"Engrossing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bounding up the steps of our habitation, and presented the 'young artist she had found beneath the walls of Rome,' as she termed her companion, and laughingly recounted her adventure. I believe our family are predisposed to strong feelings, for I never witnessed a love more engrossing than was hers for the young Lindenwood; nor was his devotion to her less remarkable. They were married, and I left them to pursue ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... of all, there had been the engrossing mystery of the spring hat; this, followed by the still more exciting problem of the summer hat; and now she was planning for the fall hat—she had seen the cutest feathery toque, that came low down about her face, pushing to all sides little wisps of golden curls and making her look—well, ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... competent to cheer and howl on his underlings to the attack. But be all this as it may, certain it is, that with the mad secret of his unabated rage bolted up and keyed in him, Ahab had purposely sailed upon the present voyage with the one only and all-engrossing object of hunting the White Whale. Had any one of his old acquaintances on shore but half dreamed of what was lurking in him then, how soon would their aghast and righteous souls have wrenched the ship from such a fiendish ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... and startling, are concealed in every chapter of this completely engrossing detective story. The horrible fascination of the tragedy holds one in rapt attention to the end. And through it runs the thread of a curious ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... he had never ceased to cultivate literature with a zeal not often found in the soldier and politician, and he now beguiled the tedium of his lot by an entire devotion to those studies which before had only served to diversify his more active and engrossing pursuits. Of his poetical talents we have already made short mention; to the end of life he continued the practice of pouring out his mind in verse, and there are several well-known and beautiful pieces expressive of his ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... brown eyes keenly intent, his face lighted with enjoyment, his occasional comments on Georgiana's adventures flashing with a dry humour which matched hers and sometimes quite outdid it. To Jeannette they were all an engrossing study. As ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... not usurp the place of the master, and the sway of love be not materially advanced by its new ally. Indeed, if the truth had been known, even the Bishop of Montreal had felt that Father Francis Xavier was too ambitious a character to reside safely in too close proximity to himself; and engrossing employment at a distance for him, rather than the expressed solicitude for Father Ignatius, prompted this appointment. The results of the following year approved the arrangement. The mission received a new accession of life; its interests ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... most engrossing volume was a large folio from her husband's own hand, in which he had recorded every experiment of his scientific career, its original aim, the methods adopted for its development, and its final success or failure, with the circumstances to which either event was attributable. ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... as they were called, which had been spent in solemn mummeries, were appointed for hearing prelections on the Scriptures; prayers for the dead were omitted, or converted into lessons for the living; papal indulgences and pardons, which had formed a lucrative and engrossing traffic, were entirely abolished; images were allowed to remain, as they could not have been removed without attracting notice, though they received no homage; habitual temperance was substituted ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston
... announced, and everybody crowded to see him. It was necessary to occupy the attention of the people in order to lull their suspicions, and to amuse the prince with the view of diverting his mind from its all-engrossing object. In this emergency Civitella hit upon play; and, for the purpose of driving away most of the visitors, proposed that the stakes should be high. He hoped by awakening in the prince a transient liking for play, from which it would afterwards be easy to wean him, to destroy the romantic bent ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... conduct must appear to them. She could see it all so clearly from their point of view. That had always been after all her poor merit, that she could see things from other people's point of view. Her vision indeed of them, of the way they took things, was apt to be so vivid, so engrossing that it left her with no point of view of her own. She carried into life itself and all its relations her virtue as an artist, that effacement of her observing self in favour ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... in a raging delirium, and for nearly a week did I remain utterly unconscious of all that surrounded me, entirely engrossing the attention of my companions, and taxing their energies and ingenuity to the utmost to prevent my leaping out of the cot or doing myself some injury, in the unnatural strength and violence of the ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... play will very obligingly take up with an occasional order. It sometimes gives one a melancholy but mixed sensation to see one of the better sort of this class of politicians, not without talents or learning, absorbed for fifty years together in the all-engrossing topic of the day: mounting on it for exercise and recreation of his faculties, like the great horse at a riding-school, and after his short, improgressive, untired career, dismounting just where he got up; flying abroad in continual consternation on the wings of all the newspapers; waving his ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... near relations, the tie betwixt us is of even unusual closeness, though in itself one of the strongest which nature can form. I am, and have all along been, the exclusive object of my father's anxious hopes, and his still more anxious and engrossing fears; so what title have I to complain, although now and then these fears and hopes lead him to take a troublesome and incessant charge of all my motions? Besides, I ought to recollect, and, Darsie, I do recollect, that my father upon various occasions, has shown ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... book, and he sat an admiring witness of the scene; and Frances enjoyed a double satisfaction, as she received an approving smile from a face which concealed, under the traces of deep thought and engrossing care, the benevolent expression which characterizes all the best feelings ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... unerschiitterlich treu vast, weil die festbestimmten grundsatze der Regierung,' etc., etc., etc. You can imagine the rest. Dear me! I wish I could get back to the sixteenth and seventeenth century. . . . But alas! the events of the nineteenth are too engrossing. ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... informed, that, in London alone, it has been computed that music affords a livelihood to more than 5000 persons. In the midst of such a host of bitter rivals, the imperfections and defects of this all-engrossing system are sure of exposure. Many grave and serious charges have been advanced against the mode in which a superficial and deceptive success has been made to appear real, sound, and healthy. These charges have ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... suggesting that, as he was then twenty-one, a joint banking account in his name and my own might now be transferred to him so that he would have the money under his own control. His reply was: "I have a large number of serious questions, coupled with much hard work, engrossing my attention at present and would prefer to leave all subsidiary matters severely alone." This letter was a sign, and not the only one, that he was ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... not even now understand, so engrossing is the toilsome and excited ritual of that rich world at Versailles, how blest you are: your children are growing round you: your daughters are beginning to reveal your own beauty, and your sons will show in these next years immediately before us that temper which in you was a spirit and a height ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... Some of the most engrossing days of my childhood were spent in exploring these places with my two boy companions. We would fell an oak sapling across the mouth of the hole, tie a rope, usually my pony's lariat, to the tree and slide down it to explore the depths ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill
... there written shows that at this period of Jackson's life devotion to duty was his guiding rule; and, notwithstanding his remarkable freedom from egotism, the traces of an engrossing ambition and of absolute self-dependence are everywhere apparent. Many of the sentiments he would have repudiated in after-life as inconsistent with humility; but there can be no question that it was a strong and fearless hand that penned on a conspicuous page the sentence: "You can be ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... heart which he had long occupied in her imagination; and, after their second meeting at Paris, her existence was merged in love. All the crosses and vexations of their early affection only rendered this state of being on her part more profound and engrossing. ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... have been already mentioned: but influencing in a different manner; for profit and honour sharpen men against each other; not to get the possession of them for themselves (which was what I just now supposed), but when they see others, some justly, others [1302b] unjustly, engrossing them. The other causes are haughtiness, fear, eminence, contempt, disproportionate increase in some part of the state. There are also other things which in a different manner will occasion revolutions in governments; as election intrigues, neglect, ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle
... affection. Henry had indeed ceased to regard his wife with the ardour of romantic passion; nor had the solid feelings of affectionate esteem supplied its place; but he loved her still, because he believed himself the engrossing object of her tenderness; and in that blest delusion he had hitherto found palliatives for her folly and consolation ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... in London was more tedious and engrossing than I had expected. Even a New York lawyer has much to learn of the law's delay in those pompous old offices amid the fog. Had I been working for myself, I should have thrown up the case in despair, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... because we have such splendid specimens of both at the period of the year when one values such things highest, namely, in the fall and winter and early spring. Sunlight is good any time, but a bright, evenly tempered day is certainly more engrossing to the attention in winter than in summer, and such days seem the rule, and not the exception, in the Washington winter. The deep snows keep to the north, the heavy rains to the south, leaving a blue space central over the border States. And there is not one of the winter months but wears this ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... retirement lies not in misanthropy, of which he had no tincture, but part in his engrossing design of self-improvement and part in the real deficiencies of social intercourse. He was not so much difficult about his fellow human beings as he could not tolerate the terms of their association. He could take to a man for any genuine qualities, as we see ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the peasant's sneer at a physician, "But what can he know when he does not even know how to sow oats?'' is more than a story, and is true of others besides illiterate boors. Such an attitude recurs very frequently, particularly among people of engrossing trades that require much time,—e. g., among soldiers, horsemen, sailors, hunters, etc. If it is not possible to understand these human vanities and to deal with these people as one of the trade, it is ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... but communion may exist without the eating of the bread, &c. Sacrament means the performance of a certain act, which is an outward and visible sign of spiritual grace. You need not fear my leaving off this subject, it is far too engrossing to ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... are photographed into visible forms with the same unexampled ease. They borrow no help from the matters of which they treat. They would have given, to the subjects described, old acquaintance and engrossing interest if they had been about a people in the moon. Of the personal character at the same time self-portrayed, others, whose emotions it less vividly awakens, will judge more calmly and clearly ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... other's hands, and at that moment no feeling of rivalry, or of competition even, entered the heart of either. Both were influenced by a pure and ardent desire to serve the woman they loved, and it would be true to say, that scarce a thought of any but Eve was uppermost in their minds. Indeed so engrossing was their common care in her behalf, so much more terrible than that of any other person did her fate appear on being captured, that they forgot, for the moment, there were others in the ship, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... what they aspired to and reached was no momentary physical equilibrium but a permanent truth. As Archimedes, measuring the hypothenuse, was lost to events, being engaged in an event of much greater transcendence, so art and science interrupt the sense for change by engrossing attention in its issues and its laws. Old age often turns pious to look away from ruins to some world where youth endures and where what ought to have been is not overtaken by decay before it has ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... various members of the royal family, presents a complete history of the Emperor's life. More than a hundred apartments, large and small, were obliterated to make room for the galleries of portraits—a most engrossing exhibition to students of French history. Carlyle said, "I have found that the Portrait was a small lighted candle by which the Biographies could for the first time be read, and some human ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne
... I had seen her in various stages of emotion, sometimes real and sometimes assumed, but at no moment had I been sure of her, possibly because at no moment had she been sure of me. In our first visit to the bungalow; in her own little library, during the reading of that engrossing tale by which she had so evidently attempted to lull my suspicions awakened by her one irrepressible show of alarm on the scene of Gwendolen's disappearance, and afterward when she saw that they might be so lulled but not dispelled; ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... feeling that every heart contains the germ of some perfection that makes our life so profoundly interesting, and, it may be added, our responsibilities for the cultivation or neglect of any such germ or capacity so serious and engrossing. ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... in for the present, there was no doubt. But could he hope for ultimate success in case circumstances permitted the renewal of his suit? Would the enthusiastic loyalty, which at this animating moment left no room for a softer passion, survive, at least in its engrossing force, the success or the failure of the present political machinations? And if so, could he hope that the interest which she had acknowledged him to possess in her favour might be improved into a warmer attachment? He taxed his memory to ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... was unusually full for that time of night; some topic of engrossing interest seemed to engage all minds until Willock's figure was recognized; then, indeed, he held the center of attention. Men gathered eagerly, curiously, but without the hostility they would have ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... things that we don't talk about to another man, even when we know each other as well as I know you. Why should we, when that which is most engrossing to us consists in those gradual shades of advance from friendship to intimacy, and from intimacy to something more sacred still, which can scarcely be written at all, far less made interesting to another? The time came at last when they ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... and proper about the pleasure of unexpectedly seeing me again so soon. There was something rather preoccupied, I thought, in those brightly resolute eyes of his; but I naturally attributed it to the engrossing influence of his scientific inquiries. He was evidently not at all taken in by my story about coming to Barkingham to fish; but he saw, as well as I did, that it would do to keep up appearances, and contrived to look highly interested immediately ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... powerful than this council, as an institution, were the Olympic games, solemnized every four years, in which all the states of Greece took part. These games lasted four days, and were of engrossing interest. They were supposed to be founded by Hercules, and were of very ancient date. During these celebrations there was a universal truce, and also during the time it was necessary for the people to assemble and retire to their homes. Elis, ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... nature is the work of design. The conception of reason in the world passed from him to Aristotle, to whom it seemed the dawn of sober thought after a night of disordered dreams. From Aristotle it descended to his commentators, and under the influence of Averroes became the engrossing topic ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... with father the fact of presence, real meeting, actual talk, seemed more engrossing than the thing talked. Oh that I had a really grateful heart to the ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... that very moment an invited guest at Bourhill? She made some little alteration in her dress, and went down, perfectly calm, and outwardly at ease, to a tete-a-tete dinner with her son. When they were left alone at the table she suddenly changed the subject from the commonplace to the engrossing theme occupying both their minds, and, leaning towards him, ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... succeeded so well that it began to bud, and throw out small leaves, which we hourly measured convinced (tho' now scarce a foot from the ground) it would soon afford us a refreshing shade. This unfortunate willow, by engrossing our whole time, rendered us incapable of application to any other study, and the cause of our inattention not being known, we were kept closer than before. The fatal moment approached when water must fail, and we were already afflicted with ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... of the day by some wild eccentricity of conduct, that people searched his lineage for a hereditary taint of insanity. But there was no need of this. His caprices had their origin in a mind that lacked the support of an engrossing purpose, and in feelings that preyed upon themselves for want of other food. If he were mad, it was the consequence, and not the cause, of an aimless ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... write down a full account of that mysterious affair in which I was providentially called upon to play so prominent a part, that it is with shame I reflect that the warning has been unheeded and the promise unfulfilled. Do not, dear friend, accuse my affection, but my engrossing duties and occupations, for this neglect, and believe that I now take advantage of my first quiet evening for many months ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... consists of a foolish paradox which is to the effect that the non-lover ought to be accepted rather than the lover—because he is more rational, more agreeable, more enduring, less suspicious, less hurtful, less boastful, less engrossing, and because there are more of them, and for a great many other reasons which are equally unmeaning. Phaedrus is captivated with the beauty of the periods, and wants to make Socrates say that nothing was or ever could be written better. Socrates ...
— Phaedrus • Plato
... repetition for the purpose of fixing it in the memory merely makes an impression upon the eye or ear or both, and the intellect, being unoccupied, naturally wanders away. Hence, learning by rote promotes mind-wandering: for the Attention always wanders unless wooed to its work by all-engrossing interest in the subject which in case of a weak power of Attention is rarely sufficient, or by the stimulating character of the process of acquirement which is made use of. In the Method about to be given, the intellect is agreeably occupied, ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... thus summoned, was sitting with Eleanor Scaife, and they were both watching Captain Heseltine's fox terrier jump over a walking-stick under his master's tuition. It was a suitable enough amusement for a hot day; and it was engrossing enough to prevent Eleanor raising her eyes at the sound of Lady Eynesford's voice. In fact, she was not over and above anxious to meet that lady's glance. Eleanor had, in the light of recent events, grown rather doubtful of the wisdom ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... most engrossing of Mr. Nasmyth's later pursuits has been the science of astronomy, in which, by bringing a fresh, original mind to the observation of celestial phenomena, he has succeeded in making some of the most remarkable discoveries of our time. Astronomy was one of his favourite pursuits ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... from his Torments, but not from Death, for he departed this miserable Life not long after: And this was the severe Fate of many Cacics and Indian Lords, who dyed with the same Torments which they were expos'd to by the Spaniards, in order to the engrossing of their Gold and Sliver ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... to know, maintain that the passion of love is of such an all-engrossing nature that it swallows up every other feeling; but we who judge more justly of our kind, hold differently, and rather believe that love in generous natures imparts a strengthening power, a magnetic touch, ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... the small success of his efforts and returned to the papers that lay before him on the counting house table. His business had become engrossing of late, and ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... a thing of the past, but the stage from the highest point of view is still distinctly attractive"; so decided Chellalu, and resolved to devote herself thenceforth to this new and engrossing pursuit. She chose the scene of her first public performance without consulting us. It was the open floor of the church, on a Sunday morning, in the midst of a large congregation. This was how ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... conversation was addressed chiefly to her, and, where circumstances permitted, it was exclusively so. All this, Lovel well knew, might be only that sort of egotistical gallantry which induces some young men of the present day to give themselves the air of engrossing the attention of the prettiest women in company, as if the others were unworthy of their notice. But he thought he observed in the conduct of Captain M'Intyre something of marked and peculiar tenderness, ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... month later that a legal-looking letter arrived, directed to him, beautifully written in the roundest and crabbiest of engrossing hands. ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... first and most engrossing question claiming our attention was that of the behaviour of our little ship, and we had not been under way a quarter of an hour before we were all agreed that she far exceeded our most sanguine expectations; she was a magnificent little sea boat, riding the long Pacific surges as buoyantly ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... a Saturday afternoon meeting at Polly Stevens's house, and the conversation, as yet, had not strayed far from the all-engrossing subject of ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... type of reflection; calm, meek, devotional, contemplative, sensitive in feeling, ill suited to battle with the cares and sorrows, the strifes and griefs of an engrossing and encumbering world; one of those gentle flowers that pine and bend under the rough blasts of life, easily battered down by hail and storm, but as ready to raise its drooping leaves under heavenly influences. Her position was at her Lord's feet, ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... time there sprang from it a marine plant. I have never seen earth taken from so great a depth that it would not before the end of the season be clothed with a crop of weeds. Weeds are so full of expedients, and the one engrossing purpose with them is to multiply. The wild onion multiplies at both ends,—at the top by seed, and at the bottom by offshoots. Toad-flax travels under ground and above ground. Never allow a seed to ripen, and yet it will cover your field. Cut ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... to be truthful, I must say that I recall few indications of budding authorship, save an engrossing diary (kept for six months only), and a ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... could prevent our laughing at the present collection of absurdities, it would be a lamentable conviction of the blinding and engrossing nature of vanity. We could forgive the folly of the original composition, but cannot but marvel at the egotism which has preserved, and ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... as his little Christina's, who, in all that needed taste and skill rather than strength, was worth all his prentices and journeymen together. Some fine bold wood-cuts had been produced by their joint efforts; but these less important occupations had of late been set aside by the engrossing interest of the interior fittings of the great "Dome Kirk," which for nearly a century had been rising by the united exertions of the burghers, without any assistance from without. The foundation had been laid in ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... not finding the beautiful story of the Frenchwoman go interesting as Mohammed Ali imagined. He had allowed the days to pass, with all their engrossing interest, without giving much thought to Margaret's coming or what she would do with herself, or how her presence would affect their ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... was retained on the general staff and assigned to the important post of censor of the press. His duties were most engrossing, for not only were the proofs of all the local newspapers submitted to him, but also all other printed matter. One day a large number of handbills were confiscated at a printer's and brought in for his ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... But whatever the pretexts with which he sought to amuse or beguile the Spartan government, they appear at least to have been successful. And the customary indifference of the Spartans towards maritime affairs was strengthened at this peculiar time by engrossing anxieties as to the conduct of Pausanias. Thus Themistocles, safe alike from foreign and from civil obstacles, pursued with activity the execution of his schemes. The Piraeus was fortified by walls of amazing thickness, ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... came into the room, filled the nurse with terror. The servants still continued to pay their compliments to the baby in the same form as usual, saying, How like it is to its papa! Nor did sir Edward himself perceive the difference, his lady's illness probably engrossing all his attention at the time; though indeed gentlemen seldom take much ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... cares. They had struck a patch; they had money in hand, the result of their toil on the patch; and now they were free to spend it, without a thought or care—spend it as freely as they had made it, spend it in the search of a similarly engrossing delight to that which they had experienced in the finding of it; and when it was gone—if any gave a moment's consideration to the question, it was answered by mentally jerking the head towards the creek—when it was gone, they would come back and get some more. ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... Is it love? Yes; but not as men call love. Ours is heavenly love, ardent, but yet spiritual; intense, but without passion; a burning love like that of the cherubim; all-consuming, all-engrossing, ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... act, in the proposing of amendments, on the recommendation of this Conference Convention, no one, I think, can reasonably expect them to consider and deliberately act on such recommendation during the few remaining days of the present Congress. Other questions, of engrossing interest, now pending before them, and the acts of necessary legislation at the close of the session, will prevent it. It must, therefore, go over to the next Congress. Assuming that during the term of that Congress the amendments ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... Finn and Mr. Bonteen had now become the talk of the town, and had taken many various phases. The political phase, though it was perhaps the best understood, was not the most engrossing. There was the personal phase,—which had reference to the direct altercation that had taken place between the two gentlemen, and to the correspondence between them which had followed, as to which phase it may be said ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... us to the scrutiny of natural objects, that scrutiny never fails of its reward. Unquestionably they are intended to be regarded by us with both reverence and delight; and every hour we give to them renders their beauty more apparent, and their interest more engrossing. Natural science—which can hardly be considered to have existed before modern times—rendering our knowledge fruitful in accumulation, and exquisite in accuracy, has acted for good or evil, according to the temper of the mind which ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... himself up like Valerius Publicola. "Let us have no more of that. I have a friend, an old schoolfellow of mine, a very intelligent young fellow; and we are so much the more intimate, because, our lives have fallen out very much in the same way. He was studying law while I was a house-student, he was engrossing deeds in Maitre Couture's office. His father was a shoemaker, and mine was a breeches-maker; he has not found anyone to take much interest in his career, nor has he any capital; for, after all, capital is only to be ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... declaration. I have seen it, known it, even before yourselves were conscious of its existence—this all engrossing passion. Before my son's return I foresaw it, with the prescience of maternal love. I knew your young, imaginative heart would find its ideal in him, and that his fastidious taste and sensitive, reserved nature would be charmed ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... tried in vain to catch the drift of conversation between Vaura and her neighbour, but no, Mrs. Marchmont, though inwardly afraid of this squire of dames; and of his intellect, determined to appear at ease, and so talked on the one engrossing idea of her life; the last conundrum in fancy work, the last fashionable incongruity in the blending of colours. And poor, victimized Lionel longed to breathe in Vaura's refreshing breadth of thought; on his tormentor pausing to recover breath, it was not ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... impediments, I worked on with all the strength and energy I could command. I knew that in time I could raise the cairn as high as required, but time had now become the all-engrossing subject of my thoughts. ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... exactness in speech, still more emphatically did it furnish the only means of exactness, subtlety, or depth in thought. For at least three centuries, philosophy and science were without a home in the West; and though metaphysics and metaphysical theology were engrossing the mental energies of multitudes of Roman subjects, the phraseology employed in these ardent inquiries was exclusively Greek, and their theatre was the Eastern half of the Empire. Sometimes, indeed, the conclusions of the Eastern disputants became so important ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... has been abolished for its inhumanity; and yet it is a statement to be taken literally that a brief death by burning would be considered a happy release by a human being undergoing the experience of some of the animals who slowly die in a laboratory. Scientific vivisection has all the engrossing fascination of other physical sciences, BUT THE TRANSCENDENT TORTURE SOMETIMES INFLICTED HAS NO PARALLEL IN ANY OF THEM. As to its extent, we read that in course of ten years seventeen thousand dogs were dissected ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... memory, for these eyes have seen, these feet have trodden, this heart yet yearneth for, the spot—which even, I say, in thus describing, seems to me (and haply also to the gentle reader) a grateful and welcome transit from the storms of action and the vicissitudes of ambition, so long engrossing the narrative;—in this lone retreat Adrian passed the winter, which visits with so mild a change that intoxicating clime. The roar of the world without was borne but in faint and indistinct murmurings to his ear. He learned only imperfectly, and with many contradictions, ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... pleasant entertainment to be given about Eastertide is one at which the all-engrossing head covering of the season is to ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... example of Tazewell presents to the American mind is of yet greater significancy. If there be one unpleasant trait more revolting than another in our national character, it is the inordinate pursuit of wealth: rem, quocunque modo rem. To get money is the first lesson of childhood, the engrossing purpose of middle age, and the harassing employment of declining years. Such is the rabid thirst for money, its effects are seen over the whole moral and intellectual character of the people. It constitutes wealth as the standard of worth, and all the noblest qualities of the head ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... presumably of high-school age and over, this problem becomes real and engrossing, but for the vast majority there is little intelligent choice, no wise counsel, no conscious fronting of the profoundly religious question of how to invest one's life. The children of ease graduate but slowly, if at all, from ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... would have been in respect to the disposal of the horse, if this consultation and debate had gone on, it is impossible to say, as the farther consideration of the subject was all at once interrupted, by new occurrences which here suddenly intervened, and which, after engrossing for a time the whole attention of the company assembled, finally controlled the decision of the question. A crowd of peasants and shepherds were seen coming from the mountains, with much excitement, and loud shouts and outcries, bringing with them ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... real player, besides, Whist was never so engrossing as to exclude occasional remark; and some of the smartest and wittiest of Talleyrand's sayings were uttered at the card-table. Imagine, then, the inestimable advantage to the young man entering life, to be privileged to sit down in that little chosen coterie, where sages dropped words of wisdom, ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... on the opposite side of the room was suddenly opened, and Hamar Lessingham and Helen entered together. Lessingham was entirely at his ease,—their conversation, indeed, seemed almost engrossing. He came at once across the room ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... by their allegiance to perform. The few articles impeaching the conduct of these ministers before that commission, which subverted the constitution, and annihilated all justice and legal authority, are vague and general; such as their engrossing the king's favor, keeping his barons at a distance from him, obtaining unreasonable grants for themselves or their creatures, and dissipating the public treasure by useless expenses. No violence is objected ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... place, there is no subject more exciting than sexual jealousy rising to the pitch of passion; and there can hardly be any spectacle at once so engrossing and so painful as that of a great nature suffering the torment of this passion, and driven by it to a crime which is also a hideous blunder. Such a passion as ambition, however terrible its results, is not itself ignoble; if we separate ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... in seeing the birds die and decay was very acute, but, fortunately, about this time some one showed him a book of illustrations, and henceforth "a new life ran in my veins," he says. To copy Nature was thereafter his one engrossing aim. ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... lovely nature, in the perils of the forest, or its overwhelming peacefulness, still there had been two phantoms, the companions of his way. Like all other men around whom an engrossing purpose wreathes itself, he was insulated from the mass of human kind. He had no aim,—no pleasure,—no sympathies,—but what were ultimately connected with ...
— The Prophetic Pictures (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... early times, was not only expensive, but often very difficult to procure; whence arose the practice of erasing old writing from it, and engrossing it a second time. Such manuscripts are called "palimpsests." Modern art has found the means of discharging the more recent ink, and thus restoring the original writing, by which means we have recovered many valuable pieces, particularly Cicero's lost book, de Republica ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... ribaldry, they could destroy his well-earned fame? Are learning, sensibility, and taste, no securities to exempt their possessor from this vulgar abuse? Did you ever read, Williams, of a man more gallant, generous, and free? Was ever mortal so completely the reverse of every thing engrossing and selfish? He formed to himself a sublime image of excellence, and his only ambition was to realise it in his own story. Remember his giving away every thing when he set out upon his grand expedition, professedly reserving for himself nothing but hope. Recollect his heroic confidence ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... it. The cypher expert, who had been at work on Feist's diary, had now completed his key and brought Logotheti the translation. He was a rather shabby little man, a penman employed to do occasional odd jobs about the Foreign Office, such as engrossing documents and the like, by which he earned from eighteenpence to half-a-crown an hour, according to the style of penmanship required, and he was well known in the criminal courts as an expert on handwriting ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... "So general and engrossing was the interest felt in this event, that a public calamity had well-nigh followed. The attendants on the princes and princesses (usually most vigilant and faithful), in the excitement of the occasion, forgot their charge, and the young folks instantly seized the opportunity to rush out ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... day, much to Ethelberta's surprise, there was a letter for her in her mother's up-hill hand. She neglected all the rest of its contents for the following engrossing sentences:— ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... he was first interviewed by what Janice would have called the attorney for the prosecution, who took him to his office and insisted, much to the lover's disgust, in hearing what he had done politically. Finally, however, this all-engrossing subject to the office-seeker was, along with Philemon's patience, exhausted, and the squire told his fellow-candidate that the object of his ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... wore on and month followed month, covering her grief and memories with the dust of forgetfulness, Jeanne devoted herself entirely to her son. The child became the idol, the one engrossing thought, of the three beings over whom he ruled like any despot; there was even a sort of jealousy between his three slaves, for Jeanne grudged the hearty kisses he gave the baron when the latter ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... course never admitting that they would like to have married. Deep in their own hearts, however, almost all of them must feel the sadness of their unfulfilment, comfort themselves how they may with other interests. Those that have engrossing occupations should be thankful, for the woman whose whole heart is set on finding a husband and who fails to attain this object generally becomes fretful, bitter, disappointed and useless in every way. But women whose minds are sufficiently broad to hold other ideals ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... you to get me the inclosed list of books, which I find are culpably absent from my library. It is a very engrossing prospect, this child's mind: it is a blank parchment, ready for any writing, and apparently anxious ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... a decree, the time and place were put first; then, the names of those who were present at the engrossing of it; after that, the motion with the name of the magistrate who proposed it; to all which was subjoined what the ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... we occupy ourselves incessantly in doing nothing.... We never have a moment's rest.... We have to drink, we have to eat, we have to sleep. It's most engrossing.... ...
— The Blue Bird: A Fairy Play in Six Acts • Maurice Maeterlinck
... one engrossing passion, had no leisure to mark the progress of this growing discontent; and his frequent absence from the vessel, which gave an appearance of alienation from their interest and concerns, increased the dissatisfaction ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... precocious scientific capacities. His father, perceiving his strong scientific bent, and desirous that he should first of all acquaint himself with languages before the absorption of the severer, but more engrossing, study seized him, had withdrawn from his sight all mathematical books, and carefully avoided the subject in the presence of his son when his friends were present. This, as might be expected, only quickened the curiosity of the boy, ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... cat-o'-nine-tails: an inventor is for ever demonstrating the merits of his implement. Soon, discovering that he was thankless and unteachable, she made him enter, as youngest clerk, the law-office of her admirer and attorney, Constabule. This gentleman, not finding enough engrossing work to keep the lad out of mischief, allowed him to sweep his rooms and blacken his boots. Little Joliet, after giving a volatile air to a great many of his employer's briefs by making paper chickens of them, showed his imperfect sense of the favors ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... that struck a responsive chord in her own mind. She was beginning to see that, being useful, Charlie was making use of her. His horizon had narrowed to logs that might be transmuted into money. Enslaved himself by his engrossing purposes, he thought nothing of enslaving others to serve his end. She had come to a definite conclusion about that, and she meant to collect her wages when he sold his logs, collect also the ninety dollars of her money he had coolly appropriated, and try ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... sum. The money he brought home would not have made him a rich man in America, but it would go a long way in the dale, and the soil and flocks at Ashness could be improved by modern methods and carefully spent capital. Kit had begun at once and found his task engrossing, but when the day's work was over he felt a gentle melancholy and a sense of loneliness. Adam and Peter had gone and he had loved them both; he knew he would not meet their like again. Yet he had not lost them altogether. ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... subject of conversation between the elder Brewsters and Barbara was the gold mine and the possibilities of it. The engrossing thought that kept Anne so quiet was the unexpected and imminent visit of John to Pebbly Pit. But the topic that now enthused Polly and Eleanor was the arrival of Kenneth Evans, and his acquaintance with Jim Latimer, the pleasant young man who had spent a Sunday at the ranch just before the ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... tongue as quickly as possible, and being able to give their whole time and attention to it, this is easily accomplished. It is of importance that they should do so, otherwise they could not carry on the duties of the mission; but by thus engrossing the knowledge, they obtain great influence over the minds of the natives. We ourselves were sadly puzzled by a correspondence we had with two native chiefs, who had been taught to read and write by ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... these injunctions, I devoted the remainder of the day to the consideration of the various methods by which a man might contrive to effect his exit from the stage of human activities. And a very engrossing study I found it, and the more interesting in view of the problem that awaited solution on the morrow; but yet not so engrossing but that I was able to find time to write a long, rather intimate and minutely explanatory letter to Miss Gibson, in which I ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... rhetoric to be the handmaiden of Politics, and proposes to find in the strain of law (Laws) a substitute for the old poets. Among ourselves the creative power seems often to be growing weaker, and scientific fact to be more engrossing and overpowering to the mind than formerly. The illusion of the feelings commonly called love, has hitherto been the inspiring influence of modern poetry and romance, and has exercised a humanizing ...
— The Republic • Plato
... possesses an attraction which is all engrossing. Admiral Fisher has proved by this tale that he can use his pen ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... and ceaselessly for the good of society, and with the completest self-abnegation that is consistent with healthy individuality, be the true form of religion, Mr. Mill exhibited such genuine and profound religion—so permeating his whole life, and so engrossing his every action—as can hardly be looked for in any other man of this generation. Great as were his intellectual qualities, they were dwarfed by his moral excellences. He did not, it is true, aim at any fanciful ideal, ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... of being disparaged to the object of my engrossing affection were revived when we went into the drawing-room, by the grim and distant aspect of Miss Murdstone. But I was relieved of them ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... way of instance, and certainly an excuse for raising beds above the floor. But the wounded angel, like the metal machine, is only a device whereby the searching examination of our author may be displayed in an engrossing and intimate form. And in The Wonderful Visit, that exuberance we postulated, that absorption in the development of idea, is more marked; in the unfolding of the story we can trace the method ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... I think. Often in the old times, when I was still alone, I could not rid myself of one engrossing thought—especially when I sat by myself on the beach, and looked into the water. I felt as if something were drawing me into it, and calling to me that it was good to be down below there, and that there all was peace. Then I said to myself—Good! ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... there was from assuming the particular form of literature. Fully to make out what this 'something' was may baffle us; but, when we remember that this was the period of the Civil Wars of the Roses, we have reason to believe that the dearth of pure literature may have been owing, in part, to the engrossing nature of the practical questions which then disturbed English society. . . . Accordingly, though printing was introduced during this period, and thus Englishmen had greater temptations to write, what they did write was almost exclusively plain grave ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... in the garden—digging up kava roots, stringing them on twine and hanging them up in the hall to dry, and in many another homely task. In the evening they played chess, and, as neither knew the game, they were well matched, and spent engrossing evenings over it. Sometimes they would light a lantern and walk over to see Mr. Caruthers, the lawyer, who lived more than a mile away. When he saw the flicker of their lantern through the palm-trees he would wind up his ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... illuminating, inspiring, refreshing and captivating thoughts and ideas about life. No philosophy is deeper than that which underlies these stories; no psychology is more important than that which finds its choicest illustration in them; no chapter in the history of thought is more suggestive and engrossing than that which records their growth and divines their meaning. Fairy tales and myths are so much akin that they are easily transformed and exchange costumes without changing character; while the legend, which ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... being well settled in the world is both natural and laudable; but then great care ought to be taken to moderate this passion, in order to prevent it from engrossing the mind too much; for it is the nature of ambition, not only to stop at nothing that tends to its gratification, but also to be ever craving new acquisitions, ever unsatisfied with the former.—One favourite point is no sooner ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... for being inscribed on the Kiswah (cover) of Mohammed's tomb; a large and more formal hand still used for engrossing and for mural inscriptions. Only seventy two varieties of it are known (Pilgrimage, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... must voice my profound admiration for Murray Leinster's brilliant and engrossing story, "Murder Madness." It's the best serial you've printed so far; though I have high anticipation for Arthur J. Burks' latest novel, "Earth, the Marauder."—Mortimer Weisinger, 3550 Rochambeau Ave., Bronx, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... attention whenever they happened to meet, and upon the last occasion had offered playfully to tell her "all she knew" about politics. "They are engrossing," she added with a sigh, "so engrossing that they have taken the best of my years. A woman should be married and happy, I think, but I have become quite depersonalized. And I really think I have done a little good. You will marry, of course; ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... "You can't trim a beard well, unless you're born to it." It is possible in some degree to imitate Froissart and Boswell in that marvellous diligence to accumulate material which was common to them both; but, when gathered, how impossible it is to work up that old junk into permanent engrossing interest let those answer who have grappled with ancient chronicles, or with many biographies. So, with a circumlocution which probably convicts me in advance of decisive deficiency as a narrator, I let myself go. I have no model, unless it be the ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... that, when our first parents were placed in the garden of Eden, they wore no clothes. It was not until after they had acquired the knowledge of good and evil that they turned their attention to the subject of dress, which is now the engrossing thought and care of ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... 1859, was drawing to its close. The weather, as usual at that time of the year, was dull and sober, and the skies were dark and lowering. More than three months had elapsed since the journey to New York, and Mrs. Savareen and her affairs had ceased to be the engrossing topics of discussion among the people of Millbrook and its neighborhood. She continued to live a very secluded life, and seldom stirred beyond the threshold of her own door. Almost her only visitors were her father and brother, for her stepmother rarely intruded upon her domain, and ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... looked after by my married sister, of whom she is very fond. Florence is merrier, if not always happier, with her young cousins than if she were condemned to the repression and joyless routine of a house where the care of the sick is the most engrossing business ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... Warner, (for she was a widow acknowledging five-and-twenty) ordered the grinning shop-boy, who was chopping the 'lump,' to take home them 'ere dips to a customer who lived at some distance. Wiggins, not aware of the 'ruse,' felt pleased with the absence of one who was certainly 'de trop' in the engrossing 'tete-a-tete.' We will pass over this preliminary conversation; for a whole week the same scene was renewed, and at last Mrs. Warner and Mr. Wiggins used ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... no place for them at present in their intentions. Government can have no leisure now for attending to any thing but its own and our preservation; and the time seems not far distant when the cares of war and expenditure will come upon it once more with their all-engrossing importance. But when better times shall arrive (whoever may live to see them), it will be worthy the consideration of any government whether the institution of an Academy, with salaries for its members (in the nature of literary or lay benefices), might not be the means of retaining in its interests, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... national prejudice. But the Spanish power became jealous of this encroachment among the islands, which it affected to own by virtue of Papal dispensation. Though Spain did not care to occupy it, Cuba and the Main being too engrossing, she determined that no other power should do so. She therefore took advantage of disturbances which arose there, in consequence, the French writers affirm, of the perfidious ambition of Albion, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... brain or soul that lay behind, no spiritual trait answered to the physical.—Well, that was for others to puzzle over, not for him. The strong man tore himself away while there was still time, or saved himself in an engrossing pursuit. He, having had neither strength nor saving occupation, had bartered all he had, and knowingly, for the beauty of this face. And as long as it existed for him, his home was ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... considerable intellectual activity, constant occupation, and engrossing interest. We were apt to "foy" at our work to the extent of grudging meal-times and sleep. Indeed, at one time a habit obtained with us of leaving the table in turn as we finished our respective meals. One member of the family after another would rise, bend his or her head for a silent "grace," ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... The engrossing nature of his occupation as engineer did not hinder DesBarres from being an ambitious land speculator. In 1765 he obtained, in conjunction with General Haldimand and one or two others, a grant of ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... many Northern firms—that caused the stock-market in New York to go up and down with feverish uncertainty. Banks suspended payment in Washington, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. The one important and all-engrossing thing in the mind's eye of all the financial world at this moment was that specter of unpaid ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... beings love is an honest, engrossing concern. They have no ideas of settlements, establishments, equipages, and pin-money. The heart—the heart—is all-in-all with them, poor things! There is seldom one of them but has her love cares, and love secrets; her doubts, and hopes, ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... in this world that do not take hold of immortality, there is not one so intensely real, permanent, and engrossing as this of social position,—as you see by the circumstances that the core of all the great social orders the world has seen has been, and is still, for the most part, a privileged class of gentlemen and ladies arranged in a regular scale of ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... door, and was sent away with thanks. Then I began to dress myself with very trembling hands. This was new work to me, this horrible deception. But all remorse for that, was swallowed up in the one engrossing thought and desire which had usurped my soul for the ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... first place, a design of engrossing the whole of Mr. Palmer's fortune for her own family; and for this purpose she determined to prevent Mr. Palmer from becoming acquainted with his other relations, the Walsinghams, to whom she had always had a secret dislike, because they were of remarkably open, sincere ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... particularly pleasant talk, which Fleda who had seen nobody in a great while enjoyed very much. They had several such talks in the course of the day; for though the distractions caused by Mr. Olmney's other friends were many and engrossing, he generally contrived in time to find his way back to their window. Meanwhile Mrs. Evelyn had a great deal to say to Fleda and to hear from her; and left her at last under an engagement to spend the next day ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... deserved; since, whenever she was urged to give her sentiments on any subject, although all she thought fit to say was clear an intelligible, yet she seemed in haste to have done speaking. Her reason for it, I know, was twofold; that she might not lose the benefit of other people's sentiments, by engrossing the conversation; and lest, as were her words, she should be praised into loquaciousness, and so forfeit the good opinion which a person always maintains with her friends, who knows when she has said enough.—It was, finally, a rule with her, 'to leave her hearers ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... for the first Sunday since he had arrived in Littlefield Anstice's walk was no solitary stroll, companioned only by his own moody or rebellious thoughts, but a pleasant interlude in a life which in spite of incessant and often engrossing work, was on the ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... his first ramble along the Rue de la Paix and through the Boulevards, like all newcomers, was much more interested in the things that he saw than in the people he met. The general effect of Paris is wholly engrossing at first. The wealth in the shop windows, the high houses, the streams of traffic, the contrast everywhere between the last extremes of luxury and want struck him more than anything else. In his astonishment ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... autumn of the year 1867, when the reign of the Liberator was in the fulness of its fame, that a certain scandal intime began, in St. Petersburg, to divide interest with the still engrossing topic of the freed serfs. Every one in society took sides, for or against, in the quarrel and separation of the young Prince and Princess Nikitenko: both of whom had been, since their marriage, high in the graces of the Grand-Ducal circle, and leaders ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... noted men—among them Mr. Josiah Quincy, whose reminiscences were to me very interesting, his accounts of conversations with John Adams perhaps more so than anything else. At various clubs I met most charming people, the most engrossing of these being Arthur Gilman, the architect: then, and at other times, I sat up with him late into the night,—once, indeed, the entire night,—listening to his flow of quaint wit and humor. The range of his powers was perhaps best shown in a repetition ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... in a paralysis of generous acts. The victim begins to shrink spiritually; he develops a fancy for parlours with a regulated temperature, and takes his morality on the principle of tin shoes and tepid milk. The care of one important body or soul becomes so engrossing, that all the noises of the outer world begin to come thin and faint into the parlour with the regulated temperature; and the tin shoes go equably forward over blood and rain. To be overwise is to ossify; and the scruple-monger ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to press her. "Knowing how engrossing the subject is, you will understand how it happens that the club has let everything else go to the wall for the moment. Since we took up Xingu I might almost say—were it not for your books—that nothing else ...
— Xingu - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... each other, and as a matter of course often discussed the future, particularly with reference to the Prince's position in his new country, and what his title was to be. One can easily fancy how interesting and engrossing such talks would become, especially when they were enlivened by the bright humour, and controlled by the singular unselfishness, of the object of so many hopes and plans. It was already blustering wintry weather, ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... highly princes have been blamed in the histories of all countries, particularly of our own; upon the account of minions; who have been ever justly odious to the people, for their insolence and avarice, and engrossing the favour of their masters. Whoever has been the least conversant in the English story cannot but have heard of Gaveston[3], the Spencers[4], and the Earl of Oxford[5]; who by the excess and abuse of their power, cost the princes they served, or rather ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... to remind you that our guest, amid his engrossing duties of State, has not neglected the Muses. Not less facile with the pen than the tongue, he has written on many topics, and this afternoon it will be our privilege to listen to him discoursing ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... prayer will become ever more engrossing, as the Divine impulse is yielded to; so that what now occupies but a comparatively small portion of time and energy will become with us, as with the great Apostle, an exercise which we prosecute with unceasing ardor, an ever-delightful method of ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... supporters of the government suffered signal defeat, notably Lord Palmerston and Cavendish. On the Tory side, young Gladstone, then still a student at Oxford, came into notice by his warm speech against the proposed reform. Parliament was reopened with another hot debate on the all-engrossing bill. It was passed to a second reading by a strong majority of 135 votes. Scarcely had this been accomplished when the government was embarrassed by William Cobbett's state trial for sedition. Throughout the trial ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... specimens sent me by Mr. Astle, of the fifteenth century, and the letters were those of an engrossing hand, angular, without any FINE strokes, broad and very black. On this none of the above-mentioned re-agents produced any considerable effect; most of them seemed to make the letters blacker, probably by cleaning the surface; and the acids, ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... gold and the all-engrossing pursuit of it have already caused in California an unprecedented rise in the price of all the necessaries ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Polk • James Polk
... great store of wise and kindly advice, guided their education, strove to form their characters, and traced for them the honorable careers which he wished them to pursue. Very few men who had risen to the heights reached by Washington would have found time, in the midst of engrossing cares, to write such letters as he wrote to friends and kinsmen. A kind heart prompted them, but they were much more than merely kind, for when Washington undertook to do anything he did it thoroughly. ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge |
