"Distracting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... though negative in purpose, has had a lasting and beneficial effect, for through his thorough demolition of the old loose and distracting notions of inherited experience, the ground has been cleared for the construction of a true knowledge of ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... a member of the English bar who may be said to have been overwhelmed by the distracting importunities of clients to secure his services, at all hazards and at any cost, it was the late Sir William Follett; and how he contrived to satisfy the calls upon him, to the extent which he did, is truly wonderful. How can one head, and one tongue, do ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... cornets, with a strong force, both of foot and horse, marching directly toward the Saracens, with loud shouts, and attacked their army with great spirit. The land attack was assisted by the Christian navy, which approached the shore, making a horrible noise, and distracting the attention of the Saracens, who feared to be attacked in flank and rear. After a sharp encounter, the Saracens fled towards Ascalon, many being slain in the battle and pursuit, and others drowned, by leaping into the sea to avoid being slain. In this battle 3000 ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... impression that he was a dull, inconsequential talker, that he considered young couples "kittle cattle," that artists were always absorbed in their work, that females had a habit of needless worrying, and that commuting in winter was distracting to a man's labors. She only half listened to him, and dropped him with relief, wondering if he was an anti-suffragist. Some memory of his remarks must, however, have remained with her, for after her next visit to Mary she ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... with the double intention of making an offensive move and of distracting the wavering burghers from a close examination of Lord Kitchener's proclamation, assembled his forces in the second week of September in the Ermelo district. Thence he moved them rapidly towards Natal, with the result that the volunteers of that colony had once more to grasp their ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... life, I had lived in the actual draper's shop of the Baines's, and knew it as only a child could know it. Then I went to London on a visit. I tried to continue the book in a London hotel, but London was too distracting, and I put the thing away, and during January and February of 1908, I wrote "Buried Alive," which was published immediately, and was received with majestic indifference by the English public, an indifference which ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... right off, but had come and asked him (Pompey's friend) whether he (the friend of Pompey's friend) ought to do it or no? There I fold my hands with some complacency: that's a piece of very good narration. I am getting into good form. These classical instances are always distracting. I was talking of the cloak. It's awfully dear. Are there no cheap and nasty imitations? Think of that—if, however, it were the opinion (ahem) of competent persons that the great cost of the mantle in question was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... any positive news from the field of battle, even in the heart of Brussels, at this crisis, when everything that was dear and valuable to either party was at stake, was at one instant nearly distracting in its torturing suspense to the wrung nerves, and at another insensibly blunted them into a kind of amalgamation with the Belgic philosophy. At certain houses, as well as at public offices, news, I doubt not, arrived; but ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... had bought a young negress. In the evening, when I retired to rest, I perceived that my wives had prepared no bed for her, and that the unfortunate girl was extended on the ground. I rolled up my trowsers and laid them under her head as a kind of pillow. In the morning the distracting cries of the poor slave made me run to her, and I found her nearly sinking under the blows of my four wives; for once they understood each other ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... the brothers slid down from the wall to the beach on the other side to make off, amid a distracting volley of heart-rending howls from the betrayed Splutters ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... but one man in the world to whom she will give without a shadow of the desire for the value in return. What was there in the world now to prevent her from taking what life offered of its small, distracting pleasures? A moment of recklessness brought a deceptive lift to ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... Pao, the merchant, pleasurably immersed in the calculation of an estimated profit on a junk-load of birds' nests, sharks' fins and other seasonable delicacies, there came a distracting interruption occasioned by a wandering poet who sat down within the shade provided by Wong Pao's ornamental gate in the street outside. As he reclined there he sang ballads of ancient valour, from time to time beating a hollow ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... hours, with not even a book for an apology, staring down into the black old roaring pot. It has a sort of hypnotic effect after a time. And you'd be surprised how quickly one gets used to the noise. To me it's even less distracting than sheer silence. You don't know, after all, what on earth sheer silence means—even at Widderstone. But one can just realize a water-nymph. They chatter; but, thank Heaven, it's not articulate.' He handed Lawford a cup with ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... harbour in the month of October last, and arrived at Gottenburgh in Sweden, from whence he proceeded to Bergen in Norway. His instructions were to make occasional descents upon the coast of Ireland: and, by dividing the troops, and distracting the attention of the government in that kingdom, to facilitate the enterprise of M. de Confians, the fate of which we have already narrated. The original armament of Thurot consisted of five ships, one of which, called the mareschal de Belleisle, was mounted ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... the use of the harem is called, was a curious and luxurious marble room, with inviting pure white marble tanks large enough to swim in, and surrounded by tiny glass mirrors let into the walls at such angles as to reflect a figure myriads of times, quite distracting to look upon. All departments of this remarkable royal residence are exquisitely finished, showing no less of refined, artistic taste, than of lavish expenditure. The courts, chambers, boudoirs, fountains, pavilions, reception halls, throne ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... you'll have enough bother without him," replied my father. "Personally I have found him quite distracting during my ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... against the darkness; then stars, or what appeared to be stars, were seen, as through a mist. Then they would suddenly change into every variety of color, and reveal the existence of massive columns of basaltic rock supporting the arch. Still the distracting sounds were heard, but no order was given concerning the ship, scarcely a word exchanged between the men. They felt that they were drifting into some unknown sea, perhaps some place of enchantment, where ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... gift for Mary in her surface generous fashion—a box of candy or a little silk handkerchief. She pitied Mary as all butterflies pity all ants, and she little knew that as soon as she had departed Mary would open the window to let fresh air drive out distracting perfume, and would look at the useless trifle on ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... Arlington Street. The sense of these things permeated my consciousness even when I was absorbed in a book, just as the rustle of pages turned and the tiptoe tread of the librarian reached my ear, without distracting my attention. Anything so wonderful as a library had never been in my life. It was even better than school in some ways. One could read and read, and learn and learn, as fast as one knew how, without being obliged to stop for stupid little ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... is, to say the least of it, confusing to have to listen to a spirited account of a boxing-match between Jack Straight and the Hon. Wilfred Dodge; and when that account manages to get interwoven inextricably with the problem in hand the effect is likely to be distracting; for instance:— ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... the paternal authority of their bishops, who, by the nature of their office, were bound to heal the wounds of dissension, and by the sacredness of their character were removed beyond the suspicion of partiality or prejudice. Though an honorable, it was a distracting, servitude, from which the more pious would gladly have been relieved; but the advantages of the system recommended it to the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... she continued limpingly: "And my love is not—is not without evil. Oh, John, I feel deep shame in telling you, but my love is terribly jealous. At times a jealousy comes over me so fierce and so distracting that under its influence I am mad, John, mad. I then see nothing in its true light; my eyes seem filled with—with blood, and all things appear red or black and—and—oh! John, I pray you never again cause me jealousy. It makes a demon ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... been heard of. He has, I should have said, a younger brother remarkably like him in character and appearance, who greatly assisted in his escape. This brother, Michael, made his appearance now in one part of the country, now in another, letting it be supposed that he was Brian; thus distracting the attention of those in search of the culprit. He is himself, from what I have heard, fully as determined a ruffian as Brian, and has long followed ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... are they?" asked Sara, in the most delighted bewilderment. The friendly little things fluttered and chattered and chirruped around her in the most distracting way, brushing her face with their wings in their eagerness to get acquainted, and even getting their silver sandals ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... listen to but the twittering of the canary downstairs, and the distant wrangling of children in the nursery: no one to speak to but the harassed housewife, wanted in a dozen places at once, and the pert housemaid, whose noisiness is distracting. The man lay there, cursing his helplessness. In spite of his iron will, the unseen enemy, who had stolen in by night, conquered, holding him down with a hundred tingling fingers when he attempted to rise, and drawing a misty veil over his eyes when he tried to read, till ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... theory completely out. They are perturbed by the sun, of course, but they also perturb each other, and Jupiter is far from spherical. The shape of Jupiter, and their mutual attractions, combine to make their motions most peculiar and distracting. ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... Further distracting Austrian band-music was going by. This time it was a regiment of Italians in the white and blue uniform. Carlo and Luciano leaned over the balcony, smoking, and scanned the marching of their fellow-countrymen ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... were admirable things for the observer—excellent for drawing the veil from men's motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing that a strong emotion in a nature such as his. And yet there was but one woman ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... doubtless gained an immense additional advantage from his habitual seclusion, from his unconcern with the distracting customs of society, and, most of all, from the imperturbable abstraction under which he studied and observed. With him there was no blending of collateral subjects, no permitted intrusion of things irrelevant or trivial, so that the channels of his thoughts were always single, deep, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... my second summer in looking for a sympathetic woman, with the intention of making her my wife. May I never see such a hard-working, distracting season again! Not that such women were hard to find—they were only too plenty: at one time I had six who were devoted to me. One sympathized with my love of music; we sang duets together in the evening; it was delightful, for I need hardly say ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... crowded, dirty thoroughfare. An endless, unbroken line of drays, beer-wagons, vehicles of every sort, moves up one side and down the other of the hurrying street cars which claim the centre roadway. The pavement is always slippery with slime, the air always full of hoarse shouts, cries and distracting whistles. Car bells jangle, policemen yell their warnings to unwary foot passengers, hackmen screech their demands for patronage, and hurrying crowds move to and fro between the ferries and the city. A place that speedily set Dorothy's nerves a-tingle with fear, ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... secret. But I have not grown out of the little child in thinking of it; and at the self-same moment I have dreamed that I have sat with the heart-ache at table, calculating the expenses of the dinner, and quite distracting myself with thinking how they were ever to be made good. I have never dreamed of the change in our fortunes itself; I have never dreamed of your coming back with me that memorable morning to break it; I have never even ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... on her feet again. In April Brodrick took her to the Riviera, and her return (in May) was the return of that brilliant and distracting alien who had invaded Brodrick's house seven years ago. Jane having nothing to do but to recover had done it so completely that Henry admitted that he would not have known her. To which she had rather ominously replied that she knew herself, ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... ostentatiously, inside and out, with my handkerchief, I offered it to her with distinguished grace. She swayed on her one foot with as much dignity as possible, and then recognizing me as the person who picked up the contents of aunt Celia's bag, she said, dimpling in the most distracting manner (that's another thing there ought to be a law against), "Thank you again; you seem to be a sort ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... she smile at Captain Middleton in this distracting fashion. It started tremblingly at the corners of her mouth, and then—quite suddenly—her wan little face became dimpled and beseeching and triumphant ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... very curious, and seem to show that the mind, when set in any train of thought by intense concentration, may pursue it after consciousness has been withdrawn. And the result indicates that the mind acts with innate logic when not disturbed by distracting considerations, and can be trusted to do more correct work when thus set going and left to run of itself than when consciously held to its work. Yet an examination of every recorded instance of this kind strongly indicates that no such unconscious mental action ever takes place except when the consciousness ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... moment in all your life when sense-impressions were not pouring in upon you from every side, tending to disturb and annoy you and interfere with your concentration and progress. Heretofore you have struggled blindly with these distracting influences, not knowing the elements with which you had to deal nor how to ...
— Applied Psychology: Making Your Own World • Warren Hilton
... up, on a shelf, volumes display their freshly marbled edges; women sing, husbands whistle, children shout; the carpenter saws his planks, a copper-turner makes the metal screech; all kinds of industries combine to produce a noise which the number of instruments renders distracting. ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... my landing at Alexandretta was alone responsible for the continuance of my dotage, and hoped that fresh scenes would banish Carlotta's distracting image. But no, it was one of the many vain reflections on which I based a false philosophy. Whether in Beyrout, or the land of the "sweet singer of Persephone," or Alexandria, or on the Cannebiere of Marseilles, or in the queer half-Orient of Algiers whither a restless pursuit of the ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... most beauteous Faith Seems doomed to death, And to her place is hoisted, by soul treason, The dullard Reason, Let me not hurry forth with flag unfurled To proselyte an unbelieving world. This is my task: in depths of unstarred night Or in diverting and distracting light To keep (in crowds, or in my room alone) Faith on her lofty throne; And whatsoever happen or befall, To see God's hand in ...
— Poems of Optimism • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Devil, You may dy for lack of Bread, if you do not look better after your self, than God is like to do for you. It is an usual thing for Persons to dispair of Gods Fatherly Care Concerning them; they torture themselves with distracting and amazing Fears, that they shall come to want before they dy; Yea, they even say with Jonas, in Chap. 2.4. I am cast out of the sight of God; He wont look after me! But it is the Devil that is the Author ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... toiling as if for life, and had already succeeded in clearing a line of fully a hundred feet in length. I critically examined their work, pronounced it all right, and we then went on to the islet, Sir Edgar and I discussing by the way the distracting question of how the crew were to be dealt with in the event of our finding the treasure. The question seemed to resolve itself into this—that the men must either be taken away in the ship, or left on the island; ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... of the distracting effect of moving objects seen "out of the corner of the eye," try reading a book facing a window in a car where the moving scenery can be seen on each side of the book. The flitting object will interrupt one, one cannot get the full meaning out of what ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... the less to the greater and with incomparable beauty woos man away from the distracting thoughts that dissipate his strength without yielding him any advantage. The Creator who cares for the birds will not forget man made in His image; He who clothes the fields in the beauty of the flower and gives to the trembling blade of grass the nourishment that ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... way out of the caves without attempting to carry off any of the gold we had found. The fate of the boy Bruno had caused a diversion among the hornets to which we probably owed our lives. In the hope of distracting them still further, we fired off our muskets, which awoke echoes in that silent place the like of which had never been heard before. Had we exploded a barrel of gunpowder, the sound of it would not have ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... distracting thing to solve. It was not only perplexing, but exceedingly trying, to feel that at any moment a visit might be expected from ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... tossed to a height of about thirty feet, and alighted senseless upon the ice. The bear seized him with her teeth and tossed him with an incredibly slight effort. The other dogs, nothing daunted by the fate of their comrade, attacked the couple in the rear, biting their heels, and so distracting their attention that they could not make an energetic attack in any direction. Another of the dogs, however, a young one, waxing reckless, ventured too near the old bear, and was seized by the back, ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... amount of energy for which she had never given him credit. He prevailed on his sister-in-law to come to Vienna, so that she could help Bertha to tide over the first few weeks of her bereavement, besides, in some slight degree, distracting her thoughts. He settled the business affairs capably and quickly. His kindness of heart did much to cheer Bertha during those sad days, and when, on the expiration of his leave, he asked her whether she would be his wife she acquiesced ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... before he found himself in possession of a possible scheme. He remembered the legend of a certain Saint, told him by his nurse in his early days. She had been beautiful, too beautiful for her religious ideals; the number of her suitors was distracting; so to one of them who had extravagantly admired her eyes she sent ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... sprang forward, gripped the bag in a trembling, faltering clutch, and dropped it with a groan to the floor, where it fell with a heart-breaking, distracting lightness, which, nevertheless, smote like a mighty ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... to form one in vain. That single channel into which my thoughts are incessantly impelled is destructive of all order and connexion. The efforts of the understanding are assassinated by the emotions of the heart; till the reproaches of principle become intolerable, and the delusions of hope distracting!—A state of such painful inutility is both criminal ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... assiduously, Stuart surveyed his companion's face in profile. It belied the dictatorial words, for Georgiana was smiling. Her cheeks were of a splendid colour, her dark hair drooped over the prettiest white forehead in the world, and the whole outline of her face was distracting. Here was a lamplight effect which rivalled the one in the living-room, though it was thrown from a common kitchen lamp, unshaded, and fell upon a figure in a red-and-white checked apron. Georgiana glanced at her self-appointed assistant ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... the old-fashioned school, whose awkward hands had unconsciously given the charm of ineptitude to her fair hair. Still unaccustomed to any finery, she showed the timidity—to use a hackneyed phrase —inseparable from a first appearance. She had come from Valognes to find in Paris some use for her distracting youthfulness, her innocence that might have stirred the senses of a dying man, and her beauty, worthy to hold its own with any that Normandy has ever supplied to the theatres of the capital. The lines of that unblemished face were the ideal of angelic purity. Her ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... feat of great excitement, especially when mud prevails. Trucks, ponderously laden with bales of goods, and pushed along at a reckless rate of speed by mahogany-complexioned men; dashing coaches, impelled by drivers hallooing when close upon you with distracting loudness and abruptness; mules coming onward with the blundering obtuseness peculiar to their tribe, or with their heads fastened to doorways, and their flanks extending across the street, affording just space enough for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... those which bereft Samson of his locks or left the lone figure of Marius seated amid the ruins of Carthage. And yet, even in the face of time-worn contradictions apparent to the most superficial and credulously minded, pretty, distracting Bessie Van Ashton had begun to cast her eyes in the direction of Dick Yankton, the handsome, open-handed, devil-may-care son of nature who regarded the world of fashion to which she belonged with about as much concern as he did the dust on ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... for a few moments every morning and devoting the rest of the day to samisens and flutes. He found the glorious country of Japan. The beguiling tea-houses, and softly swinging sampans were all too distracting. They sang ambition to sleep and the ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... an example in pictorial art, of the forespace corrugated with lines paralleling the bottom line of a frame. It would be as difficult for a bicyclist to propel his machine across a plowed field as for one to drive his eye over a foreground thus filled with distracting lines when the ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... country. The very idea of subordination of parts excludes this notion of simple and undivided unity. England is the head; but she is not the head and the members too. Ireland has ever had from the beginning a separate, but not an independent, legislature, which, far from distracting, promoted the union of the whole. Everything was sweetly and harmoniously disposed through both islands for the conservation of English dominion, and the communication of English liberties. I do not see that the same principles might not be carried ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke
... this, as if an American had not as good a right as any ancient of them all to say, Ubi libertas, ibi patria. It is no real paradox to affirm that a man's love of his country may often be gauged by his disgust at it. But we think it might fairly be argued against him that the very absence of that distracting complexity of associations might help to produce that solitude which is the main feeder of imagination. Certainly, Hawthorne, with whom no modern European can be matched for the subtlety and power of this marvellous quality, is a strong ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... an integral and important, though strictly subordinate, part of the comprehensive plan adopted by the lieutenant-general for the spring campaign. Besides distracting the attention of the Confederates, and either drawing off a large part of their forces from Sherman's front or else causing them to give up Mobile without a struggle, the control of the Alabama River would give Sherman a secure base of supplies and a safe ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... to the cottage in a sombre mood. Then, as Otto proved to be in the same condition, Falloden had to shake off his own depression as quickly as possible, and spend the evening in amusing and distracting the invalid. ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... one of them is this, that wherever the landscape is immense, the sky unlimited, clouds intimately dense, feelings unfathomable—that is to say where infinitude is manifest—its fit companion is one solitary person; a multitude there seems so petty, so distracting. ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... places the Assyrians attacked in three principal ways. Sometimes they endeavored to take them by escalade, advancing for this purpose a number of long ladders against different parts of the walls, thus distracting the enemy's attention and seeking to find a weak point. Up the ladders proceeded companies of spearmen and archers in combination, the spearmen invariably taking the lead, since their large shields afforded them a protection which archers advancing in file up a ladder could not have. Meanwhile from ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... when the happy laugh is dumb, All the joy gone, and all the sorrow come, When loss, despair, and soul-distracting pain, Wring the sad heart and rack the throbbing brain, The only hope—the only comfort heard— Comes in the music of a woman's word. Like beacon-bell on some wild island shore, Silverly ringing through ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... personality of this lover of freedom and rebel against restraint. Not at all. She was a most lovable and clinging person, when she could get hold of anything worth clinging to, with a mellifluous Irish voice at once soothing and distracting, a voice with pockets in it but not a trace of a brogue or only the very faintest suspicion. Yet when she spoke she had the Irish turn of words and she used the word "sure" in a ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... taken out of the hands of the people at large, and they are cut off from all control of slavery both in the States and Territories. Hence it is, that the American people are considering the propriety of banishing this distracting question from national politics, and demanding of their statesmen that there shall no longer be any delay in the adoption of measures to sustain the Constitution and laws of our glorious Union, against all its enemies, whether ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... religion in a community so mixed must depend on the progressive education and elevation of the people. As more and more of them are freed first from distracting wants and cares, and then from sordid and materialistic views, their spiritual nature will expand. The need for God himself rather than for his gifts, will arise and increase in their hearts, and they will grow capable of that highest religion which is the ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... that way!" cried her mother, hotly. "How could I prevent her, when she was determined? I did my utmost, but nothing could induce her to stay. Was ever anything so distracting? The very day after letting our rooms! How are we ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... of yen nearly at par just now with the dollar, packets of 50, 20, and 10 sen notes, and some rouleaux of very neat copper coins. The initiated recognise the different denominations of paper money at a glance by their differing colours and sizes, but at present they are a distracting mystery to me. The notes are pieces of stiff paper with Chinese characters at the corners, near which, with exceptionally good eyes or a magnifying glass, one can discern an English word denoting the value. They are very neatly executed, and are ornamented with the chrysanthemum ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... Ann and the demoniacal yellow-bird, and finished the service. These disorderly interruptions occurred on every Lord's Day, growing weekly more constant and more universal, and must have been unbearable. Some few disgusted members withdrew from the church, giving as reason that "the distracting and disturbing tumults and noises made by persons under diabolical power and delusions, preventing sometimes our hearing and understanding and profiting of the word preached; we having after many trials and experiences ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... without deadening the sense of pain," Beth interposed. "I have heard of the tender mercies of the vivisector. He saves himself as much as he can in the matter of distracting noises." ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... be said that almost from the outset Rossetti viewed the public exhibition of pictures as a distracting practice. Except the Girlhood of Mary Virgin, the Annunciation was almost the only picture he exhibited in London, though three or four water-colour drawings were at an early period exhibited in Liverpool, and of these, ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... live in Paris—and they are quite respectable. Of course, you may not find everything just as you like it, and if it is really unpleasant, you can write me, and I shall arrange for you to return here. But Paris would be more distracting for you to live in, and in a week or two far too hot ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... full of suspicion. He was like a child in the simplicity of his selfishness, as far as his art was concerned, but in all matters aside from it he was chaotically generous. His formlessness was sometimes almost distracting; he presented himself to the author's imagination as mere human material, waiting to be moulded in this shape or that. From day to day, from week to week, Maxwell lived in a superficial uncertainty whether Godolphin had really taken his play, or would ever produce it; yet at the bottom ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... hopeful, and, far from opposing Cecil's wishes, cheerfully forwarded them. She looked upon hers as so cruelly exceptional a lot, that any absorbing occupation capable of distracting her mind was only too welcome. ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... live was then in itself a delight, because living implied seeing. Even at a small party, the company was a pleasure to behold; the richly varied hues of the assembly in a church or theatre are said to have more than once proved too distracting for our greatest teachers and actors; but most ravishing of all is said to have been the unspeakable ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... her head; they planted themselves under the lace of her sleeve. If she moved her left hand to frighten them off from one point, another band fixed themselves upon her right hand. Not only did they flutter and sting, but they sang in a heathenish manner, distracting her attention as she tried to write, as she tried to waft them off. Nor was this all. Myriads of June-bugs and millers hovered round, flung themselves into the lamps, and made disagreeable funeral-pyres of themselves, tumbling noisily on her paper in their last unpleasant agonies. Occasionally ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... the size of the dose. Sometimes it slows me down physically and mentally. At other times there were no effects that I could tell until the kwil wore off. Then I'd have hallucinations for a while—that can be very distracting, of course, when there's something you have to do. Those hangover hallucinations seem to be ...
— The Star Hyacinths • James H. Schmitz
... I heard the sudden din, I came, on the very instant, in distracting panic to this Acropolis, a ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... simply distracting. There are shops in Dresden where no woman who appreciates bags, satchels, card-cases, photograph-frames, book-covers, and purses could refrain from buying without disastrous results. I remember my first pilgrimage through the streets of Dresden. ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... distracting babble one sonorous voice rose insistently. Laughter and applause broke in upon it occasionally. There was a din in that corner of the lobby that attracted many of the curiosity-seekers ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... cards slightly on Francesca's side, and the luck of the table going mostly the other way. She was too keen a player not to feel a certain absorption in the game once it had started, but she was conscious to-day of a distracting interest that competed with the momentary importance of leads and discards and declarations. The little accumulations of talk that were unpent during the dealing of the hands became as noteworthy to her alert attention as the play of ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... of warning, spoken at the wrong moment, in the wrong tone, might be disastrously misunderstood; and the distracting sense of being purely responsible for his own trouble, stung him to renewed irritation. All capacity for work had been dispelled by that vexatiously engaging son of his, with his heart in India and his head among ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... willing to pay frugally for her living until she could make one for herself, while too indifferent even to see her; but Thinkright's talks had turned a searchlight upon her own predilections and expectations, with the effect of distracting her attention somewhat from the shortcomings of others. Her present excitement in the discovery of her uncle was mingled with mortification at the remembrance of what her thought had once demanded of him. The boat rocked gently over the blue ripples; the sunshine illumined alike the burnished greens ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... social and economic phenomena of the day. Its consequences upon the life, welfare, and future of the great nation to which we are proud to acknowledge our whole-hearted allegiance are matters of such paramount importance to all concerned that we should turn aside more often than we do from the distracting exactions of our ordinary activities to give them prolonged and ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... arose the distracting thought how I could possibly preach TWO good sermons a Sunday to the same people, when one of the sermons was in the afternoon instead of the evening, to which latter I had been accustomed in the large town in which I had formerly officiated as curate ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... of the blow he had received. This, Gerald doubted not, had been given with the view of better facilitating Desborough's escape, by throwing the schooner out of her course, and occasioning a consequent confusion among the crew, which might have the effect of distracting their attention, for ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... Council expected a salute of twenty-one guns from the batteries of Fort William. Hastings allowed them only seventeen. They landed in ill-humour. The first civilities were exchanged with cold reserve. On the morrow commenced that long quarrel which, after distracting British India, was renewed in England, and in which all the most eminent statesmen and orators of the age took active part on ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... putting the key in my pocket, walked up the wharf. I knew it was no good standing out there argufying. I felt sorry for the pore thing in a way. If she really thought I was her 'usband, and she 'ad lost me—— I put one or two things straight and then, for the sake of distracting my mind, I 'ad a word or two with the skipper of the John Henry, who was leaning against the side of ...
— Deep Waters, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... can be said of the necessity of a close regard for nature in acting applies with equal or greater force to the presentation of plays. You want, above all things, to have a truthful picture which shall appeal to the eye without distracting the imagination from the purpose of the drama. It is a mistake to suppose that this enterprise is comparatively new to the stage. Since Shakespeare's time there has been a steady progress in this direction. Even in the poet's day every conceivable property was forced into ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... divisions, under Brigadiers Wolfe, Whetmore, and Laurens. The landing was to be attempted west of the harbor, at a place feebly secured. Several frigates and sloops previously scoured the beach with their shot, after which Wolfe pulled for shore with his divisions; the other two divisions distracting the attention of the enemy, by making a show of landing in other parts. The surf still ran high, the enemy opened a fire of cannon and musketry from their batteries, many boats were upset, many men slain, but Wolfe ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... out with herself the question, whether care had best be driven out or grappled with. Mrs. Lyddell was indeed in no state to grapple with it, and there was nothing to be done but to take the best present means of distracting her attention; yet it was to be feared that, though put aside, the enemy was not conquered,—and might there not ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... of course he loved her, too; but the bishop knew her too well to suppose that the professor would ever captivate her imagination. He had always been within her horizon, and he served the useful purpose, from the bishop's point of view, of distracting her ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... expanded abbreviations, are shown in the e-text with braces ("curly brackets"): co{n}nyng{e}. Readers who find this added information distracting may globally delete all braces; they are not used for any other purpose. Whole-word italics are shown in the usual way with lines. Superscripts are shown with^, and boldface or ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... Peninsula and the boundary between Pahang and Selangor. They went, at the invitation of the British Government, to bring to a final conclusion the protracted struggles, in which Malay Rajas, foreign mercenaries, and Chinese miners had alike been engaged for years, distracting the State of Selangor, and breaking the peace of the Peninsula. A few months later, the Pahang Army, albeit sadly reduced by cholera, poured back again across the mountains, the survivors slapping their chests and their kris-hilts, ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... remained in it, was rather inclined to bring the public worship still nearer to the Romish ritual;[*] and she thought that the reformation had already gone too far in shaking off those forms and observances, which, without distracting men of more refined apprehensions, tend, in a very innocent manner, to allure, and amuse, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... guide him, sighing deeply, trying in vain to weep. The tears would not come. He could not concentrate his attention; a voice within him was distracting him,—the voice ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... was all the great geniuses could do to be faithful to their sense of significance. Even Masaccio was driven to exhibit his mere skill, the much admired and by itself wonderfully realised figure of a naked man trembling with cold being not only without real significance, but positively distracting, in the representation of a baptism. A weaker man like Paolo Uccello almost entirely sacrificed what sense of artistic significance he may have started with, in his eagerness to display his skill and knowledge. As for the rabble, their work has now the ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... a descendant of the blood-thirsty wolf or jackal. Even frogs and toads and fishes may be tamed, provided they have the uniform sympathy of one person, with whom they become intimately acquainted without the distracting and varying attentions of strangers. And surely all God's people, however serious and savage, great or small, like to play. Whales and elephants, dancing, humming gnats, and invisibly small mischievous microbes,—all ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... steel wire, according to the belief of those who tried to handle him. He had little white hands, and feet that looked quite comfortable in a number four boot, and his hair was a tawny gold and curled in distracting, damp rings on his forehead. His eyes were blue and long-lashed and beautiful, and they looked at the world with baby innocence—whereas a more sophisticated little devil never jangled spurs at his heels. He was everything but insipid, and men liked ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... on me, without my feeling it, and amid all the distracting cares and pressing thoughts that embarrassed me, I only awoke when the roll of the caleche sounded beneath my window, and warned me that I must be stirring and ready ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... Doctor Steward, Master Rutherford, Master Edwards, Master Durey, Master Goodwin, Master Nye, Master Sympson, and others), ... I have (at the importunity of some Reverend friends) digested my subitane apprehensions of these distracting controversies into the ensuing considerable Questions." Accordingly, the Tract consists of 12 Queries propounded for consideration, each numbered and beginning with the word "Whether." We are concerned mainly with Query 11. It runs as follows:—"Whether that Independent Government ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... my father's house. At the end of his college course, he came with his brother Henry to study law in Johnstown. A quiet, retired little village was thought to be a good place in which to sequester young men bent on completing their education, as they were there safe from the temptations and distracting influences of large cities. In addition to this consideration, my father's reputation made his office a desirable resort for students, who, furthermore, not only improved their opportunities by reading Blackstone, Kent, and Story, but also by making ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... fresh rose Mr. Kent was to give to Dame Carrington to the mud that was to be splashed every day upon Mr. Gerald Height's riding-boots for his last and triumphant entry. Miss Adair had lost all sense of the play as a whole and only thought of it as distracting and distracted bits. She had, of course, never witnessed the scenes between Miss Hawtry and Mr. Height, as they were still rehearsed in private and would be until the night of the dress rehearsal on Monday at Atlantic ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... reclining, fell into a reverie of distracting thoughts. The history of his life and mind seemed with a whirling power to pass before him; his birth, in clime unknown to the Patriarchs; his education, unconsciously to himself, in an Arabian literature; his imbibing, from ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... her lip,—the under one,—unconscious of the fact that by so doing she rendered the corners of her mouth quite distracting; but he perceived both cause and result, and both the anger and the hunger in his gaze deepened as he looked, apparently in a ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... suspicions, antipathies and misunderstandings of the past, there is found a developing sense of oneness, of fellowship, of comity, amity and mutual helpfulness among the missionaries of that land. The watchword of to-day is cooeperation. The distracting spectacle of a divided Christianity, of hated and mutually hating Christian sects in a heathen land is surely passing away and the dawning of the day of peace and harmony and fellowship in Christian work is upon us. And India will enjoy the ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... to bed at his hotel at about midnight; but it was several hours later before he got to sleep, for the events of the night tossed and mingled in his mind in a most distracting fashion. Consequently, next day, he arose late, and when he reached the gymnasium it was almost noon. A note lay upon his desk in the office written in a ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... an immense mischief, but brought with it the immense benefit of drawing a line, and rallying the Free States to fix it impassably,—preventing the whole force of Southern connection and influence throughout the North from distracting every city with endless confusion, detaching that force and reducing it to handfuls, and, in the progress of hostilities, disinfecting us of our habitual proclivity, through the affection of trade, and the traditions of the Democratic ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... livery through a stately suite of reception rooms in one of the finest of Fifth Avenue mansions, felt herself suddenly a very insignificant person. The roar and bustle of New York were still in her ears. Bewildered as she had been by this first contact with all the distracting influences of a great city, she was even more distraught by the wonder and magnificence of these, her more immediate surroundings. She, who had lived all her life in a simple farmhouse, where every one worked, and a single servant was regarded as a luxury, ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... heard, with grief and rage oppress'd, His heart swell'd high, and labour'd in his breast; Distracting thoughts by turns his bosom ruled; Now fired by wrath, and now by reason cool'd: That prompts his hand to draw the deadly sword, Force through the Greeks, and pierce their haughty lord; This whispers soft his vengeance to control, And calm ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... remark that I believe poverty would have been a fairer friend to me. At any rate I now pamper myself to an unreasonable extent. For one thing, I feel that I cannot work,—much less think,—when opposed by distracting conditions such as women, tea, disputes over luggage, and things of that sort. They subdue all the romantic tendencies I am so parsimonious about wasting. My best work is done when the madding crowd is far from me. Hence I seek out remote, obscure ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... the farm, nearly a week had elapsed since the evening into which so many distracting emotions had been crowded. He exerted himself to display unusual cheerfulness, with the double object of removing any disagreeable impression which might have been the result of his sudden departure on that ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... year, when the great metropolis is so much hotter, so much noisier, so much more dusty or so much more water-carted, so much more crowded, so much more disturbing and distracting in all respects, than it usually is, a quiet sea-beach becomes indeed a blessed spot. Half awake and half asleep, this idle morning in our sunny window on the edge of a chalk-cliff in the old-fashioned watering-place to which we are a faithful resorter, we feel a lazy inclination ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... overemphasized by our civilization on its distracting side, its spicy and condimental values, and underemphasized so far as its realities go. The aim seems to be to titillate sex feeling constantly, and a precocious acquaintance with this form of stimulation is the lot of most city children. ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... Diplomacy is nothing; mind well your own affairs, leave those of your neighbors well alone. The Pragmatic Sanction, breaking Fritz's, Friedrich Wilhelm's, Sophie's, Wilhelmina's, English Amelia's and I know not how many private hearts, and distracting with vain terrors and hopes the general soul of Europe for five-and-twenty years, fell at once into dust and vapor, and went wholly towards limbo on the storm-winds, doing nothing for or against any mortal. Friedrich Wilhelm's 80,000 well-drilled troops remained very actual with ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... indeed set up a louder and more distracting yell. Getting desperate, Anson seized her in his arms, and, despite her struggles, began tossing her on his shoulder. The child understood him and ceased to cry, especially as Gearheart began to set the table, making a pleasant clatter, whistling ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... Gradually the distracting noise had subsided. The boats came no longer in splashing clusters of three or four together, but dropped alongside singly, in a subdued buzz of expostulation cut short by a "Not a pace more! You go to the devil!" from some man staggering up ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... that a nation, though conquered and overrun by invaders, may yet wage against them such a war of detail as shall in the end become fatal to the foreigners. In one of these, however, Walter Avenel fell, and the news which came to the house of his fathers was followed by the distracting intelligence, that a party of Englishmen were coming to plunder the mansion and lands of his widow, in order, by this act of terror, to prevent others from following the ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... the bedroom, whither Gladys followed her. A fit of depression and pain at the heart succeeded, as they always did, this new disappointment; and it was evident to Gladys that the only chance of restoring her to health of mind or body was by keeping her amused, and distracting her thoughts ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel in his heart by any means waggish then. The truth is, that he tried to be smart, as a means of distracting his own attention, and keeping down his terror; for the spectre's voice disturbed the ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... communication of ideas. Ideas, if they are to be accurately conveyed, should be devoid of emotional flourish, and presented with telegraphic directness and precision. They should have the clarity of formulas, rather than the distracting array and atmosphere of form. But ideas presented in the persuasive garb of beauty, gain in their hold over men what they lose in precision. Thus an eloquent orator, a touching letter, a vivid poem, may do more than volumes ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... others, so that his dramas became lyrics of anguish and despair. Brutus belongs to the best time, artistically speaking, to the time when passion and pain had tried the character without benumbing the will or distracting the mind: it is a masterpiece of portraiture, and stands in even closer relation to Hamlet than Romeo stands to Orsino. As Shakespeare appears to us in Brutus at thirty-seven, so he was when they bore him to ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... of woman. We all suffer thus every day. I have had to do a hundred times what Richardson did but once. Lovelace has a thousand forms, for social corruption takes the hues of the medium in which it lives. Clarissa, on the contrary, the lovely image of impassioned virtue, is drawn in lines of distracting purity. To create a variety of Virgins it needs a Raphael. In this respect, perhaps literature ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... of these still small voices grew distracting as the whisper of an unseen clock. They dominated the silence, paralysing thought, and compelling her to note every change in their ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... of the other dramatis personae is a long one. Not only in the name of its heroine does the story suggest the Nibelungenlied. The machinery of the Norse stories resembles the German story's in many of its parts. In this version of Morris, the main features of the saga are kept, and distracting details are properly subordinated to the principal interest. Through the nineteen divisions of this story the interest moves rapidly, and wonder as to the issue is never lost. As a story-teller, Morris is distinctly powerful in this poem, and all ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... confused sentiments, of powerful sympathies, of vague apprehensions, suddenly seized on the breast of the young Countess! One can hardly imagine their force—to the very verge of distracting her. She turned on her fauteuil and closed her beautiful eyes, as if to keep back the tears which rolled under the fringe of the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... was as nothing compared to that of her God, who would punish her for denying His existence with everlasting fire. Unable to hide her terrible agitation, she would fly to her room, her heart bursting with anguish, and casting herself on her knees cry out for deliverance from such distracting thoughts. After one of these stormy periods, followed by swift compunction, she would be able again to meet and speak to her daughter in a frame of mind which by contrast seemed ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... he had boiled his mother-in-law, though at the time the consideration of this question had filled columns upon columns of the daily newspapers. There had been a controversy between the gentleman and his mother-in-law, prolonged and distracting, and the long and short of a very painful conjunction of circumstances is that the gentleman had felt himself reduced to the necessity of doing something serious to his mother-in-law, and, thus moved, he had boiled her. It would have been wiser, doubtless, had he taken some other ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... determined, after the most careful consideration, to promote Mr Richard Chichester to that position, in recognition of the extraordinary valour which he had displayed on the previous day by boarding the Spanish ship and attacking her crew, single-handed, in the rear, thereby distracting the attention of the enemy and contributing in no small measure to their subsequent speedy defeat. This decision on the part of the Captain, strange to say, met with universal and unqualified approval; for Dick's ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... the boarding-house had the value of distracting Dave's attention from the unpleasantness of his work. Mrs. Metford, handicapped by her numerous offspring, embittered by the regular recurrence of her contributions to the State, and disheartened by drudgery and overwork, had long ago ceased to place any store on personal appearance or even ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... joined the panting one, who greeted his mates with a cheery grin, as though conscious of having done very well, under such distracting conditions. ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... time; he is not formed for length of happy years, But wherefore darken thus my days with wild distracting fears? If we must part, oh! let me live in rapture while I may; Though hope must darken, while it lasts, let ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... From the bedroom at the end of the hall came a soft murmur of women's voices. He hoped that Miss Hitchcock would appear before her father took him off. He should like to see her again—to hear her voice. Every moment some one nodded to him, distracting his attention, but his eyes reverted immediately to the end of the hall. Men and women were passing out, down the broad staircase that ended in front of the intelligent portrait. The women in rich opera cloaks, the men in black capes carrying their crush hats under their arms, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... typically academic. Such persons confine their interest in life within the boundaries of their own immediate pursuits; they are absorbed so completely by their avocations that the hurly-burly of the world seems needlessly distracting and a little vulgar. No doubt the thoughts of those who cry out most loudly against disturbance by the intruding claims of the world are, for the most part, hardly worth disturbing; the attitude to extrinsic things of those who are absorbed by their ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... hand suddenly, convulsed with agitation.) 'Tis the distracting mockery of hell that cheats us with an hour's ecstatic dream to torture us eternally: girl! girl! wouldst thou find happiness, die! seek it in the grave, only in the grave—a watchful fiend destroys it upon earth! Prat'st ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... This distracting disappointment so preyed upon the mind of Mr. Farquhar, who saw nothing but beggary and want before him, that by a sure, tho' not sudden declension of nature, it carried him off this worldly theatre, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... feel the stirring of primal sympathies for the manifold life of the city, as he does for the manifold life of the woods, Rome ceases to be distracting. The old city is like the mountain which has withstood the hurts of time, and remains for us, "the grand affirmer of ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... and ailing, vague clusters and tangles and spidery webs, that float and fly, and can never be fixed and truly seen; and that they are best treated as we learn to treat common ailments, by not concerning ourselves very much about them, by enduring and evading them and distracting the mind, and not by facing them, because they will not be faced; nor can they be dispelled by reason, because they are not in the plane of reason at all, but phantoms gathered by the sick imagination, distorted ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... with the innocent and single-minded! This is what we sincere and diffident men have to contend with in affairs of the heart. Our bosoms may be torn with ten thousand distracting cares, and yet the modesty of a truly virtuous female heart shall be so absorbed in its own placid serenity as to be indifferent to the pangs it is ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... recollection is that we were prisoners at we knew not what depths beneath the moon's surface; we were in darkness amidst strange distracting noises; our bodies were covered with scratches and bruises, and ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... shrouds embrace, Nor longer mourn their lost companions' case: Transfix'd with terror at the approaching doom, Self-pity in their breasts alone has room. Albert, and Rodmond, and Palemon, near, With young Arion, on the mast appear: Even they, amid the unspeakable distress, In every look distracting thoughts confess; In every vein the refluent blood congeals, 600 And every bosom mortal terror feels; Begirt with all the horrors of the main, They view'd the adjacent shore, but view'd in vain. Such torments in the drear abodes of hell, Where sad despair laments with rueful yell,— Such torments ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... part, was chiefly occupied in considering the distracting fact of his own yielding to the wishes of a man he disliked as sincerely as he did Mr. Aston's cousin. Peter Masters was taking him with him in precisely the same manner he had made Christopher convey him to Marden. It was quite useless to pretend ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... occasion, but I fancy that less distinctly I had felt this before many times. In the old times, night and the starlight had an effect of intimate reality the daytime did not possess. The daytime—as one saw it in towns and populous places—had hold of one, no doubt, but only as an uproar might, it was distracting, conflicting, insistent. Darkness veiled the more salient aspects of those agglomerations of human absurdity, and one could exist—one ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... have recovered the will, uncle, how are we to send it to my mother?" asked Harry when the distracting cries extracted by the courbash had ceased. "The old one I will destroy, as should have been done before. The money will add to her comfort, but news that I am alive and with you will ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... the figures, the richness of the vegetation (though not luxuriant like that of a more southern region), the precision of the outlines in the clear air and the beauty of the colors in their transparency—so the enjoyment of nature is here a purely artistic one, free from everything distracting. Everywhere else the ideas of contrast appear and the enjoyment of nature is elegiac or satiric. It is true that these sentiments exist only for us. To Horace, Tibur seemed more modern than does Tivoli to us, as is proved by his 'Beatus ille qui procul negotiis,' but it is only an illusion to imagine ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Brewster pinned a hat upon her brown head at an altogether casual and heart-distracting angle and sallied down into the tesselated bowl of the park. Quite unconscious of her approach, until she was close upon him, her objective chatted fluently with the legless one, until she spoke quietly, almost in his ear. Then it was only by a clutch at the bench ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... His "city get-up" was slightly distracting, for it had a perfection of style that Mrs. Joe was not accustomed to; but his delight at his return to the Bad Lands was so frank and so expressive that her anxiety began to dissolve in her wonder at this vehement and attractive being who treated her like a queen. He jumped ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... certainly not inherited), the unconscious perfect carriage, and his thinking in a vague way that such ease and grace meant good living and leisure and a sound body. This, at any rate, was the image in his mind —a sufficiently distracting thing for a young man to carry about with him; and now as he walked beside her he was conscious that there was something much finer in her than the image he had carried with him, that there was a charm of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... affliction of the two, and he accordingly addressed himself with all his authority and influence over them, to the difficult task of plucking this frightful resolution out of their hearts. In his attempt to execute this task, he found himself baffled and obstructed by other circumstances of a very distracting nature. First, there were the rascally paragraphs alluding to his embarrassments on the one hand, and those which, while pretending to vindicate him and his partner from any risk of bankruptcy, ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... though the two antagonists displayed, in spite of the apparent joviality of the dinner, a certain vigilance that resembled disquietude. While waiting for the quarrel that both were planning, Philippe showed admirable coolness, and Max a distracting gayety; but to an observer, each was ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac |
