"Abstractedly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... out the necessary and universal truths contained in the infinite into distinct contemplation by the pure act of the sensuous imagination—that is, in the production of the forms of space and time abstracted from all corporeity, and likewise of the inherent forms of the understanding itself abstractedly from the consideration of particulars, as in the case of geometry, numeral mathematics, universal logic, and pure metaphysics. The discursive faculty then becomes what our Shakespeare, with happy precision, ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... a remote and very cushiony place. She was sitting at her table writing letters. She lifted her face abstractedly when he entered, watched him go to the sofa, and sit down. Then she looked down at ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... gazing abstractedly at the two lovely feet of Miss Grace Plumer, with an air that implied how far his mind had wandered in their conversation from any merely personal considerations. Miss Grace Plumer had not made as much progress as Mr. Newt since ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... dropped my head, and could not help stammering as I replied that she was in her own room. Instantly his love took alarm, and leaving me, he hastened to her apartment, where I afterwards learned he came upon her sitting abstractedly before her dressing-table with Mr. Clavering's family ring on her finger. I do not know what followed. An unhappy scene, I fear, for Mary is ill this morning, and ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... the man muses, with his hat now fully upon the bridge of his nose. He smiles unexpectedly; as suddenly frowns with great intensity; and involuntarily walks backward against the sleeping Alderman. Him he abstractedly sits down upon, and then listens intently for any casual remark he may make. But ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... H.? Not Master Anthony, Jr., at all events. But some one afar off, surely. Abstractedly, Tom Slade gazed off toward that towering mountain whence this clumsy but unerring messenger had come. It looked very dark up there. Tom recalled how from those lofty crags the great eagle had swooped down and met his match ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... and to what extent the radii of mountain moonlight differed from the radii of any other kind of moonlight, and Eve herself, in absolute spiritual remoteness, stood patiently shifting her weight from one foot to the other, staring abstractedly all the time at the floor under ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... bent his steps, attracted by loud imprecations of anger mingled with the shriller chattering of monkey-language. He beheld his plump diminutive servitor, clad only in a waistcoat and a pair of socks, storming ineffectually at the monkey which was seated on a low branch of an apple tree, abstractedly fingering the remainder of the boy's outfit, which he had removed just ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... been the first to discover her bald spot—which he promptly christened her storm centre—and to call Ned's attention to it; and therein lay much of his power over her. Now, whenever Mrs. Euphemia threatened to get the better of him, he had only to fix his eyes steadily on the top of her head, or abstractedly rub his hand over his own yellow pate, to cause her to abandon her lecture and escape to her mirror, in order to assure herself that all ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... before the kitchen stove, rocking to and fro, and gazing abstractedly before her. Her mood was a reminiscent one and I knew if I gave her time enough she would launch forth into one of the interesting narratives of which she possessed a goodly store. To have interrupted her train of thought by even a whisper would have been fatal; silence and patience must ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... looked half-abstractedly at the upturned young faces, pushed his way through the little group, and taking up a parcel of papers and a surgical case which lay near, went straight to his carriage, which was heard immediately afterwards to bowl quickly down ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... novel was finished and thrown aside, and Mrs. Elwyn sat with her feet on the low fender gazing abstractedly into the fire. Now was the time Agnes thought, and approaching her gently, ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... their chairs eagerly up to the doctor's, but for a minute he did not seem to see them, but sat gazing abstractedly into the fire, then he took a long draw upon his ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... cheerfully, he was preoccupied. Whiffs of indistinct conversation, and now and then laughter, came in from the inn parlor through the pelargoniums in the open window. Hoopdriver felt it must all be in the same strain,—at her expense and his. He answered her abstractedly. She was tired, she said, and presently went to her room. Mr. Hoopdriver, in his courtly way, opened the door for her and bowed her out. He stood listening and fearing some new offence as she went upstairs, and round the ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... up—all this with the labour of the convalescents. There is a football ground, of which recreation is not the only purpose, for the O.C. has original ideas about distinguishing between "shock," or neurasthenia, and malingering by other methods than testing a man's reflexes. He just walks abstractedly round that football ground of an afternoon and studies the form of the players. In this self-contained community is a barber's shop, a cobbler's, a library, a theatre. In two neighbouring paddocks are the isolation camps for scarlet fever and cerebro-meningitis, and as soon as a man ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... I'm sure, Pollyanna," rejoined Mrs. Carew, abstractedly. On Mrs. Carew's face there was ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... of slavery, and its injustice, abstractedly considered, are so generally admitted by the citizens of all the states, that we deem it unnecessary to adduce arguments for their proof. A favourable occasion for circumscribing these evils, and discountenancing this injustice, is, we conceive, now offered to Congress, in the power ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... wound to liberty: for what king will ever call 'Etats again, if he can possibly help it! The new legislators were pedants, not politicians, when they announced the equality of all men. We are all born so, no doubt, abstractedly; and physically capable of being kept so, were it possible to establish a perfect government, and give the same education to all men. But are they so in the present constitution of society, under a bad government, where most have had no education at all, but ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... upon the matter now, scowling abstractedly at the button of the electric bell, turning the whole business over in his mind, he remembered that to-day was butter-making day and that Mrs. Tree would be occupied in the dairy. That meant that Hilma would take her place. He turned to the mirror ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... faltering uncertainty, then stiffened into resolution. Inside her muff her hands gripped, inside her bodice her heart jumped. Both these evidences of agitation were hidden and that gave her confidence. Assuming an air of nonchalance she moved forward, her gait slackened, her eyes abstractedly shifting from the sky to ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... going to do, now they're here?" Starr abstractedly wiped off the ash collar of his cigarette against the edge of ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... the same word of truth which says, 'Whosoever will, let him come, and take of the water of life freely,' also says, 'The soul that sinneth [or lives and dies in sin unpardoned] shall die.' Thus sin is the object of God's hatred, and not the man, abstractedly considered. May we therefore each of us have grace to look to Christ for full and complete salvation, who hath put away sin by the sacrifice of himself, whereby he has perfected for ever them ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... if she was really speaking the truth, and, going to the edge of the bank, looked abstractedly ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... this letter to Pope Innocent that he did not notice the slow opening of the third window: and Melicent had been in conference with the queer small boy for some while before Dom Manuel looked up abstractedly toward them. Then Manuel seemed perturbed, and he called Melicent to him, and she obediently ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... her in his church once or twice and shaken hands with her abstractedly as he did with anyone he happened to encounter on his way down the aisle. He had never met her elsewhere, for the Wests were Episcopalians, with church affinities in Lowbridge, and no occasion for calling ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... business, Percy Darrow, his curiosity aroused, interviewed the janitor. Under that functionary's guidance he examined the points of entrance for the different wires used for lighting and communication; looked over the private-bell installations, and ascended again to the corridor, abstractedly dusting his fingers. There he found a group of the building's tenants, among whom he distinguished ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... narcotic. Even the officers aft, whose duty required them never to be seated while keeping a deck watch, vainly endeavoured to keep on their pins; and were obliged invariably to compromise the matter by leaning up against the bulwarks, and gazing abstractedly over the side. Reading was out of the question; take a book in your hand, and you ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... her face over the fountain, and dropping amidst its playful spray the leaves of a rose which she had abstractedly plucked as ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... tall, middle-aged man in coarse home-spun clothing, his eye defiant, but his countenance white with the anxieties of his situation. He was surrounded by a troop of sabres; the horses' hoofs made a great clatter upon the hard road, and Count Victor, walking abstractedly along the river-bank, came on them before he was aware of their proximity. As he stood to let them pass he was touched inexpressibly by the glance the convict gave him, so charged was it with question, hope, dread, ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... reached the street he did not look back, but wandered abstractedly through by-streets in the falling rain, scarcely realizing where he was, until he found himself drenched through, with his closed umbrella in his tremulous hand, standing at the half-submerged levee beside the overflowed river. Here again he realized how completely he had been absorbed and concentrated ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... that they would have of me if ever they knew all. I did not care to pursue this train of thought. It was a subject upon which I was not prepared to examine myself; to change it, I thought of Bob's present peril, which I had almost forgotten as I lounged abstractedly in the empty hall. If anything were to happen to him, in the vulgar sense! What an irony, what poetic punishment for us survivors! And yet, even as I rehearsed the ghastly climax in my mind, I told myself that the ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... taken off his professional gear, and was undistinguishable from the sombre mass of his fellow citizens. He was out on the open space near the great tent, looking abstractedly at a man blowing with distended cheeks into a lung-testing machine. Rounders stood before him with the respect due to a man who snatches meat away ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... haven't filed their claims yet. They've GOT to take possession first, and they've got to show a sample of ore, or dust, it would be in this case. The best thing to do—" She drew her eyebrows together, and she pinched her under lip between her thumb and forefinger, and she stared abstractedly at Good Indian. "Oh, hurry up, Grant!" she cried unguardedly. "Think—think HARD, what's ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... and gazed abstractedly upon the white "Californian." Just then, a "parade" was the dominant idea in the poor fellow's limited intelligence. Amy's simple white flannel frock, with its scarlet sash, and the scarlet cap upon her dark curls, suggested only another "uniform." The girls with ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... was patting Ike more abstractedly than ever. As for me, I sat aghast and overwhelmed. The next few ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... the hero of the cricket field of which he himself had once been a cadet. In face he was not greatly altered. Still the old curly head and bright eyes. He was noticed occasionally to stroke his chin abstractedly; and some envious detractors went so far as to rumour that, in the lowest recesses of his trunk he had a razor, wherewith on divers occasions, in dread secret, he operated with slashing effect. Be this as it might, Charlie was growing up. He had a fag of ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... slowly, and had reached that very important part where the "fly," as an ocular witness, gives his substantial and straightforward evidence. I had a little narrow block between my fingers, and was glancing carefully among the unused pieces for its mate, repeating abstractedly all the while: ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... seemed to have something weighty on his mind. He kept pulling at his streaked, reddish-gray mustache when his fingers should have been wholly occupied with his food, and he stared abstractedly at the ground after he had finished his first cup of coffee and before he took his second. Once Bill Holmes caught him glaring with an intensity which circumstances in no wise justified—and it was Bill Holmes who first ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... fell. As she raised her hand abstractedly to adjust the curtain, Paul saw the flash of her betrothal ring. He caught her hand in his and quietly slipped the ring from her finger. She seized the jewel with her free hand and tried to thrust it ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... contending currents, it may often be observed that two or more dimples are formed near each other with more or less regularity. These fantastic eddies, which the musing poet will sometimes watch abstractedly for an hour, little thinking of the law which produces and connects them, are an illustration of the wonders of binary and ternary ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... "Have I?" he murmured abstractedly, looking down on that exquisite, innocent, glowing face, and trembling with the force of the restrained passion that kindled through him. "I don't know about that!—yours seem to me like two stars fallen from ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... to the opposite end of the board, where stood the cup of wine madame had poured for Marius. His own, Garnache, had left untouched. As if abstractedly, he now took up the beaker, pledged madame with his glance, and drank. She watched him, and suddenly a suspicion darted through her mind—a suspicion ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... alive, it might be you who killed him, or why should you have held your tongue about his death? But if he was dead, and you had a reason for killing him, you might have held your tongue for fear of being accused." Then after a silence he added, abstractedly: "Cyprus is a beautiful place, I believe. Romantic scenery and romantic people. Very intoxicating for a ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... and pretended to be interested in the vague shape of a steamer almost lost in the mists that lay along the horizon. Those sweetly curved lips had been torturing him with their allurement. From them he wanted kisses—not dispassionate counsel—but he replied abstractedly: ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... his book, where he had been beholding a large breadth of light on the spiritual sky, and answered, somewhat abstractedly, but with the gentle politeness he ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... the window where she stood abstractedly looking through the lattice which overhung a large yard, surrounded by the stables of the hostelry. Some yeomen were dressing their own or their masters' horses, whistling, singing and laughing. ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... necessarily," Felicity said, abstractedly judicious. "Take me for instance. I tried out four or five before I was inspired with the one I'm wearing now. And a couple of them woulda knocked you dead, take it from me. But the Vere de Vere stuff is bla now. Too phony. There's no class to that kind of a monicker ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... seems to have presented itself, that it was possible adversity might overwhelm her. She confined herself rigidly to her home; said that the moan of the sea wearied and worried her, and blocked up every window which looked upon the ocean! For hours she would sit, abstractedly, in silence. Then, wringing her hands, would wake up with a wistful cry, and repeat—'Wrong never comes right! ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... hearth, discussing the tableaux for the evening, while, with her cheek upon her hand, Cornelia listlessly fingered a diamond necklace which her father had just given her. The blazing jewels slipped through her pale fingers all unnoticed, and she looked up abstractedly when Mr. Graham touched her, and repeated his question for ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... helped to determine his belief that ballads were composed by gifted minstrels, and that they had deteriorated in the process of being handed down by recitation. He called tradition "a sort of perverted alchymy which converts gold into lead." "All that is abstractedly poetical," he said, "all that is above the comprehension of the merest peasant, is apt to escape in frequent repetition; and the lacunae thus created are filled up either by lines from other ditties or from the mother wit of the reciter or singer. The ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... looked anxiously at her and then at Keith. The young man was staring abstractedly at the window, striving to recall the vision that had appeared there, and he felt, rather than saw, his hostess start and change color when her eyes fell upon the ring he was wearing. He lifted his hand covertly, and turned the trinket around in the light, but he tried in ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... drawing-room without my shoes. You remember the gentleman in The Spectator, who had a commission of lunacy taken out against him for his extreme singularity, such as never wearing a wig, but a night-cap. Now, Sir, abstractedly, the night-cap was best; but, relatively, the advantage was overbalanced by his making ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... next morning, it is in a strange room. Her head whirls, she gazes abstractedly about her and tries to shake off what seems to her to be a horrid dream, but she is brought suddenly to realize that it is no sleeping fancy, but a steam reality, as a low voice by her ...
— From the Ball-Room to Hell • T. A. Faulkner
... of condescending majestically to Mr. Prohack while licking his boots. He listened to Mr. Prohack as to an autocrat while giving Mr. Prohack to understand that Mr. Prohack knew not the first elements of sartorial elegance. At intervals he gazed abstractedly at the gold framed and crowned portraits that hung on the walls and at the inscriptions similarly framed and crowned and hung, and it was home in upon Mr. Prohack that the inscriptions in actual practice referred to ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... to his intention," muttered St. John abstractedly. He was thinking deeply, his fine brows ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... fingers strayed to a knot of blue ribbon pinned to her gown. Abstractedly she unfastened it, and Goddard's hand closed over the ribbon as she murmured: "Come and see my aunt to-morrow. Our address ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... he announced his ennui to Tom had been quite typical. He had risen at noon, lunched with Mrs. Lawrence, and then ridden abstractedly homeward atop one of ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... Trade, one of those signs by which men may know each other in strange and peculiar situations. And there were many other knots tied along the trailing length of the string. It seemed as if some nervous and distraught prisoner in this room might have toyed abstractedly ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... place of verbal expressions were discrete from each other, but in a very small degree. Afterwards they spoke with me by means of ideas still less discrete, so that hardly any interval was perceived: in my perception it was like the meaning of words with those who attend only to the sense abstractedly from the expressions. This speech was more intelligible to me than the former, and it was also fuller. Like the other, it inflowed into the face, but the influx was more continuous according to the character of the speech; it did not, however, like the former, begin at the ...
— Earths In Our Solar System Which Are Called Planets, and Earths In The Starry Heaven Their Inhabitants, And The Spirits And Angels There • Emanuel Swedenborg
... And a thousand pound bellows. (He wanders out abstractedly. DANIEL follows him to the door and shouts after him)—Goodbye, Andy. And may you have the best of ...
— The Drone - A Play in Three Acts • Rutherford Mayne
... Tai-yue to her senses. She at length realised that her legs felt rather tired. After lingering about abstractedly for a long while, she quietly returned into the Hsiao Hsiang lodge, supporting herself on Tzu Chuean. As soon as they stepped inside the entrance of the court, her gaze was attracted by the confused shadows of the bamboos, which covered the ground, and the traces ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... he announced abstractedly, "the pressing problem is food. We've quite a number of fishermen, and a few hunters. We've got to have a lot of food at once, and everything considered, I think we'd better count on the fishermen. At sunrise ...
— The Runaway Skyscraper • Murray Leinster
... He said: "I can prognosticate With estimates correct; And when the skies I contemplate, I know what to expect. When dark'ning clouds obscure my sight, I think perhaps 'twill rain; And when the stars are shining bright, I know 'tis clear again." And then abstractedly he scanned The heavens, hour by hour, Old Ptolemy Copernicus ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... point of the last combination which must infallibly have produced the medium, I abandoned it when I heard Orellana's account, and found that Nature had already done in Eldorado precisely what I was trying to do. You see," continued the old man abstractedly, "I had put youth, and love, and hope, besides a great many scarce minerals, into the crucible, and they all dissolved slowly, and vanished—in vapor. It was curious, but they left no residuum except a little ashes, which ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... to that, I believe it is a long time since the house has had anything to do with his concerns," returned the venerable President, abstractedly gazing at Balder's high boots; "but I'll ask Mr. ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... truly represent them, but indifferently qualified for storming a citadel. After all, God knows whether this citadel is to be stormed by them, or by anybody else, by the means they use, or by any means. I know that as they are, abstractedly speaking, to blame, so there are those who cry out against them for it, not with a friendly complaint, as we do, but with the bitterness of enemies. But I know, too, that those who blame them for want of enterprise ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... sat holding it abstractedly in his hand, nor was it till the door opened half an hour later and Rosalind sailed in that he hastily pulled himself together, and crumpled the paper away ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... and dramatic in appearing and can be made immediate use of, whereas the master is slowly formed, and even then turns out unsatisfactory in many ways. He is apt to be that well-known and inconvenient sort of person who, when he comes in out of the rain to dress for his wedding, abstractedly prepares to retire instead, and then, still more abstractedly, puts his umbrella to bed and stands himself in the corner. All the same, it is no less divine to create a master by slow, laborious methods than to snatch a masterpiece ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... back in her chair, and, picking up a bit of Angela's toast from the tray, nibbled abstractedly at the crust. ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... but there was something in the girl's manner of saying it which seemed to give the young man complete satisfaction. Then the speaker seated herself on a fragment of rock, and set her chin upon her hand. It was a round and rather prominent chin, and the young man, who stood abstractedly twirling his hat, making a pivot of the two fingers which protruded through the hole, thought that he had never seen a chin quite like it. Or perhaps, on second thoughts, was it that dimple at the side of the ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... surgeon, Professor MacDonald. He was elderly, with the broad high forehead, dignity of poise, and sharpness of glance which bespeaks the successful scientist. His face, to-night, was chalky and the firm, full mouth twitched with nervousness. He greeted Shirley abstractedly. The criminologist's manner was that of ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... was brought, and then seating herself by the window Maggie looked out abstractedly, seeing nothing, and hearing nothing save the sound of the pen, as it wrote down words of love for the gentle Rose. It was not a long epistle; and, as at the close of the Douglas letter he had asked ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... with his grandfather he was in the habit of skipping along on the stone pavement in front of the three stores and the hotel of the town and betting that he could avoid the cracks. But upon this day he walked soberly, with his hand gripping two of his grandfather's fingers. Sometimes he kicked abstractedly at dandelions that curved over the walk. Any one could see ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... failed to visit to see if there were any new-blown cyclamen, without giving it even a thought. A crimson spray of gladiolus leaned from the rock and seemed softly to kiss her cheek, yet she regarded it not; and once stopping and gazing abstractedly upward on the flower-tapestried walls of the gorge, as they rose in wreath and garland and festoon above her, she felt as if the brilliant yellow of the broom and the crimson of the gillyflowers, and all the fluttering, nodding armies of brightness that were dancing in the sunlight, were ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... thinking," said Josephine, looking abstractedly at her mother, "that I would try to get John to take her to San Francisco this winter. The Careys are expected, you know; she might ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... Gad! that was neat; here they come;" for the two boys had whirled with sudden skill at the quarter post, and broke away, with Diablo slightly in the lead. "My God! he can move," muttered Langdon, abstractedly, and quite to himself. The man at his side had floated into oblivion. He saw only a great striding black horse coming wide-mouthed up the stretch. At the Black's heels, with ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... the dog-cart and the burying of Rox. Then slowly, her eyes fixed and wide, she went up to her own room and, without removing either her hat or her gloves, sat down upon the edge of the bed, letting her hands fall limply into her lap, gazing abstractedly at the white curtain just stirring at the ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... Assembly. At this he expressed his uneasiness. "Mirabeau," says he, "is a host in himself; and I should not be surprised if by his own eloquence and popularity only he were to carry it; and yet I regret that he has taken the lead in it. The cause is so lovely, that even ambition, abstractedly considered, is too impure to take it under its protection, and not to sully it. It should have been placed in the hands of the most virtuous man in France. This man is the Duc de la Rochefoucauld. ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... looking up at the windows of the Continental, across the street. Mildred's glance slowly and carelessly followed his. At one window stood the little general, gazing abstractedly out over the gardens. At another window Mildred saw Harding; at a third, her maid; at a fourth, Harding's assistant, Drawl; at a fifth, three servants of the retinue. Except the general, all ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... Cleek abstractedly, and then sat silent for a long time, staring at his spats and moving one thumb slowly round the breadth of the other, his fingers interlaced and his lower lip pushed upwards over the ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... all there," she said, abstractedly; and, returning, she kissed her gentle companion, bade her ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... the most bouffant of underlying shirts, the deepest of lace collars, the most straightly cut of Anglo-Saxon coiffures, the most far-reaching of sailor hats. Sadie Gonorowsky, the haughty Sadie, paused open-eyed in her distribution of writing papers. Morris Mogilewsky, the gentle Morris, abstractedly bit off and swallowed a piece of the gold-fish food. Isidore Belchatosky, the exquisite Isidore, passed a stealthy hand over his closely cropped red head and knew that his ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... Mr. Jansenius entered just then, and Agatha became motionless and gazed abstractedly at a vase of flowers. Miss Wilson invited her visitors to join the tennis players. Mr. Jansenius looked sternly and disappointedly at Agatha, who elevated her left eyebrow and depressed her right simultaneously; but he, shaking ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... saw, standing at a window, a beauty such as he had never beheld in all his life, black-eyed, and with skin white as snow illumined by the dawning flush of the sun. She was laughing heartily, and her laugh enhanced her dazzling loveliness. Taken aback he gazed at her in confusion, abstractedly wiping the mud from his face, by which means it became still further smeared. Who could this beauty be? He sought to find out from the servants, who, in rich liveries, stood at the gate in a crowd surrounding a young ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... interesting!' Swithin paused abstractedly for a moment, then stepped back again to the stile, while he stood watching the little boy out ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... still follows that we must first consider what is absolutely right; since the one conception presupposes the other. That is to say, though we must ever aim to do what is best for the present times, yet we must ever bear in mind what is abstractedly best; so that the changes we make may be towards it, ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... time Sylvia glanced up, and finding her companion's eyes abstractedly fixed on the floor, she continued to look into his face, noting its fine, somewhat gaunt modeling, the level line of his brown eyebrows, the humor and kindness of his mouth. The winter twilight cast its first faint web of blue shadow into the ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... abstractedly her long, flowing hair, winding it around her jeweled fingers, and then letting the soft curls ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... of the dinner is also marked by exhilarating experiences. With one coat-tail unwittingly tucked far up his back, so that it seems to be amputated, and his alpaca umbrella under his arm, he enters a grocery-store of the village, and abstractedly asks how strawberries are selling to-day? Upon being reminded that fresh fruit is very scarce in late December, he changes his purpose, and orders two bottles of Bourbon flavoring-extract sent to his ...
— Punchinello Vol. 1, No. 21, August 20, 1870 • Various
... characters of human beings in variety. There must be something abstractedly in the nature of mind, which renders it accessible to these varieties. For the present we will call it taste. One man feels his spirits regaled with the sight of those things which constitute wealth, another in meditating the triumphs ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... it won't hurt me to walk. Nothing hurts me—Leah Mordecai the despised." Then, averting her face, the young girl gazed abstractedly into the street, and began ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... it," said Gideon, cheerfully. After a pause, in which he unostentatiously rearranged the table which the widow was abstractedly disorganizing, he said gently, "After tea, when you're not so much flustered with work and worry, and more composed in spirit, we'll have a little talk, Sister Hiler. I'm in no hurry to-night, and if you don't mind I'll make myself comfortable in the barn with my blanket until sun-up to-morrow. ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... of marriage generally. This was very compromising. He had been deceived; Lizzie had deceived him. She had no right to do such a thing; and, striving to determine on a line of conduct, Mr Hare examined abstractedly the place ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... smoking in silence, monarch of all he surveyed, and then, gazing abstractedly at the silent craft around him, fell into a pleasant dream, in which he saw himself in his rightful position as master of the Foam, and Nibletts, cashiered for drunkenness, coming to him for employment ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... this strange individual sat down at the table, and was soon as deeply engaged with his large book as if he had suffered no interruption; while Martin and Barney, having gazed gravely and abstractedly at him for five minutes, turned and smiled to each other, jumped into their hammocks, and were ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... red as a red bear," said he, abstractedly. "He came from the north; they said so in the galley when he looked for rowers—not slaves, but free men. Afterward—years and years afterward—news came from another ship, or else he came back"—His lips moved in silence. He was rapturously retasting ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... and potatoes very quietly and thoughtfully that noon, a procedure so contrary to his usual actions that his mother asked him if he felt well. He nodded abstractedly, went upstairs to the big, sunny sewing room, searched the family needlecase for a long stiff darning needle and extracted several rubber bands from the red cardboard box on the library table. Then he sauntered ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... room, lighted now only by the moonrays, Jimmie Dale's eyes travelled slowly, abstractedly. Yes, in that one particular it was different; but here was the New Sanctuary, and again he was living the old life in close, intimate companionship with the underworld—the old life that only six months ago he had thought ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... now lay at hand, Kenny never doubted. Already he had rocketed sentimentally into inspiration. If a certain vagueness of detail sent him roving abstractedly around the studio with the letter in his hand, the inspiration in itself was amazingly clear. Yes, he would fare forth and find Brian. He would tramp every mile of the road as Brian had done. He would ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... word cause may be used in a secondary and subordinate sense, as meaning antecedent forces, yet in an abstract sense it is totally inapplicable; we can not predicate of any physical agent that it is abstractedly the cause of another" (p. 15). "Causation is the will," "creation is the act, of God" Grove on "Correlation of Physical Forces," (p. 199). "Between gravity and motion it is impossible to establish the equation ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... garden, where the faithful Nebbie was waiting for him, amid a company of pigeons who were busy picking up what they fancied from the gravelled path, and who were utterly unembarrassed by the constant waggings of the terrier's rough tail. And he walked somewhat abstractedly through the old paved court, past the unsympathetic sun-dial, and out through the great gates, which were guarded on either side by stone griffins, gripping in their paws worn shields decorated with defaced tracings of the old Vaignecourt emblems. Clematis clasped these fabulous beasts in ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... to act very forcibly, will be found, I think, upon reflection to reside more in our habits of apprehension than in the subject: and that the giving way to it, when we have any reasonable grounds or the contrary, is rather an indulging of the imagination than anything else. Abstractedly considered, that is, considered without relation to the difference which habit, and merely habit, produces in our faculties and modes of apprehension, I do not see anything more in the resurrection of a dead man than in the conception of a child; except it be this, ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... knows I am almost an old woman now." She made marks abstractedly upon the corner of a piece of paper. "Unless my hair turns grey presently I must bleach it, for 'twill seem improper it ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... elbows on the table, she slid her ruby ring up and down her finger abstractedly. She frowned at the rows of leather-bound books opposite her. Ralph looked keenly at her. Very pale, but sternly concentrated upon her meaning, beautiful but so little aware of herself as to seem remote from him also, there was something distant and abstract ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... person in an hundred after having had the cow-pox should be found susceptible of the smallpox, would this invalidate the utility of the practice? For, waiving all other considerations, who will deny that the inoculated smallpox, although abstractedly it may be considered as harmless, does not involve in itself something that in numberless instances proves ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... examined the book abstractedly. "Suppose," he said slowly, but without looking at his partner, "suppose, as it's gettin' late now, we play for my half share of the claim agin ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... She was turning a ring about on her finger abstractedly. He hesitated to reply. He was afraid that he might say something to press a confidence for which she would be sorry afterward. She guessed what ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... a large wrapping robe flung carelessly over her night attire, but instead of reading, which at that hour, and in that guise, she generally did, that the word of God might be the last book on which she looked ere she sought her rest, she was leaning abstractedly over the fire, seated on a low stool, her hands pressed on her temples, while the flickering flame cast a red and unnatural glare on those pale cheeks. Ellen advanced, but her cousin moved not at her entrance, nor even when ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... forehead as though his hand had been wandering among it while his thoughts were elsewhere, and his face looked worn. Almost frightened by coming upon him so unexpectedly, I stood still for a moment and should have retired without speaking had he not, in again passing his hand abstractedly through his hair, seen me ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... perpendicular white, from whence range upon range of dark lines loom out in the hazy atmosphere. From the extreme summit of one snow-laden peak, whose white steeple seems truly a heavenward-directed finger, I gaze abstractedly all around upon nothing but dark masses of gently-waving hills, steep, weary ascents and descents, green and gold, and yellow and brown, and one's eyes rest upon a maze of thin white lines intertwining them all. These ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... individuals forming their contents really existing in nature. (3) Again, there are many things in nature, the difference between which is so slight as to be hardly perceptible to the understanding; so that it may readily happen that such things are confounded together, if they be conceived abstractedly. (4) But since the first principle of nature cannot (as we shall see hereafter) be conceived abstractedly or universally, and cannot extend further in the understanding than it does in reality, and has no likeness to mutable ...
— On the Improvement of the Understanding • Baruch Spinoza [Benedict de Spinoza]
... murmured the Girton Girl abstractedly, "the best time is just as one is coming out of church. There is so much confusion; besides, one has one's Prayer-book—I beg ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... such a question proposed, we should be tempted to answer, what is not Life that really is? Our reason convinces us that the quantities of things, taken abstractedly as quantity, exist only in the relations they bear to the percipient; in plainer words, they exist only in our minds, ut quorum esse est percipi. For if the definite quantities have a ground, and therefore a reality, in the external world, and ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... She spoke abstractedly and wearily. The General felt that it was not for this that she had thus visited him, but that something more lay behind. Still he answered her remark as if he took it in good faith. He hastened to reassure her. It was no intrusion. Was she not ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... ultimate hope came to him with so much force as to cause him to reel like one on whom a severe blow had been dealt. He stood for some time, seemingly bewildered, in the din and noise of the wharf, noting abstractedly the many bales of cotton, as truck after truck-load was rushed aboard an outward bound steamer. The bales seemed to fascinate him completely. A stevedore yelled at him to move out of the way and aroused him into action, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... girl, still abstractedly. "The world seems in a vesper mood," she added, looking out the west windows at the red ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner |
