"Engrossing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... give them to him, make them his own, and notice the new light with which they instantly shine in his eyes. He takes a new kind of care of them altogether. In mature life, all the drudgery of a man's business or profession, intolerable in itself, is shot through with engrossing significance because he knows it to be associated with his personal fortunes. What more deadly uninteresting object can there be than a railroad time-table? Yet where will you find a more interesting object if you are going on a journey, and by its means can find your ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... a great deal of gossip concerning the "Boycotting" of Mr. Bence Jones, and that of the most recent victim, The Macgillicuddy of the Reeks, whose family is well known to all present; but even the one engrossing subject wears itself out at last. One cannot attain any wild pitch of hilarity among bolts and bars and Winchester rifles. Nobody appears to care for any stories but such as bear upon the present troubles and ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... to be at leisure to bestow attention on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, without thought of the usually engrossing machinery so painfully and minutely contrived for facilitating our advance to those ends! To forget the means and for once look at the object; to ignore the strife for free government, and be placidly and contentedly free; to shut our ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... docile class, nor have they any more toleration for authority, whether in religion, politics, or economics, than their brethren. In every pursuit of life they join with men on equal terms, including the most important and engrossing of all our pursuits—the search after knowledge concerning the nature and destiny of man and his relation to the spiritual and material infinity of ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... mind. And having listened to this account of incarnation, according to their portions, of gods, Gandharvas, and Rakshasas, the hearer becoming acquainted with the creation, preservation, and destruction of the universe and acquiring wisdom, is never cast down even under the most engrossing sorrows.'" ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... the sovereignty of the known earth. Writers of Roman history have been too much in the habit of representing the later Republic and early Empire as, practically, a Universal Monarchy, a Power unchecked, unbalanced, having no other limits than those of the civilized world, engrossing consequently the whole attention of all thinking men, and free to act exactly as it pleased without any regard to opinion beyond its own borders. One of the most popular enlarges on the idea—an idea quite inconsistent with the fact—that for the man who provoked ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... of the common mind, and so thoroughly engrossing are the cares of common life, that only the few among men can discern through the glitter and dazzle of present prosperity the dark outlines of approaching disasters, even though they may have come up to our very gates, and are already ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... dark Compliment; And accordingly he will either regard you with Hatred or Contempt;—Much less should a Person, who introduces himself as a Subject of Raillery, insist long upon it; For either he will be offensive in engrossing all Attention to himself; or if the Company are pleas'd, it must be by ...
— An Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Railery, Satire, and Ridicule (1744) • Corbyn Morris
... the towers and into the field at the back, but scarcely a bit of old wall repaid our trouble; and finding that the subject of washing became all engrossing to our hostess, who seemed to have forgotten that the hotel of the Three Candlesticks and its dinner-hour had existence, we rose and left the party, directing our ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... Topics of engrossing mental interests are bad form on the golf-links, since they leave a disturbing memory in the mind to divert it from that absolute intellectual concentration which the game demands. Therefore Pickings and Booverman, as they started toward the crowded ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... Fairy Man (DENT), a most engrossing phantasy, Mr. L. COPE CORNFORD takes for raw material a family of Maida Vale, victims of all those petty, sordid, but deadly troubles known only to the middle class. Without warrant, explanation, or excuse he introduces into their routine a sudden touch of magic; the tired City man, the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 10th, 1920 • Various
... one of the Eleven, a perilously engrossing position for one who, though never slurring nor neglecting his studies, did not enjoy anything so much as the cricket-field. However, there the weight of his character, backed by his popularity and proficiency in all games and exercises, began to ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... semi-independent State where, if anything happened, the Anglo-Indian officials would not—if even they could—protect me, since I should have crossed over without their permission. But I never even gave that a thought, but was bent upon one engrossing idea—to find and see my Guru. Without breathing a word of my intentions to any one, one morning, namely, October 5, I set out in search of the Mahatma. I had an umbrella and a pilgrim's staff for sole weapons, with a few rupees ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... the cat ceases to be a cat and becomes for the moment just warm. So it is in all her seeming activities. When she chases a mouse we rightly say, "She is chasing a mouse," for then she is nothing else. Such a state of things is at least conceivable. We can imagine momentary experiences to be so engrossing that the animal is exclusively occupied with them, unable to note connections with past and future, or even with herself, their perceiver. Through very fullness of Consciousness brutes may be ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer
... of the past, but the stage from the highest point of view is still distinctly attractive"; so decided Chellalu, and resolved to devote herself thenceforth to this new and engrossing pursuit. She chose the scene of her first public performance without consulting us. It was the open floor of the church, on a Sunday morning, in the midst of a large congregation. This was ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... and she stole another quick look at him. This mastery of a fellow creature was by far the most engrossing pastime life had offered her. There was something about him, a suggestion of depths hidden and shut away from her that filled her with the venturesome curiosity of Fatima opening the cupboards in ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... a satiric drama. This is a mixed and lower species of tragic poetry, as we have already in passing asserted. The want of some relaxation for the mind, after the engrossing severity of tragedy, appears to have given rise to the satiric drama, as indeed to the after-piece in general. The satiric drama never possessed an independent existence; it was thrown in by way of an appendage to several tragedies, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... Notice on another subject, which is at present engrossing the speculations of all Europe, namely, the gold-country on the Yenissei. Krasnoyayk, the capital, stands in a plain in the centre of the district, where the mania of gold-washing broke out about fifteen years ago. Some individuals ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... Canyon's two school-mistresses began their acquaintanceship, and Mary found herself strangely fascinated by plain Miss Martha Bumps. A critical analysis failed to warrant the fascination. Certainly Miss Bumps' appearance was not engrossing. To her, clothes were an economical and a social necessity. She wore her traveling gown of faded blue gingham, which of itself was inconspicuous, had it not been for two pockets of newer material on either side of the front. These proofs ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... "So general and engrossing was the interest felt in this event, that a public calamity had well-nigh followed. The attendants on the princes and princesses (usually most vigilant and faithful), in the excitement of the occasion, forgot their charge, and the young folks instantly seized the opportunity to ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... did Mr. Opp refer to the mysterious work that was engrossing him that he reduced Mr. Gallop's curiosity ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... Chaldaeans had not such clear ideas as to what awaited them in the other world as the Egyptians possessed: whilst the tomb, the mummy, the perpetuity of the funeral revenues, and the safety of the double, were the engrossing subjects in Egypt, the Chaldaean texts are almost entirely silent as to the condition of the soul, and the living seem to have had no further concern about the dead than to get rid of them as quickly and as completely as possible. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... the following morning, and early informed the rest of the household that the weather was satisfactory. She flew into Ruth's room with the hot water, to wake her and set her mind at rest on a subject of such engrossing interest; she imparted it repeatedly to Charles through his key-hole, until a low incoherent muttering convinced her that he also was rejoicing in the good news. She took all the dolls out of the baskets in which Ruth's careful ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... most engrossing conversation, for mother looked flushed and a little excited, as she always did when anything happened out of the common, and Miss Ruth had the amused expression I knew ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... would have been a valuable contribution to literature at any time, and is, in fact, an admirable text-book upon a subject that is at present engrossing the attention of a large number of the most serious-minded people, and it is no small compliment to the sagacity of its distinguished author that he has so well gauged the requirements of the times, and ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... it did mean something out of the common. It meant the growth of an all-engrossing, grateful, divinely tender passion between two love-starved souls. On the one hand, Lyddy, who though she had scarcely known the meaning of love in all her dreary life, yet was as full to the brim of all sweet, womanly possibilities of loving and giving as any pretty ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the camps, the all-engrossing topics of discourse were the terrors of the week so dramatically closed when churchyards yawned on Saturday. Excited groups were talking everywhere, and questions of hunger and thirst, supremely acute, were subordinated ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... any Expence in Apparel or Learning. Her eldest Daughter to this day would have neither read nor writ, if it had not been for the Butler, who being the Son of a Country Attorney, has taught her such a Hand as is generally used for engrossing Bills in Chancery. By this time I have sufficiently tired your Patience with my domestick Grievances; which I hope you will agree could not well be contain'd in a narrower Compass, when you consider what a Paradox I undertook to maintain in the Beginning of my Epistle, and which ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... attache of the Sergeant-at-Arms' office could be named who was in sympathy with the movement against the gamblers. Incidentally, however, it was discovered that the clerk of the important Senate Enrolling and Engrossing Committee had been an employee at Frank Daroux's notorious Sausalito poolrooms. These were disquieting discoveries ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... in public affairs because the house is to be attended to, and the comfort and well-being of her husband and children provided for. Are the recognized duties and ordinary occupations of women necessarily so all-engrossing as to be inconsistent with any other demand upon their time or thoughts; or of so much graver importance than the duties which men owe to their business and families, as to require her constant presence and the entire devotion ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... which was now rampant of disorder, recognized in the short, corpulent figure before them, with the red hair standing erect upon a turnip-like head, the man of their wish, whom they greeted with three deafening cheers. The major bowed and spread his hands, in the left of which he held the engrossing emblem of his ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... shrink spiritually; he develops a fancy for parlours with a regulated temperature, and takes his morality on the principle of tin shoes and tepid milk. The care of one important body or soul becomes so engrossing, that all the noises of the outer world begin to come thin and faint into the parlour with the regulated temperature; and the tin shoes go equably forward over blood and rain. To be overwise is to ossify; and the scruple-monger ends by standing ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Ethelberta's surprise, there was a letter for her in her mother's up-hill hand. She neglected all the rest of its contents for the following engrossing sentences:— ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... The books were engrossing, and it was later than usual when she came down stairs to get tea, but Mrs. Derrick was out. That wasn't very strange. Faith went through the little routine of preparation,—then she took another book and sat down by the sweet summer air of the open window to wait. By and by ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... down," he begged. "We have not finished our discussion. The whole subject is most engrossing. We cannot have you hurrying away. Mr. Bunsome's suggestion is, of course, hideously Philistine, but, after all, we want the world ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... peacocks trailed their plumes over the sparkling emerald lawns. But Colwyn and Musard had no thought of the beauty of the morning or the charm of the old-world garden as they paced across the lawn. It was Musard who broached the subject which was engrossing their minds. ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... else troubled me little. I fell victim to an engrossing selfishness. The quarrels and woes of my kindred went unnoticed, except when they served for a moment's amusement. To the fortunes of those with whom I had lately been so much concerned, of Wetter and of Coralie, I was almost indifferent. ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... Providence will find her some great happiness, or affliction, or duty,—and which would be best for her, I cannot tell. One thing is sure: the interest she takes in her little neighbor is getting to be more engrossing than ever. Something is the matter with him, and she knows it, and I think worries herself about it. I wonder sometimes how so fragile and distorted a frame has kept the fiery spirit that inhabits it so long its tenant. He accounts for it in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... I omit to remind you that our guest, amid his engrossing duties of State, has not neglected the Muses. Not less facile with the pen than the tongue, he has written on many topics, and this afternoon it will be our privilege to listen to him ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... this kind, which we still maintained after we had despatched our supper, was sufficiently engrossing to erase Boisrueil's fancies entirely from my mind. They were recalled by his sudden entrance, with Colet at his elbow, the faces of both full of importance. I saw that they had something to say, and asked what ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... began to study German, and in three months was reading with ease Goethe's Faust, Tasso and Iphigenia, Koerner, Richter, and Schiller. She greatly admired Goethe, desiring, like him, "always to have some engrossing object of pursuit." Besides all this study she was teaching six little children, to help bear ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... well done all round, and will be read as much for its engrossing story as for the admirable picture it gives of those stirring times which closed the eighteenth ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... are unequalled. Mr. Conrad has returned to his old habitat in fiction. An ingenious map shows the reader precisely where his tragic tale is enacted. It may not be his most artistic, but it is an engrossing story. Compared with Chance, it seems a cast-back to primitive souls; but as no man after writing such an extraordinary book as Chance will ever escape its influence (after his Golden Bowl, Mr. James ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... If some course has all at once struck us as wrong which we had been long accustomed to do without hesitation, has there been no 'murmuring' before we yielded? A voice has said to us, 'Give up such and such a habit,' or 'such and such a pursuit is becoming too engrossing': do we not all know what it is not only to feel obedience an effort, but even to cherish reluctance, and to let it stifle ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the disposal of the horse, if this consultation and debate had gone on, it is impossible to say, as the farther consideration of the subject was all at once interrupted, by new occurrences which here suddenly intervened, and which, after engrossing for a time the whole attention of the company assembled, finally controlled the decision of the question. A crowd of peasants and shepherds were seen coming from the mountains, with much excitement, and loud shouts and outcries, bringing with them a captive Greek whom they ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... we occupy ourselves incessantly in doing nothing.... We never have a moment's rest.... We have to drink, we have to eat, we have to sleep. It's most engrossing.... ...
— The Blue Bird: A Fairy Play in Six Acts • Maurice Maeterlinck
... it down to his own deceiving fancy and go back to his handbook? Return to the wholesome realities of stalking and trailing which filled those engrossing pages? Poor Peter Piper felt that he had made a sort of bold excursion from Piper's Crossroads into the realm of miracles and that he had better not let that weird apparition over beyond the graveyard dupe and mock him. Perhaps he had been "seein' things." Yet there were the long ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... a brief death by burning would be considered a happy release by a human being undergoing the experience of some of the animals who slowly die in a laboratory. Scientific vivisection has all the engrossing fascination of other physical sciences, BUT THE TRANSCENDENT TORTURE SOMETIMES INFLICTED HAS NO PARALLEL IN ANY OF THEM. As to its extent, we read that in course of ten years seventeen thousand dogs were dissected alive in ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... the Indians used when their young men were trained to endure pain self-inflicted, we might well devote a few minutes each day to the difficult task of changing at will our attention from the thing which is engrossing it to anything else we choose; or, what is more difficult still, to blank nothingness. When we have sufficiently strengthened this power, we can turn off the current of our thoughts as we turn off ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... numbered "341," and the first page "129." One hundred and twenty-eight pages, therefore, were certainly lost at the beginning, and I know not how many at the end; but what was left was sufficiently engrossing to hold me standing by the window, until the wrinkled face of the priest looked in again to inform me that unless I wished to sleep in the library, I must be ...
— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson
... Probably for the first time in her life she heard a young man declare with determination that he was in a hurry to leave her. Even a sensible young woman who is pretty must feel some sort of momentary pique because a young man can have engagements so summary and so engrossing. ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... to his resolution, and said not another word. Talbot was as silent as he. Each had thoughts which were all-engrossing. Neither spoke, but each knew perfectly well that the other was wide awake, and full ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... of such a prayer for, maddened at his disappointment, and excited at the sight of blood, the Huron mercifully drove his tomahawk into her own brain. The mother sank under the blow, and fell, grasping at her child, in death, with the same engrossing love that had caused her to cherish ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... person of note who arrived before I departed was Sir Thomas Denman. The Chancellor was engaged with some one at the moment, and nothing passed betwixt them but an exchange of bows. It was nearly ten years since I had seen Brougham and Denman together; the Queen's trial was then the all-engrossing topic of public consideration. Who could then have foretold that these men would have in so short a space won the confidence of a sovereign, whom they attacked with a degree of virulence which, even in those days of party violence, was generally ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 496 - Vol. 17, No. 496, June 27, 1831 • Various
... Franciscan Monk came and deliver'd him from his Torments, but not from Death, for he departed this miserable Life not long after: And this was the severe Fate of many Cacics and Indian Lords, who dyed with the same Torments which they were expos'd to by the Spaniards, in order to the engrossing of their Gold ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... most engrossing volume was a large folio from her husband's own hand, in which he had recorded every experiment of his scientific career, with its original aim, the methods adopted for its development, and its final success or failure, ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... thank Heaven!" The speaker was a charming woman from Boston, whose society he had found engrossing during the voyage—a woman of the polite ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... hand, Hooker had shown clear intention of fighting a defensive battle; and perhaps Lee measured his man better than the Army of the Potomac had done. And he knew Jackson too. Should Hooker remain quiet during the day, either voluntarily or by Lee's engrossing his attention by constant activity in his front, the stratagem might succeed. And in case of failure, each wing had open ground and good roads for retreat, to form ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... with his full confidence. We had been sea-fishing in a small open boat which he had purchased, and which he managed without assistance; that is to say, that we had provided ourselves with what was requisite for the pursuit of that engrossing sport, and that the young count had gone through the form of dropping his line over the side and pulling it up, baitless and fishless, from time to time, while I had dispensed with even this shallow pretence of employment, and had stretched ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... to Bristol to see us, and felt an engrossing interest in all of the family. She now led me into the house, and went as briskly to work as her rheumatic old limbs would allow, to make a good fire—piling on logs, blowing with the bellows, and talking all the while with the volubility ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... presence; and with her constant presence existence would be rapture. It had come to that. All his musings, all his profound investigation and high resolve, all his sublime speculations on God and man, and life, and immortality, and the origin of things, and religious truth, ended in an engrossing state of feeling, which could be denoted in that form ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... at a desk beside the window, directing the work. The two girls had fallen into the habit of doing their chores together and telling each other secrets. Birdie's had mostly to do with boys, and it was not long before Nance felt called upon to make a few tentative observations on the same engrossing subject. ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... young, beautiful, and accomplished sister shared his splendid establishment in Malaga; and for her my father formed an engrossing attachment, reciprocated in the fullest, almost simultaneously with his friendship for her brother. Zea favored the suit of the high-spirited and clever young Englishman, whose intelligence, independence, and perseverance, to say nothing of his good looks and his engaging manners, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... something still worse, and that is the suppression of all government. For, it is owing to government that human wills form a harmony instead of chaos. It serves society as the brain serves a living being. Incapable, inconsiderate, extravagant, engrossing, it often abuses its position, overstraining or misleading the body for which it should care, and which it should direct. But, taking all things into account, whatever it may do, more good than harm is done, for ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... this mighty delight and joy engrossing they heard one of the servants of the Saint[FN526] smite the gong[FN527] upon the roof, to call the folk to the rites of their worship, and he was even as saith ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... never occurred to her sons and daughters-in-law that they and their interests were not her chief preoccupation. The energy and variety of her nature were, however, given, to her social relations and to her personal friendships, which were many and engrossing. These friendships were always highly flavoured. Mrs. Forrester had a flair for genius and needed no popular accrediting to make it manifest to her. And it wasn't enough to be merely a genius; there were many of the species, eminent ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... society,' I said. 'I don't know much of the world, Miss Rayner; perhaps that is why I feel, if I went right into every sort of gaiety I should not be able to stop myself. I know I should become so fascinated and engrossed that I should think of nothing else. Don't you think it very engrossing? When you went out yourself, didn't ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... automatic. There was not enough traffic to bother me. The details of leaving the office so hastily had been too engrossing for thought of Alan and Babs. But now, in my little pit at the controls, my mind flung ahead. They had located him. That meant Franz Polter, for whom we had been searching nearly four years. And my memory went back into ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... He was wounded on the night of the 14th of April. By the first of May he had so far recovered as to be informed somewhat minutely of the sorrowful situation. By the tenth of the month he received visits from the President and his fellow-members of the Cabinet, and conferred with them on the engrossing questions that pressed upon the Administration. On the 20th he repaired to the Department of State—which then occupied the present site of the north front of the Treasury building—and held conference with foreign ministers, especially with the minister of France, touching ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... Scotland to permit accusation or hope for conviction. Time passed, and the only change observable in the baron was, that he became more gloomy, more abstracted, wrapt up, as it were, in one dark remembrance, one all-engrossing thought. Towards his wife he was changed—harsh, cold, bitterly sarcastic; as if her caresses had turned to gall. Her gentle spirit sunk beneath the withering blight, and he was heard to laugh, the mocking laugh of a fiend, as he followed her ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... Rishi of Vasishtha's race, why are Vedic sounds silent now? Why art thou sitting silent and alone engaged in meditation like one taken up with an engrossing thought? Alas, shorn of Vedic echoes, this mountain hath lost its beauty, even as the Moon shorn of splendour when assailed by Rahu or enveloped in dust.[1751] Though inhabited by the celestial Rishis, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... was the climax in the examination. Even McNamara, the Governor, was breathless with interest in his chair; Forest had the rapt look of a scientist in some engrossing experiment. He opened the box, taking therefrom a roll of white cotton. This he slowly unrolled, revealing two small, ribboned ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... particular regiments. The feeling resulted in a second attempt being made, this time to destroy the enemy's big gun on Surprise Hill. Though it failed to win an equal success, it was a hardly less brilliant performance, and forms another engrossing page in Mr. Pearse's story. Writing on 11th December, he thus describes the ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... all this to heart,' she said, as soon as Crauford had left the room; 'he is very feeling, and then he is so fond of Audrey.' And as Mrs. Ross sighed in assent, she went on with the topic that was engrossing them at that moment—how Audrey was to be induced to leave home for ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... prevent our laughing at the present collection of absurdities, it would be a lamentable conviction of the blinding and engrossing nature of vanity. We could forgive the folly of the original composition, but cannot but marvel at the egotism which has preserved, and the conceit which has published. What exaggerated notion must that man entertain ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... form their characters, and traced for them the honorable careers which he wished them to pursue. Very few men who had risen to the heights reached by Washington would have found time, in the midst of engrossing cares, to write such letters as he wrote to friends and kinsmen. A kind heart prompted them, but they were much more than merely kind, for when Washington undertook to do anything he did it thoroughly. Whether ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... an attraction which is all engrossing. Admiral Fisher has proved by this tale that he can use his pen ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... eating our supper, and there being a collection of men assembled there, inhabitants of the hamlet, we had an opportunity to get into communication with them. My uncle sold a watch, and I played on the hurdy-gurdy, by way of making myself popular. After this beginning, the discourse turned on the engrossing subject of the day, anti-rentism. The principal speaker was a young man of about six-and-twenty, of a sort of shabby genteel air and appearance, whom I soon discovered to be the attorney of the neighbourhood. His name was Hubbard, while that of the other principal ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... for a twenty or thirty mile ride, and bringing tens of thousands of sheep to the wash-pen. At that huge lavatory there was splashing and soaking all day with an army of washers; not a moment is lost from daylight till dark, or used for any purpose save the all-engrossing work and needful food. At nine o'clock p.m. luxurious dreamless sleep, given only to those whose physical powers have been taxed to the utmost and who can bear ...
— Shearing in the Riverina, New South Wales • Rolf Boldrewood
... disregard the warning. Pixie read over the tiresome grammar, and then lay back in her seat studying the furniture of the room, and deciding on the improvements which she would make if Miss Phipps asked her advice on the subject of redecoration. It was an engrossing subject, and would have kept her happily occupied for quite a long time, had not Kate jerked her elbow as a reminder, and pointed significantly to the history. She had mentally constituted herself as friend-in-need to the new classmate, and was determined to do her duty by her, however little ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... time of her earliest childish love affair, but that she had a vague feeling that she and her little lover would always be together, and this feeling was a source of pleasure. Certainly children under eight have little foresight; they are chiefly absorbed in the present whose engrossing emotions give no premonition ...
— A Preliminary Study of the Emotion of Love between the Sexes • Sanford Bell
... so many of the real adventures of life have been out of doors and so much of the beauty, too, that I have scarcely written a word about my books. In the summer the days are so long and the work so engrossing that a farmer is quite willing to sit quietly on his porch after supper and watch the long evenings fall—and rest his tired back, and go to bed early. But the winter is the true time ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... change he knew would come. And it always did. The sudden picking up of a book, the vanishing of an anxious frown, and in an instant their young minds had turned happily back into themselves, into their own engrossing lives, their plans, their intimate dreams and ambitions, all so curiously bound up with memories of small happenings which had struck them as funny that day and at which they would suddenly ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... marries and without even admitting to himself that his marriage is a failure he gradually shuts himself off from any emotional expression—protects himself from the married state by sublimating his natural domestic ties, usually in some kind of engrossing work, but often in questionable ways—by hobbies, speed manias, and excesses of various kinds. In connection with this it is interesting to note that the automobile, quite apart from its utilitarian value, is ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... who at last found nothing save science engrossing enough to make him oblivious of his constant ill-health, Huxley never lost his keen delight in literature and art. He was a rapid and omnivorous reader, devouring everything from a fairy tale to a blue book, and tearing the heart out of a book at express speed. With this went a love ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... a bright focus, listening meanwhile to a voice by turns languid and lively, with now and then a curious liquid softness, perhaps insincere, yet dangerously pleasant. Questioning, hinting, she played at motherly age and wisdom. As for him, he never before knew how well he could talk, or how engrossing his sober life, both in his native village on the Baltic and afterward in Bremen, could prove to ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... Amid all these engrossing occupations, Dr. Bowen has been a voluminous writer and an indefatigable lecturer. His publications include a volume of sermons and addresses, "Plain Talks to the Colored People of America," "Appeal to the King," "The Comparative Status of the Negro at the Close of the War and ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... feelings of thine, Antonio, are most exacting. Thou namest them on all occasions, as if they were the engrossing concerns of life." ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... real player, besides, Whist was never so engrossing as to exclude occasional remark; and some of the smartest and wittiest of Talleyrand's sayings were uttered at the card-table. Imagine, then, the inestimable advantage to the young man entering life, to be privileged to sit down in that little chosen coterie, ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... of their heads, nor its success sufficient to induce them to rush recklessly into print, and thus strangle their fame in its cradle. Let it fail, was Richard Sheridan's thought; he had now a far more engrossing ambition. In a ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... Jesuits of France. A letter from Jogues, written during his captivity, had already reached France, as had also the Jesuit Relation of 1643, which contained a long account of his capture; and he had no doubt been an engrossing theme of conversation in every house of the French Jesuits. The Father Rector was putting on his vestments to say mass; but when he heard that a poor man from Canada had asked for him at the door, he postponed the service, and went to meet him. Jogues, without ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... aberration. His misery and dejection were intense; and such were his sufferings, that he moved about his station a mere shadow of his former self, and kept himself exclusively to his own place; attempting to relieve his feelings by engrossing his mind on his avocation. Tom Rainsfield, in the meantime, had learnt from his sister-in-law the cause of John's estrangement; and deeply sympathising with his friend, he made his visits to Fern Vale as frequent as possible, ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... incipient moustache. His attention was entirely occupied with the young woman; hers entirely occupied with herself. And of this Dominic Iglesias was glad. For the matter immediately in hand was best conducted without witnesses. He found it strangely engrossing, strangely moving. However vain, however madly exaggerated even, de Courcy Smyth's estimate of himself, there could be no question but that his present emotion was as actual and genuine as his past hunger had been. The man was utterly ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... the Albizzi. The foundations he prepared for future action were equally characteristic of the man, of Florence, and of the age. Commanding the enormous capital of the Medicean bank he contrived, at any sacrifice of temporary convenience, to lend money to the State for war expenses, engrossing in his own hands a large portion of the public debt of Florence. At the same time his agencies in various European capitals enabled him to keep his own wealth floating far beyond the reach of foes within the city. A few years of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... draw them after him. Then, presently, the young man turned again to Mary, and took her hand in his. The shock of the event had somehow steadied him, since it had drawn his thoughts from that other more engrossing mood of concern over the crisis in his own life. After all, what mattered the death of this crook? his fancy ran. The one thing of real worth in all the world was the life that remained to be lived between him and her.... Then, violently, the selfishness ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... found the work engrossing, because the need of a book of the kind which makes it easy for the teacher to bring his pupils ahead more rapidly and intelligently by giving him an oversight of the entire teaching-material of the violin and under ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... outsider that she needed an addition to her wardrobe. She was striving, and without success, to alter her own uneasy conviction that the prospective visit of Justin Ware was responsible for her novel and engrossing ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... was evidently occupied by some engrossing thought, which prevented his paying much attention to ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger
... was monopolized by conferences on the affair. No one listened to Babbitt's bulletins about the February weather or to his throat-clearing comments on the headlines. He said furiously, "If I may be PERMITTED to interrupt your engrossing private CONVERSATION—Juh ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... Clement all about Susan, and was on the point of saying that if he, Mr. Clement, did not claim any engrossing interest in her, he, Gifted, was ready to offer her the devotion of a poet's heart. Mr. Clement, however, had so many other questions to ask him about everybody in the village, more particularly concerning certain ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... four years later—and also whether or not it would be worth his while to order a new suit of white flannels so late in the season. The fact that he finally decided against the photograph and in favor of the white flannels has nothing to do with the relative importance of the two matters thus engrossing him. The health of the human mind depends largely on its ability to assemble its irrelevant and incongruous problems in dignified yet informal proximity. When he went to his desk it was with the double intention of addressing a letter to his tailor, and locking the cherished photograph ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... stay at home henceforth, she gleamed with admiration when they disappointed her. In later days I had a friend who was an African explorer, and she was in two minds about him; he was one of the most engrossing of mortals to her, she admired him prodigiously, pictured him at the head of his caravan, now attacked by savages, now by wild beasts, and adored him for the uneasy hours he gave her, but she was also ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... Except for engrossing duties, with time to think and brood, I should have been thrown into tortures with the possibilities. There was always the chance, too, that Zoe in the desperation of the moment might run away from me. She had the English blood of my father in ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... the line, towards which its direction tends from either side. This swell or libration of the sea is so prodigiously long, and the sensible effect of its height, of course, so much diminished, that it is not often attended to; the gradual slope engrossing almost the whole horizon when the eye is not very much elevated above its surface: but persons who have sailed in those parts may recollect that, even when the sea is apparently the most still and level, a boat or other object at a distance from the ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... unfrequently on the MSS. of his best novels, and which now and then dropt instinctively from his pen, even in the private letters and diaries of his closing years. I allude particularly to a sort of flourish at the bottom of the page, originally, I presume, adopted in engrossing as a safeguard against the intrusion of a forged line between the legitimate text and the attesting signature. He was quite sensible that this ornament might as well be dispensed with; and his family often heard him mutter, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... the girl faithfully and conscientiously; but there were two points in her character and belief which had a most important bearing on the manner in which she carried out her laudable intentions. First, she was one of that class of human beings whose one single engrossing thought is their own welfare,—in the next world, it is true, but still their own personal welfare. The Roman Church recognizes this class, and provides every form of specific to meet their spiritual condition. But in so far as Protestantism has thrown out works as a means of insuring future ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... are some things that we don't talk about to another man, even when we know each other as well as I know you. Why should we, when that which is most engrossing to us consists in those gradual shades of advance from friendship to intimacy, and from intimacy to something more sacred still, which can scarcely be written at all, far less made interesting to another? The time came ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... was not this which steeped the feeble soul of Twemlow in confusion. This he was used to, and could take soundings of. The abyss to which he could find no bottom, and from which started forth the engrossing and ever-swelling difficulty of his life, was the insoluble question whether he was Veneering's oldest friend, or newest friend. To the excogitation of this problem, the harmless gentleman had devoted many anxious hours, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... governing motive of commerce, all over the world, is the love of gain. It differs from the love of gain in its lower aspects, merely in its greater importance and its greater activity. These cause it to be more engrossing among merchants than among the tillers of the soil: still, facts prove that this state of things has many relieving shades. The man who is accustomed to deal in large sums is usually raised above the more sordid vices of covetousness and avarice in detail. There are rich misers, certainly, ...
— New York • James Fenimore Cooper
... following day, he was first interviewed by what Janice would have called the attorney for the prosecution, who took him to his office and insisted, much to the lover's disgust, in hearing what he had done politically. Finally, however, this all-engrossing subject to the office-seeker was, along with Philemon's patience, exhausted, and the squire told his fellow-candidate that the object of his desires could now ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... of those entirely engrossing pursuits, which excite all our enthusiasm, and task every energy, and of which the statesman's and the soldier's callings are the best examples, that, when they fail us, we can find no substitute. All things else ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... in the Tonto Basin beyond the Matitzal Range, and Byrne had the cares of a continent on his hands. Three of the five commands out in the field had had sharp encounters with the foe. Official business itself was sufficiently engrossing, but there were other matters assuming grave proportions. Mrs. Plume had developed a feverish anxiety to hie on to the Pacific and out of Arizona just at a time when, as her husband had to tell her, it was impossible for him, and impolitic for her, to ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... the benefactor of Germany who fell at Lutzen: the beneficent part of his career, Gustavus Adolphus had already terminated; and now the greatest service which he could render to the liberties of Germany was — to die. The all-engrossing power of an individual was at an end, but many came forward to essay their strength; the equivocal assistance of an over-powerful protector, gave place to a more noble self-exertion on the part of the Estates; and those who were formerly the mere instruments of his aggrandizement, ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... are either above natural reason, or seem something opposite to it, that can engage natural beholders, and far less the prosecution of a temporal worldly interest of the people of God, to the destruction of all opposite to it, at least to the diminishing of all other men's gain and advantage, the engrossing of all earthly privileges into the hands of saints. That is such a thing that never entered into the heart of the shining lights of the primitive times. O how doth the stream of their exhortations run cross to this notion! ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... that yesterday seemed remote and vague, to-day filled their horizon, for some of them dark enough. Determined to ignore that gaunt Spectre standing there, in the shadow silent and grim, they would begin to talk on themes good yesterday for an hour's engrossing conversation, but before they were aware they had forgotten the subject of their talk and found themselves sitting together dumb and looking out upon the gleam of the waters, thinking, thinking and ever ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... and ceaselessly for the good of society, and with the completest self-abnegation that is consistent with healthy individuality, be the true form of religion, Mr. Mill exhibited such genuine and profound religion—so permeating his whole life, and so engrossing his every action—as can hardly be looked for in any other man of this generation. Great as were his intellectual qualities, they were dwarfed by his moral excellences. He did not, it is true, aim at any fanciful ideal, or adopt any fantastic ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... The ageing of his manuscript of the Vita Burtoni, to take a further instance, was effected by smearing the middle of it with glue or varnish. This document was also written partly in an attorney's regular engrossing[3] hand. During the next four years Chatterton 'transcribed' a great quantity of ancient documents, including AElla, a Tragycal Enterlude—far the finest of the longer Rowleian poems—the Songe to AElla and The Bristowe Tragedy (the authorship ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... "After an engrossing conversation, every moment of which I loved, he said good-bye to me and I leant back against the pillow and gazed at the ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... interrupting, you know, of all things. The Hedleys have been flitting backwards and forwards, staying, some of them, for a month at a time in London, and then going, and then coming again; and I have had other visitors, few but engrossing 'after their kind.' And I have been getting well—which is a process—going out into the carriage two or three times a week, abdicating my sofa for my armchair, moving from one room to another now and then, and walking about mine quite as well as, and with considerably more ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... to the library and resumed his work, and was busily engaged in engrossing a deed of conveyance when the door opened and Judge Merlin entered accompanied by a tall, dark-haired, handsome, and rather prepossessing-looking man, of about fifty years of age, whom he introduced ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... love be not materially advanced by its new ally. Indeed, if the truth had been known, even the Bishop of Montreal had felt that Father Francis Xavier was too ambitious a character to reside safely in too close proximity to himself; and engrossing employment at a distance for him, rather than the expressed solicitude for Father Ignatius, prompted this appointment. The results of the following year approved the arrangement. The mission received a new accession of life; its ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... who had not complied with the requisitions of the newly incorporated company, mulcts were imposed of one thousand five hundred pounds and one thousand pounds. One man was fined and set in the pillory for engrossing corn, though he only kept what grew on his own land, asking more in a season of dearth than the overseers of the poor thought proper to give. Some arbitrary regulations with respect to prices may be ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... course he always carried little Ethel about when mamma and nurse were busy. After breakfast, when he had finished his investigations of all Dr. May's domains, and much entertained Gertrude by his knowledge of them, Ethel set him down to write a letter to his father, and her own to Meta being engrossing, she did not look much more after him till Dr. May came in, and said, 'I want you to sketch off a portrait of her dicky-bird for Meta;' and he put before her a natural history with a figure of that tiny humming-bird which is endowed ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lounging. Tristan stands apart from the rest, with folded arms, staring abstractedly over the water. His servant Kurwenal lies idly outstretched at his feet. Isolde's eyes at once find the half-averted figure; her absorption in it becomes equal to his in the unknown object of the thoughts engrossing him. She does not hear this time the sailor at the topmast singing over again the song she had before resented; "O Irish maid, where tarriest thou? Is it the force of thy sighs which fills my sails?" Slow, involuntary, words drop from her lips, ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... formal declaration. I have seen it, known it, even before yourselves were conscious of its existence—this all engrossing passion. Before my son's return I foresaw it, with the prescience of maternal love. I knew your young, imaginative heart would find its ideal in him, and that his fastidious taste and sensitive, reserved nature would be charmed by your simplicity, ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... Limestone College and again when Mrs. Young responded to a toast at the banquet of the State Press Association. That same year there was lively effort to decide which one of twenty women candidates should be elected State librarian. Miss Lucy Barron was elected and a large number of women engrossing clerks were appointed to ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... to do, according to the British envoy's reading of his orders, and the matter terminated in a fruitless exchange of argumentation.[200] In April, 1808, Rose quitted the country, and redress for the "Chesapeake" injury remained in abeyance for three years longer. Interest in it had waned under more engrossing events which had already taken place, and it was relegated by both Governments to the background of diplomacy. Admiral Berkeley had been recalled, as a mark of his Majesty's disapproval. He arrived in England ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... Martha, Ida, and Jenny had left her, she arose, and stealing to the window, looked out upon the company as they departed. She could readily divine which was George Moreland, for Rose Lincoln's shawl and satchel were thrown over his arm, while Rose herself walked close to his elbow, apparently engrossing his whole attention. Once he turned around, but fearful of being herself observed, Mary drew back behind the window curtain, and thus lost a view of his face. He, however, caught a glimpse of her, and asked if that was the room in ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... was retained on the general staff and assigned to the important post of censor of the press. His duties were most engrossing, for not only were the proofs of all the local newspapers submitted to him, but also all other printed matter. One day a large number of handbills were confiscated at a printer's and brought in for his inspection. He was very busy and asked his native private ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... ground on which the memory of Daniel De Lisle Brock must rest its claims on the affection, the respect, and the gratitude of his fellow countrymen, is the devoted—the engrossing love which, during his whole life, he bore to his native land. Every thought, every wish, every feeling of pride or ambition, centered in his beloved Guernsey. She was the idol of his affections—the object of all his solicitude—the ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... nothing bearing on the scheme he had undertaken. In the books on political economy—in Mill, for instance, whom he studied first with great ardor, hoping every minute to find an answer to the questions that were engrossing him—he found laws deduced from the condition of land culture in Europe; but he did not see why these laws, which did not apply in Russia, must be general. He saw just the same thing in the socialistic books: either they were the beautiful but impracticable fantasies which ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... peaceful country life which he had planned for himself, and in making these arrangements he took care to find his son abundant and varied employment. But all his well-meant efforts were in vain. Luis could not detach his thoughts from one all-engrossing subject; and at last, although Count Villabuena had expressly forbidden any correspondence between his daughter and young Herrera, the latter, after some weeks' absence, unable to resist any longer his desire to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... garden—digging up kava roots, stringing them on twine and hanging them up in the hall to dry, and in many another homely task. In the evening they played chess, and, as neither knew the game, they were well matched, and spent engrossing evenings over it. Sometimes they would light a lantern and walk over to see Mr. Caruthers, the lawyer, who lived more than a mile away. When he saw the flicker of their lantern through the palm-trees ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... story, charming in its New England village setting, endearing in its characters, engrossing in its plot, and diverting in its style. The PAGE imprint has been given to many books about beautiful characters in fiction,—Pollyanna, Anne Shirley, Rose Webb of "SMILES," and Lloyd Sherman of the "LITTLE COLONEL" books. To this galaxy we now add ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... for half an hour every morning, and in the afternoon twenty or thirty stitches of patchwork, with a very short text to repeat next morning at breakfast. When three years old she could read easy books, and her brother Frank remembers how often she was found hiding under a table with some engrossing story. At four years old, Frances could read the Bible and any ordinary book correctly, and had learned to write in round hand; French and music were gradually added; but great care was always taken not to tire her or excite the precocity of her mind, and she never ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... Assembly's entire want of confidence in the new appointments, and humbly requested that immediate steps might be taken to remove the new Councillors from office. Meanwhile, petitions on the all-engrossing subject poured into the Assembly from all over the Province.[231] Public meetings were called in Toronto, as well as in some other of the principal towns, at which resolutions were passed echoing the Assembly's address, imploring the Lieutenant-Governor to ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... engrossing romance of the Soudan deals with the siege of Khartoum and the death of the hero, Gordon, and the Epilogue with the retribution which England exacted from the Arab hordes. Between the two is placed a dramatic story ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... most alternate afternoons, Jacinth accompanied their hostess; there were reminiscences of the past, always interesting to the girl, awakened to fresh vividness by Mrs Mildmay's own recollections of her mother and her own childhood; there were, more engrossing still, plans for the future, when 'papa' should return and be skilfully persuaded into renouncing India. And Lady Myrtle was nearly as great at castle-in-the-air building as Jacinth herself, and though too wise to discuss as yet with any one, especially ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... very obligingly take up with an occasional order. It sometimes gives one a melancholy but mixed sensation to see one of the better sort of this class of politicians, not without talents or learning, absorbed for fifty years together in the all-engrossing topic of the day: mounting on it for exercise and recreation of his faculties, like the great horse at a riding-school, and after his short, improgressive, untired career, dismounting just where he got ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... statue of Pope Julius; and there was the majestic figure stretching out the hand of benediction over them, and bending down upon this guilty and repentant pair its visage of grand benignity. There is a singular effect oftentimes when, out of the midst of engrossing thought and deep absorption, we suddenly look up, and catch a glimpse of external objects. We seem at such moments to look farther and deeper into them, than by any premeditated observation; it is as if they met our eyes alive, and with all their hidden meaning on the surface, ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... I put on these lively airs, I am sick at my soul!—My whole heart is with my charmer! with what indifference shall I look upon all the assembly at the Colonel's, my beloved in my ideal eye, and engrossing my ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... fatigued warriors, while side combatants of various ages fought their mimic battles, blending the whole in a scene of wild excitement and confusion. Grey Eagle was an expert archer, but he had found his equal; hence the conflict was so long, and had, from its even tenor, become so engrossing. One instant's hesitation would probably decide the contest with critics so quick to perceive with both eye and ear the least deviation from their standard customs. After passing successively through the exercise ...
— Birch Bark Legends of Niagara • Owahyah
... when every problem of business is so engrossing, demanding a man's full time and thought. It is the rare man who can devote himself to business and be fresh for the service of others afterward. No man can, with efficiency, serve two masters so exacting as are these. Besides, if his business has ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... presents to the American mind is of yet greater significancy. If there be one unpleasant trait more revolting than another in our national character, it is the inordinate pursuit of wealth: rem, quocunque modo rem. To get money is the first lesson of childhood, the engrossing purpose of middle age, and the harassing employment of declining years. Such is the rabid thirst for money, its effects are seen over the whole moral and intellectual character of the people. It constitutes wealth as the standard of worth, and all the noblest qualities of the head and ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... dropped his book, and he sat an admiring witness of the scene; and Frances enjoyed a double satisfaction, as she received an approving smile from a face which concealed, under the traces of deep thought and engrossing care, the benevolent expression which characterizes all the best feelings of the ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... for Jack to tell me that he was come down on a bold speculation at this unseasonable time for Cheltenham; that he was quite sure his fortune was about to be made in a few weeks at farthest, and what seemed nearly as engrossing a topic—that he was perfectly famished, and desired a ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... words. Communion is better than sacrament, but communion may exist without the eating of the bread, &c. Sacrament means the performance of a certain act, which is an outward and visible sign of spiritual grace. You need not fear my leaving off this subject, it is far too engrossing to me, ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... the impulsive Irishman's remark. He could see that he had moved every fibre of his feeling heart and warm nature and that he was following every incident of his terrible story of atrocities and sufferings with an all-engrossing interest. ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... worst of all, of a rebellion in Ireland, is a trial to a Minister's wife. However, the reason was simply that Prince Albert had detained him talking. ... Of course we talked a great deal with our visitors of France, Italy, Germany, and Ireland; but happily, engrossing as these topics are, the bright sun and blue sky and shining river and opening leaves and birds and squirrels would have their share of attention, and give some ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... Life of Johnson and the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides may be taken for practical purposes as one book; and it has some claim to be the most companionable book in the world. There is no book like it for a solitary meal. A novel, if it is good for anything, is too engrossing for a dinner companion. It is impossible to put it down. It interrupts the business of dining and results in cold food and indigestion. A book of short poems—the Odes of Horace, the Fables of La Fontaine, the Sonnets of Shakespeare ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... cards, when the discourse began to flag, the minutes between the time of assembling and the placing the card-tables are spent in an irksome suspense. To relieve this vacuum in social intercourse and prevent cards from engrossing the whole of my visitors' minds, I have presented them with objects the most attractive I could imagine—and when that fails there are the cards.' Hanway was the first man who ventured to walk the streets of London with an umbrella over his head. After carrying one near thirty years, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 27. Saturday, May 4, 1850 • Various
... his residence in the Palazzo Altieri—a circumstance which gave rise to the belief at the time that it had disappeared during the French occupation of Rome—he could only bestow upon the arduous task the scanty leisure available from more engrossing duties. The work was therefore so imperfectly done that the cardinal himself was reluctant to publish it; and the learned and honest Barnabite under whose editorial auspices it appeared was obliged to append a formidable ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... Lawson Stelle Montgomery F. H. Threat Marengo J. R. Treadwell Russell Thomas Walker Dallas E. A. Williams Barbour Latty J. Williams Montgomery William V. Turner, Assistant Clerk Elmore Phillip Joseph, Engrossing Clerk Mobile W. H. Council, Assistant Engrossing Clerk Madison C. O. Harris, Assistant Enrolling Clerk Montgomery Stephen Russell, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... chief, being a savage, takes daily a sufficient amount of fresh air and exercise, which nine-tenths of civilised men refrain from doing, on the economic and wise principle, apparently, that engrossing and unnatural devotion to the acquisition of wealth, fame, or knowledge, will enable them at last to spend a few paralytic years in the enjoyment of their gains. No doubt civilised people have the trifling little drawback of innumerable ills, to which ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... Finn and Mr. Bonteen had now become the talk of the town, and had taken many various phases. The political phase, though it was perhaps the best understood, was not the most engrossing. There was the personal phase,—which had reference to the direct altercation that had taken place between the two gentlemen, and to the correspondence between them which had followed, as to which phase it may be said that though ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... had, at Paris, entered into a shameful league with Madame de Chatillon and his pretended rival, the Duke de Nemours, in order that they might rob the poor Duchess of her last consolation, the esteem and affection of Conde. Left in Guienne, without any great or engrossing occupation, with a vacant mind, discontented both with others and herself, Madame de Longueville was no longer the brilliant Bellona of Stenay, but her pride and dignity, which she could not lose, never failed to sustain her. ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... of negotiation upon which he had entered, must be left to conjecture, for his life was suddenly destroyed by the terrible accident on board the United-States steamer "Princeton," in February, 1844, but little more than seven months after he had entered upon his important and engrossing duties. ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... apt to forget, in the engrossing incidents of our civil war, and its sequel, the enormous changes that were in progress in the material condition of the country, and the larger economic struggle that was being waged between the Western European Powers in regard to the supremacy in commercial undertakings, ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... last hope; he treasured the bitter knowledge that under this fatal spell his life was ebbing fast away. All attempts to fix his attention upon other objects were made in vain, he refused to be comforted and would constantly speak of the one engrossing subject. Even if he had ceased to speak of it, would he not always have thought of it? He seemed to inhale the poison rapidly and eagerly, that he might thus shorten the time in which he would be forced ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... from infidelity to either:—that the intrinsic worth and weight of my subject may commend these songs, both at home, and in the many Englands beyond sea, to those who, (despite the inevitably more engrossing attractions of the Present, and the emphatic bias of modern culture towards the immediate and the tangible), maintain that high and soul-inspiring interest which, identifying us with our magnificent Past, and all its varied lessons of defeat ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave |
