"Abstracted" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Her manner was becoming abstracted. It seemed as if she were addressing herself, warning herself, and fighting down a weakness which was ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... noticed that Andrew, who had been absent for some time, and had only returned just in time for supper, looked worried and abstracted, and replied almost at random to any questions ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... expressed an earnest wish to be present at the festivity; but meeting with no response in the darkened eye of Mr. Snodgrass, or the abstracted gaze of Mr. Pickwick, he applied himself with great interest to the port wine and dessert, which had just been placed on the table. The waiter withdrew, and the party were left to enjoy the cosy couple ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... little and sleeps little, and all he eats is fruit, and when he sleeps, if he sleeps at all, it is in the field on the hard earth like a brute beast. Sometimes he gazes at the sky, at other times he fixes his eyes on the earth in such an abstracted way that he might be taken for a clothed statue, with its drapery stirred by the wind. In short, he shows such signs of a heart crushed by suffering, that all we who know him believe that when to-morrow the fair Quiteria says 'yes,' it will be his ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... he was aware of Mrs. Coppin crying in a corner, of Mr. Coppin drinking his health in the remains of sparkling limado, of Brothers Frank and Percy, one on each side trying to borrow simultaneously half-crowns, and of Muriel, flushed but demure, making bread-pellets and throwing them in an abstracted way, one by one, at the Coppin cat, which had wandered in on the chance ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... after the announcement the two sat on the same bench in the downtown park, while the fluttering leaves of the trees made a dim kinetoscopic picture of them in the moonlight. But Donovan had worn a look of abstracted gloom all day. He was so silent to-night that love's lips could not keep back any longer the ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... The Duke, towering, abstracted, swaying along ponderously, close to the wall of the corridor, eyes on the head of the stairway, was as indifferent to the uproar as he ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... was gone. She was conversing with her partner, but without the soft animation that usually shone out upon her countenance. And when she was brought back to her seat Molly noticed her changed colour, and her dreamily abstracted eyes. ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the topic, he returned to the matter of the repairs required on Sparkes' farm, and for a few minutes the two men were engrossed in details connected with the management of the estate. But Ann noticed that Coventry seemed curiously abstracted. He allowed his cigarette to smoulder between his fingers till it went out beneath their pressure, and presently, bringing the discussion with Robin to a sudden close, he got up to go. He tendered his farewell somewhat abruptly, mounted his horse, which had been standing ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... before he was dressed; then came a short and select levee, followed again by audiences, which kept him till eleven or twelve o'clock; then the chiefs of the councils (La Valliere and Le Blanc) came to give an account of their espionage, then Torcy, to bring any important letters which he had abstracted. At half-past two the regent had his chocolate, which he always took while laughing and chatting. This lasted half an hour, then came the audience hour for ladies, after that he went to the Duchesse ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... view of the future, and his inward soul acknowledged that the man the country wanted was Peel. Why might he not govern as long as Pitt? He probably would. Peel! his father's friend! And this led to a train of painful but absorbing memories, and he sat musing and abstracted, fiddling with ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... abstracted youth like you, but utterly unpractical. I want you to hire a forge this side of Warren. I will insure you custom enough to warrant ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... kind to me as you have. They've all been—the other sort. I used to think of you a good deal, and I wanted to do some little thing to show you I was really grateful. On the boat I used to notice you because you were so quiet and abstracted. Then you were grandfather's room-mate and gentle and kind to him. You looked different from the others, too; your eyes ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... and would get hold of Colney's hand and hold it and squeeze it, growing red the while with pity and anger. But Colney never noticed it half as much as Peggy did; she used to look at the angry teacher for a few minutes in an abstracted kind of way, and then retire within herself and make imaginary experiments. This was what happened on the dreadful ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... was to him that the young nobleman addressed himself for admittance; but Faustus immediately objecting the tenderness of his constitution, discouraged his desires with words of some harshness; "Go," said he, "and first learn to live in the world abstracted from its pleasures. Who can well suppose, that you on a sudden, relinquishing a life of softness and ease, can take up with our coarse diet and clothing and can inure yourself to our watchings and fastings?" ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... often wondered what he should do if he were to meet a burglar; and he had always come to the conclusion that curiosity would be his chief emotion. His anticipations were proved perfectly correct. Now that he had abstracted his visitor's gun, he had no wish to do anything but engage him in conversation. A burglar's life was something so entirely outside his experience! He wanted to learn the burglar's point of view. Incidentally, he reflected with amusement, ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... then make up two large caskets with your own jewels, those of Cacama, and some of the most valuable stones and jewels from the royal treasury—leaving all the royal ornaments worn on state occasions, so that the usurper will not know that any have been abstracted." ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... in dark abstracted guise Seem most alone in greatest company, With dearth of words, or answers quite awry To them that would make speech of speech arise, They deem, and of their doom the rumour flies, That poison foul of bubbling Pride doth lie So in my swelling breast, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... The abstracted look passed, and the slight color and delicate mobility of her face returned. "To end, dandy boy?" she repeated lazily. "You didn't ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... young man, moody and abstracted, still looked on ahead, some of his senses seemed yet on guard. His head turned at the slightest sound of the forest life that came to him. If a twig cracked, he heard it. If a green nut cut by some early squirrel ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... a merry party around the table at dinner, though now and then Ned noticed that Tom had an abstracted and preoccupied air. ...
— Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders - or, The Underground Search for the Idol of Gold • Victor Appleton
... yet is claimed to have been a very ancient custom, which the Ptolomies revived in Egypt. At any rate here is the picture of the Family in its patriarchal form, wholly separated from other connections and set apart by itself, on the brass-bound precipitous island. The Family is abstracted from the rest of the world and ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... he not known the secret of his sorrow, it would have soon become plain to his acute and watchful nurse that some hidden trouble was gnawing at his heart, for he was taciturn, abstracted and sometimes morose. He manifested no curiosity as to the benefactor upon whose charity he was living, but received the alms bestowed by that unknown hand as children receive the gifts ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... with sunny blue-gray eyes belying the gloomy curve of his mouth, was everywhere; arranging for bearers, selecting hymns, conferring with the family, keeping abstracted old women off the seats reserved for the mourners, and maintaining an anxious lookout for ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... cost of maintaining more than a hundred thousand priests and ministers, in supporting foreign and domestic missions and in publishing religious literature; besides the taxes applied to the care of the religious insane, and realize the fact that all of this vast sum of money is abstracted from the resources of the people, we would not have to go outside of our own country to appreciate the fact that religion is the burden of all burdens to society; and when we contemplate the great disturbance to the ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... loquuntur, non tantum ferae, are, for the purpose of moral instruction, feigned to act and speak with human interests and passions. To this description the compositions of Gay do not always conform. For a fable he gives now and then a tale, or an abstracted allegory; and from some, by whatever name they may be called, it will be difficult to extract any moral principle. They are, however, told with liveliness, the versification is smooth, and the diction, though now and then a little constrained ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... me to the house. Dr. Brende was a small, dark man of sixty-odd, smooth-shaven, a thin face, with a mop of iron-grey hair above it, and keen dark eyes beneath bushy white brows. He was usually kindly and gentle of manner—at times a little abstracted; at other times he could be more forceful and direct than anyone with whom ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... trembling with emotion. "Shout," cried one of the peasants; "shout, the boy may hear you!" "Alas," answered the father, " he cannot hear; you forget that my child is deaf and dumb!" At that instant, Theodor, who for a brief while had stood apart, abstracted and silent, approached St. Aubyn and grasped his hand. "Shout!" repeated he, with the earnestness of a command; "call your boy by his name!" St Aubyn looked at him with astonishment; then in a clear piercing voice obeyed. "Charlie!" he cried; "Charlie, ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... enough supposed that her hour was come; for the door, the only means of retreat, had been blocked up by the brush and fire, with hellish ingenuity, and she addressed herself, as she believed, for the last time to her Maker in prayer. Her eyes were closed, and for more than a minute her spirit was abstracted; but the interests of the world too strongly divided her feelings to be altogether suppressed; and when they involuntarily opened again, she perceived that the streak of flame was no longer flaring in the room, though the wood around ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... is also useful. After a few minutes the moth will come out of its dug-out with an abstracted expression on its face, and commit suicide by jumping into ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various
... Wilson to Madame Limouzin—were written on paper manufactured after their date,—an incident not unfamiliar to readers of old-fashioned English novels. The real letters, therefore, had undoubtedly been abstracted, and replaced by others of a less ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... of the other documents from the War Office is accounted for by the remarkable testimony of Benjamin F. Wade and Samuel Hunt (keeper of the records), as given on page 30, 45th Congress, 2d session, Mis. Doc. 58, both testifying that the papers were abstracted from the desk of the Secretary when the Military Committee were considering Miss Carroll's claim, in 1871. As Miss Carroll possessed the original draft of these letters, she quickly reproduced them. The papers having been already examined by the Committee and ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell
... account of the state of the several plantations in the year 1818 is by permission abstracted from ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... and bracing up were matters of frequent occurrence, as Frank grew more and more silent and abstracted, and now after he had sat through a funny story told by Mr. St. Claire and had not even smiled, or given any sign that he heard it, he suddenly caught Dolly's eye and saw that both eyebrows, and nose, and chin ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... while always liable to return upon us with every renewed movement of the isolated reason, are in truth unreal projections of man's imperious mind. When we subject them to an analysis based upon our complete organ of research they show themselves to be nothing but tyrannous phantoms, abstracted from the genuine reality of the soul as it exists within ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... in level due to different causes—rain, wind, and evaporation being the chief—are taken into consideration, the effect of 10,000 cubic feet a second abstracted would probably not be noticeable. That this would be so is the opinion, after careful investigation, of many eminent American engineers. On the other hand there is a similar unanimity of opinion as to the advantages that would be obtained in the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... a moment of peril and fear, when he had need to grasp unseen strength, sitting in an abstracted mood, tracing on the table with his finger the words 'Vivit! vivit!'—'He lives! He lives!' It is our hope for ourselves, and for God's truth, and for mankind. Men come and go; leaders, teachers, thinkers speak and work for a season and then fall silent and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... had grown dreamy and abstracted. The hand that had pushed back her heavy hair fell on her lap. She looked at it and its shining rings, and Mrs Jefferson's sharp glance followed hers. Was there a plain gold circlet among that glittering array?—was the beautiful stranger ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... Cyril noticed that Nellie was silent and abstracted at breakfast-time. She went out marketing with her mother afterwards, and at dinner her mood had changed. She talked and laughed more than usual. There was a flush of excitement on her cheeks, and he drew the conclusion ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... and took their work, Mrs Macphail was making another of the innumerable comforters which she had turned out since the beginning of the war, and the doctor lit his pipe. But Davidson remained in his chair and with abstracted eyes stared at the table. At last he got up and without a word went out of the room. They heard him go down and they heard Miss Thompson's defiant "Come in" when he knocked at the door. He remained with her for an hour. And Dr Macphail watched the ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... at last, as she still knelt before the fire, looking deep into the coals, absorbed, abstracted, "I think that I am going to be very ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... proverbially honest. By and by a great excitement was apparent on the platform, when it came to light that the apologist and indorser of the good people here was declaring that a leather strap had been purloined from his trunk, between the hotel and the depot, and the contents of his hat-box abstracted. What was to be done? The engine was screeching forth the starting signal with unwonted vigor, and there was no time to be lost. He who had spoken so favorably of the local population a few moments before, was now red in the face with ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... uncooked vegetables is a really healthy craving, and that free indulgence in Salads is a means of supplying the human frame with important elements of plant-life. In the process of cooking, certain minerals, such as salts of potash, are abstracted from vegetables, while in Salads they are available, and contribute both to the enjoyment and the benefit ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... theory collected facts on a wholesale scale, more especially with respect to domesticated productions, by printed enquiries, by conversation with skilful breeders and gardeners, and by extensive reading. When I see the list of books of all kinds which I read and abstracted, including whole series of Journals and Transactions, I am surprised at my industry. I soon perceived that selection was the keystone of man's success in making useful races of animals and plants. But how selection could be applied to organisms living ...
— The Autobiography of Charles Darwin - From The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin • Charles Darwin
... of the sofa. The silence had lasted a long time. Ellen thought so; and standing near, she by-and-by put her hand gently into one of his, which was thoughtfully passing through the locks of his hair. Her hand was clasped immediately, and, quitting his abstracted look, he asked what she had been doing that day. Ellen's thoughts went back to toes of stockings and a long rent in her dress; she merely answered, smiling, that she had ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... low edge of the lake, and where the off-shore wind ripples the rushes of the shallow water: that, and the vision of a frame house, and the snake fences of the fourth concession road where it falls to the lakeside. And if the eyes of the man are dreamy and abstracted, it is because there lies over the vision of this vanished farm an infinite regret, greater in its compass than all the shares the Erie Auriferous Consolidated has ever ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... minister's daughter, and perhaps she would like it as well as her gull's wing. There was another sly visit to the chilly spare chamber. Minty took the summer Sunday hat from its bandbox in the closet, and carefully abstracted the blue feather. It was slightly faded, and there were some traces of the wetting it had received in a thunderstorm in spite of the handkerchief which Aunt Kittredge carefully pinned over it; but Minty thought it still a very beautiful ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... shan't permit you to go up with this renegade to the revolutionary cause—" he began impetuously. She put warning fingers to her lips. In the white flowing robes of an antique priest, Karospina came out to them and took Gerald by the hand. He was abstracted and haggard, and his eyes glared about him. He ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... distributing coffee, and alternating the task by cutting bread-and-butter—thin-thick for her brother Hendon, who was reading a sporting paper, and thin-thin for Dr Chartley, who was gazing in an abstracted manner at a paper before him, and making notes from time to time with ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... you my spare chamber," replied the matron, with abstracted glance. "It's next the bath-room. I'm sorry, but I guess your father'll have to go ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... contents of the paper been of no interest, she might even have continued to read more in that same abstracted mood; but those four first lines were of a nature which sent a thrilling sensation of horror through her entire frame; the feeling terminating with an icy ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... way from the Rue de Normandie to the Rue de Richelieu, Pons drew from the abstracted Schmucke the details of the story of the modern prodigal son, for whom Death had killed the fatted innkeeper. Pons, but newly reconciled with his nearest relatives, was immediately smitten with a desire to make a match between ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... get restless. He fixed up a list of the days till June 15th, and ticked each off with a red pencil, making remarks in shorthand against them. I would find him sunk in a brown study, with his sharp eyes abstracted, and after those spells of meditation he was apt to ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... approaches that of innocence or perfectness, it approaches that of Paradise,—it is a dressing of garden. And, therefore, where nothing else can be used for ornament, vegetation may; vegetation in any form, however fragmentary, however abstracted. A single leaf laid upon the angle of a stone, or the mere form or frame-work of the leaf drawn upon it, or the mere shadow and ghost of the leaf,—the hollow "foil" cut out of it,—possesses a charm which nothing else ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... reveals a soul. In a word, in that state of liberty which physical nature arrogates to itself from its chief, we must not think of beauty. Under the empire of the moral agent, the liberty of form was only restrained, here it is crushed by brutal matter, which gains as much ground as is abstracted from the will. Man in this state not only revolts the moral sense, which incessantly claims of the face an expression of human dignity, but the aesthetic sense, which is not content with simple matter, and which finds in the form an unfettered pleasure—the aesthetic sense will turn away with ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... fondness, and anxious to provide for them, affection gives a sacred heroic cast to her maternal duties. She thinks that not only the eye sees her virtuous efforts, from whom all her comfort now must flow, and whose approbation is life; but her imagination, a little abstracted and exalted by grief, dwells on the fond hope, that the eyes which her trembling hand closed, may still see how she subdues every wayward passion to fulfil the double duty of being the father as well as the mother of her children. Raised to heroism ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... an abstracted air of washing. 'Well, commander, well, sir, they say a candidate's to be humoured in his infancy, for he has to do all the humouring before he's many weeks old at it; only there's the fact!—he soon finds out he has to pay for his first fling, like ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... be so easy for them as you think, George," said Little Douglas; "for I shut all the doors behind me, and some time will elapse before the keys that I have left there open them. As to these," added he, showing those he had so skilfully abstracted, "I resign them to the Kelpie, the genie of the lake, and I nominate him porter of ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... G— archly pointed out to the lively guests the abstracted air and clouded brow of the poet; and Condorcet, who liked no one else to be remarked, when he himself was present, said to Cazotte, "Well, and what do YOU predict of the Revolution,—how, at least, will it ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... to prevent crime? The parliamentary returns demonstrate that it is not. I was engaged in making some extracts from these documents, when I found them so well abstracted in one of the papers published by the committee on this subject established at Aylesbury last year, by the humane exertions of Lord Nugent, that I am glad to quote the general ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... door and secured it, and went across to the lamp, where he stood looking down at the stained and dirty covering. He turned it over, his thoughts abstracted and busy with the woman who had folded it ready for its journey to him. Yes, she had folded it, she had ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... Arthur turned and entered the house. The study- door was open, so he went straight in. Philip, who was sitting and staring in an abstracted way at the empty fireplace with a light behind him, turned quickly round as he ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... lord, I was about to say, that the imagination is the Voli-Donzini; or, to speak plainer, the unical, rudimental, and all- comprehending abstracted essence of the infinite remoteness of things. Without ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... admitted was incurable, was restored to robust vigor by the administering of some mild herbs. This savored rather too much of medicine, and other holy healers used more orthodox means. Hugo the Holy abstracted a serpent from the infirm body of a woman by the use of holy water, and Coleta, the saintess, awakened from the dreamless slumber of death more than one hundred slain infants by the ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... lairds of Buccleuch. The cause of their being stationed in Elfland probably arose from the manner of their decease; which, being uncommon and violent, caused the vulgar to suppose that they had been abstracted by the Fairies. Lethington, as is generally supposed, died a Roman death during his imprisonment in Leith; and the Buccleuch, whom I believe to be here meant, was slain in a nocturnal scuffle by the Kerrs, his hereditary enemies. ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... will be seen that this discussion of modesty is highly generalized and abstracted; it deals simply with the formal mechanism of the process. Hohenemser admits that fear is a form of psychic stasis, and I have sought to show that modesty is a complexus of fears. We may very well accept the conception of psychic stasis at the outset. The analysis of modesty has ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... speech, as when it is said, he loves me, a king loves his subjects, and subjects love their king, a husband loves his wife, a mother her children, and conversely; also, this or that one loves his country, his fellow citizens, his neighbor; and likewise of things abstracted from person, as when it is said, one loves this or that thing. But although the word love is so universally used, hardly anybody knows what love is. And because one is unable, when he reflects upon it, to form to himself any idea of thought ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... the job of stepmothering those youngsters. Even the Hill girls balk at that. They haven't been found laying traps for Mr. Meredith. Elizabeth would make him a good wife if he only thought so. But the trouble is, she really is homely and, Anne dearie, Mr. Meredith, abstracted as he is, has an eye for a good-looking woman, man-like. He isn't SO other-worldly when it comes to ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... dress. She looked at Marion without curiosity from an immense distance of preoccupation. There came from a room at the back of the house the strains of "Nearer, my God, to Thee," played on the harmonium, and at that she made a weak, abstracted gesture ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... difference, of course," is the satisfied answer. And yet, all told, the presents received by the whole family, in useful articles, has not reached the value of twenty-five dollars during six months. And this has been more than abstracted from them by the kind ladies of the parish, who must needs visit and take tea with the ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... his cheerful vivacity and private worth caused him to stand highly in the estimation of those who were honoured by a participation in his hours of recreative enjoyment. The necessary consequence of his abstracted devotion to the service of the settlement, for a long period, was the obtainment of a thorough knowledge of every subject connected with its welfare; and in the application of that knowledge to the practical improvement of the settlement, no man could have been more happy, none more eminently ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann
... to be necessary for preventing worms from getting into them. Those persons who are sent for this commodity in the company's ships, practise a fraud of this nature, in order to conceal their thefts: For, having abstracted a certain quantity or proportion from the cloves received on board, they place two or three hogsheads of sea-water among those remaining, which is all sucked up in a few days by the cloves, which that recover ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... like a dumb man with Grimaud, who forbid him to speak, and consequently never exchange ill words with him; for you, Porthos, who carry matters in such a magnificent style, and are a god to your valet, Mousqueton; and for you, Aramis, who, always abstracted by your theological studies, inspire your servant, Bazin, a mild, religious man, with a profound respect; but for me, who am without any settled means and without resources—for me, who am neither a Musketeer nor even a Guardsman, what I am to do to inspire ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the first, on the competence of Managers for the House of Commons to give the evidence supposed to be offered by them, but which we deny to have been offered in the manner and for the purpose assumed in this question; the second is in a shape apparently more abstracted, and more nearly approaching to Parliamentary regularity,—on the competence of the evidence itself, in the case of a supposed circumstance being superadded. The Judges answered only the first, denying flatly the competence of the Managers. As to the second, the competence of the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... he prepared himself to act the part of the cold, abstracted, supercilious man of business, the part already too horribly familiar to him as young Mr. Rickman of Rickman's. He reflected how nearly he had wrecked his prospects in that character. He bade himself beware of ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... being a recognized fact. The Colonel felt a pleasurable relief at this, and a general satisfaction he could not account for. His few inquiries concerning Mr. Hotchkiss only confirmed his own impressions of the alleged lover,—a serious-minded, practically abstracted man, abstentive of youthful society, and the last man apparently capable of levity of the affections or serious flirtation. The Colonel was mystified, but determined of purpose, whatever that purpose might ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... than usual, as she entered the house, and for some reason, unknown even to herself, she did not acquaint her parents with the interview. She endeavoured to occupy her mind by busying herself with the little household affairs, but her manner was abstracted, so feigning exhaustion she went to her room, at an earlier hour than usual. She slept, but not that deep, quiet, undisturbed slumber that wraps in oblivion all the senses. She dreamed strange dreams, in which she saw strange faces, but the one face was ever ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... eye may provoke a speaker; a butterfly, or the figure in a carpet may engage your attention in preference to him; or if these objects be absent, the simply averting your eye, looking through the window in quest of outward objects, will show that your mind has not been abstracted, and will display to him at least your wish of not attending. He may, however, possibly have lost the habit of watching your eye for approbation; then you may assault his ear: if all other resources fail, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... come," said the other; "it would have looked well, and pleased the rest of the directors. There has been some queer business—some of the books abstracted or destroyed, we can't tell which, and no means ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... inanimate, "arbores loquuntur, non tantum ferae," are, for the purpose of moral instruction, feigned to act and speak with human interests and passions. To this description the compositions of Gay do not always conform. For a fable, he gives, now and then, a tale, or an abstracted allegory; and, from some, by whatever name they may be called, it will be difficult to extract any moral principle. They are, however, told with liveliness; the versification is smooth; and the diction, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... o'clock on the following Thursday, and Thorne was walking from the office to Bellevue street. He had adopted a quicker and more business-like pace than in old days, and came down the street with long steps, his head high and an abstracted expression on his face. Suddenly he stopped. "Miss Lisle!" he exclaimed. "Good God! What ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... night-watchman, as he watched in an abstracted fashion the efforts of a skipper to reach a brother skipper on a passing barge with a boathook. Don't talk to me about love, because I've suffered enough through it. There ought to be teetotalers for love the same as wot there is for drink, and they ought to wear a piece o' ribbon to show ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... vagaries of animal nature, he apparently at once discharged his mind of the whole affair, became utterly oblivious of it, allowed it to drop without the least concern, and eventually flew away with an abstracted air, as if he had been another bird entirely. The paper got into a manzanita bush, where it remained suspended until the evening, when, being dislodged by a passing wild-cat on its way to Mulrady's hen-roost, it gave that ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... be produced by mechanism. When printing-presses, moved by the power of steam, were introduced, the action of these rollers was found to be well adapted to their performance; and a reservoir of ink was formed, from which a roller regularly abstracted a small quantity at each impression. From three to five other rollers spread this portion uniformly over a slab (by most ingenious contrivances varied in almost each kind of press), and another travelling roller, having fed itself on the slab, passed and repassed over the type ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... Mankyn, who 'don't know twelve times,' can dance to her perfect admiration; when I see that she likes ease of manners—and all sorts of men without an idea in their heads have that—while I turn all colors when I speak to her, and am clumsy, and abrupt, and abstracted, and bad at repartee—Uncle Teddy! sometimes (though it seems so ungrateful to father and mother, who have spent such pains for me)—sometimes, do you know, it seems to me as if I'd exchange ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... with us long?" inquired the shoeman, after trying on the shoes and cursing out Peter, the adenoidic clerk, in an abstracted, ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... in the background, whilst at the farther window stood Constance with Mr. Stroud. Philip was bending over a book with Hugh at a small table near, but when I began to play he threw himself into an easy chair, and resting his head upon his hand, prepared himself to listen. I noted an abstracted, moody look in his eyes, and it was in vain that he tried to hide it. I began to play one of Beethoven's sonatas, but drifted on from that to my own fancies, and glancing out into the dusky twilight, seemed to feel, rather than see, great banks of heavy, gloomy ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... of the fate in reserve for him, and resolved that he would never be carried alive to Waughcotomoco. Their route lay through an unprimed forest, abounding in thickets and undergrowth. During the whole of the march, Kenton remained abstracted and silent; often meditating an effort for the recovery of his liberty, and as often shrinking from the peril ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... skilful dealing of accomplished fingers with precious forms of matter for the delight of the eyes. Greek sculpture has come to be regarded as the product of a peculiarly limited art, dealing with a specially abstracted range of subjects; and the Greek sculptor as a workman almost exclusively intellectual, having only a sort of accidental connexion with the material in which his thought was expressed. He is fancied ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... emphasis that has been placed on special scientific methods discloses its significance. The speculative synthesis of Greek and Alexandrine Science was a superb training in Deduction,—in the descent from consciousness to Nature. Abstracted from its relations with reality, the scholasticism of the Middle Ages pushed Deduction to mania and moonshine. Then it was, that, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Occidental mind, astir under the oceanic movements of the modern, arose to break the spell of scholasticism that had fettered ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... combination by which the meddling of man is made evident, and the feebleness of his hand branded on the inorganization of his monstrous creature, is advanced as a proof of inventive power, as an evidence of abstracted conception;—nay, the violation of specific form, the utter abandonment of all organic and individual character of object, (numberless examples of which from the works of the old masters are given in the following pages,) is constantly held up by the unthinking critic as the foundation ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... comfort and protect him. The stoop of his thin shoulders, the silvering hair on his bowed head, and the sound of his gentle voice all appealed to Elizabeth's heart in the same way as when Jamie cried from a hurt. Whenever he looked unusually sad and abstracted, his little daughter yearned to fling her arms about his neck and pet and caress him. But Elizabeth knew better. Such conduct would be courting death by ridicule at the hands of ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... rolled between the green tobacco fields. "How delicious the wild grape is!" exclaimed Cynthia, drawing her breath, "I hope the horses aren't tired. Have they been at the plough?" "Not since dinner time." It was clear that his mind was still abstracted, and he kept his face turned toward the pale red line that lingered on the western horizon. "This is a queer kind of life," he said presently, still looking away from her. "We are so poor and so shut in that we have no idea what people of the world are really ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... this, rode into the town, and as he stopped his horse to pay the turnpike, he was observed by the turnpike-keeper's wife to be looking gloomy and abstracted; indeed, the gate was no sooner shut behind him than he sighed, and said with a certain bitterness, "I shouldn't wonder if, in two or three years time, I am driven to put my neck under the yoke ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... companion somewhat abstracted on their way down town, and unusually serious, even for him, who was accustomed to take, as she had already learned, a serious view of himself and the world. He crossed the ferry with her, and not until they had ensconced themselves ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... liquid property left them. At this Indra became highly enraged and again smote him with his thunderbolt. And he (Vritra) smitten by the thunderbolt by the most powerful Indra betook himself to the Jyoti (luminous matter) and abstracted its inherent property. The luminous matter being overwhelmed by Vritra and its property, colour and form being thereby lost, the wrathful Indra again hurled his thunderbolt at him. And thus wounded again by Indra ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... precipitately under a gate from out a cabbage-patch toward nightfall, may, perhaps, have observed, that, immediately upon emerging from the sacred vegetable preserve, a couple of the more elderly and designing of them assumed a sudden air of abstracted musing, and reduced their progress to a most dignified and leisurely walk, as though to convince the human beholder that their recent proximity to the cabbages had been but the trivial accident of a ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... abstracted from its effects upon the hearer, may be more rigorously and philosophically considered as a kind of "discordia concors;" a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult resemblances in things ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... been imagined that the residence of missionaries would have the effect of civilising the natives, and adding to the safety of ships touching here; but experience fully proves the fallacy of such an expectation. These people, abstracted by their own gloomy reflections, look with contempt on all who are in the pursuit of "worldly wealth"; and regard the arrival of a whaler as an enemy coming to interfere with the spiritual interests of ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... Finally, the accompanying change in effect (conviction by evidence) is to be tested. The last procedure requires discussion; the rest is self evident. In our business isolation is comparatively easy, inasmuch as any individual statement, any visual impression, any effect, etc., may be abstracted without difficulty. Much harder is the determination of its value. If, however, we clearly recognize that it is necessary to express the exact value of each particular source of evidence, and that the task is only to determine comparative valuation, the possibility of such a thing, ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... reason why the Bank of England ought, I think, to deal most cautiously and delicately with their banking deposits. They are the symbol of an indefinite liability: by means of them, as we see, an amount of money so great that it is impossible to assign a limit to it might be abstracted from the Bank of England. As the Bank of England lends money to keep up the bankers' balances, at their usual amount, and as by means of that usual amount whatever sum foreigners can get credit for may be taken from us, it ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... and now and then his eyes were raised to look over the top of the book at his wife. There was a patient sort of suffering about her which irritated him a good bit, as he could see no possible reason to account for it. He asked her one or two questions, which she answered in an abstracted manner. ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... always given satisfaction, except on the score of being somewhat gay and somewhat irritable. Privately, he was a man of loose habits, and for years his extravagances had been paid for by property clandestinely abstracted from his too-confiding master. Slow to believe in the reality of such wickedness, Mr. Harvey could with difficulty entertain the suspicions which began to dawn on his mind. At length all doubt was at an end. He detected Cartwright in the very ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... Valencia entrusted me with a letter for you, in answer to your own," I informed her, and from underneath my pillow I drew the package, which during Magistri's absence I had abstracted from my boot that I might have it in ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... no clearer clews to her identity. She is happy in her new home. Many little surprises for the pleasure of Bessie are planned by the generous Esther. Interest in childish whims is so genuine as to check pensive, abstracted moods. These ministrations revive drooping spirits. Bessie's eccentricities ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... nineteen and three quarters,' replied his friend, with abstracted literalness. He ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... together, and you went out alone. Denial is useless, for I saw you. If you remember, the door was banged violently, and it was you who did it. A careless servant locked him in. He opened the secret vault in that table, and abstracted diamonds worth a million. You were wise in courting the Minister of War and Chief of Police, but your passports have been stopped. No power under heaven can get you ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... abstracted air, Madison read the slate, wiped it carefully, laid it down, and then ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... occur? To these chemists music seems to be no more than the art of resolving sounds. They mistake the alphabet for a book. Christophe shrugged his shoulders when he heard them say complacently that to understand art it must be abstracted from the man. They were extraordinarily pleased with this paradox: for by it they fancied they were proving their own musical quality. And even Goujart subscribed to it—Goujart, the idiot who had never been able ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... hard to engage the woman in conversation, but her manner was abstracted and strange. I noticed her clothes were all black, even the flannel bandage around her throat—she was recovering from an attack of quinsy—was black too; and as if in answer to my ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... ceased speaking the piercing eye of the strange woman became riveted on her with a glare, which, whilst it startled Mrs Sullivan, seemed full of an agony that almost abstracted her from external life. It was not, however, so wholly absorbing as to prevent it from expressing a marked interest, whether for good or evil, in the woman who addressed ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... upon the origin of hospital gangrene. Up to the present war, the results of chemical investigations upon the pathology of the blood in scurvy were not only contradictory, but meager, and wanting in that careful detail of the cases from which the blood was abstracted which would enable us to explain the cause of the apparent discrepancies in different analyses. Thus it is not yet settled whether the fibrin is increased or diminished in this disease; and the differences which exist in the statements of different ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... couch for the purpose, considerably disarranging the same; and the sheets they covered with crimson curtains, taken down at imminent risk of injuring themselves from one of the dining room windows, with the help of a ladder, abstracted from the area by way of the front door, although they were in their dressing-gowns, the time chosen for this revel being when their parents were in the drawing room after dinner, and all the servants were having their supper and safe ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... Barbary" was in Boston in 1716; and I believe the "lyons hair," which was "cut by the keeper" and sent by Wait Winthrop to be placed as a strengthening tonic under the armpits of his sickly little grandchild, was abstracted from this very lion. In 1728 another lonely king of the beasts made the round of all the provinces on a cart drawn by four oxen, with as much eclat as if he had been a whole menagerie. He lodged in New London in ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... extracted by Erdmann (Temudschin, p. 532) seems to make Bala Saghun the same as Bishbalik, now Urumtsi, but this is inconsistent with other passages abstracted by Oppert (Presbyter Johan. 131-32); and Vambery indicates a reason for its being sought very much further west (H. of Bokhara, 116). [Dr. Bretschneider (Med. Res.) has a chapter on Kara-Khitai (I. 208 seqq.) and in a long note ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... I glanced at Phyllis I fell to wondering how Gretchen would have looked in evening dress. Yes, Phyllis was certainly beautiful, uncommonly. For years I had worshipped at her shrine, and then—how little we know of the heart. I was rather abstracted during the performance, and many of my replies went wide ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... only. She takes no interest in this young man; scarcely noticed him when I introduced him; just bowed to him over her shoulder; she was fastening on our little one's cap. Usually she is extremely, courteous to strangers, but she was abstracted, positively abstracted at that moment. I wondered at it, for he usually makes a stir wherever he goes. But my wife cares little for beauty in a man; I doubt if she noticed his looks at all. She did not catch his name, ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... consciousness of art, or the cubic force of blissful ignorance. This fine old man, whose stout body proclaimed his vigorous health, was wrapped in a dressing-gown of rough gray cloth plainly bound. Between his lips was a meerschaum pipe, from which, at regular intervals, he blew the smoke, following with abstracted vision its fantastic wreathings,—his mind employed, no doubt, in assimilating through some meditative process the thoughts of the author whose works he ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... aspect to all living and inanimate things. With this gloomy shade before him good Mr. Hooper walked onward at a slow and quiet pace, stooping somewhat and looking on the ground, as is customary with abstracted men, yet nodding kindly to those of his parishioners who still waited on the meeting-house steps. But so wonder-struck were they that his greeting hardly met with ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... their university erudition, are apt to fill their sermons with philosophical terms and notions of the metaphysical or abstracted kind, which generally have one advantage, to be equally understood by the wise, the vulgar, and the preacher himself. I have been better entertained, and more informed by a chapter[10] in the "Pilgrim's Progress," than by a long discourse upon the will and the intellect, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... actions were very human like. When any one came near to fondle him, he never neglected the opportunity of pocket-picking. He would pull out letters, and quickly take them from their envelopes. Anything eatable disappeared into his mouth immediately. Once he abstracted a small bottle of turpentine from the pocket of our medical officer. He drew the cork, held it first to one nostril, then to the other, made a wry face, recorked it, and returned ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... result being an ingot of malleable iron of the quality of charcoal iron. An important feature in the process is, that by stopping it at a particular stage, immediately following the boil, before the whole of the carbon has been abstracted by the oxygen, the crude iron will be found to have passed into the condition of cast-steel of ordinary quality. By continuing the process, the metal losing its carbon, it passes from hard to soft steel, thence to steely iron, and last of all to very soft iron; so that by interrupting ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... to determine what effect was produced upon the illusion if in the one set of judgments one purposely visualized and in the other excluded visualizing as far as possible. In my own case I found that after some practice I could give very consistent judgments, in which I felt that I had abstracted from the visualized image of the arm almost entirely. I did not examine these results until the close of the series, and then found that the illusion was greater for those judgments in which visualization was excluded; that is, the filled space seemed much ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... however, two distinct expressions, which, in a great measure, characterized the whole man. When engaged in traffic, the intelligence of his face appeared lively, active, and flexible, though uncommonly acute; if the conversation turned on the ordinary transactions of life, his air became abstracted and restless; but if, by chance, the Revolution and the country were the topic, his whole system seemed altered—all his faculties were concentrated: he would listen for a great length of time, without speaking, and ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... i.e., supplying the necessary inorganic atoms. Hence, the deadly qualities of aconite, and the generous life-sustaining qualities of the nutritious vegetable, BEING SPIRITUAL LIFE ENDOWMENTS, conveyed to the material substance, abstracted from the soil and withdrawn from the atmosphere, are no mystery; their effect upon the human organism being exactly that, which is produced by their spiritual affinity or antipathy, as the case may be. And this also shows ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... at night, gazing upwards and making his deductions, though, in reality, I fancy, his inspiration came from the study of almanacs which profess to foretell the future. He was quiet and reserved, with a spare figure, dark complexion, and an abstracted expression. Occasionally I could induce him to talk, but he did not like to be "drawn." He told me, as one of his original conceptions, that he thought the good people were accommodated in the after-life within the limits of the stars of good influence, and that the ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... two chapters, and it is probable that the historian had not before him either of the two good Jewish sources for the period, the First and the Second Book of the Maccabees. In his later work, in which he dealt with the same period at greater length, the account which he had abstracted from a Greek source, probably Nicholas of Damascus, is corrected by the Jewish work. The two records show a number of small discrepancies. Thus, in the Wars he states that Onias, the high priest who drove ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... missing, gone, and no amount of search, no shaking of handkerchief, or turning of pocket inside out could avail to find it. The letter was lost, and in the utmost consternation Juno returned to the parlor, still hunting for the letter, and appearing so abstracted as scarcely to be civil when Katy came down to see her; asking if she was going that night to Sybil Grandon's, and talking of the dreadful war, which she hoped would not be a war after all. Juno was too wretched to talk, and ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... improvement took place in his situation. His mother, to whom he was indebted for all the happiness of his childhood, opened a day school, and, as it abstracted her from the groveling cares of a butcher's shop, his home was made much more comfortable; and, instead of being confined to his father's business, he was placed in a stocking loom, with the view of bringing him up to the trade of a hosier, the poverty of ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... Observing; There he, says That 'twill appear plainly to any one that understands the design of his Book, that that degree is not attainable by the means of those Sciences which were then in use; but that he attain'd to what he knew, by being altogether abstracted from any thing which he had been acquainted with before; and that he was furnish'd with other Notions altogether independent upon matter, and of too noble a nature to be any way attributed to the Natural Life, but were peculiar to the Blessed, and which upon that ...
— The Improvement of Human Reason - Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan • Ibn Tufail
... reason to know that the feelings of oppressive delight, gratitude, and praise experienced by the married officers and soldiers on being assured of the comparative safety of their wives and children, so entirely abstracted their minds from their own situation as to render them for a little while totally insensible either to the storm that beat upon them, or to the active and gathering volcano that threatened every instant to explode under ...
— The Loss of the Kent, East Indiaman, in the Bay of Biscay - Narrated in a Letter to a Friend • Duncan McGregor
... down and began to smoke. He offered me a cigar and I took it, but he said nothing. I was surprised at his leisurely, abstracted air. Apparently he had nothing in the world to do but sit and ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope
... show you some of the milder workin's of that licker. Boggs files away four inches of it onder his belt, an' next, when he's walkin' by the corral an' meets a Mexican, he reaches out in a casyooal an' abstracted way, collars that Greaser an' hefts him over a six-foot 'dobe fence, same as if he's a bag of bran; an' all apropos of nothin'. Boggs says himse'f he don't know why none. He's thinkin' of something else at the time, he declar's, an' the eepisode don't leave no partic'lar ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis |
