"Unobservant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Trudy slept long hours and did not interfere with the goings and comings of her young nieces, she was not quite so unobservant as ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... this result. Moreover, it seems very clear that teachers of all grades should have some acquaintance with the nature of the minds that they are laboring to develop, and that they should not be left to pick up their information for themselves—a task sufficiently difficult to an unobservant person. ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... conclusion, and brushing the dank hair from his eyes, he thrust his hands into his oozing pockets, and proceeded across the square toward the Continental, wondering if there was a rear entrance. Happily the adventure absorbed all his thoughts. He was quite unobservant of the marked attention bestowed on him. Carriages filled the Strasse, and many persons moved along the walks. It was the promenade hour. The water, which still dripped from his clothes and trickled from his shoes, left a conspicuous trail behind; and this alone, without ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... Plant, Wig Tree, or Venetian Sumach. Spain to Caucasus, 1656. On account of its singular appearance this shrub always attracts the attention of even the most unobservant in such matters. It is a spreading shrub, about 6 feet high, with rotundate, glaucous leaves, on long petioles. The flowers are small and inconspicuous, but the feathery nature of the flower clusters, ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster
... was questioning me, and had got me far beyond my depth—in the house-place, when the letters were brought in by one of the men, and I had to pay the carrier for his trouble before I could look at them. A bill—a Canadian letter! What instinct made me so thankful that I was alone with my dear unobservant cousin? What made me hurry them away into my coat-pocket? I do not know. I felt strange and sick, and made irrelevant answers, I am afraid. Then I went to my room, ostensibly to carry up my boxes. I sate ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... to be supposed that Raoul Yvard and his followers were unobservant of what was passing. It is true that the latter wilfully protracted his departure, under the pretence that it was safer to have his enemy in sight during the day, knowing how easy it would be to elude him in the dark; but, in reality, that he might prolong the pleasure of having Ghita ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... fibres or yarns wound in cop or bobbin forms, in hanks or skeins and in warps, and lastly in the form of woven pieces. These different forms necessitate the employment of different forms of machinery and different modes of handling; it is evident to the least unobservant that it would be quite impossible to subject slubbing or sliver to the same treatment as yarn or cloth, otherwise the slubbing would be ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
... wears the usual tribal adornments, and beadwork, and skins; she's as dazzling as any other beauty, in her box at the opera; and she sleeps and eats in the family's big stone igloo near Fifth Avenue. An unobservant citizen might almost suppose she was one of us. But every now and then her neglect of some small ceremonial sets our whole tribe to chattering about her, and eyeing her closely, and nodding their hairy coiffures or their ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... had been standing by the door not unobservant of what passed, directed the attention of the younger branches towards her; and had likewise the happy effect of leading to the formal recognition of Miss Nipper, who was not quite free from a misgiving that ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... not unobservant; and when the second supply of milk had been drunk, she looked down at the round-headed man, and said with ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... we all gay and happy in the house again, running out as we pleased, beginning to think of parties and drives and theatres and all enjoyment—and rather unobservant, as young folks are apt to be unobservant of Aunt Pen's slight habitual pensiveness in the absence of guests or excitement, and of her ways generally—than Aunt Pen would challenge some lobster-salad to mortal combat, and, of course, come out floored by the colic. ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... totally preoccupied. Tom was engrossed by the concerns of his theatre, and saw nothing that did not immediately relate to it. Edmund, between his theatrical and his real part—between Miss Crawford's claims and his own conduct—between love and consistency, was equally unobservant: and Mrs. Norris was too busy in contriving and directing the general little matters of the company, superintending their various dresses with economical expedients, for which nobody thanked her, and saving, with delighted integrity, half-a-crown here and there to the absent Sir Thomas, to ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... item of evidence will enable you to form an opinion for yourselves. I only obtained it yesterday, and, as it made my case quite complete, I wrote off to you immediately. It is the statement of Joseph Ridley, another cabman, and unfortunately, a rather dull, unobservant fellow, unlike Wilkins. He has not much to tell us, but what little he has is highly instructive. Here is the statement, signed by the ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... nobody," says a Roman Cardinal, "whom Fortune does not visit once in his life: but when she finds he is not ready to receive her, she goes in at the door, and out through the window." Opportunity is coy. The careless, the slow, the unobservant, the lazy fail to see it, or clutch at it when it has gone. The sharp fellows detect it instantly, and catch it when ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... judge others by ourselves,—whether we do it consciously or not,—since we have no other way of judging. And the judge himself was so simple, so sincere, so essentially honest, that he could not doubt one who was in a way a member of his own family. And then he was absent-minded, unobservant, easy-going, indolent, and the slave of habit, as such a nature is apt to be. Moreover, he was not always master of the slight power of observation which had been given him. That very day, while on his way home from the court-house, he had stopped at a cabin where liquor was sold. ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... say that, in this respect, all the members of the Relief Corps have made the most of their opportunity. Some are unobservant, or perhaps simply inarticulate; others, when going beyond the bald statistics of their job, tend to drop into sentiment and cinema scenes; and none but H. Macy Greer has the gift of making the thing told seem as true ...
— Coming Home - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... discovered in the deed. One day when the master had left the room to confer with some visitor at the door, he spied Annie in the act of tying her shoe. Perceiving, as he believed, at a glance, that Alec Forbes was totally unobservant, he gave her an ignominious push from behind, which threw her out on her face in the middle of the floor. But Alec did catch sight of him in the very deed, was down upon him in a moment, and, having already proved that a box on the ear was of no ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... an eye to appearances. Then quite suddenly the car, rounding a turn, came into a different region, one of cultivated wildness, of studied effects so cleverly disguised that they would seem to the unobservant only the efforts of nature at her best. A long, heavily shaded avenue of oaks, with high, untrimmed hedges of shrubbery on each side, curved enticingly before them, and all at once, Burns, looking sharply ahead, called, "There, by that big ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... into soul. How much beyond whole Libraries of orthodox Theology is, sometimes, the mute action, the unconscious look of a father, of a mother, who HAD in them "Devoutness, pious Nobleness"! In whom the young soul, not unobservant, though not consciously observing, came at length to recognize it; to read it, in this irrefragable manner: a seed planted thenceforth in the centre of his ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... sin, know that beneath every flower there lurks a spider, beneath every silken couch of indulgence there broods a nest of serpents, and the scene that begins with flowers shall end midst thorns and thickets. For the moment, indeed, the judge may seem unobservant and the watchman may seem asleep; but he who yields to any deflection from honor shall find at last that God never slumbers, that his laws never sleep. Go east or go west. Nature is upon the track of the wrong-doer. Could the sage of old sit down to converse with each youth who to-day walks ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... that, as they entered; saw Notely enter with his easy, unobservant swagger, lest the unexpected visit of this fashionable company should embarrass her. He walked across the room, humming an air, to his ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... the brute, tossing its horns in vain towards the skies. Thence backwards he retraced his steps 'midst great laud, guiding his errant footsteps by means of a tenuous thread, lest when outcoming from tortuous labyrinthines his efforts be frustrated by unobservant wandering. But why, turned aside from my first story, should I recount more, how the daughter fleeing her father's face, her sister's embrace, and e'en her mother's, who despairingly bemoaned her lost daughter, preferred to all these the sweet love of Theseus; or how borne by their ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... γε»Ώε
η« γεζ°γεΉ΄εεθθ¦ζ‘ηγε
Άη΅δΉε·²γ being in a low station, slanders his superiors. He hates those who have valour merely, and are unobservant of propriety. He hates those who are forward and determined, and, at the same time, of contracted understanding.' 2. The Master then inquired, 'Ts'ze, have you also your hatreds?' Tsze-kung replied, 'I hate those who pry out matters, and ascribe the knowledge to their ...
— The Chinese Classics—Volume 1: Confucian Analects • James Legge
... votaries of pleasure in theirs; and hence it is that diseased sympathy and compassion are every day expended on out-of-the-way objects, when only too many demands upon the legitimate exercise of the same virtues in a healthy state, are constantly within the sight and hearing of the most unobservant person alive. In short, charity must have its romance, as the novelist or playwright must have his. A thief in fustian is a vulgar character, scarcely to be thought of by persons of refinement; but dress him in green velvet, with a high-crowned hat, and change the scene of his ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... sound thoughts were the result of long hours of reflection. They belonged to her nature and a quality of judgment which, even in her most extravagant romances, is never for a moment swayed from that sane impartiality described by the unobservant as ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... I took to my room, coming down only for meals. I couldn't eat a thing, and Cyrus noticed it—it is queer how observant men are about some things and how unobservant about others. He didn't tell me what he was going to do, but in the afternoon Dr. Denbigh came to see me. That's the way they do—I'm liable to have the doctor sent in to look me over any time, whether I want him or not. Dr. Denbigh is an excellent friend and a good ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... biological orthodoxy behaves just as the old biological orthodoxy did. In the days before Darwin, those who occupied themselves with the phenomena of life, passed by with unobservant eyes the multitudinous facts which point to an evolutionary origin for plants and animals; and they turned deaf ears to those who insisted on the significance of these facts. Now that they have come to believe in this evolutionary origin, and ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... the question cannot fail to have occurred to the most unobservant reader, why the history of the Family of Bethany and the Resurrection of Lazarus, in themselves so replete with interest and instruction—the latter, moreover, forming, as it did, so notable a crisis in the Saviour's life—should have been recorded only by ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... Drouet unobservant, all this while; but steps out and steps in, with his long-flowing nightgown, in the level sunlight; prying into several things. When a man's faculties, at the right time, are sharpened by choler, it may lead to much. That Lady in slouched ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... creatures there congregated seem, each individual is leading the beatified existence of an epicurean god. The world without—its cares and joys, its storms and calms, its passions, evil and good—all are indifferent to the unheeding oyster. Unobservant even of what passes in its immediate vicinity, its whole soul is concentrated in itself; yet not sluggishly and apathetically, for its body is throbbing with life and enjoyment. The mighty ocean is subservient to its pleasures. The rolling waves waft fresh and choice food within its reach, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... better suited to the great flat snow-shoes by her side, with which she has made her way hither across the deep snow. She speaks but little, yet her keen and watchful glances show that she is by no means unobservant of what is going on around her. See! one of the market women has stopped just in front of her, but it is only to have a good look at the glossy wrapper, white as snow, which glistens quite dazzlingly in ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... for, notwithstanding all their efforts, not another trace of the missing children had been discovered. They had assuredly fallen into the canal, argued Miss Turner. The locks were so often open, the keepers so dull and unobservant, that their bodies might easily have drifted by without being noticed. Then, once past Barchester, they would be washed away by the next outgoing tide—far, far away, wrapped in a tangle of brown and green seaweed; or perhaps they were lying fathoms deep beneath the restless, ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... the disorder in her countenance when she reached Choisy that even unobservant Ombreval whom continuous years of self-complacency had rendered singularly obtuse—could not help but notice it, and—fearing, no doubt, that this agitation might in some way concern himself—he even went the length of questioning her, his voice sounding ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... unobservant, in her own quiet way, of what has been going on. Waiting until Francine and Miss Plym are out of hearing, she bends over Emily, and says, "My dear, I really do think Francine is ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... about a score of diverse sounds, each of which indicates a particular turn of their mind. Almost all of these different notes have slight variations of expression which fit particular situations. Thus the crow of these birds, which may seem to the unobservant a very unvaried sound, discloses to those who have lovingly studied them at least half a dozen distinct modifications. In the fledgling male who just begins to feel the spirit of his kind, and who goes through his performance in the adolescent ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... that restrained her from doing so was her knowledge that Maitland would be more pained by her sacrifice than gladdened or relieved. He was so sure of clearing himself.... It was inconceivable to her that there could be men so stupid and crassly unobservant as to be able to confuse the identity of the two men for a single instant. What though they did resemble each other in form and feature? The likeness went no deeper: below the surface, and rising through it with every word and look and gesture, lay a world-wide ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... in front of her, his short-sighted unobservant glance concentrating itself unexpectedly ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... "I am not unobservant, Mr. Brent," he said. "Our profession, as you know, sir, leads us to the cultivation of that faculty. Now, I've thought a good deal about this matter, and I'll tell you a conclusion I've come to. Do you remember that when Dr. Wellesley was being questioned the other day he ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... signs seen by a wise man, that escape the unobservant. When young cavaliers have a taste for mingling with the people in honorable disguise, as in the case of a certain patrician of this Republic, they are to be known by their air, if not by ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... an unobservant man. He had seen many signs which distressed him, both in Grannie's face and Alison's; he knew also that Harry had been taken from school quite a year too soon; he knew well that Alison's bread winnings were necessary for the family, ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... watch within and toward Ka-ula; Question each breeze, note every rumor, Even the whisper of Malua-kele. Search high and search low, unobservant. ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... never did, being naturally of an unobservant and easy-going nature; and I will answer for him, that he would have sat quietly in his seat in that Sentry Box or the House from February to September (which you know were his favourite months for serious ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 22, 1893 • Various
... other ways going over the tracks of my predecessors. The phenomena of the United States are so momentous in themselves that the observation of them from any new standpoint cannot be wholly destitute of value; while they change so rapidly that he would be unobservant indeed who could not find something ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... her eyes red. She looked anything but lovely. Grant, however, was instantly so moved that he did not notice her homeliness. Also, he was one of those unobservant people who, having once formed an impression of a person, do not revise it except under compulsion; his last observation of Margaret had resulted in an impression of good looks, exceptional charm. He bent upon her a look in which understanding ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... and he listened, while he made a pretence of eating his supper, for the steps outside and the knock at the door, which would surely renew the unwarrantable attempt to saddle him with the charge of the child. He listened too, as he sat after supper, holding up the newspaper in front of his unobservant eyes; and he listened most of the night as he tossed on his sleepless pillow—listened to the wind that had risen and moaned and sobbed round the house like a living thing in pain—listened to the pitiless rain that followed, pelting down on the ivy outside and on the tiles above ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... rich as Leonora longed for him to be. She was glad Dumont seemed to be putting him in the way of making a fortune. He was distasteful to her, because she saw that he was an ill-tempered sycophant under a pretense of manliness thick enough to shield him from the unobservant eyes of a world of men and women greedy of flattery and busy each with himself or herself. But for Leonora's sake she invited him. And Leonora was appreciative, was witty, never monotonous or commonplace, most helpful in getting up ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... unobservant, began to murmur; especially those who had wagered that the Pomerania would dock on the eighth day. The world itself, they complained, was created in seven days, and why should so fine a ship take ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... condition of the body, and in the expression of the face. So the motives of man festoon his personality with flaunting and infallible signs to be known and read by all men who care to take the trouble to learn. Some of them are so plain that there is scarcely any grown person so unobservant as not to have seen them. Others are more elusive, but none the less legible to the ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... cents, and scarcely knew whether she won or lost, so intent was she on watching Graham go down the room, although she did know that Bert Wainwright had not been unobservant of her gaze and its direction. On the other hand, neither she nor Bert, nor any other at the table, knew that Dick's quick-glancing eyes, sparkling with merriment while his lips chaffed absurdities that made them all laugh, had missed no portion of ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... alliance on it, a practice still observed by the inhabitants of some remote regions of the Caucasus. I must again solemnly express my conviction that we are standing on a slumbering VOLCANO; the thoughtless and unobservant may suppose not; probably because in the present tee-total state of society they see nothing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 20, 1841 • Various
... said, "how stupid and unobservant I was! I knew nothing of all this till Granny blurted it out one day. New York simply meant peace and freedom to me: it was coming home. And I was so happy at being among my own people that every one I met seemed ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... if this was the same young lady I saw a day or two before I went to town? He really could not remember. Was she a girl with dark hair and blue eyes? I asked further. He really couldn't tell what colour her eyes were. He was very unobservant except as to the peculiarities of footpaths, on which he ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... the windows, thereby displaying to the unobservant air an instep large but exquisitely arched, Marcia Amherst comes slowly up to where the lazy fowl are dreaming. Almost unconsciously (because her face is full of troubled thought), or perhaps a little vengefully, she flicks the one nearest to her with the handkerchief she carries ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... English education. It has always been my humble experience that one learns more of use in one hour's keen observation than by reading all the books in the world, and when that sense is keenly developed it is quite extraordinary with what facility one can do things which the average unobservant man thinks utterly impossible. It most certainly teaches one to simplify everything and always to select the best and easiest way in all one undertakes, which, after all, is the way leading ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... very indifferent or unobservant, she would have noticed the striking difference between the manner and appearance of Lizzie Stevens and the class who generally came to see McCloskey. She did not, however, appear to observe it, nor did she manifest ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... difference of any sort or to any degree—anything which could have justified a mutual falling off from the old intimacy! But William Edgerton was meekness and kindness itself. His confidence in me was of the most unobservant, suspicionless character; either that, or I succeeded better than I thought in the effort to maintain the external aspects of old friendship. He saw nothing of change in my deportment. He seemed not to see it, ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... Mrs. Graham's sense of propriety. There was an old lady who had once been Clara's governess—a gentle, mild-tongued, unobservant person, who was greatly in want of a home. Mrs. Alison was easily induced to promise the support of her presence to Lettice during the days or weeks which Lettice hoped to spend at Bute Lodge. She was a woman of unimpeachable decorum and respectability, and ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... years old, is of dark red brick with facings of stone, long since worn by wind and weather. The windows are enormous, and would appear abnormal in any other city but this. The Hotel of the Old Shooting gallery stands on the Toornoifeld and the unobservant may pass by without distinguishing it from the private houses on either side. This, indeed, is not so much a house of hasty rest for the passing traveler as it is a halting-place for that great army which is ever moving ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... the attention, divert the attention, distract the mind; put out of one's head; disconcert, discompose; put out, confuse, perplex, bewilder, moider^, fluster, muddle, dazzle; throw a sop to Cerberus. Adj. inattentive; unobservant, unmindful, heedless, unthinking, unheeding, undiscerning^; inadvertent; mindless, regardless, respectless^, listless &c (indifferent) 866; blind, deaf; bird-witted; hand over head; cursory, percursory^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... that I should see my wife again. Until then, the present had no existence for me—I lived in the past and future. I wandered indifferently along lonely bye-streets, and crowded thoroughfares. Of all the sights which attend a night-walk in a great city, not one attracted my notice. Uninformed and unobservant, neither saddened nor startled, I passed through the glittering highways of London. All sounds were silent to me save the love-music of my own thoughts; all sights had vanished before the bright form that moved through my bridal dream. Where was my world, at that moment? Narrowed ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... passion, and to obtain a half-ready, half-timid acceptance of the offer of his hand. All this time, the parents of these very youthful lovers were as profoundly ignorant of what was going on, as their children were unobservant of the height to which professional competition had carried hostilities between their respective parents. Doctors Woolston and Yardley no longer met even in consultations; or, if they did meet in the house of some patient whose patronage was of too much value to be slighted, ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... passed unobservant and in silence. I remained in the same posture for several minutes. At length, just as my alarms began to subside, the halloos, before heard, arose, and from the same quarter as before. This convinced me that my perils were not at an end. This now appeared ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... spoke, a strange suspicion that was half an apprehension came into his head. He had been looking the whole time at Strelitski's face with his usual unobservant gaze, just seeing it was gloomy. Now, as in a sudden flash, he saw it sallow and careworn to the last degree. The eyes were almost feverish, the black curl on the brow was unkempt, and there was a streak ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... seated on a grassy knoll so absorbed in some curious kind of occupation that he was totally unobservant of the presence of Gibault until he had approached to within thirty yards of him. Although his occupation was a mystery to the trapper, to one a little more conversant with the usages of civilised life, the open book on the knee, the easy ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... stupid, unobservant fellow you must be, Joe," said Edgar, "not to be able to recommend a cook or a gardener, and you living, as I may say, in the very midst of such useful personages. Now, Aileen, I can recommend both a cook and ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... visitor must be warned. My bat had a certain looseness in the shoulder, so that, at any quick movement of it, it clicked. If I struck the ball well and truly in the direction of point this defect did not matter; but if the ball went past me into the hands of the wicket-keeper, an unobservant bowler would frequently say, "How's that?" And an ill-informed umpire would reply, "Out." It was my duty before the game began to take the visiting umpire on one side and give him a practical ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... the seven months since her husband's death. She had aged considerably. Her spirit, her courage, were undiminished, but the years had at last levied the toll which a happy wifehood had denied them. Nor was Murray unobservant of these things. His partner in the fortunes of Fort Mowbray was an ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... for an hour in his office, dispatching his accumulated two-days' mail, all unobservant of the cat-like tread of Einstein, the office boy, moving in and out. He lingered in a gloomy reverie, after checking up his correspondence, and a half hour's sharp dictations, absorbed in the cautious letter ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... will pay for everything." [Letter itself, of brief magnanimous strain, in Campagnes de Noailles, i. 127; date "Neuwied, 26th April, 1743" (Adelung, iii. B, 114).] For the rest, they are in no hurry. They linger in that Frankfurt-Mainz region, all through the month of May; not unobservant of Noailles and his movements, if he made any; but occupied chiefly with gathering provisions; forming, with difficulty, a Magazine in Hanau. "What they intended: or intend, by coming hither?" asks the Public everywhere: "To go into the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... have been so unobservant as to overlook this. Here was a clue worth having. Poirot delicately dipped his finger into liquid, and tasted it gingerly. He ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... subordination, that while the whole country was overrun by the enemy, who invited them to desert, no fear was ever entertained of an insurrection of the slaves. During a war of seven years, with our country in possession of the enemy, no such danger was ever apprehended. But should we, therefore, be unobservant spectators of the progress of society within the last twenty years; of the silent but powerful change wrought, by time and chance, upon its composition and temper? When the fountains of the great deep of abomination ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... candy from Tom's pocket was greedily accepted by Jackie. Tom was feeling blue that day thinking of his father from whom had come no word, of his mother and sister, and his old home. He wandered on unobservant of the fact that it was growing dark, and that a storm was fast approaching. He was suddenly called to a sense of his surroundings by hearing a cry behind him, and turning back saw that little Jackie was ...
— The Dare Boys of 1776 • Stephen Angus Cox
... times out of ten what we call luck or fate is but a mere bugbear of the indolent, the languid, the purposeless, the careless, the indifferent; that, as a rule, the man who fails does not see or seize his opportunity. Opportunity is coy, is swift, is gone, before the slow, the unobservant, the indolent, or the careless ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... the combat between Snowball and the shark, he had hitherto remained unobservant of a circumstance of the most alarming character,—one that threatened not only the destruction of the Coromantee, but Ben Brace as well, and Lilly Lalee, and in time little William himself,—in short, of the ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... appeared morose and dissatisfied. Something had not worked to his liking in the complicated machinery of his plans, and he showed his vexation so palpably as soon to attract the attention of his submissive but by no means unobservant wife, who, after a while, plucked up the courage ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... in salutation of Miss Carroll. As she stopped to speak to him, he stared earnestly at her horse's neck; but kind Nature permits even a shy man's vision to take a wide range, and Bud by no means was unobservant of the brilliant skin framed by a glory of red hair; of the velvet dark eyes with their darker lashes; and of the corduroy habit, brownly harmonious with the sorrel horse and the clay road, ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... all times to stand in awe of his sister's authority, complied; though it was with a reluctance so evident, as to excite sneers, even among the unobservant and indolent sons of the squatter. Ishmael, himself, moved among his tall children, like one who expected nothing from the search, and who was indifferent alike to its success or failure. In this manner the party proceeded until their ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... became obvious even to unobservant Mr. Lyle, who longed for an opportunity of asking him ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... these passed through the Pagan's toiling mind as, unobservant of all outward events, he paced through the streets of the beleaguered city. Already he beheld the array of the Goths preparing the way, as the unconscious pioneers of the returning gods, for the march of that mighty revolution which ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... Lhari slipped unobserved out of Raynor's house and hiked unnoticed to the edges of a small city nearby, where he mingled with the crowd and hired a skycab from an unobservant human driver to take him to the spaceport city. The skycab driver was startled, but not, Bart judged, unusually so, to pick up a ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... her father's intended marriage with madame came on Leam with a crushing sense of terror and despair. Unobservant youth sees little, and even what it does see it does not comprehend. Though the girl had accustomed herself by slow degrees to many works and ways which mamma had never known; though the faculties which had been, as it were, imprisoned by that close-set, hide-bound love of hers were now a little ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... unobservant. But with the dogged resolution that marked him he forced himself to ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... laugh. She was rather tall, and of a pretty enough figure; hands good; feet invisible. Hugh came to these conclusions rapidly enough, now that his attention was directed to her; for, though naturally unobservant, his perception was very acute as soon as his attention ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... Hannah's face was a little more sallow and wrinkled, and her hair a little more freely streaked with gray than of yore: that was all the change visible in her personal appearance. But long continued solitude had rendered her as taciturn and unobservant as if she had ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... discourse was concluded, the trio remained sitting as if spellbound, quite unobservant of the crowd, ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... not, Sally, when I tell you that my life's whole happiness lies in your silence. John is unobservant and also unsuspicious. He has never had an intimate relation with you. You will have no difficulty. But you must be here,—because, dear, there is another reason," and here her voice grew very unsteady, and ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... "Rover," or of losing no small portion of his 'vantage ground. He did not hesitate. When the vessel was as nigh the weather shore as his busy lead told him was prudent the ship was tacked, and her head laid directly towards the still motionless and seemingly unobservant slaver. ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... flowers and fruits of holiness. Here is Macarius; Romoaldo here: And here my brethren, who their steps refrain'd Within the cloisters, and held firm their heart." I answ'ring, thus; "Thy gentle words and kind, And this the cheerful semblance, I behold Not unobservant, beaming in ye all, Have rais'd assurance in me, wakening it Full-blossom'd in my bosom, as a rose Before the sun, when the consummate flower Has spread to utmost amplitude. Of thee Therefore entreat I, father! to declare If I may gain such favour, as to gaze Upon thine image, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... innumerable green and flowering things. As it was, he whistled—an unusual thing for him to do in the street—then assumed the air of a man hard pressed for time. Gradually the passers-by began to look at him with the right amount of attention; he jostled, as if by accident, one or two of those who were unobservant, then apologised for his hurry. It was not pleasurable anticipation alone that was responsible for Dove's state of mind, and for the heightening and radiation of his self-consciousness. In offering to go ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... been unobservant of her—indeed it would not be too much to say that he had been acutely conscious all the time of Miss ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... writing table arranging some models of vessels and steam tugs as his employer turned at the doorway and looked back, and, with a countenance more waggish than exasperated, Duff Salter shook his cane at the unobservant Irishman, and ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... his cousin had not been unobservant of what was passing at a little distance from them. Benjulia's great height, and his evident familiarity with the child, ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... totally preoccupied. Tom was engrossed by the concerns of his theatre, and saw nothing that did not immediately relate to it. Edmund, between his theatrical and his real part, between Miss Crawford's claims and his own conduct, between love and consistency, was equally unobservant; and Mrs. Norris was too busy in contriving and directing the general little matters of the company, superintending their various dresses with economical expedient, for which nobody thanked her, and saving, with delighted integrity, half a crown here and there to the absent Sir Thomas, to have ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... know," Featherstone rejoined pointedly, and Foster saw that Alice had said nothing about his recent visit. She gave him an inquiring glance, as if she wondered why he did not state his reasons for going to Newcastle, but he looked as unobservant as he could. He could not signal her, because while this might escape his host's notice he was afraid of ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... silent and impassive, appearing to have heard or seen nothing of what had transpired, and to have no thought in her mind except the desire of fulfilling the duty which had brought her thither. But AEnone knew that the most unobservant person, upon entering, could not have failed at a glance to comprehend the whole import of the scene—and that therefore any such studied pretence of ignorance was superfluous. The attitude of the parties, the ill-disguised ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... fascinated, at the door. Good heavens! What should she do? What should she say? If she appeared confused, she would be thought a thief; she must have some excuse: she had come—to—find a lady—was waiting! She sank into a little chair and tried not to tremble visibly to the most unobservant eye, and the door opened, shut, and the owner of the room stood ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... or experiences to writing. I have said, with one exception; for the occasion is worth noting, as it was on a matter interesting, indeed, to every epicure in the universe. The subject which then engaged his pen bore the following title:—"Signs by which the most unobservant may detect in the soils of the world the existence of Truffles; together with an Essay on the most effectual mode of cultivating them." And it may well be conjectured, from the great learning and fitness of the writer to deal with ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... under any circumstances; but if that is the only reason for asking the Government to pay owners part of the cost of manning their ships, then they are living in a fool's paradise, and are much too credulous about public philanthropy, and very unobservant and illogical too if they imagine that national interests are entirely centred in the industry they happen to be engaged in. It would be just as reasonable for Armstrong's or Vickers' to request a subsidy for training their men because their business happens ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... kitchen and a maid—whom we had brought on from West Salem. We even went so far as to give dinner parties to such of our friends as could be trusted to overlook our lack of plate, and to remain kindly unobservant of the fact that Dora, the baby's nurse, doubled as waitress after cooking ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... yielding to importunity, and unmindful of the unities of time and place, went freely about, from gourd to gourd, concocting in him a punch. At which, Samoa expressed much surprise, that he should be so unobservant as not to know, that in Mardi, guests might be pressed to demean themselves, without its being expected that so they would do. A true toss-pot himself, he ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... and the Son of God. It would have been fulfilled quite as really, that is to say, the parallel between Christ and the nation would have been as fully carried out, if His place of refuge had been in some other land; but the precise outward identity helps to point the parallel to unobservant eyes. The great truth taught by it of the typical relation between the nation and the Person is the key to large regions of Old Testament history and prophecy. Rightly, therefore, does Matthew call ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... lying chiefly along the sea-coast, and in winter a most uncomfortable journey. But few trees are met with; a banyan here and there, but no camphor-trees along this route; but there is one extremely interesting feature on it that would strike the most unobservant traveller, viz.; the Loyang bridge, one of the wonders of China." Had Polo travelled by this route, he would certainly have mentioned it. Pauthier remarks upon Polo's silence in this matter: "It is surprising," says he, "that Marco Polo makes ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... the group the figure sitting there, and, striding towards the still unobservant boys, laid one hand upon Theodore's collar, the other on that of Rob; and the startled Theodore looked up into the stern, set ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... hostility. So she tapped at the kitchen door and a large cook of sound principles who loved neither Esther nor Sophy, let her in and passed her up the back stairs. Esther had strangely never noted this adventurous way of entering. She was rather unobservant about some things, and she would never have suspected a lady born of coming in by the kitchen for any reason whatever. Esther, too, had some of the ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... with a puzzled expression. Julius Savine smiled, but his sister-in-law, who had remained silent, but not unobservant, broke in: "You believe in the hereditary transmission of character, ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... ill-humour attracts no expressed notice or excites no efforts to remove it, it does not therefore affect those around you. This is not the case; even the gloom and ill-humour of a servant, who only remains a few minutes in attendance, will be depressing and annoying to the most unobservant master and mistress, though they might make no efforts to remove it. How much more, then, may your want of cheerfulness and sweet temper affect, though it may be insensibly, the peace of your family circle. ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... Minks,' said the other, who had taken his seat. 'I'll let you hear from me, you know, about the Scheme and—other things. Don't wait.' He seemed curiously unobservant of these strange ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... his familiar gestures. She had the woman's anxiety for his bodily health, she wished to know whether he had changed in face or figure, and, if so, how and in what measure. But she glanced at the obtuse, unobservant countenance of Captain Willoughby, and she understood that however much she craved for these ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... they are the possessors of a rare and subtle super-logic. Apparently whimsical, they hang to the truth with a tenacity which carries them through every phase of its incessant, jellylike shifting of form. Apparently unobservant and easily deceived, they see with bright and horrible eyes. In men, too, the same merciless perspicacity sometimes shows itself—men recognized to be more aloof and uninflammable than the general—men of special ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... might have suggested a degree of offended pride, and she was truly humiliated that her vaunted hazel eyes had so signally failed to work their wonted charm. As they strolled back together up the steep path to the hotel he seemed either unobservant or uncaring, so impassive were his manners, and she was aware that her demonstration had resulted in giving him information which he could not otherwise have gained. Later, she was nettled to notice that he had utilized it in prosaic fashion, for ...
— The Lost Guidon - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... these chance encounters, Barter found it hard to avoid the belief that his new-made acquaintance had a rather careful eye upon him. His nerve was a good deal shaken, and he was by no means the man he had been. To the unobservant stranger the frank gaiety of his laugh was as spontaneous as ever, but then that had never had much to do with Barter's inward sensations. Perhaps he got the laugh in some remote fashion from an ancestor who really ought ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... entirely unobservant of all that had been going on. She had had her qualms, but business must be business, and so long as Joan did not interfere with that she had not felt called upon to remonstrate with her on her growing friendliness with the ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... are!" he said. "Are you so unobservant as not to have found out that sanity and happiness are an impossible combination? No sane man can be happy, for to him life is real, and he sees what a fearful thing it is. Only the mad can be happy, and not many of those. The few that ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... the room with its three windows appear, and satisfied its tenant that his choice after all had not been a bad one. When he was almost dressed he walked to the middle one of the three windows to look out at the weather. Another shock awaited him. Strangely unobservant he must have been last night. He could have sworn ten times over that he had been smoking at the right-hand window the last thing before he went to bed, and here was his cigarette-end on the sill ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... as a rule, unobservant; they go on in the old way until the horse flinches in action or stands "pointing" in dumb appeal to his owner, telling with mute but touching eloquence of his tight-ironed, feverish foot, the dead frog, and the insidious disease, soon ...
— Rational Horse-Shoeing • John E. Russell
... which would be thought appropriate for romance, but which are more common, in fact, than the unobservant are disposed to confess, these two most brilliant events in the painter's life—his first successful work of art and the triumph of his scientific discovery—were brought together, as it were, in a manner singularly fitted to ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... advantages; yet the total absence of progress, if not the appearance of retrogression and decay, the loungers in the streets, and the peculiar appearance of the slaves, afford a contrast to the bustle on the opposite side of the river, which would strike the most unobservant. I was credibly informed that property of the same real value was worth 300 dollars in Kentucky and 3000 in Ohio! Free emigrants and workmen will not settle in Kentucky, where they would be brought into contact with compulsory slave-labour; ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... Don Estevan was not unobservant of this by-play that was passing around him. He easily read in the expressive looks of Tiburcio the secret of his heart, and involuntarily contrasted the manly beauty of the young man with the ordinary face and figure of the Senator. As ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... pieces are fifteenth-century human beings, such complications are likely to occur. The Lady Lisa had more than once given evidence that she was not carved of wood or ivory. But for three years the situation had remained the same—the husband unobservant, the lady capricious and wilful. She had shown the artist more kindness than he cared to recall. That was months ago. Of late he had found scant favor in her sight.... It ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... that, although I had been conscious of something odd, I never thought they were girls. Directly I knew it, I knew that I had been the most unobservant ass alive; for they couldn't ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... to the natural fortifications of Rome, who is so negligent and unobservant as not to have them depicted and deeply stamped on his memory? Such is the plan and direction of the walls, which, by the prudence of Romulus and his royal successors, are bounded on all sides by steep and rugged hills; and the only aperture between ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... no power or wish to obstruct his flight. I thought of it with transport, and once more threw myself upon the bed, and wrapped my averted face in the carpet. He would probably pass this door, unobservant of me, and my muffled face would save me from the agonies connected with the sight ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... not unobservant of his condition, although she was far from understanding his state of mind. She felt that there was little use in forcing his confidence, but she gave him now and then an opportunity to confide in her, feeling sure that ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... in my opinion, the correct adjective to apply to the spotted forktail (Henicurus maculatus). Like the paradise flycatcher, it is a bird which cannot fail to obtrude itself upon the most unobservant person, and, once seen, it is never likely to be forgotten. I well remember the first occasion on which I saw a spotted forktail; I was walking down a Himalayan path, alongside of which a brook was flowing, when suddenly from a rock in mid-stream there arose a black-and-white apparition, ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... of that great inland deep, the Mississippi, he conceived the ambition and the ideal of learning to know and to master that mysterious water. His dream, in time, was realized; he not only became a pilot, but—which is infinitely more significant—he changed from a callow, indolent, unobservant lad, with undeveloped faculties, to a man, a master of the river, with a knowledge which, in its accuracy and minuteness, was, for ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... her, and quite incapable of agreeing about the exact direction in which she was proceeding when they last saw her, these three bright exceptions to the general rule of total ignorance afforded no more real assistance to us than the mass of their unhelpful and unobservant neighbours. ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... husband you will make with all that knowledge at your finger ends! I need have no misgivings as to Ethel's health, and she has always been so subject to chills. The risk of entrusting one's daughter to an unobservant man is shocking, but to a physician! To have for one's daily companion a great and renowned doctor, what an advantage—what ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... village toward which he was driving, when a man on horseback met them, and, in passing, raised his hat to Mary. The act was only the usual courtesy of the highway; yet Mary was startled, disconcerted, and had to ask the unobservant, loquacious driver to repeat what he had said. Two days afterward Mary was walking at the twilight hour, in a narrow, sandy road, that ran from the village out into the country to the eastward. Alice walked beside her, plying her with questions. At a turn ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... noticed at length that the damsel was comely withal; and, his heart yearned towards her. The reverend gentleman, however, had not been unobservant of the charms of other maidens with whom he had been brought in contact, so, it may be presumed that his heart had "yearned" in vain for them; or, peradventure, these had not played with him so dexterously, when once hooked, as did the fair Bessie—who had not been the granddaughter ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... differing in appearance, but identical in essentials, the efficacy of sea-power was proved again in the American Secession war. If ever there were hostilities in which, to the unobservant or short-sighted, naval operations might at first glance seem destined to count for little, they were these. The sequel, however, made it clear that they constituted one of the leading factors of the success of the victorious side. The belligerents, the Northern or Federal ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... recesses of the Highlands, relates how he frequently came in contact with men living in the rude Highland way—forty years since, no education then—whom at first you would suppose to be morose, unobservant, almost stupid. But when they found out that their visitor would stay for hours gazing in admiration at their glens and mountains, their demeanour changed. Then the truth appeared: they were fonder than he was himself of the beauties of their ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... looked at him. "Mr. Holland," she said, "you must think me singularly unobservant. Do you suppose I don't see that you dislike my brother. You refused the pencil—you did refuse it plainly enough—because Billy had given it to me. I will not offer it to you again. I know that Billy sometimes does rub people up the wrong ...
— The Burglar and the Blizzard • Alice Duer Miller
... mild unconcern that had rested on Chang-how's features was rippled by a quaint, cunning smile, and for the first time he cast a quick glance full at her, then stood again with folded hands, calm, submissive, apparently unobservant. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... hours they talked there, their voices low, save once or twice when Danton's rose. They seemed to have lost all count of time, all heed of appearances. Menard and the priest made an effort at first to appear unobservant, but later, seeing that their movements were beyond the sight of those unheeding eyes, they took to watching and speculating on the course of the conversation. The night came on, and the dark closed over them. Still the murmur of those low voices floated ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... themselves, and unobservant In what state God's other works may be, In their own tasks all their powers pouring, These attain the ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... bad flavor, preferable or inferior to this or that other thing of the kind, so that I was bro't up in such a perfect inattention to those matters as to be quite indifferent what kind of food was set before me, and so unobservant of it, that to this day if I am asked I can scarce tell a few hours after dinner what I dined upon. This has been a convenience to me in traveling, where my companions have been sometimes very unhappy for want of a suitable gratification of their more delicate, ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... they would probably take the spindle-legged stand next. A strong protective instinct is part of possession, and to Esther that sight was as a magnet to steel. Down the grassy lane she sped, but so lightly that the couple by the wall were as unobservant of her as they were of the wind stirring ...
— Different Girls • Various
... silent witness of scenes like these, who laid them up deeply in her heart. Mrs. Williams was not unobservant of the gradual but steady falling off in Eric's character, and the first thing she noticed was the blunting of his home affections. When they first came to Roslyn, the boy used constantly to join his father and mother in their walks; but now he went seldom or never; ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... with redoubled energy, continuing the cry from time to time, and raising himself occasionally to look round him. The excitement of his mind, and the intensity with which it was bent on the one great object, rendered him at first almost unobservant of the flight of time. But suddenly the thought burst upon him that fully ten minutes or a quarter of an hour had elapsed since Ailie fell overboard, and that no one who could not swim could exist for half that time in deep water. He shrieked with agony ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne |
