"Distraction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... administer the law. There is only one judge who knows how to do his duty, now. He tried that revolutionary female the other day, who, though she was in full work (making shirts at three-halfpence a piece), had no pride in her country, but treasonably took it in her head, in the distraction of having been robbed of her easy earnings, to attempt to drown herself and her young child; and the glorious man went out of his way, sir—out of his way—to call her up for instant sentence of Death; and to tell her she had no hope of mercy in ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... not refer to whether speculation is justifiable in itself, but to its effect on me as an individual—its distraction to my mind and consequent interference ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... left squadron of the Clinabarians, and whirling their staves, seized the horses by the man; the animals threw their riders and fled across the plain. The Punic slingers scattered here and there stood gaping. The phalanx began to waver, the captains ran to and fro in distraction, the rearmost in the files were pressing upon the soldiers, and the Barbarians had re-formed; they were recovering; the ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... Spartans in the citadel were in a state of distraction and alarm. All night long the flashing of lights, the blare of trumpets, the shouts of excited patriots, the sound of hurrying feet in the city, had disturbed their troubled souls, and when affrighted partisans ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... had passed over the Poultry at four o'clock, bringing welcome distraction to the clerks in every office. Soames was drinking a cup of tea when a note ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the family an influence more potent than that of contracts and conventionalities, and which everywhere underlies humanity, has indicated that the husband shall fill the necessity which exists for a head. Dissension and distraction quickly arise when this necessity is not answered. The harmony of life, the real interest of both husband and wife, and of all dependent upon them, require it. In obedience to that requirement and necessity, the husband is the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... little parlour, as already mentioned, having the presence of a young family impressed upon his mind in a manner too clamorous to be disregarded, or to comport with the quiet perusal of a newspaper, laid down his paper, wheeled, in his distraction, a few times round the parlour, like an undecided carrier-pigeon, made an ineffectual rush at one or two flying little figures in bed-gowns that skimmed past him, and then, bearing suddenly down upon the only unoffending member of the family, boxed ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... of Anjou, who was not in a condition to assert his wife's title to England, hearing Stephen was employed at home, entered Normandy with small force, and found it no difficult matter to seize several towns. The Normans, in the present distraction of affairs, not well knowing what prince to obey, at last sent an invitation to Theobald Earl of Blois, King Stephen's eldest brother, to accept their dukedom upon the condition of protecting them from the present insults of the Earl of Anjou. But before this matter could come to ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... bibs served their purpose, and the sap dripped cozily into the pails without any distraction from alien elements. Sap doesn't run in the rain, they say, but this sap did. Probably Hiram was right, and you can't tell. I am glad if you can't. The physical mysteries of the universe are being unveiled so swiftly that one likes to find something ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... of eager hunting after the red-deer, brought not enough distraction, and to stand by the mountain tarns and fish the dark trout was to hold a ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... which caught her ear as they passed on, she insisted that her guide should proceed to Kenilworth with all the haste which the numerous impediments of their journey permitted. Meanwhile, Wayland's anxiety at her repeated fits of indisposition, and her obvious distraction of mind, was hourly increasing, and he became extremely desirous that, according to her reiterated requests, she should be safely introduced into the Castle, where, he doubted not, she was secure of a kind reception, though ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... had his claims allowed;" while a very protracted sitting of Parliament still delayed in London the Squire's habitual visitors in the later summer; so that—a chasm thus made in his society—Mr. Hazeldean welcomed with no hollow cordiality the diversion or distraction he found in the foreigner's companionship. Thus, with pleasure to all parties, and strong hopes to the two female conspirators, the intimacy between the Casino and Hall rapidly thickened; but still not a word resembling a distinct proposal did Dr. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... through bravado, would have seemed to him an amusing and clever thing, and would not have left more impression on his mind than a shot fired at a hare; but he had experienced a profound emotion at the murder of this child. He had, in the first place, perpetrated it in the distraction of an irresistible gust of passion, in a sort of spiritual tempest that had overpowered his reason. And he had cherished in his heart, cherished in his flesh, cherished on his lips, cherished even to the very tips of his murderous fingers, a kind of bestial love, as well as ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... resolved not to again open them, that I might not be influenced by external objects, for distraction had gradually taken possession of me until I hardly ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... was forever springing on the camp were a perpetual joy. I suspect that he was not well versed in his scoutmasters' handbook. He was a sort of human north wind. He adopted the pose of being driven to distraction by "those kids" and he denounced them roundly and said there were too many of them and that he was going to pick out one and drown the rest. Then he would show up with a new one. He was a sort of free-lance ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... later the train carrying Julie to London entered Victoria Station. On the platform stood the little Duchess, impatiently expectant. Julie was clasped in her arms, and had no time to wonder at the pallor and distraction of her friend before she was hurried into the brougham waiting beyond ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... inordinate desire of knowledge, for therein is found much distraction and deceit. Those who have knowledge desire to appear learned, and to be called wise. Many things there are to know which profiteth little or nothing to the soul. And foolish out of measure is he who attendeth upon other things rather than those ...
— The Imitation of Christ • Thomas a Kempis
... gentle sensations which are consistent with a virtuous and elevated female mind. In short, all which esteem, gratitude, and pity, can inspire in such towards an agreeable man—indeed, all which the nicest delicacy can allow. In a word, she was in love with him to distraction. ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... almost personally attentive to us as the only Anglo-Saxon visitors in town. The tea might have been better, but it was as good as it knew how; and the small boy who came in with his mother (the Spanish mother seldom fails of the company of a small boy) in her moments of distraction succeeded in touching with his finger all the pieces of pastry except those we ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... terrific game. Between trying to read into these other guy's brains and keeping them from opening mine, and blocking the Greek's sly stunt of tipping over the poker chips as a distraction, I was also concerned about the eight thousand bucks that was in the pot. The trouble was that all four of us fully intended to rake it in. My straight flush would be good for the works in any normal game with ...
— The Big Fix • George Oliver Smith
... released by death from her relentless, driving torment. But it was still too early to disturb the old man—and yet—she must hear a human voice, one word—even if it were a hard word—from the lips of a human being; for the bewildering feeling of distraction which confused her mind, and the misery of abandonment that crushed her heart, were all too cruelly painful ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... supplied a distraction to the more serious work of writing 'Paracelsus', which was to be concluded in March 1835, and which occupied the foregoing winter months. We do not know to what extent Mr. Browning had remained in communication with Mr. Fox; but the following letters show that the friend of 'Pauline' gave ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... Church of Westminster. Dr. William Twisse, President, preached the opening sermon from Christ's precious promise, "I will not leave you comfortless." These word's were as apples of gold in pictures of silver, in those days of woeful distraction. One week later they met again, when the oath was administered to every member ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... time he suddenly ceased to employ this distraction; he seems to have sacrificed it easily, under the stress of present necessities and cruel anxieties as to his uncertain future. "When we do not know where we shall be tomorrow ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... whereupon he drew a pistol and shot him through the heart. The body was brought in, and it was only then the governor realised what had happened. The bride, who appears to have gone indoors before the tragedy occurred, then learned the fate that befell her husband, and in her distraction, rushed from the house and flung herself over the battlements. In despair at the double tragedy, her father shot himself during ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... adding of a column of figures, and it may be distracted by a commotion in my vicinity. Thus concentration produced by any form of attention is easily destroyed by a legion of possible disturbances. If I desire to increase my concentration to the maximum, I must remove every possible cause of distraction. ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... upon which Zillah gazed was one which might have brought distraction and alleviation to cares and griefs even heavier than hers. Never had she seen such a sight as this which she now beheld. There before her spread away the deep blue waters of Naples Bay, dotted by the snow-white sails of countless vessels, from the small fishing-boat up to the giant ship of ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... Majesty did, I must own, adopt rash counsels. But it is not their illegality so much as his weakness in threatening when he wanted strength to punish, that I condemn. If your objection to the royal cause be founded on the distraction and imbecility that have marked the measures by which it has been supported, I must cease to rouse your dormant loyalty. It is not in the defenceless tents of our Prince that we must seek for safety; we must leave him to his ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... he voted for prelacy. After which, he was convicted of taking silver out of the poor's box with false keys, and then fell into a fearful distemper, insomuch that, from some words of the chancellor apprehending he should be hanged, he run out of the pulpit one day when going to preach, in a fit of distraction, confessing he had sold Christ at that assembly. He was also seized with sickness. Mr. Row made him a visit, and found him in a lamentable condition. He asked, if he was persuaded that God had called him to the ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... the animal world. What can you do to make up for the lack of life in a dog? I read the other day of a lady who had a pet dog. She loved it to distraction. It died. Whatever could she do with it to make up for its loss of life? Well, she might have preserved it, stuffed it, jewelled its eyes, and painted its skin. But had she done so, these things would have been a disappointing substitute. So she buried it, and committed suicide in her grief, and ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... her eyes glued to her book, and when that was not in use, upon the mittened hands crossed before her, resolute against distraction, and every prayer turning into a petition for her sister's welfare; but Eugene gazed, open-eyed and open-mouthed, oblivious of his beloved hole, and Harriet, though keeping her lids down, and her book open, contrived to make a full inspection of ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... quay facing the sunset where one may sit and lose oneself in the eternally interesting movement of the shipping. I found the town distracting under the incessant clanging of the tram bell (yet grass grows among the paving-stones between the rails); but there is no distraction opposite the sunset. On the evening that I am remembering the sun left a sky of fiery orange barred ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... seemed to be the only customer at that hour, I selected a table by the window for distraction. Tom had taken my order; the other waiters, including Tournelli, were absent, with the exception of a solitary German, who, in the interlude of perfunctory trifling with the casters, gazed at me with that abstracted irresponsibility which one waiter assumes towards another's customer. ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... conversing softly about many things—as to how long it would take the seed of the four-o'clock to "sail away, away, over the river," and why a nice brown frog that they came across was not getting ready for bed like the birdies. There is no such sweet distraction as an excursion into Children's Land, and Sophia wandered quite away with this talkative baby, until she found herself suddenly cast out of Dottie's magic province as she stood beyond the trees that edged the first field not far from the fence of the Harmon garden. And that which had ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... at me with solemn distraction, obviously thinking of something else. I suggested that he had better take the next city-ward tram-car. He was inattentive, and I perceived that he was profoundly perturbed. As Miss de Barral (she had moved out of sight) could not possibly approach the hotel door as long as we remained where ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... listened to him and in twenty-four hours our preparations were made. We saw the house closed—with what emotions surging in one small breast, I leave you to imagine—and then started on our long tour. For five years we wandered over the continent of Europe, my grandfather finding distraction, as well as myself, in ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... time that Alma affected to be absorbed in music when not consciously hearing it at all. Today the circumstances made such distraction pardonable; but often enough she had sat thus, with countenance composed or ecstatic, only seeming to listen, even when a master played. For Alma had no profound love of the art. Nothing more natural than her laying it completely aside when, at home in Wales, she missed her ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... day, and out of the welter of din and rumble the cool plash of falling water came to his straining ears refreshingly. At once he considered the dog and, thankful for the distraction, stepped beneath the portico of a provision store and indicated the marble basin with a ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... many of Herbert's letters are given, and these alone would go to stamp him as a wonderful man. His conscience was awakened by the popular outcry against his sin of simony, he plunged into his new duties at Thetford with ardour in the vain hope of distraction, but failed to find that consolation he had hoped to; and so about 1093 he determined on a visit to Rome to tender his resignation and confess his sin to Pope Urban. He journeyed to Rome and was kindly received, and the absolution ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Norwich - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. H. B. Quennell
... did me kindnesse sir, drew on my side, But in conclusion put strange speech vpon me, I know not what 'twas, but distraction ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... peace I don't with looks of envy view, But I admire your happy state, and you. In all our farms severe distraction reigns, No ancient owner there in peace remains. Sick, I, with much ado, my goats can drive, This Tityrus, I scarce can lead alive; On the bare stones, among yon hazels past, Just now, alas! her hopeful twins she cast. Yet had not all on's dull and ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... him, was one of the gilders in the book-bindery—a tall, handsome, manly young fellow of four-and-twenty, whose only failing was that he loved little Dorothy Glenn to distraction. ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... where the Church is all-sufficient and requires no extraneous aid, will naturally see at first in the problems of public life, the demands of modern society, and the progress of human learning, nothing but new and unwelcome difficulties,—trial and distraction to themselves, temptation and danger to their flocks. In time they will learn that there is a higher and a nobler course for Catholics than one which begins in fear and does not lead to security. They will come to see how vast a service they ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... be particularly fond of the theatre as a distraction, I had thought you might essay the role of society actress, confounding appreciation for talent, as so many women do; and when your letter opened with the announcement that you were about to give me a great surprise, ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... drawbridge, the vestibule with its columns of twisted oak, even the grand salon with the stately courtiers and captains, the gracious dames and damsels of the family of Secondat gazing down from the walls, all these distract the eye and the mind. The distraction is agreeable, but still it is a distraction. It leads you from the biographical into the social and historical mood. You are delighted as at Meillant or Chenonceaux with a corner of ancient France, marvellously rescued from the red ruin ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... been torn from the specter of distraction, and hereafter when irrelevant sights, sounds and other sensations threaten to interrupt your work, just stop a moment and consider. So far as you and your actual knowledge are concerned, nothing exists in substance ...
— Applied Psychology: Making Your Own World • Warren Hilton
... other times when I knew I would drag myself round the world—yes, on my crutches!—if at the end of the journey I could see her for an instant, a long way off. I could see that my despondency was driving Dunny to distraction. He evolved the theory that I was going into ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... extraneous idea, I stop my ears and inhibit all attention to the sounds which come from the next room. And then, feeling that my mind is growing fatigued without having any success to report, I compel it for a change to enjoy that distraction which I have just denied it, to think of other things, to rest and refresh itself before the supreme attempt. And then for the second time I clear an empty space in front of it. I place in position before my mind's eye the still recent taste of that first mouthful, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... he, passionately, "to desert me at the very altar!—to cast me off at the instant the most sacred rites were uniting us!—and then thus to look at me!—to treat me with this disdain at a time of such distraction!—to scorn me thus injuriously at the moment you unjustly ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... a very absent man, of which instances have been recorded; once meeting with a book in an apothecary's, which he had been long looking for, he opened it, and read from morning till night without being roused from his pursuit by the distraction and tumult occasioned by a great wedding passing through the street. For some time he roved about Italy in an indigent and distressed condition, till he was hospitably received by the Lord of Ravenna, his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 352, January 17, 1829 • Various
... one most heavily underscored, and chief among them all, was the fact that the big girls did not seem to consider her a "little pitcher" or a "tag." No matter where they went or what they talked about, she was free to follow and to listen. It was interesting to the verge of distraction when they talked merely of Warwick Hall and the schoolgirls, or recalled various things that had happened at the first house-party. But when they discussed the approaching wedding, the guests, the gifts, the decorations, and the feast, she almost held her breath ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... one may enjoy the place thoroughly without any distraction, and feel amid the lonely vistas of the woods as if buried in the loneliest solitude of the Apennines. And truly on such occasions I know no place so fascinating, so like an earthly Eden! The whole scene thrills one like lovely music. All the charms of nature and art are there ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... restored to you," he went on, "you have nothing to do but to serve God without distraction, till you are sanctified ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a salutary distraction in her life. As December drew near, she exhibited alarming symptoms of over-work, and but for the romance which assured to her an occasional hour of idleness, she must have collapsed before the date of her examination. As it ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... played. He grew easily tired too, and very seldom could sit out more than twelve or fourteen rubbers; unlike Talleyrand, who always arose from table, after perhaps twelve hours' play, fresher and brighter than when he began. Lord Melbourne played well, but had moments of distraction, when he suffered the smaller interests of politics to interfere with his combinations. I single him out, however, as a graceful compliment to a party who have numbered few good players in their ranks; for certainly the Tories could quote folly ten to one whisters against the ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... in displaying the many sights, already familiar to her, bored him to distraction, and they had been in France but a few days before she discovered his indifference to the wonders which seemed of such importance to her. On the way over she had noticed his spells of abstraction. She had seen how quickly the shadows descended upon her ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... the fraction of a second. "It was Barker who was driving me to distraction. He knew that I was the woman in the taxicab. He really believes that I killed Mr. Warren. He has been ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... to seek distraction from my thoughts within the house. Now there came over me a great longing for music. Once, when in the drawing-room on that famous evening of the abortive fete, which was the only time I ever was there, I had ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... perplexed; I scarcely know what I say; I am in a state of inconceivable distraction. Suppose I should change my mind; it is not unlikely; I am whirled about by a crowd of contending emotions; but—well—let me see—oh, yes—it will be as well, Lanigan, to have two horses ready saddled; that is no crime, I hope, if we should go. I must, of ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... custom would follow the sermon and feared the gentleman's ridicule. For that reason his thoughts lost some of their usual clearness, his feelings were somewhat concealed, and the more he talked the further he digressed from the subject. His distraction increased when he noticed that the gentleman was casting appreciative glances at him and occasionally nodding his head in approval; this last happened usually when the speaker was most dissatisfied with what he was saying. He consequently cut short certain parts of the nuptial address and hurried ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... occupy her mind she hailed the festival of the Devil Dance as a welcome distraction. Not even the impertinent curiosity of the spectators could drive her from her balcony. She followed the many phases with interest, although she could not understand the meaning of them. For the performance was a curious mixture of religion and blasphemous ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... again, and sobbed so violently and clung to Leslie in such a frantic paroxysm of terror that poor Dick became thoroughly alarmed, and, in his distraction, could do nothing but soothe her as he would a frightened child. This simple treatment, however, sufficed, for the sobs gradually diminished in violence, and at length ceased altogether; and presently Flora arose, declaring that she ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... expressions of devout sensibility and aspirations to divine communion, it is quite apparent that they were practiced by him, in modes and to an extent that cannot be commended, leading to much self-delusion and to extravagances near akin to distraction of judgment, and a disordered mental and moral frame. He would abstain from food—on one occasion, it is said, for three days together—and spend the time, as he expresses it "in knocking at the door of heaven." Leaving his bed at the dead hours of the night, and retiring to his study, ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... variety and no originality at all." "They are very civil," he admits, "but civility itself so thus uniform wearies and bothers me to death. If I do not mind I shall grow most stupid and sententious." With such apprehensions it is not surprising that he should have eagerly welcomed any distraction that chance might offer, and in December we find him joyfully informing his chief correspondent of the period, Mr. Foley—who to his services as Sterne's banker seems to have added those of a most helpful and trusted friend—that "there are a company of English strollers arrived here who are ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... eunuch. The fervent were chosen in dreams and possessed Christ. At night, the beautiful, nude young man descended from the cross and became the ecstasy of the cloistered one. Lofty walls guarded the mystic sultana, who had the crucified for her sultan, from all living distraction. A glance on the outer world was infidelity. The in pace replaced the leather sack. That which was cast into the sea in the East was thrown into the ground in the West. In both quarters, women wrung their hands; the waves for the first, the grave for the last; here the drowned, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... hastily contracted, it is I. Gustave, when you, exaggerating in your imagination the nature of your sentiments for me, said with such earnestness that on my consent to our union depended your health, your life, your career; that if I withheld that consent you were lost, and in despair would seek distraction from thought in all from which your friends, your mother, the duties imposed upon Genius for the good of Man to the ends of God, should withhold and save you—when you said all this, and I believed it, I felt as if Heaven commanded me not to desert the soul which appealed to me in the crisis of ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... thought them superior I dropped my eyes almost every time I met anyone. I even made experiments whether I could face so and so's looking at me, and I was always the first to drop my eyes. This worried me to distraction. I had a sickly dread, too, of being ridiculous, and so had a slavish passion for the conventional in everything external. I loved to fall into the common rut, and had a whole-hearted terror of any kind of eccentricity in myself. But how could I live up to ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... so, dear, if it does not interfere too much with your studies. Sometimes there is distraction in change of scene and habit. When you enter Miss North's school, you will be under her supervision, not ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... probable that amongst these people I should hear the cause of Agnes peculiarly the subject of conversation; and so, in fact, it did really happen,—but partly, and even more, I believe, because I now awfully began to shrink from solitude. Tumult I must have, and distraction of thought. Amid this mob, I say, it was that I passed two days. Feverish I had been from the first—and from bad to worse, in such a case, was, at any rate, a natural progress; but, perhaps, also ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... extent to harbor large bodies of troops), the construction of which was forbidden by the rocky soil, and the still unsubdued fire from the ramparts, all condemned an assault. But it was deemed necessary as a distraction in aid of the French, and it fulfilled ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... Her grief and distraction shook her to pieces; and she lay in this frenzy of sorrow for more than an hour. Broken words came every now and then from her quivering lips: 'O, if he had only known of me—known of me—me! . . . O, if I had only once met him—only once; and put my hand ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... Alice, and none of her own folk had, I am sorry to say, sufficient generosity to send me even an occasional word of comfort regarding her health and well-being. I spent six months wandering about Europe, but as I could find no satisfactory distraction in travel, I determined to come to Paris, where, at least, I would be within easy hail of London in case any good fortune should call me thither before the appointed time. That 'hope deferred maketh ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... drove her cook to distraction with divers dieting systems, from Banting's and Dr. Salisbury's to the latest exhortations of some unknown newspaper prophet. She bought elaborate gymnastic appliances, and swung dumb-bells and rode imaginary horses and propelled imaginary boats. She ran ...
— Different Girls • Various
... Truitonne in all her grandeur, and on her finger was the ring given her by the Prince; and, when Florine saw this, she knew that the ring belonged to her Prince. The Queen then announced to all that her daughter was engaged to Prince Charming, and that he loved her to distraction. Florine did not doubt the truth of it all. When she realised that she would never marry her Prince Charming, she cried all the night, and sat at the little window nursing her regrets. And, when the day arrived ...
— Edmund Dulac's Fairy-Book - Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations • Edmund Dulac
... been in imminent danger, and was literally dragged from under the horses' feet. A slight wound in her temple was still bleeding, and her livid lips and half-closed eyes gave me the image of death. As for Madame, she was in distraction; the volubility of her sorrows made the well-trained domestics shrink, as from a display at which they ought not to be present; and at length the only recipients of her woes were myself and the physician, who, with ominous visage, and drops in hand, was administering his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... drawled, "I love you to distraction! But as a daily companion?" Vaguely her eyebrows lifted. "As a real playmate?" Against the starch-white of her pillows the sudden flutter of her small brown throat showed with almost startling distinctness. "But as a real playmate," she persisted evenly, "you are so—intelligent—and ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... the King in an inexpressible confusion. He saw himself now forsaken not only by those whom he had trusted and favored most, but even by his own children. And the army was in such distraction that there was not any one body that seemed entirely united and firm to him. A foolish ballad was made at that time treating the papists, and chiefly the Irish, in a very ridiculous manner, which had a burden, said to be Irish words, lero, lero, lilibulero, that made an impression ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... bleak, loud whistling wind! Its crushing blast recalls to mind The dangers of the troubled deep; Where, with a fierce and thundering sweep, The winds in wild distraction rave, And push along the mountain wave With dreadful swell and hideous curl! Whilst hung aloft in giddy whirl, Or drop beneath the ocean's bed, The leaky bark without a shred Of rigging sweeps through dangers dread. The flaring beacon points ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... Pennsylvania, now becoming aggressive, should succeed in planting her official machinery at Ft. Pitt, which was garrisoned by Virginia; again, his colonists were in a revolutionary frame of mind, and he favored a distraction in the shape of a popular Indian war; finally, it seemed as though a successful raid by Virginia militia would clinch Virginia's hold on the country and the treaty of peace that must follow would widen the area of provincial lands and encourage Western settlements. April 25, 1774, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... hope that her party would finish without unpleasantness was singularly frustrated. Robert Boulger was irritated beyond endurance by the things Lucy had said to him; and Lucy besides, as if to drive him to distraction, had committed a peculiar indiscretion. In her determination to show the world in general, represented then by the two hundred people who were enjoying Lady Kelsey's hospitality, that she, the person most interested, did not for an instant believe what was said about ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... thy contrasted lake, With the wild world I dwelt in, is a thing Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake Earth's troubled waters for a purer spring. This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing To waft me from distraction; once I loved Torn ocean's roar, but thy soft murmuring Sounds sweet as if a sister's voice reproved, That I with stern delights should e'er have been ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... young husband. His father-in-law, a clean-shaven, dropsical privy councillor, crafty and avaricious; his mother-in-law, a stout lady with small predatory features like a weasel, who loved her daughter to distraction and helped her in everything; if her daughter were strangling some one, the mother would not have protested, but would only have screened her with her skirts. Olga Dmitrievna, too, had small predatory-looking features, but more expressive and bolder than her mother's; ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... bullied school-boy counts the days to the end of the term. He writes to his friends in the capital, begging and praying of them that they will prevent his being obliged to stay for a second year. All his thoughts are of Rome and how to return there. The wretched provincials bore him to distraction; he yearns for the wider arena of the capital in which to play the swelling part to which he aspires. There is, in short, not a trace in Cicero's letters from his province to show that he took the slightest interest in his new surroundings. Pliny displays a far different spirit. ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... ever-increasing pallor. It was born to die, and died to be born again twelve times in the year, and each of these cycles measured a month for the inhabitants of the world. One invariable accident from time to time disturbed the routine of its existence. Profiting by some distraction of the guardians, the sow greedily swallowed it, and then its light went out suddenly, instead of fading gradually. These eclipses, which alarmed mankind at least as much as did those of the sun, were scarcely more than ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... continually absorbed in the investigation of minute points in the fibre of it, to bear in mind the extraordinary events of the poet's lifetime,—the civil war, the murder of Julius, the division of the Roman world, the distraction of Italy, the attempt of Antony, or rather, indeed, of his enslaver, to set up a rival Oriental dominion, and the rescue of Romanism and civilisation by Augustus. Had Lucretius himself lived in that generation, he could hardly have escaped the influence ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... evening Mary grew so bold as to offer to show him the harbour by night, and he welcomed the suggestion as likely to afford him a little quiet distraction. He had sat amid the family for several hours, and it had not occurred to anybody he might like to be just alone. The day had seemed interminable, and as they had been behaving more freely among themselves, once the restraint had worn off, he had begun ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... letter has lain so long unfinished, and I am now so engulfed in all sorts of worry, flurry, hurry, row, fuss, bustle, bother, dissipation and distraction, that it is vain hoping to add anything ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... sent to speak to you by one who does know you, Miss—one who loves you to distraction—he has seen you before at Mrs. West's. He is so grieved to think you should walk—you ought, he says, to have every luxury—that he has sent his carriage for you. It is on the other side of the yard. Do come now;" and ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... it's only temporary, I know. For furnished rooms they aren't bad. To be sure, these family portraits on the walls would drive me to distraction. ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... the Notables returned home; carrying to all quarters of France, such notions of deficit, decrepitude, distraction; and that States-General will cure it, or will not cure it but kill it. Each Notable, we may fancy, is as a funeral torch; disclosing hideous abysses, better left hid! The unquietest humour possesses all men; ferments, seeks issue, in pamphleteering, caricaturing, projecting, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... of Tosti, Neapolitan songs, breezy and graceful melodies that the old chords of the instrument sent forth with the fragile and crystalline tinkling of an old music box. The poor old captain with sick heart and legs of stone had always turned to the sea of light for distraction. It was music that made appear in the foggy heavens the peaks of Sorrento covered with orange and lemon trees, and the coast of Sicily, perfumed by ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... lost little and gained much thereby. The years at Oxford in which he would have taken a temporary sameness, a sameness in the long run protective and strengthening, were spared him. In his letters we have him unspoiled, as the sentimentalists would say—not yet with the distraction of protective colouring. ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... with her self-controlled, serene, sorrow-accepting temperament, should be driven to such an act of unholy madness. Yet Maurice allowed the frightful fantasy to work within his brain until it clothed itself with a shape like reality, and drove him to the verge of distraction. ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... at work all the more eagerly in the fields of association and memory, attention and emotion, habit and volition, distraction and fatigue. Here subtle methods have been elaborated, methods which surely common sense cannot supply, and which showed differences of mental behavior with the exactitude with which the microscope reveals the hidden differences of form. If physicians are slow ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... things in so far as they needed them, but to be intent on them, and for their sake to do whatever they are bidden to do in preaching the Gospel." Yet the possession of much wealth increases the weight of care, which is a great distraction to man's mind and hinders him from giving himself wholly to God's service. The other two, however, namely the love of riches and taking pride or glorying in riches, result only from an abundance ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... roamed about the city, striving to find distraction in the amusements offered but feeling strangely alone and out of place. Under other circumstances he would have keenly enjoyed the brief vacation and the change from the desert life and work, but ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... accents. At that moment I saw my little Francis was missing, and my grief was augmented by the fear that he had been killed by the lightning. I hastily turned to the window, expecting to find my child dead, and our dwelling in flames. Fortunately, all was safe; but, in my distraction, I scarcely thanked God for His mercy, at the very moment even when he graciously restored to me my lost treasures. Francis, frightened by the storm, had hidden himself in his mother's bed, and ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... and distraction of Louisa and her mother may be easily imagined. It might be a subject of more deep and curious interest to trace the influence of such a catastrophe on the mind of Mildred; but this also we must leave to the reflection and perspicacity of the reader. Mr. Bloomfield and his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... after long practice, the virtue of silence; for when I recognized the voice of my old friend, I was thunderstruck. I'm sure I would have said something very emphatic, but my habits restrained me. But I regret to say it was all a source of distraction to me in the celebration of the Divine Mysteries, and during the day. What had occurred? I was dying to know; but it would not be consistent with the dignity of my position to ask. To this day, I congratulate myself ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... thesis cannot long remain in doubt. Through whatever amazement and distraction, it becomes clear enough at last. Clothes, which at once reveal and hide the man who wears them, are an allegory of the infinitely varied aspects and appearances of the world, beneath which lurk ultimate realities. But ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... of almighty benevolence was a long way from securing all the success that had been foretold. For lack of knowledge, or of strength, or by distraction maybe, God missed his aim, and could not keep his word. Less sage than a chemist who should undertake to shut up ether in canvas or paper, he only confided to men the truth that he had brought upon the earth; it escaped, then, as one might have foreseen, by all human ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... read the letter, his cousin was staring at him. Slowly, intently, yet with a sort of vague distraction, his eyes travelled over Angelot; the plain shooting clothes, so odd a contrast in that gay house, at that time of night, to his own elegant evening dress; the handsome, clear-cut, eager face, the young lips set with a man's ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... from on high, Mountains and bolts encountered in the sky; Till one stupendous ruin whelmed the crew, Their vast limbs weltering wide in brimstone blue. But now at length the pygmy legions yield, And, winged with terror, fly the fatal field. They raise a weak and melancholy wail, All in distraction scattering o'er the vale. Prone on their routed rear the cranes descend; Their bills bite furious, and their talons rend: With unrelenting ire they urge the chace, Sworn to exterminate the hated race. 'Twas thus the Pygmy Name, once great in war, For spoils of conquered cranes ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... so well that I have nothing to add in excuse of my negligence or idleness, influenza or distraction, or, or, or—you know I explain myself better in person; and when I escort you home to your mother's house this autumn, late at night along the boulevards, I shall try to obtain your pardon. I write to you without knowing what my pen is scribbling, because Liszt is at this ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... time and all his strength in making it, and he was successful. He had many ships on the sea, and much gold in the bank. He had also a charming little wife, who prayed in secret that God would deliver her husband from his false god, and he had a dear little daughter who loved him to distraction in spite of his 'business habits!' Well, one year there came a commercial crisis. Mr Getall eagerly risked his money and over-speculated. That same year was disastrous in the way of storms and wrecks. ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... because the world has grown too familiar to us; on the contrary, it is because we do not see it in its aspect of unity, because we are driven to distraction by our ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... stake which appealed strongly to a houseless, landless man, with not even a name worth leaving to his son. Thus, while the Countess lavished her affection on young Wilhelm, noticing nothing of her husband's distraction in this excessive happiness, Count Herbert sat alone in the lofty Knight's Hall, his elbows resting on the table before him, his head buried in his hands, ruminating on the strange transformation that had taken ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... spoke, his accent had none of its usual sedateness; and he repeated his inquiries as to the time of her having left Longbourn, and of her having stayed in Derbyshire, so often, and in so hurried a way, as plainly spoke the distraction of his thoughts. ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... Mrs. Chadron groaned, her arms lifted above her head. She ran in wild distraction into the dining-room, now back to the chimney to take down a rifle that hung in its case on a deer prong over ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... a little courage. You know we come here to give you some distraction. Then do not let us feel sad. Let us try to forget. We are playing two sous a game. Eh! ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... whilst he was at the guard-setting, he might have had occasion to see once more the tantalising mischief-maker whom he yet loved with all his heart, in spite of, or perhaps because of, the distraction to which she continually reduced his spirit by means of her ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... went on Harry. "No difficulty about that. She has another beau who loves her to distraction, and who doesn't in the least suspect—a decent sort of a fellow, a young ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... for I have yet to wait. Far South, beneath (I hope) a stainless sky The pregnant news shall find me, rather late, Powerless to watch the ball with steadfast eye Through sheer distraction ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... of desert, and a pale blue sky closed all. There was Egypt even as the Pharaohs, their engineers and architects, had seen it—land to cultivate, folk and cattle for the work, and outside that work no distraction nor allurement of any kind whatever, save when the dead were taken to their place beyond the limits of cultivation. When the banks grew lower, one looked across as much as two miles of green-stuff packed like a toy Noah's-ark with people, ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... Huntsmen renew the chase they lately run, And generals fight again their battles won. Spectres and fairies haunt the murderer's dreams; Grants and disgraces are the courtier's themes. The miser spies a thief, or a new hoard; The cit's a knight; the sycophant a lord, Thus fancy's in the wild distraction lost, With what we most abhor, or covet most. Honours and state before this phantom fall; For sleep, like death, its ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... for laborers and for service, but cannot respond. Their hands are already filled. Yet Jesus whispers, "These for whom you are toiling, caring, and spending time and strength are mine, and in doing for them you are doing for me just as acceptable work as are those who are toiling without distraction or hindrance in ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... Mikhaylovna, "God grant you never know what it is to be left a widow without means and with a son you love to distraction! One learns many things then," she added with a certain pride. "That lawsuit taught me much. When I want to see one of those big people I write a note: 'Princess So-and-So desires an interview with So and-So,' and then I take a cab and go myself two, three, or four times—till I get what I want. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... debts or mortgaging his farms. The priest added, "He is a very charming young man, so steady and quiet, though there is very little to amuse him in the country." The baron said, "Bring him in to see us, Monsieur l'Abbe, it will be a distraction for him occasionally." After the coffee the baron and the priest took a turn about the grounds and then returned to say good-night ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... valuable experiments on these animals (Archiv fuer die Gesammte Physiologie, Bd. lvi, 1894, p. 319), tells us that, when a female white rat is introduced into the cage of a male, he at once leaves off eating, or whatever else he may be doing, becomes indifferent to noises or any other source of distraction, and devotes himself entirely to her. If, however, he is introduced into her cage the new environment renders him nervous and suspicious, and then it is she who takes the active part, trying to attract ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... solitude, as well as student and dreamer, the church warden's favorite resort, when his duties left him at leisure, was a dense grove not far from the town. Thither he went when he wished to be free from all distraction, to think and dream over many things which would appear nonsensical to his sober, practical-minded neighbors. There he indulged in day dreams and poetic fancies; and once, when in a sentimental mood, he carved the initials of the lady of his love ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... attempting to subdue the body, many necessary requirements of the physical organism were totally ignored. The body rebelled against such unnatural treatment, and the mind, so closely related to it, in its distraction, gave birth to the wildest fancies. Men, who would have possessed an ordinarily pure mind in some useful occupation of life, became the prey of the most lewd and obnoxious imaginations. Then they fancied themselves vile above their ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... intended that it should meet one of many demands. They insist upon making it stand for all the emotional pleasures of life and art, expecting an individual and self-limited passion to yield infinite variety, pleasure and distraction, to contribute to their lives what the arts and the pleasurable exercise of the intellect gives to less limited and less intense idealists. So this passion, when set up against Shakespeare, Balzac, Wagner, Raphael, ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... Princess in herself, "If what the Wazir's daughter says be true, these are assuredly the traits of the baffled, the wretched Ali Nur al-Din. Would I knew if indeed he be the youth of whom she speaketh." At this thought, love-longing and distraction of passion redoubled on her and she rose at once and walking with the maiden to the lattice, looked down upon the stables, where she saw her love and lord Nur al-Din and fixing her eyes steadfastly upon him, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... advantage of the distraction of the waiter's presence to slip the map from the table into my pocket. After this I breathed freer, for it is scarcely necessary to say that in the struggle for the map—and by this time I had quite made up my mind that there would be fought out a campaign ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... a vigorous mind shut out from outer stimuli[1] finds in this circumstance the time to develop leisurely, finds a freedom from distraction that leads to clear views of life and a proper expression. A periodic retirement from the busy, too-busy world is necessary for the thinker that he may digest his material, that he may strip away unessential beliefs, that he may find what it is he really needs, strives ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... Breen. A young man, still unknown, who, in my opinion, is one of our greatest physicists. Matt is a kind of savage, so he may take to you. If he does—and if he's feeling in a good humor—he may show you some laboratory stunts that will afford you plenty of distraction. Come along—you're wearing out my rugs with your ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... am I! Is it not monstrous that this player here, But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, Could force his soul so to his own conceit That from her working all his visage wan'd; Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect, A broken voice, and his whole function suiting With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing! For Hecuba? What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for her? What would ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... the meals of Rabelais who said, "the great God makes the planets and we make the platters neat." By that time, the ranch-house meals were not affairs of gusto; they were mental distraction, not bodily provender. What they were to be later shall never be forgotten by ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... above the natural sentiments of man. New characters appear from time to time in continual succession, exhibiting various forms of life and particular modes of conversation. The pretended madness of HAMLET causes much mirth, the mournful distraction of OPHELIA fills the heart with tenderness, and every personage produces the effect intended, from the apparition that in the first act chills the blood with horror, to the fop in the last that ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... therefore, insert almost his whole letter, and add to it one testimony, that the mischiefs arising, on every side, from this compendious mode of drunkenness, are enormous and insupportable; equally to be found among the great and the mean; filling palaces with disquiet, and distraction, harder to be borne, as it cannot be mentioned; and overwhelming multitudes with incurable diseases, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... strawberry plants sent out new tendrils. All growing things were more advanced in that walled pocket than in the outer vale; the arid gulf had become a vast greenhouse. Cerberus no longer menaced. Even the habitation of the goat-woman, that had been the central distraction of the melancholy picture, was obliterated. In all that charming landscape there was no discordant note to break ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... terrible destiny with hers: he cannot marry her: he cannot reveal to her, young, gentle, innocent as she is, the terrific influences which have changed the whole current of his life and purposes. In his distraction he overacts the painful part to which he had tasked himself; he is like that judge of the Areopagus, who being occupied with graver matters, flung from him the little bird which had sought refuge in his bosom, and with such angry violence, that ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... "you terrify me to death." "Oh, no. I would not for the world give you an uneasy moment. Let me be unhappy—but may misfortune never disturb your tranquility. I return to seek her whose fate is surely destined to mix with mine. Pardon, loveliest of thy sex, the distraction in which I have appeared. I would ask you to forget me—I would ask you to remember me—I know not what I am, or ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... very soul of monotony, piped and piped and piped, as if his diapason stop were pulled out and stuck, and could not be pushed in again. He is an odd genius. With plenty of notes, he wearies you almost to distraction, harping on one string for half an hour together. He is the one Southern bird that I should perhaps be sorry to see common in Massachusetts; but that "perhaps" is a large word. Many yellow-throated warblers, silent as yet, were commonly in the ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... men who play at cards even in the railway-train morning after morning and evening after evening. The time of the journey might be spent in useful and happy thought; it is passed in rapid and feverish speculation. There is no question of reviving the brain; it is not recreation that is gained, but distraction, and the brain, instead of being ready to concentrate its power upon work, is enfeebled and rendered vague and flighty. Supposing a youth spends but one hour per day in handling pieces of pasteboard and trying ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... away. With this definition of attention, we see that in order to increase the effectiveness of attention during study, we must devise means for overcoming the distractions peculiar to study. Obviously the first thing is to eliminate every distraction possible. Such a plan of elimination may require a radical rearrangement of study conditions, for students often fail to realize how wretched their conditions of study are from a psychological standpoint. They attempt to study in rooms with two or three ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... reserve of speech and manner during dinner, to which I cannot but plead guilty, to a fastidiousness which, situated as I am, (and he bowed to the General, and Commodore,) would have been wholly misplaced. My distraction, pardonable perhaps under all the circumstances, was produced entirely by a recurrence to certain inconveniences which I felt might arise to me from my imprisonment. The captive bird," he pursued, while a smile for the first time animated his very fine countenance, ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... week in Carrick-on-Shannon had commenced, and all was bustle and confusion, noise, dirt, and distraction. I have observed that a strong, determined, regularly set-in week of bad weather usually goes the circuit in Ireland in company with the judges and barristers, making the business of those who are obliged to attend even more intolerable than from its ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... absolute necessity of my heart. To contend with somebody was still my fate; how to escape the contention I could not see; and yet for itself, and the deadly passions into which it forced me, I hated and loathed it more than death. It added to the distraction and internal feud of my own mind—that I could not altogether condemn the upper boys. I was made a handle of humiliation to them. And in the mean time, if I had an advantage in one accomplishment, which is all a matter of accident, or peculiar taste and feeling, they, on the other hand, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... and for the "rococo toy," Italy, is too well known to need citation. It proceeds from the same deficiency of sensation. His eyes saw nothing; his ears heard nothing. He believed that men travelled for distraction and to kill time. The most vulgar plutocrat could not be blinder to beauty nor bring home less from Athens than this cultivated saint. Everything in the world which must be felt with a glow in the breast, in order to be understood, was to him dead-letter. ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... in a kind of distraction, but she remains standing at the entrance of the scene, where she with fearful curiosity looks on and off the combatants. The warriors go in circle with ...
— The Death of Balder • Johannes Ewald
... is like the misanthropy of Shakespeare's Timon—his crushing sarcasms strike blow after blow at the poor flesh and blood he despises. The hatefulness of average humanity drives him to distraction and in his madness, like a wounded Titan, he spares nothing. To the whole human race he seems to utter the terrible words he puts into ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... Except for the pressing nature of one's needs, the look of unutterable perplexity that comes over the face of a Bengali villager, to-day, when I ask him to obtain me something to eat, would be laughable in the extreme. "N-a-y, Sahib, n-a-y." he replies, with a show of mental distraction as great as though ordered to fetch me the moon. An appeal for rice, milk, dhal, chuppatties, at several stalls results in the same failure; everybody seems utterly bewildered at the appearance of a Sahib among them searching for something to ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... was alone again Henriette experienced a strange sensation of fear. He had been no protection to her, that scrubby urchin, but his chatter had been a distraction; he had kept her spirits up by his way of making game of everything, as if it was all one huge raree show. Now she was beginning to tremble, her strength was failing her, she, who by nature was so courageous. The shells no longer fell around her: the Germans had ceased ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... the icy pillar of pride in the background of his nature. Certainly standing solos at the hour of eight P.M., he would stand for a fool. Hitherto he had never allowed a woman to chance to posture him in that character. He strode out, returned, scanned every lady's shape, and for a distraction watched the veiled lady whom he had accosted. Her figure suggested pleasant features. Either she was disappointed or she was an adept. At the shutting of the gates she glided through, not without a fearful ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the day in great anxiety and excitement, and not even the distraction of her new possession had been able to calm the beating of her heart or allay her fears. Prince Frederick William had arrived early in the morning, to bid her farewell, as he was to march in the course of the day with his regiments from Potsdam. With the tenderest assurances of love he took ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... her young guest could have found a needle-case to his taste, she thought of the fair Limeuil, one of Queen Catherine's maids, of Mesdames de Nevers, d'Estree, and de Giac, all of whom were declared friends of Lavalliere, and of the lot he must love one to distraction. ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... rush at their fate like mad bulls," said the Frenchman. "They get less distraction for their ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... impressed with a conviction that they had been wronged all around and all the way through. They felt that the whole world was against them; and when, by a train of mischievous influences, hell itself seemed to be let loose upon them, it is not strange that they were driven to distraction. ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... was elegant in the highest degree; looked handsome, and distinguished, and almost outdid herself in politeness; but still Elise, spite even of herself, felt stiff and stupid by the side of her husband's "old flame." Beyond this, she had now a great distraction. ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... tavern an' have much whiskey as I could stan' up to, an' dee'd pay for it; an' de jedge distracted 'em to tu'n me loose. P'laski, he wuz sort o' bothered; he ain' know wherr to be disapp'inted 'bout de hangin' or pleased wid bein' set up so as de centre of distraction, tell ole Mis' Twine begin to talk 'bout 'restin' of him. Dat set him back; but I ax 'em, b'fo' dee 'rest him, couldn' I have jurisdictionment on him for a leetle while. Dee grant my be-ques', 'cuz dee know I gwine to erward him accordin' to his becessities, an' I jes nod ...
— P'laski's Tunament - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page |
