... her fingers. Rollo was silent too. Half sitting half lying on the leafy slope, he was busying himself with gathering together all the acorns and acorn-cups within his reach, examining them carefully one by one, and yet with a face that grew grave and became abstracted. More time passed than he knew probably, and Hazel had leisure to come out of her own abstractions and wonder at his. He did not look as if he remembered her presence; and yet a sensible woman has no objection to such indications in a man's face,even ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... going on. Bernasconi, completely restored, sang the beautiful air from "Orpheus and Eurydice," and Frederick applauded as before. But the emperor sat silent and abstracted. His thoughts were with that Polish woman, whose love of country had brought her to Neustadt to remind him of the promises he had made to the Confederates ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... observed, are horizontal beds remaining, which give a measure of what had been abstracted by some cause, which is our present subject of ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... stage of Drury Lane Theatre, David Garrick both writing and speaking the prologue. Probably the satire soared rather above the heads of the audience. Foote admits as much in his preface to the published play: 'I was always apprehensive that the subject of the following piece was too abstracted and singular for the comprehension of a mixed assembly. Juno, Lucina, Jupiter Tonans, Phidias, Praxiteles, with the other gentlemen and ladies of antiquity, were, I daresay, utterly unknown to my very good friends ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... Mr. Hartley listened with an abstracted air, for his thoughts were upon the defalcation ...
— The Telegraph Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... lower corner of the garden, and as soon as the gardener entered he was accosted by a handsome woman in a widow's cap, who called him father, and said that supper had been ready for a long time. They sat down, but during the meal the gardener was so abstracted and silent that his daughter put her head winningly to one side and said, ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... that a king loves his subjects, and subjects love their king; that a husband loves his wife, and a mother her children, and vice versa; also when it is said, that any one loves his country, his fellow citizens, and his neighbour; in like manner of things abstracted from persons; as when it is said that a man loves this or that. But although the term love is thus universally applied in conversation, still there is scarcely any one that knows what love is: even ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... was gone to his work, and sounds above showed the wife to be engaged on the toilette of the younger branches. She called out that she had come for the keys of the church, and seeing them on the dresser, abstracted them, bidding the good ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Still strangely abstracted (but conscious now of the way by which he went), Mr. Bashwood left the public-house a few minutes later, in his turn. He walked on mechanically, in his dreary black garments, moving like a blot on the white surface of the sun-brightened road, as Midwinter ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... foot rose nor upon the heel as it fell. He never wore his shoes out at the heel and the toe, as most men do, more than at the middle. Yet his gait was not altogether awkward, and there was manifest physical power in his step. As he moved along thus, silent and abstracted, his thoughts dimly reflected in his sharp face, men turned to look after him as an object of sympathy as well as curiosity. His melancholy, in the words of Mr. Herndon, 'dripped from him as he walked.' If, however, he met a friend in the street, and was roused by a hearty 'Good-morning, Lincoln!' ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... nor I is inclined to be suspicious, and although we noticed Tish's rather abstracted expression that morning, we laid it to the fact that Charlie Sands had been talking about going to the American Ambulance in France, which Tish opposed violently, although she was more than ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... abstracted, deliberate way, his eyes pondering the safe, the blue-steel tools were replaced in the pockets of the leather girdle; and then the long, slim, tapering fingers closed upon the dial's knob and twirled it tentatively, and his head bent forward until his ear was pressed hard against ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... afterwards, had a distinct recollection of the turning-up of the mouse. Like a thoughtless youth as he was, he ran after the creature to kill it, but was checked and recalled by his master, who, he observed, became thereafter thoughtful and abstracted. Burns, who treated his servants with the familiarity of fellow-labourers, soon after ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... on a large plate; a little mound of spinach rested on one side of them, a huge baked potato on the other. She slid the plate softly from the metal shelf, peeping apprehensively at Maggie, tumbled the rolls on to the top, and sped into the dining-room. From a drawer in the sideboard she abstracted a silver fork which she slipped into her pocket, adding, after a moment of consideration, a salt-shaker. Stepping to the door, she paused on the little porch for a hasty survey. The coast seemed clear, and ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... Unorna's manner that she must have reason to believe that the guest was identical with some one of whom she had heard very often. Her manner was abstracted and she seemed ill at ease. But that might be the result ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... Ricci. Between 1483, when Bembo reconstructed the tomb, and 1520, when the Florentines again claimed the body, and for the first time with a certainty of success, the body of Dante disappeared. It seems that in 1520 the Franciscans entered the mausoleum, abstracted the body, and hid it to save it for Ravenna. In June 1677 Fra Antonio visited the bones in their hiding place and verified them. In October of the same year they were built into the new wall where the old entrance ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... the only articles of dress in which Aunt Mabel was a little fastidious. She kept her sewing in her hand as she commenced her story, and stitched away most industriously at first, but gradually as she proceeded the work fell upon her lap, and she seemed to be lost in abstracted recollections, speaking as though impelled by some uncontrollable impulse to recall the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... finished eating all their salt pork, but had never once opened the cask of beef since Eric abstracted the piece he roasted the year before "for a treat"; and, now, on going to get out a good boiling piece, in order to cook it in a more legitimate fashion, they found to their grief that, whether through damp, or exposure to the ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson |
